Posts from — August 2010

It’s Hot!!

You’re sure cats don’t swim?

[Editor: Even Pita had to calm down and take a break after this week’s heat indexes.]

Friday Ark

Position: 26.3N 66.6W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [340°] near 14 mph [22 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 70 mph [110 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 105 miles [165 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1005 mb ↓.

It is about 430 miles [ 690 km] South-Southwest of Bermuda.

Colin has regenerated.

Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Bermuda.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The Miami Herald notes that the Science world skeptical at oil spill’s disappearing act

WASHINGTON — Many scientists say they’re skeptical of a widely publicized government report Wednesday that concludes much of the oil that gushed from BP’s leaking well is gone and poses little threat to the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the “vast majority” of the 4.9 million barrels released into the Gulf has either evaporated “or been burned, skimmed, and recovered from the wellhead, or dispersed.”

“I’m suspect if that’s accurate or not,” said Ronald Kendall, the director of the Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University and one of the scientists who testified Wednesday at a congressional hearing about the need for more research into the composition and use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil in the Gulf.

“It’s an estimate and I’d like to say that even if it’s true, there are still 50 to 60 million gallons that are still out there,” he said. “It’s too early to draw the conclusion that the coast is clear, but there are species there that will tell us.”
…

Scientists also questioned the report’s methodology.

“There is a lot of uncertainty in these figures,” said James H. Cowan, Jr., a professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University,

For example, the report doesn’t explain how its authors decided what was naturally dispersed oil and what was chemically dispersed oil. They gave no details of how they estimated the evaporation rate of oil — something that’s difficult to do over large areas of seawater because of the effects of weather and other factors, Cowan said.

It took them over 100 days to come to a decision on the flow rate, but they can make reasoned judgments on what happened to the oil in a week? What is the basis for their figures, because they haven’t been sampling, and those who have been sampling have only produced preliminary figures?

This whole thing smells more like marketing and politics than science. They had to be embarrassed into starting their pathetic efforts at research, and they denied the existence of the underwater plumes until the facts were overwhelming. They have put more effort into protecting BP than the people, despite a few harsh statements for the masses.

McClatchy reports that BP will try to cement Deepwater Horzion well today

BP reported earlier Wednesday that a “static kill” had succeeded in forcing what oil remained in the Deepwater Horizon’s well bore back into rock formations 13,000 feet below the sea floor and that oil was no longer flowing into the well. If that’s true, then the cementing Allen authorized on Wednesday should seal the well — weeks before the relief well will be in a position to try to do the same thing.
…

Wells said the “static kill” had gone as smoothly as engineers could have hoped. The procedure, which began at about 4 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, lasted eight hours and required, Wells said, 2,300 barrels — 96,600 gallons — of drilling mud. At a weight of 13.2 pounds per gallon, the mud weighed nearly 1.3 million pounds or more than 637 tons.
…

He said there was no evidence that the mud had gone anywhere but straight down the drill pipe — suggesting that oil was not flowing in the well’s annulus, the empty space between the outside of the pipe and the rock wall of the bore. Allen has said sealing the annulus is the primary reason for completing the relief well.

Well, OK, except, the numbers don’t say what Wells wants people to believe they say.

After the fold some Solid Geometry will take place, so it’s not safe for multinational marketing or government spokesweasels.

[Read more →]

From Weather Underground

Cinco Bayou – Pocahontas Dr., Fort Walton Beach, Florida (PWS)
Updated: 12:00 PM CDT on August 05, 2010
Partly Cloudy
90.9 °F [32.7 °C]
Humidity: 71%
Dew Point: 80 °F
Wind: 1.0 mph from the NNW
Wind Gust: 4.0 mph
Pressure: 29.92 in (Falling)
Heat Index: 109 °F [42.8 °C]
Visibility: 10.0 miles
UV: 10 out of 16
Pollen: 4.10 out of 12
Clouds:
Few 9000 ft
Few 15000 ft
(Above Ground Level)
Elevation: 16 ft

Heat advisory in effect from noon today to 6 PM CDT this evening…

I’m having flashbacks of the Hedgemony listening to this White House propaganda. The BBC reports that the Majority of BP spill ‘dealt with’

Almost three-quarters of the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico has been cleaned up or broken down by natural forces, the US government has said.

A government report says only a quarter of the oil from the BP well remains and that it is “degrading quickly”.

The majority had been captured, burned off or evaporated, it states. But more clean-up is necessary officials warn.

The report was released after BP announced its “static kill” procedure to seal the leak was working.
…

Speaking on the ABC television network, White House energy adviser Ms Browner said: “The scientists are telling us about 25% was not captured or evaporated or taken care of by mother nature.”

She said the inter-agency report was “encouraging”, but added that further clean-up effort was necessary.

Browner is effectively lying. Even Newsweek has figured it out: What the New Report on the Gulf Spill Really Says

To be precise, the report indicates that 50 percent of the oil is gone—17 percent was collected directly from the wellhead, 8 percent has been skimmed or burned, and 25 percent has evaporated or dissolved. Of the remainder, 24 percent has been dispersed, either naturally (16 percent, by the force with which oil left the wellhead, much like spray from an aerosol can) or through the use of chemical dispersants (8 percent). The final 26 percent remains unaccounted for, and has either washed ashore or remains lurking in the sea.

The “dispersed oil” isn’t gone. They are finding it in larval crabs and in huge plumes in the water column. They don’t know what is going on, because they aren’t doing the sampling that is necessary to find it.

At a press conference the head of NOAA, Dr. Lubchenco, said that there was no oil on the floor of the Gulf. How in hell does she know – they don’t have anyone looking at the floor of Gulf. Off shore in five feet of water people are finding oil on the floor of the Gulf, so Lubchenco is back to her bad habit of denying reality until someone buries her in facts. You can’t find it if you don’t look, and NOAA isn’t looking.

We put up with eight years of this anti-scientific garbage under the Shrubbery, and it looks like this is another policy that Obama is continuing.

McClatchy is trying to fight against the ignorance: Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that’s what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They’ve specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren’t true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Jeff Greene, the billionaire running against Kendrick Meek for the Democratic nomination for Senate, is pushing the Fannie/Freddie fairy tale, to avoid his personal responsibility for the meltdown as a major player in the Credit Default Swap scam.

It is the standard conservative agitprop – everything is the fault of the government and poor people, and the rich are the victims.

McClatchy, and most news outlets, gets carried away and reports: BP well in Gulf killed with heavy mud in 8-hour operation

WASHINGTON — BP’s Deepwater Horizon well, which for 87 days spewed millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in the worst accidental oil spill the world has ever seen, has been successfully killed by thousands of tons of heavy drilling mud.

BP announced early Wednesday that a so-called “static kill” had succeeded in forcing the Macondo well’s oil back into rock formations 18,000 feet below the sea’s surface.

“The MC252 well appears to have reached a static condition,” BP said in a news release, calling the well by the Mississippi Canyon lease number it was assigned when BP bought the rights to drill from the federal government in 2008.

The well reached it’s “static condition” — meaning the drilling mud was holding the oil in the reservoir by nothing more than its weight — about eight hours after technicians began pumping the mud into the well, BP said. It was midnight on the East Coast, but still Tuesday in the Central time zone, the 105th day of the crisis.

They have the well in balance for the moment, but it was supposedly in balance on April 20^th, just before a gas bubble pushed all of the mud out of the well and exploded. After they pump in enough cement to fill the entire well bore I’ll accept that it is dead, but not before.

The cementing process itself is not risk free. It may well have been the heat from the curing cement that released the gas from a hydrate deposit and caused the bubble. The Wagnerian soprano isn’t on stage yet.

From Weather Underground

Cinco Bayou – Pocahontas Dr., Fort Walton Beach, Florida (PWS)
Updated: 1:30 PM CDT on August 04, 2010
Scattered Clouds
92.7 °F [33.7 °C]
Humidity: 70%
Dew Point: 82 °F
Wind: 0.0 mph
Wind Gust: 1.0 mph
Pressure: 29.94 in (Falling)
Heat Index: 116 °F [46.7 °C]
Visibility: 10.0 miles
UV: 10 out of 16
Pollen: 4.00 out of 12
Clouds:
Scattered Clouds 3000 ft
Scattered Clouds 11000 ft
(Above Ground Level)
Elevation: 16 ft

There are no advisories??

To help people make up their minds about Tom Shales’s complaints about Christiane Amanpour’s first show as the anchor of Meet the Press, here are their relative accomplishments from their Wikipedia entries:

Tom Shales has worked in Elgin, Illinois and Washington, DC.

Shales worked as Entertainment Editor at the Washington Examiner from 1968-1971. He joined the Washington Post as a writer in the Style section in 1972, was named chief television critic in July 1977, and was appointed TV Editor in June 1979. The Washington Post Writers Group has syndicated his column since 1979…

During 1998-1999, Shales was a frequent film critic for Morning Edition on National Public Radio. He was twice a guest co-host on the television show Roger Ebert & the Movies after the death of Gene Siskel…

Shales received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1988, for his work at the Washington Post…

His latest book is Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. New York: Little, Brown and Co. 2002

Christiane Amanpour, CBE has reported from “Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans and the United States during Hurricane Katrina.”

Honors

Her body of work has earned an inaugural Television Academy Honor; nine News and Documentary Emmys; four George Foster Peabody Awards; two George Polk Awards; three duPont-Columbia Awards; the Courage in Journalism Award; an Edward R. Murrow award and other major journalism awards – as well as honorary degrees from The American University of Paris, Georgetown University, New York University, Smith College, Emory University and the University of Michigan.

In 2007, Amanpour was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for her “highly distinguished, innovative contribution” to the field of journalism…

Shales has spent decades watching television for the Style section of the Washington Post while Amanpour has seen more more wars than the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He talks to the judges on American Idol, while she interviews world leaders.

McClatchy reports on the latest solution for the Well from Hell: BP begins ‘static kill’ of Deepwater Horizon well

MIAMI — BP on Tuesday finally began slowly strangling its blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, injecting heavy drilling mud slowly but steadily into the well in a plan to drive the crude back into the deep rock formations from which it first surged more than three months ago.

The company and the Obama administrations cautioned it would take another step and a week or more to officially pronounce the monstrous gusher dead, but a successful “hydrostatic kill” operation would drive one huge nail in the coffin. Early on, the signs from a mile below the Gulf’s surface were encouraging. BP said it began the process, which injects a dense “drilling mud” tipping the scales at 13.2 pounds a gallon to muscle oil and gas back down its ancient reservoir, around 4 p.m. Eastern Time after what BP Vice President Kent Wells called some “text book” tests.
…

[Read more →]

For some reason the Mobile Press-Register decided to do some fact-checking on the “oil just evaporated”. and sent people out to same the water along the Alabama coast.

Ben Raines, the paper’s environmental reporter, covers the early results – Tests suggest oil dispersant washing up on Alabama beaches

The stained, brown water seen washing up in pockets along Alabama beaches for the last two weeks appears to contain the dispersant widely used on oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, according to a preliminary analysis.

The Press-Register collected samples from multiple locations along the Fort Morgan peninsula during the last several weeks and provided them to Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University chemist.

While heavy oil sheen was visible in the areas where the material was collected, little if any oil was found to be present in the samples, said Overton, who is analyzing oil samples for the federal government.

“We didn’t see oil in the analysis we do, but I passed some of these water samples to a colleague who does fluorescence analysis,” Overton said. “We saw some preliminary indications that there was a dispersant signal in the sample.”

Fluorescence analysis provides ultra-fine detail and can measure chemicals to the parts per billion level or better. Overton said it was too soon to say definitively that the material in the samples was the Corexit dispersant, but the signal was similar to a Corexit sample.

Later in the article is another piece of bad news:

[Read more →]

From Weather Underground

Cinco Bayou – Pocahontas Dr., Fort Walton Beach, Florida (PWS)
Updated: 11:00 AM CDT on August 3, 2010
Partly Cloudy
90.3 °F [32.4 °C]
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 75%
Dew Point: 81 °F
Wind: 0.0 mph
Wind Gust: 2.0 mph
Pressure: 30.05 in (Falling)
Heat Index: 110 °F [43.3 °C]
Visibility: 10.0 miles
UV: 10 out of 16
Pollen: 3.90 out of 12
Clouds:
Few 15000 ft
(Above Ground Level)
Elevation: 16 ft

Excessive heat warning in effect from noon today to 6 PM CDT this evening…

Position: 15.8N 53.8W [ 4 PM CDT 2100 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [285°] near 35 mph [56 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 35 miles [ 55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1006 mb.

It is about 540 miles [ 865 km] East of the Lesser Antilles.

Colin seems to be degenerating. A small storm, it appears to be shedding its support in a burst of speed.

Update: The National Hurricane Center has given up on Colin which is now a low pressure trough.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]