On The Lighter Side

by Bryan

Gulf Gusher symbol Via Dr. Cole of all people, a video: The BP Oil Spill Re-Enacted By Cats in 1 Minute.

Because someone finally explained the difference between “circumstantial” and “direct” evidence to Dr. Lubchenco: Under water oil plumes confirmed

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said that the tests conducted at three sites by a University of South Florida research vessel confirmed oil as far as 3,300 feet below the surface 42 miles northeast of the well site and also oil below-surface oil 142 miles southeast.

Lubchenko said the analysis “indicate there is definitely oil sub surface. It’s in very low concentrations” of 0.5 parts per million.

Next I suppose the Doctor will have to be led to the EPA standards on pollutants to discover that many of the components of crude oil are considered hazardous when they occur in parts per BILLION, not parts per million. I would assume that as a marine biologist she is aware that most of the animal life in the Gulf filters the water for oxygen, and some for food, so oil in any concentration will eventually cause death.

20 comments

1 jams O'Donnell { 06.08.10 at 2:24 pm }: That’s brilliant Bryan!
2 Bryan { 06.08.10 at 3:53 pm }: The sad truth is, Jams, you guys are much better at satire than the US. We are OK with farce, but satire requires greater familiarity with language than most Americans want to bother with.
3 Kryten42 { 06.08.10 at 9:40 pm }: Yeah… That was (sadly) funny. *sigh* 😉

I was watching this video diatribe… He’s mostly correct I think.
BP’s oil spill: Damn The Consequences!
4 Bryan { 06.08.10 at 10:32 pm }: People don’t want to sacrifice anything, so they vote for people who tell them they don’t have to. Sooner or later the bill arrives and they act shocked that what the “hippies” have been telling them for years would happen, has happened.
5 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 10:30 am }: You could point Dr. Lubchenco to her own site. Here is a PDF document from the NOAA Book Shelf. Oh, wait…

BTW! I am sure it’s purely coincidental… But NOAA recently (since May 6, 2010) have changed the URI to their Restoration web site, thereby breaking links to the relevant documents held there and pointed to by all sites to the previous URI. Curious that they have time to ~~break site links~~ change their website structure in the midst of a major crisis, knowing full well that the site is a valuable resource for all involved in the said crisis. 🙂 Of course, they will have some legitimate reason I’m sure. Anyway, to continue…

Crude Environmental Oil – Potential Hazard to Life and Living Organisms

Fixed URI to the PDF document referred to at the above site is here:

Michel, J. 1992. Oil Behavior and Toxicity, Chapter 2. in Introduction to Coastal Habitats and Biological Resources for Spill Response response. (Office of Response and Restoration, NOAA).

Oil Behavior and Toxicity – Chapter 2 (PDF)

This is a good reference created by Dr. Michael Harbut, Karmanos Cancer Institute and Dr. Kathleen Burns, Sciencecorps.

Gulf Oil Spill Health Hazards

To be continued…
6 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 11:02 am }: …continued:

I found this at ‘The National Academic Press’:

Spills of Nonfloating Oils – Risk and Response

Here is the recovery document from the 3^rd R&D Forum on High-Density Oil Spill Response. This documents the response to the much smaller oil spill created when the Russian Tanker VOLGONEFT 248 broke in two in the Sea of Marmara off Istanbul, Turkey and spilled 1,578 tonnes of Heavy Fuel Oil. The shoreline cleanup took 471 days (12,355 man-days) whilst the sunken oil took 275 days (3,192 man-days) to recover. The contract for the cleanup was awarded to a Turkish salvage company after an exhaustive process. This company is now one of the very few in the World with real experience in cleaning up or recovering sunken (sub-surface) oil.

Recovery of Sunken Oil in the Sea of Marmara (PDF)

(PS: Your SPAM system is a REAL PITA!!)
7 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 11:06 am }: …continued, again:

I also found this interesting document (from 2004):

This paper presents the state of the art for oil spill detection in the world oceans. We discuss different satellite sensors and oil spill detectability under varying conditions. In particular, we concentrate on the use of manual and automatic approaches to discriminate between oil slicks and look-alikes based on pattern recognition. We conclude with a discussion of suggestions for further research with respect to oil spill detection systems.

Oil spill detection by satellite remote sensing (PDF)

And yet, the US Gov continues to state they have no idea how bad the spill actually is! Aha… Right.

And this (from the IOSC):

Heavy Oil Spills: Out of Sight, Out of Mind (PDF)
8 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 11:23 am }: …continued, again:

Here’s another document from NOAA:

Oil Behavoir, Pathways, and Exposure – Appendix C (PDF)

And… Here’s the official (public version) NOAA NRDA document for the Deepwater Horizon oil Spill (dated May 7)

Natural Resource Damage Assessment – Deepwater Horizon oil Spill (PDF)

And, for reference:

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (PDF)

Happy reading!
9 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 11:39 am }: I found this Citizens Guide to the NEPA. But, given that it’s from ‘Council of Environmental Quality, Office of the President’ 2007… I have no idea how accurate or legitimate it is. *shrug* 🙂

A Citizen’s Guide to the NEPA (PDF)

And, lastly… This US Coast Guard dcument:

National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Procedures And Policy For Considering Environmental Impacts (PDF)
10 Bryan { 06.09.10 at 2:07 pm }: In a post today, I’ll point to a report that describes the Well from Hell in detail, including the problem with the plumes, that was written in 2000 by the Minerals Management Service.

Yeah, I know, cue Condi…
11 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 8:49 pm }: Yeah, really!

I mean, all up it took me about an hour to find and check those doc’s, and there were dozens more. I figured they were the most relevant and debunks Dr. Liar. She is either lieing or got her PhD from one of those bogus online *Universities* (like Uni of Sucker-R-U). And the rest of the Gov from the Prez down also. And I really don’t get it. They can’t really believe they can hide the truth for long? Even Bushmoron wasn’t that stupid… OK, yes he was. Oh well… *shrug*
12 Bryan { 06.09.10 at 10:21 pm }: If you work for the Obama administration you probably got your graduate degree from an Ivy League school, Harvard in her case. Why anyone who was interested in marine biology would go to Harvard is beyond me, because most of the best research is done at schools that are tied to research institutes or on the the ocean. MIT has ties to Woods Hole. but the real work is done in the public universities of coastal states.
13 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 10:56 pm }: Well… I decided to do some more research. 🙂

OK. Let’s have a look at who Dr. Jane Lubchenco is (or is purported to be):

First, her biography:

Jane Lubchenco

According to her Bio, she certainly has the academic qualifications and her husband, Dr. Bruce Menge, is a Marine Biologist also.

Dr. Menge has been working with Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon as a Community Ecology Instructor (from their blog):

Community Ecology Begins

Dr. Menge has also been involved in the USGS Mendenhall Research Fellowship Program:

Predicting Effects of Climate Change on Pacific Coast Intertidal Foragers

Both Jane and Bruch have been contributors and their publications used in several books, such as:

“Defending illusions: federal protection of ecosystems” By Allan K. Fitzsimmons
(also called: Science, Ecosystems and the Emperor’s New Clothes). Available via Google Books, see reference 16.

Continued…
14 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 10:57 pm }: …Continued:

OK, Back to Jane… She has received the Heinz Award for the Environment:

Jane Lubchenco receives the Heinz Award for the Environment for her role in broadening awareness of the importance of biological sustainability to the future of humanity, her efforts to raise the visibility of ocean issues, her commitment to opening the lines of communication between scientists and citizens, and her pioneering concept of the social contract that exists between science and society.

Based on a brilliant scientific career, and after years of dedicated service, Jane Lubchenco is one of our most respected and recognized ecologists. She has shown that, while science should be excellent, pure and dispassionate, scientists should not sacrifice their right – and must not ignore their responsibility – to communicate their knowledge about how the earth is changing or to say what they believe will be the likely consequences of different policy options.

The 8th Heinz Awards

So… given the impressive credentials, I don’t understand the discrepancies.

Continued…
15 Kryten42 { 06.09.10 at 10:58 pm }: …Continued:

In the news today (yesterday now), I found these two items. One from the Environment News Service (USA) where she is quoted as saying:

Hydrocarbons found in the samples 42 nautical miles northeast from the wellhead at the surface at 162 feet and 4,500 feet were in concentrations too low to do the actual fingerprinting, she said.

BP Fingerprints Found on Subsurface Oil in the Gulf

And this from News Australia:

“NOAA is confirming the presence of very low concentrations of subsurface oil at sampling depths ranging from the surface to 3300 feet (1006 metres) at locations 40 (74 kms) to 42 (78kms) nautical miles northeast of the well site,” she said.

Ms Lubchenco said officials have completed a process of “fingerprinting” the oil to confirm that it did in fact, come from the BP spill.

“The test results confirm that there is oil subsurface. We’ve always suspected that, but it’s good to have confirmation,” the NOAA chief said.

Oil from BP spill found 74km away

So, apparently, when speaking about the spill and links to BP in the USA, she “doesn’t know for sure”, but in International media, she is certain!

Maybe she’s certain that American’s are pig ignorant and don’t look at International news? *shrug*

Anyway, this is simply one of several I’ve seen. It will suffice for now.

“Curiouser and Curiouser”, Said Alice 😉
16 Bryan { 06.09.10 at 11:57 pm }: This smells like lawyers doing the filtering by everyone involved. No one is allowed to say what they think unless they can prove it in court. The fact that the number two guy at the Energy Department was BP’s chief scientist before taking the job, and helped the Secretary [Minister in the rest of the world] of Energy get a huge grant from BP, does not make me a happy camper.

It seems like everyone in this administration is tied to Goldman Sachs and/or BP. This wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t thousands of qualified, experienced people in the US who aren’t tied to corporations and could use a job right now.
17 Kryten42 { 06.10.10 at 1:41 am }: I was going to add this, but I had to go for a Doctor’s appointment. I now have two more prescription med’s to add. Soon, I won’t need food! *sigh* Anyway…

This is from Der Spiegel (in English). 🙂

Oil Spill’s Real Threat Lies Beneath the Surface

The Gulf of Mexico spill is vastly larger than the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989, but where is all the oil? While efforts to protect coastlines have been making the headlines, the real ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is unfolding deep beneath the water’s surface.

Samantha Joye was sure she was right. Somewhere down there, the toxic clouds were sure to exist. And now she was holding the evidence in her hands. A thin film of oil glistened in one of the small sample bottles Joye had filled with water taken from more than 1 kilometer (3,300 feet) beneath the surface.

“You could see it. Everybody saw it,” Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, wrote on her blog. Besides, the sample taken from the Gulf of Mexico smelled as if it had come directly from a gas station.

Joye made this important discovery a few days ago on board the research ship Walton Smith, near the location where the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig went up in flames on April 20.

The scientists are now referring to the site as “Ground Zero.” They have spotted oddly shaped “pancakes of oil” floating on the surface there, Joye reports, as well as “bizarre orange and black stringers, as deep in the water column as you could see.”

And they have a Flash map with time-line for the best estimates of the spill that’s just scary! Click on the red dot’s on the time-line to see the progression:

Estimated Reach of the Deepwater Horizon Spill

It’s definitely going to get worse. 🙁
18 Kryten42 { 06.10.10 at 2:03 am }: There’s a photo here of someone picking up oil blobs on Pensacola beach (and other images in the gallery):

someone uses a straw to collect an oil blob on the beach in Pensacola

Slide 7 has this:

BP CEO Tony Hayward (pictured at a press conference in Louisiana on May 24) disputes that the oil plumes even exist. “The oil is on the surface,” he said. “There aren’t any plumes.” He argues that, because oil is lighter than water, it will always float to the surface. BP scientists, at any rate, have found “no evidence” of underwater oil clouds.

I’d call him a moron, but that would assume that he really is a moron, rather than the lieing criminal he actually is. Maybe he wants people to think he’s a moron and that will be his defense? 🙄
19 Kryten42 { 06.10.10 at 5:58 am }: Wanted to comment on the point you made earlier Brian, about Obama appointees being from Ivy league schools. As you said Harvard in her case, which like you, I find really weird. 😐 Oh, and according to her bio on AllGov, she played basketball, like most of Obama’s appointees (what the hell is with that BTW??)

She attended a Catholic girls’ high school, St. Mary’s Academy, where, like so many Obama appointees, she played basketball. Lubchenco attended Colorado College, where she fell in love with the ocean during a summer course in invertebrate zoology at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. After earning her BA in biology in 1969, she received her MS in zoology from the University of Washington in 1971, and her PhD in ecology from Harvard University in 1975.

She had a great start at Woods Hole… then went off the rails if you ask me. UW & Harvard… Seems like she was more interested in Political aspirations. *shrug*

I really don’t understand how someone with all her qualifications (even discounting her academic ones) can be allowing this to continue, and even helping the disaster continue.

She has served as president of the International Council for Science (the first woman to do so), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Ecological Society of America. She was a presidential appointee to two terms on the National Science Board (1996-2006), which advises the President and Congress and oversees the National Science Foundation. She co-chaired an Oregon gubernatorial advisory group on global warming that recommended actions the state should take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Lubchenco founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program that teaches environmental scientists to be leaders and communicators of scientific information to the public, policy makers, the media and the private sector. She currently serves as chair of the program’s advisory board. She also participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a five-year, international scientific assessment of the consequences of environmental changes to human well-being, and co-chaired the MA’s Synthesis for Business and Industry (PDF). She is also a Founding Principal of COMPASS (the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea), a collaboration among academic scientists, communication and media specialists that communicates academic marine conservation science to policy makers, the media, managers and the public.

Lubchenco served on the Pew Oceans Commission and now the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (a merger of the Pew Oceans Commission and the US Commission on Ocean Policy). She is a director, co-chair or trustee of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, SeaWeb and the Environmental Defense Fund; Trustee Emerita of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and a former trustee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and the World Resources Institute.

Damned if I know! 😐

Anyway…

I found a cool techno-blog (with some blogs about the Horizon disaster, but also some other interesting blogs.)

The X-Journals

As a companion blog following the research, planning and production of a series of documentary films, The X-Journals seek out and explore revolutionary new technologies from both conventional and unorthodox sources, especially those technologies that could help to remedy significant threats to our planet and societies.
20 Bryan { 06.10.10 at 10:34 pm }: Hey, Ivy League and a basketball player, like Obama… and Palin, what could go wrong?

You can’t tell where anyone stands even with a program and team roster. There is obviously something going on that people aren’t being told, and that isn’t a safe thing to do right now. People are angry and many are afraid. Sooner or later someone is going to snap if the people in charge don’t start paying attention.

The time for trying to minimize the problem is over, so the people in charge had better start telling the truth. Hell, local officials are already being openly rude to BP people, and that is not the way things have ever been done down here. If you are a local politician you are expected to say “excuse me” before you murder an opponent.