June 3, 2010 archive

Oil is Likely to Impact East Coast

“I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?'” says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. “Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood.”

The computer simulations indicate that, once the oil in the uppermost ocean has become entrained in the Gulf of Mexico’s fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida’s Atlantic coast within weeks. It can then move north as far as about Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east. Whether the oil will be a thin film on the surface or mostly subsurface due to mixing in the uppermost region of the ocean is not known.

The scientists used a powerful computer model to simulate how a liquid released at the spill site would disperse and circulate, producing results that are not dependent on the total amount released. The scientists tracked the rate of dispersal in the top 65 feet of the water and at four additional depths, with the lowest being just above the sea bed.

“The modeling study is analogous to taking a dye and releasing it into water, then watching its pathway,” Peacock says.

The model simulations show that a liquid released in the surface ocean at the spill site is likely to slowly spread as it is mixed by the ocean currents until it is entrained in the Loop Current. At that point, speeds pick up to about 40 miles per day, and when the liquid enters the Atlantic’s Gulf Stream it can travel at speeds up to about 100 miles per day, or 3,000 miles per month.

http://www2.ucar.edu/news/ocea…

Open Iggy Pop Invite (not I/P essay)

While many subjects have been wonderfully covered through the years on DD; and shall continue to so do, there be subjects that I shall not name, that are only allowed here as filtered privately by the admins.

To take this potentially messy subject off their hands, I invite anyone who would like to post on that unnamed subject, to come to Wildwildleft.com and post freely.

The Wild Wild Left

This is offered to support the rules here, and offer an alternative venue.

Iggy Pop discussions, be it about the (ahem) band, or any of its policies can be taken next door, ande posted at WWL.

There are no schedules there, every essay is considered a gift, not a duty, and being small, I trust that those of you who I make FPers will kindly take turns.

I am not taking comments on this thread, for it is NOT an attempt to further debate a policy here set in stone. (oops, see disclaimer below)

It is only an open invite, an alternative avenue. I will continue to read your OTHER content here (but you can still cross to us if you choose) but now I can read your opinions and reporting on the other subjects at home.

I probably won’t be around here much, so you all know where to find me. (and Gottlieb)

See you around the tubes.

Peace,

Diane G

(this format doesn;t have a no-comment button, but I IMPLORE YOU, do not use it to rehash the already hashed, or this essay will end up deleted or something, and me banned! To any admin, plz turn comments off for me????)

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 BP cuts off broken oil pipe with giant shears

by Allen Johnson, AFP

49 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – BP on Thursday successfully cut off a fractured oil pipe using giant shears, pressing ahead with its latest bid to seal the Gulf of Mexico leak as President Barack Obama announced a third trip to the region.

After a diamond-blade saw got stuck in the pipe lying a mile down on the sea bed, the British energy giant was forced to use rougher means to get the job done.

“The other saw that we attempted to use was not successful in getting the internal drill pipe so we replaced it with the shears, which don’t have as clean a cut, but we do have a cut now,” Admiral Thad Allen told reporters.

Open Masquerade

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No future for you

This is an attempt to assess how political life has been foreshortened by the fact that “the horizon of the future has contracted.”

(Crossposted at Orange and Firedoglake)

Off The Wall: Wave Dancing

meh. I have much to say but my meatworld self and my family have other ideas and demands on my time today.  I pretty much said it, most of it, yesterday with my ironically titled essay No Strings Attached. So I’ll just take a little time to embellish this one little thing from there. A postscript, if you will.

This is all such soul sapping stuff. It can drown you but there are ways… in the ocean, you dive under the wave…. under, then wait, swim out some, then surface. Breathe.

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Obama Makes Angry Faces About the Oil-Spill

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Ever since Barack Obama found some oil on a beach…

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He has been trying to look angry, but he just looks weird!

So it would probably be better if he stuck with his usual expressions…

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“I would like to thank the Academy for this award as Cutest President Ever!”

…and left making angry faces to really angry people like Britney Spears.

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Mother Mother Ocean

A couple of weeks ago on May 17 we heard and saw Ritter Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Jeremy Jackson talk about and show us the shockingly overfished, overheated, and polluted state of our oceans today and how they have been so for long before BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, with indicators that things will get much worse.

Though he’s been a contract photojournalist for National Geographic Magazine since 1998, Brian Skerry has spent the past three decades telling the stories of the ocean. His images portray not only the aesthetic wonder of the ocean but display an intense journalistic drive for relevance.

In another TED talk posted only a couple of days ago Skerry “brings to light the many pressing issues facing our oceans and its inhabitants. Typically spending eight months of the year in the field, he often faces extreme conditions to capture his subjects. He has lived on the bottom of the sea, spent months aboard fishing boats and dived beneath the Arctic ice to get his shot. He has spent over 10,000 hours underwater.”

Spend 16 minutes with Skerry here and let him share some of his stories of the oceans and show you more of the beauty and natural treasures our society seems so bent on wrecking and losing.



Brian Skerry reveals ocean’s glory — and horror

TED.com – June 2010

Coming Out as Religious, and Other Stories

I’d rather not entertain current events for a while, and instead tell you a bit more about the Quaker Young Adult gathering I recently attended.  Primarily this is because it is supremely depressing to contemplate the oil spill.  The beaches on Alabama’s Gulf Coast that I visited every summer as a child and young teen might be forever changed as wave after wave of oil washes ashore.  I may return to that at another time, but right now I am avoiding even thinking about it because it hits so close to home.  Returning to my original point, there are so many stories to share I hardly know where to begin, but I’ll start with one and go from there.

Docudharma Times Thursday June 3




Thursday’s Headlines:

Gaza blockade untenable, U.S. believes

Gershwin Prize event at White House: A really big night for Sir Paul McCartney

USA

BP says more La. barrier island berms will cost $360 million

The Mississippi Delta’s healthcare blues

Europe

President Sarkozy named by inquiry into Pakistan submarine payments

Switzerland bans private poker games

Middle East

Gaza flotilla attack: Turkish activists return to heroes’ welcome

Iraq bomb deaths blamed on ‘useless’ detectors

Asia

Taliban rocket attack shakes peace congress in Afghanistan

Chinese newspaper cartoon defies ban on mentioning Tiananmen Square

Africa

Animals struggling to survive on Zimbabwe’s Starvation Island

Latin America

Cartels smuggle U.S. drug money back to Mexico in cash, study finds

The Rule Stands

The intensifying Israel/Palestine crisis has generated the necessity of reexamining Docudharma’s current policy of requiring preapproval for I/P essays.  A range of opinions have been expressed regarding the validity of this policy, most have been stated respectfully, a few have been inflammatory.  The current policy is still being defended by the Admins and CE’s, based upon their view that the content of I/P essays must be preapproved in order to avoid angry words being exchanged in essay threads.

I have a fundamental problem with that policy.  The censorship aspect of it is problematic enough, but even more problematic is what it reveals about progressive weaknesses, weaknesses which have crippled our ability to have any impact on the political, social, and economic systems in this clusterfuck of a country.    

Progressives shouldn’t get so freaked out about angry name-calling in an essay thread. What the fuck? How are we ever going to have any impact on the government or anything else when something as relatively minor and trivial as name-calling and insults in an essay thread freaks everyone out?  The participants exchange increasingly angry words, everyone else curls into a fetal position, and nothing is ever resolved anyway.    

It’s no wonder everyone in D.C. laughs at us and tells us to go fuck ourselves.

We need to get tougher, we need to get a lot tougher and we need to do it in a fucking hurry.

But The Rule Stands.  I’m told The Rule has to stand because . . .  

Discussions of I/P almost always instantly degenerate into knee jerk apologies for unconscionable actions on the one hand and anti semitic hate speech on the other.

So fucking WHAT?  

Progressives haven’t done a damn thing about 8 years of Bush/Cheney war crimes and torture, they haven’t done a damn thing about 30 years of Democratic betrayals, they haven’t done a damn thing to generate change on any major issue, but if angry words are exchanged on a blog, then the hammer comes down.  The mighty admins draw the line at that.   A million people have been killed in Iraq, Wall Street perpetrated the greatest financial crime in all of human history, BP unleashed the worst ecological disaster ever, the list of corporate crimes against humanity is endless, but progressives have done nothing meaningful about any of it, absolutely NOTHING.  

Chickenshits.  Don’t talk to me about enforcing fucking FAQ’s while the world’s going to Hell, don’t tell me your feelings were hurt because of hate speech on an essay thread, not when we’re all in a world of hurt because criminal governments and corporations can inflict massive suffering without ever being held accountable.  Don’t tell me Docudharma will be ruined if we allow I/P essays. Go to Iraq, you’ll see what ruin looks like, go to Gaza, you’ll see what ruin looks like, go to the Gulf of Mexico, you’ll see what ruin looks like, you’ll see ruin like no one’s ever seen before.

 

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning


Mushroom Caps

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Re-fertilize…

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