Tag: Alaska

Next Big Oil Spill Disaster Set for the Arctic

Shell Oil is on its way right now to a location less than 15 miles from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. “Shell has proposed drilling up to four shallow water exploration wells in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea this summer, beginning on July 1,” Subsea World News reported last month.

The potential harm from a BP-scale spill is almost beyond comprehension,” David Yarnold, president of the National Audubon Society wrote at the Huffington Post.

If there is a spot on Earth as sacred or as critical to the future of our wild birds as the Gulf of Mexico, it is probably the unspoiled Arctic. Here, hundreds of bird species arrive every spring from all four North American flyways — the superhighways in the sky that birds use to travel up and down the Americas. Here, they mate, lay eggs and raise their young. Here also, many of America’s remaining polar bears make their winter dens along the coasts.

Siri wrote earlier today on Daily Kos on how the BP-spill in 2010 has caused unprecedented mutations and deformities in ocean life in Gulf of Mexico. Today, I’ll look at how our government and Big Oil are setting the stage in the Arctic for the sequel to Deepwater Horizon disaster. The script is already written and the leading actors are already on their way to the set.  

Ask them about the Minimum Wage; It’s the Least we can Do.

Raese says Minimum Wage is Unconstitutional

by Alison Knezevich, The Charleston Gazette — Oct 14, 2010

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Republican candidate for U.S. Senate John Raese doesn’t just want to abolish the minimum wage.  He also calls it possibly unconstitutional.

[…]

Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin’s campaign seized on Raese’s remarks as a sign that Raese, a multimillionaire, is out of touch with West Virginians.

[…]

West Virginia is one of the nation’s poorest and oldest states. Nearly 18 percent of West Virginians live in poverty, compared to 14 percent of Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Rachel Maddow has some sage advice, on how to turn “out of touch” rhetoric like this, into Electoral Gold …

Alaska Walruses Without Ice



“an unusual gathering on a barrier island in Alaska. ”  They’d normally be out on the floating ice after foraging, but there is no ice this year near their feeding grounds.  Arctic sea ice is at the 3rd lowest point in recorded history.


Walruses Swarm Beaches as Ice Melts

National Geographic

http://news.nationalgeographic…

Biologists with the USGS say the situation can be very dangerous because walruses are easily startled, and can stampede. Some walruses, particularly calves and juveniles, can get crushed to death by larger walruses moving about.

Adak: The Next Silicon Valley

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

Photobucket

“We make GSM look like a wireless access point. We make it that simple,” describes one of the project’s three founders, Glenn Edens.

The technology starts with the “they-said-it-couldn’t-be-done” open source software, OpenBTS. OpenBTS is built on Linux and distributed via the AGPLv3 license. When used with a software-defined radio such as the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), it presents a GSM air interface (“Um”) to any standard GSM cell phone, with no modification whatsoever required of the phone. It uses open source Asterisk VoIP software as the PBX to connect calls, though it can be used with other soft switches, too. (More stats in a minute that I promise will blow away your inner network engineer.)

http://www.networkworld.com/ne…

New Cap for Leaking Oil Well as Slick Blows Towards Texas, & More Alaska Drilling

Just when you thought we were up to our a$$es in oily alligators,  the Obama Administration Department of the Interior announces plans to open 1.8 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to bidding on 190 new tracts for NEW OIL AND GAS DRILLING.   Bidding will open Aug 11.

Gotta Love Grist. Called it The Dept of Not Learning.      http://www.grist.org/article/2…

It’s only another 1.8 million acres.

http://interior.gov/news/press…

Increases number of oil/gas wells by 60% from 310 to 500.

Increases number of acres under drilling  by 60% from 3 million  to 4.8 million

Teshekpuk Lake is 80 miles east of Point Barrow on the northern Alaska coastline, which is already being damaged by the warming climate and melting arctic sea ice.  Up to 90,000 geese use the area to molt every summer, and the Indigenous people use part of the local caribou herd to survive by subsistence hunting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…

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The BP Oil Slick is Blowing Towards Texas.  Here’s the satellite image from NASA, Friday, July 9th,  from 1 km up in space

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa…

BP oil spill,texas coast,achalafalay bay

Friday, July 9, 2010.  Oil slick heads west towards Texas coast. photo NASA

BP oil spill,yucatan penninsula,texas coast,achalafalay bay

Oil Slick now extends south all the way to the east of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.  This is the bottom half of the same image of the Gulf of Mexico on 7/9/10 as above. photo NASA

photo from today, Saturday July 10, 2010

Gulf,BP Oil Spill,texas coastline,nature,tragedy

Today, July 10, 2010, Gulf of Mexico.  Winds are now shifting to come out of the west/southwest again after an east wind drove this oil towards Texas earlier this week.    But the oil to the south near the Yucatan peninsula,  is probably going to continue to go west, then north again,  with the natural Gulf clockwise current.   photo, NRL Monterey, biomass, satellite Aqua

New Cap for Leaking Oil Well as Slick Blows Towards Texas, & More Alaska Drilling

Just when you thought we were up to our a$$es in oily alligators,  the Obama Administration Department of the Interior announces plans to open 1.8 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to bidding on 190 new tracts for NEW OIL AND GAS DRILLING.   Bidding will open Aug 11.

Gotta Love Grist. Called it The Dept of Not Learning.      http://www.grist.org/article/2…

It’s only another 1.8 million acres.

http://interior.gov/news/press…

Increases number of oil/gas wells by 60% from 310 to 500.

Increases number of acres under drilling  by 60% from 3 million  to 4.8 million

Teshekpuk Lake is 80 miles east of Point Barrow on the northern Alaska coastline, which is already being damaged by the warming climate and melting arctic sea ice.  Up to 90,000 geese use the area to molt every summer, and the Indigenous people use part of the local caribou herd to survive by subsistence hunting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…

____

The BP Oil Slick is Blowing Towards Texas.  Here’s the satellite image from NASA, Friday, July 9th,  from 1 km up in space

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa…

BP oil spill,texas coast,achalafalay bay

Friday, July 9, 2010.  Oil slick heads west towards Texas coast. photo NASA

BP oil spill,yucatan penninsula,texas coast,achalafalay bay

Oil Slick now extends south all the way to the east of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.  This is the bottom half of the same image of the Gulf of Mexico on 7/9/10 as above. photo NASA

photo from today, Saturday July 10, 2010

Gulf,BP Oil Spill,texas coastline,nature,tragedy

Today, July 10, 2010, Gulf of Mexico.  Winds are now shifting to come out of the west/southwest again after an east wind drove this oil towards Texas earlier this week.    But the oil to the south near the Yucatan peninsula,  is probably going to continue to go west, then north again,  with the natural Gulf clockwise current.   photo, NRL Monterey, biomass, satellite Aqua

A Clear difference: setting the Price of Carbon, so WE get a Share

Clearly America needs to reach for, and achieve, a Clean Energy Future.

Not so Clear is the Road we will take, if any, to ultimately get there …

Kerry says Obama intends to move votes on energy

Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Richard Cowan, Editing by Sandra Maler, Reuters — June 22, 2010

WASHINGTON – […]

Obama is slated to meet leading Republican and Democratic senators on Wednesday to discuss a way forward for the energy legislation.

[…]

Kerry said the bill must include ways to price carbon but was not “locked into any one single way of doing it.”

“The fact is if we don’t price carbon, we will create one tenth of the jobs and reduce only one tenth of the emissions,” he said. “It would essentially be an energy-only bill.”

BP = Beyond Prosecution? “It Can Do Whatever It Wants and Won’t Be Held Accountable”

Four weeks ago today, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sank, breaking the pipe connecting to the wellhead a mile below on the floor of the Gulf in Mississippi Canyon Block 252, referred to as the Macondo Prospect.

Former EPA Criminal Division Special Agent Scott West led a 2006 investigation of British Petroleum following a major oil pipeline leak in Alaska’s North Slope that spilled 250,000 gallons of oil on the Alaskan tundra. His story hopefully will not prove to be somewhat prophetic for BP’s prospects following the Deepwater Horizon environmental catstrophe, but it is very much worth hearing and reflecting upon.

As Jason Leopold wrote yesterday May 19 in a very detailed historical and investigative article at Truthout.org:

Mention the name of the corporation BP to Scott West and two words immediately come to mind: Beyond Prosecution.

West was the special agent in charge with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) criminal division who had been probing alleged crimes committed by BP and the company’s senior officials in connection with a March 2006 pipeline rupture at the company’s Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska’s North Slope that spilled 267,000 gallons of crude oil across two acres of frozen tundra – the second largest spill in Alaska’s history – which went undetected for nearly a week.

West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal probe would result in felony charges against the company and the senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees at the Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.

In fact, West, who spent more than two decades at the EPA’s criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture – about six months before it happened.

In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a “slap on the wrist” for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.

He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP’s record are now being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface that has been spewing upwards of 200,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month.

Today Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of DemocracyNow.org interviewed Scott West about his experiences investigating and attempting to bring criminal charges against BP:

One month after the BP oil spill, we speak to Scott West, a former top investigator at the Environmental Protection Agency who led an investigation of BP following a major oil pipeline leak in Alaska’s North Slope that spilled 250,000 gallons of oil on the Alaskan tundra.

Before West finished his investigation, the Bush Justice Department reached a settlement with BP, and the oil company agreed to pay $20 million. At the same time, BP managed to avoid prosecution for the Texas City refinery explosion that killed fifteen workers by paying a $50 million settlement.



Fmr. EPA Investigator Scott West:

US Has Told BP “It Can Do Whatever It Wants and Won’t Be Held Accountable”


Democracy Now – May 20, 2010

Democracy Now’s rush transcript follows…

Crap in the Box – Gas Frozen in Oil Catch Dome

Remember Blue Popsicles ?

  Environment,tragedy,Oil Spill,Climate

 The Pipes on the Outhouse Froze.    photo, Navy.  color, ARC.

Cimate: Today’s Gulf Images, Govt Denies Spread Potential of 19 mil oil gallons to Florida

Today is Tuesday, May the 4th, the 2 week anniversary of the blowout, fire, and sinking of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. 14 days x 5000 barrels per day, = 70,000 barrels, or  2,940,000 gallons of oil so far have been dumped into the Gulf.   For my earlier diary today, with satellite photos from the past weekend, go here:

This Oil Spill is Bigger Than Delaware, You Idiots!

There are new satellite pictures from today which show the spread of the oil slick has continued west and south.

Climate: This Oil Spill is Bigger Than Delaware, You Idiots!

The BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig failed on Tuesday evening April 20, 2010, 14 days ago.

This is what it looked like Saturday, May 1st.   I took a satellite picture from the NRL Monterey of the Gulf of Mexico that was showing biological substances, cropped it, and color enhanced it by playing with the settings on iphoto, to make the colors have more contrast. Since oil is based on organics, this made it show up better, and I could recreate, roughly, what the LSU ESL  was doing to get the oil to show up on their pictures I posted previously.  Because there were thunderstorms this past weekend, the area was obscured by cloud cover often.  I also noticed the government was not putting up daily picture updates.

climate Nature

May 1, 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon’s oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, photo NRL Monterey, color enhanced by ARC  The thicker part of the slick is the part that looks like a bird’s beak pointing upside down off the New Orleans Louisiana Delta, which is to the left in green and pink. Pink is the coastline, drawn in.  The greenish tint is where the slick is thinner.  The blue is the water.  

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This is the same picture from May 1st, larger area,  without my increasing the color contrast.

Climate Nature

May 1, 2010, BP Deepwater Horizon’s Oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, photo NRL Monterey.  The heavier part of the slick is gray, the lighter part of the slick is very hard to see, but is there and greenish grey.  The coast outline is drawn in pink by the website.  The ^ triangle to the north in the shoreline is the Bay of Mobile, Alabama.  To find the origin of the slick, look down from the left side of that triangle of the Mobile Bay and come out from the Delta about at a 45ยบ degree angle, where the lines would meet, is roughly where the broken drill rig is.   Where the up and down brilliant blue longitude line is to the right touches shore, is where Pensicola Bay is in the Florida panhandle.

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As you can see from this larger view, the slick actually has spread quite a bit towards the Florida Panhandle by Saturday the 1st.

Climate Nature

5/1/2010,  Larger view of Gulf with BP DH Oil slick southwest of the New Orleans delta, spreading towards Alabama and Florida.

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Sunday May 2-  This lovely overlay picture below is the satellite of the eastern half of the US, including the gulf of Mexico,  with the wind direction and speed marked on it.  Think of the little color icons as brooms with the stick end pointing towards what way the wind is going, and the bigger the broom, the faster.  There were several thunderstorm fronts moving thru to the southeast, and the wind in the Gulf is spinning in a clockwise manner, driving the waves and the oil around and around and easterly at the same time.

This is known as the “Conveyer Belt.” photo NRL Monterey

  Climate Nature  

Wind Direction on Sunday the 2nd, showing the Gulf’s classic “Conveyor Belt.”

The other thing you can see here is a big low pressure system spinning off the eastern coast and it’s spinning counterclockwise.  Look at Florida.  Now look at Cuba, the long island under it, then to its right, the island with Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and to the right of that, little bitty Puerto Rico, the rectangle island.

Do you see how small Puerto Rico is ?  Do you see how big the oil slick is, in the first picture ?   Do you know how stupid White House Correspondent Cokie Roberts looked, prattling about how the oil slick is so big it was as big as Puerto Rico, all day Saturday, when she wasn’t blathering about the White House Correspondent’s dinner ?    

Chalk it up as Incidental Costs — 4 Days Profit is a Bargain

March 24, 2009

RIKI OTT:  […] Exxon promised to make us whole. You know, “You’re lucky you have Exxon.” We hadn’t even gone to court by 1993. We had fish run collapses, bankruptcies, divorces, suicides, you know, domestic violence spikes, substance abuse spikes. The town was just unraveling. And we were waiting for somebody to help us: the State of Alaska, the federal government, the court system, Exxon. Nobody. And–

AMY GOODMAN: There were 33,000 plaintiffs.

RIKI OTT: There are 32,000 claims, 22,000 plaintiffs.

[…]

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said that is not just an environmental disaster, but a crisis in democracy.

RIKI OTT: It is a democracy crisis. The question we started asking as our lawsuit went on and on and on, and we didn’t get paid, was how did corporations get this big, where they can manipulate the legal system, the political system? What happened here?

[…]

AMY GOODMAN: How many animals died?

Riki Ott, author, community activist, marine toxicologist and former fisherma’am. She is author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill.  

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