Tag: Alaska

Last night, McClatchy reported that the first globs of crude oil from the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon were washing up on to the Louisiana delta shores of the Gulf Coast.  

The wind forecast for today in the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, Louisiana, is from the southeast.

http://forecast.weather.gov/Ma…

Map of April 30 2010 Friday forecast of the BP Oil spill trajectory, in tan. Other days shown in other colors. Black asterisk at lower tip of light blue shows location of broken Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico.  Image courtesy of NOAA

In oceania, no one can hear you seep.

The U.S. Coast Guard “discovered” 4 days after an explosion destroyed and sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig 40 miles off the coast of Venice, Louisiana,  killing 11 crew workers, that indeed, oil does appear to be leaking out of the well head on the floor of the ocean.

From HuffPo this morning:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“We thought what we were dealing with as of yesterday was a surface residual (oil) from the mobile offshore drilling unit,” (Rear Admiral Mary) Landry said. “In addition to that is oil emanating from the well. It is a big change from yesterday … This is a very serious spill, absolutely.”

Coast Guard and company officials estimate that as much as 1,000 barrels – or 42,000 gallons – of oil is leaking each day after studying information from remotely operated vehicles (underwater) and the size of the oil slick surrounding the blast site. The rainbow-colored sheen of oil stretched 20 miles by 20 miles on Saturday – about 25 times larger than it appeared to be a day earlier, Landry said.

BP PLC, which leased the rig and is taking the lead in the cleanup, and the government have been using the remotely operated vehicles to try to stop the leak by closing valves on the well deep underwater.  If that doesn’t work, the company could drill what’s called an intervention well to control the oil flow. But the intervention drilling could take months.

The article says that the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker wreck in Alaska was 11 million gallons.   By dividing 11 million by 42,000 gallons, assuming the government is not lowballing this estimated amount, which seems like a nice, suspiciously round number, “1000 barrels,”  I’m coming up with 261 days before this is as big as the Exxon Valdez spill.  The regional director for the Federal government’s Mineral Management Services (the wonderful folk who let the companies bid on offshore drilling tracts) says that leaks have been repaired at this depth before, but it is difficult.  Bad weather is currently delaying the cleanup of already spilt oil.  

Don’t worry — Oil Spills? — We got it covered!

Covered with what? … maybe should be the next question.

Granted America needs the energy … but what sort of safety measures are in place?

When Murphy’s Law kicks in again — as it always does — will America’s Energy Corporations be ready, to mitigate the fallout?

This very brief essay that might be about hypocrisy. Or it might be that that McPalin campaign is giving you and me and all the other people who care about Global Warming a raised middle digit.  You decide.

These are polar bears:

In May, 2008, before she was a VP candidate, the Great Huntress decided that polar bears shouldn’t be on the endangered species list, where Bushco had put them.  The Anchorage Daily News wrote:

The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.

The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing petition.

“She’s either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Alaska deserves better.”

Put simply, Palin is a hard-core global warming denier:

Q: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A: A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

But you already knew all of that.  You’ve already ranted and banged on the table about this and cursed a blue streak at the screens on your television and monitor.  This is nothing new.

Then, last night, on Keith, I thought I saw Sarah Palin wearing on her right lapel a polar bear pin.  Just like this:

I was paying special attention, because I wanted to see whether she was still wearing the RNC purchased and soon to be donated to charity designer threads.  Normally, I don’t pay much attention.  Last night I was paying attention because I wanted to see if she had gotten, well, more frumpy.  That didn’t happen. To put it mildly, I was surprised by the pin.  Maybe I’m easily surprised.

There is no really satisfactory explanation for this.  Are they hypocrites of the first degree? Is the McPalin campaign that clueless? Maybe after the last eight years, they think cluelessness, for which they have voted 90% of the time, is a qualification for running the nation.  But then I had a darker thought.  Maybe she’s wearing the pin to “energize the base,” and it’s a gigantic FU to anyone who cares about the environment.

You choose.  Either way, I wish McPalin would be gone.

Wasilla, nobody knew about that little Alaskan town unless from Alaska. Wasilla’s favorite daughter, what is it now 5 or 6 weeks ago few ever heard the name Sarah Palin and apparently those that did didn’t know much about her either, even Alaskans are quickly finding out that apparently they didn’t really get rid of the corruption and incompetence in the Alaskan Governors office when electing Sarah who ran on cleaning it up and honest government.

Now Wasilla and Sarah palin are well known in the lowere 49, and yes Hawaii is below Alaska despite where some maps of the U.S. put it.

But this isn’t about the hockey mom nor really about Wasilla except for one of the residents of.

Seems a few taking pics at a Palin rally hit on the same rational of who are these Sarah Palin supporters and the mentality of the group think.

I visited After Downing Street and Dave has a post up there from a curious woman wanting to find out for herself what was attracting people to Palin, certainly isn’t her intelligence, experience nor non-writin rhetoric while at these rallies.

Though apparently those who are flocking to her seem to be on the same intelligence level.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, avid helicopter hunter and lifetime NRA member, has opposed native subsistence rights ever since she came into office.  Tuesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said “Thanks but no thanks” to her ongoing efforts to ban indigenous moose harvest.

Federal trust responsibility for Native people meant that the Federal Subsistence Management program followed all appropriate procedures in its ruling for moose harvest by the Cheesh-na Athabaskans of the tiny inland village of Cristochina.

“Palin’s attack here has targeted (among others) the Ahtna Indian people in Chistochina; and although the federal court last year rejected this challenge, too, Palin has refused to lay down her arms,” wrote Kendall-Miller and her husband, Lloyd Miller, another prominent Native rights attorney.

The State’s challenge was rejected on straightforward legal grounds.  It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will hear a further appeal should Palin take time out from the campaign trail to pursue it.  This decision will probably stand.  With more GOP judges appointed?  Perhaps not…

What’s Sarah Palin’s environmental record as governor of Alaska?

I asked an old friend, a college classmate of my wife, who’s been an environmentalist working in Alaska for three decades, most of her post-college life.  In a nutshell:

Her record is one of support for wolf control by illegal means, opposition to the listing of endangered species, and unethical intervention into public initiative processes.

But read her report yourself: