Scientists Find Damage to Coral — Essential to Marine Life — Near BP’s Oil-Spill Well
The Associated Press reports via CommonDreams:
For the first time, federal scientists have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life on the ocean floor several miles from the blown-out BP well — a strong indication that damage from the spill could be significantly greater than officials had previously acknowledged.
Tests are needed to verify that the coral died from oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, but the chief scientist who led the government-funded expedition said Friday he was convinced it was related.
“What we have at this point is the smoking gun,” said Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who led the expedition aboard the Ronald Brown, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel. “There is an abundance of circumstantial data that suggests that what happened is related to the recent oil spill,” Fisher said.
For the government, the findings…
BP Warns Congress About Ban On Offshore Drilling
BP’s executive vice president, David Nagel, stated “If we are unable to keep those fields going, that is going to have a substantial impact on our cash flow.” BP is trying to lift their ban on offshore drilling in order to maintain enough money to clean up the spill AND donate to charity programs surrounding the April explosion. The New York Times reports”
BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to voluntarily support.
BP executives insist that they have not backed away from their commitment to the White House to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund over the next…
Nothing Good in This One-Year Projection of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill (Video)
Cyriaque Lamar posted on io9.com this interesting research from the University of Hawaii. Cyriaque Lamar writes:
Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa have created a simulation of the potential spread of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill over 360 days. Their hypothetical scenario? All sorts of bad.
Researchers at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) have created a model that charts the oil’s possible path over the course of approximately a year:
Two Minutes Hate: Working Class Politics, History, Culture
The ISO Dutifully Joins "The Left" in Reformist Protest Politics
Nick Pell at the Red Star Times:
Just wanted to do a quick roundup before the weekend comes. Things have been hectic around RST central as I gear up to move and begin work on my book. Still, there’s a few things I just have to make time for.
There’s the small matter of the continuing oil spill uncontrolled hemorrhage, for which no one has, nor will they ever be, arrested and tried for crimes against humanity.
The unions continue their attacks on workers while the Chinese working class continues to prove that it is at the vanguard of struggle against the fake left, capitalism and imperialism. And Red Star Times’s favorite fake left sect the International Socialist Organization gears up for their annual love-in with the Democratic Party, its radical hangers-on and vaguely left-of-center celebrities, ironically named “Socialism 2010.”
Read the Full Article at Red Star…
The BP Deepwater Horizon, Macondo Well Blowout And What We Are Truly Facing In The Gulf
In my opinion BP and our Govt have not been forthcoming about what is really is going on with this well and the situation we will likely face. Understandably they would not want to create panic, but we also need to prepare for this oil leak getting worse, ignoring the reality that there is good chance it will get worse leaves us vulnerable. Just like we shutter up before a hurricane we should be preparing now because we know that if we don’t, we are going to sustain far more damage than if we did.
Two Minutes Hate: Spill, Baby, Spill
Nick Pell at Red Star Times writes:
How many of you have woken up over the last couple weeks and almost immediately thought: damn, the world is in the toilet? Me too. The last month or so has been perhaps one of the most horrible times I have ever experienced, with the beginning of the Iraq War being one of the few things that even comes close.
Whether or not it’s a Chinese curse, the adage about living in “interesting times” becomes more and more apt with each passing week. Despite how awful things are, there seems to be a lingering scent of resistance in the air. I concede that this could entirely be wish-fulfillment and solipsism on my part, but it seems as if things could explode at any second.
Explosions in and of themselves go nowhere, however. A political analysis and direction is necessary to make an explosion travel in the right direction.…
Criminals Running the Crime Scene
From Nick Pell at Red Star Times
For anyone who needed a good, hard lesson in the nature of American capitalism and the Democratic Party, the Deepwater Horizon disaster provides it. BP, a massive energy cartel was allowed to flagrantly violate established safety laws by the Obama Administration. Indeed, the Administration abetted BP in violating safety and environmental regulations.
Oil has been allowed – by the government and BP – to gush out into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate as yet undetermined (but estimated at about an Exxon Valdez disaster every four days) for over a month. The administration finally admitted that the spill is the worst in American history, but didn’t bother to mention that it might actually get worse.
Despite public outrage, BP is still being allowed to run its own cleanup and investigation. The official investigation will clearly be little more than a whitewash. Barry does his usual mock…
Countdown
From Nick Pell at Red Star Times
My friend Bill is wont to say that humanity hasn’t quite figured out that it could do something so bad that it couldn’t be fixed. From a certain point of view, I agree. Our ability to fix the messes we create is finite. Never before the last 50 years has humanity been in a position to utterly and totally destroy itself and drag a large amount of other life forms down with it.
Chernobyl was bad, to be sure. However, the damage was largely regional. The BP disaster is creating an Exxon Valdez crash every four days, with no end in sight.
Forget about the very real possibility of a third world war, one that could irreparably render the planet uninhabitable for humans. The fact that multinational oil cartels are building things capable of creating disasters without solutions should be of concern to everyone who likes…
