Comment: BP has bought the Google and Yahoo search words relevant to researching the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with the intent of redirecting searches for the purposes of damage control.
Excerpt: In their most tenacious effort to control the ‘spin’ on the worst oil spill disaster in the history, BP has purchased top internet search engine words so they can re-direct people away from real news on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
BP spokesman Toby Odone confirmed to ABC News that the oil giant had in fact bought internet search terms. So now when someone searches the words ‘oil spill’, on the internet, the top link will re-direct them to BP’s official company website. . . .
Perhaps they are looking to avoid coverage indicating that the disaster was due to inexcusable corporate error, as appears to be the case.
Excerpt: The morning the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, a BP executive and a Transocean official argued over how to proceed with the drilling, rig survivors told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview.
The survivors’ account paints perhaps the most detailed picture yet of what happened on the deepwater rig — and the possible causes of the April 20 explosion.
The BP official wanted workers to replace heavy mud, used to keep the well’s pressure down, with lighter seawater to help speed a process that was costing an estimated $750,000 a day and was already running five weeks late, rig survivors told CNN.
BP won the argument, said Doug Brown, the rig’s chief mechanic. “He basically said, ‘Well, this is how it’s gonna be.’ ”
“That’s what the big argument was about,” added Daniel Barron III.
Shortly after the exchange, chief driller Dewey Revette expressed concern and opposition too, the workers said, and on the drilling floor, they chatted among themselves.
“I don’t ever remember doing this,” they said, according to Barron.
“I think that’s why Dewey was so reluctant to try to do it,” Barron said, “because he didn’t feel it was the right way to have things done.” . . .
As we all know, oil and water don’t mix. Fracking waste and water, on the other hand, can mix quite nicely. Living things, which contain lots of water, could probably mix with that fracking waste water too, but it’s not really recommended:
That report was from last year, so hopefully there are even more up to date studies on the impact of fracking pollutants on our health. If not, don’t worry. We’ll have lots more human data points sooner or later. Like the above study, which didn’t use data from controlled studies (because that would be unethical) and instead relied on data from two naturally-occurring control groups, researchers in the future should have plenty more naturally-occurring control groups, although they may not be very “naturally occurring”. Either way, these new fracking-exposure control groups are occuring:
Glug, glug, glug....*gulp*
Thirsty? No? You will be:
Note that Kern County, where most of the permits were granted, faces a tragically interesting conundrum: Moody’s just just downgraded Kern County due to a fiscal emergency tied to the plummeting price of oil. So...will Kern County find a way to even easier to drill in order to make up for lost revenues or move on to a non-suicidal economic strategy?
“By declaring a fiscal emergency, Kern officials have the legal authority to tap into a $40 million reserve fund to shore up the county budget. It also gives them greater ability to cut staffing levels and benefits in the fire department.” Hmmmm...sounds like they’re sticking with suicidal.
Thirsty? No? You will be:
Note that Kern County, where most of the permits were granted, faces a tragically interesting conundrum: Moody’s just just downgraded Kern County due to a fiscal emergency tied to the plummeting price of oil. So...will Kern County find a way to even easier to drill in order to make up for lost revenues or move on to a non-suicidal economic strategy?
“By declaring a fiscal emergency, Kern officials have the legal authority to tap into a $40 million reserve fund to shore up the county budget. It also gives them greater ability to cut staffing levels and benefits in the fire department.” Hmmmm...sounds like they’re sticking with suicide.
Remember the case of the disappearing Macondo spill oil and Corexit, the mystery product used by BP to cause oil from the Macondo oil spill to sink and disperse? The BP spill cleanup workers no doubt remember, although some of the details might be hazy due to the memory loss cleanup workers experienced years after the disaster. Here’s a look back at how BP unleashed the Blob upon the Little Mermaid and the rest of her friends in the sea. Especially her friends on the sea floor:
As Dr. Joye pointed out:
Well that sounds nightmarish. And when you hear something like that four months after a blob attack, you shouldn’t be surprised when you read about things like large numbers of dolphin deaths in the blob-impacted region. You also probably shouldn’t be very surprised that BP vehemently denies that its blob had anything to do with with the dolphin deaths:
Might the blob attack have something to do with the dolphin deaths? BP obviously doesn’t think so, suggesting that it could be due to other types of pollution. Aha.
And, of course, since it was a blob attack that didn’t just include the sea, but also the surrounding coastal region , we also probably shouldn’t be surprised if the blob attack’s left a lot of human survivors that are going to be feeling the dolphins’ pain for many years to come:
As we can see, the BP blob attack and its Corexit ‘cure’ are still synergizing away in the Gulf and surrounding regions. And maybe still on the sea floor. And in the bodies of the blob’s victims.
But in all fairness to BP, it really did make a valid point when the it suggested that the dolphin deaths could have been due to some sort of pollution. It’s true. Some other forms of pollution that had nothing to do with an oil/Corexit blob attack could certainly have played role.
Like plastic. Plastic has long-polluted the Gulf of Mexico and the rest of the seas. Although you might not know it if you just set out counting the plastic. Yes, it turns out that oil isn’t the only petroleum product we’re dumping into the oceans capable of a disappearing act:
“Yet those patches accounted for less than 1 percent of the plastic thought to be in the oceans — and no one quite knows where the other 99 percent went”
So there you have it: Our civilization’s proud legacy not only includes a giant Corexit/oil blob that’s managed to embed itself into the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico; the giant plastic garbage patches we all know and love represent only 1% of the plastic we dump in the oceans and no one knows where the rest went. Where do we come up with all of our bright ideas for ocean management? Who knows, although presumably not from the oceanographers. It’s another one of those mysteries.
In related news...
Of course that’s what happened:
Well, that was predictably depressing, especially since the group that brought this lawsuit wasn’t some coalition of private environmental groups. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East was created as part of a state law following the Katrina disaster to oversee flood protection efforts.
So an organization set up by the state of Louisiana following the biggest flooding disaster in Lousiana’s history with the mission of preparing for and preventing future floods, just had its biggest initiative yet for financing those efforts flood prevention efforts tossed out into the sea:
“The suit’s backers said it was necessary to hold energy companies accountable for decades of damage and that it was one of the state’s few hopes for funding coastal protection and restoration efforts with an estimated price tag of at least $50 billion over the coming decades.”
Well, Louisiana probably didn’t need all that lost land anyways...and presumably feels the same way about the remaining coasts...
Oh great: BP has apparently “lost faith in the conciliatory approach it had been pursuing and decided to fight everything” regarding the environmental damage to the Macondo disaster. For instance, how do we know the Rhode Island-sized oily “bathtub ring” sitting on the sea floor surrounding the disaster area wasn’t seeping naturally from the sea floor? Yep:
Might ‘prolonged oiling’ have contributed to an unusual spike in dolphin die offs in the Gulf? That seems like a very reasonable conclusion, especially since that’s the conclusion marine researchers are arrive at after studying the phenomena.
But as BP points out, we can’t be sure the deaths are due to all that prolonged oiling. After all, large die-offs of bottlenose dolphins aren’t unusual, so who knows what’s killing them. It could be all sorts of different causes. For instance...:
And in case you’re curious, yes, the offshore drilling industry employs seismic surveying techniques in the Gulf of Mexico. But don’t worry, Flipper will be fine. Or deaf. Or dead. But if he’s deaf or dead that had nothing to do with the prolonged oiling or seismic explorations or anything related to human activities, especially BP’s activities.
So stop worrying about the dolphins. Or, better yet, start worrying about the dolphins and all the evil things they would do to you if they ever got the chance. At least BP cares about you. Really!
Good news for California: The state may have hit a ‘water windfall’. That’s according to the results of a recent study by Stanford researchers of the volume and quality of underground water reserves deeper than the 1,000 feet normally surveyed for freshwater usage.
Of course, there are a few catches to using this water. For instance, if you suck all that water out of the ground, the ground might sink even more.
Also, if California wants to eventually drink this water, it can’t pollute it with fracking and oil drilling pollution. That would seem like an obvious and avoidable catch, but since the study also found that almost one in three of the deep water reservoirs they studied had oil or gas activities running directly on top of them, it’s an unfortunately large catch:
“Another concern the Stanford scientists uncovered is that oil and gas drilling activities are occurring directly into as much as 30 percent of the sites where the deep groundwater resources are located. For example, in Kern County, where the core of California’s oil and gas industry is centered near the city of Bakersfield, one in every six cases of oil and gas activities was occurring directly into freshwater aquifers. For useable water – water that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deems drinkable if treated – the number was one in three.”
A tripling of the state’s water reserve estimates. Exactly what California needs. What spectacular news. Now all the state needs to do is not do something totally insane like poison the water before it slurps it up years from now.
And in unfortunately related news, there’s a high probability that California will have a major deep ground water contamination issue in coming decades...
This is one of those stories that raises the question of whether or not the fossil fuel industry isn’t yet satisfied with its ecological damage and actively trying to take it to the next level Guess what just happens to reside on Cushing, Oklahoma, an area that’s seen so much fracking that it’s now the most seismically active area of the lower 48 states: 15 percent of the oil stored in the US stored in hundreds of tanks known as “tank farms”, making it the largest store of oil in the world. Plus there’s a nexus of 14 major oil pipelines connecting through there. And, again, this is now the most seismically active area in the lower 48 states.
So guess who is designing the oil containers and pipelines in that area to ensure they can withstand the growing frequency and intensity off all the fracking-induced earthquakes: the American Petroleum Institute. What could possibly go wrong?
“Dubbed the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World,” Cushing is the nexus of 14 major pipelines, including Keystone, which alone has the potential to transport as much as 600,000 barrels of oil a day. The small Oklahoma town is also home to the world’s largest store of oil, which sits in hundreds of enormous tanks there. Prior to this recent spate of natural disasters, Cushing oil levels were already high. They’ve increased nearly a million barrels, to nearly 60 million barrels, since Harvey hit.”
The largest store of oil in the world. So much that the Department of Homeland Security labels it “critical infrastructure”. Critical infrastructure now at risk from man-made earthquakes:
But don’t worry, this critical infrastructure, which could cripple the US economy if disaster strikes it, is build to meet a standard. A standard created by the petroleum lobby, who of course has the public interest at heart:
“Tom Heaton, professor of geophysics and director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, says most, if not all, of the tanks in Cushing are built to the weakest industry design standards.”
Well done, petroleum industry. And the tank farms aren’t even the biggest potential source of spills:
“This would not be a simple cleanup, You’d have an uninhabitable community for a long time.”
And don’t forget, all of this could have been avoided if the state government of Oklahoma had simply exercised a basic level of caution in regulating its fracking industry. But it didn’t, so here we are, with the world’s largest store of oil sitting on a man-made earthquake machine.
So with that national security/ecological nightmare in mind (and don’t forget that ecological nightmares are national security nightmares on their own) it’s worth asking what the federal government might finally do about this situation. And as the following article about the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, makes clear, if the federal government does intervene it’s probably not going to be the EPA doing it:
“And while it is true that Pruitt does not regulate oil and gas extraction in Oklahoma, other attorneys general have involved themselves in difficult fracking cases. In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Kathleen Kane sued multiple fracking companies, alleging that they had violated environmental laws and leaked toxic chemicals into the water supply. Her elected successor, Josh Shapiro, won his election in part by promising to go even harder on frackers.”
This is the current head of the EPA. Because apparently we aren’t collapsing the biosphere fast enough.
Of course, in Pruitt’s defense, as attorney general he wasn’t the state official in charge of regulating the fracking industry. But as the article made clear, he did have the power to intervene at a legal level but that never happened. For super mysterious reasons:
A fracking billionaire was chairman of Pruitt’s 2014 campaign. What a shocker. And at least by creating our own man-made earthquakes under an area of “critical infrastructure” the US is sending a signal to terrorists “don’t bother attacking this critical infrastructure...we got this!” It’s a very innovative counter-terrorism strategy.
But perhaps the real shocker in this situation is that Oklahoma appears to have belated started regulating the fracking wastewater injections last year. And according to an independent report the state is on track to return to “normal seismicity” in the next decade:
But note that the report predicting a return to normal seismicity bases that prediction on the assumption that Oklahoma actually sticks with its new regulations and doesn’t somehow make the situation worse. Which, of course, is an open question. A very open question thanks to Scott Pruitt. Of course, in his defense, he’s has help. A lot of help.
Here’s a fascinating new piece of environmental research that’s a reminder of how rapidly humanity is careening towards conflicts over changing water supplies due to climate change and other man-made activities: The first study based on all of the data collected over 14 years by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) was just released. GRACE was a NASA-led mission started in 2002. It involved two satellites circling the globe in tandem about 220 kilometres apart. Extremely small changes in the separation of these satellites, down to a distance of one-tenth the width of a human hair, was made possible by a microwave link between the two satellites. That ability to detect extremely tiny perturbations in the satellites can, in turn, be used to detect extremely small changes in the gravitational pull on the satellites as they travel across the globe. And that, in turn, can be used to infer the presence of ground water. So humanity is getting its first look at a 14 year global study on global water supplies and, surprise!, the data points towards rapidly changing water supplies that are likely to lead to future conflicts and crises:
“By combining 14 years’ worth of satellite data, scientists have captured a startling portrait of the world’s water supply undergoing rapid transformation. The new analysis points to areas where there is increasing potential for conflict as a growing demand for water collides with the impacts of climate change. In Canada, the maps shows shifting water supplies that include wetter, more flood-prone regions in many areas of the country but a general drying out in the western sub-Arctic.”
A startling portrait of rapid transformation points towards an increasing potential for conflict. That’s pretty much what we should expect at this point for anything involving the environment. And sure enough, that’s what the most comprehensive mapping of global water supplies found. Thanks to some amazing satellite technology:
And note that it’s not just climate change driving these water supply changes. It’s other human activity like simply extracting ground water at a faster rate than it can be replaced. And that includes one area with rapidly dwindling ground water supplies that’s already prone to conflict: the Middle East:
And don’t forget that climate change and a devastating drought was a likely initial driver for the Syrian civil war. So where there’s probably going to be some wars between nations over scare water resources, there’s probably going to be even more wars that break out in the form of civil wars as societies buckle under the stress of shrinking water supplies.
So that’s a highly disturbing piece of research. Kind of a nightmare if you think about it.
But at least now we know. After all, imagine how much worse if would be if the we never did the study in the first place and weren’t even trying to track all these changes. Or worse, imagine if these changes were being tracked but the research was being suppressed for political reasons. That would be a very different kind of nightmare. Kind of like the nightmare situation current manifesting in the United States:
“More than three months later, the draft study remains unpublished, and the HHS unit says it has no scheduled date to release it for public comment. Critics say the delay shows the Trump administration is placing politics ahead of an urgent public health concern — something they had feared would happen after agency leaders like Pruitt started placing industry advocates in charge of issues like chemical safety.”
Yep, just when the Health and Human Services (HHS) Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of certain toxic chemicals that have already contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites, we get this big political intervention to block the release of the study. And three months later it remains unpublished and has no scheduled release date.
And it all apparently started with an email on January 30th by an unidentified White House aide decrying the “public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers.” That email gets forwarded by James Herz, a political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the Office of Management of Budget (OMB), to the EPA’s top financial officer. Later that day, Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, effectively puts the brakes on releasing the study by suggesting sending the study to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to coordinate an interagency review:
And as Nancy Beck pointed out in her email, this exact kind of ‘dispute arbitration’ (as a means of suppressing research) was done quite a bit under the Bush Administration. Environmentalists agree, this was a very ‘Bush administration’ thing to do:
Adding the scandalous nature of this research suppression is that the chemicals in question, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are already know to be dangerous and chemical manufacturers have already had to pay massive fines to pay for their cleanup. But this research indicated that these substances are even more dangerous than previously thought, meaning the cleanup efforts will have to be even more thorough and therefore more costly. Additionally, these substances are found in nearly every water supply that gets tested in the US. So this research would obviously end up costing the chemical industry even more massive amounts of money to clean up and it’s obvious that these expected costs to the private sector were a key factor in the desire to suppress this research:
So as we can see, the Trump administration is trying to ensure the public doesn’t learn about how almost all water supplies in the US are contaminated with a chemical that appears to be much more toxic than previously recognized. All so private industries can avoid pesky cleanup fines.
And don’t forget that this conscious poisoning of US water supplies is happening in the context of this global rapid changing in water supplies that’s going to make clean water one of the most valuable resources in the future and a likely source of future conflicts. #ContaminateTheSwamp #WakingNightmare