I WANT to BELIEVE!
Now it turns out that a lot of people are seeing a "conspiracy," and the more one thinks about the cui bono calculation....
Then there is the law of unintended consequences:
"Oil spill threatens fragile La. marshes; Scientists fear environmental disaster is near" by Leslie Kaufman and Campbell Robertson, New York Times | May 2, 2010
Yeah, God didn't do this.
He doesn't do wars and environmental despoiling.
That's our shtick.
COCODRIE, La. — With oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico unabated and officials giving no indication that the flow can be contained soon, towns along the Gulf Coast braced yesterday for what is increasingly understood to be an imminent environmental disaster.
The spill, emanating from a pipe 50 miles offshore and 5,000 feet underwater, was creeping into Louisiana’s fragile coastal wetlands as bad weather and rough waters hampered cleanup efforts. The White House announced that President Obama would visit the region this morning.
The imperiled marshes that buffer New Orleans and the rest of the state from the worst storm surges are facing a sea of sweet crude oil, orange as rust. The most recent estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank days later, is gushing as much as 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf each day. Concern is mounting that the flow may soon grow to several times that amount.
The surface area of the oil slick nearly tripled in size in roughly a day — growing from a spill the size of Rhode Island to something closer to the size of Puerto Rico — according to satellite images analyzed by the University of Miami, the Associated Press reported.
On Thursday, the size of the slick was about 1,150 square miles, but by Friday’s end it was in the range of 3,850 square miles, said Hans Graber, executive director of the university’s Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.
And GROWING by the SECOND!!!
The Coast Guard said yesterday it had shut down two offshore platforms near the spill and evacuated one of them as a safety precaution. Many of the oil-cleaning boats remained at their piers in Venice, La., partly because of rough seas, and some of the floating containment booms broke loose.
The wetlands in the Mississippi Delta have been shrinking for decades, deprived of sediment replenishment by levees in the river, divided by channels cut by oil companies, and poisoned by farm runoff from upriver. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita took large, vicious bites.
The questions that haunt this region are: How much more can the wetlands take, and does their degradation spell doom for an increasingly defenseless southern Louisiana?
Many variables will dictate just how devastating this slick will be to the ecosystem, including whether it takes days or months to seal the leaking oil well and whether winds keep blowing the oil ashore. But what is terrifying everyone from bird watchers to the state officials charged with rebuilding the natural protections of this coast is that it seems possible that a massive influx of oil could overwhelm and kill off the grasses that knit the ecosystem together.
Why not? They already killed off the human culture with Katrina.
Healthy wetlands would have some natural ability to cope with an oil slick, said Denise Reed, interim director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans. “The trouble with our marshes is they’re already stressed, they’re already hanging by a fingernail,’’ she said.
It is possible, she said, that the wetlands’ “tolerance for oil has been compromised.’’ If so, she said, that could be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.’’
To an untrained eye, the vast expanses of grass leading into Terrebonne Bay, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, look vigorous. Locals use boats as cars here, trawling though the marsh for shrimp or casting for plentiful redfish. Out on the water the air smells like salt — not oil — and seabirds abound and a dolphin makes a swift appearance.
All ruined now.
But
Please, can we stop with the (clink) buts, MSM?
Oh, NYT, even worse!
it is what is not visible that is scary, said Alexander Kolker, a professor of coastal and wetland science at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Piloting a craft through the inland waterways, he points out that islands that recently dotted the bay and are still found on local navigation maps are gone. Also gone are the freshwater alligators that give the nearby town Cocodrie its name — French settlers thought they were crocodiles. All evidence, he says, that this land is quickly settling into the salt ocean.
The survival of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is not only an environmental issue here. Since successive hurricanes have barreled up from the gulf unimpeded, causing mass devastation and loss of life, just about every resident of southern Louisiana has begun to view wetlands protection as a cause of existential importance.
If the wetlands had been more robust when Hurricane Katrina’s waters pushed up from the ocean, the damage might not have been as severe.
But they were not.
Yeah, but.... where did all the tax loot go?
Why didn't the government protect you -- then and now?
Levees holding back the Mississippi River have prevented natural land replenishment from floods. Navigation channels and pipeline canals have brought saltwater into fragile freshwater marshes, slowly killing them, and the sloshing of waves in boats’ wakes has eroded natural banks.
BUT GLOBAL WARMING is the CAUSE of the PROBLEM, right?
Sigh!
The state has lost an area the size of Delaware since 1932 and is still losing about 24 square miles a year.
'Cuz of global warming, not those other things.
Garret Graves, director of the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, said that since Hurricane Katrina, extraordinary efforts at restoration had been made and to some extent had slowed the decline. But, he said, a severe oil dousing would change that.
Another but -- with government lies or... ???
“The vegetation is what holds these islands together,’’ he said. “When you kill that, you just have mud, and that just gets washed away.’’
Global warming.
A federal judge has affirmed the necessity of robust wetlands for the city of New Orleans, finding last fall that the degradation of wetlands and natural levee banks by the federal government’s negligent maintenance of a navigation channel had created a path for Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge right up to the city.
BUT they are COMING TO HELP!
I CAN USE the word because I AM doing ANALYSIS, not a "report," readers!
Oil is likely to take similar open pathways into the coast. For this reason, the state’s approach to fighting the oil slick is the same as its approach to creating a heartier and more storm-surge-resistant wetlands: it is diverting the Mississippi River and its healthy load of sediment to counter a potential influx of oil and strengthen vegetation.
Doesn't fill one with confidence.
Normally, these grasses have great resiliency. They are similar to a lawn, said Irving Mendelssohn, a professor at Louisiana State University who has done studies on the effect of oil on the local ecology.
If they are damaged only above the ground, they will grow back swiftly.
But if the roots die, the plant dies and the ground underneath it sinks into the sea within a year.
Oh, a but and an if back-to-back, yay!
I'm relieved. Maybe nothing bad will happen and the oil will magically disappear.
The bill, supported by President Obama, calls for new offshore drilling — a concession by environmentalists. But with the spill off the Gulf Coast growing daily, even conservationists who have waited a decade for the legislation are now saying it will fail if offshore drilling remains in the bill.
“When you’re trying to resurrect a climate bill that’s face-down in the mud and you want to bring it back to life and get it breathing again, I don’t think you can have offshore drilling against the backdrop of what’s transpiring in the Louisiana wetlands,’’ said Richard Charter, energy adviser to Defenders of Wildlife. “I think it’s flat-lined.’’
Some Democrats, including both senators and two representatives from New Jersey, threatened Friday to pull their support if offshore drilling is included in the bill designed to curb emissions of pollution-causing gases blamed for global warming.
Introduction of the legislation was postponed Monday for an unrelated reason....
I linked why above.
And CUI BONO?
Steve Cochran, with the Environmental Defense Fund, said, “We need to take advantage of the opportunity....’’
But....
But....
However....
If....
While....
While....
I feel like I hit a slot.
--more--"
Can you see why I do not want to read it anymore.
Sick of being covered in s*** oil.
"Gulf oil leak reaches crisis proportions; Plume’s spread laps at La. shore" by Beth Daley, Globe Staff | April 30, 2010
The massive oil well leak in the Gulf of Mexico abruptly turned into a national crisis yesterday, when scientists realized oil is probably gushing from the seafloor at five times the rate they first thought. The expanding slick began washing ashore in the Mississippi River Delta last night.
They never stop lying to you, do they?
Doesn't matter what the issue, what the event.
Scientists, federal officials, and environmentalists rushed to contain the leak and prepared for a massive cleanup. The leak is occurring at an awkward time for the president, who recently called to expand offshore drilling to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.
“This is a spill of national significance,’’ Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said at the White House before flying to the Gulf Coast....
It’s not that the amount of oil leaking has changed — rather, federal officials said the amount had been low-balled initially because it is so hard to tell how much is leaking from the seafloor by examining the oil sheen on the surface.
“It’s premature to say this is catastrophic. I will say this is very serious,’’ said Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry.
That is the second time she said that.
See: Gulf of Fire
Can we call it one now?
About 1,100 people were working on capping and containing the leak yesterday, but fierce winds and choppy seas hampered the work and pushed the light brown oil plume toward the coast. Efforts to use underwater robots to close a valve on the seafloor to slow the flow have not worked, and attempts to limit the expanding slick with booms and even by setting it afire have not stopped the oil from drifting toward the coast. Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana declared a state of emergency....
In contrast to the Exxon Valdez tanker that spilled heavy oil in the top ocean layer of the enclosed Prince Edward Sound, the
I would call it a catastrophe, sorry.
Chris Reddy, an oil specialist from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, cautioned that each oil spill is different and it is difficult to predict the ecological impact along the coast of Louisiana, as well as Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida....
I needed that reassurance.
Reddy said much has changed since the Exxon Valdez spill — oil cleanup specialists are better trained and have prepared for such an event. Coincidentally, just last month, 600 people from 50 federal and state agencies and private businesses took part in a massive training simulation of an oil spill of national significance in Portland, Maine.
OH NO!!!
Another INSIDE JOB GONE LIVE!!!!!!!!
Happened on 9/11, happened before the Haiti earthquake, and now this!!
When the NEWSPAPER SAYS COINCIDENTALLY you KNOW it is a CONSPIRACY!!
And because they SAVAGE "CONSPIRACY THEORIES" you KNOW THEY ARE TRUE in some form or fashion -- unlike an agenda-pushing, war-promoting AmeriKan newspaper.
“This is not a surprise for responders,’’ said Reddy. “But the question is how long can you handle a spill.’’ If the well can’t be plugged or doesn’t tap out, the leak could go on for a long time, he said, “hitting a coastline that just got damaged from [Hurricane] Katrina.’’
Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP Exploration and Production, which is responsible for the leak, said the company may start drilling another well nearby to divert the oil and plug the leak.
However, that could take three months, Suttles said. Other less-tried techniques were also being discussed.
A GULF FULL of OIL that KEEPS LAPPING at the SHORES!!
OOOPS!!!
Once again, UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES even if it was an "accident."
In Louisiana, state officials warned that commercial fisheries could close and fishermen took to the water to catch as many fish, shrimp, and oysters as they could before the oil arrives....
I would say their livelihood is OVER -- and THAT IS a CAUSE for WEEPING!!!
Goodbye, Forrest Gump!
--more--"
MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER —
Just taking a look back at the lies, readers.
Amid increased fingerpointing yesterday, high winds and choppy seas frustrated efforts to hold back the giant oil spill seeping into Louisiana’s rich fishing grounds and nesting areas, while the government desperately cast about for new ideas for dealing with the growing environmental crisis.
See what your taxes are paying for?
President Obama halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.
The seas were too rough and the winds too strong yesterday to burn off the oil, suck it up effectively with skimmer vessels, or hold it in check with the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast.
The floating barriers broke loose in the choppy water, and waves sent oily water lapping over them....
The spill — a slick more than 130 miles long and 70 miles wide — threatens hundreds of species of wildlife, including birds, dolphins and the fish, shrimp, oysters, and crabs that make the Gulf Coast one of the nation’s most abundant sources of seafood. Louisiana closed some fishing grounds and oyster beds because of the risk of oil contamination.
Many of the more than two dozen lawsuits filed in the wake of the explosion assert it was caused when workers for oil services contractor
Are you flipping kidding me?
Notice how that garners very little attention in the MSM.
While the amount of oil in the Gulf already threatened to make it the worst US oil disaster since the
Coast Guard Admiral Mary Landry brushed off a question during a news conference yesterday about estimates that suggested the rate of the leak was five times larger than official estimates.
“I would caution you not to get fixated on an estimate of how much is out there,’’ Landry said.
Oh, she is a real piece of work, isn't she?
Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said it is impossible to measure the flow. But he said remote cameras show the rate does not appear to have changed since the leak was discovered.
High seas were in the forecast through tomorrow and could push oil deep into the inlets, ponds, creeks, and lakes that line the boot of southeastern Louisiana.
Yeah, that happened.
--more--"
Isn't that criminal?
