05/12/2010

You Can Hide, But You Can’t Run

Now that BP’s jury-rigged contraption to contain its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spew has failed, the company’s only resort is to continue pumping massive amounts of dispersant into the water near the wellhead, in an attempt to – what exactly?

The dispersant goes by the trade name “Corexit.” It’s supposed to be a pun on the words “corrects it.” Marine conservationist and oil spill expert Rick Steiner says “Corexit” is called “Hidez-It” by insiders because its purpose is not to correct but deceive.

Oil is toxic to marine life. Dispersant is toxic to marine life. Together, their toxicity exceeds the sum of their parts. The people running the spill response for BP are geologists, but what needs protection in the gulf is not geology, it’s biology.
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By floegel | Posted in Asides, Energy, Oceans, Oil, Toxics | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
05/06/2010

The Gulf of Oil

Venice, LA – I’m down at the oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico or what for now is the Gulf of Mexico. Rick Steiner, a marine conservationist and oil spill expert flew over the gulf Wednesday morning and said, “It’s not the Gulf of Mexico any more. It’s the gulf of oil.”

Rick’s been helping governments respond to oil spills for the past 30 years (an unusually prescient career choice). A resident of Cordova, AK he found a spill in his front yard in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

“Right after the Valdez spill, someone told me, ‘Lawyers still to be born will be litigating this spill.’ I laughed at him, but he was right. It’s been 21 years and the litigation between the federal government and Exxon is still not over.”

The fact that people who lost their livelihoods in the Exxon spill waited 20 years before they saw a nickel of compensation from Exxon is not happy news here, but Rick pulls no punches and gives straight answers. It’s as welcome – and as rare – as a cool breeze in Louisiana.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Global Warming, Oceans, Oil | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
04/29/2010

Obama’s a Fool (Part I)

Less than a month ago, Barack Obama told us he wants to open 167 million acres of America’s continental shelf to oil drilling. At the time, he promised the nation that we have the technology to do this in a safe, clean and environmentally sound manner.

Now, before the “April Fool” window has closed, we know 5,000 barrels (that’s 210,000 gallons) of oil are leaking into the Gulf of Mexico daily. Eleven people are missing (dead, really) and three critically injured. Now the president can go to another mass funeral (or memorial service if the bodies are never found) without ever admitting that oil – like coal, like nukes – is not the answer to our problem, they ARE our problem.

Mr. Obama’s not stupid, although he’s a fool. He’s foolish to make sweeping announcements about policy while giving citizens assurances neither he nor anyone else can back up. Where would he have gotten the notion that we can safely drill for oil on the continental shelves? From the oil companies. Just as the Wall Street banks and bank-like non-banks tell him they can regulate themselves with no harm to the economy.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Global Warming, Oceans, Oil | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
04/22/2010

The Death of Earth Day

Let us now mourn the passing of Earth Day, on this its 40th birthday. The dear old girl had been sick for many years. I remember mocking the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990. I was living in Washington, DC at the time and a big rally / sales event was held on the national mall, hosted by Tom Cruise, star of the just-released “Days of Thunder,” a movie about stock car racing.

A few weeks earlier, the national mall was the setting for EarthTech, a trade fair of environmentally friendly technologies. There were booths for solar and wind power, but most of the promoters hawked nuclear power or plastic or incinerators. Like any trade fair, the only thing that mattered was how much vendors paid for their display areas. Whether or not the display was an unmitigated pack of lies didn’t even enter the conversation. Senator Al Gore was the congressional sponsor.

A bunch of us attended in white lab coats and stood in front of the worst liars in the fair to explain exactly how they were lying. You know, First Amendment stuff. But this is America, the real America, and the people paying the freight control the cops, so we were hauled away in handcuffs, but the tee vee cameras caught it all and we were on the six o’clock news. Like I said, real America.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Nuclear Energy, Oil | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)
04/08/2010

Pachelbel’s Canon (as it pertains to me)

The car radio came on with the ignition and Pachelbel’s Canon (formally, Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel) came on with it. It wasn’t a classical music station; it was a commercial. For what, I do not remember because Johnny P.’s canon has been so overused for so long it fails to convey any message other than its own ubiquity.

It is, however, an ear worm, and so I was stuck with it for a few hours, humming it as I engaged in the kind of mindless, about-town errand driving that requires no more brain power than was required of the milk man’s horse a century ago.

I think it was the combination of the canon and the cool, wet spring weather that recalled me to the last day of winter, 1986. I was a police reporter and the scanner in my bedroom at midnight announced escaped prisoners from the county jail. I pulled on a pair of jeans and coat and grabbed my camera and was out the door. Thirty minutes later, I was at the county seat, in the command post set up in the Sheriff’s office.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Comments (0)
04/01/2010

No Foolin’

Happy April Fool’s Day. This is not a joke.

No one seems quite sure why the first of April is called “April Fool’s Day.” The first reference to the day is in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.” In the story, a fox and rooster trick each other in turn.

So it is April Fool’s Day is an occasion for practical jokes. Some scholars believe the tradition began when the societies shifted the beginning of the calendar year from early spring (around the first of April) to January, leaving only “fools” to honor the older tradition.

However it began, it’s with us still and you may be fooled more than once today. There are several times this week when I had wished I was being fooled, but no, it seems I’m merely dealing with fools.

Yesterday is a good example. Barack Obama announced he is opening 167 million acres of the continental shelf to oil and natural gas drilling. This is something George Bush and Dick Cheney wanted to do, but didn’t have the nerve. I thought 2008 was supposed to be a “change” election. Didn’t know it was going to be change for the worse.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Nuclear Energy, Oceans, Oil | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)
03/25/2010

Sodomizing Jesus

For any parent, one of the scariest stories in the New Testament has to be in the second chapter of the Book of Luke. Twelve-year-old Jesus is separated from his parents on a trip to Jerusalem. They’re halfway back to Nazareth before they realize he’s missing and they rush back in a panic before discovering he’s safe.

Why the panic? Because there were predators about in those days, just as there are today. And just because Jerusalem was the seat of Judaism doesn’t mean a child wouldn’t be raped, killed or sold into slavery. It happened to Joseph.

And now we know it’s happened to thousands of other children by the hands of men the world over who claim to act in Jesus’s name. While that’s horrible, an added horror is that other men – who lay claim to moral leadership, the men for whom the word “sanctimonious” was coined – covered up and defended the crimes.

The Catholic Church’s pederasty scandal has gone global and now coils its tentacles around Josef Ratzinger, a / k / a Pope Benedict XVI. Did he – when he was a cardinal – ignore warnings about a rabidly pederastic priest in Wisconsin, as the New York Times reports? Did he – when he was a bishop in Munich 30 years ago – approve the transfer, rather than the prosecution of pederast priests under his jurisdiction?
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By floegel | Posted in Catholicism, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)