Tag Archives: BP

Gas Attack

1/17/2013 – 2:01 pm

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the Shell oil rig Kulluk, which was then beached on an uninhabited island off Alaska’s south coast.  Shell has since refloated the rig and it’s now in a sheltered harbor being inspected.  This is not the end of Shell’s troubles. Shell’s incompetence with equipment (see here for a longer, […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Global Warming, Nuclear Energy, Oil | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Chump Change = No Change

11/15/2012 – 4:57 pm

Let me apologize in advance for all the numbers that follow, but they’re important. Eleven men died on Deepwater Horizon the night BP’s Macondo well blew out in April 2010.  It’s one number we shouldn’t forget and no number can be placed on the loss their families and communities suffered and continue to suffer. The […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming, Oil | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

What the Left Hand is Doing

9/29/2011 – 2:55 pm

Cognitive dissonance is name given to the discomfort caused by trying to simultaneously hold two conflicting ideas.  Policy dissonance might be the name applied when two conflicting ideas are the basis for government action. An example: Texas is still in the worst single-year drought in its history and the hottest summer in Texas history just […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics, Energy, Global Warming | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Faster Than Ever

3/31/2011 – 4:19 pm

It’s supposed to snow tonight. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, tomorrow night and into the middle of Saturday morning. Except during the warmer, mid-day hours tomorrow, when it’s supposed to turn to rain and then back into snow. Spring snow is not unusual around here, but tonight’s will probably carry radiation. It’s been dry since […]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Energy, Nuclear Energy, Oil | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Ask a Stupid Question

11/8/2010 – 8:57 pm

The presidential commission on the BP oil spill seems to be fulfilling the task of all such blue-ribbon commissions: ask the wrong questions, draw the wrong conclusions. The commission’s general counsel, Fred Bartlit, burst across the media Monday with his claim that he could find no cost cutting leading to the April 20 blowout and […]

By floegel | Posted in Asides, Energy | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Low Incidence, High Consequence

10/21/2010 – 11:53 am

To date, NASA has launched 132 space shuttle missions. Two – Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 – were catastrophic failures, killing all the astronauts onboard each shuttle. Low incidence, high consequence; it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s bad. So it is with deepwater and/or high pressure oil drilling. Most […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Oceans, Oil | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Broken in Two

10/14/2010 – 12:33 pm

I attended the Gulf Gathering at Weeks Bay, Alabama last week. It was a conference of grassroots groups from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, coming together to try and figure how to put their region together again after the BP oil disaster. This being the gulf, implications from the other recent disaster – […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Global Warming | Also tagged , | Comments (0)