Mental health, public health, global health. New and interesting developments in technology and the arts. Meditation research. And occasionally cute animals.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Price Tags Needed for Gulf of Mexico’s Ecology
Of all the inadequacies revealed by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, maybe none is as fundamental as the failure of companies, markets and government to put a price tag on natural assets.
From deep-sea fishing grounds to shallow-water nurseries to hurricane-blunting wetlands, multiple Gulf ecosystems have demonstrable utilitarian and economic value. Yet except for one think tank, nobody has tried to calculate that value.
Chevron’s new greenwashing/CSR campaign is absolutely fantastic. I cannot think of any other advertising campaign that so clearly demonstrates environmental cover-up and social distortion than this degenerate PoS.
Last month, Chevron was ordered to pay a record $8.6 billion for environmental damages from its drilling in Ecuador. The company was found guilty of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon river. Billions. Over decades, until the 1990s. It destroyed the lives of thousands of people - including children. Over 30,000 Ecuadorians brought suit agains the company, accusing it of ruining huge swaths of pristine rain forests and Amazonian rivers, and causing countless deaths from toxic illnesses.
Nearly a dozen federal acts regulate and control how oil is drilled, processed, sold, and disposed of in the United States. This is because oil is a known carcinogen that harms human health and physical environments and systems. Ecuador does not have the capacity to regulate the oil industry, and Chevron (and it’s per-merger companies) moved in for a cheap drill.
The evidence against Chevron is indisputable; Chevron’s response, vile and utterly disgusting.
Yet, the company will get off the hook by playing the victim, counter suing Ecuador under, of all things, RICO and extortion by none other than Ecuador.
Instead of settling the case, and championing taking the moral highground, Chevron’s new campaign is an obvious diversion, a blatant cover up to get the public to take their eyes off the ball.
This campaign is an example of how low companies will go to buy their way out of actual malfeasance. Out of the blue, and just after a record lawsuit, Chevron suddenly supports small businesses, educates girls in math, and donates to AIDS research?
You know what Chevron, f*ck you. F*CK. YOU.
Why the Gulf Oil Spill Isn't Going Away
In early August, a high-level U.S. government official asserted that more than three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf spill was “gone”—based on preliminary National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates. Since then a fiery backlash has erupted from independent scientists who have been tracking and studying the spill.
“The oil budget NOAA came out with was just a joke, a fairy tale scenario,” said Samantha Joye, a marine biogeochemist from the University of Georgia and one of the first researchers to detect and measure the deep plumes of oil. “I understand why people want it to disappear, but who in their right mind would believe that? It makes absolutely no sense.”
Scientists Find Thick Layer Of Oil On Seafloor
Scientists on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico are finding a substantial layer of oily sediment stretching for dozens of miles in all directions. Their discovery suggests that a lot of oil from the Deepwater Horizon didn’t simply evaporate or dissipate into the water — it has settled to the seafloor.
MIT’s Seaswarm Robots Could Clean Up Gulf-Sized Spill in a Month | Inhabitat
Dubbed the Seaswarm, this autonomous 16-foot long, 7- foot wide robot features an oil-absorbing conveyor belt covered with a nanowire mesh, carefully designed to absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil all while repelling water… Affixed with two square meters of solar panels, unlike traditional oil skimmers which require frequent maintenance, the Seaswarm can run at full power continuously for weeks on end.
Interesting. I wonder how much it costs to build and maintain and how it would perform under bad weather. I’m also wondering how it would affect marine life - e.g. sucking up plankton, or being noisy and frightening away/disturbing migration patterns, etc.
US food waste worth more than offshore drilling
MORE energy is wasted in the perfectly edible food discarded by people in the US each year than is extracted annually from the oil and gas reserves off the nation’s coastlines.
Life-Altering Energy Conversion Machine of the Day: From Japan’s Blest Corporation comes a revolutionary Mr. Fusion-like device capable of returning plastic material back to its original form: Oil.
From OurWorld:
Blest’s conversion technology is very safe because it uses a temperature controlling electric heater rather than flame. The machines are able to process polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene (numbers 2-4) but not PET bottles (number 1). The result is a crude gas that can fuel things like generators or stoves and, when refined, can even be pumped into a car, a boat or motorbike. One kilogram of plastic produces almost one liter of oil. To convert that amount takes about 1 kilowatt of electricity, which is approximately ¥20 or 20 cents’ worth.
[noob.us.]
Intriguing, though I would withhold high praise until a few other questions are answered. For example, what are the byproducts, and how safe/harmful are they to people and the environment? This sounds amazing at face value, but that’s a fairly important question to answer. The fact that it wasn’t addressed makes me suspicious. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Failing f***ing booming school.
The BP Cover-Up
BP and the government say the spill is fast disappearing—but dramatic new science reveals that its worst effects may be yet to come.
Via my buddy Thain — BP, completely clueless, fails at f***ing booming school.
Warning: Lots of profanity.
![abcsoupdot:
Photograph by Chris Combs
From National Geographic:
On July 1 machete-wielding coastal geologist Katie Brutsché cut pits (such as the one pictured at lower right) into layers of Pensacola Beach sand to reveal oil invisible—and largely inaccessible—to cleanup crews, whose focus is on the surface oil, such as those seen at lower left.
This “weathered” oil—mainly tarballs and tar mats—began washing ashore around June 23 in Pensacola. (See pictures of Gulf oil atop Pensacola Beach.)
Waves buried much of the oil under new layers of sand, particularly this week, when Hurricane Alex spawned rough seas around the Gulf. (See “Hurricane Alex Pushes ‘Worst Oil’ Ashore; Cleanup Slowed.”)
[…]
During a series of digs, oil patties and tarballs were found just beneath beaches dirtied by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The discoveries suggest that toxic oil lies hidden under even “clean” patches of beaches along the U.S. Gulf Coast—and that oil-spill cleanup crews are only scratching the surface.
Because the buried oil is both harder to clean and slower to break down, it could be a long-lasting threat to beachgoers, both animal and human, experts say.
Nice: my university gets a shout-out.
Boo: FCKING OIL.](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07/photogalleries/100705-gulf-oil-spill-beaches-florida-nation-pictures/#oil-under-pensacola-beach-digging_22935_600x450.jpg)
Photograph by Chris Combs
From National Geographic:
On July 1 machete-wielding coastal geologist Katie Brutsché cut pits (such as the one pictured at lower right) into layers of Pensacola Beach sand to reveal oil invisible—and largely inaccessible—to cleanup crews, whose focus is on the surface oil, such as those seen at lower left.
This “weathered” oil—mainly tarballs and tar mats—began washing ashore around June 23 in Pensacola. (See pictures of Gulf oil atop Pensacola Beach.)
Waves buried much of the oil under new layers of sand, particularly this week, when Hurricane Alex spawned rough seas around the Gulf. (See “Hurricane Alex Pushes ‘Worst Oil’ Ashore; Cleanup Slowed.”)
[…]
During a series of digs, oil patties and tarballs were found just beneath beaches dirtied by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The discoveries suggest that toxic oil lies hidden under even “clean” patches of beaches along the U.S. Gulf Coast—and that oil-spill cleanup crews are only scratching the surface.
Because the buried oil is both harder to clean and slower to break down, it could be a long-lasting threat to beachgoers, both animal and human, experts say.
Nice: my university gets a shout-out.
Boo: FCKING OIL.
Oil Spill Threatens Native American Water Village
The town of Grand Bayou, Louisiana, has no streets and no cars, just water and boats. And now the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens the very existence of the Atakapa-Ishak Indians who live there. “We’re facing the potential for cultural genocide,” says one tribe member.
Oil-Coated Gulf Birds Better Off Dead?
Some experts—citing traditionally low survival rates for rescued birds—are controversially arguing it would be better to immediately and humanely kill the suffering birds. In a Spiegel Online article last month, German biologist Silvia Gaus argued that workers helping birds caught in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, should “kill, not clean.” Gaus said studies show that more than 99 percent of rehabilitated birds will die anyway as a result of oil exposure, mainly due to kidney and liver damage caused by oil ingestion.
Portrait of a BP Executive.
