Cross posted from OC Progressive
It's summer and it's time to hit the beach but please remember that what you do there matters, from what you bring, what you where and what you leave behind.
Did you know that some ingredients in sunscreen can bleach coral reefs? And many of those ingredients are very good for you anyway, it's why your better off with more natural ingredients for your sunblocks rather than chemical ones.
No politics today. I spent the weekend in Sequoia National Park (SEKI to the National Park Service), had adventures, took pix, came home, blogged about it.
Sequoia is a huge park, but the NPS has chosen to focus visitor activities on one charismatic megaflora: the General Sherman tree. People ride shuttle buses to see one tree, turn around, shrug, say If you've seen one redwood, you've seen 'em all, and ride the shuttle bus back to their cars. Maybe they also ride another shuttle to take the half-mile hike up Moro Rock for the view. I've seen that tree and that view. I want to touch the sky above the trees.
A number of factors have gelled for me into an important understanding, however unlikely it is to be original: Neither money, real estate, precious metals, nor any other tangible good or floating trade medium possesses rigorous intrinsic value - in each case, their value can be corrupted or undermined through various manipulative processes (e.g., stock market shenanigans, currency policy, fraud, etc). Even food, energy, or water, when provided by a producer to a consumer, can be manipulated in similar ways. But when something is produced by the consumer, pure economics is at work in how it is used - you have begun the process of vertically integrating your own personal economy. Such a move must necessarily begin with energy, so I will examine its purpose, implications, and how it may be approached.
At this point almost all of the precipitation that falls on the state of California is trapped by dams in reservoirs where it is controlled, managed and transported to other parts of the state. The vast system is an impressive engineering feat, but it grew out of a long history of conflicts over the use of water resources and has come with a great environmental impact.
Start with the poll. It's a quiz. Indulge me. Do the poll thing now! Before you read this. Please?
How much of the oil gushing from Deepwater Horizon well is being skimmed or burned off? Do you, as I did,* believe you know?
If you believe BP press releases are confusing on purpose you would be right. Journalists have been getting it wrong. Hard to believe, huh?
In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.
Please. Read that again.
NRDC recently released a report -- Reclamation FAIL -- that debunked the coal industry's propaganda that mountaintop removal mining is beneficial because (1) Appalachia needs more flat land and (2) flattened mine sites are routinely converted for economic development. Such claims are nothing more than a big, flat lie.
It is always interesting to see that so many of us are on the same page some days. Something I posted at my own place this morning, and then saw OPOL's post today. This, is my take on what is going on, Right now....
The machine is of our own making.
The complexities of society and different chains of command. The food chain, the fossil fuels that power our conveniences and the things that distract us so that we do not think too hard about how absolutely precarious it all truly is.
It is time that a separate and autonomous United States Department of the Environment be created.
At present the various agencies that purportedly guard our nation's environment are part of the following entities, admittedly very likely, not a comprehensive list:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Energy
Department of Interior
Environmental Protection Agency, a subset of the Executive Branch
I guess, till I die be posting about this horrible
sickening situation in the gulf and the hits keep coming.
Today I find out the Arsenic levels are up to the point
that it WILL get into our food chain
Where is the outrage? Why are people concerned with elections and the Stanley Cup and Soccer and going about life and singing about God Bless America, especially the part of Oceans white with foam, when it is actually black with oil and arsenic and of course disbersements. Below
Note: It is not my intent in this diary to be alarmist. Being an alarmist and acknowledging conditions that are alarming are quite different things.
In a recent diary I posited that the human race could become extinct within a hundred years or less. Predictably a number of readers rejected that notion in what I would characterize as knee-jerk reactions. None of them offered any argument beyond no. Apparently they just didn't like the idea. No matter that it came from a world renowned scientist. That it came from a prominent scientist doesn't make it irrefutably true but it's a much better argument than 'umm no' or 'my ass.' It can be very difficult to get people to think outside of the ruts they've grown accustomed to, and the similarities between humans and ostriches have been often noted.
As if we needed any more evidence demonstrating that anthropogenic climate change is real, that it is occurring right now, and that it poses a major threat to the planet’s environment, we now have it -- in spades. Let;s begin with the assessment by a Penn State University investigation, which completely exonerated climate scientist Michael Mann from any wrongdoing in the ridiculous, trumped-up, never-any-truth-to-it, pseudo-"scandal" known as "climate-gate." In reaction to this report, former House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) -- full disclosure, Boehlert's on the NRDC Action Fund board -- issued a statement which read:
Thanks to Hurricane Alex and heavy winds pushing crude oil towards the Louisiana shoreline, tarballs from BP's deepwater blowout have now made their way from the Gulf of Mexico and into Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain:
Showing just how unpredictable and all-consuming the massive Gulf oil spill can be, tar balls and small sheens of oil have entered Lake Pontchartrain and are hitting Texas shores for the first time.
John Lopez, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's coastal stainability program, spotted the first tar balls in the Rigolets Pass on Sunday. By Monday, the blobs of oil had washed ashore as far west as Treasure Isle in Slidell.
Cleanup crews used nets to scoop up the tar balls throughout the day, collecting more than 1,000 pounds of oil and waste. BP also deployed 19 manual skimming vessels and four decontamination vessels to the area, and placed 600-feet of hard and soft boom at a choke point in the Rigolets to prevent more oil from entering the lake. Cleanup efforts are expected to resume today.
The oil that has reached the lake has been heavily weathered and officials predict a "modest" impact. Nonetheless, the state has now expanded the area closed to recreational and commercial fishing to include the southeastern part of the lake (the region southeast of U.S. 11 in the map below).
Lake Pontchartrain is the second-largest saltwater lake in the United States (Utah's Great Salt Lake is the largest). It connects to the Gulf of Mexico through an eight-mile long strait known as the Rigolets.
http://www.britethorn.com
The actor in this film, Marty Shutter, just got back from visiting the Alabama shores where he's been vacationing every summer since he was a child. But after returning home from a visit this year, he tells me that he's very unlikely to be returning to those beaches for a very long time.
"Death in the Gulf." BP and Halliburton committing ecocide.
This WineRev Model series provides a home for pics and vids. WineRev covered the 2009 Senate recount with a delightful 157 diary series. "Recounting Minnesota" at Amazon
Meanwhile, following its "1,000 gallons a day" lie, Coast Guard and BP referenced this map showing quick, clean flushing for the Gulf of Mexico:
No-no-no-no-no-no-no..... In deep water circular currents makes flow patterns quite complicated.
Greenpeace is brilliant:
More below :::
The current ROV DIARY: Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #178 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Khowell/alkalinesky
Rules of the Road
PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's diaries to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Yes I will get to the fraudulent claims that global denialists have been pushing that our planet has actually cooled since 1998 and will continue to cool for years to come.
But first, just for fun, let's take a look at the weather outside.
(cont.)
An exceptional, deeply satisfying diary published Monday didn't get many eyeballs, so I'm posting a big chunk of it here in hopes that it will whet your appetite for reading the whole piece. It's Mike Stagg 's analysis of how The Deep Water Moratorium Threatens Two Louisiana Republican Oligarchs. Mike posts at Democratic Louisiana:
| Any chance for good cooperation between the federal government and the state of Louisiana in the response to the BP Gulf Gusher died on May 30 when the U.S. Department of the Interior declared a six-month moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the then month-old disaster. Although the New York Times reported that Governor Bobby Jindal's personal dissatisfaction with the federal response to the disaster had gone public by May 3, the moratorium ratcheted up the pressure in the already tense situation by threatening losses in the industry that had caused the disaster. ... So, the moratorium looked like the prudent call until the cause of the BP Gulf Gusher could be identified, the well capped, and a new set of safety rules issued based on what was learned from this incident. But, alarm about the potential impact from the moratorium quickly went up along the coast and from within state government. Tens of thousands of jobs were threatened if the moratorium was allowed to stand. The job loss numbers fluctuated but trended downward in the first weeks after the moratorium was announced. Jindal assigned his newly minted Lieutenant Governor Scott Angelle the task of heading up the effort to generate public opposition to the moratorium. Angelle formed a coalition and had an online petition created. He traveled across the southern part of the state rallying opposition. He met with federal officials, parroting dire predictions of the impact of the moratorium. He followed Jindal's lead and bashed the President. ... Still, the moratorium stuck. Then Hornbeck Offshore Services, LLC, of Covington, announced its intention to file suit challenging the moratorium. It was assigned to Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans and the rest is history. Feldman overturned the moratorium. Hornbeck was joined in the challenge by 37 other companies in the challenge, giving the impression that a broad swath of the industry opposed the moratorium. The governor's office filed a brief in support of Hornbeck's claim. ... The involvement of these 37 companies did not constitute a broad industry response. It was, instead, a shriek of anger at the federal government that had thrown into jeopardy the empires of two of the key members of the new Republican oligarchy that has been ascendant in Louisiana politics in recent years. The Bollingers and the Chouests were reliable heavy hitters for the party and its causes. In trying to prevent another blowout in the hazardous deep water environment, President Obama had unwittingly delivered would could prove to be a lethal blow to some of some of the wealthiest arch conservative activists in the state. If the President did not realize the full extent of the in-state political implications of the moratorium, it did not take too long to become evident. |
Click the link. There's much, much more.
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Green diary rescue appears Sundays (except for three-day weekends) and Thursdays. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily mean my agreement with it. The rescue begins below and continues in the jump.
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Haole in Hawaii posted A Random Hawaiian Photo Diary.
In case you missed the news over the Independence Day weekend, Eclectablog took note that Obama announces $2 BILLION in solar power investments: "This is an industry and an energy source that needs a kick start. Much of the Recovery Act money that has gone into solar power-related projects has ended up going to foreign companies for the very simple reason that there just aren't that many USA companies to invest in.This is a huge commitment to USA-made solar energy equipment and components. Meanwhile, right here in my own backyard, University of Michigan scientists are figuring out how to make plastic solar cells that have a high enough efficiency that they can compete with standard silicon and thin-film cells."
