I recently returned from my second once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Okavango and Linyanti wilderness of northwest Botswana. This dairy includes the some of the photographic results of that trip. I offer it as a brief respite from the insanity of the day, whatever that may mean to you, and as a reminder that we share this planet with some amazing creatures.
The Okavango
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Please remember to rec the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 80
Project Gulf Impact is in between. Floating somewhere in a venn diagram between activism, journalism, documentary filmmaking, social media, and trying to accurately convey what's actually going on in the Gulf of Mexico. "It would be adding a crime to a crime," Thad Allen said, "if we didn't make this one of the great learning laboratories in the history of this country." And indeed we are. PGI has been told, interview after interview, that this is "the grand experiment." I don't find "grand" to be the choice word, but you get the idea.
One of the pleasures of operating the way we do - on a shoestring budget that barely affords us two meals a day and the gas to get from one interview to the next and not much else - is that we get the opportunity, the privilege, of staying in the homes of Gulf coast residents that we have met along the way. These homes - warm environments where "home cooking" still means something (especially to the Cajuns!) - make me miss the trips to my grandparent's homes in the midwest and southern Texas more than anything else.
Don't believe the hype. It isn't over. For many residents of the Gulf Coast it won't be over for a very long time. According to Krissah Thompson and David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post:
This week, Obama signed a $26 billion bill that eases state budget crises and saves 300,000 teachers and policemen from imminent layoffs. The trade-off was DOE's renewable energy and transmission loan-guarantee program: it lost $3.5 billion.
The WH assured Nancy Pelosi that they intend to restore the funds, and claimed there is enough money to support current projects, but the enthusiasm for this program has been tempered from the start. The Office of Management and Budget has been slow fund it, and it does not seem to connect guaranteeing capital to job creation and economic recovery. Harry Reid describes this trend here in a letter to President Obama.
Defecit hawks' war on spending is a war on the middle class, and the DOE's clean energy loan guarantee program is a prime example of how the government can support small businesses and create jobs. Access to working capital is the spine that supports "green economy" and "green jobs", and the lack of it stops the show.
I am so proud to be included in the Gulf Recovery Blogathon. I was a lurker for many years here at Daily Kos until the day the Deep Horizon oil rig exploded and ripped a gash into Mother Earth causing her blood to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Since that day I have spent my time on Daily Kos deeply immersed in the Mothership and her child ROV's finding comfort and commiseration with people who have shown me that America will always have hope as long as such people exist.
I have watched with tears in my eyes and pain in my heart as wildlife came out of the ocean covered in oil and struggling for life. The loss of every one of the creatures who have died in this unparalleled disaster leaves us poorer and sadder. I have watched as the fishermen and oystermen's livelihoods have been destroyed and the Gulf Coast way of life decimated.
Below the jump you will find a list of organizations that I have been compiling for months. Please consider donating or volunteering to help support these organizations who spend their lives trying to help people, wildlife and even family pets recover from disaster. Thank you.
What the Blogathon has been missing thus far:
I'm still a __ing believer; and why wouldn't I be since the information readily available from the beginning of this incident has been so clear and above board. A free and open flow of accurate information was at our fingertips everyday, shame the information the next day disagreed completely with that of the day before, heh, what could be more open than that?
Color me skeptical if you will. ,
As the proud and nerdy owner of an electric bike for three months now, I can make one statement about e-bikes and e-biking with complete confidence: E-bikers don't get no respect. Depending on demographic, the e-biker is viewed as a wimp (can't hack the pedaling), a poseur (regular bike not complicated/expensive enough), or an object of pity (can't drive, or can't afford a moped/car). If you've never been at the receiving end of the simultaneous sneers of the hippie knapsacker and the Hummer H3-driver, well, here's your chance.
Indeed, the goal of this diary will be to convince you that E-bikes deserve serious consideration as a mode of transportation well suited to the daily needs of many, if not most, of the citizens of this warming planet... even here in the car-centric USA.
2003 Report
According to MMS’ 2000 resource assessment of conventionally recoverable hydrocarbons in the Gulf, 65 billion barrels of oil equivalent total reserves have been produced, but 71 billion barrels of oil equivalent remain.
According to the MMS the undiscovered resource assessment is approximately:
For the western Gulf of Mexico, 37 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
For the central Gulf, over 92 billion BOE.
For the eastern Gulf, about nine billion BOE."Of course, our resources estimates are likely to be revised upwards due to new discoveries in entirely new geologic frontiers such as deep gas targets on the shelf," Oynes said.
History and quotes from: http://www.aapg.org/...
The Math:
71 + 37+ 92+ 9 = 209 Billion Barrels of Oil Remain in the Gulf
@ $60 Average/Barrel =
$12.5 Trillion Reasons to Continue Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
Please rec the new Mothership #81 here. This one has expired.
The current ROV DIARY: Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #297 - Perplexity and Relief Wells - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Kairos
Rules of the Road
PLEASE visit Pam LaPier's diary 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!
Even in light of the number of extreme weather events that have happened in 2010, some continue to deny this has anything to do with global warming (although the weather this year has started to persuade even some of the most adamant skeptics).
So what do the experts say? Here's what Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says about the relationship of the extreme weather events.
At Solve Climate, Stacy Feldman writes:
| The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) declared today that carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) is currently "viable," and that the only real obstacle to rapid deployment in the United States is political will. "There are no insurmountable technical, legal, institutional, or other barriers to the deployment of this technology," the agencies announced. However, without a price on carbon, the agencies said they were highly pessimistic about CCS's possibilities. "Widespread cost-effective deployment of CCS will occur only if the technology is commercially available at economically competitive prices and supportive national policy frameworks, such as a cap on carbon pollution, are in place," EPA and DOE said.... The study's show of confidence comes at an inauspicious time for the struggling industry. The infamous FutureGen project in Mattoon, Ill., announced in 2003 and once expected to be the world's first CCS plant, was officially scrapped last week by the DOE after years of cost overruns. In its place, the agency said it would spend $1 billion to carry out "FutureGen 2.0," which would retrofit a shuttered coal plant rather than build a new one. But in a letter this week to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the town of Mattoon said it would not provide land to store the CO2, causing an indefinite delay in the project. |
Be sure to check out the Gulf Recovery series. So far 13 diarists have contributed to this blogathon organized by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, noweasels and myself. More diaries will appear Friday. Links appear in the jump below.
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Green diary rescue appears on Thursdays and Sundays. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it. The GDR begins here and continues in the jump.
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Haole in Hawaii is one lucky fellow, as he let us know in Beautiful Birds of Botswana - A Photo Diary: "Aloha! I am back in the islands after my second once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Okavango and Linyanti wilderness of northwest Botswana. I have to say that re-entry into my work life and also into the blazing insanity that is American politics after two weeks of wildlife photography is jarring to say the least. This diary as all my diaries here is meant primarily as a respite from the craziness and as a reminder that we share this fragile planet with some incredible creatures." That is a Saddle-billed Stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis) in the photo on the right.