Overnight News Digest -- Sci Tech

by palantir

Welcome to the Overnight News Digest!

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Oil Enters Food Chain & Deep Dead Zones Grow in Gulf

by FishOutofWater

Oil spewing from the blown BP well is entering the food chain. Marine biologists have discovered oiled crab larvae in uncontaminated marshes. Oil from the Gulf is being taken into otherwise uncontaminated areas by contaminated crabs.

Offshore, in deep water, methane levels as high as 10,000 above normal have been confirmed by new data.

On June 26, a lake of oil built offshore of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle, before winds and waves from hurricane Alex swept across the Gulf.

continued at Daily Kos....

I am so sad...

by Richard Cranium

I don't even know where to start.  It's like I've been kicked in the gut over the past week.  Repeatedly.

The Gulf of Mexico is being destroyed.  But it's apparently not that big of a deal.  Mothers let their kids swim in the muck, and then say they'll get some Goo Gone to clean them off.  There's no national outrage about this?

250,000 lives a week will be destroyed because the Senate decided to recess, that a vacay was important, more important than resolving unemployment compensation funding for millions of their fellow citizens.

Day by day, I see more silent suffering by those of us who just hang on, day to day.  And I fear there is no future for us.  I am so sad...

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Bobby Jindal seals all state records related to oil spill

by Jed Lewison

This is the third major revelation in the last week to undermine Bobby Jindal's claim to have effectively managed Louisiana's response to BP's oil spill:

Louisiana Governor Seals Oil-Spill Records

For more than two months, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has made it clear that he considers the response of the federal government and BP to the gulf oil leak a failure on many fronts.

But elected officials in Louisiana and members of the public seeking details on how Mr. Jindal and his administration fared in their own response to the disaster are out of luck: late last week the governor vetoed an amendment to a state bill that would have made public all records from his office related to the oil spill.

The measure was proposed by Senator Robert Adley, a Republican, and easily passed the Democrat-controlled Legislature. He told the Associated Press that the veto was a “black eye” on the state. “This governor has opposed transparency for the three years he’s been in office,” he said.

According to the New York Times, Jindal claims he vetoed the measure to strengthen the state's position if it pursues legal action against BP. But given that the documents Jindal has now sealed to the public would be discoverable in any such case, his argument is transparently bunk.

Last week, CBS revealed that despite Jindal's attacks on the Obama administration for not delivering enough resources, Jindal was holding up the deployment of 5,000 National Guard troops authorized by the Obama administration. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that experts at the state and federal level had panned Jindal's response, saying the state was ill-prepared for the spill and that Jindal's attacks on the Federal response smacked of political calculation designed to distract attention from his own failures.

continued at Daily Kos....

BP Fined for Lying (not Gulf related)

by mole333

BP's lies and greed isn't just about the Gulf anymore. Seems they have been lying to the government about prices and royalties related to production on the Southern Ute tribal lands in Colorado. More on this below, followed by some resources to help decide what gas stations best suit your ideals. Sunoco and Hess seem the best according to most sources. Citgo perhaps next. BP/Arco (which I admit I used to like), Exxon/Mobil and Chevron/Texaco seem the worst according to most sources.

From BBC News:

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What Sick BP Oil Spill Workers?

by Steven D

A philosophical question for you.  If no reporter is ever allowed to speak or meet with any of the many oil spill clean-up workers about the medical treatment they may or may not be receiving at a Federal Clinic, much less visit said clinic, do they really exist?  And by that I mean oil spill clean-up workers in general, sick or not:

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(UPDATED) Facepalming in Biloxi (A Photo Diary)

by Free Chicken and Beer

It's rare that I disdainfully bury my face into my palm and massage my temples with my thumb and middle finger in quiet frustration so early in the morning. But the sheer lunacy of one woman's brazen suggestion at how I do my job nonetheless prompted me to facepalm around 8:30 yesterday. I have to say, that's the earliest time I've ever been so confused and saddened at the same time, so much so that I had such a reaction.

Read below the fold to find what exactly she said that crushed my spirits and prompted the palming of my face.

continued at Daily Kos....

Landrieu demands equal role for big oil in spill inquiry

by Jed Lewison

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu says she opposes President Obama's commission on BP's oil spill because its membership consists entirely of independent scientists and includes no paid officials from the oil industry. Her solution: create a new commission with power divided equally between big oil executives and independent researchers.

WASHINGTON -- On the same day the White House commission investigating the Gulf oil spill announced its first meetings -- July 12-13 in New Orleans -- a Senate committee cast what amounted to a no-confidence vote on the commission's objectivity.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted Wednesday to create a congressional bipartisan commission to investigate the spill, with Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and others saying a separate panel is needed because the White House commission has four environmental advocates -- three members and the executive staff director -- but no oil industry representation.

"Maybe the commission that the Congress sets up, in a more balanced fashion, with both very strong environmental views and very strong industry views, could actually come up with something that really might work for the dilemma and the challenge that this nation faces, which briefly is this: We use 20 million barrels of oil a day," Landrieu said. "That was true the day before the Deepwater Horizon blew up. It is true today. And we need to get that oil from somewhere."

Brilliant idea, eh? Fair and balanced, right? Let's give the oil industry veto power over the the commission investigating the oil disaster in the Gulf! Smart.

This is exactly the kind of garbage that got us into this mess in the first place. Amazingly, Landrieu is pushing it even as BP's well continues to flood the Gulf of Mexico. She might as well scream "Drill, baby, drill" at the top of her lungs. And she's doing it eight months after mocking the very people who warned her that a disaster like this could happen:

Meanwhile, not to be outdone by Landrieu, GOP Sen. Jim DeMint yesterday blocked legislation on the Senate floor that would have given the presidential spill commission subpoena power. If nothing else, it's a reminder that when it comes to the poor regulation and oversight of the oil industry, conservatives like Landrieu and DeMint need look no further than themselves when searching for somebody to blame.

continued at Daily Kos....

Senator Robert Byrd: An Appreciation

by Bruce Nilles

This post was co-written by Mary Anne Hitt of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, who is also a native West Virginian.

On September 21, 2006, grandfather and former coal miner Ed Wiley took the final steps of a 455-mile walk that began in the coalfields of West Virginia and ended in Washington, DC, at the office of Senator Robert Byrd.

Ed had made his two-month, one-man pilgrimage to ask Senator Byrd to build a new school for the students of Marsh Fork Elementary, which is located immediately beneath an earthen dam holding back 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge, next to a dust-spewing coal processing plant, and adjacent to a massive mountaintop removal mining operation.

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BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 37

by Gulf watchers

Please rec the new Mothership #38 here. This one has expired.
The current ROV DIARY: Gulf Watchers ROV # 165 -  BP's Gulf Catastrophe
Rules of the Road

• We take volunteers for subsequent diaries in the sub diaries or ROV's as we have playfully coined them.
• Please rec this mothership diary, not the ROVs.
• Please be kind to fellow kossacks who may have limited bandwidth and refrain from posting images or videos.

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!

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Build a backyard gusher then plug the d*mn leak with a relief well

by GrumpyOldGeek

This is my attempt to help you gain a practical understanding of how BP is going to "plug the d*mn leak". The relief well technique is universally promoted as the solution that works. A simple model will show you how and why.

My model describes a virtual backyard gusher, definitely not something you should actually construct. Fortunately, the idea is simple and easy to visualize.

Many experts have likened the BP gusher to opening a bottle of champagne. We're going to do this on steroids. The gusher is based on the well known effect when a few Mentos mints are dropped into a two liter plastic bottle of Diet Coke.

You don't need to be a geek to understand this model.

continued at Daily Kos....