The Downplaying of Dispersants

by scorpiorising

I almost choked on my breakfast cereal when I read this headline in the Times Picayune today: Senator gently scolds EPA's Director(for that headline today there is no online link posted yet, so I included a link from basically the same article yesterday). Now I didn't see the entire video of that questioning, but I did see a compilation of remarks both from Senator Mikulski and Lisa Jackson. "Gentle" is a value ascribed to the interaction that I wouldn't necessarily use. I will admit though, it could have been a lot stronger from Mikulski and company. There is also a grilling, at the same hearing, of a NOAA official that is worth seeing.

continued at Daily Kos....

A sad state of affairs.

by icebergslim

BP is the gift that will continue to screw the Gulf Coast region by poisoning them while continuing to cover up the oil spill.

The EPA is the gift that continues to look LAME, against the power house foreign company called BP.

The government continues to be quasi in charge, while attempting to look NOT IN CHARGE.

Put these three together the gifts that keep screwing the Gulf Coast Region.

continued at Daily Kos....

Wolf Sushi

by murrayewv

Doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it?  Why would you eat raw slices of a warm-blooded, pack hunting predator that is on the top of the food chain and whose numbers are critically threatened by hunting?
If you are a bluefin tuna sushi or sashimi eater, you are eating a wild population that is overfished and on the verge of collapse before the oil disaster.  You are eating wolves of the sea, warm-blooded pack hunters roaming the northern hemisphere before returning to one of two spawning areas- the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea.  

The tipping point is now, this year, this month today.   Take home message of this diary for those busy this Father’s Day: Stop eating bluefin tuna, and tell restaurants and fish shops to stop buying it for their customers.  Call it a moratorium, not a boycott.  

continued at Daily Kos....

Gulf Oil Spill Mythbusters

by murrayewv

This blog is quick to condemn technological solutions on little data.  Diaries on the inadequacy of science and engineering abound (ironic, since we all are using computers to reach the internet).  Folks are quick to jump to conspiracy theories.  The problems of the oil spill are bad, but to read Daily Kos, the horrors are incredible, often in contradiction to all logic.  Chiming in to doubt some of these claims has resulted in What the hell, dude? You sounded earlier as if you were defending BP, and there's shitloads of anecdotal AND empirical evidence that they're in no way worthy of it. There's a point where you just have to stop playing "devils advocate" or "supporting the underdog". Or whatever that earlier bit was. Truthfully, it didn't make a whole lot of sense in context with the rest of the discussion, but seemed more designed to introduce the idea that "the fumes just aren't that bad, so people really didn't need masks anyway....

continued at Daily Kos....