Yahoo and Yippee! Hurricane be good for oil cleanup. Make like washing machine.

A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that hurricanes have a washing machine effect. The major spinning and disturbance of the waters help to break down the plumes of oil. The stirring up of the water by a hurricane break the oil up into smaller droplets that microbes can more easily consume. This constant pounding on the oil break it down faster and to a greater extent.

http://fastfreenews.com

From the "Who Cares" department: New Video Game Lets You Stop The Leak

Now you can try your hand at stopping the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. A new game inspired by the ongoing BP oil spill has hit the Xbox Live games marketplace. Called Crisis In The Gulf, the game challenges gamers to stop the oil spill from an exploded oil rig owned by "DP" using whatever means necessary--from cannons and torpedos to high-powered lasers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Passing Alex shuts cleanup down

Oil-skimming ships in the Gulf of Mexico steamed to safe refuge because of the rough seas, which likely will last for days. Officials scrambled to reposition boom to protect the coast, and had to remove barges that had been blocking oil from reaching sensitive wetlands.Officials worried the weather could hamper efforts to keep the oil out of Lake Pontchartrain, which so far has not been affected. The brackish body of water, connected to the Gulf by narrow passes, is a recreational haven for metropolitan New Orleans.
The containment system now in place is capturing nearly 1 million gallons per day from the well, which is spewing as much as 2.5 million gallons a day, according to the government's worst-case estimate. So far, between 70.8 million and 137.6 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from the broken BP well, according to government and BP estimates. The higher estimate is enough oil to fill half of New York's Empire State Building with oil.

Alex may delay improved oil collection

Waves of 10 to 12 feet would prevent BP from connecting a third rig to an underwater containment system. That process needs three days of good weather, said Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president. The rig is expected to nearly double the amount of oil siphoned from the leak to between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels a day. The storm's winds are expected to stay far enough west of the spill to avoid any interruption to the drilling of two relief wells, which BP officials hope will completely cut off the flow of oil into the Gulf in August.

Wall St. Journal June 29, 2010

New Streamers about to hit Grand Isle

Poor BP. A hundred million bucks a day. The dead pelicans can really use that.

Over the weekend, as spending hit $100 million a day, the number of vessels helping with the clean-up had grown to 5,000 and a flotilla of expensive drill ships gathered on the surface far above the well head, as BP implemented plans to capture 90% of the leaking oil and continued drilling two relief wells.
Wall St. Journal Blogs

Oil companies are major shareholders in the American political and media machines

Open Secrets, whose mission is to track money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy, details the amount of money received by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is currently investigating BP, from oil and gas companies. In 2010, members of the committee received a combined $1,227,455. The ranking Elephant on the committee, Joe Barton, who stuck his oily foot in his foul mouth by apologizing to BP, received over $100,000 last year, the second only to an Elephant from Missouri, Roy Blunt.
bigthink.com

Palin packs Oil Palace, disses Obama

TYLER, Texas — Sarah Palin fired up an enthusiastic Texas crowd late Saturday by criticizing President Barack Obama's handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, saying he's falling short on leadership. "You asked for the job, Mr. President, so buck up," Palin said to voracious applause inside the nearly packed Oil Palace. Organizers said the event drew about 5,000 people. "I chant, 'drill baby drill,' because it will help make the country energy independent," she said.
http://www.chron.com/

Black Lexus joins protest

"In Mobile, about 40 people participated in the 15-minute peaceful protest. Sherri Wilson of Daphne said that the oil spill is a "tragedy of epic proportions" that the Gulf may never recover from. "It's important to let people know that we care about the environment, and offshore drilling is not something that I, now or ever, supported," she said. After 15 minutes in the sweltering heat, the attendees headed back to their cars, shouting, "Air conditioning," and "Ooh, that was warm." Two of the protesters climbed into a black Lexus sport utility vehicle -- left on and idling all 15 minutes -- and drove away."

www.alabama.com

And here's a thank you note from Steve...

stevenleonard wrote on 06/27/2010 07:15:03 AM:

I would like to thank the Judge on behalf of the nation for his quick action and wise decision. However we need to plug the hole the oil is leaking from. The russians had the same problem some years ago and used a small nuclear device to blow up the ocean floor to close it off. Can we do the same? Lets work on finding a resolution to the leak. The reason that BP doesn't close it off is because if the oil stops flowing from the hole, then their contract stops. The politics in that is why we continue to have an oil leak. We need to take actions on that as our nation is suffering!

Stockholding judge a bit of a folk hero

"HOUMA, La. -- Along the troubled waters of the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman has become a bit of a folk hero. He's the Ronald Reagan appointee who overturned the Obama administration's six-month ban on deepwater oil exploration, siding with oil service companies and the state of Louisiana, which argued that the moratorium -- coming on the heels of the gusher in the Gulf -- would seriously weaken the state's economy. Feldman owned stock in Exxon Mobil -- an oil company affected by the ban -- even as he considered the case, The Washington Post reported."

The Miami Herald June 27, 2010

Here's a doomsday scenario for you. Enjoy.

"Let's say the oil blowout continues, and the Gulf of Mexico is carrying millions of gallons of crude oil as a massive hurricane approaches. It's a hot July day in the Gulf of Mexico, with temperatures soaring towards 110 degrees, accelerating the evaporation of volatile oils which get mixed in with hurricane-force winds. The hurricane makes landfall in New Orleans, let's say, dumping potentially hundreds of thousands of gallons of what is essentially "volatile fuel" on the city of New Orleans. Now, at first it's just a wet, slippery toxic mess that kills trees and grass. But what happens after the storm when the sun dries out the city?"
Natural News

Spill spurs activists

The April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers and triggered the nation's worst environmental disaster, created a powerful surge in environmental awareness. In Florida and elsewhere, activists hope it has staying power beyond the current catastrophe. Eric Draper, Florida Audubon's executive director, said that 16,000 people have signed up to volunteer with Audubon nationally ``as a response to the oil spill'' -- perhaps 1,000 from Florida. Most, he said, aren't Audubon members, but have ``seen the images of the wildlife or imagined the oil's effect on the beaches. They're people who love the beaches and want to do something.''
The Miami Herald June 26, 2010

Tropical storms heads for oil spill area

Coast Guard officials are making preparations for what could turn into a hurricane. A tropical cyclone is forming south of the Gulf of Mexico and is headed toward the oil spill area. Gale force winds could force at-sea workers to abandon their oil collection efforts in the Gulf of Mexico for two weeks, the head of the national response effort said Friday. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen described the cut-and-run plan in a conference call to reporters Friday as, “Realistically, out of an abundance of caution,” but the Deepwater Horizon well would remain uncapped for “14 days” if that happened.

Scott Brown: on the big oil dole?

Gulf Boat Captain Describes Turtle Rescue

Wildlife incinerated

Boat captain Mike Ellis described what he had seen at sea in a YouTube report. "They drag a boom between two shrimp boats and whatever gets caught between the two boats, they circle it up and catch it on fire. Once the turtles are in there, they can’t get out," Mr. Ellis said.
The Christian Science Monitor June 25, 2010

Raining oil in Louisiana?

This You Tube video claims it was raining oil on Thursday near Saint Louis Bay, La.

Oil: who needs it anyway?

Americans consume petroleum products at a rate of three-and-a-half gallons of oil and more than 250 cubic feet of natural gas per day each!

The largest "spills" in history

U.S. energy security could suffer if BP fails

With public anger off the charts over BP's role in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, there's not much sympathy about the financial burden the British oil company faces from future legal claims and cleanup costs. BP says it's considering asset sales to help cover the cost of a $20 billion escrow fund that the White House demanded it set up to handle U.S. claims. The company's survival may also be in doubt if the financial hit from the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion approaches $100 billion, as some analysts suggest is possible.
http://www.businessweek.com

Oil spill college course open for buisness

Oil and water don’t mix. That is, unless they are coming together in a class dubbed “Oil and Water: The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010,” a joint venture of the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences and College of Liberal Arts.

Robert Gilmer, a University graduate student and the course’s instructor, hopes to help students sort through the contradictions and find connections within the Gulf crisis in his class this fall.

“What fascinates me the most about it is looking at all the paradoxes involved,” Gilmer said.

He points out that while oil and water do not usually mix, it is easy to forget that something as basic as the success or failure of commercial fishing in Louisiana is closely tied to oil.

“The oil rigs themselves form artificial reefs off the coast,” Gilmer said. “A lot of these fishermen … go out to the oil rig because that’s where the best fishing spots are.”

http://www.mndaily.com/

"It's enough to knock you down."

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. A Florida beach was closed to visitors for the first time because of the Gulf oil spill Thursday as workers tried to remove pools of black sludge from Pensacola Beach's once-white sands. Lifeguard Collin Cobia wore a red handkerchief over his nose and mouth to block the oil smell. "It's just awful, he said." It just breaks your heart. I can't get my feet in the water."

Who's in charge here?

 

A case of chronic oil pollution

During World War II, 452 oil tankers were sunk in the North Atlantic, as were an unknown number of the 1080 wrecks lying on the bottom of the Pacific. Little is known about the total amount of oil that spilled directly in to the ocean, but it's likely much went to the bottom in ships that remained virtually intact. It is known that two oil tankers sunk in 1942 lie only a few hundred miles from Australia's Great Barrier Reef and are estimated to contain as much oil as the Exxon Valdez. It's only a matter of time before rotting hulks pose enormous potential to foul fragile environments.

washingtonpost.com

Oil spill cap replaced

VENICE, La., June 24 (UPI) -- The containment cap on BP's broken Gulf of Mexico oil well has been replaced following a bump by a robotic vehicle, the company said. More crude flowed into the sea while the cap was off but U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the step had to be taken "out of an abundance of caution."

UPI

Rolling Stone: BP's Next Disaster

The oil giant plans to start drilling in the Arctic this fall — and the Obama administration is doing nothing to stop it.

Obama's tough-guy act offers no guarantee that oil giants like BP won't be permitted to repeat the same mistakes that led to the nightmare in the Gulf. Indeed, top environmentalists warn, the suspension of drilling appears to be little more than a stalling tactic designed to let public anger over BP's spill subside before giving Big Oil the go-ahead to drill in an area that has long been off-limits: the Arctic Ocean.
Rolling Stone Magazine

Federal Judge Overturns Drilling Moratorium

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A federal judge struck down the Obama administration's six-month ban on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as rash and heavy-handed Tuesday, saying the government simply assumed that because one rig exploded, the others pose an immediate danger, too. The White House promised an immediate appeal. The decision was handed down by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and has owned stock in a number of petroleum-related companies.
Huff Post June 23, 2010

More than you reall ywant to know: check out this graphic.

The Daily Green

15 Myths abou the oil deluge

A good article that corrects most of the wrong ideas people have about the spill. Here's number 15:

15. It Will All Be Over in August

Through each of BP's failed attempts to cap its well – from the top hat to the top kill – it has maintained that the worst thing that could happen was that the well would continue to gush into August, when the company would complete its relief well. But there's no guarantee that the relief well will be fully effective. In a June 15 testimony, BP's Lamar McKay said that "the design of the relief well is very, very similar to the original well." In addition, there's speculation that the oil well leak may have caused the sea floor itself to rupture, meaning the shutting off the well may not stop oil from seeping into the gulf.

The Daily Green June 23, 2010

Containment cap fails; oil gushing again

BP suffered a setback in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, when a discharge of liquid and gases forced the company to remove the containment cap that for three weeks had been able to capture a large portion of the oil gushing from the damaged well. Adm. Thad Allen of the Coast Guard announced this development in a mid-day briefing from Washington, explaining that a remote controlled submersible operating a mile beneath the surface likely bumped a vent and compromised the system. Live video from the seafloor showed the oil and gas storming out of the well unrestricted.

Does Oil Spill Mean A Broken Economy?

As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis enters a third month, the economic impact of this environmental nightmare is starting to become clearer. The truth is that the "oil volcano" spewing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf has absolutely decimated the seafood, tourism and real estate industries along the Gulf coast. Not only that, but energy industry insiders are now warning that the chilling effect that this crisis will have on offshore drilling could precipitate a new 1970s-style energy crisis. Considering the fact that the U.S. economy was already on incredibly shaky ground even before the oil leak, the last thing we needed was a disaster of this magnitude. But it has happened, and the reality is that the long-term effects of this crisis are potentially going to reverberate for decades.

Just a Daily Grind on OCS-G 32306

In one of the first visits by journalists to the scene of the disaster, a small group of reporters watched Saturday as, a few feet away, a team of roughnecks and others prepared a tool that would be used to lower several thousand feet of steel casing to the bottom of the hole, where it would form part of the well’s permanent lining.
New York Times June 21, 2010

Which is Worse?

Turning the Corner?

The administration is clearly expecting -- maybe hoping -- that the intense public attention on the spill fades a bit, starting with this week, giving them a chance to turn to other subjects.
The Washington Post 6/21/10

Manatees too

Until recently, biologists believed that manatees rarely ventured west of peninsular Florida, where, so far, no oil has appeared. But in 2007, Ruth Carmichael, who leads the Dauphin Island team, began documenting a relatively large summer migration of manatees to Mobile Bay, Ala. — leading them directly into and through the path of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak.

Opinion: Clean the Gulf, Clean House, Clean Their Clock

What’s also being tarred daily by the gushing oil is the very notion that government can accomplish anything.
New York Times June 21, 2010

Do corporations gets away with murder?

What's most striking about the present BP oil catastrophe is not that it is an aberration but rather part of a dangerous pattern of mankind's propensity to destroy nature. Whether it's Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Food or Big Agriculture, every large and powerful corporation gets away with murder because laws are never properly applied to them. BP is destroying an entire ocean -- and the livelihoods of millions of people -- and will probably get off with a large fine and a slap on the wrist. In two years, it will all be back to business as usual, polluting the oceans, destroying life and ignoring safety rules and regulations once again while the American people suffer.
Natural News.com June 18, 2010

'Tis a pity

Politics Daily

BP: Relief well is ahead of schedule

BP's ongoing effort to tap into the busted well head with a shaft and plug it with mud and cement is moving forward, Allen said. The interception shaft was about 1,000 feet away from the well on Thursday. BP has said that the relief will be complete in August.
LA Times June 17, 2010

USA Today: How bad could it get?

So how bad could it get? The numbers point to an unprecedented ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and possibly along the Eastern Seaboard. An in-depth analysis of the long-term effects of the spill.
USA Today

Joe Barton recants

"I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP. As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico. BP should fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident. BP and the federal government need to stop the leak, clean up the damage, and take whatever steps necessary to prevent a similar accident in the future. "I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."
Huff Post 6/18/2010

We're talkin nukes again, folks

A reader sent me this NYT interview with Christopher J. Brownfield, whose credentials in the field of underwater demolition I am unable to establish:
You’re a veteran of the Iraq war and a former Navy submarine officer who’s now a scholar of nuclear policy at Columbia University. You’re also among the newly emergent big-bang crowd that wants to blow up the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico.
I advocate the demolition of the well. It’s feasible to use nuclear explosives. The Russians did it four times with a 100-percent success rate. But I fear the mere mention of the nuclear option has only given opponents and unnamed oil engineers a straw man to attack.
New York Times June 7, 2010

Getting Oiled: Cuba's next

Cuba is steadying itself for an ecological and tourism crisis as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill appears to be heading towards its pristine northern coast. Authorities are preparing coastal communities to respond to the first sign of black slicks and have brought in Venezuelan experts to advise on damage limitation. Patches of oil were reportedly spotted 100 miles north-west of the island, prompting concern that gulf currents will add Cuba to the list of casualties from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
guardian.co.uk

Rep. Barton accuses Obama of "shaking down" BP: I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday."

For your viewing pleasure

Watch live streaming video from wkrg_oil_spill at livestream.com

Oil's landfall as of today

Big spills no news to Nigeria

BODO, Nigeria - Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless. Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.
New York Times June 17 2010

Sea creatures flee spill, gather near shore

GULF SHORES, Ala. — Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water off Florida beaches, like forest animals fleeing a fire. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again. Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena. Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Burn Boxes Bake Unwary Sea Lfe

So-called burn boxes are torching oil from the water's surface at the sacrifice of turtles, crabs, sea slugs and other sea life. Wildlife researchers operating here, in the regions closest to the spill, are witnesses to a disquieting choice: Protecting shorebirds, delicate marshes and prime tourist beaches along the coast by stopping the oil before it moves ashore has meant the largely unseen sacrifice of some wildlife out at sea, poisoned with chemical dispersants and sometimes boiled by the burning of spilled oil on the water's surface. When the weather is calm and the sea is placid, ships trailing fireproof booms corral the black oil, the coated seaweed and whatever may be caught in it, and torch it into hundred-foot flames, sending plumes of smoke skyward in ebony mushrooms. This patch of unmarked ocean gets designated over the radio as "the burn box."
LA Times June 17 2010

Charlie Checks the Oil

LA Times June 16, 2010

5000 BBl per day may now be 60,000!

As many as 60,000 barrels of oil per day may be flowing from the blown-out wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the newest government estimates. Basing their calculations partly on pressure readings from the wellhead and acoustic soundings, a team of federal and independent scientists said Tuesday the current daily well flow ranges from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day.
LA Times Blogs June 15, 2010

No shit: Obama declares BP "reckless"

Fifty-seven days into the crisis, oil continues to gush from the broken wellhead, millions of gallons a day, and Obama has been powerless to stem the leak. The sad episode has raised doubts about his leadership and his administration's response to what Obama has called the nation's worst environmental disaster.
NOLA.com June 16, 2010

Prez sez: just the fax, pleeze

"I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deep water drilling to continue," Obama said. "And while I urge the commission to complete its work as quickly as possible, I expect them to do that work thoroughly and impartially." But the president, who called the spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," said his administration has responded with the "largest environmental clean-up effort in our nation's history" - removing millions of gallons of oil "through burning, skimming and other collection methods.

Cleanup is in Chaos

From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.
New York Times June 15, 2010

Supply shortages slow spill cleanup

MOBILE, Ala. — As countless tar balls washed ashore on a beach along Alabama's Gulf Coast, cleanup workers sat and watched because they didn't have the proper plastic covers to protect their shoes. Elsewhere, a crew using shovels and garden rakes worked for hours on a long stretch of sand that a machine could have cleaned in minutes. Almost two months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, shortages of government-required protective gear and cleaning equipment are slowing work to remove the sticky mess and keep beaches and marshes along the Gulf Coast safe and oil-free.
Associated Press June 14, 2010

BP's Big Spill

Hold your nose and buy BP

By Adam Sharp
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

British Petroleum (NYSE:BP) shares are off nearly 20% since their Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 21st. That's around $30b in market cap wiped out in 2 weeks.

From a cold-blooded investing perspective, this looks like a buying opportunity to me. I've seen clean-up cost estimates from $170m to $3.5b. It could go even higher as the class-actions roll in.

Straight talk about the spill's effects

Coast Guard to BP: Speed it up, stop the spill

By RAY HENRY

The Associated Press

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — The Coast Guard has demanded that BP step up its efforts to contain the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the weekend, telling the British oil giant that its slow pace in stopping the spill is becoming increasingly alarming as the disaster fouled the coastline in ugly new ways Saturday. The dispute escalated on the same day that ominous new signs of the tragedy emerged on the beaches of Alabama. Waves of unsightly brown surf hit the shores in Orange Beach, leaving stinking, dark piles of oil that dried in the hot sun and extended up to 12 feet from the water's edge for as far as the eye could see.

Worldwide BP Protest Day vilifies BP for spill

Boycotts and protests against BP gas stations could hurt the wrong people. But public anger over the Gulf oil spill can no longer be contained, worsening the oil giant’s prospects for survival. Fifty-four days into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the court of public opinion continues to turn against BP and its role in the worst ecological mess in US history: The April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent spill is emptying up to 40,000 barrels a day into the ecologically sensitive Gulf of Mexico.

The Christian Science Monitor
June 12, 2010

Time To Buy BP?

By Christopher Helman
Forbes.com
Daniel Pickering, head of research at Houston energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., has taken a thorough look at BP's financial reports, and in his daily research note this morning, he put forth a thoroughly convincing argument for why BP is far from a bankruptcy risk, and why it is very important for President Obama to appreciate that BP is a far more valuable cash cow alive than dead.

Mississippi governor says press coverage is more damaging than slick

"The truth is we have had virtually no oil," Mr Barbour said on Fox News Sunday. "We've had a few tar balls but we have a few every year" because of natural seepage in the Gulf of Mexico. "The biggest negative impact for us has been the news coverage," he added, saying that reports and footage gave the misleading impression that the entire coast from "Texas to Florida" was "knee deep in oil".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/f

Spill may have leaked 42M-100M gallons into Gulf

New poll shows support for use of renewable energy

By Charles Q. Choi

June 10, 2010

As the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to wreak havoc, renewable energy may never have looked better. A new poll out of Stanford University, surveying 1,000 Americans between June 1 and June 7, found that while about three-fourths oppose new taxes on gas or electricity to force conservation, 84 percent favor the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage more wind, solar and water power.

Live Science

Cleaning Animals Largely Futile, Scientist Says

AP | JOHN FLESHER and NOAKI SCHWARTZ | June 10, 2010 at 05:02 PM

FORT JACKSON, La. — Rescuers gently washing the goo from pelicans make for some of the few hopeful images from the disaster on the Gulf of Mexico, yet some scientists contend those efforts are good for little more than warming hearts.

Critics call bird-washing a wasteful exercise in feel-good futility that simply buys doomed creatures a bit more time. They say the money and man-hours would be better spent restoring wildlife habitat or saving endangered species.

Opinion: Leaders Play Games While Oil Pours Into the Gulf

As a country, we seem to have lost the plot, with grandstanding, strategizing and even lying taking center stage while real problems threaten many of the core elements of our day-to-day lives. We don't realistically address the issues, but use them as opportunities to score political points. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is far from the only example, but it is the latest one.
From a jobs crisis to Afghanistan to Iran to oil taking over the Gulf of Mexico (and more), we have real problems in the United States that have to be addressed. But how can we solve anything when too many political leaders are more interested in seizing on these issues to score political points? As we fight these petty battles, the problems march on, unaddressed. Nero might have fiddled, but I doubt he denied the existence of the fire.
Huffington Post June 10, 2010

The Situation: June 7, 2010

New Estimates Double Rate of Oil Flow

The new calculation suggests that an amount of oil equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could have been flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.
New York Times June 10, 2010

If you're not depressed enough, listen to this... Plight For Pelicans: Oil Puts Nesting Season At Risk

It's the economy stupid: Global fallout from the big spill

Push for BP to Halt Dividends Hits Resistance in Britain

BP’s shares, which are widely held by pension funds here, dropped 7 percent in London on Thursday because of concerns about the costs for the oil cleanup. The shares have fallen more than 40 percent since the fatal explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April, wiping more than £50 billion, or $73 billion, from the company’s market value.

New York Times 6/10/10

The real issue: How out of balance with the natural world are we?

There's nothing pat about what's going on in the Gulf. It's the most vivid sign we've yet had that we are running into the kind of limits that people started talking about way back at that first Earth Day. But its meaning risks disappearing beneath the endless stories about Top Hat and Junk Shot. BP's great victory will come if it need merely confess to technical overreach and pay a few billion in fines -- if that happens, it can get back to making serious money, and the planet can get back to burning.
Bill McKibben
Huffington Post

Media Blocked from Covering Spill News

Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.

http://global.nytimes.com/

Our Dilemma--in Spades

UGA Oil Spill Blog

Hide and seek

By Samantha Joye | Published: June 6, 2010 12:17am

June 5th, 18:34. The plume was hiding. We anticipated that the flow trajectory of the oil and gas discharging from the leaking riser pipe would change after the pipe was cut but it was tough to predict which way the flow would go. We had a day and a half of ops remaining and our goal was to find the plume, revisit several stations to see how they had changed over time, and sample two control sites well away from the plume.

BP's spill response plans severely flawed

The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one.
Associated Press June 9, 2010

Houston firm has an idea

By MONICA HATCHER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE June 7, 2010,

The federal government said Friday it is forming a new technology assessment program to examine the best proposals, after learning BP had only evaluated a handful of thousands of ideas submitted to its hot line

Houston-based Thrustmaster of Texas said it's had trouble finding an ear for its proposal to provide improved surface skimming technology.

“The biggest challenge is to find somebody, an audience, to explain it to so they understand what we have to offer and assess it and make a decision,” said Joe Bekker, president of Thrustmaster. It designs and manufactures thrusters used to steady rigs and vessels in waters too deep for anchoring.

Bekker said Thrustmaster engineers had designed a skimming system using a tanker capable of gulping 450,000 barrels of oily water mixture per day.

So far, response crews using 135 skimming vessels have collected just shy of 370,000 barrels of oily liquids since the cleanup operations began more than a month ago.

A quantum leap?

The system Thrustmaster proposes would use a tanker more than 450 feet long, equipped with the company's thrusters to push it laterally over the water, sucking up the oily surface with three massive skimming devices.

Large separators onboard would remove 99 percent of the oil from the water, which then would be dumped back into the Gulf.

Opinion: Gulf spill is an outcome of our addiction to oil

By By Sylvia Zhang
Gunn High School Palo Alto, CA
Offshore drilling is not something we should promote. Although many see it as an opportunity for energy independence, it is actually a distraction from renewable energy sources. It all comes back to the United States' addiction to oil. If it were not such a profitable sector, would companies such as BP invest in risky ventures like offshore drilling? I doubt it. We could stop offshore drilling by switching to renewable energy sources.
Mercury News. com Palo Alto CA

Cleanup to Take Years, says Thad of the many ribbons

Old Thad admitted today that the coastguard had never anticipated that oil would spread across such a broad area and break up into hundreds of thousands of patches as the current spill has done. “We’re no longer dealing with a monolithic spill,” Ad. Thad proclaimed. "We’re dealing with an aggregation of hundreds of thousands of patches of oil. And we need to adapt to meet that threat.”

Allen was on hand at the White House today to brief President Obama directly on the latest regarding the disaster and how to contain the spread of the oil. Afterwards, Obama reiterated the message that Allen offered in the spirit of transparency: The environmental nightmare in the Gulf is going to be around for a long, long time. “Even if we are successful in containing some or much of this oil, we are not going to get this problem completely solved until we actually have the relief well completed. And that is going to take a couple more months,” Obama told reporters.“We also know that there’s already a lot of oil that’s been released, and that there is going to be more oil released no matter how successful this containment effort is,” the President added.

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Long road to oil cleanup

By JAY REEVES and RAY HENRY Associated Press Mon Jun 7

GULF SHORES, Ala. – A wellhead cap at the bottom of the Gulf is slowly pinching off a geyser of oil spewing from the earth, but there's no containing much of the crude that's already escaped, a reality becoming increasingly evident on the region's beaches. The battle to contain the oil is likely to stretch into the fall, the government's point man on the spill warned. The cap will trap only so much of the oil, and relief wells being drilled won't be completed until August. Meanwhile, oil will continue to shoot out.

"Just batten down the hatches." Jimmy Buffett tells Florida beachgoers to stay upbeat.

Musician Jimmy Buffett, wearing his Margaritaville-brand flip-flops, stood Saturday on a pier at tar-ball blotched Pensacola Beach and led a pro-beach rally, urging Floridians to "not get a 'sky is falling' attitude" over the looming oil slick. Buffett said he has survived hurricanes, getting shot at in Jamaica and a plane crash, and he insisted he's ready to ride out the oil-spill disaster that in the last two days has hit the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle.

Gulf Lawmakers Plead With Obama to Ease Drilling Ban

Bipartisan pressure is building on the Obama administration to reconsider its ban on new offshore drilling, with Gulf lawmakers decrying the moratorium as an overreaction to the BP oil spill that will compound the economic damage the disaster is inflicting on their states. Lawmakers and industry groups warn that the moratorium could cost thousands of jobs and drain hundreds of millions of dollars out of the local economy. That's on top of the billions of dollars studies predict could be lost from hits to the tourism and fishing industries along the Gulf.

Published June 04, 2010

| FOXNews.com

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