I have not really scanned news yet today; is this getting coverage in the U.S.?

From the Scotsman:

World News: BP spill disaster 'down to bad management decisions'

Published Date: 06 January 2011
Decisions intended to save time and money created an unreasonable risk that triggered the largest offshore oil spill in US history, which could happen again without significant reforms, reported the top-level panel probing the BP blowout.

The commission findings - the result of a probe requested by President Obama after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion - described systemic problems within the offshore energy industry and government regulators who oversaw it.

...

BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three key companies involved with the well and the rig that exploded, each made decisions that increased risks of a blowout, but saved significant time or money.

Like, we haven't known this all along?

--the BB

A Message from Maggie

Maggie, the Rose Queen of Desert Farne, asks us all to save the dolphins and all her friends in the Gulf waters.

A public service announcement brought to you by Margaret Macrina Dolphin, Belle Hippoposterous, and Bearfeathers Press.

--the BB

This bird is dying for our sins

AP Photographer Charlie Riedel
at The Boston Globe

Our desire for an endless, cheap supply of oil leads directly here.

Our abandonment of the Red Car in Los Angeles to build freeways for the benefit of Standard Oil leads to this moment.

Our refusal to design cities where effective public transportation meets most needs and you have neighborhoods where you can obtain most of what you need in a reasonable radius... leads to this disaster.

Our lack of political will to shift to renewable/sustainable energy... leads here.

Our not forcing Congress to raise the CAFE standards on mpg in vehicles over decades... leads here.

Our indifference and unawareness as a philosophy of government that believes government is bad and, when in power, proves it, has left us uninvolved as lobbyists wrote laws, regulations were defanged, and greed and corruption could proceed without interference until it all... leads here.

Our acquiescence while Dick Cheney convened an energy policy team the very membership list of which was secret... leads here.

Our not going on a general strike and shutting this nation down when Bush led us to war in Iraq with lies - so that four western companies could control almost all the oil in Iraq (oh yes, we divvied it up nicely, we did)... leads here.

We are complicit at every turn.

Which is not to say I will let BP, Transocean, and Halliburton off the hook for proceeding in haste when there were multiple warning signals and safeguards were ignored. Some BP honcho[s] ordered this affair to proceed and on his/their head[s] must lie eleven human deaths and all this devastation.

But we do not get off the hook either.

--the BB

If the oil spill started in Albuquerque

Graphics can be helpful.

You can map it over your home by going here.

h/t to Raven at Facebook

--the BB

95,000 barrels a day

Photo by Ted Jackson, The Times-Picayune

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser and La. Gov. Bobby Jindal tour through the Roseau Grasses that mark the coastline of Southeast Louisiana at Pass a Loutre at the mouth of the Mississippi River where oil has washed ashore, Wednesday, May 19, 2010.

"Everything that that blanket of oil is covering today will die," he said. "All of the bugs that the fish come in to eat, all of the critters in the marsh will die. And that marsh will die. There's no way to clean it up."

h/t to FishOutofWater at Daily Kos

WASHINGTON — The latest video footage of the leaking Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico show that oil is escaping at the rate of 95,000 barrels — 4 million gallons — a day, nearly 20 times greater than the 5,000 barrel a day estimate BP and government scientists have been citing for nearly three weeks, an engineering professor told a congressional hearing Wednesday.
--Renee Schoof at McClatchy Newspapers

h/t to Jed Lewison at Daily Kos


As we ponder the disaster in our part of the world, let us remember others.

Cyclone nears India's southeast coast
AFP - ‎10 minutes ago‎
HYDERABAD, India - A severe cyclone packing winds of 110 kilometres an hour closed in on India's southeast coast Thursday as tens of thousands of residents evacuated their homes fearing major storm damage.

Господи помилуй
Κυριε ελεησον
Seigneur, aies pitié.

-the BB

Booms will only collect 15% of spilled oil

God bless Representative Capps from Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Oxnard.



She asks why there have been no improved technologies since the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara. In all these decades nothing better than what was done then, and that was totally inadequate.

Translated into rudespeak, she's saying, 'Y'all have done diddly, you irresponsible bastids." Only she does it like a lady.

Rape and pillage is all they know.

H/t to emptywheel

--the BB

Wake up, people!

...the fact is that climate change is going to affect large numbers of people in a fairly short period of time. And those people are going to move somewhere and cause dislocations and wrenching social change all across the planet. It's not just about driving a Chevy Tahoe or the price of gasoline. It's about starvation, migration and war.
--Digby

There is a reason the Pentagon pays attention to climate change.

--the BB

What you didn't read in your papers yesterday

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries [and 18 languages] take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

...

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

[snip]

--The Guardian and 53 other newspapers.

[Emphasis mine]

The Miami Herald was the only U.S. newspaper to carry it. Our oligarchic media afraid to let the American people read the truth?

We have troglodytes like Inhofe obstructing at every opportunity. What an embarrassment.

I used to believe that having a Senate that could deliberate and help keep the House from being over-hasty might be a good thing. Now I am inclined to wish it were abolished. Or would at least change its rules to operate more like a representative body and less like an old boys' club.

Sigh.

--the BB

Whoa!

The EPA must have been listening to John the Baptist this Advent because it has repented, it has TURNED AROUND!

They are going to be, you know, the Environmental PROTECTION Agency again.

Amazing.

A small emergence from newspeak back towards coherent meaning.

Imagine, PROTECTING the environment.

Science.

Rationality.

Responsibility toward the earth and all that lives upon it.

About flipping time.

--the BB

The importance of wetlands

There is an extensive articleon Daily Kos right now about the South Louisiana wetlands, their importance, and threats to them.  The dramatic heading is "The Biggest Environmental Disaster in American History" and it is written by ArkDem14.  Just FYI.

--the BB

L'homme vert

The headlines from TPM:
Bush Goes Green?
Not quite. The president tries to preempt legislation that would actually do something about global warming with his announcement a "new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025."
Wired: Bush Announces Greenhouse Gas Strategy -- Surprise! It's Bad
Froomkin: Bush's Third Climate Change Fake-out
Excerpts From Bush's Speech
Bush's New Way Forward

Dan Froomkin:

Bush's trick on climate change is to wait until others are about to embrace mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, then make a major speech about goals and process, without any specifics on measures or penalties.

He's also touting voluntary compliance again. We all know how well that works, in contrast with regulations that are enforced.
--the BB