A Terrible Solution to Gulf Disaster

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This photo makes me sad beyond words. Sometimes I just can’t believe what people are doing to this planet. (And I know, this is hardly the worst evidence of what we’ve done.)

From DotEarth: There is little to say about the scope of the unfolding Gulf of Mexico petro-calamity that the photography of James Duncan Davidson doesn’t say better (play the Deep Purple’s “ Smoke on the Water” while you’re exploring the gallery below). Here’s a  high-resolution version of the photograph above.

Davidson is part of  a team of photographers and videographers in the region now compiling imagery to present on June 28 in Washington at a gathering called  TEDxOilSpill, devoted to exploring new ideas for America’s energy future and mitigating the mess in the gulf.

Burning the oil at sea is seen as progress?  Yes, let’s add lots of black smoke filled with toxins and poisons and CO2 to the atmosphere to get rid of the oil we’ve dumped into the ocean.  Now that’s a solution. <sarcasm>  Sure, it’s a way to get the oil out of the water — some of it — but then it’s adding another very dangerous type of pollution to the air.  This will add to the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change. There must be another way to remove this oil. Burning can’t remove the emulsified oil either. That’s the oil mixed in fine particles with the water. That will eventually rot and sink to the bottom or make it to the shores of the U.S., killing everything on the way there.

 Below is a video explaining the burning process.

Notice the first scene in this video, which is from BP, and you can see how “apocalyptic” it looks.

This is why the drilling moratorium is important.  This could happen again. There are deeper wells than this one in the Gulf, and possibly even larger oil fields that could be unleashed into our oceans. It’s not worth the cost. We can’t afford another spill like this — hell, we can’t even afford just this one.

Activist, Oil-Investing Judge Blocks Drilling Moratorium

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An oil sheen covers the surface of Bay Jimmy near Port Sulpher, Louisiana June 20, 2010. The BP oil spill has been called one of the largest environmental disasters in American history. Photo: Sean Gardner

A judge on Tuesday blocked the Obama administration’s ban on deepwater drilling, complicating its efforts to improve the safety of offshore oil operations after the worst spill in U.S. history.

The White House said it would immediately appeal the judge’s ruling, issued in New Orleans. Oil companies involved in offshore drilling operations had challenged the government’s six-month moratorium. — AP

Why not just tell it like it is. The Judge who blocked the offshore drilling moratorium ruled that President Obama had supposedly overstepped his authority when he put a six-month moratorium on new offshore drilling.   (Given all that GW Bush did while King, most of it damaging rather than protecting, it seems like an insane ruling by comparison.

The White House is going to immediately appeal the ruling, as it should. Let’s describe the judge the way Republicans in Congress would describe him if he displeased them: An activist, environment-hating judge who is interested only in his own profits from his oil investments.  He’s man who cares more about his personal investments than about the damage BP’s deep water drilling is doing to our country.

In granting a request by more than a dozen oil services companies for the ban to be overturned, Judge Martin Feldman challenged its “immense scope.” . . . . The court’s decision was a victory for offshore energy producers like BP, Chevron Corp and Royal Dutch Shell. They have been hamstrung by the ban, and are eyeing relocating their giant rigs to other basins like Brazil.

It’s every President’s job to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, but it’s also the President’s job to defend the country itself. The United States is being attacked  by a deluge of BP Oil. There is no disputing that. This is an environmental war to fight for our coastlines, which are part of the sovereign state of the U.S.A. I wish this was the only war we were fighting right now because it’s the most important. Yet an activist judge decided the President of the United States had gone too far. Excuse me, but if protecting our shores and the people who live there isn’t the President’s job, then what the hell is?

It makes no sense, until you understand this Judge’s motives. He owns stock in 17 energy-oil corporations, such as Halliburton, and Transocean.  Eureka.   See some of these below, in information obtained by Think Progress and MSNBC.

Judge Feldman's Income 2008

See all of the oil and BP-related companies that he invests in here.  It’s a long list.  How is that NOT a conflict of interest?  This is a prime example of Big Oil Greed.

And [...]

‘FUTURISMO: La rivolta dell’avanguardia’ in German and Italian by G. Lista

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FUTURISMO: La rivolta dell’avanguardia / Die revolte der avantgarde
by Giovanni Lista

Silvana Editoriale, 2008
p. 752
ISBN 9788836611034
Italiano/ Tedesco

1. Un’ideologia del rinnovamento
2. Un’arte del dinamismo
3. La macchina come modello o gli anni venti
4. Il mito del volo o gli anni trenta
5. L’eredità futurista
++++
1. An ideology of renovation
2. An art of dynamism
3. The machine as a model or the 20s
4. The myth of flying or the 30s
5. The futurist heritage
++++

Primo movimento d’avanguardia del XX secolo, il futurismo viene fondato nel gennaio del 1909, a Milano, dallo scrittore Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Non si tratta di una scuola di pittura o di letteratura, ma di un movimento rivoluzionario che si prefigge d’instaurare una nuova sensibilità e un nuovo approccio al mondo in generale e all’arte in particolare. Così, nel suo manifesto inaugurale, Marinetti si adopera a definire l’atteggiamento che l’uomo e l’arte devono adottare di fronte alle forze del progresso. Proclamando il rifiuto del passato, Marinetti vuole essere cantore di un avvento incondizionato della modernità, l’apostolo di una fede positiva nel rinnovamento costante dello spazio sociale e delle condizioni esistenziali della sfera umana.

Il futurismo equivale quindi a un progetto antropologico: ripensare l’uomo nel suo raffronto con il mondo delle macchine, della velocità e della tecnologia.

Al movimento futurista è dedicato questo volume della Fondazione VAF, in cui l’autore indaga ogni aspetto ad esso correlato, in numerosi capitoli suddivisi in cinque macrosezioni: “Un’ideologia del rinnovamento”, “un’arte del dinamismo”, “La macchina come modello o gli anni venti”, “Il mito del volo o gli anni trenta”, “L’eredità futurista”.

Il volume, dal ricco apparato iconografico, è completato da una bibliografia.

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Project your own probability | Gene Expression

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By now you’ve probably stumbled onto Wired’s profile of Sergey Brin, and his quest to understand and overcome Parkinson’s disease through the illumination available via genomic techniques. I want to spotlight this section:

Not everyone with Parkinson’s has an LRRK2 mutation; nor will everyone with the mutation get the disease. But it does increase the chance that Parkinson’s will emerge sometime in the carrier’s life to between 30 and 75 percent. (By comparison, the risk for an average American is about 1 percent.) Brin himself splits the difference and figures his DNA gives him about 50-50 odds.

…

Brin, of course, is no ordinary 36-year-old. As half of the duo that founded Google, he’s worth about $15 billion. That bounty provides additional leverage: Since learning that he carries a LRRK2 mutation, Brin has contributed some $50 million to Parkinson’s research, enough, he figures, to “really move the needle.” In light of the uptick in research into drug treatments and possible cures, Brin adjusts his overall risk again, down to “somewhere under 10 percent.” That’s still 10 times the average, but it goes a long way to counterbalancing his genetic predisposition.

Do you think Brin’s chances are really 10 percent? Is he being an objective analytical machine, or is he exhibiting the ticks of systematic bias which plague wetware? This is interesting because when it comes to big-picture extrapolations individuals who come out of the mathematical disciplines (math, computer science, physics, economics, etc.) have a much better ability to construct models and project than those who come out of biology. Biology is dominated by masters of detail. The system-builders only have small niches across the sub-domains, with the exception of evolutionary biology where the system is the raison d’etre of the field. But though biologists lack strategic vision, they are often masters of tactics when on familiar ground. I would like to believe Sergey Brin’s estimate of the probability in his case, but I do wonder if biomedical scientists working on Parkinson’s are aware of powerful constraints and substantial obstacles which would force one to be less optimistic. I would of course assume that Brin though is aware of constraints, or lack thereof, because he has talked to the relevant researchers. On the other hand, would a biomedical scientist be totally candid with Sergey Brin due to even the silver of a possibility of a research grant of magnificent scope?

The Art of the Potentially Deadly Deal: Marketing Heroin on the Street

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The empty glassine packets can be found in Manhattan, Brooklyn and beyond, scattered on streets and sidewalks with only obscure slogans or graphic images to suggest their former use. At one time they contained heroin and the markings stamped on the packets were meant to differentiate strains of varying purity or provenance.

To some they are crime evidence. Addicts may see them mainly as a vehicle to fulfill a dangerous urge. For a group of artists who have been collecting them they are cultural artifacts that are equally unsettling and compelling.

On Wednesday a weeklong show called “Heroin Stamp Project” organized by seven members of the Social Art Collective is scheduled to open at the White Box Gallery on Broome Street on the Lower East Side. The show, which will include 150 packets picked off city streets, as well as 12 blown-up prints made from them, is meant to examine the intersection of advertising and addiction and provoke questions about how society addresses dependence and disease.

Original Article found here

The Eco Catastrophe is Growing in the Gulf

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Could it rain oil? The EPA says it has no data or evidence that the oil and dispersant have entered the water cycle, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Read more about this here. It certainly looks like it’s raining water that has oil in it, based on what is on the ground.

Oil in the ocean does evaporate, unlike most oil we are used to seeing on land. The other bad news concerning the oil well today is that the remains of the blowout preventor are leaning over very badly and looks like they might break off, reportedly, and the ROV bumped the cap and it was removed. So for many hours, the  oil was gushing like a geyser, completely unrestrained.  Now, BP says the cap is back on.   BP then announced it would capture a huge amount of the oil starting soon, but at this point I think they are just saying that in order to stave off the threats they are receiving.

BP is also, according to several reports, burning sea turtles alive. This is according to CREDO, and the bonus of going to that link is that you can sign a petition asking them to stop. There is also a story about it on Raw Story.    BP employees are not allowing the people who are there to save the turtles to do their jobs.

“A rare and endangered species of sea turtle is being burned alive in BP’s controlled burns of the oil swirling around the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat captain tasked with saving them says the company has blocked rescue efforts.

Mike Ellis, a boat captain involved in a three-week effort to rescue as many sea turtles from unfolding disaster as possible, says BP effectively shut down the operation by preventing boats from coming out to rescue the turtles.

“They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there,” Ellis said in an interview with conservation biologist Catherine Craig.

Part of BP’s efforts to contain the oil spill are controlled burns. Fire-resistant booms are used to corral an area of oil, then the area within the boom is lit on fire, burning off the oil and whatever marine life may have been inside.

“Once the turtles get in there they can’t get out,” Ellis said.”

Most of the turtles being trapped like this and dying from the oil so far are Kemps Ridleys turtles, the rarest turtles in the area, and an endangered species. This is an interview with boat captain Mike Ellis who was trying to save some of the turtles.

More to read, get sad, below — and then your Congress people and tell them to stop this oil madness.  This cannot ever happen again.

1 BP ‘burning sea [...]

Boxer is Right on Conflict and Climate Change

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A video of Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has made the rounds recently as proof that she is off the mark on climate change. Instead, it proves she is perfectly on the mark, at least in the national security — climate change connection. This is the longer version of the video that people are writing about.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said on June 10, 2010: “Our national security experts tell us that carbon pollution leading to climate change will be, over the next 20 years, the leading cause of conflict, putting our troops in harm’s way.”

What she is referring to are the Pentagon and military reports that say the same thing.

Naturally, the deniers are out in force denigrating  her statement, calling her a “kook” and worse.  Boxer is only a kook if the Pentagon and the military leaders who are saying the same things are “kooks”.    Media Matters has much more on the right-wing uninformed*  reaction to her statements.  Maybe the entire armed forces is full of kooks? Because they know what the deniers don’t know. Climate change will be one of the biggest sources, if not the biggest source, of conflict in future decades. No one knows exactly when this will happen, but we’re not currently doing anything to stop it. It won’t be long before wars are being fought over oil (well, that’s already happened a few times) and natural gas, and pipelines (already happening) and water (also has happened) and food, and then we’ll have big migration issues as people will have to move from hotter countries to more temperate ones (like the United States).  Also, people will have to move from flood plains and coastal cities that are under sea level.  Any of these things might cause wars or conflicts,  related to energy and climate.  They can probably be mostly prevented if only Congress would act on an energy and climate bill this year.

This is from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, on the 2009 military report on climate change and conflict.

“U.S. military missions and operations

Climate change will influence where, when, why, and how the U.S. military operates. First, military facilities and personnel will be directly impacted: Sea level rise and taller storm surges will encroach on important coastal installations around the world. Increasing land area under drought will affect how and where U.S. forces acquire and transport water to support operations. Weather conditions will become more extreme in places where the local climate already presents serious operational challenges.

Second, climate change portends a rise in the frequency of natural disasters. U.S. Navy ships provided critical logistical assistance in the aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, and calls for such assistance are likely to increase, both at home and abroad. Third, climate change will create new theaters of operation. For instance, the opening of the Arctic, which is rapidly losing sea ice, will force the U.S. military [...]

NASA: Beware solar flares from ‘huge space storm’

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As if we didn't already have enough to worry about, NASA is now warning of space storms that could spawn devastating solar flares. The Telegraph UK reports:

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.

“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”

Dr Fisher added: “Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.”

Technology Review: The Argument over Aging

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MIT's Technology Review wonders if a drug can extend good health and postpone the effects of aging. Early results are not promising:

In 2003, Sinclair made headlines around the world when he announced that the red-wine component resveratrol, which had previously been linked to a reduction in heart disease, extended life span in yeast. He argued that the compound activated one of the sirtuins and proposed that it mimicked the effects of caloric restriction. Sinclair and Westphal launched Sirtris in 2004 with the aim of developing molecules that could stimulate the enzyme much more potently. The company is developing treatments not for aging itself--which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't consider an illness--but for diseases of aging, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, and cancer.

As Stipp recounts, hopes for antiaging drugs captured media attention and investors' imaginations. But a different conversation has played out in the academic community. Some scientists doubted whether resveratrol truly targeted the sirtuins. Researchers at drug maker Pfizer also published a study in January questioning whether one of Sirtris's newer compounds targets the enzyme. The study failed to confirm the health benefits seen in earlier trials. To make matters worse, safety concerns have arisen over one of Sirtris's resveratrol compounds. In May, Glaxo announced that it would not expand a clinical trial for multiple-myeloma patients until it better understood why some participants developed a dangerous kidney ailment.

The field of antiaging research is littered with failures, and the controversy over Sirtris's compounds highlights just how difficult it has been to transform exciting scientific discoveries about the aging process into useful drugs. As Stipp illustrates, many candidates with promising antiaging benefits later failed to work in mammals or showed conflicting results.