What does an oiled pelican look like?
You’ve probably seen the disturbing images of pelicans so badly mired in leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico that they can barely be distinguished as birds at all — they look like part of the muck.
But nearly three months after the blowout at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, there are other pelicans touched by the oil where the impact is far less apparent, though still real.
Hustle and flow: how much oil is really gushing?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Billions of dollars and the future of one the world’s lushest ecosystems could all ride on one elusive number: the precise amount of oil gushing from the broken BP well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Evidently, it’s not an easy number to calculate. Estimates have ranged from a 1,000 barrels a day to 100,000 barrels a day. Some say it depends who’s doing the figuring; others point to the unpredictable conditions that go along with drilling for oil deep beneath the seabed.
What’s in a name? Will BOE smell sweeter than MMS?
Shakespeare definitely put it best, in that famous balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet”: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” But what if the original smell wasn’t so great? Will a name change make a difference?
That might have been the purpose behind the Obama administration’s decision to change the name of the U.S. agency that oversees offshore oil drilling — the Minerals Management Service — to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or Bureau of Ocean Energy for short.
BP chief evades questions at Capitol Hill grilling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Surrounded by handlers and the customary scrum of photographers, a tense BP CEO Tony Hayward on Thursday deflected tough questions at what has become a set-piece in the U.S. capital: the congressional grilling.
Sitting alone at the witness table, Hayward looked sheepish but gave a controlled performance in the face of hours of invective and a barrage of questions from a U.S. House of Representatives committee on the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Undersea robot aims for 3-D image of BP oil plume
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists geared up on Wednesday for a 12-day trip in the Gulf of Mexico with an undersea robot they hope will capture 3-D images of oil plumes from the BP spill.
Oceanographers and others have been monitoring the plumes of oil, gas and dispersant chemicals coming from the broken BP wellhead since soon after the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.
May 2010 was warmest on record – US govt data
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Last month was the warmest May on record, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Tuesday.
It was also the 303rd consecutive month that was hotter than the 20th century global average for that month, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.
May 2010 was warmest on record: U.S. government data
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Last month was the warmest May on record, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Tuesday.
It was also the 303rd consecutive month that was hotter than the 20th century global average for that month, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.
Does Gulf spill controversy stretch all the way to Canada?
Oil and gas spewing from that broken wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico has spread at least as far as the Florida coast, and could go further. Controversy and questions about the relative safety of different kinds of fuel pipelines may have spread over an even wider area — taking in Washington DC, Alberta, Canada, and a big slice of the U.S. heartland.
Have the ripples from that BP spill reached the U.S. State Department? At least one environmental group thinks that could be the case. The State Department, which approves energy pipelines that cross international borders into U.S. territory, is considering the environmental impact of a massive pipeline that would have stretched from Canada’s oil sands fields all the way to Texas. But on Wednesday, the department extended the public comment period for the Keystone XL Pipeline Project a few weeks, from June 15 to July 2, with additional public meetings on the project on June 18 in Houston and on June 29 in Washington DC.
Campaign ad equating global warming with weather gets “pants-on-fire” rating
By now, almost everybody — with the possible exception of Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina — realizes there’s a difference between climate and weather. Fiorina, running in the California primary and ultimately aiming to unseat Democrat Barbara Boxer, paid for and appeared in a campaign ad slamming the sitting senator for being “worried about the weather” when there are serious concerns like terrorism to deal with.
Take a look here:
A few problems with this ad earned it the not-so-coveted beyond-false “Pants on Fire” rating from Politifact, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalism website that checks on the truthfulness of political advertising. First off, Boxer didn’t say she was worried about the weather. She said that climate change was “one of the very important national security issues” — a position in line with the Pentagon and the CIA. The site also found that it’s not an either/or thing, that focusing on climate change doesn’t necessarily mean neglecting national security. They took a look at Boxer’s record and found she has supported at least six bills against terrorism.
BP’s battered brand draws U.S. consumer opposition
WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U.S. consumers are venting frustration over the BP oil spill, demonstrating at gas stations and corporate offices, drumming up support on Facebook and waging a mock public relations campaign on Twitter.
But their opposition to BP’s handling of the crisis has yet to achieve critical mass, and any attempt to dissuade customers from fuelling their cars with BP is likely to hurt the small business owners who run the stations with little or no effect on the British oil giant’s revenues.
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