It's not a question of ‘if' a major spill will occur in the Arctic, but ‘when and where', says conservation biologist and oil industry expert Rick Steiner
As we enter the end of the age of oil, it is clear that most of the world's easily accessible oil has already been produced. Oil companies are now moving offshore into the last hydrocarbon frontiers - deepwater and the Arctic Ocean.
The dangers of deepwater drilling came into sharp focus in 2010 with the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, where 200 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico over a 3-month period. Another high-risk environment is the Arctic Ocean, which geologists suggest may be the last significant oil and gas frontier left. As decisions are made on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean, we need to understand and acknowledge the risks.
First, even if nothing goes wrong, there would be unavoidable impacts from each phase of oil development in the Arctic Ocean - seismic exploration, exploratory drilling, production platforms, pipelines, offshore and onshore terminals, and tankers.
Offshore oil development will include airplanes, helicopters, support ships, drill ships, platforms, artificial islands, icebreakers, waste streams from ships and rigs, lights and noise, extensive coastal infrastructure construction (ports, roads, causeways, staging areas), subsea pipelines, geotechnical coring, and noise from underwater seismic surveys. These industrial activities will add significant disturbance in an Arctic ecosystems already suffering terribly from warming.
The acoustic disturbance to marine mammals from offshore oil development is of particular concern, as underwater noise can affect communication, migration, feeding, mating, and other important functions in whales, seals, and walrus. As well, noise can affect bird and fish migration, feeding and reproduction, and can displace populations from essential habitat areas. Some of these impacts can be reduced or mitigated with lease stipulations, but most cannot.
And of course, beyond these unavoidable operational impacts, there is the very real risk of a large oil spill from exploration drilling, production, pipelines, terminals, and tankers. While government and industry ritually understate the risk of oil spills and overstate their preparedness, for high-risk environments such as the Arctic Ocean, we should assume that a large marine oil spill will occur.
In fact, for development off Alaska's Arctic coast, U.S. government authorities project the risk of a major spill at about 30 - 50 per cent, and that a worst-case blowout could release some 1.3 million barrels (58 million gallons) of oil.
So if drilling proceeds in the Arctic Ocean, then everything possible to reduce risk should be required. The risk reduction standard for the Arctic should go well beyond industry's preferred standard of ‘As Low As Reasonably Practicable' (ALARP), to ‘As Low As Possible' (ALAP), regardless of cost.
This highest safety standard would include best available and safest technology for all components of an offshore drilling program - blowout preventers with redundant shear rams, well design and integrity verification, proven seabed well capping equipment, independent well control experts on rigs, rigorous cementing and pressure testing procedures, dual well control barriers, immediate relief well capability on stand-by, state-of-the-art seabed pipeline design and monitoring, tanker traffic monitoring, strict seasonal drilling windows allowing sufficient time for response to late-season spills, robust spill response plans, rigorous government permitting and inspection, and Citizens Advisory Councils to provide effective citizen oversight. As well, financial liability for offshore oil spills in the Arctic should be unlimited, thereby motivating companies to incorporate the highest safety standards possible.
Not "if" but "when" a spill will occur
But regardless how safe we make offshore drilling in the Arctic, there will still be a significant risk of a major oil spill, and policy makers and industry need to be honest about this. People will make mistakes, and equipment will fail. It's not a question of ‘if' a major spill will occur, but ‘when and where.'
A major spill will travel with currents, in and under sea ice during ice season, and it would be virtually impossible to contain or recover. Even with robust oil spill response capability, in most scenarios far less than 10 per cent will be recovered, and a major spill could easily become a transnational event.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
VIDEO - Tug ARIES Sinking/Rescue in Bering Sea
On June 26, 2011, the Tug Aries sunk in the Bering Sea, about 109 miles East of St. Paul Island. After the crew managed to get from the sinking tug to the barge they were towing, Captain Doug Pine pulled out his iPhone and began taking footage of the rescue. All four members of the crew were safely rescued by the USCG. The Aries was a 68-ft tugboat owned by C&K Marine and was towing a barge bound for Nome, AK when she sunk.
For additional details, visit http://www.jgp1.com/tugaries
For additional details, visit http://www.jgp1.com/tugaries
Stricken 361m VALE BEIJING Ore Carrier off Brazil
Vale Beijing on her maiden trip and fully loaded suffered cracks in the hull and a leak in a ballast tank
Brazil’s navy on Thursday called off an operation to unload fuel oil from the damaged Vale Beijing large iron-ore transport ship due to unfavorable ocean conditions, Brazil’s UOL online news service reported.
A fresh attempt to remove about 7,000 metric tons of fuel oil from the ship will occur in the near future, UOL said, citing Calmon Bahia, captain of ports of Maranhao state in Brazil’s northeast, where the vessel was moored offshore. The oil must be removed from the stricken vessel to reduce the risk of an oil spill, Bahia told the news service.
Vale Beijing, reportedly the world’s largest iron ore carrier, and which has been leased to Brazil iron ore miner Vale SA (VALE, VALE5.BR), developed cracks in its hull on Dec. 3 while it was loading iron ore at Vale’s Ponta da Madeira export terminal in Maranhao for export. The vessel, which was on its maiden voyage, is owned and operated by South Korean company STX Pan Ocean Co. (028670.SE, GZ9.SG).
The ship is still loaded with 260,000 tons of iron ore.
The navy hasn’t yet managed to remove the oil from the ship due to strong winds and tides which would make the operation unsafe, according to the UOL report. After the oil is removed, an operation will start to unload the iron ore from the vessel, and only then will there be a decision on where the ship will be taken for repair, Bahia told the news service.
A Vale press officer in Rio de Janeiro referred enquiries on the matter to the ports captaincy, noting that Vale is neither the owner nor the operator of the vessel.
STX Pan Ocean told Dow Jones Newswires on Wednesday that a salvage team is still looking at the ship to determine the cause of the accident and to decide where the repairs would be carried out.
It is still hard to predict how long the repairs will take, an STX spokeswoman said.
-By Diana Kinch, Dow Jones Newswires
Friday, December 30, 2011
Alaska: The Last Frontier on Discovery Channel tonight
Alaska: The Last Frontier premieres tonight on the Discovery Channel at 10 p.m. You can check out the preview below.
A Slice of Heaven Shared.... KUDOS!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirsten-dixon/postcard-from-the-alaska-_b_1171496.html
Kirsten Dixon
Postcard From The Alaska Wilderness (PHOTOS)
After an extended period of travel, I'm heading home to Winterlake Lodge, where I live in the backcountry of Alaska. Most of my family will be there when the skiplane circles the house and flies low over the frozen lake in preparation to land. A couple of snow machines will fire up and head out towards the packed-ice runway and my black Labrador, Willow, will follow close behind. We'll unload hundreds of pounds of provisions brought in from Anchorage. Fresh vegetables and fruit are the most coveted cargo and the highest priority to get over to the lodge before they freeze. It's a scene we've repeated countless times in the nearly 30 years I've lived here.
Our lodge lies far from any road and the nearest grocery store is about 200 miles away in Anchorage. It might sound complicated, but my husband Carl and I have long ago adapted our lives to living in the wilds. We've raised two daughters here, and they both now work for our small family-run business.
In the seclusion of living "away from the things of man," time seems to bend and curve in unusual ways here. The world spins without us even noticing. I think Carl and I completely missed the '80s as far as popular culture goes. We live in a place where wolves can still howl at night and bears can wander into our yard.
The rhythm and pace of our winter lives are not necessarily less work than in the summer but days are certainly shorter. The sun comes up around 10 a.m. and it sets a little after 3 p.m. That's in contrast to the nearly perpetual daylight and intense pace we keep in the summer months.
Lodge life offers a kind of comforting routine. Carl is the first one up in the morning. He stokes the fires and then he makes the first morning coffee. He does this in the dark using his LED headlamp to illuminate the scene. He'll sit by the glow of the woodstove and read until the rest of the crew begins to wake and the lodge comes to life.
Since there are no nearby communities, we have to provide our own electricity and we have a well for our water. We cut firewood for the woodstoves and the outdoor crew head out on daily expeditions looking for naturally dead-standing trees we can chainsaw into manageable pieces. We constantly groom and maintain trails around the lodge so our snow machines won't get bogged down in the deep snow.
I spend the majority of my day in the kitchen, cooking, thinking or talking about food or looking through cookbooks designing future menus. The kitchen is a large, comfortable, well-lit and warm place with a large table where lodge guests sometimes sit and chat while I cook.
Our sled dogs are the superstars of the wintertime. We take two teams out twice a day for exercise and training along our trails. They love to run, and the seemingly frenetic harnessing of a dog team takes all hands on deck. Why do we have sled dogs? There's an addictive quality to gliding silently through the woods powered only by natural energy.
And, besides, our dogs are part of our family. At the end of the day, sitting around the kitchen table, we talk about our dogs as if they are a collection of colorful and quirky people: Rosie had a good day today, Axel doesn't like Boomer and so on. It's funny how Willow the Labrador picks her favorite sled dogs to interact with. The dogs have such vivid personalities, sometimes evident right from birth, and they seem no less complicated than we are.
We live at Mile 198 along the Iditarod Trail, a historic 1,000-mile trail that commemorates the dramatic story of how diphtheria medicine was relayed by dog mushers to reach the town of Nome during an epidemic in 1925. The trail is only passable in the winter and has become a destination for adventurers traversing it by dog team, snowmobile or sometimes by bike, skis or snowshoe.
In the depth of winter, when the snow is higher than the windows of the lodge, I feel as if I am living along a hobbit trail where at any moment a strange and magical character can knock on my kitchen door and ask for help or food. Sometimes buffalo hunters on snow machines stop in on their way across the rugged Alaska Range to McGrath. More than one walking-around-the-world person has trudged with backpack and skis across the frozen lake on their way to or from Russia, recounting wondrous tales of adventure and human generosity along the way.
This holiday season, my family and I will spend time together playing games, sledding down the big hill, running the sled dogs, skiing, eating crab and salmon and laughing often. We'll keep an eye out for northern lights and, on January 1, we'll watch the sun rise over our lake, washing us with opportunity for a new year.
We'll take trips away from this place in the new year as often as we can but we'll recognize that sometimes the greatest value of travel is being able to appreciate returning home.
Kirsten Dixon
Postcard From The Alaska Wilderness (PHOTOS)
After an extended period of travel, I'm heading home to Winterlake Lodge, where I live in the backcountry of Alaska. Most of my family will be there when the skiplane circles the house and flies low over the frozen lake in preparation to land. A couple of snow machines will fire up and head out towards the packed-ice runway and my black Labrador, Willow, will follow close behind. We'll unload hundreds of pounds of provisions brought in from Anchorage. Fresh vegetables and fruit are the most coveted cargo and the highest priority to get over to the lodge before they freeze. It's a scene we've repeated countless times in the nearly 30 years I've lived here.
Our lodge lies far from any road and the nearest grocery store is about 200 miles away in Anchorage. It might sound complicated, but my husband Carl and I have long ago adapted our lives to living in the wilds. We've raised two daughters here, and they both now work for our small family-run business.
In the seclusion of living "away from the things of man," time seems to bend and curve in unusual ways here. The world spins without us even noticing. I think Carl and I completely missed the '80s as far as popular culture goes. We live in a place where wolves can still howl at night and bears can wander into our yard.
The rhythm and pace of our winter lives are not necessarily less work than in the summer but days are certainly shorter. The sun comes up around 10 a.m. and it sets a little after 3 p.m. That's in contrast to the nearly perpetual daylight and intense pace we keep in the summer months.
Lodge life offers a kind of comforting routine. Carl is the first one up in the morning. He stokes the fires and then he makes the first morning coffee. He does this in the dark using his LED headlamp to illuminate the scene. He'll sit by the glow of the woodstove and read until the rest of the crew begins to wake and the lodge comes to life.
Since there are no nearby communities, we have to provide our own electricity and we have a well for our water. We cut firewood for the woodstoves and the outdoor crew head out on daily expeditions looking for naturally dead-standing trees we can chainsaw into manageable pieces. We constantly groom and maintain trails around the lodge so our snow machines won't get bogged down in the deep snow.
I spend the majority of my day in the kitchen, cooking, thinking or talking about food or looking through cookbooks designing future menus. The kitchen is a large, comfortable, well-lit and warm place with a large table where lodge guests sometimes sit and chat while I cook.
Our sled dogs are the superstars of the wintertime. We take two teams out twice a day for exercise and training along our trails. They love to run, and the seemingly frenetic harnessing of a dog team takes all hands on deck. Why do we have sled dogs? There's an addictive quality to gliding silently through the woods powered only by natural energy.
And, besides, our dogs are part of our family. At the end of the day, sitting around the kitchen table, we talk about our dogs as if they are a collection of colorful and quirky people: Rosie had a good day today, Axel doesn't like Boomer and so on. It's funny how Willow the Labrador picks her favorite sled dogs to interact with. The dogs have such vivid personalities, sometimes evident right from birth, and they seem no less complicated than we are.
We live at Mile 198 along the Iditarod Trail, a historic 1,000-mile trail that commemorates the dramatic story of how diphtheria medicine was relayed by dog mushers to reach the town of Nome during an epidemic in 1925. The trail is only passable in the winter and has become a destination for adventurers traversing it by dog team, snowmobile or sometimes by bike, skis or snowshoe.
In the depth of winter, when the snow is higher than the windows of the lodge, I feel as if I am living along a hobbit trail where at any moment a strange and magical character can knock on my kitchen door and ask for help or food. Sometimes buffalo hunters on snow machines stop in on their way across the rugged Alaska Range to McGrath. More than one walking-around-the-world person has trudged with backpack and skis across the frozen lake on their way to or from Russia, recounting wondrous tales of adventure and human generosity along the way.
This holiday season, my family and I will spend time together playing games, sledding down the big hill, running the sled dogs, skiing, eating crab and salmon and laughing often. We'll keep an eye out for northern lights and, on January 1, we'll watch the sun rise over our lake, washing us with opportunity for a new year.
We'll take trips away from this place in the new year as often as we can but we'll recognize that sometimes the greatest value of travel is being able to appreciate returning home.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Best 'Great Loop' Videos - S/V FREEDOM - Thank You!
WOW - job well done ! My hat goes off to you for producing GREAT videos.
http://www.youtube.com/user/CruisingFreedom?feature=watch
Anyone thinking about cruising the GREAT LOOP should view these videos.
Want to follow along as S/V FREEDOM cruises? Click HERE to go to the blog.
Bon Voyage FREEDOM !!!
Freedom Launch 2011
S/V Freedom Underway At Last
Bound For Mackinaw
Cruising from Chicago to Mobile
http://www.youtube.com/user/CruisingFreedom?feature=watch
Anyone thinking about cruising the GREAT LOOP should view these videos.
Want to follow along as S/V FREEDOM cruises? Click HERE to go to the blog.
Bon Voyage FREEDOM !!!
Freedom Launch 2011
S/V Freedom Underway At Last
Bound For Mackinaw
Cruising from Chicago to Mobile
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
VIDEO - Spectacular Time Lapse Dam "Removal" - Salmon win 33 miles of spawning habital - KUDOS!!!
The October removal marked another step in ongoing efforts to restore habitat for threatened and endangered fish in the Pacific Northwest.
The more than 12-story Condit Dam on the White Salmon River is the second-tallest dam to be demolished in U.S. history to be breached for fish passage, according to the advocacy group American Rivers
The more than 12-story Condit Dam on the White Salmon River is the second-tallest dam to be demolished in U.S. history to be breached for fish passage, according to the advocacy group American Rivers
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
NOAA issues draft study for Arctic Sea oil drilling - PLEASE SEND YOUR COMMENTS
Obama administration under political pressure to permit new drilling in fragile Arctic Ocean ecosystem; public comment taken through Feb. 13
By Bob Berwyn ( http://summitcountyvoice.com/2011/12/27/noaa-issues-draft-study-for-arctic-sea-oil-drilling/ )
RED by Captain on GREY GOOSE
Federal officials say plans to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska will cause only “minor to moderate” impacts to rare bowhead and beluga whales — despite the potential for another spill on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and no good way to clean it up.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a draft environmental impact statement on the drilling plan just before Christmas, outlining the potential impacts, as well as mitigation measures that could be implemented to minimize effects on the marine environment. The draft EIS is open for public comment through Feb. 13. All the documents for the project are online here.
The mitigation measures include closures during whale migration and feeding and during traditional whale and seal hunts. If adopted, these measures could reduce the effects on marine mammals and ensure they remain available to the communities that depend on them for their diets and cultural traditions, according to the draft EIS. The executive summary is online here.
“We know how important marine mammals are to healthy Arctic ecosystems and the people who depend on them for food and cultural traditions,” said Eric Schwaab, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “We want to hear comments on these proposed alternatives to lessen any effects of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.”
The conservation community has already voiced its outspoken opposition to Arctic drilling, charging that the federal government doesn’t have enough background science on the Arctic Ocean ecosystems to make a good drilling decision.
Additional criticism has been aimed at inadequate response plans for possible spills or leaks in the harsh environment. There is nothing to suggest that either the oil companies or the Coast Guard have the capability to clean up any significant oil spill in the region.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act directs the Secretary of Commerce to allow the incidental and unintentional take of small numbers of marine mammals by U.S. citizens if their actions will have only a negligible effect on the species and will not reduce the availability of the mammals to the Alaska Natives who rely on them.
“We know how important marine mammals are to healthy Arctic ecosystems and the people who depend on them for food and cultural traditions,” said Eric Schwaab, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “We want to hear comments on these proposed alternatives to lessen any effects of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.”
NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will travel to eight North Slope communities to hold public hearings in late January and February on the draft environmental impact statement. The times and building locations of the public hearings in Barrow, Kaktovik, Kivalina, Kotzebue, Nuiqsut, Point Hope, Point Lay and Wainwright will be announced early in 2012 in the Federal Register and through a public notice.
ITS A DONE DEAL EVEN IF THE PUBLIC COMMENTS SAY "NO" BECAUSE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT RECEIVES BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ROYALTIES FROM OIL DRILLING - THERE IS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST WHEN PERMITS ARE APPROVED BY A GOVERNMENT THAT RECEIVES OIL DRILLING ROYALTIES - WE NEED NEW REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS TO CHANGE THE LAWS TO BETTER PROTECT OUR CITIZENS AND NATIONAL RESOURCES AND INTERESTS.
By Bob Berwyn ( http://summitcountyvoice.com/2011/12/27/noaa-issues-draft-study-for-arctic-sea-oil-drilling/ )
RED by Captain on GREY GOOSE
Federal officials say plans to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska will cause only “minor to moderate” impacts to rare bowhead and beluga whales — despite the potential for another spill on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and no good way to clean it up.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a draft environmental impact statement on the drilling plan just before Christmas, outlining the potential impacts, as well as mitigation measures that could be implemented to minimize effects on the marine environment. The draft EIS is open for public comment through Feb. 13. All the documents for the project are online here.
The mitigation measures include closures during whale migration and feeding and during traditional whale and seal hunts. If adopted, these measures could reduce the effects on marine mammals and ensure they remain available to the communities that depend on them for their diets and cultural traditions, according to the draft EIS. The executive summary is online here.
“We know how important marine mammals are to healthy Arctic ecosystems and the people who depend on them for food and cultural traditions,” said Eric Schwaab, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “We want to hear comments on these proposed alternatives to lessen any effects of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.”
The conservation community has already voiced its outspoken opposition to Arctic drilling, charging that the federal government doesn’t have enough background science on the Arctic Ocean ecosystems to make a good drilling decision.
Additional criticism has been aimed at inadequate response plans for possible spills or leaks in the harsh environment. There is nothing to suggest that either the oil companies or the Coast Guard have the capability to clean up any significant oil spill in the region.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act directs the Secretary of Commerce to allow the incidental and unintentional take of small numbers of marine mammals by U.S. citizens if their actions will have only a negligible effect on the species and will not reduce the availability of the mammals to the Alaska Natives who rely on them.
“We know how important marine mammals are to healthy Arctic ecosystems and the people who depend on them for food and cultural traditions,” said Eric Schwaab, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “We want to hear comments on these proposed alternatives to lessen any effects of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.”
NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will travel to eight North Slope communities to hold public hearings in late January and February on the draft environmental impact statement. The times and building locations of the public hearings in Barrow, Kaktovik, Kivalina, Kotzebue, Nuiqsut, Point Hope, Point Lay and Wainwright will be announced early in 2012 in the Federal Register and through a public notice.
ITS A DONE DEAL EVEN IF THE PUBLIC COMMENTS SAY "NO" BECAUSE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT RECEIVES BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ROYALTIES FROM OIL DRILLING - THERE IS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST WHEN PERMITS ARE APPROVED BY A GOVERNMENT THAT RECEIVES OIL DRILLING ROYALTIES - WE NEED NEW REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS TO CHANGE THE LAWS TO BETTER PROTECT OUR CITIZENS AND NATIONAL RESOURCES AND INTERESTS.
DRILLING WITHOUT PROVEN CLEAN-UP TECHNOLOGY, ASSETS AND INFRA-STRUCTURE IS IRRESPONSIBLE - THIS ALONE SHOULD BE SUFFICIENT REASON TO WAIT.
PLEASE SEND YOUR COMMENTS - THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS
After receiving public comments during the 45-day comment period and from the public hearings, NOAA will finalize the environmental impact statement in 2012. It will then be used to guide decisions by BOEM about permitting of oil and gas exploration and by NOAA about incidental take authorizations that allow unintentional take of small numbers of marine mammals.
To comment on the draft EIS, the public can submit written comments via mail, fax, or email by Mon., Feb. 13.
Comments may be mailed to:
James H. Lecky
Director, Office of Protected Resources
NOAA / NMFS
1315 East West Highway, Room 13704
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Comments may also be faxed 301-713-0376, or emailed to arcticeis.comments@noaa.gov
PLEASE SEND YOUR COMMENTS - THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS
After receiving public comments during the 45-day comment period and from the public hearings, NOAA will finalize the environmental impact statement in 2012. It will then be used to guide decisions by BOEM about permitting of oil and gas exploration and by NOAA about incidental take authorizations that allow unintentional take of small numbers of marine mammals.
To comment on the draft EIS, the public can submit written comments via mail, fax, or email by Mon., Feb. 13.
Comments may be mailed to:
James H. Lecky
Director, Office of Protected Resources
NOAA / NMFS
1315 East West Highway, Room 13704
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Comments may also be faxed 301-713-0376, or emailed to arcticeis.comments@noaa.gov
Sunday, December 25, 2011
U of Washington School of Fisheries lands a Ray Troll
99 species of fish on the wall
99 species of fish
They swim round and round
Mostly in Puget Sound
99 species of fish on the wall
- Sing to tune of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”
People know about sharks but they might be surprised at some of the other toothy, carnivorous fish calling the Salish Sea home.
Take the longnose lancetfish, some which grow 5 feet long with 2-inch daggerlike teeth.
Sporting a dorsal fin like a sail, it’s one of 99 species gliding and snaking across a supersized 15-foot mural by Alaskan artist, author and confessed fish groupie Ray Troll, whose style has been described as “scientific surrealism.” The mural was unveiled last month at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
It’s on display in the lobby of the Fisheries Sciences Building. Be sure to grab a pair of loaner 3-D glasses from Chris Yoder in the main office down the hall in order to see the yelloweye rockfish, grunt sculpin, red Irish lord, showy snailfish and other brightly colored fishes emerge from the painting’s depths.
The 3-D effect in the mural takes advantage of the fact that, to our eyes, warm colors seem to come toward us while cool colors recede, Troll said. He’s used the effect in other paintings, although never in such a large piece has he made it so pronounced. Through 3-D glasses, all the warm-colored fishes seem to float off the art work. While painting, Troll said he needed to put on such glasses from time to time and note which fish needed more warm tones and which needed more blue wash to cause them to recede.
At the water’s surface, above the fishy fray, there’s Seattle with its Space Needle, Mount Rainier and a sky where even the clouds are fishy.
Look close – can you spot the submarine periscope? The three orcas? The Boeing 737?
What about items displaying Troll’s signature quirkiness? Is that a No. 2 pencil in the salty sea? A paintbrush, a tiny slice of pizza . . .
Uh, pizza?
“I couldn’t paint a northern anchovy and not put pizza in front of it,” Troll said.
“That's what you get with Ray Troll: rigorous scientific detail, odd juxtapositions, and an appreciation for diner food,” said a Seattle Post-Intelligencer review about a 2009 fossil exhibit at the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on which Troll collaborated.
Most all the species depicted in the mural are found in the Salish Sea, a name coined in recent years for the inland marine waters of Washington and British Columbia comprised of Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Mary Levin/University of Washington
UW's Ted Pietsch was a driving force to get the Ray Troll piece for the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
Ted Pietsch, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator of the UW’s fish collection, provided Troll with a list of the 240 species found in the Salish Sea. Pietsch and Troll got to know each other 30 years ago and Troll has sought Pietsch’s insights and made use of specimens over the years from the fish collection as one way to ensure his drawings are biologically accurate.
Troll worked on the painting at his Ketchikan studio for a year selecting species from Pietsch’s list, trying to get at least one representative of each family and just “letting the thing fill itself up until I couldn’t fit anything more.” Noticing that a number of species were named forTrevor Kincaid, who established the UW’s zoology and botany departments in the early 1900s, Troll painted Kincaid’s image, in a frame, floating with the fishes.
Troll created a key listing everything in the order he painted it.
The mural was commissioned with donations from aquatic and fishery sciences faculty -- an effort kick started with $1,000 each from Pietsch and fellow fisheries professor Ray Hilborn-- as well as alums and friends of the school.
Several species are represented more than once, bringing the total images in the water to 111. For example, under the belly of the striking sockeye salmon, all bright red and making its way back from the sea to spawn, are a couple of little smolts heading in the other direction and “looking up at dad,” Troll said.
Pietsch, who also is curator of fishes for the UW Burke Museum, said he’s already dreaming up some kind of fish identification challenge using the mural for his “Biology of Fishes” next quarter.
NOTE ABOUT SLIDE SHOW: Images by Mary Levin, University Photographers, unless otherwise indicated.
99 species of fish
They swim round and round
Mostly in Puget Sound
99 species of fish on the wall
- Sing to tune of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”
People know about sharks but they might be surprised at some of the other toothy, carnivorous fish calling the Salish Sea home.
Take the longnose lancetfish, some which grow 5 feet long with 2-inch daggerlike teeth.
Sporting a dorsal fin like a sail, it’s one of 99 species gliding and snaking across a supersized 15-foot mural by Alaskan artist, author and confessed fish groupie Ray Troll, whose style has been described as “scientific surrealism.” The mural was unveiled last month at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
To go:
Fisheries Sciences Building
1122 NE Boat Street
Building hours: Weekdays, 7am-5:30pm. Closed weekends and holidays
Borrow 3D glasses: Room 116, weekdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Fisheries Sciences Building
1122 NE Boat Street
Building hours: Weekdays, 7am-5:30pm. Closed weekends and holidays
Borrow 3D glasses: Room 116, weekdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
It’s on display in the lobby of the Fisheries Sciences Building. Be sure to grab a pair of loaner 3-D glasses from Chris Yoder in the main office down the hall in order to see the yelloweye rockfish, grunt sculpin, red Irish lord, showy snailfish and other brightly colored fishes emerge from the painting’s depths.
The 3-D effect in the mural takes advantage of the fact that, to our eyes, warm colors seem to come toward us while cool colors recede, Troll said. He’s used the effect in other paintings, although never in such a large piece has he made it so pronounced. Through 3-D glasses, all the warm-colored fishes seem to float off the art work. While painting, Troll said he needed to put on such glasses from time to time and note which fish needed more warm tones and which needed more blue wash to cause them to recede.
At the water’s surface, above the fishy fray, there’s Seattle with its Space Needle, Mount Rainier and a sky where even the clouds are fishy.
Look close – can you spot the submarine periscope? The three orcas? The Boeing 737?
What about items displaying Troll’s signature quirkiness? Is that a No. 2 pencil in the salty sea? A paintbrush, a tiny slice of pizza . . .
Uh, pizza?
“I couldn’t paint a northern anchovy and not put pizza in front of it,” Troll said.
“That's what you get with Ray Troll: rigorous scientific detail, odd juxtapositions, and an appreciation for diner food,” said a Seattle Post-Intelligencer review about a 2009 fossil exhibit at the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on which Troll collaborated.
Most all the species depicted in the mural are found in the Salish Sea, a name coined in recent years for the inland marine waters of Washington and British Columbia comprised of Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Mary Levin/University of Washington
UW's Ted Pietsch was a driving force to get the Ray Troll piece for the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
Ted Pietsch, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator of the UW’s fish collection, provided Troll with a list of the 240 species found in the Salish Sea. Pietsch and Troll got to know each other 30 years ago and Troll has sought Pietsch’s insights and made use of specimens over the years from the fish collection as one way to ensure his drawings are biologically accurate.
Troll worked on the painting at his Ketchikan studio for a year selecting species from Pietsch’s list, trying to get at least one representative of each family and just “letting the thing fill itself up until I couldn’t fit anything more.” Noticing that a number of species were named forTrevor Kincaid, who established the UW’s zoology and botany departments in the early 1900s, Troll painted Kincaid’s image, in a frame, floating with the fishes.
Troll created a key listing everything in the order he painted it.
The mural was commissioned with donations from aquatic and fishery sciences faculty -- an effort kick started with $1,000 each from Pietsch and fellow fisheries professor Ray Hilborn-- as well as alums and friends of the school.
Several species are represented more than once, bringing the total images in the water to 111. For example, under the belly of the striking sockeye salmon, all bright red and making its way back from the sea to spawn, are a couple of little smolts heading in the other direction and “looking up at dad,” Troll said.
Pietsch, who also is curator of fishes for the UW Burke Museum, said he’s already dreaming up some kind of fish identification challenge using the mural for his “Biology of Fishes” next quarter.
NOTE ABOUT SLIDE SHOW: Images by Mary Levin, University Photographers, unless otherwise indicated.
A Sea Change - Imagine a World Without Fish?
A Sea Change, a feature length documentary produced by Niijii Films, premiered March 14, 2009 at the Environmental Film Festival, Washington, D.C. to a full house - it was the first time in the festival's history that every seat and all standing room was taken during a screening.
This poignant film tackles the probability of a world without fish should humans continue to act and behave environmentally as we have for the past century.
According to scientists, such as Dr. Richard Feely of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this catastrophe will play out in coming generations unless widespread awareness is raised about ocean acidification, its causes, and how to slow or stop it.
A Sea Change explores the ecological, cultural, and economic effects of this alarming phenomenon. It is the first documentary to focus public attention on this impending but little-known crisis - the side effect of carbon dioxide emissions. Public concern about the warming of our atmosphere is widespread, while the other half of the global equation - the fate of our oceans and their falling pH - remains virtually unknown in the public domain. This film broadens the discussion about the dramatic changes in the chemistry of the oceans, and conveys the urgent threat those changes pose to our survival.
By raising awareness about this important issue, viewers are moved to understand the consequences of inaction, and to consider the wide range of practical steps that individuals, corporations and the government can take to help address this phenomenon.
The audience learns about ocean acidification as the on-camera guide embarks on a journey to revisit the communities of his childhood including Norway, Alaska and Seattle. Along the way, he meets scientists, activists, entrepreneurs and politicians, all working to research ocean acidification and to take steps to address it.
With its multigenerational and international storylines, coupled with an educational outreach plan and curriculum component, A Sea Change reaches broad audiences. The accompanying outreach will further address the chemistry and biology of ocean acidification, encourage young people to consider careers in science, and provide specific examples of activities that people can do to make a difference in reducing their personal carbon footprint.
Learn more about the film and view the trailer at www.aseachange.net.
If your organization would like to host a screening of the movie, please contact Ben Kalina at ben@aseachange.net
Read more about ocean acidification's effect on coral reefs here.
Brochure link is here: http://www.aseachange.net/_literature_51809/English_Brochure
This poignant film tackles the probability of a world without fish should humans continue to act and behave environmentally as we have for the past century.
According to scientists, such as Dr. Richard Feely of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this catastrophe will play out in coming generations unless widespread awareness is raised about ocean acidification, its causes, and how to slow or stop it.
A Sea Change explores the ecological, cultural, and economic effects of this alarming phenomenon. It is the first documentary to focus public attention on this impending but little-known crisis - the side effect of carbon dioxide emissions. Public concern about the warming of our atmosphere is widespread, while the other half of the global equation - the fate of our oceans and their falling pH - remains virtually unknown in the public domain. This film broadens the discussion about the dramatic changes in the chemistry of the oceans, and conveys the urgent threat those changes pose to our survival.
By raising awareness about this important issue, viewers are moved to understand the consequences of inaction, and to consider the wide range of practical steps that individuals, corporations and the government can take to help address this phenomenon.
The audience learns about ocean acidification as the on-camera guide embarks on a journey to revisit the communities of his childhood including Norway, Alaska and Seattle. Along the way, he meets scientists, activists, entrepreneurs and politicians, all working to research ocean acidification and to take steps to address it.
With its multigenerational and international storylines, coupled with an educational outreach plan and curriculum component, A Sea Change reaches broad audiences. The accompanying outreach will further address the chemistry and biology of ocean acidification, encourage young people to consider careers in science, and provide specific examples of activities that people can do to make a difference in reducing their personal carbon footprint.
Learn more about the film and view the trailer at www.aseachange.net.
If your organization would like to host a screening of the movie, please contact Ben Kalina at ben@aseachange.net
Read more about ocean acidification's effect on coral reefs here.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Kelvin-Helmholtz Wave Clouds Over Birmingham Alabama
Ride the wild waves (Birmingham, Jefferson, Alabama)
http://news.yahoo.com/giant-tsunami-shape-clouds-roll-across-alabama-sky-192102289.html
For a morning, the sky looked like a surfer's dream: A series of huge breaking waves lined the horizon in Birmingham, Ala., on Friday (Dec. 16), their crests surging forward in slow motion. Amazed Alabamans took photos of the clouds and sent them to their local weather station, wondering, "What are these tsunamis in the sky?"
Experts say the clouds were pristine examples of "Kelvin-Helmholtz waves." Whether seen in the sky or in the ocean, this type of turbulence always forms when a fast-moving layer of fluid slides on top of a slower, thicker layer, dragging its surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcwOn4VeJOE
http://news.yahoo.com/giant-tsunami-shape-clouds-roll-across-alabama-sky-192102289.html
For a morning, the sky looked like a surfer's dream: A series of huge breaking waves lined the horizon in Birmingham, Ala., on Friday (Dec. 16), their crests surging forward in slow motion. Amazed Alabamans took photos of the clouds and sent them to their local weather station, wondering, "What are these tsunamis in the sky?"
Experts say the clouds were pristine examples of "Kelvin-Helmholtz waves." Whether seen in the sky or in the ocean, this type of turbulence always forms when a fast-moving layer of fluid slides on top of a slower, thicker layer, dragging its surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcwOn4VeJOE
Shell deployed ships and aircraft with dispersants to SINK Nigerian oil spill - Nigeria Government must be asleep after BP Gulf of Mexico fiasco
Shell on Friday deployed ships with dispersants and planes in a bid to mop up (sink out of public sight) one of Nigeria's worst offshore oil spills in recent years, a spokesman said, amid fears it could soon reach the shoreline.
A Shell spokesman in Nigeria said five vessels and two aircraft had been deployed to attack the oil slick, with the company estimating the amount of the spill at its Bonga field at less than 40,000 barrels.
The leak has been stopped since the company became aware of it on Tuesday.
"Investigation is going on," Tony Okonedo said. Asked whether ships had been deployed as planned on Friday, he said, "Five vessels, two aircraft ... oil spill response specialists and other personnel are involved."
The company says the slick has been thinning and breaking up, but the information was difficult to verify independently.
Shell became aware of the leak Tuesday at its Bonga field some 120 kilometers off Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and an OPEC member. Production has halted at the field, which has a capacity of 200,000 barrels per day.
The company said the source of the leak was a flexible line linking a production vessel to a tanker.
It was Nigeria's worst offshore spill since a 1998 Mobil incident, officials said, though onshore leaks have been estimated at levels far worse since that time in the oil-producing Niger Delta.
Environmental group SkyTruth, using satellite imagery from Wednesday morning it published on its website, estimated the slick was 70 kilometers long and 17 kilometres wide at its widest.
It said it covered 923 square kilometers (356 square miles) of ocean.
EPA scolds BP in Gulf oil spill: dispersant is too toxic, change it
A Shell spokesman in Nigeria said five vessels and two aircraft had been deployed to attack the oil slick, with the company estimating the amount of the spill at its Bonga field at less than 40,000 barrels.
The leak has been stopped since the company became aware of it on Tuesday.
"Investigation is going on," Tony Okonedo said. Asked whether ships had been deployed as planned on Friday, he said, "Five vessels, two aircraft ... oil spill response specialists and other personnel are involved."
The company says the slick has been thinning and breaking up, but the information was difficult to verify independently.
Shell became aware of the leak Tuesday at its Bonga field some 120 kilometers off Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and an OPEC member. Production has halted at the field, which has a capacity of 200,000 barrels per day.
The company said the source of the leak was a flexible line linking a production vessel to a tanker.
It was Nigeria's worst offshore spill since a 1998 Mobil incident, officials said, though onshore leaks have been estimated at levels far worse since that time in the oil-producing Niger Delta.
Environmental group SkyTruth, using satellite imagery from Wednesday morning it published on its website, estimated the slick was 70 kilometers long and 17 kilometres wide at its widest.
It said it covered 923 square kilometers (356 square miles) of ocean.
EPA scolds BP in Gulf oil spill: dispersant is too toxic, change it
After saying last week that it had no authority to tell BP which disperant to use for the Gulf oil spill, the EPA on Thursday told BP to switch dispersants to one that is less toxic.
IF THIS IS HOW SHELL INTENDS TO HIDE OIL SPILLS IN ALASKA THEN THEY BETTER THINK IT THROUGH AGAIN - THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WILL NOT ACCEPT DISPERSANTS USE NOW THAT THEY HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO BE TOXIC AND CONTAIN CARCINOGENS CAUSING CANCER.
IF THIS IS HOW SHELL INTENDS TO HIDE OIL SPILLS IN ALASKA THEN THEY BETTER THINK IT THROUGH AGAIN - THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WILL NOT ACCEPT DISPERSANTS USE NOW THAT THEY HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO BE TOXIC AND CONTAIN CARCINOGENS CAUSING CANCER.
UN Experts Make The Case That CO2 Has No Effect On The Climate
http://www.real-science.com/experts-case-co2-effect-climate
Global warming gases have increased beyond the worst predictions of the UN’s climate experts – exceeding the worst of seven emissions predictions laid down by the UN’s World Meteorological Organisations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Greenhouse gases are rising faster than Scenario A, but temperatures (green below) are trending below Scenario C (the zero emissions scenario.) What they are telling us is that climate sensitivity is essentially zero, and that it is time to shut down their global warming scam. CO2 has essentially no effect on the climate.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Global warming gases have increased beyond the worst predictions of the UN’s climate experts – exceeding the worst of seven emissions predictions laid down by the UN’s World Meteorological Organisations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Greenhouse gases are rising faster than Scenario A, but temperatures (green below) are trending below Scenario C (the zero emissions scenario.) What they are telling us is that climate sensitivity is essentially zero, and that it is time to shut down their global warming scam. CO2 has essentially no effect on the climate.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Kolskaya Oil Rig Sinking Sparks Doubt Over Arctic Plan
The sinking of a floating oil rig that left more than 50 crew dead or missing is intensifying fears that Russian companies searching for oil in remote areas are unprepared for emergencies – and could cause a disastrous spill in the pristine waters of the Arctic.
Only four months ago, Russian energy giant Gazprom sent Russia's first oil platform to the environmentally sensitive region, and industry experts and environmentalists warned it is unfit for the harsh conditions and is too far from rescue crews to be reached quickly in case of an accident. They are demanding Russia put Arctic oil projects on hold.
Russia is the world's largest oil producer, but it extracts most of its oil onshore, with no more than 2 percent of its production coming from mature offshore fields in the warm Black and Caspian seas and relatively new fields just off Sakhalin Island in the far east.
As Russia's core oil fields in Eastern Siberia are depleted, companies are looking north. The government hopes that up to 80 million tons of oil will be produced annually in the Arctic by 2030.
Russia is trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas. By speeding up the Arctic oil project, the government is strengthening its bid.
The Kolskaya floating oil rig that capsized and sank in the Sea of Okhotsk on Dec. 18 had done exploratory drilling for Gazprom Neft Shelf, a subsidiary of Gazprom. It was being towed back to an eastern Russian port in a fierce storm when a strong wave broke some of its equipment and portholes, and it capsized in the choppy water.
Gazprom is now pioneering the oil development of Russia's sector of the Arctic and was the first Russian company to dispatch a drilling rig to the Pechora Sea in northwest Russia.
Russian oil companies have never operated in weather conditions as harsh as those found in the ice-bound Arctic, where ice ridges are meters (yards) deep and storms are frequent. The Kolskaya accident has reinforced fears that they are unprepared to meet the challenges.
"This tragedy has once again reminded us of how high the risks of offshore accidents are," said Alexei Knizhnikov, an oil and gas policy officer with the World Wildlife Fund.
WWF, Greenpeace and five regional Russian environmental organizations signed a petition on Thursday calling for a parliamentary investigation and urging the government to suspend the oil projects for now.
The petition accuses government agencies of failing to enforce environmental and safety regulations and says that current laws are inadequate for dealing with the magnitude of risk in the Arctic.
Environmentalists first raised their concerns when Gazprom announced in August that it was sending its platform to the Arctic for exploratory drilling in the Pechora oil field, which holds some 6.6 million tons of oil.
The platform's underwater section was built in Russia in the 1990s, while its upper part comes from a platform built in Scotland in 1982 and decommissioned from the North Sea in 2002.
Gazprom insists the Prirazlomnaya platform, billed as the first to be ice resistant, is safe and contains no old equipment except for its frame.
"We've done our best to implement the latest technology and regulations to prevent any accidents," Vladimir Vovk, chief of Gazprom's department for the management of equipment and technologies in developing marine fields, said at a news conference in September.
Environmentalists question both the state of the equipment and the platform's design. Because the Prirazlomnaya is situated hundreds of kilometers (miles) offshore, it is designed to store huge quantities of oil until tankers can arrive to collect it. The platform's storage tanks can hold up to 120,000 tons (840,000 barrels).
Unlike the Kolskaya, which was carrying no oil when it sank, the Arctic platform could potentially cause a disastrous spill if it capsized in icy, rough seas.
The distance from shore would also complicate any rescue or cleanup mission. The nearest port of any size is in Murmansk, some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away.
Even in warmer, more hospitable waters, accidents at oil platforms have been disastrous.
A giant oil slick was approaching the coast of Nigeria on Friday after what Royal Dutch Shell said was a spill during the transfer of oil from its floating platform in the offshore field to a waiting tanker. The spill came less than a week after Shell received approval from the U.S. government to drill exploratory wells off Alaska's northwest coast, in the Chukchi Sea near Russian waters.
In the Gulf of Mexico, the 2010 explosion of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and led to more than 200 million gallons (4.8 million barrels) of oil spewing from a well deep beneath the sea.
Russia's parliament gave preliminary approval in September to a bill intended to tighten regulations on oil companies working in the Arctic.
Yekaterina Khmelyova, an environment law officer at the WWF, said the bill does not do enough to hold the oil companies publicly accountable or to guarantee a full assessment of the environmental risks. She said environmentalists and the business community are working on a new draft that among other things would provide for the creation of clean-up funds.
Oil industry experts also have expressed doubts about Gazprom's expertise in offshore drilling in the Arctic as well as the platform's design.
They have questioned the economic justifications for the project. The oil in the Pechora field is of low quality and the project will be loss-making without tax breaks, said Valery Nesterov, a senior analyst with the Moscow-based investment bank Troika Dialog. For state-controlled Gazprom, the Arctic project appears to be more of strategic importance than about any immediate economic benefits, he said.
"This is clearly a strategic task that the company is executing," Nesterov said. "It looks like Russia is not going to give up that strategy since the interests of ship yards, machinery producers and, possibly, the military are involved."
Four years ago, Russia staked its claim to supremacy in the Arctic by planting a titanium flag on the ocean floor and arguing that an underwater ridge connected the country directly to the North Pole. The United States does not recognize the Russian assertion and has its own claims, along with Denmark, Norway and Canada.
Russia, Canada and Denmark are planning to their respective file claims to the ridge to the United Nations.
In past years, Russian ship yards and machinery producers have been able to stay afloat largely thanks to large orders coming from state-owned plants and government-sponsored projects. A large-scale oil and gas development of the Arctic is likely to give a welcome boost to both industries.
Canada's Arctic Oil Drilling - Meet or Exceed the National Energy Board’s policy to kill an out-of-control well - The ball is in the Industry's court to demonstrate - USA? Alaska? Shell et al?
Companies planning to explore Canada’s Arctic offshore region have been given a chance to show they can “meet or exceed” the National Energy Board’s policy to kill an out-of-control well, otherwise the federal regulator will stick with its same-season relief policy.
In updating its rules, which included consideration of BP’s Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the NEB said in a 53-page report it remains determined to “minimize harmful impacts” to the Arctic environment by requiring operators to sink a relief well in the same summer season that a well begins to leak uncontrollably.
But it has given companies a de facto exemption to demonstrate that they can apply new technologies to cap a blowout.
It is not yet clear whether that will open the way for Imperial Oil, ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron to file exploration applications in 2012 to explore their Beaufort Sea leases.
“Filing requirements set out the technical information we will need to see in future applications for offshore drilling in the Canadian Arctic,” said NEB chair Gaetan Caron.
“These new requirements provide clarity to future applicants and to those who will provide input into the board’s decision to approve or deny an application for a well in the Arctic.”
Chevron says not feasible
Imperial, as operator, and ExxonMobil each hold 25 percent of the Ajurak-Pokak joint-venture covering two deepwater exploration blocks in the Beaufort, with BP holding the remaining 50 percent. The partnership secured the rights by making combined work commitments of almost C$1.8 billion.
Chevron has two exploration licenses covering a total 1,200 square miles immediately west of the joint-venture properties and is hoping to start seismic work in the 2012-14 period.
In its submission to the NEB’s 18-month consultation with northern communities, the industry and environmentalists, Chevron said the same-season relief well requirement “would likely not be feasible as drilling moves into deeper water areas, with more complex wells and with more challenging ice conditions than were experienced in the initial phase of Canadian Beaufort exploration 20 to 35 years ago.”
It said the NEB should require drillers to stop uncontrolled flows in the same season that they started, but not necessarily with a relief well.
Chevron has already indicated it is developing a new-generation blowout preventer which it believes would make relief wells unnecessary.
Imperial focused on prevention
James Hawkins, Imperial’s Arctic operations manager, said in a letter to the NEB that his company’s “primary approach to well control is prevention.
“While it is important to have a relief well plan that has been subject to rigorous review and approval by the NEB, a requirement for same-season relief well capability is generally neither practical nor necessary,” he said.
But the leaseholders, along with ConocoPhillips, say they need more time to study what impact the new stipulations will have on their exploration plans.
However, the NEB does not rule out the use of enhanced prevention technology to avoid the same-season rule, although it said prevention alone will not suffice.
It said NEB panels will now determine whether companies can “depart from” the relief well rule.
CAPP: Some flexibility
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said the new rules offer some flexibility for companies to “innovate and apply new technologies.”
In its submission, CAPP said 132 wells have been drilled in the Canadian Arctic, 89 in the Beaufort, with no significant oil spills.
Bharat Dixit, the NEB’s technical leader of exploration and production, told the National Post that the ice pack makes the Beaufort a “closed ocean” for much of the year, which prompted the NEB to introduce its single-season relief well policy to prevent uncontrolled wells from leaking through the winter.
He said the NEB is confident drilling can be conducted safely in the Arctic provided companies follow recommendations on proper management and training, use a measured pace on development that includes “pauses” before critical or dangerous work and have a proper spill response plan in place.
Trevor Taylor, policy director at the Pew Center’s Oceans North Canada group, said the NEB’s review is a “positive first step,” although it is not clear “what you need to do in order to drill in the Arctic.”
“The industry has been saying they can do it safely, so I think the ball is in industry’s court right now when it comes to demonstrating to regulatory bodies, the NEB in particular, that they’re able to meet requirements,” he said.
However, Taylor warned that “there’s always going to be the risk” of a spill, adding: “We’re not saying you shouldn’t drill at all. The risk has to be minimized to that extent that is reasonable.”
—Gary Park
In updating its rules, which included consideration of BP’s Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the NEB said in a 53-page report it remains determined to “minimize harmful impacts” to the Arctic environment by requiring operators to sink a relief well in the same summer season that a well begins to leak uncontrollably.
But it has given companies a de facto exemption to demonstrate that they can apply new technologies to cap a blowout.
It is not yet clear whether that will open the way for Imperial Oil, ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron to file exploration applications in 2012 to explore their Beaufort Sea leases.
“Filing requirements set out the technical information we will need to see in future applications for offshore drilling in the Canadian Arctic,” said NEB chair Gaetan Caron.
“These new requirements provide clarity to future applicants and to those who will provide input into the board’s decision to approve or deny an application for a well in the Arctic.”
Chevron says not feasible
Imperial, as operator, and ExxonMobil each hold 25 percent of the Ajurak-Pokak joint-venture covering two deepwater exploration blocks in the Beaufort, with BP holding the remaining 50 percent. The partnership secured the rights by making combined work commitments of almost C$1.8 billion.
Chevron has two exploration licenses covering a total 1,200 square miles immediately west of the joint-venture properties and is hoping to start seismic work in the 2012-14 period.
In its submission to the NEB’s 18-month consultation with northern communities, the industry and environmentalists, Chevron said the same-season relief well requirement “would likely not be feasible as drilling moves into deeper water areas, with more complex wells and with more challenging ice conditions than were experienced in the initial phase of Canadian Beaufort exploration 20 to 35 years ago.”
It said the NEB should require drillers to stop uncontrolled flows in the same season that they started, but not necessarily with a relief well.
Chevron has already indicated it is developing a new-generation blowout preventer which it believes would make relief wells unnecessary.
Imperial focused on prevention
James Hawkins, Imperial’s Arctic operations manager, said in a letter to the NEB that his company’s “primary approach to well control is prevention.
“While it is important to have a relief well plan that has been subject to rigorous review and approval by the NEB, a requirement for same-season relief well capability is generally neither practical nor necessary,” he said.
But the leaseholders, along with ConocoPhillips, say they need more time to study what impact the new stipulations will have on their exploration plans.
However, the NEB does not rule out the use of enhanced prevention technology to avoid the same-season rule, although it said prevention alone will not suffice.
It said NEB panels will now determine whether companies can “depart from” the relief well rule.
CAPP: Some flexibility
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said the new rules offer some flexibility for companies to “innovate and apply new technologies.”
In its submission, CAPP said 132 wells have been drilled in the Canadian Arctic, 89 in the Beaufort, with no significant oil spills.
Bharat Dixit, the NEB’s technical leader of exploration and production, told the National Post that the ice pack makes the Beaufort a “closed ocean” for much of the year, which prompted the NEB to introduce its single-season relief well policy to prevent uncontrolled wells from leaking through the winter.
He said the NEB is confident drilling can be conducted safely in the Arctic provided companies follow recommendations on proper management and training, use a measured pace on development that includes “pauses” before critical or dangerous work and have a proper spill response plan in place.
Trevor Taylor, policy director at the Pew Center’s Oceans North Canada group, said the NEB’s review is a “positive first step,” although it is not clear “what you need to do in order to drill in the Arctic.”
“The industry has been saying they can do it safely, so I think the ball is in industry’s court right now when it comes to demonstrating to regulatory bodies, the NEB in particular, that they’re able to meet requirements,” he said.
However, Taylor warned that “there’s always going to be the risk” of a spill, adding: “We’re not saying you shouldn’t drill at all. The risk has to be minimized to that extent that is reasonable.”
—Gary Park
Friday, December 23, 2011
Shell Announces Huge Oil Spill Off Nigerian Coast, Worst In A Decade - ALASKA in 2012 could be the same? SHOW THE WORLD YOU CAN RESPOND TO AN OIL SPILL - I DARE YOU TO PROVE ME WRONG - SHOW US!
WHY DOESN'T SHELL DEMONSTRATE THEY CAN RESPOND TO AN OIL SPILL IN NIGERIA SO WE KNOW THEY LIKEWISE COULD RESPOND IN ALASKA. IF THEY CANNOT RESPOND IN NIGERIA THEN IT STANDS TO FIGURE THEY ALSO CANNOT RESPOND IN ALASKA AND SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE.
ARE ANY OF THE ALASKA REGULATORS AWAKE UP NORTH - HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY ISSUING PERMITS TO A COMPANY WHICH HAS A TRACK RECORD OF NOT RESPONDING AND CLEANING UP OIL SPILLS IN NIGERIA? THE UNITED NATIONS SAYS NIGERIA WILL REQUIRE A BILLION DOLLARS AND 30 YEARS TO REVERSE THE SHELL OIL SPILL POLLUTION.
WHAT HAS SHELL DEMONSTRATED THAT ALLOWS IT TO ATTEMPT DRILLING IN ALASKA? WHO WILL BE ON-SITE MONITORING WITH AUTHORITY TO SAY "STOP" IF THERE IS A PROBLEM?
Shell has just alerted Nigerian coastal communities that up to 40,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled on Wednesday off the coast of the Niger delta while it was being transferred to a tanker about 120 kilometres off the coast. The spill is likely to be the biggest in a decade.
Satellite images have suggested that the spill is 70 kilometres long and is spread over a total of 923 square kilometres.
The Bonga oil field, where the spill is said to have occurred, and which produces 200,000 barrels a day, has had all production suspended as of Wednesday night, as authorities decide how to move to curb the potentially devastating environmental damage that could now occur.
Nnimmo Bassey, head of Environmental Rights Action, a leading Nigerian human rights group based in Lagos, isn’t so sure we should trust Shell’s estimation of the spill:
Shell says 40,000 barrels were spilled and production was shut but we do not trust them because past incidents show that the company consistently under-reports the amounts and impacts of its carelessness.
We are alerting fisher folks and coastal communities to be on the look out. It just adds to the list of Shell’s environmental atrocities in the Niger delta.
In August, Shell admitted responsibility for two major spills in the Bodo region of the delta that took place in 2008, but it hasn’t yet paid out any compensation to those affected by those spills.
Tony Okonedo, a Shell Nigeria spokesman, issued a standard response:
Early indications show that less than 40 000 barrels of oil have leaked in total. Spill response procedures have been initiated and emergency control and spill risk procedures are up and running.
Shell is likely to face major criticism from this latest debacle because a major UN study said it could take Shell and other oil companies 30 years, and $1 billion to clean other oil spills in Ogoniland, one small part of the oil-rich delta.
[Source: Guardian]
ARE ANY OF THE ALASKA REGULATORS AWAKE UP NORTH - HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY ISSUING PERMITS TO A COMPANY WHICH HAS A TRACK RECORD OF NOT RESPONDING AND CLEANING UP OIL SPILLS IN NIGERIA? THE UNITED NATIONS SAYS NIGERIA WILL REQUIRE A BILLION DOLLARS AND 30 YEARS TO REVERSE THE SHELL OIL SPILL POLLUTION.
WHAT HAS SHELL DEMONSTRATED THAT ALLOWS IT TO ATTEMPT DRILLING IN ALASKA? WHO WILL BE ON-SITE MONITORING WITH AUTHORITY TO SAY "STOP" IF THERE IS A PROBLEM?
Shell has just alerted Nigerian coastal communities that up to 40,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled on Wednesday off the coast of the Niger delta while it was being transferred to a tanker about 120 kilometres off the coast. The spill is likely to be the biggest in a decade.
Satellite images have suggested that the spill is 70 kilometres long and is spread over a total of 923 square kilometres.
The Bonga oil field, where the spill is said to have occurred, and which produces 200,000 barrels a day, has had all production suspended as of Wednesday night, as authorities decide how to move to curb the potentially devastating environmental damage that could now occur.
Nnimmo Bassey, head of Environmental Rights Action, a leading Nigerian human rights group based in Lagos, isn’t so sure we should trust Shell’s estimation of the spill:
Shell says 40,000 barrels were spilled and production was shut but we do not trust them because past incidents show that the company consistently under-reports the amounts and impacts of its carelessness.
We are alerting fisher folks and coastal communities to be on the look out. It just adds to the list of Shell’s environmental atrocities in the Niger delta.
In August, Shell admitted responsibility for two major spills in the Bodo region of the delta that took place in 2008, but it hasn’t yet paid out any compensation to those affected by those spills.
Tony Okonedo, a Shell Nigeria spokesman, issued a standard response:
Early indications show that less than 40 000 barrels of oil have leaked in total. Spill response procedures have been initiated and emergency control and spill risk procedures are up and running.
Shell is likely to face major criticism from this latest debacle because a major UN study said it could take Shell and other oil companies 30 years, and $1 billion to clean other oil spills in Ogoniland, one small part of the oil-rich delta.
[Source: Guardian]
Bob McDonald's top science stories of 2011
By Bob McDonald, Quirks & Quarks
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/quirks-quarks-blog/2011/12/bob-macdonalds-top-science-stories-of-2011.html
This year was another remarkable year in science, with space shuttles retiring and new particles being detected (perhaps). Here is a partial list of the more interesting science stories of 2011.
ENVIRONMENT
1. Fukushima Nuclear Accident/Tsunami
On March 11, following astounding video footage of ships passing over farmers' fields, as the tsunami washed over the Japanese landscape, came news that the nearby nuclear reactor had been compromised. Immediately, news stories recalled Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Fear washed over North America and Europe, as explosions ripped through the reactor buildings. But in fact, no one died from the reactors themselves, and what could have been a major disaster was averted.
Thanks to heroic efforts on the part of the workers at the plant, sea water was poured on the overheated reactor cores and the melting nuclear fuel was prevented from escaping. Radiation that did get out was carried by steam into the atmosphere and water running into the sea, but while it was detectable around the globe, the levels were so low they were less that what we are exposed to naturally.
It will take years to clean up the site, and the accident renewed fear of nuclear power in the public mind, just at a time when many believed the industry was about to experience a renaissance as a clean alternative to fossil fuels.
2. 7 Billion and Counting
On Oct. 31 (an arbitrary date chosen by the UN), world population reached seven thousand million, a number that is hard to fathom. If we all joined hands with our arms outstretched, we would form a line that would circle the Earth about 175 times, or reach all the way to the moon and back about nine times. If everyone on Earth lived to the same level of consumption as Canadians, we would need several more Earths to provide all the food, water and energy. It was a time to take a serious look at our impact on the planet, as we continue to gobble up everything in sight and drive species to extinction at a rate similar to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
To ensure our survival, consumption must come down, which is not happening, and most experts say that people living in developing regions need better access to family planning. But the latter issue is more of a cultural and religious issue than a scientific one.
3. Arctic Retreat
Ice in the Arctic Ocean continues to retreat, with this year's loss greater than it has been in the last 1,450 years. More than half of the polar ice cap has now disappeared.
At the same time, permafrost around the shorelines of the Arctic Ocean is melting, releasing methane gas, which is another greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide.
When the ice completely vanishes during summer, which may happen in less than 30 years, what was formerly white ice will become dark sea water, which absorbs sunlight, prompting further warming. This is good for shipping through the Northwest Passage and drilling for natural gas, but it adds to the overall warming of the planet and related problems for those living further south.
4. Climate Talks in Durban
The United Nations held yet another round of climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, in late November to discuss a follow up to the Kyoto Protocol, which is about to expire. Since that agreement was signed in 1997, overall greenhouse gas emissions among the developed nations have actually dropped. This is mainly due to conservation and green technology efforts in Europe and the collapse of industrial economies in the former Soviet Union.
But it is certainly not because of Canada. Even though we signed and ratified the agreement, we have now officially backed out and our emissions have risen by 17 per cent, more than the U.S. This is mainly due to activities in the oil sands.
On the international scene, Canada is viewed as the bad guy because we are not making efforts to curb our emissions and refuse to sign new international treaties. The good news is that changes are happening at the grass roots level, rather than from the top down.
PHYSICS
5. Faster than Light?
Scientists in Switzerland fired a beam of neutrinos to a receiving lab in Italy, more than 700 kiometres away, and the sub-atomic particles seemed to arrive a few billionths of a second early, suggesting they had traveled faster than the speed of light. If that is true, the longstanding theories of Einstein would be proven wrong, shaking the very foundations of physics.
The scientists themselves admit their measurements could be wrong, even though they have done the experiment twice. They are calling for other labs in the U.S. and Japan to try the same experiment.
If the results match, we could witness a fundamental change in the way we look at the universe, or at the very least, refine our measurements of it. It won't likely lead to time travel. Then again, we could just be wrong. New results should come in the next year.
6. Award for The Dark Side
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of Dark Energy, a mysterious force that is pushing the universe apart.
This is the only force known to work against gravity and it is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. The odd thing is that Dark Energy, along with Dark Matter, make up 95 per cent of the known universe, yet no one has a clue what either of them is.
Interesting that here in the 21st century, when we think we have so much figured out, most of the universe is still unknown to us. Further work at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, which glimpsed the mysterious Higgs Boson, may also discover the nature of Dark Matter.
7. Not the "god Particle"
After half a century of searching for the hypothetical Higgs Boson, scientists at CERN say they got thefirst glimpses of the particle believed to have been responsible for all the mass in the universe.
Proof of the existence of the Higgs particle validates what is called the Standard Model of the universe, describing events at the very first moments of the Big Bang. The Higgs Boson was suggested as a missing piece of the mathematical model. If it is not proven to exist, physicists would have to re-write the theories of how the universe, as we know it, came into being.
SPACE
8. End of an Era
After 30 years and more than 100 flights, the space shuttle program ended with the landing of Atlantis last July. Coincidentally, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the first human in space, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
Almost to underline the point, now that the shuttles are retired, the only way for Americans to fly up to the International Space Station is to hitch rides on Russian Soyuz rockets, their former rivals.
The shuttles accomplished a lot in space, building the Space Station, launching and repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. But they were also hugely expensive and dangerous. Two shuttles were destroyed in accidents killing 14 astronauts. In the end, each launch of a shuttle was costing more than $1 billion. It was time to let them go.
NASA unveiled plans for a new heavy lift rocket, but it won't be ready to fly for years. Now it's up to the Private Sector to take over.
9. Back To Mars and Beyond
While humans are restricted to spaceflight around the Earth, unmanned robotic probes continue to go where no one has gone before. The largest rover ever sent to another planet, Curiosity, was launched to Mars with the goal of looking for signs of life on the Red Planet. It will land next August.
Sadly, an equally ambitious Russian mission to one of the moons of Mars, Phobos, failed to leave Earth orbit and is expected to fall back to Earth in mid-January.
Another probe went beyond Mars to the largest asteroid, named Vesta, revealing a strange-looking round world that is a leftover remnant of the original material that built the planets, including Earth.
And in the opposite direction, a probe named Messenger arrived at Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
ANTHROPOLOGY
10. The Hybrid Human
Geneticists sequenced the genome of a Neanderthal and compared it to that of a human. They discovered that we all carry about 3 per cent of Neanderthal genes, which means that during the time when humans and Neanderthals lived together in Europe, there was a little cross-cultural activity.
The scientists also discovered genes from a previously unknown species of humans, called Denisovans, who migrated south. People living today in Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal Australians carry Denisovan genes. So, the Neanderthals really didn't go extinct, they live on in part of us.
If someone calls you a Neanderthal ... it's true.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
VIDEO - Insane Helicopter Landing in Rough Seas
We don’t know much about this video except:
The helicopter pilot is bad ass and;
It was released by Prism Defence, an Australian-owned company that specializes in ship helicopter integration.
Actually through some research we found out that the video is presumably taken during system testing aboard the HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen, a Royal Danish Navy patrol vessel. Check it out.
The helicopter pilot is bad ass and;
It was released by Prism Defence, an Australian-owned company that specializes in ship helicopter integration.
Actually through some research we found out that the video is presumably taken during system testing aboard the HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen, a Royal Danish Navy patrol vessel. Check it out.
An Urgent Message for HELP - Will you make a difference in time to help?
Visions of the Arctic from Florian Schulz on Vimeo.
In a move that has Alaskan environmentalists increasingly wary, ConocoPhillips and Shell's recent Arctic exploration announcements could renew the oil industry's interest in the region and in its vast oil reserves.
Royal Dutch Shell is a major integrated oil company, and it could by next summer, discover new pockets of oil deposits reviving the oil industry in Alaska. Last week the company had its plan to drill in the Chukchi Sea conditionally approved.
Whether or not ConocoPhillips and Shell can prompt an Arctic oil boom depends on multiple factors.
Richard Ranger, senior policy advisor with the American Petroleum Institute said the API is encouraged by the recent decisions, but that the the industry's interest is currently chilled by both the high of uncertainty inherent with operating in such remote regions, as well as the amount of time needed for a project's permitting.
Shell, for example, acquired its leases in the Chukchi Sea in 2008, but is only getting its permits approved three years later, according to a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management release published last week.
Ranger said interest in Arctic oil has climbed in recent years as industry, government and third party researchers each independently realized the amount of recoverable world-class oil deposits was greater than previously thought. That view, Ranger clarified, has yet to be properly tested with a drill bit.
Depending on how well Shell and ConocoPhillips do in striking black gold, the companies' findings could indeed act as an industry barometer, prompting greater interest and maybe increased permits and drilling, Ranger said.
Other companies could reevaluate their cost-benefit analysis, but risks still associated with dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars on a well that could not lead to oil -- coupled with tight restrictions from permitting agencies -- could dampen the industry's optimism.
"The less optimism, the less certainty, the less valuable the project will be in comparison to other projects [in other areas of the globe] that will offer greater certainty," Ranger said.
Steve Hicks, Executive Director of the Alaska Association of Conservation Districts, said the tightened restrictions placed on the industry by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other regulatory agencies, is personally frustrating.
He said he thinks it makes more sense for oil companies to develop domestic deposits rather than those in foreign countries, and that he personally cannot wait for ConocoPhillips and Shell to start exploring for oil.
"I think it's great, we're a resource state," Hicks said, who added people sometimes invent problems associated with oil exploration in Alaska.
Hicks, whose association sometimes helps conduct surveys for oil companies, said those operating in the U.S. are outfitted with the best equipment in the world, and said he is not worried about oil companies causing environmental damage.
"They are good people, they are good people for the state, they are conscientious," he said. "There is really nothing bad that I can say about them."
But environment groups point outed out that the best available equipment did not prevent the Macondo spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, and some are understandably worried Shell's two oil leaks this week alone provides a glimpse of what could happen in the Arctic after 2012.
Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production company is battling a 40,000 barrel oil leak off the southern coast of Nigeria. The leak likely happened Tuesday while offloading oil from the company's storage vessel to an awaiting tanker, the company states.
That same day, and in the Gulf of Mexico, Shell reported 319 barrels of drilling fluid and oil started leaking from a rig's supporting line, designed to inject synthetic chemicals to facilitate well drilling. Both leaks have been plugged, but in the case of Nigeria, thousands of barrels of crude still threaten the country's coastline.
Despite company assurances, groups like Alaska's Wilderness Society is worried Shell does not have the capability, or the right strategy, to properly clean up a massive oil spill in the Arctic, and the group is also worried there is not enough scientific knowledge available to predict how drilling will affect local ecosystems.
The BOEM is conducting a comprehensive study, but the results won't be published until 2016, four years after Shell intends to drill in Chukchi Sea.
Thomas Jefferson
This is amazing. There are two parts. Be sure to read the 2nd part in RED but the first part in BLUE is important since it sets the basis for understanding the second part in RED …
Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in life and never stopped.
� At 5, began studying under his cousin's tutor.
� At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.
� At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.
� At 16, entered the College of William and Mary.
� At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.
� At 23, started his own law practice.
� At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.
� At 31, wrote the widely circulated "Summary View of the Rights of British America " and retired from his law practice.
� At 32, was a Delegate to the Second Continental Congress.
� At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence
� At 33, took three years to revise Virginia ’s legal code and wrote a Public Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.
� At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia succeeding Patrick Henry.
� At 40, served in Congress for two years.
� At 41, was the American minister to France and negotiated commercial treaties with European nations along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.
� At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.
� At 53, served as Vice President and was elected president of the American Philosophical Society.
� At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions and became the active head of
Republican Party.
� At 57, was elected the third president of the United States
� At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase doubling the nation’s size.
� At 61, was elected to a second term as President.
� At 65, retired to Monticello
� At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.
� At 81, almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia and served as its first president.
� At 83, died on the 50th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence along with John Adams
Thomas Jefferson knew because he himself studied the previous failed attempts at government. He understood actual history, the nature of God, his laws and the nature of man. That happens to be way more than what most understand today. Jefferson really knew his stuff. A voice from the past to lead us in the future:
John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement:
"This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe , we shall become as corrupt asEurope .”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
--Thomas Jefferson
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Please pray for America and please vote for change. Your vote can make a difference - we desperately need IT!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Sail Green 2011 - Harry does boat bottom painting RIGHT
While others focus on what’s wrong with the environment, Cruising World editors choose a different tack for the 2011 Sail Green issue: people engaged in making things right. From our December 2011 issue.
Harry Ruppenicker: His Battleground Is the Boatyard
Harry Ruppenicker has seen a lot of boat bottoms since his days in his boatyard in Cos Cob, Connecticut, when mercury was mixed in paint and he used a bandana to cover his face.
“It was very effective at keeping the bottom clean,” the boatyard owner says. “We didn’t know better.”
Mercury, the stuff that drove Connecticut’s hatters mad and killed World War II submariners, was beloved by sailors for the white gloss it gave paint that looked good when a boat was heeled over. It was still in use in 1961 on Long Island Sound when Ruppenicker opened his yard.
Half a century later, mercury is history, tin is banned, and copper is fixed in the crosshairs. But at Harry’s Marine Repair, now situated in Westbrook, Connecticut, on the Patchogue River, the copper residue is long gone. Five years ago, his boatyard became the first in Connecticut, and perhaps the United States, to stop using copper antifouling paints.
“In 1993 we noticed people sanding bottoms, with dust and paint going over the ground and into the air. I felt it wasn’t healthy for people here, or people working for me, and it made a mess,” Ruppenicker says.
He bought two large sanders that collect 98 percent of the dust, installed filter fabrics to collect residue on the ground, and graded the yard to raise the edges and drain to the middle, where he installed a filter. With more research, he decided that copper, a toxic heavy metal, “was bad,” and he turned to bottom paints made by ePaint, a small Massachusetts company that, with U.S. Navy underwriting, created the first non-copper anti-fouling paint. (See “Phasing Out Copper Bottom Paint.”)
The paints use a variety of pesticides to ward off fouling, including zinc pyrithione, a compound used in dandruff shampoos. They also employ a chemical reaction triggered by sunlight that creates hydrogen peroxide and deters barnacles, according to Mike Goodwin, a senior staff scientist for ePaint.
The result today is that Harry’s boatyard runoff, even though zinc is present, can drain into the river and Long Island Sound without treatment. Under state regulations that took effect at the end of 2010, all Connecticut boatyards must meet Environmental Protection Agency standards for copper runoff, which will require them either to install treatment plants or to haul wash water away.
Harry’s switch away from copper paint also means that he can dredge the channels to his marina without special permits and expense. Tests using living insects placed in the water show that 100 percent of them survive and propagate, says Ruppenicker.
“In fact, we discovered that Harry’s wash water met drinking-water standards,” says ePaint’s Goodwin.
Ruppenicker says he lost only one customer who didn’t want to make the switch. To sweeten his rule, he discounts his ePaint to $165 a gallon, a price that’s lower than some of the more reputable copper paints. “The little bit you make on the paint—it’s cheaper in the long run,” he says.
Working with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, which awarded Harry’s Marine Repair its first Clean Marina Award in 2003, Ruppenicker continues to make innovations. He’s now testing a strainer with microbes “that will eat hydrocarbons and other stuff.”
- Jim Carrier
http://www.cruisingworld.com/how-to/sail-green-2011?page=0,2
Harry Ruppenicker: His Battleground Is the Boatyard
Harry Ruppenicker has seen a lot of boat bottoms since his days in his boatyard in Cos Cob, Connecticut, when mercury was mixed in paint and he used a bandana to cover his face.
“It was very effective at keeping the bottom clean,” the boatyard owner says. “We didn’t know better.”
Mercury, the stuff that drove Connecticut’s hatters mad and killed World War II submariners, was beloved by sailors for the white gloss it gave paint that looked good when a boat was heeled over. It was still in use in 1961 on Long Island Sound when Ruppenicker opened his yard.
Half a century later, mercury is history, tin is banned, and copper is fixed in the crosshairs. But at Harry’s Marine Repair, now situated in Westbrook, Connecticut, on the Patchogue River, the copper residue is long gone. Five years ago, his boatyard became the first in Connecticut, and perhaps the United States, to stop using copper antifouling paints.
“In 1993 we noticed people sanding bottoms, with dust and paint going over the ground and into the air. I felt it wasn’t healthy for people here, or people working for me, and it made a mess,” Ruppenicker says.
He bought two large sanders that collect 98 percent of the dust, installed filter fabrics to collect residue on the ground, and graded the yard to raise the edges and drain to the middle, where he installed a filter. With more research, he decided that copper, a toxic heavy metal, “was bad,” and he turned to bottom paints made by ePaint, a small Massachusetts company that, with U.S. Navy underwriting, created the first non-copper anti-fouling paint. (See “Phasing Out Copper Bottom Paint.”)
The paints use a variety of pesticides to ward off fouling, including zinc pyrithione, a compound used in dandruff shampoos. They also employ a chemical reaction triggered by sunlight that creates hydrogen peroxide and deters barnacles, according to Mike Goodwin, a senior staff scientist for ePaint.
The result today is that Harry’s boatyard runoff, even though zinc is present, can drain into the river and Long Island Sound without treatment. Under state regulations that took effect at the end of 2010, all Connecticut boatyards must meet Environmental Protection Agency standards for copper runoff, which will require them either to install treatment plants or to haul wash water away.
Harry’s switch away from copper paint also means that he can dredge the channels to his marina without special permits and expense. Tests using living insects placed in the water show that 100 percent of them survive and propagate, says Ruppenicker.
“In fact, we discovered that Harry’s wash water met drinking-water standards,” says ePaint’s Goodwin.
Ruppenicker says he lost only one customer who didn’t want to make the switch. To sweeten his rule, he discounts his ePaint to $165 a gallon, a price that’s lower than some of the more reputable copper paints. “The little bit you make on the paint—it’s cheaper in the long run,” he says.
Working with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, which awarded Harry’s Marine Repair its first Clean Marina Award in 2003, Ruppenicker continues to make innovations. He’s now testing a strainer with microbes “that will eat hydrocarbons and other stuff.”
- Jim Carrier
http://www.cruisingworld.com/how-to/sail-green-2011?page=0,2
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Epic battle expected to pit Alaska fishing jobs against sea lion protection
It's nearly guaranteed to be a monumental showdown, the kind Alaska seems to spawn regularly. On Wednesday, a handful of lawyers will volley before a federal judge over whether the U.S. government properly chose to shut down cod and mackerel fisheries in Southwest Alaska, giving the well being of an endangered marine mammal preference over the livelihood of scores of fisherman.
Alaska joined forces with 23 fishing-related coalitions, companies and boats, all of which are headquartered Outside, most in Washington and one in Maine, in order to fight a 2010 decision to clamp down on fishing in areas frequented by a Western Alaska population of Steller sea lions, marine mammals listed since 1997 as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
The state has argued the National Marine Fisheries Service data shows Alaska could lose as much as $83.2 million and as many as 750 fishing-related jobs from the decision. Adding to the tension is a racial argument that the closures disproportionately affect Aleuts, the Alaska Natives who live in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Island regions where the closures are to take effect.
Aleut Corp. and Aleut Enterprises have chimed in to express how the closures will financially harm the communities they represent. Speaking up for the Steller sea lion are at least two environmental groups, which will argue the federal decision had merit and should stand.While the emotional arguments of loss of livelihood and economic hardships are compelling, the nuts and bolts of the lawsuit appear to hinge on whether correct procedures were followed for allowing the state of Alaska to have a say in the evaluation process; and further, whether federal regulators arrived at the correct scientific conclusion about the overall wellness or jeopardy of the Steller sea lion.
The Steller sea lion population that around 1960 sat near 140,000 plummeted in the following three decades to just 30,500, prompting a threatened listing. In later years, marine managers would separate two distinct groups of the sea lions living in the Aleutians and Alaska Peninsula -- a western species and an eastern one -- and declare the western population endangered. In recent years, however, the western population of Steller sea lions has seen steady growth.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell described the population as being 70,000 strong when he announced this lawsuit a year ago. And the state has argued it is wrong to associate cod and mackerel harvests with the slower-than-hoped-for rebound of the western sea lion population.
Both sides will each get about 45 minutes to argue their case. The Aleut Corp. and the environmental groups -- Oceana and Greenpeace, Inc. -- will get about 10 minutes each.
Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com
Monday, December 19, 2011
Who does BC’s coast belong to?
BC Premier Christy Clark. Photo by Ewa Chruscicka.
BC Premier Christy Clark said the west coast "doesn't just belong to British Columbia", but some British Columbians disagree.
"British Columbia's coast does not just belong to British Columbia,” BC Premier Christy Clark said last week. The statement has sparked both environmental and economic discussions about responsibilities and rights to British Columbia’s coast.
“It belongs to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces and it's essential that our ports and our infrastructure all across the west are functioning as well as they possibly can, because that's what allows trade to flow outside our country and that's what puts people to work," Clark said.
She made the controversial comment during a discussion with other provincial leaders from Alberta and Saskatchewan over energy strategy and the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Encyclopedia of Canadian pipelines: Keystone XL and Northern Gateway
Naomi Klein and First Nations leaders unite at anti-pipeline forum
Clark has consistently avoided taking a position on the Northern Gateway project, saying she is waiting for the results of environmental assessments and the upcoming Joint Review Panel hearings to formulate her position.
Other organizations with high stakes in the fight against Northern Gateway, such as the Dogwood Initiative, questioned the notion that other provinces should have a say in risks taken on British Columbians’ territory.
“Our supporters responded strongly to the insinuation that BC's coast belongs just as much to Alberta or Ontario as it does to BC. It's clear that British Columbians don't want their premier to pass the buck — they want her to stand up for their province,” said Dogwood Initiative spokesperson Emma Gilchrist.
“The real question here is who stands to be most affected by an oil spill?” she said.
“If an oil spill happens, it will be British Columbians heading down to their local beaches with shovels and buckets. Yes, this is Canada's coast too, but B.C. stands to lose the most, so the final decision should be made here.”
After Clark's comment appeared in a Vancouver Sun story, the Dogwood Initiative encouraged supporters to “strike back” and vocalize their opinions about Clark’s comment, asking people to write in to the paper in response.
One Victoria-based reader, Rob Delaney, wrote a letter that was published in the Victoria Times Colonist.
“I would like to correct our premier,” he said in his response. “British Columbia's coast belongs to British Columbia and British Columbians. It is not hers to give away.”
Other comments from users on Facebook pages and blogs have also shown passionate reactions to Clark’s remarks.
One blogger from Powell River said, “I don’t believe the BIG OIL Tar Sand lobby should dictate what happens on our coast, I don’t believe Ontario, Quebec or Atlantic Canada should dictate what risk we should take.”
Additional comments made note of the assumption that if BC’s coast belongs to all of Canada, the same should be said of Alberta’s tar sands.
Matt Horne, director of BC energy solutions for the Pembina Institute, agrees with Clark's position that the coasts of BC belong to all of Canada, however. “I would tend to totally agree with the sentiment. I think BC has a responsibility to protect its coast for the rest of Canadians, along with British Columbians," he said.
The Truth Behind the GCCF and the General Frenzy Created by its Mode of Operation Now Revealed on BPClaim.com
People who have suffered loss of income and revenue, or physical injury as a direct result of the BP oil spill are definitely disappointed by the GCCF (Gulf Coast Claims Facility). The majority of them are struggling with denied bp claims or underpayment offers. Those who want to know the true story of the GCCF, what its role should be and how it operates in reality, should visit the following website for more information: www.bpclaim.com
The Gulf Coast Claims Facility is basically an organization which is working under the jurisdiction of the BP. The BP has seen it much more efficient if there was such an organization existent which’s main responsibility is to review the BP claims and then distribute the available funding (more than $20 billion!) to businesses and individuals who were severely affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The problem is that the gccf has been extremely slow in processing these claims. When individuals or businesses are affected by such a tragedy, they definitely need the funding as soon as possible, so that they can get back on track with their life. However, when their files are continuously put off, and when most of them are ignored or blocked, certainly people become outraged.
Even with several legitimate BP claims, it has happened that the gulf coast claims facility center tried to offer underpayment. What does this mean? That if the business owner was left with damages accounting to half a million dollars due to the oil spill, he was actually offered as little as 10% as lump sum. So what several business owners did, was to accept this amount, even though they knew they are underpaid. Out of fear of not receiving anything, they were signing to accept such low amounts as compensation.
The majority of them are saying that the gulf coast claims center either have rejected their claims, or the organization keeps getting in touch with them every 3 months only to ask for more documents, thus delaying the entire process. The professional attorney firms can help people get a fair resolution quickly and efficiently.
Those interested to speed up the bp claims process, should call for immediate assistance at the following number: 1(888) 888-5924; alternatively they can get in contact with the expert attorneys through online contact forms that can be found at www.bpclaim.com
The Gulf Coast Claims Facility is basically an organization which is working under the jurisdiction of the BP. The BP has seen it much more efficient if there was such an organization existent which’s main responsibility is to review the BP claims and then distribute the available funding (more than $20 billion!) to businesses and individuals who were severely affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The problem is that the gccf has been extremely slow in processing these claims. When individuals or businesses are affected by such a tragedy, they definitely need the funding as soon as possible, so that they can get back on track with their life. However, when their files are continuously put off, and when most of them are ignored or blocked, certainly people become outraged.
Even with several legitimate BP claims, it has happened that the gulf coast claims facility center tried to offer underpayment. What does this mean? That if the business owner was left with damages accounting to half a million dollars due to the oil spill, he was actually offered as little as 10% as lump sum. So what several business owners did, was to accept this amount, even though they knew they are underpaid. Out of fear of not receiving anything, they were signing to accept such low amounts as compensation.
The majority of them are saying that the gulf coast claims center either have rejected their claims, or the organization keeps getting in touch with them every 3 months only to ask for more documents, thus delaying the entire process. The professional attorney firms can help people get a fair resolution quickly and efficiently.
Those interested to speed up the bp claims process, should call for immediate assistance at the following number: 1(888) 888-5924; alternatively they can get in contact with the expert attorneys through online contact forms that can be found at www.bpclaim.com
Why Is the FDA Saying It's OK to Eat Seafood 10,000 Times Over the Safe Limit for Dangerous Carcinogens?
Ever since the largest offshore oil spill in history spewed into the Gulf of Mexico last year, independent public health experts have questioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's efforts to effectively protect Americans from consuming contaminated seafood.
Now a recent study by two of the most tenacious non-government scientists reveals that FDA Gulf seafood "safe levels" allowed 100 to 10,000 times more carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in seafood than what is safe. The overarching issue the report addresses is the failure of the FDA's risk assessment to protect those most vulnerable to the effects of these chemicals, such as young children, pregnant women and high-consumption seafood eaters.
In an effort to pinpoint how the FDA decided to set its acceptable levels for PAH contaminants in Gulf seafood, researchers at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which performed the study -- published in the leading peer-reviewed environmental health journal Environmental Health Perspectives -- also scoured documents wrested from the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act.
These include internal emails and unreleased assessments that suggest the FDA not only downplayed the risk of contamination but also that the EPA, and even members of FDA staff, had proposed higher levels of contamination protection, which in the end were ignored.
In vehemently denying the NRDC study's findings, the FDA argues that its chemical risk assessments are inherently biased "on the side of safety" and that setting higher protective health measures for PAHs in Gulf seafood would actually "do more harm than good."
Robert Dickey, director of the FDA's Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, who's taken the lead for the agency in responding to the NRDC report, elaborated in an email to AlterNet, "Overly conservative estimates would lead you [to] remove a great deal of food from our refrigerators and pantries than is needed."
In an interview with AlterNet, the study's lead researcher, NRDC staff scientist Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, said that such a response from the FDA "begs the question of whether or not it was a political versus a scientific decision" because the agency "does not provide scientific evidence" for the claim that being more health protective somehow carries an increased risk of doing harm.
She added, "PAHs in food have been evaluated and standards set in the European Union without jeopardizing anyone's nutrition."
AlterNet confirmed that the FDA indeed has provided no scientific evidence to back up this claim in either its formal response to the NRDC report or in addressing AlterNet's questions.
More broadly, the FDA declined to directly explain the email correspondence the study's researchers obtained in the FOIA request. They reveal that the Environmental Protection Agency, and even members of the FDA's own staff, questioned the FDA's seafood safety risk assessment criteria for protecting the most vulnerable populations, particularly Gulf residents.
Other documents received via the FOIA request show that the FDA considered multiple other potential calculations and criteria where more health protective risk assessments were considered but never followed.
Asked if these documents, along with the NRDC study's findings, belie the FDA's chief claim that their risk assessments are biased "on the side of safety," Dickey responded, "The seafood safety risk assessment was developed in extensive and open collaboration between FDA, EPA, CDC, NOAA, and public health experts and toxicologists from all five Gulf states impacted by the oil spill."
He added, "During that process many factors and calculations were considered before the final version was agreed on by all participants."
http://www.alternet.org/food/153475/why_is_the_fda_saying_it's_ok_to_eat_seafood_10,000_times_over_the_safe_limit_for_dangerous_carcinogens/
Asked if these documents, along with the NRDC study's findings, belie the FDA's chief claim that their risk assessments are biased "on the side of safety," Dickey responded, "The seafood safety risk assessment was developed in extensive and open collaboration between FDA, EPA, CDC, NOAA, and public health experts and toxicologists from all five Gulf states impacted by the oil spill."
He added, "During that process many factors and calculations were considered before the final version was agreed on by all participants."
http://www.alternet.org/food/153475/why_is_the_fda_saying_it's_ok_to_eat_seafood_10,000_times_over_the_safe_limit_for_dangerous_carcinogens/
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