Education, Health and Oil Spill articles
Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover
Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. At TEDxNYED, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think.
Read More...
Health risk of wind turbines debated
Opponents say wind farms cause sleep disorders
Both sides in the wind farm debate say health and safety evidence is on their side.
A group of Brown County residents working to stop the wind farm proposed for the southern part of the county cites reports from the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health that suggest wind turbines located too close to homes or schools cause negative health impacts.
"It is my opinion as a physician that the best evidence supports that building large wind energy turbines in close proximity to humans has a negative impact on the health," wrote Dr. Herbert Coussons, a Wrightstown resident and Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy board member.
The wind farm proposal could cause sleep disorders, he said.
But the Chicago-based company seeking to build 100 wind turbines in four southern Brown County communities says that argument is wrong.
Read More...
Many Scientists Believe That Toxic Dispersants Could Be More Dangerous Than The Oil Itself
All hands are on deck to stop the oil gushing out of the Gulf of Mexico and clean up the millions of gallons of oil that now pollute it. Eleven workers lost their lives in the explosion of rig. In addition to this horrible loss of life, there may an additional, emerging public health emergency from this disaster that must not be overlooked.
Many of the human health problems evolving from the BP oil disaster are insidious and unknown. The effects of the oil are the most pressing and most obvious. This is mostly a risk for those living near the coast, and workers cleaning up oil as it washes ashore. But the effects from exposure to the dispersants BP is using to "clean up" oil also pose a serious health threat. In fact, some believe the chemical toxicity of what's in the dispersant could be more dangerous than the oil itself.
Read More...
Household Detergents, Shampoos May Form Harmful Substance in Wastewater
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2010) - Scientists are reporting evidence that certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other household cleaning agents may be a source of precursor materials for formation of a suspected cancer-causing contaminant in water supplies that receive water from sewage treatment plants. The study sheds new light on possible environmental sources of this poorly understood water contaminant, called NDMA, which is of ongoing concern to health officials.
Their study is in the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.
William Mitch and colleagues note that scientists have known that NDMA and other nitrosamines can form in small amounts during the disinfection of wastewater and water with chloramine. Although nitrosamines are found in a wide variety of sources -- including processed meats and tobacco smoke -- scientists know little about their precursors in water. Past studies with cosmetics have found that substances called quaternary amines, which are also ingredients in household cleaning agents, may play a role in the formation of nitrosamines.
Read More...
Sex & Drugs & the Spill
"Obama's Katrina": that was the line from some pundits and news sources, as they tried to blame the current administration for the gulf oil spill. It was nonsense, of course. An Associated Press review of the Obama administration's actions and statements as the disaster unfolded found "little resemblance" to the shambolic response to Katrina - and there has been nothing like those awful days when everyone in the world except the Bush inner circle seemed aware of the human catastrophe in New Orleans.
Yet there is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill - namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.
The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But it's already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions, and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such precautions were taken.
Read More...
BP refuses EPA order to switch to less-toxic oil dispersant
BP has rebuffed demands from government officials and environmentalists to use a less-toxic dispersant to break up the oil from its massive offshore spill, saying that the chemical product it is now using continues to be "the best option for subsea application."
On Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the London-based company 72 hours to replace the dispersant Corexit 9500 or to describe in detail why other dispersants fail to meet environmental standards.
The agency on Saturday released a 12-page document from BP, representing only a portion of the company's full response. Along with several dispersant manufacturers, BP claimed that releasing its full evaluation of alternatives would violate its legal right to keep confidential business information private.
But in a strongly worded retort, the EPA said that it was "evaluating all legal options" to force BP to release the remaining information "so Americans can get a full picture of the potential environmental impact of these alternative dispersants."
Read More...
Bad cement jobs plague offshore rigs
The tricky process of sealing an offshore oil well with cement - suspected as a major contributor to the Gulf of Mexico disaster - has failed dozens of times in the past, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Yet federal regulators give drillers a free hand in this crucial safety step - another example of lax regulation regarding events leading up to the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Federal regulators don't regulate what type of cement is used, leaving it up to oil and gas companies. The drillers are urged to simply follow guidelines of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.
Far more stringent federal and state standards and controls exist on cement work for roads, bridges and buildings.
While the chain of failures on Deepwater Horizon is under investigation, rig owner Transocean has singled out cement work as one likely fundamental cause of the blowout.
Even before Transocean pointed to cementing, independent experts suspected it partly because faulty cement work - either badly mixed or poorly placed against well walls - is so prevalent at offshore wells.
An AP review of federal accident and incident reports on offshore wells shows that the cementing process has been implicated at least 34 times since 1978. Many of the reports, available from the U.S. Minerals Management Service that regulates offshore wells, identify the cause simply as "poor cement job."
Read More...
Lessons from the Exxon Valdez: Oil Spills Shatter Relationships and Communities
People who rely on the sea face long-term social and psychological damage after the Gulf spill
In 1989, five months after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, sociologist J. Steven Picou arrived in the fishing village of Cordova, Alaska (population 2,450), to document the human toll that resulted from 11 million gallons of oil poisoning the ecosystem.
Picou and his colleagues were underfunded and unprepared, wearing cheap plastic ponchos that were no match for the region's torrential rains and subsisting on canned wieners and beans. But their studies of the community in the aftermath of the oil spill revealed lives shattered and a town torn apart by social and psychological damage that lasted for two decades.
Today Picou is a professor at Southern Alabama University and one of the world's leading experts on the social ramifications of oil spills -- something his neighbors in Orange Beach, Alabama, could soon come to experience for themselves. He lives 300 yards from the Gulf of Mexico, potentially in the path of oil gushing from the sea floor following last month's explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.
As he and his home prepare for the possibility of a disaster rivaling the one he studied in Cordova, what Picou learned in Alaska gives his neighbors fair reason to worry, but it could also provide them with tools to cope and perhaps avoid some of the worst of what could soon befall them.
Read More...
Read More...
Read the Govt's Report Blasting Drilling Regulators on Ethics, Drugs and Porn
When news of the Gulf oil spill first broke, we wondered if previously reported problems [1] at the Minerals Management Service, the agency that regulates offshore drilling, extended to the Gulf.
The Department of the Interior's Office of the Inspector General released a report [2] this morning indicating as much. At one Gulf Coast office of MMS, agency officials attended sporting events [3] on the dime of oil companies, stored porn [4] on company computers, used cocaine and crystal meth [4], and falsified inspection reports [5]. (The above links go directly to the relevant pages in the report [2], thanks to our ever-handy document viewer.)
The ethical violations described in the IG report occurred between 2000 and 2008, around the same time as another sex, drugs and royalty scandal [6] at the agency.
Read More...
Another ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge
In its May 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report, ExxonMobil promised:
In 2008, we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.
Bullshit.
Okay, you're not shocked. Still, it is worth publicizing their deceipt, as the UK's Guardian did:
ExxonMobil continuing to fund climate denial groups, records show
The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
Read More...
Karl Rove: Throw Me In Jail!
Karl Rove being hypocritical and disingenuous is pretty run-of-the-mill stuff by now. But occasionally, the irony rises up to hilarious territory, such as here, when he inadvertently gets himself into some trouble. Here's Rove last night on the so-called Sestak-gate:
Somebody violated the law! … There's a third part of the code [that may have been violated]. 18 U.S.C. 595, which prohibits a federal official from interfering – a government employee – with the nomination or election for office. … Joe Sestak said somebody offered him a job! That's a violation of the law.
Here's what 18 U.S.C. § 595 says:
[If a federal employee] uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
Read More...
MMS MANAGES TO LOOK EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS
That the Minerals Management Service, the agency within the Interior Department responsible for offshore drilling, was farcical during the Bush/Cheney era isn't exactly a new revelation. MMS became one of the most corrupt government agencies in American history, embracing an anything-goes atmosphere that led to literally Caligula-like corruption and debauchery -- including federal officials trading cocaine and sex for lucrative oil contracts.
But as the BP oil spill disaster gets worse every day, and scrutiny of the scandal-plagued agency intensifies, new details make the Minerals Management Service look even more ridiculous.
Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil - and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general's report to be released this week. [...]
The report includes other examples of troubling behavior discovered by investigators. In mid-2008, a minerals agency employee conducted four inspections on drilling platforms when he was also negotiating a job with the drilling company, a cover letter to the report said.
Read More...
Computer Model for Locating and Forecasting Sunken Oil Following Spills
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2010) - A team of researchers at the University of Miami (UM) has developed a computer model for finding and projecting in time sunken oil masses on the bottom of bays, after an oil spill. The unique model can be used in oil spill planning, response, and recovery applications.
"Sunken oil is difficult to 'see' because sensing techniques show only a small space at a point in time. Moreover, the oil may re-suspend and sink, with changes in salinity, sediment load, and temperature, making fate and transport models difficult to deploy and adjust," says James Englehardt, UM professor of environmental engineering in the College of Engineering and team leader for the project. "For these reasons, we have developed a unique approach to the problem, bridging sampling plan techniques with pollutant transport modeling, to create models of sunken oil.
The model was developed for the Emergency Response Division of NOAA/NOS/OR&R (NOAA's Ocean Service Office of Response and Restoration), in Seattle, and the project was funded by the Coastal Response Research Center, University of New Hampshire.
Read More...
DISASTER IN THE GULF
Experts have their doubts on well's design
The seeds of destruction for the Deepwater Horizon rig may have been planted well before its drill bits started churning into the earth a mile under the sea.
Engineering plans for the thousands of feet of pipes and joints, which BP filed with federal regulators prior to drilling, made the well particularly susceptible to a major accident, a number of industry experts say. The design left an unobstructed path for highly pressurized natural gas to reach the wellhead should safety systems fail.
One of those systems, the cement pumped between sections of pipe to seal them off from oil and gas, was far from robust, according to testimony and documents. Some tests to assure the integrity of the cement showed mixed results, while another test was simply skipped.
Gene Beck, a petroleum engineer and well expert who teaches at Texas A&M University, said a well must be designed to keep oil and gas contained in the proper well infrastructure.
"If you believe you can isolate the hydrocarbons, this well design can work," he said, noting it's used in other wells. "But that premise is pretty weak."
Given the complexity of the reservoir being drilled, the design chosen by BP and approved by federal regulators should have been changed, other observers say.
Read More...
Making money on an oil disaster
Will BP take responsibility, or squeeze the tragedy for profits the way Exxon did?
ExxonMobil convened its annual shareholders meeting in Dallas this week as the magnitude of the ongoing BP oil disaster grows. This is a reminder that oil companies need to be held accountable for their actions-both while the oil gushes from the ocean floor and 20 years after the spill. The Exxon Valdez oil accident that slimed Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989 is a chilling reminder of the need for government oversight and corporate accountability.
Exxon and BP's broken record
Many would assume that BP-the company responsible for the Gulf Coast disaster-will cover the entire cost of cleanup. But we learned from the Exxon Valdez spill that the reality is very different:
The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, which eventually contaminated approximately 1,300 miles of shoreline. The total costs of Exxon Valdez, including both cleanup and also "fines, penalties and claims settlements," ran as much as $7 billion. Cleanup of the affected region alone cost at least $2.5 billion, and much oil remains.
Yet Exxon made high profits even in the aftermath of the most expensive oil spill in history. They made $3.8 billion profit in 1989 and $5 billion in 1990. And this occurred while Exxon disputed cleanup costs nearly every step of the way.
Read More...
Did BP's Acts to Save Time and Money Set the Stage for the Gulf Disaster?
With the Deepwater Horizon rig six weeks behind schedule [1] and millions over budget, BP made a number of decisions with the Gulf well that saved money, saved time, and set the stage for the disaster [2], according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.
Weeks ago, in Congressional hearings that President Obama called a "ridiculous spectacle [3]," BP blamed the failed blowout preventer [4] owned by Transocean, and Transocean blamed the cementing process performed by Halliburton [4].
But according to the Journal article, BP made several cost-cutting and time-saving decisions in its choice of well design, its preparation for cementing, its testing of the well after the cementing process was complete, and its decision to proceed with a risky method of finishing the well even after a pressure test revealed signs of "a very large abnormality," as described by a BP investigator's findings in a Congressional memo released earlier this week [5].
Read More...