Miscellaneous & Oil Articles
The Hills are Alive, with Trailers
Today's New York Times reports that FEMA trailers have re-appeared in the Gulf as a source of cheap housing for oil spill cleanup workers. Because the trailers were constructed with cheap materials, they have unsafe levels of formaldehyde.
That's not the only place those things have landed. I'm traveling in the Dakotas and the hills on the reservations are dotted with these things. The GSA says they're for "recreational use", but the tribes who received them weren't told that. They made the reasonable assumption that the government wouldn't truck trailers from Texas as vacation homes for some of the poorest people in the US.
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Sunscreen: Friend or Foe?
If it weren't for scientists warning the public decades ago abut ozone-depleting chemicals — and politicians (including Reagan) acting in the national and global interest — the world's beach-going experience might be very different now (see "Lest We Forget Montreal" and "What would Reagan do about climate change?").
Now it's the start of the big beach weekend, and many of us will soon begin slathering on the sunscreen to protect ourselves from harmful rays. But how effective and safe is that sunscreen from your local drugstore? CAP has the answer:
Most of us were told as children to put on sunscreen before we went outside in the summertime. But some studies question how well typical sunscreens work. An Environmental Working Group, or EWG, study in 2009 analyzed 1,796 name-brand sunscreens and found that only 7 percent block both UVA and UVB radiation, remain stable in sunlight, and contain few ingredients with known or suspected health hazards.
The study also claimed that some sunscreen ingredients are absorbed by the blood and linked to toxic effects. These ingredients could release skin-damaging free radicals in sunlight or disrupt hormone systems, and several are strongly linked to allergic reactions, while others may build up in the body or the environment. EWG also blasts the Food and Drug Administration for dragging its feet over establishing safety standards for sunscreens.
A 2006 study from the University of California-Riverside also suggested that certain sunscreen ingredients may cause more free radicals to form. Free radicals disrupt cell functioning and are believed to lead to many cancers.
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Hans Rosling on global population growth
The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).
Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us will have their perspectives shifted by Hans Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the West. In fact, most of the Third World is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did.
What sets Rosling apart isn't just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You've never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling's hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.
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Asian Carp Past Great Lakes Barricade Should Be Smack to the Head
It seems that no amount of concern from environmental groups and fishermen could keep the feared Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. The state of Illinois is set to confirm today that one of the monster invasive species, a Bighead variety, has been caught in Lake Calumet, six miles on the Chicago side of Lake Michigan and past barriers designed to stop them.
It's unclear at this point just how the terrible fish made it this far, but it begs the question, what do we do now?
The blame game is bound to happen first. DNA evidence late last year showed that Asian carp had made it past a Mickey Mouse electric barrier set up by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers in a canal system connecting the Great Lakes to the Illinois River, where the invasive species has already taken over.
Several Great Lakes states called for a temporary closure of Chicago-area locks while more permanent solutions were sought. The request was opposed by the state of Illinois and denied by President Obama, a former U.S. senator from the state. The waters past the barricade were poisoned, and lots of dead fish were found, but just one Asian carp.
Now there's physical evidence that the lakes are infested. But does one fish mean there are more? It's likely.
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Northward-bound bugs studied
'Excellent barometers for environmental change'
Canadian researchers have scattered across the North this summer to study insects not normally found in the region, like wasps and hornets, and figure out how those bugs got to the Arctic in the first place.
Biologist Donna Giberson of the University of Prince Edward Island has set up teams of graduate students in various northern communities to collect insects.
"If you see people swinging butterfly nets in the Arctic this year, this is basically the team that's doing it," Giberson told CBC News on a recent flight from Norman Wells, N.W.T., where one team has been based.
The research is part of the Northern Biodiversity Program, a collaboration between UPEI, the University of Toronto, McGill University and other research institutions across Canada. The project is funded in large part by a national research grant.
Researchers are studying insects as they are "excellent barometers for environmental change due to their abundance and potential for rapid population growth," according to the project's website.
The students are hoping to collect wood wasps and other insects that are not native to northern Canada, but travelled up on annual supply barges or came north in some other way.
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To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery
ORLANDO, Fla. — The frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be here at the testing center of the University of Central Florida.
No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student's speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.
The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot.
Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later.
When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student's real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.
Taylor Ellis, the associate dean who runs the testing center within the business school at Central Florida, the nation's third-largest campus by enrollment, said that cheating had dropped significantly, to 14 suspected incidents out of 64,000 exams administered during the spring semester.
"I will never stop it completely, but I'll find out about it," Mr. Ellis said.
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The age of ethanol
A dysfunctional system may become more so
"AMERICA'S sensible fuel," reads a TV advertisement, while a soothing melody plays in the background. Other ads tout a fuel that promotes peace and is economical, home-produced, clean and renewable. So what is this magic potion? Ethanol, of course. Growth Energy, a lobby group, is spending $2.5m on America's first national television campaign for the stuff. "No beaches have been closed due to ethanol spills," one ad notes. Growth Energy planned the campaign before the BP disaster, but the push could hardly be better timed.
After the oil spill Barack Obama declared that "the time to embrace a clean energy future is now." Biofuels will be part of that future. However, most policymakers agree that the industry must move beyond corn ethanol, which is less efficient than the sugar-derived stuff and pushes food prices upwards. The new Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), which took effect on July 1st, limits conventional ethanol to 15 billion gallons of the annual 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel that must be used for transport by 2022, and the administration has just announced extra funding for algae-based biofuels (see article). But with a viable new biofuel yet to emerge, lobbyists are still pushing to support the old one.
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Oil Spills Raise Arsenic Levels in the Ocean, Says New Research
ScienceDaily (July 5, 2010) — Oil spills can increase levels of toxic arsenic in the ocean, creating an additional long-term threat to the marine ecosystem, according to research published July 2 in the journal Water Research.
Arsenic is a poisonous chemical element found in minerals and it is present in oil. High levels of arsenic in seawater can enable the toxin to enter the food chain. It can disrupt the photosynthesis process in marine plants and increase the chances of genetic alterations that can cause birth defects and behavioural changes in aquatic life. It can also kill animals such as birds that feed on sea creatures affected by arsenic.
In the study, a team from Imperial College London has discovered that oil spills can partially block the ocean's natural filtration system and prevent this from cleaning arsenic out of the seawater. The researchers say their study sheds light on a new toxic threat from the Gulf of Mexico oil leak.
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Congress' Oil Industry "Reforms" = Election-Year Greenwashing
This morning's Washington Post reports on efforts in Congress to strengthen regulation of oil companies.
Two key Senate committees approved legislation Wednesday that would change the way the federal government regulates offshore oil drilling and penalizes companies for oil spills…Both measures passed on bipartisan voice votes. One approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee would raise the civil and criminal penalties for a spill, require more safety equipment redundancies, boost the number of federal safety inspectors and demand additional precautions for deep-water drilling. The other, passed by the Environment and Public Works Committee, would remove oil companies' $75 million liability limit and retroactively remove the liability cap for BP and the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
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U.S. taxpayers paid BP to lease Deepwater Horizon rig
...which was incorporated in a foreign country for the purpose of avoiding the U.S. corporate tax. BP's tax deduction was "more than $225,000 a day"
Transocean, the company that owns the failed Deepwater Horizon rig that caused the Gulf oil spill, used well-known tax havens in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland to lower its U.S. corporate tax rate by almost 15 points. And, as TP reports, due to a break in the U.S. tax code, BP was also allowed to write off the rent it paid to Transocean on its own tax bill, saving it hundreds of thousands of dollars per day:
The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes. At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon — a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.
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Long-Term Fate of Gulf Oil Spill: Computer Simulations Show Oil Reaching Up the Atlantic Coastline and Toward Europe
ScienceDaily (July 6, 2010) The possible spread of the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig over the course of one year was studied in a series of computer simulations by a team of researchers from the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The simulations suggest that the coastlines near the Carolinas, Georgia, and Northern Florida could see the effects of the oil spill as early as October 2010, while the main branch of the subtropical gyre is likely to transport the oil film towards Europe, although strongly diluted.
Eight million buoyant particles were released continuously from April 20 to September 17, 2010, at the location of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The release occurred in ocean flow data from simulations conducted with the high-resolution Ocean General Circulation Model for the Earth Simulator (OFES).
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Gulf awash in 27,000 abandoned wells
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one - not industry, not government - is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.
The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."
Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — eveb though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.
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Tar balls hit Texas, whose governor said the BP disaster was an 'act of god'
Back in May, speaking at trade association supported by BP, Texas Gov. Perry (R) claimed the rig disaster was an 'act of God.' Now the oil has hit his shores, and TP has the story.
Tar balls have now hit every single state on the Gulf Coast, "after a bucket's worth of tar balls hit a Texas beach." The AP reports:
The oil's arrival in Texas was predicted Friday by an analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which gave a 40 percent chance of crude reaching the area.
"It was just a matter of time that some of the oil would find its way to Texas," said Hans Graber, a marine physicist at the University of Miami and co-director of the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.
About five gallons of tar balls were found Saturday on the Bolivar Peninsula, northeast of Galveston, said Capt. Marcus Woodring, the Coast Guard commander for the Houston/Galveston sector. Two gallons were found Sunday on the peninsula and Galveston Island, though tests have not yet confirmed the oil's origin.
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