Day 1061: Slick Missy
July 23, 2008 - Filed Under energy, environment, new orleans
No snanas or smoking by the riverside for any of you this week.
The stink outside is 419,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil in the Mississippi River as a result of a tanker ramming into an American Commercial Lines Inc. oil barge near the Crescent City Connection at 1:30AM today. From the T-P:
… State Department of Environmental Quality officials warned the unrefined, tar-like # 6 fuel oil is so thick that it could sink, complicating the cleanup efforts. Therefore, the fuel oil won’t simply evaporate off the surface, which means workers will try to remove it before it starts to sink.
“This is not our first rodeo; we’ve seen spills before,” said Roland Guidry of the Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office.
CNN reports on the spill:
However, the spill is much smaller than the ones that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Mississippi and nearby waterways.
But, Bobby Jindal claims Katrina caused no oil spills. I’m confused.
Day 1045: Aging Infrastructure + Stormy Weather =
July 7, 2008 - Filed Under energy, environment, louisiana
2TheAdvocate.com | Louisiana often leads U.S. oil spill list (HT, NolaDishu)
… Aging infrastructure and the volume of oil either produced or moved through Louisiana is part of the reason the state saw an average 1,500 reported oil spills a year between 1991 through 2004. That’s about four reported oil spills a day, most of which go unnoticed by the public.
Between 1991 and 2004, reported oil spills in Louisiana involved between 91,000 gallons and 701,000 gallons a year. In percentages, Louisiana accounted for between 5.8 percent and 53.6 percent of the reported oil spill volume in the United States, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office. Those are the spills reported in state waters and don’t account for reported spills in federal waters. In Louisiana, federal waters begin three miles from the coast.
… Another contributing factor to oil spills is coastal erosion. In Louisiana, 22 square miles of the coastline are lost to erosion each year. As the land is lost, oil pipelines, old oil equipment and some old oil waste pits become exposed, he said. “Every time there’s a storm, we have leaks,” [Roland Guidry, oil spill coordinator with the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office] said.
… During hurricanes Katrina and Rita, numerous large and small oil spills occurred along the coast. A preliminary count from the two storms is 464, but [Karolien Debusschere, deputy coordinator with the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office] cautioned that those report numbers remain under review and could change.
… the spills ranged from tiny to 90,000 barrels. “It was worse (than expected.) We didn’t expect that kind of surge,” Guidry said of Hurricane Katrina. The storm surge moved tanks with tens of thousands of barrels of oil and floated them away, he said. “That’s power. That’s power,” he said.
… “Louisiana, they have their oil spill response down pretty well,” [Dean Blanchard, habitat enhancement coordinator with the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program in Thibodaux] said. “They clean up efficiently and pretty quickly.” Blanchard said the office doesn’t get calls from the public concerned about oil spills.
… But that could change, [Jill Mastrototaro, Sierra Club senior regional representative for the northern Gulf of Mexico] said.
Day 1040: WALL-E
July 2, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, environment, movies/tv
What did you think the right would say about Pixar’s WALL-E?
I’ll never understand why resource parsimony cannot be a tenet of conservatism. It’s ok to mine the earth, create waste and expend energy as long as we do it in moderation. If we want ourselves and our children to live long, healthy lives with a respect for the fact that the earth is limited in what it can make and handle and that the waste has to go somewhere on this planet, why is this then an evil, liberal agenda and not a human agenda? Waste bothers me (even and especially when I create it) because I measure capitalism in efficiency and waste is not efficient. If the point is to make money now, irreducible excess and the future be damned, it will come to bite you in the butt in this lifetime, in the form of increasing pollution, crime and disease and decreasing health and quality of life. What’s the roadblock to comprehension here?
It all became clear to me on reading this post at the Culture War Blog. You see, eco-friendly movies will cause mindless drones like us to put environment over humanity which will then lead to “the devaluing of human life and the worship of creation rather than the Creator.” Yeah, ok then. Let’s just ignore that crucial fact that the environment includes humans and ruining ourselves makes us a sad lot of worshippers of the Creator. “I’ll go further and bet you a hundred bucks” that logic wasn’t the aim here.
Moving along. Despite that he dislikes the movie for its eco-friendly theme and will not purchase WALL-E products specifically and not Disney junk in its entirety, Greg Pollowitz over at National Review makes a good point.
All this from mega-company Disney, who wants us to buy WALL-E kitsch for our kids that are manufactured in China at environment-destroying factories and packed in plastic that will take hundreds of year to biodegrade in our landfills.
And so it goes.
* SPOILERS AHEAD *
The movie had me at Hello, Dolly! As dear, departed friend, computer artist and the best professor ever, George Cramer, always said, “Animation without a compelling story is a waste of pixels.” All the way from the rendering of grit and Soderbergh-esque lighting of WALL-E’s earth to the robot’s expressions, from the boundless wonder that WALL-E was allowed to express by his creators to his dance in the ether with Eva, the film was joyous and full of awe, reflecting WALL-E’s innocence and kind nature. I admit doubts. The kitschy, anthropomorphic love affair between two robots troubled me through a large part of the film until I realized that, 700 years in the future, artificial intelligence can be as intelligent and expressive as it wants to be. If HAL is a murderous paranoiac in a projected 2001, why not a robot who dances with a hubcap as a hat and who seeks true love in 2708?
Go watch WALL-E. The film succeeded in making me uncomfortable about how much junk we collect and dump out over the course of a lifetime, but also did not force me to disavow all plastic, shun my car and not get Chinese food in to-go containers after the final credits rolled. Just go watch the film for what it is.
Day 976: On Barry And Houck
April 30, 2008 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, environment, geology, louisiana, new orleans, recovery
Each time someone asks why protecting New Orleans and the Louisiana coastline is America’s responsibility, I wonder what a stupid question that is. We are Americans and the providers of so much to this country, culturally and economically. Was 9/11 New York’s or D.C.’s problem? Of course not, what a question, so why are New Orleans and Louisiana constantly in the position of explaining themselves? This past week, John Barry, author of Rising Tide, and Oliver Houck, local environmental lawyer, professor and activist, have each written a piece on why it is an American duty to save New Orleans and the Louisiana coast. Please read both articles in full before returning to this post.
LA Times: Who Should Pay To Protect New Orleans?
Oliver Houck: When Bad Neighbors Spoil Good Fishing
The question is not Can America Save New Orleans? It’s What Have You Been Doing All This Time? Moreover, it’s a shame that almost three years after Katrina/Flood, we still need this level of advocacy. However, in so doing, let us not stand accused of the same provincialism and lack of analysis of which some other Americans are guilty.
Both articles are problematic in that they do not take into account that damming and agricultural discharge from the north are a result of necessary farming. The Midwest is America’s breadbasket - just as we create and convey seafood and petroleum products to the north, Midwesterners make and give us meat, grain (corn, wheat, anyone?) and dairy, with severe environmental stresses to their own soil and waterways that are then sent to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi. Where else is the waste going to go but downhill, given the way our midcontinental drainage currently works? Wanting to sue the Midwest for sending down agricutural effluvium is like telling the oil refining industry downstream not to flare or spew other chemicals or the rest of America will take you to court for polluting the air. Those upstream and downstream of the Mississippi River are, pardon the pun, in the same boat when it comes to self-pollution, spreading the pollution and creating products that the other party and the rest of America needs. We suffer, but we enjoy the fruits of each other’s sacrifices as well.
The patch of the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans isn’t called Cancer Alley because of Midwestern agricultural effluents alone. Also, how does an area host pipelines, refineries and chemical plants as a basic part of its economy and expect to get to zero levels of toxins? Why not threaten to take every single one of these industries to court, too? It’s easy to first throw angry, culturally-loaded words at nameless fellow citizens, but not display the same ire to the companies and governmental bodies that are also equally as culpable.
Not a big fan of dams, I’m all for breaking most of them down starting with the headwaters of the Mississippi. But, how about letting the river flow where it should - into the Atchafalaya - instead of constraining it to its current course to keep the Port of New Orleans alive? Let’s face it, a lot of the problems that we currently experience are very much local- and state-made.
Again, thanks so much to John Barry and Oliver Houck for keeping us on the radar screen and so effectively. We are all Americans, like it or not, as we can and do offer to and learn from one another. Anger is one thing, goodwill is another, but the growing and misinformed American Us-Versus-Them mentality is not going to get any of us anywhere.
Day 967: Sinkholes At “Former” Ninth Ward Superfund Site
April 21, 2008 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, city planning, environment, government, new orleans, recovery
Which up until 1994 was the site of an elementary school and surrounding community that were initially put there by the Housing Authority of New Orleans and the Desire Community Housing Corporation.
NO City Business: Superfund dilemma pollutes school master plan
The Environmental Protection Agency maintains its cleanup from 1994 to 2000 has made the former site of Moton Elementary School safe … The EPA asserts a 3-foot deep layer of topsoil placed on the property prevents buried toxic contaminants from surfacing.
… 6-foot deep holes alongside the building are a cause for alarm, but [EPA spokesman Dave Bary] said no toxins have been found at the site since its Superfund status was removed.
Sarah Elise Lewis is quoted in the above article and on the case. She has video-documented the sinkholes, which I urge you to watch in full for more details on the top soil and subsidence.
… The breaches of the levees could have provided a rare opportunity to try to make right the mistakes of the past in this neighborhood, built on a toxic landfill. Placing a moratorium on building permits, offering homeowners’ equitable buyout programs and assistance in moving to safer areas. Returning the area to its natural state. All could have been done with some foresight. Instead homeowners are moving back into environmentally compromised homes and the school sits unsecured and full of furnishings.
and visits the site periodically.
I went back to Moton yesterday to take a few pictures … And so I am angry. Not that the school is ungutted, unsecured, and still full of its contents nearly three years after Katrina, but because a neighborhood was ever built there in the first place.
Besides the possible exhumation of untreated contaminants from a shallow grave, there is another glaring threat: the sinkholes themselves, which suggests the ground in the area is structurally unsound to build upon. Six feet is enough to instigate building collapse. Nothing should be rebuilt in this area, especially not schools and homes.
These are the things a RECOVERY school district, a RECOVERY czar and a RECOVERY-oriented city government ought to have been able to achieve consensus and make progress on by now.
Day 960: Of Interest
April 14, 2008 - Filed Under environment, government, louisiana, movies/tv, new orleans, recovery
* NYTimes: Agency Is Under Pressure to Develop Disaster Housing
Isn’t there a solution somewhere between “flimsy little white boxes [which] are unpleasant to live in and tainted with toxic formaldehyde fumes” and “mansion”-like Mississippi Cottages that “are colored like Easter eggs — rose-hip pink, malted mint, cloudless blue?” As long as FEMA is flailing, in return for my tax money, I demand expedition khaki. “Too nice,” my hind.
* Gambit Online: Big Oil’s Rosy Shades
The largest challenge facing the industry, [Chris John, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association] told lawmakers, involves workforce development — a top priority for Gov. Bobby Jindal. “We are going to need hundreds of thousands of people in the near future trained in a certain way,” John says, “from computers to engineers to roughnecks — the whole range.” Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, gave lawmakers a rosy picture, saying historic rig counts in northern Louisiana will continue to grow at astonishing rates with new discoveries, and that Gulf drilling is about to rebound. He says the Gulf rig count has fallen because it’s the “most expensive place to drill in the world.”
Never mind where the aforementioned workforce and rigs are going to come from given fiscal reality, does this mean I am now a computer? Awesome!
* All corporate bankruptcy are belong to us.
* Now watching America: The Wright Way in New Orleans. From the show’s website, “Ian Wright dives right into the flavors of New Orleans on April 14. Stops include the Blue Nile, Po’ Boys and Beignet’s [sic] at Cafe Du Monde.” And the Lower Ninth, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop and Rock ‘n’ Bowl from the looks of it. The woman interviewed at Rock ‘n’ Bowl must also be on FEMA crack as she told Wright that the lanes warped from the whole building being flooded. I was under the impression the upstairs was untouched by the floodwaters. At any rate, back to Ian Wright exploring the wa’ers and baaah-yews in and around Nyu Orleenz.
Day 941: Shell Oil President On Charlie Rose
March 25, 2008 - Filed Under energy, environment, government, movies/tv, science & technology
Guess it’s not cartoon, Food Network and UFO Hunters night at Casa M&D. Bush’s War on PBS Frontline is over. On to John Hofmeister, recently-retired president of Shell Oil, on Charlie Rose.
Right off the bat, Hofmeister expressed two sentiments that strike me as surprising/refreshing coming out of the mouth of an oil company executive: America has not made oil parsimony a matter of national pride. Additionally, it is the responsibility of federal, state and local governments to slap tariffs on energy abusers. As for the latter comment, let me assure you how thrilled I am not discovering hydrocarbon reservoirs that will fuel, for example, single-driver Hummers and F-350s that have never been off-road, much less over a pebble.
The rest of the program is a predictable dance; Charlie Rose conducts the interview from the perspective of the concerned environmentalist, while Hofmeister is an experienced oil-company spokesman. Following are interesting comments to ponder:
- Hofmeister points out that, in terms of positioning Shell for the future, Shell is very much an oil company, but underpinning this is a technology company, which makes 1, 5, 10, 25, 100 year outlooks. True that, I could write volumes about Shell’s and Chevron’s technological wealth, which resides mainly in the heads of their scientists and engineers. A real tragedy is that hiring did not keep up during the oil bust of the late 1980s and many of these folks will reach retirement age in the next few years. Oil companies’ intellectual assets have already begun to leave taking all that brilliance with them. Along with universities graduating increasingly less petroleum technologists, you could say that the oil industry faces a minor resourcing crunch.
- “Americans use 10,000 gallons of oil per second, not a minute, a second.”
- I’ve noticed that a number of disparate folks, from Herr Doktor Brother to Shell executives, place an immense amount of faith in nanotechnology as the wave of the future, as soon as ten years from now.
- “Politics is the root of the lack of progress. And the image of the oil industry has not helped.” This statement led into the need for a national energy security policy. Immediately, I questioned if this is a policy that involves oil exclusively.
- “We’re not climatologists, but action is needed [on global warming].”
- “We’re for reducing emissions by increasing miles per gallon [through hybrid vehicles, hydrogen cells, etc.]”
As an oil industry geophysicist, the solution as I see it is not in world governments making laws and in Shell and other oil companies enacting resolutions and initiating research for a less-hydrocarbon-dependent future. While these are good first steps, the real answer lies in the combination of consumer ownership of the problem, unfettered research and law enforcement.
Day 924: Dichotomy
March 8, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, energy, environment, photographs
Found on internet. Artist unknown.
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