LiveScience | What Will Happen to Gulf Oil if Bonnie Strikes?
What happens will depend in part on which way the wind blows. Hurricanes move in a counter-clockwise direction and so tend to move water from east to west — the opposite direction from the way the oil has generally been spreading so far. That means a tropical storm or hurricane passing to the west of the oil slick could drive oil to the coast, while one to the east could push oil away from the coast, according to NOAA.
Six weeks. Day 41 43 of Oil Spill. And the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season.
America, if you’re not shocked and scared enough, read this scathing AP editorial in its entirety: After ‘top kill’ fails, a dispiriting summer of oil, anger is ahead for Louisiana. It summarizes the whole situation to date rather nicely, including the fear and burning questions I have:
… Perhaps most alarming of all, 40 days and 40 nights after the Deepwater Horizon blew up and began the underwater deluge, hurricane season is at hand. It brings the horrifying possibility of wind-whipped, oil-soaked waves and water spinning ashore and coating areas much further inland. Imagine Katrina plus oil spill.
… As BP and the government chart the way forward, there remain prominently unanswered questions along the way.
How involved has the Obama administration been, how involved should it have been, and how much control should BP be given for events that are of public interest and happening in public places? Why have BP, scientists and the government been unable to accurately capture how much is actually leaking, the extent of damage and figure out how to fix it? And what can be done now to prevent even more of a disaster from unfolding, and to ensure transparency as decisive steps are taken to fix what’s broken?
No, I am not asking that the Federal Government intervene given that they know Nothing about drilling or even comprehending a bogus exploration plan, much less cleaning up a multi-million-gallon spill like this. Instead I ask over and over again until I’m blue in the face:
1) Why were other companies not given the responsibility of stopping the leak and cleanup weeks ago?
2) Why is Tony Hayward still allowed to run his mouth, adding insult to injury?
With officials now describing this as ‘probably the biggest environmental disaster [the US has] ever faced’, Hayward’s foot-in-mouth moment hasn’t exactly come at a great time. Sympathetic as we are to the pressures of running a huge organisation embroiled in a crisis, the same probably goes for the 11 rig workers who died in the explosion, not to mention all the fisherman who are losing their livelihoods.
3) Will the drilling moratorium add safety precautions that have not already been enacted by other companies in the wake of this disaster? I doubt anything new is required, just following rules and precautions already asked for in the current guidelines.
4) Who is on the new Oil Spill Commission, why and what are their qualifications? Can we get some transparency from government and BP now?
5) Is BP in receivership yet?
This is all something President Obama can make happen now without a geology or mechanical engineering degree or even a (useless) oil czar.
Meanwhile, the BP spill impacts Plaquemines Parish hurricane plans. Have I told you how much I love Billy Nungesser? Is he on the commission?
Update: Someone please jeezus make Tony Hayward stop already. And keep reading The Oil Drum because it’s the only clarity I’ve found over this whole affair in the last few weeks.
Randall at VizWorld noticed that Weather Underground has a new 3D weather radar feature. “They overlay the existing 2D terrain & radar map with a 3d isosurface extracted from the data.” It requires a quick install of the Unity Web Player. (By the way, the Unity game/environment development tool is now available for FREE. Go download now.)
Not to be outdone, weather.com has a new feature, too. Mapperz discovered “the new ‘Future’ button starts moving into a predicted mode using [TruPoint Beta] technology at 15 minute intervals up to 6 hours into the future.” Looks like it may warm up this evening.
I’ve read GOOD magazine online and in print on and off since its inception. Its aim to merge technology with social good appeals to the geek who cares in me. And, yeah, the writers often pose some hair-brained, far-out and grapenuts-crunchy ideas that may never fly but a) all of what you pay in terms of a subscription fee goes to a charity of your choice and b) the Wright brothers, Edison and Einstein were considered hair-brained and far-out in their time. America and the world need more tinkerers, I say.
For the start of this year’s hurricane season, I’d saved this March 2009 proposal by Graeme Wood on protecting New Orleans from hurricanes. Positives: Wood’s heart is in the right place, his socio-political and economic arguments are very sound and the science is not too far off. Negatives: The levees are completely neglected in this discussion, first the government pays for it and then it “[pays] for itself with increased property values from Galveston to Miami” (Southern Louisiana doesn’t need more unaffordable housing) and humans messing with the climate to keep it from messing with us sounds a bit scary to me. Not that we don’t already live in conditioned environments and alter it on a daily basis, but let’s not forget the huge price we pay for that.
Read the article and let me know what you think. And, be warned, don’t go to the comments section. (I foresee a niche market in the maintenance of public sanity and it is called blog comments moderation, or at least a bigot filter.)
Love how you can cross what seems like five climactic zones in the span of 30 miles here, especially in the month of April. In fifteen minutes today, I drove from a warm, sunny afternoon to black clouds to torrential downpour to freezing rain to hail to a drizzle to … this.
When the sun hit the wall of showers, I said, “Rainbow,” and there it was. But, the rainbow that appeared was one beyond my imagination, farther than the dinky iPhone camera was able to capture. With every single color of the spectrum, this full arch grew and grew in saturation, intensity and size to reveal both pots of gold where it hit the earth. How I wished for my SLR and a safe way to pull over and capture the whole amazing sight.
But, this instant was mine. For ten seconds, all was crystal clear, so visceral, so real, until the tears came and blurred the view. The last time I felt like this was when D and I caught the Northern Lights on a crisp, cloudless Wisconsin night. The unexpected and uncontrollable beauty that comes from the harshest sky over acres and acres of farmed earth. This is something about the Midwest I have missed for so long.
Then, the rainbow was gone. And there were blue sky, a long stretch of country highway and me.
Globe4D from Leiden University in the Netherlands
… an interactive, four-dimensional globe. It’s a projection of the Earth’s surface on a physical sphere. It shows the historical movement of the continents as its main feature, but it is also capable of displaying all kinds of other geographical data such as climate changes, plant growth, radiation, rainfall, forest fires, seasons, airplane routes, and more.
Check out the demo! I take it rotating the globe is the 3D component and moving the ring controls the time dimension. What a great way to understand tectonics by seeing all plate motion at once, instead of on one limited map at a time. Wonder if the inputs are static or can be altered in external software for simulations. I’d love to have one, except in English. Paleogeen sounds less like a geologic period and more like geriatric pomade.
Please help some innocent living things by supporting the efforts of The International Bird Rescue Center in locating, rescuing, and cleaning wildlife affected by the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Click on the pelican to donate.
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