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5. Oncoming Energy Issues

Feb-10-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Like many others, I’ve been puzzled as to why there has been such intense denial to the obvious and proven fact of man-made climate change. In a great article Bill McKibbon makes the answer clear. Because to stop using oil would cause massive economic dislocation to oil companies. This is an article worth reading; and the January image of our planet, centred on snow-free north America is pretty telling. The second piece explores the economics further, the 3rd looks at the crisis renewables face, and we end with a Big Picture photo feature on coal. Lovely photos; depressing scenarios.

* The Great Carbon BubbleBill McKibbon NationofChange

We have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4th, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds….As Jeff Masters, the web’s most widely read meteorologist, explains, “The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s….Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids.”

In the face of such data — statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet — you’d think we’d already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we’re witnessing an all-out effort to… deny there’s a problem.

And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by “16 scientists and engineers” headlined “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite. It’s no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial…

* The Big Choice Capital Institute

Barring a miracle technology advance in the next decade (keep working brilliant scientists and entrepreneurs), if we want to avoid civilization-transforming and global security threatening climate change, we must absorb a global security threatening $20 trillion write off (that’s 40 percent of global GDP) into our already stressed global economy. Even if gradually spread over a decade or more, with partial offsetting value creation in sustainable energy industries, this is an unprecedented challenge.

* Rare Minerals Dearth Threatens Global Renewables Industry Guardian

Shortages of a handful of rare minerals could slow the future growth of the burgeoning renewable energy industries, and affect countries’ chances of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, business leaders were told at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.

Last year, prices of many scarce minerals exploded, rising as much as 10 times over 2010 levels before dropping back, said PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Terbium, yttrium, dysprosium, europium and neodymium are widely used in the manufacture of wind turbines, solar panels, electric car batteries and energy-efficient lightbulbs. But because these “rare earths” are mined almost exclusively in China, it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to source them in the required quantities.

In a survey of some of the largest clean energy manufacturers, 78% told PwC said they were already experiencing instability of supply of rare metals, and most said they did not expect shortages to ease for at least five years. Currently, 95% of the rare earth minerals needed by clean tech industries come from China which has set strict export quotas. Last year China reserved most for its own for its domestic wind, solar and battery industries, shifting costs to the US and Europe which do not mine any of the minerals.

* Coal The Big Picture

6. Enemies of the (Canadian) State

Jan-27-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Two examples of how the Canadian Government™ (a registered trade-mark of the Conservative Party of Canada) is demonizing anyone who opposes their policies. This is wrong on so many levels… but you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t agree. There are two links through which you can share your views with the government on this policy.

* The Man Who Crushed the Keystone XL Pipeline Boston Globe

He certainly has impeccable timing. From “stop coal” protests to the Occupy encampments, something stirred in America late last year, and McKibben sensed it. “He has caught the wind of the environmental movement and will help the movement regain its footing,” says John Adams, cofounder of the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council and recipient of the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom. “He is soon to be known – if he isn’t already – as one of the top environmental leaders in the country.” Or, as Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune puts it: “He hasn’t quite broken through to the world of US Weekly and Teen Beat, but give him time. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few years from now my daughter has posters of Bill McKibben up on the wall.”

It might not even take that long. Four days after the Keystone protest, Barack Obama postponed a decision on the pipeline until 2013. McKibben promptly declared the pipeline dead, tweeting, “a done deal has come spectacularly undone!”..McKibben and his Keystone protests put a finger in this one particular dike, at least temporarily, and got an environmental cause on the Colbert Report. And that was just the beginning. America, it seems, is about to have a McKibben Moment.

* Why I’m Worried about my trip to Canada. Bill McKibbon 350.org

I’ve been visiting Canada all my life, but I’m a little worried about my upcoming trip.

In late March I’m supposed to come to Vancouver to give a couple of talks. But now I read that Joe Oliver, your country’s Minister of Natural Resources, is condemning “environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block” Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to the Pacific.

I think he’s talking about people like me.

So I’m pushing back a bit, and I need your help. Let’s tell Joe Oliver that preventing the combustion of the second-largest pool of carbon on the planet isn’t “radical” — it’s exactly the opposite. It’s rational. It’s responsible. And it’s just plain right.

Click here to sign the petition to Prime Minister Harper and Joe Oliver, and help show that Canadians everywhere are committed to stopping the oil sands.

* Prime Minister’s Office Tried to Silence Enbridge Gateway Pipeline Critic (Thanks Kyla)

The Prime Minister’s Office tried to cut funding of a registered intervenor in the Enbridge Pipeline Review, calling ForestEthics Canada an, “Enemy of the Government of Canada” and an, “Enemy of the People of Canada”, according to allegations detailed in a sworn affidavit, dated January 23, 2012.

Sworn by Andrew Frank, former Senior Communications Manager with ForestEthics Canada, and an instructor in the Environmental Protection Technology program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the affidavit cites three senior managers with Tides Canada and ForestEthics, as well as personal email correspondence.

“Today, I am taking the extraordinary step of risking my career, my reputation and my personal friendships, to act as a whistleblower and expose the undemocratic and potentially illegal pressure the Harper government has apparently applied to silence critics of the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker/pipeline plan,” says Frank. “Canadian citizens will be shocked to learn that their own government is labelling critics of the Enbridge oil tanker/pipeline project, ‘Enemies of the Government of Canada’. When a government starts labelling its own citizens ‘enemies’, it has lost its moral authority to govern.”

* Are You An “Enemy Of The Government Of Canada”? Leadnow

This week, we learned that the Harper Government is using closed-door intimidation tactics against Canadian charities. They’re trying to silence groups that question our government’s plans to push the Enbridge western pipeline and supertankers project through overwhelming local opposition, and recklessly expand the tar sands at all costs.
According to the whistleblower, a former senior communications manager for ForestEthics named Andrew Frank, the Prime Minister’s Office told Tides Canada they consider ForestEthics to be an “enemy of the Government of Canada” because of the group’s opposition to the Enbridge pipeline and tar sands expansion

Click here to tell Prime Minister Harper to stop the threats and ensure fair hearings for Canadians,

10. Eyecandy1: Unnatural Beauty

Dec-23-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: When bad things happen to a good planet, the results can be beautiful even while they’re awful. Some nice pix of places you don’t want to be.

* A Silk Purse From A Sow’s EarMail Online (Thanks Elizabeth)

J Henry Fair’s spectacular aerial images show the devastation man has wreaked on America. Pollution is exposed on a massive scale, creating striking vivid colours that highlight the scars of spillages, open cast mining, chemical and oil leaks, industrial decay and deforestation

* Dallol – The World’s Weirdest Volcanic Crater Kuriositas

* The First Millisecond of a Nuclear Explosion Gizmodo

The rapatronic camera, as it is called, was created by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s using two polarizing filters and Kerr cell instead of a shutter, which is too slow for this job. This acts as a very high speed shutter, which allows the perfect exposition to capture this moment.

* Oil Spill Disaster on New Zealand Shoreline In Focus

2. The Sticky Issue of the Tar Sands

Nov-18-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: An excellent article from MIT’s Technology Review explores the tar sands issue in intelligent and unbiased (ymmv) detail. Two key points it argues: the question is when and how the development will happen, not if; the Canadian government can control the amount of pollution and carbon released by setting penalties for doing that. At present, there is no penalty for pollution, so it doesn’t make economic sense to invest money in finding ways to reduce it. We follow up with an amusing etymological piece exploring why you may say “oil sands” and I say “tar sands”, and end with Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, accusing those who oppose the tar sands of being traitors to Canada.

*Alberta’s Oil Sands Heat Up Technology Review

The question for oil-sands innovators is whether the financial risk of developing new types of in situ technologies will pay off. Cenovus needs a global oil price of just $45 to $50 per barrel to turn a profit on its Christina Lake investments; with prices now above $75 per barrel, it is making good money. In an era of cheap natural gas and pricey oil, Canada’s bitumen producers will need an extra push before they commit billions of dollars to alternatives to mining and SAGD…. Says Heather MacLean, a professor of engineering and public policy at the University of Toronto, “There has to be some type of a policy push … to really motivate the most efficient production and reduction of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts.” What is needed, she says, is a price on carbon. Two years ago, Alberta introduced a carbon tax of $15 per ton, but that covers only a portion of industrial emissions, and even oil executives dismiss its impact on investments. “It’s in the tens of cents per barrel,” says Zieglgansberger.

* You Say Oil Sands, I Say Tar Sands… OpenFile

Type in “Alberta tar sands” into Google, and you get 852,000 results. Perform a search for “Alberta oil sands” instead, and you end up with 334,000 results—not even half that. And if you change “Alberta” to “Alberta’s,” the gap widens even further.

So why do most media outlets tend to default to the phrase “oil sands”? Is “tar sands” pejorative? Or do both terms carry their own bias?

* Oil Sands Opponents Treacherous: Canadian Environment Minister Reuters

In a sign of the strain the Canadian government is feeling over development of the tar sands, Environment Minister Peter Kent said on Wednesday that opposition legislators who campaigned in Washington against the idea were treacherous…. Much to Kent’s anger, two members of Parliament from the opposition New Democrats went to Washington this week to argue the pipeline should not go ahead until Canada has come up with a better plan to combat climate change. “One of the opposition parties has taken the treacherous course of leaving the domestic debate and heading abroad to attack a legitimate Canadian resource which is being responsibly developed and regulated,” Kent told reporters.

3. Oil Companies

Oct-14-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The stories have mostly disappeared about the BP oil spill, so what does it matter if the oil hasn’t? That seems to be BP’s attitude anyway, and Shell is further implicated in deaths and tortures in Nigeria. Meanwhile hearings on the environmentally and economically disastrous Keystone pipeline from the tarsands into the US continue; is anybody listening?

* Environmental Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico Global Research

“If you got caught humping another woman – [if] you’re both naked and caught in the act – you’d want BP to explain to your wife how it didn’t happen.” Dean Blanchard, seafood distributor on Grand Isle, Louisiana…..

During a recent discussion in his office, Blanchard told Al Jazeera that the fishing waters off Louisiana are only producing one per cent of the shrimp they formerly produced. “Half of the local fishermen have shut down,” he stated. “They are dying. And [as] for the fishing, every day they are hauling dead porpoises in front of my place. I have a claim filed with BP, but none of us in the seafood business are being paid.” Speculating that he may soon have to close down his company, Blanchard spoke for hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents who remain angry and frustrated when he added: “I worked 30 years to establish my business, and now BP has destroyed my life.”

*Shell accused of fuelling violence in Nigeria The Guardian

Shell has fuelled armed conflict in Nigeria by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to feuding militant groups, according to an investigation by the oil industry watchdog Platform, and a coalition of non-government organisations. The oil giant is implicated in a decade of human rights abuses in the Niger delta, the study says, claiming that its routine payments exacerbated local violence, in one case leading to the deaths of 60 people and the destruction of an entire town.

Platform’s investigation, which includes testimony from Shell’s own managers, also alleges that government forces hired by Shell perpetrated atrocities against local civilians, including unlawful killings and systematic torture.

Shell disputes the report….

* Not All Environmental Scandals Are Created Equal The Nation

As climate scientist James Hansen has warned, if the Canadian tar sands are aggressively exploited, “it’s essentially game over for the climate.” Obama’s EPA sees the danger ahead. Environmentalists are mounting pressure to stop the project. There is still time for Obama to do the right thing—and to deliver, in this one way at least, on his campaign promise to change the culture of Washington. The lesson of the Keystone scandal is painfully simple: our climate policy is being guided by the very forces that are destroying the climate. That has to change now.

* A Pipeline Divides Along Old Lines – Jobs Versus the Environment New York Times

The final days of rancorous public debate over a $7 billion oil pipeline that would snake from Canada through the midsection of the United States have taken on an unexpected urgency this week, as the economic and environmental stakes of the massive project snap into focus at a time of festering anxiety about the nation’s future.

4. Big Bad Oil

Sep-02-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: In a week when the BP “capped” oil well started leaking again in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s worth noting just how vile these corporations are. BP claims that since it spilled the oil outside of US waters, it shouldn’t have to pay for damage within US waters, Further evidence that “scientists” who publicly question anthropogenic global warming are being paid by big oil. And in Iraq, BP signs a deal to get oil profits even when the oil isn’t flowing.

* BP Claims State Laws Do Not Apply Courthouse News Service

BP wants to dismiss 12 oil-spill claims from states in Mexico, district attorneys in Louisiana, and Alabama cities, because they allege state law violations, though the Gulf oil spill is a matter for federal law…. BP claims that because the oil spill came on the Outer Continental Shelf, which is subject to the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), state laws do not apply, even when the oil damaged state waters and coastlines.

And because federal law takes precedent, BP says, the lawsuits from the Alabama cities and Mexican states must be thrown out for violating OPA regulations, which require presentment of claims before a lawsuit is filed. Finally, BP says, the Mexican states’ lawsuits do not allege any actual damages, and there is no contract between the United States and Mexico regarding to recovery of environmental damages caused by oil spills from foreign entities.

* Climate Sceptic Willie Soon Received $1M From Oil Companies The Guardian

One of the world’s most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies. Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.

But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Insitute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world’s largest coal-burning utility companies. Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.

* BP ‘Has Gained Stranglehold Over Iraq’ After Oilfield Deal Is Rewritten The Observer

BP has been accused of taking a “stranglehold” on the Iraqi economy after the Baghdad government agreed to pay the British firm even when oil is not being produced by the Rumaila field, confidential documents reveal. The original deal for operating Iraq’s largest field – half as big as the entire North Sea – has been rewritten so that BP will be immediately compensated for civil disruption or government decisions to cut production.

This potentially could influence the policy decisions made by Iraq in relation to the Opec oil cartel, and is a major step away from the original terms of an auction deal signed in the summer of 2009, critics claim. “Iraq’s oil auctions were portrayed as a model of transparency and a negotiating victory for the Iraqi government,” said Greg Muttitt, author ofFuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq. “Now we see the reality was the opposite: a backroom deal that gave BP a stranglehold on the Iraqi economy, and even influence over the decisions of Opec.

3. BP Anniversary: 1 Year since Gulf Spill

Apr-22-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: What do we know now that we didn’t a year ago? A lot. Despite BP’s desperate attempt to limit the research, there’s so much news that we only have space to give one sample, a link to a fuller list (53 items in total) , and an In Focus photo montage.

* BP anniversary: Toxicity, suffering and death Al Jazeera (Thanks, Gabe!)

April 20, 2011 marks the one-year anniversary of BP’s catastrophic oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. On this day in 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, causing oil to gush from 5,000 feet below the surface into the ninth largest body of water on the planet. At least 4.9 million barrels of BP’s oil would eventually be released into the Gulf of Mexico before the well was capped 87 days later.

It is, to date, the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. BP has used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersants to sink the oil, in an effort the oil giant claimed was aimed at keeping the oil from reaching shore. Since last July, Al Jazeera has spoken with scores of Gulf residents, fishermen, and clean-up workers who have blamed the aforementioned symptoms they are experiencing on the chemicals from BP’s oil and dispersants.

“I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body,” 33-year-old Steven Aguinaga of Hazlehurst, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. Aguinaga and his close friend Merrick Vallian went swimming at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in July 2010. “At that time I had no knowledge of what dispersants were, but within a few hours, we were drained of energy and not feeling good,” he said, “I’ve been extremely sick ever since.”

…Aguinaga’s health has been in dramatic decline. “I have terrible chest pain, at times I can’t seem to get enough oxygen, and I’m constantly tired with pains all over my body,” Aguinaga explained, “At times I’m pissing blood, vomiting dark brown stuff, and every pore of my body is dispensing water. And Aguinaga’s friend Vallian is now dead.

* The Best Writing on the BP Oil Spill TreeHugger

Jeff Donn, “3,200 Gulf wells unplugged, unprotected.” The Associated Press, April 20, 2011.

Brian Merchant, “The BP Gulf Spill Was Our Fault, and We’re Going to Do it Again.” The Utopianist, April 20, 2011.

Sue Sturgis, “Poisoned in the Gulf.” Institute for Southern Studies, April 20, 2011.

Allie Wilkinson, “Guest Blog: Seafood At Risk: Dispersed Oil Poses a Long-Term Threat” Scientific American, April 20, 2011.

* The Gulf Oil Disaster: One Year Later Alan Taylor – In Focus

6. Man Vs Nature

Apr-22-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: In the US it’s the corporations which have equal rights to humans… but in Bolivia, it’s Mother Earth that does. Read the astounding new laws coming out of the resurgence in the Andean spiritual view based on the Pachamama… then contrast it to what’s happening nearer home. Wonder what the Bolivian immigration rules are….

* Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth The Guardian

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings” and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature “to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

* Toxic Chemicals Injected Into Wells New York Times

Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats. The chemicals were used by companies during a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of a mixture of water, sand and chemical additives into rock formations deep underground. The process, which is being used to tap into large reserves of natural gas around the country, opens fissures in the rock to stimulate the release of oil and gas.

Hydrofracking has attracted increased scrutiny from lawmakers and environmentalists in part because of fears that the chemicals used during the process can contaminate underground sources of drinking water…. The report, released late Saturday, also faulted companies for at times “injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot identify.”

* The Prometheus Tree Wikipedia

Prometheus was the nickname given to the oldest known non-clonal organism, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) tree growing near the tree line on Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada, USA. The tree, which was at least 4862 years old and likely approaching or over 5000 years, was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and U.S. Forest Service personnel for research purposes

December 24th, 2010 :: Year 7, Issue 44

Dec-24-2010 | Comments (0)

Two week break for travels and festivities. Regular Tikkunistas resume January 15th, 2011

Followups

* London Protests A terrifying four minute video of the “kettling” actions is the focus of a Guardian article: The chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority’s civil liberties panel has condemned video footage appearing to show protesters being crushed by police attempting to contain them in a “kettle” during student anti-fees demonstrations in London two weeks ago as “appalling” and “ghastly”….

Musab Younis, 22, from Manchester, [shot this video]. Younis estimates that around 1,000 people were being held next to Westminster tube station, around 20 metres from the bridge, when police began moving in from both sides, crushing those in the crowd. “We were hemmed in by a wall on one side, vans and horses on another side, and two lines of police moving in on us,” he said. “I don’t know [if] I’ve ever been in a situation where I’ve been so crushed before. The police didn’t care whether you had any space to move, and if they had to trample you to move forward, then they would.”

* What We’ve Learned From Wikileaks In U.S. elite media, the main revelation of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables is that the U.S. government conducts its foreign policy in a largely admirable fashion….These conclusions represent an extraordinarily narrow reading of the WikiLeaks cables, of which about 1,000 have been released (contrary to constant media claims that the website has already released 250,000 cables). Some of the more explosive revelations, unflattering to U.S. policymakers, have received less attention in U.S. corporate media. Among the revelations that, by any sensible reading, show U.S. diplomatic efforts of considerable concern….

* BP Oil Still There

The oil BP tried to hide with nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersant has been discovered in thick layers on the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico. The area of contamination covers several thousand square miles and scientists from the University of South Florida say the environmental damage is “significant.”

All the marine life in the settled oil was dead, according to the scientists who saw the damage from research vessels. The disruption to the food chain could be significant. Scientists may not know the full extent of the damage for months, if not years. Fish and other marine life that depended on the worms and other microorganisms to survive may also die if they are unable to find other food sources

1. This Week in Wikileaks

Dec-10-2010 | Comments (0)

* Bird’s Eye: Last week “Bird’s Eye” said “Trying to cover Wikileaks story is shooting at a moving target.” This week it’s shooting at multiple moving targets. So we need two sections, one to cover the major news stories that Wikileaks has revealed, and the other to look at the war that’s been waged online to support or stop Wikileaks. First, three important things we’ve learned this week from the leaks.

* In Copenhagen, The US and China Collaborated to Block Progress on Climate Change Der Spiegal

Last year’s climate summit in Copenhagen was a political disaster. Leaked US diplomatic cables now show why the summit failed so spectacularly. The dispatches reveal that the US and China, the world’s top two polluters, joined forces to stymie every attempt by European nations to reach agreement.

…At that time, many Europeans were hoping the delegates at the Copenhagen summit would agree climate-change measures that could save the planet from the cumulative effects of global warming. But that dream died pitifully in mid-December 2009, and the world leaders went their separate ways again without any concrete achievements. Confidential US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks now show just how closely the world’s biggest polluters — the United States and China — colluded in the months leading up to the conference. And they give weight to those who have long suspected that the two countries secretly formed an alliance.

* In Nigeria, Shell Infiltrated the Nigerian Government The Guardian

The oil giant Shell claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to politicians’ every move in the oil-rich Niger Delta, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable. The company’s top executive in Nigeria told US diplomats that Shell had seconded employees to every relevant department and so knew “everything that was being done in those ministries”. She boasted that the Nigerian government had “forgotten” about the extent of Shell’s infiltration and was unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations.

The cache of secret dispatches from Washington’s embassies in Africa also revealed that the Anglo-Dutch oil firm swapped intelligence with the US, in one case providing US diplomats with the names of Nigerian politicians it suspected of supporting militant activity, and requesting information from the US on whether the militants had acquired anti-aircraft missiles.

* In Afghanistan, US Tax Money funded Sex Slavery Human Trafficking/ The Guardian

The now infamous Wikileaks recently released a cable from Afghanistan revealing U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of “boy play” where young boys are dressed up in women’s clothing, forced to dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder. Apparently this is the sort of “entertainment” funded by your tax dollars when DynCorp is in charge of security in Afghanistan. Full cable here, via the Guardian

November 12th, 2010 :: Year 7, Issue 38

Nov-12-2010 | Comments (0)

Followups

* BP’s Dispersent Corexit is effective at dealing with the symptom of oil spills, but makes the problem get worse. Some experts have also said that the use of Corexit has prolonged by decades the presence of toxic crude oil, because the dispersant sinks the oil beneath the ocean surface, where it cannot be quickly broken down by sun, waves and microbes.
And the head of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Ecology Department – Terry Hazen… says the oil will be damaging enough; toxic dispersants will just make it worse. He points to the 1978 Amoco Cadiz Spill off the coast of Normandy as an example. He says areas where dispersants were used still have not fully recovered, while areas where there was no human intervention are now fine.

* US Election Toon ’nuff said?

2. BP: Slick as a Pelican

Oct-29-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Got a problem when the dispersants used to sink the oil from sight turn out to be lethally dangerous? Not if you’re BP! For one, the only media that covers it is Al Jazeera; for two the company that makes the dispersants is owned (quel surprise!) by an oil company and reports record profits; for three, just send in free lecturers to schools to explain the truthy facts of the matter. Move along people, nothing to see here….

* BP dispersants ‘causing sickness’ Al Jazeera English

Injected with at least 4.9 million barrels of oil during the BP oil disaster of last summer, the Gulf has suffered the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons of widely banned toxic dispersants, which according to chemist Bob Naman, create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil. And dispersed, weathered oil continues to flow ashore daily.

Naman, who works at the Analytical Chemical Testing Lab in Mobile, Alabama, has been carrying out studies to search for the chemical markers of the dispersants BP used to both sink and break up its oil.

According to Naman, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.

* Nalco Profits Up Reuters

Water treatment services company Nalco Holding Co reported better-than-expected quarterly results and raised full-year view for the second time in three months, encouraged by better demand at its water services and energy services segments….Nalco, which sold dispersants for the clean-up of the BP oil spill, concluded its Gulf of Mexico spill response at the beginning of the third quarter.

* BP Heads to Public Schools to “Dispel Myths About Dispersants, Subsurface Oil” TreeHugger

BP has launched an ‘educational campaign’ in Louisiana to give students the most “current information available” about the Gulf spill. …“The primary purpose [of the demonstration] is to inform and educate students on the methods used to clean up the oil in the Gulf and the wetlands and marshes,” Janella Newsome, BP media liaison said in a press release. “It’s also to dispel myths about dispersants, subsurface oil and seafood safety.”

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