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Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Alberta's Oil Sands | Wired Science | Wired.com [07Nov11] - 0 views

  • More than 12,000 opponents of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline encircled the White House in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 6, weeks before President Obama's expected decision on what's become an iconic environmental battle.
  • Running to the Gulf of Mexico from Alberta's oil fields, the pipeline would cut through the Great Plains and threaten oil spills into the Oglalla aquifer, the single largest source of fresh water in the United States.
  • Though federal permits haven't yet been granted, landowners on the pipeline's path have been threatened with eminent domain land seizures; the federal review process has been corrupt, steered by oil company executives with insider connections and industry-hired consultants.
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  • Alberta's vast oil deposits are dirty and hard to reach, mixed into sand or locked deep underground. Recovering the oil is a hugely energy-intensive process, multiplying its climate footprint at a moment when extreme weather is getting worse.
  • Primeval forests and bogs are denuded and drained, replaced by barren slopes and toxic ponds. It may take centuries for life there to recover.
D'coda Dcoda

Sickness,Death, Environmental Impacts of Dispersants - 0 views

  • The report, The Chaos Of Clean-Up, was prepared in response to widespread public concern among Gulf Coast communities about the safety of chemicals, known as dispersants, that were poured into the Gulf of Mexico to disperse oil during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. This report presents findings from a literature review of scientific research on each of 57 chemical ingredients that are found in dispersants that were eligible for use at the time of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The ingredients and formulas for various dispersants on the market typically are not available, and it is not fully known which chemical ingredients among the 57 are found in which dispersant.
  • The review demonstrates the wide range of potential impacts from exposure to the chemicals found in dispersants. From carcinogens, to endocrine disruptors, to chemicals that are toxic to aquatic organisms, some of the ingredients in oil dispersants are indeed potential hazards. For instance, of the 57 ingredients, 5 chemicals are associated with cancer 33 chemicals are associated with skin irritation, from rashes to burns 33 chemicals are linked to eye irritation 11 chemicals are suspected or potential respiratory toxins or irritants 10 chemicals are suspected kidney toxins.
  • As for potential effects on the marine environment, 8 chemicals are suspected or known to be toxic to aquatic organisms 5 chemicals are suspected to have a moderate acute toxicity to fish Clearly, some of the chemical ingredients are more toxic than others, and some dispersants are more toxic in particular environments. The widely-varying toxicity of different dispersants underscores the importance of full disclosure and proper selection of dispersants for use in oil spill response.
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  • While revealing some of the potential hazards of dispersants, the literature review also highlights the extent of our current lack of knowledge about dispersants and their impacts. Ultimately, the absence of thorough scientific research on dispersants and the chemicals that comprise dispersants, as well as the lack of public disclosure of each dispersant's ingredients and formulation, hinders any effort to understand the full impacts of dispersant use. These findings call for more research, greater disclosure of the information that is known, comprehensive toxicity testing, the establishment of safety criteria for dispersants, and careful selection of the least toxic dispersants for application in oil spill response. Download Complete Report: The Chaos Of Clean-Up
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    An executive summary on the dispersants used in the BP oil spill
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Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Contaminated Ocean's Food Chain, Study Finds -- Health & We... - 0 views

  • A recent study has confirmed that toxic compounds derived from oil that was released in the Deepwater Horizon spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico nearly two years ago has entered the ocean's food chain through microorganisms.
  • The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and led by a team of researchers from East Carolina University, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Oregon State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the U.S. Geological Survey, detected chemical compounds found in oil called hydrocarbons, some known to be carcinogenic, within the bodies of microscopic crustaceans called zooplankton.
  • "Our research helped to determine a 'fingerprint' of the Deepwater Horizon spill--something that other researchers interested in the spill may be able to use," Dr. Siddhartha Mitra of East Carolina University said in a statement. "Furthermore, our work demonstrated that zooplankton in the Northern Gulf of Mexico accumulated toxic compounds derived from the Macondo well." Zooplankton form the base of the ocean's food web and are typically fed upon by fish larva and smaller crustaceans, said Dr. David Kimmel of East Carolina University. Whether or not these larger organisms have accumulated significant amounts of toxic compounds, or has entered the human food chain, has yet to be determined. "That is certainly one of the questions we would like to see answered with more research," said Dr. Mitra in a phone interview.
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Breakthrough in the Macondo Mystery: BP Admits to New Activity at Deepwater Horizon Sit... - 0 views

  • In a bombshell revelation that’s going viral, BP has admitted to conducting a study to “track oil from seabed to surface” in the Macondo Prospect. Sounds to me like they’ve found a leak. Not so fast. A leak would suggest BP is to blame (perish the thought), but a “natural seep” would imply an act of God, conveniently out of the hands of mere mortals. Here’s how Sabrina Canfield covered the BP disclosure for Courthouse News Service on Nov. 21:
  • nd a leak.
  • In an emailed statement late Friday, a representative from BP verified that several vessels are in the vicinity of the Macondo well: “There are several vessels there participating in a study of natural oil seeps. This study has been ongoing for the past month or so. Data continues being collected and we provided an update on the natural oil seeps at the SETAC [Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry] conference in Boston this week. … The study is documenting the specific locations of these seeps and is seeking to track oil flow from seabed to surface,” BP wrote. If there are seeps in the area, they are not natural. I can assure you of that. BP was required to conduct a seafloor survey prior to applying for a permit to drill. If these seeps were not discovered during the survey – which they apparently weren’t – they must be related to the disaster and the heavy-handed methods used to attempt to seal the well.
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Scientists in Revolt against Global Warming [27Nov11] - 0 views

  • Global warming became a cause to save life on earth before it had a chance to become good science.  The belief that fossil fuel use is an emergency destroying our planet by CO2 emissions took over the media and political arena by storm.  The issue was politicized so quickly that the normal scientific process was stunted.  We have never had a full, honest national debate on either the science or government policy issues. Everyone "knows" that global warming is true.  The public has no idea of the number of scientists -- precisely one thousand at last count of a congressional committee -- who believe that global warming is benign and natural, and that it ended in 1998.  We have not been informed of the costs to our economy of discouraging fossil fuel development and promoting alternatives.  The public need to know the choices being made on their behalf, and to have a say in the matter.  We are constantly told that the scientific and policy debate on global warming is over.  It has just begun.
  • The worst hurricanes were in 1926, the second-worst in 1900.  The world's top hurricane experts say that there is no evidence that global warming affects storms.
  • More and more scientists are revolting against the global warming consensus enforced by government funding, the academic establishment, and media misrepresentation.  They are saying that solar cycles and the complex systems of cloud formation have much more influence on our climate, and account for historical periods of warming and cooling much more accurately that a straight line graph of industrialization, CO2, and rising temperatures.  They also point out that the rising temperatures that set off the global warming panic ended in 1998.
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  • Scientists who report findings that contradict man-made global warming find their sources of funding cut, their jobs terminated, their careers stunted, and their reports blocked from important journals, and they are victimized by personal attacks.  This is a consensus one associates with a Stalinist system, not science in the free world.
  • The theory that entirely natural sun cycles best explain warming patterns emerged years ago, but the Danish scientists "soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials."  Physicists at Europe's most prestigious CERN laboratory tried to test the solar theory in 1996, and they, too, found their project blocked.  This fall, the top scientific journal Nature published the first experimental proof -- by a team of 63 scientists at CERN -- that the largest factor in global warming is the sun, not humans.  But the director of CERN forbade the implications of the experiment to be explained to the public: "I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them.  That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate."
  • The Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution -- whose previous president declared that "the debate on climate change is over" -- "is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind's contribution to rising temperatures. ... The society has been accused by 43 of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty that man-made emissions are the main cause."
  • In America, Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-winner in physics, resigned in protest from the American Physical Society this fall because of the Society's policy statement: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring."  Dr. Giaver:
  • Incontrovertible is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science. In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this "warming" period.
  • In 2008, Prof. Giaever endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy, but he has since joined 100 scientists who wrote an open letter to Obama, declaring: "We maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated." Do a Google search: you will find this letter reported in Britain and even India, but not in America.
  • Berkeley Professor Muller did a media blitz with the findings of the latest analysis of all land temperature data, the BEST study, that he claimed once and for all proved that the planet is warming.  Predictably, the Washington Post proclaimed that the BEST study had "settled the climate change debate" and showed that anyone who remained a skeptic was committing a "cynical fraud."
  • Dr. Joanne Simpson, one of the world's top weather scientists, expressed relief upon her retirement that she was finally free to speak "frankly" on global warming and announce that "as a scientist I remain skeptical." 
  • Dr. Simpson was a pioneer in computer modeling and points out the obvious: computer models are not yet good enough to predict weather -- we cannot scientifically predict global climate trends.
  • Dr. Fred Singer, first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, and physicist Dr. Seitz, past president of the APS, of Rockefeller University and of the National Academy of Science, argue that the computer models are fed questionable data and assumptions that determine the answers on global warming that the scientists expect to see.
  • Fifty-one thousand Canadian engineers, geologists, and geophysicists were recently polled by their professional organization. Sixty-eight percent of them disagree with the statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled."  Only 26% attributed global warming to "human activity like burning fossil fuels."  APEGGA's executive director Neil Windsor said, "We're not surprised at all.  There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of."
  • But within a week, Muller's lead co-author, Professor Curry, was interviewed in the British press (not reported in America), saying that the BEST data did the opposite: the global "temperature trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all - though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly."
  • This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting," Prof Curry said.  "Whatever it is that's going on here, it doesn't look like it's being dominated by CO2."  In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics' arguments were now taking them much more seriously.  They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation - as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.
  • Professor Muller, confronted with dissent, caved and admitted that indeed, both ocean and land measurements show that global warming stopped increasing in 1998.
  • Media coverage on global warming has been criminally one-sided.  The public doesn't know where the global warming theory came from in the first place.  Answer: the U.N., not a scientific body.
  • It was political from the beginning, with the conclusion assumed: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (U.N. IPCC) was funded to report on how man was changing climate.  Its scientific reports have been repeatedly corrected for misrepresentation and outright fraud.
  • The science of global climate is in its infancy.
  • Yet the U.N. IPCC reports drive American policy.  The EPA broke federal law requiring independent analysis and used the U.N. IPCC reports in its "endangerment" finding that justifies extreme regulatory actions.  Senator Inhofe is apoplectic:
  • Global warming regulations imposed by the Obama-EPA under the Clean Air Act will cost American consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not to mention the 'absurd result' that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [greenhouse gas] regime.
  • Former top scientists at the U.N. IPCC are protesting publicly against falsification of global warming data and misleading media reports.  Dr. John Everett, for example, was the lead researcher on Fisheries, Polar Regions, Oceans and Coastal Zones at the IPCC and a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) senior manager, and he received an award while at NOAA for "accomplishments in assessing the impacts of climate change on global oceans and fisheries."  Here is what he has to say on global warming:
  • It is time for a reality check. Warming is not a big deal and is not a bad thing. The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios ... I would much rather have the present warm climate, and even further warming...No one knows whether the Earth is going to keep warming, or since reaching a peak in 1998, we are at the start of a cooling cycle that will last several decades or more.
  • Obama has adopted the California model.  The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 has shed a million jobs in that state.  California now has almost 12% unemployment, ranking 50th in the nation.
  • The country could be following North Dakota, where oil development has led to a 3.5% unemployment rate, or Texas, which has created 40% of the jobs nationwide since the 2009 economic crash thanks to its robust energy sector.  These are good jobs.  An entry-level job on an oil rig pays $70,000 a year.  A roughneck with a high school diploma earns $100,000 a year in Wyoming's Jonah Fields.  Brazil's new offshore oil discoveries are predicted to create 2 million jobs there.  We have almost three times more oil than Brazil.
  • The cover of fighting to save the planet gives the government unlimited powers to intrude into private business and our individual homes.  The government can reach its long arm right into your shower and control how much hot water you are allowed to use.  In the words of MIT atmospheric scientist Dr. Lindzen, "[c]ontrolling carbon is kind of a bureaucrat's dream.  If you control carbon, you control life."
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Bayou Sinkhole: Radioactive dome issues covered up over a year [09Aug12] - 1 views

  • The possibly failed salt cavern may be closer to the outer wall of the Napoleonville Dome than Texas Brine officials believed.• DNR defended the timing of its disclosures about the history surrounding the salt cavern as matching the emerging facts of the incidents in Bayou Corne.• Sonny Cranch, Texas Brine spokesman, said company officials have been as surprised as anyone about a possible collapse of their salt cavern.• DNR officials allowed Texas Brine to deposit naturally-occurring radioactive material arising from drilling into two company salt caverns, including the one that may have breached in the Bayou Corne area. As of Wednesday, state environmental officials had not tested the sinkhole for radioactivity."
  • Friday evening, the day the sinkhole developed and released a foul diesel odor was the first time DNR officials made public information indicating that the cavern may have failed and caused the sinkhole, a “slurry area.” Tuesday night, DNR and Texas Brine officials explained that the cavern appeared closer to Napoleonville Dome’s edge than thought when the cavern was issued a state permit 1982, and that the cavern wall might have been breached. That failure could allow a connection between the cavern’s brine contents and sediments around the dome.
  • Ball said DNR officials focused on locating a source of the natural gas large enough to send gas bubbling up in the bayous and they focused on area natural gas pipelines and two salt caverns known to be storing natural gas under pressure.
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  • Tuesday, a University of Texas seismologist found environmental modifications (ENMODs), geological disturbances such as earthquakes, correlate with oil and gas company's hydraulic fracturing injection wells, according to research reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wednesday, due to the escalating swampland disaster, Chevron Corp’s subsidiary Bridgeline Holdings gas energy company halted its nearby pipeline activities and drew down fuel at its nearby storage cavern.
  • A Texas Brine letter dated Aug. 25, 1995, requesting the disposal says the radioactive “scale” had accumulated in soils around the two cavern wells. (Read letter.)EPA says the radioactivity of scale, a common byproduct of oil and gas exploration and production, can vary widely, from background to much higher levels.
  • Government authorized Texas Brine to dispose radioactive material into cavern DNR records show that on Aug. 31, 1995, it authorized Texas Brine to dispose of 20 cubic feet of naturally occurring radioactive material by pumping it into the cavern and another Texas Brine salt cavern in Lafourche Parish. (Read letter.)
  • The Bayou Corne disaster has resulted in a recently declared State of Emergency and the area is under a mandatory evacuation order.
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"A Staggering Mess" as Tsunami Debris Hits Alaska Coast Early [01May12] - 0 views

  • a non-profit organization that estimates it has cleared nearly 1,000,000 pounds of plastic debris from Alaskan coasts over the past 10 years, is reporting “tons” of what it believes is likely tsunami debris washing up on the coasts of the Kayak and Montague islands. Chris Pallister, president of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, told Alaska’s KTUU TV that ““It’s a staggering mess [...] the magnitude of this is just hard to comprehend and I’ve been looking at this stuff a long time.
  • In my opinion, this is the single greatest environmental pollution event that has ever hit the west coast of North America. The slow-motion aspects of it have fooled an unwitting public. It far exceeds the Santa Barbara or Exxon Valdez oil spills in gross tonnage and also geographic scope. (I was in Prince William Sound during the during the Exxon Valdez oil spill and so have a sense of comparison). Tens of thousands of miles of coastline from California to the Aleutian Islands are going to be hit with billions of pounds of toxic debris. NOAA’s latest estimate is that 1.5 million tons of largely plastic debris will hit the western United States coast. That is 30 billion pounds. We expect Alaska to get the largest percentage of that with much of it lodging on northern Gulf of Alaska beaches. Most of this will be plastic which is full of inherent toxic chemicals that will leach into the environment for generations.
  • Possibly worse are the millions of containers full of anything from household chemicals to toxic industrial chemicals that are floating our way. They will eventually burst upon our shores…in sensitive inter-tidal spawning and rearing habitat, endangering shorebirds, marine mammals, fish and everything in between. We are already finding empty and partially full containers of tsunami related chemicals and fuel drums along the northern Gulf of Alaska shoreline. The heavier fuller containers will come later because the wind doesn’t push them as fast toward the Gulf of Alaska as they are more current driven. The light-weight, high-windage debris such as Styrofoam, buoys, bottles, empty containers and drums have already arrived in staggering quantities
Jan Wyllie

John Sauven: 'I want to claim the arctic region for all of mankind' [12Sep11] - 0 views

  • "And what we want do," says John Sauven, who is executive director of Greenpeace UK, "is say that this area, which is currently not national territory, this area of sea ice around the North Pole, should be a 'global commons', collectively owned by humanity under the auspices of the United Nations.
  • So now Greenpeace, Mr Sauven says, is planning a global campaign to make the North Pole off-limits. Internalionalised. No development. No oil drilling. No territorial claims
  • It has done so by its own form of protest, by being present (often at considerable personal risk) at the sharp end of all these situations, and making the world aware: it is the idea of "bearing witness", from the Quaker background of some its founders.
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  • Yet for all the spectacular actions, perhaps the key to Greenpeace's success and to its widespread public acceptance has been another element of its Quaker heritage: it is resolutely non-violent.
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