Gail the Actuary stimulated this blog’s consideration of a great opportunity for Yes Men trainees. The TOD honcho asked rhetorically what to do about unemployment during the Peak Oil transition. This blog wanted to say: Look at what Big Oil is doing, all those lawyers anticipating years of fees, all the ongoing investment in disinformation, all the lobbying in its various shapes and forms and pursuits. We have so much for which to give thanks. Thank-you, Big Oil, may I have another.
This blog avoided such a “trolling” comment on TOD since it is other than the high level of Tech Talk in how current efforts can prevail. But here, a different perspective on the business at hand…
“Second-quarter profits at both Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil have nearly doubled from last year to $4.5 billion and $7.6 billion respectively, while ConocoPhillips profits quadrupled to $4.1 billion.” One could say, they are making a killing.
Posing as a Public Relations species for Bob Dudley, the upcoming BP CEO, they could announce his intent to avoid years and years of litigious delays, like other companies guilty of environmental disasters have done.
Instead, the new BP will make a concerted effort to restore the Gulf of Mexico to an even greater splendor than before the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Instead of buying scientists’ silence on the damage done, BP will dispel such suspicions. BP will invest significantly in the best scientific guidance for this restoration effort.
Acknowledging that this might put them in opposition to other members of the petrochemical industry and their agri-business allies, the PR team could say that their company is willing to endure such opprobrium. The need to make amends is much greater.
Yeah, too unbelievable, huh?
Curses, oiled again.
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And speaking of consequences to the Gulf foistered by the petrochemical industry and their agri-business allies, Andy Revkin calls attention to the other Gulf stain.
Andy “Hi, Sailor” Revkin canvassed marine biologists and other experts for forecasts of the long-term environmental impacts of the BP disaster. BP must have missed one scientist, Nancy Rabalais. She sent the following…
More background is available from the United States Geological Survey and Grist (which has Tom Philpott, who is down on the factory farm).
Speaking of filming the BP Way in Houma, LA, I heard a rumor, which I just started, about a remake:
will play Snidely Whiplash
will play Dudley Do-Right
will play Nell Fenwick
will play the front end of Horse, seen in this publicity still taking direction along with jovial Thad Albert who plays Inspector Fenwick.
But who, dear 20th century melodrama and silent film in the form of the Northern genre lovers, will play the rear end of Horse in Dudley Do, Too — the Canadian Outrage?
Could it be…
TVMOB?
The “dead zone” area that forms every summer in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest ever measured. Via HuffPo, the AP reports on a Dead Zone in the Gulf the size of Massachusetts.
Gray Lady reporter Michael Cooper notes, “Another front has opened in the news coverage of the spill: questions of how much oil is left in the water, and how damaging it will prove.”
Some government officials and news organizations have painted (with oil paints, no doubt) an unusually rosy picture of a new government report about the oil that remains in the Gulf of Mexico region after the BP disaster:
“There’s some science here, but mostly, it’s spin,” oil spill expert Ian McDonald, a scientist with Florida State Univerisity, told NPR.
Think Progress says the report estimates that three quarters of the two-hundred-million-gallon BP oil disaster remains in the Gulf of Mexico region in some form, with about one hundred million gallons of oil still of concern. The massive effort to burn and skim oil captured only eight percent of the total, confirming fears that the skimming operations would be largely ineffective. Most of the oil — 52 percent — has been dispersed or dissolved, either naturally or by the use of chemical dispersants. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of the Interior scientists believe that uncaptured oil is in the process of evaporating or dissolving, hopefully with little toxic effect. About 50 million gallons of oil — five times the Exxon Valdez spill — has either washed ashore or is in the remaining slicks that surround Louisiana’s marshes.
Natural degradation of the oil does not come without environmental cost. As bacteria multiply to consume the hydrocarbons, they deplete the ocean of oxygen, exacerbating the huge dead zone along Louisiana waters induced by agricultural pollution and global warming. “The microbial community is going to break this down, but it doesn’t come for free,” Dr. Mandy Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia, told EarthSky. “It comes at the expense of the oxygen budget of the system, and that’s something that’s not easily corrected.”
Well Yes Men trainees, at least the Onion is holding up its end.
Heeding the cry, The Nature Conservancy has indicated it is committed to bringing the Gulf back to Full Health.
“It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.”
Well, to quote Dr. House, “Mistakes are as serious as the results they cause!”
Too unbelievable, huh? How about…
This from the Big Oil Orwellian playbook