For the first time in my environmental career, I find myself using the word ‘hopeless’.

Alabama resident John Wathen and a volunteer pilot, Tom Hutchins, flew over the Gulf Of Mexico, surveying the spread of oil related contaminants, cleanup efforts, and the area where the oil rig sank. What they saw will shock you, oil sheen, heavy streaking, discolored water, and a massive red mass of floating goo, all of which dwarfed the boats dragging booms in hopes of containing at least a few drops.
<snip>
“It’s not a leak, it’s a volcano spewing oil” and no that doesn’t mean an ACTUAL volcano, it is a figure of speech! There is much we are not being told, and there is much not being done to contain it. This ‘leak’ is not just killing a few dolphins or coating a few birds, it is killing the entire ocean. There are reports of 4-5 UNDERWATER LAYERS of oil now, in addition to the lighter components in crude oil, which will rise to the top quickly, expanding rapidly to gas form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwMNg2adcbo (5/7/2010)

“At 9 miles out we began to smell the oil… Mile 26 we began to see solid oil on top of the water…. Mile 87, Ground Zero… I’ll never forget the scene… nothing but a red mass of floating goo that could have been prevented, and should have been prevented. …

For the first time in my environmental career, I find myself using the word ‘hopeless’. We can’t stop this. There’s no way to prevent this hitting the shorelines… The price we’re paying now is far too expensive. Safety measures that could have prevented this were not in place.”

The gulf appears to be bleeding… will we ever be able to put a stop to this? Will the Gulf ever heal?”

This needs no further commentary.
http://www.thepoliticalcarnival.net/2010/05/raw-video-aerial-survey-of-gulf-for-the-1st-time-in-my-environmental-career-i-find-myself-using-the-word-hopeless/

*sigh* **just sigh**

this is only going to get worse. I just starting thinking about the fire hazard of biblical proportion.

so you must be correct. I feel much better now.

Lightning. It avoids the ocean, but likes Florida. It's attracted to the Himalayas and even more so to central Africa. And lightning almost never strikes the north or south poles.

These are just a few of the things NASA scientists have learned using satellites to monitor worldwide lightning.

"For the first time, we've been able to map the global distribution of lightning, noting its variation as a function of latitude, longitude and time of year," says Hugh Christian, project leader for the National Space Science and Technology Center's (NSSTC's) lightning team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Left: A lightning bolt strikes the Atlantic Ocean near Florida. According to a new NASA map of global lightning rates, such strikes over open ocean waters are rare.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast05dec_1/

Hurricanes also produce some lightning over water.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/essd16jun99_1/

I'm afraid they were wrong. Anyway, it hits beaches.

storms cross the eastern horizon. it hits the ocean around here for sure.

This is a crime against humanity.

deteriorate and watching corporation protecting republicans with their greed, always insisting (without research or truth) that never is there any problems with massive polluting, that it's "overblown" by those damn "tree-huggers" environmentalist, as these same corporations & republicans reap in monstrous profits at the expense of ours and the planets - because they live in their gated protected rich mansions with private everything, that all is well...Put a coal burning plant in their gated neighborhood - wouldn't these republican pigs love that?

Do these fuckers care about future generations fuck NO! They want it ALL now. Yet, still they will scream & yell saying they do, or that Jesus is coming so it doesn't matter-very convenient or that they aren't really polluting the land, air & oceans can absorb all of their toxic shit and continue greedily polluting everything on the planet.

But still I actively support the Sierra Club other environmental organizations for continuing to try....to at the very least, slow down these corporations whose only concerns are for profit above anything else, along with the U.S. military is one of the largest polluters (and resource draining) on the planet.

Corporate & military imperialism - polluting means absolutely nothing, zero to them to them....the resources are there to grab fuck everything else only profits matter when flying their private jets & sailing around the world on their yachts, building their mansions in clean unpolluted locations.

not merely "corporation-protecting Republicans"

alas, it's also our own party that's complicit here; it's in April 2009 that the Int Dept exempted this very project from required EIS; had it been done, the project would not have been approved

That crystal blue water, gone now for how many generations?


(OH! 700! :hi: )

:cry:

So much so that it sometimes keeps me awake at night. This is a disaster of epic proportions. The mother of all man-made disasters. Damn.

Meanwhile, Obama doesn't want to offend BP by putting someone competent who actually cares in charge.