What A Real “Oilpocalypse” Looks Like

I talked to a buddy of mine last night, who is a personal injury attorney, about the 20 billion dollars the president got BP to agree to put in escrow. “Dude,” I said, “it’s as if the opposing counsel on one of your big cases called you up before the first motion was filed and said ‘here’s a few hundred grand to tide your client over until we figure out how much we’re going to be on the hook for.’”
My buddy actually rephrased my statement with the correct terminology, but he wholeheartedly agreed with my underlying sentiment. “Damn,” my buddy said. “That’s one hell of a settlement. Obama is really a personal injury lawyer.”

So we bantered back and forth for awhile about how ridiculous we thought the media mafia was for pretending this was any less than a stupendous accomplishment. Then my buddy said something that snapped me back to attack mode. “This kind of thing has never happened before.”

“Uh, actually this kind of thing has happened before. In fact, it's happening right now. In Nigeria.”

“Nigeria?”

“Yeah, Nigeria, the place where the U.S. gets almost 40% of the oil it uses, has had oil spills this bad practically every year for decades. The shit is ugly.”

“You know, I didn’t know that.”

“I know – because the weak ass son-of-a-bitches who waste time every night on your TV, yakking it up about bullshit instead of bring you some facts have never thought it was important. Those people in Nigeria who have looked at oily assesd water for years think Americans are spoiled to death.”

“You should write about this.”

“I will, just so I can send your ass a link.”

Over a 20-year period spanning 1976 and 1996, an average of 300 cases of oil spills per year were recorded in Nigeria's oil region. On the average, some 370,000 barrels of crude spilled into the environment each year, out of which only about 40 percent was recovered.

"The environmental effect of spilled oil is a function of time, type of oil spilled, its degree of weathering, the sedimentary characteristics of the receiving environment and the season of the year," said Chindah at a recent workshop. The immediate impact on vegetation are wilting, defoliation and loss of the productive cycle or outright death of affected plants.

On freshwater swamps, the studies showed, the effects are more devastating due to the longer water retention time. Lower plant forms, such as algae and lichens die off immediately. Animals, fish and other water organisms dependent on such ecosystems also die off sooner or later. In turn the communities in the affected areas suffer loss of livelihoods, poor health and other adverse consequences.

Science In Africa

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.

This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it

BP, Shell and other conglomerates and oil multinationals have engaged in these egregious disregard for human lives and pristine environments, in their hurry to make profits. And many nations such as Ecuador and Nigeria have dealt with this for decades and decades and were ignored by all, but now, because this current BP disaster and catastrophe occurred on American waters, BP and other oil companies are in trepidations and are gyrating speedily and rapidly, to avoid soiled sullied public image in America, and avoid a corporate black eye and bruises from the Gulf of Mexico disaster. But why? These same oil companies have for decades foisted pollution and deaths on the peoples of Nigeria, Ecuador and other nations without remorse or regret and remedial actions! So why now? Why the difference in attitudes and actions? It is good thing that this massive spill, this disaster and catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is actually a blessing and a wonderfully good thing in disguise, because, from now on, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will become a point of reference or benchmark for oil spills and remediation or remedial actions

It has to be assumed as well, that from now on, conversations about death and destruction caused by oil companies, are no longer seen as merely collateral damage in hydro carbons searches and as such, merely ancillaries and extraneous matters which should not bother Americans.

This is precisely what Niger Delta in Nigeria have experienced for fifty years and the world ignored it and considered it collateral damage, an ancillary and extraneous matter in the search for hydrocarbons to power the engines of the world’s economies. But now, the world knows, the chickens have come home to roost! American Oil Spills In Gulf of Mexico and Lessons for Nigerians and Ecuadorians.

American Oil Spill – Lessons for Nigeria; by Paul Adujie

Why are oil companies forever so willing to act voluntarily to compensate and act properly in response to disasters such as the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound in Alaska or in the North Sea or currently in the Gulf of Mexico, but these same oil conglomerates are unwilling to similarly act voluntarily or even under compulsion through court judgments or orders when in the persisting environmental catastrophes in Ecuador and Nigeria, even as you read this?

American Oil Spill – Lessons for Nigeria; by Paul Adujie

What explains these selective attitudes to victims of toxic pollutions caused by the same American and European oil giants? What explains permanence in always selectively choosing to compensate Americans and Europeans; but quite unwilling to compensate Ecuadorians and Nigerians, as the oil companies remain adamant in denying their liabilities?

American Oil Spill – Lessons for Nigeria; by Paul Adujie

Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude, a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: "Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care."

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it

If this isn't the personal injury of all personal injuries, I don't know what is. THIS is why I can call the media monkeys who invade your TV every night chump change motherfuckers with impunity, because they deserve every skewering they get when we've got real life situations out here to compare and contrast corporate missions statements with their actual track record, and all they can do is carp about what idiot congressman A said about idiot congressman B in breathless wonder, or lionize one of their own brethren for squawking like a plucked chicken when they want the president to be their bitch and he refuses.

Meanwhile, halfway around the world, brown skin continues to soak in oil that seems to never stop spilling.

 

Gulf Geyser : A Quick Reference Sheet For Reporters

[Sometimes I run across original research, original analysis, or hard-to-get information that is exactly the kind of stuff I live for - well thought out, well written, well researched commentary, the kind that your media experts get by the pound but think is too much for you to understand. Mark Sumner is the author of "Gulf Geyser: A Quick Reference Sheet For Reporters", as well as the author of the nonfiction work "The Evolution of Everything" and several novels including "Devil's Tower." He has given me permission to publish his comments here. Enjoy]


Gulf Geyser: A Quick Reference Sheet For Reporters


Look, guys, I'm starting to worry about the environmental impact of this trash pile growing at my side -- the one made from shredded newspapers and crushed radios. It expands every time I hear impossibly silly and ill-prepared comments and questions in a story about the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf. Frankly, I might soon have to start measuring the size of the pile in states. The only way to reduce the flow may be for you to print this out (sorry trees) and keep it by your side when you're dealing with these issues. This will also help sustain the sanity of your audience and reduce our trade imbalance with Japan China whoever makes cheap radios these days.


It is possible to estimate how much oil is being lost into the Gulf.


The idea that it's impossible to make a good estimate of how much oil is pouring into the Gulf is straight up bullshit. Calculating the amount of oil is a simple matter of looking at the size of the openings and rate at which material is being ejected. Regular video footage of the flow sites would allow for highly accurate estimates of the loss. And BP has that video footage. They just aren't sharing enough to make good estmates. Why not? Because they are well aware that the rate of loss is much, much higher than the 5,000 barrels a day number that you keep repeating. The rate of flow was 5,000 BPD, but that was only a couple of days after the accident -- in other words, three weeks ago -- and the flow increased rapidly over the initial week. The current rate is somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 barrels a day, based on what's been seen at the surface. Which number is more accurate? I'd know if you'd get BP to release those videos instead of meekly accepting "we don't know" as an answer.


If no one will give you an estimate of the loss, they can't give you an estimate of the capture.


In the same interviews where you're reporting that there's no estimate of how much oil is being lost, you're willing to report that BP is capturing "50%" or even "up to 90%" of the oil with the 4" soda straw they jabbed into the pipe. Um, no. No, they're not. BP is capturing (if we accept their numbers) around 1,000 barrels a day. That's only 20% of what was being lost three weeks ago, and it's 3% (or less) of what's been flowing out for the last two weeks. But the more important part of this is why in holy hell would you accept this number from a company that just told you they couldn't make an estimate of the loss? Look, I just poured this bag of M & Ms on the floor. How many? I don't know. I'm not even going to look, but I think this one I just picked up is half of them -- though I won't let you check me. Don't be that stupid, it's the number one cause of radio smashage.


We don't get 30% of our oil from the Gulf. 


Gulf oil accounted for about one and a half million BPD last year. That's deep water, shallow water, old wells and those just brought on line. Sounds like a lot, huh? But the US consumed twenty million BPD. Gulf oil was less than 10% of our oil supply. Yes, it's around a 1/3 of our domestic oil supply, but our domestic number has been shrinking since 1970, and that's including pretty well the whole period of Gulf exploration. The idea that more drilling in the Gulf will have an impact on our oil imports is, what's that word again... yeah, bullshit. Please stop passively sitting there when someone tells you that expanded offshore drilling is needed to secure our oil supply, because it's simply not true. Our oil supply can't be secured because the majority comes from overseas, and it will stay that way as long as we need oil.


Shutting down deep water drilling, or even all offshore drilling, will have no immediate effect on the price of oil.

Not only is Gulf oil production only 10% of US consumption, that's production not drilling. It can take years for an area to go from exploration to producing wells. The impact of shutting down drilling on price of gas at the pump... hmm, let's see. Oil is $72 a barrel. Three weeks ago, when a blanket suspension of new drilling was announced oil was selling for over $80 a barrel. Looks like stopping drilling in the Gulf saved us $8 a barrel! No. The relationship between current drilling and the price of oil is neglible. Anyone telling you what oil would cost without offshore drilling is bullshitting you. Why not call them on it for once?
Not drilling in the Gulf would not result in $14 a gallon gasoline.
This is a Mitch McConnell special, one which so many programs seem happy to repeat without comment. The truth is (as we just saw) the immediate effect of decreased drilling on oil prices is unpredictable. The oil market has way, way, way too many variables for anyone to reach into their hat and predict the long term effects of any action. And for someone to give you an actual number, like $14 a gallon for gas, means that they have pulled this number completely out of their ass. Say, why not call them on it? For once.


Oil does not make electricity.

Oil is used for transportation. It doesn't compete with coal, or with wind, or with nuclear power. All those new windmills off the coast of MA are peachy, but they won't save one gallon of gas. If all the oil wells dried up today, it wouldn't affect the ability to run our iPads, or to air condition our homes into the subarctic, or listen to you blather. Oil is not electricity. Get it? I don't care if the person trying to add a rosy "we're building windmills!" into a conversation about oil is the president of BP or President Obama, the two things are unrelated. This disaster is not a reason we need to reevaluate our need for nuclear power, because nuclear power doesn't compete with oil. Coal, wind, solar, nukes = electricity. Oil = transportation. Get it? There's nothing at all wrong with adding more wind and solar to the mix, they just don't do a damn thing to decrease the need for oil. What would decrease that oil demand? More public transit, fewer long haul trucks and more trains, smaller cars that use less gas, and (finally) cars that get their go from electricity. When we have a significant number of the later on the roads, maybe oil and those other sources will actually overlap. Until then, stop talking about other sources of energy like they have anything to do with oil. Please. Special bonus nugget: the reason we don't make electricity from oil? Because oil is more expensive than coal or natural gas. This is also the reason that Iran wants nuclear plants. Asking Iran why they won't just burn their valuable export commodity to keep the lights on is like asking South Africa why it doesn't just build streets out of diamonds.


Your job is to find out these things.

You're not supposed to have on one person from the American Petroleum Institute and one guy who just wrote the "Why Green Energy Sucks Handbook" and repeat what they say. Your job is to learn the facts of the situation and relay them to the public. Adding someone from the American Wetlands Lovers Council to your conversation is not a substitute for doing some research. Believe it or not, there are facts. You're supposed to let your readers / listeners / viewers know the truth, not just smile and look back and forth like the referee at a ping pong tourney. Feel free to extend this tip to other situations.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Sumner is the author of 32 novels, including one called "Devil's Tower" (and for the record, the book title and the screen name are from fond memories of visits to the national monument of that name. They do not show an inclination toward the "dark side."). He's a past winner of Writers of the Future, and has been nominated for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards.

If Cable News Shows Treated Their Viewers Like Drug Dealers Treated Their Customers...

My buddy called me yesterday on his way home, which kind of put me in a bad mood immediately, since he sees this commute as time to kill, while I see time as an ever-ticking clock that is always threatening to close in on a deadline I have somewhere.

So I wasn't really paying attention when he first started talking, because I was gathering some quotes for a piece I was supposed to be submitting somewhere in a couple of hours. Maybe its the writer in me, or maybe its the fact that when I am thinking, which is most of the time, I am usually juggling ten or fifteen ideas about something important to the way we live in my mind, a state of intense pleasure to me that gets me testy as hell when it is interrupted by a comment about the weather, or some other totally meaningless minutia of life, minutia that my buddy insisted on talking about.

It wasn't until he casually asked my opinion about the speed with which law enforcement had apprehended the Times Square bomb scare suspect that became fully engaged in the conversation. In fact, I became more than fully engaged - it was a ten minute rant, a verbal beatdown of everybody from Campbell Brown to Anderson Cooper, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, from Wall Street to the White House that probably had my buddy wishing he had called somebody else instead.

But he hung in there long enough to understand why most of the time the enemy isn't the left or the right or the center or even the wacko fringe elements of our political universe here in America, but the brain dead and insufferable media who do a woeful job of shaping the political conversation.

I watched Anderson Cooper interview the mayor of Nashville last night, after apologizing for CNN and the rest of the media who seemed to be totally hypnotized by the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to the exclusion of practically all other newsworthy items. Which would have been fine if they didn't waste half of their airtime getting "reactions" from idiots, or politicians who pontificated forthrightly about a situation their non-engineering, non-oceanic expert asses knew absolutely nothing about.

Or if they had quit regurgitating British Petroleum press releases and did some god damn research on their own, research which would have confirmed the suspicions any high school physics student would have about the absurd estimate that pegged the rate of leakage at "5,000 barrels a day."

Maybe the journalism schools need to shut down, or at least rethink what they allow to be called "journalism", so we have a better handle on what is news, and what is fluff and PR.

Journalists - when your interview subjects start telling bald faced lies on camera, or begin to dissemble so badly they might as well be telling bald faced lies, the kind of untruths your pre-interview research can refute unequivocally, pull the plug on them and throw up a PowerPoint instead that gives us the salient facts and their sources, so we can verify them.

Talking point TV, CNN, is why you are going to have your anchors all trading around one shirt and tie between them soon, and going on air without makeup, in order to make payroll. Talking point TV, Fox News, is why Rupert Murdoch will be rolling up to the Goldman Sachs offices to get his company one of those sweet financing deals that Greece got so Glen Beck can hawk "subprime television derivatives" during all those stretches of empty commercial breaks he's got.

Heroin dealers treat their customers better than TV news shows treat their viewers.

I told my buddy, after I had calmed down a little, and he finally was willing to acknowledge that contrary to the media slant, our law enforcement agencies had done the job we asked them to do, providing enough layers of deterrence and surveillance to catch the suspect in record time, that what we have right now in our country is akin to kindergartners telling us what is going on.

But back to this drug dealer analogy - I am hooked on facts like a crack head is addicted to crack. I would make time for a rat-a-tat tat machine gun style delivery of a lead topic and three sentences, no emotional nuances required, the announcer taking a breath during commercial breaks.

I would like to see some Powerpoint style info flashing up with each topic, with five to seven bullet points to augment the three lines the announcer is reading, and two or three sources listed below them so I could dig deeper if I wanted.

And put the pathos and the dead baby pictures on another channel, for those who need to get a good cry in before dinner.

Do you think people who buy crack or heroin or cocaine choose their dealer because of his or her talking points? Because of a favorable "reaction" from someone who doesn't even do drugs? Or because the drug dealer swears "this is the real deal?"

Nope.

They choose the dealer who gets them the best dope out there. The dope has been cut the least. The dope that packs the biggest punch.

So cable news networks, quit screwing around and start sling the best facts out there. Start giving the facts up to us raw and uncut, instead of the Similac smelling shit you are peddling now.

Weigh Your Civic Consciousnesses Daily

I'm beginning a weight loss project.

Its not Jenny Craig, or Weight Watchers, or one of the hundreds of other weight loss brands out there. It's the "I Have Common Sense" program. "Eat less. Exercise more. Repeat."

As the mechanics of the process ran through my head last night - the recent review of my eating and exercise habits, the formulation of a plan to reduce caloric intake and increase physical activity, and then the actual follow through of the plan day after day - I thought about the present state of our political scene and our economic woes, and whether or not the American body politic is really ready to make the daily changes in our information gathering habits and our civic activities that are necessary to make significant changes in the area of political engagement, or whether we are just wasting a whole lot of hot air.

Congress is playing with itself right now, the way parents of unruly children do when they look at the chaos around their house, because both Congress and lazy parents know that to get and maintain order means that you are going to have to make a commitment to doing unpopular and unpleasant things until the unruly children or the underregulated industry realizes you mean business, and then be vigilant against the first, second, third, maybe even the one hundredth attempt to try to you, if need be, until the unruly children or underregulated industry believes that there will be consequences for inappropriate behavior without fail, each and every time it occurs.

All government agencies are not created equal. From the investors who have been taken advantage of by people like Bernard Madoff to the Congressmen who sat in hearings wondering how all of this chicanery by AIG and friends (Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, this means you too) in the financial markets had been allowed to take place, they all railed against the SEC for not doing its job properly. The IRS is feared by both businesses and individuals. The SEC is not feared – it is tolerated. The difference? The IRS agents can seize your property and bank accounts without a whole lot of red tape. The SEC can issue a judgment, which doesn't really mean anything. Or bar you from the industry, which as you can see with Mike Milken or Ivan Boesky, is sort of a "under your name only" detention program they have easily skirted after getting out of jail. The SEC might as well be mall cops. The IRS, on the other hand, has all the subtlety of a SWAT team breaking down the door to your house. When was the last time you were worried about a mall cop?

Internet security companies realized long ago that the people they were up against – black hat hackers – were a sophisticated, highly motivated type of criminal element. So guess who has ex-hackers on their payroll? The SEC is in the business of hiring Boy Scouts to catch the financial equivalent of computer hackers – brilliant people who understand how to use the architecture of a system against itself. So hire a few of these guys to work for us. Or if there is no way to pay the kind of money to these people as civil servants it might require to get them onboard, put out Requests For Proposals for consultants that can contract with the agency to provide the kind of intricate analysis needed to keep the SEC at the heels of all the rule benders (do I have to type Goldman Sachs and Jp Morgan here again?) and out and out frauds.

The media, who claims it is working on behalf of the public, is a part of this too, playing with Congress and the White House as if it is one of those perennial "bridesmaid, never a bride" types who uses her dowry to attract one suitor after another in order to amuse herself before sending them packing. And we the public are lazy enough, or brain dead enough, to watch each new suitor’s arrival as if it some new kind of drama or intrigue between them might entertain us more than the last one did. How can you change the media’s focus? Since the thing we call the "news media" is really two entities - the news gathering and disseminating half, with its lifeless legs and foreshortened arms lashed to the back of the advertising delivery half, which holds up the people you see on TV or read in the paper – you can worry their sponsors the way the American Cancer Society worries smokers, day in and day out. Some of them are already falling. Hopefully the others will get back to their original mission.

There really is nothing that Kim Kardashian, Chris Brown, Alex Rodrieguez, Madonna, The Final Four, BMW, Mercedes, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Tag Heuer, Bruno Magli, Jimmy Choo, American Idol or 24 can help to provide you with any additional insight or motivation about regarding the things we say are most central to our lives. How big Kardashian's butt is this week or how much the latest top of the line Mercedes costs is what we end up knowing when we focus this kind of time and energy on these things. Does that mean these things are all bad? I may have a taste of chocolate now and again, but it is a far cry from my old approach, which was to supplement my nightly quart of chocolate ice cream with raids on my emergency chocolate stash, or have a bit with my morning coffee. A little entertainment news can go along way. the good thing is, the same people are always in the news, so if you miss something this week, you'll probably see it again next week.

There are things we as citizens can do to reshape our cultural and political landscape, the same way there are things, like curtailing my immense love of chocolate, that I can do to reshape my body. We've done them before, without one hundred percent support of the people, the same way I'm going to lose this weight without having to give it one hundred percent of my attention. But they were painful times, and often produced imperfect results, whether it was the American Revolution, or the Civil War, or Prohibition, or the civil rights movement, or the Vietnam War protests.

Maybe we all need to be a little bit hungry all the time, not for food, but for entertainment and fluff, in a way that makes us savor smaller portions even as we gaze at the emerging musculature of our new found civic duty in the mirror.

Maybe, just maybe, what we are experiencing these days has made enough of us uncomfortable with what we are seeing and hearing to commit to changing our habits and our activities in a way that make us active players in our political and social scene.

I will be weighing my civic consciousnesses daily - my body, once a week.

Educator-In-Chief Schools Press Corps

The president showed up on time last night, did his thing, answered the same old questions with the same old answers from some of the same old faces and few new ones for an hour, and left.

The news media will still be talking and writing about this on Friday.

As Brown Man Thinking Hard Number One, President Barack Obama held court last night, searching for the most complete answer he could come up with in response to the wide ranging questions he fielded from the pool of reporters.

Maybe it's just me, but the reporters seem to have become a distraction in this process, not because they are asking questions of the Obama administration – I could go for a two hour press conference myself – but because of the amount of importance they place on their own roles in the process as news shapers rather than news deliverers.

I saw a few minutes of the chatter by the political pundits on CNN after the press conference. The things these people were coming up with to explain the meaning behind the question and answer session were so off base at one point that I simply turned it off.

One of the things I've learned in doing a lot of business over the telephone is that most people don’t listen well. In order to know that the person I’m talking to has been fully exposed to new information I’m trying to explain, I’ve learned to repeat myself by saying the same thing a second time with different terminology, then illustrating my point by using an example, and finally, recapping the whole exchange with a brief synopsis of what I'd just said.

This is pretty much what President Obama did all night.

I sincerely think that the current news model does not have the capacity to handle our current multi-channel, multilevel personal information delivery needs. If these media behemoths want to remain tied to the traditional linear narrative story arc that is the backbone of the system they are using now, they are doomed.

In a post modern world, your audience is more sophisticated than ever before. The two things President Obama pointed out, when he spoke about persistence in the face of adversity and the idea that many of the changes that are happening now won’t become apparent for years to come, were spoken as if he was talking directly to us, as if he speaking over the heads of the reporters who were licking their wounds because they didn’t get called on or scribbling furiously because they did get called on.

Keep up the good work, Educator-in-Chief.