Officials at NOAA told the Obama Administration that it was underestimating the rate and risk of spills before the President announced his controversial decision to open up coastal areas to drilling in March. Analysts also noted that there were serious problems in responding to spills.
For environmentalists, the dismissal of such concern reminds them of the Bush Administration, which tended to ignore advice that didn’t fit its political agenda. While the Bush Administration ignored data on weapons of mass destruction, the Obama Administration appears to have dismissed data on environmental mass destruction.
The White House is clearly not happy with the leaked warnings and NOAA officials have come out to stress that they were heeded on other warnings. Experts at the Congressional Research Service and other organizations are cited as warning that “[r]ecent annual data indicate that the overall decline of annual spill events may have stopped’ and that ‘[t]he threat of oil spills raises the question of whether U.S. officials have the necessary resources at hand to respond to a major spill. There is some concern that the favorable U.S. spill record has resulted in a loss of experienced personnel, capable of responding quickly and effectively to a major oil spill.”
For the story, click here.
Kudos: Elaine M.
Byron,
You have been clearly and consistently against charging corporations for the right to pollute. Getting them to pay for their messes afterward (especially through the legal system) is next to impossible in all but the most egregious cases and I don’t consider it a viable process. For a system to be workable (and respect the free market) it must assign a cost to the day-to-day pollution produced, not just the high-profile accidents.
Vince:
Thanks for the info, and all this time I thought it was just plain romanticism.
Slarti:
“As long as you want to subsidize corporations by protecting them from paying the costs of their pollution, you’re against the free market in my book.”
where have I said that? I am all for corporations paying to clean up something they polluted.
Please show me where I have not said that all along.
Bdaman,
Pay $$$$ for the right to pollute = free market. Pollute for free = corporate welfare.
Trade $$$$$ for the right to pollute. Cap and Trade = Scam. Global Warming/Climate Change = Scam
More snow this weekend from the Rockies to Minnesota to Buffalo NY. Just remember the more CO2 you put in the atmosphere the hotter it will get.
Here’s some of the latest headlines
Snow in “sunny” Spain – Coldest May since records began – 6 May 10
Snow In Southern France – 5 May 10
Again? Yet another Alberta snowstorm! – 5 May 10
“Very rare” snow in 18 municipalities in Mexico – 2 May 10
Back to Ice Age?- Coldest in Korea in 100 years – 28 Apr 10
8 – 10 inches of snow for North Dakota – 6 May 10
Snowing in WA, OR, ID, MT, WY, ND – 5 May 10
Arctic ice sets 30 records in April – One for each day
2 May 10 – According to satellite data, the Arctic was more ice-bound
each day of April than on any other corresponding day since its sensors
began tracking the extent of Arctic Ice. This supports a growing number
of reports that Earth could be in for a period of global cooling.
Buddha and Byron,
Atlas Shrugged was just a science fiction story — and just fiction.
Doubt it?
When it came out, it was reviewed in Astounding Science Fiction — twice.
Byron,
As long as you want to subsidize corporations by protecting them from paying the costs of their pollution, you’re against the free market in my book.
And apparently corporations are free from the vice of violence as well as greed in your distorted money driven worldview?
Matewan. Fascist Italy, Spain and Germany ring a bell? No harm done there! History says you’re full of shit in attributing any kind of purity of motive to corporations and corporatism.
You want lawless corporatism, Buyron. You chafe at the notion any law that keeps you from “your” money. And that’s the mark of a fascist: Greed uber alles.
Buddha:
a science fiction story is just that – fiction.
The time, the place doesnt matter. The level of sophistication doesnt matter. What are the commonalities between Mad Max and a Cave man? How do they interact with others? What is the common thread?
Force.
And that is what statism, Fascism, Communism all have in common. And socialism to a lesser extent.
But then statism covers all of those.
Bdaman:
enough money is what the government tells you is enough. It always works like that with statists, they love the power of control. You control the purse strings you control the people. A free and prosperous people don’t need government, but a people barely able to make a living and provide for their family does.
What a scam, I take your money and then I give it back to you and make you kiss my ass and thank me for helping you out of a jam that I caused. Fing brilliant.
And the best part is you love me because I am helping you. Pretty sick if you ask me.
Byron,
Thanks for again proving all you can see is money. You are rapidly devolving from apologist to fascist. What you seek is clearly corporatism. You think statism brought about that Mad Max future? Try “wars for oil” on for size. It’s made pretty clear in the montage sequences. And the difference between a natural environment (say like cavemen lived in) and one polluted with industrial toxins? That distinction is self-evident. What you may want for your children is irrelevant if you make a toxic Earth a self-fulfilling prophecy in your economic myopia. You simply insist on reducing everything to a dollar value and the world you’ll leave them will be spent.
Madame speaker I yield my remaining time to the senator from Minnesota.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/05/al-franken-tom-toles-wall-street.html
Byron said:
Nothing wrong with profit, it has given us the standard of living we currently enjoy.
President Obama said:
We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned.
I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.
But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.
Unquote
How much money is “enough”?
At what point, exactly, did Bill Gates make ‘enough money’ on his road to earning billions, much of which is devoted to medicine and charity?
The President and his wife made $5.5 million last year. Is that enough money?
How about Al Gore, who is said to have earned up to $150 million promoting the ‘global warming’ scam (or is it called ‘climate change’ now, I forget?). A man who, at last count, had at least four luxury homes scattered throughout the world including his latest acquisition, an Italian-style mansion with ocean views and nine bathrooms, in Montecita, California. Is that enough money?
What should we make of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google? Little more than ten years ago, they were college students struggling in their dorm room to create a new way to search the web.
A decade later, Page and Brin were worth a combined $36 billion as the founders of Google.
Buddha:
a life or death struggle is a tad bit different. Anyway that could not have been sustained.
Al Gore has a motive, everyone has some motive. His is probably power not money.
Nothing wrong with profit, it has given us the standard of living we currently enjoy.
So you think that people like me don’t like clean air and water or want our grandchildren to be healthy? Yes we do like those things, we just think a free market is the way to do it. The Soviet Union was an environmental nightmare. And yes we had some problems in the past that needed to be addressed.
To think that some environmentalists don’t have a profit motive flies in the face of fact and reason.
Mad Max is our future unless we embrace free markets and get rid of statism. How much different do you think Mad Max is from a cave man? Not very much.
The guys on the Manhattan Project would belie your assertion that technology cannot be forced, Byron. So would the guys who work at L/M Skunkworks and NASA.
As to the rest of what you say about markets, that’s apologist nonsense once again defending the unregulated market. It also shows you are incapable of attributing any other motive than profit to an endeavor or person’s character, probably in a fit of projection. Plus smearing the opponent with one’s own sins – and that is what a corporatist accusing environmentalists of profit motives is – is just a Rove play. Oh yeah. Everyone who wants to help restore the environment has a profit motive. It has nothing to do with wanting their kids and grandkids to have safe air, water and food or an interest in salvaging a rapidly decreasing biodiversity which benefits us all. It’s all about the money. Uh. Huh.
You may think environmentalism is a step “back towards the caveman” but better that than the wasteland Mad Max dystopian future unchecked industrialism promises.
FFN:
Personally I would say that some are in it for power and for money. Al Gore comes readily to mind.
But the funny thing is that green would naturally occur as our technologies develop. The irony is that you cannot force technology and you cannot manipulate markets. When you manipulate markets you end up with stagnation, see the old Soviet Union, and you stop or impede innovation.
But hey good luck with what you guys are trying to do. You think it is Buck Rodgers in the 25th century, but it will end up more like Gork the cave man, 25,000 years BCE.
Gyges,
Well, I suppose economic interests are not the most principled ones for saving the planet, but I’m sure environmentalists will not balk at their help on this issue.
Byron,
I wonder what you believe the ulterior motives of environmentalists are?
Byron,
But do you go to Colorado for vacation to look at oil rigs? The name is because one of the brewers likes to joke “Any Monkey and throw 400 pounds of hops in their wart.”
http://www.cfcl.com.au/
website for ceramic fuel cell technology, this is a good idea.
Gyges:
I go to Colorado to look at oil rigs 🙂 and there is nothing better than fishing next to one in the Gulf. Well maybe not for awhile.
why didn’t they call it 800 pound monkey? Is it only half as debilitating?
Not at the top of my game today, that also should have been addressed to Tootie and Byron.
On the plus side, Left Hand’s new year round beer, 400 Pound Monkey, is fantastic.