Porn, Cancer, Drugs and Gifts: Oil Spill Top Kill Guesswork Under Way

Gulf Oil Tracker spillcam PBS.com If it's not working, try the BP website live feed

So what do we know so far about attempts to halt the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, now estimated at covering 16,000 square miles? While BP tries choking the broken riser with mud in an increasingly desperate series of measures — a "Top Kill" method never attempted at these depths which risks blowing the rupture wide open — corruption surrounding the oil industry emerges faster than the gusher of oil.

The 600,000 of gallons of toxic dispersant chemicals dumped in the sea has a largely cosmetic effect, breaking up the oil and making it harder to capture, making a nightmare situation even worse.

Corexit is carcinogenic, mutagenic, and highly toxic, and scientists are concerned about its effect on marine life. Corexit is banned in Great Britain.

The chemical company, Nalco, has a former BP executive on its board.

"Why would you use something that is much more toxic and much less effective, other than you have a corporate relationship with the manufacturer?" asked Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York told a hearing on Wednesday

US oil spill clean-up boats have been recalled as crew fall ill. Something is certainly toxic, and not just the relationship between government and oil companies.

We now know that government workers at the Minerals Management Service who dealt with the gulf oil industry, and whose job it was to inspect offshore drilling and rigs, accepted gifts, took drugs on the job and spent their work time slavering over porn. Meanwhile, Rick Steiner, a fierce critic of the oil industry, lost his grant and was elbowed out from his university.

Steiner observes that the BP plan is almost 600 pages largely consisting of lists, phone numbers and blank forms. "Incredibly, this voluminous document never once discusses how to stop a deep water blowout even though BP has significant deep water operations in the Gulf," he said.

Mary Kendall, acting inspector general at the department of the interior, told a congressional committee yesterday that there were problems with "gift acceptance, fraternising with industry and pornography" at the agency. She suggested there was a problem with the closeness of ties between watchdogs and industry executives: "The individuals involved in the fraternising and gift exchange – both government and industry – have often known one another since childhood."

BP oil spillers face no charges while peaceful Greenpeace protesters have been charged with felony.

The Obama government is still issuing environmental waivers. This despite the fact they already issued the BP permit for the Gulf of Mexico knowing they would be drilling on a tectonic plate with known earthquake activity — there was an underwater earthquake in 2006. Today there's talk of a well overdue oil moratorium. And, at last, a drive to stop Shell drilling in the Arctic.

As with any gripping action drama script, there's a time-factor involved and a ticking clock before something more catastrophic occurs. The escaping oil is eroding the seabed and has probably entirely eaten away the riser casing by now. This weakens the sea bed over the world's second largest oil reserve. This means not only more leaks, but if an entire chunk of seabed collapses, we get the mother of all tsunami and the release of a helluva lot more oil into our oceans. An extinction event if ever there was one. If Top Kill fails, BP's last remaining options are a junk shot (so-called because the idea is junk), where they throw everything they can get their hands on including golf balls and old tyres, calling Superman, and prayer. At the moment, the last two have the edge.

National Geographic: What happens if we can't stop the leak? Gulf oil leaks could go on for years until the reservoir is dry.

UPDATE: 19:00 Top Kill slowing down the leak.
UPDATE 2: Saturday 29 May. Top Kill fails. I noticed around 11am GMT that the leak was gushing black again, and a bit later both black and brown (dense mud). 7pm, just saw the NY Times has just confirmed it's failed.

At a Gulf Aid event, where locals were angry that the state of Louisiana got so little from the massively profitable oil industry in their own area, the BP man declared that the company had contributed $15 million towards encouraging tourism while pledging $500 million over ten years to study the impact of the oil spill on the environment. When you consider that BP makes $66 million per day, you realise how insulting this is. There should surely be a principle that the people whose resources are being exploited should share in any bounty. Instead, Louisiana's education system is second from bottom in the US.

Good source of oil spill news at The Oil Drum
Philppe Cousteau Jr video: Scenes under the sea — ‘This Is a Nightmare… a Nightmare’
Hat Tip Their Vodka

Criticism of BP oil spill "un-American": "Drill, baby, drill!"

Now, why does Rand Paul remind me of The Manchurian Candidate?

Kentucky's Republican Senate nominee and Tea Party darling, Rand Paul, who could kindly be described as "eccentric" by our wussy Brit standards, has gone all gooey over BP, defending the company and its gosh darn bad luck oil spill against that mean Barry Obama.

"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Paul said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. ... And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen," Paul said.

Now, I know practically zilch about US politicians and how they are financed, but are they in any way related? Has the oily one been greased in any way?

Gee, what's all the fuss about 11 dead workers, the Gulf Of Mexico nixed, Louisiana's coast turned into a wasteland, the livelihoods of entire communities gone, and the sea turned into a sewer, anyhow? Get real, people. We make money. And that's what makes the world go round. Or kills it. Same diff. Make like the planet and rotate. Accidents happen.

BTW, to our dear American friends, please don't blame us Brits for the appalling damage done to the planet by yet another greedy corporation. Most of us would gladly help you string up the guilty parties. Metaphorically speaking. They arrest you for making such jokes in these heah parts, our freedom of speech going much the same way as your beautiful Louisiana coastline.

UPDATE: Randall Paul, Son of Ron, also said he wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Bill. And he was only the third person in 62 years to pull out out of the prestigious Meet The Press current affairs debate show. The other two were Louis Farrakhan (1996) and Saudi Prince Bandar (2003).

China, Copenhagen and climate change

Monday sees the start of the Copenhagen climate conference, marking the end of a two-year period which aims to see a far-reaching and legally binding global agreement on how to combat climate change.

China is widely regarded as the Big Bad in this scenario, called “the world's biggest polluter”, and yet the West has been belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no serious sign of abatement. The US is still the biggest polluter per capita with Americans still consuming a huge proportion of the world’s resources. I don’t know whether the figure of one American kid consuming the same as 100 Bangladeshi children still holds true, but the nation that wants gas at ten cents a gallon and persists in its divine right to drive Humvees is telling China to shut the fridge door.

That is not to say that China isn’t storing up some massive problems for itself if things stay the same. When I was taken around China with my family in the 1970s, everyone rode bicycles and the air of the cities was pristine. Now it’s so bad that one Chinese filmmaker was telling me that she had to get out of Shanghai after three weeks because her lungs were packing up.

But, no, China is whipping boy for the failures of the developed world to sort out the mess they made. Never mind that one of the G8 group of industrialized nations is doing its best to sink any agreement. Canada is currently sitting on the planet’s second largest oil reserves which it plans to release into the markets and the atmosphere, and is the first Kyoto signatory to renege on the deal. Also implicated in these Canadian plans are Shell, BP and RBS. Our RBS.

In contrast, Chinese President Hu Jintao signaled a change in policy in September, promising a "notable" decrease in the carbon intensity of China's economy by 2020.

"At stake in the fight against climate change are the common interests of the entire world," Hu said. "Out of a sense of responsibility to its own people and people across the world, China fully appreciates the importance and urgency of addressing climate change."

Hu added that his country would plant forests across an area the size of Norway, and generate 15% of its energy needs from renewables within a decade.

China hasn’t given detailed figures as to how this will be achieved and I trust that environmentalists within and without will keep up the pressure until it does. I am, however, optimistic that China will end up leading the world in renewables technology if only for the reason that this is going to be a major global industry and fortunes stand to be made.

China has introduced a whole slew of newly released renewable energy and clean technology regulations, while all the West can come up with are delusional carbon market exchanges where rich nations buy carbon allowances from poor nations. Over five million people in the city of Dezhou, Shandong, use electric appliances powered by solar energy.

Each Chinese household will be expected to pay the annual equivalent of $64 to contribute towards the $30 billion dollars per year China needs to invest to meet its climate aims.

Let’s hope they succeed where we’ve failed. If not, China will have let us all down and helped finish the global destruction we started 160 years ago with the industrial revolution.

Ultimately, production based on need not greed is the only way out.

UK flood map here

Babeuf has just sent me the Wikipedia list of countries by carbon emissions per capita showing that Qatar is number 1, the US is number 9, and China is number 96.

UPDATE: George Monbiot on the climate change deniers.

Madam Miaow (Anna Chen) appears on BBC World Service TV tomorrow (Monday 7th December 2009) to discuss Copenhagen on "World Have Your Say" at 15:30-16:00. Also on World Service radio later in the evening. Can't watch it live in theUK but the BBC will be putting it on YouTube in a few hours, linked at worldhaveyoursay.com. The radio can be listened to on BBC iPlayer.

Sinophobia and the media following Copenhagen

Madam Miaow banned in the Guardian, Comment is Free. But speech isn't.