The Pelican

From "The Raven", by Edgar Allan Poe
(with a few omissions/changes by Horatio Algeranon)

Oily Pelican (photo by Ted Jackson, The Times-Picayune)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped an oil-drenched pelican of the Saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched on a bust of Expedite just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this piteous bird now-dying turned my former fright to crying
By the foul and stinking nature of the coat of tar it wore,
`Though thy wings be oiled and caved-in, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient pelican wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Louisianan shore!'
Quoth the pelican, `Nevermore.'

***********************

"Why is this happening again?"

"A way of life is dying before our eyes. Gulf fishermen and their families are being wiped out. Men working on their boats laying the boom to halt the pollution are now getting sick."

-- "Nothing learned from Hurricane Katrina: Inept leaders crushing New Orleans again after BP oil spill" BY New Orleans writer Jason Berry (May 28, Daily News)

Following is from "Jindal sounding alarm as oil bypasses booms in Louisiana"(By Joseph Goodman,McClatchy Newspapers, May 24)

"On Sunday, two natural rookeries, nesting grounds for brown pelicans, showed signs that heavy crude oil had broken through booms and soiled these fragile landmasses. The rookeries were located in Barataria Bay, about 14 miles west of Venice, La., between Cat Island and Four Bayou Pass.

"Some pelicans frantically brushed oily feathers with their bills while others, full coated in black ooze, simply stood and quivered, as if in shock from the oil's toxicity. When a biologist in a haz-mat suit approached one pelican, it fled in fear into the inner sanctum of the small island where reeds and vegetation hid it from capture. Some tried to fly but could not."

"They're trying to fly away but they can't because they're covered in oil," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, the southern-most parish in Louisiana. "We're begging for help."

**********************

The brown pelican is the Louisiana state bird. When it is not oil-soaked, it appears quite lordly indeed

Brown pelican on Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge (LA) boundary sign
Photo: by John and Karen Hollingsworth, US Fish & Wildlife Service (Public Domain)

"Expedite" is the patron saint of emergencies (see SaintExpedite.org). The folks along the Gulf Coast could sure use his help right now.

Read "The Poelican" (aka "The Raven", by Edgar Allan Poe) in its entirety (and without Horatio's modifications!)

Blowouts

--Horatio Algeranon

The oil blowout off the shore
Is not the only one in store.

The Washington Oilwell has a leak
Exposing bureaucratic doublespeak.

Their blowout-preventer has failed to cap
A growing credibility gap.

The Capitol Dome can not contain
The oily deals and spreading stain.

A Junket Shot offers one last chance
To recommence the Boardroom Dance.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser

Added May 27
After watching the above video, anyone who might still be under the impression that everything possible is being done to protect the inhabitants of the Louisiana Coast -- by BP, Coast Guard, Army Corps of engineers (and other Federal agencies that serve under Commander Hayward*) -- might also want to watch Nungesser in this CNN video.

*“It’s a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words ‘Coast Guard’ affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with ‘BP,’ ” says Charlie Varley, a Louisiana-based photographer. “It would be funny if it were not so serious.” -- From "BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill" (Newsweek) -- Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.


From "Plaquemines Fishermen Ask Who's In Charge, Federal Gov't or BP", By SABRINA CANFIELD (Courthouse News Service):

"BOOTHVILLE, La. (CN) - In a Plaquemines Parish town hall meeting Tuesday, a Coast Guard representative downplayed the environmental consequence of the British Petroleum oil spill and was immediately challenged by a fisherman who wanted to know why the U.S. government is carrying water for BP...

"Where the heck does that even come from in the United States that corporations are going to dictate to the government what they're not going to do and what they will do?"

[Mike] Frenette addressed [Coast Guard Rep. Edward] Stanton regarding the government's sudden decision to continue to let BP use dispersants that are banned in the United Kingdom for being toxic."

A catastrotree falls in the forest?

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Sometimes that
Which you cannot see
Turns out to be
A catastrophe.

Of course, the original philosophical riddle was about sound:

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

But Horatio has a poetic license ... and is not afraid (or ashamed) to use it.

The media are not the only ones who have used words like "catastrophic" and "calamitous" in reference to the Gulf oil blowout.

One of our country's most distinguished ocean scientists, Jeremy Jackson, of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has used the latter word to describe what the outcome might be in this case. ( Scripps says Gulf spill may be 'catastrophic')

Some other prominent ocean scientists have actually "accused the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope."
(NY Times -- Scientists Fault Lack of Studies Over Gulf Oil Spill)

It's telling that a full month after the blowout, there are still no scientific instruments (other than BP video feeds) in place at the broken pipe to accurately gauge the flow of oil (though independent scientists and engineers have made estimates from analysis of the video, which are at least an order of magnitude greater than the official coast guard estimate of 5000 barrels per day)

According to a NY Times Article (Giant Plumes of Oil Forming under Gulf)

"BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

Without detailed data (or in some cases, any data at all), it's difficult if not impossible to draw conclusions about how bad it is right now or how bad it might be in the long run. ( Ditto for determining damages in liability suits. )

Some things are fairly clear, however: the "official" Coast guard estimate of 5000 barrels a day is almost certainly a significant (gross?) understatement of the flow of oil. See scientific/engineering testimony (eg, by Steve Werely, Professor of Engineering at Purdue University) in Subcommittee Briefing on "Sizing up the BP Oil Spill: Science and Engineering Measuring Methods" See also the minimum estimates made by John Amos (Sky Truth) and FSU Professor Ian MacDonald, based on analysis of satellite images of surface oil. The latter (minimum) estimates support the finding by Wereley et. al. that the flow rate is probably at least an order of magnitude greater than the coast guard estimate.

It is also clear (a fact) that dispersants like Corexit have been used on a very large scale and in "novel" ways (injection directly into the flow at 5000 feet under the water) in this case.

Ocean scientists don't really know what "novel" (possibly deleterious) impacts such use may have over the long run. Some believe the "oil plumes" referred to in the NY Times article linked to above are one such impact and believe these might lead to "dead zones" as a result of depleted oxygen.

A lot of this remains a big question-mark at this stage.

But Horatio has to agree with what some others (including ocean scientists) have noted: "visible" impacts like oily beaches and marshes along the shore are only one aspect of the overall impact of an oil spill.

Sometimes (usually?) it is what you cannot see that is most important.

Originally posted at Only In It for the Gold

Update May 25

Ocean explorer/conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late Jacques Cousteau, has called the gulf blowout "the worst oil accident anywhere on the planet".

According to a (UK) TimesOnline article "Disaster must be catalyst for change, says Jean-Michel Cousteau"(by Jacqui Goddard)

Dismissing remarks from BP executives that the scale of the spill was tiny compared with the size of the sea and that the Gulf of Mexico would be cleaned up and "fully recover", Mr Cousteau said: "To make such a statement is totally unacceptable. We have to see behind the dying bird, we have to understand the consequences of this that we can't see. Nature is more complex than we can imagine. I know the ocean well enough to know that I don't know it at all. "

"I don’t want to call this doomsday. I want to believe we can sit down with decision-makers and industry and government and convince them that there’s a better way to manage our life support system. We can do the good thing or we can keep destroying it."

ABC News Video: Philippe Cousteau Jr. [grandson of Jacques Cousteau] and Sam Champion take hazmat dive into Gulf's oily waters.

Cousteau Jr.: 'This Is a Nightmare... a Nightmare'

The Emailanysts

--by Horatio Algeranon

Climate change has not gone away
Despite whatever the emailanysts say.

emailanyst: "email analyst"; one who is "expert" at "analyzing" (and decontextualizing) private (especially hacked) emails between scientists for the purpose of drawing definitive conclusions about the in-validity of scientific findings -- without the need to understand (or even consider) the actual science involved. Synonym -- "frauditor": one who finds (or at least claims to find) fraud or a conspiracy to commit fraud in everything he looks at.

So, do we listen to "climate science conspiracy"-positing emailanysts?

Or to scientists?

Hmm ... such a difficult decision.

The National Academy of Sciences has just released a report affirming (once again) the reality and potential seriousness of human-caused climate change:

A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.

As a result of the growing recognition that climate change is underway and poses serious risks for both human societies and natural systems, the question that decision makers are asking has expanded from “what is happening” to “what is happening and what can we do to respond?”

there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that Earth is warming. Strong evidence also indicates that recent warming is largely caused by human activities, especially the release of greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels. Global warming is closely associated with other climate changes and impacts, including rising sea levels, increases in intense rainfall events, decreases in snow cover and sea ice, more frequent and intense heat waves, increases in wildfires, longer growing seasons, and ocean acidification. Individually and collectively, these changes pose risks for a wide range of human and environmental systems. While much remains to be learned, the core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious scientific debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations.

A Counter to Supersilliousness

--by Horatio Algeranon

Chemists* might not know about strings,
But at least they know about actual things.

*Other types of scientists and engineers (gasp!) may be substituted, of course: climate scientists, geophysicists, chemical physicists, oceanographers, ecologists, molecular biologists, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, geologists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, (even) chemical engineers (!!) ... and on and on.

Inspired by a conversation at the Rabett's burrow (More Arrogant Physicists) wherein the web's most infamous (and most arrogant?) string theorist belittled chemists (or "average chemists", at least).

For the uninitiated, "strings" refers to the exotic (and as yet experimentally unproven) mathematical structures posited by some physicists (string theorists) as the very foundation of physics. Superstring theory is one version of their "Theory of Everything" (quite a humble moniker, wouldn't you agree?).

Channeled Curve Balls

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Journalists are like psychics,
This cannot be denied.
Whenever they happen to get it right,
It's greatly AMPLIFIED!!

But if, by chance, they get it wrong,
They utter not a word ......
For them to actually remind us
Would almost be unheard.

And when their GOOF's so blatant
They really can't ignore it,
They simply claim their "Channel"
Was a "bad one" and deplore it.

Inspired by a post at Only In It for the Gold -- "The Story About the News":

"I don't think it is a good idea to stop repeating that there is only one climategate story of any significance, and it is the story of how the press were manipulated to take a middle of the road position." -- Michael Tobis

Horatio would make only one minor tweak to that: IHHO, journalism has not been in the "middle of the road" for some time now. It's been off in the ditch, or, in some cases, the gutter.

The Well Oiled Machine

"Oils well that ends well"

--by Horatio Algeranon

The license for the offshore drilling,
Required no plan for unchecked "spilling."
The oily palms made sure of that
In Washington, where our leaders sat.

"Oil rigs generally don't cause spills"
Our leader said, to pass his bill,
"They're technologically very advanced"
(Of an oil "blow-out" there's little chance.)

Our scientists sang a different song--
"If it can go wrong it will go wrong,"
"One must consider a major spill" --
But they had no ear on Capitol Hill.

A short time later, the "Deepwater" blew
Off Louisiana's coast and began to spew
An endless stream of toxic crude.
The "advanced technology" had come unglued.

The "spill" was more like a volcanic eruption
That even caused a bit of disruption
In the halls of Congress, where our leaders sit.
Offshore drilling took a major hit.

Or so it seemed on first impression,
From comments of those up for re-election,
But pay close attention to what they mean,
Because oily hands are hard to clean.

Added May 17

To sell his recently released plan for more offshore drilling, President Obama said just 3 weeks before the BP blowout:

"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore."

Unfortunately, Obama's "oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills" essentially ignores the potential impacts of a large "spill" like the blowout now occurring in the Gulf -- something that no legitimate risk analysis would do. And the latter part of Obama's statement -- "Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore" -- is simply false.

That is made clear by the assessment of the Obama offshore oil drilling plan that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists did last year. NOAA criticized the Obama plan for flawed and unsupported claims made regarding both spill occurrence from rigs and potential impacts of such spills.

Based on Obama's own statements, it appears that NOAA's criticisms were largely (if not completely) ignored. On offshore oil drilling, at least, it would appear that the pattern that was so prevalent under Bush has continued under Obama: ignore the advice of scientists in the interest of business as usual.

A recent article by Ian Urbina of the NY Times ("U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits") basically says it all:

"The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf."

"You simply are not allowed to conclude that the drilling will have an impact,” said one scientist who has worked for the minerals agency for more than a decade. “If you find the risks of a spill are high or you conclude that a certain species will be affected, your report gets disappeared in a desk drawer and they find another scientist to redo it or they rewrite it for you."

We ignore at our own peril the advice of our scientists, on oil drilling, climate change and every other scientifically related issue that has a potential bearing on our own health and well being and on that of future generations.

******************************

The New Orleans Ladder and Sky Truth offer a slightly different take on the BP blowout and its likely impacts on the Gulf of Mexico and its coastal inhabitants than one is likely to find in mainstream media reports.

Among other things, the New Orleans Ladder has been highlighting BP's use of chemical dispersants on a scale that dwarfs that for any previous spill.

Many scientists have expressed concern about injection of chemicals such as Corexit* directly into the undersea oil flow -- as BP has been doing. ( According to marine conservationist and oil spill expert Rick Steiner, Corexit has actually been dubbed "Hidez-It by its users "because its purpose is not to correct but deceive".)

Scientists are worried that undersea use of dispersants will result in suspension of the oil in the "water column" (ie, underwater) with largely unknown (though potentially detrimental) long term consequences. Already, scientists have discovered giant undersea plumes of oil that may be the result of the use of such dispersants.

Based on a scientific analysis of surface oil slicks shown in satellite images, John Amos at Sky Truth has indicated for some time now (since late April) that the flow from the BP blowout is probably much (at least 5 times) larger than the "official" US Coast guard estimate of "5000 barrels per day".

The recent analysis of the BP video of the primary leak by independent scientists indicates that the actual flow may even exceed Amos' estimate (minimum of 1.1 million gallons a day) by a factor of 3 or more. But even in the "best case" -- assuming the minimum scientifically-based estimate (coast guard estimate is not among the latter!) -- the BP disaster has likely already far exceeded the Exxon Valdez disaster with regard to total oil spilled.

The Hoochie Coochie Man

--Horatio Algeranon's rendition of the song by Willie Dixon
(and made famous by Muddy Waters)

The gypsy woman told my mother
Before I was born
You got a boy child's comin'
Gonna be an AG son of a gun
He gonna make climate scientists
Jump and shout
Then the world wanna know
What this all about
But you know I'm here
Everybody knows I'm here
Well, I'm your hoochie coochie, Mann
Everybody knows I'm here.

I got a McCarthyite tone
I got a subpoena or two
I got the Kenny Coocheroo
I'm gonna mess with you
I'm gonna make you journalists
Lead me by my hand
Then the world will know
The hoochie coochie man
But you know I'm here
Everybody knows I'm here
Well, I'm the hoochie coochie man
Everybody knows I'm here

On the seventh hour
On the seventh day
On the seventh month
Seven "Skeptics" say
He was born for Denial
That you'll see
I got seven hundred thousand dollars
Don't you mess with me
But you know I'm here
Everybody knows I'm here
Well, you know I'm the hoochie coochie man
The whole round world know I'm here

Click here to listen to Horatio sing the blues (or not)

Inspired by climate scientist Michael Tobis -- "Coochie and the Witch Hunt" (and by Muddy Waters, of course)


Update May 7
In response to the rash of recent actions and statements by folks like Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (who is currently engaged in a "fishing expedition" to discredit climate scientist Michael Mann) , scientists are fighting back.

The journal Science just published a letter (click here) from over 250 members of the US National Academy of Sciences (11 of them Nobel Prize winners) that includes the following statement:

"We call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action [on climate change], and the outright lies being spread about them"

In other words,

Back off, Hoochie Coochie Man !

We're scientists !

The Future of Denial

--by Horatio Algeranon

They said "A Crash
"Will not occur,"
Though Brooksley Born
Did beg to differ.

They said "A Spill
"Will not transpire,"
Though NOAA warned
"It could be dire".

They say "Global Warming
"Is not of concern,"
And the scientists wonder,
"Will we ever learn?"