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As BP battles in court over Deepwater Horizon, oil spills are happening all over the place

by da3xs1z Posted on March 1, 2013

As BP battles in court over Deepwater Horizon, oil spills are happening all over the place

By John Upton

U.S. Coast GuardA “small” spray of crude gushes into the Gulf after a boat crashed into a wellhead.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill was notable because of the huge number of barrels leaked, the economic and environmental devastation wrought, and the number of people directly affected. But oil spills are not an aberration. Spills are a constant and poisonous cost of the world’s dependence upon fossil fuels.

Little attention is paid to this steady stream of spills. That’s in part because company and government officials often labor to convince us that each single spill is minor, unimportant, and environmentally benign.

This week, while BP was defending itself in court against claims and potential fines stemming from the 2010 disaster, emergency responders were kept busy dealing with new oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and around the world.

Louisiana

A 42-foot offshore oil service boat crashed Tuesday evening into a retired oil and gas wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico near Port Sulphur, La., causing a geyser of crude to spray into the air.

The wellhead, owned by Swift Energy, was recapped two days after the crash and a cleanup crew of more than 40 people has so far recovered about 40 barrels of watery oil from the Gulf. As usual, officials are downplaying the incident as “small.” See this Reuters report:

Swift said the collision had damaged the wellhead but that it “appears to be primarily releasing water and a small amount of oil.”

The company said containment booms and skimming equipment had been deployed around the well to protect nearby shorelines.

A Coast Guard spokesman, Ensign Tanner Stiehl, said a small sheen had developed around the accident site.

But nobody knows for sure how much oil was spilled. (Such an assessment misses a more important point anyway: The spill of any oil is bad — it suffocates microscopic organisms, smothers larger wildlife, and poisons the air and water with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The idea that an oil spill could be dismissed as “small” shows how desensitized we have become.) Houston-based Swift Energy claims that the last time the well was tested it was capable of releasing 18 barrels of oil a day. The Coast Guard, which scrambled to respond to the “small” spill with a flotilla of 12 vessels, says the ruptured well might have released as much of 40 barrels of crude oil every day, plus 36 more barrels daily of “oily water.”

UpStream, an oil and gas trade publication, went so far as to put quotation marks around the words “oil spill” in its headline, as if to suggest that the spill was so small that the normal definition of the term might not even apply here. Judging by the picture that accompanied the article — which you can also see at the top of this post — perhaps “oil explosion” would have been more appropriate.

Louisiana, meanwhile, considers the “small” spill to be so serious that it has banned harvesting of oysters in the area while health officials conduct tests.

Texas

After a resident of Tyler County, Texas, noticed a disgusting smell last Saturday, oil was discovered leaking from a pipeline and into a creek a couple of miles away. The oil had likely been leaking for at least several days before it was noticed. The pipeline was shut down, but not before an estimated 550 barrels seeped into the environment. Crews are working to mop up the oil and officials are downplaying the incident as, yes, small. Move along folks, nothing to see here. From KLTV:

“The pipeline company here is taking care of the situation. They have a full blown incident command set up. We have approximately 160 workers on the ground in the creek bed. They’re mopping up the oil and getting every bit of it that they can,” [Tyler County Emergency Management Coordinator Dale] Freeman said.

Absorbent pads and fresh water from Russell Creek are being used to clean the spill.

Many miles down the stream the water runs into Neches River but no oil has been found there according to Freeman. He said the leak has no affect on drinking water in Tyler County, and no wildlife or residents have been harmed by the oil spill.

“There’s no dead fish in the creek. The affects to the environment is minimal at this point,” Freeman said.

The Philippines

From the Philippine Information Agency:

Personnel from the Office of the Civil Defense (OCD) and the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) have been deployed since Tuesday (February 26) to conduct clean-up operations following reports that oil traces were spotted along the shorelines of La Union, Ilocos Sur, including Ilocos Norte.

Melchito Castro, chief of the OCD in the Ilocos, said on Thursday that the joint team began removing oil sludge from the shorelines mostly in the coastal towns of La Union and Ilocos Sur where the slick began to spread.

Castro said that authorities have yet to determine where the oil seepage originated. Initial reports show that the spill might have come from the M/V Arita Bauxite, a Myanmar vessel that sank off the coast of Bolinao town on February 17.

Nigeria

A pipeline ruptured recently in Izom, Nigeria, coating nearby rivers and farms in crude oil. The pipeline, which had been laid in 1977, was repaired last weekend and put back into service by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. From Daily Trust:

Notwithstanding the spillage, the villagers were still seen fetching water from the polluted river which is the only source of drinking water for the villagers, their animals and crops.

A villager who spoke with reporters, Yelo Sariki said their lives were in danger following the spillage.

He described the situation as a serious one which could consume the whole area.

Between Alberta and Texas, in the near future?

But don’t you worry about the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada assures us it will be safe:

Each year, billions of gallons of crude oil and petroleum products are safely transported on pipelines. If they do occur, pipeline leaks are small; most pipeline leaks involve less than three barrels, 80% of spills involve less than 50 barrels, and less than 0.5 percent of spills total more than 10,000 barrels.

Safety of the public and the environment is a top priority for TransCanada.

Phew!

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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As BP battles in court over Deepwater Horizon, oil spills are happening all over the place

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What’s Homeland Security?

by da3xs1z Posted on February 28, 2013

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do. Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a congressionally mandated audit.

Now, imagine that there are two such departments, both gigantic, and you’re beginning to grasp the new, twenty-first century American security paradigm.

For decades, the Department of Defense has met this definition to a T. Since 2003, however, it hasn’t been alone. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which celebrates its 10th birthday this March, has grown into a miniature Pentagon. It’s supposed to be the actual “defense” department—since the Pentagon is essentially a Department of Offense—and it’s rife with all the same issues and defects that critics of the military-industrial complex have decried for decades. In other words, “homeland security” has become another obese boondoggle.

But here’s the strange thing: unlike the Pentagon, this monstrosity draws no attention whatsoever—even though, by our calculations, this country has spent a jaw-dropping $791 billion on “homeland security” since 9/11. To give you a sense of just how big that is, Washington spent an inflation-adjusted $500 billion on the entire New Deal.

Despite sucking up a sum of money that could have rebuilt crumbling infrastructure from coast to coast, this new agency and the very concept of “homeland security” have largely flown beneath the media radar—with disastrous results.

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Meet the 3 Chinese Hackers Pwned By Mandiant

by da3xs1z Posted on February 19, 2013

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In case you missed it, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant just released a bombshell report (pdf) on how more than 150 sophisticated hacking attempts against American corporations and government agencies over the past decade almost certainly originated from a single Shanghai office building controlled by People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The hacking group, dubbed APT1 in the report, launches its attacks from roughly the same address in the city’s Pudong New Area as the one used by the PLA’s Unit 61398, a probable cyberwar division. But the excellent New York Times exclusive on Mandiant’s findings omits some colorful details about the hackers themselves. One of them, for instance, is apparently a Harry Potter fan. Here are profiles of the three Chinese hackers Mandiant outed in its report.

Jack Wang, a.k.a. Wang Dong, a.k.a. Ugly Gorilla

A profile photo used by Ugly Gorilla

Back in 2004, the cyberwarfare expert Zhang Zhaozhong was participating in an online Q&A hosted by the website China Military Online. A retired PLA rear admiral, professor at China’s National Defense University, and strong advocate of the “informationization” of military units, Zhang had written several works on military tech strategy, including “Network Warfare” and “Winning the Information War.” One question for Zhang came from a site user with the handle “Greenfield,” who brought up the United States’ cyberwar capabilities. “Does China have a similar force?” he asked. “Does China have cyber troops?”

Greenfield would soon become one of those troops, according to Mandiant. When he registered for the China Military site, he gave his real name as “Jack Wang” and the email address uglygorilla@163.com—details that would later be associated with the hacker known as Ugly Gorilla. That October, Ugly Gorilla registered the hacker zone HugeSoft.org, a name that, as Bloomberg has reported, “combines two common descriptors of a gorilla, along with sub-domains like ‘tree’ and ‘man.'”

In 2007, Ugly Gorilla authored the first known sample of a widely used family of Chinese malware and brazenly left his signature in the code: “v1.0 No Doubt to Hack You, Writed by UglyGorilla, 06/29/2007.”

DOTA, a.k.a. Rodney, a.k.a. Raith

DOTA may have taken his or her name from the video game “Defense of the Ancients,” commonly abbreviated DotA. The name shows up in dozens of email accounts that DOTA created for social engineering and phishing attacks, according to Mandiant. It appears Mandiant was able to hack some of these accounts, allowing them to get DOTA’s phone number (a mobile phone in Shanghai) and the username of DOTA’s (blank) US-based Facebook account, where DOTA registered as female. Mandiant published a screen-grab of one of DOTA’s Gmail accounts:

DOTA appears to speak fluent English and may be a fan of American and British pop culture. The answers to security questions associated with his or her internet accounts—such as, “Who is your favorite teacher?” or “Who is your best childhood friend?”—are often some variation of “Harry” and “Poter.”

Mandiant linked some of DOTA’s other passwords to a pattern that seems to be associated with Unit 61398, the PLA’s cyberwar division.

Mei Qiang, a.k.a. SuperHard

Similar to Ugly Gorilla, Mei Qiang signs much of his work by embedding his name into the code. His malware is often signed “SuperHard” and his Microsoft hacking tools are altered from “Microsoft corp.” to “superhard corp.”

SuperHard primarily works on tools used by other Chinese hackers; he’s probably employed in APT1’s research and development arm, according to Mandiant. He has also volunteered to write Trojan software for money. Mandiant researchers gained access to some of the hacker’s internet accounts. They believe he (or she) used the email address mei_quiang_82@sohu.com, which, based on Chinese habit, suggests that the user is Mei Quiang, born in 1982. They also traced SuperHard to Shanghai’s Pudong New Area—information that should give US security experts plenty of leads, assuming the hacker hasn’t been fired yet.

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Meet the 3 Chinese Hackers Pwned By Mandiant

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Your ‘sustainable’ fish may not actually be sustainable, like, at all

by da3xs1z Posted on February 12, 2013

Your ‘sustainable’ fish may not actually be sustainable, like, at all

By Susie Cagle

Deckhand

Here’s the Marine Stewardship Council label, FWIW.

Never mind knowing what kind of fish you’re eating — even when you do know, you still probably don’t have all the deets on just how green it is.

Nearly 90 percent of the world’s fisheries are either overexploited or almost overexploited. At some point this year, we’ll eat more farmed fish than wild fish worldwide, a milestone for fish farms and a scary prospect for the food system and eviscerated oceans.

In a recent poll commissioned by NPR, nearly 80 percent of respondents said it’s important or very important to them that the seafood they buy is sustainably caught. But how can they really know? There are dozens of different sustainable seafood guides, advisory lists, labels, and certifications.

When McDonald’s recently switched to fish products approved by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), it celebrated the change with packaging proclaiming sustainability. But the Alaskan pollock McDonald’s is serving isn’t considered a best choice by all fish-watch groups, and some environmentalists say the whole MSC rating system isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. From NPR’s three-part series on the topic:

“We’re not getting what we think we’re getting,” says Susanna Fuller, co-director of marine programs at Canada’s Ecology Action Centre. She says the consumer, when purchasing seafood with the blue MSC label, is “not buying something that’s sustainable now.”

If the label were accurate, Fuller says, it would include what she says is troubling fine print: The MSC system has certified most fisheries with “conditions.” Those conditions spell out that the fishermen will have to change the way they operate or study how their methods are affecting the environment — or both. But they have years to comply with those conditions after the fisheries have already been certified sustainable.

The MSC seems to expect the best of everyone. For example, the organization won’t flat-out condemn dredging, “a method of dragging giant rakes across the ocean floor,” as NPR describes it. Even though many dredging operations rip up sea ecosystems, MSC argues that some boats dredge carefully.

Since it was founded in 1997, the MSC has become the most influential organization in the world that tells consumers which seafood is supposed to be good or bad for the environment. Today, MSC-certified fisheries account for roughly 8 percent of the world’s seafood catch, worth more than $3 billion, according to the MSC website.

[MSC CEO Rupert] Howes and the MSC’s supporters say the organization has helped push fishing companies to use better, more ecologically sound methods. Many environmentalists and scientists agree that the MSC has made progress, but they say it’s deceiving consumers into thinking that the choices they make at the market have a bigger impact than they really do.

Here’s the kicker: Walmart’s seafood buyer is concerned about problems with the MSC’s ratings system while the Whole Foods buyer is all, “Whatevs.” This makes me feel a lot of feelings, and none of them are very good.

If you like journalism that gives you a stomachache too (I mean, you’re reading this, right?), check out the final part of NPR’s series on sustainable fish this evening on All Things Considered.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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13 Men Condemned to Die Despite Severe Mental Illness

by da3xs1z Posted on February 12, 2013

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Just how crazy must a person be to be ruled incompetent for execution in the United States? Being profoundly mentally ill is not enough. You have to be deemed legally “insane.”

At trial, the insanity defense generally hinges on a person’s inability to distinguish right from wrong or understand the “nature and quality” of his act. In the context of an impending execution, insanity means you cannot rationally comprehend that you are being put to death as a consequence of the crime you committed.

In 2005, a Texas jury found that Andre Thomas, the subject of my in-depth companion piece (see box below), was not insane at the time of his crime.


Read Marc Bookman’s essay: “How Crazy Is Too Crazy to Be Executed?” (Or listen to actor Mike Farrell read it.)

To put this in context, consider that Thomas was then, and still is, a delusional paranoid schizophrenic who hears voices—from God, he believes—telling him to do things. He carved out the organs of his four-year-old son, his estranged wife, and her 13-month-old daughter, and took them home in his pockets, believing that this would kill the demons inside them. In the days following his arrest, he insisted to a jailhouse nurse that his victims were still alive.

And that’s not even the weirdest part of the story.

Thomas’ case is on appeal in federal court, and as it stands, the courts cannot even address the question of whether he is competent to be executed until he is about to be. But should someone as obviously crazy as Andre Thomas be facing execution at all? Over the past decade, US courts have barred the death penalty for the intellectually disabled and for juveniles—the Supreme Court found that they have less culpability due to their lower mental functioning and immaturity. Many legal observers believe that barring the death penalty for the severely mentally ill, given their dissociation from reality, is the next frontier in capital jurisprudence.

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