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BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

by AdelaidaH Posted on December 19, 2013

BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

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NOAA

In May 2010, as BP prepared to try to staunch the flow of oil from beneath the wrecked Deepwater Horizon rig by dumping mud over the blowout, some of the company’s engineers knew the effort was bound to fail. But the mud-dumping plan, codenamed Top Kill, moved forward anyway as the world’s media watched on. Sure enough, Top Kill failed to staunch the leak.

One of the engineers who knew the effort would fail, Kurt Mix, later tried to keep that a secret from investigators. When Mix found out that his iPhone was about to be seized, he deleted more than 100 text messages — messages such as “Too much flowrate – over 15,000.” In that message, Mix was warning a colleague that 15,000 barrels of oil was leaking every day, which was too much oil for the operation to handle, and three times the flow rate that BP had stated publicly.

The presumably panicked decision to delete the texts on Wednesday led to the 52-year-old Texan being found guilty by a jury of one charge of obstruction of justice — a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. He avoided conviction on a second, similar charge. His attorneys vowed to appeal. From the AP:

Mix, who was arrested in April 2012, was the first of four current or former BP employees charged with spill-related crimes and the first of them to be tried.

BP took corporate responsibility for its role in the catastrophe earlier this year, pleading guilty in January to manslaughter charges for the workers’ deaths and agreeing to pay a record $4 billion in penalties. But none of the top executives at the London-based oil giant have been charged with crimes.

David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section, said Mix was a “sympathetic defendant” because his conduct seemed relatively minor in the context of a disaster that killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. Uhlmann, however, said the Justice Department appropriately has a “zero-tolerance policy” for those who destroy evidence in a criminal investigation.

“The Gulf oil spill was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Kurt Mix was charged with deleting text messages from his iPhone,” he said. “The government was justified in seeking charges, but there’s a proportionality problem here.”

Props to the feds for going after BP wrongdoers. But it would sure be nice to see some senior execs held accountable for the 2010 disaster, which is still affecting the Gulf of Mexico and its fishermen and shoreline communities.


Source
Ex-BP engineer convicted on 1 obstruction charge, Associated Press
Former BP Engineer Arrested for Obstruction of Justice in Connection with the Deepwater Horizon Criminal Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Oil and Dolphins Don’t Mix

by Myrna Posted on December 19, 2013

Study: Dolphins In Louisiana’s Barataria Bay Are Much Sicker After the BP Oil Spill. Pannochka/Shutterstock A year after BP’s disastrous 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a team of researchers found that dolphins in the vicinity of the spill showed major signs of sickness, a new study says. According to a new peer-reviewed study published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, a team of government, academic and non-governmental researchers identified previously unseen health issues in bottlenose dolphins examined in August 2011 in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay. Researchers examined 32 dolphins, including 29 that received comprehensive physical and ultrasound examinations. Nearly half of the sampled population were identified as being in “guarded or worse” condition, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Another 17 percent were in poor or grave condition and “not expected to survive.” Among the health problems were lung damage and low levels of adrenal stress-response hormones. A quarter of the dolphins were also underweight. To keep reading, click here. Continue reading:   Oil and Dolphins Don’t Mix ; ;Related ArticlesA Glitter-Covered Banner Got These Protesters Arrested for Staging a Bioterror HoaxHow Beyoncé Is Saving the Planet With Her New AlbumSurge Seen in U.S. Oil Output, Lowering Gasoline Prices ;

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Oil and Dolphins Don’t Mix

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GMO corn crop trials suspended in Mexico

by Adriene56E Posted on October 17, 2013

GMO corn crop trials suspended in Mexico

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Shutterstock

Sin maíz transgénico permitido.

Mexico, birthplace of modern maize, will remain (virtually) free of genetically modified varieties for now.

A moratorium on the growing of GMO corn has been in place in Mexico since 1988, but the government has recently made moves to allow the practice. That raised the ire of activists, farmers, and human rights groups — dozens of whom filed a lawsuit seeking to block field trials by Monsanto and other international companies.

Last week, a Mexican federal judge issued an order that suspends field trials from moving forward, citing risks of imminent environmental harm.

GMO corn imports will continue to be allowed. For Mexico, this is a battle over farming practices and environmental impacts, such as pesticide use and damage caused to insects; it’s not a fight about the safety of eating genetically modified food. From a report in Agriculture.com:

“The issue at hand relates to cultivation,” Andrew Conner, manager of global technology for the U.S. Grains Council told Agriculture.com Wednesday. …

The release of genetically modified corn is a controversial issue in Mexico, the birthplace of corn. It is the home to scores of traditional corn varieties as well as its wild grass ancestor, teosinte. And scientists have found low levels of modified genes in native corn, even though a moratorium on planting genetically modified corn has been in effect since 1998.

The Mexican government has been moving toward approval of planting genetically modified corn in an effort to increase the crop’s production in a nation that imports almost a third of the corn it consumes, mostly for livestock feed.

In a press release by La Coperacha, one of the NGOs involved in the lawsuit, human rights activist Miguel Concha said the ruling reflected the fact that Mexico is legally obliged to protect human rights from the economic interests of big business.

The groups say they aim to eventually turn the suspension into an outright ban.


Source
Acción colectiva de ciudadanos y organizaciones logra medida judicial histórica, La Coperacha press release
No export effect likely from Mexican GMO ban, Agriculture.com

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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College Students Compete to Create Best Solar-Powered Home

by silownie_zewnetrzne_krone Posted on October 10, 2013

Phil Horton of the Arizona State University and University of New Mexico team gives a tour of the SHADE house at the Solar Decathlon 2013, held at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, Calif. Photo: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

They may not sprint, throw a javelin or pole vault, but an accomplished group of students is showing that they’re decathletes ready to go the distance — in the sport of creating solar-powered homes, that is.

They’re currently in the midst of the 2013 Solar Decathlon, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy biennially since 2002. The competition challenges teams from colleges across the U.S. — and a few from abroad — to design and build a solar-powered home that’s affordable, energy efficient, marketable and attractive.

The 20 entries this year include features like edible walls, a walkway that heats your home, digital art, siding that converts smog to nitric acid and even movable units to create a private backyard. Like a traditional decathlon, there are 10 contests that make up the Solar Decathlon — the houses are judged on everything from architecture and market appeal to affordability and how well the designs accommodate the pleasures of living, such as sharing meals with friends and family, watching movies in a home theater and surfing the Web. In other words, it’s about style and substance — who can create the most innovative overall package.

Next page: Preparing for the competition

earth911

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College Students Compete to Create Best Solar-Powered Home

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Court to EPA on Gulf dead-zone rules: Make up your freakin’ mind

by BerndHugg Posted on September 24, 2013

Court to EPA on Gulf dead-zone rules: Make up your freakin’ mind

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Is it time for the federal government to drop the hammer on the farmers whose fertilizer gushes into the Mississippi River, fueling sweeping dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico? The Environmental Protection Agency now has six months to decide.

The deadline comes via a federal judge in New Orleans in response to a lawsuit from the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups. The enviros argue that states aren’t doing enough to tackle the problem, and have petitioned the feds to use the Clean Water Act to take charge. But the EPA has been wishy-washy, neither agreeing nor disagreeing that regulating the nutrient runoff should be its responsibility.

Travis S.

The Mississippi River is loaded with nutrients that fertilize algae outbreaks.

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

[The environmentalists’] petition asked EPA to establish numerical water quality standards for nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the Mississippi River and the northern Gulf of Mexico. They also asked EPA to establish “total daily maximum loads,” specific numerical amounts of the two pollutants that would be allowed in individual segments of the river and its tributaries.

The daily loads would impact any existing and future permits for pollution sources along those stretches, likely polluters to reduce the release of nitrogen and phosphorus when permit renewals or new permits were requested.

Thanks to the new ruling, the EPA’s indecisiveness should evaporate before next summer’s oxygen-starved dead zone takes root. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey announced that the EPA must rule within 180 days on whether federal regulations are necessary.

Here’s one of NRDC’s Midwestern attorneys, Ann Alexander, doing a touchdown dance in a blog post:

EPA has repeatedly gone on record saying that states have not done enough to solve the problem, and that federal action is hence necessary to set numeric limits on nitrogen and phosphorus to aid the process of setting discharge limits in permits. Yet when NRDC and some of our partners in the Mississippi River Collaborative filed a petition in 2008 asking that EPA render a formal decision that federal action is necessary, the agency balked…

But EPA’s days of waffling are now over. The court has ordered it to tell us, point blank, whether federal intervention is or is not necessary to address the problem.

Here’s hoping the EPA steps up and does what the states have been unwilling or unable to do: Protect the Gulf from farms that overload their land with fertilizer, laying waste to some of the nation’s most productive fishing grounds.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

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Court to EPA on Gulf dead-zone rules: Make up your freakin’ mind

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Undercover agents infiltrate anti-Keystone protests

by DeenaBumg Posted on August 13, 2013

Undercover agents infiltrate anti-Keystone protests

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Is this spy a cop or a private investigator? Either way, watch out.

What do you get when you mix America’s national security apparatus with TransCanada’s determination to build a tar-sands pipeline between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico?

A whole lot of arrests.

Earth Island Journal profiles the infiltration of peaceful Keystone protest groups by police and investigators — and in so doing paints a troubling picture of a government security force working in league with TransCanada:

On the morning of March 22 activists had planned to block the gates at the company’s strategic oil reserves in Cushing, Oklahoma as part of the larger protest movement against TransCanada’s tar sands pipeline. But when they showed up in the early morning hours and began unloading equipment from their vehicles they were confronted by police officers. Stefan Warner, an organizer with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, says some of the vehicles en route to the protest site were pulled over even before they had reached Cushing. He estimates that roughly 50 people would have participated— either risking arrest or providing support. The act of nonviolent civil disobedience, weeks in the planning, was called off.

“For a small sleepy Oklahoma town to be saturated with police officers on a pre-dawn weekday leaves only one reasonable conclusion,” says Ron Seifert, an organizer with an affiliated group called Tar Sands Blockade. “They were there on purpose, expecting something to happen.”

Seifert is exactly right. According to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal, investigators from the Bryan County Sherriff’s Department had been spying on a Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance training camp that took place from March 18 to March 22 and which brought together local landowners, Indigenous communities, and environmental groups opposed to the pipeline. …

The infiltration of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance action camp and pre-emption of the Cushing protest is part of a larger pattern of government surveillance of tar sands protesters. According to other documents obtained by Earth Island Journal under an Open Records Act request, Department of Homeland Security staff has been keeping close tabs on pipeline opponents — and routinely sharing that information with TransCanada, and vice versa. …

The new documents also provide an interesting glimpse into the revolving door between state law enforcement agencies and the private sector, especially in areas where fracking and pipeline construction have become big business. One of the individuals providing information to the Texas Department of Homeland Security’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division is currently the Security Manager at Anadarko Petroleum, one of the world’s largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies. In 2011, at a natural gas industry stakeholder relations conference, a spokesperson for Anadarko compared the anti-drilling movement to an “insurgency” and suggested that attendees download the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual.

The article, which includes scanned excerpts from documents the magazine obtained, is worth reading in full. For even more on the topic, read Earth Island Journal’s in-depth article from earlier this year: “We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Tracking This Year’s Dismally Small Monarch Migration

by Myrna Posted on August 12, 2013

Is extreme weather to blame? steveburt1947/Flickr In the summer of 2011, a small band of Ontario scientists set out to perform the most ambitious survey ever attempted of the imperiled monarch butterfly. Leading the fieldwork was Tyler Flockhart, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Guelph, who trekked nearly 22,000 miles through the United States and Canada to bag and tag hundreds of butterflies, which were then put under a lab analysis to determine their birthplaces. “As far as I know, it’s the broadest sample of monarch butterflies through an entire breeding season across North America,” Flockhart said recently. The results of the endeavor confirmed what entomologists have fretted about for years: Everyone’s favorite butterfly seems to be fluttering on the road toward extinction. “They’ve been declining steadily,” said Flockhart, to the point that 2012 their population numbers in their Mexican winter home were at the lowest point on record. Tracking these fairylike insects is a dicey proposition because their yearly migration spans vast distances and involves several different generations. The butterflies spend the colder months hunkered in the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico, but in the spring travel northward into America and Canada to be near their larvae’s favorite food, the milkweed plant. In the middle of it all are the croplands of the Midwest, where the monarchs engage in a flurry of breeding that sets the direction for future generations to spread over the continent. To keep reading, click here. Continue at source:  Tracking This Year’s Dismally Small Monarch Migration ; ;Related ArticlesMystery Lung Fungus: Are You at Risk?Buried in Muck, Clues to Future NYC DroughtIs Keystone XL a Distraction From More Important Climate Fights? ;

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Company to start slaughtering horses next week, despite arson and lawsuit

by f45 Posted on July 31, 2013

Company to start slaughtering horses next week, despite arson and lawsuit

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Hey, horse, did you try to burn down that New Mexico slaughterhouse?

A New Mexico slaughterhouse plans to begin killing horses for meat on Monday — despite a looming lawsuit and an apparent arson attack.

Refrigeration units at the Valley Meat Co. in Roswell., N.M., lit up in flames on Tuesday. Firefighters extinguished the blaze, but not before five compressors were damaged beyond repair. The company pledged to replace them in time to begin slaughtering horses and chilling their meat on Monday. From Albuquerque’s KOB Eyewitness News 4:

Chaves County Sheriff’s Department said substances that could have been used to start the fire were found on the units and there is reason to believe it was arson. The owners are sure of it.

We’re not endorsing arson. But this was the same meatpacking company whose worker shot a horse in the head on camera and said, “All you animal activists, fuck you.”

Perhaps an animal activist out there reciprocated the “fuck you” sentiment.

Other horse lovers have been taking a different tack in attempting to prevent the facility from starting its slaughter. From a July 2 New York Times article.

Several animal rights groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Agriculture Department, seeking to prevent it from inspecting horse meat that some companies want to produce for human consumption. …

The animal rights groups involved in the lawsuit — the Humane Society of the United States, Front Range Equine Rescue, Marin Humane Society, the Horses for Life Foundation and Return to Freedom, along with five individual plaintiffs — contend that the Agriculture Department did not perform reviews required by the National Environmental [Policy] Act before authorizing Valley Meat to operate.

“The U.S.D.A. has failed to consider the basic fact that horses are not raised as a food animal,” Hilary Wood, president of Front Range Equine Rescue, said in a statement. “Horse owners provide their horses with a number of substances dangerous to human health. To blatantly ignore this fact jeopardizes human health as well as the environment surrounding a horse slaughter plant.”

A hearing for that lawsuit is scheduled for Friday.

The slaughterhouse’s attorney is reminding reporters that the Bush-era Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act could lead to the arsonist being charged with terrorism.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Gulf of Mexico dead zone is big, but not record-breaking big

by AlbinoGaylord883 Posted on July 30, 2013

Gulf of Mexico dead zone is big, but not record-breaking big

By John Upton

Oh yay. Just 5,840 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico are virtually bereft of life this summer.

Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium

The deadest parts of the 2013 dead zone are shown in red. Click to embiggen.

This year’s dead zone is much bigger than an official goal of 1,950 square miles, but not as bad as had been feared.

Heavy spring rains inundated Mississippi River tributaries with fertilizers and other nutrients, and once those pollutants flowed into the Gulf, they led to the growth of oxygen-starved areas where marine life can’t survive.

But NOAA says things could have been worse. The agency had previously warned that this summer’s dead zone could be larger than the record-breaking one of 2002, when an 8,481-square-mile-area of low or no oxygen was detected during monitoring. Heavy winds came to the aid of the Gulf ecosystem this year, mixing up the oxygen-deprived waters and reducing the size of the dead zone.

From the AP:

The area of low oxygen covers 5,840 square miles of the Gulf floor — roughly the size of Connecticut — said scientists led by Nancy Rabalais of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. …

Rabalais said the survey boat encountered some bottom-dwelling eels and crabs that had swum near the surface of water that’s 60 to 70 feet deep to find oxygen.

“That’s a long way for something like an eel, that lives buried in the mud, to find its way to the surface,” she said in an interview.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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The Art of Loving – Erich Fromm

by Myrna Posted on July 19, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Art of Loving

Erich Fromm

Genre: Psychology

Price: $3.99

Publish Date: February 26, 2013

Publisher: Open Road

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


The international bestseller that launched a movement with its powerful insight: “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” The Art of Loving is a rich and detailed guide to love—an achievement reached through maturity, practice, concentration, and courage. In the decades since the book’s release, its words and lessons continue to resonate. Erich Fromm, a celebrated psychoanalyst and social psychologist, clearly and sincerely encourages the development of our capacity for and understanding of love in all of its facets. He discusses the familiar yet misunderstood romantic love, the all-encompassing brotherly love, spiritual love, and many more. A challenge to traditional Western notions of love, The Art of Loving is a modern classic about taking care of ourselves through relationships with others. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate. “Erich Fromm is both a psychologist of penetration and a writer of ability. His book is one of dignity and candor, of practicality and precision.” — Chicago Tribune “Every line is packed with common sense, compassion, and realism.” — Fortune Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a bestselling psychoanalyst and social philosopher whose views about alienation, love, and sanity in society—discussed in his books such as Escape from Freedom , The Art of Loving , The Sane Society ,and To Have or To Be? —helped shape the landscape of psychology in the mid-twentieth century. Fromm was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to Jewish parents, and studied at the universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg (where in 1922 he earned his doctorate in sociology), and Munich. In the 1930s he was one of the most influential figures at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. In 1934, as the Nazis rose to power, he moved to the United States. He practiced psychoanalysis in both New York and Mexico City before moving to Switzerland in 1974, where he continued his work until his death.

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The Art of Loving – Erich Fromm

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