Free Steven Donziger!

r/Photojournalist

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Posted by

u/avivi_

21 hours ago

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Steven Donziger saying goodbye before being sent to prison for filing a lawsuit against Chevron for decimating indigenous rainforests.

From Reddit: gordohimself says, "Not only filed but won the lawsuit representing a group of 30,000 farmers and Indigenous Ecuadorians, meaning Chevron owes them $9.5 Billion which it hasn't paid.

Instead, they targeted Steven with some bullshit charge from a corporate Judge for refusing to hand over his personal computer and phone to the Chevron legal team, kept him under house arrest for over 2 years (an unprecedented cruel and unusual punishment), and successfully convicted him to try and scare off any other lawyer for fighting worthy fights against Chevron or any other corporation functioning as an instrument of death."

Sign the petition!

Jane Goodall doing good for all

 

Women Hold Up Half The Sky

MhthafrcSch 16pomhfnmu, 2a0sao19dreodnig  · 

‪This image of 84-year-old primatologist and conservation expert Jane Goodall and 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, who just gave a fiery speech at Davos, makes me want to cry. The connection, mutual admiration, and quiet determination in their eyes is just beautiful.‬

Jane Goodall inspired this frog-loving boy to become a global activist

From tests to fires and all things in between

John Oliver takes on standardized testing.

A renowned antiquities scholar, Khaled al-Asaad, has been beheaded because he wouldn't tell ISIS where antique artifacts were hidden.  We own this brave man much for saving human history from these ugly vandals.

People killed by US police this year alone.

Buy ugly vegetables and save the world.

The plunder of black life.

Pharmaceuticals in the environment:

All indications are that we're just at the beginning when it comes to understanding the presence and importance of pharmaceuticals in the environment, let alone what to do about them. Even as scientists investigate what's actually out there, pharmaceutical companies work to make drugs and drug production more environmentally benign, wastewater treatment professionals develop better ways to remove pharmaceuticals, and environmental and public health advocates work on campaigns to change practices, studies finding pharmaceuticals in the environment keep coming. 

In fact, Kolpin says, hundreds are published each year. And although the amounts of pharmaceuticals being measured are exceptionally small, he says this information is important because it provides a base line for future comparison. 

"What we think today is safe, we may find 10 years from now there is some effect, that we didn't realize at the time was important," he says. "We're not trying to say the sky is falling. We're trying to put out the science saying there are some things that are of concern."

How much climate change will cost us.

World’s Second Largest Source of Electricity Is Now Renewables

Dog that helps sniff out foul brood disease in bee colonies.

California is on fire.  So is Alaska...

You're either fer us or again us...

For:

Wonderful little known part of the ACA.

Teaching children how to enjoy vegetables.

Against:

By tilting the playing field in favor of industry... and against the environment and people's overall health.

By enchanting people with blunt talk... and disguising the fact that the Koch brothers LOVE Governor Christie. (transcript found here.)

By ignoring all the things in your 21st century house that will mess with your hormones and health.

By believing Obamacare will kill you, abort your babies, prevent your children learning about creationism, and all the things the evil Kenyan illegal president has done in his life and in his two terms. (How do you reason with people who accept these as fact?)

By believing corporations who lie to you to bend democracy for their benefit.

By not caring that our oceans are broken.

And then there are those who explain both sides extremely well.

Bill Moyers

This is what climate change looks like

In case facts and graphs can impress you....

Boiling our oceans and killing our fish

But remember... there is no global warming! (my bold)

VILLAS, N.J. - The removal of thousands of dead fish from eight miles of Delaware Bay shoreline is expected to begin Friday after a determination that low oxygen levels in the water likely caused the massive kill.

Water samples taken Thursday "strongly suggest" that extraordinarily low levels of dissolved oxygen - the result of higher air and water temperatures - killed the menhaden, according to state Department of Environmental Protection officials.

The lowest oxygen reading was recorded at Pierces Point, one of the areas hardest hit by the fish kill. Bay water at the time the fish washed ashore was around 85 degrees, approximately 10 degrees above normal for this time of the year.

[snip]

The warmer water is, the less dissolved oxygen it can hold, Van Fossen said. At night, oxygen levels also may drop significantly because aquatic plants near the water's edge stop their process of photosynthesis.

"If the fish schooled very tightly in shallows . . . they may have simply used up all the oxygen that was available to them," he said.

An early theory of investigators was that predators had driven the menhaden toward shore and in nearby creeks, where they quickly depleted the dissolved oxygen.

Menhaden, which measure from 31/2 inches to 4 inches, are bony fish not usually consumed by humans. They are prey for species such as bluefish, drum, flounder, mackerel, striped bass, and tuna.

Oceans, we should be taking better care of you....

For those idiots who are now saying the oil is gone in the Gulf

Do you think we're stupid?

Incoming BP CEO: Time for 'scaleback' in cleanup

Just because we can't see it on the shores doesn't mean it isn't there.

You can't pour MILLIONS and MILLIONS of gallons of poisonous crude and MILLIONS and MILLIONS of horribly toxic dispersant into a sea and have it just 'disappear'. BP thinks if it can get the media to start talking about the amazing fact that the oil seems to be gone, we will forget about the disaster? Demand less money from them? Decide nature will clean it all up? Decide it wasn't that big of a mess?

Are you fucking kidding me?

The Gulf is ruined.

Not in anyone's lifetime today will the Gulf return to what it was before this 'spill'. Gulf sea creatures will have been made extinct. The water has been poisoned. The surviving fish and crustaceans are inedible. People are out of work. Health problems are obvious. Beach real estate prices are plummeting.

A seemingly feel-good story showed up this week on the nation's front pages and newscasts: The oil that befouled the Gulf of Mexico for 86 days is vanishing from the surface, leaving workers with little to clean.

But scientists warn the oil's ecological impacts are shifting, not ebbing, thanks to massive volumes of dispersants that have kept the crude beneath the waves.

"This is a management decision, to use dispersants," College of William and Mary marine science professor Robert Diaz said yesterday. "It doesn't make the oil go away, it just puts it from one part of the ecosystem to another."

That dispersed oil now hovers, diluted in the water column, posing a challenge for scientists to track and measure the subsea plumes. Mapping the long-term effects of the nearly 2 million gallons of dispersant used by BP PLC may well be equally difficult, given the array of unanswered questions that surround the products' rapid breakdown of oil droplets and their chronic toxicity.

In other words, while dispersants may have helped spare the Gulf's birds, the chemicals are likely shifting dangers to other species lower in the food chain. The National Research Council described dispersant use in 2005 as "a conscious decision" to direct hydrocarbons to one part of the marine ecosystem, "decreasing the risk to water surface and shoreline habitats while increasing the potential risk to organisms in the water column and on the seafloor."

Update: 7/31: McClatchy gets it right: When will oil spill be cleaned up? Maybe never

Update: Firedoglake.

Update: Nasa photo of Gulf on July 24th.

More of why we need to trust BP.....

BP is trying to buy off scientists

“We’re all employees of the state of Mississippi, and none of us really felt comfortable about testifying on the other side -- even if what we said was scientifically accurate,” Griffit says.

News of BP’s efforts to secure the consulting services of university faculty spread rapidly over the weekend, following a report in the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala., that provided details from contracts being offered to scientists. The newspaper said it obtained a copy of such a contract, noting that the agreement restricted consultants from discussing or publishing their research for at least the next three years.

At a time when many have already accused BP of low-balling or playing down the extent of the oil spill’s impact, many denounced the notion of professors gathering potentially damaging data for the company and letting BP sit on it for years.

“The idea that some scientists are willing to be bought off has caused quite a stir, and I guess the other thing is people don’t think too highly of BP trying to do that,” says Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama.

The debate surrounding professors working for BP is not dissimilar from concerns often raised about professors conducting paid drug research for pharmaceutical companies. The fact that BP is pursuing faculty members who work sometimes within eyeshot of the spill's impact, however, appears to have given the conversations additional intensity.

BP pumped in unusual chemicals before rig explosion:

A contractor working on the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded testified yesterday that the day before the explosion, BP had pumped an unusual chemical mixture into the well -- a mixture that later rained down on the rig like "snot."

Leo Lindner, a drilling fluid specialist for M-I Swaco, told the panel investigating the causes of the explosion that BP decided to mix two chemicals the company had a surplus of -- two chemicals that aren't usually mixed -- and pump them into the well to flush out the drilling mud.

"It's not something we've ever done before," he said.

Lindner said BP wanted to use 400 barrels of the mixture, more than twice the amount of fluid usually used, because the company had hundreds of barrels of the chemicals and wanted to get rid of them.

And BP badly photoshopping the 'control center'.

The Gulf of Mexico

Now solidifying thanks to BP!

The only thing BP and the involved oil companies did this time

Was spill in a populated neighborhood where everyone could see it.

I'm so sorry I ran over your family

I bought this super fast Lamborghini, but I never figured out where the brake was.

OIL INDUSTRY RESPONSE CAPABILITIES TO A MAJOR SPILL

Tillerson: "When these things happen, we are not well equipped to deal with them. We've never represented anything different than that. That's why emphasis is always on preventing these things from occurring, because when they happen we are not very well equipped to deal with them."

So we need to take the car and give the driver jail time. Right?

Environmental catastrophe

The oil gusher's timeline.

Who is responsible?

While BP does make a convenient target, other companies can consider themselves fortunate not to be caught up in the crisis. Of the 126 people working on the Deepwater Horizon rig, only eight were BP employees. The oil giant may have a 65% share of the well, but its partner, Anadarko, has a 25% share. The rig was owned and operated by offshore drilling company Transocean, which leased it to BP. Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, played a crucial role in carrying out cement work that was supposed to cap the doomed well. The failed blowout preventer was made by an American firm, Cameron. There is a bewildering array of potential bad guys to blame, not just one single villain. But that argument is unhelpful to those looking for a simple narrative to explain such an overwhelming catastrophe.

But what are others saying?

Internal BP documents, including an e-mail message calling the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon a “nightmare,” show a pattern of risky choices made to save time and money in the weeks before the disastrous April 20 blowout, according to a letter sent to the oil company by the leaders of a House committee on Monday.

The committee leaders cited five areas in which the company had made decisions that “increased the danger of a catastrophic well,” including choosing the design of the well, preparing for and testing the cement job and assuring that the well was properly sealed on the top.

Taken together, the documents offer the strongest case yet that BP bears much of the responsibility for the explosion that killed 11 workers and the still-unchecked leaking of millions of gallons of oil into the gulf.

Via Bryan of Why Now?, McClatchy says it's BP all the way:

From the company's uncommon well design to its fatal decision not to circulate drilling mud, which could have cleared out pockets of gas, and the lack of critical testing, which could have pinpointed problems with its cementing, the company had many points at which it could have prevented an explosion, investigators with the House Energy and Commerce Committee have found.

Instead, the company violated industry guidelines and proceeded "despite warnings from BP's own personnel and its contractors," said the chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and the chairman of the investigative subcommittee that handled the probe, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.

Those decisions led to 11 deaths and the worst oil spill in U.S. history and will continue to have an effect on the environment and the future of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the two wrote in a letter to BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward that was released Monday.

"Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense," they wrote. "If this is what happened, BP's carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants and the workers on the rig."

Didn't someone say they would be extracting the oil from the sand and the booms? Or did I hear that wrong? (my bold)

About 35,000 bags — or 250 tons — of oily trash have been carted away from this beach, said Lt. Patrick Hanley of the Coast Guard, who is stationed at Port Fourchon. And as of Monday, more than 175,000 gallons of liquid waste — a combination of oil and water — had been sent to landfills, as had 11,276 cubic yards of solid waste, said Petty Officer Gail Dale, also of the Coast Guard, who works with at the command center in Houma.

Michael Condon, BP’s environmental unit leader, said that tests have shown that the material is not hazardous, and can safely be stored in landfills around the region that accept oil industry debris. The checklist and procedures involved, Mr. Condon said, are part of a process “we do very well and have done for a long time.”

But some local officials, environmental lawyers and residents who live near landfill sites are not convinced.

“There’s no way that isn’t toxic,” said Gladstone Jones III, a New Orleans lawyer who has spent much of his career trying to get compensation for plaintiffs he says have been harmed by exposure to toxic waste.

In fact, waste from oil exploration and production falls into a regulatory no man’s land, neither exactly benign nor toxic on its face. The compounds in oil most dangerous to human health — like benzene, a carcinogen — are volatile and tend to dissipate when crude oil reaches the ocean surface, or soon thereafter. But some toxicologists say it is impossible to know whether the toxic chemicals are entirely gone.

And I'm sorry.... BP is now totally compromised as a believable player in this saga. Lies, deflection, and diversion are their known techniques. Why are they so anxious to prevent allowing reporters on the scene? Why are they scrambling frantically to remove animal corpses? Are they the last ones to realize what a complete and utter DISASTER this is?

Monkeyfister has been doing excellent work on the crisis.

Update: Help Not Wanted: BP rejects expert volunteers. Of course, this makes perfect sense. Incompetents will not want to be shown as incompetent by those who actually know stuff....

Update II: Don't forget under whose administration this screw-the-environment-just-get-the-fucking-oil policy started in the first place: MMS under Bush admin. loosened regulation of drilling, downplayed risk, ignored safety warnings

You can't dump that much crude into the Gulf

And somehow expect all of it to float. Toxic dispersants will break up the oil that floats, but the ocean itself is holding all the rest of it. It doesn't dilute and disappear. There are no good choices.

Oil will choke the life out of the ocean floor, kill the fish and the microorganisms they feed on, strangle the birds who feed upon the water. The beaches will reek and be unusable.

Fixing the pipe is one thing. Getting ready to deal with the decades... DECADES... of clean up is another. People who can look at the video feed of the broken pipe and refuse to recognize these facts are in denial.

Update: Bob Herbert

President Obama knows that. He knows — or should know — that the biggest, most powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only envy. BP’s profits are counted in the billions annually. They are like stacks and stacks of gold glittering beneath a brilliant sun. You don’t want to know what people will do for that kind of money.

There is nothing new to us about this. Haven’t we just seen how the giant financial firms almost destroyed the American economy? Wasn’t it just a few weeks before this hideous Deepwater Horizon disaster that a devastating mine explosion in West Virginia — at a mine run by a company with its own hideous safety record — killed 29 coal miners and ripped the heart out of yet another hard-working local community?

The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is beyond absurd. Even after the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon site, BP officials were telling us (as their noses grew longer and longer) that about only 1,000 barrels of oil a day were escaping into the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly a month into the disaster, BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, was publicly offering the comforting assessment that the environmental damage resulting from the spill would likely be “very, very modest.”

What corporations are all about: Show not substance: Louisiana official: BP bused in 400 temporary workers for Obama’s Gulf Coast visit.

And a very good site for the latest news: The Oil Drum

Don't look at it, don't think about it

It does not exist.

BP owns the Gulf of Mexico.

Actually... they do. The entire horrifically horrifyingly terribly horrible mess.

Update: Gulf oil spill may be 19 times bigger than originally thought

Give us your hair!!

Talk about recycling....

If you’ve been keeping tabs on the catastrophic (an adjective I feel like I’ve been having to use far too often lately) Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, you’ve probably been wondering how exactly you can help. Well, for those of you with furry, four-legged flatmates, it can be as easy as sweeping the floors and collecting all that errant fur and hair.

So how exactly can hoarding pet fur help with cleaning up one of the worst environmental disasters in recent memory? Enter Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that’s been accepting donations of non-filthy pet fur and human hair since 1998 to craft oil-absorbing hairmats — described as “flat square dreadlocks” — and hair-stuffed containment booms made from recycled pantyhose. These hairy contraptions are effective at soaking-up oil and they don’t require any new resources … just stuff you’d normally trash (or compost) unless you’re into, umm, stockpiling fur.

I must say, sending along fur to Matter of Trust via Excess Access is an eco-ideal spring cleaning mission for folks with critters around the house. In addition to pet owners, groomers and salon owners can get involved too by sending in bulk shipments of hair/fur. In fact, as of today, 400,000 pounds of hair was en route to the Gulf Coast.

Head on over to Matter of Trust for instructions on how you, and Mr. Bojangles the beagle, can help out.

The opinions of birds everywhere

To oil spills...



Update 5/3: Excellent map showing sequence of oil plume.

In honor of Earth Day

What blows around...

Comes around:

WASHINGTON — A new study further bolsters concerns that pollution blowing across the Pacific Ocean from China and other rapidly developing Asian nations may swamp efforts to clean up the air in the Western United States and make it difficult for states and cities to meet federal standards.
The study, based on 100,000 measurements over 25 years and a computer model tracking air-flow patterns, found that during the spring, ozone from Asia reaches Washington , Oregon , California and other states west of the Rocky Mountains .
For the first time, the study links ozone in the air above the United States with Asian pollution, said Dan Jaffe , a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington-Bothell and one of the study's authors.
"It is possible that emissions from emerging economies like China , with relatively limited emissions controls, are outpacing reductions in the developing countries," the report concludes. It says that the Asian emissions may "hinder the USA's compliance with its own ozone air-quality standard."
Previous studies have detected such pollutants from Asia as mercury, soot and PCBs reaching the United States . A National Academy of Sciences study last year pointed to increasing unease among regulators about a growing problem.

Canada sees our pollution acidifying their lakes. I'm sure we will soon be able to prove that the dust in Turkey came from a dump in the Congo which came from a desert in Colombia which came from a factory in Thailand which came from a ship from India which came from ....

Ken Salazar wears a white hat!

And takes head on Big Oil:

When president-elect Barack Obama nominated Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar to head the Department of Interior at the end of 2008, some voices in the conservation community wondered whether the moderate Democrat with ties to ranching and other traditional western industries was the best choice to chart a new direction in managing one-fifth of the nation’s land. But immediately after taking office, Salazar quickly moved to dispel many of those worries with a series of directives that forcefully demonstrated that the Bush era had ended, particularly on policies related to energy development on federal lands:

— He suspended 77 controversial oil and gas leases in Utah, some of them near national parks and national monuments.

– Understanding that renewable energy projects create more jobs than fossil fuels development, he directed his agencies to make the development of renewable energy a priority.

– He withdrew the Bush administration’s industry-friendly research and development leases for oil shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

– He launched a department-wide effort to ensure that federal land management decisions respond effectively to climate change.

And, saying “There’s a new sheriff in town,” he began to clean up the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service, the Interior agency that oversees royalty collections from oil and gas companies operating on federal land and offshore.