Catastrophic Thinking: How to Ensure Oil Spill Disasters Do Not Happen Again: Scientific American

"The oilmen were drilling deep below the Gulf of Mexico when a rise of pressure from natural gas blew out the wellhead. A safety device intended to seal the well failed, and tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day began to shoot up into the Gulf waters. Engineers tried stopping the flow with mud and junk and lowering a cap over the leak. They spent months digging relief wells to plug the hole. Eventually they stanched the flow, but it took the better part of a year and contaminated the waters with millions of barrels of crude. Fisheries had to close, birds and other wildlife perished, and vast lengths of coastline were soiled."

That catastrophe happened in 1979, when the Ixtoc 1 drilling rig sank. The parallels between its demise and the Deepwater Horizon disaster that began in April are chilling. We do not know how the ongoing story will end, and we may never be certain what happened in the ocean depths. That two events 30 years apart have followed nearly the same script shows we—not just the oil industry but the entire nation—have failed to address the underlying reasons for these debacles."

Read the rest here:
Catastrophic Thinking: How to Ensure Oil Spill Disasters Do Not Happen Again: Scientific American:

Slashdot Politics Story | WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets

A point I've argued in the past -- why are we fighting and dying when we can simply buy them...?

"According to the CIA World Fact Book:

* Population: 29,121,286
* GDP (Per capita:) $800 (2009 est.)

So now, expenditure over six years (Jan 2004 - Dec 2009) is $300,000,000,000.00 divided by six is around $50,000,000,000.00 per year

Per capita is $1,716.96 or more than double the GDP per capita of the country!

I would think that the US would get better resultsif the money was simply given to each inhabitant, the $800 they already make plus $1,700 from the US, would triple the GDP per capita, no small feat."

Read the rest>>>

Slashdot Politics Story | WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets:

6 Shocking Ways Conservatives Helped Cause the Economic Destruction of America | | AlterNet

So...

"It seems that you can look at a chart of almost anything and right around 1981 or soon after you'll see the chart make a sharp change in direction, and probably not in a good way. And I really do mean almost anything, from economics to trade to infrastructure to ... well almost anything. I spent some time looking for charts of things, and here are just a few examples. In each of the charts below look for the year 1981, when Reagan took office.

Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then.

Look at the influence of these entrenched interests on our current deficits, for example. Obviously conservative policies of tax cuts and military spending increases caused the massive deficits. But entrenched interests use their wealth and power to keep us from making needed changes. The facts are here, plain as the noses on our faces. The ability to fight it eludes us. Will we step up and do something to reverse the disaster caused by the Reagan Revolution or not?"

Nah, probably not.

But what it just ONE person got up and told 3 other people (or blogged about it and told almost nobody, but...)
and those 3 people told 3 others...
and they told 3 others...
pretty soon there'd be a MOVEMENT...
Nah.

(apologies to Arlow)


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6 Shocking Ways Conservatives Helped Cause the Economic Destruction of America | | AlterNet:

Economics and Politics - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

July 19, 2010, 1:45 pm
The Bush Deficit Bamboozle

OK, even by contemporary standards, this is rich: the official Republican stance is now apparently that Bush left behind a budget that was in pretty good shape. Mitch McConnell:

The last year of the Bush administration, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it’s almost 10 percent.

They really do think that we’re idiots.

So, that 3.2 percent number comes from here (pdf). Where’s the bamboozle? Let me count the ways.

First, they’re hoping that you won’t know that standard budget data is presented for fiscal years, which start on October 1 of the previous calendar year. So this isn’t the “last year of the Bush administration” — they’ve conveniently lopped off everything that happened post-Lehman — TARP and all.

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Read the rest here:
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Economics and Politics - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com:

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science -- Gleick et al. 328 (5979): 689 -- Science

From "Science"

The signatories are all members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences but are not speaking on its behalf.
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Letters

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet. Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."

Read the rest of the letter here...

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science -- Gleick et al. 328 (5979): 689 -- Science

t r u t h o u t | Cut Wall Street Out! How States Can Finance Their Own Economic Recovery

This is an article that sat in my drafts since last October.  It's a bit of a long read, and no fireworks, just some interesting information.   "The Bank of North Dakota (BND) was established by the state legislature in 1919, specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men."

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The sole state to actually gain jobs is an unlikely candidate for the distinction: North Dakota. North Dakota is also one of only two states expected to meet their budgets in 2010. (The other is Montana.) North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000 people, largely located in cold and isolated farming communities. Yet, since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56 percent, personal income has grown 43 percent and wages have grown 34 percent. The state not only has no funding problems, but this year it has a budget surplus of $1.3 billion, the largest it has ever had.

Why is North Dakota doing so well, when other states are suffering the ravages of a deepening credit crisis? Its secret may be that it has its own credit machine. North Dakota is the only state in the Union to own its own bank. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) was established by the state legislature in 1919, specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. The bank's stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota.

 
t r u t h o u t | Cut Wall Street Out! How States Can Finance Their Own Economic Recovery

Computer model predicts the spread of the BP oil spill after one year

Researchers from the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have produced an animated computer simulation that shows the potential spread of the oil over a period of 360 days from when the spill started.

Computer model predicts the spread of the BP oil spill after one year

The Oil Drum | Natural Oil Seeps and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: A Comparison of Magnitudes

FYI -
This thing is not a small deal. Don't let greenwashing hide the fact that:

The Deepwater Horizon site releases 3 to 12 times the oil per day compared to that released by natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6552#comment-641971

Editorial - A Climate Change Corrective - NYTimes.com

This follows up on a previous post I made about the scientific method, and lay-peoples understanding of it.
It works. It's self correcting -- one of the thing that bothers people is that scientific findings change...they're based on best info, and new info changes previous thinking...for the better. For all it's apparent inconsistencies, it's the best analytical tool we have for making intelligent decisions about complex problems.

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From the article...

On Wednesday, a panel in Britain concluded that scientists whose e-mail had been hacked late last year had not, as critics alleged, distorted scientific evidence to prove that global warming was occurring and that human beings were primarily responsible. It was the fifth such review of hundreds of e-mail exchanges among some of the world’s most prominent climatologists.
...
Climate skeptics pounced on them as evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate research to support predetermined ideas about global warming.
...
The panel found no such conspiracy.
...
Perhaps now we can put the manufactured controversy known as Climategate behind us and turn to the task of actually doing something about global warming.

Nahh, I doubt it....



Editorial - A Climate Change Corrective - NYTimes.com