Infusion of gas and oil into Gulf unlike anything in human history, researcher says

Methane 10,000 times normal has been detected in underwater concentrations of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers from the University of South Florida said Tuesday.

And two federal agencies, NOAA and the Coast Guard, confirmed that yes, there are underwater clouds of oil and gas in the Gulf.

BP CEO Tony Hayward had questioned earlier if such “plumes” existed. Thad Allen, Coast Guard point man for the spill response, said “clouds” would be a better term.

USF researchers, who spent two week on the ship F.G. Walton Smith, told reporters they followed an underwater plume 15 miles by 3 miles and 600 feet thick.

"It's an infusion of oil and gas unlike anything else that has ever been seen anywhere, certainly in human history," said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia, the expedition leader.

Bacteria feeding on the oil and gas have depleted oxygen to the point there were nearly “dead zones.” But researchers said it was hard to know the ultimate impact on fisheries.

Oil and gas in an area tested 40 miles northeast of the Deepwater Horizon well head showed small levels of 0.5 parts per million, NOAA said. Two other areas tested by USF showed inconclusive results and no certain connection to the BP oil spill.

The research will continue, NOAA said. The researchers are to testify Wednesday before the House Energy Committee.

(Sources: Greenwire. MSNBC and CNN)

World is on track to have hottest year on record

(Map courtesy of NOAA)

The combined land and ocean global temperature in April, and for the first 4 months of 2010, was hotter than the previous record, set in 1998, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Land surface temperatures in April were the third highest, with warmer than usual temps in Canada, Alaska, the Eastern U.S., Australia, South Asian northern Africa and northern Russia. The Western U.S. and most of China were cooler than usual, NOAA said.

The global ocean surface temperature was 1.03°F (0.57°C) above the 20th century average and the warmest on record for April. The warmth was most pronounced near the Equator, especially the Atlantic.

Tell the global warming skeptics. (But of course they won't believe it.)

Sources: Reuters, ClimateWire, NOAA website.)

Will BP pay for all the oil spill cleanup plus damages?

(Image from Flickr and Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.)

Who will pay for the damage caused by the Great Gulf Oil Spill of 2010?

Everyone is saying BP. As majority lease owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil well that is gushing a mile down on the ocean floor, BP owns most of the responsibility. BP executives have repeatedly said the company will pay for the cleanup and “legitimate claims” for economic and other damages.

But that’s not the whole story. Anadarko and Matsui, who own 35% of the lease, will have to pick up their share of the spill cleanup.

A 1990 law, enacted after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, said the companies with the oil leases would have to pay for the cleanup, plus up to $75 million for economic and natural resources damage. BP has acknowledged that this spill, really a gusher, will cost a lot more than that.

Raising the liability cap
Some senators are trying to raise the cap from $75 million. There are several proposals. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) tried to fast-track an increase to $10 billion. But it was blocked by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Others, from the Gulf Coast, say it should be one year’s profit or $150,000 million, whichever is less – to protect the little guy (guy meaning oil company.) BP is expected to see a profit of $23B this year.

The 1990 law also set up an Oil Spill Trust Fund to help pay for major spills. With a tax of 8 cents a barrel the fund is now at $1.6B, but by law just $1B of that can be spent on any one event.

Others involved in the accident, who will probably have to pay something, are Transocean, owner of the rig; Halliburton, who cemented the well, and Cameron International, maker of the faulty blowout preventer.

Then there's insurance
But they won’t have to pay all of it themselves. Each has insurance, and that insurance has re-insurance. The loss to insurance companies for this incident is estimated at between $1.5B and $3.5B by Swiss Re, whose own losses in the accident are estimated at about $200 million. The higher $3.5B figure could be reached if the oil goes ashore, which triggers another section in the policy.

Total insurance losses to date are about $700 million. The rig itself was insured at Lloyds of London for $560 million, which has already been paid, according to The Guardian in England, where BP is headquartered.

BP said at mid-week it had paid about $1.5 million in claims to fisherman and had not yet questioned the legitimacy of any claims. It also paid $25M in grants to each of the four affected states.

But government and vulnerable businesses, like tourism and fishing, are worried payment may be slow and not in full.

They also are concerned because BP asked out-of-work fishermen to sign waivers not to sue before hiring them to help with the cleanup.

In the Valdez case, some claims weren’t paid for two decades and the Supreme Court reduced punitive damages from $2.5B to $500M at the end of long drawn-out court fight. NOAA estimates there is still 21,000 gallons of oil on the Alaska shoreline.

(Sources: E&E Daily, Greenwire, E&E TV, LA Times, New York Times, The Guardian, The Hill, National Post,
PlanetArk. )

NOAA map shows spread of oil spill through Monday morning

Check out this good map of the oil spill up through Monday morning (with projections for tomorrow). Looks like it's backing away from the coast -- at least for now.

Rising seas on Delaware coast lead to study

(Photo of Delaware coast with two WWII towers from Flickr and photographer m wms)

News Update 1: Sea levels along 25 miles of Delaware coastline are rising at the rate of about 1 foot per century. Thermal expansion from global warming, along with erosion, settling and sediment blockage by man-made structures, have caused problems for some time. A historic lighthouse at Cape Henlopen fell into the sea in 1926 and two WWII towers are surrounded by water during heavy storms or extremely high tides. After a storm and flooding in May, state environmental officials are concerned about what the future holds as far as storm frequency and intensity, wetlands loss, rainfall, flooding, erosion and changes in groundwater aquifers. So they are working with NOAA over the next two years to map the land under the sea with a new technology called LiDAR, which uses digital photography to identify and find solutions to impending problems. (Sources: delawareonline, Greenwire)

Kids shortchanged when subject is climate change

(Photo of book one teacher used to try to understand the complex issue of climate change from Flickr and photographer runswithscissors/Ken)

Weekly Angst: One of the state legislatures just passed a law adding climate change to the scientific topics that must be taught in public schools. Then the governor of the state, (drum roll, please) Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed it. What was THAT about?

The Governator said he opposed attempts to mandate “specific details or events into areas of instruction, ” but state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), the bill’s sponsor, denied that the bill “specified exactly how climate change would be taught and would simply have added to 7 others topics the state already requires – issues of such overwhelming importance as "integrated pest management."

Cynthia Thomashow, president of the Center for Environmental Education at Maine’s Unity College, told ClimateWire she suspects adding global warming and the human causes of it is tough for some politicians to swallow. “It means we have to change.”

Thomashow estimates 20-30% of elementary school students in America learn about climate change in any comprehensive way, and maybe 40% of high school students.

There’s not much help from text books. Three top companies, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Prentice Hall and Houghton Mifflin, cover it only in a vague, passing way. And with no emphasis on testing for lessons learned it gets little attention unless teachers or department chairs take the lead.

John Whitsett, president of the National Science Teachers Assn., notes that textbook companies are in business to sell books and “some parts of the country aren’t interested in teaching climate change.”

It was Whitsett’s organization that in 2006 refused to help distribute 50,000 free copies of “An Inconvenient Truth” to schools. He himself told ClimateWire, “We should be teaching the fundamentals of climate, not necessarily this topic.”

The state of California buys about 12% of the nation’s textbook. A change in policy from them could have made a difference in what textbook companies do. But California wasn’t ready to make the leap, so what chance is there with states that won’t teach evolution?

Maybe all is not lost. Textbooks do tend to be out-of-date. It could get 5 degrees hotter before they get it right. But I’m not sure kids pay all that much attention to books now anyway. They’re into movies, TV, videogames and iPods. So we need other tools to teach them what we’re doing to their world and what life will be like when they’re grown up. “An Inconvenient Truth” would have been a good start.

Several government agencies and non-profits are working on materials and curricula of their own.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration unveiled a slick new brochure this spring called “Climate Literacy: The Essentials of Climate Science.” It’s for adults too – something to educate the public about the calamity facing us. But NOAA wants to get the brochures into schools too. So far, it’s distributed just 27,000 copies – that’s less than 1% of the nation’s science teachers. So they’ve got a long way to go. Both NOAA and NASA have grant programs to encourage innovative approaches to teaching climate change.

The non-profit National Wildlife Federation is also working on a booklet and lesson plans. And of course there are plenty of resources on the Internet. One of the best appears to be climatechangeeducation.org.

It looks as if it will be up to teachers and parents to push for our children to be properly educated about this issue. Clearly we can’t leave it to the bureaucracy. Teach climate change at home but also push to get information into the schools. Some people’s children won’t get it at home.
(Special thanks to ClimateWire and reporter Lydia DePillis, the main source for this posting)

Fed report links global warming to extreme weather, predicts more floods and droughts

(Photo of flood in downtown Cedar Rapids from Flickr and The U.S. Geological Survey and photographer Don Becker.)

News Update 1: In the midst of record flooding in the Midwest, causing at least $3 billion in crop loss alone, and an almost decade-long drought in the Southwest, a new government report links extreme weather with human-produced heat-trapping gases and has some dire predictions for more deadly weather events in the future. The report, “Weather Extremes in a Changing Climate,” released last week, expressed high confidence that extreme rainfalls, such as the ones that caused the floods, as well as intense droughts and more heat waves will hit the U.S. as temperatures continue to rise. The rains are expected primarily in the North and the droughts in the Southwest. The changes are already apparent, the report said. It also predicted stronger and more frequent hurricanes (though there is some scientific disagreement about that), winter storms with higher winds and waves by century’s end, and disappearing summer sea ice that could erode shorelines in Alaska and Canada. The report, led by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was an acknowledgment by the Bush Administration that global warming is and will cause catastrophic weather. But do something about it? Naaa. (Sources: ClimateWire,
the Daily Green, washingtonpost.com, CNN)

Excessive snow this winter will lead to more flooding in Midwest and Northeast -- NOAA

(Photo of recent flooding in St. Louis from Flickr and Dave Thompson)

Xtreme Weather: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting more of the deadly flooding we’ve seen in recent weeks in the Midwest. This winter has seen an unusual amount of snow, and as that snow melts, flooding is likely in the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri river basins. Some relief will come to the parched Southeast. Atlanta’s reservoir, Lake Lanier, now 12-14 feet below normal, will be replenished this summer, as will Lake Okeechobee in Florida, the National Weather Service said. The long-term drought in the Southwest won’t be affected, however. (ClimateWire)