EcocentricOil
We’ll be debating the long-term environmental impact of the BP oil spill for years, if not decades. But we can know one thing for sure right now: the spill is exacting psychological harm on the people of the Gulf coast.
That’s the conclusion of the first major survey of Gulf coast residents conducted since the well was capped on July …
EcocentricOil
After the oil spill, BP promised to make the Gulf right—and a big part of that was going to be its claims process. Gulf residents affected by the spill—like fisherman who could no longer fish, or seafood restaurant owners whose business had cratered— could visit one of BP’s 25 claims centers sprinkled throughout the Gulf coast …
EcocentricOil
The “static kill” is so called because that’s what BP aims to create—a static situation within its blown well, one where the drilling mud the company is currently pumping into the well offsets the pressure in the reservoir itself. If BP’s Houston-based drilling engineers want some advice on how to create a static situation, however, …
EcocentricOil
That’s what BP reported early Wednesday morning, in what the company called a “significant milestone.” BP stopped pumping heavy mud into the blown well around eight hours after beginning on Tuesday afternoon, saying that the procedure had achieved its “desired outcome.” Here’s part of the press release from BP:
The well is now being
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EcocentricWildlife
Burma is best known to the West as the home of one of the most repressive military regimes in the world, a country where more than 2,100 political prisoners remain behind bars. The U.S. has strict economic sanctions against Burma—a policy President Obama just renewed last week—and the country’s most famous citizen, democratic icon …
EcocentricOil
More good news on the oil spill front: around 9 A.M. today, BP began pouring cement into the well in the final phase of its static kill procedure. BP had earlier pumped 2,300 barrels of heavy drilling mud into the well—enough to equalize pressure in the reservoir and achieve a static situation, preventing any additional oil from …
EcocentricEcocentric
Positive feedback cycles—they’re what keeps climatologists up at night. The term describes the way that certain ecological responses to a warming climate can further accelerate warming, creating a feedback cycle that can spiral out of control. Take the billions and billions of tons of methane buried beneath the Arctic permafrost. …
EcocentricEcocentric
Scientists have been puzzled about a strange disease that began attacking bats in New York state in 2006. The bats would suddenly awaken from hibernation in midwinter, their faces covered in a white fungus. Already weakened, they struggle to find food and die in large numbers. Called white-nose syndrome (WNS), the disease has spread …
EcocentricEcocentric
They haven’t gotten anywhere near the attention they deserve, but the floods that have struck much of Asia over the past couple of weeks may be the biggest humanitarian disaster in recent memory—bigger even than the earthquake that hit Haiti in January and the 2004 Asian tsunami. Both of those catastrophes killed far more, but the …
EcocentricHealth
Crossposted from TIME’s Wellness blog, because I find flu fascinating:
So sayeth the World Health Organization (WHO)—and they should know, since they were the ones who declared a full, phase six-level pandemic a little more than a year ago. Now it’s done—this morning WHO head Dr. Margaret Chan announced that the group’s
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