We’ve learned so many wonderful new terms during the more than four-month old BP oil spill: top kill, static kill, bottom kill, Corexit, junk shot. It’s time to add one more: Oceanospirillales. That’s that name of an order of proteobacteria that are currently chowing down on the plumes of underwater oil created by the spill—and …
There seem to be two rules to being a passenger on a Greenpeace ship. One: if you take a beer from the refrigerator, always remember to log it on the drinks sheet. (And pay your bar bill before you leave the boat—otherwise, I believe they make you walk the plank.) Two: there is no such thing as a passenger on a Greenpeace ship. …
The Associated Press has a nifty exclusive: an interview with the mayor of the Japanese town of Taiji. If that name rings a bell, it’s probably because you’ve seen The Cove, the Oscar-winning documentary that details the dolphin slaughter carried out by the residents of the village. Though The Cove makes it seem as if the dolphin hunt is …
Twice over the past month and a half I’ve sat with groups in Louisiana and Florida while Kenneth Feinberg—the booming Boston lawyer who is running the multi-billion dollar oil spill compensation fund—made his pitch. The audiences couldn’t have been more different—worried and wary fisherman in the tiny Louisiana village of Port …
For all the attention over undersea oil plumes and seafood toxicity and depressed Gulf residents, it’s easy to forget that this well technically still hasn’t been killed. And now it looks like the final end of BP’s cursed Macondo well won’t be happening any time soon.
After days of struggling over how to deal with concrete that had …
Sorry for the light posting—between travel and the constant stream of studies coming out on the oil spill, much of my work is going straight to the mainpage at Time.com. Like this one—a piece on a new study out in today’s Science#mce_temp_url# that has conclusive evidence of underwater oil plumes. And more worrying, the oil there is …
We’ve sent a lot of criticism BP’s way during the past four months of the oil spill, so it’s only fair to give notice when they do the right thing. After weeks of experts calling attention to the potential problems—and states like Louisiana asking for fund—BP announced that it would provide $52 million for behavioral health programs …
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a story on a pair of new studies raising questions about whether most of the oil that spilled into the Gulf is really gone. Short version: not really. Check it out here.
Over in USA Today, writer Laura Vanderkam has a shockingly un-American suggestion: kill your lawn. In the middle of what’s shaping up to be the hottest year on record, Americans are still spending time, money—and water—to keep their lawns green and trim. By Vanderkam’s numbers, 21 million acres in the U.S. are covered by grass that …
Maybe Thad Allen just can’t let go. A few days after telling reporters that the final stages of the relief well was likely to go forward this week, it seems we might all have to wait a while longer. Further pressure tests on the well now indicate that some amount of concrete leaked into the annulus, or outer casing, during the earlier …