EcocentricUncategorized
Michigan is not the first place that comes to mind when you think of oil spills. But as of Monday, add the state to the list of those laying booms, scrambling cleanup teams and otherwise trying to stanch the flow of thick crude leaking from a busted oil pipe. And add that spill to yet another new gusher the Gulf of Mexico—this one …
EcocentricEcocentric
OK, that was a tiny bit snarky, but you have to forgive me. The evidence of a warming planet has been around about 20 years now, and despite what you hear from some quarters about global cooling, that evidence has continued to strengthen. What’s important about a new report titled “State of the Climate in 2009,” just released by NOAA’s …
EcocentricOil
As expected, BP announced this morning that human whipping boy Tony Hayward will be stepping down as CEO, to be replaced in October by the American Bob Dudley. Hayward will be nominated as a nonexecutive director of TNK-BP, the company’s Russian oil and gas venture—meaning that Hayward is literally being exiled to Siberia. (Though …
EcocentricTransportation
I was on a Qantas flight in eastern Australia last week when a flight attendant handed me what looked like a fancy barf bag. It was, in fact, not a fancy barf bag, but a fancy recycling bag, in which I was instructed to place everything that was not a can, plastic cup or a bottle. The idea is that the flight attendants collect and …
EcocentricEcocentric
A carbon cap now seems to be beyond the greenest dreams of environmentalists, but is it possible that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid’s energy bill will be more than just oil spill measures? It could happen. Though Reid had said last week that he wouldn’t be able to include a renewable energy standard (RES) in his bill—mandating …
EcocentricEcocentric
Expects lots of forthcoming post-mortems on comprehensive climate and energy legislation, which effectively died (for now) last week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided not to include a carbon cap or renewable energy standard on the stripped-down bill he intends to introduce this week. I’ve already had my say—today in the …
EcocentricOil
When Tony Hayward became CEO of BP in 2007, replacing a disgraced Lord John Browne, he was taking over a company in turmoil. BP was still recovering from a 2005 fire at its Texas City refinery that killed 15 people—one of the worst industrial accidents in recent memory, and a result of Browne putting profits over safety. Hayward—a …
EcocentricOil
Bonnie is a bust. Saturday morning the National Hurricane Center discontinued tropical storm warnings for Bonnie as it crossed the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and made for landfall along the Gulf coast Saturday evening. It remains a tropical depression—one step down from a tropical storm—with winds around 30 mph and sea …
EcocentricOil
As tempests go, tropical storm Bonnie would barely be strong enough to cause a Louisianan to look up from his gumbo. As of Friday evening, the National Hurricane Center actually downgraded Bonnie to a tropical depression, with winds only around 35 mph—below the 39 mph minimum needed for to be an official tropical storm. If this were …
EcocentricUncategorized
Back in mid-May, a team of scientists announced that they had discovered enormous underwater plumes of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, presumably due to the BP oil spill. While BP steadfastly maintained that almost all of the oil spewing from a partially blown well was flowing directly to the surface, where it showed up as massive slicks, the …
