On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and blowing out an oil well a mile below the ocean's surface. In the four frantic months it took to seal off the well, almost five million barrels of crude oil spewed into the Gulf, causing untold economic and environmental havoc. A year after the spill, Dr. Molly Redmond talks about the impact of the spill on the gulf. Redmond, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was on the scene in the gulf within a few weeks of the beginning of the spill and she is among ... Read More
The Death Throes of Pelicans and Presidents
August 26, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Although a discouraged office seeker fired the shot, the nation's best doctors probably killed U.S. President James A. Garfield. After Garfield survived the first night of the July 1881 shooting (much to everyone's surprise), his doctors decided their best course was to get that nasty lead out of the president. So for the next 11 weeks, they poked and probed with unsterilized instruments and bare hands — the fingers of 15 different doctors pushed into the president's side that first night — looking for the slug. Even though Joseph Lister's germ theory was not consulted during Garfield's ... Read More
The Oil-Soaked Are Least Likely to Favor Regulation
July 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
One of the big oddities to come out of the Gulf oil spill has been this quirk of public-opinion polling: Residents along the coast overwhelmingly say their communities have been hurt by the disaster, but they're also among the least likely people in the country to support a moratorium on offshore drilling. An ABC News-Washington Post poll this week reiterated the theme on the heels of President Obama's second attempt to impose a moratorium. It found that 79 percent of people in the most affected counties along the coast labeled the spill a "major disaster," with 75 percent saying it has ... Read More
Standing in Line to Cap the Spill
June 8, 2010 • By • 4 Comments
In his long career, James Dehlsen has started and sold several green-energy companies and played an important role in making wind- and ocean-powered electrical generation commercially viable. So when BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, it wasn't long before Dehlsen started thinking about ways to cap a broken well that was spewing crude oil and gas 5,000 feet under water. "It was very much driven by the enormity of the potential catastrophe and just trying to think about what might be different solutions," says Dehlsen, CEO of Ecomerit ... Read More
Oil Spill Outlines the Limits of Government
June 2, 2010 • By • 13 Comments
Since oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico six weeks ago, government officials have cycled through a series of crisis-management messages. First they were monitoring BP's response, then working with BP, then keeping "a boot on the neck" of BP. Then they were distancing themselves from BP, refusing to share a podium with BP, and finally, this week, investigating BP. Amid the evolving debate about government's role in the disaster cleanup — a debate that has drawn fine distinctions between who's "responsible," who's "accountable" and who's "in charge" — one thing officials haven't ... Read More
Mopping Up: From Hairballs to Penguin Transit
May 14, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
As the crude continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico from the deadly Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster, observers are barraged with snapshots of past cleanup tactics tried, tested or hopeful. So far, response to this disaster has tended more toward hope over help, as BP and U.S. Coast Guard efforts to date — using fire, dispersants, booms, absorbents and a massive dome designed to siphon the oil into a tanker sitting more than 5,000 feet above the wellhead — have not worked to any extent. Meanwhile, 40 percent of the nation’s wetlands lay in the oil slick’s path, to say nothing ... Read More
Oil Spill Fouls Up Climate Bill
May 13, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
The environmental movement has been pushed forward since its inception by catastrophes like the oil spill now spreading in the Gulf Mexico. The 1969 blowout off the coast of Santa Barbara helped spur the creation of the first Earth Day and, not long after, the Environmental Protection Agency. By the time the Exxon Valdez tanker started spewing oil in 1989 off the coast of Alaska, a grassroots movement had grown into a political force, some groups with Washington offices and lobbyists of their own. “They barely have to move, and the media are already describing this as an environmental ... Read More
What About Spilled Oil That Doesn’t Reach Shore?
May 11, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
As the oily goo from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico begins to come ashore, the immediate concern is for the devastating effects it will have on the shore birds and sea life in the coastal regions. But what of the long-term effects on the ocean itself? David Valentine, a biologist with the University of California, Santa Barbara, worries as much about the effects of the hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude settling on the sea floor, where much of the gushing oil is likely to settle. While the obvious immediate danger is to the coastal areas — and oil has already started to ... Read More
Oil Cleanup Cure May Be Worse Than Disease
May 7, 2010 • By • 7 Comments
Irving Mendelssohn, a Louisiana wetland ecologist, knows what won’t work if and when the oil slick in the Gulf reaches his marshy coastline. Unfortunately, he’s not sure what will. “The most important thing is that you don’t send hundreds of people walking into the wetlands, pushing that oil into the soil,” he said. “You can’t have people stomping around in their boots. And you don’t want machines like tractors pushing the oil into the soil. That would definitely kill the vegetation.” All other “remediations” are problematic, too, Mendelssohn said. As a professor ... Read More
