7 out of 8 isn’t bad

I actually listened to a little bit of that Chopraesque blithering about the Gulf from “Evolutionary Leaders” — I really, really despise them for taking that name — and you can, too, at this link. I don’t recommend it: the incompetent boobs who set it up had created a two-way conference call with swarms of people, and configured it so every time someone dialed in, there was a chime…a horrible, awful piercing chime. So throught the whole thing you get to hear ‘ping – ping – ping – ping’ at about the same volume as the speakers. It will drive you insane, if listening to Chopra doesn’t do that to you first.

I still hate these slimebags, but I do have to admit, Chopra actually gave some practical advice, and it wasn’t quite as awful as I feared. Except for the pinging. And I did give up early, so it could have gone downhill fast. Here’s Chopra’s list of things for people to do, and all except the last one are reasonable.

  1. Give direct financial aid

  2. Learn more about organizations

  3. Volunteer to help organizations

  4. Engage in global conversations with social networks

  5. Make conscious choices that are green

  6. Support investments in sustainable technologies

  7. Educate yourself on successful approaches

  8. Support spiritual education — the cause of the problem is scientific dualism that separates the organism and the environment

I was impressed — he actually didn’t propose thinking happy thoughts to change the universe, so he greatly exceeded my expectations. That last one is standard Chopra ignorant inanity and makes no sense at all, but we can always hope that the listeners are so tired after doing the first seven that they get to #8 and decide it’s a good time to take a nap.

So, not very enlightening, at least some practical if slightly fuzzy suggestions, and one moment of anti-scientific folly from the woo-meister. Not that bad.

Except for the pinging, which will haunt my nightmares.

“Climategate” slowly deflates

After the computer break-in that revealed so-called ‘damaging’ emails in the East Anglia Climate Research Group, after all the media hysterics and errors and misrepresentations, now at last some newspapers are coming out and admitting that they screwed up. Any idiot could just look at the released emails and see that they didn’t call the substance of the data into question, but the media took the profitable way out and fanned the flames of denialism.

It’s rather like the Andrew Wakefield story. Take a very weak story, puff it up a bit to appeal to fringe kooks, and before you know it, you may be selling newspapers, but you’re actually hurting people.

At least the walruses are safe, and any day now @Nifty will save the Gulf

British Petroleum isn’t so awful after all — it turns out that they have an almost 600 page long emergency response plan to deal with blowouts on their offshore oil wells. All the answers are in there, and I’m sure that they’ll soon be implemented. You can read those plans yourself and feel the warm glow of confidence that all is in good hands.

  1. Lists “Sea Lions, Seals, Sea Otters [and] Walruses” as “Sensitive Biological Resources” in the Gulf, suggesting that portions were cribbed from previous Arctic exploratory planning;

  2. Gives a web site for a Japanese home shopping site as the link to one of its “primary equipment providers for BP in the Gulf of Mexico Region [for]rapid deployment of spill response resources on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis”; and

  3. Directs its media spokespeople to never make “promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal,” implying that BP will only commit candor by omission.

I have reviewed the plan myself. It’s amazing.

  1. The walruses in the Gulf of Mexico are all safe. I repeat, the walruses are safe. This part of their plan was executed perfectly. We have to give them credit here.

  2. The site for primary equipment providers is extremely technical, and it’s also almost entirely in Japanese, so I’m afraid I can’t extract all the details. It does say in English “@nifty” on many of the pages, and nifty sounds like exactly the quality I want in my industrial gear. I think this is a picture of the rapid response team, dressed for deployment to the warm Gulf waters:

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    I poked around a bit and found this cryptic diagram of a mysterious machine of some sort. I’m pretty sure it’s the device that will be lowered deep into the ocean to seal off the gushing wellhead. It is in Japanese, so I can’t tell how it will work, but it definitely looks nifty.

  3. That third part of the plan is also a whopping success. Candor is completely absent. BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, has in fact done a sterling job of being an unctuous, lying ass, saying that the spill will have only a “very, very modest” impact on the environment, and doing a fabulous job of trying to get his life back.

One other relevant point is that they do list worst case scenarios for various wells, and they’re spot on. The worst-case oil spill for any well is the sum of the amount of oil in various flow lines plus one day’s output from the well, and I’m sure it would be accurate if, as they assume, every catastrophic failure were quickly fixed within one day. Or in some cases, the well is simply instantly shut off. That it’s been flowing for 7 weeks instead of a single day is a fairly trivial difference, and even that estimates are in the range of 20 million barrels lost instead of the predicted 20 thousand barrels, is easily explained if we simply assume that there are creationists in charge of the schedule. We can even estimate when the pipe will be closed by simply using the kind of creationist math with which I am familiar, so we can be confident that the gusher will end within 134 years.

I think we can safely say that BP’s response to this disaster has been as effective as promised in their official response plan, filed almost a year ago. It is so eerily accurate I’m almost ready to credit them with psychic powers. They have the competence of a Sylvia Browne, the infallibility of the Pope, the steely-eyed acumen of Pat Robertson, and the forthright honesty of a Republican senator’s opposition to gay marriage.

I shall sleep well tonight in the knowledge that industry has prepared many such environmental response plans.

Monckton dissected

Christopher Monckton, that pompous know-nothing who professes to be an expert on climate change and doesn’t believe in it, gave a talk here in Minnesota last fall, at a little Christian college called Bethel University (which curiously has a biology department that manages to never once mention evolution in its curriculum, just to give you an idea of what it’s like). That talk infuriated a professor at another Christian university — but one that doesn’t try to hide away from the evidence — who has put together a rebuttal of Monckton’s claims. Would you believe that essentally all of the studies Monckton cited as supporting his claims about the nonexistence of global warming actually said the exact opposite? It was so bad it’s impressive — it’s as if you don’t have to actually read and understand research papers if you’ve convinced yourself that they say what you want them to say.

John Abraham has put together a thorough presentation on the follies of Monckton. Good stuff!

A constructive suggestion for retribution against BP

Look at this: BP knew about problems at that burning oil rig 11 months ago. They screwed up with bad decisions in the short interval immediately before the explosion, but documents have come to light showing that they were worried about “loss of control” months before the disaster — and what they did in response was to ask for delays in testing (which they got), and then they fudged the tests by using a lower pressure.

This is basically criminal misconduct. But hey, what’s the point of getting upset over 11 deaths and a mere environmental catastrophe? We need the oil. Let’s just help the oil companies get beyond this.

Here’s a map of the approximately 4000 oil rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Everyone is fixated on that one burning mess in the Gulf, which is probably exactly what the oil companies want — they are probably sweating pungent carcinogenic petrochemicals at the thought that someone might look around and notice all of those other rigs, which almost certainly have a paper trail of shortcuts and risks and shoddy management. While BP is struggling to catch up with its responsibilities and close off the well and clean up the poisons, I think a great thing for the Obama administration to do would be to descend on each of those other wells with a force of elite regulatory accountants, documenting all the potential and extant problems, and telling each company to fix them. Now. Without cheating, without getting any special dispensations. If they can’t fix them, shut them down or hit them with massive penalties.

I have a very low opinion of oil company executives. I doubt that they have any sincere regrets about the loss of life or the destruction of the environment. But having to fix every place where they shaved corners, and pay out money to bring everything up to legally mandated standards — now that will make them cry.

Hmm. Here’s another site with a count of US oil and gas rigs — it says there are about 1500. I can’t account for the discrepancy, unless there has been a rapid decline in the last few years (this site is more current), or there is some other criterion for inclusion in this particular list.

It doesn’t matter, of course — except that a smaller number makes it easier to review them all.

Thank you, BP; thank you, Transocean Ltd.; thank you, Halliburton

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While the parties responsible struggle to shift the blame, the Gulf oil spill has reached the shore, as this tragically long photo essay shows. There is a cost to these risky ventures in offshore drilling, and they are not adequately paid by the companies doing the dirty work.

Those who would profit need to pay the price. There are clearly at least three companies that shouldn’t be arguing…they should be coughing up the cash, and recognizing that their businesses will have to be slightly less profitable.