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Archive for May 20th, 2010
Syrupy oil washes into La. marshes for first time
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Associated Press: The spectacle many had feared for a month finally began unfolding as gooey, rust-colored oil washed into the marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi for the first time, stoking public anger and frustration with both BP and the government. The sense of gloom deepened as BP conceded what some scientists have been saying for weeks: that the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than the company previously estimated. Up to now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had ...
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Obama takes tougher line on oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Guardian: The Obama administration directed more fire against BP last night, ordering it to provide daily updates on its efforts to contain the spill and to stop the use of a toxic chemical dispersant to break up the slick. The White House said it expected the oil company to post daily updates on its website. "We think that is what the company owes, again, both us and the American people, as we work through our response and as the public has questions about their operations," White House ...
Australia: Energy efficiency efforts will hurt our profits, says big polluter
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Sydney Morning Herald: A confidential submission released accidentally by the federal government shows the owners of the the heavy-polluting Hazelwood brown coal power plant will resist energy efficiency efforts because they could hit their bottom line. International Power's submission to a taskforce developing an energy efficiency policy also states that energy efficiency is only about power use, not energy production. ''International Power rejects any proposal to introduce climate change policy ...
Green groups demand Swiss industry waste clean up
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Environment groups called Thursday on pharmaceutical giant Novartis and other chemical firms to pay for the clean-up of toxic waste that they had dumped in northern Switzerland. "The chemical and pharmaceutical industry of Basel dumped in the 1950s and 1960s about 40,000 tonnes of chemical products, some of which were highly toxic," said Juerg Wiedemann, a Green Party parliamentarian, during a press conference with environmental lobby Greenpeace. Novartis, Syngenta and Ciba ...
Oil threatens French-speaking Cajuns, native Choctaw
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: The encroaching Gulf of Mexico oil spill may have sounded the death knell for the vanishing cultures of the last French-speaking Cajun communities and Louisiana native Americans. Here in the deep Louisiana south, the Cajun people and the French-speaking Choctaw Indians can do nothing but maintain an anxious vigil, angrily accusing US authorities of abandoning them to their fate. Since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig unleashed a huge oil leak in the Gulf, no ...
New twist in debate on climate change and malaria
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
SciDev.Net: Bednets and drugs will influence the spread of malaria far more than will climate change, according to a study that challenges fears that warming will aggravate the disease in Africa. Many researchers have predicted that rising temperatures will cause malaria to expand its range and intensify in its current strongholds. But unlike usual models, which aim to predict how climate change will affect malaria in the future, researchers looked at how warming affected the disease ...
La. Pushes Sandbars To Fight Oil; Scientists Skeptical
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
National Public Radio: Louisiana officials are pleading for federal approval to build colossal sandbars outside barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico to protect the state's vast wetlands from the oil spurting from the Deepwater Horizon rig. Heavy oil started showing up in state wetlands earlier this week, heightening the officials' urgency. "This is an extremely important component of our own plan to protect our coast from this oil, and this will also help to protect Louisiana from future hurricane ...
Gulf oil spill chemical dispersant too toxic, EPA orders
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Guardian: The Obama administration has ordered BP to use a less toxic form of chemical dispersant to break up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The decision, first reported in the Washington Post, comes only hours after Congress heard devastating testimony from BP executives and scientists on the high toxicity of two forms of Corexit, and their relative ineffectiveness against the type of crude now polluting the Gulf. The two versions of the chemical being used on the spill are banned in the ...
Louisiana marshes hit by Gulf oil slick
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Crude oozed Thursday into US wetlands, prompting furious Louisiana officials to accuse BP of destroying fragile marshes beyond repair and leaving coastal fishing communities in ruin. With some of the worst fears of environmental disaster being realized in the marshlands of the Mississippi Delta, BP was also forced to concede it had underestimated the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The British energy giant had always maintained only 5,000 barrels -- or 210,000 ...
Burn mulled for US wetlands soiled by oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 20th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Officials are considering a controlled burn of Louisiana's fragile wetlands now soiled by heavy oil, the US Coast Guard said Thursday, stressing the move would be a last-ditch option. For the first time since an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform a month ago and triggered a massive spill, Louisiana officials confirmed that heavy crude had reached the state's coastline on Wednesday. But Coast Guard Captain Edwin Stanton, downplayed the impact as ...