A Case of Big Oil vs. Climate Change - 2

We discussed Comer v Murphy Oil in the first post of this series.

It was a case against big petroleum for being part of the cause of global warming thereby increasing the severity of Hurricane Katrina.

The three judge panel originally hearing the case reversed the district court which had ruled in favor of the oil companies.

The oil companies asked for a full en banc hearing which was granted.

Then one of the 9 judges who were to hear the case recused herself unexpectedly.

The court has now made a very, very strange decision deciding it has no quorum so it dismissed the appeal, in effect reversing the three judge panel even though it said it had no quorum.

Strange.

Two judges wrote dissenting opinions.

The previous post in this series is here.

Destroy The Gulf In Order To Save It?

What is happening under the surface in the Gulf of Mexico will become the lingering story.

We now know that BP (big pollution) officials were onboard the ill fated Deepwater Horizon popping champagne corks and celebrating the safety of the rig at the same time the Deepwater Horizon was getting ready to pop its own cork.

The video below explains what some famous undersea explorers have now found out, confirming earlier Dredd Blog threads that "speculated" about the other part of the undersea reality.

We now are sure what the results of the deadly "dispersants" (better called deadly "cover up chemicals") is likely to be.

The original dead zone that existed before Deepwater Horizon even existed has been increased in size, and now as a result of offshore oil drilling, giant underwater oil island monsters have been created, and they are now ominously looking for more and more victims:



Dredd Blog thanks the popular show "Morning Joe" on MSNBC for using the term "Military Oil Complex", a term we think was coined by Dredd, which this blog has now morphed into the term MOMCOM ("Military Oil Media Complex"), which is used regularly here.

The name is valid because the "industrial" portion of the historical "Military Industrial Complex" coined by Eisenhower in the 1950's has faded, big petroleum (BP) has ascended, and they have bought up a lot of big time media outlets.

In our thread "Thanks Bill And Arianna" we explain how some others also point out the bad habits of MOMCOM.

UPDATE: The rap sheet for the criminally insane folks who orchestrated the greatest ecological disaster in the doomed empire's history is chronicled in part here in the spill baby spill history.

Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us?

In this post we are not considering the pressures of 21st Century life, with its myriad social stresses and concerns.

A recent post at Ecocosmology Blog indicated that scientists have studied the varying effects and pressures of ocean levels on the crust of the Earth.

Their studies considered global warming, combined with geological activity over many thousands of years, and they found that the level of the ocean can trigger some volcanic, as well as some earthquake activity.

We need to focus on the word "trigger" here, because that was the intent of the scientific view in the post linked to above.

We know that tectonic plate activity and magma are the greater essences and factors of such geological activity, but what we intend to focus on in this post is the potential trigger for those events.

That trigger is changing pressures.

Just like a trigger is a small part of a rifle, a trigger of a volcano or earthquake is a small part of the event, nevertheless, it is a real and identifiable part.

With that in mind, let us consider a hypothesis that applies global warming to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, just like the Ecocosmology Blog post linked to above applied global warming as a trigger for volcanic activity.

First, recall that there is a difference between a cause and a trigger, because the trigger is only "the straw that broke the camel's back", as we say.

The premise is that whether or not pressures can rise to the point of triggering some volcanic activity or tremors, it certainly can not be doubted that it can change the level and degree of pressure in and under the Earth's crust.

What that translates into is an increased pressure on gases and oil pools under the surface of that crust.

Thus the old assumptions about pressure levels and designs of equipment based upon those pre-ocean level rise assumptions and calibrations must be revisited.

There were signs that something was different on the Deepwater Horizon pool of oil prior to its exploding on April 20, and its later sinking on Earth Day, April 22:

... a series of problems were also detected in the 24 hours before the blast, including unexpected pressure rises ... warning signs kept coming right up until just minutes before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded ... "more fluid began flowing out of the well than was being pumped in" ...

(Multiple Warnings). A comment made by the CEO is also telling:

"I think the first thing to recognize is that this is an unprecedented accident, and the industry that has been working in the deep water for 25 years and not had to contend with this ..."

(Final decision). This is not to say or advocate that there is no liability for the oil industry, because these pressure changes were foreseeable.

It is not that difficult to see that as the ocean levels rise, because global warming is melting the ice caps and glaciers, weight on the Earth's crust will change as will the pressures on oil and gas deposits underneath the sea floor portion of the Earth's crust.

The pressures will not always change enough to trigger volcanic or earthquake activity, but it takes orders of magnitude less pressure than that to effect man-made machinery.

Thus, since the engineering assumptions will be impacted, good engineers will need to take all that into serious consideration, as will government regulators, legislators, and inspectors, as they rethink the reality beneath their feet.

The next post in this series is here.

Open Thread

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No final word on the results of the "top kill" yet.

The oil islands floating underneath the surface of the Gulf, some the size of Manhattan Island, and other portions of the poison continent of oil, are heading for the Bahamas to ruin some vacations and some Earth life.

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The TOP KILL IS UNDERWAY ... cross fingers ... hope ... pray ... whatever works ...

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Is the MSM is in a tizzy because they cannot seem to help us drink away our minds from the spectacle of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe onto other stories the MSM of MOMCOM approves of?

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Will it be Oilah Akbar! vs Danger Devil in the temple of doom ... or ... ???

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Like blogger disaffected said in a comment yesterday "Obama's telling MOMCOM to get all jiggly wid' it at the Mexican border - to the tune of 1,200 NG troopies" ... which is so a la Senator John McCain who recently said "build the damn wall" al la R. Reagan in a campaign ad in the struggle for his senatorial survival ...

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Or how about the Korean War revisited, since the N. Koreans have now been fingered as the ones who torpedoed a S. Korean war ship, killing almost 50 sailors, and as both sides prepare for escalation?

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Or, since today is kill the devil day at the Deepwater Horizon ground zero, could today be the day when Oilah Akbar! Oilah Akbar! is resurrected by top killing the devil to transform Oilah into the savior once again, then all the worshippers begin to drink Tea Potty nectar, sing hymns of praise to Oilah, and chant drill baby drill?

Prevention, the only true savior, will then be forgotten once again if the devil is killed at Deepwater Horizon.

Otherwise the devil patina will fall upon the robes of the priests of Oilah once again, as the people remember to hate their drug supplier BP (big provider).

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My guess is that the MSM will have to kneel down to the savior story "Oilah vs. Devil" today.

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Your stories to help the MSM divert our attention are welcome ... so post them already!

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His Or Hermeneutics?

To some hermeneutics is scientific, to others it is religious, but to the lawyer it is the highway which the law travels upon.

It is easy to illustrate how difficult the trip along that highway can become, by checking out some of the potential for bumps in the road.

Lets take a look at just two of those bumps along the road, one is an issue called "ambiguity", the other is "the reasonable person standard".

Ambiguity is a realm in the interpretation of law that automatically arises when any text is capable of more than one meaning when interpreted by a "reasonable person".

Think of that as you read these lyrics:

Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red, white and blue shoestrings
And a thousand telephones that don’t ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61

(Bob Dylan, Highway 61). It may surprise some folks to learn that some legal text is equal in ambiguity to some song lyrics, for example:

Common night walkers, common street walkers, both male and female, common railers and brawlers, persons who with offensive and disorderly acts or language accost or annoy persons in speech or behavior, idle and disorderly persons, disturbers of the peace, keepers of noisy and disorderly houses, and persons guilty of indecent exposure may be punished by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than six months, or by a fine of not more than two hundred dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

(Professor Gates Was Falsely Arrested). That law goes back to a time before the United States or the U.S. Constitution existed.

Yet it is still used in one of our oldest states, and if you read the link, you will see that the same text in that law was recently applied against a university professor in his own home, as well as against a woman picking up her own kids from school.

The old adage "the constitution says what the Supreme Court says it says" indicates not only that the interpretation of law is a function of legal hermeneutics, but that it is foundational to our system of law.

The impact of one's method of interpretation, one's hermeneutics, should not be underestimated, especially when one is being considered for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yet, can anyone point us to a question ever asked of a Supreme Court nominee by Senators or the media that contained the word hermeneutics?

The concept and the interpretive cognition embraced by this subject matter goes back to ancient struggles and understandings:

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule.

– Marbury v. Madison (1803)

[W]hoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written or spoken laws, it is he who is truly the lawgiver, to all intents and purposes, and not the person who first spoke or wrote them.

– Bishop Hoadly’s Sermon, preached before King (George I of England), March 31, 1717

(The Dynamic Constitution). In one sense, then, your life is governed by hermeneutics is it not?

Perhaps then you can take interest in a revolutionary modification to our standard legal hermeneutics which has been proposed by a legal scholar:

Two centuries after Marbury v. Madison, there remains a deep confusion about quite what a court is reviewing when it engages in judicial review. Conventional wisdom has it that judicial review is the review of certain legal objects: statutes, regulations. But strictly speaking, this is not quite right. The Constitution prohibits not objects but actions. Judicial review is the review of such actions. And actions require actors: verbs require subjects. So before judicial review focuses on verbs, let alone objects, it should begin at the beginning, with subjects. Every constitutional inquiry should begin with a basic question that has been almost universally overlooked. The fundamental question, from which all else follows, is the who question: who has violated the Constitution?

(Stanford Law Review, emphasis added). After 200 years one would surmise that things had settled a bit more than this wouldn't one?

Yet every subject on your mind today (the liability of BP for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, is BP a person, what department of government declares war if the Korea conflict goes there, what rights do states have at the U.S. border, etc.) depends on how the constitution and laws are interpreted by the use of legal hermeneutics, which is in flux still.

You Rejected Your Only Savior For Oilah

The mantra "drill baby drill" was and still is a rejection of the only saviour The Redneck Riviera had, in favor of the oilster god Oilah.

That one and only saviour you rejected is called "Prevention", whose mantra is "Safety Baby Safety".

The mantra Oilah Akbar! Oilah Akbar! was your choice like Sarah Palin, and now you must die a thousand deaths with your choice.

Go drink Tea Potty, the nectar of Oilah, the god of lies, the god of the death of a once ecologically thriving world.

Let us hope that the dying happens with as little misery as possible for your children, but it can't be undone with federal monopoly money or feel good oil collection booms made for TV (they don't work and never have).

How many times have you missed them saying "we have never tested this stuff at these depths" so we don't know if Plan B, C, or D will work?

How can you have a back up "plan" when you admit you are in over your heads?

Never forget their admission that they are in way over their heads, deeper than their knowledge, testing, and expertise, like 5th graders peering into the cosmos.

This blog, upon hearing that President Obama had decided to open up offshore drilling, immediately posted the thread The Extinction Clock Nears Midnight - 2, knowing that our nation had rejected the only saviour (Prevention) we have when it comes to satiation of oil lust with reckless misuse of technology.

I learned long ago that once we fudge on Prevention there is no saviour to rescue us from our own anthropogenic disasters.

With all the help in the world, we cannot "clean-up" Deepwater Horizon, Chernobyl, or Global Warming type disasters.

Repeat, it cannot be "cleaned up", it can only be Prevented in the first instance, and you had better learn that very, very fast.

I hear those grown men along The Redneck Riveria now crying on TV, moaning, and begging someone to do something, because the oil god Oilah will not.

"BP isn't doing all that can be done, neither is the federal government" is the new mantra replacing "drill baby drill".

Yes they are doing everything they can do, it is just that a perfect response to this type of disaster can only mitigate 2% of the ecological damage at best.

Read some history for a change.

Chernobyl killed a million people and caused a dead zone for miles around, and it will stay that way for tens of thousands of years.

Clean up?

Dream on, drink your nectar Tea Potty from the plastic bottle breasts of MOMCOM; dream on while you sing your hymns to Oilah, who will always fail you, and fail you biggest at the last.

Reality will keep telling you that Prevention is the only saviour you have, yes, scientific, strict, tried and true Prevention.

If you do not make the oilsters, banksters, and other members of the warlords practice an ounce of prevention you will always beg for a pound of cure, when there is only a grain of cure available.

It is funeral time in the bayou as my heart and soul cries for all of you innocent people along The Redneck Riviera whose tears mingle with the blame you place on others, even those who chastened you and warned you of spill baby spill and kill baby kill.

After Oilah priests plug the hole, go take a sip of your Tea Potty and muse about who is next: Virginia, the whole world?

MOMCOM (mother god of Oilah) is gonna have her children and eat them too, as she sings a little bedtime ditty "tell them to eat cake".

The Bleep Goes On - Land Ho! - 2

In the first of this series, we talked about voodoo environmental policy run amok in the federal agencies that grant offshore drilling permits.

Obama appeared to be against those policies and said so.

Who is listening to Obama?

Evidently his bi-partisan government is not, so is it the republican "moles" left behind by the bushies, or is it rogue and mavericky democrats, or is it just bloggers who don't get it?

He told both the republicans and the democrats in his administration, following his adoption of drill baby drill and the follow up disaster in the Gulf, that things would change for the better.

He clarified his intent by saying a hold was being placed on offshore drilling:

In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.

The records also indicate that since the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits, most of which were for types of work like that on the Deepwater Horizon shortly before it exploded, pouring a ceaseless current of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Asked about the permits and waivers, officials at the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, reiterating that the agency had no intention of stopping all new oil and gas production in the gulf.

Department of the Interior officials said in a statement that the moratorium was meant only to halt permits for the drilling of new wells. It was not meant to stop permits for new work on existing drilling projects like the Deepwater Horizon.

(NY Times, emphasis added). Meanwhile, BP refuses to stop using the dispersant that EPA told it to stop using.

No doubt about it, the federal government suffers from heavy oil addiction and is criminally insane.

MOMCOM & The War With The Earth - 2

Now that the buffer of time between when the oil leaks into the Gulf and when it impacts the shoreline has collapsed, it has been replaced with the shocking reality that is slowly beginning to sink into our minds.

As the photos become available, and as many innocent Americans feel the wrath of the carelessness that will change their lives forever, the oil also sinks in.

BP commercials starring models strutting their stuff and talking about "clean energy" are being replaced with photos of widespread death, poisoning, and destruction to iconic American treasures.

Play pretend time is over, it is now time to clean up the messy drill baby drill thinking that led us here and led Obama here.

Dirty oil is the big deadly story that is finding its way into people's thinking, spreading sadness to those who know this foreseeable disaster is unconscionable, as it slowly but surely spreads more and more death to nature in several states.

Somehow, now the people in those states realize that they are part of nature, and that to poison nature is to poison ourselves.

How many of the 210 species of songbird that migrate through the areas poisoned by BP oil will survive?

How many species will become sick and die on route to their nesting grounds?

How many bird eggs will be defective even if some of the nesting birds survive?

The food for how many millions is ruined?

It is a heart wrenching debacle, from the 11 workers who lost their lives, to the millions who will be environmentally impacted for the remainder of their lives, to the thousands who will be economically impacted for the remainder of their lives, and on and on it goes.

No wonder BP and the government are trying to keep the media out of the area so all the horrible truth will not get out.

But it will get out because this is a catastrophe that the phony D.C. monopoly money will not and can not clean up:

For those saddened by the scenes of thick oil washing into Louisiana's coastal wetlands a month after the BP oil disaster began, experts on oil spills and the coastal ecosystem have some advice: Get used to it.

The crews mopping up oil on beaches and marsh shorelines this week are fighting just the first of what will probably be a series of rolling skirmishes that will last for months, if not years -- even after the runaway well is finally capped. In fact, the untold millions of gallons of oil already fouling the Gulf off the Louisiana coast could stay in the area for at least a decade, and on the sea floor for more than 100 years.

(Oil For 100 Years, emphasis added). The sinister nature of BP together with the naive wishful thinking of people who do not know the nature of the oil barons came to light recently:

What [many] didn't know was that the Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years.

(Cunning Deceit Masks Reality). If BP deceived its way onto the decision making boards of environmental groups it is because these people are unable to grasp the reality of the mentality of those who are a serious threat to the security of the environment?

Now we know that President Obama was not the only city-dweller that has no clue, even the people who say they are the front line defense of the environment let the oilsters in to poison the waters.

Is President Obama going to go back to that area, like he did in a photo op some time back, and tell them once again "I wish I could write you a check"?

NOTE: The first of this series of posts was MOMCOM And The War With The Earth.

"Clean Up" Is Only Done At The Bank

The photo is of the "clean up" at the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill site in Alaska.

The poison oil is thick on the beaches still, death to the environment continues still, after 21 years of MOMCOM's lying, repeating the propaganda and deceit saying that she-it "cleaned up".

With the help of the Supreme Court, which lowered the jury verdict against BP (big petroleum) by enough to bail out a bank, the Oilstate did "clean up" at the bank, but will avoid it at all costs elsewhere (e.g. Alaska, Gulf of Mexico, Texas City).

The story you should know about the photo is that it is evidence for the scientists to validly make the statement:

Boufadel says the study points out the susceptibility of beaches worldwide to long-term oil contamination, especially at higher latitudes where beaches tend to be gravel or a mixture of sand and gravel.

"As global warming is melting the ice cover and exposing the Arctic to oil exploitation and shipping through sea routes such as the Northwest Passage, the risk of oil spills on gravel beaches in high-latitude regions will be increased," the study says.

(Alaska Beaches Still Have Oil Pollution From 1989, emphasis added). On the poison-oil soaked beaches and oil-polluted waters of Alaska, where the common people used to make a living off the live ecosystem, there is a lot of anger to go along with the poison oil, the lasting finger print of MOMCOM.

Read it and weep those of you along the Redneck Riveria who are always there to be the the base of support for the MOMCOM Earth killers; you who repeat "drill baby drill" as a mantra of your enlightenment and your education (a.k.a. "indoctrination"):

And that's a large part of what I think education is — it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.

(GE Serves The Pentagon). Soon you folks along the Redneck Riveria will be like others who have suckled the addictive oil from the plastic breasts of MOMCOM.

BTW, she-it will be visiting your bank soon to clean up some of that green monopoly money Uncle Sam printed up just for such an occasion.

Have you heard yet that she-it needs to do some drilling in the Arctic now that she-it has melted the icecap there?

UPDATE: To show how sinister mixes with naive, one of the top environmental groups is in bed with BP ... producing alien children no doubt.

The MOMCOM children feel invincible, meaning either they are not invincible or they will destroy civilization.