BP Announces New Summer Movie Release: Silence of the Scientists

I really don't know where to begin this, so like a good writer, when stuck, just start writing and then eventually ya hit a grove. Of course, like a good writer, the alternative is to walk down to the pub, grab a pint or two and contemplate my ideas, hydrate my inspiration, then write. I'm opting for the first, since its 10 AM - not that that ever bothered Hemingway.

Here goes... I'll start with a question.

Is there a time when something is so off, its principals so clearly skewed as apparent by its actions (all that we know) in which we as a society need to stop and question its value in existing? Is it something we really need in our lives, in our world?

My background, my experiences are in nature, observing it, studying it, contemplating it, soliciting other perspectives on it. In nature the above question would be rhetorical at best, ultimately moot. The old saying goes "Nature abhors a void" but nature equally abhors anything mindlessly destructive to the system, all other life. The global petroleum company BP is treading down that path and perhaps it's time we as a society pause and consider its value in our lives, in our world.

In the past couple months the following information about BP activities has come to public light, and it's clear much more remains receding in the dim recesses.

• BP abandoned almost all prudent safety procedures in deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
• BP paid or insured few if any regulations governing their drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico were know or under the scrutiny of the licensor (us hence the US).
• BP continually has under reported the extent of the spill scope.
• BP has, in coercion with local and government officials gagged the flow of information about the extent of damage along the Gulf Coast, including using coerced/paid local law enforcement to challenge, threaten and exclude journalists.
• BP has pressured government in the UK for release of a know terrorist who's actions killed
• BP is, still, working with the Lybian government on who's side it was pressuring the UK government to open the flow of oil leases.
• BP is current trying to buy the silence of scientists regarding their research into the Gulf spill damage.
  

Yes, this last one hits home. I have always had a soft spot for scientists. I think they try more than most, to do something of value for humankind. So it's with complete outrage that I read BP officials have been quietly moving through the science community trying to buy the silence of the scientists faced with understanding and analyzing the impact of this spill nightmare.

BP said it had hired more than a dozen scientists "with expertise in the resources of the Gulf of Mexico," according to a statement given to the BBC. That's great, get real scientists at work on this mess. But that isn't their objective apparently. According to a BBC report:

Bob Shipp, the head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, said BP's lawyers had approached him and wanted his whole department.

"They contacted me and said we would like to have your department interact to develop the best restoration plan possible after this oil spill," he said.

"We laid the ground rules - that any research we did, we would have to take total control of the data, transparency and the freedom to make those data available to other scientists and subject to peer review.

"They left and we never heard back from them."

Nelson warned BP's actions could be "hugely destructive".

"Our ability to evaluate the disaster and write public policy and make decisions about it as a country can be impacted by the silence of the research scientists who are looking at conditions," he said.

"It's hugely destructive. I mean at some level, this is really BP versus the people of the United States."

So where does it stop? I return to my original question,

Is there a time when something is so off, its principals so clearly skewed as apparent by its actions (all that we know) in which we as a society need to stop and question its value in existing? Is it something we really need in our lives, in our world?

Sounds ludicrous you think. We would just remove a company from our planet. Why not? BP now equates to BioPoison - life threatening. It's not infected every last worker, but clearly it has become what all corporations run the risk of, slipping off the tightrope, losing balance. BioPoison infects the inner ear, one no long hear the voice of reason and right, one loses balance. Their record is illustrating they have been tiptoeing that thin tightrope corporations balance on so precariously, only maintaining balance based on the collective conscious of a few men and women to listen to the inner ear, and realize their decisions do destroy with equal severity as they do value.

BP has lost balance, they're falling and like any one who does they desperately flail about, grasping at anything and everyone for hope of stability. The result is they take us down with them. Despite our hardwired human urge to save - this time we need, hold back our hand, look away, to let them go.

BP Lies vs Mistakes: The PhotoShop Cunundrum

Sometimes something smells so foul that it needs to be aired (out) on as many blog laundry lines as possible. Below is such a case. The original text and images (below intact) first appeared on a Yahoo blog by Brett Michael Dykes - and congratulations to John Aravosis of AMERICAblog for astutely catching Bad People doing yet more Bad Pr and first posting this. I won't rant on these PhotoShop "mistakes" here - I've said my fill before.

BP caught using altered image of command center

Is a picture worth more or less than a thousand words if it's Photoshopped?

John Aravosis of AMERICAblog made an interesting find Monday night: A high-resolution image on BP's website of the troubled company's Houston-based Deepwater Horizon response command center had been altered.

The altered image was later removed by BP and replaced with what they say is the original (the altered image is above and the original is below). You'll notice that three underwater images were inserted onto screens to the right on a wall of video feeds in the altered image, where blank images exist on the screens in the original.

The photo flap inspired the usually staid Washington Post to quip, "Apparently BP is no more adept at doctoring photos than it is at plugging deep-sea oil leaks."

BP spokesman Scott Dean told the Post's Steven Mufson that there was no diabolical plot to photographically beef up the company's command center. Rather, he said, a BP photographer with completely benign intentions just slipped the images in.

[Animals most threatened by Gulf Coast spill]

"Normally we only use Photoshop for the typical purposes of color correction and cropping," Dean told the paper. "In this case they copied and pasted three ROV screen images in the original photo over three screens that were not running video feeds at the time."

He added, "We've instructed our post-production team to refrain from doing this in the future."

(Pictures courtesy of AMERICAblog)

More than a little Spat

I haven't quite been able to figure out exactly why this BP oil spill mess keeps gnawing at me? I mean beyond the fact that you would have to be working with half a brain not to outraged at the reason, historic and current, blind energy greed, that have us in this position. But more than that I think its my childhood love for the sea. I grew up thinking and planning to be a marine biologist. I shuffled off to university with wet feet and a salty freshening breeze blowing on shore. I learned to scuba dive before I could drive, and the first place I drove, literally, was to the beach with the back of my little Datsun pickup (mini by today's standards) stuffed with diving gear. The first photo job I applied for was on the Calypso with Jacques Cousteau (okay, I was really naive.) So as the Jimmy Buffet song goes, "the sea's in my veins," and there it remains.

As I read reports and news releases, call folks on the Gulf to set up interviews, and work through the last details with National Audubon Society and prepare to start documenting in the Gulf with their interests (Important Bird Areas) in mind, its all those years of walking beaches and face-mask pointed into the sea that makes this assignment hit closer to soul's home.

Marine biologists will admit that not a great deal is known about the effects of oil on organisms in deep water.

"We know almost nothing about the ecology in the deep ocean," says Professor Ed Overton, an environmental scientist at Louisiana State University from a recent interview with BBC.

That comment comes as the Obama Administration once again filed a stop order on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. At the same time oyster fishermen (harvesters really) are coming to grips with the reality of their crops life cycle; oil and the toxic soup associated with it are not only polluting the beaches and mangroves, but plunging a dipstick deep into the future of all marine life in the wake of this disaster. In their case they have more than a little spat with BP and other oil companies that are responsible for this disaster. In fact, spat is at the very core of their future. Spat are baby oysters, and now is the time along the Gulf coast when they head off to become the encrusting bivalves nature intended. And nature's job for them - filter the sea.

The April 10th BP/Deepwater Horizon spill has carried on just long enough to spell spat doom. Late June the waters warm and trigger oyster spawning, about a 100 million eggs per female. After mid-water fertilization the infant bivalve wannabees attach to something hard, like another oyster, and start their quiet sedentary lives of inner contemplation - they are called spat, about the size of a big pinhead. Spat kindergarten through high school takes about three years, so if you are in the oyster harvesting business your crop is always three to four years in the making.

I wouldn't know so much, or care, about oysters other than they were a part of my summers and winters as a teenager growing up near Puget Sound, Washington. A friend's family owned oyster beds and forever needed a hand, and I needed the money. Lowtide, razor sharp oyster shells and the rich alive smell of the estuarine flats was better than flipp'n burgers.

And there's a culture to work drawn from the sea. Everything around it has a culture. A taste of that culture can be felt on trawlers, and shrimpboats, and village around the world. It extends into all the lives connected to the sea. Along the Gulf coast that means oysters as much as anything. A recent article in the Nola.com from New Orleans reflects the downstream impact of the oyster loss -

Gulf oil spill puts oyster shuckers, traditions on ice

Working those beaches taught me a valuable lesson, later reinforced formally at university, if you are an oyster you can not run, you can not hide, you are on the inside, what you take from the outside. In the Gulf that outside is a toxic world beyond what the past 200 million years has prepared the oyster for, and it is becoming clear it will be that way for years to come.

Photo courtesy: Mary Campbell/GLOBIO

"I will come with my full mind and soul"

The following are the words of a dear friend and photographer from India Shyamal Datta. He is returning soon to India after living in the States for a quarter century. In many ways Shyamal has something most of us never experience, two homes. Homes in the cultural sense, the sense of place. He has taken the opportunity to travel and explore this home most of those born here never feel inspired to roam. In many ways he is the American we wish all of us would be, proud of the place, both of its passion and its faults, and in love with the grand wildness our landscape still hold.

When in Kolkata recently for his wedding I reminded him of visual magic that lives and breaths on the streets he left all those years ago to do as millions do in America, discover a new home. The above image was one I discovered on those streets of his other home. Sharing it inspired this reply:

"I know. I understand where you are coming from.

I know you vouched this subject before in Kolkata. But I didn't respond to you. That's because when I am there I am so engrossed with family matters, friends, logistics and the shortage of time that I deliberately detach myself from photoshooting. Except of course when I have planned a side trip somewhere with the sole purpose of shooting.

There are millions of stories and plots and projects in my mind for when I am there. Its like when I am there I see a story and I tell myself - I will come back to you (the subject) later and I will come back to listen to your story and to capture your pixels and save them and keep them. So please forgive me for now. Because when I come to you I will come with my full mind and soul and my paintbrush or my pencil because to come to you now will trivialize you.

I have a story for ten or twelve year old kids working in shanty chai shops on the footwalks of the city - from dawn to dusk these kids work with no choice but to work. In the early mornings in the footwalks in the midst of smoke from their chai shops you can see their soiled faces serving chai to drive by truckers or taxi drivers. Something Cartier Bresson would love I guess

Just an example. So yes I see them but I try not "see" them for now. But I will"

We often see what lies before us, the challenge is to not let our eyes and ears and senses rest until we etch it indelibly with in us, then it adds texture and balance to the fabric of who we shall become, otherwise we're just so much flotsam, here and gone with the tides.

76 more years win insanity for life

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague..."
- the Matrix

Did you catch that? "...until every natural resource is consumed"

I have always admired wisdom - real wisdom. Not the kind we cavalierly toss about in the media, label political leaders with in election years, bestow on military leaders, aggrandize money-makers with, rather the wisdom born from careful thought, holistic thinking, kind application, careful reflection and consideration of future. I've also always have a soft spot for fore-thought and inspired thinking. I have always appreciated simplicity as well - a building block of wisdom really - like the kind many folks without the financial luxury of waste apply to their daily lives. In my travels around this planet I have never assumed myself to be the wisest human, I not only make mistakes, more consequentially I don't always use all that confetti of wisdom scattered about my feet. I have sought the wise, tried to learn from their experience of knowledge, and understand how to figure things out ahead of the mistake, the inevitable, the painful.

I was pedaling home from the market a few days ago and spotted a new billboard (an aesthetically abominable idea to start with) ad in my neighborhood (above.) I pulled from the bike path in amazement. As millions of barrels of oil and millions of cubic feet of methane gas spew from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico creating death zones and dead zones, I tried to fathom the stupidity of the advertising looming over me. Did centenarian petroleum company 76 (now owned by ConocoPhillips) really draw on a spec of its 120 years of experience before suggesting that we would, or should, still be running on gasoline that far into the future?

I also found the graphic subtly interesting with its hose draining from the future and its nozzle satiating the current. But then that was the ultimate virus talking - corporation marketing department - selling, exploiting, mindless and virally greedy. (Remember - Viruses are not plants, animals, or bacteria, but they are the quintessential parasites of the living kingdoms.)

I'm not anti-corporate, I've contracted to many, I'm typing this blog on one, I photographed the above picture with one, I accessed the internet to share these thoughts with one, and before the day is over I'll ride, eat, crap into, and sleep on, several more. They are us. One of my issues with the anti-BPness going on is the irresponsible We. We refuse anything but cheap gas, and they are doing their cheapest to provide it. They are us. If you don't drive a car, buy shipped products, and don't have any plastic in your world, then you are not they, and you have a reason to be uncontrollably upset.

If they are us and us are they, then we have at least 40 years selfish procrastination to stare in the mirror at.

John Stewart's The Daily Show staff assembled one of the most painfully poignant, satirical sad video montages of historical procrastination I have ever seen. It ran, I watched, I wanted to cry. Instead I laughed that kind of pained laugh one does when the truth is so excruciating, insane, and depressing, that laughter is the only survival tool despite how wrong it feels.

P-a-u-s-e
(watch the clip first)

Maybe we aren't good at wisdom anymore? Seeing it, absorbing it, understanding it, and most importantly using it. If I can draw anything from all those travels and quiet perambulations with the thoughts and actions of wiser folks than me, it might be that we no longer think, no, not think, rather believe, that wisdom is a survival requirement. Or maybe we have decided wisdom must fit into our lives to be believed, be more media relevant, app'd to our iPhones... hmmm? Maybe just cheaper? Like our gas, maybe we want cheaper wisdom. The price of the old wisdom is just too high - patience, tolerance, kindness, listening, thinking, and reflection.

"I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make that change"

- MJ

UN-embedded Journalism

Excellent piece of UN-embedded journalism by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone - worth the read!

The Spill, The Scandal and the President

The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder

From the article:

Even worse, the "moratorium" on drilling announced by the president does little to prevent future disasters. The ban halts exploratory drilling at only 33 deepwater operations, shutting down less than one percent of the total wells in the Gulf. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the Cabinet-level official appointed by Obama to rein in the oil industry, boasts that "the moratorium is not a moratorium that will affect production" – which continues at 5,106 wells in the Gulf, including 591 in deep water.

Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world's largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to "catastrophic" errors. In a May 19th letter to Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. "We are very concerned," they wrote, "that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis."

Photo courtesy of al.com

Embedded... in oil... and much more

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”
- the Beatles

Over the past few weeks I have embedded far more information about the Gulf ecosystem and the mismanagement of natural resources into my brain than I really care to know. "Embedded" is a word that has been troubling me for about 10 years, since it was first applied to the other Gulf war, that other oil mess, and the feeling continues to churn in my gut, like one of the parasites I once picked up in the Congo. This one just won't go away. My saying then was "better living through chemistry", this time that joke's punch line has a petrochemical stench to it.

"Embedded" was initially used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The US military reacted to pressure from news media who were growing frustrated by the level of access granted by the Bush (Sr.) Administration during the 1991 Gulf War and in the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (Bush Jr). Lt. Col. Rick Long, the former head of media relations for the U.S. Marine Corps, managed the media boot camp in Quantico, Virginia, which prepared journalists for their war assignments. "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment." Embedding journalists honorably served that end, said Long. BP, and in a complicit act, the US Coast Guard, are now going to attempt to dominate the information environment". Only the environment keeps growing (see map below).

As I have struggled with the "go" vs "not go" to the Gulf issue these past couple weeks, one of the issues that weighed significant in the "not go" column has been "embedded" media. It feels a bit like my friend who was unceremoniously ushered off the Nike corporate campus because he was inadvertently wearing another companies footwear, shoes that better fit his feet and wallet. If you are at Nike you better have your feet embedded in their shoes. It's hard to imagine anyone embedded in the BP media caravan and not wearing BP sneakers.

It is possible to sneak around in other shoes, sometimes, some places, but in my own country?

Amr Al-Mounaiery, Abu Dhabi TV correspondent: "After this war [Gulf 2003], I realized that we in the media are the soldiers of politics. Not the military soldiers. I am proud that Abu Dhabi TV showed all sides, everything. You can see CNN showed only part of the war – their favorite part. They didn't show any of the anti-American rallies or the civilian casualties. They just showed crowds welcoming American soldiers and clapping hands. It is selective journalism – like Saddam did ... This was the Arabic way. Now we are switching roads and we wonder: Where is America? Where is the American dream? Freedom of expression, where is that?"
– Excerpt from "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq – an oral history" by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson

"Embedded" should never be linked to journalism, journalists, media or integrity of reporting. I have a great deal of respect for many correspondents who have worked the front lines of the painful and ugly stories, both wars of politics and environment, but I am also disheartened by our lack of Murrow-ism. Our lack of courage to demand more of the words and images we create.

"For birds, the timing could not be worse; they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore," warns Melanie Driscoll, a Louisiana-based bird conservation director with the National Audubon Society. Embedded means limiting, controlling the look and distribution of images that painfully picture pollution-soaked pelicans and other life - images that are powerful emotional arguments for getting off our oil addiction. Yes, it's still possible for a picture to say a thousand words (above), unless it's embedded, controlled and marketed, then it's only 500 words at best.

Speaking of numbers, here are a few, embedded in this environmental disaster. I'm not a numbers guy, but these are numbers basic to primary school math.

• Since the initial inky plume began spreading up and under the Gulf of Mexico, the price of oil per barrel has risen by $2.5 U.S. dollars a barrel. BP generated $4 million a day before the crisis, that figure has now risen to $10 million per day.
  
• When the accident first occurred the BP estimate was 1,000 gallons flow, then upped to 5,000 (which the US government trumpeted), then 10,000 was finally settled on after 5 weeks. Post several botched attempts to stop the spewing crude, a capture siphon was reported by BP to be collecting 11,000 gallons/day... okay, my math is starting to fail me here, but isn't that 110% ? hey why not, coaches ask that of their athletes, BP of their employees, why not their well heads? (That actually make good math, if a company can get 110% of the oil out by spilling it, that's more efficient and more profitable.) But let's continue... the cutting of the pipe was, BP reported, going to expand the output by 20%, and then they (BP) announced some success as they are capturing up to 50% of the escaping oil. So, does that mean 11,000 = 50% so there is 22,000 being released, which would be 20% increase over the original which would need to be about 18,000? Hang on, I'm almost done with this story problem.
  
  Now, as of June 16, nearly 2 months after this started the Government scientists today increased the estimate of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico to be upwards of 60,000 barrels per day. That translates into 2.5 million gallons per day; an amount equal to the Exxon Valdez spill could be gushing from the well about every four days.
• Okay, so is the BP capture 50% = 11,000 or is it 50% = 60,000/2 = 30,000? which = 50% of 600% more than they said? At what point do the numbers, or men behind them, lie?
• A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration video, shot as officials coordinated response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows that federal officials almost immediately worried that the oil well could leak up to 110,000 barrels per day, or 4.6 million gallons.
• $20 billion vs $27.7 billion cash - the first is amount the US Gov. pressed BP to set in escrow for partial clean up ($1 billion spent currently) - the second BP's cash generation in 2009.
  
  A couple more bullet points -
  
• New polling suggests 76 percent of Americans support some government limitations on greenhouse-gas emissions - yet, 53% believe off-shore drilling should go forward. (The Senate recently rejected a backward-looking resolution to discredit the EPA from Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. “It shows that senators are now scared of being tied to fossil-fuel interests,” says Michael Levi, a climate expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. No numbers yet on percentage of those senators currently vs previously embedded in the pockets of major oil companies.)
• 2 cents - A tripling of the federal government’s expenditures on energy technology R.D. & D. could be financed with a increase of about 2 cents per gallon in the federal tax on gasoline. (more on this)
  

I'm a picture person - I've embedded a little map to bring this ugly mess closer to home - your home - just click on the tabs at the top of the map and move it to your home - or any other place you love.

James Carville, a Clinton campaign veteran who has criticized the administration's response to the spill, said, “We don’t need legislation, we need to utterly reject the philosophy that companies and markets are able to regulate themselves,” continuing, “Until you have that you’re going to have banking crises and environmental catastrophes.” Along with that I would also "utterly reject" the philosophy that as long as journalists (photogs included) are embedded in their subjects we will never hear and see what is and isn't being regulated and by whom.

So, "embedded", what has it come to mean? It feels a lot like a lie, or worse yet a partial truth. The kind that confuses our confidence and erodes our integrity. We have now for a decade embedded those few among us charged and challenged with reporting the facts, unbiasedly, in war and disaster - at the same time we have now been engaged in the longest war in American history and the country's largest environmental disaster. Something, maybe that "feeling continues to churn in my gut" sensation, tells me the two are embedded in one another.

other thoughts: Pros and Cons of Embedded Journalism

Photo above: A laughing gull mired in oil from the Deepwater Horizon on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)