It’s not that oil from the BP rig has snuck up on us or anything. It’s been out there growing for over a month.
Locals here (Pensacola, FL) are expecting the oil to reach our shores by the weekend.
Which brings up the question, when do we protect our shores? Before or after the oil gets here? Exactly what is the emergency action plan again?
He said many times over the last few weeks, that the buck stops with him regarding the mitigation of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak and protecting our shores and wetlands from oil contamination.
So while we hear the administration pumping its chest about fixing this problem and how responsible it is and how it was on top of this situation ‘from day 1,’ this news seems to put his whole case for their leadership and experience in oil industry regulation right in the toilet.
Three months before the massive BP oil spill erupted in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration proposed downsizing the Coast Guard national coordination center for oil spill responses, prompting its senior officers to warn that the agency’s readiness for catastrophic events would be weakened.
Have you heard that on pMSNBC? Apparently it snuck by editors at the Washington Post.
Accidents happen, “but what you’re seeing here is the government is not properly set up to deal with this kind of issue,” said Robbin Laird, a defense consultant who has worked on Coast Guard issues.
And this . . .
President Obama’s $10.1 billion spending plan for the Coast Guard would scale back funding and active-duty personnel by 3 percent. As part of a proposal to cut 1,100 military personnel, it would decommission the National Strike Force Coordination Center in Elizabeth City, N.C., and reorganize parts of it elsewhere.
The center serves as the national command for the Coast Guard activity responsible for sending technical experts and specialized equipment such as pumps and chemical dispersant monitors to support on-scene commanders.
Are we feeling confident that this administration knows how to protect us? Is Obama’s lack of executive experience beginning to show yet?
WaPo Link: Obama plans to cut Coast Guard personnel
The strategy is starting to dribble in as to the so-called real cause of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak, otherwise known as an oil spill. (I hate it when the language gets abused like that.)
A local (Pensacola FL) environmental group called The Emerald Coastkeepers has taken the lead in keeping locals informed on both the progress and criticism of BP and its efforts to stop the gusher of a leak at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Chief spokesperson for them is Chasidy Fisher Hobbs who was published in today’s paper as saying . . .
Did you know that BP’s first quarter profits for 2010 were more than $5 billion? Yet, a half-million dollar investment for an acoustic shutoff valve to protect our Gulf was not worth the investment.
In the interest of full disclosure, did you know that the President of Emerald Coastkeepers is mass tort lawyer, left-wing talk radio co-host, and FOX News contributor representing ‘balance,’ Mike Papantonio? And did you know that the President of the Waterkeeper Alliance is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Kennedy also doubles as co-host with Papantonio on the Ring of Fire radio program, formerly associated with Air America Radio. (Air America eventually went bankrupt for the last time after their listener base dwindled to relatives and employees. That, and a lack of sponsors willing to underwrite their efforts.)
Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that in and of itself. But the big omission here, and not just from Chasidy’s article but from the mainstream media overall, is the fact that both Papantonio and Kennedy are on the class action case against BP and have been from day one.
And on day three Papantonio laid out his cards to another lefty talk radio host, Mike Malloy. Papantonio has a much juicier target when it comes to this case. Bankrupting BP is just a distraction for him. He’s after something BP can’t give him, Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration.
Because you know, it’s all their fault. Cheney and Bush developed an energy policy with energy people. (Oh the nerve.) And then they didn’t make an acoustic shutoff valve mandatory, LIKE OTHER COUNTRIES have. And that’s why there’s oil coming out of the ground. It’s all their fault. That was the sum total of his case as he explained it to Malloy and his several listeners.
Papantonio did not say how he could prove that an acoustic shutoff valve would not and could not also fail.
I have my own theory for why we are seeing oil coming into the Gulf a mile 
below the surface, and it has nothing to do with Dick Cheney and the Bush administration. It has to do with the Coast Guard pouring water onto the oil rig for three or four days until it sank. It wasn’t until the rig sank that the pipeline broke, putting oil into the Gulf.
It is also a testament to the failure of BP, the EPA, and the MMS, to have a plan B in the event of just such a catastrophe. It also brings to focus the consequences of environmentalists and spineless politicians seeking their favor of pushing oil and gas drilling off of land and shallow waters where it is more readily available, into deeper waters where the risks are greater.
Leaving the fire burn and surrounding the rig with sea booms, and letting smoke get in the air until a ‘fix’ can be made, sounds like a better choice to sinking the rig, putting oil in the water, and moving the workplace a mile under water.
Update 5/24/2010: And for your video amusement, Papantonio: BP – The Very Corrupt Side of Dick Cheney
Called the Vessels of Opportunity Program, boat captains everywhere can help to remedy the oil spill going on at Deepwater Horizon. Where Florida’s coast is concerned, the oil has not reached the shores yet. But it has already hit the charter boat and commercial fishing industries, including of course the seafood distributors, all over the Gulf coast.
The problem is simple, there is no fishing business for the fishing industry until the oil leak is fixed. And there are not enough BP and government vessels available for the extended use that is anticipated.
BP is offering $2000/day for captains in the program. It helps them with some income and helps to save the coast and Gulf waters from further oil pollution.
Participation requires specialized training. Information about participating is on their website at Deepwater Horizon Response. The list of training sessions all along the Gulf Coast is below.
Vessels of Opportunity Orientation and Training Sessions Schedule
| City | Date | Place | Start Time |
| Houma, LA | Monday,
May 10 |
Houma Civic Center
346 Civic Center Boulevard Houma, Louisiana 70360 |
9:00 AM |
| Houma, LA | Monday,
May 10 |
Houma Municipal Auditorium
880 Verret Street Houma, LA 70360-4636 |
9:00 AM |
| Chauvin, LA | Monday,
May 10 |
5248 Bayouside Dr.
Chauvin, LA 70344 |
2:00 PM |
| Houma, LA | Monday,
May 10 |
Houma Civic Center
346 Civic Center Boulevard Houma, Louisiana 70360 |
2:00 PM |
| Bayou La Batre, AL | Monday,
May 10 |
Church of God Gym
1136 Argyle Road Irvington, AL |
3:00 PM |
| Panama City, FL | Monday, May 10 | Gulf World Marine Park
15412 Front Beach Road Tropical Garden Theatre Panama City Beach, FL 32413 |
5:00 PM |
| Apalachicola, FL | Tuesday, May 11 | 66 Fourth St.
Apalachicola, FL 32320 |
1:00 PM |
| Lafitte, LA | Tuesday, May 11 | Lafitte Civic Center
4953 City Park Dr. 70067 |
1:00 PM |
| New Orleans East, LA
(Vietnamese) |
Tuesday, May 11 | TBD | TBD |
| Grand Isle, LA | Tuesday, May 11 | 3811 Highway One
Grand Isle, LA 70358 |
3:00 PM |
| Pensacola, FL | Tuesday,
May 11 |
Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front, 12 Via de Luna Drive, Pensacola Beach, Fl 32561 | 5:00 pm |
| Slidell, La | Wednesday, May 12 | TBD | 9:00 AM |
| TBD, Jackson Co., MS | Wednesday, May 12 | TBD | 10:00 AM |
| Bon Secour, AL | Wednesday, May 12 | Friendship Baptist Church Community Hall,
7159 Bon Secour Highway Bon Secour, AL 36511 |
1:00 PM |
| Chauvin, LA
(Vietnamese) |
Wednesday,
May 12 |
5248 Bayouside Dr.
Chauvin, LA 70344 |
1:00 PM |
| Slidell, LA | Wednesday, May 12 | TBD | 2:00 PM |
| TBD, Jackson Co., MS | Wednesday, May 12 | TBD | 3:00 PM |
| Dauphin Island, AL | Thursday, May 13 | TBD | 9 AM |
h/t Chasidy Fisher Hobbs, Emerald Coastkeepers
After only 10 years (only?) of obstructing from politically connected democrats in the State of Massachusetts like the Kennedys past and present, the Cape Wind project met its last hurdle when on April 28, 2010, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced his approval of Cape Wind with a favorable Record of Decision for the project to be constructed on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts.
This marks not only a first for wind energy in the United States, but real progress in green energy and green energy jobs. The project’s approval also means a boost for Pensacola’s GE who will be manufacturing hundreds of turbine generators for Cape Wind.
Link: CAPE WIND APPROVED by Federal Government as America’s First Offshore Wind Farm; Project will Add Clean Energy Jobs for Region | Wind Energy? N.I.M.B.Y.
A quick recap of the Obama administration’s energy policy. On the subject of energy, this administration is the party of NO.
Oil, no. Natural gas, no. Low sulfur coal, no. Nuclear, no. Solar, no. Wind, no. And biofuel as an industry is not only unsustainable in a free market, but is worse for the environment than fossil fuels and is causing food fights and starvation in the poorest parts of the world.
To be perfectly clear, Obama’s energy policy is to not get or use our own resources. And, to increase the cost of everything including the cost of living for every American in their commitment to ‘social justice’ and the redistribution of wealth, they have cap & trade (aka cap & tax) legislation that will impose taxes on all industries including, or especially, the energy industry. The administration’s shining jewel of economic ignorance here is that the people they purport to be helping will be the ones paying these taxes in the form of higher prices, higher electric bills, and higher fuel bills.
The latest stick in the green energy spokes is the newest controversy about the Nantucket Sound shoals being Indian burial grounds. For ‘tribes’ that do not currently exist on federal records. No, can’t have a wind farm there. A creative, but just as effective, way to impede energy production as Bill Clinton’s making a 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, placing off-limits the world’s largest deposit of low-sulfur coal.
It seems that the opposition, having run out of technical, environmental and economic arguments, has co-opted the local Wampanoag tribes to assert that their ancestors are — or might be — buried under what is now Nantucket Sound — this despite the fact that the area became a water feature long before Native Americans settled nearby.
In the next few weeks, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will make a momentous decision — the official, final, formal record of decision on permitting the nation’s first offshore wind farm, Cape Wind. And after eight years of obfuscation, dilatory tactics and sharp practice by a well-funded opposition group wielding political power quite out of congruity with its level of popular support, his decision will come not a day too soon.
This press release from the Department of the Interior suggests the direction the administration is leaning.
“America’s vast offshore wind resources offer exciting potential for our clean energy economy and for our nation’s efforts to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said Secretary Salazar. “But as we begin to develop these resources, we must ensure that we are doing so in the right way and in the right places.
“The Keeper’s finding that Nantucket Sound is eligible for listing in the National Register (of Historic Places) provides information that will help us to undertake final consultations and analysis of potential impacts of wind development on historic and cultural resources in Nantucket Sound.
Having successfully overcome all other permitting and environmental studies over the last decade, will the imaginary Indian burial ground be the issue that stops green energy and green jobs?
This interview with the San Francisco Chronicle shows Obama’s real commitment to the coal industry.
Rush sums it up in a humorous way in this ‘morning update’ below.
President Obama announced today that he is opening up some areas for oil and gas development. Some in the Gulf of Mexico, some in the Atlantic. Alaska, not so much. Alaska needs more study. ‘More study’ is political-speak for ‘it ain’t gonna happen.’
Nevertheless, the President seemed to echo what he said in his State of the Union Address in January.
But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.) It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. (Applause.) It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. (Applause.) And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America. (Applause.)
And today, President Obama said . . .
But the bottom line is this: given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.
Don’t think for a minute that the President is serious about drilling. Just like he isn’t serious about nuclear energy. Seen any new refineries being built? Seen any new oil drilling going on? Seen any new nuclear plants being built? NO! What we have seen is ANWR and Bristol Bay being held hostage, and the closing of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. With no place to put nuclear waste, how many new nuclear plants will be built?
Today’s show at Andrews Air Force Base was a political rope-a-dope. His goal is far from using and getting more of our own energy resources. His goal is cap and trade legislation that will do exactly the opposite of what he said he wanted to do today. It will kill economic growth and jobs, depress business, and raise costs. We will pay more for electric and all other products because of tax pressure put on the industries that produce them. And in the end, the redistribution of wealth in the name of social justice.
NPR is trying to make sense out of Obama’s statement. Here’s what they came up with . . .
Much of the speculation for the administration’s reasoning has been on the need to get Republican votes for Obama’s climate legislation. Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are trying to hammer out a bipartisan climate bill, but Graham is getting no GOP backing on this, and Graham himself has said that he couldn’t support a bill that “doesn’t have off-shore drilling in a meaningful way.”
The New York Times’ John Broder writes that today’s proposal by Obama could “help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation,” . . .
He is repeating his SOTU line in order to get support from Republicans for his cap and trade agenda. Combine this with Obamacare and the American Dream will be history. America will have its newest founding father.
Cape Wind, is a dynamic green energy company specializing in wind energy. Their slogan is ‘Energy For Life.’ That’s because energy generated by wind, not to be confused with ‘hot air’, is free and in infinite supply. Oh wait, that might not be the best comparison when you consider the spin-meisters in politics. Especially where the environment is concerned.
Let me be clear. I’m all for tapping energy resources wherever they may be. And I’m all for doing it responsibly. Emphasis on ‘doing it.’ The ‘responsibly’ part goes without saying. Seems to me that’s where the conventional environmentalists, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and I disagree.
Cape Wind is proposing America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Miles from the nearest shore, 130 wind turbines will gracefully harness the wind to produce up to 420 megawatts of clean, renewable energy. In average winds, Cape Wind will provide three quarters of the Cape and Islands electricity needs.
You see, I’m totally on board with the proposed 130 turbine wind farm that Cape Wind has been trying to do for the last eight years. RFK, Jr. is not. Through all the hard work and devotion to environmental lawsuits Kennedy has toiled on over the years, when it comes to the Cape Wind project, it’s Not In My Back Yard.
He want’s them further from shore. Where he can’t see them. And where they would be in deeper water putting the turbines and ships at risk. From Cape Wind . . .
By placing the turbines in the shallow water of Horseshoe Shoal, we ensure that they will not interfere with large ships. With each turbine about one third of a mile apart, the wind park will be easily navigated by recreational boaters and fisherman.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Jason Jones 180 – Nantucket | ||||
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Looks like ‘dithering‘ is President Obama’s strong suit. Unlike sending in reinforcements to Afghanistan, this is not a life and death decision for American troops. This is a decision for clean energy and green American jobs.
Hardly a week goes by lately where news comes out that adds to the doubt 
about ‘man made’ global warming. From incomplete and manipulated data, to selective science of hand-picking tree samples, to lost or destroyed supporting data, and lately to statements of Phil Jones.
Phil Jones was forced to step down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after a series of leaked emails and other documents suggested that the data supporting global warming theories had been “cooked” and that opposing theories were being suppressed.
But this was not the end of the revelations.
“Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
“And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”
What do you mean ‘statistically significant‘ you ask? According to Phil Jones . . .
This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.
And associating climate change to man-made global warming, there’s this question to Jones . . .
“How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?”
Jones: “I’m 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”
OK fine. And we now know all about their data and record keeping problems.
So what’s the point? The whole point of this ‘man-made’ global warming hysteria is to execute a transfer of wealth through whatever way possible, under the pretense that we can adjust the global thermostat as well as sea-level. It’s is a political movement that has turned into a near religion with environmentalists.
Then there’s this gem about rising sea levels . . .
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.
Whether it by by the United Nations, the Kyoto Protocol, and more locally, the administration’s Cap & Trade legislation, all of these schemes are designed to move money from our side of the earth to the other, with the side benefit of depressing our economy and raising prices even further. I mean it just makes sense. If you’re a slip and fall lawyer, you go after the money. In the global scale, the ‘richest’ nation in the world is right here. And for anyone who was in Copenhagen, you saw who the evil one was. It was the United States, and it was capitalism.
In light of what is now known, we are starting to see signs in the US of hopping off this man-made global warming bandwagon. But not everyone.
Know who is heavily invested in this scheme? Al Gore. He probably has the most to lose when the cap and trade and carbon credit trading schemes fall through. Starting with a company he and another investor started called Generation Investment Management LLP. I’m all for capitalism, and according to Al Gore and the media, he’s just putting his money where his mouth is. The reason capitalism works is because there is risk taking. When the market demands it, entrepreneurs will provide. Responding to the market, or not, determines who wins and who looses. Gore’s company is an associate member of the Chicago Climate Exchange. A carbon credit trading exchange. (Available right now at $.10/share. Their stock fell 33% after the Copenhagen global warming festival in December.) How much Gore has invested varies from guesstimates from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. Suffice it to say, if things go the way he hopes they will, he’ll make George Soros’ wealth look like small change.
So yesterday, either in denial or a last ditch attempt to saves his investments, or both, Al Gore opines in the New York Times ‘We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change.’ The first sentence of his opinion piece says it all . . .
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Right. The sky is falling. On him. Then, from high on the mountain, not far from the burning bush, Gore ends with this. From Rick Moran at American Thinker.
Finally, this bit of weirdness that shows Gore for what he is; a megalomaniac:
From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis – inconvenient as ever – must still be faced.
Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer – as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an “instrument of redemption?”
Who else has put their money where their mouth is? Well, in a more muted and covert kind of way, the BBC has. They have $12.5 billion of their pension funds invested in companies whose future depends on the success of the whole man-made global warming movement and subsequent laws and regulations.
Just something to keep in mind the next time you see an article about a man-made global warming ‘crisis.’
President Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech. According to the AP, “He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.”
Right, and he also wants Iran to quit its nuclear bomb ambitions, and Republicans to participate in health care reform in a bi-partisan fashion from square two instead of square one.
Don’t buy this as a new shift in energy strategy. It is his community organizers way of appeasing his critics, which is everyone to the right of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
The other thing that community organizers do to avoid personal responsibility, like voting ‘present,’ is to appoint commissions. It is how he allows the environmentalists to shape America’s energy policy. Which explains why Obama has cut funding for the long-planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository started in 1987, was approved by Congress in 2002, and in 2009 Mr. New Energy Shift cut funding for it. Instead, he has appointed a commission to find a ‘safe’ solution for dealing with nuclear waste, but in the meantime the government has no long-term plan to store commercial radioactive waste. ‘Safe’ for Obama must mean politically safe, not materially safe.
So what’s the end result? There won’t be any new nuclear plant construction unless and until a place to put the waste is operating. That, and higher energy cost, continued dependence on foreign energy sources, and the crippling of our economy on the energy front.