Another Day, Another Oil Spill

Latest: Progress in cleaning Huntington Beach is being made by crews as the amount of crude oil and slimed vegetation decreases each day. So far, they have collected half a million pounds of tar balls, oil contaminated sand, seaweed, and driftwood. Tarred animals have not been found in a week. One third of the beach is nearing final clean up approval, although it was opened to the public soon after the spill. It may take several more weeks for opening of fisheries, as the testing for trace amounts of hydrocarbon is underway. The pipeline, believed to have been ruptured by a ship's anchor, leaked for twenty-four hours before being shut down. Fortunately for wildlife and nearby nature preserves, the spill was not has bad as been feared by environmentalists.  Much of the oil was dispersed by wind and currents before it washed ashore.

Update: {06/11/21}The news from Huntington Beach is getting worse, unsurprisingly. Despite efforts to contain the spill which is now estimated at 144,000 gallons of crude, the toxic sludge has leaked into a restored salt water marsh that is a refuge for ninety species of water birds. For the second time in its short history Talbert Marsh is slicked with oil. Created in 1989 it is one of a few wild habitats along this stretch of Southern California coastline. Ninety percent of California's wetlands have been lost to development. Conservationists cobbled together $750,000 in state and federal money to create the 25 acre wetland sandwiched between the ocean and upscale homes. Talbert is connected to Magnolia Marsh and Brookhurst Marsh and all three are now polluted.  Cleaning such a sensitive ecosystem will be a huge task.  Fortunately, the spill has missed the largestt salt water marsh in the region, Bolsa Chica, as winds and currents carry the oil slick south.

In 1990 the tanker American Trader ran aground off Huntington Beach, spilling 416,000 gallons of crude oil.  Some of that oil contaminated plants in Talbert Marsh that had only been planted a year before. It took fifteen years for the marsh to recover. The situation is a little better this time as a quick response has prevented an even more severe contamination, and there is a wildlife center to care for birds and other species contaminated with crude.  Amplify Energy Inc's leaking pipe has a thirteen inch gash in it and is displace more than a hundred feet from its original location according to the US Coast Guard.  These facts indicate to US Person that something, perhaps an anchor from one of the container ships waiting to get into harbor, struck the pipe and dragged it along the seabed. 

{04/10/21}Huntington Beach, CA, known as "Surf City" is being smeared by the oil industry again..  Its famous beaches are awash with globs of sticky crude oil from a burst oil pipeline connect to offshore oil platforms.  Residents noticed an oil sheen on the waters Friday evening, but it was not until Saturday afternoon that the pipeline owner Amplify Energy Corporation shut down operations.  An estimated 126,000 gallon have been spilled so far.  The company said it evacuated the 17 mile long undersea pipeline to prevent further spills. Production from the platforms on the OCS have stopped.  The oil will continue to wash ashore and affect nearby communities, including exclusive Newport Beach for weeks.The Repugnant congressperson for Orange County has asked for federal aid to clean up the spill.

As usual wildlife has taken the brunt of the toxic spill. The area is home to threatened species including the humpback whale, snowy plovers and least tern. Oiled birds cannot care for their feathers and marine mammals have trouble breathing in the toxic fumes released by the crude. Dead fish an birds have been found, but so far only a few survivors have been treated by veterinarians. Crews have dieployed booms and skimmers attempting to prevent the oil from polluting the Bolsa Chica ecological reserve. [photo credit: UK Independent] Beaches are now closed. Residents question the value of production platforms producing marginal amounts of oil so close to a recreational and natural area of significant value. Conservationist have pushed for automatic detection systems that could shut down a pipeline if it springs a leak, but industry operators have resisted that requirement as too expensive.

The last large spill at Huntington occurred three decades ago when an oil tanker ran over its anchor in 1990, spilling over 417,000 gallons of crude oil. In 2015 a ruptured pipe sent 143,000 gallon ashore at Refugio Beach, north of Santa Barbara.  Typically the subsidiary company that owned the platforms and connecting pipeline, Beta Operating Co., had a history of federal regulatory violations with 125 violations in the last 11 years. Beta feild was owned by Memorial Production Partners until 2017 when the parent company filed for reorganization under Chapter 11. It emerged several months later as Amplify Energy, which is still heavily in debt. The Beta oil field has been owned by at least seven different corporations since it was discovered by Royal Dutch Shell in 1976, records show. The corporate predecessor of Amplify bought the operation in 2012.

'Toontime: This Week in Trump

credit: Horsey, Seattle Times;
Wackydoodle sez: He works better in the dark!

Update:  Jeffery Clark refused to answer questions before the J6 Committee today. He hid behind the former guy's lawsuit defending his refusal to hand over records based on non-existent executive privilege.  That case is headed to the Supreme Court. Through his attorney, Clark claimed he had nothing to do with the storming of the Capitol. He showed up for a morning session with the Committee, "out of a sign of respect for the House of Representatives" his attorney wrote in a letter.  He did not return in the afternoon. It is now clear that the conspirators will rely on a conservative majority of the Supreme Court to run interference for them against potential criminal liability for their attempted coup. Committee chairman Thompson said the Select Committee will discuss Clark's failure to testify at a Friday meeting.  He told reporters that a criminal contempt referral is "on the table".

The investigation of the J6 Insurrection is proceeding apace.  The Select Committee is set to depose Jeffery Clark, the former Assistant AG and a major proponent of the Big Lie plan to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States. It boggles the mind to even write that sentence, but in Trumpworld any outrage is possible. The committee chair, Bennie Thompson, has signed off on twenty more subpoenas. So far they have taken statements from 150 witnesses.

Herr Trumpillini faces more legal trouble as the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has convened a second grand jury to consider his criminality.  This jury will focus on his penchant for fraudulently inflating asset values to obtain loans. He also apparently reported low figures on assets to avoid taxes. The pregnant question is: if the Committee finds corroborated evidence of his direct involvement in the planning of the Capitol attack, will he be prosecuted for his crime of seditious conspiracy?  He would be the first former president to be prosecuted for crimes committed while in office. Attorney General Garland has failed to impress. Stayed tuned.

credit: B. Bramhall, New York Daily News;
BC Idonawanna sez: He was dreaming of the Sinema Girl.

The Nuclear Rift at Glasgow

The Glasgow Climate Conference has exposed the rift between advocates who see nuclear power as a partial solution to climate change and those who see it as a very long term and expensive waste disposal problem. A look at how two developed countries handle radioactive wastes from nuclear operations may help answer this quandary. The USA built several nuclear reactors at Hanford, Washington to produce weapons grade plutonium for use in atomic bombs. Now that the Cold War is officially over, clean up of the Hanford site is proving to be extremely expensive and time consuming. Eight reactors are now idle. Six have been cocooned in steel and concrete and two remain to be entombed. The ninth reactor was clean and converted to a historic landmark as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Ten thousand tourists visit the old B reactor every year. Plutonium from Hanford B was used in the Trinity Test of the first atomic weapon in New Mexico. Hanford plutonium was also used in the Nagasaki atomic attack.

entombed reactors DR and D

Cocooning is the same technique used by the Russians to enclose the radioactive ruins at Chernobyl, Ukraine. The shelter are intended to last about 75 years, or long enough for radioactivity to dissipate to levels low enough for the reactors to be dismantled and buried on the reservation. Compared to other radioactive clean-up costs associated with nuclear fission, the cocoons are relatively cheap: about $10 million each. So far, cleaning the Hanford site to acceptable levels of radioactivity has cost about $2.5 billion a year since it began in the late 1980s. The steel and concrete enclosures are 58 feet meters) long, 151 feet (46 meters) wide and 123 feet (37.5 meters) high. The last sarchpogus entombing Reactor K West is expected to be completed by 2026.

Disposing of the obsolete reactors is a relative bright spot in the Hanford cleaning story. The process has been plagued by technical difficulties, lack of funding, contractor turnover, and law suits over the environmental impact of the site since it sits close to the Columbia River and the town of Kirkland, Washington. Of pressing concern are the 177 buried tanks holding thousands of gallons of contaminated waste water. They are corroding, and if they begin to leak, the contamination will certainly enter the groundwater and eventually the Columbia River. It will take decades and billions of dollars to secure the tanks or remove them altogether. An estimate for the cleaning of a site the size of Rhode Island is $660 billion No one knows if future generations will be willing to foot the bill. Safe, permanent radioactive waste disposal is the unsolved problem and usually unmentioned cost of nuclear power. As one watchdog director said, “It’s rather grim. It’s multigenerational,” Cleaning Hanford, "will cost more than anyone thought possible,”

Nuclear advocates argue that nuclear power is cleaner than most other power production methods and major accidents are exceedingly rare. So nuclear power respresents the best chance of combating anthropomorphic clinate change, they argue. When accidents do occur as in the United States, Japan and Ukraine, they are catastrophic, long lasting and cost huge sums to amerliorate. France has amassed decades of nuclear power operation without a major catastrophe. The EU is debating whether to label nuclear power "green" thus making it eligible for economic subsidies. Germany has answered the question in the negative, as it dismantles its nuclear energy industry.

France is the polar opposite. No other country is depended on nuclear power as much as France. That country has adopted methods of buring or recycling radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. Storage units hold about 90% of the country's low to medium radioactive waste materials. For highly radioactive wastes--mostly fuel rods--it is preparing underground storage near the village of Bure (pop.82) in northeastern France. The radioactive waste agency, Andra, has been building the facility for the past twenty years, and if approved by the government, the tunnels carved from the clay and granite 500 meters below the surface could hold 94,000 tons of the most radioactive waste since nuclear operations began in France forty years ago. Andra's geologic isolation is intended to be the permanent answer to a problem that still has not been resolved by nuclear operators, including the United States which abandoned its deep storage solution at Yucca Mountain, Utah. Geologic faults were discovered that compromised that facility's safety. France intends to spend $29 billion on its underground storage project, but that is only part of the extreme cost of safely operating nuclear power. For now, like the US, France stores its waste in pools next to operating reactors.

Environmental organizations like Greenpeace accuse the French of covering up or exporting radioactive waste disposa problems to eastern Europe. Because of the urgency of the climate change crisis, some policy makers have embraced nuclear power as a solution, or dropped their opposition to relying on nuclear reactors. The later category includes John Kerry, the US envoy for climate matters. Nuclear experts say that people are coming to the stark realization that nuclear power is less scary than climate change consequences. Anti-nuclear activist say deep geologic storage is not a leak proof solution for the thousands of years in which nuclear decay takes place. Meanwhile the waste, buried or not is not going away.

Four Latin Countries Create New Marine Reserve

Four Latin-American countries have agreed to create a massive new protected corridor by joining their marine reserves in the Pacific. The Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor covers 200,000 square miles of ocean that is critical to migratory routes of sea turtles, whales, sharks and rays.  Panama, Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica said Tuesday the new protected marine environment represents the "new language of global conservation" in which nations join together to enact public policy for conservation of the natural world.

Ecuador expanded the Galapagos marine reserve by 60,000 square kilometers to include a no-take zone of 30,000 square kilometers to the northeast of the island archipelago.  Columbia told leaders at the COP16 conference it would expand its existing 120,000 square kilometers of protected zone by 120 more. Panama quadrupled the size of its Cordillera de Coiba protected area.  The joint initiative is response to the UK's 30x30 campaign in which the goal is to protect thirty percent of the Earth's ocean by 2030.  Just 3 percent now lies within a highly protected zone.  Guillermo Lasso, president of Ecuador,  said the action comes after months of meetings with fisherman large and small, so he does not expect protests to occur since the creation is a "consensual decision" Ecuador has one of the largest fishing fleet in the Pacific. GREEN KUDOS to Panama, Columbia, Costa Rica and Ecuador!    

Lynx Protections to Remain

Conservationists reached a deal with federal wildlife officials to keep legal protections for the Canadian lynx (Lynx canadensis) in place.  The previous regime attempted to remove protection under the Endangered Species Act when the time for considering the effects of climate change on a species was shorted from 2100 to 2050 in 2018.  The settlement was approved by a federal judge in Montana on Monday. Called the ghost of the forest, the elusive feline is a snow specialist with several cold weather adaptations.  There are no reliable estimates of its population size.  Their protected status has disrupted the plans of loggers and road builders in western states, leading to efforts to de-list the species.  Lynx are found in Colorado and Maine with some occurring in Montana, Idaho, Minnesota and Washington state.

A new recovery plan is due in 2024 under the terms of the settlement approved by Judge Molloy sitting in Missoula, Montana.  A previous estimate (2016) concluded that the lynx would disappear from some areas based upon the effects of climate change on snow pack at higher elevations.  The same conclusion was reached for another snow specialist, the wolverine.  But the agency said it is no longer seeking protections for the wolverine since it thinks enough snow will remain for the animals to den and reproduce.  A lawsuit to reverse that wishful thinking is pending.

Extreme Heat Exposure Tripled

A study published in the Proceedings of the  National Academy of Sciences journal found that exposure to dangerously high temperatures in cities tripled between 1983 and 2016.  This product of climate change poses a serious public health risk to urban dwellers.  In 2003, 70,000 people died from an extreme heat wave in Europe.  Fifteen thousand died in France alone; Paris tallied the most excess deaths.

The Earth is nearing the safe limits of climate change say many climatologists.  Urgent action is needed now to avoid even worse consequences of anthropomorphic heating.  This chart shows the alarming increase in person-days of extreme heat at the city level:

The decade beginning in 2011 is the hottest on record. Average global temperatures peaked in 2016, 2019, and 2020.  The planet has already experience a 1.8°F increase in average global temperature since the 1950s.  According to researchers, the number of people exposed to extreme heat could swell ten fold in the next decade driven by increased urbanization in developing regions and an increase in global temperatures. Note the red areas concentrated in India and west Africa in the chart above.  More than half the world's 7.7 billion population is packed into cities that figure is expected to increase to 68% by 2050.  The most significant gains are expected in China, India and Nigeria, Africa's most populated country.  Dense urban metropolises, bereft of cooling vegetation and immersed in heat emitting vehicles, concrete buildings and pavements are heat sinks that further elevate ambient air temperatures. Most at risk of death from heat exposure are the poor and elderly who are unable to escape the heat. 

COTW: Climate Change in Charts

The attendees at the Glasgow climate conference have a huge problem: reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has been accumulating since the Industrial Revolution of the mid 18th century.  Fossil fuel companies knew by the mid 1970's that global combustion of their fuels would have an adverse impact on global climate. Now countries that have benefited from that unrestricted power source are asking developing countries to forego that same source to help reduce emissions.  It is a Gordian knot of economics, social equity and technology. The prospects of a global solution are slim: India pledged to be "net zero" by 2070, twenty years later than the announced COP 26 goal. As the future king of England pointed out, the Glasgow conference may be the last, best chance to save the Earth.  

China currently emits the most green house gases, but because the USA industrialized earlier, this chart shows it with the biggest share of global carbon dioxide emitted since 175, equivalent to Europe and Russia combined. Nevertheless, the US leads the world in the amount of emissions per capita by a wide margin, reflecting its energy intensive culture:

If emissions are measured in terms of fuel type, coal is clearly the largest source of emissions followed by oil and gas.  Clearly, a significant contribution to reducing emissions can be made if the subsidies provided the fossil fuel industry by developed nations are eliminated and switched to alternative means of energy production.