Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
More of that renewable resource; Irony.
It turns out American Commercial lines Inc., that’s the company that owns the barge that is hemorrhaging 420,000 gallons of tar-like No. 6 fuel oil into the Mississippi, is in a ‘distinctly unique position’ to deal with just such an event!
In April 2008 American Lines Inc. acquired the final 70% Summit Contracting, LLC. They already owned 30% of Summit since May 2007.
Diving into a huge helping of irony, It turns out Summit’s expertise happens to be in environmental services.
What kind of ‘environmental services’?
Summit offers emergency response and environmental remediation among other services. When accidents such as this one threaten the environment Summit may have been one of the companies called in to contain, and cleanup the mess.
Environmental remediation will certainly be among the services needed to clean up the accident American Commercial Lines was involved with this day. The Founder of Summit Contracting who had an environmental services and civil engineering background was to stay on and lead Summit as a subsidiary of American Commercial Lines.
In a press statement American Commercial Lines Inc. said the Acquisition of Summit “Uniquely Positions ACL to Serve Chemical and Energy Companies.”
Your results may vary.
‘Forward looking statements’ are based on present expectations and beliefs about future events.
American Commercial Lines Inc., reported approximately $1 Billion as of December 31, 2007.
Forward looking statements are inherently susceptible to risks, uncertainty and changes in circumstance.
This gives new meaning to ‘cleaning up after yourself’.
Did Dolly do it?
Weather conditions this morning at 1:30 a.m., reportedly the time of the accident between the Tintomara and the ACL barge, were a lovely and light 3 to 4 mph, gusting now and again to 7 mph. Weather had nothing to do with this accident. Maybe darkness played a part. The Tintomara can travel at a top speed of 14.2 knots fully ladened.
As the Mississippi snakes it’s way to the Gulf of Mexico from this area, it would be hard to belive that the tanker was traveling at its top speed in the dark in this high traffic area. With Class Det Norske Veritas, +1A1 hull the Tintomara was loaded with both biodiesel and styrene.
Photo Thanks:
Peter Langsdale Tintomara Feb. 2008 dry docked Gothenburg.
Weather Graphs, Weatherunderground.
Labels: American Commercial Lines Inc., Environment, Mississippi River, Summit Contracting, oil spill, oil tanker
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Company Cleaning Oil spill on the Mississippi also owns the barge spilling the oil!
Monday, July 14, 2008
No, you don’t have to love Oklahoma, in fact it’s one of my least favorite states.
I judge a state by the tenor of the representatives they elect. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) thinks the EPA has hatched an “economically destructive scheme” which he calls “ironic”. That’s the pot calling the kettle black!
Inhofe also said, “Big Brother is alive and well in the career ranks at the EPA.” Apparently irony is one thing the U.S. isn’t running short on.
Irony is a renewable resource.
This coming from the party that never met a wiretap it didn’t like. Big brother is alive and well, but he isn’t living at the EPA. Warrantless wiretaps, and immunity for those engaged in the massive illegal wiretapping for the past 7 years has all the odor of ‘big brother’.
There are actual scientists working at the EPA. Career scientists. Hard to imagine. Inhofe is a career politician who has been running for some kind of office since 1978.
The economic destruction severed up, in heaping portions, isn’t coming from the EPA’s lunch lady’s ladle either. The next president will inherit, at best, a $400 Billion dollar Bush legacy deficit. This administration had to burn through the huge, $127 Billion dollar surplus the Clinton was kind enough to leave. Now there’s a piece of real irony.
The EPA couldn’t spend enough money to clean-up the amount of trace metals lurking in certain portions of the career politicians anatomy. They certainly wouldn’t have to waste any money looking for brass balls.
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Meanwhile…
Brad Miller (D-NC) says, “The White House has effectively blocked the EPA from posting new health assessments of hazardous chemicals…” Miller is chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on Investigation and Oversight.
The EPA maintains a data base called the IRIS, Integrated Risk Information System. This data base is critical tool for individuals, private companies, local and state authorities to respond quickly to toxic chemicals found in air, water or soil.
The pipe has dried up on the flow of crucial facts that should be flowing into the IRIS. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are not required to disclose details of meetings that take place with industry lobbyists.
What do they lobby for? Pardon me; for what do they lobby?
The OMB ‘reviews’. The OMB prevents agency rules from ‘going final’ before it has approved them.
Trichloroethylene (TCE) will have been waiting for an assessment some 21 years after the EPA began its assessment. Miller is asking if “getting the science right” has less to do with protecting the public health than “a pretext for obstruction…”.
The Government Accountability Office has testified that the new ‘review process’ revealed by the OMB provides for even more secrecy and delay.
Before 2004 there were 10 steps a chemical needed to pass through before it was entered into the IRIS data base. The new review process would take a toxic chemical on a meandering 25 step path before it might be handed off to the EPA to post the final assessment on the IRIS database. Keep in mind, this step follows the OMB giving it’s ‘REVISED ASSESSMENT’
Miller states the obvious, “People will have been exposed to a known toxic substance for decades, for a generation, while the government engages in study after study…”
IRIS is just the first step in protecting the public. The real work begins after a toxin reaches the IRIS. That would be the same point the culprits using, releasing or dumping the toxins on to the environment and the public would have to ‘regroup’.
Who wants to regroup when the old group is so cozy?
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Since it isn’t economically beneficial for anyone to find a cure for cancer and most of us don’t have the training to even attempt, I propose a radical solution.
How about we the people, the piss ants, the captains of common wisdom, cure what is causing cancer?
Labels: Brad Miller, Bush, EPA, Environment, Speak no Evil, Trichloroethylene
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Ya gotta love Oklahoma. There’s even a musical.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Fish poachers have stolen an 8kg hapuku that was pumped full of clorine, formalin and peroxide from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research aquaculture center at Ruakaka.
What were they thinking? Not the poachers; the scientists that injected all those chemicals into the fish! Other fish taken from the center’s quarantine and disease investigation unit were Kingfish that had been treated with a sex reversal drug, making them queenfish?
Were the thieves that hungry? They had to top 2 metres of barbed wire to get to the fish giving a whole new meaning to baiting the barbed hook!
Meanwhile…
Yet another right foot has washed up near Vancouver. It’s the 4th one now in less than a year. The 4th right foot mind you. Terry Smith, B.C.’s chief coroner cautioned against jumping to any conclusions such as foul play. Smith says, “This may very well be nothing more than the results of natural process of decomposition in water and the combined affects of predation by aquatic scavengers.”
Meaning no disrespect for the loved ones of those formerly attached to these right feet, but why would a scavenger have a left foot preference?
All 4 right feet were wearing socks and men’s running shoes. What happened to the left feet? I wish my first question would have been what happened to the former owners of the right feet, but sadly, in this day and age, it was not.
By the way…
Scientists have come up with a new environmentally friendly bomb. It’s nice to know they best minds in the world are working on protecting the environment. Keep up the good work gang. We could certainly use fewer toxins in the environment!
Labels: Environment, Hapuku, Kingfish
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Poached Kingfish; Receipe for Disaster! Try the Hapuku instead.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Rainforests cover only 2% of the Earth’s surface, or 6% of its land mass, yet they house over half the plant and animal species on earth. They originally covered at least twice that area.
By some estimates 137 plant, animal and insect species vanish everyday from the earth. 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients. Less than 1% of the treasure trove of what is available has been tested by scientists. Think of all the possible cures for disease and possible future antibiotics that are being lost daily.
Achim Steiner, executive direct of of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) says,”the world is losing the intellectual patents of nature before we even have the chance to understand or unravel them.” Stiener also believes biodiversity is linked to the phenomenon of climate change.
The loss of biodiversity in our oceans is impairing the ocean’s capacity to provide food, maintain water quality and recover from stresses.
The depths of the oceans also hold untold treasures that are unexamined, making the loss of biodiversity in the seas even more heart wrenching. What has been lost with the extinction of species such as the southern gastric brooding frog, science is able to imagine. Having only been discovered in the 1980’s it has already gone extinct and with it a possible cure for peptic ulcers from which 10’s of thousands of people suffer. We are losing species everyday in our oceans we don’t even know about.
The problem with losing species we don’t even know existed isn’t just the loss of their existence and potential benefits to the environment and mankind, but not knowing what we have lost gives some sort of creepy credence to Donald Rumsfeld’s statement:
“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Photo thanks: Science News. New fish discovered off Ambon Island, Indonesia.
Labels: Biodiversity, Donald Rumsfeld, Environment, Extinct Frogs, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, UNEP
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
The loss of biodiversity and Donald Rumsfeld; the connection is creepy!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Sport fishermen have always tossed back the little fish they caught. In theory the young ones are released back into the water so they can fully mature. But, little fish make more little fish.
“It’s not the young ones that should be thrown back, but the larger older fish that should be spared.” says George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD. “Not only do the older fish provide stability…to the population, they provide more and better quality offspring.”
In a four-year study that was released back in 2002 that was headed by David O. Conover at the Marine Sciences Research Center at State University of New York at Stony Brook, harvesting the largest of a population leaves only the smaller fishbehind to breed which practically ensures more small fish in the long run.
Science magazine published Conover and a graduate student’s findings in July 2002. When the smallest fish in a group were removed the remainder became individually larger. (4.5 grams) When the largest in a group were removed the mean weight of individuals left was decreased. (2.5grams) In a third group where random sized fish were removed the remaining fish stayed similar to the size they started out at which was about 3.5 grams.
A member of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said when striped bass were protected up to 36 inches, the fish of that size were depleted until the minimum limit was lowered to 28 inches.
Taking only the larger older population of fish creates an age-imbalanced population. A lack of older fish induces early maturation in the younger fish.
Young fish left behind, thought to be too small to bring to market, are also more vulnerable to suffering from changes in their environment.
The absence of only the larger fish being harvested must have a ripple effect on the whole ecosystem.
It’s a tangled web we weave. There is one bit of conventional wisdom that remains constant…It’s not wise to fool with Mother Nature…
Labels: Environment, Fish, Ocean, Size limit, ecosystems
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Size Does Matter! Conventional Wisdom Proves Wrong when it comes to fish. Size limits have backfired!
Friday, October 26, 2007
But…maybe you can identify this man or woman, spend as much time as you need.
They shoot horses don’t they?
1,400 scientists have concluded humans have punched their dance card for the final time. Humans have danced themselves to the brink of annihilation and done it without taking so much as a break to sleep. However, it seems we have taken more than enough time to have sex and over eat.
Let them eat cake and reproduce into oblivion.
Earth’s population has grown by 34% since 1987.
Each person in the world requires 1/3 more of the earths resources than she is able to now supply. Just try to balance your checking account with that kind of cash flow. It can’t be done. The earth ‘audit’ was done by 400 scientists all experts in their field and then vetted by 1.000 others.
In the face of what seems to be the most dire predictions of doom awaiting the planet we are slapped the cold wet fist of industry:
damage sustained to the environment was of fundamental economic concern, and if left unchecked would affect economic growth
Is there no light at the end of this tunnel? There will be zero commerce when the stores and factories stand empty vanquished of consumers and workers. It seems patently obvious to most of us a symbiotic relationship between profits and consumers must exist. Killing the customer doesn’t make much sense, but that is exactly the monster that has been methodically created.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), said “The systematic destruction of the Earth’s natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged, and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible to pay.”
On the very same pages these stories are crying doom and extinction are listed a bevy of mind-numbing fluff.
Click here to see rugby legends discuss the topics you raised!
Love Sudoku? Play our brand new interactive game!
Play Fantasy CEO!
Play Fantasy Football!
New suspect in Madeleine McCann disappearance! (he has no face, but look at the sketch anyway)
Find out what was behind Marie Osmond’s Fall on Dancing with the Stars!
Oh please, can we become any more pathetic?
May my finger fall off if I try to click on one more totally irrelevant story designed to detour my mind from the real problems facing me, and the rest of us today!
See how the scientists were chosen
Labels: Environment, Humanity survival, U.N. Climate Change Summit, UNEP, United Nations
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Humanity’s very survival at risk!
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Like a rock-n-roll guitar player that stands too close to his amplifier, climate change is now creating a dreaded ‘feedback’ affect.
Loss of ice in the Arctic means less ‘white’ which reflects the sunshine back into space. In the summer we wear white or light colored clothing to reflect the heat of the sun away from us. In the winter we wear dark colors that absorb the heat. The tundra is melting absorbing more heat. The heat is rapidly decomposing plant material and in return releasing methane. Methane is over 20 times more potent than other greenhouse gases.
A study done at the University of East Anglia shows that the North Atlantic Ocean is only absorbing half of the C02 it once did, and southern oceans have stopped absorbing it, and are now releasing C02 back into the atmosphere.
The ocean’s ability to absorb C02 is called C02 sink. Merchant ships equipped with instruments to measure carbon dioxide (C02) in the water have been collecting data every month and have generated more than 90,000 measurements in just the past few years.
The North Atlantic Ocean’s ability to absorb C02 abruptly declined, while the Indian Ocean’s absorption ability was making more of a taper.
Emissions of carbon dioxide from the ocean have actually increased by 40% since 1981.
International team leader Dr. Corinne Le Quere, from the University of Eat Anglia and British Antarctic Survey says, “This is serious. All climate models predict that this kind of ‘feedback will continue and intensify during this century.”
See PSMI’s Franken-plankton story in the archive.
Labels: Arctic, Climate Change, Environment, Frankenplankton, Global Warming, Ocean, Phytoplankton, Sea, carbon dioxide, ecosystems, greenhouse gas
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Oceans Losing The Ability to Trap CO2, they may be reaching the saturation point.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Eviscerated is the term being used by on CDC official!
The Associated Press is reporting that CDC director Julie Gerberding’s report delivered to Congress yesterday was cut by 1/2. The report was to address public health effects of climate change. Details of how climate change and global warming will affect the health of Americans and how the government has failed to fully address the potential health risks of climate changes.
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) wants to know why the administration would edit testimony by “one of the country’s leading voices on public health.
For their part the Bush Administration via Dana Perino, White House spokeswoman says,…”It (the report) wasn’t watered down in terms of the concerns that climate change raises for the public health.”
Those at the CDC can take a number and stand in line behind other agencies that have been muted on climate change and the environment.
Speak no evil, or speak only of the evil we embrace seems to be this administrations motto.
From NASA the Fish and Wildlife Service to The EPA, up to and including censorship of exhibits on Global warming at the Smithsonian Institute, keeping Climate Change and Global Warming on the lowest key possible is the melody.
Links provided are to Pacific Spirit Archived Articles on Censorship. CDC report is a PDF file.
Labels: Artic, Boxer, CDC report, Climate Change, Congress, EPA, Environment, Global Warming
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Bush Administration Altered CDC Report on Climate Change! What else is new?
Monday, October 22, 2007
Where Has All The Water Gone? On A Slow Boat To China?
It may be crazy to think about but consider this for a moment. China now has more than 37,000 peasants working to produce rain. That’s right.
While millions of people are suffering from horrific wide spread drought, China says it has added a staggering 275 Billion..That’s Billion…cubic yards of additional rainfall by using rocket launchers. Rocket launcher are filled with artillery pieces loaded with silver iodide and other chemicals and then blasted into clouds.
China has been testing it’s rainmaking prowess for more than a dozen years now and they think they have a pretty good record. The Gutlan Reservoir in Fujian province is reported to have had a 24% increase since the testing began.
China has the largest rainmaking operation in the world followed by Russia and Israel.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!
I don’t need to tell any of you again that I’m no rocket scientist but, I’m going to fall down on the side of some of China’s Henan province residents. 2 years ago a 5 city squabble broke out with accusations of ‘cloud theft’ broke out. In my mind it only stands on the side of reason that unnaturally bleeding water from clouds in one part of the world would send empty clouds to another part.
Whether or not my theory is true sending chemicals into the sky with rocket launchers has to be a bad idea on so many levels.
Keep your eye on the prize!
Scientists using satellites analyze cloud content from several major cities. When the time look right they put out the call for any number of the 37,000 weather troops to assemble. Each team can assemble in a matter of minutes and begin firing chemicals into promising clouds in their area.
To the victor go the spoils!
Do we not have enough evidence that everything in this world is tied together in an inextricable knot?
China doesn’t just want to produce more rainfall to fill their newly completed $25 Billion dollar Three Gorges Dam which is the largest to date in the world, they want to also stop the rain from falling.
Don’t rain on my parade!
Zhang Qiang, a ‘weather modifier’ at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau will try to stop the rain from ruining the Olympics. Zhang will try to intercept the rain clouds by calling out his troops to divert them.
Microwaves aren’t just for popping corn.
One way scientists are scheming to stop hurricanes is by dumping black soot on to the top of a hurricane. They are thinking that the dark color will draw the sun’s heat and warm the icy clouds at the top causing it to loose it’s power.
If the soot isn’t black enough how about shredding tires and dropping black them across the top?
Maybe the beaming of microwaves from space to the tops of the hurricanes thereby changing their airflow is a better idea.
I’m in agreement that we have to start finding ways to adapt to our changing environment, but there are light years between the word adapt, and the word control.
Man has apparently learned nothing from his quest to maintain dominance on the planet.
Is this going to be the key that unlocks the trap we have set for ourselves, or will this be just one more nail in the coffin?
Labels: China, Climate Change, Cloud seeding, Environment, Water, drought
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
China Wages War with Clouds! Cloud Seeding and the Environment
Thursday, October 4, 2007
As soon as I published yesterdays article I checked my inbox and found something quite interesting coming from our friends over at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). PEER is about Protecting Employees Who Protect Our Environment.
The title of the news release: PLANNED ARMY EXPANSION WILL INCREASE POLLUTION.
Army expansion? The U.S. Army calls it “force structure modifications”. At least that’s the working title for their ‘environmental impact statement’. The Army foresees this expansion as causing “high” to “very high” adverse effects on air pollution, soil erosion, water usage, energy consumption and a threat to wildlife, noise, air and surface traffic. In the cases where impact is “very high” there is no way to mitigate the impact.
The US Army has no legal obligation to minimize its impact on global warming. In essence though, the Army is an inextricable part of the government, and the government of the U.S. is of, for, and by the people; At least it is supposed to be.
The land the Army has already recently expanded Ft. Irwin in Southern California for larger tank training activities laying waste to even more soil. An oxymoron; destroying American soil, to defend American soil?
The draft for the Army plan (two words I don’t like to see together) includes adding approximately 30,000 combat support troops and adding up to six active duty combat brigades! 
Yikes. No small feat. They plan to expand 17 bases, by at least 1,000 more soldiers; 11 of which are west of the Mississippi.
Of those 11, perhaps most interesting is, these expansions are planned for bases located in the desert and fall south latitudinaly of America’s infamous Mason Dixon Line except for Yakima Training Center, Washington State.
Will the Mason Dixon Line once again represent conflict and the worst of times for America?
Most disturbing The U.S. Army repealed the federal regulations governing the Army’s impact on air, water and toxic waste pollution. The Army is left with only internal guidelines, which cannot be enforced.
In a July 20, 2007 Federal Register notice, the Army declares that environmental regulations governing the service are repealed effective immediately, offering the following cryptic yet obtuse rationale:
“The Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management…has concluded this regulation is obsolete. This regulation has been extensively revised and has been determined that the procedures prescribed in the regulation are for Army officials, and not intended to be enforced against any member of the public. As a result, the regulation does not affect the general public. Therefore, it would be helpful in avoiding confusion if 32 CFR Part 650 is removed.”
The message is yes, we want to avoid any confusion by informing the citizens, so we’ll help ourselves out here and just remove our need to tell them anything. Helpful indeed.
PEER Executive Director, Jeff Ruch “Incredibly, the Army contends that this does ‘not affect the general public’ and therefore the public will have no say in what anti-pollution rules the Army must follow.”
Not only is war bad for the environment, training for war is too. The fox is once again guarding the chicken coop.
Photo Thanks: NPS.gov, The Guttenberg Project
Labels: Army Expansion, Environment, Global Warming, Pollution, Public right, Toxin
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
U.S. Army Expansion Planned. Bad News for the Environment
