Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘Ecology/Nature’ Category

Advisories of a tropical storm will likely be issued this morning at 11 AM EDT for Southern Florida and the Bahamas.

As the storm drew closer, boat captains hired by BP for skimming duty were sent home and told they wouldn’t be going back out for five or six days, said Tom Ard, president of the Orange Beach Fishing Association in Alabama.

In Florida, crews removed booms intended to protect waterways in the Panhandle from oil. High winds and storm surge could carry the booms into sensitive wetlands.

Also, Shell Oil began evacuating employees out in the Gulf.

Even if the storm does not hit the area directly, it could affect the effort to contain the oil and clean it up. Hurricane Alex stayed 500 miles away last month, yet skimming in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida had to be  curtailed for nearly a week.

NEW ORLEANS – A tightly fitted cap was successfully keeping oil from gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time in three months, BP said Thursday. The victory — long awaited by weary residents along the coast — is the most significant milestone yet in BP’s effort to control one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

Kent Wells, a BP PLC vice president, said at a news briefing that oil stopped flowing into the water at 2:25 p.m. CDT after engineers gradually dialed down the amount of crude escaping through the last of three valves in the 75-ton cap.

“I am very pleased that there’s no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, I’m really excited there’s no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico,” Wells said.

Isn’t it a shame that the only public figure who tells the American people the truth is a comedian?

If we want to change Washington we must change the ones we send to Washington.

The interesting thing about this video is that of all the presidents from the past 50 years, Nixon is the one who did the most for the environment.  He is the one who established the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act.

Greenpeace UK has just launched a campaign/contest urging people to ‘rebrand’ the BP logo and show that they aren’t ‘Beyond Petroleum’ as their slogan suggests. While entries are open until the end of June there have already been over 300 to date! TwistedSifter has culled 25 of the more interesting submissions.

Here is my favorite choice: