Trained as an entomologist, Chavarria studied neotropical bumble bees and has since worked in conservation policy at Washington, D.C.–based NGOs. Since 2006, she has directed NRDC’s science program. Before that she was vice president for science and conservation at Defenders of Wildlife and headed conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation. Chavarria was also a member of the Invasive Species Advisory Committee and served on the recovery team for the endangered black-footed ferret.

Among other issues, Chavarria will provide advice on how the agency should deal with climate change.”  “Fish and Wildlife Service Names Science Adviser“

The move is intended to tackle a lack of burial space and environmental concerns as 573lbs of carbon dioxide are released by each cremated corpse.

Under the process, known as resomation, bodies are treated in a steel chamber with potassium hydroxide at high pressure and a temperature of 180c (350f).  …

Sandy Sullivan, founder of The Resomation Company said: ‘Resomation offers a new, innovative approach which uses less energy and emits significantly less greenhouse gasses than cremation.’”  “Belgium’s plan to wash its dead down the drain: Bodies would be dissolved in caustic solution… and flushed into the sewer“

In what could lead to further escalation of the row, a high-level EPA official has threatened to strip Texas of its power to issue such permits, unless the government in Austin bows to Washington’s regulatory demands.

Attention is currently focused on the Flint Hills Resources East Corpus Christi refinery. EPA says the refinery operates under a permit issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) that violates the Clean Air Act.

In a May 25 letter to Flint Hills Resources, which is owned by Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries, EPA said the company must submit a permit application to the Washington agency by September 15 or face potential fines. More ominously, the agency threatened to take similar action on more than three dozen other facilities in Texas, most along the Gulf coast where the state’s oil and gas industries are located.

The bone of contention between EPA and TCEQ is Texas’ decade-and-a-half-old practice of issuing “flexible” permits to refineries. Flexible permits place limits on emissions from an entire refinery. EPA claims emissions permits are required for each of the dozens of production units within a refinery. It is not known which of the two systems results in lower emissions, but the route preferred by EPA would undoubtedly lead to more paperwork.  …

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) blasted EPA’s move.

“The Obama administration has taken yet another step in its campaign to harm our economy and impose federal control over Texas,” he said in a press statement. “With their decision to take control of a permitting process that the Clean Air Act allows to be delegated to the states, the EPA is on the verge of killing thousands of Texas jobs and derailing a program that has cleaned Texas’ air.”  …

John Dunn, M.D., a Texas-based emergency services consultant, says there is more to the fight over air quality than meets the eye. He points out Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot is one of several state attorneys general suing EPA over the agency’s plan to regulate manmade greenhouse gases. According to Dunn, EPA may be seeking payback in its recent focus on Texas air quality.

EPA, Dunn says, has declared Texas a “rogue state” as part of a strategy to “intimidate states into submission.””  “EPA and, Texas Clash Over Air Quality Permits“

HFC-23 is a potent greenhouse gas which is an unwanted byproduct of manufacturing the refrigerant gas HCFC-22. Under the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the destruction of HFC- 23 generates emission reduction credits that are used to fulfil commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. While all 2236 currently registered projects are estimated to generate about 1 billion credits by 2012, only 19 registered CDM HFC-23 projects would be accountable for about half of the issued credits under current rules.

Analysis of monitoring data from all registered HFC-23 destruction projects revealed that CDM HCFC-22 plants are intentionally operated in a manner to maximize the production of offset credits. The analysis indicates that because of the extra CDM revenue more HCFC-22 is produced and far more HFC-23 [is] generated than would occur without the CDM.

“The amount of HCFC-22 production and HFC-23 generation appears to be mainly driven by the possibility to generate offset credits rather than other factors”, summarizes Lambert Schneider who evaluated the data.  …

Due to the lack of action by the CDM Executive Board to address these flaws, CDM Watch has now submitted a formal proposal to revise the crediting methodology in line with UN procedures.  …

“The revision would ensure that the CDM projects achieve actual mitigation because it would remove the current financial incentive that causes plants to produce gas for the sole purpose of getting paid to destroy it …”, explains Eva Filzmoser, Director of CDM Watch.

“It’s completely unacceptable for the UN to keep issuing an inflated number of bogus credits that create vast profits for carbon trading groups and chemical companies. If the UN wishes to avoid irreparable damage to its reputation and show that is truly serious about climate mitigation, it must take action now. The CDM Executive Board must put the current methodology on hold with immediate effect and halt issuing credits until the methodology is revised,” [said] Eva Filzmoser.”  “UN Under Pressure to Halt Gaming and Abuse of CDM“

Needless to say, a vast majority of participants disagreed with this statement much like I did (although they were almost certainly more surprised than I was because they don’t follow every detail of these events in the same detail as your humble correspondent: Steve has been consistent about these attitudes at least for a few years, although arguably not from the beginning). But McIntyre has also offered the political explanation of his attitudes:

As a Canadian, he said, he was brought up to believe that governments should govern on behalf of the people – so if CO2 were reckoned to be dangerous, it would be the duty of politicians to make laws to cut emissions.

I completely disagree with this “straightforward” conclusion, too. Even if CO2 were found to be dangerous for the global mean temperature, a rational comparison of costs and benefits would still have to take place, and a competition between possible ways how to attack the problem would have to follow.

In my opinion, it is extremely unlikely that the result of this analysis would be that there should exist laws to cut the production of CO2. Even if one CO2 doubling led to 5 °C of warming, as the insane upper ends of the IPCC intervals suggest, it would still be counterproductive for the industry to be regulated away in the coming decades. The problems caused by this warming would still be smaller than the costs of the elimination of the appropriate portion of the industries.

Moreover, there would almost certainly exist geoengineering methods to compensate for the impact of CO2 that would be vastly cheaper than the CO2 regulation. And a task for sane governments would be to help these methods to materialize – and to fight against anti-civilization tendencies that want to undermine the economy and the sources of income for the government itself.

In this sense the debate is not a “left vs right” debate. The suppression of the industry would be a bad decision for the capitalist economies much like the socialist economies – and all the grey hybrids in between. This is about a careful evaluation of costs and benefits and an impartial comparison of the alternatives – and Steve McIntyre is simply not doing that.

Because of all these reasons, Steve may be viewed as a part of the irrational and pro-government problem who just happened to discover that something is seriously wrong with the basic pillars of the system but who failed to deduce the appropriate conclusions. His not-so-right-wing politics is arguably the main cause behind this failure.”  “BBC:  Roger Harrabin about types of AGW skeptics“

-

“[S]cientists at the University of Miami say Greenland’s ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.  …

“It’s been known for several years that climate change is contributing to the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet,” Dixon says. “What’s surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response,” he says. “Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating, implying that melting is accelerating.”

Dixon and his collaborators share their findings in a new study titled “Accelerating uplift in the North Atlantic region as an indicator of ice loss.”  The paper is now available as an advanced online publication, by Nature Geoscience.  …

Melting of Greenland’s ice contributes to global sea level rise. If the acceleration of uplift and the implied acceleration of melting continue, Greenland could soon become the largest contributor to global sea level rise, explains Yan Jiang, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Miami RSMAS and co-author of the study.

“Greenland’s ice melt is very important because it has a big impact on global sea level rise,” Jiang says. “We hope that our work reaches the general public and that this information is considered by policy makers.”"  “Greenland Rapidly Rising as Ice Melt Continues“

The growing volume of Canadian oil sands imports “emphasizes the importance they have attained as a supply source for the United States,” Daniel Yergin, Cambridge, Mass.-based chairman of energy research firm IHS CERA, said in releasing a new report on the controversial Alberta oil projects.

Canada is already the largest source of imports for the U.S. market. But as conventional Canadian production declines and oil sands volumes grow, those non-conventional supplies are becoming increasingly critical.

In the third quarter of 2009, oil sands imports to the United States hit one million barrels a day for the first time, of total Canadian exports of 1.9 million. This year, IHS CERA expects oil sands producers to average 1.08 million barrels a day in sales to the U.S., eclipsing imports from both Mexico and Saudi Arabia, which will be declining or flat.

In the report, IHS CERA director Jackie Forrest projects production in the oil sands will grow from 1.35 million barrels a day last year, to as many as 5.7 million barrels a day by 2030 – a figure that would represent 36 per cent of anticipated American imports.  …

The IHS CERA report comes as environmental groups continue their campaign against the oil sands. Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council argued in a report released Wednesday that the development of Alberta’s “tar sands” represents … a “global disaster” because it will “all but guarantee the failure of efforts to combat global warming.”  …

The U.S. State Department has approved pipeline expansion from the oil sands into the U.S. market, saying the Alberta source was critical to U.S. energy security and its efforts to reduce dependence on Middle East oil, Mr. Pumphrey noted. However, the administration also backs climate change legislation that could impose significant additional costs on refiners that process heavy-oil imports which produce more emissions when processed.”  “Oil sands on track to be biggest source of U.S. oil imports“

Based on a judicial ruling [in lawsuits brought by enviros], some of the most prized and productive agricultural land in the country was turned into a wasteland after its water was shut off.

The ruling was derived from an 800-page “biological opinion” put out by regulators enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act, ostensibly to protect a finger-sized fish called the delta smelt and some other wildlife. Regulators complained that smelt were getting ground up in pumping stations that brought river water from California’s north to its south, so the water had to stop.

Even the judge was appalled at being forced into the ruling but had no choice, given the law, and tried to cushion the impact.

Tuesday, that same judge, District Judge Oliver Wanger declared to federal regulators that they must consider the impact of their “draconian” actions on human communities, something they’ve never done up until now.

“Federal defendants completely abdicated their responsibility to consider alternative remedies,” Wanger wrote.

He also ripped into the environmental regulators for their junk science “guesstimates,” stating that their shut-off “lacked factual and scientific justification, while effectively ignoring the irreparable harm (their regulations) have inflicted on humans and the human environment,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.  …

It can’t happen too soon. The water shut-off has been a nightmare for California. Huge farms growing the world’s finest grapes, peaches, almonds, pistachios, plums and walnuts — as well as cotton, carrots, cantaloupe and the other lush truck crops that come out of California’s temperate weather and rich soil — have gone fallow.  …

But the worst part of these decisions is the high human cost. California’s communities have suffered terrible disruption, with unemployment as high as 45% in some towns and farm workers forced to stand in food lines for bags of Chinese-grown carrots near fields they once harvested.  …

Judge Wanger is a hero for ruling that federal water regulators must consider the impact of their rulings on human communities along with the fish they seek to protect. Americans’ rights have been trampled by out-of-control environmentalism, which at times seems to grant more rights to fish and other creatures than humans.

No community should have to bear the entire brunt of a man-made water shortage because of heartless, ignorant bureaucrats.

The judge’s ruling has restored some sanity into what has up until now been an atrocious out-of-control bureaucracy.”  “Water Sanity For Central California“

“A new study to be published in the academic journal Reviews in Fisheries Science recommends that efforts to restore the endangered California delta smelt and other declining pelagic fish should more sharply focus on reducing nutrient pollution to the species’ native waters. The research indicates these fish populations would greatly benefit from reductions in the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta from wastewater treatment plants and balancing the ratio of nitrogen and phosphorus contained in the discharged water.

“While a great deal of emphasis has been placed on ensuring there is enough water for delta smelt, we also need to recognize that the water also has to have the right chemical balance,” said Dr. Patricia Glibert of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “The research shows us that reducing the amount of nitrogen from Bay-Delta wastewater treatment plants should aid the recovery of the delta smelt population. The high nutrient loads are affecting the algae at the base of the food web, which in turn, affect the food supply for the fish. This has altered the ecology of the system over many years.”

For her research, Dr. Glibert analyzed 30 years of water chemistry, river flow, plankton, fish population and effluent discharge data to determine possible linkages to the population of the delta smelt and other pelagic fish in the Bay-Delta system. The analysis reveals that declines in delta smelt population most closely coincide with effluent changes from the region’s major wastewater treatment plant.  …

The Bay-Delta is the subject of considerable national public awareness due to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic tension surrounding the plight of the endangered delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) and the court-ordered modifications of water diversion projects to protect the species.”  “New research links decline of endangered California delta smelt to nutrient pollution“

The sector was facing tougher emissions targets but has been given an extra three years’ grace period to 2019 after Britain argued it faced an “energy crunch” …

The decision follows a vote on the industrial emissions directive in the European parliament’s committee on environment, public health and food safety in Brussels. This has to be endorsed by the parliament in July but is unlikely to be rejected.”  “EU drops energy regulations that could have shut Drax“

No kidding. No one on the planet claims it would change the climate in any way our most sophisticated instrumentation could discern. It’s about power.  …

Today we read in E&E Daily, from another co-sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham: “It’s not a global warming bill to me. Because global warming as a reason to pass legislation doesn’t exist anymore. ”

Oddly, both remarkable statements have been ignored by the establishment press, slavish as they are to also seeing this agenda through to the end because, as Sen. Tim Wirth said in 1988 and Barack Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address, even if you don’t buy the excuse, their agenda is still “the right thing to do.”

[T]he issue is not the issue. The global warming then climate change then, uh, it’s jobs, that’s it, jobs, or maybe national security or…I dunno, what appeals to you? … agenda for promoting the energy-scarcity list of mandates, wealth transfers and lifestyle restrictions were just excuses for doing what these people have long insisted they, as your betters, be able to do to you.”  “Global warming:  the issue is not the issue“

But how times have changed! A few days ago the auto industry urged the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to delay raising the allowable ethanol blend in gasoline from the current 10% to 15% – citing tests which indicate that more ethanol will damage many car engines. EPA signaled last year that it would probably bend to pressure from the ethanol industry and permit the higher blend rates.

Ethanol producers like ADM have been campaigning to reinforce the ethanol mandate by forcing oil companies (and the motoring public) to consume more ethanol. This pressure has been intensified by the introduction of a new association (Growth Energy headed by former general Wesley Clark) combined with existing groups like the National Corn Growers Association, Renewable Fuels Association, American Coalition for Ethanol, Governors’ Coalition for Ethanol, the Ethanol Information and Promotion Council, Corn Refiners Association, National Biodiesel Council and many others — the coalition has practically co-opted “public dialogue” on the subject. Growth Energy alone is reportedly spending more than $2.5 million on an ad campaign hyping ethanol.

As the battle royal shapes up, many drivers of older cars sit helpless on the sidelines. Others are teaming with renegade gas station owners who refuse to convert their storage tanks for ethanol. Signs are emerging along the roadside “No Ethanol in Our Gas!” But it is getting late. If the ethanolics win this round, many cars will be damaged and owners “will be walking, eventually” according to one General Motors executive, C. Coleman Jones, who happens to head GM’s biofuel implementation program. For boat enthusiasts, motorcycle riders and other recreational vehicle owners, the higher ethanol blends could prove disastrous.

Chances of mid-level auto executives blocking the ethanol juggernaut are slim. Never mind that the older cars run fine on so-called “old fashioned (non-ethanol) gas” and those cars may well be the only transport option for many workers who are barely holding on. If EPA folds to ethanol demands this time, the sounds of screeching and clunking will be heard around the world.”  “The Threat of E15“

“What does it say when 11 men who perish on an exploding oil platform, or 30 poor souls who die in a 1,000-year Tennessee flood, get less coverage than two oil-soaked birds? It says news is driven from the left.

It is to the credit of the one media outlet that reported the paparazzi-like scrums of reporters trailing rescue workers as they tried to clean off one oil-soaked gannet caught in the oil spill off Louisiana waters after a rig exploded in the Gulf on April 20. Not only did the U.S. and European media obsess breathlessly about the bird, and later about a brown pelican that followed, they seemed to be panting for more.

That’s because birds are convenient tools for driving the radical green agenda to halt all oil drilling. TV media and the national papers pounded the bird story because it served a political purpose.  …

A look at the Los Angeles Times’ oil spill coverage, for one, shows birds featured daily in its blog and paper while the 11 oil platform workers have barely registered. On the blog, the news of the deaths wasn’t acknowledged until May 5, eight days after the workers’ employer identified them in a memorial Web site.”  “Meanwhile, In Nashville“

The New York Times reports on another example: “a dire government report on cancer risks from chemicals and other hazards in the environment,” which is so alarmist that it has even “drawn criticism from the American Cancer Society, which says government experts are overstating their case.”

Here’s the key passage:

The chairman of the president’s panel, Dr. LaSalle D. Leffall Jr. of Howard University, said the panel stood by the report.

“This is an evenhanded approach, and an evenhanded report,” Dr. Leffall said. “We didn’t make statements that should not be made.”

He acknowledged that it was impossible to specify just how many cancers were environmentally caused, because not enough research had been done, but he said he was confident that when the research was done, it would confirm the panel’s assertion that the problem had been grossly underestimated.

He is confident that once the research has been done, it will confirm the conclusions that he has already reached–conclusions, by the way, that would seem to point in the direction of a vast expansion of government power, consistent with the administration’s ideology. Is this what the president meant when he promised to restore science to its proper place?”  “Everything Gives You Cancer?“

“So why is Venus hot?  Because it has an extremely high atmospheric pressure.  The atmospheric pressure on Venus is 92X greater than earth.  Temperatures in Earth’s atmosphere warm over 80C going from 20 kPa (altitude 15km) to 100 kPa (sea level.)  That is why mountains are much colder than the deserts which lie at their base.

The atmospheric pressure on Venus is greater than 9,000 kPa.  At those pressures, we would expect Venus to be very hot. Much, much hotter than Death Valley.

Wikipedia typifies the illogical “runaway greenhouse” argument with this statement.

Without the greenhouse effect caused by the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature at the surface of Venus would be quite similar to that on Earth.

No it wouldn’t. 9000 kPa atmospheric pressure would occur on earth at an altitude many miles below sea level.  No such place exists, but if it did – it would be extremely hot, like Venus. A back of the envelope estimate – temperatures on earth increase by about 80C going from 20 to 100 kPa, so at 9,000 kPa we would expect temperatures to be in the ballpark  of :

20C + ln(9000/(100-20)) *80C = 400C

This is very close to what we see on Venus.  The high temperatures there can be almost completely explained by atmospheric pressure – not composition. If 90% of the CO2 in Venus atmosphere was replaced by Nitrogen, it would change temperatures there by only a few tens of degrees.

How did such bad science become “common knowledge?” The greenhouse effect can not be the cause of the high temperatures on Venus. “Group Think” at it’s worst, and I am embarrassed to admit that I blindly accepted it for decades.

Blame CO2 first – ask questions later.”  “Hyperventilating on Venus“

Global warming scenarios from CO2 increases are envisioned to bring about rainfall enhancement and resulting upper tropospheric water vapor rise. This initial water vapor enhancement has been hypothesized and programmed in climate models to develop yet additional rainfall and water vapor increase. This causes an extra blockage of IR energy to space (a positive feedback warming mechanism). This additional rainfall and IR blockage is modeled to be approximately twice as large as the additional rainfall needed to balance the increased CO2 by itself. The reality of this additional warming and extra IR blockage has been questioned by many of us. This study analyzes a wide variety of infrared (IR) radiation differences which are associated with rainfall differences on different space and time scales. Our goal is to determine the extent to which the positive rainfall feedbacks as are included in the climate model simulations are realistic.  …

This analysis shows they are not realistic.  …

2.  FINDINGS

a)
The albedo increase occurring over the top of strong precipitation and cloudy regions rises at a greater rate than does the rate of decrease of IR within these rainy and cloudy areas. Rainy and cloudy areas are local places of enhanced net radiation to space (Tables 1 and 2 and in idealized form in Figure 3). We have many other areas of rain differences which give similar results. In almost all rain and cloud areas we find that albedo energy flux rises at a greater rate than IR energy flux is reduced.  …

3.  IMPLICATIONS OF THESE OBSERVATIONS

The above measurements are at odds with the Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations of precipitation increase associated with rising CO2 amounts. Models show large tropical upper tropospheric temperature and water vapor increases to be associated with increased rates of precipitation (due to CO2 increases) that are similar to increased rates of precipitation that this study measures. We do not observe such upper tropospheric temperature and moisture increases for rainfall enhancements as do the modelers.  …

The climate modelers have assumed that as CO2 increases it will cause a progressive blockage of IR energy to space and, in addition, a further blockage of IR energy to space will occur from the original increase in upper-level water vapor. Increased IR blockage brings about a gradual increase in global temperature.  …

Our observations do not agree with these GCM scenarios. Our observations indicate that tropical RH [relative humidity] and moisture (q) rather than rising with enhanced precipitation do the opposite and actually go down as precipitation rates increase.  …

We find that there is not a positive water vapor feedback as the modelers have assumed. In fact we see the opposite. As rainfall increases upper-level water vapor contents are weakly reduced.  …

8. CONCLUSION

We find that as rainfall increases that there is not a reduction of global net radiation to space as most of the climate models have assumed. There is a weak enhancement of radiation to space with increased rainfall. We find no positive water vapor feedback.  …

A reduction of upper level RH of about 4 percent to go along with a lowering of the emission level of 7 mb would allow a doubling of CO2 to proceed with no warming (Figure 20). We estimate the extra precipitation from a doubling of CO2 to cause a negative (not positive) temperature feedback of about minus 0.6oC.”  “THE ASSOCIATION OF OUTGOING RADIATION WITH VARIATIONS OF PRECIPITATION – IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL WARMING“  h/t Climate Realists

Revenue for April, the biggest revenue month because it is when most Californians pay their taxes, lagged projections by nearly 30% — roughly $3 billion, according to state officials. The drop was steep enough to erase improvements recorded in each of the four previous months.  …

The April collections came almost entirely from personal income taxes. Most corporate and sales taxes have not yet been reported. If they, too, come in below projections, the state’s budget problem would grow worse.

The decline sets Sacramento back as next month’s deadline for passing a budget approaches. Lawmakers face a deficit of $18.6 billion — about 20% of general fund spending — with no easy options left for addressing it, as they have already cut state services severely and temporarily raised income, sales and vehicle taxes.  …

The Legislature’s top two Democrats, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), spent Monday in Washington, pleading for aid from congressional and Obama administration officials.”  “Plunge in state revenue dashes hopes of an easy budget fix“

Last week, the benchmark price at Australia’s Newcastle port for thermal coal—the type burned in power plants—hit $108 a metric ton, the highest since October 2008, according to globalCOAL, an international trading platform. Australia is one of China’s biggest coal suppliers.  …

China’s coal imports in March jumped 165% from the same month last year.  …

More than 70% of China’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, and the country’s power-generating capacity is expected to expand another 10% this year.  …

[L]ast year … China import[ed] nearly 126 million metric tons [of coal] …  China swallowed more than a fifth of the 600 million tons of total seaborne-coal trade last year …  The trend has continued this year, with coal imports in the first three months of 2010 jumping 226% from a year earlier to 44.4 million tons. That is still a fraction of China’s overall consumption, which amounted to 1.4 billion tons of coal in 2008.  …

Suppliers are scrambling to keep up. Vic Svec, head of investor relations for Peabody Energy, estimated that Asia will add enough power plants in the next three years to burn the equivalent of a billion more tons of coal annually, with most of that new demand from China.”  “China ignites global coal market“

[T]he Deepwater Horizon blowout is not unprecedented, nor is it yet among the worst oil accidents in history. And its ultimate impact will depend on a long list of interlinked variables, including the weather, ocean currents, the properties of the oil involved and the success or failure of the frantic efforts to stanch the flow and remediate its effects.  …

The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher could be stopped.

And it will have to get much worse before it approaches the impact of the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989, which contaminated 1,300 miles of largely untouched shoreline and killed tens of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals along with 250 eagles and 22 killer whales.  …

Engineers said the type of oil pouring out is lighter than the heavy crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez, evaporates more quickly and is easier to burn. It also appears to respond to the use of dispersants, which break up globs of oil and help them sink.  …

The winds are dying down and the seas are calming, allowing for renewed skimming operations and possible new controlled burns of oil on the surface. BP technicians are trying to inject dispersants deep below the surface, which could reduce the impact on aquatic life. Winds and currents could move the globs of emulsified oil away from coastal shellfish breeding grounds.  …

Thousands of gallons of oil flow into the gulf from natural undersea well seeps every day, engineers say …

After the Ixtoc spill 31 years ago, the second-largest oil release in history, the gulf rebounded. Within three years, there was little visible trace of the spill off the Mexican coast …”  “Gulf oil spill is bad, but how bad?“