Friday, May 28, 2010

Someone call DCF!

Ok, this is one of the saddest and most fraked up things I’ve ever read:

Taking a deep drag on his cigarette while resting on the steering wheel of his truck, he looks like a parody of a middle-aged lorry driver.

Always having a break: Ardi, who is rarely seen without a cigarette, insists on the same brand, costing £78 a dayBut the image covers up a much more disturbing truth: At just the tender age of two, Ardi Rizal's health has been so ruined by his 40-a-day habit that he now struggles to move by himself.

The four-stone Indonesia toddler is certainly far too unfit to run around with other children - and his condition is  set to rapidly deteriorate.

But, despite local officials' offer to buy the Rizal family a new car if the boy quits, his parents feel unable to stop him because he throws massive tantrums if they don't indulge him

His mother, Diana, 26, wept: 'He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.'

Ardi will smoke only one brand and his habit costs his parents £3.78 a day in Musi Banyuasin, in Indonesia's South Sumatra province.

But in spite of this, his fishmonger father Mohammed, 30, said: 'He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem.'

Ardi's youth is the extreme of a disturbing trend. Data from the Central Statistics Agency showed 25 per cent of Indonesian children aged three to 15 have tried cigarettes, with 3.2 per cent of those active smokers.

The percentage of five to nine year olds lighting up increased from 0.4 per cent in 2001 to 2.8 per cent in 2004, the agency reported.

Child advocates are speaking out about the health damage to children from second-hand smoke, and the growing pressure on them to smoke in a country where one-third of the population uses tobacco and single cigarettes can be bought for a few cents.

However, imposing a non-smoking message will be difficult in Indonesia, the world's third-largest tobacco consumer.

Health Minister Endang Sedyaningsih conceded turning young people off smoking will be difficult in a country where it is perceived as positive because cigarette companies sponsor everything from scholarships to sporting events.

Absolutely pathetic.

“'He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem.”  That father should be shot.

Wiped out

Looks like we caused another species to be lost forever:
Grebe from Madagascar extinct after introduction of carnivorous fishThe Alaotra grebe, also called the rusty grebe, had been highly vulnerable as it was found only in Lake Alaotra, eastern Madagascar, according to the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the Red List of endangered species.
The grebe was wiped out by habitat destruction, by the introduction of a carnivorous fish called the snakehead murrel and by nylon gill-nets which accidentally caught and drowned many birds.
"No hope now remains for this species. It is another example of how human actions can have unforeseen consequences," said Leon Bennun, director of science at BirdLife International.
The IUCN sounded the alarm for wetland birds, imperilled by the draining of marshlands and by alien species that are introduced for food.
"Invasive alien species have caused extinctions around the globe and remain one of the major threats to birds and other biodiversity," Mr Bennun said.
So sad.

Fun signs

My mother-in-law sent me these.  Some are hysterical:

Sign over a Gynecologist's Office:

"Dr. Jones, at your cervix."

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In a Podiatrist's office:

"Time wounds all heels."

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On a Septic Tank Truck:

Yesterday's Meals on Wheels

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At a Proctologist's door:

"To expedite your visit, please back in. "

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On a Plumber's truck:

"We repair what your husband fixed."

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On another Plumber's truck:

"Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber."

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On a Church's Bill board:

"7 days without God makes one weak."

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At a Tire Shop in Milwaukee :

"Invite us to your next blowout."

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At a Towing company:

"We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows.."

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On an Electrician's truck:

"Let us remove your shorts."

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In a Nonsmoking Area:

"If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."

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On a Maternity Room door:

"Push. Push. Push."

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At an Optometrist's Office:

"If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."

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On a Taxidermist's window:

"We really know our stuff."

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On a Fence:

"Salesmen welcome! Dog food is expensive!"

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At a Car Dealership:

"The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment."

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Outside a Muffler Shop:

"No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.."

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In a Veterinarian's waiting room:

"Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!"

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At the Electric Company

"We would be delighted if you send in your payment.

However, if you don't, you will be."

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In a Restaurant window:

"Don't stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up."

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In the front yard of a Funeral Home:

"Drive carefully. We'll wait."

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At a Propane Filling Station:

"Thank heaven for little grills."

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And don't forget the sign at a

CHICAGO RADIATOR SHOP:

"Best place in town to take a leak."

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Sign on the back of another Septic Tank Truck:

"Caution - This Truck is full of Political Promises"

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Facebook’s trickiness

A wonderful cartoon by Patrick Corrigan that exemplifies the perils of over-sharing on social networking sites:

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Weatherman

I’d sure watch the weather forecast more often if it were delivered like this:

A world without fish?

That’s what we’ll be living in in a few decades unless we change our ways now:
The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.
"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.
A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones -- ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.
Collapse of fish stocks is not only an environmental matter.
One billion people, mostly from poorer countries, rely on fish as their main animal protein source, according to the UN.
According to the UN, 30 percent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10 percent of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.
The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish -- with little attempt to allow the fish populations to recover.
Fishing fleet capacity is "50 to 60 percent" higher than it should be, Sukhdev said.
Lifeless oceans are a very real possibility.  After all, fish eat fish.  Once a species is wiped out, whatever ate it will starve if it can’t find an alternative food source.  And on and on.
Why are we not able to live in equilibrium with our world?

Destroying nature will cost us dearly

A new study points out how much the loss of nature and biodiversity is going to cost humankind when we’ll have to find ways to do what nature now does for us for free:

The Earth's ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies, a major UN report has warned.

The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) says that some ecosystems may soon reach "tipping points" where they rapidly become less useful to humanity.

Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.

"We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in history - extinction rates may be up to 1,000 times higher than the historical background rate."

The global abundance of vertebrates - the group that includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish - fell by about one-third between 1970 and 2006, the UN says.

While progress is being made in some regions, the global failure means an ever-growing number of species are on the Red List of Threatened Species.

"Twenty-one percent of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds (and)... 27% of reef-building corals assessed... are threatened with extinction," said Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains the Red List.

The relationship between nature loss and economic harm is much more than just figurative, the UN believes.

An ongoing project known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us.

These services include purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism.

The rationale is that when such services disappear or are degraded, they have to be replaced out of society's coffers.

TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.

"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world.

"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."

The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed "over the edge" into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.

For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.

Will we listen?  Will our politicians make the hard choices?

Our tainted foods

We’re told time and again to eat vegetables and fruit in order to be healthy, but with all the pesticides used in agriculture nowadays we’re eating a lot of stuff that’s not good for us at all:

Of the 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides used annually in the US, less than .01% actually reach their intended targets--the bugs! Obviously they are completely contaminating our food, and the consequences are disastrous, with numerous national and international government agencies acknowledging the connection to various health problems--nervous system toxicity, cancer, hormone system effects, and irritation of skin, eyes, and lungs among them.

Unfortunately, due to cost and availability, organic food which is grown without any pesticides, is not a plausible option for every family. Thankfully, the Environmental Working Group has put together a ranked list of the 49 most purchased produce items, based on laboratory tests conducted by the US Department Of Agriculture Pesticide Testing Program. So if you can't get organic, at least you know which foods are the safest, and which should be avoided.

View the EWG's full list of 49 produce items here and a handy pocket shopping guide with the "Dirty Dozen" worst and "Clean 15" best of the list here.

Curious about what’s the worst vegetable you could possibly eat?

Celery.

Thankfully, I don’t like celery, but it’s followed by peaches and strawberries, two of my favorite fruits.  Onions top the ‘best’ list, and I love onions, but how am I supposed to replace a nice serving of strawberries with an onion?

Will Kemp’s ridleys go extinct?

Kemp’s ridley is the smallest species of sea turtle and has been around for millions of years.  It was around at the time of the dinosaurs!!
Unfortunately, since it exists only in the Gulf of Mexico, it might vanish forever thanks to BP’s carelessness and humankind’s greed in general.
From NYTimes.com:
Federal officials said Tuesday that since April 30, 10 days after the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, they have recorded 156 sea turtle deaths; most of the turtles were Kemp’s ridleys. And though they cannot say for sure that the oil was responsible, the number is far higher than usual for this time of year, the officials said.
The Deepwater Horizon spill menaces a wide variety of marine life, from dolphins to blue crabs. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expanded a fishing ban in the gulf because of the spreading oil. But of the endangered marine species that frequent gulf waters, only the Kemp’s ridley relies on the region as its sole breeding ground.
Since the Ixtoc 1 spill, the turtles, whose numbers fell to several hundred in the 1980s, have made a fragile comeback, and there are now at least 8,000 adults, scientists say. But the oil gushing from the well could change that.
The turtles may be more vulnerable than any other large marine animals to the oil spreading through the gulf. An ancient creature driven by instinct, it forages for food along the coast from Louisiana to Florida, in the path of the slick.
It lives its entire life cycle in the gulf, which is why we are so critically concerned,” said Dr. Pat Burchfield, a scientist at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Tex., who has studied the turtle for 38 years.
The Kemp’s ridley is millions of years old; its ancestors once swam with dinosaurs. Sandy olive in color, Kemp’s ridleys are the smallest of the sea turtles, only about two feet across. Although the turtles have been spotted along the Atlantic Seaboard, they return to the warm waters of the gulf to breed.
As recently as the 1940s, they were abundant in the Mexican gulf waters. Tens of thousands at a time would come ashore on the same day at Rancho Nuevo, a remote Mexican beach in Tamaulipas State, to lay their eggs in the synchronized pattern unique to their breed. But pollution, the collection of eggs for food and aphrodisiacs and the nets of shrimp trawlers depleted their numbers.
Then came the blowout on the Ixtoc 1. The deepwater well dumped three million barrels of crude into the gulf, covering the beach at Rancho Nuevo. Nine thousand hatchlings had to be airlifted to nearby beaches. Although the role of the oil in killing the turtles was never confirmed, by 1985, there were fewer than 1,000 Kemp’s ridleys left.
I just happen to love turtles, of any kind, so the possibility of losing a whole species breaks my heart.

Missing Lost

A nice ode to the great TV show that just ended:

The Gulf Coast region might never be the same again.

With the amount of oil leaking every minute in the Gulf waters and the oil finally reaching the marshes and beaches of Louisiana, one can only despair in the realization that there’s nothing we can really do to fix this disaster anytime soon.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words:
 
More frightening and sobering images here.
Countless animals are dying and will die, and future generations will be affected by dramatic drops in numbers as breeding grounds are lost for decades.  Some perhaps forever.
Some species might never recover from this catastrophe, or they might abandon the Gulf region altogether, if they can find another area where they can live.

Present day Gulf of Mexico

This is what the once clean, healthy, and rich of life waters of the Gulf of Mexico look like after BP’s oil disaster:

It looks like my in-laws’ pool when they open it at the end of the winter and the water has been sitting there for months.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Lost

lost After six years, another great show has come to an end.

Lost began with a splash (its pilot was – is? – the most expensive ever produced) but its success wasn’t guaranteed: a bunch of survivors of a plane crash find themselves marooned on a tropical island in the Pacific with little hope of being rescued (the plane was way off course when it crashed and no one would know where to look for them).

On top of that, the island seems full of weird stuff: polar bears; a smoke monster; very secretive (and heavily armed) indigenous inhabitants; a French woman who doesn’t trust anyone; a centuries old boat in the middle of the island; the four-toed foot of what had to be a massive statue; high tech stations from the Dharma Initiative (that no one ever heard of); strong electromagnetic forces; miraculous healing properties; and a button that needs to be pushed every 108 minutes or else.

The show offered adventure, action, drama, mystery and great characters whose actions would intertwine with often unexpected results.  For me, it was the perfect combination and made for a great ride.

It all ended this past Sunday with the long awaited series finale that answered many – but not all – questions.  I liked the episode.  It had the right mix of action and personal resolutions that were the staple of the show and were required to give closure to the faithful audience.

Given its peculiarity, Lost wasn’t a show that everyone could appreciate, but Ray and I loved it and were both very touched by how it all ended.

To a great six year ride.  Thanks, Lost.

Gulf spill update

BP is soon going to try to stop the unrestrained flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico by using a so called “top kill” method:
Oil company BP is expected to discuss Tuesday its next attempt to contain the gushing oil in the Gulf of Mexico -- a maneuver called a "top kill" that it plans to implement the following day.
All previous attempts by the company to cap the spill have failed, and BP CEO Tony Hayward said the top kill maneuver will have a 60 to 70 percent chance of success when it is put in place as early as Wednesday morning.
Dispersed oil caught in the Gulf of Mexico 18 May
BP on Wednesday plans to pump thick, viscous fluid twice the density of water into the site of the leak to stop the flow so the well can then be sealed with cement. The top kill procedure has worked on above-ground oil wells in the Middle East, but has never been tested 5,000 feet underwater.
Unfortunately, the oil has finally made it to shore, and it’s not pretty:
The memorial comes as oil sloshes ashore on Louisiana's barrier islands and seeps into marshes around the mouth of the Mississippi River. And public patience is wearing thin in Gulf states, where fishing is a $2.4 billion industry.
A ship makes its way through surface oil in the Gulf of MexicoState and parish leaders in Louisiana have demanded the federal government approve their plan to dredge up walls of sand to close channels between the Gulf and coastal estuaries. Those plans have been held up by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard and BP.
"It's easier to clean oil on sandy beaches than it is to clean up an estuary. There's no way to clean up the estuary, which is the breeding ground which allows for our fisheries to be in abundance," said Steve Theriot, Jefferson Parish president.
Worse yet, it’s been reported that it has reached a current that might bring it to Florida’s and Cuba’s shores and up the East Coast:
ChartThe first oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has entered an ocean current that could take it to Florida and up the east coast of the US, scientists say.
Satellite images released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depict a streak of oil stretching south from the main slick into the Loop Current - a body of fast-flowing water coming from the Caribbean which the agency says is likely to propel oil towards Florida within six days.
The oil would be "highly weathered" if it reached Florida, or could evaporate en route, it said.
The scientists warned that the turbulent Loop Current could mix the oil and water, making it difficult to track the oil's progress in the coming days.
Also on Wednesday, the US said it was having talks with Cuba over the spill.
Observers say the rare talks demonstrate a concern that the oil may be carried by currents far from the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Can this get any worse?

Monday, May 24, 2010

A Quote By

Lady Gaga, the IT singer/performance artist of the moment:
"I love the rumor that I have a penis. I'm fascinated by it. In fact, it makes me love my fans even more that this rumor is in the world because 17,000 of them come to an arena every night and they don't care if I'm a man, a woman, a hermaphrodite, gay, straight, transgendered, or transsexual. They don't care! They are there for the music and the freedom. This has been the greatest accomplishment of my life- to get young people to throw away what society has taught them is wrong. Gay culture is at the very essence of who I am and I will fight for women and for the gay community until I die."

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The 2010 spill - update

BP, the owner of the oil deposit, doesn’t want us to know how much oil is being spilled into the water because they know it’s much more than the estimated 5,000 gallons.
A lot more:
Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.
 But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.
imageThe criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.
The figure of 5,000 barrels a day was hastily produced by government scientists in Seattle. It appears to have been calculated using a method that is specifically not recommended for major oil spills.
Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University who is an expert in the analysis of oil slicks, said he had made his own rough calculations using satellite imagery. They suggested that the leak could “easily be four or five times” the government estimate, he said.
Scientists said that the size of the spill was directly related to the amount of damage it would do in the ocean and onshore, and that calculating it accurately was important for that reason.
BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing.
Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.
BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil.
Environmental groups contend, however, that the flow rate is a vital question. Since this accident has shattered the illusion that deep-sea oil drilling is immune to spills, they said, this one is likely to become the touchstone in planning a future response.
“If we are systematically underestimating the rate that’s being spilled, and we design a response capability based on that underestimate, then the next time we have an event of this magnitude, we are doomed to fail again,” said John Amos, the president of SkyTruth. “So it’s really important to get this number right.”
I can’t say I don’t agree with the last statement.  We need to know how much oil is coming out to make sure we account for a full clean up and we make sure it doesn’t happen again.
And evidence of a larger than reported spill is mounting:
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.
BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
The undersea plumes may go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy between the flow estimates, suggesting that much of the oil emerging from the well could be lingering far below the sea surface.
Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes.
While the oxygen depletion so far is not enough to kill off sea life, the possibility looms that oxygen levels could fall so low as to create large dead zones, especially at the seafloor. “That’s the big worry,” said Ray Highsmith, head of the Mississippi center that sponsored the mission, known as the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology.
“This is a new type of event, and it’s critically important that we really understand it, because of the incredible number of oil platforms not only in the Gulf of Mexico but all over the world now,” Dr. Highsmith said. “We need to know what these events are like, and what their outcomes can be, and what can be done to deal with the next one.”
I wonder what kind of pressure will be necessary to force BP to let the actual flow be measured.  We’ll probably never know for sure.

Portugal steps into the 21st century

Portugal’s President ratified that country’s gay marriage law even though he didn’t support it in order to avoid it going back to Parliament for a veto override that would have distracted the legislature from working on more pressing matters, like the economy.
Whatever his reasons, I’ll gladly accept them:
http://ec.europa.eu/echo/civil_protection/civil/images/portugal.gifPortugal's conservative president announced Monday he is ratifying a law allowing gay marriage in the predominantly Catholic country.
The head of state's decision to permit the enactment of a bill passed by Parliament in January makes Portugal the sixth European country allowing same-sex couples to wed.
Vetoing the bill would only send it back to Parliament where lawmakers would overturn his decision, he said, adding that the country needed to focus on overcoming an economic crisis that has increased unemployment and deepened poverty.
Elsewhere in Europe, gay marriage is permitted in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway.
Five U.S. states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage, as have Canada and South Africa.
Who will be next?

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Too hot to handle

I have a question for all the global warming deniers: Where are the billions of humans that populate the planet going to live when vast areas become uninhabitable?
Climate change could make much of the world too hot for human habitation within just three centuries, research released Tuesday showed.
Scientists from Australia's University of New South Wales and Purdue University in the United States found that rising temperatures in some places could mean humans would be unable to adapt or survive.
"It would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about seven degrees Celsius (13 Fahrenheit), calling the habitability of some regions into question," the researchers said in a paper.
"With 11-12 degrees Celsius warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed."
Researcher Professor Steven Sherwood said there was no chance of the earth heating up to seven degrees this century, but there was a serious risk that the continued burning of fossil fuels could create the problem by 2300.
"And under realistic scenarios out to 2300, we may be faced with temperature increases of 12 degrees (Celsius) or even more," Professor Tony McMichael said.
"If this happens, our current worries about sea level rise, occasional heatwaves and bushfires, biodiversity loss and agricultural difficulties will pale into insignificance beside a major threat -- as much as half the currently inhabited globe may simply become too hot for people to live there."
And since there is simply no way that we are going to stop burning fossil fuels for at least several decades, if not a few centuries, this study clearly becomes very important and troublesome.
So, deniers out there, I’m listening.

Make sure you sleep enough!

Looks like evidence has been found that too little sleep can shorten one’s life span, as well as too much sleep, although for very different reasons:

Sleeping consistently for less than six hours a night may cause an early death, but too much sleep could also mean problems, according to a study that claims to have found unequivocal evidence of the potential harm from abnormal sleep patterns.

It found that those who generally slept for less than six hours a night were 12% more likely to experience a premature death over a period of 25 years than those who consistently got six to eight hours' sleep. Evidence for the link was unequivocal, the researchers concluded.

It also concluded that those who consistently sleep more than nine hours a night can be more likely to die early. Oversleeping itself is not seen as a risk but as a potential indicator of underlying ailments.

"Whilst short sleep may represent a cause of ill health, long sleep is believed to represent more an indicator of ill health," said Professor Francesco Cappuccio, who led the study and is head of the Sleep, Health and Society programme at the University of Warwick.

The study noted that previous research into lack of sleep had shown it was associated with ailments including heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes.

I wish I could take a nap right about now…

Why shouldn’t I call you a bigot?

I love this article because it invalidates gay haters’ and homophobes’ argument that gays are mean spirited for calling them bigots, when in reality, according to the word’s definition, that’s exactly what they are:

On Saturday Weigel caused a stir when he tweeted "I can empathize with everyone I cover except for the anti-gay marriage bigots. In 20 years, no one will admit they were a part of that."

Absolutely! Opposing gay marriage is the moral equivalent of supporting anti-miscegenation laws.

By definition, bigots are people with unshakable baseless prejudices. There is absolutely no reason, besides blind prejudice, to deny same sex couples the right to civil marriage.

You can use religious language to express your belief that gays and lesbians are disgusting second class citizens unworthy of rights that heterosexuals take for granted, but it doesn't make your position any less bigoted. Logically, there is no reason to put same-sex relationships on a lesser legal footing than opposite sex unions, unless you think there's something wrong with them.

You can insist you don't wish gay people any harm. Perhaps not. But there were lots of pro-segregationists who didn't wish ill upon black people, but still didn't want to drink out of the same fountains. They too were bigots.

You can point out that discrimination against gays and lesbians is a longstanding tradition, but that doesn't excuse your bigotry. If anything, it makes it worse. It was one thing to fear what the expansion of gay rights might do when gays and lesbians had no rights. Today we're decades into gay liberation and none of the dire predictions have come true. For example, children raised by same-sex parents are at least as healthy and well-adjusted as those raised by opposite sex parents—and no more likely to self-identify as gay.

So, if you're still clinging to those irrational fears in the face of evidence, guess what? That's bigoted. If, like the voters of California, you voted to break up families in the name of preserving family values, that makes you a hypocrite and a bigot.

There’s more in the full post.

A Quote By

New Zealand speed skater Blake Skjellerup who recently came out of the closet:

“Gays are too often given a stereotype. Back when I was 18, and becoming serious about my sport and my Olympic goals, if I could have seen an athlete like myself out there – with whom I could relate to – my journey would have been a lot easier.  [American figure skater] Johnny Weir meets a specific stereotype, I meet a specific stereotype and [Welsh rugby player] Gareth Thomas meets another. Being gay is just like any other personality trait: it’s multifaceted. I can’t personally relate to Weir or Thomas, and nor will many other young gay athletes out there. But maybe some of them will see something in me to relate to. The more types we provide, the more we’ll appeal to people [who are struggling with their sexuality.]”

Donate your organs

I believe that organ donation upon one’s death is the best last decision one can make.  Why should you hold on to a bunch of organs that will slowly die, decay, and turn into dust when someone else might benefit from them instead?

If you can save someone else’s life after you are dead, why not do it?

A lawmaker is trying to make it easier to harvest organs, and I fully agree with his efforts:

A New York assemblyman whose daughter is alive because of two kidney transplants wants his state to become the first in the nation to pass laws that would presume people want to donate their organs unless they specifically say otherwise.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky believes the "presumed consent" measures would help combat a rising demand for healthy organs by patients forced to wait a year or more for transplants. Twenty-four European countries already have such laws in place, he said.

If he succeeds, distraught families would no longer be able to override their loved ones' decisions to donate upon their death. And eventually, hospitals would be able to assume the deceased consented to have his or her organs harvested, unless the person refused in writing.

Advocates say the availability of healthy donor organs is low just about everywhere nationwide, where 106,000 people are on a waiting list that averages three to four years for each type of organ.

But serious emotional, medical and ethical concerns worry families, who currently can stop organ harvests even if their loved ones agree to donate.

Presumed consent, opponents say, could force someone to become a donor against their will. It also might lead patients viewed as prospective donors to worry about how hard a medical team will work to save them if there is a greater benefit to harvesting the organs.

As I said, this makes sense to me and I hope they switch the consent to presumed, especially when it’s so easy for family members to override one’s wishes to donate his or her organs.

I can see how someone might feel like doctors won’t do all they can to save them if they know they can take the patient’s organs instead, but I doubt that that would really occur, since doctors swear an oath to do all they can to save a patient’s life unless it goes against that person’s wishes.

Friday, May 14, 2010

The 2010 spill - Update

The lowering of the big containment dome, alas, was not successful.  Some crystals formed inside it making it unusable.  A second, smaller device seems to have been successfully put in place on one of the smaller leaks:
Efforts to staunch the gusher continued Wednesday. The "top-hat" oil containment device has reached the sea floor and should be in position over the wellhead and operational by the end of the week, BP said.
A larger containment vessel was unsuccessful in stopping the flow of oil from the gusher about 5,000 feet underwater.
BP built the smaller dome after a much larger, four-story containment vessel, designed to cap the larger of two leaks in the well, developed glitches Saturday. Ice-like hydrate crystals formed when gas combined with water and blocked the top of the dome, making it buoyant.
If attempts to cap the well fail, BP may try to plug the leak by shooting debris -- shredded tires, golf balls and similar objects -- under extremely high pressure into the well's blowout preventer in an attempt to clog it and stop the leak. The blowout preventer has been partially successful in sealing the well, but did not fully close when the rig exploded and sank.
Suttles said BP also is drilling a relief well to try to divert the flow to another pipe.
"That started about a week ago," Suttles said. "That work continues. The well is at about 9,000 feet."
It may take up to three months to reach the target area, and progress will slow the deeper the drill bit goes, said David Nagel, executive vice president of BP America.
So now the big dome structure has joined the sunken rig at the bottom of the ocean, which is slowly turning into a dead pool/trash dump:
We might be powerless.
The oil flowing out from the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico may be under such great pressure that we do not possess technology to stop the tragedy. Chances are quite good we have no true sense of the dire nature of the situation. The facts that have been ascertained, however, lead to a dark scenario.
Although BP and Washington are trying very hard to convince the public that everything possible is being done to stem the flow of crude, there is seemingly little that might be accomplished. 5000 feet below the surface of the water with oil blasting out at tens of thousands of PSI, and wreckage from the giant rig scattered about, fixes are not easy to find. The latest plan is for a special funnel to be placed over the spout, which will then force the flow into a pumping channel. But how does a funnel get placed over the top of anything pushing at that kind of pressure? Consider that story to be an unrealistic solution.
A well blowout in 1979 offers a bit of context; except the Deepwater Horizon horror show is already about to transcend what happened in the Bay of Campeche off the coast of Mexico. The Ixtoc 1 rig blew and began to spew crude that flowed uninterrupted for nine months.
The Ixtoc disaster, however, is spit in the ocean compared to the British Petroleum apocalypse. Estimates are the current blowout is putting 200,000 gallons or 5000 barrels of crude per day into the waters of the Gulf. Ixtoc's blowout was not capped until two relief wells were drilled and completed at the end of those nine months, and regardless of optimistic scenarios from the federal government or BP, relieving the pressure on the current flow is probably the only way to stop the polluting release of oil. The only way to relieve that pressure is with additional wells. No one is going to honestly say how much time is needed to drill such wells but consider the scope of environmental damage we are confronting if it requires at least as long as Ixtoc. Nine months of 5000 barrels of crude per day ought to turn the Gulf of Mexico into a lifeless spill pond and set toxins on currents that will carry them to deadly business around the globe.
NOAA apparently believes the situation is on the verge of getting worse. A leaked memo suggests that the tangle of pipes on the ocean floor are covering and constraining two other release points. Pressure is likely to blow those loose and, according to NOAA, the gusher will increase by "orders of magnitude." In most interpretations, that phrase means a ten-fold rise in the flow, which will replicate the Ixtoc disaster in three days.
And there are no guarantees relief wells are the fix. That is a complicated project. They are drilled to intersect the main well and then concrete is forced down the holes to seal the leaking well. What do we do, if that doesn't work? Humans cannot function at 5000 feet of ocean depth and the mitigation efforts currently are being handled by robotic remotes. What is left to us as a solution other than an explosive device, which is often what is deployed during above ground blowouts? Given the pressures reported and the amount of flow, we may need a bunker-buster nuke to be placed over the wellhead. We can then begin to talk about the water pressures caused by burst at detonation and residual radiation. Is that a better or worse situation? Certainly, aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico is doomed unless there is a reclusive genius to step forward and save us from our great failure.
Anyone who thinks this tragedy is not going to result in massive kills of marine life is either blind, ignorant, or in denial. The one scenario that we all refuse to confront is the possibility that it is beyond our capabilities to stop this undersea blast of oil. If that is the case, the flow continues until the pressure eases, which might be years. How much ecological injury will that cause our planet?
Nobody knows.
Meanwhile, the investigation into this colossal failure is starting to bring to light the ugly truth that a series of equipment failures, lack of oversight and regulation, and bad decisions all combined to cause this catastrophe:
Details of a likely blowout scenario emerged this week for the first time from congressional and administrative hearings. They suggest there were both crew mistakes and equipment breakdowns at key points the day of the explosion.
In the hours leading up to the explosion, workers finished pumping cement into the exploratory well to bolster and seal it against leaks until a later production phase. After the tests that indicated leakage, workers debated the next step and eventually decided to resume work, for reasons that remain unclear.
At the same time, heavy drilling fluid — or mud — was being pumped out of a pipe rising to the surface from the wellhead, further whittling the well's defenses. It was replaced with lighter seawater in preparation for dropping a final blob of cement into the well as a temporary plug for the pipe.
When underground gas surged up uncontrollably through the well, desperate rig workers tried to cap it with a set of supersized emergency cutoff valves known as a blowout preventer. However, the device was leaking hydraulic fluid and missing at least one battery, and one of its valves had been swapped with a useless testing part.
Who in his right mind would think that swapping a security device’s part for a useless piece of junk would be a smart idea?
One of the morons who helped cause this disaster apparently.  It’s on your conscience now.
I hope they make them pay through their teeth for all the damage they are and will be causing and punitive damages on top of that.

Friday, May 07, 2010

The 2010 spill – update

Oil has been confirmed to have made land impact on Louisiana’s easternmost border.
From Raw Story:
Oil sheen from a massive crude spill in the Gulf of Mexico has started washing ashore on an island off Louisiana, officials said Thursday, confirming a land impact for the first time.
mississippi oil spill Sheen of oil confirmed ashore on Louisiana islandBP spokesman John Curry said three emergency response teams had been sent to the island, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) offshore, and were deploying inflatable booms to try to protect the prime marsh and wildlife area.
The Chandeleur Islands form the easternmost point of Louisiana and are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge -- the second oldest refuge in the United States and home to countless endangered shorebirds.
The NYTimes.com reports on the dangers to the entire food chain from both the oil spill and the incredible amount of chemicals being used to limit its impact on the environment:
But biologists are increasingly alarmed for wildlife offshore, where the damage from a spill can be invisible but still deadly. And they caution that because of the fluidity between onshore and offshore marine communities, the harm taking place deep at sea will come back to haunt the shallows, whether or not they are directly hit by the slick.
The gulf’s deeper water harbors 10 species of threatened sharks, 6 species of endangered turtles, manatees, whales and innumerable fish.
It is also a temporary home for the eggs of dozens of species of fish and shellfish, whose offspring spend their earliest days floating along currents at the surface of the water — the very layer where most of the oil settles.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of experience in how oil affects marine life, ecosystems, coastal communities, and fisheries,” said Christopher Mann, with the marine program of the nonprofit Pew Environment Group. “The iconic images of oiled seabirds are just the tip of the iceberg, because oil spills affect life up and down the food chain.”
Spring is mating and spawning season for almost everything in the gulf: Fill a jar with plankton from the local waters in the spring and it will typically contain the larvae of 80 species. All the eggs and hatchlings are surface dwellers, with almost no ability to swim away from the slick.
The fumes are particularly dangerous when the crude is fresh, because some strong toxins evaporate early. With a onetime spill, the slick gets less dangerous over time, but in the gulf, where the well has not been capped, there is a constant supply of new vapors.
Dr. Solangi said he was worried for dolphins. “They have to be awake to breathe,” he said. “If they become anesthetized, they will die. If they become intoxicated by fumes, they won’t survive.”
Even normal feeding might expose sea creatures to harm from the spill: sea grass and other vegetation covered in oil are ingested by fish that are then eaten by bigger fish and finally by manatees or other marine species. It is this food-chain effect that worries Larry Schweiger of the National Wildlife Federation.
“It is not a question of whether all these species will be affected now. It is when,” he said.
Finally, CNN.com reports that the first containment dome is ready and BP has already started work on lowering it in position over the largest leak:
A massive dome began its descent into the Gulf of Mexico to cap a gushing oil leak about 5,000 feet below the surface, a BP official said Friday.
The four-story oil containment dome made its way beneath the Gulf of Mexico early Friday to capture leaking oil.
The arduous process of lowering the four-story containment dome and getting it in place is expected to continue into the weekend. The technique has never been attempted at the depth of the leak spewing from the sunken oil rig, officials said.
Oil washed ashore on Louisiana's barrier islands and drifted west past the mouth of the Mississippi River on Thursday. An ominous pinkish-orange foam mixture of seawater and crude oil streaked across large stretches of water in the northern Gulf and turned up on the shores of the Chandeleur Islands, off southeastern Louisiana.
The hope is that the container will collect the leaking oil, which would be sucked up to a drill ship on the surface. If the operation is successful, BP plans to deploy a second, smaller dome to deal with a second leak in the ruptured pipe.
Let’s hope this “band-aid” works and the biggest leak is patched.  That would potentially decrease the amount of oil being dumped daily into the ocean.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill

More bad news.  Actually, news so bad the term catastrophic doesn’t begin to describe it:
In a closed-door briefing for members of Congress, a senior BP executive conceded Tuesday that the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could conceivably spill as much as 60,000 barrels a day of oil, more than 10 times the estimate of the current flow.
Federal officials have raised the possibility of a leak of more than 100,000 barrels a day if the well were to flow unchecked, but the chances of that situation occurring were unclear.
Also on Tuesday, the company’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, told Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, that the spill would clearly cause more than $75 million in economic damage, the current cap on liability for drilling accidents.
Mr. Nelson and the two Democratic senators from New Jersey, Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, have introduced legislation to raise that cap to $10 billion, and to make sure that the new limit applies to this spill.
While BP continues to acknowledge its responsibility to shut off and clean up the oil, it is being barraged by government officials and civil lawyers who are redoubling efforts to ensure that the company’s legal obligations are clearly defined and strictly enforced.
Attorneys general from the five Gulf Coast states have been drafting a letter to BP that will lay out demands. In the letter, they are expected to urge BP specifically to define what is meant by its repeated statement that it intends to pay “legitimate” claims, a term Attorney General Troy King of Alabama said was unacceptably nebulous.
For now, weather patterns seem to be holding the giant oil slick offshore, and are expected to do so for several more days, temporarily sparing the coast — and sparing BP the renewed criticism that would surely come with oil landfall. A containment dome is being readied to drop over the worst of the leaks.
So we could be looking at a disaster that is 10 times bigger than the worst estimates we’ve been given so far.  This could mean that the entire northern part of the Gulf of Mexico could be turned into a dead zone for decades to come, with countless animals dying and no businesses related to fishing or tourism being able to thrive.
And let’s not forget that there are many other drilling platforms out there that could have an accident like this at any point, compounding the catastrophe.
Link.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Another man-made disaster

When I first heard that an oil drilling platform, the Deepwater Horizon, had caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico, I figured it would only be a problem for the oil company that owned it, and given their enormous profits, I wasn’t feeling too bad for them.
Unfortunately, that’s changed now.  After the rig’s explosion and subsequent sinking, the connection between it and the oil reserve below sea level ruptured in multiple points and BP, the oil company that owns the oil field, hasn’t been able to stop the flow of oil into the water.
As a consequence, an environmental disaster far worse than the one caused by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989 is inevitable, especially because of the fragility of the wetlands and the richness of wildlife in the area.
Excerpts from various sources.  BBC News:
Rear Admiral Mary Landry said 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day were now thought to be gushing into the sea 50 miles (80km) off Louisiana's coast.
oilOne fire-fighting expert told the BBC the disaster might become the "biggest oil spill in the world".
"Probably the only thing comparable to this is the Kuwait fires [following the Gulf War in 1991]," Mike Miller, head of Canadian oil well fire-fighting company Safety Boss, told BBC World Service.
"The Exxon Valdez [tanker disaster off Alaska in 1989] is going to pale [into insignificance] in comparison to this as it goes on."
If US Coast Guard estimates are correct, the slick could match the 11m gallons spilt from the Exxon Valdez within less than two months.
On Tuesday Adm Landry, who is in charge of the clean-up effort, warned that work on sealing the leaking well using robotic submersibles might take months, and that the coast guard would attempt to set light to much of the oil.
With the spill moving towards Louisiana's coast, which contains some 40% of the nation's wetlands and spawning grounds for countless fish and birds, she said a "controlled burn" of oil contained by special booms could limit the impact.
Environmental experts say animals nearby might be affected by toxic fumes, but perhaps not as much as if they were coated in oil.
BP says it has not been able to activate a device known as a blow-out preventer, designed to stop oil flow in an emergency.
The idea of placing a dome directly over the leaks has only been done in shallow water before and is still two to four weeks from being operational.
BP will also begin drilling a "relief well" intersecting the original well, but it is also experimental and could take two to three months to stop the flow.
NYTimes.com:
About 210,000 feet of boom had been laid down to protect the shoreline in several places along the Gulf Coast, though experts said that marshlands presented a far more daunting cleaning challenge than sandy beaches.
466Underscoring how acute the situation has become, BP is soliciting ideas and techniques from four other major oil companies — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and Anadarko. BP officials have also requested help from the Defense Department in efforts to activate the blowout preventer, a stack of hydraulically activated valves at the top of the well that is designed to seal it off in the event of a sudden pressure release.
Other efforts to contain the spill included a tactic that Admiral Landry called “absolutely novel”: crews awaited approval on Thursday night to begin deploying chemical dispersants underwater near the source of the leaks. Aircraft have dropped nearly 100,000 gallons of the dispersants on the water’s surface to break down the oil, a more conventional strategy.
BP is also designing and building large boxlike structures that could be lowered over the leaks in the riser, the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connected the well to the rig and has since become detached and is snaking along the sea floor. The structures would contain the leaking oil and route it to the surface to be collected. This temporary solution could take several weeks to execute.
All that movement is going to continue to stress and fatigue the pipe and create more leaks,” said Jeffrey Short, Pacific science director for Oceana and former chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who helped clean the spill from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
“This is not on a good trajectory,” he added.
The next solution is drilling relief wells that would allow crews to plug the gushing cavity with mud, concrete or other heavy liquid. The drilling of one such well is expected to begin in the next 48 hours, Mr. Suttles said, but it could be three months before the leak is plugged by this method.
The legal and political dimensions of the oil spill spread as well on Thursday, with lawyers filing suits on behalf of commercial fishermen, shrimpers and injured workers against BP; Transocean; Cameron, the company that manufactured the blowout preventer; and other companies involved in the drilling process, including Halliburton.
Raw Story:
An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control and drifted inexorably toward the Gulf Coast on Thursday as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.
"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."
 Gulf Coast oil spill could eclipse Exxon ValdezThe oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.
Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.
At that rate, the spill could easily eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 — in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor.
Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells typically hold many times more oil than a single tanker.
"You're pumping out a massive amount of oil. There is no way to stop it," he said.
An emergency shrimping season was opened to allow shrimpers to scoop up their catch before it is fouled by oil. Cannons were to be used to scare off birds. And shrimpers were being lined up to use their boats as makeshift skimmers in the shallows.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Thursday so officials could begin preparing for the oil's impact. He said at least 10 wildlife management areas and refuges in his state and neighboring Mississippi are in the oil plume's path.
CNN.com:
A huge oil spill oozing toward the Gulf Coast on Thursday threatens hundreds of species of wildlife, some in their prime breeding season, environmental organizations said.
"The terrible loss of 11 workers (unaccounted for after the rig explosion) may be just the beginning of this tragedy as the oil slick spreads toward sensitive coastal areas vital to birds and marine life and to all the communities that depend on them," said Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation for the Louisiana Coastal Initiative, in a statement.
Coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida could be at risk, the organization said.
"For birds, the timing could not be worse; they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore," she said. "The efforts to stop the oil before it reaches shore are heroic, but may not be enough. We have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, including a true catastrophe for birds."
It's not just birds that could be affected, although they are usually the first to feel the effects, said Gregory Bossart, chief veterinary officer for the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. The birds are right at the surface, get covered in the oil and swallow it, causing liver and kidney problems.
"They need to be rescued and cleaned," he said.
But the coastline of Louisiana, with its barrier islands and estuaries, "is a very unique ecosystem. It's very complex," Bossart said.
Plankton found in the estuaries nourish organisms all the way up the food chain. Crabs, mussels, oysters and shrimp feed on the plankton, he said. Oil smothers the plankton, meaning they cannot eat.
Also, "the estuaries here are a nursery ground, literally a nursery ground, for the entire fish population in this area," Bossart said.
TurtleRiver otters in the region eat mussels and other animals. And "we know, in this area right now, that there are sperm whales. There are dolphins right in the oil slick," he said.
If an oil spill is small enough, animals can leave the area.
"Some of them can get away," Bossart said. "It's totally dependent on the size of the slick, and this is huge."
Exposure to the oil for a prolonged period of time can result in a toxic effect on the skin, and mammals can suffer lung damage or death after breathing it in, Bossart said.
"When the oil starts to settle, it'll smother the oyster beds. It'll kill the oysters," he said.
The spill also threatens the Louisiana and Mississippi fishing industry, as crab, oysters and shrimp along the coast could be affected, along with numerous species of fish. Gulf shrimp are in their spawning season.
More than 400 species are threatened by the spill, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Thursday, citing the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
Species of beach-nesting terns and gulls, beach-nesting shorebirds, large wading birds, marsh birds and ocean-dwelling birds are also at risk, along with migratory shorebirds and songbirds, the Initiative said.
The migratory songbirds move across the Gulf during a two-week period from late April to early May, for instance.
"The journey across 500 miles of open water strains their endurance to its limits," the Initiative said. "They depend on clear skies and healthy habitats on both sides of the Gulf in order to survive the journey."
According to a 1998 study by Louisiana State University, more than 500 million birds fly over the Gulf and enter the United States along coastal areas in Louisiana and Texas each spring.
CNN.com:
Louisiana is the No. 1 producer of shrimp and oysters in the United States, while fishing remains a major industry on the Mississippi coast even after casino gambling has come to dominate the local economy.
The Gulf Coast hasn't seen a major oil spill in about 40 years, Crozier said. Most of the toxic components in the crude spill are likely to evaporate in the sun, but a "physical mess" is likely to remain in the marshes.
"The occasional drum has fallen overboard, but we've never had anything of this magnitude," he said.
Wilma Subra, a chemist who advises the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said hundreds of spotters are watching for signs of the slick along the shoreline. But until the damaged well is capped, the coast could be hit over and over again when weather patterns shift.
"This is just going to be unbelievable," Subra said. "It's not going to be just a one-time event."
Yahoo! News:
Crews continued to lay boom in what increasingly feels like a futile effort to slow down the spill, with all ideas to contain the flow failing so far.
"I've been in Pensacola and I am very, very concerned about this filth in the Gulf of Mexico," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said at a fundraiser for his U.S. Senate campaign Sunday night. "It's not a spill, it's a flow. Envision sort of an underground volcano of oil and it keeps spewing over 200,000 gallons every single day, if not more."
Fishermen from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle got the news that more than 6,800 square miles of federal fishing areas were closed, fracturing their livelihood for at least 10 days and likely more just as the prime spring season was kicking in. The slick also was precariously close to a key shipping lane that feeds goods and materials to the interior of the U.S. by the Mississippi River.
Even if the well is shut off in a week, fishermen and wildlife officials wonder how long it will take for the Gulf to recover. Some compare it to Hurricane Katrina, which Louisiana is still recovering from after nearly five years.

"It's probably easier to fly in space than do some of this," Charlie Holt, BP's drilling and completion operations manager in the Gulf of Mexico, said Sunday.
Everything engineers have tried so far has failed. After the April 20 oil rig explosion, which killed 11 people, the flow of oil should have been stopped by a blowout preventer, but the mechanism failed. Efforts to remotely activate it continue to prove fruitless. On the surface, windy weather and waves have hampered plans to burn the oil and made booms all along the coast ineffective.
The oil probably could keep gushing for months until a second well can be dug to relieve pressure from the first.
Besides the immediate impact on Gulf industries, shipping along the Mississippi River could soon be limited. Ships carrying food, oil, rubber and much more come through the Southwest Pass to enter the vital waterway.
Shipment delays — either because oil-splattered ships need to be cleaned off at sea before docking or because water lanes are shut down for a time — would raise the cost of transporting those goods.
Even if the oil stays mostly offshore, the consequences could be dire for sea turtles, dolphins and other deepwater marine life — and microscopic plankton and tiny creatures that are a staple of larger animals' diets.
Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., said at least 20 dead sea turtles were found on the state's beaches. He said it's too soon to say whether oil contamination killed them but that it is unusual to have them turning up across such a wide stretch of coast, nearly 30 miles.
None of the turtles have oil on them, but Solangi said they could have ingested oily fish or breathed in oil on the surface.
The situation could become even more grave if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and flows to the beaches of Florida — and potentially whips around the state's southern tip and up the Eastern Seaboard. Tourist-magnet beaches and countless wildlife could be ruined.
BP has not said how much oil is beneath the seabed the Deepwater Horizon rig was tapping when it exploded. A company official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels. Fryar said any numbers being thrown out are just estimates at best.
Spill
Scary.  Maddening.  Sad.  Heartbreaking.
When we told the kids what was happening, their eyes opened wide.  They couldn’t understand how something like this could happen.  I can’t either.
In our daily lives, in this modern society, we need energy to operate anything and everything.  That energy comes primarily from oil, which can be collected on land or sea.  Naturally, it’s much harder to control in the water, so I would think that the safeguards there should be paramount, more important than even the ability to drill for oil in the first place.
Obviously, oil barons don’t agree with that reasoning.  As a result, we’re now witnessing the latest oil related environmental disaster unfolding right before our eyes.
My heart goes out to all those whose livelihood will be affected, but above all to all the poor animals who will lose their lives because of our shortcomings.