If Republicans want to pit NOAA against Obama with BP Oil Spill Report, point them to this

[zulchzulu]

There was a report issued about the initial reactions regarding the immensity of the BP/Deepwater oil spill in the Gulf where warnings of worst-case scenarios were not brought to the forefront publicly. Granted, the Obama administration believed that BP was being honest with their initial estimates of the damage. BP had the only equipment to be able to make assessments and distrusting them initially could have been seen as overreacting.

Anyway, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was part of the report's assessments:

"In early May, Secretary Salazar and Admiral Thad Allen told the American people that the worst case scenario could be more than 100,000 barrels a day. In addition, BP reported in 2009 that a blowout of the Deepwater Horizon could yield 162,000 barrels of oil a day," the statement by OMB Acting Director Jeffrey Zients and NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco said.

The critical report from the presidential commission appointed to study the environmental disaster said the Obama administration repeatedly underestimated how much oil was flowing into the Gulf of Mexico since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, which killed 11 workers.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/10/noaa-oil-spill-rate/1

If Republicans want to pit NOAA against Obama for political gain, one would have to assume that they also agree with NOAA's other assessments... like... climate change is UNDENIABLE.

Global warning is "undeniable" says a new report published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which looked at 10 climate indicators and concluded they "all tell the same story."

"People have spent thousands of years building society for one climate and now a new one is being created - one that's warmer and more extreme," the NOAA report states.

The 10 indicators included shrinking glaciers, melting spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere, declining sea-ice in the Arctic, sea-surface temperature, higher air temperature over land, air temperature over oceans, humidity and temperature in the troposphere, and ocean heat.

The NOAA report was released during a week when, faced with the specter of a filibuster, U.S. Senate leaders abandoned efforts to pass a comprehensive clean energy-climate bill.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/216741.asp

If NOAA is suddenly a group of scientists Republicans want to pit against Obama, then they certainly would also change their position on climate change as well.

That's if they had any credibility...

[TheBigotBasher]

1. Now there is the rub

That's if they had any credibility...

They do not.

[flyarm]

2. Number one your supposition is totally bullshit!

Your Quote:

" Granted, the Obama administration believed that BP was being honest with their initial estimates of the damage. "

That is a crock of shit!

Many Florida scientists were saying immediately that the estimates were totally wrong!

What happened to them? many felt threatened and they were silenced..as was our local media that was reporting trying to get to the truth..

But it was this administration that was lying and covering up..using the Coast Guard and Homeland Security to frighten anyone attempting to get at the truth!

They sent Homeland Security down to my area of Fla in an attempt to silence anyone who was telling the truth!

From the early days of this gusher our Fla scientists and many from our Universities who were saying it would take until no sooner than August to shut this gusher down. Our scientists said this almost immediately ..and their voices were silenced!

Do not even attempt to re-write history..to many of us on the Gulf have very good memories! As we were poisoned by the very air we breathe, and this administration allowed us to be poisoned with! They also poisoned truth!

[zulchzulu]

3. The report is about the initial reports, not the weeks after the spill that followed

Did the Obama administration have the ability to dive down a couple miles in the Gulf to see if BP was lying? If you know this, please supply the source.

As for BP and the oil spill, I am absolutely pissed about it and having lived in New Orleans for several years, I understand the repercussions of the environmental damage.

[flyarm]

4. I am talking about the days after the intitial Gusher began!

NOT WEEKS!

[zulchzulu]

5. What deep-sea exploration equipment does the White House have to make initial assessments?

Provide a link to that equipment that the White House staff could have used to check to see if BP was lying in their initial reports.

The main point is what difference would it have made anyway. The Navy was mobilized a day or two after the initial explosion. Other government assets were being deployed to the area as well. It took time to deploy actions there and there was no ability to actually get a good assessment of the damage initially.

This isn't a video game. And don't dare even imply that I would side with BP or any careless notions that all is well or all was done perfectly.

If you look at the timeline, the Coast Guard was sent in and was near the site 2 days after the explosion occurred (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/29/bp-oil-spill-timeline-deepwater-horizon).

Thinking that the Obama administration "did nothing" is absolute nonsense.

[flyarm]

7. are you deliberately attempting to act ignorant? ..the scientists who are

experts have the knowledge..they were shut down and shut up! By this White House!
And this administration!!

The explosion was April 20th..the rig collapsed April 22nd.

Many of our expert scientists in Fla were on our local news for days after the accident telling the truth ...they were saying in the days afterward that the gusher would not be able to be shut down until no earlier than August..and they were estimating a shit load more than BP or our government ( this administration) were saying on National news..there was a total disconnect in what was being said locally and nationally!!...and then our local media was being shut down and shut out of getting near the Gulf waters as were our scientists..who are experts..our government shut down the scientists who were telling the truth !

then Homeland Security came into our local areas..then then truth was shut down!

White House blocked BP oil spill estimates - Govt panel Source: Reuters

Wednesday October 6, 2010

White House blocked BP oil spill estimates - Govt panel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House in the spring blocked release of government estimates on the worst-case scenario of the amount of oil that was spewing from BP's well in the Gulf of Mexico, the presidential commission looking into the accident said on Wednesday.

The commission said its staff was told that in late April or early May that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wanted to make public some of its long-term, worst-case spill models for the Deepwater Horizon accident and requested approval from the White House's Office of Management and Budget to make the information public.

"Staff was told that the Office of Management and Budget denied NOAA's request," the commission said in a draft report on the amount of oil spilled and what happened to it.

Read more: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/10/7/wo...

geeeeee..in Late April or early MAY..the Accident happened in Late April!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! April 20th in fact!!!!!!! and the collapse of the Rig occurred April 22nd!!!

[zulchzulu]

23. I would suggest you go with the Decaf

You still haven't provided me with the link to the White House maritime equipment that Obama could have gotten on to go a couple miles underwater to see if BP was lying.

And you obviously can't engage in a civil discussion about this without somehow name-calling and accusing me of being supportive of BP.

Now where is that Ignore button? Oh goodie!

[leveymg]

6. Who in their right minds would trust a corporation to tell the truth when $$$$$ are at stake?

Didn't any of these Administration officials ever work for these f-ckers? Cheezits.

[flyarm]

8. who in their right mind would trust this government when they get their $$$$ from these oil

corporations..or their jobs when they leave government!

But these people are the very people exposing the citizens to toxins and poisons that will give the citizens cancers and respiratory diseases for decades!

Children all over the Gulf region have now been exposed to the most lethal toxins and they will be the recipients of god knows how many types of cancers for decades!

For the greed of few and the cover up of that greed by our government leaders! Of BOTH parties.

God help the children and us all!

[leveymg]

9. Jefferson had the right idea about trusting banks and corporations to do the right thing:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." Thomas Jefferson

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson

"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)

[flyarm]

10. I just wish we had someone with the Guts and Integrity of Jefferson ..we do not.

all we have now is crooks..who are all in bed together..with Corporate masters!

And they don't care how many of us they kill with their greed and their asses being owned by their masters!
They don't even care how many of our children they kill ..or expose to cancers! Or how they destroy our enviornment for decades or perhaps forever!



.....remember Dashle who was one of the leaders of Team Obama during our primaries..and was one of his top advisors...........working with Whitman..the lady who lied about the air quality at Ground zero in NY?? Can I tickle your memory..she lied and people died and keep dying!! And that is just one example..so now we know the Lady of Ground Zero's death squad the EPA..has so much in common with Tom Daschle the former Democratic party's senate leader and top advisor to Obama..and the New Head of the CIA under Obama..are in bed together..strange bedfellows... what the hey............

Spill, Baby, Spill
By Michael Isikoff, Ian Yarett and Matthew Philips | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 10, 2010

BP has been trying hard to burnish its public image in recent years after being hit with a pair of environmental disasters, including a fatal refinery explosion in Texas and a pipeline leak in Alaska. One major step was to announce, in 2007, that it had hired a high-powered advisory board that included former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and Leon Panetta, who were each paid $120,000 a year. (Panetta left when he became President Obama's CIA director.) Two years ago the oil giant's chief executive, Robert Malone, flew board members out to the Gulf of Mexico on a helicopter to demonstrate the safeguards surrounding BP's advanced drilling technology. "We got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right," Whitman told NEWSWEEK.

Now BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, finds itself blamed for what could prove to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. And only weeks after Obama announced an ambitious plan to open up more U.S. offshore waters to oil drilling, shunting aside environmental concerns from his own Democratic Party, his administration is facing a comeuppance from hell. "There was a lot of wishful thinking, I guess," says Villy Kourafalou, a scientist at the University of Miami's Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "The new technologies were said to be so wonderful that we'd never have an oil spill again." Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who had sought to block the expanded drilling, says the oil and gas industry was pushing this idea hard. "They said, 'We'll never have a repeat of Santa Barbara,'?" referring to the 1969 rig explosion off the California coast. Both the Bush and Obama administrations "were buying the line that the technology was fine," Pallone adds.

BP pressed hard to make that point in D.C. Its PR efforts included payments of $16 million last year to a battery of Washington lobbyists, among them the firm of Tony Podesta, the brother of former Obama transition chief John Podesta. Last fall, after the U.S. Interior Department proposed tighter federal regulation of oil companies' environmental programs, David Rainey, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico exploration, told Congress that the proposal was unnecessary. "I think we need to remember," he said, that offshore drilling "has been going on for the last 50 years, and it has been going on in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment."

Read the full article at:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237298

[leveymg]

17. There are a lot of important details one can miss looking out the window of a corporate helicopter.

Even with the best of intentions - I know, that assumes a lot.

I realized a long time ago that the size of the pools of elites from which societies draw their decision-makers is proportional to the quality of those decisions. Generally, the more elite the institutions -- the smaller the number of decision-makers -- the more prone to fatal error. In looking at the power elites in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, a pair of symbiotic systems in conflict, one saw the two groups were about the same size with similar concentrations of power.

On that basis, I concluded a while ago that the American Empire was not going to last long after the Soviet Union destroyed itself. I think I am being proved right, but don't rejoice at the fact.

If power does not devolve into democratic forms, it inevitably destroys itself. I think Jefferson understood that law of human nature; agreed, we are desperately in need of leaders like him again. Leadership is not undemocratic, rather, democracies can not long survive without good ones. I had hopes for Obama, but . . .

[flyarm]

24. I am sorry to say, I was never for a moment fooled by him! Not one moment. eom

[zulchzulu]

25. It's a conspiracy wrapped inside of an enigma!

:crazy:

Obama should have never spilled oil in the Gulf.

:sarcasm:

[flyarm]

26. Who said he spilled oil? He just covered up for those who did ! eom

[zulchzulu]

27. Your tinfoil hat looks so cute on you n/t

[flyarm]

28. your condescension is repugnant to this Gulf resident! I find nothing funny in any of this !

nor will those people whose children get cncers or respitory disease because of the cover ups! From the Poisons and Toxins we have now had exposure to!

The results of this cover up will be partly the responsibility of people like you!

[jaxx]

11. You can also point them to this:

"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said (Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas). "I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown."

"I apologize," Barton told Hayward. "I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is -- again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20008020-503544.html

The pubs screaming about this now is just slimy politics, the only kind they know. And for people here to suck it up as truth, it shows they didn't pay a damn bit of attention when the spill was happening...there was a constant update on the flow rate. When you listen to the repukes you get snookered. How many times will the left get taken by the wingers?

K&R your post...the truth is there if people want to see it.

[flyarm]

12. shhhh..It's both parties!!!!!!!!

.....remember Dashle who was one of the leaders of Team Obama during our primaries..and was one of his top advisors...........working with Whitman..the lady who lied about the air quality at Ground zero in NY?? Can I tickle your memory..she lied and people died and keep dying!! And that is just one example..so now we know the Lady of Ground Zero's death squad the EPA..has so much in common with Tom Daschle the former Democratic party's senate leader and top advisor to Obama..and the New Head of the CIA under Obama..are in bed together..strange bedfellows... what the hey............

Spill, Baby, Spill
By Michael Isikoff, Ian Yarett and Matthew Philips | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 10, 2010

BP has been trying hard to burnish its public image in recent years after being hit with a pair of environmental disasters, including a fatal refinery explosion in Texas and a pipeline leak in Alaska. One major step was to announce, in 2007, that it had hired a high-powered advisory board that included former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and Leon Panetta, who were each paid $120,000 a year. (Panetta left when he became President Obama's CIA director.) Two years ago the oil giant's chief executive, Robert Malone, flew board members out to the Gulf of Mexico on a helicopter to demonstrate the safeguards surrounding BP's advanced drilling technology. "We got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right," Whitman told NEWSWEEK.

Now BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, finds itself blamed for what could prove to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. And only weeks after Obama announced an ambitious plan to open up more U.S. offshore waters to oil drilling, shunting aside environmental concerns from his own Democratic Party, his administration is facing a comeuppance from hell. "There was a lot of wishful thinking, I guess," says Villy Kourafalou, a scientist at the University of Miami's Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "The new technologies were said to be so wonderful that we'd never have an oil spill again." Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who had sought to block the expanded drilling, says the oil and gas industry was pushing this idea hard. "They said, 'We'll never have a repeat of Santa Barbara,'?" referring to the 1969 rig explosion off the California coast. Both the Bush and Obama administrations "were buying the line that the technology was fine," Pallone adds.

BP pressed hard to make that point in D.C. Its PR efforts included payments of $16 million last year to a battery of Washington lobbyists, among them the firm of Tony Podesta, the brother of former Obama transition chief John Podesta. Last fall, after the U.S. Interior Department proposed tighter federal regulation of oil companies' environmental programs, David Rainey, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico exploration, told Congress that the proposal was unnecessary. "I think we need to remember," he said, that offshore drilling "has been going on for the last 50 years, and it has been going on in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment."

Read the full article at:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237298


they are all corporate fucking whores!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jaxx]

13. That seems rather paranoid.....and what does it have to do with the oil spill.

Nobody has said BP was an angel. But this rage against everyone else is strange, to say the least.

[flyarm]

15. if you can't read who was on BP payola..then I would have to say..no one can help you!

but do not for a moment think the rest of us don't know!!

Especially those of us who live on the Gulf! And those who live in Gulf States!

The talking points are rather pathetic!

[jaxx]

18. Au contraire.

Your putdowns don't mean diddly. You only know what you're told and some seem to be unreasonably anxious to run down the Obama administration instead of BP. Like always. I would urge the uninformed to do some reading, preferably on a non-conspiracy site, and get the facts straight.

That would be a novel improvement.

[flyarm]

20. read my post #19 Front page today St Pete Times!

[PVnRT]

14. "That's if they had any credibility..."

They don't.

[flyarm]

16. they have none at all, and those who pass on the talking points have even less!

they have the credibility of dog shit you wipe off the bottom of your shoes!

[flyarm]

19. Front page today St Pete Times..

http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/panel-government-thwarted-worst-case-scenario-on-spill/1126503
Front page!!!

read it all..due to rules I can not post entire article..but do read it all!!!!!!!!!!!

Panel: Government thwarted worst-case scenario on spill

McClatchy Newspapers
In Print: Thursday, October 7, 2010

snip:

The documents also criticize Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, saying that during a series of morning-show appearances on Aug. 4, she misrepresented the findings of a federal analysis of where the oil went and incorrectly portrayed it as a scientific assessment that was peer-reviewed by inside and outside experts.

"I think it's also important to note that our scientists have done an initial assessment, and more than three-quarters of the oil is gone," Browner said on NBC's Today show.


snip:
Florida State University professor Ian MacDonald, who has repeatedly clashed with NOAA and the Coast Guard over the size of the spill, the existence of underwater plumes and oil in the sea floor, said he felt gratified by the report.

From the **beginning,** there was "a contradiction between discoveries and concerns by academic scientists and statements by NOAA," MacDonald said in St. Petersburg at a scientific conference on the oil spill.

And he said it is still going on. MacDonald and Georgia Tech scientist Joseph Montoya said NOAA is at it again with statements saying there is no oil in ocean floor sediments. A University of Georgia science cruise, which Montoya was on, found ample evidence of oil on the gulf floor.

[jaxx]

21. part 1 of Working Paper 1 by the presidential panel.

<snip> The NOAA scientist‟s 5,000 bbls/day estimate did not take into account the kink leak, and his methodology for estimating the velocity of the leaking oil was imprecise. Further, there is no indication that the scientist had expertise in estimating deep-sea flow velocity from video data or that he used an established or peer-reviewed methodology when doing so. This is not a criticism of the scientist, who made clear his assumptions and that the 5,000 bbls/day figure was a “very rough estimate.” His stated intent in disseminating the estimate was to warn government officials that the flow rate was multiple times greater than 1,000 bbls/day. . . . .

The
The June 10, 2010 press release also noted an estimate by researchers with Woods Hole, led by Dr. Richard Camilli, who were conducting their work outside of the auspices of the Flow Rate Group but in coordination with Unified Command. . . .Their initial rough estimate was a flow for total flux (oil plus gas) of between 65,213 and 124,991 bbls/day . . . . Yet, seemingly because this estimate was given in cubic meters/second rather than bbls/day, it did not attract media attention.

he Flow Rate Group did not succeed in releasing an accurate high-end estimate until mid-June and that Secretary Chu’s team, rather than any of the Group‟s teams, appears to have been responsible for the accuracy of that June 15 estimate.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7012#comment-729607

[jaxx]

22. The amount and fate of the oil

National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling
THE AMOUNT AND FATE OF THE OIL

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/WorkingPaperAmountandFateForRelease.pdf

It's best to read the original.