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Thursday, September 02, 2010

Same shit, different guy
Posted by Jill | 5:02 AM
It really astounds me the way the teabaggers are painting Barack Obama as some kind of Marxist, eager to remake America into a collectivist paradise.

We should only be so lucky.

Instead it seems we have yet another figurehead, doing the business of his corporate masters, no doubt with visions of eight-figure paychecks in the future dancing in his head.

Do with this what you will:
Indeed, PhD toxicologist Ricki Ott noted in a New York Times Op Ed that dispersants like Corexit can persist in the ocean for decades:

[Dispersants] can linger in the water for decades, especially when used in deep water, where low temperatures can inhibit biodegradation.
Some experts have also said that the use of Corexit has prolonged by decades the presence of toxic crude oil, because the dispersant sinks the oil beneath the ocean surface, where it cannot be quickly broken down by sun, waves and microbes.

And the head of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Ecology Department - Terry Hazen - argues that the use of dispersants can delay recovery of ocean ecosystems by decades:
Hazen has more than 30 years experience studying the effects of oil spills. He says the oil will be damaging enough; toxic dispersants will just make it worse. He points to the 1978 Amoco Cadiz Spill off the coast of Normandy as an example. He says areas where dispersants were used still have not fully recovered, while areas where there was no human intervention are now fine.

As Hazen has noted:

"The untreated coastal areas were fully recovered within five years of the Amoco Cadiz spill," says Hazen. "As for the treated areas, ecological studies show that 30 years later, those areas still have not recovered."
Admittedly, chemicals other than Corexit were used in the Amoco Cadiz spill. But the precautionary tale still holds: chemicals should not be applied to oil spills unless scientists are positive that they will provide a net long-term benefit.

Disturbingly, Corexit is apparently still being sprayed in the Gulf. See this, this and this

But here's what's interesting: For all the hue and cry and rending of garments that's going on among the denizens of Wingnutistan about Barack Obama over things that are demonstrably not true, we have an increasing number of scientists willing to speak out about the still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (claims by the Administration notwithstanding), and there's not a peep out of them about the poison being unleashed by Obama's current Head Corporate Boss, BP. Of course to join the outcry would be to acknowledge that there is no "invisible hand" making corporations ultimately do the public good and that the free market doesn't always work for the benefit of all. And we mustn't have anything get in the way of our ideology.

Meanwhile, here in Sanityville, it looks like Mr. Brilliant was right all along: elections are only here to make you THINK you have a choice.

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