Hooray! Cheaper gas from BP

BP is all about helping the people! And they probably just got all this cheap gas by vacuum cleaning the birds in the Gulf of Mexico.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In an effo rt to help struggling gas stations and appease furious consumers following the Gulf disaster, BP is lowering its gasoline prices.

BP is offering a series of incentives to its distributors that could shave two cents off the price of gasoline at the pump.

Let me be one to say that all this "screw BP!" talk is stupid since any oil company could have had the same issue. And I think they did the best job trying to contain the leak. No one is more motivated than a company losing money daily and getting hammered publicly because of it. You don't think they were doing the best job possible trying to stop that thing? Turn it over to the federal government and you know who you would have working on the leaks? The same guys that stand around while pot holes don't get fixed during road construction.

But did the mainstream media not pull out a bit soon once the leak had been "capped." I mean where is the live link to the leak on the front of CNN.com or something? Where did it go?! And all this there's no oil left in the area talk is just ridiculous. That ecosystem is screwed for years and we're all acting like the teenage girl trying to make herself feel better after a bad day of school with positive thinking.

We have a long ways to go.
What about the long term health effects of the local people, what about the local animals and fish life? What about the people that lost their livelihood?


But until then, enjoy the cheap gas!

The gulf is dicked

Ran across this little nugget of good news...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Tens of thousands of gallons more oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday after an undersea robot bumped a venting system, forcing BP to remove the cap that had been containing some of the crude.

The setback, yet another in the nine-week effort to stop the gusher, came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration tried to figure out how to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

When the robot bumped the system just before 10 a.m. Wednesday, gas rose through the vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said. 

What the hell is going on down there? I just got this photos via the Associated Press of BP officers hard at work on the oil spill.

... we're dicked.

Apparently we've avoided ecological disaster

According to NASA and their super-awesome computer simulations, had we not cut CFC gasses in air conditionals and spray cans 22 years ago, we'd be screwed as a human race.

NASA atmospheric scientist Paul Newman said the answer is a "bizarre world."

By 2065, two-thirds of the protective ozone layer would have vanished and "the ozone hole covers the Earth." And the CFCs, which are long-lived potent greenhouse gases, would have pushed the world's temperature up an extra 4 degrees.

In mid-latitudes like Washington, DNA-damaging ultraviolet radiation would have increased more than sixfold. Just 5 minutes in the summer sunshine would have caused a sunburn, instead of 15. Typical midsummer UV levels, now around 10 or 11, would have soared to 30. Summer thunderstorms in the Northern Hemisphere would have been much stronger.

"It is a real horrible place," Newman told The Associated Press.

No word yet on if getting rid of big hair bands helped any too, but I'm pretty sure that if they hadn't run Vanilla Ice out of the music scene we'd be all in hell right now.

Clark Fork River Oil Spill: This is apparently how the Northwest does man-made disasters

Well not quite a disaster per say, more like a PR bloody nose for Avista. The Spokesman Review has the story on a transformer oil spill from a dam on the Clark Fork River.

Oil sheens were visible on parts of the Clark Fork River Friday afternoon – a day after a pipe broke at the Noxon Rapids Dam, spilling about 1,250 gallons of transformer oil.

Emergency response officials were working with the dam’s operator, Avista Corp., to evaluate the situation and craft a clean-up plan. A helicopter flew over a 20-mile stretch of the lower Clark Fork River. Pockets of oil were spotted from the air, but no dead fish turned up.

Apparently, a chunk of ice was to blame for the broken for the spill. Which isn't expected to have any long term environmental effects. Check out this wonderfully technical explanation:

The oil is “not the goopy, heavy stuff,” said Bruce Howard, Avista’s director of environmental affairs, but rather a highly-refined mineral oil used to cool electrical transformers.

The oil tends to float on top of the water, according to Howard. He said the spill shouldn’t put the river’s fish population or other wildlife at risk.

That's until we start seeing fish with three eyes and the jumping ability of Lebron James. Did anyone patch up the pipe yet? Just wondering.