By GREG BLUESTEIN (AP) COVINGTON, La. — BP engineers say they have the equipment in place to try a complicated procedure that they hope will seal the blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well. BP PLC senior vice president Kent Wells said Tuesday the company hopes to launch the “top kill” on Wednesday and will […]
By John PlattMay 24, 2010 02:03 PM An extremely rare “grolar bear”–a polar bear/grizzly bear hybrid–was shot and killed by an Inuit hunter in Canada’s Northwest Territories last month. Global warming has reportedly been driving grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) further north in search of food, bringing them into polar bear (U. maritimus) territory. […]
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – More than 300 sea birds, the bulk of them brown pelicans and northern gannets, have been found dead along the U.S. Gulf Coast during the first five weeks of BP’s huge oil spill off Louisiana, wildlife officials reported on Monday. The 316 birds found dead along the coasts of Louisiana, […]
Reporting by Paul Eckert; editing by Eric BeechWASHINGTONMon May 24, 2010 7:22pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government has declared a “fishery disaster” in the seafood-producing states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama due to an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, making them eligible for federal funds, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said […]
May 24, 2010Posted: 10:00 AM ET (CNN) – Dozens of ships are steaming toward the site of the oil spill in the Gulf today. In two days, they’re expected to begin a “top kill” operation to plug the spewing well. Meanwhile, the debate over dispersants is raging. The EPA has ordered BP to switch to […]
Shoreline assessments and overflights continued today as planned. As anticipated, areas of oil moved closer to the Chandeleur Islands today. With winds forecast from the north, this will tend to push the oil away from shore. However, the threat of oil impacting the coastline remains high. The Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP […]
By Justin Nobel05/23/2010 Grand Isle, Louisiana A semipalmated sandpiper pitter patters down the beach, feeding from sand laced with sticky red puddles of oil. The bird has red smeared across its flanks and face. Nearby, a flock of sanderlings pecks for worms and mollusks. The sand they’re feeding from is riddled with globs of oil […]
The balance of biodiversity within North American small-mammal communities is so out of whack from the last episode of global warming about 12,000 years ago that the current climate change could push them past a tipping point, with repercussions up and down the food chain, say Stanford biologists. The evidence lies in fossils spanning the […]
By Frank Pope It has been an hour since our sport-fishing boat started streaking through the freshly oil-soaked marshes of Pass a Loutre, but we’re still only halfway through the slick. Eighteen miles out and the stink of oil is everywhere. Rashes of red-brown sludge are smeared across vast swaths, between them a swell rendered […]
By Bob Marshall, The Times-PicayuneMay 23, 2010, 9:00AM For those saddened by the scenes of thick oil washing into Louisiana’s coastal wetlands a month after the BP oil disaster began, experts on oil spills and the coastal ecosystem have some advice: Get used to it. The crews mopping up oil on beaches and marsh shorelines […]
