BP / Gulf Oil Spill - 39 Million Gallons And Growing
John Amos, SkyTruth
The MODIS / Terra satellite image of the Gulf taken yesterday (May 24, 2010) is a relatively cloud-free look at the ongoing oil spill in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Areas covered by oil slick and sheen are marked with a solid orange line. Areas where we think there may be slicks and sheen, but our analysis is of lower confidence, are shown by dashed orange lines. All together, slicks and sheen are possibly covering as much as 28,958 square miles (75,000 km2). That's an area as big as the state of South Carolina..

The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
The Russians had hoped their idea to develop SDRs as a full reserve currency to challenge the dollar would make its way on to the agenda, but at least they got a foot in the door. There is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People's Bank of China. Beijing's moves this week to offer $95bn in yuan currency swaps to developing economies show how fast China aims to break dollar dependence.

Accounting for increasing energy use by the US food system
Michael Bomford, Energy Bulletin
According to this report, about half of the change is due to increased use of labor saving devices, with the remainder being split between population growth and changing food choices. Fewer people are farming, processing, cooking, and cleaning. Machines do the work for us, and consume more energy to do it..About a quarter of electricity used in US homes went to food-related services..This quantity increased as more households chose to buy second refrigerators, self-cleaning ovens, and other energy-demanding labor saving devices. Vehicle trips to the grocery store were counted..Non-essential foods - alcoholic beverages, baked goods, snack foods, and pet foods - accounted for the biggest component of the increase observed between 1997 and 2002.

NOAA's forecast: a very active, possibly hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season
Dr. Jeff Masters, Weather Underground
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its 2010 Atlantic hurricane season forecast today. NOAA forecasts a very active and possibly hyperactive season. They give an 85% chance of an above-normal season, a 10% chance of a near-normal season, and just a 5% chance of a below-normal season. NOAA predicts a 70% chance that there will be 14 - 23 named storms, 8 - 14 hurricanes, and 3 - 7 major hurricanes, with an Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) in the 155% - 270% of normal range. If we take the midpoint of these numbers, NOAA is calling for 18.5 named storms, 11 hurricanes, 5 major hurricanes, and an ACE index 210% of normal.

The World After Abundance
John Michael Greer, Energy Bulletin
What’s going on here is precisely what The Limits to Growth warned about in 1973: the costs of continued growth have risen faster than growth itself, and are reaching a level that is forcing the economy to its knees. By "costs," of course, the authors of The Limits to Growth weren’t talking about money, and neither am I. The costs that matter are energy, resources, and labor; it takes a great deal more of all of these to extract oil from deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico or oil sands in Alberta, say, than it used to take to get it from Pennsylvania or Texas, and since offshore drilling and oil sands make up an increasingly large share of what we’ve got left - those wells in Pennsylvania and Texas have been pumped dry, or nearly so - these real, nonmonetary costs have climbed steadily.

Blue Bayou
Olga Bonfiglio, Energy Bulletin
The threat to the bayou didn’t happen last month with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig...Saltwater intrusion and erosion threaten to destroy 60 percent of the bayou by 2040, said Richard Campanella, associate director of the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane University. He spoke recently at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in New Orleans. The reason this is happening is due in part to the activities of the oil and gas industry. This oil spill will surely speed up the process.

Gaza aid flotilla to set sail for confrontation with Israel
Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian
On board the ships are 10,000 tonnes of cargo and about 700-800 activists and politicians from more than 40 countries. The cargo includes building materials, medical supplies and paper for schools. One boat is carrying a complete dental surgery including drills. Crayons and chocolate are also on board for Gazan children. The cargo has been paid for by donations. "We're trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip and tell the world that Israel has no right to starve 1.5 million Palestinians," said Greta Berlin, of the Free Gaza Movement

More Than Just an Oil Spill
Bob Herbert, NY Times
This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter. No one knows how much of BP’s runaway oil will contaminate the gulf coast’s marshes and lakes and bayous and canals, destroying wildlife and fauna..It permeates and undermines the ecosystem in much the same way that big corporations have permeated and undermined our political system, with similarly devastating results.

Food in the Land of Peak Oil
Jill Richardson, The Seminal
Believe it or not, Cuba’s perhaps the world’s leading model of the agricultural system of the future. When the USSR fell, Cuba entered what they call the "Special Period." But it wasn’t special in a good way. Between 1990-1994, Cubans lost a lot of weight and babies born in those years still show signs of malnourishment. Because they couldn’t import grain, many farm animals died. But now, 20 years later, Cuba’s figured it out. The government promotes local, sustainable agriculture and - even though they haven’t achieved it yet - calls for food sovereignty..They don’t want to depend on food imported from elsewhere that, should a disaster strike, might become unavailable.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill: an accident waiting to happen
John McQuaid, Yale Environment 360
The oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has shattered the notion that offshore drilling had become safe. A close look at the accident shows that lax federal oversight, complacency by BP and the other companies involved, and the complexities of drilling a mile deep all combined to create the perfect environmental storm.

Spill, Baby, Spill
Joe Pishgar for Florida House District 31
Like many of you, I have been watching as the news unfolds about the massive oil spill in the Gulf. Every day seems to bring more dismal tidings about the incident and increasing comparisons to the size of it. First it was the size of New Orleans, and then it became as big as the state of Rhode Island..According to BP, the company that owns the rig, it will take 2 to 3 months to stop the flow of oil due to the failure of the blow out preventer. At a rate of 210,000 gallons of oil per day, that clocks in at just under 14.5 million gallons total before it is fixed. Many recall the devastation after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons and scientists estimate that it will take 30 years for the environment there to return to recover. http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2133

Twenty Years Later, Impacts of the Exxon Valdez Linger
Doug Struck, Yale 360 Environment
Today, 20 years after the largest spill in U.S. waters, the oil that gushed from the hull of the Exxon Valdez is still having effects. Sea otters once again play in the waters of Alaska’s Prince William Sound, and salmon and some other species have rebounded. But killer whale populations have not recovered, and the huge schools of whirling herring that fed both fishermen and animals have not returned, reminding scientists that nature’s responses are complex and unpredictable.

Amy Tidd Supports Proposed Constitutional Amendment that Protects Florida's Coastline
Amy Tidd for State Representative, District 30
Amy Tidd..today urged Representative Ritch Workman to join CFO Alex Sink, State Senator Dan Gelber (D-Miami Beach), and State Representatives..who on Friday May 7th called on Governor Charlie Crist to reconvene the legislature for a special session to consider a constitutional amendment that would ban drilling off of Florida's beaches. "Workman must change his position on near shore drilling in order to protect Florida's beaches.  He reportedly had a  'Drill, Baby, Drill' poster outside his office in Tallahasee during this years session. I believe it  needs to be changed to a 'Think, Baby, Think' poster along with a call for a special Session"

And Chicks for Free?
James Kunstler, kunstler.com
Once upon a time, the stock market was a  place where people with capital went to look for productive activity to invest in -- say, a company devoted to making soap flakes, an underpants factory. Now the market is a robot combat arena where algorithms battle for supremacy of the feedback loops.  Thursday's still-baffling fifteen-minute "crash" was an excellent demonstration..People too-clever-by-half, aided greatly by computers, have now gamed the investment indexes so successfully that these markets no longer have anything to do with investment..

Politically impossible?
Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Circumstances, strategy, personalities, evolving political alignments and myriad other variables change what is politically possible and impossible from week to week, from month to month and from year to year. But, after being stuck in first gear for a long time, history seems to be on the move. The oil price spike, the financial crisis, a dramatic election that put the first African-American into the Oval Office--something that was previously deemed "politically impossible"--all seem to have shaken even the entrenched U. S. political establishment out of its torpor and made, in some cases, the unthinkable, thinkable and the politically impossible, possible. If my young student is any indication, there is more to come.

Economics for the Story of Stuff
Rob Dietz, The Daly News
The Story of Stuff takes a look at the economy’s linear system that runs from extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal. As Annie says, "..you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely." You especially can’t grow the size of that linear system indefinitely..What a dilemma! The planet can’t sustain our pattern of consumption, but people get steamrolled in the economy when consumption slows down.

Anti-abortion amendment narrowly passes Florida Senate

Our Fill-in-the-Blank Constitution
Geoffrey R. Stone, NY Times