The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from the Gulf Coast. See previous dispatches here, here, and here.

Pressed by the Wonk Room, Gov. Bob Riley (R-AL) admitted he is reconsidering his support for offshore drilling off his state’s coast in the face of the growing BP oil disaster. Riley embraced Newt Gingrich’s campaign to expand offshore drilling in July, 2008, saying “we need to drill and we need to do it now.” He found it “astonishing” that Congress opposed efforts to lift the moratorium on drilling “because of fear they are so popular with the American people.”

At a press conference this afternoon in Mobile, AL, the Wonk Room questioned Riley whether he would reconsider his “Drill, Baby, Drill” stance as the oil spill grows, threatening the destruction of the bayous and beaches of Mobile Bay. After a long pause, Riley answered that he “will have a completely different attitude” if the efforts to protect his state’s shores fail:

That’s a great question. After we get through this, I think all of us can make a better determination than we can now. Because with the resources that have been deployed, and if we can do what I hope we can do in Alabama to mitigate any potential environmental damage here, especially in our estuaries, then I will have a completely different attitude about whether or not it is controllable after something this dramatic happens.

Watch it:

Riley is the third Republican coastal-state governor to reconsider new offshore drilling as the reality of this disaster grows, following Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL) and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA).

Joe Lieberman (I-CT): Disastrous BP oil volcano would “certainly not lead us to remove” drilling provisions

“I think it should spur it on,” Reid said. “We have to take care of this issue. I am amazed how difficult it seems to be to get people interested in alternative energy.”

Reid cited Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision last week to approve a long-standing permitting application for the Cape Wind project off the Massachusetts coast. “Alternative energy is what we need to do as rapidly as we can,” Reid said. “So I think rather than slow us up, I think it should expedite our doing energy legislation.”

That’s the majority leader quoted in an E&E News PM story (subs. req’d).  He went on to add:

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I’ve noted many times that the British Tories, unlike their American counterparts, understand climate science and support strong action to reduce emissions (see “U.S. conservatives vs. U.K. conservatives“).  But it turns out they share one thing in common with U.S. conservatives, as Joss Garman of the UK blog Left Foot Forward explains in this repost.

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Count on Dave for some gallows humor:
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The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from the Gulf Coast.

The epicenter of the growing BP oil disaster is “exactly” where scientists have found bluefin tuna spawning. On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon rig run by oil giant BP in the deep waters 40 miles off the southeast tip of Louisiana exploded, killing 11 and unleashing a torrent of oil from the sea bed. Ichthyologist Bruce Comyns, a research scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, MS, told the Wonk Room he has found bluefin tuna larvae “right in the vicinity of that ongoing discharge”:

COMYNS: We’ve also collected bluefin tuna larvae not just in the edge of the Loop Current, we’ve also collected them in the northern Gulf, in the vicinity of the mouth of the Mississippi River, maybe 40, 50 miles off.

Q: That sounds like where the spill took place.

COMYNS: That’s exactly where the spill took place. We have collected bluefin tuna larvae right in the vicinity of that ongoing discharge.

Watch it:

This is “the worst time” of year that this disaster could have begun, Dr. Comyns said, as this is the peak of the spawning and nesting season for marine wildlife in the Gulf, from fish to turtles to dolphins. As he has done in previous years, Dr. Comyns was planning to head out into the Gulf of Mexico to sample larval fishes from the edges of the Loop Current — a research trip that now has newly critical and disturbing import.

Professor Hans Graber of the University of Miami told the Associated Press that it’s “a matter of when, not if” the oil cloud reaches the Loop Current, the primary spawning ground in the Gulf for large pelagic fishes. BP is injecting dispersants directly into the underwater oil stream, limiting the slick at the surface, but increasing the contamination underwater. Protect the Ocean’s John Taylor reports that BP is using a dispersant named Corexit 9500, which has a “toxicity to early life stages of fish, crustaceans and mollusks” four times greater than petroleum.

… buy my book, Straight Up: America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions.

Traffic is up 50% as Climate Progress has been providing readers the most comprehensive coverage on the BP oil disaster — from the causes to the human impacts to the policy implications — for free!

So I thought I’d take the opportunity to plug my book, which devotes an entire chapter to peak oil and what to do about it, and another to the “clean energy solution.”  In other chapters, the book explains how the media and the anti-science disinformers have undercut efforts to mobilize the kind of political effort the country needs to dramatically reduce fossil fuel use once and for all.

If you haven’t bought Straight Up yet, you’re missing:

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The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from the Gulf Coast.

Gulf Coast marine scientists agree that the unfolding oil disaster could mean devastation beyond human comprehension. In an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room, a team of scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, MS, discussed the ecological impacts of a three-month blowout from the BP-Halliburton Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig, described as the expected timeline for “ultimate relief” of the leak by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. None of the scientists even wanted to attempt to imagine the coming devastation, because, as ichthyologist Eric Hoffmayer said, “oil is bad for everything” that lives in the ocean. If the leak continues for three months, about 100 million gallons of oil will have flooded into the Gulf during the peak spawning season of the region and the start of the hurricane season. Dr. Bill Hawkins, director of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, summarized the scenario starkly:

All bets are off.

Watch the discussion:

Dr. Eric Hoffmayer, a shark specialist with the Center for Fisheries Research and Development, discussed the inevitable path the cloud of oil would take once it gets caught up by the gulf’s Loop Current that feeds the Gulf Stream. Dr. Hawkins found a limited amount of optimism that the “fractions of oil that are overtly toxic” are about five percent, and a lot of the toxic elements are “aerosolic” compounds — which would aid in dilution. Dr. Bruce Comyns, a larval ichthyologist — studying the early life stages of fish development — concluded that the worst-case scenario would be “devastating” beyond his ability to predict.

Historically, major blowouts of this kind have been stopped by drilling relief wells, a process that will take about three months at this site, the Macondo Prospect just off the continental shelf of Louisiana. Last year’s underwater Montara rig blowout in the Timor Sea took ten weeks to get under control. The 1979 Ixtoc I blowout took nearly a year to stop. BP is attempting experimental new efforts — containment domes, shutoff valves, and the like — to staunch the flow of oil, but none have previously been shown to work.

Transcript:

HAWKINS: All bets are off. I mean it’s an exposure-times-time kind of scenario. I don’t even want to think about that.

HOFFMAYER: I think oil’s bad for everything. To just add: It would go beyond just the Gulf of Mexico. If it gets entrained into the Loop [Current], it’s up into the Atlantic. And who knows where it’s going to go from there. As it moves around Florida, the next or another critical area would be the Florida Keys and the coral reefs we have down there. I don’t even want to think about that area being covered in oil. Once it works its way up the East Coast and potentially crossing the Atlantic, it could be far-reaching.

HAWKINS: Hopefully in that scenario there would be sufficient dilution, but you’re talking about some really fragile habitats as well. I shudder to think of a three-month blowout.

COMYNS: We’re kind of speculating, but obviously it would be devastating. Nothing’s ever really been seen probably quite like it, so it’s hard for us to tell you exactly what would the results be. We know it’s bad, we couldn’t tell you how bad. We’re just reacting to it as it slowly develops. If it was the worst-case scenario, I probably wouldn’t be qualified to tell you exactly how much devastation there would be. Obviously, it would be bad.

The silent threat of the unknown hovers over Mr Obama at all times. By force of oratory, Mr Obama could revitalise the energy debate and alert Americans to the dangers of business as usual. Or he could wait for a brighter day. Fortune, in this case, may favour the brave.

That’s Edward Luce in his optimistically headlined Financial Times piece, “From disaster can come a new direction for US energy” (reg. req’d).

Luce is the latest in a long, long line of people, urging, pleading, and begging Obama to speak out on the gravest threat — and greatest opportunity — the nation faces (see Tim Wirth: “The president should deliver a major speech on climate change to the American public, using all the props and charts he can muster to bring the message home. The public interest requires it”).

If you can’t explain to the public now that there are hidden costs of our addiction to fossil fuels, that fossil fuels are injurious to our health, the environment and national security, when can you?  Heck even Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic opines:

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Presidents Carter and Reagan””after the Three Mile Island near-nuclear meltdown and the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion, respectively””appointed independent commissions of high-profile public officials and experts to thoroughly investigate the causes of these events and make recommendations to prevent future tragedies. President Obama should follow their lead by appointing an independent commission to completely examine the causes of the BP disaster and offer guidance for how we can make sure it never happens again.  CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss explains why in this repost.

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While some in the “drill baby drill” crowd have been chastened by reality, others have not.  Think Progress has the story of those who still seem in denial of the unfolding disaster.

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Since BP has been channeling Goldman Sachs, here’s Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon on GS in Salon:

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Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

We cannot predict the full scope of public health, economic, or environmental damages of the BP disaster until BP is able to halt the flood of oil. But the horrible calamity has claimed 11 lives and contaminated the water with millions of gallons of oil. The best-case scenario at this point is that oil will continue to flood from the ocean floor for another week until BP is able to cap the well. If that effort fails, it could be several months before BP is able to drill another well to capture the oil currently fouling the Gulf Coast waters.

The federal government can look to past administrations for guidance in understanding the causes of this devastating situation and taking measures to minimize future occurrences. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan — after the Three Mile Island near-nuclear meltdown and the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion, respectively — appointed independent commissions of high-profile public officials and experts to thoroughly investigate the causes of these events and make recommendations to prevent future tragedies. President Barack Obama should follow their lead by appointing an independent commission to completely examine the causes of the BP disaster and offer guidance for how we can make sure it never happens again:

One of the charges of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, for instance, was to evaluate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing, inspection, operation, and enforcement procedures as applied to this facility since the NRC could not undertake a truly objective review of its own procedures.

The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident was similarly able to review NASA’s management structure and procedures and more objectively assess its contribution to the accident. Both independent commissions issued findings that were critical of the agencies’ performances and made recommendations for management changes.

President Obama asked Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar after the initial explosion to “conduct a thorough review of this incident and report back to me in 30 days.” The Departments of Interior and Homeland Security agreed to conduct a joint investigation, with the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service and the U.S. Coast Guard sharing the lead for this evaluation.

This is an important start, but it is not a complete response to a disaster of this colossal magnitude. Any investigation must focus not only on BP, but also on the performance of federal and state agencies responsible for oversight of offshore oil production.

An independent commission is particularly necessary since the Minerals Management Service was scandal-ridden during the Bush administration. The Obama administration has had only 16 months to reform this agency. It is simply too much to ask it to assess its own performance.

An independent commission investigating the BP disaster should have subpoena power and conduct public hearings. The TMI and NASA commissions had six months and four months, respectively, to conduct their investigation and issue their reports. The BP disaster commission should similarly also have a limited period of time and the authority to conduct a thorough review.

The Obama administration swiftly responded to the BP disaster from day one and mobilized the U.S. government’s resources to attempt to minimize the harm from this unprecedented event on the health, economy, and environment of the Gulf Coast. President Obama should now ensure complete scrutiny of the explosion and its aftermath by appointing an independent commission to assess the causes and damages and make recommendations to prevent future tragedies.

Green Jobs Ticking Upward

The green economy is growing, but slowly.

That’s according to a report released by the Economics and Statistics Administration, a division of the Department of Commerce. Green services and businesses amounted to just 1 to 2 percent of the private business economy in 2007. And there were 1.8 million to 2.4 million green jobs in 2007, less than 2 percent of the total work force.

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With a naivet© reminiscent of the Bush administration, BP officials are claiming that the apocalyptic failure of its deepwater exploratory rig was unforeseeable, unprecedented and inconceivable.  I guess that’s why they didn’t really plan for it and kept telling everyone for the first week that they could handle it.  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson– who is reporting from the Gulf Coast — has the story in this repost.

On Sunday, BP press flack Steve Rinehart “” hired from the Anchorage Daily News after a mega-spill from a damaged Prudhoe Bay BP pipeline in March 2006 “” even evoked the “I don’t think anybody” excuse that was the hallmark of the Bush administration’s attempts to deflect blame for their catastrophes:

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[To get daily email updates of the latest news and analysis on the BP oil disaster, click here.]

You’re going to be hearing about  the Minerals Management Service in the coming days, since their “mission is to manage the mineral resources of the Outer Continental Shelf in an environmentally sound and safe manner.”

After eight years of Bush-Cheney, they became absurdly cozy with the industry, signed off on Big Oil’s desire for voluntary, “trust me,” self-regulation — and caved in to industry demands not to mandate the backup shut off switch for offshore rigs that Brazil and Norway require.

In fact, “cozy,” turned out to be an extreme understatement for how close the MMS and Big Oil were as I discussed two years ago in a post on their sex-for-oil scandal subtitled, “Please no jokes about Drill, Baby, Drill or Bush Energy Policy!” and excerpted below.

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