But in the land of make-believe, Watts and Goddard say: “Arctic ice extent and thickness nearly identical to what it was 10 years ago.”

One of the country’s leading experts on the Arctic projects it will be essentially ice-free (in the fall) decades ahead of the projections of the climate models used in the 2007 IPCC report.  And that has quite dire implications and consequences for the likely future rate of climate change compared to those models.

The following chart is from Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in a presentation at the March State of the Arctic Meeting (click to enlarge):

*This projection is based on a combined model and data trendline focusing on ice volume.  By “ice-free,” Maslowski tells me he means more than an 80% drop from the 1979-2000 summer volume baseline of ~200,00 km^3.  Some sea ice above Greenland and Eastern Canada may survive into the 2020s (as the inset in his figure shows), but the Arctic as it has been for apparently a million years will be gone.

Note also that the Polar Science Center asserts “September Ice Volume was lowest in 2009 at 5,800 km^3 or 67% below its 1979 maximum.” If that figure is correct, then we may be on one of Maslowski’s faster-declining trend lines.  And yes, after apparently hundreds of thousands of years, this relatively rapid decline can, I think, safely be called a “death spiral” (especially if the Polar Science Center’s work discussed below is correct).

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If only they had been so clever in their operations or response

As BP’s oil disaster continues to ravage the Gulf Coast, the company is ramping up its public relations and legal operations to try to salvage its reputation and protect itself from lawsuits. Now, ABC News is reporting that one such tactic BP is using is purchasing search items that have the word “oil” in them on various search engines to ensure that the first results that appear link directly to BP’s official website:

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Turns out BP is very easily pleased.

National Incident Commander Thad Allen has rebuked BP for being “very pleased” about the company’s failed efforts to contain the disaster he described as an “insidious enemy” that is “holding the gulf hostage.”  In this repost, WE’s Brad Johnson has the story and videos:

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National Incident Commander Thad Allen has rebuked BP for being “very pleased” about the company’s failed efforts to contain the disaster he described as an “insidious enemy” that is “holding the gulf hostage.” On Saturday, BP Senior Vice President Bob Fryar said “the company funneled about 250,000 gallons of oil in the first 24 hours from a containment cap installed on the well” to a drilling ship on the ocean surface. “That operation has gone extremely well,” Fryar said at an Alabama news conference. “We are very pleased.” On CNN’s State of the Union, Allen rebuked Fryar, telling Candy Crowley that nobody “should be pleased as long as there’s oil in the water”:

ALLEN: We are making the right progress. I don’t think anybody should be pleased as long as there is oil in the water. They have been able to put a containment cap over the leak site, start to bring oil to the surface and start turning off the vents. Nobody should be pleased until the relief well is done.

Watch it:

“The facts are, there is oil on the beach,” Allen concluded. “We need to keep focusing on that. This is an insidious enemy attacking our shores. It’s holding the gulf hostage, basically.”

The effectiveness of the containment cap in limiting the flow of oil into the ocean is actually entirely unclear. Cutting the riser pipe may have increased the gusher, whose flow rate is unknown. The estimate of 500,000 to 850,000 gallons a day is just a lower bound estimate from before the riser pipe cut, the scientists who worked on the official Flow Rate Technical Group have explained. The live underwater video shows no apparent reduction in the oil spewing into the gulf.

BP has a long record of being “very pleased” with their failed efforts to stop the gusher and contain the spread of oil, which has now led to the closure of a third of the Gulf of Mexico, an area larger than the state of Florida:

May 17: “I’m really pleased we’ve had success now,” BP COO Doug Suttles says. “We’ve actually had what we call this riser insertion tube working more than 24 hours now.”

May 19: BP announces it’s “very pleased” with the performance of the insertion tube, as oil blankets Louisiana’s wetlands, fishermen are sickened, and the slick is caught by the loop current.

May 26: “As the admiral has mentioned, it’s disappointing, we do have oil ashore at nine different locations in the state of Louisiana,” Suttles says, before finding a silver lining. “But we still have no oil ashore in either Alabama, Mississippi, or Florida, which we’re very pleased about.”

May 27: “As I’ve mentioned before, the equipment actually has performed very well,” Suttles says about the top kill effort, which replaced the failed riser insertion tube. “We are very pleased with the performance of the equipment so far.”

May 28: “I’ve done this many, many times now and I can tell you that the battle offshore, we’re winning that battle,” Suttles claims. “It’s the least amount of oil that I’ve seen offshore since my very first flight, so I’m very, very pleased with the activity of the offshore team.”

May 29: “I’m very pleased to say the amount of oil on the surface of the sea continues to be reduced,” Suttles bizarrely claims, as BP abandons the failed “top kill” effort.

June 5: “Over the last 24 hours we’ve been able to collect 6,000 barrels of oil,” BP Senior Vice President Bob Fryar tells reporters in Mobile, AL, “so we’re very pleased with that operation.”

Why we need a Gulf Recovery Fund

The condition of the Gulf region today is the result of hundreds of business and economic development decisions made by the states, the federal government, and the oil and gas industries over many decades. It calls for a long-term solution that involves all those players alongside the communities that have been most affected by generations of compromises made in favor of short-term economic gain over long-term sustainable growth. It is time to face and address our addiction to oil.

In this repost, CAP’s Kate Gordon and Richard Caperton propose a Gulf Recovery Fund.

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Yesterday, President Obama met with the governors of Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama in Kenner, LA, to discuss the oil spill clean-up effort. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) “” who has repeatedly tried to downplay the disaster “” was the only no show, making it the second meeting with Obama he’s skipped, as TP explains in this repost:

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