Tar Balls Found Off Key West

Apparently they're OFF the case now.



==Jonathan Katz, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is another member of JASON. But Katz's major research focus has been astrophysics, and in an interview Friday with a St. Louis paper, he didn't seem confident that he had been much help with the mission. "I was honored to be invited and enjoyed the experience," said Katz. "Did I have anything much to contribute? I think I have some ideas for how to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, but I don't have anything very specific to offer on the present problems. It is very much in the hands of the real pros." Asked if he'd be willing to go back, Katz said: "I'd be happy to, but someone's got to send me an email or a phone call."==



http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/mission_impossible_obama_taps_crack_team_of_scient.php



Nobody should be doing deep sea drilling without a plan and resources in place for accidents.



I think that's what this 5-member "crack scientific team" that Steven Chu put together has determined, and what was already known -- It's out of control, and BP's answer is to stall for time with the 'straw' while they drill another well to tap into the one that is gushing, which they say is going to take months.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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Gulf Coast Oil Spill: Senate Democrats Want Justice Department To Investigate

You can survive decreasing your carbon footprint. You can't survive without water and food, which Big Oil is destroying around the world.



Companies that drill for natural gas and oil are skirting federal law and injecting toxic petroleum distillates into thousands of wells, threatening drinking water supplies from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. Federal and state regulators, meanwhile, largely look the other way.

http://www.ewg.org/drillingaroundthelaw
About Gulf Oil Spill
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Chris Oynes, MMS Official, To Step Down In Wake Of Gulf Oil Spill

And BP continues to drill. At the Deepwater Horizon site and elsewhere:



"There is new concern about another BP facility in the Gulf: a former BP insider tells us the platform Atlantis is a greater threat than the Deepwater Horizon."



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490087.shtml



All offshore drilling must be stopped, not just new drilling. There are other deadly rigs out there, other catastrophes waiting to happen, that are inevitable because of how they were built and the shortcuts taken for the sake of bigger and faster profits.
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Jonathan Katz: Member Of Science Team Tasked With Gulf Solution Is A Homophobe, Climate Change Denialist

Those who question what his beliefs about homosexuality have to do with his being put on a select team to do whatever this team has been tasked to do (we really don't know what the focus is), it's about his credentials as a scientific "genius", or having a scientific mind at all.



Katz equates homosexuality with being in the Ku Klux Klan. Not only is that a value judgment (which would have nothing to do with his appointment, true), but it ignores the best scientific theory that homosexuality is biology, not choice. Yes, the statement makes him a homophobic id-jit, but for these purposes (solving this ecological threat to our nation and world) you also have to wonder how good of a scientist he actually is.
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Jonathan Katz: Member Of Science Team Tasked With Gulf Solution Is A Homophobe, Climate Change Denialist

Katz does not believe that global warming is caused by human activity. But even if it is, he doesn't support Americans cutting carbon emissions because "nobody else is doing it". He doesn't believe that warmer climate creates storms or droughts.



I don't know who declared Katz a "genius"* or recommended him for this team, but these papers he's written indicate a mundane shallow narrow mind & scattered thought processes. If you're indiscriminate about facts, your conclusions aren't valid. GIGO.



Obama's seriousness of purpose is in question.



His Papers - http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/



*If only Elena Kagan had left this kind of paper trail. Just last week Obama's surrogates were all over the cable channels trying to assuage liberals' doubts about Elena Kagan by saying, "Thurgood Marshall was her mentor", when all she did was work for him, and did not share his judicial philosophy.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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Jonathan Katz: Member Of Science Team Tasked With Gulf Solution Is A Homophobe, Climate Change Denialist

Katz has some startling opinions on a whole host of topics.



How, as a scientist, he comes to his opinions, is troubling. He states things that aren't true, proven falsehoods, as facts. According to him, the war in Iraq was justifiable, because "Al Qaeda carried out the attacks in cooperation with, & perhaps at the behest of, Saddam Hussein and Iraq". And "The single most important fact, confirmed by the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, is that Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the terrorist attacks of September 11, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague a few months before". All of which has been exposed as false. Katz also claims, "Some evidence is incontrovertable; for example, that Iraq organized an unsuccessful plot to assassinate former President Bush when he visited Kuwait in April, 1993". Not true. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Pentagon_report_finds_no_evidence_of_0324.html

http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/baghdad.html



He seems to only consider information that validates his beliefs, & rejects what doesn't fit his pre-formed opinions. For example, he believes that discrimination against women in the field of physics (& other fields in science & the law) doesn't exist because his wife has never experienced it & neither of them have ever seen it in at Washington University where they teach.
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Oil Spill Florida Keys: Scientists Think Oil Has Entered Loop Current And Poses Grave Threat To Reefs

Why didn't Obama make recess appointments across the board?



It's not like he and Democrats have been without recourse to Republicans' obstructionism. But Democrats have preferred to make political hay rather than govern.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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