8:05 p.m. | Updated
White House officials always tinker with the language in reports relevant to policy.

For the most part, such efforts are aimed at avoiding problems. But they sure can backfire.

During the Bush administration, reports dealing with global warming got a thorough going over, as I reported in detail in 2005 and periodically earlier than that. The goal, revealed in hand-written editing marks, was clearly to amplify uncertainty and remove verbiage that smacked of definitiveness.

Now a much-discussed report by the inspector general of the Department of Interior shows how officials in the Obama White House were responsible for a last-minute change in the language of a document on deep-water drilling safety that formed the basis for President Obama’s controversial decision in June to enact a six-month deep-water drilling moratorium (the move was more politically harmful than economically damaging, in the end). (A belated nod to Dan Berman of Politico.com, who broke this story on Tuesday night.)

As John Broder explained on the Green blog and Greenwire laid out in detail, Mary L. Kendall, the inspector general, found that officials under Carol M Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and environment, had changed wording and moved text in a way that made it look as though independent experts assembled by the National Academy of Engineering had not only reviewed and approved of conclusions about safety issues, but also the moratorium recommendation.

They had not, which explains why many of the experts expressed anger and surprise back in June when they saw what appeared to be their endorsement of the moratorium.

Obama administration officials last night stressed that they had publicly acknowledged the faulty wording as soon as the complaints brought the issue to light, saying it was unintentional and that apologies were made to the review panel (these points were acknowledged by Kendall).

That’s a more creditable stance than the one taken by President George W. Bush’s staff after the disclosures of edits to climate reports.

But it sure is hard to read the drilling safety report — which sits unchanged on the Web with nary an asterisk to indicate the problem — without concluding that the purpose of the editing was to give the perception of scientists’ and engineers’ support for the moratorium.

Judge for yourself. There’s a list of recommendations in the executive summary, capped with these: Read more…

Controlled burns of spreading oil.

David Brancaccio, a longtime correspondent for public radio and television, has written a fascinating post on his new Economy 4.0 blog for the Marketplace radio show analyzing the economic impacts of the gulf oil spill six months after explosions killed 11 workers and unleashed the gusher in the seabed.

His bottom line? Using conventional analysis, the oil spill was a winner for the American gross domestic product. Here’s how he put it, citing a June forecast by an analyst for J.P. Morgan Chase:

Even if you factor in declines in fishing, tourism, and offshore oil production, the analysis argued the government’s key calculation of economic growth, the Gross Domestic Product, would get a push upward by the worst oil spill ever. Here is the apparent takeaway: if we want to steer the economy away from a double-dip, one strategy would be to set off a series of environmental disasters. Maybe chop a hole in the Alaska pipeline. Turn a few spigots on willy-nilly at some chemical plants. Hire a platoon of locusts to decimate the wheat crop.

Of course, he’s not endorsing this econometric approach; in fact he’s using it to emphasize the need for a reexamination of longstanding norms for how we measure progress. Such reexaminations have been underway for awhile in places as far-flung as Bhutan and Britain. I asked Brancaccio several questions about his focus on unconventional economics. Here are his replies: Read more…

In the face of America’s oil addiction two things seem to fade fast — the wallet shock of $4-a-gallon gasoline and the political impact of an oil spill, once it’s stanched.

Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Ag. An oil rig in Port Fourchon, La., last June.

This year’s Gulf of Mexico gusher seemed to pose potent political perils just a few months ago, but all along its significance was blunted by the reality that it did not affect oil or gas prices, which have stayed relatively low. So while it was upsetting for shrimpers, marine biologists and coastal communities, it was really a yawn for the average American.

That lack of political punch is crystal clear now, as the Obama administration, perhaps hoping to help embattled Democrats at the polls next month, has ended its moratorium on offshore oil drilling for companies that, as the news release headline puts it, clear a “higher bar for safety, environmental protection.”

While the bar may be higher for approvals, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was plainspoken in trying to convey the overall message, saying: “We are open for business.”

I talked about the lifting of the moratorium this afternoon with Peter Lehner, the executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council and author of “In Deep Water,” a new book on the gulf oil spill. He credited President Obama for a host of actions on vehicle efficiency and other fronts that should cut American oil dependence in coming years, but criticized this move as premature.

“There are three studies under way, by the National Academy of Engineering, the president’s commission and the Coast Guard,” he said. “We have a pretty good idea of what happened but don’t know for sure. These commissions are presumably not just window dressing. To wait a couple of months and get this extra information seems to be a prudent balance.”

As with so many issues, including climate, Obama is clearly weighing a broad range of costs and benefits, both political and environmental, in every move. I understand those realities.

My frustration is with his persistent unwillingness to firmly cast his moves on oil — including today’s announcement — in the broader context of the sustained energy quest that will be needed, here and around the world, to avoid hard knocks in coming decades as human numbers, appetites and environmental impacts crest.

Why isn’t expanded offshore drilling predicated on real movement toward a tougher federal gas tax, at least one that is revenue neutral — something that even some ardent conservatives support?

But maybe getting the drill rigs busy before the elections is simply one component of the president’s new stepwise approach to energy policy. Hopefully some more steps will come soon.

Nearly five months after BP’s Macondo well was wrecked in a fiery series of explosions that killed 11 rig workers and unleashed America’s largest oil spill, the well head on the sea floor was officially “killed” over the weekend.

There’s nothing left of this well but salvaged components and a tangle of steel on the sea floor that will be the subject of investigations and litigation for years to come. But this is a good moment, perhaps, to look ahead to a point when most of the thousands of other rigs dotting the Gulf of Mexico have drained the last dribbles of fossilized sunlight from the sediment far below.

Here’s a map of wells as of 2008, generated using the Geocommons map-making tool (the animal-like shape sure is weird):

A map of oil well locations off the Gulf coast.

Most will be reused or recycled in some way. But maybe a few could be kept in place, replicating the Seaventures Dive Resort, a hotel and diving platform created out of a small oil rig in coral-rich waters off the Malaysian side of Borneo.

As reported in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, the rig was purchased long ago and recently towed to its current location. Accommodations are spare and metallic, according to the article, which quotes the rig owner, Suzette Harris of Singapore, as saying:

No matter what you do, oil rigs have an industrial feel because they’re made of metal…. You’re not going to come to the rig to enjoy the sunsets. You come to dive.

But the views…

To the west of the oil slicks and fleets of vessels working to seal the BP well, another less invisible stain, mainly the result of vast amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients washing down the Mississippi River from agricultural lands upstream, has spread beneath the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It is the annual blossoming of a zone of low dissolved oxygen levels, anathema to fish, shrimp and other marine life, known colloquially as the “dead zone.”

This year’s hypoxic zone, nearly the size of the state of Massachusetts, is right in the range predicted earlier in the year by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, which does a yearly survey of oxygen levels. Here’s a map of the findings:

When I canvassed marine biologists and other experts late last week to get their forecasts of the long-term environmental impacts of the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher, one scientist, Nancy Rabalais, sent an apologetic note from the cruise charting oxygen levels, saying she had no time to weigh in because the expedition was wrapping up its survey. Late Sunday night, she sent the release below, summarizing the findings: Read more…

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As BP and its team prepare to seal the wrecked Macondo well with mud and cement early next week, and the extent of oil on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico has receded, biologists and other scientists are mulling the long-term prospects for the ecosystems of the despoiled region and the communities that rely on them.

I e-mailed a batch of researchers and other experts tracking the aftermath of the gulf gusher and others who studied previous oil spills to get their sense of where things go from here. Their responses are posted below (along with a musical take on the situation by Pete Seeger).

In the long run — as happened in the world’s worst oil spill, in the Persian Gulf during the war — ecosystems will heal and even thrive. But big questions persist for now.

While the risk to coasts is likely to quickly recede, biologists have expressed strong concerns about the use of nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants that don’t destroy surface slicks, but simply cause the oil to disperse and sink (not to mention the dispersants sprayed at the point where oil gushed from the seabed a mile down).

A Greenwire report published in the The Times put it this way:

That dispersed oil now hovers, diluted in the water column, posing a challenge for scientists to track and measure the subsea plumes. Mapping the long-term effects of the nearly 2 million gallons of dispersant used by BP PLC may well be equally difficult, given the array of unanswered questions that surround the products’ rapid breakdown of oil droplets and their chronic toxicity.

In other words, while dispersants may have helped spare the Gulf’s birds, the chemicals are likely shifting dangers to other species lower in the food chain. The National Research Council described dispersant use in 2005 as “a conscious decision” to direct hydrocarbons to one part of the marine ecosystem, “decreasing the risk to water surface and shoreline habitats while increasing the potential risk to organisms in the water column and on the seafloor.” Read the rest…

Here are the thoughts of some scientists and chroniclers of this and past oil spills, including the Exxon Valdez incident in 1989:

Eric Cordes, Temple University:

I think we still have a lot of “I don’t knows.” The oil on the surface appears to be going away. I am sure that there are plenty of people that would tell you that it has not disappeared from the marshes and shorelines of the northern Gulf. As Jane Lubchenco said, it does not appear to be sitting on the bottom, at least in the areas that have been surveyed. That doesn’t mean that there has been no impact on those deep-water coral or seep communities. There is a lot of evidence that the dissolved hydrocarbons and a fine mist of oil droplets are moving around at depth in plumes below 1000 meters.

We have not yet been to those depths to survey the communities that we know about – mostly natural oil seep communities, some within 6 miles of the Deepwater Horizon — to see if they have been impacted. Besides the immediately visually detectable impacts, this could also have long term affects on growth and reproduction that will take a long time to evaluate and monitor.We (Chuck Fisher and I, and others) hope to get out there soon to have a look. Until then, it is another big “I don’t know.”

Caz Taylor, Tulane University:

We have been seeing droplets of what could be oil or dispersant (or both) in crab larvae, from Pensacola, Fla., all the way down into Galveston, Tex. We haven’t yet confirmed what these droplets are but, if they are oil-spill related, then we have been seeing effects of the oil spill in places where oil is not visible for a while now. So the (welcome) news that the surface oil is receding does not greatly change my perception of the magnitude of the effects of the spill. There is still a lot of oil out there. If the oil and/or dispersant has entered the food web then the effects will be felt throughout the Gulf although they may take months, or longer, to manifest themselves.

With regards to whether the effects will be socioeconomic versus ecological, etc., it’s difficult to separate them when considering harvested species. We know that the one spill in the Gulf of comparable magnitude, from the Ixtoc well, resulted in a severe depression in marine populations, particularly shrimp. The stock took years to recover and the regional fishery never really recovered for a set of complex reasons. I recently moved to New Orleans, and it seems to me that this town and most of the region runs on local seafood. I think of the multiple effects of the collapse of the blue crab population and fishery in Chesapeake Bay. A similar decline of Gulf blue crabs, shrimp or any of our Gulf fisheries would be a cultural, sociological, economic and ecological tragedy.

Charles Wohlforth, a journalist who covered the Exxon Valdez spill and author of “The Fate of Nature”:

The Exxon Valdez oil spill offers a valuable lesson for predicting the long term harm of BP’s spill, teaching caution about the limits of our knowledge in a big, dynamic marine ecosystem. We still don’t know the true impact of Exxon Valdez, and now it is clear we never will. The immediate wildlife deaths in Alaska appear to have been orders of magnitude worse — a quarter million birds and otters compared to less than 2,000 animals so far confirmed dead from the Gulf. But measuring long-term damage requires understanding how pollutants work their way through water, sediments and the food web over time. That’s much harder than counting dead animals.

The ecosystem effects of pollution range from the nearly imperceptible, in depressed growth or reproduction of particular species, to the incomprehensible, as when the web of life is restructured because an important element of the old regime is disabled. If the impact of such a change is on the resilience rather than the productivity of the system, the damage may not be evident until much later, when the ecosystem collapses for a seemingly unrelated cause.

It’s clear the Sound ecosystem is profoundly different than it was before the oil hit 21 years ago. But scientists can’t tell us why, or exactly what the changes mean.

Throughout the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico officials have shown a lack of humility before the power and complexity of nature. Understanding the long term harm of the spill will require a major investment of time and money in a broad-ranging, well designed science program. And an acceptance that the only simple answer may be that oil spills must be prevented.

Ian MacDonald, Florida State University:

The human system through the northeastern Gulf of Mexico has experienced what can only be called a sympathetic reaction to the dragged out trauma that hit the Gulf’s marine and coastal ecosystem. The effects are undeniable. We know this because we’ve all felt the pain of the oiled birds and stained beaches over these past 100 days — everyone in the country, but those keenest who were closest to it. The question is how do we respond now that the acute phase is past? How do we assess and mitigate the damage done?

The recent satellite data indicate that although the oil has greatly diminished in the 15+ days since the gusher was staunched, patches of floating oil remain in the open Gulf and will continue to come ashore in the weeks to come — albeit in isolated patches of tarballs and coagulated mats. The decrease in volume of the floating oil is predicted by models from NOAA and others. A light sweet crude from Mississippi Canyon, floating on the Gulf of Mexico during summer conditions, will have a half life of 7 to 5 days. So it is not surprising that a great deal of oil “disappeared” once the flow of oil stopped.

However, as the time course of evaporation and dissipation continues, the material that remains will be more and more durable and persistent. Moreover, much the hydrocarbon that “disappears” is still in the environment following evaporation into the air, dissolution into the water, or burial in marine and coastal soils. BP and the authorities will smear that remaining material around and will recover a fraction of it. Ultimately, however, a combination of bacteria and environmental chemistry will oxidize everything except for the very durable residuals. That material, judging from past events, will remain for decades.

Thinking about this on a decadal scale, how do we repay the ocean for having cleaned up our mess? How do we make good on the great sympathetic trauma we all experienced? BP has pledged to make things right for the people of the region who have suffered economically. Under Obama’s pressure, they set aside $20 billion and will pay out more still more to settle law suits. Beyond all that, BP is facing a whopping fine — at least $5 billion and possibly as much as $20 billion!

Here’s a suggestion. That fine should be placed in a permanent trust to restore, understand, and sustain the Gulf of Mexico marine and coastal ecosystem. It should not be used to repay hotel owners or plug state deficits. We owe it to the gulf we love.

Sylvia Earle, oceanographer, National Geographic Society:

Applause to Ian MacDonald for this thoughtful analysis, and for the bottom line: We must take measures to “give back to the Gulf.”

We can speculate knowledgeably about the consequences to the future of the Gulf of Mexico, but there is no way to fully gauge the impacts on any single species, let alone the entire system, but one conclusion is clear. Pouring millions of gallons of oil and dispersants into an area already greatly stressed by upstream pollution, atmospheric fall-out, fifty years of industrial activity (44,000 wells, 33,000 miles of pipelines), shoreline
trauma, and ecosystem damage by decades of large-scale fishing is a recipe for short and long-term disaster.

To compensate the Gulf, and provide hope for recovery, actions should be taken asap to identify and protect areas that are still in good shape. This is the key. Obama has the power to do as Presidents T. Roosevelt and Bush have done in the past — under the Antiquities Act — to declare National Monuments. What better way to “give back to the Gulf” — and to the people whose livelihood depend on a healthy Gulf — than to protect the deep reefs and string of “topographic highs” in the Northern Gulf, the spawning areas for tuna, the critical places for menhaden, grouper, snapper, shrimp and others, as well as the vital — but neglected — seagrass meadows of Florida’s Big Bend area, from Panama City to Tampa Bay. Respect for the importance of the floating forests of Sargassum and their role in providing nursery areas, food and shelter — as well as taking up carbon and generating oxygen — might be considered in an overall recovery plan. This could be the moment to act to secure protection for Pulley Ridge, the extraordinary system of deep reefs 150 miles offshore from Sarasota.

New research and on-going monitoring is critical and would be a smart way to invest funding derived from whatever “restitution” comes from the current oil spill. However, knowledge already exists concerning where the critical areas are, based on years of existing research. In the past, moves to protect the Gulf have been timid at best. The Flower Garden Banks as a sanctuary is a jewel, and the small areas established for full protection within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary are helpful, but the serious scale of the present assault requires serious — and rapid — response.

I applaud the usual multi-year process required to establish marine protected areas, with long deliberations, public hearings and resulting multiple-use “Management areas” — a small but promising network of marine sanctuaries for the nation. It has worked in the past to acquire “buy in” from a broad public constituency, largely driven by a desire to placate those who want to continue fishing and other extractive uses. But in the Gulf, the amount of ocean truly protected (where even fish, shrimp and lobsters are safe) is a slim thread upon which to hang overall ecosystem integrity, let alone recovery from the latest blows. And time is of the essence.

Numerous proposals for establishing protected areas in the Gulf have been put forward over the years. Maybe now is the time, when the need is so obvious, to act on them.

There’ll be a lot more discussion of the long-term fate of the Gulf in months to come. In the meantime, make sure to watch this short video clip below from a forthcoming documentary, Mission Blue, which shows Earle’s recent trip to check on the status of whale sharks in the Gulf. These extraordinary fish feed on the surface and are considered particularly vulnerable to oil (although the sharks in this encounter were doing just fine:

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Also, Pete Seeger, at 91, has weighed in with a new contribution to the growing list of songs related to the gulf spill:
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When we look and we can see things are not what they should be
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
When we look and see things that should not be
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through, Hoping we’ll all pull through,
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through
Me and you.

It’s time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
It’s time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through, Hoping we’ll all pull through,
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through
Me and you.

And when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Yes when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through, Hoping we’ll all pull through,
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through
Me and you.

Don’t give up don’t give in, workin’ together we all can win
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Don’t give up don’t give in, workin’ together we all can win
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through, Hoping we’ll all pull through,
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through
Me and you.

There’s big problems to be solved, let’s get everyone involved
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
There’s big problems to be solved, let’s get everyone involved
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through, Hoping we’ll all pull through,
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through
Me and you.

When we sing with younger folks, we can never give up hope
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
When we sing with younger folks, we can never give up hope
God’s counting on me, God’s counting on you
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through, Hoping we’ll all pull through,
Hopin’ we’ll all pull through
Me and you.

Below you can watch a more home-style rendition of the tune, recorded just up the Hudson River from my home, at the Beacon Sloop Club (if you live in the region, make sure to come by for the monthly potluck supper, meeting and musical jam session, the first Friday evening of each month):

Federal oceanographers have released their second report assessing how much of the oil that gushed from the Gulf of Mexico seabed since the blowout of the BP well may have dispersed in ocean depths rather than rising to the surface. The new analysis confirms the previous conclusion that some oil did in fact drift and disperse in waters between 3,300 and 4,300 feet beneath the surface.

Minerals Management Service and NOAA Chemo III Project A kind of colonial cnidarian — an animal with stinging cells related to anemones, corals and jellyfish. The cluster of creatures was photographed near a cold seep nearly a mile down.

The report doesn’t assess the ecological significance of this oil. That will likely remain unknown for a long time to come. As Bill Broad reported in The Times in June, the gulf seabed is home to communities of organisms that thrive on petrochemical seeps and scientists are split on whether deep drifting oil from the Macondo well poses a significant environmental risk.

Just in case you’re wondering why the skimmers and support ships and all the other craft plying the oil-stained Gulf of Mexico are making for port, have a look at the National Hurricane Center map below:

There’s plenty more on the gulf forecast on the National Hurricane Center page for Atlantic storms, Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog and at Brian McNoldy’s Tropical Atlantic Headquarters page.

A new Web site, RestoreTheGulf.gov, is soon to be the only official outlet for information on the gulf oil disaster.

The Obama administration, clearly hoping that pressure tests on the capped BP seabed oil well succeed, is trying to pivot its online narrative on the disaster from response to recovery. On July 7, the government unveiled RestoreTheGulf.gov, a government Web site that will eventually completely supplant the DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com site that was hurriedly created in the spring to provide the latest information on everything from the oil flow to fishery closures. One problem with that site from the start, to my mind, was the mashup of information coming from BP and the federal government. This lack of delineation perhaps reflected the murky, and troubling, sense of who was in charge through the first month or so.

One great aspect of the old site was how it revealed the swiftness with which government communications officials dove into Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other online portals. From here on, direct immersion in the full span of online media will be a vital part of any disaster communication effort in a world where conventional media outlets are a shrinking slice of a growing communication pie.

When you visit the DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com page, there is now a prominent banner leading visitors to RestoreTheGulf.gov.

CREDIT The DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com Web site is being phased out.

Is the effort to shift the story line too far ahead of reality, given the questions about seeps of oil and gas around the well, and given that the final steps for permanently sealing the well are still weeks away? Time will tell.