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The decision was handed down in a packed courtroom by Alberta provincial court Judge, Ken Tjosvold. 

“I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that Syncrude could have acted lawfully by using due diligence to deter birds from the basin, whether or not it was successful in its attempts at deterrence, and it did not do so,” Tjosvold said in his written decision.  The judge pointed to evidence presented during the trial that showed Syncrude had reduced staff responsible for its bird deterrent systems because of retirements and had scaled back the number of deterrents it used in the years before the ducks died.

The federal government hasn’t ruled out seeking a $300,000 fine for each of the 1,606 ducks that perished .  Federal Prosecutor Kent Brown said that while he won’t seek an available jail term for Syncrude executives, no decision has been made about seeking a fine that potentially could total almost $500 million.

Provincial Crown prosecutor Susan McRory told the court she would recommend that Syncrude fund an environmental project rather than pay a fine. Syncrude faces a maximum $500,000 provincial fine.

The team analyzed the number of research papers published by more than 900 climate researchers and the number of times their work was cited by other scientists.  Expertise was evaluated by the number of papers on climate research written by each individual, with a minimum of 20 required to be included in the analysis.  Prominence was assessed by taking the four most frequently cited papers published in any field by each scientist — not just climate science publications — and tallying the number of times those papers were cited by other researchers.

“These are standard academic metrics used when universities are making hiring or tenure decisions,” said William Anderegg, lead author of the paper published in the online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

The results:

• Climate researchers who are convinced of human-caused climate change had on average about twice as many publications as the unconvinced
• Papers by climate researchers convinced of human effects were cited approximately 64 percent more often than papers by the unconvinced.
• When you look at the leading scientists who have made any sort of statement about anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, you find 97 percent of those top 100 surveyed scientists explicitly agreeing with or endorsing the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assessment.

Media outlets (particularly in the United States) have eliminated “science” reporters and have gone to a business model of general reporting. This results in a lack of  understanding regarding scientific rigor and process on the part of reporters and journalism schools and the following of the mantra of getting someone to comment from the “other” side of a particular story.  The problem with this approach is that you are treating science and scientific research as if it is pure opinion like politics. 

“We really wanted to bring the expertise dimension into this whole discussion,” Anderegg said. “We hope to put to rest the notion that keeps being repeated in the media and by some members of the public that ‘the scientists disagree’ about whether human activity is contributing to climate change.”

“I never object to quoting opinions that are ‘way out.’ I think there is nothing wrong with that,” said Stephen Schneider, professor of biology and a coauthor of the paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “But if the media doesn’t report that something is a ‘way out’ opinion relative to the mainstream, then how is the average person going to know the relative credibility of what is being said?”

Source: Stanford University (2010, June 27). Scientific expertise lacking among ‘doubters’ of climate change, says new analysis. ScienceDaily

“Our goal is to provide students from a variety of academic backgrounds with an understanding of contemporary marine conservation and policy issues,” said program director Dr. Robert Cerrato. “Graduates of this program should have the advanced training and broad skill-set needed to compete effectively for marine conservation positions that are not research-based. They should be well prepared for employment in government, environmental consultancy, and non-governmental organizations, and to apply marine conservation and policy knowledge in other fields such as law, teaching, communications, or business.”

The Graduate Program in Marine Conservation and Policy balances coursework in marine science, marine conservation biology, communications, and quantitative analysis with classes in marine management, economics, policy, or law. Through an exciting new collaboration with the School of Journalism, the program aims to equip students with the communications skills necessary to connect scientists with stakeholders and to make research results understandable to the general public.

Students in the Graduate Program in Marine Conservation and Policy will have the opportunity to learn from SoMAS faculty who are world-renowned experts in marine conservation, including researchers from the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, which became a part of SoMAS in 2008. Each student’s course of study culminates with an in-depth capstone study or internship resulting in the production of an original synthesis paper based on a consequential topic in marine conservation and policy.

“From oil spills to overfishing to the consequences of global warming, our oceans are in peril,” said Dr. Cerrato. “We hope that this program will train the next generation of ocean advocates and guardians who will build the framework for a smarter ocean policy.”
Stony Brook University’s Graduate Program in Marine Conservation and Policy is accepting applications through the middle of July for enrollment in fall of 2010.

About the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University
The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) is the State University of New York’s center for marine and atmospheric research, education, and public service. With more than 85 faculty and staff and more than 500 students engaged in interdisciplinary research and education, SoMAS is at the forefront of advancing knowledge and discovering and resolving environmental challenges affecting the oceans and atmosphere on both regional and global scales

The Gulf oil spill — the worst in the history of the nation — has caused extraordinary environmental and economic damage to the communities along the Gulf Coast.  Out-of-work fishermen are wondering how they will provide for their families; oil-drenched birds are struggling to live; and globs of oil are washing ashore on area beaches causing tourists to look elsewhere for vacation.

Current technologies exist to begin the job of achieving true security.  But to dramatically reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil and domestic drilling and to meet the nation’s 2030 target to substantially reduce greenhouse gases, advanced technologies are needed.  And that means a greater investment in long-term research.

The U.S. House cap-and-trade (Waxman-Markey) bill shortchanged that kind of research.  The Senate must do better. Legislators should start by including in the bill the president’s Clean Energy Technology Fund, an investment of $15 billion per year over 10 years to develop affordable, low-emission energy technologies.

Energy efficiency, an APS Study Panel concluded, is the easiest and least inexpensive way to significantly reduce the nation’s demand for imported and domestic oil and its greenhouse gas emissions without causing any loss of comfort or convenience.    

“Energy efficiency reduces demand, and energy we do not use costs nothing, emits nothing and does not pollute the Gulf,” said Nobel Laureate Burton Richter, who chaired the APS energy efficiency study and authored the newly released book, “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century.”
Numerous technologies already exist to increase the efficiency of U.S. vehicles and buildings that will save consumers money.  But, as the panel’s report, Energy Future: Think Efficiency noted, realizing future gains, as with other energy technologies, will require a larger and better focused federal research and development program on energy efficiency than exists today.

The APS report also noted that consumers often are not provided with information that allows them to make informed decisions on energy consumption.  The cap-and-trade legislation should include a provision to help consumers save money by requiring energy audits at the point of sale for new homes.  The audits would give home buyers valuable information regarding energy efficiency upgrades to lower their utility costs.

NOAA ship Delaware II departs Key West, Fla., today to collect tunas, swordfish and sharks, to gather data about the conditions these highly migratory species are experiencing in waters around the Gulf of Mexico spill site.

During the two-week mission, the research vessel will use longline fishing gear to capture the fish, and assess their environment using sophisticated water chemistry monitoring instruments. Researchers will only retain the fish needed to get enough samples for the study. Every effort is made to release any animals caught but not needed for sampling. Some may also be fitted with satellite tags to help determine how much time these highly migratory animals spend in oiled and unoiled waters.

These fish, and other prized Gulf seafood species, are the focus of NOAA’s response mission to help assess the safety of seafood for consumers, and to lay the groundwork for measuring the long-term effects of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill on commercially important fish and shellfish.

Two other NOAA ships, Pisces, one of NOAA’s newest research vessels, and the ship Oregon II, are in the midst of surveys of reef fish, bottom-dwelling fish, and shrimp in the eastern and western Gulf of Mexico to sample for seafood and water quality and species abundance as part of the oil spill response.

“These vessels are providing a variety of seafood and water samples from locations throughout the Gulf—nearshore and offshore, shallow water and deep, oiled and unoiled,” said Dr. Steven Murawski, who is leading NOAA’s science response to the spill. “This is baseline information we need to measure any effects on seafood attributable to the spilled oil and to make sure our fishery closures are effective and in place for as long as they need to be, but no longer.”

The seafood samples will be analyzed by scientists in NOAA labs in Pascagoula, Miss., and Seattle for levels of oil and dispersants and to document the movements of fish from oiled to unoiled waters, to compare against guidelines for re-opening fishery closure areas, and to provide baseline information so that changes in the ecosystem owing to spilled oil can be measured.

A fourth NOAA ship, the Gordon Gunter, is also in the Gulf, surveying marine mammals through August 5. Researchers are taking biopsy and water samples for analysis, and placing satellite tags on some animals to learn more about how they move between oiled and unoiled waters. The ship is also placing underwater listening devices on the ocean floor in the survey area. These will be left for up to four months, recording the vocalizations of marine mammals so researchers can better understand which species are present.

These missions build upon research conducted in the vicinity of the spill by NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson, and a previous mission by NOAA ship Gordon Gunter from May 27 through June 4. Teams from NOAA, universities, marine science institutions, and other federal agencies collected water samples and employed advanced methods for detecting submerged oil while gathering oceanographic data in the area.

A sixth NOAA survey vessel, Nancy Foster, departs Miami next week for a mission to better understand the loop current and how it may change over time, as well as to sample planktonic animals potentially affected by the spill.

Also, specialized NOAA aircraft operating out of Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana continue to support the Deepwater Horizon response.

NOAA’s fleet of ships and aircraft is operated by the NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations.

Other ships are also supporting NOAA in the Gulf:

• The charter ship Beau Rivage is in the closed fishing zone in the eastern Gulf, using bottom longline gear to catch fish for seafood safety samples.
• The NOAA Mississippi lab vessel Gandy is conducting a vertical line survey in the eastern Gulf, collecting seafood safety samples.
• The NOAA Mississippi vessel Caretta will be geared up this week for trawling and plankton work in the oiled area off Mississippi.
• Several for-hire recreational charters are collecting seafood safety samples in both the open and closed areas off Clearwater, Fla

Ping Wang and USF graduate students Mark Horwitz, Tiffany Roberts, Katherine Brustche and Jun Cheng report that tar balls have been found along 160 kilometers (more than 99 miles) of the overall 180 kilometers (nearly 112 miles) of beaches the team studied. Wang received an NSF rapid response grant for the research.

“The baseline information Wang and colleagues have assembled is an invaluable data set for assessing the mixing of oil in beach sands across the Mississippi, Alabama and western Florida shorelines,” said H. Richard Lane, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, which co-funded Wang’s rapid response award with NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.

The researchers studied a stretch of coastline from Alabama’s Dauphin Island to the eastern end of Santa Rosa Island in Florida, including 17 sections of northeast Gulf beaches and six marsh areas in the eastern Mississippi Sound.  While crews cleaning beaches along the Gulf coast where oil is washing ashore have become a common sight, Wang said cleanup efforts are leaving behind numerous small tar balls and contaminated beaches.  Although most of the larger tar balls are removed, the cleanup efforts don’t return the beaches to their pre-spill condition. The tar balls can become easily buried in the sand, Wang said. Buried oil, he said, is more difficult to remove and may decay more slowly than exposed tar balls.

The findings represent conditions along the studied stretch of coastline through June 9th, and include results associated with varying degrees of beach cleanup.  The intensity of the beached oil decreased generally from west to east, but the study was conducted before wind conditions began moving oil farther east toward more stretches of Florida Panhandle shorelines.

The researchers first traveled the northern Gulf beaches from May 7th-19th to gather baseline data on beach conditions. These pre-beach-oiling data were collected along pristine beaches in state and national parks, as well as along heavily developed stretches of beach. In addition to examining the beaches for oil, the scientists conducted short coring operations to get a complete picture of beach conditions before the oil arrived.

On their first research trip in May, the researchers found unsoiled white quartz sand (also known as “sugar sand”), which has made the area’s beaches among the world’s most famous.  By the time the geologists returned in June, the shores were marked with sticky tar balls, some as large as pancakes. The strengthening of summer sea breezes will provide stronger on-shore forcing to push the oil onto the beaches, Wang said.  “High waves and storm surges are capable of spreading the oil contamination over a much larger area than the narrow beach zone where the tar balls are currently found,” Wang said.

“It doesn’t need to be a major hurricane to push the oil onto the shore and spread it over a large area–it just needs to be a storm.”

The NSF response to the Gulf oil spill involves active research in geosciences, computer simulation, engineering, biology, materials research and other fields represented across the agency, with more than two dozen awards totaling over $3 million.

The movement started in Florida on February 13, 2010 with a statewide gathering against offshore oil drilling occurred. Thousands of Floridians representing 60 towns and cities and over 90 beaches joined hands to protest the efforts by the Florida Legislature and the US Congress to lift the ban on oil drilling in the near and off shores of Florida. Florida’s Hands Across The Sand event was the largest gathering in the history of Florida united against oil drilling. Thousands joined hands from Jacksonville to Miami Beach and Key West to Pensacola Beach, each against oil drilling in Florida’s waters.  What a travesty that oil has started washing up on Florida’s beautiful white sand beaches this week.

The Mission Statement

The Event

STEP 1

Go to the beach at 11 AM in your time zone for one hour, rain or shine.

STEP 2

Join hands for 15 minutes at 12:00 forming lines in the sand against oil drilling in our coastal waters.

STEP 3

Leave only your footprints.

Don’t worry if you don’t live near the beach.  Events are being held all over the world, inland as well as on the coast.  Please visit the “Hands Across the Sand” website to find an event near you. 

It started four or five days ago and the companies responsible didn’t notify anyone. It is catastrophic,” HEPCA managing director Amr Ali told an AFP reporter. HEPCA, a non-governmental organisation based in Hurghada, has been working for the protection of natural resources in the Red Sea.The spill was caused by leakage from an offshore oil platform north of Hurghada and has polluted protected areas and showed up on tourist beach resorts.

“The companies have said they will pay damages, but it is the environmental damage that we are concerned about,” Ali said, declining to name the companies for legal reasons.  “We will take all measures, including legal, to make sure this does not happen again…we would like to see more stringent standards imposed on these offshore platforms to ensure natural areas are protected,” he said.

More than 180 rigs also operate in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez, according to the oil ministry, although production from the area has declined in the past decade.  Total Egyptian oil output averaged 742,000 barrels a day in 2009, compared with a peak of 941,000 barrels a day at the end of 1993, according to the BP Annual Statistical Review of World Energy.

The oil has been visible on- and offshore since June 17. Hoteliers and provincial government workers are cleaning the white sand beaches along the Hurghada shore though no effort has been made to collect the oil at sea floating atop coral reefs that are a magnet for visiting divers.

“This is a vital area for tourism,” said Mohamed Shobaghi, general manager for Aquanaut, a dive center in Hurghada. “I suppose the authorities expect the oil to clean up itself.”

This follows the recent unveiling of the design of its Oyster 2 device which will be built in Scotland later this year.  This new, next generation 800kW device will deliver 250 per cent more power than the original Oyster 1 with only a 50 per cent increase in footprint. Oyster 1 has been successfully undergoing sea trials at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney since November of last year and is connected to the National Grid.

The company will begin deployment of Oyster 2, which consists of three flaps linked to a single onshore 2.4 MW hydro-electric turbine at EMEC in Summer 2011.

The proceeds of the fundraising will be used to fund the procurement programme and provide general working capital.

Earlier this year Aquamarine Power secured an award from the Carbon Trust’s Marine Renewables Proving Fund (MRPF) to support the manufacture of Oyster 2.

In partnership with SSE Renewables, the company has already been successful in the Crown Estate leasing round, securing exclusive rights to develop the 200MW Brough Head wave farm which could provide enough energy to power around 190,000 homes. This joint venture is the first site development within the agreement with SSE Renewables to jointly develop up to 1,000MW of marine energy sites by 2020 using Oyster technology.

Martin McAdam, Chief Executive Officer of Aquamarine Power, commented:

“Aquamarine Power has made substantial progress over the last 12 months.  Our current Oyster device has performed well during sea trials surviving the harshest winter seas off the coast of Orkney and the data we have gathered from it has enabled us to design a much more powerful Oyster 2.

“The additional fundraising enables us to progress to the next phase – the manufacture and installation of Oyster 2 and we will announce the award of these contracts shortly.

“As an emerging industry, marine energy has a substantial funding requirement and the financial support of investors and the UK and Scottish Governments is paramount to its success.

“Once again I would like to thank all of our investors, which include Scottish and Southern Energy, Scottish Enterprise, our Norwegian investors and Sigma Capital Group plc for their support, as we surge forward with the development of the technology and the company.”