Oil spills have caused massive damage (the herring fishery in Prince William Sound may never recover and thus recovery may never occur for the populations of wildlife dependent on them such as sea otters and many birds). Yet, oil spills still represent a very small part of the damage done.

I wish I had your energy and drive. At some point I’ll piece together the literature and send it to you. The damage is well documented, but mostly sits as inaccessible gray literature and government reports.

By far the greatest cause of environmental harm is from other impacts such as subsidence and loss of marsh land and developed coastal lands from depressurization and consolidation of oil and gas deposits, loss of fish and wildlife habitat from pipeline construction (coastal Texas and Louisiana are a spagetti bowl of pipelines – some places are more pipeline ROW than open lands), infrastructure impacts such as navigation channels, refineries, etc.

Unlike oil spills, these are unavoidable, permanent losses to the coastal and inland environments.

The emphasis on oil spills would be analogous to saying the only environmental harm done by mountain top removal strip mining is from increased dust causing more air pollution. Oil spills are a red herring.

The industry has done very well in keeping this off the radar.

[JR: I don't agree with you here. Oil spills have always been huge news, unlike, say, dust. Also, unlike coal, we are probably going to use most of our conventional oil and natural gas, as Hansen and others have said. And doing so would not be fatal to the climate if we curtailed coal as Hansen and I'd like to.]

You’re right on the money here.

Most recently there has been the endorsement of T. Boone Pickens by a number of people who ought to know better, among them the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope and the Center for American Progress’s own John Podesta. (I will admit that, of the two, Pope is guilty of the more egregious praise.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ carl-pope/ t-boone-and-me_b_110712.html

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/ pressroom/ 2008/ 07/ podesta_statement_on_pickens_plan.html

My analogy for these folks is that of the spinster who drains her bank account to help the spurious fiance that she has met on the Internet. She’s been neglected for so long that she’s completely cowed and will do anything to please that special someone who finally pays attention to her.

Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to watch.

Blogging for the future at Climaticide Chronicles.

I think Environmentalist in North America have effectively been drowned out by big time commerce, their backers and big oil.

Al Gore covers this in his last book…
The Assault on Reason

NYT says about the book…
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/books/22kaku.html

I think it might become a classic in its category.

Time we stopped and countered the organized denialist, obstructionist campaigns.

Thanks

I suggest John McPhee’s excellent book “Control of Nature” for a reality check on what’s going on at the south end of the Mississippi River.

While it may be true that no single storm can be attributed to global warming, it is equally true each individual storm, is very likely to be stronger than it otherwise would be, and that each one is an example what we can expect to see much more of if we don’t cut GHG emissions now.

It’s well past time to pander to deniers and self-interested delayers, or to accept their framing of issues.

Thanks Joe.