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oceans

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    Ask Umbra’s Book Club: Dive into the big blue

    Greetings readers, As you all know, I am a bookworm of the highest order. In fact, I’m such a bookworm that my compost worms have their own library. I think it’s important to surround them with good literature, but they just keep eating the pages. And so must we all surround ourselves with good matter […]

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  • PR lessons from a 1960 oil trade group [VIDEO]

    The oil drilling and oyster industries both extract things from coastal waters, so it’s no surprise they’ve been interacting for decades. Here’s a cheesy 1960 video from the American Petroleum Institute that gives a fun look into that relationship, and the industry-funded science that keeps it humming: I don’t know the full background, but Louisiana […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Technology

  • Libertarian answer to oil spill: Privatize the ocean

    Industrial disasters create cleanup jobs. See, the system works!If there’s one thing the leaking gash in the Gulf of Mexico seems to make clear, it’s that private companies shouldn’t be left unwatched to meddle with the messy innards of our planet. They shouldn’t be allowed to open a hole they can’t close, as William Saletan […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Technology

  • The best books about the deep blue sea, just in time for World Oceans Day

    All reading lists are incomplete and arbitrary. This is especially true of a list limited to a dozen works about the ocean, the blue immensity that comprises 71 percent of our planet. So take this list with a grain of sea salt — and suggest your own favorites in the comments section below. ———————————————– Log […]

    Osha Gray Davidson Culture

  • Ask Umbra on celebrating World Oceans Day

    Some water over the rainbow … maybe there isn’t an oil spill.Photo: Sean Linehan, NOAAAhoy, mateys! Today is June 8th, and it’s one of my favorite holidays: World Oceans Day! World Oceans Day was officially declared a holiday last year by the United Nations. This year, I’m celebrating by taking a moment to consider the […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Four oil-spill questions scientists can’t answer

    A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worker carries an oiled pelican to a boat for transport to a recovery center.Photo: Deepwater Horizon ResponseCoast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, Barack Obama’s talking head of choice, made news on the Sunday talk shows with his grim prediction that the battle against BP’s oil blobs will last well into […]

    Randy Rieland Climate & Energy

  • BP oil heading toward Atlantic? Looks that way

    Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo: This nightmarish model comes from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which predicts that BP oil “might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and open ocean as early as this summer.” “I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?'” NCAR scientist Synte Peacock said in […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Technology

  • Oil gusher forces State Dept. into awkward diplomacy with Cuba

    Add this to every other sort of headache the Gulf of Mexico spill has caused: It’s now an international relations problem too. As Brendan DeMelle reports, the State Department has sent diplomatic notice about the spreading oil threat to Mexico, the Bahamas, the Marshall Islands, and even Cuba, a nation with which we do not […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Technology

  • Top U.S. scientists to Congress: No more ‘business as usual’ on climate change

    A group of the country’s top scientists say that the Earth definitely is getting hotter, that human activity is driving it, and that, unless dramatic measures are taken, the planet’s water supply, sea levels, coral reefs, etc. will be changed forever. So what else is new?   Well, actually, this time the National Academy of […]

    Randy Rieland Climate & Energy