[Coral-List] Gulf eco-conspiracy

[Jim Hendee]

Hi, Andrew...

    Thanks for showing us that article,

   
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-cope/the-crime-of-the-century_b_662971.html

which the author of the piece calls the "crime of the century."  I would
like to respond to the article referenced in your post, something I
rarely do.

    I should say here that even though I'm the Administrator of this
list, and I represent NOAA in what I say and do, I am herewith hoping
that I can successfully plop down a disclaimer right here and now and
say that the view below is mine as an individual, and not an official 
(i.e., passed through chain-of-command) view.

    I am so disgusted with this writer's type of non-scientific approach
to observation and reporting that I had written a couple of pages of a
response, quoting the author and spelling out what was wrong with this
type of writing.  However, I despaired, because this is unfortunately
not new from these guys trying to get in "print" (actually, anybody can
put junk on a blog these days) and/or trying to bring attention to a
subject, the latter of which is fine, but you have to wonder if the
former is more important to some of these writers.  So, I'm just going
to end with one quote.

"The Gulf of Mexico from the Source into the shore is a giant kill zone."

    By inference I take it to mean that the ENTIRE Gulf of
Mexico--radiating out from the Source to the shores of Louisiana, across
to South Florida and the Keys, west to Texas, and down to the Gulf of
Campeche--is completely devoid of life.  Big zone, big kill.  Bad guys,
all in collusion. 

    How ridiculous.  We already know it's bad.  Why not put more time
into describing the huge amount of science that is now, and for years
ahead, going to go into figuring out the effects of this spill on the
ecosystem, and the engineering to make the unfortunately necessary oil
discovery process continue successfully.  Of course that would take a
lot more research on the part of the writer, making it much more
difficult to make that deadline on Friday...

    Jim

On 8/9/2010 10:01 AM, andrew ross wrote:
> Jim and all,Have you seen this?
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-cope/the-crime-of-the-century_b_662971.html
> It's potentially a bit "men in black"-conspiracy, so I checked with a friend who runs snapper charters in Texas- there are no fish in his favorite spots, even spots many miles out that (to his knowledge) saw no oil. 
>
> Little to do with coral directly, so I'll leave it up to you whether or not to post to the list.
> Andrew 
>
>
>