[Coral-List] Gulf eco-conspiracy

Tue Aug 10 11:40:16 EDT 2010

Dear Listers,

As an environmentalist I must also disagree with the line of thought in the huffingtonpost.com article.

Unfortunately freedom of speech and the internet make for a lot of useless "information' for which there always will be an audience.

The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill is like the financial markets meltdown, something that was coming, because too many of the instruments in the checks and balances system were not in place, malfunctioned or had been turned "off".

I have heard some conspiracy theories the likes of which make Area 51 and alien abduction pale in comparison when it comes to why the oil spill was allowed to happen.

If anything I have learned over the last two decades in my line of work, is that humans make mistakes and when corporate greed and lack of oversight and regulation go hand in hand, the mistakes can be catastrophic or huge in impact.

It should not have happened and it should never again.

Let;s leave it to the scientists out in the field, regulators and legislators to make sure we really get to know the extent of the damage, compensate those impacted, try to fix what can be fixed and regulate this in such a fashion that it becomes very unlikely to repeat ever again.

In this issue there cannot be and must not be allowed any room for dissemination of conspiracy theories, and less for eco-conspiracy theories.

Milton Ponson, President
Rainbow Warriors Core Foundation
(Rainbow Warriors International) Tel. +297 568 5908
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad 
Aruba, Dutch Caribbean 
Email: southern_caribbean at yahoo.com    http://www.rainbowwarriors.net

To unite humanity in a global society dedicated to a sustainable way of life

--- On Mon, 8/9/10, Quenton Dokken <qdokken at gulfmex.org> wrote:

From: Quenton Dokken <qdokken at gulfmex.org>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Gulf eco-conspiracy
To: "'Jim Hendee'" <jim.hendee at noaa.gov>, "'Coral-List Subscribers'" <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Date: Monday, August 9, 2010, 3:53 PM

Jim,

You are absolutely correct.  The absurdity of some of the rhetoric coming
across the media has been mind numbing.  Unfortunately, we are the nation of
the National Inquirer and Jerry Springer; no matter how absurd, there is an
audience. 

Quenton Dokken, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Gulf of Mexico Foundation, Inc.
PMB 51 5403 Everhart Rd.
Corpus Christi, TX 78411

Office:  3833 South Staples Suite S214
                Corpus Christi, TX 78411

361-882-3939 o
361-882-1262 f
361-442-6064 c

www.gulfmex.org

-----Original Message-----
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
[mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Jim Hendee
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2010 11:04 AM
To: Coral-List Subscribers
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Gulf eco-conspiracy

Hi, Andrew...

    Thanks for showing us that article,

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

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.h
tml
> 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 
>
>
>       

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