Stance and Balance

Bad enough that the federal agencies have put politics ahead of science in addressing the Deepwater Horizon event.  But attempting to discredit academic science?  From the St. Petersburg Times yesterday, this headline “USF says government tried to squelch their oil plume findings“.  Quoting briefly:

“I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil,” USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF’s public announcement, he said, comparing it to being “beat up” by federal officials.

The USF scientists weren’t alone. Vernon Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, was part of a similar effort that met with a similar reaction. “We expected that NOAA would be pleased because we found something very, very interesting,” Asper said. “NOAA instead responded by trying to discredit us. It was just a shock to us.”

To be fair, in an interview with the Washington Post yesterday, Hogarth made clear that the officials that told him to retract USF’s announcement were not from NOAA.

Hogarth said one agency had, indeed, asked him to retract the school’s announcement. But he wouldn’t say which agency–other than to say it wasn’t NOAA.

That should help bring about accountability.

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And on the words count front, this from the very end of the Washington Post article:

But she [Lubchenco] said that the word “plume” had given the public the wrong impression: what was under the surface was really highly diluted oil droplets, not thick black concentrations of crude. NOAA prefers to call them “clouds,” instead of plumes.

Maybe it is the first “A” in NOAA that causes the confusion.  There is no question these are plumes.  Could this be why NOAA didn’t reach out to the broad scientific community that works on oceanic plumes?

I have been concerned this week, ever since the Wednesday press conference of NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco describing the government’s new “oil spill calculator”, the NY Times coverage here.  The spin was unmistakable, 75% of the oil has gone missing and there is reason for great optimism.

The primary government document is a short read.  From it you’ll learn that they can account for about 25% of the oil, burned or recovered.  Then the primary distortion:  the nearly half that is described as “chemically dispersed”, “naturally dispersed” and “evaporated or dissolved”.  It is no longer oil!  Kind of.  The dispersed category accounts for small droplets of oil, “finer than a human hair”, that will undergo biodegradation, but in the meantime remain a serious environmental concern.  Same for the hydrocarbons soluble in water.  Still there, still an environmental concern.

The Consortium for Ocean Leadership, of which UW is a member institution, responded Friday afternoon.  The Ocean Leadership statement reinforces my skepticism.  The conclusion:

The American public needs to understand that this problem is not rapidly going away and based on previous oil spills, significant impact to the Gulf environment, ecosystems and communities will continue for many years.

Apparently the understanding of the American public is not going to be helped by its federal government.   David Gregory quizzed Carol Browner, President Obama’s Senior Advisor on Energy and Climate Change, on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning.  Asked twice about dispersed oil, in the context of her part of the spin during her appearance on NBC’s Today on Wednesday morning, she ran around the question continuing to distort the reality:  75% is not gone–75% is in the environment, most in the Gulf of Mexico, the remainder in the atmosphere.

Can we manage to keep our eye on the ball?

A NYT article this morning reaffirms the continuing harm of not knowing how much oil is discharging from Deepwater Horizon, though with blame put oddly on BP:

Rate of Oil Leak Still Not Clear, Puts Doubt on BP:  “On Monday, BP said a cap was capturing 11,000 barrels of oil a day from the well. The official government estimate of the flow rate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, which means the new device should be capturing the bulk of the oil.  But is it? With no consensus among experts on how much oil is pouring from the wellhead, it is difficult — if not impossible — to assess the containment cap’s effectiveness. BP has stopped trying to calculate a flow rate on its own, referring all questions on that subject to the government. The company’s liability will ultimately be determined in part by how many barrels of oil are spilled.”

Certainly BP is acting to serve its own interests and is not being at all helpful.  But what about the official government estimate?  I advocate for a different close to the headline: “Puts Doubt on BP and FRTG”.  For while it is wonderful that BP is managing to capture over twice as much oil per day as they claimed was being discharged, FRTG by publicly releasing what is a minimum to the flow while calling it the “best estimate” should share blame for this debacle.  And so finally the national press is bringing some of the nuance to the forefront:

“In fact, a subgroup that analyzed the plume emerging at the wellhead could offer no upper bound for its flow estimate, and could come up with only a rough idea of the lower bound, which it pegged at 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day.”

Later in the story, the focus turns to the White House:

“I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” Mr. Obama told the show’s host, Matt Lauer, in an interview in Kalamazoo, Mich. “We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answer so I know whose ass to kick.”

We are being misled, not just by BP, but by the way in which FRTG is reporting its results.  And so don’t forget to kick some ass of the government handlers of the FRTG.  For starters why is MMS represented?  How about some independence not just from BP but from the governmental entity that was asleep at the wheel?

Apparently all “official” authorities (BP and now FRTG) believe we can’t handle the truth.

There is still a factor of five-ten range in the estimates of discharge, with the FRTG range of estimates at the low end.  (Some news accounts claim the FRTG estimate is meant to be a lower bound, but I simply can’t find that in the Department of Interior press release which begins by calling the work of the group an “independent, preliminary estimate of the amount of oil flowing from BP’s leaking oil well.”)

The news tonight is that, with the failure of “Top Kill”, instead of a few more days discharge from the well will continue perhaps a couple more months, putting estimates of duration at three times than earlier in the week.

The time is past to get serious about discharge and duration.  This is the reason we have the National Academies, instead of the continuing ad hoc approaches intertwining high quality science with wishful thinking and management of public opinion.

Has this event become 20-fold worse than it was a week ago? No, only our perception.  We can handle the truth.