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PATH: BS | Science
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Celebrities Misled By 'Restore The Gulf' Campaign
Posted by Pile
(11901 views)      [E-Mail link]
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[Environment]
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 Not long ago, many celebrities got together to make a PSA for the "Be The One" campaign, urging people to sign a petition to save the Gulf of Mexico on the website RestoreTheGulf.com (very similar to the government's website at RestoreTheGulf.gov, which might have caused confusion). This all seems good, until you look at the fine print and dig below the surface... Which is what DeSmogBlog did. It turns out that the campaign's sponsors are "America's WETLAND Foundation", a front group for oil companies (Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, etc), and "Women of the Storm", a Louisiana group with strong ties to America's WETLAND (the founder of the former is married to the chairman of the latter).
The end result seems to be a carefully-orchestrated snowjob by the oil and gas industry to try and get taxpayers to fund the cleanup of their own messes... |
READ MORE | 1 comment since 2014-02-15 23:49:48 | Comment on this Article |
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Top 10 Crazy Facts About The BP Gulf Oil Disaster
Posted by Pile
(17299 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Environment]
[Industry] |
 It's been more than seven weeks since BP's offshore oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, crude oil has been hemorrhaging into ocean waters and wreaking unknown havoc on our ecosystem -- unknown because there is no accurate estimate of how many barrels of oil are contaminating the Gulf.
Though BP officially admits to only a few thousand barrels spilled each day, expert estimates peg the damage at 60,000 barrels or over 2.5 million gallons daily. (Perhaps we'd know more if BP hadn't barred independent engineers from inspecting the breach.) Measures to quell the gusher have proved lackluster at best, and unlike the country's last big oil spill -- Exxon-Valdez in 1989 -- the oil is coming from the ground, not a tanker, so we have no idea how much more oil could continue to pollute the Gulf's waters.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster reminds us what can happen -- and will continue to happen -- when corporate malfeasance and neglect meet governmental regulatory failure.
The corporate media is tracking the disaster with front-page articles and nightly news headlines every day (if it bleeds, or spills, it leads!), but the under-reported aspects to this nightmarish tale paint the most chilling picture of the actors and actions behind the catastrophe. In no particular order, here are 10 things about the BP spill you may not know and may not want to know -- but you should. |
READ MORE | 1 comment since 2010-08-17 10:43:24 | Comment on this Article |
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Did you know there's a single company behind some of the most controversial elections in modern history? An ad company that has been using Facebook and "psychometrics" to accurately predict, classify and manipulate people and elections?
2017: Resolutions, OUT. Enemies, IN.
Is science BS? Or is there BS masquerading as science?
This may be one of the most interesting and poignant videos ever that demonstrates the unusual dynamic between not just believers and non-believers, but between different religious factions.
Until fairly recently, Jonathan Lundgren enjoyed a stellar career as a government scientist. An entomologist who studies how agrichemicals affect the ecology of farm fields, he has published nearly 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals since starting at the US Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service laboratory in Brookings, South Dakota, in 2005. By 2012, he had won the ARSs "Outstanding Early Career Research Scientist" award, and directorship of his own lab.
Fourteen years ago, a leading drug maker published a study showing that the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teenagers. On Wednesday, a major medical journal posted a new analysis of the same data concluding that the opposite is true.
Everybody from NPR to USA Today is reporting on fast food chain Chipotle finally making their entire menu GMO-free. 
Atheists have written their own version of the ten commandments. These commandments were chosen from submissions to Atheist Mind Humanist Heart’s (AMHH) Re-Think Prize, a crowdsourcing project.
Youtube user "potholer54" is gaining quite a reputation for his instructive and well-referenced videos debunking myths and showing the truth behind various social, cultural and scientific issues. In his latest post, he tackles pragmatic issues regarding global climate change, and looks deep into the skeptics and the resources they use to see who's really telling the truth...
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One of the archaeologists at Bad Archaeology lambastes the History Channel for its series Ancient Aliens and treating its nonsense as though it were fact.
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English comedian Russell Brand outlines the nature of his desire "to be famous" and in a short 10 minutes outlines a brilliant, cogent diatribe on the psychology of fame...
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We here at BSA want to get in the holiday spirit too, and what better way than to show off these cool, festive holiday lights... Find out how you can make your own too!
Penn Jillette gives one of his most honest and insightful interviews yet, discussing a number of interesting topics...
It goes without saying that most people no longer believe what British Petroleum is saying publicly about the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf and the condition of the well structure. The reality is much more frightening... In a few crevices in Cyberspace, experts in the industry are whispering what they think is really going on...
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Plaquemines parish president, Billy Nungesser makes a plea to the government to take over the project and stop British Petroleum's control over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as he watches the coastal marshes become irrevocably destroyed by the oil slick...
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An otherwise routine post in one of the online motorcycle enthusiast forums has been making the rounds as a powerful and poignant expose of what makes the modern conservative/right wing movement tick.
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Have you ever wondered why it's fashionable to be young and stupid? Craig Ferguson has it figured out...
Tim Minchkin launches a beat poem to end it all. A brilliant and magical tirade on the nature of irrationality.
The Obama Administration recently declassified about 1,000 satellite photographs of Arctic ice the Bush Administration had kept under wraps. The photos didn?t make much of a splash until recently, when two English newspapers, the Guardian and the Daily Mail, published some startling examples of the effects of global warming and how the Bush administration sought to cover this up.
There's a cool viral 
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Mike Rowe, host of the tv show, "Dirty Jobs" addresses a group in the tech industry and gets into a very insightful talk about whether conventional wisdom is "right" and what the problem is with America. Very well worth watching...
Just after midnight on December 22, levees broke at the The Kingston coal power plant, and a man-made pond containing toxic ash - essentially the leftovers from the nearby coal-burning power plant - burst its walls, and more than one billion gallons of coal ash spilled into the Tennessee River and its tributaries.
A clever group has put together a short animated film called, "Instruction Manual For Life", and created a unique metaphor for peoples' ideology and sense of tolerance. Check out this insightful film..
We interrupt this web site to bring you something that's likely more educational than what we usually provide, but it's worth watching...
Gay scientists have isolated the gene they believe makes people Christian.
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