From the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, a new Truther movement is born UPDATE: Troll detected in the comments!

NOTE: Please see the latest post regarding PGI, located here.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Project Gulf Impact.  It’s meme: “From the Gulf Stream to the bloodstream and why what you’re about to read is the alarm bell of the pending Gulf disaster.”

Project Gulf Impact (we’ll shorten that to PGI) is the newest, latest and greatest incarnation of the truther movement.  You know.  “Ask questions.  Seek the truth.”  Then ignore the truth when given, and ask even more asinine questions.  If it sounds familiar, it should.  If PGI sounds a lot like “Loose Change,” it should.

According to this whois.net report, Project Gulf Impact is a website established by Gavin Garrison, a Santa Barbara, California graduate student at USC.  Hmm.  California graduate students sound like natural experts on oil spill impacts in the Gulf of Mexico, don’t they?
If Gavin Garrison sounds a lot like Dylan Avery, he should.  After all, if film school rejects can speak truth to power about collapsing skyscrapers, then film school students in California can speak truth to power about oil spills 1,900 miles away, right?  Right.

Garrison’s filmograghy includes the NOAA-sponsored “Proof or Propaganda.” Want to guess which side the film falls on?

As is usual with new, exciting and scary conspiracy theories, Garrison, PGI and their mentally challenged ilk have developed a rather devoted following.  It’s the usual collection of Black Helicopter watchers, including several Examiner.com nodes and blog websites like Prison Planet and Godlike Productions.  Their latest:  A story alleging that a group of [ahem] California filmmakers were sickened by mysterious poisons while investigating “the truth” about the oil spill in [gag] “Nazi America.”  The film crew was allegedly working for…  guess who?  PGI, of course!

These people take themselves very seriously but apparently don’t investigate their allies very closely.  Upon reaching the Pelican State, the allegedly sickened PGI crew hooked up with one of New Orleans biggest moonbats: Casey Nunez.

Never heard of Casey?  Really?  Maybe you’ve heard him referred to as Casey Kaine, The Psycho Hurricane.  Or Crackhead Frankenstein.  In his own words:

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I'm 6"6 245 latent homosexual and come from New Orleans Louisiana USA. My friends call me "Beefy Tits". My grand father was A pitcher with the N.Y. Yankees that's how I came to have the Name Casey and more than likely where I Got the explosive knock out Bone crushing power of my right punches and kicks. My Power high Kick is 96.6 Inches or 8ft. At Age 16 I ran away with The Royal Hanneford circus and have done dates in every State in America over a 20 year period with my personal favorites being Michigan adventure in Muskegon. The ice palace in Tampa Florida, the mid Hudson civic center in Poughkeepsie New York and also the Yonkers raceway during the New York State Fair. My All time Favorite Date however by far would have to be The Great Circus Parade in Milwaukee Wisconsin since Its held during Summer fest so I always got to get in free to see all of the shows with my circus pass. I was a tour Guide here in new orleans on a mule drawn carriage at Jackson square and I also Worked as bouncer at the Tricou House 711 Bourbon Street where I lived in the Haunted 3rd floor attic suite which over looked bourbon street. In 1984 I became friends with Tommy Lee of the Heavy Metal Band Motley crue and Jake e. Lee Lead Guitarist for Ozzy after coming to their aid during a fight at the Dungeon in new Orleans.

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Beefy tits?

I swear on a barrel of Corexit, I’m not making this up.

Nunez has a long, sordid history as a YouTube troll.   This is apparently what attracted the PGI crew to Nunez.  He’s also the guy behind this notorious “raining oil” hoax:




Hey, if a troll like Nunez can make a video that fools The Drudge Report and Russia Today, he’s GOT to be the guy PGI hooks up with, right?

What a fine, honest, upstanding bunch of wackos we’ve got here.  Asking questions.  Seeking truth.
I have an honest question—who is the worse group of idiots:  Gavin, Nunez, Dupre, et al, or the fools who believe their garbage?

Missing Oil! Who's behind this? - Updated with video

Via Hot Air:

NYT: Oil slick on gulf surface disappearing rapidly on its own

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It’s not that the oil’s all gone, of course. But a lot of it is. And the rest is … hiding. [gasp!]
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Less surface oil means fewer dead animals and, presumably, less of a chance that a hurricane’s going to blow in and paint the coast black. As for the oil below the waves and what it’s doing to marine life, oxygen levels, etc., the feds will have to get back to you on that. [ZOMG] So far, so good, though: The Times notes that two early assessments have found relatively low concentrations of toxic compounds in the deep sea.

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It's obviously a conspiracy between BP and Halliburton. Or, the government and NALCO, the company that makes that evil, toxic, racist Corexit 9500 soapy stuff that disperses oil and makes it more accessible to the teeming microbial colonies that have evolved on the 390,590,821,800 oil seeps on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. After all, EPA said the stuff was pretty safe and didn't harm wildlife, so they're obviously hiding something.

The Gulf of Mexico is a unique body of water in the world.  It is virtually closed, exchanging very little water with the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.  It is also extremely warm in the summer months, which is why tropical systems tend to blow up so rapidly once they cross the Tropic of Cancer on their annual treks to the west-northwest.  I mean, it's bathwater warm. Natural substances like the light sweet (low sulphur) crude that spewed from the runaway Macondo well have been part of the ecosystem for millenia, and the ecosystem has evolved natural processes to deal with those substances and keep things in balance. The Deepwater Horizon incident did upset that balance, and things are likely to remain out of balance for a while.  But, not for long.  The well has only been capped for 13 days, and somewhere on the order of 100 million gallons of oil have all but disappeared from sight.

Where'd it go?  Back into the belly of the beast.

Update:  How could I forget the greatest conspiracy theory to evah be concocted about the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Matthew Simmons, "respected" energy market analyst, on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show. Magic. Flying. Blowout Preventers. Peak Oil... Thanks for the heads up, TJ. And correcting the video link.





Gimme some feedback in the comments.

But Corexit 9500 is still racist!!!

Uh oh.  Another huge setback for the doom-and-gloom crowd.  That nasty, evil and probably racist Corexit 9500 was among eight petroleum dispersants examined in a peer-reviewed labratory experiment by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Richard S. Judson, Matthew T. Martin, David M. Reif, Keith A. Houck, Thomas B. Knudsen, Daniel M. Rotroff, Menghang Xia, Srilatha Sakamuru, Ruili Huang, Paul Shinn, Christopher P. Austin, Robert J. Kavlock and David J. Dix.
National Center for Computational Toxicology, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27711, and NIH Chemical Genomics Center, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

Abstract

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has led to the use of >1 M gallons of oil spill dispersants, which are mixtures of surfactants and solvents. Because of this large scale use there is a critical need to understand the potential for toxicity of the currently used dispersant and potential alternatives, especially given the limited toxicity testing information that is available. In particular, some dispersants contain nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), which can degrade to nonylphenol (NP), a known endocrine disruptor. Given the urgent need to generate toxicity data, we carried out a series of in vitro high-throughput assays on eight commercial dispersants. These assays focused on the estrogen and androgen receptors (ER and AR), but also included a larger battery of assays probing other biological pathways. Cytotoxicity in mammalian cells was also quantified. No activity was seen in any AR assay. Two dispersants showed a weak ER signal in one assay (EC50 of 16 ppm for Nokomis 3-F4 and 25 ppm for ZI-400). NPs and NPEs also had a weak signal in this same ER assay. Note that Corexit 9500, the currently used product, does not contain NPEs and did not show any ER activity. Cytotoxicity values for six of the dispersants were statistically indistinguishable, with median LC50 values 100 ppm. Two dispersants, JD 2000 and SAF-RON GOLD, were significantly less cytotoxic than the others with LC50 values approaching or exceeding 1000 ppm.

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Corexit 9500, the predominant dispersant used by BP in attempting to break up the 140 million gallons of oil spilled by the runaway Macondo well, appears to have all of the toxicity and poisonous capacity of your average bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid.

The company that makes the stuff, NALCO, has been thrown into the blender of conspiracy theories surrounding this disaster.  Other ingredients in the conspiracy mix are Halliburton, George Soros, Brazilian Petrobras, the North Korean submarine Navy and giant, asphalt-eating monsters living on the floor of the Gulf.


Have faith, conspiracists.  I'm sure you'll concoct some other evil plot to reduce world population and bring forth the New World Order of the Bilderberger Rothschild clan. Or, maybe that Corexit is racist!

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Day 5: No evacuations planned...

It's Day 5 of a successful "well integrity test," which is governmentese for "the damned hole is still plugged."  Over the weekend, BP and the government were apparently at odds over the fate of the new capping and containment system.  The well has remained shut since Thursday afternoon.  BP, for obvious reasons, wants the well to remain shut in.  The government, for unbeknownst reasons, thinks that returning to containment and transfer to topside processing vessels should remain a viable and quick option.

Meanwhile, the doom-and-gloom crowd are in a near state of tizzy over the discovery of a hydrocarbon seep several kilometers away from the Macondo well.  Matt Simmons, an energy investor with a known short position in BP, has been telling anyone who will listen (from Dylan Ratigan to Kingworld productions) that the end of the world is upon is and that everyone should evacuate the Gulf Coast immediately to avoid impending doom.

The folks at TheOilDrum.com blog don't seem to be worried about his wild-headed theories, so I think I'll stay put.

The Deepwater Horizon Incident Timeline, which is absolutely the most popular page on this blog and as far as I can tell the only document of its kind on the web (so far), looks like it will extend a few more weeks.  The near certain success of the Development Driller Relief well is only meters away from intersecting Macondo, but the last few meters are critical and there's a lot of stop-and-go drilling left.  BP hopes to have the Macondo well intersected and bottom kill operations (hopefully) complete later this month.  But the cleanup will continue for months, if not years.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.