Originally Posted By DAR <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101007/ap_on_sc/us_gulf_oil_spill" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201...il_spill</a> Not good.
Originally Posted By plpeters70 This really disappoints me. Obama claimed that his White House wouldn't ignore what scientists were saying, and would be more open to scientific views. But, once again, we see a White House that is trying to block scientific research so that it can "control the message". Is there ANYONE left in charge of this country we can trust to actually tell us the truth?
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt I agree with you plpeters70, this is not encouraging. I'm very disappointed.
Originally Posted By andyll What a poorly written article. It tries to make 2 points. 1) that the admin refused to publicly release the worst case numbers. But in the article... "...early May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told the public that the worst-case scenario could be more than 100,000 barrels a day, or 4.2 million gallons."" "In late April, just after the spill began, the Coast Guard and NOAA received an updated worst-case estimate of 2.7 million to 4.6 million gallons per day." So it sounds like the Govt did publicly release the worst case numbers. And the 2nd point... "But the analysis never said it was gone, according to the commission. It said it was dispersed, dissolved or evaporated — meaning it could still be there. " uhhh... if it ws dispersed, dissolved or evaoprated... then it is gone. The article is trying too hard to find things to complain about and failed. Typically you avoid contridicting yourself in your own article.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "The article is trying too hard to find things to complain about and failed." Not exactly. The article is about findings from a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster. It's simply telling us what the report said. At the very least it's pretty clear that Carol Browner is either misinformed or deliberately tried to misinform the public on her appearance on a television talk show.
Originally Posted By andyll 1 person being wrong on what they said once does not equal the WH blocking a report when the Interior Secretary and the governments head of the crisis (Allen) already have relayed the worst case scenario. And this statement makes absolutely no sense at all: "But the analysis never said it was gone, according to the commission. It said it was dispersed, dissolved or evaporated — meaning it could still be there. " There were a lot of issues with the spill but the WH trying to minimize it was not one of them.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "1 person being wrong on what they said once does not equal the WH blocking a report when the Interior Secretary and the governments head of the crisis (Allen) already have relayed the worst case scenario." It was more than one person. Long before the correct information was released the WH repeatedly and purposely give low ball estimates on the actual amount of oil spilling into the gulf. While none of this is criminal or Earth shattering, it certainly doesn't lend any credibility to an administration that pledged transparency with it's dealings with the American public. As I said before, it's disappointing. The one consolation in all of this is that the commission was appointed by the president. >>And this statement makes absolutely no sense at all: "But the analysis never said it was gone, according to the commission. It said it was dispersed, dissolved or evaporated — meaning it could still be there. "<< It makes perfect sense if you read it in conjunction with what Browner said in the preceding paragraph: "I think it's also important to note that our scientists have done an initial assessment, and more than three-quarters of the oil is gone". So, basically she painted an overly optimistic and inexact picture of what the scientists had actually reported. Her comments gave the impression that the oil material had just vanished when it hadn't. What she did was dishonest. "There were a lot of issues with the spill but the WH trying to minimize it was not one of them." Not sure how you can come to that conclusion considering the commission's findings.
Originally Posted By andyll <<It was more than one person. Long before the correct information was released the WH repeatedly and purposely give low ball estimates on the actual amount of oil spilling into the gulf.>> Initially what was reported is the low ball estimates from BP. But once the report was released the Interior Secretary and Allen publicly relayed the updated estimate. The article says they surpressed it. The thread title says they surpressed it. That is not true. " dispersed, dissolved or evaporated" ?!? uhh... the oil went away. You are going to quibble of the term vanished? <<Not sure how you can come to that conclusion considering the commission's findings.>> Interior Secretary and Allen did not surpress the report which is what the article says.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "Initially what was reported is the low ball estimates from BP." That's right, but I think what you're missing (or simply choosing to ignore) is that the WH deliberately chose to go with the low ball estimates when they had scientific evidence that the spill was much worse.
Originally Posted By andyll <<That's right, but I think what you're missing (or simply choosing to ignore) is that the WH deliberately chose to go with the low ball estimates when they had scientific evidence that the spill was much worse.>> The article itself says that Salazar & Allen reported the worst case estimates when the report came out. Did you even read the article?
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "Did you even read the article?" I've read several, including the one at the link.
Originally Posted By andyll <<I've read several, including the one at the link. >> Then I guess I don't understand why you keep ignoring the fact that the article states that Salazar & Allen reported the worst case estimates publicly when the report came out. Which kinda undermines the whole thesis of the article that the WH suppressed the report.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt It isn't a thesis andyll. It's the preliminary findings of a report commissioned by the president. Here's another article. Perhaps this will help you to better understand: <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/10/07/white.house.oil.spill/?hpt=T2" target="_blank">http://edition.cnn.com/2010/PO.../?hpt=T2</a> >>According to the working paper released Wednesday from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, the administration vastly underestimated the tens of thousands of barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion that caused the disaster, despite contrary information from scientists using better methodologies. Gibbs [House Press Secretary] acknowledged that some mistakes were made, in particular citing comments regarding the estimated oil dispersal by former White House environmental adviser Carol Browner in one of "hundreds" of interviews she gave.<<
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I read the articles, and I admit it's unclear to me. Underestimating, or initially reporting the low end of a range of estimates, is not quite the same thing as "blocking" or "suppressing" something. I don't know if it's bad writing of the articles or bad reading comprehension on my part, but I find it hard to get a real "fix" on this. As near as I can figure, it looks to me like, yeah, they tried to put the best public face on this for a while, but didn't actively suppress any information, and then reported the higher estimates later. Not a stellar performance, but not some sort of vile act either. Of course, I could be reading them wrong.
Originally Posted By andyll Thread title: <WH blocked oil spill estimates> Article title: <Panel: Gov't blocked scientists on spill estimate> From the article: <White House budget director Jeffrey Zients pointed out that in early May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told the public that the worst-case scenario could be more than 100,000 barrels a day, or 4.2 million gallons.> This happened after the report. Before the report the WH relied on BP for estimates because they had no other source. After the report top officials including those in the WH relayed what was in the report. There was no surpression of the report. At best it was poor reporting in the article... at worst it was a deliberate hatchet job.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>As near as I can figure, it looks to me like, yeah, they tried to put the best public face on this for a while, but didn't actively suppress any information, and then reported the higher estimates later. Not a stellar performance, but not some sort of vile act either.<< My thoughts exactly.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "I don't know if it's bad writing of the articles or bad reading comprehension on my part, but I find it hard to get a real "fix" on this." I think the CNN article that I linked above has a much more concise explanation of the preliminary report's conclusions. "Not a stellar performance, but not some sort of vile act either." Agreed. At the very least it seems that someone in the WH opted to go with lower estimates than the more accurate scientific information that was available at the time.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Well, that's kind of the crux of it. The WH did, as andy said, go with BP estimates at first because that's all they had. After the report was released they did report it. When was the more accurate information available to them and what did they do with it and for how long is what is unclear to me from the reporting. At any rate, it wasn't THAT long before plenty of official people were reporting higher numbers. And I do give Obama great credit for getting $20 billion out of BP, when BP actually could have insisted on the letter of the law (pushed through Congress years earlier at the behest of the oil industry) that could have limited their liability to a fraction of that. Because, despite right-wingers decrying him for "strongarming" BP, guess who would have had to pay for it if BP didn't? The US taxpayer. The one the tea partiers claim to care about. We'd have had to pay for something we didn't even do. Instead BP is going to pay for what they actually did. Works for me.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt NOAA is saying that parts of the report is inaccurate. Perhaps we'll see some revisions and clearer explanations of what transpired by the time the full report is completed.
