Federal Government Witholds Data From
Scientists Citing Litigation With BP, Yet Gives BP Data ImmediatelyPosted
by
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/14/federal-government-witholds-data-scientists-citing-litigation-bp-bp-data-immediately/ -
July 14, 2010 at 4:17 am
An
investigative report on the Huffington Post revealed that the Federal Government’s claims that it can not release
data to the public and scientists studying the impact of the the BP Gulf
Oil Spill due to litigation with BP just don’t add up.
The Huffington Post has revealed that the critical data the
Government says it can’t release to the public due to the litigation is
actually being turned over to BP as soon as it is collected, catching
the Government in an outright lie.
<blockquote>The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is
hoarding vast amounts of raw data that independent marine researchers
say could help both the public and scientists better understand the
extent of the damage being caused by the massive BP oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico.
In most cases, NOAA insists on putting the data through a ponderous,
many-weeks-long vetting process before making it public.
In other cases, NOAA actually intended to keep the data secret
indefinitely. But officials told the Huffington Post on Tuesday that
they have now decided to release it — though when remains unclear.
BP, incidentally, gets to see all this data right away.At issue are test results from a series of research missions
conducted by NOAA or NOAA-sponsored ships exploring the extent and
effect of oil beneath the surface of the Gulf. Due to the leak’s depth
and the unprecedented use of dispersants, much of the oil is thought to
have spread in gigantic undersea plumes, potentially adding a huge,
so-far
mostly invisible toll to the
devastation so obviously manifesting itself along the nation’s Gulf
shore.
Despite
early urgent warnings from
independent scientists that oil suspended in the water column is likely
killing wide swaths of sea life in the short run — and possibly
endangering marine animals and coastlines for decades to come — NOAA
was slow to send out research vessels to probe the extent of the
problem, and even
slower to confirm it.
NOAA eventually sent out a half dozen ships packed with scientists,
on back-to-back research missions. But the only
detailed results so far made public were collected during a single mission that ended in late May —
almost two months ago. And some data — including from the very first
research vessel to take underwater tests, the
Jack Fitz — wasn’t slated to
be released at all, because it’s part of what NOAA calls its Natural
Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA).
NRDA data is traditionally kept close to the vest until potentially
adversarial legal wranglings are over. But in this case, the obvious
lead defendant, BP, is part of the Joint Incident Command, to whom all
the raw data is being turned over immediately.</blockquote>
After the Huffington Post launched it’s inquiry into the matter the
Federal Government has back pedaled on its previous statements that it
was keeping information confidential because of litigation and will now
release it to the public, but would not give any time frames on when.
<blockquote>NOAA officials told the Huffington Post on Tuesday that,
in a turnaround, they will now be making NRDA data public — but they
offered no timeline for that process.
In a statement to the Huffington Post, NOAA officials insisted that
they are working as hard as they can to get the public accurate data, as
fast as possible. “We understand the public’s need for answers and
consider it our responsibility to help provide those answers,” NOAA
spokesman Justin Kenney wrote in an e-mail. “Our commitment is to do
what it takes to provide the right answers. Doing so requires upholding
the highest standards of data quality and analysis to ensure our
conclusions are correct. This process does take time, but we are doing
everything we can to make quality data available in a timely fashion,
to responders, our scientific partners, and to the public.”</blockquote>
It is not just the public that is fed up with the run around and the
constant stream of lies from the Government but the scientists trying to
research and monitor the impact of the spill are now getting frustrated
as well.
<blockquote>But when it comes to data about what’s going on under the
surface, some marine researchers are fed up with NOAA’s slow-walk
policy.
“It’s not about science, it’s about what their responsibility is to
the public,” said Vernon Asper, a professor of marine science at the
University of Southern Mississippi.
“We want to find out what the impact is going to be. In order to do
that, we need to find out as much as possible about what’s happening to
the oil, and make as many measurements as we possibly can.”
Asper was part of a team of scientists aboard the
Pelican,
one of the first research vessels to test for oil under the surface —
and, it should be noted, to
report the existence of underwater plumes.
“What I’d like to see is the data released as soon as possible, with
the proper qualifications, in the interest of openness and especially
in the interest of allowing scientists like myself to plan our work. To
plan our sampling, we need to know what they’ve found,” Asper told the
Huffington Post.</blockquote>
So don’t be surprised the next time we have a massive oil spill and
the Government doesn’t have any answers to give besides “We don’t know”.
On of the major issues that the Government is withholding data about
is test results of oxygen depletion in the waters.
Oxygen depletion in the Gulf from the BP Gulf Oil Spill is now
confirmed to have caused a
massive
dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where no life can survive.
Scientists know that the existing dead zone will only grow larger as
more oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico and other dead zones
are likely to appear in more places.
The scientists are frustrated that the Government is stifling
research efforts with the refusal to release important data about such a
critical issue.
<blockquote>Scientists are primarily searching for signs of oil in
the water and the consequent depletion of oxygen. Calibrating oxygen
measurements is apparently a consistent challenge, and researchers
typically don’t release data until they’ve accounted for any
inconsistencies.
Asper gets that. But, he said, “even if their results are off by 10
or 20 percent because of calibration or something, that still helps me.
That’s the kind of information that’s required.” In this case, he said,
“my view on that would be: Go ahead and release the data but say:
‘These don’t agree. We haven’t figured this out, but here they are
anyway.’ It’s still totally useful information.”
And Asper expressed frustration about one issue in particular: “If BP
can see the data,” he asked, “why can’t the taxpayers see it?”
…
There are two main goals when it comes to sub-surface testing. One is
to get a better sense of how much oil has spilled; another is to get a
better sense of what it’s doing to sea life. When it comes to the
latter, the key indicator involves oxygen levels, and the fear is that
the oil will turn regions of the Gulf hypoxic, when means the water
would have insufficient dissolved oxygen levels to sustain living
aquatic organisms.
As it happens, the Northern Gulf already develops a large, hypoxic
“dead
zone” every summer, on account of all the nitrogen from
sewage or fertilizer flowing down the Mississippi River.
Scientists testing for subsea oil have found depleted levels of
oxygen, but the good news is that so far, none of them have come close
to hypoxia, according to Wanninkhof — who, unlike the rest of us, is
seeing the raw data.
He warns that those levels could still go down, however, as microbes
start to eat the oil in earnest, and in doing so deplete oxygen.
And Asper, the marine scientist from Southern Mississippi, warns
that, at the depths where the plumes are mostly being found, even a
slight reduction in oxygen could have serious and very long-lasting
consequences.
“The water at great depths hasn’t been on the surface in a long
time,” he said. “It’s old water” that rose to the surface in
Antarctica, perhaps hundreds of years ago, got chilled, and spread out
along the ocean floor. Just as it hasn’t seen the surface in a long
time, Asper said, “this water that’s down there won’t get back to the
surface of the ocean for probably hundreds of years longer.”
So to the extent that oxygen levels there are depleted, he said,
“it’s quite likely that oxygen will stay low for a long time.”</blockquote>
Some what ironically the only people who have a real idea of the
critical data that scientists need are lawyers who have forced the data
to be released during the discovery process of the lawyer’s lawsuits
against BP.
<blockquote>By contrast, right now that duty is being taken up by
other, more self-interested parties. “The best way to find out,
ironically, what all the research is that’s going on,” Leifer said, are
lists being compiled by law firms — by plaintiffs’ attorneys preparing
to sue BP for damages in civil suit.
“There are some legal teams that have created extensive, detailed
lists of exactly who’s doing everything,” Leifer said. “It’s not
possible from my knowledge to find that information from government
sources in any easy fashion.”</blockquote>
Scientists are also telling the Huffington Post that it is not just
NOAA that is withholding the data from the public, but the information
blackout is coming from all branches of the Government involved in the
oil spill.
<blockquote>Meanwhile, the government is working alongside BP, which,
as Leifer put it, “may want areas of non-knowledge.”
Indeed, BP, which faces a potentially enormous per-barrel fine, has
no incentive to measure the amount of oil leaked with any precision
whatsoever. Nor does it have any desire for the public to become too
acutely aware of the vast amounts of oil it has been able to keep
largely hidden beneath the surface, in part due to its controversial use
of dispersants.
Rick Steiner, a marine conservationist who studied the effect of the
Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, sees NOAA’s behavior as part of a larger
trend. “It’s my sense that all federal agencies are withholding
information at this point on this spill, and this includes Coast Guard,
EPA, Department of Interior, and certainly NOAA,” he told the
Huffington Post.
“And there’s an overwhelming public interest that the public knows
everything that the government knows about this at this point. So we
need a new paradigm for how to handle public information in these sorts
of disasters, and there’s no better place to start than right here
right now.”</blockquote>
There has also been specific outcry from scientists complaining about
a NOAA issued gag order that is muzzling them from warning the public
and the press about the dangers discovered during the course of their
research.
<blockquote>Another factor at play when it comes to the dissemination
of data is the apparent lack of clarity about the circumstances under
which NOAA scientists are allowed to speak to the media.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a whisteblowers
group, on Monday
demanded that NOAA lift its “gag order muzzling NOAA scientists.”
And some scientists contacted by HuffPost over the past few weeks
have said they were explicitly told they could not talk to reporters
without permission from NOAA’s public affairs office. “That’s what I’ve
been told, that I’m supposed to direct any media contacts to the
media,” one scientist said on Monday.
But NOAA officials say that this is a misunderstanding of the
actual rules. Although the wording
of those rules — which dates back to the Bush administration — is
ambiguous in places, Kenney, the NOAA spokesman, insisted that the
policy “clearly states that NOAA’s scientists are free to speak to the
media.”
NOAA Director Jane Lubchenco “has discussed the importance of open
communication to employees on many occasions, including whenever she
travels to our labs and science centers,” Kenney wrote in an e-mail.
“[T]his is central to who she is as a scientist and NOAA administrator.”
Kenney did not indicate, however, that NOAA officials were planning
to take any action to clear up was is evidently some continued confusion
in the ranks. Wrote Kenney: “Could our media policy be communicated
better? Sure, that is always possible. Could it be clearer? No.”</blockquote>
What's wrong with this picture?
Tonight on a 
