As News on the BP Gulf Oil Spill Seriousness Spreads, Calls for NOAA's Lubchenco to Step Down Mount

A huge glob of oil moving along the bottom of the Gulf, toward Florida. It is being reported by the University of South Florida, whose scientists have been threatened by NOAA. Here's a report about it on CNN yesterday:


And late last week, Gulf fishers did some at-sea testing on their own:

Angered by claims from state and federal officials that Gulf Coast waters are safe and clean, fishermen took their own samples of the waters off of Pass Christian, Mississippi on August 11th, 2010. I had the opportunity to go along and see first hand the results, as well as the thin, oily sheen and bubbles caused by dispersant that streak the Mississippi sound.

The testing method is simple: tie an absorbent rag to a weighted hook, then drop it overboard for a minute or two. In all but one of the samples, the rags came up with brown oily substance which the fishermen identify as a mix of crude oil from the BP disaster and toxic dispersants.

Meanwhile, in New England, NOAA Director Jane Lubchenco's longtime adversary, the Gloucester Massachusetts Times, is calling for her to step down:

Enough is enough. There is no need, no place for any more talk.

Jane Lubchenco's tenure as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is an ongoing, unmitigated disaster. And if any part of the Obama administration — right up to the president himself — is to have any credibility in addressing the shameful, government-driven campaign to stomp down the fishing industry, it simply has as no choice but to let her to go.

It is now blatantly obvious there is no working with her to resolve any of the issues she once vowed to fix, any of the openly corrupt actions she has allowed to continue — and essentially endorsed — under her so-called "leadership."

And the Newburyport Daily News is more succinct:

It is time for her to go — past time.

These stances are based on NOAA'a conduct in New England fisheries. But NOAA's partnership with BP to stifle science in the Gulf of Mexico is perhaps a far greater transgression, if not a blatant crime:

A federal official said Wednesday that the government stands by its recent analysis that reported only 26% of the crude from BP's oil spill remains in the Gulf of Mexico, days after a University of Georgia study determined nearly 80% is left.

"We stand by the calculations we released," Jane Lubchenco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told reporters during a briefing. "We have known and said all along there was sub-surface oil dispersed."

Meanwhile, the fish continue to die on the mid-Atlantic coast: