Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

Today I saw on the Nat'l news that Central Park in NYC is predicted to reach 103 degrees F.
I - and David Letterman, I'm sure - can assure you all that the squirrels in NYC will be resting their nuts on the ice in vendors wagons. (Joke of course)

No, I was never in the Navy.

Otherwise the above would have been censored just like Bob Hope about a hundred years ago (kidding) when he asked a female guest to get something out of his pants pocket. She said, "I feel crazy doing this." Bob said, "Feel a little further and you'll feel nuts."
The TV screen went black and Hope was barred from his show for at least a coupla weeks - I forget how long it was. Ahh, the good old days.

AP IMPACT: Gulf awash in 27,000 abandoned wells
By JEFF DONN and MITCH WEISS, Associated Press Writers Jeff Donn And Mitch Weiss, Associated Press Writers
Wed Jul 7, 12:49 am ET

.More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — eveb though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

There's ample reason for worry about all permanently and temporarily abandoned wells — history shows that at least on land, they often leak. Wells are sealed underwater much as they are on land. And wells on land and in water face similar risk of failure. Plus, records reviewed by the AP show that some offshore wells have failed.

Experts say such wells can repressurize, much like a dormant volcano can awaken. And years of exposure to sea water and underground pressure can cause cementing and piping to corrode and weaken.

"You can have changing geological conditions where a well could be repressurized," said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer for the American Petroleum Institute trade group.

Whether a well is permanently or temporarily abandoned, improperly applied or aging cement can crack or shrink, independent petroleum engineers say. "It ages, just like it does on buildings and highways," said Roger Anderson, a Columbia University petroleum geophysicist who has conducted research on commercial wells.

Despite the likelihood of leaks large and small, though, abandoned wells are typically not inspected by industry or government.

Oil company representatives insist that the seal on a correctly plugged offshore well will last virtually forever.

"It's in everybody's interest to do it right," said Bill Mintz, a spokesman for Apache Corp., which has at least 2,100 abandoned wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

Officials at the U.S. Interior Department, which oversees the agency that regulates federal leases in the Gulf and elsewhere, did not answer repeated questions regarding why there are no inspections of abandoned wells.

State officials estimate that tens of thousands are badly sealed, either because they predate strict regulation or because the operating companies violated rules. Texas alone has plugged more than 21,000 abandoned wells to control pollution, according to the state comptroller's office.

Offshore, but in state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s.

In deeper federal waters, though — despite the similarities in how such wells are constructed and how sealing procedures can fail — the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service — the regulatory agency recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — relies on rules that have few real teeth. Once an oil company says it will permanently abandon a well, it has one year to complete the job. MMS mandates that work plans be submitted and a report filed afterward.

Unlike California regulators, MMS doesn't typically inspect the job, instead relying on the paperwork.

The fact there are so many wells that have been classified for decades as temporarily abandoned suggests that paperwork can be shuffled at MMS without any real change beneath the water.

With its weak system of enforcement, MMS imposed fines in a relative handful of cases: just $440,000 on seven companies from 2003-2007 for improper plug-and-abandonment work.

Companies permanently abandon wells when they are no longer useful. Afterward, no one looks methodically for leaks, which can't easily be detected from the surface anyway. And no one in government or industry goes underwater to inspect, either.

Government regulators and industry officials say abandoned offshore wells are presumed to be properly plugged and are expected to last indefinitely without leaking. Only when pressed do these officials acknowledge the possibility of leaks.

Despite warnings of leaks, government and industry officials have never bothered to assess the extent of the problem, according to an extensive AP review of records and regulations.

That means no one really knows how many abandoned wells are leaking — and how badly.

The AP documented an extensive history of warnings about environmental dangers related to abandoned wells:

• The General Accountability Office, which investigates for Congress, warned as early as 1994 that leaks from offshore abandoned wells could cause an "environmental disaster," killing fish, shellfish, mammals and plants. In a lengthy report, GAO pressed for inspections of abandonment jobs, but nothing came of the recommendation.

• A 2006 Environmental Protection Agency report took notice of the overall issue regarding wells on land: "Historically, well abandonment and plugging have generally not been properly planned, designed and executed." State officials say many leaks come from wells abandoned in recent decades, when rules supposedly dictated plugging procedures. And repairs are so routine that terms have been coined to describe the work: "replugging" or the "re-abandonment."

• A GAO report in 1989 provided a foreboding prognosis about the health of the country's inland oil and gas wells. The watchdog agency quoted EPA data estimating that up to 17 percent of the nation's wells on land had been improperly plugged. If that percentage applies to offshore wells, there could be 4,600 badly plugged wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone.

• According to a 2001 study commissioned by MMS, agency officials were "concerned that some abandoned oil wells in the Gulf may be leaking crude oil." But nothing came of that warning either.

The study targeted a well 20 miles off Louisiana that had been reported leaking five years after it was plugged and abandoned. The researchers tried unsuccessfully to use satellite radar images to locate the leak.

But John Amos, the geologist who wrote the study, told AP that MMS withheld critical information that could have helped verify if he had pinpointed the problem. "I kind of suspected that this was a project almost designed to fail," Amos said. He said the agency refused to tell him "how big and widespread a problem" they were dealing with in the Gulf.

Amos is now director of SkyTruth, a nonprofit group that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems. He still believes that technology could work on abandoned wells.

MMS, though, hasn't followed up on the work. And Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said agency inspectors would be present for permanent plugging jobs "only when something unusual is expected." She also said inspectors would check later "only if there's a noted leak." But she did not respond to requests for examples.

Companies may be tempted to skimp on sealing jobs, which are expensive and slow offshore. It would cost the industry at least $3 billion to permanently plug the 10,500 now-active wells and the 3,500 temporarily abandoned ones in the Gulf, according to an AP analysis of MMS data.

The AP analysis indicates that more than half of the 50,000 wells ever drilled on federal leases beneath the Gulf have now been abandoned. Some 23,500 are permanently sealed. Another 12,500 wells are plugged on one branch while being allowed to remain active in a different branch.

Government records do not indicate how many temporarily abandoned wells have been returned to service over the years. Federal rules require only an annual review of plans to reuse or permanently seal the 3,500 temporarily abandoned wells, but companies are using this provision to keep the wells in limbo indefinitely.

Petroleum engineers say abandoned offshore wells can fail from faulty work, age and drilling-induced or natural changes below the seabed. Maurice Dusseault, a geologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, says U.S. regulators "assume that once a well is sealed, they're safe — but that's not always the case."

Even fully depleted wells can flow again because of fluid or gas injections to stimulate nearby wells or from pressure exerted by underlying aquifers.

Permanently abandoned wells are corked with cement plugs typically 100-200 feet long. They are placed in targeted zones to block the flow of oil or gas. Heavy drilling fluid is added. Offshore, the piping is cut off 15 feet below the sea floor.

Wells are abandoned temporarily for a variety of reasons. The company may be re-evaluating a well's potential or developing a plan to overcome a drilling problem or damage from a storm. Some owners temporarily abandon wells to await a rise in oil prices.

Since companies may put a temporarily abandoned well back into service, such holes typically will be sealed with fewer plugs, less testing and a metal cap to stop corrosion from sea water.

In the Deepwater Horizon blowout, investigators believe the cement may have failed, perhaps never correctly setting deep within the well. Sometimes gas bubbles form as cement hardens, providing an unwanted path for oil or gas to burst through the well and reach the surface.

The other key part of an abandoned wells — the steel pipe liner known as casing — can also rust through over time.

MMS personnel do sometimes spot smaller oily patches on the Gulf during flyovers. Operators are also supposed to report any oil sheens they encounter. Typically, though, MMS learns of a leak only when someone spots it by chance.

In the end, the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Laboratory handles little more than 200 cases of oil pollution each year.

And manager Wayne Gronlund says it's often impossible to tell leaking wells from natural seeps, where untold thousands of barrels of oil and untold millions of cubic feet of gas escape annually through cracks that permeate the sea floor.

___

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org

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July 7, 2010
British Panel Clears Climate ScientistsBy JUSTIN GILLIS
A British panel issued a sweeping exoneration on Wednesday of scientists caught up in the controversy known as Climategate, saying it found no evidence that they had manipulated their research to support preconceived ideas about global warming.

The researcher at the center of the controversy, a leading climatologist named Phil Jones, was immediately reinstated to a job resembling his old one at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. That unit, often referred to by its initials, has played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth’s past climate.

Embarrassing e-mail messages sent by Dr. Jones and other scientists were stolen in November and posted to the Internet, leading to a deluge of accusations from climate change skeptics as well as admissions from some of the scientists that they had been guilty of poor behavior.

But were they, as the skeptics charged, guilty of scientific misconduct?

“On the specific allegations made against the behavior of C.R.U. scientists, we find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” said the new review, led by Muir Russell, a leading British civil servant and educator.

The Russell panel also found little reason to question the advice the scientists had given to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that produces a major review of the science of global warming every few years. The new report said that “we did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the I.P.C.C. assessments.”

The review was the fifth to come to essentially the same conclusion about the e-mail messages sent by Dr. Jones and other scientists, though it was the most comprehensive and eagerly awaited of the investigations. Last week the second of two reviews at Pennsylvania State University exonerated Michael Mann, a scientist there who had also been a focus of the controversy.

The latest report was not a complete vindication for scientists or for the University of East Anglia, which commissioned it. Echoing the findings of an earlier report by a parliamentary committee in London, the reviewers criticized “a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness” in responding to demands for backup data and other information under Britain’s law governing public records.

Climate change skeptics criticized the four previous reviews of the issue as whitewashes that failed to delve deeply enough into the scientific uncertainties about climate change.

For their part, the reviewers took the position that conclusions on science get sorted out in academic interchanges and scientific publications and that their role in the inquiry was to focus on a narrower set of questions raised by the private e-mail messages.

"British Panel Clears Climate Scientists". That's an extremely misleading title, conflating as it does the actual e-mails - sole topic of this panel's inquiry - and the scientific issues involved. You can see this for yourself by reading the last line in the article you posted:

Hi ya all!

Paint/repair of the back deck is becoming a career! Each time i think i'm finished with a task...voila...another one magically appears. May be done by the Fall.

Today i damned near stepped on a King snake! Critter was at the bottom of the stairs moving away from the house and i wouldn't even have noticed if the animal hadn't moved! He leisurely ambled toward the hedge, then descended out and through the Rosemary hedges.

Seen just about every type of Sierra wildlife, but never a snake. Keeping gun handy just in case there's a rattler visiting the neighborhood. And NO...if i hear one and see one, it's going to the great beyond. King Snakes arn't dangerous...rather pretty...but can find someone elses house to visit far as i'm concerned.

Hope everyone has a marvelous evening.

Hi back and y'all. My assistant keeps all my personal mail in her (locked) desk, and she's at the hospital having a baby, so I haven't seen your book yet. Will be sure to post here - or send e-mail if I'm out of the country again - the moment I get it. Thanks in advance anyway

.... well, she should begin working again in a few months...or sending key by messenger so you can collect your mail.

The book is really well written, although you will skip over some pics (sad) and i hope you like how the author explains the importance of wolves and habitat. There are cycles humans go through concerning wolves. Wish to God 'they' would get over it and 'manage' something else though.

Nature, like the King Snake can take care of itself. There is an abundance of lizards running amok through the neighborhood...Mr KS's just taking care of business is all.

Preaching to the choir again...sorry.

The porch awaits!

T, and all the wildclickers, have a marvelous day.

I got all the business mail - it's on my desk - but personal she locks in case some admirer might send a marriage proposal. I told her this hasn't happened yet - they all propose in person - but there's no arguing with her filing habits - anyway she'll be back starting tomorrow.

Hi Hi, Sounds like you have a solidly loyal assistant. Hope the delivery of both baby and mail is ok.

Thanks, Danon - the baby arrived safely yesterday and Stradee's book will be reviewed on these pages next week. A great day to all

Stradee, Kings are great - they are all so colorful and helpful to humans. But, so are the other ones with venom - I just stay clear of those and hope they keep the field mice at bay. We have a particularly pretty one here - the Copperhead. I found one on the road a few years ago - freshly dead - and sadly I named it Hat Band, skinned it and it's still looking pretty somewhere up in the attic.

You reminded me of a great book - Gilda Radner's "It's Always Something".

So true.

T, i'm sitting here laughing and picturing a suitor sending a note of proposal!

Dear Stradee,

I'm standing by the Eiffel Tower. Will you fly to France and marry me?

Love Forever,
Pierre

Dear Pierre,

I really must finish painting the deck. Maybe some other time...

Love,
Stradee



T, you will receive the most marvelous marriage proposal from the man of your dreams....guaranteed!

They are...and pretty. Recall visiting a friend at his ranch, and we found a King Snake that he picked up gently and we explained to the kids about the animal. Was quite an experience for them. However, there were also Rattle Snakes on the property. We saw one, and that was the last time i visited with the kids. uhuh

Clear Lake is home to a zillion Rattlers, and i'm very surprised we as kids never ran up on one. Course, we spent most of our time on the water fishing, or skiing, and not hiking, plus our cabin was close to the beach area and pier.

My dad and I took the boat across the lake one day to check out places where
mom and my sisters could picnick. Beautiful rock fomations and a small beach area for the boat. Dad was checking out the area and then he looked at me and said "Shirl, don't get out of the boat, we're leaving". When i asked him why, he told me there were a few Rattle snakes sunning on the rocks.

ok bye


What's scary for me is the fact a Rattle snake doesn't have to be 'rattling' to bite a person or animal. yikes

You're right about the rattles - it's a warning to other animals - "Please leave me alone."

With emphasis on the "Please". They are not aggressive, just defensive.

The only snake I have heard of that IS aggressive is the Black Mamba in Africa. WOW, that one scares me just thinking of it.

That's it, i'm buying a ferret.

Rattle snakes are not aggressive, dan, but i nearly stepped on a King snake whos coloring is black and white. Ya can't see a Rattle snake, at least not on the landscaping rocks, and that's scary.

BLACK MAMBA!!!!!!!!!! One animal i could never meet in this lifetime and have no regrets atol.

Finishing my work today with thoughts of elephants, wolves, and ferrets.

July 8, 2010
Public and Private: Restoring a Montana Spring CreekBy VERLYN KLINKENBORG
A couple of weeks ago, I walked along a spring creek in the upper Madison Valley, just south of the town of Ennis, Mont. As my guide, Jeff Laszlo, explained, the creek is one of the unnamed tributaries of the Madison River, fed by innumerable springs along the valley’s rich bottomland. The creek meanders for miles before it reaches the Madison, gaining water, providing spawning grounds for fish and invaluable wetland habitat for birds. I looked on in disbelief, because the section we were hiking — nearly eight miles of cold, clear waters — did not exist before 2005.

Or rather, it existed until 1951, when Jeff Laszlo’s grandfather dewatered this section of land by digging canals to draw the water along the edge of one of the alluvial benches that define the Madison Valley. His purpose was to move water to other sections of his ranch and to improve the grazing. In the narrow agricultural logic of the time, his ditches made a certain economic sense. And if it seems strange that his grandson would undo all that work 60-some years later, Laszlo notes that he is simply obeying a different economic logic — one that considers increased biodiversity to be one of the ranch’s most important assets.

Restoring this stream was not simply a matter of diverting the water back into its old channels. It was an intensely collaborative process, involving more than a dozen state, federal and private partners — including the United States Department of Agriculture, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, the local power company, PPL Montana, and the Trust for Public Land.

And it was a major construction project, requiring the precise engineering of new streambed and shallow backwaters and the careful laying and planting of new bank sod and willows. Photographs of the construction show an almost nightmarish scene — excavators hard at work in what looks as much like the digging of those old canals as the restoring of a stream.

But wherever I looked, I saw only nature, even in sections of the stream that were restored just last year. The speed with which this habitat — aquatic and terrestrial — has altered itself has surprised nearly everyone.

Within weeks, trout began to move up from downstream, and they are now abundant. Water temperatures in the stream have dropped significantly, and daily variation in temperature has decreased. The subterranean water table has risen, and bird populations have greatly increased and, more importantly, diversified. Aquatic insects are again proliferating.

The hope is that this restoration will serve as a model for landowners farther downstream — and, indeed, wherever wetland habitat can be restored. The critical point — one that Laszlo emphasized repeatedly — is that the restoration could never have been accomplished without the collaboration of private and public partners. It has been a test not only for him and the organizations and agencies that have worked with him. It has also tested conventional assumptions about the proper use of public money — which was, in this case, used to help restore private land without providing public access.

But the new spring creek on this ranch, though a private fishing stream, serves many public purposes. It is a wild hatchery for trout that move downstream to the Madison River, a public river. It is a nesting and feeding ground for birds that use these wetlands only seasonally. And it acts as an enormous sponge, retaining and releasing water critical for generating power much farther downstream.

The real beauty is that from the bench above this creek, where a large band of curlews was feeding, I couldn’t tell that man had been at work — not in the past five years and not in 1951. And neither could the birds and the fish.

sumac,
You have just brought back one of my personal principles of life on Earth - "Don't Screw With Mother Nature."

I believe that concept completely.

Here we go again...

Montana sets wolf-hunt quota, awaits fed ruling
By MATT VOLZ and MATT GOURAS (AP) – 19 hours ago

— Montana wildlife regulators have set this year's wolf-hunt quota at 186, more than doubling last year's quota, with the aim of reducing the state's wolf population for the first time since they were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies in 1995.

The quota was set Thursday, even as the state awaits a federal judge's ruling that may determine whether there will be a wolf hunting season at all.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy has yet to rule after hearing arguments last month in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups seeking to restore Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Montana and Idaho.

Opponents of the wolf hunt argued the commission should end the hunt before the courts act.

Ranchers and hunters say the wolf population has grown too high, which has led to more attacks on livestock and game.
###

If ranchers managed their domestic herds, instead of allowing the animals free range (ON PUBLIC LANDS, btw) poor animals wouldn't be eaten by wolves, bears, or any predator animal. How many times do we announce the facts? Apparently, the powers that be would rather have out of state money at their 'hunt' clubs, then properly manage lands and habitat. Wolves take the weak and sick from herds...including domestics. The only predator animals destroying the ecosystem are humans.

Amen, Danon.

Stradee, I sign every petition and click every day for the dear critters.

dan and sue, i found the following page during wolf research.

There are some good before restoration and after shots of land and waterways.

http://www.managingwholes.com/--environmental-restoration.htm