Please rec the new Mothership #39 here. This one has expired
The current ROV DIARY: Gulf Watchers ROV # 171 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - David PA
Rules of the Road
- We take volunteers for subsequent diaries in the sub diaries or ROV's as we have playfully coined them.
- Please rec this mothership diary, not the ROVs.
- Please be kind to fellow kossacks who may have limited bandwidth and refrain from posting images or videos.
In her own Voice is a clinical social worker in the field of psychology who has a psychotherapy practice informed by mindfulness and nature. Ecopsychology is being seen as a theory and practice that may be effective in breaking through the denial regarding issues of anthropogenic climate change. Its practice offers techniques that aid in reducing chronic stress through restoring the intimate nature of our relationship with the earth and all its beings.
The Gulf Oil Spill – a Cultural Crisis of Unprecedented Proportions
“The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster feels far worse to shrimper Ricky Robin than Katrina, even though he's still haunted by memories of riding out the hurricane on his trawler and of his father's suicide in the storm's aftermath.
The relentless spill is bringing back feelings that are far too familiar to Robin and others still dealing with the physical and emotional toll wrought by Katrina five years ago.
"I can't sleep at night. I find myself crying sometimes," said Robin, of Violet, a blue-collar community on the southeastern edge of the New Orleans suburbs, along the highway that hugs the levee on the Mississippi River's east bank nearly all the way to the Gulf.
Psychiatrists who treated people after Katrina and have held group sessions in oil spill-stricken areas say the symptoms showing up are much the same: Anger. Anxiety. Drinking. Depression. Suicidal thoughts.”
Oil spill's psychological toll quietly mounts
By Janet McConnaughey and Mitch Stacy A.P.
The Gulf oil spill is a cultural crisis of unprecedented proportions and it deeply affects us on social, political, environmental, and economic levels. The broader concerns are often the most discussed on a national scale, but there are intensely personal psychological and emotional ramifications to what has happened in our southern waters. Especially hard hit are the residents along the coast who are still recovering psychologically and emotionally from Katrina’s devastation. But we are all: as a country; as a global community; a human community; suffering a blow to our sense of safety in “place”. We are suffering from the grim reality that nothing is sacred: our homes, our livelihood, the intimate relationship we have with our natural environment, all can be destroyed without warning. Understandably, it is doubly hard to bear traumatic destruction that comes at the hands of those we trust and depend upon for our security, emotionally and financially.
Trauma is defined as an experience that falls outside the range of normal human experience. Since the horror of 9-11, there have been a number of formerly unthinkable events around the globe and the United States has responded with empathy and personal, corporate, and governmental aid. After too many disasters and too many responses, our responsiveness and resilience are blunted. Even the most empathetic people among us become cold and cynical to the cries of the survivors as a natural response to our own helplessness. We can’t bear hearing them anymore because our own helplessness is too painful to bear. The end result of long-standing helplessness and futility is the stage of grief known as denial, a “frozen” state where occasional feelings of sadness, emptiness, restless anxiety, and anger arise to activate our natural patterns of defense. Those at the center of a disaster who have been suffering from the chronic stress of poverty and poor physical health have little resilience and few coping strategies. These chronically stressed people can rapidly decompensate to self-destructive, self-sabotaging behaviors such as those reported in the article quoted above. The most common responses are increased drug and alcohol consumption, explosiveness, domestic violence, criminal behavior, and suicidal thoughts, but more often it is a crippling state of depression that prevents activism and recovery.
It is no wonder, then, that there is a call from the coastal states and their mental health professionals for funds to be set aside for dealing with this ongoing crisis and its aftermath. However, it bears repeating: regardless of geography, we are all experiencing this intrusion on our sense of what is normal and acceptable. And the feeling of powerlessness to do anything about it can be overwhelming. If we’re normally healthy and have good coping mechanisms, we may fall into a deep and painful period of unrest and despair. Or we may do what Daniel Goleman, the psychologist who wrote "Emotional Intelligence" has pointed out in his recent release, "Ecological Intelligence" that people react in an unproductive way which can actually subvert the kind of change we really need:
“Finding other people to blame has always been a favored ploy of the human psyche. Psychoanalysts call this "projection," the casting out of our own failings and pasting them on someone - or something - other than ourselves...
By imagining some disembodied power that has victimized us - "those greedy corporations" say - we avoid having to examine our own impacts. It's a convenient arrangement, one that lets us deflect our discomfort at facing the ways in which we add to the onslaughts against the natural world.”
Daniel Goleman
Ecological Intelligence (pg. 38-39)
The outrage, the sense of righteous indignation, and the painful despair we feel over the misuse of power by those who do not represent our interests or our core values can be channeled towards change and activism. However, change requires that we look at how we support the status quo by proxy: that is, how we continually value a lifestyle dependent upon an economic structure that sucks the life out of people without regard to social justice, and resources out of the earth without regard to toxic waste and environmental destruction. We must become conscious of our own participation in this dysfunctional, abusive system just like those living in debilitating family systems must do. We must shed our reliance on them by breaking away from the little they provide to us at such a great personal and emotional cost. We must if we choose to create a future that can support Life. At this time, we are supporting a culture of Death – in the Gulf of Mexico, in Nigeria, in Afghanistan, and etc. In her own Voice
PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's diaries to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill Reference Material
- from Whitis is the best source for everything.. The quantitative data diary has also been moved there.
Kossak Sillia gives a concise explanation of the mothership and liveblog:
This diary, that is, the mothership, forms the hub from which you can reach the other diaries. Or, think of it as a table of contents in the front page of a book. You use this diary to find a link to the latest discussions. You can also find links here to past discussions (previous diaries) if you wanted to read them.
The actual liveblog diaries (in this case playfully referred to as a 'submersible' or ROV) is where the discussion is--once one of these gets so long that its size is cumbersome, they start a new one. So if you wanted to join in to the most current discussion, you'd click the most recent link. But they leave the links there so that people can still go back and read the older ones if they wish.
The reason for this setup is that it prevents the recommended list from being filled up with many diaries on the same topic. Instead just the mothership will appear on the rec list where everybody can find it, which they can use to navigate to the latest discussion. (That's why we are asked to "rec" the mothership but not the other diaries, just reduces confusion.)
I hope this is sort of what you were wanting to know...
Video Feeds
The best multi-view feed
BP Video Feed
CNN multi camera view
PBS This PBS feed is security compliant.
BP videos - Links to all available live feeds from BP
WKRG - Mobile/Pensacola (contains link for an iPhone app at the bottom)
ABC News
A multi-view with feeds from BP, C-SPAN-2, WKRG, and PBS
Vote For America's awesome clickable multi-view
Courtesy of Whitis, here are two additional video links:
Primary feed
Secondary feed
Links, courtesy of several Kossacks
- Summarized tally of affected wildlife
- Visualize the spill
- Nola.com
- h/t dov12348's recommended links
- The Oil Drum
- Oil & Gas Journal
- Offshore Magazine
- Petroleum News
- Your Oil and Gas News
- World Oil
- Administration response to spill.
- Donate to SkyTruth here. SkyTruth helps environmental NGOs use remote sensing (pictures taken from space) and digital mapping to improve their scientific credibility, conservation decisionmaking, communications and public outreach.
- Images of the Oilpacalypse, from Tomtech.
- Visit the Oil Spill Crisis Map to see where oil, mousse, tar balls, and eau de crude have been reported on the Gulf coast.
- The BP Deepwater Horizon Unified Command official website. Wherein you can read latest post warning of employment scams associated with the event and much more from the folks handling this.
- Timeline of response here.
- Timeline of the Event from April 20th being maintained by blogroots.
- Bit Tooth Energy blog (technical discussions) by the famed Heading Out, well known key poster on The Oil Drum blog site.
- Department of Interior BP Deepwater Horizon Response site provides updates, reports, data, links to pictures, etc.
- Rigzone for specific disaster news and news about the offshore industry, in general.
Liveblog diaries
Gulf Watchers ROV # 171 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - David PA
Gulf Watchers ROV # 170 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe -Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers ROV # 169 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Gulf Watchers Overnight / Peraspera
Gulf Watchers ROV # 168 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - CindyMax
Gulf Watchers ROV # 167 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers ROV # 166 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Tomtech
Gulf Watchers ROV # 165 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Yawnimawk
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #164 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Darryl House
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #163 - On Bearing Witness - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers ROV # 162 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe A Small Cottage Edition - GulfGal98
Gulf Watchers ROV # 161 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Gulf Watchers Overnight / peraspera
Gulf Watchers ROV # 160 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - David PA
Gulf Watchers ROV # 159 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers ROV # 158 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Politik
Gulf Watchers ROV # 157 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Gulf Watchers Overnight / Dave PA
Gulf Watchers ROV # 156 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - bubbanomics
Gulf Watchers ROV # 155 - Darryl House
Gulf Watchers ROV # 154 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Hester
Gulf Watchers ROV # 153 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Gulf Watchers Overnight
Gulf Watchers ROV #152, John Muir Edition - David Kroning II
Gulf Watchers Liveblog ROV 151 - gchaucer2
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.