Exxon Mobil’s $10.4 billion second-quarter profit, announced today, was the second-best quarterly performance ever for a publicly traded company. (AP/MSNBC)
According to a study out Feb. 15 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey and Alaskan agencies found that oil levels in the sands around the Exxon Valdez spill site (1989) are much the same as they were when tests were done five years ago. The study says oil has seeped down 4 to 10 inches. (USA Today)
Seventeen years ago, scientists predicted that the oil would be long gone by now.
Wednesday, it was announced that “scientists� forged their data for the Bush administration’s view on global warming before their most recent about face.
In December, an appeals court in San Francisco said Exxon Mobil Corp. must pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages to victims of the Valdez oil spill almost two decades ago, a 44 percent reduction saying the verdict exceeded U.S. Supreme Court limits on such damages.(bloomberg.com)
As many as half a million birds were killed in the spill, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation says, including more than 150 bald eagles.
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
--Alfred Tennyson 1809-1902
Perhaps if Tennyson were alive a century later, he would write...
He gasps his last on oily sand
Dying from a cause he doesn’t understand
Our Symbol of freedom extinct from this land
The rising sea beneath him crawls
He no longer watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls
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