from: ReadWriteWeb.com:

“On the one year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, journalist Peter Aldhous created a data visualization that shows how the Carribean country’s relatively low seismic earthquake had as many fatalities as all but one earthquake over a time span of almost 40 years. The data visualization is striking but also a study in how journalists are increasingly telling stories that leverage datasets that are freely available to the public.
Peter Aldhous, San Francisco Bureau Chief for New Scientist magazine, created the interactive graphics. We asked him to explain how he created the visualizations which compare seismic activity to fatalities caused by earthquakes over the span of four decades:

“The raw data was downloaded from searches at the U.S. Geological Survey for quake magnitudes and locations and The International Disaster Database for earthquake fatality data. I manipulated the downloaded data in Excel and Access to get it in the format I needed to make the graphics – e.g. running some SQL queries in Access to get the numbers of quakes of different magnitude classes in each year for the stacked area chart drawn from the historical data.” Read more here and find raw earthquake data here…

Journalist Brian Deer is a hero.

On the BMJ (British Medical Journal), he published an article that exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school…(from BoingBoing):

“Last week, editors of the medical journal BMJ declared Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 Lancet paper linking autism to the MMR vaccine to be not just incorrect, but actively fraudulent.

The research that led many parents to avoid MMR vaccination for their children (and, subsequently, led to the resurgence of measles, mumps, and rubella outbreaks, including several deaths) turned out to include information falsified to support a result chosen before the study began, by a researcher who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get that desired result.

The scam was exposed by journalist Brian Deer, and now, you can read the full text of Deer’s expose online in BMJ.…

A vehicle leaves the area of an explosion of a Pemex pipeline in the village of San Martin Texmelucan near Puebla December 19, 2010. At least 10 people were killed early Sunday when the oil pipeline exploded in central Mexico, the state news agency Notimex said. The pipeline maintained by state oil monopoly Pemex exploded at around 5 a.m. in San Martin Texmelucan, a small community in the state of Puebla about 50 miles (75 kilometers) east of Mexico City.
REUTERS/Striger

From the Washington Post:

“One of the most controversial tactics used against this summer’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill – the construction of large sand islands off the Louisiana coast – managed to stop only a “minuscule” amount of oil, according to a draft report from a presidential commission.

The report, released Thursday, is the latest in a series of findings from the staff of the commission empaneled to investigate the response to the spill.

In this report, staffers found that the “sand berms” – which Louisiana officials had touted as an essential shield against the spill - trapped only about 1,000 barrels of oil out of the approximately 5 million barrels spilled.

For that, the report said, BP paid about $220 million. That, together with $140 million that BP has committed to provide, amounts to one-third of all the money the oil company paid to federal or state governments to help respond to the spill.”

This is devastating news for Republican Governor Bobby Jindal who ordered the Berms built over the rejections of scientists. In an open letter dated July 22, 2010, almost two dozen coastal scientists from Louisiana and around the country urged the federal government to halt the construction of sand berms in the gulf, calling the project “ineffective in the fight against the oil and a waste of resources that could have heavy environmental consequences”.

The opening paragraph of the letter reads as follows:

“As BP appears close to shutting off the flow of oil, we believe that it is also time to shut off the flow of funding and permitting for the large-scale re-engineering of the Gulf Coast,” the letter states. “If this is not done, environmental damage resulting from ill-conceived, poorly reviewed coastal engineering may become an additional and unnecessary byproduct of the spill.” You can see the rest of the letter here

In its report on the Sand Berms, the commission, appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the spill, called the project “underwhelmingly effective, overwhelmingly expensive.” Proof positive that GOP leadership calls for “Washington spending” might be more effective if they took some of the advice of experts prior to making blunderous decisions that cost taxpayers $220 Million.

Courtesy of PDN, Canon displayed this futuristic “SLR wonder camera” at their expo yesterday at the Javits Center in Manhattan:

Despite eyewitness accounts and photographs, and the complaining of local officials, BP decided to spend a full week in blatant denial that thousands of gallons of oil were washing up on the beach in Pensacola, FL.

This quote from The Upshot says it best:

“Remember how the “vast majority” of the oil in the Gulf is supposed to be gone, according to the White House and BP? Sure, you say — but what about those recent independent scientific reports that showed the opposite to be true? Heck, the government’s own chief scientist admitted that 75 percent of the oil remains in the Gulf just a few days ago. Oh, don’t worry about that, because, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gleefully announced this week, oil-gobbling microbes have eaten up almost all of the undersea oil plumes. Confused yet? Yeah, so are we.” Read more here

According to the AP
A lead congressional committee investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has broadened its inquiry, now checking if tens of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells are leaking or even being monitored for leaks. Committee members wrote in a letter Thursday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that they were responding to an Associated Press investigation released last week on the 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf. The AP reported that the wells are not routinely inspected when plugged or subsequently monitored for leaks.

“These wells could pose an additional danger to the Gulf Coast environment and economy,” wrote U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who heads the subcommittee on energy and environment. They asked for details on the number of wells as well as leaking and inspection requirements. They asked for an initial reply by Monday….read more
AP Oil Coverage here

When in the Congo, tread lightly around these guys. Goliath Tigerfish have supposedly been known to attack humans. On this episode of River Monsters you can watch Jeremy Wade hook one below.

Too early to tell, but all it took was Three Mile Island to put the brakes on Nuclear Power developments in the US. A telling quote from the article:

“What I worry about as an energy CEO is what effect this will have on energy policy,” he said, noting it may lead people to look more seriously at electric cars, or complicate plans to pump carbon underground. “This BP thing has tentacles.” Read more here

(from the WSJ) Oil giant BP PLC told congressional investigators that a decision to continue work on an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after a test warned that something was wrong may have been a “fundamental mistake,” according to a memo released by two lawmakers Tuesday.

The document describes a wide array of mistakes in the fateful final hours aboard the Deepwater Horizon—but the main revelation is that BP now says there was a clear warning sign of a “very large abnormality” in the well, but work proceeded anyway. The rig exploded about two hours later.

The congressional memo outlines what the lawmakers say was a briefing for congressional staff by BP officials early Tuesday. Company representatives provided a preliminary report on their internal investigation of the April 20 disaster, which killed 11 workers and continues to spill thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico.

The new developments come as President Obama is expected to announce Thursday that the government will impose tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections on off-shore drilling operations. Read more here…