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Scoop.it!
The end is in sight for the civil trial of BP and its partners in the ill-fated Macondo oil and gas exploration well, but not before the British oil giant has its day in court. 
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Residual contamination from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is still killing dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life in record numbers. ->
PIRatE Lab's insight:
While we do indeed appear to have an elevated number of dolphins impacted in the Gulf post spill, the exact cause is still somewhat equivocal. The real critters that suffered the most include midwater plankton and demersal critters in the midwater and deepwater where cameras rarely snap pictures.
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
This (and related stories on ABC, etc.) seem to not be going deeply enough into the actual goings on. In my experience the situations outlined in the first 15 comments on this article provide a much more nuanced and complete picture. While we should of course be cracking down on fraud, I fear the real casualty here will be the folks in the next disaster who will have the federal support tightened too much for fear of massive fraud. This seems to be much more about setting up a good program from the get-go which is properly monitored, etc.
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Time was that Malibu's celebrity-studded Broad Beach lived up to its name. Not anymore. Via clare wormald
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Again, the difficulty in maintaining structures on an eroding coastline continue. This is neither a game nor lesson. Rather it is a somewhat early salvo in one of the greatest struggles our coastlines will be facing; armor it all for the protection of an elite few/select vulnerable infrastructure and detroy/vastly alter the littoral dynmics of the system...or find a more realistic, cost-effective, and mature answer to our increasingly erosive coasts. We should recall that ill-advised coastal development in Malibu (such as Broad Beach here) was one of the key motivators for the landmark California Coastal Act.
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BELLE CHASSE — As the Gulf of Mexico creeps closer and closer to New Orleans, the forested wetlands in between provides a crucial storm buffer between …
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Our second piece from last week's Louisiana newspapers. This great piece from the Advocate provides an excellent overview of the course I have been teaching for the past seven years.
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
A nice overview of how Protected Areas were created in California and how they have come to be an essential part of our coastal state's character and identity.
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“We’re not runners.” — Clyde Jones, Plaquemines Parish resident Clyde and Stella Jones are rebuilding in the tattered Braithwaite community in the wake of Hurricane Isaac, but they likely will forgo flood insurance to do so.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Here comes the onslought of the reality of a sinking coastline and increasingly severe mix of coastal storms and rising sea levels. Thank you climate change and inept management!
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They're pushing state to close structure and scrap plans for future diversions.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
This is crazy. We need to stop killing large-scale projects like this for single interest/special interest groups. This is just nuts. We need to keep these things going and expand them, not shut them down.
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Right after the levees broke in New Orleans during Katrina, the people responsible for building them - the Army Corps of Engineers - blamed just about everyo...
PIRatE Lab's insight:
The Corps just can't seem to get coastal management right.
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Science Serving Coastal Communities
PIRatE Lab's insight:
A new interactive map, “Mapping America’s Coral Reefs,” gives casual observers an engaging overview of the nearly 3 million acres of sea floor habitat mapping data produced by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and its partners.
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
We are seeing more and more stories about the value of MPAs from the local community perspective.
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Integrating coastal aquaculture with wet rice farming could boost Bangladesh's food security and combat climate change
PIRatE Lab's insight:
These types of approaches ('hybrids' compared to the traditional, single focus approaches) are more and more needed.
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
An interesting idea to stabilize coastal loss rates.
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The MIDWAY film project is a powerful visual journey into the heart of an astonishingly symbolic environmental tragedy. On one of the remotest islands on our planet,…
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Joseph Massenburg, 18, was shot and killed on Eagle Street on Monday night
PIRatE Lab's insight:
While I normally do not post on events such as this, this particular incident has greatly saddened me and hit close to home. Mr. Massenburg was only 18 and arrived in New Orleans a mere two days before my studetns arrived in town last month. He was there to volunteer and help with bettering the City of New Orleans via an energy efficiency non-profit. This senseless act against someone who was dedicating his time to helping those in a difficult neighborhood and pushing us all towards a more sustainable place is just heart-breakingly sad.
None of us knows how long we have on this blue planet of ours, but we would all have a much better time during our journey were we to have more folks like Mr. Massenburg. Our thoughts and prays are with his family and friends.
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GADDANI, Pakistan — Gaddani is three dimensional maze of hazards, as chaotic as a major industrial site can get. Steel assaults the senses: the shrieking of metal saws, the ferocious, unnerving thump of massive slabs falling to the sand.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Here lies one of our moder recycling facilties. These shipbreakers in developing countries have largely replaced modern and safe (and increasingly expensive) decomissioning efforts with modern environmental and labor standards. This is the face of globalization. Read William Langewiesche's chapters on India's shipbreakers from his The Outlaw Sea (2004).
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
A great new in-depth news service (ala ProPublica) created from the wreckage of The New Orleans Times-Picayune. This investigative news site includes great environment beat reporters like Bob Marshall. Check out their recent investigations.
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It all started in 2007, after a fateful call to Executive Director of The Woodlands Conservancy Katie Brasted from Brenda Puckett of Hands of Hope in Belle Chasse.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
One of two recent overviews of our work to help restore coastal Louisiana, this one from the Times-Picayune. Check out the audio slideshow embedded at the start of the story from about four years ago.
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Belle Chasse, which has about half of Plaquemines Parish’s 23,000 residents, is the one community in the parish protected by the federal government’s new risk reduction system. Its elevation requirements would not increase under the new maps.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Our friends in Buras, LA are on limited time. What time remains is a roll of the dice. This is what ineffeective leadership, a failure to engage and educate the genearl public about coastal risks, and the lack of will to deal with the restricting of sediment into the Mississippi River delta thanks to the array of dams and thousands of miles of levees on the Mississippi. Those at the bottom of the pipe always pay the harshest prices incurred by those at the top of the watershed.
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The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority was a study in stark contrast Wednesday night in Morgan City, with the group approving more than $760 million in projects designed to protect coastal residents, while officials from FEMA and coastal...
PIRatE Lab's insight:
We are finally geting real about beginning to manage risk, butmany have become comfortable with their incorrect perceptions of that risk
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The Army Corps of Engineers is hosting a public meeting Tuesday evening to explain the comprehensive environmental document developed for the improvements made to the New Orleans area hurricane levee system.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
If you are in town, this should be good. I am sure the Corps will have a multitide of reasons (yet again) for the levee failure and the consqeuntial impacts...except for the honest one.
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SAN FRANCISCO — For decades, surfers, smelt fishermen and picnickers flocked to Martin's Beach — a crescent-shaped haven south of Half Moon Bay, backed by stunning cliffs.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
This decades old battle (and identical arguments on both sides) seems to never be far from our front pages. This was why we created the Coastal Act.
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
We used a decade of underwater monitoring data to evaluate the effectiveness of no-take and partial-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) located in the US Virgin Islands in the context of differing levels of enforcement and compliance. Results will provide managers with a status report that can guide management actions and communicate to a wide audience how the MPAs are performing.
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New Orleans residents continue to face a three-fold increased risk of heart attack post-Katrina -- a trend that has remained unchanged since the storm hit in 2005, according to new research.
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A genetic analysis by biologists suggests that the stocking of Florida bass in Texas reservoirs impacts bass populations far beyond the actual stocking location.
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Here they go...