“For the First Time in My Environmental Career, I’m Using the Word ‘Hopeless’”

Melissa Lafsky writes:

This video was taken by John Wathen, an environmentalist from Alabama also known as the Hurricane Creekkeeper. The images, and his informative yet devastating narration, give some visual sense of just how bad the situation in the Gulf has become. For more of Wathen’s coverage, check out his blog, BPoilslick.blogspot.com.

[H/T: A Blog Around the Clock]

Spill baby, spill: BP oil blowout creeps toward Mississippi Delta: Updated

Tiny, nonprofit SkyTruth has been analyzing the satellite data and forcing changes in official underestimates of the catastrophe's magnitude. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Saturday, the group updated its analysis to estimate that the slick contained more than 11.1 million gallons of oil, which would make it the largest oil spill in American history. John Amos, the group's president, also revised the estimate of the rate of oil leaking to 25,000 barrels a day, saying it was a "rock bottom" figure. There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil.

NASA's Earth Observatory reported on April 29:

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a natural-color image of the oil slick just off the Louisiana coast. The top image shows a wide-area view, and the bottom image shows a close-up view of the oil slick (outlined in white in the top image). The oil slick appears as dull gray interlocking comma shapes, one opaque and the other nearly transparent. The northwestern tip of the oil slick almost touches the Mississippi Delta. Sunglint—the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water—enchances the oil slick’s visibility.

Update: BP advertising vs current reality

Winter storms bury the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in misery

South Dakota's Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation is besieged by winter storms, "leaving about 30,000 residents in two communities without water, electricity or heat for at least a week," and Bishop John Tarrant of the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota has appealed for emergency relief funds.

Cathy Lynn Grossman writes:

No photos or video of sweet suffering faces. No popular vacation landscape for a backdrop. No personal connective ties. Are those the reasons the natural disaster in the Great Plains has gone below our philanthropy radar?

Keith Olbermann appeals for help: