More new oil spill animations from June 3rd are seen and described here.

And here’s the new live BP oil spill video feed showing a new picture of semi-captured oil! (Maybe)  PBS reports: We modified our original Gulf Leak Meter because the video takes our sliding scale out of the abstract and into reality.

Their original Gulf Leak Meter is seen here in the right-hand column.  You can slide the scale back and forth, depending on who you believe.  But today it looks like we can celebrate.    BP has had a semi-success with their new capping procedure, and some of the oil is now being channeled. That means some of the oil gushing from the ocean floor is now going to be captured. Then it can then be stored, refined, sold and burned, where it will pollute our atmosphere and climate instead of our oceans.  That’s considered progress.  At least there is no major food chain living in the sky.

President Obama will be talking again today in the Gulf Coast region. I don’t expect him to use this as a teaching moment to educate the public about climate change and the wrong-headed increased use of fossil fuels. Climate change is something he has barely mentioned since becoming president. I don’t expect him to not embrace oil and gas and coal in the near future.

I expect him to talk about how offshore oil is great for “our energy needs”. He inappropriately talks about how great offshore drilling is at every possible public moment. It’s almost obscene. I don’t expect Obama to express much genuine or sincere concern for the environment at all, but he will probably mention jobs and the economy a lot. Preserving temporary jobs and economic systems is much more important to all national politicians than preserving a livable, habitable planet. That’s the way it is.

A new memo was released yesterday, and  UN climate leader Yvo de Boer states his opinions on America’s contributions to climate talks. It’s not a flattering picture.  Reported in New Scientist:

According to de Boer, the document was “unbalanced” and heavily biased in favour of western nations. “The Danish paper destroyed two years of effort in one fell swoop,” de Boer wrote in a memo shortly after the conference ended. The memo was obtained by Danish journalist Per Meistrup, author of Kampen om klimaet, and can be seen online at bit.ly/aanbGg.

I don’t expect much from our political leaders at all anymore. They are too busy dealing with the next upcoming election to ever do what is necessary for climate change. (That’s just reality. We need to face reality in order to decide what we can do to fight climate change. I have written off federal level politicians entirely.)  As Dmitri Orlov wrote recently,

It is embarrassing to be lost. It is even more embarrassing for a leader [...]