#North Sea oil drilling

[rjzimmerman]

Elections Matter - and not just here. (Bill McKibben's Substack, "The Crucial Years."

Yesterday Ed Milliband, the new Labour Energy Secretary, yesterday announced that the government would not back the companies that want to develop two huge new North Sea oilfields. This takes a bit of explanation, so bear with me. Oil giants Shell and Equinor want to develop the vast Jackdaw and Rosebank oil fields. The Tory government backed these projects, even though it led former energy secretary Chris Skidmore to resign from the party. In June, a court ruled that the environmental review for the projects was insufficient, because, crucially, the companies had failed to account for the emissions not just from the oil wells themselves, but from the eventual combustion of that oil in cars around the world. These so-called Scope 3 emissions are obviously the key problem with new gas and oil projects, but the industry has worked hard to keep them off the table—and after the court ruling the then-Tory government announced they would back those companies in court. Now the new sheriff, veteran environmentalist Milliband, has said no. 

The fight isn’t over—the companies are appealing the court rulings. But here’s my prediction: this will be one of the first large oilfields that humans decide to leave in the ground because of climate concerns.

I say this because Labour has just won its massive majority, and can now govern for as much as five years before they have to face the voters again. Let’s say they don’t call a new election along the way and govern until 2029; with the massive growth in renewable energy now firmly underway, I don’t think that there will be the appetite among financiers for new oil fields then. They’ll certainly try—as Desmog Blog points out today, a leading candidate for the new head of the beleaguered Tory party, Tom Tugendhat, has been merrily collecting money from various oil interests and is plumping for new North Sea drilling. But I think that by the time he or someone likes him returns to 10 Downing Street, the moment will have passed.

[saxamophone]

reading, lately

Go give all these a look, they're phenomenal.

Eat Your Death, Draco by @sillywives T | 3k

What if Draco was really excited to join the Death Eaters but then found out they eat death? Literally. On a plate. Draco being Draco is hilarious in this one. (Written for @hp-abandonshipfest)

Seven Year Itch by @mintawasalreadytaken E | 5.6k

Please read @vukovich's prompt for this at the start of the fic, and then oh my god. What minta does with it is so, so good. Ugh! I don't want to say much because I don't want to spoil it. But it will hurt so good. (Written for @hd-hurtcomfort-fest)

Crush by @citrusses E | 8k

Harry's a mess but someone has a crush on him. What's the best way to ensure he can keep their attention? Asking Draco Malfoy for help, of course! Gosh, I love this. Funny and sweet and sexy. I love everything citrusses writes.

When the Flood Comes by @academicdisasterfic E | 10.3k

Draco is a lawyer, back in England to stop oil drilling legislation in the North Sea. Harry is a stoic Auror, set on seeing something through. There's political manouvering, powerful women, and men who are terrible, as always. But Harry's one of the good ones, as always. I love this fic sm, and maybe I'm biased (I am, but I'm also right) but you should read everything by academicdisaster. (Written for @hd-wireless)

Rookie Moves by peu_a_peu E | 75k

Harry and Draco are Auror partners. Harry attempts earnestness, while Draco remains Draco ('Get fucked, loser,' is an amazing response to when someone tries to shake your hand.) Hilarity ensues. Ron and Hermione blame themselves. Need a sample? @littlewinnow drew an amazing rendition of the above-mentioned 'Get fucked, loser.'

Also not a rec, per se (because it's widely known) but my comfort fic lately is Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love. Hilarious, smart, and full of the best romcom tropes.

[15-lizards]

ASOIAF modern AU class/wealth distinctions bc in the wise words of Mod Sam from the Inn at The Crossroads Discord: “i love modern aus where theyre like oh yeah the lannisters are filthy rich and here's the starks, piling into a minivan to go to public school. they would not fucking do that”

Lannisters: Private jets and COO/CEO/CFO positions at the family company and plain white tshirts that cost $5000. 1% of the 1%. They’re the Roys we already know this no need to elaborate.

Starks: they’re a rugged type of Minnesota/North Dakota/Wyoming wealth. Land rich. Own ranches and mining operations and oil drilling companies. Ppl think they’re normal bc they look like average farmers until they get a tour of their 300,000 acres and private mountain. Seem down to earth but grew up breeding ranch horses, don’t really understand what a car note is, and Nedcat paid for all the starklings college apartments. Also wear normal looking vests and ranching jeans and boots that cost absurd amounts

Tyrells: masters at the “quiet wealth” bullshit. Wayyyy older money compared to the Lannisters, and aren’t aggressive/scrappy like them bc of it. Literal aristocracy like lords or barons or some shit. Multiple residences, family tradition of politics, and loads of passive income. Maybe run a newspaper or two and own some global shipping companies bc of their merchant roots or whatever. Margaery was at one of those international debutante balls for the ubër-wealthy.

Tullys: Not as rich as the Tyrells or Lannisters but still nothing to scoff at. Not upper middle class but more like lower rungs of the upper class. Family tradition of sending all the kids to boarding school (that’s where Lysa got pregnant 🙂‍↕️) and they have some nice yachts and the like. Have one really nice permanent house on the river, a summer house upstate, and an apartment in the city. Normal enough to blend in with most people at their school. Also made their money thru shipping lanes.

Martells: Southern oil barons. Nymeria emigrated over and immediately discovered oil on her apparently shitty piece of land. Thousands of acres dedicated to drilling and cattle ranching. Awful for the environment but greenwash the fuck out of their business. Good at being a man of the ppl despite literally being in the one percent. Very publicly donate to progressive charities and causes to offset the backlash they get from pay the people who work for them slave wages. People stan them on Twitter because they’re hot and not like other billionaires.

Baratheons: slightly newer money but old enough to have no excuse to act the way they do. Loud annoying displays of wealth. Made their fortune mostly because they were good at being overly aggressive when it came to the stock market or sales or smthn idk what they do. Robert buys an egregious house in Florida where him and some other rich repulsive republicans do Labor Day weekend on their yachts with women they paid to be there. Absolutely terrible at saving their money (except Stannis and kinda Renly) and quite literally have to have their accounts frozen by their investment bankers. Actively going bankrupt.

Greyjoys: Not even rich anymore. Had a sizable shipping company at one point before they got poached bought out by the Lannisters. Also they engaged in too much tax fraud and embezzlement so now no one wants to touch them with a ten foot pole. Still live in their dilapidated cliffside house that’s literally ab to crumble into the sea. Theon got to live with the Starks bc once the Greyjoys got audited Ned felt bad.

Targaryens: REAL old money that stretches back like at least 500 years. Have had multiple income sources over the years and almost all of it is blood money of some kind and extracted through violence :) Giant ass portraits of their ancestors in their multiple residences, they all speak Valyrian at home, and they don’t even go to school it’s just private tutors. Obscene wealth that isn’t even fathomable to most people. Famously bred race horses and hunting dogs for a while until there was some familial infighting about ownership of the racetracks and stables and that collapsed. Got audited and investigated twenty years ago and Aerys just killed himself instead of going to jail.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End of the line for corporate sovereignty

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Back in the 1950s, a new, democratically elected Iranian government nationalized foreign oil interests. The UK and the US then backed a coup, deposing the progressive government with one more hospitable to foreign corporations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalization_of_the_Iranian_oil_industry

This nasty piece of geopolitical skullduggery led to the mother-of-all-blowbacks: the Anglo-American puppet regime was toppled by the Ayatollah and his cronies, who have led Iran ever since.

For the US and the UK, the lesson was clear: they needed a less kinetic way to ensure that sovereign countries around the world steered clear of policies that undermined the profits of their oil companies and other commercial giants. Thus, the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) was born.

The modern ISDS was perfected in the 1990s with the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). The ECT was meant to foam the runway for western corporations seeking to take over ex-Soviet energy facilities, by making those new post-Glasnost governments promise to never pass laws that would undermine foreign companies' profits.

But as Nick Dearden writes for Jacobin, the western companies that pushed the east into the ECT failed to anticipate that ISDSes have their own form of blowback:

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/energy-charter-treaty-climate-change/

When the 2000s rolled around and countries like the Netherlands and Denmark started to pass rules to limit fossil fuels and promote renewables, German coal companies sued the shit out of these governments and forced them to either back off on their democratically negotiated policies, or to pay gigantic settlements to German corporations.

ISDS settlements are truly grotesque: they're not just a matter of buying out existing investments made by foreign companies and refunding them money spent on them. ISDS tribunals routinely order governments to pay foreign corporations all the profits they might have made from those investments.

For example, the UK company Rockhopper went after Italy for limiting offshore drilling in response to mass protests, and took $350m out of the Italian government. Now, Rockhopper only spent $50m on Adriatic oil exploration – the other $300m was to compensate Rockhopper for the profits it might have made if it actually got to pump oil off the Italian coast.

Governments, both left and right, grew steadily more outraged that ISDSes tied the hands of democratically elected lawmakers and subordinated their national sovereignty to corporate sovereignty. By 2023, nine EU countries were ready to pull out of the ECT.

But the ECT had another trick up its sleeve: a 20-year "sunset" clause that bound countries to go on enforcing the ECT's provisions – including ISDS rulings – for two decades after pulling out of the treaty. This prompted European governments to hit on the strategy of a simultaneous, mass withdrawal from the ECT, which would prevent companies registered in any of the ex-ECT countries from suing under the ECT.

It will not surprise you to learn that the UK did not join this pan-European coalition to wriggle out of the ECT. On the one hand, there's the Tories' commitment to markets above all else (as the Trashfuture podcast often points out, the UK government is the only neoliberal state so committed to austerity that it's actually dismantling its own police force). On the other hand, there's Rishi Sunak's planet-immolating promise to "max out North Sea oil."

But as the rest of the world transitions to renewables, different blocs in the UK – from unions to Tory MPs – are realizing that the country's membership in ECT and its fossil fuel commitment is going to make it a world leader in an increasingly irrelevant boondoggle – and so now the UK is also planning to pull out of the ECT.

As Dearden writes, the oil-loving, market-worshipping UK's departure from the ECT means that the whole idea of ISDSes is in danger. After all, some of the world's poorest countries are also fed up to the eyeballs with ISDSes and threatening to leave treaties that impose them.

One country has already pulled out: Honduras. Honduras is home to Prospera, a libertarian autonomous zone on the island of Roatan. Prospera was born after a US-backed drug kingpin named Porfirio Lobo Sosa overthrew the democratic government of Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

The Lobo Sosa regime established a system of special economic zones (known by their Spanish acronym, "ZEDEs"). Foreign investors who established a ZEDE would be exempted from Honduran law, allowing them to create "charter cities" with their own private criminal and civil code and tax system.

This was so extreme that the Honduran supreme court rejected the plan, so Lobo Sosa fired the court and replaced them with cronies who'd back his play.

A group of crypto bros capitalized on this development, using various ruses to establish a ZEDE on the island of Roatan, a largely English-speaking, Afro-Carribean island known for its marine reserve, its SCUBA diving, and its cruise ship port. This "charter city" included every bizarre idea from the long history of doomed "libertarian exit" projects, so ably recounted in Raymond Craib's excellent 2022 book Adventure Capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

Right from the start, Prospera was ill starred. Paul Romer, the Nobel-winning economist most closely associated with the idea of charter cities, disavowed the project. Locals hated it – the tourist shops and restaurants on Roatan all may sport dusty "Bitcoin accepted here" signs, but not one of those shops takes cryptocurrency.

But the real danger to Prospera came from democracy itself. When Xiomara Castro – wife of Manuel Zelaya – was elected president in 2021, she announced an end to the ZEDE program. Prospera countered by suing Honduras under the ISDS provisions of the Central America Free Trade Agreements, seeking $10b, a third of the country's GDP.

In response, President Castro announced her country's departure from CAFTA, and the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes:

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/

An open letter by progressive economists in support of President Castro condemns ISDSes for costing latinamerican countries $30b in corporate compensation, triggered by laws protecting labor rights, vulnerable ecosystems and the climate:

https://progressive.international/wire/2024-03-18-economists-the-era-of-corporate-supremacy-in-the-international-trade-system-is-coming-to-an-end/en

As Ryan Grim writes for The Intercept, the ZEDE law is wildly unpopular with the Honduran people, and Merrick Garland called the Lobo Sosa regime that created it "a narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity":

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/

The world's worst people are furious and terrified about Honduras's withdrawal from its ISDS. After 60+ years of wrapping democracy in chains to protect corporate profits, the collapse of the corporate kangaroo courts that override democratic laws represents a serious threat to oligarchy.

As Dearden writes, "elsewhere in the world, ISDS cases have been brought specifically on the basis that governments have not done enough to suppress protest movements in the interests of foreign capital."

It's not just poor countries in the global south, either. When Australia passed a plain-packaging law for tobacco, Philip Morris relocated offshore in order to bring an ISDS case against the Australian government in a bid to remove impediments to tobacco sales:

https://isds.bilaterals.org/?philip-morris-vs-australia-isds

And in 2015, the WTO sanctioned the US government for its "dolphin-safe" tuna labeling, arguing that this eroded the profits of corporations that fished for tuna in ways that killed a lot of dolphins:

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/24/wto-ruling-on-dolphin-safe-tuna-labeling-illustrates-supremacy-of-trade-agreements/

In Canada, the Conservative hero Steven Harper entered into the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, which banned Canada from passing laws that undermined the profits of Chinese corporations for 31 years (the rule expires in 2045):

https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/harper-oks-potentially-unconstitutional-china-canada-fipa-deal-coming-force-october-1

Harper's successor, Justin Trudeau, went on to sign the Canada-EU Trade Agreement that Harper negotiated, including its ISDS provisions that let EU corporations override Canadian laws:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-eu-parliament-schulz-ceta-1.3415689

There was a time when any challenge to ISDS was a political third rail. Back in 2015, even hinting that ISDSes should be slightly modified would send corporate thinktanks into a frenzy:

https://www.techdirt.com/2015/07/20/eu-proposes-to-reform-corporate-sovereignty-slightly-us-think-tank-goes-into-panic-mode/

But over the years, there's been a growing consensus that nations can only be sovereign if corporations aren't. It's one thing to treat corporations as "persons," but another thing altogether to elevate them above personhood and subordinate entire nations to their whims.

With the world's richest countries pulling out of ISDSes alongside the world's poorest ones, it's feeling like the end of the road for this particularly nasty form of corporate corruption.

And not a moment too soon.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/27/korporate-kangaroo-kourts/#corporate-sovereignty

Image: ChrisErbach (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UnitedNations_GeneralAssemblyChamber.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[billy-cockblock]

SWTD Theory

Still Wakes the Deep has been a huge brainworm for me the past few weeks, so I wanted to make a post with one of my takes. Someone’s probably thought of this already, but I can’t find anything about it, so here I go. 

I’m gonna take this time to shout out a little sub theory of mine that plays a bit of a part in my main point. 

For a little background, in populations of organisms, there are limiting factors on their growth and spread. Think of it as a series of funnels of different sizes: the rate of liquid that can flow through is going to be determined by the narrowest funnel. For example. if there’s a population that has ample food, space, and whatever else it needs, but has a restricted access to water, that water is going to limit how large that population could grow.

Before the Shape was dug up by the drill, it was probably dormant in the sea bed, doing its best to survive, the same as any other organism. Down where it was dark, wet, and cold, I think it had one main limiting factor: oxygen.

I don’t think the Shape can efficiently exchange gas underwater. Most of the untouched bodies Caz sees are only underwater, where an organism that thrives in air would struggle to access. Once it gets dug up and brought to air with plenty of organic matter to consume and grow with, its population explodes. When a limiting factor is removed, there’s nothing holding the population back any more until they hit a new limit. The Shape’s old limiting factor was removed, and it would only stop reproducing by running out of space to grow on the rig, running out of organic matter to use, or being killed (like, say, in a giant fiery explosion).

(I could go on and on about how the Shape potentially works, please feel free to ask me about it)

Now, I’ll get to my main theory:

I think Caz was dead the whole time.

Now, I don’t mean that in a “the whole game is in his head, none of it was real” way; I mean it in a “this man got Ethan Winters’ed” way. 

So, I started to do a little research into how tall oil rigs are to know how far Caz would have fallen off the helipad. I quickly learned there are many types of oil rigs and not every oil rig of the same type is the same size. I’m studying marine biology, not petroleum engineering like my brother, so I got tired of trying to guesstimate how tall the Bierra D’s helipad would be and attacked the problem with some simple math. 

Watching a video, I saw he fell for between 4-5 seconds; the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8m/s^2. Plugging that in a calculator while not accounting for air resistance to solve for distance gets me ~80-120m, depending on if I used the 4 or 5 second count, so I’ll guess around 100m. I’ve found many conflicting sources on what the tallest heights you can safely fall into water are, but I can safely tell you that 100m is much higher than any of them. 

Now, maybe the devs weren’t going with the mathematical exact timing it would take for a guy to fall off an oil rig, and didn’t mean for it to be implied that he fell from THAT high. Still, we can agree he fell from very high up, high enough to have likely ended in injury. Maybe he’d just fall on and break a leg? Maybe an arm or some ribs?

After falling off the rig, the last frame before Caz blacks out shows the water at the top of the screen, meaning he hits the water head-first. He may be wearing a hard hat (that somehow stays on his head through the whole ordeal since he clips his flashlight to it), but he still should have cracked his skull open or broken his neck. 

When they pull him out of the water, he’s cold and not breathing, which wouldn’t be unusual for a drowning victim in the North Sea in the dead of winter, but it would usually be a death sentence. They never explain how they dragged Caz out of the water, but it would presumably have taken a long time to get him out, and time is key when dealing with someone who isn’t breathing. The fact that he’s able to cough up water and start breathing on his own is a miracle, since it doesn’t sound like Brodie or Douglas do CPR when they bring him inside.

So, fall damage, head and/or spine injury, drowning, and hypothermia. By several different factors, Caz should be a very, very dead man. So why isn’t he?

My theory is that, somehow, somewhy, the infection from The Shape healed and brought him back to life. We know for a fact it has amazing generative properties, basically able to double, triple, quadruple the amount of tissue and organic matter in the crew’s bodies with no regard for conservation of mass, so what’s just a little regeneration of damaged tissues in a single body? Once Caz’s body gets someplace with better conditions suited to life (inside where it’s warm and there’s air), it just jumpstarts his body functions. The Shape’s presumably been dormant in the seafloor for a long time, so it could be able to go dormant and kinda “come back to life” as conditions change, similar to a tardigrade, and potentially pass this ability onto its hosts.

And Caz mentions how his head hurts a lot, especially when he gets close to the Shape. 

Now, this might seem like baseless conjecture, and y’all might say “That’s a good headcanon, but there’s no evidence that The Shape could bring people back to life!” to which I would say “Oh, but there might be!"

After the helicopter on the starboard side, we get a call from Bruce, who is actively drowning. Through his gasps, he tells us that O’Connor hurt his leg and couldn’t swim, presumably drowning. And guess who we see still kicking as we’re passing through the pontoon? My thought is that O’Connor couldn’t swim, drowned, and drifted to the bottom, landing on a part of the shape. Once Caz and Brodie start working in the legs and they drain, it exposes him to air and allows the shape to start growing again, assimilating him and bringing him back to life. 

Obviously, he’s not doing as well as Caz is. My thought was that, if Caz died as he was infected, the infection would’ve had to put a lot of its energy into bringing him back, not leaving much for itself to begin assimilating him into the Shape. Since O’Connor was in direct contact with the Shape, it could hook him up to its network to help supplement that loss. Caz, meanwhile, stays as far away from the stuff as he can and doesn’t even get anything to eat all day; guy's running on empty. He has small things where the Shape affects him, like the colors at the edge of his vision, but most of his hallucinations only happen after the Shape attacks him through O’Connor. Before, I’m pretty sure the largest incident (other than when he’s blacked out) is when we can barely hear Suze’s voice over the speakers when moving through the pontoon. It’s really only after getting attacked that he starts to hear her when he’s awake, near the Shape, or over phone calls. He only hears her clearly over the speakers in administration after he runs into the shape many times when he gets swept away in the flooding.

With my main evidence out of the way, I’ll also mention that Caz sees the “light at the end of the tunnel” from the end of the game in the oil flashes when he blacks out.

But hey, that’s just a theory. 

A GAME TH- I have received a cease and desist.

Man, this became a long read. Thanks for getting this far, and I hope you enjoyed!

[protoaxol]

Whats your au about?

Disclaimer: this au is not belonging to me! It is an AU that my friend March made.

The au is a precursor to the events of Still Wakes the Deep. It takes place in the north sea during the year 1973. A Cadal-owned drillship named the Montrose set out to the north sea during the winter to drill for oil, unsuspecting of what would happen. During the night, the ship is rocked by an explosion.

Something has boarded the ship.

[scotianostra]

November 5th 1983 saw an "incident" at the North Sea oil rig Byford Dolphin the resulted in 5 men losing their lives.

I was debating whether this falls under my "Scottish" remit as such, but two of the divers were british, and the North Sea is by and large part of our territories, as well as Scandinavia, who also drill out there. The manner of their deaths is quite gruesome

The Byford Dolphin Decompression Incident was The worst diving accident In History, well until the Titan submersible implosion last year equalled the death toll.

On a normal day at work, two divers climbed into the rig’s diving bell, a transportation chamber to take them down to depth before heading down to the chamber system far below the surface. At first, all seemed to go well, with the divers taking turns resting and heading out to work on the rig.

During their time underwater, however, two divers were resting in their decompression chamber while another two divers made their way to the chambers in the diving bell. Everything was going as planned as the two tenders—the “drivers”—secured the bell to the chambers. The two divers on board would soon proceed to their own compression chamber. However, as the tenders were preparing to depart, they failed to seal off the diving bell properly from the chambers before beginning their ascent.

What ensued was that the chambers were suddenly decompressed from nine atmospheres to one atmosphere, and the air rushed out of the chambers. Tragically, three of the divers inside the chambers at the time were killed in a horrible way—through explosive decompression. Essentially, the nitrogen bubbles in their blood expanded, causing them to boil from the inside out. The fourth was sucked out of a very narrow opening, ejecting his internal organs, spraying the deck with gory torrent.One of the divers in the bell was also killed in the accident The only consolation is that their demise would have ben mercifully fast.

The North Sea Divers Alliance, formed by early North Sea divers and the relatives of those killed, continued to press for further investigation and,it wasn't until February 2008 that they obtained a report that indicated the cause was faulty equipment. The families of the divers eventually received compensation for the damages from the Norwegian government, 26 years after the incident.

The rig was the site of several serious incidents, and was only decommisioned in 2019, the pic shows the rig at Invergordon.

[sataniccapitalist]

[dailyanarchistposts]

The Many Faces of Authority

The complicity of nation-states, NGOs and corporations in creating ecological degradation showed itself again recently, when Denmark announced its plans (praised by Greenpeace as a historic event) to phase out oil drilling in the North Sea by 2050.[20] Parallel to their ambitious goals, Denmark builds hundreds of kilometers of new infrastructure for fossil fuels with the European Baltic Pipe project.[21] This project will also connect to Danish sugar factories on Lolland,[22] an industry releasing the second highest Co2 emissions in Denmark,[23] making it clear that Denmark’s ‘green’ ambitions are heavily misrepresented.

Green NGOs like Greenpeace continue to keep inventory on the destruction of nature and bargain the details of destruction with corporations. In 2010 Greenpeace entered an agreement supporting logging companies in the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement[24] and, recently, praised Mærsk – the planet’s largest shipping company and, until 2017,[25] a big player in the oil industry – merely for refusing to ship a specific Antarctic toothfish.[26] NGOs collaborate with state and capital constantly; they are businesses in and of themselves and constantly sell out movements defending forests, rivers and marine ecosystems [R.F. – see Green Capital & Environmental “Leaders” Won’t Save Us].

Promoting a notion of “net zero” emissions and subsequent carbon trading schemes is leading to a major land grab in the Global South. Industrial scale green energies, which increase the total energy market rather than decreasing fossil fuels, also lead to new profits for energy companies and devastate vast sacrifice zones in poor areas. It is no coincidence that all these technocratic solutions proposed by green NGOs are also supported by energy corporations.

The guises of authoritarianism are plenty and its attempts to resolve environmental issues have failed and led to increased degradation. Representative democracy, and other systems based on bureaucratic authority, have taught us change comes through politicians, corporations, NGOs and, of course, personal consumer choice [R.F. – see Return Fire vol.5 pg65]. The underlaying implication of this narrative is that chaotic organizing, viral direct action (and unrestrained) and immediate change in conduct is not the answer.

We need to recognize that authoritarianism and human-centric claims to supremacy over the earth have been and continue to be the root of socio-ecological crisis. This happens via the church, the State, urbanization and modern mechanical science,[27] all of which seek domination and control over the systems of our planet. This is not to say modern science is not useful, but to remember that it comes at a material and energetic cost [R.F. – see Return Fire vol.5 pg33].

[melancholitas]

My coworker showed me the cluster fuck of a gem that is Nanowar of Steel's "Norwegian Reggaeton" and I might have fallen off the hinges completely ever since.

Despite the MV not being my cup of tea, I'm laugh-crying even harder because song wise that's exactly how I picture a party of the Strawhat-Heart-Kid alliance, in all it's suggestive and chaotic glory- - - At this point I don't know if I should be concerned about my brain or need someone to edit this into an animation.

This grease fire of a song awoke so many thoughts about some of my favorite ships, as well... (one of the dancers has a hat like Penguin, the makeup and wigs and sunglasses don't make it better in the slightest.)

Some lyrics and my hc's regarding under the cut. Proceed to read at own risk lmao:

Kid to/or (drunk) Law

Yeah, you drilled my heart and my blood is spilling, babe. Like oil from a platform in the North Sea (Blue). You fished me like a whaler in violation of international treaties, babe. Now I'm in an Oslo (Flevance) state of mind, honey. And you burned my soul like the Fantoft (City) church in June 1992, babe

Killer or Penguin or Shachi (maybe Wire as well)

Hypothermia, cuba libre, midnight sun, Sommer fiesta at Ragnarok beach. You were dancing, like a polar killer whale, when your bloodthirsty eyes crossed with mine

Kid pirates ft all

Corazón vikingo de Santo Domingo, la iglesia quemada, la piña colada (Viking heart of Santo Domingo, the burnt church, the piña colada)

Guerrero cubano, bailarín pagano, tomando mojito en el sacrificio (Cuban warrior, pagan dancer, having a mojito during the sacrifice)

Esta vida loca, a mirar la foca, asando un salmón - Norwegian (North blue) Reggaeton (This crazy life, looking at the seal, roasting a salmon - North Blue Raggaeton)

Kid or Killer (with the "softly" part thrown in by a Heart)

Nórdico latino, qué luciferino, mata al enemigo, pero despacito, vamos a bailar en la Playa del Mal (Nordic Latin, so Luciferic, kill the enemy, but softly, let's go dance at the Evil Beach)

Kid

Mueve tu cintura, con mi armadura, Satanás me sube la temperatura, vamos a bailar en maligno ritual (Shake your belt, with my armour, Satan makes my body hot, let's go dance in the evil ritual)

Kid to Law or a desperate and drunk Shachi / Sanji

My Drakkar is ready won't you get on board, while I proudly sail in the depths your fjord. When the storm is raging, and your booty is shaking, hold my pole tight and you ain't get no aching. Your breakfast is ready, isn't it good? It comes with my morning Norwegian (North Bluean) wood. I'm swimming against the stream, I don't care I'm soon getting there where the salmons dare

(↑the dude with the pilot cap getting shooed away during this kills me every time. Like, you tried, Penguin, you tried.)

Ft. an hommage to "In your head" from the soul king himself

Why. Just WHY. This shouldn't fit so well. The deadly yet horny viking vibe for the Kids, the Hispanic party touch from the Strawhats, and the nordic innuendos (polar killer whale, Law's seal spots, the dry humor pick up lines with the burning church including a side jab that might as well be Flevance) for the Hearts???

This will haunt me to my grave and I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse. Probably both.

[rjzimmerman]

Biden to block oil drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. waters. (Washington Post)

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

President Joe Biden will moveMonday to block all future oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of federal waters — equivalent to nearly a quarter of the total land area of the United States, according to two people briefed on the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement is not yet public.

The action underscores how Biden is racing to cement his legacy on climate change and conservation in his last weeks in office. President-elect Donald Trump, who has describedhis energy policy as “drill, baby, drill,” is likely to work with congressional Republicans to challenge the decision.

Biden will issue two memorandums that prohibit future federal oil and gas leasing across large swaths of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska, the two people said. The oil and gas industry has long prized the eastern Gulf of Mexico in particular, viewing the area as a key part of its offshore production plans.

The move could have the biggest impact in the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for about 14 percent of the country’s crude oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Industry operations there focus on a small sliver of federal waters off Louisiana’s coast.

The decision would have little effect on a stretch of the Atlantic from North Carolina to Florida, where no drilling is underway.There is weak industry interest in the region, and lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns about possible oil spills devastating local beaches and tourism.

In fact, Trump imposed a 10-year moratorium on offshore oil exploration off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina when courting voters there during his 2020 campaign. “This protects your beautiful gulf and your beautiful ocean, and it will for a long time to come,” Trump said as he announced the election-year reversal during an appearance at a lighthouse in Florida.

The Northern Bering Sea, off the coast of western Alaska, is home to migrating marine mammals including bowhead and beluga whales, walruses and ice seals, which are hunted by many Alaska Natives. In 2016, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that prohibited oil and gas exploration across more than 112,000 square miles of marine habitat in the Northern Bering Sea and called for tribal comanagement of the protected area.

Biden plans to invoke the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which gives the president broad powers to withdraw federal waters from future leasing. A federal judge ruled in 2019 that such withdrawals cannot be undone without an act of Congress.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, suggested that he would seek to overturn the decision using the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to nullify an executive action within 60 days of enactment with a simple majority vote.

The expected move is “yet another attempt by the Biden administration to undercut the incoming Trump administration and ignore the will of the American people — who decisively voted to reverse this war on American energy,” Lee said in an emailed statement, adding, “Senate Republicans will push back using every tool at our disposal.”

[bouncinghedgehog]

DID YOU KNOW? This is what an oil platform looks like before being submerged in the ocean.

The largest object in the world is made of concrete.

Wonders of engineering.

The record-holding largest object in the world is built of concrete. It is the Troll A marine platform, which extracts gas in the North Sea.

It is owned by Shell Oil and is the heaviest object ever transported by water from where it was constructed, on the coast, to its final location in the sea.

It was completed in 1991 and was moved by 10 ships over several days. It weighs 1,050,000 tons, and its construction used 245,000 cubic meters of concrete and approximately 100,000 tons of reinforced steel.

The Troll A in the North Sea is located 80 kilometers offshore northwest of Bergen, Norway. The platform is the largest ever transported, weighing 683,600 tons and standing 472 meters tall. The Troll A belongs to the gravity base foundations, meaning it rests on the seabed due to its weight. The construction of the platform cost $650 million at the time.

The Troll A platform is a milestone in engineering and has set several records in the Guinness Book. In 1996, it set the record as the largest oil platform in the world, a record later surpassed by the Petronius platform. In 2006, singer Katie Melua held a concert at its base, setting the record for the deepest underwater concert, 303 meters below sea level.

The Troll A platform has contributed to Norway's economic development, as the country is one of the world's largest exporters of natural gas. Additionally, the platform has helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve air quality, as natural gas is a cleaner alternative compared to coal or diesel.

The technology used in the construction and operation of the Troll A platform has been revolutionary. Shell has developed technology to produce, liquefy, store, and offload gas onto floating liquefied natural gas carriers (FLNG) at sea. These advanced technologies allow access to remote natural gas fields and serve larger fields with various FLNG installations.

The environmental impact of the Troll A platform has been minimized thanks to directional drilling, which has played a crucial role in accessing the Troll field while simultaneously reducing environmental impact. Directional drilling tools provide real-time data to guide the drilling process, ensuring precise well placement.

In summary, the Troll A in the North Sea is a natural gas extraction platform owned by Shell that has contributed to Norway's economic development and helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve air quality. The technology used in its construction and operation has been revolutionary and has minimized environmental impact.

Credtis to the rightful owner

[beardedmrbean]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg went on trial Thursday for refusing to leave a protest that blocked the entrance to a major oil and gas industry conference in London last year.

Thunberg, 21, was among more than two dozen protesters arrested on Oct. 17 after preventing access to a hotel during the Energy Intelligence Forum, attended by some of the industry's top executives.

The Swedish environmentalist, who inspired a global youth movement demanding stronger efforts to fight climate change, and four other protesters face a two-day trial in Westminster Magistrates' Court on a charge of breaching a section of the Public Order Act that allows police to impose limits on public assemblies. She and four Fossil Free London protesters have pleaded not guilty.

Thunberg and other climate protesters have accused fossil fuel companies of deliberately slowing the global energy transition to renewables in order to make more profit. They also oppose the U.K. government's recent approval of drilling for oil in the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland.

Thunberg sat in court in a black T-shirt and black pants, taking notes as a police officer testified about efforts to disperse demonstrators who had blocked several exits and entrances for hours outside the luxury InterContinental Hotel in central London.

“It seemed like a very deliberate attempt ... to prevent access to the hotel for most delegates and the guests,” Superintendent Matthew Cox said. “People were really restricted from having access to the hotel.”

Cox said protesters were lighting colorful flares and drummers were creating a deafening din outside the hotel as some demonstrators sat on the ground. When officers began arresting people, other protesters quickly took their places, leading to a “perpetual cycle” that found police running out of officers to make arrests.

The protest had gone on for about five hours when police issued an order for demonstrators to move to an adjacent street, Cox said.

Thunberg was outside the front entrance when she was warned she would be arrested if she didn't comply, prosecutor Luke Staton said. She said she intended to stay where she was.

If convicted, the protesters could receive fines of up to 2,500 pounds ($3,170).

Outside the courthouse, protesters held signs saying “Make Polluters Pay,” and “Climate protest is not a crime.”

Thunberg rose to prominence after staging weekly protests outside the Swedish Parliament starting in 2018.

Last summer, she was fined by a Swedish court for disobeying police and blocking traffic during an environmental protest at an oil facility. She had already been fined for the same offense previously in Sweden.

[hexjulia]

can anyone recommend a good book about drilling for oil and gas in the north sea? I saw a few but I have limited time and i'm trying to just pick a good one. I would just like to be more informed about both the politics surrounding it + how they actually do that.

[superkalafragilisticiexpectitall]

Can`t let it go to waste.. That would be criminal.

God gave us Mama Earth & ALL her treasures.

God wants us to be looked after..

Just think though - thats OURS..

Cheap, plentiful gas & UK won`t use it.. 😡

[bixolox999]

no, cuz why is everyone so casual about wtf is going on in this country. oklahoma state superintendent just required bibles to be a part of grade school curriculum, the president has been granted entire legal immunity, american democracy is falling apart, seperation of church and state is failling, the chevron act just got overturned, peoject 2025 is already in affect, the president refuses to declare a national climate emergency. pollutopn is at an all-time high. the social wealth class is at an all-time high. ww3 is on the brink of starting. China and Taiwan beef. Microplastics, red40, and glycophosphates as well as lead in our food. Celebrities singing and autographing Israeli weapons that are being dropped on literal children. Voter suppression. Sea bed drilling and new oil pipelines. Grizzlies being taken off the endangered and protected species lists. White rhinos literally went extinct. The sun emits thousands of tons of harmful UV radiation. Snapp funding is being withdrawn. Housing prices are through the roof. America cab pretty much have a king now (think pre Magna Carta times in England) abortion, contraception, and ivf rights being stripped away. Student protestors are being prosecuted. "Let them eat cake." Super corporations and big money literally control politics. Mini rebellions and revolutions are starting ALL OVER THE WORLD. Ukraine and Russia are still at war. Russian watercraft in Cuba harbors. Christian nationalism works to overrule the literal constitution. INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION BEING TARGETTED????? no safe asylum for anyone in the world right now. North Korea and Russia form a stronger alliance. Kellogs "let them eat cereal" bullshit. Teens mental health crisis. Flowers are blooming in Antarctica. The ocean is literally trying to kill us. Polaroid bears having to move to warmer climates in order to survive climate change and global warming. The only real presidential candidates are either a tyrant or a dementiated old man being controlled by MAGA Congress, OR a man who used epsteins plane and literally had a worm eat part of his brain. GET YOUR PASSPORTS. this country is fucked and I'm genuially scared to see what our future looks like.