Today in climate news:
The New York Times editorial page calls out Obama for the Senate’s climate failure.
John Kerry (D-Mass.) tells Bloomberg that the Senate might take up climate in a lame-duck session, however.
And in oil disaster news:
Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, told a federal panel this morning that the alarm system on the rig that should have warned workers prior to the explosion had been disabled, the Times-Picayune reports.
A report on conditions aboard the rig conducted a month before the explosions found that Transocean employees had entered fake data in order to circumvent safety systems, CNN reports. The report also found that employees were afraid to report possible safety concerns to superiors.
Two BP managers on the Deepwater Horizon have been listed as potential targets in the Department of Justice investigation.
The Interior Department Inspector General is looking into allegations that the agency may have altered the report used to justify the offshore drilling moratorium.
Tropical storm Bonnie has forced BP to suspend drilling operations on the relief wells in the Gulf.
The spill may cost $22.7 billion in lost tourism income alone.
BP posted the originals of those photos it admitted to doctoring.
About 630 gallons of oil have spilled from a pipeline in Alaska’s Kenai National Wildlife Refuge run by Chevron.
