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Bayer Shouldn't Be Making and Storing the Same Toxic Chemical That Killed Thousands in Bhopal. Why Is That Even a Question?

Submitted by meg on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 1:27pm.

Analysis

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

It's kind of like asking whether or not one should sell a convicted arsonist a stockpile of a certain type of industrial flame thrower that is notorious for misfiring.

Four lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board President John Bresland requesting an investigation into Bayer's continued use of the highly hazardous chemical methyl isocyanate (MIC, also sometimes abbreviated as MIS) in light of last year's deadly explosion at a West Virginia chemical facility.

Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee Ed Markey (D-MA) questioned Bayer's need to produce a chemical that was at the heart of what Greenpeace calls the "world's worst industrial disaster."

The Bhopal disaster claimed upwards of 20,000 lives and caused countless injuries and untold disfigurement when a leak of MIC emanated from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India in 1984. The Congressional letter to Bresland notes that another major chemical company, DuPont, phased out MIC use after the disaster, but Bayer did not.

The circumstances of the Bayer explosion suggest the incident easily could have become another Bhopal. Bayer's West Virginia facility is the only chemical plant in the nation that uses and stores such quantities of MIC, a chemical used to make pesticides and fertilizers. The August 2008 explosion killed two employees and endangered the surrounding community, as the highly flammable and combustible MIC was dangerously close to the detonation.

The tank that exploded that night was propelled 50 feet into the air, smashing pipes and equipment along the way. The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board preliminary report noted that the tank could have been propelled in any direction, and that the 37,000-pound capacity tank of MIC was only 80 feet away. Some debris from the accident landed close to the MIC storage tank. Had the MIC tank been impacted, the result could have easily been much worse than the devastating Bhopal disaster, ripple effects of which persist to this day.

Bayer is the last company to deal in such huge quantities of MIC. It is a fair question to ask why a company would need to use and store such a dangerous chemical, one that is known to cause death and destruction after fairly minimal exposure. The fact that these lawmakers have taken it upon themselves to inquire about it is certainly a positive thing.

Countless people put their lives in Bayer's hands, taking vitamins, medications and -- of course -- aspirin made by their healthcare division. But trust in Bayer CropScience, which Congress only now seems to be just barely questioning, is worth a closer look.

When one reads about the routine dereliction of duty and rejection of safety precautions that occurred at the West Virginia plant, the more important question becomes whether or not Bayer should still be allowed to manufacture and store chemicals in this country.

Bresland told Congress that there were "significant lapses in process safety management that likely contributed to causing this accident." He noted that employees were overworked and improperly trained, and due to inadequate equipment, safety procedures were routinely disregarded.

"What else could have happened in this accident?" Bresland asked during his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Bayer's bad behavior didn't end there, however. In the wake of the explosion, Bayer destroyed evidence of its misdeeds and launched a media campaign designed to "marginalize" citizens and journalists who expressed concern about MIC.

Bresland also told local media outlets that Bayer had been uncooperative with his board's investigation, a full report of which is expected by year's end. The company is reportedly using an obscure post-9/11 security law to shield thousands of documents from the board's view.

Perhaps most troubling was Bayer's initial refusal to even tell emergency responders what exactly was going on. If there had been a release of MIC along the lines of Bhopal, could West Virginia have trusted Bayer to have been more forthcoming with information?

I say we don't put ourselves in that position. And I'm not alone.

One local opinion editor wrote that even though West Virginia is in need of jobs, Bayer should no longer operate its business as usual there:

It is both astonishing and disturbing that a company with such low ethical and safety standards is allowed to continue to manufacture and store chemicals potent enough to kill untold numbers of residents in Kanawha County.

The entire process proves that the company and its decrepit facility should no longer be allowed to operate in the heart of West Virginia's most populous urban environment.

West Virginians have been plagued by incidents similar to the August explosion for many years. Maya Nye, spokesperson for the local group People Concerned About MIC, told Bresland's board this story of an explosion that occurred in 1993, when she was just 16:

I felt and heard a loud boom. I thought a tree limb must have fallen on our house until the fire truck went backwards down my one-way street announcing that a shelter-in-place was in effect and to close all doors, windows and turn off all air conditioners until further notice. Panicked, I called my father, a Union Carbide employee, to ask him if he knew what happened and what to do. With no information, he told me to hang tight. It wasn't until after I hung up the phone that the smell invaded my house. I called my father again, only this time I couldn't get through. The phone lines were jammed as too many people were looking for information at the same time. Frantically I grabbed some duct tape and started taping up the cracks around the door and the windows as they had taught us to do in school after the Bhopal disaster. It didn't much work. Too many windows, too little time. The smell had already pervaded my house. So with a wet wash rag to my face, I sat with my dog, crying, hoping that my last phone call to my father wouldn't really be the last.

Nye was not overreacting, even at the traditionally melodramatic age of 16. The Environmental Protection Agency calls MIC "extremely toxic." Documented causes of death and injury related to MIC exposure range from "respiratory tract irritation, difficulty breathing, blindness, nausea, gastritis, sweating, fever, chills, and liver and kidney damage" to lung and eye damage to long term effects on fertility.

Despite its attempt at strong language, the congressional letter to Bresland simply asks him and his board to see whether Bayer could feasibly reduce or phase out MIC. Clearly, if DuPont did it more than 20 years ago, so can Bayer. The board and Congress should examine whether the sheer ineptitude, corruption and deception emanating from Bayer's CropScience division should bar the company from producing agricultural products at all.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

For more information about the Bhopal disaster and ongoing fallout, see The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.

First this from the AP:
President
Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used
questionable interrogation practices violates international law, the
U.N.'s top torture investigator said Saturday. But he said Washington
is unlikely to face any legal sanctions.


On
Thursday, Obama absolved CIA officers from prosecution for harsh,
painful interrogation of terror suspects under the former Bush
administration. The announcement was met with disappointment from human
rights groups and former detainees who condemned such methods as
torture.
In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manfred
Nowak, an Austrian law professor who serves as a special rapporteur for
the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, said the United States had
committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make
torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it.
"They are party to the convention and the convention is very, very
clear," Nowak said when asked to confirm comments contained in an
interview he gave Austria's Der Standard newspaper. "The fact that you
carried out an order doesn't relieve you of your responsibility," he
said, adding it could be a mitigating factor.Now that we've established they need to be punished, here is what they should be punished for:


....

New Bush Torture Bombshell Memos: 10 Horrifying Discoveries By Liliana Segura, AlterNet Posted on April 17, 2009, Printed on April 19, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/story/137093/ The Obama administration has finally released four long-awaited legal memos used by the Bush administration to design its torture program -- and although their existence,  like U.S. torture itself, has been an open secret for years, the memos are nonetheless shocking. Written in a dispassionate legal tone, the documents contain the professional opinion of Office of Legal Council attorneys Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury as they assessed the CIA's "harsh interrogation techniques" between 2002 and 2005. Each method is described in sadistic detail, and each would surely be heinous if experienced on its own. But, as pointed out in the famous "Bybee" memo, dated August 1, 2002 -- the "interrogation team planned to use these techniques "in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique." The torture memos are available on the ACLU website. But if you can't bring yourself to read them, below are ten disturbing excerpts that provide a hideous glimpse of what was done in the name of Americans in the so-called "war on terror." As you read them, keep in mind that the Obama administration has already announced that it will not seek charges against the people who carried out the actions they describe. "In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution," Obama said in a statement."This is a time for reflection, not retribution. ... We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement, too. "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," he said.Which was exactly what the Bush administration intended.   1. Walling (Bybee memo, August 1, 2002) "A flexible false wall will be constructed. The individual is placed with his heels touching the wall: The interrogator pulls the individual forward and then quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall. It is the individual's shoulder blades that hit the wall. During this motion, the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a c-collar effect to help prevent whiplash … "You have orally informed us that the false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock or surprise the individual. In part, the idea is to create a sound that will make the impact seem far worse than it is and that will be far worse than any injury that might result from the action." 2. The Facial (or Insult) Slap (Bybee memo, August 1, 2002) "With the facial slap or insult slap, the interrogator slaps the individual's face with fingers slightly spread. The hand makes contact with the area directly between the tip of the individual's chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe. The interrogator invades the individual's personal space. The goal of the facial slap is not to inflict physical pain that is severe or lasting. Instead, the purpose of the facial slap is to induce shock, surprise, and/or humiliation …" 3. Cramped Confinement & insects Placed In a Confinement Box (Bybee memo, August 1, 2002) "You would like to place (Abu) Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect such as a caterpillar in the box with him..."Focusing in part on the fact that the boxes will be without light, placement in these boxes would constitute a procedure designed to disrupt profoundly the senses..."With respect to the small confinement box, you have informed us that he would spend at most two hours in this box ... For the larger box, in which he can both stand and sit, he may be placed in this box for up to eighteen hours at a time ..." 4. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet. You have informed us that the CIA believes dietary manipulation makes other techniques, such as sleep deprivation, more effective. "Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation." 5. Nudity (Bradury memo, May 10, 2005) "This technique is used to cause psychological discomfort, particularly if a detainee, for cultural or other reasons, is especially modest. When the technique is employed, clothing can be provided as an instant reward for cooperation. During and between interrogation sessions, a detainee may be kept nude, provided that ambient temperatures and the health of the detainee permit."... Interrogators can exploit the detainee's fear of being seen naked. In addition, female officers involved in the interrogation process may see the detainees naked, and … we will assume that detainees subjected to nudity as an interrogation technique are aware that they may be seen naked by females." 6. Abdominal Slap (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005) "In this technique, the interrogator strikes the abdomen of the detainee with the back of his open hand. The interrogator must have no rings or other jewelry on his hand. The interrogator is positioned directly in front of the detainee, generally no more than than 18 inches from the detainees. With his fingers held tightly together and fully extended, and with his palm toward the interrogator's own body, using his elbow as a fixed pivot point, the interrogator slaps the detainee in the detainee's abdomen. The interrogator may not use a fist, and the slap must be delivered above the navel and below the sternum. This technique is used to condition a detainee to pay attention tot the interrogator's questions and to dislodge expectations that the detainee will not be touched." 7. Water Dousing and "Flicking" (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005) "Cold water is poured on the detainee either from a container or from a hose without a nozzle. This technique is intended to weaken the detainee's resistance and persuade him to cooperate with interrogators. … A medical officer must observe and monitor the detainee throughout application of this technique, including for signs of hypothermia. "… You have also described a variation of water dousing involving much smaller quantities of water; this variation is known as 'flicking.' Flicking of water is achieved by the interrogator wetting his fingers and then flicking them at the detainee, propelling droplets at the detainee. Flicking of water is done 'in an effort to create a distracting effect, to awaken, to startle, to irritate, to instill humiliation, or to cause temporary insult … Although water may be flicked into the detainee's face with this variation, the flicking of water at all times is done in such a manner as to avoid the inhalation or ingestion of water by the detainee." 8. Sleep Deprivation (more than 48 hours) (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005) "The primary method of sleep deprivation involves the use of shackling to keep the detainee awake. In this method, the detainee is standing and is handcuffed, and the handcuffs are attached by a length of chain to the ceiling. The detainee's hands are shackled in front of his body, so that the detainee has approximately a two- to three-foot diameter of movement. The detainee's feet are shackled to a bolt in the floor. "… In lieu of standing sleep deprivation, a detainee may instead be seated on and shackled to a small stool. The stool supports the detainee's weight, but is too small to permit the subject to balance himself sufficiently to go to sleep… "… We understand that a detainee undergoing sleep deprivation is generally fed by hand by CIA personnel so that he need not be unshackled… "If the detainee is clothed, he wears an adult diaper under his pants … If the detainee is wearing a diaper, it is checked regularly and changed as necessary. The use of the diaper is for sanitary and health purposes of the detainee; it is not used for the purpose of humiliating the detainee and it is not considered to be an interrogation technique. "The maximum allowable duration for sleep deprivation authorized by the CIA is 180 hours ... You have informed us that to date, more than a dozen detainees have been subjected to sleep deprivation of more than 48 hours, and three detainees have been subjected to sleep deprivation of more than 96 hours." 9. Combination of Techniques (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005) "Your office has outlined the manner in which many of the individual techniques we previously considered could be combined … "In a prototypical interrogation, the detainee begins his first interrogation session stripped of his clothes, shackled, and hooded, with the walling collar over his head and around his neck. … The interrogators remove the hood and explain that the detainee can improve his situation by cooperating and may say that the interrogators 'will do what it takes to get important information.' As soon as the detainee does anything inconsistent with the interrogators' instructions, the interrogators use an insult slap or abdominal slap. They employ walling if it becomes clear that the detainee is not cooperating in the interrogation. This sequence 'may continue for several more iterations as the interrogators continue to measure the [detainee's] resistance posture and apply a negative consequence to [his] resistance efforts.' The interrogators and security officers then put the detainee into position for standing sleep deprivation, begin dietary manipulation through a liquid diet, and keep the detainee nude (except for a diaper). The first interrogation session, which could have lasted from 30 minutes to several ours, would then be at an end. "If the interrogation team determines there is a need to continue, and if the medical and psychological personnel advise that there are no contraindications, a second session may begin." 10. Waterboarding (Bybee memo, August 1, 2002) "Finally, you would like to use a technique called the 'waterboard.' In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual's feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth. This causes an increase in carbon dioxide level in the individual's blood. This increase in the carbon dioxide level stimulates increased effort to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception of "suffocation and incipient panic," i.e., the perception of drowning..."We find that the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death. As you have explained the waterboard procedure to us, it creates in the subject the uncontrollable physiological sensation that the subject is drowning ..."Although the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death, prolonged mental harm must nonetheless result to violate the statuatory prohibition on infliction of severe mental pain or suffering ... you have advised us that the relied is almost immediate when the cloth is removed from the nose and mouth. In the absence of prolonged mental harm, no severe mental pain or suffering would have been inflicted, and the use of these procedures would not constitute torture." © 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/137093/

http://www.gregpalast.com/stick-your-damn-hand-in-it-20th-birthday-of-the-exxon-valdez-lie/

Stick Your Damn Hand In It:
20th Birthday of the Exxon Valdez Lie

March 23, 2009
For SuicideGirls.com

"Gail, Please! Stick your hand in it!"
The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.
"Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR GOODDAMN HAND IN IT!"
She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village's fishing ground.Gail's hand came up dripping with black,
sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez.

It was already two years after the spill and Exxon had crowed that
Mother Nature had happily cleaned up their stinking oil mess for them.
It was a lie. But the media wouldn't question the bald-faced bullshit.
And who the hell was going to investigate Exxon's claim way out in some
godforsaken Native village in the Prince William Sound?
So I convinced the Natives to fly the lazy-ass reporters out to
Sleepy Bay on rented float planes to see the oil that Exxon said wasn't
there.
The reporters looked, but didn't see it, because it was three inches
under their feet, under the shingle rock of the icy beach. Gail pulled
out her hand and now the whole place smelled like a gas station. The
network crews wanted to puke. And now, with their eyes open, they saw
the oil, the vile feces-colored smear across the glaciated ridge faces,
the poisonous "bathtub ring" that ran for miles and miles at the high
tide level.
And it's still there. Less for sure. But twenty years later. IT'S
STILL THERE, GODDAMNIT. And I want YOU, dear reader, to stick your hand
in it. I want YOU, President Obama, to stick your hand in it before you
blithely fulfill your Palin-esque campaign promise for a little more
offshore drilling.
***
Tuesday marks the 20th Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez grounding and
the smearing of 1,200 miles of Alaska's coastline with its oil.

It also marks the 20th Anniversary of a lie. Lots of lies:
catalogued in a four-volume investigation of the disaster; four volumes
you'll never see. I wrote that report, with my team of investigators
working with the Natives preparing fraud and racketeering charges
against Exxon. You'll never see the report because Exxon lawyers
threatened the Natives, "Mention the f-word [fraud] and you'll never
get a dime" of compensation to clean up the villages. The Natives
agreed to drop the fraud charge -- and Exxon stiffed them on the money.
You're surprised, right?
***
Doubtless, for the 20th Anniversary of the Great Spill, the media
will schlep out that old story that the tanker ran aground because its
captain was drunk at the wheel. Bullshit.
Yes, the captain was "three sheets to the wind" -- but sleeping it
off below-decks. The ship was in the hands of the third mate who was
driving blind. That is, the Exxon Valdez' Raycas radar system was
turned off; turned off because it was busted and had been busted since
its maiden voyage. Exxon didn't want to spend the cash to fix it. So
the man at the helm, electronically blindfolded, drove it up onto the
reef.
So why the story of the drunken skipper? Because it lets Exxon off
the hook: Calling it a case of "drunk driving" turns the disaster into
a case of human error, not corporate penny-pinching greed.

Indeed, the "human error" tale was the hook used by the Bush-stacked
Supreme Court to slash the punitive damages awarded against Exxon by
90%, from $5 billion, to half a billion for 30,000 Natives and
fishermen. Chief Justice John Roberts erased almost all of the payment
due with the la-dee-dah comment, "What more can a corporation do?"
Well, here's what they could have done: Besides fix the radar, Exxon
could have set out equipment to contain the spill. Containing a spill
is actually quite simple. Stick a rubber skirt around the oil slick and
suck it back up. The law requires it and Exxon promised it.
So, when the tanker hit, where was the rubber skirt and where was
the sucker? Answer: The rubber skirt, called "boom" -- was a fiction.
Exxon promised to have it sitting right there near the Native village
at Bligh Reef. The oil company fulfilled that promised the cheap way:
they lied.
And the lie was engineered at the very top. After the spill, we got
our hands on a series of memos describing a secret meeting of chief
executives of Exxon and its oil company partners, including ARCO, a
unit of British Petroleum. In a meeting of these oil chieftains held in
April 1988, ten months before the spill, Exxon rejected a
plea from T.L. Polasek, the Vice-President of its Alaska shipping
operations, to provide the oil spill containment equipment required by
law. Polasek warned the CEOs it was "not possible" to contain a spill
in the mid-Sound without the emergency set-up.

Exxon angrily vetoed ARCO's suggestion that the oil companies supply
the rubber skirts and other materiel that would have prevented the
spill from spreading, virtually eliminating the spill's damage.
Regulations state that no tanker may leave the Alaska port of Valdez
without the "sucker" equipment, called a "containment barge," at the
ready. Exxon signed off on the barge's readiness. But, that night
twenty years ago, the barge was in dry-dock with its pumps locked up
under arctic ice. By the time it arrived at the tanker, half a day
after the spill, the oil was well along its thousand-mile killing path.
Natives watched as the now-unstoppable oil overwhelmed their
islands. Eyak Native elder Henry Makarka saw an otter rip out its own
eyes burning from oil residue. Henry, pointing down a waterside
dead-zone, told me, in a mix of Alutiiq and English, "If I had a
machine gun, I'd shoot every one of those white sons-of-bitches."
***
Exxon promised -- promised -- to pay the Natives and other
fishermen for all their losses. The Chief of the Natives at Nanwalek
lost his boat to bankruptcy. His village, like other villages, Native
and non-Native, decayed into alcoholism. The Mayor of fishing port
Cordova killed himself, citing Exxon in his suicide note.

On the island village of Chenega, Gail Evanoff's uncle Paul Kompkoff
was hungry. Until the spill, he had lived on seal meat, razor clams and
salmon Chenegans would catch, and on deer they hunted. The clams and
salmon were declared deadly and the deer, not able to read the
government warning signs, ate the poisoned vegetation and died.
The President of Exxon, Lee Raymond, helicoptered into Chenega for a
photo op. He promised to compensate the Natives and all fishermen for
their losses, and Exxon would thoroughly clean the beaches.
Uncle Paul told the Exxon chief of his hunger. The oil company,
sensing PR disaster, shipped in seal meat to the isolated village. The
cans were marked, "NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION." Uncle Paul said,
"Zoo food."
Paul didn't want a seal in a can. He wanted a boat to go fishing, to bring the village back to life.
Two years after the spill, Otto Harrison, General Manager of Exxon
USA, told Evanoff and me to forget about a fishing boat for Uncle Paul.
Exxon was immortal and Natives were not. The company would litigate for
20 years.
They did. Only now, two decades on, Exxon has finally begun its
payout of the court award -- but only ten cents on the dollar. And
Uncle Paul's boat? No matter. Paul's dead. So are a third of the
fishermen owed the money.
***
Lee Raymond, President of Exxon at the time of the spill -- and its
President when the company made the secret decision to do without oil
spill equipment, retired in April 2006. The company awarded him a $400
million retirement bonus, more than double the bonuses received by all
AIG executives combined.
***
Gail's oily hand never made it to national television. The networks were distracted with another oil story.
After sailing back to Chenega from Sleepy Bay, I sat with Uncle
Paul, watching the smart bombs explode over Baghdad. Gulf War I had
begun.
Uncle Paul was silent a long time. The generals on CNN pointed to
the burning oil fields near Basra. Paul said, "I guess we're all some
kind of Native now."
************
Greg Palast investigated fraud and racketeering claims for the
Chugach Natives of Alaska. Now a journalist whose work appears on BBC
Television Newsnight, Palast is the author of the New York Times
bestselling books The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.
Visit GregPalast.com for more.



Check out the YouTube clip of Greg Palast
on Air America's 'Ring of Fire' with Mike Papantonio on the Exxon
Valdez and on the death of investigative reporting in America. Listen
in this weekend on your Air America station.
And get ready: This Friday - the launch of GREG PALAST
INVESTIGATES - On the Trail with investigative reporter Palast - with
three of his latest ass-kicking BBC Television reports.
Palast is looking for co-producers for the film's DVD release. Support the team behind the work that the Chicago Tribune calls, "Stories so relevant, they threaten to alter history." Pre-order the DVD today.
Palast is a Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.
Alaska photos by James Macalpine for the Palast Investigative Fund, a 501c3 not-for-profit educational foundation.

Look up tonight and see a two-fer.
The Geminid meteor shower will be occurring the next two nights. The Geminids are the biggest meteor shower of the year, with up to 100 an hour on the average. Sadly, the full moon will render many of those invisible to us, but there will be plenty of action. The moon is at perigee, the closest it will get to Earth. So the moon will look brighter and larger. It won't be this close and full again until 2016. So dress warmly and look up tonight. Be sure to catch the Ursid meteor shower on the night of the 21st!

The MOP

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

Yeah for us!!!
And by "us", I mean the "U.S."
Fingers still crossed for a Sen. Franken.

The annual Orionids meteor shower is taking place this week. Peak will be from Midnight monday night til dawn, Tuesday. Meteors will also be seen in greater numbers Sunday midnight til dawn and Tuesday midnight til dawn. The moon will be late in phase so it won't completely outshine the meteors.
The Orionids occur when the earth passes through the dust trail of Halley's (rhymes with Valley) Comet. This is the second of the Halley's Comet meteor showers in a year. The other is the Eta Aquarids.
The orionids are fast-moving meteors and you will likely see 12-20 meteors in an hour. Get to a dark spot with a good view of the sky and look up. Take a reclining lawn chair or blanket and make yourself comfortable.
No telescopes or binoculars needed.
They are called the Orionids because they seem to radiate from the part of the sky that the constellation Orion is in.
Have fun! Take a friend!
Geek out on science, Yeah!

The MOP