Giant Saturn Ring Discovered

ASTRONOMY

Saturn’s moon Iapetus has fascinated astronomers since Cassini discovered in 1671 that it seemed to appear and disappear in orbit around it’s parent planet. This little walnut-shaped beaten and battered moon’s later claim to fame would be that it appeared to be bright on one side and dark on the other, which is why he could only see it on the western side of the planet and then it would seemingly vanish.

How it got that way would cause a lot of speculation down through the centuries.

In February of 2009 a trio of astronomers at The University of Virginia in Charlottesville lobbied for the use of NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope to investigate the long standing theory that Iapetus was being “painted” with soot from another of Saturn’s moons; namely Phoebe. What team leader Anne Verbiscer and her colleagues Douglas Hamilton and Michael Skrutskie discovered would write a new chapter in astronomic history.

They found that over a span of millions of years, meteorite impacts on Phoebe had indeed kicked up enough dust to paint Iapetus, which orbits Saturn like our own moon with one hemisphere always facing the planet. Since the two possibly captured moons orbit in opposite directions of each other only one side is being “painted.” When they looked closer an immense ring of thinly spaced soot-like powder twenty times the thickness of Saturn was revealed in orbit far out in space.

So fine were the particles, that they can only be detected by their faint thermal radiation signature in orbit. Deep black in color they individually collect just barely enough heat from the distant sun to distinguish the ring from the surrounding cold of space. According to Verbiscer, "The particles are very, very tiny, so the ring is very, very tenuous – and actually if you were standing in the ring itself, you wouldn't even know it. In a cubic kilometer of space there are all of 10 to 20 particles."

This would explain how so many probes missed it and possibly other even larger rings orbiting Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, the notion of which will have astronomers scrambling for use of other infrared telescopes for years.

As with Phoebe, the ring is orbiting opposite to Saturn’s rotation and is tilted twenty-seven degrees off of the planetary equator and it’s seven inner more famous rings. Anne’s recently published paper on the find in the journal “Nature”, states that the new ring is estimated to be 1.5 million miles thick, and orbits Saturn between 3.7 million miles at its inner edge to 7.4 miles at it’s outer rim. Unfortunately despite its size, the ring is too dim because of its distance from the sun to be seen by optical telescopes. If the astonishingly large ring could be seen from earth it would appear a little over twice the diameter of our moon in the night sky.

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©-2009 by Jet Gardner/Blogcritics.org

STOP THAT-Or You'll Go Blind-My Fight With Diabetes

DIABETES

This nightmare started with one fatal phrase... "If I don't know I have it, then I won't have it."

Writing this article has been totally distasteful, personally embarrassing, and probably ill-advised, but if I save one person from the fate I’ve suffered so far, it’ll be worth it.

WARNING: What follows is a frank, open, no-holds-barred, nothing-left-out description. I’m going to tell you things no one should tell a relative or friend, much less a total stranger. If you can’t take a point-blank non-clinical street-level discussion about a personal problem, stop reading now.

Now stay with me here, the next paragraph is important.

I kept telling my friends, “Someone needs to write an article that a common guy would understand,” and the response was always, “Well, why don’t you?” I've stopped reading many an article on diabetes because the long medical terms were too confusing. Honestly, the descriptions were scaring me to the point of not wanting to know — you fear what you don’t understand — and therefore, you will intentionally find no medical terms here. But I plan to educate you with a narrative in hopes of saving you from my fate. I know all those terms, but since they were what made me avoid researching this subject, I won’t use them on you.

Around five years ago, an odd thing started happening. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it and that’s the danger I’m warning you of now — you don’t know you have it, until it has you — and then it’s too late.

I started having night sweats. The fact is, I didn’t even know that’s what they were, because they were localized to one part of my body -- in my case, the neck and shoulders.

I’d wake up and my pillow would be soaking wet and I just assumed I’d begun falling asleep with my mouth open and slobbered all over it. It wouldn’t happen every night, but often enough that I began wrapping bath towels around the pillows and having a spare for mid-night swaps for a dry one.

After about a month, they stopped. Male menopause?

Within the next year or so I gradually came to realize I was continuously thirsty. Driving all around the country and spending a lot of time in the gym, I just figured I was getting dry from all of the running around I was doing and wrote it off.

Two years ago, the night sweats returned, only now they came randomly from an arm or a leg, sometimes my stomach or back. I’d wake up to find the bed soaked and resorted to sleeping on body-sized bath towels. The unimaginable volume of liquid was so great at times, I began buying rubber sheets to protect the mattress and slept with a box fan turned on me! I began suspecting maybe I had contracted AIDS from unprotected sex. If I did, I didn’t want to know, so I was stupid and didn’t go to a doctor and get tested.

Soon after came the sugar cravings and sugar avoidances. I had to have a piece of Pepperidge Farm three-layer German Chocolate cake — no, not a piece — the whole cake. An entire small can of pineapple tidbits for dessert or those (sigh) chocolate-covered custard-filled doughnuts. I began stocking up on two-liter bottles of Dr. Pepper and a Snickers bar was never far from my hand. Then there would be the days when I couldn’t stand the sight of anything sweet and it was Crystal Light iced tea or a salad for dinner, or (ugh) cottage cheese, which actually began tasting good.

I began realizing the night sweats came on the nights I’d pig out on sweets. Diabetes began entering my mind, but was overridden by the fear of similar AIDS symptoms… so still, I didn’t see a doctor. Denial and fear would be my downfall because, at this stage, I might have avoided what I’m going through now.

At the time I thought it was fear, but now I know better. Now that I look back at it with clear eyes. I found myself easily frustrated-(yes that is a symptom), short-tempered, and could blow up at the tiniest provocation; then later I’d wonder why — one of the classic signs of the disease you’d never attribute to diabetes!

Now here's one I hear from nearly every diabetic I know, but you'd never think to mention it... I started detesting the taste of tap water.

About three years ago, I stopped being able to get a full erection. No way was I going to a doctor about that. Shortly after, I’d experience the muscle spasms and pleasure but no ejaculation. I started waking up in the middle of the night having to take a piss, then twice a night, and then three times a night. I figured it was from drinking water and pop continuously all day. In actual fact, if your body can’t absorb and use the sugar you take in, it has to put it out as urine, or sweat — remember that.

I figured I could treat myself if it was diabetes. I began reading sugar contents on foods I’d buy and was shocked to find things like hot dogs were loaded with it, bread, nearly all the things l loved to cook and eat.

No. If I didn’t know I had it, then I magically didn’t have it.

I started writing off being tired all the time to getting old, or worse, getting lazy.

Another symptom I ignored, because I didn’t know the signs, were odd scratches and bruises on my legs below the knees that seemed to appear from nowhere and take forever to heal. They’d stay scabbed, seemingly forever, and eventually turn into scars rather than heal with new skin.

I’d come home from a night of being out in the winter snow only to discover my feet were cold to the touch, even though they didn’t feel cold.

I started reading and was alarmed by articles on type 2 diabetes. It couldn’t be cured, you had to puncture your finger several times a day and stick some machine on it to see what your sugar level was. There was storing insulin in the fridge and the… the… needles. I can’t stand needles. I learned diabetes can only be controlled and never gets better. I was told once you started insulin, you could never get off it again.

Then came the night I was attacked and nearly beaten to death, and the resulting stays in the hospital over and over again.

Are you a diabetic?

No!

I.V.s were prepared with the medications dissolved in a sugar solution (glucose). Suddenly, my sugar levels went through the ceiling and I was being given intravenous insulin to counter it.

Still I denied it.

The nurses got me a free blood tester and equipment to take home with me. The doctor prescribed pills I took daily. I had to start learning what level of blood sugar was safe.

I wrote it off to all that glucose I.V. solution the medications came in. I didn’t really have diabetes, or I was a “borderline” diabetic. Diabetes is like being pregnant — you are or you aren’t.

There are no in-between or borderline diabetics.

My broken foot became infected inside the cast and it wasn’t discovered until weeks later. My body couldn’t fight off the infection because of diabetes. I was forced to inject myself several times daily with massive doses of antibiotics through a plastic line inserted into a vein in my arm (PICC line) that traveled through a vein to my heart. This line had to be pulled out of my body once a week and replaced with another for two months. Unless you’ve actually experienced a doctor you trust repeatedly telling you that you only have a 40 percent chance of avoiding having your foot cut off, you have no idea of the trauma. Diabetes does that and more, and is one of the leading causes of amputations.

One night in the hospital, a student nurse accidentally pricked herself with a needle she’d used on me. I knew I had to have AIDS. I’d had all the symptoms, hadn’t I? Was I actually more afraid of diabetes than AIDS? Emotional stress and personal traumas raise your blood sugars; the more you worry, the more diabetes becomes a problem. Most of my regular readers already know what I’m going through personally, so you can imagine the fight I have to go through to keep control of the condition.

The tests came back after what seemed like months, but were actually days.

No HIV.

At the same instant, I was so relieved and happy, and then resigned that it had to be diabetes.

Last May, around my birthday, I started going blind. Not gradually, but all at once. Diabetes affects the tiny blood vessels in your eyes and your kidneys first, clogging them with sugar. My brain thought my eyes were starving for nutrients and began growing more capillaries, some blocking where the light passes through, dimming my vision. Other blood vessels became clogged and pressure began painfully building up inside my eyes. Fluid and solids from my bloodstream began leaking into the center of my eyes, blurring and blocking my vision. Clogged blood vessels burst from clogs, the shreds hang down in front of my optic nerve, and only surgery can remove them.

If you’ve experienced any of what I’ve described, don’t make the same mistake I have. See a doctor NOW.

ONE IN THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIABETES DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE DIABETES.

The fear of the unknown can destroy you completely. I never thought I’d ever get used to pricking my finger to get a drop of blood; the thought ran shivers down my spine. I never thought I could get used to injecting myself with a needle three or four times a day.

The leading cause of blindness in adults is type 2 diabetes. The result of my ignorance is eight surgeries on my eyes so far, with three more planned, and no health insurance to cover them. Placing my head in a brace with no painkillers. Having to hold my eyes still while a laser burns in the back of my eyes — each feeling like a sewing needle prick, sometimes 2000 in a sitting lasting around three hours.

As a laser cauterizes the unwanted blood vessels, the scar tissue makes your sight dimmer. You begin to lose your peripheral vision and also your night vision. It’s the trade-off to keep from going completely blind. Also a blood vessel will rupture days later, squirting a tiny amount of blood inside of your eye, squirming and undulating before your eyes like a stoned snake in water, taking days to dissolve.

Fear and denial is what brought me to where I am today.

For God’s sake, don’t follow in my footsteps.

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©-2006 by Jet Gardner/Blogcritics.org

Volcanic Destruction Of United States Is 40,000 Years Overdue

GEOLOGY

…and God shall rain down destruction fire and brimstone upon the land and all that which remains will be blanketed in a smoldering silencing ash, hushing the wails of sorrow. While this all sounds very biblical and even whimsical, the scientific fact is that the western mountain and central sections of The United States face such a fate, but not at the hands of a deity or an antichrist.

The only question is “when?” not “if?”

A caldera is formed when a volcano suffers so massive an explosion and ejects so much magma, ash, and gas under pressure that it collapses of its own weight into the emptied subterranean chambers that fed it. The result is a huge pit as big as 50 miles in diameter and hundreds of feet deep in place of the usual majestic snow-covered mountain peak.

Such an event has happened in North America not once, but three times in a place you normally wouldn’t think of as a hotbed of volcanic activity. This particular renowned and famous tourist destination has a little-known periodic feature that is more deadly than Old Faithful and is ominously about 40,000 years behind schedule.

Of the three most massive volcanic eruptions in our continent’s geological history, Yellowstone National Park holds the first and second place records. The Long Valley California caldera comes in at number three. Yellowstone so far has had two mega-destructive events — 2 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and a smaller one (for the sake of comparison, not severity) 600,000 years ago.

The area around, beneath and within our nation’s first national park is known in scientific circles as a “Super Volcano” and there’s a good reason for all that magnificent mountain scenery. Approximately two million years ago the first Yellowstone blast left a crater that has been estimated at 49.8 miles long by 40.5 miles wide. Geological records reveal a ballpark figure of the output of that eruption at 585 cubic miles of molten magma.

According to geologists, our pleasant little nature and wildlife preserve has an average cycle of caldera-building eruptions of about every 600,000 years — and the last one was 640,000 years ago. That one produced a crater measuring 53 miles long by 28 miles wide. The resulting pyroclastic flow deposited enough material to cover 3000 square miles, settling into a rock layer known as the Lava Creek Tuff, a volume, if rolled out evenly, that would equal covering the entire continental United States with five inches of asphalt. In addition, the eruption blasted 625 cubic miles of vaporized rock into the air, the majority of which settled as smothering ash across much of what is now the United States. The rest formed a cloud that encircled the globe, cooling it by several degrees over a period of years before it finally dissipated.

Volcanologists from the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey have predicted that the next major Yellowstone eruption would make Mt. St. Helens look like a mere geologic hiccup. The 1980 St. Helen’s eruption sent 1.25 cubic miles of ash into the air; in comparison the next Yellowstone “event” could potentially produce approximately 500 times that output volume (or 625 cubic miles). Crop failures resulting from the cataclysmic event could last for years as a consequence of that much particulate and sulfur dioxide content in the air.

The immense North American plate’s friction moving beneath the Earth’s crust under Yellowstone is currently heating the magma, gas, and ground water. In other words it’s slowly boiling the park, like the bubbling top crust of mom’s apple pie in the oven. The “filling” is molten magma, which is feeding and expanding chambers under the park and building up pressure.

When (not if) that Yellowstone bubble bursts it will cost millions of lives, devastation of hundreds of species of animals and plants, and drastically alter our global atmosphere. The result will be widespread destruction of crops and the cause of millions more people to die of starvation. After the first good rainstorms, the nation’s farm belt will be buried under a hardened layer of ash the consistency of dried concrete. Vehicles will be trapped in it and house roofs will collapse beneath it.

Geologists seem to be divided as to the likelihood of a “super” eruption happening any time soon because the cycle seems to be slowing down. The last small but “significant” non-caldera eruption was about 70,000 years ago. However reports from the National Park Service using sophisicated satellite readings show that the ground in the region within Yellowstone has been rising and falling in super slow motion. Over the last century several places within the park have shifted as much as several inches.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, for the month of July 2006 alone there were 110 earthquakes in and around Yellowstone National Park. Most were relatively small with the largest being 2.9 in magnitude, which was one of 34 to have occurred on a single day last month (July 10) within a few miles of the Lower Geyser Basin.

The White Lake GPS stations have also reported a consistent uplift over the last 23 months.
This activity has motivated the USGS to create a nationwide system of alert levels to identify volcanic movement. It is expected to be adopted by the fall of this year at The Cascades Volcano Observatory in the northwest, the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the Long Valley California Observatory and of course the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

The rankings are:
Normal -Typical volcanic activity in a non-eruptive phase;
Advisory - For elevated unrest;
Watch - For escalating unrest or a minor eruption causing limited hazards
Warning - If a highly hazardous eruption is underway or imminent.

Should this event actually come to pass, global warming would no longer be a problem, as enough sunlight would be reflected away by the ash and dust to cool the atmosphere by several degrees causing extended winters and brief, if nonexistent summers.

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©-2006 by Jet Gardner/Blogcritics.org

More and More Exciting Solar Systems Being Discovered

ASTRONOMY

According to an article expected to be published in the journal Nature today, Geneva University's Prof. Michael Mayor and Christopher Lovis, using the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), have discovered planets in a solar system in the Argo Navis constellation ("the ship of the Argonauts"). The star (just slightly smaller than our own sun) is classified HD69830 and is located within the sub-constellation Puppis ("The Poop Deck") some 41 light years away and can only be observed from the southern hemisphere.

The Swiss team based at the Geneva Observatory is renowned for having found more than 95 percent of the 180 solar systems discovered since the first was found eleven years ago. They used the HARPS, located in Chile's Atacama Desert, to restudy this particular star, because last year astronomers at NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found that it has a unique asteroid belt around it (the only star other than our own yet to be discovered with one). The study was to see if there were planets shepherding it, and the rocky belt is believed to be orbiting either between the second and third, or beyond the third, planet.

A closer study by the Swiss team revealed that the Neptune-sized planets are orbiting a sun remarkably like our own. This was done employing a Doppler system of observing the gravitational pull that planets exert on their parent star causing a measurable "wobble." Recently the team has refined the technique to the point where lower-mass planets are found just as easily as the larger gas giants.

The closest planet has a mass of about ten times that of earth and appears to be like a giant Mercury with a solid core. It has a very swift orbit of only about nine days, approximately seven million miles from its star.

The second planet is about 12 times that of Earth, seventeen million miles from its star, and has an equally swift orbit measured at only around 32 days. It also appears to have a rocky core.

The outermost planet orbits in about 197 days in what's referred to as the "habitable zone" where its distance from its sun (60 million miles compared to Earth's 93 million), available light, and approximate temperature might support life. In fact it's the smallest planet to date yet found within such a zone. It is about 18 times the mass of the earth and has a rocky core with possible ice on the surface, but is shrouded in a thick and high-pressure atmosphere possibly made up of mostly hydrogen. It's improbable that life could exist there however, because the massive gravitational field and atmospheric pressure would crush it even down to a mere cell's level.

David Charbonneau of Harvard University is quoted as saying, "The architecture of this particular planetary system bears some intriguing similarities to that of our own solar system."

The system is also interesting because it's the first one discovered not to have a gas giant such as Jupiter orbiting it.

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Asteroid Collision with Earth Predicted for 2039

ASTRONOMY

I remember back in the early 70s when it was predicted that California was going to fall into the ocean as the result of a coming massive earthquake. Using that as a backdrop now comes word that Sunday April 13, 2039 is definitely not going to be a good day. That NASA scientists have pegged it down to the day has me a bit more concerned than the prospect of developing potential beachfront property in Reno Nevada.

What is all the fuss about? Oh nothing really; just a little tiny space rock named Apophis that's only about 1,000 feet wide that NASA says appears to be on a collision course with Earth. You could say it's predicted that we're about to become the object of affection in a cosmic game of 8-ball.

Chicken Little's prediction that "The sky is falling!" could actually come true! Especially since Arizona's 4,000-foot-wide Barringer Asteroid Crater has apparently been waiting expectantly and/or impatiently for his big brother to arrive. The only trouble is the result of that predicted reunion is bound to be wider than the average state!

Right now we have only two factors that could alter this doomsday scenario. On the negative side, we have the nightmare that it'd break apart in Earth's gravity and shower chunks over a larger area instead of concentrating the impact on one site, such as what happened when the Shoemaker-Levy comet broke up before it hit Jupiter. For the better, maybe our battered Moon will get in the way. Merely looking at our lunar buddy with a good pair of binoculars will tell you how many times it's saved our butts before. Then again, the latest theory is that that very same moon was created when a Mars-sized planet hit us, sheering off enough material to create our lunar neighbor. Fortunately Apophis appears to be much, much smaller — thank goodness.

Astrobiologist David Morrison of NASAs Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA has declared the threat real and credible. The date is set for April 13th 2036 (which oddly enough isn't a Friday), but what really gives me pause is they've started to quote odds--1 in 6,250 to be exact. Considering the odds are higher at being an a airline crash, being struck by lightning, or Boston winning the World Series three years in a row, that little ratio should give you pause!

Should the rock actually hit earth, it'd have the equivalent punch of 65,000 Hiroshima bombs or approximately 880 million tons of dynamite.

While the tendency is to laugh this off, (after all, I'll be 86 by then-what do I care?) just ponder that the scientific community is so concerned about this, that in recent years Congress has authorized funds to identify asteroids more than about half a mile in diameter that might cross Earth's path by 2008, and plans have been put into the works to develop strategies to deflect, ram or destroy those threats by 2015.

Now before you scoff at only 1,000 feet in diameter consider this; a rock only approximately 200 feet in diameter took out Siberia's Tunguska forest in 1908 devastating an area the size of Rhode Island and destroying 60 million trees.

If you think about it, this might be a good thing! At least the resulting worldwide dust cloud will solve our "Global Warming" problem!

Just to be on the safe side, I think I'll spend the day in church and see about altering my future homeowner's insurance policy.

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Jupiter's Giant Red Spot has a New Little Brother!

ASTRONOMY

Back around 1916, two small (we're talking half the size of Earth here), but not uncommon, little white oval-shaped storms were observed close together in Jupiter's southern hemisphere. In 1939, a third similar storm appeared, and while interesting, it wasn't what you'd really call news, especially if a nearby and much bigger astronomical item was distracting you at the time — The Great Red Spot (GRS). It would've been understandable; after all, the GRS storm is almost three times the size of the Earth, has winds in excess of 250 miles per hour, and has had people wondering at it for well over 400 years — ever since Giovanni Cassini and Robert Hooke first trained their telescopes on it between 1662 and 1670.

In what would be comparatively considered a blink of an eye, between 1998 and 2001, and while almost no one was watching, Jupiter was brewing up a surprise for planet watchers like me. By 2000, those three little white cyclones had merged together into one big flattened oval measuring about twice the diameter of the earth and about 7,500 miles tall. Since its formation, it's grown to about half the size of its cousin — the Great Red Spot — but it's doubtful that it'll get much larger because of the opposing bands of jet stream winds shepherding it tightly to the north and south.

Even more interestingly, it's recently begun taking on its older cousin's coloring, indicating that it's whipping up material from Jupiter's lower atmosphere while it hovers high above it. The effected matter changes color after it is sucked up from below, then is chemically transformed by solar radiation and ultraviolet light. In November of 2005, astronomers noticed that it was shifting hue. By December of 2005, it had taken on a brownish color and has since turned to the same color as the GRS, possibly because it's pulling material from the same atmospheric layer as its bigger companion.

Lately, "Junior" has been displaying some pale white clouds in its center, indicating some strong convective winds and most likely a huge thunderstorm. It has also been speculated that Jupiter may be going through its own cycle of global warming and climate changes. This would explain why the storms are developing faster.

Right now, Jupiter has orbited around to the opposite side of the sun from us (at a distance of about 500,000,000 miles from Earth), presenting more of its face to sunlight. It is becoming brilliant enough to make it the brightest object in the night sky (except for the moon, of course) at -2.4 magnitude and almost impossible to miss in the southern sky just after the sun sets. You should be able to spot it with a decent pair of binoculars, but I'd recommend even a cheap department store telescope to get one hell of a show. Being able to glimpse the Great Red Spot will depend on whether it has rotated into view; a little daily checking will probably be necessary.

Astronomers are having a field day observing the conditions of how the Great Red Spot was possibly formed thousands of years ago. Even more anticipation is brewing because the two are drifting toward each other, resulting in a close encounter without being on a collision course. As Junior drifts east, the GRS is drifting west and they should be at their closest pass to each other in the first weeks of July.

The photos here were taken between April and May of this year. NASA enhanced the colors and I sharpened them even further and added a little more intensity.

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Just One Environmental Consequence of War

ECOLOGY/EARTH SCIENCE

Try to forget politics for a moment.
Let me assert this right up front again that I am NOT taking political sides here,

Point 1: Bickering over who started the current Israeli/Lebanese mess won’t solve the incredible disaster that has befallen the eastern Mediterranean waters and coastline. An entire ecosystem is in eminent danger of dying unless something is done very soon.

Point 2: Heated debate over whether Hezbollah started the war with Israel can only serve to divert attention from this major but nearly unnoticed crisis.

Point 3: Assertions whether or not Israel purposely targeted oil tanks nearest the sea and the earthen dikes used to contain a spill won’t serve any purpose other than to politically delay urgently needed ecological repair action.

Having gotten that out of the way, let’s look at the facts, and not the inevitable rhetoric that's sure to follow.

The Jiyveh Power plant on the Lebanese coast 18 miles south of Beirut was nearly destroyed during bombing raids July 14 and 15. In the process, two tanks (irresponsibly) a mere 80 feet from the Mediterranean Sea were hit. One of those 25,000-ton tanks of volatile and explosive fuel oil is still burning, spreading choking black acrid smoke with the prevailing winds; the other leaked its contents into the sea.

Estimates are that only about 20 percent of the resulting accumulated sludge has evaporated. It’s also been estimated that it would take in excess of $60 million just to clean the coastal areas and, even if the work began tomorrow, the job would not be completed until next summer — if then. The spill also threatens Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, and marine life in general in the entire Eastern Mediterranean.

Eighty miles (approximately one third) of the Lebanese coastline has been affected by leakage into the sea. Estimates vary that from 110,000-115,000 barrels of oil stain the rocky coastline and at least that amount again now coats the surface of the eastern Mediterranean coast. The once tourist-lined and pristine white sandy beaches are now coated with thick black slime. About 80 percent of Lebanon’s beautiful sun-drenched coastal areas are also plagued with the stench of oil, dead fish and sea birds.

So far many European countries, including France, Italy, and Spain, have given advice, but only Kuwait has sent actual help. The problem is that Kuwaiti truck caravans loaded with provisions and equipment to deal with the problem are trapped in Beirut. Experienced crews have been forced to wait out the hostilities before they can set to work helping Lebanon with the crisis. Long-term damage to the tourist industry and the local economy in general is inevitable and even more harm will be done if the political posturing and bickering doesn’t stop. What’s needed is a pause, long enough for professionals to get in there and start working to contain the damage.

Environmental scientists point to the grim plight of endangered sea turtles who are just now beginning to hatch in the sand and must make it through the sludge to the sea to survive but surely won't. The damage to the entire ecosystem of the eastern third of the Mediterranean could take up to ten years to recover, more if there are additional delays.

Scientists have been asserting that the longer it takes to get started, the more permanent the damage will be.

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