BP cherry-picks study to dodge blame for massive deaths of gulf dolphins
BP cherry-picks study to dodge blame for massive deaths of gulf dolphins
Michael Hiltzik
Los Angeles Times
February 16, 2015, 11:28 AM
In the years since its Deepwater Horizon oil spill befouled huge stretches of the Gulf of Mexico, oil giant BP has honed its skill at cherry-picking scientific studies to duck responsibility for the spill's environmental impacts..
Its latest effort concerns a study of a massive die-off of bottlenose dolphins in the gulf from 2010 through June 2013, occurring mostly after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout caused the worst oil spill in history. The peer-reviewed study, led by Stephanie Venn-Watson of the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and published last week in the open-access journal PLoS One.
The study analyzes the strandings of 1,305 dolphins on the beaches or shores of the Gulf of Mexico from February 2010 through the present. About 94% of the stranded mammals were dead. This is the longest marine mammal die-off in the gulf -- known under federal law as an "unusual mortality event " or UME -- on record. The 2010 and 2011 figures for Louisiana are the highest annual numbers ever recorded for that state; for Mississippi and Alabama the 2011 figure is among the highest ever in those states.
BP, in a statement on its website responding to the study, asserted that it "reiterates what other experts, such as NOAA, have stated: the UME started three months before the Deepwater Horizon spill, and the cause or causes have not been determined. The study does not show that the accident adversely impacted dolphin populations." (A slightly different BP statement on the study, making essentially the same points, is here.)
This is a quintessentially selective, and highly misleading, interpretation of the PLoS study. But it's conventional tactics for BP, which has been desperately minimizing data pointing to serious environmental damage related to the oil spill. Its most flagrant effort in this line was an op-ed by one of its chief PR men, Geoff Morrell, published by Politico in October and headlined "No, BP Didn't Ruin the Gulf." (We questioned Politico's role in providing BP with this priceless PR platform here.)
More:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-bp-cherrypicks-a-study-20150216-column.html#page=1
