TV News LIES

Two U.S. scientists say it's not a question of "if" there will be nearly ice-free summers in the arctic but "when," and sooner than many think.

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration scientists James Overland and Muyin Wang say several different methods for predicting when the arctic will be nearly ice free in the summer show it could happen before 2050 and possibly within the next decade or two.

Oil giant ExxonMobil is pressuring Arkansas television stations to pull satirical advertisements critical of its business practices following the March 29 rupture of the company's Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower, Ark., which spilled an estimated 84,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into residential streets.

Ads set to run on Little Rock ABC, NBC, and Fox affiliates this week were nixed shortly before airing when Exxon threatened legal action. (The full cease and desist letter is available here.)

The incident in Mayflower, 25 miles north of Little Rock, pales in comparison to the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, when hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude spilled from an Exxon oil tanker into Alaskan waters. It's too early to estimate the financial cost from Mayflower to Exxon, but it is likely to be a drop in the bucket for the $400 billion company.

But the spill has stoked a national debate about the safety of carrying crude in pipelines across the United States just as politicians weigh whether to approve the mega Keystone XL pipeline that will help to link the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, with oil refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

And although significant pipeline spills happen every three days on average in the United States, according to federal data, rarely do they occur in a town and rarely in these volumes.

So far, most of the fight over fracking in California has played out in Sacramento, with legislators introducing bills to study hydraulic fracturing or stop it cold.

But some environmentalists have also taken the fight to court. And on Sunday, they scored a victory. A judge ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management did not take a “hard look” at fracking’s possible dangers before selling leases to drillers hunting for oil in California’s vast Montery Shale formation.

When I see raw tar sands coursing through people's yards and across wetlands, it makes me sick. My thoughts are with the people in Arkansas who are dealing with this river of toxic mess. And my thoughts instantly move ahead to what could happen to farms, families, homes, and wild areas across our country if we support expansion of tar sands with permits for pipelines such as Keystone XL.

The answer seems clear, especially when we look at the graphic video footage from Arkansas: tar sands expansion rewards the oil industry while putting us all at risk of oil spills and climate change. That's a raw deal by any calculation.

UPDATE: Correction: We originally reported that Exxon had allegedly pumped diluted bitumen which spilled into the Northwood Subdivision into a nearby wetland. We were mistaken; they power washed it into the nearby wetland via storm drains.

Mayflower, AR, April 5: We spent most of the day chasing down reports of oil sightings and talking to residents.