Publix adopts Tea Party style of customer care

By Calvin Palmer

“Publix would prefer you took your custom elsewhere.”

That remark was directed at me this morning by the manager of the fresh produce section of the Publix store at the Roosevelt Square Shopping Center, on Jacksonville’s Westside, after I had voiced some criticism of his department.

Since when has a lowly manager become the arbiter of who may or may not shop at Publix?

The remark came after he said, “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

I guess the interpretation of “around” is pretty loose but my with my English accent, it was fairly obvious that I wasn’t born in the United States. However, I have resided in the country for 12 years and for the last five years in Jacksonville, Florida.

When I replied in the negative, the fresh produce manager issued his appalling statement. Talk about a redneck mentality.

This altercation all started when I noticed one of the plastic-bag dispensers was empty, forcing me to go back and forth to a dispenser that did have bags.

I noticed an assistant filling shelves close by and wondered how many times he had passed the empty dispenser without giving a moment’s thought to replenishing the plastic bags.

It was then I noticed someone else filling one of the display stands. He was not wearing a green Publix T-shirt, so I figured he was more than likely a manager and wearing a shirt of his own choosing was probably one of the perks of the job.

When I pointed out the empty dispenser, he said that he could replenish it or I could use the other one, which had plenty of bags.

I said, “That’s a marvellous attitude, isn’t it? I am expected to traipse back and forth to get a plastic bag.”

He went to fill up the dispenser.

A little later, I passed him again and said that I was not complaining out of ignorance. I told him that I grew up in a grocery store and knew how to treat customers and present fresh produce for sale

He replied, “Publix is the best store there is.”

I said, “Not quite. Many times you have rotting fruit and veg on display and ask top dollar for it.”

“You aren’t from around here, are you?”

“No.”

“Publix would prefer it if you took your custom elsewhere.”

“We will see what the store manager has to say about that.”

“Go ahead. The name is…” He gave his name.

After completing my shopping and checking out at the till, I said to the assistant that I wanted to see the manager.

The manager duly came and I recounted the incident with his fresh produce manager who seems to have an attitude problem.

The manager assured me that he would have a word. I said I think it needs something stronger than a word, with an attitude like that he probably needs to be fired.

“I’ll take care of it, sir,” the manager replied.

What I found appalling was the fact that not being American was followed by the suggestion to shop elsewhere.

It struck me as being like the Tea Party approach to customer care.

Perhaps Publix should incorporate this rhyme in its advertising material:

If you are red, white and blue, we are here to serve you.                                                                                                                                                             If you belong to the stars and stripes, we will listen to all your gripes.                                                                                                                                 But if you are not true to Uncle Sam then frankly we don’t give a damn!

It always amazes me that people who cannot deal with the public end up in jobs dealing with the public. Appointing this guy to the position of fresh produce manager does not say much for the recruitment and selection process adopted by Publix.

Then again political donations given by Publix in the past eight years clearly point to how a person holding such bigoted views is able to reach the position he has within the company.

One phone call away from the full story

By Calvin Palmer

Florida is one of two states forecast to lose restaurant jobs this summer, according to a report by the National Restaurant Association. The other state facing a fall in restaurant jobs is Arizona.

The Florida Times-Union carried this story in its Business Section, on Thursday, stating restaurant employment in Florida is estimated to shrink by 3.1 percent, from 614,100 to 595,100 jobs, as well as pointing out that Alaska’s growth is projected at 23 percent; Delaware’s is estimated at 20.6 percent and Maine’s is projected at 31.1 percent.

Given that Florida is a state where tourism forms a large part of the state’s economy, this story immediately begs the question, why is its number of restaurant jobs projected to fall?

Sadly, The Florida Times-Union was not prepared to go the extra yard and provide its readers with an explanation.

The Jacksonville Business Journal, however, was on the ball. It contacted the National Restaurant Association and concluded its coverage of the story with the following paragraph:

Florida and Arizona’s busiest seasons for travel and tourism are not the summer months, an association spokeswoman said.

Was that too difficult a task for Florida Times-Union reporter, Kevin Turner? Apparently it was.

[Based on reports by The Florida Times-Union and the Jacksonville Business Journal.]

Basic standards of reporting elude The Sentinel

By Calvin Palmer

Scanning the Obituaries column of The Daily Telegraph, I learned today of the death of Sir Arthur Bryan, the former chairman of the world-famous pottery firm Wedgwood.

Sir Arthur’s name was often mentioned during my childhood. Like me, he was born and raised in Penkhull and attended the same school as my late mother. She often used to reminisce of times when they used to play together in the school playground.

In its obituary, The Daily Telegraph correctly stated that Arthur Bryan was born on March 4, 1923, at Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent.

Eager for more information, I checked out the web site of the Stoke-on-Trent newspaper, The Sentinel.

It escapes my reasoning as to why The Sentinel’s web site is called This Is Staffordshire rather than The Sentinel but some high-ranking newspaper executive obviously thought it was a great idea.

In the web site’s tribute to Sir Arthur, The Sentinel’s Louise Psyllides wrote: “Sir Arthur, who was born and brought up in Stoke-on-Trent, joined Barclays Bank at Trentham aged 17 after leaving Longton High School.”

The local paper could not be more specific as to Sir Arthur’s birthplace than to state Stoke-on-Trent?

What is happening to the standards of journalism these days? How did the omission of Penkhull get past the news editor, the sub-editor and editor?

And where is the internal logic of this story? It specifies the Stoke-on-Trent district of Trentham for Sir Arthur’s first job but cannot state the district where he was born and grew up.

This poor standard of journalism makes me recall one of the stone hands, a man called Dennis, when I worked the stone sub shift on The Birmingham Post.

It was the job of the stone sub to catch the errors that occasionally slipped past the chief sub-editor. Sometimes, the errors were real howlers.

As Dennis was cutting the bromide of the corrected version of the story to be attached to the page, I would say in an apologetic tone, “We can’t get the staff.”

In his Brummie accent, Dennis disagreed. “We can but they are crap!”

Fifteen years on, it would appear that the pithy words of Dennis still ring true for The Sentinel and a great many more newspapers the world over. What is worse, those running the newspapers do not seem to care.

As for The Birmingham Post, it ceased to be a daily morning newspaper in November 2009 and became a weekly, or should that be weakly, publication. I guess it was a good thing I left in 2000.

AT&T patently fails to communicate

By Calvin Palmer

My Internet connection and phone line went down in the early hours of Wednesday morning. I did the usual trick of turning off the modem and powering it back up but to no avail. I then noticed a flashing light — In Use — on the telephone and discovered the  line was dead also.

It was left to my wife to report the fault. She has a cell phone and I do not.

Our telephone and Internet service provider is AT&T. Despite the repeated offers from Comcast to switch I have remained loyal to AT&T, although in the past 24 hours my loyalty has been tested almost to breaking point.

First off, the person on the AT&T help desk suggested unplugging all the phones and disconnecting the modem. “It often brings everything back into service,” the person told my wife, without any mention of sending someone round to take a look.

I did unplug all the phones as instructed but knowing full well it would make not one jot of difference. And I was right.

But how was I to contact my wife and get her to call AT&T again.

Riverside, Jacksonville, has some of the last remaining payphones in the United States and one of them, fortunately is only a block away from my house.

Having never used a payphone since moving to America, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but figured the process would be similar to the one used by British Telecom back in Britain.

Luckily, I had a pocket of loose change but was taken aback when instructed to insert 50 cents for a 15-minute local call. First, I did not expect to pay so much. I figured 25 cents would be steep for a call. Second, I did not require 15 minutes. My business would take three minutes, five minutes at the most.

Of course, my wife was unavailable. She usually is when any emergency or crisis arrives and I need her assistance. Be it the direct line to her office or her iPhone, I can guarantee that in such circumstances I will get her voice mail.

My wife’s gorgeous voice, and she really does have a lovely voice, instructed me to leave my message at the end of the tone. I did so but would have much preferred to have spoken to her directly.

The Internet for me is not some idle playing – it is my life. I am dependent on it 100 percent for news, information and communication with the outside world. I also have this blog site to maintain, another one that deals solely with my photographic endeavors and my daily contribution to Blipfoto – all of which were destined to come to a grinding halt.

Most of my social interaction is conducted via the Internet. In fact, I met my wife in an Internet chat room. She was drawn to me by my ability to spell and punctuate correctly.

Any shopping I do, which has been precious little these past couple of years as my income has fallen to zero, is done online. It is my wife’s birthday next week and I was on the point of ordering something when I discovered my Internet connection had disappeared.

I need the Internet to function.

When my wife returned from work, she asked me if AT&T had been. I said not. I asked her if she had received my phone messages. She had not looked for them. However, she had called AT&T again and been told that a repair docket had been issued. She was pissed that AT&T had not turned up despite being given that assurance.

She called AT&T again. It emerged that I was not alone in having lost my Internet connection and phone line. Apparently, a major cable supplying the Riverside area was broken and many other people were in a similar position as me.

My wife was told that it should be repaired by October 18.

When this nugget of information was imparted to me, my reaction was unprintable. Since when has the United States become a Third World country? I asked, once I had vented my anger with a string of expletives. A vital service was going to take 12 days to repair? I was left speechless.

The glossy high-tech image AT&T presents in its TV ads seemingly bears little resemblance to the real world. A 12-day wait before my life could resume had me thinking strongly about switching to Comcast.

The gloom that descended over me today was heavy and intense. I had little interest in doing anything in the knowledge that I was isolated from the world and all that I hold dear. I kept thinking of how I was going to cope over the course of the next 12 days. It was a depressing prospect that I tried to put out of my mind but it kept looming large.

In the middle of the afternoon, I thought I would check if I could access a network on my wife’s laptop. In the past, such a move has enabled me to check e-mails and see what is going on in the world. However, these days most networks are secured by a WPA pass code, as is my network, and are inaccessible to outsiders.

I happened to go into the office, before heading to the Mac Pro, in what I term the “creative suite” – it’s the back bedroom in actuality — to work on processing images from last week’s trip to Atlanta, when I noticed the In Use light on the telephone had stopped flashing. I picked up the phone and obtained a dialing tone. I was back in business. Yay!!!!

So where did this mysterious repair date of October 18 come from?

My wife has just written me an e-mail, saying that she telephoned AT&T again and was told someone had been dispatched today and the ultimate repair date was still supposed to be October 18. Also the promised phone call to her when the repair had been completed was never made. No surprise there.

I would have thought that if a major cable providing Internet and telephone service to Riverside had broken, it would have made the news.  I cannot find any reference to such a story. I doubt The Florida Times-Union would run the story even if it were aware of it. The newspaper may not like Big Government but it sure gives big corporations a free ride.

So just what is going on with AT&T, apart from making huge profits by providing a shoddy service and seemingly by employing complete idiots?  Has any repair man visited my house? No. Have I got my Internet service back? Yes. I guess the pixies must have fixed it.

So while I am grateful to the engineers and technical staff at AT&T for getting me back online, my contempt for the people at customer service knows no bounds. For a company in the communications business, AT&T patently fails when it comes  to communicating with its customers.

If any senior managers at AT&T happen to read this piece, I have one message for them: “Get your act together where customer service is concerned. You don’t know how close you were to losing my business.”

Never let dangerous side effects get in the way of drug company profits

By Calvin Palmer

Drug regulators in Europe and the United States issued announcements today concerning Avandia, the controversial diabetes medicine made by British company GlaxoSmithKline.

The EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said the drug would no longer be available to patients in Europe, after recommending it be removed from the market.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration decided to severely restrict the drug’s use but stopped short of an outright ban.

The FDA said it was taking the step after data suggested “an elevated risk of cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke, in patients treated with Avandia”.

Under the restrictions, the one-time blockbuster medicine will now only be available to new US patients with type 2 diabetes if they are unable to control their glucose levels through other medications.

Existing diabetes sufferers taking Avandia will be allowed to continue to take the medicine if they so choose, the FDA statement said.

“The FDA is taking this action today to protect patients, after a careful effort to weigh benefits and risks,” said FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg. “We are seeking to strike the right balance to support clinical care.”

Avandia was once the biggest-selling diabetes medicine around the world, with sales reaching $3.2 billion in 2006. Its sales abruptly declined in 2007 after a study by Dr Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist, found that it increased the risk of heart attacks. An advisory committee in 2007 decided that Avandia did increase heart risks but voted to keep it on the market.

Further studies heightened the controversy and in July another FDA advisory committee meeting was held. This time, a majority of experts — many of whom had supported Avandia’s continued sales in 2007 — recommended it should stay on the market in the United States but with greater restrictions on its sale.

“Allowing Avandia to remain on the market, but under restrictions, is an appropriate response, given the significant safety concerns and the scientific uncertainty still remaining about this drug,” said Janet Woodcock director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Doctors will now have to attest that their patients are eligible to be prescribed Avandia, and the patients will have to acknowledge that they are aware of the risks.

The FDA said it would require Glaxo to develop a restricted access program for Avandia under a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy.

Avandia, known generically as rosiglitazone, was approved in 1999. It helps control blood sugar levels in diabetics by making patients more sensitive to their own insulin. It is one of a class of three drugs, the first of which, Rezulin, was withdrawn because it caused liver damage. Actos, the last remaining drug in the class, appears safe in part because it seems to affect a different set of genes than either Rezulin or Avandia.

Avandia’s risks became known only after Dr Nissen analyzed data from myriad trials that GlaxoSmithKline had been forced to post on its Web site as a result of a legal settlement.

The FDA has instructed GlaxoSmithKline to conduct an independent assessment of the Record trial, a landmark study of Avandia’s heart effects that an FDA medical officer found was riddled with what he said were unpardonable errors that seriously biased the trial’s conclusions.

The US watchdog also halted Glaxo’s clinical trial comparing Avandia to the other most popular diabetes drug Actos, as well as standard diabetes medication.

Senate investigators found that GlaxoSmithKline spent years hiding from regulatory authorities clear indications that Avandia increased heart risks. In July, GlaxoSmithKline took a $2.3 billion liability charge related to legal cases involving Avandia and another medicine, Paxil.

But today’s announcements may increase the company’s legal exposure.

Plaintiff’s lawyers must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of rich pickings.

“If the manufacturers of Avandia had told the full truth about the drug’s harmful effects to the medical community or the users of Avandia, patients would have been able to make an informed decision about the potential health risks of using the drug,” said Robert Brown, the head of Baron & Budd’s Miami office.

“While we respect the FDA for repeatedly reviewing this drug, there has been a suggestion of bias on the advisory panel. Regardless, we cannot sit idly by while large pharmaceutical companies hide the truth about dangerous drugs,” said Brown.

Especially when he stands to make a lot of money from successful lawsuits.

How can patients make any informed decisions regarding their healthcare when the motivating force at work with many physicians and drug companies is greed?

Physicians may well protest their innocence in this sordid affair but let us not forget the inducements they are offered by drug companies to prescribe drugs. I am not saying all physicians accept these incentives but clearly the greedy ones do and make no mistake a good many doctors in America are motivated by personal wealth rather than patient care.

All a patient can hope for is that they find a doctor who strictly abides by the medical code, “Do no harm,” a doctor who puts patient care before his or her own financial gain.

Such physicians do exist in the United States, whether they form the majority of the medical profession is open to debate.

[Based on reports by The New York Times, AFP and pharmiweb.com.]

Executives in Stanford’s company to face fraud charges, says SEC

By Calvin Palmer

Several executives involved in Texan billionaire Allen Stanford’s alleged $7 billion Ponzi scheme will face fraud charges, the Senate Banking Committee was told today.

“We have notified several former Stanford executives that we intend to recommend fraud charges against them,” Rose Romero, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth office told US lawmakers. “These persons include former high level executives and financial advisors.”

Stanford, a flamboyant Texan billionaire, has already pleaded not guilty to 21 counts of fraud, money laundering and obstruction. A trial date has not yet been set for him.

The Justice Department has also filed a raft of charges against former Stanford employees, including James Davis, the former chief financial officer of Houston-based Stanford Financial Group, who pleaded guilty last month to counts including fraud.

The company’s chief investment officer, Laura Pendergest-Holt, accountants Mark Kuhrt and Gilberto Lopez, and Leroy King, head of Antigua’s financial services regulatory commission, also face charges.

They are accused of helping Stanford run a massive Ponzi scheme involving the sale of $7.2 billion of Certificates of Deposit.

Romero and other senior SEC officials offered apologies today for failing to detect the massive fraud despite multiple warnings.

“We deeply regret that the SEC failed to act more quickly to limit the tragic investor losses suffered by Stanford’s victims,” said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division.

 The SEC inspector general found that the agency knew since 1997 that R. Allen Stanford was likely operating an alleged Ponzi scheme. But it didn’t charge the billionaire until February 2009. The charges came a few months after the massive pyramid scheme of financier Bernard Madoff surfaced.

SEC enforcement officials discouraged cases that couldn’t be resolved quickly, the inspector general found.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., asked SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami why no one at the SEC has been fired or demoted for the excessive delay. Other senators on the panel also wanted an answer during the hearing on the issue.

“We seem to have an instance in which one side of the agency was screaming that there was a fire, and the other side said that the fire was too hard to put out,” Dodd said.

Khuzami told the panel that the disciplinary process is under way.

He told the committee the details of the SEC’s failure in the case only have been known since the inspector general’s report was issued in April.

Khuzami also said the agency has toughened its efforts to shut down financial misconduct since the past failures.

He said the SEC is working to provide “maximum recovery” to investors hurt in Stanford’s alleged $7 billion fraud.

Inspector General David Kotz also found that the former head of enforcement in the SEC’s Fort Worth office, who helped quash investigations of Stanford, later represented the billionaire as a private lawyer.

The official briefly represented Stanford in 2006 before being told by the SEC ethics office that it was improper for him to do so.

Kotz indicated he has referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution in connection with statements he made to SEC ethics officers.

He also said the official’s representing Stanford appeared to violate Texas’s rules for lawyers.

Kotz said the reforms in the SEC’s enforcement and inspections operations that Khuzami outlined may not have yet taken hold at the lower levels of the agency.

“I think that the intention is there,” he said. “I think it takes time for a culture to be changed.”

Kotz’s office has also found that the agency bungled five investigations into Madoff’s business between June 1992 and December 2008. Madoff’s fraud, which could be the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, destroyed thousands of people’s life savings, wrecked charities and jolted investor confidence during the worst days of the financial crisis.

[Based on reports by AFP and The Houston Chronicle.]

Thrift store manager’s laptop sold for $5

By Calvin Palmer

The manager of an Idaho thrift store returned from conducting business away from the premises to find that her laptop computer had been sold for $5.

Sandra Bechthold, of Coeur d’Alene, said she was shocked when she learned her two-year-old Dell Inspiron and case were sold on July 12.

“It was just a slip up, an easy mistake at a busy store that could happen anywhere,” Bechtold said.

The day the laptop was sold, Bechtold left the Women’s Center Thrift Store in the hands of one paid staff member and several inexperienced volunteers.

Somehow her computer ended up in the donation receiving room.

Items are not usually offered for sale until they have been priced but one volunteer in the busy store made a decision to sell if for $5.

The volunteer said she decided on $5 because she had once seen a laptop with no software sold for that price, Bechthold said.

Anne Chatfield, executive director of the Women’s Center, said the nonprofit organization doesn’t hold any volunteers at fault for the situation.

“We are grateful for all volunteers, whether they are helping with the thrift store or crisis intervention or picking up donations,” she added.

Bechthold took out a classified ad and put up a sign about the incident in the store window last week, with the hopes the buyer would sell the laptop back to her.

But she has had no luck so far.

“I just consider it part of life,” Bechthold said philosophically. “Nobody ever promised that this wouldn’t happen, and in the grand scheme of things it could have been much worse

“It’s a terrible loss, but the conclusion I’ve come to is it can be replaced and the data on it can be recreated.”

[Based on reports by the Coeur d’Alene Press and Associated Press.]

Customers have become ‘guests’ at car dealership

By Calvin Palmer

I went to pick my car from the dealership today; it had been in for a service and to get one or two other things fixed.

While being dealt with by the receptionist, the telephone rang.

She shouted through to a colleague hidden from view, “I am with a guest.”

“Are we having a party?” I inquired.

The receptionist smiled.

“What’s wrong with the word customer?” I asked. “It seems strange when there is a perfectly adequate word to describe my status, namely customer, someone has to come up with a totally inappropriate word. Customer, client, patron, any one of those would be applicable but not guest. I am not your guest.”

The receptionist once again smiled politely and went on to inform me that it was the idea of head office — Pearson Infiniti, of Richmond,Virginia, which owns several Infiniti dealerships, including the one on Atlantic Boulevard, Jacksonville.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines guest as:

Person invited to visit another’s house or have a meal etc at his expense; person lodging at hotel, boarding house, etc; occasional performer from outside regular company etc.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines guest as:

Person entertained in one’s house; a person to whom hospitality is extended; a person who pays for the services of an establishment (as a hotel or restaurant); a usually prominent person not a regular member of a cast or organization who appears in a program or performance.

So Pearson Infiniti appear to have usurped the third meaning given by Merriam-Webster. Perhaps Merriam-Webster should amend their definition to include car dealerships as well as hotels and restaurants.

But wait. If Pearson Infiniti have instructed all dealerships within their ownership to use guest rather than customer, why does the About Us section on its Web site read as follows:

Welcome to the Pearson Infiniti website. Our website is part of our ongoing efforts to offer our customers the most modern and convenient access to useful information and satisfying service. Our clients have high expectations for their vehicles, and equally high expectations about the dealership professionals who serve them.

Suddenly, guests have become, as they should be, customers and clients. And I am one client who has high expectations about the standard of English used by the dealership professionals. Does the use of “professionals”  mean the dealership also has amateurs on its staff?

Under the title Contact Us, the drop-down menu features Customer Survey.

What has suddenly happened to guest? Perhaps the party is over and they have all gone home.

The Atlantic Infiniti dealership in Jacksonville may use guest to describe customers who step foot inside its premises but online is a different matter.

Its Web site features a number of sections one of which is labeled More Info. The drop-down menu features Support, which opens up to reveal its full title – Customer Support.

What happened to the guests?

The section goes on to say:

For us “customer service” means making your car buying experience as easy and enjoyable as possible. You’ll find a number of ways that we make customer service the basis of buying and owning a car from our Atlantic Infiniti.

It even goes on to describe the service department.

We offer all our customers who use our service department a comfortable waiting room, with TV, magazines and the best coffee in town.

But what do they offer their guests?

It grieves me to see words used incorrectly because for one thing, as a guest of Atlantic Infiniti Jacksonville, under the definition given by The Concise Oxford Dictionary, they should have paid the $1,000-plus bill for the service and repairs.

Official prediction suggests an active hurricane season for 2010

By Calvin Palmer

For many people living in the northern hemisphere, June is the month when summer officially starts and thoughts turn to long lazy sunny days.

On the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, June 1 is the start of the hurricane season and the summer months lose a little of their appeal with the knowledge that catastrophe could be just a storm away.

Today, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) said that the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, which lasts until November 30, could be one of the worst on record. Such a forecast is in stark contrast to last year, which was the quietest hurricane season for 12 years.

The agency said it was predicting 14 to 23 named storms, including eight to 14 hurricanes, three to seven of which were likely to be “major” storms, with winds of at least 111 mph.

This is compared to an average six-month season of 11 named storms, six of which become hurricanes, two of them major.

“If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” said NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco.

“The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared,” she said.

the prospect that there will be more and bigger storms this year than average was due to several factors.

Wind shear, which helped suppress hurricane activity in 2009 by tearing up storms before they developed, is expected to be weaker this year as the El Nino effect dissipates in the eastern Pacific.

El Nino is a cyclical phenomenon that brings unusually warm ocean temperatures to the equatorial Pacific, but cooler temperatures to the Caribbean and the Atlantic.

Its opposite is La Nina, when Pacific temperatures are unusually cold. In those years, the southeast United States is unusually warm, enabling storms to grow and move.

Sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic are already up to four degrees Fahrenheit above average, NOAA said.

“Whether or not we approach the high end of the predicted ranges depends partly on whether or not La Nina develops this summer,” said Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

“At present we are in a neutral state, but conditions are becoming increasingly favorable for La Nina to develop.”

And NOAA said the period since 1995 has been one of unusually high storm activity with eight of the last 15 seasons ranking in the top ten for the most named storms. In 2005, there were 28 named storms.

The agency’s forecast saw a surge in oil and natural gas prices. It is also a portent of possible damage to homes and businesses, losses to insurance companies and wild swings in the price of commodities.

The forecast also raises further concern on the Gulf Coast where BP is desperately trying to contain its leaking well.

Hurricanes exert considerable influence in commodity markets. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shut down natural gas and oil production, as well as refineries, along the Gulf Coast. As a result, energy prices soared.

In 2004, Charley, Frances and Jeanne caused lasting damage to Florida’s citrus industry, resulting in orange juice features reaching a record high.

“Any time you have an active season, it’s going to make for active markets,” said David Streit, a meteorologist with Commodity Weather Group.

The U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, rose to $74.4 a barrel today, an increase of nearly 4 percent on the day and reversing price falls of the last two weeks. Oil futures for September, regarded as the peak of the hurricane season, surged even higher.

If the prediction turns out to be true, and remember that it is only a prediction, no doubt the global-warming lobby will be cracking open bottles of Champagne and Tea Party activitists will place the blame firmly on President Barack Obama.

[Based on reports by AFP and The Financial Times.]

Massive Gulf Coast oil spill may turn the tide on offshore drilling

By Calvin Palmer

Sarah Palin’s presidential election battle cry of “Drill baby, drill!” seems to ring hollow in the light of the massive oil spill that is beginning to wash up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

The massive oil slick measuring 100 miles by 40 miles threatens an ecological disaster that may well surpass  the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

President Barack Obama has pledged to “use every single available resource” — including the military — to help fight the oil slick.

A blown-out well a mile underwater is leaking in three places, spewing 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico — five times more than originally thought.

The leaks started after a drilling rig that British Petroleum (BP) was operating exploded and sank last week 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Eleven people were killed in the explosion.

In an attempt to mitigate damage from the slick, BP has asked the Department of Defense if it can provide better underwater equipment than is available commercially, said chief operating officer Doug Suttles.

The request comes just as President Obama dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to help with the spill. The president said his administration will use “every single available resource at our disposal” to respond.

In the conservative Florida Panhandle, charter captain Jim McMahon said the spill changed his mind.

“I am pessimistic about this,” he said. “It could be devastating to the fishing and tourism industry. People aren’t going to come to a beach if they have to step through tar balls.”

Republican Gov Charlie Crist, who surveyed the massive oil slick this week and called it “frightening,” backed off his support for offshore oil extraction.

“It’s the last thing in the world I would want to see happen in our beautiful state,” said Crist, adding that there is no question now that lawmakers should give up on the idea this year and in coming years.

 “Until you actually see it, I don’t know how you can comprehend and appreciate the sheer magnitude of that thing,” said Crist.

That magnitude was lost on bikini-clad Kiley Boster at Pensacola Beach, as she looked out at orange buoys and a boom designed to collect oil that approached an oyster bed and bird sanctuary near the shore.

“I would rather we drill here than spend another 10 years fighting a war and being dependent on oil from other places,” she said.

It was a sentiment that no doubted would have elicited “You betchya!” from the myopic Palin and her supporters.

President Obama recently lifted a drilling moratorium for many offshore areas, including the Atlantic and Gulf areas.

Today, he ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to report within 30 days on what new technologies are needed to tighten safeguards against oil spills from deep water drilling rigs.

Environmentalists sense that this oil spill could swing the balance of opinion in their favor.

“This event is a game changer, and the consequences, I believe, will be long-lasting ecologically and politically — and will be irreversible,” said Richard Charter, energy consultant to Defenders of Wildlife.

For BP, the financial cost of the spill is enormous. The company is spending $6 million a day on trying to contain the spill but the costs to the company extend far beyond that expenditure.

Since April 20, the company has lost more than $20 billion in its stock market value as investors have begun to realize the cost of the clean up to BP could amount to more than $3 billion.

[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph, Associated Press and The Christian Science Monitor.]