Follow up to postings on the Gulf Coast oil spill, via the Huffington Post, “A group of independent scientists, frustrated and dumbfounded by the continued lack of the most basic data about the 77-day-old BP oil disaster, has put together a crash project intended to definitively measure how much oil has spilled and where and how it is spreading throughout the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. An all-star team of top oceanographers, chemists, engineers and other scientists could be ready to head out to the well site on two fully-equipped research vessels on about a week’s notice. But they need to get the go-ahead — and about $8.4 million — from BP or the federal government or both. And that does not appear imminent…Team leader Ira Leifer, a researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, released the group’s 88-page science plan [Deep Spill 2 – Technical Science Plans and Supporting Explanations] late last week. Leifer has been pitching a variety of scientific missions to BP since May 1, and has yet hear word one from the company. But this time, he is more hopeful, in part because his team represents “a significant fraction of the marine hydrocarbon research community” and in part because of Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.”