Trash In The Ocean

They should not burn the oil slick in the gulf because it will create many more billions of chemicals from the waste. It is better to try and clean the beaches after. The oil will hit the beaches anyway. Better the oil hit the beaches and not a burnt mess.

I think thy have to redouble their efforts to try and shut off that well cap while they also speed up retaping the well.

as for the clean up they need to suck up and contain the spill material in as many places as possible capture it in boats and put it in storage facilities. start the clean up now create safe storage containers and store it maybe underground to keep it away from the sun.

Then it needs to be refined and broken down into it basic chemical properties and reused recycled in industry this clean up will take many years.

Now maybe people won't be saying "drill drill drill".

I have never agreed with drilling for more oil.

I don't believe we should be using oil/gas/petroleum/ethanol to fuel our cars.

I once believe that ethanol was the answer to our energy needs. I figured wow you can run a car off corn that sounds healthy and natural. Well it turns out that as petrolium puts off carbon monoxide ethanol also has its noxious chemicals that is releases when you burn it.

The noxious chemical that ethanol puts off is (i believe) formaldehyde. So these cars driving around on the streets burning ethanol to save the environment. This formaldehyde causes genetic disorders in carbon based life forms and birth defects. Thus it is degrading the life on this planet.

It is known that if we were to plant corn on every square foot of American land it woudl still not make enough ethanol to fuel our fleet of motor vehicals.

I believe we should be using the sun and hydrogen to fuel our cars.

Hydrogen when you burn it in an engine it gives off oxygen and occasionally a drop of water out of the tail pipe. What could be any better?

Whatever hurdles there be to becoming hydrogen based fuel society I say we start jumping them now.

How about dropping giant rocks to block the spill cap well
the well many laser guided rock drops TONS.

Please stop burning the gulf oil.

No oil should be burnt!

I admire how concerned you are about this oil spill. I feel powerless. What I don't understand is why oil drilling companies do not have "fixes" already determined before the catastrophe occurs. Oil drilling companies should be forced to predetermine possible catastrophic occurrances and how to fix them. Certaintly oil spewing from the head at the bottom of the Gulf is something that could be determined beforehand as a possible catastrophe and figure a way beforehand how to handle this problem.

It is unconscionable, raining oil and wrath for our disregard for mother earth.

A passion to clean up the Pacific Ocean's great 'garbage patch'
Avid sailor and educator Mary Crowley is recruiting help to clean up the North Pacific Trash Gyre, a 'garbage patch' of plastic and other trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0510/A-passion-to-clean-up-the-Pacific-Ocean-s-great-garbage-patch

This Gulf oil catastrophe is even more disturbing than ever, now that it has gone on for how long? And not even a solution to be found. I am speechless.

I am speechless too Philis, it is just to bad to think about and face too long, like getting punched in the stomach, it just takes all the wind out of you.

Thank you for this link! I am so glad you shared this with me.

Bless their endeavors to clean up the Pacific Ocean's great 'garbage patch' and may they be praised, commemorated, remembered, honored and emulated for being the first to act and reverse this terrifying blight caused by careless human activity.

I would LOVE to be on those boats helping... I am just terrified of being on the ocean. I would donate what little money I can to help the effort succeed.
If anyone can find a direct link to donate to this cause please post it here.

I love the ocean but I am unable to enjoy being on the ocean in a large boat. I do like to sail on lakes and inland ocean sailing. It is just that the open sea has not been good to me and I have been on ocean vessels that were encountering fifty foot waves and am compelled to say, never again. I was so sick I could not even stand up and walk and every time we hit another wave the whole ship would go BOOM and tremble violently! This lasted all night.

I have great admiration and awe for those courageous and outstanding persons, heroes who are able to endure the ocean's great power and have set their sights upon ridding the ocean of this refuse. It is really nice that they have recycling built into their plans too. I just wonder if there is a garbage patch floating the size of Texas how much of that garbage has become weighted down by algae and plankton and sunk to the bottom of the ocean? Is there not even more of an ecological impact on the deep sea floor? Is this patch over mostly deep or shallow water? This Gulf spill will/should/must have the consequence of building up a massive fleet of ships for skimming the ocean surface. Once the all of patches of the oil are meticulously collected and contained from the Gulf this fleet can just be relocated to the Pacific cleanup.

Perhaps there are cubic tons of trash heaped up on the ocean floor bottom. This should require all countries of the world to volunteer support and help our dying oceans to survive this. I think our government should be picking up a lions share of the tab on this garbage patch/pile too. I will never again say that plastic things are cheap and don't last.

About sucking up fish during the clean up, I don't think that the proportion of fish that are sucked up in this mess would be negligible to overall populations. Perhaps the fish/plant matter that is sucked up can be separated from the plastic and used as fertilizer (like the Indians did). Although it is probably true that many if not most fish prefer to live right under the ocean's surface.

Consider the silver lining that the more fisher persons that we send out to the garbage patch the less they will be hauling and dwindling fish supplies elsewhere.

Thanks for participation in this woeful but still hopeful discussion on the current state of the our earth's oceans.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37091079

Day 43 of the catastrophe. I think of a million things I could say, but why bother. This is a losing situation and I don't believe Obama will see to it that "Everybody" affected will get what they are due. On my keyboard I have these keys:!@#$%^&*()_+, BUT no key to show DISGUST!!

I know Philis day 46 it is absolutely heart wrenching. BP seems focused more on stopping the well and who would blame them but the environmental catastrophe is reaching disastrous epic proportions. They are burning the oil which is only making billions more chemicals out of the spill sending it up into the clouds to come down as a toxic acid in a place near you. I would focus on containment rather than disbursement and burning which is also disbursement. Why can't they have unmanned drones with webcams and tankers collecting the oil up off the surface like those vacuums that automatically clean your carpet and bump against the wall?

I guess I am getting my wish... a ten thousand ship fleet of collector/container boats to go out into the pacific and clean that up. They can go to the pacific after they are done cleaning up the gulf.

If they filter all of the water in the gulf the fish will get caught in the filters and die. Well the fish and crustaceans are going to die anyway. If we do not filter the water in the gulf with thousands of huge tankers then the oil will settle and seep into the land and the ecosystem will not be able to rebound.

Little did I know when I started this post how futile my prophetic ramblings would seem now.

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7062605

Having this lesson in oil wells it should serve all the other oil companies to make back up plans for their rigs NOW and not after a disaster.

They should have tons of back up hardware and research and development into robotic cleanup technologies. God forbid that this is hurricane season and if wells are not anticipated for failure we will be seeing more oil like this slowly ruining our world.

I feel the same seeing when this post originated and look what we have now.
I also agree "vacuuming" up the crap is a good idea. I don't get it, Obama says they have the FULL support of the us govt. So I feel let down that there is too little support. BP does not care about the environment or else they would have had a backup plan for such a disaster as this one. They should have a warehouse FULL of disaster equipment.

Well, there is a solution to this BP oil spill.

Stop driving your car. Stop flying in airplanes. Stop buying goods that were shipped from other parts of the country or world. Stop buying plastic. Stop using oil.

THAT is the only way you'll ever see anything happen in regards to less drilling in the oceans. It will take millions of people to do this before the impact will be felt.

There are something like 4000 ocean drilling rigs. No way all of them will be shut down unless they are no longer needed. And to retrofit them with some new safety device won't happen either, the government doesn't have the will to require it or enforce it.

If you don't like (and I don't either), then the only thing you can really do about it is to stop using what is produced. Lower the demand for oil and you'll see these rigs become too un-economical.


I'm of the opinion that many people care about this problem, just not enough to actually do anything about it.

Or we could vote in a government that does as the people want and expect in regards to our energy needs. We can change the way big oil companies and others lobby our senators. We can eliminate pork barrel spending. Either way the American consumer should be paying MUCH more for energy in order to provide a smooth transition from fossil fuels to nuclear energy and electric/hydrogen cars.

Once we start producing more nuclear facilities it will be even more important that these environmental safety regulations be not only in place but strictly adhered to.

I don't own a car I got rid of it and now I walk or take the bus. Usually I walk where I need to go.

But I am willing to pay instead of a dollar and a quarter for the bus three dollars and a quarter if two of those dollars go to energy alternatives. I would rather pay that 2 dollars per ride now rather than when we are nearing running out of energy and it skyrockets in price to 6 dollars a gallon for gas and then I have that two dollars tacked on when the price is high already, to little too late...

American pay too little for energy considering the forecast of our energy future. When energy becomes too expensive on its own, the time to develop new sources of energy will have long passed.

No, we really can't do any of that either. The democrats are more likely to do that than the republicans, and I can't see you ever having more Democrats than we do right now. Our government is in league with big business and will not, indeed cannot, do anything to stop this.

Any changes would have to be market driven, not regulation.

...or it could be people driven via the internet and voter consciousness.