Spill baby spill, slippery politics

This is evidently a conversation between silly sods who think that suggesting these inane ideas, or even holding forth on the matter, are designed to explain why they were foolishly passed over by those BP agencies which recruit experts in disaster management.

When one hears such drivel in social settings one might be pretty certain that someone is parleying up their machismo. One cannot imagine any other effect it might have.

I thought farmerman's "quick setting grout" was the funniest.

It goes to show though that not all crude oil is worth $70 a barrel. Shades of Midas, a version of which was told by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Maybe you're right. It sounded too easy anyway.

How big is that drill hole anyway?

Cycloptichorn

Look at all that lovely oil going to waste. We could be putting it into our cars and burning it and putting it into the atmosphere instead of on that poor beach.

Wow!! One wouldn't really want ros teaching the kids science with that flouncy ladies' coffee morning talk of "waste".

Nothing goes to waste in science. That's a fundamental law of science. The kids would be getting off on anti-science with that sort of talk.

"Waste" is a purely human and subjective concept.

The USA is probably covered in a very thin film of more or less the same stuff. In cities it can be felt on the skin. ros must only be able to see it when there's a concentration of it which will, in time, become dispersed as well. I daresay the boot is made of it.

BP is rethinking latest strategy, may abandon idea of blasting in mud and concrete.

Oh Ya, that Idea that the best and the brightest have we are told been working on for a month, only BP never before now took the time to examine the BOP in detail? That idea? You would think that crack engineers would as the first step examine the problem and then look for solutions, but apparently I don't understand engineering.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_top_kill_2

Correct me if I am wrong, but was it not the whole point of not taking the time to figure out how much oil is flowing that they were concentrating on more important things...like perhaps checking out the condition of the BOP maybe. I must be slow or something.

As I remember reading once, oil just seeped out of the ground in PA where it was known as rock oil.

Video update:



http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/05/25/2909294.htm

The govt oughta be arranging for pumping and storage and oil separator rigs on boats to pump and separate the oil that in the water. This stuff, the longer it lays there will remain a toxic pile of crap, partially submerged.

NOBODY is doing anything about that. WHY NOT??
Jeezus Christe, theres millions of gallons sitting in conveniently reached clots of crude and emulsion that could be used and would help speed-up the cleanup. This isnt rocket science.

A blogger's view: http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/2010/05/major-change-down-below.html
The situation is not just one hole leaking oil at 5,000 or 400,000 gallons a day.(you pick the amount) There are now gas fissures appearing away from the area of the blow-out preventer and major outburst events. This is Old Lady Nature at her volcanic best.

Check it out.

I think the only way this will be stopped is to get the two other wells drilled, start pumping from them to reduce the pressure on the hole and surrounding fissures, then start pumping concrete mud down the hole. Um. that's going to take until Labor Day.

This is incredible engineering. This is like working on another planet except it's this one.

I would remind everyone that we are at about seven million gallons (+/- a million) today. The Ixtoc I blowout of 1979 was 140 million gallons and covered two hundred miles of Texas beaches with oil. It made places on Padre Island stink for about ten years.

This is going to take a LOT of clean-up, but it's not Armageddon.

Joe(drill relief wells, baby, drill relief wells)Nation

There are 3,858 active drilling platforms in proximity to the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The work takes place in a hostile environment. Accidents are inevitable.

One explanation of why the clean up operation is not being conducted as well as it might is because not many Americans live in those coastal regions and very few work in hostile environments and thus have little or no understanding of conditions there. Not that that inhibits their need to spout nonsense about the matter, as this thread amply shows, or to reduce their demand for oil which almost 4,000 rigs a long way from where it is consumed shows to be an obsession or even an addiction.

One could esasily argue that the probability of such an accident occuring with 4,000 rigs operating in deep waters subject to storms is so high (100% some might say) that the entire responsibility for the odd one that does should be borne by the end user of the product. One rather obvious way to slide out of such responsibility is to try to load it all onto BP which could easily make safety its only priority if the end users would pay the price rather than continually voting for it to be kept down.

As the denizens of Media are bigger consumers of the end product than most, and encourage the addiction with alarming determination, ( a Ponzi scheme when studied carefully), it is obvious they will do the cheer-leading which will need to set aside the sterling work BP has done in the past to keep prices at levels which enabled Americans to have sufficient funds left over after attending to their energy needs so that they could wear outsize trousers and skirts on a regular basis with the concomitant reduction in the blood supply to their brains which, in a sort of cascading effect, required examainations to be made easier if the graduation ceremony business was to be prevented from foundering which is a priority of great importance bearing in mind that having graduated is often the only evidence offered for a very large number of ridiculous statements.

This is exactly why the anti-regulation conservatives need to check themselves. When left to their own devices, private industry will NOT look out for the greater interest of the environment, the economy, or even the safety of it's own employees.

A
R
T

I think it WILL have an effect on November elections and political platforms. November elections could have effects on legislation affecting off shore drilling.

So it could have a long term effect if acted on in the next year and a half by congr-- ****.

A
R
T

Oh man, seriously? I believe the number is actually much closer to 39 million gallons at this point.

http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/bp-gulf-oil-spill-39-million-gallons.html

Dunno where you are getting your numbers from... the official BP numbers most certainly cannot be trusted.

Cycloptichorn

But don't you see fa, (no wonder you failed art), that private industry has to be popular. It used to be illegal did trying to be popular. I don't know how long ago. It's a very complex story to do with which class has power. Some might say, and I'm a bit loathe to disagree, that Wankers have it now. 300 years ago.

Imagine if you will, if only metaphorically, that you own an ice-house. The only one for ten miles, and that was a long way then, even as the crow flies. You make a good living out of the ice-cream trade and the butchery business, the OK side of it, and the ice-house has been in your family ever since one of your forbears won it in a card game along with a skint widow of about 30. It bought you your bishopric. And some nerd turns up with a refrigerator. He was in the ****.

Today, in our more enlightened age, private industry needs to be popular and it measures its popularity at the check-outs on the grounds that if it didn't it would be hung out to dry in the sun like a wombat skin being cured in the traditional manner. To make a costume for a Saturday Nite Hop say. Bothering about those other things you mention is a function of the pressure coming from the tills. Reduce till pressure and the choice is between those things and shareholders with an amount set aside to see that any court cases which arise can be spun out until they fade away by diffusion as a vapour trail does not to mention a few other things. Plus a few trained spokespersons gifted with the capacity to field questions from concerned citizens who have suddenly discovered that there are risks, and to get into tomorrow with. It's a fluid situation and everybody wants to have their say. Which is popular too.

And the dangerous, and no doubt tough, jobs on the rigs is the reason the pay is so good and the occupation carries a certain cachet in the working-man's hierarchy. An "oilman" and a ladies hair stylist are in different worlds. Oilmen have status. And the danger is a large part of it. Men who ransacked Mother Earth have always had a certain something to set them apart.

Another advantage of the conditions on rigs being what they are is that it provides an example of sexual discrimination still being with us. It seems a great shame in this day and age that ladies should seemingly be excluded from such well paid and highly honoured professions as those which make Mother Earth yield up her riches so we can all have so jolly a good time that no potentate, Pope, emperor and suchlike of long ago seeing it in his crystal ball could have done other than stagger back in astonishment.

And it's us who make them try to be popular. And here we are baying for their scalps.

I think this passage summarizes your ability to contribute a discussion.

A
R
T

I was watching Mr Obama blustering on the idiot box and it struck me that negligence would have to be proved to the sastisfaction of a jury if BP was going to be held as accountable as is being suggested. I presume the regulatory authorities signed everything off as A1 OK.

NASA didn't take the blame for the "O" rings in that rocket ship disaster.

I bet there's a lot of lawyers jingling the change in their pockets--what??

You appear to be confused. NASA did indeed "take the blame" for the O rings failure and a number of senior officials lost their jobs for it. You may recall there was a rather exhaustive investigation of the affair and a great deal of blame was laid on NASA's failure to act on earlier indications of damage top the shuttle thermal tiles and the flawed design of the O rings on the fuel tank themselves.

There are many legal options for enforcing BP's accountability and I believe the energy they are putting into containing the leak is evidence they believe they will be effective.

That said, the political posturing of our President has more to do with escaping blame and accountability himself and pleasing the cadres of zealous supporters who would really like to see us abandon petroleum and turn to the fantasies of wind power like a bunch of crazy Brits.

Obama has accepted responsibility of "its his watch" Im concerned that noone, either govt OR BP is working on how to pump and separate the existting spill. They cant really rely upon bacteriological means to break the stuff down.
There are several pumping boats and separator vessels and "Lightering tankers" available for just such occasions. WHY the hell isnt anyone asking that this be done while the major part of the plume is hanging together.

Therell be plenty time for "who shot john" after this is spiffed up.