Spill baby spill, slippery politics

I wish this would become an object lesson on the need to observe, license and limit corporations through law . . . but it won't.

In order to drill off the Canadian coast, oil companies have to have the sort of emergency well . . . that won't be finished until August . . . at least partially in place. If American law makers would stop listening to the laissez-faire element . . . whose only goal is to line its own pockets . . . perhaps we would have had an operative solution to this problem.

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@plainoldme,

But the "laissez-faire element " is that which actually believes in evolution theory rather than just using it to try to justify sexually depraved activities.

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@spendius,

Quote:

But the "laissez-faire element " is that which actually believes in evolution theory rather than just using it to try to justify sexually depraved activities.

it is more than a little bit hilarious to watch moderns who don't believe in much of anything jump through hoops trying to apply so much morality to sexual activity. In psychology this goofy behaviour is called over compensation.

What ever other people want to do sexualy should be fine, people outside the relationship should mind their own business. Most people have more than they can handle running their own lives.

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Huffington Post wrote:

Isn't it interesting how so many Gulf state Republicans are anti-big government -- until they need its help? It's "big government for me, but not for thee." You know what they say: a Republican is just a Democrat who hasn't been the victim of a catastrophic oil spill yet. The BP disaster is the inevitable result of the Bush-era habit of filling regulatory agencies with industry lobbyists and cronies. So this is a teachable moment. Just as Reagan put forth his grand, unifying theory that government is the problem, not the solution, Obama needs to seize this opportunity to reframe the debate and show how Corporations Gone Wild are the real problem. What we have now isn't free market capitalism, it's corrupt third world cronyism. Tony Hayward would like his life back. Well, Americans would like our democracy back.

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Quote:

HOUSTON " A cap placed over a ruptured well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico is capturing about 10,000 barrels a day, indicating engineers are making some progress in stanching the flow, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, who is commanding the federal response to the disaster, said Sunday.

Given that we were told by BP and the Government for weeks that the flow rate is 5,000 a day this does not inspire confidence in the leadership in this crisis. In fact it looks suspiciously like the 5,000 number was a bold faced lie, which has long term consequences for the elites of this nation who are on every front extremely active in trying to boss the rest of us around.

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@hawkeye10,

That's old news hawkeye. I'm pretty sure last week the official volumetric flow rate was 20,000 barrels per day.

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@failures art,

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hat's old news hawkeye. I'm pretty sure last week the official volumetric flow rate was 20,000 barrels per day

shockingly enough I consider proof of incompetence/dishonesty to be something new and different than strong suspicion of incompetence/dishonesty...

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@hawkeye10,

I still feel like the worst is yet to come. Even if they managed to plug the leak today, the oil would still have to go somewhere.

just thinking about hurricane season gives me a headache.

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@failures art,

Quote:

I still feel like the worst is yet to come. Even if they managed to plug the leak today, the oil would still have to go somewhere

depending upon the oil type much of it evaporates, and the rest weathers. Bacteria gets rid of a lot of it.

Quote:

Given that there are hundreds of natural oil seeps in the northern Gulf, spewing out an estimated 70,000 tonnes (roughly equivalent to 20 million US gallons) of oil every year, why do we not see a more oil-polluted Gulf in normal circumstances? One big reason is the natural activity of bacteria like Alcanivorax borkumensis.

http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/06/alcanivorax-borkumensis---oil-eating-bacteria-where-are-you.html

Of course this leak may well overwhelm natures ability to compensate, given what we know about how the earth works we can suspect that once nature starts to get overwhelmed its systems of regulation collapse rapidly.

Quote:

In many oil spills, evaporation is the most important process in terms of mass balance. Within a few days following a spill, light crude oils can lose up to 75 percent of their initial volume and medium crudes up to 40 percent. In contrast, heavy or residual oils will lose no more than 10 percent of their volume in the first few days following a spill. Most oil spill behavior models include evaporation as a process and as a factor in the output of the model.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10388&page=90

I am actually more concerned about the chemicals than I am about the oil. BP claims that the chemicals evaporate quickly as well, but we have no history of massive amounts of chemical use like we have here to guide us.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I am actually more concerned about the chemicals than I am about the oil. BP claims that the chemicals evaporate quickly as well, but we have no history of massive amounts of chemical use like we have here to guide us.

Far be it from me to question BP's word on anything, so let's just suppose it does all evaporate. Lets even suppose that the underwater, dispersed component also evaporates. Then what? It didn't disappear. It went somewhere else.

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@roger,

It evaporates, Roger, into thin air.
End of problem.
Right?

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

the elites of this nation who are on every front extremely active in trying to boss the rest of us around.

we're hosting the G20 here in Toronto in a few weeks. I do not see it going smoothly, partly as a result of this bossing-around business which has seemed very obvious during this BP crisis

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@ehBeth,

I think we are at the stage where it has become clear that the elites are keenly interested in amassing power over the rest of us, but are largely incompetent in the jobs that they are actually supposed to be doing. Our economy is in taters, most of our major societal systems no longer work (education, health care, government, corporate governance.....)...I am in no mood to be lectured on my sexual and eating habits by these know it all idiots.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Our economy is in taters

Blue ones, presumably.

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@DrewDad,

<snort>

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@roger,

roger wrote:

Lets even suppose that the underwater, dispersed component also evaporates. Then what? It didn't disappear. It went somewhere else.

Well, we would really like to collect it all and burn it in our cars and disperse it into the atmosphere through combustion. Then if all we do is move it somewhere else in the environment, at least we get to drive somewhere while we're doing it.

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@rosborne979,

Yeah sure, but if it evaporates, the step between floating oil and using it for fuel is missing.

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@roger,

roger wrote:

Yeah sure, but if it evaporates, the step between floating oil and using it for fuel is missing.

uh, yeh. I knew that. I was being cynical Smile

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

we're hosting the G20 here in Toronto in a few weeks. I do not see it going smoothly

You're saying the number of radical liberals is going to explode in Toronto in a few weeks.

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it seems as if the problems from DEEPWATER will be with us for years to come .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10258612.stm

Quote:

US Coast Guard chief Thad Allen has warned that cleaning up marshlands and other habitats affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will take years.

and tarballs are already showing up on florida beaches - nasty stuff - why didn't the stuff evaporate before hitting the beaches ???

btw great lakes beaches are still fouled by tarballs formed 20 and more years ago when ocean-going ships came up the st. lawrence river and " cleaned " their balance tanks while moving up the lakes - the stuff did not evaporate .

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Spill baby spill, slippery politics

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