Oil Arrives In Louisiana; Defense Booms Inadequate 359
eldavojohn writes "People in mainland Louisiana are seeing the beginnings of the oil's full effects on wildlife in the area. Sticky, rust-colored oil covers the reeds like a latex paint, indicating that the efforts to lay miles of floating booms to keep it away from the fragile marshes are useless. They are experiencing what the Plaquemines (mouth of Mississippi River) saw last week, and it now appears that their defenses were inadequate. Only time will tell how much worse it can get as BP still scrambles for a solution. NPR also ran a story critical of Obama's 'scientific approach' that he promised to use in office and how well it's being applied and holding up during this crisis."
Re:BP CEO Hayward Predicts 'very, very modest' Imp (Score:2, Interesting)
It depends on what the actual flow rate is. If it is in the range of 20,000 barrels per day and they manage to close the thing off in the next few weeks, the gulf will probably shake the oil off fairly quickly (especially with various mitigation strategies eliminating thousands of those barrels).
If it is at 70 or 100 thousand barrels per day, then probably not.
Re:Not very critical, actually. (Score:5, Interesting)
BP has lied about the flow rate and did not release data that would allow scientists to judge it. All they would have to do is release their data, which would not stop the effort to stop the flow. In fact, knowing the size of the flow is kind of crucial to stopping it.
From what I've read, the containment is inadequate. Double booms aren't being used in most places, they are aren't being anchored right, no catch basins are being used to collect the oil being trapped, with no pumps at the nonexistent catch basins to remove it. Meaning, the oil will build up and overtop or run under the booms instead of being collected and removed. In order to work, booms need to direct oil to catchbasins for removal. Meaning, they might as well not be booming at all. Best practices are not being followed. A science based, data driven approach would mean, at the very least, doing what has worked in the past, and not doing what hasn't worked.
The use of a more dangerous, less effective dispersant in an untried, untested underwater application is also far from science based. But that was the dispersant BPs sister company had on hand to sell them, and with multiple board members sitting on both companies, I think we can say profits trumped science once again. As a liberal, I am very, very upset with the man I voted for right now. At least Bush was just an idiot with Katrina. Obama seems to be deliberately pandering to Big Oil.
Re:Not very critical, actually. (Score:2, Interesting)
As Jimmy Durante would say, "You ain't seen nothin' yet"
Re:Not very critical, actually. (Score:2, Interesting)
If we nationalized just one company for screwing up, the rest would fall into line tout de suite. And then when the government agency screws up, we auction it all of to private industry again. This process would repeat itself until we found some entity, public or private, that could handle managing it right. But in the mean time, I think I just found a solution to our budget problems.
Oil is $70/bll (Score:2, Interesting)
Have the gov force BP to pay about $1 per gallon to any boat that pulls up along a designated barge and pumps out what they have captured.
All those fishermen/boats docked at port suddenly have a new source of revenue. Let free enterprise figure out how to capture that oil.
Re:Just so you all know. (Score:2, Interesting)
No one will ever be held responsible for this. Ever. Not now, not ever. Ever ever ever.
What exactly do you mean when you say "be held responsible"? Are you hoping for public executions? BP CEO's heak on a pike, maybe?
BP will pay whatever it ends up costing them to "fix" the spill,
In other words, BP will be held responsible, in that they will pay for the cleanup.
Obama is a completely worthless shill to the right of Richard Nixon and will do nothing.
Obama's an amazing guy -- simultaneously to the left of Chairman Mao and to the right of Richard Nixon! He's everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time! Maybe he's mastered that quantum teleportation technique from the other article.
Nothing ever changes, rich people never suffer, and again no one will ever be punished for it. There is literally no hope, and that's not even a joke. There seriously isn't.
You sound like someone trying to defend their own apathy. After all, if there's no hope, then you are cleared of all responsibility for ever doing anything. Nice gig if you can avoid suicide.
Why is oil so hard to separate from water? (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep it simple, or is it stupid? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow. I mean, wow. What's going on here? (Score:3, Interesting)
What's with all the people blaming Obama for the failure of BP to contain or control their oil spill / environmental disaster? He's the President and he has an opinion - but he doesn't have any control over the spill itself or the folks at BP. About the only thing he could do would be to send the Army Corps of Engineers in to take care of the problem and that's not an easy choice to make. If they succeed, it'd be a big win. But if they failed then not only would BP escape blame but the ACofE and Obama would have to explain why their plan failed.
It's a big clusterfuk because in our wisdom we let British Petroleum (BP) do business in our country but they're a foreign corporation. Do you want to punish them or make them pay for all the damage they've done and continue to do? Sure, now how would you propose to do that? For extra credit, accomplish this goal without interrupting the flow of gasoline to all the BP (Arco and probably other) stations in this country and also avoid a diplomatic incident with our (for now) friends in the British Empire.
But that's not likely; instead we have some idiots who see this as a chance to promote their political agenda and a bunch of others who feel their sense of entitlement being threatened. Get a clue: if you want your toaster waffle to be piping hot, it requires energy. If you insist that nuclear is too dangerous, coal is too dirty, and oil is too dangerous and expensive then you're going to have to deal with cold frozen waffles while you huddle in the dark. There's no happy energy unicorn that's going to descend from the sky to save all of us. The solutions to these problems aren't clean and pretty and they don't make the forest animals happy. But if we don't solve the problems then life is going to be much less than it is now in a third-world kind of way. There's still some time but you can't wait forever for something that's never going to happen.
Re:Not very critical, actually. (Score:3, Interesting)