Quantifying, and Dealing With, the Deepwater Spill 343
Gooseygoose writes with a link to this analysis by Boston University professor Cutler Cleveland. "Some reports in the media attempt to downplay the significance of the release of oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident by arguing that natural oil seeps release large volumes of oil to the ocean, so why worry? Let's look at the numbers." Read on for a few more stories on the topic of the Deepwater Horizon spill.
theodp writes with some information on the remote-controlled efforts to stanch the oil's flow: "The work Tito Collasius does sounds a little like science fiction: Men on ships flicking joysticks that control robots the size of trucks as they rove miles beneath the sea in near-freezing depths no man could hope to reach. But BP's spill efforts rest in the hands of underwater remote-operated vehicle (ROV) pilots, who 'fly' the ROVs from command centers aboard ships, joysticks in hand and large banks of screens in front of them offering a view of the challenges they confront in the waters below. ROVs are typically used for commercial (as in the oil industry), oceanographic (science research and exploration), and military (mine reconnaissance and recovery) missions. If you're interested in joining Tito, training's available."
Even if BP were to effect a perfect block for the oil, though, there's still quite a bit of it swirling in the Gulf — you've probably seen some gut-wrenching pictures of the affected wildlife. Reader grrlscientist writes "Some people claim that we should euthanize all oiled birds immediately upon recovering them. But I argue it is our ethical responsibility to protect, clean, and save these birds, even after they've been oiled, just as we should preserve and clean their habitats."
Heh, (Score:5, Insightful)
Reader grrlscientist writes...it is our ethical responsibility to protect, clean and save these birds, even after they've been oiled, just as we should preserve and clean their habitats
I love it. The BP executives should themselves be forced to help clean birds and other wildlife. It's the grown-up equivalent of writing "I will not pollute the ocean" ten million times on the blackboard.
The Usual Suspects (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdotters are better than the general public at understanding that this BP rupture's quantity of spewing oil is very serious and damaging, even where it isn't obvious on Gulf Coast beaches.
So you should look at who is downplaying it. And then remember next time they tell you something how seriously low their credibility is. That they cannot be trusted. Their usual lying isn't usually as obvious as it is here.
The Exon Valdez (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at the site of the Exon spill in Alaska. Although it has been about 30 years the beaches are still a total wreck and the area still can not be fished.
Coral reefs may be the worst injuries as they kill easily and may take hundreds of years to rekindle. It is obvious that financially damaged parties will continue to be damaged for decades.
And the large view is even worse. Human population is exploding and we are now absolutely confronted with the fact that oil driven technologies are a horror story. And we are jumping to adopt newer technologies with no way to estimate the great harm that they may generate. After all, only the lunatic fringe believed that oil driven advances were aproblem until the 1970 era.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
People are cruel, shallow, and small minded.
All of us are some of the time.
All a misanthrope needs to do is sit back with a beer and watch humanity destroy themselves with their shallowness and stupidity.
Stupidity often burns me out too, but if we just sit back and do nothing we will run out of beer (and food, and clean air, etc.) and suffer greatly long before the end. So heave a sigh, shed a bitter tear, and roll up your sleeves for another tortuous round of cleanup and rebuild.
It's no surprise there's muck to rake up (Score:3, Insightful)
See, for example: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=64864 [sfgate.com] or http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/02/2010-06-02_the_hidden_death_in_the_gulf.html [nydailynews.com]
I am sure BP is doing everything it can to stop the oil gushing out, despite what all the (sometimes idiotic, very amusing) armchair engineers are saying is the "obvious" thing to do.
However, it seems the real battle that will have the greatest impact on the future of this is over who controls the media now, and that's where BP needs to get its hands tied.
Re:The Usual Suspects (Score:5, Insightful)
So you should look at who is downplaying it. And then remember next time they tell you something how seriously low their credibility is. That they cannot be trusted. Their usual lying isn't usually as obvious as it is here.
Let's start with all the D.C. politicians who conveniently remain quiet. Why? I hear more clamoring from the governors of the states being affected than from the voter elected senators and representatives. Why?
How many of the voter elected politicians are on the oil industry payroll? Why? What happened to safety administrator who abruptly "retired" when this whole fiasco blew up (no pun intended). How many oil executives and oil lobby politicians switch roles when things get dicey?
If there ever was a call to separate Business and State, this is it.
Re:Raises the Question Where Does Oil Come From? (Score:5, Insightful)
from long dead organisms
You answered your own question. If you don't believe the answer the geologists give you, feel free to read up on petroleum geology, and do some basic back-of-the-envelope calculations yourself.
There are four ways to answer a question. From best to worst:
1) Figure it out yourself
2) Trust the experts
3) Proclaim it an unanswerable mystery
4) Make up something
You're one rung off the bottom. Climb on up!
Sarah Palin knows the reason for the spill....phew (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, Sarah has figured out the real reason [facebook.com] for the Gulf oil spill, and that reason is those of us who actually care about the environment.
No really, she's serious. We just need to let the oil companies drill unrestricted pretty much wherever and whenever they want, sans restictions and we wouldn't have these problems. Thank God we have a genius [nonstick.com] like Sarah to tell us unwashed slobs what the truth is.
That unrestricted oil drilling is safe, clean and green! [thescreamonline.com]
Re:Heh, (Score:3, Insightful)
But of course we all share the blame for this disaster. The root cause, after all, is our collective demand that BP drill for oil and sell it to us. Of course it's likely there were specific things that specific individuals did or did not do that precipitated this disaster, and yes they will have pay for their errors. But I worry about vilifying BP too much. It is almost as if we're trying to assuage our own consciences by mistakenly thinking that if we can just get BP to take the blame then everything will be alright and we can keep on living the consumption lifestyle.
Re:All natural (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not THAT hard to understand if anyone tries to present it. Quick, everyone in the world drip one drop of oil wherever they may be. Tiny problem, no big deal.
Now, drip 6 billion drops of oil where you're standing right now (about 300,000 Liters) and see how much trouble it is!
Re:Heh, (Score:3, Insightful)
We can place the root of the blame on our congress for failing to allow for the free market to have prevented this.
Re:Heh, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The Exon Valdez (Score:5, Insightful)
No, NOT stop everything until it's all perfect but how about not being cheap fucks and skimping on safety?!
So far we've heard that BP was pushing for a faster and faster schedule, using only two plugs instead of three, forgoing a final check on the cement, and (think this might have been Transocean) ignoring CLEAR FUCKING EVIDENCE that the seal of the BOP was damaged (clear as in chunks of in the hands of workers that they brought to the manager).
Oh, and stuff like the BOP had low batteries and one of the redundant systems was shot.
And fuck MMS for being a bunch of corporate whores and letting BP FILL OUT THE INSPECTION REPORTS. WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS WRONG WITH THESE ASSHOLES?
That's the problem and THAT is what makes me so furious. Maybe we need more regulation. Maybe we don't. It's kinda hard to tell when it appears that absolutely NONE of it was followed.
I can only wish that some asses get nailed to the wall over this.
Feeds from the ROVs (Score:5, Insightful)
so NIMBYs (Score:5, Insightful)
you won't have nuclear reactors with modern technology. france and japan have been relying on reactors for decades. but not in your backyard, no. you know, electric cars, less air pollution, no more funding of geopolitical nightmares, etc.
so instead you'll have thousands of acres of your shoreline turned into a befouled environmental calamity, you'll fund wahhabi madrasas in pakistan through all the money you're giving saudis to drive your SUVs, you'll send your sons, daughters, fathers, mothers to die in pointless wars, you'll fuel global warming, you'll make your cities unbreathable...
but remember, its nuclear power we should be afraid of
read NIMBY's, and reverse your idiotic mental block:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France [wikipedia.org]
Re:Animal ethics? (Score:2, Insightful)
> but it simply doesn't make sense to try to save every
> possible bird here,
What harm is there in trying?
> from either a monetary or moral perspective.
Oh, right, you're really just worried about the cost. Of course. But hey, if you add "or moral" in there, it makes it seem like you really thought this out and that you're not really just a greedy miser. You should (do?) work for BP, it's great thinking like yours that got them where they are now.
Re: The Exon Valdez (Score:5, Insightful)
We're past Peak Oil, so oil use will drop as oil becomes more expensive. In a few more decades large scale oil use will be a thing of the past.
Until then ever more difficult, risky and expensive oil production methods will be used, so this will not be the last major accident.
Re: All natural (Score:4, Insightful)
Boo hoo. Let me know when its any more unfair than having your livelihood wrecked because some BP fuckheads couldn't keep control of their oil wells. When you shit in the sandbox you should face some extraordinary rules. It isn't a game when you're fucking up my world. If BP ever played by 'fair' rules instead of bribing... I mean, lobbying politicians, drilling and ignoring safety standards, etc we could judge them by fair rules. But they didn't. They broke the rules, they hit below the belt, they rigged the odds and they fucked up. So screw the marquis of queensbury rules, the gloves come off now.
Re:The Usual Suspects (Score:4, Insightful)
But I'm not sure how helpful it is to actually quantify it. The amount of oil spewing into the Gulf doesn't really have any impact on the efforts to stop it; it simply must be stopped at all costs and BP is doing everything they can to try to make that happen. If the leak were twice as big, or half as big, the appropriate response would be precisely the same.
So next we have the issue of cleanup of beaches. The amount of oil reaching the beaches is good to know, but not necessarily directly correlated with the amount of oil gushing out of the well - there's a lot of coastline, and the amount of oil hitting each spot will vary.
As for the amount of oil that remains in the gulf itself, it seems to me there's not a whole lot we can do about that at this point. So while there's certainly value in understanding the nature and scope of the problem, in purely practical terms I don't really see how it matters.
When you say "you should look at who is downplaying it," do you mean people who are saying this isn't really that big a deal, and it's not really that much oil? Or do you mean people who are saying the exact amount of oil isn't relevant to the task at hand? If the former, I agree with you, but if you mean the latter, you may want to reconsider.
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
We've long known that hydrocarbons can occur without biogenesis - and finding new sources of them, or methane on Titan, isn't any sort of revelation despite media labels like "game-changer".
However, as far as I'm aware we've never found any abiogenic petroleum - long-chain, more complex hydrocarbons (primarily paraffins and cycloalkanes) than the much simpler/smaller hydrocarbons like methane. It's possible abiogenic petroleum exists of course, but it's never been discovered in commercially-significant quantities, certainly.
The Science Daily article you cite is interesting, and contains some bold claims from Stockholm researchers, but they appear to be based solely on simulations to date. When/if they can show their simulations match reality (e.g by drilling where their simulations indicate, and discovering quantities of petroleum lacking in biotic markers), then that might be considered a "game-changer".
Re:Heh, (Score:1, Insightful)
If you ever took a ride in a car or airplane then you share a part in this. You need to grow a pair and take responsibility for your actions before you can expect BP execs to.
Re: All natural (Score:5, Insightful)
The game is not the US government the game is a corrupted version the Lobbyist US Government, a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations (well at least the corporate executives, the investors quite often get it in the neck at golden parachute time). Of course the lobbyists can get kicked out on any issue or all together, the public just has to demonstrate the collective will to do so.
Criminal negligence should never be allowed, prosecution for the crimes committed by BP, Halliburton and Transocean should be pursued. The executives responsible for those decisions should have their assets seized and spend the rest of their lives in jail. Can't find a way to do it, well, simply claim that some components of the oil are drugs and the companies involved are illegally distributing and dealing it (so seized under drug dealer laws).
A for proof of their criminal negligence, well hey, you would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to be aware of the evidence of it or a Republican politician to be able to shamelessly publicly lie about what is blatantly obvious or a Fox News presenter/reporter for whom the truth is nothing but a tool by which to extort advertising dollars and lies are what they really sell.
Re:Heh, (Score:4, Insightful)
Screw that. I've told anyone who will listen that we need to get off oil and tried to do so myself. I resent being lumped in with all the "drill baby drill" yahoos as part of the problem. Some of us are at least trying to be part of the solution.
Re: The Exon Valdez (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulation doesn't work so well when the people at the top are actively opposed to effective regulation. You don't think all that "drown the government in a bathtub" talk was just for show, do you? This is the "ad absurdem" part of the small government movement.
Re:Heh, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Usual Suspects (Score:4, Insightful)
If there ever was a call to separate Business and State, this is it.
I'm undoing a lot of mod points to say this, but separation caused this mess: A lack of regulatory oversight and trusting that the private industry was putting in adequate safeguards. Business and State need to be working in a partnership -- it's a necessity. There was a disconnect; The people making the laws and doing the regulatory oversight didn't have the training or knowledge to know what measures would be effective (and what was just window-dressing). What we need to look at right now is how that relationship can be structured to best serve the public interest, rather than private interests as it has until now.
I would start by putting people who design and work with these systems in front of Congress and coming up with effective measures the government can take to prevent private interests from causing this amount of damage again.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heh, (Score:3, Insightful)
For the umpteenth time, only economic liability is capped to 75 million dollars. And that is only if BP and/or Halliburton and/or Transocean cannot be found to be at fault for the spill.
Fixed that for you ...
"Some 25 years after the gas leak, 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the UCIL plant continue to leak and pollute the groundwater in the region and affect thousands of Bhopal residents who depend on it ..."
Re:Sarah Palin knows the reason for the spill....p (Score:1, Insightful)
Wait, what?
You think that if we let Palin drill in ANWR that the drilling in the Gulf would stop? That thought is completely divorced from reality.
Re:Heh, (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All natural (Score:3, Insightful)
The periodic extinction of dominant megafauna (that's currently us) is also natural and just the Earth "doing it's thing".
Just saying.
Re: All natural (Score:5, Insightful)
And if they aren't, real human beings get screwed over by them.
Yes, you can. And in fact they regularly are, in more complex games, such as D&D. Humans are imperfect and the rules they make sometimes have holes which let some players screw other players.
This is especially true of games where a huge disparity of power exists between players, such as the game of BP vs. real human beings.
And that's a great idea. Businesses aren't holy cows, they are the workhorses of economy; if one acts all uppity, why shouldn't it be put down and shipped to the glue factory?
In fact I say we start the slaughter right now. I, for one, am tired of carrying horses on my back.
Whenever there's a story about some company doing something technically legal but horribly unfair, we get a hundred posts defending their right to do so, saying that the "world is not fair; deal with it". The second someone dares to suggest dealing with it by treating a company the same way, we get cries of "wah! unfair!".
Either fairness is important or it isn't. Either you can do anything you can get away with, or you can't. You can't have it both ways depending on whichever suits you best at the moment. Corporate America, which way do you want it?
Re:Heh, (Score:1, Insightful)
If you ever took a ride in a car or airplane then you share a part in this. You need to grow a pair and take responsibility for your actions before you can expect BP execs to.
Everyone shares responsibility to some extent BP is the main culprit no doubt...
Re:Heh, (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Heh, (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't remember ever asking BP to drill for oil. I don't remember ever asking anyone to drill in an unsafe manner. No, BP has to take the blame for this themselves. They tried to take a short-cut and failed. There are plenty of other oil rigs that are chugging away just fine.
'Plenty of other oil rigs' are operating in exactly the same manner as BP's. You might want to start panicking now or, at least, take a look around your house and out to your driveway and consider that you did ask BP to drill for oil.
Re:All natural (Score:5, Insightful)
seeing how [Obama's] superior executive response has been to let BP fumble around forever?
That's because BP are the ones with the greatest expertise here. Frankly, Obama would be acting very irresponsibly if he kicked them out of the cleanup altogether and just made them foot the bill. And with so much at stake, I really wouldn't want the president to act irresponsibly for the sake of making himself look better in the short term.
Oil is not the sole feedstock for society. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm getting sick of people saying that modern life is dependent on petroleum. Sure.. things won't be as easy, but we can make all sorts of things, and won't be giving up all the technological developments of the last century just by switching feedstocks!
This will not drive us back to the middle ages, in the middle ages, we didn't have electricity!
Reducing petrol use in transport, even by only 50% will increase the amount of "easy oil" available for use as chemical precursors for the stuff that can't easily be made from coal or fresh biomass.
Agriculture scares me the most because modern ag pretty much involves turning diesel into meat. But we can make changes here, too.. there's no reason we cant farm electrically, we're already using electricity for irrigation. What scares me the most is a ill-considered switch to biofuels as we could quickly starve ourselves trying to grow massive quantities of fuel from food crops.
This stuff isn't rocket science and I'm getting more and more angry about the lack of political will to start adapting rather than burying our heads in the sand.
Re: All natural (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets be realistic here, soon this will become a world wide catastrophe taking it beyond Just America as oil starts to get into the international currents and finds itself all over the world. Yeah it's a game, with more pawns than kings and guess what you and I are. Once it's there BP has won the game.
Why? Because realistically no one here cares as long as you can drive and get your groceries. Slowly it will become a blip on the world media and it just doesn't affect you. After a while it will be the whole 'residents lives were destroyed and thats really bad but it's not me' and 'Gee the government really ought to do sumthing about it' kind of apathy will arise and our complacent little lives will once again be complete. Then it will become;
Gee what about that oil spill - yeah terrible, tsk tsk.
And ask yourself when the last time you felt strongly about something you actually wrote a letter to your pollycritter saying how you wanted the matter treated or regulations increased or laws or criminal charges pressed instead of just feeling angry and shouting at the TV before you call this flamebait.
We asked for this shit because we just love it when the PR crew goes down on us and makes us feel like it's all right, it'll be alright, see, just an image change away and some funky 'we've learned our lesson now' ads from BP, maybe a name change or a buy out and we will all throw our money at them again. Heaps cheaper than doing it right.
Here's a fun thing to think about, it's not just global warming but every biological support system that sustains life on this planet is in decline.
There I said it, and we will all go on singing and dancing with full bellys until the next disaster.
Re:so NIMBYs (Score:3, Insightful)
double the cost of electricity. do it nearly all renewably. accept that doubled electricity costs are the costs of SAFE, SUSTAINABLE, CLEAN power. and call that the baselines requirement of civilized power generation. If it's too expensive to do with safe, clean, sustainable power, it's too expensive to do, period.
oil is for plastic. and less and less of that as time goes on.
it can absolutely be done.
nuclear power in a best case scenario still leaves us guarding a pile of dangerous material (not just toxic, but dangerous to allow to fall into the wrong hands) for hundreds of years. that's a burden you'd place on countries and generations not even conceived of yet, through circumstances no one on earth can plausibly predict including very real possibilities of major societal collapses (thus leaving such material basically unguarded). That ignores any risks or danger in procuring, processing, reprocessing, and in the actual power generation itself. Never mind non-meltdown problems such as the radioactive material leak occurring in vermont right now and moving towards ground water supplies for communities in 3 states.
that is a risk. it's one that doesn't trouble my life or your life, probably... we can probably assume that we could keep it safe for 50 years. maybe. but hundreds? that's unlikely.
Forget risk. we don't need it, as long as we get over the need for energy to be dirt cheap. double the cost of electricity, covert everything to it or to fuels produced with it, and let's get on with a clean, safe future. soon.
Re:Heh, (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't remember ever asking BP to drill for oil."
Actually you did, unless you live a life without using oil, plastics, non-organic food, paper, a good many medicines, and no metals or lumber. Oil is everywhere.
"I don't remember ever asking anyone to drill in an unsafe manner."
Now that statement is entirely reasonable.
Re:All natural (Score:3, Insightful)
Deep sea expertise is one thing, but this isn't just a deep sea issue. This is also an issue with an extremely high-pressure oil well gushing out through a fair bit of broken machinery. Ignoring the dynamics of that would be a dangerous mistake, and unfortunately, when it comes to practical experience dealing with ruptured oil wells, the experts are likely mostly in private industry.
Re:Heh, (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are going to state it like that, you might as well say that if you've ever left your house or had a visitor, or connected with any external utilities, or done any business with anyone anywhere for any reason, then you are the problem.
You can't walk down to the grocery store and walk back and ignore that everything in that store burned diesel or gasoline to get there. You can't receive visitors who drove or even took the bus to your house without taking responsibility for the oil. You can't have electricity without taking responsibility for the oil used to generate electricity (go ahead, tell me how it's mostly coal, then tell me how much oil/diesel is used, and note that it's non-zero, so even if you pay for "renewable" energy, there's a chance your actual power was provided by oil). And even if you take issue with that, what percentage of those who drive to work to provide your energy used oil products to get to work? So, if you are going to try to guilt someone, you might as well go all the way and make it quite clear how absurd your guilt is.
Everyone shares responsibility to some extent BP is the main culprit no doubt...
You might as well say it that way, rather than the whole "if you drive, take responsibility" when it's really "if you live, take responsibility."
Which, again is completely absurd, no matter how hard I tried, short of buying a piece of land and erecting a fence to keep everyone in from going out, and everyone out from going in (oh no, flashbacks of The Village), I'd be contributing to oil usage. Unless that's what you are advocating, then it's a biased and useless assertion to say "if you drive, then
You need to grow a pair and take responsibility for your actions before you can expect BP execs to.
Well then, lets just revoke all laws about safety and such for oil, after all, if we aren't allowed to hold the people that caused the problem responsible, then we might as well go all the way. While on that, we should abolish all laws, because how can you convict a murderer if you broke the law by speeding?
Oh wait, the rest of us that are sane realize that you can hold someone responsible even if you are a customer of theirs.