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How Bad Is the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?
Dasher42 writes "Claims are circulating on the Internet that the Coast Guard fears the Deepwater Horizon well has sprung two extra leaks, raising fears that all control over the release of oil at the site will be lost. The oil field, one of the largest ever discovered, could release 50,000 barrels a day into the ocean, with implications for marine life around the globe that are difficult to comprehend. So, considering that losing our oceanic life, with subsequent unraveling of our land-based ecosystems, is a far more possible apocalyptic scenario than a killer asteroid — what do we do about it?" Other readers have sent some interesting pictures of the spill. One set shows the Deepwater Horizon rig as it collapsed into the ocean. Others, from NASA, indicate that the spill's surface area now rivals that of Florida. The US government has indicated that it intends to require BP to foot the bill for the cleanup. And the Governator has just withdrawn support for drilling off the California coast.
We will be footing the bill, not you. With higher gas prices that is.
Then why are you posting anonymously? When Nixon signed all the current environmental laws in the 1970s, it was because pollution was so bad that it could not be denied as a figment of liberal media. And here comes another such event. Welcome to your worst nightmare. And mine.
It really seems like an understatement to call this a 'spill', as though it were a limited quantity from an oil freighter or something. It's an underwater gusher. I knew it was a huge disaster when it was reported as such with the addendum of at least 30 days to fix. At least. How would they even fix something like that? Has anything like this been attempted before?
Loose lips lose spit.
Agreed. And unfortunate how most anti-nuclear arguments use Chernobyl as an example - we can build them so much safer today. Looks like the oil drilling technology hasn't come as far, while still capable of producing devastating effects for years to come.
Anyone know of any research into the long term environmental effects of World War 2 tanker sinkings? They should represent a range of climates and a range of developed to pristine locations. Some with surface oil burning, some not. Surely there is something to be learned from that era of history.
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Why do we have to go through the slashdotted blog.alexanderhiggins.com to see images hosted at NASA? This is the dumbest thing so far this month.
CG Pin-Ups?
There are two ways of looking at what to do -- proximate and ultimate.
In the proximate sense, one thing to do is volunteer time or supplies if you're in an affected area. I'm in Florida -- in my area, I know right now of Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary ( http://www.seabirdsanctuary.com/uploads/oil.pdf ) and Audubon Florida ( http://audubonoffloridanews.org/ ), which are each asking for volunteers, money, and/or supplies. Other organizations may be looking for help -- help if you can, spread the word even if you can't.
In the ultimate sense, it's hard not to become reactionary to things like this. Clearly there's a need for some serious prevention, and however that comes about, it must. There are boycotts, letter writing campaigns, and the like, and while they may seem awfully pedestrian, the first step in each is something that's been needed for an exquisitely long time -- awareness. People don't tend to realize that the oceans are just downstream from everyone -- for example, just how many people do you think recognize the oil spill that dribbles into the Gulf every year from runoff into the Mississippi watershed? It's once people start to realize what's happening, what's important, and where changes need to happen that movement toward change occurs. Oil being the trigger word that it is these days, it's hard to say whether or not ocean health is foremost in people's minds. Building awareness -- even inland! -- is about getting it there.
I don't know what the key is. Maybe it's kids asking whether the animals they love seeing at the aquarium are going to be lost because of the oil spill. Maybe it's fishermen who lose their livelihoods because their fisheries are either contaminated or outright destroyed. Maybe it's people who worked in tourism and sports industries that previously thrived on healthy beaches and coastal waters. Whatever that key is, some catalysis needs to happen soon, and it needs to start with people simply caring enough to understand and do something, wherever they are, however they can. Too much is at stake.
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
It's not really over-reacting, things ARE pretty bad. I'm no marine biologist, but the last time I checked, most creatures have some variable level of tolerance when it comes to acidification and warming. That being said, we've still managed to kill a lot of creatures by affecting those changes. Ecosystems still have trouble recovering after a regular oil tanker spill.
And I am not aware of any creature that was able to survive an oil spill without human aid. Now, normally aiding creatures is in the process of cleaning it up, but we haven't even hit that part yet, its still uncontained.
How many creatures would normally migrate through the gulf but won't be able to this year? This is going to unbalance a lot more than just the gulf.
Do people really think offshore drilling should be stopped because of this?
Transitions should be made to other forms of power, but my Lord, what else is there to substitute for oil for transportation in the short-mid term? Nothing. We need to get more oil. The WSJ reported that the Department of the Interior knew about failings of shear rams in deepwater conditions (the mechanism that should have shut this well down) since 2004 but didn't do anything about it.
Thanks, Uncle Sam. BP holds blame, the US government holds blame, and Transocean holds blame. But we should increase safety mechanism reliability and oversight without going Greenpeace on this.
Note of credibility: I love LA and am from the Gulf Coast. I grasp what this can do to the local economy and my oyster appetite. I can see rigs from 1/4 mile from my old back yard. Without proper safeguards, this shit happens. But it's unavoidable that we drill. Let's manage risk better.
An NPR interview this morning with a BP executive asked two simple questions:
1. Are you responsible for the leak?
2. Will you pay for the results of the leak?
The response was along the lines of "We will cooperate with cleanup and containment efforts, and will pay any legitimate claims."
I think this will be a long (decades?), dirty fight to hold BP accountable.
If BP raises their prices, it opens the door for their competitors to under cut them.
The price of oil will be set by the supply and demand of the other producers if BP raises it's price. The the other producers can't meet demand, the price will rise to BP's costs. If the can, then BP will be losing sales and income to them.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I think the supporters of offshore drilling, at least the intelligent ones, and I am not saying the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd was knew there would be serious accident eventually. Its just a common sense no matter what precautions you take if you engage in a fundamentally dangerous activity often enough eventually the odds will catch up with. Skiers break bones, drivers have accidents, nuclear reactors melt down or leak, coal mines collapse, drillers have spills, these things happen.
We should do our best to learn what went wrong and our best to avoid it in the future but we must accept that this is a consequence of the life style we enjoy the rest of the time. Experience with other major spills shows us the environment will recover eventually. This is a tragedy and its going to impact some of us more than others. I bet though for every Gulf Coast fisherman or tour operator that gets put out of business there was AT LEAST one who was/is making a comfortable living in oil and gas. I think you also have to consider all the good in terms of quality of life cheap petroleum and energy in general has done our nation as whole and will no doubt continue to do. When you look at this in broad objective terms its hard for me to conclude it was not worth it. Maybe when all the consequences are known I will change my mind but for now lets be sensible and keep in mind the old saying "no pain no gain."
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Chernobyl could have been built much more safely than Chernobyl (was built). But it cost less to build it as they did.
This particular oil rig could very likely have been built/operated more safely than it was. But who'll make BP do that?
Similarly, oil pipelines can be very safe, but they have been operated very unsafely, with maintenance neglected until accidents happen. It turns out that it's cheaper that way, lawsuits and all.
It's not a matter of what "we" can do. It's a matter of what government will actively regulate business to do. Business doesn't like regulation, and they often have more influence on lawmaking than "we" do. As long as no one pays much attention, they get their way.
to finally convince people to support alternative energy.
It is sad that the US has swung so far to the right, with such extreme abuses of power that Nixon now comes across as a relatively honest moderate.
An individual tanker isn't all that large, at least in WW2. There is a reason we call modern tankers: super-tankers.
It is like people who think CO2 emissions don't matter because volcanoes do it as well. Indeed they do, but have these people never heard of adding up. This spil comes on top of all the others. On top of the coral reefs already dying, on top of fish stocks already being over fished, on top of the plastic we have been dumping whole sale in to the ocean.
Will this be the straw that killed the camels back? Hard to say, but if fishing is hurt then that means some areas need to pay more for their food then they do now and not everyone can afford that. Plus the replacement food will have to be grown somewhere else.
And down the line, some fish migrate and others are dependent on long food chains. I don't know what grows in place X that is eaten in place Y that has an effect on populations in Z.
This isn't about one tanker sinking with the oil inside. It is about tanker after tanker being emptied in one single spot with no way to end it so far except waiting for one of the biggest oil fields to run out. And that could be REALLY bad because according to the people who want to drill everywhere, oil doesn't run out.
The apocalypse won't come in a flash of thunder, it will the eco-system slowly dying from being over-stressed. Less 2012, more YKK or Testament.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
From what i understand it does happen. All the time.
But theres a huge diffrence between a natural crack or fault covered with sediment and mud, often a pretty thick layer. And a nice large bore hole drilled right down to the oil.
The 'natural' oil leaks take some time to filter up to the surface and many of the 'heavy' parts of the oil are trapped in the seabed and very little makes it to the ocean surface.
And also in a natural leak you don't have an oil company pumping water or other waste down the hole to boost the pressure and bring the oil up.
So no it's not the end of the world. But on our time scale, it could still be a disaster of unprecedented proportions that we will have to deal with through our lifetimes.
Oh come on. Wind has been driving the slick over the booms. It isn't just where it appears on the surface that counts, it's the actual effectiveness of the booms, and that's pretty much determined by weather conditions.
The harsh reality is that there probably was no way to mitigate an event like this. You have at least 5,000 barrels a day barfing out of an uncontrolled well 5000 feet under the water, with intervening currents carrying it all over the place even before it reaches the surface, and then bad weather pushing it even further. The reality is that technologies like booms and dispersant chemicals may be reasonably effective for relatively small spills, but an ongoing high pressure river of oil puking out from the Gulf seafloor is not an event you can control.
The only real solution is going to be to find a way to divert or cap the well itself. Everything else, including washing the seabirds off, is just 6 o'clock news fodder. The fact is that once that platform exploded and burned uncontrolled, any hope of mitigating this disaster in the short term went out the window. I know you want to imagine some set of circumstances after the explosion that wouldn't have lead to a vast slick growing bigger and bigger, but this is simply too big for any containment measures invented thus far. Ultimately the well will have to be capped, as much shoreline as possible will be cleaned off, and the oil will ultimately end up in the sediments like the most of the Exxon Valdez oil did. We're basically going to have to let nature do its thing, and eat the damage to certain industries that is going to incur over the next few years.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You seem to be thinking that the ocean needs to be saturated with oil for it to have an effect. Most of the ocean is already dead, always has been. The whole eco-system depends on a few rich spots to feed it. Why do you think so many sea live hold such epic migrations? Because they like it?
How can a tiny bit of metal possibly kill a human being? Fine, let me stick a needle in your brain, see how long you last. Maybe a long time, maybe not long at all.
Killing the eco-system doesn't have to be whole-sale slaughter. All you have to do is knock over one part of the food-chain. It doens't even have to mean the end of life in the ocean. The wrong algea start to grow out of control, and you have plenty of life, and also death at the same time.
Will this be it? Well we better just bloody hope it isn't because else we are screwed. But the right wingers seem determined to keep trying to screw up until they finally really manage to screw us all.
Gosh, off-shore drilling isn't safe. Irak doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. Banks do need goverment control. Are republicans even capable of saying "we were wrong"?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Obama is no where near the left. The American political spectrum is shifted so far right that our "left" candidates are too far on the right for most first world nations' center-right parties.
BP was one of the oil companies that lobbied against legislation to make this sort of operation safer. To save millions then, they are going to pay billions now. And people on the Gulf Coast of course will be paying with polluted coast lines.
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It seems that, if anything, it's swung away from statism. In the post-WW2 but pre-Reagan era, both parties were in favor of a whole range of statist approaches that now often struggle to get support among even the nominally "left" party. For example, Nixon imposed price controls, created the EPA, and was in favor of a national healthcare program, and was seen as right-wing at the time.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...this one will do that in three days if that crimped riser pipe gives way. And how long are they saying it'll take to fix it? Months?
If it takes 1:1,000,000 oil to water to destroy the ecosystem, it doesn't take that concentration everywhere at once. Once the oil has destroyed an area, it can drift somewhere else to wreak havoc. It will take years (dozens? hundreds?) for any one area to recover, and that time span will only increase the larger the area that gets destroyed. Life can recover fairly readily if neighboring populations can move in quickly, but if those neighboring populations were also killed, who knows what it will take to recover.
That said, of course we still won't see all the oceans get destroyed, but worst-case the ecosystem of the gulf may be decimated for the rest of our lives and then some.
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He's a corporatist. If you think he is left wing, you really have guzzled the Flavor-Aid.
Both Left and Right are corporatist. They are merely two different brands of corporatism that use different approaches to achieve the same goal of statism. Pick the most "conservative" political candidate and pick the most "liberal" political candidate. Then do some research and look at their list of sponsors. See all the names they have in common? Why, it's almost as though the people who bankroll campaigns don't care who wins...
The bickering about Left vs. Right is designed to distract attention away from what is actually happening. I wish I could recall and attribute the eloquent quote about our politics becoming more polar as our political parties become more homogeneous, for it's an accurate one. The distraction is all about divide and conquer. Like "bread and circus" or "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" it's an age-old tactic used by rulers and governments throughout history for the simple reason that it's effective. Here's why it works: the more time we waste blaming "the other party" for society's ills the less time we spend demanding more freedom in the form of minimal government.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It seems that, if anything, it's swung away from statism. In the post-WW2 but pre-Reagan era, both parties were in favor of a whole range of statist approaches that now often struggle to get support among even the nominally "left" party. For example, Nixon imposed price controls, created the EPA, and was in favor of a national healthcare program, and was seen as right-wing at the time.
I define "statist" in terms of the size and power of the federal government. Currently its size as measured by dollars is around 35% of GDP. Compare that to just ten years ago and you'll quickly see my point. Note that the relative size of government measured as a percentage of GDP should be inherently self-adjusting for inflation.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Why we thought that the oil companies could honestly handle this on their own is beyond me.
Didn't you get the memo? Government is the problem, not the solution. The free market will handle everything!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Minimal government is what got us this disaster. The valves to close this leaks as soon as it started exist, the USA just does not require the companies to use them, so they don't.
We should do our best to learn what went wrong and our best to avoid it in the future but we must accept that this is a consequence of the life style we enjoy the rest of the time.
We could also take it as a sign that our way of living needs to change. We need to use less energy and switch to less damaging, more sustainable energy sources. People hate to acknowledge it, but it's the simple truth.
Just writing this sort of accident off as "the cost of doing business" only works in the short term. Eventually, the cheap, accessible oil will be gone, the ecological damage will be irreversible, and then we'll still have to switch over to other energy sources. It's clear that we're heading down a blind alley, so why not turn around ASAP, rather than waiting until all possible damage has been done?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Oh, this oughta be good. Please. Name some "centrists" who have shows on Fox.
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There were 6 safety systems that all had to fail for this to happen
Which is a pretty good indication that there was only one that had to fail to happen: we had to let Conservatives talk us into trusting an oil company to install 6 layers of safety.
That might just make things worse. Whether its melting the top of the drill string shut with a nuke, or some other method of slamming a valve shut, you've got to think about what 10,000 feet of flowing crude represents in terms of inertia. It'll probably just squirt the drill pipe right out of the borehole. Many well control systems include a 'down-hole' shutoff valve in addition to the surface blowout preventer. Its the only way to stop such a flow once it gets going.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah, it's gone up, but most of that has been due to autopilots put in place decades ago (mostly social security and medicare expanding faster than inflation). I don't see much actual support for new policies among politicians.
What do you call the government-sponsored bailouts of various financial companies, or government expanding into the health-care insurance market? Or a few years prior to that, the federalization of airport security into the TSA, or the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, or the Patriot Act? If these are not (relatively) new policies I don't know what would qualify.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
How are are the results "the same"? The US government already spends some 41.5% of the world's military expenditures, and probably has the best traditional (meaning, for nation-versus-nation wars) forces. It also spends a lot of money on social security, medicare, and soon health care, and the results of those programs are people who might survive job loss, illness, or old age. Now, which one you care about more depends on your political views, but it does matter where the government is big.
They're the same because the federal government is looking for growth areas and will exploit them wherever they are found. Any benefit to me as a taxpayer is indicental.
You mention Social Security and health care. If I could, I would opt out of Social Security entirely. I'm in my mid-20s. If I cannot figure out on my own, without assistance, that I will one day grow old and wish to retire, and that the time to start saving up and preparing for that is right now, why should somebody else be forced to pay for my lack of foresight? Morally speaking, I don't know how to justify that one. That is, I cannot tell you why my failure to plan ahead should become someone else's emergency. I certainly cannot tell you a good reason why the Baby Boomers could not have felt the same way as I do, why they prefer to burden their children and grandchildren instead of working to make sure they have a better life then they had. As far as I am concerned, they are the most selfish group to ever exercise suffrage.
It's likewise with health insurance. I pay a monthly premium for my health insurance. I see it this way: I pay an insurance premium so that I am prepared in the event of a medical disaster, or I risk bankruptcy. I chose to pay the insurance premium. Other people will have to weigh the cost-benefit analysis as they see fit. So long as they don't dip into my wallet to make up for their shortcomings, I have no problem with this.
Where the government is so big is precisely where people don't want to use some foresight and plan ahead and take personal responsibility for their situation. There's nothing politicians love more than a crisis to solve. The problem is, a "crisis" that involves adults who could not properly plan for inevitabiltiies is not actually a crisis at all. Those adults deserve to be left to their own devices. If they succeed, uphold them as examples of good planning. If they fail, use them as examples of why one should think of these things ahead of time. Yet that's not good enough for big government, and it's apparently big business to protect people from their own poor decision-making.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The problem is that there are "Progressives" in BOTH parties. It's not about left/right or liberal/conservative or even Republican/Democrat. Nixon, both Bushes, Carter and Obama were/are Progressives.
Personally I believe that the government that governs best governs least.
We are. Shame on us.
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Let not forget which party made this their slogan.
The leaseholder of the well has a legal responsibility to clean up any mess emanating from the well. Legally, it is BPs fuck up. Morally, it is their fuck up because they hired the company and were in a position to specify what safety measures should be taken. An argument like yours would mean that a large company basically never had to take responsibility for anything just by subcontracting stuff out.
The huge mistake you make is in assuming that all forms of calamity can be warded off with proper planning. It's true that there's a heck of a lot that can be avoided with foresight and preparation. But a well-placed hurricane, bullet, love affair, or metastatic tumor can annihilate every one of those plans.
I suspect you're the kind of personality that thrives on feeling like you're in control and have the moral high ground. And that's all very well and good up to a point, but:
"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!"
(Robert Burns)
No matter how carefully you plan, it can all go to shit in an instant. And there's nothing you can do about it. EVER.
So if your worldview depends on cognitive errors like the just-world fallacy, or blaming the victim...well, then you're almost guaranteed to spend your last days in a state of abject terror and despair. Good luck with that.
for anyone looking to download the whole memo it's posted here http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2006/pdf/wm1140.pdf/ i have a feeling the page on heritage.org will be 404ing soon
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
In a few million years when the cockroach archaeologists are poking around, they are going to have a hell of a time figuring out what actually killed us off.
Seriously; no more new business allowed for British Petroleum in the US. They had a an oil spill in Alaska because they ignored maintenance that lead to pipe corrosion; had a massive refinery explosion in Texas with fatalities, and in this case, they glibly assumed this very failure would never occcur (which was rubber-stamped by ineffective Bush-era 'regulators' in the Minerals office). In every case: profits before common sense. You have to be an incredibly craven entity to make ExxonMobil look moral in comparison.
On a slightly more practical level, the planet is mortal and we really can't afford to kill it off.
It is very, very sensible to fear every little thing that is capable of wiping out an entire species or ecosystem, or that is capable of making irreversible changes to our habitat. A single individual can risk a threat to themselves, but we cannot risk existential threats to our species. This oil spill might raise to that level if it kills too much of the gulf.
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