Slashdot Mirror
Hundred-Ton Dome To Collect Oil Spill
eldavojohn writes "After failing to contain the Gulf oil spill any other way, a massive containment dome had the finishing touches put on yesterday. It amounts to a giant concrete-and-steel box made by Wild Well Control that is designed to siphon the crude oil away from the water. They expect an 85 percent collection with this device. It's not a pretty situation as Google Earth illustrates."
That number would be more encouraging if the amount coming out were not so massive. This spill is going to create a lot of suck for years to come.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Actually, it's the UK filling the Gulf with FAIL
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
Consider R'ing TFA. Second link has pics. Dear Lord, people, who in the world ties your shoes in the morning?
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact? If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt. And so, as usual, it is the rest of us who will have to pay. Socialism for the rich, paid for by the poor.
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you? You'd probably demand I stop shitting in your yard. And I would say, "Human civilization can not exist without environmental impact, shit happens, get over your knee jerk reaction and get used to it, hippie."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"condemn an entire industry because of one accident" ... one accident and their complete lack of preparedness for it.
If it was some fly-by-night corp, this would be expected. BP is a bit bigger and more established and should have had measures in place to deal, or attempt to deal, with this sort of scenario. And considering they seem to cook off a rig or two (in the event hurricanes don't do it for them) when ever it looks like oil prices aren't where they want them to be at they should at least be prepared to deal with the cleanup.
Risk mitigation implies you believe there is a legitimate risk, which scares voters, which scares politicians. And, after the fact, it's way easier to say "We had know way of knowing X could happen resulting in Y damages" than "We had a contingency plan in place, so X only resulted in Z damages". No matter how much smaller Z is than Y, people will hate you more for it. Because you knew it could happen, therefore, you LET it happen, you are a villain! But if you were "caught totally unawares", you're the victim. Hell, you're the hero if you even slightly mitigate the damages.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
So they put all their faith in a blowout valve that apparently had an unanticipated failure mode. That's not risk mitigation, that's as assumption that, since you don't recognize the risk, there is no risk.
One layer of protection here was far to thin. In Norway and Brazil they require that wells also have remote control shutoffs. That would have been another layer of protection.
Keeping extra domes around would have been another layer of protection - a relatively low cost "when all else fails" measure. Seems like they didn't do it because they had too much confidence that all else couldn't possibly fail.
They were wrong.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes.
If it's an industry where one mistake translates to environmental and economical damage on the scale we are witnessing at the gulf coast right now, then yes, condemning (and perhaps even abolishing) said industry may be the right thing to do.
There is a big difference between 1-2 million birds dying in one geographic location over a short amount of time versus hundreds of millions spread relatively evenly across the globe. It also doesn't stop at birds. Crabs, clams, crawfish, fish, etc, etc.
Roughly a quarter million people die each day. That doesn't mean that wiping out the population of Buffalo NY every now and again is "ok". It would simply devastate the area (for other humans who live around there, etc.. probably good for the environment tho...).
I know this stuff happens naturally and I get that. Natural disasters have more or less hit the "reset" button on the planet a few times. But going out and causing it (intended or not) is stupid and entirely preventable. Just because an asteroid or another event pretty much wiped out life on the planet in the past doesn't mean that killing/poisoning large quantities of life now, no matter how small in comparison, is a-ok!
I'm would be all for off-shore drilling if:
1. There was a constant inspection regime paid for entirely by the industry. In other words, there is an armed government official with absolute power to stop drilling, and his salary paid entirely by whoever owns the well and the platform.
2. All caps on liability were removed and the owners of the well and platform were forced to pay all costs of a spills, without limit of any kind.
3. Any evidence of ignoring of safety requirements would lead to lengthy prison sentences for all involved, and a ban on the companies involved in the accident of no less than five years from any extraction.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Those who think letting the oil sink is a bad idea are a distinct minority. ...
There are creatures that will be effected by oil on the sea floor like crabs and such, but it's still better than letting it run ashore.
I don't think you understand the full consequences of oil on the sea floor.
Every time a big storm comes through,
(and this is the Gulf of Mexico... hurricane central)
the sea floor gets stirred up and oil gets carried to shore.
The gulf coast is going to have oil contaminations problems for years.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
OK, so now we have this oil well accident that some want to call an ecological disaster of unimaginable proprotions. That this accident illustrates how incredibly stupid it is to drill for oil, and even worse to do so in some ecologically sensitive area.
Yes we have some people making these claims. These people are irrational or have an agenda. The fact of the matter is that all that the actual damage we have documentation of so far (despite all the journalists looking for disaster evidence) are one dead jellyfish and two birds that needed to be cleaned of oil contamination. Otherwise no significant oil contamination in ANY sensitive marshes or wetlands.
The fact is that oil is itself a product of natural biological processes, and nature does have mechanisms for dealing with it over time. The Gulf itself is naturally and continuously contaminated by seepage from oil deposits, to the tune of an estimated 2,000 barrels a day. Every day. Over a history of millions of years. The ecology there has adapted to deal with oil, although not the large quantities from a point source like this incident without some damage.
The fact is that once this spill is contained the ecosystem will recover. It might seem to take forever if you are a fisherman working those waters, but to call it an ecological disaster is just silly.
The only true ecological disasters this planet faces is the accumulated biosphere pressure of human overpopulation and the occasional asteroid strikes.