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Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Below the Gulf's Surface
An anonymous reader sends in a NY Times article about the spread of oil from the BP gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Quoting:
"Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. ... The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes. Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. ... [Scientists on the Pelican mission] suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly. ... Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes."
We should call BP big polluter now!
New York Times: "Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf" * gushing 80,000 barrels a day * The well is 5,000-feet down. * The shallowest oil plume is 2,300 feet down. * The deepest bubble of oil is 4,200 feet down. * Will bubble up for decades. * At most 5% of the spilled oil will ever be recovered. "one big oil bubble is 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick."
I've been reading a little about oil dispersants. I understand that basically they help to break down oil so that microorganisms can do their thing and use the oil as food. Maybe an oversimplification, but that is what I got out of it.
So now if you use oil dispersants, do you end up exacerbating the oxygen problem? If the microorganisms go nuts on the food supply, does this kill off even more of the ecosystem?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Sarah Palin...
is out parasailin'.
As reported by the WSJ
telling all of us how much we should appreciate our fine new immigration law.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
The insistence of the political mainstream to stick to slogans is so backwards... This includes both the conservatives and liberals.
BP. British Petroleum.
Hold my beer and watch this!
At the moment of now she's 5000 ft underwater at the center of the well, she will be used as the nuclear option.
The government has "top men" working on this. Who? "Top men".
Besides, it's silly to think there could be oil elsewhere than the surface.
Yes, there's no value (to us) in trying to determine exactly how badly we've screwed things... It's not like a better estimate would be useful in calculating a level of effort for the cleanup, possibly quantity of cleanup materials, or potential ocean chemistry changes.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
}"substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given"
Was there ever any doubt that it would be worse...?
No sig today...
Yes, that evil, American oil company: British Petroleum.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
If humans never (or, say before humans did so) drilled for oil, wouldn't the oil still be there, and occasionally be released by events such as earthquakes?
It's basically a natural organic substance, not a product of man (like artifical pesticides, nuclear waste, etc), so wouldn't the earth's ecosystem have dealt with it before/if we wern't around?
Or is there something done to prepare the oil before it's extracted (like injection of chemicals) that makes it unnatural?
I'm not saying this isn't a terrible disaster, but, disasters just happen sometimes.
I'm in FL, and I can assure you the teabags are still saying it here. I guess Faux news isn't covering it or hasn't told them what to say.
The free market will fix this. People will stop putting BP gas in their car and BP will go out of business. Leading others to clean up the spill, garner goodwill with the public, and have consumers put that company's gas in their car.
Right?
Right?....
or they could end up poisoning the oceans globally, you know that ocean's circulates and what is in the gulf of mexico will soon be in the atlantic and mediterranean, and eventually find its way in to the indian and pacific oceans,
even if they stopped it today i wont trust seafood anymore ever.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Blow baby, blow?
You can't handle the truth.
All we need to do is drink the milkshake.
The bacteria need small bits of oil and lot of oxygen to eat the oil why not in addition to breaking up the oil pump oxygen from the surface down to the depleted areas. Sure it will end up with mass amounts of CO2 in the water but then also make that area ripe for an algae/plankton bloom and then things would start to get better. That is help the other parts of the natural cycle. Maybe add in some bicarb to help keep the ph where it should be. Sure throwing chemicals into the water is bad, be we have already done that, now we need to add others to counteract the effects and neutralize things back to the state they were in before the spill.
Give the microbes the oxygen they need to feed on the oil, and then give the other algae/plankton what they need to eat the microbes and make more oxygen. Speed up what would naturally happen over the next 30+ years without human intervention. The planet is fairly good at correcting things on it own just not in time scale we can see, or if part of the correction lower the habitability for humans we may not see it, but the earth will eventually recover to its normal ebb and flow.
It is like helping an old lady across the street. Sure she could do it on her own but with some boy/girl scouts there they can help her across faster and safer.
So, you're saying that because a company got greedy, wasn't regulated well enough, and fucked something up, that means we should stop doing it? Wow, that's rational. So I guess if I fall down the stairs today everyone should stop using stairs? Yeah, we as a society should be hellbent on renewable energy and kicking the oil addiction, but in the meantime, I'd prefer to drill locally instead of bleeding out money in the form of foreign oil imports. Really, are you making the argument that because things can go wrong they shouldn't be done under proper regulation, or are you being irrational to accuse Palin of being stupid? So yeah, I'll say it: drill baby drill...along with the less popular 'regulate baby regulate' and 'research baby research'.
Previously known as Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which is a bit less catchy these days.
Actually BP no longer stands for British Petroleum officially, but meh.. No large company is anchored too heavily to its country of origin.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
All this really means is that some of the fishing industry in the gulf will change to oil gathering.
And isn't it a good thing that the refineries are so close by?
They might call it Gulf Oil. Oh wait that name is already taken.
What is most amazing about this is that an oil rig caused it with a drilled hole.
Hasn't nature ever done such a thing as leak oil in the ocean?
I always wondered what was oil holding up that when we take it out of the ground...
In comparison to other man made disasters, like deforestation, where does it really rank?
Dead Sea II
Seriously. You can mod this a troll if you feel better. But I would much rather there be a small area of radiation from a tactical nuclear explosion, than the entire gulf coast destroyed the biggest oil spill in the history of mankind and one that will just keep on going and keep getting worse.
I know folks have bad feeling about nukes, but for fucks sake..it worked 4 out of 5 times for the Russians. It's time to do it before it's too late!
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/62992,news-comment,news-politics,deepwater-horizon-gulf-mexico-oil-spill-should-bp-nuke-the-leak-like-the-russians
Ironically their tag line is "Beyond Petroleum".
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
These idiots used DRILL BABY DRILL as a campaign slogan. Now they want to forget that ever happened.
That's right, Beyond Petroleum - Killing the Living and the Harvesting the Dying before they even become oil! Ingenious!
You can't handle the truth.
If you can't handle the leak, you shouldn't be drilling that deep underwater. Period.
Bear in mind that several years ago, BP merged with another company and kept the BP name. That company? Amoco. AMerican Oil COmpany.
So maybe this is a stupid question, but why can't they just design a big plug and stick it in the pipe? Would that cause the pipe to rupture or something? Or try to reroute the oil by attaching a big to the pipe that's spewing oil?
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
If we let the Gulf fill with oil, The petro industry can't tell us there is a shortage again.
Since we can't seem to really do anything about it, lets all make up nasty oil industry jokes and shame the whole industry into ... the Gulf of Mexico.
As much money that goes through the oil industry, you'd think they would have installed a shut off valve. Of wait, they don't want to shut it off so why would they have installed a valve? (don't no body say they did, for it they really did, it'd been shut off by now) Instead they try to funnel it...
Maybe if they actually focused on shutting it, they might just figure it out.
And since they don't really want to shut of off, it must not be so serious.
Who owns the oil in the water? Does BP hold all claims to it?
you americans are fucked, hahah. thats what you get with your evil oil companies.
Actually, it's what Americans get when they let a British oil company deploy a Swiss drilling platform with German companies responsible for safety. Massive US lobbying efforts by BP also contributed to the lack of regulation, all in the name of international fairness and free trade.
And historically, Europe's record on oil spills is far worse than that of the US. Of course, being obedient little nationalists, Europeans love to find fault with the US while their own governments are screwing them.
Hopefully, as a result of this disaster, the US will severely limit the ability of foreign companies to lobby in the US, and hopefully it will kick out European oil companies with their poor safety records once and for all.
There isn't enough oxygen in the water to metabolize all that oil in time to prevent a disaster.
No sig today...
This situation is only going to get worse. And worse. And worse. I can see it coming. Eventually, when thousands upon thousands of people who depend on the Gulf for their livelihood are put out of business, who is going to pay? Exxon didn't pay (in full), so I expect BP won't be paying up either. Oh they'll pay some, and put up a good effort to clean up the mess, but the damage will become so widespread that most of their efforts will be in vain. And all those people who depend on the Gulf will be out of work and will essentially lose everything.
Who Pays?
BP should pay. Even if it means the company goes out of business entirely. Sell off all their assets if necessary to pay the people who no longer can support themselves. Stockholders, you lose. You are in fact the owners of the company, and your company is responsible for the damages (federal 75 million liability cap be damned). Why should a Gulf worker lose everything and you keep on truckin with your BP stock?
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
I find curious how apathetic people are these days.
It's like a toon character:
"Hey! Look! The Earth is being destroyed!" "Yo, man! That sucks!"
Earth may be doomed, but is there hope for us?
As opposed to "OH NO THE WORLD IS ENDING!?!?! Kill your children before they have to suffer the same fate we will!". The whole situation fucked up, nothing you say or do can change that. Welcome to the real world, deal with it and QQ.
There's been quite a lot of speculation that the numbers estimated by BP are low. BPs response has essentially been "that won't help us stop the leak, so stuff it". Well, that's not really true, since to know how effective something is you need to be able to measure before and after. There's also the obvious problem of the aftermath, and understanding how large it will be.
Frankly, I think BP releasing how much oil is leaking represents a HUGE conflict of interest for them. I believe they know the flow rate is substantially higher than the original estimates. But why would they want to release that information? Attempting to keep the numbers low limits their potential damage payout. It also would be a huge PR nightmare if the numbers are even bigger. In the long term there's going to be a TON of lawsuits. Many of them are going to be dependent on the scientific data to support them. The amount of oil leaked is obviously going to be a BIG factor. The larger the amount of oil leaked, the larger the damage right? So BP is essentially trying to play dumb, and hope that the original estimates will stick, thus limiting their liability.
To get a handle on this it's very clear we need real numbers on how much oil is leaking. The position that stopping the leak is the only thing that matters is ridiculous. The problem doesn't go away after they stop the leak. Solving the large term damage left by this is obviously partially dependent on knowing how much oil has leaked into the Gulf. Being potentially off by an order of magnitude is in no way acceptable.
AccountKiller
My vote is for Beautiful Plumage.
Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
Mr. Praline: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
Old news. This story was making the science rounds early last week. It is a devastating spill, and it is depleting subsurface oxygen, but the scare tactics are not helping anyone clean it up.
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by tenure.
It should become quite a lot clearer fairly soon, now that they are trapping some of the leaks.
The maximum amount they are trapping can be easily calculated by watching the boats they use to transport it away, and the change in the Gulf over the next couple of weeks can be used to estimate if they are staunching a lot of it or not.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And the sea is far more overfished now. A cold when you're healthy is shrugged off. A cold when you're already starving and hypothermic will kill you.
In 1979 Newfoundland was still a massive fish nursery. The ocean flow past there comes from the Gulf.
And the fish there are already in far far greater trouble: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/cbio/cancod.html
No. You don't get to get away with this one. The left may spew slogans, but the right produces mantras.
If you don't believe the Left produces mantras, then you might be too close to the problem. All extremes in the political spectrum use the same basic strategies. These slogans / mantras / memes are one of them.
If you ever want a sanity check for what one side's "mantra" is, find out what their critics parrot back at them when things aren't going well. When you have a saying that one side uses in earnest and another side repeats in scorn, you probably have yourself a political slogan.
Blow baby, blow?
I thought it was Liberal party not Libertine party?
There is no "extreme left" in the United States. Liberal in the US is the equivalent of centrist to slightly conservative in Europe.
You can't assume that the column of oil is made of 100% oil. The oil might be dispersing into the water immediately upon exiting the pipe, making the column a mixture of oil and water.
Think of faucet in your kitchen or bath. Many have aerators on the nozzle that serve to mix the water with air. These aerators increase the size of the column of water, making it appear that a larger volume of water is coming out of the faucet.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, goes by the name of "learned helplessness".
With the exception of the occasional mulishly idealistic college student, most people don't take long to stop caring much about things over which they have absolutely no power.
It's a publicly traded multinational corporation. The world's fourth largest, in fact. I think it's pretty much transcended nationality. The CEO is Swedish, FWIW.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
can wind power make pantyhose?
There is no "extreme left" in the US just like there is no "Left", "Right", "Extreme Right", or "Central".
All of these terms are made up to make us think that we still have a choice. To make us think that this isn't for all intents and purposes a one party system.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
There's always something you can do 'about it', first of which is making sure everybody knows 'about it'. That's how mobilization starts.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Exactly, we will never be able to make any large amounts of progress in Us politics until (among many other things) people can stop just blaming and demonizing the "other side". Conservatives, democrats, and everything in between and outside of that is currently involved has been tainted and is not to be trusted. Imagine for a second that all of a sudden no politician could be called a democrat or republican, or left or right, and people had to actually judge people on their stances on issues. Ah but that takes too much effort. Keeping up with what politicians really think, from local to state to federal levels takes time and effort on the citizens part, and this is why most people are "idiots". They don't want to know the truth, they just want to be able to say, "ah, that guy looks and talks like me, is from the same state, I agree with him no matter what!" I fear it is a underlying problem that will not be solved in my lifetime, if anyone has any ideas let me know.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
So what is the left's version of Drill Baby Drill?
Please forward us all the news reports from the famine. And the mass poisonings. I'll be holding my breath waiting for them.
I am an EXTREME Liberal when it comes to Freedoms and Choices.
I am an EXTREME Conservative when it comes to Free Markets.
I think there are many people in US who share this way of thinking.
You can't handle the truth.
You are almost right except this: No amount of Government intervention (regulation) can do anything about all possible ways someone may fuck up in all different companies in all different sectors of economy.
Have the Government do what it should do on behalf of the People: Sue the Shit out of BP, Halliburton and Transocean, get the damages, cleanup and x100 or x1000 liability as a way to scare the fuck of all the other companies who are pumping oil, gas, digging coal etc etc etc
Do this: destroy the fucking BP if necessary and also, screw the corporate protection, arrest the management, arrest whoever wasn't doing the job right and also put every single prick from MMS (that's the Government agency literally is fucking with the corporate whores, literally) to jail for 10 consecutive life sentences. Or shoot them Chinese style.
You have to do it. Have to distribute the punishment to the guilty and be consistent about it. That's the way to avoid the future 'calamities' like this one.
You can't handle the truth.
Knows about what? The oil spill? I'm pretty sure everyone knows that there is a really bad oil spill in the gulf by now.
Mobilization has begun. There are already crews attempting to stop the leak, and crews attempting clean up.
Perhaps you should go donate blood to the red cross. It'll make you feel better.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
There is no "extreme left" in the United States. Liberal in the US is the equivalent of centrist to slightly conservative in Europe.
And I bet Europe's even-more-left-than-the-USofA has some nice slogans and mantras of their own.
So what is the left's version of Drill Baby Drill?
I'm not sure the left has a version of "Drill Baby Drill" per se. I've never heard of a alternative energy / evironmentalism / anti-offshore (or whatever would be the counter-point to "drill baby drill") drilling phrase being thrown around.
If you want a leftist meme... I'm sure if you hang out around FOX News or their ilk, it won't take long to figure it out.
So, you're saying that because a company got greedy, wasn't regulated well enough, and fucked something up, that means we should stop doing it? Wow, that's rational. So I guess if I fall down the stairs today everyone should stop using stairs?
If you falling down stairs involved not just hurting yourself but instead killed a dozen people, threatened the livelihoods of thousands of people and the environment of hundreds of miles of coastline then that is different. Your assertion implies that other oil companies apart from BP are less greedy, somehow exist under better regulation and make no mistakes and therefore should be allowed to drill seems a stretch.
The main discrepancy with those chanting 'drill-baby-drill' is that they do so in complete ignorance of the risks and dangers involved while at the same time bemoaning the scope and size of governmental regulation.
I'm certainly not an expert at any of the respective areas of science this involves, but does anyone know if we could re-oxygenate the water even on a temporary basis? Jokes about bubbling skeleton pirate treasure chests aside, would it be possible to run tubing down to the floor of the affected areas and pump air in? I realize we're talking about a large area and this wouldn't be a small task but would that at least temporarily solve this particular part of the problem?
I find curious how apathetic people are these days.
It's like a toon character:
"Hey! Look! The Earth is being destroyed!"
"Yo, man! That sucks!"
Earth may be doomed, but is there hope for us?
We are basically bombarded with completely irrelevant bad news 24/7.
Turn on the TV or radio, fire up a web browser, pick up a newspaper... You'll read about some random person who got kidnapped on the other side of the planet. Or a nasty plane crash somewhere. Or a tsunami.
Yeah, it's sad that somebody is suffering somewhere... But it's really got absolutely no bearing on my life.
And then we're bombarded with big stuff that is relevant, but we can't do anything about it.
Things like the volcano in Iceland, or the oil spill in the gulf. Yeah, it affects me... But there's really nothing I can personally do about it. Maybe throw some money at it in the form of a donation or two... Which might help... But there's absolutely no immediate feedback that I'm doing something to alleviate the problem.
And then we're bombarded with random scary stuff that doesn't even necessarily have a basis in reality.
Somebody, somewhere said that they wanted to kill the President - so now we're at threat level plaid, be afraid! There's some random bowl game coming up and terrorists would love to blow it up, be afraid! Mashed potatoes cause Alzheimers, be afraid! Obamacare is going to destroy Social Security, be afraid!
Is it any wonder that we've learned to tune all that out and just keep chugging along in our day-to-day lives?
It's either that, or stop functioning entirely.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
"Bush lied. People died."
Why not make up a huge long extra strong heat resistant open ended plastic bag to bring this oil up to the surface. Something like a huge long chimney. The oil eating bateria could be added at the bottom to ride the oil up and start working on it early. Then once you get all that oil up to the top suck it up into oil tankers and take it away to reprocess. I'm sure that they 'BP' can get some good oil out of it to help offset the cost of this cleanup.
Just a thought...Perhaps a very uneducated one...But I'm just thinking out loud here...We already use chimneys to move the out gasing further up above us. So why not use the same principle to move the oil closer to us for collection instead of leaving it sitting underwater with the potential disaster it could cause.
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
I might be a little late to the party, but I haven't seen anyone yet do the calculation I was expecting to see... just how much volume is that 10mi x 3mi x 300 ft plume?
Well once you convert everything to meters, and observe 264 gallons per cubic meter, you get a staggering 1.8 trillion gallons of ocean water in that plume. If even 1% of that is oil, then we are totally fucked. Hopefully it's less than 0.01%.
However, if you calculate from the surface slick itself, you have 3650 sq miles of slick (as of Friday). And based on a chart of oil-thickness-to-color, you could say that the oil slick is 50 micrometers thick. This equates to 125 million gallons of pure oil just on the surface. Over the course of 25 days, that's about 5 million gallons per day just making it to the surface! Is anyone else getting concerned?
Yeah, and it was enough of a merger that for the first few years it was actually named BP Amoco. Then the Amoco got dropped a bit later.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You can't stop this oil spill. You could stop contributing to a society which encourages profit over anything - executives get in trouble for failing to meet fiduciary responsibility if they don't do everything in their power to increase value for shareholders. Then maybe next time a well is drilled it won't be hurriedly backfilled around the pipe with cement by Halliburton. Or you could just keep ignoring it and keep giving your tacit approval.
mediocrity rules, man
Damnit, I knew we should have bombed Swederland when we had the chance!
which is totally what she said
donate blood to the red cross. It'll make you feel better.
That's a lie! It made me almost pass out! Damn those vampires!
which is totally what she said
Don't worry, it's already happening. You can breathe again. Oceans' alarm: Jellyfish swarms
mediocrity rules, man
Oil developed in the US does not necessarily stay in the US, it goes into the world oil market just like oil from every where else and is sold to who so ever has the paper for it. Plus potential production form off-shore in US waters drilling is a pitifully small fraction of US consumption at current rates. I'm not saying that these fields should never be developed, but using what is a now scarce resource they way we have in the past is completely irresponsible. When they are developed it should be done in a rationally regulated manner where maximizing profits to the detriment of proper risk abeyance is at ther very least a hanging offence.
Oh and Palin may not be completely stupid, but she is an ignorant, credulous, self serving con whose only real talent is playing the punters for all they're worth. It this implys that you Mr. AC are a punter well, OK then.
Soylent Oil is PEOPLE!!!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"Previously known as Anglo-Iranian Oil Company," of Operation Ajax fame. The wikipedia has a decent article on Operation Ajax - maybe some people would like to look at it. The United States literally overthrew a legitimate government, for the sake of BP's profits. Not something that the UK or the US government readily admits to.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Swederland? Alright, +1 funny.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Like the parent said. True, the most that most of us can do about the leak now is stay out of the way of the professionals trying to stop it.
But we can make BP wish they'd never been so reckless, and give pause to any company still cutting corners on the safety. Stop driving gas guzzlers. Don't fill up at BP gas stations. Use other means of transport or propulsion. Fire off angry letters to Congress. It may not sound like much, but enough people doing these things will hit them where they live.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Lemme guess. You're still in school - or at least you're very recently graduated. I'm not apathetic, myself, but at age 54, I'm getting there. No matter how bad the news, how dire the warnings, or how hopeless the situation, EVERYONE AROUND ME is an apathetic jackass. Phht. There is no "mobilization". We'll just continue to swirl around and around, until we finally get sucked down the toilet, and find ourselves in the septic tank.
Even then - MOST PEOPLE JUST WON'T FUCKING CARE!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes." Well, let's get the little buggers some oxygen! They're on our side, they should be getting all the help they need. Let's get an aircraft carrier in there, and use the power from the reactors to pump as much oxygen down to them as is necessary.
No large company is anchored too heavily to its country of origin.
Tell me about it. A few weeks ago, I was posting on another forum about banking, and was recounting how a bank account that I've had for years started out as a regional S&L, and through about 4 or 5 mergers finally ended up being with Bank of America. While researching Bank of America's history in order to get my facts straight, I saw this gem on the Bank of America wiki page.
Bank of America's history dates to 1904, when Amadeo Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco....
Somehow I don't see them playing that bit of their history up what with their Stars and Stripes logo and all.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
You can't stop this oil spill.
Which puts into the big stuff that is relevant, but we can't do anything about it category.
You could stop contributing to a society which encourages profit over anything - executives get in trouble for failing to meet fiduciary responsibility if they don't do everything in their power to increase value for shareholders. Then maybe next time a well is drilled it won't be hurriedly backfilled around the pipe with cement by Halliburton.
Sounds nice on paper... But I'm skeptical that it would actually be effective in reality.
We aren't talking about problems with a single company, or a single state, or even a single nation here... Pretty much the entire freaking planet operates this way. Even if BP is absolutely crucified for this, it won't do much to all the other folks around the world who operate this way. It'll take a hell of a lot more than a few people boycotting BP to fix this problem.
Or you could just keep ignoring it and keep giving your tacit approval.
I'm not personally ignoring anything.
I'm fairly active in my community. I vote, and try to make informed decisions. I write letters. I purchase as responsibly as possible.
That whole is it any wonder that we've learned to tune all that out and just keep chugging along in our day-to-day lives was aimed at the AC who found modern apathy curious. And it was merely an explanation as to why so many people in the world are, indeed, apathetic.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
BP's corporate headquarters are still firmly rooted in the UK, and all major corporate decisions come out of corporate home base. Trust me, I work for them.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
That's good, and you seem like you're on the right track. It's not enough though, there are many opportunities for you to close the gap between what you know and the ignorance of the general population... if you can handle being called a crazy person for a while.
mediocrity rules, man
While that is ordinarily not a reason to trust you, I guess I'll trust you on this. ;)
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I'm not prepared to accept the consequences of a completely out of control well.. like a lost wellhead. We shouldn't be drilling down there until we can do it in an intrinisically safe manner.. that means, technology has to work to keep the well open, not technology has to work to close the well (like the current BOP systems) As bad as this is, it could have been even worse.
But those are two facts.... simply strung together.
Is it a mantra to repeat two facts? hmmm...
So I guess if I fall down the stairs today everyone should stop using stairs?
You falling down the stairs doesn't make your neighbors fall down the stairs.
If it did, then your neighbors would politely ask for you to stop using them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
No people were harmed in that story. How is it even remotely related to the topic?
I personally have reduced my use of gasoline by almost 4 times from that of the lifestyle my parents lead by making choices in my own life. I use about 1/8 the electricity of my parents. It's really not hard, if you give a fuck about anyone other than yourself.
I'm planning to spend a year on the ocean, living on a small yacht "off the grid", a life based exclusively on wind and solar power in a few years. What have you done to improve the life of your progeny? (and I'm talking about 10 generations from now, which rules out spewing spittle while pointing at the size of your 401K).
Do you realize the level of the absolute asshattery (or perhaps ignorance) that you have demonstrated with the "YOU GUYS ARE STUPID POOPYHEADS" tone of this comment?
Lay off the Limbaugh crack, it'll make you smarter and generate more salient debates, rather than regurgitated internet flamebait.
So you're saying that because one nuclear bomb didn't kill all life on the planet we should keep using them? If you can compare massive oil spills to falling down stairs, then I think I'm even more justified in comparing them to nuclear war. Nuke baby nuke! "I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
There are things for which the consequences of something going wrong are so dire that we shouldn't even try them.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Now, was that protesters saying that at demonstrations, or was is the Democratic party platform, chanted at their convention?
I agree with all you said, totally. Getting our own oil by drilling in the gulf means buying less from rogue nations (mostly). Why is it the oil is in the hands of bad people? But essentially, the point is moot; we use 25% of the worlds oil, and possess only about 3% of the global reserves. I am sure anyone would agree that is not a sustainable model.
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The dispersant Corexit is itself toxic, which means BP is adding more poison to hide the first.
The one great advantage of Corexit, however, is that it makes the oil sink below view, so BP is literally hoping, like a naughty toddler, that out of sight means out of mind. A few weeks from now, when dead fish begin piling up on the shore and people ask "What's up with all the stinking fish?" you can depend on Pat Robertson to blame the homosexuals, Sarah Palin to blame the liberals and Fox news to report on the new terrorist attack on the Gulf.
And we'll believe it.
But, Dear God, I hope not. As much as I hate to say it, I think the previous vicious AC poster is right -- killing the Gulf of Mexico might be the only thing that gets our attention and forces us to make better choices.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
How about a mile (or so) long 30'-50' diameter rugged/oil proof fabric tube that goes down to the bottom over the leak and goes all the way to the surface. It could flare out at the top to as big as need be and have 10' high walls. All the oil would stay in the tube, with the surface the only place to go, from there it could easily be siphoned into ships. It really shouldn't be that hard to make such a "sock". I would think it would definitely be easier than all the difficult solutions they have tried so far.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
What gets me the most with all of this is that people STILL calling it an "oil spill", WTF?
to code or not to code, that is the question.
Anyone else notice that BP's attempts to fix their mess all involve recovering the oil, and they've not tried anything that involves sealing off the well? Are they trying to prevent environmental disaster or are they trying to maximize profits?
You still use electricity? You, sir, are worse than Hitler.
Dark Reflection
No. Massive, ecosystem-wrecking oil spills are not even in the same ballpark as your dumbass falling down a flight of stairs. Comparing your booboo to one of the worst natural disasters in recent history, in which 11 people were killed and no one even knows how many billions it will cost us, is just plain inane.
If you fall down the stairs then perhaps only you should stop using stairs. The rest of us can manage. But if you fuck up huge swaths of precious natural resources then you lose your right to exploit said resources.
There is no safe way to drill that deeply. The risks outweigh the rewards. No amount of regulation is going to make it safe. And instead of pouring finite research dollars into deep-drilling technology to try to make it safe, we're better off funneling that money into renewable energy.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Yeah - as someone who has been through 4 mergers, it's the "tow-mah-tow" to acquisition's "tow-may-tow". Probably there are differences in accounting and filings to regulatory agencies, but within each company, what ever name was kept was the winner.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Glen Beck approves of your Hitler reference. :-)
... it goes into the world oil market just like oil from every where else and is sold to who so ever has the paper for it...
I seriously question your understanding of economics.
You see, if the highest demand for a product is local (which is the US), the greatest profit can be had by selling locally. Texas Oil is not sold anywhere outside the US except in the form of plastics and other goods manufactured from oil. Period. The US is the #1 world consumer of oil by a vast margin, and is only capable of producing about 1/4 of its needs. Far and away the most profitable place to sell oil produced in the US is in the US. There is no economic situation that can change that fact unless the US suddenly stops buying oil.
Period.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
The left's version is "Drill Baby Drill"...
Both sides use their own catch phrases/memes to get back at each other... It's incredibly childish.
"No Liberty without Representation!"
"Live Free or Die!"
"Remember the Alamo!"
Slogans is how the gestalt of democracy works. You hear the slogan, compare its implied argument towards your understanding of the facts, and either cheer or boo. This is not new, and I suspect if the ancient greeks and romans had better record-keeping (and movable type), you'd be able to find similar slogans as well.
Perhaps you should go donate blood to the red cross. It'll make you feel better.
The Red Cross is doing just fine..
Net Assets $2,559,637,123
We have determined that this charity has a privacy policy which requires you to tell the charity to remove your name and contact information from mailing lists it sells, trades or shares.
They sell my blood for $200 a pint and then sell my name and address as a blood donor.
executives get in trouble for failing to meet fiduciary responsibility if they don't do everything in their power to increase value for shareholders.
I hear this a lot in rants about capitalism, but do you have any examples of this actually happening? I'm familiar with fiduciary duty. I just want to see some example(s) of this occurring in a public company. thanks.
Nobody is that stupid. Sure they'll be happy to fuck up your shit, but they'll make sure theirs is nice and pretty,
We begin today's lesson with a discussion of the horrific history of the Rapa Nui and Easter Island. We'll draw a line from that ancient environmental disaster to the current situation in Los Angeles where the ditance between "your fucked-up shit" and "my pretty shit" is currently the width of one street in most places.
We all breathe the same air, we drink the same water. Ultimately, it all "our shit." Today's homework is Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" for a discussion about how well separating the Rich from the Poor works.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Speak for yourself. I live in Orange County, CA. It's about as pedestrian / public transit unfriendly as you can get. Still, I do not own a car and I get around just fine (I walk about 50 miles a week, but that's doable). Before that I lived in Moscow, Idaho. I did not own a car there either, and there is absolutely no public transit. However, since it's a small town I was able to walk everywhere I needed to go. The problem's not that you can't do it, it's that you don't want to make the lifestyle choices you'd need to in order to do it.
Your first example shows what government regulations do to the competition. Phone companies are provided government backing and monopoly on laying cable across public and private lands without paying taxes or royalties. Health Insurance industry has become the monstrosity that it is due to government policy on taxes, it used to be a normal practice to buy health insurance with a large deductible and to pay for most minor things out of pocket. efore Nixon it was possible to buy health insurance with 500 dollar deductible for a year for 25 dollars for a family. As for companies like Google and Apple - nobody forces you to provide them with your private information, that's your personal problem.
Sex with a 12 years old? It is absolutely not a problem. Many countries have the age of consent from 12. I do not see your point.
AFAIC you can have any weapon you like. I can too. That's all there is to it.
Halliburton can do what they do, however I am not an anarchist, the Government has the right to start Class Action Lawsuits on behalf of the public against anybody who is destroying common public resources. Ocean is a common public resource, it does not belong to Halliburton. I am NOT for socializing harm and privatizing the profits. The cost of any operation must include the cost of conducting it in a way that does not do harm to public resources and private citizens.
You can't handle the truth.
I just noticed I missed the last paragraph of your diatribe there.
In a Free Economy John Rockefeller would not be able to conglomerate that way without plenty of Government assistance, so he colluded with government officials specifically to set up the Federal Reserve to have access to Free Money and he colluded with the Government Officials to set laws and regulations that would make him a Monopolist in more ways than one. He used the Government to destroy competition and to get access to cheap huge wads of cash.
So go ahead, tell me how Government will protect your interests. All huge monopolies of the world use Governments to protect themselves from competition and use Governments to get Free Money.
You can't handle the truth.
Do this: destroy the fucking BP if necessary and also, screw the corporate protection, arrest the management, arrest whoever wasn't doing the job right and also put every single prick from MMS (that's the Government agency literally is fucking with the corporate whores, literally) to jail for 10 consecutive life sentences. Or shoot them Chinese style.
And then no oil company will work without having full insurance cover, and insurance companies will charge a gargantuan fortune to run that kind of risk, and the cost of fuel rises to compensate, and the price of your dinner goes up 4x or 5x every year. Congratulations, you've just destroyed society.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
You are calling names.
What I did was to compare US and European mainstream news reporting about the oil spill around end of april.
I was shocked by the reporting in US mainstream media and the extreme spin. It looks like one month later the US public happens to find out about what is really going on.
"BP is a European based company, by the way, fucking up our environment, you asshole."
The oil rig was run by Transoceans, the cementing done by Haliburton. And BP? Maybe they own the oil field or buy the oil, no idea. I don't care where a multinational company has its seat.
The first cover-up was that the explosion occured 20 april but we got news reporting only 21 april. In the case of a terror incident 20 april is a very significant date to muslim haters.
http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2010/04/19/daily25.html
I was speaking about the US media spin.
Yeah, oil is "organic", ha ha ha
Yes well the Roman slogan was "panem et circenses"
If you introduce a viable, usable, public transport system (not asking for much, just regular, frequent (every 20 minutes OK?), buses, running from, say, 6am to 11pm, with bus-stops within half an mile of every populated part of the cities) here in and around Stuart, Florida, I'll use it. If you can make those buses run all night, and ensure adequate links to other cities, so much the better.
Alas, the Right has been in charge of transportation policy for the last few decades, what buses there are are run on a charity basis and are neither frequent nor likely to go where you need them to, planning policies make it uneconomic for private industry to run proper bus services, and as for other alternatives like cycling, the car centric planning makes cycling extremely dangerous in this area. Walking five miles to work every day is equally unrealistic.
Oh, and before you come up with the usual crap about how I'm just saying it or whatever, evidence shows the opposite. People in cities with real public transportation tend to use it in preference to cars where they can. In Britain I didn't bother having a car, I didn't want one, bicycles, buses and trains took me everywhere I wanted to go, while cars were expensive, stress inducing, and unpleasant.
I *hate* driving. Anyone sane and rational does. There's a reason why property prices within cities with good PT systems tends to be sky high, even now. Alas, transportation policy has never been set by the rational, and within the US public transportation has been deprecated and in large part made barely usable by people with ideological attachments to one of the worst forms of transportation ever invented.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You're fun in a sad way.
"Video bona proboque; deteriora sequor." -- Ovid
No, it's about the same as when a government says: "funding Project X will cost Y."
Because there's no accountability for bullshitting in parliament, most people I know now just assume that the government is full of shit, and that Y costs somewhere between 10x and 100x the actual estimate. For a good example, look at the initial estimates for the Olympics in various areas. The initial estimates are always lowballed, and then costs start pumping up and up and up once things get going.
You have to go back a few decades, but "No more nukes" might fit the bill.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You missed the "In San Francisco" part, along with the rest of the summary. Bank of Italy purchased a smaller bank named Bank of America Los Angeles," in 1929 and took (part of) its name. This is not at all uncommon in corporate mergers (I'll be damned if I know who actually owns AT&T or Westinghouse these days)
The original Bank of Italy name stemmed from the fact that its founder was an Italian immigrant, and many banks at the time refused to offer accounts to immigrants.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Hopefully, as a result of this disaster, the US will severely limit the ability of foreign companies to lobby in the US...
Placing limitations on lobbying kinda defeats the politicians' motivation for "regulation"...
Hey man, we've got an energy crisis looming! They're just doing their part to replenish the oil supply.
It's proof that oil is a renewable resource, and therefore should get all kinds of green tax credits! ;)
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Well, I rode my bike in to work today...
Granted, the motivation is more my quest for ROCK HARD BUNS OF STEEL than it is for saving the world from The Swamp Thing, but either excuse works out great on the hipsters at the coffee shop downtown!
+1 Disagree
everyone knows its got to be at least 800 feet.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
[...]
And historically, Europe's record on oil spills is far worse than that of the US. [...]
I fail to see how the table you linked there is supporting this claim.
You may want to do the following two things:
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Risk mitigation and risk aversion - Just because something is dangerous doesn't mean you don't do it. Thousands of people die daily in car accidents, but we still drive. Well, *you* may not drive, but I accept the risk and take reasonable steps to mitigate that risk. While I'm certain some failings will be identified, you can be damn sure BP did a greater risk assessment before drilling than I did before driving to work this morning. Fact is you really don't get anywhere unless you're willing to accept *some* risk. Sure, BP may have taken on too much risk - but "this might be dangerous, don't do it. Period." is a terrible knee-jerk response.
+1 Disagree
I read elsewhere on the internets that they've done oxygen testing near the plumes (sorry, can't find the link again), and dissolved O2 levels are down by like 30% in the vicinity of the plumes. The theory is exactly what you say - microbes are busy devouring the oil, and using up oxygen in the process. There's a real fear that in addition to all the other bad effects of the oil, it will also increase the already growing "dead zones" - areas in which low oxygen concentration is destroying all animal life - in the Gulf.
There was an article in Salon that addressed this, and several commenters there brought up the point that to achieve the concentrations found harmful to corals would require an enormous amount of dispersant. In fact, they'd have to be pumping as much dispersant into the water at roughly the same rate the well is discharging oil into the water. Which seems pretty unlikely.
Interesting. I didn’t knew that.
But I have something even more interesting: They did the exact same thing in the Ukraine. It’s what you may know as the “orange revolution”.
All the people you saw on TV, with the orange stuff... those were CIA extras and agents.
It came all out, when the agent that became the president (Viktor Yushchenko) was thrown out again, since the election was found to be completely rigged. It’s interesting how the premise was, that Russia would rig the elections, when really, the US did. (Or actually, I think they both did.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Even then - MOST PEOPLE JUST WON'T FUCKING CARE!
AND THAT IS THE EXACT FUCKING PROBLEM!
___
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Mmmmmm. I had actually read about that Orange revolution, it was brought up about the time that Iran's Green thing was going. I read a couple claims that it was staged by the CIA, and I read a couple articles that refuted that. I'm not sure what to believe, but it's something the CIA is capable of!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It hasn't even been called "British Petroleum" for a decade, and even when it was it was largely owned by ayrabs.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
But don't hit the fence at the Eastern border - you'll let all the kangaroos escape!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Too true. You hit the nail on the head. It's simply human nature, and globalisation may have given us the opportunity to hear about disasters on the other side of the planet, but we're just not programmed as human beings to care about things outside of our immediate circle of effect.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
No no, BP stands for Beyond Petroleum. ;)
They are simply getting rid of the excess oil they no longer need
The most dangerous drug