Slashdot Mirror
Quantifying, and Dealing With, the Deepwater Spill
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."
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.
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.
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make install -not war
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.
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.
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!
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!
BP has been providing live feeds of all the ROV missions to the wellhead for the last few days. For those who are curious, here's a pretty decent site hosting all the feeds from the ROVs. Pretty fascinating to watch all the work going on around the BOP, occasionally you can follow a few of the ROVs as they wander off to find old pipelines or prepare the Q4000 direct connection. In a tragic way it almost feels like watching the Titanic discovery all over again.
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
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
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.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.