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US Confirms Underwater Oil Plume
oxide7 writes "An underwater three-dimensional map of the oil spill is closer to becoming a reality, now that the US has for the first time confirmed the discovery of a subsurface oil plume resulting from the ruptured BP well. The government agency in charge of ocean science has received the first of several expected reports from university investigators aboard research ships detailing specific locations where oil has been found below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The government, which denied reports of giant underwater oil plumes in mid-May, said researchers at the time had not confirmed the presence of conglomerated oil." The New York Times talked with scientists on a two-week mission in the Gulf and reported them "awed" at the size and density of the underwater plume.
Any solution that does not prevent future blow outs from happening in the first place is far too expensive to justify
Huh? I was under the impression that many jurisdictions have rules stating that relief wells must be drilled in advance. Granted, you'd still have a blow out, and it would probably take a few days to get the necessary equipment and supplies in place to perform the bottom kill, but the leak would be pretty short lived compared to what we are seeing today. Also, Shell is, as I write this, building containment domes over many of their wells that would significantly reduce the problem as well. So it seems to me that there are economical ways to reduce the impact such an event would have. Oh, and that's even ignoring the fact that the spill was caused because BP was breaking the rules that are already in place and cutting corners to save money.
the feds could have provided the 5 million feet of oil boom for the LA coastline back when the Gov requested it on May 2nd.
http://216.87.191.15/News/Louisiana/Government/Louisiana_Gov._Jindal_Parish_Leaders_Express_Frustrations_With_BP__Coast_Guard_Feds__10892.asp
BP = Bhopal for the Gulf.
Uh, no, not even close. This isn't even close to being the worst oil spill in history, let alone the worst disaster in history. If the worst case scenario comes to pass... a spewing well until Christmas... then maybe this will make the top ten spill list. Second, this is oil, a natural substance, which even in its toughest form is a far cry from the chemical pesticides that Union Carbide leaked (and this leak is light sweet crude, not the much heavier grade of oil that was spilled at Valdez. It'll actually start evaporating). Last, Bhopal killed 17,000 people. This spill will kill no one, unless we've suddenly started counting birds and fish as people. The birds and fish will recover. The victims of Bhopal aren't coming back.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
GDP/capita is a pretty stupid way to measure power. Quatar has a GDP/capita of $84,000. Almost double the US. Luxembourg is around 80k. And do remember the US is just the aggregated economies of all the states right.
The part added by kdawson isn't quite right. The article is available on the New York Times website, but was not written by them. It obviously says: "By PAUL QUINLAN AND JOSH VOORHEES of Greenwire", "Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved", "Greenwire is published by Environment & Energy Publishing." The actual New York Times article was written by different people and doesn't say anyone was "awed."
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. (Ambrose Bierce)
How about taking over BP because its assets exceed the damage and selling said assets off to fund national oil independence?
Do you know how big BP is? Its assets are worth 236B$ (according to wikipedia, as of 2009). This is going to be expensive, possibly in the billions of dollars, but I doubt they will have to sell anything, they had net income of 16.5B$ in 2009. As for the rest, I would say that legal action should be taken only after investigation, which is underway, and according to the actual evidence. The liability caps were not issued by the president (any president, by the way) but by the congress, and republicans there are currently blocking the attempt to remove them (claiming they should be increased, but not completely removed).
0.5 PPM is the MAXIMUM concentration found, not the minimum.
The actual report shows average analysis results about 0.2 ppb.
That would mean about 1000 barrels spread out over 1000's of cubic miles.
Here is the link to the original NOAA report.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/PDFs/noaa_weatherbird_analysis.pdf
The press is totally misrepresenting the results of this report.
Deepwater Horizon's estimated to have spilled over 100,000 gallons.
Ixtoc spilled ~70,000+.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It's funny, because I think sacking the head of the MMS, while probably politically necessary, wasn't really a reasonable action.
Birnbaum took office on July 15 2009. She was taking over the most notoriously corrupt and ineffective agency in the Federal Government. The permits for DWH had already been issued, and the relaxation of safeguards that might have prevented the disaster had taken place six years earlier. Any revision of the policy could not have been made in time to prevent the disaster.
So there is no reasonable way that Birnbaum could have been expected to avert this disaster in the 9 months she was in office. It was entirely a political gesture. They'd already decided MMS was so broken it couldn't be fixed, and they were going to split it up and move its functions to other agencies. So Birbaum's "resignation" was purely symbolic.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes but half the downtime. You always double the chance of failure with redundancy. What it's there for is quick response. You're on slashdot so let me make an analogy: What costs you more?
1) A server's HDD dying, losing all data for the past day / week, and a day of downtime while you restore a backup? 2) A server's RAID1 array degrading and a day of slightly reduced performance as it is rebuilt fingers crossed that it won't fail and you won't have to rely on the above mentioned backup?
1. Excepting oil, the two richest countries in terms of natural resources are the United States and Russia. The United States infrastructure is also vast and the US has incredible agricultural assets.
2. The US military is the most powerful, most fighter aircraft, most airlift tonnage at once, most bombers, most aircraft carriers, most guided missile destroyers, most cruisers, most special forces units, most ballistic missile submarines, most attack submarines, largest amphibious warfare group
Because of the unified nature of the US military (one giant military, each branch having its own role), the US military is much more efficient than say the combined national forces of the EU.
As for "no war ever solved anything", thats a load. Couple quick ones - wars decided who would rule the central and western United States, war ended slavery in the United States, war ended the systematic execution of European Jews, war ended the Japanese enslavement of Korea, war unified Germany in the 19th century.
As a measure of the GDP of the United States, the US military isn't that "expensive".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/01/information-is-beautiful-military-spending
Any pension fund so invested in BP that it would be significantly harmed by it dissolving is run by an incompetent manager.
BP's share price already halved in the last month.