Disaster looms as oil slick reaches US coast

[capstone]

Nah, your break will be fine, different oceans and all, plus the ocean is very, very big, and a few hundred clicks is fuck all in the scheme of things.

Good point, but....

No, this will be a very localised catastrophe. Apparently though, the material is much lighter than what Exxon spilled back in the day (possibly due to its unrefined nature, not sure), so the eventual dispersal and evaporation will happen faster. The real worry as far as I can tell is the sheer volume, that is the real X factor in this case.

You have to remember there's the Gulf Stream. There's a huge potential much of the uncontrollable volume will reach this current and carry it all the way up the eastern US seaboard, round to Europe, and all the way down to Africa, and back. That's a lot of play for this spill to fuck up the entire Atlantic, and from there, diluted out to the rest. All the water on this planet is connected you know, and this is a shitload of oil that will stay on the surface of the ocean for many years to come, as well fuck up many different continent's coastlines.

Just a fucking tragic goddamn set of affairs.

Thanks oil companies for fucking our world up for a long time, fucking cocksucking motherfucking goddamn shitheaded greedy fuck assholes!

I think I speak for everyone when I say "we really fucking appreciate it!"

 

[bit_pattern]

Right, will look into the Gulf Stream, hadn't put two and two together to connect 'the Gulf" with what is essentially a trans-Atlantic flow of water, but it make sense now I think about it. Still, dilution and all, I'm sure there are no end of toxins and shit flowing through the oceans and entering the food chain through seafood that we have no idea about. It's been a dumping ground for far too long (look into the radioactive waste that used to get dumped of the coast of Cali, they'd literally heave 44 gallon drums overboard from navy vessels, apparently when the drums wouldn't sink they'd take pot shots at them until they did )

 

[Unbreakable]

dilution

I was under the impression oil does not dilute in water

 

[bit_pattern]

Well, not in the sense you thinking, I was more thinking the ratio of oil to water, not any sort of emulsification. Not that I mean to downplay this catastrophe in any sense.

 

[Unbreakable]

understood

but this whole shindig is a fucking tragic mess....
America's economy already is tanking and now all this....
not good what so ever....my heart goes out to all affected by this


So what is the game plan to stop this leak? i still haven't heard them say anything about this at all... other than FIRE...which i dont think will work, but i am no chemist or whatever

 

[bit_pattern]

Anyone remember when BP re-branded themselves as "Beyond Petroleum" a few years back? There is a certain dark irony that would be comical if not so serious

 

[Unbreakable]

The US Coast Guard initially estimated about 200,000 gallons of oil a day were gushing from the well, but conceded on Saturday it was nearly impossible to be sure how much is leaking.

Satellite images analysed by the University of Miami suggest the slick has ballooned to an area the size of Puerto Rico.

Hans Graber, a professor of applied marine physics based at the university, estimates the slick has expanded three-fold in just days to some 3,850 sq miles (9,900 sq km).

"The spill is... expanding much quicker than they estimated," he told AP news agency.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8656627.stm

 

[bit_pattern]

Nice

 

[capstone]

I was under the impression oil does not dilute in water

What he said, it don't, but, there's more water(69%-72% earth's surface) than oil gushing. Therefore, its "dilute" in the way that you dilute pesticides in water before spraying. Still a shitload of gushing ecological poison, though.

Except this is just a travesty of a fuck, I don't know what else to say there.

I can just picture the cliché of the Native American shedding the tear about litter on the side of a highway, only having a straight up catatonic nervous breakdown over this.

Anyone remember when BP re-branded themselves as "Beyond Petroleum" a few years back? There is a certain dark irony that would be comical if not so serious

Just lol. I guess there goes that PR campaign.

So what is the game plan to stop this leak? i still haven't heard them say anything about this at all... other than FIRE...which i dont think will work, but i am no chemist or whatever

Again, they'll have to tow in another rig, most likely, to drill a relief in the pressure, and cap it off from the new rig. But it takes a very long time to tow one of these out to sea, so, basically, we're fucked. And its not like they can dump fire retardants from the air, because that'ld only exacerbate the situation.

Again, Fucked.

 

[Unbreakable]

I have neighbors with homes on the beach in Florida near the gluf... they are doing short sales right now.... they also do not see this ending well for the coastal areas/communities

 

[Unbreakable]

Gulf Oil Spill - New Spill Calculation - Exxon Valdez Surpassed Today

Dr. Ian MacDonald at FSU just produced a new spill-size estimate based on the US Coast Guard aerial overflight map of the oil slick on April 28, 2010. The bottom line: that map implies that on April 28, there was a total of 8.9 million gallons floating on the surface of the Gulf.

That implies a minimum average flow rate of slightly more than 1 million gallons of oil (26,000 barrels) per day from the leaking well on the seafloor. Since we're now in Day 11 of the spill, which began with a blowout and explosion on April 20, we estimate that by the end of the today 12.2 million gallons of oil, at a minimum, have been spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

Source:
http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-new-spill-rate.html

this is some of worst types of doom..

asteroids and volcanoes are beautiful...


this just makes me real sad

 

[aanallein]

As soon as this happened I was thinking about the Ixtoc disaster. When you have an oil rig basically melt down you are fucked. Your options for controlling the flow are simply not that good. Without the blow out preventer doing its job we're talking about weeks or months before the flow stops. I don't understand why they were even bothering to claim 1k gallons per day initially unless they thought the blow out preventer had activated. Knowing it hadn't activated you have uncontrolled flow from the ocean floor and that's going to be an incredible rate of flow for a very very long time. There have been quite a few blow outs and just the Ixtoc alone should have been enough of a lesson to these companies and the government that there needs to be a fail proof way to prevent the oil from flowing if anything happens to the rig.

I also don't understand why there isn't some kind of emergency preparation already all setup and ready to go. They are talking about assembling a giant collector to put over the well head.. umm.. why not have that shit on stand by? I know it's expensive but it would be a lot less expensive than a 50+ million gallon spill would be. Which this thing could turn into if something isn't done quickly.

 

[beamers]

There was a TYT mashup of Palin quotes on oil drilling during the campaign....America really dodged a bullet, but there shouldn't have even been the chance of someone so dumb getting anywhere near the presidency.

 

[Unbreakable]

NOAA Closes Fishing In Oil-Affected Portion Of Gulf Of Mexico
http://www.eurasiareview.com/2010/05/noaa-closes-fishing-in-oil-affected.html

 

[Belisarius]

<<I also don't understand why there isn't some kind of emergency preparation already all setup and ready to go. They are talking about assembling a giant collector to put over the well head.. umm.. why not have that shit on stand by?>>

Actually, the latest wire reports are saying they considered that, but never did it because they couldn't conceive of the usual blowout "fail-safes" ever not working.

There's that old saw about assumptions coming to mind right about now...

 

[Unbreakable]

Must Watch Video about the oil spill
http://disclose.tv/viewVideo.php?video_id=44554

Explains the out come of the oil spill and much more information... Such as they will not be able to stop this in at least 1 month... because that is the fastest they can with the current idea that they have... so that means that oil can/most likely spill for one month at least....that is NUTS... how big you think that will be in one month? entire GULF?..... btw tar balls are coming up shore

 

[Wyld 4 X]

There was a TYT mashup of Palin quotes on oil drilling during the campaign....America really dodged a bullet, but there shouldn't have even been the chance of someone so dumb getting anywhere near the presidency.

Um......but Obama is smart for actually allowing additional oil drilling?

I think it is difficult to make any derogatory comments about someone who is not in the office of the current administration. Bill Maher had a great comment this weekend, (I paraphrase) he said if it had been Bush who approved these new drilling policies and had made comments about the safety of offshore oil drilling, the media and Bush-haters would be out of their mind with calling him stupid. But Obama? Not a peep of negativity. People need to wake up and realize Obama isnt as smart or as good as they want him to be.

When he was a candidate for president, Barack Obama firmly opposed offshore oil drilling, especially in Florida. “When I’m president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium here in Florida and around the country that prevents oil companies from drilling off Florida’s coasts,” he said during a 2008 campaign stop in Jacksonville.
...
During the summer of 2008, Obama charged that McCain’s advocacy of offshore drilling was no more than an empty political maneuver, “a strategy designed to get politicians through an election.”

He even repeated LIES that Katrina and Rita in 2005 caused no oil spills to try and validate his policy of offshore drilling.

 

[Wyld 4 X]

Yup. And your point is? (I mean other than scoring cheap political points on the back of the biggest environmental disaster in America's history? )

So, score all the cheap political points you want, the joke is on you, it ain't my economy that is going to be suffering from this disaster.

Score political points with who? You? That is ridiculous. My economy wont be suffering either, unless I move to the Gulf area in the near future.

Anyway, other than the US government caving into lobbying and allowing lax safety standards, this has little to do with America being the big, bad wolf, BP (British Petroleum, but otherwise a faceless multinational corporation) is the bad guy in this story. I don't know why people like you get so defensive at any suggestion that someone is criticisng your government, I'd be more concerned about the state of the Gulf myself. And from what I've been hearing, there may be no way of capping the million gallons of oil pumping into the ocean until the well runs dry, and nobody actually knows just when that might be.

Correct, it is a private industry issue. And they, BP and their associated vendors, will be paying heavily for the damage they have brought to the Gulf region but will never be able to pay for the environmental catastrophe. I'm more critical that you do not criticize the government (i.e. Obama opening up drilling and lying about no spills during Katrina & Rita) versus employing irrelevant rhetoric characterizing people who dont have any power.

 

[Unbreakable]

Here's a link to a great article by an oil rig engineer: It sounds like this rig was trying to drill very deep into the largest oil reservoir in the world. This was new technology that had never been done before. They hit a vein so powerful and high pressure it blew out the wellhead and flipped over the whole huge oil platform. That now remains 5,000 feet under the water, blocking us from getting to the wellhead. It could take months or even years to just get the oil rig removed, while an estimated 50,000 barrels of oil a day is shooting like a high pressure firehose out of a five foot wide hole (actually a couple more now). Just one quart of motor oil can make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to all wildlife. According to this engineer there's no way we can ever stop this and it will eventually kill off the entirety of the world's oceans.


Source:
http://pesn.com/2010/05/02/9501643_Mother_of_all_gushers_could_kill_Earths_oceans/

Hope the beach's won't look like this....

 

[beamers]

Um......but Obama is smart for actually allowing additional oil drilling?

No he is weak for trying to appease republicans in his ever futile quest for bipartisanship. It was solely added to get one or two republicans on the energy bill. Obama is incredibly weak and has bowed to lobbyists left right and centre. He cannot be called dumb though. He'd smoke Palin and McCain on any aptitude, civics or IQ test, that's for sure.

Also the difference is that Palin unequivocally claimed that drilling more and more was completely safe, in quote after quote and even mocked Biden for bringing up safety issues as needing discussion. That's the problem is the certainty in her stupidity that was so dangerous.