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Today's Top News
Oil Spill May Be Five Times Bigger Than Previously Thought
Oil from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon rig is feared to be gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at five times the latest estimate of the US Coastguard, according to satellite imagery studied by industry experts.
The view from space indicates that the oil may be leaking at a rate of 25,000 barrels a day, dwarfing the figure of 5,000 barrels that US officials and the British oil giant BP have used in recent days.
A Northern Gannet bird, which is covered in oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, pokes its head out from under a towel as members of Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research and the International Bird Research Center prepare to hydrate it in Fort Jackson, La., Saturday, May 1, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
That would mean that some nine million gallons may already have escaped
from
the underwater well following the April 20 explosion that killed 11
rig
workers. It suggests the disaster will almost certainly prove greater
than
the Exxon Valdez tanker spill off Alaska in 1989, which released 11
million
gallons and was the worst previous spill at sea.
President Barack Obama will visit the region on Sunday morning, aides have announced. The trip comes amid mounting criticism that the White House has been slow to react to the crisis.
His predecessor, George W Bush, faced similar anger over the federal government's handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But the government has emphasised that responsibility for the clean-up rests with BP, which leased the rig and initially played down the scale of the leak.
As the administration steps up its operations, the Pentagon will spray the slick with chemical dispersants from military C-130 planes, although environmental groups warned that these could also seriously damage the eco-system.
Menwhile Eric Holder, the country's attorney general, is dispatching a team of lawyers to New Orleans to assess whether any laws have been broken. BP, which leased the rig and owned the oil rights, had downplayed the possible danger of any spill - predicting "no significant adverse impact" - when it submitted its exploration plan last year.
The scale of the looming catastrophe was still unclear yesterday as strong winds hampered an emergency operation to mop up the 2,200 sq mile slick being blown towards the coast of five US states.
Even BP has acknowledged that the 5,000-barrels-a-day figure for the leak - already a five-fold increase on the 1,000 barrels that it initially gave - is only a "guesstimate". The Coastguard has also said that that leak rate could turn out to be much greater than 5,000 barrels.
The implications of the higher figures for the fishing waters, wildlife and beaches of the Gulf - and the residents whose livelihoods depend upon them - are potentially devastating.
John Amos, director of SkyTruth, a satellite data monitoring outfit that supplies analysis to environmental groups, told The Sunday Telegraph that the images and information made public by BP indicated that the slick was made up of at least six million gallons of oil.
"That is a conservative estimate and it would mean that oil is leaking at a rate of 20,000 barrels a day," he said. "That's a real eye-opener. And I believe the true figure is significantly higher."
Ian MacDonald, a Florida professor of oceanography who tracks maritime oil seepage, estimated that more than nine million gallons may already have escaped into the sea on the basis of higher industry estimates of the rate of leakage. BP engineers have been desperately and unsuccessfully trying to use unmanned submarines to initiate a failed switch-off device on the well about a mile beneath the surface of the water.
In the absence of such a quick-fix solution, the company is pursuing two other remedies to stop the leak, but both will take weeks or months.
In the medium-term, the company is hoping to cover the leaks with 100-ton steel domes that would capture the escaping oil and funnel it back to a ship at the surface through pipes. The technology has been deployed for leaks at much shallower depths but has never been used for a deep-sea spill.
It has also dispatched a drill ship to the area to begin digging a relief well that would intercept the oil from the existing pipes at about 18,000 feet below the surface. This will allow the company to close off the leaking well, but the process will take at least three months and possibly much longer.
At the same time, investigations have been launched into the two crucial failures - why the rig exploded and then why the automatic switch-off device did not then activate. Oil industry analysts believe the explosion was caused by a "blow-back" when a pressure surge thrust natural gas up to the rig platform. One area under focus is a recently-completed cementing operation by the company Haliburton, which was intended to prevent oil and gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of pipes and the inside of the hole drilled into the ocean floor into which they fitted.
According to a 2007 US government report, cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 well blow-outs in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period. And investigators have also been told that cementing was a likely cause of a major 10-week blow-out in the Timor Sea off Australia last year.
Haliburton has declined to comment while the cause of the accident is being investigated and lawsuits are pending.
The second disastrous failure occurred when the rig's "blowout preventer" - equipment that should have automatically blocked the well when the explosion occurred - failed to work. It has since emerged that the device did not have a remote-control shut-off mechanism - these are commonly required in most offshore oil producing nations, but not the US.
Fifty miles away, on the Louisiana coastline, communities that rely on the sea for their existence are now braced for the worst. Oyster beds could take 20 years to recover and world shrimp supplies will plummet as the Gulf waters are the largest source of the seafood.
There is widespread anger, not just at BP but also the federal government for what is perceived as a hopelessly tardy response. Locals have expressed disbelief that the deployment of booms - special floating barriers - to protect the coast only began nine days after the explosion.
In its initial statements, BP indicated that could handle the leak, but in recent days has appealed for urgent help from the government and other oil industry companies.
Mr Obama dispatched Cabinet ministers and top officials to the disaster zone on Friday. But there was resentment locally that he had not visited the region and he was last night [SAT] scheduled to deliver a humourous speech at the black-tie celebrity-studded White House Correspondents' Dinner in a Washington ballroom.
The announcement yesterday morning that he would make a trip to Louisiana today came as conservative critics called the oil spill "Obama's Katrina".
In New Orleans, Jeff Crouere, host of the "Ringside Politics" radio show, said that Mr Obama's approach to the crisis was being compared - unfavourably - to President Bush's handling of the fall-out from the hurricane.
"Five years on from Katrina, we feel another president has been ignoring us," he told The Sunday Telegraph.
"Another disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is heading for the shorelines of Louisiana. Once again, the federal government has bungled the response. In contrast to President Bush, who waited four days after Katrina to send federal help to New Orleans, President Obama has waited nine days to act after the horrific oil disaster in the Gulf.
"It should have been a top priority for the Obama administration in the minutes after the disaster, not waiting over almost ten full days to take serious action.
We are finally seeing the federal cavalry descending on the impact zone with booms, boats and personnel, but it is way too late. It would have been much easier to accomplish containment goals one week ago."
Another political embarrassment for Mr Obama is that he had only recently announced White House approval for a controversial expansion of offshore oil exploration.
The policy has been enthusiastically pushed by Republicans such as former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin - who litters speeches with the phrase "drill, baby drill" - and has also been backed by a majority of Americans since fuel prices soared.
But environmental groups and many members of the president's Democratic party are fiercely opposed to new drilling off America's coastline. And the White House said last week that no new licences would be granted while the cause of the current disaster is investigated.
Several lawsuits have been filed against BP, Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and other oil industry companies involved in the operation, on behalf of residents and businesses as well as survivors and relatives of those killed in the April 20 explosion.
But such legal matters were far from the minds of the hundreds of mourners who attended Friday's memorial service for Wyatt Kempt in the small rural Louisiana town of Jonesville Mr Kemp, 27, who was married to his teenage sweetheart and had two young daughters, worked on Deepwater Horizon for three years, following his own father into the dangerous world of the offshore oil fields.
"Wyatt liked the work and the money was good," said his grandmother, Carolyn Kemp. "There aren't many options for paying the bills round here." Indeed, Mr Kemp's brother Sandon will return to another rig after coming home to attend the service.
No bodies have been recovered from the waters. But a survivor told Mrs Kemp that there was no chance that her grandson escaped the series of blasts that ripped through the pumphouse where he was last seen.
When the rig exploded, he was just 75 minutes away from the end of his three-week stint at sea. Only the helicopter ride back to land should have awaited him.
- Posted in
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131 Comments so far
Show AllThey should change their name from British Petroleum to British Polluters.
Sickening.
I hope they get sued over and over again.
Boycott their oil.
Yes, boycott BP, which is also ARCO. Boycott Exxon/Mobil for the Alaska foul-up. Boycott Shell for Nigerian fiasco. Are there any good oil companies other than Citgo---Venezuelan gas? Citgo doesn't sell in my area...
In addition to the human lives lost, all those precious sea creatures are lost too.
I think Obama will still "Drill baby drill"...................
30 yrs ago a biologist explained to me in in no uncertain terms what a fossil fuel economy really means for the biosphere:
“It is like feeding an organism with its own excrement”
This may sound disgusting but I believe it is an accurate description to understand how insane our economic system really is, since ecological imperatives have been consistently ignored or subordinated to profit interests and the huge environmental (and social) cost is being “externalized” to society as a whole, including future generations.
Anyone with half a brain must see that bringing children into this insane world is totally irresponsible, because the forces of unbridled capitalism in a “financialized” economy (run by mentally ill, sociopathic people) can no longer be contained and, given its cancerous properties, it will eventually destroy the host system ...
In a wider context, I find it extremely absurd and even ironic that fanatic “pro-life” groups in the US denounce abortion as the ultimate sin while often supporting a right-wing “free enterprise” and “free individual” political agenda that aggravates the degradation of ecosystems on which future generations depend.
It does not matter who is the US president (... perhaps the lesser of two evils ...), since they are all so indoctrinated with the “free market” BS and are unable to see that “Full Spectrum Dominance” is a recipe for global disaster. While the corporate state seeks to gain control over all “strategic resources”, (i.e. energy) they have not even begun to understand that without the invaluable services of living ecosystems (which we must respect and sustain, not try to control as with transgenic organisms) talk about “energy security” is a cruel joke ...
A system that has no self-limiting principle is bound to be self-destructive so a totally economised market society which accepts profit maximization as a (rational) organizing principle is digging its own grave ...
Economic theory recognizes capital and labor as the major factors of production and also concerns itself with material resources but the HUGE FALLACY has been that nature is treated as “income”, not as limited capital and that the intrinsic value of ecosystems has been ignored:
“If it is helpful to consider our natural resource base as capital assets, it is fair to say that the Assessment demonstrates that humanity has been squandering these assets at a quickening pace. In fact, we have treated many of these assets as if they had no value. The people who clear forests for agriculture, build dams for water retention or power, .... may benefit from those changes, but society at large pays significant costs associated with the loss of nature’s economic, cultural, or intrinsic values. No one in the private sector, or the public sector for that matter, would keep his or her job with a record of financial mismanagement and waste that the Assessment documents for our natural assets.”
http://pdf.wri.org/restoring_natures_capital.pdf
Back in the 1980s, when environmentalism began to question the established economic paradigms, Greenpeace sold stickers and T-shirts with the following words of native American wisdom:
“Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught will they realise that we cannot eat money.”
What is there left to say?
I hate to say it, but it seems to me nature will have to get rid of humans in order to ensure survival of the system but what about the enormous radioactive and toxic legacy?
On top of the human misery (exploding child-cancer rates, horrible congenital malformations ) in Iraq people were shocked to see football-sized tomatoes and strange purple carrots, animals are born with two heads and other gross deformities, see also the latest report about the true “cost” of Chernobyl ...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17571
Tocqueville 22, thank you for an insightful and prescient post.
Indeed. 'Wisdom' is the key concept here.
“It is like feeding an organism with its own excrement”
Did you ever watch the movie "Soylent Green?"
Brace yourselves for fuel prices to spike dramatically in the coming weeks ($100 per barrel or higher), either due to manipulation of oil prices as a result of this disaster and/or shortages due to actual disruption of oil and gas drilling activities in the Gulf. Stock up on food, fuel, water, and other goods if you can, because the increase in fuel prices will affect shipments to the store. There may also be long lines at the gas pumps. Remember what happened after Katrina?
If you've never been to the Florida Keys, you may want to go there now before the oil hits the beaches in the next two to three weeks. Same goes for the Atlantic coast of Florida, because there is a real danger that the Gulf loop will pick up the oil in the Gulf and carry it to the Gulfstream. If the kinked pipes that are holding back this gusher fail or disintegrate from continual high pressure sand blasts (as BP itself has said it fears), this could affect not just the Gulf and Florida coasts but the further reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. This could end up being the biggest environmental disaster of our lifetime, in terms of the number of sea life and marine animal deaths, people sickened by exposure to the oil and fumes (with all their carcinogens and toxins), economic losses, and irreversible damage to the ecosystem. It's already devastating.
I wept this morning as I read what is happening. And I'm also very angry. Where the fuck is Sarah "Drill Baby Drill" Palin now? Despite her penchant to run her mouth about everything on her stupid Facebook page, she's noticeably quiet about this disaster. Wonder why.
So, what else is new?
Heckuvajob, folks.
This news story as it develops, and this article, contain so many lies, distortions, and information failures that one hopes for the good old days when "news" organizations could be hoped to be authoritative.
From this article:
"The second disastrous failure occurred when the rig's "blowout preventer" - equipment that should have automatically blocked the well when the explosion occurred - failed to work. It has since emerged that the device did not have a remote-control shut-off mechanism - these are commonly required in most offshore oil producing nations, but not the US."
To the extent that such a "remote-control shut-off mechanism" could be expected to work, the LACK of such a device should be viewed as a direct failure of the PHILOSOPHY of government "deregulation" at least since Reagan, and continuing through "oilman" Bush II.
Truly a case of penny-wise pound foolish that is so massive in scale that it ought to have the deregulators scrambling to hide in their caves. It ought to alter the entire concept of governance in this country, immediately. We have had a "no-accountability" government at least since Katrina.
Another aspect of this disaster goes to the question of the physics of Gulf oil, namely the "natural" pressure that is pushing the oil out of the earth. Did the oil company geologists NOT know that their well would produce the equivalent of trying to prick a water balloon with a syringe? Has anybody published a report on how big the well field is that they have "pricked"?
The environmental and economic devastation coming out of this deregulated "accident" will be as great as if they had nuked the entire Gulf Coast. It could get even worse if, for example, a large hurricane comes along and pushes the oil slick another mile (or so) inland.
---
From the article:
BP "has also dispatched a drill ship to the area to begin digging a relief well that would intercept the oil from the existing pipes at about 18,000 feet below the surface."
Given that the wellhead is reported at 5,000 feet down, where the hell does the 18,000-foot figure come from?
The lack of any evident Plan B for this disaster is simply stunning for what it says about corporate (and government) hubris.
---
From the article:
"Menwhile [sic] Eric Holder, the country's attorney general, is dispatching a team of lawyers to New Orleans to assess whether any laws have been broken."
Showtime! Hasn't AG Holder heard of the internet and PDF documents?
We need to build monuments to stupidity in this country. Literally. So we are constantly reminded of how stupid and destructive we really are. Let's have a contest and then commission a few.
In the case of the Exxon-Valdez, the captain turned out to be drunk, or so they said. Who was drunk, stoned, or otherwise mentally compromised on the "Deepwater Horizon"? Probably at least the persons who named it.
Words fail...
-30-
OleManRiver, indeed, indeed, indeed.....
I think i read that BP is not telling how big that well is. Classified.....
It seems i was mistaken about BP not telling.
See RV response to me in earlier post.
"Given that the wellhead is reported at 5,000 feet down, where the hell does the 18,000-foot figure come from?"
I have a possible answer to your question.
5,000 feet of water depth
13,000 feet of well hole depth.
= 18,000
I'm guessing that this quote is suggesting that the reservoir of oil is probably located 13,000 feet below the surface of the ocean floor. (assuming when they say 'surface' that it means the surface of the water, and not the ocean floor. If they mean the surface of the ocean floor then it is saying that the well hole depth is 18,000 feet deep. I really don't know if this number is accurate or not. I can say this though...
When I visited a natural gas rig in Colorado the hole that they were drilling was just about to reach a depth of 10,000 feet. They were expecting to hit a pocket of natural gas that was located about 10,300ish feet below the surface. I was told that a 10,000 foot depth was not very common in Colorado (most gas pockets were in the 7000 to 8000 foot range).
So, in this case... this article is suggesting that the well hole and the pipes go about 13,000 feet down to where the oil pocket is located. This depth may or may not be true, but it's very possible. When they say 'intercept' that means that they are probably going to try to drill another well that would connect near the end of the current hole at the depth of 13,000 to divert the oil into the new well hole. It is certainly a possible scenario. How long it takes or the success rate of this type of tactic is beyond my level of understanding.
1) Addressing the 18,000 foot question:
Over at Nola, they have user friendly graph showing the plan.
here's the link:
http://media.nola.com/2010_gulf_oil_spill/photo/beneaththeoilslickjpg-26ae69ad5b2d305c_large.jpg
2) Addressing the time line and success rate question:
If the Montara Oil Spill is any example of what BP will be attempting, then it could take weeks. The Montara Oil Spill happened August 21, 2009, and stopped November 03, 2009. PTTEP took 10 weeks to fix their problem.
10 weeks to flood the well with sand, 2 weeks down. So, roughly May and June. Maybe plugged the day before July 4, 2010?
Link discussing the details of the Montara Oil Spill
http://www.
dailyfinance.com/story/oil-disaster-off-australia-raises-concerns-about-deepwater-drill/19219751/
25,000 Barrels = 1,050,000 Gallons PER DAY!!!!!!
The Exxon Valdez dumped 257,000 Barrels, or 11 Million gallons, so this Gulf disaster is set to meet the Valdez disaster in a matter of days, not weeks, with NO END IN SITE.
If this tragedy can't spark some serious demands and protests from all of the rusty old former environmental movement then nothing will.
The coverage on 60 minutes of the pollution of Lake Erie in the 60s largely sparked the environmental movement.
This current unprecedented US environmental disaster should spark at least that much of a movement.
All of us, me included, need to pull ourselves away from our computer screens to get visible and active out in the streets.
Those of you who are already doing so, good for you!
There are so many things to be out in the streets about these days. The issues dwarf in many ways those in the 60s.
No media coverage or not, it is time already, and yesterday.
When Israel attacked Lebanon in the July War (2006), war planes attacked the Jiyeh Power Station. An estimated 30,000 tonne of heavy fuel oil drained into the Mediterranean Sea (1), and there was barely any news coverage of it in the US media, let alone much political uproar over Israel's tactics.
If a barrel of oil weighs roughly 309 lbs, 30k tonne [Metric] at 2204.62 lbs equals around 214,041 barrels of heavy fuel oil dumped.
Or, 8,989,723 gallons. Exxon Valdez was ~11,000,000 gallons.
August 21, 2009, the Montara Oil Spill (2) happened in the Timor Sea (cause is said to be the cementing over by Halliburton [also see current DeepSea Horizon]). With an estimated high of 2,000bbl a day gushing, the oil spill was stopped until November 03, 2009. If the spill was 2,000bbl for 74 days that would be 148,000bbl or 6,216,000 gallons. But finding an actual assessment of how much oil was spilled is hard to come by. So, if we took the oil company PTTEP's low-ball estimate of 400bbls a day, then an estimated 1,554,000 gallons gushed into the ocean without making much headlines in the US.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiyeh_Power_Station_oil_spill
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montara_oil_spill
This morning on NPR, a BP executive was quoted as saying - and this is word for word, I am not making this up - "We are pouring every resource into the cleanup effort." The sick irony of that statement is killing me . . . not to mention killing the flora and fauna of the region. Thank you, Mr. BP Executive Man, but methinks you have poured quite enough resources into the area already.
The liberal press, like Huff Post, should stop protecting Obama. He is simply to young and to inexperienced for the job.
Every president -- perhaps except for LBJ and Nixon and Ike --
are "young and inexperienced" in dealing with organized crime which
is the oil industry.
No difference between the oil industry and organized crime --
and most of our corporate MIC --
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
It doesn't matter how worse the oil spill ultimately gets. As long as capitalism is here to stay, all we can do is helplessly watch the damage unfold.
Off-shore drilling is similar to nuclear power in that the disasters they cause are few and far between. The problem is that when those systems do fail, the results are catastrophic.
A recent article regarding Chernobyl indicated that perhaps a million people died because of it. But we are still told that nuclear power is safe because it didn't happen in this country. We have been listening to corporate propaganda about the safety of off-shore drilling for years. And now we find that when the rare event does come to pass, the entire tier of southern states will suffer, probably for decades.
And don't think this will end off-shore drilling. As soon as possible, the government will restart continued drilling, just like they are restarting the nuclear industry.
As has been inferred or stated directly, we've been brainwashed to believe our standard of living will suffer with too much environmental regulation or by tenets of sustainability. You can guess who feeds us that crap. As if one can't be a good neighbor or steward of the earth and make a living. If you or I went out and poured pollutants into a river or the air every single day, we'd be arrested immediately. But corporations are immune except in the most egregious cases.
Same crock with 'buyer beware'. Fine, but how about 'businessmen have some god damn ethics'. It's as if commerce exists in a parallel universe where we suspend most forms of permissable conduct developed over thousands of years.
readytotransform: "I think I read that BP is not telling how big that well is. Classified."
Actually, BP has stated that the Macondo Block 252 reservoir may hold as much as 100 million barrels. That figure (given at the time of the oil strike announcement) is probably an over-estimate, but it's as reliable as any available. Nobody can be absolutely certain about newly discovered petro resources.
REF (among others):
http://www.drillingahead.com/forum/topics/transocean-deepwater-horizon-1
RV, thanks for the information!
And sorry for the misinformation.
If you're interested www.theoildrum.com has a lot of technical information from people who do this kind of work.
The concrete dome option is a long-shot per one of the main posters there.
When disasters strike we often think of what political and social changes might rectify the problem. It seems though, no matter what system is in place a new hierarchy forms that is just as deviant as the old one.
Perhaps we need to spend more time evaluating how symbols relate to our thought process and our values.
Is it possible to turn off the internal dialogue?
Cha Ching Cha Change is Id empirePie
Change is id a coming?
change is id in?
is id in yet?
Belief
I am
you are
he is
change
the is
hum for change
a mantra to de arrange
shhh ...shhhhhhhh chhhhhhh
turn off the cha ching
cha ching cha ching
For it’s change
sh shhhhh for the slummer
just as....
the party ends in slumber
Turn off that dialogue
the mirror ....
the never ending rewind
is id in yet?
belief
I am
you are
he is
a need..... will that be healing?
a glass ceiling
like one that’s tinkled down
Change could be so becoming
rather than just benumbing
cha cha cha ching
the change
that is becoming
and the Statement of obama reveals the real priority, where he uses two words, one obligatory , the other == the REAL priority:
"A disaster for the ECONOMY and the environment".
the American way for the last 300 years of its existence:
"ECONOMY above environment".
if only people would remember , daily, and as societies handing it down as ABSOLUTE requirement for existence:
"there is NO economy -- without the environment".
we are NOTHING....all our societies, all our political and economic and cultural systems...without the Environment...
absolutely NOTHING. if we continue in this path, especially in following the US model of "advancement and prosperity" based on its capitalism mold of no holds-barred profitmaking...at the expense of everything else, environment and people.....
the earth itself will surely exact its revenge on us all with a future for the generations to come who will know only a world deprived of so much that we today and in recent generations have disrespected so much for the sake of the $$$...and beyond them - even if they manage to find a way to avoid more disasters..will surely blame the generations before them...and we will have deserved it many times over.
ePie 5:36 excellent poem !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Roughly (~) trying to grasp the volume in cubic feet....
1 barrel(bbl [US, petroleum]) = 42 gallons(g [US, Liquid]) or 5.614 cubic feet (^3)
5,000bbl = 210,000g or 28,079.9166 ^3
25,000bbl = 1,050,000g or 140,364.5833 ^3
1 Olympic swimming pool = ~ 660,425g or 88,286 ^3
Tanker trucks vary between 5,500g and 9,000g (1)
or ~ 130.95bbl to 214.28bbl per tanker, or 735.24 ^3 to 1203.125 ^3
Wow, that's breathtaking. Let me take a minute and put it into a narrative:
"If" the spill is 5,000bbl a day, it will take just over 3 days to fill an Olympic swimming pool. If the spill is 25,000bbl a day, then 3 days will fill 4.7696 Olympic swimming pools. To fill an Olympic sized swimming pool via tanker truck, we would need either #73.388 9,000g tanker trucks, or #120 5,500g tanker trucks.
Today is day 12. When looking at the total spill, there are two sources: the rig and the oil well. According to the Deepwater Horizon website, the rig had a capacity of 27,885bbl of fuel oil (2). We do not know how much of this ended up in the explosion and how much ended up in the ocean, and we do not know when the ocean floor gushing exactly began. Nonetheless, hypothetically, if the spill is gushing at 5,000bbl a day for 12 days, we have ~ 4 Olympic pools in the ocean. At 25,000bbls a day for 12 days, we have ~ 14.3 Olympic pools of crude oil in the ocean.
I'm being rough with my calculations, but to fill 14.3 Olympic sized pools with crude oil, we would need anywhere between #1049 to #1716 tanker truckloads.
1 Olympic sized pool is ~ 660,425 gallon [US, liquid] = 2.0267 acre foot [US survey]
1 US football field is ~1.32 acres. Imagine 1 9,000 gallon tanker truck dumped on a football field. Now imagine 73 tanker trucks dumped on 2 acres. Holy cow!
Now imagine 1716 high schools participating in a field study. Each high school team would represent 1, 5,000 gallon tanker truck. Incorporate the local municipality into the project, and donate 1 afternoon and a water truck. Dye the water and water the grass red.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_truck
(2) http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Deepwater-Horizon-56C17.html?LayoutID=17
OK, this should be it, this disaster should be the final straw that forces everyone to start openly discussing that our ENTIRE way of life is obsolete.
All this bulls*** about:
Getting rich at all costs, allowing corporations to dominate and control our lives, all the Imperial garbage, the MIC stranglehold on our country and the war-profiteering, unregulated capitalism, media monopolies and corporate media whores, bankster scumbags ripping us off blind, politicians who are nothing but corporate whores, a worldview based upon "God-as-abusive-father" and which - combined with fundamentalist capitalism - is ecologically blind to the point of existential insanity - the whole freakin thing needs to be thrown in the dumpster of history! Now!
Our way of life in its totality is totally insane - how much more evidence do people need to see this?! We are sssoo cut-off from both the natural world and natural, direct spirituality that we are insane. It is that simple.
Some people are waking up or have already awoken to the fact that we need to radically change our adaptation to existence. Such people are the real progressives.
"Some people are waking up or have already awoken to the fact that we need to radically change our adaptation to existence. Such people are the real progressives."
You're right, things can't continue down this road. Unfortunately, not enough are waking up. We need some kind of critical mass.
(Crossposted)
Anyone familiar with that old yet timely and prophetic '80s song:
"Nemesis" by Shreikback from OIL And GOLDman, 1985.
(Well, it wasn't Goldman, but...there is a strange resemblance - yet moreover, it IS about Empire.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bMM61Y5CEU
"...We feel like Greeks, we feel like Romans
Centaurs and monkeys just cluster round us
We drink elixirs that we refine
from the juices of the dying
We are no monsters, we're moral people
and yet we have the strength to do this
This is the splendour of our achievement
Call in the airstrike with a poison kiss...
How bad it gets, you can't imagine
the burning wax, the breath of reptiles
god is not mocked, he knows our business
Karma could take us at any moment
Cover him up.....I think we're finished
You know it's never been so exotic
but I don't know, my dreams are visions
We could still end up with the great big fishes
Chorus
Priests and cannibals, prehistoric animals
Everybody happy as the dead come home
Big black nemesis, parthenogenesis
No-one move a muscle as the dead come home"
This mix opens with a voice-over of Brando's "Kurtz" (from a reprise of Conrad's Heart of Darkness in Coppola's Apocalypse Now):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiOh84bLrmc
And all of that, somehow, leads us back to:
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, Halliburton, KBR, Deepwater, Blackwater...
It Was Oil, All Along
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
"...At a congressional hearing this week, James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who exactly twenty years ago alerted Congress and the world to the dangers of global warming, compared the chief executives of Big Oil to the tobacco moguls who denied that nicotine is addictive or that there's a link between smoking and cancer. Hansen, who the administration has tried again and again to silence, said these barons of black gold should be tried for committing crimes against humanity and nature in opposing efforts to deal with global warming.
Perhaps those sweetheart deals in Iraq should be added to his proposed indictments. They have been purchased at a very high price. Four thousand American soldiers dead, tens of thousands permanently wounded for life, hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled Iraqis plus five million displaced, and a cost that will mount into trillions of dollars. The political analyst Kevin Phillips says America has become little more than an "energy protection force," doing anything to gain access to expensive fuel without regard to the lives of others or the earth itself. One thinks again of Daniel Plainview in THERE WILL BE BLOOD. His lust for oil came at the price of his son and his soul."
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2008/06/bill_moyers_michael_winship_it.html
Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, anyone?
Afghanistan Oil Pipeline?
Got OIL?
Got it now.
rbc: Thanks for the link.
Nemesis or divine retribution... Parthenogenesis ....ah natures cloning apparently can also occur in Turkeys.. (vaccination for fowl pox increases the likelihood). Does president Obama forgive all the turkeys?
The video has a neat lap dissolve of rotating Crustaceans while the talking heads rotate.
Hopefully today’s talking heads may find spin more difficult to achieve.
LOL!
Bless Hansen, but scientists have been warning us about Global Warming
since 1957 --
And there was a quite desperate press conference held by Nobel scientists
in 1992 . . . met with silence --
Here is some of it and a link --
SCIENTISTS WARNING TO HUMANITY/
GLOBAL WARMING
http://www.ucsusa.org/ucs/about/1992-world-scientists-warning-to-humanity.html
1. Scientist Statement
QUOTE
World Scientists' Warning to Humanity (1992)
Some 1,700 of the world's leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists' Warning to Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of UCS's board of directors.
INTRODUCTION
Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.
THE ENVIRONMENT
More at link --
UNQUOTE
Further, the other day, Thom Hartmann reported new alarm from scientists researching
in the Artic where they experienced a 3 minute rain!!
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Obamageddon has arrived.
Good Grief.
Now could you be more specific, please?
Would you mean Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, Halliburton, KBR, Deepwater, Blackwater...etc. The "Texas-Tea" Party? Those are all in deed, indeed, related.
And the hits just keep on coming:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/7660837/Second-rig-overturns-in-Gulf-of-Mexico.html
Two down, how many to go?
It's definitely a non-stop hit parade. This from salon.com -- 'At almost the exact moment that Reuters broke the news (on Twitter) that a second oil drilling rig had overturned off the coast of Louisiana, Sarah Palin posted her latest Facebook "note." The headline: "Domestic Drilling: Why We Can Still Believe.'
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/30/sarah_palin_drill_spill
Response to:
"Sarah Palin posted her latest Facebook "note." The headline: "Domestic Drilling: Why We Can Still Believe.'
"...When an ostrich buries its head in the sand as danger approaches, it very likely takes the happiest course. It hides the danger, and then calmly says there is no danger; and, if it feels perfectly sure there is none, why should it raise its head to see? A man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions, and if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychological laws -- I do not see what can be said against his doing so. It would be an egotistical impertinence to object that his procedure is irrational, for that only amounts to saying that his method of settling belief is not ours. He does not propose to himself to be rational, and, indeed, will often talk with scorn of man's weak and illusive reason. So let him think as he pleases...
But, above all, let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous. The person who confesses that there is such a thing as truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by this, that if acted on it should, on full consideration, carry us to the point we aim at and not astray, and then, though convinced of this, dares not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed."
- Charles Sanders Peirce from The Fixation of Belief (1877)
http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html
'Thirdness' is not ordinal.
It may be at times, depending on the context in which one uses it.
Yet no one said or implied an ordinal Thirdness here. Did you misapprehend? Unless, of course, you may be referring to thirdness in a linear process, in which case it may be ordinal.
It IS "that" which turns the axle. The "triadic event" we engage in as language animals. Or, "The Delta factor," as Percy (Walter) described it affectionately in honor of both fellow Southerner Helen Keller and the Mississippi Delta.
Anc, "paradoxially, polar opposition is a triadic concept. The function of an axle is to turn, and that rotation is dependent on the polarity the axle makes possible. This dialectical activity is paradigmatic for all nonlinear processes." - AE Berthoff
Good evening, Senor.
No va.
Are you splitting a star there?
Perspective(s). Context(s). Interpretation(s). Mediation.
...For the naïve realist, entertaining such a paradox is out of the question. Mediation remains a barrier against which shins must be barked to prove that it is not accepted. Or, conversely, mediation is simply denied in favor of the pleasant horrors of the abyss. But once we accept the “immediacy” or necessity of mediation, the dichotomy of language and reality dissolves and we discover that this opposition is logically faulty. Mediation – that is to say, the acknowledgment of interpretation as a constituent part of the sign – converts dichotomies to dialectical relationships; it transforms dyadic structures to dynamic processes; it makes interpretation the motive power of symbolization. This is, indeed, what Richards meant in referring to Peirce’s “revolutionary doctrine of the Interpretant.”
- AEB, "Dyadic Misunderstandings: Gaps, Abysses, and the Mysterious Barricades" in The Mysterious Barricades
edit: Anc to And (That looked and sounded like Ankh.)
This second hit isn't really a big deal. The rig wasn't in operation, and was being towed to a salvage yard.
"(Reuters) - An inland shallow-water drilling rig capsized near Morgan City, Louisiana, while being towed to a salvage yard, the Coast Guard said on Friday...
A 210-foot-long barge rig, which worked swampland and shallow water oil and gas prospects, was involved in Friday's incident, the Coast Guard said.
It had a 20,000-gallon diesel tank but carried only about 200 gallons of fuel when it capsized. Spill containment boom was put around it as a precaution, the Coast Guard said."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T55Q20100430
In the name of christ, fuck oil.
Here are a couple of interesting maps and projections for the extent of the oil spill and its intrusion onto the Northern Gulf of Mexico coast. It appears that Louisiana's marshlands east of the Mississippi outlet will suffer the brunt of the oil inundation this coming week with the State of Mississippi probably avoiding the worst...
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1472
Not to bad mouth Reptiles, but USAans morality is creating a subreptilean enviornment.
One might call it Empire, or Neoliberalism, specifically - as not all human beings who comprise the USA share in, agree with, or practice the Neoliberal ethic.
The accusation that the Obama Admin has been slow to respond dilutes the real issue and distracts attention from what should be the central focus here. Given the disastrous fact of an unpluggable hole on the bottom of the sea spewing oil into the gulf I can't say I could have expected a more effective reaction since there isn't a hell of a lot anybody can do at this point except watch egrets and dolphins die. The overriding question is: What was that god damned oil rig doing out there in the first place poking a hole into a lake of oil of undetermined size, particularly with two busted safety valves that obviously had never been inspected? What are the other 599 oil rigs doing out there in the same condition? What is Obama doing proposing that we proliferate the whole Atlantic seaboard with these reckless devices? Have we gone stark staring mad? I don't give a rat's ass if we flood the resorts and casinos of bubbaville with toxic sludge. This should cost us dearly, and goodness knows our disdain for personal hygiene should be on public display. But the wildlife is not to blame for this, and neither (contrary to BP's astonishing assertion) is the weather. Where is Ed Abbey when we need him? How do we monkeywrench an oil platform? There needs to be a war here. This is Mother Nature's 911. There needs to be a war.