So... how about that oil spill? [Archive]

Wavelength

05-02-2010, 11:29 PM

To add insult to inury, this offshore drilling was entirely unnecessary. We could have been electrifying America's transport almost 20 years ago when the technology became viable, yet here we are, chanting "Drill Baby Drill!" because oil fuels economic growth and too few people want too much wealth.

There are a couple hundred million Americans that want offshore drilling, by my estimation (even most of the more liberal people I know like the idea of it). But I agree with you. It's not "economic growth" so much as "GDP inflation" that it provides.

But even more egregiously, yes, a more electric infrastructure could have been in place years ago (sans airplanes; we'd still need oil for those). Cars certainly have certain advantages, but taking trains and subways through Japan (which were a far, far cry from the ones in the States) made me realize that if I had to switch to that kind of system, I wouldn't miss our car-based infratructure very often.

My sincerest hope is that once our economy "recovers", our government offers 100% subsidies to anyone willing to install a solar panel on their roof (or in a separate installation on their property). You pay it back over time based on the cost of the energy that you're saving, and once you've paid back the cost of it, free energy is yours forever. Same kind of system could be used for electric cars, if only the rare earth elements that the batteries require weren't so limited.

The Toecutter

05-02-2010, 11:45 PM

There are a couple hundred million Americans that want offshore drilling, by my estimation (even most of the more liberal people I know like the idea of it).

True, but those same Americans also think it will make a noticable impact on our oil supply, when it won't. The people who run the oil companies know this, but push such a platform anyway because there is potential money to be made.

Hopefully action is taken to liquidate BP of everything necessary to clean this mess up; the American taxpayer shouldn't have to.

Cars certainly have certain advantages, but taking trains and subways through Japan (which were a far, far cry from the ones in the States) made me realize that if I had to switch to that kind of system, I wouldn't miss our car-based infratructure very often.

Interestingly enough, every time such a system was proposed, even on a small scale(such as around Florida in the early 1990s), the airline industry and automobile industry were first in line to lobby against it, and each time, they got what they wanted.

It would be a very good system.

Same kind of system could be used for electric cars, if only the rare earth elements that the batteries require weren't so limited.

While rare Earth elements are finite, if we used just 1/3 of the readily recoverable nickel that the USGS claims is present, there would be enough for more than 200 million 30 kWh NiMH EV battery packs. The amount of battery packs that could be provided with lithium or lead is orders of magnitude more. Then there is also advanced lead acid using graphite foam technology. The trick is to use a variety of chemistries for diferent applications. NiMH would be perfect for midsized sedans and small SUVs, lithium ion for exotics, luxury cars, and high performance sports cars, and lead acid for the cheap daily drivers with some range sacrifice(say, 150 miles range in a lightweight aerodynamic chassis instead of the 250 miles range NiMH would provide). In the future, the cost to build lithium ion batteries may drop to a point where it is the cheapest chemistry to use on a per mile basis, but currently that still belongs to the large format NiMH batteries of 15 years ago.

Worrying about the supply of lithium is like worrying about the supply of crude oil in 1890. Assuming all the lithium ends up in landfills, we will have about a century before it runs out if there is a large increase in electric vehicles on the road to displace the majority of gasoline ones. Best of all, unlike crude oil, it doesn't get consumed propelling the vehicle, and can be recycled into new batteries when the material is spent, granting the possibility that once a certain amount is in use, no new material will need extraction.

Leish

05-03-2010, 12:21 AM

I pee oil.

The Toecutter

05-05-2010, 03:10 AM

The news outlets have been saying that the leak is 25,000 barrels per day, and not the much lower figures initially quoted. The Gulf of Mexico will be a dead zone. This is truly unfortunate.

BP has also been forcing the fishermen it is hiring for the cleanup to sign an agreement to where they cannot sue BP and to where the terms and conditions must be kept secret. Public outcry in the states bordering the Gulf has caused BP to halt circulation of these forms tempoarily. BP are scum. I hope all of the assets they have accumulated that are necessary to pay for this are liquidated.

Some engineers within the industry have stated on blogs that the 3 leaks may not be able to be capped, and some have proposed detonating a small nuclear device in the event that the current course of action fails as a last resort. The detonation of a nuclear device to plug this is not without significant risks. These same engineers have also stated that claims from industry stating that this will be able to be mitigated within 1 month are wildly optimistic, and that 3 months, is much more likely, and there is a significant possibility that this will not be able to be capped at all.

1 month at 5,000 barrels a day will turn the Gulf into a dead zone. We've had 25,000 barrels a day so far, with the potential for this to increase to 100,000 barrels per day should more failures occur in the interim.

If it is capped 3 months after the start of the leak, at 25,000 barrels per day, this will also damage the Atlantic beaches all the way past the Carolinas.

Had the secret energy task force meetings involving Dick Cheney and the oil companies not involved de-regulating offshore drilling, and had the regulation specifying the most up-to-date wellhead technology not been removed, this would have never occured. But companies like BP didn't want to spend an extra $500,000 on a more advanced well-head. Further, BP is not intent on paying more than the $75 million that they are legally liable for(from legislation passed after the Exxon-Valdez disaster).

Obama's support for offshore drilling has not helped things either. That's what happens when the American people are given a set of a few corporate shills to vote for within a very narrow spectrum of ideologies, ranging from economically moderate right and socially conservative(Democrats) to economically extreme right and fundamentalist conservative(Republicans). With the recent Supreme Court ruling, corporations have no limit on how much they can provide a candidate, either.

Don't be surprised if New Orleans eventually riots; their livelihood, at least what little remained of it after Katrina(seafood), is now completely and permanently destroyed.

The world is looking more closer to a John Brunner novel with each passing day, and the worst part about it is that it was all preventable.

Valkysas

05-05-2010, 03:20 AM

BP has also been forcing the fishermen it is hiring for the cleanup to sign an agreement to where they cannot sue BP and to where the terms and conditions must be kept secret. Public outcry in the states bordering the Gulf has caused BP to halt circulation of these forms tempoarily. BP are scum. I hope all of the assets they have accumulated that are necessary to pay for this are liquidated.

I heard that these agreements were declared to be void by the government.

BP's legally responsible for the entire cost of the cleanup effort, with no cap to the limit of the costs. So I assume we can expect oil prices to climb to absurd heights so we end up "indirectly" paying for the cleanup effort, which basically has a cost of infinite dollars.

hooray.

The Toecutter

05-05-2010, 03:32 AM

In order to prevent that, the government should step in and start taking any profits BP wil make. Voila, the price hikes would then be dramatically reduced when consumers no longer have to pay for profit margin...

BP also has some very limited(next to non-existent) competition; if that competition is kept from colluding with BP, the price hikes can also be somewhat mitigated.

I don't see the Obama administration trying such a thing, sadly. We could have had a McCain administration though, which would have been far worse... *shudder*

All the more reason to get off of oil. I'm glad I have a source of waste fryer oil where I live(even if it can't be used unless trips are longer than ~10 miles).

Alex

05-05-2010, 04:57 AM

It's not enough to call this an oil spill.

An oil spill is like, "Whoops."

This is a deep sea Oil Geyser.

It's all rather sad, and I want everything to be better.

The Toecutter

05-05-2010, 06:08 AM

You'll be much more sad if you research the impacts this will have on the phytoplankton... :(

John Mora

05-05-2010, 12:37 PM

Unfortunately, human beings primarily learn through trial and error, and there are some errors you just don't come back from.

goldgecko4

05-05-2010, 04:47 PM

I'm a firm believer in the idea that sustainable energy is the only way we'll be able to inhabit this planet in the long term. However, oil is king now, and even if we started backing away from it now, most of the population would not go "green" for decades, if not centuries. So right now, it is a necessary evil. That being said, this was a foolish well to drill in the first place. Any engineer will tell you that in a project this size, you need to know what the worst case scenario is, and how you would be able to prevent it or repair it. BP drilled this well not considering the consequences, and not know how to clean up after something like this could occur. The fact that we can drill a mile down and not know how to clean up after it when something goes wrong boggles my mind.

New Orleans, blame BP when your city smells like a gas station parking lot.

The Toecutter

05-06-2010, 03:33 AM

Unfortunately, human beings primarily learn through trial and error, and there are some errors you just don't come back from.

In this particular case, we had already learned from trial and error, but the individuals seeking to make money from this didn't heed the lessons learned. This is simply the largest of such offshore "spills", but definately not the first. There is a very valid reason that proposed offshore drilling projects had been opposed by environmentalists for decades. Their nightmares are now coming true.

A lesson can be learned, but it is not going to stop moneyed interests from ignoring its findings, in spite of what humanity as a whole might desire or need.

The size of this oil leak is larger than West Virginia, and growing. The oil is now just south of Pensacola, Florida, and if this isn't capped ASAP, not only will you get to say goodbye to the Gulf and the Mississipi Delta, but also the Florida Keys, the everglades, and other biodiverse regions. The amount of oil leaked so far will already be devastating to them, but if this cannot be capped, these places will be dead with no prospects for recovery. This leak, being the size it is now, is putting over 400 species at risk of extinction. :(

SirTMagus

05-06-2010, 04:45 AM

3XXCGWyH2wY

jacquel

05-06-2010, 05:24 AM

Speaking as a gulf coast Floridian... NO ONE HERE SEEMS AS TERRIFIED AS THEY SHOULD BE.

The Toecutter

05-06-2010, 06:17 AM

Cutter De Blanc

05-06-2010, 06:41 AM

I didn't know anything about it till now.

That's lame, but kinda cool in an "Evil Empire With a Dead Sea" kinda deal

:america

Funk

05-06-2010, 05:20 PM

Electric cars can't wash up on shores and kill wildlife!

Dusk Raven

05-06-2010, 09:45 PM

Wait until the black balls of oily tar start washing up on their pristine beaches rendering them unsafe to swim in(possibly for the the rest of our lifetime, if the well isn't capped soon enough), and all of the flora and fauna in the everglades starts dying... Floridians just might panic, and rightfully so.

As an ex-Floridan (fairly close to the gulf-side beaches, no less) and environmentalist, I'm already panicking. The entire time this has been happening has been a stressful time for me.

If my local newspaper is to believed, BP claims to have plugged one of three leaks spewing oil. If true, then at best those two domes they're building will be able to contain the other two leaks and stop any more oil from leaking. Of course, then we'll still have an absurd amount of oil to clean up.

At least the government and BP seem to be making a genuine effort to fight the damage. BP likely has no choice; from what I've read there's already a noticeable backlash against offshore drilling forming, and I don't think a good portion of the Gulf Coast states are going to forget this anytime soon. If the leak continues for another three months, then I don't think there's much chance anyone (or the aforementioned Gulf Coast states, at least) are going to trust BP or any offshore drilling companies with anything.

Of course, there should be a nice and nasty price for BP to pay anyway. Otherwise... Ugh.

Big Rick Cook

05-06-2010, 10:42 PM

Of course, there should be a nice and nasty price for BP to pay anyway. Otherwise... I dunno what I'll do.

That's an incredibly passive aggressive statement that I feel sure someone would take as a terrorist threat.

Dusk Raven

05-06-2010, 10:43 PM

That's an incredibly passive aggressive statement that I feel sure someone would take as a terrorist threat.

Removed.

Big Rick Cook

05-06-2010, 10:47 PM

Wow, LOOK AT THE POWER I WIELD.

But yeah, I was mostly joking about that.

This is a pretty serious situation, though, about the oil spill. It's gotten almost no play in the local Oklahoma news and no one's been talking about it. I had to go find national news pieces to get any idea of the gravity of the situation, and it's all being downplayed severely anyway in most public forums. Really need to get this word out there more, get people educated on the subject and talking about it so there's more reluctance on the government and corporation's part to brush it all away.

Stormy

05-06-2010, 11:26 PM

What news outlets do you guys go to? The ones I am hearing this from keep mentioning that there is a good chance it will get worse, and that BP is saying it could get worse of weather conditions don't cooperate.

Terr, your defeatist attitude disturbs me.

The Toecutter

05-06-2010, 11:44 PM

Terr, your defeatist attitude disturbs me.

Stating facts about the extent of the damage that could occur is not defeatest. A defeatist attitude would be arguing that nothing should be done, and I don't believe that at all nor have I argued that.

The reality is that BP does not know what they are doing; being able to cap a well this deep is something completely new to them(and to the oil industry in general), and it should be kept in mind that the technology may not exist to adequately cap it. Hopefully it does get capped completely and that the additions do not fail; the consequences will be far greater than the media has let on if this does not succeed.

Alex

05-06-2010, 11:55 PM

http://synthedelic.com/uploads/bp-oil-spill.jpg

The Toecutter

05-07-2010, 04:41 AM

5,000 barrels per day leak? Try 25,000 barrels per day:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/2/862413/-Janet-Napolitano-Comes-Clean-on-Potential-Leak-Size

MagusMartovich

05-07-2010, 11:07 AM

Sadly, we're all bashing each other and politics for silly reasons. What about what's being done? What about ideas on how to help? Anybody see that big box they trying as I type? No, its not the a 100% solution, but at least its something.

Karr Lord of Chaos

05-08-2010, 03:00 AM

5,000 barrels per day leak? Try 25,000 barrels per day:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/2/862413/-Janet-Napolitano-Comes-Clean-on-Potential-Leak-Size

wow, with that then we have smoked the record spill of the exxon.

i find it incredibly appalling that the "safety" mechanism that was required to operate in just such a scenario was a big fat waste of technology. i wonder if it was ever really properly designed or was just a token piece to satisfy the requirement of such a feature. it was far too easy for a major spill like this to occur and too many people just sitting there scratching their heads when a plan was meant to be in place. the whole spill containment was a laughable joke; are we really this incompetent? how there could be no quick reaction plan for this type of incident points back to the mess of katrina.

the sooner we leave oil behind and all the greed and corruption it fosters, the better our planet will be.

Big Rick Cook

05-08-2010, 03:07 AM

the sooner we leave oil behind and all the greed and corruption it fosters, the better our planet will be.

Whatever greed and corruption is caused by the supply and demand for oil will be replaced by the same or worse greed and corruption for whatever comes next.

Denmo

05-08-2010, 03:45 AM

Those greedy wind farmer SOB's. Taking up all our land just for their... their... WIND ENERGY. how dare they.

SirTMagus

05-08-2010, 04:22 AM

ozLZ40f1FcI

Bad taste. I know.

Big Rick Cook

05-08-2010, 04:29 AM

ozLZ40f1FcI

Bad taste. I know.

Everyone's thinkin' it, I'm just sayin' it.

Stormy

05-08-2010, 03:50 PM

Stating facts about the extent of the damage that could occur is not defeatest. A defeatist attitude would be arguing that nothing should be done, and I don't believe that at all nor have I argued that.

The reality is that BP does not know what they are doing; being able to cap a well this deep is something completely new to them(and to the oil industry in general), and it should be kept in mind that the technology may not exist to adequately cap it. Hopefully it does get capped completely and that the additions do not fail; the consequences will be far greater than the media has let on if this does not succeed.

NO. You have been saying, **** you always say about everything, that the worst WILL happen, not that it could or that it might. THAT is defeatist.

The Toecutter

05-08-2010, 05:39 PM

I don't always state that the worst will happen. For all I know, this could be fixed today, even if the damage that will be caused by the amount of oil that has already spilled can't be mitigated. Unlike the incident at Prince William Sound, a much greater aray of species are at risk. If the marshes in the Mississippi Delta are damaged, for instance, this could cause rapid erosion of the land in the area because the plantlife in this marshes help keep the soil stationary. Once that oil makes its way to land, it is, for all practical purposes, impossible to clean. The current booms that are used to syphon off the oil from the top of the water only manage to capture about 3% of the oil where they are used.

The worst that can happen is that the Gulf of Mexico will become a giant dead zone, along with about half of the Atlantic on the side of the U.S., along with any marshes or wetlands adjacent to the Gulf. I stated that will only happen *if* this isn't capped within a certain time frame, based on the amount of oil that will leak out. Not that it *will*.

I also gave a best case scenario based on the amount of oil that had been leaked at the time, and our current technological knowhow to clean it up(eg. booms, chemical dispersants, ect.). It isn't rosy, but it is realistic. The seafood industry in this region cannot be saved, and eventually, that oil will wash up to land. This is not good, but it could be much worse. There is a very good reason that all of those shrimpers and fishers are trying to sue BP; they are acutely aware of what has already happened and what the impacts will be to them.

My current expectations are that it will fall somewhere in-between, say it gets capped in late may. This will still turn the Gulf into a permanent dead zone, and much of the everglades/wetlands will be destroyed, but there will still be prospects for recovery.

Now I have said been pessimistic about other scenarios(such as the economy, or oil); the timeframe I expected events to occur in was pessimistic, not necessarily the events themselves. Events are trending in the direction as I had expected, but at a slower pace. Even at this slower pace, we will still see the effects well before our lives are over.

But to think my attitude is defeatist would be ignorant. I also think of ways that these problems might be overcome.

For a bit of technical info on the techniques used to cap wells, and for methods used to clean spills, the following topic has it in abundance:

http://peakoil.com/burning-rig-in-the-gulf-deepwater-horizon-t58378.html

Within that topic are some people who work within the oil industry, where they lend their knowledge.

The Toecutter

05-08-2010, 09:42 PM

It appears as if the first containment dome attempt is having significant setbacks. :(

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0817889720100508

"As we were placing the dome over the leak source a large volume of hydrates formed inside the top of the dome, requiring us to move the dome to the side of the leak point," Suttles said. "I wouldn't say it's failed yet."

The four-story structure, BP's only short-term hope of controlling the leak, is supposed to redirect the unchecked flow of crude from nearly one mile (1.6 km) below the water and, once connected, pump it to a surface tanker.

If the dome plan fails, BP faces the prospect of drilling a relief well to cut off the leaky oil well, which could take two to three months. A giant oil slick from the gush of oil threatens to create an environmental disaster for four Gulf Coast states.

I hope to hell they can get this to work. A 3 month oil geyser will kill the Gulf of Mexico and all nearby ecosystems. Just in time for hurricane season...

Cutter De Blanc

05-09-2010, 06:47 AM

CNN said BP said it would take at least two days to try and fix it.

THERE'S ANOTHER 50,000 GALLONS OF OIL, WHOOPS OHWELL

The Toecutter

05-11-2010, 07:29 AM

CNN said BP said it would take at least two days to try and fix it.

THERE'S ANOTHER 50,000 GALLONS OF OIL, WHOOPS OHWELL

The two days doesn't worry me so much, as long as it gets capped... the amount that has leaked out will already be catastrophic and "50,000 gallons"(more like barrels) isn't much more. What scares me is the prospect that this can't be capped, and if that is the case, the best we can hope for is a 2 month period where another hole is drilled... which means the Gulf of Mexico will be a permanent dead zone in that scenario.

Already, small balls of tar are washing up on beaches:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/10/1622913/oil-spill-killing-business-on.html

The EPA has also just approve releasing into the water 1/3 of the world's supply of a chemical dispersant used to reduce the cohesive properties of oil; it is not without its side effects and is highly carcinogenic. Despite this, it may be a better option than letting the oil wash up on beaches. The amount of dispersant available will only cover a small fraction of the oil currently released.

Areas along the coast are going to be heavily polluted for years to come, even with the best efforts put forth, and even if this is magically sealed today. Residents of New Orleans are already complaining that the air is making them sick and that they can smell the petroleum.

And even if this well is capped today, the worst effects of it haven't even made themselves known yet, given that most of the oil is still out at sea.

I suppose having left Corpus Christi is a blessing. That place was already a giant ghetto relying on restaraunts and beaches for a significant portion of its economy; while its unemployment rate was very low, the vast majority of the jobs available paid minimum wage(hence the success of the drug trade and the number of residents participating in it; if you have a family, you can't live on minimum wage, even in as cheap a place as that). Jobless rates in the Gulf area are going to soar, no doubt of that... and I would not want to live in that city if all of a sudden its real unemployment rate(not the BLS U3) jumped from ~11% to 30%... *shudder*

The Toecutter

05-12-2010, 02:36 AM

Here is a video showing the extent of the oil leak, taken from a fly over the area by plane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8JHSAVYT0

The scum running BP were forcing workers on the rig to sign a statement that they had no first hand knowledge of the incident, or BP wasn't going to let them return home:

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/assoc_1.html

Survivors floated for hours in life boats in the Gulf of Mexico after the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon, and were greeted by company officials onshore asking them to sign statements that they had no "first hand or personal knowledge" of the incident, attorneys said.

"These men are told they have to sign these statements or they can't go home," said Tony Buzbee, a Houston attorney for 10 Transocean workers. "I think it's pretty callous, but I'm not surprised by it."

Hopefully, sanity will finally prevail in government, and take everything necessary from BP(even if it means nationalization or seizure of corporate assets) to pay what it can for this disaster. If they can't cap this well, turning the Gulf into a permanent dead zone will cost trillions... which BP certainly doesn't have.

Further, while this leak may not be as large as the lxtoc spill, the lxtoc spill was mostly mud and the extent of its damage was thus limited. This is crude oil, natural gas, and methyl hydrates, the vast majority being crude, and that is what causes the damage...

Cutter De Blanc

05-12-2010, 04:13 AM

The Earth bleeds.

Hopefully, sanity will finally prevail in government,

:skeptical I'm not holding my breath, cuz I don't look good in blue.

The Toecutter

05-12-2010, 09:54 PM

Cutter De Blanc

05-13-2010, 07:34 AM

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, FLIPPER!!!!!!!!

The Toecutter

05-14-2010, 07:48 PM

A Purdue University professor has estimated that the oil spill may not be 5,000 barrels per day, or even 25,000 barrels per day, but 70,000 barrels per day...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525

From the article:

Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.

A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

My earlier statement that the environmental impact being an Exxon Valdez spill times 10 may have been a large understatement.

Denmo

05-14-2010, 08:40 PM

I sure hope BP collapses because of this.

Chrono

05-14-2010, 08:48 PM

They can't use a controlled explosion like they do with the wells on land? Or would that jeopardize the reservoir from rupturing even more into the sea floor?

Cutter De Blanc

05-14-2010, 09:23 PM

I bet BP is gonna try and get money because of this.

The Toecutter

05-14-2010, 10:05 PM

They can't use a controlled explosion like they do with the wells on land? Or would that jeopardize the reservoir from rupturing even more into the sea floor?

There is a risk with a controlled explosion, but it is something that BP also has no experience with and is unwilling to try. The Russians do have experience using explosions to cap wells, but a minority of the time, they made the problem much worse. However, this particular geyser is biger than anything the Russians have delt with, and would still require a small nuclear bomb.

Dusk Raven

05-14-2010, 10:06 PM

I sure hope BP collapses because of this.

If things keep getting worse, they quite possibly will - or at least find no market in the US.

They can't use a controlled explosion like they do with the wells on land? Or would that jeopardize the reservoir from rupturing even more into the sea floor?

Not knowing anything about this process and failing to find anything in an admittedly quick search, if it's like a controlled burn I would imagine that they can't do it because there's not enough oxygen down there. Just a guess.

SirTMagus

05-15-2010, 12:05 AM

However, this particular geyser is biger than anything the Russians have delt with, and would still require a small nuclear bomb.

It worked for Raccoon City!

IamPinhead

05-15-2010, 12:31 AM

Dolphins are now washing up dead in Mississippi. The cause of their deaths have yet to be validated, but they are probably related to either this oil or the use of the chemical dispersants...

Dolphins are rapists. Either way, BP has screwed up somethin' fierce. I can just imagine the meeting:
Douche 1: So, we ignored all safety precautions, broke pretty much every limit on that well possible. We've jeopardized the environment for-
Douche 2: Wait! That's it! We need to release an extremely dangerous cancer causing agent to maximize economic and minimize any sort of responsibility!
Douche 1: Isn't that...what's the word...it's that thing that you're not supposed to be...
Douche 2: Black?
Douche 1: No....unethical!
Douche 2: Ethics? E-t-h-i-c-s? Do you work in the oil industry or are you some sort of hippy? 'Cause that's who business ethics are for. Commies and hippies.
Douche 1: You're right. Screw 'carcinogens are horribly dangerous' and 'we're making the problem worse' or 'that's like burning the building down so the initial fire has nothing to burn,' LET'S ROCK!

Denmo

05-15-2010, 01:45 AM

Dolphins are now washing up dead in Mississippi.

Yeah, except locals say that normally happens around this time of year. Also, the article in question said they had no visible signs of contamination. Soooooo yeah. Oil slick bad, but let's not get crazy.

Cutter De Blanc

05-15-2010, 02:53 AM

I bet next it's gonna catch on fire.

That would be wicked scary

Chrono

05-15-2010, 03:28 AM

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a32/Chrono101/oilburn.jpg

They are, controlled burns (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/disaster_unfolds_slowly_in_the.html) at least.

Cutter De Blanc

05-15-2010, 03:59 AM

Well, yes, lets hope they stay that way.

Denmo

05-15-2010, 04:03 AM

it's not like they can burn the whole gulf. the oil is scatted into pockets thanks to ocean waves. They have to round up a bunch to be able to light it up like that, and the end result is like carving the face of a mountain with a fork.

marcus

05-15-2010, 11:41 AM

I'm enjoying the blame game going on between the owner, contractor, and guys funding the project.

"We followed the protocol, blame those guys."

"Our safety regulations were up to par, blame that dude."

"What are we talking about? Oh, yeah, blame the other two dudes.

Wavelength

05-16-2010, 02:54 PM

marcus

05-28-2010, 06:22 AM

Bumping this because of Obama's press conference and listening to the average citizen is one of the most maddening things ever. In case you haven't been following BP was officially made responsible but everyone is pointing the finger at the federal government for not doing anything. Obama in his speech basically said "We have regulations, BP didn't follow them, the spill is their fault, we couldn't do anything because we don't have any more money or technology than these guys do."

This entire situation has completely highlighted the problem of a corporate run country. The private sector expects to remain automonous and the average American citizen is so fearful of any rule or precaution that they instantly lash out at the smallest change. When disaster strikes, wholly the fault of the private industry who ignored all warning indicators and every red flag leading up to the spill, people turn to the federal government expecting a miracle cure to be pulled out of thin air. Reality is that the federal government controls absolutely nothing and the means of production is *gasp* in the hands of the private sector which are contracted to the government in the first place.

I can tell you what happens in the months down the road. The public demands more safety regulations to ensure this doesn't happen again. The government responds with stricter controls and more training. This leads to higher costs for training and safety equipment. This leads to higher costs for oil. This leads to the average idiot gettting ****** off that he suddenly has to pay an extra 10 cents at the pump. The corporations waggle a finger at the government for putting their hands in people's pockets and the people waggle a finger at the government for not doing anything to stimulate research of alternative energy WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'LL TAKE THAT RESEARCH OUT OF MY TAXES **** THAT **** BLOOD FOR OIL! BLOOD FOR OIL!

The Toecutter

05-28-2010, 07:18 PM

Reality is that the federal government controls absolutely nothing and the means of production is *gasp* in the hands of the private sector which are contracted to the government in the first place.

If anything, the Federal Government has far too much control when it comes to the average American or a small business owner. You can't even work a normal job without the government knowing how much money you make, what drugs you do, how much is in your 401k, what bank acount your money is deposited in... you can't have a savings account without the government keeping tabs on it, the government knows all major assets you own such as cars or homes, the government has been illegally wiretapping our phone calls... yet despite all of this surveillance and scrutiny of the average person, our government seems not only incompetent with regard to finding terrorists, it is even moreso when handling those large institutions that paid for the politicians' campaigns.

The monolithic corporations have so much clout that they are largely granted exemptions from those regulations that are crushing small business owners and preventing the average person from starting their own enterprise. It just so happened that BP and other oil companies over the last few years had been given exemptions on the types of wellheads to use, thanks to our very government. It just so happens that in the case of BP, a disaster of the likes we have never seen before has occured. Bye bye sea life in the Gulf!

The government needs to be removed from the bedroom, shrunk down to a very small size, and what little remains absolutely SHOULD be placed in the boardroom. Instead, we have quite the opposite... an oversized government that is damned near useless when it comes to adressing big business, but is more than happy to erode the privacy of the average person. One set of laws for us and an entirely different standard for the elite of our society...

Shard

05-28-2010, 07:46 PM

The government needs to be removed from the bedroom, shrunk down to a very small size, and what little remains absolutely SHOULD be placed in the boardroom.

Particularly applicable in this case since officials from the Minerals Management Service were literally found in bed with oil industry lobbyists a few months back.

IamPinhead

05-28-2010, 08:55 PM

How's that socialism for you, Toe Cutter?

marcus

05-28-2010, 09:27 PM

Frankly what I'm getting tired of is hearing people complain that nothing is being done but when something is being done and it has an adverse effect on their pocket book they get up in arms. The country is too heavily rooted in big business and private markets to change any time soon. All we can do as the average tax payer is demand more and accept that change isn't painless which everyone wants and even expects it to be.

I shouldn't see single people driving SUVs. A family of two making a combined $60,000 a year shouldn't take out a massive loan for a six bedroom, two-story house. The simplest changes happen at home but when you think about it the elite got to where they are by selling garbage to idiots who who thinkt hey depend on it but don't really need it.

The Toecutter

05-28-2010, 10:16 PM

People will complain that "nothing is being done" or that "too little is being done", when in fact, this government is not capable of adequately dealing with a calamity of this scale. It doesn't help at all that the secret energy task force meetings involving Dick Cheney were partially about de-regulating ofshore drilling, and it certainly doesn't help that the Obama administration gave BP an exemption pertaining to the wellhead being used, but the fact remains that there is very little that can currently be done to cap this well. We simply have never had the technology to stop an oil gusher of this size; it also raises questions into whether we should be drilling in such areas to begin with. It is quite obvious that we have the technology not to need oil for our transport, it's just a matter of sacrificing the bottom line of the oil cartels in the process...

About middle class people buying homes they can't afford, had the banks not driven prices so high to begin with, they'd never have needed to take out loans so massive. Houses are STILL over-valued, even after the price collapse beginning in 2005. Adjusted for inflation, you should be able to buy a house for the same price you could in the 1960s... the construction methods have not changed much and the materials used in homes today are much cheaper and lower quality... the price should reflect that, but instead it is extremely over-inflated. If anything, these bailouts should have never occured, and the glut in housing would have allowed the market to take over and for the prices to drop accordingly.

Middle and working class America is over-taxed as it is; they not only have to support welfare parasites in the ghettos, they also have to support those parasites that compose the elite of society and receive trillion dollar bailouts, which also happen to be a much bigger burden than the financially poor parasites. Here is a novel idea: make the oil companies PAY for the transition to renewable energy, considering all of the effort they had put into suppressing it for so long. Don't let them pocket a single penny in profit in the meantime, until this leak is dealt with and we have much of our oil use replaced. Then afterwards, break the oil companies up into smaller sizes so that competition will once again thrive.

How's that socialism for you, Toe Cutter?

What about socialism? In the U.S., we seem to have socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, and a big government hell-bent on surveillance of the average person, which is quite far from the intent of our founding fathers. Would you have considered Thomas Jefferson a socialist? He did, after all, warn us of the potential for the U.S. to become run by a corporate oligarchy and the need to crush such an oligarchy before it arose.

marcus

05-29-2010, 12:30 AM

People will complain that "nothing is being done" or that "too little is being done", when in fact, this government is not capable of adequately dealing with a calamity of this scale.

Obama specifically said this in the press meeting. Didn't really quell anyone's tempers. Too many people still think the feds are the magic source to stop all problems when they rely on the corporations as much as we rely on Wal-Mart for bulk goods.

As for my homes comment, I know way too many people who live completely above their means. I'm not talking about a middle-income person who lives paycheck to paycheck, I'm saying friends straight out of college put down a massive lease for a home 2,000sqft home that they toss a shag rug, couch, and ikea coffee table in and call it a day. You don't need that new car, you don't need that SUV when you're a single working student, you don't need a four bedroom mansion as a newly married couple, and you don't need that $2200 3D TV you just slapped onto a maxed out credit card you pay the minimum for every month.

There's a lot of simple, stupid stuff people waste their money on which only goes to show that A) the dudes up top will keep producing it and B) the dudes at the bottom will have nothing to show for their daily rat race except a fancy gadget which is now obsolete. You want to show the oil companies who boss? Buy a cheap car that gets 33mpg or greater, car pool, and stop taking long pointless vacations to places you can't afford. Want to strike back at the banks and credit card companies? Stop putting daily sundries on credit and don't purchase more than what you can afford in a month.

Red Dragon

05-29-2010, 01:40 AM

Obama specifically said this in the press meeting. Didn't really quell anyone's tempers. Too many people still think the feds are the magic source to stop all problems when they rely on the corporations as much as we rely on Wal-Mart for bulk goods.

As for my homes comment, I know way too many people who live completely above their means. I'm not talking about a middle-income person who lives paycheck to paycheck, I'm saying friends straight out of college put down a massive lease for a home 2,000sqft home that they toss a shag rug, couch, and ikea coffee table in and call it a day. You don't need that new car, you don't need that SUV when you're a single working student, you don't need a four bedroom mansion as a newly married couple, and you don't need that $2200 3D TV you just slapped onto a maxed out credit card you pay the minimum for every month.

There's a lot of simple, stupid stuff people waste their money on which only goes to show that A) the dudes up top will keep producing it and B) the dudes at the bottom will have nothing to show for their daily rat race except a fancy gadget which is now obsolete. You want to show the oil companies who boss? Buy a cheap car that gets 33mpg or greater, car pool, and stop taking long pointless vacations to places you can't afford. Want to strike back at the banks and credit card companies? Stop putting daily sundries on credit and don't purchase more than what you can afford in a month.

Well duh, but as Americans we can't abide by logic.

:america

Stormy

05-29-2010, 02:12 AM

There is nothing wrong with Socialism. The Federation of Star Trek was socialist. Your problem, pinhead, is with communism.

JPS

05-29-2010, 05:01 AM

I feel bad for the people who just closed on multi-million dollar homes in florida...lol

Im thinking that the government isnt pressing the fine issues with BP in fear that BP will say "Whatever, you guys take care of it, we're out"...or rather, I hope thats what the government is doing.

The Toecutter

05-29-2010, 05:28 AM

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sgWxl2t9A48J:www.seattlepi.com/business/1310ap_us_gulf_oil_spill.html+bp+%22stock-market+sensitive%22+oil+gulf&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

It was difficult to tell sometimes how the top kill was going. On Friday, reporters received a note from a BP spokesman saying information on it is now considered "stock-market sensitive" and updates can be provided only in "formal settings," though BP's CEO talked about it on the morning news shows.

This is a polite and indirect way of saying that there is censorship.

Hopefully the next junk shot works and only mud flows out from then on until the flow stops; there won't be any way of knowing for some time afterward though, but if at some time afterward oil starts gushing out again, it will be obvious that it failed.

orius

05-30-2010, 05:57 AM

Obama specifically said this in the press meeting. Didn't really quell anyone's tempers. Too many people still think the feds are the magic source to stop all problems when they rely on the corporations as much as we rely on Wal-Mart for bulk goods.

I posted a reply on this topic yesterday, but it seems to have vanished. Or it wasn't completed properly, maybe I closed the tab on preview before posting.

But you're right, people think the Feds are they to solve every single problem. Some of that thinking is encourge by people who support strong federalism. But it's also ignorant. The oil industry is not nationalized in this country, so the Feds don't have the equipment or engineers to go in there and tackle it themselves. So they have to rely on BP to fix it (and besides, those assholes broke it by trying to go cheap, so they should fix their own damn mess). If the Feds did directly take over, they'd likely have to bring another comany in anyway, and most of them would probably balk at cleaning up BP's mess. They don't want to spend money on fixing a problem they didn't cause, and they probably don't want to be held liable if something goes wrong.

There's a lot of simple, stupid stuff people waste their money on which only goes to show that A) the dudes up top will keep producing it and B) the dudes at the bottom will have nothing to show for their daily rat race except a fancy gadget which is now obsolete. You want to show the oil companies who boss? Buy a cheap car that gets 33mpg or greater, car pool, and stop taking long pointless vacations to places you can't afford. Want to strike back at the banks and credit card companies? Stop putting daily sundries on credit and don't purchase more than what you can afford in a month.

It's not entirely the fault of our companies that people feel they need to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. This sort of wastefulness is probably why a lot of religions decry excess materialism (though it comes off as hypocritical when many priests choose to wallow in opulance while telling thier followers poverty is good for the soul or karma or whatever).

Hopefully the next junk shot works and only mud flows out from then on until the flow stops; there won't be any way of knowing for some time afterward though, but if at some time afterward oil starts gushing out again, it will be obvious that it failed.

Unfortunately, it seems to have failed.

I hope BP is happy with all the money they've saved by using seawater instead of proper lubricants.

The_Real_Crunk

05-30-2010, 07:28 AM

Is it bad I almost want to see the east coast get turned into a wasteland for decades so people sit back and are all like "****, we gotta do something about oil. Maybe we should like, stop using it."

Karr Lord of Chaos

05-30-2010, 11:33 AM

Is it bad I almost want to see the east coast get turned into a wasteland for decades so people sit back and are all like "****, we gotta do something about oil. Maybe we should like, stop using it."

that is also my guilty thought.

ill toss my two cents in and say that i expected the government to contain the mess more efficiently. that it eclipsed all methods so quickly and spread like crazy was a disappointment. ignoring all the prevention methods and safety measures that should of been in place, there at least should of been some kind of quick response to deal with this issue and keep trying until the mess is contained. i understand that obama is basically saying that capping the well head is outside of the governments technology, but i wanted to see more visible work from the government on protecting the gulf and containing the spill. we look to the government for a solution because its the last big agency in the line of defense, an agency that is charged with looking after our countries interests.

society is always seams to be left holding the bag when something big happens to large industry. we have very much shut out smaller business in favor of major conglomerates. look at some of those coal mining sites which had poor regulations and when some of the companies where found to be majorly polluting with leaking chemical tailing ponds they just went bankrupt and walked away. its costing billions to clean up the damage done and the country has to pay. its just too easy to let companies walk away from responsibility, just let the country take the risk.

i am starting to understand why people buy beyond their means. its tough working in a dead end job, and you want to spend like you're making more to give yourself a better feel, to sooth over the fact that you are not happy. unfortunately our society caters highly to this need and offers credit to over extend ourselves. we are built entirely on a shaky foundation, anything to try to bolster our gpa, to make us look like we are always growing. its not a surprise the market sprung back, its been over inflated for years. this whole want it now thing is in every part of our lives and it allows us to shirk responsibility for our actions and to blame our failures on anyone else but ourselves.

we are on an endless quest to get better deals, we want our money to go farther. big business can cater to us, they have the power to squeeze everyone down the chain to get better prices, they have the power to offer cheaper because of volume; others just cant compete. we really have no one more to blame then ourselves for creating this need. im not surprised we are screwed and unprepared for a big disaster like this. when the next one comes we still wont be prepared.

Valkysas

05-30-2010, 05:00 PM

What's the government supposed to do? They don't have the equipment, the vehicles, and well, EVERYTHING that BP does.

Also, despite people screaming for the government to do stuff, if they were actually able to, then people would be complaining about their tax dollars paying for the cleanup efforts instead of BP's money.

Karr Lord of Chaos

05-30-2010, 05:21 PM

is the US goverment so void of resources that they cant do anything? what about all those military ships and coast guard vessels, perhaps use some of that man power to properly set up containment barriers and monitor them. why not some personal on the shore line setting up barriers to keep it from contaminating the shore line or going up the delta? maybe dump a ton of soap in the water to break up the oil - like hell i know. bp has nothing the government cant get, and there is no reason why both groups cant work together to control the spread - its within everyones interest to fix the issue before it destroys more wildlife and upsets the ecosystem in the area. there is a lot of wasted time with people pointing fingers, point them after the oils been dealt with.

i wont claim to know what the best avenue is here but i can see that whats being done doesnt feel like a best effort. we have the technology and motivation to get oil out of the ocean floor but we cant summon enough effort or resources to contain an oil spill? tell me whats wrong with this picture?

Valkysas

05-30-2010, 05:27 PM

some personal on the shore line setting up barriers to keep it from contaminating the shore line or going up the delta?It's the entire gulf coast. With millions of gallons of oil coming at at it, that will continue to be coming at it for decades. There's oil in the water hundreds of feet deep getting swept everywhere. This is going to start coming around the east coast soon. What exactly can anyone do?

This is beyond containment. This is beyond clean-up. Humanity has finally successfully destroyed part of the planet, and there isnt much of anything we can do about it.

IamPinhead

05-30-2010, 11:09 PM

There is nothing wrong with Socialism. The Federation of Star Trek was socialist. Your problem, pinhead, is with communism.

I think socialism is the perfect form of government. In theory. It's based on the idea of "Each according to his own need." However, it's too easy to have corrupt douchebags. Look at the USSR. State ownership, farming collectives, centrally planned economy and industrial manufacturing. All very socialist. But the problem with a socialist economy is that any sort of planning is bound to fail by anything that can't be predicted years in advance.
This is beyond containment. This is beyond clean-up. Humanity has finally successfully destroyed part of the planet, and there isnt much of anything we can do about it.
O contrare:
http://jeffburk.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/godzillavshedorah1.jpg

Valkysas

05-31-2010, 03:35 AM

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/11/11558/1890

Riotsword

05-31-2010, 03:50 AM

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/11/11558/1890

That was ****ing informative.

IamPinhead

05-31-2010, 08:51 PM

BP ad from 1999:
http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/bp.png
So basically what I gleaned from that article is that BP sucks at their job. And ****in Mother ****in BOOMS!

Cutter De Blanc

06-03-2010, 06:26 AM

God, the media disgusts me.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/03/gulf.oil.spill/index.html

The way it's written it's just like they have a hardon about this and they think it's just great.

Nothing new other than the "dur de dur Hannah Montana lol" attitude about this horrible disaster, though. BP still ****ing off.

Kire

06-03-2010, 11:26 AM

Hey guys, they just stopped it, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Valkysas

06-03-2010, 11:58 AM

*looks at live video of the oil leak*

*is confused*

Kire

06-03-2010, 12:27 PM

Sorry I got an email alert that they "cut the oil." All that means is the cut some pipe that is a first step. Lame.

The Toecutter

06-07-2010, 06:15 PM

Here's a video showing a projection of where the oil is expected to be at various time intervals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE-1G_476nA

The amount that has leaked out has already doomed the Gulf to destruction and will impact most of the Atlantic coast in some manner.

I wonder what would happen if BP refused to pay?

SirTMagus

06-07-2010, 06:45 PM

Eh, the Jersey shore's been going downhill for a while.

Cutter De Blanc

06-07-2010, 07:07 PM

Right around day 80 it just shoots up the coastline.

Karr Lord of Chaos

06-07-2010, 08:04 PM

does day 80 coincide with the hurricane season? that would explain why it shoots out of the gulf seemingly in one fell swoop.

jacquel

06-08-2010, 08:52 PM

Deepwater workers start talking about negligence, short-staffing and employees being fired for being too vocal about safety concerns (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/08/oil.rig.warning.signs/index.html?hpt=C1).

I think this impending criminal investigation is going to be one of the most fun we've seen in decades.

IamPinhead

06-08-2010, 09:16 PM

So this is basically the biggest environmental disaster in the history of mankind. The worst part is that America will get blamed for a British company's inability to follow safety regulations. Not to say that nationality matters, but I'm sure that we'll get blamed for it. Either way, the gulf coast is officially a dead zone. Mutant zombie apocalypse, anybody?

Cutter De Blanc

06-08-2010, 10:39 PM

It doesn't help that the president is panicing and looking for people to blame instead of trying to figure out how to solve this problem. ~

Maybe other countries might wanna try and help with this problem...

...just a thought.

The Toecutter

06-08-2010, 10:42 PM

Either way, the gulf coast is officially a dead zone.

Not quite yet; the oil still has to cover more area, and it eventually will even if the flow rate stopped immediately.

Mutant zombie apocalypse, anybody?

Maybe if Isreal illegally attacks another humanitarian aid ship to Gaza in international waters, which next time will be escorted by Iran and Turkey...

It doesn't help that the president is panicing and looking for people to blame instead of trying to figure out how to solve this problem. ~

Maybe other countries might wanna try and help with this problem...

...just a thought.

Not much can be done at this point; fixing this will take enough time to garauntee that the gulf will not ever recover. Hell, enough oil has entered the GOM that it will not ever recover.

The president already made his mistake by changing his policy to a pro-drill stance and by continuing the former President's exemption of BP from already existing regulations. Obama is no more or less culpable in this than Bush/Cheney. Some "change" he is though...

Want real change? How about a seperation of corporation and state?

IamPinhead

06-09-2010, 01:13 AM

Want real change? How about a seperation of corporation and state?

Toecutter advertisement for anarchy number 40, 932.
Oh yeah. At the rate that BP is flubbing up, I don't think the Gulf is going to live through this one.
The Mutant Zombie Apocalypse cannot be stopped, Toecutter. We're all doomed to be eating each others brains. Let's stockpile ammunition and non-perishable editable-on-the-go food and water while the stores still have reasonable stockpiles. Lots of Mr. Pibb and Cheez-its, don't forget that.
Spellcheck: "seperation - sepAration."

Stormy

06-09-2010, 01:31 AM

Toecutter advertisement for socialism number 40, 932.
Oh yeah. At the rate that BP is flubbing up, I don't think the Gulf is going to live through this one.
The Mutant Zombie Apocalypse cannot be stopped, Toecutter. We're all doomed to be eating each others brains. Let's stockpile ammunition and non-perishable editable-on-the-go food and water while the stores still have reasonable stockpiles. Lots of Mr. Pibb and Cheez-its, don't forget that.
Spellcheck: "seperation - sepAration."

Actually, no. Socialism would be a merging of corporation and state, so that the state is the only corporation.

The Toecutter

06-09-2010, 04:16 AM

Toecutter advertisement for socialism number 40, 932.

It is fitting that a product of the U.S. public school system would mistake an advocate of less government for a socialist.

Oh yeah. At the rate that BP is flubbing up, I don't think the Gulf is going to live through this one.

It won't, as far as the ecosystems and lifeforms residing within it are concerned. Certain major cities in or near the Gulf coast may in fact require evacuation due to dangerous air pollution resulting from this in the not too distant future.

http://www.examiner.com/x-43399-Huntsville-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m6d7-Blowout-Its-not-an-oil-spill--how-do-you-spill-something-underwater-

Depending upon the actions taken as a result of this spill, there is an existant but very small possibility of a breakdown of the civil order. This would especially be the case if the resultant air pollution required the evacuation of as many as 30 million people. More likely, the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico will experience greatly increased unemployment because of this, when the United State's real unemployment rate(U6) is already so bad that it matches what was seen in the less-horrific part of the Great Depression(early 1940s)..

The Mutant Zombie Apocalypse cannot be stopped, Toecutter.

I wish mutants and zombies were real, especially zombies; I'd love nothing more than to keep a zombie pit in my parent's basement, so that their moaning, groaning, and shambling, and the beautiful clinking noises of their shackles and chains, could soothe me to sleep at night. I <3 zombies.

We're all doomed to be eating each others brains.

In a true SHTF scenario, cannibalism may in fact become quite common-place(eg. Nigeria, Congo, North Korea's meat market, ect.), but eating brains and/or nervous tissue would be a very unwise decision. You don't want a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, do you?

Let's stockpile ammunition and non-perishable editable-on-the-go food and water while the stores still have reasonable stockpiles. Lots of Mr. Pibb and Cheez-its, don't forget that.

Junk food is quite possibly the worst choice for a food stockpile that you could possibly think of, although it may be good for barter should the need ever arise.

Spellcheck: "seperation - sepAration."

I am using an old keyboard that requires for me to pound on the keys for them to be generated on my screen; often times, a key misses or I inadvertently hit a key near it. In the events I do misspell as a fault of my own and not the keyboard(this was the case cited above), I do not see much purpose in inconveniencing myself by having to re-type it so long as the misspelled word is still recognizable.

Cutter De Blanc

06-09-2010, 05:36 AM

I wish I had a fallout shelter.

And a gun.

And a 50 year supply of canned food.

orius

06-10-2010, 01:07 AM

Toecutter advertisement for socialism number 40, 932.

How the hell is that comment an endorsement for socialism? Besides, Terr's more of an anarchist than any shade of Red.

Shard

06-10-2010, 01:32 PM

In a true SHTF scenario, cannibalism may in fact become quite common-place(eg. Nigeria, Congo, North Korea's meat market, ect.), but eating brains and/or nervous tissue would be a very unwise decision. You don't want a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, do you?

More of your anti-prion propaganda. Prions make your brain more efficient by trimming out the unused bits. It's like a capitalist version of Alzheimer's. You are what you eat, and we all want to be smarter, right? Eat a nerd today!

Red Dragon

06-10-2010, 02:41 PM

How the hell is that comment an endorsement for socialism? Besides, Terr's more of an anarchist than any shade of Red.

Isn't red, Communism?

John Mora

06-10-2010, 04:08 PM

Ehhhhhhhh, they're related.

IamPinhead

06-10-2010, 06:04 PM

Junk food is quite possibly the worst choice for a food stockpile that you could possibly think of, although it may be good for barter should the need ever arise.

Everybody knows that Superman drinks Mr. Pibb and eats Cheez-its to combat cryptonite poisoning. Besides, you could use the delicious combination in order to lure zombies into your traps. Even the undead love cheezits and mr. pibb, Toecutter.

Valkysas

06-11-2010, 10:12 PM

Adrian Foley

06-11-2010, 10:18 PM

Goufunaki

06-11-2010, 10:26 PM

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/Gouki22/misc3/kevin-costner.jpg

orius

06-12-2010, 12:32 AM

Guys, it's okay. Kevin Costner is on this (http://www.examiner.com/x-19632-Salt-Lake-City-Headlines-Examiner%7Ey2010m6d10-Kevin-Costner-sells-32-oil-spill-machines-to-BP-to-recycle-6-million-gallons-of-water-a-day-photos).

What's he going to do, make a movie about it that will bomb? :p

Seriously though, that sounds like good news if these machines work.

The Toecutter

06-24-2010, 09:44 AM

Here is a video depicting Pensacola Beach today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtCQiD8mUqU

Imagine this, going up the Atlantic Ocean to New Jersey, all the way down south to the shores of the Carribean...

Hrafn

06-24-2010, 01:02 PM

Kevin Costner is so stupid that after making a post-apocalyptic movie that totally bombed, he followed it up with a post-apocalyptic movie that totally bombed. If anything, he's probably sabotaging the cleanup efforts in the hopes of creating an actual apocalypse, filming the aftermath, and thus finally riding the post-apocalyptic horse that has kicked him twice already.

Red Dragon

06-24-2010, 01:09 PM

I think there's more money in it for him to try and get his oil cleanup machines (tm) on every boat, barge, and oil platform.

IamPinhead

06-24-2010, 03:18 PM

I honestly hope BP buys as many of these things as possible. The more water filtered the better. We can do this, America.

Hrafn

06-24-2010, 04:12 PM

Wait, his machine is a water filter?

For the love of God, don't drink it! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMROpXu9WLw)

Cutter De Blanc

06-26-2010, 06:58 PM

And there it is. (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/26/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html)

Now it gets intense.

orius

06-26-2010, 11:08 PM

Why are people poking fun at Costner's machines? Give the guy props for doing something useful.

(not necessarily here, but I've seen people make idiotic comments about these things elsewhere.)

The Toecutter

07-12-2010, 06:23 PM

BP/Coast Gaurd are colluding to silence reporters on gulf oil geyser.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/05/bp/index.html

Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.

The Obama admin has helped further erode the 1st amendment, just as Clinton/Gore has with "free speech zones", and the Bushes have with repeated documentation and harassment of antiwar protestors and continuing said "free speech zones". This Gulf of Mexico oil geyser is eventually going to spur popular action of some sort due to its severity and effect on millions of people; VOCs in much of the area near the gulf are now over 14 ppm, the level of which long term exposure to causes permanent and chronic health conditions.

The so called "environmentally aware" Obama administration is allowing free speech to be denied in order to help cover up this disaster. It's little wonder, given that BP is the largest supplier of fuel to the U.S. military.

We won't really see the impact of this oil gusher until sometime around November/December of this year, and that holds true even if it were to be stopped today. It's going to take time for this slurry to spread around the Gulf, and it is killing everything it comes into contact with. The Gulf will be dead, and permanently(on the scale of a human lifetime, at least).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riki-ott/the-big-lie-bp-government_b_638369.html#s111369

Case in point, someone went to retrieve a bag from the ocean, and later her skin erupted into blisters(see image 6 of 8). THIS is eventually going to cover all of the Gulf of Mexico from South Texas to Florida and than the Atlantic Ocean from Florida all the way up the east coast until it diverges off at some point(likely around New Jersey) and is dispersed into the Atlantic.

The Plankton that are exposed to this will be killed, destroying the food chain of everything it touches.

There are already tar balls washing up on beaches as far west as Texas, near the Galveston area:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/05/tar-balls-texas-gulf-oil-spill_n_635784.html

Rest assured, our government is doing its best to look out for BP...

Red Dragon

07-12-2010, 06:51 PM

Government is supporting oil companies and oil companies are being pricks.

Also in the news, anti-gay senators are actually gay and the sky is blue.

Rodak

07-12-2010, 07:37 PM

zt617zYAbng

MRevelle83

07-15-2010, 05:15 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

The Toecutter

07-15-2010, 05:19 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

It's about damn ****ing timem the leak was stopped...

...and assuming BP isn't once again lying, they stopped it about 2 months too late to save the Gulf. Wait until the health problems due to breathing VOCs, Corexit vapor, and the like begin to show themselves in tens of thousands(maybe millions) of people, and that won't even be the worst of it.

This is an encouraging development at least...

Mcardy

07-15-2010, 06:20 PM

Yeah, that Corexit **** is wack.

I also hope this is the end of this disaster, but I can't really trust BP anymore after the complete incompetence they've displayed in the first 382327 failed attempts to stop it.

IamPinhead

07-15-2010, 06:40 PM

Knowing the catastrophic failures that BP has put forth, I would not be surprised if there was simply no more oil left in the well to spill.

American Hero

07-15-2010, 06:43 PM

I wonder where all that spilled oil is going.

Shard

07-15-2010, 07:18 PM

To a beach near you~

The current has landed tar balls on every state that shares a border with the gulf and its expected that residue from the spill will work its way up the eastern seaboard in the coming months.

There are massive plumes of oil on the surface, and beneath, that's in the process of being broken down by algae. The algae use up oxygen in the water as they break down the oil, leading to massive "dead zones" that are uninhabitable by marine life.

Denmo

07-15-2010, 07:36 PM

The Toecutter

07-15-2010, 07:55 PM

On a side note, Louisiana is not new (http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/) to the idea of being surrounded by a dead zone. (http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/dead_zone.html)

Also, assuming the nitrogen and other toxins stop flowing into the water, dead zones are reversible. The Black Sea is one example. (http://www.oceanactions.com/?page_id=129) But, in our case, it's also assuming that everything in that oil will eventually decompose....

and of course, this will take decades if not centuries to fully recover.

These new 'dead zones' will be littered with oil and corexit; they are entirely different in their effects compared to the fertilizer/nitrogen runoff dead zones that the Gulf is used to. The oil/corexit slurry kills everything it touches, and give it a few months, and the weather will cause it to cover the northern half of the GOM, with a thinner layer spread along the eastern seaboard.

If you kill the phytoplankton in the area of impact, the entire food chain that subsists on it dies. Just the oil/corexit at the surface is sufficient to do this, nevermind the gigantic clouds of it below the surface that are killing everything else.

The Eastern seaboard, once contaminated, may recover to its normal state over a decade or so(depending on how much of the slurry is transported there by the ocean currents), but not the Gulf.

Prince William Sound has not recovered to anything near 'normal', and it's two decades later with far fewer toxins released per square mile of area affected. People are still developing various forms of illness due to exposure to the minority of toxins that were spared the cleaning. To this day, you can find water and sand polluted with oil/tar from that disaster without having to put effort into searching. The fisheries have not recovered to their initial state, or anything close to it, withsome populations having been permanently destroyed.

An Exxon Valdez every 3-4 days has been leaking into the GOM, for almost 3 months straight. Barring an unprecedented technological breakthrough applied to correct this mess(and said breakthru succeeding) or 'divine intervention', the Gulf will not return to anything resembling 'normal' on any human timeframe.

***edit***

Knowing the catastrophic failures that BP has put forth, I would not be surprised if there was simply no more oil left in the well to spill.

According to Matt Simmons, there is enough oil within that well that, if leaking at 100,000 barrels per day, would continue spewing oil for 2.5 years. This is also slightly more than 1 day's worth of world oil consumption, so not a whole lot...

ChaosKnightXD

07-15-2010, 08:37 PM

The Toecutter

07-15-2010, 09:50 PM

Not out of the woods yet by a long shot but it's nice to see some progress being made.

I'm also glad that people probably won't end up dying from the Earth farting if this cap really does work. And by farting I mean giant methane bubble.

The methane bubble is an extremely unlikely scenario, but not an implausible one. IMO, it never was any real worry.

There have been such methane bubbles in the Earth's past, some of which have contributed to mass extinction events. They are more rare than supervolcanoes.

ChaosKnightXD

07-15-2010, 10:07 PM

Yeah I knew people were exaggerating about the methane bubble a bit but it was still bothersome. The devastation that would cause along with the climate change is no reason not to be a little worried.

jacquel

07-15-2010, 10:07 PM

On the bright side marine scientists are going to have a lot of stuff they can research for a really really long time.

And maybe, just maybe, this could start the cultural change needed for people to take non-expendable energy sources seriously....

But I DOUBT IT

Shard

07-16-2010, 12:47 PM

Speaking as someone who works with marine scientists on a daily basis, I can tell you they had no shortage of work beforehand.

The questions are will they have any funding to do their research, and if so, will their findings be buried under PR bull**** when they're released?

jacquel

07-16-2010, 03:40 PM

I heard that BP is actually giving funding money to coastal universities themselves.

The Toecutter

07-16-2010, 09:40 PM

Matt Simmons is saying there are other leaks under the sea floor away from the capped geyser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scl2dgK_-Nw&feature=player_embedded

I wonder if it's true?

And maybe, just maybe, this could start the cultural change needed for people to take non-expendable energy sources seriously....

But I DOUBT IT

Political change, not cultural change, is what is needed to get said energy sources in use. It's probably not going to happen in time to get much built; the people in charge are allowing the multinationals to loot the treasury of the very funds needed to make the transition, nevermind the fact that there is in existence more debt than assets effectively rendering the U.S. bankrupt.

The U.S. has "screwed the pooch" with regard to renewable energy about 10 years ago, and Bush II was the final nail in its coffin. A transition to renewable energy will take at minimum 10 years; it will require 20 years according to the Hirsch report. It will also require trillions of dollars which were, unfortunately, squandered(and still are being squandered) on oil wars.

***edit***

Well, here's some interesting information regarding whether there are other leaks:

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/15/intergity-test-pressure-leaks-bp-gulf-oil-spill-sea-floor/

Cutter De Blanc

07-18-2010, 11:03 PM

****ing incompetence.

Rodak

07-23-2010, 01:23 PM

Big Tropical Storm heading Right For The Site!!

Predictions?

Shard

07-23-2010, 01:47 PM

As long as there's nothing on the surface that's still working on the sea floor, whatever's happening topside ought to have no effect on the well/cap.

For the oil that's already in the gulf, the storm will spread and dilute it. Given that we're in the beginning of the hurricane season, we're probably seeing the first of several evacuations of critical equipment and personnel from the site.

Red Dragon

07-23-2010, 03:39 PM

The U.S. has "screwed the pooch" with regard to renewable energy about 10 years ago, and Bush II was the final nail in its coffin. A transition to renewable energy will take at minimum 10 years; it will require 20 years according to the Hirsch report. It will also require trillions of dollars which were, unfortunately, squandered(and still are being squandered) on oil wars.

Maybe they'll legalese drugs and prostitution and tax it to get us on the right track.

...

olol

American Hero

07-23-2010, 03:46 PM

Hopefully this storm will push the oil down into Mexico so we don't have to worry about it anymore.

The Toecutter

07-23-2010, 04:29 PM

A lot of people living near the coast are going to sickened by the increased oil/corexit vapor in the air as a result of a hurricane. It remains to be seen just how many.

JPS

07-26-2010, 12:25 PM

Maybe they'll legalese drugs and prostitution and tax it to get us on the right track.

...

olol

Couldn't you imagine all the prostitutes banding together to file a class action lawsuit saying that sex can't be taxed because its not using anything materialistic?

On topic, LA cant catch a break, they spent all this money to rebuild New Orleans now they still wont be able to use it, first a hurricane, now the oil spill.

How flammable is crude oil? Itd suck if a hurricane spread it throughout the city then someone missed the trashcan when throwing a match away.

Red Dragon

07-26-2010, 05:15 PM

Couldn't you imagine all the prostitutes banding together to file a class action lawsuit saying that sex can't be taxed because its not using anything materialistic?

Actually no, it's a service, like a plumber only using his wrench to fix your sink.

Only the plumbing done...

Well you get the point.

The Toecutter

07-31-2010, 12:36 AM

Couldn't you imagine all the prostitutes banding together to file a class action lawsuit saying that sex can't be taxed because its not using anything materialistic?

That would be an awesome day for those freedom-loving Americans everywhere!

On topic, LA cant catch a break, they spent all this money to rebuild New Orleans now they still wont be able to use it, first a hurricane, now the oil spill.

I've argued before just how stupid it is to waste money rebuilding that dump. It is below sea level, and there is no cost-effective or realistic means to change that. Try viewing maps of New Orleans from the 1800s; they built the original part of the settlement above sea level for a reason. Unfortunately, short-sighted politicians decided to expand it to such a degree that most of it is/was below sea level.

However, Halliburton and their ilk saw dollar signs with the opportunity to 'rebuild', payed for by taxpayers... including grossly inflated profit margins pocketed mostly by upper management.

How flammable is crude oil? Itd suck if a hurricane spread it throughout the city then someone missed the trashcan when throwing a match away.

The flash point of crude oil is approxamately 135-150 degrees farenheight depending on a variety of environmental conditions and the quality of the oil.

However, crude oil diluted to the degree as that which is washing ashore, cannot be ignited. A greater concentration and thickness at the waters' surface would be required to cause a fire.

orius

08-01-2010, 02:16 AM

I've argued before just how stupid it is to waste money rebuilding that dump. It is below sea level, and there is no cost-effective or realistic means to change that. Try viewing maps of New Orleans from the 1800s; they built the original part of the settlement above sea level for a reason. Unfortunately, short-sighted politicians decided to expand it to such a degree that most of it is/was below sea level.

Short-sighted and a lack of ecological understanding. The early 20th Century saw a number of flood control projects on the lower Mississippi that made things worse instead of better. Probably some of this urban planning took into account these flood controls and levees and such thinking natural forces could be forcibly tamed. And don't forget some of the political corruption that has plagued the city over the years.

You're also ignoring the racial elements to rebuilding. Some of those neighborhoods maybe should have been left alone after Katrina, but given the disproportionate number of racial minorities displaced by the disaster, no politician is brave or stupid enough to suggest rebuilding the neighborhoods in a better location. They'd be slammed as prejudiced, racist oppressors by their opponents nationwide no matter how they approach the issue. Doesn't help either that many of these minorities, particularly blacks, would have good reasons for being distrustful of such plans either.

The Toecutter

08-05-2010, 07:53 PM

An excellent article from the Huffington post covering the extent of the damage and censorship:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-cope/the-crime-of-the-century_b_662971.html

Over the Gulf from the Source (official term for the Deepwater Horizon spill site) in to shore there is virtually no sign of life anywhere in the vast areas covered by the dispersed oil and Corexit. This in a region previously abundant with life above and below the ocean's surface in all its diversity. For months now, scientists and environmental organizations have been asking where all the animals are. The reported numbers of marine animals lost from BP fall far short of the observed loss. The water has a heavy appearance and the slightly iridescent greenish yellow color that extends as far as the eye can see.

...

The majority of the disposal operations were carried out under cover of darkness. The areas along the beaches and coastal Islands where the dead animals were collected were closed off by the U.S. Coast Guard. On shore, private contractors and local law enforcement officials kept off limits the areas where the remains of the dead animals were dumped, mainly at the Magnolia Springs landfill by Waste Management where armed guards controlled access. The nearby weigh station where the Waste Management trucks passed through with their cargoes was also restricted by at least one Sheriff's deputies in a patrol car, 24/7.

Write your congressman, at least. BP can not be allowed to get away with this and get away with not paying for the externalized costs. Their PR machine is running at full load, but all the PR in the world is not going to change the fact that they have killed the Gulf of Mexico. On TV they talk about the oil "disappearing", when in reality, the corexit simply allowed it to sink to the bottom of the ocean, following the currents, and killing everything it touches. An oyster bed was even recently re-opened for fishing, and it is completely covered in black sludge! Corexit is highly carcinogenic and a significant perentage of those living near where the oil/corexit mix has washed ashore are going to have permanent potentially fatal health problems as a result.

You're also ignoring the racial elements to rebuilding. Some of those neighborhoods maybe should have been left alone after Katrina, but given the disproportionate number of racial minorities displaced by the disaster, no politician is brave or stupid enough to suggest rebuilding the neighborhoods in a better location. They'd be slammed as prejudiced, racist oppressors by their opponents nationwide no matter how they approach the issue. Doesn't help either that many of these minorities, particularly blacks, would have good reasons for being distrustful of such plans either.

The job of people in government is to do the right thing, and not save face or do what is a politically convenient act to get re-elected. Sadly, that seems too much to ask these days... If members of government aren't doing their jobs, why have government?

The Toecutter

08-10-2010, 06:03 PM

Here is a video that was interesting(this is just the first part; there are more and I recommend you watch them all):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPhPvQot4o8&feature=player_embedded

***edit***

For a picture of the extent of the damage as of last month, watch this two-part media coverage from Australia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9YoUFhQ4_k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSbfmJQeWAk&NR=1

The Huffington post has an article describing crab larvae coated with corexit and oil:

But the answer is clear: In part due to the1.8 million gallons of dispersant that BP used, a lot of the estimated 200 million or more gallons of oil that spewed out of the blown well remains under the surface of the Gulf in plumes of tiny toxic droplets. And it's short- and long-term effects could be profound.

...

Perry told the Huffington Post that the small size of the droplets was clearly a factor in how the oil made its way under the crab larvae shells. Perry said the oil droplets in the water "are just the right size that probably in the process of swimming or respiring, they're brought into that cavity."

...

Diaz also expressed concern that dispersed oil droplets could end up doing great damage to the Gulf's many undersea coral reefs. "If the droplets agglomerate with sediment," he said, "they could even settle to the bottom."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/scientists-find-evidence_n_664298.html

I also found the following article interesting, as it debunks the government's recent report, a report that concluded that a majority of the oil has disappeared:

As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the "vast majority" of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and "robust" cleanup efforts.

In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches—where it could linger for years—or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it's a "3-D catastrophe," one scientist said.

...

According to Hollander, the government can account for only about 25 percent of the spilled Gulf oil—the portion that's been skimmed, burned off, directly collected, and so on.

The remaining 75 percent is still unaccounted for, he said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100805-gulf-oil-spill-cement-static-kill-bp-science-environment/

The following comment on that article was also interesting:

username
August 7, 2010, 1:37 p.m. ET

The only "mystery" about the latest utterly deceptive, misleading, and inaccurate "news" stories proclaiming, "The Oil is GONE!! It's a MIRACLE!!! A MYSTERY!!! WHERE DID IT GO???? SO MAGICAL!!!!" is the following: When was the last time people from all walks of science lost every bit of their ethics and regard for the truth? How do you get chumps like this guy "Physicist" to put their names on such utterly specious reports which omit so much information that they imply that 200 Million gallons of raw crude Oil just "disappeared"? Seriously. The oil is in and under the sand, and it is in the water. There is no mystery. Every core sample taken, and every site inspection (that hasn't been blocked by BP employed Police departments and BP paid ex-military goons) has found oil on and under the coastal surface. In places it is so thick it bubbles up when you step on the surface. http://www.wafb.com/global/story.asp?s=12921374 There were strong allegations that BP simply dumped sand on much of the oil using heavy equipment at night. Those allegations are detailed here: http://www.jonlowder.com/2010/07/is-bp-burying-oil.html How did BP get these former scientists and mathematicians to put there names on a report which did zero field work, employed zero people to walk the beaches and take core samples, and included zero visits to the areas closest to the spill emission point? Have we reached the point where it is not only possible, but easy to pay off entire branches of our government (EPA, Coast Guard, NOAA) to get them to endorse any lie that a company wants to tell? If the answer to that question is "Yes", then how can we rely on anything told to us by the government agencies we pay 30% of our earnings to support, and whose employees' generous pensions we pay to sustain? When it so easily publishes big lies like this, is it worth even keeping those departments, and those people funded,salaried and pensioned in our government? I think not.

It's also heartbreaking what is happening to our marshes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly7_nVzNZp0&feature=related

The Toecutter

08-12-2010, 04:36 AM

Someone is preventing wildlife experts from accessing the site and gathering data. They got all of the proper clearances to fly over the site in New Orleans; when they were in mid-air, a caller would claim that their clearances had been revoked. This happened again the next day. The wildlife experts never were able to find out who had directly issued the orders(watch video):

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/death-gyre-in-the-gulf#comments-52798

The red algae in all contaminated zones of the Gulf are dying out; the deep ocean is likely to be worse off than the areas the red algae are exposed to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbfkECfrwPQ

The Gulf's current dead zone was at minimum the size of New Jersey as of early August, twice as large as last year, and the contaminated zone is rumored to today be as large as Ohio:

The same day at an AFL/CIO convention, Obama hailed the news, saying "the long battle to stop the leak and contain the oil is finally close to coming to an end."

False. From the start, the Obama administration conspired with BP, imposing censorship and cover-up, barring the public and news media from coming within 65 feet of clean-up of "booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law" without Coast Guard-authorized permission.

The agency is a virtual BP arm, now retired Admiral Thad Allen its de facto representative as National Incident Commander, doing its bidding, suppressing the disaster's severity, including enforcing the FAA's mid-June announced no-fly zone, not needed if there was nothing to hide. There's plenty, why journalists and other violators faced up to five years in prison and a $40,000 fine for telling the truth, now mostly hidden, not gone.

...

Louisiana State University (LSU) biological oceanographer Robert Carney says scientists are finding plenty of oil, under Louisiana islands, beneath Florida beaches, and in unseen ocean reaches.

Biological oceanographers Markus Huettel and Joel Kostka discovered large oil swaths up to two feet deep on a "cleaned" Pensacola beach. With little oxygen, it'll remain for decades. It gets trapped underground when tiny droplets penetrate porous sand or when waves wash it ashore, burying it. Huettel explained further that previous oil under beaches migrates into groundwater, causing hazards to wildlife and humans, not knowing what they're drinking is contaminated.

He noted also that deep sea spills are "unchartered territory," dispersants for the first time used at depths down to 5,000 feet, settling oil on the seafloor, the mixture suspended and preserved, causing long-term harm for deep-sea animals, and disrupting a large part of the food chain.

University of South Florida (USF) chemical oceanographer David Hollander is also alarmed, calling the 75% claim "ludicrous." USF scientists and Vernon Asper, University of Southern Mississippi oceanographer, were "lambasted" by NOAA and Coast Guard officials when they reported a giant undersea plume, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco telling them to stop "speculating" when, according to Asper, "We had solid evidence, rock solid."

...

Minimally, over 44,000 square miles of ocean are contaminated, an area comparable to Ohio or Pennsylvania. Some estimates say nearly 80,000, more than Florida and Massachusetts combined, the health hazard immense, the waters causing "internal bleeding and hemorrhaging in workers and dolphins alike," according to senior EPA analyst Hugh Kaufman, a rare responsible official.

On Democracy Now, he accused BP and the administration of cover-up and deceit, including using dispersants "to hide the volume of oil that has been released," far more than official reports, to save BP up to billions in fines. "That's the purpose of using dispersants, not to protect the public health or environment. Quite the opposite."

...

On May 4, National Geographic asked if the "Gulf Oil Spill (was) a 'Dead Zone in the Making,' " saying if it can't be contained it could happen. An early August update explained that beneath the surface lies:

"a turbid cloud of stirred-up sediment and dead sea creatures. Flaccid jellyfish floated on the flat currents of tiny corpses. On the sea bottom the waters were gray and terribly empty. No coral, no fish, no algae, nothing but the noxious oily streaks of red tides and lethal plankton blooms. Everything in this 7,000 square-mile zone (the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined) has died from lack of oxygen. It (was) if every person in a city were suddenly sucked dry of air and suffocated...."

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54422

Cutter De Blanc

08-12-2010, 04:52 AM

I bet it's gonna blow up.

The Toecutter

08-12-2010, 05:08 AM

I wouldn't agree with that bet, but there is a remote possibility of it happening.

I'm much more concerned about the effects on wildlife and on the population living on/near the gulf coast. They will be of such a size and scope that they will be impossible to ignore or cover up. Our government is violating the constitution in its efforts to protect BP; our government has been caught(Coast Guard) denying reporters access to areas rumored to be wildlife disposal sites(with witness claims of dead dolphins, rays, sharks, whale pieces, ect.); our government is claiming a highly carcinogenic dispersant is safe when that dispersant has been banned in the nation where it is produced and was previously claimed unsafe by the EPA(BP owns the company that produces it); our government is also attempting to limit BP's liability to $20 billion when the damage is estimated to be no less than $1 trillion thus far, when people near the Gulf Coast are already becoming ill due to exposure of the oil/corexit mix in the air; BP has hired local law enforcement in coastal cities to deny reporters access to hospitals where people are being treated for health complications resulting from this; BP is subtracting what they are paying workers from any liability claims against BP.

What kind of country is this?

Shard

08-12-2010, 01:13 PM

I'm much more concerned about the effects on wildlife and on the population living on/near the gulf coast. They will be of such a size and scope that they will be impossible to ignore or cover up.

I dunno, if a piece of ice three times the size of Manhattan breaking off and puttering around the Atlantic doesn't convince some people that global climate change is a real thing, I wouldn't underestimate the ability of those same people to completely overlook stuff that's going on beneath the surface of the water.

I'd expect to hear a lot more about gay marriage, because it's a super-big deal, rather than the the 20 foot rise in global sea levels if the Greenland glacier completely melts. Protip: Now's not the time to buy waterfront property.

Rodak

08-12-2010, 03:39 PM

...Now's not the time to buy waterfront property.

I've always wanted a beachfront property in Arizona.

The Toecutter

08-13-2010, 04:52 AM

More bad news...

DOJ issues gag orders to scientists:

In an explosive first-hand account, ecosystem biologist Linda Hooper-Bui describes how Obama administration and BP lawyers are making independent scientific analysis of the Gulf region an impossibility. Hooper-Bui has found that only scientists who are part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process to determine BP’s civil liability get full access to contaminated sites and research data. Pete Tuttle, USFWS environmental contaminant specialist and Department of Interior NRDA coordinator, admitted to The Scientist that “researchers wishing to formally participate in NRDA must sign a contract that includes a confidentiality agreement” that “prevents signees from releasing information from studies and findings until authorized by the Department of Justice at some later and unspecified date.” Hooper-Bui writes:

It’s not hazardous conditions associated with oil and dispersants that are hampering our scientific efforts. Rather, it’s the confidentiality agreements that come with signing up to work on large research projects shepherded by government entities and BP and the limited access to coastal areas if you’re not part of those projects that are stifling the public dissemination of data detailing the environmental impact of the catastrophe.

Hooper-Bui’s depictions of samples confiscated by US Fish and Wildlife officials and expeditions blocked by local law enforcement is consistent with the steady stream of reports about obstruction, censorship, and confusion under BP’s private army of contractors. A full and open scientific assessment of the effects of the BP disaster is crucial for the health of the ecosystem and the residents of this American jewel.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/10/scientists-bp-gag

Lt. Commander Dale Vogoelsand of the U.S. Coast guard claims that dispersants are still being used at the original site, which BP has said has been plugged. Why use dispersants if the oil is no longer leaking out, or was Matt Simmons correct and it IS still leaking out?

When reached for comment, Lt. Cmdr. Dale Vogelsang, liaison officer with the United State Coast Guard, told The Log he had contacted Unified Command and they had “confirmed” that dispersants were not being used in Florida waters.

“Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in Louisiana,” Vogelsang said. “We are working with Eglin and Hurlburt to confirm what the flight pattern may be. But right now, it appears to be a normal flight.”

http://www.thedestinlog.com/news/residents-14872-multiple-differ.html

Meanwhile, the government is confiscating samples of dead animals from scientists because said scientists are investigating this without BP's knowledge and approval; law enforcement is then used to prevent the scientists from accessing the site:

Linda Hooper-Bui, Louisiana State University Department of Entomology Associate Professor, writes in The Scientist, “My PhD student’s ant samples were taken away by a US Fish and Wildlife officer at a publicly accessible state Wildlife Management Area because our project hadn’t been approved by Incident Command.”

What is the Incident Command? Hooper-Bui continues, “[It's] also called the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command — which is a joint program of BP and federal agencies, such as the Coast Guard…”

She shares another similar experience, “Where our research trip was halted after driving more than 150 miles to a study site. On the way to our sampling sites in Grand Isle, LA, [we] were turned away by a sheriff’s deputy blocking the road who said that he was told to allow no one who wasn’t associated with BP or NRDA.” The NRDA (National Resource Damage Assessment) process “is overseen by state, tribal and federal science agencies and is partially funded by BP.”

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/feds-confiscate-independent-lsu-scientists-samples-because-project-not-approved-by-bp-others

Robert Cavnar, an expert in the oil industry, who has over 30 years of experience, and former CEO of Milagro Exploration, claims that the statements coming from Thad Allen, Kent Wells, and Steven Chu are inconsistent while BP has refused to release any data:

Wells confirmed that fear in the afternoon, admitting that they indeed had 4,200 psi on the well when it's supposed to be dead. At the seafloor, the well should have no more than 2,200 psi on it, and conceivable less, if the hydrostatic of the mud in the closed well had overcome reservoir pressure.

...

What's going on here is that the "static kill" looks like it did the opposite of what BP and Allen had suggested at the beginning. It certainly hasn't accelerated the relief well. To the contrary, it has caused interminable delays. As a matter of fact, since July 13, the DDIII has only drilled 70 or 80 feet and set one string of casing. With all of the shut downs for the "well integrity test", then the "well injectivity test", then the "static kill" plus cementing, they haven't been able to get much work done for a month, especially with the 2 weather delays.

The mis-information and confusion is also taking its toll. I got asked in an interview yesterday that since the well is "dead" now, why are they bothering with the relief well? AP reported last night that BP and the government are contemplating skipping the bottom kill. Every time Wells, Suttles, or Allen get in front of a microphone, everyone gets even more confused, mis-informed, or both; everyone just wants this to go away, but it's not going away; not until the relief well kills from the bottom as we've been saying for over 3 months.

...

The fact that they're getting pressure now tells me that they are indeed communicated to the reservoir below, probably obscured by the fact that they now have mud strung through the annulus. If they are indeed communicated, pressure will build on the wellhead, which is exactly what's happening. Adm. Allen pledged to get BP to release the pressure data 3 days ago. The next day, when asked about it, he said it was released, but "nobody can find it." The data is still AWOL.

http://dailyhurricane.com/2010/08/adm-allen-confused---so-now-is-everybody-else.html

IamPinhead

08-13-2010, 05:23 PM

http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/4ce24240_b628_d2cf.jpg

The Toecutter

08-14-2010, 10:44 PM

Whatever it is that you posted Pinhead, it has never shown up.

That being said, a video of *something* leaking from the wellhead as of August 13th, 2010, has been captured and put on youtube, just before BP shut down the feed:

http://www.project.nsearch.com/video/massive-oil-leaking-bp-kills?xg_source=facebookshare

MSNBC now has an article on how the well is not completely closed off:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38687424/?GT1=43001

Whatever happened to the well being sealed, which had been repeatedly stated on various media sources?

There is information around the internet concerning the following(I've covered most of these in the links I posted, but you can find it if you look):

-Constant lies from BP about everything
-Censorship of scientists
-Massive dumping of corexit to hide the oil both at the well and on the water's surface
-BP using police/Coast Guard and threat of force to keep scientists and reporters from accessing beaches, and BP/Coast Guard confiscating samples from scientists
-Scientists claiming that the deep scattering layer of the ocean is being clogged with oil/corexit mix that resembles a brown/purple goop, where everything living within the gulf is fleeing it to avoid death, and small areas of the Gulf are overcrowded with sea life as a result
-A massive cover up of dead sea life by BP, including disposal of carcasses and refusing to let scientists do any testing
-Scientists warning that the seafood is unsafe to consume, while the government/media is trying to convince the public otherwise
-Hospital patients who have been sickened as a result of this spill in coastal cities are being denied access to reporters
-BP dumping sand on oil soaked beaches, where the oil bubbles up eventually, prompting them to cover it again
-Video footage of something leaking from the wellhead as of 8/13, AND quotes from scientists and engineers concerning the same, AND admissions that corexit is still being dumped at the site from the Coast Guard and other sources

What do you all think of this? IMO, this is far from over. The worst effects of this will begin to show 1-3 years from now, especially with regard to wildlife. The red algae is already dying. Dolphins, whales, and fish of all sorts have been killed. All of the dead stuff and the oil will allow green algae to over-breed, suck up all the oxygen, and kill everything(this process could take a while) including the plankton that overbred.

Some detractors of this terrible news like to talk about how the Ixtoc spill has similar in size; what they don't tell you is that it was mostly mud, and corexit was not used. I will not pretend to know the real number of corexit used, but even according to BP, it's at least 1.8 million gallons worth as of late July(it's probably far higher than that, given BP denies spraying it in certain places even though people have filmed it).

Cutter De Blanc

08-14-2010, 11:06 PM

I think it's much worse than CNN is telling us and that the government's covering it up so people won't panic.

The Toecutter

08-17-2010, 03:39 AM

The following video shows what oil/corexit stained beaches look like, when BP isn't there to keep everyone with a camera from filming it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvgg5PWsDxQ

Residents of the gulf coast are upset at BP's dishonest commercials as oil continues to wash ashore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkpTax74y4Q

There are protests all over the Gulf, including one in Panama city(linked below), but oddly enough, they never seem to get media coverage:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27717&id=138109319533994&ref=mf

Obama and his daughter did NOT swim in the Gulf as those on TV would have you believe; him and his daughter took a dip at alligator point, which was protected by a barrier island and where no oil will flow:

The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal. Yet it soon emerged that the private beach
on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, north-west Florida, isn't technically in the gulf.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/president-goes-for-a-swim-in-the-gulf-ndash-or-does-he-2053567.html

***edit***

Also, scientists from the University of Georgia are claiming that 80% of the oil still remains, contradicting the statements from BP and our government:

WASHINGTON – Georgia scientists say their analysis shows that most of that BP oil the government said was gone from the Gulf of Mexico is still there.

The scientists say as much as 80 percent of the oil still lurks under the surface. The Georgia team said it is a misinterpretation of data to claim that oil that is dissolved is actually gone. The report from University of Georgia and other scientists came from an analysis of federal estimates.

Earlier this month federal scientists said that only about a quarter of the oil remained and the rest was either removed, dissolved or dispersed.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100816/ap_on_sc/us_sci_gulf_spill_gone

I really hope that I am wrong about this, but the bottom of the ocean and the deep scattering layer that this oil is contaminating are the very basis of life in our oceans; if these two layers are too severely damaged in the Gulf of Mexico, the entire food chain will collapse. Hopefully we will see 2+ years from now that I was completely wrong, but we are still looking at the prospect of a dead Gulf of Mexico that is irreversible on the scale of any human lifetime. Oddly enough, the overuse of the dispersant combined with the lack of a significant hurricane has prevented most of the wetlands from being destroyed, but it remains to be seen what a hurricane will do; those wetlands that are currently contaminated are faring very badly. This is nowhere near over yet...

The Toecutter

08-18-2010, 12:59 AM

In the following video, scientist Susan Shaw discusses the potential impacts of this disaster on wildlife:

http://www.earthboppin.net/talkshop/enviro/messages/2705.html

In the following video, residents of the Gulf of Mexico refuse to swim in the Gulf, while tourists are told it's safe. Also in this same video, an independent lab tests the water in the Gulf and finds that it is toxic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXYjFRBcklE

Shrimpers in the Gulf are finding contaminated shrimp in the areas re-opened for fishing.

Title: Gulf Shrimpers Find Oil In Reopened Fishing Areas. Governnment Says "Shut Up". Sierra Club Alleges Areas Were Solely Reopened to Limit BP's Liability

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gulf-shrimpers-find-oil-reopened-fishing-areas-governnment-says-shut-sierra-club-alleges-are

Scientists who have solid evidence of underwater plumes are being told by BP/government not to discuss it:

"I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil," USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF's public announcement, he said, comparing it to being "beat up" by federal officials.

The USF scientists weren't alone. Vernon Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, was part of a similar effort that met with a similar reaction. "We expected that NOAA would be pleased because we found something very, very interesting," Asper said. "NOAA instead responded by trying to discredit us. It was just a shock to us."

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, in comments she made to reporters in May, expressed strong skepticism about the existence of undersea oil plumes — as did BP's then-CEO, Tony Hayward.

"She basically called us inept idiots," Asper said. "We took that very personally."

Lubchenco confirmed Monday that her agency told USF and other academic institutions involved in the study of undersea plumes that they should hold off talking so openly about it. "What we asked for, was for people to stop speculating before they had a chance to analyze what they were finding," Lubchenco said. "We think that's in everybody's interest. … We just wanted to try to make sure that we knew something before we speculated about it."

"We had solid evidence, rock solid," Asper said. "We weren't speculating." If he had to do it over again, he said, he'd do it all exactly the same way, despite Lubchenco's ire.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/article1114225.ece

Cutter De Blanc

08-19-2010, 06:07 AM

Thad Allen, the government's point man in the Gulf, told reporters that seafood coming from reopened Gulf fishing waters is safe to eat. full story (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/19/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html)

:vomit

The Toecutter

08-20-2010, 02:44 AM

Meanwhile, fisherman are protesting the lack of testing citing safety as their main concern:

"On Sunday, August 15th, fishing families from across the Gulf Cost will gather in Panama City Beach, Florida, with a message for President Obama: The Gulf of Mexico is still infused with oil and dispersants from the BP disaster, threatening marine life, livelihoods, and the health of the American people."

"Fishermen do not want to lose our credibility or deliver contaminated seafood to market and make people sick." - Kathy Birren

"While President Obama and state officials claim that the Gulf is 'open for business,' these fishermen say the spraying of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico is ongoing and they're concerned that seafood pulled from impacted waters is unsafe for eating."

"The tissue testing of this seafood is inadequate and testing for the toxic dispersants is non-existent." - Tracy Kuhns, Louisiana Bayoukeeper

"I think it is crucial for the public to be made aware of the concerns of the commercial fishermen. And if a commercial fisherman who makes his living off of those products doesn't want to deliver them to the public, the public needs to know why." - Chris Bryant, Commercial Fisherman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuf_RAZKdhg

The Toecutter

08-20-2010, 03:09 AM

Only the ignorant, dishonest, and/or stupid at this point would deny that BP and our government are colluding with each other to downplay the damage caused and to reduce BP's liability. Transnational corporations control and comprise the U.S. government, as opposed to the American people; the events that have unfolded after this disaster are most certainly more proof of it.

A scientist has reversed his statement surrounding the amount of oil in the Gulf of Mexico:

A senior government scientist admitted for the first time today that three-quarters of the oil that gushed into the ocean from BP's broken well was still in the Gulf of Mexico, repudiating his own earlier assurances that the worst of the spill was over.

In an appearance before Congress, Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) offered a very different account of the oil that poured into the Gulf, appearing to contradict the official report from two weeks ago that he wrote, which suggested the majority of the oil had been captured or broken down

"I would say most of that is still in the environment," Lehr told the House energy and commerce committee.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/19/bp-oil-spill-scientist-retracts-assurances

Meanwhile, 650 foot tall, 22 mile wide oil plumes are floating underneath the surface of the water, killing everything they come into contact with:

Scientists on Thursday reported results from the first detailed study of a giant plume of oily water near the blown-out BP well — stating that it measured at least 22 miles long, more than a mile wide and 650 feet tall.

While other scientists earlier found evidence of plumes in the area, the new data is the first peer-reviewed study about oil lurking in the water, in this case at some 3,000 feet below the surface. It's also the first to offer some details about the size and characteristics of a plume not only vast in size but which remained stable and intact during a 10-day survey last June.

Moreover, the study adds to the controversy over how much oil is still in the Gulf ecosystem from the spill. The U.S. government earlier this month estimated that 75 percent of the oil that spewed from the Macondo well had been skimmed, burned or broken up by chemical dispersants and natural microbes in the water.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38770508/

I just don't know what to say about this:

Moreover, one of the world's top experts in oil drilling disasters - Dr. Robert Bea - told me yesterday that the geology underneath the seafloor at the leak site is fractured, and includes very loose salt formations. This geology may make it very hard to kill the well, even using relief wells, and he says that we may never be able to kill it. He also said that there are uncorroborated reports of additional leaks other than the main well, but that BP isn't sharing enough information to be able to assess whether or not that there are additional leaks. (Dr. Bea told me that BP is using a "cloak of silence", and is refusing to even show the government videos of what the seafloor looked like before the April explosion).

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bp-and-government-are-underplaying-difficulty-stopping-oil-leak

The Toecutter

08-22-2010, 08:05 PM

Keith Olberman and an oil industry expert discuss the possibility that there are other leaks in the sea floor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=295kZa1-pE8

***edit***

Oil industry engineer Dr. Robert Bea claims the sea floor is cracked; if this is true, the oil may leak for years:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/guest-post-top-oil-expert-geology-is-fractured-relief-wells-may-fail-and-oil-may-leak-for-years-bp-is-using-a-cloak-of-silence-and-refusing-to-share-even-basic-data-with-the-governmen.html

Cutter De Blanc

08-23-2010, 06:28 AM

I thought fissures in the sea floor meant the methane bubble is gonna go boom?

Or are these cracks somehow not fissures?

The Toecutter

08-23-2010, 08:13 PM

I thought fissures in the sea floor meant the methane bubble is gonna go boom?

Or are these cracks somehow not fissures?

There are some geologists that are now saying the amount of methane isn't sufficient for that, although without the data that now exists it was thought to be possible.

However, a fissure in the sea floor means the oil will keep leaking for years and there is nothing we can do about it until/if a solution can be found.

John Mora

08-23-2010, 08:21 PM

I'm just glad everything is fixed and we can go back to normal!

The Toecutter

08-24-2010, 08:39 AM

I'm just glad everything is fixed and we can go back to normal!

Your statement confuses me. Is it sarcasm?

The Toecutter

08-26-2010, 04:48 AM

Remember the video of that scientist Bob Naman, who attempted to test a sample of the water near a boom, a sample which blew up in his lab? He claims someone(it is unclear who) has hired private mercenaries to prevent people from photographing the areas where supposedly the Corexit has ceased use(as according to Thad Allen); he claims it is still being used at night AND obtained photographs of barrels of it being stored at the locations in question. He also claims to have been intimidated:

That's a little perplexing, given that Admiral Thad Allen said on August 9th that dispersants have not been used in the Gulf since mid-July:

We have not used dispersant since the capping stack was put on. I believe that was the 15th of July.

***

But I would tell you, there are no dispersants being used at this time.

More importantly, Naman told me that he found 2-butoxyethanol in the sample.

...

Naman told me he used EPA-approved methods for testing the sample, but that a toxicologist working for BP is questioning everything he is doing, and trying to intimidate Naman by saying that he's been asked to look into who Naman is working with.

I asked Naman if he could rule out the second possibility: that the 2-butoxyethanol he found was from a months-old applications of the more toxic version of Corexit. I assumed that he would say that, as a chemist, he could not rule out that possibility.

However, Naman told me that he went to Dauphin Island, Alabama, last night. He said that he personally saw huge 250-500 gallon barrels all over the place with labels which said:

Corexit 9527

Naman took the following picture of the label:

...

Naman further said he saw mercenaries dressed in all black fatigues, using gps coordinates, applying Corexit 9527 at Dauphin Island and at Bayou La Batre, Alabama. The mercenaries were "Blackwater"-type mercenaries, and Naman assumed they must have been hired either by BP or the government.

Naman also told me that Corexit 9527 is being sprayed at night, and that it is being applied in such a haphazard manner that undiluted 9527 is running onto beach sand.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/08/chemist-mercenaries-hired-by-bp-are-now.html

The Toecutter

08-26-2010, 08:46 PM

The concentration of corexit washing up between Florida and Alabama is more than 13 ppm(Corexit can be absorbed through the skin and various toxicologists have concluded it has been responsible for internal bleeding, kidney and liver damage, bleeding from the rectum, muscle spasms, heart palpatations, cancers, and other effects):

Bob Naman is the analytical chemist who performed the tests featured in WKRG’s broadcast. He was interviewed by Washington’s Blog for an August 24 report. Highlights include:

* Naman found 2-butoxyethanol in the Cotton Bayou sample. [Ingredient in 'discontinued' Corexit 9527.]
* Naman said found no propylene glycol, the main ingredient of Corexit 9500.
* Naman said he went to Dauphin Island, Alabama last night and while there observed many 250-500 gallon barrels which were labeled Corexit 9527. Naman took pictures that he will soon be sharing.
* Naman said he saw men applying the Corexit 9527 while he was in Dauphin Island and also in Bayou La Batre, Alabama.
* Naman said the Corexit 9527 is being haphazardly sprayed at night and is impacting beach sands in a highly concentrated form.

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/alert-13-3-ppm-of-corexit-found-inland-near-florida-border-chemist-says-tests-show-2-butoxyethanol-from-9527-video-photos

Animals in the Gulf are crowding themselves into oil/corexit free areas that still have oxygen:

On Friday, Inter Press Service reported:

Danny Ross, a commercial fisherman from Biloxi… said he has watched horseshoe crabs trying to crawl out of the water, and other marine life like stingrays and flounder trying to escape the water as well. He believes this is because the water is hypoxic. …

David Wallis, another fisherman from Biloxi… [said] “I’ve seen crabs crawling out of the water in the middle of the day. This is going to be affecting us far into the future.”

This has been a common occurrence since BP started spilling oil into the Gulf.

The Post Chronicle noted on August 12th:

Some local fishermen say they are seeing strange behavior by marine life -- mullets, crabs and other creatures which normally stay well under water have been sighted congregating on the surface -- and they relate this to the spill.

***

"It looks like all of the sea life is trying to get out of the water," said Alabama fisherman Stan Fournier. "In the 40 years I have been on these waters I've never seen anything like this before."

The Advocate-Messenger pointed out on July 31st:

Besides potentially maintaining higher levels of toxicity, the oil trapped in the water column is also suffocating the ocean, causing radical drops in oxygen levels never before seen, [Monty Graham, a biological oceanographer specializing in plankton at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab on the coast of Alabama] said.

Following the oil and methane spill, Graham’s measurements of oxygen levels in the waters where he studies plankton dropped to two to three times lower than normal, to a level so low most animals cannot tolerate it.

That suffocating effect is why all kinds of sea animals have been showing up in greater and greater numbers, closer and closer to shore — they can’t breathe in their normal habitats anymore.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/08/gulf-water-so-toxic-dolphins-fish-crabs.html

Dispersants have recently been photographed in the water, still in powder form(they would not be in poweder form had their use ceased when BP said it did):

Today, Project Gulf Impact is out on the waters in and around Orange Beach Alabama. What they have found is exactly the opposite of what BP and the federal government have told the American people. Not only did they find oil but they apparently found what looks to be freshly sprayed dispersant, still in powder form.

Why is this toxic dispersant still being sprayed? Warnings from scientists and independent journalists have indicated that Corexit could effect the gulf for at least twenty years.

http://theintelhub.com/2010/08/25/project-gulf-impact-were-seeing-way-more-dispersant-than-ever-before-large-thick-oil-plumes-freshly-sprayed-with-poison/

Just posting this, in case anyone still cared...

Cutter De Blanc

08-26-2010, 08:58 PM

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cjrILVe632A/SbqlzqH0ymI/AAAAAAAAAL8/NU3bIPTJxzU/s320/Blinky+toxic+fish+toxic+baby+shampoo.gif

The Toecutter

08-27-2010, 05:54 AM

At Modoto Island in Louisiana, the ground is littered with dead birds(photos and videos in link below):

The ground was littered with dead birds. So many dead birds that we aren't sure how many were out there, many dozens of dead birds just in the small area which we surveyed on the island. The dead appeared to included mostly seagulls and terns though some were badly decayed and identification was difficult. It was clear to me by the various states of decay, from scattered bones to a tern that couldn't have been dead for more than a day and everything in between, that this is an ongoing situation.

http://leanweb.org/news/latest/dead-bird-island-terrebonne-parish.html

There are scientists claiming the likely cause of thousands of fish and other marine lifeforms washing ashiore is due to the oil/corexit mix(more specifically, plankton trying to metabolize the toxins, leading to oxygen depleted zones):

On Aug. 22, St. Bernard Parish authorities reported a huge fish kill at the mouth of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.

“By our estimates there were thousands - and I’m talking about 5,000 to 15,000 - dead fish,” St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro told reporters. “Different species were found dead, including crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout, red fish, you name it, included in that kill.”

The next day, a thick, orange substance with tar balls and a “strong diesel smell” was discovered around Grassy Island, near the fish kill, according to a news release.

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/fish-kills-worry-gulf-scientists-fishers-environmentalists

IamPinhead

08-27-2010, 06:21 PM

Red Dragon

08-27-2010, 07:10 PM

N862Pmi5CV4

The Toecutter

08-28-2010, 12:44 AM

ITT: The Toecutter simultaneously preaches to the choir and beats a dead horse by reminding us that BP is a giant evil corporation trying to clean up a mess that could have been prevented in any way they can, ethical or not.

Do you really believe they are trying to clean up this mess? The facts seem to point to the more likely possibility that they are trying to cover it up to limit their liability.

-There been a virtual media blackout on real information surrounding this disaster
-BP has been paying inordinate sums of money to pay scientists to write bogus studies; some of said scientists have denounced what they had written as false and independent scientists have contested BP's/NOAA's claims as impossible
-BP and our government both have taken steps to prevent data from being gathered including but not limited to threats of violence or arrest for even photographing evidence of collecting samples
-BP and our government have in the past confiscated and disposed of dead wildlife so that it could not be analyzed
-Our own government(EPA) has reversed its stance on the dangers of the dispersants used with no explanation provided when independent scientists still claim they are dangerous to human health
-BP has denied and continues to deny using dispersants in certain areas even though they have been caught. It would be easier to clean up the oil were these dispersants not used, as the booms are designed to skim oil from the top of the water; when dispersants are used on oil, it no longer has the surface tension required to float on the water and is thus harder to clean

If BP were serious about cleaning this up, they wouldn't be spending the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary for PR and to buy government officials and scientists off, nor would they be spending this money to prevent the gathering of evidence against them, and would instead actually spend the money on cleaning up the gulf.

Nevermind that both BP and the government are acting illegally; the constitutional rights of Americans to freedom of speech and freedom of the press have been violated. This is treason.

Were someone or some group to decide one day to systematically kill certain upper executives in BP along with major shareholder Larry Fink, and to destroy Nalco's production facilities with explosives, those living along the Gulf coast would rightfully rejoice. These scum are treating the lives of millions of human beings as expendable commodities; they deserve nothing less than the same treatment, IMO.

Red Dragon

08-28-2010, 02:00 AM

Just don't respond to it... It's like a t-rex, stay perfectly still and it will go away.

SirTMagus

08-28-2010, 02:16 AM

ITT: IamPinhead continuously lives up to his namesake~

The Toecutter

08-30-2010, 06:59 AM

Dr. Riki Ott comments on the continuing use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico:

Summary: Based on these documents, and more, we believe that dispersant spraying in inland and near shore waters across the Gulf of Mexico from Louisiana to the western Florida panhandle is occurring now and has continued unabated (before) and since July 19, the date that the seafood safety panel proclaimed was the last day dispersants were sprayed. Based on these documents, and more, we believe that the dispersant spraying in inland and near shore waters is being conducted for the sole purpose of sinking the visible oil, an activity that is supposedly illegal. According to the University of South Florida, dispersed oil micro-droplets have been documented throughout the Gulf water column and are likely to affect the entire ecosystem.

The inability of the federal and state agents who attended the Dockside Chat in Jean Lafitte, LA, on Aug. 25 to find recent subsurface oil and ocean bottom oil or dispersant spraying activity in inland or near shore waters gives us zero confidence in these same agencies' declaration that they can find no oil or dispersant in Gulf seafood product.

Sincerely,

Riki Ott, PhD
Ultimate Civics Project
Earth Island Institute
POB 1460
Cordova, AK 99574
970-903-6818
www.RikiOtt.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riki-ott/an-open-letter-to-us-epa_b_697376.html

IamPinhead

08-30-2010, 09:46 PM

Do you really believe they are trying to clean up this mess? The facts seem to point to the more likely possibility that they are trying to cover it up to limit their liability.

-There been a virtual media blackout on real information surrounding this disaster
-BP has been paying inordinate sums of money to pay scientists to write bogus studies; some of said scientists have denounced what they had written as false and independent scientists have contested BP's/NOAA's claims as impossible
-BP and our government both have taken steps to prevent data from being gathered including but not limited to threats of violence or arrest for even photographing evidence of collecting samples
-BP and our government have in the past confiscated and disposed of dead wildlife so that it could not be analyzed
-Our own government(EPA) has reversed its stance on the dangers of the dispersants used with no explanation provided when independent scientists still claim they are dangerous to human health
-BP has denied and continues to deny using dispersants in certain areas even though they have been caught. It would be easier to clean up the oil were these dispersants not used, as the booms are designed to skim oil from the top of the water; when dispersants are used on oil, it no longer has the surface tension required to float on the water and is thus harder to clean

If BP were serious about cleaning this up, they wouldn't be spending the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary for PR and to buy government officials and scientists off, nor would they be spending this money to prevent the gathering of evidence against them, and would instead actually spend the money on cleaning up the gulf.

Nevermind that both BP and the government are acting illegally; the constitutional rights of Americans to freedom of speech and freedom of the press have been violated. This is treason.

Were someone or some group to decide one day to systematically kill certain upper executives in BP along with major shareholder Larry Fink, and to destroy Nalco's production facilities with explosives, those living along the Gulf coast would rightfully rejoice. These scum are treating the lives of millions of human beings as expendable commodities; they deserve nothing less than the same treatment, IMO.

No, I'm actually agreeing with you completely. BP is withholding information about a disaster without any thought about how this is affecting other people. You've got plenty of information to back it up, I wasn't being sarcastic in the least bit.

ITT: IamPinhead continuously lives up to his namesake~
By stating that everybody at the Pav agrees with Toecutter and that he has plenty of information to back up what he's saying? I'm an idiot for stating something everybody agrees on? Or is it because I secretly find joy in the pain of those involved, because that would make plenty of sense, considering I named the account after a horror character whose motif is pain and suffering? Otherwise you're ignoring every other post on this thread and assuming I'm incapable of any deductive reasoning based on the glaring facts Toecutter has presented against a company that defines "evil." That would be just awesome.

Cutter De Blanc

08-30-2010, 10:52 PM

Well, what can we do to solve this oil thing?

IamPinhead

08-31-2010, 01:30 AM

Well, what can we do to solve this oil thing?

Human hair. Very absorbent stuff.

The Toecutter

08-31-2010, 04:52 AM

Thad Allen responds that he has no regrets about the actions taken, despite the extreme fragility surrounding the current pipe(including being broken in 3 pieces):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN_eYb2jdPk

50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, an ingredient in corexit, was found in a sample of water from a family's swimming pool in Tampa; it came from either a plane spraying it, or possibly from rain:

“Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

...

BP Press Officer Daren Beaudo released a statement on August 28 that reads, “Unified Command records indicate that the last date of use of the Corexit 9527 was May 22,” almost three months before the samples were taken from the pool.

Yet, the Schebler’s report is the second time in the last 10 days that the 2-butoxyethanol marker for Corexit 9527A has been discovered near the Gulf. It has also been found near the Florida border in Cotton Bayou, AL, at about 1/4 the level as in Homosassa, FL. A WKRG segment from August 19 featured an inland water sample that tested for 13.3 ppm of the Corexit dispersant.

...

“At night we would hear very low aircraft, including helicopters. We figured they were just heading to help out in the Gulf,” and Mrs. Schebler added that she was told, “The prevailing winds from the Gulf are easterly — and when they spray, it is airborne — and that we are right in the path of those winds.” It was also noted that, “We had alot of rain here before my husband got sick, and wondered what was going on… We had been having daily downpours in July.”

There is no way to be sure at this point. Though she stated, “Friends a few miles away… are having [a] similar situation. They are now thinking of getting their water tested.”

As for the family’s current physical well being, “We both still have rashes that will not go away if we stop the cream we were given by our doctor. Warren still gets diarrhea on and off – this never happened with this frequency before.”

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/exclusive-tests-find-sickened-family-has-50-3-ppm-of-corexits-2-butoxyethanol-in-swimming-pool-just-one-hour-north-of-tampa-lab-report-included

Shard

08-31-2010, 01:46 PM

Is 50.3 ppm a significant concentration for a person to ingest? Were there any traces of corexit found in the test results for the family? Have they cleaned their pool since May?

I'm not casting doubt on their story so much as waiting for factual connections to be made. It's one thing to say we have documented proof that the dispersant is making people sick and another thing to say we have dispersant and sick people and maybe the two are related.

Rashes and diarrhea are unpleasant, but it's not like there aren't chemicals stored under the sink that have the same effect. Hell, it's not like there aren't pool cleaning chemicals that cause exactly the same reaction.

Cutter De Blanc

08-31-2010, 09:34 PM

Rashes and diarrhea are unpleasant, but it's not like there aren't chemicals stored under the sink that have the same effect. Hell, it's not like there aren't pool cleaning chemicals that cause exactly the same reaction.

Well you don't expect those chemicals to be in the ocean, you expect them to be under your sink. That's why you use gloves when you handle those chemicals.

http://www.dentonisd.org/54520812154712150/lib/54520812154712150/images/YellowLatexDishwashingGlovesL.jpg

The Toecutter

09-01-2010, 01:04 AM

Is 50.3 ppm a significant concentration for a person to ingest?

Yes; OSHA claims being in a location where the air exceeds 50 ppm for more than 8 hours is hazardous.

Were there any traces of corexit found in the test results for the family?

No, but they are certainly exhibiting symptoms of exposure, and not only this family either.

Have they cleaned their pool since May?

Doubtful, being that it has been raining almost every day there.

The Toecutter

09-01-2010, 05:59 PM

More bad news... toxins found within the oil are being found in Gulf coast residents, even those that live inland. In the following online broadcast, at 31:45, you can hear the report. 31:45 is about 1/4 into the broadcast.

http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/archive/Intel-Hub-32k-083110.mp3

Matt Smith from projectgulfimpact.org is interviewed.

It’s been a collaboration of a couple of groups working on the oil spill and other people.

They are actually finding the toxins that are in the oil in the blood of the people who live down there.

Its horrifying because they’re cumulative and they’re heavy metals and toxins…

We used three different doctors, and the exact same thing that is being found in the water and the air and the soil is now in the blood.

This is the kind of stuff that causes cancer and death.

This is not just in the workers that we’ve had tested, but also in residents.

The worst part about that is we haven’t even gotten to the Corexit testing yet.

This is just the oil, the polyaromatic hydrocarbons, the heavy metals, the arsenic.

And they’re not just people who are right on the beach, some people are really inland.

The credit for testing goes to:

* Project Gulf Impact
* Sassafras
* Gulf Coast Volunteers (Michelle Nix)
* Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana

http://theintelhub.com/2010/09/01/project-gulf-impact-three-different-doctors-find-pahs-heavy-metals-and-arsenic-in-blood/

The FDA admits to not testing for aresenic, mercury, and other toxins in the oil:

Video: http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/fda-admits-not-testing-for-mercury-arsenic-or-other-toxic-heavy-metals-in-crude-oil-video

The horror is just beginning, by the looks of things...

Cutter De Blanc

09-01-2010, 06:54 PM

It's quite like watching a frieght train charge toward a broken bridge.

Valkysas

09-02-2010, 04:04 PM

Hey guys, it happened again.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_rig_explosion

IamPinhead

09-02-2010, 06:04 PM

The Toecutter

09-05-2010, 05:00 AM

It appears as if microscopic amounts of oil are suspended in the air, but further testing is needed to determine to what extent:

Just as seaspray might leave a film on a person's sunglasses, a greasier material was detected by beach workers.

"You could actually feel it in your hair and stuff," says beach worker Matt Cole.

And when the crew started to take down the umbrellas, they were slippery. "You could rub your finger along the shaft of the aluminum pole on the umbrella, and it was kind of an oily brown substance," Cole adds.

...

Geologist Mark White has also confirmed that oil was apparently airborne, coating the sea oats that line the sand dunes on the beach. He runs a white napkin along the stem of the plant, and it leaves a greasy brown tinge — "Problematic for sure," he says.

White says no trends have surfaced in their two months of testing. And with changing currents, tides and winds, he says, only long-term monitoring will give residents the answers they're looking for.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129610908

LunarWingCloud

09-05-2010, 04:20 PM

Hey guys, it happened again.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_rig_explosion

The hell is wrong with the people keeping track of our oil...?

The Toecutter

09-06-2010, 01:15 AM

Gulf residents are being found with measurable quantities of oil in their blood...

The testing did come back with unusually high amounts of toxins in the subjects bloodstreams indicating that the government and the EPA have been lying to the general public about the health effects and the air quality in the region. A fact that we pointed out over two months ago.

Another major fact to consider is that gulf residents who have not had testing done to document their illness, symptoms, and or accumulative toxicity levels, will be short changed when it comes to future claims against BP.

http://theintelhub.com/2010/09/05/gulf-residents-test-positive-for-oil-in-blood/

IamPinhead

09-06-2010, 01:27 AM

the government and the EPA have been lying to us
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KgBT8kIRgBo/SXTn2oA2keI/AAAAAAAAE1o/gGDt_g_6lN0/s320/Walter+Peck.jpg
O rly?

The Toecutter

09-07-2010, 07:10 PM

Here is a video showing the test results of blood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6drasiXNFaw

Some of the highlights?

Abnormally high amounts of Ethylbenzene; the average of the Gulf coast residents samples was at 0.31 ppb(parts per billion), while the 95th percentile from random blood samples analyzed by the lab is 0.11 ppb.

Abnormally high amounts of m,p-Xylene, the 95th percentile of random blood samples being 0.34 ppb and the m,p-Xylene in blood samples from Gulf Coast residents ranging from 0.4-1.3 ppb.

Abnormally high amounts of Hexane, the 95th percentile being less than 200 ppb, and the average of Gulf Coast residents being 199.5 ppb.

If you live near the Gulf Coast, I'd recommend leaving. This **** will make you sick. Look up its effects...

The Toecutter

09-13-2010, 01:02 AM

BP is now claiming it needs more offshore drilling permits, and that it won't compensate the victims of the spill if they don't get the permits...

BP wants the federal government to meet its demand for continued access to oil and gas leases in the United States. If the oil giant can't keep drilling here, its promise to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster might go unfulfilled—or so the company claims.

...

BP's behavior is riling a few in Congress. On Monday, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) accused the company of "openly blackmailing the American government." The company, he said in a statement, "should be held responsible not just for the damage it caused, but for its consistently indifferent attitude to that damage."

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) took to Twitter for his criticism: "BP threat to not pay damages if CLEAR Act is approved should be repudiated. Bill brings accountability & reforms to the leasing process."

http://www.alternet.org/environment/148109/congressman:_bp_%22openly_blackmailing_the_american_government%22/

The Toecutter

09-13-2010, 06:22 AM

Professor Samantha Joye claims that a large amount of the oil has accumulated at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, including a 2-inch thick layer of dirt at the bottom of the ocean that extends 70 miles from the Macondo well. Nothing lives there except for bacteria; there are no shrimp or fish.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/bp-spill-oil-found-bottom-gulf-11618885

This is cause for concern because most ocean life depends on the organisms that live on the bottom of the ocean. It is only a matter of time before the remaining organisms that are higher on the food chain are killed off.

Cutter De Blanc

09-13-2010, 09:36 PM

I'm still not sure what i should do about this. Write my congressman? Like he cares. He probably wouldn't even get my letter, and if he did he'd chuckle, and throw it in the garbage and keep getting money from big business.

Also, I find it appalling that CNN isn't reporting about any of this stuff, they just keep saying the spill should be completely cleaned up "soon", which is the same thing they've been saying since May.

Newest load of Bull**** CNN is handing us (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/13/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html)

The Toecutter

09-15-2010, 02:44 PM

I'm still not sure what i should do about this. Write my congressman? Like he cares. He probably wouldn't even get my letter, and if he did he'd chuckle, and throw it in the garbage and keep getting money from big business.

I was being partially serious with that comment(it's your only 'legal' option that won't get you arrested, and I was being partially facetious(they don't follow demands of those voters they claim to represent; more Americans had written their congressmen over the first bank bailouts than any other time in history, more than 9 in 10 Americans in opposition, and the politicians voted for it anyway).

Also, I find it appalling that CNN isn't reporting about any of this stuff, they just keep saying the spill should be completely cleaned up "soon", which is the same thing they've been saying since May.

Newest load of Bull**** CNN is handing us (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/13/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html)

The mainstream media will not broadcast information that they deem capable of significantly harming or even destroying their sponsors...

The Toecutter

09-16-2010, 01:42 AM

8/20/2010: Scientists are claiming they are being prevented from investigating the Gulf of Mexico for refusing to sign a confidentiality agreement with BP(article).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129324775

Imagine that the Gulf of Mexico was a giant crime scene. You know that yellow crime-scene tape, imagine that it's spread all over the Gulf and if you want to cross it, you can't, without getting permission from the authorities who have roped it off.

So if you're a scientist, and you want to investigate that giant oil plume 22 miles long that the scientists at Woods Hole now say exists, or if you want to measure how much oil has sunk to the bottom and may be affecting the wildlife there, you as an important, independent scientist, may not be allowed in.

The only information or the facts that are allowed to be collected belong to the parties involved. That's BP and the U.S. government. And because both BP and the feds have a vital and monetary interest in the amount of oil still in the water and on the wetlands, you have to get past the lawyers first, before you can go on to public property and waterways.

9/13/2010: BP has been caught again illegally using dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico(article, photos):

http://www.truth-out.org/evidence-mounts-bp-spraying-toxic-dispersants63219

Shirley logged what they saw and took hundreds of photos. The Tillmans confirm, both with what they logged in writing as well as in photos, what Truthout has reported before: BP has hired out-of-state contractors to use unregistered boats, usually of the Carolina Skiff variety, to spray toxic Corexit dispersants on oil located by VOO workers.

9/14/2010: Hundreds of thousands(millions) of dead fish and even a dead whale are accumulating in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, of many different species, which is something that has never happened before(article, photo, video):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100914/od_yblog_upshot/massive-fish-kill-reported-in-louisiana/

What you see above isn't a rural gravel road. It's a Louisiana waterway, its surface completely covered with dead sea life -- a mishmash of species of fish, crabs, stingray and eel. New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL-TV reports that even a whale was found dead in the area, a stretch of coastal Louisiana hit hard this summer by oil from BP's busted Gulf well.

Fish kills are fairly common along the Gulf Coast, particularly during the summer in the area near the mouth of the Mississippi, the site of this kill. The area is rife with dead zones -- stretches where sudden oxygen depletion can cause widespread death. But those kills tend to be limited to a single species of fish, rather than the broad sort of die-off involved in this kill.

And therein lies the concern of Gulf residents, who suspect this may be yet another side effect of the catastrophic BP oil spill.

9/14/2010: The Homeland Security Department is confiscating dead wildlife samples from independent scientists(video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmIpTAuWCBM

9/15/2010: The Homeland Security Department is gathering names of and spying on anti-drilling activists(article).

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/15/pa-homeland-security.html

Pennsylvania Homeland Security has been spying on anti-drilling activists, taking down names of attendees at meetings and even a screening of a documentary on drilling; these dossiers on peaceful protesters are then supplied to Marcellus Shale, a drilling company. The State Homeland Security Director James Powers justifies the snooping on meetings and information sessions because activists' "presence may spark something else. [I don't want to see public meetings] escalate to physical criminal acts."