Lost ‘Horizon’ and the Price We Really Pay for Oil.
Alaskans are watching the news, like the rest of the nation watched us after the Exxon Valdez slammed into Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound more than 20 years ago. Helpless. Far away. Filled with grief. We look at our screens and monitor a growing black sheen of oil spread and we can’t do anything to stop it, and we don’t know where it’s going to go.
This is a picture I took at a huge Earth Day gathering in 1989 in downtown Manhattan, a few weeks after that spill. This time it’s British Petroleum. And in the Amazon it’s Chevron. And on the Niger Delta, it’s Shell. And the story plays out across the world. The names change, but the result is the same. We pay a heavy price for our refusal to change our ways.
The Associated Press just released an article with a headline that tightens the throats of those who were here, and watched the devastation of the ecosystem and communities on Prince William Sound unfold over decades.
Gulf Coast Oil Spill Could Eclipse Exxon Valdez
An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control with a faint sheen washing ashore along the Gulf Coast Thursday night as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.
The spill was bigger than imagined — five times more than first estimated — and closer. Faint fingers of oily sheen were reaching the Mississippi River delta, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines.
“It is of grave concern,” David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. “I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling.”
The oil slick could become the nation’s worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world’s richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life. Thicker oil was in waters south and east of the Mississippi delta about five miles offshore.
It’s easy for the right to call progressives “anti-development.” They’d have us all sitting around making grilled tofu with our solar ovens, and heating up water from the creek to bathe. They say we want to stand in the way of progress. They say we shouldn’t bother with all that pesky studying and science. Sarah Palin who was here in 1989, and whose husband commercial fishes says we should drill, baby, drill – not stall baby, stall.
“Behind the rhetoric lie new drilling bans and leasing delays; soon to follow are burdensome new environmental regulations. Instead of “drill, baby, drill,” the more you look into this the more you realize it’s “stall, baby, stall.”
Too many studies involved in the president’s plan, the Alaskan says: “What we need is action — action that results in the job growth and revenue that a robust drilling policy could provide”.
[Palin] concludes that “the administration’s sudden interest in offshore drilling is little more than political posturing designed to gain support for job-killing energy legislation soon to come down the pike,” and predicts: “I’m confident that GOP senators will not take the bait.”
Perhaps the current administration will now rethink its “sudden interest in offshore drilling.”
We cannot simply stop resource development, but we MUST find ways to take control of the nation’s energy and move forward with alternatives that do not involve our waters, and do not endanger the ocean and its fisheries. The Exxon Valdez, and The Horizon are cautionary tales that are supposed to warn us about drilling in the Chukchi Sea, extracting coal from Chuitna, and risking Bristol Bay with the Pebble Mine. Environmental disasters happen, but the ocean does not forgive us so quickly. Our mistakes are carried unchecked to delicate places where tourism, biodiversity, aesthetic beauty, fisheries, coral reefs, and livelihoods are lost. The ocean has a long memory.
One of the most sobering things about this accident is that it was not some old dilapidated oil rig. We cannot blame obsolescence, corrosion, or degradation. We can’t stand and say, “This would never happen any more.” The Horizon was state-of-the-art drilling technology. This was our best. And it’s now sitting five thousand feet below the surface hemorrhaging oil into another American fishery, and on to another coast line. Alaskans’ hearts break for you, Louisiana, because we can see into your future. We have a crystal ball.
The following email made it into my hands by way of the Alaska Independent Fishermans Marketing Association. The author is unknown.
You may have heard the news in the last two days about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which caught fire, burned for two days, then sank in 5,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. There are still 11 men missing, and they are not expected to be found.
The rig belongs to Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor. The rig was originally contracted through the year 2013 to BP and was working on BP’s Macondo exploration well when the fire broke out. The rig costs about $500,000 per day to contract. The full drilling spread, with helicopters and support vessels and other services, will cost closer to $1,000,000 per day to operate in the course of drilling for oil and gas. The rig cost about $350,000,000 to build in 2001 and would cost at least double that to replace today.
The rig represents the cutting edge of drilling technology. It is a floating rig, capable of working in up to 10,000 ft water depth. The rig is not moored; It does not use anchors because it would be too costly and too heavy to suspend this mooring load from the floating structure. Rather, a triply-redundant computer system uses satellite positioning to control powerful thrusters that keep the rig on station
within a few feet of its intended location, at all times. This is called Dynamic Positioning.The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft. The next operation was to suspend the well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the work necessary to bring the well into production.
It is thought that somehow formation fluids – oil /gas – got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed – the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment – the Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit, and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface. The flames were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow – the flames. They were 200 – 300 ft high.
All of this will be investigated and it will be some months before all of the particulars are known. For now, it is enough to say that this marvel of modern technology, which had been operating with an excellent safety record, has burned up and sunk taking souls with it.
The well still is apparently flowing oil, which is appearing at the surface as a slick. They have been working with remotely operated vehicles, or ROV’s which are essentially tethered miniature submarines with manipulator arms and other equipment that can perform work underwater while the operator sits on a vessel. These are what were used to explore the Titanic, among other things. Every floating rig has one on board and they are in constant use. In this case, they are deploying ROV’s from dedicated service vessels. They have been trying to close the well in using a specialized port on the BOP’s and a pumping arrangement on their ROV’s. They have been unsuccessful so far. Specialized pollution control vessels have been scrambled to start working the spill, skimming the oil up.
In the coming weeks they will move in at least one other rig to drill a fresh well that will intersect the blowing one at its pay zone. They will use technology that is capable of drilling from a floating rig, over 3 miles deep to an exact specific point in the earth – with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus. Once they intersect their target, a heavy fluid will be pumped that exceeds the formation’s pressure, thus causing the flow to cease and rendering the well safe at last. It will take at least a couple of months to get this done, bringing all available technology to bear. It will be an ecological disaster if the well flows all of the while; Optimistically, it could bridge off downhole.
It’s asad day when something like this happens to any rig, but even more so when it happens to something on the cutting edge of our capabilities. The photos that follow show the progression of events over the 36 hours from catching fire to sinking.
Day 2 – Morning. Settling quite low in the water now – Fuel and oil slick forming
We need to ask ourselves what would happen if the name on the rig was not BP and was not Exxon, but was Shell? And what if the location was not the Gulf of Mexico, and not Prince William Sound, but the Chukchi Sea? Imagine the above scenario happening under a bed of pack ice, off the road system and hundreds of miles from the nearest city. It is not a pretty picture, and nobody seems to want to talk about that. We’re dealig with profits after all. The bottom line. The almighty dollar. Our corporate benefactors. The ones the Republicans like to remind us “pay 90% of the bills around here.” I remind them that they also create 100% of the oil spills.
And with their profits, they buy our politicians.
Our memories are short, and we pay the price for it. It took the Exxon Valdez to teach us that we need double-hulled tankers in Prince William Sound. And yet we don’t have anything that tells us we need them in Cook Inlet, the next body of water over. We learn our lessons hard.
Will the Horizon be our Chernobyl for off-shore drilling? Will the Everglades, and our southeast fisheries be the price we have to pay to learn that lesson? And how long will it take for the Gulf Coast to forgive us?
Drill, baby. Drill.
I am on the Texas part of the Gulf and this kills me. Just kills me. I have been weepy about it for the past several days. I just don’t think a lot of people understand the long-reaching, years to come, damages this will cause. Especially one of my friends who told me I just needed to lay off “drill baby drill” Palin because I was a much nicer person than that, displaying all that hate against her and what all. I don’t feel like being nice. So I told them to suck me. There are no words for this.
I am in Tx, too but not on the Gulf. This is so sad and I am sorry for those of you on the Gulf.
GOOD FOR YOU!!! hahaha. i can not stand it when people discount what i am saying because they want me to be nice. what they really want is for me to shut up so they can talk about whatever it is they are interested in talking about. which is usually about themselves.
Bubbles, you so rock.
I am on the gulf side of Texas also. It’s just killing me also. I have alot of friends who are in the shrimping industry and this is going to hurt them something awfull.Heartbreaking.To ALL them people who sung Drill Baby Drill ………………SUCK ME !
If I have one more person tell me to quit being so full of hate because I am really a sweet person with a good heart I’m going to … well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do but it won’t be sweet. CRock, the shrimpers here are what I have been thinking about too. That’s one tiny bit of this whole mess but living this close to Galveston I know a lot of people who do that for a living and I feel for them. And the animals. So yeah they can all suck me and go on to hell.
and kiss my grits, also, too! This burns my biscuits and breaks my heart.
Anne in Texas, Alaskans so sympathize.
Years ago I spent some time on North Padre Island. It was a restful place with nice people, but would have been much nicer without the big gobs of black goo that had come ashore from the drilling rigs in the Gulf, and that was nothing compared to this. My heart goes out to all impacted by this tragedy.
I am with you Anne, have never liked Sarah Palin but have remained silent until now. But this is the extra drop. I live in Georgia, and often go to Pensacola, FL in the Gulf of Mexico, a beautiful coastline now threatened by this disaster. The absolute idiocy and emptiness of Sarah Palin is more than ever obvious. Her silence speaks volume. I just hope she will keep silent from now on.
is it a bad thing to have s’error palin finally shut her mouth for awhle?
This is a monumental disaster and I really honestly hope the Administration re-think its offshore drilling policy.
If I hear drill baby drill one more time, I will bust a blood vessel. Palin really does need to sit down and shut up. Otherwise – come up with a plausible alternative instead the usual BS!!
Last week I had the misfortune of listening to Dan Fagan’s show for a bit. He was raking a caller over the coals as she suggested this oil rig sinking was bad news. Fagan challenged her to name one single major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He was his usual self, trying his best to emulate his hero, Limbaugh.
I wonder if Dan has been watching the news lately. This time it’s his state. (he is no way Alaskan) I wonder if he’ll set down his oil company poms poms for even one day?
Drill, Baby, Drill
Here you go – major oil spills in Gulf since 1967
June 3, 1979 – exploratory oil well Ixtoc 1 blew out, spilling an estimated 140 million gallons of crude oil into the open sea. Although it is one of the largest known oil spills, it had a low environmental impact.
June 8, 1990 – off Galveston, Tex.: “Mega Borg” released 5.1 million gallons of oil some 60 nautical miles south-southeast of Galveston as a result of an explosion and subsequent fire in the pump room.
Nov. 28. 2000 – Mississippi River south of New Orleans: oil tanker Westchester lost power and ran aground near Port Sulphur, La., dumping 567,000 gallons of crude oil into lower Mississippi. Spill was largest in U.S. waters since Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989.
Aug 2005 – New Orleans, Louisiana: The Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were spilled during Hurricane Katrina from various sources, including pipelines, storage tanks and industrial plants.
June 19, 2006 – Calcasieu River, Louisiana: An estimated 71,000 barrels of waste oil were released from a tank at the CITGO Refinery on the Calcasieu River during a violent rain storm.
July 25, 2008 – New Orleans, Louisiana: A 61-foot barge, carrying 419,000 gallons of heavy fuel, collides with a 600-foot tanker ship in the Mississippi River near New Orleans. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel leak from the barge, causing a halt to all river traffic while cleanup efforts commence to limit the environmental fallout on local wildlife.
Jan10, 2010 – Port Arthur, Texas: The oil tanker Eagle Otome and a barge collide in the Sabine-Neches Waterway, causing the release of about 462,000 gallons of crude oil. Environmental damage was minimal as about 46,000 gallons were recovered and 175,000 gallons were dispersed or evaporated, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Source, http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001451.html
Today, Anchorage radio host Fagan took another rung on the lunacy ladder. He first claimed that the oil spill is “a dream for Louisiana.” He then went on to equate the spill to a “glass of spilled milk.” Even Fagan’s normal Fagan-bots were turning on him a bit today.
He waved his oil company pom poms for the next 45 minutes, and I had to change the channel. I just couldn’t take any more. How can one person be so stupid?
This is heartbreaking.
I grew up not far from the Santa Barbara oil spill that basically gave birth to Earth Day. When I was a little kid, I didn’t like going to the beach because there was still crap on the sand, not realizing at my young age what had caused it.
I moved back after NYC and the 9/11 disaster that Christine Todd Whitman of the EPA and the GWB admin said was safe to breathe the air when it was not.
I live near the coast and there was a large mining company that was trying to put in an experimental LNG platform off the coast, but we fought the company and won. If we can do it, so can you. Get organized, get the publicity and work on it. We had some huge ups and huge downs, but the thing that will help us most and immediately is conservation.
AKM, with your platform and Netroots experience, I’m sure you can help in that effort.
Anne in Texas- My arms are around you, sister. I was born in Miami and grew up on Sanibel Island, Fla. I moved to Alaska in 98. I work daily with the aftermath of EVOS in the environment, and the people.
My heart just breaks. Especially for the wildlife refuges and estuaries that are harboring important species in critical habitat. At least, most of the spring bird migration has already come through that area.
But I am also angry. I’ve been waiting for this to happen for over 20 years. And it finally has.
This is going to be a disaster to make both EVOS and Katrina look like mear blips. That oil is going to cover the whole coast line on more than just our country. This will become an international crisis.
And an economic one. The Gulf of Mexico’s state’s rely heavily on the economy that the coast deliver’s. We’ve just come through a very hard winter and everyone has been waiting for those summer tourist dollars. The oysterbeds, shrimp beds, etc will be untouchable for the foreseeable future. Boating, fishing tours? Not going to happen. Cruise ships ? Re-routed.
I can only hope, pray and scream at the top of my lungs, “Can we PLEASE have some meaningful action on climate and energy legislation now that doesn’t involve our tax dollars on more oil exploration, coal mining and nuclear energy?”
I’m wondering if “the twit who quit” is actually enjoying the disaster of epic proportions. It’s like the coming of the rapture in which all the “real” Americans will make a mecca to Wassila, AK to be saved by “the chosen one”.
Is she enjoying it? Only the truly stupid are enjoying what’s going on and, sadly, that’s a group that includes her.
On the brighter side, teabaggers in my area have not done the “drill baby drill” chant for a few days. Someone’s getting it, but that’s probably not s’error palin.
She’s trying to figure out how to make money off it. Same as it ever was.
We understand this country runs on oil, Heating / product transportation / military / commuters / etc. Since the Jimmy Carter presidency – we have been pushing the edge. Instead of promoting higher mileage per gallon – we get Hummers & Expeditions.
We have “bet” our country for close to 30 years that we wouldn’t have to depend on foreign oil if we drilled in new locations, deeper wells and newer technology. Wars, debt…..how long before China or Japan sell a few of our IOU’s to oil producing countries for a billion gallons of crude?
Very scary!
I
Actually, closer to 40 years. Remember the faked shortage of ‘73 or so? That should have been a wake-up call for a shift from dependency on oil.
This is indeed a tragedy: for the families that lost loved ones working on the rig, for the individual states whose citizens will lose their livlihoods, their homes, their recreation areas, the beauty of what once was, and for our country.
Hate to say it, but we are all thinking it: if you don’t learn your lesson, you are bound to repeat it.
Sarah Palin makes fun of those who think, those who learn, and those who challenge her simple-minded sound bites. She is one who never understood what happened, doesn’t understand what is happening and will probably never even care about disasters of this type.
The rest of us, though, can ignore her and work to make sure this kind of no-holds barred race for the biggest profits regardless of the consequences is stopped. We need to contact President Obama and tell him that we do not want any further off-shore drilling. We want investment in alternative energy now!
What a spectacular piece AKM, comprehensive and informative about the ongoing disaster.
Enjay (9) and Sunflower (10), yes and yes. It’s crazy that after the gas crisis of the 70s we still have so many cars with ridiculously low gas mileage rates.
Even if there is a bundle of lovely oil under the surface of American-owned soil, the point of having a comprehensive energy plan is that oil IS A NON-REWNEWABLE RESOURCE (sorry for the yelling but it reflects how I feel) and the more of it we waste the faster it runs out. The pont of promoting alternative energy sources and getting people to use them is that it lets our reserves last longer. We can use the oil for the more important things (jet airplane engines, for example), and use solar and wind to power our TVs.
A lot of people don’t realize that when they use electricity, they are (unless completely supplied by a nuclear power plant, and even then I don’t know enough about it, I could be wrong on this point) still consuming energy that is derived from non-renewable resources such as oil, natural gas and coal. Replace what parts of your home’s energy needs can function great with solar, wind or other alternative sources, and you don’t have to sacrifice a bit all while reducing your consuption of the non-renewable resource by (I’m just guessing here) maybe as much as 20%. Imagine if every home in America did that!
Why aren’t all new houses being built with a stationary bike hooked up to a battery that supplies the energy in the outlets to certain rooms? I mean really, your own, renewable energy from a 30-minute workout, could run your TV, radio, DVD player, cell phone charger from who knows how long? Plus it’s healthy!
One morning a few months ago I woke up with a wacky idea that the energy generated from a hamster wheel could be stored in batteries to run the blower in your fish tank.
Ideas? I got a lot of ‘em. We all do. Some of them may not be so practical (as I fear for your fishes’ lives if you have a lazy hamster) but they are all worth at least looking into.
The only good that might come of this disaster is if we can use this to get people to understand that there are no simplistic answers to the problem, that you cannot just say ‘drill baby drill’ is THE answer, and that no matter where we get oil from or how much it costs, it behooves everyone to pay attention to their own energy consumption, work to reduce waste, and try to incorporate the use of renewable sources of power wherever possible.
Next mandate from President Obama? As part of an effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, every household must own and care for at least one hamster!
A hamster in every household and a chicken for every doctor! Thank you for that little chuckle. I’ve been crying at the waste all day.
My DH was in Mexico last week and he saw a turtle crawl out of the ocean and laboriously make her way up the beach to dig a hole and lay her eggs under a canopy while several dozens of people watched in awe. Her eggs will be moved to a protected area. And all I can think of now is what will happen to the ONE turtle baby out of hundreds that will make it through the gauntlet to the ocean?
I also want to bring up a point that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere else: the threat of terrorists regarding these deep sea oil rigs.
Not that I think there was anything suspicious about what happened with the The Horizon. No, I think that was just a lesson that our technology is not infallible.
I am not someone who sees plots everywhere, but common sense tells me that these rigs are not heavily guarded and could be vulnerable to attack – particularly along the eastern seaboard.
Considering how devastating these oil spills are, wouldn’t the rigs make more appealing targets than one airplane? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier to attack or sabotage a rig than to smuggle in, set-up and set-off a dirty bomb? Wouldn’t the impact be more devastating?
I put the environmental and economic damages of oil spills beyond measure because the costs escalate over decades – there is no instant fax to “make it all better” once a spill happens.
So, why are we not talking about making the existing rigs safer from attack, safer period?
I hope we stop talking about new drilling altogether for a long, long time.
Yes, and the threat of terrorism on all those mega oil and gas pipelines also!
Sorry to make another entry so soon, but just read that Halliburton (there’s that ugly name again) may be tied to the cause of the spill. See HuffPo for details.
would not be surprised. Halliburton seems to have a very large presence in Texas and Louisiana.
WHY am I not surprised?
I have a friend who is a veterinarian (his specialty in the past was with zoo animals). He would very much like to help with the animal end of this disaster. Does anyone out there know who he should contact?
Hey there (great handle, BTW!)
Here’s the location that the National Wildlife Federation is sending people to for volunteering info:
http://www.crcl.org/
I’m finding this so heartbreaking I’m having trouble even thinking about it.
I live in Bayou La Batre on the coast of Alabama. Here’s what info I have for people who want to help with the animals. Forward from Coop: Assistance needed..oil spill–If you find a bird or animal that is damaged from the oil spill DO NOT TOUCH IT! The material is toxic to you–Call the Oiled Bird Hotline at 1-866-557-1401 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-866-557-1401 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Volunteers are needed who would be willing to attend a training in dealing with oiled birds/animals. You may call 228-475-0825 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 228-475-0825 end_of_the_skype_highlighting (Pasc. River Audubon Center) and give your name and number. Pass it on.
I was up in Seward when the oil spill happened and remember that fiasco and the terrible silence upon the water afterwards. The only good thing about this is that it will hopefully change Obama’s mind on offshore drilling once and for all.
God has a message for you, Sarah – “Grab a shovel and a bucket and STFU.”
hear, hear!!
Every a$$hole who ever chanted “drill baby drill” should have to report to the Gulf Coast today for clean up.
This was tweeted (twat?) earlier today by Bill Maher.
Thanks for this post. Like Anne in Texas, I’m worried about the long term impact this will have. The fish, shrimp, oysters, etc. will not be edible for years, so the fisherman, shrimpers, etc. will have their livelihood devastated. The coastal areas and inland areas will be destroyed. Wildlife injured. I could go on and on, but everyone knows the story.
It is bizarre to be watching this happen. Most disasters occur quickly. However, this time, we’re watching a disaster unfold, hour by hour. It’s already been over a week since the rig caught fire and reports say that it could take 3 months to drill a relief well to stop the leak.
AKM, thanks again for posting this article. I guess the knowledge gained in Alaska from the cleanup of the Valdez spill will be needed in the Gulf. Help…
Posting again from an earlier thread…
drill, baby, drill
Ka-BOOM
kill, baby, kill
spill, baby, spill
burn, baby, burn
Damn it, baby, damn it…
I’m no Dominionist Evangelical, but I can see the Lake of Fire, er, Gulf of Fire, from my house…
(Mind’s eye…I’m 20 miles inland as the crow flies…)
weeping, baby, weeping
and praying, also, too, and pulling on my yellow wellies and rolling up my sleeves…
Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts and prayers. We Are all in this together…
L’Shalom.
Painful, powerful post. How is it possible that there are oil rigs all over the place and no capability to avert disaster? The clean-up technology and preparedness seems to be a joke.
The idjit has broken her silence with a tweet:
“Having worked/lived thru Exxon oil spill,my family&I understand Gulf residents’ fears.Our prayers r w/u.All industry efforts must b employed”
Makes we wonder: What did Sarah DO to help the Valdez clean-up effort?
Like she has any freakin’ idea what she is talking about. How old was she when that happened?
“Industry efforts”… No one ever knew what Chevron had in place as contingency/emergency plans for the oil tanks in the path of Mt Redoubt’s flow, did they? How does she know there even are “industry efforts” available, eh? They sure haven’t been doin’ so great so far.
Heartsick.
Whoop-de-doo. Talk is cheap $arah! How about you STFU.
“Our prayers r w/u.” Palin fully spelled out her gestures of concern, but the suffering people receiving those prayers got an abbreviated 4 characters. Nit-picky of me, but …. what were you really concerned with, S.P.?
I, too, am so very tired of drill,baby,drill and her recent stall,baby,stall. Obviously, we did need more studies. Has the Facebook post convienently disappeared yet?
I know they are talking about the wind in the Gulf. I am not in the Gulf but it was so windy yesterday in the Garland/Dallas area that I thought my place would blow away–I can only imagine the damage from the winds in the Gulf. So, so sad. They refer to it as a “nursery” for sea creatures on the coast.
Putting it very bluntly, it’s more like A$$hole, baby, a$$hole.
Pebble Mine? …….. The original concept of a corporation was to encourage investment and growth by allowing the creation of an artificial “person” – the corporation, which would be liable for losses. The investors would be isolated from risk beyond the limit of their investment. We have now reached a point where the acts of corporations can cause damage on a global scale. My suggestion with Pebble and now with these rigs is that the individuals on the Board, the executive officers and any shareholder holding more than a couple percent of the shares become personally liable for damages caused by the company. If John Shiveley says that Pebble is safe, let him put his and his family’s assets where his mouth is. After all, he and his ilk are asking all the people who live around their “investments” to risk their homes and livelihood.
Kieth Olbermann piece on Countdown last night…
“That women is an idiot”. Thank you Keith.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#36861570
Seriously, she is so stupid. Intentionally so!
I can’t believe that a throw caution to the winds approach is even being applauded let alone on something as complex as dependence on oil.
“Let’s drill baby drill not stall baby stall”……HEAVENS ABOVE!! She is just ridiculously unqualified to speak on anything let alone energy policy. I wish she would just stop getting media coverage.
Maybe this will be her Waterloo.
@ KS Sunflower- As far as I’m concerned Halliburton is a terrorist organization!
My solar and wind energy research continues today. The problem with alternative energy sources is that they are prohibitively expensive for many (as one has to come up with the initial cost out of pocket and then do a ton of paperwork to get subsidies, etc). The only thing that has kept the human species from becoming extinct long before this time is our tenuous grasp of technology. It is far past time that we invest all of our resources in figuring better ways to heat our homes and transport ourselves. Yes, big corporations that make huge profits do not want us to have self-sustaining little power plants in our homes. What the powers that be fail to say is that so much of our lives are bound up in petroleum products that we are going to continue to need them even without using them to run our cars and heat our homes. If you wear polar fleece, or own a pair of Crocs, or store your leftovers in plastic containers, or take certain medications, or tap, tap, tap on a keyboard everyday, you are using petroleum products. None of us are completely free of it.
My husband works in the oil field and our very livlihood is dependent upon it, I fear for his life every time he leaves. I am against drilling in Anwar and off-shore. We discuss this often. There are actually very strict safety regulations in the oil field. How many of us spend an hour before work every day at a safety meeting? When I spoke to him about this spill he said very much the same as the author above. There are supposed to be failsafe systems in place to prevent this from happening. My argument is that NOTHING is 100% failsafe. There is always human error to be accounted for. There is always that chance that the valves below surface, in the well, might have something as small as a rock preventing them from closing the way that they are supposed to. “Why is it taking them so long to fix?” I ask. The answers involve many things: first and foremost, it must be safe (no more loss of human life) to approach; secondly, there are only a few companies in the world that deal with things like blow-outs and they have many logistics to figure out before appraoching the problem. He states that the people in the oilfield do NOT want people to die, they do NOT want environmental disasters, they do NOT want things like this to happen. It is NOT to their advantage in any way shape or form. He does admit that there is always the problem of greed at the top, not necessarily greed of individuals but greed of the corporation. What followed in the wake of Exxon Valdez was a travesty of justice. They could never make things right in Prince William Sound in terms of the environmental impact and they did not make them right for the people impacted. That is wrong.
Right now I feel horrible grief for the families of those men/women lost and missing. I feel dread for what will wash ashore and so damage the environment. I find it hard to think past these things. It is a sense of helplessness in the face of an oncoming storm. I am sending all of my positive energy to the people of the Gulf Coast but, frankly, I am not sure that our technology will save your beaches and waterlife. This makes me profoundly sad. Mother Earth may heal herself in thousands of years or we may destroy her before we learn our lessons.
I’m not a big thinker like some…say…like energy expert Sarah Palin for instance, but maybe G. D. oil wells don’t belong right in the middle of waters we get our food from. In fact, I don’t think they belong in water at all.
Thankfully, President Blows-With-The-Wind has decided to rethink his position on this.
I always tell my dogs “we don’t poop where we eat”.
At least we have a President who has the guts to rethink his decisions and change his position when needed. I prefer that to “The Decider” we had for the previous 8 years.
‘cuse me?
Outstanding post akm, and that letter gave me chills. Bravo to the author, and to you for once again sharing a message that needs to be rung loud and clear for all to hear and take heed. May it be so that we will indeed learn from such disasters and explore more thoroughly and thoughtfully whatever alternatives would avoid such tragic risks in the first place.
The pictures look like Pearl Harbor. The president has to reconsider off-shore drilling. If a state of the art facility like this one can go down it is simply not worth the risk.
Also, too the Republicans are already criticizing the Administration and their misleading comments and slow response. I bet that most days when the alarm goes off Obama puts the pillow over his head and crawls deeper into the sheets. Sheesh. What a time to be president.
He has. No more for now until investigations. Guess we might have to have better REGULATIONS and ENFORCEMENT, things thoso “small government conservatives” don’t like except when it’;s my body they are talking about.
How could anybody possible believe that we can have adequate control on something occurring a mile under the surface of the ocean?
In the next decade or more that it will take us to explore offshore drilling opportunities, we could instead invest in much safer energy resources.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/fbi-investigating-fed-off_n_558544.html is about the federal investigation of Massey — it’s believed they bribed safety officials re Upper Big Branch. On the same page (green) at huffpo, there’s more on the Gulf disaster. Yes, Halliburton was involved.
I pay an energy services company (ESCO) a premium every month so that all the electricity Con Edison delivers to my apartment comes from renewables. Go to http://www.sterlingplanet.com and see if you can sign up in your state.
Tikkun Olam Shalom. Health and peace.
Our electric company is a small co-op type thing. Every time there is some type of climate legislation coming out they tell us to vote against it. It is run by a team of climate change deniers. I am told we have no choice, if we want electricity in our area we have to use them!
I heard about Haliburton also being involved. Maybe Cheney will lose his retirement when their stock plummets.We can only hope.
I believe we lost 8 years of research and development for renewables under Bush, we have a lot of work to do. Sadly, it takes a tragedy for us to rethink our priorities, we sure do have short memories.
OT, just heard there is a verdict in Hacker-Gate.
I use ESCO too. It costs me more, but I signed up when they first came around and I’ve never looked back. The cost we pay for our dependence on oil is untenable. We simply can no longer afford it. I suppose we will always have some need for oil and its related products, but we must focus on alternative and renewable sources of energy. If this horror teaches us anything it is this. We must stop cheating and shortchanging our future. We must.
For those of you near the Gulf who want to volunteer to assist with the cleanup, please go to:
http://www.audubonaction.org/site/Survey?ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=3400
and fill out the form. They’ll be happy to have the help. Unfortunately, I think it’s too late for the oysters — it’s spawning season.
Zyx, thanks for the link. I have been stuck at work all day and was just about to look into how to volunteer for cleanup. I have a heavy heart tonight over this spill and am really ready to do anything to help out.
By the way, the smell cleared today. Can just imagine how bad it is downriver and closer to the coast.
Drill what?
yw, anytime.
OT
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/apr/30/judge-...
KNOXVILLE — A federal jury this afternoon convicted Sarah Palin e-mail intruder David C. Kernell of felony destruction of records to hamper a federal investigation and misdemeanor unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer.
The jury acquitted Kernell, 22, of wire fraud.
It remains deadlocked on felony identity theft.
It’s unclear if U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips will order the jurors, in their fourth day of deliberations, to continue.
I just read Sarah Palin’s response to the verdicts thus far. She is totally disgusting. If she brandishes her cross in another video or photograph, all I can say is I hope it’s not silver because it could set her aflame; not that she is a vampire – she is simply one of the most heartless, self-centered, loathsome creatures around who tries to convince everyone what a good Christian woman she is. She’d better hope there is no Hell, because I think she has just signed up for one of the lower rings of it. Sorry, no offense meant for real Christians. She is not a real Christian so it’s easy to rail against her.
Funny how it is ok for Palin to hack into someone elses account and read their email, but if it happens to her it’s terrible. Someone should go to her facebook page and ask her why she didn’t use a secure state email account as opposed to yahoo for government work. She probably wouldn’t have had her email hacked if she used a state account. Karma please come soon for this woman….
“[Sen.] Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was insisting that there’s going to be offshore drilling. I think that’s dead on arrival.”
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/bill-n...
That’s a masterpiece of understatement.
Oil spill approaches Louisiana coast
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/oil_spill_approaches_louisiana.html
Here’s up to date info from NOAA:
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/topic_subtopic_entry.php?RECORD_KEY(entry_subtopic_topic)=entry_id,subtopic_id,topic_id&entry_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=809&subtopic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=2&topic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=1
just curious if anyone in AK can recall what palin’s views were on the exxon valdez crisis? …and did they ever conflict with her ‘drill, baby, drill’ mantra? gee, a conflict in the mind of palin…what a surprise there!
She probably doesn’t make the connection . Drilling is done on the North Slope. The EV was a shipping disaster. In her tiny brain they are not really connected unless it works in one of her speechifying thingys to say that they are connected so that everyone can feel her pain projected onto their patriotic souls that bless her also too….there…also…
What I really don’t understand is how the politicians of the day (not now) were lobbied into foregoing the $500,000 robotic capping system for these rigs which would have prevented, or at least minimized, this disgusting and totally irresponsible disaster which will destroy lives and livelihoods. Both Brazil and Norway DO NOT ALLOW drilling in their off-shore without these. But I guess the politicians were, once again, bought off by big money, and once again put themselves ahead of the good of their country. Actually, treasonous, I think.
In any case, before the ‘drill, baby, drill’ morons completely destroy this Garden of Eden, it’s time for the American citizens to make some really big noise and INSIST upon these 1/2 million dollars safety precautions which the big oil companies don’t want as it would ‘cost too much’. Just beyond disgusting how it’s always about money, money, money and the world be damned. Capitalism at its ugliest.
sigh……..yeah………500k is chump change to these oil companies. I say they all should be required to put up a large amount of $$ in a interest bearing escrow account for stuff like this.
“When the white people have polluted every river [and ocean], they will discover they can’t eat money.” – American Indian chief
Here is a visual to go with the statement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=862cXNfxwmE
Excellent video. Seeing people throw garbage out car windows – I can’t understand a society that allows its citizens to litter its own nest – it isn’t civilized. Even the supposed ‘lesser species’ aren’t as disgustingly filthy as some humans.
Time to enact ‘Freedom from brain-dead polluters’ and a “War on Slobs”. A civilized world just doesn’t need them.
Last week I was sitting at a red light, waiting to exit the parking lot of the grocery store. Two cars ahead of me, a young woman opened her window and dropped three boxes onto the pavement just as she pulled out. They were small boxes that looked like the kind allergy medicine comes in. I was shocked that someone could be so incredibly careless, and couldn’t imagine why she felt the irresistable need to dispose of those boxes right there. I wanted to pick them up but would have had to stop in the middle of traffic to do so and the risk of being hit was too high.
I was steaming all the way home.
Prolly took the pills out and took those home to make bathtub meth. I’m serious.
ain’t THAT the truth!
AKM says, “And with their profits, they buy our politicians.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/sen-landrieu-minimized-po_n_558772.html
“We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, OUR LEADERS ARE NOW COMMITING VIOLENT CRIMES to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.” – Kurt Vonnegut
By the way, what caused this……………………..an errant submarine? Nobody’s saying.
I miss Kurt.
Read Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth. Yes, it is spelled differently because we are living on a different planet now. Short, clear and kind of sad. The world’s economies have been built on cheap energy and that has to change.
So tragic. Gee, maybe Discovery will rethink their decision to pay Palin for a show about nature since she “owns” the phrase, Drill baby Drill.
Here’s a letter forwarded to “friends and colleagues” from the Environmental Defense Fund:
Fr: Paul Harrison
Re: Another Disaster for Coastal Louisiana
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It is with a beleaguered and heavy heart I write this note to update you on the situation along the Gulf Coast.
News accounts can hardly do justice to the epic human and environmental tragedy that is unfolding in the wake of last week’s oil platform explosion. In spite of all the efforts to contain the spill and prevent its spread, the leading edge of the oil spill has made landfall.
At its current leak rate of 5,000 barrels of oil per day, the spill could surpass the size of the 1969 Santa Barbara spill by next week. If the leak cannot be contained, it could exceed the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska by mid June.
An impact of this magnitude would devastate wildlife and coastal communities and villages, many of whom rely heavily on natural resources of the Louisiana coast to sustain their economy and to feed their families. It is especially sad that this catastrophe threatens the fishing communities of the Gulf that have become national leaders in transforming oceans fisheries to sustainability.
For communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast, this blow could set back all the tireless efforts since Katrina to fight for programs and funding to restore Coastal Louisiana to its natural health.
In February, we won a huge victory when President Obama asked Congress to fund for the first time construction of large-scale coastal restoration projects, a landmark investment that at long last offered hope that our vision could be achieved.
Now, Gulf Coast communities confront a new disaster from which we will have to recover.
This crisis almost couldn’t come at a worse time. It appears that the oil slick will most directly devastate the salt marshes and the species that rely on them along the coast — including hundreds of migratory bird species that are nesting and breeding as we speak. This area also produces 50 percent of the nation’s wild shrimp crop, 35 percent of its blue claw crabs and 40 percent of its oysters.
At this point, we are doing everything possible to coordinate with our colleagues at National Audubon, NWF, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, the Gulf Restoration Network, and others – as well as our coastal community contacts – to monitor the extent of the damage and provide whatever support we can.
For those who are interested in doing what you can to help, please go to the Coalition To Restore Coastal Louisiana website where you can sign up to volunteer.
Now is a very tough time for coastal restoration advocates and all the communities with whom we have worked so closely.
We hope and pray that this devastation is limited and that we will be able to work with federal, state, and local officials and impacted communities to mitigate the damage, prevent future disasters, and clean up and restore the coast as soon as possible.
Thank you for your concern and support,
Paul Harrison
Go to EDF’s website for up-to-date information (or Audobon, or any of the environmental groups).
My deepest sympathy to those who lost family to this tragedy, and to everyone who eats shrimp, oysters, or blue-claw crabs. The Gulf produced most of them.
I am especially upset at the environmental tragedy — we must speak up for the birds, fish, shellfish, etc., who can’t speak for themselves.
Whales (a pod of sperm whales live in the area), sea turtles (migrating through to the southern coasts), bluefin tuna (in their prime spawning season there), brown pelicans (recently removed from the endangered species list), royal terns, snowy plovers, reddish egrets, mottled ducks. This is spring nesting season. They will be trying to feed their babies with this contaminated food. Shrimp, oyster beds, people’s lifestyles–lost for years.
Now would be a good time to post a video of Palin chanting “drill baby drill”. Her words and attitudes need to be connected to this disaster.
Anyone have it.
And here’s the EPA’s new website on the spill: http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhvRQyRdVEI The full ugliness of the Drill-baby-drill crowd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9D3epQL704 Out of the moronic Palin’s mouth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9L9d28W1Sc&NR=1 To the tune of “Call Me Irresponsible” Perfect
Here’s a link to the Times-Picayune, which, being local, has a lot of coverage of the spill. Apparently, it’s way worse than thought at first, because according to a sample, it’s not Louisiana “sweet crude,” but far more viscous, and therefore more difficult to clean up:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/04/gulf_of_mexico_oil_spill_could.html
how much more toxic waste are we going to eat from our polluted environment?
Here’s the link to sign a petition to END offshore drilling:
You’ve probably seen the devastating images of the BP oil spill in the Gulf–it’s shaping up to be one of the largest environmental disasters in American history.
It’s a crisis–but it’s also a huge opportunity to push for stronger environmental protection and a shift towards clean energy. President Obama has put a “temporary moratorium” on offshore drilling in the wake of the disaster, but we need more. We need a PERMANENT BAN on offshore drilling..
I just signed a petition demanding just that–can you join me? http://www.350.org/drilling-ban
You can also join the Facebook group by clicking here: http://www.facebook.com/dont-drill
Thanks–working together we can make our voices heard and help stop future disasters like this.
Done. Thanks for the links.
NO MORE–NOT IN MY STATE!
Done. Petition signed and group joined. Messages to family and friends.
Thanks for the links.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/sen-landrieu-minimized-po_n_558772.html
Best precaution: Don’t go there.
I second that.
Things can get worse. A lot worse. For instance: A secret Coast Guard memo was just leaked: A worse case scenario, is that “the broken and leaking well pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead and kinked piping currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels — or 210,000 gallons — per day.”
“If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate.” “In this case, an order of magnitude would mean the volume of oil coming from the well could be 10 times higher than the 5,000 barrels a day coming out now. That would mean 50,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 million gallons a day.”
“Typically, a very good well in the Gulf can produce 30,000 barrels a day, but that’s under control. I have no idea what an uncontrolled release could be,” said Stephen Sears, chairman of the petroleum engineering department at Louisiana State University.
“Kinks in the piping created as the rig sank to the seafloor may be all that is preventing the Deepwater Horizon well from releasing its maximum flow. BP is now drilling a relief well as the ultimate fix. The company said Thursday that process would take up to 3 months.”
BP said Thursday the company was worried about “erosion” of the pipe at the wellhead.
Sand is an integral part of the formations that hold oil under the Gulf. That sand, carried in the oil as it shoots through the piping, is blamed for the ongoing erosion described by BP.
“The pipe could disintegrate. You’ve got sand getting into the pipe, it’s eroding the pipe all the time, like a sandblaster,” said Ron Gouget, a former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
=( Just saw developing reports of another oil rig overturning in the Gulf Coast……near Morgan City, LA……with another possible oil spill. No details as yet.
=( This is the most horrible month ever.
If this doesn’t freaking bury drill baby drill, I don’t know what will. If Palin ever says that again, she should shipped off the Gulf Coast for clean up duty each and every time an oil spill happens. UGH!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/louisiana-drilling-rig-ov_n_559221.html
She should be dipped in the oil spill and left to clean herself up.
The BP CEO and all his head honchos should be left to stew in their own juices. They should be out there getting tarred, if not feathered, and run out of the gulf on an out of work fishing vessel.
Silver lining – every time she opens her mouth, something drastic happens to shut it the heck up. If we have to suffer, at least we also get concrete proof that Palin has no idea about anything, ever.
Add Halliburton to that – apparently it was the one responsible for the failure.
President Obama said he expects the corporations responsible to pay back the costs of dealing with this disaster.
Unfortunately, Halliburton made its billions from ripping us off during the Iraq War and other taxpayer underwritten schemes. So, we’d just be getting back our own money. Of course, they will use their lawyers and politicians to fight paying any money and will try to drag this out for years hoping to get off the way Exxon-Mobil did.
We need to start demanding payment from the negligent parties now and not let up on the pressure because you can bet Republicans will not be eager to cross one of their main sources of income.
No, no, no! Reuters is reporting that another oil rig in the Gulf near Louisiana just overturned. The news gets worse and worse. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T55Q20100430 There isn’t much more than what I just said; this just happened.
My heartfelt sympathy to everyone on or near the Gulf of Mexico. This may turn out even worse than Exxon Valdez.
was just about to post the same…i hope to god this is a wakeup call, I’m just sickened by it all
Here’s some pictures for the day. The first one is rather whimsical, though sad. The second is heart breaking. The pictures of the Gulf Coast are heart rending.
This may be BP et al’s fault, but did the government really do enough once the problem had started? And not that I blame this administration any more than Bush’s. They can’t undo all the problems left behind in just one of two years. It’s easier to dismantle than to build. But this administration needs to jump on this and use it to their advantage–why government oversight is needed.
Aside from everything else, can we really blame people on the Gulf Coast for not trusting the government? What have their tax dollars done recently to protect them from harm?
Well, if I put in the link to the pictures, that would be helpful.
http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleries/Photos-of-the-Day/2010/Photos-of-the-Day-04-30
You are right, I was shocked when the President came out with his offshore drilling policy. Surely this has to be revisited. This is a mounting eco-disaster and if the Administration doesn’t step up, this may be their Katrina.
President Obama has already suspended plans to proceed with more off-shore drilling in the wake of this disaster. Whew! Hope it stays on ice, too.
Apparently, this isn’t quite the case – this story posted within the last 1/2 hour (5 PM Pacific time)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/offshore-drilling-to-continue-despite-us-oil-spill/article1552604/
I am sitting on my porch overlooking the Santa Rosa Sound, and only a mile South I see the white sandy beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore on Navarre Beach, FL. My heart is heavy with grief. I have lived in this paradise since 1995, surviving several hurricanes, losing my home in Ivan, and in my new home where the old used to be, finally settled in, only worried about the next storm to come someday. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever REALLY think the next “storm” would be of oil, washing up on our pristine beaches of NW FL. Well yes, I DID consider it, as the “Drill Baby Drill” Palin Fans & Conservative Right Wing fanatics made their loud voices heard on the local forums in this area, while I was chastised with my “left-wing-tree-hugger” comments in response.
I regret being right…….that something like this could happen. People dismissed it, all I hear now is silence from these people. This is truly a horrific disaster, a sad sad day in paradise. All the suffering is heart-wrenching, from the sealife affected, all the wildlife, the oyster beds, the commercial fishing industry, trickling down to our tourism industry, just poised to begin for this year, people that will lose the jobs they just secured……I cannot begin to describe the sorrow, the tears and the hole in my heart for this place I call my home.
CNN said Palin just released a statement she stands by “drill here, drill now”. She is absolutely crude and cruel beyond belief.
I’m thinking that she may not be quite the darling she has been with conservatives and tea baggers on the Gulf Coast after this. After all, what she’s saying is, yes, I’m just like you and I feel your pain, and, since drill baby drill will make me money, we should drill. It’s not my livelihood that will suffer. I just fish for the heck of it.
You know, I didn’t think much of Palin’s ability to think and act responsibly before and now I think even less of her. Unbelievable because how do you get below a zero percentage. I can’t wait to hear KO eviscerate her comments tonight!
That just figures! What happened to her “drill baby drill” mantra.
Of course she did. She will never ever ever admit she is wrong about anything and why am I telling you this because you all know that already?
I think somewhere along the way, probably from dear old dad, she got the message that admitting you made a mistake, or saying you were wrong, or saying you’re sorry, was a sign of weakness and that signs of weakness were to be avoided at all costs! (How often do the Palin supporters go off about that she is a ’strong’ woman?)
So nope, she cannot backtrack on her stance, ’cause that would be showing weakness. Obviously dad never thought spouting unsubstatianable crap (i.e. lies) was a problem, a la, let’s tape your fingers together and say they were injured so you can get out of pep band practice, who cares if its a lie? (And for any Palin fans reading here, that fact is in her book. She wrote it herself, with apparent pride. I can tell you my parents would never have condoned, nor let me or God forbid have abetted me, in lying like that. Disgusting.)
I digress only to try to briefly substantiate my point, Sarah cannot ever say she is wrong about anything and that that goes back to her childhood and that as such we cannot expect that that behavior will ever change and that therefore she would be the worst person to have as president (or really, in any important leadership position).
If you can’t be honest with yourself, and assess your own ideas and behaviors, how can you do so with others? I want a leader who can be honest, and that means flaws and all. We are all human, our leaders therefore will have to be human, imperfect as we are. Those like Sarah Palin who try to put on this front that they are always right just sicken me.
So good. Let the rest of her adoring fans try to support her pro-offshore oil drilling position now. All Mitt Romney has to do is show a clip of the recent disaster juxtaposed with her saying “Drill Baby Drill” on a commercial and her hypothetical candidacy for president is over. And that wouldn’t be a smear ad, it would be the truth she can not back away from.
There’s reports that the govt. is putting offshore oil exploration on hold Thank the Lord.
And some very understandable reactions from people on the Gulf to this disaster.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0430/As-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-hits-land-residents-decry-response
I posted the following on ADN pertinent to this mess:
“And Paul Jenkins has the audacity to suggest: “Alaska is consumed with an irrational hatred of EXXON”.
We are being destroyed by greed, corruption, absurdity, plus a lack of integrity. This spill is yet another example.
Norway and Brazil require that all offshore oil rigs have valves on their offshore oil rigs designed to prevent just the type of disaster we are experiencing now. The valves cost $500,000. In 2002 and 2003 a law requiring installation of such on offshore oil rigs in the U.S. got defeated in Congress. The oil lobby did that. Oil industry shills like George W. & Cheney spearheaded the effort. We now witness ramifications of the absence of such safeguards.
If citizens of this country don’t start standing up and doing the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do we will continue to see things like the financial crises, this oil spill and other like crises and disasters as are country sinks. All while Palin and the Tea Baggers chant: “drill baby drill”.
Some south Texas asshole was in our office today bragging about where he lives there are NO regulations or inspections for buildings like that was a good thing.
I went out on the Santa Barbara, CA breakwater today and looked at the oil platforms in the channel. It would be terrible for one of them to go, and I remember when one did go, in 1969. The tar was awful (there’s always tar on the beaches around here, due to natural oil leaks. But there’s way different.) I was just a young teen when the 1969 spill happened, but I was well aware it wasn’t pretty, disrupted lives, and injured wildlife. I don’t want to see another one. Ever. The two since have been more than enough.
I read this post a few hours ago. No one had commented at the time. I think AKM may just have put it up. I actually shed a tear reading it, but I didn’t want to be the first to comment on it as I knew that someone else would do a better job. Anne in Texas – I understand where you are coming from.
This whole debacle has left me very saddened at the potential ruin of coastlines, wildlife and jobs. America, you did not need this disaster.
Sarah, you fool. I think it is time you sat down and shut up. You are a 46 yr old woman trying to make money at the expense of everyone, including your children and grandchildren. Your plastic surgery and push up bras won’t last too much longer. You are an evil old hag and it shows more in your face everday.
I’m going to shut up now and sit down before I say anything I regret.
Well said, good on you.
Hey, why worry about saying something you might regret? Palin never does, and she reportedly has put 12 million away for mouthing off.
I didn’t know about the push up bras, though. Interesting.
No!!! Irishgirl. don’t sit down or shut up.
I looked at Palin’s facebook. I can’t believe she/mansour said drill here, drill now and talks about the tragic losses in the same post. Ice water runs through her veins.
Irish – you just say anything you want. You have First Amendment rights here to say anything your heart desires and you certainly are a far finer person than Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh and the rest of that ilk.
That’s very true. Except she can’t yell “fire” on a crowded blog!
Unless, of course, the blog is really on fire.
I like the international flavor of this blog. We USA-ns can get mighty self centered. I think most of that comes from living in a place so large that we don’t easily get to other countries/cultures. Despite our differences, we can be remarkably the same.
And Irishgirl is a glowing example of internationalistism. I mean, she writes English (the homegrown language of Umerikuh) like a native (not the Indigenous Americans, the Rill Umerikuns)! Oh, wait. Sarah’s a native. So better than Rill Umerikun natives! Who wouldda thunk it!
What’s your native language? Irishian? Australiach?
I’m going to yell…..”PANTS ON FIRE.”
{{{{{Irishgirl}}}}}
Fine BP a billion a day until the oil has been cleaned up, that would get them to act a bit faster. Yes a billion a day. We can not expect the Gov’t to clean up for BP’s neglect. It’s all about the money for them, so show me the money BP, a billion a day until the shores are oil free.
Not a bad idea! After all, they sucked up billions in taxpayer dollars giving bad water, bad food, and bad equipment to our troops. They can afford it. Cheney can certainly live without his dividends.
I am generally liberal and generally environmentalist, but I’ll admit to also being a believer in technology. This sometimes leads me to reason that certain potentially dangerous activities — like offshore drilling or fission-based electricity production or tanker transportation of petroleum or erecting buildings in California– may be acceptable as long as sufficient technical safeguards are implemented.
An event like Deepwater Horizon is particularly hard on my worldview, because the rig did embody multiple layers of very current technological safeguards, and at this point nobody seems to have any theories about why they all failed. Don’t misunderstand — I know that it will take months of investigation to properly understand the failure mechanisms. What disturbs me is that there is no even theoretical failure mode. This suggests that the the failure mode analysis was inadequate; that the analysis said, in effect, “Nothing can possibly go wrong”. This is never a true statement.
Of course, it’s also possible that there are some theories, and the parties involved are just dummying up until they can’t. This, unfortunately, would suggest that the risk probability estimate was flawed, or administratively overridden.
In any event, it’s a serious blow to those of us who believe that technology can mitigate the environmental risks that technology introduces. It also exposes a flaw in the use of simple statistical analysis to predict risk. Statistically, the amount of oil spilled from tankers is a very tiny fraction of the amount transported without spill. The amount of oil spilled by offshore rig blowout is a very tiny fraction of the amount of oil produced from offshore drilling.
But the local (a relative term, opposite to “global”) impact of one of the rare “misadventures” can be enormous, and in some case there will be irreversible ill effects. Simple statistics can estimate things like the average effect on corporate profits, but they cannot account for catastrophic side-effects — for one thing, the magnitude of the side-effects depends on exactly where a rare bad event happens.
Ach, I’m rambling. Sorry. Perhaps I will post a better-thought-out piece on my blog. It just pisses me off. From what I read, this shouldn’t have happened, and if it did, it should have been contained. By technology. But it did happen, and it wasn’t contained, and I’m forced to become a bit less confident in technological mitigation. I HATE changing my mind. I do it, I just hate it.
Halliburton.
Profit motive.
How’s that drilly-spilly thing workin’ out for ya?
I understand where you are coming from Strangelet. However, the cat has been let out of the bag. And how can mankind herd those cats back into the bag?
By that I mean, how can they stick a plug in that oil field under the sea?
Irishgirl I was wondering the same thing. How can they get down that far with diver to fix things or can they even do that.I would think if it could have been done it already would have been done.A very big wake up call about off shore drilling.I always wondered what would happen or be done if something happened to the oil rigs off shore Now we know not very much.
As I understand it, they’ve been trying to use remotely operated subs to activate the gizmos that were supposed to close off the bore, but this doesn’t seem to be working, maybe because there are defects in the bore seal (see ks sun below).
The way-beyond-last-ditch fix is to drill another bore into the same reservoir, and start pumping like hell to pull the pressure down. The even-more-beyond-last-ditch approach (which, techie though I may be, sounds like science fiction to me) is to drill a new bore that intersects the existing one, and then pour some dense material into it, on the theory that a mile-high column of something denser than petroleum will provide enough downward pressure to stop the flow.
Either of these will take weeks or months. Neither of them is an acceptable precautionary measure — they’re both “oh merde” responses. The precautionary measures all failed, leading to loss of life, a giant environmental disaster, and (much less important) a big hit to my belief in technological mitigation.
As I understand it, they’ve been trying to use remotely operated subs to activate the gizmos that were supposed to close off the bore, but this doesn’t seem to be working, maybe because there are defects in the bore seal (see ks sun below).
The way-beyond-last-ditch fix is to drill another bore into the same reservoir, and start pumping like hell to pull the pressure down. The even-more-beyond-last-ditch approach (which, techie though I may be, sounds like science fiction to me) is to drill a new bore that intersects the existing one, and then pour some dense material into it, on the theory that a mile-high column of something denser than petroleum will provide enough downward pressure to stop the flow.
Either of these will take weeks or months. Neither of them is an acceptable precautionary measure — they’re both “oh merde” responses. The precautionary measures all failed, leading to loss of life, a giant environmental disaster, and (much less important) a big hit to my belief in technological mitigation.
Yeah, it so sad.
strangelet, I,too, am disappointed that here we are in the 21st century and this kind of human sloppiness still threatens our world. We are better than this…We are brighter than this…
Report card comment for Humankind: “Does not work up to potential.”
Time for some restrictions, loss of privileges, and increased adult supervision.
20 years teaching science and history to sixth graders, followed by thirteen years in middle and high school libraries….
Please, young ones, we need you to be as smart
and as strong
and as brave
and as kind
and as generous with your time and your talents and your resources
as you can be.
There is so much Important Work that Must Be Done.
Preliminary – very preliminary suggestions are:
“Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in the “cementing” process — that is, plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon.
See the article for more details at:
“http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/halliburton-may-be-culpri_n_558481.html
As I was coming home this evening I heard a caller into NPR say they should just start pouring cement until they have a mile of it on the seabed. He seemed quite sure that would work. Me? I’m skeptical.
Accidents happen. Oops!
Palin now reminding everybody that she was A VICTIM herself of the Exxon oil spill. “Lived through it”, in fact! Understands Gulf residents’ “fears” and is favoring them with her devout prayers.
she gets lots of hopping practice from one bandwagon to another, doesn’t she?
Somebody tell her she’s not the center of the universe and she should just stop talking about things she knows nothing about. That should keep her mouth closed for the rest of eternity.
Joe MGuiniss called her a sycophant because of all the “i’m just like you” lies wherever she is speaking, made up hokey stories to connect so they love her more. So she had a compulsion to share their pain, she knows, there, there, it will be alright….patronizing really.
Hey, $arah, about your prayers…
Thanks, but NO THANKS!
Have you found any way to link the info sent to you by the Alaska Independent Fishermans Marketing Association?? Only via email? I tried to search for this and can’t find it. It is very interesting, I looked on their site, not there. Thanks!!
So, where’s $arah “Drill baby Drill” Palin on this? (crickets)
Palin doesn’t matter. Begich and Murkowski do. Hope they are paying real close attention.
Palin isn’t worth talking about anymore – she is a waste of good oxygen. Not worth a miniscule fraction of all the hundreds of thousands of birds who are now doomed to die a cruel, human-caused death. For what? Greed – greed – greed. Most consumers haven’t even given up on using plastic bags yet – another oil-based product. CUT DOWN ON YOUR USAGE OF PLASTICS – they are ALL oil-based. SHAME people who you see using these things. CONFRONT the problem, don’t ignore it. Time to start SERIOUSLY helping our planet and stopping those who continue to abuse it – they are dinosaurs and destroying all that we love about life.
Actually, that is one thing we did in Ireland a couple of years ago. The government introduced a tax on plastic bags. The shops (stores) used to supply them for free to carry your shopping. Now it costs something like 25 cent to buy one. So everyone has reusable bags now and it is great. They used to be an awful source of litter, stuck in trees and discarded willy nilly all over the landscape. It made a huge difference to our litter problem.
Sarah Palin calls for more drilling as second rig overturns
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/sarah_palin/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/04/30/sarah_palin_drill_spill
Sarah Palin is a Dodo Bird. Like the Dodo, her type will hopefully become extinct one day. Enough of the dumbing down – the world needs smart, not more stupid.
This was a drilling platform that was supposed to be utilizing the latest and safest technology available, and an accident like this should never have happened.
Initial reports speculate that the failure may have come from a part of the process being completed by Halliburton.
Hmmm…I seem to remember another problem with Halliburton subsidiary KBR doing shoddy work…
Oh yeah, that was it – soldiers being electrocuted in Iraq, some while taking showers.
From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30860668/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Earlier Wednesday, Jim Childs, an electrical inspector hired by the Army to help review U.S.-run facilities in Iraq testified before the Democrats’ policy committee that 90 percent of KBR’s wiring in newly constructed buildings in Iraq was not done properly, meaning an estimated 70,000 buildings where troops lived and worked were not safe.
“When I began inspecting the electrical work performed by KBR, my co-workers and I found improper electrical work in every building we inspected,” Childs said.
(snip)
In strongly worded correspondence last fall, a senior Pentagon official, David J. Graff, told KBR there were “continuing quality deficiencies” in the electrical work it performed. He said KBR executives were “not sufficiently in touch with the urgency or realities of what was actually occurring on the ground” and that some military officials had lost confidence in KBR.
Despite those concerns, KBR was awarded a new $35 million contract earlier this year for a project in Iraq that included electrical work.
(May 21, 2009)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Isn’t there ANYONE who will hold this company accountable for the people they’ve killed and the lives they’ve destroyed???????
“Isn’t there ANYONE who will hold this company accountable for the people they’ve killed and the lives they’ve destroyed???????”
Very very good question. Does anybody know, since, unlike some people, I’m not afraid to admit I don’t know everything, if anybody from Haliburton has been jailed for anything, and if so, for how long?
Just askin’ ’cause even though sentencing still has yet to be done, a kid from TN may be facing jail time for a prank, that, yes, involved getting into somebody else’s e-mail account, and kinda sharing contents over the internet. Not right.
But Good Lord, let the punishment fit the crime.
The magnitude of damage of the incident in the Gulf far and away outstrips what this kid did. I expect justice to be done in all cases. If he gets any significant prison time, then I jolly well expect that the persons responsible for the mess will have far harsher sentences.
Evidently not. KBR was apparently also the entity that decided burning all manner of toxic crap right next to bases was a good way to get rid of it.
OK mudflatters, (from Alaska and beyond!) it is time we take action. Contrary to what the Administration is saying, Shell and Conoco are continuing ahead with drilling in the Chukchi and Arctic seas this spring/summer. They are not slowing down, they are not stopping until we have a better understanding about what happened in the Gulf and how to prevent it from happening off the coast of Alaska. Shell and Conoco will be conducting deep sea drilling off the coast of Alaska, just like BP in the Gulf of Mexico. There is no one stopping them; not our Governor, not our Congressional delegation, not our President.
Seems the only thing that has any hope of stopping them is common sense loving folks like you and me. We know what happens when oil coats our shores! and it ain’t pretty. Just imagine the “Deadliest Catch” fishing in oil filled waters and pulling up oiled crab.
Find every blog you can and start the public opinion outcry to stop drilling in the Chukchi and Arctic now. Go forth and multiply those blog postings!
Night from Ireland, Love you mudpups.
My dear Mudpups,
I have to apologise for a previous posting where I said that the BP oil spill may be Obama’s Katrina. I just read an article on Huffpo and a Katrina timeline on ThinkProgress and have realised my comment was WAY WAY off base.
In 2005, I had only been in the US for 2 years and to be honest, I didn’t pay as much attention to the wall to wall coverage as I should have during Katrina. So I made that comment with no full knowledge of the real horror of Katrina and its aftermath.
I’m relieved that President Obama is acting swiftly and doing all that he can to help the people affected by the oil spill. And I am further encouraged that the Administration is rethinking the offshore drilling policy.
I just want to say – I am…..in absolute shock after reading the ThinkProgress timeline of Katrina. I am no fan of the Bush administration but even I had no idea just how…..truly incompetent they were. I mean, I knew they were AWFUL but I feel like an abyss has just opened before my eyes. The evidence against them is overwhelming – HOW CAN ANYONE DEFEND BUSH OR HIS ADMINISTRATION?
I thought 9/11 was bad enough. That a sitting US President would ignore a major security brief on a very real terrorist threat was enough to dumbfound me for years but to repeat the same brutal ignorance and incompetence just 4 years later? And the Conservatives have the NERVE to say that under OBAMA, Americans will die?? THOUSANDS have ALREADY DIED on THEIR WATCH!!!!
Sorry guys, I know this anger is WAY late. I am just blown away after seeing ALL the details of Katrina. I remember seeing the MSM coverage but clearly I should have been reading the blogs.
WOW. Just wow. God forgive us for abandoning our brethren during their hour of need. This just makes me cry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/the-obamas-katrina-meme-m_n_559203.html
http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/
AussieGal….thank you for saying that. for many people the brutal disregard and ineptitude of the Bush regime and Louisiana’s equally brutish and irresponsible state and parish governing bodies showed the true mind set of Republican and Dixie Democratic thought. the teabagger mentality has been alive and well for many years.
i was traveling in Europe during much of the coverage and reaction from many of my family and friends was shock and they expressed feelings very much like the ones you just wrote about.
yes. it is terrible what happened but what worse is that the same people are still in control….Bush+Cheney+Halliburton+Big Oil+Big Business= Mega-Disasters-Hate-Shoddy goods- more hate…etc……i love it when you get mad….bubs
Love you Irish. Good night.
AKM, thank you for posting this. I am taking this whole thing very personally, since i actually grew up in South Louisiana and have recently moved back here from Houston (out of the frying pan, into the fire). I was going to give you guys the nola.com link, but Zyx did her homework today (thanks!). I just signed up on the Audubon site she linked and will hopefully be able to do my part to help with cleanup. This could have pretty far reaching effects, communities all along the gulf coast could be affected for a very long time.
I take comfort in my fellow mudpups’ anger over this, so thanks to everyone for caring (no snark).
Earth is a small planet and until we figure out how to live on Mars, its the only one we have. I studied lots of geology in college. I have a pretty good world view. We can rape and pillage the entire planet and it’ll be fine in the long run. We’re just ruining it for ourselves and that is what is sick about Palin and her ilk. They couldn’t give a shyte and I for one hope I she NEVER visits South Louisiana again. As far as I’m concerned, her invitation is revoked.
By the way, I haven’t made it through all of the comments yet, but the Morgan City rig collapse was not an active drilling rig. It was being taken to a scrap yard when it collapsed. There may be a spill, but it will not be more than 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel if it had any on it at all and no leak has been detected. At least that’s what I read about it earlier. Here is a link to the local paper:
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20100430/HURBLOG/100439925/1223?Title=Drilling-rig-overturns-in-Morgan-City-no-one-hurt
Out here in the Sierra foothills, all I can say is “damn”. Hope the booms work, hope the seas stay calm enough, hope we (that would be “the entire USA”) don’t lose the whole unique LA/MS wetlands.
BTW, my understanding of the Morgan City event is the same as yours — if anything, it’s an example of how things are supposed to work when there’s a problem, i.e., no leak.
Read the new book Eaarth, by Bill McKibben, purposefully spelled that way because we now live on a different planet. So maybe the earth will survive, but it won’t be habitable for most life.
What the Obama administration really needs to do right now is to mandate that “every single existing and future offshore oil well be fitted with relief wells” – just like Norway. With billions in profits, that should not be too difficult to do – perhaps pennies per share?
Maybe we need an 80% or greater Windfall Profits tax on companies to fund recovery efforts when systems fail. This could be used for cleanup and for compensation to those affected. Tax the heck out of em, I say!
As long as lobbying and corporate donations to politicians is legal nothing will really change. There is simply too much money going to corporations and politicians and not back into the states who lose so much when something like this happens.
I am far behind the curve here because the rate of posting has probably far surpassed what I have read but I try to comment only after having been through all other comments. There are several here that have great merit that I would like to mention but by the time I did so I would be so out of date that it would require an entirely new post to compensate, therefore I just plunge in.
Mostly unnoticed unfortunately is the very early post by nswfm @#6 who points out the ultimate solution to this global problem, conservation.
It is up to us. If we collectively do not change our own behaviors these kinds of things will only become worse and more common. WE caused this environmental disaster because of our insatiable thirst for
oil to empower us to drive preposterously inefficient vehicles on trivial errands. While it is surely true that huge corporations like BP and EXXON could be more responsible, even if they were, the prime mover behind the avaricious quest for more and more energy is us. They just sell it to us at inflated prices because we are so easily fooled.
I know my message here is not going to be welcome, but that does not make it any less true. The picture is also incomplete if we do not expand the view beyond our own shores. The US is a major consumer of resources, far more than its proportional share in terms of population, so we are setting an example for others to aspire to. We should set a better and different example, use less, and get by on less and be contented with it.
I will also reply to strangelet’s post @ 57. I can certainly sympathize. I am not so much a technology geek as a knowledge geek but the conflicts of interest that arise are often similar. Not knowing your overall attitude to the supernatural insights defense, I offer the following. Without our science and the subsequent technology we have developed from it our world would be vastly different from what it is. Not millions, but hundreds of millions would starve every year, pestilence would sweep through whole populations leaving behind only a small residuum of survivors. In other words, nature would have imposed itself upon us and in fact we might, as a species have gone extinct a few thousand years ago out of pure ignorance. We might accomplish that goal in the next century if we do not adapt ourselves and render moot the claims that hypothetical constructs of the supernatural can guide our decisions of how to contend with the real world.
The other thing that I think has been underreported is those who are responsible for the cleanup, and for making sure that resources are on hand should an accident occur. They are often late to the party, and the equipment is lacking or absent. This is the case in Cook Inlet. It’s an accident waiting to happen with no means to contain the oil when it does.
You are quite right of course, but in a perverse way the inadequate capacity for response is justified. There isn’t any efficacious response except to stop the blowout. Once a few million gallons of oil are loose in saltwater there is simply no technology that is available that can clean it up. Other than time of course. And we all should be aware that it is geological time. Not years, not decades, not centuries, perhaps millenia, or tens of millenia, but in fact we do not know and we cannot know. We are not old enough to know.
I hesitate to bring it up because I don’t know how credible the claim is and haven’t the time or ability to do due diligence, but I have seen allegations to the effect that at least one back room deal with the energy suppliers made by Cheney in 2001 was to prevent regulators from requiring blowout preventers on all off shore wells.
It is sad, it is grimly cruel that so much suffering and deprivation can result from the failure of a single technological detail. But it is the nature of our current world.
I am not prone to make predictions, but in this case I will. I predict that BP will resist any full responibility for this catastrophe for long enough to outlive the current administration. And in the end, the horrendous impacts of this incident will weigh only upon the extreme periphery, the thousands of fishermen put out of work, the millions of organisms caught by surprise in a tar pit of transitory nature, the lingering smell of death, long after the crisis is forgotten borne upon a sea breeze.
You are my favorite reasoned voice, KN. I get too pissed off, too easily, to be as well thought out, but I learned this effect of conservation when fighting one of the world’s biggest mining companies which wanted to put some experimental technology, not far from America’s Galapagos. The friend who kicked me in the rear to get involved instead of just complaining was the one from whom I got my posting name. I made friends in the community as a result of my efforts, and our coalition supports each other on other environmental issues. People don’t realize how much my state’s population has grown, but energy use has remained generally the same, dropping per capita use. Some other states follow us, but most bitch and moan about interfering with the lifestyle. Our lifestyle kills. Miners, oil workers, marine life and humans.
nswfm –
Again thanks for the appreciation, it is not easy to be reasonable. I too have my points of view that I could pronounce with inflammatory rehtoric, but it would not sway anyone not already predisposed to agree. The ultimate objective of all argument should be to persuade. That seems to be an art that has been lost or forgotten. To me it is just another irony that people today are so uninformed that they cannot distinguish between persuasion and coercion.
In my own profession I have become something of a pariah because I argue for responsible development of necessary projects. It is both ironic and disturbing.
All I can say to you is fight on, and learn as you go what you are fighting for. It is not easy, it is not simple, but it is important.
I confess to not knowing what the “supernatural insights defense” is. I’d be happy to tell you my attitude toward it, if you’ll tell me what it is.
I completely agree with your point that without science and technology, the human race would be a much smaller and — on average — much less happy operation. That is why I am a technophile (or, if you prefer, a logophile). I firmly believe that technology (the implementation side of knowledge) can produce great benefits for both humans and our planetary fellows; and most of the time I believe that technology can also mitigate any adverse side-effects.
What bothers me about great failures of technology, like Deepwater Horizon, is that they demonstrate that in the last few decades we’ve reached a level of technological competence where a single error can have devastating consequences. If you are a wizard that can move mountains with a gesture, you have an obligation to be careful about where they land.
Events like this make me worry that that the current generation of wizards is not paying close enough attention. We may be approaching the point where we have so much leverage over the ecosphere that we can (unintentionally, I suppose) turn it off. I’m old enough that I might not care, but I have kids, and more to the point, OTHER PEOPLE have kids. Technology is critical to allow those kids to have decent lives, but it’s beginning to look like it may also destroy those lives.
Events like this really hit me hard (apart from the very real death and destruction), because they should not occur. Ever. That one does occur suggests that the people who should be overseeing these activities have become careless, or subject to the allure of profit. And I cannot think of a mechanism to fix the failure. I truly worry that the human species is going to get really close to achieving a sustainable relationship with the planet, and then blow it up at the last minute.
Dunno, but my guess would be something like “god did it.”
Strangelet,
I wrote a reply to you last night but my uplink was lost before I finished it and so I sent it into the ether.
We have actually been living fairly successfully with the threat of any number of dire technologies for a few decades. The worst of all of course are the huge arsenals of nuclear weapons that still exist here and in Russia.
After that we have a handful of other technologies designed exclusively to kill people, chemical weapons, biological weapons. Both science and technology are responsible for the existence of these things.
I think I understand your ambivalence, because after all, no act or discovery or insight is without consequences and it is impossible to foresee every consequence.
The simple fact of the matter is that good technologies with a sound scientific basis will work within some limited context to confront massively complex problems. Because we must push the limits of both science and technology to keep pace with the demands of population, we will always be on the tightrope of a single path to success and myriad means of failure.
It is a grim prospect and a daunting task, made worse by orders of magnitude when howling ideologs claim the great almighty sky daddy whispered the answer into their ears. Those few of us who contend with reality every day know that there is no such thing as certainty.
You express the situation very well. With six billion humans on the planet, we have to continue to use technology, and in fact innovate our collective brains out. There is no other choice (well, except mass death). The not-an-analogy image I have is the circus or vaudeville performer who keeps the plates spinning on the sticks, and keeps adding plates. (To be an analogy, I’d have to add gyroscopically stabilized plate-spinning motors, and then control networks, and possibly Plate-Falling Preventers, and what all).
I do derive some hope from the fact that we, as a species, survived the first fifty years of the Atomic Age. Clearly, we are not out of the woods yet, but still, whew. Maybe we aren’t completely insane. Just possibly, we can ratchet down the aggregate size of the world’s nuclear arsenals to a level where a maximal nuclear war would just destroy civilization, as opposed to all mammalian life.
Your reply allows me to infer what you mean by the “supernatural insights defense”, and I’m happy to say that I don’t play that defense. The Caro-Kann is about as adventurous as I get. While I generally feel that religious faith is a good thing when it helps people to live happier lives, it can become a problem for the rest of us if some group decides that their particular faith is prescriptive and indisputable. As citizens, all we can do is to try to keep such individuals out of high political office.
I’d say that in my lifetime, the influence of rationality has gotten globally stronger, although there are certainly local examples where irrationality is as bad as it ever was. I’m cautiously optimistic that my kids will be able to have decent lives.
All we can do is keep going, do our best to do right, and, as you say, remember that there is no certainty.
Strangelet -
I don’t really disagree with you to any extent at all, however, for the purposes of furthering my own thoughts, and perhaps yours and others, may we engage in some socratic discussion? By that I will make clear I mean I will argue with you from a contrarian point of view simply to evoke your constructive response and to exercise my own ability to question that which I generally accept.
I would submit that we are prisoners of our technology and yet, we implement it in the most haphazard and irresponsible of ways. Education is a kind of ponzi scheme, it produces only a small fraction of people with any depth of knowledge or ability out of the vast pool that is available. This produces a lack of technologists, scientists and people of other disciplines with something positive to contribute. Hence we end up with technologists that may not be particularly skillful, diligent, or even attentive to their tasks.
There seems to be an argument in some circles that the solution to the inadequate application of technology is to use less technology. Without implying that you have suggested such a thing, I have to wonder how exactly that is supposed to work? I have to correct myself, instead of ‘use less technolgy’ I should say ‘rely less on technology’. I am not quite clear what the difference there is but I am striving to be precise.
You are quite right that it is a somewhat remarkable feat to have survived without a nuclear holocaust for low these 55 years. But the threat is not gone. The posture of confrontation between the US and Russia has changed some, but there are still more than ten thousand nuclear weapons ready to be used. I think they could destroy civilization. They might even be able to destroy Homo sapiens, but life will adapt. So the only issue respecting this technology is self preservation, and also perhaps in other contexts as well.
Think for a moment how much effort was devoted to the development and maintenance and creation of delivery systems for nuclear weapons. The figure has to be trillions of dollars. I have to ask the question, what would the world be like if instead of squandering all that effort on weapons, we had devoted it instead to harnessing the fundamental physics of energy exchange and developing safe, and efficient nuclear energy to power the whole world? We would leave the oil in the ground for the most part, we might extract a small amount for feed stocks to be replicated for materials production. We would have no need to sully the landscapes with wind farms, or solar panel fields instead of native plants. We would not need to dam our rivers. Ultimately, given the freedom to experiment and explore we might even be able to shed the earthly bonds of nuclear energy and tap it directly from that huge fusion furnace that blazes away 93 million miles from us. Is it not even slightly ironic that the whole of earth’s ecosphere depends upon photosynthesis and that the source of energy is the nearby star we orbit?
On the supernatural insights matter I was just being cautious, I always prefer not to uselessly offend. I have the suspicion that the Caro-Kann is a defense in chess but that is just a guess.
You may be right that the global population has become more rational in your lifetime, there is some evidence for this in terms of the demographics of China and India for example, but there are also counter examples where regression rather than improvement is the rule. Unfortunately, for all appearances, the US is in regression. Realistically, a vapid schill like Palin could not exist for a day in a rational world. So I have considerable trepidation for your children. I earnestly hope I am wrong, but I strongly fear what we have seen so far is as nothing to what will be visited upon all indiscriminately, when the consequences of willful ignorance make themselves felt.
The future is upon us, tomorrow is today, too much is happening to manage it all.
There will be more and worse failures. Ironically, there are already a multitude of unsung failures haunting the periphery of our individual narrow fields of view.
I’ll say one last thing, I know it is unsettling and even a little manipulative to take a very negative point of view, to argue the worst case so to speak. But it is a useful exercise. If you do not anticipate possible problems, you are unprepared to deal with them when they arise. Indeed, nothing is certain. But some things become in the ordinary course of events, inevitable.
Just got in and haven’t read all the comments, but the AP is reporting that the rig had a history of spills and fires before this last explosion.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100430/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_the_rig
Is anyone surprised? How do these “corporate citizens” live with themselves? How do they sleep at night?
Massey Energy anyone? Another great corporate citizen with a history…
Thanks to everyone for the great comments on this thread.
Thank you, AKM, for bringing us all together.
Ditto as regards thanking AKM. It was a wonderful write-up about exactly what happened. I was unsure myself about the initial cause of this disaster and this thread and all the comments have really enlightened me.
Coal mining is a whole different (and thoroughly toxic) kettle of stuff. Unlike offshore oil-rigs, the potential for widespread devastation from underground mining is fairly small (give or take the odd mine fire), but the potential for individual death and injury is quite high.
Generally, you don’t get massive environmental disasters, but you do get, every year, deaths, injuries, and illness — one of the truly disgusting features of US society is that black-lung disease still exists.
The thing is, the other way to get coal is mountaintop removal / pit mines. This minimizes local death/injury/illness, but it guarantees significant local/regional environmental degradation.
So, whaddya do if you think you still need coal for a while? There is actually a fairly successful answer, which is “unionized mines”. Unfortunately, this concept causes a fraction of the US electorate to go berserk, and the MSM reports on the berserkitude, and we’re all basically screwed, but especially the non-union miners.
Thanks for this very informative post. I was looking all over for good pictures and a step by step of what occurred and lo and behold —I find the best reporting right here!
Just like there is no such thing as clean coal, there is no such think as safe drilling when it comes to our oceans. Ohh, my heart aches for our oceans and what we are doing to them.
I spent a decade in Fla while in college.
I cannot believe, I am just dumbstruck at the degree, the unending degree’s
of damage ahead from this oil, and if the well-head goes, it becomes incomprehensible.
This blog gives some explanation re oil, tankers, profits, etc.
http://oiltankers.blogspot.com/.
It will blow your mind…
Having lost all to the Exxon spill i will feel deeply for those folks down there in the gulf coast. I dont know what to say to those folks. Perhaps carry on. They dont leave you much ,those corporations, but you must find a way to carry on. My heart is with you here in Alaska.
I forgot the supreme court is against you.
even though it has been 20 years I’m still angry about Exxon.. There is huge pile of trash in the pacific larger than Texas and in the Atlantic there is one nearly the size of Texas( maybe partly caused by the tsunami?) and now the oil spill in the gulf.. we ignore these issues at or own PERIL!! once the ocean die we will soon follow….there are no other planets near by like this one SO FIGHT FOR HER. PLEASE!!!
Douglas Brinkley in this video at Crooks & Liars says that BP had an incident in Alaska in 2006 – does anyone here remember what that was? Was Palin governor at the time, or was it during her tenure on the Oil & Gas Commission?
And does anyone wonder why – if she’s been positioning herself as such a great Energy Expert – she isn’t doing anything to help out with repair or containment of the spill, or cleaning birds, or anything at all about this disaster. Other than posting on her Facebook page, I mean.
Shouldn’t she, with her 12 million bucks, be donating some money to cleaning birds, sending Willow and Bristol down there with rubber gloves, or at least donating some money to buying oil booms to protect the coast? Shouldn’t she be corraling some of the oil and gas “experts” she knows so well to help with containment? Shouldn’t Todd be going down there to pilot a boat deploying protective booms?
What the f*ck is Miss Oil Industry Expert doing other than yapping?
Time to relook at Naomi Klein’s book ’shock doctrine’. It begins with telling how corporate entities love these sort of disasters to gain control and advantage in these situations. Time we look at a evolutionary quantum leap in what the heck we’re doing here, and why isn’t life as precious as greed…and how to sustain what is left….We are also still in pain and anger over the Valdez, and wrote 20 years ago that it will be telling, about our countries priorities, about how that was going to be handled…I thought at the most, 10 years of stall and degradation…. then it became 20…and still, nothing learned. We are a plague on this miraculous planet.
It would be truly great for Alaska and those who cannot fight off shore oil drilling, but may forever be effected by it, if each of you could write a letter to your local paper and your Senators & Reps asking them to prevent Shell and Conoco from proceeding with drilling new off shore oil wells in the Chukchi and Arctic seas this summer. Unfortunately, Pres. Obama and his administration are doing NOTHING about this new drilling, no new requirements, no waiting until we understand how to respond to such a disaster at 50 below, in complete darkness, and under many, many feet of ice. Please write one letter and ask a friend to write another — let’s work for change!
Excellent advice. Let us do what we can. Thanks for the encouragement.
I worked for three months out in Scan Bay, Alaska cleaning up the Bunker C from the Selandang Ayu spill. The total oil spilled out from that wreck was approximately 450,000 gallons. The Deepwater Horizon drill over site is leaking approximately half that amount every day. The crude coming up out of the hole contains the same toxic mix that leaked from the Exxon Valdez. It mixes with sea water and becomes an oozy, sticky noxious mess that clings to everything with which it comes in contact.
I choose to see the advancing sheen of oil as a line of millions of laptops, cell phones, cheap plastic toys, plastic totes, discarded tarps, cell phone case covers gone out of vogue and a thousand other petty, unnecessary items consumed by the industrialized world today.
Practically every process used to pump, process and utilize the oil we consume in the millions of barrels daily creates a toxic by product. We have even begun to theorize that polyethylene leaches out artificial hormones that may be interfering with basic bodily development. Revenge of the ancient trees who lived before feeling the mighty ax of mankind.
I am a cry baby. I admit it. Why would God chose to rapture us to heaven to enjoy a new planet created in a new millennium when we cannot exercise proper custodianship of what we have right in front of our noses? The conservatives told us that government didn’t need to govern the corporations. They would do it themselves. Now neither the Coast Guard nor the EPA has the resources to tackle this mess, and we now know (as if we didn’t already suspect) that BP greatly over estimated its ability to handle a leak of this size.
“In an exploration plan and environmental impact analysis filed with the federal government in February 2009, BP said it had the capability to handle a “worst-case scenario” at the site, which the document described as a leak of 162,000 barrels per day from an uncontrolled blowout — 6.8 million gallons each day.” Sunday, May 2, 2010 1:41 PM EDTThe Associated PressBy ALLEN G. BREED and SETH BORENSTEIN
What do the Shell oil folk have to say to that bit of fact from the mouths of BP themselves? I am certain Shell will be more than willing to tell us how they have managed to anticipate and plan for a spill under conditions never before encountered to date by oil producers. They don’t even plan to start small and work there way up, but plan to hit it full bore.
I want to see every last planner on the Chuckchi project at Shell oil on a boat in the Gulf. I want to see them laying out boom by the mile. I want to see them man a skimmer as it desperately tries to keep up with the slag collecting on the booms in the wind driven waters. I want to see them pulling apart the guts of a skimmer platform after it gets clogged up for the umpteenth time. I want to see them pass thousands of bags of oil hand over hand across a thousand yards of beach as they try and beat the tide. I want them to smell the stench of rotten vegetation that has been cooking under a layer of sludge. I want them to hear the voice of the EPA as they yell at you for cutting down too much saw grass because cutting it down removes not only the oil but the natural buffer that protects the nearby nesting grounds from being washed away in the next winter storm cycle. I want them to collapse from exhaustion at the end of a twelve hour day spent pretending that what you have done actually helped, when you know damned well that the only real way to help is by preventing the damn spill from happening.
Just sayin @ 79
” We are a plague on this miraculous planet.”
Yes, yes we are and the is the ultimate crux of the problem. There is much irony here as well. Of those organisms that exist on this green and blue earth, we are the most sentient, the most well provided to foresee our own futures and the futures therefore to some extent of everything else, and yet we defy all logic by ignoring the obvious. There are simply too many of us.
I would offer one small reassurance though it is not consoling form the view point of humanity. Life on earth is astoundingly resilient and adaptive. We will not destroy it. We may well destroy any number of superbly adapted and elegant organisms, we may well render the entire northern hemisphere a radioactive wasteland but life will not succumb. We will succumb.
It’s a pity to think that the flowering of a rudimentary intelligence on a small satellite of an ordinary sun should have such a short existence. But perhaps that is the course of most civilizations. Sparks that burn brightly for a few millenia in the vast sea of tens of thousands of millenia.
If we don’t figure out a way to stop breeding an increase of population, we are doomed.