

BP oil slick - motters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8JHSAVYT0

======
jsulak
I still have trouble comprehending how truly very, very bad this all is. I
think it's been hard to feel the scale of it because it's such a slow-motion
event, so it frequently falls out of the news cycle, even here in relatively
nearby Houston. It makes me even more pessimistic about the prospect of humans
getting it together to deal with truly slow-motion problems, like global
warming.

~~~
Tamerlin
What makes me most pessimistic about it is that even in the face of empirical,
observational evidence of global warming, there are still people out there who
deny it.

The real gravity of this situation in the Gulf is being drastically
underplayed -- because no one has accounted for the combination of its
enormity plus the fact that hurricane season is nigh. And NOAA is predicting a
higher than average hurricane season. Even if NOAA ends up being wrong about
that, one or two hurricanes of even moderate strength anywhere near that
enormous oil spill, which I suspect is FAR larger than anyone at BP has
admitted (several researchers indicated that based on analyzing BP's video,
BP's estimate of 5000 barrels per day is short by close two orders of
magnitude), will whip the entire coastline into a toxic nightmare.

~~~
jsulak
Exactly. I am truly dreading hurricane season. Cleanup after a major storm is
bad enough without having to deal with sticky, toxic oil.

~~~
Tamerlin
I'm surprised that it hasn't gotten more attention, but the thought of a 120
MPH wind whipping all of those miles-long plumes of toxic glop into a froth
and splattering all over the Gulf coast definitely concerns me -- especially
with the beginning of hurricane season so close, couple with the National
Weather Service forecast...

<http://www.mahalo.com/2010-hurricane-season-forecast>

------
doron
Having visited New Orleans after Katrina, you could not escape the feeling
that neglect, and dereliction of duty of our elected officials displayed
before, during, and after the event. Strong words came to mind at the time,
something akin to treason, but time has passed, and we move on to other
issues.

And here we are again, where an entire way of life might be destroyed and the
already battered economy of the region (and more so,its unique wild life
habitats) will be gone due to neglect, cutting corners and protecting profit
margins at the detriment of society and our natural environment.

The golf states are being destroyed by neglect, and i cant shake the feeling
that to some degree however small it is my fault as well.

~~~
Tamerlin
"Having visited New Orleans after Katrina, you could not escape the feeling
that neglect, and dereliction of duty of our elected officials displayed
before, during, and after the event. Strong words came to mind at the time,
something akin to treason, but time has passed, and we move on to other
issues."

That's the understatement of the decade. New Orleans was a deathtrap, and a
large part of the damage was self-inflicted.

The city sank itself by drawing water out of the aquifer below (which
gradually leeched out the dissolved limestone, a bit like the sinkholes in
Florida, but not as dramatic). The barrier islands that the locals have been
callously destroying, mostly by ripping out the vegetation ("weeds") that held
them together used to protect the coastline from the massive storm surges that
come along with the bigger hurricanes pretty much every summer.

To top things off, the levies weren't built to spec -- the Army Corps of
Engineers cut corners, as usual, not driving the supports in deep enough to
anchor them into solid ground. So they drifted under hydraulic pressure from
the canals, and eventually started to leak, since they were anchored in soggy
earth. In spite of complaints about flooding from the leaking levies, no one
bothered to examine and/or repair them.

On top of that, the way that they've screwed up the Mississippi's outflow
gives it only one place to go when it floods: New Orleans. Which, being below
Lake Ponchartrain, the Mississippi, AND the Gulf, leaves the water with no way
out.

So the only thing that kept the 3 major bodies of water out of the city were
the levies that were poorly built and unmaintained.

That's not just neglect, it's bordering on suicide.

------
flatline
Sadly, I'm afraid that the only real hope for cleanup is to rely on natural
processes. From the reading I've been doing about past oil spills and the
efforts they've taken so far with this one, the dispersants and other chemical
measures used to stop the spread of the oil may be more toxic than the oil
itself. Although millions of gallons of oil leak into the gulf each year
naturally, they are certainly not all at once and in so contained an area. We
will feel the impact of this for a long time into the future.

~~~
chaosmachine
This might be the event that finally drives home the long-term consequences of
our actions as a species.

The problems we're creating today have no immediate solutions. We are fucking
things up in ways that will take hundreds or thousands of years to fix.

Of course, that only seems like a long time because we measure things in terms
of human lifespans. 500 years is nothing to a 4 billion year old planet.

And earth's seen much worse. A single supervolcanic eruption would do more
damage than all the man-made disasters of the last 500 years combined.

~~~
dhimes
Unfortunately I am cynical about this. We thought the Exxon Valdez disaster
might be a turning point as well, but it wasn't. Some incremental change may
come of this, but probably nothing revolutionary.

No doubt, you'll soon hear folks trying to put the public at ease about the
long-term consequences of this spill. Something about how it's not too
important in the big scheme of things, nature will have the place perfectly
restored in about a decade, and so on. That's what they said about the Valdez.
At the time I thought it was a reasonable argument. Then I pretty much forgot
about it and went on my merry way. It wasn't until this spill that it came to
my attention that the Puget sound still hasn't recovered ecologically from the
spill.

~~~
khafra
I fuzzily remember a quote about either the hot-air balloon or the gatling
gun; something to the effect that it would make war so terrible that it would
no longer be waged. It doesn't matter how terrible the consequences of
something are to everybody else; if it profits someone who's powerful enough
to get it done, it'll get done.

~~~
oz
Yes. Gatling thought that it would save lives by reducing the amount of
soldiers necessary for war.

------
DanHulton
Weirdly enough, it was a YouTube comment that really hit home with me on this
issue:

How long ago was it that there was a substantial part of the North American
population chanting "Drill baby, drill"?

~~~
gcv
That same segment of the population still supports off-shore drilling.
Environmental concerns don't matter to vocal members of the conservative
movement until they actually start coughing up smog.

On the other hand, liberal President Obama's drilling plan might actually
collapse now. At least, one might hope that the oil industry can't
successfully bribe Congress anymore — er, excuse me, make sufficiently large
campaign contributions.

(Blatant politics and off-topic for HN, I know. Sorry.)

~~~
orangecat
Well, perhaps if we had opened up ANWR there would be less need for offshore
drilling. Or if liberals hadn't spent the last several decades demonizing
nuclear power, apparently under the delusion the alternative is Living in
Harmony with Gaia rather than coal and oil.

~~~
MichaelSalib
ANWR would need decades to begin production and even then would produce only
modest amounts of oil. Nuclear power has proven to be extremely expensive; I
am not aware of any country that generates a significant fraction of its power
using nuclear power plants without massive investment and control by the
state. Since the people generally opposed to government funding and control of
industry on a massive scale are not usually liberal, your comment is of
questionable veracity.

~~~
anamax
> Nuclear power has proven to be extremely expensive; I am not aware of any
> country that generates a significant fraction of its power using nuclear
> power plants without massive investment and control by the state.

"control by the state" is a choice. Many countries have national oil
companies, but that tells us only that they like national oil companies as
other countries have private ones.

The "massive investment" for nuclear power is well within the capabilities of
many US companies. For example, at least three of the California utility
companies can afford it. (PG&E has at least one. Sacramento used to and at
least one of the LA basin companies is bigger than Sacramento's company.)

Note that at least some of the "expense" is also a choice. We spend a lot of
money on nukes that has nothing to do with safety or power production.

I'll agree that nukes could be safer, but as long as we're spending money on
things other than safety, I reject the claim that safety is a high priority.
(And yes, some of those things are driven by folks who scream "safety".)

~~~
MichaelSalib
_"control by the state" is a choice._

Well, eating is a choice. And yet I choose to eat every day. The word 'choice'
conveys very different meanings: everything we do is a choice, but many of our
actions are highly constrained. After decades of nuclear power development, no
one earth has successfully run a nuclear power system without massive
government funding or control. That suggests that we don't know how to do such
a thing.

 _The "massive investment" for nuclear power is well within the capabilities
of many US companies._

Not in anything that looks like a free market. Right now, the federal
government provides very large subsidies to nuclear power operators. As a
result, we've had...no new nuclear power plants built in the last three
decades. In the absence of the massive government subsidies we have in place
now, I don't believe there are any utilities that could afford to build a
nuclear plant on their own or secure the necessary financing.

 _Note that at least some of the "expense" is also a choice._

And yet nuclear power is very expensive all over the world. Nuclear power
plants are almost always over budget and late no matter where they're built.
When different people all over the world keep making the same mistakes, at
some point, you have to consider the possibility that all these mistakes are
not just random individual failures but reflect intrinsic properties of
current reactor technology.

 _We spend a lot of money on nukes that has nothing to do with safety or power
production._

I don't know what you're referring to here.

~~~
orangecat
_Right now, the federal government provides very large subsidies to nuclear
power operators._

Ok, but then to be fair a substantial portion of the defense budget should be
counted as subsidies to oil companies.

 _And yet nuclear power is very expensive all over the world. Nuclear power
plants are almost always over budget and late no matter where they're built._

The French seem to not be starving. And large projects being late and over
budget is not at all surprising, regardless of the field.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_Ok, but then to be fair a substantial portion of the defense budget should be
counted as subsidies to oil companies._

I've heard this before and it makes no sense to me. The US spends a lot of
money on defense because Americans love the military and use it to funnel
money into all sorts of places that would otherwise be quite poor. And most US
military operations around the world don't do anything to reduce the price of
oil. I mean, Iraq is not exactly giving us oil for free now is it?

 _The French seem to not be starving._

True, they're not. But the original claim was that liberal opposition to
nuclear power was the problem. My counterclaim was that you will find zero
support amongst American conservatives for a nuclear power policy anything
like the successful one used in France. Can you point to any important
American conservatives who publicly speak favorably about the France's nuclear
system and advocate for adopting it in the US?

 _And large projects being late and over budget is not at all surprising,
regardless of the field._

I have friends that do design and construction for power plants and, according
to them, the cost and schedule overruns in nuclear plant construction really
are surprising.

~~~
anamax
> My counterclaim was that you will find zero support amongst American
> conservatives for a nuclear power policy anything like the successful one
> used in France. Can you point to any important American conservatives who
> publicly speak favorably about the France's nuclear system and advocate for
> adopting it in the US?

So what?

Note that US conservatives do support more nuclear plants like the ones that
we have.

It's also fairly easy to find conservative support for nuclear power under a
variety of other circumstances.

Yes, France does use reprocessing, but the US nuclear power industry didn't
ban that here.

Do you want to argue that the French system is cheaper because the French govt
is not subject to the review cost that US companies must pay? Or is it that
the French govt doesn't have to pay certain "in operation" costs by virtue of
being a govt? In either case, imposing those costs is clearly a choice.

BTW - You can't damn someone for not going along with an "authority" unless
you accept said authority. In other words, by suggesting that we should agree
with said conservatives in all things, you're saying that you do.

------
yellowbkpk
On a mostly-related slant, Grassroots Mapping is working with local groups to
take home-made high-resolution aerial photographs of the oil slick (from
balloons and kites): <http://grassrootsmapping.org/>

------
thefool
the sad part it, it seems as though this spill is getting comparatively little
attention compared to other disasters. Hell, this will probably much more
damaging than Katrina in the long term, but the difference in the levels of
conversation are staggering.

~~~
Tamerlin
Agreed.

Worse still is the fact that since the oil companies run america, this will
get swept under the rug. The ecological and economical damage will last for
more than half a century. And there are hundreds of these things scattered
along the now-trashed Gulf coast.

------
davi
On the need for a second try at inserting a 4 inch tube to capture some of the
oil coming out of the 21 inch riser pipe:

'“This is all part of reinventing technology,” Tom Mueller, a BP spokesman,
said on Saturday. “It’s not what I’d call a problem — it’s what I’d call
learning, reconfiguring, doing it again.”'
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/18spill.html>

------
rauljara
I never really had a strong stance on offshore drilling until this.

------
parka
It is very sad to see the extent of the problem.

However, as much as I hate to say, it doesn't really affect us directly,
probably not those that are reading this comment on HN anyway. Yes, we're
angry, disappointed, disillusioned - throw in other emotions - but that's
about all.

Those who are directly affected are merely inconvenienced or at worst having
to pay the price of cleaning up.

The wildlife there are paying with their lives, because of us.

I hope people with the power to effect change can learn something from this
disaster, especially the CEO of BP who's going to get his million dollar
paycheck anyway at the end of the year.

------
RyanMcGreal
For all those holdouts still insisting that peak oil is just a silly theory, I
ask you: if the easy-to-reach reserves weren't already in production, why
would we be trying to pump oil out of risky, technically-difficult places like
this?

~~~
tumult
What if 99% of the world's oil was in more difficult places like this, but we
had already extracted the 1% that was easy to get?

I'm not sure what the point of your question was.

~~~
jbooth
Then we wouldn't have gotten so addicted to begin with.

The point is that current oil consumption rate and projected growth are
completely unsustainable, as we're just going to have to keep doing crazier
and crazier stuff like an addict on the street who needs the next fix.

------
joubert
I'm speechless.

