Oil leak?

[gorpPearo]

Maybe you have noticed the enormous oil leak at the Gulf of Mexico. You think it will have a very major negative effect on our animal population close to Mexico?

[Wittgen]

I think it's going to have a negative effect on a lot of things. Hurricanes, especially, should be interesting this year.

[ewuvi]

Hurricanes, especially, should be interesting this year.

Oh dear, that hadn't even occurred to me.

Birds and reptiles and a lot of fish are pretty screwed, since even small amounts of oil can kill their eggs.

[gman391]

Yep the gulf is screwed for at least the next decade.

[ewuvi]

Well, at least I can say I walk everywhere to protest the use of gasoline instead of admitting that I don't know how to drive.

[Arganaut]

The spill in the gulf is pretty damn bad, and it'll definitely take a while to get fixed up. Really though, they were drilling 5,000 feet underwater several miles off the shoreline, in the Gulf of Mexico. Did no one see the threat in only allowing oil companies to drill in the outermost and bottom portions of the Gulf of Mexico, where its even a little difficult for the government to get military vessels that aren't nuclear powered, or don't have large stores of fuel in them? Are we really this surprised?

Here's just hoping that BP greenlights the super-tanker solution here soon. Those would go a long way to getting at the very least some of the oil out of the gulf.

[Tempest Kitsune]

Supposedly a lot of what's coming out of the pipe is gas, not oil, so it's not quite as bad as we first were led to believe. Which doesn't really mean all that much if you think about it, because you've got the oil rising to the surface, and the natural gas dispersing through the water and possible altering the chemical balance of the entire gulf for decades to come. Getting the oil out is gonna be the easy part.

[Arganaut]

Too true. And its not like this is some lake that's a contained body of water. This is an open body of water who shares its source of water with an entire current throughout the Atlantic Ocean... which could be really REALLY bad.

[Lthayer3]

Louisianian here.

I don't live very close to the coast (Lafayette), but what I see on the local news channels every day is depressing. Neither the government nor BP seem to be doing much of anything. Seven weeks have passed, and the rate of leakage hasn't even been slowed. You'd think that seven weeks would have been plenty of time to plug the hole. The effort to cordon off the spill was left to locals for the most part, same as the efforts to clean the oil from beaches. Had the coast guard been more fully mobilized in the first few days, the problem could have been minimized. Had BP accepted help and advice from other people in the oil industry, multiple solutions could have been devised and implemented in the first couple weeks. Had the government taken control of the mess and hired experts in the field instead of letting BP decide how to fix things... The possibilities go on and on.

There is simply no excuse for this disaster extending for so long. It is just so frustrating that the people in charge of this are acting at a snail's pace and seemingly hadn't planned for any disaster like this. One thing that I think this mess has pretty much guaranteed: Obama won't be receiving nearly as many votes from the Southern US in 2012.

Louisiana's wetlands were already seriously endangered from erosion and pollution, so this just feels like a nail in the coffin. It could take decades for the oil to be cleaned from the ecosystem, which is long enough that it may never recover. Depending on how much of the oil reaches Florida's wetlands, they could be in some deep trouble, too. I don't even know what this will do to the Gulf coast fishing industry, but I'd imagine things are looking pretty grim for them right now.

As for Mexico, I suspect the Yucatan peninsula's coasts will be in for some trouble (especially if this goes on for several more weeks), but it shouldn't be horrible elsewhere if the leak is fixed soon.

[doc.exe]

That is what makes me the most furious about this entire mess. The U.S. authorities and the oil company have simply not done enough to control the disaster.

My father (who by the way, is a petroleum engineer and worked in the Mexican oil company for more than a decade) told me the other day that they could have implemented an engineering solution that would have minimized the damage in the very first weeks, yet for some reason they didn't do it. I don't get how they can be so... indolent.

Then again, the government in my country has been very indifferent regarding this whole disaster, despite the fact that it could seriously affect us too.

[Tempest Kitsune]

I think the entirety of Senators and Congressmen from Gulf states are going to see a turnover when the elections roll around this year thanks to their handling of the entire situation.

[Arganaut]

doc.exe, considering your government is pretty much fighting a war in the northern provinces of your country against a well-armed drug cartel, I'd be cutting them a little slack when it comes to an oil spill that's really the responsibility of an American company, and after the situation got out of their control, the American government.

That being said, both BP and the US government have a lot of responsibility. Everyone here has mentioned the fact that BP's inability to consult with other oil companies kept them from acting quickly and inefficiently, plus choosing completely bone-headed and wrong-approach tactics like 'Top-Kill' as a Plan B after Plan A 'plug the damn hole' failed. Seriously, pump mud down to the bottom of the ocean to try and clot the hole? Genius, just genius. Though, you may want to take matters like currents and ocean pressure when going through with this.

The US government, however, really dropped the ball both before the situation occurred after the situation spun out of control. Really, who took a look at an oil rig off sure and said "Yeah, its close by in case something bad happens and the coast guard and emergency personal can react immediately and stop the situation before it erupts out of control, but its an eyesore. How about we send these out to the middle of the very sea itself, where the water's so deep it could take hours just to get the machinery down to review the pipelines and equipment, much less get emergency personal and machinery down in case something terrible happens."

Really, while I can easily sympathize with not wanting non-aesthetic and even somewhat dangerous equipment and buildings being nearby (as a West Virginian, coal mines are never too far away, nor are the trains that cart the coal from the mines out across the state), I'd think it better to have them closer so that you can more easily keep an eye on them, versus out in the middle of nowhere, where the difference between complete disaster and a curtailed inconvenience is just how easy/hard it is to get the right men and equipment out there.

Heck, our coal mines aren't just nearby, but we actually put more effort into making sure we have good roads heading out to them, instead of just dirt and gravel, versus a whole lot of other roads: just so that emergency vehicles don't end up wrecking on their way to the collapsed mine, where several miners are stuck and possibly slowly dieing.

Meanwhile, the federal government (I have to give kudos to state and local governments for their efforts), outside of the military, reacted only about 37 days out after the actual incident... well, they started talking about how they were going to take effort to fix the problem. Still, its certainly more than what they did for Nashville during the torrential flood a few weeks back.

The whole thing is frustrating, and we here in the Mountain State certainly hope that folks like you Lthayer will be alright.

With that being said, I don't see the electoral consequences of this being much. Really, if the Republicans try to trot this out against the Democrats (what with them being in control of Congress and the White House), the Democrats will just trot Katrina out against the Republicans (what with them having been in control of Congress and the White House back then). So I see this as more as a canceling out than anything else.

[gman391]

Actually the Oil Spill is going to have world wide influence

Up in BC they were talking about a new pipeline across the north. With this shit?

Yeah it's dead in the water. Literally political suicide and we we're already....less then okay with it.

Of course gas and oil are both going up. And with the U.S. finally getting it's stuff together it's forgetting some other important issues. Spain's going under, North and South Korea are at each other's throats. (haven't brought the knives out yet but give it time.) Israel is once again in hot water. Yeah this is one of those times where you wish that both governments and corporations were people.

Just so you could beat the shit of one and shake the other screaming "WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING?"

Good luck to those folk in the more immediate area.

[Lthayer3]

... oil spill that's really the responsibility of an American company ...

Actually, it isn't an American company. BP (British Petroleum) is most definitely a British company. Which I suspect is partially why the American government didn't just take over the situation. Interestingly, I haven't heard anything about the British government taking an interest in the matter...

(Although, after a little further research, Transocean Ltd., an American company, owned and operated the actual rig on behalf of BP. Halliburton, another American company, built the well casing. BP seems to be the one blamed because it chose how the well/rig would be built -- specifically, it didn't have a shut off switch that seemingly could have prevented the disaster entirely.)

I suspect it won't affect politics too much -- at least not on the state or local levels in LA (Mississippi might be another story entirely). Even Louisiana's senators and congress people have been making efforts, but they don't have the power it takes to really do anything without congressional voting, which takes forever. President Obama is the one Louisiana is blaming for not working quickly enough. On his one visit to LA, he spent all of two hours, and from what I understand, has barely consulted with local officials at all. Really, though, it isn't just this that Obama hasn't seemed concerned enough about. I've heard very little from him about the Iran, Israel, and Korea problems. He seems to leave most things to Hillary and the rest of his cabinet.

Actually the Oil Spill is going to have world wide influence

Absolutely. I suspect the actual ecological impact will only be in the close gulf coast areas. I would really be amazed if the oil even makes it past Cuba.

Just so you could beat the shit of one and shake the other screaming "WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING?"

Shaking people and screaming at them seems like a good idea right now. Maybe if government officials and corporate executives got that sort of treatment whenever they messed up, they'd learn to be a little more responsible?

[gman391]

Just so you could beat the shit of one and shake the other screaming "WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING?"

Shaking people and screaming at them seems like a good idea right now. Maybe if government officials and corporate executives got that sort of treatment whenever they messed up, they'd learn to be a little more responsible?

Heh heh your assuming they can be taught anything besides money=good everyone else=not important

Damn I'm cynical at night.

[Arganaut]

I think all of us who can rightfully claim to be informed about recent issues can say that we're quite cynical in one way or the other. My cynicism is more or less aimed towards the Federal Govt. which, despite taking an ever growing share of our tax money, and spending even more, doesn't seem to be doing any better of a job, if not a worse job, than it did the previous year.

My cynicism is also aimed towards the remaining PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) who seem poised to take the entire world economy down because they're finding that they don't have the money to pay their debt anymore... but still really want to continue to subsidize and entitle anything that will vote for the government in power.

My cynicism also can't be helped by the fact that even if the party I'm registered with wins majorities in Congress this November, I still highly doubt anything of substance will be done, which leaves me with very little hope for the near-term future.

It also isn't helped by the fact that the Korean War is about ready to kick into Round 2, Iran is about ready to hold the entire Middle-Eastern Sphere of Influence hostage with nuclear missiles, with the only reliable ally we have in the region being quickly abandoned by the nearby Europeans, seemingly with the hope that by distancing themselves by the only somewhat stable Western-Style Democracy in the region, they can forgo a conflict with Iran.

Also, Russia seems poised to re-exert its power over the former Soviet Satellite States, while our current Commander-in-Chief and Head of the State Department seem far too busy mispelling 'Reset' on buttons of symbolic meaning to actually look like it would attempt to block Russia's plays.....

The world kinda sucks when you stop to think about it.

[Lthayer3]

I guess I'm a little cynical. I mostly alternate between angry and resigned, though. When was the last time most of the American people were happy with their government, anyway? World War 2? The (American) Civil War? The Revolutionary War?



Getting governments to coordinate with each other to solve the world's problems is like herding cats. The good thing: if war does break out anywhere, NATO and the UN will get their acts together pretty quickly. At least, well, theoretically they should. Maybe? Ok, probably not. In the best case, Europe will just follow the USA's bumbling government again, and we'll have another messy occupation for a decade or so. And we're probably screwed if something isn't done about Iran soon, seeing as they already have ICBM capability :/

[Arganaut]

Ugh... I'd say I would've been reasonably happy with the state of global governance in.... hmmm... well, I always thought the period after Bismark's creation of Global Politics and before the Spanish-American War would be nice. America hadn't gotten involved in Imperialism to a great degree, we mostly kept to ourselves, the number of countries that we would have to deal with was smaller, and at the very least, though the government of the United States was somewhat corrupt, it wasn't powerful enough to hurt the rest of the country.

Then again, the competition between the various countries would probably lead to a lot of stress on its own... oh well, it would have to be less stressful than the current situation... right?

[gman391]

It depends where the war breaks out Lith

The NATO treaty only agreed to fight in North America and Europe. One of the reasons why NATO stayed out of 'Nam

As for the UN....well they showed how effective they are at stopping war with Bush didn't they?

Overall Arganaut's right government has never really been happy for anyone. Ultimately humans despite being all kinds of awesome are still pretty flawed and the system reflects that.

Now if we took over the world we might be able to change it or just create new problems. But all we can do is the best we can.

Now after the Spanish America war was just jiffy for America it went less then well with some of the others... my own country was just getting through it's first huge scandal
(Railways baby! ) although we did have our last unambiguously good Prime Minster until the 50's so whatever.

[tjchaos]

Some of you might find this interesting, apparently BP has opened up all of their live feeds:

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?cat ... Id=7062605

Although none of them were running when I just checked them.