Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

I haven't done my homework on this issue, but I don't see any reason to bring a left wing/right wing debate into something like this; it all seems common sense-y to me.

I would like to assume that there's a valid reason to not deploy the Costner Oil Bubble Sucking Device. However, if there IS such a reason, wouldn't it be in the government's best interests, from a PR perspective, to let us know what it is?

If there is foot dragging, I would like to assume that the reasons for it are valid. Again, why have they not been known? As John pointed out, what's worse than oil?

In SW's defense, it's understandable to be a bit sensitive to attacks on the current administration. From 2000-2005ish, you couldn't say ANYTHING bad about Bush without hearing "THIS IS A TIME OF CRISIS AND YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT THE PRESIDENT BECAUSE YOU STAND BY HIM." The pundits who were screaming that not too long ago seem to have forgotten that. I'm not a fan. But Fox News has pretty much conditioned an irritation response in a lot of us. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that this isn't some artificial "issue" cooked up by Murdoch and Company. This is an actual crisis, and if the admin's not up to snuff, why shouldn't they be called out on it?

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

<font color=plum>OH Please - like that actually stopped ANYBODY from ranting about Bush. :rolleyes:

If Bush were still in the White House, the same people calling Obama's actions "cautious, with good reason" would be screaming "Cowboy Bush is at it again. Doing everything he can to protect his oil buddies". We've had offers from other countries to help with the clean-up. They've been turned down. If Bush did that, it would be touted as "proof" that he is an egocentric idiot intent on alienating the rest of the world. But since it's Obama, he must have a good reason for being so cautious. LOL! Personally, I think it's humorously entertaining to watch those who slammed Bush for 8 years to suddenly find the roles reversed and watch the reactions when it's their boy in the White House that is being criticized.

Oh, one other side not, The New Orleans Katrina F***-Up can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the New Orleans mayor and LA Governor. As <font color=white>JD</font> correctly pointed out, Bush actually declared most of the coastal regions of LA, MS, and AL a disaster area 2-3 days BEFORE Katrina ever made landfall. But the federal government cannot just "take over" emergency operations in any state because that would violate the state's sovereignty. The state has to ask for or accept the aid offered. The governor chose not to do that. It was known for at least 3 days that Katrina absolutely would hit New Orleans. What did the mayor do about that information? Not much. Did he start evacuations or stockpiling emergency supplies? No. He and the governor decided to wait and see what would happen and they got fubarred. I do give the mayor credit for using the Superdome as an emergency shelter. THAT showed some quick thinking. The only problem was that he shouldn't have HAD to do any "quick thinking", because he had at least a week (or more) to prepare for the situation.</font>

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

Well, at that time I remember Kanye West went on TV and said Bush didn't care about black people, so it must be true. *Shrug*

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

That's the point I was trying to make- I had a long weekend so forgive me if I'm exhausted and not clear.

I'm saying that we shouldn't need to bring left or right wing namecalling into something that seems as cut and dry as this. If there are unnecessary delays, that's not okay and we should be screaming about it. If the delays are warranted, we should know WHY. And no, nothing will stop anyone from slamming a president they don't like- I was just pointing out that the SAME people who said "Stand by your President no matter what" seem to have forgotten they had that opinion- I don't like hypocrisy.

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

QFT.

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

As soon as I heard about the Spill and it's depth, 5K feet, I was pretty certain the solution wouldn't be quick. The depth of the Spill equates to 151 atmospheres. This means that direct human intervention is almost impossible. Everything has to be done by robotics. Even if a manned submersible were sent down, it would just give us a "closer look", all actions would still have to be thru robotic arms.

Adm. Allen said it best (paraphrase) "if you get rid of BP, it begs the question, Who do you replace them with?". The Federal government certainly doesn't have the practical skills to deal with this magnitude of a disaster. That leaves us dependent on the oil companies to actually stop the leak.

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

Deja-vu. 1979
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill
They tried mud and iron balls, only thing that worked was 2 relief wells and a concrete cap 10 MONTHS later. (in only 160 feet of water)

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

Indeed. Not mentioned in the wikipedia article however, is that much the oil from the Ixtoc oil spill didn't actually go anywhere. Most of it sunk to the bottom of the seafloor and resides within the sedimentation.

I am still somewhat dubious as to what will happen with the majority of the oil from the Deep Horizon well. Part of me thinks it'll be a repeat of Ixtoc by and large. But there is far too much uncertainty. Again the media loves to jump on worst case scenarios predicted by models (i.e. all of the coasts are screwed). I'm not quite so certain, time will tell. Granted I haven't followed closely within the last few days, so I could be wrong.

As for this whole political debate that this thread got turned into... I think all of those points are by and large unfounded. I don't understand how people can make the connection and say that this is "Obama's Katrina." To me that is a positively stupid assertion to make. The fact of the matter is BP really screwed this one up. There may have been some governmental shenanigins in terms of safety procedures between BP and regulatory bodies. I expect investigations to yield those results. But this is by and large BP's own doing, and I don't understand how people can reasonably assume that the government could have acted sooner to somehow mitigate the damage. ~17k barrels of oil were spewing out each day, there is next to nothing you can do to contain that. The best thing you can do is hope that BP fixed the problem. BP more than anyone wants to stop the flow, and they have many brilliant minds working to try to stop it. Although I'm pretty certain those minds have probably the most miserable lives since this fiasco started.

Re: Giant Plumes of Oil... A way to clean those up?
 

I don't think there is much anyone can do about these tremendously huge oil plumes. Your idea in theory could be sound (although I'm not certain as to the makeup of this oil plumes, I'm not certain anyone truly is), but practicality/technicality becomes an issue. Somehow I imagine trying to vacu-suck (Spaceballs reference) would be quite a challenge, and probably wouldn't yield very much captured oil. To be honest, I haven't heard of any suggestions as to what to do with these giant oil plumes, presumably because there really isn't much we can do except prepare for wherever it "lands". A dismal answer to give, and probably one that lacks depth but the fact that I don't hear much about trying to capture the oil plumes leads me to believe that it is probably impractical to begin with.