Two articles that are rather worrying in different ways for the Gulf spill:


Carol Browner Says 75% of Spilled BP Oil Is Gone, Georgia Sea Grant Scientists Say 70-79% Remains in Gulf

... The high loss rate scenario results in 70 percent of the oil that entered the waters of the Gulf still being there and the low loss rate scenario predicts that 79 percent of the oil is still in the Gulf. Recall from above that this dissolved and dispersed oil "can be highly toxic".

The residents of Grand Isle have a very good innate understanding of the fact that most of the oil is still present in the waters of the Gulf and still in a toxic form. Here is an excerpt...



To Eat or Not To Eat: The Dilemma of Gulf Seafood

..."Colbert: Do you live down there?
Blum: Yes I do.
Colbert: Do you eat seafood?
Blum: Yes I do.
Colbert: Are you going to eat this seafood now?
Blum: Absolutely.
Colbert: Good man."

[...]

... seems like elementary logic. Not only do I not want to eat the fish because it’s CONTAMINATED, I don’t want to eat it so it can have an opportunity to RECOVER faster. Sorry fishermen. ...


It's our only planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

A while ago, there was the "big spill" from the Itox 1 platform in relatively shallow water:

In 1979, Less Complicated Oil Leak Took 10 Months To Stop

We then have the very big spill from the BP Deepwater Horizon rig...


And now we have the Vermillion Platform on fire...


Meanwhile, Greenpeace is protesting the new oil exploration in the pristine cold waters of the Arctic off Greenland...


It's our only planet!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

We have to be pragmatic here Martin. There is a continuing worldwide demand for oil and petroleum products, and while that continues, people will cut corners to meet that demand. Deals will be struck, safety compromised, and politicians will look the other way.

Things won't change until the oil runs out, it is uneconomic to extract it, or a cheaper energy source, or an alternative product becomes available. ...

And that's a rather depressingly good summary of the present state of play.

Another "Gulf Spill" disaster can be expected. Rather than "if", it's more a question of "when".


Doesn't mean that we can't or shouldn't do anything about that. We may even hold off the "when" to until other better energy sources dominate to push oil-for-burning out of the way.

It's our only planet!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

A bad mess compounded by bad politics?


Barack Obama under fire for grossly underestimating Gulf oil spill

The Obama administration lost the public trust and may have sabotaged clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico by grossly underestimating the amount of oil gushing from BP's broken Macondo well, according to a White House commission appointed to investigate the spill.

In a scathing critique of the administration's handling of the disaster, the two co-chairs of the commission yesterday said government officials made a serious blunder by releasing early estimates of the spill that were about 60 times too low.

"It's a little bit like Custer underestimating the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and paying a price for that," ...


Looks like the game of politics continues whilst the world burns (cue manic laugh of Nero!). (Just to play on the analogy game!)

It's our only planet!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Seems like BP and the government are all too eager to say the oil has gone.

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=49&a=469982

---

Join the PACK!

Seems like BP and the government are all too eager to say the oil has gone.

Scientists find BP oil at bottom of Gulf

Thanks for that. I'm sure this story will linger for some time yet. Apart from the damage to the Gulf (and tuna?), will it sweep away Obama and BP with it?...


A two inches thick coating of tar?! From that link:

Joye said 10 of her 14 samples showed visible oil, including all the ones taken north of the busted well. She found oil on the sea floor as far as 80 miles away from the site of the spill.

"It's kind of like having a blizzard where the snow comes in and covers everything," Joye said.

And the look of the oil, its state of degradation, the way it settled on freshly dead animals ... the oil will be tested for the chemical fingerprints that would conclusively link it to the BP spill.

"It has to be a recent event," Joye said. "There's still pieces of warm bodies there."

A disappearing act

Since the well was capped on July 15 after some 200 million gallons flowed into the Gulf, there have been signs of resilience on the surface and the shore. Sheens have disappeared, while some marshlands have shoots of green. This seeming recovery is likely a result of massive amounts of chemical dispersants, warm waters and a Gulf that is used to degrading massive amounts of oil, scientists say.

Animal deaths also are far short of worst-case scenarios. But at the same time, a massive invisible plume of oil has been found under the surface, shifting scientists' concerns from what can be easily seen to what can't be.

... especially a report on the subject by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August — were too optimistic.

The oil "did not disappear," he said. "It sank."


Quite a mess... For some time yet...

It's our only planet!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

"... The oil "did not disappear," he said. "It sank."


Quite a mess... For some time yet...

I am very sure this will happen again:


Tony Hayward says BP was 'not prepared' for the Gulf oil spill


It's our only planet!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I'm not sure if anyone else is getting this... but BP is making an all out assault on the air waves in dallas-ft worth. It seems they've found a few people that are happy(well paid for their spoon fed lines) with BP and want everyone to know that the Gulf food is safe and tourists should return even though tourist season is clearly over.

Well played BP. Make sure I hear how much you care about the Gulf after the fact that you spilled 10-20X more oil into the Gulf than you did in Alaska. They still can't fish near the sound since there is still oil coming ashore. Lets also make clear that they fought the Alaska court case so vigorously that the people affected by it are now entitled to about $50k which replaces virtually nothing of the actual money lost to the fishermen of Alaska. Well played indeed

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

So who knows the extent of the disruption to the Gulf ecology?... How far? How long? And only for the Gulf?...


Louisiana oyster beds remain empty after BP disaster

... The oysters were good but hardly plentiful. At this, the season of peak demand, far too many were simply dead.

Not, as you might think, coated in sticky oil or even poisoned by chemical dispersants but killed off, as luck would have it, by fresh water.

Millions of gallons from the Mississippi River were hurriedly diverted...

... He thinks about Alaska and the herrings that disappeared from Prince William Sound three years after the Exxon Valdez spill, never to return.

More than seven months after the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon, the full ramifications of this disaster are still hard to gauge.

The uncertainty gnaws at everyone who depends on the sea. Is it possible, they wonder, that the worst days may still lie ahead?



It's our only planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Check some major news channel releases that whole Gulf area ocean floor was turned into hellish scene. All those million tons of oil mostly sank into the floor and clearly the food chain link at the bottom is effectively broken. But off course since Republicans in power these coverages will be silenced asap.

---

Mandtugai!

You might want to check who owns and runs most of the News/Media sites out there. You'd be surprised at who's in charge

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

You might want to check who owns and runs most of the News/Media sites out there. You'd be surprised at who's in charge

Rupert of course, and we know who he backs

T.A.

Yes he is the Dear Leader Kim Jong Murdoch of America who own 90% of all media power or brain washing power something.

---

Mandtugai!

The biggest law suite ever, US-style?


Gulf of Mexico oil leak: US sues BP over oil disaster

The US is suing BP and eight other firms for allegedly violating federal safety regulations in connection with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The lawsuit asks that they be held liable without limitation for all clean-up and damage costs.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in April killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil over several months.

The oil leak became the worst environmental disaster in US history. ...

US Attorney General Eric Holder said the complaint alleged that "violations of safety and operational regulations" caused the 20 April explosion. ...




It's our only planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

First part of the aftermath:

The biggest law suite ever, US-style?


Gulf of Mexico oil leak: US sues BP over oil disaster

The US is suing BP and eight other firms for allegedly violating federal safety regulations in connection with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The lawsuit asks that they be held liable without limitation for all clean-up and damage costs.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in April killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil over several months.

The oil leak became the worst environmental disaster in US history. ...

US Attorney General Eric Holder said the complaint alleged that "violations of safety and operational regulations" caused the 20 April explosion. ...

Here's part two summarised in just 48 pages:


US oil spill: Cost-cutting decisions led to BP disaster

... In a months-long investigation, the panel found that mistakes and "failures to appreciate risk" compromised safeguards "until the blow-out was inevitable and, at the very end, uncontrollable".

BP's "fundamental mistake", the panel wrote, was failing to exercise proper caution over the job of sealing the well with cement.

"Based on evidence currently available, there is nothing to suggest that BP's engineering team conducted a formal, disciplined analysis of the combined impact of these risk factors on the prospects for a successful cement job," the report reads.

Specific risks the report identifies include:

* A flawed design for the cement used to seal the bottom of the well
* A test of that seal identified problems but was "incorrectly judged a success"
* The workers' failure to recognise the first signs of the impending blow-out

The conclusions run counter to industry efforts to portray the Deepwater Horizon disaster as a rare occurence, as oil companies prod the US government to open greater areas of the US coast to oil exploration.

"The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again," the report read.

"Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur."




And we have nothing to cleanly clean up an oil spill...

It's our only planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

... In a months-long investigation, the panel found that mistakes and "failures to appreciate risk" compromised safeguards "until the blow-out was inevitable and, at the very end, uncontrollable".

Gosh almighty. Doesn't that describe the mortgage meltdown too? Remember backing mortgages was Bear Sterns "most profitable" division.

Perhaps teaching risk assessment should be a top priority of schools going forward. Far too many people are far to willing to buy Lotto tickets.

---

When the fuss dies down, it will happen again somewhere else .......

Looks like that will be so. Looks like BP are to be let off the hook:


BP set to avoid harshest Gulf of Mexico fine

There was light at the end of the tunnel for BP (BP.) after a US Presidential Commission inquiry into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill made it likely that the company will not be found grossly negligent.

If this proves to be the case, the FTSE 100 oil major could avoid paying the severest financial penalties for the disaster.

Despite the report taking a highly critical stance of failures by BP's management team in the run up to the April 2011 explosion, the 48-page excerpt of its upcoming full report, also heaped blame on contractors Transocean and Halliburton, as well as highlighting the wider flaws within the oil industry and surrounding regulation.

The Commission said the blowout, which resulted in the death of 11 men, was "not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could have been anticipated, rather the root causes are systematic and absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies might well recur". ...


I think the "might well recur" is very likely...


It's our only planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Regulatory failure due to political pressure, incompetence, and corruption and also the pressure for short-term profits at the expense of the long-term are the two primary causes of the gulf oil spill, in my opinion.

In order for regulation by micromanagement by government agencies to succeed in an industry, the people doing the regulation must have expert-level knowledge of the industry they are regulating. All too frequently, these regulators can only come from industrial insiders, as only the insiders possess the necessary knowledge.

Furthermore, since the government, through its agency, told the business to do 'X, Y, and Z', that makes the government at least partly at fault when something disastrous (like the Gulf oil spill) happens.

Also, regulation by insiders opens the door to all sorts of things, such as conflict of interest, influence peddling, and outright subversion of intent for the benefit of a specific business, or the detriment of another.

A much better regulatory scheme, in my opinion, would be to make certain outcomes criminal with very stiff penalties. In this case, make the release of any crude oil beyond a very small amount a crime. The business must pay for the cleanup, the business must pay a rather large criminal fine, and give the officials in the business a nice, long jail term. Then, let the business itself decide how to go about avoiding this.

Let the officers of BP and the other oil companies decide how best to act in drilling for oil. Let them decide if the risks of cutting corners in safety is worth not only the end of the corporation but also each of them spending the next 30 years in prison. Let the shareholders in the corporation decide if letting the corporation take large risks in the name of short term profit is worth losing their entire investment.

Stop trying to prevent certain bad outcomes by having Government micromanage business. Just let the business' shareholders know that if they let bad things happen, they lose their investments. Just let the business' leadership know that if they let bad things happen, not only will the business be over, but the leaders themselves will be in the poorhouse, and in jail for long terms. Motivate them to not screw up, and they won't.


Another thing in society that needs reform is the notion that 'you need it all, and need it right now'. Lets all start looking ahead to the long-term future. What is really important is not 'where will be be on this quarter's bottom line', but instead 'where will we be in 10 years...' or '... 100 years'...

Kong: after a stunt like BP is pulling, they should have all permits to conduct business in the united states REVOKED. Period. Shut them down.

Sieze all assets in the USAQ, and see them in court afterwards. If I had dumped 2 barrels of oil into a storm drain, rest assured I would face the same fate.

Now THAT would be justice.

---

Janice