This is not the biggest leak that has ever hit the oceans: the biggest was when Saddam Hussein sabotaged the Kuwaiti oil field. And there was a massive leak in Mexican waters, there was the Exxon Valdez, and there is, almost continually, the abysmal mess in Nigeria, where people attempt to deal with oil with low-tech, healthwise lethal means …not to mention what gets spilled into Nigerian waters.
The demand for oil and its profits have made for some very bad decisions. Many of them we can’t do a thing about except by offering assistance and encouraging local governments to put the brakes on some of this: but it’s catch-22: the local governments without the oil profit have no money to clean up what oil’s done to their other resources. In the history of the world, it’s been gold rushes, land rushes, etc. But it’s not just what’s happened in our back yard. The ocean is a circulating resource, and ‘goes around, comes around’. In the end, it’s just not good.
I feel for the people of the Gulf—they’ve been through a lot; and they’re still trying to make it. If you’re debating where to go for a vacation, or where to hold an event, the Gulf could sure use the traffic. Order Gulf seafood: it’s been tested, it’s safe—and it’s probably more tested than seafood not from the Gulf at the moment; and the industry needs help.
And I hope this has been public enough and has enough of the common issues of management and misdeed about it that it will prompt governments to slam some regulations down. There’s a safe and responsible way to use this resource. In whatever industry, inspectors should NOT get chummy with the managers of the site, and should not be accepting food, drink, and a good time from people they’re inspecting. That’s number one, be it meat packing plants or oil platforms.
And if some worker has a protest on file (which should be dated) and is subsequently fired or reassigned, there should be a strong show-cause in an agency hearing: if the company is found to have fired a whistleblower—their liability should be astronomically high. The fact that these platform workers were afraid to protest and had no way to protest lies at the core of what happened here. They knew it was wrong. They were not able to prevent what was about to happen.
There was a 60 Minutes interview right after the explosion. They talked with a worker on the deep sea rig who described finding faults in the seals and being told by his management to go ahead with the work anyway. The explosion happened just as they were getting ready to celebrate the opening of the well…they all ended up in the water fearing for their lives.
The oil situation is about greed and short-term thinking. We should have moved away from petroleum-based transportation and economy with the first oil embargo in the 1970s. And even today, it takes MORE than an act of Congress to make this happen…and of course, Congress won’t go there because of upcoming elections. We need to take the long view. But we won’t until our pocketbooks are seriously impacted. Like healthcare…but that’s a whole ‘nuther discussion.
There has been a switch in thinking over the past few decades towards short-term profit at the expense of long-term goals, even if the long view is better overall. We need straight answers about the relative values of various programs, and information about break-even points, unobscured by other agendas. Right now there’s a lot of manure that needs to be cleared before we can find the barn door, let alone the pony. We also need to change our thinking to long term, which is hard when a good chunk of the world has trouble planning more than a week in advance for whatever reason.
Yeah, politically it’s been killing us for YEARS. We are forced to do business with countries we shouldn’t have that kind of relationship with. And then locally oil rig jobs are so high risk/low paying that I feel bad for the people desperate enough to take those jobs. They just aren’t worth it any angle you look at it. And that is without the whole green argument.
Heard on NPR that the Energy Bill which was going to put some stronger regulations on deep sea drilling will not make it out of committee this session. For all intents and purposes it’s dead. Go to NPR-dot-org for more info. Depressing to say the very least.
I have a brother in FL near Ft. Walton Beach. His feeling is that it isn’t the oil (not much) but the perception of oil that is killing the area.
I’d still approach Gulf seafood with a great deal of trepidation. Those millions of gallons of dispersants have to go somewhere. Creatures with exoskeletons can probably shed contaminants when they molt; fin-fishes are probably going to get off lightest of all, but shellfish are going to retain that muck for quite a while IMO… they don’t call ’em filter-feeders for nothing.
Not only that, according to the news articles I have been reading, a lot of the “testing” has been more of a sniff test than a qualitative chemical anlysis.
And if you want to see something not too far off topic.
YouTube has a shortened version of Daniel Nocera on
his mad schemes for personal energy.
He has a great name too. The first set of numbers he
tosses out are quite interesting too. The longer version
covers some details about how they got the numbers.
If you’re old enough to remember JW Campbell, maybe
we’ll be around long enough to see if a Bender Pack
will topple society. I seriously doubt society is as
fragile as most seem to think. There are very few who
will consciously act against their own self interests.
The loss of a number of institutions isn’t the same
thing at all and we have a few who will not be missed
if they cease to be.
Today’s news was an example, the ridiculous California
ban on marriage was declared unconstitutional. Why any
one thinks that who marries who is relevant to anyone
except those being married is beyond my comprehension.
I know there are strong opinions on the subject, but
if you want to meddle in other peoples private lives
you better have more than some real justification to
do so.
Anyway the long version of Nocera at MIT video opens
up a whole world of interesting possibilities not gone
into and he answers some really interesting questions
about biology too in passing.
I don’t think the oil itself is a long term problem for
seafood. The Santa Barbara area has had that sort of
ooze in the oceans for millenia, but I never heard any
complaints about the seafood in the area. The dispersant
is what you need to examine because the average chemical
company is highly suspect about what it makes for usage.
They are the same bunch that produced 2-4-5T years ago
as the answer to the world’s vermin problems.
The latest physics discussion is about the highly exotic
windpowered vehicle that can move faster than the wind
speed. It has been quite a bit of fun because it seems
so counterintuitive on the face of it. Nothing new though,
the dragsters were told it was impossible to get faster
than 150MPH due to the calculations years ago, but the
racers just kept on getting faster. Then the theory boys
had to deal with experimental results again…GRIN
Human society changes with inovation and communication. The printing press caused major change in how we lived. Martin Luther’s writings were circulated throught Europe and had a much larger effect on a wider section of humanity than they would have had with out the press. The automobile, personal computers and cell phones have all expanded our communications with a growing segment of humanity. Look at the recent effect of cell phones texting and youtube on the political situation in Iran, a rather closed society. improved communication has usually improved relations between people in the long run, but can cause major upheavals in the process.
Even with the change to human institutions that have occured over our history, human nature changes very little. We resist change in our own way of life. Even if the change would benifit humanity at large. I have long been convinced that the only way to get Americans to conserve gas, or change to alternative fuel, is to let the price go up. In the USA that will require increasing the taxes on oil products like much of the rest of the world. Unless it hits us in the wallet we will not pay attention to the environmental benefits. Americans all say they are for pro enviromental policy untill it comes to paying for it. It has to be someone else who pays. We say we want good mass transit, but we don’t use it when its there, Its for everyone else not “Me”. “I” have to have the freedom of my own auto.
The idea of a wind propelled car has been around for a long time. Popular Mechanics magazine had articles on them 40 years ago. One I remember was fun, but not to practical. it had a U shaped structure over a body like an fighter Jet airplaine with a cockpit. It was basically a sail and you had to have the room to tac like a sail boat. Think how large our highways would have to be for everyone to move around from here to there tacing with the wind. Might be fun though!
The leak is stopped, but the TV news figures (CBS world news) I saw said about 22 to 24 percent of the oil still to be cleaned up, and it’s hard to find, get at, and clean up. Environmental impact still Unknown.
I’m from Houston, so this is practically in my back yard, only an hour and a half drive or so to Galveston. The Texas and Louisiana coast, and Florida, already hurting from hurricanes, need business from tourists — and just as importantly or more so, Gulf fishermen need to be able to fish, before they lose what little they have. However, those same fisherment *know* how the fish and seafood are being tested, and they themselves are of two minds about it. They want to know the seafood’s safe, both for their own families and for the poeple who will buy and eat their catch. Yet they desperately need to be working, earning income, to continue their family business. The perception of safety, as much as the actual safety, of the Gulf and our seafood are keeping folks away. Locals, though, are visiting some, and tourists really do need to visit.
Like many here, what’s going on in the Gulf…I’m busy with my daily life, so I’m not as up on things as I would like to be. I am as appalled at the government and big business now as during the aftermath of Rita and terrible Ike. (Almost two years later, I still know people whose homes are not repaired, and they are *middle class*, not poor.) Government and big business have very badly mismanaged things, out of greed and laziness and outright lack of care for their constituents and customers.)
I want something better for our country and our people. I look around, and as much of a mess as this all is, still there are other countries where things are worse, where people would long to be here instead. Those other countries, those other people? They are just as much citizens of the planet, trying to get by and hoping for a good life as we are… and their political systems… vary in effectiveness to offer their people those freedoms.
It seems now China and a couple of other spots have also had oil spills. Not good for them, any more than for us. — And as CJ points out, the oceans are a circulating resource. Eventually, our water goes there, and their water goes here, a valuable, costly lesson on the global nature of… global nature… and the need for people to manage and cooperate and compromise and set long-term goals (and meet them) that benefit our own well being and the other lifeforms we depend on, and the planet itself. We only have this one little oasis in a very empty, black desert. If only people won’t do massively stupid things, we might get out into space. (That’s another subject, since NASA is also nearby, that same hour and a half circumference.)
Perhaps the ultimate lesson is, we need to stop being so dependent on fossil fuels and develop those good alternatives.
There’s got to be a better way.