Where Are The Cries?

[Meem]

Do you remember those "drill here, drill now" chants, bumper stickers, and all that clean, safe, more efficient ways to reach oil far below on the ocean floor adds ... sponsored by the very same company that has brought us this? I do. I wish I knew where to find an archive of that commercial with ... the spider's web of lines leading to the one rig.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_louisiana_oil_rig_explosion

This is not safe. This is not clean. This is not good for the environment.

[labelwench]

It is a sad state of affairs when a disaster such as is presently playing out in the gulf of Mexico is almost overshadowed by the hockey playoffs. Have we become so desensitized to oil spills and the environmental harm done, that such don't even register with us anymore?

The scale of the leak may well be many times that originally estimated, possibly even 5000 barrels a day, as opposed to the earlier estimate of 1000 per day. Regardless of the actual number, there are an estimated 11 persons missing and presumed dead as well.

As usual, the news is quick to report the financial numbers associated with the event, which reflects nothing, IMO, of the true cost to the future of this planet.

The cost of the disaster continues to rise and could easily top $1 billion.

Industry officials say replacing the Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by BP, would cost up to $700 million. BP has said its costs for containing the spill are running at $6 million a day. The company said it will spend $100 million to drill the relief well. The Coast Guard has not yet reported its expenses.

Here are a few links, taken from the net.

http://www.euronews.net/2010/04/29/u...ant-oil-spill/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36800673...s-environment/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100428/..._rig_explosion

For decades now, we have been trying to keep oil drilling out of the Arctic, particularly the area used by the Porcupine Caribou herd. Some of you will remember the Berger Report and the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry. It is my understanding that the progressive new regime (and I use the term lightly) is looking to drill in the arctic yet again.

What's the point?

We need to kick our bloody fuel habit and put our money, minds and technology to work in the development of sustainable clean energy.

We are a pathetic species, and yes, I would have to include myself, as we are all part of the problem, and so unfit to judge others without inclusion.

[Meem]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100429/..._rig_explosion

As of late Thursday morning, part of the slick was about 3 miles from the Mississippi River delta, said National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration spokesman Charles Henry said. A blown-out well a mile underwater is leaking in three places, spewing 5,000 barrels a day into the gulf, five times more than originally thought. The leaks started after a drilling rig that BP PLC was operating exploded and sank last week 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

I heard on NPR today, the plan to drill a relief well will take 3 months. 5,000 x 55 x 90 = Clean and Safe Gulf of Mexico. ( I estimate at least 25 million galons of oil )
Maybe we should just burn it all.

Artic National Wildlife Refuge up next.

[Meem]

By CAIN BURDEAU and HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writers Cain Burdeau And Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 39 mins ago

VENICE, La. – An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control with a faint sheen washing ashore along the Gulf Coast Thursday night as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.
The spill was bigger than imagined — five times more than first estimated — and closer. Faint fingers of oily sheen were reaching the Mississippi River delta, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines.
"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling." The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life. Thicker oil was in waters south and east of the Mississippi delta about five miles offshore.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=126390880

Mr. BIELLO: Well, we know it's leaking five times as much oil as you mentioned in your opener there. It's up to about 200,000 gallons a day. To put that into perspective, the Exxon Valdez was, in total, about 10 million gallons. So it'd take a couple of months of leaking at this rate to catch up to that disaster.
And the last kind of deepwater oil rig spill like this happened back in 1979, 1980 off the coast of Mexico. And before they were able to cap that one - and it took almost a year to do so - it spilled 140 million gallons.

CONAN: Wow. And they're saying maybe three months more for this?

Mr. BIELLO: Yeah. All the let's say permanent solutions take a lot of time to do. And those permanent solutions range from drilling a new well to kind of intersect the existing well and get the oil flowing in a different direction rather than spilling directly into the Gulf, to putting a dome or a cap over the wellhead to, you know, block off the oil.

[labelwench]

Amazing that we have learned so little from past such disasters.

There is only one permanent solution to oil spills.

We must seriously pursue alternate energy.

Which we won't do voluntarily, as ever we choose the known path, as the path of least resistance.

The path of least resistance is a fundamental law of nature, which we are a part of, yet sooner or later, even the path of least resistance encounters an immovable object.

Note that I did not state 'an irresistible force'.

Humankind is hardly irresistible, as it seems bound to find out, if it continues this path.