oil spill on the gulf of mexico :(

[japanesebaby]

it's a nightmare :(

and just why didn't BP act immediately, after the accident? oil companies...    

lousiana already got hurricane katrina, now this. one can imagine people there feeling SO let down and cheated.
and the worst scenario is the destruction of the priceless marshlands of the mississippi delta. :(

thanks to BP, the oil companies and the leaders who allow them to run the world.  


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


'They lied to us'
Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood will be destroyed. He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the federal government or oil company BP PLC.

"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said. "As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms."

The Coast Guard worked with BP, which operated the oil rig that exploded and sank last week, to deploy floating booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants, and set controlled fires to burn the oil off the water's surface.

The company has requested more resources from the Defense Department, especially underwater equipment that might be better than what is commercially available. A BP executive said the corporation would "take help from anyone."

Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.

At that rate, the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 — in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor.

[skellington]

I just did a report on this for my world Issues class. It is absolutely horrible, I can't believe that in 2010 we have let something like this happen. It is a sign that oil has done nothing but harm this Earth, and if we want to live here, we will have to find some other way of powering our cars, or else things like this will continue to ruin everything

[japanesebaby]

I just did a report on this for my world Issues class. It is absolutely horrible, I can't believe that in 2010 we have let something like this happen. It is a sign that oil has done nothing but harm this Earth, and if we want to live here, we will have to find some other way of powering our cars, or else things like this will continue to ruin everything

exactly, if eve a fraction of all the money that the oil companies make was spent on finding alternative energy sources, i'm sure wouldn't be in a situation like this anymore. but those people have no interest because oil puts money in their pockets... that's all they care about. 
good choice for your school report.

in the meantime:


Pictures: Gulf Oil Spill Hits Land—And Wildlife




Scientists fear for birds and endangered turtles in Gulf of Mexico oil spill

:(

[japanesebaby]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/photogalleries/100519-gulf-heavy-oil-marsh-bp-shore-washing-up-pictures/#gulf-oil-reaching-marshes-wide_20690_600x450.jpg

:(



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/photogalleries/100514-gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-pictures-science/#gulf-coast-oil-shores-dolphin_20276_600x450.jpg

[Trust...]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/photogalleries/100514-gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-pictures-science/#gulf-coast-oil-shores-dolphin_20276_600x450.jpg

So sad :(

[japanesebaby]

big and important - seriously, does anybody still believe these people have really been "doing all their can" to stop the oil leaking into the sea, let alone pay for the cleaning the aftermath?

the BP chairman carl-henric svanberg had finally stepped into spotlight and said:

"The US is a big and important market for BP, and BP is also a big and important company for the US, with its contribution to drilling and oil and gas production. So the position goes both ways," he said.

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto052520101612004170

in other words, the US can't force us into anything (like for instance  paying for this mess) because we are too big and important for anybody.
jesus...  




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/25/bp-is-big-and-important-b_n_589675.html

watch the video there, see the BP's CEO tony hayward acting "big and important" because he and his company is "big and important" and so, who gives a rat's ass about the environmental disaster his "big and important" company has caused?

While observing a beach covered in crude, Hayward took it upon himself to scold a photographer whom he thought was too close to the spill.

"Hey, get outta there. Get outta there," Hayward barked to the photographer. "Get him out. Get him out."

:x


ad listen to this CEO clown hayward minimizing the scale of the disaster:

Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive of BP, has claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is "relatively tiny" compared with the "very big ocean".

In an bullish interview with the Guardian at BP's crisis centre in Houston, Hayward insisted that the leaked oil and the estimated 400,000 gallons of dispersant that BP has pumped into the sea to try to tackle the slick should be put in context.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," he said.


WTF??? "relatively tiny"?  :roll:


Hayward promised that BP would "fix" the disaster, which is on course to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill as the biggest US oil spill in history. "We will fix it. I guarantee it. The only question is we do not know when."

yeah, the magic words are: don't know when - meaning that don't care, don't give a shit, let's forget about it and keep making money somewhere else.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/13/bp-boss-admits-mistakes-gulf-oil-spill

it makes me sick that idiots like this ca run this world:

tony hayward

carl-henric svanberg





A young heron sits dying amidst oil splattering underneath mangrove on an island impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Barataria Bay, along the the coast of Louisiana on Sunday, May 23, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


An oil-covered crab crawls past a blob of oil on the beach on May 22, 2010 on Grand Isle, Louisiana. (John Moore/Getty Images)


See more pictures:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html

[crowbi_wan]

I feel awful for the animals and sea life that have died and been affected by this spill, but let's not forget about the people that lost their lives.     Then, we have the workers who are out of a job (both oil and the fishing industry).  What a terrible, yet avoidable, situation this has become. 

Today, I drove by a BP owed gas station which had picketers and several news cameras just off the property.  It was during rush hour and actually I had to sit through two lights before passing the station.  During the course of my stop I didn't see anyone pumping gas there.  Not only that, but the mini mart had no customers.    I hope that it wasn't just because the cameras were present, though would have to guess that was the main factor in people's decision to boycott the place.  Whatever the reason, it put a smile on my face.  But then again, I think about that cashier who has nothing to do with the spill, (lack of) clean up, and start to fell for him just as much as I do the oil-soaked creatures.     

[japanesebaby]

well i know people easily disagree with me but i think 11 people killed is really quite a small number, compared to the tragedy of the envronmental catastrophy. to put that on headlines past the environmental issues is simply distorted.
sure it's bad that some people lose their jobs but in the end, people can move on and get another job. but the marshes of louisiana might never recover from the oil and all the creatures and plants that live there can't go anywhere else. they are simply destroyed now - thanks to humans.
so i think the real tragedy is the environmental catastrophy.

it might sound cruel but human beings are the only species that keep destroying their own habitat, making it unsuitable not for themselves but to all other living beings too. no other creature on earth acts like that. so sometimes it's just impossible for me to feel much sympathy for human beings, whether they were personally involved in the disaster or not. it's all the other creatures on earth that i feel sorry for. the sooner this planet would get rid of humans, the better it would be for it.

it's estimated that there are natural resources on earth for appr. 3 billion and there are already twice as many people here. it's simply an impossible equation.
fortunately that big asteroid will hit the earth sooner or later. it has happened before and it'll happen again, just given time. i hope it'll be big enough that it'll do the job well.

[lostflower4]

listen to this CEO clown hayward minimizing the scale of the disaster:

Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive of BP, has claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is "relatively tiny" compared with the "very big ocean".

In an bullish interview with the Guardian at BP's crisis centre in Houston, Hayward insisted that the leaked oil and the estimated 400,000 gallons of dispersant that BP has pumped into the sea to try to tackle the slick should be put in context.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," he said.


WTF??? "relatively tiny"?  :roll:

Well, that's technically true about the water volume, although the Gulf of Mexico is not an ocean by itself.    

The Gulf of Mexico contains 6,430,000,000,000,000 (6.43 quadrillion) gallons, which is 6.43 billion gallons x 1 million.  

And 400,000 out of all that is about 0.000000006%.

Still, that's a total bullshit argument once you consider all the damage that has been done (including the fact that the oil is showing up on land now).

But you know, it's really odd... BP gas stations moved out of my city just about two months before the spill. I actually frequented them a lot since they had a reputation for not importing Arab oil (which can support terrorism).

Well, it turns out that is something of an urban legend and 6% of their imports to the U.S. are from the Persian Gulf:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/summary.html


And that's also misleading, since they have a subsidiary that imports a bunch more than that (doing business as ARCO on the U.S. west coast).

But still, avoiding Arab oil isn't always such a great thing — because some of those companies that don't deal with it get it all from Venezuela, which in turn supports their totally fucked up government.

And I guess when places get oil from "friendly" nations like the U.S., they just spill it all over the place anyway.  :roll:

So yeah, oil is pretty much an evil thing all around. But unfortunately a necessary evil in our crazy modern world.  :twisted:

Anyway, my point is that I'm a bit disappointed that I don't really have a chance to directly boycott BP now.  

[crowbi_wan]

fortunately that big asteroid will hit the earth sooner or later. it has happened before and it'll happen again, just given time. i hope it'll be big enough that it'll do the job well.

I think Bruce Willis, Billy Bong Thornton, and Ben "Pancake Head" Affleck already have a plan to keep that from happening.  And Aerosmith will be right there to sing a crappy song about it.   

[lostflower4]

fortunately that big asteroid will hit the earth sooner or later. it has happened before and it'll happen again, just given time. i hope it'll be big enough that it'll do the job well.

I think Bruce Willis, Billy Bong Thornton, and Ben "Pancake Head" Affleck already have a plan to keep that from happening.  And Aerosmith will be right there to sing a crappy song about it.    

I was going to say... Haven't you learned anything from the movies, jb?

Of course they'll be able to destroy it, but it will be very dramatic and they won't succeed until the very, very last second.  

[japanesebaby]

:roll:

obviously you don't have to care, but i do - so why exactly make fun of it?


ok maybe you weren't exactly making fun of it, i just don't think there's really anything to joke about either.

[japanesebaby]

as BP fails the attempt to stop the leak again and now it might go on leaking until august, "sending 504,000 to 798,000 gallons a day into the Gulf of Mexico".

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/30/nation/la-na-oil-spill-obama-20100531

[lostflower4]

Well, I knew this was gonna happen if they couldn't stop it fast enough. I kind of take this personally as one of my most memorable vacations was here. I guess Pensacola might be famous for their "black sand beaches" soon?  :(

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/article_6640378d-ef05-54ec-abb8-d433eca6d5c1.html


Oil slick threatening Florida beaches

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- The BP oil slick drifted perilously close to the Florida Panhandle's famous sugar-white beaches Wednesday as a risky gambit to contain the leak by shearing off the well pipe ran into trouble a mile under the sea when the diamond-tipped saw became stuck.

The saw had sliced through about half of the pipe when it snagged, and it took BP 12 hours to free it. The company said preparations were being made to resume cutting, but didn't give a timetable on when it might start.

The plan is to fit a cap on the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to capture most of the spewing oil; the twisted, broken pipe must be sliced first to allow a snug fit.

"I don't think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut. It's about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis.

As the edge of the slick drifted within seven miles of Pensacola's beaches, emergency workers rushed to link the last in a miles-long chain of booms designed to fend off the oil. They were stymied by thunderstorms and wind before the weather cleared in the afternoon.

Forecasters said the oil would probably wash up by Friday, threatening a delicate network of islands, bays and white-sand beaches that are a haven for wildlife and a major tourist destination dubbed the Redneck Riviera.

"We are doing what we can do, but we cannot change what has happened," said John Dosh, emergency director for Escambia County, which includes Pensacola.

Since the biggest oil spill in U.S. history began to unfold April 20 with an explosion that killed 11 workers aboard an offshore drilling rig, crude has fouled some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline and washed up in Alabama and Mississippi as well. Over the past six weeks, the well has leaked anywhere from 21 million to 45 million gallons by the government's estimate.

The latest attempt to control the leak is considered risky because slicing away a section of the 20-inch-wide riser could remove kinks in the pipe and temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent.

If the strategy fails -- like every other attempt to control the leak 5,000 feet underwater -- the best hope is probably a relief well, which is at least two months from completion.

As the oil drifted closer to Florida, beachgoers in Pensacola waded into the gentle waves, cast fishing lines and sunbathed, even as a two-man crew took water samples. One of the men said they were hired by BP to collect samples to be analyzed for tar and other pollutants.

A few feet away, Martha Feinstein, 65, of Milton, Fla., pondered the fate of the beach she has been visiting for years. "You sit on the edge of your seat and you wonder where it's going," she said. "It's the saddest thing."

Officials said the slick sighted offshore consisted in part of "tar mats" about 500 feet by 2,000 feet in size.

County officials set up the booms to block oil from reaching inland waterways but planned to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to defend against the action of the waves and because they are easier to clean up.

"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

Florida's beaches play a crucial role in the state's tourism industry. At least 60 percent of vacation spending in the state during 2008 was in beachfront cities. Worried that reports of oil would scare tourists away, state officials are promoting interactive Web maps and Twitter feeds to show travelers -- particularly those from overseas -- how large the state is and how distant their destinations may be from the spill.

In other developments:

-- Investors ran from BP's stock for a second day, fearful of the potential cleanup costs, lawsuits, penalties and damage to the company's reputation.

-- President Barack Obama said it is time to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil companies and use the money for clean energy research and development.

-- A pair of Democratic senators pressed BP to delay plans to pay shareholder dividends worth $10 billion or more. They called it "unfathomable" that BP would pay out a dividend before the total cost of the cleanup is known. BP had no comment.

-- More fishing grounds were closed. More than one-third of federal waters in the Gulf are now off-limits to fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

"I'm going to be bankrupt very soon," said fisherman Hong Le, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam and rebuilt his home and business after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 wiped him out. "Everything is financed. How can I pay? No fishing, no welding. I weld on commercial fishing boats and they aren't going out now, so nothing breaks."

[japanesebaby]

Well, I knew this was gonna happen if they couldn't stop it fast enough. I kind of take this personally as one of my most memorable vacations was here. I guess Pensacola might be famous for their "black sand beaches" soon?  :(

:(

-- Investors ran from BP's stock for a second day, fearful of the potential cleanup costs, lawsuits, penalties and damage to the company's reputation.

-- President Barack Obama said it is time to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil companies and use the money for clean energy research and development.

if there's something good in this, it's there. it's just sad that it always seems to take some really major catastrophy, before something happens. so in some weird way i almost hope the spill gets just worse and worse and worse, because that would would eventually start bringing down the oil companies' power.


there's also been a lawsuit filed against the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS)already in may, for handing out the drilling rights too easily:

Permits to sell hot dogs are harder to get than permits to drill offshore in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an Earthjustice attorney said this morning as he filed a lawsuit challenging the federal Minerals Management Service for letting companies like British Petroleum drill without adequate safety measures.

http://unearthed.earthjustice.org/blog/2010-may/suit-filed-end-reckless-approach-offshore-oil-drilling

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2010/fishermen-and-conservationists-sue-u-s-department-of-interior-for-illegal-waivers-of-blowout-and-spill-response-planning-in-gulf-of-mexico-disaster.html