Oil reaches Louisiana shores
boston.com
boston.com
This is one medium where digital really shines, I can't imagine how they represent this in the newspaper, but an single page of high quality images is just brilliant. Lets hope they don't feel the need to put this in a slide show format.
This selection though, does not give me the impression that they've done that, however that may be the art. Still, if this is 'all there is' the problem is of an unbelievable magnitude.
People keep comparing this to the Exxon Valdez spill, and while there are parallels I can't help but notice that that happened in a much less populated area of the world, and even this many years on there is still surface oil to be found there, and it still affects the local wildlife.
- The Exxon Valdez was a static amount of oil, we knew how much there was immediately. We can only estimate the amount of oil leaking here and nobody can accurately predict the date when it will finally be shut off. The whole "we have to stop the leak" part was missing in the Exxon Valdez, frankly that is the pressing crisis now.
- The Prince William Sound is very enclosed compared to the Gulf of Mexico. The concentration in the Gulf is much lower, we won't be seeing anything as bad as the 2" thick crude oil goo covering everything in sight because the oil is spread out relatively thinly across a huge surface. On one hand that is good because it will break down faster naturally, on the other hand it makes corralling really hard to do, the area is massive. June and July are very timid months for weather in the Gulf because the water and land are very similar temperatures, what happens in the fall when hurricanes start rolling through the oil patch? It is going to be hitting everywhere. We lucked out that for the first few days the prevailing wind was from the northwest, but as soon as it turned around all hell broke loose.
- There are marshes in the Gulf. Suffice to say cleaning the oil out from between blades of grass is a lot harder than off of rocky beaches.
- Exxon got a lot of blame in 1989, BP has been lucky enough to have this widely labeled the "Gulf of Mexico oil spill" or the "Spill in the Gulf", the gulf of mexico did not spill the oil, BP did. Make a point to correct people who incorrectly label the spill.
And with things like twitter and facebook, we have a great way for the ordinary person to keep the pressure on.
Also, the amount of oil being released here is huge, and it is going to affect a much larger area, if it does not disperse quickly. Lets just hope they get this under control.
From what I have read, people at BP/Haliburton should go to jail for letting the drilling go ahead, when there was damage to the saftey mechanisms.
The best you can hope for at this stage is that BP does not go bust (down about 29% since this all started, from $60 to $43 now), and that they will be able to pay for the cleanup.
I don't think this is necessarily a for-profit situation in terms of refinement, but I think that there is a possibility that if groups and organizations assembled themselves to simply collect the oil, that they could publicly lobby congress to purchase the oil back. Essentially it will be the taxpayers who pay for cleanup either way. At least this way is faster and is more populist (in terms of flag-waving and what it means to be an american).
If it were simple we wouldn't have a problem to begin with.
There have been some pretty naive ideas tossed out that got huge media coverage (hair, straw and all kinds of nonsense), but these all seem to miss the main point: this stuff is spread out, it will spread out even further if you do nothing, and the amount of energy that goes in to collecting a spilled barrel of oil may well be more than the amount of energy that you gain by collecting it in the first place, which means you are going to have to do this at a substantial operational loss.
You can't just stuff a few thousand cubic kilometers of ocean water in to a centrifuge and swirl it out, and then there is the law of diminishing returns, once you've done the 'easy' bit the hard bits only get harder because the concentrations diminish, so the cost of recovery goes up as the concentration goes down, the more it is mixed in the first place the harder this gets.
Waiting until it comes ashore only compounds the problem, since it is going to be a lot harder to remove the oil from solids than it is from seawater.
The problem comes near the shore - and thats where absorbents and booms come in. Oil absorbent are not naive ideas, they are standard operating procedure. Any place that sells gas on the water in this country has a box full of booms and absorbent mats by law. This is just a much larger version of that so the availability of mats becomes an issue and so hair, mattress padding etc become options.
As for the hair being naive, I figured the sheer quantities involved would make it rather impractical, the hay was a nice little setup in two bins of water on a benchtop but to execute that principle on a several hundred by several hundred kilometer area (at the moment) is a little bit harder.
Sure it might not get into marshes as quickly, but instead microbes eat it and create total deoxygenation of the water. I have dealt with the cleanup of minor sewage spill that caused total deoxygenation of a sound, I know how horrific that is. Basically all of the fish suffocate, die, and float to the surface to rot. Expect to see bumper to bumper fish carcases for miles. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life.
I think the goal with absorbing is that you will put out booms to protect sensative areas, and then when oil collects near them you can absorb it where it is more concentrated. The oil does not cover the surface completely, it is in patches, so collecting it into a solid slick makes the economics a little better (note: the idea that collecting it could be profitable is ridiculous, but you can optimize the dollar per barrel cleaned up ratio)
Does anyone know much of this cleanup is being covered by some form of disaster (or other) insurance?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/27/business/main64360...
The rough estimates of what it could cost are topping 8 billion already, if that's 'all' (for want of a better term) then why that huge drop in stock price ?
I'm thinking the economic damage claims that will be filed could easily eclipse the cost of the actual cleanup.
Does that estimate include lawsuits?
As for oil/water emulsion in sea water, having been around that stuff one thing people don't point out is the stench. It is at or worse than sewage.
People forget that the alternative to oil was either whale blubber or armies of horses that left cities knee deep in shit (literally.) The fact is that oil was a technology that substantially decreased pollution. The proof of that is that water and air quality has been improving steadily over the years since the 1800's (partly because of legislation, but largely because of technology. You can't legislate away horse manure - but you can legislate cars with cleaner engines.)
So yeah, I look forward to the day when oil is obsoleted in favor of some magic green energy source that produces no pollution (although rest assured, people will find something else to bitch and moan about.) Until then, I'll breathe a silent "thank you" to the grimiest oil refinery out there for making my life that much easier.
So really the best thing to do is leave things alone until oil becomes scarce (i.e. expensive) and an alternative will be developed. Any attempt to legislate conservation will just result in us burning more oil for longer.
I've heard people say that there is still much to invent in terms of making a better power source, which made it seem as though it was simply a problem of money and manpower.
Best thing to do for whom? You're saying that if we continue to find oil for 300 more years, we just keep burning it? That seems pretty awful. The technology has already been developed (Denmark, for instance, is getting a quarter of it's electricity from wind power)--why wait?
I'd argue that the best thing to do would be to rapidly transition to the cleaner, more renewable sources of energy that already exist (wind, water, sun, even natural gas) while drastically altering lifestyles to reduce the need for such massive amounts of energy. Maybe the economy (stock market) get's screwed up for a little while, but hell, it's already screwed up, right?
Any attempt to legislate conservation will just result in us burning more oil for longer.
How so?
Someone will, absolutely. First world nations will have the wealth and access to innovations to convert to cleaner energy but the poor majority of the world will increasingly create the demand. Oil is too easy and efficient to just ignore. As I see it the only options to stop this would be to build clean energy sources for the entire world which seems nearly impossible, destroy or prevent access to the remaining oil sources, or occupy and repress these poor countries to actively prevent them from burning oil. The later two options would almost certainly start World War 3. The first option is ideal but not very realistic. We are OK letting these same people die due to lack of basic medical care and clean water. What are the chances we help them convert to clean energy? Without some massive global catastrophe to change the game letting the oil run out is the most peaceful and realistic approach in my opinion.
Yea it really sucks having to sit next to somebody else on the way to work. Especially if they are really fat. Of course you need a 2 tonne truck to get to work as well, cause smaller cars or motorbikes just aren't safe enough with all those 2 tonne trucks on the road.
It's all cost/benefit but in the 21st century I think we can afford to change the balance.
Just sayin'.
Just sayin'.
And frankly your alternatives for oil in power generation are coal and nuclear. Take your pick.
I'm not a mass transit hater, my girlfriend and I use mass transit more than any other people we know. We drive to the bus stop together in the morning (5 miles), get on a bus, transfer to our respective subways once in the city, and make it to our sailboats on the weekend by train. There often weeks where we'll go 5 or 8 days without getting in the car other than to and from the bus station because we're either using buses, trains, or subways. We're not environmentalists per say, but it is far cheaper, faster, and convenient (especially when you are out at bars drinking and the other option is a taxi) than driving.
But I still need a car to get to the grocery store during the week. I still need a car when I want to go skiing. I still need a car to get to the movies. I still need a car to get to the library. I still need a car to visit my parents. I still need a car to go to a concert, or hang out with my friends.
But - almost all of my driving would work just fine with a plug-in electric car. The bulk of it is <20 miles each way. Some occasional longer trips will have to be dealt with. I see gasoline usage in cars as something that is basically a technically solved problem. Look at Better Place - they have figured out the system, or even some plug-in hybrids (although I think they are overly complex). It is just an inexorable transition that will be based on economics.
On the other hand, I just can't imagine a technology we have on the drawing boards today that is going to replace the jet engine in airplanes simply due to power density. We've had oil fueled airplanes from the start with 3 minor exceptions - solar power (prop only, basically no payload), rockets (not feasible on a large scale, and probably worse enviromentally), and molten salt cooled nuclear reactors (and even then I'm pretty sure it wasn't driving the plane, just testing in it). You can't use fuel cells or batteries for jets (you could for props, but that sucks), you can use biofuels but honestly is that any different? Personally I prefer my oil out of the ground instead of from ex-rainforest land or competing with the food supply.
So I see airplanes as the big technological problem.
As for people choosing to drive when there's public transit available, I think a lot of people do; certain much more than a "tiny" number. The main problem is that where public transit is available, it's often slower, so people prefer not to use it. For example, my brother lives within 2 blocks of a VTA light rail station in Santa Clara, and never takes it anywhere, even to places where the light rail actually goes. And when I lived within the Atlanta city limits, where there's fairly good public transit, almost nobody at Georgia Tech I knew took public transit. Even the people who lived within walking distance of a subway station didn't take it.
(Not saying those are irrational choices, just that a large number of people who don't take transit could, in the sense that it exists, but is often slower than driving.)
We put more radiation into the air with coal ash then we have ever released with nuclear power.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is... (first article I found - there are plenty)
I fear this is just the beginning though.
One thing I can't understand, and this is not an armchair oil spill cleanup attempt, why are they so trying to avoid the oil coming to the surface, isn't that the only chance you get to contain it and to deal with it? Dispersing it underwater seems to me to make it much harder to get rid of it.
Can someone with more technical insight here explain that?
I can see that BP might think that's a 'cost savings' measure, if you can't see it you won't have to clean it up, but that seems rather irresponsible.
Imagine that.