Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow? | Hacker News Reader

Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow?

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12 pointsrglovejoy23 comments

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Why are politically-themed op-eds so inaccurate and poorly sourced?

http://factcheck.org/2010/06/oil-spill-foreign-help-and-the-...

Hmm, now I want to get to the bottom of this.

This article from deepseanews contradicts sections of this:

http://deepseanews.com/2010/06/the-jones-act-and-the-oil-spi...

As far as I can tell, foreign-flagged vessels can operate, but only if they're at least three miles offshore and (more importantly) have their crews replaced by Americans. I can see how this could cause problems, not only because vessel owners might be reluctant to hand over their vessels to new crews but because the new crews might not be experienced at operating them.

There are definitely fifteen foreign-flagged vessels participating in the cleanup, but fifteen isn't very many. Is it not true that the Jones Act is preventing more from showing up? It still seems like a completely insane set of restrictions.

Because they have an agenda.

Ever since the man behind Fox News bought the Wall Street Journal I've had a rule of thumb that says be very wary of anything the WSJ writes anymore that touches on politics. Their OpEd section has never exactly been a left-wing/liberal haven by any means but now that there's a Fox News connection behind the scenes I expect things to slide more a certain way. Propaganda++.

Read the whole thing. It's a well-written attack piece, paid for by somebody.

I really love 2 things about it, that are glaringly overlooked. In discussing the oil disaster and the cleanup efforts so far, and why the latter hasn't been as effective as one might have liked, he cites just about everything except these 2 points, rather suspiciously:

1. new oil is STILL leaking into the Gulf -- cleaning now is a bit like running just to stand still, there will be more flowing out and hitting the beaches tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, etc.

2. BP/Transocean/Halliburton are primarily at fault, both for the original accident/leak, and for not stopping it quicker. I don't buy the argument that somehow because a government oversight agency was not as aggressive as it could have been, and/or was bribed BY these oil companies to back off and let them ignore rules that THEREFORE the government is anywhere near as at fault as the oil companies in question. It's a bit like blaming the police for not stopping a murderer -- rather than blaming the murderer. Hello?!

You're right, we shouldn't clean it up quickly and effectively because its getting worse. We should wait until all of the oil is in the ocean and then clean it up all at once! That's much more effective!

No, seriously, what is your point here. Also the oil companies can't tell the more effective oil clean up ships to come operate because of the mentioned government regulations and directions. Oops.

Of course there should be a cleanup effort ongoing. But if new stuff continues to spill out every day afterward, there will be more to cleanup the next day, and the next, and the next, forever, until we reach the point where the leak is totally stopped and/or contained the source. It's weird/naive to criticize a cleanup effort that's been going on for months if the leak has also been leaking unstopped for those same number of months as well. It can never be totally cleaned up or restored until, at a bare minimum, the leak is stopped.

As much as possible should be done about both problems. This article puts forth the idea that we can and should be doing more to clean up what is already there.

If the leak stopped tomorrow, should we deploy the largest possible oil cleaning ship? If the leak cannot be fixed for 3 months should we do the same thing?

I'm really not sure how the fact that BP and Transocean are to blame for the disaster (a fact nobody, including BP, would dispute) means we can't criticise the screw-ups in the US government's response.

In your police/murderer analogy, of course the murderer bears the sole responsibility for the actual murder, but if there's a serial killer on the loose and you find that the entire homicide squad is focused on a four-week intradepartmental tiddlywinks tournament then you're allowed to be pissed off at the police too.

When something obvious isn't happening all you have to do is go look for the people that have a vested interest in preventing said thing from happening. In the current oil spill fiasco there are way too many powerful groups with opposing interests and politicians don't want to step on their toes because all politicians need large sums of money from these opposing interests to finance their campaigns. So it's no wonder the bureaucracy is moving at a snail's pace.

You know you're reading a right/conservative/Repub/FoxNews-like source when the very 1st suggestion discussed for improving the clean up effort is this:

"First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million."

Welcome to Bizarro World. We do things backwards here.

EDIT: skushch's reply below made a good clarification. When I originally read that portion of the article I didn't realize that was the argument made. I just saw how the very 1st solution recommended was that the EPA should allow more oil in the water, which was hilarious and consistent with many other "pro-pollution/pro-greed" efforts I've seen from The Right in past years, and I reacted to that. So on this single narrow point I think the article does make sense: we should temporarily drop any rule that commits the error of letting the quest for perfection be the enemy of the good enough now. The overall article I still think is an attack piece with highly cherry-picked statements and convenient blinders on.

The point the author makes is that relaxing the filtering restrictions could help remove more oil.

Sort of like saying "the filter isn't effective enough, so we won't filter at all".

Bizarro World indeed.

I don't know enough about the chemisty and ecosystem impacts of this but from what I do know I can think of one possible reason, at least, while the EPA's position makes sense. If a certain volume of oiled water is processed by a machine that has reduced filtering standards -- essentially, only removing the bigger or easier to capture materials suspended in the water -- it may make it harder for later cleanup operations to further address the remaining pollutants that were released back into the water. Either because they become much harder to detect (harder to see/smell/taste, or react to chemical sensors) or become harder to "bind" with cleaning agents. In other words, while at a logic-only level the EPA position may appear stupid, it's possible that from a chemical & logistical standpoint it may not be.

Regardless, I think it's reasonable to expect BP to be moving heaven & earth to clean this shit up as fast as they possibly can, since they made the mess in the first place.

Your edit says it all... you assumed it was a "right wing" piece so you assumed it was terrible evil lies. Good luck with that.

Nope. I did not assume that. And I don't assume that everything said by a politically so-called right wing source is evil or a lie.

However, on the other hand, I've seen so many lies (both blatant and subtle) and so many anti-humane, pro-rich, pro-aristocratic, anti-health, anti-education, pro-superstition, anti-science, anti-environmental, anti-empathy, pro-military, anti-fairness actions supported and advocated by right wing folks that yes I do come to expect it much of the time. Are those positions "evil" in the same sense that say Hitler was evil? Hard to say, and that's a can of worms to even try to debate. But my operating principle is that it is approximately equivalent to evil, at least by quality if not by magnitude or directness.

"Are those positions "evil" in the same sense that say Hitler was evil?"

Since you seem worried about this I'll help you out a bit. Since the American right wing lacks a specific plan to exterminate millions of a certain race or religion, or conquer the world with a master race, then the answer is clearly "no".

Was that even an intellectually serious thought though? If you are an American, do you literally worry about the day when your outspoken liberal drinking buddy will be taken to a work camp, if the Republicans should take back Congress or the White House? Or was it just a cheap slur.

You're assuming things I did not say. Go look at the actual things I said I've seen them advocate (pro-rich, anti-environment, etc.) -- none of them involved race or work camps. They are more pro-superstition ('faith' is probably their agreed upon buzzword used to convey this without having to say Christianity explicitly) than say the Democratic Party -- any reasonable study of that should lead you to that conclusion. If you are pro-religion or pro-aristocracy, you should prefer the R's over the D's, that's for sure. Pro-pollution? Also better to vote R than D. Anti-gay? Vote R rather than D. The list goes on.

Calling bad/evil things bad/evil is not a cheap slur, it's like calling water wet. People just have different views on what constitutes bad/evil.

In other words, you also agree that they are not as evil as Hitler, but feel that they align with bigoted or superstitious interests. So it wasn't a cheap slur, just a fitting comparison. Much like comparing a Canadian goose to the space shuttle.

Also instead of "right wing" I should have said Republican Party. I think you can be "right" politically and not necessarily agree with everything the RP promotes. In the US they tend to get conflated however.

I'm going to shutup now in this thread area though. Way too political of a topic. Sorry, fellow HN readers. :(

> However, on the other hand, I've seen so many lies (both blatant and subtle) and so many anti-humane, pro-rich, pro-aristocratic, anti-health, anti-education, pro-superstition, anti-science, anti-environmental, anti-empathy, pro-military, anti-fairness actions supported and advocated by right wing folks that yes I do come to expect it much of the time.

Have you subjected other folks to the same scrutiny?

Opinion piece. Conspiracy theory.

Yes, its just one man's opinion against another that the world's largest oil skimmer does not seem to be operating in the Gulf. Almost like those poor saps who think we didn't land on the moon. Didn't they see Obama walking on the beach! The man is trying!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill/print

Excellent, that ship should help a lot if the numbers I've seen are accurate.

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