Even I forgive Obama for interim between the explosion and the evaluation period he needed to determine the extent of the spill. Even if we give Obama more time after he found out how serious the spill was, he did nothing, zero, zip, nada to start a clean-up until Jindal, Carville, et al screamed bloody murder -- and he is still dragging his feet. Obama has yet to accept the assistance of all the non-domestic sweepers offered to scoop up oil gunk.
If someone is puking all over your rug, do you start to clean it up while they are still puking? By the way, a lot of the clean up solutions have the potential to do more harm than good and there's no consequence amongst experts that they'd actually help. Obama could just pick one and prays it works - but that's not reality.
If the puke is running toward your feet, will you not try and contain it from doing so? There are two completely different operations here. Those at BP who are capable of working to "cap" the well will do that, and others are working on containing and cleaning up the oil that is spilled, preferrably before it gets to shore.
This is the weakest argument I've ever seen you put up. Usually you make sense even when I don't agree. First of all, if someone begins puking you can get them to a containment area (the toilet, for example) while you clean the original eruption. This is not the case with the blowout. As Tech pointed out, there are two operations here -- plugging the blowout and cleaning the spill. This thread is devoted to the clean-up. Now, if an advocate of a chemical dumps oil into a fish tank, soaks it up with the chemical, pulls the gunk out and then drinks from the remaining water, I would venture to say there is probably no harm. However, each solution proponent discusses the side effects -- all of which are negligible -- and even a positive in the case of the chemical that becomes fish food -- compared to the solvents now being sprayed into the ocean. Watch the re-run tonight on Fox News at 7 p.m. (Huckabee) and then provide your assessment. I won't be around much today. The ad at the bottom of this Clutch page is appropriate. My cousin is in intensive care at BAMC after suffering a severe stroke yesterday. So carp at me later.
I love how forgiving you are of Jindal, Mr. "don't trust the feds - wait, where are the feds!!" His plan is not feasible in any reasonable timeframe and the impacts/success are really unknown. As has been explained to you repeatedly. As has also been explained repeatedly, the federal government mobilized the coast guard and innumerable other resources to combat the effects (rimrocker has a bunch of posts with details). For the actual spill part of it, the federal government is NOT CAPABLE. It is NOT AN OIL COMPANY. Any rational person would be pleased that the government did NOT try to take command of something it was totally not fit to attempt. Frankly, taking control of this situation without any clue of how to handle it except to throw money at it is Bush's style. And it sucks. As is evidenced by your OP, you have no real interest in potential solutions, you just want to waste everyone's time with more goofy Obama rants. If you want to discuss the solutions there is a whole thread talking about it, article after article debating it, and a thousand odd oil-rigger blogs with experienced comments from actual oil field personnel. Similarly, the sweepers and why they are not as effective has been discussed previously here. If you actually cared to learn about stuff instead of just b****ing irrationally.
I have a hard time buying that you started this thread with the idea of discussing solutions and hope when much of your post, including the original one, have been criticizing Obama. I agree with you that we need to explore other solutions but as others have noted caution is warranted with untried methods and scalability. What works in a bucket with motor oil poured in it may not work, or cause worse problems when applied to the Gulf.
That's not true, skimmers, booms and dispersants have been used since the early days of the leak. Also the widespread use of dispersants show the problem with just rushing things in without considering possible side effects. WHile the dispersants break down the oil they are also toxic and by breaking down the oil also spread them out in the water column. At the moment we don't know what the long term implications are of using dispersants.
The point is you clean up the puke after the puker stops puking. I've looked into some of the Jindal solutions and they cause alarm to many scientists who said that not only would they not help but that in fact they might make it worse as well and even increase the damage. For instance - building the great wall of Louisiana...this is what Jindhal really pushed for at a cost of 1 billion dollars. Forget about the fact that even a weak tropical storm would wipe out the whole structure, and that it would actually simply funnel oil up into the mississippi delta and surrounding states...or that it would take 9 months to build, by which time the well would have been capped already. But even after all that, the actual dredging process would have negative environment impacts. Marine and coastal experts were alarmed at such a suggestion might actually go forward without them chiming in and figuring it out. You can't just do things haphazardly. Didn't we learn from Bush the one lesson - look before you leap?
First, my apologies for being away for so long, but family always takes precedent over politics. I was trying to find a replay of the Huckabee show, but now it is in bits and pieces. I hope some of you had a chance to see it to serious explore immediate remedies -- no more reviews and studies. I can understand how some of you (rocketsjudoka, for example) think I am exploring solutions to embarass Obama in regard to his slothful reaction to help help the people and wildlife of the Gulf Coast. This is not true. He needs no help from me in that regard. My sole purpose is to explore ways to rescue the estuaries, wildlife and livlihoods as expeditiously as possible. This is an American disaster -- not a Democratic or Republican disaster. For the "go slow" crowd, I'm find with being careful but we do need to move faster than a snail can crawl. If we can sprinkle portions of the gulf with crystals that absorb the gunk and leave the water potable, then do it until it is used up. We can more more while the gunk that becomes fish food is used to clean gunk out of the system until it is exhausted. We can dump hay for the sweepers to collect until the excess hay is used up. Do you get my drift? Or, we can sit back and let nature do the work. In 10 to 30 years the oil will be gone and the wildlife will have returned and Gulf Coast workers may have returned from the greener pastures where they fled. Screw the consequences as long as the politics are correct, right?
I read the American Modern Bible but supplement it with the Scofield and Phillips reference versions of the King James Bible for context and background. However, for my "Biblical" reply earlier, I was referencing Ben Franklin. You may have heard of him. Or not.
The Dutch offered skimmers three days after the spill. Obama told them he could handle it. Also, I regard the dispersants as more dangerous than the worst clean-up idea proposed on the Mike Huckabee show Saturday. Unfortunately, I was not in a position to see if he repeated the show on Sunday.
We are very different. I would have started a clean-up right away while working to shut down the source. If your boat springs a serious leak while you and a friend are in the middle of the lake, you don't sit back and continue fishing. You start bailing while your buddy tries to plug the leak or vice versa. However, it seems you would let the boat sink because putty might have harmed the lake.
Except that skimmers and booms were used already in the early days fo the spill. The reason why the Dutch offer was turned down was because three days after the spill no one knew for sure how big it was and reports where it was only around 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day. In regard to the ideas that Huckabee proposed without more research I can't say whether they are feasible or not but I am skeptical of them. Such as your idea that we can sprinkle crystals in that take out the oil and make the water potable. Well for one Gulf water isn't naturally potable, to humans, and its not supposed to be. If the Gulf were potable it would be sterilized. Also Thumbs, hope your cousin is OK.
thumbs, this is just incredible stuff that obviously no one has ever considered before in the history of oil spills. Maybe you should post a link to Huckabee's show on the Whitehouse website. You could be Mr. Transparent, the savior of the Gulf.
Fox news? Huckabee. There are rumors floating around out there that Huckabee is certifiably insane and a circus freak. I personally am not saying that, but it's out there. So what about that? *thoughtful glamor shots pose with a tear if I can muster it on cue*
Of course there are solutions being ignored. I saw a story about a 10th grade science class doing a project on how to fix the problem. Not to defend BP, but listening to every crack-pot proposed solution would probably be the most detrimental idea to the entire situation.
Actually, your analogy isn't correct, because it implies that the gulf coast could drown in oil if no one does anything. I am all for booms and preventive measures that have ALREADY been shown to work. This is not a time to play dice though. You don't do things that you have no idea whether or not may do more harm than good. It may seem like a good idea to pour ice cold water on a burn - but it's actually a really bad one that makes it worse. And to correct your analogy, what you are advocating is putting out a towel to dry when there's a tropical storm dumping massive amounts of rain. It just doesn't make sense. Can things be done more efficiently? Absolutely, but you have to keep in minds this the biggest environment disaster in u.s. history.
