Posted on 05/30/2010 7:36:09 PM PDT by Bigtigermike
WASHINGTON — If the growing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico isn't contained soon — and the latest efforts suggest that's unlikely — then the damage to the fragile region will intensify over the coming summer months as changing currents and the potential for hurricanes complicate the containment and cleanup efforts.
"It's all lose, lose, lose here," said Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska marine scientist who's familiar with both the current Gulf oil spill and the Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago.
"The failure of the top kill really magnified this disaster exponentially," he said. "I think there's a realistic probability that this enormous amount of oil will keep coming out for a couple months. This disaster just got enormously worse."
As the federal government and BP try yet another strategy to curb the flow of oil from the blown well a mile below the surface of the Gulf — one that could increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent — scientists anticipate a range of disastrous effects, only some of which are well understood.
The damage to the shorelines of Gulf states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida is literally only the surface of the problem: The damage to the sea floor could be extensive, and oil could also devastate marine life between the Gulf floor and its surface, as well as in coastal areas far from the leaking wellhead.
Steiner, the Alaska scientist, said that while the shoreline has gotten the most attention, the damage from oil plumes under the Gulf's surface would be extensive.
"A lot of this oil has yet to surface, and so it's formed these huge sub-surface plumes," he said
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/30/1656217_p2/gulf-oil-spill-this-disaster-just.html#ixzz0pTFMrrbS
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
It’s 18k feet of rock they have drilled through. You just close the upper part, drill down next to it and insert nuke. Or if that freaks people out, dump in conventional explosives. They could at least test the idea on a smaller scale somewhere else. We have everything we need to test it and see if it would work. Soviets have done similar in the past.
Even though this is an oil spill by big oil, and therefore would seem to be made to order, this is a big distraction for Obama. Think back to the early days of Bush's presidency, he was originally pretty mild, and the biggest foreign policy move was a unilateral nuclear weapons cut. But then, on 9/11, everything changed, and Bush readily recognized that, and changed with it. The rest of his presidency was spent keeping Americans safe from terrorism, and agenda barely on the radar of his campaign.
Obama, curiously, does not want events to dictate his presidency. He is getting irked at this oil spill upsetting his schedule and agenda. His unwillingness to act is part of his refusal to be sidetracked from his own agenda and schedule. He can't wait for this to be over so it can all be about him again, but he doesn't recognize that it was about him anyway, just not in a good way.
If while they are pumping mud into the well the oil flow stops, why don’t they continue doing that until another solution is ready? Seems to make sense.
yeah, that’s called and oil well I think they had that before the blow out.
I don’t think the have enough mud to keep doing that non stop. Not sure.
Apparently there is no cure for Bush Derangement Syndrome.
would someone explain to me why they don’t put a big steel reinforced cement dome over the top of the well with a pipe coming out the top and the lower side... leading to a tanker? then just suck the water out of the dome from t eh lower pipe (water would be at the bottom?)... leaving a mostly oil filled dome... which could be drained to the tanker and the well would be essentially operational, altho not at peek production
i would imagine i’d make the dome massive, so as to insure the oil would not seep under or push it up.
seems pretty straight forward. hasn’t anyone thought of something like this??
They have an uptake hose on one of the leaks and they are collecting more than 2000 barrels a day from it.
I had a similar thought using a Kirby vacuum cleaner...it will suck up anything....
BP obviously does not want to lose the “find,” and Dear Leader (Peace Be Upon Him) does not want to waste the disaster. The livelihoods of millions and a few decades’ destruction of the Gulf's ecosystem are a small price to pay for a major eco-disaster that can be exploited by the Democraps.
One (small) good thing is that the South will now be solidly in the Tea Party column, IMHO. (Assuming free elections, of course — a major assumption in itself.)
The ‘top kill’ failed but, why can’t they reverse the flow and allow oil to come up the piping used for the ‘top kill’?
I watched video of the ROVs working yesterday, amazing how they can manipulate them.
As I understand BP’s next attempt I see a possible problem.
The top of the BOP looks like it bent and they might have difficulty getting the ‘top hat’ gizmo to seal on the BOP.
Since the piping is/was an access point to the well, why not pump up instead of down on those pipes. Crimp the damaged riser.
It looks more like a box than a dome, though...
The approximately 100-ton box made of steel and concrete is about as high as a four-story
building. It arrived on the site of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico today, and crew will try to lower it
5,000 feet down over one of the leaks in the hope that it will contain the oil and allow them to
siphon it into ships.
Two words for you: Radioactive seawater.
yes. answer my question
doesn’t look like concrete... and looks a bit like a milk carton. i’d immediately think it could crush.
the point of using a steel re-enforced concrete dome was that it would not care about the conditions at those depths
so what happened with the box?
meanwhile, comments on that page are pretty funny. people that are critical of what’s been done say ‘government’ and not ‘0bama’ like they would have if GW was still in office. seems like they are deliberately trying to insulate zero from any blame. just amazing.
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