Very good indeed. Says a lot about our technological capabilities. With a safety rating like this we should have no trouble going nuclear.
I lived in Santa Barbara, oil would just bubble up out of cracks in the ocean floor. I would bet that natural releases of oil exceed that from oil spills, if you take into account all the oceans, not just local areas where man made influences may dominate.
I read somewhere back in the seventies that the source of the vast majority of the oil in our oceans was from emptied oil tankers pressure-washing their holds with seawater when out-of-sight in international waters.
Could that practice have stopped? Perhaps an improved, cleaner method has been devised?
Along with that safety record has come vastly improved techniques for dealing with oil spills.
I think part of the problem is that people have long memories, and forget that technology marches on. Most of us old guys can remember when drilling offshore meant a good chance of tar on the beach. It happened way too often. Same thing with nuclear power. At the height of the debate about the safety of nuclear power, with all the assurances that the odds of a nuclear accident were one in a billion, there came Three Mile Island. Then a few years later the Russians gave us Chernobyl. In both cases the technology just wasn’t very good. It takes time to restore trust. A little desperation helps as well. On the positive side, a lot of the old timers have moved to the other side of the grass, so there’s not quite the same national anxiety about these difficulties as twenty years ago. Maybe we’re ready to try again.
I’d certainly let them drill in my back yard
More oil seeps off the ocean floor than ever is spilled around the world.
If you like $5/gal, Thank Congress in Nov.
Pray for W and Our Troops
I agree with what you said and urge FReepers to check out Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions site (”Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.”) I think most Americans are lagging behind scientific and technological reality. We can drill for oil in environmentally safe ways, as you said in your post. But many Americans think of the Exxon Valdez which was an accident that had nothing to do with drilling. Likewise, when they think of nuclear energy they think of the old Jack Lemon movie “China Syndrome.” Or the old “Three Mile Island” accident in Pennsylvania. What isn’t presented enough is that France gets 75% of its domestic energy from nuclear power; that there are environmentally friendly ways of drilling, removing nuclear waste, and processing low carbon “clean coal.” Yes, it’s important to develope alternative energy sources (wind, solar, etc.) but these have serious developmental flaws at present and cannot be near-term solutions. What we need is a TOTAL package that includes researh into all potential energy sources.
Opposition to drilling is about breaking your back economically not the environment. Look at the liberal Democrat policy platform across the board and ask yourself what the ultimate aim is.