Former NOAA oil spill cleanup boss says Obama waited too long in Gulf disaster

The Washington Examiner by Way of the Weekly Standard ^ | 5/2/10 | Mark Tapscott

[dalight]

Gouget told the Registe that NOAA officials at the Unified Command Center in Louisiana know how to respond to spills, and know burning should have started as soon as possible after the initial release was detected. He also speculated that they may have been prevented from doing so by higher officials.

"It may have been a political issue. The burn would make a big big plume and lots of soot. Like Valdez, the decisions to get the resources mobilized may not have occurred until it was too late," Gouget told the Register. "This whole thing has been a daily strip tease. At first they thought it was just the diesel, then they said the well wasn't leaking. It's unfortunate they didn't get the burning going right away. They could have gotten 90 percent of the oil before it spread."

[concerned about politics]

"It may have been a political issue.

The bigger Oboma can make the crises, the closer he gets to the Cap and Tax bill. Why not let it pour for, say, about 11 days just to make sure it's a real beauty.

When Oboma talks about going green, he's not talking about green plants. He talking about green currency. That bill is worth trillions of tax dollars $$$ to Oboma and his Chicago cronies.

[concerned about politics]

Oboma responce time poll....

(http://www.cnn.com/)

[homegroan]

Thank you so much for posting that!! It’s the best I’ve seen...up here in CT, I don’t get to see a lot of info on oil rigs.

That looks like it was destroyed as opposed to-it just broke!

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Obama’s scheme is likely to backfire.

[Republic of Texas]

Nice job Bammy!

[homegroan]

well with a nuke-wouldn’t you kill everything in the oceans also? radiation poisoning?

[homegroan]

“...Obama simply doesn’t care....”

ONLY about himself.

During the presser, did you hear him complain about the rain in Louisiana? “I was told it would only be drizzling” he said as he laughed.

I’m sure the dead oil riggers families and all of the people who live and work down there felt really bad for him-not.

This is an Eco 9-11 in slow motion and the truth is-he screwed it up from day one.

All the jokes and pretty words and flashy smiles can’t fix this.
He owns it and has proved that no one is “too big to fail”.

[chimera]

Naw. Plenty of underwater nuke tests when they were testing above ground (and underwater). We're all still here, last I checked.

Able Baker test at Bikini Atoll (1946, shallow water):

Hartack Umbrella deep water test (that's a BIG Splash!):

[Road Warrior ‘04]

One word: WOW!

Pray for some sort of intervention!

[Gilbo_3]

the rig is supposedly lying on top of the leak, making access a problem...???

id like to know more about the 'burn' or lack thereof...

[an amused spectator]

Doesn’t matter. The mainstream media will always cover for Obama, simply because he’s an leftist African-American in a position of power. I worked in radio and print for 20 years; I know my former colleagues. You could have a photo of Obama with a lighter torching the oil platform himself and it wouldn’t matter. I was watching the NBC news tonight showing Obama at some dinner in Washington, D.C., cracking jokes with the rich and famous; not a peep from NBC about the president hanging with the trendy while fishermen lose their livelihoods and birds get covered with oil. I could almost write the script if Bush had been in the same situation, with the pained lines in the forehead of the newsreader leading into the story: “And while the disaster unfolds in Louisiana, critics are charging that the Bush administration didn’t do enough enforce regulations for off-shore drilling. The president chose instead to attend an official dinner and make light to the current situation. Here’s our White House correspondent...”

EVERYONE in the country would have known what the word "redacted" means by last Friday (April 30), after the Blagojevich PDF oopsie on April 22.

If Bush was still in office, The New York Times, the WashLaunderington Post & the Los Angeles Times would have had THREE front pages each (page 1, page 1 and page 1) filled with screaming headlines for a solid week, while Katie, Diane Sawyer and Brian would have had breathless updates every half hour on the hour in a 240 hour marathon up to today, continuing through the month of May, till the illegitimate "president" Shrub had been rightly and justly forced from office...

[GalaxieFiveHundred]

[metmom]

Not necessarily. There certainly would be problems and I’m not really sure how a nuke would work under water at those depths with that kind of pressure.

I’d hate to see it backfire and blow open a bigger hole.

[Windflier]

...with a nuke-wouldn’t you kill everything in the oceans also?

Does seem a bit of an extreme solution, doesn't it?

[SeaHawkFan]

BP has got to love this news. It is going to mitigate their liability, BIG TIME.

If burning had been permitted at the start, virtually all the damgage that is going to occur could have been prevented.

[thackney]

the rig is supposedly lying on top of the leak, making access a problem...???

Not True.

I've watched video from submersibles of the wellhead / BOP. The rig is not near it.

[Gilbo_3]

wow, good info, which makes me wonder why it wasnt what the problem has been in getting a 'lid' on the thing...

I know, its nowhere near that simple, but the tech surely had contingencies for a failure, didnt it ???

also, how does 210k/day leakage compare to other natural deepwater releases ??? is this due to the proxomity of the coast, or is this a majorly huge flow in general ???

seems in the expanse of the ocean it would literally be a drop in the bucket...

[chimera]

It would probably detonate okay, although the effects would be problematic. The WIGWAM test in 1955 was set off at a depth of 2,000 feet. The device performed nominally. There was no evidence of the fireball reaching the surface, although the spray dome from it formed:

[Joined2Justify]

>That looks like it was destroyed as opposed to-it just broke!<

So do some people who know a lot more about these things than we. I was speaking with the VP of our mineral club over the weekend. He usually is working on nuke subs in So Cal. He’s been called to go down there. Even at a dollar a minute, he’s not sure if he wants to deal with the red tape. Quizzing him on this mess I did learn this, and I quote “they don’t happen this way”.

I’ll let you draw your conclusions.

I do have another question: with over 60 people working on that rig, where are the interviews of the survivors??

[AFreeBird]

If memory serves; the liquid on Titan is methane, not crude oil. Still a hydrocarbon, just a shorter chain.