Quote :

"Not to mention the Obama Admin was sheisty as hell changing the document after the experts signed off on it"

TKE-Teg

Yep. And that outrage hasn't gotten anywhere near the attention it should have in the mainstream media or here.

Not to mention the fact that even AP, among others, has been critical of Obama's oil spill commission:

Obama spill panel big on policy, not engineering
Jun 20, 2010

Quote :

"An expert not on the commission, Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University and an Obama campaign contributor, said the panel should have included more technical expertise and 'folks who aren't sort of already staked out' on oil issues. Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute described the investigation as 'an exercise in political theater where the findings are preordained by the people put on the commission.' When the White House announced the commission, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and others made compared it with the one that investigated the 1986 Challenger accident. This one, however, doesn't have as many technical experts. The 13-member board that looked into the first shuttle accident had seven engineering and aviation experts and three other scientists. The 2003 board that looked into the Columbia shuttle disaster also had more than half of the panel with expertise in engineering and aviation. Iraj Ersahaghi, who heads the petroleum engineering program the University of Southern California, reviewed the names of oil spill commissioners and asked, 'What do they know about petroleum?' Ersahaghi said the panel needed to include someone like Bob Bea, a prominent petroleum engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who's an expert in offshore drilling and the management causes of manmade disasters."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100620/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_commission

6/28/2010 12:42:12 PM

http://www.financialpost.com/Avertible+catastrophe/3203808/story.html#ixzz0sFoTyOLU
This is outrageous. The US system needs to change.

Quote :

"Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico…. The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer — but only partly. Because the U.S. didn’t want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained."

[Edited on July 1, 2010 at 2:38 AM. Reason : ,.,]

7/1/2010 2:37:05 AM

^ sacrificing the gulf to satisfy unions can be laid squarely at the feet of obama

no arguments possible on this issue

7/1/2010 8:16:36 AM

So what's the score at this point? How many points for the government, and how many points for BP?

7/1/2010 8:50:25 AM

0-0

7/1/2010 8:58:27 AM

sorry, i meant anti-points.

7/1/2010 9:02:42 AM

who the fuck cares how many points or anti-points anyone has

the gulf is dying and obama is playing hanky panky with the union lobby

fuck him

7/1/2010 9:47:21 AM

Yeah thats inexcusable. I dont blame BO for the spill happening, or not being able to shut off the leak, but a lot of the damage that has been done could have been prevented. We needed a leader in the crisis, and BO failed.

7/1/2010 10:01:28 AM

Issa report questions administration's spill response
July 1, 2010

Quote :

"Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has released excerpts of a new GOP report charging that the White House has mismanaged key elements of its response to the BP oil spill. The report, which draws heavily on administration critics such as Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, suggests that the federal government has not deployed as many assets to the Gulf of Mexico as it has said, and accuses the government of sending equipment primarily in hopes of placating disgruntled local officials. 'These testimonials from the people who are on the frontlines of this crisis have brought to light a bureaucratic quagmire that is exacerbating the response and clean-up effort-- in a post-Katrina world, this is unimaginable and unacceptable,' Issa said in a statement. 'The evidence on the ground suggests that the White House has been more focused on the public relations of this crisis than with providing local officials the resources they need to deal with it.'"

http://tinyurl.com/3xvzqxu

[Edited on July 1, 2010 at 6:21 PM. Reason : Just FYI.]

7/1/2010 6:20:49 PM

Quote :

"Spill Volunteers Grumble They've Been Ignored"

http://www.aolnews.com/gulf-oil-spill/article/volunteers-grumble-theyve-been-left-out-of-spill-cleanup/19539840

Quote :

"BP and the Obama administration face mounting complaints that they are ignoring foreign offers of equipment and making little use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up what may now be the biggest spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard said there have been 107 offers of help from 44 nations, ranging from technical advice to skimmer boats and booms. But many of those offers are weeks old, and only a small number have been accepted "

LOL AT THIS NEXT ONE

Quote :

"Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's hard-hit Plaquemines Parish, said BP and the Coast Guard provided a map of the exact locations of 140 skimmers that were supposedly cleaning up the oil. But he said that after he repeatedly asked to be flown over the area so he could see them at work, officials told him only 31 skimmers were on the job. "

Quote :

"The frustration extends to the volunteers who have offered to clean beaches and wetlands. More than 20,000 volunteers have signed up to help in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, yet fewer than one in six has received an assignment or the training required to take part in some chores, according to BP. "

7/2/2010 1:06:59 PM

7/2/2010 1:08:35 PM

Oops!

Quote :

"Now, partnering with BP, we will have the resources to actually carry out some of the things we want to do to in order to help save the world."

--Dr. Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and U.S. Secretary of Energy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Ui_4_cTE0

[Edited on July 3, 2010 at 7:07 AM. Reason : Chu: BP = BFF!]

7/3/2010 7:04:47 AM

... why's that an oops? it happened three years ago, and Chu was in an entirely different position. that's not at all related.

7/3/2010 10:48:16 AM

"It's like one big sand trap!"

7/3/2010 10:48:50 AM

Do we live in a fascist country? This...is just terrible

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/07/03/white-house-enacts-rules-inhibiting-media-covering-oil-spill

7/4/2010 11:05:26 AM

no, its ok because its being done by a democrat administration

7/4/2010 11:41:55 AM

It certainly feels like we live in a fascists nation

http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/07/04/4611161-photographer-detained-by-police-bp-employee-near-refinery

7/5/2010 8:28:12 AM

7/5/2010 2:14:38 PM

holy fuck.

i am literally shocked.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81028408/

7/13/2010 5:46:58 PM

I am not. The government does not like to be held accountable for the actions of their agents. It is this same reason why some states have made it illegal to record police encounters and all states allow police to harass people trying to record police encounters.

7/13/2010 8:08:07 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/14/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?hpt=T1

Quote :

""I think we are very confident we can take control of this hydrocarbon stream and then slowly close all these valves and stop the emission of hydrocarbons. What we can't tell is the current condition of the well bore below the sea floor and the implication of the pressure readings," he said. "That is, in fact, why we're doing a well integrity test.""

is the use of the term "hydrocarbon stream" a way to spin/rephrase "oil leak" or do those in the industry actually use the term hydrocarbons on a regular basis?

7/14/2010 12:42:09 PM

hydrocarbons is an all encompassing term. There could also be natural gas leaking out of the well. Oil and natural gas are both hydrocarbons so I suppose it could be easier to just say that.

7/14/2010 1:10:53 PM

Not trying to derail here, but I wonder if an intentional explosion, which I gather is off the table, might accidentally trigger a massive catastrophic event:

Erupting Seas
An awesome mix of fire and water may lie behind mass extinctions

Quote :

"Stagnant water may have unexpected dangers. We already know that certain volcanic lakes can burst forth in clouds of choking gas. Now someone suggests that the ocean itself could erupt in explosive gas under the right—make that the wrong conditions."

http://geology.about.com/cs/extinction/a/aa092803.htm

7/14/2010 4:06:41 PM

I generally support Obama, and I'm not going to read this whole thread, but I think this is just about perfect:

Quote :

"Yeah thats inexcusable. I dont blame BO for the spill happening, or not being able to shut off the leak, but a lot of the damage that has been done could have been prevented. We needed a leader in the crisis, and BO failed."

7/15/2010 2:26:59 PM

BP announces that the spill has stopped!

7/15/2010 4:33:12 PM

Quote :

"Great. Now we can focus on the clean-up and suing them out of business."

7/15/2010 4:46:58 PM

Quote :

"Haha. Shutup"

7/15/2010 4:49:46 PM

Quote :

"DE JA VU"

7/15/2010 4:57:40 PM

lol, suing them out of business would be horrible for the economy...no matter of course

7/15/2010 10:28:24 PM

well, his idiotic moratorium is no better, but all he cares about is getting rid of big oil anyway

7/16/2010 11:01:39 PM

^ Do you even have the slightest idea what the moratorium is on? Here's a clue, whatever garbage you've had spoonfed to you by Faux News, Rush, et. al. is a lie.

7/17/2010 4:01:46 AM

Number of birds killed by the BP oil spill: at least 2,188 and counting.

Number of birds killed by wind farms: 10,000-40,000 annually.

Number of birds killed by cars: 80 million annually.

Number of birds killed by cats: Hundreds of millions to 1 billion annually.

Don't worry there is some good news.

Number of birds killed by fisheries: tens to hundreds of thousands annually (fortunately for the birds, some of these fisheries are now shut down).
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/dead-birds.html

7/19/2010 12:16:36 PM

Not sure why, but I read "killed by fisheries" as "killed by Frisbees". I was like .

7/19/2010 1:33:08 PM

^^ you should be able to tell as well as anyone else that those are disingenuous comparisons.

7/19/2010 7:00:11 PM

BP Oil Spill: Clean-Up Crews Can't Find Crude in the Gulf
As Size of Slick Shrinks, Experts Say Oil is Breaking Up, Staying Below Surface
July 28, 2010

Quote :

"For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it. At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire. Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen."

Quote :

"Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment. '[It's] mother nature doing her job,' said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University."

Quote :

"The light crude began to deteriorate the moment it escaped at high pressure, and then it was zapped with dispersants to speed the process along. The oil that did make it to the ocean's surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves."

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-crude-mother-nature-breaks-slick/story?id=11254252&page=1

Before some smart person here attempts to "educate" me, I realize that the long-term effects of the spill are unknown at this point. But this does seem to be a bit of relatively good news, which has been lacking as of late.

7/28/2010 4:58:39 AM

^it is good news. I remember a discussion on here about how many decades it would take to clean this up and how the guy in charge of the clean up for the Alaska spill said that mother nature really broke the oil down much quicker than expected. Glad the same seems to have happened here.

7/28/2010 7:50:15 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/us/28spill.html?_r=3

Quote :

" The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there. Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf."

7/29/2010 4:47:10 PM

7/29/2010 5:51:17 PM

Scientists Say as Much as 79% of Oil Remains in Gulf of Mexico
Aug. 17, 2010

Quote :

"A group of scientists says as much as 79 percent of BP Plc's leaked oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico, challenging an Obama administration assessment that the crude is largely gone or rapidly disappearing."

http://tinyurl.com/3aguk38

If this were the previous administration, some of you would be going absolutely bananas about this by now--if you'd just admit this, it'd be helpful. So, who's lying/incorrect, the Obama administration or this group of scientists?

8/18/2010 1:25:31 AM

How did five million barrels of oil simply disappear?
Steve Connor explains the science behind the natural – and man-made – processes at work in the Gulf of Mexico

Quote :

"British scientists with extensive experience of oil spills have supported their American counterparts who believe that most of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico no longer poses a threat to wildlife. Only about one-quarter of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil from the spill in the Gulf remains as a residue in the environment, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The other three-quarters no longer poses a significant threat to the environment, having mostly either evaporated or been dispersed, skimmed or burned off from from the sea surface, the NOAA scientists said. Related articles Although the amount of oil still remaining in the environment, nearly 1.3 million barrels, is about five times the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989, scientists believe that it is unlikely to cause as much damage as this notorious spill. The oil from the Gulf of Mexico is lighter than the usual heavy crude oil like cheese, and it will be easier to degrade naturally because there is a greater volume of water so it will dilute faster, and the warmer temperatures of the Gulf help bacterial degradation. "This is good news. We've been saying all along that this wasn't the catastrophe that the politicians and the media would have us believe – but of course there is no such thing as a good oil spill," said Simon Boxall, an oceanographer from the National Oceanography Centre at Southampton University. "It has caused a lot of damage to the coastline and it is a tragedy for everyone affected, but it is not the catastrophe that everyone was talking about," said Dr Boxall, who was involved in the assessment of the environmental impact of the MV Braer tanker disaster off the Shetlands in 1993. "It is not the world's worst environmental disaster, and not even the worst oil spill." The NOAA investigation, led by the administration's head, Jane Lubchenco, found that the efforts to contain the oil spill in the Gulf, namely the direct recovery of oil as it spewed from the wellhead, the burning and skimming from the surface, and dispersal with chemical sprays, accounted for about a third of the oil that leaked from the well following the massive explosion and fire on 20 April that killed 11 oil workers. Another 16 per cent of the 4.9 million barrels was naturally dispersed in the water column, mostly as a result of the oil forming small droplets no thicker than a human hair, as it sprayed from the wellhead under high pressure. Another 25 per cent of the oil either evaporated or dissolved into the seawater, the NOAA report says. The remaining residue of 26 per cent exists in a combination of categories which are difficult to measure or estimate. "It includes oil still on or just below the surface in the form of light sheen or tar balls, oil that has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, and some that is buried in sand and sediments and may resurface through time. This oil has also begun to degrade through natural processes," the NOAA report says, while oil from the spill is being "degraded naturally by oil-eating microbes in the ocean and the rate at which this is taking place is higher than expected because of the warm sea temperatures". Dr Lubchenko said that NOAA does not believe that it has missed any huge amounts of oil still lurking below the surface of the sea but she warned that there may still be some longer-term effects on the environment as a result of the leak, which is now the biggest offshore oil spill. "Dilute and out of sight does not necessarily mean benign and we remain concerned about the long-time impacts both on the marshes and the wildlife but also beneath the surface," Dr Lubchenko said. Geoffrey Maitland, professor of energy engineering at Imperial College London, said that the NOAA estimates are very much in line with his own. "Although the estimates confirm that this is indeed the biggest offshore oil spill [it] has not turned out to be anywhere near as bad as was feared in the first month or so of this crisis," Professor Maitland said. The report described how US scientists used an "oil budget calculator" to estimate how much oil had been released each day leading up to the point on 15 July when the wellhead on the seabed was sealed by a cap."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-did-five-million-barrels-of-oil-simply-disappear-2044817.html

[Edited on August 18, 2010 at 1:29 AM. Reason : .]

8/18/2010 1:28:44 AM

^ Answer the question or GTFO.

8/18/2010 1:30:08 AM

Quote :

"some of you would be going absolutely bananas about this by now--if you'd just admit this, it'd be helpful."

To who? It was a fact from the beginning that this oil spill was not going to be all that bad. Sure enough, as everyone familiar with history predicted, the oil spill has been contained by circumstance and neither red team nor blue team can take credit for nature's natural oil eating ability. Acting all hurt that Obama is being let off the hook by powers beyond his control is not helping your team. The only people looking better thanks to current events is perhaps BP.

8/18/2010 3:28:47 AM

^ My point was clear. Those who my statement might apply to can just admit it to this forum--that will suffice. But it might be more meaningful if they were to truly admit it to themselves.

First, if the Bush administration had put out a statement that nearly all of the oil from the "worst environmental disaster in history" was simply gone, many here would have been howling, "BUSH LIED, PELICANS DIED!!!1" (or some such), and you know it. Second, now that a group of scientists is questioning the statement that the oil is gone, where are the environmentalists and other critics?

In any event, Obama is not "off the hook," as you put it, for his administration's statement about the oil being gone if this proves not to be the case. My question stands:

Quote :

"So, who's lying/incorrect, the Obama administration or this group of scientists?"

8/18/2010 7:26:04 AM

In my opinion, they are both correct. Yes, the 79% number is made up, but their point that most of the oil remains in the gulf is absolutely correct. The only lies I see in your post is the assertion that this is the "worst environmental disaster in history". This wasn't even the worst oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

So, again, why should Blue team fall on their sword to make you feel better about your own lies?

8/18/2010 1:45:52 PM

^ Man, you usually make a lot of sense about economics, but I'm not really following you here. What's your point?

The Obama administration stated that the oil from the Gulf spill was almost all gone. A group of scientists has said that most of the oil is still there. They can't both be correct--so who's lying/wrong?

As to the "worst environmental disaster in history" statement, that's not mine (thus the quotation marks). President Obama said it and the exact words in his June 15 speech were the "worst environmental disaster America has ever faced."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-nation-bp-oil-spill

8/18/2010 2:15:17 PM

We are nowhere close to being done with this

8/18/2010 3:27:33 PM

[Edited on September 13, 2010 at 4:44 AM. Reason : Computer did something weird.]

9/13/2010 4:42:10 AM

[Edited on September 13, 2010 at 4:44 AM. Reason : WTF?]

9/13/2010 4:42:10 AM

Oil From the BP Spill Found at Bottom of Gulf
University of Georgia Researcher Says Samples Are Showing Oil From the Spill
Sept. 12, 2010

Quote :

"Professor Samantha Joye of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, who is conducting a study on a research vessel just two miles from the spill zone, said the oil has not disappeared, but is on the sea floor in a layer of scum. 'We're finding it everywhere that we've looked. The oil is not gone,' Joye said. 'It's in places where nobody has looked for it.' All 13 of the core samples Joye and her UGA team have collected from the bottom of the gulf are showing oil from the spill, she said."

Quote :

"Studies conducted by the University of Georgia and the University of South Florida caused controversy back in August when they found that almost 80 percent of the oil that leaked from BP's well is still out in the waters of the Gulf. Their report stood in stark contrast to that of the federal government, which on Aug. 4 declared that 74 percent of the oil was gone, having broken down or been cleaned up. 'A report out today by our scientists shows that the vast majority of the spilled oil has been dispersed or removed from the water,' President Obama said in August."

Quote :

"Though initially denying the claim, BP -- and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- acknowledged the existence of the dispersed oil. BP subsequently pledged $500 million for gulf research."

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/oil-bp-spill-found-bottom-gulf/story?id=11618039&page=1

In the ABC News broadcast, it was reported that the scientists said they were told to "stop talking" about oil in the Gulf by the Obama administration. Furthermore, if any of this--the contradiction about the oil remaining in the Gulf and charges of attempts to silence scientists--had happened in the previous administration, some of you would be going bananas.

So, I guess left-wing politics trumps concern about the environment, right?

[Edited on September 13, 2010 at 4:59 AM. Reason : Right?]

9/13/2010 4:42:10 AM

Oil on the sea-floor sounds harmless to me. Nothing lives there.

9/13/2010 8:57:22 AM