This is topic Gulf of Mexico Oil Slick - Things are getting really bad in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
I just noticed that there wasn't already a thread on this.

I've been keeping an eye on this for the past few days. I was saddened but not all that surprised when I heard about it; off-shore oil is always going to have instances of leaks. Indeed, anything industrial or mechanical is going to fail at some point, no matter how hard you try to prevent it.

But the newest reports have upped this from unfortunate oil disaster to potentially historically unseen disaster levels:

Washington Post

quote:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has estimated that oil could be leaking at a rate of as much as 5,000 barrels a day, but some independent experts using satellite imagery and estimates of the thickness of the slick have calculated that the rate could be five times more.
It looks like that 5,000 barrels a day could be on the (very) low end of the actual amount of leaking crude oil. Oy.

quote:
On the Royster, a rust-edged fishing boat, Richard Bosarge said he feared the oil could coat the valuable oyster grounds, which the fishermen here know so intimately they have given them names like "Square Handkerchief" and "Pass Mary Anne." And the oil could poison the huge stocks of shrimp offshore.

"They're out of reach until he's probably my age," Bosarge, 42, said, pointing to his son Roy, who is 15. "Just take a picture and put it in a museum."

Here's a graphic showing the extent of the spill

Here's a BBC article with satellite pictures, good graphics, and a good overview

And another (from Examiner):

quote:
"The following is not public," reads the report, "Two additional release points were found today. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

The concern is that kinks in the piping and a deteriorating wellhead is what is currently controlling the flow to 5,000 barrels a day. The other concern is that sand which is an integral part of the formations that normally holds the oil under the Gulf is essentially sandblasting the pipe. The formation that was being drilled by the Deepwater Horizon is reported to have tens of millions of barrels of oil.

"The loss of a wellhead, this is totally unprecedented," said Ron Gouget, a former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "How bad it could get from that, you will have a tremendous volume of oil that is going to be offgassing on the coast. Depending on how much wind is there, and how those gases build up, that's a significant health concern."

I think the likelihood of this being a smaller disaster than is currently reported is very small. This looks just awful. [Frown]
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
From the Wall Street Journal (requires subscription) but excerpt below taken fro Climate Progress.

quote:
Ian MacDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University who specializes in tracking ocean oil seeps from satellite imagery, said there may already be more than 9 million gallons of oil floating in the Gulf now, based on his estimate of a 25,000 barrel-a-day leak rate. That’s compared to 12 million gallons spilled in the Valdez accident.

Interior Department officials said it may take 90 days to cap the leaking well. If the 25,000 barrels a day is accurate and it leaks for 90 days, that’s 2.25 million barrels or 94.5 million gallons.

This is not a small problem. [Frown]
 
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
 
Did they succeed in getting the slick lit? That was my first reaction, light it on fire, but of course initially they were still trying to find the missing workers and no one knew how bad it was going to get.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Parts of it:

ABC News

quote:
This is a measure of how fearsome the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has become: engineers set parts of the oil slick on fire this afternoon.

. . .

It is an inherently risky move, said engineers, but less risky than the alternatives.


 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The White Whale:
This is not a small problem. [Frown]

Sigh. Indeed.
 
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
 
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/the-oil-spill-is-obamas-fault/
 
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
Uuuuh commentary Parkour? Do you agree with the link or disagree and if so why?

Also I don't agree eitherway, if Obama didn't do it the Republicans would have the pressure for it was that high.

edit: damn you for posting an article that had an ambigous name, apparantly upon reading it that the article isn't saying its Obamas fault only that mainstream media will eventually pose the question.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
What?

Edit: And then links to Rush Limbaugh saying exactly that.

quote:
"I'm just noting the timing here."

 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
Wow. Krugman is really grasping at straws there. Rush refers to "environmentalist whackos," and that somehow fits one of Krugman's criteria?

I mean, there are environmentalist whackos out there. Eco-terrorists exist. They do sabotage industrial works. Now, far as I know Rush has zero evidence that they were involved here, so it's basically just a fantasy/conspiracy theory, and shouldn't be given any serious consideration. But that's still a far cry from saying "Obama is responsible."
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
If they light it, all that carbon will be released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Anyone who would prefer a clean beach over the health of the planet is selfish. Obama must hate the beaches...Bush hated black people due to Katrina.

It is horrible. Who's to blame? Funny, the government is relying on BP. Where's FEMA?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
If they light it, all that carbon will be released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Anyone who would prefer a clean beach over the health of the planet is selfish. Obama must hate the beaches...Bush hated black people due to Katrina.

It is horrible. Who's to blame? Funny, the government is relying on BP. Where's FEMA?

GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD

I GIVE YOU

THE

WORLD'S

LARGEST

MAN

OF

STRAW

 
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
The US consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. Burning off 5,000-25,000 for each day this goes on would be a blip.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
Rush refers to "environmentalist whackos," and that somehow fits one of Krugman's criteria?

He said he knew that something along those lines was coming and he posited three likely potentials.

Like literally he says "you know something along these lines is coming"

And Rush did in all fairness walk his big mouth right into Krugman's prediction.
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
It's safer to burn it than to release it. California doesn't allow offshore drilling and their beaches are oil coated. The oil being released in the gulf isn't being pumped, it's under natural pressure. BP's answer is to open up new drill sites to relieve this natural pressure. Oil is there and it is under pressure. If you want to clean up California, drill oil wells.

http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/enviro/seeps1.htm
 
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
California beaches are not oil coated. The quantity of oil that shows up from seepages is relatively minuscule and poses no environmental hazard. Litter is a bigger problem than natural oil will ever be.

BP's plan involves temporarily reducing pressure at this one well until it can be capped, not reducing the amount of overall pressure present in this oil field.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
California doesn't allow offshore drilling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_oil_and_gas_in_California

wow, something you said is completely and unambiguously false, what a surprise
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
Rush refers to "environmentalist whackos," and that somehow fits one of Krugman's criteria?

He said he knew that something along those lines was coming and he posited three likely potentials.

Like literally he says "you know something along these lines is coming"

And Rush did in all fairness walk his big mouth right into Krugman's prediction.

I don't know, man. If you interpret things loosely enough any prediction can be proved accurate. You need to hold the prediction to some level of scrutiny, don't you?

We're letting him make multiple predictions already, and that's all well and good. But none of his predictions are satisfied by the Rush clip. The closest might be his first prediction...

quote:
Originally posted by Paul Krugman:
Will it be claims that liberals and/or scientific conspirators sabotaged the rig, to undermine good Americans who want to drillheredrillnow?

But, I don't know, "scientific conspirators" doesn't seem to even remotely apply to eco-terrorists, to me.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Come on man. Your Krugman quote is a dead-on description of what Rush is doing. You don't think that if asked, Rush would describe ELF as a liberal interest group? Eco-Terrorists are liberal terrorists as far as they are concerned.

Regardless, I think you're missing the forest for the trees here.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
You need to hold the prediction to some level of scrutiny, don't you?

1. We do, but

quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
But none of his predictions are satisfied by the Rush clip. The closest might be his first prediction...

2. This isn't correct at all. His prediction was satisfied. It would have been even if any of his three examples of the sort of thing that could satisfy his prediction were not what ended up happening. However, #1 is pretty spot on due to the and/or qualifier.

KEY WORDING: "something along these lines is coming."
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
that said though, this was some really low-hanging fruit. Paul Krugman predicts that the republican line will try to fault this somehow on liberals? It's like predicting that Rush Limbaugh will open his mouth in the next three months.
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
Lyrhawn: Liberals, maybe, but are they "scientists?"

Samprimary: "Along these lines" is a great example of weasel words, though, isn't it? ... Okay, reading your second post, I guess I don't need to continue this line of thought.

If all Krugman is saying is that some Republican somewhere will suggest the possibility that liberals may in some way be responsible for this catastrophe, then sure. This is a pretty safe bet, and can be flipped just as easily. It's a fair bet at least a couple thoroughly partisan hacks will blame the other side when things go wrong.

In other news, Ricky Martin... still gay, and water... still wet.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
Samprimary: "Along these lines" is a great example of weasel words, though, isn't it?

It was just a very safe prediction given the current propensity of conservative strategy. All I'm saying is that even if this was a total duh, he was still spot-on.
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
It was just a very safe prediction given the current propensity of conservative strategy. All I'm saying is that even if this was a total duh, he was still spot-on.

Current strategy being... demonize the opposing party?

This is supposed to be particular to conservatives?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
Man you are REALLY looking for something to object to here, but no, Dan, nobody's saying that.
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
For someone who objects vociferously when you think I'm putting words in your mouth, you sure are putting words in my mouth. Or at least motives in my... motivator.

I'm not looking for something to object to. If that's not what you meant, then awesome, it was an honest misunderstanding.

Note how I was asking questions, not making positive statements. They weren't rhetorical, and I'm actually quite happy to be corrected when I ask questions like that. [Smile]
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
California doesn't allow offshore drilling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_oil_and_gas_in_California

wow, something you said is completely and unambiguously false, what a surprise

[ROFL]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I have to say, I see the attraction of comparing this to Hurricane Katrina, but other than the fact that they are both broadly termed as disasters, they don't really seem to have a huge number of similar factors.

I actually didn't place a huge amount of the blame on Bush for Katrina. I think FEMA screwed up, and Bush deserves a bit of the blame for that, and for more or less pushing the problem aside until it was too late to prevent and the only thing left was a massive federal clean up and rescue effort. However, a lot of that prevention was Nagin and Blanco's fault.

In this case, we had a situation where we don't know what went wrong, and could not see it coming. The entire situation was reactive, rather than proactive. Also, I think we're finding that as more and more information comes out, the federal response changes to match it.

In other words, I don't think Bush was to blame for Katrina. I don't think this is Obama's Katrina. And I think, from what we know so far, Obama has done what we can expect of him to solve the problem.
 
Posted by Ginol_Enam (Member # 7070) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
California doesn't allow offshore drilling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_oil_and_gas_in_California

wow, something you said is completely and unambiguously false, what a surprise

This is where I quit reading the thread due to unwarranted hate. Going elsewhere for my oil spill discussion lurking
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
I'm not sure if you're being critical of Samprimary or malanthrop here, Ginol. If Samprimary, I don't see how it's warranted.

Malanthrop has a history of posting as fact outright false, provably false statements, and he did so in a rather decisive fashion in this thread, using that falsehood to support profoundly stupid arguments.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
In this case, we had a situation where we don't know what went wrong, and could not see it coming.

While this statement is true for those of us watching, I wonder how true it will turn out to be for BP. My dad used to work in the department that reports on accidents at the power plant. They operate on a pyramid theory - that you need a certain number of small accidents to support a medium accident, a certain number of medium accidents to get a large accident, and on up to a catastrophe.

So the theory is that if you aggressively pursue the small accidents, you can keep the situation from building up to a disaster. They did have a guy die at the plant after he fell off a pipe a bunch of the guys cut across where they couldn't wear their safety equipment, but the only other accidents I remember him mentioning are fairly innocuous redneck stuff like falling off the work truck while hitting a deer.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Given that we don't know what went wrong, isn't it too soon to say whether or not we could have seen it coming?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ginol_Enam:
This is where I quit reading the thread due to unwarranted hate. Going elsewhere for my oil spill discussion lurking

Take malanthrop with you!
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
Just to put things in perspective:

Bush hesitated 3 minutes at the school he was visiting after 9-11 happened and democrats and the media went completely crazy over how long it took.

Obama played a few rounds of golf and did some fund raising before he realized how bad of a problem the oil spill was. Twelve days passed before he visited the spill.

To be fair, there was no way Obama could have known how bad the spill was going to turn out to be. Republicans simply see this as an opportunity to point out what they feel is hyprocrisy on the part of the media. I think they know perfectly well that it is being handled in an appropriate matter, but they are using this as political capital.

I don't think it is right, but democrats have done it in the past, so they probably feel they have a right to do it as well. It is childish, but both sides are guilty of it.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
Considering they're trying to call this 'obama's katrina,' the relevant comparison is the obama administration's response to the oil spill versus the bush administration's response to katrina, not bush's My Pet Goat event.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
There is no relevant comparison between either Katrina or 9/11, they were completely different types of events.

Those who are criticizing the Obama administration or the federal government for this, what is it you think they should have done that they haven't done?
 
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
quote:
I actually didn't place a huge amount of the blame on Bush for Katrina. I think FEMA screwed up, and Bush deserves a bit of the blame for that, and for more or less pushing the problem aside until it was too late to prevent and the only thing left was a massive federal clean up and rescue effort. However, a lot of that prevention was Nagin and Blanco's fault.
Who's to blame for Katrina
quote:
Ray Nagin was clamoring for help since it was first announced that Katrina would hit the Gulf coast. He ordered a mandatory evacuation, but with so many people unable to evacuate themselves, what was he to do? He asked for help. And the reason Republicans are blaming Louisiana is because the Blanco, Mary Landrieu, and Ray Nagin are all democrats, not because of some state's rights issue, which I think is laughable since this REPUBLICAN president has done more to curtail the rights of individual states than any president of the 20th century.

The post-hurrican excuse doesn't wash with me. Nagin was clamoring for assistance for days before Katrina hit. He had few resources, and even post Katrina it's pretty obvious LA didn't have the resources either. These are resources only the Federal government can get ahold of. Bush should have known that. Yes, officially Blanco needed to request aid, and we don't know for sure yet when exactly she did that do we? But you don't have to be a genius to figure out this was more than they could handle.

Bush should have sent in massive amounts of transportation to get people out before hand, they should have had tents, and other shelters ready for the evacuees. It's no excuse that they didn't know how bad it would be, they did an exercise LAST SUMMER that theorized what would happen if a Cat. 3 hit NO dead on. There is no excuse, they knew what would happen. It's no one person's fault, but Bush, as the nation's leader has to accept some responsibility.

He won widespread praise after 9/11 for his handling of that situation, where, if you ask me, he didn't really do all that much more than give moral support. So here he has to face the other side of the coin.

Also, I think he should take some fire for being on vacation when this happened. He keeps making the argument that he can do his job just as well from Crawford as he can from the White House, but I don't buy it. I believe he would have handled the situation differently if he were in the Oval Office instead of biking around a field of poppies.


 
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
I don't think it helps when Salazar, then echoed Gibbs, is quoted as saying keeping a boot to throat of BP.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by DarkKnight:
I don't think it helps when Salazar, then echoed Gibbs, is quoted as saying keeping a boot to throat of BP.

I'm unfamiliar with the comments can you give me some context and why you think its not helpful.
 
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
 
Rabbit,

Here's a link to NPR's write-up on the subject:

Link

And while I don't approve of violent metaphors casually thrown out, regardless of administration, BP isn't giving people much reason to trust them:

BP admits "misstep" over oil spill claims waivers

quote:
BP Plc (BP.L) said on Monday that waiver clauses in contracts it offered to Alabama fishermen to help fight the Gulf of Mexico oil spill had drawn allegations that it was trying to buy them off to give up the right to sue the company.

"That was an early misstep," BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward told National Public Radio, when asked about Alabama media reports about a waiver campaign.

I have a feeling that when this is over, the area's economy will be taking a hard hit, the environment an even harder one - and American taxpayers having to try to alleviate the damage.

BP shareholders, OTOH, will probably make out just fine.
 
Posted by Ginol_Enam (Member # 7070) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
I'm not sure if you're being critical of Samprimary or malanthrop here, Ginol. If Samprimary, I don't see how it's warranted.

Malanthrop has a history of posting as fact outright false, provably false statements, and he did so in a rather decisive fashion in this thread, using that falsehood to support profoundly stupid arguments.

I don't see how it matters. People are allowed to be wrong; if malanthrop's being maliciously wrong then ignore him. This dicussion board has degraded to a point where I can't read half of a thread (and I'm referring to 90% of all threads; not just this one) without reading at least one inflammatory and insulting remark. Generally the discussions just turn into petty, childish, and ignorant sessions of name-calling.

Maybe its because a few members have chosen to incite such arguments. You might be inclinded to blame them. Personally, I think it takes two to tango and the most commonly spread (but most rarely used) rule on the internet is "don't feed the troll."

Anyway, I hardly ever post and when I do its very rarely in a "meaty" rather than "fluffy" thread, so maybe I don't really have a right to say what this discussion board should or shouldn't be like. Oh well. That's for the community as a whole to decide. If everyone likes the way things are now they'll continue to post here. If they don't, they'll leave or stop participating in these inane arguments.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
Anyway, I hardly ever post and when I do its very rarely in a "meaty" rather than "fluffy" thread, so maybe I don't really have a right to say what this discussion board should or shouldn't be like.
I say it is somewhat poor form to not participate in discussions and then jump in to complain that they are not of high enough quality. I lurked for years, and then realized that I could create, or at least spark, some of the discussions I was looking for.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
DarkKnight,

While the article you quoted does have some valid points, I can't help but express that the writer of that article was being intellectually dishonest. He completely ignores any of the information regarding the numerous warnings the state of Louisiana had regarding the danger of flooding, including the warnings that in the event of a hurricane the levies would not hold up, as well as the funding that was offered to fix them.

As for the correlation between the two, I don't blame Obama just like I don't blame Bush. There were things that were not handled properly with both situations. What I was pointing out is that the republicans are simply doing what democrats and the main stream media did with Katrina: Scoring political points.

I think the only thing we are missing now is a telethon in which a country singer yells "Obama hates rednecks." While standing next to John Voight.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
From Rakeesh:
Given that we don't know what went wrong, isn't it too soon to say whether or not we could have seen it coming?

Who is we? By all accounts, the safety checks that BP reported to the government showed that the rig was just fine. As far as the government knew, within the confines of current regulations, there were no red flags. Now, whether or not BP should have known something was wrong is a different story.

DarkKnight -

Change "didn't" to "don't, and have not for a long time," in my original post, and then proceed. Am I not allowed to change my mind?

Sometimes I get carried away in the initial stages of an argument, only to settle into how I really feel after I've had time to think about it. This is one of those times. I still think Bush is to blame for some of the problem, but not nearly all of it. I'd actually forgotten a number of criticisms I made in that post as well that I think are perfectly valid. So thanks for the reminder.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
From Geraine:
While the article you quoted does have some valid points, I can't help but express that the writer of that article was being intellectually dishonest. He completely ignores any of the information regarding the numerous warnings the state of Louisiana had regarding the danger of flooding, including the warnings that in the event of a hurricane the levies would not hold up, as well as the funding that was offered to fix them.

You must not have clicked the link. The writer of the "article" was me, circa 2005. However, if that's your point of complaint, then I'd hasten to add that the Army Corp of Engineers, which oversees the levee system, both had their funding cut, and were refused funds for structural upgrades to the levee system under the Bush Administration. That's a federal, not a state issue.
 
Posted by Ginol_Enam (Member # 7070) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The White Whale:
quote:
Anyway, I hardly ever post and when I do its very rarely in a "meaty" rather than "fluffy" thread, so maybe I don't really have a right to say what this discussion board should or shouldn't be like.
I say it is somewhat poor form to not participate in discussions and then jump in to complain that they are not of high enough quality. I lurked for years, and then realized that I could create, or at least spark, some of the discussions I was looking for.
Glad we agree. Nevertheless, I clearly did it.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by sndrake:
Rabbit,

Here's a link to NPR's write-up on the subject:


Thanks for the link sndrake. I'm still a bit confused as to why DK thinks this imagery doesn't help. What doesn't it help?

Based on the context of the thread, DK seems to be implying that it doesn't help create the impression that the Obama administration is doing all it can to address the problem. Why not? Do most people think that the Obama administration should not being pressuring BP to do more? Do most people think the Federal government should take over? I don't understand why this doesn't help.
 
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
quote:
I'm still a bit confused as to why DK thinks this imagery doesn't help. What doesn't it help?
Would you be OK with Obama saying we need to put the boot to the throats of illegal immigrants?
Keeping your boot to someone's throat seems pretty violent to me especially when you are relying on that organization to do the work. Putting your boot to someone's throat isn't working with them or trying to solve a problem through a coordinated effort. It's threatening them.
 
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
quote:
Change "didn't" to "don't, and have not for a long time," in my original post, and then proceed. Am I not allowed to change my mind?

Sometimes I get carried away in the initial stages of an argument, only to settle into how I really feel after I've had time to think about it. This is one of those times. I still think Bush is to blame for some of the problem, but not nearly all of it. I'd actually forgotten a number of criticisms I made in that post as well that I think are perfectly valid. So thanks for the reminder.

Of course we can all change our minds and time does affect how we see events in the past. I'm glad to see that you have taken time to settle into a different perspective on it
 
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
quote:
Would you be OK with Obama saying we need to put the boot to the throats of illegal immigrants?
No, but primarily because illegals, despite being viewed as opportunists, are viewed as weak and vulnerable. The imagery of a literal boot to the literal throat of a migrant farm worker is pretty horrifying.

Conversely, the imagery of a literal boot to the literal throat of a multinational megacorporation is, well, not an image at all - said corporation has no throat. But beside that it's also viewed, correctly, as a humongous powerful entity with virtually limitless resources.

quote:
Putting your boot to someone's throat isn't working with them or trying to solve a problem through a coordinated effort. It's threatening them.
No coordinate effort will be required to pay for this mess. BP needs to write a check - a very big one. This posturing sounds like the administration is making that point clear.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by DarkKnight:
quote:
I'm still a bit confused as to why DK thinks this imagery doesn't help. What doesn't it help?
Would you be OK with Obama saying we need to put the boot to the throats of illegal immigrants?
Keeping your boot to someone's throat seems pretty violent to me especially when you are relying on that organization to do the work. Putting your boot to someone's throat isn't working with them or trying to solve a problem through a coordinated effort. It's threatening them.

I don't particularly like violent metaphors either but I don't think your analogy is at all valid for all the reasons Matt stated above.

This is a disaster that was caused by a powerful private for profit corporation. If there had been no disaster, they would not have been sharing their huge profits with the American tax payers. BP caused the problem and BP should be held liable for the damages and responsible for resolving the problem. The primary role of the government in this type of case should be enforcement of the laws and regulations to ensure that BP fulfills their responsibilities. I think words that indicate a strong stance on enforcement are exactly what is needed. We have had far too much public liability for private mistakes over the past 2 years and I'm glad the Obama administration is making it clear that won't happen this time around.

This isn't a case where the government and the corporation should be equal partners working to solve the problem.

That said, of course we the people (i.e. the government) should be providing BP with all possible assistance to solve the problem but as best as I can tell they are doing that and hard line statements be the administration don't seem to be hampering cooperation between BP and NOAA.

This is a very different kind of disaster because the private sector really does have better resources and expertise for this than the government. There aren't refugees that need to transported, housed, fed and clothed. There isn't any public infrastructure, such as bridges, roads, damns, and levies, involved. Aircraft carriers, helocopters, and soldiers aren't of any real use. The US government doesn't do deep sea drilling. It doesn't have either the expertise or equipment for dealing with this problem. BP does, or at least its got more than the government does.

[ May 05, 2010, 04:05 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
 
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
The US consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. Burning off 5,000-25,000 for each day this goes on would be a blip.

Well, we burn refined varieties of oil. Do you know how much worse crude oil emissions are? Because I have no idea.
 
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
quote:
Well, we burn refined varieties of oil. Do you know how much worse crude oil emissions are? Because I have no idea.
It's actually quite a bit worse than the refined stuff, which I hadn't considered at the time I posted that. [Frown]

Still, I think it would probably be a lesser evil, though the reading I've done since then indicates that it isn't really practical or effective to solve this problem by burning. Some burning may help, but it's clearly not a solution for the bulk of the problem.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
The US consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. Burning off 5,000-25,000 for each day this goes on would be a blip.

Well, we burn refined varieties of oil. Do you know how much worse crude oil emissions are? Because I have no idea.
Depends on what you are talking about. If we are talking about CO2 and other important green house gases, there is very little difference between burning crude and burning refined petroleum products.

The questions are bigger for other pollutants. SO2 emissions are a concern but I don't know how big a concern because I don't know if this high or low sulfur crude. That will be oxidized to sulfate aerosol and ultimately end up as acid rain somewhere.

The biggest differences won't be the because of difference between burning crude oil and refined products, but between the very inefficient uncontrolled burning of floating oil and burning in well controlled conditions with pollution controls. We will certainly generate a lot more soot and VOCs which will be a pollution problem but isn't going to make a difference in climate change over the longer term.

The biggest problem with burning oil slicks is that it depletes the surface sea water of oxygen which will kill everything that needs oxygen to survive.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
The biggest problem with burning oil slicks is that it depletes the surface sea water of oxygen which will kill everything that needs oxygen to survive.
So is it better to burn the oil, kill those oxygen-lovers and save the creatures on the shore, or save the oxygen-lovers and kill the creatures on the shore?
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
It's actually quite a bit worse than the refined stuff, which I hadn't considered at the time I posted that. [Frown]

Also, it would seem to me that we typically don't burn everything that comes out of a barrel of oil either. We make some plastic that we bury, some asphalt, some artificial fibres, etc.

So this is sort of like a fractional gasoline fire, tire fire, clothing fire, etc. occurring as rabbit points out badly without pollution controls.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
It's actually quite a bit worse than the refined stuff, which I hadn't considered at the time I posted that. [Frown]

Also, it would seem to me that we typically don't burn everything that comes out of a barrel of oil either. We make some plastic that we bury, some asphalt, some artificial fibres, etc.
The fraction that doesn't get burned is pretty small so that doesn't make much of a difference.

quote:
So this is sort of like a fractional gasoline fire, tire fire, clothing fire, etc. occurring as rabbit points out badly without pollution controls.
Not really. Petroleum products are very heavily modified to make thinks like tires, plastics, and polar fleece. Those chemicals aren't in crude oil, they are made using crude oil as a starting material. It just isn't accurate to say burning crude is like burning gas mixed with those things.

[ May 05, 2010, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
That would be the "sort of"

I was more concentrating on the fact that we *don't* typically burn these things. (Or if you want to be picky, we don't burn the oil content that goes into these things)

Edit after edit:
quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
The fraction that doesn't get burned is pretty small so that doesn't make much of a difference.

It would seem to me that it isn't just about volume though. The non-fuel products should be more concentrated toward the heavy end of the distillation process. Per unit, the crude oil that was destined for gasoline should burn cleaner than the units that were destined for say the tar in asphalt.

[ May 05, 2010, 06:19 PM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The White Whale:
quote:
The biggest problem with burning oil slicks is that it depletes the surface sea water of oxygen which will kill everything that needs oxygen to survive.
So is it better to burn the oil, kill those oxygen-lovers and save the creatures on the shore, or save the oxygen-lovers and kill the creatures on the shore?
How close is the oil slick to the Gulf dead zone? Maybe we can burn it and not worry about the oxygen.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
Wow, that was dumb.

BP didn't have a plan.

Really? We're just going to operate on the assumption that nothing bad will happen? I especially like this:

quote:
When questioned about the exemption claim, BP spokesman William Salvin said provisions for handling a blowout incident were actually included in the firm's 582-page region oil spill plan, though he had difficulty pointing to specific passages.
I'm sorry, but it's not a plan if you don't know what it is. I wondered why it was taking BP so long to come up with ideas to stop the leak. Now I get it.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Well, from what I've been reading, there IS a mechanism in the well that shuts off the flow, but for some reason it didn't activate and they were trying to use robot subs to activate it. I don't know if this is the same device as the blowout device or not.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by AvidReader:
... BP didn't have a plan.

Humans, not Cylons. Check.
 
Posted by Omega M. (Member # 7924) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by AvidReader:

Wow, that was dumb.

BP didn't have a plan.

Sigh. I was hoping this wasn't going to turn out to be another disaster that was Bush's fault, but I guess I was wrong. (The article headline is "Feds let BP avoid filing blowout plan for Gulf rig".)

Also, this guy had better be wrong about the oil spill, for our sake. (He starts talking about the spill in the fourth paragraph.)
 
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
quote:
I was hoping this wasn't going to turn out to be another disaster that was Bush's fault, but I guess I was wrong.
How is it Bush's fault?
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by DarkKnight:
quote:
I was hoping this wasn't going to turn out to be another disaster that was Bush's fault, but I guess I was wrong.
How is it Bush's fault?
The rule which would have required BP to file a blowout plan for the well was lifted in April 2008 (under the Bush administration). Based on this change of rules, BP claimed did not file a blowout plan for this site.

So it does in fact appear that the Bush administrations cozy relationship with the oil industry and active push to make off shore drilling easier for companies were a contributing factor.

Of course we won't ever know how much of a difference it would have made, but you must admit it looks pretty bad.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by DarkKnight:
quote:
I was hoping this wasn't going to turn out to be another disaster that was Bush's fault, but I guess I was wrong.
How is it Bush's fault?
The article cites changes to the regulations in 2008 that relaxed the requirements of plans related to blowout scenarios. Bush was still the president at the time.

I don't think anyone is blaming Bush though.
 
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
quote:
I don't think anyone is blaming Bush though.
No one but Omega M. is blaming Bush...
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I think more evidence needs to come up before we can blame Bush. But the evidence at hand doesn't really look promising. The MMR and USFS did a lot of things during his tenure that I didn't like, and most of them amounted to giveaways to big corporations that cost taxpayers billions of dollars in unpaid royalties, to say nothing of environmental damage.

I have no idea how that translates to safety regulations, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.
 
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Omega M.:
Also, this guy had better be wrong about the oil spill, for our sake. (He starts talking about the spill in the fourth paragraph.)

This is happening too close to 2012 for comfort...
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Why would people be fighting over bottled water because of an oil spill in the OCEAN? That seems extremely counter-intuitive to me. Either way, that seems like the most extreme of worst case scenarios. He's also making assumptions about what caused the accident when we don't know for sure yet what did it.
 
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
 
I think you misread it, Lyrhawn. The fighting over bottled water was due to the aqueduct break in New England, unrelated to the oil spill.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Oh my bad. That's what I get for skimming.
 
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
 
Don't understand the dome strategy?

Let Bill Nye explain it to you.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
You know, I've been thinking about political philosophy over the last couple of weeks, and I realized that I'm not sure how a true libertarian would handle the externalities here. Can anyone tell me how they'd have private entities address this spill?
 
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
 
Have the responsible parties pay for it?
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Not possible. We see that sort of thing already with SuperFund cleanup now, at mining sites: once it's time to clean up, they just spin off any assets and let the empty shell declare bankruptcy. For that matter, who's the organization doing the cleanup in that scenario? Does the government in a libertarian model maintain a very expensive emergency response team for environmental crises, only to bill the responsible parties enormous amounts on the rare circumstances it's required?
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
For that matter, what sort of regulatory apparatus would a libertarian support to prevent something like this from happening again?
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
For that matter, what sort of regulatory apparatus would a libertarian support to prevent something like this from happening again?

Considering how much oil is drilled for on a daily basis, and how long it's been since a major oil spill, I think a libertarian might argue that we don't need to introduce any new regulatory apparatus to prevent this from happening again.

Any more than we need to introduce new regulations every time a 747 crashes.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
How can you say that before we know specifically what went wrong? What if this is a result of of regulation in the MMR? What if BP lied about something they were supposed to do and that's what caused it?

You seem to be operating from the belief that this was an unavoidable freak accident, and that freak accidents just happen.

Also, the 747 comparison is a bad one. Yes, modern jetliners rarely crash, but the effects are immediate and limited. There's a tragic loss of life, but the effects are limited to the families of the unfortunate victims. Massive oil spills affect millions of people, to say nothing of the environmental damage itself, assuming you find that to be worthwhile.
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
How can you say that before we know specifically what went wrong? What if this is a result of of regulation in the MMR? What if BP lied about something they were supposed to do and that's what caused it?

You seem to be operating from the belief that this was an unavoidable freak accident, and that freak accidents just happen.

Also, the 747 comparison is a bad one. Yes, modern jetliners rarely crash, but the effects are immediate and limited. There's a tragic loss of life, but the effects are limited to the families of the unfortunate victims. Massive oil spills affect millions of people, to say nothing of the environmental damage itself, assuming you find that to be worthwhile.

Of course I consider the environmental damage to be a worthwhile consideration. Why wouldn't I? [Smile]

The jet comparison is significant from a risk/reward viewpoint. Rewards of taking a specific jet flight (getting to point B faster) are vastly less than the rewards of a specific drilling operation (millions of barrels of oil gained). And yes, the potential danger is also greater.

The question is: Is the reward worth the risk? It obviously is in the case of air travel, but it's perhaps debatable when we look at drilling.

If BP lied about following regulations, how, precisely, would adding more regulations prevent a future catastrophe?
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
Our inability to plan ahead just gets more pathetic: Mock drill in 2002.

quote:
Many of the problems responders face in today's oil spill were spelled out in the mock disaster staged eight years ago, known as the 2002 Spill of National Significance Exercise. Such exercises include participants from multiple local, state and federal agencies and the private sector.
As for regulation, it sounds like dumb regulation strikes again.

quote:
The 2002 drill found that government budget rules and strict regulations "have inhibited research, development, test and evaluation of response technologies," according to the report produced after the exercise.

 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I'd actually like a response from someone to this scenario: in a libertarian model, how would the response to this oil spill be handled? Who would coordinate it? What company or companies would perform the cleanup? Who would pay them?
 
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
I'd actually like a response from someone to this scenario: in a libertarian model, how would the response to this oil spill be handled? Who would coordinate it? What company or companies would perform the cleanup? Who would pay them?

In a libertarian model, the best you could hope for is a cabal or organization with significant control or interest in the health of the shoreline and ocean in that region. Without that there would be nothing in the way of an effective response, just a strategic retreat from the fallout by BP.

Of course under a libertarian model there would be no effective management of the sea's resources in general and we would have been overfished to complete collapse in the first place. In that morbid way there would for long swaths of time be much less in the way of industry left to be threatened by the ecological disaster.
 
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
If BP lied about following regulations, how, precisely, would adding more regulations prevent a future catastrophe?

Inspections.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
in a libertarian model, how would the response to this oil spill be handled?

Which model? standard-fare natural rights libertarianist model will fare very, very poorly. Consequentialism may do okay. Any model that follows the non-aggression principle as the core moral guidance of governmental limitation (i.e., 'taxation is theft') would fail utterly in a scenario such as this.
 
Posted by Mucous (Member # 12331) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
... at mining sites: once it's time to clean up, they just spin off any assets and let the empty shell declare bankruptcy.

I don't know if Lisa is representative, but wouldn't she respond that there shouldn't be corporations, let alone "empty shell" subsidiary corporations? Therefore, the equivalent of the owners/shareholders would be all responsible directly.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
quote:
Therefore, the equivalent of the owners/shareholders would be all responsible directly.
So the corporation's assets would be sold off at auction, and any remaining bill would be divided amongst shareholders (per share) and sent to some kind of insanely huge collections department? Or are we talking about a truly massive class-action suit?
 
Posted by Mucous (Member # 12331) on :
 
I hesitate to speak more for her, but IIRC the last "no corporations" thread, corporations wouldn't exist let alone have assets in the first place. The insanely complex part would be front-loaded in trying to organize the equivalent of what would be a corporation through a whole lot of contracts between owners/shareholders in the first place (IIRC, that was Fugu's objection).

Edit to add: I think these, 1, 2, and 3 are the relevant threads.

Ok, the above summary is not quite right. It's the restriction of what a corporation is versus removing them totally, but the relevant bit might be
quote:
2) All debts owed to a corporation or by a corporation shall be owed to or by shareholders of that corporation according to the proportion defined in the bylaws of the corporation. If no proportions are defined therein, debts shall apply to shareholders in direct proportion to their ownership of the corporation.

3) No corporation shall own another corporation. Any corporate ownership of a corporation at the time this article goes into affect shall be transfered to shareholders in the parent corporation according to the bylaws of the parent corporation. If no proportions are defined therein, ownership of the child corporation shall be transferred to shareholders of the parent corporation in direct proportion to their ownership of the parent corporation.

The latter would seem to be aimed at the empty shell problem while the former would allocate the debt.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
So in this scenario, everyone holding BP stock would eventually receive a bill in the mail for their percentage of the cleanup, plus handling charges?

But who would contract with the cleanup company in the first place? If BP refused to do it, would someone need to sue them to force the issue?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
Sue them over what? What sort of liability would theyhave to accept in exchange for opening an oil platform on territory they have rights to? Who is enforcing that liability?
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Presumably, in a libertarian scenario, things like fishing grounds would be owned; damage to those grounds could therefore be ascertained. But it seems like a nightmare.
 
Posted by Stray (Member # 4056) on :
 
I think Chernobyl is a better comparison than Katrina.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
I actually take issue with this:

quote:
The political challenges, in both cases, centered on the inability of the political establishment to acquiesce to the fact that a key source of energy (nuclear power or deep-water oil) relied on technology that was unsafe and prone to catastrophic failure.
My understanding of both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island is that they were attempting risky situations - creating weapons grade material in a commercial plant and deliberately overriding safety protocol, respectively. No other American reactor has ever failed, catastrophically or otherwise.

Like I said earlier, the plant operates on a pyramid theory. If you attack small accidents aggressively, you can remove the fuel needed for larger accidents to occur. The worst accident I ever heard of was a guy deliberately ignoring safety protocol.

Calling that unsafe and prone to catastrophe is deliberatly misrepresenting the track record of the American nuclear industry, in my opinion.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
My understanding of both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island is that they were attempting risky situations - creating weapons grade material in a commercial plant and deliberately overriding safety protocol, respectively. No other American reactor has ever failed, catastrophically or otherwise.
Your understanding is incorrect in both cases. Neither Three Mile Island nor Chernobyl were used to create weapons grade material. The Three Mile Island accident was the result of a faulty valve compounded by operator error. The Chernobyl incident was the result of critical flaws in the reactor design compounded by conditions set up in an shutdown experiment. Neither accident had anything to do with making weapons grade fuel.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Presumably, in a libertarian scenario, things like fishing grounds would be owned; damage to those grounds could therefore be ascertained. But it seems like a nightmare.

Its worse than a nightmare, its an impossibility. Even if you divide the ocean into privately "owned" sectors, water, air and fish don't stay put inside a given boundary. We don't even fully understand the oceans and all the things they do. Many of the services provided by the oceans like production of oxygen by algae and uptake of CO2 simply can not be bought and sold in any market system. Even for things like fishing, it is impossible to quantify the precise impact this disaster will have in either the long or short term.

One of the many fundamental flaws with libertarian ethics, is that anything which cannot be exchanged on the market is considered to have no value. And furthermore, any thing which can not buy and sell (say for example manatees or even future humans) on the market has no voice and no rights.

[ May 10, 2010, 02:58 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
that guns into these grounds, as does this whole question about the oil spill hypothesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
The Three Mile Island accident was the result of a faulty valve compounded by operator error. The Chernobyl incident was the result of critical flaws in the reactor design compounded by conditions set up in an shutdown experiment.

Nevertheless, that doesn't invalidate my main point that nuclear reactors are not inherantly unsafe technology.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Nevertheless, that doesn't invalidate my main point that nuclear reactors are not inherantly unsafe technology.
Wasn't some of the evidence for your main point that two of the worst nuclear disasters in human history, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, occurred because of extremely unusual risk factors in a riskier-than-usual situation in the first place?

If that wasn't the case, then isn't your point if not invalidated at least weakened? I mean, I say that as someone who supports expanding nuclear power in the United States, only because I think the batch of problems that come with it are better than the batch of problems we have with our current power makeup. But it is incredibly dangerous, and when bad things happen, they're s@#t-hits-the-fan bad at best.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
I am pretty sure that the events of three mile island could not be replicated with the technology in place in today's nuke plants. As for chernobyl, I don't think we EVER ran things in such a way that we could pull off that stunt.
 
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:
Nevertheless, that doesn't invalidate my main point that nuclear reactors are not inherantly unsafe technology.
Wasn't some of the evidence for your main point that two of the worst nuclear disasters in human history, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, occurred because of extremely unusual risk factors in a riskier-than-usual situation in the first place?

If that wasn't the case, then isn't your point if not invalidated at least weakened? I mean, I say that as someone who supports expanding nuclear power in the United States, only because I think the batch of problems that come with it are better than the batch of problems we have with our current power makeup. But it is incredibly dangerous, and when bad things happen, they're s@#t-hits-the-fan bad at best.

Chernobyl is one thing; but Three Mile Island was a tempest in a teapot. Your average coal plant releases more radiation in a week of ordinary running. (Yes, coal plants put radiation into the air; they burn carbon, which has radioactive isotopes.) If that's your standard of shit hitting the fan, you need to get a grip, calm down, and then panic and demand the immediate cessation of all coal power production.
 
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
Most of todays currently operating nuclear plants are actually aging and fairly old and need to be replaced, the ones that WOULD replace them however would be perfectly safe (Made in China) but otherwise perfectly safe.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:

quote:Nevertheless, that doesn't invalidate my main point that nuclear reactors are not inherantly unsafe technology.

Wasn't some of the evidence for your main point that two of the worst nuclear disasters in human history, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, occurred because of extremely unusual risk factors in a riskier-than-usual situation in the first place?

If that wasn't the case, then isn't your point if not invalidated at least weakened? I mean, I say that as someone who supports expanding nuclear power in the United States, only because I think the batch of problems that come with it are better than the batch of problems we have with our current power makeup. But it is incredibly dangerous, and when bad things happen, they're s@#t-hits-the-fan bad at best.

Chernobyl is one thing; but Three Mile Island was a tempest in a teapot. Your average coal plant releases more radiation in a week of ordinary running. (Yes, coal plants put radiation into the air; they burn carbon, which has radioactive isotopes.) If that's your standard of shit hitting the fan, you need to get a grip, calm down, and then panic and demand the immediate cessation of all coal power production.

Actually, my point was specifically that things are worse by our current standard, but that nuclear power does still have its dangers. That [i]any[i] generation of power for hundreds of millions of people will have dangers of some sort.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
The fact that the current plants produce waste that lasts thousands of years is the one thing that sets me against nuclear power (well, besides the fact that nuclear plants and nuclear waste storage gets disproportionately placed in poorer areas). If you can get over this hurdle (and I think third...or is it forth...generation nuclear power claims to do just this), then I'm all for nuclear power.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
We could build breeder reactors and get less waste while getting more fuel than we started with.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
We have a perfectly good nuclear storage facility here in Nevada that is already built! Yucca mountain.

I've been to the facility and toured it, and it is world class. The dangers that opponents warn of are absolutely non-existant. I've seen what they store the waste in, and these things are durable. They said they could be shot, dropped off the Empire State Building, and even be in the middle of a bomb blast and NOTHING would penetrate these things.

The way opponents make it sound is that we just store it in these metal barrels with a radiation sign on the side and throw it in some dark cave in Yucca mountain.

The facility is already built. We've spent $10 billion on it. For Nevada it would be a HUGE boost to the state economy.
 
Posted by sarcasticmuppet (Member # 5035) on :
 
The same Yucca mountain that is right on top of an active fault line?
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Geraine:
We have a perfectly good nuclear storage facility here in Nevada that is already built! Yucca mountain.

I've been to the facility and toured it, and it is world class. The dangers that opponents warn of are absolutely non-existant. I've seen what they store the waste in, and these things are durable. They said they could be shot, dropped off the Empire State Building, and even be in the middle of a bomb blast and NOTHING would penetrate these things.

The way opponents make it sound is that we just store it in these metal barrels with a radiation sign on the side and throw it in some dark cave in Yucca mountain.

The facility is already built. We've spent $10 billion on it. For Nevada it would be a HUGE boost to the state economy.

The biggest arguments I've seen against using Yucca aren't so much the facility itself (though Nevada isn't thrilled), but from transportation. Most opponents fear what would happen if thousands of tons of nuclear waste start zooming all over the country.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Geraine:
The dangers that opponents warn of are absolutely non-existant.

Yeah, no, this actually happened.

quote:
In September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault line ran underneath the facility, hundreds of feet east of where it was originally thought to be located, beneath a storage pad where spent radioactive fuel canisters would be cooled before being sealed in a maze of tunnels. The discovery required several structures to be moved several hundred feet further to the east, and drew criticism from Robert R. Loux, then head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, who argues that Yucca administrators should have known about the fault line's location years prior, and called the movement of the structures “just-in-time engineering.”[11][12] In June 2008, a major nuclear equipment supplier, Holtec International, criticized the Department of Energy's safety plan for handling containers of radioactive waste before they are buried at the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. The concern is that, in an earthquake, the unanchored casks of nuclear waste material awaiting burial at Yucca Mountain could be sent into a "chaotic melee of bouncing and rolling juggernauts".[13] Loux resigned from office in October 2008 amid discontent that he had increased salaries for himself and other employees beyond authorized levels after one employee left.[14]

 
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvNwQusaMbA

Editing in some info for a later discussion

blog1491 post664 pottery Yeah, I saw this.
I cannot understand what is taking so long to do an analysis of the interior of the BOP (which I am sure is the unknown issue here).
Cant they ultra-sound it ?? Although to build an ultra-sound device that can withstand 5000 ft deep pressure may be a bit of a challenge....
Having said that, I also feel that the current flow is small, compared to the potential flow if they screw-up this option.
This is a BAD one guys...........

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/images/TopKill_5-21_1a_large.jpg BoP
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/561979/ BoP
http://dailyhurricane.com/Top%20Kill%20Close%20Up.jpg BoP

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/561979/ Subsea
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doctype/2931/54691/&offset=10

blog1477 post238 188 rinkrat61 "I driller oil wells for 22 years and I have never heard of 10 in. interior diameter drill pipe. Drill collars that go directly on top of the drill bit may be up to 10 in. outside diameter but they only have a 3 in inside diameter. Drill collars are typically 10,8,and 6 in. O.D. Drill pipe makes up most of the drill string and it is typically 5in. O.D.
the casing ranges in sizes. Any casing 20 in or larger is only for surface casing and is rarely set deeper than a few hundred feet. Depending on the depth of the well there is typically 3 strings of casing cemented into the well and the production casing is NEVER more than 9 5/8 in inside diameter. Most wells have 5 1/2 in production casing."

[ May 26, 2010, 10:14 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
This is why actual SCIENCE needs to be taught in school. So the kids don't end up like Rush....
 
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
I think I will buy one of these shirts, though....
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Nice links. Also, hooray for a fellow Treehugger.com reader. [Smile]
 
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
quote:
We have a perfectly good nuclear storage facility here in Nevada that is already built!
Ok, good.

quote:
I've seen what they store the waste in, and these things are durable. They said they could be shot, dropped off the Empire State Building, and even be in the middle of a bomb blast and NOTHING would penetrate these things.
Allowing for propaganda, splendid.

quote:
The way opponents make it sound is that we just store it in these metal barrels with a radiation sign on the side and throw it in some dark cave in Yucca mountain.
Yes.

quote:
For Nevada it would be a HUGE boost to the state economy.
Whoa, stop right there! What the devil has that got to do with anything?! The US does not produce energy to benefit the economy of Nevada, thanks kindly! This is possibly the worst argument ever for nuclear energy; please don't make it.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Well, for the industry as a whole sure. As an argument to get Nevada to stop protesting the use of Yucca, it's great argument. And if Yucca is essential to the future of nuclear power in the United States, then it becomes part of the larger argument as well.

I'd say it's really a tailored argument to one state that happens to have more importance than most others in the wider context of the discussion. Which of course isn't to say that there are other solutions that make Yucca unimportant, but, in the past it has been a pretty important idea.
 
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
Currently, teams of scientists, linguists, and anthropologists are struggling to properly identify Nuclear Waste burial sites. It sounds simple at first... until you consider the half-life of this crap will far out live any facility or structure that contains it, the memory of what it was, or our descendants' ability to read the warnings on the labels, leaving us Neglectful Precursors to our own descendants. As an added twist, future archaeologists might successfully decode the labels, just to brush off our warnings as the superstitious ramblings of an ancient, underdeveloped culture. Damn Interesting has an article on the process.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Series of pictures of the spill, the clean up, and the damage. [Frown]
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Sigh. So pointless too.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
"We don't have any idea how to stop this"

quote:
If the oil can't be stopped, the underground reservoir may continue bleeding until it's dry, Simmons suggested.

The most recent estimates are that the leaking wellhead has been spewing 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons, or 795,000 liters) of oil a day.

And the oil is still flowing robustly, which suggests that the reserve "would take years to deplete," said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

"You're talking about a reservoir that could have tens of millions of barrels in it."

At that rate, it's possible the Gulf oil spill's damage to the environment will have lingering effects akin to those of the largest oil spill in history, which happened in Saudi Arabia in 1991, said Miles Hayes, co-founder of the science-and-technology consulting firm Research Planning, Inc., based in South Carolina.


 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Well that's troubling.

Why not just drill a dozen holes and pump the hell out of it? Sure it's a longer term strategy, but it'd be better than years and years of the status quo.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
I suspect that, if the idea of recovering the current well is given up, there are several options available, probably involving some sort of controlled explosives to remove the path to the surface.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
You mean use explosives to collapse the wellhead?
 
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
Some estimates put it at 50,000 barrels/day or higher.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525
 
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
"And into the Valley of Death rode the Six Hundred Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
"Four Horsemen. You've mixed Revelations with Charge of the Light Brigade."

Even NOAA's probably*lowball estimate of 5,000barrels per day is more than sufficiently appalling.
The crude oil slick already covers an area nearly equivalent to a circular degree...
...a 3740square-mile / 9680square-kilometre KillingField.

* Blog1477, Comment105, Point3

(Just got curious about the appearance of a circle doubled in area. The first circle I posted is for a spill that is half the size of the ExxonValdiz spill, a milestone that will be reached ~2:30amCentralStandardTime on 17Apr10.)

[ May 16, 2010, 05:06 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
Actually, this raises an interesting question for me. The oil naturally sits down under the surface under pressure. We have fault lines in the Caribbean and have even occasionally had a little earthquake. How come we've never naturally had a rupture at an oil field? If nature's doing something that protects the fields on its own, maybe we could figure out what that is and adapt it?
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
AvidReader: Oil occurs and remains squeezed between layers of rock at high pressure deep beneath the surface. Earthquakes don't let it up to the surface because earthquakes don't break the giant layers of rock above the oil.

To get at oil, we drill all the way down through those layers of rock and put a pipe that the oil escapes up (since there's now a place to release the pressure). Since there's now a hole to the surface, oil will come out whether we're there waiting for it or not, until the hole is effectively closed off.

In other words: there's nothing special 'nature' does to protect oil except keep it deep underground, and if we want to be able to get it out from deep underground, this sort of thing will continue to be possible.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
It keeps getting worse: (NYT)

quote:
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”


 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Good grief, why is BP the one making the decision whether or not scientists can measure on the ocean floor?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
2009 - drill baby drill
2010 - spill baby spill
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Rakeesh: Probably because they don't have any conflicts of interest.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
Earthquakes don't let it up to the surface because earthquakes don't break the giant layers of rock above the oil.

How weird. With the plates rubbing against each other, I assumed you got damage all the way down. But then I suppose lava would be a normal after effect of one, and it's not.

I hope someone comes up with something brilliant soon. [Frown]
 
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Good grief, why is BP the one making the decision whether or not scientists can measure on the ocean floor?

I am guessing they want to use BP equipment and resources to do it.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
AR: they probably do cause damage a long way down. Damage, however, does not equal to opening up paths directly to the surface that are several inches wide.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
I am guessing they want to use BP equipment and resources to do it.
There really ought to be a provision for government control over such resources in the event of such a catastrophe. Even if it were absolutely clear that BP, Transocean, and Halliburton did nothing wrong whatsoever, I don't think they ought to be the ones calling the shots. It's not their coastline and coastal-dependent economy that's facing ruination for the next few years (at minimum) or so.
 
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mucus:
Rakeesh: Probably because they don't have any conflicts of interest.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/05/13/13greenwire-less-toxic-dispersants-lose-out-in-bp-oil-spil-81183.html

tee hee~

look, another argument against the deregulate-business-libertarian crowd~

~~
 
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
Somehow I doubt that putting bureaucrats with zero experience in drilling and capping oil wells in charge of the operation would help matters.

However, the government and most especially the public should have full access to all information concerning the leak in real time. That includes all executive discussions and all engineering discussions, all legal discussions and all public relations discussions, all videos and other recorded data, etc as in 100%.
With the proviso that any official armchair quarterbacking should be saved for the post-mortem and the ensuing law suits.
 
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
Remember that corporations are people now and can take the 5th!
 
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
 
Why do you assume they are bureaucrats with 0 experience? Why can't there be experts, technicians, and those who have drilled and capped wells but who are not now nor ever hope to be in the employ of a particular oil company, placed in charge of overseeing the safety and honesty of the industry--so that it meets minimum standards that society requires?
 
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Because someone would have to pay them, and oil companies pay better than the US government does.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by aspectre:
Somehow I doubt that putting bureaucrats with zero experience in drilling and capping oil wells in charge of the operation would help matters.

However, the government and most especially the public should have full access to all information concerning the leak in real time. That includes all executive discussions and all engineering discussions, all legal discussions and all public relations discussions, all videos and other recorded data, etc as in 100%.
With the proviso that any official armchair quarterbacking should be saved for the post-mortem and the ensuing law suits.

so the government should not be able to do anything until the deeds are done? nobody can step in and say, for instance, bp has to switch out their crappy kickbacks dispersant?
 
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
 
Crossing our fingers here. Let's hope this works (or at least strongly mitigates continued damage).
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Somehow I doubt that putting bureaucrats with zero experience in drilling and capping oil wells in charge of the operation would help matters.
If that were the only other option, I would be against it. However, the status quo is currently: the folks who very well may have done it are the ones handling it, and they're turning down requests to investigate the current extent of the damage.

I don't particularly care if that's the right decision to make, it's an obvious drastic conflict of interest, and it shouldn't be permitted.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Kinda surprised this fell to the second page.

Up next: The Top Kill

As frustrated as I am with how long it's taking to solve the problem, I have to wonder what the government would do differently if they took over.

So far as blame goes, I put the preventative blame on the government, but as far as the solution goes, I don't know what people think should have been done differently, or for that matter, what the government would do differently if they pushed BP out of the way and took over tomorrow.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
I agree that with no adequate research and no plan there's not much that anyone could have done different. But I still got a chuckle out of this:

quote:
Republican Strategist Mary Matalin -- who herself toured the damage by boat Sunday -- said the White House should cease "saying they have their boot on the neck of BP. They don't have a ballet slipper on the neck of anybody."

 
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
 
I am just laughing at the conservative socialists out there demanding that "President Obama take over the oil rig and do something." You know that the moment President Obama does anything to supplant BP as lead of the effort it will be hailed as "yet another socialist move by Obama. First he took over banking, then GM, then health care, and now the Oil industry."
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
http://politicalirony.com/2010/05/26/this-comic-doesnt-exist/
 
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
 
LA Times is reporting top kill success in stanching the flow.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
That's pretty thankful. The oil could have continued pumping out for quite a long time if this had not worked, and nobody would have been able to do anything about it.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Darth_Mauve:
I am just laughing at the conservative socialists out there demanding that "President Obama take over the oil rig and do something." You know that the moment President Obama does anything to supplant BP as lead of the effort it will be hailed as "yet another socialist move by Obama. First he took over banking, then GM, then health care, and now the Oil industry."

I don't think they are arguing that at all. To me the argument is that Obama has been ignoring what is happening and has not sent support to the states affected by the spill. The spill is BP's fault, but that does not mean that the states are unaffected. Fishing, tourism, and other industries are affected by the spill. States have been asking the government to step in and help in the efforts, but feel that so far they have not received the support they need. If the President started to help with the clean up effort, I'm sure President Obama would be applauded for it.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
To me the argument is that Obama has been ignoring what is happening and has not sent support to the states affected by the spill. ... States have been asking the government to step in and help in the efforts, but feel that so far they have not received the support they need.
If bobby jindal is one of those making this argument, I am going to laugh my head off for obvious reasons.
 
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
quote:
To me the argument is that Obama has been ignoring what is happening and has not sent support to the states affected by the spill.
Is this the case? I don't think it is.

So far as I can tell, the argument is something like "People jumped on President Bush because of the extremely poor federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Well, President Obama's response is the same as President Bush's and this situation is the same." To put it another way, I'm not seeing much coherent thought or reasonable arguments. Just continuations of efforts to defend one of President Bush's obvious screw ups and attempts to somehow vaguely say that President Obama is doing a bad job without going into any specifics.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
Whether he is or not is irrelevant. While I think Mr. Jindal's idea of a barrier island is nonsense (It would take years to get it completed) there are other things that can be done to help out.

You can cry hypocrisy, but that doesn't change the fact that the states need help down there.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Geraine:
Whether he is or not is irrelevant.

Bobby Jindal is going to cry about the feds one way or another; it's a quick way to score points against Obama, and the people who desperately want this to be "Obama's Katrina" will eat it up.

A more relevant issue is whether or not the accusations are true. In terms of response — as in, whether the administration has been ignoring this issue — the answer is no, the fed has been all over this from the very beginning and Salazar's response has been hearteningly competent in an era where federal disaster response is coming out of a 'heckuva job' tarnished reputation.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Is there a blog post or a news article or a divining rod anywhere that actually lists, specifically, what people want from Obama that they aren't getting?

All I've been seeing for the last two weeks is "do more!" but with no specific requests except for Bobby Jindal throwing a hissy fit about barrier island construction that will take years to complete. And for that matter, that's pretty rich when Democratc in LA, and environmentalists in general have been complaining for years about natural barrier island destruction as a result of poor environmental management of the Mississippi Delta and surrounding Gulf regions. It's one of the reasons Katrina was worse than it needed to be.

But really, I can't take anyone seriously who says Obama is doing nothing when there are hundreds of ships and thousands of workers in the Gulf right now combating the problem. And I can't take anyone seriously who says Obama should take over and push BP out when the government doesn't have any better solutions in mind. And I can't take them seriously when they say he isn't doing enough but have no clue as to what more he could do.

As an aside, I've yet to decide who I'm really mad at in this situation, other than BP. It feels like I should be mad at BP, the MMS, whoever was in charge of creating the regulatory system that BP was operating under, and beyond that, I don't have nearly enough information to focus my anger yet.
 
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
 
quote:
As an aside, I've yet to decide who I'm really mad at in this situation, other than BP. It feels like I should be mad at BP, the MMS, whoever was in charge of creating the regulatory system that BP was operating under, and beyond that, I don't have nearly enough information to focus my anger yet.
Crab People.
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
I wish I could honestly describe how I feel about Bobby Jindal but I'm at a loss for words that wouldn't violate the rules here regarding obscene language.

I wish I could be more excited about the fact that SOMEONE is getting on television and voicing the anger and concern of Gulf coastal residents, but its just ridiculous for Jindal to be that person. Here's a guy who accepted campaign money from BP and has supported lifting the ban on offshore drilling.

I would have some respect for him if he stepped up and described how this nightmare has forced him to reconsider his old positions. Not sure I'd believe him, but I'd appreciate the attempt.

Instead, he's just blowing hot air, coming up with kooky ideas, and trying to score some points for his party. He had his chance to make coastal restoration a priority and instead he spent his time undermining the educational system, making cuts to healthcare, and protecting himself and all his colleagues from ethics investigations.
 
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
 
Interesting comparison:

During Katrina the Republican Media Machine told the world that the Government was doing everything possible, and it looked that way to everyone except those in the effected areas.

Today the Republican Media Machine has told the world that The Government is doing NOTHING, and it looks that way to everyone except those in the effected areas.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
DM, do you have some links? I'd be interested.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Geraine:
Whether he is or not is irrelevant. While I think Mr. Jindal's idea of a barrier island is nonsense (It would take years to get it completed) there are other things that can be done to help out.

You can cry hypocrisy, but that doesn't change the fact that the states need help down there.

Geraine, Can you please tell what things can be done to help out that are not being done? I keep hearing this same sentiment but I'm at a loss to come up with anything that the government should have been doing for the past month which is has not been doing. Tell me what the Obama adminstration should have done before or after this disaster that it has not done?

The only thing I can think of is that Obama needs to put a long term moratorium on deep water off shore drilling until we have developed new technologies and regulations that will prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again. I don't see that happening as long as our economy is dependent on oil and I certainly don't see republicans supporting it.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Well as far as BEFORE the accident, the Department of the Interior needed to clean up the MMS, and frankly, that IS something we knew needed to be done. I've been reading stories for years on environmental blogs about how the MMS is in bed with Big Oil and the lumber industry (Big Wood?) and that the government has not only been cheated out of billions of dollars in royalty payments from both of them, but the regulatory oversight of where to drill, the safety protocols in place, and in the forestry service, where to cut, have all been extremely lax. A lot of that was loosened under the Bush Administration, and a lot of it was already loose when Bush got there.

I didn't know that the MMS was quite as corrupt as the news is portraying it to be now, but we knew that something was hinky before this happened. I'm a little wishy-washy on whether or not I can blame that on Obama. Clearly he had a lot of priorities when he got into office, and he's been there less than two years with a lot of pressing concerns. The Minerals Management Service isn't something that gets priority. But maybe it should have.
 
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
 
The administration could have (I won't say should have) mobilized emergency response much more quickly. For the first three days after the explosion they were treating this primarily as a search and rescue mission rather than an environmental disaster. It wasn't until after the oil leak was discovered that they mobilized their emergency management teams. To some degree this is what Bobby Jindal is complaining about; that the booms that are being used to contain the area of the spill weren't more rapidly available.

Now, whether they should have done this, I don't know. Mobilizing resources is expensive, and I think the administration thought they'd dodged a bullet for the first three days. If there had been no leak, and they had called out the emergency response team, they would have been denounced for wasting money on an emergency that didn't happen. It would be useful to know how likely the oil rig accident would be without the attendant well leak; if it was highly likely that a leak had occurred, I think it was negligent of the Administration to roll their response out so slowly. But if the leak was more like a "black swan" event, then I would be more hesitant to fault the Administration for not committing the resources more rapidly.

<edit>I'd also be interested in knowing why the top kill wasn't attempted sooner (like a month ago). Why were the cap and then the shunt tried first? Were they more likely to succeed or were they cheaper or what? To what degree was beaurocracy responsible for the delays in trying different solutions, and to what degree was it incompetence and to what degree was it just a lack of imagination and planning (on the part of the government and BP)?</edit>
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
From what I've read, they had a higher likelihood of success. But really, from how they're describing all these procedures, it sounds like there is really no way to gauge the likelihood of success on any of these procedures without wildly guessing. None of them have ever been attempted in anything close to a situation like this before. They've only been successful on land wells. I know there have been undersea spills off the coast of Africa, actually, on a regular basis from what I've heard, but never something this complicated.
 
Posted by Earendil18 (Member # 3180) on :
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

Seems like they have done this before.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
Obama has now pulled on deep water drilling permits in both the Gulf and Alaska.

Its about time. I wonder how long it will stick.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Sadly I doubt ethics will play a major part in which way it goes.
 
Posted by Mucous (Member # 12331) on :
 
Good call on Alaska, no messing up BC [Razz]
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
I think most of the Alaska oil exploration has been off the north coast where it would never impact on BC.
 
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
 
There should be differentiation between BP and all the other major oil companies. According to the network newscast I saw, BP has hundreds of major safety violations in recent years, for which they have been fined millions of dollars, and some of the violations still have not been corrected. Some of those violations led to the deaths of workers in a serious refinery fire a few years ago. The oil company with the next highest number of violations was Exxon (I think it was) with only 8 violations. The other oil companies listed had 6 or fewer violations. Clearly something is wrong systemically at British Petroleum, where they seem to regard fines for cutting corners as standard operating costs.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
How much of that is BP and how much is it the MMS? From what I've read, Great Britain has far more stringent standards than we do, and BP's record in the North Sea is far better than it is in the Gulf and elsewhere.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Ok, no messing up the Northwest Territories or the Yukon [Wink]
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
Obama has been in control, "Since day one"...in his own words. Good thing he spent three hours in Louisiana today (on top of his 5 hours on the golf course). Still waiting for him to even mention the 500 year flood in Tennessee. It's particularly telling...Obama's destruction of the gulf coast will be far worse than Bush's during Katrina. Bush's response to New Orleans was faster than Obama's to the spill. Where's the media outcry?

Legally, Bush responded as soon as legally possible, when a state requested assistance in state territory. Legally, Bush couldn't send help until the governor requested it. The spill is in federal waters and state governors have been begging for help for weeks.

Who is more inept?
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Heh, so Obama went out there with a wrench and jammed the BOP open to cause the spill? Man, that guy must HATE the environment AND the south. By the way, what do you expect him to do? Head down there, personally, in HazMat gear to clean up the mess himself?

I'm not saying there aren't fair criticisms to be made, but yours are too silly to be taken seriously. I feel like I'm being overly defensive of Obama when I really don't intend to be, but really, what am I defending when the charges thus far are either laughably ridiculous or so vague as to be non-existent?
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
The oil platform and spill is in federal waters. The sole domain of the federal government. The federal government (president) cannot intervene in a city or state without the governor's invitation and no state governor has authority over the waters surrounding the spill....that's federal waters.

The federal government under Bush offered assistance to the state of Louisiana before the governor requested help. The federal government couldn't provide help until authorized by the the governor of Louisiana. The disaster was in state territory.

In this situation, the governor of Louisiana has been begging for help for weeks. He's been begging for help to protect his state's shores from a disaster coming from federal waters. The oil rig, in federal waters, was immediately the president's responsibility. He not only failed to react to his responsibility in federal waters, he's ignored the pleas of state governor's.

Bush offered help before the governor asked and his assistance couldn't be enacted until the governor authorized. In this situation the disaster began in Omama's juristiction and the governors have been begging for help. The federal beurocracy was too slow for Louisiana's request to build sand bars. Louisiana shouldn't have to get permission from the federal government to build sand bars to protect its beaches. Unfortunately, federal law requires it.

The most responsive government is the one closest to the people. Our nation was founded on power granted to the government by people. The most powerful governments, local. This has been turned upside down. People give power to the town, towns to the county, counties to the state and states to the fed. The federal government was created by the states. Now, people lose their livelihoods, town's are flooded with oil and states are decimated by federal bureaucracy. Governor Jindal knows what is best for his state. The inland water ways of Louisiana would be protected if he didn't have to wait for federal approval.

Government closest to the people is the best.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
What are the things that Obama did not do that you think he should have?

You're listing more generalities with no evidence, or barring evidence, even specifics.

quote:
The federal beurocracy was too slow for Louisiana's request to build sand bars. Louisiana shouldn't have to get permission from the federal government to build sand bars to protect its beaches. Unfortunately, federal law requires it
Obama isn't in charge of sand bar management. The Army Corps of Engineers is, and they, GASP, wanted to double check the plan to make sure it would work, was feasible, and was the best use of manpower in the situation before launching a major engineering process! That's insane! Why would we stop and think about something before just DOING IT!?

But let's say for the sake of argument that building it is the right idea. If Obama had jumped over the normal process of doing things and had said "Gentleman, move, that, sand!" It would be built right now, and LA would be fine right? Right? Oh no! It turns out that building these artificial barrier islands would require massive resources, importing dredges from across the country, and could take SIX to NINE months to complete! And that scheming Obama with his hatred for America has made them wait a week to double check the plan. God, I just HATE that guy.

Also, why are you bitching at Obama for following federal law. It's not Obama's fault that the law requires Jindal to get approval from the ACoE.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
Governor Jindal knows what is best for his state.

Ok, that made me giggle, and I'm a classic Republican when it comes to power structures.

The problem, to me, is that we went into the Gulf half-cocked with no clue what we'd do if anything went wrong. We knew we couldn't fix it if a major spill happened and we did it anyway. We stuck our heads in the sand and said nothing bad was going to happen and now, oops, our sand is full of oil.

I think I see this situation as more a symptom than a problem itself. Which thread had the article by the former IMF guy who siad America's become an oligarchy? That's how I see this. One more instance where the elite get to do what they want while everyone else fails to get ahead following the rules.

We've got a systematic problem with how we operate these days, and we need to figure out how to force change on the ruling elite (CEOs and government types) or we may not have a USA in another hundred years.
 
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
To me the argument is that Obama has been ignoring what is happening and has not sent support to the states affected by the spill. ... States have been asking the government to step in and help in the efforts, but feel that so far they have not received the support they need.
If bobby jindal is one of those making this argument, I am going to laugh my head off for obvious reasons.
I know. My GOD, the irony!

[Smile]
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
A hint of good commentary worming its way out.

quote:
This conflates two very different things. Katrina was an example of the type of disaster that the federal government is specifically tasked with handling. And for most of the 90s, it was very good at handling them. But when George Bush became president and Joe Allbaugh became director of FEMA, everything changed. Allbaugh neither knew nor cared about disaster preparedness. For ideological reasons, FEMA was downsized and much of its work outsourced. When Allbaugh left after less than two years on the job, he was replaced by the hapless Michael Brown and the agency was downgraded and broken up yet again. By the time Katrina hit, the upper levels of FEMA were populated largely with political appointees with no disaster preparedness experience and the agency was simply not up to the job of dealing with a huge storm anymore.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion is almost the exact opposite. There is no federal expertise in capping oil blowouts. There is no federal agency tasked specifically with repairing broken well pipes. There is no expectation that the federal government should be able to respond instantly to a disaster like this. There never has been. For better or worse, it's simply not something that's ever been considered the responsibility of the federal government.

FEMA's job was to handle disasters like Katrina, but Dan Bartlett had to make a DVD for Bush to watch because he didn't even know what every American knew as the tragedy was unfolding.
Newsweek:

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One. How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

I take issue with how Axelrod and his team approached the spill because the president should have been out there sooner, but to draw a parallel to the Bush's Katrina disaster is completely ridiculous. The White House knew what was happening and didn't need a DVD of news reports made for them by Robert Gibbs to help alert them to the crisis. If conservative governance proved anything, it was that without competent oversight, regulations, and a willingness to then implement those tools, horrific things result.

I made the same argument to the very unstable Andrew Breitbart on last Friday's LA Weekly panel discussion, but he was too busy drinking beers on stage to engage in a real dialogue about anything other than the ACORN thugs who helped cause the global financial meltdown, as he phrased it.

obama's katrina wooooo
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
and now!

quote:
The standard toxicity test for chemical compounds is called the LD50. LD stands for Lethal Dose and 50 indicates 50 percent. In other words, LD50 means the lowest dose at which a material kills half of the test subjects.

The results are usually given in milligrams of compound per kilograms of body weight. Many of these tests are conducted on laboratory rats. To give you a few rat results: the LD50 of table sugar (sucrose) is 29,700 mg/kg. For table salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) it's 3,000 mg/kg. Really poisonous substances, though, measure in the single digits: Sodium cyanide (NaCN), for instance, possesses an LD50 score of 6.4 mg/kg.

Basically, the lower the number, the deadlier the compound. Poisons in water and air are usually measured in lethal concentration rather than dose - in other words an LC50. Which got me wondering about the oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's shattered oil rig. Not to mention the chemical dispersants being used in attempt to break down the spreading oil. What kind of lethal concentration might be building up in those waters?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data on dispersants provide the LC50 in parts per million. Of course, these tests aren't done on rats but sea creatures, in this case Menidia, a small silvery fish that likes to hover near the water's edge and Mysidopsis, a tiny brine shrimp.

As has been earlier reported, Corexit, the compound chosen by BP, has some of the lowest LC50 numbers on the list, meaning that it's among the most poisonous. Also, it's among the least effective on Louisiana crude (the type flowing from the Deepwater break). Why the EPA went along with this choice remains a mystery to me - or maybe I just think the answer would depress me - but under public pressure the agency has now ordered BP to find an immediate alternative.

Nearly 700,000 gallons of Corexit have already been poured into gulf waters. But that pales, obviously, beside the amount of Louisana crude, now estimated at a minimum of 6 million gallons. So, I wondered, what is the LC50 of Louisiana crude on small salt water dwellers?

Of course, I realize, that comparing lethal concentrations is not straightforward. The results differ by species and by time as well as by amount of poison, The EPA numbers for Corexit 9500 (the formula used most heavily by BP) show that at 2.62 ppm, the dispersant kills half the silver fish in 96 hours/ four days. At a slightly higher concentration - 3.4 ppm - the compound kills half the little shrimp in two days.

As for crude oils, a very decent analysis by the American Petroleum Institute shows that all are toxic, but their effects vary with thickness and with the different chemistry seen in say, oil from the Gulf of Mexico and oil from Kuwait. The best estimate I've seen for South Louisiana Crude - after hours of exasperated research - comes from thesis work done at Louisiana State University several years ago. For instance, the study found that Louisiana crude had an LC50 of 4250 ppm for the warm-water loving killifish.

This suggests that crude oil is less acutely poisonous than chemical dispersants. But here's the really interesting finding in that terrific little study. Adding a dispersant - specifically Corexit 9500 - made the oil more poisonous. A lot more poisonous.

The "dispersed" oil had an LC50 of 317.7 ppm, making it more than 11 times more lethal in its effects. The study found a similar worsening for white shrimp, although not quite as dramatic. "Dispersed oils were more toxic than crude oils," noted the report.

Oh, definitely. Still, you might argue that this is only a master's thesis conclusion. But as it turns out there are plenty of other studies raising very similar warnings and they go back quite a ways. A report in the journal Environmental Toxicology a decade ago concluded that "LC50 values indicate that dispersed oil combinations were significantly more toxic to these organisms than .. crude oil." Another study, this time of snails and amphipods reached exactly the same conclusion.

To be fair, a study of the Australian octopus found no increased toxicity. But don't you wonder what we're doing out there in the fragile environment of the Gulf, whether we're reducing the spill damage or just turning the whole area into one ever-more poisonous bowl of toxic soup?

And don't you wish our officials gave any indication that they knew more about it than we do? I love doing this kind of research but in this case I'd much rather have our country's so-called regulators waving the LC50 red flag ahead of me.

http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/2010/05/a_lethal_concentration.php

corexit was used because of a buddy-buddy relationship between BP and its manufacturer.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
more on bp's other spill (hey read this)


http://www.gregpalast.com/smart-pig-bps-other-spill-this-week/


(you didn't read it did you)


(i hate you >:[ )
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
We should be doing what they did in the Persian Gulf for a similar situation. There's a bubble of oil miles wide and miles long. When this happened in the Persian Gulf, tankers were sent out to suck up the bubble. Of course, in America there are probably law suits about who owns the oil. Cant have a Shell tanker sucking up BP's oil bubble.

They are doing nothing. In a sick way, I'm looking forward to the oil getting in the loop current and washing up on the east coast. I hope the illegal aliens from AZ head straight for MA,...the sanctuary state.

It wont be a sanctuary state for long, once Boston replaces Phoenix as the kidnapping capital of the nation. (#2 in the world)
 
Posted by August (Member # 12307) on :
 
Any volunteers to go down to New Orleans and start cleaning pelicans? The economy down there, primarily based on seafood, is going in the toilet.
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
The great uniter doesn't care about the south. His election doesn't depend them. A 500 year flood in Louisiana isn't even newsworthy.

The devastation of New Orleans, be it oil or hurricane, depends upon the political expediency of those in power. The destruction of a city destroyed Bush,...the destruction of an entire state will be ignored to protect Obama.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
quote:
When this happened in the Persian Gulf, tankers were sent out to suck up the bubble.
How is it possible that you don't know this is being done, and why it doesn't particularly help?

Do you really not bother to read anything?
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
Please, provide a link to what I am not reading.

I know there was a preapproved plan to burn the oil but the federal government didn't have the equipment necessary. I know that the governor of Louisiana has requested federal approval to put up sand bars, without answer for three weeks. He should've done it without federal approval.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Okay, I'm going to give you some facts, here. I don't want to hear you repeating untruths again, 'k?

1) There has been equipment out there scooping up oil since the first couple of days after the spill. There are a fair number of reasons why this has not been as successful as one might hope.
2) The federal government does not, indeed, own (much) oil burning equipment. It has never been considered the job of the federal government to burn oil in the event of a spill; cleanup efforts have always been the responsibility of the guilty corporation. Once it became clear that BP was not sufficiently responsible, the government hired remediation experts (and billed their time to BP). Are you suggesting that the federal government should have more direct oversight over ocean rigs?
3) Bobby Jindal has wanted for some time to build some big sand bars in the Gulf, for all kinds of reasons. This gives him an excellent opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, the sand bars are likely to dramatically change the environmental conditions at the mouth of the Mississippi, may well wind up diverting oil east onto Mississippi shores (and potentially into the Atlantic), and -- as requested, at least -- will take nine months to build. As required by law, Jindal's request was sent to the Army Corps of Engineers, who found a number of flaws and have suggested a few changes to the plan (including changes in priority and berm design that would have the most critical berms completed within a month). This is not a minor thing that Jindal is asking for. It might well have worse effects than the oil itself, in the same way that dispersants are considerably worse than raw crude. That the Corps first reviewed his request -- and certainly didn't give him the silent treatment, either; records show that he received replies every time he asked for an update, which was all of twice -- is, IMO, merely responsible stewardship.

But, of course, none of this has anything to do with your real point, which apparently revolves around Mexican kidnappers in Phoenix and their desire to move to Boston.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
What we're seeing here is a perfect circus of media nothingball: people aggressively criticising the administration for not acting aggressively enough while aggressively ignoring the fact that they oppose anything aggressive the administration does.
 
Posted by Omega M. (Member # 7924) on :
 
On a lighter and semi-OSC-related note, did you see the story about James Cameron speaking at an official "listening session" on how to deal with the oil spill?
quote:
The director of Avatar, the world's highest-grossing film, and the previous record-holding movie, Titanic, is considered an expert in the technology of deep-sea diving, having used submersibles in a succession of his films.

His 1989 film The Abyss is set underwater around an oil rig where a US nuclear submarine has crashed. The film was shot in a deep-sea canyon in the Caribbean known as the Cayman Trough. The make-believe oil company that owns the rig in Cameron's underwater thriller is called BP, standing for Benthic Petroleum.


 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Missing Oil Spill Photos

quote:
Since the flight restrictions were expanded on May 11, private aircraft must get permission from BP’s command center to fly over a huge portion of the Gulf of Mexico encompassing not just the growing slick in the Gulf, but the entire Louisiana coastline, where oil is washing ashore. If a request is denied, aircraft must stay 3,000 feet above the restricted area, where visibility is minimal.
quote:
Photographers who have traveled to the Gulf commonly say they believe that BP has exerted more control over coverage of the spill with the cooperation of the federal government and local law enforcement. “It’s a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words ‘Coast Guard’ affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with ‘BP,’ ” says Charlie Varley, a Louisiana-based photographer. “It would be funny if it were not so serious.”
I'm not a huge fan of BP telling people what they can't do.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Some of those aforementioned pictures
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
^And now I feel like crying.

I had been wondering why the local news channels weren't showing the effects of the oil spill on wildlife, aside from pictures of the spill invading the marshland grasses. But I hadn't tried looking for the pictures cause I knew they'd break my heart.
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
^And now I feel like crying.

I had been wondering why the local news channels weren't showing the effects of the oil spill on wildlife, aside from pictures of the spill invading the marshland grasses. But I hadn't tried looking for the pictures cause I knew they'd break my heart.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The White Whale:
Some of those aforementioned pictures

Well that felt like a gut punch. Where are the people on the beaches with buckets of Dawn and toothbrushes to wash them? [Frown]
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
Overloaded by the magnitude. Crying. Possibly standing in an unemployment line.

Drill baby drill.
 
Posted by Mucous (Member # 12331) on :
 
Extended sample of photos with
 
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
I find myself wondering why they didn't use a wider diameter oil-recovery riser. It's just bloody arithmetic:
2670psi pressure from oil deposit to seabed.
385psi of "suction" from seabed to surface.
So a seabed-to-surface pipe with (2670divided-by385 or) ~7times the cross-section of the deposit-to-seabed pipe
will suck up all of the oil.... without even having to have any sort of seal between the two pipes.

That's seven pipes of the same diameter or one pipe with (squareroot-of~7 or) ~2.64 times the diameter of the deposit-to-seabed pipe.

No worries about over-pressurizing the BlowoutPreventer or the wellhead casement. And if ya wanna suck up less oil to make sure that no seawater enters the line, a simple valve at the top can lessen the "suction".

[ June 05, 2010, 08:37 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
This is all complications with the well's depth and the large amounts of methane ice that threaten to f*** up the entire operation at all points.
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
Yeah,

Bobby Gindhall loves sand barriers...he's been lobbying for them for a very long time.

Even if that were the case, you're accusing Gindhal of following Emanuel's motto. "Never let a crises go to waste".

Bobby Gindhall cares about his state but the federal government is slow to react. The best and most reactionary government is local government. We live in an upside down nation. Our founders intended a nation in which a town can trump the feds. The feds are only suppose to trump a town when it comes to individual rights. Federal law trumps state law. If the state law is constitutional, the feds have no position.
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
I have a hard time giving your opinion any real consideration when you can't even spell Jindal's name correctly.
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
Thanks for the correction on the spelling. Care to comment on content?
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
quote:
If the state law is constitutional, the feds have no position.
Do you understand the legal rationale that gives the Army Corps of Engineers the right to review any man-made alterations to the mouth of the Mississippi?
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Thanks for the correction on the spelling. Care to comment on content?
The irony burns like the daystar.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
Thanks for the correction on the spelling. Care to comment on content?

"404"
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
Yeah,

Bobby Gindhall loves sand barriers...he's been lobbying for them for a very long time.

Even if that were the case, you're accusing Gindhal of following Emanuel's motto. "Never let a crises go to waste".

Bobby Gindhall cares about his state but the federal government is slow to react. The best and most reactionary government is local government. We live in an upside down nation. Our founders intended a nation in which a town can trump the feds. The feds are only suppose to trump a town when it comes to individual rights. Federal law trumps state law. If the state law is constitutional, the feds have no position.

No, that is incorrect. You might as well pretend Shay's Rebellion never happened.

You need to realize something. Lets say you are exactly right about what the founders intended, (assuming we can homogenize them like that at all.) Let us also say that they created a government born out of that intention. The people had that government, so what did they do with it? Well first they tried things the Federalist way, and they didn't like it, so Thomas Jefferson got voted in. Political parties disappeared for a time and everybody was a Jeffersonian Democrat. That didn't work out too well so we see Whigs getting voted in, followed by Jacksonian Democrats. Then Lincoln Republicans. I could take the time to expand this all the way to the present but it's not very relevant to my point.

What is relevant is that originally if America had this State Government > Federal Government system, they surrendered it, because it wasn't working the way they wanted. We had a bloody civil war precisely because of this issue.

You can argue that we've gone too far in the federal direction, and I'd say the fact our entire history has been an almost unrelenting push towards giving the Federal government more power at the expense of the States gives you quite a fertile ground for that belief. But to argue that we need to just take everything back to the way things were when the constitution was formed is just foolish. It's essentially arguing that not one single improvement to our government was ever formulated since it was instituted. If that were true, that makes Americans the single worst group of people to ever try their hands at politics.

[ June 06, 2010, 03:06 PM: Message edited by: BlackBlade ]
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
Thanks for the correction on the spelling. Care to comment on content?

As I am a Louisiana resident, I cannot begin to tell you how much this state needs more federal involvement. Jindal's is absolutely an opportunist whose "interest" in sand barriers is simply a game that will be quickly abandoned once it is no longer politically useful. Local politics here are incredibly corrupt and Jindal has already showed that he's keeping this time honored tradition alive,
 
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
 
There are hundreds of oil platforms in the Gulf, and maybe thousands all around the world. This is the first time I have ever heard of a major problem with any of them, in the several decades of their existence. Seems like a remarkably good track record, over all. We still need the oil, so we still need to "drill, baby, drill." Just make sure that the oil companies that manage them do not have hundreds of safety violations like BP has had over the past few years (the next highest was, I think, Exxon, with eight). Something clearly is wrong with the attitude of BP toward safety standards--they seem to regard paying millions of dollars in fines for cutting corners (as they have) as being part of the cost of doing business.

Three Mile Island did not lead us to shut down all the nuclear power plants in the country. It was, in fact, a demonstration of the effectiveness of backup safety designs. The sterling safety record of the nuclear power industry has pretty much discredited all the fanatics who opposed it, and more and more mainline politicians are calling for more nuclear power plants to be built. One would only hope they would not be built upon known fault lines.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
There are hundreds of oil platforms in the Gulf, and maybe thousands all around the world. This is the first time I have ever heard of a major problem with any of them, in the several decades of their existence. Seems like a remarkably good track record, over all. We still need the oil, so we still need to "drill, baby, drill." Just make sure that the oil companies that manage them do not have hundreds of safety violations like BP has had over the past few years (the next highest was, I think, Exxon, with eight). Something clearly is wrong with the attitude of BP toward safety standards--they seem to regard paying millions of dollars in fines for cutting corners (as they have) as being part of the cost of doing business.

Three Mile Island did not lead us to shut down all the nuclear power plants in the country. It was, in fact, a demonstration of the effectiveness of backup safety designs. The sterling safety record of the nuclear power industry has pretty much discredited all the fanatics who opposed it, and more and more mainline politicians are calling for more nuclear power plants to be built. One would only hope they would not be built upon known fault lines.

You might be right. But one also has to consider just what is the total damage done by an accident of this magnitude, and is it an acceptable cost for the benefit of drilling for oil off shore.

Maybe we shouldn't be saying, "drill, baby, drill," but, "drill, baby, drill, after we setup proper safety standards and protocols, as well as a system for enforcing them."
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
The sterling safety record of the nuclear power industry has pretty much discredited all the fanatics who opposed it

This still does not address the problem many have with the hundred-to-thousand year lifetime of the waste products. Safety in industry is expected. That's why BP's failure is so awful. Planning to keep the waste safe for a thousand years is impossible, or at least hasn't been adequately addressed by anyone.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
This is the first time I have ever heard of a major problem with any of them, in the several decades of their existence.

Well.
Category:Oil_platform_disasters
 
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
There are hundreds of oil platforms in the Gulf, and maybe thousands all around the world. This is the first time I have ever heard of a major problem with any of them, in the several decades of their existence.

There have been plenty. There have been bigger issues than this and they have been handled. This one is different and has many issues with failures of oversight. It is so embarrassing because the company undercut our own environmental safety by claiming disaster readiness they did not have.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Oh, timely article
quote:
John Vidal of The Observer reports on the effect of oil drilling in the Nigerian delta, where activists claim that oil leaks are common and cleanup and compensation are rare. “There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year,” said Nnimo Bassey, the Nigerian head of Friends of Earth International. “It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm.”
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/where-oil-spills-happen-all-the-time/
 
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
 
The last major oil spill that caused vast environmental damage was when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground and split open. This latest one in the Gulf is still the one producing the worst environmental damage since then. I see by your link, Mucus, that there have been a few other spills. Probably the worst one was the Montara spill off the coast of Australia. The deliberate sabotage of the Kuwait oil wells by Iraq in Desert Storm produced a spill. But it looks like in every case the disasters were handled. Sometimes it took a couple of months, but they were handled, even by relatively small oil companies. There does not seem to be any massive environmental damage associated with these spills, certainly not on the scale we are looking at with the BP Gulf disaster.

Before anyone cavalierly suggest that we do without oil from off-shore drilling platforms, they need to ask themselves if they can afford to pay $10 a gallon for gasoline, and how long they think they will have jobs when the entire economy suffers the enormous hits of higher and higher energy costs. Not to mention the political vulnerability we will have if we have to rely on ever larger amounts of foreign imported oil from countries that profess to hate us and our culture and our entire civilization. The Arabs did try an oil embargo against us in 1972. It did not work well, because we were not totally dependent upon their oil. Even so, we did have to observe gas rationing on alternate days for a time. Now our consumption of petroleum products has multiplied many times. We get a large part of it from Venezuela--whose leader is a diehard holdover communist, and hates us--and not so much from Saudi Arabia. But it would not take much to put us in a precarious position once again. Our economy is already barely beginning to recover from a Depression. One of the things that has helped us begin to recover is the relatively low price per barrel of oil. But let a few fanatics succeeded in stampeding people to demand that off-shore pumping cease, or even that there just be no more new drilling, and our whole economy could collapse completely. We are still that close to it. A feather's touch could destroy us.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Before anyone cavalierly suggest that we do without oil from off-shore drilling platforms, they need to ask themselves if they can afford to pay $10 a gallon for gasoline...

Actually, if we took the bulk of the cars off the road, it would be safe for me to bike the six miles I live from work without a scrap of sidewalk or much shoulder. But I live in Florida where pedestrians and bicyclists are twice as likely to be injured as the average in the country.

quote:
...and how long they think they will have jobs when the entire economy suffers the enormous hits of higher and higher energy costs.
Ok, that's a pretty good one. I'm originally from a semi-rural county where everyone lives in subdivisions dotted around the woods and two big towns at either end of the county. Everyone in the middle would suffer with no good options but trying to work from home or paying through the nose for the gas.

It would probably take a massive construction campaign to put grocery stores, clothing boutiques, hardware stores, etc in the subdivisions so people could reach them without a car.

Even here in Tally, most people live outside town and drive in every day. Moving some of the government offices out to Killearn and Lake Jackson would probably make that workable without cars, but we're not as diversely employed as most cities. [Smile]

As something of a hippie, I have to wonder if announcing that we're going to raise gas prices to unsustainable levels and planning for it over the next decade wouldn't actually produce healthier, more connected communities.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
Either a gasoline tax or a carbon permit system with appropriate numbers of permits would be plenty effective. Note: it should really be accompanied by repeal of the zoning laws that make it illegal to put grocery stores, et cetera, in subdivisions. But that would probably start to come naturally if gas prices were higher by $3 a gallon or more.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by AvidReader:
As something of a hippie, I have to wonder if announcing that we're going to raise gas prices to unsustainable levels and planning for it over the next decade wouldn't actually produce healthier, more connected communities.

Do you mean sustainable levels?

If you do, then absolutely. By paying the actual price of gas/oil and not some bizarre government subsidized bastardized price, the economic system (which everyone seems to trust so much) would kick in and make alternative transportation more appealing. Communities would be build and modified to mixed zoning. No more suburbs with no grocery stores. No more needing to drive an hour to drop of the kids, pick up your prescriptions, and to get to work. Shipping would change, movement will change. The entire country would slowly (and for the most part, unwillingly) shift into a reduced-consumption, more efficient, and more stable state.

Some say that this would cause undue hardship on some. And yeah, it would. But if you implement the fee-and-dividend system, the people would still shift away from these oil-intense processes, while still getting their money back. In the long run, these changes would make everyone less dependent and less tied to the fluctuations of gas/oil prices without destroying the country. A spike in oil prices? Alright. I'll take the bus/subway/walk to work today.
 
Posted by Godric (Member # 4587) on :
 
Um... What about electric cars?
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
What about them?
 
Posted by Godric (Member # 4587) on :
 
Well, isn't the idea to continue to have vehicle transportation without the need to fuel them with oil?
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Purely electric cars that don't rely at all on gas are still a ways away from mass production and mass consumption. Quick charge station infrastructure still needs to be installed across the nation before people will turn their lives over to them, regardless of how close things are your house.

I still think a car like the Chevy Volt is the perfect compromise, but we won't know how popular it us until it goes on sale later this year.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
If oil is being taxed, coal should be as well. In fact, a carbon tax is really what I'm talking about here. So electricity from coal or oil will all be more expensive.

And these zoning changes have little downsides, even with electric cars. They way things are laid out now (at least wherever I've lived) all of the stores are in one strip, away from the houses. It's to the point where there are Lowes and Home Depots across the street from one another. Walmarts and Kmars within eyeshot of one another. Tops and Wegmans within a 5 minute walk. It's silly.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you ****ing happy? Are you ****ing happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."

Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am ****ing calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"

i stillllllll like this.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The White Whale:
If oil is being taxed, coal should be as well. In fact, a carbon tax is really what I'm talking about here. So electricity from coal or oil will all be more expensive.

And these zoning changes have little downsides, even with electric cars. They way things are laid out now (at least wherever I've lived) all of the stores are in one strip, away from the houses. It's to the point where there are Lowes and Home Depots across the street from one another. Walmarts and Kmars within eyeshot of one another. Tops and Wegmans within a 5 minute walk. It's silly.

Hopefully, Democrats will start pushing EPA rule changes in their PR campaign to get climate change legislation passed. The EPA is going to bottleneck power plants that use fossil fuels in the near future with new limitations on emissions. It should be the perfect reason to push a new plan to grease the skids for alternative energy and a taxing scheme that incentivizes change, but stonewalling Republicans might make things a lot worse in the near term and the long term if they don't come up with a comprehensive plan soon.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The White Whale:
By paying the actual price of gas/oil and not some bizarre government subsidized bastardized price, the economic system (which everyone seems to trust so much) would kick in and make alternative transportation more appealing.

So...the government makes gas cheap, then slaps a bunch of taxes on it? Gee, that doesn't sound shady at all. O_o

quote:
No more needing to drive an hour to drop of the kids, pick up your prescriptions, and to get to work.
That sounds awesome. I'm only six miles from work, but the drive is 20-30 minutes with traffic. I can't get anywhere in Tally without a half hour drive.

quote:
Some say that this would cause undue hardship on some.
I'd be most worried about food access for the poor. Out in the country, most folks could probably put in a vegetable patch and get a cow, but here on the south side of town, I'm not sure how we'd keep food affordable.
 
Posted by Black Fox (Member # 1986) on :
 
Ingrained cultural and social traditions are rarely changed by anything other than near collapse or revolution. The issues isn't that we need a clean burning car, its that we need to change our transportation dynamic etc. Drill baby Drill is a finite solution to an infinite problem.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Wow, long time no see, Black Fox. Howdy! [Smile]

Personally, I think the only thing that would work is what you describe: changing our transportation dynamic. And I think the only thing that really has a shot at that is economic pressure. Make it too expensive not to, as unpleasant as that is, because the alternatives if we don't are worse.

But that's not the way governments work, outside of near-total collapse and crisis. So hopefully if/when that comes along, we'll have some good technology to deal with it.
 
Posted by Black Fox (Member # 1986) on :
 
I feel you there Rakeesh, I support a carbon tax for that very reason. That and it has been a longtime. I am not longer a grunt, but a college student. Not only that, but if things continue to go well in the next 2 years I should be studying law at a fairly respectable institution. I will have to put up a post giving an update on my life, but my ego is generally pretty small.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
But that's not the way governments work, outside of near-total collapse and crisis. So hopefully if/when that comes along, we'll have some good technology to deal with it.

That's horrendously pessimistic. Is there no chance that we (as a nation, or species) can see this coming and try to avoid it? We're very smart.
 
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
I just checked the oil spill live feed, and I'm wondering why nobody has mentioned that there is FIRE coming out of the pipe.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel-popup/pbs-newshour-streaming
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Look at that. Fire...um...wow?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
what fire.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
yeah not seeing any fire. who knows if it even was really fire. I honestly don't know what's going to ignite the cap in an environment at that O2-lacking, ambiently cold depth.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
No, I was looking at around 11 EST last night, and there were definitely glowing orange flames surrounded by oil. It could have been some orange fluid...or something, but it looked like fire to me. [Dont Know]
 
Posted by Stray (Member # 4056) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Black Fox:
Ingrained cultural and social traditions are rarely changed by anything other than near collapse or revolution. The issues isn't that we need a clean burning car, its that we need to change our transportation dynamic etc. Drill baby Drill is a finite solution to an infinite problem.

Amen, brother! [Wink]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
BP's spill policy

Hopefully that link works. Let me know if it doesn't.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Not exactly new news, but what how do you guys feel about the moratorium on offshore drilling pending a 6 month safety inspection on all rigs?

On the one hand it kinda sucks to have to screw with so many oil workers lives like this, but on the other the oil industry apparently has wide spread failure to maintain basic safety standards, and those failures as demonstrated by the gulf coast spill have a huge impact on the lives of other people.

Sadly I imagine there will be alot of checking now, and down the road people will just be lax about it again until the next disaster.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
I'm ok with it.

Personally, I think that gas prices are too low anyways and when oil prices are too low as they are now then the government should be taxing it to make up the difference.

I'm not all anti-development, quite the opposite, but I do feel that we need an extended period of higher gas prices to really knock down the number of large cars on the road, encourage the development of alternative energy, and cut down on urban sprawl.

That said, I'm not entirely sure what effect if any this moratorium (or offshore drilling in the gulf of Mexico) has on gas prices. The wiki article on the subject links to a couple of studies that seem to indicate that allowing drilling would only affect oil prices by 1.6% and a few cents between 2012 and 2030. So I would have thought that banning it would only affect it upward by a similar amount. However, I'm not sure if they're talking about only additional exploration or existing production in addition to that.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Trust Me. What could possible go wrong?
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Many more pictures of the oil, the creatures, the workers, the efforts...
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
I met with my mother tonight to see a movie and she filled me in on a friend of hers who has been volunteering down on the beaches as part of the wildlife rescue. She's a vet and is furious with how the situation is being handled. BP officials have been refusing to let in volunteers who are carrying cameras or cell phones. My mom's friend and some of her staff having been fighting for access to a particular island that is home to the pelican and sea bird breeding grounds. They've been wanting to get in and rescue eggs from their nests, but BP officals won't give them access.

BP is also being incredibly particular about who is allowed to volunteer, refusing anyone who is interested in wildlife rescue unless they have the right credentials (vets, animal specialists, etc.) According to my mom's friend, there are people all over the place who show up everyday wanting to help but they can't get past the barricades. While I understand that letting random people handle the birds may not be the wisest thing, there's plenty of jobs these volunteers could be doing to help the specialists so that they can concentrate on doing the bird handling. For every 40 birds they've been rescuing, they're lucky if 5 survive and that doesn't even begin to count all the dead birds, fish, crabs, etc, that have been washing up on the beaches.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
BP is in charge of security that is cordoning off public lands from being accessed by the volunteering public?
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
Its either BP officials or independents on BP's payroll. They've got quite a few of their people on the ground being generally useless. From what I've been hearing, its gotten worse since people started reporting oil-related illnesses. BP has stepped up the security to prevent anyone from physically handling the oil or oil-contaminated wildlife (all while claiming that volunteers and fishermen are suffering from nothing more than dehydration or food poisoning. Because, you know, people who work on boats day in and day out don't know how to stay hydrated. *facepalm*)

As for movement on public grounds, I really do understand the concern that "spectators" might be getting in the way of the clean-up effort. However, alot of the concerns from vessels which have been stopped by the Coast Guard or BP boats is that some of the first questions they are asked include 1) are you media? and 2) are you recording? So its pretty easy to discern what is BP's primary worry.
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
CNN was complaining about lack of access yesterday. They were saying after getting permission to film at the site where wildlife was being cleaned, security told them they couldn't go in. And I thought the gal said the FAA wouldn't let Sen. Bill Nelson fly over the spill with some reporters.

It's been very weird. Like conspiracy theory weird.
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Black Fox:
I feel you there Rakeesh, I support a carbon tax for that very reason. That and it has been a longtime. I am not longer a grunt, but a college student. Not only that, but if things continue to go well in the next 2 years I should be studying law at a fairly respectable institution. I will have to put up a post giving an update on my life, but my ego is generally pretty small.

Hey man, good to see you!
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
BP Spills Coffee
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
BP is in charge of security that is cordoning off public lands from being accessed by the volunteering public?

Seriously, WTF?
 
Posted by FoolishTook (Member # 5358) on :
 
quote:
Either a gasoline tax or a carbon permit system with appropriate numbers of permits would be plenty effective. Note: it should really be accompanied by repeal of the zoning laws that make it illegal to put grocery stores, et cetera, in subdivisions. But that would probably start to come naturally if gas prices were higher by $3 a gallon or more.
Potentially collapsing the U.S. economy is one helluva means to an end.

Do changes have to be forced? I'm all in favor of public transportation, getting rid of zoning laws, bike routes, less cars on the road, more people walking, cycling, carpooling. I love all these ideas.

But in a collapsed economy, there is very little opportunity for innovation. I want these changes to come via pressure from consumers/citizens, not because we can't heat our homes in the dead of winter.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by FoolishTook:
I want these changes to come via pressure from consumers/citizens, not because we can't heat our homes in the dead of winter.

Do you really think consumers/citizens will care enough to force these changes? I think back to the recalcitrance of seat-belt use. Clearly wearing seat-belts is wise, but it wasn't until a law was passed that people started doing it.

From a 'selfish' consumer point of view, these changes are probably not going to happen. They may if these selfish consumers are intelligent, organized, and concerned. But this is usually not the case. The market will not have a solution to these problems. Therefore, non-market intervention needs to step up. I like the idea of starting small (say $0.01 per gallon the first year), then raising it every year ($0.10, $0.25, $0.50, $1.00, $2.00) until we reach a price which internalizes all of the externalities. It may take us several years to determine what this price is, but this system would give us time to figure that out. It will also give everyone time to get used to it, and plan for the new realities of oil use.

You say that a carbon tax will collapse the U.S. economy. I say that the U.S. economy is doomed to collapse unless we remove its ridiculous sensitivity and dependence upon cheap oil.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
quote:
The market will not have a solution to these problems. Therefore, non-market intervention needs to step up.
While I understand the sentiment, a gasoline tax or cap and trade system is getting the market to find a solution. All markets only exist in the context of their formal and informal structures, and a system that neglects to account for an externality is a bad market system. Fixing that isn't working against the market -- the particular arrangement of formal and informal rules that existed before the adjustment are not somehow "more pure" than the ones after, inherently. How market-oriented a set of rules are is determined by whether markets can operate under them with minimal externalities, not by whether or not they involve taxes.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
quote:
The market will not have a solution to these problems. Therefore, non-market intervention needs to step up.
While I understand the sentiment, a gasoline tax or cap and trade system is getting the market to find a solution. All markets only exist in the context of their formal and informal structures, and a system that neglects to account for an externality is a bad market system. Fixing that isn't working against the market -- the particular arrangement of formal and informal rules that existed before the adjustment are not somehow "more pure" than the ones after, inherently. How market-oriented a set of rules are is determined by whether markets can operate under them with minimal externalities, not by whether or not they involve taxes.
I liked this post fugu, it was a very efficient summation of my feelings on the matter.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Agreed, to the extent that I understood it. [Smile]
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:
Originally posted by malanthrop:
Yeah,

Bobby Gindhall loves sand barriers...he's been lobbying for them for a very long time.

Even if that were the case, you're accusing Gindhal of following Emanuel's motto. "Never let a crises go to waste".

Bobby Gindhall cares about his state but the federal government is slow to react. The best and most reactionary government is local government. We live in an upside down nation. Our founders intended a nation in which a town can trump the feds. The feds are only suppose to trump a town when it comes to individual rights. Federal law trumps state law. If the state law is constitutional, the feds have no position.

No, that is incorrect. You might as well pretend Shay's Rebellion never happened.

You need to realize something. Lets say you are exactly right about what the founders intended, (assuming we can homogenize them like that at all.) Let us also say that they created a government born out of that intention. The people had that government, so what did they do with it? Well first they tried things the Federalist way, and they didn't like it, so Thomas Jefferson got voted in. Political parties disappeared for a time and everybody was a Jeffersonian Democrat. That didn't work out too well so we see Whigs getting voted in, followed by Jacksonian Democrats. Then Lincoln Republicans. I could take the time to expand this all the way to the present but it's not very relevant to my point.

What is relevant is that originally if America had this State Government > Federal Government system, they surrendered it, because it wasn't working the way they wanted. We had a bloody civil war precisely because of this issue.

You can argue that we've gone too far in the federal direction, and I'd say the fact our entire history has been an almost unrelenting push towards giving the Federal government more power at the expense of the States gives you quite a fertile ground for that belief. But to argue that we need to just take everything back to the way things were when the constitution was formed is just foolish. It's essentially arguing that not one single improvement to our government was ever formulated since it was instituted. If that were true, that makes Americans the single worst group of people to ever try their hands at politics.

We had a civil war because some states ignored the constitution and the feds had to intervene. Slavery wasn't a "state's rights issue", just as the 2nd amendment isn't a state's rights issue. I have a right to bear arms and all men are created equal. The founders had it right. I doubt the feds would go to war with Illinois to protect gun rights but a president from Illinois went to war to protect individual rights. There is no "state's rights" that violate the constitution. States are the ultimate authority for things not spelled out in the constitution.
The feds should intervene when a state is violating federal constitutional law. I don't believe in local anarchy. We do have federal protections and the federal government has an obligation to uphold federal law.

"Sanctuary Cities" like San Fransisco should be flooded by federal agents. Immigration is a federal issue. How can you have a "sanctuary city" without the feds coming down? I doubt you'd tolerate a slavery accepted sanctuary city. San Fran accepting illegal immigration is no different than another place accepting slavery. The feds should intervene in either case. The federal government should raid sanctuary cities for harboring illegal immigrants. They would do so for a city tolerating slavery. Both are under the pervue of the federal government.

[ June 13, 2010, 01:41 AM: Message edited by: malanthrop ]
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
There's got to be some sort of a game at play here, like, you could call it Six Degrees of Malanthrop

Like secretly he's sitting at his computer thinking "Okay, how do I go from the BP oil spill to earnestly claiming that San Fransisco should be flooded by the feds for harboring the immigrants, in only six jumps ..."
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
Federal law should be enforced everywhere.

A city banning guns is no different than one tolerating slavery. African Americans have a right to be free and all Americans have a right to bear arms.

Even though we have a constitutional right to bear arms, the feds defer that right to the city. They won't do the same for slaves and they choose what laws they will enforce. A "sanctuary city" is a place to hide from federal law. The "sanctuary" is from the feds, only because the feds wont intervene. A city with slaves wouldn't be tolerated. A city that trumped the first amendment wouldn't be tolerated. They'll tolerate a city that ignores the second amendment. Why is there such an inconsistency?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
A city banning guns is no different than one tolerating slavery.
Well, that's a retarded way to look at it, even before you keep in mind that when the SCOTUS got put on the issue, they removed the former case as well as the latter.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
While I understand the sentiment, a gasoline tax or cap and trade system is getting the market to find a solution.

Okay. But isn't this impetus coming from "outside" the market? From someone saying "this market is not internalizing all the externalities, and we need to change that." I think my definition of market is not as wide as your definition of market.

quote:
All markets only exist in the context of their formal and informal structures, and a system that neglects to account for an externality is a bad market system.
When you say formal and informal structures, what are you talking about? The laws and regulations? Or the social-political structures that exist as well? I have a problem with the current set-up because it is neglecting to account for many exernalities. If it can account for these, I wouldn't have such a problem with it.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
quote:
But isn't this impetus coming from "outside" the market?
A market does not operate properly without a framework of rules. For instance, markets operate badly if contracts are not enforced, if the power to police transgressions does not exist, or if property rights are not defined (note: there are many different kinds of property rights that can be defined). All of those arise "outside the market", yet we still (at least potentially) call the markets defined by their existence "free markets".

A sort of bizarre fetishism has arisen around certain market rules, but those market rules are not special. Ultimately, what makes a market free is that people, choosing to deal with others as they see best within the constraints of the rules, lead to near-optimal outcomes. If a 'market' does not have that condition, and there is a way to bring it back into alignment without removing the fundamental characteristic of choice (and even that could be argued to merely be an arbitrary market rule that it just happens to be impossible to operate a market efficiently without), then taking that action is, in a very important sense, making the market a better market.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Okay. But isn't this impetus coming from "outside" the market? From someone saying "this market is not internalizing all the externalities, and we need to change that." I think my definition of market is not as wide as your definition of market.
Solving the problem requires economic pressures be brought to bear upon the private sector. For the purposes of getting the problem solved, it doesn't really matter where the pressure comes from, so long as it exists. If there suddenly evolved a species like the 'graboids' from Tremors that feasted upon fossil fuels below the Earth's surface, the pressures would still (probably) do the trick.
 
Posted by FoolishTook (Member # 5358) on :
 
quote:
Do you really think consumers/citizens will care enough to force these changes?
Yes, I do.

I think it's a bad idea for the government to blindly pass any more laws because of the threat of global warming, since there's no clear evidence of what will or will not reverse the problem in time. Cap and Trade has the potential to fail on so many levels, not including its potential for fraud. Under the best of circumstances, it'll take years for any feasible changes, and the economic cost is dire.

This is why I'd rather see a cultural driven change, one that doesn't collapse the worldwide economy but slowly changes the way we treat the environment (you know, in case the problem isn't as severe or as immediate as we think). Because while global warming may never amount to more than a horror story, a global economic meltdown could quickly become a horrific reality.

quote:
From fugu13: While I understand the sentiment, a gasoline tax or cap and trade system is getting the market to find a solution.
Businesses will just pass the cost onto consumers. Cap and Trade will merely increase the cost of energy.

And the cost of energy has already skyrocketed. If the economy recovers, it'll skyrocket even more. There is already an impetus to change, to stop wasting energy, to find a clean, renewable, safe alternative to oil.

Cap and Trade, or any kind of energy tax, is overkill.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by FoolishTook:
... Businesses will just pass the cost onto consumers. Cap and Trade will merely increase the cost of energy.

Thats, well, the plan.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
Cap and trade has already been wildly successful in broad use. You might be familiar with the huge drop in acid rain falling over the US? Most of that drop was due to an extremely effective cap and trade program with extensive industry participation.

And yes, the point is to increase the costs of polluting activities. That is the most economically efficient way to dissuade people from engaging in them. We have plenty of data that shows that people use things a lot when they are cheap, and less when they are expensive. We have almost no examples of things (that can't be easily eliminated from daily life, especially) where "culture change" led people to use them a lot less without someone increasing the price (hint: all that European culture that involves consuming gas less is heavily assisted by large gasoline taxes).

Furthermore, part of the point of cap and trade is to make it easier for people to take the cheapest routes to reduce pollution. Imagine two people each have five permits, and are both polluting seven units. There need to be four fewer units of pollution between them, by cap and trade. It costs the first person $10,000 to reduce a unit of pollution, and it costs the second person $5,000 (in reality, the cost to reduce would increase with further units of pollution, but we'll ignore that -- the example works anyways). In cap and trade, the second person will sell four permits to the first person for somewhere between $10k and $5k, reducing pollution by the requisite four units at an economic cost of $20k, total (since that's how much is spent to reduce the pollution -- in reality, its even less than that, but by the same amount in this scenario and the next I'm going to relate). Now imagine we just tell each place they have to reduce their emissions by two units, and they do. That's an economic cost of $30k (two units @ $10k, two units @ $5k). Cap and trade will have lead to the most efficient outcome (note: a carbon tax should have the same first order effects, but I strongly believe that enforcement, transition, and efficiency will all be better under cap and trade).

quote:
And the cost of energy has already skyrocketed. If the economy recovers, it'll skyrocket even more. There is already an impetus to change, to stop wasting energy, to find a clean, renewable, safe alternative to oil.

Cap and Trade, or any kind of energy tax, is overkill.

So your assertion is that carbon is already perfectly priced by the actions of society, and doesn't lead to more environmental damage to others than its price reveals? To put it mildly, you're ignoring the science.

I'll quote an excellent explanation of why environmental economics exists to illustrate why maybe, just maybe, you might be missing something:

quote:
I can throw away biodegradable coffee grounds and a non-biodegradable, poisonous chemical-laden, broken, and useless cell phone and battery for the same price: $0.

 
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by FoolishTook:


I think it's a bad idea for the government to blindly pass any more laws because of the threat of global warming.

Because paying people who want to kill us billions of dollars a year is such a great idea, right? Because breathing the particulate matter and gases from diesel and coal combustion is so healthy, right? Because oil spills are so great for the fishing industry, right? Because coal mining is so safe, and coal companies always have their workers' safety as their #1 priority, right? Because the regulators and legislators who are supposed to protect the public from safety and environmental issues aren't bought and paid for, right?

Just in case you want to know which of my questions is most important to answer, go in order, first to last.


I find it cosmically entertaining that it's the VERY SAME people who want to protect Big Oil who also love the military-industrial complex. It's like, on some level, they actually realize that it doesn't work to hate the first and love the second, or vice versa. They don't really know why, but they sense it. I'm not even talking about ideology, I'm talking about how the two feed off each other. They wouldn't exist to nearly the same degree in today's world without each other. It amazes and entertains me, how their supporters are always the same people, while almost none of those people realize just how dependent those two are on the existence of the other. [Smile]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Anyone watching the Tony Hayward prosecution...I mean questioning, in the House?

His responses make me thing one of two things are going on here (or both): Hayward is a broken man, and it shows, or he has utter contempt for the committee, and refuses to seriously engage.

I will say though that, despite the fact that I'm slightly annoyed by what looks like a CEO who doesn't give a crap, I think the Committee looks pretty rude for continually interrupting him. If you want him to answer a question, let him answer, if you just want to talk over him, then does he really need to be there for anything other than to show that you're grilling him for political purposes?
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
What on earth was Joe Barton thinking?

Link.

Even John Boehner had the sense to tell Barton off immediately. Was Barton thinking if he did that off the bat the rest of the Republicans would all fly to his defense if the Democrats got angry?

Then to immediately retract his apology and his assertion that the 20 billion dollar fund is a shakedown. It's like Barton thought, "Heh...it would be way funny if I said something like this, I can always retract later and it will be as if I never said it."
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Wow, it Barton had moonwalked out of that any faster, there would have been a congressman shaped hole in the wall.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Link.

Is it permissible for a judge to get royalties from an industry that they also suppose to adjudicate?
 
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Anyone watching the Tony Hayward prosecution...I mean questioning, in the House?

His responses make me thing one of two things are going on here (or both): Hayward is a broken man, and it shows, or he has utter contempt for the committee, and refuses to seriously engage.

I will say though that, despite the fact that I'm slightly annoyed by what looks like a CEO who doesn't give a crap, I think the Committee looks pretty rude for continually interrupting him. If you want him to answer a question, let him answer, if you just want to talk over him, then does he really need to be there for anything other than to show that you're grilling him for political purposes?

CNN collected responses from several British media outlets. They generally echo one or both of your two points: Hayward seemed reticent and removed ("like a tired undertaker who was rather bored with having to look mournful" according to The Daily Telegraph), and the haranguing of the congressmen was savage and abusive (presumably with the exception of Joe Barton).
 
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
 
No comment necessary. Read ABC.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-gov-bobby-jindals-wishes-crude/story?id=10946379

Maybe it has something to do with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_kHHLow

Oil is only 20% of America's energy, the rest is coal. The oil spill is an "opportunity" to tax the other 80% in the name of oil.

With this administration, everything is an emergency, everything is a crisis. Health care, bailouts, stimulus, on and on. Crisis pass law and now the pay czar is in charge of the $20 Billion BP dollar Obama shake down. BP handed over that money to Obama's "Pay Czar"...will that money go to people who were put out of work or people who were out of work prior to this crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opxuUj6vFa4

Not too far out from an administration who would refuse international assistance for the gulf spill to protect the unions. Even Bush immediately exempted the Jone's Act for Katrina, in order to accept international assistance. (sorry no link, google Jone's act yourself)

Unions rule all. Union leaders are Obama's #1 consideration. Teachers unions are more important than failing students and foreign oil spill assistance is less than union spill jobs. Lets see where the $20 Billion BP extortion dollars go.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
mal, I am regularly fascinated by your brain. You're the kind of person who could look at a painting by Georgia O'Keefe and say, "You know, that reminds me of the Nazis. Therefore, spaghetti!"
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
mal, for the love of all things sane, use facts if you're going to post. I try not to engage you; you're qualitative arguments are off-the-wall convoluted sometimes. But it's hard for me to let quantitative arguments of yours go without correction.

quote:
Oil is only 20% of America's energy, the rest is coal. The oil spill is an "opportunity" to tax the other 80% in the name of oil.
U.S. Energy Consumption Summary:

37.1% oil
23.8% natural gas
22.5% coal
7.3% renewables
8.5% nuclear

Please note (again), that what you say and what in fact is reality are separate entities.
 
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
 
It's obvious that Big Brother is on to mal, and constantly edits his posts to hide the truth from the rest of us.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Even the guy who said 'shakedown' admits it was wrong and stupid. Not mal, though!

DOWN WITH OBAMA!
 
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
 
I don't understand the frustration with Mal. It has been obvious for quite some time that Mal propagates a narrative and not arguments. I imagine it comes from his consumption of talk-radio.

Look at Rush: he is a narrative maker and narratives are like waves. Sure you can win specific arguments, but it is like throwing rocks at water. Sure the rock wins, but the wave keeps washing across the shore changing the landscape.

The sad thing is narratives are VERY effective and Rush is like a tsunami. Sometimes it's tough for me to remain a fiscal conservative. [Frown]
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
I guess I just hold onto the hope that facts and data can change minds. Call me overly optimistic.
 
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
 
You're overly optimistic.
 
Posted by FoolishTook (Member # 5358) on :
 
quote:
So your assertion is that carbon is already perfectly priced by the actions of society, and doesn't lead to more environmental damage to others than its price reveals? To put it mildly, you're ignoring the science.
My assertion is that the price of energy is already high and will go higher if the worldwide economy recovers.

Add Cap and Trade into the equation, and you have a potential disaster. Most people's paychecks aren't keeping pace with the cost of energy as it is. If gasoline hits $6 a gallon or more, the cost of everything will be inflated beyond what people can afford.

If you push this too far, you will effectively fail at everything you're aiming for. Impoverished countries do not make protecting the environment their priority. Jobless people, who can't heat their homes or feed their families, don't give a rat's backside about global warming.

steven, if you're point is that you'd like to find a clean, renewable form of energy, I don't have an argument against that. I just disagree with the methods of getting there.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
quote:
Add Cap and Trade into the equation, and you have a potential disaster. Most people's paychecks aren't keeping pace with the cost of energy as it is. If gasoline hits $6 a gallon or more, the cost of everything will be inflated beyond what people can afford.
You should let Europe and Japan know. After all, that's already the sort of level they pay for gas. Despite in many cases having lower paychecks, they manage.

The practical evidence is clear: more expensive carbon emissions is economically viable. Indeed, if the true costs of higher carbon emissions are anywhere near what is estimated, not having more expensive carbon emissions is what will doom the economy.
 
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
You should let Europe and Japan know. After all, that's already the sort of level they pay for gas. Despite in many cases having lower paychecks, they manage.

The practical evidence is clear: more expensive carbon emissions is economically viable. Indeed, if the true costs of higher carbon emissions are anywhere near what is estimated, not having more expensive carbon emissions is what will doom the economy.

the US isnt europe or japan.

all the europeans i know drive less because obtaining a driving permit, among other reasons, costs alot, many major highways require a toll fare, the vehicles are expensive, maintainece is expensive, auto insurance is expensive and, the
factor which has perhaps the greatest effect on ones driving habits and results in driving less, is that everything in europe (and japan) is closer. its a matter of scale. from the city level to the national level, americans tend to be much more spread out.

and you said 'economically viable'. could you expound upon that?

as an example question, i offer this: to what degree should an environmental law be allowed to dictate the economic situations and decisions of the affected citizens, especially considering the citizens are forced to comply?

but you can take it any direction you like.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
I was working from your assertions:

quote:
If gasoline hits $6 a gallon or more, the cost of everything will be inflated beyond what people can afford.
Since, clearly, people already subject to similar rates for gasoline manage to buy large numbers of things, your statement at best requires significant justification as applied to the US. Far, far more likely is that the US would adjust to the higher gas prices in various ways, just like other countries have. You're the one who is asserting the US will somehow be doomed by situation that already exists elsewhere without even light showers of doom.

quote:
as an example question, i offer this: to what degree should an environmental law be allowed to dictate the economic situations and decisions of the affected citizens, especially considering the citizens are forced to comply?
To exactly the extent that the 'environmental law' corrects for externalities. So long as major carbon-related externalities exist, the US is losing money. By instituting programs that correct for those externalities, such inefficiencies are reduced.
 
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
[QB] [QUOTE]Add Cap and Trade into the equation, and you have a potential disaster. Most people's paychecks aren't keeping pace with the cost of energy as it is. If gasoline hits $6 a gallon or more, the cost of everything will be inflated beyond what people can afford.

You should let Europe and Japan know. After all, that's already the sort of level they pay for gas. Despite in many cases hav
 
Posted by FoolishTook (Member # 5358) on :
 
The European continent is not in the best economic health right now. Mimicking their failing policies is a bit like jumping off a cliff because the sheep in front of you did.

Also, consider the lack of public transportation in the U.S. compared to Europe/Japan. Consider the difference in landmass, climate, resources, shipping, and transport. It's not quite an accurate comparison, even if, say, Cap and Trade had a sterling record of strengthening the economy.

Another problems is that a direct effect of Cap and Trade will be a spike in energy costs, which will likely affect the poor more than those who can afford energy efficient cars and homes.

I can only guess that this intended side effect will be cured via energy vouchers. So more government spending aimed at mopping up bad policy.

quote:
So long as major carbon-related externalities exist, the US is losing money. By instituting programs that correct for those externalities, such inefficiencies are reduced.
Barring the implementation of a government imposed fine/tax on carbon, how does carbon reduction decrease the operating costs of industry in the U.S.?

I've read a little about the "public cost of greenhouse gases," but that seems a bit arbitrary to me.
 
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
 
How come when we raise the cost of anything to an industry, the industry responds "Don't do that. We'll just pass the cost straight to our consumers by raising prices", yet when the costs are given directly to the consumer, the workers don't respond, "Don't do that. We'll just pass the cost straight to our employers by demanding more money."

Sure, you can't go to your boss and say "I need a 20% increase in pay to cover growing health care and gas prices" and expect the boss to agree, or to continue hiring you. On the other hand you can't go to the consumer and say "I'm raising your price 20% because to cover growing health care and gas prices" and expect them to agree, or continue as your customers when the power of the market means your competitor decides a lower margin is worth gaining your market share.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by FoolishTook:

quote:
So long as major carbon-related externalities exist, the US is losing money. By instituting programs that correct for those externalities, such inefficiencies are reduced.
Barring the implementation of a government imposed fine/tax on carbon, how does carbon reduction decrease the operating costs of industry in the U.S.?

I've read a little about the "public cost of greenhouse gases," but that seems a bit arbitrary to me.

You have a disconnect here. The "U.S. losing money" does not match with "decreasing the operating costs of industry in the U.S." I think you need to read up a little on the costs (i.e. externalities); me thinks you'd be surprised.
 
Posted by FoolishTook (Member # 5358) on :
 
If I understand correctly, using this method: Generic Industry A. causes pollution. An increase in asthma-related hospitalizations near Generic Industry A. Hence, Generic Industry A is increasing the cost of healthcare in the city/county/state where it exists.

Hence, industry = increase cost of healthcare.

But it's a general idea associated with a specific problem that doesn't take into account a thousand different variables--is the industry causing asthma problems or was it the spike in population associated with workers who came to work there? Consider potential over-crowding, more cars on the road, more paved roads, and unsanitary living conditions.

It may very well be Generic Industry A that's causing the problem. But Generic Industry B three states over may being doing no harm at all.

The idea of "environmental externalities" doesn't seem like an exact science quite yet.
 
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Again, that's because (IMO) you haven't studied it enough.

There are tons of examples. Off the top of my head:

1. Americans eat a lot of meat. Meat demand increases. Meat grown in other countries gets shipped into the U.S. (Also, replace meat with corn, rice, wheat, whatever) Developing countries without strict regulations start to cut down forests to harvest more meat. Globally, forests are cut down in part because of American's love for meat.

2. In Europe, coal gets a bad rap. European coal industry shrinks. At times, energy is needed from other sources. China, with plenty of coal sources (with coal mined and shipped up from Australia), fills this demand. European preference for "green energy" causes increased emissions in Asia, which pollutes Asia, the Pacific, and the U.S.

3. Americans like to drive their cars. Any suggestion that they try and take more public transportation is met by viscous criticism. Oil demand increases. Automobile demand increases. Demand for cheap oil, cheap metals, cheap production causes repercussions all over the world: mining in South America increases, oil in the Middle East is in higher demand. Asphalt and concrete roads need to be constantly maintained, requiring raw materials from within and without the U.S. Poor people in developing countries start to work for poor wages to satisfy the demands of the American people.

You're example may be true, but it's too specific. It's requiring connections that are filled with uncertainty. You say that "the idea of 'environmental externalities' doesn't seem like an exact science," and that's the problem. It's not exact. There are tremendous uncertainties. Just because there are uncertainties doesn't mean that the repercussions are not there. Qualitatively, these three examples (or similar examples) are occurring all over the world. The exact quantification may not be known, but that doesn't mean we can't see them.

You're making the assumption that we need to fully understand the connections before we make a decision to change. I say that we could be more cautious, and consider the potential repercussions before we make the decision to charge blindly (and IMO arrogantly) forward.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Link.

I forget who it was complaining about the coast guard stopping state ships to inspect them for safety. But there we are, a good reason to inspect for safety.

[ June 25, 2010, 11:03 AM: Message edited by: BlackBlade ]
 
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
As a point of interest, in Norway the price of gas is about 8 dollars a gallon, and you can't say the cities are close together. There's a lot of unsettled wilderness. People somehow get along anyway.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
How much of that unsettled wilderness is habitable, or should I say comparably habitable to the current settlements, would you say? I really have no idea one way or another, not having much of a mental image of Norway's geography.
 
Posted by Ecthalion (Member # 8825) on :
 
I dunno about the wilderness, but i hear they have award winning Fjords.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
Judging by the some of the things a few of you have typed, we should all just live in tents in the middle of the wilderness eating nothing but vegan food.

Comparing the US to Japan and Europe? Come on. Japan's land mass is smaller compared to the US, and mass transportation is available to the largest populated areas. Europe has a thriving high speed rail system, the US does not.

Liberals and Conservatives alike want oil to be around for a long time. If you think otherwise you are fooling yourself. The government makes billions upon billions of dollars on gasoline taxes. Forcing regulation like Cap and Trade raises those taxes even more, forcing Americans to pay higher taxes. The way I see it, it is an indirect tax on my paycheck.

People will still need to drive. Where I live (Las Vegas) there is no good mass transit system. We do not have subways. We have a bus system that is clean (All of the vehicles run on natural gas) but is uttery inefficient.

There are ways to get people to help the environment without punishing them to do it. And don't say it isn't punishing or say you are simply "encouraging" them. Its a tax.

If there already were a valid, high quality source of alternate energy, I'd say go for it. But you don't put Cap and Trade in place when there is no valid alternative in hopes that this will somehow force the private sector to somehow come up with a fuel source that can be used on a daily basis in millions of vehicles. Right now its more "Bait and Switch" than "Cap and Trade."

Give me a nuclear powered vehicle, and THEN you can tax the hell out of oil for all I care.

Better yet, just give me a trash eating Delorean already. As long as it can hit 88 mph.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
quote:
There are ways to get people to help the environment without punishing them to do it. And don't say it isn't punishing or say you are simply "encouraging" them. Its a tax.
Could you list the ways? Note: mandates (such as minimum gas mileage) cost people more than pigovian taxes, they're just much less obvious.

quote:
Give me a nuclear powered vehicle, and THEN you can tax the hell out of oil for all I care.
You're rather putting the cart before the horse. As long as gasoline is cheap it doesn't make sense to put significant effort into more environmentally friendly vehicles, because no one would buy one. A reasonable level of cap and trade would make current hybrid and electric vehicles, that already exist, much, much appealing relative to gasoline powered vehicles, and lead to a huge upswing in their usage. They exist, but they're not very popular (except among people already buying fuel-efficient cars!), because they're expensive.

In fact, if your area uses nuclear power, you've already been given the nuclear powered vehicle: an electric car. Why haven't you bought one?
 
Posted by Black Fox (Member # 1986) on :
 
I have to say I find it a bit unusual that people can be so casual about dismissing the massive amounts of damage that we continue to do to our enivornment. Global warming aside, issues such as soil salination, lack of clean fresh water, rising levels of heavy metals and chemicals in the food supply, any number of poor agricultural practices ( which I suppose would include soil salination), air pollution, and the rising population against the general unliklihood that resources and production can continue to meet demand. Basically we are trading in long-term growth for a quick fix on the hopes that we can continue to adapt to the situation without some kind of global crisis. Doing so, even if the probability of us failing to adapt is amazingly low, means that it will eventually occur unless human beings take charge of the situation. Would you trade your kids in for a high-consumption lifestyle?

I would also ask that anyone who thinks a completely free market system is somehow superior to take a look at economic growth during the 1800s compared to the last century. 1800s are full of extreme up and down spikes, whereas the last century has been much smoother. That and a major externality not taken care of by the free market system, the human cost. That and I find cap and trade to be a much better fit for a free market sysem than say simply subsidizing everything. Guess what, in the end the tax payer, which really just means everyone, has to pay. You just really can't get around that fact.

However, I will be honest. Looking at the nature of our problems today there is a fairly good chance that we simply won't answer the question fully until we have paid a staggering human price for ignoring so many issues for so long.

That and if you want to "reward" people to get onto mass transit you have to spend money. Spending money means taxing people. Either way you are going to have to "punish" the populace. Punish being used extremely inappropriately there. In that sense a diet is punishment, or excercise to lose weight is punishment. Doing anything that requires will, effort, and sweat must then be punishment.

The whole idea of cap and trade is not simply to push people to adopt renewable energy sources etc. It is to instill a demand in the market for said energy source, which would help fund private research and development into those sources etc.

Balancing the budget, totally punishment.
 
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
 
Quick article about how Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is still refusing to support a light-rail system that could be built between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. My mind boggles at the number of cars this would take off the road. I know he's got his hands full at the moment but he's been fighting this for awhile. Its the right choice for the people of this region if Jindal would get off his tea-party high horse and take the federal money.

http://www.businessreport.com/news/2010/jun/01/right-track-gvpt1/

[ June 26, 2010, 12:02 AM: Message edited by: Shanna ]
 
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
 
Speaking of oil spills, has anyone heard of the Red Sea oil spill? I heard about it today for the first time in our local paper as a small little side story saying it has restarted after people thought it was contained.

quote:
Government spokesman Magdy Rady told the state news agency Monday that the spill, which began last week, was "limited" and has now largely been contained. It was one of the first government acknowledgments that the spill was even taking place.

An environmental group based in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada told the Associated Press that the government was trying to cover up the extent of the damage and the leak had restarted.

quote:
The northern islands protected area is very heavily impacted," said el-Droubi. "This area is very important because it is the last pristine spot, there is a lot of sea life there that will be harmed ... there are dead birds and dead sea turtles scattered across the island covered in oil."

Oil company officials in the port city of Suez said the spill was caused by a leak from an offshore oil platform in Jebel al-Zayt north of Hurghada and has polluted about 100 miles (160 kilometers) of coastline including tourist beach resorts.


 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Ah proof
quote:
Gulf oil spill: White House blocked and put spin on scientists' warnings

Investigative report into the BP oil spill reveals US government blocked scientists model data two weeks after the rig explosion
...
The report amplifies scathing criticism last week by the commission's co-chairs, Bob Graham and William Reilly, of the Obama administration's handling of the disaster.

It goes on to catalogue other lapses by the administration, including repeated underestimates of the size of the spill, and downplaying the environmental damage after the BP well was capped.

The report found particular fault with the White House energy adviser, Carol Browner, who appeared on television on 4 August and said: "The vast majority of oil was gone."

It said Browner was overstating the findings of a NOAA analysis of the fate of the oil.

"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," the report said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/07/gulf-oil-spill-report-white-house
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
It seems strange to say the government was intentionally underestimating, when BP was underestimating it in their reports as well.

I fully expected there was much more oil coming out than was being reported so as to reduce the amount of wigging out people would do.
 
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
The government wasn't intentionally underestimating. They were lying. The NOAA's reports were accurate or rather much higher than what was released by the government and BP. The political people quashed these reports and released numbers that they knew their experts thought were very inaccurate.

This is another item for the "ways in which the Obama administration is adopting the worst aspects of the Bush administration" folder.

[ October 07, 2010, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
MrSquicky: To me "intentionally underestimating" is synonymous with lying. I meant that they knew there were higher amount of oil in the gulf, and intentionally reported lower numbers so as to reduce the impact when people heard about it in the news.

I'm completely agree it was wrong to do so, I meant more it seemed like everybody overseeing the disaster was lying so as to save their jobs.
 
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
Ah, I get what you were saying. It sounded way too soft to me, but I think we were getting at the same thing.

I see the government as lying to cover for BP, the company. Yeah, the MMS was majorly screwed up. This was known since the Bush administration when they intentionally screwed it up. And yeah, they had a motivation to lie.

But the White House I don't see as having that motivation. Sure, they should have reformed the mess that the Bush administration intentionally created, but it's hard to really lay that at their door. To me, their suppression of the accurate information me goes in line with their cession of the spill site to BP as bending over backwards to accommodate a bad actor, which, and I don't think this is a coincidence, was a major donor to President Obama's political campaign.
 


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