you can stab and shoot and spit but they won't be fixing it
So there's a few things I've been musing on over these past weeks, but haven't come to thorough opinions on. And other stuff that I just want to rant about. I'll try to write it out, because I think best when I see it in text and because sometimes y'all like to read what I write, but I'll still put it behind cuts because I'm feeling self-conscious this week.
Today, it's what's on everyone's mind: the second-largest oil spill in the history of the Gulf of Mexico. (Even by the harshest estimates, Deepwater Horizon hasn't gushed more than Ixtoc I's spill. Ixtoc I in 1979-80 gushed for 10 months before Pemex could stop it, poisoned the Bay of Campeche with over 3 million barrels, and washed huge amounts of oil up onto US beaches. I remember visiting Brownsville for New Year's that year, and how much of South Padre Island was closed to tourism. At the time, I thought it must have been because of Hurricane Frederic, but now I see that Frederic hit Alabama, not Texas. I'll bet it was the oil spill.)
So I've been thinking, first of all, for all BP's mendacity about the extent of the spill, the consequences of underwater Corexit injection, and their own liability for the blowout... it's probably fortunate that a publically-traded company like BP is the culprit, under USA jurisdiction, because it means that for all the backroom deals they obviously cut with both sides of the aisle, at least they can't claim "national sovereignty" and just refuse to pay for cleanup. (sure, there's a chance they can buy enough influence that the courts won't rule "gross negligence" when it comes to trial, which is why I hope Congress passes the bill proposed by my Senators Menendez and Lautenberg, and amends the Oil Pollution Act to raise the $75M cap on liability to $10B. It seems pretty clear that Obama would sign such an amendment, even if he is softsoaping the Industry with equivocation...)
Secondly, I admittedly don't know much about offshore oil drilling, but it does seem to me like BP's efforts to stop the leak so far have been more like "try to capture some usable oil from the gusher, oh, yeah, and we should see if there's a way to stop the spill in the meantime." One can only speculate about how long it'd have taken to stop it if they hadn't been messing around with the domes and siphons all this while.
And speaking of which... did they fire all their PR people over Christmas or something? How on earth did they let the engineers release jolly procedural nicknames like "TOP HAT" and "JUNK SHOT" to the reporters, anyway?
Lastly, this Corexit business. Now I understand that in theory, an oil spill can become more of a wide-ranging environmental disaster if it's picked up by surface currents and carried around, which is the point of trying to weigh it down with emulsifiers. But at the same time, I seem to recall from my days in Jersey City that pollution in bottom-silt is much more persistent than anything that floats. (there was a big battle over the cost of dredging in Newark Bay to deepen the channel, and dredging eventually lost out because the silt is so permeated with dioxins that it'd have to be encapsulated and stored as toxic waste...) Also, I've been hearing that sending so much oil to the bottom is creating plumes in deep-water currents, plumes that slip in under the booms designed to keep the oil away from the coastline. With all this, it does make it hard for me not to give some credence to the idea that BP's reason for the unprecedented direct-injection Corexit usage is primarily to hide the size of the spill. *sigh*
And then there's the depressing turf war. Seems like BP is busy declaring that it's in charge of the whole cleanup effort, squeezing out and tying up independent offers to assist, commandeering Coast Guard vessels (with the CG's apparent full cooperation), and blocking access to the area so nobody can make an educated guess of the spill's extent. And the Feds are apparently letting them, so far. The speculation I've heard is that somehow the administration thinks that by leaving the whole cleanup effort to BP, they can make all the fuckups BP's fault instead of theirs. Or maybe make it an object lesson in what happens when you leave private industry in charge, take the small-government fanatics down a peg. Neither of which is an appropriate response, but is something I wouldn't necessarily put past an administration as conflict-avoidant as Obama's seems at times. Gods, I wish someone with clout, anyone, were more interested in curbing an historic disaster than in covering their own asses.
That's all I have right now. Hey, in the good news department, Nissan reports that the first wave of pre-orders for the 2011 LEAF (their new electric car) is completely sold out with 13,000 buyers having plunked down the reservation fee. And Nissan has broken ground on a huge battery factory for the LEAF in Smyrna, Tennessee.
Now if only we could do something for electricity besides burn coal.
Today, it's what's on everyone's mind: the second-largest oil spill in the history of the Gulf of Mexico. (Even by the harshest estimates, Deepwater Horizon hasn't gushed more than Ixtoc I's spill. Ixtoc I in 1979-80 gushed for 10 months before Pemex could stop it, poisoned the Bay of Campeche with over 3 million barrels, and washed huge amounts of oil up onto US beaches. I remember visiting Brownsville for New Year's that year, and how much of South Padre Island was closed to tourism. At the time, I thought it must have been because of Hurricane Frederic, but now I see that Frederic hit Alabama, not Texas. I'll bet it was the oil spill.)
So I've been thinking, first of all, for all BP's mendacity about the extent of the spill, the consequences of underwater Corexit injection, and their own liability for the blowout... it's probably fortunate that a publically-traded company like BP is the culprit, under USA jurisdiction, because it means that for all the backroom deals they obviously cut with both sides of the aisle, at least they can't claim "national sovereignty" and just refuse to pay for cleanup. (sure, there's a chance they can buy enough influence that the courts won't rule "gross negligence" when it comes to trial, which is why I hope Congress passes the bill proposed by my Senators Menendez and Lautenberg, and amends the Oil Pollution Act to raise the $75M cap on liability to $10B. It seems pretty clear that Obama would sign such an amendment, even if he is softsoaping the Industry with equivocation...)
Secondly, I admittedly don't know much about offshore oil drilling, but it does seem to me like BP's efforts to stop the leak so far have been more like "try to capture some usable oil from the gusher, oh, yeah, and we should see if there's a way to stop the spill in the meantime." One can only speculate about how long it'd have taken to stop it if they hadn't been messing around with the domes and siphons all this while.
And speaking of which... did they fire all their PR people over Christmas or something? How on earth did they let the engineers release jolly procedural nicknames like "TOP HAT" and "JUNK SHOT" to the reporters, anyway?
Lastly, this Corexit business. Now I understand that in theory, an oil spill can become more of a wide-ranging environmental disaster if it's picked up by surface currents and carried around, which is the point of trying to weigh it down with emulsifiers. But at the same time, I seem to recall from my days in Jersey City that pollution in bottom-silt is much more persistent than anything that floats. (there was a big battle over the cost of dredging in Newark Bay to deepen the channel, and dredging eventually lost out because the silt is so permeated with dioxins that it'd have to be encapsulated and stored as toxic waste...) Also, I've been hearing that sending so much oil to the bottom is creating plumes in deep-water currents, plumes that slip in under the booms designed to keep the oil away from the coastline. With all this, it does make it hard for me not to give some credence to the idea that BP's reason for the unprecedented direct-injection Corexit usage is primarily to hide the size of the spill. *sigh*
And then there's the depressing turf war. Seems like BP is busy declaring that it's in charge of the whole cleanup effort, squeezing out and tying up independent offers to assist, commandeering Coast Guard vessels (with the CG's apparent full cooperation), and blocking access to the area so nobody can make an educated guess of the spill's extent. And the Feds are apparently letting them, so far. The speculation I've heard is that somehow the administration thinks that by leaving the whole cleanup effort to BP, they can make all the fuckups BP's fault instead of theirs. Or maybe make it an object lesson in what happens when you leave private industry in charge, take the small-government fanatics down a peg. Neither of which is an appropriate response, but is something I wouldn't necessarily put past an administration as conflict-avoidant as Obama's seems at times. Gods, I wish someone with clout, anyone, were more interested in curbing an historic disaster than in covering their own asses.
That's all I have right now. Hey, in the good news department, Nissan reports that the first wave of pre-orders for the 2011 LEAF (their new electric car) is completely sold out with 13,000 buyers having plunked down the reservation fee. And Nissan has broken ground on a huge battery factory for the LEAF in Smyrna, Tennessee.
Now if only we could do something for electricity besides burn coal.