Oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico

[IAmTheJody]

The pictures the national media isn't showing you.. it's bad. I feel so sorry and helpless for the people not only here in Mississippi on our own Gulf Coast and islands but all along the Gulf Coast who make their living from these waters. Everything from shrimpers to oyster gatherers, fishers, charter boats, tourism along the coasts (hotels, restaurants, etc), they are all going to be feeling this for years.

More here: WLOX TV Biloxi, Mississippi: Amazing, new Gulf oil pictures from USM research vessel

 

[Greyfox]

We'll see if BP spends those obscene profits on cleaning up this disaster. I'm not holding my breath.

 

[JoshD]

Sad. So sad. I have seen the coast bounce back from huricanes, casinos, and political woes. But this. It is nit going to take years, but decades. But the people here on the coast are strong. And they will all band together. I have faith in them that they will be able to stand and not go down with out one hellova fight.

JoshD
Wiggins, MS
30 miles from the coast.

 

[Austin]

What an environmental mess. I'm starting to change my mind about off shore drilling.

I hope the folks on the gulf coast recover.

 

[gaseousclay]

thanks, BP, for destroying mother nature. this is truly sad.

 

[Lynchmeister]

Agreed, that this is a horrible thing, but I don't think the sole blame lies with BP, or "Big Oil" in general. "We" demanded, "they" supplied and as long as we continue to consume and expect the price tag to stay at $3.00/gallon, Mother Nature will more than likely continue picking up the remainder of the tab.

What a shame. All the best to those in the Gulf area.

 

[rm71]

We'll see if BP spends those obscene profits on cleaning up this disaster. I'm not holding my breath.

Yep.

 

[Tekka]

We'll see if BP spends those obscene profits on cleaning up this disaster. I'm not holding my breath.

They don't make obscene profits. Companies like Apple make a heck of a lot more in profit than BP.

With regard to cleaning it up. The earth is self regulating and absorbs and cleans up these sorts of things on it's own over time.

 

[rm71]

With regard to cleaning it up. The earth is self regulating and absorbs and cleans up these sorts of things on it's own over time.

What about the wildlife? Remember the pictures from the Exxon Valdez?

 

[Obsessed]

With regard to cleaning it up. The earth is self regulating and absorbs and cleans up these sorts of things on it's own over time.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Regardless. even assuming the earth is self-regulating, the spill is in fact the result of human intervention with those self-regulating mechanisms (i.e., the oil was safely underground before we began to drill for it). Accordingly, I don't think it's a stretch to say that human intervention is necessary to clean it up.

 

[Tekka]

I'm not sure I understand your point. Regardless. even assuming the earth is self-regulating, the spill is in fact the result of human intervention with those self-regulating mechanisms (i.e., the oil was safely underground before we began to drill for it). Accordingly, I don't think it's a stretch to say that human intervention is necessary to clean it up.

Human interaction can not clean something like this up. The oceans have to absorb and dilute spills like this.

 

[82R100]

With regard to cleaning it up. The earth is self regulating and absorbs and cleans up these sorts of things on it's own over time.

The earth seems to have no mechanism in place to plug the hole that BP put in it. Are you as sanguine about The Gulf's chances if they fail to find a way to substantially stop the leak in the next couple of months?

I must confess that the industry had me just about sold on the viability of expanding the off-shore oil fields with little environmental risk. While it didn't seem the greatest news, I regarded the president's announcement about opening up the additional areas as a rational, pragmatic approach to our near-team global political-economic needs. Was this sort of catastrophe a very rare occurrence? Most certainly. Will the earth "clean up [this sort of thing] on its own over time"? Only if you've got a lot of time and a very loose sense of cleaning up.

Sorry, Lynchmeister. We are not all to blame for this. At some level there had to be be an understanding that this sequence of events could take place and the responsibility for recognizing the risk and taking all possible measures to address it rested on the experts overseeing the extraction of the oil. Inexcusable.

- Chris

 

[Barbarian]

They don't make obscene profits. Companies like Apple make a heck of a lot more in profit than BP.

With regard to cleaning it up. The earth is self regulating and absorbs and cleans up these sorts of things on it's own over time.

Yeah, see...

(AP) BP PLC, Europe's second-largest oil company, said Tuesday that first-quarter profit more than doubled from a year earlier to $6.1 billion due to higher crude prices and lower production costs and taxes.

SEATTLE (AP) -- Blockbuster iPhone sales helped Apple Inc. blow past Wall Street’s expectations with a 90 percent leap in net income for the most recent quarter...

...Apple’s net income and revenue were its highest ever, Oppenheimer said. Earnings rose to $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per share, from $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per share in the same period last year.

Not sure where you got that one.

 

[thunderball]

With regard to cleaning it up. The earth is self regulating and absorbs and cleans up these sorts of things on it's own over time.

 

[82R100]

They don't make obscene profits. Companies like Apple make a heck of a lot more in profit than BP.

Apple makes much less $ in profit than BP. Perhaps what you were trying to say was that the profit margins in the oil industry were smaller. That is true.

- Chris

 

[Tekka]

What about the wildlife? Remember the pictures from the Exxon Valdez?

Yes, I remember Exxon Valdez. Most people involved in the clean up spent meaningless amounts of time and effort cleaning rocks with tooth brushes and attempting to save injured animals. Rocks would get rewashed with oil after people had spent hours or days cleaning them and most of the wild life still died.

If you look at the area that was affected by Exxon Valdez today. It's as if nothing bad ever happened there. The earth recovered and all the efforts people spent trying to fix it didn't amount to much of anything. The earth and all it's processes are far more powerful and capable of cleaning itself up than human beings. We are almost nothing compared to the power of the earth.

 

[rm71]

Yes, I remember Exxon Valdez. Most people involved in the clean up spent meaningless amounts of time and effort cleaning rocks with tooth brushes and attempting to save injured animals. Rocks would get rewashed with oil after people had spent hours or days cleaning them and most of the wild life still died.

If you look at the area that was affected by Exxon Valdez today. It's as if nothing bad ever happened there. The earth recovered and all the efforts people spent trying to fix it didn't amount to much of anything. The earth and all it's processes are far more powerful and capable of cleaning itself up than human beings. We are almost nothing compared to the power of the earth.

Trying to save injured animals is meaningless?

 

[Barbarian]

Yes, I remember Exxon Valdez. Most people involved in the clean up spent meaningless amounts of time and effort cleaning rocks with tooth brushes and attempting to save injured animals. Rocks would get rewashed with oil after people had spent hours or days cleaning them and most of the wild life still died.

If you look at the area that was affected by Exxon Valdez today. It's as if nothing bad ever happened there. The earth recovered and all the efforts people spent trying to fix it didn't amount to much of anything. The earth and all it's processes are far more powerful and capable of cleaning itself up than human beings. We are almost nothing compared to the power of the earth.

Yes the Earth will last much longer than any catastrophe humanity can inflict upon it. Humanity's experience on the Earth may suffer, however.

This is a sad, sad, catastrophe. There is no sugar that can coat it.

 

[bamafan64]

I'm not sure I understand your point. Regardless. even assuming the earth is self-regulating, the spill is in fact the result of human intervention with those self-regulating mechanisms (i.e., the oil was safely underground before we began to drill for it). Accordingly, I don't think it's a stretch to say that human intervention is necessary to clean it up.

Most oil is underground, but there are plenty of places on earth where it comes to the surface without human intervention. The media hasn't reported this, but south of the Louisiana coast has plenty of places where oil seeps out of the sea bed naturally. The amount of oil coming from there doesn't compare to the rig accident, but it is a larger amount than most people realize.

Human intervention is necessary to clean this up, and hopefully we can get the well capped off and stop it at the source pretty quickly. Once that is accomplished, maybe between man power and mother nature, the rest will be cleaned up before too much harm is done.

There are 3500 active oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. It has been quite awhile since there has been a disaster anywhere close to this magnitude. Hopefully the oil industry will learn from this and we can go much longer without another accident.

 

[toucanlamp]

Yet all the silly people up here continue to scream about how the oil sands are destroying the universe and are so much worse than conventional oil production.... You'd think something like this might change their mind but of course not, nothing has become more trendy than bashing the oil sands, with James Cameron being the latest celebrity endorser of it. The greatest oil sands catastrophe involved a thousand or so dead ducks, but not the potential devasation of a thousand miles of coastline.

I'm amazed BP stock hasn't dropped further. Since this catastrophe occured, it has gone down only about 13-14%, yet I think most experts think it is absolutely certain that BP will be on the hook for billions and billions of dollars in cleanup costs here.

And - if subsequent investigations show gross negligence, and this turns out to be the worst spill in US history, they will be absolutely destroyed in the courts.