BP oil spill

[infernalis]

'Top kill' planned to stop oil leak - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/21/gulf.oil.spill/index.html)

At this point if I ran out of gas directly in front of a BP station, I would walk elswhere to get my gas :(

I can't hardly watch the news anymore, but I also don't want to ignore what is happening to the enviroment and all the sea life either.

This thread is for your thoughts, rants and concerns.

Don't hold back, if you feel gutted as I do, let it out here.

[Nafun]

Supposedly if the top kill method is botched, we're looking at a yellowstone level event.

The kind of natural disaster that makes nuclear war look like a holiday in the sun.

[Lankyrob]

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! (Pretty much sums up how i feel about the disaster and its effect on nature)

[infernalis]

The whole thing is botched...

If they did not have a way to stop it in the first place, they should never began drilling.

That oild has been there millions of years, what difference besides better equipment would another 10-20 years make.

and the scarier part is, there are countless oil rigs just like this one all over the seas.

[Deej85]

I hope no species goes extinct as a result of this one spill.


I hope BP gets hit hard by fines, perhaps Jail time. this is serious business.



I hope this causes sweeping reform in the system of checks and balances that provides permits to drill.

It should be much harder to get this permit because of the massive repercussions that it can create.

[dragunov.762]

I am calling for a WORLD WIDE boycott from BP. We need to teach these big businesses that we control them and not the other way around. There are many people from all over the world on this forum so this is a good place to start a boycott. tell your friends and families, and anyone else not to buy from BP. Tell them to spread the word to anyone who gives a rats a** about the environment not to buy from BP. People now have gotten soft and we let businesses control us way too much. it is time for people (in general) to grow a backbone and stick up for what you believe is right. write your congressman (or woman or whatever government official you think will listen) and tell them how you feel and what you think should be done about it. If BP survives this i will be highly disappointed. the fines alone, i feel, should put them out of business but we know that that won't happen so it is up to us to punish them for their negligence in taking care of this world that we are only a small part of.

[shaunyboy]

The whole thing is botched...

If they did not have a way to stop it in the first place, they should never began drilling.

That oild has been there millions of years, what difference besides better equipment would another 10-20 years make.

and the scarier part is, there are countless oil rigs just like this one all over the seas.


sadly mate oil = power as its products make our world what it is.there have been next to no realistic break throughs on what will take its place in our society.so these multi billion pound companys just go around the planet pillaging its resources.the companys themselves are that a powerfull that most governments give them free range to do what they want (especially if they can keep it out the news).since its money their after they usually do it the cheapest way possible with no regards for the poor people that have to live in their aftermath.i know the iraq war was started in the name of fighting terrorisim but we would be nieve to think that their oil producing capabilitys were not also taken into account.you would think that as infernalis said they would not go about it in the first place unless they had adiquit safety procedures in place for events like this.but sadly oil is money and money is power.these people have the monopoly on oil prices.recently although the price of a barrel of crude oil had dropped quite a bit the price of petrol went up by a massive amount (in the uk).it seems the every day man and woman on this planet does not have a say in any of this and why ? imo the governments need crude oil or their countrys will come to a stand still.no governments going to risk totally upseting oil companys for fear of having no oil.so this gives these greedy companys free range to rape and pillage our planet.at the end of the day bp will get a silly fine told dont do that again and it will be played down.they will then get back to doing what they do best ruining some of the most beautifull places on our planet.a lot of countrys they extract oil from have dictator ships or a puppet government running them.this makes it so easy for oil companys to bribe and buy their way out of the messes they leave.its just not right.....!!!
cheers shaun

p.s.one last thought.as the worlds oil runs out these companys will get more desperate.imo that means they will start on places that up until now have been off limits.i'm sure ive read somewhere that the uk,america and russia are presently squabbling over who gets to pillage the artic circle and its oil reserves.soon nothing will be sacred...!!

[Nafun]

No, I mean, supposedly, if they botch the top kill, it'll cause the oil to start eroding the hole bigger, accelerating the flow of oil (which will in turn make the hole even bigger) until we're looking at an eruption of oil on a volcanic scale. Everywhere the oil goes, the dissolved natural gas displaces oxygen in the sea water, creating a dead zone where nothing can live. Ocean dies. Everything that depends on the ocean dies. Everything that depends on something that depends on the ocean dies. Et cetera.....

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[Feebo]

Yep, it`s bloody crazy that they are allowed to drill where they can`t fix. If you can`t fix at that depth, don`t drill at that depth! As for the fix it effort, I`m amazed it hasn`t been fixed, I`m amazed at how ill prepared they are for such an eventuality and I`m just plain dismayed at the whole situation. Time and again we hear "we will learn from this and it`ll never happen again" Salt in the wound that is, I hate hearing that when I know full well it WILL happen again and we`ll hear all the same excuses. BP are putting BILLIONS into researching the affected area now it`s happend. Could BILLIONS of pounds not come up with a proceedure for fixing this BEFORE it happened?! It just makes me so bloody angry.

[emseeKAY]

The whole thing is pretty messed up. if they had have been prepared for what COULD happen maybe it wouldnt take this long to clean up, but as everyone knows, its always about making money, not preserving anything...

[infernalis]

NASA photo from space. what a mess......

http://media-files.gather.com/images/d407/d348/d746/d224/d96/f3/full.jpg

[Kmef07]

Yes, I agree that it sucks and is horrible, but if they all stopped drilling until there was a perfect way to drill with no possibility of an accident then we would all be complaining about the cost of gas. Unfortunately, accidents happen. Some of them are large, very large, but that is the cost of the lives we live. There is a saying that he who has not sinned be the first one to cast a stone...well we all use oil products, and we all complain about it when the price goes up. I think that BP should be responsible to clean up their mess, but hitting them with fines is silly. Believe me that they did not want to have an oil spill that tarnishes their company, loses them tons of money every day, and costs them tons of money to try and fix. If the goverment hits them with fines they will just blow the money away like they always do and the money will not go to anything except to pay off people they want to vote for them.
What if BP gets fined out the butt for this and they have to go bankrupt. Will the goverment then turn around and say they are too big to fail? Will the goverment say that there is no way we can let a company that size, with that much influence, and with that many employees fail? I think we all know where that has gotten us and i'll be damned if they won't do it again. So we will fine BP and then we will bail them out of bankrupcy and the goverment gets to come away with a nice chunk of change.

Again I feel for the animals too and the enviroment, but there is no benefit for BP to have this happen. I am sure they are doing everything possible to shut it down, because then they can go back to being a business that makes money not one that loses money.

Finally, like I said, let he who has not sinned cast the first stone. So the first person who wants to cut off using oil products and wants to pay out the butt for gas they can really argue that they should stop drilling until they fine a perfectly safe way. Or I guess we can always just buy oil off the middle east and again, we have been down that road and no one likes it.

Sorry to rant but there are consequences to every action even if there are things that need to be changed. Sometimes you have to choose the better of two evils.

[infernalis]

Well said, and point well taken.

Once the crisis abates, I'm sure emotions will simmer down.

For now, an 8 inch pipe belching hydrocarbon poisons into the sea is going to stir ill feelings with many, many people.

[Kmef07]

I would agree and it sucks, but so is life I guess...The earth has seen many natural disasters that is has cleaned up before. While this is not a NATURAL disaster, the earth has a way of cleaning itself and recycling something that is produces.

[Palor]

This is only going to get worse and worse until someone actually steps in to fix it. So far all they have done is few half assed attempts at stopping the flow, some poor booming and then they added dispersants. Oh and of course all the finger pointing.

All the while the Gulf is dying, likely will be a wasteland by the time they fix the leak. The Southern USA is going to takes decades to recover if it ever does, likely not in our lifetimes.

[infernalis]

This is only going to get worse and worse until someone actually steps in to fix it. So far all they have done is few half assed attempts at stopping the flow, some poor booming and then they added dispersants. Oh and of course all the finger pointing.

All the while the Gulf is dying, likely will be a wasteland by the time they fix the leak. The Southern USA is going to takes decades to recover if it ever does, likely not in our lifetimes.


And that is exactly why this whole mess is yanking at my guts.

I have went swimming in that water before, The gulf of Mexico WAS once an American asset.

One time when I was in Florida, I watched the sun rise in Daytona beach, and that same evening went to Tampa and watched it set over the gulf.http://laserpointerforums.com/images/smilies/cry.gif

[Kmef07]

they need to stop the political BS and just let the military do what it proposed when it first happened. They were ready with a plan of action to plug the whole with a bomb. they were going to use the earth itself to plug the whole but it is still being held up by the people against the oil companies. it is funny they say they are enviromentalists, but they are letting a disaster happen that could have been stopped within a week by one bomb. their excuse...they are worried about the effects the explosion will have on the surrounding ecosystem.

[Nafun]

I read that the window for plugging it with a bomb has passed, that trying to bomb it now would equal disaster.

[shaunyboy]

I would agree and it sucks, but so is life I guess...The earth has seen many natural disasters that is has cleaned up before. While this is not a NATURAL disaster, the earth has a way of cleaning itself and recycling something that is produces.

i dont think anyone is saying that bp wanted this to happen.the reality is that it has.imo your quote above is all true.but the earth can only do so much at one time to save itself (theres a lot of man made stuff going on right now).i have watched documentrys that say there is already more natural disasters happening more often than we have seen in recorded history (tsunami's,hurricanes,global warming).take the uk,we have now experienced floods on a yearly basis that before happened once every 10 years.at present we have the dust of the errupting volcano in poland settling here and grounding aircraft.chuck in a few man made disasters and we'll have something to really worry about.i wasnt condeming drilling for oil.i was condeming the hap hazard way in which they do it.i watched a documentry but cannot remember which country it was about (nigera,algeria ?).the state the oil companys left behind after a job was finished was obscene.it had ruined the locals way of life for the next 20 to 30 years or more.all i'm saying if these companys put as much effort into cleaning up after themselves as they do at making money then we would all be better off.i like to think of myself as someone who keeps it real.of course we need oil that was what i meant when i said there have been no realistic breakthroughs on a replacement (hence we need oil,until such a thing exists).i'm definatley not a tree hugger but being realistic we havent half ruined this planet over the last 150 years.its our poor grandchildren and they're children thats going to bare the brunt of all these greedy unsafe endeavours.now that the worlds running out of oil imo its going to get a lot worse before it gets better.the fact that countrys are squabbling over the oil in the artic circle will just be the first of many examples of this type.sadly i have no answers to these problems.at least we are all being made aware of these things down to how easy it is these days to get news out there.so hopefully sooner rather than later some of that human ingenuity that gave us oil and all its products will come up with a plan to take us to the new safer cleaner way of doing things.
cheers shaun

[infernalis]

Just checked, and plugging that hole has not even begun yet.

There was also leak in Alaska just now, and the Korean spill not that long ago.

Divers went into the water and globs of the oil mixed with the dispersant are adrift at all depths, this crap is getting into the gills of the fish, it seems as if this is getting worse before it gets better.

The Gulf of Mexico will be polluted now for decades, I will be dead and gone before it cleans up, and that depends on weather or not this happens again.

I'm no tree hugger either, I'll cut them up with a chain saw and build a nice fire to cook meat over, no problem.

However I cannot find any peace in the senseless deaths of entire populations of sea life that are now unfit to eat by anything or anyone.

Also saw that the blow-off preventer malfunctioned, so what good is it to have one?

[infernalis]

I just watched an oil covered shark die on national TV... I feel sick.

That oil is full of dead animals already, it's a nightmare.

The gulf is dying fast and the end in not even in sight...

[airjacobs]

How wrong can you be in estimating an oil spill? The first few days after the tragic April 20 blowup of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the US Gulf Coast, BP estimated a spill rate of 1,000 barrels per day. This was further revised to 5,000 barrels a day.