There are more than 3000 holes (or wells) off the coast of Louisiana alone. Rigs drill wells and then move onto another spot and drill another well. Granted, I am throwing the one in a million number around with no backup whatsoever but figure out how many wells, including test wells and wells that didn't produce, we have in the world and you will be getting closer.
There are more than 3000 holes (or wells) off the coast of Louisiana alone. Rigs drill wells and then move onto another spot and drill another well. Granted, I am throwing the one in a million number around with no backup whatsoever but figure out how many wells, including test wells and wells that didn't produce, we have in the world and you will be getting closer.
My side??? What side to you think I'm on???
I'm a lib. I'm in favor of ecological sanity and pursuing alternative energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power. All of that is consistant with pursuing and developing energy independence.
I'm also an engineer, and I know that you can't undertake vast projects with half-vast ideas. Good environmental impact studies, good planning and good engineering take as long as they take to do the job right, and no longer. Ignoring them, cutting them short or skipping them in the interest of expediency or greed will only eventually lead to more disasters like this one.
Your side fails to take into account the reality of the situation. The reality is, we WILL continue to use energy. We WILL continue to grow our energy usage as long as our economy continues to grow. That is pure fact.
Where our energy comes from is the only thing in question. You can not simply say that we need to produce and use less oil without replacing it with viable alternatives. You want 5 year environmental studies on solar farms in the desert than you WILL deal with 5 years of increased fossil fuel usage. That is reality. It took us 10 years to go from nothing to the moon but for some reason it takes us half that time to figure out if some turtle is gonna be displaced by solar panels. I am admittedly ignorant on why it takes that long but I do understand the reality of our energy situation. BOTH sides had an opportunity to upgrade our grid so people like me who are actually doing the grunt work of putting renewable energy into use can actually work towards reducing our need for fossil fuels. The other assholes think that drilling is the end all be all solution.
Those of us that know just a little bit about the subject know that neither of you are completely right or completely wrong. An approach that involves both viewpoints is necessary to fix our problems but I doubt you will admit that.
I am not sure what it is that you engineer, but I am on the frontline of ensuring you have energy so that you CAN engineer whatever it is you do. I was on the frontline in the oil patch and now I am on the frontline in renewables. I will do more tomorrow to help our environment than most so called environmentalists will do in a year. I will also be on the frontline cleaning up this mess AND dealing with the vast consequences of it. I have friends and family who will probably lose everything they have. The town I am purchasing a house was built around the shrimping industry.
Yet YOUR SIDE, the libs, want to tell me that I am wrong somehow while they sit comfortably in Cali flying around in their private jets sucking up the energy WE provide this nation. YOUR SIDE talks down to us "dumb coonasses" who only supply/handle 1/3 of your oil, 1/3 of your Nat. Gas, a ton of your refining capabilities and various other petrochemicals so that you can live the life you do. On top of that, us dumb coonasses get fucked out of royalties by the Federal Gov that states like YOURS profit greatly from. The other side is no better which makes it all the more frustrating. Like I said, you go do whatever it is you do, I am gonna get up in the morning and be a part of the solution instead of being a part of the problem.
I will be taking some vacation days at the end of the week and beginning of next week to volunteer in the cleanup effort. I am sure I can find you a bed if you want to actually help.
werepossum
Elite Member
- Jul 10, 2006
- 29,873
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Refineries were a major problem in Katrina, but I'm not sure there is any way around that. In any event Katrina to me is a more legitimate federal matter, as it was an Act of G-d rather than a failure of a private company's equipment and safety systems. I think that an industry-wide fund would be okay, let them fight it out amongst themselves who is ultimately responsible. I also think the feds should look into pre-positioning spill mitigation systems, which I thought had already been done but apparently not.
Mark Levine had a guy on his talk show who was on the rig when it blew. He said the blow-off valve had just been successfully tested, but when they released the test pressure a huge bubble of natural gas and/or methane blew up the pipe and was ignited. He said they had safety measures for this, which isn't unusual, but the bubble was freakishly massive, far more massive than the safety equipment could handle. I would be surprised if this becomes more common as we drill more deep shafts, where pressure can exceed 40,000 PSI just from the water alone.
Harvey, PJABBER is correct, the Obama administration did make that announcement. It lasted about two hours. Personally I think it was a sound decision as the President's tour typically brings work to a halt for hours as personnel are screened and dangerous and/or distracting work is stopped. Unfortunately in our society during any major disaster the President's personal attention is like the male orgasm in porn; it must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done. As Bush learned, failure to immediately tour a disaster, no matter how sensible a decision, will immediately be attacked for political gain.
werepossum
Elite Member
- Jul 10, 2006
- 29,873
- 463
- 126
I call bullshit. One of the most common things on the Internet is the flaming liberal claiming to be a Republican and then hating on every Republican he can identify as though his claim gives him some sort of legitimacy. You are most definitely a progressive Democrat or a Green, if not a Socialist or Communist. (Out of pity I am discounting the small possibility that you are so abysmally stupid as to join the party that is diametrically opposed to every position you hold. After all, you claim to have lived in Florida, and if you can't handle a butterfly ballot perhaps party registration was also beyond you.)
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adlep
Diamond Member
- Mar 25, 2001
- 5,287
- 6
- 81
You betcha, Sarah. How's that working out for ya?
Guess the destruction of Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez in the state you abandoned wasn't enough to make the point. Today, estimates of the leakage rose from 1,000 barrels per day to 5,000 barrels per day, and no matter how you slice it, the ecology of the Gulf shores is screwed for decades to come..
Ditto
The "Energy Expert" is finished.
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Powermoloch
Lifer
- Jul 5, 2005
- 10,084
- 4
- 76
Your side fails to take into account the reality of the situation. The reality is, we WILL continue to use energy. We WILL continue to grow our energy usage as long as our economy continues to grow. That is pure fact.My side??? What side to you think I'm on???
I'm a lib. I'm in favor of ecological sanity and pursuing alternative energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power. All of that is consistant with pursuing and developing energy independence.
I'm also an engineer, and I know that you can't undertake vast projects with half-vast ideas. Good environmental impact studies, good planning and good engineering take as long as they take to do the job right, and no longer. Ignoring them, cutting them short or skipping them in the interest of expediency or greed will only eventually lead to more disasters like this one.
I repeat the question... My side??? What side to you think I'm on???
Whatever "side" you're on appears to be somewhere on the other side of reality, or you'd know I already posted that we'll be stuck with using petro fuels for awhile.
That's not an excuse for allowing the unrestricted, unregulated and unsupervised rape of our planet in pursuing our fuel needs. It's even less of an excuse for ignoring good science and engineering to protect public safety and to avoid ecological and environmental catastrophies like the one that is happening right now as we speak.
I never called you a "dumb coonass," but if that's how you choose to define yourself, who am I to argue? :hmm:
What you don't know is jack shit about me. What you don't know is when to keep your "dumb coonass" (your label, not mine) mouth shut, instead of attempting to brand me with some generalized label of your own disturbed and misinformed imagination. If that's the best you've got, you're too much of a "dumb coonass" (your label, not mine) for me to expect any kind of rational conversation from you on almost any subject. Come back if and when you reconnect your mouth to your brain.
And I don't have a private jet. Where's the one you promised me? All I have is a Honda Civic with a 5-speed that gets 30+ MPG on regular unleaded gas in the city. ()
Dead Jellyfish washing up on Mississippi coastline
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100503...DeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDZGVhZGplbGx5Zmlz
GULFPORT, Miss. The head of the National Wildlife Federation says he has seen a huge number of dead jellyfish along the beach on an island at the southern end of the Mississippi.
Larry Schweiger says his team will go back out Monday to take tissue samples to see if the oil spill caused their deaths.
Schweiger says it's not uncommon to see jellyfish floating dead during high winds, but the number of dead found so far is beyond normal.
At least 20 sea turtles have been found dead over the weekend along a 30-mile stretch of Mississippi beaches but wildlife officials can't say with certainty the turtles died as a result of the oil spill.
They won't know more until necropsies are performed on Monday.
Just to put this into perspective, try posting a source for your bullshit. I searched and found exactly one -- Rush Limbaugh, an mental midget and moral dwarf, purporting to quote one global warming denier, a Dr. Roy Spencer, who also pimps intellectual garbage like "intelligent design."
Like you, Limbaugh and Spencer don't know their Patranus from a hole in the ground. :hmm:
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werepossum
Elite Member
- Jul 10, 2006
- 29,873
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Methinks your bitterness is interfering with your search skills 'cause there are myriad stories about oil seeps in the Gulf. Estimates I've seen range up to a few thousand barrels a day, but frankly I'd be surprised if anyone could accurately predict this to within an order of magnitude. We know they are much more common than was thought a decade or two ago, and we know they are fairly ancient as several of the species of the chemosynthetic (as opposed to photosynthetic) communities are obligate feeders on natural gas or petroleum or methane hydrates. (This also supports the highly speculative theory that petroleum may be a naturally produced substance through deep-Earth inorganic processes.) And we can surmise that these communities, which are often more than a mile deep, are not evenly distributed across the Gulf, so accurate estimates of the number of seeps, much less the total aggregate amount of the seepage, would seem to me to be just about impossible to estimate with any precision.
Here are a few links. This one estimates as high as 100,000 to 400,000 barrels per year (up to 1,000 barrels as day.) http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/regulate/environ/chemo/chemo.html
This one makes no attempt at estimating the amount, but is well worth visiting nonetheless. http://ocean.tamu.edu/Quarterdeck/QD5.3/sassen.html
Here's one that estimates 140,000 tons per year. Assuming an average weight of 8 lbs per gallon (which may be quite far off), that would be about 2,500 barrels per day. http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/reports/reprints/Kvenvolden_GML_23.pdf
Here's another discussing the matter. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=20863
Obviously the volume of this spill is troubling - perhaps even doubling the natural seepage. But the real problem, as is usually the case with destructive forces, is in its unnatural concentration.
This is a fascinating subject and a fascinating area. The fauna and their ecosystems are unique and quite interesting. Did you know old wells from the sixties and seventies are filing back up? Know that one of the biggest sources of radiation in the ocean is natural seepage of radioactive substances in the Gulf - so much so that the nukes dropped in the Gulf can't be located, even though their steel casings were likely breached long before now? There are real risks of very serious side effects from off-shore drilling, true, and I'm all for reducing these risks and mitigating the potential damage where possible and practical even at the expense of more expensive energy. But abandoning the area would be foolish. It's a real mother lode of energy, in many forms.
I didn't have that much time for a search, but searching for that 5,000 barrel figure for oil seepage, the first few pages that came up were all right wingnut sites parroting Limbaugh's citation of that figure. Thanks for researching it further and for the links. Interesting stuff, but unless Patranus can come up with something else, I'd still think that was his source, and of course, with no links or accreditation.
Your other point is also relevant that a bigger problem with this spill is that it's causing an unnatural concentration at one time and in one locale. Patranus's post specifically stated that 5,000 barrels per day are spilling into the Gulf, not broadly spread across the world's oceans and not over any longer period of time. If he was referring to Limbaugh's source, the fact that the guy is also a believer in ID didn't do much to bolster the credibility.
the 'natural seepage' is far different than an open pipe(s) spewing the stuff right into the water - read the f'ing articles
this is one of the more idiotic attempts to downplay an ecological disaster I've ever seen
this is one of the more idiotic attempts to downplay an ecological disaster I've ever seen
CaptnKirk
Lifer
- Jul 25, 2002
- 10,053
- 0
- 71
Always the GOP sympathiser whining about anything that they don't control.
Still GOP - since the 60's, the party left me, it's been hijacked by morons.
Fighting the 'Nam in the US military, yeah, that makes me a Commie-Pinko doesn't it?
Wasn't in FLA to see the Butterfly Effect, had gone to St. Louis to build Military warplanes,
the kind of things that we hit Afganistan and Iraq (TWICE) with.
And not only that, I'm stupid enough to have participated in the building of the B-1 Bomber, the Space Shuttle Fleet, The MX Missle,
the Western Space Launch Range, and now the Orion.
Takes an idiot to be that dumb.
What's your excuse?
Now get back on the topic and stop the deflection and partisan rants
- this is about an Oil Spill that could affect the whole damn country.
werepossum
Elite Member
- Jul 10, 2006
- 29,873
- 463
- 126
I didn't have that much time for a search, but searching for that 5,000 barrel figure for oil seepage, the first few pages that came up were all right wingnut sites parroting Limbaugh's citation of that figure. Thanks for researching it further and for the links. Interesting stuff, but unless Patranus can come up with something else, I'd still think that was his source, and of course, with no links or accreditation.
Your other point is also relevant that a bigger problem with this spill is that it's causing an unnatural concentration at one time and in one locale. Patranus's post specifically stated that 5,000 barrels per day are spilling into the Gulf, not broadly spread across the world's oceans and not over any longer period of time. If he was referring to Limbaugh's source, the fact that the guy is also a believer in ID didn't do much to bolster the credibility.
The links I provided were specific to the Gulf. No one really knows though how much flow it is, at least to my satisfaction, or how much escapes past the chemosynthetic communities. I think it could be 500 barrels a day, or 1,000, or 5,000. I am very suspicious of anyone quoting a hard number, but it's certainly tons a day, probably a hundred tons a day or more, naturally spilling into the Gulf. Oil slicks in the Gulf do predate oil drilling there though, but historically would rarely be of this magnitude.
Personally I'm not trying to downplay it, just to bring accuracy to it. The seeps are exactly the same petroleum compounds as come from the mines - where on Earth do you think they come from? The only differences are the concentration and (perhaps) the greater upward velocity granted by the stub of the pipe and its wholesale piercing of the bedrock, as opposed to natural fissures which might (or might not) have more resistance. It isn't unusual though for these "seeps" to have great force (in which case the chemosynthetic community merely rings the seep and feeds on the eddies and diffused compounds) but don't have the advantage of a pipe to overcome the water's resistance and diffusion for however long the pipe remains. I think this will be less ecologically damaging than Alaska spills because so many primary producers are able to feed on petroleum compounds (due to the unusually high natural concentration of hydrocarbons in the Gulf) and the higher rate of reproduction in the warm water. I think the economic impact will be worse though because of the much greater tourism and because the fishing and seafood harvesting in the Gulf is probably more concentrated in the shallower water, rather than the deeper waters off Alaska. I could be wrong about the last, though, haven't made an effort to research it.
My post was specifically in response to your partisan rant claiming to be a Republican - your post where you did nothing but bash Republicans. For the record, I questioned your honesty, not your intelligence (although since you seem to have missed that, you might have a point . . .) I fail to see any GOP leader in the last two decades who could compete with Goldwater or Reagan for conservatism. Granted, many are more conservative than Nixon and Ford, but I'd hardly say they are less intelligent. Nonetheless, since you seem to hate every Republican you see, you're either a liar or an idiot when you claim to be a Republican. I'm still voting "liar", but I'll admit you made a fair case for "idiot". (BTW, Democrats do all those things you mentioned too. I'm just saying . . .) Either way I recommend you move to the Northeast where those who so draw your ire will be blissfully absent and even the Republicans will be more to your taste. As a side benefit, you'll be far from the oil spill as those states don't produce energy - they only consume it, which is far less messy.
rudder
Lifer
- Nov 9, 2000
- 19,441
- 86
- 91
I wonder how much of a crackdown will come from the white house....
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html
JSt0rm
Lifer
- Sep 5, 2000
- 27,399
- 3,948
- 126
Chaotic42
Lifer
- Jun 15, 2001
- 34,674
- 1,843
- 126
I see what you did there, hack.
Why does pointing out that Obama received a lot of money from BP make him a hack? I'm not saying that Obama is holding back anything because of it, but it's not like it's irrelevant information.
JSt0rm
Lifer
- Sep 5, 2000
- 27,399
- 3,948
- 126
His question was "how much of a crackdown will come from the white house?"
he then showed this donor information to back up his tinfoil hat mystery question. Boring.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100508/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill
Looks like they've identified the cause of the explosion. Methane has racked up a considerable body count in the past month.
Looks like they've identified the cause of the explosion. Methane has racked up a considerable body count in the past month.
Fenixgoon
Lifer
- Jun 30, 2003
- 33,192
- 12,667
- 136
*ahem*
Coal is a fossil fuel too.
Drowning in slag is probably about as fun as suffocating in a mine
CaptnKirk
Lifer
- Jul 25, 2002
- 10,053
- 0
- 71
Methane Bubble burst to the surface.
http://www.wwl.com/Report--Series-of-failures-led-to-rig-blast/6998248
Containment didn't work, hydraye crystals - ice build up, or possibly frozen methane.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100508/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_248
http://www.wwl.com/Report--Series-of-failures-led-to-rig-blast/6998248
Containment didn't work, hydraye crystals - ice build up, or possibly frozen methane.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100508/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_248
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CaptnKirk
Lifer
- Jul 25, 2002
- 10,053
- 0
- 71
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