Ahira's Hangar

If there was ever a compelling argument to seriously go after alternate and less damaging energy sources...

Yeah, this one is looking bad. And the rough weather is apparently mixing the oil and water, which means clean-up is effectively too late in some senses. (Although anything they can clean up is good.)

--A

The only good thing (if you can call it that) is the oil has not yet hit the main currents that swirl around the Gulf like a bathtub...

Since mid-May a deep sea oil well, after an explosive blowout, has been spewing tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. This is an ecological calamity that makes previous environmental accidents (Exxon Valdez, the burning of Kuwaitii wells in 1990) look like nothing. After demonstrating engineering incompentence the responsible commercial entity, BP, is no where near controlling the situation; additionally, remediation of this calamity, if possible at all, will take decades and billions of dollars.

I think it's been just recently that the area around the Exxon Valdez spill has returned to more-or-less normal. So, yes, decades for this cleanup to be complete.

Isn't this sort of accident the reason why offshore drilling has been controversial?

The oil companies are in no hurry to change their ways. They see plenty of oil reserves in these essentially inaccessible places to keep them enriched for generations to come. To them, apparently, an occasional environmental disaster is just a cost of doing business.

And now Obama has compared it to 9/11... (Which is taking it a bit far I think...)

--A

Merged the two topics.

This is an environmental disaster of the first order.

What gets me, too, in addition to the horrific damage to the wildlife and environment is all of the screaming for federal help and criticism of the governent...since a lot of it seems to be coming from people who usually think that the federal government should not intervene or regulate private industries (a la the bailouts which might have saved us from a second Great Depression) - and that taxes should be constantly cut. How can the government have high tech cutting edge/experimental equipment in every major industry which might be subject to a disaster to intervene in things like this when people do not want to pay taxes?

And few were screaming in the affected states about the evils of deep sea oil drilling (Drill BABY Drill!!!) when they were enjoying the jobs and money that came with this industry...

Yeah, in American politics these days stupidity and hypocrisy are the norms. And God forbid people actually think before they start spouting out ill thought talking points.

(Sorry for the bitterness but as an unaligned middle of the road voter I am so sick of crap being spewed by people on both sides of the ideological divide right now).

Speaking of ill-thought talking points: Joe Benton yesterday. The only man in America who believes *BP* deserves an apology. What a flaming idiot.

Ali, here are John Scalzi's comments on Joe Benton:

Excellent post on Scalzi's part. I also enjoyed reading the comments. Seeing Scalzi beat the neocons about the head and shoulders to keep them on topic was almost more fun than reading the original post.

So what's happening? How much oil is still coming out?

--A