BP'S LATEST FIX WON'T WORK

"BP made promising strides in its latest bid to capture some of the oil spewing from its ruptured deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico, while President Barack Obama called off an overseas trip and prepared for another visit Friday to the spill-stricken U.S. Gulf Coast.

After failing days ago to plug the well, BP managed Thursday to shear away the gushing well pipe a mile below the ocean surface, then lowered a containment cap over the jagged hole left atop the crippled wellhead assembly in its latest bid to curtail the oil flow.

The placement of the cylindrical apparatus was confirmed by the U.S. disaster response chief, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, in a statement describing the move as a "positive development" but "only a temporary and partial fix."
MSNBC

So, after listening to the guys from BP tell us that the sawcut was necessary so that the pipe would be smooth and clean for the connection to be made, they ripped the top of the pipe off with a pair of shears. Now they're telling us that this just might work. Whatever.

The ugly reality is that this cap is supposed to hold back and then redirect enormous amounts of pressure, a task difficult enough in perfect conditions. Anyone that is familiar with tools and how they work knows that using shears to cut a pipe will leave the pipe ragged and out of round. Not exactly the perfect conditions one would want to try to cap this thing. Have you ever tried to get household plumbing put back together when the pipes are deformed? Good luck. Even if you can get the connection made its hold is tenuous, at best.

So we'll hear talk about things maybe going well over the next few days; wishful thinking on the part of the government and BP. Then we'll be told that yet another fix has failed and the oil is spilling faster than before into the Gulf. Of course, some solutions won't even be considered, like the possibility that it may be possible to seal the hole with a nuclear device.

All the while, keep in mind the very real possibility that the broken pipe we keep seeing and trying to repair is not the source of the majority of oil flowing into the gulf.

Pray, pray, pray!!

NO NUKES IN THE GULF FOR NO GOOD REASON

"The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well?

Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here?

...Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said that neither Energy Secretary Steven Chu nor anyone else was thinking about a nuclear blast under the gulf. The nuclear option was not — and never had been — on the table, federal officials said.

“It’s crazy,” one senior official said."
New York Times

Isn't that special. We're faced with an event that could possibly change life on this planet forever and possible solutions are taken off the table. WHY??!!

If our President had any idea how to lead or manage something more complex than picketing a bankers house he would have every qualified engineer and oil man in the world working on this with nothing outside the bounds of consideration. However, Obama exists in a world of politics, where problems can be talked about ad nauseum and solutions can be forced at the barrel of a gun. He has no experience at leading in a time of crisis and cannot find it within himself to rise to the challenge.

We have been burdened with exactly the wrong man at the wrong time and our very existence, at least as a country and quite possibly as human beings, may be at stake.

Pray, pray, pray!!

OIL WILL SPREAD UP EAST COAST

"A detailed computer modeling study released today indicates that oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and open ocean as early as this summer. The modeling results are captured in a series of dramatic animations produced by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and collaborators.

The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor. The results were reviewed by scientists at NCAR and elsewhere, although not yet submitted for peer-review publication.

“I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?’” says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. “Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood.”

For more information go to the UCAR website.

WATER AND AIR BEING POISONED IN GULF

This sickness that has dogged the workers from the Exxon Valdez cleanup is beginning to effect workers in the Gulf. There have been reports almost from the beginning of this blowout of sickness among workers and symptoms of the same sort from people on shore.

The biggest difference, as far as impact goes, between the Gulf and the Exxon Valdez is proximity to population. The Gulf has millions living on its shores and within a couple hundred miles inland, all of whom will be and are being exposed to the same chemicals that effected the Exxon Valdez cleanup crews. Not to mention the question of how far inland hurricanes will carry this problem.

Life in America has been permanently altered by this blowout; and potentially life around the world. The effects cannot be predicted because nothing like this has ever happened.

Pray, pray, pray!

"For days now, Dr. Damon Dietrich has seen patients come through his emergency room at West Jefferson Medical Center with similar symptoms: respiratory problems, headaches and nausea.

In the past week, 11 workers who have been out on the water cleaning up oil from BP's blown-out well have been treated for what Dietrich calls "a pattern of symptoms" that could have been caused by the burning of crude oil, noxious fumes from the oil or the dispersants dumped in the Gulf to break it up. All workers were treated and released.

"One person comes in, it could be multiple things," he said. "Eleven people come in with these symptoms, it makes it incredibly suspicious."

Few studies have examined long-term health effects of oil exposure. But some of the workers trolling Gulf Coast beaches and heading out into the marshes and waters have complained about flu-like symptoms — a similar complaint among crews deployed for the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

BP and U.S. Coast Guard officials have said dehydration, heat, food poisoning or other unrelated factors may have caused the workers' symptoms. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals is investigating.

Brief contact with small amounts of light crude oil and dispersants are not harmful. Swallowing small amounts of oil can cause upset stomach, vomiting and diarrhea. Long-term exposure to dispersants, however, can cause central nervous system problems, or do damage to blood, kidneys or livers, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.

...Dozens of complaints, most from spill workers, have been made related to oil exposure with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said spokeswoman Olivia Watkins, as well as with the Louisiana Poison Center, clinics and hospitals. Workers are being told to follow federal guidelines that recommend anyone involved in oil spill cleanup wear protective equipment such as gloves, safety glasses and clothing.

Michael J. Schneider, an attorney who decided against filing a class-action lawsuit in the 1990s involving the Valdez workers, said proving a link between oil exposure and health problems is very difficult.

"As a human being you listen to enough and you've got to believe they're true," he said. "The problem is the science may not be there to support them ... Many of the signs and symptoms these people complained of are explainable for a dozen different reasons — it's certainly coincidental they all shared a reason in common."

...Unlike with Exxon Valdez, in the Gulf, the oil has been lighter, the temperatures warm and humid, and there have been hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals used to break up the oil.

Court records showed more than 6,700 workers involved in the Exxon Valdez clean up suffered respiratory problems which the company attributed to a viral illness, not chemical poisoning.

Dennis Mestas represented the only known worker to successfully settle with Exxon over health issues. According to the terms of that confidential settlement, Exxon did not admit fault.

His client, Gary Stubblefield, spent four months lifting workers in a crane for 18 hours a day as they sprayed the oil-slicked beaches with hot water, which created an oily mist. Even though he had to wipe clean his windshield twice a day, Stubblefield said it never occurred to him that the mixture might be harming his lungs.

Within weeks, he and others, who wore little to no protective gear, were coughing and experiencing other symptoms that were eventually nicknamed Valdez crud. Now 60, Stubblefield cannot get through a short conversation without coughing and gasping for breath like a drowning man. He sometimes needs the help of a breathing machine and inhalers, and has to be careful not to choke when he drinks and eats.

Watching the Gulf situation unfold, he says, makes him sick.

"I just watch this stuff everyday and know these people are on the very first rung on the ladder and are going to go through a lot of misery," said Stubblefield, who now lives in Prescott, Ariz."
Fox News

LATEST FIX FAILS IN GULF

"BP Plc’s failure since April to plug a Gulf of Mexico oil leak has prompted forecasts the crude may continue gushing into December in what President Barack Obama has called the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP’s attempts so far to cap the well and plug the leak on the seabed a mile below the surface haven’t worked, while the start of the Atlantic hurricane season this week indicates storms in the Gulf may disrupt other efforts.

“The worst-case scenario is Christmas time,” Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston, said. “This process is teaching us to be skeptical of deadlines.”

Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government’s current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.

So much crude pouring into the ocean may alter the chemistry of the sea, with unforeseeable results, said Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts."
Bloomberg

"A Florida beach might get hit with oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident for the first time Wednesday as sheen likely caused by the accident was reported less than 10 miles off Pensacola Beach.

A charter boat captain reported the oil Tuesday afternoon and state and local environmental officials confirmed that it was about 9.5 miles offshore. Winds are forecast to blow from the south and west, pushing the outer edges of massive slick from the spill closer to western Panhandle beaches."
Palm Beach Post

EVERYTHING I EVER NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT ISLAM

Click on picture to enlarge. This ought to be worth a Fatwa.

MANIPULATION IS NOT LEADERSHIP

"BP's stock plummeted and took much of the market down with it Tuesday as the federal government announced criminal and civil investigations into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP engineers, meanwhile, tried to recover from a failed attempt to stop the gusher with an effort that will initially make the leak worse.

Attorney General Eric Holder, who was visiting the Gulf to survey the fragile coastline and meet with state and federal prosecutors, would not say who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response," Holder said in New Orleans."
Yahoo

Since our political leaders have no real solutions to the problem, like all good politicians they'll look for someone to blame and create a distraction from their own incompetence. We don't have time for any government resources to be used frivolously. Perhaps, and I know this is just crazy to even think about, the Attorney General should spend his time making sure that all the alphabet agencies get out of the way so that the states, BP and the military can do what what's necessary to get this blowout fixed, if that's even possible.

We have a group of inexperienced community activists running the most powerful country on earth at a time when we need every ounce of power available to us to stop potentially the most grave threat this country has ever faced. Yep, that's right, this will prove to be worse than any war we've ever been in when the final tally's are made, if we don't get it under control now. And the guys we've got running the place don't have a clue how to manage this because they've never run anything. It's impossible for them to lead. All they can do is manipulate.

Pray, pray, pray!!!

ARE WE ON THE EDGE OF A NEW ERA?

The End of Our Era from Mark Mallett on Vimeo.