The Gulf Spill

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[Daniel]

Letter from The Sierra Club

Dear Friend,

Volunteer to Help with
Gulf Coast Oil Drilling Disaster
Relief Efforts!

Sign Up to Volunteer!

 Sign Up to Volunteer Today!

Last week, the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, located just 45 miles off the Louisiana coast.  Each day, an environmental disaster continues to unfold as an estimated 210,000 barrels of oil are released into the Gulf waters.

Gulf Coast communities are facing the challenge of managing the immediate cleanup and recovery needs of area residents, businesses, wildlife and marine life.

They need all hands on deck to meet the challenges of the relief effort. Sign up to volunteer as part the relief efforts and we will connect you with opportunities to help.

As the Gulf Coast faces an environmental and economic tragedy of epic proportions, the Sierra Club is calling on our federal government to marshal all available resources to respond to and monitor marine and coastal impacts while ensuring adequate and effective cleanup efforts.

The spill is so huge that even with all the resources of the federal government more help is needed with the clean up efforts. Now is the time for all Americans to lend a hand!

Follow this link to sign up to volunteer: http://action.sierraclub.org/Oil_Spill_CleanUp

Thank you for caring about our nation's coasts and waters.

Sincerely,

Jill Mastrototaro
Sierra Club
New Orleans, LA

P.S. We need all hands on deck to meet the challenges of this disaster.  Please forward this email to your friends and ask them to volunteer.

Source:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=174761.0&dlv_id=150141

[Jana]

Frankly I am sick of grieving, its one thing after another, until we get our technology in line with nature. For sure there needs to be an international investigation on the entire American oil industry feasco. The new energy suppressions, the resource wars, the use of water in wells...and regulations on the rigs.
Still consider, that this disaster which will kill the gulf coast for a decade or more is probably less damaging in the very long term than what the uranium miners will do to America with their water leaching methods.

The Defense depart. haven't been deployed is that right? They are just deployed to go steal other peoples oil apparently.

My humor is becoming more evil by the day, but this should really have happened directly off the Texan coast for divine justice to be metered correctly.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43768

[Daniel]

CNN editorial

Oil spill changes everything

By Michael Brune

Editor's note: Michael Brune is executive director of the Sierra Club and former director of the Rainforest Action Network.

(CNN) -- The oil disaster plaguing the Gulf of Mexico and our coastal states puts our desperate need for a new clean energy economy in stark relief. We need to move away from dirty, dangerous and deadly energy sources.

We are pleased that the White House is now saying it will suspend any new offshore drilling while the explosion and spill are investigated, but there should be no doubt left that drilling will only harm our coasts and the people who live there.

Taking a temporary break from offshore drilling is an important step, but it's not enough. We need to stop new offshore drilling for good, now. And then we need an aggressive plan to wean America from dirty fossil fuels in the next two decades.

This BP offshore rig that exploded was supposed to be state-of-the-art. We've also been assured again and again that the hundreds of offshore drilling rigs along our beaches are completely safe. Now, we've seen workers tragically killed. We've seen our ocean lit on fire, and now we're watching hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic oil seep toward wetlands and wildlife habitat.

This rig's well is leaking 210,000 gallons of crude every day, wiping out aquatic life and smothering the coastal wetlands of Louisiana and Mississippi. As the reeking slick spreads over thousands of square miles of ocean, it rapidly approaches the title of worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, even worse than 1989's Exxon Valdez oil spill. The well is under 5,000 feet of water, and it could take weeks or even months to cap it.

This disaster could unfortunately happen at any one of the hundreds of drilling platforms off our coasts, at any moment. It could happen at the drilling sites that the oil industry has proposed opening along the beaches of the Atlantic Coast.

Indeed, even before this spill, the oil and gas industry had torn apart the coastal wetlands of the Louisiana Bayou over the years. These drilling operations have caused Louisiana to lose 25 square miles of coastal wetlands, which are natural storm barriers, each year.

And it's hardly just the environmental costs of oil spills that we have to worry about with offshore drilling. The threat to the people who work on these platforms has again become terribly clear. In fact, more than 500 fires on oil platforms in the Gulf have injured or killed dozens of workers in just the past four years, according to the federal Minerals Management Service.

We don't need to pay this price for energy. We have plenty of clean energy solutions in place that will end our dependence on dirty fossil fuels, create good, safe jobs and breathe new life into our economy.

One huge example came Thursday, when the Obama administration approved our country's first offshore wind farm.

Our country has huge solar power potential as well. We can also save more oil through simple efficiency measures than could be recovered by new drilling on our coastlines.

This oil spill changes everything. We have hit rock-bottom in our fossil fuel addiction. This tragedy should be a wake-up call. It's time to take offshore drilling off the table for good.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Michael Brune.

[Jana]

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Events:2010:ExtraOrdinary_Technology_Conference#Featured:_John_Searl

2010 ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference in Albuquerque New Mexico? July 29-August 1

[Jana]

This thing could kill the oceans, reduce atmospheric oxygen through the loss of algae, and collapse the entire biosphere. However, the good news is that everyone will be so busy, they will not bunker bomb Iran.


http://pesn.com/2010/05/02/9501643_Mother_of_all_gushers_could_kill_Earths_oceans/

Read the whole article to get the picture.

[Jana]

  Grief an't going to get us anywhere, also informing those who don't have any
"capacity" is not compassionate at this point.
There are only a select few of the strong ones, capable of leadership who should
know at this early stage. If the regular media start laying out the larger
picture, then panic will ensue...talk about a reassessment of the plans one made
of ones life...it would be good to start a forum dedicated soley to this. This
is bigger than a war.

It seems we have to change all our plans in line with a slowburn survival
scenario. We need some of the NOAA/NASA scientists to do some calculations on
whether all that hydrocardon on the surface, and in the atmosphere will ignite,
if we get the big superflare activity/direct hit of the earth from the sun this
2013. Just to lay out the worst possible outcome.

Southern Hemisphere is looking pretty good at this point folks, the effects will
take longer to get down there...
Off to look at some ocean current charts. Hmm thats interesting, once it gets out of the gulf, it heads over to UK...Hmmm.

Use the event to build energy and consciousness, we gotta get moving.
Put on a smiley face!

[Jana]

Catchment and relief well look like a 'safe' option. They are building catchment boxes for all leaks and a new rig is being set up. The are hoping for 85% catchment.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FGMO8O5

Currents
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-florida-braces-for-impact.html

[Jana]

Thought: Perhaps Halliburton (Hell-burr-ton) may have sabotaged the concrete pouring as a corporate act against BP, so that BP could be bought out by a US company? But it was probably a miscalculation of timing...the drilling having punctured through almost 2 weeks prior to the necessary time for concrete setting. This seems inconceivable.

Speaking of shit—The morphine production in response to social status stress and trauma has a direct effect of subduing and incapacitating our nervous system, but it also has many indirect psychological effects that affect thought, behavior and experience. For example the constipation that morphine produces leads to unclear thinking, loss of selfhood, slow reflexes, inefficient metabolism and general toxicity that incapacitate a subordinate and trap them in the abusive situation. Over time, even subtle subliminal social stress can lead to grave consequences for health, emotional well-being and success in life. If pyramid society is held together by such debilitating social stress, then we need to  detoxify,  strengthen ourselves and find new meta-adaptation patterns in order to create a society that evolves rather than undermines our highest human potential.

[Francis]

This disaster could unfortunately happen at any one of the hundreds of drilling platforms off our coasts, at any moment. It could happen at the drilling sites that the oil industry has proposed opening along the beaches of the Atlantic Coast.

Based on this experience, I think that it's worth retrofitting all the platforms with valves and containment appurtenances. Not a big deal, but not cheap either.

Couple good vids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7cylfQtkDg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqfvUA2vRAM&NR=1

[jimtzu]

nice videos Francis...

while not related to the oil spill this sheds a light on big oils mindset.

<a href="http://current.com/e/87156551/en_US" target="_blank">http://current.com/e/87156551/en_US</a>

[Daniel]

That's some rough footage Jim. It's all money. The bigger the money, the more they beat the crap out of you. It's really evil that they don't care about the health and environmental impact. If they did, it would be a much more tolerable a situation, but that means it would cost them more money. They would rather ruin the health of the locals, after all, its not their bodies at stake.

[Jana]

Anyone got the dibs on where the technical discussion is at?
For starters, why didn't they know that the methane would gel and block the outflow at that pressure?
There are thousands of wells in the region, is this one different...deeper, more methane or something?
Also as far as shutting a valve at that temp, under that pressure...perhaps they need a new valve system?

http://www.youtube.com/user/rocksiphone#p/a/u/2/Ar0YCN7Dwa8  —Sterling Allen on the Gulf Spill.
Goldman Sachs, the banking giant admitted today that it made "a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico" one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water.

[Jana]

I am smelling an oil industry/banking conspiracy here...

http://www.youtube.com/user/rocksiphone#p/a/u/2/Ar0YCN7Dwa8 —Sterling Allen on the Gulf Spill. Goldman Sachs, admitted today that it made "a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico" one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water.

** An 'acoustic switch' would have prevented this catastrophe - it's a failsafe that shuts the flow of oil off at the source - costing half a million dollars each, and are required in off-shore drilling platforms in most of the world...except for the United States. This was one of the new deregulations devised by Dick Cheney during his secret meetings with the oil industry at the beginning of Bush's first term.

**If "cementing" is the cause, it could spell new troubles for Halliburton, whose work was also suspected in a well explosion that took place last August in the Timor Sea near Australia. It took 71 days to fully cap and contain that spill. The official investigation is still ongoing, but cementing was the main area of investigation, the head of the inquiry has said.

**BP's record is abysmal. Piple line leaks in Alaska and the Texas City oil refinery. Last October, it was hit with a record $87 million workplace-safety fine for failing to take corrective steps after a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/goldman-sachs-reveals-it_b_558774.html

[Francis]

"BP's record is abysmal" pretty much sums up the situation.

[Jana]

This is a slow ongoing disaster.
I suppose if it wasn't sabotage, then BP was not equipped to deal with a well of this depth.
I still don't understand why there was a punch through only 20 hours after the concrete was laid???
Anyone thought of a solution, short of atom bombs?