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Watching the live feed over the Interwebitube has been a sensation.

The hypnotic video of mud, gas and oil billowing from the seafloor has become an Internet sensation as Americans watch to see whether BP’s effort to plug the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico succeeds.

BP warned Friday that it could be Sunday or later before the outcome of the cliffhanger becomes clear. And scientists cautioned that few conclusions can be drawn with any certainty from watching the spillcam coverage of the “top kill.” But some said the video seemed to suggest BP was gaining ground.
[…]
BP, under pressure from Congress, made available a live video feed of what is going on underwater, and about 3,000 websites were showing a version of it that the PBS “Newshour” offered for free. On Thursday alone, show spokeswoman Anne Bell said, more than a million people watched it. Many found it hypnotic.




  1. Dallas says:

    Americans need to ween themselves off the oil tit. The most practical way to do it is quickly moving to electric cars.

    Planes and commercial vehicles, trucks need oil for it’s energy density but that’s it. That goodness we finally have an administration that gets this.

    While we lost a decade during the Cheney administration sucking on that oil tit even more, I’m hopeful we can cut Saudi oil tit consumption by 30-40% in 10 years time.

  2. zybch says:

    You have an unhealthy obsession with greasy tits.

  3. really nice sharing thanks

  4. bobbo, wage slaves unite says:

    #2–zybiotch==you obviously have never had greasy tit. Be sure to get extra onion rings for the ring toss.

    So–still focused on the moving pictures huh?

    Yep==most constantly predicted and unanimously predicted and warned by ALL parties involved as the cause of our ultimate destruction===continues unabated.

    Amusing? Only if you like greasy tits. Two per order please.

  5. bobbo, beer in the morning is bad for posting says:

    “Usually” when business screws over the public and lies their ass off, the motive is clear: money. but here the short sighted self interest of the oil industry is befuddling and moronic. Look at all the resource/revenue they are loosing and how much it is going to cost them. I’d think the BP board/itself would “care” why safety standards used elsewhere in the world by law were not used in the USA by choice? IT JUST MAKES SENSE!!! Sonic Safety Valves and a relief well drilled at the same time are standard elsewhere.

    Any help on why this self interested well known relatively cheap investment is not made by Big Oil just because they aren’t forced to?

    BUT ONCE AGAIN–no jail time, the biggest crooks go free while Big Government acts all innocent, and libertarians day dream about being Big Oil CEO’s.

    Silly Hoomans. ((Beer Me!!))

  6. Nobody says:

    The public demand cheap gas, there are near riots when the pump price approaches half that in europe, any politician that suggests any limit on drilling, any environmental or safety standards is hounded out.

    Yet all this is the oil companies fault.

    Presumably the reason there isn’t free health care is all the fault of hospital billing depts.

  7. Skeptic says:

    This chart by itself is useless and misleading.

    Among other things, oil consumption is directly related to GDP. So here’s what to do…. become a third world economy.

    Problem solved.

  8. We're all gonna die anyway... says:

    Blah blah blah…

    More fresh water gets dumped into the sea by the Colorado river in a couple seconds then all the oil leaked to date. The earth will heal itself.

    So if you want to watch the video in a much smaller window and not have a browser open.

    Launch Windows Media Player, File, Open URL… then paste in:

    http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:46245.asx?bkup=46260

  9. Skeptic says:

    Re: #10 “More fresh water gets dumped into the sea by the Colorado river in a couple seconds then all the oil leaked to date. The earth will heal itself.”

    Finally, someone with common sense. The ocean is the perfect place to dump all our radioactive and other hazardous waste. More fresh water gets dumped into the sea by the Colorado river in a couple seconds then all the radioactive waste created to date.

    Who needs garbage dumps? We have the ocean. That Colorado river is just amazing! Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

  10. Gman says:

    Ahh did any-one notice the Elephant in the room on this Graphic????

    Consumption is EXCEEDING Production

    So where is the extra 400,000 barrels a day coming from…..

  11. Skeptic says:

    Gman, like anthropogenic global warming charts, this one is skewed for maximum effect. In truth, consumption and production are kept relatively equal, with a stockpile to maintain flow discrepancies. In fact, production has been exceeding consumption for some time, causing the price of crude to drop.

  12. patriot says:

    from graphic
    “North America (excluding U.S.)”
    is that Canada?
    but why? it is shorter too,

  13. bobbo, not to get picky says:

    I thought the Colorado River actually doesn’t make it to the Sea of Cortez anymore? Maybe they openned up the flush valve for picture taking? But its nonsense to remark/think that “the Earth will cleanse itself” so there is no problem worth fixing. Part of the way the earth WILL ultimately fix itself/go on is without that fuzzy mold like covering called humanity.

    #7–Asleep==no, my question was not the obvious conclusion anyone should draw and the rest of the world other than the USA has drawn. MY question was why doesn’t Big Oil regulate itself (safety wise) in its own best interests? If I was Big Oil, I wouldn’t like seeing my profit flow streaming wild into the ocean. Seems like a loss of revenue to me.

  14. Skeptic says:

    re#15, bobbo,”MY question was why doesn’t Big Oil regulate itself (safety wise) in its own best interests?

    Penny wise and pound foolish and it won’t happen again until next time. Besides, there’s plenty more from where that came from… greedy investors money and untapped oil, that is.

    The best that can come out of this is for all North American drilling to be regulated by government. They aren’t going to stop drilling offshore.

  15. angry says:

    Why doesn’t Obama care about the oil leak?

    This is worse than Bush’s Katrina!

    Thanks Barry for abdicating your responsibilities and going on vacation.

  16. MikeN says:

    The spill amount seems rather low. Is this calculator working right? If it is gallon, that is about 10,000 barrels per day, and about half a million barrels to date?

  17. MikeN says:

    Something Steve McIntyre has pointed out. BP’s published response plans report a worst case of about 250,000 barrels per day. So why can’t they handle this spill that is a tenth of that?

  18. Glenn E. says:

    Apparently sometime last year, a similar oil well “blow out” occurred off the coast of Mexico. And it wasn’t stopped for ten months. Funny how this didn’t make world news, at the time. Ten months is an awful long time to keep the lid on something. But I guess the media was well paid to keep its collective mouth shut. And I guess Mexico’s eco-system doesn’t count, anyway.

    I occurs to me that most forms of major profit making, in the world, depend an awful lot on gambling. Whether its financial transactions, stock investments, or natural resource blundering. The gamble here was how to such as much crude oil out of the earth. Without spending too much of the profit on safety mechanisms, to prevent the worst from happening. If doesn’t appear that BP knows how to adequately deal with such a problem, at this depth. And never spend the time and money learning how to, or to prevent it. They just gambled that it wouldn’t happen. And hoped they’d never have to pay the price of being wrong.

    I think they should drop a very tall cylinder over the well head. And pour tons of concrete and gravel into that, until it smothers off the thing. The so-called “relief wells” will being doing the very same thing. Only deeper down the shaft, where they can redrill thru the concrete plug, later. But it appears that BP is more concerned about preserving their expensive well head, for later use. Than they are prepared to sacrifice it, to save the Gulf and the US south coast’s health. So the final solution will take three months, instead of a few weeks. The oceans be damned.

  19. Anon says:

    Well, until there is a viable electric car on the market, we won’t be dumping gasoline powered cars.


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