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