Thursday, June 10
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How deep is the Deepwater Horizon rig? Karl Tate from OurAmazingPlanet.com put together this handy chart that shows the relative depth of the Deepwater Horizon compared to other recognizable features of the planet…manmade and otherwise (click on the image below to see the whole chart):
“They’re everywhere”
via Pensacola oil spill: blobs of oil tar are washing ashore in Florida – OrlandoSentinel.com.
Below are 20 messages. Some are ACTUAL responses from BP Executives and some are from the FAKE BP Global PR Twitter account. Can you tell which is which>
1. “We regretfully admit that something has happened off the Gulf Coast. More to come.”
2. “What the hell did we do to deserve this?”
3. “Are people mad at us for drilling in the ocean? Maybe God shouldn’t have put oil there in the first place.”
4. “We will fix it. I guarantee it. The only question is we do not know when.”
5. “The environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.”
6. “Here’s the thing: we made $45 million A DAY in profits in 2009. This really isn’t a big deal.”
7. “Catastrophe is a strong word, let’s all agree to call it a whoopsie daisy.”
8. “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I’d like my life back.”
9. “We’re all disappointed that the “top kill” operation didn’t work. We failed to wrestle this beast to the ground.”
10. “All ideas for alternative solutions welcome on (281) 366-5511.”
11. “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”
12. “At night the gulf really doesn’t look that bad.”
13. “You don’t go drilling 5,000 feet underwater with the tools you want, you do it with the tools you have.”
14. “We will only win this if we can win the hearts and minds of the local community. It’s a big challenge.”
15. “People are upset, so we are working nonstop to make as many ‘BP cares’ shirts as we can.”
16. “Food poisoning is a really big issue when you got a concentration of this number of people in temporary camps, temporary accommodation. It’s something we have to be very, very mindful of.”
17. “So, I actually haven’t been watching the [live feed] video.”
18. “I actually don’t know, this moment, what we’re actually doing.”
19. “We are dedicated to helping the wildlife in the gulf. Any birds that need cleaning must report to 287 Quartemain St., Baton Rouge, LA 70801.”
20. “Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp.”
Click this link for the answers:BP’s Global PR vs. BPGlobalPR – Newsweek.
“We are not at liberty to fly media, journalists, photographers, or scientists,” the company said in a letter it sent on Tuesday to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). “We strongly feel that the reason for this massive [temporary flight restriction] is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press.”
The ability to document a disaster, particularly through images, is key to focusing the nation’s attention on it, and the resulting clean-up efforts. Within days of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, pictures of dead otters, fish, and birds, as well as oil-covered shorelines, ignited nationwide outrage and led to a backlash against Exxon. Consumers returned some 10,000 of Exxon’s 7 million credit cards. Forty days after the spill, protestors organized a national boycott of Exxon. So far, no national boycott of BP is in the works, despite growing frustration over the company’s inability to cap the leaking well. Obviously, pictures are emerging from this spill, but much of the images are coming from BP and government sources.
Photographers Say BP Restricts Access to Oil Spill – Newsweek.
BP had ultimate authority over drilling decisions, the Deepwater Horizon’s chief mechanic, Doug Brown said in sworn testimony Wednesday.
The BP company man at a meeting stood up and said, “This is how it’s going to be.”
The BP official, a “company man” in industry parlance, would have been the top decision-maker on the rig, although his role may have been complicated by having a number of higher-ranking BP officials on hand to celebrate the Deepwater Horizon’s safety record.
A BP employee named Donald Vidrine, who’s been identified as one of the company men, was on the original witness list for the multi-day hearings, but is no longer scheduled to testify due to an undisclosed medical condition.
The other BP employee on the witness list is Robert Kaluza, who did appear but pleaded the Fifth.
BP refused to identify what role Kaluza and Vidrine had on the Deepwater Horizon.
Michael Williams, a Transocean employee who was chief electronics technician on the rig, said there was “confusion” between those high-ranking officials in an 11 a.m. meeting on the day of the rig blast, according to a sworn statement.
According to Mr. Williams’s account, Transocean’s rig manager, Jimmy Wayne Harrell, was discussing the plans for the next few hours’ work, including taking out the drilling mud and running a test to make sure gas wasn’t seeping into the well. Mr. Harrell explained in the meeting that he had received the plans from BP.
Then, according to Mr. Williams’s statement, the top-ranked BP employee assigned to the rig, Donald Vidrine, disagreed and said “that was not the correct procedure.”
When I read this article about BP defending its response to the Gulf Oil spill, for some reason my mind went to the scene in “A Few Good Men
BP, for all of their pompous arrogance, is just like Colonel Jessep. Replace a few words in that speech with words like Oil, and it might as well be BP’s position right now.
There are over 5,000 offshore oil rigs. Forget the “accidents”…what happens when Terrorists, or North Korea or…worse… starts torpedoing them?
In the meantime, the company plans this “Top Kill”. Who better to explain it, than Bill Nye the Science Guy?
When he’s not producing, directing, writing and starring in movies about Wolves, and when he’s not dating Elle MacPherson, not singing in his rock/country band, or running his casino Kevin Costner is an avid environmentalist, fisherman, and greentech entrepreneur.
While making Waterworld in 1995, Costner was troubled by oil spills like the Exxon Valdez and started developing a system to cruise the surface of the sea and clean oily water. His business partner, John Houghtaling, says:
“The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners, which sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed,” Houghtaling said. “On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water” [Los Angeles Times].
BP and the U.S. Coast Guard plan to test six of the massive devices next week.
Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor Corp is taking a $50 million stake in California electric carmaker Tesla Motors, which will take over a closed San Francisco-area Toyota plant for its all-electric sedan, the companies said on Thursday.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk (of Paypal and Space-X fame) described the investment as a “gesture of support” from Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda, who approached him and struck a deal in a whirlwind corporate romance that included dinner at Musk’s house and a test ride around Los Angeles in a pricey electric Roadster sport car.
BP now reports they are siphoning 210,000 gallons of oil per day. But that’s not ALL the oil coming out of the leak. Last week they were estimating the leak was spewing 210,000 gallons a day…no it looks like twice that.
Using the following widget, let’s say BP is harvesting half of the oil using the siphon tube. That would mean there was at least 420,000 gallons per day is leaking from the pipe — 12.5 million gallons total so far. We’re beyond the Exxon Valdez at this point.
Exposure to pesticides used on common kid-friendly foods — including frozen blueberries, fresh strawberries and celery — appears to boost the chances that children will be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, new research shows.
Youngsters with high levels of pesticide residue in their urine, particularly from widely used types of insecticide such as malathion, were more likely to have ADHD, the behavior disorder that often disrupts school and social life, scientists in the United States and Canada found.
Pesticides in kids linked to ADHD, study finds – Kids and parenting- msnbc.com.
