If BP Spilled Coffee

The BP guys seem to have finally stopped the oil leak. Oil spill? It doesn't really seem like it should be called a spill. Sure, there's ooze spilling out of the ground, but the oil wasn't really spilled, so I don't know what they're calling it (other than the biggest environmental F-up that one could possibly imagine). They are worried that the well is now leaking methane, but so are most senior citizens that I know, so I'm not sure how big of a deal that really is. Anyway, in honor of this disaster possibly being on the way to being cleaned up (they're never going to be able to "fix" it no matter what they say; we both know that), I present to you a video that you, quite likely, have already seen. It's what would happen if BP spilled coffee. Given the fact that the ocean is filled with a gazillion tons of goo which is now washing ashore in the form of, among other things, tar balls (and if you suspect that you have tar balls, please, see your doctor immediately), this imagined reaction doesn't seem so farfetched.

The "How Screwed Is The Gulf" Meter

I found this fascinating, yet depressing little tool over there at PBS. I don't know if there is an official name for this, but I like to think of it as the "We're Effed" widget. Slide that little box underneath where it says "Adjust Leak Rate" if you'd like to see the damage based upon the different estimates by various entities with their heads up their arses. If you'd like this whole gallons thing translated into barrels, you're going to have to do the math on your own. But I will tell you that there are 42 gallons of oil in a barrel. Oil prices, as of the writing of this post, are around $75-$77 per barrel. You're going to have to do that math as well. Oh, and the wanting to hang yourself after you get a clearer picture of how much crap is leaking into our precious ocean? Yeah, you're on your own there. But I could probably tell you where to get a good deal on some rope.

Bureaucracy At Its Finest

I, like the pelicans, enjoyed the Gulf Coast while it was not so oily. You know, back in the day. Like, March. But I have the feeling that those days are completely gone. It's become clear to me that it is no longer a matter of when the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster will be cleaned up, but it's a matter of IF it will EVER be cleaned up. Actually, I'll take that a step further. It's now a matter of anyone will be ALLOWED to ATTEMPT to clean it up. And if the federal government is going to have much more to do with it, the answer will be a resounding no.

Let me tell you what happened yesterday. Tell me if this does not make you just want to pound your head upside a wall and not stop until you lose consciousness and/or at least a pint of cranial fluids. According to something called the Associated Content and the more familiar ABC News, there really doesn't seem to be anyone in charge of anything. That's why Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana (who seems to act like a distant relative of Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock on occasion) has spent the last ten days trying to get a bunch of barges out into the gulf so that they can begin sucking up some of the bazillion-gazillion gallons of oil that is ruining the ocean. He finally got his barges. He got sixteen barges. And they got right to work sucking up that oil. That is, until the US Coast Guard shut them down.

So here we have something finally being done and being effective in the way that that oil that shouldn't be in the ocean was being removed from the ocean by these barges. OK? That's a good thing, right? Naturally, with some progress (albeit a small amount of progress) being made, there had to be a pretty good reason for the Coast Guard to halt the work of these barges and send them back to shore, right? Well, that's what you'd think. But in this ridiculous, utopian world that people are trying to create, that's not exactly what happened here. No, the barges were ordered to stop sucking up the oil and to return to shore so that the Coast Guard could make sure that the barges all had fire extinguishers and life jackets aboard. Um, wait. What the what?!

You have got to be dry shaving me! Fire extinguishers?! Oh, right. Because if there had been fire extinguishers aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded, a fire extinguisher would have been key! And life jackets?! Really? They're BARGES. THOSE are the reasons why you're having those sixteen barges return to shore? Where they would then SIT for another 24 hours?! What in the world is wrong with you people?!

Tell me this: Could the Coast Guard have not sent someone out to those barges to poke their nose around while the barge was at sea and was actively vacuuming up oil to do their little fire extinguisher count? Why did it take over 24 hours to inspect 16 barges? Couldn't they have just checked with whoever made the barges or whatever and asked them how many fire extinguishers and life jackets were provided for each vessel? Oh, well, sure. They could have done that. But apparently, they had trouble finding the barge making folks. So instead of having a barge out at sea without enough fire extinguishers, they decided to have all of the barges stop what they were doing, return to shore and sit there while the oil continues to wreak havoc on the once beautiful and once wonderful ocean.

This could possibly be the stupidest thing I have ever heard. And it's a perfect example of how the perceived necessity of over-regulation is going to be the downfall of this country. It's already proving itself to be the downfall of the Gulf Coast environment. Give it time. It will make its way to the rest of the land. I guarantee it.

How Not To Stop An Oil Spill

I'm starting to get a little bit more than just a little nervous about this oil spill/leak/disaster that is going on in the Gulf of Mexico right now. It's been spewing a ridiculous amount of oil (oil that we need, for cryin' out loud!) since April 20th and it doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon. Now, that's not to say that they haven't been trying to stop the leak. They've been trying, uh....stuff to stop the leak. But nothing is making a whole lot of sense to me. I realize that I'm not a scientist (nor do I play one on TV), but their solutions don't seem to involve a whole lot of science.

After realizing that there wasn't just a simple "OFF" switch on this oil well, the first idea that was proposed and implemented in an attempt to save the environment from further damage was to burn the oil off of the water. Let that sink in (pun not really intended) for a minute. We're going to set an oil slick on fire. The flames. The billowing, dark smoke. Did I mention the flames? Yeah. There were flames. Oh, but they're also spraying it with some sort of detergent chemical as well, so maybe that will help cut down on the dark smoke once they've...cleaned...the oil? Something? I don't get it.

So, there was all of the burning and spraying. That hasn't done much other than make a mess from what I can tell. Their next brilliant solution was to build a containment box. According to The Washington Post, the box was "...a 100-ton, 40-foot-tall steel containment dome". They wanted to lower it onto the largest leak (apparently, there's more than one, so that should simplify things a great deal while we're racing against time to save a fragile ecosystem out there), sort of like a hat. Uh, OK....I...I...guess. Again, I'm not a scientist, but that doesn't seem like it would work. It's over a mile down there! How come I can see this outcome coming, but the folks who went ahead with this plan didn't? Whatever the reason, "The dome became clogged with methane hydrates, an ice-like slush created when pressurized gas from the well mixed with cold seawater. The hydrates, which are lighter than water, stuck to the inside of the dome and made it buoyant." I don't even know what all of that means (other than "it floated"), but you'd think that the scientists would have seen it all coming and moved onto their next idea.

But maybe they didn't move on because their next idea isn't much better than the two I've already described. According to The Washington Post next up "...is a small containment dome -- four feet wide, five feet tall and shaped like a barrel cut in half -- that will be lowered over the main leak." Four feet wide? Five feet tall? But...that other one was 40 feet tall and weighed 200,000 pounds! You can go from something that is 40 feet tall to something that is 5 feet tall? Why wouldn't you have just started with the smaller one? That way, if it worked, you could always lower the bigger one on top of it later, right? (Have I mentioned I'm not a scientist?) I don't know, but here's what they're saying about this plan: "The smaller dome will not capture nearly as much seawater as the large dome did....But it might also mean that less of the oil is captured." Really?

You don't say! A dome that is one-eighth the size of the original dome is going to not capture as much seawater, nor as much oil? Fascinating! I did not see that coming! Wait a minute. Yes, I did! Who wouldn't?! Oh, let me guess...the engineers and the scientists? Probably. Geez.

But here's my absolute favorite idea that they're getting ready to try. (For those of you new to the blog here, that's my way of implying that it's probably one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of.) I had to check various sources online to see if this was true because it seemed completely insane and something that I would have thought had been concocted by 14-year old boys. Ready? Remember, I'm not making this crap up. "Engineers will use golf balls and shredded automobile tires in what they call a "junk shot" to try to clog the oil well." Um, what now?

According to a one Kent Wells, the senior vice president of exploration and production for BP, "We'll be pumping pieces of tire. We'll be pumping knots in ropes...There's a little bit of a science in this, even though it sounds odd." What, exactly, IS that "little bit" of a science that you're implementing here? Because it doesn't just sound odd. It sounds freaking weird and useless. You're going to try and throw golf balls in there? And tires? Tell me something, if you can throw all of that stuff in there and get it to stop leaking, what so you just throw a big ol' LID in there and cap the damn thing off?! Golf balls and tires?! Good Lord, man.

I don't get why this relief effort is turning into an episode of The Three Stooges (with or without Shemp, it's your call). They seem a bit clueless when I read things like "Officials were testing some of the 30 pounds of "tar balls" that washed up on Alabama's Dauphin Island to determine whether they came from the spill." Do they usually have "tar balls" washing up onto that island? Oh, no? They don't? Then where in the hell do they think that they came from!? Of course they came from the damn spill! Again, NOT a scientist, but do you really need to be one to figure that out?!

We're doomed. Doomed.