It should also be noted that the entire internet apparently does not use oil, drives no cars, and is trying it's eviscerations of BP on wooden keyboards.I'm sorry, but that's some serious bullshit. People live in society. They can only use whats available to them. If it were my choice, I would rather see (slightly) higher gas prices then offshore drilling, especially after this accident. But I don't get to make that choice.
Which basic safety procedures are those? We don't know exactly what happened yet. We know that there was a blow-out and that this was preceded by pressure readings which some considered anomalous, but when you're working at several thousand metres under the sea-bed you are constantly dealing with impartial and incomplete information. Not only that but we don't know to what extent these decisions were driven by company policy (for which senior BP executives are responsible) and to what extent they were driven by the decisions of the BP D/S on the rig.Except, you know, we kind of do know but now you're saying "oh, we don't know for sure!" We know BP spouted bullshit on their application. We know, for the most part, that BP pressured transocean to cut corners to speed up the process. We know they've been convicted of misconduct in the past. What else do we need to know? It's also only 1.6km below the surface, not "several thousand metres"
KFC now offering the Top Kill sandwich! Bacon. Cheese. Mud. Sandwiched between two oily chicken slabs served on a plate of shame #bpcaresposted by delmoi at 9:10 AM on May 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
It's perfectly okay not to follow politics that closely. Just don't go around making categorical statements of fact like:You're confused. Obama campaigned against new offshore drilling. Then he flipped around and argued for it, making my statement correct.More problematic though is the fact that while Obama campaigned against offshore drilling, just before the well blew, he actually flipped around and started arguing for offshore drilling.
It's just not true. The opposite of fact.
I hear this, but I don't agree that it's "buck-passing bullshit". I still think that there is room for even the smallest of adjustments - in taking some personal responsibility, wherever possibleNope, sorry. The idea that environmentalism = personal sacrifice is one of the stupidest things out there. It gives the (false) impression that if environmental laws do pass, then people's lives are going to be worse. When in fact there won't be much of a difference at all -- electricity prices might be a little higher (but not much) and vehicles would be more likely to be hybrids. You could get most places by taking mass transit. They are things most people wouldn't notice or really mind.
Big coimpnay acts like big compan, that's how it works. You think any other oil companies aren't involved in similar compromises and trade offs all the time? Do you think this is the only time anything has gone wrong with oil drilling? There is going to be a non-zero chance of spills regardless of whatever precautions are in place.What's your point? We should just let this go because they were just a "big coimpnay" acting like a "big compan"?
Banning off-shore drilling for 3 months isn't a solution. Building an electrical super-grid to the American south-west is a solution. Converting our fleets of trucks from diesel to natural gas is a solution. Nuclear plants are a solution. Colossal wind farms are a solution.Natural gas? That might help with oil leaks, but it won't do much to prevent global warming. It's still a greenhouse releasing energy source.
What you'd have them do is nothing at all, except lobby for government action as it's the only way to get a 100% solution.It doesn't hurt anything if they take personal measures, but if they give the impression that everyone would have to live like they do in order to solve the problems, then they are doing more harm then good, IMO.
You don't need to. You need a significant minority of early adopters to buy the expensive option, so that over time economies of scale and demand driven by aspiration combine to bring down the price, no govt required.And how exactly are consumers supposed to individually buy mass transit? Or walkable neighborhoods? Or Wind farms? Or super-grids capable of moving electricity from wind/solar corridors to the rest of the country? Obviously, they can't. You can't even get net metering that can make solar panels more useful/profitable without collective action.
What you are proposing is the govt order Apple to make and sell $600 iPads in 1977, without going through the decades of $10,000 computers first. And *that* ain't gonna happen.
Same would be true with delmoi-disapproved individual action. It'll take decades (that we probably don't have, admittedly) of $10,000 solar panels, but the end result will be the same.Wtf are you talking about? I wrote this:
There are some things you can do, like putting solar panels on your roof, or driving a hybrid car that will help, but (if you notice) don't actually entail any real sacrifice, just upfront investment that gets paid back over time.Things like solar panels and hybrid cars can catch on. They're economically feasible right now. But it's never going to happen that enough people are willing to give up their cars and switch to bikes unless we get government supported alternatives (and btw, there is a huge amount of government support for driving gasoline fired cars)
There are some things you can do, like putting solar panels on your roof, or driving a hybrid car that will help, but (if you notice) don't actually entail any real sacrifice, just upfront investment that gets paid back over time.Yet you also said:
$10,000 is a lot of money to me, so if I spent it on, say, solar panels it wouldn't make much of a difference overall (although I would recoup my investment over time). It would have a huge impact on me personally, though.So which is it? Solar panels are "no real sacrifice" or have a huge impact on you personally? Or are these huge impacts non-sacrifical because they're purely monetary?
Solar panels aren't really a viable option currently - at least in temperate climates. I'm a planner - I did a quick costing estimate last year as part of a land use bylaw review and, based on current and projected natural gas prices, it would take the average consumer 100 years to break even (after a $25000 investment in solar panels) over a conventional gas system-- jimmythefishWell, I have no idea what you're basing the costs on. Here's a 370W solar panel kit, including a grid tie in for $989.91. (That's $2.60/watt) At 10¢/kwh and assuming an average of 4 hours of sunlight a day, that's 1.4kwh/day or 540kwh/year. It would take 19 years to earn back your investment.
To the extent that Obama does not firmly, indelibly establish in the minds of the public that it was some specific other party's fault, it becomes his fault. To the extent that he and his supporters do not reinforce the Other Guy's Fault over and over and over again, they create the possibility that it will revert to becoming Obama's fault. -- darth_tediousI agree. What is the deal with Obama never wanting to blame bush for all this shit? It just seems stupid, and annoying. It's also his problem because he was a supporter of offshore drilling. And not just some random guy who supported it, but he was the president and had a huge impact on whether or not we would do it. And he's also still for it. Saying that it "makes sense" to develop our own resources, for national security reasons. Because obviously the risk of oil all over our coastlines isn't a national security issue...
It's a regulatory failure that could have been prevented by pre-drilling relief wells. It's not complicated. Heads should roll. -- jimmythefishYou know what else could have prevented this? NOT DOING OFFSHORE DRILLING. I'm sorry but discussing these technical fixes totally misses the point. We don't NEED that oil. So why put the economy/environment in so much danger to get it? in the first place.
What is that supposed to mean? That actually the whole panic is because America is involved this time? That's it's not actually any kind of global ecosystem disaster? That as I don't care about America I don't really need to care about this, except insofar as the effect on the US economy would affect the rest of the world? -- jacalata
darth, i see what you're saying about Obama and communication but i'd much rather that he was working away in the background than spending his effort trying to explain to us in excruciating detail what's going on. I'm happy with "i'm on it." -- ukdanaeWhy? He doesn't know any more about capping deep see oil wells then any other random person.
So which is it? Solar panels are "no real sacrifice" or have a huge impact on you personally? Or are these huge impacts non-sacrifical because they're purely monetary? -- bonaldiSolar panels are no real sacrifice because they pay for themselves in a 10-20 years. That's why I specifically included them as an example of something that was a good idea. I'm not sure why you're having trouble understanding this. Solar panels are something I think do make sense to do on an individual basis.
You had your chance with Jimmy Carter, and you fucking blew it. So get fucked. Fucking country.posted by enn at 4:46 PM on May 30, 2010 [5 favorites]
Yet you also used them as an example of something that would have a huge impact at a personal level and have not make much difference overall.No, because it's not a sacrifice. That's what makes it worthwhile. The solar panels pay for themselves over time. Given the current prices, they can pay for themselves in 10-20 years, and after that produce free income. Yes, buying solar panels, as an individual, won't have much of an impact. But it's something that actually can appeal to a broad swath of the public, since it makes economic sense. Other examples might be CFL light bulbs and better insulation.
Can't you see the confusion engendered by you trying to use solar panels as an example of a pointless sacrifice that won't solve our overall environmental problems, while also using them as an example of a worthwhile individual contribution to solving that same problem? -- bonaldi
This chart is why Obama supports offshore drilling. -- Max PowerUgh. That's so wrong, sorry. Offshore oil production is a drop in the bucket compared to other sources of oil. Only a tiny portion of our oil consumption is made up for by deep water drilling. Not doing it wouldn't have much of an impact on the average person. Oil wouldn't be that much more expensive. And instead of waiting for production to ramp up, we'd be better off
The problem isn't the technology. This incident was caused by faulty equipment -- wierdoUh... Read that again.
and blatant disregard for safety. -- wierdoWell, I kind of think that if a technology is 1) sensitive to irresponsible use, and 2) capable of wreaking widespread destruction then we probably shouldn't be letting people use it at all. Why should we as a society tolerate
That we haven't had a comparable spill in 30 years despite thousands of wells being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico kinda argues against your point there. -- wierdoNo it doesn't! If someone proposed doing this such that you would only have one blowout every 30 years no one would support it. If we actually needed this oil, it would be a different issue, but we don't. Oil is going to go away eventually, and we need to be moving off of it as fast as possible for other reasons!
delmoi, I agree completely that we need to be moving away from oil. One unforced errors in tens of thousands of wells drilled is a pretty low failure rate.It doesn't matter if the failure rate is "low" if the failures are this catastrophic. Twice in 3 decades is still way to often.
Bus drivers driving off a cliff doesn't make me think we should ban buses, it makes me think we should have better monitoring of the alertness of commercial drivers.Or just not have the bus drive by the cliff in the first place. Again if there weren't plenty of reasons to move off oil, then it would at least make sense to try to make this safer. But why would want to try doing that when the downsides outweigh the upsides even if the rigs could be perfectly safe. And nothing is "perfectly safe" when it depends on people not fucking up. People are always going to fuck up. That's why I like new nuke designs that can't fail even if people screw everything up. Wind and solar plants can't cause catastrophic problems, and they aren't susceptible to fucking up.
Current world energy use is *googling* 15 terawatts, and we can expect that to grow substantially. I don't think we know much about what happens when we start extracting, say, 30-40 terawatts from wind.How much do you think gets extracted from trees every day?
Just in the US, offshore drilling represents more than 30% of productionYeah our production which is tiny. Our production is already pretty small compared to our consumption. If we stopped producing oil in the U.S. entirely, it wouldn't have that big of an impact. Offshore drilling is only a tiny portion of our consumption. Right now we produce 10% of the world's oil, and use 25%. Which would make offshore oil account for 12% of what we use. But that goes into the global supply, so it wouldn't affect overall oil prices much at all. The U.S only has 2.2% of the worlds reserves, too.
Thousands of wells successfully drilled, completed and producing against one operator with a known and well established track record for shoddy practices being overseen by a regulator known to be in desperate need of restructuring and reform.Again, if all it takes is one fuckup to cause a disaster this size, then the fact that you can drill 'thousands' of wells without a problem doesn't matter. Also, my understanding is that BP has a pretty sizeable chunk of the offshore drilling, anyway.
Not so. Instaed of "drop in a bucket", try, "about a third" and "far and away the largest potential for future resource growth".A third of a small and irrelevant number, and growth in a resource we don't want growing in the first place.
[L]et's say you had... a small but very dynamic, very aggressive start-up nuclear-reactor company with some great ideas about how to run a reactor at half the cost of those big inefficient old utility companies. The competition will be great for the business, driving down prices everywhere. But wouldn't you know it, you just can't get your company off the ground. Why? Because the federal government requires you to insure yourself for $10 billion in damages in case of an accident. (For anything above $10 billion, the taxpayer picks up the tab.) Just because of the tiny chance that your reactor might melt down and turn the tri-state area into a radioactive wasteland, you'd have to pay $400,000 a year in premiums on your reactor. At that price, only the big guys, the monopolies, the Florida Power and Lights of the world can operate nuclear reactors. There's no room here for the little guy. Terrible, huh?so i guess to me the proof that anything has changed, kinda like with finreg, will be if massive industry subsidies are ever curtailed; it's not only that externalities are being exploited, but that this is being encouraged rather than punished!
This brings us to offshore drilling. As we're all by now aware, the liability limit on offshore oil spills isn't $10 billion. It's $75m. Anything above that, and the taxpayer picks up the tab. There's a bill afoot in the Senate to raise the liability limit to $10 billion, but Republicans have blocked it twice, arguing that liability limits that high will push little mom-and-pop offshore drilling platforms and supertanker operations out of the business and reduce competition. And now it turns out that the Obama administration, though it criticises Republicans for blocking the bill, agrees that the $10 billion limit is too high.
Of all the priorities the American taxpayer has at the moment, is putting tens of billions of public dollars on the line to subsidise competition by small operators in the offshore-drilling business really on the list? What is the justification for subsidising insurance for offshore drilling, with its record of repeated spills, more heavily than we subsidise nuclear power, which has an excellent safety record? What is the justification for subsidising either of them more heavily than industries like wind and solar power, which pose no catastrophic risks?
uranium mining isn't all kittens and sunshineAIUI uranium mining is, broadly speaking, about as bad as coal mining. You just have to do a lot less of it.
President Obama said an independent commission investigating the Gulf oil spill will follow every lead "without fear or favor" and that if U.S. laws were broken, those responsible would be brought to justice.posted by saulgoodman at 10:58 AM on June 1, 2010
Obama spoke in the Rose Garden after meeting with the co-chairs of the panel looking into the April 20 Deepwater Horizon accident and the subsequent effort to control and contain the undersea gusher that has poured untold barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
"If the laws on our books are insufficient to prevent such a spill, the laws must change. If oversight was inadequate to enforce these laws, oversight has to be reformed," the president said.
Also on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will meet with federal prosecutors and state attorneys general in New Orleans. It will be Holder's first trip to survey the damage before what legal experts believe will be a criminal investigation into the disaster.posted by saulgoodman at 11:09 AM on June 1, 2010
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posted by box at 7:57 AM on May 30, 2010