On Ignoring Expert Opinion

In June, GOP Governor (GOP ) Bobby Jindal ordered the construction of a series of berms to keep oil from the Deepwater spill off the Louisiana coast. They were built by popular demand, as it were, but against the wishes of local scientists, who argued that the benefits did not outweigh the risks, and that the berms would not last out the 2010 hurricane season.

The same berm pictured above, in early July:
A metaphor for so many things.

Pretty Picture O' Doom

Oily Wave, Orange Beach, AL.

Gulf Oil Spill: Connecting The Dots

From the comments at The Daily Irrelevant:

Mudak on June 10th, 2010 at 21:31: Um, even if we think his thesis has any credibility, why is Obama in quotes?

John Sinteur on June 10th, 2010 at 21:34: Because, without his birth certificate, how can you be sure he’s called Obama?

Gulf Oil Spill: Containment Cap Coming Apart?

This is funny


This maybe not so much:
You can wait a week for the MSM to pick up on this, or read The Oil Drum today. Don't know if this is a dangerous development or no.

Oilicane

My favorite web-comic on the oil spill. And for a serious discussion of the same topic, go here.

Oil Spill Sunday

...in an otherwise fine article about the financial troubles of British Petroleum, this statement

BP has being very aggressive about addressing the latest catastrophe, spending as much as US$930-billion, including claims and federal costs, on the spill, according to an estimate from the company in Friday.

...proves to be on the high side by a factor of 1,000.

Meanwhile, if you want to know what the news will be 24 to 48 hours from now re the Great Gulf Oil Spill of 2010, read The Oil Drum (also good for Peak Oil stuff and material on how the energy sector and the environment interact, usually to the detriment of the latter). Seriously, "Top-Kill" failed on Thursday; the lamestream reported that on Saturday, even when BP was already readying LMRP on Friday. Mind you, they're mostly oil industry and engineering types writing and commenting over there, and they do nothing to dispel the stereotype of engineer as arrogant dick.

This guy has also been following events with a sharp eye. And that explosion noted the other day does indeed seem to have been an explosion type thingy rather than dirt kicked up the ROV (BP's submersible) moving around.

Boom! Part II

Video of explosion and possible rupture at BP's oil-spill cleanup site:


From here.

Note: Some specualtion as to whether what we're seeing here is the result of the robot camera backing away and panning up, with the debris falling from the camera itself. Possible, but towards the end of the vid you see the debris moving fairly decisively towards and past the camera lens (a bit like a tv space-ship moving through an asteroid field), which suggests its being propelled from the leak.

PS. The best explanation of why this may not be an explosion/rupture is here. And, oh, by the way, BP's 2nd attempt to plug the well has officially failed.

Oil Spill Update: BOOM?

It appears that British Petroleum's attempt to cap their oil spill has gone seriously lateral.

Their robot camera is looking studiously in another direction at the moment, but at about 9:10 AM the live feed was showing what looked like a cloud of flying stones. From the industry experts at The Oil Drum:

What the hell just happened?

Was watching - monitoring ROV turned camera away and then whoosh -- the chunky debris has me suspecting a sizable rupture in that kinked and perforated section of the riser.

And here's a low res screen shot from somebody's twitter account:

That's just one piece of debris. Watching an hour ago, there was lots more of it.

And here it is, courtesy youtube. Shit starts to happen around the one minute mark:

Update: or were they just trying to knock mud off the ROV (Robot vehicle?)?

Update to update: Nope. Something exploded. Frame by frame here.