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Ear to the Ground

Rough Seas Spread Oily Misery

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Posted on May 1, 2010
AP / U.S. Coast Guard

A containment boom is deployed around islets at the Breton National Wildlife Refuge off southeastern Louisiana.

Amid a wave of finger-pointing, rough waters in the Gulf of Mexico have quickly tripled the surface area of what could become one of the most disastrous oil spills in U.S. history, with the goo already lapping at valuable shoreline habitat. —JCL

Associated Press:

VENICE, La.—The surface area of a catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill quickly tripled in size amid growing fears among experts that the slick could become vastly more devastating than it seemed just two days ago.

Frustrated fishermen eager to help contain the spill from a ruptured underwater well had to keep their boats idle Saturday as another day of rough seas kept crews away from the slick, and President Barack Obama planned a Sunday trip to the Gulf Coast.

Documents also emerged showing BP downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at the offshore rig that exploded.

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LostHills's avatar

By LostHills, May 2, 2010 at 8:13 am Link to this comment

Sarah Palin provides a useful smokescreen, but she’s just a loud mouth clown with
no power to affect national policy. Obama says, “drill baby drill,” too, and has the
power to make it happen. The Obama Administration also has the authority to
enforce health, safety and environmental regulations that should have prevented
disasters like this one and the ones in Kentucky and West Virginia from
happening. Obama is not doing his job. Skwacking about Sarah is kinda like
sticking your head in the sand.

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By Jim Yell, May 2, 2010 at 6:52 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

We lost the years of research and development and practical application of alternate energy thanks to the Energy Corporations. The same business theories that led the railroads to destroy passenger railroad service. The same business theory that allows corporations and banks to steal money for services not rendered, for lethal products, to wipe their hands of responsibilty for the health issues, environmental results, and disasters that follow in their greedy, lying progress.

The problem with Obama is not that he is Progressive, which he has proved he isn’t except in speeches, it isn’t that he is liberal which was apparent even during the election, although he mislead people about that too. He is most like Clinton, a manipulating, Right wing politician with tatters of social conscience.

However, the building of that oil tower was not done on his watch. Everyone has been assured by the industry that these things are safe, which clearly they are not. The oil produced by off shore drilling may help in the short term with energy needs, but keeps us clinging to petrol which in the long term is poison. This is one more illustration why Petrol is a poor choice for the future, in fact clinging to it will make our future more problematic.

It is an illustration of how helpless we are and not just from the cost cutting greed, but from our abilities to control the wastes of such technology as Oil and Nuclear.

I just watched a progam about the salt caves in Germany which were supposed to hold nuclear waste for nearly forever, which sadly is about how long it takes to degrade to a safe level and the storage is already fastly falling apart, even to the extent that the mountains above are starting to slide. That isn’t even mentioning Chernobyl which is still not over and won’t be for thousands of years, by then the waste will probably be spread throughout the environment.

Neither Petrol, nor Nuclear can be clean energy. It is a lie anytime someone claims this. The likelyhood of finding a way to contain these wastes unlikely to happen at all and certainly not before the damage is done. Techies may think jump in and use nuclear as we will then develope the necessary safeguards, but that is delusional or out right lie. Corporations, care only for their Greed and will kill us all to make one more dollar. to have total power. Destroy them before they destroy us, use your vote and pay attention to reality and don’t listen to Religion, which haa continued to betray the poor every chance they get.

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RAE's avatar

By RAE, May 2, 2010 at 6:21 am Link to this comment

“And Sarah Palin is silent. I wonder why.”

Because she hasn’t been told what to say yet.

“American voters turned congress over to the Democrats in 2006 and the Whitehouse over to the Democrats in 2008, and this is what we got.”

What bloody nonsense! I’m getting really, really tired of crap like this being published about BOTH parties. Neither has credibility greater than the other. Both have been bought and paid for by BIG CORPA and have been instructed to continue the vaccuous mudslinging as it provides a wonderful diversion/smoke screen behind which the corporate puppeteers can pull the invisible strings. Those who blow smoke like this stuff from LostHills contribute nothing except to waste everyone’s time.

I don’t know what happened to cause this accident. But you’d think that it would be obvious that drilling deep into pressurized pools of poisonous crude has the potential for catastrophic disaster such as this and that with such foreknowledge SEVERAL FAIL-SAFE mechanisms would have been built into the shaft that would automatically and POSITIVELY cut off the flow should anything happen “above.”

We wouldn’t think of having water or gas piped into our houses without having shutoffs both outside and inside the dwelling. Tell me I’m wrong but they wouldn’t have built this well without such shutoffs, would they? Guess I’m hoping for too much. Probably add a few million to the cost of the well and we couldn’t have that, could we?

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By Jimnp72, May 2, 2010 at 6:04 am Link to this comment

Spill, baby, spill.
for our memory deficient friends out there, it was the republicans who have
throttled the country into near bankruptcy for 8 years, the dems inherited their
mess and of course are getting blamed for it by the reoubs.

I remember the Cheney philosophy, representative of the republicans in general,
‘what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right.’
Maybe now we will wise up and use sustainable energy the way we should have
been for the past 30 years.

Yeah, now Sara’s latest catchphrase should be ‘spill, baby, spill.’

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LostHills's avatar

By LostHills, May 1, 2010 at 8:24 pm Link to this comment

American voters turned congress over to the Democrats in 2006 and the
Whitehouse over to the Democrats in 2008, and this is what we got. Time to ask
for your money back, friends. This is not change you can believe in…..

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rico, suave's avatar

By rico, suave, May 1, 2010 at 6:54 pm Link to this comment

Time for all the truthers to add a new chapter to the conspiracy book. Just when the govt was about to permit offshore drilling on the east coast… an offshore rig suffers an “explosion” followed by a disastrous spill. Hmmmm!

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By b, May 1, 2010 at 6:41 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Greed, greed, greed, the price of greed.

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By DJ, May 1, 2010 at 5:29 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Shut down BP and nationalize the oil industry, now!

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By diamond, May 1, 2010 at 2:13 pm Link to this comment

And Sarah Palin is silent. I wonder why.

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