Tag: Gulf of Mexico

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

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Steve Sack, Comics.com (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

As you can see, I’ve gotten tired of just typing and complaining about this. That just didn’t seem to be enough, especially because BP is now collecting oil from the spill that it can sell, their stock is still traded, they’re still doing business. No, I wanted to do something else. So here’s an invitation to join me in creating a leaderless, spontaneous national boycott of BP.

Well, it isn’t exactly Alice’s Restaurant.  Yet.  But who knows what this can lead to.

Please join me.

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simulposted at The Dream Antilles and docuDharma

I was listening to the Diane Rehm Show on NPR yesterday,

when I heard this Oil Rig Engineer call in

and explain a “common sense” way to put a halt to the Oil Gusher in the Gulf.

He was a shocked by BP’s incompetent, “shotgun” approach —

to contain the mess, as most of us have been.

Here’s the eye-opening clip, with my transcript of Engineer Henry’s simple advice to BP.

The Gulf Coast Oil Spill and the Future of Offshore Drilling

May 13, 2010

Diane Rehm Show Audio

“Oil Rig Henry” starts his Engineering lesson, at Time Mark 40:20

My transcript of the his Engineering insights, and simple containment and shut-off recommendations, follows next:

Cool, being a life-long Science fan, I have always liked Experiments …

But I generally prefer those of the ‘Controlled Experiment’ variety.  Those fly-by-night Variety, like combining a jet of Hair Spray with a tiny Lighter flame, always left me a little frightened.

Funny, I’m starting to feel that way again …

As the oil gushes from the broken well head at the sea floor, Rader says it has the potential to contaminate each layer of the water column that, “directly exposes those animals to toxicity, at the surface including the very sensitive surface zones where not only sea turtles and marine mammals and sea birds can be oiled, but also where the highways for fish larvae exist. And then as it rains back into the abyss over a much wider area carrying toxicants back into the deep sea where ancient corals and other sensitive ecosystems exist.”

One response strategy has been to use dispersants or anti-freeze-like chemicals to break the oil up into smaller globules.

[…]

It is a choice, he says, between two bad options. While the chemicals may protect birds and other wildlife by dissipating the slick before it reaches shore, their toxicity in the Gulf could harm fish and other marine life.

Remember Blue Popsicles ?

 The Pipes on the Outhouse Froze.    photo, Navy.  color, ARC.

Today is Tuesday, May the 4th, the 2 week anniversary of the blowout, fire, and sinking of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. 14 days x 5000 barrels per day, = 70,000 barrels, or  2,940,000 gallons of oil so far have been dumped into the Gulf.   For my earlier diary today, with satellite photos from the past weekend, go here:

This Oil Spill is Bigger Than Delaware, You Idiots!

There are new satellite pictures from today which show the spread of the oil slick has continued west and south.

The BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig failed on Tuesday evening April 20, 2010, 14 days ago.

This is what it looked like Saturday, May 1st.   I took a satellite picture from the NRL Monterey of the Gulf of Mexico that was showing biological substances, cropped it, and color enhanced it by playing with the settings on iphoto, to make the colors have more contrast. Since oil is based on organics, this made it show up better, and I could recreate, roughly, what the LSU ESL  was doing to get the oil to show up on their pictures I posted previously.  Because there were thunderstorms this past weekend, the area was obscured by cloud cover often.  I also noticed the government was not putting up daily picture updates.

May 1, 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon’s oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, photo NRL Monterey, color enhanced by ARC  The thicker part of the slick is the part that looks like a bird’s beak pointing upside down off the New Orleans Louisiana Delta, which is to the left in green and pink. Pink is the coastline, drawn in.  The greenish tint is where the slick is thinner.  The blue is the water.  

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This is the same picture from May 1st, larger area,  without my increasing the color contrast.

May 1, 2010, BP Deepwater Horizon’s Oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, photo NRL Monterey.  The heavier part of the slick is gray, the lighter part of the slick is very hard to see, but is there and greenish grey.  The coast outline is drawn in pink by the website.  The ^ triangle to the north in the shoreline is the Bay of Mobile, Alabama.  To find the origin of the slick, look down from the left side of that triangle of the Mobile Bay and come out from the Delta about at a 45º degree angle, where the lines would meet, is roughly where the broken drill rig is.   Where the up and down brilliant blue longitude line is to the right touches shore, is where Pensicola Bay is in the Florida panhandle.

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As you can see from this larger view, the slick actually has spread quite a bit towards the Florida Panhandle by Saturday the 1st.

5/1/2010,  Larger view of Gulf with BP DH Oil slick southwest of the New Orleans delta, spreading towards Alabama and Florida.

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Sunday May 2-  This lovely overlay picture below is the satellite of the eastern half of the US, including the gulf of Mexico,  with the wind direction and speed marked on it.  Think of the little color icons as brooms with the stick end pointing towards what way the wind is going, and the bigger the broom, the faster.  There were several thunderstorm fronts moving thru to the southeast, and the wind in the Gulf is spinning in a clockwise manner, driving the waves and the oil around and around and easterly at the same time.

This is known as the “Conveyer Belt.” photo NRL Monterey

   

Wind Direction on Sunday the 2nd, showing the Gulf’s classic “Conveyor Belt.”

The other thing you can see here is a big low pressure system spinning off the eastern coast and it’s spinning counterclockwise.  Look at Florida.  Now look at Cuba, the long island under it, then to its right, the island with Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and to the right of that, little bitty Puerto Rico, the rectangle island.

Do you see how small Puerto Rico is ?  Do you see how big the oil slick is, in the first picture ?   Do you know how stupid White House Correspondent Cokie Roberts looked, prattling about how the oil slick is so big it was as big as Puerto Rico, all day Saturday, when she wasn’t blathering about the White House Correspondent’s dinner ?