I’ve been looking at some of the driller bulletin boards and blogs, written by engineers and physicists, people who really know how to drill and do it often. They are much more worried about the Macondo disaster than the regular news is. Then there’s this post on “the mother of all gushers.” The relief wells they are drilling are not really going to solve the problem, but only relieve some pressure until it can be sealed — if in fact it can. That will apparently be months from now and the chemical dispersants being used are an environmental hazard in themselves.
The sheen has reached Ship and Horn Islands where I used to go to the beach. We sailed once to Horn Island in a schooner that anchored, so we could row in on canoes. It was very beautiful and we had homegrown smoked turkey from Yazoo City, Mississippi, to eat. C’est tout fini, chers. Here is an environmentalist blog on this disaster with good technical information.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
P.S. I don’t dare look for U.S. ones because it would be endless, but very many Mexicans and Brazilians have videotaped accidents disasters on oil platforms and put them on YouTube. Here offshore injuries are an everyday phenomenon and we have heard that there are lots of accidents and fires that don’t make the news, but there is quite a large amount of live footage available for viewing!
What to do? This is worse than Chernobyl. It could bring everything down.
That’s what they’re saying. “Oilpocalypse.”
Here’s a video from the PEMEX loss of control of the well Cantarell-69 a couple of years ago. It has technical information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdP_PrKFrtE&feature=related
Eventually, an accident like the current one was bound to happen.
Terry says we have reached peak oil and passed it, which is why the oil companies are doing riskier drills.
We are all in this together, that’s for sure.
This, about the reasons for riskier drills, is true for sure. Here’s the Louisiana Hayride on the spill, with running updates. I need to put the Louisiana Hayride in my news sidebar. http://thehayride.com/2010/05/the-latest-on-the-gulf-oil-spill-via-upstream-online-and-some-troubling-questions/
I probably need a new category for oil and oil spill related links.
OK, I have the new category. It will have views and information from across the spectrum.
Here’s a good news summary for today. I can’t believe more regular people aren’t watching this with eagle eyes than seem to be, but perhaps I am just not in the right circles.
http://www.troymedia.com/?p=10756
I was rivited to the coverage of Hurricane Ike, but hardly anyone around here was interested.
Part of the thing about this oil spill is that it is so awful that people don’t want to think about it.
Sure we could all cut back on consumption and be environmentally correct, but what good does it do if the oil companies are just wrecking everything anyway?
Oh, and thanks for the good links.
I now want to go back to school in Engineering to study these things. It is true about the conservation thing: what we do as invididuals means nothing if these companies aren’t stopped. And these companies fight precisely to structure the world such that their products will be or be seen as necessities.