Obama’s hubris, and the myth of G.W. as dimwit.
Via The Anchoress, who wonders whether competent engineers outside BP were consulted about all our available options: could supertankers have vacuumed up the contaminated seawater for cleaning? I haven’t heard a good answer to that one yet.
Again—to translate this into Californian, imagine the San Francisco Bay as one big oil slick(though the real thing is much, much larger, of course)—or one industrial disaster damaging both Yosemite and Santa Barbara in one fell swoop.
Entire industries destroyed, along with priceless natural wonders. This is, as the Veep would say, a big effing deal.
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The “Dubya was an idiot” refrain was merely a distillation of the much more prevalent theme from the left, namely that anyone who opposes their agenda is an idiot (or evil, and often both). Their belief in their own infallibility and moral superiority is nearly palpable.
I am a Chem E with almost 25 years experience in the Chemicals sector. I once worked for Mobil Chemical. You can bet BP has put out a call to other majors for assistance, but they have kept it quiet. Because you don’t need to know. And the other majors are willing to help on the QT but don’t want to be associated with it.
In addition, please look at:
https://gw.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9383447
Here there are almost 2000 teams of concerned people willing to offer solutions for free. Note the date of the posting – 30 April 2010. There are truly some very bright and dedicated people working on this and I’d wager they are as frustrated that they cannot come up with a solution.
And I’d guess that those peole have a bit more on the ball than a fricking movie director.
As for the supertanker vacuums: It may have been looked at. However, the ships are probably not designed to hold a vacuum and they would likely collapse. Besides, they are in short supply. If even one were diverted to assist, it would disrupt the world oil delivery system and soon you would be seeing $5/gal gas.
Which brings up another interesting issue. Recently, gas prices have been falling. Typically with disasters of this magnitude prices would be going through the roof. I would guess that we have not seen a price spike because the well had not been brought into production when it failed, so there was no panic as to supply disruption.
The problem at first was, oil was leaking from the riser in several places. Plus, there’s natural gas in the flow. It’s tricky when you’re trying to vacuum up something that has an explosive component.
The second problem is sheer volume. Oil tankers are huge, but they hold drops compared to the volume of water involved. You need a way to separate the oil (and gas) from the water. Kevin Costner’s machine can do that, but only at a rate of 200 gallons per minute per machine. You need a whole lot of those machines to do the job effectively, and you need a way to operate them safely (i.e. to not blow up your ship with the natural gas).
Another problem is one that was found the first time they tried to put a cap over the well. It’s cold down there, and icy hydrates form on any structure in the path of the flow. If you’re trying to vacuum up the oil at the source, it seems to me that you’re going to get water mixed with oil, and thus the hydrates will form in the vacuum hose.
If it was simple, they’d have solved it weeks ago. But it’s fairly complicated, and somewhat dangerous. The engineers are going to be writing papers on this for years afterward.