The BP oil spill & Gulf deep sea corals

[BryanGoodson]

To this day i am a proud bp supporter. And to the morons saying go battery powered. When's the last time you pulled a tractor down the road with a Prius? Or when's the last time you seen a battery powered tractor capable of pulling itself and tons of steel through the ground for 10 hours straight. You haven't. And you won't. Just get rid of the tractors right? No tractors no farmers. No farmers no food.

[tfrizz80]

Im no scientist by no means but isn't hydrogen the most abundant element known to man and highly flammable. I think honda made a hydrogen car some years back and for some reason it just disappeared. You can see all kinds of reactors on you tube built and running diy. I made a tiny one with a cup a rubber glove a piece of stainless steel and a lithium battery. Its was kindof neat when the glove filled up like a little balloon and put it to a lighter. I don't really know about the algae but I know we could be well on our way to fixing alot of problems in our country and our planet if it wasnt for the government.

[doctorgori]

this is one of those "bordeline" topics that could skim into the polical realms so maybe we should tread carefully here ....

Anyway, sometimes you gotta look at these things objectivley.... BP supplies a product, a enviormentally sensitive "product" that is in high demand....this was a accicdent albeit a very impactful one, but still an accident...

my only beef with these "energy" companies is when they purchase "advertisments" to erode public support for the rules and "Regulations" that are designed to mitigate these type of accidents in the 1st place... Joe public has to decide the actual price of gasoline beyond the sheer dollars and cents of it...

is a dead whale or oily beach or dead reefs a fair tradeoff for saving a few more cents at the pump?

again, being carreful to keep this as an enviorment/business/consumer impact issue

[alton]

In this case you had company that worked for BP that was behind schedule, over cost, and took a short cut or two and got people killed, accident? Lets compare, you are at a stop sign next to a blind curve, you do not see anyone coming so you pull out and get hit, that is an accident. Get behind the wheel stone drunk drive and kill someone, that is manslaughter. Do your home work check out all the explosions at petro plants along the gulf in the last 20 years and see whos names are on them? I have family and friends who work for oil companies and there are some very safe ones, but then there are some that are questionable. In this case it is political because we know what the root cause was and we know how to fix it, so instead of moving on we shut it and down give billions to other countries to drill in there waters and doesn't benefit anyone but a few. In the 70's we lived with tar balls here on the Texas Coast, not today because we and Mexico fixed the issues which cleaned up there rigs. We have to have oil and natural gas until one day we can find something cheaper, and safer. Solar is not there yet and solar panels are not made from energy from using other solar panels, at least not yet.

[power boat jim]

Originally Posted by tfrizz80

Im no scientist by no means but isn't hydrogen the most abundant element known to man and highly flammable. I think honda made a hydrogen car some years back and for some reason it just disappeared. You can see all kinds of reactors on you tube built and running diy. I made a tiny one with a cup a rubber glove a piece of stainless steel and a lithium battery. Its was kindof neat when the glove filled up like a little balloon and put it to a lighter. I don't really know about the algae but I know we could be well on our way to fixing alot of problems in our country and our planet if it wasnt for the government.

The only problem with hydrogen is there is no economical "free" souce of it on this planet. It has to be removed from some other compound. That takes energy. The only known large source of "free" hydrogen is found on the sun.

[doctorgori]

Originally Posted by alton

In this case you had company that worked for BP that was behind schedule, over cost, and took a short cut or two and got people killed, accident? Lets compare, you are at a stop sign next to a blind curve, you do not see anyone coming so you pull out and get hit, that is an accident. Get behind the wheel stone drunk drive and kill someone, that is manslaughter. Do your home work check out all the explosions at petro plants along the gulf in the last 20 years and see whos names are on them? I have family and friends who work for oil companies and there are some very safe ones, but then there are some that are questionable. In this case it is political because we know what the root cause was and we know how to fix it, so instead of moving on we shut it and down give billions to other countries to drill in there waters and doesn't benefit anyone but a few. In the 70's we lived with tar balls here on the Texas Coast, not today because we and Mexico fixed the issues which cleaned up there rigs. We have to have oil and natural gas until one day we can find something cheaper, and safer. Solar is not there yet and solar panels are not made from energy from using other solar panels, at least not yet.

True....
...also I've said this before: its a thin line between "conscience/awareness" and activism...

...as people we depend on leadership and goverment to address our concerns; whatever those might be...we just can't go in that direction here (because as we know political discussions always "devolve" into unwinnable arguments)...

Still, perhaps we maintain a in scope focus here that as "consuming individuals" we can collectivley have a impact via awareness, public opinion and product choices

[loganbug3]

I just wish people would actually care a little bit about our planet (especially the underwater segment). It's as always difficult to balance the needs of our society, such as drilling for oil, with the consequences of what happens when we mess up. Call me an optimist but I still think we can manage a bit of balance in our world, I just wish people would take the steps to make it happen.

[markaren]

Originally Posted by thebanker

It's very sad to see that soft coral covered in oil. Like Eric the Half-Bee said, our earth has endured worse. Hopefully we (as a human race) have learned enough from this mistake and the oil companies take steps to prevent a disaster like the BP spill again.

Agree. This was an unusual rig in the sense that it almost seemed planed for it to fail. Very very rare for modern rigs to have this issue.

Our oceans recover quite nicely from natural oil fissures. Oil floats for a reason...making it sink was weird when I first learned that. Yes our shores would get oily but the alternative is forever on the bottom with chemicals.

[T Diddy]

sigh

[HippieSmell]

Originally Posted by BryanGoodson

To this day i am a proud bp supporter. And to the morons saying go battery powered. When's the last time you pulled a tractor down the road with a Prius? Or when's the last time you seen a battery powered tractor capable of pulling itself and tons of steel through the ground for 10 hours straight. You haven't. And you won't. Just get rid of the tractors right? No tractors no farmers. No farmers no food.

Yup. Tractors. The #1 consumer of oil in the world. If only we could solve the tractor problem...

[HippieSmell]

Originally Posted by power boat jim

The only problem with hydrogen is there is no economical "free" souce of it on this planet. It has to be removed from some other compound. That takes energy. The only known large source of "free" hydrogen is found on the sun.

Hydrolysis. If we'd use alternative energy sources to store their energy this way, a lot of problems could be solved. Couldn't be any more complicated than a nuclear reactor, and we've got tons of those.

[sparr0w1]

Originally Posted by BryanGoodson

To this day i am a proud bp supporter. And to the morons saying go battery powered. When's the last time you pulled a tractor down the road with a Prius? Or when's the last time you seen a battery powered tractor capable of pulling itself and tons of steel through the ground for 10 hours straight. You haven't. And you won't. Just get rid of the tractors right? No tractors no farmers. No farmers no food.

There is sooooo much to be said about the value of our current industrial farming system. What's the largest lobby in Washington? Not oil, not credit card companies, not insurance. Agriculture. I think there are some questions worth asking here, like why do we grow so much corn? and rice? for food? if we used it all, maybe- but there was so much corn surplus they had to create high fructose corn syrup to make more uses for it. Corn is in just about everything on the grocery store shelves....and yet the taxpayers still subsidize corn and tobacco. Why? We give away tons and tons of corn every year in aid to foreign countries. This is noble and well intentioned, but it means we simply grow too much food. Somehow an abundance of food being grown is not translating to Americans eating better or healthier. Maybe it's time to stop lining the pockets of corporate farming conglomerations and the chemical companies that own them and start supporting real American small scale farmers. I dunno- I me, I could be wrong....but seems like a better path.