The Glade 4.0

...is worse than I thought. Like lots of people I tend to ignore bad news in the media because I have enough stress in my own life. Rather selfish, I know, but the media declares everything a crisis these days and its hard for me to discern what is worth worrying about and what isn't.
Anyway, I looked up some articles and photos and stuff and it looks really really really bad and scientists are saying the thing is spewing out about 1.8 million gallons a day and BP's pump and ship are getting less than half of that.
That is really really really scary.
I remember Exxon's spill in the 80s and we were all petrified (all of us 5th graders anyway) and this is much much much worse.
How are they going to stop this? What happens if they don't? Are we never going to eat seafood again? Where is this oil spreading to? How far has it gotten so far and will it wind up on every beach in the world? How in the Hades are we going to clean this up? Are our kids never going to be able to go to the beach?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Never is a long time. While this is certainly bad, it is fixable.

It's not being handled well. Crisis management is horrible. It seems to be dragging on forever. It will definitely impact a ton of businesses, tourism and beach access. All that said they will eventually cap it and the water will be cleaned up.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

The only thing that should terrify you about this spill is the intentional mismanagement in Washington. The Executive is manipulating the situation for legislative ends without any real interest in assisting in clean up, prevention, mitigation, or solution.

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Mexico had a (so far) bigger spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979: Ixtoc I spill. There's still damage from that if you know where to look. Of course, that spill only affected beaches for the most part, and not far more sensitive marshlands. It's definately a game changer for the whole gulf of Mexico...just how much remains to be seen

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

It's really hard to tell at this point how much damage will be done.

At this point, there are no good estimates of how much oil is escaping, nor of where it is ending up.

We know the LA coastal marshes absorbed around 9 million gallons during Katrina, and it didn't decimate them.

Take what you read, especially in the media, with a grain of salt on this one.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

9 million gallons is not really that much when compared to the current spill.

We will be feeling the effects of this for many years to come. No way around it.

It is very sad.

How do you know that? Are there facts to substantiate this?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Did you forget how to use Google, DFK?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

It isn't the duty of the listener to provide support for a contention. It's the duty of the individual making the claim.

Futhermore, I'd like to know 1) what the "best case" scenarios are, not just the "worst case" ones, and 2) what sources besides the government, which is politicizing the travesty for its own ends, are saying in terms of volume.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Hmmm. Ok. I thought it was a pretty easy number to look up, but I can see where you are coming from with more complicated things maybe.
Anyway, could you expound on how the govt is using volume to its advantage? I mean, it's a lot of oil, its bad for the environment, and I fail to see how or why anyone could be blowing it up any more than it already is?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

If the government is dragging their feet and/or politicizing the crisis to try to "score points" (and various indicators "from the ground" are indicating that this is happening), part of "scoring points" is to make the crisis appear to be as bad as possible. That way, when they point fingers at BP and move to try to nationalize it (or some other punitive measure), they can say "Look, people, BP killed the entire Gulf of Mexico." That sounds a lot more dramatic than "Look, people, BP caused $X billion in cleanup costs, which they're paying for."

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying they're juking the numbers. What I am saying is that 1) organizations, particularly government, regularly juke statistics, 2) the government has a vested interest in juking the numbers here, and 3) evidence points to the government being willing to politicize this issue. Given all three of those items, I'd always be considering both independent numbers as well as the governmental numbers, as well as looking at high, medium, and low estimates for damage, not just high estimates.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

In the face of this crisis, DFK, that seems incredibly trite.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Trite?

Go wrap yourself around the feet of your beloved tyrant if you wish.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

In what way?

Are you refuting any of the 3 points I made? If so, on what basis?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Seriously?

You're using a google-determined 'worst case estimate' as accurate?

That's about 5 times the amount that I've heard referenced.

The truth is, no one has an accurate number, so pulling random numbers from estimates found via a google search is pretty worthless.

As I mentioned before, my mom is the head of the coastal geology department for the environmental consulting firm representing all of the Louisiana coastal parishes- and even they aren't as grim about it as most of the news has portrayed.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

You guys act like you think I know what I'm talking about.
I don't.
Thats why I'm in Heckfire talking about this and not in Hellfire. Think of this as the oil spill thread for political retards, aka me.
I don't see what is wrong with googling and getting relatively the same numbers in every article: around 1.8 to a little over 2 million gallons a day.
I also don't see how, when we are dealing with millions of gallons of oil, seen pictures of what it is doing and articles saying that less than half of it is being caught before it spills into the ocean...I fail to see how the government is blowing that out of proportion and using it to its advantage? Its a big oil spill...isn't that the bottom line?
If I'm wrong, which obviously I appear to be, then you are going to have to SPELL IT OUT FOR ME.
I am politically retarded and I tend to voice my ignorant and uneducated opinions rather strongly.
I don't lay out arguments like you guys do, I am terrible at it and very rarely can I seem to get a point across around here without pissing somebody off.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

LadyKate:

DFK! is suggesting you don't listen to the government or whatever numbers they're pushing on the mainstream media. More importantly, both he and Nephyr are saying take the media and the government worth a grain of salt on ANYTHING related to this issue. Because both the media and the government have made this more political and more about politics than it needs to be. Consequently, they have a vested interest in appealing to your sentiment and emotion, rather dealing with the situation at hand. Likewise, the media and the government will make an "enemy" of BP for ease of further making this political.

No one is saying it's not a horrible situation. They're saying the government is using the situation to push and agenda instead of attempting to solve the problem or assist in solving the problem BEFORE that agenda can be met.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Thank you Khross. I learned critical thinking skills in college but it was so foreign to me I've forgotten most of it already...I almost always follow the "sentiments and emotion" and its difficult to see beyond that. My judgement is often clouded by what I feel very strongly...and I can't seem to put it into words the way you guys seem to so effortlessly formulate your arguments.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I just don't see (or don't understand what I'm seeing?) any political agenda right now other than "hey, its a really big oil spill and we have a really big problem." I don't keep up with politics enough to understand agendas and biases and things like that.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Senator Barbara Boxer has been talking about "carbon pollution" and "carbon taxes" since this started. The President keeps using phrases like, "Make BP pay" and "Make BP accountable". However, the President NEVER admits to what BP is already doing. The media never mentions how much per day BP is spending on this issue. Rather, they talk about stock prices (which as fundamentally irrelevant), government focus groups to determine the extent of the problem, and they keep scaling up the impact. To give you an idea, when NPR was covering the Perdido Bay situation in Florida, they mentioned but failed to comment on the fact that the Coast Guard ordered the cove's flood gates held open for almost 3 days after first land fall.

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So the govt is trying to extort money from BP over this?
And why would they hold open flood gates?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

In a word, yes.Because about 80% of the communities affected east of Louisiana could have mitigated most of the damage with proper forewarning and assistance. Instead, the government has demonstrated this habit of showing up late and doing things to impede mitigation.

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Yes, because the fact that LK is cricticizing DFK!'s explaination means she must be some sort of slavish Obama fan.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Where the hell do you get this? Don't be an ***.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."