Re: Does the BP disaster mean the end of greed?

Na, people have very short memories.

Ralph Nader said, we won't have solar plower because the oil companies don't own the sun. (I'm paraphsizing here.)

Paul Jay: In Defense of Helen Thomas -- On Apologizing to Apologisthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-jay/in-defense-of-helen-thoma_b_602972.html

Cheney's push of deregulators led to BP disaster

Wilkerson on Cheney Pt2: Cheney's support for pro-industry "regulators" maybe his main damage to America June 8, 2010

I wish Obama wouldn't have said that BP was going to pay for all of the damage of their leak. It won't happen. How can we possibly calculate a monetary figure that would cover a priceless resource? What would be the value of the Gulf of Mexico, or the Great Lakes, or the Amazon Rainforest? It took millions of years to create these natural treasures and only hundreds to destroy them.

Dear Mr. President Obama; Your newly engaged frequent flier program to the Gulf Coast may becoming more of a gamble, risking your chances for any renewable program to the White House. If you don’t see the writing on the wall-in-the-water, you only needs to look to the polls. Yes Mr. President, it’s for you the bell tolls. Napolean said “there is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous” may I suggest the next time one foot goes before the other, to those oil-soaked shores, there be a plan, that worries not about all of those Republican Governors, not about some middle of the road compromise, or even about all of those unmet promises that got you elected. It’s about doing what needs to be done. Since elected, you have done little more than continue the paths of destruction laid out by previous administrations. These Gulf Governors are forced, by their own hand, to continue relying on the revenue these “offshore rigs” provide, even though what they have sold their citizens, is a dime for a dollar’s worth of peril. I also understand after “income tax”, oil lease revenues generate the most revenue for the Federal Government. But every time we look back at these pressured situations, there is always a reference point of feudal homage, that got buried like a bone.

I know President Ronald Reagan’s most famous quote is probably “Gobachev take down that wall”. Well as much cold-war-cash as it took to get there, history may write a different story. It’s the “take down those panels” that might prove to be much more costly. The panels he was referring to were the solar panels President Jimmy Carter put on the roof of the White House. President Carter put through a bill that invested in “alternative energies”, it’s stated goal was to wean us away from “middle east oil”, by the year 2000. As symbolic as panels can be, their life, and a clean future for this country, was put on hold when President Reagan repealed the bill and took down the solar panels. Following that came tax exemptions for oil companies that promised to invest in alternative energies. They had just come away with too many billion in profits from the “gas crises” of the late 70s, promising to invest in alternative energies. I wrote a piece in the St. Pete Times (citrus county) denouncing any involvement by the oil companies in alternative energy. I stated, they lacked incentive and would eventually ring-us-out for what ever they could get, no madder what the source, just as they did through the crises. One can only imagine what could have become of this country had those “panels” stayed, moreover, the “bill” behind them. Mr. President, it’s been 30 years.

It may not be clear to you yet, but what happens in the next months to come, will in fact dictate who you are. There will be no second guessing. Even those, like me, who worked hard to get you elected, defended you as your stated policies got trashed, will consider your Presidency a wash, if you don’t stand up to the plate and deliver. The situation in the Gulf is a defining moment. Hope didn’t help the war, or health care, or the economy, “Hope”, that empty hand we hold, when holding isn’t there, never showed up for any of those. That can’t happen here. It is time to go forward with a new model.

This is true; No one energy source is going to jump up and replace oil, yet that over stated deterrent, should be curbed for fear of sounding juvenile. With the many options, all avenues and resources will be needed to rid us of of what has become a self-destructive practice that reaches far beyond what can be deemed acceptable. The time is now. The punitive penalties

generated by BPs recklessness, should be made available now, for training and employing the many thousands of disenfranchised workers. We must invest in factories building windmills, solar panels, grit friendly electric meters and plastic substitutes. All government R&D energy money should be directed to alternatives, not oil, or nuclear. What should be known to the public is to the extent oil and nuclear energies are subsidized by the taxpayers. When you have Exxon/Mobil generating $12 billion quarterly profits, BP $6 billion, Shell $5 billion, Chevron $4.5 billion, Conoco $2 billion, why aren’t they paying for their own everything? That is a 3 month period. These fortunes get divvied up offshore in tax-exempt havens. They are raking in this much because their positioning of oil, to permeated every industry, has succeed in creating an overwhelming thirst. Our cars don’t just run on it, they are made of it. Almost every part of our car, that is not metal, is made of a “hydro-carbons”(oil). Our fertilizers, our pesticides and household products, all have non-oil based replacements. We inject everything with oil, and if anyone thinks the oil companies are going to do anything to alter that, get out of line, go home, get out of the way.

Mr President, as President Kennedy went to “the people” with programs to “go to the Moon” “be physically fit” and to usher in “civil rights”, you must turn around from protecting these too big to cage gorillas, and be a “people’s” President. You can’t sound “eloquent” when reciting song and dance. The music’s over, turn out the lights on these corporate giants that keep sucking us dry to the bone. You can’t remake the wheel, but you can replace it spoke by spoke if you speak to the country as a whole and rejuvenate the innovative nature of the American people.

Example: Melvin Calvin was one of those, in 1961 he was awarded the “Nobel” in Chemistry for his work on “photosynthesis” also recognized as an authority in theoretical organic chemistry, as well as being awarded the “Priestly Medal”. The “Calvin Cycle” was named after his method of developing the path of carbon in Photosynthesis. This was the birth of understanding “solar energy” In 1974 Calvin began working on a project that could have brought more of an affect to the security of this country than did the atomic bomb itself, as his focus turned to global warming and the greenhouse effect. He had worked on the Manhattan Project and was aware of the direction the $2 trillion Pentagon budget was taking us. Years before, he had traced carbon dioxide’s relationship with sunlight to carbohydrate in plants. He then understood every single enzymic requirement needed to convert carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons.

By 1978 on his ranch in California, he had successfully produced oil from a plant. “Euphorbia lathyris” a relative of the poinsettia. It’s grown in a hot and dry atmosphere and produces a latex milk that consist of hydrogen and water. This mixture is processed to exclude oxygen atoms, thus producing hydrocarbons- oil, 12% of the plant to be exact. At $ 20. a barrel.

Calvin felt cloning and genetic engineering would highly improve the yield and bring the cost down. One of the advantages of fuel derived from Euphoriba is, it does not add to the carbon dioxide blanket eating the ozone. But this did not fit what modeled the “Business Round Table’s” lock on “fossil fuels”. This Quantum leap in energy resourcefulness and environmental preservation died. The last time I talked to Mr. Calvin, it was 1992, to let him know I included his studies in a piece I wrote for “Creative Loafing” that I had gathered in an an interview with him a year before. He was only coming into his Lab 1/2 day a week and soon to retire. He told me he did have misgivings about his years of work being swept under the carpet. How many more like him, were, and are being dismissed. Imagine California to Texas cooling the desert with green bio-fuel. Euphorbia can still be grown, but we can’t get back the precious kids, who have been sent off to fight over middle east oil, not to mention the trillions of dollars spent protecting these companies.

Mr President, you won’t sound eloquent reciting any song and dance routine down in Louisiana, or Mississippi, or Alabama, or Florida. They are all being forced to watch their own slow-motion train-wreck. They don’t know what to do, no one has their back. It’s up to you. Do the right thing and we’ll all have your back, don’t, and we’ll forget about you soon. Imagine, Mr President, you could actually be a person that helps to bring change. If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve got. How’s that been working for ya.

john rehill duette fl.

At last, someone else (beside me) is doing the Math! As I was scanning old blogs, I found someone else (DRSpalding) who has an accurate idea of what we are dealing with on this blowout containment. DRSpalding correctly states the issues involved, the pressure at 5000 ft of roughly 2150 psi, and the deep well pressure, which if unimpeded could reach 7750 psi in the well pipe. With the well leaking at 5000 ft of depth, the pressure at that point would be the difference; 5600 psi. If you try to contain that pressure in a containment vessel or cap, it would have a lift, as stated and recalculated, at 438 tonns per square foot. Another factor of concern to me is that the 21 inch drill casing to the surface weights 122 lbs per foot, so the total weight on the wellhead was 305 tonns before it collapsed. So picture a well head being held down with 305 tonns of steel on top, now missing, which could come out of the ground like a giant hyraulic cylinder with 438 tonns per square foot of lift, and now we would just have a hole in the ocean floor erupting oil like a volcano.

So, all the theories like stuff an inner tube down the hole and blow it up, or put a load of concrete blocks and quick set cement on to are just ignorant. At this point I think that BP has to let the "tophat" leak so that it doesn't just lift off. They have to be thinking that the answer is to out-pump the leakage as much as possible while getting to plan "B" as soon as possible, to drill a relief well from the side to relieve the pressure, then plug the broken well pipe (with a lot of concrete!).

If you could put something on top of the wellhead to hold it down and hold the pressure, it would have to be a chunk of metal the size of an old aircraft carrier, (don't we have a couple of those around somewhere we could sink on the well?).

The moral of the story as it has played out and will play out is that you better know what you are doing when you start messing around and drilling at those depths. Clearly BP didn't!

I think something is up with BP, I've been monitoring the 12 feeds on line. None of them are showing the spewing volcano.

I have a bad feeling about it.

N

This is roughly the way most history books record the re-genesis of Israel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel

@DRichards, go to Wikipedia and enter Israel in the search engine. From what I gather, the Holocaust was more or less a tipping point for the United Nations to create a two state solution, but that solution wasn't acceptable to the Palestinians, war ensued, Israel declared Independence eventually it was recognized by the UN.

That's the short summation of it. In reality there's a lot of history to research if you're interested, rarely if ever can you point to one event as the cause for another in history, especially when talking about the creation of a nation. Jewish people had been returning to Israel long before the creation of the NAZI party though, and pretty much for similar reasons, intolerance in the places they lived.

N

Yes, we've reached a milestone with Afghanistan, and I agree that the military occupation should've ended long before this. There's a good article in today's WaPo about the U.S. secret war on al-Qaeda et al, with special operations forces deployed to strategic locations around the globe having been expanded by Obama... Something Bush should've been doing all along, but instead cut funding for most of those in the most strategic locations to divert effors to the Iraqi invasion. Here's the link..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR201006...