Nuclear concerns following Japan

If you have a moment, I recommend watching what this guy Ralph has to say about serious concerns for nuclear and what we should really be advocating in future.

Japan

It is terribly sad and shocking what just happened in Japan. Everyone can help financially (no matter how small a contribution) and should go on line now to the Japan red cross or Save the Children and donate something. Make sure you type in these organization official site names in the top your browser so donations go to the right places.

Wow

Interesting history on oil spill.

The scales of justice were favorable for the Exxon spill in 1989.
The supreme court "vacated the fine" .Exxon only had to pay one 10th of the sum for "punitive damages" many many years later.

After the Exxon Valdez spill, Exxon fought a $5 billion fine for punitive damages for two decades. It won. The fine was cut down to $4 billion, then to $2.5 billion. The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which found that Exxon’s actions were “worse than negligent but less than malicious,” and vacated the fine. The judgment limited punitive damages to the compensatory damages, which were calculated as $507.5 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/08sorkin.html?bl

Here is a reminder of how much of this deadly stuff gets into the ocean

Most of the spills are from the middle east and Nigeria (this is where most of the oil comes from) but with oil running low, wells are being drilled in deeper oceans. Oil extraction is destined to become more expensive and the BP spill may show to be the pinnacle of when the world realizes we must stop using oil


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What BP does not want you to see

Before anyone mentions clean up, think again.... these CHEMICAL DISPERSANTS could be the worsted thing ever to try and break down an oil spill!

Renowned Marine Biologist Carl Safina on the BP Oil Spill’s Ecological Impact on the Gulf Coast and Worldwide

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/27/expert_ecological_impact_of_spill_could

CARL SAFINA: Well, the dispersant is a toxic pollutant that has been applied in the volume of millions of gallons and I think has greatly exacerbated the situation. I think the whole idea of using a dispersant is wrong, and I think it’s part of the whole pattern of BP trying to cover up and hide the body. They don’t want us to see how much oil, so they’ve taken this oil that was concentrated at the surface and dissolved it. But when you dissolve it, it’s still there, and it actually gets more toxic, because instead of being in big blobs, it’s now dissolved and can get across the gills, get into the mouths of animals. The water below the floating oil was water. Now it’s this toxic soup. So I think that in this whole pattern of BP trying to not let people know what’s going on, the idea of disperse the oil is a way of just hiding the body. But it actually makes the oil more toxic, and it adds this incredible amount of toxic pollutant in the dispersant itself.

How big is the oil spill?

Really, how big is the spill?

It's hard to get a sense of the true size when it's over the ocean floor. Use the links below to see how large the spill is, as of May 21.

Break out of frame:
http://paulrademacher.com/oilspill/

What is going on with this oil field in the gulf?

This is just my comment on oil (my 0.2 cents)

So who are we upset with ?

I have so far refrained from comment or criticism over the oil spill in the Gulf. I know huge companies involved have this responsibility to do everything they can to fix this disaster of monstrous proportions. As a result BP are quickly facing fierce criticism from oil consumers around the world - how ironic is that? - from the very consumers who moan when gas prices are high!



But today I felt the urge to comment about this after I came across this report in Business Week:

"If the top kill method fails to halt the spill, BP has “a series of activities that we will do to kill the well for good,” BP Managing Director Robert Dudley said today in an interview broadcast on CNN.

The “best minds” available are focused on the oil flow which, he said, “is catastrophic” for the Gulf region and the company."

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-23/epa-chief-goes-to-louisiana-as-bp-battles-oil-spill-update1-.html

WHAT?????????

Did I understand they are taking approaches to keep the well alive at the cost of destroying the gulf? I think if we join the dots here my intuition says they have been doing everything possible to keep this damaged well functioning at a deadly cost. This dates back to one of my earlier posts when gulf oil was discovered in the Gulf. BP Makes Giant Discovery in the Gulf of Mexico (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a44RUTBIl_3Q). I was talking about the question of reaching peak oil discovery and how this well was being factored into the calculation on numbers to keep the oil discovery production trajectory a-float for a while longer (before declines start to really show). I believe if this well is lost, it will add to the decline in future years sooner, even if we do have extra time due to a recession reducing demand for now.

I think this oil spill represents a big moment for humanity. I think we have finally reached peak oil production and this graphic mess [an oil leak] has clearly shown to the world what it is what we depend on. If we get angry there is only so far we can get angry, as we are all dependent on this oil. While we are reducing global oil demand significantly due to a bad economy caused by a tainted finance industry, the price of oil remains low. This has positive impact to the consumer but it also reduces funds for oil companies to discover more oil fields to put them into production.

Europe is in turmoil and this is not going to increase oil demand any time soon. It is a question of time before this convenient problem goes away....

If the numbers are correct (on how much oil is being spilled into the gulf) then this is how much oil has gone into the ocean to date:



BP says 5,000 per day (enough to power North America for a few minutes)

That would equal to 16 million gallons (388 thousand barrels) of oil since the well started gushing out. That amount is enough to power North America for a few minutes and by June that would equal the entire load of the Exon Valdes spill in Alsaka (enough to power North America for 1/2 half an hour).


I don't have much to conclude except to say the voice of environmentalists about are a reality. This reality has started to show up (literaly) on our door steps (fish markets, holiday vacation spots) and everything we do will require oil BP are currently trying to rescue at the cost of millions of people's livelihoods. This is wrong and I have reason to believe there is a lot of political assessment going on behind the scenes (this whole picture including peak oil) and it is going to require rocket science of epic proportions making NASA look like hobbyists . The damage we see today is a sign of the times we live and speaks volumes on behalf of the environmentalists who have been warning about this for a very very long time!

Sorry to bring itup. This is just my opinion and I believe we are in good hands with the current government in the US but I hope the disaster rings sense into most people for once and for all or else we really are going to find ourselves in trouble.

oil