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Well it is not looking good for the future of collecting drift wood along the Alabama and Mississippi coast for the foreseeable future. Nor the fishing. Both maybe full of oil. Very sad!

Years ago we lived in south Florida and had a travel trailer down in the Keys. That was when I first started carving, and got a lot of the wood I carved from down there. In fact I am working on a piece of sea grape that was from there after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. I got off topic if this spill is not contained soon it will wrap around under the keys and back up the east coast. Besides the gulf coastal states the eastern states could be in trouble too.

I agree, it is not looking good for the coastline. I just think of all it years it might take to even come close to back to look the way it was. All the animals, land and driftwood. Sometimes I wonder how much we are really doing to improve our way of life over what we are really giving up. I know the work etihic is now where near what it use to be. Seems like everyone feels we owe them something for just being alive.

Two things I don't understand.

1. I thought ALL oil wells had an fail safe cut off to prevent this exact situation.

2. Does anyone believe that if the press had any other news to report we would hear about this?

It is my understanding that the once common practice of ships dumping their bilge in the Gulf dumped more oil in the water than this well is. I realize ships now filter out all the oil before dumping their bilge but at one time it was normal to pump out oil.

I like the latest conspiracy theory, the well was torpedoed by a North Korean mini sub.

Ed in Tampa wrote:Two things I don't understand.

1. I thought ALL oil wells had an fail safe cut off to prevent this exact situation.

The fail safe cut off failed to cut off. Then the backup fail safe failed too. They've been trying to activate the shut-off valves with robots, but with no luck.

Ed in Tampa wrote:2. Does anyone believe that if the press had any other news to report we would hear about this?

I think we would. I think this is going to be very big and painful with long last effects. Both environmental and economical. I'm not a big environmentalist, either. Louisiana is already pretty bad off right now and our economy relies heavily on the gulf for seafood and oil. Both are going to take a major negative impact. This is going to be worse than the Exxon Valdez. It is going to almost destroy the gulf fishing industry (for a while), will give the environmentalists a great reason to further restrict oil drilling (offshore or anywhere else), and the regulatory changes placed on the oil companies will increase the price of oil and/or make it too expensive for them to drill oil here.

Ed in Tampa wrote:It is my understanding that the once common practice of ships dumping their bilge in the Gulf dumped more oil in the water than this well is. I realize ships now filter out all the oil before dumping their bilge but at one time it was normal to pump out oil.

I think it's estimated that the well is currently pumping around 5,000 barrels of oil per day into the gulf. I have no idea how much oil was routinely dumped by ships. Was it in the neighborhood of 5,000 barrels per day?

Here's a satellite image of the oil spill from a few days ago. And it's still pumping out oil. And it may be weeks before they get it shut off.



EDIT: More satellite pictures from NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natura ... p?id=43733

I'm afraid I have nothing good to add to this conversation. The blame game will snowball and go on for years to come. Prices of fuel and transportation will increase, justified or not, making consumer good and raw materials increase in cost. Of course for every action there is a reaction, so jobs will be created by the cleanup, new technology will be researched and the government will probably establish at least a dozen new bureaucracies to make certain that such an event probably will have a lesser chance of maybe happening again.
Best to all who live in affected areas.

heathicus wrote: This is going to be worse than the Exxon Valdez. It is going to almost destroy the gulf fishing industry (for a while), will give the environmentalists a great reason to further restrict oil drilling (offshore or anywhere else), and the regulatory changes placed on the oil companies will increase the price of oil and/or make it too expensive for them to drill oil here.

Heathicus
I'm not trying to be some kind of a wise guy but on what do you base this statement?

Do we really know the impact the Valdez had or do we know what environmentalist tell us? From what I was told the environment recovered immediately after the Valdez incident. Sure there was fish kills and wildlife that died but I'm told today the environment is total restored.

Ed in Tampa wrote:Heathicus
I'm not trying to be some kind of a wise guy but on what do you base this statement?

Do we really know the impact the Valdez had or do we know what environmentalist tell us? From what I was told the environment recovered immediately after the Valdez incident. Sure there was fish kills and wildlife that died but I'm told today the environment is total restored.

You just may get to see for yourself, Ed. I heard this morning that some forecasters say that it is quite possible for the oil slick to get pushed around to the other (east) Florida shoreline.

Ed in Tampa wrote:Heathicus
I'm not trying to be some kind of a wise guy but on what do you base this statement?

Do we really know the impact the Valdez had or do we know what environmentalist tell us? From what I was told the environment recovered immediately after the Valdez incident. Sure there was fish kills and wildlife that died but I'm told today the environment is total restored.

Right, I'm not saying this is a doomsday we'll never recover from. We will. The environment will be fine after a while, the oil and fishing industries will adjust and return to normal eventually. But it is a very serious thing that will be very costly.

One of the "pains" that jumps to my mind is the poor folks that just "survive" along a lot of the coast.
My brother-in-law (retired from the sheriffs dept.) in Pensacola was telling me years ago about how many poor people fished off of the docks etc. every day and for many of them if they did not catch something they did not eat that day.
I was just there fishing for fun and some were trying to catch to sell but a lot of them were needing something for the kids to eat that day.