This is a republish of an earlier diary that has been updated to include some recent discussion about the topic. I know it isn't popular, I want this to be included in the discussion as a last-ditch effort.
Also, having this topic in the discussion is one of the only ways to adequately convey just how damaging this catastrophe is. We have allowed unregulated corporations vis-a-vis government partnership to create an extinction event in the Gulf of Mexico.
This is what the lack of regulation of the most greedy and avaricious corporations has brought us.
This is what U.S. "pay-to-play politics" has brought us.
This is a referendum.
updates below:
Thanks to gangster octopus for finding this video that explains, without hyperbole or misinformation, how this process takes place.
This video shows clearly that the device is to be placed NEARBY the well at a sufficient depth so that NONE of the blast leaves the surface of the ocean floor.
On Countdown last night Michio Kaku put a bunch of disinformation into the conversation. He so obviously had no idea what he was talking about that I had to update this diary because of it.
He says that nuclear contamination would go into the food chain. Notice he doesn't say that it would be contained below ground. He then says that it would make the oil radioactive, the fact is that the explosion would not put radioactive materials in the oil plume. He then says that many more leaks could open up but he fails to note that the well itself has drilled down over 3 miles below the surface of the gulf floor to tap the oil. Finally, he said that the heat of the explosion would create a glassification of the well material. This is in total conflict with the actual procedure shown in the Russian video and shows that he has no idea whatsoever what he is talking about.
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There is 4,500 feet of water and 18,000 feet of soil between the reservoir of oil and this weight would collapse any cracks in the soil easily.
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Hyperbole aside, if the capping of the well does not succeed and we are faced with 9 months of leakage, this has to be on the table.
rest of the diary
An environmental catastrophe in the gulf threatens the economic viability of the gulf states during the most fragile period of our nation's recovery from "The Great Recession".
meanwhile:
A plump MMS official, having grown fat on the largess granted him by favors from the oil industry, has decided to resign and live, very well, off of the millions of dollars in his Cayman Island slush accounts.
meanwhile, oil streaks along the surface of the gulf toward the beaches of Florida and the fragile ecosystem of the Florida keys.
http://i49.tinypic.com/...
In response, Halliburton blames BP and Transocean, BP blames Halliburton and Transocean, Transocean blames BP and Halliburton.
meanwhile 40% of the total oil being spilled is being captured by a straw inserted into a pipe that is the source of one of the leaks. BP says this straw, which has the capacity to move 3.3% of the volume that the pipe it is inserted into can move, is magically pulling out 40% of the oil, so says BP.
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30 days after the spill began:
11,790,576 cubic feet of oil released
(70,000 barrels per day X 30 days X 42 gallons per barrel X .13368 cubic feet per gallon)
That is enough oil to fill an aquarium th size of a football field with walls as high as an 25-storey building.
6,300,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas released
That is over 5% of the total natural gas used by all u.s. homes in Sept of 2009.
That amount of gas, compressed to liquid form, would fill a storage tank the size of a football field with walls as high as a 22-storey building
(70,000 barrels of oil per day X 3000 cubic feet of gas released per barrel X 30 days X compression ratio of 600 to 1 to make into a liquid)
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1 hour ago: The European Space Agency says that oil has now reached the loop current
"With these images from space, we have visible proof that at least oil from the surface of the water has reached the current," said Bertrand Chapron at the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea. Chapron and colleague Fabrice Collard said they've combined surface roughness and current flow information with images from the ESA's Envisat satellite to monitor the proximity of the oil to the current.
"Now that oil has entered the Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida within six days,"
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If BP cannot halt the leak using the top kill method in the next 7 days, then it is apparent that only way that BP can stop the leak is by drilling a relief well.
The relief well will take a minimum of 3 months to stop the leak and most likely it will take up to 6 months.
If that is the case then, in the interests of national security the U.S. government must consider the efforts of BP have failed.
The U.S. government must act on executive order to halt the leak as rapidly as possible and in the most effective way it can produce in the shortest amount of time.
The President must grow a pair and order the placement of a nuclear weapon at the leak site for detonation.
An underground nuclear detonation only 65 miles away from one of the United State's largest cities.
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This will be a referendum on the way U.S. politics works. How we have handed the keys to the wealthiest corporations and how they have captured our regulatory agencies and a majority of our elected representatives for their agendas.
This is what pay-to-play politics has brought us.
It is a referendum on the deregulation of credit cards and the removal of usury. It is a referendum on the banking industry's derivative-swap induced global economic collapse. It is a referendum on the inability of the u.s. to address our own domestic economic decline and the destruction of our middle class.
This is what it comes to
update:
ok some citations, cause people need to realize that
- there will be no noticeable tidal shock
-- the energy of the shock wave will translate from the point of origin along the bow front of the wave. it will grow according to the surface area of the shock wave and then propagate outward along the leading edge of the circle.
That means that for the first mile the energy will disperse according to a function of the cubed of the radius or for each tripling of distance the energy will drop by a factor of 9. then it will move 42 miles to the shore and it will drop by square of the distance so by the time it reaches land, the energy of the wave will be reduced some 10,000 fold and will not be noticeable (since it has spread out to sea as well).
- it has been done before
The Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities. The first happened in Uzbekistan, on September 30, 1966, with a blast 1.5 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and at a depth of 1.5 kilometers.
- it is far better than letting it leak 3-6 months.
yes it is
- the amount of radioactivity from the modern weapon will be negligible.
it will take place underneath the ocean floor, most radioactivity will be contained. Any other will be diluted in the ocean. It is much much less damaging than the oil.