http://blog.al.com/live/2010/04/deepwater_horizon_secret_memo.html
May 4, 2010, 1600 PDT -- Everybody in the world needs to read this story from the Mobile, Alabama Press-Register. It is solid journalism from a respected news source. I and others have already shown that it is now conservative to estimate the leak at 25,000 bpd. Just yesterday Adm Thad Allen, Commandant - USCG, did not deny that the current leak rate could be as much as 100,000 bpd. He even acknowledged that as possible right now. This story confirms that possibility. -- In the meantime CNN and the government continue to lie and direct attention away from the Gulf. My only conclusion is that they are trying to prevent panic through distraction. -- The longer they delay in telling the truth, the greater the panic will eventually be. I did a long impassioned interview today with WMNV in Tampa. Parts of that are supposed to air in their 6 P.M. drive-time news today and I was told that the rest of the story would be available for download from their web site. I'll provide more details when I have them.
CollapseNet Note -- Within a week we will be launching CollapseNet ahead of schedule. We are doing this because we need to be up and running now. It won't be as pretty as we had hoped, but it will be vastly more effective than what we are doing now. You'll be getting regular video updates and commentary from me, the blog, and quite a bit more. When CollapseNet launches, this URL will become an archival site only with directions to CollapseNet. A great many of the loyal participants here will be given free lifetime memberships to CollapseNet. In addition -- although it may not be possible at launch -- we will be offering barter memberships for those willing to exchange their time and help us populate our data bases. CollapseNet now has four screened volunteers in addition to our board of four people. Jenna will be letting you all know before the blog's last day and she will be providing instructions as to how long-term blog participants who have free memberships can activate them.
I need to stress one thing. All of you who are going to help Beta test or who have been given memberships must fill out a detailed questionnaire to activate your accounts. Everybody will. That is how we will be able to find each other. The data from those questionnaires will populate our maps and data bases and help us buils a ready-reference directory of key suppliers, vendors, schools, and other essential services.
Send no unecessary messages to either Jenna or me. Please don't email Jenna offering to volunteer. As we need them, we will ask for volunteers and employees from the CollapseNet site and we will have procedures in place to respond. When the time comes we'll have people in place to handle what we expect to be a gusher of incoming traffic. Few can yet see what I see. Around the world we are many. Around the world we see and understand what is happening and we want to help. Many of us are already building local lifeboats. We are strong... and soon we will be heard.
This is it. Stay real cool and loose. This is just the beginning. We do what we can because that's all we can do.
MCR
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I haven't put my two cents in on this latest gulf oil disaster, because I don't know all the science involved. So I can't decide whether to go with the idea that it's the end of the world, or just another day in paradise. But I will say this: It is just another day at the office!
Part 2
So what IS the worst that can happen? We all probably have different ways of conceptualizing that. Most of us would throw into our concept a vision of a planet Earth that does not support life anymore. We all love life; we love ourselves, and by extension, humanity. We are perplexed and angered by people who act in ways diametrically opposed to the best interests of life, of humanity, and of themselves, even as they think they are doing otherwise.
I could go on, but the point is this: we all want love. Yes, even the bad guys. We often act out of fear or other impulses – in fact, that it what is responsible for so much of what is wrong – but we all act in order to experience love (and please shift your definition of “love”, if you haven’t already, to encompass that indefinable feeling of wholeness that arises within ourselves on occasion, bidden or not).
That being the case, why on earth would any of us (again, sorry Elmo) think that we are contributing to “the cause”, so to speak, by indulging in fear, anxiety, paranoia, etc…? We can all see how things are going. We all know that TPTB are acting with ruthless (and loving) efficiency to further their agendas. Why wouldn’t they – they think that they’re “doing the right thing”. They’re acting out of love, same as all of us.
Not that we should in any way indulge their vast and onerous ignorance. Nor that we should necessarily squelch our own emotions, some of them unpleasant, as they arise – it’s simply healthy to acknowledge them and then move on in our desired direction. If you believe that “the enemy” controls your own reactions, your own experience, then you’ve got a lot of learning to do, my friend.
Creating one’s own reality usually gets a bad rap, as it’s such an easy straw-man target. To do it properly requires open eyes and acceptance, and a willingness to work very, very hard. Is that not what we should all aspire to? If we didn’t think that there was a possibility for improvement, if not for humanity as a whole, then for some of us, we’d be engaging in whatever nihilistic endeavor floated our boat.
But we’re not. We’re here, gathering information, looking for clues, preparing ourselves to pursue love and to spread love, for next month and next year and next decade, for us and for our children and for everyone with a pure heart, and for the animals and the trees and this ever-indulgent Mother of ours.
I always figured that, no matter how it all comes down, I’d be set in this isolated, rural place with water & sunshine, where I’m thick with a network of farmers and DIY-ers. But love intervened, and I’ll soon be leaving my beloved Kauai to join my sweetheart and her burgeoning natural clinic in Sacramento, of all places. Exactly the kind of place I wouldn’t have been caught dead in.
Should I have forgone love to preserve my hide? Not a chance. Love is the only reason that I, or any of us is here. We’re not saving lives, we’re saving love. And if we’re not doing it right now, every day – if we’re not living life in a meaningful way – then we have missed the point, and we are part of the problem, not the solution.
Part 1
I’ve wanted to write a “State of the Blogger” essay for quite a while now. Finally coming out of me ….
Elmo is bringing up some interesting issues. Watching him voice his fears and anxiety, it does beg the questions:
What are we afraid of? What do we dread the most? What is the “worst” thing that can happen, and what is the “best”? What is the point of reading and contributing to this blog? What is the point of being alive, and being conscious and aware?
I’m sure that RanD has broached these topics before in his/her inimitable and hard-to-read fashion, but it bears a very close looking-at. This is not the province of “religion” or “spirituality”. It’s about the reason we are doing this. If we don’t know why we are doing something, isn’t that craziness?
MCR has repeatedly referenced “saving lives”, and that has never resonated with me. Everybody dies. I will die. Everybody alive on this planet will die. We act as if it’s the worst possible tragedy when somebody, especially somebody we know or somebody famous, dies “before his time”. What the hell does that mean? Who decides whether it’s somebody’s time or not?
And this fluid concept, THAT’S the raison d’être of what we’re doing? No, it’s not good enough. Because then you’ve got people like Elmo (sorry, Elmo), apoplectic with fear and anxiety, telling us that it’s not enough, that WE’RE ALL GONNA FUCKIN DIE!! Well, duh.
Oil Slickonomics
Some economic impacts of the gulf oil disaster
quote
Three scenarios lie ahead. They rank as bad, worse, and ugliest (the latter being catastrophic and unprecedented). There is no “good” here.
…
The Ugliest.
This spew stoppage takes longer to reach a full closure; the subsequent cleanup may take a decade. The Gulf becomes a damaged sea for a generation. The oil slick leaks beyond the western Florida coast, enters the Gulfstream and reaches the eastern coast of the United States and beyond. Use your imagination for the rest of the damage. Monetary cost is now measured in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.
…
Federal deficit spending will certainly rise by tens, and maybe hundreds, of billions as emergency appropriations are directed at larger and larger efforts to clean up this mess. At the same time, federal and state revenues tied to Gulf-region businesses will fall.
…
We expect to see the deterioration of the economic statistics for the US to reveal the onset of this oil-slick crisis in May, and the negative impact will intensify during the summer months. A “double-dip” recession probably has been made more likely by this tragedy.
...
Deepwater and all offshore drilling in the US has been set back for a generation, just as Three Mile Island set back nuclear power development for decades. No politician can win an election now with a permissive view on drilling. Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill” now condemns her to political marginalization. Off shore drilling has lurched to the top of the political agenda in this November’s election cycle.
unquote
Namaste
See http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aFExL2COTwb0&pos=7
“By 2016 to 2018, there could be some significant impact on the supply standpoint,” according to Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Newedge USA LLC in New York, adding that a moratorium on new drilling, his worst-case scenario, would cause a shortfall of 500,000 to 1 million barrels a day. “They wouldn’t be able to offset depletion with new drilling.”
Oil-slick scenarios grow more grim
"I don't think they're going to be able to put the leak out until the reservoir depletes," Simmons said. "It's just too technically challenging."
Fucking hell!
Some free lifetime memberships will be given away? Uh if it isnt free for everyone then its not going to go anywhere.
"What do I dread the most?"
Well, that's easy... My #1 fear is that we're go going to sell our futures into oblivion!
And I'm sorry if people don't like hearing it. But as long as making money is the #1 determining factor in people's decision making, then planetary oblivion will always be just around the corner.
Tell me how else to explain BP popping a hole in the ocean floor, and allowing the biggest known oil reserve to drain into the Gulf of Mexico! Then tell me how something like that is a non-issue, and I'll stop worrying about the future of this world!
It's just another shining example of some major corporation playing with all of our lives in the pursuit of a buck! And at the same time, it's an example of how ignorant and selfish we are as a species, that we would allow --nay, encourage by our own obsession with technology-- something like that to even occur!
So, what is the worst that can happen? We kill the fucking biosphere, and there's no more anything! My kids, your kids, everybody's kids; they all die a horrible death! That happens to matter to me! I'm sorry that it doesn't matter to all of you dreamers!
We are ALL the cause of it! Or is my understanding of reality somehow mistaken; and it was actually rock-forming microbes that built New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Dubai, and all the other wonderful places that are just oh-so-healthy to our environment!
Oh, but I'm just afraid of ghosts, right? Is that what you're trying to say?
Yeah, yeah, yeah... Peace, love, and understanding is what's going to save the planet... Yeah, that's worked so well up to this point!
JESUS H. CHRIST, why do I even bother!?! Go ahead and kill the fucking place, I really don't care anymore!
Paul re, Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill” now condemns her to political marginalization.
Cui bono, yes?
BP have chimed in to suggest that they are 'containing' the spill by dropping a large dome over the well head and pulling the oil up a pipe connected to the dome to a waiting ship so as to 'prevent the oil gathering on the surface'.
Now I'm not one to scoff at everything, but this sounds like some hair-brained PR spin on BP extracting the oil rather than watch it spewing in to the oceans. In other words, this new attempt to 'contain' the spill is not an environmental measure, but a (very) dirty method of oil extraction.
I worked for a major oil company for many years. In the mid 90's I was part of an industry wide disaster spill team created just for these scenarios. We had simulated drills on each coast. There are methods and products that can be deployed to contain blowouts. I am no longer in this industry so I'm wondering if the spill teams are still in existence or if they were disbanded during the Bush years. Perhaps were just not hearing of their efforts from the media?
Re: "...it sounds trite, and the word 'meek' has got to be a deliberate mistranslation, but let's say 'The mellow shall inherit the Earth.'"
It is not clear that "the word 'meek' has got to be a deliberate mistranslation"; but saying "The 'mellow' shall inherit the Earth" is so incomplete as to be the equivalent of just another mistranslation:
The lingua franca used by Jesus in his day is a now long extinct (since app 650 AD) language of the Holy Land's western Semites known as the Aramaeans. From those first translations of Judaean-Christian religion from Aramaic into Greek and eventually into today's 2010 AD American-English, the word "meek" indeed does not accurately convey what & who Jesus meant when speaking of those who "...shall inherit the Earth" [sic]. Exactly "what & who" those people are is most succinctly defined in today's American-English lingua franca as 'those whose egos are subordinate to their intellects'; which persons are of course necessarily also masters at bearing the cross of patience in equal to their consciousness of reality.
As for how to personally/directly affirm or establish such information as this for oneself one needs but go to any of the contemporary versions of the King James Bible which include both 'Old' and 'New' testaments and the information on how to do so is there.
I won't claim to be an expert in deep water drilling or disaster mitigation in deep water drilling, but I think I can interpret the news articles and press releases I'm seeing.
1. No oil company ever spent the effort to come up with an emergency plan for a blowout at 5,000 feet.
2. No one knows how to repair a blowout at 5,000 feet.
3. We're experimenting with possible solutions at the height of a crisis.
As the oil continues to erupt through the seafloor, I suppose that it would be safe to assume that's eroding the pipes and the rocks. After all, the oil could well be picking up particulates in the flow and abrading the walls of the vent. This flow could in theory, increase in volume over time.
If it does expand, there's probably no fixing it. It'll just have to run until the field is exhausted.
Paul, I don't know if this is going to hurt Sarah Palin's reputation any. At worst, she can just lie and say she never said that. Just as McCain says he never was a maverick. The Tea Partiers can just spin this as proof that the oil industry needs to be deregulated. Logic be damned...
I finding plenty of folks commenting that this whole thing is overblown and that it should effect upcoming drilling activities. Never mind that current rigs in the vicinity are shutting down out of safety concerns. Piddling concerns such as, the workers don't want to be burned alive. And the folks that own the rigs, don't want to watch their property burn and sink into the ocean.
I hope that BP can plug this gusher soon. I don't have high hopes. My gut tells me that this is going to become the worst oil disaster ever.
I think it's a shame what we had already done to the gulf. When I was a kid, I waded in the channel off of Padre Island. It was teeming with life. I saw stingrays, anemones, starfish, a wide variety of shellfish and many other creatures. When I went back as an adult, the same area was barren and devoid of visible life. The beaches were abundantly decorated with tar balls. The very nature of the place was dramatically changed in a span of only ten years.
This disaster should not have been unexpected. Statistically speaking, it would be abnormal, not to have a major disaster once in a while. Each well of course, has only a small chance of suffering catastrophic failure, but as you construct more and more wells, the probability of failure increases. Just as each lottery ticket as an infinitesimal chance of winning, the volume of sales in tickets makes it a statistical certainty that one will win.
And of course, during economic downturns, the odds of failure increase as shortcuts are made to save money.
As we roll down the far side of Peak Oil, we should expect more failures. Even a major nuke failure should not come as a surprise when it happens. After all, our nuke plants are all aging and many are well past their originally intended life spans.
@ Velobwoy:
I can think of no other online writer / blogger / commentator right now who has been able to answer all of those difficult, complex, and contemplative questions (many of which you have stated in the opening of your "State of the Blogger" essay) that we have all had better than Joe Bageant.
He is a brilliant minds who humbly offers some of his own views and responses to many of those central questions that beg to be answered.
Read his latest article entitled:
"There Ain't No Escape From Collapse"
I was wondering the same thing as Iconoclast.
Will Collpasenet be a free service for us?
Mike needs to charge for CollapseNet - give me a break. So he's supposed to go bankrupt while giving us valuable information that might save our asses and wallets?
Not everything can be free in this world, and we need to pay for people's expertise and insights.
I just read the article from yesterday describing how the oil does have sand in it, and oil industry experts do expect it to wear away the pipes.
And after it wears away the pipes, i think we can assume it'll wear a bigger hole through the rock.
BP says that they'll have it plugged in several months. How big will the hole be by then? Is their current strategy going to be sufficient by that time?
I think Matt Simmons is probably right. this will have to deplete before it can be plugged.
So... After this wipes out the reefs in Florida, the resistance to offshore drilling, will no longer be able to voice concerns over damaging the ecosystems, right?
I was a lifetime subscriber to FTW, I have no problem subscribing to another MCR site. His knowledge is too important to not pay to access.
It was a pity that just when I had the money, and fully committed to FTW, everything went bad, with the break-in, and everything. I am ready to be an active part of CollapseNet.
Bring it on!
--Monkeyfister
monkeyfister.blogspot.com
"
So the worst case scenario
Wed, 05/05/2010 - 11:50 — IrishMo48 (not verified)
So the worst case scenario is 2.1 million gallons per day or 766 million gallons per year or 3 billion quarts of oil per year each polluting 250 thousand gallons of water per year ... That equals 750 quadrillion gallons of water polluted per year ... assuming that the source of oil is unlimited as is the pressure pushing that oil ... And we all know that fossil fuels are an infinite source ... right?
Anyway ... Back to the math ... so the Earth's oceans have 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water in them, and a cubic kilometer has 257 billion gallons of water in it ... so we have 334 million quadrillion gallons of water available to be polluted ... So it will only take 445,333 years before ALL of the oceans water is polluted by this oil spill ... at one quart per 250,000 gallons.
Just checking the doomsday time clock."
http://www.truthout.org/things-fall-apart59152#comment-193234
there's NO free lunch. unless you are a thief. goldman. we are all goldman now. have been for a while.
free energy slaves.
anyway, best case scenario is USG saves up the oil instead of doing controlled burns, centrifuges out the valuable industrial lifeblood instead of burning it away for nothing, which at least goes to fuel USG's public taxpayer-supported efforts to "assist" beleagured BP corporation.
other best-case is BP's "100 ton block" fix working. seems unlikely.
Perhaps it's just my penchant for mistrust, but of the top eight stories in the NYT mobile this morning (5-5-10) the first five were about the "terror" event in Times Square. None of the eight concerned the Gulf Oil Spill. On the Google World News mobile series of pages this morning there were NO stories about the Gulf Oil spill. BP is unlikely to contain the catastrophe of the spill but there seems to be no problem crimping the media pipe. This "leaked report" is crucial.
CollapseNet needs this:
http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2010/05/with-donation-of-single-domain-name.html
I'm sorry but this post makes me chuckle. MCR goes on and on about alerting and helping mankind. Collapsenet is about to be unveiled but there is a membership fee. I predict your membership will be low because there are plenty of free sites on the web offering similar information. So much for hippy love, lol.
Re "I'm sorry but this post makes me chuckle. MCR goes on and on about alerting and helping mankind."
bostx takes his angle, others take their angle. All share a common mistake, delusion and political liability. The challenge that lies on the horizon has squat to do with helping "mankind." For starters, the anthropological notion of mankind (and the "human race") is a globalist construct designed to serve globalist purposes. If anything will be served, it will be one's immediate tribe. Some will get it; most won't.
At the best of times this group suffers from a bewildered and naive tree-hugging ethos that is not only counter-productive; it is dangerous. Kindly bring your research, observations, perceptions and analyses up to scratch.
When assuming responsibility for the lives of others, it is always imperative to keep the following maxim in mind: It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake.
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