>They must have some fallback plan? >If NASA can go to the moon, there must be engineers out there somewhere that >can, given the all out green light, beat this disaster. Therein lies the rub. green light and TIME. NASA went to the moon by having TESTED back-up plans for the back-up plans. Slowly built up the capability to accomplish the mission and then did it. Ready-AIM Aim-and aim again-Fire. The oil industry in general is doing READY-FIRE-AIM. Can't blame them, it's more profitable that way. And that's all they see. Since we know that, and they don't pay the price of failure, the public does, it's up to someone else to keep them in check. The regulators that were supposed to be keeping them in check is where my anger is directed. How could they possibly let the drilling be operated this way? Carey *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 8:43 AM, Carey Parks <carey_at_jimparksfamily.com>wrote: > > Therein lies the rub. green light and TIME. NASA went to the moon by having > TESTED back-up plans for the back-up plans. Slowly built up the capability > to accomplish the mission and then did it. Ready-AIM Aim-and aim > again-Fire. > The oil industry in general is doing READY-FIRE-AIM. Well, in all fairness, deep water drilling has been going on since the 1970s. I worked on a drill rig that drilled in 6,300 feet of water almost exactly where the Deepwater Horizon was drilling back in 1984. I think that the analogy might be better if it were to compare the Challenger disaster. After all, nothing had gone wrong before so why would it go wrong this time? It's called "complacency". > The regulators that were supposed to be keeping > them in check is where my anger is directed. How could they possibly let > the > drilling be operated this way? > > So after sitting on our butts for 60 years watching our government become hogtied by one industry lobby after another throwing money at politicians we are suddenly wondering why the "regulators" didn't do their jobs? BP is responsible for this, not the regulators. BP decided to remove the mud from the well before setting the last cement slug (allegedly overruling the operators of the drill rig - Transocean - in at least one account). BP allegedly ordered the rig operators to ignore the evidence that the annular in the BOP was damaged. And I might add that it's difficult to maintain a regulatory framework when one political party seems to believe that the answer to every possible problem is lower taxes. Corporate tax rates have fallen steadily since the 1950s and between the rate decreases and the new loopholes we find ourselves in a position where simply funding regulators isn't easy. Guess how much income tax BP paid last year. What I'd like to know is why a corporation has as many rights as an individual but none of the responsibilities? I mean.. they can throw *me* in jail but what can they do to BP? I think that BP should be required to terminate all operations in the USA and transfer those operations to an oil company with a cleaner record. That would be any other oil company, by the way. Craig Jungers Moses Lake, WA www.nwkayaking.net *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 03:53:31PM -0700, Craig Jungers wrote: > I think that BP should be required to > terminate all operations in the USA and transfer those operations to an oil > company with a cleaner record. I think that BP should be confiscated. All of it. So should the personal assets of every Cxx-level executive. Their homes, their bank accounts, their portfolios, etc. Their surpassing greed, their disregard for the safety of their workers and for the public and for the environment is what caused this. It was not, as some inferior people and industry lackeys have suggested, "an act of god". It was the entirely predictable and direct result of their deliberate actions, and they need to be held fully accountable for it on both a corporate and personal level. (Note: this is my merciful option. Others are not so kind and generous.) All of this combined MIGHT make a small dent in the massive bill for the cleanup. Which is not going to be confined to the Gulf of Mexico if this model from UCAR turns out to reflect reality: http://www2.ucar.edu/news/ocean-currents-likely-to-carry-oil-spill-along-atlantic-coast As frightening and horrible as all the pictures we've seen are -- the animation on that page is worse. It doesn't have the visceral emotional impact of the photos of dying pelicans and dolphins, but the implications are staggering and awful. Other useful sources of information: http://www.theoildrum.com/ http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/ http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/ The first in particular has exhaustive engineering analysis covering everything from the initial failure to the fine details of the various attempts made to stop the flow. ---Rsk *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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