Do we really know just how serious the oil spill is?

[george formby]

Not sure if it has been posted as I haven't read the whole thread, but I found http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/ really useful in visualising it. It puts the area of earth affected by the spill over a location of your choosing. Scary shit.

Holy s@#t. at it's narrowest point it stretches from Auckland to Kaitaia!

[marty]

the SKANDI rov's usually give the best pictures on the BP site

[marty]

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...andi_ROV2.html

direct to player: http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/r...asx?bkup=45684

[Naki Rat]

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...andi_ROV2.html

direct to player: http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/r...asx?bkup=45684

Great improvement to run the feed to Media Player. How to do that with the other ROV feeds?

[oldrider]

Hope this not a repost, I was reading a medical report and this (and many others) clip was on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QwsC...layer_embedded

Serious shit IMHO.

[Edbear]

This story is not going to end anytime soon! The more we hear about it the worse it gets...

[spacemonkey]

Hope you have had your fill of Kai moana of late cos over the next few years (Decades??) the price of seafood is going to go through the roof!!
This continuing spill is nailing one of the biggest fisheries over there causing shortages. The Yanks will start buying in from elsewhere and the importing of seafood is going to put prices under a lot of pressure worldwide.

[marty]

Great improvement to run the feed to Media Player. How to do that with the other ROV feeds?

open the in-web stream, right click on the streaming video and open properties. cut and paste the http that you see into a browser and it will open in the media player. i've saved the media players as favorites - it's a much better picture i reckon

[Naki Rat]

Interesting and disturbing interview on National Radio this morning on the GOM spill, particularly on the use of chemical dispersants

[Elysium]

speaking of oil. I found this of interest.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article18948.html

[Neshi]

But then I hear that oil reserves replenish themselves naturally, but I dont beleive anything I hear from the media these days.

it's true, it does replenish. But it takes billions of years.. maybe in our lifetime it will have replenished by a gallon.. or less.

[Naki Rat]

speaking of oil. I found this of interest.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article18948.html

Along similar lines, check out The End Of Suburbia It gives a well presented exposay of the likely future of civilization as oil supplies run out.

[Winston001]

Along similar lines, check out The End Of Suburbia It gives a well presented exposay of the likely future of civilization as oil supplies run out.

Yes there are numerous dyspeptic predictions that urban life is doomed. No more cheap air travel, fewer cars, a return to villages and small towns as people become unable to move about. I don't believe it.

Any view of human society shows the dramatic effects of technology. It took hundreds of thousands of years to move from using wood and stone tools to the leap to iron. Then quickly to bronze, taming of horses, agriculture, and recently steel. A century ago motor vehicles were uncommon, electricity was a wonder, and the telephone was becoming accepted. Today small children wander around with cell-phones...... The rise of technology is unstoppable.

So oil will be superceded. The most obvious source of new energy is atomic fusion. Already the Europeans are working on this in France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER. The problems are not easy, nor is how we store and transfer energy. But again there are remarkable ideas being experimented with for future batteries and a technology will be found.

30 years ago Jerry Pournelle pointed out that the complex hydrocarbons in oil are far too valuable to mankind to waste by simply burning. Looks like that realisation is finally coming to fruition.

[Jonathan]

I agree with the above post. It is all basic economics. Supply and demand - costs and benefits. For the time being while this (relatively) cheap and abundant resource continues to gush from the earth there is little impetus for companies to pour time and resources into R & D for alternatives.

Eventually, when oil supplies dwindle and the costs soar and the net benefit of focusing on oil extraction drops below the net cost, oil giants such as BP are not simply going to sit on their hands and fret about it. It will become necessary for these companies' survival to find alternatives at any cost - and as quickly as possible to head off the competition. So, in short, when the oil runs out alternatives WILL be found and these alternatives will quite possibly surpass oil in efficiency and cleanliness.

[Winston001]

.....oil giants such as BP are not simply going to sit on their hands and fret about it. It will become necessary for these companies' survival to find alternatives at any cost - and as quickly as possible to head off the competition.

Its happened already. All of the major oil companies now brand themselves as "energy" businesses and specifically BP rebranded in 2001 - "Beyond Petroleum". These mega companies are pushing and shoving each other to grab the next technology so they don't lose their place in the sun. Pretty astute.