Nerdy Girl

So specifically, what would you have wanted Obama to do differently?

So...what could he have done? Are you really choosing to blame Obama for the past 30+ years of reduced government regulation? (Hurr, hey kids, remember, the market will regulate itself! There's no way that they'll be self-serving as all hell! Or you know, demonstrate basic human nature. ...)
Or are you choosing to blame him for not being able to magically snap his fingers and wish all of the oil away in a day? BP deserves to burn for this but it's not like they can do the same thing either. You seem to be unaware of the sheer scale involved in the oil leak.

The solution should have been... the industry should have prepared for just such an event as what we're experiencing now. Despite all the assurances that deep-water drilling is safe, with the advances in technology, etc., BP cut corners (and I would expect the other companies drilling there as well are guilty of this) with their Gulf drilling sites, compared to their setups in the North Sea.

Someone in the industry actually claimed that blowout and clean-up technologies have not continued apace with corresponding technologies for finding, drilling and extracting the oil - due to the fact that there have been no major spills in the last few decades. Really? There have been maybe two dozen spills, of various sizes - many more than just the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Oil companies have not developed these technologies, due to the fact that they are more concerned with their balance sheets and shareholder dividends, over actually being cautious in the oil extraction itself.

Is BP alone to blame? Not by a long shot. Is our oil-hungry society to blame? Yes, definitely. The nice thing about solar, or other alternate forms of energy, is there's not much danger that an entire ecosystem could be decimated as we're witnessing now. Is Obama to blame? Perhaps, but not to the degree that you assert I think.

Deregulation of the last few decades, pretending that a corporation will look out for anything beyond its own narrow interests, has failed us, and is failing the Gulf now. And the incredibly cozy revolving door situation we have with people in the industry routinely serving in "regulatory" capacities in office like the blatant "look the other way and everything will be fine" Mineral Management Service. The scary thing is - this situation is repeated throughout government these days.

Having financial industry exec's serve in the FDC, SEC, and other supposed "regulatory" agencies - that worked out so well for us didn't it?

I'm confused too.. Is that your blog you linked to, as it seems the entire post is quoted verbatim. The blog first paragraph is exactly as you wrote above.

Why wouldn't President Obama use this to push energy reform? Is this not the perfect example of how our dependence on oil can harm the environment?

How do we know there haven't been closed door meetings to try and figure out what to do to stop the oil leak? I mean BP tried to be transparent with their efforts to stop the leak and became the laughing stock of the world with their, throw golf balls and shreded tires down to try an plug the hole. The blowout valve is 5,000 ft below water, with the total depth of the drill stopping at about 18,000 ft. Water pressure at this depth is 150 ATM, 2,205 psi, and over 540 ATMs at the bottom of the drill depth or over 8,000 psi. This is a complicated problem that isn't a one day/one week/one month fix. I'd imagine some of the most intelligent geologists, machinists, deep water experts, oil drillers, etc. have been called on to try and find a solution, problem is, if it's rushed, it could make the problem worse. What if capping the well causes a build up of pressure in the casing going down the entire 18,000 feet in the solid rock? How do you fix that?

Here's a graphical representation of how deep the well is:

http://9gag.com/full/25578

Here is a good discussion going on between some people that at a minimum have some experience with the science behind all the numbers.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb...63/index8.html

Not a big fan of the prez but I don't like the idea of blaming him(him being anyone in the office) for everything that goes wrong in the world. It's not logical at all. That being said, his handling of the situation was/is pretty bad and he tried to spin it by saying he was there since day 1 which is bs. On the issue of alternative energy, do we really have anything? Solar power is inefficient, wind power is dependent on wind, takes up tons of land, kills more birds than the oil spill ever will, bio diesel raises the prices of who knows how many commodities reliant on corn... Oh yeah, all this stuff requires massive government subsidy implying that they are money sinks. Nuclear energy is a great idea but there are too many hippies out there that think everything will turn into Chernobyl. I'm still waiting on my microwave and fusion power plants from SimCity2000.

I like that Penny and Nerdy both state pretty early that they're not fans of the President, then state they don't like the idea of blaming him, but then criticize how he handled it.....classic.

It really is quite unfortunate that there isn't more being done about such a major catastrophe.

Where do I start...?

I note that no one has taken up the challenge of answering what should have been a pretty simple question: WHAT should the president, or whoever else, have done? Not generalities about how he should have seen it coming, or causality-violating demands that he enact regulatory safeguards years before he took office. Specifics.

What, specifically, should Obama have done from April 20th until today, in order to more efficiently mitigate this crisis?

And while we're on the topic of efficiency... Photovoltaics have just hit 42.8% efficiency rates. (1) There is potential, though still far off and uncertain, of them hitting a 65% efficiency rate. That's 65% of energy hitting the cell as solar radiation being converted to electricity.

The coal industry has been crying about the hit it would take in efficiency if it was required to introduce carbon capture and sequestration systems -- it's estimated that they'd lose 5% of their current efficiency levels. Which would take them -- you ready for this? from an average of 31% efficiency (2) down to 29.45% efficiency. Or, in absolute figures, 31% less efficient than the best currently possible PV alternative. I'm not being entirely fair, comparing an average to a best of breed, I know. But neither is it fair to compare a technology that's barely two decades old with one that's had two hundred years to improve itself -- and hasn't bothered.

So if you're going ot talk about efficiency, the least you can do is get your numbers straight.

(nuclear is a different rant, but based on pretty much the same problem -- extremely low rates of industrial learning)

1) http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2008/jul/solar072307.html
2) http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/an...article-154672