Saturday, May 08, 2010

Oil!


Oil picture

According to this Huffington Post article:

The catastrophic explosion that caused an oil spill from a BP offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico has reached the shoreline early Friday morning. The leak is currently releasing 5,000 barrels of oil per day, and efforts to manage the spill with controlled burning, dispersal and plugging the leak were unsuccessful Thursday. This oil spill is on track to become the worst oil spill in history, surpassing the damage done by the Exxon Valdez tanker that spilled 11 million gallons of oil into the ecologically sensitive Prince William Sound in 1989. Unlike the Exxon Valdez tragedy, in which a tanker held a finite capacity of oil, BP's rig is tapped into an underwater oil well and could pump more oil into the ocean indefinitely until the leak is plugged.


However, some people say that as bad as that sounds the reality is far worse. According to Glenn, in a comment on a blogpost about an election that's going on in some Western European backwater:

This is gusher - a traditional, straight up gusher - of unprecedented force and it's sitting on the sea bed, three miles down. It cannot be stopped, it will deliver 60,000 barrels (nearly 1/4 million gallons) of crude into the ocean each day soon.

The force of this, after we'd drilled 13,000 feet into the Earth's mantle, was something we could not stop - it blew every valve from the bottom all the way to the top of the rig.

If we do not stop it, all the world's oceans will be destroyed, they will stop producing oxygen, and we will die gasping very soon afterwards.


Expecting some sort of knee-jerk, pseudo-skeptic response from myself, ("Towel-whipping and high-fiving between AngryLarry aside, isn't anyone else seriously concerned about this unfolding environmental catastrophe, possibly the worst ever") he offers two links, one of which makes the case for an Apocalyptic scenario.

The first describes a situation worse than that reported to the public:

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

Asked Friday to comment on the document, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the additional leaks described were reported to the public late Wednesday night. Regarding the possibility of the spill becoming an order of magnitude larger, Smullen said, "I'm letting the document you have speak for itself."


But the second suggests that all life on Earth is finished!

Here are some extracts with my own snarky comments:

Glenn, I honestly don't know what to say. The guy who wrote the email seems to suggest there is nothing that can be done and that we're all doomed!

"We're humped. Unless God steps in and fixes this. No human can. You can be sure of that."

He gives one piece of advice:

"The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I'm not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work."

But that sounds counter-intuitive to me.

There is something I do agree with here, though:

"We're so used to our politicians creating false crises to forward their criminal agendas that we aren't recognizing that we're staring straight into possibly the greatest disaster mankind will ever see."

Yes, our politicians do create false panics about this, that and the other but they're not the only ones.


I think the amount of alarmism that conspiracy sites such as Infowars, Poison Prison Planet etc... like to churn out also adds to the boy-who-cried wolf knee-jerkism that many people feel when they hear stories like the one above.

Buried at the bottom of the first report is this:

Smullen described the NOAA document as a regular daily briefing. "Your report makes it sound pretty dire. It's a scenario," he said, "It's a regular daily briefing sheet that considered different scenarios much like any first responder would."


Unfortunately, the conspiracy theorizing gets worse...

Reading the link that Glenn posted there was a spoof article by the very same Huffington Post titled "Goldman Sachs Reveals it Shorted Gulf of Mexico":

The new revelations came to light after government investigators turned up new emails from Goldman employee Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre in which he bragged to a girlfriend that the firm was taking a "big short" position on the Gulf.

"One oil rig goes down and we're going to be rolling in dough," Mr. Tourre wrote in one email. "Suck it, fishies and birdies!"


While "Pure Energy Systems" agreed that the writer Andy Borowitz was a comedian and that the article was a joke, they also point out that Goldman Sachs had made investments into the company responsible for drilling into the oil field. The writer says "just because his piece was satire, doesn't mean there isn't something to it" and points to a source called "A. True Ott Ph.D" (I no longer can tell what is satire) who says:

I have confirmed that there were indeed numerous "shorts" placed on TransOcean stock just days before the "problem"...

Who would dare to quote the actual e-mails from "Fabulous Fab", unless the writer would post them as a "satire" - especially after what happened to the Wall Street Journal writers who dared expose the 9-11 short sales involving Goldman Sachs. (They were assigned to Afghanistan, and had fatal "accidents" there.)


So, Dr Ott is a Truther? Quelle surprise! He's clearly very brave for speaking out given that he knows what happened to those who exposed Goldman Sachs' hand in 9/11. Or not.

Here's his website. Please buy his goods.

I'm going to give the last word to the PES guy:

Do we have a shred of clean justice left in our corrupt government system which has been bought out, blackmailed, threatened, or otherwise brought under the control of these New World Order manipulators?

It's a dark day in which we live. But I am confident that brighter days are ahead. This time of transition is going to be a wild ride.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Not strictly on topic, but you mentioned "the amount of alarmism that conspiracy sites such as Infowars, Poison Prison Planet etc... like to churn out". I was just on such a 9/11 conspiracy site & I feel like I need a shower.

My God! They actually believe it! We should all give thanks to some higher power, whether it exists or not, that these people are ineffectual solipsists and narcissists.

What makes it even more grotesque is the sense of community, the participation. An hour spent on these kind of forums & one can almost understand how somebody could end up joining some mad cult.

Anyway, thanks for letting me use your blog to regain some sanity & let off some steam.

angrysoba said...

Anyway, thanks for letting me use your blog to regain some sanity & let off some steam.

You're welcome. I like to think of my blog as a public service.

I think the community aspect of Truther/conspiracism results in unhealthy reinforcement of wacky views. Perhaps people start off with some "gateway" conspiracy such as the JFK assassination or 9/11, they meet up with broadly like-minded people who are busy collecting evidence that mysterious things are going on, and end up convinced they are a band of rebels fighting against the evil Matrix!

I think they like the idea they've stumbled upon hidden truths, ancient mysteries and special kinds of knowledge that makes them way smarter than every one else. But the reinforcement they get from their "communities" and confirmation bias makes them extremely hostile to rationally discussing the possibility that they may be wrong.

Anyway, thanks for dropping in. Please call again.