OIL SPILL: Have you been following the news?

[Captain Zap]

What do you think of they way it's been handled so far?

I doubt they'll be able to stop it. So far, nothing has worked.

[Lagoon Bug]

The Gulf is gonna become a tar pit.

[Frong]

I think somebody will figure out some way to seal the thing off eventually, but I haven't the vaguest idea how long that will take and how much damage will be done to the area before then. The thing I don't think will ever happen is a complete, 100% recovery of the environment around the spill. Even if, say, five years from now, the oil is FINALLY all gone, the amount of wildlife and habitat destroyed may very well be too great for things to return to their prior state. All this because some moronically greedy execs at BP refused to ordered the people working on the rig to take shortcuts on safety measures in order to save some money. At least that was the final trigger, anyway, the order to replace the heavy drilling mud in the well (which was the only thing keeping the gas leaking into the well from escaping and triggering a blowout) with seawater so that the mud could be used elsewhere, in spite of the objections of the chief driller that it was a bad idea. Maybe from now on, the chief drillers at oil companies should be running the show and the execs should be out there doing manual labor.

[NOA Imawario]

It's pretty crazy how things have lasted this long. I do hope they will be able to seal it off before there is much more damage. It's definitely a historical event that will be talked about for a long time to come.

[Frong]

I was just talking to my mom about this today and she said how she saw on the news that some guys on the Florida coast who have been in construction or something for a long time (and therefore have experience working with molten blacktop and other funky liquids) came up with two ways to deal with the oil spill that actually work:

1) Hay. Yes, the kind you find on farms. Apparently, if you dump hay onto oil and stir it around, it absorbs all the oil and you can just pick it up and dispose of it. That's a solution that's cheap, effective, AND completely harmless. Nothing environmentally hazardous about a bunch of hay.

2) They also came up with this dual-layered carpet-type thing that will absorb both oil and water, but when wrung out, it holds the oil in between the layers and only releases the water. Then you can clean off the device and use it again. This might cost a bit more than hay, but it's reusable, and it's still just as harmless to the environment.

It seems that because both BP and the government are incompetent, these guys decided to deal with the oil approaching Florida on their own, and that it's working. Can we boot everyone out who's in charge of this fiasco in BP and Washington and put these guys in charge instead? Please?

[KenseidenXL]

Tony Hayward is as big of a dildo as Dubya. "I just want my life back." I'm sure the 11 men missing and presumed dead feel that way, too....

[Lagoon Bug]

The shortage in seafood from that area will probably cause more fishing in other waters and more land animals to be killed for food. It prompted me to eat vegan now. It's been about a week. I'm doing another week, then I'll see how it goes and may go longer. If I eat meat, it would be a couple times a week instead of per day.

[Frong]

I dunno, does not eating any meat at all really have much of a connection to the reduction in seafood supplies due to the spill? Not eating any crab or other stuff that's normally fished in that area, I can see, since the law of supply and demand should automatically correct for the drop in supply by raising the price of certain kinds of seafood.

[Diabolique]

Tony Hayward is as big of a dildo as Dubya. "I just want my life back."

I know! I just couldn't believe it when I watched his interview. Selfish bastard.

[Lagoon Bug]

A major shortage in seafood from this event could have some people eat other forms of meat. One way or another there is a sudden drop in animal life from this. It's like having a bowl of M&M's and eating little by little to make it last a month. And someone takes a handful and throws it away. That's like the oil spill. And I'm not doing this as a favor to the BP company. It's more like opting out of the whole meat and seafood industry for a while. Any major meat industry does not care about conserving. They'll fish more than they're allowed to if they could to make more money.

[Frong]

Any major meat industry does not care about conserving. They'll fish more than they're allowed to if they could to make more money.

Yeah, I suppose that much is true. The only reason most fishing industries would practice sustainable fishing would be if failing to do so would cost them more profits.

[Nakor]

A little research that it's too late at night for me to bother with at the moment will reveal exactly which fish and sea life are easily sustainable and which should be avoided for nature's sake.

[Poison PJ]

What pisses me off about BP is that it seemed they had no precautionary measures in place whatsoever.

[Frong]

Oh, they had precautionary measures in place. The problem is that a) they weren't designed to deal with a disaster of this scale (i.e. BP was shortsighted), and b) some of the execs cut corners with the safety mechanisms in order to save money. Everybody keeps screaming that the CEO of BP should be fired or kill himself or whatever, but he probably wasn't the one who issued those orders. The ones who did are the ones who should should take the brunt of the blame.

[Diabolique]

What pisses me off about BP is that it seemed they had no precautionary measures in place whatsoever.

Not only that, but they say that BP has been cutting maintenance costs in Alaska too...and that one could be another disaster waiting to happen.