1,000 Words: The Slick From Space

Looks like a mocha with some half and half. What’s the problem? Drill, baby, drill.

Wow…..

Isn’t GIS a wonderful tool?
.
Yup, Hayword, it sure don’t take much milk to color the coffee, does it?
.
Heckuva job, Hayword…

Having looked at it this way, do you think Obama’s $20,000,000,000 “shakedown” is enough?

Good God, they’ve turned the Gulf into a desert…

If you squint really really hard you can see Tony “I’d Like My Life Back” Hayward’s yacht (where he hid over the weekend).
.
.
BTW, Michael, per your tweet, what do you mean by the British press covering the WH like Robert “You’re in Good Hands” Green? Of course, it could be worse. You could be describing the French press sitting on their asses and whining in their press tour bus with the curtains drawn, refusing to come out.

I think that cloud is following him around. Water has a bit of difficulty evaporating through oil…

The Gulf Oil Slick, brought to you by the people who have been making fun of the environmental movement and environmentalists for the past half century. Let’s see, there is Goldwater, Reagan, Bush I, Dole, Bush II, McCain, “Drill, Baby, Drill” Palin, Joe “The Apologizer Bunny” Barton, the list goes on and on.
-
The sad things is, they have won. The battle for the environment worldwide is essentially lost. We have passed the tipping point.

Sorry, I’m suddenly not in a joking mood……

Good point, let that cloud follow him around and haunt him. Maybe evil spirits will work here; certainly BP has had no better success. Speaking of clouds and an unusual analogy to one of my favorite ‘50’s films…
.
… if you squint even harder than for viewing Tony’s yacht you can see individual tourists and reporters on the Florida beaches watching the spill inch closer and closer like the fallout cloud descending upon Australia in On the Beach. Among the crowds are our lovely swampwomen Jay and Kate + future swamper Katy Steinmetz in hot bikinis while sipping caipirinhas and working on their upcoming books – they can write bestsellers too, Catherine Mayer, ha! assessing the upcoming tourism damage.

It’s ironic that “Drill Baby Drill” (aka Sarah Palin’s command to her husband each night) may be the only real solution …as in the relief wells, which should’ve been drilled up front to access sooner, but I digress.

This is the kind of stuff that is so enormous it can only be addressed with humor.
.
This, area wise, is the largest man made object ever created.
.
It is larger than some mid sized satellites in the Solar System…

Why does the Earth hate liberals?

One thing I can see immediately is why the force of the disaster has not yet been felt:
.
You see the current flow between the leak location sweeping eastward? I’m not sure what the white is (emulsified oil?) but it clearly demarcates natures’ hand in keeping the bulk of the oil out to sea.
.
Nature giveth and nature taketh away. We are tiny…

You know, decon, maybe that is a good point. Maybe any well that is to be drilled in such a way as to be uncontrollable should be required to have a prepositioned and maintained relief well drilled to within a few hundred feet of the production well.

Do you know, Micheal, that 1,000 words was intended to create a bastion of light-hearted humor. My response to Paul Dirks, now that I think of it, needs to be parsed a bit:
.
1. You are not really keeping up ’1,000 words’ as KT envisioned it. I think this was PD’s point, which I agree with.
.
2. This could wind up being the largest environmental disaster in history, outstripping Bhophal in deaths, Chernobyl in sheer numbers of human beings affected, and Exxon Valdez in sheer size (already accomplished!). It is too huge by half to be the subject of a ’1,000 words’, yet I think humor is probably the only way to approach this.
.
Otherwise, I would cry…

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/06/21/nungesser-contractors-rules/

“Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told members of the New Orleans City Council that private contractors are trying to block access to oil-slicked marshes and are keeping pelicans covered in toxic sludge for days before cleaning them. When Nungesser follows the established chain of command to raise concerns, they ‘never get an answer back.’”

If the Earth hated liberals then the spill would be hitting the upper West and East coasts, not the R-heavy South. The Exxon Valdez also hit an R state (AK), not the Port of San Francisco or other liberal redoubt.

I hope KT isn’t reading and weeping (literally) at watching her “1000 words” turn into a somber event with melancholy pix.

Where’s Daniel Plainview when you really need someone to “drink your milkshake”?

It’s just never going to be fixed

53-3, the requirement of a relief well is already the law in Norway and other countries. Perhaps it should be the law here but that would reduce the profits of the oil companies (that they take back to their home country afterwall).

Thanks for that, artraveler. I don’t know the oil industry well.

Michael, are we supposed to say something funny about this. CNN interviewed a local fisherman who has been contracted to scoop up endangered turtles. They have saved some young turtles. However, since they are burning the top oil many of the turtles and other animal life are getting trapped within the booms and are being burned alive.
Funny huh. I picture Cheney sitting with his arm aroung Liz and just having a great yuck.

Rep. consultant working big oil PR: Alex Costellanos
Dem. consultants working big oil PR: Hilary Rosin, Steve McMahon
I am sure there are many more.
When these people are interviewed, this fact is never mentioned.