As someone that thinks it is ridiculous to use Windex instead of vinegar and water to clean windows, the idea of pouring almost two million gallons of it into the ocean strikes me as completely insane.

ra-ra-raw: As someone that thinks it is ridiculous to use Windex instead of vinegar and water to clean windows, the idea of pouring almost two million gallons of it into the ocean strikes me as completely insane.

Yeah, can't beat vinegar, or baking soda for tubs/showers. Quite a few natural remedies are cheaper and work better than most household cleaners.

As far as this BP shiat goes; I think there were quite a few people who correctly predicted that the dispersant was going to cause a lot of problems.

Shame on BP.

What oil? I read the other day that it's all gone and Mother Nature cleaned up a 100 million barrel oil spill all by herself in less than a month.

Duh, we should just have built a fusion-powered space elevator and toss the oil into the Sun.
Do I have to do all the thinking around here?

NYZooMan: acaciaavenue: What oil? I read the other day that it's all gone and Mother Nature cleaned up a 100 million barrel oil spill all by herself in less than a month.

If ya can't see it, it ain't really there!

/look no further than Fark to find such fools.

Actually, Mother Nature will clean up what is still 100% natural. However, it takes a bit more than a month for bateria to break down the globs (the lighter stuff has already evaporated).

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NYZooMan: acaciaavenue: What oil? I read the other day that it's all gone and Mother Nature cleaned up a 100 million barrel oil spill all by herself in less than a month.

If ya can't see it, it ain't really there!

/look no further than Fark to find such fools.

You mean like the ones that were convinced BP was trucking in a few million tons of sand to covertly cover hundreds of miles of beaches while nobody was looking?

Quasar: The EPA 2 months ago when they said the dispersant BP was dumping into the Gulf was worse than the oil itself?

I remember reading that also. The government said "knock-off" dumping so much of it. I think BP's ulterior motive was to just make the oil itself go away. Be damned the eco issues the dispersant causes.

Nice to see the perps responsible for this have been put in jail.

/fark you, bp.
//i'll laugh and support anybody who bricks any bp employee's face

CasperImproved: I remember reading that also. The government said "knock-off" dumping so much of it. I think BP's ulterior motive was to just make the oil itself go away. Be damned the eco issues the dispersant causes.

That's my belief. They knew that the real danger was in the bad optics of oil washing up on the beach and into the wetlands. If they could prevent that, its good for BP.

Oil does not dissolve in water, so it might be removed from it.
Dispersed (emulsified) oil does dissolve in water, becoming a solute that is impossible to remove... except by living tissue, which manages to separate out the oil and suffer its effects.

/facepalm

My pr0n name is Tom Seaview: Oil does not dissolve in water, so it might be removed from it.
Dispersed (emulsified) oil does dissolve in water, becoming a solute that is impossible to remove... except by living tissue, which manages to separate out the oil and suffer its effects.

/facepalm

Not saying that they should have used dispersants, but you got a source for that?

If only there were a government agency to stop... An agency to protect the land, sea and air....

Duh, we should just have built a fusion-powered space elevator and toss the oil into the Sun.

"Ever since the Beginning of Time, Man has longed to destroy the Sun."

Is there anything this administration does right? Once again they overestimated the impact of the oil. Even Rush Limbaugh got that one right.

Now they fark up the dispersant protocol? What a gaggle of incompetent buffoons. I feel sorry for all the animals they are supposedly helping but they have no voice so they can't complain.

Competence and the Obama administration go together like oil and water.

The reason for using dispersants is so that no one else can collect the oil.

I heard an interesting interview with a guy who I believe was an accountant. He was performing a financial analysis of BPs actions after the spill. He found the #1 reason why BP used so much dispersant was to hide the oil from the govt. According to him BP gets fined based on how many barrels of oil are spilled. By using the dispersants, they basically sunk most of the oil/evidence making an accurate estimate of the spill's size very difficult.

rustybender: I heard an interesting interview with a guy who I believe was an accountant. He was performing a financial analysis of BPs actions after the spill. He found the #1 reason why BP used so much dispersant was to hide the oil from the govt. According to him BP gets fined based on how many barrels of oil are spilled. By using the dispersants, they basically sunk most of the oil/evidence making an accurate estimate of the spill's size very difficult.

Yea this part is pretty obvious. They used dispersants so less oil would be visable to the people on the beaches. The dispersants keep the oil in those mile long underwater plumes that journalists with cameras can't display on the evening news.

On a side note, this whole "dispersant is worse then the oil" reminds me of a Reno 911 sketch. They found asbestos in their office so they were given these masks to wear... only they later found out the masks themselves were made of asbestos.

Yes, but BP was prepared for this. They've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on dispersant.

Chimperror2: Competence and the Obama administration government go together like oil and water.

FTFY. Don't even try to pretend that Bush would have been any better. Most of the people involved in any day to day government function, except at the very top, are career civil servants. It's the same pack of fools doing the work regardless of which crook's cronies are waving the baton.

Government is incompetent and inefficient.
Politicians are self-serving, power-hungry liars.
Water is wet.
Grass is green.

These things should be completely obvious to anyone with three functioning brain cells.

If anything, I'm inclined to believe that the Obama administration is less incompetent than the Bush administration. Of course that's like saying Jeffery Dahmer was less evil than Ted Bundy.

...so vote Republican!

rustybender: According to him BP gets fined based on how many barrels of oil are spilled

Bingo. They even blurred the footage of the camera footage for as long as they could to ensure nobody was making calculations based on High-Def images of the oil spewing into the water.

And now, with no oil to recover, they saved themselves billions. Of course, the oil is still there, somewhere else in the water column, but if it's not on the surface, nobody can accurately gauge any reliable estimate as to what BP owes.

BorgHunter: Yes, but BP was prepared for this. They've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on dispersant.

t0t0: 2-butoxyethanol (new window)

from the linky2-Butoxyethanol usually decomposes in the environment within a few days and has not been identified as a major environmental contaminant. It is not known to bioaccumulate.

It was applied for 86 days. 1.1 million gallons on the surface, 770,000 gallons subsea. It has left the building. Testing of 500 fish have not revealed any trace of corexit in the fish.

I realize that the liberals here want this to be bad, but in reality, it is not any worse than Benzene, Ethyl Benzene, Toluene, Xylenes, or other PAHs in the oil.

My pr0n name is Tom Seaview: Oil does not dissolve in water, so it might be removed from it.
Dispersed (emulsified) oil does dissolve in water, becoming a solute that is impossible to remove... except by living tissue, which manages to separate out the oil and suffer its effects.

/facepalm

Oil is eaten by the bugs in the water. It is how it disappears. The corexit is solvent, detergent and other chemicals. The detergent will break up the oil (it is why Dawn works so well on the birds). Solvent is like kerosene - a product of oil (being mixed with oil). The 2-Butoxyethanol usually decomposes in the environment within a few days and has not been identified as a major environmental contaminant. It is not known to bioaccumulate (per wiki).

The oil biodegrades naturally when exposed to heat, direct sunlight, wave action, etc. Less than 2,000,000 gallons were applied to a spill that could have reached 60K bbl/day x 42 gal/bbl x 86 days (or 216 million gallons). So when you compare the volume of corexit applied to the spill, it is minimal compared to the volume of oil released. When it hit the oil, it broke it down to small particles allowing bacteria and biodegradation.

Do you think that BP is going to get their $20 Billion back from 0bama? really?

you guys are smokin some of that fake pot....

Watch it if you have the time. You're on Fark, you have the time.
Link (new window)

Had the obama administration ALLOWED BP to use whatever means necessary to get the needed booms in place, and then allowed nature to take its course, there wouldn't be this big mess.
Where the hell do you think the oil went? It's been CONSUMED by the naturally occurring enzymes in the ocean. That's what mother nature does, cleans up after itself.
What do you think happened to all the oil that gushed out of the oceans before fricking man came upon the scene? If nature hadn't cleaned it up, it would be still floating and killing things.
Once again, man thinks he can do a better job of cleaning up something in nature, than nature can do for itself.

All of this sets me to wondering, ya know. Just how many gallons of water are in the oceans? I mean, the oil and dispersants couldn't possibly degrade and vanish, right?

ummmm me?

Everyone.

/including Mr. Happy Smiley Eyes Closed Guy.

Wait, are you telling me that an oil company can be very evil and very stupid?

Quasar: The EPA 2 months ago when they said the dispersant BP was dumping into the Gulf was worse than the oil itself?

FTFA: The EPA says "no federal agency has said these products cause no harm to aquatic life"," but that its testing so far shows no "significant impact."

Hypothesis is merely hypothesis until properly tested.


/Just sayin.

Rufus Lee King: All of this sets me to wondering, ya know. Just how many gallons of water are in the oceans? I mean, the oil and dispersants couldn't possibly degrade and vanish, right?

Well it's a big ocean, and now we can't see this crap, so....yes, it's gone. No problem. Probably will be fine. Back to the beaches!

How could you possibly doubt these test results? Oh, maybe by reading this sentence:

a group of scientists working for law firms suing BP

Umm, they have no agenda, do they? Unless the testing is done by a lab not hired by BP nor ambulance chasing law firms, none of the results are to be trusted.

No one else has any reaction to the fact that they named their dispersant "Corexit?" Someones tongue is in their cheek. Probably Orwell fans too. Balls man, in your face balls.

drjekel_mrhyde: styckx: The page is blank

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/FF always does that with MSNBC links

Maybe it's trying to give a hint.