Setting Fire To The Gulf Of Mexico
The search for the 11 missing workers was called off days ago, but the oil well they left behind continues to gush more than 40,000 gallons of oil a day. The oil slick is estimated to cover 28,600 square miles of the Gulf. In hopes of restricting further spread the Coast Guard will, you’re going to love this, set fire to the sea.
The U.S. Coast Guard prepared to set fire Wednesday to portions of a growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico to keep the pool of crude away from sensitive ecological areas in the Mississippi River Delta.
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“It’s a historically proven technique, and it has multiple preventative safety measures in place to ensure that that burn area remains controlled,” said Lt. Cmdr. Matt Moorlag, a Coast Guard spokesman.
We are assured that multiple safety measures, no doubt as effective as the ones to prevent explosions on the Deepwater Horizon in the first place, will be put into place to ensure the “controlled” burn can be, well controlled. No matter how many safety measures are taken, there are serious doubts that burning the slick will be effective:
Ed Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University who’s studying the oil spill, questioned whether burning would work.
“It can be effective in calm water, not much wind, in a protected area,” he said. “When you’re out in the middle of the ocean, with wave actions, and currents, pushing you around, it’s not easy.”
He has another concern: The oil samples from the spill he’s looked at shows it to be a sticky substance similar to roofing tar.
“I’m not super optimistic. This is tarry crude that lies down in the water,” he said. “But it’s something that has got to be tried.”
This is turning into a total cluster fuck faster then even I’d imagined.
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