teacherken and Nashville fan have feuding diaries. Judging from the activity, you, the reader, have probably already read both diaries. If not, you should do so.
I agree more closely with teacherken. Nashville fan makes too many unsubstantiated assertions for my taste, so I will start below the fold with an attempt at exposing those. Then I will add something new, that neither diary seems to have considered.
In the second sentence after the fold the Nashville fan says:
The simple fact is that even if skimmer ships from other countries were or are dispatched, they cannot suck up enough oil to counteract what is coming out and will continue to come out until August.
He does not add anything to quantitatively support that statement.
Then in Update #2 the he states again:
Twice in this diary, I said that the skimmer boats would not be able sto suck up enough oil to couteract what is coming out. Once I said they could not get it all. Guess which line got the most play? :o)
But again no quantitative analysis, just a statement of opinion.
Some Quantitative Analyses:
Robinson's article states:
Sweden has volunteered to send three ships that can each collect about 15,000 gallons of oil an hour.
This article from the Seattle Times corroborates Robinson's figures:
... the Swedish Coast Guard said it can send three ships that can each collect 370 barrels of oil an hour, but it is waiting to hear from the U.S. government or BP.
albeit expressed in barrels rather than gallons, (42 gallons to the barrel.)
Those three skimmers alone can sweep up about half of all the barrels of oil being released per day. (370 barrels per hour times 3 ships times 20 hours per day equals 22,200 barrels per day.) I allow 4 hours per day to offload oil to another tanker ship once per day and to refuel and change crews.
The capacity of those three ships alone would approximate 50 percent of the total spill rate at the current worst case estimates I've seen. The coast guard already has about a dozen or more skimmers working the gulf, albeit at about one third the capacity each. But between those and a call for more skimmers from other countries and other international oil corporations, we can easily cover the capacity we need.
The Main Issue:
As I see it the main issue is twofold:
- the oil has not been allowed to concentrate itself on the surface, near the well, where it can be skimmed up efficiently, and,
- the Obama Administration has not taken sufficient control of these activities.
The skimmers cannot in an hour's travel, intersect a cross section of water surface that contains anywhere near the amount of spilled oil approaching 370 barrels. Why? Because of the dispersants; they prevent the released oil stream from remaining in concentrated form all along its journey from the seabed to the surface! Instead they contribute to the formation of massive "plumes," described as underwater colloidal solutions, resembling a thinned out salad dressing, extending over diameters stretching for miles.
Here I do fault Obama's administration of the disaster recovery plan. The US government has purposely kept itself at arms length away from BP, probably because they want BP to take all the blame for all the decisions that were made. We should have never allowed dispersing of the oil at the same time we were trying to skim it. What a waste or time and resources.
I hope Obama threatens to take charge of BP, by force of executive order, if necessary, as of tonight's address from the oval office. He should start acting like a strong POTUS!