Weather Still Problematic for Oil Spill Response Efforts

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/31074/weather-still-problematic-for.asp

The weather will remain problematic for officials working to control the spread of the massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico over the next few days.

Strong winds will continue driving the slick toward the shore of southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, while thunderstorms potentially disrupt containment and response efforts.

How the Winds are Affecting the Spread

Winds across the north-central Gulf of Mexico are expected to remain quite strong out of the south-southeast through Sunday, sustained at the 20 to 30 mph with higher gusts.



In response to the strong winds, seas will continue averaging between 8 and 12 feet through Sunday night before slowly subsiding Monday into Tuesday.

The wind and wave action will continue driving the expanding oil slick toward the Mississippi Delta region over the next few days. Experts were expecting landfall in some areas to occur Saturday with Venice and Port Fourchon, La., being among the first places affected.

In addition to spreading the oil slick, the rough seas could also cause temporary disruptions for crews working to deploy protective floating booms along the Mississippi Delta.

Thunderstorms an Added Obstacle

FULL story at link.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thanks for the report! What a horrible mess this is!

The only upside is that maybe it will give the Obama administration PAUSE as to more ocean/seaside oil drilling.

I don't have much hope that it will be more than pause--pause until this is over, until it flows into the corpo-fascist 'news' monopoly "river of forgetfulness" and the whole thing starts up again. ('Drilling is now safe, with state-of-the-art technology'; 'we need to free ourselves from foreign oil,' blah, blah, blah...). What I would like to see--in addition to massive efforts to free ourselves from ALL oil, oil profiteering and oil products--is the State Department acknowledging the DEMOCRACY in Venezuela, the VAST IMPROVEMENT in life for the majority of Venezuelans that the Chavez government has brought about, and the RIGHT of the Venezuelan people to benefit from their oil and to set the terms for multinational corporate contracts with regard to this, the BIGGEST oil reserve on earth (twice Saudi Arabia's), stop WRONGFULLY demonizing Chavez, STOP lying about his government, STOP treating the people of Venezuela as stupid and irrelevant, STOP plotting against Chavez, START supporting social justice, fairness and transparent elections (they have them in Venezuela; we don't), and thus pave the way for FAIR TRADE access to Venezuela's HUGE oil supply. We're importing about 15% of our oil from Venezuela. It could be much more--but that is now going to Italy, France, Spain, China and other countries, because one of our biggest corporate rulers, Exxon Mobil, the richest corporation on earth, refused fair terms for Venezuela and walked out of the talks in a snit. So now the Pentagon (the biggest sucker up of oil in the world) is surrounding Venezuela's oil coast and northern oil provinces with war assets--in Colombia, Panama, the Carribbean and the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast, planning WHAT we cannot know (they never tell us taxpayers)--and we could even lose the 15% we are getting and find ourselves in another oil war.

Why can't our government and its corporate overlords learn to play nice? There is lots and lots of oil to be had from existing, known sources, much of it on land. We don't need to wreck more of our coastline, destroy more fisheries, reefs, beaches, birds and waters--with the world's ocean environments already under tremendous stress--to fill CIVILIAN oil needs until we can ween ourselves from this horrid substance. As for the Pentagon, they need to be downsized by about 90% (to a true defensive posture), and that will very significantly curtail our oil needs, as well as curtailing oil corporation profiteering (price-gouging the military, i.e., the taxpayers) and saving us LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of money, which we could VERY MUCH use ELSEWHERE.

SANE policy. Fair play. It's not asking for the Moon.

And, speaking of that, a sane foreign policy and a 90% cut of the military budget, might put exploring our solar system back on the table--a tremendously exciting adventure that would utterly change the world for the better in a thousand ways--from the very probable discovery of life in other places in this solar system, to fabulous discoveries and inventions of every kind, to economics, to education and to perspective on this planet and its fragile biosphere and how to save it. This is what WE WERE MEANT TO DO--explore!--not wage resource wars, not slaughter people to steal their oil, not kill the oceans! Invent, create, stimulate, educate, go forth!

What the hell are we doing fouling Louisiana's coast, when COOPERATION would get us all the oil we need while we, and the rest of the world, WORK TOGETHER to get off fossil fuels, save this planet and step off into the great cosmos?

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"You may say that I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one..." --John Lennon