Interior Sec Salazar: It can take three months to find the ultimate solution.

[caseymoz]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/02/ken-salazar-gulf-coast-di_n_560101.html

Three months. That's ninety days of 200,000 gallons of oil a day? Maybe he means they'll slow it down before then.

Do the math: 90 days means 18 million more gallons of oil into the ocean. That's about 2.2 million tons of oil into the gulf, which could be carried by the gulf stream. If it takes that long to stop this, it will dwarf the biggest oil spill ever, which was the Gulf War spill. That's if 200,000 gallons is the right figure this time. I've gotten the distinct feeling over the last two weeks that BP has been "easing us into the bad news," that is giving us a succession of lies about how bad this was.

Now things can go right, and we could catch a lucky break somewhere here, but I'm thinking if this goes on for three months, BP will go bankrupt (no tears there) and the government will have to "nationalize" the clean-up. That could take place sooner if shareholders begin to abandon BP.

The Soviet Union had its Chernobyl. I wouldn't be too surprised if this isn't ours. If we get off easy on this one, I wouldn't be surprised if this totally alters the nation, or even the world. The people who will suffer the most, or at least most at first, will be in the conservative south. De-regulated capitalism has certainly been depantsed in the last several years. That's the bright side if we have a bright scenario.

The dark side of the worst case scenario is: this could be Ice-9, to cite Kurt Vonnegut: a technological mistake that destroys the world, all due to self-regulated capitalism.

[Bobbieo]

1. Two months and the hurricane season begins. - like things aren't

screwed up enough. What can a hurricane do to the oil spill?

[caseymoz]

2. For one thing, it may delay any solution they try. nt