A thought experiment that explains a dirty little secret:

[hedgehog]

1. Get a quart of motor oil out of our garage and walk over to the nearest pond, lake, stream, beach, etc.

2. Pour the oil into the water.

3. If the water is still, get a big stick and really mix that oil around.

4. Now, get all the oil out again.


There is no way to get all the oil out of the Gulf.

Crude oil is the consistency of motor oil, not black tar. It is a mixture of gasoline, kerosene, # 6 bunker fuel, benzenes etc. We can skim what floats on the surface. We can hide the oil from view by using dispersants. But we can not recover all the oil now mixed in below the surface. We can keep the beaches looking nice with booms, but we can not stop the slaughter of all the fauna and flora off-shore.

[havocmom]

1. You left out the part about having to make bail after being arrested for spilling the oil into water

You or I would most likely face immediate penalties for such a small spill.

[hedgehog]

4. That's why i called it a thought experiment! BTW - never dump

anything on your driveway, on your lawn or down your drain that you wouldn't want to drink! It all ends up in the water, sooner or later. Keep an eye open for hazardous waste collections to get rid of your bad stuff.

If you're mad at BP, take a look at that fertilizer/pesticide/herbicide combo you dumped on your lawn this spring.

[havocmom]

6. coffee grounds, finely chopped veggie trimmings, diatomaceous earth?

That's the sort of stuff I dump in the garden. But I understand your point.

I love onions and radishes for bug repellent, being chemically sensitive myself, I avoid commercial stuff with ingredients I can't pronounce ;)

[Duer 157099]

2. Your post gives me an idea, but I'll post it as it's own thread

so it can sink to the bottom all by itself lol

[monmouth]

3. Someday, long after we are all gone, the oceans will die off. At the

bottom of the cesspool that man has left will be ready-made tar roads to drag off the garbage, sunken ships and dead sea life and humans. I'm glad I won't be here..

[gateley]

5. Yes - early on an Alaskan radion host said "let's get this straight -

they are not "cleaning it up" -- they are moving it around.

[Jennicut]

7. Is their a point to it then? I mean, other then keeping it off the beaches?

It makes me so depressed. And they are still finding oil mixed in the shoreline in Alaska all these years later.

[hedgehog]

8. Sometimes you can't make something all better. It is depressing,

but what's worse is that we tend to forget accidents. Everyone remembers 9/11. I couldn't tell you the date of this accident. I'd have to say far more people are directly affected, and far more economic damage done. We need to use this to prevent future "accidents". ( I put "accidents" in quotes because with 20/20 hind sight, most "accidents" are predictable undesired outcomes of doing things the wrong way!

[gateley]

9. I honestly don't know. And she also said that they were told not to spray something,

so they did it in the pre-dawn hours. The people who would walk on the beach found their rubber boots were melting!

She did mention that about the oil still being present, and seeping up during some conditions.

[Avalux]

10. I saw a super sponge on CNN this morning.

The sponge absorbs the crude oil and retains it, the water is squeezed out. The sponge can then be burned as fuel. Looked liked a cool solution, however mass quantities would be needed to submerge in the water.

[jberryhill]

11. Did it look like this?