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David Anthony Kearns with video contributions by Stanley S. Morton, III

BP Oil spill in Gallons

Monday, May 17, 2010

CNN "We'll swallow anything" award

This morning's news shows were emblematic of what is wrong with large corporate media today. CNN among the worst of the gargle and spit method for delivering the news, followed by the It's Way Too Early With Willy Geist on MSNBC.
Both shows had graphic representations of how BP has stanched the oil flow with a six inch pipe with a hood on it.
Ta-da!
Doing a disservice to the truth and journalism, all in one.
Touchdown, guys. Way to go!
Question (and Stanley Morton III might emphasize at this point: "dumbasses!") if it were that easy, what in the hell was BP doing for going on 28 days messing with hats and domes, and talking about golf balls?
Think about it!
In eighth or ninth grade we learned a little trick in pre-algebra called dimensional analysis. Example if you have five chickens to a pen, and there are four square feet on the bottom of each pen, how many chickens can you pack into a farm of 100,000 square feet?That sort of deal.
Well, flow rate of that 21 inch riser pipe, which we all know now, since we are now all oil and gas experts at this point, was calculated by scientists using a stop watch and that video BP provided, to be about 70,000 barrels a day, not 5,000, that BP estimated.
I work in gallons. Now, if 5,000 barrels equals 200,000 gallons, we have to multiply 70,000 by 40 to find that the actual flow is 2,800,000 gallons a day. By the way, that means about every four days, we get an Exxon Valdez (10.8 million gallons of oil). That means, also, by the way, we have had 7 Exxon Valdez's equivalents up to this minute.
Work out the math and tell me I am wrong and I will correct it!
If BP ever admitted this to the news people, this would be a fu-huh-cking! NIGHTMARE public relations-wise for BP.
Big Media never says this! Have you noticed? We have the information at hand! They've given it to us, like a defense lawyer sloshing his opposition at disclosure with stacks and stacks of nonsense paper. IN other words, with NO, basic analysis that a ninth grader is capable of.
Yes, big media, run by Big Energy, is more than too eager to let BP off the hook, as we have discussed and as we are seeing here this morning.
Are we saying CNN doesn't have people on staff who can do ninth grade math? Apparently this is the case, because we wouldn't want to believe that CNN, the most trusted name in news, were purposefully ignoring their duty as journalists; also known as malfeasance, intellectual dishonesty, cowardice, just plain shitty, gutless, nutless "All is well when it really ain't" journalismLITE (tm) big media is often accused of.
But look at it, by these numbers, there were ( before the magic six-inch diameter pipe) 32 gallons coming out every second. Boom, there went another 32 gallons. Boom, again. Every minute, nearly 2,000 gallons. Every two minutes your average above ground pool would fill up with oil.
Now imagine a six inch diameter pipe (the magic pipe) being shoved into a 21 inch diameter sewer main, pumping out a swimming pool every two minutes.
They BP tell CNN who lap this information up and regurgitate to us that (whoopie!) they are now collecting most of it, and the oil is being pumped to the ship.
Yay! (Souza music here)
They further tell CNN who are more than happy to pass along this fairy dust to us, that, they will be "piling mud" on the busted riser from Deepwater Horizon, and this will cut off the flow forever.
Yay!
Let's review the misrepresentations, low-balling, and/or god damned lies this company has told us since this fiasco began, shall we?
1. No leak. This facturd shared with the U.S. Coast Guard immediately after the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. Wwwwah waah! Complete bullshit. It in fact was leaking, so much so, we now have the worst oil leak in US History on our hands.
2. "Not our accident" said BP. Complete bullshit. In fact, the news coming out indicates all three, companies had something to do with it.
3. A dome will work. The company should have been well aware there were methane hydrates coming from this well and had a good idea how much in ever gallon of fluid pumped out. They would then, one assumes, have the expertise on hand to have an idea that the dome idea, particularly one in which there was no heating of the fluid to put the methane ice back into liquid, would be an utter waste of time.
4. Smaller top-hat will work. Same logic, with a heating element, failed. For whatever reason.
5. Days and days of discussion about golf balls, bits of tire, sand, mud etc. being injected into the Blow out preventer. This idea has vanished, likely because the idea of a golf ball, or a thousand golf balls and bits of tire flowing upstream against a 32 gallon per second current defies the laws of physics. Also, what happens if all that mess generates a spark?
6. The waivers. Someone in this mess had waivers for people to sign releasing liability with regard to those who had seen the accident. BP later said this was an error, boilerplate legalese that just somehow seemed very specific to the Deepwater Horizon event. Wwwah waah! Bullshit.
( Shall we continue?)
7. Tony Hayward BP CEO, let it slip to the press that this was a relatively "tiny" spill when measured against the volume of the water in the world's oceans. Nice. Real nice. This gives us a glimpse into the corporate culture of a company that would not only continue to allow this man to say such utterly stupid things, but also give him a raise of 40 percent for his continued blasphemes against truth, and our country.
8. "The other guy did it" Blame game.
9. The idea that a million feet of boom means a damned thing in all this.
10. "We are preventing this spill from reaching shore" essentially taking credit for the fact the winds heading toward shore and the currents which are trying to pull it into the Gulf loop, are for the moment, keeping the spill where it is.

This list is far too short.
Yet, here is major media this morning, controlled by Big Energy and Big War, ready to gobble the magic pipe (story) and we can all rest easy.
The bronze statue to CNN for this prize would be pornographic and distasteful. Too distasteful for description here.
I leave it to your imagination, dear reader, to conjure the image I am thinking of.
Nice.
Meantime, won't we at least ask someone for video footage of the allegedly stanched flow before we gargle and spit this information onto the public?


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