Obama halts deepwater oil drilling amid US soul-searching

By Chris Cermak May 28, 2010, 15:12 GMT

Washington - US President Barack Obama has taken a series of aggressive steps to limit drilling off coastlines as the US begins a period of deep soul-searching over the merits and risks of offshore drilling.

Obama on Thursday halted for at least six months exploratory oil drilling in deep waters off the Gulf of Mexico, the most significant long-term step yet in response to the massive oil spill off the southern US coastline.


Here's a big surprise. The media-shielded marxist orders a halt to a legal and vital capitalist enterprise.

oDumbo is a dictator already. Let's hope His Lowness doesn't put a moratorium on the November elections.

This spill will take years to clean up. After the execs are sent to prison, I nominate that they are enrolled into a new work release program entitling them to 7 days a week of beautiful Louisiana coastline labor.

>> ^NordlichReiter:

>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^NordlichReiter:
Listen people ... The oil spill is not directly dangerous to humans, ergo they cannot keep people out ...
Is that your expert opinion, professor nordlichreiter? I for one think we should take his word for it.
Did you know that it's more difficult to try and swim or float in oil because it's less dense than water? (hence why it floats on top of the water) I mean even in that respect ALONE oil is directly dangerous to humans. I've named one property of oil and proved you wrong.

Excellent! Elementary my good dear dannym3141. You fell for my trap. You assumed that meant people should go into the water. If a person stands on the beach, how can the oil be a direct danger to them? Touche.
On a serious note, with all trolling aside, I didn't word my opinion well enough. I was of the position that if a person is on the beach filming then they would not be in direct danger of the oil. Unless there's a fire.


There's no trolling, there's "sarcastically showing up very poor advice." I don't know if you've ever been on a beach that's been hit by an oil spill, but it's pretty fucking grim. At blackpool, we've had the odd occasion where small patches of oil have hit the shore, and i think i once accidentally walked into one.

It was IMPOSSIBLE to spot, it looked like a very clean patch of dry sand. When i stood on it, i sunk immediately up to my knee, which i pulled out and was entirely black down to the toe, i was INCREDIBLY lucky that i didn't fall forward and a friend was close enough to grab me, because i sometimes remember that moment and shiver a little to think - if i'd fallen forward, arms first onto a knee-high trap like that, how quickly could i have gotten out? Could i have gotten out? I'd have got a face-full of sticky black shit. Clothes made heavier to make it harder to extricate myself, would it have got in my eyes, would i have breathed some in?

Let's not pretend you set up a trap, because in my email box i have your original post.

Don't forget this is all in reference to you refuting the "exclusion zone" based on oil not being dangerous to humans. They were excluded trying to get a boat in. If they'd been excluded for trying to get on the beach, i'd say they're not perfectly safe there either.

I apologise for being sarcastic originally, it was light-hearted. But it's time to stop trying to argue your way into being right and just say "fair enough, oil is dangerous to humans, i took a guess."

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^NordlichReiter:
Listen people ... The oil spill is not directly dangerous to humans, ergo they cannot keep people out ...
Is that your expert opinion, professor nordlichreiter? I for one think we should take his word for it.
Did you know that it's more difficult to try and swim or float in oil because it's less dense than water? (hence why it floats on top of the water) I mean even in that respect ALONE oil is directly dangerous to humans. I've named one property of oil and proved you wrong.


Excellent! Elementary my good dear dannym3141. You fell for my trap. You assumed that meant people should go into the water. If a person stands on the beach, how can the oil be a direct danger to them? Touche.

On a serious note, with all trolling aside, I didn't word my opinion well enough. I was of the position that if a person is on the beach filming then they would not be in direct danger of the oil. Unless there's a fire.

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^NordlichReiter:
Listen people ... The oil spill is not directly dangerous to humans, ergo they cannot keep people out ...
Is that your expert opinion, professor nordlichreiter? I for one think we should take his word for it.
Did you know that it's more difficult to try and swim or float in oil because it's less dense than water? (hence why it floats on top of the water) I mean even in that respect ALONE oil is directly dangerous to humans. I've named one property of oil and proved you wrong.


I'm sure drinking it, like..say if your boat accidently flips and you go into the water with your mouth open, is totally fine, too.

Or the admittedly less humorous third option that he may have attempted to hold back the sea by commanding his subjects to build earthworks to extend the coastline.
It wouldn't take many retellings by unreliable sources for a story about how those earthworks collapsed to be exaggerated to the point where the King gets his feet wet.

>> ^NordlichReiter:

Listen people ... The oil spill is not directly dangerous to humans, ergo they cannot keep people out ...

Is that your expert opinion, professor nordlichreiter? I for one think we should take his word for it.

Did you know that it's more difficult to try and swim or float in oil because it's less dense than water? (hence why it floats on top of the water) I mean even in that respect ALONE oil is directly dangerous to humans. I've named one property of oil and proved you wrong.

>> ^NordlichReiter:

Listen people. If it is a public beach, the government has no authority to keep you out; only if it is a state of emergency. That means something dangerous to people is taking place. The oil spill is not directly dangerous to humans, ergo they cannot keep people out.
If it is a private beach they have no authority to keep people out, because the beach does not belong to them; it belongs to whatever municipality the beach falls in.


I honestly don't know what the deal is here, but I can guess. Back in 1989, after the Exxon spill, Congress passed a law that basically put the entire responsibility on oil companies to clean up their own mess. The government oversees it, but we expect the company to have planned ahead, have the expertise, pay for the equipment, etc. It sort of makes sense then that the company gets some say in the procedure. If one of the rules is meant to prevent gawkers from getting in the way of clean-up crews, then I suppose it makes sense. Obviously, they can fly over the site (as many people have) or send crews to the beaches, the just can't expect to send a bunch of boats into the middle of the slick. It isn't much different than police roping off a scene - you can stand outside it and take pictures, but you can't expect to waltz in the middle.

As far as the government's authority goes, that thing about "only if it is a state of emergency. That means something dangerous to people is taking place." is completely wrong. The federal government certainly has the authority to keep people out of the water affected by the spill regardless of whether it is a public or private beach. There's no question here. The better issue is whether they improperly delegated the power to a private party (BP), but it looks like they made sure to have coast guard officials present.

WTF is wrong with these reporters?

That would've been the perfect time to call BP's bluff. The two guard officers would most likely back down, because they know perfectly well that it's not a crime to film the coastline.

Your video, BP Refuses To Let Journalists Film Coastline, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 1 Badge!

For some reason this video won't play for me. It just plays the advert and then nothing. My Canadian IP maybe?

[Based on comments above]
I think the idea of preventing people from photographing the coastline of this disaster is absolutely unenforceable. I feel bad for the people working for coast guard, just trying to do their jobs as best as they can, based on what they are told to do by superiors.

There's a good 60 minutes report on here about who should be accountable for this mess:
http://videosift.com/video/60-Minutes-Deepwater-Horizon-s-Blowout-Part-2

Ok WP , you still cant provide good links to peer reviewed data huh ?
This is a report ( sorry pdf ) that details paleoclimate carbon ppm measurements ,
and surprise , theorizes those high levels are the case of the high temperatures .
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/1991/04.1991.03Cerling.pdf

also
The only thing that is political in this movement is that studied observation MAY lead the way to better governance
The word is MAY , as in might , or possibly .

Have you ever heard the ultimate conspiracy theory?
It goes like this .
I don't believe in any conspiracies , because if i believed in a conspiracy , it would mean i knew something about said conspiracy , and therefore would be a danger to it , and therefore it would be a danger to me , therefore i don't believe in any conspiracies .
Circular logic is what it's called .
So what your saying is ALL the governments in the whole world except the U.S. , as they did not sign the Kyoto Accord , are working together to rip you off .
Paranoia is the easiest form of narcissism.

So lets say they win , and it's false, what do they do with all the tax money ?
How do they keep from getting whacked by a disgruntled polity?

Ok lets say they lose , and it's real .
We lose 1/3 of the worlds population , weighted more heavily among the poor , and populations near any coastline . Wasn't it well over 50% of the world population that lives within 50 miles of the coast ? We gain 40 feet , 12.19 meters , of sea level . Hence the title of this video .

Option 3 is obviously , They win and it's real .
Well they may be able to slow it down before it goes into a self-sustaining loop .
All that methane hydrate stored at the bottom of glaciers doesn't come bubbling lose . All that carbon sequestered in the permafrost stays put. Which it isn't .
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/lamontagne/lamontagne080109.html
Maybe governments have a few extra resources to deal with all the problems that will be caused by it . They still wont have enough because even their reports have been watered down .

Option 4 , They lose , and it's false .
I have a hard time addressing this one , as the odds of the latter are so low, though the odds of the former are well , a real possibility .

>> ^joop:
It's hardly the worst environmental disaster. It may have released more material, but it's only affected 1.2 sq km.
Exxon Valdez spill affected 28,000 sq km of ocean and 2000 km of coastline. The total environmental impact is not even comparable to a few peoples homes and some fish.

Not to say this isn't terrible, but it just goes to show that it's all about how you spin it.

It's hardly the worst environmental disaster. It may have released more material, but it's only affected 1.2 sq km.

Exxon Valdez spill affected 28,000 sq km of ocean and 2000 km of coastline. The total environmental impact is not even comparable to a few peoples homes and some fish.

http://www.physorg.com/news161960925.html
This morning, at precisely 8:57 a.m. ET, a carefully orchestrated maneuver was carried out 350 miles above the Atlantic coastline of Africa, marking the successful end of the fifth and final shuttle servicing mission.

Ever so gently, the Atlantis crew released the grapple fixture on the shuttle’s robotic arm, allowing Hubble to resume orbiting Earth on its own, as it has done since its deployment in April 1990. After Hubble’s thousands of orbits, thousands of images, five tune-ups and countless discoveries, a space shuttle crew is leaving this great observatory for the last time.