Is the Bias Real Culprit Here?

The only way I can prepare myself for every potential disaster is to never get out of bed, and even then I am in danger of suffocating on my pillow or choking on my sheets.

Why the nation is not prepared for such disasters?

One reason was that BP had previously insisted (back in Febuary 2009, and on other occasions I belive) that it was highly unlikely anything could happen and if even if it did there would be no adverse impacts. And government oversight was so incompetent / corrupt that this was accepted completely unquestioned with a smile and a nod.

But looking forward, there are countless other similar disasters looming out there. We simply cant plan for them all. Worse, we can't even remotely begin to even identify them all since politics, greed and ignorance prevent it. Worse still, even if we do identify some threats and come up with plans, we don't have the money to get all those plans to the "ready to deploy" stage.

But worst of all is the political infighting over such things. Imagine this spill never happened and the US had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on spill-mitigation equipment that was just sitting unused in warehouses. It wouldn't be long before some cocky up-and-coming politician started trying to make a name for himself by shouting about the "huge government waste on all this stuff we don't use!".

In the eyes of BP the only disaster they see is lost money. Hence the reason they didnt just plug the leak to begin with. They kept trying to "salvage" the well head to be able to still get the oil out.

In the eyes of our country, Most of the population would rather sit on their butts and complain rather than act. People are standing in the streets along the Gulf protesting oil companies when they could be actually helping clean up the mess.

You cant blame the government. They are bound by the bill of rights and the constitution. Because of that, the action they will take has to pass through too many policies and politicians to be effective on a short timeline.

It seems to be Most of the problem is that everyone wants to complain and offer up their Ideas but nobody truly wants to help.

I know I seem to be complaining, But I have made arrangements to work on the cleanup if I am not still needed on the farm after harvest.

it's the attitude most of us Americans have adopted

that is, I'm too busy playing nitendo and getting fat, get someone else to do it.

we'll just pay them instead

While we point the finger at the United States and the oil spill. Let's go back in history a few years. Maybe some of you have heard of Chernobyl. That disaster is still killing people today. There are entire cities that are completely abandoned beause of this disaster and there are people that are paid to live in contaminated areas. They come in and periodically replace the top soil but after a few years they have to come in and replace it again. It is a huge drain on the economy over there.

The world was alerted about the radiation in the atmoshere and the United States offered the USSR assistance but the Soviets, who had kept quiet about the disaster and played it off as something minor, just declined any outside assistance.

It wasn't until it became very apparent that the melt down was bigger than anything they could handle and that the radiation was affecting all of Europe, did they accept outside assistance.

As a result a new organization was formed. It became one of the first successful United States - Soviet joint ventures that was later joined by several other countries that utilized nuclear power and now any nuclear power plant built requires global approval through this organization.

So now we have an oil catastrophy. I'd say the oil industry has held up through the years with how long we've been pumping oil, to finally have a disaster of this magnitude. The Carribean Sea will probably never recover from this in our life times and who knows what illnesses are going to affect the residences of the Gulf regions all around.

If you've ever done a failure mode analysis (there's several with attendant alphabet soup), you would see that you have to anticipate every possible failure and come up with a way to prevent it or (if not possible to prevent) mitigate the effect. If you have an event (or series of events) that have never occured, you may over/under estimate the probability, particularly when being pressured by top management.

But, some things are simply not fixable. Think for a minute and tell me how you would deal with the sun going red giant as it surely must some day. What possible mechanism could deal with that?

How about the following solution!

Pressure at 5000 ft would flatten foam inserts to hard, inflexible material.

There is an old saying; s--- happens. No matter what we do, something will always happen to challenge us to the limit. Nothing can be 100% planned for no matter how many smart engineers and scientists there are.

I may be mistaken, but I detect a certain amount of bias directed at the U.S. in your post.

With a higher standard of living (and by living, I mean not piled up on one another like meerkats) comes a greater possibility for the law of Murphy.

May I ask your location?

I'm from Asia, I apologize if you/someone else felt offensive/otherwise towards US, I never intended. But this question originated because of two thoughts-

If it had happened in some other countries, the failure to fix could simply have been rejected as "lack of technology/ resources".

And I really admire the technological progress of US. So it made me wonder like that.

Please understand, if there are reports of a possible terror strike that would kill a hundred people, and WHO warning that a new disease will kill 100 people, any nation, not just the US for that matter, would worry more about terror threat.

Of course, I completely agree with many of the people who replied that things happen, no matter how we much we plan. We can't just keep preparing for each and every possibility of disaster, that would simply be impossible.

You are correct In the Niger delta there are over 600 oil wells - every day they spew out more oil than the BP well - because it's Nigeria no one raises an eyebrow

And the Alberta oil sands is an environmental disaster area

Hopefully, the publicity regarding the Gulf will raise USA public awareness regarding "Our" environment

Yes you are biased, the USA is not the best at anything (except maybe bullying) - out here in the non-US world are some incredible brains & wisdom - sadly the American ego doesn't allow that knowledge to be utilised - it would rather crush than grow different better technologies

Being the biggest does not mean the best - commercial considerations frequently smother the newer more effective technologies

The oil spill may never be stopped (for many many years) - such deep drilling into very high pressure (100,000psi) oil & gas seams was foolish, now that the seam has been penetrated we may well see other cracks appearing in the sea bed (ocean floor), allowing more oil & gas to escape - one of the gases H2S (rotten egg gas) is lethal at more than 300ppm & brain damaging at more than 15ppm can be smelt at 5-10ppm for only a few minutes before the nose shuts down

It was American BP, not British BP who are to blame

Add to the list...you don't spit into the wind or tug on superman's cape

No...The culprit is a government taking control and then not acting...not using the pre-approved methods to circumvent such disasters as part of the previously planned emergency response.

Someone was asleep at the switch and the micromanagement model failed.

I think at least part of the problem is that the deep water drilling situation is new and untried. The disaster caused was not anticipated because prior experience wasn't there to highlight the risks.

I see "wishful thinking" in the management of other new technologies as well: nanotechnology is one obvious example and so is genetic engineering. The studies that do exist on nanotech health risks make it obvious that the (logically deduced) risks are real, and that the present state of dysregulation is basically insane. It's a free-for-all, to expose consumers to health hazards and/or to create environmental disasters which really can't be mitigated easily once they occur.

The state of dysregulation and health hazards in biotech/genetic engineering labs have recently been highlighted in the press, and a high rate of employee infection is reported - safety protocols are not regulated, and they are obviously inadequate. Not only workers are put at risk, it also means that GM infectious agents could escape the lab with infected workers and spread to the public. Again, difficult to mitigate after the fact.

So it seems to be part of the "free enterprise" mentality that industry should regulate itself, but there's little evidence that industry is motivated to do so in a way that is adequate to prevent disasters, especially wherever a technology is "new" and there's opportunity to cover a$$ with "we didn't see it coming" "nobody knew" "there was no science showing..." etcetera.

When the crisis happened, the response should NOT have been, "Oh crap! Now what do we do?" as it clearly was. Someone should have analysed the situation and divided it into the 2 problems of stopping the leak and cleaning up the mess, and implemented both response actions immediately and simultaneously. I heard BP's response plan for a gulf spill was so generic that it mentioned walruses (In Louisiana???), and it was approved by our govt agency. Other nations offered fleets of skimmer boats, but Obama declined their offer. I never heard WHY he declined, but I'd sure like to! Seems like skimmer boats would still be useful today in keeping oil out of coastal areas, so why not bring them in now? Obama accepted responsibility for the clean-up then pointed his finger at BP and said he's going to kick somebody's @$$. How's that for leadership and passing the buck? LA had pre-approved contingency plans to build sand barriers to keep out the oil, but the Army Corp of Engineers denied them permits to do so while doing an environmental impact study. Obama appointed a "Clean-Up Czar" who will only be a part-time administrator. Is this not worthy of a full time effort? Obama's chief of staff, Rham Emanuel has said,"Never let a good crisis go to waste!". Is Obama actually this incompetent, or is he using this crisis to advance his agenda of Crap & Charade (Cap & Trade)? The problem may not be our bias, but our own government red tape and government incompetence. We have political appointees and bureaucrats in charge . (Remember "Good Job, Brownie!" during katrina?)This crisis should be a wake-up call to the entire petroleum industry to form a global disaster response team with the best technology and expertise available, do training drills, and be ready to start deployment in 24 hours. It shouold be paid for by the oil industry, not our govt. Oil profits would be better spent on this capability than on multi-gazillion retirement packages for their CEO's.

candidly, the premise is faulty.

well, at the part about having "humanity's best engineers", "best scientists", "most powerful supercomputers" & "largest corporations".

but even granting all that, the USA is not the omniscient, omnipotent God.

and maybe we should call a spade a spade. what we're seeing is *definitely* not a spill.

*this* is a spill

First of all the US doesn't have the market on brains, computers or much of anything else. We are however smart enough to encourage all of the geniuses of India, China and other places to relocate here for good pay, clean water, low crime and all the other things that make life good. Good for the whole world as we do not hoard our good fortune, blood nor treasure. Nor do we take offense if the inventions produced by capitalism pisses off Allah, Buddha, Confucius, God, the Prophet, Yahweh or the fractured rock setting in the corner of your yard. Besides that, most of the world can thank the US for giving them the ability to read this in their native tongue if they so desire and not in Japanese, Chinese, Russian or German by force of arms of an occupier. Come to think of it - - if not for the US, Chinese and Russian wouldn't be on that list anyway now would it?

The BP well blow-out is bad but it is not as bad as the media and politicians make it to be. It is not even in the top 10 oil spills on a world wide basis and not even close to being number one in the Gulf of Mexico. That record is owned by the 2-mile-deep exploratory well, Ixtoc I, which blew out on June 3, 1979 in the Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. By the time the well was brought under control in March, 1980 (today is DAY 61 in the Gulf), an estimated 140 million gallons of oil had spilled into the bay. The Ixtoc I spill is currently #2 on the all-time list of largest oil spills of all time.

Now if you can just think back to the Ixtoc disaster and the damage it caused to the beaches of the Gulf coast. Having trouble? Sure you are, the disaster put some tar balls on South Padre Island but mainly effected Mexico. It didn't really make the news in the US. As to statements in this thread concerning the Caribbean being ruined forever just aren't grounded in fact. In fact they are grounded in the belief that man can have a traumatic effect on something the size of the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River alone puts 4.5 million gallons of water per second into the Gulf. If Ixtoc I didn't destroy the Gulf the Deepwater Horizon isn't going to destroy it either. Bad? Sure. Nasty? Sure. Preventable? Maybe. End of the world as we know it? Not today my friends.

And can you assure that the best engineers (from any country) took the decisions on the construction, supervision, government control....

If the responsible of fixing the problem are of the same "quality" as the formers.... May God save our souls!

Don't forget that nowadays in such type of things the decisions are not taken by "technical" people but rather by bean-counters (Isn't it a pity?)

Kind regards

This is so because -I have the sense that- companies don't make essential and hard efforts concerning the ecology safety issues. And the explanation is simple: Such efforts don't bring profit (they require money instead). Unfortunately, big companies don't show an ecological and social profile as they should. And -in most cases- the laws are not sufficient to push the companies to take the proper measures in order to avoid such disasters. It's a rather political issue.

We can conquer the space but we can't protect our own planet. Shame on us.

Even if as this post claims, the US has the best engineers, scientists, etc., this has clearly not helped since approximately 0% of these folks were working for BP on research into oil spill prevention and cleanup. Why not? Because they weren't hiring anyone to work on this - it wasn't a priority for them. From their perspective it's cheaper to hire lawyers after a disaster than to hire engineers to prevent one.

R&D takes time. The R&D clock started when the oil reached the surface about 2 months ago. Two months is not much time to solve an unprecedented problem, in an environment so foreign to us land dwelling creatures that we can't wrap our heads around it.

I'm a just a little surprised that the government, BP management and the oil company shareholders allowed this research to be such a low priority, but low it has been. These are problems that would take years of R&D to solve. I'm not surprised that in two months there has been no clear solution. The gusher continues.