Workers are scrambling to protect the Florida Panhandle as winds push the spill toward the coast, laying booms, firing up skimmers and learning to clean oil-soaked wildlife, as efforts to plug the spill meet further setbacks. People are mad at BP, and have begun marching on gas stations. Wildlife are dying, but the company won’t allow photographs.
So why don’t we just nuke the rig?
Hopefully, The New York Times has finally put that idea to bed.
“It’s crazy,” one senior official said.
Government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear bomb would be not only risky technically, with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences from radiation, but also unwise geopolitically — it would violate arms treaties that the United States has signed and championed over the decades and do so at a time when President Obama is pushing for global nuclear disarmament.
The idea was originally raised in Pravda, a Russian newspaper, and had been studied by the Department of Energy in a report studying peaceful applications of nuclear weapons, released 10 years ago.
But can we go fishing?
Red snapper season has begun off Florida’s Gulf Coast, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has expanded the area closed to fishing.
Federal waters from Navarre to Pensacola Beach now are off-limits to fishing, which could force many summer tournaments to be canceled. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also reported Wednesday that an oil sheen is about 10 miles off the Florida coast.
As a result, FWC has requested additional federal aid for Florida’s fishing industry.
Obama “finally” uses the spill in green push
Aaron Weiner reports:
Speaking at Carnegie Mellon University yesterday, President Obama did what environmental advocates have been urging him to do for weeks now: He turned public anger at the BP oil spill to his advantage, using it to push for comprehensive climate legislation.
Know your chemistry
Chemical dispersants are making the oil more toxic. That doesn’t mean they won’t be raining down on the Gulf of Mexico them in even greater quantities — possibly even from jumbo jets.
If called to action, the giant tanker would be able to drop 20,000 gallons of EPA-approved oil dispersant in one or more passes that would cover a path in the Gulf more than 300 miles long and 200 feet wide. At a rate of 5 gallons per acre, that is an area of 7,272 acres.
The jumbo jet would fly at a speed of 170 to 180 mph at an altitude of 250 feet while dropping its load. Flying to and from the drop zone, it would be able to maintain a cruise speed of 600 mph.
…And through it all: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal urges Obama to allow offshore drilling to continue.
