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So a hurricane, a pandemic and an oil spill walk into a bar... hey, make it an oyster bar during a recession, and that's what the Gulf Coast must feel like. They've been pounded by disasters, natural and man-made, one after the other.
Unlike pandemics and hurricanes that can be prepared for - even when preparations don't mitigate everything, they can save lives - an oil spill at the bottom of the ocean where people don't live is a different kettle of fish altogether. For pandemics, you prepare to "shelter in place" and decrease human contact (see H1N1: Why Do Schools Close, And When Do They Open?) until things improve. For hurricanes and brush fires, you consider when you need to move out rather than hunker down. (And if you want to read the unhappy response when an official is perceived to have minimized the issue, just go here and read the posts bottom to top, and the comments to the first post; the official downplayed the concern and got lambasted for it.)
Note that these emergency responses are designed to save lives. Even mine rescues are for that purpose. But no one lives on the ocean floor, so an oil spill a mile down (an environmental disaster) doesn't involve a rescue operation as we are used to seeing it unfold.
There's little we can do about this oil spill as far as the ocean bottom goes (and by "we", I mean everyone in the US from the President to the bloggers, with the exception of a few industry engineers). Drilling a relief well will take another month to stop the leak, and everything else from heavy mud "top kill" to junk shots are tourniquets to stanch the bleeding until the relief well can be drilled. But we need to clearly distinguish the errors and missteps beforehand (which require thorough and public investigation, including the courts) from the "trial and error" engineering happening now. An attempt to kill the leak 5,000 down is expected to be full of "we've never done this before" attempts, and castigating those who try is the wrong approach.
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Unlike pandemics and hurricanes that can be prepared for - even when preparations don't mitigate everything, they can save lives - an oil spill at the bottom of the ocean where people don't live is a different kettle of fish altogether. For pandemics, you prepare to "shelter in place" and decrease human contact (see H1N1: Why Do Schools Close, And When Do They Open?) until things improve. For hurricanes and brush fires, you consider when you need to move out rather than hunker down. (And if you want to read the unhappy response when an official is perceived to have minimized the issue, just go here and read the posts bottom to top, and the comments to the first post; the official downplayed the concern and got lambasted for it.)
Note that these emergency responses are designed to save lives. Even mine rescues are for that purpose. But no one lives on the ocean floor, so an oil spill a mile down (an environmental disaster) doesn't involve a rescue operation as we are used to seeing it unfold.
There's little we can do about this oil spill as far as the ocean bottom goes (and by "we", I mean everyone in the US from the President to the bloggers, with the exception of a few industry engineers). Drilling a relief well will take another month to stop the leak, and everything else from heavy mud "top kill" to junk shots are tourniquets to stanch the bleeding until the relief well can be drilled. But we need to clearly distinguish the errors and missteps beforehand (which require thorough and public investigation, including the courts) from the "trial and error" engineering happening now. An attempt to kill the leak 5,000 down is expected to be full of "we've never done this before" attempts, and castigating those who try is the wrong approach.
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