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The Spill, The Scandal and the President

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Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#21

Post by grandalf »

anigbrowl wrote: post #18
grandalf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an accident? Why was the recent spill the result of negligence rather than an accident? The difference is a matter of some bureaucratic definition, not of reality. Offshore drilling is always a gamble. Any diffusion of the risk to the public / taxpayers shows that the firms used their influence with regulators to stack the deck in their favor, and that regulators complied.

Absurd. The public necessarily shares some risk to the extent that it asserts a claim over, and collects royalties for mineral resources extracted from US territorial waters.

You did not address my remark about the difference between accidents and negligence. Also, the public bears the risk of environmental damage which should be offset by an additional disincentive not to have 'accidents' underwritten by taxpayers.

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#22

Post by grandalf »

anigbrowl wrote: post #19
grandalf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it this way: What should be done: A systematic review of all offshore drilling practices and regulations and a significant reassessment, which would likely lead to the closing of hundreds of productive wells. What will be done: A massive fine to BP and minor regulatory changes. Obama is acting like a company man on this one, of course BP will be scapegoated, with the primary goal being to prevent widespre…

Your way of thinking seems to involve substituting portentous phrases for actual argument. We know spills can be bad; while the degree of damage resulting from this one should certainly be factored into cost-benefit calculations, and prospective drillers required to plan and put up security for such eventualities, we still need to consider probability too. The fact is that incidents of this kind are quite rare in dev…

We knew spills are bad before the Deepwater Horizon spill, however the estimates of environmental damage (for the worst case scenario foreseen) were far smaller than what has already occurred with the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Why? Because spills of the magnitude of this one are quite rare. But, like any low probability event, as the time horizon increases the probability approaches 1.

Obama knows that another spill is very unlikely to happen soon, so he is under no pressure to create a new regulatory environment that actually reduces that probability.

The gulf is a public resource, and so the question for the American people should be something along the lines of: If we are likely to get a Deepwater Horizon level spill every 20 years, should we still allow drilling? My guess is that (barring misinformation) most Americans would agree that we should absolutely not allow any offshore drilling at all.

Offshore drilling in the US does not have a meaningful impact on oil/gas prices as experienced by consumers. It simply enriches the firms that extract that oil, but not enough is extracted to significantly impact the market price of a global commodity.

Supporters of offshore drilling claim that gas would be $10 at the pump without it... which is total nonsense. If anything we'd see about a $0.05 increase per gallon at the pump.

What is your explanation for why Obama is not doing more to create systematic reforms that decrease the chances of another spill? It sounds like you think he wisely views the risk as acceptably low.

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#23

Post by tptacek »

davi wrote: post #8
tptacek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what the one has to do with the other. In one case, a power plant near Rockford is associated with elevated levels of tritium, and Obama, a freshman senator with almost no regulatory affiliation to nuclear power generation, attempts to pass a bill requiring more stringent notification of possible radiation leaks. Meanwhile, state and federal regulatory bodies that Obama has no oversight over take over th…

In one case, after a radioactive byproduct of an Illinois power plant leaked into his constituents' well water, Senator Obama sponsored legislation to require nuclear power plants to report all abnormal leaks, not just ones they determined to rise to 'emergency' levels. The power company, Exelon, believed that the leak arose from "millions of gallons of water that had leaked from the plant years earlier but went unre…

Your accounting of the Byron plant story drastically oversimplifies the actual events. It casts Obama as somehow central to the story when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation. It attempts to read tea leaves about Obama's mentality out of the progress of pushing a bill --- itself a meaningless political reaction to an event in his backyard, a sop to his constituents --- past stiff opposition, as if the alternative to "watering down" this bill was strong new legislation on nuclear regs, which of course it wasn't.

In short, it attempts to make Obama the go-along get-along energy-insider-pol "bad guy" in a story that not only has no good guys or bad guys, but also almost nothing at all to do with Obama.

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#24

Post by davi »

tptacek wrote: post #23
davi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one case, after a radioactive byproduct of an Illinois power plant leaked into his constituents' well water, Senator Obama sponsored legislation to require nuclear power plants to report all abnormal leaks, not just ones they determined to rise to 'emergency' levels. The power company, Exelon, believed that the leak arose from "millions of gallons of water that had leaked from the plant years earlier but went unre…

Your accounting of the Byron plant story drastically oversimplifies the actual events. It casts Obama as somehow central to the story when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation. It attempts to read tea leaves about Obama's mentality out of the progress of pushing a bill --- itself a meaningless political reaction to an event in his backyard, a sop to his constituents --- past stiff oppo…

"My" accounting is derived entirely from what I read in that New York Times article. I'm not clear if you're criticizing my read of the article, or the article itself. If the latter, do you have any other accounts that provide further detail? The vehemence of your responses suggests you might live in the area?

when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation

Elected members of a representative democracy are charged with producing the legislation that defines "formal oversight", and with using feedback from their constituents to do so. Who else should his aggrieved constituents have turned to in this case?

go-along get-along energy-insider-pol "bad guy"

Not really. His behavior is typical of politicians across the board (except the ones who don't get elected). I agree with you that his legislation might be characterized as "a sop to his constituents". This doesn't make him one of the bad guys, it just means he is not the leftist demagogue/messiah some make him out to be.

attempts to read tea leaves about Obama's mentality

Sure, I think this is fair game. He (like his predecessor) is a bit of a cipher.

Anyway, this thread started because you asked me what I saw in common between the two articles. That's what I saw in common. YMMV.

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#25

Post by tptacek »

davi wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your accounting of the Byron plant story drastically oversimplifies the actual events. It casts Obama as somehow central to the story when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation. It attempts to read tea leaves about Obama's mentality out of the progress of pushing a bill --- itself a meaningless political reaction to an event in his backyard, a sop to his constituents --- past stiff oppo…

"My" accounting is derived entirely from what I read in that New York Times article. I'm not clear if you're criticizing my read of the article, or the article itself. If the latter, do you have any other accounts that provide further detail? The vehemence of your responses suggests you might live in the area? when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation Elected members of a representativ…

I live in Chicago, which is an hour or so from Rockford. I didn't actually manage to extract a "here's what Obama is about" narrative from the NYT article. Here's what I think:

• Take anything Obama touched during his time in the Senate.

• Note that we still have that problem. For instance: immigration, border security, mines, spending transparency, no-bid contracting, nonproliferation, and (of course) peace in West Asia. (Note how I cheated by reading 1 Wikipedia graf to generate that list. You could broaden the list by finding things he did in the Senate that weren't notable because they went nowhere.)

• For bonus points, find some large organization that contributes uniformly to major political candidates of one or both parties that is relevant to the problem Obama attempted to solve.

• Write a message board post with the same narrative as your original post.

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#26

Post by chopsueyar »

grandalf wrote: post #9
mbateman wrote: post #5

I can understand -- sort of -- holding up lax regulation as something blameworthy here. More to fault is BP for not taking the possibility of disaster seriously and (apparently) having a dramatically worse safety record than other large oil companies. But other than that, I don't get it. Why blame Obama for taking a week to act? What could he have done? And what can he do now? Imagine the volcano in Iceland had been…

Lax regulation? Not only was regulation lax, but there was a liability cap on spill damages. That's a regulation that amounts to a handout! To your second point, at the critical moment of public outrage Obama lowballed the estimate of how much oil was flowing into the gulf. His actions have mainly had the effect of buying time and preventing public outrage. What if he handn't acted this way? Maybe the American people…

"...but there was a liability cap on spill damages."

I believe it is called "tort reform".

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#27

Post by grandalf »

anigbrowl wrote: post #18
grandalf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an accident? Why was the recent spill the result of negligence rather than an accident? The difference is a matter of some bureaucratic definition, not of reality. Offshore drilling is always a gamble. Any diffusion of the risk to the public / taxpayers shows that the firms used their influence with regulators to stack the deck in their favor, and that regulators complied.

Absurd. The public necessarily shares some risk to the extent that it asserts a claim over, and collects royalties for mineral resources extracted from US territorial waters.

You are saying that the American Public should feel lucky that BP is extracting oil and just tolerate spills and incompetence?

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#28

Post by davi »

tptacek wrote: post #25
davi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My" accounting is derived entirely from what I read in that New York Times article. I'm not clear if you're criticizing my read of the article, or the article itself. If the latter, do you have any other accounts that provide further detail? The vehemence of your responses suggests you might live in the area? when, again, he had virtually no formal oversight over nuclear regulation Elected members of a representativ…

I live in Chicago, which is an hour or so from Rockford. I didn't actually manage to extract a "here's what Obama is about" narrative from the NYT article. Here's what I think: • Take anything Obama touched during his time in the Senate. • Note that we still have that problem. For instance: immigration, border security, mines, spending transparency, no-bid contracting, nonproliferation, and (of course) peace in West…

It's an interesting summation of your perspective, thanks. You depict Obama as one molecule in a sort of political Brownian motion, with me & the Times acting as a cherry-picking Maxwell's Demon.

A hard thesis to disprove, and I'll let it go from here. But I'll note that in contrast to the examples in your list (with the possible issue of no-bid contracting, I don't know about this), this tritium issue was local, raised by Obama's constituents. Also, "Exelon’s support for Mr. Obama far exceed[ed] its support for any other presidential candidate."

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#29

Post by tptacek »

davi wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Chicago, which is an hour or so from Rockford. I didn't actually manage to extract a "here's what Obama is about" narrative from the NYT article. Here's what I think: • Take anything Obama touched during his time in the Senate. • Note that we still have that problem. For instance: immigration, border security, mines, spending transparency, no-bid contracting, nonproliferation, and (of course) peace in West…

It's an interesting summation of your perspective, thanks. You depict Obama as one molecule in a sort of political Brownian motion, with me & the Times acting as a cherry-picking Maxwell's Demon. A hard thesis to disprove, and I'll let it go from here. But I'll note that in contrast to the examples in your list (with the possible issue of no-bid contracting, I don't know about this), this tritium issue was local, rai…

It seems to me a 99.99999% near absolute certainty that he'd have been nowhere near nuclear regulation if this hadn't happened in his back yard. Which makes it, to my mind, a pretty silly thing to try to mine for insight. Any senator from any state would have had to react somehow to an incident like that.

Re: The Spill, The Scandal and the President

#30

Post by johnohara »

richcollins wrote: post #16
johnohara wrote: post #2

I finally took the time yesterday to read whatever I could about this problem. Like most Americans, I've watched the daily developments and nervously believed a solution was imminent. Maybe not optimal, but close at hand. Multinational comglomerates the size of BP have such a large quiver of resources at their disposal that it seemed all it would take was the desire to act and it would get done. So I believed. Here's…

Can you post your sources so I can better inform myself?

Here's TransOceanic's Spec Sheet For DeepWater Horizon: http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Deepwater-Horizon-56C17.htm...

From the NY Times: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/0521spill....

Yahoo Answers: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100529174827AA...

There were more at boston.com including excellent photos of the spill and the efforts to control it.

... to name a few.

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