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OTOH, there are many days worth of oil still coming. If every day you clean up that day's deposits, then the next day you have to start over. I admit I know nothing about it, but I'd guess that a blob three inches high isn't that much harder to clean up than a blob that is one inch high. IOW, there might be some logic in waiting.
Anyone seen the video of people leaning over the edges of small boats wiping the reeds with paper towels? It seems totally futile.
And instead of people with shovels, couldn't some kind of backloader skim off the top layer of sand faster?
I think that for the most part the oil does NOT arrive in a steady fashion but rather in discreet waves. So that beach A may get most of 2 hours of oil (less the part which ends up being knocked out by the surface and subsurface dispersants) and the next 4 hours worth oil ends up in a marsh 100 miles away. Beach A may not get anymore oil for days or even weeks.
Certainly if you want to be most minimize the cost of clean up you should wait until Sept or Oct when the well is plugged. Heck at the point might as well wait until after hurricane season has passed and mother nature has distributed and diluted the oil over the entire region
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I agree futile efforts like using a paper towels are just that futile.
It's not political slant I have an issue with, it is media 'sensationalism' at the detriment of investigative reporting.
CNN and NPR reported specifically that people were out cleaning the day After the president's visit.
Al's point is also worth considering.
Listen, I am not saying everything is being done perfectly, or even adequately.
What I am saying is the media is letting us down by not digging into this and instead just hyperventilating.
I think the media's job is to sensationalize it, it is after all the worse oil spill in US history. I am not sure what exactly the media is or isn't doing as far as digging. If you are telling me that there is actually lots of action going on to clean up the spill and the media isn't telling me focus instead on failure. That is fair criticism, but honestly I've looked for statistic or even pictures showing folks cleaning up beaches and marshes and really have not found them.
I have seen Gov Jindal put out some very specific requests. "We want to build 100 miles of sand berms, the Army Corp approved 40 miles, but BP is only going to fund 2 miles." I wanted 16,000 feet booms of deployed here. The Coast Guard approved 8,000 since they don't have 16,000 feet around, but the contractors working for BP are not authorized to deploy it unless the oil is closer. The oil is already here"
Regarding the sand berms, the media questioned Gov. Jindal on the effectiveness about the berms. This seems like a legitimate function for the media. Gov. Jindal strikes me as guy who wants to do something even if it is not optimal. It is worthwhile to ask in a crisis are we doing something to make the situation worse.
Still in general, I get the distinct impression that situation in the Gulf right now where lots of people can say NO you can't do (or we won't pay for) X and almost nobody is in a situation to say YES. This is a recipe for disaster.
