Dear Mr. President,
I will be brief. Were the disaster mine to solve I would advise thusly:
Let the ground heated warm oil and saltwater rise naturally by convection to the surface inside a sluice tube. Apply the principles of Archimedes. Call in a stream of tanker ships to carry the saltwater and oil laden streams away for land based processing and cleanup.
Let the oil and saltwater combination be separated by gravity, each according to its nature, as they crawl their way to the surface doing gravity’s dance of separation. Let the saltwater’s water be recovered by contained condensation. Let the final distilled water be put to some socially conscious purpose. Let some portion of the recovered salts be fired into oblivion in a plasma furnace, as a penance offering to the universe.
Otherwise the Gulf becomes a toxic wasteland for the thousands of years that the oil flows. And it leaks from there into the Gulf Stream current and on some future day perhaps blackens the ice at the poles.
Let it be that the science of the BP oil disaster be taught freely by means of training videos so that all humans might understand the peril of the collapse of civilization that might be triggered by just such a disaster. Explain how it is that science and mathematics are applied and how it was that such an environment threatening technology was loosened upon earth without there being in place some bigger technology prepared and ready to be applied. Let this be a lesson for our posterity.
Let there be formed a Cooperative among the oil Leviathans such that they levy among themselves, each according to its gross revenue, a fee. The combined levy must purchase a mini navy of surface and undersea vessels with equipment designed for the containment of ocean based drilling disasters and spills.
P.S. On a personal note, while you were campaigning in Butte, Montana I was at Chief Plenty Coup’s Spring praying that you would win the election and that you would be granted the wisdom to do good work. I recollect that being around the time of the Fourth of July. Thank you so very much for your efforts and your success on Health Care. We still need the Public Health Nurse Corps to be activated. Thank you also for your support of Financial Reform. You are doing a fabulous job. Thank you for being willing to serve in public office.
P.P.S. Industry and commerce must direct itself to constructing the necessary equipment at the fastest rate possible. This will be beneficial to commerce. It may be a great application of the rocket scientists at Nasa. It will be good for the economy. You have the Executive Authority to command such a first response to an environmental disaster which, upon your watch, may be likened to Chernobyl.
. . . [to be continued, above and below in the presentation URL: http://peaceengine.com/blog/category/environment/
I emailed to this link:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
I emailed this link also:
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/clients/2931/319487.pdf
I posted at Digg:
http://digg.com/political_opinion/Dear_Mr_President_Re_Gulf_Oil_Spill
NOTES ARE BELOW:
The idea is that the warm oil and saltwater rising in a convection sluice tube and being pumped into waiting tankers will work. It might work better with a stream of air injected in at appropriate depths. The sluice tube can be miles long and suspended by buoy.
The oil circulates along the top of the tube and the saltwater tends to flow under the oil. This is the natural effect of a oil/water mixture flowing up a gentle hill at a 3:1 slope. Let the oil flow upward at a gentle slope from the seafloor to the surface.
Pray for no hurricanes aimed at Louisiana.
The proposed clamping assembly is explained below
1. robot affixed magnetic collar
2. iron ring
3. Sluice tube to surface
4. Stream of tankers carrying away mix for land-based processing and cleanup
MORE IDEAS
Perhaps a more gentle 12:1 slope is achieved by a twelve mile long spiral complete with buoys, constructed in pieces in a dry dock, and towed into place for final assembly.
A buoyed single, double, or triple helix descending from the surface of the water to the sea floor might work. The only universal requirement is that it be uphill all the way.
Assuming the structure has near neutral buoyancy it should be easily assembled at the surface and sunk down into the water below the construction on top. Each buoy would need to control its own ballast as it descends. The structural stress would need to be monitored with buoyancy adjusted by the robots.
The cost of constructing a triple helix sluice and getting it to the sea floor is staggering. The alternative has taken thirty days to construct and does not seem to be working very well. Perhaps a combination of the two approaches will work best.
Human civilization demands a clear vision and a steady hand. I urge you, Mr. President to, with all due haste secure the area of the spill and see yourself to the cleanup effort. Let it never be said that, upon your watch the Gulf of Louisiana became an environmental wasteland. BP will repay the United States for such an emergency response mobilization. Perhaps the Coast Guard should be mobilized to build oil/saltwater capture, containment, and transport vessels, ever ready for just such oil spill emergencies, worldwide. As a Nation we owe the World a huge penance for the damage wreaked by the cozy Washington lobbyist political corruption that permitted this to happen in the first place.
OTHER IDEAS AND NOTES
Create an autonomous robot cleaner vessel capable of finding and capturing underwater stray plumes of oil in the open ocean. It will naturally float with its bladder full to the surface of the ocean for easy retrieval. A fleet of such vessels, capable of deployment anywhere on the ocean’s surface, will be an asset whose cost will be recovered on first use from the oil companies involved.
When a surface ship operates, like a mobile cleaner with an oil capturing conveyor belt of membrane buckets, upon the surface of the ocean, it is a different matter. Perhaps, loosen a swarm of such devices surrounding the mother ship, each connected by means of an umbilical cord to the mother ship. Perhaps each oil slick capture ship protrudes a wide scoop and tows a bladder or a tar collection barge.
Assuming such oil spill lapping vessels existed it would be an easier matter to sweep the ocean clean of its oil spills.
If the nation of the United States does not act upon its own to contain the oil and tar, then BP will seek the least cost solution because it is in its nature to do so. The least cost solution is not acceptable. Human civilization must hold itself to a higher standard of morality.
SUNDAY, MAY 30, 2010 — HOT OIL BALLOON
Suppose a hot air style balloon skin could be sunk and tethered in place above the oil leak. Vent tubes connected into the top of the balloon could collect the oil and gas mixture and direct it towards the surface. Perhaps this would work by sucking the oil and gas mixture into a tube connected to the surface.
The balloon assemblage, perhaps laid out by robots on the sea floor, could be winched into place by robots in such a manner that the opening of the balloon is pulled across the spill head. Incidentally, by timing the first filling of the balloon the volume flow rate of the spill may be ascertained.
The entire hot oil and gas balloon may be dropped into place from above, adjusted to slightly negative buoyancy for the descent, and guided into place by robots. The natural drag of the water will tend to inflate the balloon and slow its descent.
Once the balloon and its tethered ballast boxes reach the bottom and quickly lose their remaining buoyancy, the balloon will begin to fill. As the balloon fills with oil and gas it will have a tendency to rise up from the sea floor towards the surface of the water. In this regard the balloon will be self filling. If the balloon overfills, the excess oil and gas will leak out the bottom of the balloon.
