Federal officials are hoping film director James Cameron can help them come up with ideas on how to stop the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The world is being run by crazy people.
Federal officials are hoping film director James Cameron can help them come up with ideas on how to stop the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The world is being run by crazy people.
I guess they’ll use a combination of special effects and a grossly overestimated sense of self-importance.
I’m watching the live Macondo ROV feed right now, and the CUT diamond saw is about ¼ of the way through the riser and DP, a few inches above the flange that connects to the BOP. If this operation is successful (the riser shear-off was successful ca. 19:00 CDT Tuesday), then we can proceed to attempt the LMRP Cap interim solution.
Finally they have found a good use for Leonardo.
Some years back (perhaps even still currently), NASA had hired Cameron with regards to Mars exploration. It was an interesting idea, to hire a non-scientist, but highly creative thinker to assist with problem-solving. I don’t think it’s a bad idea here.
However, I’ll echo EBD’s comment about Cameron’s sense of self-importance. I have absolutely loved his films over the years, but am currently boycotting all things Cameron (I still haven’t seen Avatar). I just cringe when I hear Cameron speak about oil being the “old paradigm”, as if there was something new us plebes could easily, and affordably switch to. The last straw was when he began to speak ill of the Alberta oilsands — when his words can potentially impact the livelihood of thousands of his countrymen, I drew the line. He will get no more money out of me.
Hiring a man that is to stupid to realize his 2 bit films need plastic to be made,lots of plastic in props and film, right James, plastic comes from environmentalists excrement doesn’t it James? You are so right Kate, crazy people are in charge now, adolesent boy men, poofs and lezees, people who care less about the long term ramifications of their decisions stupidity because for the most part they have no off-spring to care about.
James Cameron might just make silly films, but he sure knows his deep water operations, much mord than the layman. For The Abyss all filming was done at the bottom of a huge water tank – the “Benthic Explorer” wasn’t a sound stage, it was a pressure vessel (and he made Ed Harris wear the actual Navy deep water diving suit and breathe that pink oxygenated gunk. He also designed the helmets for the diving suits to allow better views of the actors’ faces, and they worked so well that the US Navy started using them). For Titanic, he didn’t just read about the thing, he actually got in a submersible and went to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean and saw the ship firsthand.
If I get into a submersible and go down to the well head in the Gulf it will make me an expert in capping deep water blowouts?? That’s great thinking Ed.
Ask Kathryn Bigelow. She’ll know exactly what to do.
Frankly Bruce Willis would have this wrapped up in, say 2 hours 30 minutes.Or early in the sequel.
I agree the nuts are in charge…….
I’m getting tired of the various attempts to plug this hole. It was originally drilled for good reasons in the first place. Instead of trying to plug it, why not extend it? Put a big heavy funnel over it, and, a hose or pipe, under negative pressure (a suction pump!) and recover the oil.
As intended.
Up to the top, then piped to the tanker/refinery.
Geez…
Someone should introduce Cameron to Mann. Then maybe we can get a computer model to stop the flow. Maybe get Gore in the mix because he has an academy award and a nobel … and these guys are experts!!!!
No Rob, but when you make a twenty-year habit of going in deep water submersibles on a regular basis, using remote manipulators in much deeper water than the blowout, you pick up on a few things that a BP oil executive would simply not even know that they don’t know.
Jeeze, Ed. By your reasoning, the Russians should have called in Jane Fonda to help them deal with the wreck at Chernobyl.
I see someone who is experienced in deep water operations, has been an innovater in the field, and is, most likely, highly motivated to “save the earth”, as an excellent choice as a team member. Regardless of his political views.
He probably already has more ideas than the BP personnel.
Al Gores wife of 40 years thinks they should stick him,
his Academy award,
and Nobel prize into that hole.
I would watch the movie.
I saw Avatar and I am a huge fan of the Myst games. Cameron essentially took the beauty of Myst and put just about the worst story I have ever seen to a concept, a idea, a reality, that the Myst games are and completely raped it.
At what about a 1/2 billion dollars the guy should be able to produce a watchable film. Technically.
Lord, if I where a lefty emoter this would get me nuts.
Send in the clowns.
The obvious experts from left field….Bono, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. I sense a groundswell.
Send in the clowns?-
They are already there.
Our Dept of Justice idiot lawyers are swarming the Gulf trying to prosecute the people trying to stop the leak.
Eric Holder has watched TV and thinks they can operate those underwater robots from a jail cell.
What if British Petroleum just throws up their hands,
says to “Hell with it” walks away declaring bankruptcy?
Obama can’t afford another war with England right now.
They need older technology folks….Mary Poppins’umbrella would do it.
bartinsky: “You are so right Kate, crazy people are in charge now, adoles[c]ent boy men, poofs and lezees, people who care less about the long term ramifications of their decisions stupidity because for the most part they have no off-spring to care about.”
You’ve hit on a key point here, bartinsky. As fewer AND fewer people have children, the hedonistic craziness factor kicks in. No kids? No property? No responsibility, I-do-what-I-want-when-I-want-to-Hell-with-YOU-outta-my-way.
I live in Toronto. I live in Ontario. I see it every day.
As for James Cameron’s ideas on how to plug the oil blowout, it might help, except why tell the world? Apparently, when brainstorming problems, some successful companies bring in people who have no background in their particular field — and because they have no preconceived notions, they’re often able to suggest solutions or a seed of a solution that the “experts” have never thought about — and have been programmed not to think about.
I just hope Cameron’s doing this pro-bono.
Hey, I just had a GR-8 idea: Why not plug the hole with James Cameron? He’s got an ego which would more than do the trick.
I think James Cameron is the wrong choice for the job. What we really need is the guy who made Back to The Future. Then we could travel back in time and prevent the problem.
Plus this oil spill just isn’t glamourous enough for the general public to take serious. Someone has to write in a car chase or a love interest. A good shower scene always brings up the ratings.
Things would go so much better if Hollywood ran things.
So many other better choices. Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, heck even Ray Liotta. 🙂
All you can do is laugh.
All good fun, but I agree with ed, it isnt as crazy as you think. Cameron isnt just “an artiste” in deep water. The filming requires real planning, real engineering etc.
Would I let him run it….absolutely not. But bringng in someone who is familiar with the area, and “thinks outside the box” is hardly letting the workd be run by crazy people.
I believe his angle on this will be that you can actually get humans down there in submersibles and that this might allow a different solution by bringing more capabilities to the blow out.
Heck the Bush admin brought in Hollywood writers after 9/11 to brainstorm attcks against the US. Why, they needed someone to think the unthinkable. Control and decisions still rest with the experts but people, especially in this type of situation, often need an outsider to help them work through non-standard solutions.
Now if they put him in control, well thats a different story. Who knows, stuffing Leo in the pipe might just be the suggestion.
Why DiCaprio? Man-bear-pig is available and has actually transformed himself over the years into the shape of a plug. Besides this would be his chance to actually do something for the environment after all these years of pretending. And Tipper would gladly help stuff him into the hole. Fat Albert seems like the perfect solution to me.
Chuck Norris would have squeezed the pipe closed with his bare hands, after free diving down to the bottom.
“Frankly Bruce Willis would have this wrapped up in, say 2 hours 30 minutes”
But if Cameron was the Director it would be 3 hours & 30 minutes and have a soppy ending
Pity that the Beverly Hillbillies aren’t available .
Mad Mike at June 2, 2010 3:21 AM
Exactly, though it’s somewhat low tech, (big bell, flexible pipe and a pump), maybe it would not qualify.
I was about to send them the idea.
However, not being a wise guy, non academic and all, that would very likely not qualify.
They could have tested it in a lab in a day.
Then again, they may have thought about it and tested it, maybe it did not work.
Or, maybe even bring in the people from state-run Pemex who eventually stopped the flow of IXTOC-1 just east of the Yucatan Peninsula.
That was a 1979 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that was stopped nine months after it started. Stopped by drilling a relief well after spitting out 250 million gallons of the earth’s treasure.
All water life returned to normal within five years.
Never heard of IXTOC, until my own research uncovered it last Saturday.
The info is there for anybody to see.
Wonder how long it will take the MSM to discover it?
set you free says “Never heard of IXTOC, until my own research uncovered it last Saturday….Wonder how long it will take the MSM to discover it?”
The MSM knows about it and is trying to keep it quiet. You see, it would ruin their story….big bad capitalists and their “profits”. Of course PEMEX in Mexico is state owned and that doesn’t fit with the demonization of the left.
As for stopping the BP well, the solution is obvious. Stuff Michael Moore into the pipe. I realize there are girth issues there, but if you got him jammed into that thing, not one molecule of oil could ever escape (as long as you could sew his considerable mouth shut).
There is merit to involving Cameron…..despite his politics–howwever his politics have a great chance of influencing that input.
He is not an engineer but certainly has much more imagination that the current US administration.
However ideas are good but engineers inevitably are needed to get things to work…then you require “Bruce Willis” like individuals to actually do it—nerds need not apply.
My though was why not cut the riser and haul all the scrap up and away. The image I got was that the well head had a heap of crumpled riser and a wrecked sunk rig to boot. Clear the work area and many things are possible….and infinitely safer.
I thought Kirstie Alley would have been the ideal choice to plug that hole, particularly if she did a Batman and Robin remake with George Wendt.
John Ratzenberger could provide the voiceover.
Any leaks could be fixed with Rosie O’Donnell, as a sop to the LGBT viewing audience.
Late to the thread, but…EBD = thread winner, IMO.
“Avatar” = predictable, derivative crap with decent effects and some decent performances of two-dimensional characters. Cameron and Bay are birds of a feather, and not in a good way.
Now to the topic at hand:
One of the big problems, as far capping the well goes, is the pressure involved. You can’t just stick a hose down there and start sucking up the oil because of the pressure at the wellhead. Until the pressure is contained or reduced below the water pressure at that depth, the oil will continue to exit the well bore at a high rate. A relief well would help, probably, but TPTB seem not to be interested in anything that doesn’t address the visible problem immediately.
Also, being under water, the oil will disperse very quickly from the main “gusher” stream, making it that much harder (certainly less efficient) to suck up. Granted, anything might help, but I doubt the (maybe) 50% that they could gather would keep the critics happy in any case.
IMO, the only regulations that might need to come of this are better emergency-response planning, mandating high standards for casing, cementing and completing off-shore wells, and taking the decision to fire BOPs away from the human chain (auto-firing, but with a dead-man override requiring users to intervene to stop them from firing in some cases). Drill floors of off-shore rigs should be built with automatic fire-suppression systems (with that soapy foam stuff, as well as sea water) with nozzles all over the dang place.
I add these, because from what I’ve read, butt-covering (and some scared) humans made the problem far worse, perhaps, than it might otherwise have been.
Cameron might have some deep-water ideas, but why would they use him as their go-to person, when they could use the expertise in the USN or various deep-water investigative agencies (I’m looking at Woods-Hole or the Cousteau Foundation, here) that don’t, AFAIK, have outspoken political agendas.
My two cents’.
However ideas are good but engineers inevitably are needed to get things to work…
But as has been noted, Cameron does have knowledge of the engineering angle, and indeed spent a portion of the decade between Titanic and Avatar working on submersible technology (and squeezed a documentary or two out of it). He knows his stuff in this field and could have something useful and workable to contribute. And, his enviro-politics give him some added impetus to take the assignment seriously. It’ll be interesting to see what happens here, at any rate.
set you free says “Never heard of IXTOC, until my own research uncovered it last Saturday….Wonder how long it will take the MSM to discover it?”
“The MSM knows about it and is trying to keep it quiet. You see, it would ruin their story….big bad capitalists and their “profits”. Of course PEMEX in Mexico is state owned and that doesn’t fit with the demonization of the left.”
Actually Rachel Maddow did a bunch of stories on this last week – the fact that the technologhy BP is trying is exactly the same as 1979 and had the same results should give us all pause. I am all for technology but if you are drilling in a mile of seawater you better have more than one fail safe in the event of an accident.
but he sure knows his deep water operations
No, he knows deep water filming operations, which have precious little in common with capping an oil well underwater.
How about plugging the pipe with hordes of litigious trial lawyers… and Leo DeCaprio?
@Vίtruvius
Now the saw is stuck.
That’s why they’re now adjusting the rigging at the outboard end of the
riser, where it was cut off yesterday. Indeed, that’s why the end of the
riser was cut off yesterday, because it is known that sometimes you have
to do things like this when cutting a stressed element with a wire saw.
When Saddam lit up all those wells in Kuwait, a bunch of American experts predicted it would take five years to cap them. Enter a couple of Red Deer companies, and the problem is solved in six months. The most up to date and effective technology is in Alberta, but I don’t expect they’ll be asked to help out. That would not be politically correct for a group that spends so much time demonizing us.
I think you guys are missing the point, while many “Super Heroes” have been suggested these people are just actors and yes they probably have stayed at a Holiday Inn but they are not eqipped to battle reality.
The person they should be asking is David Copperfield after all he can make big things disppear.
I am sure Mr Cameron will direct the government to Copperfields door (unless David makes it disappear first)
Ed Minchau at June 2, 2010 3:42 AM: I’ve flown in airplanes and years ago flew gliders … does that make me a specialist in landing 737s, without power, in a thunderstorm.
The most up to date and effective technology is in Alberta, but I don’t expect they’ll be asked to help out.
BP has an open request and contact info for any solutions. If there are Alberta companies with expertise in capping oil wells at 5000 feet below sea level they can easily volunteer their ideas.
“Chuck Norris would have squeezed the pipe closed with his bare hands, after free diving down to the bottom.”
That made my day.
What I find absolutely astounding is that there was no plan in place for this type of disaster. Come on, you drill a hole in the ocean floor and you don’t foresee that maybe, one day, something could go wrong? Instead, you play catch-up, trying to think up a plan?
What I find absolutely astounding is that there was no plan in place for this type of disaster.
There is a plan: drill a relief well. The only near-guaranteed solution is a relief well, but that takes months to complete, hence the interim attempts at containment and shutoff. Those are going to be dictated by circumstance, and in disasters the circumstances are usually going to be different from anything that’s happened before, making them pretty difficult to plan for. By my count the LMRP cap is the sixth different procedure they’ve tried so far. There’s just no getting around the fact that deep-sea operations are HARD, and no amount of stating that they should “plug the damn hole” is going to make it any easier or make it happen any faster.
they were going to use Sean Penn but discovered his head was to thick to fit in the hole.
The Queen has just nominated Fergie. She can get herself in and outta more holes than anyone who’s been mentioned so far. And she knows how to plug them.
Or, Red Green maybe?