It is hard to believe that the oil spill is still gushing as much as ever and that we still have no idea how to fix it . To top it off, our politicians are too busy arguing over money and apologizing to BP to do anything productive about the situation. We haven’t even effectively paused off-shore drilling in the gulf of mexico due to the recent legal setback. John Stewart says this better than I could.
| Day 62 – The Strife Aquatic | |
Because of my work at a national lab, I get e-mails from the Department of Energy, but this one from last week really surprised me.
Subject: DOE Email Address for Deepwater Horizon Solutions
Employees are encouraged to submit ideas and suggestions in topic areas including, but not limited to: sub-surface containment, surface containment, shoreline cleanup and remediation, safety improvements, and flow stoppage. Effective immediately ideas should be sent to oilspillsolutions@hq.doe.gov
As part of the Department of Energy’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf, the Office of Fossil Energy has established a new email address to collect the best ideas from within the Department’s research community (i.e. DOE labs, universities, contractors and others that interact with DOE) on how to stop or contain the oil’s release and mitigate impact on the environment. Please send ideas and suggestions directly to oilspillsolutions@hq.doe.gov. Submissions will undergo an internal vetting process and the most immediately applicable suggestions will be elevated to senior DOE leadership for accelerated consideration.
However, ALL suggestions will be placed in the Government’s public Deepwater Horizon database for evaluation by an interagency team. This will ensure that innovative ideas, which are directly applicable to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, receive the highest attention.
Working with the Department of Energy, I know how many smart people there are working here, but this seems a little desperate. The only thing that most people know about the spill is what we hear on TV and it seems a little unreasonable to expect us to be able to put fourth an effective solution without doing a better job of outlining the details of the problem. Here is a start at explaining the technical details if you happen to be up for taking on the challenge. This is a disaster on an unprecedented scale (I am not going to say how big because we can’t even tell you that accurately) and we need to learn something from it. Going forward, I think that it is important to learn from this mistake and in the short term use a lot more caution in oil exploration, while focusing on the long term goal of weaning ourselves off of oil and onto renewables. The cost of fossil fuels is much higher than the price that we pay at the pump and if this is the disaster that makes the world realize that, then maybe we can turn a horrible situation into a turning point for the energy economy.
More information about Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
-DOE
