Taiwan's The Whale, the largest oil skimmer in the world, arrives in the Gulf
From Denny: There's a new behemoth in town, a 10-story and almost four football fields long retro-fitted ship from Taiwan sailing in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment. The vessel has been nicknamed "The Whale." It's the largest oil skimmer ever created in the world. It's so large it needs at least a one-half mile berth around it while it cruises in the Gulf.
Currently, the vessel, a retro-fitted oil tanker, is awaiting permission from the Coast Guard to begin its skimming operation. The Coast Guard is assessing how the discharged water that is separated from the oil may impact the Gulf eco-system. The Whale is now cruising a 25-mile-square mile test site over the weekend.
Everyone is practically holding their breath in the hopes this giant skimmer lives up to its expectations and claims. It's capacity for processing is claimed at 21 million gallons of oil spilled water a day. The ship processes the fouled water by taking in water through 12 vents on the bottom level of the ship, then separates the oil from the water and pumps the cleaned sea water back into the Gulf. At least that's the plan. This has never been done and everyone is eager to see it a success.
"In many ways, the ship collects water like an actual whale and pumps internally like a human heart," TMT spokesman Bob Grantham said.
The reason The Whale is so close to the well head is because officials think it will be most effective where the oil is the thickest. Also, it just makes sense to clean up the oil closest to the leaking area rather than wait until it dissipates over million of acres of ocean and lands on shore.
The Whale arrived in the Gulf on Wednesday. Officials are testing its capability and the EPA must sign off on deciding if the water is clean enough to discharge back into the Gulf. Apparently, it is not a perfect process. The cleaned sea water still contains trace amounts of crude oil.
Louisiana officials are frustrated the huge ship was not put to work immediately as they see their marshlands clogged with oil. Once the marsh grasses start dying off what happens is that the land sinks never to return. Then Louisiana loses habitat for wildlife as well as barrier island protection from severe hurricanes. People in Louisiana hope this mammoth ship will prove to be a game-changer for this war on the oil spill effects.
The world's largest oil skimmer hails from Taiwan where they just retro-fitted an oil tanker just for this project:
Meanwhile, BP continues to play games with those of us who want them to stop with the gigantic science experiment in the Gulf: excessive use of dispersant. The whole point of using dispersant from BP's point of view is to force the oil down under the surface where it cannot be easily seen. It's their nightmare public relations problem. Shame on them for thinking only of themselves. Dispersant forces the oil down to the mid and lowest levels of the ocean, killing off every living thing. It's like nothing can swim underwater to get away from the oil spill. There is pollution everywhere on every level.
BP continues to lie about huge amounts of dispersant used on the oil spill:
Here's an interesting story about how President Obama is ranked in relation to the other Presidents. He has only been in office a mere 18 months and is already ranked as high as 15th. Clinton is listed as 13th, Ronald Reagan as 18th and George Bush 43 is listed in the bottom five - no surprises there.
The Survey of U.S. Presidents was conducted by the Sienna College Research Institute. They have done five surveys since 1982, asking 328 Presidential scholars to rank the 44 U.S. Presidents on a number of characteristics.
6 personal attributes:
background
imagination
integrity
intelligence
luck
willingness to take risks
5 forms of ability:
compromising
executive
leadership
communication
overall
8 areas of accomplishment:
economic
other domestic affairs
working with Congress
party leadership
Supreme Court appointments
executive branch appointments
avoiding mistakes
foreign policy
Who was ranked as the best President ever?
1. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. George Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson.
For his first year in office, President Obama was rated highly in these areas: imagination, communication and intelligence.
How did George Bush 43 fare? In 2002, after his first year in office, he was rated as 23rd. Since then? Bush was drop kicked to the bottom of the pile to rank 39th. He received poor ratings for communication, foreign policy, intelligence, the economy and his ability to compromise. Bush's best ranking was in the category of "luck" where he was considered the 18th best president.
Who could actually be worse than Bush? Staring up from the bottom of the cellar were Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin Pierce.
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