Smart Sponge Technology vs. BP oil Spill

[Trouble]

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It's easy enough to "vacuum" large areas of water out into a "pool" of the sponges. I'm sure with the help of the developer of the technology and his knowledge of it I'm sure he already has a way of implicating it.

If you watch the video carefully, it's not forced through the sponge anyway, he just simply poured it through.

Poured/forced..still, you have to take miles and miles of water and "pour" it through sponges...? Anyway, I'm not saying it's not do-able, I just don't get the logistics.

[Trouble]

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Ah geeze...if everybody makes a great big deal out of this they will bitch till they ban drilling off shore and gas will be $12 a gallon. I know, I know, the poor wildlife and the fish, oh the fish. I baked some fish yesterday it was farm raised in China, I don't even know where the fish and shrimp and stuff from the gulf goes.
In the end of it all Mother Nature is a hard nosed bitch, she will reclaim what is hers one way or the other. You know, everything that was on this planet (with the exception of that electric car we left on the moon in 1970) when it was created is still here, it just changes form sometimes. That oil will go back to earth and reform. Mother Nature will see to that. The problem is that WE are in a big damn hurry, earth will still be here and all the stuff here will still be here long after we are gone, this oil spilling out is just a little glitch, hell, that volcano in Iceland is probably doing more damage than this oil, but nobody will pay you off for bitching about the volcano.
Those wood ducks and sea otters seem to soak up lots of oil, we should send a few truck loads of them in to mop up.

I know, I know, I'm an asshole.....I'm just in one of those moods.

I don't think you're an asshole but that post does seem naive. We have a finite amount of space here...expecting "mother nature" to clean up after all of our messes seems simplistic at best (did your mommy clean up after all your messes....?)? To think we can just treat the planet as a giant garbage bag and "mother nature" will take care of it...err, no.

[twisteroo]

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Nah, I'm just saying that us humans are just such a very small blip on the earths radar. The human race will eat themselves out of a habitat and the planet will still go on.
We are treating the planet like a garbage pile no matter what.
Everyone thinks this oil spill is an outrage but there is only a small handful of people really willing to do anything to help, everyone still uses gas and oil and yet they still bitch about alternative energy sources, windmills, more nuclear plants etc, you know, Not I My Backyard.

The short of it I guess is that I think people are pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things, we as a species will breed ourselves out of a habitat and mother nature will carry on like she always does.

I think BP is probably doing the best they can, they are doing stuff that has never been tried before. They have a hell of a lot riding on this, I think they are doing their best.

This is why I rarely post in these or political threads. Opinions.

Well this old hippy has to get ready and ride my bicycle to work so I can not buy any gas from BP today.

[Twitchin Kitten]

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It's easy enough to "vacuum" large areas of water out into a "pool" of the sponges. I'm sure with the help of the developer of the technology and his knowledge of it I'm sure he already has a way of implicating it.

If you watch the video carefully, it's not forced through the sponge anyway, he just simply poured it through.

Poured/forced..still, you have to take miles and miles of water and "pour" it through sponges...? Anyway, I'm not saying it's not do-able, I just don't get the logistics.

You know I was going to go at this again but then i realized that you're not going to 'get the logistics' no matter what I say. If you have a better suggestion then by all means, suggest away.

[LKTraz]

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Logistically.......since oil is lighter than water and it mostly floats one could suck up the surface and maybe the 2 feet below the surface and then pass it through the sponge. As the demonstration shows, the oil is held in the sponge and the water passed through. The oil which is now a solid can be taken away and processed or disposed of.

This would take a large amount of vessels equipped to vacuum skim the surface and as well cargo ships or barges set up to remove the oil soaked sponges.

If nothing else, as many as can be deployed and set to work would surely aid the cleanup effort.

In related news, the tar balls which have washed up in the Florida Keys have been found NOT to be from the leaking rig pipe.

Click for the story

[Jamminitin]

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There is constantly oil being naturally released into the oceans now. No I am not saying it's OK to just let this pipeline keep running, but they found oil balls on the coastline of Florida and they are NOT from this spill. Oil is always there.

[Trouble]

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You know I was going to go at this again but then i realized that you're not going to 'get the logistics' no matter what I say. If you have a better suggestion then by all means, suggest away.

I was just questionning the "how's" of it but I don't claim to be an industrial engineer--I'm just a layperson. Similarly, I wouldn't be so arrogant (or is it ignorant?) as to try to formulate a solution to this mess with absolutely zero education or experience in this field.