Politics

Live Feed of BP Oil Spill

By Karina

Explaining that “this may be BP?s footage, but it?s America?s ocean,” Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) has been requesting a live feed of the BP oil spill to be made publicly available on the web so we can see the real-time effects and independent scientists can analyze how much oil is still flowing and at what rate:

Rep. Markey has frequently queried BP for more information on the exact size of the spill and on their refusal to engage with outside scientists. Independent scientists have examined video, satellite photos and other aspects of the spill and determined that it may be much bigger than estimated. Today at a briefing Rep. Markey held in his Energy and Environment Subcommittee, independent scientists from Purdue University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said that the estimate of a 5,000 barrel per day leak was an underestimation of the flow. The scientists said with more data, they could better calculate the flow of oil from the sea floor.

“This is 4th grade math. We know the numerator here?the couple thousand barrels a day BP is siphoning out of the sunken pipe. But we still don?t know the denominator,” said Rep. Markey. “BP is capturing a fraction of the oil, but they don?t know what that fraction is.”

Last night, BP agreed and said they would release the feed. It is now streaming on globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam from the ocean floor, 5000 feet below the surface:

Note: If you can not see the feed, it is currently overloaded and will be back soon.

Full post as published by The Gavel on May 20, 2010 (boomark / email).