John L. Smith

Professor's call for action on oil spill one Congress should heed

From Congress to the corner bar, there’s no shortage of outrage or ideas when it comes to battling BP’s gulf oil spill.

One guy I know wants to blow it up. Not just in protest, but as a way of sealing off the leak.

Another wants to scoop it up. He figures ingenious entrepreneurs should be able to find a way to harvest the oil for profit now that it’s pooling in the gulf. For him, the worst oil spill in U.S. history can be addressed in an economic model by clever capitalists. (Never mind that we got into this mess with help from the clever capitalists who sunk a hole 5,000 feet under the ocean using what they now admit was shoddy work and oversight.)

Still another person thinks there should be some way to use a series of giant sponges to soak it up. Take a lesson from the ocean in how to clean the ocean and devise a way to pull giant filters through the water to collect the crude.

Call them all wet, but admit BP’s brain trust hasn’t devised a more successful plan .

The slick pollutes the gulf, slimes the Southern shoreline, and oozes all the way to the White House, where the Obama administration battles a public relations disaster. It hasn’t stopped the leak either, but it has drilled a hole in BP’s ocean-deep pockets, extracting the promise of $20 billion.

For the embattled president, the only solace may come from knowing he’ll never look as bad as oil industry lackey and human punch bowl turd Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who saw the worst oil spill on record and rushed to call the administration’s recovery efforts “a shakedown.”

With due respect to family, friends, loyal readers and pub strangers, it’s time we started listening to UNLV associate professor of physics Michael Pravica. The Harvard-trained Pravica is a member of the High Pressure and Engineering Center at the university.

In an effort to be heard at the highest levels, and clearly experiencing the same frustration felt by others, Pravica has taken to YouTube, where he has posted two videos illustrating the challenge and the deeper issue: BP’s inability to fix the problem.

“I am asking that our political leaders set up a clearing house for ideas and information to be exchanged freely between scholars who might be interested in this problem,” Pravica said. “I am worried that BP has not been forthright and honest in all of the discussions and data that is released about the gulf oil incident, and I feel it’s imperative at the moment that we share data so that we can jointly try to find solutions, because I think now this crisis is so disastrous that it’s beyond the scope of BP’s abilities to solve it.

“I ask my fellow Americans to encourage our elected officials to begin to take over this project and stop this disaster in the gulf because life is truly hanging in the balance.”

Congress should have done this weeks ago after BP refused to disclose how much oil was roaring from its well.

So far, Pravica’s online high-pressure physics lesson and academic call to arms hasn’t generated a large response. As of mid-Monday, his videos had only a few hundred views.

Call him just another academic with an educated opinion, but remember the academics were the first to mathematically quantify the depth of BP’s lies about the oil spill when they calculated the amount of crude pouring out of the hole at many times the company’s estimate.

BP’s credibility is as shot as its oil rig. It’s time to bring in experts who aren’t motivated by profit, but by a desire to save the environment before it’s too late.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.

Trending topics:

• BP
• gulf oil spill
• Joe Barton
• R-Texas
• Michael Pravica
• UNLV professor
• YouTube videos

Comments

Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background.

1. rmolnar Jun. 22, 2010 | 2:15 p.m. Report Abuse

   It is beyond belief that someone would think that hack politicians from Cook County, Ill. would try to shake down a big rich oil company.

2. Jack.Webb Jun. 22, 2010 | 11:50 a.m. Report Abuse

   The dust does not appear to be settling over remarks by Rep. Joe Barton on the BP oil spill disaster. At the House Energy Committee hearings last week, Barton apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for what Barton called a ‘shake down’ by the White House for a 20 billion escrow fund to help oil spill victims.
   
   Republicans fearing the wrath of voters who are changing their minds about favoring offshore drilling, are distancing themselves from the far-right Barton-types.
   
   House Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH), threatened Barton with removal from his senior position on the Energy Committee if he did not retract his apology to BP. Despite Barton’s compliance, the flames around the heated statements continue to flare.

3. JaneDeaux Jun. 22, 2010 | 10:49 a.m. Report Abuse

   GeneHemingway, after enabling Cheney's Halliburton to profit by the billions at American taxpayers' --and U.S. troops--expense for 8 years, you continue your support in the wake of this ongoing Oil-spew Horror. Here, you prove that if Obama handled it less aggressively you'd peg him a coward. When he goes to bat for the Gulf Coast victims and all affected by this disaster, he's a Thug. At least you are consistent, but in a matter of this tragic magnitude, it's still astonishing that your 'Party of No' knows no shame, and displays no conscience. Suggest you read a National newspaper for a change, and find some time-lines empirically linking this disaster directly back to your Republican administration's cost-cutting, profit-scarfing cover-ups leading to this catastrophe.
   “Rep. Joe Barton of Texas took it upon himself to apologize to BP CEO Tony Hayward for a political ‘shakedown.’ He later apologized for his apology and explained that he hadn’t seen the news in two months and didn’t know that BP recently destroyed the ocean.” — Jimmy Kimmel.

4. GeneHemingway Jun. 22, 2010 | 8:38 a.m. Report Abuse

   I guess Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, deserves the endearing label you gave him as a “human punch bowl turd,” for being the only man on the committee to have the decency and manhood to apologize for our “Thug-in-Chief’s” extortion of the much maligned green friendly BP.
   
   (Remember all those “Beyond Petroleum” advertisements during the last Super Bowl?)
   
   Normally, it’s the women in the Republican Party like Michele Bachman and Jan Brewer who possess the brass ones big enough to stand up to the “Man” and tell the truth about his thuggish behavior.
   
   Interestingly enough, when famed economist, writer and actor Ben Stein called the White House Press Office and asked what law or provision in the U.S. Constitution gave President Obama the authority to take such action against BP, the Press Office replied they didn’t need any law, or constitutional authority.
   
   Perhaps history will judge that as the turning point when we moved from being a nation governed by the rule of law, to a nation governed by the rule of men. Perhaps it will also show how we became the world’s newest “Banana Republic” and the world’s first “Third World Nation” to possess massive stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Won’t that make for a bright future for our grandchildren?
   
   My advice to anyone who has a private meeting in the Oval Office: Wear a wire and tape the conversation so it can be shared on YouTube for all the world to admire Obama’s “Chicago style thug-ocracy” in action.

5. Jack.Webb Jun. 22, 2010 | 7:06 a.m. Report Abuse

   Listen, it's time we stop picking on a fine patriotic American corporation like British Petroleum. After all, they make payroll and employ people and do everything that's good and right.