The Deepwater Horizon disaster for visual learners

Americablog has a breathtaking series of photos, taken by a DOE contractor, that show the final hours of the Deepwater Horizon.

Also worth taking a look at: The Times-Picayune's animation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which shows the blob growing and shifting on the waves.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Stefan Jones

If you look carefully you can see Obama hovering in the background Air Force Two and laughing like a Bond villain.

Really, Glenn Beck proved it with his blackboard.

* * *

But seriously, I found this slide show a bit more responsive. Americablog is kind of bogged down:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/gallery/2010/05/fire-in-the-gulf-new-pictures-of-the-deepwater-horizon.php?img=1
- Anonymous
  
  Nope, sorry. Air Force One, or Air Force Two, for that matter are not specific aircraft. The name Air Force One applies to whatever aircraft the President is currently in. By definition, the President cannot be in Air Force Two.
  - MrJM
    
    In any event, the “hovering” aircraft would be Marine One, the president’s helicopter.
Anonymous

Strangely, fringe right-wingers can’t see these images. They just see whatever they want.
jadagast

I thought this was a poignant comment on the Deepwater Horizon debacle http://fckoffguy.posterous.com/bp-137
igpajo

Is that a water spout in that one picture?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1xQeOPE9ePU/S97XrPIki0I/AAAAAAAAE3U/zzGpoKfFzW0/s1600/Horizon+Fire+5.jpg

Sure looks like it. Impressive as hell, and somewhat disturbing to see something that big tilting and sinking.
- kb1
  
  It’s probably a fire whirl generated by the dynamics and sheer heat of the fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceYbKxwsFJk
Eadwacer

That picture looks remarkably like shots of the battleship Arizona after Pearl Harbor
- benher
  
  We can anticipate a Michael Bay Hollywood blockbuster complete with Hans Zimmer soundtrack in 3…2…
EH

So, is all that water even doing anything? Seems like it’s just giving people something to do until the wreckage cools.
coaxial

Terribly beautiful. It looks so scifi.
- PalookaJoe
  
  Yeah. There are some beautiful photos in this series. I just wish they were special effects.
Wuss Brillis

There is no fatality in human disasters:

quote: “Mike Papantonio, an environmental lawyer said on the popular American radio programme, the Ed Schultz show, that former Vice-President Dick Cheneyâ€™s shadowy decided that the switches, which cost $500,000, were too much a burden on the industry.

â€œ(The acoustic switch) is a failsafe that shuts the flow of oil off at the source,â€ said Papantonio in the April 30 broadcast.

â€œThey cost only about half a million dollars each, and are required in off-shore drilling platforms in most of the world…except for the United States. This was one of the new deregulations devised by Dick Cheney,â€ he said.”
- joeposts
  
  Obama is president now. We mustn’t linger on the deeds of the previous administration.
  - joeposts
    
    Plus it was Obama himself who tipped it over because he wants foreign oil and needed something to distract the public from his secret lover.
    - MrJM
      
      Under Obamacare, petroleum fouls the environment without fueling your car!
Anonymous

11 people died on rig. Some comments here show exactly the lack of respect that makes workers in the oil industry furious at the urban environmental folk.
Anonymous

@14
Why not? Does time somehow erase the past?
- joeposts
  
  We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.
  - Ocker3
    
    Yes, we must never examine old mistakes, we should simply press ahead and make new ones! Death to History! Long live the reign of those with no memory!
    
    We should avoid namecalling and unnecessary complaining, while calmly finding the mistakes of the past and working to avoid their reoccurance. Find a bad leader? Don’t make him leader again!
greytone

Snake? What happened? Snake!? SNAKE!!!!
kmoser

Just before the end of the animation, on May 2nd, the slick takes on the exact shape of the continental US. Weird.
- Anonymous
  
  You are so right! Good catch! It does look just like the US!
- Anonymous
  
  um.. close.. but if you would have really looked you would have seen that on april 28th the oil slick took on its most revealing shape: a sillhoutted circus seal pointing its oily nose of doom to Nawlins.
MrJM

Spill, Baby, Spill!
bklynchris

Don’t know about you guys, but I can’t even look it is so depressing…
ill lich

It’s about time someone developed that lost roll of color film from Pearl Harbor.
Anonymous

Does that not look like the expansion of Mordor or no?
Anonymous

Who cares about the pictures?

In the meanwhile the leak (or shall we call it “oil volcano”) is still leaking at the same rate and no end in sight.

In fact it might hit the Florida Keys soon and possibly mix into the Gulf stream.

God help us all. And kill BP, Halliburton and Transocean
DJBudSonic

I would like to see a news animation that shows the actual depth of the sea floor where this is happening. All I have been seeing is a rendering that makes it look like it is in 100 feet of water, not 5000, on a pipe that appears to be 50 feet in diameter. I think it would look more like a floating lego brick trailing a string to the bottom of a 12′ diving well. Then people would realize how crazy we are to trust BIG OIL to do this safely.

All I can do is hope that this is the beginning of the end for the age of oil. At least let’s save it for making plastics for alternative energy technologies, not for burning in our cars and power plants. Rant in 3..2..1…