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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (80194)	5/17/2010 9:37:01 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 89467

To: LoneClone who wrote (131930) 5/17/2010 8:54:34 PM From: Jacob Snyder of 131940 Chevron says, "the probability of a large spill occurring during exploration is insignificant." When thinking about low-probability catastrophic events, many decision-makers just mentally cut off the thin ends of the bell-shaped curve. "It won't happen on my watch, probably." Then, when those events happen, they say, "Nobody could have anticipated this." Those decision-makers need to be given powerful financial incentives, to make them think about rare but highly destructive events. I've been on the Chukchi Sea in winter. At 40 below, you can only take your gloves off for a few minutes, to do anything like work on machinery, before your hands start getting numb. Doing anything outside takes about 20 times longer than doing the same job in, say, the Gulf of Mexico. Since the ocean is frozen, and all of West Alaska is not connected to any road system, you can't get anything in by truck anytime, or by boat in winter. If you need it now, it has to be flown in. A lot of the landing strips are dirt. I'm not an expert, but from reading the descriptions of BP's response to the current spill in the Gulf Of Mexico, I don't think it would be possible to mount that kind of response in the Chukchi Sea. I don't mean expensive. I mean impossible, at any cost. Saying, "It won't happen, so we don't need to plan for it" is irresponsible.