[ale] OT - Have you seen this almost trivial solution to the oil mess?

[Tom Freeman]

On 05/24/2010 09:07:57 AM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 08:58, Tom Freeman
> <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net> wrote:
> > One of the clearest rebuttals to a simple solution that I've seen 
> to
> > date for virtually any situation. If we could all get in the habit
> of
> > checking ideas this way, we might be in better shape.
> >
> > OTOH, while I don't think hay is "the solution", I suspect that use
> of
> > hay to chase after the oil has some value, and should see some use.
> > Exactly where is another problem, for another post, and possibly
> > another venue.
> 
> Perhaps I didn't catch it, what were the costs/efforts associated 
> with
> harvesting/storing/shipping/distributing the hay?  Hay seems 
> wonderful
> if it get's there on it's own. ;-)

Well, that and what do you do with it after it is "full" of oil. And 
salt water. Collect and burn? Collect and bury? Extract oil and burn 
hay? I doubt that the hay would be reusable at that point. And 
admittedly, those type issues were not addressed either by myself or 
the post I responded to. Quite roughly speaking, however, use of hay 
will result in 2 lbs of material to work with for every lbs of oil 
slick retrieved. Plus that material will not be especially easy to work 
with, since it will neither pump nor be an easily filterable solid. 
Again, not explicitely noted.

Of course, these analyses ignore the effects of diverting a percent or 
three of the nation's hay supply to oil chasing, and the logistics of 
getting that much hay transported in the first place.

What I was trying to do with my original post was to complement Quentin 
for actually running down some of the facts and running some estimated 
numbers to get at crude ballpark figures, as opposed to the usuall 
debate tactics of simply snearing at the idea.

Ok. My bad for not expanding and expounding with greater clarity, for 
which I appologise. I should know better. Plus, I should do a better 
job of looking up and checking more of my data (sorry but I'm not going 
to today, I've got some oil based product (gasoline) to combust in 
cleaning up a back yard).

I will stand by the statement that the use of hay probably has a place 
in the overall effort regarding the oil spill but is _not_ truely a 
cure regardless of how popular the idea is.


> 
> -Jim P.
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