Saturday, May 15th

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well. “The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

This is the time line of events so far :

Tuesday, April 20 News broke that an explosion occurred at 11 p.m. Monday, April 26 underwater robots have discovered at least two leaks that are dumping an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil per day in the sea. Thursday, April 29 It is discovered that the leak is not spewing the equivalent of 1,000 barrels of oil per day, but rather 5,000. Saturday, May 1st SkyTruth, a small non-profit, analyzed radar and satellite imagery and estimated that the oil was leaking much faster than the original official estimates. Saturday they revised their estimate to 25,000 barrels/day!

Saturday, May 8th, First containment dome = unsuccessful

Wednesday, May 12, BP release video of one leak and of containment dome being placed over one of the leaks

Friday, May 14, Professor from Purdue University estimates flow rate at 70,000 barrel per day.

Saturday, May 15, first attempt at insertion pipe = unsuccessful

Sunday, May 16, Second Attempt underway at insertion pipe

Here are just a few, off the top of my head reasons why knowing exactly how much oil is flowing would help :

To calculate the size of the top hat, piping, boat and heating required to put on top of the leak. Too small and wont handle it, too much and wont be able to heat it to stop the crystals from forming.

To calculate how much dispersant they need to tell their supplier to manufacture, and calculate how much to inject at the bottom of the ocean to obtain maximum effect.

To calculate how much booming will be required and to estimate, knowing the studied underwater currents, how much oil there is and where it is likely to make land fall.

To calculate the size of the pipe, pump, and plug for this threading a needle operation they intend on doing in the next day or so to one of the leaks.

To determine how much pressure they are up against and flow if they are going to attempt the junk shot.

I am sure there will be countless others.

Further, I am sure the JASONs, some of America's finest scientists, who have been sent to the site to try to come up with plans B,C,D,E and F will ask as one of their first questions, how much flow are we talking about here?

Obama Sends Bomb, Mars Experts to Fix BP Oil Spill

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP Plc’s leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving.

Members of the Chu team are credited with accomplishments including designing the first hydrogen bomb, inventing techniques for mining on Mars and finding a way to precisely position biomedical needles.

Katz’s early work focused on astrophysics, but now he consults on a wide variety of physics puzzles, he said. He is a member of the JASON group, a think tank dedicated to researching complex problems for the U.S. Government, including the Defense Department.

Chu chose another JASON think tank member, Richard L. Garwin, for his oil spill taskforce. Garwin, 82, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus, is a military-technology and arms-control consultant to the U.S. government. He helped design the first hydrogen bomb in 1951, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Chu selected one scientist with experience operating on Mars, George Cooper, a civil engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

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As a service to BP, here are the multiple methods which are available to measure flow. Some are obviously inappropriate, but it seems to me that this critical piece of information which will help these scientists and your own engineers, do their job better, would be the flow rate.

Flow measurement

Mechanical flow meters

Bucket-and-stopwatch

Piston meter/Rotary piston

Variable area meter

Turbine flow meter

Woltmann meter

Single jet meter

Paddle wheel meter

Multiple jet meter

Pelton wheel

Oval gear meter

Nutating disk meter

Pressure-based meters

Venturi meter

Orifice plate

Dall tube

Pitot tube

Multi-hole pressure probe

Optical flow meters

Open channel flow measurement

Area / velocity

Dye testing

Acoustic Doppler velocimetry

Thermal mass flow meters

Vortex flowmeters

Electromagnetic, ultrasonic and coriolis flow meters

Magnetic flow meters

Ultrasonic (Doppler, transit time) flow meters

Coriolis flow meters

Laser Doppler flow measurement

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BP is using more than 500 specialists from almost 100 organizations and welcomes additional help, Jon Pack, a BP spokesman, said by phone.

This event has now been ongoing since April 20 or 25 days. Surely the very first thing scientists and engineers need to know would have been how many leaks and how much flow from each. The lack of willingness to measure and provide this flow data from BP, considering that those wishing to help have specifically requested flow data, appears non-cooperative.

500 experts plus the very best American scientists should not be sent on a problem solving exercise where the first problem they are expected to solve is to guess how many jelly beans in the jar. They need real data, hard numbers, and BP should be trying to meet these requests for information and to stop appearing so evasive.

The people trying to help deserve better.

The people of the Gulf Coast deserve better.

Americans deserve better.