How to Stop the Leak

I have no idea if this guy, Christopher Brownfield, who is saying on the op-ed page of the Times that we should blow up the run-amok BP oil well, has any idea at all what he's talking about.

But it is certainly a bizarre information schism that, on the one hand, we have the White House and BP fumfering around and acting like there is no fix except infinite patience, and on the other, a perfectly reasonable, methodological approach to damming the spill in short order.

Someone's got some explaining to do.

To recap: Brownfield says the US Navy has the wherewithal to simply blow up the well, by "drilling a hole parallel to the leaking well and lowering charges to form an explosive column" and thereby staunch the flow.

Possibly this is pure science fiction. Although Brownfield is talking about conventional explosives here, he has, in fact, been one of the people suggesting we nuke the well. If he is a quack, it is not particularly helpful for the Times to have published this contribution. And, while theoretically possible, perhaps it is not quite so practical as Brownfield suggests. In that case, I surely hope the White House can produce a very good explanation for why Brownfield's solution is not as good as the solutions currently being tried.

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