Would this really work as a solution for the Oil spill?...

[HipChick]

using Hay as a solution?

http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil/

[Statistical]

1. Worth at leas trying. Even if not perfect it could double ot triple the amount of oil

captured by skimmers.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. I've seen others offer this solution - seems to me that it should work.

It makes sense to me.

It'll take a shitload of straw/grass, but it's natural. And I bet the oil could be wrung back out of it, too.

[3waygeek]

9. Well the Republicans have

plenty of strawmen they can put to use.

[Speck Tater]

3. If it were and oil SPILL, yes, it might work.

But it's not a spill with some fixed number of gallons that need to be soaked up and disposed of. It's an ongoing gusher that needs to be STOPPED at the source. No mater how good something is a soaking up the oil, you wouldn't "repair" a broken water main in your basement by stacking rolls of Bounty® paper towels around the break. You'd call a plumber first, and THEN, after it's fixed, worry about how to clean it up.

[csziggy]

4. It would work on a smaller scale, but there is not enough hay, especially at this time of year

Hay is cut summer through fall - most hay cut is used up over the winter, so there is little in storage now. Some grain crops, such as rye and oats, that are grown over the winter in some areas, can have their stalks cut for straw in the spring, but even that would be in relatively low supply.

For the last several years, hay and straw have been in pretty short supply, especially in the Southeast. Between drought and hurricanes it has been either too dry or too wet to get a good crop. Too dry, the grasses and grains do not grow. Too wet, once cut, they cannot be cured for baling. If baled too wet, fermentation in the compacted bales can ignite the bales and cause fires that are difficult to put out. Last spring, even waste hay for controlling erosion at construction sites was hard to find.

Even if we used the entire season of hay, leaving none for livestock, I doubt there would be enough produced in the entire country for soaking up this oil.

Other techniques, mentioned in posts here, would be more effective. Sending in super tankers to suck up the majority of the surface oil combined with various chemicals to either disperse or solidify the oil left in the water sounds seems to me to be more feasible. But BP and/or the US government is not allowing the supertankers that Shell Oil offered to do their job.

[HappyCynic]

5. Only partly...

Think of the spill as actually three problems:
1. The oil leak itself. Any solution for this would require stopping the oil from flowing out. The more it leaks, the larger the spill, which leads to #2.
2. The spill. Solutions for this include hay, hair (human and pet), chemical dispersing agents, booms for containment, etc.
3. Side effects. Wildlife deaths, lowered oxygen content of the water, etc. No real solutions for this yet, although stopping #1 and #2 would help mitigate the damage (it'll still be horribly bad, though).

[lonestarnot]

6. Looks like it could help. Grow alph alpha instead of corn.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

7. Grow corn

Use the corn cobs, the corn silk, and corn stalks to mop up the oil

Use the corn kernels for ethanol (instead of for High Fructose Corn Syrup)

[damntexdem]

8. Now that's the last straw.

;-)

But:
1) is there enough hay in the world to clean up 70k barrels a day of oil; and
2) where would the oil-soaked hay be put? Dumpsters on shore are not the answer: (a) the oil is deep in deep water; (2) there aren't enough dumpsters in the world; and (c) there would be the question of where to put dumpsters full of oil-soaked hay.

Maybe the real solution is to build cars that run on hay. ;-)