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24 Hours of Top Kill; Making Surfboards Out of Dust; South Korea's Show of Force; 2010 Geography Bee Champion; New Life For Things You Toss; Obama's Oil Comments; How Deep is Deepwater?

Aired May 27, 2010 - 14:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: And thanks, Wolf. We will be checking into that.

In fact, we are now into hour 25 of BP's top kill aimed at finally plugging that oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. We are waiting to hear from BP executives on how it's going and whether they actually think it's working.

Meanwhile, the spill is growing, literally, by the second. New numbers are out today. They're going to shock you.

Plus, as we have just heard from Wolf and his team, President Obama cracking down amid blistering criticism that the government is not doing enough.

Let me bring you up to speed while we've been listening to the president on what's going on right now.

First of all, brand new estimates out of the government about how much oil is actually leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The estimates range from between 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day. Remember, a barrel is 42 gallons of oil. So between 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

Even at the low end of that estimate that the government is presenting, that would be more than twice as much as BP had estimated what was leaking. And, by the way, at this rate, if we believe these brand new numbers, 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, that would mean that this oil spill has already eclipsed Exxon Valdez. This becomes the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Now, these are government scientists' estimates, the 12,000 to 19,000 barrels. Take a look at this.

By the way, just to compare it to Exxon Valdez, we're looking at 262,000 barrels having spilled in that disaster. Right now we're looking at between 450,000 and almost 800,000 barrels having spilled. So we have eclipsed that. There are private sector estimates which are substantially larger than what the government is estimating.

Now, about two months ago, you may remember President Obama came out and said that he was going to lift the moratorium on certain offshore drilling in parts of the country that were otherwise prevented from drilling off shore. He has now canceled that. He has canceled a lease off the coast of Virginia. You can see that on the right side of your map. And over on the extreme right, we've pulled Alaska out, and he has canceled another piece of drilling on the north coast of Atlanta. He has also extended the moratorium on offshore drilling for another six months while the government comes to terms with what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico.

Another piece of information. You just heard Suzanne Malveaux talking to Wolf about this a few moments ago.

The president seemed to equivocate about Elizabeth Birnbaum, who is the head of the Minerals Management Service, the MMS. That's part of the Department of Interior, which until now has handled the leasing and collection of royalties from oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico.

That organization has come under scrutiny and criticism by the inspector general of the Department of the Interior, saying that in some cases, an inspector for the Minerals Management Service, while inspecting rigs off the coast of Louisiana, was actual in negotiations for a job with the company whose rigs it was inspecting. In another instance, they talked about having accepted meals or sports tickets from companies that were being inspected.

The president was not able to say whether Elizabeth Birnbaum was fired or resigned from her job -- or whether she resigned from her job. But the head of MMS is gone.

Now, I told you that we're waiting for an update from BP as to how this whole top kill situation is going.

Twenty-five hours in, let's go right to Robert, Louisiana, where David Mattingly is at the command center with the latest -- David.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ali, we did get an update a short time ago. We're finding out BP's saying so far, so good, what they're calling an arm wrestling right now with the pressure down there. They're trying to exert enough pressure using that drill mud, that heavy liquid, exert enough pressure with that to push this oil down into the well where they can seal it off with cement.

They are in the process of doing that, but they say the further down they push the oil, the harder it's going to get. They're looking to see if they're going to be able to say if this is going to be a success 24 to 48 hours from now.

It all depends on how far they can push that oil down into the well to get that cement in place to put this patch on there to keep this leak from going on any further. And you were talking earlier about all of that, the new figures coming out about how much oil has leaked --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: Yes, tell me about these. Why are they so much higher than what we initially heard from BP?

MATTINGLY: The first question out of my mouth at that press conference was, "Who got this wrong and why was it so wrong?"

For so long now, we have been told that we were seeing approximately 5,000 barrels a day. We were told, oh, that was an estimate, it's probably higher, it's probably lower. We knew it was too low when BP started to siphon off oil down there below.

And now we're finding out that based on an estimate that they made 10 days ago -- this is 10 days ago, Ali -- they were able to calculate that there were 260,000 to 540,000 barrels of oil that had leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. You add 10 days on top of that, it's even worse now.

But at the top range there, at 540,000 barrels of oil, that's more than double what came out of the Exxon Valdez. At the low end, we're looking at a little more of what came out of the Exxon Valdez. This is the worst oil disaster in this country's history, the worst environmental disaster to hit the Gulf of Mexico.

VELSHI: David, tell me this -- when we first heard about top kill, they said -- and this was several days ago -- that after they begin this, it will be 10 to 12 hours. Then yesterday, late afternoon, a few hours in, Tony Hayward from BP said it would be about 24 hours. Now they're saying 24 to 48 hours.

What do we read into the fact that the estimate of when we're going to find out whether this is working effectively or not keeps getting pushed back?

MATTINGLY: What you're seeing going along is what we have been told all along, that every step they take is a new step into uncharted waters. So, every time they go a little further, they're finding out, perhaps, it's a little harder, we have to stop and think about this a little bit. That's why it's taking so long.

They're now trying to exert enough pressure on that oil to push it back down into the well so they can seal it with cement temporarily. Again, this is a temporary solution to the flow of oil.

And they have got a well that's being drilled right now. That will be in place in a couple of months to permanently seal this well. But this is the first and best good news we've received so far for BP to say that so far, so good on pushing this oil back.

VELSHI: All right. David, thanks very much. You stay on top of that. If you get any more news on the success or failure of this operation, let us know, we'll get you right back on TV.

David Mattingly at operations headquarters in Robert, Louisiana.

Let's talk to -- I want to talk to Professor Don Van Neiuwenhuise. He is the director of Professional Geosciences at the University of Houston, knows a lot about what's going on.

Professor, thank you for joining us.

You've seen these pictures that we're seeing, the main one which shows all of this oil coming out of the one pipe. It seems to be different than it looked yesterday at this time.

PROF. DON VAN NEIUWENHUISE, DIRECTOR, PROFESSIONAL GEOSCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON: Yes. The reason it looks different is because it's mud. And having mud come out of those leaks is what you want to see.

Apparently, most of the oil's been cut off. They have a dynamic seal. A high-pressure flow line is actually trying to block most of the fluids from coming out of the blowout preventer. And what you see is actually the mud that they're pumping down right now.

But the well fluids are actually being contained within the wellbore. And they have another flow line below that that they're pumping the mud in which is really -- it's kind of like a -- it's not a tug of war. It's more like a big piston of mud trying to push down on a large piston of hydrocarbons coming out of the well.

VELSHI: OK. So you just said it there for us non-engineers. Basically, you're putting this mud in, this heavy mud, and we need to push the oil out of the way. And once the oil is out of the way, we put cement in, and that's how we close this hole.

NEIUWENHUISE: Yes, exactly. What it's doing is pushing the oil down. The level at which you have 100 percent oil is being pushed further and further down the well.

It's hard to do because they don't have a complete seal. They have what we call a dynamic seal at the top, because the blowout preventer obviously is open, or there wouldn't be a leak.

VELSHI: Right.

NEIUWENHUISE: And because of that, they have this dynamic seal that's not 100 percent. But it makes me feel good to see that they haven't tried a junk shot yet, because that means they believe the dynamic seal is working fairly well. And we just noticed some shots from the ROV, and I'm not exactly certain, but it appears there may be some --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: And we're looking at that, by the way. ROV means remote-operated vehicle. And you can see in that picture that we have got on the screen, something is moving, it's being remotely operated. We can't tell what it is. It looks like a wrench that's trying to get something.

NEIUWENHUISE: Yes, that's a wrench now. But before that, they had a different object in there that looked like it might have been a sensor.

VELSHI: Yes.

NEIUWENHUISE: And that sensor, they may be trying to measure the conductivity or, actually, the temperature, or both, in terms of what's coming out in terms of the fluid to help decide exactly what's coming up. But I haven't talked to BP, and they haven't spoken to me, so I don't know exactly what they're doing at any point in time.

But earlier in your show, you actually had a sensor that was hanging from one of the robotic arms.

VELSHI: All right. We'll keep an eye on that to see if comes back.

Professor, talk to me about -- you know, when a patient goes through serious surgery, or something, and they often say the first 24 hours are the most telling, is there anything like that in this instance? We've been through the first 24 hours. Are you optimistic given what we have seen? Is there anything that would have gone wrong in the first 24 hours that would have told you this is going to fail?

NEIUWENHUISE: There's a couple of very optimistic points. One is, of course, nothing has ruptured yet.

People were wondering why it took them so long to get to the top kill. And what they had to do was pressure up slowly, because if they were to pressure up at the level they're at right now, they could have actually ruptured something else and made this top kill impossible.

They have carefully raised the pressure, slowly but surely. And all along the way, they have watched to make sure everything could withstand those pressures.

So, one of the bits of good news is that everything is working the way it should work, and they're able to remain at least a significant dynamic seal to hold all of the fluid coming out of the well down in the wellbore. And the fluid you see coming out right now is essentially almost 100 percent the fluid they are pumping down from the surface right now to create this dynamic seal.

VELSHI: And how long do we have to see that for before the next thing happens?

NEIUWENHUISE: Well, the problem is, is that you don't know how long it's going to take until you've actually tried it. And I think if it wasn't working, they would have tried the junk shot. And the reason they would have tried the junk shot by now is that if the dynamic seal was not effective, they would have tried to push in junk into the upper part of the blowout preventer to kind of slow down the flow of the escaping mud. But they haven't had to do that, so that means they're at least holding steady with this battle between the piston of mud against the piston of oil.

VELSHI: You talk about the junk shot. We haven't talked about this for a few days.

NEIUWENHUISE: Right.

VELSHI: I mean, it almost seems remarkable that some of the smartest people in the world, the best engineers, are involved in this, and yet we're discussing something called the junk shot, which is literally throwing tires and golf balls and junk into this pipe to clog it. NEIUWENHUISE: Well, actually, it may seem kind of simple, but it's -- and it is simple, but it's also a very complicated way to make the flow of the mud more torturous (ph), we call it, and it has to go around more different things. And when it does that, it creates more friction.

You create more friction, you slow down the flow. When you slow down the flow, the seal then becomes more effective. And that's what we might do.

Now, if we had a sub-surface blowout, instead of having a blowout preventer, you would have a sandstone with lots of small pores and pore throats (ph). And what we normally do there is we put in heavier clays that will actually seal those pore throats (ph) and seal up those pores, and put a Band-Aid on the formation that way.

But in this case, we have a huge open pipe. And the only way to clog up an open pipe is to put some kind of junk in it. And the only way the junk shot would possibly work is the fact that they may or may not think that the rams are partially closed and would provide an obstruction for those larger things.

VELSHI: OK. Let me ask you this. I was just talking to David Mattingly about this, who's at operations headquarters. Initially, they said they would know within 10 hours. Then it became -- a few hours in, it became 24 hours. Now we're told it's 24 to 48 hours.

What does that mean? Why is that line changing?

NEIUWENHUISE: Well, what it means is that the battle with the oil is a little tougher than their most optimistic estimates. And that's one of the downsides that I see right now, that it is taking them a little bit longer than they were initially hoping. But I think all along they were saying they wouldn't know exactly how long it would take until they started this battle of the mud piston against the oil piston.

But based on what we're seeing, it appears, clearly, that they are at least moving forward, inching forward a bit at a time. They have to push that oil down a good 18,000 feet in the wellbore. And at that point, they will have a very heavy column of mud on top of that oil, and it should control the pressure within the wellbore long enough for them to start injecting the cement which will be permanent.

Now, they could try to do this prematurely and have a problem, but I think what they're trying to do is to make sure that they absolutely do not have a problem. And they might actually do this a little bit longer than they might normally intend to just to make sure they don't make a mistake. Because one thing they don't want to do right now is make another mistake by shooting all their shots too soon.

VELSHI: OK. I want you to stay with me, Professor Van Neiuwenhuise. You really make this sound like it's tying a shoelace, which we love. You understand this so well. So I want to ask you about what President Obama said just moments ago, where he said the government evaluated whether they have better technology and know-how to go in, because there's a lot of pressure on the government to take over this attempt to kill this well.

Stay with us. I want to get your answer on the other side.

Professor Don Van Neiuwenhuise is watching the top kill effort with us here on CNN. This guy knows everything about this.

We're going to tell you by looking at those pictures whether or not this is working.

Stay with us. Our coverage continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. We're looking at these live pictures coming out of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and they do seem to be changing in character.

We obviously don't know enough about what these changes in character mean. These are never seen before. But Professor Don Van Neiuwenhuise does. He's the director of Professional Geosciences programs at the University of Houston, and he's tracking those.

I want to get to the pictures in a second, Professor, but I want to ask you, because my Facebook page is full of it, there are commentaries all over the country about, why doesn't the government take this over? And a reporter asked the president about this within the last hour at a news conference, and he said they evaluated whether or not they could do this better than BP was, and they determined that they don't have the technology or expertise to be able to take over this mission.

Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't, but do you agree with that evaluation?

NEIUWENHUISE: I completely agree with that evaluation. The oil industry has got some of the sharpest minds on the planet right now. And I've actually been involved in kill operations, and to actually penetrate the earth at 13,000 to 20,000 feet and hit something that's seven inches in diameter is like finding a needle in a haystack.

And there are people in the oil industry who absolutely know how to do that. And there's a lot of engineering that's going into these different kill procedures. They're using not just one or two very bright people, they're using 10 to 20, maybe even 30 bright people, on each one of these options to make sure that they're doing the right thing and checking each step.

And in some ways, it's more complicated than even sending a spacecraft into outer space, because the pressures and the temperatures they're dealing with in terms of the extreme ranges typically are much, much higher, particularly in the realm of pressures. Of course, temperatures out in space can be dramatic, but in terms of pressures, the pressures that you have to deal with in the oil business exceed just about anything else that's done by humans anywhere on the planet.

VELSHI: All right. I want to refresh for our viewers who are following this.

We're in the 25th hour now. We're more than 24 hours into the beginning of this top kill operation.

From what you see, from these pictures, the one that's on the bottom right of the screen, from what you see, you think this is going well?

NEIUWENHUISE: From what I can see, it appears to be going very well. And I think that's why BP has not tried the junk shot, because they have not needed to try that. And the junk shot itself would have been dangerous.

What it means is that the mud seal that they're trying to form, it's a dynamic seal. You can imagine a very high-pressure hose squirting across a pipe that's so high pressure, that the pressure underneath it cannot get through it. And that's exactly what you're seeing happen.

And, of course, the mud that you're seeing coming out of the surface right now is probably close to 100 percent of the fluid that they're pumping down into the well to create that dynamic seal.

VELSHI: And that's the change. When I say we've been looking at this picture and we see change, it's a different color, which mean they're pumping this mud through.

Tell me what you mean by "dynamic seal." When I think of a seal, it's a rubber thing between two metal parts, or something, that is sealing it up. When you say "dynamic seal," you mean it's the pressure of that mud going down versus the pressure of that oil trying to go up, and where they meet is the dynamic seal?

NEIUWENHUISE: Right, exactly. Instead of having a piece of rubber or a steel ram, what you have is high-pressured mud shooting across the blowout preventer. And the pressure of that flow is greater than the pressure underneath it, and so the pressure underneath it cannot get past it.

And the mud that they're pumping in, they have to pump in very -- in large volumes. A large percentage of that mud will go up, and some of it will go back down the well. But at the same time, the only thing that can get past that flow is if the pressure is greater than the flow. So they have to have a pressure and the dynamic seal that's greater than the pressure below it to actually force the mud to go down the wellbore.

VELSHI: Here's one question for you. I get how this mud piston, as you call it, or this mud is trying to hold that oil back. At what point do you get the cement into this operation?

NEIUWENHUISE: Well, you want to get the pressure back far enough from the blowout preventer so that when you start to put the mud in there, if you lose a little bit of your overbalance in pressure from the mud, that once you get enough of that concrete or cement in there, that it can get down far enough to make a seal. If you do it prematurely, when the oil is closer to the surface, there is a chance that you'll lose your pressure advantage from the mud because you're putting cement in at the same time, and you could have a serious rupture and another blowout.

VELSHI: All right. Professor, thanks for being us with. Again, we appreciate you telling us so much about this.

Professor Don Van Neiuwenhuise is the director of Professional Geosciences programs at the University of Houston.

And we'll be continuing to lean on you for your explanations about what the changes are that we're seeing.

Thanks, Professor. Appreciate that.

NEIUWENHUISE: Thank you.

VELSHI: By the way, let's talk about surfboards for a second. I just want to change gears, even though we're still talking about the ocean.

Would you think that surfboards would be environmentally friendly or not? Well, apparently they're not. There's one surfer who is trying to change that. We're going to introduce you to him when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: OK. When he's not surfing, Joey Stanley does something pretty neat. He takes the dust that's left over from making surfboards and he uses it to make new surfboards. It's one simple thing that's really making waves.

Here's Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOEY SANTLEY, SURFBOARD ENTREPRENEUR: Man, there's some fun ones out here. Can't wait.

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "AC 360" (voice-over): Joey Santley is a fun-loving, nature-loving, pollution-hating small businessman.

SANTLEY: This is one of the main central locations in the world for surfboard production and manufacturing.

COOPER: Santley works in this clutter of surf businesses, San Clemente's surf ghetto.

SANTLEY: I can walk to, like, 27 different clients within -- I don't have to get in my car, I don't have to use any gas.

COOPER: Santley desperately wanted to do something about surfing's dirty little secret: making the boards produces chemical dust. This is polyurethane waste.

SANTLEY: We're going over to the wax (ph) factory to pick up some dust right now.

COOPER: His goal is one simple thing -- recycling foam dust to make surfboards.

SANTLEY: What happens here is this is the shaping machine. And they cut -- it cuts a board about every 15 minutes, 20 minutes. And after they do about 35, 40 boards, then I'll come in here and clean all this stuff up, then they'll keep cranking because it gets too full.

And they love it, because now they don't have to clean up. And I love it because I come and get my material for my boards. And all this material, if I am not doing this, Green Foam wasn't doing this, it would be going in the landfill right over the hill.

COOPER: Santley started Green Foam Blanks. All boards are made from cutouts called blanks.

Almost 2,000 recycled green foam blanks have been turned into surfboards by legendary board shapers such as Matt "Mayhem" Biolos from Lost Enterprises. And Green Foam boards are now ridden by professional surfing stars like Kalohe Andino and Cory Lopez.

CORY LOPEZ, PROFESSIONAL SURFER: Of course, you want a surfboard that's going to ride really well. You go out there and you want to put on a good performance and have fun just free surfing. You know, Green Foam works just the same as a regular foam. It's just a little more environmentally friendly, so it's a win-win situation

COOPER: Santley is a second generation surfboard maker, now shredding waves on his own recycled material.

SANTLEY: Everyone kept saying don't waste your time, don't waste your time. And finally, we got the opportunity and a Blank manufacturer to do a test. And after 50 years of rigid polyurethane production on earth, we successfully proved our concept in one hour.

COOPER: Anderson Cooper, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: What a great story.

All right. Hurricane forecasts are out. Boy, oh, boy, they are looking as bad as the year that Katrina hit back in 2005. You've got the same question I've got. What if a hurricane hits while that oil is still in the Gulf of Mexico?

Chad's got an answer for us when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: We like to mix it up here in the Weather Center. So I've got Reynolds Wolf here, our meteorologist to tell us about the --

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Don't look at that --

VELSHI: Listen, this is interesting, we got the hurricane forecast, which we normally get. It seems to be higher than normal, but not just that, we have this big thing of oil in the Gulf of Mexico which complicates this a great deal. Tell us the story.

MYERS: The numbers that NOAA came out with today, these are the official numbers, and we hear about random unofficial numbers all the time, but this is from the Weather Service. They are quite scary because the number of named storms -- that means, you know, A, B, C, D all the way up into that Alpha, Beta, Zeta that we got that one year -- 23 named storms is the high number that they have, in the year 2005, which is obviously the record, there were 28 storms.

VELSHI: That was Katrina?

MYERS: Yes. And the hurricanes, up to 14 real hurricanes above, you know, the 70-mile-per-hour threshold. It's in knots, but you get the idea. There were hurricane (INAUDIBLE) but seven potential major hurricanes of category three or higher this year, the water is extremely warm.

VELSHI: So much higher than the average and in many cases competing with that worst year than we had in 2005?

MYERS: No question about it. And how does this affect -- look what we have already here. This is the Pacific Ocean, here's the west coast of Mexico, all the way down there's Panama and there's South America. There's already a storm that could become the first named storm of the eastern Pacific, not of the Atlantic.

VELSHI: That one wouldn't shift its way over into the gulf?

MYERS: It typically can't go over the mountains.

But the deal is, what I want to explain, is what would happen if this really was right here. All the winds would be coming this way and there would be storm surge here. All the winds would be going this way and there would be scouring and cleaning of the beaches on this side. But the storm surge that could make its way up and push miles inland --

VELSHI: With oil.

MYERS: -- would be completely contaminating all the of soil along those beaches.

VELSHI: How far inland could water -- the water that has oil in it, let's say there were a hurricane, how far inland can water typically go from the ocean?

MYERS: Dry land, maybe three or four miles. But there's all these estuaries that this water is going to be driven into. All the oil is going to go up into Mobile Bay. Hopefully not, but it could. VELSHI: If there were. Just to be clear, we don't have a hurricane forming there, but this is what we have to worry about. That's why as soon as this well is killed, we have really got to get going with getting that oil cleaned up.

All right, Chad, thanks very much for staying with us.

Listen, one of the stories we're following are the developments between North and South Korea. Warships fire live ammunition as part of a naval exercise. We're going "Globe Trekking" right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Time now for "Globe Trekking," which we do every day. Let's take you to South Korea and North Korea, we have been doing that for a few days. We've got some more action right now.

A show of force by the South Korean navy, they conducted a large scale navy drill, South Korean warships dropped guns and anti- submarine bombs off the west coast. The North Koreans have said they're going to meet, quote, "confrontation with confrontation and war with all out war." North Korea says it is cutting its military hot line with South Korea.

Now all of this is in reaction to North Korea's alleged torpedoing -- and you can see it here -- of a South Korean warship in March, killed 46 sailors. By the way, the U.S. has more than 289,000 troops right now in South Korea.

Let's go to France. We have been globe trekking around Europe a lot the last few days, because of these austerity measures that a lot of countries are taking to avoid getting into the pickle that Greece got into. France is doing that. They've got a retirement age at 60, President Nicholas Sarkozy wants to raise the retirement age to 61 or 62.

And guess what? This happens in France all the time, everybody went on strike. Strikes across the country shutdown trains, delayed flights, closed schools, about 14 percent of teachers and 8 percent of hospital workers walked off the job. They're trying to avoid a debt crisis. The government is also considering raising the number of years you need to work to get a full pension. This is going to be happening all across Europe.

All right, here's the fun part. Let's go to New York now. I'm joined by 13-year-old Aadith Moorthy from New York, he is the winner of the 2010 National Geographic Bee. He won $25,000 in a scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Before I say hello to him, Aadith, I want to play a video of your winning answer yesterday in Washington. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX TREBEK, 2010 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BEE HOST: Haiti, very much in the news this past year. The largest city in northern Haiti was renamed following Haiti's independence from France, what is the present day name of this city?

Put your cards up.

Oliver (ph) wrote down Port-au-Prince. Aadith wrote down, Cap- Haitien.

The correct response, the largest city in northern Haiti is Cap- Haitien.

Aadith, congratulations, young man, you are the 2010 National Geographic champion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: This is one smart kid. I usually have a rule on this show, not to have people that much smarter than me, but I have been defeated.

Aadith, welcome. You're a smart guy. How do you know so much about geography?

MOORTHY: Well, of course, studying.

(LAUGHTER)

VELSHI: Of course, that was an obvious one.

You learned in preparation for this, and you're an eighth grader from Palm Harbor, Florida, you learned 22 new facts a day for four months with the help of a coach? Just everything? Were you going around the world? Were you doing it by regions? How did you do this?

MOORTHY: Yes, he's Mr. Kumar Nandur (ph), and he told me to make 20 new facts a day and take it by country by country.

VELSHI: And so do you know more about any particular place? Or do you know more about America or is it everything?

MOORTHY: It's just everything, nothing specific.

VELSHI: All right, what are you going to do with all of this information?

MOORTHY: Well, I won the geography bee and that gave me a lot of scholarship money to go through college.

VELSHI: And what do you want to study?

MOORTHY: I want to become a physicist. So space geography.

VELSHI: Space geography? Very interesting.

All right, listen, I got a simple one for you here. I didn't get this, somebody presented me with this question today and I got close, but I couldn't actually get the full answer. There is one city in the United States, if you travel along any of the compass points from that city -- north, south, east or west from that one city -- the next state you will reach is the same one no matter which direction you go in. One city you can travel north, south, east or west from that city and the next state you will hit will be the same state no matter which direction you go.

Do you have any idea what city that is?

MOORTHY: You mean it's in a different state?

VELSHI: Yes, so you go from one city, and as you drive, the next state you hit no matter which direction you go will be one state.

MOORTHY: Oh, you stumped me.

VELSHI: I'll tell you, they stumped me too. Watch with me as we show you where this is. Let's put it up on the screen.

It is Stamford, Connecticut. If you go from Stamford, Connecticut, no matter which direction you go in, you will hit New York state.

MOORTHY: OK, that's a new fact I learned today.

VELSHI: There you go, so we can help you out. That is pretty cool that we can give you --

MOORTHY: Life is a learning experience. Life is a learning experience.

VELSHI: It absolutely is. And if you love learning as much as you do, I think you're going to get very far with that.

Thank you for coming and joining us.

MOORTHY: Thank you.

VELSHI: Good to see you.

Aadith Moorthy is the winner of the 2010 National Geographic Bee. Got a $25,000 college scholarship and a trip to the Galapagos Islands, and one smart kid. And by the way, I did not get that answer either today. So I just figured he might know more than I do about these things and he probably does.

You may think nothing, by the way, about throwing away an old computer or used cooking oil, but you are about to meet a brother and sister team who are finding new life for the things you toss out. The only thing more impressive than their accomplishments are their ages.

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VELSHI: OK, this is the smart kids edition of today's show. We got these two, this is our "Mission Possible" today where we introduce you to people who really lead the way. Here we have got a brother and sister team who are leading a recycling effort in their community and beyond that. I want to introduce you. On the left of your screen is 16-year-old Alex Lin on the right, 12-year-old Cassandra Lin. They're from Westerly, Rhode Island joining us via Skype.

Guys, welcome to you. Thank you for being with us.

Alex, let's start with you, you've got this great thing I want you to tell us about. The rest of us get a new cell phone or a new computer and the old one, maybe we give it to somebody, maybe it's just trash, who knows what. But when you throw electronics out, you're actually hurting the environment. Tell me about this.

ALEX LIN, FOUNDER, WESTERLY INNOVATIONS NETWORK: Me and my friends found out about this problem back in 2004. We had a community service thing going and we wanted to work on a project for the next year. So I read an article in "The Wall Street Journal" about how all these electronics have dangerous heavy metals and other chemicals in them that when you dump them or burn them or when it gets exported the other countries, all these chemicals go into the environment and they are a serious health concern to anybody around them and to the environment they're dumped, burned, whatever.

VELSHI: So what do you do about it?

A. LIN: So what me and my friends did is we created a system in our town to recycle and reuse the electronics. So we actually did some work refurbishing some of the computers and the cells and donated them to local students in need.

But we also worked with local responsible recyclers. There's a difference between recycling and responsible recycling because some people who say they're recyclers don't actually recycle their electronics, they actually just export it to other countries where it's dumped and hurts the environment there.

So we worked with a company that's a certified e-steward from the Basel Action Network. It's a certification that says they properly dispose and responsibly dispose of electronics.

So we worked to reuse and recycle these computers and then we pushed for legislation for -- to enforce this and we also raised a lot of awareness in our town to promote ways to e-waste reuse and recycle. But we were eventually able to pass a law our state that banned the dumping of electronic waste.

VELSHI: This is incredible what you're doing, you're 16 years old. And not to be outdone, your 12-year-old sister, who isn't just here to support you, actually, I want you to tell me in 30 seconds, Cassandra, you've got this system called TGIF, which is not what we think it is. You turn grease into fuel, give me 30 seconds on it.

CASSANDRA LIN, CO-FOUNDER, PROJECT TGIF: Well, my friends and I, we created a sustainable system to collect waste cooking oil, have it converted it into biodiesel fuel and distributed it to our local needy families who need heat.

VELSHI: You're amazing. First of all, you keep better time than a TV anchor does.

You and your team members received the 2010 President's Environmental Youth Award, you two are fantastic. We can all take a lesson from you. Thank you so much, Alex Lin and Cassandra Lynn, for all you are doing to try and help the earth.

Ed Henry is in New Orleans and, boy, is that a tough act to follow after these three brilliant kids that we have had on TV. He's a pretty brilliant kid himself. We're going to talk to him in just a moment.

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VELSHI: Ed joins us here from New Orleans. I was talking to a brilliant set of kids, first the kid who won the National Geographic Bee and another set of kids who are changing the world and the environment. And now it's time for two ordinary guys to have a conversation.

Ed, how are you? Good to see you.

(CROSSTALK)

I saw you earlier this week, you've been all over the country since I saw you. Did I seem to have a cough last time when I saw you? Because I have to apologize to my viewers, I'm coughing up a lung here.

ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You were, yes, just a few moments ago. I was worried about you. Did something happen over the weekend when we were together? Maybe you stayed out a little bit too late.

VELSHI: No, I didn't think I did. I feel like a sissy because I came right back to Atlanta and all I did was work and sleep here and you've been traveling across the country. You were in San Francisco last I saw you, now you're in New Orleans because the president's coming there tomorrow?

HENRY: That's right, he's going to be in the region here tomorrow. You saw the news conference back at the you, it's critical days for the president to try to regain control of the narrative of this story, frankly, because this has sort of been simmering for weeks with the White House largely saying, look, BP is the responsible party here, they're in control. And in fact to the point that last week Robert Gibbs was really pushing back hard on the notion that maybe the government should step in.

So it's interesting to hear the president now saying BP is acting at our direction, kind of making it sound like the government is control here. And also at the end of that news conference saying look, ultimately, I'm responsible. Certainly trying to take control of this, maybe the buck stops here, Harry Trumanesque. But I think it perhaps adds a little bit to the confusion about who really is in charge, number one. And then when this topic of the MMS official, the agency in charge of the permit process at the Interior Department, whether she stepped down, she was fired, the president didn't seem to have a lot of information on that. We were expecting that he was going to sort of make it official there. And so, if they're cleaning house, you would think the president had a little more knowledge on that.

So I think on some respects he was trying to regain the narrative, show I'm in charge, I'm going to take responsibility, but in other details, a little bit fuzzy.

VELSHI: Yes, a little strange at the end of that thing when he talked about how he -- I don't know what that means. I mean, nobody thinks that the president caused the oil spill. What do those kind of things mean, because right now our polling has showed that people are pretty angry at BP, some people are angry at the administration. There's anger as we see that oil coming onshore, but we don't really know who that's supposed to be directed at.

HENRY: Yes, well, partially, I think in fairness to the president, there's a divide here.

I was talking to some democratic advisers to the White House last night who were telling me that there's really growing concern on Capitol Hill that Bill Nelson, the democrat from Florida, who told our Dana Bash yesterday that the government really does need to take full control, maybe get the military involved. That there's some democrat who is fear -- and some in the administration, frankly, I'm told -- who fear that this is really going to really increase if this operation fails. Over the next 24 hours, you're going to have a whole flood of Democrats on the Hill saying the government has to got to take over.

So the president is walking this line where everyone's telling the him to do something but no one really has a magic solution, no one really knows. And he's getting pressure from all sides, not just the politicians. You heard him even his daughter, Malia, interrupts him this morning while he's shaving this morning, peeks her head in the bathroom door at the White House residence and says, have you plugged up the hole yet, daddy? So he -- sort of a light-hearted moment, but a reminder that everyone in the country is essentially saying, somebody do something.

VELSHI: Yes, it is interesting. I've had a lot of comments on Facebook from people who say get the private sector out, let the government take charge. And others saying if the government are in charge, people would be yelling about the government to get out of the way and let the private sector take care of it because they've got better scientists. Hard to know what we want to do.

Ed, we will be in touch again tomorrow. I guess you will be in New Orleans.

HENRY: That's right. I'll be here in the region overnight and I'll be on "AC360" tonight.

VELSHI: All right, we'll see you tonight and we'll see you tomorrow again.

Ed Henry, our senior White House correspondent with "The Ed Henry Segment."

OK, a little "Wordplay" coming up. The Bee Gees asked it 33 years ago, how deep is your love? A bigger question now, how deep is your oil?

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VELSHI: Time for today's "Wordplay," as always something in the headlines that may need some explanation. Today we have got "Deepwater."

President Obama extending the moratorium on deepwater drilling for oil today. Deepwater in this context means 1,000 feet below the surface of the water or deeper, anything 1,000 feet or deeper from the surface.

The deepest well in the Gulf of Mexico is more than 9,000 feet below the surface of the water. By the way, it goes a lot deeper under the core of the sea at that point.

The leaking well, the one that was caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, that is 5,000 feet down or about a mile.

Now there are about 141 deepwater projects in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of 2008, that's the latest that we have numbers for. Deepwater wells in the Gulf account for 70 percent of the oil that is produced in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lots more on this oil spill with Rick Sanchez and "RICK'S LIST" right after the break. Have a good afternoon.

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