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  • Current Events & Politics Moderators: deficiT | tryptakid | Foreigner

Disaster looms as oil slick reaches US coast

thanks for the positive vibes notdeja and seedless! I'll find out in a week or two.

We need to get Paul Stamets down there, start detoxifying thew marshes with fungii
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This is essentially what the project I might be working on will do. We'll take native compost and "expand" it both aerobically and anaerobically (using sugar and big bio-reactors). Specialized fungus will also be added to the reactors. The mixture of aerobes and anaerobes will then be sprayed onto sensitive marsh land contaminated with toxins. This rapidly increases the rate of de-toxification.
 
Well it is official the man just put all the blame on B.P. time to pay up...I just hope things work out it is a shame . Just hope it gets under control with this next EXPERIMENT works Jesus that shit is flowing
 
Problems compound on problems. This year is shaping up to be the warmest on record and the Gulf is already unusually warm, hence the likelihood of an extreme hurricane event is quite high and a storm surge could push oil even further inland than it might otherwise reach. All of these problems, all caused by our veracious appetite for energy, if there is a silver lining this catastrophe, and the possible twin catastrophe of an oil-slick storm surge, might be the impetus the world needs to take real action on adopting clean enegy :(


Hurricane Season May Be "Extremely Active"
Atlantic-born hurricanes would have unknown consequences for Gulf oil spill.


The U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast should brace for a potentially "extremely active" hurricane season, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2010 Atlantic forecast, released Thursday.

NOAA warned of added risk from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, saying a hurricane storm surge could bring "discernable deposits" of oil even farther ashore along the Gulf Coast.

(See "Hurricane Could Push Spilled Gulf Oil Into New Orleans.")

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., agency officials predicted that the 2010 hurricane season could be one of the busiest on record, with as many as 23 named tropical storms forming in the Atlantic Ocean between June 1 and November 30. (Watch hurricane videos.)

As many as 14 of those storms could become hurricanes, which have winds of at least 74 miles (119 kilometers) an hour, according to a NOAA statement. Up to seven of those hurricanes could become major storms, with winds exceeding 110 miles (177 kilometers) an hour, the forecast says.

In an average summer about 11 tropical storms form—among them 6 hurricanes, including 2 major hurricanes.

The "extremely active" hurricane season prediction is based in part on record water temperatures currently in the Atlantic regions where tropical storms form and along the paths where they can intensify into hurricanes, NOAA says. Warm water and warm, humid air fuel hurricanes.

Another factor driving the forecast is the lack of an El Niño in the eastern Pacific, NOAA says. The unusually warm waters of an El Niño cause the jet stream—a high-altitude wind current to shift southward—where high-level winds can disrupt hurricane formation.

(Related: "Strong Hurricanes Getting Stronger; Warming Is Blamed.")

NOAA's 2010 Atlantic hurricane season forecast is slightly more ominous than Colorado State University's eagerly awaited annual prediction, released in early April. Though it forecast an "above average" hurricane season, the Colorado team predicted fewer tempests than NOAA: 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes, and 4 major hurricanes.

(See "2009 Hurricane Season Quietest in Decades.")

Hurricanes' Effects on Oil Spill Unknown

The explosion last month of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the coast of Louisiana has injected a worrisome uncertainty into 2010 hurricane forecasts for the Gulf Coast.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, said NOAA scientists are trying to determine how a hurricane might interact with the massive oil spill.

Gradually and pervasively oozing ashore, coating everything in its path, leaked oil has started fouling Louisiana wetlands. But it's not clear hurricane-driven oil would behave in the same way.

"We don't have models to tell us how the oil will come ashore" in a hurricane, Fugate said at the news conference. "I don’t think the oil will come ashore in a hurricane like it's coming ashore now."

Rather than a comprehensive coating, for example, hurricane-tossed oil may be patchier. But it wouldn't be invisible, said Fugate, who said oily traces would be easily "discernable."

Depending on the topography, a powerful hurricane can drive a storm surge more than a mile (1.6 kilomters) inland. And as Texas Tech University's Ron Kendall told National Geographic News earlier this month, "You put a major hurricane in [the oil spill zone], you're liable to have oil in downtown New Orleans."
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NEW ORLEANS – Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama.

The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science's Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume recorded since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20.

The thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters), and is more than 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) wide, said David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school.

Hollander said the team detected the thickest amount of hydrocarbons, likely from the oil spewing from the blown out well, at about 1,300 feet (nearly 400 meters) in the same spot on two separate days this week.

The discovery was important, he said, because it confirmed that the substance found in the water was not naturally occurring and that the plume was at its highest concentration in deeper waters. The researchers will use further testing to determine whether the hydrocarbons they found are the result of dispersants or the emulsification of oil as it traveled away from the well.

The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower waters where many fish and other species reproduce.

The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may be the result of the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at the site of the leak.

Hollander said the oil they detected has dissolved into the water, and is no longer visible, leading to fears from researchers that the toxicity from the oil and dispersants could pose a big danger to fish larvae and creatures that filter the waters for food.

"There are two elements to it," Hollander said. "The plume reaching waters on the continental shelf could have a toxic effect on fish larvae, and we also may see a long term response as it cascades up the food web."

Dispersants contain surfactants, which are similar to dishwashing soap.

A Louisiana State University researcher who has studied their effects on marine life said that by breaking oil into small particles, surfactants make it easier for fish and other animals to soak up the oil's toxic chemicals. That can impair the animals' immune systems and cause reproductive problems.

"The oil's not at the surface, so it doesn't look so bad, but you have a situation where it's more available to fish," said Kevin Kleinow, a professor in LSU's school of veterinary medicine.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_oil_spill_new_plume

New, giant sea oil plume seen in Gulf 6 miles large 8o
 
missunderstood said:
Well it is official the man just put all the blame on B.P. time to pay up...I just hope things work out it is a shame . Just hope it gets under control with this next EXPERIMENT works Jesus that shit is flowing
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Of course it didn't work. They knew an hour in that it didn't work and from day one that it wouldn't work, but led everyone by the nose with their multicam theatre production.

This all happened before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-4oooyqe_8

Script look familiar? Only much worse this time.

One of two things will stop this gusher. One is the relief wells, which will take months to drill. The other is the nuke, which Russia proposed right in the beginning. My bet is on this thread staying alive for the next six months... at least.

Oh, and the "that shit is flowing"? They're just showing you the rated-PG leaks. The really fun Rated-R stuff, they don't dare show that.
 
I am somewhat curious whether these sorts of "leaks" don't occur naturally with tectonic shifting?

After all, oil is really just recycled plant sediment that will eventually churn over and settle again, is it not?

I'm not minimizing this issue, I'm just wondering if drilling is the only way to release oil from deep deposits.
 
Cyc said:
After all, oil is really just recycled plant sediment that will eventually churn over and settle again, is it not?
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The "oil as a fossil fuel" theory has been debunked several times over already, in the U.S. and in Russia. When they drilled the world's deepest well at the time in Russia, the scientists there concluded that

1. oil, found in seemingly limitless quantity thousands of feet beneath any organic material, was not formed from animal and plant remains, but as a result of a chemical process deep within the earth
2. Peak Oil is BS. No such thing. Those wells formerly discovered at lesser depths - Alaska, Persian Gulf, Venezuela, etc. - and which were all deemed to have a life span of XX years are being fed and replenished by these mother wells much deeper down, like the one found in Russia and the one the Deep Horizon rig punctured. All those wells already being siphoned in the Gulf Of Mexico are probably being fed by one or two much deeper mother wells, which in turn (who knows?) could be fed by yet deeper wells. We know practically nothing about oil and where it really comes from. We've grown up being fed a bunch of lies and pretty tales.
 
^ This is certainly very eye-opening and I have never even thought about it.

What I CAN tell you though, is that oil, fossil-fuel or not, HAS been exposed by geological-processes in the distant past. It just happens that places around the caspian (particularly azerbaijan) have natural gas vents which have at one point in history caught fire and have continued to the present to be regarded as "eternal flames" (there is a very well-known one at the Iranian-Azeri border at a town named "Astara" IIRC). Indeed, it seems a huge part of the Zoroastrian religion was based at least partially in those naturally-occurring vents. Then we have more recent reports of explorers from the west who describe "springs" of "black oil" that cannot be used for cooking but makes great lamp fuel and heals a variety of skin ailments (just read Marco Polo's travels). All that before oil became what it is today.

That said, I cannot comment on under-sea events, as I know next to nothing about the subject, and will be researching it now that you mention it.
 
bit_pattern said:
Sorry, SA, but the abiotic oil theory is woo woo nonsense.
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Sure. For decades now, we've been finding the largest ever oil reserves at up to 35,000 feet below the ground, because dinosaurs once roamed there. Riiiiiight. Read up on deep oil drilling and how and why Russia has become such an oil and gas giant, presumably out of nowhere. A bit of advice - don't use Wikipedia as the be all and end all of all fact, knowledge and sole valid reference. Here, I'll give you an easy head start:

http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html - "Not only are any predictions that the world is "running out of oil" invalid, so also are suggestions that the petroleum exploration and production industry is a "mature" or "declining" one. This writer ’s experience, gained from working in the former U.S.S.R. during the past five years, has provided compelling evidence that the petroleum industry is only now entering its adolescence."
 
While I'm tempted to agree with bit, if only for the fact that the abiotic oil theory is not what's being taught in University classrooms, I'm still curious whether fissures in the ocean can occur naturally.

I'm also curious what sort of chemical process could be explained to make organic hydrocarbons and cycloalkanes.
 
Cyc said:
While I'm tempted to agree with bit, if only for the fact that the abiotic oil theory is not what's being taught in University classrooms, I'm still curious whether fissures in the ocean can occur naturally.

I'm also curious what sort of chemical process makes organic hydrocarbons and cycloalkanes?
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I can't answer the base of your question but will state this. There is no doubt hydrocarbons can be created abiotically, we have extraterrestrial sources of methane for instance that prove that it can be produced geologically, and plenty of terrestrial evidence to support that it has happened here on Earth. But just because organic hydrocarbons can form abiotically doesn't mean oil ever has.

SA said:
Sure. For decades now, we've been finding the largest ever oil reserves at up to 35,000 feet below the ground, because dinosaurs once roamed there. Riiiiiight. Read up on deep oil drilling and how and why Russia has become such an oil and gas giant, presumably out of nowhere. A bit of advice - don't use Wikipedia as the be all and end all of all fact, knowledge and sole valid reference. Here, I'll give you an easy head start:

http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html - "Not only are any predictions that the world is "running out of oil" invalid, so also are suggestions that the petroleum exploration and production industry is a "mature" or "declining" one. This writer ’s experience, gained from working in the former U.S.S.R. during the past five years, has provided compelling evidence that the petroleum industry is only now entering its adolescence."
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This isn't a thread about peak oil, or abiotic theory, however it is a discussion I'd be most interested in having the debate, but, admittedly, kinda drunk atm so I don't want to have it now. How about one of us start a thread in the science forum and we can have a discussion there? I'll definitely read your link tomorrow (its late here and I am well into my second bottle of red) and would really like to engage this debate. If you want, start up the appropriate thread here on in the Science forum and we'll have at it tomorrow. And I'll happily make it a Wikipedia free-zone (although I tend to think your reluctance to rely on "mainstream" sources already suspect, although I've read the Wiki page already and even there the they dispute the neutrality, although I don't know what side it is biased againt. What do you reckon?
 
unlimited supplies of abiotic oil would certainly be both a blessing an a curse. I'd really like to see you two smart dudes engage in the discussion.
 
I don't understand why they don't come in from a side angle to place another pipeline and then a seal to channel it through the pipe. and into a series of tankers. It is huge volumes of stuff, I know, and probably a significant distance, but the pipelines are readily available and it would generate tons of jobs while the rig itself is repaired/rebuilt.

Why wouldn't a relief pipeline stop the pollution (or at least, mitigate much of it) while a new well is drilled?
 
probably because of the high pressure of the escaping oil, and the high pressure in the surrounding environment. Besides, I would think you'd encounter the same hydride problems that BP did when they tried the "top hat".
 
i'm nervous about this, hella nervous.

but i'm pretty confident that Louisiana will do what she can to take care of herself, as much as she can.

Acadiana Self Reliance as far as I'm concerned, I think we've all learned that lesson ;)

Defending Grand Isle ;)

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