Gulf Gusher Worst Case Scenario

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a listing of several scientific and economic guides for estimating the volume of flow of the leak in the Gulf of Mexico erupting at a rate of somewhere around 1 million barrels per day. A new video released shows the largest hole spewing oil and natural gas from an aperture 5 feet in diameter at a rate of approximately 4 barrels per second. The oil coming up through 5,000 feet of pressurized salt water acts like a fractionating column. What you see on the surface is just around 20% of what is actually underneath the approximate 9,000 square miles of slick on the surface. The natural gas doesn't bubble to the top but gets suspended in the water, depleting the oxygen from the water. BP would not have been celebrating with execs on the rig just prior to the explosion if it had not been capable producing at least 500,000 barrels per day — under control. If the rock gave way due to the out-of-control gushing (or due to a nuke being detonated to contain the leak), it could become a Yellowstone Caldera type event, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it, from a reserve nearly as large as the Gulf of Mexico containing trillions of barrels of oil. That would be an Earth extinction event."

Comments

That much oil?

[slapout]

Wait. There's that much oil there? I thought the environmentalists said we needed to find other power sources because we were going to run out of oil soon.

Re:Drill, Baby, Drill

[Doc Ruby]

We also knew terrorists would planebomb buildings, and that offshore deepwater drilling is unsafe.

We just trust "the system", namely "it can't happen to us". And we spend $TRILLIONS a year on the people who run the system so it doesn't happen to us.

Those people have been largely Republicans, and the Democrats who go along with them.

Re:Paul is ahead of the class, not behind

[sterlingda]

You can't dismiss the evidence that this guy is an information spunge and far ahead of the class in his drive to do things.
"I was doing College level Chemistry by 5th Grade. I was doing rocketry, mapping and a lot more before high school. I was breeding plants before I was 11. My bedroom was a radio station for 8 years (Ham) during the time I built transmitters, antenna and receivers."
He's in the far upper reaches of the bell curve in nerd world.

Re:Paul is ahead of the class, not behind

[sterlingda]

He might not be 100% correct, but he's a lot closer than what you're getting from the mainstream press.