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Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Below the Gulf's Surface
An anonymous reader sends in a NY Times article about the spread of oil from the BP gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Quoting:
"Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. ... The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes. Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. ... [Scientists on the Pelican mission] suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly. ... Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes."
I've been reading a little about oil dispersants. I understand that basically they help to break down oil so that microorganisms can do their thing and use the oil as food. Maybe an oversimplification, but that is what I got out of it.
So now if you use oil dispersants, do you end up exacerbating the oxygen problem? If the microorganisms go nuts on the food supply, does this kill off even more of the ecosystem?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
As an immigrant from a 3rd world, and after watching American and British and lately chinese interests eat away resources such as forests and minerals, and watching western oil companies pollute and then using economic blackmail to suppress voices, I personally feel this is a positive thing.
Crap close to home seems to be the only way Americans learn - so some pollution close by is always good.
I can't understand why:
It's a bit worse than that, though not substantially worse. (Depending, of course, on just how much oil is released.) This may be enough additional stress to convert the entire gulf into a dead zone, rather than the partial dead zone that we've dealt with previously.
If enough oil is released it could also spread a dead zone up the Gulf Stream, though I feel this is doubtful. OTOH, the ocean off-shore the coast is already home to many dead zones, so it might not require that much additional stress.
This could be a disaster to the fishing industries, which are already nearing collapse due to over-fishing and improper fishing. (Again, just adding a bit more stress to something that's already overstressed.) This, of course, will cause other food prices to rise, which they were already doing due to the increases in the price of oil.
Nothing here looks like a disaster to the Earth, but it's a pretty big disaster to the humans that happen to live near the area...and to some that don't live that near, but were already under near limiting stress. Also to some species. Some have probably already been wiped out. More probably will be. These were generally species that had already been pushed near extinction, and this will have been just the final blow. Others only live/d in a restricted area, and when that area is rendered uninhabitable, they die.
Just to put things in perspective, a nuclear war that killed off all humans and most other mammals wouldn't be a disaster to the Earth. Only to the people. But as a person, I would find it a major disaster. (Presuming that I lived long enough. Quite unlikely as I live in a major metropolitan area.) Saying that something isn't a major disaster just because it isn't a disaster to the Earth is stupidly unreasonable. Only the collision that split off the moon has counted as a major disaster to the Earth. Even the incident that killed off 90% of all species (genera?) wasn't a major disaster to the Earth.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"BP still has the authority to say "no you can't study the ocean floor.""
Because if you've got half a dozen ROVs, each with their own umbilical cable down there trying to fix the problem, the last thing you want is scientists or fishermen trolling across the area as if there was no issue with them deploying their gear too. It's probably challenging enough to keep half a dozen surface ships/rigs on-site and a bunch of ROVs from bumping or tangling with each other.
For as long as BP is in charge of the cleanup/well control effort, "no you can't study the ocean floor" near the site is the right answer. If someone else were to take charge of the cleanup/well control effort, the correct answer would still be "no you can't study the ocean floor". The gear involved with trying to stop or collect the flow has priority for obvious reasons.
Actually, a 5' DIAMETER hole, would have a 30 inch radius, and therefore an area of 2827 in^2 2827*150000 = 424 million pounds of pressure. However, it is actually an 18 inch drill hole with a pressure differential of around 13,000 psi (see various calculations in comments for this post http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1651510), which puts you at just over a million pounds of pressure. The blowout preventer that didn't work properly was a 450-ton device. It isn't much of a stretch beyond that to get a 500 or 600-ton block of something down there to just plug it up.
There is a possibility, but the current oil collecting ships like this one from the German Navy collect water by opening a wide 'mouth' on the ship from the top of the water, I wonder if they could install a pump and a long hose to do what you are proposing.
While possibly a valid idea, there are the economics to consider. The "leak" is spewing over 210 million gallons a day, while an average to large oil tanker can store about 62 million gallons (assuming my math guesstimate is correct). That means (at 100% efficiency, inotherwords, 100% oil collection 0% water/sediment/etc collection) it would take almost four tankers a day to collect the spewing oil to prevent an increase in the amount of uncontained oil from increasing.
It would also take an equivalent amount (of gallons) worth of storage and/or processing facilities to deal with the "dirty oil" that was collected. None of this takes into account whatever percentage of the liquid they collect is not oil (ie: say, using such a collection method results in a 60/40% oil/water ratio) - which increases the cost (number of tankers, size of storage/processing facilities, etc).
While I think that BP and those other companies involved should be put on the hook for whatever it takes to prevent this catastrophe from growing any further, the simple fact is that no one at BP is going to even consider or "think up" a method of dealing with this situation in a manner that so adversely affects their bottom line. I also seriously doubt that the government, who is dependent on BP's revenue for taxation, is going to think up such a scenario as well. That is where the economics involved come into play.
Sometimes (often maybe?) the economics of such a situation prevent the better methods of dealing with the environmental aspects from even being considered. Sadly, the reality of human greed of those in power usually trumps environmental needs or the needs of the "not so rich" who get adversely affected by situations such as these. It's far cheaper for them do to nothing, or spend lotsa time "analyzing" the situation to come up with lame-brained but cheap solutions than to actually do something to fix it if the economics are not favorable to the "powers that be" involved in the crisis.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
I agree with this sentiment. Oil companies rarely take into account the negative externalities they create by drilling for oil. It would be nice to see this oil spill become such a huge disaster that the entire market changes the way they do business. However, the pessimist in me thinks that regardless of how bad this looks for BP, it will not affect the status quo.
The dispersant Corexit is itself toxic, which means BP is adding more poison to hide the first.
The one great advantage of Corexit, however, is that it makes the oil sink below view, so BP is literally hoping, like a naughty toddler, that out of sight means out of mind. A few weeks from now, when dead fish begin piling up on the shore and people ask "What's up with all the stinking fish?" you can depend on Pat Robertson to blame the homosexuals, Sarah Palin to blame the liberals and Fox news to report on the new terrorist attack on the Gulf.
And we'll believe it.
But, Dear God, I hope not. As much as I hate to say it, I think the previous vicious AC poster is right -- killing the Gulf of Mexico might be the only thing that gets our attention and forces us to make better choices.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
While I have mod points, I feel the need to comment here (I wish that the AC had had some courage).
The AC's point was that America does not care when it is out of sight, out of mind. AC is 100% correct.
The problem is that AC limits it to just America. That is a mistake. It absolutely should include EU as well as Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and most of all, China. Basically, it is the industrial nations that are doing this. Now, most of the west has cleaned up OUT nations, but a big part of that was done by outsourcing. It is hypocritical on our part to do that. It needs to change. That is why I keep speaking out against the EU approach on Climate: that is for the west to tax ONLY our goods. That is the dead wrong approach. Instead, every nation should be taxing ALL goods based on the pollution (start with CO2) that is in the area for the good as well as the largest sub-component. After time, change the CO2 to include Mercury, and other pollutants. THis approach is the ONLY way to clean up the world.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.