Gulf Oil Spill Nearing Loop Current

An anonymous reader writes "Per The Weather Channel's tropical expert Dr. Richard Knabb, 'based on satellite images, model simulations, and on-site research vessel reports, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the oil slick at the surface is very near or partially in the Loop Current. The Loop Current is responsible in the first place for extending that stream of oil off to the southeast in satellite imagery. With its proximity to the northern edge of the Loop Current it may be only a matter of weeks or even days before the ocean surface oil is transported toward the Florida Keys and southeast Florida.'" Other experts are a little more cautious: "We know the oil has not entered the Loop Current," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "A leading edge sheen is getting close to it, but it has not entered the Loop Current. The larger volume of oil is several miles from the Loop Current."

Comments

bologna

[nadaou]

Other experts are a little more cautious: "We know the oil has not entered the Loop Current," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "A leading edge sheen is getting close to it, but it has not entered the Loop Current. The larger volume of oil is several miles from the Loop Current."

I think you got a word wrong there. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry is not an other expert in this area at all. Any other [scientific] expert would never make such an absolutist statement, and a few miles is within a hour or two's drift (*spread is not necessarily the same rate as the water currents) so by the time her statement hit the papers it would already be false. And who knows what the hell's going on subsurface where the satellites don't see?

"Dispersal" of a slick into a cloud of droplets does not mean the cloud-plume itself has or will dispersed.

And why has the US gov't not put its foot down and demanded that the invited but then uninvited (by BP the day before they thought the dome would work) Wood's Hole team be allowed to measure the flow rate with the instruments that BP claimed did not exist? [NY Times 16 May] Even if there's nothing much we can do with that number now, by having better data about the size of the spill and measuring the effects over the coming months and years we can better understand and plan future responses. I see what BP has to lose by that number being properly established, but why aren't they being forced to establish it anyway?

How old are they?

[Two99Point80]

There's a lot of discussion about this over at dailykos - apparently tarballs take a while to form, as opposed to the brownish goo seen on the "60 Minutes" piece. So if they're actually tarballs they're not from this release of oil. They're being analyzed.

Re:How old are they?

[Rogerborg]

Yup, I read that discussion with interest. Apparently the "tarballs" are actually globs of nano-sized Black Helicopters created under the Majestic-12 program at Area 51 by Haliburton on orders from the Tea Party and their New World Order masters, the Lizard Man Kings of the Houses of Saud and Bush.

Admittedly I kind of skimmed the comments, and in fact I wasn't sure that was the tarballs article - it could have been any DailyKos story.

Re:Oil at Key West already.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this story is a little old now

This. We real Linux geeks have been using tarballs since the 70s and BP comes along does it on a massive and claims it as something new. I'm sure they've even gone out and gotten patents on it (just because you add "in the water" doesn't make it patentable, goddammit!). I bet M$ put them up to it, the bastards.

i don't want to say "i told you so"

[circletimessquare]

i want you to listen to reason: we need to get off oil now, or we will suffer

and you react like i'm trying to run your life?

no, i'm trying to wake you up from your ignorant complacency, and you are reacting like a teenager told by his mom he needs to stop playing videogames and start studying. that indolent sloth of a teenager would then say 'Look on the bright side. Now you have an outlet for all your self-righteous indignation. Nothing feels quite as good to someone trying to run other people's lives as saying "I told you so!"'

so you are basically saying that american energy policy is akin to a fat lazy useless teenager with a sense of spoiled entitlement... but i'm in the wrong because i'm pointing out the simple obvious truth that we're on the wrong path? is that your message to me?