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Oil Means More Arsenic In Seawater
oxi writes "Besides the oil already spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of up to 60,000 barrels daily, a group of British scientists says one can expect to see elevated levels of arsenic as well. The research, published in the journal Water Research, showed that oil prevents naturally-occurring arsenic from being filtered out of the water by the sediment on the ocean floor."
Well in other news every time I pee in the ocean the ph level drops too.
This is about as valuable insight as a story above without any meaningful interpretation of what the rising level of arsenic means. How much more arsenic will there be? Will the entire ocean die? Will just a few patches of the Gulf die? Or more likely will it not make the tiniest bit of difference?
This is probably some parts-per-billion phenomenon.
Arsenic is naturally found in some fish, and the concentrations approach regulatory limits. It's not clear in what compounds the arsenic appears; if it's locked into a compound that doesn't metabolize, it's probably not a problem.
Oh dear.
is there any other kind?
have you tried looking it up on the internet?
Everything that is possibly sensational about this story (as if the spill wasn't sensational enough) will be reported.
This spill is a reporters wet dream and they will milk it for everything they can.
Did you see the "will it rain oil" stories they were running now that we started hurricane season?
It is 1:30 AM CST and I am willling to bet good money that if I go into the break room at my job, Anderson Cooper is on with more oil spill coverage. I don't think the guy reports on anything else and he seems to be all that is on for CNN at night
I am of the opinion that the best way to clean up the Gulf of Mexico is to Send the Enterprise (no, not that Enterprise, silly rabbits!). The complete proposal is given at the link.
Tell everyone you know.
(kuro5hin.org has two options for voting for a story: "Front Page" and "Section Page". 93% of the people who voted for my story voted FP, so I have reason to believe that my proposal has merit.)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
With respect, that article shows the author really has not the remotest clue about the navy, oil experts, oil eating bacteria, oxygen in water, weather (stopping a hurricane - OMFG), and let me just add reality in general to the list.
Massive fuckups that can not be solved quickly with all the experts on earth happen - and this is one of them. We're just going to have to cope with it being fixed slowly.
It makes a good story to send a "ship of heroes" but unfortunately magic does not exist in this world so they won't be able to fix it any more quickly.
Maybe you should care how nature took care of other ocean contaminations on the past,
Well, there needs to always be some vaguely disaster-ish background story to report on when other stuff runs low. The Afghanistan war, frankly, just ain't cutting it. Oh, we're still in Afghanistan, great. And the economy/joblessness/whatever is getting old. At least the oil is still somewhat fresh!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Some have turned out not all that catastrophically, though.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-461896
"According to Sagalevich’s report, the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is not just coming from the 22 inch well bore site being shown on American television, but from at least 18 other sites on the “fractured seafloor” with the largest being nearly 11 kilometers (7 miles) from where the Deepwater Horizon sank and is spewing into these precious waters an estimated 2 million gallons of oil a day."
"As a prominent oil-industry insider, and one of the World's leading experts on peak oil, Simmons further warns that the US has only two options, “let the well run dry (taking 30 years, and probably ruining the Atlantic ocean) or nuking the well.” "
"On top of the environmental catastrophe currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico the situation may about to get even worse as new reports from the US are confirming the grim predictions of Russian scientists regarding the oil dispersement poisons being used by BP which are being swept up into the clouds and falling as toxic rain destroying every living plant it touches"
Does that not make sending the Enterprise worth doing anyways?
It makes about much sense as "cleaning beaches". It would be a PR campaign and nothing else. And a pretty expensive campaign at that. If you think an aircraft carrier is expensive in Dock. Just wait till its seaside.
310 Megawatts of power could "turn over" a lot of ocean water.
No it couldn't. In fact it could "turn over" hardly any at all. The ocean is not a swimming pool. Run the numbers... How much of just the gulf region can 310 MW "clean" after ruining for a century. Its nothing compared to how much is there.
Sometimes experts know too much...
And you are ignorant of basic facts, and are too lazy to even run some simple back of the envelope calculations. Thank God you are not in charge of fixing it, or we would really be screwed.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Yeah but nature taking care of it may very well not include life going on.
While CNN is the butt of all media jokes (Hello? Is anyone out there?! TWEET US SOME NEWS PLEASE!), I'll give Anderson Cooper props for talking about the 65ft exclusion zone they're enforcing around response vessels and oil booms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXsmLMV1CrM
Call it milking but if the Coast Guard is doing this and BP is hiring police to run off reporters and anyone curious (link), I certainly hope they don't stop talking about it.
Fish don't vote.
Drill, baby! Drill!
Palin / Haliburton 2012!!
Clever analogy. If America consumed 20 million barrels of raw sewage every day, and if humankind's thirst for raw sewage was so desperate that it led them to start wars, dig in environmentally special areas until the only places left for them to find more sewage was underneath the ocean - then you'd be spot on. I find it funny to see America looking around for who to blame here. They bought the SUVs. They are the biggest oil consumers in the world (along with the UK) - and they're still buying. The pollution in Nigeria caused by oil is desperate - this kind of thing happens every year. But no one cares at all about Nigeria, because Nigerians are worth a lot less than Americans. The board of BP aren't my favourite people, but singling them out is ridiculous (and politically expedient). So in short, perhaps better to throw shit at the next SUV you see, or the next person who tells you they've been scuba diving in the caribbean (like the then-head of Greenpeace, Lord Melchett) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
3.3 million barrels over 8 months is 275,000 barrels a month. The Deepwater Horizon spill is spewing more than that every 2 months.
60k barrels * 30 days = 1.8 million barrels
interesting, so when the relief wells shut down the flow in august, it'll be larger than Ixtoc, but still in the same order of magnitude.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You still don't understand the situation. The USA has oil on land that it's not pumping. We're devastating the oceans for the sake of maintaining our reserves.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh come on, that wouldn't be the fault of the regulation. Let's assume that what you said really would be the case.
If the company is told "You are only allowed to drill this many wells." and the company decided "Oh, okay. Then we'll skip the relief wells!" it is the company that fucks up. Okay, regulators have also erred when they didn't say "And this many of the wells need to be relief wells" and assumed that the company would realize to take the responsibility. But the regulators wouldn't have forced the company to drill a single well. Rather, they would have given rules and the company decided "Well, within these rules, we can drill only so many wells safely... Okay, then we won't drill safely!"
That's like saying that this was really the regulators fault as the companies were drilling that far in the ocean because they weren't allowed to drill closer to the shore. But regulators didn't force them to drill far either. They just disallowed drilling close and practically said "You can't drill here. Drill there, if you can do it safely." and the companies thought "Well, that would be unsafe... But let's do it anyways!"
The regulators suck as they assumed that they could expect some responsibility from the oil companies. It is however quite clear, that when profits and enviromental safety clash, the companies choose profits and most certainly don't regulate themselves the slightest. That being the case, the problem was too lax regulation (They shouldn't have had permission to drill there, either), not too strict.
Khyber is troll... See his other posts...
1) His father designed the Harpoon radar guidance system
2) He worked at HP repair line right next to Dell help line
3) He has immense knowledge about pH and chemistry
4) and what do we have here... He has worked on oil platforms and his solution is
i) relief wells... mmm why didnt BP think of this... not wait... they started working on two relief wells long long ago and they have been trying (or pretending to do something in the meanwhile) to temporary stop the flow till the relief wells are operational.
ii) C-4s, ahh how innovative. When the GP talked about nuking it, did you somehow think it is the radiation from the nuke that would stop the leak? The GP effectively meant blow it up (he said with nukes, and you say with C-4s). And I would leave it as excersie to the reader, whether nuking it easier or C-4s are easier at this depth. PS: before someone flames me, I am neither in favor nor in opposition to blowing it up
Don't blame the masses for what the masses will always do. You have to place the blame where it starts. Yes, people bought the SUVs. They were told they needed to buy them because they were the biggest and the best and so they did. The masses are mindless drones as Apple can plainly attest. It's the marketing and fashion people who really drive the masses... for better or for worse. And what drove the marketers? Well, the people who want to sell bigger and more expensive things, of course. There's a lot more profit in the big machines than there is in the little ones so naturally they want to sell the big ones. These same auto makers also managed to convince the people (AKA the government) to stop building railroads and to build freeways instead.
The demand for SUVs didn't happen until the SUVs happened... well that's not entirely true either -- I can remember when the Suburban was essentially a worker's vehicle until someone put leather interiors and other features in it, jacked up the price to more than twice what it was and now it's "for rich people." They polished a turd and sold it as a diamond. So when figuring out where the blame belongs, you need to follow the greed, not the masses. The masses don't think for themselves and I pretty much thought everyone knew that already... you knew that already right?
If you knew the masses don't think for themselves, how can you blame them? Maybe it's just easier to "blame the Americans" for being born on their particular plot of concrete and soil and living the lives that were handed down to them from their parents and know of no other way to live? Going down that road, you are essentially blaming people for being born and inheriting their culture. How much sense does THAT make?! Should I also blame you for where and when you were born?
No. It's better to blame those who actually have the influence to make changes and fail to do so to the benefit of the planet and mankind.
3.3 million barrels over 8 months is 412,500* barrels a month. The Deepwater Horizon spill is spewing more than that every 2 months.
60k barrels * 30 days = 1.8 million barrels
Adjusted that for you in case someone was going to use the math.
On top of the environmental catastrophe currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico the situation may about to get even worse as new reports from the US are confirming the grim predictions of Russian scientists regarding the oil dispersement poisons being used by BP which are being swept up into the clouds and falling as toxic rain destroying every living plant it touches
Bullshit. Florida (as well as the rest of the Gulf coast) isn't some mysterious location about which little is known. If there was toxic rain "destroying every living plant it touches", we'd have a zillion people on the internet complaining about their messed up lawns. We'd probably have riots in Tallahassee (the capitol of Florida). This stuff would get in the news too. And Obama would have photo-ops all over the place. Because an evil oil corporation destroying voters' lawns, especially lawns in a critical swing state, is a crisis that Obama could use.
Keep in mind that the relief wells come in below most of that fracturing. It's also possible that the fracturing and oil leaks were already there. Just because oil leaks out of the Gulf seafloor, doesn't mean it came from a BP oil well.
I think you've forgotten that for the first 30 - 40 days or so, there was a complete media blackout on the oil spill. They were afraid to even report about it on any news network, including CNN. I think that BP and Obama were telling them not to report on it, that they had things under control and not to blow it out of proportion to the public. That's the only thing that could explain why it took so long for the media to jump on this story 24/7. The first reporter to really get angry about what was happening in the gulf was Anderson Cooper, by reporting on it he forced all the other networks to end their silence. With 24/7 coverage now, people realize this is actually a serious problem now. Even with all the coverage, most of the public still doesn't grasp that this is one of the most categorically dangerous events man has created in the history of world barely eclipsed by Chernobyl. It may even be worse, because of the uncontrollable extinction events occurring right now in the Gulf.
Anderson is probably one of the few reporters who actually gives a shit that this is happening. Everyone else is merely reporting on it, he feels and understands it. I remember watching each and every news network every single day thinking, I hope to hell someone starts beating the drums soon on how important this is. And, day after day, no one did. The day Anderson said, my god what have we done, I admired that guy. Took some balls, insight, and a backbone.
So who then are the right people?
If you know why haven't you sent their names to the Government so they can do more than just worry about why it's taking so long?
Also is it really a "news blackout" is is there really just nothing else to report?
How on earth would BP enforce a news blackout anyway?
Are you astroturfing or something?
The right people would have been the Dutch.
Sending their names to the government woudn't help; they've already refused the help.
There is a kind-of blackout, ie here is CNN's take on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpJBsjKhRTo
BP doesn't enforce the blackout, the government does.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I can seal that bitch with half a million dollars worth of focused C-4 charges from 50 feet down to 500 feet of well-breach.
It's a trick to get us to do exactly that, triggering the fault line and bringing a volcanic island to the surface that Cobra can use as their headquarters. We're not going to fall for that ploy.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
BP doesn't enforce the blackout, the government does.
Upon BP's request... All those campaign "contributions" are paying off very nicely. The corruption on display here goes far beyond the pale. They're making Cheney look like a saint.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Within the same order of magnitude, sure. So is .08 BAC and .35 BAC but the difference in effects is quite pronounced.
But, then again, going from .01 to .05 would mean you're not partying hard enough and going from .5 to 2 means you're still probably dead.
What I mean is that just because there's no apparent effects from the previous spill doesn't mean there will be no apparent effects from one that is gushing over four times the rate.
BTW, as pointed out by another commenter, I math bad. Still not sure how I got it but the figure should be 412,500 barrels a month (about 14k a day).
In glancing over your reference to "other ocean contaminations" (which you misleadingly point to an article about extinction events), I don't see any support of your murky point (which seems to be that arsenic or the BP spill will lead to mass extinction?). Could you please cite where in that article you see support of your point? (Or is this, like, you know...stuff in the water and, like, mass extinction and everything...kind of...like that?)
Actually, it's more than the rich... it's also those who would want to appear to or aspire to be so. Those are not the same people who are actually in a position to control or influence the masses. Those people number in the few hundreds or even in the tens. These people are often carefully concealed but are seen in the company of people such as Dick Cheney and the like. Look to big oil, big auto, big pharma, big energy and big agriculture to see who is actually at the steering wheel directing the masses.
From the first reference in that section ([11]):
"So you can probably say that within two to three years the beach fauna or beach populations were back to where they were before the spill. I think that's probably a pretty standard thing. Fine-grain, sandy beaches can be cleaned up pretty easily," Tunnell explained.
I just want to point out that sandy beaches are a far different matter than the swampy coastline environments conservationists are most concerned about.
Extrapolating from Ixtoc to this doesn't seem sound. There are plenty of factors that are different.
But God, I hope it's true.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Apple can plainly attest" ?
You mean I didn't buy my Macbook Pro because it had more memory, a faster processor and video card than contemporary notebooks in its price range/size. Also a gorgeous screen, a backlit keyboard, an accelerometer protecting my data by parking my hard drive's heads in the event of a fall, a magnetic breakaway power cord, awesome battery life, and a aluminum unibody holding it all together weighing in at only 5.5Lbs? Don't forget a UNIX-based OS with a largely consistent, beautiful and lean GPU-accelerated UI (read: doesn't require a ridiculous CPU+GPU combo to simply present my interface like some other UIs). Several aspects of the OS are empirically "better" than the competition- which is probably why the competition has spent the better part of the last 10 years duplicating functionality in OSX from the UI down through the frameworks. The OS + beautiful and capable hardware make an Apple computer a killer package.
I'm a software engineer with a computer engineering degree and I could hardly ask for a better development platform. Apple makes, on the whole, the best of the breed when it comes to personal computers and you need to compare the complete package (OS, build quality, tech specs, weight, battery life, etc) if you are to compare apples to Apples. Pun intended.
People buy what they're sold. The US automakers want to sell gas guzzlers because they can mark them up more; if x amount of power and size is good, then x+y amount is better! They were going to be forced to sell more fuel-efficient vehicles by the demand of the state of California, by the will of the voters, but they lobbied the federal government which threatened lawsuit if our state proceeded with the stricter emissions standards, for which foreign automakers were completely prepared. You can say what you want about sheeple but if you know that selling gas guzzlers is harmful to the environment in a way that may make it inhospitable for human society, then selling gas guzzlers is an antisocial activity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Jeeze! Do you watch the news at all? The government stated that there will be $40,000 fines and possible felony charges to "violators". They are enforcing the blackout with police and private security, and the coast guard. Yes, you do sound like you're defending the crooks(BP) here. They should not be calling the shots. Doesn't really matter. Nobody gives a shit. So there they are, covering up as best they can. You are defending the indefensible.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone