Slashdot Mirror
Huge Amounts of Oil Found On Gulf of Mexico Floor
intellitech tips news of a study examining the Gulf of Mexico sea floor in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Marine scientists have found a thick layer of oil, and say it has devastated life there.
"Studies using a submersible found a layer, as much as 10cm thick in places, of dead animals and oil, said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia. Knocking these animals out of the food chain will, in time, affect species relevant to fisheries. She disputed an assessment by BP's compensation fund that the Gulf of Mexico will recover by the end of 2012. ... 'The impact on the benthos was devastating,' she told BBC News. 'Filter-feeding organisms, invertebrate worms, corals, sea fans — all of those were substantially impacted — and by impacted, I mean essentially killed. Another critical point is that detrital feeders like sea cucumbers, brittle stars that wander around the bottom, I didn't see a living (sea cucumber) around on any of the wellhead dives. They're typically everywhere, and we saw none.'"
"Huge Amounts of Oil Found On Gulf of Mexico Floor"
Yeah... drill baby drill. Oh, hang on...
Exactly. That's how this whole mess started.
And this is the problem with allowing big business to violate the environment. No matter how much they can assure us nothing will go wrong, something generally does go wrong and then we're screwed. Sure we "fined them" and "made them pay for the cleanup" but still the ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico got badly damaged and will take a long time to recover (2012 my ass - shit, there is still oil on beaches in Alaska from the Valdez spill, that happened decades ago).
When will we learn that there are some risks we just shouldn't take.
Now all the wildlife is perfectly preserved for future generations to study after we've finished killing them all off. Oil companies are always thinking of our children.
All those dead animals will be oil in a few million years. We should be *thanking* BP for making more oil, not reprimanding them for the spill.
I accepted BP/Transocean's not-at-all-self-interested assessment of the Sound Science(tm) concerning this minor, but unfortunately unprofitable, incident with the uncritical, childlike, faith that every corporate person deserves. I, for one, am shocked, shocked, that actual scientists might have come to different conclusions.
Just waiting to see what kind of fines BP will have to pay to help clean up that mess.
And if you're going to say that they'll just pass the fines on to their customers ... who cares? If their prices are higher than their competition then I'll shop at their competition.
"I didn't see a living (sea cucumber) around on any of the wellhead dives"
I'd like to see a larger survey, please. Of course right next to where the well broke there will be a significant problem with marine life. Please examine what exactly is the area impacted.
Why is it that when a Democrat is in office, Republicans always say things like this, and when a Republican is in office, Democrats always say things like this? Is it because you're both idiots?
Don't worry, my friend. This is America. In America, scientists are tolerated only so long as they tow the party line. When science diverges from short term commercial interests, you can be sure that scientists cannot be trusted, that scientists are Communists, anti-God and anti-American Way. Your child like faith does you great credit, and will server you well when Sarah Palin is chosen to be the next President and all those pinko environmental laws are thrown out the window and any scientist who believes that the Earth is over six thousand years old or that large amounts of oil vomiting on to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico will be re-educated in their proper patriotic requirements.
God bless America, where freedom is slavery, ignorance is knowledge and war is peace.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The phrase is "toe the line".
Ah, Irony, MightyMartian is thy name.
How is anyone supposed to make an assessment of this story? There is no data presented, no links to scientific articles, and the quotation referenced 'around the wellhead' where of course you would expect severe effects.
I realize this is Slashdot, but surely there has to be a minimal standard for reporting on a technical site.
Under 1000ft, seawater is usually under 4C. All the processes and critters that break down the oil work much slower in the cold. A lot of that area will probably remain dead until more silt falls over it and its recolonized from scratch. This is sad, but I doubt it was unexpected by anyone who knew anything.
God bless America, where freedom is slavery, ignorance is knowledge and war is peace.
Wow. That just about sums up everything I feel about the USA right now. I think I just found my new sig.
That's close, but the actual quote from 1984 is:
"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."
Sounds just like the DEA, they ban drugs all by themselves. Seems the republicans like that one just fine though.
Well, Mars is pretty irony. That's why it's red, y'know.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It's not adequate to know that the layer is 4 inches thick if we don't know the area the layer covers. If it's a square mile, who cares? If it's 100 square miles, it may have some practical significance. Alarmist articles like this are irresponsible.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
No political fallout at all. None.
:(){
615,000 square miles of ocean floor in the Gulf.
How big of an area did they examine? Did they really expect to find anything different around the well head?
So she goes and examines in detail maybe half a square mile right around "ground zero" and extrapolates that to 615,000 square miles?
OK... I see.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's like asking why it's called the 100 meter dash instead of the 1 hectometer dash. Despite it being a valid measurement, when was the last time you saw the measurement used in the real world? Most people know what a centimeter is. We all had rulers in grade school that had inches and centimeters. Most people only know millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers. All the other units are pretty much left to scientists.
To be fair, the way our environmental law works in America right now, EPA included, is horribly flawed.
Its original mission was to stop the kinds of stuff that *everyone*, right- and left-wing both, can agree is bad: dumping waste into public water systems, belching smoke next to a school, and so forth.
The modern environmentalist movement has moved on from there to basically banning any and all projects, everywhere, if it impacts the environment in the slightest. Some ripe examples of environmentalist hypocrisy:
1) Building a wind farm in upstate Virginia? Some lawyers who owned a vacation farm there (and had *fought* NIMBYs before for companies) sued and got construction blocked.
2) Building an offshore wind farm? Teddy Kennedy,Mr. 90% voting rating by environmental groups, sues to have it blocked.
3) Building a massive solar project in the Mojave desert? Sierra Club sues to have it blocked.
4) Building a new interstate in North Carolina? 10 river snails found in a new branch of a river mean the project has to be rerouted at a cost of billions of dollars and with X tons of extra pollution going into the atmosphere every day from all the extra car-miles being driven, let alone the extra time on the commute.
5) The California High Speed Rail system, which has the support of environmentalists, is currently slogging through its three year and multibillion dollar environmental impact report. They've already been threatened to be sued by environmentalists for going through Pacheco Pass. (And if they went through Altamont? They'd be sued, too.)
Etc., etc.
The arguments always made by these duplicitous bastards is that, "Well, we aren't against X (Wind power, solar, etc.), we're just against it here." And if the place isn't 100% perfect, the judge will agree, and it'll get moved elsewhere, at which point the project gets sued again, and it gets delayed and moved again, and so forth.
One editor put it exceptionally well: You look at all of these developments that environmentalists love - canal walks by DC, highways leading to trail heads in the Sierras, and so forth. And then you realize that all of these things would be impossible to build today. We're so screwed up in our modern society that we could never do another Erie Canal, or a Hoover Dam, or the Interstate System. It's impossible.
So something needs to change. I wouldn't say that banning the EPA is the right way of going about it, but limiting and restricting the EPA to deal simply with actual sources of pollution, would be a very good thing. So they would no longer be an unelected and unaccountable limiter on construction in the US. Revising the Endangered Species Act to eliminate its abuses would be an excellent accompaniment.
More importantly though, we need reform for environmental lawsuits. Perhaps for every major project, a tribunal of judges could be set up to hold all hearings in a unified and systemic fashion. So lawsuits can no longer bounce projects around the countryside, and so that projects no longer require themselves to be perfect to be allowed to go forward, but merely the best option among several choices. And their default behavior should be to allow the project to proceed.
"Knocking these animals out of the food chain will, in time, affect species relevant to fisheries."
Gotta love that.
"Hey, turns out we've devastated the local environment!"
"Why should I care?"
"But whole species could die, or be pushed to the brink of extinction!"
"Meh."
"Well... fishermen could lose their jobs!"
"Oh, that is a big deal! They'd better get right on that."
"Hm, how can I put this... You'll have to pay more for fish, and Your Tax Dollars* will have to be used to solve the problem!"
"TO ACTION!"
(* Your Tax Dollars are not actually yours.)
Bow-ties are cool.
"That's not OUR oil, you can't prove anything. THAT oil must have come from somewhere else, our well is sealed."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
the people who are supposed to check on oil rigs and make sure nothing bad happens are absolutely incompetent
Well, that's not entirely true. They're actually quite competent...they just work for the oil companies and thus their opinions are drowned out by the "cha-ching" sound the executives eyes make. GW made absolutely sure there was no one who would slow down an oil operation anywhere in the gubment. And, yes, the spineless coward Dems aren't any better. Time to stop throwing our votes away on the two major parties!
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
My, aren't we building ourselves quite an assortment of straw men.
So you tell me, can you make any kind of worth while statement about he nature of165,000 square miles of ocean floor based on a survey that looked at 1 square mile if they were lucky?
Remember, you already got to make your worthless, snarky comment so only real responses count.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Offtopic, but that is a very interesting link you have posted, and to my eye, looks correct.
I'm a dual Australian and American citizen, so am familiar with the politics of both countries and the recent debates re health care in the US. In Australia we have universal, single-payer health care and like 99% of people here I believe that is a good thing. However, your link led me to take a look at the constitutional situation with regards to healthcare matters here. The Australian Constitution is not dissimilar to the US one - both set up a system of Federal Govt. with certain powers, with other powers remaining with the States.
Lo and behold, implementing Australia's universal healthcare system DID require a change to the Constitution:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/general/constitution/par5cha1.htm
That is the Australian equivalent of section 8 of the US Constitution, setting out the powers of the Federal Government. Cast your eye down it and you will see one that breaks the normal numbering scheme - between paragraph 23 and 24 you have a random paragraph 'xxiiiA' that allows them to legislate regarding healthcare. It was indeed inserted to allow UHC to be implemented in Australia in the mid-70s.
Given this, and given the large scale similarities with the US Consititution, it does indeed seem as if any such system implemented in America would require section 8 of the US Constitution to be amended. Interesting how this is an issue that has seemingly been overlooked in the debate.
According to the AP article linked to in the summary, over a period of 5 dives, the team looked at 2,600 square miles.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gsv8vJ45hWNxvco5tgcPE_iHt6dQ?docId=b0876e788169473cb4fbe2d7ff275ffb
So, not half a square mile, but not the entire Gulf basin either. About half a percent of the total area.
did you forget the president is a democrat?
Quite right, and heres another thing.
I keep a reef tank. Out of interest I did my own extrapolating back when the world was on the brink of environmental melt down at the hands of Mordor... er, I mean BP.
You take the amount of oil spilt, and divide by the amount of water in the GOM.
Then you scale that down to your reef tank, and see if you would be comfortable adding that much oil.
Turns out I couldn't even accurately measure the amount (0.00007ml).
I'd be more than happy to test out having a 'disaster' of that magnitude in my little biotope.
Kind of ruins the 'news' angle though.
Invaders must die
No, I'm more concerned about the stupid laws on the books. For example, I work on petroleum storage tanks, and if there is even a pinhole in the seal, the EPA says we have to clean the tank and replace it. Cleaning a tank releases more vapors than about a century of that pinhole. You might ask why we don't manage those vapors. Well the only way to get rid of gasoline vapors is to burn them off. Which would you prefer, some gassy smell, or a giant flare?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill released over 6 times as much oil as the Valdez did. Very little of it was actually cleaned up. Of the oil which even made it to the surface, mostly BP just dumped enough dispersants down to cause the oil to sink back down to the ocean floor. Where exactly did people think it was going to go anyways?
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Yes, this is entirely Obama's fault. The entire federal bureaucracy turns on a dime every time the president changes.
And do you also believe that under a Republican president such as John McCain, who campaign under the banner of 'smaller government' and are working on actively making it harder for the EPA to enforce existing regulations, would have resulted in anything different happening in the gulf? Other than perhaps having two or three more drilling rigs working within sight of the one that blew up.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Well the whole idea of toe the line means literally what it says, to place ones toes just before a line as ordered.
So obey an order is to toe the line.
I am amazed something so simple needs explaining.
You seem to have missed the truth that 2 judges have ruled that the federal health care reform law in unconstitutional while 2 have ruled that it is constitutional. As a U.S. citizen who is looking forward to the Supreme Court striking down a law that forces citizens to buy over priced insurance policies from corrupt scum bag corporations I can also see that a single payer system would be good for the welfare of the entire nation, from individual citizens to all corporations excluding the scum bags currently ripping off citizens.
So I have to ask, that super Koolaid you are drinking that blinds you from reality, is it a bum trip or a super high cause I wouldn't want a bum trip but if the fantasy world your living in is any fun perhaps it would be worthwhile to take a sip.
It doesn't scale as you imply. It's not about the amount of water, because oil doesn't really dissolve all that well in water, and it doesn't stay dispersed in water for very long. It's all about surface area at the interfaces: the interface with air, the interface with seabed, and perhaps a thermal or density boundary or two in between.
So, let's redo the math and see what difference it makes (if any).
Supposedly, we had Vs=780E3 m^3 spilled.
Per EPA, there's Vg=2.4E15 m^3 of water in the GOM; the area of the GOM Ag=1.6E12 m^2.
The volumetric fraction is Vs/Vg=3.2E-10; this makes your tank's absolute spill volume of vs=7.0E-11m^3 imply total tank volume of 0.2m^3, or 200L. So far the numbers are in the right ballpark at least.
So now, let's look at the areas. Your tank could be a cube about 0.58m on the side, having the water surface of at=0.34m^2.
The spilled oil, if it were to cover the whole surface of the GOM, would do so in a layer Vs/Ag=0.5um thick. That's a volume of 1.6E-7m^3 = 0.2ml. This is nothing to scoff at, and it may make a mess in your tank. Assuming the hydrocarbon molecule diameter in crude to be on the order of 1nm, we're looking at a layer about 500 molecules thick.
You'd probably need to check if agitation or some other artificial wave action would help with evaporation and coalescing the heavier hydrocarbons into tarballs. Then of course tarball behavior may be benign, or it may be messy, I have no clue. Could it kill your coral and other life in the tank? Maybe it's worth checking it out.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
My take on this is everyone is putting words in everyone else's mouths without actually reading either article. I know it's slashdot but both Google and BBC can take a little extra traffic.
From the BBC report:
Studies using a submersible found a layer, as much as 10cm thick in places, of dead animals and oil . . .She disputed an assessment by BP's compensation fund that the Gulf of Mexico will recover by the end of 2012. . .it may be a decade before the full effects on the Gulf are apparent. . . Professor Joye noted that after the Exxon Valdez spill, it took several years before it became clear that the herring industry had been destroyed. . . "I do believe that it will recover from this insult, but I don't think it's going to recover fully by 2012."
From the AP report:
Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico . . .Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook . . .Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles. . . "I've been to the bottom. I've seen what it looks like with my own eyes. It's not going to be fine by 2012,"
From what I've read she has not said the entire Gulf floor is covered in oil. She has sampled different parts of the Gulf. She has warned that not all the ramifications of the spill are known based on prior experience with the Valdez spill. She has not said that BP is lying. She has merely stated she disagrees with the BP assessment based her research and personal observations. She does not believe recovery by 2012 is likely.
I guess my point is that when someone says "I disagree" it does not mean the same thing as "You're a liar!".
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
For all intensive purposes, his point was still clear.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
I'll grant you that MightyMartian referenced some common stereotypes of conservatives that aren't optimally conducive to bridging cultural and political barriers. But on the relevant facts, the corruption is all corporate. Al Gore has pediatric oral Bidenitis, sure, but what matters is influence on government policy and no environmentalist has the power and financial resources to bribe the tens of billions of dollars out of Congress, which the oil industry receives every year.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-22-fossil-fuel-subsidies-dwarf-clean-energy-subsidies-obama-wants
The only way environmentalists ever get any policy outcomes to go our way is by being absolutely right, having all the science on our side. And we have.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
About that 2% or 3%, they're really tenured professors who can't be fired, former scientists turned corporate shills.
http://www.desmogblog.com/lindzen-wipes-hands-clean-of-oil-and-gas
Lindzen has not done respectable work for some years; since he started taking oil and gas money, not coincidentally.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
The Lib Dems probably had no option but to go along with the raise in tuition fees, or the Tories would break up the coalition. Breaking up the coalition meant no AV referendum, and no chance of electoral reform - a once in a generation opportunity. They had the Lib Dems over a barrel. Once electoral reform is in place, more left wing parties can get into parliament and reverse tuition fee increases. Maybe.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
All of those things likely make it better, not worse.
Reef tank has too much bio-load for the volume of water. Reef tanks typically (or shouldn't) use mechanical filtration. Reef tanks typically get too many nutrients added, thereby polluting the water far more than the ocean.
I'm not making a case for BP being innocent, or that what happened was acceptable. Clearly there were effects, for which they should be held accountable.
I still think though that given the volumes That still makes me feel this isn't the environmental disaster that the press seemed to want it to be.
Invaders must die
Yeah... drill baby drill. Oh, hang on...
Drill baby drill! We need a sane energy policy or our already struggling economy will take another dive soon. Things aren't looking at all good given the unrest in the Middle East right now.
More drilling sounds like a plan to me as long as basic safety procedures are followed. It took multiple violations for this well to fail. Thousands of rigs have operated there for many years with no problems. After Deepwater Horizon I'm sure all of the companies involved realize there's no net cost savings in skimping on safety.
On a more scientific note, I notice there's absolutely no quantitative information in the linked article. Exactly how much of the 615,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico seafloor was affected? I'm guessing it was far less than 1%, but of course that wouldn't sound nearly so alarming...
According to Wikipedia, about 5 million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf, at 42 gallons per barrel for 210,000,000 gallons. Also according to Wikipedia, the total amount of water in the Gulf is 660 quadrillion gallons (6.6e15 gallons). So the oil released represented about 0.0000003% of the total volume of the seawater. If you released the same percentage of oil into a full standard bathtub (36 gallons) you'd be releasing about 0.0004 grams of oil...not even close to a single drop. Also reflect on the fact that around half the oil evaporated quite soon after the spill.
This is not to say such spills are negligible, but I hope the numbers put things into a bit more of a perspective. Newspapers sell (and websites get hit) based on how alarming the story sounds...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Actually, it might just be. The radioactive debris is going to be pretty diluted by all that water. And we did detonate dozens of nuclear weapons in the pacific ocean with relatively small negative effects. (there was the japanese fishing boat crew that got directly into the path of the fallout, and we ruined the islands we set them off on, but other than that, it's all good)
Please don't lump NIMBYs and anti-technology enviro-nut groups in with environmentalists.
I think the word "environmentalist" might be beyond salvaging these days, it's more far-gone than "hacker"...some have suggested "enviro-technologist" or "enviro-capitalist," and while they have the right words in them to make they'll never be confused with the nutjob/NIMBY crowd, they just aren't right for the job...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Invalid assumptions. Oil doesn't equally disperse and life isn't equally dispersed either. If the *heavy* oil drifts to the bottom, as the article suggests you're looking at layering the *life rich* ocean floor with 341 gallons per square mile. Too much for my taste.
And realistically its more like a 10,000 square mile affected, 21,000 gallons per square mile. = more than enough to kill off all life.
Invalid assumptions indeed. First off, most oil is lighter than water and floats. Secondly, the majority of the oil left the Gulf waters through various mechanisms. From "Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: The Fate of the Oil" report produced by the Congressional Research Service:
That leaves a grand total of 22% of the oil unaccounted for, with an unknown amount being biodegraded by oil-eating bacteria.
Given that between 24 million gallons and 70+ million gallons of oil are released into North American waters each year from natural seepage, the ocean ecosystem clearly has the ability to thrive despite some oil release. It's quite likely the damage from the Deepwater Horizon spill is being exaggerated by the environuts for the usual reasons.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
And your source for "around half the oil evaporated quite soon after the spill"? I've never seen oil evaporate in any timeframe I'd call soon. Of course we're talking crude oil here. So without having the assay, it's impossible to say how much of the oil evaporated. It'd be nice, if your number was right, but I suspect it's a bunch of prospective future oil in the form of the male bovine variety. I have a suspicion where you got that figure. Granted the methane evaporated, but that figure is separate from the crude figure.
But as for the article and "there's now a life killing layer of oil near the well area", all I can say is "Thank you Capt'n Obvious".
Plus I expect your analysis is very flawed. While overall the Gulf is probably going to be ok, That is not to say that area that had oil on the surface/below the surface is not going to be devastated for the next decade. History supports my theory. The Exxon Spill and the previous spill close in to Mexico. The area that was affected by the spill was some of the richest shrimping grounds in the Gulf. I predict a lot of really good bargains in the Gulf states. They might even be able to compete with Michigan soon for land value.
One thing pretty much everyone is missing is that 20-30 years from now, if no more tragedies occur the marine life in that area is going to skyrocket and be even richer than before from all the decomposed nutrient rich oil. This is also a historical fact. But what affect it has on global diversity and the long-term evolutionary scheme of things I can't say. That's the scary part. Trying to project the really long term impacts of our stupidity/greed as a species on this planet. For such intelligent creatures we do a lot of really idiotic things. You know, overall, as a species.
Ironically, Orwell, whom you quote, also warned against writers who didn't pay attention to their metaphors, and gave the example of the bad usage "tow the line" instead of "toe the line", which actually makes sense...
But I don't suppose, for that matter, that he would have liked your wild hyperbole in the first place.
Drill baby drill! We need a sane energy policy or our already struggling economy will take another dive soon.
Hurm... I'm not sure I buy this. Do you have some data?
Things aren't looking at all good given the unrest in the Middle East right now.
You're joking, right? When in the past 100 years has there not been unrest in the Middle East? I've lived through decades with many simultaneous wars going on there, depending on what you call "The Middle East" which can include or not include states such as Iran, Egypt, etc. depending on which definition you use. One fundamental constant: oil has a dollar value and someone's going to want to do that conversion.
More drilling sounds like a plan to me as long as basic safety procedures are followed.
Of course, and guaranteeing that takes time. Rushing the imposition of strong regulatory oversight because of an imagined crisis is reckless and irresponsible.
It took multiple violations for this well to fail.
I'd argue that it took one: prioritizing immediate returns over safety.
After Deepwater Horizon I'm sure all of the companies involved realize there's no net cost savings in skimping on safety
How many NEW buildings since 2001 have extra-wide stairwells, after seeing how many died in the twin towers because narrow stairs cause backups that prevent evacuation?
Sure, you sometimes hear of a success story in terms of companies smartening up, but it's usually in public-facing situations. For example, though the McDonalds coffee-in-lap suit is often made fun of because it sounds like a customer suing a company after doing something stupid, it's actually a great example of where a corporation tried to game profit/loss/safety and lost. What McDonalds did is they ignored dozens of cases where people were sent to emergency rooms because their coffee was too hot, a warning from the FDA that their coffee was too hot and produced and internal memo that was turned up during discovery that argued that the cost of law suits from burn victims was less than the cost of upgrading their coffee beans, which they would have to do in order to produce coffee that tasted good at lower temperatures.
When you think about companies "realizing" that there's no net savings in skimping on safety, think about the guy that wrote that memo. Think about the mentality that says, "I'll never get caught, and this will result in a small uptick in profit, for which I'll be rewarded."