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New Oil Slick In Gulf Waters Linked To BP Well
An anonymous reader writes "A new oil sheen appeared in the Gulf of Mexico last week, and now scientists have confirmed that the oil bubbling up to the surface matches the type released by BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well last summer. Ed Overton, a chemist at Louisiana State University, examined samples of the oil and said, 'After examining the data, I think it's a dead ringer for the MC252 oil, as good a match as I've seen. My guess is that it is probably coming from the broken riser pipe or sunken platform.'"
That's right. Humans abdicate responsibility and leave it to some of the most primitive organisms on the planet.
Primitive? I guess that depends on your point of view. You see, a human generation is about every 20 years or so. A dog, every 6 months or so. Bacteria reproduce anywhere between every 20 minutes and every 2 hours. So how many generations of bacteria have there been since 2001? Well it's still the same human generation, but it's been close to 260,000 generations of bacteria. Evolution isn't all about growing a third arm or changing the color of your fur. Just looking at the biochemistry that a simple bacterium is capable of will show you that they are far, far more "advanced" than we are, even if they don't vote or sit around watching sit coms.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
BP = Broken Pipe
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
I don't see why we're concerned at all. Petroleum is an all natural product containing no artificial chemicals, and it's 100% organic, too!
About 15 minutes ago NPR reported that robots were sent down there and they found no leaking. The next best guess is that the oil is coming from the shipwreck of the drilling rig, which is one of the theories mentioned in the article.