Around 200,000 Tons of Deep Water Horizon Oil and Gas Consumed By Bacteria

SchrodingerZ writes "The University of Rochester and Texas A&M University have determined that in the five months following the Deepwater Horizon Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, bacteria have consumed over 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas. The researched was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (abstract). 'A significant amount of the oil and gas that was released was retained within the ocean water more than one-half mile below the sea surface. It appears that the hydrocarbon-eating bacteria did a good job of removing the majority of the material that was retained in these layers," said co-author John Kessler of the University of Rochester.' The paper debuts for the first time 'the rate at which the bacteria ate the oil and gas changed as this disaster progressed, information that is fundamental to understanding both this spill and predicting the behavior of future spills.' It was also noted that the oil and gas consumption rate was correlated with the addition of dispersants at the wellhead (video). Still, an estimated 40% of the oil and natural gas from the spill remains in the Gulf today."

Comments

Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, the usual assortment of enviro-wacko Chicken Littles were saying this was going to destroy gulf fishing for decades, kill millions of animals, etc.

Why do the Chicken Littles always seem to disappear when their predictions fail, yet again, to come true? When there's a drought or a heat wave, they're always the first to jump in front of the mic screaming "Global warming--Weesa all gonna die!!!." When it's flooding or mild--nowhere to be found. Oil well rupture, "End of the World! Run for your lives!" Rupture turns out to not have much of an effect at all--hey, where did they go?

Guess they're off preparing for the next disaster that's going to destroy us all.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[MyLongNickName]

Still an estimated 40% of the oil and natural gas from the spill is still in the Gulf today.

Read that. Basically, you seem like you'd be happy if I served you a glass of my piss, but before I served it to you I removed 60% of the piss and replaced it with pure water.

Some of us are not "enviro-wacko"s, but are not comfortable with self-regulating companies. We learned from the pre 1920's when corporations ran rampant. We learned from the period before 1970 or 1980 when companies polluted without consequences. I want progress. I want oil drilling. I don't want a blank check for BP and others to pollute or shortcut on safety.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

These weren't self-regulated. They were heavily regulated. It's just the regulators get bought off. A system with unrestricted liability would be so much better than the current system where even the most heavily regulated industries get to act as if there is zero regulation. For example the only industry more regulated than the financial industry, was the medical one, yet that didn't stop massive fraud and abuse.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Viol8]

Given that artic drilling has been given the go ahead by various countries in water twice as deep and much colder with consequently little potential baterial cleanup if theres a spill, I doubt the powers that be really give a damn. So long as government get their taxes, the oilmen get their profits and idiots can drive 15mpg 2.5 ton SUVs to go to the supermarket it seems the enviroment doesn't matter.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regulation certainly paid off on this one!

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[NatasRevol]

Pretty sure buying off regulators is self-regulation.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[khallow]

Pretty sure buying off regulators is self-regulation.

Now all you need to do is get the rest of us to agree with you. My view is that heavy regulation doesn't become self-regulation merely because society fails to enforce it. It just becomes unenforced regulation.

While the two look similar functionally, it's worth remembering that solutions to the problems are different. If self-regulation doesn't work, then one can apply a fix merely by adding regulation that addresses the deficiencies. (Of course, you might create new problems by doing so. Just pointing how the process works.)

If regulation is unenforced, then it doesn't matter how much you add, it'll still be unenforced. So it is possible in such a case to end up with both heavy regulation and an industry that would disappear, if that regulation were ever enforced according to the letter of the law. (some industries, say the assassination industry, aren't worth having, but most such industries have benefit as well as cost, and would still exist in a reasonable regulation environment.)

Another problem is that regulation can be selectively unenforced. That allows certain companies to enjoy state-granted competitive advantages. Self-regulation doesn't create such opportunities. But it does have the disadvantage of the prisoners' dilemma. Namely, that businesses which voluntarily sacrifice in certain ways can be taken advantage of by businesses that do not.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[khallow]

Another issue is that unenforced regulation can still end up with society paying for a bunch of regulators. It's just regulators that aren't for whatever reason doing their jobs. Self-regulation doesn't have this diversion of resources.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the old saying goes - a barrel of piss with a teaspoon of wine in it is still a barrel of piss, but a barrel of wine with a teaspoon of piss in it...is a barrel of piss.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[flimflammer]

Basically, you seem like you'd be happy if I served you a glass of my piss, but before I served it to you I removed 60% of the piss and replaced it with pure water.

Are you implying that 40% of the ocean is now oil?

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[oh_my_080980980]

So the part where the company copied and pasted its disaster plan for deep sea drilling from an off-shore drilling disaster plan doesn't sounds any alarm bells for you....

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there is the other side of the coin, where oil leakage is "natural"t:

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/putting-the-gulf-oil-spill-into-perspective---natural-oil-seepage-from-the-oceans-floor-is-common/blog-334195/

Now continue it further: The article points out that in previous centuries "oil spills" were common (or at least easily noticed by the explorers). Now what if with all of this drilling of oil, that the pressure has been reduced, and currently all natural oil spills have been mostly eliminated? It would be ironic if that in order to "re-balance" nature we would have to make more oil spills occur.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[roccomaglio]

The actual text from the article. "Our results suggest that some (about 40%) of the released hydrocarbons that once populated these layers still remained in the Gulf post September 2010, so food was available for the feast to continue at some later time. But the location of those substances and whether they were biochemically transformed is unknown." This does not seem to be exactly what you are quoting.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[khallow]

Why should it sound alarm bells? Deep sea drilling is also off-shore drilling and there are considerable similarities between the two activities. As it turns out, we can look at the actual disaster recovery plan and see what actually happened. And whatever they did have, plan or not, worked pretty well.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[HornWumpus]

Don't forget the cost of misregulation.

Like required Freddy and Fanny to buy junk mortgages on the secondary market.

When regulators have political axes to grind the regulations can be astoundingly expensive.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[MightyMartian]

40% of the oil remains in the gulf. Or, to put it more simply, you're a fucking retard.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[MightyMartian]

What's needed is guns to the heads of the CEOs, Boards of Directors and top shareholders, with a promise that if such spills are not completely resolved in five years entirely at the company's cost, most assuredly the triggers will be pulled.

I doubt you would need any more regulation than that.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[OverkillTASF]

No. It would be more like if you peed 160 million gallons of piss into a 343 quintillion gallon glass. And then you removed 96 million gallons of piss.
Or you served me a 12 fl. oz cup of water, peed .000000000005598 fl oz. into the cup, and then removed .0000000000033588 fl oz. of your piss.

I'd still be horrified that you peed into my glass of water.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Shempster]

IIRC Why do the Chicken Littles always seem to disappear when their predictions fail, yet again, to come true? When there's a drought or a heat wave, they're always the first to jump in front of the mic screaming "Global warming--Weesa all gonna die!!!." When it's flooding or mild--nowhere to be found. Oil well rupture, "End of the World! Run for your lives!" Rupture turns out to not have much of an effect at all--hey, where did they go?

Guess they're off preparing for the next disaster that's going to destroy us all.

Thousands if not tens of thousands big & small, fish, birds, dolphins, seals, sea-turtles, coral reefs, sea-lions, walruses, everything that comes into contact with the 170M+ gallons of oil that leaked from the ruptured BP Gulf oil well due to irresponsible reckless idiots at BP & Deepwater drilling, you DF wannabe lobbyist.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

My view is that heavy regulation doesn't become self-regulation merely because society fails to enforce it. It just becomes unenforced regulation.

My view is that this isn't about unenforced or self regulation. The problem is there is not much (if any) self regulation.

Self regulation is not mutually exclusive with government regulation. Just because there are government regulations (whether or not they are enforced) doesn't mean you can't instill some self discipline and personal responsibility (you know, the things we love to accuse the lefties and big government types of lacking?)

Oh sure, government "let" you slack off and ignore the moral hazards, but to paraphrase from what parents say to their kids: if the government lets everyone jump off the bridge, would you?

If we are to believe that government is ineffective and inefficient, why in the world would a rational business only stick to the bare minimum of government regulations (or apparently, regulators are bribed and regulations are unenforced, so they probably didn't even meet the bare minimum)

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[James McGuigan]

self discipline and personal responsibility

That costs money, and as most of the work is outsourced to contractors, often to the lowest bidder, it becomes quite easy to pass the buck and look the other way.

We can save money by getting someone else to cut the corners for us.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Jawnn]

Another issue is that unenforced regulation can still end up with society paying for a bunch of regulators. It's just regulators that aren't for whatever reason doing their jobs. Self-regulation doesn't have this diversion of resources.

It (self regulation) is just so much bullshit without severe penalties to actually "self regulate". Corporations have one over-arching imperative - make money. The board member who fails to act in such a way that maximizes profit is guilty of malfeasance. If a director can legally give the corporate finger to the environment because the corporation makes more money that way, he/she must do so, and moreover, we should expect that behavior and stop with all the naive self-regulation horseshit.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[anagama]

[blah blah] ... Chicken Littles were saying this was going to destroy gulf fishing for decades, kill millions of animals, etc. ... [blah blah environazidjits talking points blah]

Last I heard, oxygen is critical to sustain most forms of life. If you had read the article, you would have realized that they method used to arrive at the 40% sum was to look at how much oxygen depletion has taken place.

This is what happens to the oceans when there isn't enough dissolved O2:
http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/index.html

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[camperdave]

Well, it would have worked well, if they learned some proper booming.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you worried about the safety of others that are satisfied with their current level of safety (after all, they are willingly continuing their employment)?

Why do you believe regulation makes a difference? Regulation is why BP doesn't have to pay for most of the damage.

Why do you want companies to be regulated instead of punished for destruction of property (ahhh, I'll admit, here I'm putting words into your mouth, but this is the end result of your request)?

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[MyLongNickName]

Why are you worried about the safety of others that are satisfied with their current level of safety (after all, they are willingly continuing their employment)?

Why do you believe regulation makes a difference?

Oh, you sound like somone who knows nothing about history. Look at how companies were run pre-1930. Look at how children were used for unsafe labor. Look at how adults were worked literally to death. But, hey, they could always go work somewhere else.

Face it. Your viewpoint on the way government should be run died off a long time ago. Go start another country built on a pure free market, no government model. You'll quickly learn how without government, free market will die, replaced by corporations who are able to push their agenda, and quickly form a government that enforces their desires.

No, government is not perfect. Regulation is not perfect and your misguided notion that you can always hold an entity responsible for destruction of property is naive. In the 60's, a river caught on fire in Ohio. It is impossible to know who polluted the water and in what amount and how many fish they killed and how many birth defects each caused. Trying to sue individual polluters proved impossible. Instead, regulation did a great job of cleaning up a stretch of river that hadn't had fish in it for decades.

So, please take your libertarian utopia and go try it somewhere where people don't have decades worth of counterexamples of why it didn't work in their country.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[rtb61]

Well we know that a substantial amount was broken up by dispersants and adsorbed into substrata and being slowly re-released. More rapidly of course when hurricanes stir up the sediments. Of course added to this was in fact that it was crude-oil and comprised a range of toxic elements many of which simply evaporated away creating a more toxic atmosphere at those locales. Much was absorbed into enormous fish and animal kills which were buried at closed to the public locations.

Of course some media sites don't tow the government line http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/03/20123571723894800.html but nasty foreigners who can trust them. Now with enormous pressure on, often of the directly threatened lethal kind, people are required to talk up the regional fishing tourism and general beach recreation of the region, regardless of actual fish catches and their general condition.

As for the toxic carcinogens contained within crude oil and normally contained and not released into the environment, bacteria 'er', 'um', just assume that the bacteria also ate them and made them, 'woosh', disappear.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[mug funky]

if an entire industry is not playing by the rules, then that industry absolutely should be allowed to die (but they should be made to clean up their mess first).

enforcement is still a viable solution to your dilemma, and perhaps regulations that the regulators must follow (not as stupid as it sounds - look at Internal Affairs in the police force).

effective government MUST be accountable to those they govern. you can't dodge the issue of ineffective government by knee-jerking and getting rid of it altogether. rather you and everyone else should demand better.

luckily, Americans still have a second amendment that allows them to do this... the question is how much bloodshed are we all willing to tolerate for a greater good?

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[khallow]

if an entire industry is not playing by the rules, then that industry absolutely should be allowed to die

Why? The industry might be abominable, like assassination or slavery, but what if it isn't. Why choose to destroy the industry rather than scale the regulations back?

effective government MUST be accountable to those they govern. you can't dodge the issue of ineffective government by knee-jerking and getting rid of it altogether. rather you and everyone else should demand better.

luckily, Americans still have a second amendment that allows them to do this... the question is how much bloodshed are we all willing to tolerate for a greater good?

So if we have ineffective government, we should kill people until it becomes effective?

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[khallow]

While that's probably true, it is worth noting that self-regulation is cheaper than ineffective regulation that doesn't do anything other than cost the public money.

I keep hearing the same song. We need to regulate industry because it won't self-regulate itself to our satisfaction. This ignores both the quality of the regulation, and how or if that regulation is enforced.

My view is that self-regulation, as skimpy as it is, can be a lot better than full scale regulation. It depends on the actual costs and benefits of the regulation. You can always sue. You can boycott a company with a particularly bad reputation. These occur even in the absence of regulation. But bad regulation can be extremely hard to compensate for in the above ways (unless one refuses to fully enforce the regulation in the first place).

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

While that's probably true, it is worth noting that self-regulation is cheaper than ineffective regulation that doesn't do anything other than cost the public money.

That's not worth noting. Almost anything is cheaper than ineffective regulation. That's... kind of what "ineffective" means.

It doesn't say anything about the effectiveness of self-regulation. You're like those politicians who go on and on slamming his opponents, but don't say much about what makes you yourself a good candidate.

I keep hearing the same song.

Might want to get your ears checked. Maybe stop listening to the same CDs. Expand your mind and horizons a little.

We need to regulate industry because it won't self-regulate itself to our satisfaction. This ignores both the quality of the regulation, and how or if that regulation is enforced.

Ok... so we need to regulate the industry, AND make sure that regulation is of good quality, AND make sure that regulation is enforced.

My view is that self-regulation, as skimpy as it is, can be a lot better than full scale regulation

My view is that what "can" happen isn't what "does" happen.

Hey look, maybe you "can" be the next rock star, if only your damn parents (the government) left you alone instead of telling you to go to school and get a job. But the thing is: you "did not" become a rock star. Where did your band with your friends go (if you had one)? Nowhere.

You can always sue. You can boycott a company with a particularly bad reputation. These occur even in the absence of regulation

Those things can also occur when public regulations are bad

As with rock star analogy above: you can go to school like your parents want while still practicing with your band hoping to become rock stars.

But bad regulation can be extremely hard to compensate for

No, it's very easy. Companies can self-regulate on top of following (bad, unenforced) government regulation.

But they didn't.

Going back to the "rock star" analogy. It's like you "can" be a rock star, but you don't ever pick up an instrument or sing yourself. You just complain how your parents tell you to go to school instead of buying you a guitar (but hey, if your parents bought you a guitar, wouldn't that be welfare? They're giving you a loan so you can earn a useless a degree in rockstarology!)

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[khallow]

Ok... so we need to regulate the industry, AND make sure that regulation is of good quality, AND make sure that regulation is enforced.

Ok, I'm good with that. Who else is with me?

You can always sue. You can boycott a company with a particularly bad reputation. These occur even in the absence of regulation

Those things can also occur when public regulations are bad

The only problem is that there might not be an industry (at least in your country) to boycott or sue.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem is that there might not be an industry (at least in your country) to boycott or sue.

That's only a problem in your mind. If people want that industry badly enough, there will be one. See, people are greedy. They like money. They'll even risk their own lives for money (see: prohibition, war on drugs, black markets in general, etc)

Americans is particular have an edge over most people. Not only do they like money, they worship it. You can tell how important something is to people in how they react should that something be jeopardized.

Muslims protest over their prophets. They're protesting over some movie now

Americans protest over profits. They protest when their money is on the line (see: OWS and Tea Party)

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[nobodie]

Young man, come to Florida to see the mutant fish and shellfish that have resulted from the pollution of the Gulf. Come walk our beaches where there is still a black layer of crude oil an inch or two below the surface as you walk. Parents won't let their kids play in the sand now. Oh yes, I must be a wacko enviro-crazy for telling you what we see every day hundreds of miles away. That we know came ashore here because we saw it.

You, my friend, are sadly mistaken. You have been brainwashed by the people who are willing to trde their environement, their air and water and food, for money. And I bet they aren't giving you any of it.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[khallow]

If people want that industry badly enough, there will be one.

Well, what's the threshold? For example, the US doesn't have a TV industry. And it's nearly lost its traditional textile industry. It seems to me that the threshold for whether an industry is "wanted" badly enough, is whether the industry can get favorable regulations, selective enforcement of that regulation, and various subsidies and rent seeking opportunities from the government. For example, US finance seems quite adept at being "wanted" enough.

Re:Where have all the Chicken Littles gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what's the threshold?

You tell me, since you're the one who set up the threshold in your mind.

It "seems" to you government and regulations is keeping industries from rising up? Well, who do you think is going to tear down the government? The Chinese? The Muslims? Europe? Canada? The FSM who'll descend upon America with its divine noodle appendages?

No, the people who'll fix the US is the people of the US themselves (i.e. you, assuming you're American)

There's your threshold. How long will you keep up with that learned helplessness?

Press release

[ISoldat53]

Sounds like a BP press release.

Re:Press release

[HiThere]

Not really. It's not *totally* unexpected, and it's certainly not a good bill of health. (Though I notice some are reading it that way.)

One important consideration for other spills is that the Gulf is a relatively benign environment as far as hydrocarbon eating bacteria are concerned. In a colder environment, the response would be, at best, much slower. And notice that around half is still left. And it's not a random half, it''s preferentially the hydrocarbons that the bacteria found harder to eat.

IIRC, in the Valdez spill recovery was a lot slower, but much of the oil degraded and buried itself in the bottom and under rocks, so people didn't tend to notice it. Free swimming life, IIRC, rebounded fairly well, be benthic life didn't fare nearly as well. So oil that isn't quickly accounted for tends to become a persistent low-grade poison...that doesn't much affect fish, but affects sessile life forms, like mussles, and (probably) seaweed.

OTOH, my summary isn't based on close reading of an indepth study, but on remembered stories over a period of several years, so some features may be wrong. (And if it didn't make the popular science press, I didn't read it.)

A society without an attention span

[concealment]

Politics in a democracy involve two sides cheering for their own while doing anything they can to damage the other side.

Whenever a disaster happens, whichever side that named its underlying cause as an issue makes a huge deal of the event. To gain maximum publicity for their (righteous) cause, they overstates the event and style it as a new coming apocalypse.

Then months later when the consequence isn't as big as they thought, the event and the issue it represents pass out of public consciousness.

There's a nasty see-saw effect as a result. We're either full on an issue, or have forgotten it, and our legislators write law accordingly. It's like a society without an attention span.

Re:A society without an attention span

[postbigbang]

A narrow view.

The bacteria digested the oil, but what did they excrete. If they multiplied and now have no meal, they starve, and their carcasses in turn become something else. There was a process applied to the spilled oil by the bacteria. Is the remainder environmentally tenable? None of that seems to have been addressed.

No measurements have been made of long term effects as of yet, and so we don't know 1) quantity of remaining undigested oil 2) rate at which it can reasonably be digested 3) interim effects on ecosystems in the Gulf at this estimated rate 4) how much remaining oil there is to feed the equation 5) what current fishing rates do to the population, and what might replace the population given these rates, and more.

Democracy is weighing more than two sides of a question, as there are almost always more than two sides to a question. You're just used to American politics, which have devolved to become polarizing.

Re:A society without an attention span

[TubeSteak]

Politics in a democracy involve two sides cheering for their own while doing anything they can to damage the other side.

Whenever a disaster happens, whichever side that named its underlying cause as an issue makes a huge deal of the event. To gain maximum publicity for their (righteous) cause, they overstates the event and style it as a new coming apocalypse.

Your position ignores that sometimes there is an objectively "correct" thing to do and that sometimes, someone is objectively wrong for arguing against it.

Then months later when the consequence isn't as big as they thought, the event and the issue it represents pass out of public consciousness.

There's a nasty see-saw effect as a result. We're either full on an issue, or have forgotten it, and our legislators write law accordingly. It's like a society without an attention span.

Do you know why Nixon (that notorious liberal) created the EPA?
The second largest (deep water is #1) oil spill in American history brought so much attention to environmental issues that he had no choice.

That was 42 years ago. I wouldn't call 42 years "forgotten" or "see-saw effect" or "without an attention span."

Re:A society without an attention span

[interkin3tic]

The bacteria digested the oil, but what did they excrete. If they multiplied and now have no meal, they starve, and their carcasses in turn become something else.

So... you're saying if we come up with something that eats said bacteria, everything will be fine right? EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, RIGHT!?!?

Re:A society without an attention span

[dpilot]

> It's like a society without an attention span.

That's only part of the story. When you talk about society's "attention span" you have to talk about what's being put front-and-center as "news" by the media.

One deeper cause is our current trend of calculating the financials on everything, cutting costs as much as possible and maximizing profits. In particular, if you decide that delivering the news is a financial matter rather than a sacred trust necessary to maintain our democracy, you start turning the news into infotainment.

Maybe it's our fault, for not demanding real news, particularly for not demanding news that we may disagree with, that we may find unpleasant. But there are 2 sides to every issue, (at least) 2 parties to every "agreement", and the media are certainly participating in this race-to-the-bottom.

Re:A society without an attention span

[postbigbang]

What might eat the bacteria; what part of which food chain were/are benefiting? What about bacteria excrement? What is that, and how does it help/hurt? What eats oil-digesting bacteria poo? At what rate? To benefit what food chains and ecosystems? That's what's wrong trying to make sense of the report cited; it only serves as a very interesting data point, not something that you can make judgments with easily, if at all.

Re:A society without an attention span

[Anonymous Coward]

Politics in a democracy involve two sides cheering for their own while doing anything they can to damage the other side.

No, that's politics in a limited two-party representative republic.

Politics in a democracy is American Idol.

I thank the gods daily that I do not live in a democracy.

Re:A society without an attention span

[navyjeff]

... That’s the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

Hydrocarbons are hydrogen and carbon. They combine with oxygen to produce CO2. Sugar is the same way: apply oxygen to C6H12O6 and you get H2O (H6O12 becomes 6 x H2O) and C6 + O (C6 + O2 gives you 6 x CO2 if you can find 6 O2). Yes, sugar--food--is basically air (CO2), water (H2O), and sunlight (to strip the O2 off the CO2 and attach the remaining C to the H2O to give CH2O and O2).

We're dealing with CH4 here or basically C(n)H(2(n+1)) which when combined with oxygen gives CO2 and H2O. News flash: it's a fuel source, it burns.

We dealt with all the oil by burning it.

Re:A society without an attention span

[GonzoPhysicist]

I wouldn't be worried about how much oil is left, about one Exxon Valdez worth of hydrocarbons seeps up naturally every year. That's why these bacteria were there in the first place. IANABiologist, but I figure most of the bacteria will be eaten (shrimp bloom?) or die and sink to the bottom and eventually turn back into oil. As far waste products it's just a bunch of CO2.

Re:A society without an attention span

[postbigbang]

Were it that easy. It's not that clean, and contains a number of other products that the refiners will tell you about; the most onerous is sulphur and various metals.

While it's a lot like sugar (lots of energy to burn), where do these bacteria live in the ecosystem? I mean-- I like the thought of bacteria gobbling errant oil spills, don't get me wrong. But the questions remain of how much, how long, what's left over.

Of course, the alternative would be to crack the crude, get varying fuels and materials for plastics and so forth.

Re:A society without an attention span

[nebosuke]

Your position ignores that sometimes there is an objectively "correct" thing to do and that sometimes, someone is objectively wrong for arguing against it.

That statement is not accurate. The only objectively "correct" things as relates to politics are facts. Interpretation of facts, determination the relative importance of specific facts with respect to a given social issue, and subsequent decisions are at the heart of politics, and there is never an objectively "correct" position for any point of that process-- it is all relative to objectives, philosophy, morality, ethics and beliefs. If you say that someone's political views are "incorrect" given a common body of facts, you are really saying that their system of values differs from yours.

Effective influencers, understanding the above, consequently spend their time trying to convince their audience as to why their view is more consistent with the audience's system of values than the opposing view. Less effective people try to get their audience to change their system of values to match their own. Unsuccessful people label their audience wrong.

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

Well yes but the impurities are obviously just left around. There's not much to do with sulphur unless you're an H2S burning bacteria, which isn't common up here.

We don't crack the crude because finding it is apparently hard. They need a way to refine it out of the water and such, which I guess is hard.

Re:A society without an attention span

[tragedy]

So, in other words, the water has been acidified.

Re:A society without an attention span

[Anonymous Coward]

'murrican attention span = What's in the media

Re:A society without an attention span

[Solandri]

The bacteria digested the oil, but what did they excrete. If they multiplied and now have no meal, they starve, and their carcasses in turn become something else. There was a process applied to the spilled oil by the bacteria. Is the remainder environmentally tenable? None of that seems to have been addressed.

Most oil spills aren't man-made. Natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico release an estimated 1 million barrels of oil per year (one ton of oil is about 6-8 barrels). The Deepwater Horizon spill was estimated to be just shy of 5 million barrels. So it was a substantial increase over natural oil seeps for the year. But in the grand scheme of things it wasn't a substantial deviation from the amount of bacteria which digest oil, excrete whatever it is they excrete, and decompose.

The Deepwater Horizon spill was a local disaster with large transient effects. But its long-term effects on the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico will be minimal if not negligible because the ecosystem has already been dealing with similarly large quantities of oil being released naturally every year for millions of years. The key was to disperse the oil so it could be broken down naturally (if at an artificially accelerated rate for a few years) by already-existing natural mechanisms, rather than allowed to clump up at the surface in an unnatural manner. The only question is what the long-term effects of the dispersants (soap) will be.

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

Well, that too, but most directly we burned the oil in a series of tiny fires.

Re:A society without an attention span

[tragedy]

It's pretty much as postbigbang was saying though. 60% of the oil having been consumed by bacteria doesn't mean that 60% of the problem is gone. Being eaten by bacteria is just the first stage of the process. Also, in your post you said that we were just dealing with methane. There's a heck of a lot more in crude oil than just methane. There's a whole lot of different kinds of hydrocarbons as well as stuff that isn't hydrocarbons. The ability to metabolize hydrocarbons is also a fairly special skill. It's not that easy for a living organism to do. I'm pretty sure that bacteria metabolizing this stuff produce all kinds of byproducts that aren't just plain old CO2. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a fair amount of benzene left over, for example.

Quite aside from that, the combining with oxygen that you mention doesn't address the critical point of where the oxygen comes from. There's oxygen dissolved in the water, of course, but not a whole lot of it is actually produced at those depths. When it gets used up, it has to be replenished or all the other things that need oxygen too can't stay alive. It comes back over time, it's just a question of how much time.

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

Where did I say that we were dealing with methane?

Re:A society without an attention span

[tragedy]

When you wrote:

We're dealing with CH4 here or basically C(n)H(2(n+1)) which when combined with oxygen gives CO2 and H2O. News flash: it's a fuel source, it burns

It was in post 41313793, which is the one I originally replied to.

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

CH4, CH2O, etc. I guess CH4 is improper because it's not C2H8, it's C2H6... CH2O is C6H12O6 though (or (CH2O)3 depending who you ask...)

Re:A society without an attention span

[tragedy]

The discussion was about what happens to these hydrocarbons when they're consumed by the bacteria. You talked about what happens to a bunch of carbohydrates. The only hydrocarbon you mentioned was methane which combines with oxygen very cleanly (and still doesn't produce only CO2). All of the hydrocarbons that the oil we're talking about is actually composed of produce all kinds of other stuff when combined with oxygen. Also, we're not talking about burning them in a furnace here, we're talking about them being metabolized inside a living thing.

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

False. ALL hydrocarbons are composed of CH4, C2H6, C3H8, C4H10, etc.... Carbon surrounded by hydrogen. Hydrocarbon. There's sulfides and other shit mixed in with the oil, but that's not oil. Burning this in a furnace is different from bacteria absorbing chemicals that come in contact with the cell membrane and doing stuff with them. Bacteria will be more selective; anything not meant to be absorbed will either not enter the cell or will behave in unpredicted or undesirable ways (poison).

Re:A society without an attention span

[tragedy]

False.

Sorry, what part of what I wrote was false. You're being a bit unclear.

ALL hydrocarbons are composed of CH4, C2H6, C3H8, C4H10, etc.... Carbon surrounded by hydrogen. Hydrocarbon

Uh... Yeah. Duh. Hence the name Hydrocarbon. At no point did I dispute this, and I have no idea where you got the idea that I did.

There's sulfides and other shit mixed in with the oil, but that's not oil

Yes. That also doesn't seem to be in disagreement with what I wrote.

Burning this in a furnace is different from bacteria absorbing chemicals that come in contact with the cell membrane and doing stuff with them.

Yes. That was part of my point. It's pretty much paraphrasing what I said, as a matter of fact.

Bacteria will be more selective; anything not meant to be absorbed will either not enter the cell or will behave in unpredicted or undesirable ways (poison).

Yes, all in agreement so far.. Either they metabolize it, or it doesn't get in, or it gets in and they die. No disagreement there. The actual _point_ is that what does get in is by no means guaranteed to simply be combined with oxygen and come out as CO2. That's why I mentioned that it's not the same thing as burning in a furnace. Inside an organism, the chemistry can get pretty complex. It's quite conceivable that a lot of the hydrocarbons it breaks down involve chemicals other than just O2 and produce byproducts other than water and CO2. Some hydrocarbon-eating bacteria do so anaerobically, for example, so how will CO2 be a byproduct there? And, of course, even when the only byproducts are water and CO2, that's still not great for surrounding life.

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

But that would be needlessly complex and likely require some sort of intelligent designer. Hydrocarbons don't supply much in the way of useful building material without putting in quite a lot of energy. They're most readily reacted with oxygen to provide energy to drive biological processes. You could hydrocrack them, but that requires +2 hydrogen which you have to get from somewhere, most likely from dividing water, which is hard. That, of course, gets you lighter oil or hydrocarbon gases like propane, methane, etc.

Re:A society without an attention span

[tragedy]

But that would be needlessly complex and likely require some sort of intelligent designer.

I'm not sure you're quite understanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the bacteria are going to break down the various hydrocarbons they encounter into all sorts of different things just for the fun of it or because of an intelligent designer, or for the sake of needless complexity. I'm saying that chemistry is complicated, especially organic chemistry. Breaking down hydrocarbons for biological use is likewise going to be complicated with all kinds of potential byproducts and intermediate steps.

Re:A society without an attention span

[Anonymous Coward]

consequence isnt as big as they thought? Next time there is a sewage overflow into your home, and 60% of it evaporates naturally- you let me know what a big deal 40% of sludge in your bedroom and kitchen is like.
nasty indeed

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

And I'm saying everything other than "apply oxygen, get heat" is going to require a needlessly large amount of energy, which would make hydrocarbon-consuming bacteria which follow those methods require more food. Be aware that snakes don't inject a lot of venom when they bite, and they resist biting and don't inject venom on every bite because of the energy required to produce venom.

Do you think bacteria would evolve to needlessly consume excess energy? The population growth of those strains would be very slow compared to the explosive growth of those that just rapidly burned the oil by oxidization; they'd be overtaken and then starved out: dwindling supplies of food would be quickly consumed by the big population of simple combustion bacteria.

Your argument is "science is hard and biological science involves a lot of complex stuff, so this must be complex." That's an argument from ignorance: you don't understand it, so it must be complicated. Your argument fails Occam's Razor. There are important reasons why this would end up being simple.

Re:A society without an attention span

[tragedy]

And I'm saying everything other than "apply oxygen, get heat" is going to require a needlessly large amount of energy, which would make hydrocarbon-consuming bacteria which follow those methods require more food.

Ok. Now you're really confusing me. Are you saying that hydrocarbon-consuming bacteria burn hydrocarbons just for the heat and then run themselves off the heat? Do they have little steam engines in them? Stirling engines? Some sort of thermocouple. Honestly though, if it's true that the hydrocarbon eating bacteria operate by converting chemical energy to heat, then capture the heat and presumably convert it back to chemical energy as you seem to be implying, I'd be truly fascinated by the mechanism. It seems like, for such a thing to be remotely efficient, the bacteria would have to be able to contain temperatures that would normally kill a living thing.

Do you think bacteria would evolve to needlessly consume excess energy?

No (for a non-nihilistic definition of "needless"), of course not. They certainly do evolve to consume whatever energy they can, however, even when it's bound up in complex chemical forms like hydrocarbons. They will also tend to opportunistically consume what they can, which may involve breaking down a large hydrocarbon into smaller, indigestible pieces, for example. If they can consume something they normally wouldn't be able to by consuming a second substance, then they will, even if it produces all kinds of byproducts. Same thing as humans needing biotin to metabolize amino acids.

Your argument is "science is hard and biological science involves a lot of complex stuff, so this must be complex." That's an argument from ignorance: you don't understand it, so it must be complicated. Your argument fails Occam's Razor. There are important reasons why this would end up being simple.

That is not my argument. As for Ockham's Razor, I find that it's a pretty poor tool in general since so many people end up cutting themselves with it. You, for example, don't seem to understand that there's a difference between apparent complexity and inefficiency. There's also a difference between apparent complexity and real complexity. Sometimes (quite often in biology), additional factors actually make certain things simpler rather than more complex

Re:A society without an attention span

[bluefoxlucid]

Ok. Now you're really confusing me. Are you saying that hydrocarbon-consuming bacteria burn hydrocarbons just for the heat and then run themselves off the heat? Do they have little steam engines in them? Stirling engines? Some sort of thermocouple. Honestly though, if it's true that the hydrocarbon eating bacteria operate by converting chemical energy to heat, then capture the heat and presumably convert it back to chemical energy as you seem to be implying, I'd be truly fascinated by the mechanism. It seems like, for such a thing to be remotely efficient, the bacteria would have to be able to contain temperatures that would normally kill a living thing.

Well, in plants, energy from the sun is used to excite an electron off a chlorophyll molecule to bind H2O and CO2, stripping the C off the CO2 and releasing O2. This electron supplies the input energy to create CH2O (well, C6H12O6, but close enough), which is used for structure (cellulose) as well as food.

Animals that consume plants, and the plants themselves in the absence of sunlight, utilize CH2O and oxygen in the opposite way. Through a rather complicated mechanism, mitochondria use CH2O to bind an array of chemicals into ATP. When a cell needs energy to perform work, O2 is combined with CH2O to produce CO2 and H2O, along with a small release of heat. This heat serves as an activation energy to reduce ATP into ADP, then AP, then base chemicals. Breaking the phosphorus bonds in ATP/ADP/AP releases MUCH more heat than combusting CH2O, and so is useful; it takes very little energy to trigger the exothermic reaction, and thus the combustion of CH2O is a fast and easy way to gain access to the energy stored in ATP.

In hydrocarbon-consuming bacteria, the biological processes all work the same way: thermal energy is used as an activation energy source to trigger certain endothermic (energy-consuming) reactions. That thermal energy is supplied by readily-triggered exothermic reactions such as oxidization. Because oxygen is plentiful, a combustible fuel source such as sugar or methane would supply the basic energy requirements to drive all of the cell's biological functions. Hydrocarbons in general are combustible.

They will also tend to opportunistically consume what they can, which may involve breaking down a large hydrocarbon into smaller, indigestible pieces, for example. If they can consume something they normally wouldn't be able to by consuming a second substance, then they will, even if it produces all kinds of byproducts. Same thing as humans needing biotin to metabolize amino acids.

True. Hydrocracking long chain hydrocarbons may be useful (combusting a big hydrocarbon chain releases a lot of energy; stability is favorable in biology), but that would involve... hydrogen. Which would come from water (or maybe acidic water for the free H+... would carbonic acid work? Is the environment sulfated such that sulfuric acid forms?). It wouldn't, however, form new compounds by the breakdown of oil. Hydrocarbons wouldn't combine with sulfurs to create hydrocarbonicsulfate or whatever; they'd just get shorter.

We must destroy this bacteria.

[circletimessquare]

How dare they eat our precious, precious oil.

Re:We must destroy this bacteria.

[dccase]

I hope they don't crawl down the well and eat the rest of it!

Re:We must destroy this bacteria.

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one...bow...to our ... oil-slurping ... bacteria?

Re:We must destroy this bacteria.

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

This. Do you want the bacteria to win?

Re:We must destroy this bacteria.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bacteria are routinely present in the subsurface, eating the oil. Look up the subject of "biodegradation" in the context of petroleum geology. One of the reasons the "oil sands" in Alberta are the consistency of dense, viscous, almost tar-like oil is due to the effects of bacteria near the surface. However, usually the rate at which bacteria degrade oil is limited by nutrient supply (especially oxygen and nitrogen), chemistry of the water, and ultimately by temperature. Beyond ~60-80C, the number of bacteria and rate of their degradation greatly declines. A lot of oil fields are effectively "sterilized" by high temperatures, and you have to "innoculate" them with bacteria before the degradation will start. Often this happens at the time that a well is drilled into the reservoir, and this can create problems if it progresses too far (e.g., "tar mats", which clog up the system and slow the flow of the oil). So, no, they probably won't eat the rest of it. It would take quite a while (that's a lot of oil), and it might be too hot to get established. But it could reduce the ultimate amount that is recoverable.

This paper is focused on high-temperature subsurface biodegradation, but in the process also talks about some of the shallower/cooler biodegradation processes as a contrast. Unfortunately you'll need journal access to view it.

What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[divisionbyzero]

It's not like the oil just "goes away". It gets transformed into other materials. Are those hazardous? Is the Gulf now a giant cesspool of bacterial waste?

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bacteria shit.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[artemis67]

More like a cycle of life... the oil spill is eaten by the bacteria, and then the bacteria get eaten by something else, which then gets eaten by something else.

I'm wondering what the fishing boats in the Gulf are seeing, if there was a corresponding explosion of growth in populations of shrimp or such.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Anonymous Coward]

The oil is transformed into the bacteria themselves. When it's all gone, the bacteria die, and the dead bacteria become food for some other organism.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oil eating bacteria produce carbon dioxide and water from the process of breaking down the oil. Carbon dioxide is a green-house gas, but one that would have been produced by burning the oil anyway.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[gstoddart]

It's not like the oil just "goes away". It gets transformed into other materials.

And, most importantly, long before the bacteria can do anything with it, the damage to the fish, coral, and everything else is done.

Though, I'm sure some people will say that since these bacteria will eventually clean things up we can spill and not worry about it.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Yvanhoe]

It gets transformed into more bacteria and heat. And probably CO2 in the process.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[alexhs]

I'm wondering what the fishing boats in the Gulf are seeing, if there was a corresponding explosion of growth in populations of shrimp or such.

Not exactly.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[DarkTempes]

They also consume the oxygen from the water to help that process, so when these oil spills happen a lot of times you have rampant bacteria growth that hurts other marine life that needs that oxygen.

Probably still better than having the oil in the water though.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[M. Baranczak]

I'm wondering what the fishing boats in the Gulf are seeing, if there was a corresponding explosion of growth in populations of shrimp or such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Fisheries

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[khallow]

Is the Gulf now a giant cesspool of bacterial waste?

It's worth remembering that the Gulf, as well as most of the rest of the world, has always been a giant cesspool of bacterial waste.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[mapkinase]

In principal, chemically, all of oil could be processed, with potential release/consumption of water and carbon dioxide.

In terms of elements, chemically, oil actually is pretty clean, it's just basic organic elements of life, as every one of you knows. Oil pollution problem is a result it's physical properties: viscosity, density, etc. Which results from oil being bunch of rather long polymers.

Theoretically, it does not make sense for bacteria that consumes oil to produce polymers longer than oil polymers, most likely, it couldn't exert nothing but carbon dioxide, water, methane - smaller molecular compounds.

That's the bacterial waste directly from oil metabolism. Theoretically there could be toxins from other aspects of bacteria's life.

Theoretically.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[NatasRevol]

Dead from oil or dead from lack of oxygen?

One isn't better than the other.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[nahdude812]

The money quote from that article regarding whether there is a corresponding explosion of population of life that feeds on this bacteria:

In late 2012 local fishermen report that crab, shrimp, and oyster fishing operations have not yet recovered from the oil spill and many fear that the Gulf seafood industry will never recover. One Mississippi shrimper who was interviewed said he used to get 8,000 pounds of shrimp in four days, but this year he got only 800 pounds a week. Mississippi's oyster reefs have been closed since the spill started. A Louisanna fisherman said the local oyster industry might do 35 per cent this year, "If we're very lucky." Dr Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer and a marine and oyster biologist, said that many of the Gulf fisheries have collapsed and "If it takes too long for them to come back, the fishing industry won't survive".[314]

So... no. If I had to speculate, the bacteria is most effective in high concentrations of dispersant. That dispersant is likely detrimental to higher lifeforms, so it's probably a smorgasbord of poisoned food. A shrimper who pulls in around 6% of his pre-disaster haul, that sounds like a completely devastated ecology. Also from the above article, they used dispersants right as tuna were spawning, and it takes a tuna fish 5-15 years to mature, so the effects of that might not hit the tuna fishing industry for 3 more years.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Type44Q]

Dead from oil or dead from lack of oxygen?

One isn't better than the other.

Dead from oil will likely lead to a lack of oxygen anyway but with the added benefit of petroleum byproducts and other persistent nastiness permeating everything...

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[wvmarle]

These effects on fisheries can very well be because of the remaining 40% of the oil. That's still a lot of oil, and many lifeforms perish quickly when there is oil in the water.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that, unlike humans and animals, bacteria never take a dump? Is that information reliable, since you don't know for sure if they produce CO2?

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[interkin3tic]

I'm sure some people will say that since these bacteria will eventually clean things up we can spill and not worry about it.

I think that's rather optimistic: I think most people had already moved onto not worrying about it while the well was still spewing at it's peak. Not because of bacteria or cleanup efforts, because they didn't live in the gulf and assume the environment won't ever change.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything gets cleaned up in the long run. Five billion years from now, the Sun will go into a red giant phase and engulf the Earth. Therefore, we don't need to worry about it.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[formfeed]

I'm wondering what the fishing boats in the Gulf are seeing, if there was a corresponding explosion of growth in populations of shrimp or such.

Yes. Giant shrimp.
And the best thing: you don't have to put butter on them.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[bluefoxlucid]

As food, the only use for hydrocarbons is energy. They supply hydrogen and carbon, which you can burn for CO2 + H2O + heat. Sugars are burned for heat, which is used as activation energy to strike ATP and get more heat, which activates other chemical processes. Plastic isn't very useful biologically.

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[mdielmann]

It's not like the oil just "goes away". It gets transformed into other materials.

And, most importantly, long before the bacteria can do anything with it, the damage to the fish, coral, and everything else is done.

Though, I'm sure some people will say that since these bacteria will eventually clean things up we can spill and not worry about it.

Yeah, I don't get it sometimes. I'm not sure I believe in the whole AGW thing, but stewardship means using what's there responsibly, and making sure resources will be there for the future. Sure, the earth will be fine, someday, and the Gulf will be fine, someday, but that's no excuse for the kind of careless damage done. I think the cliche is "Don't shit where you sleep."

Re:What kind of waste do these bacteria produce?

[Solandri]

and it takes a tuna fish 5-15 years to mature,

I'm an avid fisherman and amateur ichthyologist. Tuna mature in 3-5 years. The average lifespan of most tuna species is estimated to be about 8-15 years old. Counting the rings in the otoliths (ear bones) showed world record yellowfin tuna in the 400 lb range to be about 13-15 years old. The vast majority of yellowfin, bigeye, and bluefin tuna (the bigger ones) harvested commercially are in the 50-150 pound range (roughly 4-7 years). The older ones build up too much mercury (thanks to everyone who blocks nuclear so we can continue burning coal) and are legally only usable as pet food. Except for the Japanese who don't seem to care when it comes to raw bluefin tuna.

And dispersant is soap. Yeah some formulations are more toxic than others - boaters are encouraged to use biodegradable marine soaps at sea. But they're not all some potent chemical cocktail which will cause life to wither and die on contact. It's soap.

WCPGW?

[Anonymous Coward]

What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently there's still a leak

[Viol8]

Not at the wellhead but oil matching the signature of the Macondo field is (or was earlier this year) leaking out of the seabed from somewhere. If the oil has found a fracture line out of the bottom of the dead well then to quote the song , There could be trouble ahead...

Re:Apparently there's still a leak

[danbert8]

Or they could be naturally occurring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep

Re:Apparently there's still a leak

[Viol8]

Lets hope so. If a large fracture does open it'll be potentially unkillable and a large proportion of the contents of the field could escape into the ocean until the pressure is equalised making the wellhead spill seem like a small pot of ink.

Fart Gas

[Anonymous Coward]

No Gulf of Mexico is a beautiful location with copious amounts of very healthy sea life.

Little, if anything has, changed between pre-spill and today.

It happens again and again in nature

[Orga]

This could easily have been a natural occurrence, at anytime nature could again just decide to expel tons of deep ocean oil, but because now people have $$$$ involved and it could be blamned on someone (sued) then it's all the news with the environmentalists. Anyone who actually has studied some Geology knows this was not a big deal for the environment... and please.. we need to talk in scales of centuries.. not months.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Orga]

Here's a simple citation easily google'd

This is for the /. mods who love to just mark me troll
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000127082228.htm

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Chalnoth]

Sorry, but this, "It's a natural phenomenon!" argument just does not fly. A really, really simple way to see why this argument cannot be remotely reasonable is to look at pictures like the one posted on this article:
http://www.allword-news.co.uk/tag/louisiana-fish-deaths-raise-oil-spill-questions/

But to get into the nitty gritty of it, the article you linked says that it's "twice the Exxon Valdez spill each year," and that is likely spread out over a wide area and released in small amounts that are less likely to clump. Also, consider the magnitude: the Exxon Valdez spill between 260,000 and 750,000 barrels of oil. So if we take the high estimate, that's perhaps 1.5 million barrels of oil that normally spill into the Gulf of Mexico each year, likely spread over a wide area.

The Deepwater Horizon spill was around 4.9 million barrels of oil, all released in a short time (much less than a year), all in the same place. No, spills of this magnitude do not happen naturally (except perhaps in exceedingly rare circumstances). Yes, it is highly damaging to the ecosystem of parts of the Gulf.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[P-niiice]

Yes but it wasn't nature it was BP and friends so I'm not sure what you're posting about. BP screws up, BP pays. Pretty simple.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Orga]

I'm posting about the actual long-term effects to the environment certain people claim this is going to cause. Nature has mechanisms to deal with spills of this magnitude without any intervention from us. It could just have easily happened naturally.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Orga]

There are four regions offshore North America with known seeps. Two of these, the Gulf of Mexico and southern California, have a combined annual oil seep rate of 160,000 tonnes, derived by adding 140,000 tonnes, estimated from the Gulf of Mexico, and the estimate of 20,000 tonnes from Southern California.

source: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10388&page=192

Spills of that magnitude at one location might be rare but they still occur and looking at time in a geologic timescale they're simply not that big of a deal. Man has simply decided that it needs to feed of the seafood in that area, and swim on those beaches so a spill is something to complain about. A meteor impact wiping out 80% of all species on the planet you could deem damaging to the ecosystem, it's still a natural occurence, life still finds a way and the world still turns.

The pictures of dead fish sure prompt a lot of people to get upset I'm sure but it does not make this event even remotely unprecedented in nature.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Type44Q]

Anyone who actually has studied some Geology knows this was not a big deal for the environment...

Surely I can't be the only one who thinks this should be modded funny!

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Type44Q]

Nature has mechanisms to deal with spills of this magnitude without any intervention from us.

She certainly does; the question is, do you have the vaguest grasp of what those mechanisms entail?!

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Chalnoth]

The difference is frequency. Sure, one spill like this every few million years might not be that unexpected. But what happens when we get one major spill ever decade or two?

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[wvmarle]

They may say "twice the Exxon Valdez in a year" which may very well be true, but there are two giant differences:

1) both the Exxon Valdez and this Deep Water Horizon spills spilled their vast quantities of oil in hours or days, not spread over a year. They both caused a huge spike in oil concentrations, well over the naturally occuring spills.

2) the Exxon Valdez was at the surface, so the oil directly contaminated large parts of shoreline where the natural seep usually doesn't get to as it's all eaten by bacteria or dissolved in the water before it can reach the shore.

The reason there are natural spills all the time will certainly have helped in the clean-up of the Deep Water Horizon spill, as there is an existing ecosystem of oil-eating bacteria present. But to say "oh it doesn't matter as nature spills more" is false. Nature has a huge capacity when it comes to cleaning up our mess, given enough time, but that doesn't mean we should just allow it to happen.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[nahdude812]

Your article states that twice an Exxon Valdez seeps into the gulf naturally each year. Their methodology is pretty suspect - measuring the thickness of naturally occurring oil on the surface, extrapolating the expected bacterial consumption rate and natural churn rate, and multiplying this by the surface area of the gulf. But I'll accept their figures for the sake of argument. So that's 84,000 m^3. Deepwater Horizon was 780,000 m^3, 18.6 times larger.

You're saying that releasing 18 times that volume over the course of only a few months in a single location about 40 miles from a coast probably doesn't have much if any measurable ecological impact? Maybe Exxon Valdez was no big deal either, I mean that's the Pacific Ocean, I'm sure there are hundreds of times that much oil seeping naturally into the ocean, right?

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[AGMW]

Yes but it wasn't nature it was BP's subcontractors so I'm not sure what you're posting about. BP's subcontractors screw up, BP pays, because the subcontractors have friends in high places. Pretty simple.

Fixed that for you

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[h4rr4r]

I won't live for centuries, will you?

I want to be able to eat fish today, fisherman want to be able to make a living today. The question was never will the sea recover, it was what is the economic cost of the spill. Also what is the short term cost to the local environment?

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[interkin3tic]

So because a disaster COULD have been natural, the only reason one would try to prevent it from happening again is greed?

Interesting. You could die naturally at any time, therefore you must be greedy. Hurry up and die please.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Anonymous Coward]

What _IS_ naturally unprecedented is the deployment of the dispersants...

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[P-niiice]

I acutally said "BP and friends" - I figured that would cover them and the subcontractors subsequently.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Anonymous Coward]

You're comparing apples to oranges and in doing so you just proved Chalnoth's point. 140,000 tonnes is the equivalent of 1 million barrels. That being an _annual_ rate compared to the time-span of a single event is HUGE, expecially if you consider the deepwater horizon event was nearly 5 times that annual rate.

Put it in perspective as it relates to yourself. Every breath you exhale a certain amount of carbon dioxide. That amount mixes with the air around you and disperses, never having any impact on your ability to retrieve oxygen from the air. Now, if you suddenly released FIVE YEARS-worth of carbon dioxide into a small room, you will die.

do those seem like the same scenarios to you?

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[MattskEE]

Even though oil does seep into the ocean naturally in some locations, human-caused oil spills are still bad news. Life will find a way, eventually, but in the meantime there is significant damage to the local ecosystem which was caused by humans, and resulting damage to human livelihoods. Even if you don't care about the ecological damage for its own sake do you not sympathize with the damage to human livelihoods?

To compare it to another scenario: floods sometimes happen naturally, but are sometimes caused by dams bursting, maybe due to human negligence. Does the fact that it can happen naturally make it okay if a burst dam destroys a town?

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[bluefoxlucid]

If it's a legitimate oil nature has ways to shut all that down.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Anonymous Coward]

you're still way off base to think something like Deepwater Horizon is comparable to natural seepage.

from your latest citation "tones per year spread out over the entire gulf" is a HUGE FARKING DIFFERENCE compared to "several tons this week in one spot"

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Anonymous Coward]

"we need to talk in scales of centuries.. not months"

On the scale of centuries and milennia, life will go on, pretty much no matter WHAT humans do.

Which won't be any real consolation for the humans who had lived there and died in the months and years while the surrounding environment found a new equilibrium.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Uberbah]

The pictures of dead fish sure prompt a lot of people to get upset I'm sure but it does not make this event even remotely unprecedented in nature.

Drivel. The largest spill in history is by definition unprecedented. And of course the problem with pointing to previous natural disasters that lead to extinction events for "comparison" is the, you know, extinction event that followed.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[JeffAtl]

But it is not the biggest oil spill in history.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Anonymous Coward]

Exxon Valdez was in a far colder area, which explains the slower consumption by bacteria.
The Gulf of Mexico is very warm water w/ regular natural releases so has an active ecosystem well adapted to this situation.
Your analogy is simply not comparable.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[T Murphy]

at anytime nature could again just decide to expel tons of deep ocean oil

Considering we can only access that oil because it has not leaked out after millions and millions of years, that doesn't seem too likely.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[mantissa128]

A meteor impact wiping out 80% of all species on the planet you could deem damaging to the ecosystem

Yes, you could deem that damaging. o_O

But since life - technically - will likely survive, it's... completely okay?

I'm not sure what planet you live on, but it can't be this one.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[10101001 10101001]

Lightning strikes and kills plenty of people every year. I guess we should just look the other way and not make a big deal when maliciousness or indifference results in electrocutions, even non-life threatening, on a large scale. No, that's obviously not true. Even if the DWH spill has no net effect, it's still a violation of a social contract. It's the same sort of contract that says electrical devices shouldn't trivially short out and give people nasty shocks. Not only that, but because such social contracts have been so frequently abused, such social contracts have been codified into law, at one level or another, to cover such things. Now, the fact that that law isn't been well enforced is news worthy on top of the shear violation of that law or the violation of social contracts.

But, yea, keep focusing on "but nature does it too". Did you know that in nature, male on male anal sex isn't entirely uncommon and that there is no real concept of rape--as consent is most often rather meaningless? Yep, think about what sort of absurd extrapolation you could get from that.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[mdielmann]

Apple seeds have cyanide! Ergo, cyanide isn't poisonous. To put it another way, sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.

And yes, the earth will be around for about 4 billion years (probably - Andromeda is coming!). I'd still like there to be a place for my grandkids to live. They'll be human, not cockroaches.

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Anonymous Coward]

One also has to consider that life may very well find a way, the question is whether humans will be included in this future life. (I'm not disagreeing with the previous post FYI).

Re:It happens again and again in nature

[Uberbah]

But it is the largest spill in history. You only get "larger" ones by either using the lowball estimates from those wanting to save face (U.S. gvt and BP) or by adding up all the individual spills (most of which were deliberately set as opposed to being accidents) from the Gulf War and counting them as one "big" spill.

And aside from the Persian Gulf war, nothing has come close to dumping this much oil straight into a huge body of water like the Gulf of Mexico.

Conversion process?

[jickerson]

Curious if the bacteria use the hydrocarbons strictly to sustain their biological processes or if it is converted to another form (broken down into C02 & H20 or another combination)

Re:Conversion process?

[Chalnoth]

From what little I know of biology, I'm almost certain they're used for fuel, meaning eventually broken down into a combination of H2O and CO2. There may be a few steps along the way, where the bacteria incorporate some of the hydrocarbons in their membranes for a short time, or break the longer hydrocarbon chains into shorter chains, releasing the smaller molecules back into the water for other bacteria to gobble up. But eventually it's basically all going to become H2O and CO2.

Re:Conversion process?

[the biologist]

Given the low oxygen level of the environment, it is probably converted to CH4 rather than H2O and CO2.

I miss BadAnalogyGuy...

[Anonymous Coward]

just as much as you do, but this is ridiculous:

Read that. Basically, you seem like you'd be happy if I served you a glass of my piss, but before I served it to you I removed 60% of the piss and replaced it with pure water.

More like: 60% of the pee Michael Phelps put in the pool during the Olympics has been filtered out. Fancy a swim?

Re:I miss BadAnalogyGuy...

[wvmarle]

Pee is mostly water, containing a small fraction of contaminants.

Oil on the other hand, is 100% concentrated contaminant.

Can't compare the two so easily.

Re:I miss BadAnalogyGuy...

[manaway]

More like: 60% of the pee Michael Phelps put in the pool during the Olympics has been filtered out. Fancy a swim?

To stick with your (bad) analogy, here are photos of Michael Phelps' pee in the pool.

Re:I miss BadAnalogyGuy...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK only 2% pee!! still do you want to drink it? the analogy is sufficient to make the point, it is not a whole solution to use in a comparison. It's just a way to illustrate to those who are not able to grasp the concept (like yourself or a child).

Re:I miss BadAnalogyGuy...

[hawguy]

OK only 2% pee!! still do you want to drink it? the analogy is sufficient to make the point, it is not a whole solution to use in a comparison. It's just a way to illustrate to those who are not able to grasp the concept (like yourself or a child).

I'd rather drink a glass of sterile 2% pee than a glass of 2% oil.

Super Hero Bacteria?

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

I'm guessing they ate it to gain its super powers.

WormWood

[zenlessyank]

Maybe we can beat God to turning a third of our oceans to wormwood. I don't see the big deal in being able to catch pre-marinated seafood. Just add flour now and toss in the oven! I mean we have been breathing car exhaust for all of our lives so what is the big deal?

Yummy Bacteria

[psybre]

How soon can we harvest the bacteria to fuel our cars?

A drop in the bucket, comparably

[sl4shd0rk]

If one barrel is 306 pounds and a ton is 2000 pounds then that's 400,000 pounds of oil consumed, or 1324 barrels. In contrast, BP trashed the Gulf with an estimated 5 million barrels.

It's interesting that bacteria are working hard to consume the spilled oil, but hardly a successful method of cleanup.

Re:A drop in the bucket, comparably

[MyLongNickName]

200,000 tons is not 400,000 pounds. Try running your numbers again.

Re:A drop in the bucket, comparably

[MozeeToby]

You dropped a few zeros there. 200,000 tons * 2000 lbs / ton = 400,000,000 lbs. 400,000,000 lbs / 306 lbs / barrel = 1.3 million barrels. Still not close to the 5 million mark, but quite a bit better than your 1324 barrel figure.

Re:A drop in the bucket, comparably

[hawguy]

If one barrel is 306 pounds and a ton is 2000 pounds then that's 400,000 pounds of oil consumed, or 1324 barrels. In contrast, BP trashed the Gulf with an estimated 5 million barrels.

It's interesting that bacteria are working hard to consume the spilled oil, but hardly a successful method of cleanup.

I don't know how you arrived at "400,000 lbs" from 200,000 tons, but I came up about 1.3M barrels of oil:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200000+tons++%2F+307+lbs%2Fbarrel

Which is still only about 25% of the spill, yet the article said that it accounts for 40% of the oil, what happened to the rest?

Re:A drop in the bucket, comparably

[NatasRevol]

You're off by a few zeros.

Re:A drop in the bucket, comparably

[sunking2]

That's the total release though which includes what has already been scooped up, chemically neutralized, washed on shore, cleaned off sea gull wings, broken down by sunlight, etc, etc.

Re:A drop in the bucket, comparably

[AGMW]

... BP's subcontractors trashed the Gulf ...

Fixed that for you

Re:A drop in the bucket, comparably

[sl4shd0rk]

You dropped a few zeros there.

Ugh.. good catch. Much apologies. Funny how a few zeros can do that.

But what happens to it?

[hawguy]

What happens to all of the oil they consume? When a person devours a large plate of nachos, much of that tasty food comes out as undesirable waste products that have to be carefully treated and disposed of.

Do they turn it into some other chemical? Do they just eat the oil, reproduce, and eventually die, leaving 200,000 tons of organic matter at the bottom of the gulf (is that any better than 200,000 tons of oil?). Oil from the ground has lots of contaminants like sulfur, what happens to the parts of the oil the bacteria can't digest?

Take a lesson from Star Trek...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of money and we get rid of 90% of the worlds problems..

Re:Take a lesson from Star Trek...

[danbert8]

Yes, because the world's problems are humans and before the concept of money existed, our population was less than 10% of what it is now.

Re:Take a lesson from Star Trek...

[readin]

Good point. Get rid of money and 90% of the people will likely die in the resulting wars and famines.

Re:Take a lesson from Star Trek...

[istartedi]

Yeah, but you have a bizarre and unsuual threat every week, occasional mysterious changes in the look and feel of everything, constant dire threats to sector 0-0-1, and dramaticly shortened lifespans for people wearing red attire.

To quote Leanord: "I see just one flaw with your plan. This is not Star Trek!".

"40% of the oil and natural gas"

[swb]

"40% of the oil and natural gas is still in the gulf" -- is this 40% of the total released quantity of oil AND natural gas combined, 40% of each of oil and natural gas, or some other combination?

What was the proportion of oil:natural gas released? I'd be less worried about natural gas in the ocean than oil, but maybe that's naive (although I've never seen a cleanup working cleaning up natural gas..)

40% gas and crude oil in the water

[Anonymous Coward]

60% in the food chain and coming to a plate near you. "Consumed" does not mean non-toxic.

Re:40% gas and crude oil in the water

[JeffAtl]

What do you think happens to the oil when it is consumed by bacteria?

So are they revising this report....

[oh_my_080980980]

After the recent tar balls and oil patched brought to shore by Hurricane Isaac....

I like Gulf shrimp

[Anonymous Coward]

so FUCK BP

Bacteria have now produced 114,000 tons of CO2

[G3ckoG33k]

"bacteria have consumed over 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas"

So, the bacteria have now produced over 114,000 tons of CO2...

As interpreted from "Effect of Environmental Parameters on the Biodegradation of Oil Sludge"
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC243289/pdf/aem00208-0071.pdf)

Ignore that, it is way wrong

[G3ckoG33k]

Wrong... My fault. It is much, much more... They produce 57% of the theoretical maximum, which is a lot larger thanks to all the oxygen adding up with each carbon atom. Damn, I realized it right after pressing the send button...

COREXIT is the stuff poisoning the coast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any word on how well the environment is dealing with the tons of caustic solvent used to sink the oil from public view and poison entire communities along the Gulf coast?

WHOOSH

[Uberbah]

just as much as you do, but this is ridiculous:

Yes, engaging in Pedantic Poutrage to ignore the point is ridiculous. He's engaging in a 10% less anal leakage parody and you're whining that it's actually 23.67%.

A Meteor Impact isn't a Problem?

[jeko]

A meteor impact wiping out 80% of all species on the planet you could deem damaging to the ecosystem, it's still a natural occurence, life still finds a way and the world still turns.

Sure, on geologic timescales. Interestingly enough, it's the larger, more dominant predators most at risk to such an event. Know anyone at the top of the food chain you'd like to keep around?

Seriously though, if you don't define a meteor strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs to be a disaster, then the simple fact is that the word "disaster" holds no meaning for you. There is literally nothing up to and including the aforementioned "red giant" phase of the sun that will one day engulf the Earth that you find to be a problem.

Meanwhile, my concerns are a bit more immediate.

The Big Fix

[chriscokid]

Many of the researchers making such claims have been funded by BP. There is evidence that the well has still not stopped leaking completely. The fishing and seafood business in the Gulf is devastated and may never recover. http://technorati.com/entertainment/film/article/the-big-fix-film-gulf-oil/

Correlated in which direction!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Positive correlation, where activity increases as dispersants are used, or negative correlation where it decreases. Saying it is "correlated" doesn't tell me anything other than "Hey, they're linked!".

Text doesn't say, article doesn't say, video doesn't say.

You can't say they're correlated and not finish that sentence.

oblig Simpsons

[shiftless]

So... you're saying if we come up with something that eats said bacteria, everything will be fine right?

How about some Bolivian lizards?

Rarely works because ...

[dbIII]

That rarely works because the people with the power just find some patsy to be the person with the responsibility.
I personally encountered that some years ago when I was a very junior engineer in a very dubious small consulting company and was offerred the chance to purchase a directorship. That was a bit of a double scam to get my money and put me in a position where I was likely to have to spend a bit of time in court taking responsibility for some very dubious advice given by my boss. The ninteen year old unemployed boyfriend of the bosses daughter, who had never had a job in his life or any education or training beyond high school ended up as director, but by then I'd moved on to a place with less stupid shortcuts or outright fraud and risk of legal action.