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Oil From the Exxon Valdez Spill Still Lingers On Alaska Beaches
An anonymous reader writes "It's been 25 years since the Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound, and you can still find oil sticking to rocks. Worse yet, scientists say the oil could be around for decades yet to come. From the article: 'There are two main reasons why there's still oil on some of the beaches of the Kenai Fjords and Katmai National Parks and Preserves in the Gulf of Alaska, explains Gail Irvine, a marine ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and lead researcher on the study. When the oil first spilled from the tanker, it mixed with the seawater and formed an emulsion that turned it into a goopy compound, she says. "When oil forms into the foam, the outside is weathering, but the inside isn't," Irvine explains. It's like mayonnaise left out on the counter. The surface will crust over, but the inside of the clump still looks like mayonnaise, she explains.'"
Mmmm....Mayonnaise.
Consequences only exist for those too poor to fight them. Exxon should have been made responsible for taking care of the entire area until all the oil was cleaned up, but that would have driven them out of business...and we can't have that!
Also like mayonnaise left out on the counter for too long, it is disgusting, toxic, and may harbor several species of bacteria previously unknown to science.
the surprising thing is being surprised million-year old oil lasting longer than 25 years
And still no fines have been paid! It's good to be crazy rich and criminally immune... God bless the U.S.A.
It has to be cheaper to extract oil from a beach than from shale.
Where the fuck did you expect it to go? It doesn't just disappear because you've forgotten about it!
It's very unfortunate that the oil spill happened, that was a lot of oil that could have been used to keep people warm and fed. Much has been done already to keep something like this from happening again, just simply requiring all oil tankers to have a double hull would prevent many spills like this. The United States has already required all oil tankers that travel between US ports to have double hulls.
Less transport of crude oil in tankers would help. A really big pipeline would be nice, like the Keystone XL. More domestic oil drilling would be nice too, I understand that there is a lot of oil just off the California coast. So much it's seeping out of the ground and washing up on beaches. But, no, we can't drill for that oil. Somehow allowing "natural" oil to collect on the beach is "good" but "unnatural" oil collecting on the beach is "bad". I say that all oil on beaches is bad. Much better to burn it and get some benefit from it rather than wait for it to decompose to CO2 on its own.
I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix. They are much cheaper too. But the tree huggers think that if we don't build pipelines that somehow we won't be burning that oil. No, we will burn it. We will move it from where it is plentiful to where it is needed. We will just move it by means more likely to spill.
If we want to stop burning oil we need something better. By "better" I don't mean something with less carbon emissions. If less carbon output was the goal then the solution is not doing whatever it is we do with that oil. I mean like we let our food spoil and we freeze to death in our homes. Of course people suggest that is precisely what we should do, and I suggest they do it first and I'll consider it.
Conservation is an excellent goal but all it does is mean we burn a limited resource at a lower rate, we will still run out but just later. By "better" I mean something just as convenient, just as cheap, and just as safe but also more plentiful. I say we need nuclear power. Anything else means choosing between starving to death or freezing to death.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"It's like mayonnaise left out on the counter. The surface will crust over, but the inside of the clump still looks like mayonnaise,"
I don't understand that analogy. Does someone have a car analogy to explain it for me?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So, it sounds like the oil is sequestered under rocks. Sure, things that once lived under those particular rocks may not do well, but the oil is obviously being kept out of the broader environment. Eventually bacteria will transform the sequestered sludge into something that's fairly harmless and that will eventually disperse. Meanwhile the 99.9999% of the organisms of the type that lived under those rocks, but didn't actually live under those specific rocks, will go on as if nothing has happened.
Seems like a good outcome.
Sure, it would have been better if the tanker hadn't crashed, but it did - time to move on after (as has been done) reducing the chances of similar environmental impact in the future (now, if we could just due that for cruise ships in Italy).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Cyanide is also an organic substance.
Hm. 25 years. And yet, no massive die-offs, no world-wide consequences. In the words of Jurassic Park, "life finds a way." A little less hysteria would be a good thing.
50% of profits as a cap on liability? Great!
Now smaller unprofitable oil companies can take big risks.
Corporations are NOT people ('one' in your weak-ass defense) my friend.
No matter what your Saint Rmoney may say.
Deep Water horizon is all cleaned up. All gone.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Irvine explains. It's like mayonnaise left out on the counter. The surface will crust over, but the inside of the clump still looks like mayonnaise, she explains.'"
Hate to think what this girls kitchen looks like.
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The mutated bugs from Fukushima will eat what is left from the spill.
Passionately Indifferent
ok i'll bite.
there is no way the oil they are finding is coming from the spill.
its more likely leaking from the oil(remember all the oil all ready there?)
that is there naturally.
this is the same stunt they pull down in the gulf.
you know all those pretty beaches where you can dig down a foot and find oil?
yes even today.what they don't tell you its all ways been there.thats one of the ways
one would use to find large reserves.the presents of oil seeping to the surface.
more oil naturally seeps into the environment every year than all the spills in history.
bogus science.
we were taught about this in high school back when every thing wasn't processed
through the politically correct filter.
There is also radiation left over from nuclear blast testing 60 years ago. Everybody freakout.
Thanks to global warming oil that is now coating the rocks on the beach will soon be completely under water and out of view. And when your seafood hits the frying pan you no longer need cooking oil to keep it from sticking to the pan. And dredging for gold where the river mouths reach the ocean may no longer be an issue as well as one simply can not run oil coated gold particles through the sorting riffles as it will not stay put. Also modern society has never figured out how to deal with tribal people in the artic regions and oil in their diet may well finish off what smallpox and alcohol failed to completely accomplish when tried out upon them in years gone by. Hey! If i really believed that rant i would sign up for the Republican party.
I assume that is sarcasm as I expect no one to be that stupid. But you could use Geospatial statistics coupled with the chemical and isotopic "finger print" of the oil itself.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You are attacking the very stated purpose of permitting corporations to exist in the first place - to allow investors to collaborate without exposing themselves to risk beyond losing their investment. Now there's an interesting conversation to be had there, but consider - do you really want to risk everything you own because your 401k was partially invested in a company responsible for some massive catastrophe? Personally I think simply requiring the corporations to possess assets and/or malpractice insurance to cover any potential liabilities would be less damaging to the economy.
Executives and board members on the other hand - I'd be all for having them be personally liable for corporate malfeasance - the captain(s) go down with the ship, right? All that power and profit should come with some chains of responsibility to mitigate abuse.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
yes it has the same finger print as the oil that is there naturally.thats where the oil came from.
I submit I am the highest authority on this specific subject here on slashdot. I grew up in Valdez, AK, the closest town to the spill. I was there when it happened. There is some documentary footage somewhere of myself and my siblings at one of these oil-soaked beaches. I've known friends to go out and do these beach surveys looking for oil, and I've fished and kayaked throughout Prince William Sound.
Firstly I have to say that, unless one goes specifically looking for it, this oil is invisible. The environment has entirely recovered, the salmon run is healthy, and there are as many sea birds, sea otters, and sea lions as there ever have been.
Secondly, the other posters make a very good points about the relative safety of oil tankers vs oil pipelines. I will additionally say that tankers are better protected from deliberate damage than pipelines. I don't know where you're getting your costs from, but I make the average oil tanker to be in the $100M range, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System cost $8B.
I don't know if you know about it, but there is also a proposed natural gas pipeline which was intended to run through Canada to the States. Extrapolating from the cost per mile of TAPS, an oil pipeline would probably be in the range of $15B. Setting aside whether it is actually better for the environment, it is a lot easier to suggest that environmental concerns trump economic ones when it's not your $15B.
Nuclear power is probably a good option for Alaska, whereas solar is pretty much off the table. Hopefully one day someone will take advantage of the tidal energy in the Cook Inlet as well, one lobe of that (Turnagain Arm) having the third-highest tides in the world. There are one or two problems though with putting nuclear reactors in geologically active places though, and the NRC isn't exactly putting applications through quickly at the moment.
Personally though, from having witnessed one of the larger oil spills in history, I don't really find them all that concerning.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
... get the Hell over it!
The beaches in what is not Texas were found to have tar balls on them by the 1st wooden ships to land there. There's all sorts of "pollution" all over the world, and yet we are not all dead. Stop dwelling on the Exxon Valdez, the runaway oil well in the gulf, the Keystone Pipeline, etc. etc. They will not "kill us all" and we need to make progress and lift people out of poverty. Now, POVERTY is killing millions. People lose about 6.5 years of life from living in poverty, on average. There's about 47 million people on food stamps, and therefore in poverty, so do the math and find out the real enemy of humans in this country and everywhere.
This spill was a big deal during my childhood, yet -- its effects still linger on that much later
Maybe eventually somebody will find a way to harvest and use the oil. Perhaps after there's not enough oil being pulled from the ground they'll look at reclaiming some of that which was spilled.
You tell me, since you misread my post. I was trying to make the point that increasing the population should not only result in a decrease of overhead, but that the decrease in overhead of the US vs. Chile should have been even larger than the GP reported. (The US overhead should have been closer to 1/20 that of Chile, not 1/10, i.e. 1.5% instead of 3%.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sure. It's called economy of scale.
What pretend world do you guys live in? Do you really think trying to make Exxon continue to pay for a human mistake (it was a ship captain that screwed up, you know) is a good answer? Its tough and complicated to get crude oil out of the ground, ship it, refine it, transport it, and sell it. The oil industry continually gets better. If you don't like it, try going a whole week without your car and maybe you will change your mind.
Better yet, move to Midland, Texas where the economy is booming because of the oil companies. Or even better, go to Haiti and spend all day trying to find a single gas station that has diesel. Then figure out how many people actually even own a car.
Grow up and move out of your parents house.