Location of Spilled Oil From 2010 Deepwater Horizon Event Found

Chipmunk100 writes: A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract) claims to have identified the location of two million barrels of submerged oil thought to be trapped in the deep ocean following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. By analyzing data from more than 3,000 samples collected at 534 locations over 12 expeditions, they identified a 1,250-square-mile patch of the deep sea floor upon which 2 to 16 percent of the discharged oil was deposited. The fallout of oil to the sea floor created thin deposits most intensive to the southwest of the Macondo well. The oil was most concentrated within the top half inch of the sea floor and was patchy even at the scale of a few feet."

Comments

No Worries

[MightyMartian]

According to leading chiropractors, oil is not only not harmful to marine environments, but is in fact highly beneficial! In fact, we should be dumping millions of barrels every year into the Gulf of Mexico, and should pay back all the money BP has to pay out back to them at one trillion percent interest!

Tune in next week, when I explain how the Koch Brothers are in fact the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Re:No Worries

[93 Escort Wagon]

You joke, but the equivalent of a few million barrels of oil enters the gulf of Mexico every year through naturally-occuring seeps.

Re:No Worries

[Vellmont]

Yup, just like adding up all the blood Americans lose to papercuts ever year. Assume 1 drop of blood is lost per papercut, or .06 ml. A highly conservative guess is 1/1000 americans get papercuts in a year. (300,000,000/1000)*.06=18 liters of blood. So obviously it wouldn't hurt you if you suddenly lost 18 liters of blood, since that amount is lost in minor little papercuts every year.

Scale matters, and concentrating a huge amount of oil, (or in the above example blood loss) makes a big difference.

Re:No Worries

[PopeRatzo]

This is also confirmed by homoeopaths

This reminds me, apropos of nothing and completely offtopic (sort of): I walk the dog early in the morning, before 6am while listening to the news on my portable radio. Due to some strange meteorological phenomenon, I am able to pick up a 500watt station out of an exurb that's 20 miles away, and carries Alex Jones' show (the station calls itself, "Freedom Radio").

So anyway, as you can imagine, the big story the past week has been Ebola and how it's no coincidence that Ebola is from Africa and the President is from Africa. That Ebola is being used to take away our freedoms (but not "Freedom Radio" for some reason).

The "expert" that Alex Jones has on every single morning is a naturopath from Arizona who has developed an "anti-viral" tonic made from colloidal silver and antioxidants ("equivalent to 10,000 blueberries!"). Of course, the 800 number is given throughout the show where for a limited time, with every order you get the doctor's book about the things "The Medical Industry Doesn't Want You To Know". Then they take calls from listeners, and just thinking about the voices of the people who call in makes the little hairs on my arm stand up. I mean, these people are skeered to death that weaponized Dominican kids are being shot up with Ebola by ISIS and sent to their little Utah town by the Democrat/Catholic cabal (I'm not making that up). One lady who said she was getting chemotherapy for cancer was crying on the phone she was so terrified that the Ebola was going to come to her home near Lake of the Ozarks and kill her because the chemo has lowered her immune system. Just sobbing. Saying that hearing Alex Jones and going to Infowars is the only thing keeping her going because she knows it's God's Truth. And Alex Jones and this witch doctor are telling her that if she orders some of this colloidal silver tonic with antioxidants it's going to build up her immune system, bless her heart. And I don't know if any of you have heard Alex Jones lately, but he now sounds exactly like Sam Kinison. The same accent, the same timbre, the exact same dynamic range from hoarse whisper to hoarse scream.

Alex Jones likes to say, after he's gotten people completely apoplectic with fear, that we shouldn't worry, because he's read the book (bible) and he knows how the story ends (victory for the righteous and all patriots), So nobody should worry. This exact sequence, with small variation, goes on every single morning. I hear that stuff and really feel sad. My wife tells me I shouldn't listen, even though it's not really having an effect on me besides making me sad (except for the hole I've started digging in the back yard). Ok, that last part is a joke, but really, the whole thing is about as unfunny as it gets.

I'm sorry that I threw all that in here as a reply to a mild joke, but hearing "homeopaths" and "cancer" made me think of it, and when I'm half in the bag I start making random associations from a need to unburden my sorrow at the state of humanity OK, I think the second period of the Blackhawks game is starting, so I've gotta go.

Re:No Worries

[93 Escort Wagon]

Wow, my post was not meant to be political at all - just an interesting bit of data.

I learned about the natural seeps during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, actually. The natural seeps were complicating the job for the people whose job it was to stop the blown-out well.

Re:No Worries

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I think you just experienced backlash that stems from BP trying to use natural seeps to downplay the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon event. Living on the gulf coast I experienced first hand their spin doctors at work telling us about natural seeps and microbes that eat crude oil.

From the large tar balls washing up on our beaches, the residue that stayed in our marshes, the deaths of marine animals and the increased erosion from the death of grasses and trees along the waterline, only a fool would have fell for their bullshit.

I know that you only meant to bring up a natural phenomena but bringing up the topic of natural seeps in a story about the Deepwater Horizon does make you look like a shill for BP.

For the Future

[pubwvj]

This will now get covered with silt and eventually become an oil reservoir for future generations a million years down the line. Bravo to BP for thinking so far ahead!

Re:Think about it

[MightyMartian]

Evaporation and emulsification; evaporation leaves behind the heavier components of oil, emulsification creates a seawater-oil mixture that will sink.

There's also all the dispersants that BP flung at the leak, whose long-term effects probably still aren't fully understood.

Re:Should be enough

[hawguy]

But I tell you what. Since arsenic occurs in small amounts in many water sources, I'm going to give you a gallon of it to drink, because your logic indicates that should be perfectly alright.

Don't fall for this trap -- Arsenic is a solid at room temperature, if he gives you a gallon to drink, then it's around 1500 degF, and if you drink it, you'll die of massive burns before the Arsenic has a chance to kill you.

Re:Think about it

[TubeSteak]

evaporation leaves behind the heavier components of oil,

This is the portion of the barrel that ends up
1. getting burned in the engines of massive cargo ships
2. turned into asphalt
3. being used as feedstock for industrial chemistry

/Before asphalt, the tar leftover from the pyrolysis of coal was used for the same purposes.

Re:Should be enough

[MightyMartian]

Take a lifetime intake of Vitamin A in a week and tell me how that goes.

Re:FALSE!

[PopeRatzo]

LAURA says you're just friends.

The Corexit "dispersant" BP used made it sink.

[Rujiel]

The dispersant Corexit was used to disperse the oil.. straight to the ocean floor.. The EPA told BP to stop using Corexit, which is carcinogenic and neurotoxic, and BP simply ignored that order--making potentially hundreds of thousands sick nearby. Oil is bad to touch, and Corexit is bad to touch, but the combination is a death-sludge. BP is a truly evil entity, in so many ways.