No you can't measure the split because the presence of the siphon puts back pressure on the flow. You have to take the siphon out.
Acoustic flow meters aren't going to do much good here either because they relay on Doppler effects to measure flow velocity. This is a two phase system so you need to know the phase ratio plus the velocity.
My guess is that the "black smoker" instrumentation is based on laser velocimetry. That equipment would absolutely interfere with efforts to control the outflow.
Here are some more excerpts to further illustrate the point. I.e. even IF it turns out to be oil the potential for harming the environment is low, and there are many other potential reasons for low oxygen content in the water.
And no, I WILL NOT "STFU" to conform to the current ill-informed public opinions on this so-called "environmental catastrophe" which is in reality likely to amount to no such thing.
2) I NEVER said that these "plumes" could cause a dead zone! It's really important that you correct that! Consider:
a. We don't even know if there is any oil in the plumes so the oxygen signal we're seeing could be due to something else that is going on near the well and, if so, it could disappear overnight (we just don't know)
b. The oxygen levels we saw are lower than "normal" but are no where near the danger zone! For the most part, they are not even as low as the layer above them that we call the "oxygen minimum zone." This is a totally natural layer caused by normal oceanographic process and it is found essentially everywhere in the world with very few exceptions. The oxygen levels in these "plumes" are not as low as they are in this natural layer that is found at this site, between about 150 and 400m.
c. Even if the levels were dangerously low (which they are not), this plume does not have the potential to create a dead zone because it cannot be brought to the surface. That water is cold and heavy; it would take far more energy than is available to bring it to the surface anywhere in the Gulf, any time soon.
3) Yes, we're concerned about low oxygen and yes these numbers are lower than normal but we don't see signs of anything suffocating for lack of oxygen down there. It's something to consider but it is very far down on the list of concerns.]
The researchers don't even know that what they measured was oil.
Asper later e-mailed Los Angeles Times staff writer Raja Abdulrahim, who had interviewed him Sunday in Cocodrie, La.:
1) We are not 100% sure that the plumes are oil. We have NOT analyzed the samples yet and won't know what's in them until we do. That will take at least a few days or even a week or more and we don't want to rush these results. The sensor we used is not definitive for oil and other compounds do respond in a manner that is similar to oil and could be confusing us.
Anyone interested in journalistic responsibility (and the lack thereof)on this story should read this article:
How are a few dozen tar balls on a beach an ecological disaster? It sounds more like a summer job opportunity for local teenagers - the local city council offers $10 per pound of tar ball collected at the beach.
How do they know that these tar balls even originated from the BP spill? There is a lot of natural leakage of oil into the Gulf (estimates are around 2000 barrels per day, every day year in year out since the formation of the Gulf millions of years ago), and this isn't exactly the first oil spill in the Gulf. Given the location and currents I'd guess it is pretty likely that they are NOT from the BP oil spill.
I see what BP has to lose by that number being properly established, but why aren't they being forced to establish it anyway?
Maybe because they would have to remove the siphon they have running and stop collecting oil? Just let it spill out into the ocean while the scientists futz around with their equipment?
A barrel of oil corresponds to 5.6 cu ft. I also saw it reported that BP was removing gas to oil at a ratio of 3000:1 from this well before the explosion.
Since the pressure at 1 mil is about 160 atm that means about 20 cu ft of gas per cu ft of oil at depth. So right there the naive estimate of 80,000 is cut by a factor of 20.
In other words about 4000 bbl/day.
And that doesn't take into account the fact that the pipe is not just cut off and open to the ocean. The leak is through something akin to an orifice.
How is this parent insightful? It should be -1 Stupid.
The organisms around natural leaks are not vastly different from life in the Gulf as a whole. Once oil is released from a leak, natural or not it will distribute throughout the Gulf. And as you say the various natural leaks are widely distributed through a large area, thus the adapted life is also widely distributed.
If the adapted life was local to small areas we would not be seeing the oxygen reduction which is clear evidence of metabolism of oil, and life adapted to the presence of oil in the plume.
What this statement, and the statements in the accompanying article mean is that the researchers clearly had a strong bias towards finding a positive result. It was quite clear that the authors don't understand what "inconclusive" means in this context.
There is a simple idea associated with this sort of study that wasn't mentioned at all - correlation does not imply causation. That is that even if a correlation WAS found it still doesn't imply that cell phone use causes brain cancer.
But the converse does not apply - i.e the LACK of correlation DOES imply lack of causation. And that is the bitter pill for those who propose cell phone use as a cause of brain cancer - this study, and its 'inconclusive' evidence is actually evidence that cell phones DO NOT cause brain cancer.
Clearly the shore is far more biologically productive. In fact a salt marsh is the most productive ecology there is. Keeping oil away from shallow water areas is obviously the correct choice.
There is a lot of wringing of hands going on in the press right now, but in reality there isn't much that can be pointed at as actual ecological damage from this. I've heard numbers like 10,000 tar balls collected, and 20 birds rescued.
Wait a year or so and see what the biosurveys show then there will be something to base a good discussion on. Personally I don't think they will show much because of this fact - the Gulf of Mexico naturally leaks 2000 bbp per day every day year in and year out. The best estimates we have are that the BP spill is on the order of 5,000 bbl per day, and it looks now like BP has choked off the main leak some 23 days after the mess started. Ultimately that is not a huge increase in the oil level already naturally present in the Gulf.
The wee beasties consume oxygen while metabolizing the oil. It's called respiration.
These "giant plumes" are total hyperbole. A few miles is NOTHING in the context of a body of water the size of the Gulf of Mexico.
Of course the press doesn't sell advertising by putting things into perspective, so we see this sort of nonsense. Which would you rather have? Biodegradation of the oil, or the oil lying around as a permanently available toxin?
Well I can tell you one thing - the oil flow rate is no where NEAR 80,000 bbl per day. Only 3% of the oil FIELDS in the world produce more than 100,000 bbl per day, and these fields have dozens to hundreds of wells. The average well in Saudi Arabia, with it's immense deposits of light oil produces 5,000 bbl per day. A new field with a productive capacity of 100,000 bbl per day would be very unusual, and this is only ONE well.
The estimate of 5,000 bbl per day actually sounds high to me. This well is a mile down under immense pressure and in water barely above the freezing point. Not only that, it's a restricted flow because of crimps in the riser. There is a reason BP said 1000 bbl/day at the beginning of this event - that would be a typical flow rate from a well of this type.
There are two large bloated institutions in the US right now that are unsustainable. The first is the medical care system and the second is the traditional four year college.
Both of these have high costs out of proportion to the benefits and not only that the costs are growing at rates higher than inflation making them completely unsustainable.
They are both ripe for replacement by non traditional service delivery systems that will crash their business models, just like the internet crashed the traditional phone company model.
Sooner or later these colleges will be replaced by other systems.
1. The green revolution never was implemented in Africa. Read some of the histories of Norman Borlaug. 2. China went through frequent mass famines until the green revolution came to it. 3. Herbicide resistance due to overuse of Roundup in conjunction with herbicide resistant crops in NO WAY implies that herbicides in conventional crops will fail. For example on conventional methods rotation of herbicide types precludes the acclimation encountered when exclusive intensive use of a single herbicide over many years. 4. "What What" quite clearly stated that yields were lower than conventional methods and only an improvement over low-intensity methods. Plus it made massive assumptions regarding substitution of differing crops for what is planted now. It also said NOTHING about the known increased labor requirements or long periods of time (like the 10 years mentioned in the Rodale study needed to bring productivity up using organic methods.) All of this spells disaster. 5. Soil toxicity in India? Reference please - all I was able to find was posturing in non-scientific articles.
So you want to establish a system where if an idea turns out to be really good, so much so that it becomes widely used and an standard, that all of a sudden the inventors lose any ability to make money off the idea and they lose their company and their investments?
Not exactly what I would pick as a means to encourage people to work or invest in this area.
1. This is not a threat to the green revolution whatsoever. The green revolution is not dependent on herbicide resistant crops.
2. The end of the green revolution would he a world wide disaster. Billions of people would starve because other methods of agriculture do not provide the yields needed to support current population levels. In the process every bit of arable land would be cleared to grow food creating an ecological disaster. Not only that but the input quantities needed to convert to organic methods don't exist, and of course the increased labor requirements mean a crash in the affordability of food and the quality of life of people who had to return to the farm.
I cannot imagine a greater disaster than a return to pre green revolution farming methods. Anyone who advocates such a thing is not at all familiar with the history or economics of food production.
Monsanto already has crops resistant to other herbicides.
The problem is that Round-Up is unique in that it so non-toxic. All other herbicides are far less toxic. Glyphosate is so innocuous that the inactive ingredients in Round-Up (surfactants) are more toxic. So replacing Round-Up with something else will have other repercussions.
There is the price factor too. Glyphosate is off-patent thus generic versions are widely available. This also makes it quite attractive.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh what utter baloney. One bird and is not a mass of birds. And 3 meters of coastline is not an environmental catastrophe.
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/no_oil_spill_landfall_through.html
They don't even know if the so-called "plumes" are actually oil. Let alone if the oxygen depletion is real.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-noaa-skeptical-of-oil-plume-reports.html
And the business you fed me about brown pelican nesting? Again false.
"Nesting for the eastern brown pelican, in the Southeast Region, is generally confined to the Carolinas, Florida, Louisiana, and the Caribbean. "
It is not exclusive to the Gulf like you are trying to portray.
No you can't measure the split because the presence of the siphon puts back pressure on the flow. You have to take the siphon out.
Acoustic flow meters aren't going to do much good here either because they relay on Doppler effects to measure flow velocity. This is a two phase system so you need to know the phase ratio plus the velocity.
My guess is that the "black smoker" instrumentation is based on laser velocimetry. That equipment would absolutely interfere with efforts to control the outflow.
Sheesh. Once the big globs are gone raise the rate to $100 a pound. This will get the scuba guys looking offshore too.
It really isn't that hard.
Here are some more excerpts to further illustrate the point. I.e. even IF it turns out to be oil the potential for harming the environment is low, and there are many other potential reasons for low oxygen content in the water.
And no, I WILL NOT "STFU" to conform to the current ill-informed public opinions on this so-called "environmental catastrophe" which is in reality likely to amount to no such thing.
2) I NEVER said that these "plumes" could cause a dead zone! It's really important that you correct that! Consider:
a. We don't even know if there is any oil in the plumes so the oxygen signal we're seeing could be due to something else that is going on near the well and, if so, it could disappear overnight (we just don't know)
b. The oxygen levels we saw are lower than "normal" but are no where near the danger zone! For the most part, they are not even as low as the layer above them that we call the "oxygen minimum zone." This is a totally natural layer caused by normal oceanographic process and it is found essentially everywhere in the world with very few exceptions. The oxygen levels in these "plumes" are not as low as they are in this natural layer that is found at this site, between about 150 and 400m.
c. Even if the levels were dangerously low (which they are not), this plume does not have the potential to create a dead zone because it cannot be brought to the surface. That water is cold and heavy; it would take far more energy than is available to bring it to the surface anywhere in the Gulf, any time soon.
3) Yes, we're concerned about low oxygen and yes these numbers are lower than normal but we don't see signs of anything suffocating for lack of oxygen down there. It's something to consider but it is very far down on the list of concerns.]
The researchers don't even know that what they measured was oil.
Asper later e-mailed Los Angeles Times staff writer Raja Abdulrahim, who had interviewed him Sunday in Cocodrie, La.:
1) We are not 100% sure that the plumes are oil. We have NOT analyzed the samples yet and won't know what's in them until we do. That will take at least a few days or even a week or more and we don't want to rush these results. The sensor we used is not definitive for oil and other compounds do respond in a manner that is similar to oil and could be confusing us.
Anyone interested in journalistic responsibility (and the lack thereof)on this story should read this article:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-noaa-skeptical-of-oil-plume-reports.html
Well here we are two weeks later. Where is the landfall of oil slicks? Where are the masses of oiled birds?
This entire thing is going to be a case study in irresponsible journalism.
20 tar balls oh my God.
How are a few dozen tar balls on a beach an ecological disaster? It sounds more like a summer job opportunity for local teenagers - the local city council offers $10 per pound of tar ball collected at the beach.
How do they know that these tar balls even originated from the BP spill? There is a lot of natural leakage of oil into the Gulf (estimates are around 2000 barrels per day, every day year in year out since the formation of the Gulf millions of years ago), and this isn't exactly the first oil spill in the Gulf. Given the location and currents I'd guess it is pretty likely that they are NOT from the BP oil spill.
I see what BP has to lose by that number being properly established, but why aren't they being forced to establish it anyway?
Maybe because they would have to remove the siphon they have running and stop collecting oil? Just let it spill out into the ocean while the scientists futz around with their equipment?
I haven't had a kit of luck with Win 7 64 bit drivers for my Promise IDE cards.
A pain in the butt since I still have some perfectly usable IDE drives that I now have to access via USB.
A barrel of oil corresponds to 5.6 cu ft. I also saw it reported that BP was removing gas to oil at a ratio of 3000:1 from this well before the explosion.
Since the pressure at 1 mil is about 160 atm that means about 20 cu ft of gas per cu ft of oil at depth. So right there the naive estimate of 80,000 is cut by a factor of 20.
In other words about 4000 bbl/day.
And that doesn't take into account the fact that the pipe is not just cut off and open to the ocean. The leak is through something akin to an orifice.
How is this parent insightful? It should be -1 Stupid.
The organisms around natural leaks are not vastly different from life in the Gulf as a whole. Once oil is released from a leak, natural or not it will distribute throughout the Gulf. And as you say the various natural leaks are widely distributed through a large area, thus the adapted life is also widely distributed.
If the adapted life was local to small areas we would not be seeing the oxygen reduction which is clear evidence of metabolism of oil, and life adapted to the presence of oil in the plume.
What this statement, and the statements in the accompanying article mean is that the researchers clearly had a strong bias towards finding a positive result. It was quite clear that the authors don't understand what "inconclusive" means in this context.
There is a simple idea associated with this sort of study that wasn't mentioned at all - correlation does not imply causation. That is that even if a correlation WAS found it still doesn't imply that cell phone use causes brain cancer.
But the converse does not apply - i.e the LACK of correlation DOES imply lack of causation. And that is the bitter pill for those who propose cell phone use as a cause of brain cancer - this study, and its 'inconclusive' evidence is actually evidence that cell phones DO NOT cause brain cancer.
Clearly the shore is far more biologically productive. In fact a salt marsh is the most productive ecology there is. Keeping oil away from shallow water areas is obviously the correct choice.
There is a lot of wringing of hands going on in the press right now, but in reality there isn't much that can be pointed at as actual ecological damage from this. I've heard numbers like 10,000 tar balls collected, and 20 birds rescued.
Wait a year or so and see what the biosurveys show then there will be something to base a good discussion on. Personally I don't think they will show much because of this fact - the Gulf of Mexico naturally leaks 2000 bbp per day every day year in and year out. The best estimates we have are that the BP spill is on the order of 5,000 bbl per day, and it looks now like BP has choked off the main leak some 23 days after the mess started. Ultimately that is not a huge increase in the oil level already naturally present in the Gulf.
The wee beasties consume oxygen while metabolizing the oil. It's called respiration.
These "giant plumes" are total hyperbole. A few miles is NOTHING in the context of a body of water the size of the Gulf of Mexico.
Of course the press doesn't sell advertising by putting things into perspective, so we see this sort of nonsense. Which would you rather have? Biodegradation of the oil, or the oil lying around as a permanently available toxin?
Well I can tell you one thing - the oil flow rate is no where NEAR 80,000 bbl per day. Only 3% of the oil FIELDS in the world produce more than 100,000 bbl per day, and these fields have dozens to hundreds of wells. The average well in Saudi Arabia, with it's immense deposits of light oil produces 5,000 bbl per day. A new field with a productive capacity of 100,000 bbl per day would be very unusual, and this is only ONE well.
The estimate of 5,000 bbl per day actually sounds high to me. This well is a mile down under immense pressure and in water barely above the freezing point. Not only that, it's a restricted flow because of crimps in the riser. There is a reason BP said 1000 bbl/day at the beginning of this event - that would be a typical flow rate from a well of this type.
SATA port multipliers - 5 to 1 for about $50 + 5 2 TB gives you 10 TB off 1 SATA port.
There are two large bloated institutions in the US right now that are unsustainable. The first is the medical care system and the second is the traditional four year college.
Both of these have high costs out of proportion to the benefits and not only that the costs are growing at rates higher than inflation making them completely unsustainable.
They are both ripe for replacement by non traditional service delivery systems that will crash their business models, just like the internet crashed the traditional phone company model.
Sooner or later these colleges will be replaced by other systems.
Of course we do. The Gulf is said to leak 2000 barrels a day naturally.
Some natural leaks in the gulf of California are even bigger.
1. The green revolution never was implemented in Africa. Read some of the histories of Norman Borlaug.
2. China went through frequent mass famines until the green revolution came to it.
3. Herbicide resistance due to overuse of Roundup in conjunction with herbicide resistant crops in NO WAY implies that herbicides in conventional crops will fail. For example on conventional methods rotation of herbicide types precludes the acclimation encountered when exclusive intensive use of a single herbicide over many years.
4. "What What" quite clearly stated that yields were lower than conventional methods and only an improvement over low-intensity methods. Plus it made massive assumptions regarding substitution of differing crops for what is planted now. It also said NOTHING about the known increased labor requirements or long periods of time (like the 10 years mentioned in the Rodale study needed to bring productivity up using organic methods.) All of this spells disaster.
5. Soil toxicity in India? Reference please - all I was able to find was posturing in non-scientific articles.
So you want to establish a system where if an idea turns out to be really good, so much so that it becomes widely used and an standard, that all of a sudden the inventors lose any ability to make money off the idea and they lose their company and their investments?
Not exactly what I would pick as a means to encourage people to work or invest in this area.
Is that why cancer rates are going down?
1. This is not a threat to the green revolution whatsoever. The green revolution is not dependent on herbicide resistant crops.
2. The end of the green revolution would he a world wide disaster. Billions of people would starve because other methods of agriculture do not provide the yields needed to support current population levels. In the process every bit of arable land would be cleared to grow food creating an ecological disaster. Not only that but the input quantities needed to convert to organic methods don't exist, and of course the increased labor requirements mean a crash in the affordability of food and the quality of life of people who had to return to the farm.
I cannot imagine a greater disaster than a return to pre green revolution farming methods. Anyone who advocates such a thing is not at all familiar with the history or economics of food production.
Monsanto already has crops resistant to other herbicides.
The problem is that Round-Up is unique in that it so non-toxic. All other herbicides are far less toxic. Glyphosate is so innocuous that the inactive ingredients in Round-Up (surfactants) are more toxic. So replacing Round-Up with something else will have other repercussions.
There is the price factor too. Glyphosate is off-patent thus generic versions are widely available. This also makes it quite attractive.
Renaissance time for large scale famines?