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Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Crisis that Wasn’t: Where’s All the Oil?

The BP spill had media, politicians, and environmentalists once again pitching a worst-case scenario rather than objective analysis. 
 
From PJM:
After two years of near-daily crises, most of them either created or worsened by the federal government, we’ve entered a period of relative calm. It won’t last. Pelosi and crew will make sure of that. But during this lull it’s a good time to consider the crisis that didn’t occur: the wrecking of the Gulf from the BP oil spill.
Several news reports are showing that the expected devastation of the waters and shoreline of the Gulf simply hasn’t happened. Early (and historical) evidence suggests that it never will. The oil slicks expected to last for months have failed to cooperate with the government’s desire to use the crisis to pass cap and tax. (Congress is moving ahead with a smaller bill for now, but that’s another article.)

Despite Obama’s dour cautioning that we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, efforts to cap the well were finally a great success. Progress toward completing the relief well continues with only minor interruptions from severe seasonal storms.

Naturally, the New York Times isn’t about to surrender their Chicken Little membership card without a struggle. Give them credit where it’s due, though: for once they were honest enough to report that the problem is now less than anticipated. Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the Gulf.

Evaporation, storms, and natural dispersion effects (and human cleanup efforts) are doing what they’ve done in the past: reducing the concentration of the oil, sometimes to microscopic size, where it’s consumed as food by microbes. So, once again, the sky hasn’t fallen.

Yet CBS, the New York Times, and other major media outlets are doing what they can to keep us terrified. (They never let a crisis go to waste, either.) They’re using the well-practiced environmentalist tactic: warning of possible impending doom by relying on uncertainty:
The effect on sea life of the large amounts of oil that dissolved below the surface is still a mystery. Two preliminary government reports on that issue have found concentrations of toxic compounds in the deep sea to be low, but the reports left many questions, especially regarding an apparent decline in oxygen levels in the water.
So, despite the absence of knowledge of harmful effects (“a mystery”) and two official reports stating low concentrations of toxins, we should still be anxious. Why? Because, well, because environmentalism says so. Never mind facts, we’ve got a theory!

That theory, to use an overgenerous term given its woeful lack of empirical support, implies that human activities always lead to grievous harm greater than the Earth (or we) can handle. The potential harm is so substantial (and so likely), advocates claim, that only the mighty power of legislation has any hope of mitigating it.

The federal government has powers the seas don’t possess, apparently.

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11 comments:

  1. they applied emulsifiers into the oil at the leak.. those chemicals are described as worse problem than the oil.. the oil is floating around in clouds under the surface.

    it is feared the bacteria eating the oil will consume the available oxygen and drive the gulf into a septic sewer. that will kill all sea life from the bottom up.. the Tuna and other food fish might disappear in 5 years as the life cycle of this and following years broods fail to survive.

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  2. Ok, that sounds like it could be accurate. Could you provide me with a link please.

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  3. this stuff is the problem.. it is VERY UNSTABLE, at the end of the ice age when the thermocline started up again it pushed warm water into the fiord's of Norway. at the time the oceans were about 400 feet lower an the Methane hydrate was warmed it cracked and spontaneously detonated. it threw over 5 cubic miles of dirt into the stratosphere.. blocking the suns warmth. the resulting methane hydrate winter set back the end of the ice age 1000 years.

    http://www.sott.net/articles/show/107728-Deep-sea-methane-Energy-Saviour-Or-Impending-Disaster-



    http://beforeitsnews.com/story/87/256/Alert:_Obama_Warns_World_Leaders_Millions_Could_Die_From_Gulf_Oil_Disaster.html

    Interesting to note too is that one of the World’s top oil and gas industry experts Matthew Simmons is calling for the evacuation of the entire US Gulf Coast, and as we can read as quoted by him in an interview with the Washington Post News Service: “We’re going to have to evacuate the Gulf States. Can you imagine evacuating 20 million people? . . . This story is 80 times worse than I thought.”

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  4. Hysteria

    Oil eating bacteria etc have been used for years.

    Dispersant volumes compared to water exchange rates are tiny.

    Every river in the midwest, and in the east, west of the appalachians empties into the gulf. EVERY ONE.
    How many cities' bacteria course down that river and ALL THE TRIBUTARIES?


    Water from the Atlantic courses in, in many places.

    I'll look in to this Matthew Simmons moronic statement, but doesn't sound a little like AL GORE? Dr. Jones?

    He's watched the Day After tomorrow one to many times.

    Perhaps this story is better off disappearing in the eyes of those who publish the news as Nov 2010 approaches. Or perhaps clouds of oil at 3000' feet are beyond our technical means to locate as they disperse before making their way to the surface as the wave and underwater forces affect them.

    I feared for the fate of the shellfish fishery and the hotel and related industries, but maybe they are lucking out, OR MAYBE those who report and publish the news don't want headlines about ruined ways of lives in the hundreds of thousands due to the govt inaction as the lead story as Nov approaches contending with stories about Rangel and Waters for space, eh?

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  5. Black Rain,
    If you take Al Gore seriously, then really, humans ought to evacuate the entire planet.

    How old are you?

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  6. I'm piss'n in the wind trying to explain this.. but in a nut shell it isn't global warming at all. we have been in an Ice Age for over 125,000,000 years.. with a few warm 'Bumps' along the way.

    but..there is a phenomenon called "The Blind Eye of Science"
    it is a variant of Denial. essentially ..one day the Band Wagon will get stuck in the snow an what you deny while high 5'n your buddies will not only bite you in the ass but freeze your balls off.

    how it works..
    the cold water at the poles created by melting icebergs is more dense, sinks and runs like rivers on the bottom of the ocean to the Equator where it is warmed considerably. the warm water replaces the cold and flows to the poles.. round and round.. here is an animation

    ocean currents
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqjO8rwB-GI&feature=related

    if it warms up, whatever the reason and the ice melts.. the heat conveyor stops. the 125 million year ice age is back.. oceans heat up.. evaporation skyrockets it starts dumping ice on the poles again, it takes 5 pounds of red hot cast iron to vaporize 1 pound of water.. the glaciers were 1.5 miles thick over Seattle an the great lakes..

    but that is really not the problem right now.. the problem is Methane Hydrate. apparently the oil drilling in the Gulf has fractured a huge deposit of methane hydrate

    VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS FROM GULF
    (in parts per billion)
    1) Hydrogen Sulfide- Allowed: 5-10 ppb / in air: 1200 ppb
    2) Benzene- Allowed: 0-4 ppb / in air: 3000 ppb
    3) Methylene Chloride- Allowed: 61 ppb / in air:3000-3400 ppb
    EPA measurements from few days ago

    At the depth of this well a methane bubble will expand 3000x. the bulge is 20-50 miles across.. at 1200 pounds per sq inch.. the deposit will essentially detonate.
    the bubble will super-caveatte at speeds where the physics are essentially that of a solid moving within a solid. the water above will vaporized and millions and millions of tons of methane will be ejected into the stratisphere... along with cubic miles of water and dirt.. the ice crystals in the stratosphere will reflect sunlight, the dirt will absorb it.

    methane
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTb0MfP1UT4

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1liqk9UQNAQ&feature=channel

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20131

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  7. oh,, i forgot to mention the Tsunami.... an there will be 2.

    one from the detonation and one when the water rushes into the massive hole.. the momentum of the rushing water will cause the water to over fill and rise/fall causing another Tsunami.

    there is a serious chance that some of the methane falling back can be blown inland by prevailing winds and catch on fire, it is said up to 20,000,000 peoples lives are at risk
    .
    there is a serious chance that some of the methane falling back can be blown inland by prevailing winds and catch on fire, it is said 20,000,000 peoples lives are at risk

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  8. Black Rain,
    Do you really worry about stuff like that?

    When do you think this is going to happen by? Cuz, if you have a date, then maybe we ought to set up some sort of wager.

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  9. So, let me get this straight, you believe there is going to be a nuclear winter type explosion in the Gulf because of methane?

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  10. http://www.fart-sounds.net/fart_sound_board.htm

    ReplyDelete