Hurricane, Plus Oil Spill: It’s Never Happened, and We Sure Don’t Want It To
The Gulf oil spill is terrible, but it could become much, much worse and soon.
The threat comes in the form of a hurricane moving over the spill. If a hurricane’s violent winds track over the oil slicks this season, we will witness a natural and economic calamity that history has never recorded anywhere or anytime. We will literally be in oil-soaked uncharted waters, suffering the first ever “oilicane.”
A Category One hurricane — the scale ranks them from one to five — has maximum sustained winds of 74 to 95 miles per hour near the eye. A Category Five hurricane has maximum sustained winds of 156 to 200 miles per hour. The difference between the two storms is gigantic, and non-linear. A Category Five hurricane will cause 250 times more damage than a Category One. In other words, there are hurricanes, and then there are monster hurricanes.
Tropical Storm Alex could become a hurricane over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico this week, however the wind currents in that region do not favor the storm coming anywhere near the oil spill. The more likely track is towards northern Mexico or southern Texas later this week.
Looking forward, the water temperature in the Atlantic Ocean is running as warm as the record setting season of 2005, and this is significant. Warmer water means more heat and humidity over the tropical ocean to fuel hurricanes. Just as a car needs gasoline to fuel its engine, a hurricane needs hot, humid air. A hurricane is a gigantic atmospheric engine — the warmer and more humid the air it breathes in, the faster its pistons pump and the stronger its winds become. And warmer water not only creates more hurricanes, it makes more intense ones.
The 2005 season produced a record 15 hurricanes.
Oil now continues to gush from the bottom of the Gulf, and some is washing up on shores. Presently, the good news is that most of the oil is confined to coastal areas. The bad news is what might happen if a moderate to large hurricane rides over the spill.
The winds of a hurricane are so strong that the normal interface between ocean and atmosphere disappears. The winds generate large waves, spray is blown off the top of the waves, and spray mixes with the air. After a short time, there is no real boundary between ocean and atmosphere — they become one! If a large hurricane moves over the spill, this chaotic mixture will also contain oil. The oil will become airborne and travel with the hurricane.
http://www.xkcd.org/748/
Others predict that a hurricane would actually help, by accelerating the evaporation of the oil. Nobody really knows what would happen at this point; it’s all just conjecture. However, there are undoubtedly scientists at NOAA and EPA working on accurate predictions of the effects of just such a hurricane. Don’t forget the dispersants, either. They’ll likely be a factor.
If NOAA’s ‘predictions’ on a hurricane’s effect on spreading the oil are anything like their predictions on the ‘climate change’ fraud, nothing they say can be trusted.
come on Hurricane let BO see the true Power of GOD as he cries for help to allah and mohammed. They scorn GOD remove Him from everywhere so GOD let the winds blow in JESUS name I pray. BO needs to see the Power of GOD and learn fear and trembling. Fire away GOD as America scorns YOU I Praise and Glorify YOU.
Based on this reasoning, its dog’s fault the oil spilled in the first place.
george carlin once did a bit about america going down the tubes and if you listen closely, you can hear the flushing sound it makes.
what sound does an oilcane make?
LOL. The biggest story in US history is in the known facts of the “gulf oil fiasco”;
The analogy would be like Madoff was a pickpocket compared to the story that is right in front of your face in the known facts, but you can not see!
1986: “downfall, by popular uprising, of the government operating out of Moscow”; same reaction from PJ today as I got from congress then when I handed congress that: report/conclusion/analysis.
I offer it to PJ; but no, PJ does not want the story; PJ prints story about hurricanes and oil! LOL
Having seen the quality of your “analysis” I’m not surprised that your “report” was ignored.
MTFake: Hi Oil industry Rep whose motto: Protect oil industry at all cost…
So anyone who disagrees with you is an industry rep?
I thought only liberals were immune to reality, but apparently I was wrong. Contact Brian N. This makes twice in one week.
MTFake, not anyone, butt you are certainly an oil industry rep; and that is OK, I am happy to hear you desperately defend, protect, raise invalid objections and canards for: Big Oil.
You claim to disagree even though no one has figured out the story; LOL
Of course you do not want anyone to listen; you know I know and you know you simply right rubbish to defend “oil”: MTFake
Your evidence that I am an oil industry rep is that I disagree with your long and well discredited opinion.
That’s alright. I’m used to conspiracy nuts going apoplectic whenever someone challenges their favorite fantasy.
You of course present the classic profile.
The only thing I’m trying to protect is reality. A place you haven’t visited in years.
Remember, dose makes the poison.
While it may be possible to measure the amount of oil in water spray miles inland, the odds of the concentration being high enough to cause any damage is minute.
Remember another thing, the smaller the droplet, the faster it evaporates. By reducing the big blobs, to a fine spray, most of it will evaporate.
While it is true that warmer waters give a hurricane more potential, what determines how big a hurricane finally gets depends much more on the condition in the upper atmosphere? Is it relatively cold and dry, or warm and wet. Also, how fast are the winds blowing. Fast winds shear the tops off of hurricanes and prevent them from growing.
I’ve read other reports where experts believe that a hurricane could help the clean up effort, by breaking up and disbursing the oil.
A very good point. This article is not very logical. We are all exposed to petrochemicals every time we gas up our cars, and every stream in the country has some level of contamination in it from idiots changing their oil and dumping the old stuff down a nearby storm drain.
And where in hell are the skimmers?
Three days after the spill, the Dutch, who are experts at cleaning up oil spills, offered (for free) their highly sophisticated skimmers through diplomatic channels, so there is no denying that DC got the offer. If that offer had been accepted, they could have removed 80,000 tons of oil and sludge every day. That means that over 7.5 million tons could have been removed already.
First they used the antique Jones Act to justify turning down the Dutch (Bush quickly granted a blanket waiver after Katrina). Then, federal environmental law makes it illegal to discharge water that is less than 99.7+++ percent pure. The Dutch skimmers remove only 90% of the oil, and discharge the remaining 10% back into the ocean, all in ultrafine particulates that more easily evaporate, so that they can process more sludge. This is a perfect example of allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the pretty damn good. Better to leave all the oil in the water than only 10% of it, apparently.
That’s why there is all this crap hitting the beaches now, because Obama’s incompetent, petulant administration refuses to actually do the things that would mitigate this disaster. Not only is this too good a crisis to waste, apparently they must feel that if they help it get worse, politically for them it will only make things better.
The skimmer “A-Whale” is docked in an American port waiting permission to start skimming. It’s a converted oil tanker and can recover as much as 500,000 gallons a day.
This ship works by sucking in contaminated water at the bow, seperating the oil from it, and discharging the water. The problem is that even though the discharged water is a million times cleaner than the water taken in, it isn’t clean enough according to the EPA, which has rules limiting discharged water to 15ppm of oil.
Anyone with half a brain knows that this ship will greatly reduce the amount of oil floating in the gulf, but since it isn’t perfect enough, the EPA won’t allow it to be used.
It is situations like this that Presidential waivers were designed for. Yet Obama has yet to issue his first during the nearly three months of this crisis.
If what you say is true, I would have to agree with your point. 500,000 gallons a day seems highly unlikely, but hell, if it took out 100,000 gallons, a waiver would seem more than justified.
Can anyone tell me if we are yet at the point where we are removing more oil each day than is coming out…or not?
And finally, because Art Horn (with whom I have often differed) speculates that a hurricane which would bring millions of gallons of the oil inland in a hurry would be a very bad thing, hardly makes him some sort of traitor. Yeah, it MIGHT actually help things, but it also might turn thousands of square miles inland into a toxic wasteland for some substantial period of time. It’s hard to look forward to THAT.
As I stated above, the dose makes the poison. If the small amount of oil that is reaching shore were to be spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles, you would be hard pressed to find any evidence that it was actually there. Hardly the toxic wastelands that haunt your imagination.
Here’s a story about the “A Whale”. It even has a picture of the vessel.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/30/free-enterprise-crashes-the-oil-cleanup-party/#more-37590
In this article it mentions that the vessel is able to process 500,000 barrels of contaminated water a day.
A sea of toxic assets threatens financial institutions, so this administration papers them over with fiat money… meanwhile, those toxic assets are still out there bubbling.
An underwater gusher of oil threatens to wipe out the Gulf ecology and economy, so this administration assigns a cadre of oil scoopers on the beach to shovel it up after the fact… meanwhile, that oil is still out there bubbling.
A rabid Islamic regime in Iran threatens to build a nuclear bomb and use it on Israel (or anyone else that gets in its way), so this administration slaps some ineffective sanctions on Iran…. meanwhile, the mad mullahs are still out there building their bomb.
Now, some might say my comparisons are overdrawn, but I would conclude that Obama and his merry band are playing games of three-card monte with any problem that comes their way… you know, look over here, not over there, and presto !!! There’s no problem here, folks !!!
OMG OMG OMG, its new, its not understood, it must be evil!!! The reality is that a Hurricane has a far greater than 50% likelihood to lower the total environmental impact of the oil in the water. The only difference on a negative is that it will spread the oil to places it otherwise could never have gotten to. But hey, nice scare mongering article, who cares if you actually had to put total blinders on to write it, right?
A few days ago, a poster tried to claim that a hurricane, by causing the fumes from the spill to spread, would create the world’s largest fuel/air bomb.
Yesterday another poster cited a link to some moron who tried to claim that the toxic fumes from the spill were going to force everyone who lived within 500 miles of the gulf to evacuate.
Do you not remember the 1979 Ixtoc I spill? It was a spill larger than the current one, in the Gulf of Mexico. It lasted through the entire 1979 hurricane season.
And somehow, we’re still here.
Interesting. Oil, being lighter than water (it floats) might be subject to sort of cold distillation with its more volitel compounds rising into the clouds where internal lightning could ignite them. A storm that brings floods, tornados and fire from the sky, that’ll make believers out of a lot of folks! I doubt if it will convince any liberals, they always remind me of Edward G. Robinson’s character in the Ten Commandmants, nothing Moses did was ever quite enough.
Before petroleum vapors in air can ignite, they need to be within a narrow range of concentrations. Too low, no boom. Too high, no boom. There isn’t enough oil in the gulf to get the atmosphere in a hurricane up to the critical concentration.
I meant Volatile, please forgive me, I’m from a broken home and a bigot.
A Saudi Arabian oil representative is seeing Mr Obama, and believes in Cap n’ Trade, considering this oil spill that produced 25% of USA’s oil, I suspect he
is after new business? What do your reckon.
Well if and when the hurricane hits the area, I hope there is no water spout?
Raining Cats, Dogs and oil eh?