The Crisis that Wasn’t: Where’s All the Oil?
Never mind history, too — there have been huge oil spills in the past, after all. In 1979, the Ixtoc I blowout gushed 140 million gallons into the water during the ten months taken to contain the problem. Yet the long-term environmental impact is so low, few even remembered the event until the BP Deepwater Horizon incident. (Some native crab and turtle populations were severely impacted for several years.) For comparison, the BP oil spill injected about 23 million gallons into the Gulf in three months, based on Department of Energy data.
As with any large-scale oil spill, there are local effects, some of them serious. Some citizens of the Gulf states have suffered real harm and should be fairly compensated. BP should be held accountable to the amount of the actual damage and their degree of real culpability. Setting aside his unwholesome love for being an unaccountable petty dictator, Ken Feinberg is sure to see to that, at minimum.
Also, there will be long, careful legal proceedings to establish what liability BP and others incurred. (There are already early reports that some government bodies caused or worsened the crisis. Those responsible will almost certainly escape without substantial punishment, but never mind that for now.) BP has already laid out billions, and no doubt they’ll lay out many billions more before it’s all over.
That’s fine. The evidence so far suggests their safety procedures were lax, even negligent perhaps. Fine. Nail them, if and to the extent they deserve it. But let’s keep a sense of perspective. A serious problem? Yes. But one that, like so many, private parties responded to with vigor and ingenuity, hampered as usual by the worse-than-useless efforts of people focused on finding a neck to support a boot.
Maybe we should wish for a new crisis to distract them. Here’s a candidate: Obama could concentrate on replacing the jobs vaporized by his ill-considered moratorium on deepwater drilling. On the other hand, given his track record in that arena … we don’t need another mess to clean up.
One reason this spill apparently hasn’t lasted as long as the “Death to Western Civilization” crowd would have liked is the kind of oil it was mainly composed of. Most of it was what is known as “light sweet” crude (LSC), so called because it is mostly made up of the distillates that are easily convertible to motor fuels like gasoline, standard diesel, and jet fuel (diesel and jet fuel are basically highly refined kerosene). Unlike “heavy crude”, the thick, blackish stuff most people think of when they hear the term “crude oil”, light sweet in its natural state is closer in color, consistency, etc., to the motor oil you put in your car (about 20W30 weight or so).
The high concentration of these fractions in light sweet crude makes it very volatile, compared to “heavy crude”. This is one reason the Deepwater Horizon blowout resulted in a massive explosion and fire when the wellhead failed; disperse that much volatile petroleum in the air and add a spark, and you have a nearly textbook fuel-air explosion.
However, the high volatility of these fractions also means that, when in the open (on top of the water- oil has a lower density than water, remember), exposed to the open air, and in average daytime Gulf summer temperatures (hot), it will evaporate into the air almost as fast, liter per liter, as an open pan of gasoline in similar conditions. What “survived” to hit the beaches were the heaviest fractions, about what you would normally make (surprise!) ordinary motor oil out of, which account for around 10% of a typical LSC volume. This explains the “tar balls”, the “beach slicks” the government and BP tried to hide by throwing sand over them, and the relatively few birds who needed a detergent bath.
No mystery to it at all. Except for the “environmental experts” who, as usual, pride themselves on their ignorance of what they hate (rather like anti-nuclear and anti-gun fanatics do), as well as politicians who are mainly lawyers and thus wouldn’t know a distillate percentage from a panty raid anyway.
clear ether
eon
What happened to all the oil?
Well, for one thing, for every gallon of oil that was spilled, there are 3.47 BILLION gallons of water in the Gulf. That’s using an upper estimate of 184 billions having been spilled and a volume of water in the Gulf of 643 quadrillion gallons, available here: http://www.epa.gov/gmpo/about/facts.html
I understand that the gas cut has been varying between 2200 and 3000 cubic feet of natural gas per barrel of oil. To me this means that some gas is still entrained in the oil. I well remember how tankers had to discharge North Sea Brent crude much slower than any other crude because the pumps would vapor lock from all the gas still in the crude after its voyage to the Gulf Coast.
Those wild high estimates are wayyyyyyyy off. I’d eat my only hat if this well ever flowed at 40,000 bpd even after the restrictions of collapsed and bent riser and drill pipe were removed. Yes I did see that riser section that had collapsed like air sucked out of an aluminum beer can.
Mr. Perren:
“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.”
They don’t call it “Light Sweet Crude” for no reason, don’t ya know. “Light” means it has a low viscosity, and “Sweet” means it has a low sulfur content.
Both of these facts make for a less heavy and sticky spill, (unlike the Alaska crude that was spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster).
It’s the difference between spilling “3-in-1″ oil and spilling used motor oil.
As a guy on a ship DP-ing over the Macondo site as I write this, I’m having a good laugh at some of the ridiculous claims and prescriptions that have been made over the past 100 days.
-The oil slick was supposed to have splooged Miami by now, and possibly been detected ashore at Cape Cod.
-The Deepwater Horizon supposedly had drilled into a “batholith” magma chamber or something and had thereby caused a global environmental disaster via essentially what was claimed to have been a “man-made supervolcano”,(This was the freak-out of some Russian “scientist”, reportedly).
-Likewise, BP had activated the massive fault line that reportedly runs beneath the Gulf, so we could expect super earthquakes or something.
-We were to perhaps have nuked the well at the sea-floor,(possibly the most retarded suggestion: The Odministration wouldn’t let LA Guv’nah Bobby Jindal dredge up berms from local sea-bottom, but they were supposedly going to approve…plutonium?
And the seismic and hydraulic shock effects of a sub-surface nuclear detonation on all the OTHER oil infrastructure on the bottom of the Gulf no-one was quite giving any thought to).
It’s going to be fun watching people walk away from the ridiculous claims made by some of the more spittle-flecked and glazed-eyed of the public “eco-warriors”,(or whisk all that chicken-littling down their moonbat memory holes…which will be the more likely course).
Now here’s the skinny. The tuna are jumping out here. 5-10 pounders are leaping out of the water between the vessels over the site. We reckon that since there ARE less seabirds around, the baitfish are getting a break when they congregate near the surface, and that is drawing the tuna.
There is no denying that the spill was bad and that a lot of people took one right in the kisser from it, but all the “bedbugs” jumping into the sleeping-bag haven’t made it any better.
Nothing about waking up Godzilla? How did they miss that one?
Godzilla, huh?
With all the Coon-asses, Texicans and Filipinos in this flotilla, he knows better than to stick his mug up out of the water ’round here.
He’d be “gumboed”, “barbecued” AND “pancited” faster than you could say
Bee-Pee!
LMAO. You got that right.
That would be after the nuke went off.
“-The Deepwater Horizon supposedly had drilled into a “batholith” magma chamber or something and had thereby caused a global environmental disaster via essentially what was claimed to have been a “man-made supervolcano”,(This was the freak-out of some Russian “scientist”, reportedly).
“-Likewise, BP had activated the massive fault line that reportedly runs beneath the Gulf, so we could expect super earthquakes or something.
“-We were to perhaps have nuked the well at the sea-floor,(possibly the most retarded suggestion: The Odministration wouldn’t let LA Guv’nah Bobby Jindal dredge up berms from local sea-bottom, but they were supposedly going to approve…plutonium? And the seismic and hydraulic shock effects of a sub-surface nuclear detonation on all the OTHER oil infrastructure on the bottom of the Gulf no-one was quite giving any thought to).”
Wow. Sounds like somebody stayed up too late watching “Crack in the World” (Dana Andrews, Kieron Moore, Janette Scott, directed by Andrew Marton, 1965).
Moral; Never watch scientifically-questionable sci-fi movies late at night. And especially don’t eat Rocky Road ice cream while you’re doing it.
cheers
eon
Sir…I implore you to write a small miniblog for those of us who so desperately want to see and feel the actions out there in the Gulf. I am extremely proud of you all to be doing such an incredible job. Any possibility for you to throw us a “line” in the future?
PLEASE, don’t call me “Sir”.
I can’t promise much of anything since communication about what might or not be going on out here is a sensitive subject, (for rather obvious reasons).
Also bear in mind that my being too close to the action would give a very distorted view…only what my “little bit of the picture” is.
And my little bit of the picture is wonderfully boring and routine and miserably HOT. Watch and watch about, eat some grub watch a movie and see the tuna jump around in the sea from the ship’s rail.
And try NOT to observe the two middle-aged male Norwegians who walk the helideck perimeter of the MV Skandi Neptune while wearing Speedo swimsuits every afternoon…feh! Euro-Scandinavians, what can you do? They’re just LIKE that.
What is going on out here is essentially no different from drilling any other deep sea well, except you have two rigs going at the same time about 1000 yards apart, plus quite a bit more support vessels around…because of that incontinent geologic “colon” down below. And the “Eye of Sauron” sweeping over us Oil Patch and Seagoing Hobbits from the north-east occasionally.
If you want to be proud of something, be proud that we still have, and can muster, the know-how and the wherewithal to deal with this unprecedented occurrence in a safe and sane manner,(without resorting to “nuclear voodoo”).
My participation in this little exercise is certainly going on MY resume.
And to the folks who want to shut this industry down until they have air-tight iron-clad seaworthy guarantees that disasters like this can NEVER happen again, I’d say this:
When you boil it down to the bare bones, the Deepwater Horizon disaster apparently happened because they were running behind schedule and were over-budget.
Doesn’t this circumstance also obtain in whatever industry YOU work at? If it never does, you could make some serious bank by letting the oil companies, (and just about everyone else!), know the secret.
So all we need to do is master the 4th dimension of Time and then absolutely control every aspect of economic market activity so that the thought-mechanisms of “Time” and “Money” become essentially meaningless.
Only THEN we can have the assurances that you are demanding, until then, we can only do the best and safest job we know how, given the constraints that time and money and knowledge place upon us.
Just a psotscript.
If you’re looking to someone or soemthing to be proud of, be proud of the Captain and Crew of the PSV Damon Bankston:
http://www.faqs.org/sec-filings/100604/TIDEWATER-INC_8-K/g91208ex99_1s6gbgd.jpg
They braved the flames that night ans rescued over 200 survivors from the Deepwater Horizon. IF you had been on the Horizon and survived the blast and the fire, if you made it to the Bankston’s decks you were saved…you were going home.
The heroism of the Bankston’s crew has rather gotten lost in this episode.
And it should not have been.
http://media.nola.com/news_impact/other/bankston.pdf
Thank you.
I’ll pay the writer $100 to eat some oysters from the estuaries nearest the gulf, or to swim in the gulf for 1 hour.
Just because you don’t see baby seals covered in black gunk a la the Exxon Valdez, doesn’t mean there are not repercussions from this event. Unless of course, as with so many other topics, if the evidence is not visibly apparent and presented in a totally obvious fashion, it must not exist.
I’ll take you up on your bet Drew, though I’m not the author of the piece. Sometimes people do take the attitude that, if something is not visibly apparent, it’s not there. Sometimes we call these folks half full people, optimists, if you will. You, on the other hand, are a half empty person, a pesimist or, progressive, if you will. To you, even when there is proof against your position, everything can be given a sinister purpose even though you…can’t see it. Hmmm. I’ll guess you are a warmer too. Am I right?
Oh dear, oh dear. Drew, did you actually read the story? Do you realize that the even The NYT Itself is stating things aren’t as bad as first thought? I’m afraid you engaging in the “all or nothing” fallacy, one of the last resorts of both poor arguments and trial lawyers. No-one has said there is =no= damage. Try again.
May I inquire, is that “per Oyster?” — because if so, then I will gladly pay my own airfare, or even drive down, and eat, oh about 30 or 50 oysters… that is if you can afford that? Man I could really use that money too — and if there were any Light Sweet Crude oil in minuscule amount in each oyster, that would simply ensure that they’d… uh… “pass through” my system all the quicker.
Drew is obviously not an oyster eater or he would have known that these aren’t the ‘R’ months…prolly lives in some blue state, also…
All that was coming out of the well wasn’t oil. They had tapped into a portion of volcanic gasses or other pressure vault containing substances other than oil. Those gasses caused a decline in oxygen levels in surrounding sea water as they are very toxic and contain little or no oxygen. At the pressures at the well head much of the gasses would have remained in solution and wouldn’t have been seen as bubbles. But much of the well casing was eroded due to cavitation caused by expanding gasses deep in the well.
“…But much of the well casing was eroded due to cavitation caused by expanding gasses deep in the well.”
You sure seem to know a lot about the condition of the casing pipe which is about 3 miles or so down below me.
Mind telling me how you came by this data?
What happened to the Horizon was the hit a methane pocket, (I’ve seen speculations that it was in the neighborhood of 40,000 psi). That happens with oil wells.
BTW, lest you think it’s just eco-weenies who piled on…all sorts of kooks got in on the act:
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/05/us-orders-blackout-over-north-korean-torpedoing-of-gulf-of-mexico-oil-rig/
It’s a good ‘un! Here’s another:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/07/15/18653889.php
But let me lay my own conspiracy theory on you.
You don;t suppose that the Saudis or Hugo Chavez, or the Russians or the Mexicans would rather that we not develop our own oil resources so that we keep buying their crude, huh?
So if you were an Aramco or PeMex or Statoil executive, it would be pretty smart business to subsidize the kooky-krazier maybe of US “environmentalist groups” would it not?
wow, who pays you to write this crap?
A question one might ask you.
Good one there Charlie!
American Petroleum Institute?
Pajamasmedia would be my guess.
“Pajamasmedia would be my guess.”
-maybe, i’m just being funny….But no doubt, API & BP love this kind of nonsense.
David Walters asserted:
But no doubt, API & BP love this kind of nonsense.
If what Mr. Perren has written is “nonsense”, then show us why it is nonsense. Give us the facts, evidence, reasons, etc. that support your contention. Otherwise your comment is mere unsupported assertion and carries absolutely no argumentative weight.
“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.”
You show your ignorance of the life of the Gulf and its people.
Instead of flying over, they need to get down to the Gulf waters and wade in it. Oil and the chemical dispersants slung at the disaster have contaminated all sea life. Burning of the oil on the surface incenerated live sea turtles and birds. Oil and the dispersants have contaminated and smothered most bayou and estuary life. What those did not contaminate and smother, the government’s release of fresh water into the Gulf finished, wiping out the oyster beds. Gone for a decade at least is the livelihoods of these people who depended on the sea’s bounty for their living. Oysters, shrimp, crabs…everything ruined. And yes indeed they deserve to be compensated for the loss of their generational businesses.
Pat Pierce claimed:
Oil and the chemical dispersants slung at the disaster have contaminated all sea life
And your evidence for this sweeping claim is what?
Well judging by the padding of future, speculative damages, he’s probably a plaintiffs’ lawyer trumping up a case. So he doesn;t need any evidence. He’ll just pay some “expert” tell a jury it is so and laugh all the way to the bank.
“The federal government has powers the seas don’t possess, apparently.”
Ha ha, that’s a good one! Don’t forget to watch for the (… danger music …) “worse than previously thought” meme the MSM will surely apply.
It is quickly becoming a joke, and we should parody it relentlessly.
“We should not be writing any obituary for this event until the well is completely sealed, until we have no more oil on the surface of the water, until we understand where all the oil has gone to, until the beaches are cleaned, until the local — federal, state and local — officials agree that the beaches are clean,” -Thad W. Allen
What’s a little oil gonna hurt?
David, are you aware that there are major oil seeps that are completely natural? The ones I know of offhand are off Santa barbara, but the fact is that crude oil enters the biosphere regularly with no help.
That doesn’t mean there no reason to be concern, but the notion that oil in the ocean is unprecedented or always man-caused is mistaken.
Charlie Martin, asks
the question: “……are you aware that there are major oil seeps that are completely natural?”
-Sure, oil was used in ancient times by people collecting it from seeps. If it seeps above ground, it follows that it will seep undersea.
But does HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of gallons of oil naturally gush out of the ground a day? Something tells me the answer is NO!
“But does HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of gallons of oil naturally gush out of the ground a day? Something tells me the answer is NO!”
Not that there’s been widespread, empirical studies, but the answer is unequivocally YES.
First, Mr. Walters asks:
What’s a little oil gonna hurt?
And then, when he is reminded that natural oil seeps allow crude to flow into the Gulf every day, he switches to this question:
But does HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of gallons of oil naturally gush out of the ground a day?
An example of the sort of context-dropping and claim-switching that those on the left employ in place of rational argument. One wonders exactly what they think these sorts of juvenile “arguments” prove.
No question about it; The Cubans stole it!
Not true. I heard that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have it all collected and are saving it to be used just for their families and they’re not going to anybody else have a single itty-bitty drop.
Having no way of checking the news reports something in the back of my mind said be careful about believing what you read and see. I guess it was the grandstanding and bleating by the local politicians that first raised my alarm bells. Then the shrillness of the media and their long faced pronouncements of the dire consequences to come that really started me wondering.
I guess with me it was just a case of when today’s media start focusing on something, anything, be careful, there are just not to be believed or trusted any more, it was that simple.
I often wonder how many other people also started to question what they were seeing and hearing in the media about half way through this whole thing?
Just because the MSM focused on this disaster and followed it daily does not mean the crisis was not all TOO real to the Gulf residents. And it will continue to plague them for at least a decade. But don’t worry — you can buy your shrimp and oysters and crabs from Thailand and not give it another thought.
I caught David Bernstein, noted
scientisthistorianmouthpiece, saying that the “heavy dispersants” had “sunk the oil to the bottom.”You know, just like dishwashing liquid makes the grease from greasy pans sink to the bottom of the sink instead of breaking it up so it can be rinsed away.
(Don’t try a sentence like that at home, kids, we’re professionals here)
So you equate the chemical dispersants — which choked and contaminated all sea life — to dishwashing liquid in a kitchen sink? I’ve seen small minds, but yours takes the cake.
Not a chemistry major, I’m guessing.
Not a placer miner, nor a boater, either.
Pat Pierce: dishwashing liquid (especially the sort used for dish washing machines) is very effective at breaking up oil films. So is laundry detergent, but the foam is a pain. I know this from experience.
So you equate the chemical dispersants that choked and poisoned sea life in the Gulf to dishwashing liquid in the kitchen sink? I’ve heard people with short-sightedness, but you take the cake.
Obviously we have some folks working off of the same talking points.
Is there an echo in here?
In any case, yes I do. Look it up. Although actually the main surfactant is not strong enough for dishwashing liquid, and is largely used in laxatives.
Eon and Bilgeman,
Two excellent posts – a pleasure to read from two who understand something about hydrocarbons instead of the shills at the NYT who can’t find their butt cheeks with both hands.
I got some pretty heavy criticism from a few of the leftist fringe when I told them two months ago, this was in no way the environmental “disaster” everyone was making it out to be assuming the well plugged – for no other reason than it was forty miles out to sea. Exxon Valdez it was not.
The biggest disaster was the coverage of the “disaster”, with this time FOX News as bad as anybody about the sky is falling message. Though a usual FOX viewer, the insufferable Shepard Smith made the usual ass out of himself by running around in circles screaming “all is lost.”
Pass me another shrimp cocktail.
Over the past many obaMadministration months, there have been many occasions when observers (who were truly attempting to grasp what was happening in front of them) have had to conclude that the folks in charge/or bleaters about events were quite unable to discover the location of their rear sides, as referenced by Tex.
It occurs to me that there is a real epidemic of yahoos running the country who are afflicted with this limitation. It also occurs to me that over the decades, actually having the ability to locate one’s own rear end has been intrinsic to the happy success of individuals who loved being Americans. How, with this epidemic confusion I am beginning to fear the inevitable headlines of the future. Unfortunately, those unable to locate their rear ends (or related cheeks) are obama’s voting base (and, of course, also occupy most of the appointed positions in his “administration”.
Tex,
I couldn’r agree more, especially about Shep Smith, the newsreader I find to be one of the closest to being a total fool as anyone on cable TV. I’ll never forget his nauseating performances in covering Hurricanr Katrina, ignorantly pontificating about the “Lord of the Rings” conditions prevailing in the Superdome, in between crying and coming close to wetting his pants on air. To this day, although I too watch Fox more than any other TV news outlet, I turn off the TV whenever he makes an appearance.
As to Fox being guilty of overplaying the Gulf spill, I agree. But, the coverage by all the players in this eco-drama is enormously complicated by the constantly shifting points of view each player temporarily adopts to extract the maximum propaganda and political advantage from whatever is happening, or at least seems to be happening. Obama wants to cut off oil production in the U.S. as much as possible to: drum up support for alternative energy subsidies, help pass cap and trade, generally seem to ape the memes of Big Environment and Big Class Action Law to solidify their support for him, and impoverish more and more of us so as to make us even more dependent on Daddy Fed for sustenance. So, he and his various constituents did what they could to actually prolong the spill at first, until the more immediate political considerations of, ironically, being the recipient of the same crazy and delusional blame-the-President hysteria that started to sink President Bush a few years ago, and more or less forced his hand to at least stop obstructing the clean-up. On the other hand, his detractors, no matter how they saw the real scope of the spill’s effects, had to at least seem to behave almost hysterically over-concerned lest they be in danger of being politically “katrina-ized” by the mainstream media. And, then, after they had to tone down their criticism of Obama with the capping of the well by an ostensibly Obama-friendly BP, they were left with only the idiotic drilling ban and its obviously ruinous effect on our economy – bad enough, but not as juicey as Obama’s intial apparent obliviousnees to the oil spill. It’s all very complicated, with sands shifting under everyone’s feet every few days. That’s why I can’t blame Fox too much for getting some of their coverage wrong. It will be another matter however, if, after the real science concerning the spill does continue to reveal a much less than anticipated problem, that they fail to play up that positive outcome and point out the foolishness and mendacity of the sky-is-falling bull earlier trumpeted by almost everyone concerned.
EON and Bilgeman,
A pleasure to read both of your posts. I feel as though I learned something and for one I will be delighted if this turns out to not be as awful as was anticipated.
Oil is a mix of many different hydrocarbon “species”, as the chemical nomenclature goes. Some of the light components (between a single carbon atom per molecule, known as methane, to 4 or so, such as butane and its isomorphic cousins) actually dissolve in the water. They can be bad news for some living organisms, and good news for others, but in relation to more stable molecules, they definitely contain energy, and there is no particular reason why this energy cannot be metabolized by some microorganisms at the root of the food chain. Such opportunistic microorganisms are always present, because some quantities of oil naturally seep from the ocean floor, regardless of whether we are drilling or not. Some other hydrocarbons float and evaporate, or are dissipated by burning. At the other end of the spectrum, the “heavy” ones, (12 carbon atoms per molecule or more), are still buoyant, and form the tar balls and other slimy things, which are amenable to skimming on the water and collecting on the beaches.
The incumbent media is constantly carpet-bombing us with all kinds of enviro-hysteric fairy tales, (witches included), apparently enough to make it hard to recognize oil as a biodegradable material. And yet, some of it is, before we burn it. When we do burn it, God forbids, we release carbon dioxyde in the atmosphere. CO2 is definitely bio-degradable, and profitably so, since it is necessary for plant growth. No CO2, no corn, no tomatoes, no strawberries!
Any natural process can be spun into a positive story, or a negative one, depending on the designs of the spinnor, and the gullibility of the spinnees. The only way out of this sorry state of affairs is to improve education by freeing it from those who are presently holding it hostage, for the cultivation of ignorance and irresponsibility.
Let’s roll or sleeves and get on with this forward-looking side of the clean-up task!
Don’t be silly, friends. Where has the oil gone? Where is the environmental damage? Why, President Sock Puppet Himself stood upon the Banks of the Gulf, and healed it all by His Word!
The sock puppet is not a normal sock puppet he is one from the locker room full of athlete’s foot and very smelly and as such so are the words that he speaks. I can’t listen to him for the reek that comes out of the radio or television.
Doubtless the Obama regime will now lift the moratorium on off shore drilling. Yes?
I can’t imagine they want to cause us unnecessary pain.
Another item the Democrat Media invented and sensationalized was the ‘loop current’!
I busted a gut laughing at that one. There is no loop current of any kind in the Gulf of Mexico.
Check a good weather map source and verify the sea surface temperatures; They would show any water movement in the temperatures.
There’s more current in the average toilet bowl than in the Gulf. And that’s something the Democrat Media would be an authority on.
BP spilled the oil, but Obama and his cronies created the disaster. From halting all fishing to placing a moratorium on deep sea drilling, this disaster was almost entirely and hugely economic. The immediate or even eventual environmental damage was as usual grossly overestimated. This is especially true regarding the ‘experts’ at the Federal agencies – the EPA, Fish and Wildlife and Interior, who all worked extra hard to make this crisis as painful as possible. Their agents traveled to the Gulf and made things worse and worse every day. Even the simplest plans proposed by local officials, including the Louisiana Governor to help deal with the crisis were delayed, obfuscated or “shut down”. Shutting down solutions to environmental problems is what these agencies do, and have been doing, for decades. Why? I believe they want to stop the drilling, and making these occasional crises worse is how they accumulate and retain political power.
I know a few things about hydrocarbons myself, and the the answer to “where did the oil go?” has been around since the Exxon Valdez spill. Why wasn’t this information used to help deal with the present crisis? Hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers have estimated the rate of microbial degradation of crude oil in sea water. In this specific example (Applied and Environmental Microbiology; 2002, vol 68 pp 5537-5548.), the water in this microcosm had 2 parts per million nitrogen and 3.7 kilograms per square meter of “aged” oil added. After about a month, microbes had grown up and were degrading the oil at a rate of 130 grams per square meter of surface area per day. I assume this only goes on within about 6 inches of the surface, since oxygen is consumed during degradation and can become the limiting nutrient. I’ve seen estimates that the well was releasing as much as 2.5 million gallons, or 9,500 metric tons of oil per day, and the slick covers 2,500 square miles, or 6,500 square kilometers. The microbes, according to the above example, in 6,500 square kilometers (6.5 billion square meters) of sea surface, 6 inches deep, can consume (6.5 billion square meters X 130 grams of oil per day per square meter) = 845,000 metric tons of oil per day. That is over 100 times the amount of oil being released per day by the well. The truth? The well adapted oil-degrading bacteria always present in the Gulf ate most of the oil, and consumed a bunch of oxygen while they were doing it. I don’t think this was that hard to explain, but of course it doesn’t fit the current narrative by our National “leaders”. I think Obama and his cronies horribly mistreated the people in the Gulf states to further a political agenda, and created an economic crisis while the environmental crisis was minimal.
bloghead ….
“BP spilled the oil, but Obama and his cronies created the disaster.”
-Lax oversight of the industry wasn’t a contributor, huh?
Actually, it looks like a really big contributor was the Coast Guard.
Charlie Martin,
You assert the Coast Guard “contributed” to the spill.
So, you’d have me believe that had the rig NOT sunk, that oil would NOT have gushed outta the well?
Precisely.
The pipe was intact until the DW Horizon sank,
pulling the top end of the pipe with it, and
breaking the pipe at the bottom end.
This was reported from the beginning;
What was not reported was that the Coasties
pumped so much water onto the rig that it
flooded and sank.
Think of a three foot strand of spaghetti held
upright by a balloon; The balloon bursts and
falls, the strand bends and breaks;
People tend to think of steel as strong, but
a pipe two feet wide and 5000 feet long is
even more flexible than a load of irrigation
pipe on a truck, waving in the breeze as the
truck goes over bumps in the road.
Gents:
I have to step in here and say that the effort to blame the Coast Guard for the Horizon’s sinking is bogus.
The fact of the matter is that the rig was abandoned, and was in effect, (and probably in law as well, seeing as how MODUs are under maritime and admiralty law), a derelict.
Since there was no-one aboard to worry about things like ballasting or flotation, (for rather obvious and understandable reasons, her being engulfed in fire and all), it rather beggars the question of what exactly the Coasties were supposed to have done?
The responding OSVs fought the fire with their monitors because that was the most reasonable response if your effort was to have saved lives and salvage the thing.
Certainly the Horizon’s sinking may have contributed to the difficulty of controlling the well, since dealing with a broken pipe on a ruin that is still floating is easier than with a “stub” 5000 feet down, but nobody could have predicted with any reasonable certainty what eventually happened.
At some point, absent any political agenda from any direction, you just have to accept the fact that shit happens and then deal with it as best you can.
Why yes, David, and had you followed the link (those blue letters? They’re called “a link”. Follow it, sort of like a reference in a bibliography) you’d see why.
Good article. I noticed that even with the heat wave that hit us over here on the East Coast, the global warmists haven’t said much about it (See! I told you so!), because the “science” behind their own “Chicken Little” thesis has been discredited. They’ve just settled for a generic term, “climate change.” Yeah, and climate is always “changing.” What’s new? You may as well inveigh against the onset of puberty. Not much that I’ve been able to find. Michael Mann has been “exonerated” of inventing the hockey sticks used by Gore, but everyone seems to know that the investigation into his fraud was a phony drumhead court-martial. It’s much like the JournoList scandal; doctored “news” reporting has been exposed with the same vigor that drove ClimateGate. The accused, over 150 progressives, liberal/leftists, and outright Marxists, aren’t saying much, but their unlisted proxies at the NY Times and WaPO are still yammering.
Sparrowhawk,
let me explain…..
When you said:
“I noticed that even with the heat wave that hit us over here on the East Coast, the global warmists haven’t said much about it (See! I told you so!)”
A heat wave is a weather phenomena. Global warming is a climate phenomena.
Higher AVERAGE temperatures over a period of time constitutes global warming. When polar icecaps thin and shrink in extent, that is a sign of global warming.
When you said:
“Yeah, and climate is always “changing.” What’s new?”
-Substitute weather for “climate” and you’ll be correct.
Mr. Walters: Please don’t lecture me on term usage. “Climate” does change; ice core samples and tree rings are evidence of it. “Climate” is what the fraudsters of East Anglia and Michael Mann and Al Gore and that whole crew were always warning us about (and before that, their predecessors were warning about global cooling). Don’t forget the Medieval Period that the fraudsters conveniently forgot, and other whole chunks of climate change that were suppressed as well. As for the heat wave, that is a minor, transient climate change. I live in Virginia, near Chesapeake Bay, and have for 15 years. The “climate” here does alternate between mild, almost northern California weather, to long bouts of sweltering, sub-tropical heat (which at the moment is abating), to winters that are almost Siberian, and so on. So, a region‘s “climate” can vary from season to season. Call it “weather” if you like.
Sparrowawk,
Sorry about the lecture, but your assertion about the heat wave in the eastern United States (-July was very hot here in North Carolina, yet I’ve seen it hotter)as evidence for anyone to use for climate change is wrong, and i felt oblige to straighten this out.
As a geology student back in the ’70′s we were taught that the possibility for climate change in either direction was a possibility. Yet at that time no conclusive data existed to support either scenario. Now however, data is overwhelming from almost all of the specialists in the fields of climatology that shows we are warming. The present observed change is not consistent with what is naturally expected. Average air and sea temps are rising. Greenland’s icecaps are experiencing more summer melting that has been recorded. Arctic sea ice is thinning, and open water exists where none has ever been recorded. Permafrost is thawing that has not ben witnessed before by natives who have lived there for millennium. Yes, there was a medieval warming, but that warming was not as warm as what we’ve experienced in the mid 20th century. And it’s rising still more as we speak.
“…i felt oblige to straighten this out.”
Good.
“As a geology student back in the ’70’s …”
I was Geology student in High School. Does that count?
“…we are warming. ”
Al Gore’s 2nd Chakra?
“…and open water exists where none has ever been recorded.”
Get up there with some analog tape! Warmth!
“Permafrost is thawing that has not ben witnessed before by natives who have lived there for millennium.”
Are the “natives” immortal?
“And it’s rising still more as we speak.”
Jeez, I knew that girl too from a bar in Boston.
Martin thinks as well as he writes.
David Walters gives us the usual litany of alarmist claims:
however, data is overwhelming from almost all of the specialists in the fields of climatology that shows we are warming.
The surface temperature record is manifestly contaminated with urban heat island effects. See the studies of Ross McKitrick.
The present observed change is not consistent with what is naturally expected.
You mean, it is not consistent with what the climate models predict. The climate models all universally predict the greatest warming to occur in the tropical troposphere. But such is not the case, hence, the models are wrong.
What’s more, the models are incapable of recreating the medieval warm period, no matter what magnitude of warming occurred. Hence, the models clearly do not include all the possible variables that can cause warming.
Greenland’s icecaps are experiencing more summer melting that has been recorded. Arctic sea ice is thinning, and open water exists where none has ever been recorded.
And what you conveniently ignore is that the “recorded history” only goes back to 1979.
Permafrost is thawing that has not ben witnessed before by natives who have lived there for millennium.
Anecdotal “data” carries very little weight in science.
Yes, there was a medieval warming, but that warming was not as warm as what we’ve experienced in the mid 20th century.
False. All such claims about past warming versus current conditions rely on proxy data, which has been shown repeatedly to have significant reliabity problems. See the work of McIntyre and McKitrick.
Michael Smith
“The surface temperature record is manifestly contaminated with urban heat island effects.”
-So how do you explain rising ocean temperatures?
“You mean, it is not consistent with what the climate models predict. The climate models all universally predict the greatest warming to occur in the tropical troposphere. But such is not the case, hence, the models are wrong.”
-No, Your assertion just isn’t true. Some of the highest increases are at very high latitudes.
Ross McKitrick? Seriously, isn’t he an economist? The overwhelming majority of climatologist support the science of global warming…..
Science doesn’t cherry pick. Take some time to study peer reviewed material, and don’t rely on junk science from economists Michael.
The social activists (_NOT_ “scientists”) at first tried to drop “anthropomorphic” from the AGW claim on the grounds that all increases in global temperature are human caused, no matter what else may have caused the increases. Then they tried to change the claim to “climate change”, and still leave off the “anthropomorphic”, on the grounds that all changes are caused by humans.
That’s just the political side.
The AGW crowd has tried to proclaim “The Science Is Settled!”(c)
However:
The scientific method is the first “open source” protocol, and the most unforgiving, that I know of. In order for a science claim to be made, it has to be backed up with full disclosure of everything involved so that someone who wants to check the work or replicate the experiment can do so. Everything, including actual numbers used from the weather recording stations, has to be released to be verified and used. Everything done with the data, including spreadsheets and computer programs (if not commercially availible, and those have to be identified along with the type of processor in the computer) have to be released, to the general public. The people making the initial claims have to be ready and able to defend why they did this, why they left out that, etc, even if the people asking are their worst enemies. (People in the know have described defending a scientific paper as a “blood sport”.) People disputing the claims are also subject to the full disclosure requirement.
The AGW supporters have not defended their work in an open forum. They refuse to release their work. The little those investigating their claims have been able to discover has a very high error content. AGW claims are questionable at best, possibly outright fraud. AGW claims utterly unsupported. They should be ignored until the supporters adhere to the scientific methodology.
We were all under the impression that the government was limiting media access to the area to keep us from seeing how big the oil spill really was. Maybe the opposite was true: the government didn’t want us to know that there really wasn’t much of a catastrophe after all.
Oh, there WAS a catastrophe, but most likely the real reason for the government declaring the area off limits to non-involved marine and air traffic is that there are 3 semi-sub rigs, 1 drillship, a FPSO vessel, a pipe-layer ship, at least half-a-dozen ROV vessels, and a baker’s dozen of smaller OSV “mudboats” and even smaller crewboats out here at any one time.
This is very congested sea-space, with a lot of cables and pipes and such running down to the bottom. The LAST thing anyone here needs is a boatload of joy-riding reporters or eco-kooks trying to get “free TeeVee” for their protest banner.
Almost all of the larger vessels have helidecks, and take at least one helicopter a day apiece, more often two. So the airspace above this watery “patch o’ nowhere” gets pretty busy also.
And the sky is even MORE unforgiving of lolly-gagging dip-shits,(and those who have to share the same airspace with them),than the sea is.
Thank you for clearing that up. I was thinking the same thing as the poster you responded to as soon as I read that the spill was not as bad as proclaimed.
Will Obama use this as a good excuse for his inaction during first two months as the “crisis” unvailed to tell us now that he knew pretty well from the beginning that it was not such a big deal after all, that he was well aware, well in CONTROL (as he assured us as far as I remember)? Well, let see!
Hey! Tex Taylor!
“… instead of the shills at the NYT who can’t find their butt cheeks with both hands.”
Thanks! I loved that!
Unsurprising News: Obamacare, the Groper, and the Gulf
With apologies to the Bard, some news is born worthy of being news, some becomes newsworthy as a result of misinterpretation, and some achieves newsworthiness due to wildly-inflated, distorted exaggerations.
Obamacare: Anyone who believed the Democrat-Obamian sales pitch on Obamacare has to have been an Obama-enamored African-American, a disturbed Democrat with a government sinecure, a chronic user of illicit, mind-altering drugs, or all of the above.
All the horrors of Obama’s signature legislation that its opponents warned about are either coming to pass or are in process, from rationing to death panels to higher costs to the dreaded “public option.” The truth about Obamacare will include both intended consequences, which Obamians will deny, and unintended consequences they will declare total surprises, even shocks.
As one observer wrote, ”Higher costs, longer wait times, inferior care–essentially every nightmare scenario envisioned by Obamacare critics is coming true” and, by design, Obama will be out of office or a lame duck when the major horrors kick in in 2014: http://tiny.cc/8t0o3 . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1815)
Hindsight is usually 20-20.
Not for Barracky Boy.
BC, hindsight is when you won’t stop blaming your predecessor, helpful when you want a smokescreen for your policies.
Don’t despair BC, there is still ample opportunity for your man Hussien to destroy America, chin up & keep smiling.
I don’t know, but this slant sounds far too optimistic to me. Maybe too soon to start writing all this off?
Could someone “knowledgeable” address the issue of the massive amounts of Corexit dumped into the Gulf? Isn’t it highly toxic, with exposure resulting in cancer, birth defects, etc? Won’t the Corexit end up in the water, air, and eventually the food chain. Seems to me that no one addressed this.
Believe me, I’m no fan of the Huffington Post. Just grabbed the paragraphs below to provide an illustration.
“With BP’s well possibly capped for good, and the surface slick shrinking, some observers of the Gulf disaster are starting to let down their guard, with some journalists even asking: Where is the oil?
But the answer is clear: In part due to the1.8 million gallons of dispersant that BP used, a lot of the estimated 200 million or more gallons of oil that spewed out of the blown well remains under the surface of the Gulf in plumes of tiny toxic droplets. And it’s short- and long-term effects could be profound.”
Could someone who understands the Corexit toxicity issue address this?
Thanks.
It’s a little hard to be real precise because the exact formulation is proprietary, but it’s basically light desulfurated petroleum distillates — think something like old-fashioned lighter fluid — as a solvent, and dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a surfactant. Surfactants break up oils and keep them in suspension and are a major component of most usual detergents; this particular one is primarily used otherwise as a laxative, under the name “docusate sodium”.
Generally, the really toxic things are things that are already there in the crude oil, and the other stuff isn’t all that toxic. You wouldn’t want to drink it in large quantities, but you might very well take small quantities on purpose.
As a general rule, its worth remembering that “X is mildly toxic” is a helluva lot more interesting in a headline than “X is mostly harmless.”
If the oil spill was football you could say the federal government was running interference for the spill. Not good.
The total truth about anything is not going to come out of the mouth of the main stream media. It’s their job to lie, exaggerate and take the liberal side of any issue. Their job is to sensationalize any issue that forwards their agenda and ignore anything that doesn’t. Although they do sensationalize some issues just for the sake of fear mongering. This has always been the job of the press. Death, mayhem and doom. In older days people like this were called harbingers of ill will and their job was to scare people with bad news and gloomy outcomes. Have you ever tuned into any news show to hear how few deaths or problems there were…if so you were sadly disappointed. The job of the news was always to spread discord, doubt and anxiety which could also included their own whims or that of their advertisers or supporters, that they have now also become the right arm of the progressive socialist party is not a surprise. That they have abandoned all pretense of objectivity is also not shocking. Anyone who believes totally what is presented in the news is a fool. This is another instance of trust but verify or better yet doubt and verify.
To Benson: How many times must it be explained to right wingers that it is not the “liberal media” but in fact the “corporate media”? Huge difference. If we had a supposed liberal media, Bush would have been re-elected — he was a lot, LOT worse than any of you could possibly imagine. The whole Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame thing was never more than vile, colossal BS implemented by Bush’s people and the GOP supporters that the mainstream corporate media basically did nothing more than a he said/she said thing about it all. Remember Kerry being whacked by the Swift Boaters and all that supposed lying by him about Cambodia? Again complete BS, but you wouldn’t know that by the timid coverage by the corporate media. I remember well seeing GOP toadies on Sunday morning talk shows cavalierly making all sorts of BS statements that an intern with Google could have flagged right but nothing of the sort ever happened.
Nowadays the coverage of Obama is all over the place. People who actually know what’s really going on, and what he’s had to deal with, are very, very glad he’s there and not someone else. But again, as a flip side to poor coverage of what a terrible President Bush was, we almost getting likewise poor coverage of actually how good a job Obama is doing (if you get all your news from the right wing sources, you might as well be reading Pravda in the 60′s for getting balanced journalism.)
The GOP as a whole, has if anything gotten more pandering and unscrupulous than when Bush was President. I don’t think I’ve head a single statement by any GOP politician of late that wasn’t a BS talking point to appease their rabble-ish supporters, and they also as a whole have been MIA in trying to help get things done and fixed for the benefit of the country.
And spare me the eye-rolling catch phrase I’m seeing more and more, usually by Tea Baggers and such, “Let’s take our country back.” From what? People who are trying to fix things and give it back to people without a clue, and who will likely do more damage? That’s basically what will be the logical consequences of such a utterly clueless, benighted notion.
Off your Lithium, huh?
To Sharpshooter: See no logic, hear no logic, speak no logic, eh?
A lot of empty BS BC. You can show that every utterance of a “GOP toadie” is BS, yet you don’t give any specifics. And, even if you did, who cares? All politicians are full of BS, yours too. People who “know” think you’re right, yet you don’t tell us who they are, or how they “know” or give us any proof of what these anonymous jerks actually think. You want to knwo who we want our country back from? We want it back from you jerks who think that claiming to be trying to “fix things” is enough to rebut the notion of a free people.
#27: Anyone who believes totally what is presented in the news is a fool. This is another instance of trust but verify or better yet doubt and verify.
True; and one needs to apply the same methods to the sources from the right as well. The “reality” of the oil spill, and just about everything else has so many facets and pieces of “truth” that virtually any source oversimplifies to make a truth, or just to achieve some coherence.
The news seems almost too good to be true. Obviously, it will take some time to sort out the lasting effects of this spill.
I know what happened to the oil in the gulf – Bush hid it!
Meanwhile back at the Macondo site…the Q4000 has started pumping…and it’s pumping…and it’s pumping.
Hope that this static kill works.
Reading through this thread you’ll notice a very significant pattern emerge.
Folks who seem rather disappointed about the noted absence of visible crude segue into freaking out over the approved chemical dispersant used, and when it’s pointed out that the dispersant is a lot less toxic and a lot more environmentally friendly than the crude, they then turn to an alleged depleted marine oxygen content as a result of the microbial metabolization of the crude oil.
Some folks apparently just WANT something to be worried about…or they want YOU to be worried about, eh?
And not to “miss the bus” and “waste a crisis” the Global Warmening/Climate Changering/”Eeeeeevil Bad Carbon” crew shows up and pitches their particular brand of pig shampoo.
(What’s with you guys? The flush is busted! Throw your cards in and give up your seat at the poker table. You’re not winning this hand.)
It is going to be difficult for a lot of those commercial fishermen to quantify the damages claimed since a great many sell their catch for cash and never declare these earnings.
Heck yes I’d eat the seafood, AND HAVE! Just a month ago my neighbors (both biology professors) were at their camp in the marsh near Grand Isle and using their trial shrimp trawl (6 feet) to make two drags to catch bait shrimp ended up with bait shrimp for a week and 25 pounds of tails. Their week at he camp was one of bountiful crabs, fish & shrimp.
It would have been nice if the author had even mentioned the huge oil spill caused by Saddam when he opened the valves and let the oil flow from Kuwait to create a spill which was quite a few times larger than the BS estimates by “scientists” and the nutjobs. Nature cleaned itself up rather nicely there as well without a “herd of supertankers” to suck it up.
Thankfully, there has never been any late 60′s/early 70′s LSD ever in my system to call up weird and fantastical hallucinations of environmental disaster.
8/06/2010 update;
The Miami Herald has an article about the ‘loop current’ that never was, saying that there was an ‘eddy’ that broke off and carried the oil in a different direction.
I really want to know how much time and money was spent on supporting this complete fallacy. These liars will go to any length to find support for their fairy tales.
Journalism was a respectable profession. These people can’t even write a decent letter to mom.
There IS such a thing as the Loop current.
I’ve seen it when heading south out of Louisiana, it exists.
http://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/atlantic/loop-current.html
Like a lot of what has happened with this spill, some clown with a line to the media got a hold of a fact, and then stretched it all out of shape to fit their Eco-Doomsday narrative.
And the media isn’t about fact-checking, but rather about getting the story so that they sell advertising.
Oil Spill Eater II
Testing of OSE II by Dr. Tsao of British Petroleum
BioChem Strike Team Leader
Regarding the Effectiveness of OSE II Remediating Oil from Deepwater Horizon, Blow Out, Gulf of Mexico
British Petroleum tested Oil Spill Eater II at Louisiana State University. Relevant sections of BP’s BCST (Bio Chem Strike Team) test results are posted.
British Petroleum formed the Bio Chem Strike Team (BCST). Under the direction of Dr. Tsao, BCST was established in response to the Deepwater Horizon incident by the Alternative Response Technology (ART) program. The BCST consisted of experts from BP, LSU, LDEQ (Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality), USCG (U.S. Coast Guard), OSPR (California), SCAT, and highly experienced oil spill response consultants. Furthermore, BCST operated in conjunction EPA and NOAA.
The tests were conducted with Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometry EPA test procedures. PAH and Alkane degradation was quantified.
OSE II showed a great ability to remediate PAH’s, and Alkanes. By the conclusion of the testing time frame, OSE II remediated 80% of both components of the oil. Based on total concentration levels of the PAH’s OSE II actually remediated 200 %of the PAH’s or 162% of the total of both oil fractions.
released by BP which ended up in Bay Jimmy, Louisiana.
This test by a major oil company is the second major testing of OSE II on two of the largest spills on water in the history of Earth caused by Man. Exxon tested OSE II in 1989 and discovered OSE II was the most effective product on Alaskan Crude oil from the Valdez spill.
BP has now successfully tested OSE II on their spill in the Gulf of Mexico which is over 600,000,000 gallons of oil spilled.
Dr. Tsao wrote “After nearly one year since the Deepwater Horizon spill, residual weathered oil remains in many locations. The need for a field trial to establish operational criteria for final bioremediation work plans should be initiated before early Spring 2011.”
The OSEI Corporation after over 16,000 spill clean ups in the past 21½ years, stated the logistics in regard to the successful application of OSE II were worked out some time ago.
The remediation of the PAH’s also verifies that OSE II is an effective first response bioremediation product, and has benefits:
) causes the oil to float which limits the negative toxic impact to the water column or ocean floor of the oil and dispersant
) reduction of the adhesion properties so the oil cannot stick to birds, grass, rock or sand on shorelines
) elimination of fire hazard
) proven non-toxic by the numerous toxicity tests, you can safely wash your hands with it, the TV news program in which Retired Rear Admiral Lively drank some of it
) OSE II causes the oil to float, because of the method in which it goes to work on the oil, it is still very difficult to see
) defined end point of turning the oil into water and CO2
OSE II is the best and only needed oil spill response that will, even at this late date, remediate oil and dispersant currently in the Gulf.
-You forgot to mention that metabolizing the compounds depletes the dissolved oxygen content of the water…most life in the Gulf’s food chain requires oxygen.
“hello. i do not mean to ridicule your observations in a negative manner, but a small tactical nuclear explosion would have caused less damage than a bunker buster on your precious infrastructure; and both would have ended the devastation on day 5.”
And you would know this…how? Where and when have you been involved in setting off small tactical nuclear explosions?
You DO know that a 13 kiloton yield weapon is considered a “tactical” nuke today, yes? Hiroshima can today be effected with an artillery piece.
As far as ending the devastation, and assuming that the oil infrastructure survives the seismic and hydraulic shock…and that the burst doesn’t open any fissures around the well-bore to allow EVEN more oil to escape, there would be the issue of radioactive isotopes of iodine and other such interesting “pollutants” created and released by the nuclear blast.
I guess SOME folks would rather their fish pre-microwaved than marinated in crude oil, but then there ain’t no accounting for taste, is there?
“and constantly breathing toxic dispersant and sweet crude, you are allowed a wider berth than land locked moonbat, spittle flecked, glaze hole Demoncrats: whom only want clean, safe, abundant hydrogen energy to replace the oil barons, and many of you employees of theirs.”
Nuclear Fusion, huh? That’s about about 40 years out…and has been about 40 years out for about the past 40 years.
Maybe I can get y’all a nice pony…will that do for your transportation and energy needs? You can ride it and then snuggle up with it on cold winter nights. And it’s very eco-friendly, except for the methane and horse-shit emissions.
As for the rest of your mildly entertaining ad hominem rant, I might consider responding to it, but since you seem more interested in arguing with a BeePee corporate strawman instead of a contracted working bilgeman, I’ll just tack out of the course track between yourself and that yonder windmill you’d apparently rather be tilting at.
And while you doubtless will have yourself a grand old time of it….know this:
I am actively and intimately involved in stopping the leak and sealing the well.
I take no small measure of satisfaction in the fact that I’m helping to disappoint you from the global environmental armageddon you rather obviously had hoped for.
Sorry, Charlie…maybe next time.
David Walters asserted:
-You forgot to mention that metabolizing the compounds depletes the dissolved oxygen content of the water…most life in the Gulf’s food chain requires oxygen.
Is there any evidence to suggest that the depletion of dissolved oxygen by the metabolizing of oil is of sufficient magnitude to threaten much of the life in the Gulf’s food chain? If so, why don’t you present that evidence so we may evaluate it? Or are you content to merely leave us with a vague suggestion of impending doom?