Posted on 06/18/2010 5:41:00 AM PDT by numberonepal
It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits...
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Don't tell the eco-weenies, but that leak has already dumped more methane into the atmosphere than a hundred years of cow farts...
Most journalists can’t do math ... science with math is worse - this is AP after all...
Nuke it? Why not just light that fart with a match!
I try to stay away from Oil Drum, cuz the prevalence of ‘government education’ is so high and the comments are so inane.
Methane as a solute in salt water is only gonna be about 20 ppm, and it DOES NOT displace dissolved O2 in the water. A modicum of understanding of gas laws would tell you that.
Plus the article calls methane a major component of ‘natural gas’, and also calls it a “dangerous gas”. GEESH, methane *IS* natural gas, not a major component of it (except for the PPB odorants) and TELL ME WHY methane is a “dangerous gas”.
And the guy was reporting from Montana.
What, it's not "spewing" any more??? Did the media actually discover that there are other descriptive words than "spew" for the leak.
While I understand what you mean, they really do rail on about the slightest thing... The Gulf is a little different in that there really IS a lot of ‘fragile’ ecosystems affected by the Gulf. Most especially the swamps and marshes that are near the Gulf and the mouths of rivers. From what I understand, oysters are fragile too.
And regardless of what you think about liberals screaming about every frog and stupid minnow (I’m speaking of the San Juaquin (sp) valley losing water to keep a minnow ‘safe’), I really don’t want to eat fish, shrimp or anything else out of methane soaked waters. Not to mention if this could effect PEOPLE on the coast.
Last... I have posted a comment on several threads about the fear that methane was leaking from the gulf floor. Beyond the methane being the cause of the explosion, methane is scarier in a bigger way.
Methane is a carrier of hydrogen sulfides. Hydrogen sulfides is believed to be the cause of the dinosaur extinction as geological layering shows a layer of hydrogen sulfides at the time the dinosaurs became extinct. Scary scary stuff.
http://aapgbull.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/90/5/701
. Methane acts as a carrier gas for hydrogen sulfide produced by thermal sulfate reduction and/or thermal decomposition of sulfur compounds in kerogen or oil. Methane seeps in potentially explosive amounts, and hydrogen sulfide is over the levels necessary to induce toxicological diseases and lethal effects.
Sorry for shouting .. this just all pi$$es me off soooo much ;-)
...the Russian nuke experiance indicates otherwise
No PROBLEM! :)
A lot of folks have signed up at Oil Drum recently to show their ignorance. However, there are some very knowledgeable folks there. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Do you have any suggestions for professional drilling forums besides Oil Drum?
Soro's has closed access to our largest source of domestic oil, so his Brazil deal can lead the race.
It an old fashion crooked horse race.
And we need to get down and dirty if we're going to stand a chance in this bar room brawl!
We can do it if we take off our old church lady uniforms.
Rubbish
Hydrogen sulfide is considered a broad-spectrum poison, meaning that it can poison several different systems in the body, although the nervous system is most affected. The toxicity of H2S is comparable with that of hydrogen cyanide. It forms a complex bond with iron in the mitochondrial cytochrome enzymes, thereby blocking oxygen from binding and stopping cellular respiration.
Since hydrogen sulfide occurs naturally in the body, the environment and the gut, enzymes exist in the body capable of detoxifying it by oxidation to (harmless) sulfate.[6] Hence, low levels of sulfide may be tolerated indefinitely.
autumn —
I gotta stop you where you are. You wrote you didn’t want to eat seafood from “methane soaked waters”.
Methane is a gas. It is odorless, colorless AND tasteless, and it is NON-TOXIC. Methane would be undetectable to a human as a solute in ANY food or beverage. And it would be harmless. NET: there is no such thing as methane soaked waters, and even if there were, it is harmless to ingest.
BTW, every breath you take from the earth’s atmosphere contains methane, and it does you no harm.
Secondly methane is not a ‘carrier’ of H2S. ALL gases mix and dissolve in each other. That’s a physical gas law. The atmosphere is a ‘carrier’ of H2S— (H2S is also a gas, just like methane.) The presence or release of methane does not cause or act as a harbinger of a dangerous release of H2S. Don’t worry yourself that methane somehow makes H2S worse. Either the well releases H2S or it doesn’t — that’s a mix of geology and biology.
Bear in mind that the human nose is extraordinarily sensitive to H2S — we can smell it down to single digit parts per billion (IIRC). We smell it at low tide. We smell it in natural gas leaks (or derivatives of it) because the manufacturers add it to the odorless methane ... so we can detect the leak.
NET: don’t worry about H2S just because the well is releasing methane.
Insert tin foil:
We've been fooled again. Instead of Iran shipping a nuke in a shipping container off the east coast, launching it and setting off an EMP detonation over Michagan, they changed their plans: Install a closet muslim president, botch an environmental disaster, and then send a suicide bomber to light up a cig in off the LA coast.
I think there are a lot of old church ladies prepared to fight for freedom than the current generation of metrosexual men, happy with their bread and circuses. But I think that was your point anyway.
oh, if it were Bush...
No, I'm just amused at the number of people who claim to be of Cherokee ancestry. Those damned Cherokees must really have gotten around.
Same here.
It might take 50 or so posts, but pretty quickly most any claim of ‘fact’ is fully dissected here at FR. Amazing the diversity of knowledge amongst the posters.
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