Well I'm not an expert but these look toxic to me.
Posted on 07/14/2010 2:37:29 AM PDT by combat_boots
Last week, scientists from a University of Georgia weighed in with their findings on methane gas in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Yesterday, more opinions from other experts were published. Texas A&M University has also had a team on the Gulf and also finds exceptionally high methane levels in the water. Reuters: Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler, just back from a 10-day research expedition near the BP Plc oil spill in the gulf, says methane gas levels in some areas are “astonishingly high.”
Kessler’s crew took measurements of both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP’s broken wellhead.
“There is an incredible amount of methane in there,” Kessler told reporters in a telephone briefing.
In some areas, the crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal.
(Excerpt) Read more at uncoverage.net ...
“I thought you were talking about the oil under the surface of the sand or mud where the shellfish live.”
thats one of the areas of concern. I fail to see how that oil will disperse in 2-3 years without some kind of manual intervention.
Cleaning up that sand for the hundreds of miles of affected coastline is a monumental challenge.
“As far as methane amounts in the Gulf due to Methane Hydrate, the amounts that are being time released into the water, fully dwarf the overall amounts that this well has released or ever will release.”
So this spill releases massive amounts of methane, and yet the overall amount of methane decreases?
If their claim is true the air they tested was 17% methane. That’s above the upper explosive limit of 15%, so they missed dying in an explosion.
But why didn’t they suffocate? Something stinks here, and it’s not the methane.
That sounds like a job for The EPA. They're just sitting around picking their noses and looking at porn anyway.
They need to send every employee of that worthless agency down there with hand tools and have them earn their oversized paychecks.
You don’t listen very well do you.
Perhaps, in any case 50-100 yrs does fall under the definition of “eventually”
My case is it would be more like 2 yrs since the oil is of a finer grade and will evaporate far more quickly than the heavier crude
I thought it was the dept of interior that looked at porn. the EPA is too busy inventing new regulations making breathing illegal.
No I listen fine. You said there is a huge amount of methane released naturally. Your inference was that the spill amount didn’t have an impact.
I disagree with you.
Replacements from unaffected areas will rapidly occupy the ecological niches by in-migration. Evidently, the total unaffected population is so large relative to the affected one that such in-migration decrease from the "supplying" population is lost in the statistics of natural population variability. This is one of the main reasons the EPA decided to allow the dispersant use. "In-migration" is obviously much faster offshore than on.
"Shellfish populations have been decimated. The oil has contaminated the sand surroudning their habitat. How will that subsurface oil evaporate or be cleaned out of the shellfish that have survived?"
If the oil is subsurface (below the soil/sea interface), then it can't affect the recovering shellfish, now can it?? And the oil will be cleaned out of the surviving shellfish by the same detoxification mechanism(s) that they use to handle natural oil at low levels.
Instead of making asinine comments, why don't you go and READ the actual science in the study.
I swam in the GOM two weeks ago in Rockport, Texas with my 4 yr old son. It was quite nice.
Have you ever been to an Ocean?
“Have you ever been to an Ocean?”
My screenname is driftdiver and you ask that question?? Your credibility just went out the window.
“Minimizing the damage which is being done by this spill is naive at best”
Oh my GOD we are all gonna DIE...!
EVERY DROP of oil that has spilled out of the leak to date would fit into a cube of space just 330 feet by 330 feet by 330 feet, barely bigger than a football field tall by a football field wide by a football field high. This is a pin head size problem in two side by side olympic pools.
(75,000 barrels per day X 42 gallons per barrel X 85 days divided by 7.5 gallons per cube foot = 35,700,000 cubic feet. A cube 330 feet by 330 feet by 330 feet has 35,937,000 cubic feet.) ......$@(#*#*
We have a lot of freeprs with their heads in the sand and they are going to keep them there with hostility.
Your screenname? Oh well, excuse me, I didn’t realize that a screenname carried such weight. You know you just don’t pick those out of thin air! If you are such an expert, then you know that the Ocean is constantly cleaning itself. They’re called “currents”.
BTW, my screenname is Republic of Texas but that doesn’t make me Sam Houston.
Unfortunately its not all in one great big cube. Its spread over hundreds of miles of beach, wetlands, and water surface.
But you’re the expert. This isn’t a problem, just let it keep spewing. no harm no foul.
Well you could have admitted your error and apologized, so much for civility.
Currents move things, they don’t clean things up. So the oil that is in one place gets moved until it hits something it sticks to. Like a beach, coral, animals, boats, wetlands.
And yes drift diving (aka driftdiver) is a form of scuba diving. Dift diving is where the scuba diver jumps off into the OCEAN and floats (aka drift) with the CURRENT.
I like it because I really enjoy looking at all the things this oil is killing.
Have you ?
“We have a lot of freeprs with their heads in the sand and they are going to keep them there with hostility.”
Yeah, I just cannot understand that attitude. The economies of the gulf states are being hit very hard. The spill is being used by the administration to further their marxist agenda. One of the biggest companies in the world is discussing bankruptcy because of the spill. Thousands of fish, birds and other wildlife have been killed.
But its really no big deal?
Too far away. I was just checking for the source of methane.
The concise Brittanica Encyclopedia estimates the surface of the Gulf of Mexico to be 1,550,000 km2 that is 1,550,000,000,000 m2 e maximum depth of the Gulf is 5203 m.
The average depth is somwhere between 0 and that value. I guess 1/4 the maximum depth (because it gave me an almost round number) of 1300 m. Multiplying 1,550,000,000,000 m2 x 1300m = 2.015 x 10 E 15 m3 or 5.3 X 10 E 17 USGallons (give or take 1223gallons) or about 650 Quadrillion gallons (650,000,000,000,000,000). The leak so far is 75,000 X 42 X 85 = 267,750,000 gallons or said another way, just 2.7 parts per 6,500,000,000 (six point five BILLION) .....Oil isn’t considered toxic until it reaches 10 parts per million.
ping Evening star
BLITZER: David Kessler, I don’t know if you him. He is a professor at Texas A&M University. He is quoted as saying this. And I will put it up on the screen.
“This is most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history.”
You think he is right?
OVERTON: He may know a lot more about that than I do. I’m not a methane expert, but there is certainly an awful lot of carbon going into the water column. There’s no question about it. There is just an awful lot of water out there.
And so it sounds like to me it is a bit of an overstatement.
BLITZER: What would the methane potentially do if it were to continue to come up in huge numbers to sea life, for example?
OVERTON: Well, it is not very toxic. What it does is bacteria will degrade the methane and use up oxygen in the degradation, so — and this is what I was referring to when you — when we measure the amount of dissolved oxygen at depth.
And, so far, those measurements have not showed significant lowering of the dissolved oxygen, maybe 10, 20, 30 percent, but not down to zero, so most calculations show that it is probably not going to be reduced to zero. You have to have a D.O. concentration, it is three or four or five parts per million and at depths, and it would have to go near zero to produce dead zones.
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1006/18/sitroom.02.html
When people on our side freak out and say it will never be cleaned up, or it will take 100 years, they are playing into the hands of the left. That argument will be used against us in the future, just as it is now with the Global Warming fraud.
My main point of contention is with the media. If this were a Republican Administration, they would be going nuts. Now you can't even take pictures. Eventually the left is going to use quotes like yours to go after BP. By that I mean drive them out of business or take them over and that won't help one single Person or Dolphin or Oyster on the planet. They are already using this to kill the oil industry, and that will hurt the economy and the people of the Gulf region more than this accident ever will. Play into their hands if you like, I won't do it.
Well I'm not an expert but these look toxic to me.
‘When people on our side freak out and say it will never be cleaned up, or it will take 100 years, they are playing into the hands of the left. “
No, they are playing on the side of being rational. Minimizing the spill and its effects is helping Obama further his marxist agenda.
This spill and the inept response is his fault.
//Thousands of fish, birds and other wildlife have been killed//
Thousands? Talk millions, everything the oil/dispersant has touched is dead and gone, and it is in a 3 dimensional column in the Gulf.
The only way the Gulf can recover is if somehow the Texas coast is not hit to hard. I have been down to port Lavaca and the Whooping Crane has made a comeback there. You never seen a bird so big!! I would hate to see them go away.
“You never seen a bird so big!! ‘
We have herons that fly over our house every morning. hearing their calls and whoosh of their wings is cool. They stand about 4 feet tall as they walk through your lawn looking for something to eat.
I could not agree more, but you do know the left will use comments out of context? He should be vilified daily over this thing but it will never happen, however one day a Republican will be in charge again and our comments about 100 year cleanups will be used to kill the oil industry. Actually that is happening right now.
(The shore of) Prince William Sound is essentially unpopulated compared to the Gulf of Mexico. There is a generation of people and animals that lives on the Gulf NOW. Sophomoric assurances about the future do little to improve their mood.
We don’t have pictures of millions of starving children as a result of NOT having oil as a cheap energy source do we. We also do not have pictures of billions of human beings living lives far below the scale they are at now because we are NOT drilling for oil.
We never know the cost of NOT drilling do we, we just seem to pounce on the cost of an accident while drilling. Same as in war: liberals complain about the cost of going to war, but never NEVER want to discuss the COST OF DOING NOTHING.....!
PS; Who was taking pictures the last time an earthquake released billions upon billions of gallons of oil...
You think that that huge energy battery called the earths oil supply hasn’t leaked b4?
Like I said before, I don’t worship birds, animals, or mammals. I believe in humanity.
The leftists are seeking to close down oil production regardless of this spill. They will use anything possible to further their attacks.
‘Like I said before, I don’t worship birds, animals, or mammals. I believe in humanity.”
I believe in God, and God has commanded us to take care of what he has given us.
I don’t worship animals but realize that humanity needs them to survive.
You write: “andGod has commanded us to take care of what he has given us.”
What number commandment would that be? I must have missed that.
I was pretty sure he just gave us dominion over his creations, free will, and those other 10 commandments.......
Well the Bible does have a little bit more in it then just the 10 commandments.
So then it should be easy to tell me exactly where “God has commanded us to take care of what he has given us” in the Bible and but then forgot to add it as number 11....
After Katrina, the squirrels in my neighborhood were GONE! Today we are overran with them.
Genesis 1, Verse 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 2, Verse 15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
Hebrews 2, Verse 8 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.
Those are the quotes. Pleae don’t do what other environmentalists do and try to put words in God’s mouth...as to what he REALLY meant...!
You really need to hush up, and fast, before those idiots hear you!
Exactly. So why help them by adopting their language?
Good one.
well then that there is proof
Yeah, I get what you're saying. Just like my mood can turn a bit foul when someone referes to my considered opinion as "sophomoric"
So, in keeping eith the label you have hung on me, let me simply say, GFY.
This answer I really like.
I’m not an engineer, but I do like your calculations.
Tnx.
She’s gonna blow, Cap’n and we can not do a thing to stop it!
Millions of Migratory Birds Are Flying Right Into Oily Morass
Excerpt: Hundreds of thousands of endangered birds will die. "There are millions of birds at risk, says Ken Rosenberg, conservation science director at Cornell Lab of Ornithology * * *
more like 80%. I’m here and have been for 30 years. I see more cars in the condo lots during January than now.
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