Gulf Oil Spill Another Extinction-Level HOAX?

Personally, here on the West Coast, I don't see the MSM spinning this thing like you say Doc. In fact, if you ask me, there's far too little information being given out about this, and most of the time the rig story is buried behind the bomb that never blew, or some other local horse crap. Plus, the information being released is FAR too conflicting.
If you think this is not going to have some very serious repercussions environmentally, economically, and psychologically for this country you are very seriously deluded. Of course, that also depends on how much oil is really gushing up out of that well head and for how long.
ELE??? No, not necessarily. Drinking a shot glass of sweet crude might not kill you either...but I guarantee, it's certainly going to disturb the balance of things. Anyone on here NOW, spouting this garbage based on "BEING around oil all their life" BLAH BLAH BLAH, BEFORE this is over...Well it's like seeing a hurricane forming off the coast and saying
"I've seen rainstorms before, it's nothing to worry about..."
Your logic and your argument are completely flawed, and way too premature.

Doc...GREAT POST!

I disagree with you to some extent, but still a great first hand account.

I have also experienced what you describe, but that in itself is a crime! It should be unacceptable! The West, and the US in particular has a ton of fairly new health complications that are unexplained. We have been ingesting this stuff either through the air, water, or fish supply for years. It is still toxic and unacceptable.

Now, the current scenario has the added problem of gumming up 100's or 1000's of miles of shoreline, wetlands, nesting grounds, and killing mammals that breath by surfacing through the muck to get air. This will be devastating.

Just last night, some news channels were agreeing with you that it naturally disperses, and that a lot of sealife is capable of processing the crude without dying. For example, Oysters process this stuff, and it is retained in their flesh. It concentrates in about a 10:1 ratio. So, if they ingest a drop of it over and over through time, and then they get harvested in the Apalachicola Bay, and brought to my favorite Oyster Spot, Barnacle Bills, and I eat about 2 dozen of them, then that is 24 Oysters x 1 drop x 10:1 ratio, equals 240 drops of crude oil ingested! Now, if I also happen to eat some fish that week, and breath the ocean air, and swim at the beach, etc., etc. I wonder what my ingestion rate is. Am I consuming a quart a week? A gallon a month?

They will suspend all fishing and Oystering in these bays, and it will crush industries. Plus, there were already water-usage lawsuits in place. Apalachicola Bay for example is in a lawsuit with Atlanta, GA over watershed runoff. If they suspend Oystering in the Bay, Atlanta will use it as ammunition to keep more of the fresh water, and thus change the salinity of the Bay, and having a ton of unintended consequences.

This spill will destroy industry, wildlife, beaches, real estate and economies. Then, opportunists will take advantage of the situation to get their own special projects approved and destroy more of the coastline industries. Then, oil companies and insurance companies will capitalize on the opportunities presented. Then, the government will make a political statement by taking a hard stance and winning political points, all the while financing the very people they are regulating and punishing. EVERYONE INVOLVED GETS RICH EXCEPT THE WILDLIFE, RESIDENTS, AND BLUE COLLAR WORKERS, AND BEACH ENTHUSIASTS! WE GET SCREWED AS USUAL!!

Hi all this is my first reply to a post here on ATS.

Just wanted to let u guys know and i dont know if u allready know this

OIL SPILLING IN NATURE IS NEVER AND I MEAN NEVER A GOOD THING.
IF IT'S 1 LITER OR 1000 LITERS OR A MILLION LITERS!!!!!

And i agree with the OP on the green media #.
But i think its time and i think it has bin time for many years now to stop poluting nature in any way.

TruThS33Kr

Doc;

Very good topic. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is a hoax, however it is being hyped far more than it should be, that I agree.

Now I have never been to Texas, I live about as far away from there you can in N America, but I do know about the oilfield.

I worked on drilling rigs, and then followed my career into oilfield safety. I have seen blowouts that couldn't be capped for days, and crude oil being pumped into the sky, onto the forest & marshland. I have seen H2S (Hydrogen Sulphide) otherwise known as 'sour gas' be pumped into the forest due to malfunctioning equipment.

An oil well blowout that released fluids into a muskeg northeast of Edmonton posed no danger to the public, Alberta's energy regulator said.

The EnCana well released about 20,000 barrels of fluids —

source


This is not that scary. Bad? yes. Scary? no. It will be capped, fuel prices will jump, the rich will get richer, and we laymen will continue too pay for it.

Just my thoughts though.

Shade.

I like this thread. Seems oil spills are far more common then we are led to believe. Thanks for the info doc.

reply to post by Doc Velocity



Ok Doc I heard today on the BBC that latest estimates are potentially more than 250000 BARRELS of oil that's what about 10000000 gallons of crude a day getting pumped up from 5000ft as it rises it pollutes the water it passes through.

I accept that oil is natural and biodegradable but how long will it take to clear 90 days worth of 10 000 000 gallons a day and how far can it spread before it biodegrades.

Saying it's natural nothing to worry about forgets that extinction is a natural event.

Out of interested, who exactly is suggesting this oil spill - which looks like being even worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster - is an extinction level event? Do they really think all humans along with most other life on the planet is all going to die?

It's an ecological disaster for the Gulf coast - as the Valdez was for the Alaskan coast.

There is oil leaking from most oil rigs and most ships in the ocean, but each spill is vastly smaller and it's only when a huge amount is concentrated in one small area that we humans start to appreciate just how little respect we show our planet.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
For example, Oysters process this stuff, and it is retained in their flesh. It concentrates in about a 10:1 ratio. So, if they ingest a drop of it over and over through time, and then they get harvested in the Apalachicola Bay, and brought to my favorite Oyster Spot, Barnacle Bills, and I eat about 2 dozen of them, then that is 24 Oysters x 1 drop x 10:1 ratio, equals 240 drops of crude oil ingested! Now, if I also happen to eat some fish that week, and breath the ocean air, and swim at the beach, etc., etc. I wonder what my ingestion rate is. Am I consuming a quart a week? A gallon a month?

Your math is not making much sense to me. Where are you getting that every oyster you eat has 10 drops of crude oil in it? Because of a 10:1 ratio? If anything, I would assume that ratio is water (10 parts) to oil (one part). So, if there were 10 drops of water in your oyster, there would be one drop of oil. But, as vast as the oceans are, I don't see any way even that ratio would be possible. Where are you getting this "ratio" from? Source?

I tried to find info about this, but the only relevant link I could find was to your post.

Has anyone even been to the site yet?

All I am getting is the feed from the corporate and government propaganda departments.

I think they blew up a rig, poured some oil around, and now will use it to stop America from drilling oil in the Gulf.

A few months later China will take over operations.

Scam.

reply to post by CDippa


Well, "one drop" isn't a very scientific measurement either, lol! That is the info from the MSNBC show that I was watching last night. Apparently the Oysters (they gave other examples, but I like Oysters) slowly ingest a little each day. Over time it multiplies in their body up to a certain point. As an example, they said a 10:1 concentration. If they ingest 1 drop, then it will become a 10 drop concentration in their flesh over time.

Lots and lots of fish and invertebrates serve as filtering media, so they will help to clean up the water supply, but at the same time they are poisoning the food supply? Now, if nature works as it usually does to undo man's mistakes, then we are looking a few years of banned seafood from the Gulf and nothing more. However, if we overwhelm these natural resources, then we are looking at a whole lot worse!

I agree there are probably more oil spills in the world from ships and rigs and whatever that we are being told off.

But i disagree with the point made by the OP thats its all naturall and will disolve eventualy (it probably will).
Every oil spill is 1 to much.
Its not good for nature at all even if its a natural resource.

And probably the green media is going to exploid this to jack u off ur hard earned dollars or euro's.

But the thing is this whole oilconsumption world we live in is bin long overdue.

TruThS33Kr

reply to post by getreadyalready


Fair enough, I don't have evidence to dispute that, but I just highly doubt you would even be able to eat an oyster without vomiting if it had 10 drops of crude oil in it. I can believe they filter the crude oil, but the amount of oil you claim they contain does not seem right to me.

Okay, If I understand it correctly you claim that a little oil is fairly harmless.. Like acid rain. Not desirable but nature overcomes it. So when a little rain becomes a lot of rain, you get floods.. Like in Tennessee, right? So rain can actually become a problem. Do you agree with me there?

Now if we take a 'little' bit of oil leaking on a daily basis that adds up to a lot but still, the crude that is toxic evaporates quickly and the crude that doesn't, but also is less toxic, remains and washes ashore. This nature can deal with, up to a point. Now, I agree that they don't exactly know how much oil there is being leaked but it is a hell of a lot more than little leaks that you show on the example photo.

No, this gusher is 5' wide and the oil is coming out under great deal of pressure. They failed to repair it and there will be hundreds of thousands of gallons gushing out but could be as much as 2 million. It is an astonishing amount of oil as the pics of the slick shows and the bad thing is, it won't be contained until at least three months from now.

There is now an awful lot of oil that nature has to deal with ALL AT ONCE and yeah it will cause death, destruction and economic malaise.



[edit on 4/5/10 by Lebowski achiever]

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Seriously? A hoax? I think it's pretty well established that there's no hoax here. There really was an oil rig... really... a real one. It really did explode, there was fire and everything. It really was connected, with a real, tangible pipeline, to a massive, high pressure crude oil reserve. That real oil, is now really flowing into the sea, for real.

Maybe you should have titled your thread "Gulf Oil Spill: No big deal.". Then, your title would fit perfectly with your comments about how trivial the whole matter is. Maybe you could elaborate a little more though. Tell us how a nice, thick coating of crude helps the sea birds stay drier. Tell us all about how the nutrients found in the crude will supercharge the food chain in the Gulf. Just tell us it's all going to be fine, y'know, since you've seen oil in the Gulf your whole life.

Seriously. It's like you're saying forest fires are no big deal, because you've seen people light matches safely your whole life.

Well geee wizzz Doc, i'm convinced.

Sign me up for a dozen gulf coast oysters and a few of them "male Blue Crabs exhaling thick brown globs" YUMMM!!!!

On the other hand i'll stick to nice clean AUSTRALIAN sea food if it's all the same to you.

Not that the oil spill/leak is a good thing but to put it into perspective...

sciedsociety.blogspot.com... into-ocean-documented.html

Twenty years ago, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was exiting Alaska's Prince William Sound when it struck a reef in the middle of the night. What happened next is considered one of the nation's worst environmental disasters: 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the pristine Alaskan waters, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean. Now, imagine 8 to 80 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident.

According to new findings by scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), that's how much oil has made its way into sediments offshore from petroleum seeps near Coal Oil Point off Goleta, Calif., in the Santa Barbara Channel. These natural seeps release some 20 to 25 tons of oil daily, "providing an ideal laboratory to investigate the fate of oil in the coastal ocean," says oceanographer David Valentine of UCSB.

www.csmonitor.com... 03-hfks.html

European explorers reported the seeps as early as 1775. In 1793, George Vancouver, an early European explorer to California, noted in his journal that the sea off Goleta, near what is today Santa Barbara, was "covered with a thick, slimy substance, which, when separated or disturbed by any little agitation, became very luminous...."

www.manhattan-institute.org...

www.searchanddiscovery.net... acts/hedberg2002/kvenvolden01/kvenvolden01.htm

Thus a revised estimate of the global seepage rate was calculated based on assumptions concerning the amount of crude oil known to be present that could seep over reasonable periods of geologic time. The new estimates ranged between 20,000 and 2,000,000 mt/a, with a ‘best estimate’ of 200,000 mt/a (2).

So the Earth has been seeping crude oil into the oceans at a rate of possibly millions of tons per year for centuries. While our spills are not a good thing, the Earth seems to be able to handle it. It may cause a mess but will hardly kill the worlds oceans.

[edit on 4-5-2010 by Primordial]


[edit on 4-5-2010 by Primordial]

reply to post by TruThS33Kr

Let me say, hello and welcome to the fray.

I don't consider myself a "greeny" but I could not agree with you more.

Maybe those who seem to think this blow out is not much of a deal should think of just opening up an artery the next time they get a paper cut.

I know such an action would not be very smart but neither would simply dismissing the possible devestation brought on by the current problem.

Just in case I have misread any of the previous posts, maybe the posters should re-read them in a better light.

reply to post by Primordial


And doctors and nurses have been pricking fingers to draw blood for a century.

So, what are you going to say when your doc walks in with a cleaver and says "don't worry, it seems that the human body can handle a little bleeding..."?

I'd say you've got to be kidding. Not every news story is a hoax - this threat is real and an ecological disaster in the making.

If you don't believe it, I'd suggest that you go down to the Gulf yourself and volunteer to help out on one of the fishing boats that are helping to contain this massive spill.

Originally posted by Doc Velocity

And that's why it's my firm opinion that this "catastrophic" oil leak in the Gulf is a bunch of hogwash. Another environmental hoax being perpetrated in order to advance the Green Agenda

What an odd and cynical argument you put forth. One that is premised on the idea that we're being polluted and poisoned for decades and that somehow this spill isn't that bad in comparison. It is an argument that is essentially based on asking one to concede that the existing and ongoing Gulf pollution is acceptable. In your attempt to minimize the grave consequences of this massive spill, you have in fact made the perfect case for the "green agenda" and for alternative energy.

You're a hippie environmentalist and you didn't even know it.