OILPOCALYPSE!? (lets get real), page 8

June 12 2010 Update: We have had Gulf oil spills of up to 3,000,000 barrels (49 gal.p/brl x 3,000,000 = 147,000,000 gals.) with the Ixtox I oil spill owned by Mexico as recently as 1980.

Deepwater is a game changer because it reached our southern coast and is making us all assess our personal actions and what we will expect and demand from off shore drillers.

Ixtox I was over 500 miles from the LA coast and caught favorable currents keeping it off shore only because Texas had two months to prepare for the onslaught, which it did with floats and booms. Eventually what can evaporate, evaporates, leaving residual tarry balls that sink.

It's not likely we can de-link from oil consumption or need to. We are all becoming oil engineers and aware of a lot more of the safety considerations needed for oil exploration. While the oil companies have focused on rig and platform safety there has been little incentive to focus on disaster containment and oil spill clean up technologies. It's evident that the free market supply and demand for extraordinary oil spill disaster response needs government leadership through some politically manageable incentives.

While the Coast Guard has traditionally been assigned coastal and waterway environmental response, they should be working with a design and testing clearing house within the US Naval Architect and Ocean Engineering NAOE. We're all on the same team. Solve this obvious turf battle and lets move on.The mission to implement clean-up should likely remain with the Coast Guard, but the equipment testing and development is better vested in our nation's parent service, the Navy, as the level of priority assigned to US ecological marine disaster response works its way up the list of national priorities.

We can expect one of these disasters every 10 to 20 years. We are a long way from having a strategy in place to deal with oil spills quickly. We need to develop a contingency war plan and NAOE should be that campus and testing lab that serves as the clearing house for our nations clearn-up response. Turf battles may need to be settled before real progress can be made.

Relying on the underfunded Coast Guard to hold all the answers is an unreasonable expectation when they have no funding to operate a testing lab on an ongoing basis. NAOE on the other hand was set up in part to do just that with a focus on naval design, rescue, research, and now marine disaster response, water borne technologies of every sort, no doubt much of which remains classified. NAOE is also well equipped to project its rather considerable knowledge base into design issues concerning oil platform construction, fire safety, extreme emergency fires at sea, and an entire range of out of the box marine engineering solutions that flow from this area of research and development.

It should be kept in mind also that Deepwater leaks gases as well as oil and the gases create additional toxins the kill sea life at the plankton level and microbial levels for which to date we have no defense other than prayer.

Even if it's argued that we must continue to drill, this disaster I believe will prove to be the political game changer for the good of humankind, serving to develop quick and effective marine disaster high speed state-of-the-art responses we so glaringly lack.


[edit on 12-6-2010 by LateToTheTable]

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
reply to post by maybereal11

---

Is this good for people, no. Is this good for the environment, no. Do we face extinction from this or other spills, no. If we did then consider this:

Does anyone have conflicting data that debunks that image??

[edit on 17-5-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

/raises hand

umm, yeah. i joined specifically to tell you that your "chart" is showing the natural oil seepage. that chart doesnt include this specific situation, and therefore makes about as much sense as a chart for iphone sales post android release.

the whole "pie" here is x. the situation is x PLUS this spill. so it would be awesome if you stopped posting it like you know something.

Wow, the people downplaying this disaster must really have sold their soul to the devil.

If you don't believe this is a horrible environmental (and economic) catastrophe, I suggest you join this great festival and eat as much shrimp as you can!

In fact, apply as shrimp & petroleum king (or queen) if you're so fond of drilling.



[edit on 12-6-2010 by MrXYZ]

reply to post by donovanm

---

So you actually believe that the National Academy of Sciences didn't do their math based on a multiyear average? What, they picked a no oil spills year to come up with that?

We'll need a little more effort than that. How about you dig up some data to back up such an assertion. Note that I don't speak to strongly (about anything really) without tons of data to go with it.

A spill is worse actually. A spill is general WHAM everything at once. Little time to even mobilize. A leak is more gradual, sort of how people keep saying that natural oil seeps are even more gradual. The gusher allows the oil to disperse much better.

The same applies to the depth. But the time it rises up the 5,000' water column its far more dispersed than if 2 tankers collided at the surface. BLOB is BAD. Nature can handle it, just so long as it gets diluted and spread a far as possible.

The flip side is that the synthetic chemicals and plastic products made from oil is VASTLY worse than the 'organic' crude:
We can't possibly get off oil, and its products are worse for the environment than crude is.

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

---

How in the name of every holy and unholy can you say a simple spill limited to what a single tanker carries to a CONTINUOUS LEAK that spills an Exxon Valdez every six days is better?

The mind boggles.

You seem to think there's a bench team of microbes just waiting to eat oil.

There isn't.

The natural processes you are so fond of citing are being overwhelmed by the quantities of oil and gas that are leaking. You seem to think that the oil and gasses are magically moving from the bottom to the surface without spreading subsea, that 75% of the oil evaporates into something harmless, and that billions of cubic feet of methane in the water is inconsequential.

This leak is extremely bad and getting worse by the day, and there is zero possiblity of stopping it before late fall or early winter at the very earliest. The reports today indicate that the casing was damaged by the junk shot 1,000 feet below the sea floor and the well is leaking sideways.

To call recognition of how serious this is fearmongering is deadly. Failure to acknowledge the depth and potential consequences of this catastrophe is irresponsible at best and criminal at worst...nay, suicidal at worst...this has moved beyond criminal.

Try to understand that this isn't your usual weeklong disaster that is bad for the locals but great for the ratings.

This disaster is going to be very slow to make it full effects visible to the dense.

For those who can add two plus two and get four, the consequences reach out for months and look very bad but might be mitigated.

For those who have a broader understanding and can see deeper, some things are already set in stone and can't be changed: those consequences will play out over the next few days, months, and years no matter what we do from this point forward.

When she was about eleven, my granddaughter wrote a poem in which she referred to "completed mistakes"; an idea I had to analyze to figure out what she meant. She was referring to mistakes for which all the consequences had played out, that nothing whatsoever could be done to change the situation.

This disaster...catastrophe...we lack a word to properly define this event...is not yet a completed mistake, but every voice that diminishes the severity of the problem and thereby reduces focus, resources, and urgency moves us ever closer to it being so.

People should be scared.

This is genuinely scary.

But fear shouldn't preclude thought and effective action. You don't curl in a ball and hide when the rockets and mortars are dropping in, you figure out where they're coming from and make them stop. Pretending no one is shooting at you is not a rational option.

Ignorance, I truly understand your desire to minimize, but it is past time to face reality and start working on the problem we actually have, not the one you wish we did.

[edit on 12-6-2010 by apacheman]

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
reply to post by donovanm

---

So you actually believe that the National Academy of Sciences didn't do their math based on a multiyear average? What, they picked a no oil spills year to come up with that?

We'll need a little more effort than that. How about you dig up some data to back up such an assertion. Note that I don't speak to strongly (about anything really) without tons of data to go with it.

just so im clear, your argument is that the NAS includes "disaster" scale oil levels for every year they make a chart like this regardless if there is a disaater or not? are you serious? you are telling me that in that pie chart above, without any prior knowledge of situations like this, they include oil levels of this magnitude overall? if you dont see the flawed logic then i have no idea what to tell you Youve obv figured out the world your own way and any further debate on this would be pretty useless

UPDATE: JUNE 12, 2010 8:04 PM Posted On Native Spirits Website Just Now

"A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with “total destruction”

Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP’s use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being
pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

The dispersal agent Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco Holding Company of Naperville, Illinois that is four times more toxic than oil (oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61ppm). In a report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled “Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview” Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed. Even worse, according to this report, with higher water temperatures, like those now occurring in the font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"">Gulf of Mexico, its toxicity grows.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in discovering BP’s use of this dangerous dispersal agent ordered BP to stop using it, but BP refused stating that their only alternative to Corexit 9500 was an even more dangerous dispersal agent known as Sea Brat 4.

The main differences between Corexit 9500 and Sea Brat 4 lie in how long these dangerous chemicals take to degrade into their constituent organic compounds, which for Corexit 9500 is 28 days. Sea Brat 4, on the other hand, degrades into an organic chemical called Nonylphenol that is toxic to aquatic life and can persist in the environment for years.

A greater danger involving Corexit 9500, and as outlined by Russian scientists in this report, is that with its 2.61 ppm toxicity level, and when combined with the heating Gulf of Mexico waters, its molecules will be able to “phase transition” from their present liquid to a gaseous state allowing them to be absorbed into clouds and allowing their release as “toxicrain” upon all of Eastern North America.

Even worse, should a Katrina like tropical hurricane form in the Gulf of Mexico while tens of millions of gallons of Corexit 9500 are sitting on, or near, its surface the resulting “toxic rain” falling upon the North American continent could “theoretically” destroy all microbial life to any depth it reaches resulting in an “unimaginable environmental catastrophe” destroying all life forms from the “bottom of the evolutionary chart to the top”.

Note: For molecules of a liquid to evaporate, they must be located near the surface, be moving in the proper direction, and have sufficient kinetic energy to overcome liquid-phase intermolecular forces. Only a small proportion of the molecules meet these
criteria, so the rate of evaporation is limited. Since the kinetic energy of a molecule is proportional to its temperature, evaporation proceeds more quickly at higher temperatures.

As over 50 miles of the US State of Louisiana’s coastline has already been destroyed by this spill, American scientists are warning that the damage may be impossible to repair, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service:

Read Full Report Link:

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

---

How in the name of every holy and unholy can you say a simple spill limited to what a single tanker carries to a CONTINUOUS LEAK that spills an Exxon Valdez every six days is better?

I'm making light of the reality of the situation. For what it is, there are certain 'positives'. I know most people only want to light their hair on fire but things could be worse. The fact is it happened, it's there and it's still happening.

Figure this: whatever the total amount of gushed oil becomes: if it happened all at once from one single ultra-super-mega tanker, in one single day, it would be WAY worse. Perhaps even on this oilpocalypse scale. Guess what, that's basically what happened in the Persian Gulf and for all we know had there not been so many other oil spills in that region, there might not hardly be a trace left of it.

Although then again there is absurd mismanagement of this spill, I must say. But as you all say about the seeps, a stretched out gusher is a better situation than a near instant mega explosion. How can you say it isn't???

You seem to think there's a bench team of microbes just waiting to eat oil.

There isn't.

There IS.

You of all people should know this.

Originally posted by apacheman

How serious is the oxygen depletion problem?

Potentially, this is a very serious problem. At present, oxygen concentrations exceed 2 mg/L but if concentrations drop below that, it would spell problems for any oxygen requiring organisms. ... ...

gulfblog.uga.edu...

She goes on to say that while microbial action is being supercharged by the oil's presence, and the bugs are eating the oil as fast as they can, their eating is depleting the oxygen at a frightening rate. Getting oxygen into the deep water is a very slow process; if the microbes remove the oil but leave the water anoxic and less saline, you've simply traded one bad problem for another bad problem.

And to respond to that:

Bacteria are breaking down the oil's hydrocarbons in a massive, microorganism feeding frenzy that has sent oxygen levels plunging close to what is considered "dead zone" conditions, at which most marine life are smothered for a lack of dissolved oxygen.

Such low-oxygen conditions were noticed farther from the spill site, although Joye said she did not think the process would immediately produce a dead zone, since low nutrient concentrations in the water would limit the rate of the bacterial consumption.
www.nytimes.com...

You seem to think that ...billions of cubic feet of methane in the water is inconsequential.

I'll ask you this again, for the official record, and hopefully you'll respond this time:
Would you prefer 100% crude oil or 100% Natural Gas to be spewing from that damned well??? Which you'd prefer in absolutes is important in gauging all of the grandstanding you've been doing across the site on the methane issue. If you'd prefer 100% crude over NG please do explain.

To call recognition of how serious this is fearmongering is deadly. Failure to acknowledge the depth and potential consequences of this catastrophe is irresponsible at best and criminal at worst...nay, suicidal at worst...this has moved beyond criminal.

Failure ... ...? What is ANYONE going to do about it? The fact is not you or anyone you know can do a single thing about it whatsoever. All you can achieve is to make people depressed. Maybe if you're really successful you might get people to consider suicide after seeing you running down the street like your hair is on fire, Godzilla is chasing you, and your head is cut off like a chicken.

Guilt tripping people isn't a SOLUTION. I've started threads about ACTUAL solutions for the mess, as well as started threads to help destroy BP P.R.-wise, as well as constantly linked to another thread citing all of their crimes against the earth, and I added a section to that about their crimes against humanity. Hardly anyone, let alone the biggest screamongers on the site have participated in any of those threads.

The only thing you can do is set out to destroy BP, logically, truthfully. Focus on their mismanagement. Their crimes. Their shady advertising campaigns against children. Their helping to overthrow the democratic government of Iran in 1953. These are truthful, 'wholesome' measures to frighten any and all oil extractors from ever daring to handle things recklessly ever again.

But instead the maniacs trying to convince people to resort to suicide focus all of the energy in the wrong places. What you people will be successful at is making people not want to hear about the issue anymore, just like most people don't watch the news because its depressing.

For those who can add two plus two and get four, the consequences reach out for months and look very bad but might be mitigated.

Finally you sound rational. Normally everyone screams that it's going to cause permanent apocalyptic damage and theres no turning back.

Ignorance, I truly...

IIB is my 'name' in shorthand. Thank you.

[edit on 13-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

en.wikipedia.org...

even with CONSERVATIVE estimates, it trumps anything that has happened in the gulf, so no. the NAS does NOT figure in disasters like this yearly. it would be axiomatically retarded for NAS to just "put down" x amount for massive spills of this magnitude. set aside there is no mention of concentration (which case - even if they DID figure this amount of oul, theres no accounting for how centralized it is, which affects things greatly), so again, you have no leg to stand on. and again i feel like an idiot for taking time to type this. if you really and truly believe what you believe then you've gone from idea to mindset..thats a failure to communicate.

reply to post by donovanm

---

Read your link. Just because Deepwater is at the top of that list doesn't mean anything. Those top 2 are only showing the "on going". Even the "occured" list isn't in order of severity.

The Deepwater on the high estimate is still just over 1/3 the size of the Persian Gulf spill on its low. The Deepwater on the high estimate is is about 1.5x worse than the Ixtoc's low.

so again, you have no leg to stand on. and again i feel like an idiot for taking time to type this.

I never said the spill isn't bad. I said it isn't THE END OF THE WORLD OMG.

Had you read the thread you'd have noticed this:

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
While looking further into Ixtoc I just noticed another piece of history: Most of the oil washed up on Texes shores, and right in the middle of it an oil tanker crashed and leaked another 2.6 million barrels of oil.

On November 1, 1979, the BURMAH AGATE collided with the freighter MIMOSA southeast of Galveston Entrance in the Gulf of Mexico. An estimated 2.6 million gallons of oil was released into the environment; another 7.8 million gallons was consumed by the fire onboard. This spill is currently #55 on the all-time list of largest oil spills.
capnscott.com...

Visit that page for more photos of the burning ship. Here's the beach:

It burned until Jan. 8, 1980.

Shoreline types inluded fine sand beaches, marshes.
www.incidentnews.gov...
www.incidentnews.gov...

On November 1, 1979, the M/V Burmah Agate collided with the freighter Mimosa southeast of Galveston Entrance in the Gulf of Mexico. The collision caused an explosion and fire on the Burmah Agate that burned until January 8, 1980. An estimated 2.6 million gallons of oil were spilled, and an estimated 7.8 million gallons were consumed by the fire. Oil traveled more than 200 miles, impacting Matagorda Peninsula and Padre Island. Marshes were not cleaned because response efforts could have caused more damage than the oil. deepwaterhorizon.noaa.gov...

That happened at the same time as the Ixtoc. The world didn't end.


[edit on 13-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Ok IgnoranceISBliss, you've forced me to do this. You can't admit you are wrong about this thing not being that bad. So let me go through and point out your mistakes.

But first let me ask you again, if what you say is true, its not so bad, WHY IS THERE CURRENTLY A MEDIA BLACKOUT

From your OP

Next we have the idea of this leak being unprecedented, which is false

WRONG: This is being characterized as the worse manmade disaster in the country's history. I think its safe to say this event is unprecedented. Though as dumb as you are, you'll claim its not by some strange unknown logic that you use.

Next you compare this spill to the Ixtox I event in 1979. So I looked at the Wiki link you provided... I don't know why you would even compare this oil volcano to that! From the wiki article, YOUR SOURCE

Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible platform Sedco 135-F in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters 50 m (160 ft) deep

THEY WERE ONLY DRILLING IN 160FT of water, where people and divers can work on the well. This is in no way shape or form similar to the Deepwater Horizon well, in which they were drilling in over 5000ft of water, where people cannot operate in. Only robots and submersables. Not even submarines, which makes it a bit difficult to do anything.

Also the difference in pressure between 160ft and 5000+ft is orders of magnitude apart. So you were trying to compare a shallow water low pressure well to a high pressure deep well.

WRONG

At the time of the accident Sedco 135F was drilling at a depth of about 3,600 metres (11,800 ft) below the seafloor.[5]

They drilled down to 11,800 ft, Deepwater Horizon at 35000+ ft.
Hmmm not a good comparison at all

Ultimately, 71,500 barrels of oil impacted 162 miles of U.S. beaches, and over 10,000 cubic yards of oiled material were removed.[7]

Its almost laughable when you claim 19000 bpd. I asked you to show me where you go that lowball number. LOLOLOL you said from some commision Obama put together. AND if you researched any further you would see this same group complained that Obama DID NOT take their real estimate, but an extremely low bogus one. This same group came out in the news with this. This is why I had to laugh when you quoted that.

Ultimately, 71,500 barrels of oil impacted 162 miles of U.S. beaches, and over 10,000 cubic yards of oiled material were removed.

Its closer to 100,000 bpd, so each day this disaster is greater than the Ixtoc disaster was as a whole.

YOU SAID

The pipe size of the Deepwater Horizon leak is 20". Somehow we're supposed to believe that 100,000 barrels per day are blasting out of that pipe. Anyone care to do that math for us?

sure, we'll do the math

Gulf oil spill may top 100,000 barrels a day

from the article:

“In the data I’ve seen, there’s nothing inconsistent with BP’s worst case scenario,” he added in comments to McClatchy newspapers, stating that the previous 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day estimate had simply been the “lower bound” estimate

A volcano of oil erupting

From the article:

BP estimated a spill of 165,000 barrels per day would not even reach land! That is what they told the US Government before they drilled the well. They had excellent science on their side, which you can begin to comprehend when you understand how oil reacts in salt water, as we will briefly discuss below.

The fact that the spill has reached land clearly states that the size of the spill is probably well above 200,000 barrels per day. Yes, that's BARRELS, not gallons. There are 42 gallons per barrel.

I could find you another 20 articles that agree this thing is 100,000+ a day.

So lets see. IgnoranceIsBliss is WRONG AGAIN.

Ok then you go on to lowball the Chernobyl disaster to show how people overestimate doom! Buddy that was a bad choice. I work with a lot of Russians and to be frank, there were hundreds of thousands of people who got cancer from that. Again you are quoting gov't propaganda again! Russian gov't sources, even worse! You must check your sources instead of quoting intentional lowball figures.

You go from Chernobyl to this?!?!

Then you have people citing doomongering predictions about all of the earth ocean simultaneously releasing their stored methane hydrate into the atmosphere and igniting, on par with earth being hit by a "big one" asteroid.

I have no idea where you heard that one. I guess you wanted to throw in a crazy impossible scenario for good measure. Afterall you did throw in Chernobyl.

You also said:

What I'm getting at here is that where the 'eyewall' of this oil slick hits will be tragic, and other areas will notice effects, but the madness being projected right now is by default overblown.

I dont' think the worst disaster in US history is overblowing whats is currently going on.

Gulf Oil Spill Worst in U.S. History; Drilling Postponed

Ok after reading your OP again I realize your argument is much weaker than I remember, because you really didn't provide that much information.

You compare the spill to:
Ixtoc I and other similar SPILLs, which I shown above is not a good comparison. For this is a DEEP WATER volcano that cannot be stopped by conventional methods.

Then you go on to show fearmongering examples including Chernobyl. But what you don't realize is that your sources for that are laugably wrong and Chernobyl was much worse than your Russian gov't funded source. Ask any Russian who lived in the area and they would laugh at you. I personally know some of them. I showed your reference to one of them who laughed at you quoting propaganda and somehow trying to use it as a talking point about this oil volcano.

Then you talk about how your aunt survived a hurricane?!?


I don't even know where to go with that one.

So i'm still waiting buddy

And by the way check out the levels of Hydrogen Sulfide, Benzene, Methylene Chloride, and other toxic gases in the atmosphere.

They are WAY above normal in the gulf area. The air is starting to be poisoned. NOT GOOD. Evacuations may be on the way. Go tell those who have to evacuate that its safe for them to stay.

On May 14 WWLTV in New Orleans ran a report on the levels of Hydrogen Sulfide and Benzene in the air at that time. 5-10 parts per billion is the established allowable amount for Hydrogen Sulfide. WWLTV reported that on May 3 the level was recorded at 1,192 ppb.Pastor Williams said his sources report the level detected in the Gulf at 1,200 ppb and the amount poses a serious and even fatal health risk. ...

researchris.blogspot.com... ases-in-gulf-back.html

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