"Worst Oil Accident Anywhere on the Planet"

We were just watching CNN and an interview with Jean-Michel Cousteau. It was interesting and terrifying at the same time.
He said that 21 years after the Valdez accident, the area is still recovering.
That the spill is so huge it could reach New York and even Europe.
He mentioned the coming hurricane season and what havoc that could bring to the Louisiana area.
Some of the oil is up to 20 FEET deep, so aerial pictures are very misleading.

Dismissing remarks from BP executives that the scale of the spill was tiny compared with the size of the sea and that the Gulf of Mexico would be cleaned up and “fully recover”, Mr Cousteau said: “To make such a statement is totally unacceptable. We have to see behind the dying bird, we have to understand the consequences of this that we can’t see. Nature is more complex than we can imagine. I know the ocean well enough to know that I don’t know it at all.”

www.timesonline.co.uk...

I don't many of us are aware of the huge impact this will have both in the Gulf are and the rest of the country.

Federal fisheries managers have already closed nearly a fifth of federal waters in the Gulf to fishing, including many areas relied upon by Price and others who operate out of Venice, La. Price says he works six days a week fishing, and now the future is uncertain.

But even when fishermen are allowed back on the water, industry groups and fishermen fear customers will question the safety of their product for years in what is one of the nation’s most productive fisheries.

The effects on the Gulf Coast economy of this oil and the chemical dispersants being used to fight it back from these marshes will likely ripple through many sectors, not just fishing, said Jean-Michel Cousteau, an environmentalist and documentary filmmaker in Louisiana working on a piece about the spill.

www.spokesman.com...

S&F

I am delighted to see other people with knowledge of our ecosystem coming forward to explain the severity of the situation. However, I am also sickened, (and not suprised) to see the people behind the disaster attempt to downplay this crisis as much as possible. The best way to save face is to do everything you can to fix the mess you caused, and be up front with the populace -- the people in positions to do something about it are not stupid, so why lie, and continue to lie?

Even after the well head is capped and the leak is no more, the damage done to the environment, and our economy will remain for probably longer than any of us will be alive.

One thing that I have thought about is, besides a hurricane whipping up the waters and carrying the oil inland, what happens to the oil on a surface, on a hot summer day? When it evaporates, it does not just 'disappear' right? Does it not accumulate in the clouds and return to the earth through rainfall?

If this is true, I can only be horrified at the implications this will have on our fresh water sources, and everything else the rain touches.

I just want to cry.

Before you people go all nuts with your Incorrect information, Look at this:


To put this spill into Perspective:

Here are the Top 10 worst of all time:

1. Kuwait - 1991 - 520 million gallons
Iraqi forces opened the valves of several oil tankers in order to slow the invasion of American troops. The oil slick was four inches thick and covered 4000 square miles of ocean.

2. Mexico - 1980 - 100 million gallons
An accident in an oil well caused an explosion which then caused the well to collapse. The well remained open, spilling 30,000 gallons a day into the ocean for a full year.

3. Trinidad and Tobago - 1979 - 90 million
During a tropical storm off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, a Greek oil tanker collided with another ship, and lost nearly its entire cargo.

4. Russia - 1994 - 84 million gallons
A broken pipeline in Russia leaked for eight months before it was noticed and repaired.

5. Persian Gulf - 1983 - 80 million gallons
A tanker collided with a drilling platform which, eventually, collapsed into the sea. The well continued to spill oil into the ocean for seven months before it was repaired.

6. South Africa - 1983 - 79 million gallons
A tanker cought fire and was abandoned before sinking 25 miles off the coast of Saldanha Bay.

7. France - 1978 - 69 million gallons
A tanker's rudder was broken in a severe storm, despite several ships responding to its distress call, the ship ran aground and broke in two. It's entire payload was dumped into the English Channel.

8. Angola - 1991 - more than 51 million gallons
The tanker expolded, exact quantity of spill unknown

9. Italy - 1991 - 45 million gallons
The tanker exploded and sank off the coast of Italy and continued leaking it's oil into the ocean for 12 years.

10. Odyssey Oil Spill - 1988 - 40 million gallons
700 nautical miles off the cost of Nova Scotia.

from: envirowonk.com...

The WKRG Live Video Feed has a counter with an estimate of gallons spilled.

www.wkrg.com...

Currently we are at 57.5 million gallons.

Thought this info may be of interest to some and give a good idea of the worst case and how far we are from it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So you see.. the Exxon Valdez didn't even make this list!


So your title, "Worst Oil Accident Anywhere on the Planet" is very far from being correct.

I would have thought a Super Moderator would have done a little more research before making a claim that bold.




[edit on 24-5-2010 by JohnPhoenix]

As I've been pointing out for a few weeks now in this thread:

Gulf spill: is the methane a bigger problem than the oil?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

as bad as the oil problem is, the methane problem is worse.

David Valentine, a professor of earth science at UCSB and the author of several authoritative studies about the behavior of oil and methane in the ocean, was asked by editors of the journal Nature to write an essay for its Opinion section about how to determine the magnitude of the spill. Valentine's report was published online by Nature on Sunday and will appear in the May 27 print issue.

In his essay, entitled "Measure Methane to Quantify the Oil Spill," Valentine says that the usual methods of measuring the magnitude of an oil spill are of limited use in the current situation. He suggests an innovative way that might be more effective: quantifying the leaked methane gas now dissolved in the water. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas and has been the focus of numerous studies in past decades, but has never been considered as a means for determining the magnitude of a deep oil spill.

Methane constitutes approximately 40 percent of the leakage at the sea floor. This compound has been implicated in causing the initial blowout, and was also the reason the initial containment dome failed. Valentine suggests capitalizing on the high methane content of the oil to determine total oil release. "Unlike oil, methane dissolves uniformly in water and can be tracked down-current from the leak source," Valentine says. "If we can add up all the methane, we've got a reasonable estimate on the oil spilled."

Valentine issues a call for action by saying that "while researchers are already measuring methane in some Gulf water samples, a larger-scale project is required to map the methane plumes in real time, so that this opportunity is not lost."

The platform explosion on April 20 was caused by an eruption of pressurized methane from a BP well almost one mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The methane eruption caused a series of blasts, sinking the rig and causing massive amounts of oil to spill. "In what is likely to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history," Valentine says, "the need for a more accurate way to estimate the spill's magnitude is clear. This number is not only useful for comparing spills, but also for tracking dispersed oil, assessing the efficacy of containment measures, and for assessing liability."

Based on official flow estimates, Valentine calculates that approximately 7,500 tons of methane were released into the Gulf of Mexico in the first 27 days of the spill - enough to triple the methane concentrations in a water parcel of 7,500 cubic kilometers. "If we conducted a dedicated sampling expedition, I expect we could account for much of the methane and place a reasonable lower limit on the total oil release," he says, adding that there are still plenty of challenges, most notably locating and defining all major plumes before they disperse.

"The first research ship on the scene has made great efforts to document the spill," Valentine says. "But a larger community effort is needed." He suggests tracking water flow in June, followed by a comprehensive two-vessel expedition "to ensure the plumes are quantified as comprehensively as possible."

newswire.ascribe.org...

I just got off the phone with David Valentine and he stated that the 7,500 tons figure for the amount of methane released so far is based on unrealistically low assumptions. He further stated that a more realistic low-end estimate is at a minimum at least twice that amount: 15,000 tons of methane, or ~7-8 billion cubic feet of methane, so far.

He had to run before he could give me a high-end estimate.

The methane is driving the oxygen out of the water, strangling the life from the Gulf wherever it spreads underneath.

Don't get me wrong, this is a terrible situation and is going to wreak havoc on the environment, especially in the gulf. With that said, it seems like this spill is being hyped up as the worst spill in history.

I did a search on this last night, and found out that there were 34 spills which were worse than the Exxon Valdez. Here's one article I was looking at, 12 Worst Spills .

Even though there were worse spills, a spill is still a spill, and this is a big one which is being handled carelessly. Hopefully this doesn't surpass all these spills. However it looks like it's heading in that direction.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Lol, you posted that right before I did. Your post wasn't there as I was writing mine, but anyway this is information that gets overlooked many times when discussing the current oil situation.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
Before you people go all nuts with your Incorrect information, Look at this:

To put this spill into Perspective:

So your title, "Worst Oil Accident Anywhere on the Planet" is very far from being correct.

I would have thought a Super Moderator would have done a little more research before making a claim that bold.

LOL, I was thinking the same thing.
The only good thing about this oil spill is that a lot of people are waking up to how corrupt the corporations are.

It's part of the awakening

Oh dear, here we go again...


reply to post by apacheman


Hey good article. So that expert is saying that about 40% of the gushing is methane instead of oil.

But again this is supposed to be a bad thing?

Methane is a gas, meaning it will move off into the atmosphere in short time. I don't understand why we're supposed to freak out about this.

From there, if the actual crude portion is light crude, then that means 75% will evaporate, just not as fast as the gassy compounds. Light crude would have very little tar content, as medium crude is considered to have only 6% tar.

I posit that light crude will more easily separate into the water column, and spread faster. And I argue that this is what we're seeing in those vast images of red.

We WANT it to spread faster... we DON'T want a solid BLOB, or slick.

[edit on 24-5-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


I guess you just aren't thinking it through.

The methane dissolves into the water, displacing the oxygen. A report last week found a 30% depletion of oxygen in the waters near the subsea oil plumes:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”

The plumes were discovered by scientists from several universities working aboard the research vessel Pelican, which sailed from Cocodrie, La., on May 3 and has gathered extensive samples and information about the disaster in the gulf.

www.nytimes.com...

That was 8 days ago, minimum. And it is good to keep in mind that they were looking in areas dictated by what was visible to them; I don't think it occurred to them to look at the effects of what is essentially a massive poisonous, but invisible, bubble shaped by subsurface currents that is spreading inexorably from the leak.

Yesterday there was a report of a school of fish gasping for air at the suface near a boat:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Most things that live in the gulf don't breathe methane all that well.

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
Oh dear, here we go again...

[edit on 24-5-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Igno,
Remember this reply to your thread that you didn't respond:
The only group qualified to explain the impact on ocean-life is the Jacques Cousteau Society/family...I'll wait for their explaination...not your mirage.

RUN don't walk from Fragile Earth...






[edit on 24-5-2010 by Granite]

[edit on 24-5-2010 by Granite]

reply to post by apacheman


Can you show where methane dissolves in water? This explanation found over at answer.com sure seems to explain it rather well:

Methane, (CH4) has a tetrahedral shape. (Like the four points of a pyramid). Since each Hydrogen on the carbon atom have the same charge (because they are the same thing), there is no dipole moment / delta +/-. This means methane is non-polar.
Water does have a dipole moment because the two electron pairs on the oxygen have a bigger negative charge than the Hydrogens. This creates a net dipole moment. This means water is polar.
Polar molecules easily dissolve other polar molecules because the delta+ side of the molecule is attracted to a delta- of another molecule.
Nonpolar molecules dissolve other nonpolar molecules becuase there is no charge one way or another, so the are neither attracted nor repelled to one another.
Polar molecules and nonpolar molecules do not dissolve well because there is typically more than one of each molecule in the solution. The polar molecules of water will stick together and the nonpolar molecules of methane will congregate as well. wiki.answers.com...

Originally posted by Granite
Remember this reply to your thread that you didn't respond:
The only group qualified to explain the impact on ocean-life is the Jacques Cousteau Society/family...I'll wait for their explaination...not your mirage.

What was there to say? If you'll only listen to an environmentalist organization, if you don't feel self-competent enough to look over facts, figures, trends, history, numbers, etc and judge for yourself then there's really no point in conversing / debating with you. Much like any others who will only listen to Dick Cheney on the wars or 9/11, Al Gore on Global Warming, or any other parallel.

And yes, the Valdez is still recovering. The location and a number of other factors made arguably the worst oil disaster ever, even though by volume it is ranked at less than 50th place on the all-time oil spill list. This is the Gulf of Mexico, not the Prince William Sound, therefore it's not quite a valid example.

Besides, panic actually helped harm that incident:

Because Prince William Sound contained many rocky coves where the oil collected, the decision was made to displace it with high-pressure hot water. However, this also displaced and destroyed the microbial populations on the shoreline; many of these organisms (e.g. plankton) are the basis of the coastal marine food chain, and others (e.g. certain bacteria and fungi) are capable of facilitating the biodegradation of oil. At the time, both scientific advice and public pressure was to clean everything, but since then, a much greater understanding of natural and facilitated remediation processes has developed, due somewhat in part to the opportunity presented for study by the Exxon Valdez spill.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Have you missed the fact that the oil is in the Gulf Loop current which leads directly to the worlds strongest current the Gulf Stream which leads to Britain?
Have you and your family been the custodians of the ocean longer than the Cousteau's?

You read very little of the OP...run don't...



[edit on 24-5-2010 by Granite]

[edit on 24-5-2010 by Granite]

reply to post by Granite


You act like this is radioactive isotopes. It's ORGANIC crude oil. Do you even know what volume of water is between here and the British Isles?

You should read up on logical fallacies. One in particular I suggest to you is Appeal to Authority.

"It's organic"
There was a recent thread that was pretty convincing that said oil is not from fosil deposits.

The whole argument that this is part of natural world is a falicy at this point in history because the global environment has been pushed to the edge of a cliff. There are deadzones that are known and God knows others unknown. After this event, how many deadzones between here and Britain before you understand?


[edit on 24-5-2010 by Granite]

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
reply to post by apacheman

 

Can you show where methane dissolves in water? This explanation found over at answer.com sure seems to explain it rather well:

Methane, (CH4) has a tetrahedral shape. (Like the four points of a pyramid). Since each Hydrogen on the carbon atom have the same charge (because they are the same thing), there is no dipole moment / delta +/-. This means methane is non-polar.
Water does have a dipole moment because the two electron pairs on the oxygen have a bigger negative charge than the Hydrogens. This creates a net dipole moment. This means water is polar.
Polar molecules easily dissolve other polar molecules because the delta+ side of the molecule is attracted to a delta- of another molecule.
Nonpolar molecules dissolve other nonpolar molecules becuase there is no charge one way or another, so the are neither attracted nor repelled to one another.
Polar molecules and nonpolar molecules do not dissolve well because there is typically more than one of each molecule in the solution. The polar molecules of water will stick together and the nonpolar molecules of methane will congregate as well. wiki.answers.com...

Yes, you can quote a wiki answer and believe ... or pretend ... that's The answer.

Some methane does dissolve into seawater, but that is not the problem.

Some bubbles up into the atmosphere, and methane is a greenhouse gas 10 times worse then carbon dioxide.

Worse still, methane reacts with the dissolved oxygen in water in a reaction that forms carbon dioxide and water, and depletes the ocean of oxygen in the process.

In effect, this drowns the marine life in the area.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Quote from JohnPhoenix

"posted on 24-5-2010 @ 04:06 PM single this post "quote"REPLY TO:

Before you people go all nuts with your Incorrect information, Look at this:

To put this spill into Perspective:

Here are the Top 10 worst of all time:

1. Kuwait - 1991 - 520 million gallons
Iraqi forces opened the valves of several oil tankers in order to slow the invasion of American troops. The oil slick was four inches thick and covered 4000 square miles of ocean.

2. Mexico - 1980 - 100 million gallons
An accident in an oil well caused an explosion which then caused the well to collapse. The well remained open, spilling 30,000 gallons a day into the ocean for a full year.

3. Trinidad and Tobago - 1979 - 90 million
During a tropical storm off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, a Greek oil tanker collided with another ship, and lost nearly its entire cargo.

4. Russia - 1994 - 84 million gallons
A broken pipeline in Russia leaked for eight months before it was noticed and repaired.

5. Persian Gulf - 1983 - 80 million gallons
A tanker collided with a drilling platform which, eventually, collapsed into the sea. The well continued to spill oil into the ocean for seven months before it was repaired.

6. South Africa - 1983 - 79 million gallons
A tanker cought fire and was abandoned before sinking 25 miles off the coast of Saldanha Bay.

7. France - 1978 - 69 million gallons
A tanker's rudder was broken in a severe storm, despite several ships responding to its distress call, the ship ran aground and broke in two. It's entire payload was dumped into the English Channel.

8. Angola - 1991 - more than 51 million gallons
The tanker expolded, exact quantity of spill unknown

9. Italy - 1991 - 45 million gallons
The tanker exploded and sank off the coast of Italy and continued leaking it's oil into the ocean for 12 years.

10. Odyssey Oil Spill - 1988 - 40 million gallons
700 nautical miles off the cost of Nova Scotia.

from: envirowonk.com...

The WKRG Live Video Feed has a counter with an estimate of gallons spilled.

www.wkrg.com...

Currently we are at 57.5 million gallons.

Thought this info may be of interest to some and give a good idea of the worst case and how far we are from it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So you see.. the Exxon Valdez didn't even make this list!


So your title, "Worst Oil Accident Anywhere on the Planet" is very far from being correct.

I would have thought a Super Moderator would have done a little more research before making a claim that bold.

[edit on 24-5-2010 by JohnPhoenix] "

UnQuote from JohnPhoenix:


Well JohnPhoenix, it looks like you had better wake up and do your research before you start making erroneous claims as bold as the above. You are way off in your figures. Your figures are for the most fact in "GALLONS". There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil. This means that most of your figures should be divided by 42, which makes your view of the situation totally unreal.

This is the greatest oil disaster of all time.

If there is 70,000 barrels of oil escaping from this 12" diameter pipe a day, that means that 2,940,000 gallons of oil are escaping and destroying our ecosystem EVERY DAY!!!! In 129-173 days this will eclipse your largest claimed oil spill. The current estimate ranges as high as 84,000 barrels a day escaping.

You wrote "we are currently at 57.5 million gallons". The explosion hit April 20th and today is May 25th making it 35 days later at over 102,900,000 gallons. That makes this spill the second largest in history with no end in sight yet.

Your #1 oil spill was really estimated at 380-520 million gallons. That means that in as little as 2 to 4 months this will be the largest oil spill ever. Ecologically it is going to be the worst ever because of where it is located.

So it looks like Don'tTreadOnMe is correct with his wording on this thread, since there is no end in sight for stopping this catastrophe.

reply to post by Kailassa


"Global Warming" isn't the issue here. Please provide some citations for the rest. I'd really like to know the hard numbers in all of this...

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Please don't try to be logical on this site.Nobody wants to hear there have been worse oil spills than this one.

They want to believe that a naturally occurring substance from the earth will just destroy the environment forever.

In the meantime they breathe in tons of pollution in to their lungs and do not for a moment even consider where all the rubber that is worn off their cars tires ends up,or where the used tires even end up.