Long Term Fate: Computer Simulations Show Oil Reaching Up the Atlantic Coastline and Toward Europe

very interesting find.......its nice to see some thinking ahead.......there was none before the disaster.......


www.sciencedaily.com...

Sorry, my computer is still being a POS

[edit on 7/6/2010 by SUICIDEHK45]

That's not even that far in the future, thats on day 360, only 282 more days. Maybe the U.K. will reap the "rewards" of BPs hard work.

estimated flow of oil 50,000 barrels per day

I agree it'll probably happen before the date given

[edit on 6-7-2010 by Zeta Reticulan]

Somebody please tell me the worlds brightest minds just figured out that all of the oceans have a current!
They may be wrong though as we now have tarballs all over Texas but not much to see in Alabama and only a few sparse pockets in Florida.
Indeed those currents move in mysterious ways.
I smell a rat.

with all of the dispersant being sprayed the oil that spreads won't be on top of the water. It will be under or in the water wreaking havoc without the obvious blobs of oil in the surface. I almost believe that it would be better to not use the dispersant and just let it come on shore. The power of unintended consequences is nothing to be messed with.

Or is it actually an intended consequence? Makes you wonder.

[edit on 6-7-2010 by doublehelix]

The dispersal of the particles does not capture such effects as oil coagulation, formation of tar balls, chemical and microbial degradation. Computed surface concentrations relative to the actual spill may therefore be overestimated. The animation, thus, is not a detailed, specific prediction, but rather a scenario that could help guide research and mitigation efforts.

It is important not to miss this and I know how good people are at actually reading the articles here

The following link is to an article you must read before you take your posted article to the bank.

Oil Spill Forecasts: Take them with a grain of salt.

Natural degradation

The “dye” model used by the researchers essentially mimicked the placement of a dye in a global model of ocean currents to see where the dye would go during a period of 90 days.

Among the problems with equating the model to the real world: The “dye” had the density of water, which is far higher than oil, and the model itself includes only large ocean patterns, not smaller wave action.

It also didn't include the factors mentioned above, including natural degradation by bacteria and evaporation.

“These are clearly large uncertainties,” acknowledged Synte Peacock, a principal scientist behind the report.

Peacock said the goal of the project wasn't to scare East Coast residents that oil would imminently be washing up on their beaches. Indeed, she said, it's possible any oil that rounds Florida will remain tens of miles offshore.
Diluted slick possible

It's also unclear what form that oil might take, whether it's tar balls, slicks or much-diluted oil mixed into the water and unnoticeable.

Add to this the higher the water temperature and its in some very warm waters, you get the degradation process sped up because it is a good environment for the microbes that naturally eat the oil. These microbes is why, even though plenty of oil is in the water from natural seeps, normally you only see tiny tar balls washing up on the beaches before this spill.

It is pure hysteria to try and convince people this will spread around the world when in fact that is not true. These so called scientific websites that put out that study without the other relevant information is unethical to say the least.

Here is a much better article from an excellent source, Scientific American.

How Microbes Will Cleanup

The last (and only) defense against the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is tiny—billions of hydrocarbon-chewing microbes, such as Alcanivorax borkumensis. In fact, the primary motive for using the more than 830,000 gallons of chemical dispersants on the oil slick both above and below the surface of the sea is to break the oil into smaller droplets that bacteria can more easily consume.

"If the oil is in very small droplets, microbial degradation is much quicker," says microbial ecologist Kenneth Lee, director of the Center for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who has been measuring the oil droplets in the Gulf of Mexico to determine the effectiveness of the dispersant use. "The dispersants can also stimulate microbial growth. Bacteria will chew on the dispersants as well as the oil."

Another good read for those interested in this enough to learn.

Biodegradation: Sea water contains a range of micro-organisms or microbes that can partially or completely degrade oil to water soluble compounds and eventually to carbon dioxide and water. Many types of microbe exist and each tends to degrade a particular group of compounds in crude oil. However, some compounds in oil are very resistant to attack and may not degrade.
The main factors affecting the efficiency of biodegradation, are the levels of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) in the water, the temperature and the level of oxygen present. As biodegradation requires oxygen, this process can only take place at the oil-water interface since no oxygen is available within the oil itself. The creation of oil droplets, either by natural or chemical dispersion, increases the surface area of the oil and increases the area available for biodegradation to take place."

Many species of marine micro-organisms or bacteria, fungi and yeasts feed on the compounds that make up oil. Hydrocarbons (oil) consumed by these micro-organisms can be partially metabolized or completely metabolized to carbon dioxide and water. The rate of biodegradation depends on the temperature of the oil and water mixture. (AMSA). ••• A wide range of micro-organisms is required for a significant reduction of the oil. To sustain biodegradation, nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are sometimes added to the water to encourage the micro-organisms to grow and reproduce. Biodegradation tends to work best in warm water environments. (EPA) ••• The addition of nutrients to speed up the process is also referred to as bioaugmentation, biostimulation, bioremediation, seeding, or fertilization.

The above article goes into depth on other factors and how they dissipate or degrade the oil naturally.

The dispersant will in fact speed up the natural process of degradation as you will see if you do your homework folks.

Sorcha Faal (the Kremlin reports) pretty much said this too. If they're "knocking down" 98% of the oil with Corexit, the remaining 2% probably won't be much by the time it reaches Europe? I didn't read every word, but I'm guessing the sims didn't take this into consideration? Do you think they're really knocking down 98%?

It only took me a few moments to find out that the study this thread is about is fatally flawed and misunderstood.

Plenty of good info out there for all of us, or at least those of us who want it.

Threads here are becoming notoriously devoid of any good research or factual information since all we have posting for the most part is the cut and paste things they don't understand crowd.

If only it were so simple as they drilled into the side of a radioactive volcano, contained in a pool of oil, inside a giant void that will collapse and create a mile high tsunami. I wonder how long before the movie hits?

Not picking on you of course, just venting a bit.

reply to post by ~Lucidity




Tell Sorcha, Hay from Batboy will ya? He/She is missed.

Originally posted by Blaine91555
It only took me a few moments to find out that the study this thread is about is fatally flawed and misunderstood.

Plenty of good info out there for all of us, or at least those of us who want it.

Threads here are becoming notoriously devoid of any good research or factual information since all we have posting for the most part is the cut and paste things they don't understand crowd.

appears as if it depends on what kind of homework you do. The problem with most scientific studies is that you can almost always find another one out there that contradicts the first. Consensus is tough to reach when most experiments are done in a controlled system. The current gulf oil leak is not a typical experiment.

These people disagree about the use of dispersant and microbes...

"An experiment conducted in the late 1990's by Nyman and other LSU researchers on soil from many of the state's tidal freshwater marshes found that dispersants mixed with oil reaching marsh soils were more toxic to fish, crustaceans and benthic invertebrates than undispersed oil for months after arriving in the soil. Benthic invertebrates are small, growing organisms that live at the bottom of the marsh.

Nyman said "it appeared in our experiments that COREXIT 9500 was toxic to microbes in the marsh soil that eat the oil." And in another experiment with salt marsh soils, Dr. Nyman found that dispersed oil biodegrades, or was eaten by oil microbes, much more slowly than non-dispersed oil."

www.louisianaweekly.com...

guess it all depends on who you ask...

reply to post by doublehelix


Clearly you have two different environments and two different results would be expected. I would not want to be the one calling the shots here.

If the dispersant does, as it has in testing, speed up the degradation in warm ocean waters that is a good thing. If however it reaches land and the other study is right, how do you decide?

To me, it would seem that far more oil will be in the ocean than ever gets near to land, making the use of dispersant the best call.

My main point is that the study this thread is about is admittedly flawed by the people who conducted it and taken alone is fairly useless information.

One thing I think is clear here, is this is and will be a localized problem and there is no need to get excitable people believing this will spread worldwide, when it clearly will not.

If that in fact were true, the oceans would be covered in oil all of the time from the natural seeps that are commonplace all over the world and in particular the Gulf.

I watched an interview, which I obviously can not post, of a person who has studied the natural seeps and he stated that in those waters by day 70 the oil is reduced to a non-toxic state that the microbes then eat. I wish I had a copy of it to post.

There is lots of science on this subject if, like I said, people will do a little homework before they run off yelling the sky is falling.

Don't get me wrong. This is a horrible catastrophe.

remember the oil is UNDER the water. The world currents are so tricky, i think the oil will spread much faster than this program shows. the whole reason for the dispersant is invisibility (and maybe killing organisms?). In my opinion the effect of the dispersant on the oil will spread it out further. As each glob seperates it moves further apart, meaning the same amount of oil just more space in between. Who knows what long term effects these chemicals will have on us all???

What does the model show for Dec 21, 2012?

I spent my 4th of July weekend at a wildlife refuge on the eastern shore of Virginia. The wildlife and plants were thriving and the thought crossed my mind that the next time I come back to visit oil from the GOM might have found it's way there. Shore birds, turtles, fiddler crabs, dolphins, all might be gone if the leak isn't stopped and my great fear is that they have no intention of trying to actually stop it. So much beauty wasted already. My heart bleeds for what has already happened in the Gulf.

reply to post by Blaine91555


do it yourself...I try to stay far, far away from all that. Though I have been sucked in...once.

Originally posted by Zeta Reticulan

estimated flow of oil 50,000 barrels per day

I agree it'll probably happen before the date given

[edit on 6-7-2010 by Zeta Reticulan]

Looks like the oil is going home?? lol

Korg.

Look at the gulf in that picture, it's dead, done, kaput.

2nd line.