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Of Course Clean Up Workers Can't Find the Oil ... BP Used Dispersants to Temporarily Hide It, So Now It Will Plague the Gulf For Years
News headlines state that cleanup workers are having a hard time finding oil.
Sounds good, right?
Actually, if BP had let things run their course:
- Oil-skimming vessels could have sucked up most of the oil
- Booms would have stopped most of the oil from hitting the shore
- And oil-eating bacteria would have broken down most of the remaining oil
Intead, BP has used millions of gallons of dispersants to hide the oil by breaking it up, so it sinks beneath the surface.
That means that oil-skimming vessels can't find it or suck it up. As the Times-Picayune pointed out on July 16th:
The
massive "A Whale" oil skimmer has effectively been beached after it
proved inefficient in sucking up oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill.
The
oil is too dispersed to take advantage of the converted Taiwanese
supertanker's enormous capacity, said Bob Grantham, a spokesman for
shipowner TMT.
He said BP's use of chemical dispersants
prevented A Whale, billed as the world's largest skimmer, from
collecting a "significant amount" of oil during a week of testing that
ended Friday.
"When dispersants are used in high volume virtually
from the point that oil leaves the well, it presents real challenges for
high-volume skimming," Grantham said in a written statement that did
not include oil-collection figures from the test.
Similarly,
the use of dispersants means that Booms can't stop it from hitting the
shore. As marine biologist and oil spill expert Paul Horsman explains, using dispersants and oil booms are competing strategies.
Specifically, breaking something down into tiny bits and dispersing
it throughout a mile-plus deep and hundreds-miles wide region (the
reason massive amounts of dispersants are being applied at the 5,000
foot-deep spill site as well as at the surface) makes it more difficult
to cordon off and contain oil on the surface (the reason booms are
being used).
And Corexit might be killing the oil-eating bacteria
which would otherwise break down the oil. University of Georgia
scientist Samantha Joye notes that scientists have no idea how the large quanties of dispersant will effect the Gulf's microbial communities (for more information, watch part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 of Dr. Joye's July 13th press conference).
And as Mother Jones wrote in May:
David
Valentine, a biogeochemist at the University of California Santa
Barbara, warns the stuff may be riskier than just its toxicity. Corexit
may undermine the microbes that naturally eat oil.
Some of the most potent oil-eaters—Alcanivorax borkumensis—are relatively rare organisms that have evolved to eat hydrocarbons from naturally occurring oil seeps. Valentine tells Eli Kintisch at Science Insider that after spills, Alcanivorax
tend to be the dominant microbes found near the oil and that they
secrete their own surfactant molecules to break up the oil before
consuming the hydrocarbons. Other microbes don't make surfactants but
devour oil already broken into small enough globs—including those broken
down by Alcanivorax.
What we don't know is how the
surfactants in Corexit and its ilk might affect the ability of
Alcanivorax and other surfactant-makers to eat oil. Could Corexit
exclude Alcanivorax from binding to the oil? Could it affect the way
microbes makes their own surfactants? Could Corexit render natural
surfactants less effective?
The National Science Foundation has awarded Valentine a grant to study the problem.
So it's not a
good thing that clean up workers can't find the oil. It means that the
oil will lurk under the surface, poisoning the sealife that lives
beneath the surface, and washing back up during storms for years to come.
Even
Admiral Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis, said
that breaking up the oil has complicated the cleanup. As AP reported on June 7th:
The
hopeful report was offset by a warning that the farflung slick has
broken up into hundreds and even thousands of patches of oil that may
inflict damage that could persist for years.Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis, said the breakup has complicated the cleanup."
Dealing with the oil spill on the surface
is going to go on for a couple of months," he said at a briefing in
Washington. But "long-term issues of restoring the environment and the
habitats and stuff will be years."
And Admiral Allen admitted in his press conference yesterday that oil could re-surface far into the future:
[Question]
There have been reports of very large undersea plumes of oil thousands
of feet below the ocean’s surface. So when you say there’s the
possibility of the shore being impacted for four to six weeks, how do
you come up with that four to six week number? And are you
taking into account these very large plumes of oil that are out there
and very difficult to sort of gauge where they’re going?
[Admiral Allen] What we’re going to continue to watch for is the oil we can’t see.... But the ultimate impact of this spill… whether or not oil surfaces at a later date will be the subject of long-term surveillance.... Impacts are going to go on for a long, long time.
As
Congressman Markey said today, BP has made the Gulf “a toxic bowl”
that will “haunt this region” for years, because “all of that oil is
still under the surface”:
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I was an avid reader of SciAm from the 1950s on, but gave it up in the late '80s when it morphed into an upscale version of Popular Science, blathering the Gaia Hypothesis and glowbull warming drivel that a sixth grader could refute, seemingly for the purpose of selling expensive ads for liquor and fancy foreign cars. Not a credible source for anything anymore, sad to say. Same thing happened to National Geographic, too. No more science, just propaganda in disguise.
I don't disagree, though I have no way to judge the editorial slant. What is for sure is that nothing gets in there that is not thoroughly vetted and deemed compromise-worthy by the vast majority of the scientific community (e.g. mainstream enough not to offend anyone). Yet publishing researchers would give (at least up to a few years ago) right arms and/or upper canines to get in there, for the sheer exposure value -- one of (if not THE most important of) the main factor in calculating 'impact factor' and thus future funding. Kind of sad when one considers the incentives in the research world that way.
Propaganda pays better.
@not@ Jim_Shillford. A clearly Scientific American Male. Mr. Shillford. Have you heard of Dr. JoyKill And Mr. Hide?
Maybe you live such a life.
Shill by day and chill by night.
Meanwhile, go stand in front of a mirror, look into your eyes and say out aloud "I, Jim_Shillford am a paid disinformation Agent, putting millions at risk by murkying the waters".
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
Give those bacteria their due!
Now contemplate the rise of the Super Oil Consuming Germ bred in the Gulf because of the tampering of men.
What happens when it spreads to all the oil fields?
+1,000,000
If the oil eating bacteria take over, we're all doomed.
hehe