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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Oil Spill Grows

The Gulf oil spill continues and is growing, more areas are affected, the potential is a horrendous environmental disaster without comparison, and yet the media seems to have shifted its attention onto Arlen Specter.

Incidentally I support Senate and Congressional term limits. One term would be plenty thank you very much.

BP's little dog and pony publicity siphoning trick seems to have appeased the media illiteratti. The media always needs a new disaster, they can only wring so much attention out of a thing for so long.

Its a great time for an attention diverter. Where's Joey?

McClatchy: Worsening Gulf oil spill overwhelming Coast Guard
Allen said the approximately 20,000 people now working to prevent the spill from reaching land were struggling to deal with an environmental threat that he called "omni-directional and almost indeterminate" in size. He said federal disaster plans had been formulated to deal with far more localized spills.


...no-fishing zone to cover 19 percent of the Gulf, or 45,728 square miles...


The company said it would employ a new method in about a week to inject heavy fluids into the well to stanch the flow of oil and gas, followed by cement to close off the rupture — a procedure known as "top kill."

2 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

We all better hope that the attempt @ a top kill works. If it fails HELL in capitals is going to be the price. This disaster is growing daily and BP's attempt to use what amounts to a straw to siphon some OIL off was really more of an attmpt to gauge the flow and the then try and figure out if a top kill or junk shot as it's called will even work. If it fails and it could especially since this has never been tried at %K depths under enormous pressures then the hole will just continue to grow! Don't think an Oil can destroy an entire ecosystem? Think again, it's happened in the past naturally. In the dim past the such events have caused huge extinction events. The Permian extinction that wiped out 95% of all life on the Plnet was caused by the release of huge amounts of Methane gas from the sea bottom. Methane is 50X's more efficient as a green house gas then CO2 and the atmosphere as you can imagine heated up and turned the planet into a huge desert like Sci Fi writer Frank Herbert's legendary desert world DUNE. Everything died except the very hardiest few species of plants and animals. The seas in that era were also virtual deserts as 99% of all sea life died off as well. This scenario could happen again, if the seas warm up and methane hydrates ( ices) locked into the Ocean bottoms start to release their huge and deadly vols. of gas as happened in the past. It's already starting to happen in the Arctic sea. Keep in mind folks It was the release of methane that destroyed the Deep Horizon in April. Have we released the dragon once again? Stay tuned.

Jim Sande said...

You are pointing out some very serious consequences. This thing is horrible.