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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (566525)	5/16/2010 12:18:28 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578161

"They say they suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly." Probably. I have touched on this issue before. Dispersants, surfactants, detergents, all the same. Given the fact that waxes and oils are used by many organisms to keep their place in the water column, wide scale use of chemicals which can dissolve them means they cannot station keep and that means certain death. "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. " Oh, yeah. That is the other thing I have pointed out. Natural oil seeps are common in the Gulf. As a result, there are many types of bacteria that are adept at breaking it down. Which is why there really isn't a long term problem with oil spills. They have an impact short term, but the oil goes away pretty quickly. The problem is they require oxygen to do their work. So use of surfactants means that much of the oil gets broken down in the one place where oxygen is in short supply, at the bottom. Ok, it looks better on camera, but it is much more damaging. At the surface, the whole atmosphere is involved. Towards the bottom, well, not so much. So sending the oil to the bottom looks good on camera, but is far more harmful.

To: bentway who wrote (566525)	5/16/2010 6:26:30 AM
From: Taro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578161

Bad stuff, agree. So what do you believe should be done about it? /Taro

To: bentway who wrote (566525)	6/6/2010 1:24:22 PM
From: Brumar89	4 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1578161

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. 10 mi x 3 mi x 300 ft = over 240 billion cubic feet. That works out to about 1.8 trillion gallons. About 43 billion barrels. The entire Macondo field is estimated to contain between 50 and 100 million barrels. Lets estimate the Maconda field at 86 million barrels. So the largest of the oil plumes is on the order of 500 times as massive as all the oil in the Maconda field. Of course, the Maconda field hasn't leaked its entire volume out over the past 47 days, only a tiny amount of it. So when you hear about a massive oil plume - 10 miles by 3 miles by 300 feet .... know that mathematically that plume has to be mostly seawater.