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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (80615)	5/29/2010 12:03:33 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

FRIDAY, MAY 28, 2010 georgewashington2.blogspot.com Third Giant Underwater Oil Plume Discovered The New York Times reported on May 15th: 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. AP reported on May 27th that scientists had found a second giant plume deep under the water. The plume is 22 miles long and 6 miles wide. Today, the Washington Post is reporting that a third giant underwater plume has been discovered: A Louisiana scientist said his crew had located another vast plume of oily globs, miles in the opposite direction. James H. Cowan Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University, said his crew on Wednesday found a plume of oil in a section of the gulf 75 miles west of the source of the leak. Cowan said that his crew sent a remotely controlled submarine into the water, and found it full of oily globules, from the size of a thumbnail to the size of a golf ball.... Cowan said the oil at this site was so thick that it covered the lights on the submarine. "It almost looks like big wet snowflakes, but they're brown and black and oily," Cowan said. The submarine returned to the surface entirely black, he said. Cowan said that the submarine traveled about 400 feet down, close to the sea floor, and found oil all the way down. Trying to find the edges of the plume, he said the submarine traveled miles from side to side. "We really never found either end of it," he said. He said he did not know how wide the plume actually was, or how far it stretched away to the west. As I have previously pointed out, the use of dispersants by BP may be making matters worse. The Washington post article notes: Cowan's finding underscores concerns about oil moving under the surface, perhaps because of dispersant chemicals that have broken it up into smaller globules. BP officials have played down the possibility of undersea oil plumes. This discovery seems to confirm the fears of some scientists that -- because of the depth of the leak and the heavy use of chemical "dispersants" -- this spill was behaving differently than others. Instead of floating on top of the water, it may be moving beneath it. That would be troubling because it could mean the oil would slip past coastal defenses such as "containment booms" designed to stop it on the surface. Already, scientists and officials in Louisiana have reported finding thick oil washing ashore despite the presence of floating booms. It would also be a problem for hidden ecosystems deep under the gulf. There, scientists say, the oil could be absorbed by tiny animals and enter a food chain that builds to large, beloved sport-fish like red snapper. It might also glom on to deep-water coral formations, and cover the small animals that make up each piece of coral. "You're almost like a deer in the headlights when you're watching this. You don't know what to say," Cowan said. He said the oil's threat to undersea ecosystems "is really starting to scare us."

To: stockman_scott who wrote (80615)	5/29/2010 1:39:20 PM
From: T L Comiskey	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Top Kill Indeed Saturday 29 May 2010 by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t \| Op-Ed "Top kill." That has been the phrase on the lips of every network news talking head, and in the lead paragraph of every news report, all throughout this last week. British Petroleum (BP) describes the process this way: "The primary objective of the top kill process is to put heavy kill mud into the well so that it reduces the pressure and then the flow from the well. Once the kill mud is in the well and it's shut down, then we follow up with cement to plug the leak." Think about that for a second. Here was the Deepwater Horizon, an absolute marvel of high-flying engineering and construction, until it exploded and collapsed into the sea. Afterward, here was this hole in the ocean spewing raw crude into the fertile waters of the Gulf. Despite all the fantastic technological prowess evidenced in the construction of the Deepwater Horizon, it's failure left us so buggered for answers to the oil vomiting from the hole they drilled that they are down to stuffing mud into it and praying that works. Maybe it has, actually. Friday's New York Times suggested as much, reporting, "By injecting solid objects overnight as well as heavy drilling fluid into the stricken well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers appeared to have stemmed the flow of oil." However, the report goes on to state that we won't really know if it worked for another day or so, and even if it did work, the leak could start up again without warning. Let's all take a huge, arm-flapping leap of faith for a moment and assume the "top kill" mud bomb did in fact work, and the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has actually been stopped. A lot of people will probably do some victory dancing on your television screen - BP officials, Coast Guard officials and maybe even the president - and if they do, it is your moral obligation to scream at them until you feel like your throat could burst. This is just beginning, and even with the oil spigot turned off (for now), it is going to get much, much worse, and will stay that way for a very long time. This thing has been spewing as much as 19,000 barrels of oil into the ocean per day, every day, for the last five weeks. There are tens of millions of gallons of oil down there, swirling around in the currents and making their way toward a long and desperately fragile shoreline. Here is one example of what we're all going to be hearing about for the next several months, if not years, to come: Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama. The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science's Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume recorded since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20. The thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters), and is more than 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) wide, said David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school. Hollander said the team detected the thickest amount of hydrocarbons, likely from the oil spewing from the blown out well, at about 1,300 feet (nearly 400 meters) in the same spot on two separate days this week. The discovery was important, he said, because it confirmed that the substance found in the water was not naturally occurring and that the plume was at its highest concentration in deeper waters. The researchers will use further testing to determine whether the hydrocarbons they found are the result of dispersants or the emulsification of oil as it traveled away from the well. The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower waters where many fish and other species reproduce. The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may be the result of the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at the site of the leak. Who knows how many of those plumes are lurking in the Gulf? Where will they go, and when will they arrive? Will this oil be carried around Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard, drowning beaches and fishing grounds and every ecosystem it encounters? How much damage will be done by the dispersants that will be used to quell the oil damage? I don't know. Neither do you. BP doesn't know; the Coast Guard doesn't know; the president doesn't know. Nobody knows. We're going to find out, though. Slowly, dreadfully, we are going to find out. Factor this in before you think this is as bad as it can get: it's about to be high, hot summer in the Gulf. Cleaning up oil at sea and on land when it's above 90 degrees and brutally humid will test the endurance of every human who dares to assist in the clean-up. People died when the Deepwater went down, and mark my words, people will die cleaning up the mess. This, too: it's about to be hurricane season: The upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will likely be a busy one and may spawn as many as 23 named tropical storms, including up to seven major hurricanes, the U.S. government said Thursday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that eight to 14 storms would strengthen into hurricanes, with top winds of 74 mph (119 kph) or higher. Three to seven of those could become major storms that reach Category 3 or higher - meaning they bring sustained winds of at least 111 mph (179 kph). "If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record," NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco said in a statement. "The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared." So, let's be clear. There are millions of gallons of oil threatening thousands of miles of coastlines, ecosystems and livelihoods. Nobody knows how much there is, or where it will appear, or when. It's about to be brutally hot exactly where the clean-up needs to happen, and a whole slew of hurricanes and tropical storms are on the way. And our best response is to fill a hole with mud, just like the little Dutch boy facing 11 holes in the dike with only ten fingers on his hands. All of this because we are so addicted to oil that the petroleum companies like BP were allowed to "regulate" themselves. Top kill indeed. 1 » William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence."