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

To: i-node who wrote (604565)	3/21/2011 10:47:12 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Respond to of 1576655

Don't know how much??? en.wikipedia.org "The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the BP oil disaster or the Macondo blowout)[4][5][6] is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed for three months in 2010. The impact of the spill continues even after the well has been capped. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.[7][8][9] The spill stemmed from a sea-floor oil gusher that resulted from the April 20, 2010 explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which drilled on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. The explosion killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others.[10] On July 15, the leak was stopped by capping the gushing wellhead,[11] after it had released about 4.9 million barrels (780×10^3 m3), or 205.8 million gallons of crude oil.[2] It was estimated that 53,000 barrels per day (8,400 m3/d) were escaping from the well just before it was capped.[9] It is believed that the daily flow rate diminished over time, starting at about 62,000 barrels per day (9,900 m3/d) and decreasing as the reservoir of hydrocarbons feeding the gusher was gradually depleted.[9] On September 19, the relief well process was successfully completed and the federal government declared the well "effectively dead".[12] The spill caused extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats as well as the Gulf's fishing and tourism industries.[13][14] In late November 2010, 4,200 square miles (11,000 km2) of the Gulf were re-closed to shrimping after tar balls were found in shrimpers' nets.[15] The total amount of Louisiana shoreline impacted by oil grew from 287 miles (462 km) in July to 320 miles (510 km) in late November 2010.[16] In January 2011, an oil spill commissioner reported that tar balls continue to wash up, oil sheen trails are seen in the wake of fishing boats, wetlands marsh grass remains fouled and dying, and that crude oil lies offshore in deep water and in fine silts and sands onshore.[17] A research team found oil on the bottom of the seafloor in late February 2011 that did not seem to be degrading.[18] Skimmer ships, floating containment booms, anchored barriers, sand-filled barricades along shorelines, and dispersants were used in an attempt to protect hundreds of miles of beaches, wetlands and estuaries from the spreading oil. Scientists have also reported immense underwater plumes of dissolved oil not visible at the surface[19] as well as an 80-square-mile (210 km2) "kill zone" surrounding the blown well.[20] The U.S. Government has named BP as the responsible party, and officials have committed to holding the company accountable for all cleanup costs and other damage.[21] After its own internal probe, BP admitted that it made mistakes which led to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.[22]

To: i-node who wrote (604565)	3/22/2011 9:40:39 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576655

nytimes.com "Revisiting the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill section below is extracted... "Q. How did the government react to your discovery? A. They said we were — essentially — nuts. The plumes were denied for a long time. We were essentially accused of exaggerating and being bad scientists because we had talked to the press before publishing a paper. Q. Aside from the plumes, what did your group find? A. We were able to document the impact of the leak on the seafloor. In the places we sampled, it was devastating. Often you saw this oily mucus, blanketing everything. There are these bacteria in the sea that eat oil. When their oil-laden waste gets heavy, it falls to the floor. And it must have been falling like a blizzard for months, because it covered the sediment. Typically, the seafloor is teeming with invertebrates sticking out — little animals with tubes, with shells, anything that filter-feeds. Well, the tubes were still there, but the animals were dead. I suspect they were suffocated when the oily waste rained down on them. The things that could run away, the fish, did. Yet even some of the mobile fauna — when we’d find them — were discolored and slow. Usually you poke a crab and it takes off running. These guys would just sort of sit there and look at you like they were dazed and confused. Q. How would you characterize the seafloor? A. A graveyard. Q. In recent weeks, a large number of dead baby porpoises have been washing up along the gulf shoreline. Do you think these deaths are linked to the oil spill? A. I am not a marine biologist. But if pregnant dolphins were exposed to oil, their embryos may have been harmed. Alternatively, the pregnant females may have eaten fish that contained oil-derived toxins. Or their food stocks may have been diminished by the spill and there may have been malnutrition causing miscarriages. Given the timing of the blowout and these deaths, it seems reasonable to suspect a link. Q. Have you been to your old study site? A. We were there in December. It looked very different. We saw a lot of dead animals, not just invertebrates but sea fans and corals. And there were a lot of exposed mounds of ice crystals of gas on the bottom, and there was a lot of carbonate on the bottom as well. And everything was covered with this layer of brownish slime. Everything. It looked like spider webs in an old house — it didn’t look normal. The animals weren’t acting normal. Behaviorally, they weren’t doing what they should. There was this one rock that had all these crabs on it. The crabs were just reaching into the air, and they had their claws out. I’d never seen that before. These crabs just didn’t look healthy. They were black instead of orange; they had barnacles all over their body. You’d poke them and they didn’t run away. Q. Did the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989 give us any information that was helpful? A. I think we learned a lot. But our memories were short. There were a lot of things said then — that we were going to develop better technologies for removing oil from the surface. Essentially, when this happened, we were dealing with the same technologies. Nothing changed. It was all the same. So we were really woefully unprepared because we didn’t take that lesson seriously. And I hope we take this lesson seriously. Q. When you read the news reports last past week from Japan, what were your feelings? A. It’s odd that you would ask me this — I’ve been thinking about it. No one can prevent earthquakes. That’s up to Mother Nature. However, building nuclear power plants on an island adjacent to an active tectonic zone is inherently dangerous. Likewise, deepwater drilling into gas-overcharged sediments is dangerous. For me, both of these disasters are a very loud plea for green energy.