The oil runs out
I noticed a curious thing recently. The BBC's coverage of the Gulf oil spill for the last two nights was missing one thing: oil.
A reporter went down in a minisubmarine and looked at a pristine coral reef. Newsnight interviewed lawyers, fishermen and politicians.
But there was no sign of a slick, a slimed pelican or even a tar ball in their reports.
Then I found this on ABC News and the penny began to drop.
For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it.
The leak is capped and the spill appears to be shrinking, but where is it going?
At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire.
Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen.
"That oil is somewhere. It didn't just disappear," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.
Salvador Cepriano is one of the men searching for crude. Cepriano, a shrimper, has been laying out boom with his boat, but he's found that there's no oil to catch.
"I think it is underneath the water. It's in between the bottom and the top of the water," Cepriano said.
Even the federal government admits that locating the oil has become a problem.
"It is becoming a very elusive bunch of oil for us to find," said National Incident Cmdr. Thad Allen.
The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.
Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.
"[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.
Looks like photo-oxidation and biodegradation work well in warm water, just like some scientists argued.
Here's another report
Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf.
And another:
Since BP capped the renegade Macondo well at the center of the Gulf oil disaster 12 days ago, the oil slick has shrunk to about 10,000 square miles from 80,000 square miles in just a matter of weeks.The reduction has amazed scientists who are tracking the spill and raised many questions about where all the oil has gone.
Natural resilience.
Update
It looks like my guarded rational optimism on the oil spill was perhaps if anything too cautious. In Time magazine, Michael Grunwald exposes the hype even more starkly:
So far — while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.
...Anti-oil politicians, anti-Obama politicians and underfunded green groups all have obvious incentives to accentuate the negative in the Gulf. So did the media, because disasters drive ratings and sell magazines; those oil-soaked pelicans you keep seeing on TV (and the cover of TIME) were a lot more compelling than the healthy pelicans I saw roosting on some protective boom in Bay Jimmy. Even Limbaugh, when he wasn't downplaying the spill, was outrageously hyping it as "Obama's Katrina." But honest scientists don't do that, even when they work for Audubon.
"There are a lot of alarmists in the bird world," Kemp says. "People see oiled pelicans, and they go crazy. But this has been a disaster for people, not biota."
Comments (20)
You know, the Mexicans experienced a terrible oil spill into the Gulf in the 1980s. the Gulf recovered.
Maybe it really is a big ocean, as Tony H said?
Of course, it's much more fun for the media and 'environmentalists' to proclaim this an enormous disaster, regardless of the actual effects.
In light of the continuous disbelief that this BP oil spill is not "castastropic" nor "unpreceented", it might be time to repost these links:
http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-oil-seeps-naturally-than-from...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000127082228.htm
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/04/farce-on-the-reef
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/commen...
Why do most people continually seem to let themselves get taken in by politicians, Greens and The Media, over and over and over again?
People are plainly concerned about living in a cleaner world, making it better for the future and at least giving their moral support for this.
But why does it seem so difficult to learn history's obvious lessons???
And more importantly, is there any way to get the average citizen to think more critically under pressure?
some "really big ocean" numbers
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/bp-oil-spill-fermi-estimates.html
Wow, its almost like the thousands upon thousands of gallons of toxic dispersant that BP dumped into the Gulf is somehow working and making it almost impossible to get the oil out of the water. Great job!
Wow, its almost like the thousands upon thousands of gallons of toxic dispersant that BP dumped into the Gulf is somehow working and making it almost impossible to get the oil out of the water. Great job!
There is oil in the mangroves, the tidal creeks and is sloshing around in catchments hidden in myriad ways. It is not gone. It may be degrading but one must consider what the half life is for any given amount of that which is now dispersed.
It will become evident in the further decline of fisheries, the death of mangroves and in the exposure of the pits and pseudo-dunes created by the BP disposal process.
We just have to admit that America loves to get hysterical. They feed on fear and panic (like some Dr. Who monsters whose name escapes me) so naturally this spill which was not the biggest ever in the world nor even the biggest ever in the Gulf had to be inflated into an Armageddon scenario.
A guy in The Daily Stirrer predicted weeks ago before the well was capped that micro-organisms would take care of the oil.
http://www.greenteethmm.com/dailystirrer.shtml#oil-spill-mexico
Now all we need to do is stop Americans convincing themselves that micro organisms grown thirty feet tall from gorging on oil are about to destroy the world.
Americans just love mass hysteria so it was inevitable the spill would be inflated into an outbreak of fear and panic.
A guy in The Daily Stirrer predicted weeks ago, before the well was capped, that micro organisms would take care of the oil.
http://www.greenteethmm.com/dailystirrer-july2010#oil-spill-mexico
The dispersants did nothing to make the oil easy to retrieve -- quite the opposite. It made it harder to detect visually, but made it much harder to collect. The whole point of the dispersants was for BP to try to make it look like there wasn't so much of a problem. Why do you think they have been barring independent scientists and the press from getting too close? The dispersants also reduced the size of the particles so they can be ingested by sea life. The comparative lack of oil on the surface of the water now doesn't mean the oil is gone.
My partner was in Alaska, in the Prince William Sound, in 2007, 20 years after the Exxon Valdez spill, and found that the marine life had not recovered, fishing had not recovered. Yes, nature is resilient, and microbes will over time take care of much of the oil, but this does not diminish the enormous economic losses and damage to the ecosystem upon which we and countless other species depend. It's great that in years to come there may be once again breeding grounds for various birds, for instance, but if their habitat is not available this year, their numbers will suffer greatly now and many won't recover.
The problem hasn't gone away just because some people for ideological reasons wish it has.
I personally suspect the hidden agenda behind the increasing romanticization of the environment through a sort of victimhood of birds, and other natural species. That victimhood is really contagious, and it is adding insult to injury as well.
Yes, the damage to the ecology that affects humans and other species, especially when it comes to what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico. Please ask the locals on the ground.
Yes, the economic losses to oil spill are enormous. Again, please ask the locals on the ground. They will tell you what happened there.
Just be patient, and see for yourself when visiting any part of the U.S.
P.S.: Victimhood means too much politics, so please be cautious. Thank you.
Say, is there any proof that damage to ecosystem and huge economic losses are present in the Gulf of Mexico due to an oil spill? It is better to please ask the locals on the ground in Florida, U.S.A. They can tell regarding the situation.
And please, exercise caution when discussing about the need for environmental protection & conservation policy reforms. Why? Because too much politics can be a mind game. So be informed and be warned of what you say about and how do you expect.
Correction: I should say that "It is better to please ask the locals on the ground in Florida, U.S.A. They can tell you about the situation there". I stand corrected. And remember - too much politics can be a mind game, so be informed and be warned of what you say about and how do you expect. Thanks.
"My partner was in Alaska, in the Prince William Sound, in 2007, 20 years after the Exxon Valdez spill, and found that the marine life had not recovered, fishing had not recovered."
No doubt from the "clean up" that Exxon was required to do. Pressure spraying the rocks played Hell with the microscopic marine life. It was the beaches left uncleaned that responded faster. The American Fisheries society "analyzed sediment samples from stream deltas throughout Prince William Sound from 1989 to 1991 and 1995." They believe "that tidal leaching of PAH [polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon] from weathered oil into incubation substrate could explain persistent elevated embryo mortality observed in pink salmon through 1993, and that spawning habitat had recovered to below lethal threshold by 1994."
Not to worry about finding the "lost" oil. I see that Greenpeace will get to the bottom of this cover up.
Too early to conclude?
What about this one?? - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67G4ZA20100818
"The idea that 75 percent of the oil is gone and is of no further concern to the environment is just absolutely incorrect," Hopkinson told reporters on a conference call.
Protecting and conserving the environment is of utmost importance, so do not expect the scary thoughts to appear.
Otherwise, the worse you philosopically have, the more consequences of an ideology of environmentalism you get.
And do not forget that social & economic stability is also of utmost importance to ordinary people, including me, in ensuring a better life.
As for concerns over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is it too sqeamish to conclude that the spillage is still there?
I will determine on that, soon!
Mystery solved. The bugs ate the oil, according to the boffins in this really well-reported story in today's Washington Post:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/24/AR2010082406521.html
This latest science reconciles the outstanding questions about what was going on under the surface, and why there first was a plume and then there wasn't. Also why there was no oxygen depletion and dead zone.
To Ken Maize:
You have to find out carefully about "why there was no oxygen depletion and dead zone". You must know that.
So, are you concerned about the mysterious phenomenon behind the oil spill? Speak out please - and know your exact viewpoint.
You have to tell Matt Ridley about about this, OK? Thank you.
[...] Okay, het lek is al gedicht en het is niet meer in het nieuws . Maar dit is toch wel interessant. Volgens een ABC nieuwsitem was het moeilijk de olie te vinden. Veel ervan is opgelost en afgebroken naar het schijnt. Matt Ridley, de rationale optimist vond het ook al vreemd. [...]
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