May 2010 archive

The dispersants are a massive experiment , and most likely a huge crime has been committed on the environment, in order to cover up the oil spill–which was at least an accident.

The Coast Guard and EPA allowing their use is a criminal act. And the use of even the worst one still goes on despite media reports to the contrary.

BP Still Using Dirty Dispersant in the Gulf

– By Kate Sheppard| Sat May. 22, 2010 10:35 AM PDT

BP is continuing to use a toxic oil dispersant in the Gulf, despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency directed the company to find a less-dangerous chemical to use on the spill. The company said yesterday that it could not identify a better alternative.

The EPA has a list of other approved dispersants that could be used in the Gulf, many of which are less toxic than Corexit. BP has already dumped at least 670,000 gallons of Corexit at the spill site.

Will the EPA force BP to switch dispersants? That remains unclear. On Friday, EPA spokesperson Adora Andy indicated to ABC News that the agency has not outright barred BP from using their brand of choice. “It’s not that Corexit is banned,” she said. “It’s not that they have to stop using it because they’re using it right now. But it’s just that they need to switch over.”

Beyond Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi. Where’s the oil now, and where is it gonna go?

Here’s a graphic of where it is now from US Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/n…

And, a satellite image, with loop stream superimposed (from the 17th)

http://deepseanews.com/wp-cont…

It kind of looks like some of it at least is starting to spin around and around in the central gulf.

That’s just surface oil though, and due to the dispersants, we don’t know what depth it’s all at.  Speeds, and potential directions are quite different depending on depths:

Fourth, measurements of near-surface current as high as 4 knots [2 m/s] have been recorded in eddies recently detached from the Loop Current. Available data do not indicate that the maximum possible speed in the Loop Current is any less than that figure. Current profiles associated with both the Loop Current and its eddies are highly sheared. These high surface speeds drop to about 1 knot [0.5 m/s] at 650 ft [200 m] and 1/2 knot [0.25 m/s] at 130 ft [400 m] depth. Features with lower surface speeds also have lower speeds at depth.

Current predictions are that the loop may swing further west than normal, threatening the Keys either less, or just a bit later on, and the Dry Tortugas perhaps more.  The Coast Guard claims that tar balls that have washed up in the Keys are not from Deepwater Horizon. You can judge their credibility for yourself.

At some point, though, it hits the Gulf Stream:

The Stream may well act as a barrier keeping the oil on the US side, not so much towards Cuba or the Bahamas. Seems like that’s what’s happening in this huge image (hat tip to Wolverine6)

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa…

As for now the oil is clearly affecting south west FL, the keys and dry tortugas, and then south FL east.  It may be that when it hits the fast, deep, warmer, water of the Stream, it’ll tend to drive it North or back towards Florida.

The census kid came today.  He seemed nervous.  Wonder if people were giving him shit all day.  He was just a 20 something and I wonder what he thought of me, a guy old enough to be his father.

I don’t answer race questions anymore.

Just like that with solid conviction.

I was kind of surprised he didn’t press for answers to the other questions.

From Gale Mead:

CASUALTIES OF THE GULF OF MEXICO DISASTER: Beneath the Surface

Videography and song by Gale Mead www.galemead.com

Lead guitar: Eric McFadden. Tenor Sax: Federico Martinez.

Carpets of crinoids – cousins of the sea-star – stretched their long limbs languidly into the current for morsels of planktonic food. Colorful tropical fish drifted among gracefully spiraling wire corals. Somber-faced grouper hovered warily while jacks and sharks cruised by, curious about the submersibles lights. Fifty miles south of Mississippi, I was the first human ever to lay eyes on the teeming, thriving, dazzling undersea metropolis that was Salt Dome Mountain. As rich and diverse as Texas Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary to the west, or Floridas coral reefs to the south, but a little deeper, and totally unexplored.

It was July 29, 2002, and I was a submersible pilot with the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a joint project of National Geographic and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, led by my mother, Dr. Sylvia Earle. Fishermen and oilmen have long known the Gulf of Mexico by what they could extract from it with their nets and their drilling rigs. We were there to study it from the inside out.

Salt Dome Mountain is an unexpectedly shallow seamount rising from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico to within 200 feet of the surface. Its just south of the Mississippi coast, just north of where a raging gusher of oil now spews death and destruction with no end in sight. And no beginning in sight either, as the vast majority of this catastrophe is occurring underwater, beyond the reach of television news cameras. The video below is a compilation of images from my dive eight years ago, posted with permission from Sustainable Seas Expeditions. You can find more videos of the undersea life near the blowout by using Google Ocean.

It remains to be seen when or even whether the raging torrent of oil can be stopped, but even in the best case scenario, the damage already done far exceeds what most of us can yet get our minds around. May it at least not pass unnoticed. And may we at long last consider that the consequences of our actions should be weighed before, and not after, the damage is done.

Saturday May 21, 2010  One month and one day past the destruction of the drilling rig of the Deepwater Horizon, with BP unable to stop the oil blowout destroying the Gulf, President Obama’s anonymous source announced he will appoint former  Senator Bob Graham (D, FL) and former EPA head William K Reilly to a commission to study the cause of the spill, federal oversight, and the potential risks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

William K Reilly was administrator at the EPA under the first George Bush administration, George H W “Poppy” Bush, the one who invaded the Middle East the First Time and went to war against Iraq the First Time, which was called the ……  Gulf War.

The commission, modeled on ones which investigated the Challenger shuttle explosion and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, will not include any federal officials, administration officials said this week.