Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Ed Jewett]

Top Killing

by Linh Dinh / May 31st, 2010
1951 — the entire village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in France went mad. Wracked by physical and psychological convulsions, people stripped themselves or leapt from windows, became violent, thought snakes were knotted inside their bellies or flowers sprouting from their flesh. Seven died, including three suicides. Fifty were placed inside an insane asylum. Baffled by this horror straight out of the Middle Ages, as it was dubbed by a French newspaper at the time, the police thought something was in the flour. It arrested the miller and baker for two months, accused a supplier in Vienna. Only in 2009 did American historian, H. P. Albarelli Jr., reveal that this episode of collective madness was the work of our C.I.A., who wanted to test the effects of L.S.D. It did this, I should add, without any complicity from the French government, but when do we ever care about any country’s sovereignty?
That a U.S. agency would unleash a dangerous drug on an unwitting population should not surprise you. There have been many instances of this. That it would poison foreigners is not at all unusual. The only twist here, apparently, is that this was inflicted on a friendly nation.
In the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 399 black men, poor, mostly illiterate sharecroppers, became guinea pigs. While misleading them into thinking they were being cared for by all these nice white doctors, our government withheld treatment just to see how messed up they would become. We even provided free transportation, fed them. This grim joke lasted 40 years. So what if 128 would die from syphilis or related complications, and that some infected their wives or had babies born deformed.
In 1963, cancer cells were injected into 22 patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital, in a study commissioned by the United States Public Health Service and the American Cancer Society. These geezers were dying anyway, the reasoning went, so no consent was necessary. In any case, their bodies rejected the alien cells, so no harm, no foul, I guess.
When fighting a war, we really flaunt our chemicals, and not just on an enemy population but our own soldiers. Take Agent Orange. During the Vietnam War, 12 million gallons of this stuff were sprayed. Most American soldiers served just a year there, yet many would become gravely ill from exposure to a defoliant that could cause numerous cancers, diabetes, ischemic heart disease or multiple myeloma. Veterans started to sue DOW, Monsanto and other companies in 1978, but only in 1984 did they manage to wrest a settlement. Many vets had already died. When a group of Vietnamese victims tried to sue in the same court, with the same judge, he dismissed their case. Millions of Vietnamese have suffered or died from Agent Orange. Half a million babies have been born with horrific birth defects.
Scientific researches had proven that TCDD, a component in Agent Orange, was toxic, yet the Pentagon went ahead and used it in Vietnam. To test its effectiveness, it sprayed some over Panama, even near a lake that provided water for the capital. In 1999, the Panamanians finally sued our government for damages. The truth of the matter is our government will use whatever that is expedient and cost effective — Agent Orange to clear jungles, Depleted Uranium to puncture armor, irrespective of the decades or even centuries long damages caused to whom or whatever gets in the way. Eyeing huge profits, the companies that make these killers are always happy to oblige since the Pentagon is a very generous spender. It’s easy to be one when it’s using your and my money to stuff into its daddy’s pocket or mistress’ G-string. Sorry, but I always get confused when trying to figure out who’s licking most energetically in this 69 marathon.
Depleted Uranium is radioactive waste. Dr. Rosalie Bertell explains:

DU bursts into flame on impact. It reaches very high temperatures, and becomes a ceramic aerosol […] Ceramic (glass) is highly insoluble in the normal lung fluid, and when inhaled, this ceramic particulate will remain for a long time in the lungs and body tissue before being excreted in urine […] The presence of DU eight years after the Gulf War exposure, means that the internal organs: lung, lymph glands, bone marrow, liver, kidney, and immune system have experienced significant localized radiation damage.

The First Gulf War lasted just six months, yet a quarter of the 697,000 American troops who participated soon reported symptoms of what became known as “Gulf War Syndrome.” Compared to 114 killed by enemy fire, thousands would perish from Depleted Uranium. As expected, the Pentagon denied everything, and only a handful of congressmen, like Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich, made a fuss. Ignoring the swelling body of evidences against Depleted Uranium, the Pentagon went on to use it in Kossovo in 1999, Afghanistan starting in 2002, and Iraq from 2003 until today.
To punish Fallujah, whose inhabitants had the audacity to kill, burn, then string up four of our Black Water mercenaries, the United States flattened that city while illegally using chemical weapons. Faced with deformed babies, some born with two heads, the Iraqis have sued the British, since American troops are off limit to litigation. Ah, the irony of invading a country accused of possessing chemical weapons, when it’s us who are unleashing them indiscriminately. Kill ‘em all, let God google through alternative blogs to sniff out the hushed ups!
As with Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium is causing a huge spike in cancers among Iraqis and Afghans, with thousands of babies being born grotesquely deformed. The Uranium Medical Research Center quotes Sayed Gharib of Tora Bora:

What else do the Americans want? They killed us, they turned our newborns into horrific deformations, and they turned our farm lands into grave yards and destroyed our homes. On top of all this their planes fly over and spray us with bullets… we have nothing to lose… we will fight them the same way we fought the previous invaders.

The words irony and hypocrisy may not exist in the Pentagon’s thin dictionary, but you can’t accuse it of having no sense of timing. The attack against Iraq in 2003 started on the same day as March Madness. (For non-Americans reading this, that’s our collegiate basketball tournament.) It’s shock and awesome, ya’al. This year, it began Operation Moshtarak, designed to secure the poppy fields of Helmand, uh, I mean, to chase out evil Talibans, just moments after the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. I know, I know, the Olympics Truce is just a cutesy myth, but it can’t hurt to have distractions on ice and snow, with frills, triple axles, and an occasional, oh so nice uplifted leg, while we take care of some nasty business in the dessert. The Canadians also participated. Joining “the largest ever helicopter assault involving the Canadian air force,” Captain Mathieu Bergeron of Edmonton gushed, “There are helicopters everywhere. It’s awesome.” It’s too bad the Afghans didn’t send a delegation. A lone athlete could march in carrying a white flag, to a rousing ovation, too, no doubt.
With the current catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it appears that the chicken has come home to roost. Our government does not police, but has always enabled and abetted, these out of control corporations. Now it twiddles its thumbs as British Petroleum dumps nearly a million gallons of Corexit into the ocean. Diluting the evidence, this solution was designed only for public relations, even as it made the situation much worse. Imagine Agent Orange in the water. Thousands of people are already sick, with millions more to come. Also, there is no discussion of how this will affect our neighbors like Mexico, Cuba and the Bahamas, not that the people in charge ever gave a damn about foreigners, or our soldiers, or our poor. They can declare you a hero even as they kill you. Look at what happened with the first responders at Ground Zero. Look at what happened to Pat Tillman.
As the government takes over the clean up effort, look for familiar contractors to show up ready to fatten their pockets. We pay to get sick, then pay to feel slightly better. Maybe they’ll even market the contaminated seafood. Coming to a store near you, well oiled and seasoned, Corexit Fish Sticks©. Up yours.


Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories and five of poems, with a novel, Love Like Hate, scheduled for July. He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union. Read other articles by Linh.
This article was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 7:33am and is filed under (Ex-)Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Children, Crimes against Humanity, Environment, Health/Medical, Iraq, Military/Militarism, NATO, Panama, Vietnam, mercenaries.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/top-killing/#more-17723

[Magda Hassan]

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc told U.S. regulators six weeks before its Gulf of Mexico well blew out that workers had difficulty maintaining control, according to e-mails released today by the House Energy and Commerce Committee investigating the spill.
A March 10 e-mail to Frank Patton, the Minerals Management Service’s drilling engineer for the New Orleans district, from BP executive Scherie Douglas said the company planned to sever the pipe connecting the well to the rig and plug the hole.
“We are in the midst of a well control situation on MC 252 #001 and have stuck pipe,” Douglas wrote, referring to the subsea block, Mississippi Canyon 252, of the stricken well. “We are bringing out equipment to begin operations to sever the drillpipe, plugback the well and bypass.”
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the panel’s oversight subcommittee, released the documents related to oil-well design, and e-mails from March, February and November 2009. The documents “raise questions, but their connection to the blowout, if any, require additional investigation,” the lawmakers said.
The e-mails shows that as early as the second week of March, BP was enlisting help from J. Connor Consulting Inc., a Houston-based firm that advises some of the world’s biggest energy companies on how to respond to oil spills.
Federal regulators gave BP permission to cement the well at a shallower depth than normally would have been required after the hole caved in on drilling equipment, the e-mails showed.
Verbal Approval
BP’s Douglas, the senior regulatory and advocacy adviser for the company’s exploration and production unit, received verbal approval from an unnamed MMS official at 11 p.m. on March 11 to insert the cement plug about 750 feet (229 meters) above the bottom of the hole, the e-mails showed.
The House committee is investigating the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers, sank Transocean’s $365 million Deepwater Horizon rig, and triggered a spill that threatens the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida. The panel also is probing equipment meant to prevent spills at deepwater wells and whether human error played a role.
The New York Times reported today that internal BP documents showed “serious problems and safety concerns” with the rig prior to the explosion that triggered the largest oil spill in the nation’s history.
BP, the oil company that owned the well, yesterday stopped pumping heavy drilling fluid into the well and is preparing to lower a containment cap over the gushing wellhead, a process that may take four to seven days. Waxman and Stupak on May 28 sent letters to clean-up consultants working for BP and Transocean, seeking documents including contacts and emergency-response plans.
Letters were sent to O’Brien’s Response Management Inc. of Spring, Texas; Marine Spill Response Corp. of Herndon, Virginia; and the National Response Corp. of Great River, New York. National Response is a unit of Seacor Holdings Inc.
All three companies have service agreements with BP or Transocean, the committee said in a statement.
--With assistance from Jim Snyder in Washington. Editors: Steve Geimann, Mark Rohner
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05...-show.html

[Ed Jewett]

May 31 2010:
9,000 days and a dying economy

Quiet day on the markets, US closed, Britain closed, Europe, Asia and the Euro hardly budging, and all the real action taking place below ground in more ways than one. Bad news from China keeps getting louder, but may still have a ways to go before it makes real headlines. Increasing pressure on Spain, but that too may take a while yet to come to fruition. Spain is not Greece. Even from a purely economical view, the most relevant issue is the Gulf of Mexico, if only because its aftershocks could be strong enough to shake and rattle global economies to an extent no-one seems willing to talk about as of yet.

The five affected US Golf states alone have, between them, a $2.2 trillion economy. Cut that in half, which could easily happen if there’s oil all over the place, and you have a nationwide economic disaster, coming on top of everything else. Throw in a hurricane, or two, or ten, and see where you get from there. How about if 50% or more of Florida's tourist industry is wiped out, or if beach side properties there lose another 50% or more of their value due to tar balls forcing beach closures? How about Georgia, the Carolinas, how about closing Chesapeake Bay as well as Galveston Bay? Alarmist? Maybe, then there’s no end in sight to the spill.

And that too is just the start. There’s a serious threat that the entire Mississippi watershed and river will have to be closed for -much of its- traffic. You can’t have a zillion ships a day drag oil residue all the way up to St. Louis or beyond. Oil is sort of toxic. If it would come to that, the US have a real serious problem.

Anyone still wish to argue that the BP/Macondo/Deepwater Horizon karbunkle is not a disaster? Or that it isn't one for president Obama? After the Top Kill failure (was that ever a serious attempt in the first place? how hard is it to gauge upward vs downward pressure?), there’ll apparently be another brilliantly engineered $multi-million inverted flowerpot theater-piece later this week, but now that we're down to the next in line ever less likely to succeed genius ideas, maybe it’s time to see what for instance the bookies are offering.

After all, they usually have their finger on the pulse of reality much more than politicians or corporations with skin in the game. Or are we down to the lucky 13th failed attempt yet, our best option to date? Someone grab me some clover, horse-shoes, rabbit's feet.

Remember, Matt Simmons, banker to the oil industry and writer of several highly insightful books on black gold, recently warned that it may take 9000 days, or 24 years, before the first oil leak to threaten a US presidency will stop a-gushin’-and-a-flowin’. Simmons has little faith in the litany of maybe-solutions we’ve seen so far and will see going forward. Yeah, there’s talk of detonating a nuclear bomb, but let’s get real, it’s never been tried at these depths, and it’s a crap shot to begin with. What exactly do you risk unleashing?

The people in the swamps, the wetlands and the bayous were never the richest in the world, or even the country, but they had an abundance of natural beauty around them to make up for it. That’s now gone too, for decades to come. It’s impossible to say when Louisiana will recover from this latest blow, but it may very well indeed take those 9000 days, and likely more. Incidentally, so may the lawsuits.

The only thing that will help BP as a going concern retain some of its value is that Exxon and Shell are both eager for a take-over, while China will certainly be looking at the ruins of the company. Then again, for all interested parties the threat of never-ending and extremely expensive legal cases, bot civil and criminal, may be a deterrent that will not be overcome. The British government will try what it can to save the firm, but even they will find they've bigger fish-and-chips to fry. The challenge will be to separate BP's assets from its pending legal claims. A few laws may have to be changed in order to accommodate that one.

When the oil reaches Florida, Georgia, Mexico and Cuba, and it will, every US and UK politician will attempt to wash their hands clean of oil in any shape or form, the president first of all. We’re all still caught in a mid-air suspension moment built on hope that the oil will magically disappear, but that’s not very clever. What we should do is imagine where a Katrina-size hurricane can deliver the stuff. That and the normal loop- and Gulf Stream currents.

So what should both the US and UK governments have done 40 days and change ago? It's simple, really. They should have immediately declared everything they could an emergency zone, situation, whatever, anything in their power. In the US, Homeland Security would have been the number 1 agency to turn to. But they’re probably too occupied with Arab Americans tying their shoelaces in airports.

It’s downright foolish to underestimate the potential damage from an all-out leak over one mile below sea-level, and if you believe it takes platoons of specialists to come to that assessment, I’d direct you to what I wrote right after April 20, and have written since.

Now, I’m not an oil expert, but I do know when things smell too much to ignore. There was and is no-one who could have guaranteed on April 20 that we would find ourselves where we are now, 41 days later, but that’s not the point. What is, is that even people like me could see way back when that the risk was there that we would end up here. And that’s all a president or prime minister should need. When it comes to these matters, the only option is to be better safe than sorry, at least and certainly when you’re in charge of an entire nation. Gambling on anything else, or better, is quite simply not in your job profile. It can’t be, for where would that leave the nation? That’s right, where we are today.

The argument that the White House didn’t and doesn’t have the expertise to intervene in issues such as Deepwater Horizon is ludicrous. If Obama would have, as he should have, declared it a national emergency on April 20, all the best resources, the best people, the best material, on the whole wide planet, would have been available right from the get-go, not just the resources of BP, which has always had a vested interest into downplaying every single aspect of this boondoggle. Unfortunately for every party involved, with the possible exception of BP, governments consciously and deliberately choose and chose to be asleep on both sides on the Atlantic.

And this one looks to be the one that’ll bite them in the rearguard. No more BP, no more Obama, and, much more importantly, no more fishermen and tourist outlets on the Louisiana coast for a long time to come, plus a giant threat to shipping on the Mississippi. And that’s still only the human cost. Do dead dolphins count for anything at all around here?

Could the president have prevented the calamity? Probably not. But that's not the point. The point is he never really tried. He, intentionally or accidentally, misread the situation to a huge degree, one that he can never have back, no matter what his spin team comes up with. The economics behind the karbunkle will tell the tale.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/20...onomy.html

[Ed Jewett]

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

DEEPWATER HORIZON WILL BE THE END OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


June 1, 2010 – The Obama Administration today opened a criminal investigation into all the events before, during and since the April 20th explosion that triggered the largest environmental catastrophe in human history. (If it’s not now, it will be.) -- This investigation is going to end badly for everybody.

As the catastrophe worsens, as people grasp what it means... there will be blood demanded and blood spilled. The tens of millions of soon-to-be victims will not accept less. There will be an almost insatiable need for vengeance and all of the pent-up rage after swallowing all of the lies fed to the American people by Wall Street and Washington for so long will have found a single, unifying issue. The frustration built up in every corner of our lives will become a blowout exactly like the Gulf…. Because of the Gulf.

We know that BP, the mainstream media and the U.S. government have at best deceived, and at worst outright lied about two key things. The first is the actual flow rate (now minimally) confirmed at 75,000 bpd. (I’m kind of leaning towards 125,000 bpd myself.) The second is the fact that there are two very huge leaks – not one. The second one is about five miles west of the bore hole. That means the explosion caused geologic ruptures. (Hello… CNN? Anybody in there?)

Nobody has any credibility here. Nobody. It’s all finger pointing. It’s tasteless. It’s transparent. It’s embarrassing. It's insulting. And it is infuriating.

-- For me a rosy side to this is that Dick Cheney has dived deep. He will be remembered for Halliburton. Those skeletons will be recalled and resurrected. Bush-Cheney’s role in turning the Minerals Management Service into a roving, drug-crazed whore house will become (finally) something actionable. Of course, the American populace didn’t get upset when MMS, Interior and Energy lied to them about how much cheap energy there was going to be… forever. Yes, Old FTW readers will remember that we took on MMS in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

This is going to be a nasty, nasty catfight and the legal and political ramifications of Deepwater Horizon will – I am very confident -- eventually bring about the collapse of the United States government. They will certainly bankrupt it (sooner) and force it into default. Political collapse is the third stage of overall collapse (Orlov). It was coming anyway. It’s just going to get here a lot sooner now. Social collapse will begin as soon as the people from the Gulf coast become refugees.....

Michael C. Ruppert

[Carsten Wiethoff]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...p-dividend

Tony Hayward, BP's embattled chief executive, will risk incurring further wrath in the US over the Gulf oil spill tomorrow by defying calls from politicians to halt more than $10bn (£6.8bn) worth of payouts due to shareholders this year.
He will hope to appease City investors by promising in a conference call with analysts to stick with BP's dividend policy amid mounting concern about a plunging share price.
BP declined to comment on its strategy tonight but it is understood that Hayward will say he is confident the company can pay for liabilities resulting from the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion – now estimated by analysts at $20bn to $60bn – as well as rewarding investors.
The move follows demands from senators Charles Schumer and Ron Wyden in a letter to Hayward all dividends be halted until the cost of the clean-up is known.
Analysts warned that committing to the dividend risked further political opprobrium in the US, with Alex Stewart from Evolution Securities fearing it could force Hayward to make a U-turn next month. BP reports its results on 27 July, when it will announce the size of its next quarterly payout, but it is expected to spend more than $10bn in total dividends this year.
"The problem they have is that the oil is likely to be still flowing by the time they announce results," said Stewart. "It's not going to look good paying about $3bn in [quarterly] dividends to shareholders if at the same time local fishermen are having their livelihoods destroyed in the Gulf."
However, BP's dividend is of crucial importance to the City and to the pensions of millions who depend on payouts from profitable companies to boost their retirement funds. Together with rival Shell, BP accounted for 25% of the total dividends of £50bn paid in the UK market last year. Any cut in the dividend could result in investors selling BP shares, further weakening the company, which has lost nearly 30% of its value since the disaster began.
Crude oil has been leaking from a well at the bottom of the sea since 20 April and BP has been unable to stem the flow despite various attempts to halt it, including the "top kill" method of pumping mud and debris into the hole.
Hayward's handling of the crisis has been called into question, and he chose Facebook to apologise for his latest gaffe: saying he wanted his life back. His position has become more troubled since he said in an interview with the FT today that it was "entirely fair criticism" that BP was not fully prepared for the oil leak.
Analysts were today openly questioning the future of Hayward as chief executive, and whether his company could be taken over and broken up.
Bookmaker Paddy Power is now offering even odds that Hayward will be forced to leave his post by the end of this year, meaning two successive chief executives would have left earlier than originally intended. Hayward's predecessor John Browne departed following the Texas City fire which claimed 15 lives.

[Magda Hassan]

They have chutzpah alright. I heard Obama was fining them 85 million for something or other. I bet they are just quaking in their boots in fear. In the mean time some garden variety arse covering courtesy of Haliburton:

Halliburton campaign donations spike

By JAKE SHERMAN | 6/2/10 3:04 PM EDT
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Reps. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) are among those who got money from Halliburton in May. AP POLITICO 44

As Congress investigated its role in the doomed Deep Horizon oil rig, Halliburton donated $17,000 to candidates running for federal office, giving money to several lawmakers on committees that have launched inquiries into the massive spill.

The Texas-based oil giant’s political action committee made 14 contributions during the month of May, according to a federal campaign report filed Wednesday — 13 to Republicans and one to a Democrat. It was the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008.

Of the 10 current members of Congress who got money from Halliburton in May, seven are on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath.

Halliburton’s political contributions in May are the highest they’ve been since September 2009, when the PAC also gave $17,000 in donations. In fact, the last time the company gave more than $17,000 in one month was when it donated $25,000 during the heat of the presidential campaign in September 2008.

About one week before executive Timothy Probert appeared before the House Energy and Commerce’s investigative subcommittee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to Ranking Republican Joe Barton's reelection effort. It was Halliburton’s second-largest donation of the month — topped only by $2,500 to former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is running for the Senate.

In the Senate, Idaho Republican Mike Crapo, who serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, who serves on the Commerce Committee and North Carolina Republican Richard Burr (N.C.), who serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, all got $1,000. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also got $1,000.

In the House Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), who serves on the Natural Resources Committee, Geoff Davis (R-Ky.) and Dave Camp (R-Mich.) all received $1,000 from the oil giant.

Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren, the only Democrat who got Halliburton’s money, is on the House Natural Resources Committee.

Republican Steve Pearce, running for a House seat he once occupied in New Mexico, and Ohio Republican Senate candidate Rob Portman also got donations from Halliburton.

Federal election law permits company PACs to donate to whomever they like, including lawmakers that are investigating their industry. A spokesman for Halliburton asked all questions to be submitted in writing, and the company did not respond to two e-mails with questions regarding Halliburton’s political donations.

Halliburton made the cement casings on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, and some experts have said the casings contributed to the cause of the disaster. Halliburton, in congressional testimony, has said it followed the orders of BP.

[Peter Lemkin]

Here is the current situation..totally out of control...but if one listens to the BBC [not biased, mind you] they have the leak 'under control'...hardly...I personally think it will not be until the end of the year until it is...by then the Gulf will be a sewer and most life in it dead...a look at what life on Gaia will be sooner rather than later if we don't get the Corporate Capitalist leeches off of our backs, legs, arms, heads, necks, throats, chests, and groins!....

http://www.livestream.com/wkrg_oil_spill...ooterlinks

[Keith Millea]

by then the Gulf will be a sewer and most life in it dead...a look at what life on Gaia will be sooner rather than later if we don't get the Corporate Capitalist leeches off of our backs, legs, arms, heads, necks, throats, chests, and groins!....

Hate to ruin peoples day,but ALL need to look in the eyes of total defilement of this precious earth.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2010/06/04
06.04.10 - 10:12 AM
"The Things I've Seen: They're Just Not Right"

by Abby Zimet

The deathly disaster unfolding in the Gulf is God-awful enough. BP's cover-up is even worse. Thanks be to the obstinacy of photographers. The AP's Charlie Riedel took these stomach-turning photos. There is little to be grateful here other than the enduring humanity of some. More on regular folks intent on truth-telling here.

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

[Ed Jewett]

Gulf Oil Spill Could Spread to Atlantic Coast

• By Betsy Mason
  
• June 3, 2010 |
  
• 1:34 pm |
  
• Categories: Environment
  

http://link.brightcove.com/services/play...9801701001

Oil from BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill could reach the Atlantic coast in the coming months, according to a new computer simulation.
The model indicates that oil at the surface is likely to be picked up by a fast-moving stream of water in the Gulf known as the Loop Current, which feeds into the Gulf Stream current that carries water northward along the Atlantic coastline.
“I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?’” Synte Peacock, who worked on the model at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in a press release today. “Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood.”
It is impossible to accurately predict precisely what will happen to the oil because it will depend on the ever-changing Loop Current and regional weather patterns. But the model, which is based on typical wind and current patterns for the area, can provide a range of possibilities.
Six different scenarios — one is shown in the video above — were run through the computer simulation. In all of them, the oil eventually gets entrained into the Gulf Stream and reaches the Atlantic coast, traveling north at speeds up to 100 miles a day as far north as Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, before heading east into the open ocean. The main differences between the scenarios are in the timing of the oil’s movement.

“We have been asked if and when remnants of the spill could reach the European coastlines,” team member Martin Visbeck of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany said in the press release. “Our assumption is that the enormous lateral mixing in the ocean together with the biological disintegration of the oil should reduce the pollution to levels below harmful concentrations. But we would like to have this backed up by numbers from some of the best ocean models.”
The NCAR-led simulation was performed on supercomputers based at the New Mexico Computer Applications Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The scientists caution that the study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed and published, is not a forecast and is based on movement of a virtual dye that doesn’t resemble oil in some ways. The study also doesn’t take into account factors such as chemical breakdown and degradation of the oil or whether the oil will remain as a slick on the surface, coagulate or mix into the subsurface.
The team is working on extending the model further into the future.
Read more background on the study at the New York Times‘ Dot Earth blog, in the full press release, and at the DOE.
All six modeling scenarios can be found here.
Video: The animation is based on a computer model simulation, using a virtual dye, that assumes weather and current conditions similar to those that occur in a typical year. It is one of a set of six scenarios released today that simulate possible pathways the oil might take under a variety of oceanic conditions. Each of the six scenarios shows the same overall movement of oil through the Gulf to the Atlantic and up the East Coast. However, the timing and fine-scale details differ, depending on the details of the ocean currents in the Gulf. (Visualization by Tim Scheitlin and Rick Brownrigg, NCAR; based on model simulations.)
See Also:

• Tracked From Space: Gulf Oil Slick Approaches Land
  
• Gulf Coast May Be Permanently Changed by Oil Spill
  
• Toxic Oil Dispersant Used in Gulf Despite Better Alternative
  
• Better Oil Dispersant Tests Delayed in Gulf
  
• EPA Orders BP to Use Less-Toxic Oil Dispersant
  

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/0...z0pvCiyHFf

[Myra Bronstein]

Fun game everybody! Guess what Gulf of Mexico animals these used to be! Yay! Games!!!

Photos are attached. Don't cheat now.