“But it was a great media event, no? And a chance
to show how concerned and moral you are, right? And
an opportunity for Congress to host a reality show starring
themselves and Tony Hayward, yes?
“So everyone's happy.
“ "Where is all the oil? Nearly two weeks
after BP finally capped the biggest oil spill in U.S.
history,..." ”
“...the oil slicks that once spread across thousands
of miles of the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappeared.
Nor has much oil washed up on the sandy beaches and
marshes along the Louisiana coast. And the small cleanup
army in the Gulf has only managed to skim up a tiny
fraction of the millions of gallons of oil spilled in
the 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig went up
in flames.
“So where did the oil go? "Some of the oil
evaporates," explains Edward Bouwer, professor
of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
That's especially true for the more toxic components
of oil, which tend to be very volatile, he says. Jeffrey
W. Short, a scientist with the environmental group Oceana,
told the New York Times that as much as 40 percent of
the oil might have evaporated when it reached the surface.
High winds from two recent storms may have speeded the
evaporation process.” [Quoted from news.yahoo.com]
Oh no, not a sane article!
Obviously you’re one of those
racists who hate Obama and Rahm Emmanual. How can they
destroy BP and increase American dominance of the filthy
fossil fuel industry with anarchists like you?
How can they improve your lives if
idiots like you start posting facts!
The National Wildlife Association has
brought out a 32-page report [.pdf format] on major fossil
fuel-related disasters in the past ten years.
“The BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, with
its tragic loss of life and devastating impact on the
Gulf Coast economy, has brought the risk and high cost
of oil development to the public’s attention.
Predictably a round of oil industry executives have
testified before Congress offering countless apologies
and empty assurances that such an incident will never
happen again. The oil industry is running ads asserting
that this is an exceptional ‘once-in-a-lifetime’
event for an otherwise safe and responsible industry.
But this is the fourth major oil spill in 33 years in
North America after the following: in 1977, Hawaiian
Patriot spewed over 30 million gallons of oil 300 miles
off the coast of Hawaii; in the Gulf of Mexico, Ixtoc
1 spilled over 140 million gallons of oil in 1979; and
Exxon Valdez was responsible for dumping over 11 million
gallons of oil into the Prince William Sound of Alaska
in 1989.
“Major oil spills are really only a small part
of the real story. From 2000 to 2010, the oil and gas
industry accounted for hundreds of deaths, explosions,
fires, seeps, and spills as well as habitat and wildlife
destruction in the United States. These disasters demonstrate
a pattern of feeding America’s addiction to oil,
leaving in their wake sacrifice zones that affect communities,
local economies, and our landscapes.”
“Global temperatures in the first half of the
year were the hottest since records began more than
a century ago, according to two of the world's leading
climate research centres.
“Scientists have also released what they described
as the "best evidence yet" of rising long-term
temperatures. The report is the first to collate 11
different indicators – from air and sea temperatures
to melting ice – each one based on between three
and seven data sets, dating back to between 1850 and
the 1970s.
“The newly released data follows months of scrutiny
of climate science after sceptics claimed leaked emails
from the University of East Anglia (UEA) suggested temperature
records had been manipulated - a charge rejected by
three inquiries.”
—
“A third leading monitoring programme, by the
Met Office, shows this period was the second hottest
on record, after 1998, with two months this year –
January and March – being hotter than their equivalents
12 years ago.”
“this is the worst environmental disaster the usa has ever faced” - obama
Someone should tell him about the dust
bowl in the 1930s
“By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million
acres of farmland had lost all or most of the topsoil
to the winds.”[Quoted from livinghistoryfarm.org]
And what about the greatest oil gusher in US history?
“A torrent of oil that someone had named the
"Trout Stream" was flowing away from the Lakeview
gusher when Frank Hill took charge. The stream threatened
not only to dissipate the oil so that it could never
be recovered but also to flow into Buena Vista Lake,
the source of irrigation water for Miller & Lux
farming operations.
“Work began immediately on building huge earthen
reservoirs to trap the oil in the sloping land between
the wild well and the lake, eight miles away. All the
teams and scrapers that could be hired in the Midway
field and some from as far away as Suisun City, 300
miles to the north, worked around the clock to build
20 huge sumps, covering some 60 acres. Before the job
was done it cost more than $350,000.
“Some 400 men labored to build a barricade around
the well, lacing sand bags and sagebrush into a levee
to hold back the flow of oil.
“Three pumps, including two 4-inch pumps and
one 6-inch, worked to full capacity delivering oil to
a pair of 55,000-barrel tanks on Producers Transportation
Co. property at Maricopa. The tanks soon proved inadequate
to handle the uncontrolled flow, which reached a peak
estimated at 90,000 barrels per day.”
—
“Finally, on Sept. 9, 1911, 544 days after the
well blew in, the Lakeview gusher caved at the bottom
and died as suddenly as it was born. It had produced
an estimated 9 million barrels of oil, a record for
the time. More than 4 million barrels had been saved.
The remainder was lost.” [Quoted from irwinator.com]
Lakeview oil well site, marked with
stone monument Image:
CLUI
“A bronze plaque reads: "America's most
spectacular gusher 'blew in' here March 14, 1910. Initial
flow was 18,000 barrels per day and later reached uncontrolled
peak of 100,000 barrels per day, completely destroying
the derrick. This Union Oil Company well between Taft
and Maricopa produced nine million barrels of oil in
18 months."
“Most of the oil soaked into the soil or evaporated.
Black mist fell for miles around. Only supreme vigilance
kept it from catching fire. The price of crude plunged
by nine-tenths. And when the flood ended, the well produced
less than 30 barrels a day.
“Today a wide oil-soaked sand pavement is topped
with desert scrub. Petroleum fumes waft from nearby
wells, and haze hides the scene on many days.”
[Quoted from geology.about.com]
I suppose no-one taught American history
in Kenya ☺ Are all
Democrats ignorant of real life? Else one of his mates
would’ve told Obama that he was talking tripe, as
usual.
And this is the guy who believes that
the USA has 57 states.
“This is the first time I've heard of [a lightning
strike] happening in my 20 years," Baker said.
"No one else can remember it. I'm just relieved
that it's over and no one was hurt."
“A pipe with 20,000 gallons of gas was burning
and two tanks with about 12,000 gallons of gas caught
on fire, Douglas said.”
Since this report, another lightning-sparked oil fire has
been reported by one of the ships helping clear up the Gulf spill.
Struck by lightning - allegedly!
Oil tank struck by lightning,
Rock City, NY, 1905
Oil tank struck by lightning,
Bridgeport, Illinois, 1909
So, on average, manufacturing exported
to China from the UK causes more than eight times as much pollution.(2.85/.35).
Thus Ed Milliband was lying when he claimed ‘New’
Labour was reducing emissions. What Britain was doing was exporting
the pollution to the Far East, meanwhile increasing the pollution
considerably.
For the USA relative to China, the
figure is 5.5 times (2.85/.52).
Of course, exporting jobs to Taiwan,
South Korea or even Vietnam is not a difference on so great a scale, while exporting
jobs to Japan, Switzerland or France improves the situation.
(Switzerland has much hydro power, while France and Japan
have developed nuclear power. The United States and Australia
have some excuse by virtue of the large distances in a
large country.)
are the gulf fishers claiming compensation from bp under false pretences?
The biggest dead zone in the world
is caused by nitrate run-off down the Mississippi.
May 2010
“The smothering layer lingers on the bottom from
May through October, but is most severe in June, July
and August, when the Gulf is its warmest and most calm.
The zone has sprawled to nearly 8,000 square miles (20,000
square kilometers). Until winter's winds and water-churning
cold break up the layer, fishermen have to travel much
farther to find fish. Officials worry about disruption-even
collapse-of the region's U.S. $26 billion-a-year fish
and shellfish industry, including the oyster harvest
in Texas, which usually peaks between Thanksgiving and
Christmas.” [Quoted from nationalgeographic.com]
June 2008
“Since 1990 the dead zone, which begins in summer
and lasts until early fall, has averaged about 6,046
sq. mi. But the threat is growing. A study released
last week by scientists from Louisiana State University
(LSU) and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium
estimated that this year's dead zone would be more than
10,000 sq. mi., roughly the size of Massachusetts. But
that prediction was made before massive floods hit the
Midwest: with the flow of the Mississippi at dangerous
levels, and with rains sweeping fertilizer off drowned
farms, the dead zone could grow even bigger. The Louisiana
fishing industry, the second largest in the nation,
is already hurting, with shrimp catches falling in the
dead zone's wake. The U.S. is not alone in grappling
with this aquatic byproduct. As modern, chemically intensive
agricultural practices spread around the globe, so does
hypoxia; a 2004 U.N. report documents nearly 150 dead
zones globally. But none compare to the black hole in
the Gulf of Mexico. "This year would be the largest
since we've started keeping records," says R. Eugene
Turner, a zoologist with LSU who led the modeling effort.
"It's definitely getting worse.”
—
“Not that it's an easy one to fix. Most of the
nutrient pollution that ends up in the Gulf comes from
the hundreds of thousands of farms in the Midwest. The
only sure way to shrink the dead zone is to reduce the
amount of fertilizer running off those farms. But thanks
in part to the push for corn-based ethanol and the skyrocketing
price of food crops, U.S. farmers are planting more
acres for corn than they have since World War II —
including 15 million more acres last year than in 2006.
Although there are measures farmers can take to limit
fertilizer runoff, those changes are expensive, and
there's little federal funding to support such conservation.
The just-released action plan relies mostly on voluntary
activities. "We need Congress to act as if this
is going to get done," says Doug Daigle, a member
of the task force. "The state governments will
contribute, but this has to be initiated by the Federal
Government.” [Quoted from time.com]
the ‘incident location’
is about 84 miles from the Louisiana coast.
Map source: National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. Hypoxia data: NASA [Normal oxygenation for sea water is about 10 ppm oxygen at 5°C and 5ppm at 50°C.]
