Friday, June 25, 2010

The Real Gulf Oil Disaster Hasn't Even Started Yet



Oh don't get me wrong. It's very fucking bad. BP's busted ass oil well has been spewing 60,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico for 66 days. Hmm, let's see...6 times ought is ought...carry the 3...

That comes to 3,960,000 barrels of oil released in the Gulf of Mexico. Put another way, that comes to 217,800,000 gallons of oil. So far. With no end in sight.

But wait! It's worse! Because it's not "just oil" going into the water. There are also at least 15,000 gallons a day of Corexit 9500 oil dispersant being added to the stew.

"Oil is toxic at 11 ppm while Corexit 9500 is toxic at only 2.61 ppm; Corexit 9500 is four times as toxic as the oil itself."

But wait! It's worse! Although oil typically does not evaporate into the atmosphere, the fact that the Corexit 9500 is thinning and dispersing the oil may, in fact, allow the oil to enter the water cycle and be sucked up into forming hurricanes.

In fact, there is at least anecdotal evidence that it has already started raining oil in Louisiana.



But wait, it's worse! Even without evaporating oil, guess what happens to the toxic Corexit 9500 when the temperature increases (ya know, like it does in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer)? I'll tell you what it does. It turns into a gas and enters the atmosphere.

This might be a good time to examine how hurricanes form and where they get all that warm air and water from.



Now, let's take another look at the picture of the Gulf from space>



Look at that for a minute. Try to remember where all that oil is as you watch this short animated video from the GOES weather satellite of Hurricane Katrina making landfall.



Probably looks like it was over pretty quick once it hit land. But look at how far inland all of that Gulf moisture that Katrina picked up made it. Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky. Fucking Ohio!



So here's the bottom line folks. For the foreseeable future, possibly for years, even decades, there will be this giant fucking bowl of toxic stew where the Gulf of Mexico used to be.

Every single year between June and November, there will be hurricanes sucking up all of that poisonous filth and spreading it all over the south, the eastern seaboard and yes, even the Midwest. It will get in our rivers, our lakes, our aquifers. You may never be able to experience a Midwestern thunderstorm the same way again.

Oh, and to you Global Warming and Climate Change deniers who believe "Oh, we are just puny humans! It's arrogant to think our little actions could affect the planet! It's really big and we are very tiny!". To you ignorant "drill baby, drill!" fucktards, please go take a nice long swim in the Gulf.

6 comments:

FletcherDodge said...

This post makes me glad I passed on that time share in Cape Coral a couple of years ago.

I Travel for JOOLS said...

I cannot for the life of me understand why the EPA has continued to allow the use of that dispersant. It makes NO SENSE.

Xavier Onassis said...

emawkc - might want to take a pass on that time share in Branson too. Dolly Parton's "Dixie Stampede" isn't quite as appetizing when the horses and steers are coated with oil and dispersant and shitting blood as they work though their entertaining routines while you eat your fried chicken.

JOOLs - As I understand it, the EPA did order them to stop using Corexit 9500 and find a safer dispersant. They even gave BP a firm deadline. BP said fuck you, we do what we want.

http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/dispersants.html#summary

So much for "over-reaching, intrusive, government regulation of private businesses".

I Travel for JOOLS said...

I read over the website you referenced. I never could find BP's response but I did find the results of a meeting that EPA and others had that said the oil was more toxic than the dispersant used which does not agree with what you stated.

Also, this particular dispersant is on EPA's approved list, but of course the quantities used were not imagined at the time and there are concerns about that.

I didn't read everything on the site nor with a critical eye as I just don't have time for that right now but it appears they have been in a "monitoring" mode for about a month now and they are not ordering BP to do anything more than cut down on the amount of dispersant used, which EPA states, BP has done.

It is apparent nobody knows what the effects will be in the long run. It's a big, out-of-control experiment.

Nuke718 said...

In a discussion yesterday it was brought up that while nobody looks forward to property damage, injury, or even death that we all agreed the first burning tornado covered by CNN would be amazing.

Morrison said...

Obama should be impeached.

And tried along with Bush for the war crimes that are being allowed to continue.