Chicago Indymedia : http://chicago.indymedia.org/archive
Chicago Indymedia

News :: Environment

Oil Is Not The Worst Part of British Petroleum's Gulf Gusher!

It is bad enough that British Petroleum (BP) doesn't want to attempt to use high explosives drilled deep down into the bed rock beside the pipe to bend it closed.
Oil Is Not The Worst Part of British Petroleum's Gulf Gusher!

By Lloyd Hart
06/22/10

It is bad enough that British Petroleum (BP) doesn't want to attempt to use high explosives drilled deep down into the bed rock beside the pipe to bend it closed. It is incredibly psychotically cynical of BP to collect 15 to 20 thousand barrels of oil a day from the well head and sell that oil into the market at $77 barrel as a means to save the company from bankruptcy while 90 percent of the rest of the oil and gas from the well head leak into gulf waters. And it is absolutely collectively psychotic of BP to back themselves into a PR mentality using toxic dispersants to hide the surfacing oil below Gulf waters. To ignore the health and welfare of clean up workers by not providing necessary respirators. To hide and burn affected animals alive. To keep media and the public away from public areas being polluted with private security details and ignore the sunken plumes of oil that are not surfacing because those plumes may be weighed down by frozen materials mixed in the oil that maybe much heavier than the sea water it self. However, besides all their white anglo saxon tight ass cheapness that most likely caused this disaster in the first place, the greatest threat to all living things in the Gulf and later of course, the Atlantic is not the oil, it's the heat being trapped in the Gulf waters by the oil that is the greater environmental catastrophe.

According to N.O.A.A.'s (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration) ocean surface temperature readings, surface temperatures in and around Gulf waters where the oil has travelled as well as further down current are much higher than the average seasonal fluctuations for this time of year. Because of the enormity of the release of oil in the Gulf, the amount of heat being trapped in the sea water will simply create a huge dead zone top to bottom in the gulf and later in the Atlantic. All life will disappear from the sea water as the temperatures rise over ninety degrees fahrenheit which has already begun to happen.

"Approximately 840,000 gallons of total dispersant have been deployed—700,000 on the surface and 140,000 subsea."
-Dept. Of Interior 05/27/10

The wholesale use of chemical dispersants on such a large amount of oil can only serve to make the temperature of the Gulf waters continue to rise. All the dispersants do is spread out the oil in to smaller droplets creating dispersant plumes which will trap heat in the sea water over a larger area for a longer period of time. The question everyone needs to ask is what will much warmer water do to the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean when the Gulf stream waters reach those two bodies of water later this year.

I also find it extraordinarily disturbing that absolutely no one, considering the amount of oil released and will be released, is talking about the rise in ocean surface temperatures in the science or environmental media or anywhere in the media. Sure, everyone is worried about the oil slicks being picked by a hurricane and sprayed even further inland but once again it will be the ocean surface temperatures that will create far worse storms making things far worse for Gulf life forms of all types.

The latest estimates are that the oil from the well head will continue to gush for two years. If this is allowed to continue at the pace of 200 thousand barrels a day which is what the scientists estimate is actually happening, this could finally push us far ahead into accelerated global warming that will in turn knock down all the dominos we are deeply afraid of. Permafrost will melt faster, Greenland will melt faster and the pace of desalination of the oceans will slow the deep ocean currents much faster and the possibility of an ice age coming sooner than thought could be the result of the British Petroleum Gulf Gusher.

The reason we should think about this is because stopping the flow of oil must be our greatest objective after BP is destroyed by forced receivership imposed by the U.S. government and the well head is destroyed by bringing the pressure of 1000 ft. of bed rock to bear on the pipe closing of the flow. The real cost of damages from the British Petroleum Gulf Gusher is actually in the trillions not the billions and until someone actually tries to stop the flow using high explosives deep in the bed rock I will be calling Barrack Obama big oil's bitch.
 
 

Donate

Views

Account Login

Media Centers

 

This site made manifest by dadaIMC software