The "Oh No!" ZONE...Whatever happened to the "Ozone Hole?"....7/28/10...and WHERE'S THE OIL, SLICK?

[Your Uncle Sam]

THE "OH-NO" ZONE

(The ozone hole, remember that? Whatever happened to it?)

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ENVIRONMENTAL "SCARE-OR-ISM"

(A form of terrorism....they must scare you into letting them control you)

......(or, Let’s push for E.P.A and CAP n’ TRADE...it’s the GREEN THING to do)

***WATCH THE "HAY" VIDEO AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS BLOG

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FRIDAY May 7, 2010

8:50 am ET

Three British scientists shocked the world when they revealed on May 16th, 1985 - 25 years ago - that aerosol chemicals, among other factors, had torn a hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole. The ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from damaging solar radiation, became an overnight sensation. And the hole in the ozone layer became the poster-child for mankind's impact on the planet.

Today, the ozone hole - actually a region of thinned ozone, not actually a pure hole - doesn't make headlines like it used to. The size of the hole has stabilized, thanks to decades of aerosol-banning legislation. But, scientists warn, some danger still remains.

First, the good news: Since the 1989 Montreal Protocol banned the use of ozone-depleting chemicals worldwide, the ozone hole has stopped growing. Additionally, the ozone layer is blocking more cancer-causing radiation than any time in a decade because its average thickness has increased, according to a 2006 United Nations report. Atmospheric levels of ozone-depleting chemicals have reached their lowest levels since peaking in the 1990s, and the hole has begun to shrink.

Now the bad news: The ozone layer has also thinned over the North Pole. This thinning is predicted to continue for the next 15 years due to weather-related phenomena that scientists still cannot fully explain, according to the same UN report . And, repairing the ozone hole over the South Pole will take longer than previously expected, and won't finish until between 2060 and 2075. Scientists now understand that the size of the ozone hole varies dramatically from year to year, which complicates attempts to accurately predict the hole's future size.

Interestingly, recent studies have shown that the size of the ozone hole affects the global temperature. Closing the ozone hole actually speeds up the melting of the polar ice caps, according to a 2009 study from Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

So even though environmentally friendly laws have successfully reversed the trend of ozone depletion, the lingering effects of aerosol use, and the link between the ozone hole and global warming, virtually ensure that this problem will persist until the end of the century.

......BY THE WAY...ABOUT THE GULF SPILL

The Gulf has 643 QUADRILLION GALLONS of water.

643 QUADRILLION means: 643,000,000,000,000,000 GALLONS

DAILY OIL SPILLAGE= 42,000 GALLONS

IT WOULD TAKE 15,309,523,809,523 DAYS to displace the water in the Gulf with the CRUDE OIL.

THAT’S 41,943,900,848 YEARS. .......(Nearly 42 Million years)...OR IS THAT BILLION?

SO.....RELAX!!

As Crude Oil bubbles up from the spill and reaches the surface, it spreads. But the total plane area is razor thin. Compared to the total volume of the water in the Gulf, the total volume of the oil slick, spread over X square miles, at the current rate of spillage, would take millions of years for the CRUDE OIL to displace the water there.

This is CRUDE oil, not processed, refined oil, and therefore does not have the Volatile Organic Chemicals and tri-halomethanes added to it. It is a naturally occurring , gummy liquid that tends to clump when the temperature is right.

It is not the ecological villain it is portrayed to be.

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The Gulf of Mexico basin resembles a large pit with a broad shallow rim. Approximately 38% of the Gulf is comprised by shallow and intertidal areas (< 20 m deep). The area of the continental shelf (< 180 m) and continental slope (180 - 3,000 m) represent 22% and 20% respectively, and abyssal areas deeper than 3,000 m comprise the final 20% (Gore, 1992). The Sigsbee Deep, located in the southwestern quadrant, is the deepest region of the Gulf of Mexico. Its exact maximum depth is controversial, and reports by different authors state maximum depths ranging from 3,750 m to 4,384 m. Mean (average) water depth of the Gulf is ~1,615 m (Turner, 1999) and the basin contains a volume of 2,434,000 cubic kilometers of water (6.43 * 10¹⁷ or 643 quadrillion gallons).

THE GULF’S RESOURCES

The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem provides a wide array of valuable resources to the nations on its shores. Brief summaries of petroleum and fisheries resources can be found below.

Physical / Mineral
It is estimated that 1.4-7.2x10⁸ barrels of petroleum and 4.4-22.3x10¹⁰ cubic meters of natural gas are present beneath the seafloor in the northern Gulf (Darnell and Defenbaugh, 1990). According to the Minerals Management Service, offshore operations in the Gulf produce a quarter of the U.S. domestic natural gas and one-eighth of its oil. In addition, the offshore petroleum industry employs over 55,000 U.S. workers in the Gulf (MMS, 2002). In Mexico, the Secretariat of Energy (Secretaria de Energia - SENER) estimated that the daily crude oil and natural gas production from Gulf of Mexico offshore operations in the years 2000 to 2005 ranged from 2.293 to 2.839 million barrels and 41.4 to 44.8 million cubic meters, respectively (SENER 2006).

Fisheries
Gulf fisheries are some of the most productive in the world. In 2000, the commercial fish and shellfish harvest from the five U.S. Gulf states was estimated to be 1.7 billion pounds (approximately 772 million kg), which represents almost 1/5 (19.4%) of the total domestic landings in the United States. In the same year, commercial catches in the Gulf represented approximately 25% of the total U.S. domestic commercial fishing revenue and were valued at over $900 million. The Gulf also supports a productive recreational fishery. Excluding Texas, U.S. Gulf states accounted for over 40% (>104,000 lbs or >47,000 kg) of the U.S. recreational finfish harvest in 2000 (O'Bannon, 2001).

THIS IS WHAT ONE QUADRILLION PENNIES WOULD LOOK LIKE, SAY IN NEW YORK CITY:

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THAT'S ENOUGH MONEY TO PURCHASE

EVERYTHING THAT'S EVER BEEN PRODUCED

IN ALL OF KNOWN HISTORY...

SO, SAVE THOSE PENNIES!

Imagine, if each of those pennies

were the size of a milk jug

...how many pennies can you fit

into a one gallon milk jug?

Would ONE QUADRILLION

milk jugs, much larger than pennies,

fit into Manhattan?

No!

(Maybe New York State, though)

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HEY!! GENIUSES, HAY!!!

ADDED 14 MAY 2010:

HEY, SLICK!!........WHERE YOU GOIN’?

(Was I Right?)

NEW ORLEANS – For a spill now nearly half the size of Exxon Valdez, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is pretty hard to pin down.

Satellite images show most of an estimated 4.6 million gallons of oil has pooled in a floating, shape-shifting blob off the Louisiana coast. Some has reached shore as a thin sheen, and gooey bits ( clumps ) have washed up as far away as Alabama. But the spill is 23 days old since the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers, and the thickest stuff hasn't shown up on the coast.

So, where's the oil? Where's it going to end up?

(Note- REMEMBER.....643 QUADRILLION GALLONS OF SEAWATER? IT DISSOLVED!!!...INTO THE SEA)

Government scientists and others tracking the spill say much of the oil is lurking just below the surface. But there seems to be no consensus on whether it will arrive in black waves, mostly dissipate into the massive Gulf or gradually settle to the ocean floor, where it could seep into the ecosystem for years.

When it comes to deepwater spills, even top experts rely on some guesswork.

One of their tools, a program the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to predict how oil spills on the surface of water may behave, suggests that more than a third of the oil may already be out of the water.

About 35 percent of a spill the size of the one in the Gulf, consisting of the same light Louisiana crude, released in weather conditions and water temperatures similar to those found in the Gulf now would simply evaporate, according to data that The Associated Press entered into the program.

The model also suggests that virtually all of the benzene — a highly toxic flammable organic chemical compound ( a v.o.c.) and one of the chief ingredients in oil — would be stripped off and quickly vaporize.

The model was not designed for deepwater spills like the one at the Macondo well in the Mississippi Canyon now threatening the Gulf Coast. But experts said the analysis might give a close approximation of what is most likely happening where the oil plume is hitting the surface nearly 50 miles south of Louisiana.

The size and nature of the spill also has been altered by response efforts. So far, about 436,000 gallons of chemicals have been sprayed on the oil to break it up into smaller droplets and about 4 million gallons of oily water have been recovered.

Of that recovered mixture, at least 10 percent is oil, BP and NOAA said. Smaller amounts of oil also have been collected after washing ashore, and crews have burned a negligible quantity off the surface.

That would leave as much as 2.7 million gallons at sea as of Friday, with about 210,000 gallons coming up from the well every day.

The 210,000 gallons figure — specifically, about 5,000 barrels — comes from NOAA and has frequently been cited by BP PLC and the Coast Guard. Some scientists have said based on an analysis of BP's video of the leak that the flow rate is much higher, while others have concluded the video is too grainy to draw any such conclusions.

Even with computer models and history as guides, uncertainty reigns.

Doug Helton, the operations coordinator for NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration, said the agency was uncertain how much oil would sink to the bottom. For now, most of it is near the surface.

"This oil is coming from the sea floor and coming up to the surface in droplets and then once it comes to the surface it re-coelesces as a slick," he said.

Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University chemist who's analyzed the spill for NOAA, said he thinks most of the oil is within a foot of the surface.

"Ultimately, you could have a lot of oil on the shoreline. It won't be a black tide coming in, it will be globs coming ashore," he said.

"It's going to be a long, slow summer."

Wilma Subra, a chemist and MacArthur Fellow affiliated with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said there was a risk that the effort to break up the oil with dispersants would simply sweep it to the ocean bottom and contaminate the food chain, a possibility that has shrimpers on edge.

Merv Fingas, who has studied oil spills for 35 years and has worked for Environment Canada, that nation's environmental agency, predicted a bit of both: some would wash up, and some would stick to sediment and mud and sink slowly to the bottom, much of it likely settling near the spewing well.

"That's the fate of a lot of oil spills: sedimentation on the bottom," Fingas said.

Overton disagreed, saying the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is too light to sink all the way.

A common refrain among experts and officials is that every oil spill is unique.

Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, said the Deepwater Horizon spill reminds him of the last catastrophic oil flood in the Gulf.

In 1979, Mexico's Ixtoc I in the western Gulf blew out and spewed about 420,000 gallons of oil a day for nine months. Large quantities of oil did not reach Texas beaches.

"This was a problem we ran into with Ixtoc, we never found the oil," McKinney said. "But I think even today if you dig down in some sandy beaches you can find a layer of Ixtoc oil."

UPDATE: 7/28/10

Mighty oil-eating microbes help clean up the Gulf

By JOHN CAREY, environmental writer

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.

[Photos: Latest from the Gulf oil spill]

[Related: 100 days of oil: Gulf life changed for good]

Although there were more than 4,000 boats involved in the skimming operations, those cleanup crews may have only picked up a small percentage of the oil so far. That’s not unusual; in previous oil spills, crews could only scoop up a small amount of oil. "It’s very unusual to get more than 1 or 2 percent," says Cornell University ecologist Richard Howarth, who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill. Skimming operations will continue in the Gulf for several weeks.

Some of the oil has sunk into the sediments on the ocean floor. Researchers say that’s where the spill could do the most damage. But according to a report in Wednesday’s New York Times, "federal scientists [have determined] the oil [is] primarily sitting in the water column and not on the sea floor."

Perhaps the most important cause of the oil’s disappearance, some researchers suspect, is that the oil has been devoured by microbes. The lesson from past spills is that the lion’s share of the cleanup work is done by nature in the form of oil-eating bacteria and fungi. The microbes break down the hydrocarbons in oil to use as fuel to grow and reproduce. A bit of oil in the water is like a feeding frenzy, causing microbial populations to grow exponentially.

Typically, there are enough microbes in the ocean to consume half of any oil spilled in a month or two, says Howarth. Such microbes have been found in every ocean of the world sampled, from the Arctic to Antarctica. But there are reasons to think that the process may occur more quickly in the Gulf than in other oceans.

Microbes grow faster in the warmer water of the Gulf than they do in, say, the cool waters off Alaska, where the Exxon Valdez spill occurred. Moreover, the Gulf is hardly pristine. Even before humans started drilling for oil in the Gulf — and spilling lots of it — oil naturally seeped into the water. As a result, the Gulf evolved a rich collection of petroleum-loving microbes, ready to pounce on any new spill. The microbes are clever and tough, observes Samantha Joye, microbial geochemist at the University of Georgia. Joye has shown that oxygen levels in parts of the Gulf contaminated with oil have dropped. Since microbes need oxygen to eat the petroleum, that’s evidence that the microbes are hard at work.

The controversial dispersant used to break up the oil as it gushed from the deep-sea well may have helped the microbes do their work. Microbes can more easily consume small drops of oil than big ones. And there is evidence the microbes like to munch on the dispersant as well.

It is still far too early to know how much damage the spill has done — and may still be doing — to the environment. Tar balls continue to wash up on beaches. And the risk of a leak remains, until the well is permanently capped sometime in the next few weeks

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

There's no denying that oil drilling from a floating platform a mile or more above the ocean bottom has risks and when those risks turn into disasters that kill almost a dozen workers on the oil drilling platform we have to pay attention.
MORE safety engineering has to be added to this risk/reward formula even "Low Tech" engineering has to be tried to mop up after an oil extraction failure.
This "hay" demonstration while workable in a couple stainless steel bowls in a lab may point towards a way to a seemingly low cost, workable solution but added problems of disposing of oil saturated hay still remain.
The need for energy has been a part of man's development since the age of fire. The more energy man needs, the more chance for danger.

[Marjorie McEntee]

DUH !! Roger

[Roger Dail May]

My Question is how much it going cost the Rancher to feed his cattle with this during winter.