It's not a matter of wanting to find the dirty deeds of BP's, the government's and the media's cover-up of the 4 to 18 million barrels of oil leaked (get the picture yet -- that's a huge range, from conservative to reality, the number of gallons of oil dumped into the sea because BP is an illegitimate operator -- fined hundreds of millions in the past and unprepared to deal with reality, this tragedy, and un-policed by MMA -- minerals management administration -- come on!!).
No rosey scenario here. Scientists just projected all the wrong stuff, those working with NOAA. 1000 then 5000 or 50000 barrels a day?
How much gas was released? In 5,000 feet of water. 100 days of discharge. This has never happened before. 3,000 cubic feet of methane gas per barrel of oil is what BP is teling us. Oil plus the gas is 6 million barrels, if you go for the 4 million barrels of oil alone figure.
The reality is science is science, and here are the facts --
-- A deepwater plume of oil in the Gulf, measuring 22 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 650 feet high
A Florida State University oceanography professor is questioning government estimates that the vast majority of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is already gone from the Gulf or is being rapidly broken down by bacteria.
“I think the imprint of the BP release, the discharge, will be detectable in the Gulf of Mexico for the rest of my life,’ Ian MacDonald told a congressional hearing on the spill. He was quoted in an Aug. 20 Wall Street Journal article that also referred to the findings of other scientists who had observed a vast underwater plume of hydrocarbons the size of Manhattan near the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Ian's been on Democracy Now, quoted in the UK's Guardian newspaper and the Fall-Street Journal, a Murdoch scam of a newspaper in many people's minds.
Here are a few pull-outs from:
• Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent for the Guardian --
"These results indicate that efforts to book-keep where the oil went must now include this plume," said Christopher Reddy one of the members of the team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
The report, which is published in the journal Science, also said the plume was very slow to break down by natural forces, increasing the likelihood that oil could have travelled long distances in the Gulf before it was degraded.
"Many people speculated that subsurface oil droplets were being easily degraded," said Richard Camilli, the lead author of the paper. "Well we didn't find that. We found it was still there."
At the heart of the debate is the rate at which naturally occurring microbes have consumed the oil from the runaway well. Even by the White House estimates, about one quarter of the oil was siphoned away from the well, skimmed off the surface, or burned. But the White House, in a high-profile briefing, earlier this month suggested that microbes had eaten as much as 50% of the remaining oil.
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Hey, I just finished my master's in urban and regional planning. Tomorrow's blog will cover some of the planning profession's take on BP and oil lies and what we as practitioners of planning and strategic community development need to start doing to get a handle on this corporate take-over of everything, now including truth and education.
Climate change plans, energy development, and sustainability on all levels need to be part of comprehensive plans, part of community dialogue, part of curriculum for both planners and K-12 students.
For now, listen to Ian McDonald on You Tube. Or better yet, Democracy Now --
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/23/scientist_accuses_obama_administration_and_bp
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