Monthly Archives: May 2010

The Watering Hole: May 17 – The Oil Spreads

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This maps shows how the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico merges with the Gulf Stream will ultimately affect North Atlantic fisheries for years to come:

The Loop Current and its Interactions with other North Atlantic Currents

Some of the spill has already entered the Caribbean Current which also feeds the Gulf Stream.

This is our open thread. Please feel free to offer your own comments on this or any other topic.

For the big Picture:
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Sunday Roast. Yan Can

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Back in the early 80s, I had the opportunity to take a cooking class from Martin Yan, after my wife made a donation to the local public radio station. We spent one afternoon in the kitchen with Yan, and then the following weekend he took the class on a walking tour of San Francisco’s Chinatown, finishing with dim sum. Although he was always pretty goofy on his tv show, in person he was very serious and very helpful. I have his first two cookbooks, and his recipes are so well-tested that I never have to tweak them. Don’t forget, this is our Sunday open thread.

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Suer Friendly

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From the Arizona Anti Illegal Immigrant Law:

G. A PERSON MAY BRING AN ACTION IN SUPERIOR COURT TO CHALLENGE ANY OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE THAT ADOPTS OR IMPLEMENTS A POLICY THAT LIMITS OR RESTRICTS THE ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW. IF THERE IS A JUDICIAL FINDING THAT AN ENTITY HAS VIOLATED THIS SECTION, THE COURT SHALL ORDER ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. THAT THE PERSON WHO BROUGHT THE ACTION RECOVER COURT COSTS AND ATTORNEY FEES.

2. THAT THE ENTITY PAY A CIVIL PENALTY OF NOT LESS THAN ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS AND NOT MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR EACH DAY THAT THE POLICY HAS REMAINED IN EFFECT AFTER THE FILING OF AN ACTION PURSUANT TO THIS SUBSECTION.

What could this lead to? Well, Steven Croley over at the Huffington Post points out

A county hospital or health clinic with a policy of treating emergency room patients without verifying their immigration status could be targeted. Local law enforcement agencies that encourage crime victims and witnesses to make reports without having to show their legal status presumably could be sued. School districts that provide educational programs for children of undocumented parents might fall within the act’s scope.

Hence every political subdivision and entity in Arizona must adopt the most draconion of policies NOW or risk having to pay $1,000 to $5,000 PER DAY for each day after a lawsuit is filed until it is settled. Oh, and by the way, you don’t have to serve a lawsuit immediately upon filing. Someone could file a lawsuit and wait, say, a month or two, before even letting the public entity know about it, racking up $30,000 + in penalties before the entity even gets a chance to respond.

Then, on top of the penalites, add attorneys fees, and you now have a state that is Suer Friendly.

Bobby Jindal discovers he’s really green.

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That’s what he said in 2008:

Now he sings to a different tune:

“We’re concerned about the subsea application of dispersent. He asked that the entire column be tested. Asked BP to make a long-term commitment to monitoring the water. “You’re talking about an impact that could hurt multiple generations of wildlife. These are the ocean’s nurseries.”

I couldn’t agree more with Mr Jindal, but off shore drilling came first, then the spill and now his eco consciousness kicks in?

How about: “We made a huge mistake, by pushing offshore drilling to it’s limits. We will have to rethink our priorities.”?

He’s pro nuclear energy and coal, too. Can’t he remember Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and West Virginia?

Oil Spill Update – What I don’t know..

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It is worse, much worse than I had imagined and there is no end in sight.

National Public Radio in the United States last night reported that the well is spewing up to 70,000 barrels of oil a day – the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez disaster every four days. Nearly 11 million barrels gallons of oil were spilled in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground, oiling beaches and poisoning marine life for generations. NPR said scientific analysis of newly released video footage from the ocean floor suggested the gusher was 12 times more powerful than estimates offered so far by the Coast Guard or BP. (read more)

The environmental impact of any oil spill is much more complicated than it appears on the surface, but the fact that this is a deep sea leak seem to make it even more complex. I definitely do not know what will come from it, I just expect the worst. But when I try to find information that sheds some light on the real environmental impact, I find: Next to nothing. The only answer I get is: Noone else knows much either.

I tried to find out what would happen with the oil at deep sea level. Reports are saying plumes of the oil were hovering at deeper sea levels. And noone seems to know what it means.

“It doesn’t float right up on top as you would think,” Raymond Highsmith of the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology tells AOL News. “Some of it floats right under the surface, and some of it now looks like it’s quite a ways down.”(read more)

So I tried looking for vertical exchange of deep sea water with surface waters and how long it takes until the oil still caught below will show up at the surface. And what would happen with all the particles made out of crude oil and that poisonous stuff they are spreading to dissolve the slick? I found this, but it definitely needs some serious dumbing down for me. What it seems to say is, particles from deep sea waters need ages to make it into the surface waters, nothing much happens in the deep sea environment:

The model was seeded below 2000 m with 19,105 inert particles that drift freely within the model domain in response to the velocity field. By tracking individual particles, it can be seen that the upward motion of particles from below 2000 m to above 1000 m occurs almost exclusively in the ring separation region in the eastern GOM. Individual particles are observed
to spiral upward with each separation of a new ring from the LC. An anticyclone-cyclone eddy pair develops in the deep eastern basin each time the LC reaches its northernmost extent and sheds a ring. The tracer particles are advected away from the Campeche Bank into the deep water of the eastern basin by the northward currents on the western side of the leading
anticyclone. A southward current associated with the western side of the trailing cyclonic eddy moves the particles back toward the Campeche Bank. The particles remain at nearly the same depth as they are advected away from the slope, but they move slightly upward in the water column as they are pushed back toward the slope. With each separation of a LC ring, the
particles experience a net upward motion.

What is does not say is, that particles never make it to the surface. Meaning, generations to come will have to do with what is currently issued into the gulf from this spill.

What I could not find either is: How will the ever present hurricanes (hurricane season starts in two weeks) in the gulf add to spreading the oil and the chemicals that are used to dissolve the spill. And mostly how deep, vertically, is the water affected by a major hurricane? Will the next big storm release another huge oil spill from the hovering plumes of oil?

What I don’t know is: How are temperatures and pressure affecting the chemical interaction between the oil and the chemicals that are used at deep sea levels to dissolve the spill. From my school years I remember that low temperatures are counteracting most chemical reactions like the ones desired here. High pressure may have a contrary effect.

There are microorganisms which are digesting naturally occuring oil seeps at deep sea level. They take how long? 50’000 years? I don’t know. Nature takes all the time she needs.

And, of course, I do not know: How long will it take for the oilfield to shed it’s entire lode into the gulf ? Because I don’t see any other end to it than that.

So, if I don’t know all this, this is hardly surprising. That BP didn’t know more is at least not surprising to me, they knew better than to ask. That drilling for oil in this environment is even allowed, judge for yourselves.

We don’t know a tiny fraction of what’s in store for the gulf and us from this but I do not expect anything less than the biggest man made environmental desaster next to Chernobyl.

You can find a series of heartbreaking and fascinating pictures of the oil spill here at the Boston Globe. And The Oildrum will be keeping you up to speed on all related developments. Yet more can be found at The NYT, The Examiner, Der Spiegel and if you can stomach it BP