So you think the gulf oil spill is the end of the world?
June 23rd, 2010
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The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent failure of the blowout preventer is, admittedly, a pretty bad oil spill. It’s certainly not the worst oil spill in world history, although it does rank fairly high. The worst spill in history is likely the 1991 Gulf War Oil spill, which not only was at least a big as the Deepwater Horizon spill, but also occurred in a more contained and near-shore area, further increasing the impacts.
There’s no doubt that the Deepwater Horizon spill has and will continue to have major local and regional impacts in the Gulf region. The ecology of the Gulf coast has already suffered and will continue to do so. Businesses like fishing and shrimp as well as tourism will take a hit. However, in a few years, most of the major effects will be gone. There will still be some lingering effects, and in some areas, tar-drenched sands will remain just beneath the surface. It will be decades before the evidence of the event is no longer visible.
The well itself will continue to be the subject of capture and containment efforts. These efforts will likely contain most of the oil in the months to come, although there will surely be setbacks and failures, as the jury rigged system is used to contain as much of the oil as possible. Thankfully these efforts are only temporary. The leak will eventually be brought to a complete stop when relief wells are completed. There are already two being drilled about as fast as possible. A contingency plan is in place to utilize only one for complete containment if one of the two fails.
As for the oil, it will cause harm to the region but not to the global hydrosphere. It will disperse and become more and more dilute with distance from the spill and as it does, it will break down chemically. The churning action of the ocean combined with the action of bacteria and sunlight will decompose the thick oil into smaller and smaller hydrocarbons. These will eventually oxidize either in the ocean or after evaporating into the atmosphere. They won’t rain back down with normal precipitation and won’t enter the freshwater streams, reservoirs or aquifers of the world.
This spill, severe though it may be to the localized region is NOT the end of the world. It’s not doomsday. It’s not going to lead to the extinction of humanity or a large portion of mankind. It won’t leave the earth sterile and devoid of life nor will it make the earth crash into the sun or cause the atmosphere to ignite.
HOWEVER, If you are convinced that this is the case, perhaps because you saw someone saying it on a poorly edited Youtube video or because you just like living in a world dominated by irrational fear, then this is the place to post about it. Now you have no excuse to post completely off-topic crap in other blog posts!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Enviornment, Misc, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 11th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Dude, please. I do not react to potential danger by pretending it does not exist.
Did you know, Jeremy, that an airplane could kill you by crashing into your house? I’ve seen it happen.
That EVERY SINGLE time you drive you may be hit and killed by a drunk?
That a meteor the size of the old dinosaur killer may be headed this way RIGHT NOW?
I could go on, you know. There’s a lot of death out there.
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July 12th, 2010 at 1:19 am
And after a bit of thought…
Let’s discuss this obsession with this wackadoo website you seem to have. You and your ilk tend to wonder why we get so picky about sources. Well, that’s because some sources are trustworthy, well researched, and peers reviewed. These sources also tend to avoid panic mongering, logical fallacies, and sensationalism.
And then you have the “Crazy Ralph” type sources. You know, that guy on the corner with the “End of the World is Near!” sign and the smell of old urine. Or you have the supermarket tabloid type sources. The one with the headline that reads “Two Headed Devil Bat Baby Discovers Cure for Piles!” or “Nostradamus’ Predicts Stuff That Contradicts What We Said He Predicted Last Year!”
Well, seems that the credibility of a lot of stuff on the internet is kind of like that, but even less so.
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July 14th, 2010 at 3:57 am
http://www.opednews.com/articles/B-P-Halliburton-and-Trans-by-Chris-Landau-100611-452.html
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July 16th, 2010 at 11:54 am
The flow of oil has finally stopped due to the cap being fully closed off. The only concern is whether the pressure will reach a point that it could cause a breach of the well. All data shows this is unlikely, but considering the situation, even unlikely risks cant be dismissed. If things hold a few more days we can all breathe a sigh of relief. I think this is probably going to happen. It still means the relief wells need to be used to stop this from ever leaking again, but the worse is probably over. (stress on the word probably)
What does this mean for someone like Jeremy? I would think he will probably forget all about this and forget that rational people tried to convince him of how wrong he was and he will move on to whatever the next doomsday prediction is or whatever the next media event to be turned into some ridiculous conspiracy is.
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July 16th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
I would imagine so. He’s been going off on this for a while and when this finally blows over he’ll insist something else is going to cause the end of the world. He has no desire to get help.
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July 20th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Jeremy said:
Oh, jeez. I just read that opinion piece.
The guy’s argument is that the oil might be regenerating faster than we can suck it off and rising pressure will cause the reservoir to rupture through the sea floor. Why does he think the oil can regenerate like this? Because he buys into a Young Earth “theory” that suggests that petroleum is a product of purely geological processes, no biological matter involved. The mechanism that would cause biological matter to transform into oil would take longer than literal biblical stories would allow. Therefore there must be an inorganic mechanism for creating petroleum that could happen faster. Once you’ve bought into this hypothesis, and accepted the mechanism proposed by certain crackpots, then oil can be generated naturally on a time scale that in the right circumstances might be faster than our extraction methods can keep up with. This writer is suggesting that this may be happening now.
An uncritical and inattentive reader might miss this in all his mumbo jumbo, but to accept his argument is to reject all we know about the formation of fossil fuels.
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