The marine scientist whose report predicts the Gulf of Mexico will recover by the end of 2012 is defending his work as the product of long experience. Dr. Wes Tunnell drew his conclusion in a paper commissioned by the presidential commission on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. "With my 35 years of experience looking at other areas, this is the bottom line of what I think," Dr. Tunnell tells the NYT.
You might as well take him at his word. The problem for the public who'd very much like to do that is that his opinion is also shared by BP. Even before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, government regulators predicted that the Gulf of Mexico would recover quickly from an accident many times that size. They made that prediction partly based on research by Dr. Tunnell's school, Texas A&M. After the spill, a BP hydrogeologist relied on that research again when he told people in Alabama not to worry too much, that you could dump all the known oil in the Gulf into the water and still come out OK. (Seriously -- it's on the clip above, and he confirmed that was his opinion when I asked him.)
So maybe the Gulf of Mexico will bounce right back, with a few lingering problems in the marshes and so on as Dr. Tunnell now writes. We'd all like to see a speedy recovery. We all wish this had never happened. And we'd all like never to see this happen again.
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I think I want a second opinion.
What does Greenpeace think of this?
False big time any spill is big time no matter how big or small
Didn't we hear this same nonsense right after the Valdez disaster?
And as I recall, oil is STILL being washed up in Valdez to this very day, decades after that smaller spill. The damage done to coral reefs, fish hatcheries and other habitats will not be evident immediately, but will manifest themselves over the next few years. This guy is whistling past the graveyard with oil company money in his pockets.
Valdez was the name of the ship, you ignorant fool.
How can you be an ignorant fool? Either you are ignorant or you are a fool...if you're going to insult someone at least look up the definition of the words you're using.
I still have to give him/her props for the screen name. That's a great name!
Apparently scornucopia is unable to do anything other than toss insults. I know very well the ship was the Exxon Valdez, that the area of the oil spill was Prince William sound. I guess I should have stated each and every one of those things so as not to bring down the wrath of scornucopia. Here's hoping that they will actually contribute something in the future other than half-witted remarks. I'm not holding my breath on that one.
I am capable of doing things other than toss insults. I just don't see the point.
The original comment was intended to indicate annoyance at people shooting their mouths off about issues that they haven't bothered informing themselves about to the slightest degree.
Public discourse of serious issues — like this one — degenerates into willfully ignorant loud-mouths generating heat in the darkness, and nobody listening to those in a position to shed light.
It's clear you thought Valdez was a place and now you clearly possess neither the integrity to admit your error, nor the basic sense to keep your mouth shut. You may add “disingenuous” in front of “ignorant fool” (an idiom so standard that it appears in the Merriam-Webster dictionary entry for “ignorant”; it seems “Mickey Mouser”, the laughable failed pedant, can't take his own advice).
Ignorant= to be unaware of
Fool= lacking intelligence or a court jester/clown
At the worst you would be admitting that you were redundant; at the best you'd be admitting you still don't know what it is you're saying. I also find it funny that someone who is clearly attempting to set guidelines and come across as verbose then goes on to call someone else a "pedant." Apparently you also don't know what hypocrisy is. Also props for confusing a thesaurus and dictionary. That takes mad skillz.
Even by your own definitions there's no redundancy in the perfectly standard idiom “ignorant fool”. You really are an imbecile! I make no apologies for being a pedantic asshat: at least I'm competent to be one, while you are a serial failure.
The Dunning–Kruger is strong in this one.
HER own advice. Mouser is a woman, one who is smarter and tougher than most of the people I know.
So Uffdaguy transposed "in" instead of "from." So what? Are you challenging his facts? Or are you just playing the niggling school-marm? "Failed pedantic?" Really? Coming from you? Have you anything to say about oil washing up from the Valdez? Any disputation? No? Then what are you busting everyones balls about? I like the name you chose, but you are really acting like a jerk. And for me - this is Nice. This is Polite. If that is lost on on, I have other ways I can play to. Do you want to discuss the matter at hand or play games with semantics. Around here, we play for BLOOD.
I love it when people cannot remember what happened 6 seconds before they post a response.
Well a. it's not my definition, it's the defintion from the dictionary you quoted...but that's an aside. b. your definition would imply you were being redundant; my definition would imply that you are being contradictory. Please do tell is Uffy unaware of what it is he's saying or does he intentionally not know what it is he's saying??? I would also like to point out the hypocrisy of someone who complains that no one engages in serious debate, but then fails to do so himself. Apparently you really are incapable of a real conversation. Glad you have a thesaurus and dictionary lying around though ;-) Confidence sometimes gets you a job interview (so I hear).
Bleh I forget I haven't gotten link approval yet. NVM this post.
Hyperventilating and posturing about trivialities is a fairly common tactic among those on the right.
I'm so glad that scornucopia was able to read my mind and divine that I thought Valdez was a place. He/she should see if they can get their own reality show, a Kreskin for the 21st century.
There's no point in arguing with someone as ignorant and arrogant as this one. They have yet to learn the basic fact that you don't score points, or earn respect, by coming out with unfounded insults in your first sentences. I guess they call themselves scornucopia because that is what they are used to receiving for their dreadful communication skills.
By the way, scornucopia, Valdez IS a place, and it is located at the head of Prince William Sound. It is the terminal where the Exxon Valdez was loaded with its cargo of oil. Don't look now, but your ignorance is showing, big time. Maybe you should change your name to something more descriptive, like Duncemaster.
Right and there is no Global Warming!!!!!
I am sure all the oil and chemical dispersant is harmlessly sitting on the ocean floor and in the marshes and NOT affecting the food chain in the least! I'm sure, aren't you? lolololol. Poor people of the gulf, they are constantly asked to buy the most amazing...stuff.
Dr.Tunnell I would like to know how much money did you and your research dept. receive from BP for this conclusion? How could you draw such a conclusion with millions of gallons of oil still laying on the bottom of the gulf as well as all the cancer causing carcinogens ? Since you believe your results I would like to treat you and your family to have a Gulf Coast Seafood Dinner On Me !! Here the shrimp is too die for !!!! Bought and paid for by BP Oil & Your Republican Party
ah huh - so how come there's oil when one turns a shovel of dirt in prince william sound?
OIL, OIL, OIL, The only thing governments care about. Wars are being waged as we speak because of oil. There is nothing for the average person to do but voice our objections and hope that somehow it makes a difference. I applaud you Rachel for trying to keep this in our collective conscience, but, sadly it will become an annual event where we'll see how the environment is doing. Ask Alaska, they are still not finished with the ill effects. Sad.
Even with respect to the Egyptian uprising - Jim Cramer was on Morning Joke yesterday, and when asked specifically about the current unrest in Egypt, he said, "All I'm thinking about is the Suez Canal and the stoppage of oil..." Tens of thousands of ordinary citizens take to the streets to put their own bodies and lives on the line for their freedom, and that's all that's on his mind? Bleaccchhh.
h ttp : // www "dot" clicker "dot" com/tv/morning-joe/cramer-on-egypt-economy-1327055/
Video won't work.
The radical right are always making outrageous claims about science, nature, and the toxicity of known chemicals without any backing other than their opinion. Somewhere along the line science became a matter of talking points and not science! The populace is too busy worrying about Lindsay Lohan and gossiping over social media to even notice, or care.
Somewhere along the line science became a matter of talking points and not science!
Right around the time the government stopped investing in math and science education.
@Becky- hah!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! (For referring to them as the "radical right", not falling back on the much more common, but weaker and more inaccurate term "conservatives".)
As sad as this may seem, from a strictly scientific viewpoint, any oil that does not get collected and burned is better than collecting it and burning it, or worse, making it into petrochemicals. At the very least, this is oil in its natural state, which is oil in its least destructive form.
Rachel, you'd be better to just turn your back on the spin factory known as mainstream media, and just follow your heart. At the very least, mistakes made that way are honest.
Recently published research has shown chem dispersants in Gulf to unexpectedly persist in the deep ocean. First peer-reviewed publication on chem dispersants. Full disclosure: lead researcher is a good friend.
Relevant links:
Tunnell is full of crap. There was an article in the last issue of The Nation where marine biologists are finding that that the ocean floor around the blow out have been coated and rendered sterile and toxic. The deep sea reef that was discovered less than two hundred miles from Deep Water Horizon is dead. As are all of the eggs and zoo-plankton form of fish that are the staple of Gulf economy and the food they eat. As present fish stocks live out their lifespans, there will be no generations to follow. Mass extinction events are sometimes slow affairs and we won't find out the full nature of the damage down for decades.
To say that everything is hunky-dory is misleading to the point of criminality. Not to mention all of the damage done to the wetlands and coastal survivability in the face of increasingly whacky weather patterns. And if sea levels rise? Yeah, fun fun fun.
And the war on Science continues. Dr. Rick Stern, or was it Stein, from Alaska needs to come back and talk about the experience after the Exxon Valdez. Is he working down in the gulf? Would like to hear what he has to say.
It shouldn't be that difficult to tell whether his opinion has merit - not to say it is correct - and I certainly can't say it is a lie just because BP shares it. This incident is not without precedent. I assume that some studies were made after the Ixtoc (spelling?) spill when I was a kid. I still remember all the gloom and doom at the time (in print mostly) and then I never heard about it again. What happened then, post spill?
How long will it take to clean the oil out of the Gulf of Mexico?
An engineering calculation
When confronted by a problem, such as ‘How long will it take?’ some preliminary estimates of the necessary parameters and some assumptions about the nature of the oil leak must be made. Let’s assume that the leak lasts for 100 days before the oil well is capped and that the oil well leaks one million gallons of oil per day. The total amount of oil involved in the spill is, then, 100 million gallons.
(10E6gal./day)(100 days)=10E8 gallons
The volume of oil to be removed can be expressed in cubic inches by the conversion factor: 231 cubic inches/1 gallon
(10E8gallons)(231 cu.inches/gallon) = 2.31X10E10 cubic inches
Let’s also assume that the total amount of shoreline that is fouled is 1000 miles long and that wave action deposits the oil in a band about 1 yard wide along the high water mark. It would appear from news reports that the oil is deposited as tar balls and that the volume of tar fouling one square yard of beach sand is about 100 cubic inches, i.e., 10” X 10” X 1”. Not all of the oil comes on-shore immediately; it appears that it takes about 10 days to foul one square yard of beach with 100 cubic inches of oil.
The length of shoreline (in yards) is calculated to be
1000miles(5280 feet/mile)(1 yard/3 feet)= 1.76X10E6 yards
The fouling rate, which is taken as the rate of removal of the oil from the Gulf by deposition on the shoreline, is
(100 cu.inches/yard)/10 days
The rate of removal of the oil is then the arithmetic product of the fouling rate multiplied by the total length of shoreline that is fouled.
((100 cubic inches/yard)/10 days)(1.76X10E6 yards) = 1.76X10E7/day
The amount of time necessary for all the oil to be removed is then calculated as:
(2.31X10E10 cubic inches)/(1.76X10E7 cu. inches/day) = 1310 days
or, in years,
1310days/(365days/year) = 3.6 years
The amount of oil to be removed can be modified by subtracting the amount of oil removed by skimmers and absorbent booms, the amount transported into the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf Stream, and the amount lost by evaporation of volatile components. The length of shoreline can be modified depending on the Gulf currents. The amount of oil fouling the sand can be modified by adjusting the cubic inches of oil that are deposited in a 10 day period on a square yard of shoreline. With each modification, the length of time to clean the Gulf will most likely change. However, since the input parameters are approximately correct, it would appear economically imprudent to begin bioremediation for the next 3 years. During this period, as much oil as possible should be collected and selected fouled areas should be isolated to conduct experiments on the best method to achieve biodecomposition of the remaining tar. Among these experiments should be addition of nitrogen and phosphorous to supplement that already present, since nitrogen and phosphorous are usually found to be limiting nutrients in biodecomposition of hydrocarbons.
In compact form, using easily adjustable parameters, the time, t, (in days) to clean the oil out of the Gulf of Mexico, is calculated from the equation:
time(days) = 1.313(ab)/(cd)
where
a = leak rate from the well (in gallons/day)
b = length of time the well remains uncapped (in days)
c = shoreline fouling rate per every 10 days (in cubic inches/ square yard)
d = miles of shoreline fouled
1.313 is a constant that combines the terms converting gallons to cubic inches, miles to yards, and fouling rate per 10 days.
If the oil reservoir contains 2 billion gallons and the well leaks at a rate of 1 million gallons/day, it will take 2000 days (5.47 years) to empty the reservoir. If the rate of shoreline fouling is 100 cubic inches of tar and oil per square yard of beach per every 10 days, then it will take 26,260 days to clean the Gulf (71.9 years) if the only method of tar and oil removal is to clean the beach.
So if you want to know, "How long will it take?" you can enter your own estimations into the calculation to get an answer (but one year is way off the mark).
The focus is now off the BP oil spill, but, the real way to find the answer is to talk to the people that live or lived there. Owning a hair salon, we are in the position to talk with a wide variety of people. Our salon is located in Colorado, and my daughter just cut a man's hair that has recently move here from Louisiana , he was an oyster fisherman. He told her his business was completely gone, the oysters are dying now so rapidly,he had no choice but to go to another state for work.He also told her his son is still in the Gulf, he fishes Red Snapper, and they still have to throw back all they catch, because they arey are contaminated We really don't know what the agendas are of the so called experts.
Sure we do. To convince everyone that everything is just fine - just the way they are paid to.