Oil Dispersants Used During Gulf Spill Degrade Slowly In Cold Water 61
MTorrice writes "During the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, clean up crews applied millions of liters of dispersants to break up the oil. At the time, the public and some scientists worried about the environmental effects of the chemicals, in particular how long they would last in the deep sea. According to a new Environmental Protection Agency study, the key active ingredient in the dispersants degrades very rapidly under conditions similar to those found at the Gulf surface during the spill. Meanwhile, in the much colder temperatures found in the deep sea, the breakdown is quite slow. The chemicals' persistence at deep-sea and Arctic temperatures suggests more research is needed on their toxicity, the researchers say."
Or, we could have just done nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or, we could have just done nothing... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about we stop letting corporations run shoddy operations to save a few bucks and keep the oil from getting in the water to begin with?
Re:Or, we could have just done nothing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or, we could have just done nothing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, but when the rewards are greater than the cost of the consequences of the mistakes, those mistakes become more frequent.
In fact, they become part of the business model.
I mean, who knew that allowing the banking industry to engage in limitless derivatives investing could possibly cause any problems to the economy? Who could have predicted that an earthquake and tsunami could kill the power to an old, poorly-maintained nuclear plant, causing the release of radiation? Why would anyone think that turning firearms into consumer products as readily available as cell phones might end up in a society with a lot of gun violence? What moron would think that injecting toxic chemicals into bedrock under high pressures near populated areas could possibly cause contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and fracturing chemicals to the surface, surface contamination from spills and flowback or that those might cause health risks?
I mean, mistakes will occur.
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Why would anyone think that turning firearms into consumer products as readily available as cell phones might end up in a society with a lot of gun violence?
I like how you tainted a punchbowl of otherwise completely reasonable and objective common sense observations by slipping in your little patently-dishonest pro-establishment turd; you sly devil, you! ;)
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One man's common sense is another man's instrument of wholesale slaughter in a kindergarten.
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Sure, but when the rewards are greater than the cost of the consequences of the mistakes, those mistakes become more frequent.
BP has already paid out tens of billions in fines and compensation. There are plenty more lawsuits in the pipeline, with a potential final payout of about $90 billion. That is an immense amount of money, far more than the GDP of most countries. You can be pretty sure that the oil companies are going to be a lot more careful in the future.
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And taken a nice tax abatement for it.
Plus, the payouts have not been that much. They have set aside that much, which still sits on their books as an asset, but the payouts have been glacial.
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"Most regulated"? Not really (Score:1)
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That's pretty easy to do... stop using oil... wait, what's that? You don't want to be inconvenienced? Oh yea... that's why this happened.
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Really?! Oh I think you will change your tune if the price at the pump goes up by a few dollars. Well, maybe you won't since you might be a millionaire, but quite a few people will.
Face it, we WANT our oil as cheap as possible. Lower price of fuel means lower price of everything else. And lower price of living translates to more money available for spending on leisure activities.
If that means we need to exterminate all the cute seals to get cheaper energy, then so be it.
More oil drilled DOESN'T MEAN lower energy prices (Score:1)
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Wasn't it drilling regulations that pushed drilling further and further offshore to much deeper (and risky) areas?
Anyway, there's vastly more oil migrating into the ocean from natural seepage than from the odd oil spill, so if you don't want oil in the water perhaps that's a better place to start :p
http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/natural-sources.htm [unep.org]
"Didn't drilling regulations...?" No. (Score:1)
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No, "natural seepage" will not cause millions of gallons of gas to drift out into the ocean every year,
Natural seepage in the gulf of mexico is about 140,000 tonnes a year, or 1 million barrels of oil. So, yes it does. Ok, it's only a fifth of the amount from the deepwater spill, but it's constant rather than one-off. Link: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10388&page=70 [nap.edu]
At the time of the spill, the liability was limited to 75 million bucks. That's definitely one regulation which increases risk taking!
Is someone paying you to post this?
Nope, you can remove you tinfoil hat now
Re:Or, we could have just done nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that both using and not using the chemicals has drawbacks and that it is difficult to make good decisions at a time of crisis, isn't it a good thing this study is done now? That way, when another spill happens, there is more knowledge to base decisions on.
The only drawback of *not* using Corexit.. (Score:1)
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You and the mod who gave you Insightful need to read at least the bloody summary.
It's not a criticism of using it in the gulf. It's saying we probably can't use it in the deep sea, and crucially in the Arctic where we're still discussing whether we've got good enough kit to handle the inevitable spills.
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Perhaps not, there's some research that could suggest that the dispersants could have made the disaster worse [motherjones.com].
So we shouldn't be testing these things and being critical of how disasters are handled? That's how progress is made, and how we can improve for the next time it happens.
Mother Jones is legitimate journalism. (Score:1)
What A Congress! (Score:2)
Who marked this garbage "insightful"? (Score:1)
Nature works fine for slow leaks. (Score:3)
When will we come to the place where we realize that the Earth doesn't need us to clean up from stuff that it already produces, in the places it produces it? Millions of gallons of crude seep from the Gulf floor every day. Nature/bacteria takes care of it.
Seeps are one thing. Blowouts are more than a tad faster. Nature takes a while and a big, concentrated, spill can cause a lot of havoc before nature gets around to clearing it.
Granted we need to avoid making it worse while trying to make it better. For
Bottom of the ocean is normally cold. (Score:2)
It never gets cold in the Gulf of Mexico.
It does near the bottom of the ocean.
Water has its highest density at approximately 4 degrees C - just a tad above freezing. Water at higher OR lower temperatures rises above it, and water at that temperature sinks to the bottom.
Then it tends to sit there: Friction with the ocean bottom causes ocean currents to be very slow, so there's little mixing from turbulence. With all the water around it at the same temperature there's negligible mixing from convection. If
The goal was to hide, not solve, the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
The use of dispersants (really, the term should be "submergants") just caused the oil to sink to the sea floor. This in no way mitigates the actual problem, and may in fact compound it over time. However, it did allow the EPA, the Obama administration, and BP to rehabilitate their severely tarnished images, because this was a problem that you couldn't see easily.
Gulf seafood is off the menu for millions of people now, and into the foreseeable future, because these "dispersants" just happen to be extremely toxic to humans.
Unfortunately, we appear to have learned nothing and will probably use this kind of sweeping under the rug tactic when future spills happen.
Re:The goal was to hide, not solve, the problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is some logic to the use of these materials.
After all most of the life in aquatic environments is on or near the surface. The most important ecologies are the salt marshes and the top 200 meters or so of the ocean (epipelalogic zone) which is sunlit. It is where all the action is. 90% of life is found in this top layer. It is where the most complex and presumably vulnerable life forms are found.
So submerging the oil potentially reduces the harm that a spill may cause.
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Yes, the oil being on top blocks the sunlight directly under it. However, the density of oil makes it possible to collect it from the top of the ocean without extremely complicated measures.
Another factor to remember is that most of the area where the oil leaked was shallower than 200m anyway.
Re:The goal was to hide, not solve, the problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the density of oil makes it possible to collect it from the top of the ocean without extremely complicated measures.
Yes ... but ... see, you're making perfect sense here, so that's where you've gone awry.
There are ships that can suck in the oil slicks and ocean water, dump 97% of the oil into the hold and pump the mostly clean water back into the sea, repeating the process as necessary.
However, the EPA demanded that in the Macondo spill they not return that 3% water back to the ocean, but instead made them send out tankers to be filled up with the 3% water, which were then transported back to shore for decon.
The obvious problem there was that the rate of processing of the sea water was limited by how fast those tankers could get out and back and unload, and what the onshore capacity was and what the onshore processing rate was. Being all finite quantities the rate was lowered tremendously from its potential.
So, using dispersants was the next-least-bad. I used to know their names, but one of them was much less toxic than the other two. Still, the oil separating ships operating at full capacity would have been much better for the environment, but the government was here to help.
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You would not want to be exposed to vapors of any of the "dispersants" used during the gulf spill, let alone get them on your skin, mucous membranes, or for fuck's sake ingest them. Aconite is more poisonous than belladonna, but you don't want to eat either one. Same thing here.
EPA told BP to stop spraying, BP bit its thumb. (Score:2)
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What do you suppose the real function government is?
I'm going with wealth transfer and resource extraction.
Corexit made the spill 52 times more toxic (Score:2)
But I agree, BP used it to make the spill appear less severe on the surface.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/12/chemical-dispersant-made-bps-gulf-oilspill-52-times-more-toxic [motherjones.com]
Not true (Score:3)
Dispersants are basically soap -- the chemicals in Corexit and similar dispersants are the same as you'll find in bottles of Mr Muscle and other household cleansers living under the kitchen sink. They work by breaking bulk oil into small droplets which increases the effective surface area of the oil and gives the bacteria that normally degrade oil a better opportunity to do their job properly. They don't cause the oil to submerge, a neat trick if it could be achieved given that crude oil is a lot denser tha
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Edit: "crude oil is a lot less dense than seawater".
"Dispersants are soap"---who's paying you? (Score:1)
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That's fucking bullshit. He a look at the MSDS for Corexit. The shit is not only carcinogenic but causes red blood cells to fall apart.
Yes, soap is a "dispersant" but not all dispersants are soap.
Why do environmentalist extremists hate penguins? (Score:3)
I'm not sure why such a negative spin is being attached to these stories.
As our press release clearly stated, new Corexit Ice(tm)(r), in 'fresh blast' or 'glacial menthol' scents, works harder, longer(tm) to protect pristine arctic environments. Apparently, eco-fascists want penguins to die, oil-soaked, when our competitor's inferior dispersants break down quickly under cold weather conditions...
Chem 101 (Score:2)
Chemical reactions slow down at colder temperatures
I learned that 40 years ago
Why do you think they invented refrigerators
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I'm not sure if I'd be so quick to call that post humorous...
Why are they called dispersants anyway? (Score:1)
Wouldn't coagulant be more appropriate?
Oh, duh! They're called dispersants because they cause oil to be out of sight and out of mind - resting in the water column rather than causing financial and political turmoil on the surface.
but cant they.... (Score:2)
But cant this make them easy to still pick up with a proper machine to then centrifuge the oil from the chemical...just sayin?