GOM Oil Spill - BP Stops Oil Leak

[WeatherLovingDoc]

My understanding is oil does not evaporate, hence does not enter the atmospheric rain cycle. Here is a video taken in Louisiana suggesting otherwise. Perhaps some of you weather and oil knowledgeable members might care to comment on Gulf oil and any impact in the rain cycle.

Oil rain: BP's black gold lands on Louisiana

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY-tIEqzcmU

[thetruesms]

I'm fairly certain that while some of its components evaporate, oil as a whole does not. What's happening in that youtube video is that rain is mixing with oil that's already present on the road surface

edit - and while I have nothing to back it up, I'd guess that even if it did evaporate as a whole, it would not be in amounts that could create that effect in rainfall.

[Ivanhater]

Beautiful Pensacola beach by the pier. Once the whitest beaches in the world, now...

[Aquawind]

That SUCKS!! Go figure..no cleanup crews in view..

[angelwing]

Just a FYI, there is a leak in the Red Sea too:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/ ... 3627.shtml

*snip* (AP) CAIRO (AP) - Environmental activists said Monday that an oil spill off the coast of Egypt's Red Sea is continuing even after the government said it had been contained, leaving turtles and sea birds covered in oil.*snip*

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-2 ... -rigs.html

*snip*Gobs of oil floated to the shore of Egyptian Red Sea resorts for a fifth day as the government said it had yet to discover the source of the pollution and may reduce the number of rigs operating in the nearby Gulf of Suez.*snip*

[WeatherLovingDoc]

NY Times update of the situation:

"By evening, the cap appeared to be back on, nestled in place on the eighth try after about 90 minutes of effort. Live video from the sea floor showed remote-controlled submersibles frequently moving hoses out of the way so that the cap could be lowered over the spewing oil.....

On Tuesday, BP said it had been able to capture 16,665 barrels of oil through its containment cap, two-thirds of the total recovery operation. But at 8:45 a.m. local time on Wednesday, workers noticed liquids escaping from a valve connected to the Discoverer Enterprise.

A technician with knowledge of the situation said that gas had apparently flowed up the part of the pipe containing warm water used to prevent the formation of icelike hydrates. Out of concern that more gas might come up, creating the potential for an explosion, the Discoverer Enterprise was moved about 50 feet away, taking the cap with it, said the technician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work. ...

Florida residents directly experienced the effects of the oil: tar balls and oil mousse (with the consistency of sludge) washed up on the shore of Pensacola Beach and caused several areas for swimming to be closed, said a spokeswoman for the Incident Command in Mobile, Ala...."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/us/24spillweb.html?src=me

[dizzyfish]

Beautiful Pensacola beach by the pier. Once the whitest beaches in the world, now...

That pic just makes me ill.......ugh

[vbhoutex]

Beautiful Pensacola beach by the pier. Once the whitest beaches in the world, now...

UUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have sat in that spot and watched the Blue Angels, watched July 4th fireworks, fished, surfed on the other side of the pier. I AM SICKENED BEYOND WORDS!! All this is happening because man's greed caused someone to cut corners thus causing the blowout.

[gtalum]

My understanding is oil does not evaporate, hence does not enter the atmospheric rain cycle. Here is a video taken in Louisiana suggesting otherwise. Perhaps some of you weather and oil knowledgeable members might care to comment on Gulf oil and any impact in the rain cycle.

Oil rain: BP's black gold lands on Louisiana

Oil will not enter the rain cycle. Much of it does evaporate, but the tar which is what gives oil its black color does not. "Oil" is not a single product, but it's a complex mixture of literally thousands of different compounds of varying molecular weight.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

People are rightly worried about the toxins in oil and the chemicals they are using to clean it up; however the spill in the Gulf is just one more nail in the coffin re seafood ........ what wonderful stewards we have been of our beautiful planet.

Whales filled with toxins, study finds Published On Thu Jun 24

DAVID BROOKS/AFP/Getty Images

Copenhagen summit»
Arthur Max, The Associated Press

AGADIR, MOROCCO—American scientists who spent five years shooting nearly 1,000 sperm whales with tissue-sampling darts discovered stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals in the animals on their 140,000-kilometre voyage, according to a report obtained Thursday.

The levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium could affect the health of both ocean life and the people who consume seafood, the scientists say.

Analysis of cells from the sperm whales showed that pollution is reaching the farthest corners of the oceans, from deep in the polar region to "the middle of nowhere" in the equatorial regions, said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance that conducted the research.

"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," he said.

Ultimately, he said, they could contaminate fish, which are a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on," he said.

U.S. Whaling Commissioner Monica Medina informed the 88 member nations of the whaling commission of the report and urged the commission to conduct further research.

"This provides new and very important information about the hazards and the problem of these sorts of contaminants in the ocean, both for the whales and their habitat," Medina told hundreds of government officials, marine scientists and environmentalists.

The report "is right on target" for raising issues critical to humans as well as whales, Medina told The Associated Press. "We need to know much more about these problems."

Payne, 75, is best known for his 1968 discovery and recordings of songs by humpback whales, and for finding that some whale species can communicate with each other over long distances.

The 93-foot (28-meter) ketch "Odyssey" set out in March 2000 from San Diego, California, to document the oceans' health by taking tissue samples from the free-ranging sperm whale, which venture from the poles to the tropics. Like humans, they stand at the top of the marine food chain.

By August 2005, it had collected pencil-eraser sized samples from 955 whales using a dart gun that scientists say barely made the animal flinch.

The samples were sent for analysis to marine toxicologist John Wise at the University of Southern Maine. DNA was compared to ensure the animals were not tested more than once.

The original objective of the voyage was to measure chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, and the study of metals was an afterthought.

The researchers were stunned with the results. "That's where the shocking, sort of draw-dropping concentrations exist," Payne said.

Although it was impossible to know where the whales had been, Payne said the contamination was embedded in blubber formed in the frigid polar regions, indicating that the animals had ingested the metals far from where they were emitted.

"When you're working with a synthetic chemical which never existed in nature before and you find it in a whale which came from the Arctic or Antarctic, it tells you that was made by people and it got into the whale," he said.

How that happened is unclear, but the contaminants likely were carried by wind or ocean currents.

"The biggest surprise was chromium," Payne said. "That's an absolute shocker. Nobody was even looking for it."

Chromium, a corrosion-resistent material, is used in stainless steel, paints, dyes and the tanning of leather, and can cause lung cancer in people who work in industries where it is commonly used.

Wise applied chromium to healthy whale cells in the laboratory to study its effect. He found that the concentration of chromium found in whales was several times higher than the level required to kill healthy cells in a Petri dish, Payne said.

Another surprise was aluminum, used in packaging, cooking pots and water treatment, although its effects are unknown.

Payne said whales absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf.

"What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.

The consequences could be horrific for both whale and man, he said.

"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction. This not on anybody's radar, no government's radar anywhere, and I think it should be," he said.
http://www.thestar.com/article/828093-- ... tudy-finds

We are a very, very dirty species. http://www.thestar.com/article/828093-- ... tudy-finds

[petit_bois]

my favorite place in the world... 50,000 lbs collected already.
Petit Bois is remote.
http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=12707270#

[angelwing]

*snip* Ping Wang, 43, who has studied beaches for 20 years, dug a narrow trench perpendicular to the shoreline, about a foot deep and 5 feet long. A dark, contiguous vein of oil ran horizontally along the walls of the trench, about 6 inches beneath the surface of the sand.

The sheet of oil which was deposited on the beach at high tide Wednesday and stretched some 8 miles was covered by as much as a foot of sand at high tide Thursday, Wang explained *snip*

Read the complete article here:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/environmen ... la/1104804

[HURAKAN]

A pic of the oil

[Nate-Gillson]

A pic of the oil

That big area of brown is all oil, am I right? Even if the well is successfully capped, all that oil is going to linger for years to come.

[thetruesms]

[img]http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/2010177-0626/Louisiana.A2010177.1905.1km.jpg[img]

A pic of the oil

That big area of brown is all oil, am I right? Even if the well is successfully capped, all that oil is going to linger for years to come.

The oil is actually more of a reflective gray - the large area of brown is sediment. Getting shots in the sun glint region is important, because the oil is actually not easily distinguishable from water when it's not.

[somethingfunny]

That image shocks me with how much of Louisiana has disappeared from the shape I'm used to seeing on maps.

[gtalum]

That big area of brown is all oil, am I right? Even if the well is successfully capped, all that oil is going to linger for years to come.

The oil shows up on satellite images as a grayish reflection.

The oil will not linger for years. Once capped, it will dissipate fairly quickly. Currents disperse it. Much of it evaporates. The Gulf also has a relatively large concentration of oil-eating bacteria because of all the natural oil seeps in the area, which will dissolve the resulting tar balls. We'll be cleaning our beaches for months, not years. The ecosystem will take years to recover, but not because the oil will still be out there. It just takes a while for plant and animal populations to rebuild.

[HURAKAN]

Link - http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... wD9GK88G81

BP: Gulf oil spill costs have reached $2.65B

(AP) – 1 hour ago

NEW ORLEANS — BP says the cost of the company's response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has reached about $2.65 billion.

The company announced the updated total in a news release Monday. The costs include spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to Gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs.

BP says it has received more than 80,000 claims and made almost 41,000 payments, totaling more than $128 million.

BP says the figure does not include a $20 billion fund for Gulf damages it created this month.

Millions of gallons of oil have spilled since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Ivanhater]

Few more pics of life on Pensacola beach now

[fwbbreeze]

What kind of sea life is that in the last picture...it seems to be in distress laying down...for goodness sakes Ivan lend a helping hand man