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Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History
Yes all of that is true. But concentrations matter a lot. You can drink very dilute lye solution. However, if you drink concentrated lye solution, it will cause immense damage to your intestinal system, and if consumed in enough quantity, will kill you. Similarly with acids. Drinking dilute acetic acid (vinegar) can even be beneficial for you. However, consuming concentrated acetic acid can be damaging.
So please get a grip on yourself. I know it is hard to see your life savings disappear, particularly when one is living on a small budget, and living very frugally, and having done almost everything right to plan for a retirement. We are all on the same page as you. However that still does not undo the damaging affects of the oil spill. Yes, over time things will hopefully come back to normal. But, just like you, many of the people in the Gulf of Mexico states, are seeing their livelihoods disappear, and they do not know how, when and where they can get their life back together again.
I believe the Ixtoc spill in 1979, spilled more oil than has been spilled in the BP spill.
Here is a writeup on the impacts of Ixtoc.
Gulf oil spill: parallels with Ixtoc raise fears of ecological tipping point
Originally posted by Starving Steve
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So please get a grip on yourself. I know it is hard to see your life savings disappear, particularly when one is living on a small budget, and living very frugally, and having done almost everything right to plan for a retirement. We are all on the same page as you. However that still does not undo the damaging affects of the oil spill. Yes, over time things will hopefully come back to normal. But, just like you, many of the people in the Gulf of Mexico states, are seeing their livelihoods disappear, and they do not know how, when and where they can get their life back together again.
I believe the Ixtoc spill in 1979, spilled more oil than has been spilled in the BP spill.
Here is a writeup on the impacts of Ixtoc.
Gulf oil spill: parallels with Ixtoc raise fears of ecological tipping point
Juan Antonio Dzul was a teenager when the Ixtoc 1 oil rig collapsed in June 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico, 70 miles from the fishing town of Champotón where he grew up and still lives. The memory of the huge spill that followed is etched on his mind.
"The oil covered the reefs and washed up on the shore. Fish died and the octopuses were buried under the oil that filled the gaps between the rocks where they live," he recalled in a phone interview. "Even today you can find stains on rocks a few centimetres deep, and if you stick something metal in them the smell of oil still escapes."
Champotón was one of the first and worst-hit areas reached by the estimated 3m barrels of oil that poured into the sea over the next nine and a half months. The Ixtoc disaster is still by far the largest peacetime spill, as well as a lesson-packed forerunner of the disaster in progress, as the Deepwater Horizon also exploded and sank after a blowout preventer failed.
The parallels are most striking in the methods that failed to cap the damaged well head beneath.
"They tried to put a funnel on top of it, injected mud and saltwater and cement, but everything they tried to put in the well was forced out by the pressure," says Abundio Juarez. He was one of the top engineers in the state-owned company, Pemex, that was exploring the Ixtoc deposit at the time, although he was not directly involved in the control effort.
He says the company also tried golf balls. "We sent divers down and today they have robots, but the only solution then, and now, is a relief well and that takes time."
Pemex also used booms and skimmers, and dumped chemical dispersants on the slicks. That, the scientists say today, helped reduce the amounts reaching the shore but sent encapsulated oil down to the sea bed with some initially devastating effects, particularly for shrimp larvae.
Meanwhile, the oil was washing up all along the gulf, a foot deep in some places, as it was pushed northwards by prevailing winds and currents until it finally crossed the Texas border two months later and eventually coated almost 170 miles of US beaches. The beach that caused most international concern in Mexico was Rancho Nuevo, a key nesting ground for critically endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtles which had already lumbered up the sand in their hundreds to lay eggs. By the time the eggs hatched, the oil was lapping at the shore. Had an emergency US-Mexican operation not airlifted them over the spill to cleaner waters beyond, a generation might have been wiped out.
But although Ixtoc was a big disaster, it did not develop into the long-term catastrophe that scientists initially thought was inevitable.
"This is not to say there were no consequences. Just that the evidence is that these are not as dramatic as we feared," says Luis Soto, a marine biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "After about two years the recuperation was well on the way."
Wes Tunnell, now at the Texas Harte Research Institute, took samples before and after the oil arrived in Texas that showed an immediate 80% drop in the number of organisms living between the grains of sand that provide food for shore birds and crabs.
"Sampling a couple of years after the spill indicated the populations were back to normal," he says. Six years after Ixtoc 1 exploded it was hard to find any evidence of the oil, he says. "It is rather baffling to us all. We don't really know where it went."
But although their message is hopeful, those who studied the Ixtoc disaster warn against assuming the gulf is automatically heading for another quick comeback.
Ixtoc 1 stood in just 50 metres (165ft) of water, while Deepwater Horizon was drilling 1,500 metres below the surface. It is also likely that the quantity of chemical dispersants being used today is significantly larger, potentially blocking the work of the oil-eating micro-organisms.
But what worries Tunnell most is that over-fishing may have reduced the ability of the gulf to bounce back. "It was much more resilient 30 years ago than today. My fear is it is reaching a tipping point."
"The oil covered the reefs and washed up on the shore. Fish died and the octopuses were buried under the oil that filled the gaps between the rocks where they live," he recalled in a phone interview. "Even today you can find stains on rocks a few centimetres deep, and if you stick something metal in them the smell of oil still escapes."
Champotón was one of the first and worst-hit areas reached by the estimated 3m barrels of oil that poured into the sea over the next nine and a half months. The Ixtoc disaster is still by far the largest peacetime spill, as well as a lesson-packed forerunner of the disaster in progress, as the Deepwater Horizon also exploded and sank after a blowout preventer failed.
The parallels are most striking in the methods that failed to cap the damaged well head beneath.
"They tried to put a funnel on top of it, injected mud and saltwater and cement, but everything they tried to put in the well was forced out by the pressure," says Abundio Juarez. He was one of the top engineers in the state-owned company, Pemex, that was exploring the Ixtoc deposit at the time, although he was not directly involved in the control effort.
He says the company also tried golf balls. "We sent divers down and today they have robots, but the only solution then, and now, is a relief well and that takes time."
Pemex also used booms and skimmers, and dumped chemical dispersants on the slicks. That, the scientists say today, helped reduce the amounts reaching the shore but sent encapsulated oil down to the sea bed with some initially devastating effects, particularly for shrimp larvae.
Meanwhile, the oil was washing up all along the gulf, a foot deep in some places, as it was pushed northwards by prevailing winds and currents until it finally crossed the Texas border two months later and eventually coated almost 170 miles of US beaches. The beach that caused most international concern in Mexico was Rancho Nuevo, a key nesting ground for critically endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtles which had already lumbered up the sand in their hundreds to lay eggs. By the time the eggs hatched, the oil was lapping at the shore. Had an emergency US-Mexican operation not airlifted them over the spill to cleaner waters beyond, a generation might have been wiped out.
But although Ixtoc was a big disaster, it did not develop into the long-term catastrophe that scientists initially thought was inevitable.
"This is not to say there were no consequences. Just that the evidence is that these are not as dramatic as we feared," says Luis Soto, a marine biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "After about two years the recuperation was well on the way."
Wes Tunnell, now at the Texas Harte Research Institute, took samples before and after the oil arrived in Texas that showed an immediate 80% drop in the number of organisms living between the grains of sand that provide food for shore birds and crabs.
"Sampling a couple of years after the spill indicated the populations were back to normal," he says. Six years after Ixtoc 1 exploded it was hard to find any evidence of the oil, he says. "It is rather baffling to us all. We don't really know where it went."
But although their message is hopeful, those who studied the Ixtoc disaster warn against assuming the gulf is automatically heading for another quick comeback.
Ixtoc 1 stood in just 50 metres (165ft) of water, while Deepwater Horizon was drilling 1,500 metres below the surface. It is also likely that the quantity of chemical dispersants being used today is significantly larger, potentially blocking the work of the oil-eating micro-organisms.
But what worries Tunnell most is that over-fishing may have reduced the ability of the gulf to bounce back. "It was much more resilient 30 years ago than today. My fear is it is reaching a tipping point."
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