Mighty oil-eating microbes help clean up the Gulf

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Mighty oil-eating microbes help clean up the Gulf

By JOHN CAREY, environmental writer

Where is all the oil? Nearly two weeks after BP finally capped the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, the oil slicks that once spread across thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappeared. Nor has much oil washed up on the sandy beaches and marshes along the Louisiana coast. And the small cleanup army in the Gulf has only managed to skim up a tiny fraction of the millions of gallons of oil spilled in the 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig went up in flames.

So where did the oil go? "Some of the oil evaporates," explains Edward Bouwer, professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. That’s especially true for the more toxic components of oil, which tend to be very volatile, he says. Jeffrey W. Short, a scientist with the environmental group Oceana, told the New York Times that as much as 40 percent of the oil might have evaporated when it reached the surface. High winds from two recent storms may have speeded the evaporation process.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_excl/ynews_excl_sc3270

i guess obama's admin can't "waste a good crisis"...

obama's right hand man:

"you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … It's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."
 
Yurt said:
Mighty oil-eating microbes help clean up the Gulf

By JOHN CAREY, environmental writer

Where is all the oil? Nearly two weeks after BP finally capped the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, the oil slicks that once spread across thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappeared. Nor has much oil washed up on the sandy beaches and marshes along the Louisiana coast. And the small cleanup army in the Gulf has only managed to skim up a tiny fraction of the millions of gallons of oil spilled in the 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig went up in flames.

So where did the oil go? "Some of the oil evaporates," explains Edward Bouwer, professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. That’s especially true for the more toxic components of oil, which tend to be very volatile, he says. Jeffrey W. Short, a scientist with the environmental group Oceana, told the New York Times that as much as 40 percent of the oil might have evaporated when it reached the surface. High winds from two recent storms may have speeded the evaporation process.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_excl/ynews_excl_sc3270

i guess obama's admin can't "waste a good crisis"...

obama's right hand man:

"you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … It's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."
Click to expand...

And what's going to happen to the microbes when all the oil is gone? Where are they going to get their next meal? Has anyone considered THAT!!!?
 
A seemingly feel-good story showed up this week on the nation's front pages and newscasts: The oil that befouled the Gulf of Mexico for 86 days is vanishing from the surface, leaving workers with little to clean.

But scientists warn the oil's ecological impacts are shifting, not ebbing, thanks to massive volumes of dispersants that have kept the crude beneath the waves.

"This is a management decision, to use dispersants," College of William and Mary marine science professor Robert Diaz said yesterday. "It doesn't make the oil go away, it just puts it from one part of the ecosystem to another."

That dispersed oil now hovers, diluted in the water column, posing a challenge for scientists to track and measure the subsea plumes.

Mapping the long-term effects of the nearly 2 million gallons of dispersant used by BP PLC may well be equally difficult, given the array of unanswered questions that surround the products' rapid breakdown of oil droplets and their chronic toxicity.

In other words, while dispersants may have helped spare the Gulf's birds, the chemicals are likely shifting dangers to other species lower in the food chain.

The National Research Council described dispersant use in 2005 as "a conscious decision" to direct hydrocarbons to one part of the marine ecosystem, "decreasing the risk to water surface and shoreline habitats while increasing the potential risk to organisms in the water column and on the seafloor."

Diaz spoke at a Capitol Hill briefing aimed at guiding future research into dispersants, which remain a politically volatile topic even as their use in the Gulf tapers off thanks to the capped Macondo wellhead.

A May meeting at the University of New Hampshire's Coastal Response Research Center, planned by government scientists and oil industry representatives, yielded a consensus judgment that dispersant use "has generally been less environmentally harmful than allowing the oil to migrate on the surface into the sensitive wetlands."

Another group of scientists, however, issued a public plea (pdf) last week that decried dispersants and warned that, mixed with oil, the products "pose grave health risks to marine life and human health."

Coastal Response Research Center co-director Nancy Kinner sought to put the May statement in context. "Nobody's saying dispersants are great," she said after yesterday's briefing, though they are an effective alternative when mechanical methods of collecting spilled oil prove impossible.

Kinner outlined a series of gaps in the current system of testing dispersants. U.S. EPA's analysis of their toxicity focuses on acute effects of exposure in two representative species, but "we do very little chronic toxicity work," she said.

That work would evaluate whether dispersants could heighten the mortality of larvae and other sensitive species that may not die off immediately but studies show are absorbing tiny droplets of dispersed oil into their shells.

Dispersant studies have not examined the products' long-term effects and their consequences when applied at high pressure, Kinner added, which BP did by spraying the chemicals subsea near the leaking wellhead. Diaz added another mystery to the list, noting that current studies focus on marine organisms that may not be feeling the brunt of this summer's dispersant assault.

"All the risks we've evaluated have used surface, shallow-water species that are easily maintained" in a laboratory setting, Diaz said. "We haven't been using oceanic species to assess risk, and this is a key issue."

Measuring long-term effects

The Marine Environmental Research Institute's director, Susan Shaw, the organizer of last week's statement against dispersant use, agreed that the current extent of testing falls short.

Oil mixed with the Corexit dispersant used by BP "is probably having a lethal effect on all these [small] animals -- that's the food for the small fish."

"The idea that the oil has disappeared and this is all fine is completely not true," Shaw added. "There are long-term impacts that we need to look at and measure."

Shaw also pointed to language in the 2005 National Research Council report that discussed the higher potential toxicity of chemically dispersed crude droplets, thanks to an increased surface area that exposes more of the oil's polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

The Obama administration sought this week to temper premature celebration of the shrinking surface oil.

"What we have yet to determine is the full impact that the oil will have on not just the shorelines, not just the wildlife, but beneath the surface," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters. "And we have a very aggressive research effort under way to determine exactly that."

How much funding that effort will receive remains an open question. Kinner said the National Research Council's report outlined a $40 million plan for dispersant research, but a quarter of the money materialized over the past five years. Future research and development should bring "industry and government and NGOs to the table," she said.

The first player on that list, however, raised concerns for Shaw, who described herself as "worried about the impact of having polluting industries funding the research. There's no way that will not impact [things] -- it's not independent research."

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/0...spersants-shifting-ecosystem-impac-95608.html
 
Medical note: if you’re suffering from neck trauma and whiplash from reading these recent Gulf spill threads, you’re not alone. The republican goal-post moving, and darting all over the map is enough to give anyone whiplash.

When this spill started, GOPers played it down, and suggested it was no big deal; and played up the “horrors” of natural seepage(!).

By May, Dixie (and others) infamously said it was a catastrophe of epic proportions, eclipsing Katrina by orders of magnitude. “Obama’s Katrina!”.

Now, we’re back where we started – it’s no big deal…. and its esta’ no problem-o!


As for me, surprisingly I’m going to wait for scientific monitoring and assessment over the long term to establish what environmental consequences there are. I’d be stoked if the collective damages are very limited and short term. No doubt, the Gulf isn’t, and never was going to be destroyed and obliterated. But at this point, I don’t know how much money the fishing industry lost, how many endangered sea turtles were killed, and amazingly I’m not smart enough to make definitive statements about the fate of benzene, toluene, and other oil-related toxins once they enter the food chain, or get embedded in sediments, marshes, and wetlands.


From the article in the OP:

“It is still far too early to know how much damage the spill has done — and may still be doing — to the environment”
Click to expand...
 
Its my understanding that the spill will lead to a rapid increase in the population levels of the organisms which feed off of oil seepage. They can potentially harm the ecosystem of the gulf by becoming too numerous.
 
Yurt said:
Mighty oil-eating microbes help clean up the Gulf

By JOHN CAREY, environmental writer

Where is all the oil? Nearly two weeks after BP finally capped the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, the oil slicks that once spread across thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappeared. Nor has much oil washed up on the sandy beaches and marshes along the Louisiana coast. And the small cleanup army in the Gulf has only managed to skim up a tiny fraction of the millions of gallons of oil spilled in the 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig went up in flames.

So where did the oil go? "Some of the oil evaporates," explains Edward Bouwer, professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. That’s especially true for the more toxic components of oil, which tend to be very volatile, he says. Jeffrey W. Short, a scientist with the environmental group Oceana, told the New York Times that as much as 40 percent of the oil might have evaporated when it reached the surface. High winds from two recent storms may have speeded the evaporation process.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_excl/ynews_excl_sc3270

i guess obama's admin can't "waste a good crisis"...

obama's right hand man:

"you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … It's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."
Click to expand...

Imagine how clean it would be if oil skimmers were allowed to work without foolish EPA 15ppm discharge regulations.
 
Cypress said:
Medical note: if you’re suffering from neck trauma and whiplash from reading these recent Gulf spill threads, you’re not alone. The republican goal-post moving, and darting all over the map is enough to give anyone whiplash.

When this spill started, GOPers played it down, and suggested it was no big deal; and played up the “horrors” of natural seepage(!).

By May, Dixie (and others) infamously said it was a catastrophe of epic proportions, eclipsing Katrina by orders of magnitude. “Obama’s Katrina!”.

Now, we’re back where we started – it’s no big deal…. and its esta’ no problem-o!


As for me, surprisingly I’m going to wait for scientific monitoring and assessment over the long term to establish what environmental consequences there are. I’d be stoked if the collective damages are very limited and short term. No doubt, the Gulf isn’t, and never was going to be destroyed and obliterated. But at this point, I don’t know how much money the fishing industry lost, how many endangered sea turtles were killed, and amazingly I’m not smart enough to make definitive statements about the fate of benzene, toluene, and other oil-related toxins once they enter the food chain, or get embedded in sediments, marshes, and wetlands.


From the article in the OP:
Click to expand...
President Obama has called the BP oil spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the "catastrophe along the Gulf Coast," while CBS, Fox and MSNBC are all slapping "Disaster in the Gulf" chyrons on their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted that the spill was an "environmental catastrophe." The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it "the leak" — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.

Well, Limbaugh has a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it's no leak; it's the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It's also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the number killed by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska 21 years ago. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but so far, wildlife-response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but so far, assessment teams have found only about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.

The disappearance of more than 2,000 sq. mi. of coastal Louisiana over the past century has been a true national tragedy, ravaging a unique wilderness, threatening the bayou way of life and leaving communities like New Orleans extremely vulnerable to hurricanes from the Gulf. And while much of the erosion has been caused by the re-engineering of the Mississippi River — which no longer deposits much sediment at the bottom of its Delta — quite a bit has been caused by the oil and gas industry, which gouged 8,000 miles of canals and pipelines through coastal wetlands. But the spill isn't making that problem much worse. Coastal scientist Paul Kemp, a former Louisiana State University professor who is now a National Audubon Society vice president, compares the impact of the spill on the vanishing marshes to "a sunburn on a cancer patient."

Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, another former LSU prof, who's working for a spill-response contractor, says, "There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts." Van Heerden, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid from BP's spill-response funds. "There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,...007202,00.html
 
Threedee said:
Its my understanding that the spill will lead to a rapid increase in the population levels of the organisms which feed off of oil seepage. They can potentially harm the ecosystem of the gulf by becoming too numerous.
Click to expand...
Only the die-off could do that. But it should be extended over time as well, it isn't like they will eat every drop then all die at once. As more oil disappears fewer of them will be able to find food, the die off will take as long as it takes to clean up the oil.
 
Glad Obama secured the 20 billion up front, as the worst case seems light years away now. He'd never get it today.
 
BP probably pays Tommy the Slimy Limey to infest US chat rooms, so I'm not surprised their claims of "minimal environmental damage" are also bought and paid for.
 
Topspin said:
you aren't that smart, thank me later
Click to expand...

i see tommy the 3rd grader is right because tommy said so

tommy's brained is dulled from too much weed...he doesn't realize that locals in the gulf were asking for the money and that other congressmen were as well....but tommy loves to give credit only to obama
 
Yurt said:
i see tommy the 3rd grader is right because tommy said so

tommy's brained is dulled from too much weed...he doesn't realize that locals in the gulf were asking for the money and that other congressmen were as well....but tommy loves to give credit only to obama
Click to expand...

and yurtsie the fake lawyer can't give Obama credit for anything.

BP does not fund the 20 billion without Obama's pressure, what an idiot you are. Your side was accusing him of strong arming BP, which I agree with.
 
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