Friday, May 14, 2010

Mother Earth is Bleeding

    [click photo]

SWEEPING IT UNDER THE CARPET:
An airplane sprays Corexit on the spill in an attempt to break up and sink the oil floating on the surface.

Chemical dispersants are being used to break up the oil spill, causing it to sink to the depths - out of sight, out of mind! But what are the true environmental affects of this procedure?

This paper sheds light on the challenges encountered after the oil has sunk. Just because it isn't seen at the surface does not mean it is gone. To the contrary, it is suspended in the water column and transported by the currents to other areas where it may re-appear causing ecological damage at the surface, or settle to the sea floor harming bottom dwelling life, not to mention everything in between.

The dispersants also evaporate some of the oil. This and the burning of the oil on the surface also pollute the air causing additional problems. Officials are now looking into the odors which abound in the coastal areas and inland even as far as New Orleans.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA - has dispatched a science team to study the spill. In conjunction with their efforts the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium research ship Pelican has been redirected to aid in the survey of the water column in the Gulf.

What are the long term effects of the use of dispersants?
FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The potential long-term impact of using chemical dispersants as part of BP’s plan of attack against the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not yet known, and that is causing concern for some.

One group fears every gallon used to fight the massive oil spill caused when British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform exploded last month could cause as much, if not more, harm to the environment and its inhabitants than the crude itself.

That’s the word coming from a group of toxicology experts, led by Dr. William Sawyer, addressing the Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Group, a group of lawyers claiming to protect the interests of those affected by the crisis.

BP chooses to use chemical dispersants produced by a company with which it has close ties rather than far less toxic and more effective products manufactured by competing companies:
BP PLC continues to stockpile and deploy oil-dispersing chemicals manufactured by a company with which it shares close ties, even though other U.S. EPA-approved alternatives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective.
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So far, BP has told federal agencies that it has applied more than 400,000 gallons of a dispersant sold under the trade name Corexit and manufactured by Nalco Co., a company that was once part of Exxon Mobil Corp. and whose current leadership includes executives at both BP and Exxon. And another 805,000 gallons of Corexit are on order, the company said, with the possibility that hundreds of thousands of more gallons may be needed if the well continues spewing oil for weeks or months.
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Of 18 dispersants whose use EPA has approved, 12 were found to be more effective on southern Louisiana crude than Corexit, EPA data show. Two of the 12 were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective, respectively. The toxicity of the 12 was shown to be either comparable to the Corexit line or, in some cases, 10 or 20 times less, according to EPA.
[Blog Editor's Note: that should read 1/10 to 1/20 of the toxicity. There is no such thing as "10-20 times less" unless you are talking about negative numbers. 1 time less is zero! Arrgghh!]
Additional Reading Here and Here



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Additional Photos


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9 comments:

  1. We're going to have to go for a big FAIL on this new image anchor thing, and they fucked with the spacing on the sidebar and made me have to go back in and slap on bandaids. Sheesh! They're SO sloppy!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It drove me nuts trying to get the pictures where I wanted them - the code gets all screwed up with unnecessary crap. HTML code with nothing inside of it to apply the code to - so why is it there? I delete it and nothing changes.
    I finally found I could "drag" the pictures around, but the image I was dragging wasn't even in the edit box, rather somewhere totally off of to the side and top of the screen.
    You can't even add pictures in the HTML editing format and when you switch to the compose editor it scrambles all the code you made in the HTML editor.

    A real mess!

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  3. I found analogous bullshit when they first added the cute little post editor thing, and IMMEDIATELY swore myself to the chore of doing all my code by hand. The INSTANT you give in to their little ease of operating features, you LOSE your ability to control how your blog looks.

    It's SERIOUSLY aggravating!

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  4. But what I came here for was to bitch about this oil blowout cleanup thing.

    WHAT THE FUCK IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING?

    The thing blew, everybody freaked, Mr. Composure said, don't worry, I'm making BP clean it up, but BP isn't cleaning it up, just dicking around with some kind of umbrella setup that might let them pump oil from the umbrella and sending out armies of guys with liability waiver forms. So then, today, Mr. Composure plays steamed, frowns hard for the cameras, and WHAT is HAPPENING on this account, except the general public getting the vague impression that the president disapproves of the evil fucks who did this?

    WHAT THE FUCK IS ACTUALLY BEING DONE?

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  5. A bunch of people I know think Obama was Brzezinski's pick for this from back in college, groomed for this post, and he's 100% on board with the NWO oligarchs... but he's SO fucking ineffectual on ANYTHING involving the big boys that I can't bring myself to think even being programmed by Brzezinski could produce this bad an outcome. And a really SICKENING thought is remembering Palin's impeccably-delivered jab on the "community organizer" angle at the RNC in 2008. It's like she nailed it.

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  6. I mean, maybe Sarah Palin nailed it!

    That's some scary shit, but... well... IT LOOKS LIKE IT!

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  7. YOU FRICKIN' FELL ASLEEP, I JUST KNOW IT! AND MY HAIR IS ON FIRE!

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  8. Ya - snoozed in my chair...

    I'm back on it this morning!

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  9. It's pretty clear to me that Obama NEVER thinks out of the political expedience box, that indeed he is every bit as sociopathic as certain movies and certain bloggers have insisted politicians this successful almost this unerringly are. Bad as Dubya was, I don't think he was even 10% as inhuman as this guy, or either of the Clintons, for that matter. This ENTIRE mess with the Gulf Blowout is because the president decided he wasn't going to make Dubya's Katrina mistake of trying to be seen as handling it and failing. No. THIS president is going to come out early declaring it BP's baby, and then come out again, looking angry, speaking sternly, when his responsibility here is beginning to poke through the original verbal patch he put over that. He uses his MOUTH for EVERYTHING! Why doesn't the fucker just go use his mouth to suck up all the crude and chemicals in the Gulf? It's certainly BIG enough for the job.

    ReplyDelete