The oil has gone? Tell that to Gulf coast residents
By Rupert Cornwell, independent.co.uk -- 6 August 2010
And though only a quarter of the 4.9m barrels reckoned to have leaked is still unaccounted, that represents the equivalent of five Exxon Valdez, the tanker whose spill caused an environmental catastrophe in Alaska in 1989.
"There are still boats out there every day working, finding turtles with oil on them and seeing grass lines with oil in it," charter boat captain Randy Boggs, of Orange Beach in Alabama, told the Associated Press. "All the oil isn't accounted for. There are millions of pounds of tar balls and oil on the bottom."
Turns out, This -- TIMES 5 --
IS mostly STILL There! ... lurking somewhere, just below the surface ...
Drilling down into the recent Good News/Bad News report ... on the Disaster Tale in the Gulf ... that Tragic Saga that is 'primed to turn a page' ...
Scientists: Most oil gone from Gulf spill
By Steve Gelsi - Market Pulse, MarketWatch.com -- Aug. 4, 2010
A team of scientsts from the federal government said Wednesday that most of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that came from the Deepwater Horizion accident and the ruptured Macondo well has been collected, evaporated or dispersed. The team, led by the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said
burning, skimming and direct recovery from the wellhead removed 33% of the oil;
about 25% of the oil evaporated or dissolved,
and 16% was dispersed into microscopic droplets.
33+25+16 = ???
How about a Picture, please? I hate doing all that math in my head.
OK
How did five million barrels of oil simply disappear?
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs points to a pie chart on the BP oil spill during the Daily White House Press Briefing, Washington, DC.
AFP/ Getty Images
OK there you go -- Only about 26% Residual Oil is left.
"Residual" -- that's like "smoke" -- like the Morning Fog.
That doesn't sound so bad. ... It should be gone in No Time, right?
Don't bet on it.
[continuing from previous MarketWatch link]
The rest of the oil, about 26%, is either on or just below the surface as light sheen and weathered tar balls. "Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn't oil still in the water column or that our beaches and marshes aren't still at risk," said Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.
And what does that risk of "oil still in the water column or that our beaches and marshes" really mean, to the locals, who must fish those waters, to make their living?
The oil has gone? Tell that to Gulf coast residents
By Rupert Cornwell, independent.co.uk -- 6 August 2010
Harry 'Cho-cho' Cherami, a 59-year-old shrimper from grand Isle, Louisiana who grew up on the deck of his father's shrimp boat, is also skeptical of the good news. "I don't think we've finished with this," he said in Grand Isle, La. "We haven't really started to deal with it yet. We don't know what effect it's going to have on our seafood in the long run."
But Science is Science, right? ... Facts is Facts.
Well it turns out there are some Science Reports, that are more "authoritative" than others. And others, read more like a Press Release:
Looking for the oil? US claims it's mostly gone
TodayOnline.com Aug 06, 2010
But the amount of oil left is almost five times the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989. And National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Ms Jane Lubchenco stressed that scientists will not be able to determine for a long time the full extent of the damage. The problem, she explained, is that oil is toxic even when it has been broken down into small droplets.
The author of the report, NOAA scientist Bill Lehr, said the calculations are based on direct measurements of a small fraction of the oil spilled and "educated scientific guesses". That's what worries some outside scientists. "This is a shaky report ... There's some science here, but mostly, it's spin," said Florida State University oceanography professor Ian MacDonald."
I wonder if that is what they mean by getting your Science Report, "peer reviewed"?
5 TIMES the Exxon Valdez spill
IS.STILL.Mostly.There.
How that qualifies as "mostly gone" is beyond me --
I guess that means, it could've been worse.
Well geesh, as with most problems, isn't that usually the case?
It could've been worse ... Let's thank our Lucky Stars!
[Note: All emphasis, and witless observations expressed above, are only those of the author, and not the sources cited.]