"Death in the Gulf." BP and Halliburton committing ecocide.
This WineRev Model series focuses on the effects.
BP, the Coast Guard and corporate media are selling propaganda that the GoM Loop Current will clean things out:
No-no-no.
That first lavender offshore geostrophic cyclone can hold slowly rising oil for years. Then the pale yellow anticyclone circles north of the Loop Current.
Oil is going to be surfacing in the northern GoM and be at risk to hurricane for years. More below :::
The more REC's, the more people get to see this stuff.
Deep water currents are carrying the bulk of the oil spew.
Surface currents are blown along by wind. They concentrate oil and make amazing sludge-ponds of oil that has been "dispersed" with chemicals.
The deep currents, called geostrophic currents, result from the Coriolis effect and coastal geography and are influenced by heat and salinity (thermohaline) processes. Geostrophic currents move very slowly.
The oil geyser at BP's Deepwater Horizon site is splitting up to the bouyed oil that surfaces immediately and to a slow moving mass that stays down low. Bouyed oil has such as methane and natural gas mixed in. This lighter spew is estimated at 20% of the total blow out.
80% of the spew does not rise immediately. Instead, the part that is not assisted by gasses will take many months to reach the surface.
Tests with appropriate temperature and pressure levels indicate that low turbulence environments could see a 95% reappearance over a 5 year span.
Put that together with the flow pattern for the northern Gulf of Mexico. The most common pattern for deep water currents has three main features:
- An offshore cyclone that reaches out as far as the Deepwater Horizon blow out;
- A second anticylcone to the south of that; then,
- The main Loop Current which operates below 500 feet in the Gulf and moves slowly.
The pace for each of these deep water currents is not the 1 to 2 mph seen with surface currents. They move much slower. The measured speeds from whale watching and FSU sources show in the low 0.1 mph range.
NOAA has failed miserably at differentiating surface currents from the deep water
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We have had crazy levels of denial related to tracking the BP oil spew.
"The business of trying to detect submerged oil is not a settled science," Cmdr. Shepard Smith, the [Thomas Jefferson research ship's] commanding officer, said Tuesday.... "There isn't a great body of experience with how to do this because it's a really very unusual circumstance."
The 208-foot, 36-person ship has been equipped with a variety of methods to detect oil. Smith said researchers have some idea how the sensors may react, he but added, "We don't know for sure, because we don't know the form it might take, and we've never done it before."
-- McClatchy
Taking samples ? Sending the samples to a lab for mass spectrometry ?
These people know. They know that cold, slow-current crude oil can take years to reach the surface. They know that 80% of the oil is staying down deep, coming in the flow out of the blow out.
Frankly, I fear that the experts from the Oil Biz are lying to everyone.
They have to know.
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This series provides a home for pics and vids. WineRev covered the 2009 Senate recount with a delightful 157 diary series.
"Recounting Minnesota" at Amazon