Admiral Thad Allen wrote an essay published on the Op-Ed page of the Washington Post today. I think that this site needs to look at it. More below the fold.
Here's the link to the essay that retired Admiral Thad Allen wrote. Here are a few pertinent snippets.
Our country encountered (a) seemingly impossible-to-open locker on April 20. The explosion, subsequent fire and ultimate sinking of the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon led to the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. Eleven lives were lost. This summer, we watched the uncontrolled discharge of tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day. The disaster caused economic deprivation and put at risk an entire way of life.
We sure didn't know how bad it would end up being, but we knew it would be bad. And we knew that BP wasn't being fully honest with us. But this community has let hysteria and conspiracy theories take over on many occasions, and I think that was/is wrong. Too often those spreading that hysteria have gotten the most attention here, and I don't think that serves our side (the left) well.
We also know we mobilized the largest public- and private-sector disaster response in this nation's history. This summer we did things that have never been done before: We employed 7,000 vessels of opportunity, a waterborne militia that has no precedent. We took control of the air space in the Gulf of Mexico to improve flight safety and more effectively employ air surveillance from the same base that defends North America from air attack. We mobilized the largest number of oil skimmers and deployed more containment boom than ever before in our country. In the process, emergency regulations authorizing the relocation of response equipment from across the country were issued in a matter of days.
It was more than just marshaling forces on the water and on the shore. Nearly every agency of the government was involved, and not only the ones you would expect, such as the Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but also the Defense Department, the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and others.
We stood up a special science team, led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who oversaw every technical aspect of the well-kill efforts. The science team also got us a precise flow rate and an oil budget that estimates where the oil went.
Given what we know now, we dodged many bullets. Yes, the oil hit some beaches, but not many, and most of them were not seriously impacted. Yes, on some beaches, there is oil just under the surface of the sand on the shoreline, and that won't disappear immediately, and maybe not for a long time in some cases. We had significant damage to some wetlands, but luckily, not too many, and for most, so far it appears they are recovering. And we still don't know what the long-term impact might be, although all the evidence we have so far is that it won't be too bad and that using the dispersant wasn't such a bad idea after all.
I wish that we hadn't been hit by the oil leak - I hate that BP convinced the Bush MMS that the $500,000 back-up acoustic blowout preventer (BOP) was too great of an expense for us to require it! I hate that there weren't rules in place that told them that when they uncovered potential major problems (like finding the bits of rubber from the annular seal), that they had to stop and fix that problem, instead of them deciding to keep on drilling!
Did BP do multiple things wrong? Of course, both before and after the explosion. Did the government do some things wrong? Sure. But not as much as the rightwing would like us to believe, as I demonstrated in my diary about the right-leaning company up in Maine that enlisted the help of the Republican Governor and the two Republican US Senators to try to bully BP into buying their boom product - something they'd never made before, and weren't making well, and that wasn't good enough until about the 5th generation months later!
And I don't think the government has done as much wrong as many posters and diarists here seem to think, and I think that Thad Allen defends himself and his colleagues well in this essay.
For example, how about the myths pushed here about Corexit? That it was banned in the UK because it was dangerous to use? It wasn't. It was deemed not appropriate for use in the UK because it isn't good to use on rocky shores, but there were no rocky shores nearby where it was being used underwater or sprayed in the Gulf of Mexico. Even after the ingredients in Corexit were 'outed', people here still pushed the myth that we didn't know what the ingredients were. Even after it's been documented that there's no scientific evidence that the dispersant mixed with the oil is more toxic, or even as toxic, as the oil itself, when dispersed in millions of gallons of seawater, there's still been hysteria here about the product! We don't know that it's this terrible thing, yet that's the conclusion that many have already come to.
We've also seen multiple diaries that said that fish kills couldn't be due to warmer than normal water temps that are causing decreased oxygen levels - it has to be Corexit or oil mixed with that dispersant that's poisoning the fish, despite an absolute dearth of evidence to support that assertion! And people keep believing that conspiracy theory, that all the scientists and regular folk in all the state environment protection boards are in on that conspiracy to cover up the damage that Corexit will do to the environment!
We responded with government effort at all levels that moved beyond the tactical issue of oil on the water to address socioeconomic effects, public health, long-term environmental impact, and responsive near-term emergency services and support. Again, we have done things on a scale with no precedent. Did we learn things along the way? Absolutely. We should have done some things sooner, like taking control of the airspace and transitioning from boom to skimmers.
Is there more work to do? Certainly. Our estimates suggest a quarter of the oil that leaked could still be in the water. What's left is breaking down, but that doesn't mean it isn't a threat, and we won't stop going after it until it's gone. Do laws and regulations need to be revised? Of course. Do we have all the answers to long-term effects to the environment from the oil spilled or dispersants used? Not yet, and we should not add to the cost of this spill by failing to learn these things.
As he says above, we don't yet know, for sure, what the long-term damage might be. They used dispersants, and that broke up much of the oil into its component parts, but those parts have settled on the bottom of the ocean floor in hugh swaths, and two months ago there was a 20 mile plus long invisible, ethereal cloud of remnants of the oil floating hundreds of feet down in the cold waters of the Gulf.
But again, many of the posters and diarists here went overboard on that topic too! Many scientists disagree with the dire predictions of the Woods Hole group, for instance, even saying that the WH group's data doesn't support their conclusions. But it's not something that anyone really wants to diary about here, because as soon as one contradicts those 'true believers', they get labelled a troll!
We had diarists here asserting that the only info we had was what the Woods Hole study told us, but that wasn't true. As a participating scientist, Christopher Reddy said,
Christopher Reddy, one of the lead scientists on the report, likened the oil-spattered Gulf to a "buffet" for "opportunistic" microbes, which may prefer some compounds in the spread more than others.
...
At best, the study is a snapshot in time, revealing the migrations of oil that had escaped from the BP well and diluted into deepwater over a period of five days. The study does not speak to current conditions in the Gulf, and researchers are uncertain how the environment has shifted since BP finally plugged its leak a month ago. The findings are more like one piece of a jigsaw puzzle than one section of a house of cards, according to Reddy.
As I documented in another diary, The New York Times documents how the Woods Hole report didn't tell the readers the full story.
They said
Based on measurements taken in late June, the study confirms the existence of an invisible, finely diffused mile-wide swath of oil-infused water...
Which is different than the vision one would get from the posters here.
Rather than painting a damning picture of subsurface oil that will barely be touched by bacteria, however, the report does little to invalidate the overall expectation that minute bugs are degrading, with vigor, oil and methane leaked from BP's well, the scientists said.
and
But some other scientists questioned the report's conclusion of little "appreciable" bacteria surge. There is some dissonance between what the study's scientists are stating and their data, said David Valentine, a microbiologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Valentine led his own expedition into the Gulf earlier this summer and is currently readying his direct measurements of bacterial activity for publication.
The Woods Hole researchers may have simply set their expectations too high, Valentine said. The oxygen levels detailed in the report, especially at their upper boundaries, still leave a large space for bacterial life to be growing and feeding on oil, Valentine said.
"There's still room for significant biodegradation to be occurring there," he said.
And in discussions with people about the findings by the Woods Hole people, I pointed out (as did some other posters too) that their findings were from 2 months ago and that currently they can't find the 'plume', and that was dismissed as nonsense. But if one keeps an open mind, one would have read that in many places. As I posted on another diary,
While praising the study that ended on June 28, Murawski said more recent observations show that the cloud of oil has "broken apart into a bunch of very small features, some them much farther away."
http://www.google.com/...
But NOAA officials told the Globe they had data showing that the remaining underwater oil was rapidly degrading and that microbes are consuming much more oil since the Woods Hole cruise.
"Part of it is [the Woods Hole] observations were early on . . . it takes a while to crank up that bacterial action,’’ said Steve Murawski, chief scientist for the NOAA’s Fisheries Service.
Woods Hole scientists acknowledged NOAA’s findings are quite possible.
http://www.boston.com/...
"We can’t find oil at the surface and, as of this week, we cannot find it deep down either," says Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, whose research has focused on the area within 100 kilometers of the wellhead.
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/...
Graduate students and researchers aren’t finding oil on the surface or as visible plumes under the water, said Dr. Jay Grimes, an expert on bacteria.
http://www.sunherald.com/...
Oil Plumes Vanish
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
"We can't find oil at the surface and, as of this week, we cannot find it deep down either," says Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, whose research has focused on the area within 100 kilometres of the wellhead.
Hazen thinks he can explain why the plumes are gone. He had previously collected water samples from inside and outside of the plumes, which he kept at 4 °C - the coldest temperature along the floor of the Gulf. Within days, he found that the microbial populations in the samples began to shift in favour of those able to break down oil. The findings tally with those of other ecologists working in the field. Hazen also found that the oil disappeared faster still in the presence of Corexit 9500A, the dispersant used by BP in the Gulf waters.
http://www.newscientist.com/...
I just want this site to be fact-based. I don't want us reacting solely out of an emotional response that's not grounded in reality. I think we need to be responsible, even if the right isn't. I believe we desperately need to restrain those who go off the deep end, but instead, too often, this site eggs them on and rewards them. The echo chamber atmosphere is not a good thing.