Here's the No Science Award for the week --
"The business of trying to detect submerged oil is not a settled science," Cmdr. Shepard Smith, the 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."
NOAA can't analyze water ???
D'oh....
- Lay a grid pattern over the Gulf of Mexico at 5 km intervals.
- At each node collect 1-liter samples at 100-meter intervals down to the bottom.
- Lab centrifuges and spectrometry make analysis relatively straightforward.
- Resample weekly.
NOAA ain't got no lab rats ?
Quantifying deep oil in the Loop Current is critical. Project summary and more BTF :::
Sophisticated sensors ??? Really ?
Do they put any priority to determining oil concentrations so that FEMA and the state governments and Cuba can make appropriate Civil Defense actions when this season's hurricanes arrive in the Gulf of Mexico ?
How dumb are these guys ?
It should take about 3 hours to sample a 5,000-foot depth node. That generates 50 liter-sized samples, which should be collected up -- helicopters or seaplanes have a role here -- and taken to an on-shore laboratory for analysis.
Frankly, the equipment to do oil and chemical concentrations is simple enough that the Thomas Jefferson research ship could be outfitted from scratch for less than $150,000. A single 4x8 work area would suffice to seat the desktop equipment and a holding rack -- you could press a large-bottle wine rack into service -- for one node of samples.
This is not #*&^ing rocket science.
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Academic publications are tightly drawn. Our wonderful Free Market and Reaganite teabagging have produced:
-- No research on crude oil or chemicals for their half-lifes and ascent rates for realistic oceanic pressures and temperatures
-- No deep water temperature and up-to-date flow maps for the Gulf of Mexico. The Loop Current is known to be unstable. A weekly update is indicated.
-- No work on wind effects applicable to hurricanes and oil in the water, much less related to storm surges
E.g., normal EC COREXIT 9500A half-life on the surface in a South Carolina coastal marsh is claimed to be 30 days. What about for deep water ?
In a nutshell:
- Proper research on chemical and oil half-life performance depends on access to max 2,500 PSI research tanks with temperature controls for cooling and time to run full scale testing.
- ASAP create and do open publication of accurate temperature maps for the Gulf of Mexico showing temperatures at 100-meter intervals to the bottom. Maps should also be provided that display flow data for the unstable geostrophic Loop Current with weekly updates. (Rough surface layer maps are published now along with temperature data.)
- Wind effect tests and oil rising measurements to determine the extent to which a hurricane's front-side winds will drive and concentrate oil and/or "dispersants" at the surface layer.
Without these three research efforts, there is no way to do competent assessments for the immediate effects and likely aftermath problems for a strong hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. American citizens cannot be properly warned and protected.
Testing half-life requires using max 2,500 PSI pressure chambers with cooling. One possibility is that running these tests will show minimal-to-no degradation at deep water conditions. (That's what we're getting from our first efforts.) Interaction between COREXIT and crude oil needs to be determined by pressure, temperature, and concentration levels.
Once you get these data, you can map over to conditions in the Gulf. When you get the data on temperature-pressure mappings in the Gulf. #1 and # 2 work together, hand in glove.
The critical shore-hugging part of the sampling and measurement work for the Gulf can be handled with three small ships, doing resource allocation with best case projections. Worst case could run it all the way to 10 hulls -- though a 60 foot trawler hull looks good enough very comfortable execution of the task at hand. Set up the grid working out from the DWH site, then work the grid for each ship's assigned area.
How hard can it be to do measurements for temperature and flow with 5 kilometer nodes and collect 100-meter increment samples ???
Need to hit each node weekly ? Hire some boats.
If this takes using 10 ships, so be it. We've got the whole #$(*&^% Navy out there. Use the Navy if that's all you've got.
OR USE #$%^ING SHRIMP BOATS.
They ain't doing nothing else.
This task requires a one day training course. Equipment is 100% OTC commercial from sampling to analysis.
The work can be contracted out. Start work within a week from tomorrow -- making it June 25th at latest. Execution is brain-dead simple once you master using a GPS.
Then for # 3: crude oil and the "dispersant" chemicals are lighter than water. While several of the "dispersant" chemicals do dissolve, likely remaining deep below for years, the 40% to 80% of the oil that is not "dispersed" is coming to the surface.
Slowly... surely.
This gets us to the most severe risk to human habitation and to the Everglades that this BP disaster produces. A poisonous storm surge driven by a major hurricane.
A hurricane storm surge drives the top layer of oceanic water ahead of it on its front-side cyclone. Performance for lighter-than-water oil and man-made chemicals is at present a matter of conjecture.
We're still doing tests. But we're tiny.
What the country needs to see is full use of the Carderock facility, Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland.
This operation has enormous tanks that are used to test naval architecture and weapons. The tanks include wave generation equipment. High winds can also be included for test scenarios.
Carderock is there to protect America. Let's see it happen. Planning to keep a poisonous storm surge from killing people is one fine use for these resources -- none better.
Getting these three research tasks done ASAP is the best $50,000,000 the Obama Adminstration will ever get to spend.
Scientific workers need to know ASAP and accurately what is happening to all that below-500-meter oil. When it will reach surface ? What is likely to happen to it ?
What changes to before- and after-disaster plans will be required at FEMA ? Similarly, Cuba is governed by the Castro brothers and a nasty regime. but that is no excuse for us to leave them open to a surprise attack from a poisonous storm surge.
The Cubans are people. We owe them the respect to quantify the harm that we are sending their way.
We all need answers: What areas would be unlivable after a poisonous storm surge ? How would livability do assessed ?
Right now its still America's Chernobyl.
Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. Risk denial. And more risk denial.....
"Please give me my life back" -- the hallmark of denial.
These research efforts can change that attitude immediately. Science and engineering do their best work at stamping out don't-know-don't-care ignorance and apathy.