Earth ChangesS


Cow Skull

Methane's hidden impact in Gulf oil spill

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© UnknownMethane is bubbling up from the Gulf floor
Large quantities of methane released by BP's oil blowout aren't fouling beaches like the Gulf oil spill is, but could endanger a key link in the undersea food chain.

The BP oil blowout, now into its 11th week, is releasing large quantities of methane into the ocean, most of which is remaining dissolved in the waters deep beneath the surface.

The gas represents an under-appreciated pollutant in a drill-rig disaster that has pumped as much as 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons) of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, researchers say.

Unlike the oil, the methane isn't coating birds or fouling beaches and wetlands. But it has the potential to wreak havoc on important links in the undersea food chain, researchers say.

By volume, some 40 percent of the hydrocarbons in the reservoir the Deepwater Horizon tapped is gas, of which 95 percent is methane, notes Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia who has been gathering data at sea on the methane plumes.

Hourglass

Methane: Biologists Find "Dead Zones" Around BP Oil Spill in Gulf

dead fish Deepwater Horizon spill
© Sean Gardner/ReutersPoggy, or menhaden, fish lie dead and stuck in oil from the BP spill in Bay Jimmy, Louisiana. Fish are fleeing the area of the Deepwater Horizon spill, biologists say
Methane at 100,000 times normal levels have been creating oxygen-depleted areas devoid of life near BP's Deepwater Horizon spill, according to two independent scientists.

Scientists are confronting growing evidence that BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico is creating oxygen-depleted "dead zones" where fish and other marine life cannot survive.

In two separate research voyages, independent scientists have detected what were described as "astonishingly high" levels of methane, or natural gas, bubbling from the well site, setting off a chain of reactions that suck the oxygen out of the water. In some cases, methane concentrations are 100,000 times normal levels.

Other scientists as well as sport fishermen are reporting unusual movements of fish, shrimp, crab and other marine life, including increased shark sightings closer to the Alabama coast.

Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Australian CBS Report on BP Oil Spill (censored at BP's request)

The following mini-documentary was aired on Australian CBS' 60 Minutes June 13. The damning report includes an interview with Kindra Arnesen and eyewitness video footage of the Deepwater explosion. It also revealed that miles of BP's boom has broken free and washed inland along Louisiana's marshes. BP apparently went all out to demand the report be taken down from CBS's website.

Part 1


Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.3 - Vanuatu

Vanuatu Quake_020710
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Friday, July 02, 2010 at 06:04:04 UTC

Friday, July 02, 2010 at 05:04:04 PM at epicenter

Location:
13.647°S, 166.441°E

Depth:
35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program

Region:
VANUATU

Distances:
225 km (140 miles) NNW of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

330 km (205 miles) SSE of Lata, Santa Cruz Islands, Solomon Isl.

495 km (305 miles) NNW of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu

2070 km (1290 miles) NE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

Attention

University of South Florida scientists find long line of oil 6 inches under the sand at Pensacola Beach

Pensacola Beach
© Edmund D. Fountain/TimesA trench dug by a group of USF geologists shows a continuous layer of oil about six inches beneath the surface of Pensacola Beach near Gulf Islands National Seashore.
The sugar-sand beach here appeared cleaner Thursday, after workers picked up tar balls overnight with shovels and nets. By noon they had collected 44,955 pounds of tar balls and oil material, according to the Escambia County Emergency Operations Center.

But a University of South Florida geologist made a grim discovery Thursday morning, 24 hours after the worst oil onslaught in Florida so far.

Ping Wang, 43, who has studied beaches for 20 years, dug a narrow trench perpendicular to the shoreline, about a foot deep and 5 feet long. A dark, contiguous vein of oil ran horizontally along the walls of the trench, about 6 inches beneath the surface of the sand.

The sheet of oil which was deposited on the beach at high tide Wednesday and stretched some 8 miles was covered by as much as a foot of sand at high tide Thursday, Wang explained.

Bell

Acid rain is back, and thanks to industrial farming, worse than ever

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© Nino Barbieri via WikimediaWhen you gargoyle with acid rain, you'll get that grin wiped right off your face.
Policy makers, environmentalists - even Republicans - like to congratulate themselves on the "victory" over acid rain. As this American success story is usually told, acid rain's effects were addressed by a 1990 update to the Clean Air Act that created a cap-and-trade system focused on sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Since the system was implemented, sulfur dioxide emissions dropped 70 percent, and threatened forests and wildlife were saved. Hurrah!

There's only one problem with that version of history: It's not true. As Scientific American reports, acid rain is a continuing and growing problem; forests and animals all over the world (including the U.S. East Coast) are indeed facing catastrophe. But the No. 1 source of today's acid rain pollution is no longer sulfur dioxide, as it was 20 years ago. It's nitrogen oxide emissions from factory farms.

Bizarro Earth

Oil is "coating the bottom of the bay, stop spraying the dispersants"

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungusser, CNN, June 16, 2010

Transcript excerpts:

It [the oil] came ashore under the surface... If it didnt work why don't we stop spraying the dispersants, let it come to the surface and let's fight it where we can see it...

They said it's [oil] light, it will come to the surface. Why do we keep spraying it, if its not doing what it said? It will be ugly all over the top, but at least we can fight it.

Right now its coming ashore beneath the surface. We have it on the bottom of Barataria Bay. Those are the most precious oyster baskets.

It is literally sunk at the bottom with dispersants coating the bottom of that bay. Let us fight it offshore... Tell me why we don't stop spraying and fight it off shore.


A report from WRAL Channel 5 in Raleigh shows what is happening 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico:

Attention

Staring into the abyss: Traffic halted as five metre crack tears through Malaysian road

A five metre wide chasm has mysteriously opened in a busy road.

The enormous crevice tore through the ground late last night, causing traffic chaos in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

Miraculously no one was killed, although one truck was overturned by the force of the collapse.

Officials have no explanation for why the giant hole has appeared but confirmed they were looking into it.

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Chasm: The five metre wide hole mysteriously opened in a road in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, last night.

Fish

Thick patch of oil discovered in Barataria Basin dubbed 'The Black Sea'


Barataria Basin, Louisanna -- Barataria Basin fisherman are now calling this thick patch of BP oil in Bay Jimmy, "The Black Sea."

The fumes are overwhelming and the sludge is toxic to the fragile marshes between Grand Isle and Lower Lafitte, south of New Orleans.

Tuesday, Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries agents discovered dead fish floating in the oil.

Bizarro Earth

Millions of birds set to fly into Gulf oil mess

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© UnknownOil-covered pelicans sit in a pen waiting to be cleaned at a rescue center in Fort Jackson, Louisiana, on June 7, 2010.
'They won't be safe on their fall passage,' says Audubon official

Despite the images of oil-soaked pelicans flooding the media in recent weeks, wildlife experts say the toll on sea birds from BP's Gulf Coast oil spill is smaller than was anticipated, so far.

That is expected to change drastically for the worse.

Scientists warn that as shifting weather and sea conditions conspire with the dynamics of avian life cycles, a tremendous number of birds will soon be put in jeopardy.

In the coming weeks, millions of waterfowl and other birds that flock to the Gulf Coast on their annual fall migration will arrive in the region either to roost for the winter or to make brief stopovers en route farther south.

With toxic crude still gushing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and streaks of the slick creeping inexorably farther inland, many more birds and other wildlife that nest, feed and find shelter on shore are likely to become casualties.