Putting the Gulf oil spill into visual perspective

reply to post by nydsdan

Great thread. I am waiting for some independent estimates how much oil is actually being released. Those pics seem to indicate that the rate of flow greatly exceeds the official story. Add the large underwater plumes to the equation and I fear this is MUCH worse than reported.

I hope I am wrong.

Thanks for your response and others who are like-minded. This is not the kind of thread nor topic I would like to be posting on. But I sense that the campaign is on to hide this from the public as much as possible. I cannot sit still while this is happening.

[beginrant] please permit if it's off topic. But it's part of why I give a d@mn:
In my childhood, around 1967-69, I was lucky enough to be taken on fishing trips with my Dad and brother in the Louisiana bayous. Some of the best ones would be directly to the west of where the plume is hitting the delta on 5-16-10. The fishing was so good, I have never seen anything like it since. It was amazing to be a little kid, filling up a creel with fish, and going home to have them for dinner.

Then later on we moved to the Corpus Christi area ca. 1973-75. As a middle schooler, I was in heaven because we lived 1/2 block from the bay and we could fish whenever we wanted to. And that's what we did. It was paradise for a budding outdoorsman, so many fish...so little time.

Then we moved inland for various reasons, and by the time I was able to get employed as a young adult and have time to go fishing again to the Gulf coast, I could not believe how much things had changed. The catches were meager or non-existant. You could not get on fish without a high priced guide. This was soon after the Ixtoc spill in the Gulf of Campeche.
Can I prove direct cause-and-result? No. But after walking on beaches full of tarballs for 6-7 years afterwards, it was pretty clear in my and other friend's minds what had happened.

Some people posting on how this oil spill is a non-issue, have lots of money, and they go once or twice a year to exploit those areas of the world where things are still pristine. They don't care about the Gulf, cuz' po' folks and Katrina victims hang around there. But, they need to watch out, because those vacation spots are getting fewer and farther between.
[/endrant]

To give you guys a picture of the amount of oil that could be leaking into the gulf I will tell you that I am a tankerman that loads and discharges barges for a living. I can discharge two 25000 barrel barges to a refinery in around 12 hours. This is done with two 6 or 8 cylinder diesel engines spining two deep well pumps pushing product heavier then crude through 8 to 12 inch pipelines at around 55 pounds per sqaure inch of pressure. Now imagine a 12 to 24 inch drill stem at 20,000 to 70,000 psi, not good. I say watch for a silent evacuation of rich and powerful while the gettins good.

reply to post by grizzard83

I say watch for a silent evacuation of rich and powerful while the gettins good.

I second that amendment.
Let's keep fighting the good fight, protect the Gulf resources (and all others), combat corporate/government thievery and manipulation....PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD.

No more big govt. execs in bed with bad people both male and female, destroying the bounty God has left for our children and grandchildren!!!!

edit to take out "witches" and replace w/ "bad people" I want to be PC neutral and non-religious.

[edit on 17-5-2010 by 1SawSomeThings]

THE DISPERSANTS JUST HIDE THE OIL UNDER THE SURFACE, AND MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO COLLECT!

All the booms being deployed catch surface globs, but the dispersants are making it harder to collect it. The emulsified oil will just wash under the booms, and get into the marshes and oyster beds more easily.

In my opinion, the the Coast Guard should not allow BP to help hide the volume of oil, by sinking it.

ANYONE WANT SOME OIL FLAVORED OYSTERS OR SHRIMP?

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch
Do you mind making a drawing that shows where the oil is? And maybe add a size-determinator?

I just saw a graphic on MSNBC that showed the area of the spill to be 10 miles by 3 miles.

Wow that really pisses me off. I for one am not a supporter of the global warming agenda, but I really do hate oil companies. What ticks me off is that all of their efforts to stop this madness is not doing anything. Where are the fail safes? Oh yeah, there weren't any. Thanks Dick. It's almost as if they want the oil to keep on spewing. They should have some filtering capabilities to get the oil out of the water. Like a large vacuum cleaner that sucks up oil and water, separates it and releases the cleaned out water back into the ocean. Containing it is one thing but how about actually having the capabilities to clean the water real time. I would think if we have the capabilities to desalinate water, we should be able to do the same with oil and water. I hope the oil exec.'s all get what's coming to them some day. Because you can be damn sure that the government will never do anything about it.

reply to post by KeepWatchingThem


THANKS, and get more pissed off. That's the only way we can take our kids or grandkids fishing in the future. What else is left? We tell them it's too polluted to eat?
WTF people we need to leave a life for our kids besides video games.

reply to post by UFORacer56


Yes, please stay PO'd.
Look for the reason to eject powerful politicians from their perches or AKA ROOSTS of power.

People don't have any idea what is being stolen from them on a day-to-day basis.

PLEASE LOOK OUT FOR YOURSELVES AND YOUR CHILDREN-GRANDCHILDREN......

Originally posted by grizzard83
To give you guys a picture of the amount of oil that could be leaking into the gulf I will tell you that I am a tankerman that loads and discharges barges for a living. I can discharge two 25000 barrel barges to a refinery in around 12 hours. This is done with two 6 or 8 cylinder diesel engines spining two deep well pumps pushing product heavier then crude through 8 to 12 inch pipelines at around 55 pounds per sqaure inch of pressure. Now imagine a 12 to 24 inch drill stem at 20,000 to 70,000 psi, not good. I say watch for a silent evacuation of rich and powerful while the gettins good.

also

The spoon-fed MSM number of 210,000 gallons per day would mean a spill of 11 average swimming pools a day and since we're 28-days into the event, about 300 swimming pools of oil.
One of the numbers is obviously bull#. Either BP & gov't are underplaying the hell out of this hoping to avoid wholesale panic around the Gulf Coast states (can't blame 'em...) OR this 'oil volcano' continues to be an extinction level event in the works.

urbansurvival.com...

reply to post by KeepWatchingThem

I have already resigned myself to the fact that I will not be eating any kind of fish again...unless I catch a mountain trout myself and that's looking unlikely. I'm sorry but where I live and shop I can't trust the labels that say where the fish came from as I live in a state that does not monitor food labeling claims.

My heart goes out to all the people in the gulf who have made a living fishing as well as to all the sportsmen/women nature lovers living there.

.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by 1SawSomeThings

 

But this is just basically decomposed dead things.

Probably not. Google "abiotic oil"

Originally posted by 1SawSomeThings
What is not seen are the other plumes that are erupting below the range of visible satellite from 1 mile down, spreading who knows where. Probably Texas and Mexico beaches, and maybe the Eastern seaboard.

The dispersants the Gov. and oil execs are spreading are toxic, and are the only thing keeping the majority of the spill from surfacing. The dispersants are simply damage control. This type of chemical remediation has never been tested on such a huge ecosystem as the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the type of fearmongering I've been pointing out in my disinfo thread.

Speaking matter as fact when history proves you wrong. This has all been done before, in the Gulf of Mexico.

The well was initially flowing at a rate of 30,000 barrels per day (1 barrel = 42 US gallons = 159 litres), which was reduced to around 10,000 bpd by attempts to plug the well. Two relief wells were drilled to relieve pressure and the well was eventually killed nine months later on 23 March 1980. Due to the massive contamination caused by the spill from the blowout (by 12 June, the oil slick measured 180km by 80km), nearly 500 aerial missions were flown, spraying dispersants over the water. Prevailing winds caused extensive damage along the US coast with the Texas coast suffering the greatest. The IXTOC I accident was the biggest single spill ever, with an estimated 3.5 million barrels of oil released. members.tele2.nl...

Lookup Ixtoc I
and also Gulf War Oil Spill

And stop guiltmongering unless you own a biodiesel processor and make your own biofuel. Like the oil slick "BLOB" has already made it down to Mexico. You clearly don't understand the issue if you think that.


response.restoration.noaa.gov...

[edit on 17-5-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

This is the type of fearmongering I've been pointing out in my disinfo thread.

Ah yes, your self-described "disinfo thread"....Total BS. You made it up as you went along. For Shame.

My posts are not fear-mongering, they're trying to wake people up against corporate shills and disinfo-monsters. And you know you are....

If you don't want to save our resources, you are part of the badness and evil. And you know it.



[edit on 17-5-2010 by 1SawSomeThings]

reply to post by 1SawSomeThings




You cant expect to come on ATS with false notions and hype and not expect somebody to stand up to keep the facts straight. But apparently if anyone dares then they're corporate shills.

This whole story is very confusing. which = covert in my mind.
Too bad Bush isn't still in office, whether you liked him or not, there would have been a hoard of reporters watching for every oil covered bird and dead fish. We would have had a 24/7 live cam of the leak and satellite coverage of the spill area every 10 minutes. Twenty independent oil experts would be giving estimates and every small detail would be streamed live.
Under Obama we almost have a news black out!

So, what are those other deep water plumes. Is the sea floor leaking? Are there more breaks, or just a big crack eminating from the leak? How much oil is really escaping in those plumes? How many plumes are there? Is catching 1/5 of the oil really a wonderous victory - wouldn't be under Bush!! I'd be too little to late.

Seems like BP and the administration want this to just go away. They
want you to think it's nothing. WHY are the down playing it??
There are hundreds of other rigs out there, maybe they just don't want us to challenge the administration to make them leave. Or maybe there are twenty more ready to blow and we have to power to stop them.

Originally posted by Streetwise
"One gallon of motor oil can contaminate one MILLION gallons of water."

"One quart of motor oil can create an oil slick two acres in size!"

Right. But that's motor oil! In particular used motor oil. Used motor oil is worse than new motor oil, and new motor oil is worse than crude oil, for the environment.

You might argue that used motor oil dissolves into the water faster than crude oil since it doesn't contain tar, but that actually means that it more quickly releases the higher concentrations of toxins, including the toxins that crude oil doesn't contain.

Furthermore, half of crude oil spills evaporates into thin air. From there, the oil separates into different forms. A great deal of which becomes semi-solid tar, which is a nuisance, but as far as the environment is concerned the tar balls retain their chemical properties for longer, allowing bacteria to eat them.

And that is not the only source for this info..you can find it also on this University of Georgia website www.uga.edu...

Be sure to read the entire documents you post:

EXPLANATION: Backyard mechanics dump more used oil into Michigan's environment each year than the Exxon Valdez spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound
...
EXPLANATION: Oil spills account for only about five percent of the oil entering the oceans.
The Coast Guard estimates that for United States waters sewage treatment plants discharge twice as much oil each year as tanker spills.
seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov...
During the last decade, more than one billion gallons of oil spilled worldwide.
www.marinergroup.com...
Land runoff and recreational boating account for nearly 3⁄4 of the 5,000,000
gallons of petroleum released into the oceans annually
National Academy of Sciences 5/23/2203) – per

www.4.nationalacademies.org)

Here's what makes used motor oil different than crude oil:

Like several individual PAHs, waste crankcase oil has
been shown to be mutagenic and teratogenic [75]. The
results are mixed, but some immunological, reproductive,
fetotoxic, and genotoxic effects have been associated

The concentration of various PAHs is much higher in used
oil than in (fresh) lubricating oil [519]. For example,
Grimmer et al. reported concentrations of dibenz(a,c)-
anthracene, 4-methylpyrene, fluoranthene,
benz(a)anthracene, benzo(e)pyrene, benzo(g,h,i)perylene,
and benzo(a)pyrene, respectively, 36, 49, 253, 720,
1,112, 4,770, and 7,226 times higher in used compared
to fresh oil [519].

As an oil used in a crankcase, motor oil breaks down to
give a wide variety of oxygenated and aromatic
hydrocarbons [497]. Other organic compounds found in
waste oil include toluene, benzene, xylenes, and
ethylbenzene. Also present are organic and inorganic
compounds of chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, bromine,
nitrogen, and metals such as zinc, magnesium, barium, and
lead resulting from oil additives and contamination
during use or disposal [752].

Used engine oil is a contaminant of concern, with large
volumes entering aquatic ecosystems through water runoff.
The major source of petroleum contamination in urbanized
estuaries comes from waste crankcase oil [762]. PAHs,
heavy metals, additives and antioxidants, trace levels of
chlorinated solvents, and PCBs have been detected in used
engine oil [519]. As mentioned above, naphthalene,
benzo(a)pyrene, fluorene, and phenanthrene are common PAH
components of used motor oil [75].
www.nature.nps.gov/hazardssafety/toxic/oilused.pdf

Did you see that?

"espectively, 36, 49, 253, 720, 1,112, 4,770, and 7,226 times higher in used compared to fresh oil"

It's called the hydrocarbon pollution intelligence test...[no, really!]

...

Now then...If the US Geological and Oceanic survey figures are right and the Gulf contains about 642 trillion gallons of water...and if the minimum independent flow rate estimates I used are anywhere near right..and I ask you to check my numbers...but if they add up and this IS the best "conservative independent" base-line calculation for what damage has been done so far ...that means in the last month the Deepwater Horizon spill has polluted/contaminated 10.43563068920676 % of the Gulf Of Mexico.

You forgot one thing. The water cycles out of the Gulf and into the larger ocean networks.

One more thing: You speak as if its all already done for, although most of it is still concentrated in one area.


[edit on 17-5-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by 1SawSomeThings


Cool picture, great find. Thanks for posting it. There have been a lot of threads on the oil gusher in the gulf. From the scale of the damage it is probably warranted.

Some have complained about BP not doing enough to clean up the spill. This is where truthful nuance is lost in the spin. BP does not care about cleaning up the spill. They simply see every minute the oil is gushing into the gulf as a minute of profits they cannot easily recover. That's what the dome was about; still making money off the strike. That is what the more successful sleeve is about; recovering product. They give a damn about the ocean.

I empathize with your feeling of loss from your childhood fishing along the coast. I would like to think one day it will return but I doubt it will be in the near future.

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


True that.

Honest information is good.

Sometimes the greedy feel the need to lie even if the disaster isn't quite as bad as people make it out to be for the very reason that people will make it out to be as bad as they want it to be.

People, as sheeply as they might be, are wolves.

And the greedily wealthy are lamb chops on a silver platter.

Everyone always first jumps to the conclusion that the jerks who run the show are responsible for every bad thing that happens. While it may be true they are responsible for some things, how is it right to try and eat these people alive and make a mockery out of humanity by crusading against every last mistake that is made?

It's like being an infant is becoming more fad the closer we get to the end of days...

If any of you are God-loving people or hippies, you know the earth will take care of it and all will be okay eventually.

...

Or you could pick up a milk jug and a boat and start counting how many gallons you can pull out in a day?

reply to post by Streetwise


can you do a comparison to the valdez oil spill?

having a hard time finding info of comparison

edit- www.aboutmyplanet.com...
Main offshore fields

p.s. main offshore fields today are found in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Campos and Santos Basins off the coasts of Brazil, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, several fields off West Africa most notably west of Nigeria and Angola, as well as offshore fields in South East Asia and Sakhalin, Russia.
[edit on 17-5-2010 by tylermbell]

[edit on 17-5-2010 by tylermbell]

Okay this is my feeling, in the wake of 911, iraq, afganistan, bilderberg, and all the politicaly and financialy orchestrated disasters. Everything has been orchestrated with some purpose in mind. To either make money, get us to give up our liberties, or expand our powers wolrdwide. I figure this about the oil spill.

Has anyone herd of the bakken report, I'm not sure if I spelled that right. But its a report on the worlds oil supply. It states that in the midwestern united states there is an underground oil reserve larger than all the arab countries put together. But environmentalists will not let us drill there as this oil is either under national parks or preserves of land and nature. So we offshore drill for oil. The only way around those environmentalist is to have an off shore disaster of great magnitude to do enough damage and remove all faith in off shore drilling capabilities, and trusts, and reliabilities. To cause the environmentalists to cave so we can now drill inro our huge oil reserve. I can't believe no one else has noticed this yet.


Notice also that this disaster is in an area that promises to be bombarded by huge hurricanes in the coming year so as to clean most of it right up. Also large payout are being given by British Petrollium B.P. to all those suffering as a result. Gee I wonder where the 8 trillion in missing money from the FED RESERVE went. This is most likely CIA or a covert operation by oil tycoons. Oh lets say maybe the Bushes who orchestrated it. Probably not Obama administration but it could be he is in on it. At this point very little surprises me

too much went wrong. Without any reason why. The worst possible scenario occurred. If somethings to good to be true it usually is. Well if something is to bad to be true it also usually is as we are now learning. Like say 911 for instance. Not that it didn't happen but the scenario they attempted to get us to believe and the one we saw were two completely different stories. Does anyone else agree with the possibilities of this occurring are very real? Wake up america.

I wish someone would begin a fighting back thread. I would like to state this in reguard to that. The hardest thing to do is oppress and subdue and armed and free people. WE MUST PUT OUR FOOT DOWN IF ANYONE TRIES TO INSTATE MORE GUN CONTROL. If they take away our right to bear arms we are powerless. That freedom was instated by our forefathers in the event tyrants or dictators ceised a free people. That day quickly approaches. Be ready America. Talk to your son and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers serving in the US Military and make sure they agree not to ever attack subdue or silence protesting Americans and agree to fight and uphold the constitution at all costs and that may mean disobeying or refusing to carry out orders which may come from a superior officer or even the president. If those orders are illegal and unconstitutional. Eventually as in the torture of inmates at GITMO They wont be alone in this stance, to do otherwise could mean jailing and dishonorable discharge last. Bilderburg and our puppet presidents will be in for a surprise if they think America is going to just cave in or request chips and submit to this maniacal plan they are trying to pull over on us. The US army fights for freedom and against tyranny for a very long time. Many have lost fathers, Sons and daughters to that cause. Do they really think they will all of a sudden go the other way against there own families and everything they hold dear on the order of a superior. If it were me I would place such a superior officer under immediate arrest. If they had not formulated and executed the plan in secret for 40 years they would realise they dont have a prayer. They are all dillusional. The love of money is the root of all evil. These bankers and the people who control the FED RESERVE the thieves and tyrants that they are, are EVIL INCARNATE