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Not so quick question: if this indeed does happen could more extraordinary measures possibly fix the problem? For example: Bombs Bombs \\

Not so quick question: if this indeed does happen could more extraordinary measures possibly fix the problem? For example: Bombs Bombs \\ | // --------|-------- ########|######## Or is it basically oil ocean forever? And: how catastrophic of a situation is this? Not, I would guess, an existential risk. Could it be measured in terms of percentage of world GDP that will be lost trying to fix or mitigate the symptoms? And if so, what approximate percentage would that be? Another nice thing would be if it could be measured in terms of the overall historical benefit of offshore drilling. Edit: I'm not really suggesting bombs; that's just something off the top my head. The main idea is that I want to know if there is any potential mitigation if the story is true? And just how bad is it if there isn't?

micmcg 16y ago
I don't see how you could possibly consider the catastrophic nature of the situation only in terms of financial cost and not environmental. No amount of money can bring back extinct species.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  I care more about my fellow man's skin than some extinct species. All other things being equal extinctions are bad, but in my world it's lower priority than the losses that humans face (at some level of conversion). Anyway, if it makes you feel better, you can try to come up with an extinction's dollar value and add that in to your estimate. That sort of thing is perfectly valid. I suggest: "How much money would I pay (or advocate to be paid) to prevent this extinction?" Then do that for each extinction you believe is likely.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    Hm, that's an interesting way of looking at it, to be polite. So, how much would you pay to prevent me from, say, burning the Mona Lisa? Or pulverizing the Statue of David? Or bombing the Sistine Chapel? I don't think it's valid at all to assume that everything can have a dollar value associated with it; that would mean that the word "priceless" would be meaningless. ...and I happen to think that the value of life in the Gulf is pretty priceless.
    - losvedir 16y ago
      Would you sacrifice your father, mother, sister, brother, etc, to save the Mona Lisa? Would you allow a type of fish to go extinct because some eccentric billionaire has a grudge against it and offers to end world hunger if you do? Not easy questions, and clearly not all "priceless" things are equal. But if you go about ranking things and comparing how much you want one thing or another, you're basically giving it a price. A loaf of bread isn't "worth" $4. It being $4 just means that you would like a loaf of bread approximately as much as a venti frappuccino, or that you'd be willing to work 15 mins (if you make $16/hr) for it. So, yes, I could assign dollar amounts to all of those questions. Think of it this way: What positive thing would you see done in exchange for the burning of the Mona Lisa? Nothing at all, really? You wouldn't have us land a man on Mars? Surely that would be as historic and beautiful as the Mona Lisa. What about free art supplies for life for an entire generation? Maybe that would inspire some artist to create something as breathtaking as the Mona Lisa. Now, once you have that minimum positive thing, ask how much it costs. (e.g. free art supplies for life for a generation: 100M people * $250/yr * 80 yrs = $2T.) That's the worth of "priceless" Mona Lisa.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - thaumaturgy 16y ago
        Philosophy is not my favorite subject. Here's the thing: in all of your examples, you're giving me a choice that I have no right to make. If I were offered the chance to trade the existence of an entire species in order to end world hunger, I would have to decline. I might forever regret the decision, but I have no natural right to make that decision. (Unless we're talking about mosquitoes. I would happily contribute to their extinction.) If philosophy isn't the proper arena for this crowd, then perhaps game theory is more applicable: if I decline that offer, then we're no worse off than before; however, if I accept, we may be better off -- if the gambit works -- unless there are consequences, in which case we may end up worse off. This is a classic high-risk/high-payoff situation, and I do not gamble. A loaf of bread is $4 not because it has anything to do with what I'm "willing" to pay for, but because someone has calculated that they can produce that product and sell it for that price and continue doing business. You might counter-argue that they only charge that because enough people are willing to pay for it, but the reality is macroeconomics is much different -- as is the reality of supermarket pricing. It is simply arrogant beyond belief to argue that any of us could make decisions that would trade something valuable to so many people, for something that might be valuable to other people. I mean, to bring this point home, how about if someone asks me if I'm willing to trade the lives of your family for the sake of feeding the homeless in my county? Based on your argument so far, that should be an easy choice for me to make ...
  - mcantelon 16y ago
    The idea that extinction doesn't directly effect us presumes that we don't live in a complex system where ecological changes can have unpredictable, possibly dire consequences.
    - houseabsolute 16y ago
      I fully subscribe to your point of view. Now, what's the approximate probable cost of those unpredictable consequences?
      - mcantelon 16y ago
        Being unpredictable, the conservative approach would be to look at worst case scenarios. So far I haven't heard much and would be interested in these predictions as well.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        billswift 16y ago
        No, the conservative approach is to look at past extinctions and see that there is little or no impact. Too many extinctions in too short of time may have different results, but the environmentalist whining is just plain irrational.
        tod_ 16y ago
        Precisely what mass, multiple species, large-area extinction events are you using as your barometer? The environment is infrastructure. This is destroying huge swaths of it.
        mcantelon 16y ago
        It doesn't seem irrational to conclude that we live in a complex system that we don't understand and accelerating changes to this system, due to unprecedented human population and capabilities, could affect human survival. Ignoring risk isn't a conservative approach.
  - wjy 16y ago
    I think many of us naturally feel that way. The problem is we rely on other species for our own survival. And the vast web of interconnected life is so complex we don't even know which species are crucial and which are not (we have an idea in some cases, but very few). Other species manufacture the air we breathe. The current inter-species balance in the oceans is why they're not teeming with jellyfish and nothing else. We absolutely rely on many other species, even ocean species, for our survival, and we don't completely understand which ones matter to us most. We are part of a huge interspecies network. We do not stand alone, even though it's easy to think so living among all our manufactured artifacts. Viscerally, I definitely care much more about other humans than I do about some eels or whatnot in the Gulf. But my relative sense of attachment to people and other species, evolved over eons, doesn't necessarily reflect the truth of our interdependence. EDIT: Grammar
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Umm, is it just me or aren't they already doing IVF treatments between rhino species to use the more prevalent species to recover the virtually extinct species to aid in re-population efforts. Why is it such a hard leap that the DNA of recently extinct (as in holding the last one in your hands) cannot be recovered and used to perform similar methods. If you've got the species you can harvest the eggs and sperm and produce thousands of offspring. It's exceptionally naive to say "no amount of money can bring back extinct species" because you just have no grasp of what money can actually buy. If I can harvest the complete DNA of several animals from one species, including their mitochondrial, you can easily reproduce the species by emptying one of the species native eggs and filling it with the harvested foreign material, by all standards that I've read it should survive until gestation (assuming regular IVF failure rates for the species) and resurrect a species. You don't need an African Elephant to give birth to African Elephant babies, because an Asian Elephant will do a suitable job. In fact it's believed an African (IIRC) elephant would be a suitable enough host to resurrect a mammoth (mitochondrial DNA would be required due to its specializations). Please any amount of money can do virtually anything. It's currently engineeringly feasible to construct a gigantic nuclear powered mass driver on the moon to turn it into a world ship . . . or alternatively a massive billiard ball to explode mercury with. It's far, far, far from practical, but screw radiation shielding and deploy a few gigantic RTG's onto the moon and your money is getting what you want. Money is a direct equivalent to resources, which is the entire point of why we use it as a common currency instead of arguing over how much steel a bar of gold is worth and how many bars of gold it would take to turn said steel into a car. If you have the money/resources, you can do anything physically possible.
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    it's believed an African (IIRC) elephant would be a suitable enough host to resurrect a mammoth People believe a lot of things. The difference between a scientist and an armchair philosopher is that the scientist knows how many tedious hours of painstaking work, followed by screwups, followed by more painstaking work, followed by the tiniest of advances, followed by a setback, followed by more work are necessary before the theoretically possible becomes the known to be possible... or, more likely, the oops, not quite so simple as we thought. Here's the state of the art in cross-species surrogate motherhood according to an actual biologist: http://www.askascientist.org/askascientist/answers/how_would_reproductive_technologies_such_as_artificial_insemination_crossspecies_nuclear_transfer.html http://www.askascientist.org/askascientist/answers/how_would... "There are few successful examples of cross-species nuclear transfer to date. The most publicized case was the cloning of a gaur, an endangered Asian ox, but the calf died two days after birth. Other efforts are ongoing, but questions remain about the incompatibility of nuclear DNA from one species with the mitochondrial DNA and cellular environment of another species." "Nuclear transfer has been suggested as a way to restore endangered or extinct species. There are a number of problems with this idea. First, the procedure is only possible when intact cells are still available, so long-extinct species cannot be restored. Second, it is difficult and expensive, so it would be feasible only for producing one animal or a few. With only a few animals to start a new population, there would be little genetic variation and the population would be susceptible to extinction factors such as disease. (Incidentally, if only one cloned animal was produced and then backcrossed to a closely related species, the effect on taxonomy would be negligible—similar to a single hybridization event.) Finally, cloning does not address the root cause of extinction, which is usually destruction of habitat. Despite technological advancements, habitat preservation is still the most effective way to save endangered species."
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Especially if one of the species turns out to be homo sapiens. :)
thaumaturgy 16y ago
I did a fair bit of research on the technical details of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I, too, wanted to know why "they" didn't do X, Y, or Z, so I decided to find out. :-) The first thing you need to know is that it's 5,000 feet from the surface of the ocean to the ocean floor at the well, and then there's another 18,000 feet of shaft below the ocean floor to the oil and gas reservoir. So, there's no clear position from which explosives can be used to "seal" it. If explosives were used, there's a pretty good chance it would blow up in our face, so to speak -- not only would the gas ignite (making the process somewhat unpredictable), but it would also likely create a huge number of microfissures that would lead to an even bigger oil geyser. How catastrophic is it? It's ... well, not to be dramatic, but if this doesn't end up being one of the nastier long-term natural catastrophes of the next few decades, then I shudder to imagine what's coming next. Not only is this killing seabirds and mammals, it's also de-oxygenating a large portion of the Gulf rather nicely. If BP does stick to their commitment to pay for the whole thing, I expect that they will file for bankruptcy next year. (In large part because their market cap is dropping like a rock.) This particular incident is sort of the perfect storm of conditions for an oil disaster: it occurred at challenging depths, and when efforts have been made to stop the leak at those depths, something has gone wrong each time to stall or defeat the effort. For further perspective: the US Navy's Seawolf class submarine has a crush depth of approximately 3,000 feet. At that depth, you're dealing with around 2,000 psi of pressure, but that's not the nasty part: the gusher is estimated to be at around 12,000 psi. So, yeah. Explosives are probably not a wise idea here.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  Oh, I wasn't saying that explosives were the right way. I'm just trying to show that I'm at least thinking about the problem a little rather than asking a dumb question. :P Thanks for the information.
  - Lozzer 16y ago
    The bbc have a bunch of ideas with reasons why they won't work at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10268979.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10268979.stm
hyperbovine 16y ago
The thrust of the original comment that inspired this whole blogroll is that the entire well structure is essentially on the verge of forming a giant, gushing oil sinkhole on the ocean floor, the likes of which the world has never seen. So I'm gonna go with no on the bombs.
- demallien 16y ago
  Personally I'm for going all Deep Impact on it. Nuclear bombs on the sea bed being blown to get down to the deeper leaks, and then going for another topkill... Of course, I know nothing about how to fix oil well leaks, underwater nuclear explosions or topkill, so I wouldn't listen to me. Still, I like the image - would a nuclear bomb going off underwater create a tsunami?
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    "would a nuclear bomb going off underwater create a tsunami?" Possibly a small one. It would vaporize a large volume of water around the blast, leading to a vast surge in pressure, and as we all know, water isn't compressible. So you'd have a large pressure wave expanding away from the blast, followed by a trough when the vaporized region cooled, forming a partial vacuum and the area collapsed. It would be like a small version of a megathrust fault. Fortunately however, the amount of energy even our larger H-bombs can release that way is miniscule compared to what a real megathrust fault would release, so the wave would probably not be much more than a slightly rougher surf for the nearest coastlines.

micmcg 16y ago

I don't see how you could possibly consider the catastrophic nature of the situation only in terms of financial cost and not environmental. No amount of money can bring back extinct species.

houseabsolute 16y ago
I care more about my fellow man's skin than some extinct species. All other things being equal extinctions are bad, but in my world it's lower priority than the losses that humans face (at some level of conversion). Anyway, if it makes you feel better, you can try to come up with an extinction's dollar value and add that in to your estimate. That sort of thing is perfectly valid. I suggest: "How much money would I pay (or advocate to be paid) to prevent this extinction?" Then do that for each extinction you believe is likely.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  Hm, that's an interesting way of looking at it, to be polite. So, how much would you pay to prevent me from, say, burning the Mona Lisa? Or pulverizing the Statue of David? Or bombing the Sistine Chapel? I don't think it's valid at all to assume that everything can have a dollar value associated with it; that would mean that the word "priceless" would be meaningless. ...and I happen to think that the value of life in the Gulf is pretty priceless.
  - losvedir 16y ago
    Would you sacrifice your father, mother, sister, brother, etc, to save the Mona Lisa? Would you allow a type of fish to go extinct because some eccentric billionaire has a grudge against it and offers to end world hunger if you do? Not easy questions, and clearly not all "priceless" things are equal. But if you go about ranking things and comparing how much you want one thing or another, you're basically giving it a price. A loaf of bread isn't "worth" $4. It being $4 just means that you would like a loaf of bread approximately as much as a venti frappuccino, or that you'd be willing to work 15 mins (if you make $16/hr) for it. So, yes, I could assign dollar amounts to all of those questions. Think of it this way: What positive thing would you see done in exchange for the burning of the Mona Lisa? Nothing at all, really? You wouldn't have us land a man on Mars? Surely that would be as historic and beautiful as the Mona Lisa. What about free art supplies for life for an entire generation? Maybe that would inspire some artist to create something as breathtaking as the Mona Lisa. Now, once you have that minimum positive thing, ask how much it costs. (e.g. free art supplies for life for a generation: 100M people * $250/yr * 80 yrs = $2T.) That's the worth of "priceless" Mona Lisa.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - thaumaturgy 16y ago
      Philosophy is not my favorite subject. Here's the thing: in all of your examples, you're giving me a choice that I have no right to make. If I were offered the chance to trade the existence of an entire species in order to end world hunger, I would have to decline. I might forever regret the decision, but I have no natural right to make that decision. (Unless we're talking about mosquitoes. I would happily contribute to their extinction.) If philosophy isn't the proper arena for this crowd, then perhaps game theory is more applicable: if I decline that offer, then we're no worse off than before; however, if I accept, we may be better off -- if the gambit works -- unless there are consequences, in which case we may end up worse off. This is a classic high-risk/high-payoff situation, and I do not gamble. A loaf of bread is $4 not because it has anything to do with what I'm "willing" to pay for, but because someone has calculated that they can produce that product and sell it for that price and continue doing business. You might counter-argue that they only charge that because enough people are willing to pay for it, but the reality is macroeconomics is much different -- as is the reality of supermarket pricing. It is simply arrogant beyond belief to argue that any of us could make decisions that would trade something valuable to so many people, for something that might be valuable to other people. I mean, to bring this point home, how about if someone asks me if I'm willing to trade the lives of your family for the sake of feeding the homeless in my county? Based on your argument so far, that should be an easy choice for me to make ...
- mcantelon 16y ago
  The idea that extinction doesn't directly effect us presumes that we don't live in a complex system where ecological changes can have unpredictable, possibly dire consequences.
  - houseabsolute 16y ago
    I fully subscribe to your point of view. Now, what's the approximate probable cost of those unpredictable consequences?
    - mcantelon 16y ago
      Being unpredictable, the conservative approach would be to look at worst case scenarios. So far I haven't heard much and would be interested in these predictions as well.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - billswift 16y ago
        No, the conservative approach is to look at past extinctions and see that there is little or no impact. Too many extinctions in too short of time may have different results, but the environmentalist whining is just plain irrational.
        tod_ 16y ago
        Precisely what mass, multiple species, large-area extinction events are you using as your barometer? The environment is infrastructure. This is destroying huge swaths of it.
        mcantelon 16y ago
        It doesn't seem irrational to conclude that we live in a complex system that we don't understand and accelerating changes to this system, due to unprecedented human population and capabilities, could affect human survival. Ignoring risk isn't a conservative approach.
- wjy 16y ago
  I think many of us naturally feel that way. The problem is we rely on other species for our own survival. And the vast web of interconnected life is so complex we don't even know which species are crucial and which are not (we have an idea in some cases, but very few). Other species manufacture the air we breathe. The current inter-species balance in the oceans is why they're not teeming with jellyfish and nothing else. We absolutely rely on many other species, even ocean species, for our survival, and we don't completely understand which ones matter to us most. We are part of a huge interspecies network. We do not stand alone, even though it's easy to think so living among all our manufactured artifacts. Viscerally, I definitely care much more about other humans than I do about some eels or whatnot in the Gulf. But my relative sense of attachment to people and other species, evolved over eons, doesn't necessarily reflect the truth of our interdependence. EDIT: Grammar
electromagnetic 16y ago
Umm, is it just me or aren't they already doing IVF treatments between rhino species to use the more prevalent species to recover the virtually extinct species to aid in re-population efforts. Why is it such a hard leap that the DNA of recently extinct (as in holding the last one in your hands) cannot be recovered and used to perform similar methods. If you've got the species you can harvest the eggs and sperm and produce thousands of offspring. It's exceptionally naive to say "no amount of money can bring back extinct species" because you just have no grasp of what money can actually buy. If I can harvest the complete DNA of several animals from one species, including their mitochondrial, you can easily reproduce the species by emptying one of the species native eggs and filling it with the harvested foreign material, by all standards that I've read it should survive until gestation (assuming regular IVF failure rates for the species) and resurrect a species. You don't need an African Elephant to give birth to African Elephant babies, because an Asian Elephant will do a suitable job. In fact it's believed an African (IIRC) elephant would be a suitable enough host to resurrect a mammoth (mitochondrial DNA would be required due to its specializations). Please any amount of money can do virtually anything. It's currently engineeringly feasible to construct a gigantic nuclear powered mass driver on the moon to turn it into a world ship . . . or alternatively a massive billiard ball to explode mercury with. It's far, far, far from practical, but screw radiation shielding and deploy a few gigantic RTG's onto the moon and your money is getting what you want. Money is a direct equivalent to resources, which is the entire point of why we use it as a common currency instead of arguing over how much steel a bar of gold is worth and how many bars of gold it would take to turn said steel into a car. If you have the money/resources, you can do anything physically possible.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  it's believed an African (IIRC) elephant would be a suitable enough host to resurrect a mammoth People believe a lot of things. The difference between a scientist and an armchair philosopher is that the scientist knows how many tedious hours of painstaking work, followed by screwups, followed by more painstaking work, followed by the tiniest of advances, followed by a setback, followed by more work are necessary before the theoretically possible becomes the known to be possible... or, more likely, the oops, not quite so simple as we thought. Here's the state of the art in cross-species surrogate motherhood according to an actual biologist: http://www.askascientist.org/askascientist/answers/how_would_reproductive_technologies_such_as_artificial_insemination_crossspecies_nuclear_transfer.html http://www.askascientist.org/askascientist/answers/how_would... "There are few successful examples of cross-species nuclear transfer to date. The most publicized case was the cloning of a gaur, an endangered Asian ox, but the calf died two days after birth. Other efforts are ongoing, but questions remain about the incompatibility of nuclear DNA from one species with the mitochondrial DNA and cellular environment of another species." "Nuclear transfer has been suggested as a way to restore endangered or extinct species. There are a number of problems with this idea. First, the procedure is only possible when intact cells are still available, so long-extinct species cannot be restored. Second, it is difficult and expensive, so it would be feasible only for producing one animal or a few. With only a few animals to start a new population, there would be little genetic variation and the population would be susceptible to extinction factors such as disease. (Incidentally, if only one cloned animal was produced and then backcrossed to a closely related species, the effect on taxonomy would be negligible—similar to a single hybridization event.) Finally, cloning does not address the root cause of extinction, which is usually destruction of habitat. Despite technological advancements, habitat preservation is still the most effective way to save endangered species."
mkramlich 16y ago
Especially if one of the species turns out to be homo sapiens. :)

thaumaturgy 16y ago

I did a fair bit of research on the technical details of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I, too, wanted to know why "they" didn't do X, Y, or Z, so I decided to find out. :-) The first thing you need to know is that it's 5,000 feet from the surface of the ocean to the ocean floor at the well, and then there's another 18,000 feet of shaft below the ocean floor to the oil and gas reservoir. So, there's no clear position from which explosives can be used to "seal" it. If explosives were used, there's a pretty good chance it would blow up in our face, so to speak -- not only would the gas ignite (making the process somewhat unpredictable), but it would also likely create a huge number of microfissures that would lead to an even bigger oil geyser. How catastrophic is it? It's ... well, not to be dramatic, but if this doesn't end up being one of the nastier long-term natural catastrophes of the next few decades, then I shudder to imagine what's coming next. Not only is this killing seabirds and mammals, it's also de-oxygenating a large portion of the Gulf rather nicely. If BP does stick to their commitment to pay for the whole thing, I expect that they will file for bankruptcy next year. (In large part because their market cap is dropping like a rock.) This particular incident is sort of the perfect storm of conditions for an oil disaster: it occurred at challenging depths, and when efforts have been made to stop the leak at those depths, something has gone wrong each time to stall or defeat the effort. For further perspective: the US Navy's Seawolf class submarine has a crush depth of approximately 3,000 feet. At that depth, you're dealing with around 2,000 psi of pressure, but that's not the nasty part: the gusher is estimated to be at around 12,000 psi. So, yeah. Explosives are probably not a wise idea here.

houseabsolute 16y ago
Oh, I wasn't saying that explosives were the right way. I'm just trying to show that I'm at least thinking about the problem a little rather than asking a dumb question. :P Thanks for the information.
- Lozzer 16y ago
  The bbc have a bunch of ideas with reasons why they won't work at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10268979.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10268979.stm

hyperbovine 16y ago

The thrust of the original comment that inspired this whole blogroll is that the entire well structure is essentially on the verge of forming a giant, gushing oil sinkhole on the ocean floor, the likes of which the world has never seen. So I'm gonna go with no on the bombs.

demallien 16y ago
Personally I'm for going all Deep Impact on it. Nuclear bombs on the sea bed being blown to get down to the deeper leaks, and then going for another topkill... Of course, I know nothing about how to fix oil well leaks, underwater nuclear explosions or topkill, so I wouldn't listen to me. Still, I like the image - would a nuclear bomb going off underwater create a tsunami?
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  "would a nuclear bomb going off underwater create a tsunami?" Possibly a small one. It would vaporize a large volume of water around the blast, leading to a vast surge in pressure, and as we all know, water isn't compressible. So you'd have a large pressure wave expanding away from the blast, followed by a trough when the vaporized region cooled, forming a partial vacuum and the area collapsed. It would be like a small version of a megathrust fault. Fortunately however, the amount of energy even our larger H-bombs can release that way is miniscule compared to what a real megathrust fault would release, so the wave would probably not be much more than a slightly rougher surf for the nearest coastlines.