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"Can something of this magnitude even ever be completely cleaned up?" Likely no. Certainly improvements can and will be made, but there will be irreversible dam

by Psyonic 16y ago

"Can something of this magnitude even ever be completely cleaned up?" Likely no. Certainly improvements can and will be made, but there will be irreversible damage, at least on a human timescale.

ams6110 16y ago
Crude oil is a natural substance. It leaks out of the earth all over the place. This is obviously an extreme case, but I think that with time, the environment will absorb this and return to some sort of normalcy.
- ericd 16y ago
  On a long enough timescale, most things can be handled by the environment. That timescale may extend past the human timescale in many instances, which is generally viewed as unacceptable.
- code_duck 16y ago
  There is never going to be a return to normalcy for this area. It has already been under relentless pressure from human activities, to the point where we have a dead zone the size of Rhode Island floating around near this area already due to criminally irresponsible over-use of agricultural chemicals. Way too much pollution has already been coming out of Houston and New Orleans for a long time. BP wasn't satisfied dumping millions of gallons of oil into the water, they also felt it was necessary to dump hundreds of thousands of gallons of unnecessarily toxic dispersant chemicals into the water, mainly for cosmetic PR purposes. Louisiana's marshes are already in serious physical decline from the change in water flow and silt buildup caused by hydrologic engineering in the area. As far as something being natural, that has little to do with it's ability to destroy ecosystems. Sure, many synthetic chemicals are worse, but don't we have plenty of examples of very harmful natural phenomena? Radiation is natural, for instance. Perhaps you'd like to absorb a couple thousand rems, and see if the naturalness makes a difference in your return to normalcy. Or drink a big glass of oil, why not! It's natural! Several thousand dolphins, sea turtles, jellyfish, fish, sting rays, eels and octopi surely gave that a try recently.
  - invisible 16y ago
    You are ranting and I honestly don't understand your need to compare an oil spill to a specific tragedy of radiation poisoning or an individual dying from exposure to oil. Oil spills are dangerous and hurt the environment greatly in the short term, but we are talking about a small region of the entire ocean that (while beautiful) doesn't sustain the large portion of the world's ocean. Saying "never" and "always" is just a way to push propaganda unless it can be proven otherwise.
    - code_duck 16y ago
      Ever so sorry, when someone says something insensitive, insulting and incorrect I guess a proper response could be characterized as a 'rant' as the amount of information you need to convey to give them half a clue is a lot. The radiation example is related to the statement about oil being 'natural'. Again, radiation and cyanide are natural, but it's all a matter of concentration. Oil has overwhelmed this area and is killing massive amounts of sea life, regardless of it's fabulous property of 'naturalness'. So, while an x-ray might not hurt you, sticking your face into a bucket of plutonium might. A drop of oil may not kill you. YOUR ENTIRE BODY BEING COVERED IN OIL UNTIL YOU SUFFOCATE WHILE ALSO BEING POISONED BY HYDROCARBONS IS DIFFERENT. Do you agree? By 'Never' I mean 'maybe sometime in the future, outside of a human time scale and definitely when none of us are alive'. The changes to the ecology of this area are irreversible. It's not propaganda, the lying people on the other side of the issue who try to insist everything is OK because they have $$$$$ at stake are the ones feeding you propaganda. Thoughtful, intellectual honest men like Rush Limbaugh were the first to insist that this man-made disaster is a 'natural phenomenon'. It's absolutely ridiculous. To believe and repeat that ACTUAL propaganda, one must be uninformed and easily manipulated, or have something to gain from misleading people. To me, killing one frog by accident with my lawnmower is upsetting. These people are killing millions of animals, then dumping more chemicals in the ocean for PR purposes. They WILL be killing people through their actions, if you're concerned at all about that. Of course, this is on top of a scene of fishing industry whose main plan is to go around dredging with heavy chains ont he ocean floor, or dragging 500 meter nets, keeping what they want, killing the rest and throwing it back. It's not even 'collateral damage', to these people, ocean life is as worthless as shit. Sorry, some of us disagree.
- ZachPruckowski 16y ago
  Bananas are radioactive, and yet they are harmless and delicious. The fact that you can eat some radioactive things does not make it a good idea to eat other radioactive things, like Plutonium. My body can handle a handful of virus cells when delivered by vaccine, but in large quantities, they overwhelm my immune system. A dam holds back a river, but not a flood. Small leaks of oil over time are tolerable to the ecosystem, whereas giant gushers overwhelm it.
- phaedrus 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
ars 16y ago
Within a year or two you will have to search hard (i.e. dig) to find evidence there was ever a leak. This is not the first time oil has leaked. It's biodegradable, the damage is totally reversible. Just look at the history from the ixtoc oil leak (about the same size as this one). There was pretty much no long term damage at all. At the bottom of the sea the oil will probably last for a while, but it'll be buried very soon. Everywhere else it'll be gone quickly. Read this if you don't believe me: http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/1979s_ixtoc_oil_well_blowout_i.html http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/19...
- warfangle 16y ago
  ixtoc was not "about the same size" as this one. Ixtoc was: 3 million barrels over 2,800 km^2. Deepwater Horizon is (so far): ~8.7 million barrels (100,000 barrels * 87 days) over 6,500-24,000 km^2. It's nearly an order of magnitude more significant than the Ixtoc spill. And we're not even sure it's capped, yet. (according to wikipedia, anyway)
  - ars 16y ago
    If anything that means this ones is much less severe - it's more diluted. And 3 times larger is not an order of magnitude. Remember: the more diluted, the faster it will be gone. As long as they have oxygen, bacteria will eat it. By diluting it more, there is much more oxygen available.

by Psyonic 16y ago

"Can something of this magnitude even ever be completely cleaned up?" Likely no. Certainly improvements can and will be made, but there will be irreversible damage, at least on a human timescale.

ams6110 16y ago

Crude oil is a natural substance. It leaks out of the earth all over the place. This is obviously an extreme case, but I think that with time, the environment will absorb this and return to some sort of normalcy.

ericd 16y ago
On a long enough timescale, most things can be handled by the environment. That timescale may extend past the human timescale in many instances, which is generally viewed as unacceptable.
code_duck 16y ago
There is never going to be a return to normalcy for this area. It has already been under relentless pressure from human activities, to the point where we have a dead zone the size of Rhode Island floating around near this area already due to criminally irresponsible over-use of agricultural chemicals. Way too much pollution has already been coming out of Houston and New Orleans for a long time. BP wasn't satisfied dumping millions of gallons of oil into the water, they also felt it was necessary to dump hundreds of thousands of gallons of unnecessarily toxic dispersant chemicals into the water, mainly for cosmetic PR purposes. Louisiana's marshes are already in serious physical decline from the change in water flow and silt buildup caused by hydrologic engineering in the area. As far as something being natural, that has little to do with it's ability to destroy ecosystems. Sure, many synthetic chemicals are worse, but don't we have plenty of examples of very harmful natural phenomena? Radiation is natural, for instance. Perhaps you'd like to absorb a couple thousand rems, and see if the naturalness makes a difference in your return to normalcy. Or drink a big glass of oil, why not! It's natural! Several thousand dolphins, sea turtles, jellyfish, fish, sting rays, eels and octopi surely gave that a try recently.
- invisible 16y ago
  You are ranting and I honestly don't understand your need to compare an oil spill to a specific tragedy of radiation poisoning or an individual dying from exposure to oil. Oil spills are dangerous and hurt the environment greatly in the short term, but we are talking about a small region of the entire ocean that (while beautiful) doesn't sustain the large portion of the world's ocean. Saying "never" and "always" is just a way to push propaganda unless it can be proven otherwise.
  - code_duck 16y ago
    Ever so sorry, when someone says something insensitive, insulting and incorrect I guess a proper response could be characterized as a 'rant' as the amount of information you need to convey to give them half a clue is a lot. The radiation example is related to the statement about oil being 'natural'. Again, radiation and cyanide are natural, but it's all a matter of concentration. Oil has overwhelmed this area and is killing massive amounts of sea life, regardless of it's fabulous property of 'naturalness'. So, while an x-ray might not hurt you, sticking your face into a bucket of plutonium might. A drop of oil may not kill you. YOUR ENTIRE BODY BEING COVERED IN OIL UNTIL YOU SUFFOCATE WHILE ALSO BEING POISONED BY HYDROCARBONS IS DIFFERENT. Do you agree? By 'Never' I mean 'maybe sometime in the future, outside of a human time scale and definitely when none of us are alive'. The changes to the ecology of this area are irreversible. It's not propaganda, the lying people on the other side of the issue who try to insist everything is OK because they have $$$$$ at stake are the ones feeding you propaganda. Thoughtful, intellectual honest men like Rush Limbaugh were the first to insist that this man-made disaster is a 'natural phenomenon'. It's absolutely ridiculous. To believe and repeat that ACTUAL propaganda, one must be uninformed and easily manipulated, or have something to gain from misleading people. To me, killing one frog by accident with my lawnmower is upsetting. These people are killing millions of animals, then dumping more chemicals in the ocean for PR purposes. They WILL be killing people through their actions, if you're concerned at all about that. Of course, this is on top of a scene of fishing industry whose main plan is to go around dredging with heavy chains ont he ocean floor, or dragging 500 meter nets, keeping what they want, killing the rest and throwing it back. It's not even 'collateral damage', to these people, ocean life is as worthless as shit. Sorry, some of us disagree.
ZachPruckowski 16y ago
Bananas are radioactive, and yet they are harmless and delicious. The fact that you can eat some radioactive things does not make it a good idea to eat other radioactive things, like Plutonium. My body can handle a handful of virus cells when delivered by vaccine, but in large quantities, they overwhelm my immune system. A dam holds back a river, but not a flood. Small leaks of oil over time are tolerable to the ecosystem, whereas giant gushers overwhelm it.
phaedrus 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

ars 16y ago

Within a year or two you will have to search hard (i.e. dig) to find evidence there was ever a leak. This is not the first time oil has leaked. It's biodegradable, the damage is totally reversible. Just look at the history from the ixtoc oil leak (about the same size as this one). There was pretty much no long term damage at all. At the bottom of the sea the oil will probably last for a while, but it'll be buried very soon. Everywhere else it'll be gone quickly. Read this if you don't believe me: http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/1979s_ixtoc_oil_well_blowout_i.html http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/19...

warfangle 16y ago
ixtoc was not "about the same size" as this one. Ixtoc was: 3 million barrels over 2,800 km^2. Deepwater Horizon is (so far): ~8.7 million barrels (100,000 barrels * 87 days) over 6,500-24,000 km^2. It's nearly an order of magnitude more significant than the Ixtoc spill. And we're not even sure it's capped, yet. (according to wikipedia, anyway)
- ars 16y ago
  If anything that means this ones is much less severe - it's more diluted. And 3 times larger is not an order of magnitude. Remember: the more diluted, the faster it will be gone. As long as they have oxygen, bacteria will eat it. By diluting it more, there is much more oxygen available.