Here's the bad news folks. The untamed pressurised oil/methane gusher from the destroyed BP Deepwater Horizon drilling platform(NOT SPILL, AS MUCH OF THE CORPORATE MEDIA CONTINUES TO CATEGORISE IT!), which BP is still not able to control and cap, as of today, 03 June, will be heading for the US Atlantic Coast. These eminent scientists, peers in the top of their fields, using the most powerful computing platforms in the World, have come up with the following scenario for the vast amounts of oil now in the Gulf of Mexico. Give this important article a read, and the comments afterword, off of the web-site. Very interesting.
Published on Thursday, June 3, 2010 by Environmental News Service
Gulf Oil Spill Likely to Hit U.S. Atlantic Coast This Summer
BOULDER, Colorado - Oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and into the open ocean as early as this summer, according to a detailed computer modeling study released today by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
![[An image from the NCAR computer model of the flow of Deepwater Horizon oil. (Image courtesy NCAR)]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s-juYnSzF27HXdLMMEqIrDp02WqkvFIEIIaUR4HZXZiXPYQhcnlVdFdRyRInPUITu6U0gHEY36acRotAaKoYj1I8RS6bQ_-ZNeYQs8_qGGtM88hVwLXBpjIiYQgmXHVg=s0-d "map_oil.jpg")
An image from the NCAR computer model of the flow of Deepwater Horizon oil. (Image courtesy NCAR)The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor. The results were reviewed by scientists at NCAR and elsewhere, although not yet submitted for peer-review publication
An image from the NCAR computer model of the flow of Deepwater Horizon oil. (Image courtesy NCAR)"I've had a lot of people ask me, 'Will the oil reach Florida?'" says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. "Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood."
The computer simulations indicate that, once the oil in the uppermost ocean has become entrained in the Gulf of Mexico's fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida's Atlantic coast within weeks.
It can then move north as far as about Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east to the open ocean.
Whether the oil will be a thin film on the surface or mostly subsurface due to mixing in the upper ocean is not known. The flow in the model represents the best estimate of how ocean currents are likely to respond under typical wind conditions.
More model studies are underway that will indicate what might happen to the oil in the Atlantic Ocean.
"We have been asked if and when remnants of the spill could reach the European coastlines," says Martin Visbeck, a member of the research team from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany.
"Our assumption is that the enormous lateral mixing in the ocean together with the biological disintegration of the oil should reduce the pollution to levels below harmful concentrations," said Visbeck. "But we would like to have this backed up by numbers from some of the best ocean models."
To model the flow of oil, NCAR scientists are using the Parallel Ocean Program, the ocean component of the Community Climate System Model, a powerful software tool developed by scientists at NCAR in collaboration with the Department of Energy. They are conducting the simulations at supercomputers based at the New Mexico Computer Applications Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The NCAR scientists simulated how a liquid released at the spill site would disperse and circulate, producing results that are not dependent on the total amount released.
The scientists tracked the rate of dispersal in the top 65 feet of the water and at four additional depths, with the lowest just above the sea bed.
"The modeling study is analogous to taking a dye and releasing it into water, then watching its pathway," Peacock says.
The dye tracer used in the model has no actual physical resemblance to true oil. Unlike oil, the dye has the same density as the surrounding water, does not coagulate or form slicks, and is not subject to chemical breakdown by bacteria or other forces.
Peacock and her colleagues stress that the simulations are not a forecast because it is impossible to accurately predict the precise location of the oil weeks or months from now.
Instead, the simulations provide possible scenarios for the oil dispersal. The timing and course of the oil slick will be affected by regional weather conditions and the ever-changing state of the Gulf's Loop Current, neither of which can be predicted more than a few days in advance.
The dilution of the oil relative to the source also will be impacted by bacterial degradation and other conditions, which are not included in the simulations.
What is possible, is to estimate a range of possible trajectories, based on the best understanding of how ocean currents transport material. The oil trajectory that actually occurs will depend on both on the short-term evolution of the Loop Current, which feeds into the Gulf Stream, and on the state of the overlying atmosphere.
Oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20 when the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and caught fire. Oil giant BP, which leased the rig to drill a test well 18,000 feet below the seafloor has not been able to stem the flow of oil from the broken wellhead.
Now, 45 days after the spill began, an estimated 540,000 to 1.25 million barrels of oil [some scientists question this number, estimating it to be 10-20 times higher! eds..] have entered the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, according to statements by the National Incident Command's Flow Rate Technical Group and an addition estimate given by Incident Commandert U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen in a news briefing this week. Some of this oil has evaporated or been collected by skimmer boats or burned on the surface of the water.
The spill is located in a relatively stagnant area of the Gulf, and the oil so far has remained relatively confined near the Louisiana and Alabama coastlines, although there have been reports of small amounts in the Loop Current. Oil has come ashore in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
The model simulations show that a liquid released in the surface ocean at the spill site is likely to slowly spread as it is mixed by the ocean currents until it is entrained in the Loop Current. At that point, speeds pick up to about 40 miles per day, and when the liquid enters the Atlantic's Gulf Stream it can travel at speeds up to about 100 miles per day, or 3,000 miles per month.
The six model simulations released today all have different Loop Current characteristics, and all provide slightly different scenarios of how the oil might be dispersed. The simulations all bring the oil to south Florida and then up the East Coast. However, the timing of the oil's movement differs depending on the configuration of the Loop Current.
© 2010 Environmental News Service
With the true rate of release of oil from the BP gusher likely many times higher than that given by the US Govt./BP, the results for all coastal dwellers will soon be readily visible. How much of the fisheries will be destroyed on the Atlantic Coast, north to Virginia or New Jersey? (the Gulf Coast's of Florida unfortunately is already slated for destruction) What will be the effect on all the undersea and near-shore ecosystems, and how will that ripple through all the other inter-related ones in these areas? What will happen to the economies of these areas? Will people finally wake up and realise that this is what unregulated Capitalism brings? A system based on greed, an emotion/personality aspect generally thought to be unhealthy, but justified by it's supporters as pushing people to work hard and innovate. On pitting each person against the other, with one's good fortune to be obtained at the expense of others, downplaying and de-emphasizing cooperation. Is this really human nature, and what our political and economic system should be based on?
OUR TRUE NATURE
They didn't have to risk their own safety to do this, and there was no profit to be gained by it. But they still did, because it's something almost everyone would do, in a similar situation. It is OUR TRUE NATURE to act cooperatively, to help people when the need is great, out of empathy for their condition. Isn't it time we had a political and economic system that would reflect OUR TRUE NATURE? Think how much healthier, happier, and safer we would all be. This would automatically lead to healthier and more sustainable policies, that would ensure that civilisation as we know it, will be able to continue. What would such a system be like? Most forward-thinkers/progressives, ourselves included here at A.P.R., think that it would be an ethical/democratic form of socialism, somewhat like the Social Democracies of Norway/Finland/Sweden, but with even greater mass control of the economic modes of production. http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/widemsoc.pdf
Until we are able to change our political and economic system, we will continue to see more Deepwater Horizon-type tragedies, and the acceleration of global warming, and global ecosystem collapse. Another article, linked here, describes heartbreaking tragedies experienced daily by the poor people in Nigeria, whose crime it is to live in the Niger Delta, which is being exploited for it's oil, by BP and the other major trans-national oil corporations. This does not, and should not have to happen.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/30-0Published on Sunday, May 30, 2010 by The Observer/UK
Nigeria's Agony Dwarfs the Gulf Oil Spill. The US and Europe Ignore It
The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades
We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.
![[A ruptured pipeline burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at least 100 people. (Photograph: George Esiri/Reuters)]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uxE0if-GJefm4hXdHTA8FnT792XzPAiDIJ29bszniBA667wWcBgv1I41KsrDzgT-otqCkVldBa8kd_gVD_D2O5QGUmN7NYopuIaLjY1JzmUJElQ6xTDUT8wqUCTy-5yeuYOb9OBQ=s0-d "nigeriasagony.jpg")
A ruptured pipeline burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at least 100 people. (Photograph: George Esiri/Reuters)The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."
That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.
That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.
On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.
Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.
"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."
"The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different."
"We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US," said Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. "But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments. The Gulf spill can be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
"This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper," he said.
It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year because the companies and the government keep that secret. However, two major independent investigations over the past four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.
One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil – 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska – has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.
According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.
Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in 2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents – one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.
Shell, which works in partnership with the Nigerian government in the delta, says that 98% of all its oil spills are caused by vandalism, theft or sabotage by militants and only a minimal amount by deteriorating infrastructure. "We had 132 spills last year, as against 175 on average. Safety valves were vandalised; one pipe had 300 illegal taps. We found five explosive devices on one. Sometimes communities do not give us access to clean up the pollution because they can make more money from compensation," said a spokesman.
"We have a full-time oil spill response team. Last year we replaced 197 miles of pipeline and are using every known way to clean up pollution, including microbes. We are committed to cleaning up any spill as fast as possible as soon as and for whatever reason they occur."
These claims are hotly disputed by communities and environmental watchdog groups. They mostly blame the companies' vast network of rusting pipes and storage tanks, corroding pipelines, semi-derelict pumping stations and old wellheads, as well as tankers and vessels cleaning out tanks.
The scale of the pollution is mind-boggling. The government's national oil spill detection and response agency (Nosdra) says that between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4m barrels contaminated the environment. "Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways has been extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation. These incidents have become common due to the lack of laws and enforcement measures within the existing political regime," said a spokesman for Nosdra.
The sense of outrage is widespread. "There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year," said Bassey. "It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm."
A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies' activities, said: "The response to the spill in the United States should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world."
Other voices of protest point out that the world has overlooked the scale of the environmental impact. Activist Ben Amunwa, of the London-based oil watch group Platform, said: "Deepwater Horizon may have exceed Exxon Valdez, but within a few years in Nigeria offshore spills from four locations dwarfed the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster many times over. Estimates put spill volumes in the Niger delta among the worst on the planet, but they do not include the crude oil from waste water and gas flares. Companies such as Shell continue to avoid independent monitoring and keep key data secret."
Worse may be to come. One industry insider, who asked not to be named, said: "Major spills are likely to increase in the coming years as the industry strives to extract oil from increasingly remote and difficult terrains. Future supplies will be offshore, deeper and harder to work. When things go wrong, it will be harder to respond."
Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude, a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: "Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care."
There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as if they are beyond the law. Bassey said: "What we conclude from the Gulf of Mexico pollution incident is that the oil companies are out of control.
"It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation, both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the international court of justice."
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
AROUND THE CORNER
Today the A.P.R. staff had time for a nice half-day hike, around the corner from Anchorage, south and east up Turnagain Arm, on the Bird Ridge Trail.
When you go "around the corner" and up Turnagain Arm, you enter a different ecosystem. You enter the milder, moister, coastal rain-forest, leaving behind the colder, drier, boreal forest ecoystem. This is because the Chugach Range is no longer blocking mild, moist airmasses moving in from the south and east, from the Gulf of Alaska and Pacific Ocean. Instead, what is blocked, from the north by the Chugach Range, south and east of Anchorage, are the coldest arctic air-masses. So winters are somewhat warmer here, and snowier, and summers, much cooler and moister. This is reflected in the forests. The smaller white and black spruce of the boreal forest are replaced by the larger, majestic Sitka Spruce, which are a major component of all the Pacific Coastal rain forests from Northern California, all the way north to here. Western Hemlocks also put in their furthest-north appearance here, as well as the Mountain Hemlock, at the higher elevations. Making for a much different view and feel, from the areas further north and inland.
We got onto the trail in cool, sprinkly weather at the base, about 11C (52F). There was also a good breeze of about 30 km/hr (18 mph). The trail quickly ascends through the the sitka spruce/hemlock rain forest, though there are birch trees mixed in, an interesting mix of the coastal and boreal forest types. About 200 metres above the trailhead, we came to this grassy slope covered in lupines. These are blooming about a month early! Because up until today, the past ten days had seen much above average temperatures (imagine that...), with some daily records broken, in south-central Alaska. In fact, throughout the state, the warm, drier weather has led to an early fire season, with unprecedented fire intensity/behaviour in the interior, thanks to antecedent drought conditions as well. Not a good start to the summer!
The higher we got, the better the views of the surrounding mountains, and Bird River Valley became. We sure do love being able to be out in places like this! Nothing at all like the interior, around Fairbanks.
Unfortunately, I was wearing my multi-sport shoes, which are great for muddy, wet, slushy conditions. But not for loose dirt or rocky trails, as they don't have very good traction or cushioning. I wasn't counting on this trail being so dry and rocky. As we got higher, the trail became much rockier and steeper, sometimes requiring hand and foot scrambling. But the views just kept getting better, well worth the effort, in spite of having to go slower than I would like.
I particularly enjoyed looking back south over Turnagain Arm, to the mountainous Kenai Peninsula. There are so many beautiful areas to explore there, hard to know where to start! By the time we got up about 600 metres above the trailhead (2000 feet), the first larger snowpatches started appearing. These areas receive many metres of snow every winter, and above 1000 metres, some remains all summer, and above 1500 metres (5000 ft.), glaciers make an appearance. We really love these beautiful, graceful mountain hemlock trees, which were mostly flagged by the strong prevailing east and southeast winds here. In fact, as we got up to about 600 metres, the wind more than doubled, to gale-force.
We had lunch at about 800 metres (2800 feet) above the trailhead, where the snowpatches were very extensive. Here Mattie had to roll and slide around, giving us her best seal /otter imitation. Homer though was content just to rest in the strong cool wind. The temperature up here was probably only about 6C (41F).
After lunch, we just went another 200 metres or so, up to about 1000 (3300 ft.). Here it was even colder, probably only 3-4C (37-39F) with a strong gale-force wind. In shorts, but with a good jacket and gloves, it was still quite cold. So we decided to head back down. This trail is so steep, that it was only about 5 km up to this point. The snow was deeper here, and the clouds were scraping the ridge, just above us.
This is the view looking further up the ridge, into the clouds. A good place to turn around. A young high-school age couple had passed us earlier, going further up, and they were not dressed appropriately for the conditions. I hope they made it back ok!
The trail follows Bird Ridge further back at least 10KM more, and when the weather is good, we intend to go in there for a 2-3 day trek, following this and other ridgetops, to enjoy these amazing views. Sure is nice to have this around our corner! Cheers.
