One of the problems with the dispersants the EPA nad CG have approved to be used is that they don’t mix well with the oil and water at cool temperatures.
First off
New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — The Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency planned a new tactic Saturday against the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, authorizing BP to use oil dispersants.
They were already using dispersants on the surface. What is being authorized is using them at the break underwater, which is not very effective as per the Grist article, so anyone messing with the clean up, really need to be cautious and follow all of the procedures.
Lapping up on shore and traveled to the islands today and saw a layer of brown slime carpeting the water. The slime, which is not as thick as oil, is thought to be the chemical dispersant that had been pumped down to the site of the leak to break up the oil before it reached the surface.
There is an apparent contradiction here, no?
Top hat is rigged up to inject warm water into the cap, ostensibly to keep nitrates hydrates from co-coagulating in the discharge pipe, but it may also be used to warm the water and facilitate the mixing of the dispersant and oil.
So far this is the state of the dis and mis information on the procedure.
Update: Tar balls wash ashore in Louisiana,
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologists found tens of thousands of tar balls littering a 10-mile stretch of beach at Port Fourchon in the heaviest oiling west of the Mississippi River delta during the three-week-old spill, officials said.
Mark Johnson, a toxicologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said there’s “no evidence to suggest” the chemical is a danger.
You drink it Mark. Of course the fish will not migrate from the waters inwhich they encounter the dispersants or oil, remaining localized so as not to spread the contamination, until monkeys too, fly out of their asses.
While the velocity of the flow can, to a degree, be point estimated using particle image velocimetry, the ability to average that over the whole flow, and the actual size of the orifice (it is leaking through a crack in the riser) makes the orifice estimation more of a guess, as is that of the total flow volume. I suspect that once the flow is captured, then the actual flow will be reported, and will come in closer to the BP estimate, which remains about 5,000 barrels per day, and remains much lower than the more recent estimated values.
I wished I shared the optimism of Heading Out, but there you have it.
That is part of the problem isn’t it? The he said/she said aspect of every fucking thing. In that respect the “media” whatever in the hell that is, is in the same boat as everyone else, none of us have reliable sources on oil spills, so who do you trust? Depending on your natural inclination to trust the government, or big business, two biased sources, will probably dictate how you feel about the seriousness of the problem and the steps being taken to address the clusterfuck under the sea.
Under that scenario I would rather just be told it is big, nobody knows how bad it is or will be, and everyone says they are doing what they can, but it can’t be verified what that is, beyond acting and speaking in their own self interests. I don’t want to hear that GoJo is the solution, or “Drill Sarah, Not the Gulf.” If I want to read that bullshit I’ll write it.
Terraformed 