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by justdrew » Sat Jun 26, 2010 12:54 pm
seemslikeadream wrote:I've lost track is the water boiling vid here?
by 2012 Countdown » Sat Jun 26, 2010 2:27 pm
by Hugo Farnsworth » Sat Jun 26, 2010 7:42 pm
—The Swedish chairman of the British polluter emerges from the White House to proclaim corporate concern for the “small people.” Imagine the musical theater possibilities, a duet of Carl-Henric Svanberg and Hayward channeling “Camelot”:
Svanberg: Oh what do the small people do? With pelicans covered in goo?
Hayward: They scrub them and they scrub them, while we are on our yacht.
Together: Oh that’s what small people do.
Svanberg: Like we care.
Hayward: I think not.
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jun 26, 2010 9:39 pm
by Cordelia » Sun Jun 27, 2010 8:52 am
I guess I don't understand the rules for late-night television.
by 2012 Countdown » Sun Jun 27, 2010 5:53 pm
by DoYouEverWonder » Sun Jun 27, 2010 6:32 pm
Methane in Gulf "astonishingly high": U.S. scientist
June 27, 2010
As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.
Science | Green Business
Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler, just back from a 10-day research expedition near the BP Plc oil spill in the gulf, says methane gas levels in some areas are "astonishingly high."
Kessler's crew took measurements of both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP's broken wellhead.
"There is an incredible amount of methane in there," Kessler told reporters in a telephone briefing.
In some areas, the crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal.
"We saw them approach a million times above background concentrations" in some areas, Kessler said.
The scientists were looking for signs that the methane gas had depleted levels of oxygen dissolved in the water needed to sustain marine life.
"At some locations, we saw depletions of up to 30 percent of oxygen based on its natural concentration in the waters. At other places, we saw no depletion of oxygen in the waters. We need to determine why that is," he told the briefing.
Methane occurs naturally in sea water, but high concentrations can encourage the growth of microbes that gobble up oxygen needed by marine life.
Kessler said oxygen depletions have not reached a critical level yet, but the oil is still spilling into the Gulf, now at a rate of as much as 60,000 barrels a day, according to U.S. government estimates.
"What is it going to look like two months down the road, six months down the road, two years down the road?" he asked.
Methane, a natural gas, dissolves in seawater and some scientists think measuring methane could give a more accurate picture of the extent of the oil spill.
Kessler said his team has taken those measurements, and is hoping to have an estimate soon.
"Give us about a week and we should have some preliminary numbers on that," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65L6IA20100622?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r1:c0.217224:b35239814:z0
Oil washes onto Mississippi coast for first time
June 27, 2010
Mississippi (Reuters) - Large patches of thick oil washed ashore in Mississippi on Sunday, the first time crude from the BP Plc spill in the Gulf of Mexico has hit the state's coast.
U.S.
Oil hit two tourist beaches at Ocean Springs, about 10 miles east of Biloxi, and a beach used by fisherman that is close to an inland marsh. Wildlife officials picked up one pelican covered in oil.
State officials and the Coast Guard, who said they were expecting more oil to arrive, were waiting on BP contractors to start cleaning up.
"We cannot clean up or catch the oil until BP gets here. They have all of our people," said Earl Etheridge, a spokesman for Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality. "We want to clean this up now. Maybe this will amp up BP's effort but we can't do anything because they have all the money."
Efforts to contain and clean up oil from the massive spill are being handled jointly by federal, state and local officials and funded by the energy giant, leading to frustration among people whose coastlines are most at risk.
Louisiana's fragile wetlands have been hardest hit by the oil but Mississippi had escaped damage until Sunday, although some oil has tainted its barrier islands. Oil has also come ashore in Alabama and Florida's Gulf coast.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65Q2S220100627?type=domesticNews
by 82_28 » Sun Jun 27, 2010 7:32 pm
DoYouEverWonder wrote:Methane in Gulf "astonishingly high": U.S. scientist
As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.
Well, why can't we import some of this speculated life on Titan to Earth now?
New Cassini Findings Show Possible Signs of Methane-Based Life on TitanSomething is consuming hydrogen and organic molecules on Saturn's moon Titan, and the recipe matches astrobiologists' theories about possible methane-based life. Granted, there may be other chemical explanations -- it's just that no one knows what they are yet.
New data from the Cassini spacecraft show hydrogen is disappearing near Titan's surface. What's more, scientists have not been able to find acetylene, an organic molecule that should be pretty abundant in the moon's thick atmosphere.
All this fits very nicely with a theory from NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, who proposed five years ago that microbial life on Titan could breathe hydrogen and eat acetylene, producing methane as a result.
Scientists emphasize that the findings are not proof of life, and there's plenty of work to do before non-biological causes can be ruled out. Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," says Mark Allen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a NASA release.
The good news is that even if life is ruled out, the non-biological explanations are still interesting. According to previous studies, hydrogen should be distributed pretty evenly throughout Titan's atmosphere. But it's disappearing at the surface.
"It's as if you have a hose and you're squirting hydrogen onto the ground, but it's disappearing," says Darrell Strobel, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., who authored a paper published in the journal Icarus.
It's possible that the hydrogen is combining with carbon on Titan's surface to produce methane. But Titan is too cold for that to happen quickly enough to account for all the missing hydrogen. An unknown mineral could be the culprit, meaning scientists may have found a new substance previously unknown to exist on Titan.
The explanations for the dearth of acetylene are equally puzzling. The hydrocarbon should form abundantly in icy aerosols in Titan's atmosphere, but it's not there. It's possible that sunlight or cosmic rays are transforming the acetylene into more complex molecules that would fall to the ground with no acetylene signature, according to NASA.
It's also possible that chemical reactions are transforming acetylene into benzene (which Cassini did observe on Titan's surface), but that would require a catalyst, which hasn't been identified.
There's one more thing: Cassini observed an organic compound with the benzene that scientists have not been able to identify.
Cassini has several more Titan flybys in which to gather data -- in fact, the craft is set to fly within 2,000 miles of Titan's surface this afternoon, to make infrared scans of the moon's north polar region. The region includes Kraken Mare, the largest lake on Titan, which covers a greater area than the Caspian Sea on Earth. If methane-based microbes do live on Titan, there's a good chance they would live in just those sort of lakes.
[NASA, New Scientist]
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... life-titan
The way out there sci-fi side of me thinks up a story at this point. Story being, perhaps oxygen based intelligent life forms eons ago annihilated the methane based forms and stuffed them far underground. Oxygen breathers and CO2 dependers took hold. They fought the methane breathers tooth and nail -- in some form of slow out and out war that probably had no more to do with natural selection than anything else these days -- but was perhaps interplanetary, an interplanetary natural selection. Now they are coming back. Their sustenance has been relinquished by the stupidity of the oxygen breathers.
Note the "synch" timing of Hopper's death and the rupture of Earth.
Titan: A World Much Like EarthSaturn's moon Titan may be worlds away from Earth, but the two bodies have some characteristics in common: Wind, rain, volcanoes, tectonics and other Earth-like processes all sculpt features on Titan, but act in an environment more frigid than Antarctica.
"It is really surprising how closely Titan's surface resembles Earth's," said Rosaly Lopes, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., who is presenting the results of two new studies at the annual meeting of the of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Friday. "In fact, Titan looks more like the Earth than any other body in the solar system, despite the huge differences in temperature and other environmental conditions."
This view of Titan comes from observations made by the Cassini-Huygens mission, which has revealed details of Titan's geologically young surface, showing few impact craters, and featuring mountain chains, dunes and even "lakes."
The RADAR instrument on the Cassini orbiter has now allowed scientists to image a third of Titan's surface using radar beams that pierce the giant moon's thick, smoggy atmosphere. As its name implies, Titan is no small moon, with a size approaching that of Mars.
Titan gets about 1 percent the amount of sunlight Earth receives.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to possess a thick atmosphere, and it is the only celestial body other than Earth to have stable pools of liquid on its surface. Lakes that pool on Titan's surface are thought to be filled not with water, but with liquid hydrocarbons, such as methane and ethane.
"With an average surface temperature hovering around -180 C [-292 degrees Fahrenheit], water cannot exist on Titan except as deep-frozen ice as strong as rock," Lopes said.
On Titan, methane takes water's place in the hydrological cycle of evaporation and precipitation (rain or snow) and can appear as a gas, a liquid and a solid. Methane rain cuts channels and forms lakes on the surface and causes erosion, helping to erase the meteorite impact craters that pockmark most other rocky worlds, such as our own moon and the planet Mercury.
Other new research presented at the IAU General Assembly points to current volcanic activity on Titan, but instead of scorching hot magma, scientists think these "cryovolcanoes" eject cold slurries of water-ice and ammonia.
The ammonia signature seems to vary, which suggests that ammonia frosts are ejected and then subsequently dissipate or are covered over. Although the ammonia does not stay exposed for long, models show that it exists in Titan's interior, indicating that a process is at work delivering ammonia to the surface. RADAR imaging has indeed found structures that resemble terrestrial volcanoes near the site of suspected ammonia deposition.
New infrared images of this region, with ten times the resolution of prior mappings, will be unveiled at the IAU meeting.
"The images provide further evidence suggesting that cryovolcanism has deposited ammonia onto Titan's surface," said Robert M. Nelson, a senior research scientist, also at JPL, who presented results on Wednesday.
The presence of ammonia and hydrocarbons could have interesting implications for the possibility of life existing on Titan.
"It has not escaped our attention that ammonia, in association with methane and nitrogen, the principal species of Titan's atmosphere, closely replicates the environment at the time that life first emerged on Earth," Nelson said. "One exciting question is whether Titan's chemical processes today support a prebiotic chemistry similar to that under which life evolved on Earth?"
Yet more terrestrial-type features on Titan include dunes formed by cold winds, and mountain ranges. These mountains might have formed tectonically when Titan's crust compressed as it went into a deep freeze, in contrast to the Earth's crust, which continues to move today, producing earthquakes and rift valleys on our planet.
by justdrew » Sun Jun 27, 2010 8:34 pm
by norton ash » Sun Jun 27, 2010 9:24 pm
by 82_28 » Sun Jun 27, 2010 9:26 pm
by Hugo Farnsworth » Sun Jun 27, 2010 11:41 pm
The way out there sci-fi side of me thinks up a story at this point. Story being, perhaps oxygen based intelligent life forms eons ago annihilated the methane based forms and stuffed them far underground. Oxygen breathers and CO2 dependers took hold. They fought the methane breathers tooth and nail -- in some form of slow out and out war that probably had no more to do with natural selection than anything else these days -- but was perhaps interplanetary, an interplanetary natural selection. Now they are coming back. Their sustenance has been relinquished by the stupidity of the oxygen breathers.
by Hugo Farnsworth » Sun Jun 27, 2010 11:44 pm
The way out there sci-fi side of me thinks up a story at this point. Story being, perhaps oxygen based intelligent life forms eons ago annihilated the methane based forms and stuffed them far underground. Oxygen breathers and CO2 dependers took hold. They fought the methane breathers tooth and nail -- in some form of slow out and out war that probably had no more to do with natural selection than anything else these days -- but was perhaps interplanetary, an interplanetary natural selection. Now they are coming back. Their sustenance has been relinquished by the stupidity of the oxygen breathers.
by 82_28 » Mon Jun 28, 2010 1:36 am
NEW ORLEANS —
The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster feels far worse to shrimper Ricky Robin than Katrina, even though he's still haunted by memories of riding out the hurricane on his trawler and of his father's suicide in the storm's aftermath.
The relentless spill is bringing back feelings that are far too familiar to Robin and others still dealing with the physical and emotional toll wrought by Katrina five years ago.
"I can't sleep at night. I find myself crying sometimes," said Robin, of Violet, a blue-collar community on the southeastern edge of the New Orleans suburbs, along the highway that hugs the levee on the Mississippi River's east bank nearly all the way to the Gulf.
Psychiatrists who treated people after Katrina and have held group sessions in oil spill-stricken areas say the symptoms showing up are much the same: Anger. Anxiety. Drinking. Depression. Suicidal thoughts.
"Everybody's acting strange," said Robin, 56. "Real angry, frustrated, stressed out, fighting brothers and sisters and mamas and family."
Fishing families, the backbone of the coastal economy, are especially hard-pressed as the waters that make up their livelihood are sporadically closed because of fears the oil will taint fish, oysters and shrimp.
Oil field workers, whose salaries are among the best the region can offer, worry about their industry's long-term future.
And there is still the rebuilding after Katrina, which in August 2005 devastated a swath from Louisiana to Alabama - almost as big as the area affected by the oil - killing more than 1,600 and forever changing the region's relationship with the water.
No one is fishing any more out of Zeke's Landing Marina in Orange Beach, Ala., though most charter boat captains are making some money pulling boom and doing other jobs in BP's cleanup program.
Looking at oil all day can be harder than staying home, said Joe Nash, a boat captain there. "Seeing everything that you've been used to for years kind of slowly going away from you, it's overwhelming," he said. "Because you can't do anything about it."
That helplessness, coupled with the uncertainty about what's going to happen with the spill and when the next check from BP PLC will arrive, leaves boat captain George Pfeiffer angry all the time.
"Our families want to know what's going on," said Pfeiffer, 55, who keeps two charter boats at Zeke's Landing. "When we get home, we're stressed out and tired, and they want answers and we don't have any."
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His wife cries, a lot.
"I haven't slept. I've lost weight," said Yvonne Pfeiffer, 53. "My shoulders are in knots. The stress level has my shoulders up to my ears."
Social services agencies have not seen a significant increase in people seeking help since the spill began, but that doesn't mean the need isn't there, said Jeffrey Bennett, executive director of the Gulf Coast Mental Health Center in Gulfport, Miss., whose state saw oil wash up on the mainland for the first time Sunday.
"Unfortunately, the people most affected, shrimpers and fishermen, are not people who traditionally seek mental health services," Bennett said. "They're kind of tough characters, and look at being depressed or not being able to handle their own problems as weakness."
On Sunday evening, many in Alabama's coastal fishing community planned to attend services for a popular charter captain who committed suicide on his docked boat. Authorities had no way to know whether his death had anything to do with the spill, but they hoped it would move others to seek help.
John Ziegler, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Mental Health, said no one had walked into counseling centers set up in fishing communities since the disaster. Then on Friday, two days after the captain's death, five people came in saying they needed help because of the spill.
As news of the captain's death spread east to Pensacola, Fla., Baptist Health Care's Lakeview Center publicized its 24-hour help line, and several calls about the spill came in the following day.
"People saying they were sad, they were angry, they were grieving, they have lost a lot," marketing director Tish Pennewill said. "Grandmothers talking about how they took the children to the beach for the summer and could no longer do that. People wondering if it was ever going to be the same."
Even people whose livelihoods aren't affected by the spill find themselves crying on beaches, like Nancy Salinas, who was on Pensacola Beach last week when Florida officials closed it because oil was washing up. "It just breaks your heart," she said. "I can't get my feet in the water."
Mental health professionals say it is too early to have reliable data to understand the full severity of stress issues spawned by the spill.
However, their work so far indicates the problem is taking root, and the backdrop of Katrina means it is likely to get worse. Tropical systems such as the one that swirled over the Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday won't help matters, even though it was forecast to bypass the spill.
"This is a second round of major trauma for children and families still recovering from Katrina. It represents uncharted territory," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and a member of the National Commission on Children and Disasters who has worked with Katrina survivors.
Dr. Howard Osofsky, chair of the psychiatry department at LSU Health Sciences Center, said focus groups he's monitored in spill-affected areas confirmed those emotions.
Ziegler, the Alabama mental health chief, said counselors have gone out to marinas, docks and other places frequented by fishermen and others affected by the spill.
"They've had folks break down and weep," he said. "They've had people share some of their deepest feelings about their future and how they're feeling now that things seem imminent."
In Mississippi, Bennett's group is working with Catholic Social Services in Biloxi on a proposal to train people in fishing communities to work as "peer listeners" to try to identify people who might be having problems and encourage them to seek help.
The social and psychological toll on residents of the Gulf will last long after the oil is cleaned up, say veterans of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.
"Every day you're dealing with this thing," said John Calhoun, former mayor of Homer, whose community was devastated. "If you're not working on it, you're worrying about it. Frankly, they sold a lot of alcohol during this time. I saw some of the toughest guys I know break down in tears because the stress had gotten to them."
Michael Herz, who served on the commission that investigated Alaska's spill, visited the Gulf and said it was like seeing it all over again, only worse.
"It took away livelihoods and it split families," he said. "Some members of family took money from Exxon and others were so upset they didn't. The rate of mental health, spousal abuse, alcoholism all skyrocketed."
Robin, the Louisiana shrimper, fears the spill will have similar effects on himself and his neighbors.
"This is a slow-moving hurricane," he said. "You're looking at it, and you can't do nothing about it."
---
Stacy reported from Orange Beach, Ala. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Noaki Schwartz in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
by Nordic » Mon Jun 28, 2010 3:38 am
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