Posted on 06/17/2010 10:47:52 AM PDT by AT7Saluki
Thank you so much for posting this!
BUMP for common sense truth.
Nothing in the article says that it took 31 years. The beach has been clean and clear for many years already.
Not trying to be an apologist for an imminent (and moderate term) environmental disaster, but one will never hear such a perspective from ABCCBSNBCPBS.
Kind of like the global warming thing.
Incidentally on the surface we do not take Barack Obama to task for the slow redress of this situation any more than we blamed George Bush for Katrina results. That's silly bigoted politics. Most of us know BO is just a Harvard buffoon. But if BP was actually given environmental waiver for the drilling, and donated big money to the BO campaign, as mentioned on FR, then we are indeed seeing the sinister global conspiracy; and the complicity of the Republican Party if nothing is brought out.
This is why "they" want to control the Internet, and it extends far deeper than just the News Media politicians.
After forest fires, etc, the ground gets nitrogen enrichment, and is then fit for growing plants again.
At least, that’s one theory I remember reading/hearing.
Some people/scientists say the Earth is billions of years old - but we humans are only a few ‘hundred thousand’ years old. We have no power capable of destroying what has lasted for ‘billions’ of years.
I recall seeing immediate signs of the Ixtoc spill on the beaches and in the Gulf well into the 1980’s. However, after 31 years there are still some not so obvious signs of that spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be dishonest to say that the 1979 spill has been completely cleaned up.
Moreover, cleaning the oil from a beach in Galveston, Texas is much easier than eradicating the oil from wetlands and estuaries in Buras, Louisiana.
The effects of the BP spill will be with the residents and wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico until long after any of us are still alive.
Oil is a natural product, and Ma Nature has her methods for dealing with it. It’s not like it came spewing out of a Monsanto plant.
Human technology stopped the Ixtoc 1, and will get the BP well plugged as well.
i am glad to see someone writing about the capacity for nature to deal with such ills. It is a refreshing alternative to the hysterical apocalyptic ravings which have predominated the discussion.
Thanks for the ping. Nice to see a ray of sanity in the discussion!
Sure there are traces out there, short of eroding away the surfaces which came into contact with the oil, there will be. We see ash layers from volcanic eruptions, carbon layers from forest fires, boulder pavement and moraine deposits from glaciers, silt layers from floods, even old river chanels from the ice ages out on the continental shelf--now underwater.
Everything leaves a mark unless the slate is wiped away. Even the dirt in your yard has a story to tell if you can read it.
I guess the point is that most of the Gulf will be back to 'business as usual'--that the planet bounces back.
In the meantime, some things will be messed up, individual organisms will die, but the species will almost always prevail and continue and replenish their numbers.
It has been that way for a long time.
Unfortunately, and prehaps now more than ever, humans have become increasingly impatient. We want it yesterday, and we have (collectively, as humans) no sense of history, short or long term with which we can provide perspective on current events.
If you think about that, it makes us susceptible to all sorts of tomfoolery, and easy prey for charlatans and thieves, especially those who would steal our liberty with edicts passed in apparent haste over an emergency.
Moreover, cleaning the oil from a beach in Galveston, Texas is much easier than eradicating the oil from wetlands and estuaries in Buras, Louisiana.
Absolutely. I agree. Early on in this I said the wetlands should get priority over the beaches. Not only are beaches less intricate, but reworked sand has a much less intricate fauna than wetlands. From a sedimentological standpoint, beaches are almost continually reworked, where wetlands are seldom reworked by wave action. The particle sizes inboth areas are vastly different, and the much finer clays and silt of the wetlands are nearly impossible to clean, where the sand in the beaches can become oil soaked--drawing oil into the pore spaces of dry sand--but can be cleaned as well, with less environmental impact.
From a biological standpoint, the wetlands are the rookeries of the nearshore environment and have an incredibly diverse fauna; about the only things that mate on a beach are humans, horseshoe crabs, and turtles.
While some effect will remain for some time, the majority will pass pretty quickly--remember, I'm a geologist, and reckon time a little different than some--but mostly in 3-5 years. The remainder will take longer, and there will be traces left unless and until the shorelines erode away.
I think the problem is that nature doesn’t repair itself AS QUICKLY as we humans would like for it to.
Even Chernobyl will be safe and wonderful someday....
not in MY lifetime though.
“Early on in this I said the wetlands should get priority over the beaches. Not only are beaches less intricate, but reworked sand has a much less intricate fauna than wetlands.”
Good point and one thing that has pissed me off from day one of this disaster is that the popular media hype will be focused on oil on the beaches of Florida and not wetlands and estuaries of Louisiana.
Oil on the beach means that hotels in the area lose business and families must alter vacation plans, oil in those wetlands means that species will be set back and our seafood supply will be drastically reduced.
TY for the ping. I hope that is the case, I fear this is far worse. The Corexit will kill the microbes that eat the oil.
“Another example of the audacity of humanity vs. the reality of creation.”
Great quote!!
good point
The event occurred 31 years ago. The recovery was complete long, long before that, so long ago nobody seems to even remember it. At least nobody in the media and none of the 0bama-sucking anticapitalist BP bashers around here (FR) who claim the gulf is dead. Dopes.
I need to look up whoever made those little towelette packages and buy some stock.
Thus far, the main comparison, accurate comparison, we can make between these two events is they’re both big.
We don’t know what we’ve got with Deepwater yet, just lots of increasing flows, failed attempts and theories on what the situation with the seabed and lining and field and pressure.
Locations are very different - both in what ecosystems are impacted and the vertical depths.
They’re both big, how big Deepwater is we don’t know yet. The composition of what’s coming out and the result of it and the disperants we don’t know yet. And so on..
31 years?... How about 3-4 years. By 1982, the beach (Galveston as an example) was basically just random tar balls every few feet apart or so. Everyone basically knew to take baby oil to wipe it off when you left. Mother Nature’s healing powers are a lot more powerful than everyone realizes.
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