While I understand what you mean, they really do rail on about the slightest thing... The Gulf is a little different in that there really IS a lot of ‘fragile’ ecosystems affected by the Gulf. Most especially the swamps and marshes that are near the Gulf and the mouths of rivers. From what I understand, oysters are fragile too.
And regardless of what you think about liberals screaming about every frog and stupid minnow (I’m speaking of the San Juaquin (sp) valley losing water to keep a minnow ‘safe’), I really don’t want to eat fish, shrimp or anything else out of methane soaked waters. Not to mention if this could effect PEOPLE on the coast.
Last... I have posted a comment on several threads about the fear that methane was leaking from the gulf floor. Beyond the methane being the cause of the explosion, methane is scarier in a bigger way.
Methane is a carrier of hydrogen sulfides. Hydrogen sulfides is believed to be the cause of the dinosaur extinction as geological layering shows a layer of hydrogen sulfides at the time the dinosaurs became extinct. Scary scary stuff.
http://aapgbull.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/90/5/701
. Methane acts as a carrier gas for hydrogen sulfide produced by thermal sulfate reduction and/or thermal decomposition of sulfur compounds in kerogen or oil. Methane seeps in potentially explosive amounts, and hydrogen sulfide is over the levels necessary to induce toxicological diseases and lethal effects.
Rubbish
Hydrogen sulfide is considered a broad-spectrum poison, meaning that it can poison several different systems in the body, although the nervous system is most affected. The toxicity of H2S is comparable with that of hydrogen cyanide. It forms a complex bond with iron in the mitochondrial cytochrome enzymes, thereby blocking oxygen from binding and stopping cellular respiration.
Since hydrogen sulfide occurs naturally in the body, the environment and the gut, enzymes exist in the body capable of detoxifying it by oxidation to (harmless) sulfate.[6] Hence, low levels of sulfide may be tolerated indefinitely.
autumn —
I gotta stop you where you are. You wrote you didn’t want to eat seafood from “methane soaked waters”.
Methane is a gas. It is odorless, colorless AND tasteless, and it is NON-TOXIC. Methane would be undetectable to a human as a solute in ANY food or beverage. And it would be harmless. NET: there is no such thing as methane soaked waters, and even if there were, it is harmless to ingest.
BTW, every breath you take from the earth’s atmosphere contains methane, and it does you no harm.
Secondly methane is not a ‘carrier’ of H2S. ALL gases mix and dissolve in each other. That’s a physical gas law. The atmosphere is a ‘carrier’ of H2S— (H2S is also a gas, just like methane.) The presence or release of methane does not cause or act as a harbinger of a dangerous release of H2S. Don’t worry yourself that methane somehow makes H2S worse. Either the well releases H2S or it doesn’t — that’s a mix of geology and biology.
Bear in mind that the human nose is extraordinarily sensitive to H2S — we can smell it down to single digit parts per billion (IIRC). We smell it at low tide. We smell it in natural gas leaks (or derivatives of it) because the manufacturers add it to the odorless methane ... so we can detect the leak.
NET: don’t worry about H2S just because the well is releasing methane.
“Last... I have posted a comment on several threads about the fear that methane was leaking from the gulf floor. Beyond the methane being the cause of the explosion, methane is scarier in a bigger way.
Methane is a carrier of hydrogen sulfides. Hydrogen sulfides is believed to be the cause of the dinosaur extinction as geological layering shows a layer of hydrogen sulfides at the time the dinosaurs became extinct. Scary scary stuff.”
Don`t tell that to some in here. They prefer to keep their heads buried in the sand and believing everything is A-ok.