The Glade 4.0

Similarly, if you come to a forum and say you know very little about the situation, don't accuse others of "being trite in the face of a crisis" when they try to help you understand it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Just a suggestion, but if you feel you don't know much about the topic at hand, asking questions and listening before forming strong opinions usually helps with not pissing people off.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

The two are not similar. LK's comment was said with a history behind it, right or wrong. Elmo's was out of left field for whatever reason popped into his head.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Which is why I'm explaining it, or attempting to, rather than just going off on ya'z.



Allow me to set up a hypothetical.

I'm a company, we'll call me Widgetz R Us. My RD division has learned that our newest widget has a 5-10% chance of chopping the hands off of its user accidentally. I issue a recall notice because I don't want to get sued. Am I going to use the 5% number of the 10% number?

Now I'm a lawyer. My client has been harmed (by having their hands cut off) by the newest widget from Widgetz R Us. I learn the risk range is 5-10% as well, through an insider source. When I hold a press conference about it, which number am I going to use, the 5% or the 10%?

The point is that in any given situation, including a crisis that can cost millions or billions of dollars and/or human lives, people are going to have a vested interest one way or another. If you have an interest in the topic, and in the truth beyond the topic, you must find a way to see through those people's interest(s). This means finding more than one source. If all the sources are exactly the same figure, I'd start looking at the root source. In this case, it sounds like all these sites have the same root: the government. What this means is that you've found one party's number. Just remember, that party, simply by being involved will have a vested interest one way or another. Therefore, it would be critical at this stage, if you're trying to find the truth behind the topic, to find another root source from another party.

This is part of why many people decry the media. "Cross-referencing", "unverified sourcing", and "sole-source material" are all too prevalent from the two major parties.



Given what I said above, you must consider the following:
1) Are those articles well sourced?
2) Are the authors independent, or if not independent, clear about their personal biases?
3) Photographs can lie. Very easily, actually.



I don't know if they're blowing it out of proportion. I simply know that they have the motivation to do so and a history of doing so in similar disaster situations.

Additionally, being a "big oil spill" isn't the bottom line until we determine a few things, such as: 1) how "big" is it really, 2) what are the impacts going to be, and 3) what solutions exist for the situation?



I don't believe you've ever pissed me off, because you actually appear to listen, even if you disagree. It's those who don't at all who are people I tend to have flare-ups with.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

See, how am I not allowed to say that I think that it's trite? Arrrrggg!! Talking about anything except boobies and movies around here is so difficult sometimes!
What I was trying to say is, I think that worrying about who is putting a slant on what for future political gain seems rather silly when the thing that we should be focusing on is stopping an oil spill and cleaning it up.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

DFK I'm reading your respnse...gimme a few, I'm rather slow. Thanks for your patience.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Ok, I think I get what you are driving at, DFK, in fact I do believe that I chose the biggest number myself when I was looking through the articles although I didn't really stop to think that I was being biased or something by doing so, I just thought that I was putting an exclamation on my point by using the biggest number that I found.
However, in this particular case, considering the magnitude of the oil spill do the exact numbers really make that big of a difference on the cleanup and damage? I mean, its kind of hard to estimate millions of gallons and isn't it sort of nitpicky/trite/whatever to argue over an exact number when an exact number doesn't really seem to make that much of a difference on this scale? I mean, if the government is saying 2 million gallons a day and its actually 200,000 then yeah, but if its 1.8?
Now I've confused myself. Sheesh.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I try, and usually I just read, but every once in awhile I get really frustrated and I have a big mouth.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I think we all do.

The problem with the numbers is they have gone up quickly with little or no factual backing. What was reported several weeks ago as an amount that didn't even make the top 40 oil spills, is now somewhat higher up.

The fact that the spill seems to be getting worse (larger oil/day estimates) makes no logical sense- as the gasses escape from a reservoir, the power to drive the gasses out escapes as well.

For most wells at that depth, the top of the reservoir is gasses and light hydrocarbons.

I have yet to see any of these larger estimates with any facts behind them as to *why* they were made. I could have missed them, certainly.

But when every time I read something about the spill it labels it the worst environmental disaster ever to take place in the US, I become very jaded, very fast.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Because it came across like you were dismissing his argument simply on the basis that it has been used a lot, and that his points bored you.

I wouldn't exactly say that it was bad to say it was trite, but then I don't think Elmo's reply was out of line either.

Saying something is overused as a dismissal is a tricky thing to do- often the argument is overused because, in fact, it's something that happens a lot- like, say, people overestimating damages in order to get more attention payed to their cause.

And at this point, to most of us that live in Louisiana, the push for drastic cuts in offshore drilling is at least as big of a worry, if not bigger, than the damage from the spill itself. Cutbacks like that would push our unemployment, which is already quite low, into an enormous slump.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Internal BP memo says worst-case scenario is worse than any external estimates...100,000 barrels a day.. 42 gallons in a barrel buts that at 4.2 million gallons a day.

nevermind - Farsky beat me to it.

And again, that's a *worst case* estimate. I haven't ever seen anybody reporting on the low end of the estimate range.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

And compared to the estimates of the reservoir size, it can't keep up that kind of flow for long.

Interestingly, I heard a talk by a biologist at the Lawrence-Berkley National Labs...

He said that in every oil spill he's studied, attempts to do any repairs past skimming and absorbing excess oil have always led to more damage then just letting the environment deal with it on its own.

Oil spills without major intervention show full recovery in about 5 years, whereas oil spills with intervention (surfactants, etc) take much, much longer to recover.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I respect LK too much to treat her with kid gloves. I suspect Elmo fels the same way. That said, some of NephyrS's comentary is legitimate.

LK, I love you to death, but, as a rule, any opinion worth having is worth understanding. You owe it to yourself to be able to defend your positions and beliefs. You are more than bright enough to do so. Don't take what Elmo says as an insult, take it as a challenge.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Ok, let's look at really, really low estimate. Let's say, 5,000 barrels a day, which is much less than what they are capturing now, and there's still a leak.

I have not seen a single estimate below 5,000 barrels a day, ever. This was an initial estimate before more data was available, and was quickly revised upward.

Hopefully we can all agree that this is a low estimate.

Now, 5,000 barrels a day * 42 gallons per barrel = 210,000 gallons per day. At this rate it would take 43 days to total the 9,000,000 gallons of oil mentioned above from Katrina (which was, interestingly enough, not referenced and left unquestioned by the same folks questioning the estimates in this thread).

So, 43 days to equal the 9 mil estimate, at the lowest leak estimate released to date. It's been much longer than 43 days, and again, the leak is very likely more than 5k barrels a day. Can we all agree now that this spill has significantly exceeded the 9 mil that was "absorbed with little damage" (again, haven't seen this reference) after Katrina?

The 9 mil was a reference from a peer-reviewed journal, with full citations, and was cited in the previous thread on the issue and mentioned again here.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I think you're approaching it just fine LK. This is a good forum to dip your feet in so to speak. It's not that you're a "political retard", so dont sell yourself short. It's more of a matter of how much time people care to spend on these kinds of topics.

People who discuss politics are used to contentious debate. Politics are based on the controversial. If there were easy answers to all this crap it wouldnt be political. You'll find a lot of people talking at you, pretending they know instead of just believe. That's not a shot at anyone here, I catch myself doing it too.

All this is to say, i see many people get intimidated by what appears to be a high barrier of entry on political debates, dont sweat it.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Oh, I'm not arguing that this spill is less significant than that of Katrina. I'm just pointing out that *nobody* is doing anything but giving us worst case estimates, which leads me to believe that there's a bias here interested in sensationalizing rather than informing us.

And, honestly, knowing that the 9 million gallons were "absorbed with little damage" isn't really helpful, either, in comparing, without additional data that I, at least, haven't heard anybody going out of their way to get, or even estimate.

The 9 million gallons from Katrina was, for instance, absorbed in a much smaller area, because Katrina only really devastated the coasts of LA, AL, MI, and a bit of FL and TX. The talk of this spill's affected regions as currents within the Gulf spread it out are talking about hitting not just the panhandle of Florida, but down the coast to the south, as well as extending well into Texas and perhaps even affecting some Mexican coast. That's going to dilute the amount of oil that's hitting the coasts, so that even if this spill is 100x worse than the spills related to Katrina, it's not hitting as small an area of coast, so it may only be putting, say, 25x the amount of oil per mile of affected coast as Katrina did.

We also have very little idea about how saturated the ability of the local environment to absorb oil was by Katrina's 9 million gallons of oil. Did that just scratch the surface of the area's resiliency, or was it heavily taxed and nearly to the breaking point where it would not have recovered? We have no clue.

So really, my point is that politicians and their willing accomplices in the media repeating everything they say as gospel without asking really basic questions like "okay, that's the worst case, but what's the range look like?" are spinning this to sensationalize and terrify us into accepting and supporting their respective agendas even when there's so damn many unknowns here.

Do I know that this isn't a huge disaster? No, so I'm not contending it isn't. But what I do know is that I don't have enough information, and neither do the people handing out the information, to know that it IS, either.

Now, maybe you don't mind being told what to do by people who don't have a clue what's really going on, but I kind of bristle at it.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So you don't have to look back to the previous threads, hereis the 9 mil reference.

Also keep in mind that while smaller, a large portion of it was from refineries and thus was polluted with toxic chemicals that you would not find in the oil coming from this spill. In addition, more of it was a much heavier crude, as opposed to the very light crude that is coming from this spill.

I'm not saying that this spill isn't larger, I'm pointing to one of the most direct precedents for how this spill will effect the Louisiana Coastal Marshes.

It's important to remember here that light chain crude oil, by itself, is not chemically toxic- instead, it is physically toxic. Most the damage it does comes from physically coating things (ie, bird wings, plant leaves, the water so insects/larvae cannot penetrate it), which means that by and large, the damage is short term, not long term.

Most creatures (I'll use earthworms as an easy example) will not find the oil toxic to them once it has made it to the soil, and began to sink in. Earthworms thrive on mediums up to 50% used motor oil.

A lot of the problems relating to the Louisiana coast will not be direct environmental damage, but rather damage to our use of the environment. Oysters, for instance- it will likely not damage the oyster population to a significant degree, but it will be a long time before we deem these oysters fit for human consumption.

In fact, in some of the spill areas, the hold on oyster harvesting will probably allow them to regain some of the ground they've lost due to overfishing in the last 5-10 years.

Again, to re-iterate: It's not to say the spill is not a disaster, but I'm quite skeptical of the news reports talking about permanent, irreversible, long term damage to the coast.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

This is contradictory to your statement regarding the toxicity of oil. If it is, indeed, only a physical toxicity that is the issue, then there would not be any restrictions on seafood consumption. I agree that the toxicity of typical Class C crude oil is not high, but it is there. I'm not sure how this relates to buildup of toxic chemicals within organisms such as fish, or more significantly, filter feeders such as oysters. If toxic buildup is low, we may be able to reestablish the seafood industry shortly after the physical cleanup is complete. Otherwise we may see restrictions for a long, long time.

It is not contradictory.

The levels in an individual oyster are nowhere near enough to kill an oyster.

The levels are enough, however, for them to be considered unsafe for human consumption due to bioaccumulation.

A lot of it has to do with relative lifespans- the toxins that do exist in oils are usually hydrophobic (fat soluble), so they bioaccumulate well.

The amount that an oyster will take in over its lifetime (or even a fish) compared to the amount that a human who semi-regularly eats oysters will take in over their lifetime means that it doesn't kill the oysters, but we are not allowed to eat/sell them.

It's similar to a lot of heavy metal toxicities- often, we don't see fish dying due to the heavy metals (even though they are toxic), but fishing is restricted due to the risk to humans.

Hence, we don't consider it direct environmental damage, but rather damage to our use of the environment.

A similar scenario would be a sewage spill onto a field usually used to grow crops for human consumption- the land is not considered safe to grow crops on for (I think) 10 years in Louisiana, but the natural growth there usually thrives. We can't use the land to grow food, but I wouldn't exactly call it 'environmental damage' either.

Oysters are especially sensitive, as they can pick up minute amounts of oil from the water (being filter feeders) long after the majority of the oil in the water is gone.

In addition, I said light chain crude oil isn't toxic. It isn't, that I'm aware of. If you know of studies that show otherwise, I would be quite interested to see them. None of the environmental toxicologists I know have been able to direct me to any. There are contaminants *in* light chain crude oil that are toxic. And many of those compounds come from either the drilling process or treatment process. I have not yet seen a good breakdown of the composition of this oil. If you have, I'd be interested to see it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I know this but (see below)



I haven't looked. Again, what I'm getting at is that if there are no toxins, dangerous to human health, then the fishery should be reopened quickly, because there will be nothing to "build up" in the tissue of humans to the point where it's dangerous. I suspect that there will be toxicity issues, and that parts of the fishery will be closed for a significant period.

Well sometimes they are right though, remember the swine flu epidemic that was gonna kill us all? That wasn't sensationalized at all!

.... ok bad example.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

For reference, I'm waiting for thisstudy to be finished in the next few days as to the extent of pollution in the water. They collected water samples from a wide area, and throughout the water column that are currently being analyzed.

The initial report from the NOAA research vessel is interesting, in large part due to the huge number of natural seeps they discovered in the area surrounding the deepwater horizon well.

It's also quite fascinating how they are using modified ultrasound to detect oil patches in the water- quite innovative.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.