Six remote control vehicles, monitoring the sub surface, have not detected oil since Friday morning. BP scientist have been conducting a seismic survey of the area surrounding the well to get a more detailed view. The results will be available today. Nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill

Scientists try to make sense of low well pressure- The Denver Post
A low pressure reading could mean oil is escaping- Business Week

Engineer Ken Price has just reported that he is moving his family away from the Gulf. He quotes at henry makow.com that "There are cracks in the sea floor leaking, and the pressure tests are revealing that the casing is not holding. It has already been perforated in numerous places. We also have a methane reading of 30%. If this continues the sea bed can swell than comtract and cause a major tsuami."

Whoa!

I believe this possibility. And it makes me so damn angry! I am not a scientist and these folks know so much more than me. And for years people like this have been telling it like it is in terms of the possible ramifications of this kind of drilling. To no avail (deaf, billion dollar ears) and to just be considered nut-cake nay-saying tree-huggers. One hell of a way for them to come up right! So much damage and potential illness to all of us. And politics as usual.

ok.............Aj.........where are you.........

I have been without technology (most on purpose) since Friday morning.........

Supposedly some engineer who worked for an oil company (what company? what kind of engineer? etc.) wrote an email to a web site (the subtitle or the web site is "Exposing feminism and the New World Order"). Of all the web sites in all the world, why would this engineer - if he exists - send this information to a fringy wingnut? The story was republished on another equally fringy freak site. If you google this supposed engineer you get three hits - the two tin foil hat sites, and, thanks to shoddy fact checking, us. What lovely company we now get to keep.

I'm no expert, but I imagine that a methane gas leak might be something akin to a submarine volcano. These volcanoes are quite common and rarely cause tsunami activity. There's one that's been active for decades in Lesser Antilles (named Kick 'em Jenny); the worst thing it's caused from what I've read so far is a 2M wave that took out a road. There's huge scientific debate right now about a possible tsunami in Italy from a submarine volcano, but that one involves a massive collapse of the ocean floor. That sort of activity is more in keeping with ocean floor movement that accompanies earthquakes - activity that does cause tsunamis.

Does that help?

yes ma'am it certainly does help...........

Immensely.

Everyone should do their homework before posting anything anywhere. That's how knuckleheads get traction.

And now a little good news...
 

So evidently the surface oil is clearing much more quickly than anyone expected and, while we naturally should have concerns about long-term impacts, this whole situation is looking more hopeful...

Of interest to me in this article...evidently the Gulf has thousands of natural oil seeps and, as a result, also has bacteria present that "eat" oil.

Interesting read from the NY Times right here.

Argh.... so, you think safety regulations are honored by oil companies in the Gulf?

Wed Jul 28, 1:50 pm ET
NEW ORLEANS – Oil, natural gas and water are still spewing from an abandoned well hit by a barge on a Louisiana waterway near the Gulf of Mexico.

Crews work to cap new La. oil leak near Gulf

Coast Guard Capt. John Arenstam says a wild well company is working on a plan to shut down the well, which is north of Barataria Bay and has been leaking since early Tuesday.

Authorities had already been working there to avoid contamination from the much larger BP oil spill in the Gulf. Arenstam expects the company to present its shutdown plan at some point Wednesday.

It's not clear how much oil has spewed from the damaged wellhead but local officials say it's a minuscule amount compared to the BP spill.

The Coast Guard says a towboat was pushing the barge on Mud Lake when it hit the wellhead. The towboat captain told investigators the well was not lit as required.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100728/ap_on_re_us/us_oil_well_accident

Popcorn:

I know you're probably getting very weary of this and I can understand why. However, as long as you continue to put up histrionic posts with NO sourcing and NO links to reputable information sites then I will have no choice but to continue to do this.

Firstly, yes there are cracks in the sea floor however that is the *last* piece of actual information in this post. The rest is nothing but breathless fear mongering.

The 'methane reading of 30%' is meaningless meant to *sound* like data without actually being about anything. The methane reading is 30% of *what*, Popcorn? Are you saying that 30% of the gases in the Gulf of Mexico is methane? Are you saying that the methane gas level is 30% above normal? If it's the latter, that's actually not that big a deal because--wait for it--methane is dissolved in water! If it's the former then that figure is something somebody conjured up out of thin air because the last numbers, in one spot, was that the methane concentration (which is different than your 'methane reading' in that concentration actually *means* something) is 1,000,000 times above normal background. However, this was in one area, not far from the Deepwater Horizon site and in other surrounding areas, the methane concentration was either at or lower than background levels.

Secondly, one more time---THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE A TSUNAMI--it isn't going to happen Popcorn. It just isn't. The sea floor *does* have cracks in it but the crust of the Earth is not perfect and there are cracks and fissures all around the sea floor.

Thirdly, the person who actually proposed the 'killer methane' hypothesis to explain, for instance, the late-Permian extinction (500 mya) is on the record as saying that he rejects the hypothesis that a methane explosion is imminent in the Gulf of Mexico because--and I want to make this perfectly clear because this point is really, really important--his theory deals with an entirely different methane compounds than are present in the Gulf of Mexico. Your posts assume--entirely incorrectly as it turns out--that methane is methane but that is not the case. There are various methane compounds and the kind of methane compound that might have built up and then was rapidly released into the atmosphere causing a large reduction in biodiversity is *not* the kind of methane compound found in the Gulf of Mexico. It simply is not. Here is Dr. Gregory Ryskin himself:

I also want to emphasize that in my theory, methane hydrates (clathrates) do not play any role.

So who should we believe? The man who actually proposed the theory that rapid release of methane caused a mass extinction and who has a faculty page (linked above) where you can actually go and check his cred or some guy who is nothing more than a name without any affiliation?

Lastly, the idea that the sea floor on the Gulf of Mexico is fractured beyond all repair is a hypothesis with *very* little actual support. There is a lot of breathless histrionics and verbal hyperventilation about it but actual empirical support? Not so much.

Science, Popcorn, is a process that proceeds--sometimes in a drunkard's walk fashion--toward higher levels of certainty while never reaching a point where certainty = 1. Just quoting some random numbers, pulled out of a hat does not make those numbers data. Claiming that someone is an engineer and *therefore* we should take that person seriously is an argument from authority and if that is the only support for your argument--and in this case your conjecture that we are on the verge of a massive methane blow-out is your argument--is almost certainly wrong. The only real support you have for this conjecture is that someone who claims to be an engineer, but does not say what kind of engineer he is*, who he works for, says that he is moving his family from the Gulf because 'the methane reading is 30%'. That's no support at all. I could claim that all is well because Carl Sagan once said that humanity is extinction proof. Does that mean that, in fact, we are extinction proof? No.

Lastly, to return to the issue of throwing numbers around as if they mean something. If I say that atmospheric oxygen readings are 20.2%! Have I said anything? No, although it appears that I have. Am I saying that atmospheric oxygen is 20% higher today than yesterday or am I saying that atmospheric oxygen is 20% of the total gaseous makeup? However, if I say "the Earth's atmosphere is 20% oxygen" NOW I have said something useful. Saying "methane readings are at 30%" sounds like you are saying something and on first glance it seems that you might be but we don't know what you mean by 30%.

When you are talking about a scientific topic--and everything that is NOT about BP or how the US government has handled this disaster is, in fact, a scientific topic--it is important to define your terms and make it clear what you are saying. Your post does not do this. Instead, it simply relies on fear to drum up more fear or other strong emotions which, it would appear, you accomplished with at least one person. Good for you! Instead of providing useful information you provided fear.

*Actually from what I could find--which is the same breathless article posted and reposted all over the Tin Foil Hat-o-sphere--he is a mechanical engineer. He does not, however, say which oil company he worked for.

Aj; Why do you think our government is restricting our awareness of this profound event? it's a hard lesson for all of us to learn.

Popcorn:

So now you're going to try to change the subject? I have not said anything about the government's behavior. Do I think that the government is trying to cover BPs corporate ass? Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. However, that is a *separate* issue from the breathless conspiracy-minded, fear mongering of your jeremiads about methane explosions and tsunamis. These are *separate* issues. In fact, one of the problems I have with the fear-mongering--and it IS fear-mongering--is that it distracts from real concerns (government underreporting of the toxicity of the dispersants, BPs continuing and historical malfeasance, etc.) and puts the attention on non-issues. The methane-bubble-will-kill-us-all meme is a distraction. It is the *least* likely major consequence of this disaster. The government isn't keeping this from the public, there's quite simply nothing to keep. As I pointed out, the type of methane compounds found in the Gulf of Mexico (methane hydrates) are *not* implicated in the great methane bubble explosion theory of extinction.

Now, is the government not stating the true risk of toxicity of the dispersants? Most certainly they are. Are they underestimating the final economic impacts? Almost certainly. Are they clamping down on BP and every other major corporation as they should? Most certainly they are not. However, what good does it do to whip up fear of an event that isn't going to happen? There is certainly lots to be upset with about this disaster However, spreading disinformation--and incorrect information is a form of disinformation--does no one any good.

So, back to the topic at hand. If the person who developed the methane bubble hypothesis says that the kind of methane compounds involved in his model of extinctions and the methane compounds in the Gulf of Mexico are so different that the latter are no kind of threat for the kind of catastrophe described by the former, why should we not give that more weight? Why should we trust the word of this engineer over the word of the man who developed the hypothesis? Why is it that we should focus our attentions on events that are so unlikely that their probability is not far from zero while not *actually* being zero when there are events whose probability is much closer to 1 that should have our attention.

I've answered your questions, popcorn, is there some reason that you are deserving of having your questions answered directly without changing the subject while I am undeserving of the same courtesy from you?

I am not pro-government, popcorn nor am I anti-government. I am pro-facts and pro-reality. What I stand opposed to is allowing bad memes to spread without challenge.

Cheers
Aj

Aj, I think you've hit the nail on the head here...

We should have some major concerns about this situation, but panic-spreading "ain't it awful" scenarios isn't the most effective use of our time and focus.

I believe that we need to be doing some serious examination of safety standards and compliance with regard to offshore drilling, as well as ensure that we aren't poisoning ourselves with dispersants as we try to clean up the mess.

For me, government's primary focus right now should be to ensure that this scenario never occurs again, and that we are better prepared to handle spills in an effective, safe manner.

I don't see any evidence that BP has turned over a new leaf as a good corporate citizen...and that's a bigger concern to me than the ravings of any particular individual looking for their "moment in the sun" on the internet.

Jo:

This is precisely my concern with all kinds of rumour and fear mongering--that it distracts from the genuine issues. From the 9/11 Truther to the Birthers to now, I dunno, the Oilers(?) the conspiracies serve as a distraction from the genuine issues. If there is, for instance, a giant methane pocket that is going to explode, release lethal levels of methane into the atmosphere and cause a Permian-style extinction there is nothing anyone can do about it. Not a damn thing. We would be as powerless in the face of that disaster as 19th century people would have been in a K-T extinction-sized rock (about the size of Manhattan island) were to have slammed into the Atlantic ocean in 1850. There would have been a day of terror and then years of eerie, eerie silence. So if that kind of event is going to happen, worrying about it does absolutely no one any kind of good.

On the other hand, we *can* do something about letting corporations run rampant across the social and physical landscape, having the pretense of personhood when convenient (being able to make campaign contributions in the name of 'free speech') but magically shedding personhood when inconvenient (liability or criminal violations). That struggle may be difficult, it may be grueling, it may even take a long time and require constant vigilance lest we are once again lured by the siren's song of unrestrained, unregulated capitalism but it is a *winnable* struggle.

I like to draw a distinction between engineering problems and hard (or scientific) problems. How, if at all possible, to prevent a giant release of methane from 5000 feet under the sea is a scientific problem. If it were a threat (and here I have to reiterate that it is not a threat in the Gulf of Mexico) there would be lots of basic science to be done just so that we could reduce the problem down to one of engineering. What to do about corporate control of the United States is, on the other hand, an engineering problem. By that I mean that we *know*, at least in broad outline, the shape of the solution and the real problem is how to get from here to there.

BP should face both civil and criminal penalties and it is nothing short of a travesty that the top brass at BP and its board are not fearing for the very future of their company. We can do something about that. But if everyone along the Gulf coast were to be panicking and trying to get away from the Giant Methane Bubble that Ate New Orleans then that energy and media attention will be taken up with an event caused by a non-probable issue while the real-world, probable events and actual crisis are ignored.

Cheers
Aj
(Proud member of the reality-based community)

Methane escapes to the atmosphere all the time. The thing is is that the actual science behind the hysteria is really quite interesting. I apologize for the derail but this is really cool stuff and, I think, provides a useful counterpoint to the "oh my god we're all gonna die!" stuff.

There have been 5 major mass extinctions in the history of life on this planet and we are in the middle of the sixth. They are (from most recent to least):

1. Holocene event 12,000 - present. Most likely cause: Us
2. K-T extinction 65 mya. Most likely cause: Meteor strike
3. Triassic-Jurassic extinction 205 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown. Possible meteor strike
4. End Permian event 251 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown.
5. Late Devonian 360 - 375 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown
6. End Ordovician 440 - 450 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown

So the three oldest extinctions we don't know why. The one everyone wants to figure out is the End Permian because that was huge. By way of comparison the K-T extinction (the one everyone knows because it took out the dinosaurs) took down 17% of all families, 50% of all genera, and 75% of all species. The End Permian extinction took out 57% of families, 83% of all genera, 96%! of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species. An event that big--and that is as close to life has come to being wiped out since bacteria got things booted up--begs an explanation. The interesting hypothesis which seems to have the *best* data to support it is that there was a huge sudden release of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas and there is a 6 degree C rise in temp at the right place in the geological record.

That's the background behind this whole methane bubble hysteria. The thing is, the methane compounds that may have caused the Permian event are not present in the Gulf of Mexico in any significant amounts and they are *not* the form of methane compounds being detected in elevated levels.

Look, both the Universe and the Earth would be perfectly happy to see us all go. Hell, the Universe positively *wants* to kill us--big rocks, gamma-ray bursts, galactic collisions, the Sun expanding and that's just the ways I can think of off the top of my head. It is endless in its creativity of ways to shuffle our species off this mortal coil. The Earth isn't that much more benign toward our presence. But this man-made catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico isn't a threat to the species. It's a threat to a way of life and it *should be* (but won't be) a threat to BPs continued existence but it isn't an extinction level event by any stretch nor will it precipitate one.

Cheers
Aj

I'm gonna guess that we'd all be hard pressed to find an instance where any government made it's citizenry aware of all of the details of a negative-impact event during said event.

If that example exists in history, I have yet to see it. I wonder if it has occurred to some of the conspiracy folks that part of the government's silence is that they simply don't know. We throw around words like 'unprecedented' but this event is truly something unlike anything that has happened before.

Cheers
Aj
(Proud member of the reality-based community)