Quote:
Originally Posted by popcorninthesofa
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."
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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.