serega

Has anyone knowledgeable been following this story ? It seems to me that the real consequences of this blunder even at this stage are being well-hidden. Isnt it just recently that the scientists were saying that the addition of fresh water from melting polar ice caps can affect the circulation of currents and make serious changes to the climate ?
Also, arent oceans one of the eco-systems that really need to be well balanced to work properly and even a slight change in ph can destroy many life-forms?


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How would the ice caps melting cause all of this to happen? Fresh water and sea water have different densities. They freeze at different temperatures. They act in different ways. When the ice caps melt (using the northern hemisphere as an example) the millions of gallons of fresh water can displace the salt water.
This can cause the Gulf Stream to change its course. Even a slight change can lead to a snowball effect. The first minor change is followed by more and more changes."

According to recent news,

"It's Day 35 of this fatal incident. Our estimated spill rate of 1.1 million gallons (26,500 barrels) per day, now on the conservative end of the scientific estimates, leads us to conclude that almost 39 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf so far."

So, besides being seriously toxic to life-forms what other possible dangers can we expect from. Obviously the density and the consistency of oil are quite a bit different from the ocean water, but i've read nothing about how this can affect anything so far.. For some reason i have a pretty bad feeling about this.

Also, im not a green minded fanatic and tend to dismiss global warming reports and crap like that, but this one seems different and what bothers me is that the media seem to be relatively quiet about this catastrophe with only the usual copy/paste press releases and no real reporting, which is not a good sign..

Brun

**** all i can do about it so quite frankly - don't give a ****. Life is too short to worry what might be.......

speedking

39m gallons = a cube with sides 56m long. Plot that on a map of the Gulf and it doesn't look that big. It's nowhere near enough to start changing densities any significant amount.

dpb

i kinda lost confidence when they said they were going stuff the hole with old golf ***** an ticky tacky

Leslie

It is obviously a very serious incident and going by what they are seeing so far, the effects on the sea area are pretty bad and since the oil is going to keep charging out of that pipe for some time to come, it looks as though the overall effects on the gulf and its wild life will be very long lasting. It will have a very bad effect on the local sea food industry of course. It is very toxic.

Of course I cannot say exactly what the future holds for the Gulf but whatever does happen, it can't be a good thing! Whether there will be far reaching effects as you say is hard to say, I bet even the really knowledgeable scientists don't know let alone the likes of us.

Les