I heard Mark Shexnayder from the LSU Ag Center on the radio this morning. I didn’t catch his credentials, but he used a lot of big words, so I’m sure he knows what’s up. He said the gulf spews between 40 and 50 million gallons of oil a year naturally and that bacterial microbes eat it up. He said the bacteria in the gulf is evolved to munch down on methane and hydrocarbons, so that while the short term impact will be terrible, the long term impact should not be that severe. He said the microbes in Alaska aren’t as good as the one’s here at handling the hydrocarbons. I don’t know if the guy is a quack or not, but at least hearing him made me feel better.
Aside from me, the LSU AgCenter doesn't employ quacks. Mark is a marine biologist and one of his primary areas of focus in recent years has been coastal fisheries. I would feel confident in trusting whatever he had to say on it.
Two years. That's as long as it will take for the Gulf to recover. Stop over-reacting. This is not the Valdez...
Mark Schexnayder is no quack. He and I go way back to when he was with the wildlife and Fisheries at Grand Terre and I was managing the first commercial Redfish farms in the coastal zone. But don't take him the wrong way...I'm sure he's very concerned about long term impact on the wetlands. They were in death throes way before the BP spill....because of the way the corps of engineers manages the lower Mississippi river. The "Corpse" of engineers has the major role in the death of one fourth of all the wetlands in North America.
Gulf oil spill: Minerals Management Service gets a name change So the govt's answer is to just change the name of the MMS? Sheesh :dis:
I guess everyone calling it the "Minimal" Management Service prompted the change.:hihi: I posted a link to a spoof video a while back that revealed that BP was trying to change their name to BOS (Baby Otter Smiles :lol
That's approximately how long it took for the gulf to recover from the Ixtoc oil spill which was similar in size with the current leak/spill. The oil from the Gulf is a light crude that evaporates quickly. The Gulf is also packed with microbes that eat this oil, much more so than what we saw in Alaskan crude that was spilled from the Valdez. While this spill was man-made, oil leaking from the floor of the Gulf is a natural occurrence and as a result mother nature has evolved to handle it. We just threw more at it this year than normally occurs, so it's going to take longer. I don't intend to make light of the spill by any means. This is a horrific disaster and it could always be worse, but the region is by no means going to be crippled for generations because of this. There is simply no evidence to support this position.
In case anyone's interested, here's a video on how the relief wells are executed. Of course, since the video is a product of BP, they go out of their way to look confident and whatnot, but the video was interesting (to me) nonetheless. Relief Well Operations Overview - Kent Wells and Relief Well Team - 27 June 2010
