Atlantic: What if we never run out of oil?

10% of the Gulf of Mexico is a hypoxic dead zone. Simple fact. That is disaster that existed prior to BP disaster on top.

In the Exxon Valdez disaster, minor in comparison to BP, the herring stocks crashed in the fourth year and never recovered and Alaska waters were not already 10% dead.

The current headline, as you saw, was of fishing disaster TODAY vs.the one year after articles you gathered. Oysters were nearly totaled killed off as the oil, due the volume and the dispersants, has gotten on everything. The oyster sprat cannot attach to anything and died off.

The Gulf environment is likely doomed from the BP blowout due to the stressed state it was in with the 10% dead zone growing by 1% total (10% growth rate) per year on top of BP oil.

Note the the "recoveries" were to previously record low catches mostly because they fish could not be caught due to oil mess. The remaining adults who survived gone, the fish, shellfish stocks are falling as the breeding cycles and basic food chain are disrupted.

 

The biggest hurt seems to be to muck dwelling creatures, oysters, crab, etc.
Those numbers, according to the media link posted, are down 15-30%.
We don't know the long term affects of the oil and dispersants. But I agree, the extreme statements won't help as they are easily show to be wrong and then hurt your position rather than helping it.

 

We cannot fix complex problems with the Gulf if we only think one thing is the source of all problems. Oil pollution is a problem. Overfishing is a BIG problem. Habitat loss is a problem. Fertilizer pollution is a problem. Likewise, draconian solutions can cause problems. Stopping all oil extraction may be a great goal, but trying to accomplish that as one instant ban tomorrow is not going to happen. Stopping all fishing and fertilizing is not happening. Don't expect a ban of all human develop along the entire Gulf Coast either. Those attempts will only result in nothing happening.....the worst answer of all. That is why your hyperbole is actually not helping you.

 

Many US policies seem to be for R&D and help for manufacturers. Those are the ones that I say are not productive.

policies to get more solar installed would help. That doesn't mean they need more money per kw. Solar is already the most subsidized per kwh, but the money is not spent well. Regulations to put up more solar and things like a FIT would be more productive.

I was thinking of this article
Cut The Price Of Solar In Half By Cutting Red Tape - Forbes

They have a handy chart. Other things point to the benefits of a fit versus a subsidy, but right now in the US most of it is in the form of subsidies and net metering.

119,000 Reasons Why Solar is a United States' Success Story - Forbes

And you might see that solar and wind increased with the cheap natural gas Natural gas plants are less expensive to build, and gas in a ccgt plant can be throttled back and easily turned off to work with renewables. Renewables don't work as well with coal, which can't change as much, and costs a lot of energy to turn off and on.

 

I certainly agree that blaming the other side will not solve problems ... nor will stopping petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer manufacturing. Hyperbole doesn't either. Part of figuring solutions is the reliability of facts:

BP Oil Spill Far Worse Than We Knew – These Are The Facts They Don’t Want You To Know | Addicting Info

When the tobacco industry tells you their product is safe - you believe their truth at your own peril. The tobacco industry might say your warnings are hyperbole.

I'm just sayin' . . . . .

 

Depending on BP to provide a factual account of what happened is insanity. An advocacy group "discovering" that BP is trying to put corporate profits first is like revealing a bank robber steals money from banks. On the other hand, who provides the checks that advocacy groups are not engaging in excessive claims? That's sometimes just as hard. The only answer is exactly what you said about getting the correct facts. Not easy, but doable.

 

So what is the solution?

 

1) Paid reporters seem to have a lower truth rate than the free sources I rely on. If the advantage of 'real journalism' is their veracity they are pissing it away. When was the last real piece of investigative reporting you saw? That is, a case where actual knowledge was increased, not going out to find 'facts' that support a previous conclusion, or asking a bunch of people what they thought.

2) Science can be funded in myriad ways. I am willing to bet we could kickstarter a trip to the moon. Government has really only been funding science for a few decades, as opposed to paying scientists to produce bigger and better bombs. In that time it has become inconceivable that anything else could work?

 

"10%" is not equivalent to "mostly". Simple fact. Your hyperbole is destructive.

Giving the spill a fully equal share of blame for a prior disaster doesn't help either.

The story, as you saw, mentions only oysters, crab, and unnamed 'some other commercial species' being disastrously down.

But the same story also mentions 'strong post-spill seafood catches' (species unnamed) and 'much of the Gulf's seafood industry has rebounded'. "Things's changing, and we don't know what's happening yet,".

Things have changed, some stocks and economic bases are suffering very badly. But many others have rebounded very well. Your ProximalSuns-style 'mostly dead zone' hyperbole is destructive.

 

Maybe it's me but 10% dead zone is too much. I'm not in support of that.

 

Keep maturing the solutions that are starting and continuing to develop. We actually have a lot of really good progress starting to occur. Here is what is happening in the Gulf:

1) Monitoring and understanding what is causing what. That means seeing where the pollution sources are, what they consist of, and what economically viable answers work best to eliminate them. Specifically monitoring sealife populations with tagging, tracking, remote sensing and whatever technologies work. Industrial facilities can be toxic waste sites or can be made rationally non-polluting. It may sound strange, but the BP disaster allowed a big leap forward to happen in this region. Too bad it had to be a destructive disaster to accelerate what should have been done earlier.

2) Regulating sea catches of ALL things. You can destroy an entire ecosystem by just destroying one species. This is starting to happen. Regulations only initially addressed big fish and fishing technology (e.g. gill net bans). Now it is understood that even things like coral reefs must be protected to have big fish to regulate. Regulating does not mean just setting limits, it also means setting up economic incentives to have fishermen self-regulate.

3) Ceaseless education that the right answers serve everyone. Total banning of all fishing is a needless economic disaster. Destruction of fishing stocks is a needless economic disaster. Same with oil, habitat development, fertilization, and every other economic activity that affects the environment. If a sustainable answer is not found......

Bottom line is getting rid of the dead zone requires a prime focus on fertilizer use. Getting rid of industrial pollution requires a prime focus on industrial legislation. Preventing overfishing requires broadly integrated catch controls. Yet none of this requires much change in government spending if done right.

 

It's not you. It's 10% too much. Period.

Quick question, is your picture of the Gulf Dead Zone effect or Red Tide? These are very different bad things and that looks like a red tide die off.

 

In the case of the spill, BP was "directed" to provide most of the science funding to examine the effect of the spill. It was a lot of money. Hopefully, not a source to depend upon, but one none the less.

 

I agree with you, 10% is too much.
However, people (not you) saying is is 'most' or all of the gulf hurt the cause of addressing the 10% as it gives ammo to the deniers.

Reality is bad enough, why exaggerate?

 

It seems that near the coast is where most people recreate with the Water. If the pollution is killing fish, how sick can it make humans?

 

I thought the BP spill damage hit the Florida shores? Did it make it to Tampa?

 

Nothing big came close to Tampa. However, some small slicks and spills made it to the Florida panhandle and a number of very small tarballs showed up further away. All in all FL was spared. It was Louisiana that took the brunt of the spill. Cleaning oil out of the sandy beaches (a lot of FL coasts) is painful but possible. Cleaning oil out of wetlands and marshlands (nearly all of the LA coasts) is virtually or actually impossible.

 

Very sick. The number one thing that kills nearly everything living in the water is a FL Red Tide outbreak. Red Tide occurs many places in the world, but the FL versions generate a powerful neurotoxin that can show up in oysters and other shellfish. Human deaths are rare, but severe respiratory and gastric problems are common. The expected cause for the increased outbreaks could be fertilizer runoff. This is where the increased monitoring discussed earlier comes into play to figure out all the factors involved. The other effect is all the decaying sealife washing onshore makes for a very nasty, smelly, and repulsive beach experience. Been there, done that. If nothing else, it does act as a wakeup call to many who ignore where we dump our waste.

 

Redtide in San Diego is an Algae boom. It lasts about a Week. At night the water glows where the waves break. I'm not a marine biologist but I believe it may be problematic.

I do not recall dead fish on shore from red tide, the Florida version may be more toxic