*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, July 5th, 2010 11:23am PDT - promote requested by geo321.

OMG, so we are going to die to the green goo zombie Apocalypse after all?

*Quality point of view!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Sagemind.

It is a lot like radioactive fallout, or the fallout from air dispersed biochemical weapons. The wind blows, then the chemical will disperse, some of that will land in strange places. Much like crop dusting, the wind can still blow that stuff over to a neighboring farm. In fact there's a term for crop dusting damage to other farms; Drift Damage. The consensus that I got from reading articles is that solid particles will drift farther than liquid; dust drifts more than liquid.

I'm supposing that has something to do with the density of water and dust. These are things you should think about before you go outside and use that weed killer on your lawn. I guess a good experiment would be to take a bucket full of sand and a wind source and let the sand fall with the wind blowing it. Then do the same for something of a liquid type. I think that the results would be clear.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf60023a614

Notable court case.
http://www.lawyersweekly.com/reprints/grg.htm

A search for Herbicide dift laws. Illinois has a law specifically for dealing with civil cases of herbicidal drift.
http://www.google.com/search?q=herbicide+drift+laws&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Below, herbicide drift damage.
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/plantsci/weeds/wc751w.htm

Pesticide drift.
http://www.midrivers.net/~fergusco/weed/Pesticide%20Drift.htm

[redacted]

*eco

Adding video to channels (Eco) - requested by dingens.

EPA. For the fail!

>> ^Mcboinkens:

He proposed a problem, but no solution. So he gets nothing. Stopping dispersants will keep the oil on the surface, and then it will just screw up the coastline. Dispersants will keep the coastline slightly more clear, but may harm creatures that live under the slick because it will create a column of oilwater.
Anyone could say dispersants are dangerous. This guy had nothing interesting to say except that one heartbeat a minute still gives an all clear rating by the EPA, and even that could just be big talk. He said he worked on those type of tests and has seen it before. Well, way to speak up before the spill. What other chemicals have been given an all clear when they are really toxic?



While it is always easier to poke holes in the boat rather than make it float, it still is valid concern. Moreover, what if breaking up the oil saves the beaches and kills the entire ocean for the next 200 years instead? These are questions you want the answers to before you start dumping millions of tons of chemical solvents in the ocean. Let it be known that all forms of corexit are not non-toxic. 2-Butoxyethanol, a main component of corexit is known to cause tumors in air breathing mamals after exposure. Heavy exposure via respiratory, dermal or oral routes can lead to hypotension, metabolic acidosis, hemolysis, pulmonary edema and coma. The cure in this case might be worse than the sickness. We might toxify (which isn't a word sadly even though detoxify is) the oceans to the point of causing a breakdown in the phytoplankton's ability to ability to survive in coastal waters for some generations.

The point is we don't know, the studies on corexit are limited, even by the EPAs own admission. This could be the equivalent of dumping cyanide in the base of the food chain for most life on the planet.

Wow, I totally misread the title. Not knowing what corexit is, I thought a specific type of Marine Biologist was being sprayed onto the Gulf. Why would you spray people there? Do you need to grind them up first?

Took me awhile to articulate what bothered me about this. The entire context we get from the editing of the clip is purely a commentary from a scientist stating that spraying the chemical on the oil spill is bad. My problem is that the relevant question is importantly different, to spray or not to spray. I'm not aware of anyone saying spraying is good, but more simply that spraying is better than that much extra oil hitting the shore. Sadly we don't see him speaking to that, only the more friendly to public outrage details of how horrible the spraying is.

Dumping millions and millions of barrels of oil into the environment is very bad for it. We live in a world that is not required to have a good solution to the problem. It's not even required to have ANY solution. Simply demonstrating and knowing that spraying is a bad solution does not prove that it may not still be the best that we've got, or at any rate a piece of the best we can get.

>> ^bcglorf:

Took me awhile to articulate what bothered me about this. The entire context we get from the editing of the clip is purely a commentary from a scientist stating that spraying the chemical on the oil spill is bad. My problem is that the relevant question is importantly different, to spray or not to spray. I'm not aware of anyone saying spraying is good, but more simply that spraying is better than that much extra oil hitting the shore. Sadly we don't see him speaking to that, only the more friendly to public outrage details of how horrible the spraying is.
Dumping millions and millions of barrels of oil into the environment is very bad for it. We live in a world that is not required to have a good solution to the problem. It's not even required to have ANY solution. Simply demonstrating and knowing that spraying is a bad solution does not prove that it may not still be the best that we've got, or at any rate a piece of the best we can get.


There are less toxic alternatives to Corexit that are more effective. In fact, the EPA has pushed BP to adopt a new dispersant called "Sea Brat No. 4". However, BP refused, on the grounds of a certain ingredient contains “potential endocrine disruptors” that “may persist in the environment for a period of years". This has been proven false, as the threshold for the ingredient to be considered toxic is 10% by weight, whereas the percentage in the Sea Brat dispersant is at 1.91%. Another is that they cannot obtain the quantity of the dispersant needed. This is false as well. There are thousands of gallons of alternative dispersant waiting to be shipped, with a manufacturing plant with sufficient capacity to produce large quantities everyday should BP need it.

On the other hand, a former BP executive sits on the board of Nalco, the manufacturer of Corexit. Just some food for thought.

>> ^Simple_Man:

>> ^bcglorf:
Took me awhile to articulate what bothered me about this. The entire context we get from the editing of the clip is purely a commentary from a scientist stating that spraying the chemical on the oil spill is bad. My problem is that the relevant question is importantly different, to spray or not to spray. I'm not aware of anyone saying spraying is good, but more simply that spraying is better than that much extra oil hitting the shore. Sadly we don't see him speaking to that, only the more friendly to public outrage details of how horrible the spraying is.
Dumping millions and millions of barrels of oil into the environment is very bad for it. We live in a world that is not required to have a good solution to the problem. It's not even required to have ANY solution. Simply demonstrating and knowing that spraying is a bad solution does not prove that it may not still be the best that we've got, or at any rate a piece of the best we can get.

There are less toxic alternatives to Corexit that are more effective. In fact, the EPA has pushed BP to adopt a new dispersant called "Sea Brat No. 4". However, BP refused, on the grounds of a certain ingredient contains “potential endocrine disruptors” that “may persist in the environment for a period of years". This has been proven false, as the threshold for the ingredient to be considered toxic is 10% by weight, whereas the percentage in the Sea Brat dispersant is at 1.91%. Another is that they cannot obtain the quantity of the dispersant needed. This is false as well. There are thousands of gallons of alternative dispersant waiting to be shipped, with a manufacturing plant with sufficient capacity to produce large quantities everyday should BP need it.
On the other hand, a former BP executive sits on the board of Nalco, the manufacturer of Corexit. Just some food for thought.


There, that is exactly what we need to be hearing from experts like this guy. I don't know if he never said it, or if it was just edited out. What matters though is that there is a very big problem that needs solutions. Poking holes in a solution without providing a better alternative though is NOT helping anyone. Even if the better alternative is simply to point out doing nothing is better than a proposal, at least it's helping.

I think he did propose a solution. He basically said "leave it as a two dimensional problem." The skimming and booming would all be easier to accomplish if all the oil is on the surface, rather than emulsified with the water.

[redacted]

@Mcboinkens I'm well aware of the limitations of booming and skimming. I think you're giving BP too much credit. When Halliburton looks like the responsible corporate citizen, you know somebody did something very, very wrong.

Incompetent booming (and we've seen exactly that) is no excuse for poor science. You don't seem to understand that there is NO SUCH THING as a guarantee in science. Instead, many corporate boards tend to look at the course of action which is most likely to yield the highest profits in the immediate quarter. In this case, the dispersants (which their buddies make btw) were a cheaper option than deploying properly trained and equipped boomers and skimmers.

I mean geez, why not just spray a bunch of dawn on that $hit? Heck, you can't see what's going on under that slick anyway, can you? Besides, our boys in the EPA and the MMS said it was cool...

Didn't you hear? Booming is for pussies.

There is no end to this oil, it is making to the beaches in spite of any spraying they are doing. So, the net effect is not only are the beaches already being ruined and will continue to be ruined, but we are also adding dangerous solvents to the ocean. Solvents are usable idea when you are talking about a defined spill. This spill hasn't even stopped. It is the equivalent of trying to mop while there is still a geyser in your kitchen. Solvents should be considered when you have a contained, defined mass of oil that is to large to spot clean with skimmers. Solvents shouldn't even be on the table when you are still leaking oil, the already existing oil isn't contained, there are vast quantities of oil blow solvent application levels, and the quantity of solvent needed to disperse the oil would kill all wildlife anyway.

*Talks.

Adding video to channels (Talks) - requested by Kevlar.

http://videosift.com/video/Water-Oil-analysis-of-Gulf-Coast-water

and here you have it, 150x the toxic level for fish because of the corexit. Well done BP, well done.