The environment thread

[Balta1701]

I'm not a petro engineer. Hopefully this is just some sort of accident on the rig and not another blowout.

Worth noting is that blowouts do not necessarily equate to large scale uncontrolled spills. However...there are enormous numbers of things that can go wrong when you're moving around explosive material under pressure. Particularly when you decide that safety inspections and requirements are an unnecessary cost and an inappropriate infringement upon liberty.

[Balta1701]

Serious question;

 

How far should the government be going right now in pushing for evacuations from Boston or NYC?

[FlaSoxxJim]

Storm's probably only going to be a Cat2 by the time it gets there, so I don't think it will come to mandatory evacuations outside of extreme low-lying areas.

[Rex Kickass]

Storm's probably only going to be a Cat2 by the time it gets there, so I don't think it will come to mandatory evacuations outside of extreme low-lying areas.

 

Plus, as of this morning the eye was supposed to past well east of the cities, limiting their exposure to Tropical Storm force winds and a lot of rain. More so in Boston, less so in NYC.

[Balta1701]

Plus, as of this morning the eye was supposed to past well east of the cities, limiting their exposure to Tropical Storm force winds and a lot of rain. More so in Boston, less so in NYC.

Even then though...the big risk for those cities is inundation, and that doesn't necessarily correlate with intensity at the time of impact.

[StrangeSox]

Ah s***.

 

[updated at 2:08 p.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Elizabeth Bordelon tells CNN there is a sheen at the site of the production platform that measures approximately 1 mile by 100 feet. This information comes after Gov. Bobby Jindal who said there were reports of a mile-long sheen.

[NorthSideSox72]

Let's hope that's just oil from the rig itself, so its terminal. If that's from below, well, f***.

 

[Balta1701]

This article ran yesterday. Mariner energy supposedly owned that platform.

Thousands of oil industry workers rallied on Wednesday to lift the moratorium on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and head off new taxes and punitive measures in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

 

Companies ranging from Chevron to Apache bussed in up to 5,000 employees to the Houston convention centre to underline to Washington the industry’s contribution to the country.

...

 

“I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this administration is trying to break us,’’ said Barbara Dianne Hagood, senior landman for Mariner Energy, a small company. “The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the gulf coast, gulf coast employees and gulf coast residents.’’

 

Organisers, which included the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s national trade organisation, said the oil and natural gas industry supported more than 9.2m jobs nationwide and accounted for 7.5 per cent of the US economy. It has invested nearly $2,000bn in US capital projects since 2000.

[Balta1701]

I'd never even heard of that person until I saw this.

I went with the first person I found, because that's sort of what was asked..."how long until".

 

Better examples are appearing today.

 

[StrangeSox]

LOL. Yep, they will use this guy to prove AGW is just a big fraud. You've already got enough fringe thinking eco-terrorists blew up the oil rigs.

[StrangeSox]

More from CNN:

"Jindal said that Mariner has told him that all seven wells have been closed off and that what is burning now is from fuel in storage, and not from an active leak."

 

Hopefully they're correct.

[Balta1701]

By the way...today's incident illustrates another point...accidents and injuries are extremely common on oil rigs. The former MMS logged 39 incidents in a 5 month stretch of 2009. No one would have ever heard of this incident had it not been for BP.

[EvilMonkey]

Can you say 'DOH!'

 

The Rev. Jesse Jackson came to Detroit last weekend pushing green jobs for the U.S. economy. On Monday, the Cadillac Escalade carrying him around the city was stolen and stripped. Does building replacement $1000 rims count as "green jobs?

 

http://jalopnik.com/5629715/jesse-jacksons...reen-jobs-rally

 

 

[Balta1701]

Somehow, someone's going to look at this and say it is the union's fault.

Union workers have been locked out at the uranium enrichment facility in Metropolis, Illinois for two months now after contract negotiations broke down over Honeywell's demand that workers give up their retiree health care coverage and pension plans. The Metropolis uranium facility is the only one in the United States that can convert U308 into the extremely deadly UF6.

 

Because the plant is the only conversion facility of its kind in the United States, familiarity with the Metropolis plant, and not just generic experience in the field, is essential to ensuring the plant's safety. Concerns have been raised by local community members and union officials that replacement workers at the Honeywell facility cannot safely operate the plant since they have no site-specific experience in this type of conversion facility.

 

...

On Saturday, nuclear regulators allowed Honeywell to start up core production at the facility, where core production had been shut down for over two months due to concerns about the training of replacement workers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission delayed reopening the plant for several days after questions were raised about the unusually high levels of uranium that were appearing in the urine tests of several nuclear workers.

 

The following day, a hydrogen explosion rocked the plant. The blast shook the ground in front of the plant and could be heard a mile away, according to local reports. State Trooper Bridget Rice said that police were called to investigate to the scene of the explosion after receiving several phone calls reporting an explosion at the plant. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Roger Hannah also confirmed that there was indeed "a small hydrogen explosion that was very loud" at the Metropolis facility.

 

The plant splits hydrofluoric acid into hydrogen and fluoride. The hydrogen then gets scrubbed and released into the atmosphere and fluorine goes into the process. If the hydrogen and fluorine recombine, it can be very reactive and cause a non-radioactive hydrogen explosion. On Saturday, hydrogen was accidentally recombined with fluorine causing a massive explosion that could be heard a mile away and leading to the plant being temporarily shut down.

[Balta1701]

[HuskyCaucasian]

My wife didn't understand the Leaf commercial (probably because she didnt see the beginning). I though it was brilliant.

Edited September 11, 2010 by Athomeboy_2000

[lostfan]

I kinda saw where the commercial was going when I was watching it, I thought it made its point pretty well though.

[greg775]

What a great commercial.

[Balta1701]

So...for whatever it's worth...after last night's primaries...every single Republican on the ballot for a Senate Seat in November is on the record as a global climate change denier, or at the very least is a signatory on a "do-nothing" pledge.

[StrangeSox]

Apparently some California utilities are coming out against Prop 23 (repeal of carbon emissions standards)

 

PG&E (of erupting gas line fame)

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfra.../12/story5.html

 

and now Sempra:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sempra-en...nk=MW_news_stmp

 

[Balta1701]

 

Link

[NorthSideSox72]

Link

At the end of the article:

 

UPDATE: The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries investigated the fish kill and determined that it was the result of low oxygen levels caused by low tides and high temperatures.

 

[Balta1701]

UPDATE: The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries investigated the fish kill and determined that it was the result of low oxygen levels caused by low tides and high temperatures.

And...why might I think that unusually high temperatures might be an environmental issue?

 

(it's probably not just low tides and high temperatures, it's probably those things combined with all the other environmental calamities that are producing the dead zones in the gulf...most specifically fertilizer runoff. The high temperatures just encourage microbes to eat the stuff faster).

[NorthSideSox72]

And...why might I think that unusually high temperatures might be an environmental issue?

 

(it's probably not just low tides and high temperatures, it's probably those things combined with all the other environmental calamities that are producing the dead zones in the gulf...most specifically fertilizer runoff. The high temperatures just encourage microbes to eat the stuff faster).

It is potentially tied to an environmental trend, I was just pointing out that the article was stuck on the oil thing, when in the end, it appears that was not the conclusion the scientists came to.

 

I am sure though that you are right, its multiple factors. Ecosystems are just so complex, its hard to ever pin a result on one specific cause.

 

[StrangeSox]

I thought it was an asphalt road at first. Horrible.