Uh Oh, Hurricane Season is already heating up

[DES]

There is a tropical wave out in the Atlantic that looks like it may develop into the first Tropical Storm of 2010, TS Alex. Invest 92L came off the African coast yesterday and already has a closed circulation and winds of about 25 mph. According to Dr. Jeff Masters of WunderBlog, (http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1505) only one named storm has formed in this area since 1979. Most storm this time of year form in the deep tropics, but higher than usual water temperatures near Africa has made this area ripe for storm formation.

Of course, scientists can only speculate what effect a tropical storm or hurricane may have on the oil spill when it enters the Gulf of Mexico. One consequence all can agree on is that a storm will significantly slow down recovery efforts, and that a storm surge will more than likely push oil further inland. This isn't going to be a fun season.

[Richard Tafoya]

The oil cap process underway now that is funneling a portion of the oil from the well to a ship will also need to be abandoned in rough seas.

[Java]

I believe they just need to go ahead and seal the riser shut with a quick methane hydrate buildup that could be produced by placing a smaller pipe down into the riser to about 500 feet below grade and pumping in sea water from the ocean floor into it to mix with the crude oil flowing upwards past it. Afterall methane hydrate has clogged up all their past efforts to extract oil to make a few bucks -- capitalism run amuck.

[DES]

There seems to be a problem with the integrity of the well casing, Java, which is why they shut down the top kill and sawed off the BOP. When they shot the mud down there, it didn't come back up like they expected which told them it was leaking out at spots in the casing further down. One of the scientists from Purdue who is on the team that is monitoring BP and the oil flow now, was just on CNN stating this. He said that you can't put a "stopper" in the top now because, basically, the well casing would lose its integrity altogether. He was a bit hesitant when Wolf Blitzer asked him if the well could fail and what that would mean, but it didn't sound good.

[Java]

That is why I suggested this be done well below grade, and if neccessary they can go down 1000 feet or even more inside the riser so long as they place fins on the smaller pipe that would help keep it pushed upwards by the flowing oil and weighing less as it goes deeper to counteract its increasing weight with length. Theoretically they could go all the way to the bottom, bypassing the need for drilling relief wells to do the same thing, and much faster too.

[Java]

Well they have a real mess down there now after one of the robots had a collision with the latest containment efforts... And as for the heavy mud and thus the oil now known to be still leaking out at spots in the casing further down, methane hydrate buildups can be used to seal those leaks farther down too as well as the riser - anywhere the oil goes so will the methane hydrate buildups to clog everything up if only BP will start pumping sea water from the ocean floor down deep into the riser at some depth below. Its beginning to appear this may be becoming their only option left and yet they dont want to try it. By the way, methane hydrate is as hard as a rock at these depths, pressures, and temperatures and at such depths harder than concrete too, and I dont think we will need to worry about it becoming unstable unless a whole lot of ocean evaporates away from above it and the pressure greatly reduced.

[DES]

We have another tropical wave churning around the western Caribbean. If it strengthens (40% chance as of now), computers models having it crossing the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula then heading straight up the middle of the Gulf toward Louisiana. Not good for operations on the Deepwater Horizon, nor for the clean-up efforts. I suppose the only "good" thing that may come out of it is that scientists will get to study how tropical systems and oil interact.

Make that a 60% chance of development as of the 8pm EDT advisory, with a closed circulation now appearing to be forming.

[DES]

Oh my god. We're screwed. We are all ****ing screwed.

Raining_Oil (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un8co1d4zb4)

[Java]

As I mentioned (I think on the old board) dont drink the rain water downwind of all those volatiles evaporating from the oil spill as I would hazard to guess that for every pound of tar balls that wash up on the beaches there is at least 10 pounds of volatiles that have evaporated into the atmosphere. As for what these volatiles are doing in terms of greenhouse effects I have no information but would hazard to guess they are at least as potent as methane gas. As for the volatiles that are ending up in rain water falling across the region I suspect the most concentrated amounts by percentage would be occuring in storms with high cloudtops where thermals would carry water vapour as well as these volatiles to such a height that water freezes and creates a good surface for these volatiles to condense upon. Then as this frozen precipation descends downwards and melts as it passes into the warmer atmosphere below, these condensed volatiles then become thin films coating the raindrops as they continue to fall.

As for city municipal water supplies, I suspect there may be troubles separating the oil from the water unless the water in extracted from the bottom of deep reservoirs while the volatiles float upon the surface but as for those on well water, if the wells are deep and it takes a good deal of time for water to reach the water table below, and there is plenty of soil above with its cornucopia of microbes covering nearly every description, there may be a number of these microbes present that may actually thrive upon these organic volatiles as they enter the earth just as there are microbes in soils that have recently been discovered to actually thrive upon antibiotics dumped into the ground - in other words there are so many different types of microbes living in soils that scientists have yet to only scratch the surface identifying them all if this could ever be possible. As for the agricultural industries, now thats another story all together! Livestock foraging in fields soaked by oil laden rain is definitely a problem of the largest order and crops that may be exposed through their leaves as well as their shallow root systems - not a pretty picture at all.

Buy bottled water for drinking - use lye soap as a final cleaning product after using the standard ones as traces of lye soap will remain upon your skin and hair (not enough to notice visually) afterwards and help to neutralize any remaining volatiles that may have been present in the bathing water - and as for cooking water, bottled water again (or imported tap water) -- This is only if the oil rains become a serious problem. Might even do good to stock up on water in plastic trash cans with a teaspoon of clorox for every 30 gallons to keep the water from growing weird stuff (microbes that were present in small numbers to begin with) over time in storage - kinda like people did during the early 1960's when building bomb shelters was all the rage at the time.

Hope this wasn't too terse or too long to follow but I tend to do better at gathering my thoughts by this means.