The BP oil spill scares me silly. Look a few years down the road (worst case scenario--or not?)

[DFW]

Even if they plug it tomorrow, what do we face then? What are the intermediate-term consequences? What are the long-term
consequences? Oil has already shown up in shrimp catches of the Florida coast. It will very likely seep into the already
fragile Caribbean and into the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic.

The oil already covers an area of the ocean floor of unimaginable size. Much if not most of the eastern Gulf of Mexico is,
or soon will be ecologically dead. Much of our environmentally vital Gulf Coast wetlands and marshlands are already dead or dying.

This will mean that at a bare minimum hundreds of thousands of people in our Gulf States lose their livelihood, and many
hundreds of thousands more in poor Caribbean islands are staring the same fate in the face. Who will have to come to their
rescue? The rest of us? But that's just the start.

The Gulf of Mexico provided fish for millions of people. This is finished for years, maybe many decades, maybe permanently.
So? People still have to eat. No fish in the Gulf? Get it out of the North Atlantic. Uh-oh--parts of the North Atlantic will
be affected, too. OK, then those parts of the Atlantic that haven't been affected. But wait. The North Atlantic already suffers
from overfishing. The Russians, the Chinese and the EU all compete with us for the fish there. So--OK, then the Pacific? They
all compete with us for the fish there, too. The South Atlantic suffers from overfishing, too.

So? What can we do? Extend the limits of our territorial waters outward so as to protect our own fishing industry? The
Russians, Chinese and Europeans have to eat, too. The condensed answer is that we could be involved in potentially serious
maritime military conflicts over food, which will not be a subject for compromise. We will shoot at Russian and Chinese
fishing trawlers if we need to do it to survive. They will shoot back if they feel they need to do it to survive. That is
the short term. Long term is that we will end up over-fishing important species to the point of extinction to satisfy our
appetites. Hell, we were doing that to some species before the leak.

Climate change could be expedited, too. That is another story altogether, and had already been addressed here on DU.

Maybe I'm just seeing things too gloomily, here, but our suddenly devastated coast and its inhabitants will need to be
cared for, and the loss of food heretofore provided by the Gulf of Mexico will have to be compensated for elsewhere.

MAYBE it won't come to maritime food wars, MAYBE there will be some way for a million or more inhabitants of the Gulf
Coast and the Caribbean to make a living without leaving home, and MAYBE the climate of the eastern part of North
America won't be drastically affected by the oil already leaked, as well as the toxic chemicals BP has tossed into
the Gulf to try to hide/disperse it.

You see BP guys and government guys on TV saying they'll do everything in their power, blah, blah, blah. But, what
if everything in their power is insufficient to rectify this catastrophe? What if it's already too late?

MAYBE it'll all work out. I just doubt it for now, and the long-term ramifications of this disaster scare me like
nothing ever has. I REALLY hope I'm wrong about all this.

*on edit:

From "When The Music's Over" by the Doors:

What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. It IS very scary, my dear DFW...

You have made a compelling case for that. And how much I hope you're wrong...

I hope that the best minds all over the planet are trying to come to grips with your excellent questions...

Love the lyrics...very appropriate, unfortunately...

[DFW]

4. Peggy--I got the barest hint of what might happen from the Canadian gov't 15 years ago

At that time, the Canadians chased off some Spanish fishing vessels from their territorial waters. The Spanish
fishing boats were in Canadian waters because they had so overfished Spanish waters that the catch at home was
insufficient for their fleet to make a living. The Canadians were worried that the EU would stand behind Spain,
but instead, public opinion (at least in Germany) was with the Canadians.

That was a mere raindrop compared with the ocean of sorrow we face with this mess.

[Odin2005]

19. The irony of that is that Basque fishermen have fished on the Grand Banks for centuries.

In fact, some think that they were fishing there even before Columbus and Cabot.

[DFW]

32. A few Basque fishermen in small boats wouldn't have bothered the Canadians

Even in Spain, the technology for fishing has progressed somewhat since the late 15th century.

[Odin2005]

47. Oh, or course, I just thought it was ironic, that's all.

[DFW]

50. That it is

That the dispute about foreign boats in Canadian waters should be with fishermen from the same non-colonizing
European country that had been fishing there before there even was a Canada. It IS ironic, I agree.

[JCMach1]

2. Endless red tides, dead zones, fish, bird, turtle and mammal kills

I have seen that here in the UAE on a much smaller scale. It is a slow motion disaster even if the oil flow stops today.

We had a red tide here that lasted more than 18 months... :(

[Oregone]

3. Humans scare me

[Ishoutandscream2]

29. Me, too.

[AnArmyVeteran]

39. Corporations scare me more than even the worst human who ever lived.

[jotsy]

5. Don't let fear freeze the faith. Fortitude is what we need to try finding now.

I don't know if man can survive man's reckless and self centered whims. I know we're smart enough, I know we're adaptable and innovative, but never will we be or have we ever been a substitute for mother earth. Our audacity to think for a millisecond otherwise will astound me for the rest of my days. I will work through the fog in whatever way I am asked or can.

[Jennicut]

6. There deeper wells out there, that is the most scary thing to me.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. The gulf will recover

the fisheries will recover.

Human populations are facing radical changes for at least ten years, worst case a generation.

But consider this. Quick... how much oil has come out of this asphalt volcano in 37 days? What we use in one day.

Now on the bright side this might provide the impulse for people to finally care about what drives our civilization... oil... and perhaps time to change that. But doing that will not be easy, or cheap... after all 95% of all in my home (low estimate) was touched by oil or made with oil, and 5% was brought here with oil.

[DFW]

8. Not entirely reassuring, even if you are 100% correct

The amount of oil "we," assuming you meant the USA, use in one day is immense. It's on
the order of 865 MILLION gallons a day, and we consume it mostly in already refined
form, and spread out from Hawaii to Key West. In crude form, all the guck, sulfur etc.,
is still there, and concentrated in a far smaller, and environmentally far more sensitive area.

A ten year serious depletion in a major world food source, let alone a generation, is plenty
long enough for those affected to attempt to remedy the situation by force. An empty belly has
little to lose by starting a fight.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Yeah I mean US Consumption

but I figure human populations will find something to do... we are nightly adaptable critters.

As to food sources, well one of our food sources is the Green Revolution. Once we have to back away from that, it will come down to what billion dies this year.

I know I am miss sunshine tonight... but been seriously considering what happens at Peak oil, or right after. We are there, to be honest.

[truedelphi]

11. I still want to know how much of that oil is used up because of our

Endless victory-less wars.

We are only 300 million people. The only explanation that I can think of for our using 20% of all the world's energy resources is this one: what we have going on with the huge Naval carriers, the endless Air Force drills, the actual fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I suspect half of the oil and gasoline used by our nation is used by the Military.

And for what?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

26. 350,000 barrels a day.

[truedelphi]

42. That could well be the case. I will ahve to do some calculating.

Herer is what another DU'er -- catherina -- posted last week

The Three Billion And change that is our government funding for the oil needed for the military

They supply oil to the US military.

Edited on Fri May-21-10 10:26 PM by Catherina
Going after them would interrupt that flow and disrupt the war machine which is the only thing propping US capitalism up right now.

In 2009 alone, $3,623,904,862.

http://www.governmentcontractswon.com/department/defens..

[Statistical]

28. "huge Naval carriers"

run on atomic power. :) Just saying.
We should have some large atomic powered cargo ships.

[truedelphi]

38. Thank you for the correction.

Done with kindness and smiling face.

Appreciate it. Wish more would employ kindness.

However, may I point out, that still leaves the many planes taking off each day on each of those carriers that are run on jet fuel.

(Adding to buddy list) :-)

[Statistical]

46. Agreed the military (Navy especially) is far to big.

We are no longer an expanding empire. We can't afford a super power's military anymore.

We are like UK our financial empire is in decline and our military must decline to match. Doesn't mean we can't have a credible military (like UK) does but maybe we need 3 super carriers not 8. Maybe we need 20 attack subs not 54. That kind of thinking.

Convincing Congress of that seems virtually impossible.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. Here is a beter question

how much of that is used to feed you? People don't realize just how dependent on it for just about everything. Yes it is used by the military... but it is everywhere in everything you do. Hell you are surrounded by the stuff. And so am I... moving away from what is at the base of the pyramid of our global civilization, notice did not say US, pretty much global, will be painful.

By the way, the military is ahead of the curve in "green technologies," including bio fuels. Here is the faustian choice, how many of those crops will replace food crops? No, this is not a fantasy, in places like Bolivia this is already happening. And yes, as we plant fuel crops, people will starve. They will also starve as we move away from all the oil based agricultural products that have increased land productivity to unheard off levels of production.

[truedelphi]

37. The issue of whether the bio-fuels will up our food prices exists

because of the fraudulent measures used to ensure that we get so much of our bio-fuels from the food end of a crop rather than the waste.

Brazil is a big leader in ethanol - based on their sugar cane harvests. Only in Brazil, they don't sacrifice the sugar end of the cane - they use the waste product.

Here our Farm Lobbyists ensure that we use the food end of the corn crop, rather than the husks.

It is a bunch of regulations more or less set up in cement. To change those, you'd have to have all of us out in the streets, because the Agro Industry has the same type of lobbying maneuvers that every other Big Industry in America does.

It is really sad that Big Money interests control our entire government.

[nadinbrzezinski]

41. Google bolivia

where they are using SOY for bio fuels... the WHOLE plant.

As they put it, while the poor starve, the rich drive.

And yes you did not answer how much of that is used to feed you? The Military is a large user, but the largest user actually is agriculture.

http://harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915

http://www.oilcrisis.com/food/

I could go on...

And by the way, don't use carriers as examples. They use a nice reactor to run...

They are really a POOR example... so are subs... now if you decide to look at things like Hummers and the costs involved in getting the army to move, well a gallon of fuel in Kabul is over 110 dollars... due to all the logistical costs involved... ergo why the military is looking at green options... still that logistics to get that fuel from depots to Kabul will not change... my opinion purely... so 110 is a good base number.

[truedelphi]

44. The thing you are taking out of the equation is that when I buy food

I pay cash that I earned recently to buy that food. So during a bad week, there is no Hagen Daz in the mix. Often there is only cabbage or pea soup.

Not so the military. No matter what the economy is doing, they still build their 46 billion dollar boats if someone somewhere in Congress has the clout to get it throught he rest of the legislature.

And when that boat is scrapped, I cannot carve it up and throw it in the soup pot.

When the military buys their three billion (plus) each year for their needs, they are not paying cash,
they are using the Great Big IOU in the sky. This means that there is a huge possibility that the Baby Boomers Social Security will pay for it, plus our grand kids and great grand kids.

[nadinbrzezinski]

45. As I pointed out yesterday

we are all fixed on single solutions. This is not JUST getting rid of military spending (good luck by the way on that one, as much as I agree. Won't happen until the empire collapses, which at this point will coincide with peak oil)

Others go, but see if we just built a kick ass public transportation system... yep a small part of the solution.

by the way, you can buy peas instead of hagen daz, Both still used oil to be produced. Massive amounts of the stuff. Systems Analysis is the name of the stuff. I am aware that I am eating oil, no matter what I like to call that food. It is oily... period...

We can, as a civilization, not the US, a world wide civilization, realize what is at the base of the culture (oil) and that we need to make changes, or what we face, collectively, is something akin to the collapse at the end of the bronze age... that took less than a generation. I fear that Peak Oil will shock most, but I also am quite positive that it will come in my life time... it is here after all.

If this makes you happy the American Empire depends on the stuff, and we are not going to be fast enough to make the necessary changes. So look on the bright side, as billions starve, the US military, or for that matter the US, might not survive this.

[truedelphi]

48. I understand that my food uses oil.

Except of course during the summer months when my garden is in.

Already we are munching on delicious dandelion greens, free from the bounty of Mom Nature.

I would agree this is not all of my diet. But some lil part of the equation is better than none.

[nadinbrzezinski]

49. Do you use any

chemicals in the garden? That is oil. And if you use manure, the horse or most likely cows ate things that are oily. This is how pervasive this is.

That said I do applaud you for the efforts...

But we truly need SYSTEM WIDE changes... and that will be the tricky part here.

Yes I want to cry as I realize this. I wonder if people living at the end of their civilizations realized it too... whether that was Rome, The Bronze Age or the Maya, as major well known examples.

[truedelphi]

43. Here is the info that catherina -- DU Member -- provided last week

keep in mind, that during a good year, we have a thirteen trillion dollar economy...
So basically this three trillion is something that our kids and grand kids will pay for

The Three Billion And change that is our government funding for the oil needed for the military

They supply oil to the US military.

Edited on Fri May-21-10 10:26 PM by Catherina
Going after them (on edit - the Oil Induistry) would interrupt that flow and disrupt the war machine which is the only thing propping US capitalism up right now.

In 2009 alone, $3,623,904,862.

http://www.governmentcontractswon.com/department/defens..

[AnArmyVeteran]

40. I feel a lot better now. Thanks...

But what you said is true. This is a moment that could be used for positive action to stop the madness. In some ways we needed to have such an event to stop all notion that we can't drill out way out of our energy problems.

[Kalun D]

9. It's Worse

than I think you are imagining.

It's going to be decades for sure. The effects of the Exxon Valdez are still being felt, the herring still are gone, and several other species unrecovered. Also the type of beaches are harder to clean.

This spill is much larger and they are using more dispersants which make it almost impossible to clean up.

that I think is the main mistake that's being made. They are allowing BP to use dispersants which keep the oil from coming to the surface. Which means it can't be skimmed. They skimmed about 75% of the big Saudi spill, they aren't going to come close to that on this one because of all the dispersants.

that's the biggest mistake Obama has made, allowing BP to run the clean up. They should only be involved with the capping. With their record they can't be trusted for anything else. Just look at their history, the biggest fine ever for their Texas refinery accident, and now just a few years later the biggest US spill ever, all because of their mantra of profit over safety.

watch and spread this vid, it's amazing this story even made it onto the TV, I heard it was blacked out in some areas.

THIS IS ALL BP'S FAULT. THEY NEED TO BE BROKEN UP AND CEO'S PUT IN PRISON

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLJHTTOSkpg&feature=related

[marions ghost]

16. yes, decades of negative effect

and the dispersant usage is a large part of the crime.

The worst possible consequences for BP won't begin to address the damage. It's incalculable. People who can talk about when it's "cleaned up" have no concept of how maritime ecosystems work. It's not like wiping the ring out of the bathtub...

This is devastation, regional death. Chernobyl. People who doubt this will see it eventually. Fighting over fish supplies is quite possible.

[Individualist]

33. You're right on all counts.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. You are making a compelling case

It is essentially what I have been thinking.

[DFW]

14. I'm trying to think of reasons why I'm all wrong

Unfortunately, the news day by day isn't providing a lot of encouragement just now.

[no_hypocrisy]

13. My feeling as a consumer is you'll always wonder if the fish and seafood are 100% petroleum-free.

[DFW]

17. That scares the hell out of me

As one with heart problems, my diet is supposed to contain a lot of fish. Indeed, ever since my
near-miss, it does. Living in Europe most of the year, most of the fish I consume comes from the
North Atlantic, mostly around Iceland. In the summer, I try to spend at least a few weeks in
New England, whose fish is obviously caught locally.

I hope the oil doesn't get that far north, but I'll always have in the back of my mind that I'm
buying from someone who may have the choice of selling slightly tainted fish or losing his way
of making a living altogether (see Ibsen's "Enemy of the People"). One can always label fish as
having come from the Pacific or the Indian Ocean, but how do you know? I don't have the chemical
equivalent of a Geiger counter to instantly test every bit of fish for traces of hydrocarbons.

[no_hypocrisy]

30. Agreed. One can possibly make a small garden for local produce, but what about

fish and seafood? Your own fishery in the basement? In the study?

[carlyhippy]

15. I was just watching cnn, a reporter took a boat out into the slick

this is very very scary. He stuck his gloved hand into the water and the glove was covered in a brown gel, dead marine life in the water...and the reporter said there was no cleanup vessel or skimmer to be found, that BP had said yesterday that the oil was not so bad, that they didn't send out very many vessels for cleanup.

I am glad that the media is in the middle of this one. Their eyes and reports are keeping the public aware, and it's getting harder and harder for BP to get away with telling us that all is well. It's not well, this is a disaster, it's going to ruin our oceans eventually.

I think the govt should get involved, help is needed desperately. However, BP should pay ENTIRELY for the cleanup and other expenses, and BP should be fined 10-100 mil dollars a day from day 1 on top of that.

If this top kill manuever doesn't work (looking at the live cams, it looks worse to me than it was a week ago) BP should look to the public, offer a multi-million dollar award for the idea/plan that would cap this well.

sigh....2012 looks pretty much true...but it won't be a natural disaster that will destroy our earth and the human race, humans are doing a fine job of making sure the 2012 story comes true.

[SoCalDem]

23. It can't be "cleaned up".. It settles and it sticks to everything

and it seeps into the sand & marsh mud. Once a "spill" happens, you can;t really clean it up.. The press loves to show the gory aftermath of a spill and the politicians get all lathered up and boisterous about it, but there is really nothing that can be done. It's a gooey mess, and then nature slowly goes to work.. Animals die, people get sick from it, and the habitat is changed (possibly forever), .

Oil is a toxin.

It's like stumbling across a corpse, and then railing about how slow the paramedics were in getting there, and how they did not work hard enough to resuscitate the dead person..

[Statistical]

27. In warm waters there are micro-organisms that eat oil.

Life has evolved to deal with the fact that millions of barrels of oil leak into the oceans every year.

I mean think about that over centuries or millenniums. If something didn't break down the oil the oceans would be black tar by now.

[Odin2005]

18. K&R

[Statistical]

20. Ixtoc I didn't wipe out all life on the planet.

It is a bad spill but the Gulf is warm and has lots of oil eating bacteria which makes it a "better" place for a spill than say Artic waters.

Environmentalists were surprised out how fast the Gulf bounced back after Ixtoc I.

[DFW]

31. True, but there differences here

How deep was IXTOC I? 200 feet?

This is 5000 feet deep, and the oil was under 13000 feet of rock under that. We don't know the amount of oil there,
but it has to be huge, or else they wouldn't have bothered. The pressure keeping the oil was immense, and that pressure
is now forcing the oil out into the sea at a fast rate, and into cold, deep water where we don't even know if the oil-
eating bacteria are around in any kind of quantity. It's a completely different ecosystem at 5000 feet. The temperature
at 5000 feet may well be that of Arctic waters. It appears to be about 34° F. This is not Cozumel.

The Gulf MAY bounce back, but it looks to me that even IF it does, it will take far longer this time than it did last
time, and the spread of the oil, due to the currents of the area has the potential to cover an area much greater than
what affected by IXTOC I.

[SoCalDem]

21. Fish move, and take the toxins within them.

the food chain has been seriously breached, and most people won't be able to afford seafood much longer anyway.

No food removed from the Gulf will be trusted for a very long time (if ever).

Rice & beans, anyone?

[Statistical]

22. So you haven't eaten anything from the Gulf since 1979? n/t

[SoCalDem]

24. I don;t eat fish, so probably not

:)

[Statistical]

25. Well ok.

:)

[Bragi]

34. There will be more blowouts to consider

Ultra deep sea drilling is high-risk, and the deeper they go, the riskier it gets.

So there will be more blowouts in the future. It may be next month, next year, next decade, but even according to industry risk assessments, they will be rare, but they WILL happen.

The result will be that huge areas of the oceans, and huge shoreline areas, will become dead zones.

The only way to avoid this is to stop all ultra deep sea drilling and extraction.

Which we are too stupid to do.

[gravity]

35. This isn't going to cause any wars

There has been collapses in fish populations in the past without any risks of fighting. Even if there are no fish in the oceans, the US can just eat chicken or farmed fish instead.

The only people who would resort to violence are those who main source of food is fish and they have no alternatives.

The real consequences are going to those living on the gulf coast who could lose their livelihood for years to come. The economic and environmental consequences are bad enough, without the other far fetched doom and gloom scenarios.