A Doomsday Scenario

[SHRED]

I hope this is inaccurate.:scared:
:(

"More than 12 months ago some geologists rang the warning bell that the Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig might have been erected directly over a huge underground reservoir of methane."...

...."With the emerging evidence of fissures, the quiet fear now is the methane bubble rupturing the seabed and exploding into the Gulf waters. If the bubble escapes, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will instantaneously sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists measuring the oil plumes' advance will instantly perish.

As horrible as that is, what would follow is an event so potentially horrific that it equals in its fury the Indonesian tsunami that killed more than 600,000, or the destruction of Pompeii by Mt. Vesuvius.

The ultimate Gulf disaster, however, would make even those historical horrors pale by comparison. If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock—layer after layer—past the oil reservoir. It will explode upwards propelled by 50 tons psi, burst through the cracks and fissures of the compromised sea floor, and rupture miles of ocean bottom with one titanic explosion."

http://www.helium.com/items/1864136-how-the-ultimate-bp-gulf-disaster-could-kill-millions

[mia]

1. Especially bad for Florida...

The burgeoning methane gas cloud will surface, killing everything it touches, and set off a supersonic tsunami with the wave traveling somewhere between 400 to 600 miles per hour.

While the entire Gulf coastline is vulnerable, the state most exposed to the fury of a supersonic wave towering 150 to 200 feet or more is Florida. The Sunshine State only averages about 100 feet above sea level with much of the coastline and lowlands and swamps near zero elevation.

A supersonic tsunami would literally sweep away everything from Miami to the panhandle in a matter of minutes. Loss of human life would be virtually instantaneous and measured in the millions. Of course the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia—a state with no Gulf coastline—would also experience tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of casualties.

[Webster Green]

8. When I first read this days ago, it said FL averages 6 ft above sea level.

They have changed at least that part of the article. I know I read 6 feet, because I wondered about that figure.

[SidDithers]

2. I call bullshit..

the author is an economist, not a geologist.

Sid

[IDemo]

4. I call bullshit, not because of the author's profession

Matt Simmons is an investment banker, after all, but is generally seen as an authoritative speaker on oil issues.

The threats posed by the oil and methane escaping from the Deepwater blowout are very real. They do not require the embellishment
of sci-fi scenarios to make them worse than they already are.

[SidDithers]

7. I think this is an "a little information is a dangerous thing" scenario....

someone without the proper background misunderstanding a complex issue, and displaying his lack of understanding by writing an inaccurate article about it.

Sid

[postulater]

3. Not to worry. I've survived farts like that before.

[WeDidIt]

5. Yeah, but have you ever LIT a fart like that before?

:puke:

[lunatica]

6. It will be quite the show

[Speck Tater]

9. The Mythbusters looked at the myth of gas bubbles sinking ships...

and found it to be plausible.

Sea floor out-gassing can explosively fill the water with gas bubbles that expand as the rise toward the surface creating a large volume of "fizzy water" with not enough density to support floating rigs and vessels. Boats, no matter how buoyant, sink to the bottom in a flash in such an out-gassing event.

It has happened before, and it can happen again.

[izquierdista]

10. Warner Bros. science

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!
Now that we got that out of the way, let's look at the scientific inaccuracies in this drivel:
1) methane escaping from fissures at that depth is going to immediately react with the water to form clathrate, which can be stable for long periods of time.
2) IF a large burp of methane gas reaches the surface, and there is a source of ignition is present, it will burn in a fireball (think Hindenburg), not explode. It can only explode if it mixes in air to a concentration between the lower and upper explosive limits, and is THEN ignited -- not a likely sequence of events.*
3) The damage from the Indonesian tsunami was due to a large displacement of earth on the seafloor. What possible mechanism is there for a displacement of earth in this scenario?
4) Mt. Saint Helens was a volcanic eruption. Again, how is volcanism involved in this scenario? Drilling has not gone deep enough to tap into magma.
5) Gas is not "gas" at high pressures. Above the "critical pressure" a gas acts like a liquid and there is only one fluid state of matter. The critical pressure for methane is 45 atmospheres, or a depth of about 1500 feet. Below that depth, there will be no "bubbles" of methane.

Sorry to rain on your parade with facts, but someone has to.

*Edited to add -- well there is one scenario. Say you have a drill rig and are piping the methane straight up to the surface faster than it can diffuse. Say the blowout preventer on the well was stuck open. Then you could quickly build up a concentration above the lower explosive limit and once it found a source of ignition -- can you say "Deepwater Horizon"?

[Chulanowa]

11. It is inaccurate, as are most doomsday scenarios