How bad is oil? 1

[enginesrus]

https://expandedenvironment.org/oil-eating-animals/

Some living things like it.

 

[LionelHutz]

Way more don't.

 

[SuperSalad]

lol, I'm all for finding a silver linings around problems, but that is just plain silly.

1. Oil spills aren't seeping from the sea floor.
2. Oil spills don't have tube worm communities surrounding them.
3. Oil spills are concentrated, typically, one time occurrences (barring Deepwater Horizon's 87 day fiasco).
4. I'm sure there are more facts that invalidate this premise, but that's what my inner monologue was screaming at me while I read that drivel.

- Andrew

 

[TugboatEng]

Oil spills do in fact seep from the ocean floor.

https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/while-oil-gently-seeps-from-the-seafloor/

And there are microorganisms that live off of the seepage.

 

[SuperSalad]

Yeah, that was the entire subject of the OP article.

- Andrew

 

[TugboatEng]

I don't click his links.

I did have to resist the urge to post a link explaining the drilling off the coast of California has reduced the amount of seepage.

I saw one estimate of 20-25 tons per day off the coast of Santa Barbara.

Few of the residents believe the leaks are natural.

 

[SuperSalad]

To condense it, it basically says: oil spills aren't so bad because there is so much natural seepage and there are ecosystems of things like tubeworms that feed off the seepage, so oil spills aren't so bad.

Yes, natural oil seepage happens, and cool, the natural systems are able to adapt to that natural process. To try to equate that to a "oil spills aren't that bad" is just ludicrous, in my opinion.

- Andrew

 

[TugboatEng]

I guess it comes down to the rate of spillage.

With that said, there certainly was a lot of oil spilled during WW2 and Earth seems to have rebounded very quickly.

 

[enginesrus]

Don't click his links? Why afraid to learn something? I don't post any bad links.
I have to post links if I just say something I hear "where is the data".
Please explain to me what I am supposed to do?

 

[TugboatEng]

Try making helpful posts in the other forums?

 

[SwinnyGG]

I don't post any bad links.

That's all you post. Sensationalism, pseudoscience, misleading or incorrectly applied arguments.

Please explain to me what I am supposed to do?

Stop posting links to bullshit pseudoscience sources and/or misusing articles that don't say what you're saying they say.

 

[LionelHutz]

Or just stop posting...

I won't click on any of your links either.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Well, I thought that article / post was interesting. We heard a ton of probably alarmist discussion of what would happen in the gulf after the BP incident. About how completely devastating it would be to the ecosystem.

Now, I'm certain that the oil spill was extremely bad for the ecosystem overall. But, how long would that devastation last? This article goes a long way towards explaining the aspects of nature that allows it to recover from such incidents.

Now, I will also contribute with some personal experience about the beaches near Santa Barbara. That occurred in 1969 when about 3 million gallons were released into the ocean. Well, the beaches were still pretty terrible to walk on in 1990 when I visited. So, that's 21 years and Santa Barbara still hadn't recovered. BP was something like 134 million gallons. That's like 50 times as large.

Obviously, the two spills are of totally different scales, and have many differences. How close to shore the oil spill was is probably very different. How deep the oil spill was could have also been very different. BP also release something like 1.8 million gallons of oil dispersant to 'mitigate' the effects. This was also criticized by some environmentalists because they viewed the dispersant as toxic as well.

It won't be until we have a sufficient amount of time to compare and contrast the LONG TERM effects on the ecosystem between these events. Personally, I think it will be interesting to compare the coastline of the gulf region in another 7 or 8 years to what I witnessed in Santa Barbara 21 years after their oil spill. That's just for my own personal interest, not that the state of a beach is really all that indicative of the overall ecosystem.

 

[btrueblood]

The beach at Santa Barbara, along with others in SoCal, have perpetual oil and tar seeps, they have had tar balls and oil sheens on the beaches long before, and long after, the oil drilling boom of the 20s and 30s. Have had and will continue to have, the whole SoCal basin is one big petroleum deposit.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

btrueblood -

I have been up and down the California coast my entire life. The only shoreline that I've experienced like that is the one in Santa Barbara. Maybe it's natural. Maybe it was like that before. But, the rest of California most certainly is NOT like that.

 

[TugboatEng]

Oil seepage isn't just off the coast of California. It's on land, too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Yes, I figured btrueblood meant that. And, La Brea Tar Pits is an excellent example. But, it's also true that our beaches remain pretty darn clean, pleasant. I can walk on them without getting tar all over my feet. But, that wasn't my experience in Santa Barbara in 1990-ish

 

[SwinnyGG]

We all know nature is highly adaptable... but there's a pretty big difference to surface wildlife between natural seepage that puts a 'sheen' on rolling waves and produces tar balls on a beach as compared to a tanker spill dumping millions of barrels of oil somewhere all at one time.

The tone of the original post - 'hey there's a guy in this one article (which the article itself says is highly contested) that says oil is great for the gulf so we shouldnt worry about all this environmental BS' is pretty ridiculous.

And yeah, I'm reading into it a lot but this OP has a long history of the same. His point of view is extremely well known.

 

[TugboatEng]

I guess if you spill more regularly then you'll support an ecosystem that can work with the oil. When you infrequently spill there is nothing to maintain the digester population in between feedings.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

The tone of the original post - 'hey there's a guy in this one article (which the article itself says is highly contested) that says oil is great for the gulf so we shouldnt worry about all this environmental BS' is pretty ridiculous.

I didn't get that same tone. But, I can see how some who reads that with an "attitude" could come away thinking that.

More of "here is a natural oddity that most people don't know about. Maybe it will help the Gulf recover from the BP oil spill. Pretty interesting, right? "