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Reply #13: Look at it this way: [View All]

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kentauros Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-20-11 10:34 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. Look at it this way:
What you're proposing would have to be implemented right now to have any measurable effect on it as it grows. At the same time, we are just beginning this year's hurricane season (a month and a half into it and we've already had two named storms in the Atlantic and four named in the eastern Pacific.) We're slated to get quite a few more before the season ends October 31st.

Although it might seem this way to you, I am not against remediation. I just don't see your proposal to use offshore platforms even getting off the ground without legislation dictating that the oil companies do something that way (because they won't on their own.) And that could take years to implement. In the meantime, how many tropical depressions, tropical storms and hurricanes will the same area receive?

As I understand the article, too, there hasn't been an increase in the amount of fertilizers, pesticides and so forth. It's still the same amount as any other time. What is the problem this time around is that the flood waters aren't oxygenated. A normal river gets plenty of that through the simple action of rapids and turbulence through shallower waters. Flood-stage is too high for that kind of action, even though the waters are turbulent. They just aren't pulling in the atmosphere like when they are shallow. So, the flood-water coming out of the rivers is pretty much "dead". Even if all of our agriculture was organic, that water will still be oxygen-poor.

Here, quoted from the article. Bolding is mine:

The largest areas of hypoxia are still around the Louisiana coast, he says, thanks to the huge amounts of fresh water still coming down from the Mississippi River. The hypoxic area extends about 50 miles off the coast.

The Mississippi is the US' largest river, draining 40 percent of the land area of the country. It also accounts for almost 90 percent of the freshwater runoff into the Gulf of Mexico.
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