"the Gulf is dying."

I keep seeing that phrase all over the place. It's dramatic, it's grandiose and it's the perfect phrase to stir up emotions.

Fortunately, it's not true.

Using histrionics and sensationalism to make your case is usually what the Republicans do. I'm disappointed so many here are disregarding rational, common sense and instead are relying solely on panic and fear.

No doubt this is a terrible, horrible disaster and the effects of this disaster will be with us for years. The consequences of this oil spill are devastating and repulsive, but you can all stop shaking in your boots, the Gulf of Mexico is NOT dying! It will survive, just like Alaska survived Exxon and the Persian Gulf survived the Gulf War oil spill.

I know I'll be accused of this, despite what I am about to say, but no, I am not downplaying this. I'm simply trying to be level headed and rational.

Yes, it is and it is going to be hideous, disgusting and heartbreaking to see the senseless devastation to wildlife and pristine land. It is unforgivable, but running around like Chicken Little crying, in this case, "the Gulf is dying, the Gulf is dying" isn't going to change a damn thing and it's not going to bring about any constructive solutions to the problem at hand.

And you know what? I'm pretty damn sure the President understands this, which is why he is not running around like Chicken Little.

Now I shall close this post so I can be told how I'm defending BP (I'm not), how I don't care about the environment (I do), how I've got my head buried in the sand (I don't) and all the other myriad of emotionalistic insults that can be thought of, but that still doesn't change the fact the Gulf of Mexico is not dying.

:hi:

I've seen other documentaries on the destruction of the bayous and wetlands, the "dead zone" at the mouth of the Mississippi from midwestern run-off. I believe NPR's Daniel Zwerdling has been following this for years and years and years and was brought to national attention during Katrina. And he's not alone.

My intention was not to dismiss the horror of what's going on in the Gulf -- I'm as outraged as most -- but to call for more sanity and less hysteria. Anger is one thing. Demanding accountability and restitution is one thing. Charging around like decapitated chickens, throwing any and every conceivable 'solution' at the problem without any attempt to see if those 'solutions' will work, is something entirely different.

Someone posted a video the other night of a chemical -- 'polymer' -- that turns crude oil into an easily-collected solid. Half a dozen posts said "Yeah! We need a billion pounds of this stuff!" But when I looked for additional information on this product that supposedly has been around since 1997, there was nothing about older than I think May 15, 2010, which was the date the video was posted on youtube.

The videos showing hay, straw, dried grass, etc., being used to clean up oil are another -- no one seems to be asking if these techniques are viable on the scale needed on the Gulf Coast. Yes, the demonstrations look promising, and yes, the techniques are worth investigating. But I get chewed out, called names, and put on ignore for merely suggesting these options be checked out.

Whether the Gulf will be killed by the Deepwater Horizon blowout is something we won't know until it's happened. We already know about the dead zone, we know about the Pacific garbage island, we know about a lot of terrible things. But hysteria doesn't help.

That's why I recced for sanity. We need a little of that now and then.


Tansy Gold

Shaw nuff...

Seasonal hypoxic areas ..... add the new areas of low O2 and you have a real mess
on your hands ...... lower O2 = more dead things ..... more dead things = greater
B.O.D. (biological oxygen demand) = even lower O2 levels. Naturally occurring
microbes will break down the oil and then add to the B.O.D. too.

large sections are now forever changed for our lifetimes.

Toxic waste and sludge dumping in the Gulf Of Mexico now being compounded by an oil slick.

The dead zone is the result of nitrogen pollution ..... the Mississippi watershed
...... picks up a lot the farm and other use fertilizer run off ..... the nitrogen
causes large algae blooms which then die and "suck the O2" out of the ocean.

marine habitat is being destroyed and the remaining fish are being mined out of existence.

But, nobody gets hysterical about all that because it wasn't from a spectacular event, just normal human "progress".

There are, at this moment, about 4,000 oil rigs working the Gulf. That's FOUR THOUSAND oil wells in the water, and we haven't started in Florida waters yet. All so we can have some of the cheapest gasoline on the planet while reducing our imports of crude.

Has anyone screaming at BP bothered to think about reducing his or her own carbon footprint and finding ways to use less oil (including plastics and processing-- not just as fuel) so that we can reduce the demand for FOUR THOUSAND wells in the Gulf?

Has anyone fought over agricultural runoff, lawn chemicals, or what strange things we put down our sinks and toilets?

I didn't think so.

the true impact for many years--many many years. So, emphatic statements on what will or will not be the ultimate outcome are not useful, no matter which of the extremes (or some middle ground scenario) is the emphasis.

Yay!

:shrug:

both top and bottom, how could the Gulf not die?

An oldy, but a goody.

I have not used this one since I was a small boy, but as long as excuses are the order of the day, who am I to say that we should not go all the back to childhood for inspiration?

The gulf will always be there. It, like us mere mortals, will not die.

But it is being raped. Polluted with life killing oil, and it could be that most all of the life in the water will die.

The gulf is changing right before our eyes. It hasn't had a change like this in millions of years, but now, through our greed and avarice, in the matter of a blink in the geological eye, is changing to a degree that it could be said it is dying.

You may care about the gulf, but if you understood what is happening because you knew what makes the gulf, our gulf, you would delete your stupid post.

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Are you a time traveler? Or are you the owner of a crystal ball that foresees the future?

And since you can see into the future, why didn't you warn anybody about the oil rig before it blew up?

Or if not some, then at least one. Must make for a bizarre world-view, however.

Denial ain't jes a ribber in Egypt no mo...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQcPOQXc9vE

It represents the best of DU. Good, sane, level headed thought.

Thank you.

"Not going to hit here". They supposedly showed a map showing a very small trickle coming into the southern Gulf. HOWEVER, on a satellite weather forecast of the Gulf you could clearly see a much bigger "darkening" of the Gulf waters all the way down to the Keys.

Now, who do you believe? Them or your lying eyes??????

and that means 5x the amount of oil

There's only a 50/50 chance of the relief well working.

The currents are making the oil stay in the Gulf now.

BP are liars.

Do the math...

It took till NOVEMBER to drill the relief well. THAT WORKED. May the "top kill" not make the situation worse...

BP's Atlantis rig must be SHUT DOWN NOW.

sigh... seems hard enough for them to put one foot ahead of another right now.

And no doubt "they" should have had a plan, but I maintain, at the same, hyperbole is not a good plan either!

Opinion, stated as fact, with nothing to substantiate said opinion. Alrighty, then. Guess we can all stop worrying now. Thanks, I feel so much better now.

Bodies of water aren't truly living, so they cannot die. The ecological impact of the oil gusher is going to kill a lot of sea-life in the gulf, and that will "domino" across the Mississippi valley and in the Atlantic, but if it is cleaned up (figure a decade, maybe longer) life will return to the gulf.

The Gulf of Mexico is not dying. Damn near everything living IN the Gulf is doomed, but the Gulf itself will recover. Eventually.

including some tricks of its own we can only dream of.

We're getting better at destroying the planet, but haven't quite gotten there yet. It will survive yet this new insult, and while it won't be quite as pretty as it was for a while, the real damage will be to us and our expectations.

This fall there may be no Gulf nesting sites for plovers, warblers and other migratory birds, drastically reducing their numbers. but, if we don't screw around with them, they will likely come back, as they always have. Same with the fish and alligators, and most other species.

Curiously, we are, at the moment, spending far more time complaining about the lot of fishermen and carpenters and waiters than about the planet itself. We are the species that is responsible for this particular disaster and our primary concern is for our own welfare.

Isn't this just a bit selfish and short-sighted?

because the "Gulf" is not alive. It is a geographical demarcation. As such, phrases such as "The Gulf is dying" are clearly metaphorical, and could mean any number of true things.

Hyperbole and high drama reign around here much of the time.

Unrecommended, because in this case it's better to err on the side of caution rather than blind optimism. Let alone talking points of corporations.

and not every living organism in the whole Gulf is dying then I suppose you are correct. I'm going out on a limb and I'm going to guess you are not a biologist. Have you ever seen crude oil, I mean first hand, seen it and smelled it? Well, I have and I can promise you that it is horrible, awful, and vile. It's sickening and toxic. I'm not a biologist either, but I do understand that crude petroleum in this quantity will devastate the food chain from the bottom to the top, starting with the phytoplankton. Prince William sound in Alaska has NEVER recovered. The food chain was virtually erased. The herring which were of the many species that visibly and audibly thrived and thrummed in the sound have never recovered. Prince William sound is a faint shadow of what it was 25 years ago.

The scale of this disaster is far beyond our ability to change. Like Prince William sound, people from the Gulf will have to tell their children about how the marshes, bays, and estuaries once teemed with life.

so I guess you'd have to ask those who keep saying it over and over what they mean by repeating that mantra.

And I think I made it pretty clear that I in no way, shape or form think what's happening now is good for the Gulf of Mexico or that there won't be serious consequences for years to come. At the same time, I don't think melodramatics is going to anything to help solve this crisis.

over and over and over again!

Especially ones where emotions run high.

K&R

:kick:

(obligatory troll-kick)

I am pretty sure that the President, based on his past actions with regard to the environment, corporations and energy, doesn't have a clue as to what is happening. And nobody seems to have a clue as to how to contain this man-made disaster, how long it is going to last and how far the damage is going to extend.