Massive dead zone at bottom of Gulf

[dbackjon]

FUCK YOU BP...

A mile below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, there is little sign of life.

"It looks like everything's dead," University of Georgia professor Samantha Joye said.

In an exclusive trip aboard the U.S. Navy's deep-ocean research submersible Alvin, ABC News was given the chance to observe the impact of this summer's massive oil spill that most will never see.

The ocean floor appears to be littered with twigs, but Joye points out that they are actually dead worms and that Alvin is sitting on top of what is considered an 80-square mile kill zone.

Having taken nearly two dozen dives in the Gulf inside the tiny sub that helped discover the Titanic, Joye is leading a team of scientists who are investigating how much oily material is left on the sea floor.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-subm ... d=12305709" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mainejeff]

I firmly believe that humans were put here to destroy the Earth.

[93henfan]

This is a perfect place to open up for more drilling. It won't harm any marine life.

[native]

This is a perfect place to open up for more drilling. It won't harm any marine life.

Drill, baby, drill!!!!

[SeattleGriz]

This is a perfect place to open up for more drilling. It won't harm any marine life.

Exactly. 80 miles squared is...wait a minute. How in the hell do you get miles squared, instead of miles cubed?

Sounds like more alarmist bullshit. 80 miles cubed is 4.25 miles by 4.25 by 4.25 (roughly).

Better hope you are not drilling more than 4.25 mile below the ocean!

[Grizalltheway]

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/360436/were-sorry" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[CID1990]

This is a perfect place to open up for more drilling. It won't harm any marine life.

Exactly. 80 miles squared is...wait a minute. How in the hell do you get miles squared, instead of miles cubed?

Sounds like more alarmist bullshit. 80 miles cubed is 4.25 miles by 4.25 by 4.25 (roughly).

Better hope you are not drilling more than 4.25 mile below the ocean!

I think maybe it refers to the area of seafloor.

The city of Charleston, SC covers about 35-40 square miles, so I guess just picture a city twice that big, and then compare it to the total size of the Gulf Of Mexico.... if you are looking for perspective.

[houndawg]

This is a perfect place to open up for more drilling. It won't harm any marine life.

Exactly. 80 miles squared is...wait a minute. How in the hell do you get miles squared, instead of miles cubed?

Sounds like more alarmist bullshit. 80 miles cubed is 4.25 miles by 4.25 by 4.25 (roughly).

Better hope you are not drilling more than 4.25 mile below the ocean!

He's studying the bottom, hence area, not volume.

and 80 square miles is not the same as 80 miles squared.

[dbackjon]

Exactly. 80 miles squared is...wait a minute. How in the hell do you get miles squared, instead of miles cubed?

Sounds like more alarmist bullshit. 80 miles cubed is 4.25 miles by 4.25 by 4.25 (roughly).

Better hope you are not drilling more than 4.25 mile below the ocean!

I think maybe it refers to the area of seafloor.

The city of Charleston, SC covers about 35-40 square miles, so I guess just picture a city twice that big, and then compare it to the total size of the Gulf Of Mexico.... if you are looking for perspective.

yes - area of seafloor.

And this just the area that this researcher is studying.

[89Hen]

Is 80 square miles out of 600,000 considered massive? It's surely not a good thing, but massive?

[Chizzang]

This thread is hysterical...
Everybody posts right on queue properly assuming their played out roles

[BlueHen86]

This is a perfect place to open up for more drilling. It won't harm any marine life.

Exactly. 80 miles squared is...wait a minute. How in the hell do you get miles squared, instead of miles cubed?

Sounds like more alarmist bullshit. 80 miles cubed is 4.25 miles by 4.25 by 4.25 (roughly).

Better hope you are not drilling more than 4.25 mile below the ocean!

Aside from the lack of understanding between area (length x length) and volume (length x length x length) I'm still suprised that you think a 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile cube of oil is alarmist. It's not supposed to be there, but thanks to an accident, it is. Why are you okay with this? Do you work for BP?

[SeattleGriz]

Exactly. 80 miles squared is...wait a minute. How in the hell do you get miles squared, instead of miles cubed?

Sounds like more alarmist bullshit. 80 miles cubed is 4.25 miles by 4.25 by 4.25 (roughly).

Better hope you are not drilling more than 4.25 mile below the ocean!

Aside from the lack of understanding between area (length x length) and volume (length x length x length) I'm still suprised that you think a 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile cube of oil is alarmist. It's not supposed to be there, but thanks to an accident, it is. Why are you okay with this? Do you work for BP?

No I wouldn't be happy with a cube of oil that large, but they are not talking about a cube of oil. They are talking about a dead zone, which isn't much better in my opinion. I'm not happy with any of the BP incident and think they should be punished heavily, I just know none of us will know the facts, as nobody involved with this can figure it out either.

[dbackjon]

This thread is hysterical...
Everybody posts right on queue properly assuming their played out roles

Including the Harvard elitist who snobbishly looks down on us mere mortals with disdain...

[89Hen]

This thread is hysterical...
Everybody posts right on queue properly assuming their played out roles

Including you.

[D1B]

Aside from the lack of understanding between area (length x length) and volume (length x length x length) I'm still suprised that you think a 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile cube of oil is alarmist. It's not supposed to be there, but thanks to an accident, it is. Why are you okay with this? Do you work for BP?

No I wouldn't be happy with a cube of oil that large, but they are not talking about a cube of oil. They are talking about a dead zone, which isn't much better in my opinion. I'm not happy with any of the BP incident and think they should be punished heavily, I just know none of us will know the facts, as nobody involved with this can figure it out either.

He's OK with it cuz fucking Clenz said it was no big deal months ago.

Clenz - resident cs.com oil dispersion expert - for the conks

Conks

[BlueHen86]

No I wouldn't be happy with a cube of oil that large, but they are not talking about a cube of oil. They are talking about a dead zone, which isn't much better in my opinion. I'm not happy with any of the BP incident and think they should be punished heavily, I just know none of us will know the facts, as nobody involved with this can figure it out either.

He's OK with it cuz fucking Clenz said it was no big deal months ago.

Clenz - resident cs.com oil dispersion expert - for the conks

Conks

It's the conk/donk part of this that I don't get. We should all be outraged by this, yet some people want to downplay it. I can understand BP wanting to down play it, but nobody else.

[Chizzang]

This thread is hysterical...
Everybody posts right on queue properly assuming their played out roles

Including you.

Bingo..!!!

But you gotta admit we all kind of post the same thing over and over and over....

[BlueHen86]

Including you.

Bingo..!!!

But you gotta admit we all kind of post the same thing over and over and over....

Nobody's mind is ever changed, but we argue anyway.

[AZGrizFan]

Exactly. 80 miles squared is...wait a minute. How in the hell do you get miles squared, instead of miles cubed?

Sounds like more alarmist bullshit. 80 miles cubed is 4.25 miles by 4.25 by 4.25 (roughly).

Better hope you are not drilling more than 4.25 mile below the ocean!

Aside from the lack of understanding between area (length x length) and volume (length x length x length) I'm still suprised that you think a 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile cube of oil is alarmist. It's not supposed to be there, but thanks to an accident, it is. Why are you okay with this? Do you work for BP?

80 square miles is roughly a 9x9 box. Yeah, its big. And it sucks...but it's hardly MASSIVE when compared to the size of the Gulf...

[BlueHen86]

Aside from the lack of understanding between area (length x length) and volume (length x length x length) I'm still suprised that you think a 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile x 4.25 mile cube of oil is alarmist. It's not supposed to be there, but thanks to an accident, it is. Why are you okay with this? Do you work for BP?

80 square miles is roughly a 9x9 box. Yeah, its big. And it sucks...but it's hardly MASSIVE when compared to the size of the Gulf...

So what? It's still a massive spill. Using your logic, all I have to do to prevent a disaster from being considered massive would be to find a large enough area/volume/number to compare it to.

A million people could die, but that's not a massive loss of life because there are several billion people on Earth.

[JohnStOnge]

It's a matter of putting it into perspective. Terms like "large" and "massive" are always relative. An ant an inch long is a large ant. A dog 20 times longer than that is generally not considered a large dog.

Anyway, everybody knows the oil spill has impacts. The question is whether or not it's some huge ecological disaster that's going to affect us in reality as opposed to affecting us through our response to our own erroneous perceptions. 80 square miles would be contained by a circle with a radius of about 5 miles. The Gulf of Mexico covers about 600,000 square miles. Great alarm over this is like thinking your back yard lawn has been destroyed because someone lit a fire and it burned a circle about 1 foot in diameter when you've got a back yard that's a square about 150 feet on a side.

I spent way more time on that oil spill than I ever would've wanted to. I was sent out a number of times to assess the severity of impacts on Louisiana estuaries and have been in the middle of the whole seafood safety thing. I've been on conference calls with the people tracking the "subsurface plumes" of oil and tracked physical monitoring for subsurface oil daily. I have said throughout and continue to say that the perception of the impacts associated with this thing greatly exceeds the reality.

To me, the real lesson of this thing is that we had pretty close to a worst case scenario with deepwater drilling and the impacts were not that bad. If we were a rational culture it would actually make us more rather than less confident about offshore drilling because we know that even if there is a massive screw up the situation can be managed without great consequences.

But we are not a rational culture and as a result there ARE great consequences due to erroneous perception. For example: People continue to think that Gulf seafood is dangerous when it was never dangerous at any point. There was never a real problem with it. A classic example of ignorant public response causing economic damage where no real physical damage exists.

[AZGrizFan]

80 square miles is roughly a 9x9 box. Yeah, its big. And it sucks...but it's hardly MASSIVE when compared to the size of the Gulf...

So what? It's still a massive spill. Using your logic, all I have to do to prevent a disaster from being considered massive would be to find a large enough area/volume/number to compare it to.

A million people could die, but that's not a massive loss of life because there are several billion people on Earth.

As long as it's the right million people I got no problem with that logic.

[AZGrizFan]

To me, the real lesson of this thing is that we had pretty close to a worst case scenario with deepwater drilling and the impacts were not that bad. If we were a rational culture it would actually make us more rather than less confident about offshore drilling because we know that even if there is a massive screw up the situation can be managed without great consequences.

But we are not a rational culture and as a result there ARE great consequences due to erroneous perception. For example: People continue to think that Gulf seafood is dangerous when it was never dangerous at any point. There was never a real problem with it. A classic example of ignorant public response causing economic damage where no real physical damage exists.

Uh oh. NOW you've gone and done it....

[kalm]

You cant buy gas for $3 a gallon in a "rational culture"