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From James Howard Kunstler at Clusterf*** Nation:
"Sometime this summer that ebb tide of events is going to reverse and we'll have more to contend with than just the shrieking wildlife suffocating in orange gunk, and the ruined spawning grounds of the shrimp, and the lost livelihoods of the sportfishing charter guides, and the tarball covered beaches and devalued real estate. We decided to de-complexify the hard way, the way that brings about as much pain and disorder as possible until we discover that the long emergency beats a path straight into a world made by hand."
It never ceases to amaze me that Mr. Kunstler and I always seem to arrive pretty much the same place even though we travel two widely divergent roads. He seems most at home with the apparatchiks of the Democrat party while my natural sensibilities lie with those of the Republicans. But it doesn't really matter because both have paved the same pathway to destruction; reliance on oil and an unsustainably disconnected way of life.
He is an acolyte of Peak Oil and believes the supply of oil is running out while I believe we'll see the affects of Peak Oil, not because the theory is right and we're actually running out of oil but because we don't have the will to exploit the resource. We've wedded ourselves to oil because the oil business held a shotgun to our heads and convinced us it would be in our best interest. Nuclear too dangerous, coal too dirty and natural gas, well, that's just not worth the effort. So now we've blown past all the exits and there's nowhere left to get off the petroleum highway. We'll stick with our bride to the end, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part.
The blowout in the Gulf is the beginning of the end, not just for oil but for our way of life. The age of abundance is drawing to a close and we'll return to an existence much more in line with all of the human history that preceded the 20th century. All of us alive today have lived in a wonderland, a vacation from reality. Well, the park's about to close and it's time we start our walk home. I hope you took plenty of pictures because your kids and grandkids will want to know all about the time when our houses were cool in summer and warm in winter; when food came in plastic packages instead of from the barn, the field or the woods. When water was clean to drink and all you had to do was turn a valve to get all you wanted. A time when catching a cold or scratching your finger didn't carry the possibility of death along with it.
They'll want to know what it was like to live in a dream.
So maybe I'm not the only hysterical one out there:
"What do you get when you mix a hurricane with an oil spill? How about the potential for a stronger hurricane, higher hurricane winds, toxic rain, and oil infused storm surges. Or, for those of you who prefer a little doom in your forecast, perhaps you’d like to hear that the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources believes “that the BP gas leak is going to become ‘the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with ‘total destruction’.”
To read more go to SHTFPlan.com.
I received a comment today on another post on the blog which suggested that I shouldn't get hysterical over the crops and animals dying in Tennessee and the possible connection to the blowout in the Gulf. Firstly, I would like to assure my kind reader that I'm not getting hysterical. Emotions like that always seem so pointless. What's done is done in the Gulf and all we can do now is pray and prepare as best we can.
But prepare for what?
You see, that's the million dollar question and one that I just don't see being addressed either by government or in the media. What are the potential effects of this? I think that if we are to be honest, the Gulf is a dead zone for decades. Best case scenario is that they might, and it's a long shot, get this shut down in a few months. A few months, maybe. Do you really think that the Gulf will still be a viable and productive life supporting environment after all the oil and other chemicals are pumped in for a few more months?
So I think that we have to accept the fact that we may have a toxic sewage dump over 600,000 square miles large. We have to accept the fact that fishing and recreation are over. Most of the economic activity that supports the cities surrounding the Gulf will cease. Even the oil industry may have to downsize with our President creating moratoriums on drilling that are already sending the rigs to other countries.
So we'll have millions more people added to the unemployment roles at a time when those roles are overflowing.
The environmental impacts are the great unknown, though. Will the chemicals filling the Gulf be caught up in the rain and dropped inland? Will the oil make it into the Gulf Stream and move across the Atlantic? If it does, will the oil alter the Gulf Stream in a way that changes the weather patterns in Europe, causing a mini ice age?
The person that commented also pointed out that we've had the volcano in Iceland spewing ash and chemicals for months now without any major ill effects. And he/she's right. The thing is, we've just been lucky. Iceland has had eruptions that have caused major environmental and weather disruptions, even being blamed as one of the causes of the French Revolution.
From Greg Neale at The Guardian:
"Just over 200 years ago an Icelandic volcano erupted with catastrophic consequences for weather, agriculture and transport across the northern hemisphere – and helped trigger the French revolution.
The Laki volcanic fissure in southern Iceland erupted over an eight-month period from 8 June 1783 to February 1784, spewing lava and poisonous gases that devastated the island's agriculture, killing much of the livestock. It is estimated that perhapsa quarter of Iceland's population died through the ensuing famine.
Then, as now, there were more wide-ranging impacts. In Norway, the Netherlands, the British Isles, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, in North America and even Egypt, the Laki eruption had its consequences, as the haze of dust and sulphur particles thrown up by the volcano was carried over much of the northern hemisphere.
Ships moored up in many ports, effectively fogbound. Crops were affected as the fall-out from the continuing eruption coincided with an abnormally hot summer. A clergyman, the Rev Sir John Cullum, wrote to the Royal Society that barley crops "became brown and withered … as did the leaves of the oats; the rye had the appearance of being mildewed".
The British naturalist Gilbert White described that summer in his classic Natural History of Selborne as "an amazing and portentous one … the peculiar haze, or smokey fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man.
"The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. At the same time the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic … the country people began to look with a superstitious awe, at the red, louring aspect of the sun."
Across the Atlantic, Benjamin Franklin wrote of "a constant fog over all Europe, and a great part of North America".
The disruption to weather patterns meant the ensuing winter was unusually harsh, with consequent spring flooding claiming more lives. In America the Mississippi reportedly froze at New Orleans.
The eruption is now thought to have disrupted the Asian monsoon cycle, prompting famine in Egypt. Environmental historians have also pointed to the disruption caused to the economies of northern Europe, where food poverty was a major factor in the build-up to the French revolution of 1789."
I don't think that it's hysterical or crazy to ask what is coming. Are the crops and birds dying in Tennessee because of the blowout? I don't know. I do know that it's a possibility and something that I think we will see happen as the hurricane season begins and the storms roll up out of the Gulf and into the heartland. As Americans and as responsible people we need to ask the questions and try to find solutions now while we have the time because time is growing short. The oil is flowing and there is no certain end in sight.
Everything has changed.
"The U.S. Coast Guard gave BP Plc 48 hours to find more capacity to contain its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after scientists and researchers doubled their estimates of the spill’s size.
BP’s efforts don’t “provide the needed collection capacity consistent with the revised flow estimates,” said Rear Admiral James A. Watson, the federal on-scene coordinator, in a letter dated June 11. It was sent to Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, and was released today.
...The spill began after the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon sank April 22, following a blowout of BP’s well that killed 11 of its crew.
It has closed as much as 37 percent of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing, cut offshore drilling in the nation by half, polluted 140 miles (225 kilometers) of shoreline from Louisiana to Florida, and cost BP more than $1.43 billion.
Separately, BP said today its board will meet June 14 to discuss whether to cut or defer its second-quarter dividend payment following the spill.
A decision on the dividend may not be reached at the meeting, BP spokesman Robert Wine said today in a telephone interview today. “All options are being considered,” he said. “No decision has been taken.”
Bloomberg
"Brazil could benefit from the BP Gulf of Mexico spill as a U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling boosts available rigs for the country's deep water oil exploration program.
Even as an ecological catastrophe makes the future of U.S. offshore drilling less certain, Brazil is plowing ahead with a $220 billion five-year plan to tap oil fields even deeper than
BP's (BP.L) ill-fated Gulf well, which is still leaking crude.
With an estimated 35 rigs idled in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil is already receiving inquiries from companies looking to move their rigs here, where vast discoveries in recent years
may soon turn the country into a major crude exporter."
Reuters
So we threaten and we bellow. We shut down drilling and we cry for justice. And what will happen? The oil companies will move their rigs elsewhere. The Obama administration just can't figure this out. It's just like taxes; raise them high enough and the rich will go someplace else. The people and the companies that control vast amounts of money and power are not constrained by national boundaries.
Our leaders are incompetent. Not just the current crop but stretching way, way back. The ones that have never led, only followed the money and the power, doing as they were told by their masters in the corporate world and the special interests. They sold our freedom for personal power. And now, as they sit in their halls of power and mansions, surrounded by luxury, we watch as our waters, air and freedom drift away.
As the rigs leave the Gulf the environmentalists will rejoice thinking they've realized a dream. In reality, the nightmare will just be beginning. If they think our oversight was lax, just what in the hell do they think China is doing in Cuban waters? How about Mexico or Venezuela? Do they think these Marxist Utopias even have the slightest concern for the environment? They don't. The only thing that concerns their leaders is money and power, just like ours. The difference is that the people are out of the loop. No one can force Castro or Chavez to follow any safety or environmental guidelines.
And the best part of all? Every gallon of oil we buy from them goes to support our enemies and their push to destroy our country and our way of life. And buy it we will. We have to have oil to function and if we won't drill it ourselves we'll get it where we can.
Isn't that special?
From Washington's Blog:
"As I noted Tuesday, there is growing evidence that BP's oil well - technically called the "well casing" or "well bore" - has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor.
The evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer."
This seems to confirm what Matt Simmons said weeks ago.
The leak that we are focusing so much time and energy on is not the main leak and fixing it will have little overall impact. The only solution may be to try to nuke the well bore in hopes that we can collapse enough seabed into it to stop the flow of oil.
In other words, we might have only one option; one shot. If that fails the oil could flow for years.
Read the report at Washington's Blog because it has a whole bunch of information that will change your perception of just how dangerous this blowout is. This isn't just an environmental disaster, this changes every single thing we know about how life should work.
Consider that if the oil reaches the Gulf Stream (many think it has) it will travel up our East Coast, over to Iceland and on to Europe. The Gulf Stream and the warmth it carries keeps Europe in general and the British Isles in particular at a livable and moderate temperature. If the Gulf Stream stops flowing as it has we have the real possibility that a vast section of Europe will become brutally cold. Go to a world map and look at how far north most of Europe is. If the Gulf Stream is changed or moved, most of Europe will have much more in common with Siberia than it does with Minnesota or Iowa. Not to mention destruction of sea life and how that ripples through the food chain along with changes in rainfall and water purity.
Buckle up and prepare; and pray. There is no way to really anticipate what this blowout will do to the human race and the world we live on. The possibilities are frightening.
I saw this link to a website named Oil Spill Map at The Coming Depression.
It seems to be a site designed to allow Gulf Coast residents a place to report what's going on in their lives. the company that set it up, Radical Designs, seems to be primarily a social change, social justice operation so keep that in mind.
Migraine like headaces, etc.
5+ continuous weeks of the first migraine I've ever had, and 3 weeks of severe double vision and eye pain. I have immune system problems, and have... 2010-06-12 Venetian Isles - Bayou Sauvage
Black oil 1 mile x 15 feet wide spotted 2 miles S of Bayou La Mere.
Black oil 1 mile x 15 feet wide spotted 2 miles S of Bayou La Mere. 2010-06-12 bayou la mere plaquemines LA
Heavy Oil 3x5 yards wide in Bastian Bay.
Heavy Oil 3x5 yards wide in Bastian Bay. 2010-06-12 Bastian Bay, Plaquemines LA
BP discouraing crews from using respirators
BP workers discouraged from using respirators because it could cause public "hysteria". 2010-06-12 Gulf Coast
headache from stench
headaches and coughing in morning from oil smell. day after day. 2010-06-12 Biloxi, MS
oil spill clean up worker with open sores on his hands and arms
Supervisor for BP subcontractor reported to first aid tent that he had a worker referral from a physician to the nurses for open sores on his hands and... 2010-06-12 BP Worker Compound, Grand Isle, LA
Boom stockpile
Boom stockpile at chef harbor. 2010-06-12 21135 Chef Menteur Highway, New Orleans, LA 70129-2585
Barges blocking channel
Big barges used to block off the mouth of the channel north of little bayou magill 2010-06-12 Bayou Magill, LA
Bayou Magill booms
Booms washed ashore in little bayou magill 2010-06-12 Bayou Magill, LA
Citrus cleaner smell
Citrus cleaner (like lysol times 100) coming off beach at Grand Isle. Could smell it from 1/2 mile away. 2010-06-12 Grand Isle State Park,
out of seafood
Restaurant out of oysters and shrimp- Grand Isle 2010-06-12 Grand Isle, LA
Where does oil come from and more importantly, what have we drilled into in the Gulf? These are two questions that seem as though they should be relatively easy to answer yet when I read up on the subject I find cloudiness and further, it seems to me anyway, that scientific fact is once again obscured by political and economic forces.
One the one side we have the proponents of "Peak Oil". This is an interesting assortment of those that profit from oil speculation, academics, environmentalists and many on the left that are convinced that capitalism cannot survive. I tend to accept many of the core beliefs of the peak oil movement, but not because I believe that we are running out of oil, just the political will to exploit the resource. Whether we run out of oil or just refuse to drill for it, the results are the same. The American capitalist economy will collapse. Without abundant and cheap oil we will revert to a life much closer to that of the 1880's. Of course, in the process, we'll experience massive societal unrest and destruction, opening the door to strongmen rulers to destroy our freedoms in the name of security.
"Peak Oil" has a another effect. It allows speculators an excuse to run up the price of oil based on the faulty assumption that the resource is limited and that demand far outstrips supply. I've a customer that has worked in the oil business as an engineer in the Middle East his entire career. He' retired now yet he stays in touch with people still active in the business. He's told me that the known supplies of oil are vast and that most of it is relatively easy to get to. A friend of his in the industry that does cost analysis said in 2008, when oil was at $147 per barrel that if we were to remove the manipulation of the markets oil should be priced around $40 per barrel. Amazingly, about 7 months later oil prices had collapsed to nearly that. Peak oil and the biomass theory of the origins of oil play into the hands of those that profit from scarcity.
The abiogenic oil theory would work against excessive manipulation and profit because it states that oil is not finite but instead is created deep within the earth as part of a natural and on going process. If this is the case then oil should and would be cheap. All we'd have to do is to figure out the best way to tap into this resource and off we go. The Russians believe that the abigenic theory is the correct theory and they have acted accordingly.
Most scientist say that abiogenic oil is a pipe dream and that oil comes from bio-mass origins; rotted dinosaurs and leaves. The question is whether this is an honest assessment or one driven by funding. I had some other customers that worked for a major biochemistry lab in St. Louis. One of them headed up research on alternative sources of energy; biomass such as corn and algae. We talked quite a bit about how their business (that's what science has become, after all) functions. They both told me that their research is shaped entirely by funding sources. They said that the biggest part of their day is spent in doing the paperwork necessary to justify the results they achieve in relation to the object of those that provide their funding. In other words, the funding directs the research and molds the results achieved, not the search for the truth.
So, can we trust the opinion of the scientists in relation to the origins of oil? Or anything, for that matter?
So what if the abiogenic theory is correct and we've tapped into one of it's sources in the Gulf? What happens if the hole we drilled has penetrated a main supply area for the worlds oil instead of a finger coming off that supply area, where pressure would be much reduced and more controllable? What if, no matter how much effort we use, we can't shut this thing down?
What if we've slashed the earth's aorta and it's bleeding out?
This article from the New York Times was published in 1995:
"COULD it be that many of the world's oil fields are refilling themselves at nearly the same rate they are being drained by an energy-hungry world?
A geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts says she believes that hitherto undetected gas and oil reservoirs lying at very great depths within the earth's crust could stave off the inevitable oil depletion much longer than many experts have estimated.
The scientist, Dr. Jean K. Whelan, whose research is part of a $2 million Department of Energy exploration program in the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans, has found evidence of differences in the composition of oil over periods of time as it flows from greater to shallower depths. By gauging degradative chemical changes in the oil resulting from action by oil-eating bacteria, she infers that oil is moving in quite rapid spurts from great depths to reservoirs closer to the surface.
Skeptics of Dr. Whelan's hypothesis acknowledge that oil is almost certainly flowing into certain reservoirs from somewhere, but say her explanation remains to be proved, as does the exact extent of the phenomenon.
A site in the gulf of particular interest to the Pennzoil Exploration and Production Company and several independent scientific teams, including Dr. Whelan's group, is Eugene Island Block 330, which is not an island but a patch of sea floor 700 feet beneath the water's surface. Discovered in 1972, an oil reservoir some 6,000 feet beneath Eugene Island 330 is one of the world's most productive oil sources; it has yielded more than one billion barrels, or 42 billion gallons, and is still going strong.
But Eugene Island 330 is remarkable for another reason: Its estimated reserves have declined much less than experts had predicted on the basis of its production rate."
New York Times
Abiogenic petroleum origin is an alternative hypothesis to the prevailing theory of biological petroleum origin. Most popular in the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1980s, the abiogenic hypothesis has little support among contemporary petroleum geologists, who argue that abiogenic petroleum does not exist in significant amounts on earth and that there is no indication that an application of the hypothesis is or has ever been of commercial value.
The abiogenic hypothesis argues that petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits, perhaps dating to the formation of the Earth. The presence of methane on Saturn's moon Titan is cited as evidence supporting the formation of hydrocarbons without biology. Supporters of the abiogenic hypothesis suggest that a great deal more petroleum exists on Earth than commonly thought, and that petroleum may originate from carbon-bearing fluids that migrate upward from the mantle.
Although the abiogenic hypothesis was accepted by some geologists in the former Soviet Union, most geologists now consider the biogenic formation of petroleum scientifically supported. Although evidence exists for abiogenic formation of methane and hydrocarbon gases within the Earth, studies indicate they are not produced in commercially significant quantities (i.e. a median abiogenic hydrocarbon content in extracted hydrocarbon gases of 0.02%). The abiogenic origin of petroleum has also recently been reviewed in detail by Glasby, who raises a number of objections, including that there is no direct evidence to date of abiogenic petroleum (liquid crude oil and long-chain hydrocarbon compounds).
Wikipedia
Read the article that I've linked to below here.
We're focused on the World Cup and Joran Van der Sloot while a volcano of oil erupts in the Gulf. I've believed from the beginning that this would cause irreparable harm to God's creation and the more I read the more convinced I've become that I'm right.
Pray, pray, pray because human existence has changed now, possibly forever. Try to savor the simple things we've become accustomed to, things like abundant and cheap food, transportation, medicine and peace. They're all going to become distant memories, the sort of things that people will hear about in stories and wonder if it could have ever been true. A thousand years from now this blowout will be remembered as a pivotal event in history, something akin to the fall of Rome or the Plague; maybe the beginning of the second dark age.
Prepare yourself and your family because it's all down hill from here.
"The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world's worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.
In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States "could go on for years and years many years."
According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, "What BP drilled into was what we call a 'migration channel,' a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia." Ghawar, the world's most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico."
Rense
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