Gaia's Toxic Intravenous Drip in The Mexican Gulf

Oil is toxic to Mother Earth (Gaia).

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Some 2.3 million tonnes of oil hydrocarbons find their way into the world's oceans annually.

Scientists estimate 260,000 tons come from natural seepage through the ocean bed, but the majority portion, 2 million tonnes of toxic seepage, is caused by humans.

In spring 2010, the worst human-caused ecological disaster exploded in the Gulf of Mexico injecting Gaia with a toxic intravenous feed of unknown magnitude.

Gaia can handle a small amount of toxic oil seepage into it's oceans by using oxidation, sedimentation and microbial degradation. The current levels far exceed earth life's ability to cope and much life in the immediate area is ended. The worst is yet to come as the toxins pour into the ocean and begin to spread around the world.

Gaia's latest tragedy began when "Deepwater Horizon", a deep-sea drilling rig located not far from Louisiana, New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in April, killing 11 people.

Known as the MC 252 well, located in 5,067 ft of water about 50 miles from the coast of Louisiana, its drilling crews were planning to leave the site in order for a well completion rig to come in and prepare the well to go into production, but many things had been going wrong by then (see Explosion No Surprise).

British Petroleum (BP), owned 30% by Americans, and the government's of all oil-producing nations in the world are to blame for the current massive Mexican Gulf deep sea oil leak.

Nationalistic policies of government-controlled oil companies have forced global corporations like ExxonMobile and British Petroleum to seek product in the far reaches of the deep sea. British Petroleum has been forced to take huge risks in the Gulf of Mexico to stay in business while under tremendous pressure from America.

That's not good. BP has a bad safety record and a questionable corporate moral code of conduct. BP hasbeen crticized in the media for incomplete maintenance and crappy equipment A blast at a refinery in Texas City, in 2005 killed 15 workers. A 2006 Alaskan pipeline spill occurred four years after BP had been warned about their corroded pipelines. BP pleaded guilty to felony counts in the Texas blast and a misdemeanour charge in the Alaska oil spill. In recent years BP has paid $485 million in fines and settlements to the U.S. government for environmental offences, neglect of workers' health and safety plus financial penalties for manipulating energy markets.

Despite the substantial U.S. stake in British Petroleum U.S. President Obama stresses the "British" in British Petroleum's name and does nothing but spin doctoring and craftily worded promises that things will get better. But the actual work has been done by American companies Transocean and Halliburton, two very familiar names in the media, renown as corporate "bad guys".

Transocean is the contractor that owned and ran the drilling rig that burned and sank after the well blew on April 20, killing 11 workers. Halliburton is the company that did the cementing job that was supposed to close off the well.

Obama's performance in this crisis has been "tacky" at best as his public relations gurus pray for Tiger Woods' love life or Lady Gaga's genetalia to gain the front page again and make everyone forget.

Not gonna happen. Killing aquatic life and shore life in this scale is unforgettable. This could be the beginning of the end of life on earth as we know it.

The U.S. should be pouring $billions into a clean-up and if it means pulling every soldier, gun and tank out of Iraq to achieve that end and protect the American people, then so be it.

As the millions of barrels of oil sludge spread in the Gulf and hit the shores, marine habitats, beaches, wildlife and human health are destroyed or endangered.

While some pundits claim that British Petroleum drilling policy is at fault, it is no less true that no project engineering team would ever overlook the installation of a failsafe shut-off plan. If the executive management of the British Petroleum and it's government liaisons were not given such a failsafe by their technical planners, either because none was available or the cost was too prohibitive, then the drilling project should never have proceeded even by the existing standards which are far too lax.

In the case of the "Deepwater Horizon" drilling platform operating over a mile below the Gulf's surface, there was not enough data nor technology background to proceed with the undertaking without massive risk.

Under tremendous pressure from the U.S. government to reduce it's sovereignty-crushing dependency on foreign supplied oil, British Petroleum proceeded with risky ventures without any safety backup plan for this current type of problem.

The tragic disaster which took those innocent souls aboard "Deepwater Horizon" and which is now killing an unprecedented amount of aquatic life and threatening human lifestyle, tells us that it's time to end our dependency on fossil fuels.

Unfortunately the message goes unheeded because oil is bling--the new gold in the middle of a zany Oil-is-Gold Rush--politicians and their oil executive pimps are throwing caution to the wind. They are killing the root of all earth's life. They are killing their children's children while they amass short-term political power and line pockets with gold.

At the forefront, British Petroleum has vigorously attacked the problem tasking some 22,000 employees with finding a solution and doing a clean up. The company has spent roughly a billion dollars in its efforts by May's end and has made an admirable effort without assistance from the oil-thirsty, responsible, North American governments which have failed to insist that technology for handling such emergencies be developed before the risks were taken.

Meanwhile the U.S. government which--along with all other oil-producing nationals--uses oil as a strategic sovereignty weapon, in parallel with it's massive budgets for bombing cities and occupying countries, has barely spent a dime. That must change.

News at of the end of May 2010 is that British Petroleum's "Top Kill" plan which essentially sought to pile self-adhesive mud with a debris collection of rope and old tires on top of the leak, failed.

By May 29, nothing has been revealed in the way of a real solution other than the hard one which has always been available: to cut the damaged riser and cap it deep down (a mile) below the surface using submersible robotics and remote controllers on the surface.

Plans have been unveiled for using dispersant in the ocean water to breakdown and distribute the sludge throughout a larger area of ocean which would make the job of Gaia somewhat easier but prolonged thus killing more aquatic life more slowly.

This exercise is a massive chemistry experiment without precedent that British Petroleum makes at our risk. It has never been done before, putting dispersant into the flow of a submersed well leak. 870,000 gallons of Corexit made by Nalco had been used by May 25 and that likely saved a lot of beaches from being visibly damaged.

The goal of using the dispersant is to make the damage invisible, but the result is a large area of clear (slightly clouded) lifeless, hydrocarbon-rich, de-oxygenated water with a few new toxins added, replaces healthy ocean waters and sparse patches of crude saturated waters.

Dispersant like the brands made by two foremost chemical companies in the dispersant business, Accepta and Nalco, are a cocktail of ingredients, some toxic, comprising a proprietary formula. No two original brands are the same.

Dispersant is used to minimize the visible impact of a massive hydrocarbon polluting event in ocean waters. The hydrocarbons of the spill are broken apart creating a much larger area of only lightly clouded, de-oxygenated water with lower toxicity in PPMs (particles per millions) spread over more than ten times the area of the original contaminant. (Most dispersant is packaged in a ten parts to one concentration although it can be much more widely dispersed over time and in a larger body of churning water, i.e.: hurricanes!).

The choice of toxic dispersant is made on the basis of what species to protect at the expense of others, and what will most readily hide the problem. The problem does not go away.

Dispersal of the toxins won't save Gaia from dying a little more at the hands of human greed in this current disaster.

The biosphere and physical parts of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) are assembled together forming a complex interacting system acting in a homoeostatic fashion to preserves climatic and bio-geo-chemical conditions on Earth, suitable for living organisms.

This current disaster will change the lifestyle of all humans and will kill life on earth in some considerable measure.

Are we really sure that we want to continue greedily puncturing oil holes in the deep sea beds, in the seven oceans including the Arctic?


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1. DeepWater Horizon Explosion Was No Surprise

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2. Toxic Oil Intravenous Injection Continues to Slowly Kill Gaia - Themis Ecology

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3. Stop Blaming BP and Look In The Mirror Instead

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4. Who Authorized Politicians to Permit Unprecedented Tampering with Earth

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8. Oil Barons, not Obama set U.S. Energy Policy

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