{"id":1868,"date":"2010-05-11T06:16:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T06:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1868"},"modified":"2010-05-11T06:16:34","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T06:16:34","slug":"something_to_consider_as_we_wa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1868","title":{"rendered":"Something To Consider As We Watch The Damage From The Oil Leaking In The Gulf"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May of 2009, In Tech<\/a>, a website posted from the research triangle in North Carolina, published an article about natural underwater oil seepage.  The article points out that according to researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), the amount of oil that seeps from the ocean floor off Santa Barbara, California, is the equivalent to from 8 to 80 times the amount of the Exxon Valdez spill.  This is a natural occurrence–there are no tankers or oil rigs involved.  The question is, “How does mother nature deal with this?”  Why isn’t the area a mess?”<\/p>\n

According to the article:<\/p>\n

\n

“There is an oil spill everyday at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara, where 20-25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Earlier research by Reddy and Valentine at the site found microbes were capable of degrading a significant portion of the oil molecules as they traveled from the reservoir to the ocean bottom, and that once the oil floated to sea surface, about 10% of the molecules evaporated within minutes.” <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy and UCSB’s Dave Valentine are studying the oil seepage at Coal Oil Point (COP) to find out how nature has dealt with this amount of oil.  They have used the Alvin submersible and its support vessel Atlantis to collect sediment samples in the area.<\/p>\n

The scientists don’t have an answer yet, but the studies continue.  The work they are doing may prevent future environmental damage from the kind of accident that we have recently had in the Gulf of Mexico.  We need to remember that although there are risks associated with off-shore drilling, the safety factor is much better than it was 20 years ago.  If we can copy mother nature’s way of dealing with the rare accidents that will happen, we can make off-shore drilling environmentally safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May of 2009, In Tech, a website posted from the research triangle in North Carolina, published an article about natural underwater oil seepage.  The article points out that according to researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}