Oil-Spotting Blimp Arrives In the Gulf 109
GAMP writes "A Navy blimp to assist oil skimming operations will be arriving to the Gulf Coast Wednesday evening, according to the Unified Command Joint Information Center. 'The airship will operate relatively close to shore, primarily supporting skimmers to maximize their effectiveness,' said US Coast Guard Capt. Kevin Sareault."
A blimp? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wonderful (Score:1, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Remediation Theatre (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone stated the other day in my thread [slashdot.org], most of the cleanup efforts are little more than a Public Relations campaign. Skimming has, so far, collected a astonishingly small amount of oil.
This is obviously due to the huge disparity between the size of a fishing boat and the vastness of the Gulf of Mexico.
I'm going to pimp my proposal again: Send the Enterprise [teslabox.com], use the nuclear reactors to power air compressors that will pump air (oxygen) into the oil plumes in the depths of the ocean. The oxygen feeds the bacteria that eat crude oil.
The Enterprise would be stationed in the vicinity of the Macondo Prospect site (where the Deepwater Horizon went down). Bubble fences would circle the wellhead at, say, 1 mile and 2 miles, or would be concentrated in whichever direction the oily currents tend to flow.
And I was just thinking today: coastal communities could experiment with running bubble fences some distance from their beaches. These compressors could be powered by the grid. Booms seem to be a big joke - look what happened when that little storm blew threw.
All the cleanup efforts are experimental, so the President ought to order at least one aircraft carrier to the Gulf. If it helps, send the rest of the nuclear navy. :)
Re:Remediation Theatre (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you do about the excess bacteria afterwards? Does the bacteria just magically vanish afterwards taking whatever product they convert the oil into with them?
This solution sounds like Australia's use of the cane toad to protect cane crops, only to end up with a major cane toad problem instead that's killing off the native wildlife.
Re:Remediation Theatre (Score:2, Interesting)
...Except by not actually introducing any new species, it is nothing like Autralia's toad problem. When the oxygen stops being pumped, the bacteria return to normal population levels.
Having said that, I somehow very much doubt that even if you shoveled tons of bateria down there and made oxygen readily available, they'd be able to metabolize the millions and millions of gallons of oil that are being released each day. A nice way to speed up ecological recovery once the well has been plugged? Sure. A real solution that will take care of the spill at the required speed when there are monstruous amounts of crude escaping that place every single second? No way. Not by a long shot.
I had being toying with the idea of oxygen bubbles, incidentally (hadn't thought about how to power the air pumps, thanks for that). But in a much more different scenario. Surround the leak with air pumps that inject enormous amounts of oxygen (as much as needed) to create a sort of oil/air/water emulsion, and set the damn thing on fire. After all, that's the way they deal with excess oil/gas in drilling sites on land, right? By just burning it?
I have NO idea how feasible this would be, but what is clear is that that hole needs to be plugged NOW. Why haven't we heard on the news of any new genious plans to make this happen? Do BP and the goverment plan to do NOTHING? Will they start to take the russian approach more seriously at some point (you'd think they have another plan if they are so quick to disregard the only people who have had to deal with with problem multiple times before)?
I'm sorry, but bringing a F$%"ing blimp is a JOKE. What are they doing to SOLVE THE PROBLEM?
Re:Minor difference between AU and GoM (Score:3, Interesting)
"It bears pointing out that the cane toad was imported from outside the Australian ecosystem, whereupon it became a runaway success as an invasive species. Meanwhile, the bacteria mentioned here are already present as a natural part of the Gulf ecosystem, and they thus present zero risk of invasiveness."
Absolutely, but that wasn't really my fundamental point with the comparison- my point was that if you alter an ecosystem in any way whatsoever it can result in just causing a whole new set of problems.
The other poster responding to me below mentioned that when you stop the oxygen you stop the bacteria and things go back to normal, but that can't happen- the bacteria has to either live or die, if it lives you have an excess of it which may cause problems, if it dies then you're releasing massive amounts of whatever compound these bacteria release when they die into the ocean.
So effectively, whilst yes, bacteria may be able to deal with the oil, all you're doing is exchanging one problem for another (again, hence the cane toad analogy)- I doubt very much a sudden release of dying bacteria is in itself healthy.
Perhaps a better comparison would be with the algal blooms- these often occur when we get too much fertiliser run off from farming into a river, lake or sea, and whilst the algae may well be native to that body of water, the sudden increase in population is devastating for the other wild life there and can even be dangerous for humans- I suspect a drastic increase in oil eating bacteria would be exactly the same.
At the end of the day, unless we can really just turn oil into sea water, picking up as much of the oil as possible and bringing it in shore where we can use it in a slightly less harmful manner probably is the only way to handle the cleanup without completely screwing the environment, albeit in a different way than the oil would. It's a case of separating massive amounts of one substance from massive amounts of another, sure we can change one of the substances, but it's still likely only going to be to something equally problematic that still needs separating.
Re:Mmkay (Score:3, Interesting)
For sensor equipment, a stable platform is also usually an advantage. Airships are exceptionally stable.
The Zeppelin company had an airship in South Africa a couple of years ago, with sensors to detect gravitational anomalies related to kimberlite pipes - kimberlite is where you find diamonds, of course. Geological survey from an airship, how cool is that?