by Dave Nocera

Created on: July 19, 2010   Last Updated: August 04, 2010

The latest new is that the US Government is downplaying the severity of the BP Gulf Disaster, claiming that most of the oil is already gone [1].  The US Government wants this problem to go away and they do not want the public to know the entire truth.  It is stupidity like this that caused the BP Gulf disaster in the first place [2] and will likely kill us in the end. The undisputed fact is that the BP leaked 219 million gallons of oil [3], which is 7 times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill [4].   For the US Government to now claim that three quarters of that oil is already gone just because they cannot see it may also explains why the US government has been strangely silent regarding the 24 billion gallons of methane that BP also released into the environment with the oil [5].

About 60% of the volume that BP spewed from the pipe was oil; but the other 40% was methane [6]. Everyone is focused on the oil; because we can see the damage, but the methane has in the past and can in the future trigger doomsday. During the spill scientists measured as much as one million times the normal levels of methane in the Gulf near the ocean surface [7].  The methane bubbles mix with the ocean but eventually they burst at the surface and enter Earth’s atmosphere. And methane is 10 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas [8].

Unlike oil, the more serious problem with the methane is the expansion factor. Methane expands 164 times in volume as it rises from the sea floor [9].  Normally, the high pressure and cold temperature keep methane compressed as a solid and stable at the ocean bottom, locked up with water in a form called methane hydrate [10].  Once the BP released that trapped methane into our environment, it expanded from 148 million gallons at the bottom of the Gulf to 24 billion gallons at sea level.  

Not to diminish in anyway the tragedy of the Exxon Valdez, but the Exxon Valdez did not release methane and 20 years later the Prince William Sound is largely recovered from the oil damage, admittedly with some heartbreaking consequences [4].  So contrary to the US Government’s latest assessment that the problem is 75% resolved[1], if we look forward, we can expect that the BP Gulf disaster will hit the wildlife and local economies many times harder than the Exxon Valdez tragedy hit Alaska, but in 20 years we will largely recover from the oil damage.  But also in 20 years we can also expect that

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