26 square miles of toxic cloud

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Friday August 20, 2010 · 11:03 AM PDT

2010/08/20 · 11:03

and wait -- there's more!

22 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 650 feet tall -- about 60 stories -- 3000 feet underwater!

That's no plume, that's a massive toxic cloud that shows no sign of abating. BP's dispersant legacy. Perhaps it's lucky that it's not showing signs of abating, since that would mean oil-eating microbes would be eating it with an oxygen chaser, and that layer is currently not showing severe oxygen-depletion. We wouldn't want a dead zone at 3000 feet.

But that toxic cloud is still a problem for a very important reason: the "Deep Scattering Layer," or DSL, which is the great, dense, daily dumbwaiter of thick marine life that moves up toward the surface, and then back down again, in a constant cycle.

Moving daily through this toxic cloud.

mwmwm

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Wednesday August 18, 2010 · 10:41 AM PDT

2010/08/18 · 10:41

In response to a comment in a recent post of mine, I replied,

"I think lots of us know what we have to do -- change radically -- but far too few are actually doing it. Problems abound, but so do solutions -- they're just expensive, inconvenient, and scratchy.

That's the theme of this diary -- that we can no longer be lazy, and that it can't be cheap, or convenient, or easy to save ourselves.

mwmwm

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Monday August 16, 2010 · 7:59 AM PDT

2010/08/16 · 07:59

It was a tough week in Tomorrowland, where everyone is above average, because the averages keep plummeting "faster than expected."

For a bit of Monday fun -- and for those 6 billion or so not paying close attention to what we're doing to ourselves -- below is this week's Pre-Apocalypse News & Info Quiz (PANIQuiz), about eco-collapse stories from the last seven days.

mwmwm

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Monday August 09, 2010 · 8:00 AM PDT

2010/08/09 · 08:00

As I've done other times, I'm reposting our weekly quiz -- some funny and scary stories during the last week. Enjoy!

mwmwm

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Tuesday August 03, 2010 · 10:35 AM PDT

2010/08/03 · 10:35

Last night, we got the call from our nearish neighbor, who has the specially modified nail gun that shoots blunt force trauma at 80 psi.

It was late afternoon -- "how about tonight?" she said.

We were planning an ethical multiple murder, and suddenly it was happening all too fast.

mwmwm

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Monday July 05, 2010 · 8:14 AM PDT

2010/07/05 · 08:14

This week's Pre-Apocalypse News and Information Quiz might provide a bit of levity on this Monday.

If you can't laugh, you can't learn.

Did you hear the one about ballast water in the Mediterranean, and the name of the new, GMO salmon headed for market in about a year?

They walked into a bar and said "That's what BP said.... last night!

mwmwm

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Saturday July 03, 2010 · 6:34 AM PDT

2010/07/03 · 06:34

I recently worked up a "see one year ago, two years ago" gizmo for the news story database underlying our "humoring the horror of environmental collapse" website.

What's perhaps most alarming is how much hasn't changed.

mwmwm

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Monday June 28, 2010 · 5:53 AM PDT

2010/06/28 · 05:53

Though provided weekly on our site, I only occasionally post these Pre-Apocalypse News and Information Quizzes here.

But there are some good ones this week, which you might enjoy.

mwmwm

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Wednesday May 26, 2010 · 7:54 AM PDT

2010/05/26 · 07:54

So I'm mesmerized in horror, watching the hypnotic gush of the live feed. I'm groaning over the ocean life that will die unnoticed in the deep, after ingesting toxic dispersants and more-toxic oil. I'm grieving for the oil-soaked wetlands, and all those to come, suffocated by the black coating of our collective addiction to cheap energy.

And then:

The National Geographic reports on a problem that I'd not considered: a feedback system that I fear will consume the life and livelihoods of the coast.

mwmwm

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Monday May 24, 2010 · 8:45 AM PDT

2010/05/24 · 08:45

The oil and gas rush out of the pipe: a force we believed we could master.

The oil explodes into droplets, then reforms into gobs, then into droplets once again.

The oil rushes, then relaxes, and begins to move lazily in the currents. The lightest oil rises to the surface, forming a sheen that glistens in the sun. The heavier oil rises, or falls, or is swirled like heavy cream.

Deep down, the ocean layers move in patterns we cannot see, and do not know, intermixing, carrying the oil inward and outward, forward and back, now diffusing, now coalescing, the soft light of the sun barely reaching the layers on layers of temperature gradients.

mwmwm

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Wednesday May 12, 2010 · 10:55 AM PDT

2010/05/12 · 10:55

Help me out here, amateur and professional economists.

We have been hearing that the Gulf Gusher damage may be "beyond human comprehension."

The carnage is iceberg-like, with the hidden undersurface Gulf biosystem likely comprising 80% of the worst. The birds, the seals, the dolphins, the turtles washing up dead will be the mildest hint of the death occurring everywhere beneath the Gulf waves.

If the Gusher continues, there will also be surface carnage as well. Wetlands utterly destroyed. Marsh life wiped out. Bayous with tarballs floating among cypress roots. Beaches rife with dispersant-produced oil mousse. New high-tide marks that are gooey and smelly, and renewed twice a day.

This, along the entire coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, likely down to Miami at least.

If, as I now believe, the oil release is far greater than we're being told, and if they can't stop it quickly, then a lot of dominoes will fall.

Because the natural resilience and beauty of the entire coastline will not just collapse.

It will stink.

mwmwm

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Tuesday May 11, 2010 · 8:35 AM PDT

2010/05/11 · 08:35

No, not sacrificing the city -- sacrificing my time in Amsterdam.

I made a very difficult decision yesterday. I'm fortunate to have become, over a couple of decades, a fairly big fish in certain small ponds. Consequently I serve on various advisory panels.

One of them, a large European open access project, is having its meeting in Amsterdam next month. They will pay my travel, and put me up at a swanky hotel, and feed me ever-so-well.

Free travel to Amsterdam! Free luxury lodging in that most lovely of cities! Hooh-hah!

I'd get to spend a productive day with a bunch of European colleagues who I see only rarely, and enjoy a great deal. I'd learn a lot about European attitudes to things we confront in the US too, and that I need to understand professionally; and I was to present a brief report on some of the movements in that same arena in the US. And maybe take an extra day to just enjoy myself.

But I decided, after much pondering, that I just couldn't do it.

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26 square miles of toxic cloud

Expensive, inconvenient, and scratchy: solutions are easy

Chortling the end of the world: this week's PANIQuiz

Eco-PANIQuiz for week ending Aug 8: GMOs, Toads, CO2, and Dams

On the death of 17 chickens

eco-PANIQuiz for week ending July 4: Laughing at danger

One year, two years ago in ecocollapse

eco-PANIQuiz for June 21-27: Funning the horror

Even worse: shallow oil pipelines in dying wetlands

Gulf gusher: a sort of requiem

After the shores turn black and begin to stink

Sacrificing Amsterdam