BP-Oil spill related article- I laughed then I cried.

[Ele'ill]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100805/ap_on_sc/us_gulf_spill_gone



:laugh:



:crying:

[leftace53]

while natural processes of dispersion, evaporation and dissolving got rid of 84 million gallons
Yea, thats what we want, oil "mixed" in with the air and the water. Lovely. :crying:

[bcbm]

huffington post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-cope/the-crime-of-the-century_b_662971.html) has a good article about this. what a bunch of bullshit but hardly surprising. people should be up in arms about this.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Meanwhile, China shows it isn't afraid to use biotechnology to combat the problem. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100720/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentoilpollution)

[bcbm]

Meanwhile, China shows it isn't afraid to use biotechnology to combat the problem. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100720/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentoilpollution)



In peer-reviewed scientific studies, seeding oil spills with microbes has never helped the cleanup process, and microbiologists who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska doubt that the outcome will be different this time.

”There was an awful lot of hype in the 1970s and 1980s about adding bacteria, and it didn’t really pan out,” says Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University who worked on the Exxon Valdez cleanup effort.

The Exxon Valdez spill was the site of the world’s largest experiment in a technique called bioremediation, which aimed to add bacteria and nutrients to the oil-filled water, says Ronald Atlas, a biology professor at the University of Louisville, but the efforts failed. ”The bacteria are already out there,” says Kenneth Lee, a researcher who founded the Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. ”If it wasn’t for bacteria, we’d be knee-deep in oil.” That is, adding foreign microorganisms did not accelerate the naturally occurring process by which native populations of bacteria degrade oil in water.http://news.discovery.com/tech/oil-eating-microbes-gulf-oil-spill.html


Jay Grimes, a microbiologist of the University of Southern Mississippi says, “Microbes are available now but they are not effective for the most part.” Man-made microbes are not more effective than naturally occurring ones at utilizing hydrocarbons.http://today24news.com/breaking/oil-eating-bacteria-clean-spills-in-gulf-292411

[Klaatu]

Meanwhile, China shows it isn't afraid to use biotechnology to combat the problem. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100720/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentoilpollution)

You might be interested in reading about the tough action China is taking against polluters:

China orders polluting and unsafe factories to shut down.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/09/china-orders-pollution-factories-shut

China gets tough on polluters.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/china-gets-tough-on-polluters-20100809-11tma.html

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

http://news.discovery.com/tech/oil-eating-microbes-gulf-oil-spill.html

I think you'll find that biotechnology has moved on from the 70s.


http://today24news.com/breaking/oil-eating-bacteria-clean-spills-in-gulf-292411

Considering that "Howarth says there are enough microbes in the ocean to consume half of any oil spilled in a month or two", which seems pretty good to me, any improvement on nature is a bonus.

[bcbm]

try reading the whole article, thanx.