Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who took the photo of the LA freeway system at the top of the right hand column and several others on the blog, has a new series of photos of the Gulf oil spill. The series, executed in large-scale digital c-prints, was captured this May and June when Burtynsky boarded a helicopter and took aerial shots of the burning Deepwater Horizon rig where the crisis — the worst marine oil spill in history — originated. An artist whose work has long been driven by deep-seated environmental concerns, Burtynsky's photos can be seen on the website of Toronto’s Nicholas Metivier Gallery (a preview of the exhibition opening on September 16).
Burtynsky has explored the theme of oil for more than a decade, from the Alberta oil sands to Baku, Azerbaijan, one of the earliest sites of oil discovery. These images are gathered in the book Burtynsky: Oil, and a previous blog about the Oil series, with links, is here. The show’s curator, Paul Roth writes in the accompanying book: “The subject is not oil. In these pictures, Edward Burtynsky shows the man-made world—the human ecosystem—that has risen up around the production, use, and dwindling availability of our paramount energy source.”
Democracy Now interviews a scientist from the Univ. of South Florida who has conducted studies showing that a giant oil plume is floating at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Several other independent studies from other Universities confirm this. The piece includes a video diagram showing the size, spread and direction of the plume. Of course, this is contrary to everything BP and the Obama Administration have been saying about the oil spill, who insisted that 3/4 of the oil was gone, basically catching the Big O and his corporate buddies in a huge lie.
And do yourself a favour: watch the video through to the "break" and you'll hear Johnny Cash sing "Don't Go Near the Water, Son"; it will blow your frackin' mind.
Two Shell drilling experts, Joe Leimkuhler and John Hollowell, recently gave an exceptionally informative talk to the Aspen Ideas Festival.
The talk begins with some surprising statistics on the proportion of current US oil production generated from deepwater drilling and then proceeds to an overview of the technology and process of deepwater drilling. The heart of the talk, found around the 18 minute mark and again in the discussion period beginning at the 27 minute mark, describes the differences between how Shell designs and drills deepwater wells and how BP did. There is also some interesting discussion of drilling design requirements that the US government now requires but were not required/followed in the BP well.
These guys clearly have an interest in maintaining the viability of deepwater drilling and claim that good well design, which BP didn't follow, would have minimized the liklihood of an accident and, if one occurred, would have provided a larger number of potential ways to close down the well early on. They are, however, up front that the specific cause of the accident is not yet known and, hence, they don't go so far as to say such accidents are impossible with Shell rigs. Everything considered, they come across as both honest and forthright.
That said, the details they provide are a sad testimony to anyone familiar with the sociological literature on technological accidents (e.g., Perrow's Normal Accidents or Vaughan's Challenger Launch Decision). The talk illustrates both a failure to incorporate the principals of design advocated by Perrow (e.g., independent and redundant components) and the malignancy of poor institutional decision making chronicled by Vaughan. Sadly, it took a second shuttle accident before NASA took Vaughan's analysis seriously. Hopefully the oil industry has a better learning curve.
The broken BP Horizon well is leaking another dangerous substance besides oil: methane gas, at concentrations up to 100,000 times the natural levels. The extremely high volumes of methane are causing anoxic conditions which are killing off the lower segments of the ocean food chain, and threatening the survival of many species of fish. In the Guardian UK:
"In a conference call with reporters, Samantha Joye, a scientist at the University of Georgia who has been studying the effects of the spill at depth, said the ruptured well was producing up to 50% as much methane and other gases as oil. . . Joye said her preliminary findings suggested the high volume of methane coming out of the well could upset the ocean food chain. Such high concentrations, it is feared, would trigger the growth of microbes, which break up the methane, but also gobble up oxygen needed by marine life to survive, driving out other living things."
The release of huge amounts of methane gas in the oceans is every climate scientist's worst nightmare. Methane is 72 times more potent a greenhouse gas than C02. Not only does it speed up global warming, oceanic methane causes anoxic "dead zones" that kill oxygen-breathing sea life, increases ocean acidity and decreases the capacity of the ocean to absorb C02.
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who took the photo of the LA freeway system at the top of the right hand column and several others on the blog, has a new series of photos of the Gulf oil spill. The series, executed in large-scale digital c-prints, was captured this May and June when Burtynsky boarded a helicopter and took aerial shots of the burning Deepwater Horizon rig where the crisis — the worst marine oil spill in history — originated. An artist whose work has long been driven by deep-seated environmental concerns, Burtynsky's photos can be seen on the website of Toronto’s Nicholas Metivier Gallery (a preview of the exhibition opening on September 16).
Burtynsky has explored the theme of oil for more than a decade, from the Alberta oil sands to Baku, Azerbaijan, one of the earliest sites of oil discovery. These images are gathered in the book Burtynsky: Oil, and a previous blog about the Oil series, with links, is here. The show’s curator, Paul Roth writes in the accompanying book: “The subject is not oil. In these pictures, Edward Burtynsky shows the man-made world—the human ecosystem—that has risen up around the production, use, and dwindling availability of our paramount energy source.”
