sullied, on 31 July 2010 - 04:45 AM, said:
2. Where is the oil? On the beaches, on the wildlife...have you not been paying attention?
Have a read:
http://news.yahoo.co...ews_excl_sc3270 Here is an excerpt:
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Where is all the oil? Nearly two weeks after BP finally capped the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, the oil slicks that once spread across thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappeared. Nor has much oil washed up on the sandy beaches and marshes along the Louisiana coast. And the small cleanup army in the Gulf has only managed to skim up a tiny fraction of the millions of gallons of oil spilled in the 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig went up in flames.
So where did the oil go? "Some of the oil evaporates," explains Edward Bouwer, professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. That’s especially true for the more toxic components of oil, which tend to be very volatile, he says. Jeffrey W. Short, a scientist with the environmental group Oceana, told the New York Times that as much as 40 percent of the oil might have evaporated when it reached the surface. High winds from two recent storms may have speeded the evaporation process.
Although there were more than 4,000 boats involved in the skimming operations, those cleanup crews may have only picked up a small percentage of the oil so far. That’s not unusual; in previous oil spills, crews could only scoop up a small amount of oil. "It’s very unusual to get more than 1 or 2 percent," says Cornell University ecologist Richard Howarth, who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill. Skimming operations will continue in the Gulf for several weeks.
Some of the oil has sunk into the sediments on the ocean floor. Researchers say that’s where the spill could do the most damage. But according to a report in Wednesday’s New York Times, "federal scientists [have determined] the oil [is] primarily sitting in the water column and not on the sea floor."
Perhaps the most important cause of the oil’s disappearance, some researchers suspect, is that the oil has been devoured by microbes. The lesson from past spills is that the lion’s share of the cleanup work is done by nature in the form of oil-eating bacteria and fungi. The microbes break down the hydrocarbons in oil to use as fuel to grow and reproduce. A bit of oil in the water is like a feeding frenzy, causing microbial populations to grow exponentially.
Typically, there are enough microbes in the ocean to consume half of any oil spilled in a month or two, says Howarth. Such microbes have been found in every ocean of the world sampled, from the Arctic to Antarctica. But there are reasons to think that the process may occur more quickly in the Gulf than in other oceans.
Our planet really is an amazing thing. It provides us with abundant, powerful energy sources, and even cleans up after our messes.
Onto the next argument:
sullied, on 31 July 2010 - 04:45 AM, said:
3. How does an EV equal energy independence? How do they equal no oil? Is this a serious question? First, EVs don't use oil and gas. Then, we use American energy from wind, solar, hydro, nuclear to power our electricity grid and then plug our EVs into that....that's total energy independence...no dependence on foreign oil for our energy needs.
I'd have to disagree with your first statement about this being a waste of money. Infrastructure spending is what the government should be spending money on. Subsidizing electric vehicles is related to infrastructure. If our country is going to move in the direction of energy independence (necessary from a defense standpoint), we need to electrify our vehicles and highways.
Ah! So, we've just got to power our entire electric grid with wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power! Is that all? Serious question: how much money do we need to spend, and how long will it take, for us to achieve this "energy independence"? Can't answer that? Don't feel bad.
Nobody can answer that question. Instead, politicians and
(ahem... liberals) just want to spend gobs of money so they can feel good about "moving in the right direction."
Pie. In. The. Sky. Do you really believe that now, now that we are currently running $1.5
trillion annual deficits,
now is the time to be "investing" in clean energy? Again, if this energy is so great, why can't it compete without government subsidies?
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