Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Oil Found! As much as 80% of the oil remains in the Gulf

Read this article! Don't buy the lie! Most of the oil is below the surface thanks to BP spraying chemical dispersants around the clock to hide the oil. Yes we've made progress but let's not forget that BP is responsible for one of the worst ecological disasters of all time. In large part due to their own negligence. Kudos to USF and UGA for having the courage to look into this themselves!

"Researchers are warning that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a bigger mess than the government claims and that a lot of crude is lurking deep below the surface, some of it settling perhaps in a critical undersea canyon off the Florida Panhandle. The evidence of microscopic amounts of oil mixing into the soil of the canyon was gathered by scientists at the University of South Florida, who also found poisoned plant plankton -- the vital base of the ocean food web -- which they attributed to a toxic brew of oil and dispersants.


Early findings based on a 10-day research cruise that ended late Monday -- follow a report on Monday from Georgia researchers that said as much as 80 percent of the oil from the spill remains in the Gulf. Both groups' findings have already been incorporated into lawsuits filed against BP.


At the White House on Aug. 4, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco said, "At least 50 percent of the oil that was released is now completely gone from the system, and most of the remainder is degrading rapidly or is being removed from the beaches." That is not what the scientists from South Florida and Georgia found. "The oil is not gone, that's for sure," University of South Florida's David Hollander said Tuesday. "There is oil and we need to deal with it." University of Georgia's Samantha Joye said: "It's a tremendous amount of oil that's in the system. ... It's very difficult for me to imagine that 50 percent of it has been degraded." Marine scientist Chuck Hopkinson, also with the University of Georgia, raised the obvious question: "Where has all the oil gone? It hasn't gone anywhere. It still lurks in the deep. NOAA spokesman Justin Kenney defended his agency's calculations, saying they are "based on direct measurements whenever possible and the best available scientific estimates where direct measurements were not possible."


To read the full story click on the Herald Tribune

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