A catastrotree falls in the forest?

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Sometimes that
Which you cannot see
Turns out to be
A catastrophe.

Of course, the original philosophical riddle was about sound:

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

But Horatio has a poetic license ... and is not afraid (or ashamed) to use it.

The media are not the only ones who have used words like "catastrophic" and "calamitous" in reference to the Gulf oil blowout.

One of our country's most distinguished ocean scientists, Jeremy Jackson, of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has used the latter word to describe what the outcome might be in this case. ( Scripps says Gulf spill may be 'catastrophic')

Some other prominent ocean scientists have actually "accused the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope."
(NY Times -- Scientists Fault Lack of Studies Over Gulf Oil Spill)

It's telling that a full month after the blowout, there are still no scientific instruments (other than BP video feeds) in place at the broken pipe to accurately gauge the flow of oil (though independent scientists and engineers have made estimates from analysis of the video, which are at least an order of magnitude greater than the official coast guard estimate of 5000 barrels per day)

According to a NY Times Article (Giant Plumes of Oil Forming under Gulf)

"BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

Without detailed data (or in some cases, any data at all), it's difficult if not impossible to draw conclusions about how bad it is right now or how bad it might be in the long run. ( Ditto for determining damages in liability suits. )

Some things are fairly clear, however: the "official" Coast guard estimate of 5000 barrels a day is almost certainly a significant (gross?) understatement of the flow of oil. See scientific/engineering testimony (eg, by Steve Werely, Professor of Engineering at Purdue University) in Subcommittee Briefing on "Sizing up the BP Oil Spill: Science and Engineering Measuring Methods" See also the minimum estimates made by John Amos (Sky Truth) and FSU Professor Ian MacDonald, based on analysis of satellite images of surface oil. The latter (minimum) estimates support the finding by Wereley et. al. that the flow rate is probably at least an order of magnitude greater than the coast guard estimate.

It is also clear (a fact) that dispersants like Corexit have been used on a very large scale and in "novel" ways (injection directly into the flow at 5000 feet under the water) in this case.

Ocean scientists don't really know what "novel" (possibly deleterious) impacts such use may have over the long run. Some believe the "oil plumes" referred to in the NY Times article linked to above are one such impact and believe these might lead to "dead zones" as a result of depleted oxygen.

A lot of this remains a big question-mark at this stage.

But Horatio has to agree with what some others (including ocean scientists) have noted: "visible" impacts like oily beaches and marshes along the shore are only one aspect of the overall impact of an oil spill.

Sometimes (usually?) it is what you cannot see that is most important.

Originally posted at Only In It for the Gold

Update May 25

Ocean explorer/conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late Jacques Cousteau, has called the gulf blowout "the worst oil accident anywhere on the planet".

According to a (UK) TimesOnline article "Disaster must be catalyst for change, says Jean-Michel Cousteau"(by Jacqui Goddard)

Dismissing remarks from BP executives that the scale of the spill was tiny compared with the size of the sea and that the Gulf of Mexico would be cleaned up and "fully recover", Mr Cousteau said: "To make such a statement is totally unacceptable. We have to see behind the dying bird, we have to understand the consequences of this that we can't see. Nature is more complex than we can imagine. I know the ocean well enough to know that I don't know it at all. "

"I don’t want to call this doomsday. I want to believe we can sit down with decision-makers and industry and government and convince them that there’s a better way to manage our life support system. We can do the good thing or we can keep destroying it."

ABC News Video: Philippe Cousteau Jr. [grandson of Jacques Cousteau] and Sam Champion take hazmat dive into Gulf's oily waters.

Cousteau Jr.: 'This Is a Nightmare... a Nightmare'