This is a girl I used to know. Those boats
spraying water on her couldn’t save her.
She went to pieces. Sank. Destroyed the world.
She destroyed the world. Not in a good way
like Elektra King in my re-telling
of that Bond thing, “The World Is Not Enough.”
But wreckage tells a story all its own
independently of the wrecking crew
more eloquently than the wrecking act.
This is Professor Challenger’s account
of what he found in Maple White’s knapsack
in addition to the artist’s sketchbook:
“From the contents of the knapsack it was evident that this man had been an artist and poet in search of effects. There were scraps of verse. I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit. There were also some rather commonplace pictures of river scenery, a paintbox, a box of coloured chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my inkstand, a volume of Baxter’s Moths And Butterflies, a cheap revolver, and a few cartridges. Of personal equipment he either had none or he had lost it in his journey. Such were the total effects of this strange American Bohemian.”
Throughout the history of our planet
every extinction event has been paired
with a subsequent resurgence of life
as old species struggle for dominance
with new species re-filling the niches
made available by the extinctions.
Professors write books about extinctions
but they don’t write books about those sequel
episodes of refreshed diversity.
Maybe that’s only random chance. The way
niches just happened to get filled last time.
Our teachers just like writing about death:
First, the world warms over short intervals of time because of a sudden increase of carbon dioxide and methane, caused initially by the formation of vast volcanic provinces called flood basalts. The warmer world affects the ocean circulation systems and disrupts the position of the conveyer currents. Bottom waters begin to have warm, low-oxygen water dumped into them. Warming continues, and the decrease of equator-to-pole temperature differences reduces ocean winds and surface currents to a near standstill. Mixing of oxygenated surface waters with deeper, and volumetrically increasing, low-oxygen bottom waters decreases, causing ever-shallower water to change from oxygenated to anoxic. Finally, the bottom water is at depths where light can penetrate, and the combination of low oxygen and light allows green sulfur bacteria to expand in numbers and fill low-oxygen shallows. They live amid other bacteria that produce toxic amounts of hydrogen sulfide, and the flux of this gas into the high atmosphere, where it breaks down the ozone layer, and the subsequent increase in ultraviolet radiation from the sun kills much of the photosynthetic green plant phytoplankton. On its way up into the sky, the hydrogen sulfide also kills some plant and animal life, and the combination of high heat and hydrogen sulfide creates a mass extinction on land. These are the greenhouse extinctions.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
John Kessler, Ph.D., Professor of
Chemical Oceanography, Texas A & M University,
researched methane concentration
in Gulf of Mexico oil-contaminated water
during June 2010 research funded by
the National Science Foundation
BP's Gulf Crude Oil Nearly 40% Methane -
Will Huge Dead Zone Follow?
WHAT DID YOU FIND IN TERMS OF THE AMOUNTS
OF METHANE AS YOU LOOKED AT DEPTHS AND BROADNESS?
We surveyed from the surface of the ocean all the way down to the sea floor. We surveyed from within one-third mile of ground zero (Deepwater Horizon rig) all the way out 7 to 9 miles in a radius around the wellhead. What we noticed in terms of depths was that most of this methane is staying in the deep one-third of the ocean water. We were seeing concentrations in those deep depths (3000-4000 feet down).
We found dissolved methane concentrations ranging from 10,000 times above background methane to an average about 100,000 times above background. We also saw a few samples that were even starting to approach one million times above background!
WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT?
That’s what we are trying to figure out right now. I think the biggest ramification is the loss of oxygen that is dissolved in the waters. What we are talking about are the deep waters around the spill zone and we surveyed between 6 to 8 miles radius from ground zero. With all of those hydrocarbons now in the water that can be food for microorganisms can lead to significant oxygen drawdowns and potentially dead zones. What we’re trying to determine now is: will these dead zones develop? Will the microorganisms that feed on methane be able to feed at a significant rate that will deplete the amount of oxygen faster than any new, fresh oxygen might be supplied to these regions?
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Orbis Non Sufficit And The Status Cow
“This Was A Different World”
The Built World Before The Wrecking Crew
Quasi Una Petroleum Fantasia
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