We were trying to account for the impact on everything from plankton to
cetaceans and from immobile plants to migratory birds. We also have a database
table with information about storms. Somewhat ironically, years ago we had
written to the State of Louisiana saying that in our simulations of cities from
Brownsville to Boca Raton New Orleans stood out as most vulnerable. They replied
thanks, but they had a state of the art disaster management system in place. Four
months later Katrina hit, thankfully with less force than our simulations. We
concluded the State's system must have been for northern Louisiana. One
disappointing linkage was that it is estimated that Katrina caused 7 million
gallons of petroleum to spill. We don't know how much was crude and how much
was refined.
One possible benefit of using chemical disperants is to prevent hypoxia. Low or no
oxygen water occurs when bacteria consume the oxygen when eating the oil. A
troubling result from several hundred simulations is that the disperants have
ZERO positive effects when a hurricane pushes everything north. In fact,
introducing lots more petroleum and glycol to an ecology already struggling makes
things measurably worse. Somewhat like spitting into the wind.
We cannot find any happy outcomes, especially if British Petroleum keeps pouring
in dispersants. It is tough to be optimistic about relief wells in August. So we've
asked several colleagues who are outer planet experts if there's a coagulent -
anything that is cheap to make (on the order of rice hulls or kitty litter), not
environmentally disastrous, and which causes the oil to SINK. Not to be too
gloomy, but we think the warnings were ignored, the response was too slow and the
strategy used was dead wrong. All of us here at I-MAG STS would just love to be
wrong about how bad this will be.