http://ocg6.marine.usf.edu/~zheng/research/Oilspill/index.htmlhttp://ocg6.marine.usf.edu/~liu/Drifters/latest_roms.htmThis is an on-going joint effort from the Ocean Circulation Group and the Optical Oceanography Laboratory at College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, and the results are provided as is. The OCG & OOL do not warrant that the simulated drifter trajectories fit for any particular purpose. Further, neither OCG nor OOL guarantee availability, updates or timely online delivery.
Run these to 5/7 and it's about then that the tendrils of the slick really start to grow.
I'm not an environmental alarmist--far from, I consider myself a
conservationist, a "wise-user" of the Teddy R. kind (and one who always knew the C02 crap was crap)--but I'm getting a really bad feeling about this one.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/gulf-loop-current-oil-spill.htmlThe Gulf of Mexico oil spill is expected to strike the Louisiana coastline today, and officials are bracing for impacts to shorebirds, turtles, shellfish and other endangered wildlife. But many ocean scientists are now raising concerns that a powerful current could spread the still-bubbling slick from the Florida Keys all the way to Cape Hatteras off North Carolina.
These oceanographers are carefully watching the Gulf Loop Current, a clockwise swirl of warm water that sets up in the Gulf of Mexico each spring and summer. If the spill meets the loop -- the disaster becomes a runaway.
"It could make it from Louisiana all the way to Miami in a week, maybe less." said Eric Chassignet, director of the Center for Ocean Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University. "It is pretty fast."
Right now, some computer models show the spill 30 to 50 miles north of the loop current. If the onshore winds turn around and push the oil further south: "That would be a nightmare," said Yonggang Liu, research associate at the University of South Florida who models the current. "Hopefully we are lucky, but who knows. The winds are changing and difficult to predict."
Imagine the loop current as an ocean-going highway, transporting tiny plankton, fish and other marine life along a watery conveyor belt. Sometimes it even picks up a slug of freshwater from the Mississippi River -- sending it on a wandering journey up to North Carolina.
The Gulf Loop Current acts like jet of warm water that squirts in from the Caribbean basin and sloshes around the Gulf of Mexico before being squeezed out the Florida Strait, where it joins the larger and more powerful Gulf Stream current.
Fishermen follow the current as a harbinger of good catches. It has also transported algal blooms -- toxic "red tides" -- from the Gulf of Mexico to beaches and bays along the southeast Atlantic coast.[/b]
Oceanographer George Maul worries that the current could push the oil slick right through the Florida Keys and its 6,000 coral reefs.
"I looked at some recent satellite imagery and it looks like some of the oil may be shifted to the south," said Maul, a professor at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla. "If it gets entrained in the loop, it could spread throughout much of the Atlantic."
In fact, new animation from a consortium of Florida institutions and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, predicts a slight southward shift in the oil over the next few days.
Now whatever the loons of the left may think, most of us who live in the world of common sense--conservatives for short--want no harm to come to beautiful sections of the world's economy. Coral reefs are almost magical in their beauty and complex biodiversity. And their ecosystems can be very fragile.
Then there's the effects the oil could have on the widely-migrating cetaceans of the world. This is not funny.
And Obama wasted over 8 days. And is really, when you get down to it, doing nothing now--except getting in the way. If the hypocrites of the enviro-whackos
weren't hypocrites, they'd be cursing him as possibly the worst President, ecologically speaking,
ever.
Do I have any ideas beyond what BP is doing? Maybe. Is it possible that, if we devoted as much of our military fleet as we could spare, hell, Congress appropriated funds and hired as much of commercial shipping that could be spared, that we could use their propulsion systems to create artificial surface currents to beat back the oil spread, so it doesn't enter the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream? Could we deploy enough giant fans ito augment their propulsion? Probably what I'm suggesting is impracticable, but maybe not. Those booms look like a waste to me.
Anything to contain this...
