Scientists dispute Obama admin's contention that most spilled oil is "gone")

[brentspeak]

There's an easy way for the the Obama administration -- and anyone else who believes as they do -- to demonstrate that the Gulf water and ecosystem is safe: gulp down some cooked Gulf fish live on television. Yum-yum, bon appetite. Corexit makes fish taste good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/us/05oil.html

By JUSTIN GILLIS and LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: August 4, 2010

The Obama administration’s latest report on the Gulf of Mexico disaster set off a war of words Wednesday among scientists, Gulf Coast residents and political pundits about what to make of the Deepwater Horizon spill and its aftermath.

The report, the subject of an extended White House briefing, claimed that most of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that have leaked into the gulf could be accounted for, that much of it was effectively gone already, and that most of the remaining oil was in a highly diluted form. The implication of the report was that future damage from the oil might be less than had been feared.

That suggestion was not happily received on the Gulf Coast, where people are still coping with the collapse of fishing and tourism and saw the report as fresh evidence that the Obama administration was preparing to abandon them in the same way they felt the Bush administration did after Hurricane Katrina.

Gulf residents pointed to oiled beaches, blackened marshes and dead birds as evidence that, whatever the future damage from the remaining oil, the damage already done was severe enough.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080407082.html

Scientists question government team's report of shrinking gulf oil spill

But, in interviews, scientists who worked on the report said the figures were based in large part on assumptions and estimates with a significant margin of error.

Some outside scientists went further: In a situation in which many facts remain murky, they said, the government seemed to have used interpretations that made the gulf -- and the federal efforts to save it -- look as good as possible.

"There's a lot of . . . smoke and mirrors in this report," said Ian MacDonald, a professor of biological oceanography at Florida State University. "It seems very reassuring, but the data aren't there to actually bear out the assurances that were made."

[Wilms]

1. NOAA is concerned too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4491507&mesg_id=4491507

Really surprised at Obama's statement, unless I took it out of context.

[Bobbieo]

2. I'll bet not much Gulf seafood is served at the White House.

[laugle]

3. This is so

disturbing. It reminds me of the Bush Administration after 911, saying the air was safe at ground zero. Now, many people that helped with the clean-up are dead and dying.

I'm so sick of the government lying to us. And Obama is suppose revamp the FDA? There's not a chance in hell I would eat seafood from the gulf. I love Shrimp, but now have to be so careful to find out the origin before buying it.

The gulf is a toxic soup of oil and the dispersants they sprayed, I'm sure it will take years before we really know the ultimate damage to the environment.

[old mark]

4. I wonder where it went? nt

[ProSense]

5. There are obviously scientists who don't dispute the President's statement. From the NYT article

<...>

But other scientists, while acknowledging that the report incorporated assumptions that could not be directly tested, found them reasonable, if not conservative. Edward B. Overton of Louisiana State University, one of the most experienced gulf researchers, said the report, if anything, might have underestimated the amount of oil that had effectively gone away or been dispersed. He expressed concern, however, that dispersed oil in the deep ocean might not break down quickly.

Jeffrey W. Short, a former federal scientist who led major studies after the Exxon Valdez disaster and now works for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, found the report plausible, over all.

The estimates in the report “are better than nothing, and probably not very far off,” he said. “They have measured all the easy stuff to measure, and the rest will be very difficult to measure if not impossible. So I suspect it is not going to get a whole lot better than this.”

The heart of the debate is the applicability, in a situation like the gulf spill, of the scientific technique known as modeling. In that approach, scientists build an elaborate computer program, incorporating numerous best guesses, to try to answer complex questions that cannot be tackled any other way.

In this case, the report’s authors started with an estimate from another government scientific team: how much oil spewed from the out-of-control BP well before it was capped on July 15. That calculation was itself the product of a drawn-out controversy in which the government was accused of deliberately playing down the size of the spill in the early days.

<...>

[Orsino]

6. Shoving one's toys under the bed...

...does not mean that one has cleaned one's room. That is all.

[Catherina]

7. Thank you. Rec'd n/t

[ladywnch]

8. well, the new head of BP has said publicly that he would serve Gulf

seafood to his family......let them BOTH put there money where their mouths are. Pull the fish straight out of the water.....cook it up.....and eat it down.....all on continuous camera coverage.