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Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.latim

MildSteel

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Another oil spill. Although modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil and it's derivative products, it is causing significant environmental damage. However, the powerful influence of the oil industry insures that we will be dependent on oil for years to come.

Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves - latimes.com

Oil spilled from a barge in Galveston Bay, blocking the busy Houston ship channel and threatening some birds at a nearby wildlife sanctuary, officials and environmentalists said.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said as much as 168,000 gallons of oil may have spilled.

Michael Lambert, spokesman for Galveston County Office of Emergency Management, called it a “significant spill,” but not based on the amount of oil.

“The real issue is that it’s in the ship channel, near environmentally sensitive areas. So there’s an economic impact and an environmental impact,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

Crews were skimming oil and laying absorbent booms to contain the spread of the spill, which occurred in the channel that runs between Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula, Lambert said

Containing the spill is likely to take days, he said.

Coast Guard port captain Brian Penoyer said at a Sunday news briefing that oil had been spotted a dozen miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

He said the spill blocked about about 60 vessels, including cruise ships, from transiting the channel, one of the world's busiest petrochemical transport routes.

Penoyer said all of the remaining oil had been removed from the damaged barge and the barge had been taken out of the channel. He did not say when the channel would reopen.]

On Sunday, the spill prevented dozens of ships, including a few cruise ships, from transiting the channel, one of the world's busiest petrochemical transport routes.

The spill comes on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the massive Exxon oil spill in Valdez, Alaska, that took a devastating toll on wildlife. That spill involved 10 million gallons of oil.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Another oil spill. Although modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil and it's derivative products, it is causing significant environmental damage. However, the powerful influence of the oil industry insures that we will be dependent on oil for years to come.

Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves - latimes.com

Saying that modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil is a lot like saying it has benefited from the industrial revolution. Without oil, there would be no modern human society. We'd still be plowing with mules and riding in horse drawn carriages.

Now, is there a substitute for oil? Not yet, no. Someday, let's hope, as the world's supply is finite, and no one wants to go back to plowing with horses and riding in carriages.

Oh, and there were lots of "spills" from those horses as well.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Saying that modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil is a lot like saying it has benefited from the industrial revolution. Without oil, there would be no modern human society. We'd still be plowing with mules and riding in horse drawn carriages.

Now, is there a substitute for oil? Not yet, no. Someday, let's hope, as the world's supply is finite, and no one wants to go back to plowing with horses and riding in carriages.

Oh, and there were lots of "spills" from those horses as well.

A couple of things. First, I think it's more accurate to say there would be no modern human society as we know. There are other forms of energy that do not depend on oil. For example, steam engines don't necessary depend on oil, although they can use oil as a source of heat. There is also electrical energy, solar energy, and wind energy. So it's not necessarily true that you would be plowing with mules if it were not for oil.

Next of all, has the negative environmental impact been worth the convenience? It was sure sad to see the beautiful beaches of Pensacola ruined by the big oil spill. Not only that, but the quality of the air we breath. Some things don't have a price.

Lastly, what's wrong with plowing with mules if it means less war and a more sustainable way of life?
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

A couple of things. First, I think it's more accurate to say there would be no modern human society as we know. There are other forms of energy that do not depend on oil. For example, steam engines don't necessary depend on oil, although they can use oil as a source of heat. There is also electrical energy, solar energy, and wind energy. So it's not necessarily true that you would be plowing with mules if it were not for oil.

Next of all, has the negative environmental impact been worth the convenience? It was sure sad to see the beautiful beaches of Pensacola ruined by the big oil spill. Not only that, but the quality of the air we breath. Some things don't have a price.

Lastly, what's wrong with plowing with mules if it means less war and a more sustainable way of life?

Modern society would definitely be a lot different. Electric cars may come into their own eventually, but then there's the problem of generating enough electricity. Steam can be produced by coal, and who knows, maybe steam engines would have taken the place of the internal combustion engine. As for plowing with mules, you have to be kidding. We have to import illegal aliens to do what little agricultural work remains to be done in an industrial society.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Modern society would definitely be a lot different. Electric cars may come into their own eventually, but then there's the problem of generating enough electricity. Steam can be produced by coal, and who knows, maybe steam engines would have taken the place of the internal combustion engine. As for plowing with mules, you have to be kidding. We have to import illegal aliens to do what little agricultural work remains to be done in an industrial society.

Ain't nothing wrong with a little hard work. Hard work is good for a man. Keeps you fit and strong. Just think instead of people having to spend all that time working out, they could simply plow the fields and stay as fit as a fiddle.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Ain't nothing wrong with a little hard work. Hard work is good for a man. Keeps you fit and strong. Just think instead of people having to spend all that time working out, they could simply plow the fields and stay as fit as a fiddle.

Yep, that there plowin' and aplantin' keeps a man fit and young. Why, my grandpappy did it from sunup to sundown and lived to almost 50! Imagine that, almost half a century of life.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Yep, that there plowin' and aplantin' keeps a man fit and young. Why, my grandpappy did it from sunup to sundown and lived to almost 50! Imagine that, almost half a century of life.

LOL

My grandpappy told of the time he was aplowin' with the mules in the corn fields in July. Said it got so hot tha corn started apoppin' in the fields. The poor ole mule seen the corn apoppin' as such, took it to be snow, and froze to death!! :lamo

Seriously, there something to be said for that kind of life. I remember living in a village in one country for a couple of months were they don't have electricity. I don't know about now, but some people used oxen to plow. I knew this man who was 84 years old who used to walk barefoot in the mountains every morning and those were pretty high mountains. That guy beat me digging a ditch and he did it barefoot, that's a fact. There was another guy there that lived to be over 100. He fathered his last child at the age of around 74, I think. He was surely over 70. But there is no air pollution, the ground is fertile, and the people don't use pesticides. So there you go. Food for thought.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Another oil spill. Although modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil and it's derivative products, it is causing significant environmental damage. However, the powerful influence of the oil industry insures that we will be dependent on oil for years to come.

Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves - latimes.com

Yeah, but at least it's not a pipeline!!! The Alaska pipeline had destroyed that entire region with leaks!!

Oh, wait, that never happened. BUT tanker ships IS the Obama demand. No pipelines, just tankers.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Yeah, but at least it's not a pipeline!!! The Alaska pipeline had destroyed that entire region with leaks!!

Oh, wait, that never happened. BUT tanker ships IS the Obama demand. No pipelines, just tankers.

Pipelines are prone to rupture. A spill is a spill, no matter what the source.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Pipelines are prone to rupture. A spill is a spill, no matter what the source.

There have been many major tanker and barge oil spills. Name a major oil pipeline rupture? It is also significantly easier to clean up a oil spill on land than in water.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Saying that modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil is a lot like saying it has benefited from the industrial revolution. Without oil, there would be no modern human society. We'd still be plowing with mules and riding in horse drawn carriages.

Now, is there a substitute for oil? Not yet, no. Someday, let's hope, as the world's supply is finite, and no one wants to go back to plowing with horses and riding in carriages.

Oh, and there were lots of "spills" from those horses as well.
There is a substitute for hydrocarbon fuels.
Fueling the Fleet, Navy Looks to the Seas - U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Audi opens 6 MW power-to-gas facility: pv-magazine
It does take energy, but could be a viable way to store alternative power.
organic oil could be saved for other uses.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

There have been many major tanker and barge oil spills. Name a major oil pipeline rupture? It is also significantly easier to clean up a oil spill on land than in water.

What about this one

2013 Mayflower oil spill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 2013 Mayflower oil spill occurred on March 29, 2013, when an ExxonMobil pipeline carrying Canadian Wabasca heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock. Approximately 12,000 barrels (1,900 m3) of oil mixed with water had been recovered by March 31. Twenty-two homes were evacuated. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified the leak as a major spill. A reported 5,000−7,000 barrels of crude were spilled.

A spill is a spill. I haven't been to Pensacola in a couple of years, but last time I was there, you could still see black stuff on the beach, even after they said they had cleaned up.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

There is a substitute for hydrocarbon fuels.
Fueling the Fleet, Navy Looks to the Seas - U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Audi opens 6 MW power-to-gas facility: pv-magazine
It does take energy, but could be a viable way to store alternative power.
organic oil could be saved for other uses.

That's interesting. However, my understanding is that the current methods for generating hydrogen require more energy to produce the hydrogen than the energy that the hydrogen can generate. If you could shed some light on this, I would appreciate it. I need some time to digest this.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

That's interesting. However, my understanding is that the current methods for generating hydrogen require more energy to produce the hydrogen than the energy that the hydrogen can generate. If you could shed some light on this, I would appreciate it. I need some time to digest this.
This is true, you still need the energy input.
When you look at it from an energy storage perspective, All of the energy not stored is lost.
Storing 60% of something, is better than losing 100%.
It takes more energy to charge a battery, than you can possible get out, but they are still useful.
Storing energy as hydrocarbons, is just a different sort of battery, one that we already have a
vast infrastructure in place to handle.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

This is true, you still need the energy input.
When you look at it from an energy storage perspective, All of the energy not stored is lost.
Storing 60% of something, is better than losing 100%.
It takes more energy to charge a battery, than you can possible get out, but they are still useful.
Storing energy as hydrocarbons, is just a different sort of battery, one that we already have a
vast infrastructure in place to handle.

That's the problem. Hydrogen could be viewed as energy storage, but not as an energy source. The source would have to be something else, and that something else could be used directly as an energy source.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

There have been many major tanker and barge oil spills. Name a major oil pipeline rupture? It is also significantly easier to clean up a oil spill on land than in water.



September 29: The Tesoro Logistics LP pipeline spill was the biggest leak in North Dakota since 1 million barrels of salt water brine, a byproduct of oil production, leaked from a well site in 2006.

March 29: Exxon Mobil's Mayflower pipeline ruptured in a suburban neighborhood in Arkansas, forcing residents from homes. It spilled some 5,000 to 7,000 barrels of heavy crude from Canada.

June 2012: Enbridge Inc shut its 345,000 barrels per day Athabasca pipeline after 1,400 barrels of oil spilled in Northeast Alberta. The line was quickly restarted after the company bypassed a pump station.

July, 2011: Exxon Mobil's Silvertip pipeline leaked 1,500 barrels of crude into the Yellowstone River after heavy flooding in the region.

July 25, 2010: Enbridge Inc's 41-year-old 6B pipeline ruptured in Michigan, leaking 19,500 barrels of crude, of which about 8,500 spilled into the Kalamazoo River. The accident on the pipeline owned by the Calgary-based company was the largest onland oil spill in U.S. history and environmentalists complained it left lasting damage to the river. Regulators kept the line shut for more than eight weeks. The accident was one of three outages that summer for Enbridge, raising questions about the safety of pumping Canadian crude through the United States.

-----------------------------------

It takes a lot of digging and trucking away, to clean up a land spill. There are ground water concerns, not to mention swamps, rivers creeks, farmland and forests.

I don't know that inland spills are easier to clean than spills in the ocean. It would depend, I would think, on where the spill happens and how easy it is to access it with the proper equipment.

The bottom line is that there is no safe way to transport oil, but transport it we must. Overall, pipeline may be the safest, I will leave that one to experts.

One thing for sure, regardless of how the product is moved from the fields, to the refinerys and onward, the methods must be regulated. The safer oil and its by-products are being handled the better for us all.
 
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Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

That's the problem. Hydrogen could be viewed as energy storage, but not as an energy source. The source would have to be something else, and that something else could be used directly as an energy source.

Indeed. In other words instead of using the energy to make the hydrogen, why not use it directly, e.g. to power an engine.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

This is true, you still need the energy input.
When you look at it from an energy storage perspective, All of the energy not stored is lost.
Storing 60% of something, is better than losing 100%.
It takes more energy to charge a battery, than you can possible get out, but they are still useful.
Storing energy as hydrocarbons, is just a different sort of battery, one that we already have a
vast infrastructure in place to handle.

As someone else pointed out, why not use the energy that used to make the hydrogen to directly power the ship? The other thing is that how will they store it? Hydrogen takes a lot of room. The next thing is that not only is a lot of energy used to produce the hydrogen, there is still a lot of energy needed to synthesize it into hydrocarbons. It's very difficult for me to see at this point how this process can be made efficient.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Another oil spill. Although modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil and it's derivative products, it is causing significant environmental damage. However, the powerful influence of the oil industry insures that we will be dependent on oil for years to come.

Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves - latimes.com

Yea, this was one barge running into another barge and sinking it. Almost 200,000 gallons of oil is in the Ship Channel. Ship Channel is still closed, but the Galveston Ferry is finally running again, but you are not allowed to get out of your car while taking the ferry.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Yea, this was one barge running into another barge and sinking it. Almost 200,000 gallons of oil is in the Ship Channel. Ship Channel is still closed, but the Galveston Ferry is finally running again, but you are not allowed to get out of your car while taking the ferry.

Yep. That's significant. My understanding is that the ship channel is still closed and there are about 80 vessels waiting to get through. If I'm wrong, correct me.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

Another oil spill. Although modern human society has benefited from the convenience of oil and it's derivative products, it is causing significant environmental damage. However, the powerful influence of the oil industry insures that we will be dependent on oil for years to come.

Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves - latimes.com

What makes this spill significant is that the oil has the consistency of STP. If nobody knows what I'm talking about, it's a more slippery sticky oil than that of lumpy crude oil. It'll be more difficult to clean up. I like those words, clean up. We know they'll never get all of it up, just like any oil spill in water.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

That's the problem. Hydrogen could be viewed as energy storage, but not as an energy source. The source would have to be something else, and that something else could be used directly as an energy source.
If the something else is wind or photovoltaic, and you need it within milliseconds of it's conversion, yes,
If you need it later, next day,month, year, you need to store that energy.
Batteries are not suitable for the long term task.
If we store the energy as natural gas, it could stay that way for centuries.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

What makes this spill significant is that the oil has the consistency of STP. If nobody knows what I'm talking about, it's a more slippery sticky oil than that of lumpy crude oil. It'll be more difficult to clean up. I like those words, clean up. We know they'll never get all of it up, just like any oil spill in water.

I agree with what you say about that "clean up" stuff. As I have said before, I remember going to Pensacola after they said they had "cleaned up" the BP spill. You could still see black stuff on the beach. Very sad.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

If the something else is wind or photovoltaic, and you need it within milliseconds of it's conversion, yes,
If you need it later, next day,month, year, you need to store that energy.
Batteries are not suitable for the long term task.
If we store the energy as natural gas, it could stay that way for centuries.

Yeah, but natural gas is a hydrocarbon. So you are back to dependence on hydrocarbons which are finite and therefore not sustainable in the long run.
 
Re: Oil spill blocks Houston ship channel, threatens wildlife preserves http://www.l

I agree with what you say about that "clean up" stuff. As I have said before, I remember going to Pensacola after they said they had "cleaned up" the BP spill. You could still see black stuff on the beach. Very sad.

I've never seen oil in water disappear or go away either.

What makes this especially bad is that the spill is located in a migratory bird area. So sad.
 
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