Oxygenomics

To: Retort

From: IC

[Our actually existing ecologist, in a dispatch from Norway, reflects on reports concerning the suspended products of the BP gusher in the water column of the Gulf of Mexico. IB]

The "plumes" of dissolved, emulsified and otherwise suspended carbohydrates across the water column in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from the BP gusher should have been expected.  The effect of adding dispersants at the source, independently of what they may be, should have been expected to make this problem even worse (I am curious to know why BP decided to stop doing this).  The toxicological effects of the suspended and dissolved materials should be expected to be great, going well beyond the physical damage on macroscopic things we can photograph, like pelicans, fish gills.  I guess that denial of biochemistry and physiology would make sense in a world where a photo of charcoal-like lungs becomes the only intelligible message about the health implications of smoking.

It is crazy (meant in a literal sense) that anyone would deny the sub-surface effects of these processes - Hayward (is that the name of "Want-My-Life-Back" boy?) and Chu and all others around them seem so incredibly inexperienced and child-like... which of course they are, as we know: far removed from having had any experience in the world other than their controlled, enclosed cocoons.  Protecting their own cocoon, BP announced they will pay US $500 million (same amount as for Berkeley over 10 years) to Louisiana State University - I see this as the value they place on what Louisiana State researchers may have had to say, and what they will refrain from saying after the dispersant dose of cash.

I do not hear anyone yet mention the synergism that should also be expected between the oil/methane (and so many other materials) coming from the floor of the Gulf, and run-off fertilizers from the Mississipi watershed.  A simplistic initial model would tell me that what you are getting there is a double-punch effect: fertilization with reduced C plus fertilization with phospates, reduced N and much more. This brew would tend to favour bacterial growth, which is the defining character of the yearly (Summer) development of the "Dead Zone" as a regular feature of the Gulf: bacterial growth spurred by fertilization sequesters oxygen available in the water column, making it impossible for any oxygen-loving creature to live for more than a few minutes in it.

There are interesting implications with this "experiment", which is akin to some of the ideas proposed by our enlightened bioengineers.  First, we must see that there is no "absolute death" implied here, just a change in who is alive and who is not.  Dolphins and tuna and turtles and such things are not, bacteria are welcome.  I see an interesting coincidence here with the general thrust of the Genetic Engineering programme, which in broad terms pushes systems to behave - and eventually to become - more and more as those systems that the engineer can understand, in the bacterial and viral domain.  Iain Boal and I used to talk years ago about the "viralization" of the environment, in the same sense as for example agriculture could be seen as the "ruderalization" of the environment.  The thread running through these examples is similar: humans pushing environments in directions towards which they make "sense" to those same humans, even if this sense is utterly nonsensical for the places [at the time/where] those environments evolve.  Purist progressive and environmental-ethics types would have to suck it up due to the fact that they have managed to leave themselves out of intellectual tools to deal with this.  In overall terms, there may be an increase in biomass altogether in the ecosystems in the Gulf.  What's more, the lack of oxygen and the dynamics of deep waters (mentioned in http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/49-49/2134-what-the-spill-will-kill) can make it possible that the spike in productivity could result in an accumulation of undecomposed biomass on the bottom of the sea, exactly what The Carbon Crusaders would like to see to "stop global warming"; that BP has not come up with that one does not surprise me, only because I recognize their level of sophistication.  Hell, I've even seen online entries swooning about the beauty of the patterns formed by the oil on the water surface (usually as seen from outer space).

So what is an agriculturalist, a bioengineer or an oil yahoo to do?  The pattern about agriculture, especially in the course of the last five centuries has left the planet marked at the largest scale possible: masses crowding away from fertile land or paving over their best soils to plant their houses.  Bioengineers had it somewhat easier, building upon the scars of colonial times: just send the wretched plants off to Indonesia, Brazil, The Congo, wherever they be out of sight.  But now the consequences may be different for the oil colonists: see what Frank Carlucci, Carlyle Group friends & co. are up to in the link below: ocean-going colonies.  Will the oil catch up with them?

http://exiledonline.com/escape-from-america-the-strange-scary-billionaires-behind-the-libertarian-inspired-sea-castles/

Meanwhile, we here in Norway at the Arctic edge of the Atlantic oceanic conveyor-belt keep an eye out for the signs floating in from the South West; it makes for very enjoyable mountaineering.

All best,
Ignacio