Oil Spills

An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term often refers to marine oil spills, where oil is released into the ocean or coastal waters. The oil may be a variety of materials, including crude oil and refined petroleum products (such as gasoline or diesel fuel). Spills take months or even years to clean up.

It’s one month ago when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also called the BP Oil Spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill or the Macondo blowout, a massive ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the worst oil spill in US history happened.

The spill stems from a sea floor oil gusher that started with an oil well blowout on April 20, 2010. The blowout caused a catastrophic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform that was situated about 64 km southeast of the Louisiana coast. The explosion killed 11 platform workers and injured 17 others. Estimates of the amount of oil being discharged range from BP's current estimate of over 5,000 barrels (790,000 litres) to as much as 100,000 barrels (16,000,000 litres) of crude oil per day. The exact spill flow rate is uncertain – in part because BP has refused to allow independent scientists to perform accurate measurements – and is a matter of ongoing debate. The resulting oil slick covers a surface area of at least 6,500 km², with the exact size and location of the slick fluctuating from day to day depending on weather conditions. Scientists have also discovered immense underwater plumes of oil not visible from the surface.

BP (formerly British Petroleum) is the operator and principal developer of the Macondo Prospect oil field, which was thought to hold as much as 50 million barrels (7.9×10⁶ m³) of oil prior to the blowout, by BP's own estimate. The Deepwater Horizon drilling platform had been leased by BP from its owner, Transocean Ltd. The U.S. Government has named BP as the responsible party in the incident and officials have said the company will be held accountable for all cleanup costs resulting from the oil spill. BP has accepted responsibility for the oil spill and the cleanup costs, but indicated they are not at fault as the platform was run by Transocean personnel. It is the third serious incident at a BP-run site in the United States in the last five years, following the Texas city Refinery explosion in 2005, and the Prudhoe Bay oil spill in 2006. These previous incidents, attributed to lapses in safety and maintenance, have contributed to the damage to BP's reputation and market valuation since the spill.

The blowout, the New York Times reported U.S. government sources as saying May 27, has far surpassed the Exxon Valdez oil spill as the largest in US history. Experts fear that due to factors such as petroleum toxicity and oxygen depletion, it will result in an environmental disaster, damaging the Gulf of Mexico fishing industry, tourism industry, and habitat of hundreds of bird species.

Crews are working to block off bays and estuaries, using anchored barriers, floating containment booms, and sand-filled barricades along shorelines. There are a variety of ongoing efforts, both short and long term, to contain the leak and stop spilling additional oil into the Gulf.

More than 400 species live in the islands and marshlands at risk, including the endangered Kemp's Ridley turtle. In the national refuges most at risk, about 34,000 birds have been counted, including gulls, pelicans, roseate spoonbills, egrets, terns, and blue herons. Since April 30, 19 dead dolphins, none of which have had visible signs of oiling, have been found within the designated spill area. Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia indicated that the oil could harm fish directly, and microbes used to consume the oil would also add to the reduction of oxygen in the water, with effects being felt higher up the food chain. According to Joye, it could take the ecosystem years and possibly decades to recover from such an infusion of oil and gas.

THE PUBLIC OPINION

Regarding the handling of the situation, 53 percent of Americans rate Obama's performance as poor or very poor while 43 percent consider it good or very good, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll taken on May 24-25. Sixty percent said the federal government has done a poor or very poor job while 35 percent rate it good or very good. A CBS News poll conducted May 20-24 also found a negative reception with Obama, with 45 percent disapproving compared to 35 percent who approved, with 20 percent undecided. BP had worse polling numbers with 73 percent in the Gallup poll describing its response as poor or very poor, while 24 percent say it has been good or very good. In the CBS survey, 70 percent disapproved of BP's response compared to 18 percent who approved, with 12 percent undecided.

QUESTIONS

· What is an oil spill?

· It is the first oil spill in the world? When happens the others?

· Has ever happened near us? When? Why?

· Is someone doing something to stop it? What?

· Which are the consequences of this oil spill?

· Do you think that it would affect us?

· Do you think that we could do something to help? What?

· Do you agree with the opinion of American population? If not what is your opinion?

The big problem of the deforestation

Nowadays deforestation is a major problem throughout the tropics. Uncontrolled logging of trees, especially in rainforest still goes on. Subsistence farming is practiced by millions of people who farm the land by burning a part of the forest and planting crops in the seemingly rich soil. The problem is that despite the lush appearance of the forest, the underlying soil is not that fertile. Its fertility is not inherent but comes from a complex interaction of the plants, trees, bacteria and insects that live only in the forest. After burning the forest, crops can only be grown for a couple of years before the soil is depleted and the farmer moves on to burn another section of forest. He leaves behind a dead space directly exposed to the burning sun and torrential rain. The land will take many years to recover. Sometimes it never recovers. What's more, if the topsoil is lost, the land will never recover at all and the topsoil washes into rivers and streams causing further ecological disruption downstream. Even if the fertility of the land recovers it will never truly return to its original state, as discussed below. 

About one half of the forests that covered the Earth are gone. Each year, another 16 million hectares disappear. The World Resources Institute estimates that only about 22% of the world's (old growth) original forest cover remains "intact" - most of this is in three large areas: the Canadian and Alaskan boreal forest, the boreal forest of Russia, and the tropical forest of the northwestern Amazon Basin and the Guyana Shield (Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, Columbia, etc.)

Today, forests cover more than one quarter of the world's total land area, excluding polar regions. Slightly more than 50% of the forests are found in the tropics and the rest are temperate and boreal (coniferous northern forest) zones.  

The saddest aspect of forest destruction is the loss of species. The rainforest is a virtual laboratory of interdependent bacteria, moss, lichen, bromeliads, epiphytes, trees and insects. Most of these have not even been cataloged, much less studied. Some of the most beneficial medical discoveries in recent times have come from rainforest life forms. It has been learned that each part of the forest contains some unique species that evolved and live only in that part of the forest. Each square mile of the forest reveals new species unique to that area. When that part of the forest is destroyed, the species unique to that part are lost forever.

The area around El Rancho along the Caribbean Highway between Rio Dulce and Guatemala City is an example of what can happen after clearcutting of the forest. The whole area around El Rancho is a desert with exposed tan colored soil, occasional scrub and brush, yellow weeds and two prominent types of cactus. But it didn't used to be this way. Hank McLaughlin, a long-time resident of Guatemala remembers in the early 80's when it still was an evergreen forest. In the space of 20 years, hundreds of square miles of Guatemala have become a hot, uncomfortable desert. Residents of the area can remember when there were plentiful pine trees and the temperatures much cooler. Local effects are also observed in Guatemala City which has grown much in the last 20 years and now sprawls in all directions over the surrounding hills. Local residents complain that temperatures in the city used to be much cooler, before the surrounding hills became covered with concrete and asphalt.

This situation is happening in most of the world's rainforest like in the Amazons or in the woods of Borneo, and the effects are ver clear. The solution to the deforestation is obviously clear, we have to look after te foest and prevent uncontrolled logging. However, it is not as easy as we think because there are a lot of companies that take many benefits from this situation. These companies only care about short-term benefits but they know that long-term will not have trees to cut down if they continue down that road. This seem very stupid but this mentality is deeply rooted in our society.

If you want, you can answer these questions about the text:

1-Are the rainforest areas good for farming?

2-Why do the farmer have to burn another section of forest if they have one yet?

3-How many hectares of woods disappear every year in the Earth?

4-In your opinion, why the last world's original forest are intact?

5-What is the connection between the deforestation and the loss of the species?

6-What happened in the area around “El Rancho”?

7-Do you know other place that happens something similar?

8-Do you think that most of the big companies in our world do not care abot the climatic change?

Why or why not?

Kevin Manzanera