Coast Pipelines Face Damage as Gulf Oil Eats Marshes?

[imurhuckleberry]

Source: National Geographic Daily News

Spill could hasten marsh erosion, leaving infrastructure vulnerable.

In addition to threatening wildlife, the thick oil oozing into U.S. Gulf Coast marshes (pictures) may be hitting the oil and gas industry where it hurts: in its own coastal infrastructure.

A vast network of pipes and platforms is woven into these wetlands, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill could literally expose them to potential ruptures and wreckage, experts say.

If oil kills off marsh plants, wetlands will turn to open water, putting the shallowly buried coastal pipelines at risk of ships strikes, storms, and corrosive salt water. Each rip means more leaking oil, costly repairs and replacements, and in some cases, new wetland-restoration projects.

(Related: "Nuclear Reactors, Dams at Risk Due to Global Warming.")

Even without the added threat of the Gulf of Mexico spill, Louisiana has the highest rate of human-induced coastal erosion in the country, according to the Texas-based Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies.

Read more: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100525-gulf-oil-spill-pipelines-science-environment/

[TheMadMonk]

1. Should not ever have happened. But perhaps an oportunity to put right...

...a lot of that earlier damage as well.

Dissassemble that ridiculous inside out Mississippi delta and rebuild the barrier islands. Advantages are several: Storm surge mittigation; Enormous simplification of navigation; Relocates fragile ecosystems away from shipping/industry. Disadvantages: It's expensive, and it's seriously fucking with the unknown. However, the unknown is well and truly fucked already, it's doubtful that any honest effort could make matters worse.


Massive, unintended geoengineering (greenhouse gas induced climate change) has gotten us into this fix, and I suspect it's going to take massive intentional intervention on a geological scale to get us out.

Israel is talking about digging a channel from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is shrinking, because too much water is being taken from the Jordan. Simply keeping up with evaporation and restoring historical water levels would generate an enormous amount of electricity.

Other sites around the world are below sea level. One in NW Africa is doomed to inundation in the not too distant geological future. If evaporation from this basin were to rain out over the Arabian Peninsula that's a lot of desert that potentially could be reclaimed. Dead Sea evaporation should affect rainfall patterns over the northern parts of the Middle East.

Salton Sea and Death Valley in the US. Lake Eyre in Australia. All have the potetial to at the very least be evaporation basins that have the potential to deliver elevated/more consistent rainfall to lands to the East.

We should at least see what the climate modeling software has to say about flooding dry sub-sealevel basins before saying no.

More pie in the sky is WeatherSats that can be used to influence the weather. Essentially a big solar array and a microwave transmitter. Aimed just right, they could be used to steer tropical storms & hurricanes, disrupt tornadoes and stormcells, and direct rainfall to where it is needed. Aimed at fields of cheap wire receivers, the microwave energy can be fed into the powergrid.

Right on the edge of theory: A correctly shaped (ironically a saucer) craft can "climb" a microwave beam into orbit with very little fuel expenditure.