By Peter Aldhous , Phil McKenna and Caitlin Stier 09 June 2010 * 16:14 THE Deepwater Horizon blowout is the largest oil spill in US history, but its ecological impact need not be the worst. It all hinges on the amount and composition of the oil that reaches the Gulf of Mexico’s most sensitive habitat: […]
Giant plumes of crude oil mixed with methane are sweeping the ocean depths with devastating consequences. ‘I’m not too worried about oil on the surface,’ says one scientist. ‘It’s the things we don’t see that worry me the most.’ By Sharon Begley, with Ian Yarett in New York and Daniel Stone in WashingtonJune 06, 2010 […]
MIAMI — June 4, 2010 — Thousands of barrels of oil are leaking out of the Deepwater Horizon site each day. The oil ascends from depths of approximately 1502 m. (4928 ft.), but not all of it reaches the sea surface. The stratified seawater of the Gulf of Mexico captures or slows the ascent […]
By Emily DuganSunday May 30, 2010, 1:46 PM The world’s most damaging oil spill – now in its 41st continuously gushing day – is creating huge unseen “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico, according to oceanographers and toxicologists. They say that if their fears are correct, then the sea’s entire food chain could suffer […]
By JASON DEAREN AND MATT SEDENSKY updated 10:01 a.m. PT, Mon., May 17, 2010 NEW ORLEANS – Delicate coral reefs already have been tainted by plumes of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, including a sensitive area that federal officials had tried to protect from drilling and other dangers. And marine scientists are […]
By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet EilperinWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, May 15, 2010 ELMERS ISLAND, LA. — The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has not yet caused coastal damage on the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster. But scientists say it is becoming something different and potentially much more troubling: the first massive […]
Nairobi, 10 May 2010 – Natural systems that support economies, lives and livelihoods across the planet are at risk of rapid degradation and collapse unless there is swift, radical and creative action to conserve and sustainably use the variety of life on Earth. This is one principal conclusion of a major new assessment of the […]
By Staff Writers Venice, Louisiana (AFP) May 6, 2010 – Oil may not yet be washing ashore in large quantities in Louisiana but an environmental disaster is already unfolding deep down in the Gulf of Mexico and in the swirling currents on its surface, experts warned Thursday. “Everyone is focusing on the beaches and […]
By Cain Burdeau And Harry R. Weber NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The oil you can’t see could be as bad as the oil you can. While people anxiously wait for the slick in the Gulf of Mexico to wash up along the coast, globules of oil are already falling to the bottom of the sea, […]
BY GWYNETH DICKEY New evidence gleaned by analyzing calcium embedded in Chinese limestone suggests that volcanoes, which spewed massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for a million years, caused the biggest mass extinction on Earth. In a paper published April 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of […]
