AND NOW A TALL BLAST OF HOT AIR FROM THE GULF See, this ginormous methane fart is gonna shoot up from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, and then we’ll all be outta here like the dinosaurs: “BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years. . . . If the methane bubble—a bubble that could be as big as 20 miles wide—erupts with titanic force from the seabed into the Gulf, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will immediately sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists participating in the salvage operation will die instantly. Next, the ocean bottom will collapse, instantaneously displacing up to a trillion cubic feet of water or more and creating a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland. Like a thermonuclear blast, a high pressure atmospheric wave could precede the tidal wave flattening everything in its path before the water arrives. When the roaring tsunami does arrive it will scrub away all that is left.” [Helium; deprogramming available on Reddit; both via Rex Hammock]
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I may be missing something here but if the ocean bottom collapses wouldn’t the ocean run into it rather than away from it?
So how will this affect weekend weather?
He must be a blast at parties!
Bring it on!
Cattle production is one of the world’s largest producers of methane gas, I suspect the amount cattle generates yearly far exceeds that of gigantic oceanic bubble. The science is sound, although a little too fatalistic perhaps?
Actually even the science is not sound if you read the full article. To breathlessly claim that the wellbore pressure is 100,000 psi and that the gas pressure at the wellhead has “skyrocketed” to 40,000 psi betrays a pretty fundamental lack of understanding of the pressures within geologic formations. I won’t even get into the use of the terminology “pounds psi”
Excellent point.
Should Katy evacuate?
The ‘awesome mix of fire and water’ described in this article pales in comparison to the incredible amount of B.S mixed with snippets of science that IS the article.
For some reason, I don’t think my credit card company will accept this as an excuse for why I didn’t send in a payment. “Sir, there will be a $39.00 monthly charge until we receive confirmation, in writing, that you’ve been scoured off the face of the earth. Have a nice day.”
This is probably where the FEMA camps will be used.
Martial law and all that junk, too.
Wow! I need to cuddle and have a cigarette after reading this.
People will still drive their cars into the high water.
Doesn’t that imply that cows should float?
Dang.
Looks like that Mayan calendar is going to turn out to be right on!
> wouldn’t the ocean run into it…?
Yes it would, but then the ocean would try to level itself out again. The impulse would generate a ginormous tsunami.
The good news is that, in tsunami generation events, a bigger wave is created if the first motion of the water is “up” rather than “down”.
So Austin might be spared. Katy is screwed regardless.
Oh No JF!! Don’t light a match!!
Cows DO float, jesse! Remember how many of them on Bolivar survived hurricane Ike?
If there’s a mass extinction event, it will likely be from something we can’t control and didn’t cause and that doesn’t give a **** about us one way or another.
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While anything is possible, this article is full of drivel. Originally when I read about this theory, its main proponent was a guy who does radio shows in Idaho or something and supports Neo-Nazi ideology. It looks like they’ve cleaned it up somewhat and quoted some professors of sorts, but the quotes are out of context or for random bs, just for the purposes of name-dropping.
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However, some of the more easily-refutable things are gone from this new and improved conspiracy theory, like erosion-corrosion (solids causing the inside of the pipe to wear down, which makes it rust more quickly); the rates they were talking about were way to quick.
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It will be interesting to see how this theory evolves as more people point out its inherent bs.
Ex.: heated oil somehow causing a runaway melting of methane hydrates, though it hasn’t happened yet in the past two months. None of the boats of sunk, right? And remember the tophat idea? It failed because methane hydrate were forming, so if anything, “methane ice” is forming, not “melting”.
And 5% is the “normal” amount that escapes from a blowout? Where does this come from? This seems really suspect because most blowouts are caused by a kick, or an unexpected amount of gas. Most of the gas phase is going to be methane. I’m sure some blowouts have been 80-90% methane, and yet we haven’t become extinct yet.
And notice how vital parts of the story rely on a “news blackout”. Classic!
A trillion cubic feet of water? Why, if we had a dollar for every cubic foot of seawater… oh wait, that’s how much the BP clean-up is gonna cost our economy as a whole.