No seriously, we’re all gonna die. 
So apparently, the BP disaster is going to kill us all. Like, seriously.
I’ve been sitting here staving off my increasing annoyance at life; meanwhile, none of it may matter because we’re all about to die.
So, you know how BP and the federal government have been arresting journalists and photographers who try to document the clusterfuck that is going down in the Gulf right now because of the Deepwater Horizon explosion from six months ago? (You remember the oil spill, don’t you?)
Well, apparently, according to some scientisty-type people, the media lockout is to prevent all of us hapless assholes from finding out that the shit is going down in a major way.
The BP disaster may have triggered what anyone who has seen the movie Deep Impact knows is called an Extinction Level Event, or “ELE,” or “Ellie” if you want to be really anti-feminist and blame the end of the fucking world on vaginas.
An extinction level event is a world-killer — something of apocalyptic proportions that literally causes the end of life on Earth:
- 251 million years ago, we had the Permian Extinction Event. Some scary geological crap happened; a huge ass methane bubble erupted from the Earth, which basically blew up almost everything and then poisoned everything that was left. 96 percent of life on Earth was destroyed.
- 55 million years later (i.e., 196 million years ago), there was the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum Extinction Event. (By the way, who is coming up with the names of this shit?: “Dude, did you hear about the Mega Extreme Triple Throw Down All Up in Your Mom’s Face Extinction Event? That one was tiiiiiight!”)
During the LPTME Event, some more methane decided to erupt from the Earth and wipe out a bunch of life for 100,000 years straight. What a dick. It couldn’t wipe everything out in one fell swoop. Oh no! It had to go and terrify for one hundred thousand years, all the species that managed to pop back up after the Permian Extinction Event (or the species that, you know, just popped up all fresh out of the genetic box after the Permian Extinction Event; I don’t know how it all works — evolution ???? — all I know is that I’ve seen an elephant but I’ve never seen a wooly mammoth; think about that!)
Imagine how unmotivated a species that lived through the first ELE must have been during the next ELE. It’s like, “Hey, wanna go gather some nuts?” “Nah, what’s the point, dude. We’re going to get extinctified anyway. I’m just gonna hang out by this half-burnt tree over here.”
Well, looks like those asshats at BP may have triggered some scary geological crap that is going to lead to more methane spewing from the Earth and burning our asses up. Here’s what it boils down to:
You can read all about it here — Some dude at Northwestern University, Gregory Riskin, has a theory about the oceans periodically producing massive eruptions of explosive methane gas, and then the Earth’s decision to periodically fart that gas in all of our faces, thus causing our faces to melt off and DIE.
The warning signs of this sort of ELE are: (1) the appearance of large fissures splitting up the ocean floor; (2) a rise in the elevation of the seabed; and (3) venting of methane and other gases into surrounding waters.
Guess how many of those warning signs are all happening now? Go ahead and guess?
FUCKING ALL OF THEM:
All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.
Ground zero: The Gulf Coast
The people and property located on the greater expanse of the Gulf Coast are sitting at Ground Zero. They will be the first exposed to poisonous, cancer causing chemical gases. They will be the ones that initially experience the full fury of a methane bubble exploding from the ruptured seabed.
The media has been kept away from the emergency salvage measures being taken to forestall the biggest catastrophe in human history. The federal government has warned them away from the epicenter of operations with the threat of a $40,000 fine for each infraction and the possibility of felony arrests.
Why is the press being kept away? Word is that the disaster is escalating.
Cracks and bulges
Methane is now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.
Reports, filtering through from oceanologists and salvage workers in the region, state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is succumbing to greater and greater pressure. That pressure is causing a huge expanse of the seabed-estimated by some as spreading over thousands of square miles surrounding the BP wellhead-to bulge. Some claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet.
The fractured BP wellhead, site of the former Deepwater Horizon, has become the epicenter of frenetic attempts to quell the monstrous flow of methane.
The subterranean methane is pressurized at 100,000 pounds psi. According to Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert, the methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a terrifying 40,000 pounds psi.
Another well-respected expert, Dr. John Kessler of Texas A&M University has calculated that the ruptured well is spewing 60 percent oil and 40 percent methane. The normal methane amount that escapes from a compromised well is about 5 percent.
More evidence? A huge gash on the ocean floor—like a ragged wound hundreds of feet long—has been reported by the NOAA research ship, Thomas Jefferson. Before the curtain of the government enforced news blackout again descended abruptly, scientists aboard the ship voiced their concerns that the widening rift may go down miles into the earth.
That gash too is hemorrhaging oil and methane. It’s 10 miles away from the BP epicenter. Other, new fissures, have been spotted as far as 30 miles distant.
Measurements of the multiple oil plumes now appearing miles from the wellhead indicate that as much as a total of 124,000 barrels of oil are erupting into the Gulf waters daily-that’s about 5,208,000 gallons of oil per day.
Most disturbing of all: Methane levels in the water are now calculated as being almost one million times higher than normal. [7]
So what’s gonna happen if a methane bubble decides to burst forth from the seabed into the Gulf of Mexico? Well basically, exactly what happened in Deep Impact, except it will come from below instead of above, and it won’t be a comet, it’ll be massive quantities of methane gas. We’re talking the immediate sinking of every ship, drilling rig, and structure within the region of the up to 20-mile wide bubble. Then the ocean floor will collapse, displacing a shit ton of water, and creating atmospheric pressure the equivalent of a thermonuclear blast before creating a “towering supersonic tsunami” that will drown everyone and everything that isn’t already dead.
Basically, we’re all totally fucked:
And wouldntcha know, all of this is happening when Morgan Freeman Barack Obama is President — as if the crazies who think he’s the anti-Christ really need this little arrow in their quiver.
So, I hope there’s some serious Def-con Eleventy-type preparation going on right now behind the scenes. I want Jack Bauer (not just Kiefer Sutherland, but also, the cat) to be running around whispering and meowing in low gravelly voices, torturing A-rab geophysicists who have the solution and could save us all, but who refuse to talk because we’re still holding some of their terrorist friends in the bowels of Gitmo.
Somebody better save us is all I’m saying. I don’t care if it’s Will Smith or Hillary Swank. I don’t care if I have to look at Ben Affleck’s chest all greased up like a pig or Bruce Willis’s bald yet inexplicably sexy head shoved into a spacesuit. Throw Tom Cruise in the mix. I don’t care.
I just want somebody to save our dumb asses.
Do it for Johnny. Put ’em in a body bag.
Or else, it’s game over, man.
We all might actually die in a fire.
That would really piss me off.
[Good afternoooooooon BJers! I am having a fucking blast over here. Ferreals. Anywhoozle, I blog because… well… I have a couple screws loose and I crack myelf up. I mean, if you can’t make yourself laugh, who can you make laugh? No one, that’s who. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. This post popped up on my Angry Black Post Roulette–I wrote it in July and it’s one of my favorites. I figured, why not share it (edited version) with you, my new friends! After all, it’s tangentially related to Morgan Freeman and BP still fucking sucks, right? I’ll have some original content soon, but I have to go get my hair and nails did, and then I have to do laundry, pack and get ready to make the cross-country journey to D.C. for the rally shenannies. I’m going to hunt down Jon Stewart and/or Stephen Colbert and by gum, I’m going to try to sit in one of their laps. Hope everyone is having a day. Toodles! -ABL Oh, and P.S.: What the hell does “We are all Mayans now mean?” I don’t get it!]
cleek
but, i don’t want to die in a giant fireball.
so i won’t.
any by extension, neither will anyone else.
Betty Cracker
Well, fuck. I would be sitting a few blocks from the Gulf of Mexico. At least it’ll be quick for me.
Kiril
Actually, we have methane gas bubbling up through submerged permafrost of the coast of northern Siberia already, making climate change occur more quickly and severely than anticipated. But it has always occurred more quickly and severely than anticipated by the most “alarmist” scientists since we started paying attention to the problem in the late 1980s.
This is the first I’ve heard of DOOM FROM THE GULF though.
freelancer
Link inside brackets has one too many “http://” ‘s in it.
John PM
ABL, I don’t know if I like you any more… If you will excuse me, I need to pop a Zoloft.
Ash Can
Hello, officer? Someone just ran through the blog smacking people in the face with a large dead fish. What? Well, yeah, I suppose we did deserve it, but that’s beside the point.
Silver
This post is useless without a link to Dave Chappelle’s Deep Impact sketch:
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?title=real-movies-deep-impact&videoId=11891
Church Lady
Well, shit. I guess I don’t have to worry about saving for retirement anymore.
dmsilev
A countervailing view: http://io9.com/5585294/methane-bubble-doomsday-story-debunked
Not to mention, the scientist cited in that article says:
Sorry, but I’m going to have to call FAIL on this one.
Edit: Should add that Ryskin’s paper, which was published in a real peer reviewed journal and has amassed a healthy number of citations, doesn’t seem too outlandish to me, though geoscience is a bit far afield from my normal specialties. Taking his work and extrapolating it to WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE is a bit much, however.
dms
Violet
If you don’t know about the Balloon Juice Lexicon, check it out. Links in the upper right corner. Here’s the link for the section with the answer to your question.
Hunter Gathers
@cleek:
Speak for yourself. Death by giant explosion is my preferred way of meeting my Maker. Either that or decapitation by a Sith Lord. As long as it’s not by something as lame as heart attack or diabetes. Or getting accidentally killed by crossfire in the upcoming Teabagger Revolution, AKA Cival War II – Whitey Strikes Back.
Dennis SGMM
Having been born into a time when weekly duck-and-cover drills were the norm (Because the Soviets just couldn’t wait to unleash a nuclear holocaust) all the way through High School I’ll reserve judgment until our new methane overlords come after me personally.
El Cid
FWIW:
I got suspicious when this was flatly claimed as the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when to this day the causes are hotly contested.
My general sense is that the sort of things which could trigger an imminent global catastrophe would likely have enough observable effects that keeping journalists away wouldn’t prevent the observation of these effects. But then, I could be wrong.
chopper
jesus, ABL, you are just awesome.
El Cid
@dmsilev: Great minds and all…
4tehlulz
ITT we all miss the “Humor” tag.
Maody
what Church Lady said. guess not.
DonkeyKong
Mother Earth quoting T.S. Elliot would say “Not with a bang but a qweef.”
Martin
Soooo. Who’s gonna break the news to the fundies that the Rapture is God getting drunk on his ass and lighting a big fart on us? Silent but deadly, indeed.
On the upside, maybe I don’t need to worry about California breaking off and sliding into the ocean any more. That seemed totally likely to happen, like any minute now.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“We are all Mayans now” – Check the helpful Balloon Juice Lexicon.
peej
Damn, now I have to go back on the diet…figured that I might as well go out fat, dumb, and happy.
Calouste
Yes, that’s because it is a fucking oil rig. It’s not like the processes that create oil create Chanel No. 5 as a byproduct.
Linda Featheringill
Yes, I read that this post was written in July. I’m going to comment, anyway.
“The subterranean methane is pressurized at 100,000 pounds psi. According to Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert, the methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a terrifying 40,000 pounds psi.”
1. Matt Simmons died August 2010 [but he was viewed by many in the industry to be an oil expert].
2. The only sure sign of an ELE is death, lots of it, scattered around everywhere.
All the rest are merely phenomena.
HOWEVER, if you want to worry about methane, worry about the gas captured in the arctic permafrost. The permafrost is melting because of global warming and that releases methane into the atmosphere which makes global warming speed up which makes . . . .
Probably still not an ELE, though.
me
If this happens in 2012 (which it probably won’t) we really will all be Mayans now.
JGabriel
ABL:
Okay, that made me snort with laughter, an extremely rare occurence. I think the last one was 2003.
By the way, do I detect a Firefly fan? That line reminds me of the Wash’s corpsified eulogy from Shindig.
.
ed
Bummer.
trollhattan
I’d like to chime in and repeat a question I was asking last summer: when are murder charges going to be filed over the deaths in the Gulf?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/29spill.html?_r=1&hp
If corporations “are people too” in this age of the Citizens United ruling, why not drag them into the dock on criminal charges? What happened in the GOM seems way beyond mere negligence.
Ash Can
Please pinch Jon Stewart’s buttcheek for me.
dmsilev
@El Cid: Heh. Really, three cheers for Google. Search on ‘methane extinction’ and get more information than you could possibly want, including Ryskin’s original paper (which he seems to have made freely available; no expensive subscription to _Geology_ needed).
dms
catclub
@John PM:
Did anyone else get the hint that this a repost from July,
and hence all the worry about IMMEDIATE CATACLYSM, is three months too late?
I enjoyed the post and got a good laugh. I also liked all the links to verifying stories and reports.
And Betty C, I think the point is that even if you are in Missouri, you will soon be on the Gulf coast.
Justin
I’ll be back with a more trenchant analysis after I change my shorts.
The Other Chuck
So BP might have ended all life on earth? Clearly this calls for tax cuts. Oh and apologizing to BP.
(And for the record, I think the theory is totally froot-loop nonsense. We might be kicking off an extinction event with global warming, but not a fucking oil spill)
ed
Not only that, but…
I don’t want no nukular freeze.
No funny lookin
Skin disease.
I don’t want my face
Blown apart…
licensed to kill time
I thought we had to worry more about the cow farts n’ burps.
There’s ever so much to worry about o_O
freelancer
@dmsilev:
Skeptic first, then a partisan. It works for me.
El Cid
@catclub: Oh yeah? Maybe we done already could have died, and we just don’t know it yet! Like in one a’them movies!
chopper
@El Cid:
yeah, ‘supersonic tsunamis’ sound like an emmerich movie.
Jules
Last night’s South Park.
Captain Hindsight.
Bob L
@El Cid: and further clues why this methane cloud of doom is a bunch of flatulence; underwater volcanos, earthquakes and landslides happen all the time. Not to mention man made events like underwater nuclear tests and a world war that featured a lot of depth charging in the Gulf of Mexico. If this something like this is possible it would be happening all the time.
Doubleday
You should probably rethink giving ABL the keys, Cole. Your blog, whatever…but there are lots of places where you can get this crap on the internet. Real science, please.
Martin
@trollhattan: Corporations are only people for the good stuff. For the bad stuff, it’s all ‘officers acting in the best interests of shareholders and should not be held liable for blowing off the atmosphere and making every male’s dick fall off’ and a nice golden parachute to protect them from the people that keep saying mean things.
catclub
@dmsilev:
“Taking his work and extrapolating it to WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE is a bit much, however.”
Actually, I am ok with that. It is the ‘we are all going to die tomorrow’ that is hard to take. Even harder when the first priority is to blame the government for hiding it.
The Moar You Know
Not OK to print scaremongering crap, whether you’re a leftie or a rightie.
If you don’t understand the science – and you clearly don’t – STFU and leave the speculation to those that do.
Liked your first couple of posts. You should have stopped there.
EDIT: I got it on the first go-round that this is an attempt at humor. It still isn’t funny, no more funny than printing anything by Fred Phelps, chain letters, debunked Snopes rumors or the former Dover Board of Education.
kdaug
Please people, we covered underage lesbian zombie Apocalypse yesterday.
Do try to stay current.
Florida Cynic
@Martin: This. Just freaking perfect!
El Cid
@Bob L: All of this is really just a gigantic cover-up to hide the fact that the government has found the secret new non-polar entrance to the Hollow Earth.
Martin
@dmsilev: But this is a totally likely scenario that requires no additional facts or scientific support, unlike Obama’s birth certificate which hasn’t gotten enough factual backing to even pass the smell test.
WyldPirate
This BS story about ruptured cracks with twatwaffles in the Gulf spilling massive amounts of methane and nasty tuna-like odors may be a load of malarky.
what isn’t a load of malarky is global warming that unleashes all of the methane hydrates in the artic waters and all of the methane locked up in the permafrost up around the Snowbilly from Wasilla’s way and the Siberian Tundra.
isn’t BS and it is a way worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
Mark S.
The Permian Extinction Event (251 MYA) has been called the Great Dying and left these guys in charge:
Link
Nate
Just to reiterate what has already been stated because science is awesome and often right:
http://io9.com/5585294/methane-bubble-doomsday-story-debunked
Come on, people. There’s enough truly horrible stuff going on in the Gulf as a result of the BP disaster without having to make shit up.
Bubba
I know Greg Riskin. I wouldn’t trust anything he publishes. Seriously, he’s a horrible professor. We’ve been trying for decades to get him un-tenured with no luck. I would choose to ignore what he says.
General Stuck
Somewhere, some wingnut is scheming to make a profit on this.
BR
Here’s the thing. While I don’t buy that this specific event is a problem, it’s pretty clear that civilization in the broader sense is killing the planet.
We’re on track to have all large fish and ocean mammals go extinct by 2040. (Google Jeremy Jackson if you’re curious.)
We’re on track to have runaway (as in unstoppable, self-reinforcing) greenhouse warming by about 2040. (Check out McKibben’s Eaarth or Hansen’s Storms of my Grandchildren.)
We’re likely to face a permanent dust bowl across much of North America by 2040. (See recent research as highlighted at climate progress and elsewhere.)
We’re likely facing a permanent and rapid decline in oil production within the next 2-5 years, causing a permanent great depression due to our dependence upon oil. (See the UK Industry report, the German military report, the DoD report, the Kuwait report, the Hirsch report, etc.)
And on and on.
And I haven’t heard a serious discussion about any of this shit. Where the hell are our serious leaders on any of this?
General Stuck
And by the way. I do love me some apocalyptic blogging
Culture of Truth
BP Demands Apology From All the People of the Earth
morzer
@BR:
Well, they have to save the economy from the consequences of actually doing anything about climate change. We may all be living in a dustbowl – but the economy will be going gangbusters. Also too – Jeebus and the Magic Unicorn will save the true believers, and perhaps a few Christians as well.
El Cid
@General Stuck:
Close enough.
Violet
@General Stuck:
It sounds vaguely like bad scat p0rn. “Large fissures”, “splitting”, “rise”, “gasses.” Two cracks and a well?
Bob L
First PUMA has beens now Gulf fearmongering. They’re making a statement about election gloom and doom. If the Gulf spill didn’t kill the human race and PUMA the destroy Democratic party then Speaker Orange Boner is survivable too.
stuckinred
I’m going deep sea fishing in the gulf in a couple of weeks, I’ll let you know what charlie tuna says!
4tehlulz
@Violet: If that was true, then BP would be German.
General Stuck
@Violet:
Throw in a little tea bagging and we can go out with with a bang.
BR
@morzer:
You mean that economy that has trillions in papered over toxic derivatives sitting as if they’re worth something on bank balance sheets?
For the amount of money the Fed has conjured up out of thin air in the past three years, we could have built some of the biggest public rail systems in the world, not to mention installed solar and wind farms everywhere and on and on.
Sentient Puddle
Any talk of apocalyptic doom requires a bit of light music to properly set the mood.
Tsulagi
And the SO says my farts are deadly.
So what they’re saying is some big ass methane fart cloud is forming in the Gulf and later some retarded Texan playing with matches at the wrong time could toast us all. Sounds like an appropriate ending for the planet.
So 96% of life could perish. Prepare thyself to be the 4%ers. Wonder what liberal survivalists look like. Natural fiber camo? Organic bullets? Recycled armor bicycles?
morzer
@BR:
Well, if you insist on splitting hairs…
morzer
@stuckinred:
If you find Bill Parcells out there with Charlie, tell him Jerry Jones is sorry and promises never to do it again, cross his heart and hope to die.
Phoenix
Reality is bad enough, we don’t need to go play make-believe that things are even worse.
toujoursdan
@BR:
What he said. We are headed toward an Easter Island style environmental collapse on a planetary scale, with or without the cannibalism.
freelancer
If only there was a way to exploit this situation to finagle myself a Hoveround.
morzer
Speaking of Apocalypse Now, Manchin may not be an ideal Democrat, but he sure makes a nice mocking ad:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/manchin-web-ad-john-raese-is-an-imperial-storm-trooper-video.php
General Stuck
@El Cid:
Not surprised after they built electrocution showers for our soldiers in Iraq. Which, btw, seems to me took some world class effort in the fucking shit up department
Maybe they are angling to cause the end of times for a chance at the no bid cleanup contract.
Capri Sun-Bagger
Well, as for the Mayans thing, it means that someone doesn’t know the difference between the possesive plural and plural form of the proper noun ‘Mayan’, but aside from that, I think it means WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE NAO, KTHXBAI!
The Other Chuck
Clearly if we gave Halliburton a tax cut, the blowout would never have happened.
Martin
@Violet:
Ok. First, I’m not afraid to admit that I can’t discern between good and bad scat p0rn. I’m additionally not sufficiently versed in bad scat p0rn to discern between a vague and a direct reference to it.
I’m not judging, mind you, but you might have stepped out of the community envelope here, dear Violet.
jl
I am in wuv with ABL who is smart, purty and has a very handsome dog, but I don’t believe this particular story.
Same stories have been circulating about same things happening due to global warming and melting permafrost in arctic, which would happen on a much larger scale and seems actually possible, but very unlikely. But even if it did, what would be the blink of an eye on a geological time scale would take thousands of years on our human one in order to do its humanacidal work.
But agree with commenters above that there are multiple warnings of more minor troubles ahead, which all put together, might be comparable to the nightmare Gulf methane scenario.
JGabriel
If you want to burn out, you’ve got to blow it out: Methane
If you want to burn it down, down to ground: Methane
It’s so hot, it’s so bright, it’s all right: Methane
When your day is done, and the end times have come: Methane
It’s real bad news, news you can’t use: Methane
It’s so bright, hit the light, it burned out my sight: Methane
When the earth is gone, then you’ll wanna blame it on: Methane
It’s no Martian attack, we choked our own gack: Methane
It’s no lie, we’ll all die, we’re all gonna fry: Methane
.
garage mahal
FDL furiously fact-checking Obama today, and will appear on TV with their critiques. Just in time.
catclub
@BR:
“You mean that economy that has trillions in papered over toxic derivatives sitting as if they’re worth something on bank balance sheets?”
Why not, look at nature. Take a bunch of shit and bury it for a few million years and it turns to black gold.
El Cid
@General Stuck: Really? Do you know any other company as skilled and experienced enough to build electric showers for our troops?
Martin
@General Stuck:
Yes, that is some world record in fucking shit up, because it happened more than once. I’ve been thinking about that since I first read about it, and for the life of me I cannot envision a way to do that accidentally. I even asked my son who was 10 at the time to walk me through how he would handle the wiring and plumbing from the garage water heater and circuit breaker to a bathroom in the house, and one of his first statements was to make sure that the wiring and plumbing are well insulated from each other.
BR
@catclub:
I wonder what happens when you bury the computer hard disks that are holding the data for the banks’ toxic assets six feet under. I’m thinking they just cause more damage by leaching their metals into the groundwater…
FormerSwingVoter
We done got trolled!
Walker
Press releases != science.
kdaug
@El Cid: Of course he doesn’t. That’s why Halliburton gets the no-bid contracts.
superluminar
@El Cid:
Do you know who else built showers to kill people?
/godwin
Ash Can
@JGabriel: LOL!
joeyess
Thank the FSM that this will take 1000 years to occur. It could’ve ruined my reputation.
You see, I predict that we will be the cause of the next ELE. And we will be it’s first and only victim. This will be done by attrition war, famine and disease. It will be quick and painless – in relation to other ELEs. We’ll be the main attraction of this massive die off.
I hope to have a nice spot picked out to watch this all unfold. Bring a cooler, folks. And lots of vodka.
Zandar
Meh, I’ll just float.
Downpuppy
And we are already well into an extinction event, with the current estimates being that human civilization will take out about 50% of all species before it collapses.
Which kinda spoils the fun of laughing about apocalypse.
BR
@toujoursdan:
I remember an interview with Jared Diamond where they asked him about Easter Island and what the people there were thinking when they cut down the last tree. The premise of the question was that people there were stupid, and we’d obviously be smart enough to foresee our own demise well enough to stop it.
But here we are, chugging away with no end in sight, and none of our serious-media betters, nor serious-bipartisan politicians, nor anyone else of public prominence is giving a rat’s ass.
I can see how Easter Island fell – one tree at a time while everyone was looking at the statues.
Edit: and since the only thing they seem to give a shit about is the economy (supposedly, but not really), I’m surprised that they’re not doing anything about peak oil, which has now moved from ‘maybe some day a long time from now’ to ‘before 2015’. (Steven Chu is well aware of it – he gave talks referring to peak oil before he went to Washington.)
General Stuck
@superluminar: bullseye!!
Who will be incinerated first?
Ohhh….Cthulhu was a metaphor, then.
alterneuro
Some dude (at University, no less) has a theory, eh? Well shit, that’s good enough for me.
I mean, it’s probably a well-substantiated theory his colleagues support that doesn’t rely on specious assumptions and hasn’t been roundly debunked…right? Right?
This stuff just makes us look bad. Pretty please, fix it to comport with scientific consensus and stop trying to scare the bejesus out of people with falsehoods? The world is plenty scary, and I’d rather people focus on threats that are, you know, actually threatening.
Cain
Well.. shiiit.. I guess that means we’ve won, and tea baggers will never win! Fuck it, I’m not phone banking tomorrow!
cain
Keenan
On a brighter note, I was swimming in the Gulf a week ago and it seems alive again. Thousands of mullet in schools blackening areas as large as a BBall court. Millions of little fish of various sorts, rays, and a couple small sharks made an appearance.
It lifted my spirits after months of gloom and tar balls.
The Other Chuck
Scat porn? Is that like when you take your doobie-doobie-doo-wow and biddly-doo-bop your shibbly-diddly-biddly-bo?
(googles for a moment)
Oh. I guess not.
Culture of Truth
I remember an interview with Jared Diamond where they asked him about Easter Island and what the people there were thinking when they cut down the last tree.
“Stupid liberals said I couldn’t have this tree!”
different church-lady
Cool. So we can stop worrying about global warming now?
Mark S.
@El Cid:
Shit, I don’t think the Three Stooges could build showers that would electrocute you.
Chadwig
I’ve enjoyed every post until this one ABL. This is unfortunately rank speculation and conspiracy theorizing minus any supporting evidence or citations.
While the prose is rewarding, the content is bereft of any useful information.
Now, excuse me while I go watch 2012.
Allan
Shouldn’t we be discussing something really important, like Christine O’Donnell’s Wookie beaver?
Kay Shawn
John, a bit of oversight here? What’s goin’ on at this site today??
jl
Coming back to be a wonk jackass. From what I’ve read and what my geotechnical connections tell me,
The bottom of the Gulf where they drilled this is basically layers of mud, sand and layers of various kinds of ice (water ice, methane ice).
The well probably has small leaks, since there is evidence that its integrity was compromised, there are probably cracks and stuff is slowly leaking out through them. But if the well has been shut down enough, it will act like the thousands of natural seeps in the area. If it leaks slowly enough, pressures of over burden and resevoir will start to equalize, the fissures that propagated through the faults will be sealed up by mud. The population of oil eating bugs will grow rapidly near where the stuff comes out and will degrade the oil at about the same rate it comes out.
Conceivably the thing could blow, but the probability is vanishingly small.
But have to admit this is hearsay, I trust my sources. I still trust conservative Democratic engineers, but then everyone here knows I am a naive and trusting soul.
catclub
@Allan:
Shouldn’t we be discussing something really important, like Christine O’Donnell’s Wookie beaver?
Aren’t we already discussing scat porn?
freelancer
@Allan:
Wookies aren’t Beavers! You take that the hell back!
General Stuck
@jl:
The toxic soup of dispersant, oil and it’s noxious components, along with oil eating bacteria, all thrown into the mix in massive quantities, does not fill me with relief for the long term.
Capri Sun-Bagger
Um, people do know that cast iron drain pipes are often used as the primary ground path in many older homes’ wiring scheme, right?
I assume that people are also aware that they shouldn’t shower or do dishes etc, during a lightning storm. Right?
Linda Featheringill
@BR:
I highly recommend The Oil Drum for comment on this topic.
http://www.theoildrum.com/
I share your frustration. Nobody, but NOBODY, around here wants to talk about peak oil. I guess they don’t think it will affect them. Or the good fairy will bring a wonderful substitute for petroleum products. Or innovation will save the day. Or we humans are so flippin wonderful we can handle anything. Or God would never let that happen to us. Or whatever.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Justin:
Win and LOL.
Johannes
ABL, I’ll leave the scientific critique to the science bloggers, but no frakkin way am I going out to the frakkin Vangelis version of Barber’s Adagio, savvy?
I mean, “Nearer my God to thee” sucked less than that little musical mutation.
danimal
Whew, looks like we escaped the big one (this time).
BTW, isn’t it going to be fun when the conservatrarians realize that global warming is a really big deal and they chastise us for not doing enough to stop it?
I’m really looking forward to the media analysis that blames liberals, moderates and all other people with brains for their intransigence. You know it’s coming.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Did anybody else read a little more on this Terrence Aym fellow? An interesting meld of different crackpot theories. If the giant methane bubble doesn’t get us something else certainly will.
Zuzu's Petals
@El Cid:
Suspected something like this, but still…I feel sick.
Culture of Truth
First the stock market bubble and then the housing bubble and now this
General Stuck
For the tender souls of our serious juicers, this has all been a simulation. Do not touch your dials, the problem is not in your computer, we control the vertical and the horizontal.
There will be no post Dino apocalyptic farts, unless Al Gore takes up laxatives. So relax. But not too much.
BR
@Linda Featheringill:
Tim F. did a good, and very dark post on the German peak oil report a couple of months back.
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/09/09/great-news-about-global-warming/
But yeah, this is some serious shit. The Hirsch report the DOE commissioned in 2005 said that they expected it would take 20 years for us to adjust to peak oil, and that’s assuming we put in a WWII like effort to the task. We’re less than 5 years out and haven’t done a damn thing, and nobody wants to talk about it.
I’m wondering if politicians are hoping they can blame it on someone else as a “surprise” event that should surprise nobody.
jl
@General Stuck: it bothers me too. The whole thing is an ongoing, massive uncontrolled experiment on the environment and food chain for, like a big chunk of the world. And I mean the world, since some of the Gulf fisheries produce major populations of fish all over the Atlantic.
Sort of like the US health care system and human health in the United States, an irresponsible massive uncontrolled experiment on animals plants and us humans.
Good luck to us. Plenty bad can happen, even if this scenario isn’t true.
If ABL believes this stuff and is alarmed, let her post it. I don’t see how it is any worse than some of what the others have posted, or many of my own comments. And we have Levenson as an insurance policy.
In fact, between this post and Levenson, there is so much balance that Balloon Juice is now clearly qualified as just as respectable as mainstream media. The whole front page crew should be invited to the White House for the next blogger conference. I will expect to see pics of the meeting should Cole survive California with his sanity intact.
trollhattan
Gas pressure: not necessarily your friend.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/28/BAQO1G3IE3.DTL&tsp=1
General Stuck
@jl:
good typo catch
Rosalita
who needs a scotch?
catclub
@BR:
“But yeah, this is some serious shit. The Hirsch report the DOE commissioned in 2005 said that they expected it would take 20 years for us to adjust to peak oil, and that’s assuming we put in a WWII like effort to the task. We’re less than 5 years out and haven’t done a damn thing, and nobody wants to talk about it.”
I can predict already that after Obama is a lame duck, he will give a speech that says: “Peak oil is coming and we will have to make changes. Folks now don’t want to make changes because many people who made lots of money on petroleum will no longer be on top. If you want talk more about it, I’m willing, but the main thing is that YOU have to be willing to talk about it.”
It will be as deeply respected as when Eisenhower warned of an iron triangle of the military industrial complex.
And ignored.
Rosalita
@catclub:
isn’t that an insult to Wookies and beavers?
Jim Crozier
This totally gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite links of all time.
http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm
twiffer
@El Cid: the flat claim of methane causing the permo-triassic extinction also pricked my ears. also of note, the supporting link on that claim lends no support.
ah well.
mclaren
And you people call me an apocalyptic pessimist.
Now this has got the apocalyptic pessimism thing down. Only thing is, he’s missing zombies. It needs zombies to complete the picture.
Maybe the methane cloud will choke everyone and blow up and burn down all life on earth but the humans won’t be quite dead — they’ll be zombies. That would work. End of the world with zombies!
Now we’re talkin’!
Ruckus
I think this is hilarious. I get to see weird off the wall OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING stuff and I don’t have to go look for it.
The world has been ending as we know it, every day of the existence of mankind. The world is a changing place and we humans affect it, I’m sure much more than we should or need to, but evolution and aging is what happens.
Now why people are getting their panties in a twist about ABL posting this, I don’t get. She said it was 3 months old, she posted under humor and she gave you a hint by asking about the Mayans bit. Jeezzz, get a life.
BR
@twiffer:
I think there’s actually evidence of that, but it’s not conclusive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_extinction#Methane_hydrate_gasification
@catclub:
Yeah, but that only works if Obama is a one-term president, something I sincerely don’t hope happens. Because if (when) he’s re-elected, he’ll be in office until 2017, which is well past the point most projections say we’ll be on the downslope of oil production.
So it’ll be a crisis he’ll have to deal with. It’d be better if he dealt with it pro-actively…
shortstop
I actually think this is a beautiful story. It has all the elements wingnuts most love: mass punishment for nonbelievers, Rapture possibilities for true believers, a horrifying scale of suffering, a government conspiracy to keep the truth from everyone, etc. It only has one little problem that prevents them from forwarding it to everyone in their churches and scrapbooking clubs: the moral of the story is humanity’s stupid fucking with the environment. They must be sick in bed at having to pass up such a good one.
jl
@Ruckus: oops. You are right. I missed the humor tag. Deep snark strikes me again.
DougJ will have to work double time to top ABL’s style.
Adam Lang
@catclub:
Didn’t you die in a giant cataclysm? I did.
I thought it was a retrospective.
General Stuck
The reason I like a good apocalyptic spoof/rant is that we little humans with our even smaller schemes and designs of all sorts, including political, need a reality check from time to time. That despite our serious, and legitimate concerns about how we govern our countries and our personal lives, at the end of the day, we are all at the mercy of mother nature, whether you tie that to some intelligent quasi god thing or not.
It puts things into perspective for me, and highlights just how crass and self important the human race can get, wrapping itself in the false belief that everything will always turn out just peachy, no matter how much foul shit we do to ourselves and the planet that sustains our very existence.
No better way than to engage in some half serious macabre spoofing that our existence and well being is not for eternity because we choose to believe it is. I crave reality. All of it. YMMV
Caravelle
I got suspicious when this was flatly claimed as the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when to this day the causes are hotly contested.
Not only do we apparently now know THE cause of the Permian Extinction, we also have a list of WARNING SIGNS.
OldK
@Linda Featheringill:
Exactly.
Wait, wait, there’s natural gas leaking at the site of an oil well?! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! And the gas is under pressure?! At an oil well?! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE TWICE!
If this is all meant in jest, I guess I haven’t figured out ABL’s sense of humor yet.
Angry Black Lady
@General Stuck: you get me, general! (others may too, but i have not yet read all the comments.)
jokes, people, jokes!
CynDee
The sun is setting and I’m going to the back of the cave to curl up with my dog and go sleepy-bye.
celticdragonchick
@Caravelle:
Everybody calm down. This article is first rate pseudo scientific hackery.
Bullshit.
Absolute bullshit.
The End-Permian event has beeen linked to eustatic sea level changes, loss of shallow marine epi continental shelf environment, volcanics (the Siberian Traps) and a possible bolide impact at the Bedout Crater near Australia.
I researched the hell out of this subject last semester in Paleontology when I wrote a paper on similarities between the last three mass extinction events.
If you want to read what reputable scientists have said, look up in JStore for Anthony Hallam, Jablonski, Sepkoski and D.H Erwin.
I can forward a copy of my paper and my citations to anybody who wants the info. Do not pay attention to this idiocy from Terrence Aym.
General Stuck
@CynDee:
Charlie says Hi! to his Godmommie.
Angry Black Lady
@JGabriel: I LOVE firefillionfly.
Angry Black Lady
@JGabriel: I lol’d out loud.
Angry Black Lady
@Johannes: I love that you said “savvy.” Also, too I loved that I riled y’all up and in the process learned some actual sciencey-type shit. Bonus.
To those who don’t think that was funny, you’re crazy right in your own faces. It was objectively funny.
Don’t argue.
::evil stare::
That is all.
ABL out.
HyperIon
yeah, a pretty good frontline this week on the spill.
poor tony, he emphasized safety compared to his predecessors. but was still determined to be the big player in the gulf.
i did not realize he was an engineer.
Xoebe
Your bullshit meters should have been pegged reading the Terrence Aym article. It’s a major piece of shit – and I don’t say things like that very frequently.
The first clue is the title of the article: “How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a ‘world-killing’ event ” – yet there is nothing – literally nothing – in the article that says how it triggered anything but an oil and gas spill. In fact, it doesn’t even go that far.
The second clue is the breathless style. Too many instances for lazy old me to document. Really.
Third, the complete and utter lack of credible attribution relevant to item one. The link to the NOAA research vessel that supposedly found a huge gash on the ocean floor links to a piece of marketing fluff on the vessel itself. The “signs” that the gulf floor is doing what happens prior to a mega-methane-release event? “All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.” Citation, please. It’s really simple.
Fourth, the author claims a government clampdown on the press. Seriously, please, to all you UFO invasion reporters: stop with the government clampdown meme. It’s decades old now.
Fifth, and related to the first, the article is about a couple of extinction events, and some made up numbers (no attribution) that purport to relate to some event in the Gulf. Ooooo scary. Yes, we might figure from the name “Mass Extinction Event” that it’s bad. Really bad, even. Data, please.
Sixth. Common fucking sense. The Macondo well was a deep well, by human standards. By geological standards, it was nothing – I think even the word negligible would give too great a weight to it. Even if BP had lanced a giant boil on the Earth’s ass, the damn thing would have to be ready to go already anyway.
One last item…Rig No. 1? Really? Which one is that, exactly?
Maude
This isn’t one of the better Doomer stories.
The mud that they put down the well to out pressure the oil/gas is what makes the well static. The cement is done after that. If the mud is done properly, the well isn’t going to blow.
It was the mud that killed the well this time.
Not so good cement jobs aren’t unusual and they can do them over again.
We don’t know why the well blew.
Ash Can
@Angry Black Lady: Hmph. Everybody knows a real punking requires a pimp suit and a boat full of dildos.
mnpundit
Where have you been? This was talked about months ago. Literally months ago. There’s nothing we can do and the possibility of it happening is pretty rare. So….
….for once I just have to shrug and move on. Nothing else we can do.
mem from somerville
Oh, yeah, that one. I remember having to debunk that this summer. Good times….
If you are looking for something else that’s being rumored ’round the left you can do the #FAIL Monsanto buys Xe thing. This is a hilarious real-time conspiracy theory that unfolded in the last couple of weeks.
It went from lefty article –> Spanish mis-translation–> Pravda back to English–> CT sites –> Lefty blogs far and wide.
If anyone thinks credulous thinking is specific to the Teabaggers and Firebaggers….
mclaren
I still think the story is missing a few elements. Crazy-weird end-of-the-world shit, but not crazy enough…how about this? The methane eruption ignites and blows off the Yellowstone caldera — the caldera detonates and takes out North America. This sets off a conflagration that makes the methane clathrate in the arctic ocean explode, which in turn blasts the polar cap off the earth, unbalances the planet on its axis, and tears it apart.
So the earth blows up into little softball-sized fragments. And why? Why, people?
Because you foolish libtards ELECTED A BLACK MAN PRESIDENT! It’s…OBAMAPOCALYPSE NOW!
jinxtigr
Much love to ABL and all- I just think that, well, you know…
Just because it is impossible to satirize these days does not mean it is good to try. First of all, we’re fucking rattled enough, OK? And second of all, it really is difficult to find things that aren’t epically fucked up.
Major ‘cool kids’ nihilist byotch points for laughing in the face of armageddon. Now that we’re done- hope you’re still down for doing the regular work and coping with the river of shit we’re stuck with, and here’s doubly hoping the world doesn’t eclipse your satire as it has done in so many other fields and situations :P
Bill Murray
@celticdragonchick: the Siberian traps are cool though — a one million year long volcanic event, up to 4 million cubic km (about a million cubic miles, 0.001% of the entire earth volume if I did the math correctly) of lava
Angry Black Lady
tough crowd, eh.
aight, aight… i’ll see if i can’t rassle up some more indignant and timely outrage.
don’t be sad. 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
General Stuck
@Angry Black Lady:
Well, you got Mclaren excited, with prolly a little apocalypse envy. Though I”m not sure that is for the best, all in all.
I did enjoy it rather much myself.
Cermet
WTF is this pile of shit being written on this blog? With all the problems and issues that need to be addressed we get this bad SciFi that isn’t even worth a B-level movie? Please.
Mnemosyne
@Angry Black Lady:
Yep. We’re all wonky and science-y and where’s-the-evidence-y when stuff like this comes up. It’s just how we are. :-)
General Stuck
@Cermet:
Hold on sparky, maybe Cole will throw up a neti pot thread, so we can get serious again.
Cermet
@General Stuck: Huh … what is a “neti pot thread”?
General Stuck
@Cermet:
It’s one of these gadgets, and when Cole’s sinuses acted up a few years ago, he threw up a 150 comment thread on the various kinds of neti pots and other half baked remedies.
The point I was making to you, was this blog has a funny bone and an unserious side to it, that has manifested itself into all sorts of mindless threads on meaningless topics to compliment the serious ones, and give everyone a break from how fucked up things are. This one, imo, was one of those, but also with a serious undertone and message, but ultimately a spoofing thread. Chill out a little, we will get back to saving the world by blogging it in no time.
Triassic Sands
Disaster May End Life on Earth
Finally…some GOOD news. Thank you, Baby Jeebus.
Damn, more bad news and the return of the status quo. I knew I couldn’t count on the Baby J. Back to Plan A and the massive overdose of opiates.
mclaren
@Cermet:
Exactamundo. That’s America in 2010: a bad SciFi potboiler that isn’t even worth a B-level movie. ZONTAR, THE THING FROM THE TEA PARTY. Or how about ATTACK OF THE GIANT CORPORATE LEECHES. Or better yet: IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND THE RIGHT WING.
Uloborus
I am glad that I did not have to come in this late to try and correct the record! Every generation thinks that the end of the world is right around the corner. Scientific scares are the current favorite bogeyman. One day one of them might be right, but until then keep a big grain of salt handy and wait until you’ve heard the counterargument.
Angry Black Lady
@Mnemosyne: i reckon it takes some time to get used to my sense of humor, to the extent the BJ lifers think i have one!
dirt off my shoulder, yo. ;)
p mac
Dear ABL — you got me good.
I reread your post, and noticed the fukin tags at the bottom just in case i didn’t get it.
…Humor. Joke is srlsy on me.
Caravelle
@celticdragonchick (awesome username btw) :
LOL I know. It’s just the whole “warning signs” thing that killed me. We don’t even fully understand the warning signs of things that are happening right now, but yeah Permian Extinction we own that shit.
Also, I’m picturing trilobites going “Hey ! All this stuff happening, might they be warning signs ?” “Nah, shutup you hippie”.