Government’s Fake-Science in its BP Residual Oil Spill Estimate

© 2010 Peter Free

 

05 August 2010

 

Government and the oil plutocracy joined forces to return to the business of stealing little guys’ livelihoods

 

In a report entitled BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget: What Happened to the Oil?,  seven National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists made preposterously unscientific estimates of the extent of the oil remaining after the BP’s massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

 

In addition, the organization of the report seems to be deliberately misleading.

 

These residual oil estimates come from layering unproven computer models atop poor or absent data ─ while examining a deep-water environment that has never been studied under similar circumstances.

 

Furthermore, the NOAA/USGS report probably deliberately masks the fact that it is addressing visible oil, not invisible toxicities that remain in water and air.  It is, predominantly, the invisible components of the spill that could (but might not) cause significant problems in the future.

 

In essence, the report may or may not be true.

 

A more scientifically honest appraisal would have said, “We don’t have a clue.”

 

So what’s going on?

 

The Obama Administration is apparently trying to use this report’s pretend science as camouflage for its inept handling of the pre- and post-spill Deepwater Horizon events.

 

Government, joined to the oil cartel, wants to return to our business as usual oligarchic exploitation of the planet and most of the people who live on it.

 

The report’s camouflage will allow the power elite to continue their pursuit of corporate and personal wealth.  Without the inconvenience of doing sound science or undertaking serious environmental restoration.

 

This evasion of governmental duty will be paid for by the planet and people who live close its ground.

 

Citation for the NOAA/USGS report

 

Jane Lubchenco et al., BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget: What Happened to the Oil?

 

Summary of what the report states

 

The report says:

 

In summary, it is estimated that burning, skimming and direct recovery from the wellhead removed one quarter (25%) of the oil released from the wellhead.  One quarter (25%) of the total oil naturally evaporated or dissolved, and just less than one quarter (24%) was dispersed (either naturally or as a result of operations) as microscopic droplets into Gulf waters.

 

The residual amount ─ just over one quarter (26%) ─ is either on or just below the surface as light sheen and weathered tar balls, has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, or is buried in sand and sediments.

 

Oil in the residual and dispersed categories is in the process of being degraded.

 

© 2010 Jane Lubchenco et al., BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget: What Happened to the Oil? (single original paragraph split for readability)

 

Deliberate deception in wording

 

Notice how the authors conceal the fact that BP used huge amounts of very toxic oil-dispersants in its oil volume concealment effort.  The report covers this up by using the word “operations.”

 

How deceptively cute and lawyerly is that?

 

The report’s scientific ridiculousness

 

Samantha Joye evaluated the NOAA/USGS report the way I do:

 

“A lot of this is based on modeling and extrapolation and very generous assumptions,” said Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia who has led some of the most important research on the Deepwater Horizon spill.

“If an academic scientist put something like this out there, it would get torpedoed into a billion pieces.”

 

© 2010 Justin Gillis & Leslie Kaufman, Oil Spill Calculations Stir Debate on Damage, New York Times (04 August 2010) (paragraph split for readability)

Another scientist was less demanding:

Jeffrey W. Short, a former federal scientist who led major studies after the Exxon Valdez disaster and now works for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, found the report plausible, over all.

The estimates in the report “are better than nothing, and probably not very far off,” he said. “They have measured all the easy stuff to measure, and the rest will be very difficult to measure if not impossible. So I suspect it is not going to get a whole lot better than this.”

 

 

© 2010 Justin Gillis & Leslie Kaufman, Oil Spill Calculations Stir Debate on Damage, New York Times (04 August 2010)

It is what you can’t see that often gets you ─ and what you can see (if you looked for it) often is not accurately measured

The “easy stuff” that Short refers to is the oil you can see.  It is easier to measure what you can see than what you cannot.

But don’t try to kid me into believing some people have walked and flown the entire Gulf and measured all the visible oil.  That’s idiotic.  (Satellites cannot reliably see oil hidden among vegetation, barely covered with mud or sand, or even somewhat dispersed in water.)

Jeffrey Short (who should know better, if he was quoted in context), apparently, is going to let NOAA and the USGS get away with this public-manipulating silliness.

Second, toxicities usually can’t be seen.  That’s the point to the “badness” of spilling poisonous substances into the environment.

Biologically-hostile substances are usually difficult to track.  They can create complex and subtle havoc with plant and animal physiologies that often does not surface for years.

Or not.

That is why it is scientifically honorable to say, “We don’t know, and we will not assume or imply” ─ when data are completely insufficient to support sound hypotheses.

Why Short’s favorable implication about the estimates is wrong and Joye’s negative evaluation is substantively right

The basic deceit of the NOAA/USGS cover-up is that it is impossible to estimate portions of an unknown quantity.

Nor is it helpful to mislead people into thinking that 74 percent of that unknown quantity has conveniently disappeared into probably benign invisibility.

For months, we have witnessed the Government’s inability to deliver believable estimates of the volume of the oil gusher that BP was deliberately trying to conceal.

So don’t tell us today that that problem of measurement miraculously evaporated.  Or further, that we can reliably estimate 26 percent of an unknown quantity.

The overdone precision of the 26 percent estimate was obviously chosen to give credence to the purported accuracy of these estimates.

Either that or the team needed to fudge some figures to come up with 100 percent.  Just as high school kids might do in a boring chemistry class.

The report’s most basic science and interpretation problem?

The basic problem to the NOAA/USGS report is that it equates to “out of sight, out of mind” based on almost no scientifically valid data.

The report misleads the public into thinking that “disappeared oil is good oil,” under circumstances where that may not be true.

Perhaps worst, the report’s transparent attempt to manipulate public perception worsens the nation’s distrust of science and scientists.

If you are going to do science, do it well, or call it something else.

Conclusion

This residual oil report is BP-Obama propaganda and not much more.  Don’t call it science.