Oil Rigs an Enviormental Miracle

[Nativeshark]

Should more oil rigs be built as a way of generating revenue and create areas which organisms live and reproduce? Seems like a win-win-win-win situation. Everyone wins.

Oil platforms provide important habitats for fish

Oil platforms off the Southern California coast are some of the world's most productive marine fish habitats, a new study has found.
The research could inform decisions to be made about the inevitable decommissioning of the world's roughly 7,500 oil and gas platforms. Rather than completely removing them, underwater portions could be left intact to provide habitat for increasingly threatened fish populations on natural reefs.

Marine biologists at Occidental College, UC Santa Barbara and the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimated rates of production for the entire community of fish associated with oil platforms, comparing them to previous research that made similar measurements in highly productive estuary, coastal lagoon and coral reef ecosystems.

They found that the platforms tended to produce about 10 times more fish biomass "” chiefly various species of rockfish and lingcod "” than other more conventional marine habitats studied in the Pacific and North Atlantic oceans, Mediterranean and North seas, the Gulf of Mexico and along the coasts of South Africa and Australia.

When compared to the fish production on natural rocky reefs at similar depths off the Southern California coast, the platforms, on average, produced more than 27 times as much fish, according to the study.

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=6544

 

[Alexraptor]

Yeah, aside from the little fact that Fossil Fuels are polluting and damaging the planet, and I don't mean Global Warming.
Not to mention the massive destruction and harm potential oil leaks can cause the environment, which is a matter of not if, but when, and even has already happened.

So no, everybody definitely does not win.

 

[Nativeshark]

Yeah, aside from the little fact that Fossil Fuels are polluting and damaging the planet, and I don't mean Global Warming.
Not to mention the massive destruction and harm potential oil leaks can cause the environment, which is a matter of not if, but when, and even has already happened.

So no, everybody definitely does not win.

By damaging the environment do you mean run hospitals in order to save the lives of children, fly humanitarian aid to the sick people in Africa, run water purification plants to help reduce deaths from the #1 killer in the world diarrhea. Without energy many children will die. Do you want the children to die?


Maybe you mean close down oil platforms in California and just buy oil from ISIL. I heard they are stocked with it.


Maybe you should reduce your use of fossil fuels in order to save the environment. Some ways you can reduce your fossil fuel usage is not flush the toilet when you urinate (if its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down), close down your fish tank and stop using the computer for non essentials such as talking about fish online.

 

[Coelli]

I'm sure the folks in the Gulf of Mexico don't feel like they got a winning deal.

By damaging the environment do you mean run hospitals in order to save the lives of children, fly humanitarian aid to the sick people in Africa, run water purification plants to help reduce deaths from the #1 killer in the world diarrhea. Without energy many children will die. Do you want the children to die?

Red herring. Your post was specifically about the environmental impacts, not about how oil companies are really great humanitarians in disguise.

I think it's a great idea to leave them out there once they're decommissioned if they're helping in the long term. I don't think building more oil platforms under the premise that they're helping the environment is really an argument that holds water (har har).

 

[Dmorty217]

I worked the BP oil spill and let me tell you you could put in 10,000 oil rigs as "habitats for sea life" as you put it, but it won't reverse the fact that sea life is still suffering from that spill and it never will fully be back to normal. Now decommissioned oil rigs left in the ocean make great habitats for sea life until a storm breaks them loose and they float away. For the record I Don't care about sick people in Africa. Everyone acts like ANYTHING that happens in the world is Americas problem and that couldn't be further from the truth.

 

[lboud39]

I worked the BP oil spill and let me tell you you could put in 10,000 oil rigs as "habitats for sea life" as you put it, but it won't reverse the fact that sea life is still suffering from that spill and it never will fully be back to normal. Now decommissioned oil rigs left in the ocean make great habitats for sea life until a storm breaks them loose and they float away. For the record I Don't care about sick people in Africa. Everyone acts like ANYTHING that happens in the world is Americas problem and that couldn't be further from the truth.

Not too many rigs float. The ones that do don't support as mush life as the ones that have metal structures attached to the bottom. These have greater vertical habitat and can be left in place or cut below the waterline and toppled over to prevent navigation hazards.

http://www.bsee.gov/Exploration-and-Production/Decomissioning/Rigs-to-Reefs/

 

[Jpugh73]

++++1 amen that brother!

 

[Grandlotus]

Yeah, aside from the little fact that Fossil Fuels are polluting and damaging the planet, and I don't mean Global Warming.
Not to mention the massive destruction and harm potential oil leaks can cause the environment, which is a matter of not if, but when, and even has already happened.

So no, everybody definitely does not win.

Carbon Dioxide is what plants breath and what we exhail...so your saying we pollute simply by exhaling?

:lolspin:

 

[Dmorty217]

Not too many rigs float. The ones that do don't support as mush life as the ones that have metal structures attached to the bottom. These have greater vertical habitat and can be left in place or cut below the waterline and toppled over to prevent navigation hazards.

http://www.bsee.gov/Exploration-and-Production/Decomissioning/Rigs-to-Reefs/

Most rigs that are being put in the ocean now are floating deep water rigs because there isn't anymore oil to get in shallow waters since we have been using up that oil for decades now... But your point isn't lost

 

[Timfish]

. . . For the record I Don't care about sick people in Africa. . .

May I suggest you look at the news. We're all connected whether we like it or not and problems that may seem to be strictly a local or regional issue often turn into something more when not dealt with early.

 

[Grandlotus]

We are only 'all connected' because the president refuses to close flights into and out of Lybia and halt the issue on southern boarder from allowing illegals spewing over the boarder.
Also, why did the president send 3000 troops right into the center of Ebola country?

Lots the country can do but for some reason the elites and 1%ers don't care about me and you.

 

[billsreef]

No politics allowed on RC

 

[Alexraptor]

Carbon Dioxide is what plants breath and what we exhail...so your saying we pollute simply by exhaling?

:lolspin:

Personally I can't ever recall exhaling nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds and heavy metals. :rolleye1:

 

[Grandlotus]

Personally I can't ever recall exhaling nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds and heavy metals. :rolleye1:

Fossil fuels release 'carbon'. Aka: carbon dioxicide.

What are you referring to?

We had the coldest summer on record and the second worse winter here last year in Philly.

 

[Grandlotus]

No politics allowed on RC

Whoops.
Did not know what I said was politics, just basic topics of the day. My statements were not bias.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Carbon Dioxide is what plants breath and what we exhail...so your saying we pollute simply by exhaling?/QUOTE]

The carbon dioxide being produced from the combustion of fossil fuels like oil and coal come from dead producers that died a very long time ago. Like, dinosaur age long time ago. Oil is made from dead photosynthetic marine organisms. That carbon was locked away. We don't pollute by exhaling because we are not releasing carbon that was locked away thousands of years ago. It is the same principal as using algal biofuel as opposed to oil. The algal biofuel we burn is from carbon locked within the same time period. The oil we burn is from carbon locked from a different time period.

 

[billsreef]

Personally I can't ever recall exhaling nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds and heavy metals. :rolleye1:

Fossil fuels release 'carbon'. Aka: carbon dioxicide.

What are you referring to?

It's not just mass quantities of CO2 released (which is a problem in such quantity), but also those pollutants mentioned by Alex that are also released with the burning of petroleum products. Think extra nitrogen loading in your tank and adding acids to your tank (nitrous and sulfuric) without adding any buffer.

We had the coldest summer on record and the second worse winter here last year in Philly.

Some areas also had hotter than normal for both seasons. West Coast has been having an incredible prolonged drought. Also the polar vortex escaping the polar region and giving you that unusually cold winter happened to be an effect of "global warming". Yes, it seems counter intuitive, but it has to do with a change in global temperature gradients which normally would keep such a thing more restricted. Arctic winters are actually getting shorter, ice coverage greatly reduced and thinner.

 

[alton]

Personally I don't like floating oil rigs, If you can secure it to the floor of the ocean with four legs than I am good. I would think the earth has been getting warmer since the ice age? I look as it like a large block of ice, at first it barely melts but as the block of ice gets smaller it melts faster. And unless you stick it back into the freezer it will melt away. With the increase of 98 degree heaters running around the earth what are we to do? I really do not want to see another ice age.

 

[Grandlotus]

billsreef,

I look at bigger issues than slight changes in the make up of our air, like:

Pole Shifting : North and South Poles have been moving a lot over these last 10 years
Burn Temperature of the Sun: The sun does not burn at a constant rate and has hot and cold periods
Milankovitch cycles: Our earth, much like the poles and sun are not constant and our earth moves farther and closer to the sun on thousand year cycles.

Just do a quickie search on these topics and give yourself five minutes to learn some 'non-human' problems...
Like how did the Ice Age (Snowball Earth) warm up when there was no humans?

 

[Nativeshark]

Some areas also had hotter than normal for both seasons. West Coast has been having an incredible prolonged drought. Also the polar vortex escaping the polar region and giving you that unusually cold winter happened to be an effect of "global warming". Yes, it seems counter intuitive, but it has to do with a change in global temperature gradients which normally would keep such a thing more restricted. Arctic winters are actually getting shorter, ice coverage greatly reduced and thinner.

The drought in California is due to the redirecting of canals and irrigation systems. California had an expansive irrigation system which filled lakes and was used by farmers. A species of smelt was declared endangered so all these canals and irrigation systems were directed back into the ocean.

The whole idea of a polar vortex has been around for over 100 years. When they do occur it will get cold for a couple of days not a whole year. Polar vortexes occur on other planets not only earth.

The world is constantly changing. As more time goes on the more changes are going to happen. Unless you don't believe in plate tectonics.