Gulf oil spill study's surprising find: bacteria ate methane in three months

[Geee]

Christian Science Monitor:

A new report is offering a potentially remarkable answer to one of the questions that vexed scientists during the Deepwater Horizon blowout last year.

As oil and methane were pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from April to July, scientists sought to understand how quickly bacteria in deep Gulf waters would consume the gas. Initial, rough estimates suggested that bacteria might take years.

Moreover, since the bacteria use oxygen dissolved in sea water as they eat, there were questions about how that bacterial banquet might draw down oxygen levels – to the detriment of other organisms living at those depths.

According to the new study, bacteria took less than four months to finish off the methane, and it appears that at no time did oxygen levels in the area the team studied fall to levels dangerous to marine organisms there.

"This was a surprise for us," says John Kessler, a chemical oceanographer at Texas A&M University, who, along with David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara, led the study. "The process was very speedy."

By the end of last July and into the beginning of August, methane decomposition rates in the broad area the team studied "were faster than had ever been recorded in any other place on the planet."

Other researchers working on the same issue are cautious about the results, suggesting the team may be overinterpreting its data.

"It's a bold hypothesis," says Samantha Joye, a marine biologist at the University of Georgia at Athens, who also has been gathering methane-related measurements since the blowout on April 20 last year. But "there are other, alternate hypotheses that could just as easily explain" the data.

[Evad]

yes, but what are we going to do about all these obese microbes?

Moochelle Obama has launched an investigation.

[Geee]

We need to export some of those microbes to Washington to consume some of the gasbags there

[nickydog]

Rush predicted early on in the spill that this would happen.

[NCTexan]

Rush predicted early on in the spill that this would happen.

Nickydog!

 

Once again the Great Maha Rushie calls history before it even transpires!

 

Rush proves again that he can read the stitches on a fast ball...

and he knows liberal like like every square inch of his glorious naked body!

 

[nickydog]

Yes, indeed.