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Science & Technology
Oil Leaks 40,000 years ago off Santa Barbara, CA
2010-06-21
A news report is in this Month's Civil Engineering magazine, right after an article asking for clever ideas to stop the BP leak, but the source is from April, and edited below.
About 10 miles off the Santa Barbara coast, at the bottom of the Santa Barbara Channel, a series of impressive landmarks rise from the sea floor. They've been there for 40,000 years, but have remained hidden in the murky depths of the Pacific Ocean-until now.

They're called asphalt volcanoes.

The largest of these undersea Ice Age domes lies at a depth of 700 feet (220 meters), too deep for scuba diving, which explains why the volcanoes have never before been spotted by humans, says Don Rice, director of NSF's Chemical Oceanography Program, which funded the research. "They're larger than a football-field-long and as tall as a six-story building," says David Valentine, a geoscientist at UCSB and the lead author of a paper published on-line this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. "They're massive features, and are made completely out of asphalt."
Gee, I wonder where all the oil and gas went? Did we have an EPA 40,000 years ago?
Using a mass spectrometer, carbon dating, microscopic fossils, and comprehensive, two-dimensional gas chromatography, the scientists determined that the structures are asphalt. They were formed when petroleum flowed from the sea-floor about 30,000-40,000 years ago.

Chris Reddy, a scientist at WHOI and a co-author of the paper, says that "the volcanoes underscore a little-known fact: half the oil that enters the coastal environment is from natural oil seeps like the ones off the coast of California."

The researchers also determined that the volcanoes were at one time a prolific source of methane, a greenhouse gas. The discovery that vast amounts of methane once emanated from the volcanoes caused the scientists to wonder if there might have been an environmental impact on the area during the Ice Age. "It became a dead zone," says Valentine. "We're hypothesizing that these features may have been a major contributor to those events."
Wait a minute! I thought global warming was caused by man-made CO2. It wasn't cave men breaking wind that ended the ice age?
Posted by:Bobby

#9  swksvolFF...Very funny comment. Priceless!
Posted by: Asymmetrical   2010-06-21 22:42  

#8  The Cheney predates civilization...frightening. Without progressive civil rights lawyers back then he could have feasted on blood at will.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2010-06-21 20:22  

#7  In 1793, during the travels of English explorer James Cook, his navigator, George Vancouver, recorded in his journal that they had anchored off of Goleta

is this the same English explorer James Cook who died in 1779?
Posted by: classer   2010-06-21 19:41  

#6  Groan! Bad Bunny!
Posted by: Deacon Blues   2010-06-21 16:02  

#5  more glad than ever that I use a brita filter.
Posted by: Hugh Jass   2010-06-21 15:46  

#4  'Tar she blows'
Posted by: BrerRabbit   2010-06-21 15:32  

#3  Also:


In 1793, during the travels of English explorer James Cook, his navigator, George Vancouver, recorded in his journal that they had anchored off of Goleta. Vancouver reported that the sea was "... covered with a thick, slimy substance, which, when separated or disturbed by any little agitation, became very luminous, whilst the slightest breeze, that came principally from onshore, brought with it a very strong scent of burning tar." He continued that "... the sea had the appearance of dissolved tar floating on its surface, which covered the ocean in all directions within the limits of our view."


This also is consistent with the memory of my friend's mother who is now in her 90's. She spent her summers at the beach near Santa Barbara in the 1920's and 1930's. She said the beach was always full of tar and her aunt made the kids clean their feet with turpentine when they got back from the beach. She said the breeze smelled like kerosene. She said that after the war when drilling started, the beaches cleaned up and became usable. Before that time the beaches were normally fouled with oil and tar seeping naturally into the ocean.
Posted by: crosspatch   2010-06-21 15:14  

#2  Not as much as the BP leak but about two Exxon Valdez tanker loads a year seeps naturally into the Gulf every year.

The same thing happens off the coast of California. Some of the natural gas seeps are so prolific that oil companies, prevented from drilling there, simply put a cap over them and collect the gas:


Two small underwater containment structures positioned near Goleta Point, placed to collect natural seepage, have alone captured over 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas since 1982: enough natural gas to supply the needs of over 25,000 residential natural gas users each year.

Posted by: crosspatch   2010-06-21 15:09  

#1  Actually, the latest Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago. These "methane monsters" had about zero effect on the ice at that time. According to one record I read, the Gulf of Mexico has several THOUSAND natural leaks that put as much oil into the water as the BP well does.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2010-06-21 15:02  

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