EnduringSense

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last April was a catastrophe.  Workers at the well site were killed during the explosion, fisheries were closed, beaches were damaged and many other peoples’ livelihoods were hurt.  These were all predictable results of the massive oil and gas leak into the Gulf.  What was not predicted by the experts was how quickly the Gulf ecologically recovered from the spill.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an article on the amazingly rapid comeback for the Gulf.  The well leaked tons of methane gas into the gulf that scientists predicted would take years to disperse before the Gulf would return to normal.  Instead, it only took months.  The heroes were not government bureaucrats who bungled so much during the months that followed the accident.  The heroes were some of the smallest critters that live on this planet, bacteria.

According to a recently released government funded study appearing on the online journal of Science, microbes occurring naturally in the Gulf have devoured much of the poisonous chemicals found in the natural gas and oil on the sea floor.  In June, measurements of methane showed levels in the water at thousands of times the normal amount.  Current measurements show these readings now to be normal.

The scientific communities surprise at the Gulf’s natural cleanup abilities was echoed by chemical oceanographer John Kessler at Texas A & M, an author of the Science study who said: “We were shocked.  We thought the methane would be around for years.”  Dr. David Valentine, a microbiologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, also said: “Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane.  The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected.”

The remarkable natural cleansing of the oil and gas spill from the Deepwater Horizon spill is instructive.  The environment is complex and dynamic with literally millions of variables that come into play in keeping it in balance.  It should not be surprising that this same environment has significant abilities at self repair.  Long before man began to affect the Earth’s environment it put up with all sorts of natural abuses including earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and Ice Ages and it still remains a rather hospitable place.

While the evidence on the Gulf’s natural cleanup is compelling, there remain disbelievers among scientists including University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye who said:  “I think they are jumping to a conclusion.  It would take a superhuman microbe to do what they are claiming.”  Evidently Ms. Joye didn’t read H.G. Wells’, The War of the Worlds.  There are indeed events that man cannot control.

There are those that will also question the Gulf’s natural cleanup “theory” since it has implications for the Global-Warming debate.  Methane is a significant greenhouse gas that plays a role in some theoretical scenarios on rapidly rising earth temperatures.  Should naturally existing microbes be able to control large methane gas releases, that part of the alarmists’ theory will no longer hold water.

The Earth’s ability to self-repair its environment does not justify man’s abuse of it.  However, this ability should give pause to allowing fear-mongers to change the way the world operates in the name of questionable theories on manmade global warming.  Given that these scientists could got it so wrong on how a major oil and gas spill would affect the Gulf of Mexico, it is likely that their predicted results of excess carbon emissions on the Earth’s temperature is also flawed.