Scientists Urge U.S. to Move Quickly to Study Gulf Oil Spill

[G_j]

http://www.truth-out.org/scientists-urge-us-move-quickly-study-gulf-oil-spill61199

Scientists Urge U.S. to Move Quickly to Study Gulf Oil Spill

Thursday 08 July 2010

by: Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers


Washington - Frustrated with limited data on the BP oil gusher, a group of independent scientists has proposed a large experiment that would give a clearer understanding of where the oil and gas are going and where they'll do the most damage.

The scientists say their mission must be undertaken immediately, before BP kills the runaway well. They propose using what's probably the world's worst oil accident to learn how crude oil and natural gas move through water when they're released at high volumes from the deep sea.

The scientists also want to see how the oil breaks down into toxic and safer components in different ocean conditions, information that would help predict which ocean species are most at risk. The experiment also could provide data that would help in dealing with any future spills.

"Without this understanding, we're no better off when the next one occurs," said Ira Leifer, a researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California at Santa Barbara who's leading the team that's proposed the experiment.

..more..

[n2doc]

1. These idiots are lying to you

There are literally hundreds of people studying the spill RiGHT NOW.

An example

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100707222312.htm

NSF put 2.5 million into RAPID grants in May alone to examine the spill effects. Each rapid is a max of 200k so one can do the math. This doesn't count NOAA USGS or other efforts, or those who are doing studies for free.

Lots of others looking at the plume. What these guys want is for someone to hand them 8 million without anyone examining their plan or comparing it to other planned missions. And to say nothing is being done is an insult to those of us working hard on the problem.

[BadgerKid]

2. .

Are these institutional grants or grants to PIs? If the usual overhead is being taken out and given to universities, then I would say only ~$1.75M is going directly to science here.

[n2doc]

3. Grants to PI's

And yes overhead is taken out. As it would be for the folks in the main article above. But NSF is also providing an almost equal match in research ship time, which doesn't show up on the grants as a cost.

[nashville_brook]

4. i'm betting a chunk of the research in the OP is going to index/analyze this existing research

that's the way it's done in lots of the human sciences...there's lots of data collected and out there, and we write grants to support research that collects/analyzes the existing data.

[Karenina]

5. . .