Russian state of emergency after Arctic Circle oil spill

[Mark]

Russia's Putin declares state of emergency after Arctic Circle oil spill:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-52915807

Sounds horrendous - 20,000 tonnes of diesel = 1,000 road tankers....
The environment loses again.....

Found this bit particularly interesting:

The accident happened when the pillars supporting a fuel tank at a power plant began to sink. The area is built on permafrost which has been melting as the climate warms.

[fuzzy]

Well it's the BBC - they have to put a climate change angle to every story. It will give a few animals a nasty death, but it's only the stuff nature makes anyway in a concentrate form. A shame it can't evaporate much. Maybe it gets quite warm in summer?

[kenneal - lagger]

Rowlatt says in this piece about the Thwaites Glacier and its increasing rate of melting "An increase in sea level of 50cm would mean the storm that used to come every thousand years will now come every 100 years.

If you increase that to a metre then that millennial storm is likely to come once a decade."

What he fails to say, or perhaps understand, is that coastal erosion also increases. I'm not sure by how much (perhaps Biff could give us a heads up on this, Chris?) but features like the chalk cliffs of the south coast start to collapse and move back and softer cliffs such as those of the Jurrasic Coast and sediments such as the coast from the New Forest and Southampton along to Hove and all down the East Coast will disappear even faster. The land won't just disappear under water it will disappear even faster into the water as is happening to stretches of the East Coast already where metres of coastline are washed into the North Sea every year. That rate of erosion will increase vastly.

[kenneal - lagger]

Well it's the BBC - they have to put a climate change angle to every story. It will give a few animals a nasty death, but it's only the stuff nature makes anyway in a concentrate form. A shame it can't evaporate much. Maybe it gets quite warm in summer?

They don't have to put a climate change angle on this because this is what climate change is actually doing. Not only will it give a few animals a nasty death it will give a lot of humans a nasty death from starvation as changing climate and sea level rise adversely affects world food production.

The changing climate and more extreme weather have adversely affected food production in the UK this last autumn, winter and spring, but you probably hadn't noticed, fuzzy. The extremely wet autumn meant that most winter grain crops, the bulk of the grain crop in the UK, couldn't be sown last autumn and what was sown was sown into very wet soil. This had an adverse effect on the root development of the crop so that this extremely dry spring has meant that a large proportion of what germinated in now whithering in the ground.

The same is happening to the few spring sown cereals that were planted instead of the winter sown ones. There wasn't enough spring seed to make up for the autumn sown crop either so cereal prices for what has been grown are likely to be very high later this summer.

For someone who lives in a country that imports 50% of its food while also increasing its population by 250,000 to 300,0000 people a year by immigration you are very blasé about climate change, fuzzy.

[vtsnowedin]

I don't know who Rowlatt is or his credentials but a 50 cm rise in sea level would not increase the total surface area even one percentage point so the rise itself wouldn't change much. Perhaps he is using the rise in temperatures that caused the rise to also increase average sea surface temperatures which would provide greater energy for storm creation?

[Mark]

Well it's the BBC - they have to put a climate change angle to every story. It will give a few animals a nasty death, but it's only the stuff nature makes anyway in a concentrate form. A shame it can't evaporate much. Maybe it gets quite warm in summer?

Oil is one of the very worst environmental pollutants - it causes havoc to any water based eco-system.
1 litre of oil can contaminate 1 million litres of water, as it spreads over the surface in a thin layer that stops oxygen getting to the aquatic life in the water....
I've not a calculation to work out how many litres of water 20,000 tonnes of diesel would contaminate, but it's got a lot of 0000000s, that's for sure....
In a fairly pristine part of the planet ??

Even Putin, not exactly an Eco Warrior, thinks it's a tad serious...
But in your world, just a few dead animals and BBC bias....
Unbelievable.

[stumuz1]

One of my day jobs is an IOSH environmental practitioner.

When I used to do spill training for companies many years ago ( it's now done via e-learning) I would get 4 cups and fill each with drinking water. I would then put 1ml of diesel/kerosene in one of the cups and ask the delegates to tell me which of the 4 cups of drinking water had the fuel in it.

Every time the delegate would get the cup within 12 inches of their nose and say" that one" it stinks!

As Mark says diesel is a severe marine pollutant.

Here is an SDS for diesel.
https://www.trafigura.com/media/1687/en ... 4-30-5.pdf

Written by those lovely people from trafigura of the dump toxic waste on a beach in Africa and get a super injunction to stop the press reporting it fame. Thank goodness Ryan Gigg's brother's girlfriend had big tits or we would never have known about it.

[kenneal - lagger]

I don't know who Rowlatt is or his credentials but a 50 cm rise in sea level would not increase the total surface area even one percentage point so the rise itself wouldn't change much. Perhaps he is using the rise in temperatures that caused the rise to also increase average sea surface temperatures which would provide greater energy for storm creation?

Rowlatt is a journalist who reports for the BBC on environmental matters.

It's not the relative area of land that will be lost but the type of land. It's river deltas which will go and these are some of the prime food growing areas of the world: the Nile, Ganges, Mekong and in the UK, the Wash and Fens. Then there is the creeping erosion that would be more than the actual area just going under water.

The Mekong is already suffering the effects of sea water ingress before the land is actually flooded so another 500mm of rise is going to have a profound effect.

Then, as you state, VT, there is the added effect of more extreme storms.

Then what would be the financial loss of a 500mm sea level rise on a place like Florida where they already get floods from rising ground water when they get very low atmospheric pressure?

[vtsnowedin]

I don't know who Rowlatt is or his credentials but a 50 cm rise in sea level would not increase the total surface area even one percentage point so the rise itself wouldn't change much. Perhaps he is using the rise in temperatures that caused the rise to also increase average sea surface temperatures which would provide greater energy for storm creation?

Rowlatt is a journalist who reports for the BBC on environmental matters.

It's not the relative area of land that will be lost but the type of land. It's river deltas which will go and these are some of the prime food growing areas of the world: the Nile, Ganges, Mekong and in the UK, the Wash and Fens. Then there is the creeping erosion that would be more than the actual area just going under water.

The Mekong is already suffering the effects of sea water ingress before the land is actually flooded so another 500mm of rise is going to have a profound effect.

Then, as you state, VT, there is the added effect of more extreme storms.

Then what would be the financial loss of a 500mm sea level rise on a place like Florida where they already get floods from rising ground water when they get very low atmospheric pressure?

Yes Florida and Bangladesh would get flooded out along with river deltas but my question is how would that make storms go from 1000 year intervals to 100 year intervals? If he just means the water levels in those delta regions that is fine but 100 and 1000 years storms and floods hit all regions not just the coastal plains and deltas.
A minor point and nothing to do with diesel fuel in an arctic river. The Ruskies will just have to skim it up as best they can but getting enough skimmer pumps and tanks to that location maybe a logistics nightmare.

[adam2]

A low technology way to deal with oil spills in water is to scatter straw or wood pellets into the water.
Collect and burn the material afterwards.

[kenneal - lagger]

The Ruskies will just have to skim it up as best they can but getting enough skimmer pumps and tanks to that location maybe a logistics nightmare.

The Russians have military aircraft at least as big as US ones and heavy lift helicopters as well. If they have enough equipment they can get it there, eventually.

[vtsnowedin]

The Ruskies will just have to skim it up as best they can but getting enough skimmer pumps and tanks to that location maybe a logistics nightmare.

The Russians have military aircraft at least as big as US ones and heavy lift helicopters as well. If they have enough equipment they can get it there, eventually.

Norilisk being a mining town it is served by both highway and railroad links so transportation should not be a problem. It is pretty interesting to view it on Goggle earth to see the extent of the open pit mine and the smelter works.

[BritDownUnder]

Norilisk being a mining town it is served by both highway and railroad links so transportation should not be a problem.

Errrrrr...........



Maybe not

[kenneal - lagger]

I've heard of charring wood to extend its life but those sleepers are taking that a bit far!!

And what was that saying about building on sand?

[vtsnowedin]

Maybe not, but what they have appears to go west to the nearest seaport but of course that is summer only and it is summer. At any rate however that tank full of diesel fuel got there will also serve to bring in the cleanup equipment.