Hay Was Used Successfully On The
1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill
The Two American Farmers Are Right - All Available Hay Should
Begin To Move To The Gulf Immediately

By Jeff Rense
5-13-10

The two wise American farmers who presented their hay solution to dealing with the massive, burgeoning Gulf of Mexico oil slick are right on the money.

 

It's doubtful they remember, but the same technique was used in the historic Santa Barbara Channel oil spill.

 

On January 28, 1969, there was a blowout at an offshore oil rig, Platform A, several miles off the coast of the city of Santa Barbara in the Santa Barbara Channel.

 

The spill galvanized national and world attention to the potential nightmare and dangers of offshore drilling...

Some of the efforts to contain small parts of the oil slick with booms kept it relatively confined...

 

 

 

 

The loss of wildlife was considerable...

 

 

 

 

 

Some dispersants were used but the best technique turned out to be hay...

The hay, endless of bales of it, were trucked into Santa Barbara and driven out onto the Stearns Wharf pier where it was loaded onto a small fleet of oil service boats, volunteer vessels and a few barges.

 

The smaller boats cruised through the oil while men with pitchforks tossed hay from the decks of the boats down onto the oil-covered water. A couple of the larger oil boats had big blowers which were used to shoot streams of hay out over a much wider area of the water around the boat. However, because no one was prepared for the disaster, much of the work was done by hand...

 

 

The hay DID absorb and stick to the oil.. and as the gooey black masses floated ashore, volunteers of all ages scooped up the clumps from the surf and pulled and dragged them ashore. Scenes similar to these will likely be repeated in many areas of the Gulf Coast over the coming weeks and months...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the beaches, the oil that had already washed ashore, and was coming in with each wave, was covered with hay by hundreds of workers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, the oil-soaked hay was then scraped up by heavy equipment, piled up and finally hauled away in dump trucks...

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I say 'Bravo!' to the two American farmers and let's
get that hay moving to the Gulf NOW. -Jeff Rense

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A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards.

The moon seems to possess long, winding tunnels called lava tubes that are similar to structures seen on Earth. They are created when the top of a stream of molten rock solidifies and the lava inside drains away, leaving a hollow tube of rock.

Their existence on the moon is hinted at based on observations of sinuous rilles – long, winding depressions carved into the lunar surface by the flow of lava. Some sections of the rilles have collapsed, suggesting that hollow lava tubes hide beneath at least some of the rilles.

But until now, no one has found an opening into what appears to be an intact tube. "There's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem," says Carolyn van der Bogert of the University of Münster in Germany. "If it's intact, you can't see it."

Finding a hole in a rille could suggest that an intact tube lies beneath. So a group led by Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency searched for these "skylights" in images taken by Japan's Kaguya spacecraft, which orbited the moon for almost two years before ending its mission in June.

Deep cave

The team found the first candidate skylight in a volcanic area on the moon's near side called Marius Hills. "This is the first time that anybody's actually identified a skylight in a possible lava tube" on the moon, van der Bogert, who helped analyse the feature, told New Scientist.

The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 metres across.

It is not clear exactly how the hole formed. A meteorite impact, moonquakes, or pressure created by gravitational tugs from the Earth could be to blame. Alternatively, part of the lava tube's ceiling could have been pulled off as lava in the tube drained away billions of years ago.

Radiation shield

Finding such an opening could be a boon for possible human exploration of the moon (see What NASA's return to the moon may look like).

Since the tubes may be hundreds of metres wide, they could provide plenty of space for an underground lunar outpost. The tubes' ceilings could protect astronauts from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations (see Can high-tech cavemen live on the moon?).

"I think it's really exciting," says Penny Boston of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. "Basalt is an extremely good material for radiation protection. It's free real estate ready to be exploited and modified for human use."

Blocked passage?

But even if astronauts were to rappel into the hole, they might not be able to travel far into the tube it appears to lead into. "I would bet a lot of money that there's a tube there, but I would not bet nearly so much that we could gain access to the tube," says Ray Hawke of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who has also hunted for lunar lava tubes.

Rubble or solidified lava might block up the tube. "It could be closed up and inaccessible," Hawke told New Scientist.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which should be able to snap images of the area that are at least 10 times as sharp, could help reveal more about the hole. And more lava tube openings may be found.

The Kaguya team is still combing over images of other areas in search of additional skylights. And Hawke says a proposal is in the works to use LRO's main camera to snap oblique shots of the lunar surface. This could help reveal cave entrances that are not visible in a bird's-eye view.

Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters (in press)

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