I linked two frightening article here yesterday, one of which was written by an organic chemist who said the Gulf gusher was producing large amounts of methane and other toxic gases. The full article can be accessed by clicking here. (The other discussed the dire implications of a fractured sea bed.) Since I am trying to confirm all such stories independently, I sought comment from a friend’s son, a PhD candidate at Caltech who teaches in the chemistry department. Here is what he had to say:
“I took a look at the links. I should preface my statements by saying that my training does not provide me any knowledge in the area of underwater oil drilling. As someone who works in science, however, there were many aspects of the articles in those links that seemed suspicious. It seemed a bit conspiracy theoryish, alarmist, and suggestive of pseudoscience. Many statements are simply made, without any attempt at justification via scientific evidence. I can tell you that some of the chemistry-related statements in the first article were flat out wrong, and this makes me suspicious of the rest of it.
“The second article states that there is some massive attempt to conceal the truth about the nature of the leak, but it is unclear to me that this would even be advantageous to the supposed perpetrators of such an act, or that it would even be feasible given the number of people involved and the attention the situation has been given. The note directly after the second article talks about the government’s campaign against them is about as conspiracy theory as you can get.
“In summary, I would not trust any statements made in these articles one way or another. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone at Caltech that knows about this topic. Good luck with the research.”