below the water s surface which is a big question. ed overton is an environmental scientist at lsu, and john hofmeister, my friend, was president of shell oil. let me start with the professor. what are your signs what evidence do you have do you have to draw on as to how bad the long-term environmental or conservation damage is going to be here as of now? well, chris, we re still in the middle of this spill so we don t know for sure how long it s going to last and the total environmental damage, and we won t know for a while, but it s certainly good news that the visible oil is removed from the surface. i think the oil the gulf area has been acclimated for 87 days. it s really been degrading bacteria. the bacteria have been degrading the oil. all of a sudden there s no new oil out there so the bacteria are looking around for supper, and they find the oil that is there and are rapidly degrading what s left of the residual oil. so maybe our planet is going to save our planet, i
water s surface which is a big question? ed overton is an environmental signist at lsu, and john hofmeister, my friend, was president of shell oil. let me start with the professor. what are your signs what evidence do you have do you have to draw on as to how bad the long-term environmental or conservation damage is going to be here as of now? well, chris, we re still in the middle of this spill so we don t know for sure how long it s going to last and the total environmental damage, and we won t know for a while, but it s certainly good news that the visible oil is removed from the surface. i think the oil the gulf area has been acclimated for 87 days. it s really been degrading bacteria. the bacteria have been degrading the oil. all of a sudden there s no new oil out there so the bacteria are looking around for supper, and they find the oil that is there and are rapidly degrading what s left of the residual oil. so maybe our plan set going to save our planet, in other words
the oil is or isn t, ed overton, environmental studies professor. a coast guard official says the oil is in its final life cycle, that they aren t finding much oil on the surface, they say. does this mean it s gone? has mother nature and the dispersants broken it up already? well, to a large extent, remember, the spill stopped about ten days ago. so, when the gulf was really acclimated to taking 60,000 barrels a day. all of a sudden, you have none. bacteria are there, they re degrading very rapidly what s left. the amount of oil floating around in the gulf is going down significantly. that doesn t mean we re out of the woods. oil will still be coming ashore for several more weeks, maybe several more months but is being degraded fairly quickly as seen by over-flights. if it means it s not on the surface, is there still all that oil in the water column that s just diffused? i suspect a lot of this oil is floating near the surface but right under the water column. the oil that s eas
whether bp sees it or anyone else, we go by what we experience every single day. we re having new oil impact on our marshlands, our islands and certainly within our skimming vessels. ed, at this point, do we know the impact can we judge this with some perspective now, the impact this has had, will have on animal life, fish life, marine life, on the oyster beds? do we know what s happening underneath the water? well, we know that the oil is going away. now, it s still there, as craig pointed out, and it s still going to be coming ashore for a while. the frequency, the quantity will start falling off fairly dramatically. we sure don t need to move the skimmers. we need to be prepared to get it all because that s where the damage occurs, when it gets onshore. it s hard to tell what the damage is offshore. there s been any number of estimates. of course, we can see the turtles that have been counted, the birds, all of these things.
and there is a significantly better attachment point. look at that can you see that? see how that sticks out there? that is going to be where the new cap comes in, literally a new blowout preventer is going to go on top of the old blowout preventer. they are not calling it that, they are just calling it a cap. as we lower the cap down, there are three valves that will literally shut off the oil. so, a new good seal here, a new good seal here, all of a sudden, you turn the valves off and the oil stops. so, will it work? will this gusher finally be stopped? that s the question we are asking tonight. ed overton joining us from the department of environmental sciences at lsu and historian doug brinkley, who has been watching the spill with us from the very beginning, back with us once again tonight. welcome to both of you. ed, let me start with you here. some pretty amazing images, be we were watchinger think evening as it was happening, capping the well after 84 days of watching that gu