It appears that even the lame-stream media (LSM) is starting to get it: there isn’t really an “environmental disaster” in the Gulf of Mexico
Image via Wikipedi
The Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion was a terrible tragedy for the workers who were killed and their families. The resulting oil spill, touted nightly on news reports with dramatic “Day x” graphics, is turning out to be a disappointment for left-leaning types that hate big business and relish hyperbole in their daily dose of LSM “news”.
Early on in the “disaster” I remember talking to my son Josh about how much oil was gushing into the Gulf, and how comparatively small it was to the immense amount of water there. Days or weeks later, I heard (the obnoxious, anti-environmentalist – as described by Michael Grunwald, author of the Time article) Rush Limbaugh talking about that very subject. The Gulf of Mexico is the seventh largest body of water on our planet, with approximately 660 quadrillion gallons of water. That’s 15 zeros, and it’s an almost incomprehensibly large number (to get a visual, check here).
The amount of oil that has spilled so far (see the handy widget from the Huffing and Puffington Post) is about 327 million gallons (that’s the “expert” worst-case scenario; slide the slider all the way to the right). There’s no denying that’s a lot of oil, but as a percentage of the Gulf’s volume, it is infinitesimally small: just under five billionths of 1% (4.95 x 10^-10). No wonder, then, that media outlets are reporting in recent days that the oil is very difficult to find. The NY Times article reports:
The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there.
Another graphic that I’ve seen recently compared the amount of spilled oil to a 24 oz. beer can inside of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium, the largest domed stadium in the world. If you care to, look at slide 5 of that same presentation for the comparative size of the Kuwaiti oil spill in 1991. How come you never hear about the environmental impacts of that spill? Were there any? There must have been, but you don’t hear anything about them. Why, then, is so much attention being put on this spill? Could there be other reasons for claiming it’s a “disaster?”
But what about all those birds and mammals?
Image via Wikipedia
What, indeed. True, the pictures of birds fouled by the oil were heartbreaking, and they were used to great advantage by the alarmists in the media to convey the supposed enormity of the disaster. The Time article reports that the spill thus far has killed less than 1% of the birds killed in the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska 21 years ago (they can’t say for sure that some of those birds didn’t just die of natural causes, and get gathered up in the search). And, despite the horror stories about dolphins and other mammals being covered in oil, so far only three carcasses of oiled mammals have been recovered. All of the region’s fish and shrimp have been tested as clean, and the fishing restrictions are being lifted.
Yes, but thousands acres of marshlands have been ruined.
Well, not exactly. True, about 350 acres of marshlands have been found to be contaminated by the spill. But, this damage pales in comparison to that wrought by other forces over the last century. Over 2,000 square miles of Louisiana coastline has disappeared, mostly due to man-made effects. Coastal scientist Paul Kemp, with the Audubon Society says the impact of the spill “is like sunburn on a cancer patient.” Louisiana is losing 15,000 acres of marshland per year, according to the article (presumably to development of various types).
So why all the alarums of impending doom?
Like I mentioned at the beginning, the folks who want this to be a disaster are the anti-capitalist, tree-hugger types. They’d love to see us move backward into the 18th century: eschew petroleum as an energy source, and live on solar and wind power, even though they’re not economically viable alternatives at this time. The Obama administration used it as a convenient way to “take back” what was certainly a gaffe on his part to allow certain offshore drilling for oil to proceed. It is the perfect execution of Rahm Emanual’s aphorism: “never let a crisis go to waste.”
There are a bunch of good details in these two articles. Take a look, and get a perspective that’s different from the horror stories that we’ve been bombarded with since May, when it was the end of the world as we know it.
From the New York Times: On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay
From Time Magazine: The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?
