Oil Spill Perspective
No, I'm not trying to downplay the significance of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. I just find it kind of nice to read something that goes above the hysteria we often hear when something like this happens.
I'm sure the enviros won't like it, but I enjoyed this short editorial in the Washington Examiner that takes a look at this incident compared to some others.
Labels: offshore drilling
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:45 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
By the same logic, it's not so bad to drink and drive and kill people in the process because more people die of natural causes while driving and end up killing other people.
It's a screwed up sort of logic to compare natural disasters to man-made disasters.
I'd say a better analogy would be to say that, while many people die on the highways from driving related accidents, the automobile is something everyone uses in nearly every aspect of their lives. We can't just stop driving because someone might get killed doing it.
That might not fit well with the way the editorial was written, but it's about the same difference.
Fred
Don't take this personally, because I usually agree with what you say, but this is a true disaster in so many ways that we will never see the end of it. It tipped me beyond the point that I might never believe anything I hear about how safe anything is.
They BYPASSED critical safety measures to save 1/2 million dollars. The environmental impact, and the implications of this spill will never leave us. I'm not downplaying the loss of the eleven men killed or the ones injured, but we will never be able to build another offshore oil well again! All to save a half million dollars! Can you trust anybody that would do that??? Ever again?
A friend sent me a "Bush Bash" artical, but it contains a lot of info. Reason for oil spill
Again: By no means am I downplaying the significance of BP bypassing safety measures or even the effects this spill can have on coastal communities, at least in the short term.
Obama is right to place a hold on future drill operations until they can figure out how this happened and that we can make sure we prevent such incidents in the future.
If I'm trying to say anything, I guess it's that this isn't the end of the world, assuming they can shut off the oil flow eventually. It may take a while, depending how much damage ends up being done, but the Gulf Coast will recover and thrive again just like Santa Barbara did after its spill 30 some years ago.
And this finger pointing by the partisan types as to what president is responsible for this is assinine, at best, but predictable.
The editorial is TOTAL NONSENSE. They compare the number of gallons naturally seeping in a YEAR over the ENTIRE WORLD'S OCEANS with the number of gallons in a few days in a small area.
Do you understand the concept of dilution? Anyone that does would stop reading the editorial and put it in the bit bucket where it belongs.
I just wish people would engage their brains when reading stuff on the internet instead of just blindly agreeing with what they read because it backs up their pre-conceived biases.
I don't know that it's as misleading as you're suggesting although I can understand that some might be offended by that sort of comparison. They're simply saying that of the over 4000 offshore rigs we have on the U.S. coast, the normal spillage is a drop in the bucket compared to what seeps naturally from the ocean floor. They have a pretty good record in that regard.
What they don't mention, is that the millions of gallons of natural seepage doesn't cause catastrophic harm to the environment. It just degrades naturally. Otherwise, we'd have accumulated hundreds of millions of gallons of oil all over our shores.
That's not saying that this much oil dumped all at once isn't catastrophic, at least in the short term, but hopefully they can cap the well, clean it up and things will get back to normal over time.
Santa Barbara is doing quite well now, or so it seems. Not sure how long it took them to recover. Prince William Sound, in Alaska, seems to be doing ok from what I've seen.
I wonder how the coast of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are doing after Hussein dumped all that oil there during Gulf War 1? Haven't heard anything about that. I know when I was in Saudi Arabia back in '92 the water at the Port of Dammam was real clear and teeming with life, but I imagine that was some ways away from where the the oil was dumped.
This is a picture posted by one of my Twitter friends of the oil spill from Space http://twitpic.com/1laxzu
You do understand The Examiner is the mouthpiece for the owner, oilman Phil Anschutz? This editorial is absurd. It is simply propoganda in convenient newspaper form.
Of course. I should of known. Anyone who doesn't oppose offshore drilling is simply a tool of the oil companies.
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