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How Bad Is the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?
Dasher42 writes "Claims are circulating on the Internet that the Coast Guard fears the Deepwater Horizon well has sprung two extra leaks, raising fears that all control over the release of oil at the site will be lost. The oil field, one of the largest ever discovered, could release 50,000 barrels a day into the ocean, with implications for marine life around the globe that are difficult to comprehend. So, considering that losing our oceanic life, with subsequent unraveling of our land-based ecosystems, is a far more possible apocalyptic scenario than a killer asteroid — what do we do about it?" Other readers have sent some interesting pictures of the spill. One set shows the Deepwater Horizon rig as it collapsed into the ocean. Others, from NASA, indicate that the spill's surface area now rivals that of Florida. The US government has indicated that it intends to require BP to foot the bill for the cleanup. And the Governator has just withdrawn support for drilling off the California coast.
If there is anyway BP is going to actually pay for this disaster then we all are going to lose. BP will not survive this and will just be absorbed by some other multinational. Perhaps even some corporate entity associated with the Bush and Chaney crowd. It was all well and good to bail out the auto industry but we are just delaying the inevitable social collapse caused by our collective stupidity and greed!
> Better that the consumers of a product causing environmental destruction
That would be everyone then. You don't think that the food from around the world and all kinds of toys from China in your neighborhood store are brought there by fairies, do you? And that's only transportation.
Our cities and infrastructure are designed around the automobile and have no sense of real community or ecological plan. The future must be designed around a society that plans for the ecology of more than the just the needs of cars! Perhaps a crisis like this is necessary to wake up the most industrialized consumptive stupid nation on Earth to the facts of the future.
I grow old and tired of being just a "stupefied-consumer" in the eyes of a corporate crazed system of consumption and waste. Our corporate culture of greed and consumption must change now or we will be considered as a lost generation of essentially greed driven parasitic humans.
The current oil spill spew out 40 thousand tons of crude.
Ixotic spew 400 thousand tons
The gulf war in 91 did between 750 thousand and 1.5million tons spill (but mostly over inland / burning).
Amoco Cadiz was about 250 thousand tons.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills
It is not the worst oil spill by any standard and the ocean got off with 10 time as worst. Sure it will polute , sure it sucks, sure we4 want it stopped ASAP, but it ain't the end of the world oce3an by any standard.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
so the left is bad for responding to a crisis caused entirely by greedy and reckless businesses, but the right is good for exploiting a crisis it's own policies contributed to...
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
If an ecosystem is "delicate" who is to say it should continue to exist?
If your puny human body is so delicate that it can't withstand 37 point-blank shotgun blasts, who is to say that it should continue to exist?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Riiighhht. You are going to commit huge resources to preparation for an event that has happened ONCE in human history.