My Voice from the Spill



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History repeats itself. Boy does it. This was never more evident than after I finished reading Charles Wohlforth's The Fate of Nature (2010), which has a few ominous chapters dedicated to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Wohlforth was a journalist who covered the spill in the field and after reading…

The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill in proportion
The Gulf of Mexico ......basin contains a volume of 2,434,000 cubic kilometers of water (6.43 * 1017 or 643 quadrillion gallons).
On July 15, the leak was stopped by capping the gushing wellhead after releasing about 4.9 million barrels (780Ã103 m3) of crude oil at the rate of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day (5,600 to 9,500 m3/d).
Roughly one part per 3 million
An Olympic swimming pool has a volume of 2,500 cubic meters.
How much of a disaster is that?

By Colin MacGillivray (not verified) on 10 Aug 2010 #permalink

Hey Colin,

What do think you'd do or say to the person right beside you in that huge olympic sized swimming pool if you saw a bright yellow plume emanating from them and starting to swirl all around you. Hey it's a really big pool...

By Fred Magyar (not verified) on 11 Aug 2010 #permalink




While, I agree with most of what you post, I find fault with some of it... I am still an old Yippie, and I still stand for the "little man"; that socialism is word that has become(well, I guess it was from 41 onward), at least in Fuckedupistan(USA), a derogative... well, is disturbing.


Anyway, on to some meat:

In the article, you said


Forgive my ignorance, doc, but what is "sublethal", and how are the sub-lethalities of two disparate localities related? Too me, it seems that the areas are too distally separated, geographically, and climactally to associate a correlation???




That is a valid fear, but then you write:

BP... sit[s] in on every single discussion with Fish & Wildlife and beyond.I think BPâs ubiquitous involvement in the recovery process will corrupt it, as well as other things.


Later on, you write:

... four humans who are trained as vet techs wash a bird with nothing more than Dawn soap and a high pressure hose.




I would respond that "hell yeah, the birds got the media". Diabetics with open wounds in Appalachia don't get much print!

Then you said



In reference to migratory birds, the vast majority of the birds won't see anything other than ppm concentrations. I doubt that by this fall that oil will be an issue to the aves.


You can decide for yourself why that happened.

I'll answer that-it was the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Hell, I've lived in the South most of my life... most of us "down here" saw "separate, but equal" as convienent way to "keep them in their place". Even though segregation was done away with in the 50s, the school that I attended in the 70s still had different fountains, and the swimming pools were segregated, still, later.


Truth be known, you have awakened something in me that I haven't felt for years.

Keep up the good work.