NYT Article......Calm down and wait to see what happens with Oil Spill.....

Gulf Oil Spill Is Bad, but How Bad?

WASHINGTON — The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad — no one would dispute it. But just how bad?

Some experts have been quick to predict apocalypse, painting grim pictures of 1,000 miles of irreplaceable wetlands and beaches at risk, fisheries damaged for seasons, fragile species wiped out and a region and an industry economically crippled for years.

President Obama has called the spill “a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.” And some scientists have suggested that the oil might hitch a ride on the loop current in the gulf, bringing havoc to the Atlantic Coast.

Yet the Deepwater Horizon blowout is not unprecedented, nor is it yet among the worst oil accidents in history. And its ultimate impact will depend on a long list of interlinked variables, including the weather, ocean currents, the properties of the oil involved and the success or failure of the frantic efforts to stanch the flow and remediate its effects.

As one expert put it, this is the first inning of a nine-inning game. No one knows the final score.

The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher could be stopped.

And it will have to get much worse before it approaches the impact of the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989, which contaminated 1,300 miles of largely untouched shoreline and killed tens of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals along with 250 eagles and 22 killer whales.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04enviro.html?hp

and Bird Flu, and even the Volcano a few weeks ago.

While being a Pollyanna would be equally stupid too, we need to be vigilant and ignore the perennial Debbie Downers.

calm down fish markets, calm down ya little pelican bastids... wait and see what happens. Kiss your ass good-bye, we'll miss ya. ::banghead:

...THE BIGGEST MAN-MADE DISASTER EVER.

If this the first inning of nine in a baseball analogy, Mother Nature is batting cleanup and she bats last.

From the inner bowels of the article:

“The sky is not falling,” said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Tex. “We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.”

"We've always been at war with Eastasia"

Sweet Jesus, I hate these bastards. I really, really do. I'm trying to move on but right now I just can't.

:grr:

I think you meant: AN OIL SPILL THAT HASN'T EVEN MADE IT INTO THE TOP 40 WORST SPILLS

For comparison:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills

If not, it makes no sense.

I took your post to mean that "the current spill as the worst man made disaster of all time", but when compared to other oil spills, it's still fairly minor.

However, if you meant that "drilling for oil, in general, is the worst man made disaster of all time", I can see why you wouldn't understand comparing relatively minor spills (like this one) to larger spills.

It'll cause plenty of damage, but at the same time, there have been oil spills that have been orders of magnitude worse, including one in the Gulf of Mexico that spilled over 100 million barrels back in 1979 or 80, IIRC.

We shouldn't treat this as a global apocalypse, but of course, we shouldn't minimize this either - hopefully, this will raise consciousness enough to actually bring some regulation with teeth to the oil industry, and get us moving a little faster to green energy.

The Blowout Preventer wasn't able to stop that one either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I

The Times really went to hell, didn't it? Used to be a decent paper at one time, with real "news" in it...I remember reading it only 5 years ago or so and being impressed with the quality of the paper, but it seems like they have really been seriously changed for the worse. I am sorry for younger people - there is almost NO reliable or even reasonably accurate news source left amid all the noise and clatter in the MSM.

mark

When is it time to panic?

When it's too late?

I would not recommend sticking your head in the sand. It might get a little messy down there.