"[over 9 months] Approximately an average of ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on March 23, 1980"
> Worst case for the oil spill? Extinction of all life on Earth. (truthout.org)
Seriously? Seeing as life on earth survived the impact of a six mile in diameter comet 65 million years ago, I'm reasonably certain one leaking oil well (even a very large one) is not going to cause an extinction event.
Well surely not extinction, but maybe mass reduction. Of course some stuff always survives, but 5 billion or so humans dying due to lack of food and clean water, isn't really that cool either, is it?
The crux of the argument seems to hang on this statement (linked to from the article):
If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to
destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes
one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons
of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting
to get the magnitude of this?
Would be great to have some secondary sources/opinions on this. Is that true? And if so, how much damage could this leak cause?
Judging from the crankish/alarmist tone of the quoted "engineer", I wouldn't really trust his evaluation. However, let's say that 1 gallon of oil actually does poison a million gallons of water. A quick google search yields that there are approximately 346 quintillion gallons of water in the ocean. This means it would take about 346 trillion gallons of oil to poison the ocean. At a rate of 1 million gallons per week, this process would take about 6.6 million years. That is assuming that there are 346 trillion gallons of oil under the earth (good news for BP) and that the oil is never cleared or broken down once it enters the water.
Author tries to connect NYC car bomb (if it went off, troops in the streets - laws thrown out), oil spill (might kill all life on planet), and the panic buying (pushing and shoving at the supermarket) after the Boston water main break into a "we humans are doomed - the end is nigh" scenario.
11 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 31.7 ms ] thread"[over 9 months] Approximately an average of ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on March 23, 1980"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I
And somehow, we are all still here.
Seriously? Seeing as life on earth survived the impact of a six mile in diameter comet 65 million years ago, I'm reasonably certain one leaking oil well (even a very large one) is not going to cause an extinction event.
http://pesn.com/2010/05/02/9501643_Mother_of_all_gushers_cou...