I've noticed how silent people are now on this subject, I'd like to think that it was due to severe embarrassment. Topspin is still banging on, but then he is out of his gourd most of the time. Cypress is still waiting for some mythical band of scientists such as the International Pollution Conspiracy Committee, IPCC for short, to pronounce that it is all due to global warming.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...rst-oil-spill-cynical-spin-campaign-ever.html
Your link….
”The extraordinary change of tune came after government scientists concluded, much to President Obama's embarrassment, that three-quarters of the leaked oil has evaporated, dispersed, been burned off or been contained….But last night the White House ruled out an apology for beleaguered outgoing BP chief executive Tony Hayward.
This is what I’m a big admirer of BBC, man. Is this "Daily Mail" blather what passes for professional journalism in the UK? Sheesh man, the British press is notoriously tabloid-ish, sensationalist, agenda-driven and apparently highly nationalist. This reads like a blog, chock full of opinion, emotion, snarkiness, and just plain un-newsworthy assertion and commentary.
And before you get your panties in a wad, bro, I’m not defending the American press, which I think mostly sucks. But, I’m a big fan of professional journalism that is fact-checked, adheres to professional journalistic-standards, and is written in a fact-based, professional manner. Which is why high fives are always due to BBC and NPR. You really should read more BBC, and less Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times, bro. It would totally be worth your while.
With regard to your pop psychoanalysis of what other posters might think, the Obama apologists can claim this turn of events is due to an aggressive response to the spill, which allegedly captured, burned off, or dissipated 75% of the oil. Indeed, the NOAA report credits an aggressive spill response to containing three-quarters of the oil. I wonder if the “It’s Obama’s Katrina!” crowd will give any credit to an aggressive federal response?
The Obama-haters, naturally will bounce back and forth between proclaiming this is a disaster of epic proportions that Obama is responsible for – to claiming natural seepage is worse, and no worries on the spill! I can never keep track of the constantly evolving Obama-hater position.
Me? I’m in neither the Obama-apologist nor the Obama-hater camps.
I’m in the science camp. You article cited only two “science” experts, one of whom I’m highly dubious about….:
'The oil may have killed fewer fish than the fisherman would have done,' Martin Preston, senior lecturer in ocean sciences at the University of Liverpool, told the Times. 'Stocks may look better next year but we won't know until then. The big imponderable is the effect of the toxicity of the oil on the larval stage of the fish.'
And he said though young fish were at the mercy of the spill, some of the more mature specimens would have survived by swimming to less polluted areas.
Okay, the first thing I noticed about this dude, is that he’s a “senior lecturer” at some university. I don’t know how it works in the UK, but in the U.S. a “lecturer” isn’t a professor, isn’t a reputable academic researcher, and is in fact just a dude who has a part-time teaching job at a college; aka, it’s a dude who didn’t have the credentials, the capability, or the motivation to become an actual tenured professor or high-end researcher. And in my opinion, when a newspaper can’t find an actual tenured professor, or prestigious academic researcher, and have to rely on a quote from a “lecturer” it generally means they were scraping the bottom of the barrel to get a quote to support a preconceived agenda.
The only other scientist quoted, appears to have a much higher level of scientific credibility and qualifications….:
But Ian MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, warned that even 25 per cent of the oil from the BP spill was five times the amount of oil lost in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
He said: 'An enormous amount of oil is now buried and we know from previous spills that this buried material can persist for decades."
So there you have it. Two scientists were quoted. The first one appears to be a subpar scientist with a part time teaching job, and whose quotes are all over the map. He suggests fish stock will rebound on the one hand, and then on the other hand he says we don’t know what “the effect of the toxicity of the oil on the larval stage of the fish”. He’s all over the map bro, and in scientific circles this is regarded as arm-waving, speculating, and flailing.
The other – and evidently more qualified scientist – is much more consistent and cautious: he says there’s a crap load of buried oil and suggests that we don’t know what that’s going to do over the long term.
Bingo.
The science of long-term assessment of the fate, transport, and toxicity or residual oil from large spills is in its infancy. We are data-limited, there hasn’t been a lot of long-term robust monitoring of the ecological effects, and we’re going to have to study this and monitor this spill over the long haul. That’s what I’ve said before, and now what I’m saying is even backed up by the NOAA report that’s reference in this article. Anyone who makes claims couched in a veneer of absolute certainty about the long term ecological effects of massive oil spills is just guessing and asserting. You don't have any robust and extensive data to make those claims.
We don’t know yet how much money fisherman lost, we don’t know how many endangered sea turtles were killed, and we are mostly in uncharted waters with regard to the long term toxicological affects of a spill of this magnitude.
Will I be stoked if ultimately, it is determined that there was very little impact? Absolutely.
Will you see me running around the board crowing that Obama’s aggressive federal response was a success; or alternatively that this was “Obama’s Katrina!”.
Nope. I’ll leave that to hyper-partisans and hyper party-loyalists.
I don’t know why some dudes hate science, or have a misguided allegiance to nationalism and faux patriotic loyalty to some corporation. I’d be just as pissed off about the spill if it was Chevron or Texaco. And myself, and ever liberal on this board has been ubiquitous in our criticism of the American corporate empire. Oddly, I’m beginning to get the impression that a lot of Brits are highly nationalist, and loathe to criticize anything British – at least on message boards. But, I could be wrong about that – it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.
