Saturday, April 16, 2011

BP Anniversary

April 20th marks the 1-year anniversary of what is shaping up to be the greatest environmental disaster in the history of mankind. Although, to be fair, we still haven't seen the worst of the Fukushima meltdown disaster. But, back to BP.

One year ago on the 20th, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, beginning an oil spill that would eventually dump at least 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean. A barrel, by the way, is 42 US gallons, (or 34 Imperial gallons, or 160 liters). If we do the math, that is 210 million gallons of oil. Minimum. It could have been two or three times that much, we just don't know.

In the "clean-up", which was more like a cover-up, BP sprayed roughly 2 million gallons of toxic dispersants, which are so toxic that they are banned in 19 countries, including the United Kingdom.

In August of last year, a study by the University of Georgia suggested that 70% or more of the oil which was spilled, "has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem".

Rather than quoting extensively from what is, after all, someone else's work, let me just suggest that you read the article at AJE.

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