Lots of Ink: Gulf oil spill is fading fast. Impacts to linger, their magnitude uncertain…
All of a sudden, Oilamageddon in the Gulf is turning into Oil-about-gone from the Gulf. At least a cursory glance at media might suggest so.
For the second time in a week the NYTimes puts front page top right a story, today’s by Justin Gillis in DC who helped write one that ran Aug. 28, that seems to tell readers BP did not bring the End of Days to the gulf after all. To be sure, it recognizes that impacts on fisheries, beaches, marshes (and their erosion), rookeries, and other things may still be significant for a long time. The story is a curtain raiser, propelled one suspects by a news leak or good enterprise or both, for a gov’t report being released this morning.
While it has caveats galore, many readers will likely focus on its relay, from the head of NOAA, Jane Lubchenco, of opinion that only 25 percent of the oil is still oil (rather than hardened tarballs or waste-products of petro-gobbling microbes), and that most of that is either a light sheen or dispersed tiny droplets in the water column. She is by all accounts no industry patsy yet declared no evidence, none, that any of the subsurface oil is in big coherent petroleum pools that will surface and wash into the shores like the surface crud we all were watching with horror-struck eyes just a few weeks ago.
That sounds good. Hope so. A sobering list of reasons not to put away the worry beads is over at the AAAS ScienceInsider blog by Eli Kintisch under the unambiguous hed, Five Ways Oil Drops Could Still Be Deadly to Gulf. Who’da thunk teeny oil droplet might mess up crabs’ shells?
In the meantime, top kill mud continues flowing into the well while the drilling of relief wells at the bottom nears their climax.
Other stories about gulf spill disappearing, and in general:
- AP – Harry R. Weber, Greg Bluestein: As BP plugs leak, report says most of oil is gone ;
- Telegraph (UK) : BP oil spill: majority of oil in the Gulf of Mexico ‘eliminated’ ;
- New Orleans Times-Picayune: David Hammer: Oil companies say their containment plans will improve drilling safety in 6 months ; from a public hearing by the feds, at Tulane ;
- Independent/ Press Association (UK) Russell Lynch, Holly Williams ; Gulf oil spill ‘close to end’ says Obama ;
- Miami Herald/McClatchy Newspapers – Curtis Morgan: “Static Kill” has worked on Gulf oil well, BP says ;
- Reuters – Matt Spetalnick : Obama: Gulf oil spill fight nearing an end ; Also, enviro writer Deborah Zabarenko: Nearly 3/4 of BP spill oil gone from Gulf ;
- Financial Times – Anna Fifield: Damage from BP spill is less than feared ; She watched the White House energy advisor on ABC TV, and quotes here reassurance that “There will continue to be some tar balls, there may be some sheens” but that vast majority has been “cleaned, skipped, contained.”
- Washington Post – Joel Achenbach: Technologically, gushing gulf oil well has finally been brought to heel ;
- on the other hand, in tone: BBC: US govt: ‘No premature celebration’ on BP oil seal ; Video starts off on message – things look a lot better now – but a lots of secondary and tertiary impacts are still ahead. So says the Coast Guard admiral who has been the point of the spear for the feds.
- and another of less-jolly tone: AP – Brent Kallestad: Biologist using Noah’s Ark idea to save sealife ;on a naturalist who doesn’t believe the oil is enough gone to stop worrying.
- There is much more but you get the gist…
For weeks, months, we’ve had pretty hysterical media and government reaction to the spill. And most days hysteria seemed a pretty understandable strategy. Now things may sway the other way. This is likely to be news for the back pages, and then no pages, in a jiffy.
A good retort to media that too-quickly fold tents on the spill:
- Columbia Journalism Review /The Observatory - Curtis Brainard: “Missing” the Point / Absence of evidence oil is not evience of absent oil ;
I’m wondering about all those thousands of turtle eggs sent for incubation to Cape Canaveral. Will the little waddlers-to-be all get shipped back to the gulf now, or still be released into the atavistically confusing waters on the right side of Florida? Sure, I’ve opined on the doom awaiting 99+ percent of baby turtles no matter where they’re hatched naturally, as that is just the population dynamic of their species. But I still worry about them.
With BP evading emplacement of any meter on the fully-sealed but wide-open riser-top, looks like we’ll never know for sure how much oil it and its contractors spilled. But still have work to do. How much erosion is occurring where marsh sod died? What is the productivity of rookeries in the oil zone? Of fish spawning grounds? Of tuna recruitment? Will shoreline and deep sea biota, from microbes to worms and molluscs and such, be off kilter and for how long?
LATE ADDITION:
- Washington Post – David Farenthold: Scientists question government team’s report of shrinking gulf oil spill ;
One last thing – an Oregon science writer Thomas Hager earlier in the spill’s news life, while twisting himself into a pretzel to be sure readers know he’s no petro-apologist, blogged on the resilience of nature and the almost-sure inability of this spill to make much lasting change in gulf ecosystems. Take a look at his posts: #1 Nature vs. Oil Spills: Nature Wins (Eventually), and #2, Nature vs. Oil Spills, Round 2. In the latter he has a good line: weathered old oil sticks around a long time (…that’s why we use it on roads). Good thought. Just think of a tarball as asphalt without the gravel. I don’t recall intense worry that runoff from asphalt roads is a significant threat to nearby creeks, soil, or other habitats.
- Charlie Petit
