Radical Environmentalism – Which Is Worse, An Ecological “Disaster” or the Federal Government? (Part 13)

The Gulf oil spill news has certainly waned in the last few weeks. I guess people got tired of watching each drop spill on national television. And while I don’t approve of lackadaisical methods by companies such as BP, who are ultimately responsible for the spill and its cleanup, I also think we need to put the spill in perspective (see my previous tongue-in-cheek post about how long it would take to fill the Gulf with oil).

For me, a couple of questions stand out in relation to the spill. First, how bad was it for the environment? To be sure, some beaches were impacted, but I can’t find any lasting evidence that any were ruined – if they were, don’t you think the media would report the “loss of a national treasure” ad infinitum? I haven’t seen it on the news, so I must conclude that there is no story there.

What about losses to animals in the Gulf? According to Jonah Goldberg’s latest column, the losses in the bird population stand at less than one percent of losses during the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska back in 1989. That is remarkable, considering that this spill is larger and in a region which likely has more birds due to the warmer climate. And according to Goldberg, the total number of oiled mammal carcasses discovered to this date numbers only…three. Three? How many dolphins and porpoises died of old age during this period? And if this is not enough to make you think that a minimum amount of damage has been done, consider this article (from ABC News, no less), which claims that some clean-up crews are having a hard time finding any oil to clean up. “Even the federal government admits that locating the oil has become a problem”.

I concede that the oil is likely out there somewhere, breaking down over time as nature intended, but I refer you again to my calculations on the relative size of the oil spill (one or two grains of sand represent the relative size of the oil which has spilled, while the volume of the Gulf of Mexico can be represented by over 4,000 5-gallon buckets of sand). It’s going to be hard to find – and it’s going away more and more each day.

My second question is this – how bad was the spill for the economy? There is no doubt that the shrimping industry and the tourism industry have been hurt temporarily. And some families may not be able to weather the loss of half of their working season. That is sad.

But far, far more damage has been inflicted by the federal government’s intrusion into the economic policies of the Gulf region.

- An attempted moratorium by the Obama administration on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf (overturned by a federal appeals panel on July 9)

- The potential trickle-down effect of the above moratorium on things like boat shuttle service, and all of the industry that supports deepwater drilling.

- The potential passage of crippling federal economic laws that might come about due to this event – make no mistake, they are sorely tempted to limit America’s ability to drill for oil in the Gulf – though there is no corresponding decline in demand. This will simply open the door for others to replace that oil with oil obtained elsewhere on the planet, likely by non-U.S. companies. This would increase our dependence on foreign oil.

- The future “justified” shift to “greener” energy because of the oil spill – most of these so-called greener technologies are far more expensive, and many are not proven to be any better for the environment. But the federal government is pushing hard on these because of appearances, not because it is ultimately the right thing to do.

Finally, consider this. The Deepwater Horizon rig was incredibly difficult to shut down because it was in…deep water. The challenge of capping a wellhead that is a mile below the surface (where pressures are in the 2200 psi range) is far greater than if the well had been drilled in shallow water, and the drill bit allowed to tunnel sideways toward the oil reserve. But it is the very government which decries this disaster which then forces companies like BP out into the deep water areas to drill. Could it be that the government’s policy of forcing oil companies into deep water drilling is at least partially responsible for this “disaster”?

The oil spill is a nasty event. But it would appear that nature (designed by God) is already reclaiming the Gulf. When man (a.k.a. the federal government) thinks he knows more that he really does, bad policy is made. And the result of bad policy is ultimately higher energy costs, increased foreign dependence on oil, and a people with temporarily-soothed consciences who may later discover that much of the economic suffering was due to improper reactions to the spill, rather than to the spill itself.

Go, Gulf - I have a soft spot for the area since I grew up in Louisiana.

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...and this was released a week after my article - "The Gulf Recover Obama Does Not Want To See"

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Math…and the Gulf Oil Spill

Without a doubt, the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is a regrettable event – dooming various parts of the Gulf to loss of shrimping, oystering, tourism and pleasure – at least for a time. I would never say that the spill is a non-issue, nor would I belittle any effort to cap the pipe on the ocean floor. Every effort needs to be pursued to get it under control. And the loss of life of the eleven men on the Deepwater Horizon rig is a tragedy as well. My heart goes out to their families.

I don’t have cable TV or satellite channels coming into my home, but there are a lot of TV’s at my place of work which do. And the image seems to constantly be that of the BP cameras trained on the broken and oft-repaired pipe at the bottom of the Gulf, spewing oil into the ocean. Given the amount of attention placed on that camera shot, many might come to the conclusion that the Gulf is filling up with oil.

So, I decided to do some math around the spill and put it into perspective. Here are some facts:

· The federal government estimates that the total leakage from the pipe to-date has been somewhere between 22 million and 47 million gallons. For purposes of my exercise, I will use the largest number – 47 million gallons.

· The oil has been spilling from the pipe since the rig explosion on April 20, 2010 –a total of 46 days.

· Rounded slightly, that gives us a daily spill rate of 1 million gallons

Now, just how big is a million gallons? Well, a gallon is equal to 0.133680556 cubic feet. So, a million gallons takes up 133,680 cubic feet. Taking the cube root of that number will give you the dimension of a side of that million-gallon cube – 51 feet on all three sides. A typical tractor trailer that you see hauling goods on the interstate is 53 feet long, by 8.5 feet wide by 9.25 feet tall – that’s 4,167 cubic feet. That amount of space is capable of holding 31,172 gallons of oil (4,167 cubic feet divided by 0.13368 cubic feet per gallon). Dividing a million gallons by this figure tells us that the volume of spill coming from the broken well is equal to about 32 tractor trailers each day.

Thirty-two big-rig trailers full of oil seems like a lot. But let’s put it into perspective. The Environmental Protection Agency tells us that the Gulf of Mexico holds 643 quadrillion gallons of liquid. Spelled out, that is 643,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of salt water. Dividing by 31,172 gallons, this tells us that the Gulf of Mexico is capable of holding 20,627,486,205,569 tractor trailers full of liquid. That’s 20.6 trillion trailers.

So – in a total volume of 20.6 trillion tractor trailers, we are displacing 32 trailers full of oil each day. Assuming the oil field is infinite (obviously not a valid assumption, but stick with me), how many days would it take to completely displace all of the water in the Gulf? Simply divide the two numbers, and you get 644,608,943,924 days. That’s 644 billion days, which when divided by 365 yields 1,766,051,901 years.

So, at the current spill rate, we will fill the Gulf of Mexico with oil in approximately 1.76 billion years.

Let’s put it another way – in a visual. It’s estimated that about 30 million grains of sand fit into a one-gallon bucket (this is obviously very dependent on the type of sand). Assume that one of those grains of sand represents the 32 tractor trailers (1 million gallons) of oil being spilled each day. How many grains of sand represent the rest of the Gulf of Mexico? Simple division – 20.6 trillion divided by 32 – equals 644 billion grains of sand. How many gallon buckets of sand is that? Again, divide 644,000,000,000 by 30 million – and you get 21,467 one-gallon buckets of sand. So, if you can picture lining up 21,467 gallon buckets of sand (or 4,293 five-gallon buckets) in a parking lot, the relative volume of oil being spilled into the gulf each day is equal to one grain of sand.

Unfortunately, all of that oil has a tendency to spread upward and toward the edges of wherever it travels. This tends to make moot any volumetric comparisons and analogies – because the oil is finding its way to the exact places that we don’t want it – beaches and fishing grounds. If oil were heavier than water, this whole event would be a non-issue – we’d have the equivalent of a tiny percentage of the Gulf being taken up with a small pool of oil at the bottom.

Of course, BP has not yet taken action on my spill-prevention suggestion – to stuff the Obamacare bill into the end of the oil pipe. That way, we could take care of two problems at once…

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For an extremely interesting time-lapse-from-space video of the Gulf spill, via NASA satellites, visit this site..