Dilution is the solution to pollution?

[HereSince1628]

Recently British Petroleum has made an attempt to dismiss the severity of their well blow out in terms of the volume leaked compared to the volume of the Gulf of Mexico.

Many readers have found that argument to be just STUPID.

But, why would a company with billions of dollars of assets at its service choose such a rhetorical approach?

Well, simply because they want to LIE about the truth is one explanation.
But, because they use thinking Homo sapiens to constuct "best optics" is another.

Toxicity is generally dose dependent. Dose is a quantitative measure of exposure per some unit of time. If we ignore that oil either forms curds or floats and try to spread the kilograms of oil vs kilograms of water in the Gulf of Mexico the spill looks, well, it looks pretty fucking minimal volume of oil to the volume of water.

Unfortunately, the oil concentrates in physical forms as both surface films and subsurface balls. These physical realities do not relate to the volume of the basin of the Gulf of Mexico. The exposure of birds and shoreline is related to linear feet of surface, not cubic volume.

The consequences of the well blow-out in the Gulf have very very little to do with clever PR efforts to rescale our perception of the problem.

Unfortunately, the political response to the blow-out does.

[BeFree]

1. heh

It's all a big experiment. They want to see how far they can go. Sure, they hate that the rig went down. But now they are experimenting how far they can take this.

Later, they can say: "Look, the gulf took millions of gallons of oil and we kept the beaches clean. Now, can you idiots just leave us alone and let us provide your gas?"

[whyverne]

2. I'll bet that idea drives the Homeopathics crazy. n/t

[Duer 157099]

3. Which is exactly why they are using dispersants

Even though in the long run it won't really work, but in the short term, they can hide their mess in the vast quantity of water below the surface.

[HereSince1628]

4. That's so true, but it still hurts to read n/t

[On the Road]

5. I Doubt The Oil Spill is Kind of Thing Barry Goldwater Had in Mind