More than 1 million gallons of oil leaks into Gulf of Mexico, potentially putting endangered species at risk

TokenBoomer@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 340 points –
More than 1 million gallons of oil leaks into Gulf of Mexico, potentially putting endangered species at risk
cbsnews.com

Cbsnews.com

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“No way to prevent this” says only planet where this regularly happens

I haven’t forgotten how BP used chemicals to make all the oil just sink to the bottom of the gulf so people would forget what they did quicker. We don’t deserve this planet.

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hey I've seen this episode before

we're sorry

oh god i forgot south park did a bit on this. i feel dirty now. was not meant to be a south park reference. just that this shit keeps happening

Just so more people know, South Park was off the mark in their criticism of that. The "We're Sorry" ad campaign was just a form of soft bribery so the media outlets would play softball with their coverage of the disaster.

Surely the oil executives will be held accountable for destroying everyone's environment...right?

How do 1 million gallons of oil accidentally leak into the Gulf Of Mexico? Don't the oil companies have valves on their equipment?

I haven't read the article but sometimes oil cracks out from the actual ocean floor, not valves, and is very hard to plug. Not sure if that's the case here.

They do, it isn't a million. The article is deliberate sensationalism. If you read the Coast Guard's press releases, you will see they didn't say a million gallons was leaked.

From the U.S. Coast Guard press release:

https://www.news.uscg.mil/Press-Releases/Article/3593964/update-1-unified-command-monitors-responds-to-mpog11015-incident/p

Initial engineering calculations indicate potential volume of crude oil that could have been released from the affected pipeline is 1.1 million gallons.

So yeah, no one can go out there with a bucket and measure it, but that's probably a safe estimate.

So you don't find it questionable that this happened a week ago yet the most they've found is a couple hundred gallons?

And all these sites that claim a million, in their headlines, all say lower in their stories that there is no actual measurement and that it is only potentially?

I feel it undermines the issue when people are dishonest. I consider these headlines to be dishonest.

I regret engaging that one idiot that claims dispersants were used by BP to submerge the oil so people can't see it.

That's the kind of disinformation and dishonesty that makes it so difficult to have real outcomes. All the noise drowns out the signal.

Just FYI, we don't exactly know how much CO2 we've released, how many particles are in the atmosphere, how much water is in the ocean, etc. We use math and statistics to create estimates. They'll have some amount of error, but it is not strange. In fact, acting like someone does know the quantity exactly would make me a lot more skeptical.

Also, don't say "look at this thing..." and then when that exact thing proves you incorrect you just move the goal posts. That's called a bad faith argument. Either you had faith in the USCG report or you didn't. If you didn't, don't use it in your argument. If you did, you must accept what it says.

That's just it, the USCG DIDN'T say the leak was a million gallons. They said it could be that much.

They know there was a leak and they know roughly how much oil the pipeline holds.

That's it. That is all they said. The story headline said that the USCG said that much DID leak when they very specifically didn't say that.

Where exactly did I move the goal posts? What was my bad faith argument?

You: If you read the Coast Guard's press releases, you will see they didn't say a million gallons was leaked.

Them: From the U.S. Coast Guard press release:

Initial engineering calculations indicate potential volume of crude oil that could have been released from the affected pipeline is 1.1 million gallons.

You: I regret engaging...

Potential does not equal actual.

Are you that incapable of thought?

They know there was a leak and they know how much the pipeline holds but they don't know how much actually escaped.

The same press release you are quoting says, "The volume of discharged oil is currently unknown."

But the headline says more than a million gallons of oil leaked into the gulf.

If you don't understand how that is sensationalism, then you have more problems than this dumbass Internet argument.

I regret engaging because holy shit, so many of you are really fucking stupid.

Some things like this would benefit from being sensationalized though right? Would be better if a lot of people actually were pissed about this and that it would be over responded to.

I definitely hope it's less than a million gallons, but whether it's a million gallons or 300 thousand gallons or 500 this evokes much the exact same response from me. Just because it's a horrid thing wasn't an even more horrible thing doesn't make either not a bad thing.

I think people just aren't responding well because when you explain that it's an estimate and could be lower that you might be trying to downplay the situation. Like it's not 100 it's actually 80 so no one should be mad kinda thing

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But didn't you all see the commercial on TV promoting Oil and Natural gas as being amazing? This is a good thing right? /S

The inevitable sequel to "drill baby drill" entitled "spill baby spill" was not enjoyed as enthusiastically as the oil companies had hoped.

That reporter/editor should be fined or charged with this blatant bullshit.

"The U S. Coast Guard said Monday that an estimated 1.1 million gallons of crude oil has leaked into the Gulf..." and linked the actual press release in that line.

When you actually read the press release, and then lower in the article, it says the amount is actually unknown.

They know how much oil the pipeline holds, which would be around that estimate. It could only be a couple hundred gallons that have actually leaked.

Also they are not even sure where the leak is, so it might not even be the named company's fault.

Yeah oil industry sucks, but this sounds like a fat nothing burger that CBS is pumping for clicks. No wonder no one trusts the media.

(This is a reposted comment from when this bullshit article was posted earlier)

The OP of this repost didn't even have the decency to share the qualifications from inside the article.

They are just as terrible of an attention seeking whore as the writer of the article.

Ya the actual press release says up to 1.1 millions gallons could have been released with the actual amount unknown. The article is sensationalist, but it still sounds like it could be pretty bad, but we need to wait for more data to find out exactly how bad.

"The volume of discharged oil is currently unknown. The total pipeline length is 67 miles and was closed by MPOG at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday. Initial engineering calculations indicate potential volume of crude oil that could have been released from the affected pipeline is 1.1 million gallons."

https://www.news.uscg.mil/Press-Releases/Article/3593964/update-1-unified-command-monitors-responds-to-mpog11015-incident/

Also as a side note to understand how bad 1 million gallons is, the 2010 BP oil spill released 130 million gallons.

And if it's unknown it could even be zero, right? Phew, nothing to worry about.

It is definitely not 0 and I would still be worried. I just don't apreciate news that exagerates facts.

Sorry. I read your comment quickly and didn’t realize you were criticizing the original writer. I apologize.

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Again? Isn't this whole sea contaminated yet? What can possibly still be there?

For comparison, this is less than 1% of the deepwater horizon spill, and they've turned off the entire pipeline so there's little danger of it increasing in size.

The danger, as the article says, is letting them continue to operate in the area. At what point do we say "okay we've nearly totally fucked this place up, find someplace else"

Ideally? Back in 2010 when BP made it clear they were systemically hiding critical safety and environmental control failures.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is right now.

It may be too late to save humanity, but it's never too late to do the right thing.

Any oil spill is terrible, but this article is blatant bullshit, written for clickbait.

1% of the largest environmental disaster of all time isn't a great frame of reference.

Comparing a bad thing to another bad thing that was larger doesn't make the lesser not also still a bad thing. Not that you necessarily think that of course but some people use this as a defense quite often. "Like x person in history killed a million people but I only murdered one why are you so mad at me?!How am I bad!" haha

Turns out, building your entire economy and financial system on O&G causes problems for the environment, huh?

Let's fucking goo! Another one! A big boost for Any% world destruction Speedrun.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


On Facebook, the Coast Guard said that oil was "skimmed and sampled" roughly four miles southeast of South Pass, Louisiana on Friday, at which point they retrieved about 210 gallons of "oily-water mixture."

Matt Rota, senior policy director for Healthy Gulf, told CBS affiliate WWL-TV that the amount of oil thought to have spilled could still increase.

NOAA is helping oversee the incident, and the agency's emergency operations coordinator Doug Helton told WWL that it's not necessarily the amount of oil, but its impact, that is of most concern.

Just north of the spill and Plaquemines Parish lies the Chandeleur Islands, where last year, the world's most endangered sea turtle species, the Kemp's Ridley, was found hatching for the first time in three-quarters of a century.

"Continued oil and gas development in the Gulf represents a clear, existential threat to the whale's survival and recovery," a group of 100 scientists said in a letter to the Biden administration last year.

"The government's Natural Resource Damage Assessment on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill estimates that nearly 20% of Gulf of Mexico whales were killed, with additional animals suffering reproductive failure and disease."


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