The government report instantly made headlines for the astonishing conclusion that approximately 75 percent of the oil had been collected, burned, skimmed or simply disappeared. Given the magnitude of the spill — the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history — some scientists concluded it was premature to draw such conclusions.
Another independent study released this week estimated as much as 79 percent of the oil remains in the Gulf, beneath the water’s surface.
Lehr’s admission that the peer review wasn’t completed in advance of the report’s release undermines the administration’s claim that it was.
And then, there’s this:
Interior Department officials knew beforehand that President Obama’s six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would cost more than 23,000 jobs and inflict devastating economic damage throughout the region.
Even so, the administration was not deferred from defying a federal judge and doing it anyway.
You’d almost think that they want to destroy the economy. I’m not sure what they’d be doing differently if they did.
And I don’t want to hear any more partisan noise about a “Republican war on science.”
I think the estimate of 23,000 jobs is low.
Once Obama gets booted from office, I wonder how he’s going to rationalize stuff like this. A book naturally will be in the offing and I imagine it’ll pamper his “legacy” a bit.
But, but, but I thought the meme the press was pushing was that Bush a.k.a. The Great Satan, played politics and ignored the ‘concensus’ science of AGW?
Obama’s making Brownie look like he really was doing a heck of a job.
You’d almost think that they want to destroy the economy.
It has to be destroyed, otherwise people will never understand that socialism is better.
The man certainly isn’t above self-aggrandizement:
“I have worked for three years on projects like the revolutionary Chevy Volt electric plug in, on efforts to reinvent the automobile.”
Doing what, exactly? And is that something really to brag about?
Didn’t the original 75% figure include oil dispersed below the surface? If so, the two estimates aren’t really that much in conflict. The spin on that first figure was rather blatant, though.
The “plume” is said to be 22 miles long, 1.2 miles wide, and 650 feet deep. If it consists of 50 million barrels of oil, then the concentration is about 650 ppm, or less than twice the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Look at some of the maps that have been published in newspapers. The whole plume is a tiny little dot in the middle of the Gulf.
People need to get a sense of proportion about things…