I think the scientific community IS willing to
consider that things may not be as bad as they
seem in the Gulf spill. It is just that it is
premature to do so and the article you posted
wasn't very good, as you yourself admit, it
"paints an incomplete and misleading picture". We
don't need to invoke conspiracy theories or guilt
by association, we just need to invoke critical
thinking. If the article had announced the Gulf
was dead, I suspect it would have received a chilly reception here.
David Duffy
At 10:58 PM 8/10/2010, William Silvert wrote:
I confess that I posted this in large part
because I was curious to see the reactions. As
expected, all replies (on- and off-list) were
critical and skeptical. However, although some
responses were based on scientific arguments
about issues like long-term burial in sediments,
many seemed to be based on a deep suspicion of
any good news about environmental issues and
some relied on conspiracy theories and guilt by
association. Curiously no one mentioned that
although lighter fractions of oil dissipate more
rapidly than heavier tars, they tend to be much more toxic.
While I agree that the article paints an
incomplete and misleading picture, I am
concerned about a broader issue, namely the
willingness of the scientific community to
investigate the possibility that things may not
always be as bad as they seem. For example, some
time ago a team of my colleagues investigated
the benthic impacts of bentonite (drilling mud)
around off-shore rigs. To their great surprise
they found that the effects were minor and very
localised. I am sure that if they had found
something serious they could have published in
Science mag, perhaps even with a press
conference, but as it was I don't even recall
whether the work made it past an internal report.
Work on the benthic impacts of fishing has
produced some very surprising and
counter-intuitive results. One colleague in the
UK set out to study the impacts of shellfish
dredging, in which massive quantities of sand
are sucked up, pushed through a sieve, and
dumped back on the ocean floor. Not only could
he not see anything worth reporting, but after
24 hours he couldn't even see any evidence of
the dredging - the smaller infauna were all present and seemed fine!
On the other hand, marks from the otter board of
a trawler on the sediments of the Bay of Fundy
persist for months in this extremely energetic
environment. I was skeptical of this until I
participated in some field work in an area where
the tides are fast and the tidal range is up to
16 m and it is impossible to moor any kind of
enclosure. We did monthly sampling, and when we
returned to the site we could see the marks made
by our boots the month before. It works both ways.
So while I agree in scientific terms with all
the criticisms of the article I posted, I am not
comfortable with all the attitudes expressed. I
think we need to be more open-minded and not prejudge the impacts of events.
Bill Silvert
----- Original Message ----- From: "William Silvert" <cien...@silvert.org>
To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
Sent: sábado, 7 de Agosto de 2010 11:44
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Good news from the Gulf?
The following article from TIME magazine offers
an unusually optimistic view of the BP spill
which I suspect many will disagree with, but
which is worth considering. Bill Silvert
Thursday, Jul. 29, 2010
The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?
By Michael Grunwald / Port Fourchon, La.
President Obama has called the BP oil spill "the
worst environmental disaster America has ever
faced," and so has just about everyone else.
Green groups are sounding alarms about the
"catastrophe along the Gulf Coast," while CBS,
Fox and MSNBC are all slapping "Disaster in the
Gulf" chyrons on their spill-related news. Even
BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy
talk, admitted that the spill was an
"environmental catastrophe." The obnoxious
anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a
rare voice arguing that the spill - he calls it
"the leak" - is anything less than an ecological
calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype...
David Cameron Duffy
Professor of Botany and Unit Leader
Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit (PCSU)
University of Hawai`i
3190 Maile Way St. John 410
Honolulu, HI 96822-2279
(808) 956-8218 phone
(808) 956-4710 fax / (808) 956-3923 (backup fax)
email address: ddu...@hawaii.edu
