Early in May, Rush Limbaugh said that the Gulf oil spill would resolve on its own:
“You do survive these things. I’m not advocating don’t care about it hitting the shore or coast and whatever you can do to keep it out of there is fine and dandy, but the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there,” Limbaugh said. “It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.”
This was met with scorn, of course:
“But this spill is of very large dimensions. And the capacity of any natural system has its limits. The oil is in a form that makes it very destructive when it gets to shore… You’re left with residue that is goopy and floats. It’s a story of mousse. If it hits a marsh, or shore, or the beach, it gloms on to everything. We’ve all seem images of birds caught up and it’s devastating to them,” he said.
And then poor Tony Hayward made his prediction:
‘The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean,’ he said. ‘The volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.’
And he promised they’d fix it:
“We will fix it. I guarantee it,’ he said. ‘The only question is we do not know when.’
He was severely criticized for those words:
Greenpeace reacted angrily to the comments – saying that BP could not ‘fix’ an oil spill.
Its scientist Rick Steiner said: ‘You can’t effectively clean up a major marine oil spill. It just can’t happen anywhere.‘This whole mythology that we can respond to a spill is just that – mythology. The genie is out of the bottle.’
And then the truth began to emerge as the oil vanished:
For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there’s one problem — they’re having trouble finding it.
Slowly, the realization began to seep into the minds of the media:
But now, 16 days after the leak was finally stopped, scientists are coming forward to suggest that perhaps BP boss Tony Hayward may have been right after all.
Oil from the well is clearing from the sea surface much faster than scientists expected.
And the money line:
Indeed, some are asking whether the original threat was actually exaggerated.
Golly, who could want a political advantage from this disaster??
As my colleagues Campbell Robertson, Justin Gillis and I reported on reaction, scientific and otherwise, to a government report on the fate of the oil in the gulf, it emerged that the Obama administration faced something of a credibility gap in conveying its findings to some gulf residents, environmental groups and even scientists.
There were plenty of varied opinions out there, of course. But what came through loud and clear in the interviews I conducted was how leery many were of pronouncements by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government agency charged with monitoring the health of the waters and the climate.
(H/T Instapundit)
The oil spill crisis is over.
The well no longer gushes: It is capped, top-killed, and cemented, and within a few weeks it will be finished off with the coup de grace of bottom kill, at which point we can expect the administration to declare victory. At least three-quarters of the leaked oil is already gone. While some has been burned or captured, most — per the predictions of former BP CEO Tony Hayward — has been devoured and rendered harmless by the Gulf’s uniquely ravenous bacterial ecosystem, which has been digesting natural oil seeps for millennia. This isn’t administration spin; it’s reality.
The same incompetent NOAA which made ridiculous predictions about the oil spill covering most of the Earth now claims credit for the end of the crisis:
Crediting what the agency calls “the robust federal response efforts,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that at least one-third (33 percent) of the leaked oil has been removed by burning, skimming, chemical dispersion and direct recovery from the wellhead, all overseen by the government’s Unified Command team.
But as Lou Dolinar notes, NOAA has had to eat its computer model:
Also in the last two weeks, most of the wildest stories have been laid to rest, although some scientists (and the media outlets that quote them) seem reluctant admit it. NR will be looking at the more embarrassing details, but here’s the bottom line: NOAA retracted the outlandish computer model that showed the spill covering thousands of square miles from the Gulf to the east coast as far north as New England.
Let me be clear (sound of me chortling):
The blame for this oil spill may be placed at the feet of many, BP included. But in the end, capping of the well and stopping the leak was all BP. And they are cleaning up the Gulf as they promised.
I continue to feel bad for Tony Hayward. He was right all along. So was Limbaugh, and that is going to gnaw at the guts of Democrats everywhere. (more sounds of me LMAO) Barack Obama and everyone else was wrong.
So this is a good news post all around.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.