The New York Times devoted a big chunk of its front page one day last week to noting that much of the spilled BP Deepwater Horizon oil has “dissipated.”
Most of it, in fact.
And to scant noticeable ill-effect — at least so far — relative to the apocalyptic rhetoric attending weeks of televised video footage that showed oil rushing from the ocean floor.
It’s not clear how much oil actually spilled; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute expert Dr. Judy McDowell estimates that between 96 million and 184 million gallons made its way into the Gulf before the leak was capped two weeks ago.
That’s a lot, right?
Well, maybe not.
Even at the high range, the leakage represents less than 20 percent of the capacity of the Central Park Reservoir — some 1 billion gallons.
And the Gulf of Mexico is considerably larger than the reservoir: It holds some 643 quadrillion gallons of water, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency — or 4.43 billion gallons of water for each gallon of escaped oil.
“The oil spill is definitely blown out of proportion,” said McDowell last week, with a laugh, a day after returning to Woods Hole from the Gulf Coast.
Because the oil entered the water a mile beneath the surface, she said, it will separate and dissipate on the way up.
Which tends to explain the Times’ inability to find much oil last week.
And why maybe nobody ever will — unless perhaps if a huge hurricane churns up the Gulf this summer and pulls plumes of oil to the surface.
But even then, according to McDowell, the worst that can be expected is merely a light “oiling” of the surface and some beaches. The volume of the escaped oil versus the volume of the Gulf itself will determine that outcome.
None of this is to suggest that the Deepwater Horizon explosion was anything other than an unmitigated disaster.
Yet it was not the Apocalypse, either.
An estimated 21 million gallons of crude oil seep naturally into the Gulf each year — and has for eons. Not surprisingly, Nature has devised strategies for dealing with it.
Again, Deepwater Horizon isn’t the same thing.
But modern civilization depends on the extraction and exploitation of petroleum — an inherently dangerous undertaking.
Accidents are going to happen.
The alternative?
The lights go out around the world.