Posted on 06/16/2010 8:47:30 AM PDT by blam
Now Most Americans Think Gulf Wildlife And Beaches Will NEVER Recover
Gus Lubin
Jun. 16, 2010, 11:31 AM
Image: the sierra club
A new Gallup poll shows most people are very pessimistic about the oil spill.
59% of Americans say local wildlife will never cover. 49% say local beaches will never recover. Nearly everyone thinks wildlife and beaches will take more than ten years to recover.
Most people say the spill will hurt the economy (83%), push up gas prices (79%), and push up food prices (79%).
The polling numbers tell you everything you need to know about major publicity campaigns by BP, Barack Obama, and Florida.
(Read more: 18 Beaches That The Oil Spill May Ruin Forever)
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Gulf of Mexico vs Australia.
Ever means ever.
What’s your solution? Get off gasoline?
Nuke it? Nuclear radiation a good thing for the coast?
Please. Contribute.
If you ask BP, you're going to get one kind of answer. If you ask someone who is at the coast of Louisiana, you're going to get a different kind of answer. If you ask the White House, you're going to get another kind of answer.
And, if you ask FReepers, posting here, you're going to get, yet again, another kind of answer.
Each person has an answer which is related to their circumstances and in the context in which they relate to the problem. I have to say that, to preface my answer, because some people seem to miss that point.
So, to me specifically..., my "answer" is totally related to "information" and information for FReepers and others in the public.
What I've found, in my own experience, is that one only attacks a "problem" to the level that they perceive it to be a really serious problem, or one of a less serious nature. More thinking, time and effort, goes into a more serious problem.
Now, I know that if people, in general don't recognize a problem for the real seriousness of it, then they won't act with as much forcefulness or with as much action as others which are very serious.
The real question is -- is this a problem that if we do just like we did for the decades-old Mexican blowout, that things will just return to normal by themselves and we have nothing much to worry about?
Or, is this a problem that the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have not ever faced before and it's the worst disaster for an oil-drilling blowout, that these states have ever had?
The answer to that ("it's of no real consequence" -- or -- "it's the worst oil-spill/blowout ever faced by these states") -- will determine the level of "action" taken to deal with the problem.
THUS ... my answer to your question, and in context of this board, Free Republic, is to get information out to how serious of a problem this is.
That's "my solution" -- but it's not BP's solution, and it's not the White House's solution either -- as they each have a different responsibility than I do.
And likewise, it's not the solution to those who are on the Coast, as they are busily dealing with this, right in front of their faces, and they see the seriousness of the problem.
SO..., everyone has their own answer to that "problem" -- according to their circumstances and their responsibility, related to this disaster.
I don’t know about you.... but I’m not in Australia ... LOL ...
Maybe that’s your problem ... :-)
This poll only shows that most people are idiots. Yes - idiots. (NEVER?!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/01/gulf-oil-spill-ixtoc-ecological-tipping-point
But although Ixtoc was a big disaster, it did not develop into the long-term catastrophe that scientists initially thought was inevitable.
“This is not to say there were no consequences. Just that the evidence is that these are not as dramatic as we feared,” says Luis Soto, a marine biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “After about two years the recuperation was well on the way.”
Wes Tunnell, now at the Texas Harte Research Institute, took samples before and after the oil arrived in Texas that showed an immediate 80% drop in the number of organisms living between the grains of sand that provide food for shore birds and crabs.
“Sampling a couple of years after the spill indicated the populations were back to normal,” he says. Six years after Ixtoc 1 exploded it was hard to find any evidence of the oil, he says. “It is rather baffling to us all. We don’t really know where it went.”
But although their message is hopeful, those who studied the Ixtoc disaster warn against assuming the gulf is automatically heading for another quick comeback.
Ixtoc 1 stood in just 50 metres (165ft) of water, while Deepwater Horizon was drilling 1,500 metres below the surface. It is also likely that the quantity of chemical dispersants being used today is significantly larger, potentially blocking the work of the oil-eating micro-organisms.
But what worries Tunnell most is that over-fishing may have reduced the ability of the gulf to bounce back. “It was much more resilient 30 years ago than today. My fear is it is reaching a tipping point.”
Mother Nature always balances her books.
Well on the other hand, since Obama isn’t doing any real leading, you’ll find more Americans like this one trying to stand up to do something, even if ignorant. And this is the real danger of this government, if the perception continues to grow that our federal government is inept and cut off from reality, it might lead some real evil people to try to take control of parts of this nation. The feds might respond with martial law, but since the Feds are already showing they can’t fix problems that they have now...the declarations of martial law will be meaningless and this country will fall apart into disparate federations!
Thanks for the link. I don’t live near the Gulf anymore, but I visited there a few years after Ixtoc. At the time I visited I couldn’t see any visible evidence of the spill... but if you dug down a few inches there was a layer of oil. Still, to the naked eye, the area had recovered beautifully.
So, it takes time, but it does recover. Its organic. Microbes eat it. The biggest problem is to stop the leak. Nature will take care of the rest given time.
“Nature will take care of the rest given time.”
It really amazes me soemtimes how resilent nature is if we give it the chance. I recall the articles about how the Illinois (?) river would catch fire from all the oil and pollution in it. How Lake Michigan was a “dead sea”. After we stopped dumping all our crap into it and cleaned up what we could, it is now a thriving fishery.
Never is a very long time.
That was the Chicxulub crater and ask any dinosaur and he'll say after 65 million years, the planet still isn't healed.
I don’t live near the Gulf anymore, but I visited there a few years after Ixtoc. At the time I visited I couldn’t see any visible evidence of the spill... but if you dug down a few inches there was a layer of oil. Still, to the naked eye, the area had recovered beautifully.
Well, if you take a look at the location of Ixtoc-1 and then take a look at the BP drill site (on the following maps...) you'll see why you didn't hardly see anything from Ixtoc-1 ... LOL ...
Map link to approximate location of Ixtoc-1 ...
It's slightly west of that mark (the red "A" down by Campeche, Mexico).
Compare that location to the location of BP's drill site, close to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, all just as close as the others.
Map as of June 13th
In case the map image doesn’t work on the BP site ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/world/10/oil_day/oil_slider/img/8_oil_spread_13june.gif
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