For being a scientist myself, I've been positively amazed at the work done by diarists here and elsewhere in searching for the truth on what is happening in the water southeast of Venice, LA, and spreading throughout the Gulf.
A few links, to eminently worthwhile sources of information (and please pardon my lack of link sophistication):
News
Official Govt Site (with press releases & daily status maps)
EPA's Spill Update Page
National Weather Service Offshore Weather ReportSky Truth (remote sensing experts crosschecking the feds)
HuffPost's Dan Froomkin (the crusader!)
Pro Publica (some of the best journalism available)
Commentary
Our Own Inimitable Fishgrease!Collins Center (FL public policy group)Monkeyfister (a blogger monitoring the ROV feed)
My gratitude and thanks to these and the many other people who are working to discover and, as Dylan put it, reflect upon mountains what they find.
Some credible independent estimates put the flow rate--before Saturday's event (whatever it was) at roughly two Exxon Valdezes per week. Those estimates are based on comparing successive images in time, and using a computer to break each image into tiny pieces, comparing each tiny piece to its neighbor in time, and estimating the amount of motion. This technique is known as PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry)
Wikipedia article: PIV
The quality of the analysis depends directly on the quality of the image, which in this case, is poor. There aren't many distinct objects for the computer to compare within images (only bloblike patterns, which increases the margin of error). The camera platform itself is unsteady, since it's floating and not far from the turbulence, and the lighting is limited. But medical researchers, aeronautics and hydrodynamic engineers (to name a few) use this technique constantly. It's a robust, well-developed avenue of research. I used it in my own oceanogrpahy thesis. By these means, it's estimated that ten Exxon Valdezes' worth of oil--well over 110 million gallons--have leaked already.
Outrage is not a strong enough word. It may well be that the only means to close off the leak will be explosives--whether traditional or nuclear. In my thinking, we do what we must--as in, Obama, sweep BP aside and take over!--to close off the flow now. Every other problem is secondary.
Then, over the years ahead, as the aftermath becomes clear, our collective rage at this criminal catastrophe can be turned into a hammer to change our economy toward things more sustainable.