The media has been providing a lot of stories about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Pundits from both the right and the left, both religious and secular, have been weighing in with their usual uninformed ways about the potential dangers to the financial well-being of corporations, to the pocketbooks of consumers, to wildlife, and to human health. If we step back from all of the hype for a moment, we see that there have been lots of bigger spills in the past.
The largest oil spills:
Oil spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico have been fairly common. Listed below are the largest oil spills in history.The spill from the Deepwater Horizon has not yet made the list.
1991 Arabian Gulf: 520 million gallons
1979 Ixtoc I Oil Well in the Gulf of Mexico: 140 million gallons.
1979 Atlantic Express near Trinidad and Tobago: 90 million gallons
1992 Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan: 88 million gallons
1991 ABT Summer located 700 nautical miles from Angola: 82 million gallons
1983 Nowruz Field Platform in the Persian Gulf: 80 million gallons
1983 Castillo de Beliver in Saldanha Bay, South Africa: 79 million gallons
1978 Amoco Cadiz in Brittany, France: 69 million gallons
1991 Mt Haven in the Mediterranean Sea near Italy: 45 million gallons
1988 Odyssey 700 nautical miles off of Nova Scotia: 42 million gallons
1972 Gulf of Oman: 37 million gallons
1994 Morris J. Berman in Puerto Rico: 34 million gallons
1980 Irenes Serenade in Navino Bay, Greece: 32 million gallons
1976 Urquiola, Spain: 32 million gallons
1967 Torrey Canyon, UK: 31 million gallons
The American Response:
For some time now, the large corporations have argued, and American politicians have agreed, that environmental and safety regulations are a bit "silly" and that government shouldn’t really interfere with energy production. Among the responses to the current problem has been a call to obtain a scientific analysis of the problem and the solution. A group of top scientific experts has been assembled:
Dr. Tom Hunter, Director of the Department of Energy's Sandia National Labs
Dr. George A. Cooper, an expert in materials science and retired professor from UC Berkeley
Richard Lawrence Garwin, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus
Dr. Jonathan I. Katz, professor of physics at Washington University
Dr. Alexander H. Slocum, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT
Jonathon Katz is well-known for his views on climate change:
Fortunately, global warming is probably good for humanity. Sit back, relax, and watch it happen.
In other words, he is out of step with most of the world’s scientists. Is he going to contribute real, objective science—meaning data-driven—or is he going to offer political rhetoric in the guise of science?
He has also written:
I am a homophobe, and proud.
His writings on homosexuality show little understanding of biology—not just human biology, but biology in general. He seems to think that homosexuality is unnatural, ignoring all of the biology that shows it is found in several hundred species. It is not his homophobia that should be questioned here, but his lack of scientific understanding of contemporary problems. This oil spill is going to require science, and the evidence seems to indicate an inability to use data—that is, the scientific method—in understanding contemporary problems.