No, at this point this isn't hyperbole. It borders on a legitimate question.
First, we were told it was 1,000 barrels per day.
Then, we were told it was 5,000 barrels per day.
Just moments ago, at least two other diaries reported that it's looking more like 25,000 barrels per day.
How bad could it get? Well, according to the Alabama Local News...
Gulf of Mexico oil spill 2010: The worst-case scenario
The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels -- or 210,000 gallons per day.
If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate, perhaps up to 150,000 barrels -- or more than 6 million gallons per day -- based on government data showing daily production at another deepwater Gulf well.
By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons total. The Gulf spill could end up dumping the equivalent of 4 Exxon Valdez spills per week.
The above article was from a few hours ago--you know, back when we thought that it was "only" 5,000 barrels per day.
Which begs the question: Just how much oil is underneath there? How many millions of barrels are in that particular pool of oil beneath the sea?
The article states:
The formation that was being drilled by the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded and sank last week is reported to have tens of millions of barrels of oil. A barrel contains 42 gallons.
What happens if they're NEVER able to stop it, until every drop of oil comes out of it?
Could this wipe out the entire Gulf of Mexico? Could it wipe out the entire Carribean?
Or--God help us all--could it conceivably destroy the entire Atlantic ocean and every fish and plant in it?
Has this disaster--complements of Dick Cheney, it would appear, along with BP--doomed the fucking planet?
And before anyone asks:
- No, I'm not making light of this. I have a 4-year-old son, goddammit.
- No, I'm not hysterical. Just suffering from insomnia and understandably terrified by the possible prospects of this catastrophe.
Update: Thanks to many commenters for their words of encouragement/reassurance; in particular, I'd like to thank ontheleftcoast, who posted info about a similarly horrific--but NOT armageddon-inducing--oil tanker spill in the Gulf some 30 years ago: the Ixtoc I spill:
Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, about 600 miles (970 km) south of the U.S. state of Texas. On June 3, 1979, the well suffered a blowout and is recognized as the second largest oil spill in history.
...
In the next few months, experts were brought in to contain and cap the oil well. Approximately ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on March 23, 1980. Prevailing currents carried the oil towards the Texas coastline. The US government had two months to prepare booms to protect major inlets. Mexico rejected US requests to be compensated for cleanup costs.
The Ixtoc I spill dumped a whopping 100 million gallons (2.4 million barrels) into the Gulf of Mexico. Horrifying, but we did survive.
As for the largest spill? Well, according to EnviroWonk, that would be Kuwait, 1991, when...
Iraqi forces opened the valves of several oil tankers in order to slow the invasion of American troops. The oil slick was four inches thick and covered 4000 square miles of ocean.
They say that the Kuwaiti mess amounted to a staggering 520 million gallons of oil (12.4 million barrels).
Guess who was the Secretary of Defense in 1991? Yup, Dick Cheney.
OK, I'm not blaming the Kuwaiti "accident" on him (it was deliberately done by Sadaam Hussein's army, after all), but it still figures that he'd be prominently connected to anything involving oil and ecological disaster.
So, I guess it looks like the answer to my question is: No, the planet isn't dead, and neither is the human race.
I guess that's some comfort, anyway...