The CEO of British Petroleum had this to say yesterday:
Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive of BP, has claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is "relatively tiny" compared with the "very big ocean".
In an bullish interview with the Guardian at BP's crisis centre in Houston, Hayward insisted that the leaked oil and the estimated 400,000 gallons of dispersant that BP has pumped into the sea to try to tackle the slick should be put in context.
"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," he said. [Emphasis added]
This morning, I got to thinking about this.
Perhaps BP is trying to do some good for the Gulf, and we are all just misunderstanding.
Can any one corporation be that bad?, I thought.
Then an idea hit me, and I did some quick research to verify my thinking.
Damn! BP is trying to apply a homeopathic treatment to the Gulf!
See if you can follow me here:
As defined by Wikipedia:
Homeopathy (also spelled homoeopathy or homœopathy) is a form of alternative medicine, first proposed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, that attempts to treat patients with heavily diluted preparations. Based on an ipse dixit axiom formulated by Hahnemann which he called the "law of similars", preparations which cause certain symptoms in healthy individuals are given as the treatment for patients exhibiting similar symptoms. Homeopathic remedies are prepared by serial dilution with shaking by forceful striking, which homeopaths term "succussion," after each dilution under the assumption that this increases the effect of the treatment. Homeopaths call this process "potentization". Dilution often continues until none of the original substance remains.
OK, so if BP is trying to apply homeopathy to the Gulf, what problem are they attempting to solve?
The clue is here:
...preparations which cause certain symptoms in healthy individuals are given as the treatment for patients exhibiting similar symptoms...
What symptoms are caused in a healthy body of water by the injection of large amounts of oil, which are in evidence in the Gulf, and so could be solved by injection of oil in an amount which:
"is tiny in relation to the total water volume"?
Well, we saw a large amount of oil, relatively speaking, added to Alaska's Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez disaster. We all know what happened there--wildlife died by the thousands, and the economy of the area was wrecked for many years.
Those are the symptoms of a large oil spill. And, we all know that catches of some species of fish have fallen in the Gulf in recent years, which has had a severe effect on the economy.
Bingo!
BP is using homeopathic techniques to inject very tiny amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico to restore the fish population and bolster the Gulf's economy!
It's so simple once you think about it.
(Perhaps those who are better at research than I can find the volume of the Gulf of Mexico and, using the numbers provided by BP as to the volume of oil spilled, calculate the homeopathic dilution BP is using. Is it 20X? 60X? As "high" as 400X? Knowing the dilution factor might help us calculate--on BP's behalf--the "strength" of the effect on the symptoms.)
Thoughts?