Size matters.
For those of us without a good spacial ability to get a grasp of how large this river of oil a mile underwater is, a new tool has been developed.
Here are a few places you might recognize, and how they would look underneath the crude oil produced by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Seattle, WA:
From Whidbey to Mt. Rainier. Wow.
People tend to think Hawaii is small, but the Big Island is larger than the entire state of Connecticut, bra:
If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some hair in your flowers:
Thanks to a friend of Facebook, I was alerted to this link today:
http://www.good.is/...
Because it's over the open Gulf, it's really tough to get a sense of how big the spill actually is. Google Earth engineer Paul Rademacher built this utility (posted first by the Atlantic's James Fallows) with which one can overlay an image of the oil spill on top of a map of your choosing.
Although by now anyone should know better than to call a gushing volcano of oil a "spill", it is great that they helped us get a handle on the scale.
Keep in mind that the image is actually from back on May 6, and the spill has grown since then.
Yeah, it has grown by a lot; like millions of gallons lot.
Here is the link to the Google map feature you can use to see how fucked your favorite place would be if you were unlucky like the animals and residents of the Gulf region.
http://paulrademacher.com/...
The site tend to focus of the U.S. and western Europe. You can find many of your "important" famous cities there (London, Paris, Rome).
Being a bit more globally-minded than your average American, I took the liberty of looking at some famous places abroad as well.
Tokyo:
Mumbai, India:
Lest we forget last month's major crisis of a smaller scale, the city of Cairns, Australia:
The pretty light blue sections are all the Great Barrier Reef. Perhaps the Oilpocalypse would not have killed the entire GBR, but it would have wiped out most of it by now. Give it a few more weeks of gushing and maybe it will have been horrific enough to kill all of the Reef. We'll see.
Snorkel the Sphinx.
Cairo, Egypt:
Bye bye, Shanghai:
And yes, entire countries would have been blanketed already.
Singapore:
So long, Hong Kong:
++++
More madness...
For DWG,
My oh my, Miami
This would complicate the middle east a bit, wouldn't you think?
I/P:
¡Dios, Mio, Rio!
Did you know another offshore rig sank today?
It's true.
You know, Hugo.
Carracas, Venezuela:
++++
Update II by LaughingPlanet on Thu May 13, 2010 at 12:04:24 AM PDT
A few more and I'm done. This scale is already outdated, and as I mentioned, just the literal tip of the oilberg.
Please keep the heat on your elected officials about this mega-distater.
And don't let anyone call it a "spill".
Dick Cheney has no soul.
If the oil was there, Korea wouldn't either.
Seoul:
Egad, Baghdad:
I wonder if the volume of oil is greater than the volume of Mt Everest...
Math whizzes?
Kathmandu:
There is still plenty of Switzerland left! We don't need no water let the motherfucker Bern! Bern, motherfucker, Bern!
Bern, Switzerland.
Question:
What is bigger?
A) The Oilpocalypse?
or
B) The area under Hamid Karzai's control?
I'm going with A.
++++
Final update by LaughingPlanet on Thu May 13, 2010 at 12:32:22 PM PDT
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