On 8/9/2014 12:01 PM, Paul M. Cook wrote:
> Prevention is far cheaper than a clean up. The
> whole point is that big energy is being allowed to run rampant with lax
> regulation. How many more Gulf oil spills can we endure.

Better ask the microbes that digested all that oil:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...es-slide-show/


The Deepwater Horizon oil spill added roughly 800 million liters of
hydrocarbons to the Gulf of Mexico. One quarter of that has been burned,
captured or skimmed, according to U.S. government estimates. That leaves
the rest for trillions of microbes to feast on—a petroleum cornucopia
that first became available April 20 when the oil platform exploded and
the spill started.


http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...ype=blogs&_r=0

Oil-eating bacteria exist in significant quantities even in the deep
waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and may be breaking down submerged oil
from the Deepwater Horizon oil leak faster than previously believed,
scientists are reporting today.

The bacteria were found in a plume of microscopic oil droplets more than
3,000 feet below the surface, in the vicinity of BP’s blown-out well, by
a group of scientists led by Terry Hazen, a senior ecologist at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Their presence may have been
overlooked by other researchers because the variety found in the plume
do not seem to be consuming much oxygen from the water column, unlike
most oil-digesting bacteria, the scientists said.