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This is, unfortunately, quite well-known in the oil spill management community. We've chosen to measure incident response using visible oil on the surface of t
by crygin 11y ago
This is, unfortunately, quite well-known in the oil spill management community. We've chosen to measure incident response using visible oil on the surface of the water, so the companies use a method which reduces that metric but causes exponentially more environmental damage throughout the water column.
- emodendroket 11y agoI believe it, but what other way is there to measure?
- thaumasiotes 11y agoDonations to the church. Local fish production. Number of words in public apology. Average number of different bacteria cultures you can grow from a sample of water. There's no end to ways you could measure incident response. Measuring based on visible oil makes the statement "the problem with oil spills is that you can see them".
- emodendroket 11y agoWell, implicit in the question is, what better way is there to measure the damage? Local fish production I could see, I guess maybe I could see the bacteria. The others are clearly worse than visible oil.
- theoh 11y agoHonestly not being pedantic, what do you mean by "exponentially" in this case? Usually it implies a rate of growth though some people, increasingly, seem to use it just to mean "a lot".
- crygin 11y agoFair point, it's somewhat hyperbolic phrasing. A perhaps somewhat retroactive defence: Surface contamination is deadly, particularly to bird/shore life, but dispersed oil is deadly throughout the water column (until it resurfaces, at which point it becomes deadly to birds again). There's relatively little life at the surface compared to the pelagic zone, so the impact of dispersants doesn't merely multiply the effect of the oil by the depth of the water, but actually moves that oil into the regions where life is densest.