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If It Was My Home (Oil spill visualization)

49 points by angusgr 16y ago

angusgr 16y ago
(Sorry if this was submitted already.) The genius I see here is that the relative size of a large area is really hard for people to actually understand. Until you show it relative to something they know intuitively (like where they live.)
pyre 16y ago
When I click "Put it back in the gulf," the size of the oil spill shrinks. When I click "Put it in Portland, OR, USA," it grows again. I don't think that the map scale has changed, because slider doesn't move. {edit} Is this just a by-product of mapping the surface of a sphere to a rectangle?
- ugh 16y ago
  It’s a by-product of the projection Google Maps uses. Try “congo” and then “greenland” (and then never trust maps again :). This is actually another good reason to use a tool like this. Projections distort.
  - tjr 16y ago
    Wow. Putting it in the "arctic ocean" is pretty interesting too.
- nhebb 16y ago
  Is this just a by-product of mapping the surface of a sphere to a rectangle? Yeah, it's called a Mercator Projection. If you look at the "Uses" section of the Wikipedia page [1] it gives a good example of the magnitude of distortion between Greenland and Africa. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
dice 16y ago
I zoomed out so that I could see the entire Earth, which is where I live. Looks pretty small on that scale.
- angusgr 16y ago
  Um, you can see it on the surface of the entire earth. How many other man-made things can you see at that scale? At a small enough scale, even pretty small is pretty big.
- nuxi 16y ago
  The area covers my whole country and then some. Although small compared to whole Earth, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't enjoy having the spill as a next-door neighbour.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Good thing it's out in the sea, then.
- pyre 16y ago
  If you consider the total human population of the Earth, a single murder is pretty insignificant. We probably should stop prosecuting people for murder...
retube 16y ago
At the risk of getting downvoted, and I'm not saying the oil spill isn't bad - it is (very) - but let's remember some context: 1) The area is large. But this is meaningless without knowledge of the density. 2) I can't find a reference, but a prof of marine biology was on the bbc a couple of days ago and apparently this oil spill doesn't even make it into the top 40 worst man-made disasters (e.g compare to bhopal, chernobyl, pacific gyre) The Niger Delta sees this volume of oil spilled EVERY SINGLE YEAR and no-one gives a fuck. No-one is held to account, there's no press, there's no nothing. The culprits are all the major US/European oil firms.
- fserb 16y ago
  I agree with your Niger Delta comment, but not with your 2nd point. It really comes down to defining what "worst" means and I'm not sure is that simple to compare all those completely unique disasters (and it's even harder to put the pacific gyre - I assume you're talking about the garbage patch - on the same category as bhopal/chernobyl) specially when you consider the probable long term effects they might have. Regarding your 1st point, I think the different shades of black on the map reflect the density. Even though we still don't know what a 'light grey' or 'black' looks like in practice.
  - retube 16y ago
    I agree with you that quantifying the size of a disaster is difficult. But I would say that rendering a 1000 square miles of land utterly uninhabitable for generations probably beats the damage caused to the US coast (Chernobyl). Or that 500,000 people rendered severely ill with long-term respiratory and realted health problems, thousands of deaths, premature babies with congenital defects, the destruction of farming land and poisoning of water for decades also probably tops Deepwater Horizon (Bhopal) And guess what? Union carbide still haven't cleaned it up over 25 years later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
    - angusgr 16y ago
      This is an interesting one, because I think you're entirely right. The tough question I see is this: would exaggerating, downplaying or relativising the severity of the BP Spill increase or decrease the chances of more catastrophes like Chernobyl & Bhopal? The prospect of continuing abuses by oil companies in poorer parts of the world? Would it increase or decrease the chances of catastrophes like those being dealt with and cleaned up? I'm not wording those questions like I know the answer, cos I really don't. Optimistically, I try to hope that more environmental awareness is always a good thing.
koops 16y ago
Give the subjunctive some love: "If It Were My Home"
castis 16y ago
Not to try and get downvoted and not saying this isn't an absolutely shitty situation for the gulf but this thing cant really take into consideration elevations and/or valleys where the oil would rest and not spread. Then again I don't think google maps can do something like that and/or was never intended to do so.

49 points by angusgr 16y ago

(Sorry if this was submitted already.) The genius I see here is that the relative size of a large area is really hard for people to actually understand. Until you show it relative to something they know intuitively (like where they live.)

pyre 16y ago

When I click "Put it back in the gulf," the size of the oil spill shrinks. When I click "Put it in Portland, OR, USA," it grows again. I don't think that the map scale has changed, because slider doesn't move. {edit} Is this just a by-product of mapping the surface of a sphere to a rectangle?

ugh 16y ago
It’s a by-product of the projection Google Maps uses. Try “congo” and then “greenland” (and then never trust maps again :). This is actually another good reason to use a tool like this. Projections distort.
- tjr 16y ago
  Wow. Putting it in the "arctic ocean" is pretty interesting too.
nhebb 16y ago
Is this just a by-product of mapping the surface of a sphere to a rectangle? Yeah, it's called a Mercator Projection. If you look at the "Uses" section of the Wikipedia page [1] it gives a good example of the magnitude of distortion between Greenland and Africa. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

dice 16y ago

I zoomed out so that I could see the entire Earth, which is where I live. Looks pretty small on that scale.

angusgr 16y ago
Um, you can see it on the surface of the entire earth. How many other man-made things can you see at that scale? At a small enough scale, even pretty small is pretty big.
nuxi 16y ago
The area covers my whole country and then some. Although small compared to whole Earth, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't enjoy having the spill as a next-door neighbour.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Good thing it's out in the sea, then.
pyre 16y ago
If you consider the total human population of the Earth, a single murder is pretty insignificant. We probably should stop prosecuting people for murder...

retube 16y ago

At the risk of getting downvoted, and I'm not saying the oil spill isn't bad - it is (very) - but let's remember some context: 1) The area is large. But this is meaningless without knowledge of the density. 2) I can't find a reference, but a prof of marine biology was on the bbc a couple of days ago and apparently this oil spill doesn't even make it into the top 40 worst man-made disasters (e.g compare to bhopal, chernobyl, pacific gyre) The Niger Delta sees this volume of oil spilled EVERY SINGLE YEAR and no-one gives a fuck. No-one is held to account, there's no press, there's no nothing. The culprits are all the major US/European oil firms.

fserb 16y ago
I agree with your Niger Delta comment, but not with your 2nd point. It really comes down to defining what "worst" means and I'm not sure is that simple to compare all those completely unique disasters (and it's even harder to put the pacific gyre - I assume you're talking about the garbage patch - on the same category as bhopal/chernobyl) specially when you consider the probable long term effects they might have. Regarding your 1st point, I think the different shades of black on the map reflect the density. Even though we still don't know what a 'light grey' or 'black' looks like in practice.
- retube 16y ago
  I agree with you that quantifying the size of a disaster is difficult. But I would say that rendering a 1000 square miles of land utterly uninhabitable for generations probably beats the damage caused to the US coast (Chernobyl). Or that 500,000 people rendered severely ill with long-term respiratory and realted health problems, thousands of deaths, premature babies with congenital defects, the destruction of farming land and poisoning of water for decades also probably tops Deepwater Horizon (Bhopal) And guess what? Union carbide still haven't cleaned it up over 25 years later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
  - angusgr 16y ago
    This is an interesting one, because I think you're entirely right. The tough question I see is this: would exaggerating, downplaying or relativising the severity of the BP Spill increase or decrease the chances of more catastrophes like Chernobyl & Bhopal? The prospect of continuing abuses by oil companies in poorer parts of the world? Would it increase or decrease the chances of catastrophes like those being dealt with and cleaned up? I'm not wording those questions like I know the answer, cos I really don't. Optimistically, I try to hope that more environmental awareness is always a good thing.

koops 16y ago

Give the subjunctive some love: "If It Were My Home"

castis 16y ago

Not to try and get downvoted and not saying this isn't an absolutely shitty situation for the gulf but this thing cant really take into consideration elevations and/or valleys where the oil would rest and not spread. Then again I don't think google maps can do something like that and/or was never intended to do so.