Ah, media!
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126,000 gallons of oil escaped a ruptured gs line, a rupture caused by a ship anchoring in a prohibited area, and the media was ll over it: “Massive Oil Spill threatens ecological disaster”.
How big is this spill? It isn’t. Exxon Valdez, the 54th largest reported oil spill ever, released 11 million gallons of oil, the Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf, 134 million. The LA Times actually put the spill into perspective, the rest of the media went with hysteria, just as it does with COVID, demonstrations at the Capitol, and everything else it touches.
The full scope of this weekend's oil spill in Orange County remains unclear. But the leak of at least 126,000 gallons of crude oil is one of the largest in recent years in California. However, the size is still far less than several other catastrophic spills in the state and elsewhere.
Oil from the spill reached some marshes and wetland areas Sunday. A day later, it was moving south toward the sensitive coves around Laguna Beach.
The overall impact is still hard to assess at this point. [So far, one dead duck has been reported-FWIW] But the amount of dumped oil is still only a small fraction of the worst spills in history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been tracking spills since a 1969 Santa Barbara incident.
But people hear, and read headlines, and rarely go beyond them, even on the rare instance when full details re provided. I decide to post on this this morning after hearing on a radio “new roundup” that “a massive oil spill of 126,000 gallons has occurred off the California coast”. Period, on to the next story. And I see to myself, “self, how ‘massive’ is 126,000 gal. compared to the big spills?” Not too many consumers of MSM do that, I don’t think.
