DailyDirt: Drill, Baby, Drill!

Hindsight makes it easy to criticize decisions that were made that, in retrospect, seem foolish. The word 'tsunami' was coined by the Japanese, and yet a nuclear power plant apparently wasn't designed to fully withstand one (and an associated earthquake). Lots of folks have asked: "How could they not see this coming?" But it's not that simple, and a nuclear power plant isn't the only energy facility that can devastate the environment. Let's not forget the BP Oil Spill. As a reminder, here are some interesting links about the Gulf of Mexico and the still-unfolding aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

• The full effect of the BP Oil Spill may not be known for about a decade...? It also took several years to determine the environmental effects of the Exxon Valdez spill, and there's a lot of oil on the seafloor even though the surface oil has dissipated. [url]
• The Gulf's seafloor seems to be covered in "microbial spit" and oil -- a combination of bacterial slime that helps microbes digest the oil. This slime has also been described as an "invertebrate graveyard." [url]
• Here's a map of the Gulf of Mexico and where all the active offshore oil well platforms are located. There are thousands of wells and about 43,000 miles of pipeline in the Gulf. [url]
• Earlier this year, over 70 dead dolphins (including baby dolphins) washed up along the Gulf Coast. Autopsies might point to a cause, but it seems suspicious that the baby dolphins were conceived just before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.... [url]
• As a nice gesture, BP has created a very pleasant (perhaps too pleasant?) photo gallery of the US beaches around the Gulf of Mexico. Interestingly, BP also includes some altered images in its gallery, for transparency sake. [url]
• To discover more stuff on alternative energy, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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