Wednesday, May 26, 2010

spill, baby, spill.

i just got back from a beyond awesome beach wedding and the best beach week probably ever. if you havent noticed with the post about dudus in jamaica, hanging around beaches and reggae for a week has definitely influenced my posts.

as i was chilling with multitudes of awesome people and basking in the beauty of rodanthe's beaches, i couldnt help but wonder about the bp oil spill. after combing the internet to learn more about it, i came across a few gems i thought id share.

as usual, some of the best info was in infographics. my favorite was at visual economics, but crude awakening (by zmgraphics for inforgraphicworld) was pretty awesome too. i also got some pretty good perspective from vizworld's biggest oil spills graphic. for a little more perspective, one of the most infamous oil spills, the exxon valdez, was about 40,000 tonnes, which ranks below 50th in the world's biggest spills.

so why is it so infamous? well the economist nails it as usual in spill, baby, spill, explaining that since oil is biodegradable, what matters most is where the spill is, because that determines its effects before the oil biodegrades.

also awesome, we both came up with the same witty titles for our material independently. true story.

edit: oh hey, one more little tidbit! theres a bit of a buzz surrounding the oil pollution act of 1990, but lemme clear a couple two three things up for you with bit about oil spills, tort law and libertarianism. quick summary... the law only limits a specific kind of "strict" liability at the federal level to $75 million, so the true liability for bp is theoretically unlimited, as it should be.

ill try get this up as a video as soon as its posted. oh zing, here it is...



edit again: this is awesome.

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