The Encyclopedia Brittanica estimates the surface of the Gulf of Mexico to be 1,550,000 km2 that is 1,550,000,000,000 m2 The maximum depth of the Gulf is 5203 m. The average depth is somewhere between 0 and that value. 1/4 of the the maximum depth is about 1300 m. Multiplying 1,550,000,000,000 m2 x 1300m = 2.015 x 10 E 15 m3 or 5.3 X 10 E 17 US Gallons (give or take 1223gallons) or about 650 Quadrillion gallons (650,000,000,000,000,000)according to Wikianswers It's 643 Quadrillion gallons according to the EPA's official site. AP Reports...A federal oil spill task force says about 172 million gallons of crude made it out in the Gulf of Mexico after the well blew out. The estimate Monday is smaller than a previous one saying the busted well leaked as much as 184 million gallons. The group says about 206 million gallons total gushed out of the mile-deep well between the April 11 rig explosion and July 15. That's when engineers placed a temporary cap on the leaking well. But the fleet of boats and other efforts were able to contain more than 33 million gallons. The task force says its estimate is the most accurate to date. It has a margin of error of about 10 percentage points.
Doing the rough math, with some rounding... 206,000,000 divided by 650,000,000,000,000,000 = 1 gallon of oil was spilled for every 3 Billion gallons of water in the Gulf. Let us look at the gulf as a bath tub. If we estimate that your bathtub hold 75 gallons of water, then the the oil is the equivalent of 1/4,000,000 of a gallon in your tub. Since there are about 90,000 drops of water in a gallon of water, the oil spill is equivalent to roughly 1.5 drops of oil in your bathtub.
Maybe that is why the government is saying..........The “vast majority” of crude from BP Plc’s damaged Gulf of Mexico well is gone and the rest is being broken down by waves and bacteria, reducing the threat of further pollution from the largest maritime oil spill, White House energy adviser Carol Browner said.
Just sayin'....that's a whole lotta math goin' on......
ReplyDeleteIdiotic math that is. Since the oil did not disperse evenly throughout the Gulf there is no point of comparing the amount spilled to the total volume of the Gulf. I thought you conservatives were friends of business. Why don't you go tell the folks along the gulf coast whose businesses have been impacted that they are complaining about the equivalent of a drop of oil in a bathtub. Do the pictures of oil washed ashore and in the wetlands look like the equivalent of a few drops?
ReplyDeleteNo one said there was no impact.What I am talking about is the amount. As the title says.. Just Sayin.....
ReplyDeleteIt is the government that is stating that it is gone..
And it is the government that is causing some of the "impact" with the moratorium.
And there is oil residue in seafloor sediments that comes from natural petroleum seeps.
According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ....
natural oil seeps account for about 50 percent of oil that ends up in the coastal environment. That's five times as much oil as is delivered by accidental spills. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/While+oil+gently+seeps+from+the+seafloor:+natural+leaks+into+the...-a0217042193