I’m going to add this to the top of last night’s post rather than start a new one, mainly to preserve the comment thread. This is about the potential for an extinction event that is being discussed various places on the Internet; that event would be related to a giant methane bubble under the Gulf of Mexico that could rupture and create a mass die-off, as has happened at other times in geological (very very long) history.
For the past couple of years I’ve written for The Ecologist about another kind of extinction event — dioxin. One psychological advantage that I have is that since the early 1990s I’ve addressed global contamination with compounds that are indeed, actually killing many people prematurely, and are wrought with denial and lies.
What BP and the government are doing sounds entirely familiar and I am accustomed to the psychology of the deception, profit motive and legal/mental/media maneuvering.
I know from too much personal experience that the TV, newspapers, corporate PR departments and government officials are capable of spewing absolute total lies, then accusing anyone who doesn’t believe their lies of being crazy. (This is part of the story of why I am an astrologer, rather than working every day an environmental investigative reporter. If I’m going to do something that some people think is crazy, I may as well have more fun, be appreciated for my work and make a good living at it along the way.)
BP and the US government would be doing all of that without an extinction event on the horizon. Even your average normal worst ecological disaster in the world, or the 10th worst, would have them all scurrying like pigeons, shredding their memos and having lawyers cut up the bananas on their breakfast cereal, to make sure they don’t incur any additional liability.
Anyway this morning my former editor at The Ecologist, Pat Thomas, saw our discussion here and sent me this article, which she rated as a decent piece of writing on the methane issue.