10 May 2010

How big is the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?

How big is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?  When you are on the floor of the ocean it may be hard to get a real idea.  Use the links here to find out just how big it is - it will astonish you.  You only have to look at the map above to get an idea.

As you no dount know, on April 20th, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon left kicked off what could become the greatest environmental catastrophe of our - and any - time.  There are to this date 17 workers injured and 11 missing, and presumed dead.

An immense human tragedy but overshadowed by the amount of oil that is coming out of the disaster area.  Oil surging from a well ober five thousand feet below sea level.  Imagine your hosepipe pinched at the end and you can imagine the discharge of over 200,000 gallons of crude oil a day coming from the site.

From these sites you can compare the area to other places in the world, in terms of land mass.

Of course, private estimates put the figure at closer to two million gallons a day. The spill covers at least almost three hundred thousand square miles of ocean surface.The old son The Earth Dies Screaming  may now be applicable to the oceans too.

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17 April 2010

Don't Jump Off The Roof!

High up on the Empire State Building a lone figure stands.  Another poor soul prepares to shuffle off their mortal coil by leaping from the ledge.  Or are they?

Anthony Gormley’s latest piece of public art is causing a stir in New York City.  Event Horizon, as it is known, consists of his trademark life-sized figures, thirty one of them in total.  The only problem is that people keep mistaking them for suicide jumpers and call the police.

In some respects you can’t blame those who look up, catch a glimpse of ‘someone’ perched on a ledge and panic.  After all, it is human nature to try and help someone in peril, especially if it only involves notifying the authorities and not actually doing anything else yourself!

However, the NYPD is not terribly amused by Gormley’s latest attempt to provoke thought and discussion.  Since the statues have been erected they have been inundated with calls about the potential jumpers.

Each call has to be investigated and this is wasting a lot of police time.  Ironically, when the installation’s home was the capital of England, London, there were no such calls to the emergency services.

Perhaps that is because the buildings in London are smaller and people could more easily see that these figures are in fact statues.  Or is it that New Yorkers are in such a hurry they don’t look twice but still do the right thing and call the police to report yet another would-be suicide shuffling towards the edge of another tall building?

Just in case you haven't seen one close up, here is one of the Gormley statues with its feet firmly on the ground in Madison Square Garden.