What a downer:

Coast Guard officials say an oil rig that exploded Tuesday off the coast of Louisiana could be spilling thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Officials previously had said the environmental damage appeared minimal, but when the rig sank Thursday that changed. The Coast Guard says the Deepwater Horizon carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel and could spill as much as 8,000 barrels of crude a day.

UPDATE: Q13 Fox News sez: “This got us wondering: Will this have us paying at the pump? So far, the answer is ‘no.'”

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

18 replies on “Happy Earth Day!”

  1. The oil slick is one mile wide by five miles long.

    It’s OK, though, the Gulf is already pretty much dead thanks to the top four feet of Iowa being spread across it, laden with pesticides and fertilizer, courtesy of the Mississippi River.

  4. “Ya know, I care about my carbon footprint, but most people out there are making carbon snow angels! (flaps arms for empathsis). Ya know Earth Day? It was last week? Hilarious! Earth gets one day. The other 364 we’re crankin’ the A.C. in our Hummer, and then one day a year… ooo we seperate the plastic. Ha. Ya know what I think? I think … See Morethat once we die out… ahh in a couple hundred years, Earth is gonna have a People Day. Ya know to remember us. One day a year she is gonna laugh and laugh and shake our bones.”
    -Hippie Alpha, Dollhouse S.1, Ep.11

  6. I like it. It’s really bad press for those rigs. Obama opened up a bunch of protected land saying they are safe.

    WRONG.

  12. I find it pretty – what? distasteful? – that in the shadow of a huge ecological disaster someone’s first thought would be, “Is this going to increase the cost of gasoline?”

    Fnarf’s right. The Gulf is a wasteland. A lot of the Gulf coast stinks to high heaven. And it’s not just Iowa, Fnarf. Texas has been boxing up toxic shit and sinking it about a mile off its coast for years. Some maps even show the toxic dump areas.

  13. Volkswagen’s Autonomous Car: Drivers Unneccesary

    http://technologizer.com/2010/04/16/volk…

    “On Thursday afternoon, I went for a very short ride–maybe forty yards–in the back seat of a diesel Volkswagen Passat. Here’s why I’m writing about it on a site called Technologizer: The car had no driver. I was attending the formal dedication of the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab (VAIL) at Stanford University–complete with a ceremonial ribbon cutting by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The car in question was Junior 3, a collaborative effort between VW and Stanford researchers.”

    SLOG will like this…it’s started off by an iPhone!

  14. Anyone else starting to realize there really wasn’t that much difference between Obama and McCain at this point? Dill baby drill, war war war and keep those queers out of the miliatry.

    Yeah that hope thing isn’t working out all that great.

    Onward to financial reform!!! HA HA HA HA !!!!

  15. Nobody is starting to realize that Cato, because there’s virtually no difference between Obama the Candidate’s policies on Energy, War, and DADT and Obama the President’s policies on those things. Everyone else realized that the President’s policy on energy differed substantially from McCain’s, and even moreso from Palin’s.
    Everyone else also understands that the intellectual gap between Obama and McCain is such that while McCain would likely barrel forward in his drilling plans after news like this, Obama will almost certainly use it as an excuse to delay any offshore drilling until “technology improves”

  16. Haha, I’m just kidding Cato. There are tons of stupid, childish, and irrational idealistic idiots like you out there. Don’t fret!

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