At last some balance on the affect of the oil spill from the MV Rena:
Professor David Schiel, one of the Southern Hemisphere’s top ecologists thinks we’re over-hyping things:
So far I think that the marine environment will cope very well with it . . .
I think there’s very much to hope for, for the locals and for the nation in terms of this so far that it doesn’t turn into an ecological disaster. . .
It’s not as these things go a great deal of oil, but it’s a very big ocean . . .
It’s dose dependent so if you get a lot of oil in a little space and it gets confined for a while without getting dispersed the effects are going to be much larger than if it disperses widely, gets pushed out to sea, the oil weathers and it moves across the sea surface and some of it sinks.
Once it sinks micro-organisms help break it down, converting it so that the eco-system can accomodate it.
So far it’s not as bad as it could have been and if things go as plan, they get the fuel oil off that vessel and it’s a straight forward boat salvage operation we should be okay.
No oil spill is good and this one could harm the economy.
But the combination of the clean-up effort by people and nature means – at least yet – this is not the ecological catastrophe we’ve been told it is.
The only way this will harm the economy is if people go into hysterics – on the scale of oil spills it is tiny, a temporary nuisance that’s all.
It is politically useful to beat it up and that is what will cause economic damage, which I’m sure the Greens and the Labour Party would relish if it gave them political power.
And Nick Smith claiming it was “New Zealand’s worst ecological disaster” ….. That was foolishness beyond belief. What was required from him was calm confident leadership not hyperbole.
The potential spill could have been worse as a little birdy told me the Rena had tankage for 4500 tonnes of HFO.
A small mercy i suppose.
It’s really hurt Key’s chances at the election, Ele! 50% of people who voted for Key in the last election say they won’t vote for him this time, according to the just-released RadioLive poll.
Fifty per cent!!!
Yikes, Tories!
Action stations!
You really live in a world of your own don’t you Robert Guyton.
Meanwhile back on planet earth ……..
Given the Greens propensity to astroturf and lie I immediately tracked down the poll..
http://www.3news.co.nz/Voters-swing-from-National-after-Rena-disaster/tabid/419/articleID/230207/Default.aspx
According to the Horizon poll.. the most notoriously inaccurate pollster we have, just 11% would change their vote as a result of the spill, and that translates to 3% nationwide.. within normal monthly poll variation as we saw with the Roy Morgan poll a couple of days ago where National went up 4%, Labour down 4% and Greens down significantly as well.
JC
Good for you JC – I should have checked online, after hearing on RadioLive that 50% of those who voted National last time, said this time around, they wouldn’t. Not lying, not astroturfing.
Given though, that you say the Hoprizon poll is ‘notoriously inaccurate’, my 50% claim might be right on the button
“A RadioLIVE/HorizonPoll survey found just over half of those who backed the party in 2008, 50.3 percent, believe it could have done more to prevent oil spilling from the ship and polluting the environment.”
Perhaps this is where I went wrong.