Rush Limbaugh – smarter than ten thousand ecology PhDs

Back when BP’s oil was spouting into the gulf of Mexico, Rush told us:

“The beach will fix itself”

“More oil spilled every year in Africa, in Nigeria, than so far in the Gulf, so it’s not unique. It’s not exceptional. It’s not the largest. Mexico had a spill that larger than this, nobody talks about except apparently me”

And behold:  The beach has fixed itself.

The reason that BP was drilling there in the first place is that giant oil plumes occur naturally from time to time in that location– not as big as this one, but comparable. There is an entire ancient oil eating ecology naturally present in the gulf

This supposed crisis is akin to the supposedly horrifying crisis of the radioactive boy scout – any man made radiation is deemed ten gazillion times worse than naturally occurring sources of radiation, and any man released oil is deemed ten gazillion times worse than naturally occurring sources of oil.

Just as the soil is full of living creatures things that turn dead leaves into compost, the Gulf of Mexico is full of living creatures that turn oil into asphalt. The asphalt sinks to the bottom, and eventually gets buried in mud. It appears that sea creatures ate most of the released oil, and cleanup crews collected only a tiny portion. No doubt it was rough on those sea creatures that cannot eat oil, which all the cute charismatic creatures from seagulls to crabs cannot, but nature is rough whether humans meddle or not.

And while the cute charismatic creatures had a hard time for a while, now the oil is gone.