|
it's an interesting question, isn't it? i'll use numbers to keep things separate. plus i like numbering things. anyway
1. there's the question of bp's information control strategies. that they are not forthcoming about the rates of oil has the effect of corroding their credibility. this in turn has the effect of making their media control operations more evident to the extent that their refusal to provide this information is a running demonstration of their lack of transparency.
2. there's a more abstract matter that's linked to the matter of fines. bp is to pay something on the order of 3500/barrel leaked in fines alone. so they have every interest in lowballing. the problem is that because of the regulatory set-up (thanks dick cheney)---again---the system is geared around corporate self-reporting. so there's no independent verification of the amounts that are leaking.
3. it would be of considerable utility in terms of forecasting rates and implications of the oil as it moves around the gulf killing shit were any of us in the position of making such forecasts.
4. but really i think the rate is part of a kind of cognitive matter for alot of folk, myself included. look at the feeds. i keep finding myself saying that i can watch without seeing them. i take in the visual data but i don't have frames to put it into often. i see what look like considerable clouds of oil continually spilling into the water that looks like an abstract blue-ish curtain. i see it from a strange angle, at a distance i am not sure of, and sometimes there's a mechanical arm in front of me.
i think in that context, which is maybe the one we share (maybe because i have a perverse affection for the platform that lets me see all the rov feeds at once and you may not share that) having a number or sense of the flow into the water is mostly a device that allows you to put what you are watching somewhere, into some kind of scale. not that it makes things easier to see (as opposed to watch). but that's a reason i think folk want to know.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|