Robert Ariail for October 09, 2014

I have relatives on the Gulf Coast, harley. The fishing is shot, the beaches have a layer of oil below the surface, and tourism dropped like a rock.

The shrimp festival is there. It already has sponsors. As a matter of fact, Golf Shores, Alabama is having the shrimp festival this weekend. Perhaps you should go. You may learn something.

I wonder if any of these people know what the Koch brothers do. I suspect that they don’t.

As to the ONshore drilling for oil and gas; folks should take a flight that passes over Farmington N.M., and note the miles and miles of roads, and vast acreage taken up by drill pads for gas production, that are scarred essentially permanently within our lifetimes as habitat for humans as well as wildlife, or vegetation. That doesn’t even touch the acres of range in Montana, Utah, and elsewhere where fracking fluids have poisoned streams and grazing lands. Then there’s the oil spills from production, and especially from pipeline leaks.

Leasing on federal land btw is NOT “down”, and production is the result of companies choosing not to impliment existing leases, not a lack of leasing.

Try reading National Geographic instead of a repeatedly disproved blogger.

Umm, you realize the was about one fishery and conservationists’ efforts to stop overfishing? Conservation began well before the Deepwater Horizon spill. Red Snapper can live up to 57 years, but the population of young fish is down. Those young fish are smaller & less healthy than normal. The complex truth is we still don’t know how great the long term impact on red snappers will be. Of course, that is only one species in the Gulf. Many others species are are seeing more immediate & drastic effects.

Your article claims that natural seepage equal to perhaps twice the Exxon Valdez spill occurs naturally, each year. The Exxon Valdez spilled about 500,000 barrels of oil. These natural seeps occur over a wide area. Exxon Valdez was a major story, because the spill occurred in a constricted body of water.Deepwater Horizon spewed 10 times that amount, in a small area.It hasn’t turned out to be the utter catastrophe that some predicted, but the impacts have already been significant. We have no idea what the long term effects will be. It’s highly doubtful that the Gulf could endure spills the size of Deepwater Horizon, without horrible results.It seems pretty foolish to pretend otherwise, unless you are getting paid by the oil industry to convince the gullible that we need to roll back regulations designed to prevent a repeat.

Watch your accusations. Where do you live? On the other side? My family is in Pensacola, which got whacked.Here’s what Pensacola’s OWN WEBSITE said about the spill hurting tourism:http://www.visitpensacola.com/professional/media/news/bp-oil-spill-and-escambia-county-tourism-crisis-and-recoveryHere’s an article from APRIL talking about tar balls still washing up: http://www.pnj.com/story/local/environment/2014/04/20/four-years-after-bp-oil-spill-the-hurt-doesnt-go-away/7923145/You might also want to read the National Geographic article I posted.I await your apology.

I eat Gulf shrimp regularly, Ahab. Here on our planet, “Earth”, we’ve been enjoying it for several years.

Probably. But it gives me satisfaction to provide facts where others have merely smoke.

Those who believe the oil companies are the same ones who just KNEW the tobacco industry was the “good guys”, and smoking cigarettes were first good for you, and when decades of research proved they well, weren’t, and caused cancer, the inustry public relations people kept sales up by denials of the research as “unscientific” and there was no proof the public should believe.

BTW, those exact same PR people are the ones hired today to debunk anthropogenic climate change is a fraud by the “energy” industries, and believed by “deniers” in the public ignorance base.