Posted 6/21/2010 05:24:00 PM by Douglas

The leak in the Gulf continues, and the drive to come up with the dumbest way to quantify the leak's quantity spills out from journalist's iMacs faster than oil from the seabed.

A little mathematical context to the spill size can put the environmental catastrophe in perspective. Viewing it through some lenses, it isn't that huge. The Mississippi River pours as much water into the Gulf of Mexico in 38 seconds as the BP oil leak has done in two months.

On a more human scale, the spill seems more daunting. Take the average-sized living room. The amount of oil spilled would fill 9,200 of them.

Since the BP oil rig exploded on April 20, about 125 million gallons of oil has gushed into the Gulf. That calculation is based on the higher end of the government's range of barrels leaked per day and the oil company BP's calculations for the amount of oil siphoned off. Using the more optimistic end of calculations, the total spill figure is just over 66 million gallons.

For every gallon of oil that BP's well has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, there is more than 5 billion gallons of water already in it. And the mighty Mississippi adds another billion gallons every five minutes or so, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Well when you put it that way. . . . One part per five billion of oil. . . in the entire Gulf. What could go wrong?

Some more bullshit comparisons:

More not-so-dreadful context: The amount of oil spilled so far could only fill the cavernous New Orleans Superdome about one-seventh of the way up. On the other hand, it could fill 15 Washington Monuments. If the oil were poured on a football field — complete with endzones — it would measure nearly 100 yards high.

If you put the oil in gallon milk jugs and lined them up, they would stretch about 10,800 miles. That's a roundtrip from the Gulf to London, BP's headquarters, and a side trip from New Orleans to Washington for Hayward to testify.

This is getting ridiculous.