Here I was, sitting at my desk trying to articulate for our readers how frustrating it is that no-one has really measured the amount of oil spilled off of the Gulf of Mexico in the last few weeks (one of the PR mistakes in this disaster), but I thought I’d point to another blog about this very same topic, which illustrates the exact point that bothers me.

Felix Salmon, a writer with Reuters, puts it perfectly when he says “So let’s get down there and measure this thing” since no-one has really reported a true figure of barrels of oil spilled.

Felix asks “Why release a point estimate? Well, if the NOAA had released a range — say 3,000 to 30,000 barrels a day — then the press would have gravitated to the higher number, and talked about a spill of “as much as 30,000 barrels a day” – which, true to his thoughts, is exactly what the media is going to do.

No matter which way you flip it, this is all very, very bad. And a difference of a couple of zeros isn’t going to change public perception that someone needs to pay for this accident.

See Felix’s piece:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/05/14/lies-damn-lies-and-oil-spill-statistics.