Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_OIL_SPILL_LINGERS

Feb 19, 3:47 PM EST

Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

3:52 p.m. Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A University of Georgia scientist has gone public with video and slides showing how oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The images demonstrate that the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

At a science conference in Washington, Samantha Joye aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling critters.

At the same meeting Saturday, federal officials announced the start of the gulf restoration planning process that BP will pay for.

http://www.marsci.uga.edu/FacultyPages/Joye/research/cold_seeps.htm

[onehandle]

1. Science has a liberal bias. nt

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. (Just like reality)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/04/30/206303/-Re-Improved-Colbert-transcript-%28now-with-complete-text-of-Colbert-Thomas-video!%29

Does that mean Science is Reality?

[Hydra]

3. Naw, Science couldn't be reality...

...That would mean we'd have to follow it in order to survive...

Oh, crap...

[HCE SuiGeneris]

4. Not a lot of news coverage on this. Gee, I guess it's no big deal

:grr:

The fucking fourth estate is not only remiss, it has swung over to become our enemy.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. Not decimated, annihilated.

Decimated reduces by 1/10th.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Decimation is closer

While the original meaning of decimation involved a tenth, today’s usage is not as precise:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimated
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/decimated
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/decimate#Usage_notes

…

Usage notes

The definition reduce by one in ten is occasionally cited as "the correct" definition, with severely reduce considered a "misconception," reading decimate as to reduce to one-tenth rather than by one-tenth.

The Cambridge Guide to English Usage states that the nonspecific use of this word to mean devastate or severely reduce the numbers of is ‘nowadays the commonest use of the word in both British and American English, and it’s registered without comment in modern dictionaries.’ It also advises against using numbers with the term, as ‘They are redundant where it means “reduce by one tenth,” and where it doesn't they confound the arithmetic.’

The http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=decimate">23 occurrences of decimate in the British National Corpus — compare decimates, decimated, and decimating — almost all clearly accord with the nonspecific sense. The only references to the historical sense are two complaints about modern usage and its critics. Neither of these actually uses the term to mean "reduce by one-tenth".

…

;-)


Annihilation, on the other hand, is the complete destruction. (nihil — nothing.)

[AtheistCrusader]

9. I wonder how they would have stated

reduced TO one-tenth, instead of reducing BY 1/10th.

[hatrack]

6. Wow, you mean the oil didn't just magically go away?

What a shocker!!

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Live @ AAAS - Samantha Joye on BP Oilspill Impact (Transcript)

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/live-aaas---samantha-joye-on-bp-.html