

If It Was My Home (Oil spill visualization) - angusgr
http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/

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retube
At the risk of getting downvoted, and I'm not saying the oil spill isn't bad -
it is (very) - but let's remember some context:

1) The area is large. But this is meaningless without knowledge of the
density.

2) I can't find a reference, but a prof of marine biology was on the bbc a
couple of days ago and apparently this oil spill doesn't even make it into the
top 40 worst man-made disasters (e.g compare to bhopal, chernobyl, pacific
gyre)

The Niger Delta sees this volume of oil spilled EVERY SINGLE YEAR and no-one
gives a fuck. No-one is held to account, there's no press, there's no nothing.
The culprits are all the major US/European oil firms.

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hugh3
More relevant than the comparison to other disasters is the list of largest
oil spills:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spills#Largest_oil_spills>

on which it is currently somewhere between third and sixteenth, depending on
which estimate you believe. The point being that if the ecosystem recovered
from all these other oil spills (most of which you've never heard of) then
it'll recover from this one too. If you want to worry about something, worry
about overfishing in the oceans instead.

Besides, hasn't there been a shocking lack of photogenic oil-drenched wildlife
washing up on beaches? Anyone know what the deal is with that?

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pyre
Tighter controls over the media? Did they have no-fly zones and tightly
restricted waters during the Exxon Valdez spill?

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hugh3
The entire coastline is free and populated... I haven't seen any pictures of
dead wildlife or even oil on land yet.

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pyre
There was a story[1] posted to HN last week with oil-covered animals and oil
on land. I don't remember of there were any dead animals though.

[1]
[http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisia...](http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html)

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pyre
When I click "Put it back in the gulf," the size of the oil spill shrinks.
When I click "Put it in Portland, OR, USA," it grows again. I don't think that
the map scale has changed, because slider doesn't move.

{edit} Is this just a by-product of mapping the surface of a sphere to a
rectangle?

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ugh
It’s a by-product of the projection Google Maps uses.

Try “congo” and then “greenland” (and then never trust maps again :).

This is actually another good reason to use a tool like this. Projections
distort.

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tjr
Wow. Putting it in the "arctic ocean" is pretty interesting too.

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koops
Give the subjunctive some love: "If It _Were_ My Home"

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angusgr
(Sorry if this was submitted already.)

The genius I see here is that the relative size of a large area is really hard
for people to actually understand. Until you show it relative to something
they know intuitively (like where they live.)

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castis
Not to try and get downvoted and not saying this isn't an absolutely shitty
situation for the gulf but this thing cant really take into consideration
elevations and/or valleys where the oil would rest and not spread. Then again
I don't think google maps can do something like that and/or was never intended
to do so.

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dice
I zoomed out so that I could see the entire Earth, which is where I live.
Looks pretty small on that scale.

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nuxi
The area covers my whole country and then some. Although small compared to
whole Earth, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't enjoy having the spill as a next-
door neighbour.

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hugh3
Good thing it's out in the sea, then.

