{"id":570006,"date":"2010-05-19T08:22:44","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T12:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=25292"},"modified":"2010-05-19T08:22:44","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T12:22:44","slug":"brit-hume-shrugs-off-bp-disaster-%e2%80%98where-is-the-oil%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/570006","title":{"rendered":"Brit Hume shrugs off BP disaster: \u2018Where is the oil?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Fox News anchor Brit Hume scoffed at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering, \u201cWhere is the oil?\u201d\u00a0 I guess he’s using the same playbook as BP’s Tony ‘Soprano<\/a>‘ Hayward.\u00a0 TP has the story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/span>Hume followed the lead of Rush Limbaugh and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), who have been aggressively downplaying the disaster<\/a> and bristling at comparisons to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. During the Fox News Sunday roundtable, Hume dismissed the expert analysis that many times more oil<\/a> have spilled already than the Exxon Valdez disaster, a point raised by fellow panelist Juan Williams:<\/p>\n

\n

WILLIAMS: First of all, don\u2019t you think, this spill now is going to be in excess of what happened with Exxon Valdez.<\/p>\n

HUME: Let\u2019s see if that happens. There\u2019s a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil?<\/strong><\/p>\n

WILLIAMS: \u201cWhere is the oil?\u201d<\/p>\n

HUME: It\u2019s not on \u2014 except for little of chunks of it, you\u2019re not even seeing it on the shore yet.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Watch it:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Independent experts, using both surface and subsea estimates, believe the vast sea of oil gushing from multiple leaks on the seabed surpassed the Exxon Valdez weeks ago<\/a>. \u201cScientists are finding enormous oil plumes<\/a> in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.\u201d \u201cThe millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos<\/a>, and scientists have no answer to the question of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out. \u201d<\/p>\n

The slick on the surface of the Gulf is now about 4,922 square miles<\/a>, larger than Los Angeles County<\/a>, Delaware, or Rhode Island. On the surface, oil contamination has reached the barrier<\/a> islands<\/a> of Louisiana<\/a>, Mississippi<\/a>, Alabama<\/a>, and Florida<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After Hume repeated the \u201cnatural seepage<\/a>\u201d talking point to falsely imply the oil industry\u2019s catastrophic record of spills is unimportant, he then mirrored Rush Limbaugh\u2019s argument that \u201cThe ocean will take care of this on its own<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n

\n

WILLIAMS: But I think it will damage the environment in the gulf and damage tourism and damage fishing. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any question this is in excess of anything we\u2019ve previously asked the ocean to absorb.<\/p>\n

HUME: We\u2019ll see if it is. We\u2019ll see if it is. The ocean absorbs a lot, Juan, an awful lot. The ocean absorbs a lot<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

WILLIAMS: I think Rush Limbaugh went down this road, \u201cThe ocean can handle it.\u201d I think we have to take some responsibility for the environment and be responsible to people who live in the area, vacation in that area, fish in that area. It\u2019s just wrong to think, \u201cYou know what? Dump it on the ocean and let the ocean handle it.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

HUME: Who said that? Who is saying that? No one\u2019s making that argument<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nearly two weeks ago, Gulf Coast marine scientists told ThinkProgress they \u201cshudder to think<\/a>\u201d of the devastation this underwater apocalypse could entail, because \u201coil is bad for everything\u201d that lives in the ocean.<\/p>\n

This repost brought to you by Think Progress<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Fox News anchor Brit Hume scoffed at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering, \u201cWhere is the oil?\u201d\u00a0 I guess he’s using the same playbook as BP’s Tony ‘Soprano‘ Hayward.\u00a0 TP has the story: Hume followed the lead of Rush Limbaugh and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), who have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-570006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}