Put oil spill numbers in perspective
Numbers. They drive me — and most everyone — crazy.
Case in point: The spill in the Gulf is variously described as dumping 5,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf every day, or 200,000 gallons. (Indeed, there are 42 gallons in a barrel, so the math works.) How much is this? What does it mean? Why can’t news organizations pick one measure, explain it, and stick with it?
My truck holds 18 gallons of gas. So, the Gulf spill is gushing an amount equivalent to 11,000 fill-ups per day (albeit in oil, not gas). I am as environmentally conscious as the next person, but I must admit that when I did this math I was surprised at how “small” this figure actually seemed.
It would be helpful, then, for reporters and editors not only to pick a measure, but also to put this measure in perspective so I can understand how devastating the figure is. When I envision “gushing” wells, I see this amount coming out in an hour — perhaps — not a day. This figure, juxtaposed with the size of the Gulf, seems relatively small. Regardless, when I imagine myself pulling up at the gas station and pumping 11,000 tanks of raw oil into the nearby creek, every day — well, maybe it does seem like a lot.
There are lots of other numbers in stories of this kind: miles of coastline fouled; feet of boom laid to contain the oil; depth in feet of the disaster (about 3 miles underwater) and the pounds of pressure at that depth (150 times more than at the surface, according to Sunday’s editions of The New York Times); tons of weight of the dome that workers are attempting to lower over the leaking pipe.
And on and on.
When you find yourself confronted with numbers, don’t fall in love with them. Explain them.
Try to help readers make sense of them not only in the absolute sense (“How much is that, anyway?”), but also in context (“How can I understand how much damage that might do?”)
Steve Davis
Comments
Do you think part of the reason we shy away from qualifying numbers like this is to avoid showing a bias?
Or possibly in this case it’s a lack of knowledge on how much crude in the ocean causes what corresponding amount of damage. Maybe 11,000 tanks isn’t is less then we think in terms of how vast the Gulf is, but a it’s enough by health standards to affect the fishing industry for months after it is contained.
Keep up the good work Profs. Davis.
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