Yesterday, I wrote that even when he gives the best speeches, I'm not sure President Obama is able to assuage the slow-burning terror we all feel at what probably amounts to a loss of the Gulf of Mexico as we know it. The news we woke up to today shows part of the reason for that sense of dissatisfaction: estimates of how much oil is spewing into the Gulf were revised upward, meaning that the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident is filling the Gulf every four days. Our Nobel-prize-winning Energy Secretary Steven Chu helped determine the new estimates.
It's not clear that we have the abilities to have done better on the spill. It seems unprecedented in scope and there are teams of people working on it and unable to stop it. But part of the problem is that new numbers on a regular basis, numbers that admit we were wrong before, don't give anyone any confidence.
-- Monica Potts
