Is it a convenient memory, selective amnesia, or a tacit admission by The Old Grey Lady that they don’t expect anyone to read and actually remember the dreck that they print?
From an article datelined October 23, St. Pete Beach, Florida:
Actually, there wasn’t a drop of oil anywhere in sight. Not then, not in the months that followed and not now. This barrier-island city and snowbird haven is hundreds of miles from the nearest land befouled by the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon platform and the epic gusher it left behind….
Of course, anyone who bothered to look at a map would have known that St. Pete Beach — and hundreds of other vacation spots throughout the Sunshine State — would have pristine beachfronts through the summer, even under the worst of the worst-case scenarios. [emphasis added]
How’s that again?
A half hour of research with a sophisticated Internet search engine known as “Google” results in the following sample of articles from the Times, or from it’s Greenwire environmental blog:
An undersea conveyor belt to Florida is approaching the Gulf Coast oil spill, and should it stretch past its typical bounds, oil from the BP PLC accident, blobbing placidly off the Louisiana coast, could soon stream into the Florida Keys and up the United States’ Eastern Seaboard. …
The worst-case scenarios have been concerning enough for communities in Florida ranging from Tampa Bay to Key West to begin mobilizing contingency plans. Should the current reach the spill, oil would begin to flow down past Florida’s western coast, which would be largely spared due to its wide coastal shelf, and into the Florida Strait.
WASHINGTON — Scientists warned Monday that oil from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico was moving rapidly toward a current that could carry it into the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Ocean, threatening coral reefs and hundreds of miles of additional shoreline.
A thin stem of oil stretching east from BP PLC’s spill is increasingly likely to enter the Loop Current, a powerful Gulf of Mexico flow that runs past the Florida Keys and up the Atlantic Seaboard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief said today.
Stark satellite imagery released yesterday revealed that, while the large majority of oil remains bobbing off the Louisiana coast, “a tendril of light oil has been transported down toward the Loop Current,” NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said. …
Once oil is in the current, it would likely reach the Florida Keys within 10 days. By month’s end, the oil could reach Miami, oceanographers have also warned.
Scientists have warned that crude oil leaking from the blown well off the Louisiana coast is drifting toward an area where it could be swept into the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Ocean within the next two weeks.
What really worries most fishermen and environmental scientists are the long-term consequences if oil is carried around the coast of Florida, with plumes underwater and slicks onshore.
Again, quoting from the October 23 article:
… anyone who bothered to look at a map would have known… even under the worst of the worst-case scenarios.
Would “anyone who bothered to look at a map” include journalists at the New York Times?
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