mppickett posted:Offshore has a decent record considering how much oil we get, but screwups have extremely broad impacts. So one mistake hurts for many years. House of cards in the log run.
"In the Gulf of Mexico, there are more than 600 natural oil seeps that leak between one and five million barrels of oil per year, equivalent to roughly 80,000 to 200,000 tonnes." - Wikipedia
And that is just in the Gulf of Mexico.
"The infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, one of the largest in U.S. history, dumped more than 10 million gallons of crude into Prince William Sound." ... "Microbes consume most, but not all, of the compounds in the oil." - LiveScience
Growing up at a California beach, I knew that the ocean contained naturally occurring oil, because the beach ALWAYS had tar on it, even when there were no oil spills. And the tar did not increase or decrease when there was a spill.
Fortunately, there's tons of research going on in coming up with the next generation of batteries. Follow the money - venture capitalists are circling.
That may have been true a few years ago, but now, not so much. The big money is no longer investing in battery research. Hundreds of millions of dollars were speculated with a big goose egg in returns. If money does not find a return, it goes elsewhere. You want media evidence, Google Panasonic and the gigafactory.
Fusion is a dream. Thorium is real.