An end not as nigh as we were told

It's the "worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," as President Obama describes it. Lesser mortals call it a "catastrophe" and "calamity." Some call the Gulf oil leak "doomsday for the Gulf of Mexico." But now dawns the recognition, as nearly always happens in the wake of disasters, calamities, catastrophes, etc., that maybe the politicians and the mainstream media have been guilty of a little contagious hyperbole. Exaggeration has been the order of the day. But maybe the end has not been so nigh as we were confidently told it was. Some unexpected media voices are (gulp) saying so. Jacqueline Michel, a geological chemist who is coordinating the federal assessment of damages to the shores of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, says the impact of the oil spill has been "much, much less" than anticipated in the first days after the well blew out. Her survey teams have found only about 350 acres of oily marshland — sad and disheartening, but only a fraction of the 15,000 acres of Louisiana wetlands that slip into the sea each year. Wildlife-recovery workers have so far found only three dead oil-soaked mammals along the coast that they can attribute to the spill. The harsh restrictions on fishing the Gulf for shrimp, imposed with hysterical fanfare when we were told the universe as we know it would soon vanish, are being lifted...more