While I was at TAM 8 a breathless story came out claiming that methane erupting from the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was going to cause a catastrophic global extinction event. I knew the story smelled bad right away* but was a bit busy at the meeting, so I couldn’t attack it.
Happily, my pal Annalee Newitz at io9 did. She talked to actual experts and found out there simply isn’t enough methane leaking from the oil plume to do much except to the local environment. In my humble opinion, this ecological disaster sucks enough without adding hysteria to it.
Tip o’ the top hat to Rob Sheridan and aeontriad.
* Yes, I made a fart joke (it’s not the first time). And yes, I know methane is odorless.
