Plugging the Gulf Oil Spill for Dummies

According to popular fiction, the stereotypical artist is willing to starve for his art. On the other hand, more than one "freelancer" writing for content farms (e.g., InfoBarrel,com) isn't even willing to check his or her "facts," much less miss a meal at Mickey-D's drive-through. Today's example is someone who called himself gardens14, a southern gentleman who treated the site's readers to his peculiar version of the truth in "20 Facts About the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill." We won't list all twenty, just enough of the list to show what a dummy gardens14 is...

"BP (British Petroleum) Spent over three billion in response to the spill." BP wishes that were true. In addition to the costs of attempting to contain the spill, as of 2015 the company says it has spent $14 billion in cleanup costs and may be liable for an additional $22 billion in fines. "It is the largest of shore spill the United States has ever seen." We assume he means "offshore"... but he gives it short shrift: it's the largest (accidental) oil spill the world has ever seen. The largest ever spill, some four times the volume of this incident, was the deliberate release of petroleum by Iraqi troops in the Persian Gulf in 1991-1992. "Four years before the spill, BP was fined 20 million for not fixing the corroded pipe." What this has to do with the Gulf isn't clear. Perhaps this dumbass is referring to a 2006 pipeline spill in Alaska, for which BP was fined $25 million the year after the Gulf incident. "BP make an average of $500,000 every eight minutes, or about $59 a day." Wow: did this dumbass ever take a math class?  We did the math; that would be about $90 million...

• "Though it may seem like it, this is not the worst oil spill that the United States has experienced. The Deepwater Horizon spill takes that prize." This one's our personal favorite: does this character really think the "BP Gulf of Mexico spill" is different from the "Deepwater Horizon spill"? We rest our case: he is clearly a dumbass!

For lousy research, for bad math, for poor grammar, and for in general being an all-around dumbass in the desperate search for a few pennies, we hereby award gardens14 the coveted Dumbass of the Day. Just don't get any oil on it...

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