10 thoughts on “The Moon Needs Women”

  1. “Not a spill”? Please. “Spill” just means that there is oil where we don’t want it to be because of an accident. I really don’t see the point in trying to keep this, er, “event” off the list of big oil spills, or whatever you think you would accomplish if everyone went along with this PC nonsense. If fact I don’t see why anyone thinks points are to be awarded to the Left whenever oil spills.

    Oil spills. Sometimes a lot of oil spills. Get over it. We’ll have to clean up and remediate if anything we don’t want tainted by oil is still tainted when we’re done getting the spill under control. For now, let’s concentrate on getting it under control.

  2. A “spill” is what happens when something tips over.

    The first non-archaic definition of “spill” in Merriam-Webster is “to cause or allow especially accidentally or unintentionally to fall, flow, or run out so as to be lost or wasted”. So let’s preserve the language, shall we?

  3. Rand, I deal in industrial accidents from time to time.

    “Spill Reporting Requirments” is a legalistic term. A ruptured tank car of Ethanol is still considered a spill in the eyes of the law even though it is a leak.

    Almost every significant industry anymore falls under a Groundwater Protection Plan and a duty to report spills to either or the respective state and/or also the national spill hotline.

    I would bet SpaceX has an Industrial Stormwater Permit including a GPP they have to operate under at the Cape unless the launch complex they use is permitted to the Air Force then the USAF has to comply.

  4. OK, then do you have any proposed way to differentiate between a leak of a finite (or at least known) volume (e.g., a tanker) and this?

    To me, “spill” implies a loss from a container of known quantity, regardless of its physical state. This is something different. It could continue to spew its results for an indefinite time and with an indefinite quantity. It will continue to do so until it is contained in its indefinite container.

  5. The thing about words is they can often have more than one meaning. When people agree on a meaning communication happens.

  6. Well, not surprisingly, the largest oil spills are mostly from drilling operations and pipelines rather than tankers, more or less for the reason you mention — the total volume of a tanker is small compared to the reservoir the oil came from. If you’re stuck on this, I’m sure no one would object if you called tanker spills “tanker spills” and gushers “well spills” and pipeline leaks “pipeline spills”. For that matter, I don’t really care if you call this a “leak” as long as you don’t instruct everyone to stop calling it a “spill”. The traditional usage is quite well-established. FWIW if you type “oil leak” into Wikipedia’s search engine you get redirected to the “oil spill” page.

    Ironically, the largest oil spill in history was intentional, so I guess I would amend my definition of spill to say “usually because of an accident”.

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