re: #13 Macha

A downding for ignorance. You bet they are going to limit as much evidence of the impact as possible. They know that people respond emotionally to visible evidence of the loss of life to wildlife and marine life, and they base their opinions and decisions thusly. They want to preserve their image of “doing everything possible” in the aftermath of this spill. It was their greed and impatience that caused the spill in the first place.

I agree with your last sentence. I disagree that there can be such a thing as a meaningfully effective coverup under these circumstances. As several have already noted, in a world of cell phone cameras and a Gulf of Mexico with hundreds of miles of beaches, no such thing is possible.

I see BP doing a bunch of things: trying hard to stop the leak, paying for the cleanup, agreeing to pay for the economic damages (I don’t know if they have actaully paid for any of that yet), and trying to mitigate their reputational damage. The first three are all good, and the last is a waste of time.

But a coverup? Absurd. There will be hundreds or thousands of photos of oily birds and the like. You’ll have lots of choices.