bad as some of the other oil spills. you mentioned the exxon valdez. that s a little more than 20 years ago. what they found in that spill in some fisheries, for example, is that four years later they saw the effects. all of a sudden a lot of the fish were gone. so again, you re looking at this from a long term perspective as well because obviously right now we can t see the oil. how can they make this sort of prediction like, it can t be that big of a deal, if something had happened a long time down the line? first of all, i don t think anybody s saying this is no big deal. look at the exxon valdez disaster. it is certainly unfortunate it is 20 years later and you still don t have fisheries completely recovered. here you have people really concerned about the marshlands. you saw the oil in the marshes and people talking about how that s at the bottom of the food chain. that s true, you have 350 acres of oiled marshlands in the gulf. but louisiana was already losing 15,000 acres
decades. are the scientists and your sources being a little premature here? it s kind of funny, sara. for three months we ve had nonstop hysteria about how this is the worst environmental catastrophe ever. then suddenly you hear some scientist saying, well, there s no data to show that. there are some dead birds but less than 1% of the dead birds that they had in the exxon valdez. this is lighter oil, it s warmer gulf, you ve got fresh water from the mississippi pushing it out to sea. so but suddenly you hear people saying it is premature, it is way too early to say how bad this is going to be. i think my reaction is, oh, now you tell us? it s certainly true, we don t know exactly what all the long-term effects are going to be. but in the past oil spills have turned out to, while they don t have no impact, they haven t been quite as bad as people feared and there are reasons to think that this may not be as
how are we doing so far in the birdie count? i think i made six birdies yesterday. i like that. i think i made six birdies. kenfy perry only made one so we hope he has a good round going today. jim, you grew up with mining. you made your fortune in mining and when i was there at the greenbrier in april, a couple weeks after the upper big branch mine is disaster, employees didn t know who i was but all they could talk about was jim justice and all the great things he s done for the area that he really looks out for his employees. i m wondering, what s your take, jim, on all of these mine owners who operate these mines and rack up so many safety violations, possibly putting miners at risk? well, john, in all honesty, everybody in the mining business has to do better. i mean our employees have to be first and foremost and they
skimming up what s left as it drifts about in the gulf particularly if more storms come in and mix it up into smaller tar balls that then disperse and the more it disperses the harder it is to find and the harder it is to get resources to clean it up. and your work on the exxon valdez revealed that sometimes there is the damage that s obvious that you can see and then the damage that you can t see. explain what you mean. well, in the exxon valdez it turned out there was a substantial amount of oil that seeped into beaches and stayed there for quite a long time. in this spill the big wild card is the oil that s dispersed sub surface and is in the sub surface plumes that we re not sure how big they are, how long they re going to last, how concentrated they are, and what their effects are going to be. those are all things we need to nail down more. some people are concerned that the cleanup efforts while being well intentioned can occasionally do more harm than good. i know a lot of
birthday. yes, it is. happy birthday! thank you so much for having me on my birthday. all right. we didn t bring a cake or anything. well, i just left a meeting and they gave me a pretty big cake but it wasn t big enough for all. i hope you got the first piece. take care. thank you so much. we turn now to the gulf coast. relief there may finally be in sight. the government s point man for the spill thad allen says that broken well could be permanently sealed in a matter of weeks now. once that happens, the focus of course will turn to the cleanup and the long-term impact of the disaster. our guest is a scientist who led research into the impact of the exxon valdez disaster and is now pacific science director at the environmental advocacy group oceania. thanks for being with us. thanks for having me, savannah. i want to read something that you wrote or were quoted as saying in the new york times. i think it s an interesting jumping off point. you said, quote, thoug