BP oil spill 2011 - better or worse?

The environmental damage - how bad is it? There seem to be conflicting reports in the beginning of 2011.

Is the oil that has settled on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico degrading quickly and will not have a long-term impact? How bad is the damage that has been done and what can we expect to see in the future?

Evidence found by marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia when she did December 2010 submarine dives show that the oil's residue is not degrading as was expected.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," the scientist told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Joye went on to say, "Magic microbes consumed maybe 10% of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

The problem with the research seems to be that different teams are checking spots at different times. So the results are not consistent. The collection of cores that are being used in Joye's research come from an area of 2,600 square miles.

Part of what has to be established is whether or not the oil samples being tested are from BP's Macondo well. This oil spill is not the first one, just the most publicized.

It's not just the oil that is a concern, there is also the gas that was injected into the Gulf.

Kenneth Feinberg, the man in charge of the government's oil compensation, has declared that based on research he has the Gulf of Mexico should fully recover by 2012.

There is a program, which is part of the Natural Resources Damage Assessment program, which is part of the oil spill litigation — or out-of-court settlement — in which the polluters pay for overall damage to the ecosystem and efforts to return it to normal.

So who says when things have returned to normal? The television commercials says that business is back to normal but this portion of compensation is completely separate from the damage to the ecosystem.

What do you think? Is it just the oily tip of the iceberg? We all know that the soot and heavier oil will sink to the ocean floor. It has to have some long-term negative effect on the environment, wouldn't you think?