Oil spills in Gulf

I posted on the Gulf oil spill a while back and a discussant argued I was being alarmist.  The NYT thinks he is right.  It is bad but there seem to be worse environmental problems.  74% of the oil released was captured which reduces the scale of the problem and ”much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm”. Of course the cleanup effort will partly reflect the alarm calls so it is not clear the situation has been mishandled.  But the Todd Litman estimates of total costs in the $50-$500b range (I never believed the top of this range) don’t sound right.