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>>>about 843,000 gallons of oil sands crude near Marshall, Mich.<<<

Which is about 20,071 barrels.

To put it in perspective, the Alaska pipeline produces about 671,000 barrels per day. That’s down from 2.1 million barrels per day in 1988.

A barrel of oil would fill about four 10-gallon fish tanks, with two gallons left over. I just measured the 10-gallon tank on my desk here to see how big it is, and for good measure added some inches - it’s about 1-by-1-by-2 feet in volume. A barrel would be four of those stacked up.

My back-of-the-napkin estimatation is that the spill in question would cover about four football fields with about five feet of crude, or maybe ten football fields in about 18 inches of crude. It isn’t a hell of a lot, but stating the amount in gallons makes it seem enormous.

Back in the days when I was a journalist, one of my primary jobs was called “perspective.” Now, 843,000 gallons sounds like a lot, but covering ten football fields with about a foot and a half of crude is really the image that people should have trying to get a mental picture of the size of the spill. (I don’t know if my math is correct, either - I do have a job that I’m ignoring right now.)

A long time ago I had to describe a pollutant which was described in several parts per billion. I figured out that meant a few tablespoons of whatever it was in Lake Oswego.

You get a good idea why I was drummed out of that line of work, too. C’est la vie.