Reply #19: Hate to sound like a denialist, but really, that's rather conceited

[Chulanowa]

We honestly lack the ability to eradicate life on land; the oceans are far beyond our ability to harm in total.

We can, of course, cause severe damage to certain aspects of the ocean, put to put this in perspective...

Out in the middle of the Atlantic is a massive trench that goes way below the crust of the earth. Millions and millions of tons of seawater pour into the mantle from here, and are ejected at temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Speaking of lead, these waters are laden with the stuff. And arsenic, and cadmium, and sulfur and all sorts of wonderful cyanides and mercury compounds and what have you. Billions of gallons of deep sea water are venting a soup of chemicals that will kill anything except those critters specially adapted to it, at temperatures that are dangerous even for those rare few. Every day. it's been happening for billions of years.

You'd never know if we didn't have benthic explorers.

So while the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico is probably well and truly screwn for most coastal life forms, the gulf itself will survive.