The popular thing to do today is to build a model of something rather than going out and measuring it.
The fallacy of this shows up all the time in climate modeling, especially among proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming. It seems that BP was basing their response to the Deepwater rig disaster on some out of date and inaccurate models. From the Wall Street Journal:
BP Relied on Faulty U.S. Data
BP PLC and other big oil companies based their plans for responding to a big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on U.S. government projections that gave very low odds of oil hitting shore, even in the case of a spill much larger than the current one.
The government models, which oil companies are required to use but have not been updated since 2004, assumed that most of the oil would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather. In the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon caught fire and sank, real life has proven these models, prepared by the Interior Department's Mineral Management Service, wrong.
Oil has hit 171 miles of shoreline in southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and northern Florida. Further, government models don't address how oil released a mile below the surface would behave - despite years of concern among government scientists and oil companies about deep-water spills.
At the risk of making liberal's heads pop, I bet that Dick Cheney would be the absolute best choice for Cleanup Czar right now. Obama will probably just appoint another lawyer...
