09 May How big is that oil spill?

This big:

[Correction appended.] Google Engineer Paul Rademacher has produced a tool that will put a shadow the size of the Gulf oil spill anyplace on earth. (You may need to install the Google Earth Browser Plugin, which Rademacher developed, in your browser.) If the spill occurred off Sambro Island near Halifax, the slick would extend from Rose Bay, Lunenburg Co., in the west, to Port Bickerton, Guysborough Co, in the east:

Here’s how it would look on Sable Island, where Shell Oil’s Uniacke G-72 gas well blew out for 13 days in 1984:

Here it is on George’s (!) Bank, where Canada and Nova Scotia will soon decide whether to lift a moratorium on offshore drilling:

Ad on the Left Coast, in the Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia:

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[Correction] An earlier version of this post misidentified George’s Bank. I do know its name, but the copy desk at Contrarian is thin on the ground.