A Time for Everything...

...under the sun. Specifically, there is a time when people are on a "hot streak".

I sit and listen to news about oil spills, and listen to nonsense, for a large number of people have been warning us about exactly this for a long, long time.

When the prophets of doom are on a hot streak, it is time to heed and bet with them, instead of against them. Suddenly, a prophet of gloom and doom is no longer an object of mirth and derision, but are actually movers and shakers, having taken Credit Default Swaps on disaster, as it were.

I am listening to the CEO of BP say that the worst-case scenario is 2 to 3 months until a relief well is drilled. It still hasn't dawned on them that "worst-case" means what it says, and the worst-case is the scenario where the relief well doesn't work, either.
The first offshore rig seems to have been that of Pure Oil in 1937:  63 years.
To me, it seems that the chances of such a catastrophe, such as that which has occurred, is at least "Once in 63 years", and certainly not "hardly ever" or "remote".

Furthermore, if we try to estimate the probability of an oil spill of at least 500,000 gallons into the ocean, whether from an oil rig or other source, we have at least a probability of 3 times in 63 years, or 1 in 21, which is just less than 5%. (The three events being Deepwater Horizon, Exxon Valdez, and the Santa Barbara spill. )  5 chances out of 100 is not large, but it is hardly rare or remote. Nor, I think, does an event which occurs 5% of the time likely to be a worst-case scenario, except in hell, where all scenarios are worst-case.