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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

It'll just slowly go back into the ground where it came... I find it funny that a lot of self-proclaimed "environmentalists" who love to espouse the benefits of using "natural" stuff get outraged by things like this, as if oil wasn't a naturally occurring substance.

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Oil is not naturally occurring on the surface of the earth. It can only be formed underground, it is extremely poisonous, it kills almost every living organism. You can say that deep underground oil is natural, but on the surface of the earth certainly not.

Oil is not naturally occurring on the surface of the earth.

If it didn't naturally seep out of the ground, humans never would have discovered it and started using it. See this comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28740261

This apparently popular argument of the form "hey, it's natural, so it doesn't matter! Hah, hypocritical environmentalists!" is utterly absurd, not only false equivalence, but a brain dead employment of an appeal to nature fallacy. That some amount of seepage is naturally occurring does not remotely excuse the obnoxious, mind-boggling amount of death to nature caused by oil spills due to the economic activity of humans. Every single year in the history of the oil industry there have been major spills. That's 162 years worth of major oil spills. Sure seepage is natural; oil spills are not.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits

It isn’t formed on the surface, but it is naturally occurring.

Are oil spills naturally occurring? Were the La Brea Tar Pits caused by an oil spill? [1] Is it morally permissible for an arsonist or an irresponsible camper to burn down the neighborhood and an entire forest with it because fire is natural? [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

it is extremely poisonous, it kills almost every living organism

You may want to look up the history of the invention of petroleum jelly...

It floats on top of water and kills life.

Isn't there a frequency difference between natural "leakage" and man-made disasters like this? Naturally occurring events made be damaging but happen at less frequency.

According to the subthread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28740261 , oil has been coming out of the ground on its own for a long time. As in, before humans even knew what to do with it.

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