hydraulics in cold weather

People totally freak out about oil spills. Yes, some are bad, especially when there are other chemicals added to oil to change its properties, but the Valdez spill proved that letting nature take its course is often the best option. In the areas where people went to extremes in cleaning up the oil, like steam cleaning the shoreline, it literally =sterilized= the entire area, having killed pretty much all life, from micro to macro. In the areas where little to no remediation was done, they bounced back within just a couple of years and it was virtually impossible to tell where they were within something like 4-5 years. The other areas are =still= recovering some 32 years later. People forget that there are NATURAL oil seeps along the SoCal coast that, while messy, literally do little to nothing to the environment. La Brea Tar Pits, anyone? There are a lot of natural oil seeps around the world that Nature adapts to and "takes care of" without a "disaster". People get all up in arms about the SHORT-TERM effects that a spill causes HUMANS, like contaminated fishing areas, but LONG-TERM, Nature =always= wins.

(/rant)

Lyle