A group of government and independent scientists under the supervision of the Energy and Interior Departments have again upped their estimates for the rate of flow from the Gulf oil leak. They now think that between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels are escaping every day.

When I first argued for nuking the leak, the top-end of the official estimate was 19,000 barrels a day. At the time I said:

If the LMRP fails, Plan G gets more speculative still. It’s an attempt to fit a second blowout preventer atop the crippled original, a procedure that at depth amounts to welding an ice-covered spigot to an ice-covered spigot in pitch-black darkness. If that fails, Plan H — awaiting the completion of a pair of relief wells now being drilled — would amount to little more than surrender; the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon would continue to spurt as many as 19,000 barrels per day into the Gulf clear through the end of August. For reference, that is a total of 2.565 million barrels — equivalent to ten Exxon Valdez’s, or as much oil as the world’s fifth-largest economy, Germany, consumes on any given day.

We should be so lucky. Based on the new estimate, the total flow could be as much as 8.1 million barrels by the time the relief wells are finished. That’s more than 30 Exxon Valdez’s, or more oil than all of China consumes in a given day.

And yet in the days after my article appeared, everyone from the New York Times to the DailyKos came out to call it crazy.

I think I’ve demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt — here and here for instance — that not only is the nuclear option not crazy, it might just be our best bet. But think of it this way. We know what detonating a small nuclear device under a couple of thousand feet of rock will do; we’ve done it dozens of times and the answer is “not much.” We don’t know what dumping 30 Valdez’s on the Gulf coast will do.

And I’m the crazy one.