Credit: Forbes
It’s been a tough couple of years for Big Oil. Battered by plunging prices, the oil majors have seen their profits sink and their prospects darken. BP lost $3.3 billion in 2015; Shell lost nearly $7.5 billion in the third quarter of 2015 alone, its biggest loss in a decade. Even mighty ExxonMobil saw its profit shrink by half in 2015 from the previous year. The usual oil company response to a period of shrinking profits is to rein in new drilling, cut costs, and wait for prices to rise again. And recent months have seen a modest recovery in oil prices.
But a new report from the influential U.K. think tank Chatham House says the old playbook isn’t going to work this time. The problems go way beyond rock-bottom oil prices, and they are unlikely to vanish in a hoped-for recovery. The oil majors, the report says, “cannot assume that, as in the past, all they need to survive is to wait for crude prices to resume an upward […]
Florida waterway
For the first time in over 25 years, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is proposing to revise its restrictions on what toxic chemicals can be discharged into surface water — but environmentalists worry that the proposed standards, which would triple the amount of a toxic chemical called benzene allowed to be discharged into surface waters like rivers and lakes, are meant more to entice fracking companies than keep Floridians safe.
If we had the opportunity to improve the regulations of toxics, why aren’t we taking the advice that the EPA is giving?
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the Florida DEP is currently either updating, or creating for the first time, standards for 82 various toxic substances — many of which are known carcinogens. Of those 82 chemicals, the vast majority would, under the DEP’s revised standards, have lower standards than those recommended by the EPA. And of the 43 chemicals that are already regulated, the Tallahassee Democrat reports that “a couple dozen” will have limits higher than what is currently […]
Credit: Shutterstock
Florida’s coral reefs are disintegrating much faster than expected. And who’s to blame? Oh, you know, just the ENTIRE OCEAN.
Ocean water is growing increasingly acidic as it absorbs the extra CO2 we’re pumping into the atmosphere, and now that water is eating away at the limestone foundations of coral reefs. A new study found that in the northern section of the Florida Keys’ reef — the third largest barrier reef ecosystem in the world — 6 million tons of limestone have disappeared over the past six years.
This wasn’t unexpected. It’s just that scientists had predicted the reef’s “tipping point,” where coral development is so severely limited by ocean acidification that reefs erode, was a good 40 years off — not today.
Ocean acidification is different from coral bleaching, another threat to reefs, though both have a common cause (climate change) and a common effect (dying corals). We’re looking to our most resilient corals to survive the challenges of living in today’s oceans.
We hope we never have to hold a farewell […]
House Benghazi Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. Credit: Susan Walsh/AP
WASHINGTON — Shortly before the House Benghazi committee ramped up its battles with the Department of Defense in its probe of the 2012 terrorist attack, the committee’s own top lawyer admitted at least four times in interviews with military officials that there was no more they could have done on that tragic night.
That’s according to a letter obtained by The Huffington Post that is being sent Monday to the chairman of the committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), from the top Democrats on the Benghazi panel and the House Armed Services Committee, Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Adam […]
The Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York was bought by the Chinese group Anbang. But Chinese purchases of residential property outpaces commercial deals.
Credit: Mark Lennihan/AP
Chinese nationals have become the largest foreign buyers of US property after pouring billions into the market in search of safe offshore assets, according to a study.
A huge surge in Chinese buying of both residential and commercial real estate last year took their five-year investment total to more than $110bn, according to the study from the Asia Society and Rosen Consulting Group.
The sheer size of that total has helped the real estate market recover from the crash that began in 2006 and precipitated the 2008 economic crisis, they said.
Chinese investment in property has also helped to inflate prices in other developed countries, notably the UK and Australia in the wake of the dip in world stock markets in […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
