"Not long ago, a long drive on a hot day wouldn’t be complete without scraping bug guts off a windshield. But splattered insects have gone the way of the Chevy Nova: You just don’t see them on the road like you used to. Biologists call this the windshield phenomenon. It’s a symptom, they say, of a vanishing population. A small but growing number of scientific studies support the notion of insects on the wane....."
And it is ‘‘very alarming!’’
The loss of bees, not the trick of physics.
Maybe it is the fires:
"Sheriff: Fire kills Texas woman and her 5 children" October 19, 2017
SILSBEE, Texas — A woman and her five children were killed in a fire that quickly engulfed their Texas home, authorities said Wednesday.
Flames were already shooting from the home near Silsbee, about 80 miles northeast of Houston, when a neighbor called 911 about 12:15 a.m., Hardin County Sheriff Mark Davis said.
The home, a small structure converted at some point into a residence, was fully engulfed when firefighters arrived, Davis said. He said all six bodies were found in the home after the blaze was extinguished, and the family was probably sleeping when they were overcome by heat, flames, and smoke.....
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Time to find a new path:
"Some of biggest oil rigs being junked as daily losses mount" by David Wethe Bloomberg News October 18, 2017
HOUSTON — Transocean Ltd. is finally sending Pathfinder to its grave, after two years in a Caribbean purgatory that cost about $15,000 a day.
The move by the world’s biggest offshore-rig operator signals just how bleak the future looks for deep-water drilling. Pathfinder is the most famous of six floating rigs the company is scrapping in burials that will add up to a bruising $1.4 billion write-off.
Competitors are going the same route, jettisoning more rigs in the third quarter than have ever been trashed in a 90-day stretch, according to a Heikkinen Energy Advisors analyst, David Smith.
The predictions are that crude prices won’t go much higher than $60 a barrel in the next year, compared with about $50 recently.
“Deep water is going to be playing a much-reduced role on the global oil-supply stage, relative to what the industry expected as recently as three years ago,” said Thomas Curran, an FBR Capital Markets analyst in New York.
It could have been worse, in one way, for Transocean. It has been the most aggressive in an unprecedented experiment with what’s called cold-stacking for big drillships. After oil prices cratered in 2014, the company didn’t send all of its unwanted rigs out to sea in the time-honored temporary holding pattern, with engines kept running and a crew remaining on board — something know as warm stacking. That runs up a daily bill of some $40,000. Instead, Transocean dropped anchor on nine high-tech ships 12 miles off the coast of Trinidad & Tobago and simply shut off the motors. So far, the savings are in the neighborhood of $90 million.
This hadn’t been tried before with the new generation of finely tuned, computer-driven giants never intended for long-term parking. Equipped with derricks towering 220 feet above the platform and able to drill in 10,000 feet of water, the vessels had been in demand since birth. The big question was whether one could be shut down so solidly and later switched back on at a reliable cost.
With Pathfinder, and a cousin called the GSF Jack Ryan that’s also being scrapped after its Caribbean cold-stacking, Transocean will never know for sure. The Swiss company declined to comment for this story.
For Transocean and others that went the cold-stacking route, “this has been a very painful process,” said Greg Lewis, a Credit Suisse analyst in New York. He doesn’t disagree with the company’s decision. Cold-stacking Pathfinder was only a $5 million-a-year expense, and with that “you’re basically paying for a call option on a recovery in the market.”
At the moment, seven other Transocean offshore rigs continue to bob in the Caribbean. Most if not all of them may never drill again, say analysts at Heikkinen and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. The older the rig and the longer it’s parked, the more likely it will be passed up by customers for more capable competitors.
The offshore-drilling business enjoyed the highest of highs when oil topped $100 a barrel a few years ago. Companies including BP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. could lease out an advanced ship for more than $600,000 a day. An army of boats and helicopters took workers and supplies out to these rigs, where the meals often included steak and shrimp, and carved ice sculptures adorned lunch rooms.
Now it’s one of the most beaten-up sectors. Exploration and production companies are focusing on lower-cost shale-oil drilling on land, in places like Texas and New Mexico. There’s a glut of offshore equipment.
Only about half the global supply of deep-water rigs is working today; in 2013, almost every one was running at full speed. The latest projections call for a modest offshore recovery around 2019, or maybe 2020, according to Wells Fargo Securities LLC.
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Wasn't Transocean involved in the Gulf Gusher?
