A roundup of news items related to climate change and other environmental issues in Florida:
What is Florida’s future as climate change threats add up? | USA Today
Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Historic rainfall. Climate change.
If you think Florida has seen it all. Think again, and a recent study on climate risks in the United States confirms some of our worst fears.
It probably comes as no surprise that when you combine the threat of climate change with a state surrounded on three sides by water, Florida doesn’t fare well when it comes to a changing climate.
Price to plug old wells in Gulf of Mexico? $30 billion, study says. | New York Times
Ever since the first offshore platforms went up off Louisiana 85 years ago, the Gulf of Mexico has been an oil and gas juggernaut. But decades of drilling has left behind more than 14,000 old, unplugged wells at risk of springing dangerous leaks and spills that may cost more than $30 billion to plug, a new study has found. Nonproducing wells that haven’t been plugged now outnumber active wells in the gulf, the study says.
The researchers also found that, in federal waters, nearly 90% of the old wells were owned at some point in the past by giant oil companies known as the “supermajors,” including BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon. Under federal law, that means those companies would still be responsible for cleanup costs, even though they might have sold the wells in the past, the study’s authors said.
Oil gushed into the Gulf and people got sick. A secret Florida warehouse may hold clues | Miami Herald
The warehouse looks like countless others in South Florida. But what’s inside is anything but typical.
Steel barrels lined up wall to wall. Shelves of vials and jars stacked along the sides of refrigerated storage rooms.
Inside the containers, large and small, are samples from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010 — the largest oil spill in history.
If you have any news items of note that you think we should include in our next roundup, please email The Invading Sea Editor Nathan Crabbe at ncrabbe@fau.edu. Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here.
