Without any press conferences, grand announcements, or hyperbolic advertising campaigns, the Exxon Mobil Corporation, one of the world's largest publicly owned petroleum companies, has quietly joined the ranks of those who are predicting an impending plateau in non-OPEC oil production.

Their report, The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, forecasts a peak in just five years.

In the past, many who expressed such concerns were dismissed as eager catastrophists, peddling the latest Malthusian prophecy of the impending collapse of fossil-fueled civilization. Their reliance on private oil-reserve data that is unverifiable by other analysts, and their use of models that ignore political and economic factors, have led to frequent erroneous pronouncements. They were countered by the extreme optimists, who believed that we would never need to think about such problems and that the markets would take care of everything. Up to now, those who worried about limited petroleum supplies have been at best ignored, and at worst openly ridiculed.

Meanwhile, average consumers have taken their cue from the market, where rising prices have always been followed by falling prices, leading to the assumption that this pattern will continue forever.

In truth, the market price of crude oil is completely decoupled from and independent of production costs, which average about $6 per barrel for non-OPEC producers and $1.50 per barrel for OPEC producers. This situation has nothing to do with a free market, and everything to do with what OPEC believes will be accepted or tolerated by the United States. The completely affordable market price--what consumers pay at the gasoline pump--provides magisterial profits to the owners of the resource and gives no warning of impending shortages.

All the more reason that the public should heed the silent alarm sounded by the ExxonMobil report, which is more credible than other predictions for several reasons. First and foremost is that the source is ExxonMobil.

No oil company, much less one with so much managerial, scientific, and engineering talent, has ever discussed peak oil production before. Given the profound implications of this forecast, it must have been published only after a thorough review.

Read the entire article:

Oil: Caveat empty


Welcome to the downside of global trade. Along with cheap goods from China, linens from Europe and seafood from South America, a host of unwanted plants, animals, insects and microbes have been penetrating US borders.
iNVASIVE SPECIES
Invasive species are nothing new. The gypsy moth arrived in 1869, imported by a French scientist who hoped to crossbreed the insect with silkworms. Instead, America got a pest that denudes millions of trees a year.

Today, 7000 invasive species are already in the USA, outcompeting or eating their native cousins, killing crops and forests, upsetting nature's delicate balance. They're blamed for four in 10 endangered-species listings, and their economic toll is staggering: $137 billion a year, estimates one study. Little wonder that the General Accounting Office has labeled invasive species "one of the most serious yet least-appreciated environmental threats of the 21st century."

Read the entire article with TIPS on WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Can They Be Stopped?

Resources:
Invasive Species - gateway to Federal and State invasive species activities and programs

Nature Conservancy - Invasive Species Initiative


Lets talk about healthy cosmetics!

Believe it or not, but some cosmetics are being linked to cancer!

I agree, it's hard to believe, but there really are quite a few cosmetics still on the market with ingredients that are carcinogens or cause reproductive harm.

That includes the lotions we rub into chapped skin, the deodorants we swipe under our arms, the lipsticks and blushes we use to brighten our faces.

What happens before these things go on the shelves of the stores? There must be some review process, right? Cosmetic companies must have to send their formulas and safety studies somewhere, right?

Wrong! In the USA the FDA does NOT regulate the cosmetics industry, nor does any other governmental body. In a case of the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse, the job of regulating the thousands of chemicals that are used to preserve, dye, and emulsify most of the personal care products and cosmetics on the market -- the very same chemicals, by the way, that are used in industrial manufacturing to soften plastics, clean equipment, and stabilize pesticides -- falls to the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel, the industry's voluntary oversight committee.

Not sure what ingredients are good or bad?

The Breast Cancer Fund has a handy checklist:
http://www.breastcancerfund.org/

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics! is a coalition of public health, educational, religious, labor, women's, environmental and consumer groups.

They want to protect the health of consumers and workers by requiring the health and beauty industry to phase out the use of chemicals that are known or suspected to cause cancer, genetic mutation or reproductive harm:
http://www.safecosmetics.org/

Also here are just a few companies that sell healthy cosmetics:
http://acquarellapolish.com/
http://www.chooseorganics.com/
http://www.barefoot-botanicals.com/
http://colorganics.net/

Here is a database of the good stuff:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/purelink.html

Stop! What if I want to make my own beauty products?

Sure, check out the recipes here:
http://www.makeyourowncosmetics.com/

Bottom line: play it safe and stick to body products with ingredients similar to those that you would eat!

Hope this helps all your pretty people to look good AND feel good!


Check out these TRAVEL AGGREGATOR sites the next time you are online looking for travel tickets:

http://qixo.com/

QIXO searches more than 28 popular airfare sites and finds you the best prices and flight times.

http://mobissimo.com/
Mobissimo performs real-time queries of the multiple websites that travelers traditionally check manually (plus dozens of others that are often overlooked).

http://kayak.com/
KAYAK objectively and comprehensively navigates travel information online by searching for travel deals from over 100 online travel sites.