At the Macondo spill trial, number crunching or quantification of the oil flow started Monday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, with Judge Carl Barbier presiding. The U.S. is on one side with a figure of about 5 million barrels for the disaster that commenced in 2010, versus BP and Anadarko on the other with 3.26 million barrels.

With memories of the catastrophic hurricane seasons of 2004, 2005 and 2008 (the three most costly on record) still fresh, the predictions for an average season are quite welcome. But two recent publications suggest that we are far from being in the clear when it comes to hurricanes.