Active Rigs Hit New Post-Boom Record Low: 33 -- March 8, 2016

Active rigs in North Dakota hit a new post-boom low: 33.

	3/8/2016	03/08/2015	03/08/2014	03/08/2013	03/08/2012
Active Rigs	33	114	191	186	205

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The Katie Ledecky Page 

It's a long article. Bottom line: Katie Ledecky, with close ties to Williston, ND, is a long distant swimmer who pretty much owns the sport. But now, she is taking a break from the long races, seeing what she can do in the sprints, such as the 50-, 100-, and 200-meter freestyles plus the 200 and 400 individual medleys.

Analysts suggest she cannot medal this year in the sprints, ruling out a 7-event program at the 2016 Summer Olympics for Ledecky.

From The Washington Post, March 5, 2016:

ORLANDO — For 72 hours here, Katie Ledecky got to see how the other half lives. The half that doesn’t necessarily need to swim 70,000 grueling yards every week in practice to achieve its goals. The half that measures its times in fractions of seconds, not whole ones. The half that doesn’t set or threaten world records every time they jump in a pool — and that sometimes finishes fourth, or 18th.

For one weekend only, Ledecky, the 18-year-old freestyle phenom, got to experience life as a very good sprinter, not the all-time-great distance specialist she has become. Her program for the Arena Pro Swim Series Orlando event, held at the aging but oddly charming YMCA Aquatic Center, featured none of the events she has come to dominate internationally, with world records in each: the 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter freestyles.

“I’ve probably had six weeks of the best training I’ve ever had,” said Ledecky, who won five gold medals at last summer’s FINA World Championships, with an unprecedented sweep of the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 frees. “Just a really good, dedicated period of training. . . . I don’t need to swim [the distance events] in every single meet. It’s good to take one meet off from those.”

Ledecky’s standing in the 400 and 800 is virtually unassailable. No woman in the past four years has been within three seconds of her best time in the former, or eight seconds in the latter. The only real question, barring something unforeseen, is whether she will improve her own world records.  

“She’s really rewriting the rules of the sport,” Franklin said Friday, one day after Ledecky beat her and three other former Olympians in a star-studded 200-free field with a winning time of 1 minute 55.73 seconds, “and to be a part of that, and watching it happen in person, is really a spcial experience.”

Go to the article to see how she did in the sprints.

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Global Warming Crisis Doesn't Justify 

Current North Dakota National Guard Authorizations

The "National Guard" is often called in to help following major weather disasters. With the news that there has been no global warming in the past 58 years (NOAA data); and, the fact, that there is little likelihood that rising sea levels will affect North Dakota before the end of the century, it only makes sense for the warmists to cut Federal positions in North Dakota and move them to states like Florida and California (with more electoral votes, also).

The Bismarck Tribune is reporting:

Guard units in Mott, Rugby, Bottineau and Grafton will be dissolved, and it fell to recently appointed Adj. Gen. Alan Dohrmann to tell community leaders this week that their long relationship with guard detachments will end in August 2017.

Dohrmann said the cutbacks are necessary because North Dakota lost federal authorization for 300 guard positions as part of a national strategy to decrease overall guard numbers. With slightly fewer than 3,000 guardsmen and women, North Dakota is more than 400 below its authorized strength and it was tough to argue for positions it hasn’t been able to fill, Dohrmann said.

In fact, the North Dakota guard was unable to fill 300 positions and the positions were simply eliminated and probably moved to Florida and California (with more electoral votes, also).

We faced the same issue when I was on active duty in the USAF. It was very interesting how local commanders learned to play the game of manipulating "positions" and "personnel" -- two very different things. For example, higher headquarters always kept an ENT surgeon position at USAF Hospital Grand Forks, knowing that it would never be filled, but if unfilled, the local commander could fill it with a family practitioner that we were not authorized (based on patient population) but the family practitioner was much more important to us than an ENT surgeon. We had excellent ENT support in the civilian Grand Forks community.

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Speaking of Rising Sea Levels

The New York Times reports that the sea level could rise as much as 3 - 4 feet by 2100, the fast rise in 27 years, about one-half inch a year. Of course, the report from which that was taken was flawed; see below. 

From The New American:

Climate Depot called attention to statements about the sea-level study made by another climate expert, Judith Curry, Ph.D., who was profiled in a recent article posted by The New American, “Meet the Climate Realists.” (Curry is the former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.) Curry wrote on her blog on February 23:

So, what to make of all this?

Sea level rise is the main “danger” from human caused climate change (any increase in extreme weather events is hypothesized rather demonstrated using historical data, with possible exception of heat waves in a few regions).

At a presentation that I made earlier this year to CEOs of small electric cooperatives, one participant was surprised by what I had to say about sea level rise — he hadn’t realized that there had been sea level rise prior to 1950. I.e., like “climate change”, all sea level rise has been sold as caused by humans.

Sea level has overall been rising for thousands of years; however, as the Kopp et al. paper points out, there have been century scale periods of lowering sea level in the recent millennia. It is not clear from my cursory reading as to whether meaningful decadal and multi-decadal variations in sea level can be discerned from their data.

The key issue is whether the sea level rise during the past 50 years reflect an acceleration in sea level rise. The IPCC figure 3.14 suggests that there is no acceleration, given the large rates of sea level rise in the first half of the 20th century. Until we have an understanding of variations in decadal and multi-decadal sea level rise, we can’t make a convincing argument as to acceleration. [Emphasis added.]

Much more at the link.