Friday Morning Links -- Including My Favorite: More Global Warming -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

1. Yankees out of the race for this year.

2. Harold Hamm expects Continental Resources to meet "top end" forecasts for entire 2011, based on strong third quarter.

Independent oil and natural gas company Continental Resources expects to meet the upper-end of its production-growth forecast for 2011 on the back of a strong third quarter.

"We significantly accelerated production growth in the third quarter, especially in the North Dakota Bakken," CEO Harold Hamm said in a statement.

3. More on the Bakken story, same press release, different source:

We significantly accelerated production growth in the third quarter, especially in the North Dakota Bakken," Mr. Hamm said. "At this point we are focused on improving operating efficiencies and getting additional gathering systems in place so we can minimize truck traffic, deliver more of our natural gas to market, and deliver our oil production more efficiently." In the next two months, additional gas processing plants are expected to be completed and put into service. The Company is also evaluating the use of portable gas turbine generators that would consume excess gas and produce electricity.

Continental is the most active operator in the Bakken, with 24 operated drilling rigs and five dedicated fracture-stimulation crews active in the Bakken play.

4. Evidence of more global warming:

Heavy snow and unsafe road conditions prompted the temporary closure of Yellowstone National Park's South Entrance and Craig Pass between Old Faithful and West Thumb as well as U.S. Highway 212 over the Beartooth Pass on Thursday.

This was predicted by Al Gore: global warming would bring much more precipitation to areas such as the Rocky Mountains.

By the way, speaking of weather forecasts (and, of course we weren't as purists will write in to tell me that global warming is climate change and not weather change; whatever): wakling down Main Street in Williston I stopped in at a little antique shop, and had a lovely discussion with a life-long Williston resident.

She mentioned that her friend, the neighborhood weather forecaster said that if a particular caterpillar (the bug, not the heavy equipment) is black it will be a very tough winter. She said her friend said the caterpillars are "pitch black" this autumn.

5. Huge story here regarding daily production. Read this alongside the Harold Hamm quote above.

6. Job creation: 103,000. Significantly better than expected. And then this, buried deep in the article:

Striking Verizon workers back on the job fed much of the gains as 45,000 of the telecom giant's employees came off the picket lines and the unemployment rolls.

Somehow that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence with regard to a) the economy; and, b) how writers interpret jobs data. I don't know how one can call it "job creation" when it is simply a striking worker returning to the location where he/she tells the IRS he/she works.

43,000 of the 103,000 "created" jobs come from striking workers returning to "work." I cannot make this stuff up. By the way, did anyone notice a degradation in Verizon service when 43,000 of their employees were not at work? I don't recall any news stories on such.

Here's a story on the unemployment figures. The writer notes, as I did several weeks ago, that automobile sales are up. Unfortunately, he comes to the wrong explanation.

7. Meanwhile, even if the economy is stagnant, and even if the housing market is a bust, Cook County (Chicago) seems not to have noticed. Property taxes for some have jumped "a whopping 27 percent." Obviously this was out of the ordinary (across the county, the new rates were only 2.7 percent higher), so there was something peculiar about this 27 percent jump which was not explained.