Monday Morning Links -- Part I -- Not The Bakken -- Including Politics

Apple sets record in Chinese sale of new iPhone.

Apple Inc sold more than 2 million of its new iPhone 5 in China during the [first] three days after its launch there on Friday, marking China's best-selling iPhone rollout ever, the company said late on Sunday.

"Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China," Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a statement.

Apple's latest iPhone, which offers a larger 4-inch screen and 4G capability, was launched in the United States and 30 other countries in September, when the company sold more than 5 million of the devices in the first three days.

There was a lot of chatter over at MacRumors about how the Apple iPhone was receiving poor reception (pun intended) in China. It will be interesting to see comments now. Disclaimer: I do not own any shares in Apple; never have, never will. This is not an investment site; do not make any investment decisions based on what is posted here.

Finally, the truth is starting to leak out: folks on both sides of the aisle have same concerns when it comes to the ObamaCliff. One wonders how much momentum (assuming there was any to begin with) has been lost in the past few days. I will truly be surprised if a deal can be made at this late stage. Again, the law requires spending cuts, one way or the other. The tax issue is just one side of the coin. Everyone is focused on the president and Mr Boehner. But even Mr Obama knows that Harry Reid control the agenda. And we see how serious Congress is about controlling costs: apparently the "Sandy relief" bill is filled with all kinds of goodies unrelated to Sandy.

WSJ Links

Chevron enters shale hunt in South Africa. Very, very interesting. 

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[In addition to the WSJ link following, click here for a great source document sent in by a reader.]

"Fossil fuel free" (wind and solar) cannot even keep up with global GROWTH in demand, much less current needs.

WIND: to meet growth demands, mankind would have to install the equivalent of Germany's entire wind industry every year, year after year.

SOLAR: to meet growth demands, mankind would have to install 23 times the solar energy Germany solar industry provides, year after year.

The math does not add up. Wow, I've said that a lot. Another op-ed supporting that view: this time from the Manhattan Institute. "Harvard needs remedial energy math."

Wind and solar power cannot possibly meet the world's growing need for more electricity. Activists now want the world to go "fossil fuel free." Let's do the math:

Let's do the math by considering what will happen if we humans—in the words of the campaign—attempt to "go fossil free" and rely solely on "clean energy." To make the computation simpler still, let's ignore oil altogether, even though that energy source represents about 33% of all global energy use and is indispensable for transportation.

The absurdity of the calls for a "fossil free" future can be illustrated by looking exclusively at the explosive growth in the world's demand for electricity, the commodity that separates rich countries from the poor ones. Since 1985, on a percentage basis, global electricity demand has grown by 121%, which is nearly three times the rate of growth in oil demand. Over the past two and half decades, electricity consumption has increased by an average of 450 terawatt-hours (a terawatt-hour is one trillion watt-hours) per year. That's the equivalent of adding about one Brazil (which used 485 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2010) to the electricity sector every year. The International Energy Agency expects global electricity use to continue growing by about 450 terawatt-hours per year through 2035.

Wind: The world's fleet of turbines produced 437 terawatt-hours of electricity. Therefore, just keeping up with the growth in global electricity demand—while not displacing any of the existing need for coal, oil and natural gas—would require the countries of the world to install about as much wind-generation capacity as now exists, and they'd have to do so every year.

Put another way, just to keep pace with demand growth, the wind industry will need to cover a land area of some 48,000 square miles with wind turbines per year, an area about the size of North Carolina. Even if that much land were available, no humans would want to live on the land because of the irritating noise generated by those turbines.

Solar: Germany has more installed solar-energy capacity than any other country—about 25,000 megawatts. Last year, Germany produced 19 terawatt-hours of electricity from solar. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in global electricity demand, the world would have to install about 23 times as much solar-energy capacity as now exists in Germany, and it would have to do so year after year.

Remember: these figures are just to keep pace with growth in global energy demand; this has nothing to do with current demand.

The math simply does not add up.

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And "they" joked about Sarah?

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Awesome.

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Random update on Iraq's production:

Iraq’s production surged 650,000 barrels a day this year to 3.35 million, the biggest annual gain in 14 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, amid assistance from foreign oil companies that are paid a fixed amount per barrel produced, regardless of international price levels.