Friday Morning Links, Views, And News; Huge New Increase In Water Needs Noted; Waiving The Government Shutdown; Global Coolling Crisis

Active rigs: 184

RBN Energy: last in a series on shale gas production economics model results.

Futures: DOW down 50 points; oil down 60 cents.

I seldom update the "Big Stories."  The update today reminds us how severe the energy crunch is in Japan.

North Dakota daily oil production will double by 2017 -- Director, NDIC.

I did not remember this post from May 31, 2013 -- a reader brought it to my attention: "Imagine what Statoil could do if the CEO had a sense of urgency." The reader noted that post in light of the recent record-breaking IP Statoil reported.

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Government shutdown? I was going to do a poll on whether the US govt would shut down, but CNN says it is unlikely. That's good enough for me. If CNN says it, it must be true.

Most likely: technically the US would have to shut down at midnight September 30, at the end of the fiscal year but the president has done it before and could do it again: waive that requirement for a few hours if a deal looked like it was in the works.

But this raises the obvious question: if he can waive a government shutdown for a few hours, can he waive it for 24 hours? If so, can he waive it for 72 hours? If so, can he waive it for a week? How long can he waive a government shutdown.

But I do believe he will waive it at least 72 hours, perhaps as long as a week. September 30 is Monday. He could say give Congress to the end of the "week" whatever that means -- Jewish week,  Muslim week, Christian week? The Sabbath of each falls on a different day: Saturday, Friday, Sunday, respectively.

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Three articles on global cooling:

• Flat earthers say deniers misinterpret data. -- Bloomberg
• Climate scientist warns of global-cooling crisis; he needs to put together a PowerPoint presentation that the flat earth society can understand
• Huge increase in Arctic ice coverage in past eight days

Don tells me CBS had a one-minute story last evening about the fact that the earth has not warmed since 1998.