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Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Warmists Predicted All This

It was reported earlier today that the warmists predicted that the winters would be colder and snowier, and they were right. These are headlines pulled from Drudge showing just how right the warmists were about worse and worse winters due to global warming:
  • winter wonderland
  • sleet, ice, deep freeze hit large swath of USA
  • Texas setting snow records
  • cold rewrites Oregon history books
  • "climate change" warning: killer winter storms for next thirty years
  • snow falling, in Australia, in the summer
School is again canceled here in the Dallas-Ft Worth area on Monday; the roads are just too dangerous. The buses cannot get across the bridges.

I have to admit: I was wrong about the warmists: they were correct. Winters would be worse. I missed that part, I guess. Of course, it has nothing to do with CO2 but that's another story for another day.

I get another full day with my granddaughters. And they get another day off from school. What's not to like?

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Speaking of granddaughters and grandparents, a reader sent me this link: America's clash of generations is inevitable -- Seymour Hersch.

It begins:
We are locked in a generational war, which will get worse before it gets better. Indeed, it may not get better for a long time. No one wants to admit this, because it’s ugly and unwelcome. Parents are supposed to care for their children, and children are supposed to care for their aging parents. For families, these collective obligations may work. But what makes sense for families doesn’t always succeed for society as a whole. The clash of generations is intensifying.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that Detroit qualifies for municipal bankruptcy. This almost certainly means that pensions and health benefits for the city’s retired workers will be trimmed. There’s a basic conflict between paying for all retirement benefits and supporting adequate current services (police, schools, parks, sanitation, roads). The number of Detroit’s retired workers has swelled, benefits were not adequately funded and the city’s economy isn’t strong enough to take care of both without self-defeating tax increases.
And it ends:
Generational warfare upsets us because it pits parents against children. The elderly’s well-being partly reflects Social Security and Medicare’s success, but it also comes at the expense of younger Americans. We pretend these discomforting conflicts don’t exist. But they do and are rooted in changing demographics, slower economic growth and competing concepts of old age. They cannot be dissolved by pious invocations that “we’re all in this together.” To date, the contest has been one-sided; now the other side is beginning to stir.
I disagree completely. America's clash will between the "haves" and the "have-nots." The gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" crosses all age groups: some seniors are incredibly wealthy; some homeless. Some college students come from incredibly wealthy families; others come from families barely surviving financially.

I don't think "the American clash" will be inter-generational so much as between "haves" and "have-nots."

There is a reason for flash mobs that hit a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart and ransack the stores. I expect we will see more of that before we see less of that. 

I doubt my granddaughters and I will ever clash but I can imagine all of us getting caught up in clashes between the "haves" and the "have-nots." I tend to believe in "rule of law"; others do not. And that's where the clash will center.

The Rollout To Destroy The US Healthcare System. We Knew It Was Bad; We Just Didn't Know It Was This Bad -- Talk About Breaking The Best Medical Care System In The World, The President Is Doing It

Updates

December 14, 2013: one of the eastern liberal states, Connecticut, will get to see just how "wonderful" ObamaCare is. TheDay is reporting:
Undocumented immigrants are expected to make up a larger share of Connecticut's uninsured population next year, putting "new financial pressures on safety-net hospitals" that provide emergency care to everyone, state and national health experts predict.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides coverage options for legal immigrants, but those in the U.S. illegally cannot apply for Medicaid, even if they are poor, or buy coverage at Access Health CT (the new insurance marketplace), even if they have cash. That means undocumented residents without coverage will continue turning to local emergency departments for care at a time when Connecticut hospitals face the loss of millions of dollars in federal and state subsidies to help defray the cost of uncompensated care.
December 14, 2013: we are not even into the second quarter of ObamaCare, the First Year, and the president has already garnered a new award, an award of distinction: Obama's "You Can Keep Your Insurance" is the 2014 "Lie of the Year." And look at the source: NPR.  The interesting thing is that every other runner-up and nominee was a conservative, it appears. You have to hand it to NPR to at least recognize the "You Can Keep Your Insurance" as the biggest lie, but in fact, by recognizing the others, NPR conveniently forgot many, many other lies made by folks who supported ObamaCare. 
"I still support President Obama, but everything he has done has screwed up my life."-- Obama supporter, 2013. Cognitive dissonance.
December 14, 2013: New York elite -- the ones who would have overwhelmingly voted for Obama -- are losing their insurance coverage.
Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.
They are part of an unusual informal health insurance system that has developed in New York in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country....

December 11, 2013: the numbers, by state:
  • North Dakota, at 265, signed up the lowest number.
  • South Dakota, at 372 , signed up the second lowest.
  • Florida, at 17,908, led the nation (Florida, with all its senior citizens, is certainly not known for young, healthy males)
  • Illinois, at 7,043, certainly is not particularly noteworthy.
  • Delaware, at 7,650, was said to be "tiny."
  • Hawaii signed up 574, for $350,000 apiece.
  • California signed up 107,087.
Seattlepi.com has has a nice summary:
Vermont has, by far, the highest rate of signups as a share of its population: 0.8%.
It's followed by Connecticut, Kentucky and California.
Because of its large population, California accounts for about 30% of total Obamacare sign-ups, at 107,087.
New York, another state running its own exchange, has provided more than 45,000 enrollments.
Nationally, only 0.12% of Americans signed up for private health insurance made available by the Affordable Care Act between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30; that figure must rise to 2.2% for the Obama Administration to reach its goal of 7 million signups by March 31.
In general, the states with the fewest signups rely on the federally-run exchange, whose infrastructure has been plagued by technical problems, though website performance has improved over time and enrollments have been accelerating.
But some state-based exchanges are doing even worse than the federal one. Oregon, which runs its own exchange, has enrolled virtually none of its population. In fact, its website is so plagued that it has only enrolled people through a paper application process, according to the Washington Times.
HHS reports just 44 enrollments in private insurance through Oregon's exchange as of Nov. 30, though a local press report puts the figure at 217. Either way, the figure is dismal.
Hawaii and Massachusetts are also poor performers, challenging the stereotype that state-based exchanges outperform the federal exchange.
Reminder: the ten (10) states most critical and the numbers needed to enroll:
  • California: 1.3 million
  • Texas: 629,000
  • Florida: 477,000
  • Washington State: 340,000
  • Oregon: 237,0000
  • New York: 218,000
  • Pennsylvania: 206,000
  • Georgia: 204,000
  • North Carolina: 191,000
  • Ohio: 190,000
December 11, 2013: the first quarter stats are still rolling in.
Original Post

If this was being reported by Fox News I would consider the source, but this is coming from the highly respected Financial Times. It turns out that Obamacare policies will NOT be accepted by the premier hospitals in the nation, like MD Anderson and/or Mayo Clinic.

This is truly beyond the pale: even those folks who can can actually enroll and obtain insurance won't be able to access some of the best hospitals in the world. This trainwreck is going from bad to worse daily.

The FT is reporting:
Americans who are buying insurance plans over online exchanges, under what is known as Obamacare, will have limited access to some of the nation’s leading hospitals, including two world-renowned cancer centres
Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.
Wasn't it just two days ago when The Los Angeles Times asked what will come out next?

Now we know. 

This is complete insanity.

... And The Answer To The Question ... With Regard To "ULW" ...

A reader writes:
It appears that Burlington Resources “ULW” means that this is a “Unit Line Well."  
The well will be drilled under or near the section line in a 2560-acre unit.   Other companies will likely come up with their own “short-hand” notations for this type of well.  
I told the reader I was very, very impressed. You have no idea how much time I spent trying to figure that one out. And now it seems it should have been easy to figure out -- in retrospect.

A big "thank you" to the reader who will remain anonymous unless he/she wants otherwise.

*******************************************
 Checkmate!

Wells Coming Off Confidential List Over The Weekend, Monday; Hess Reports A Big Well; Whiting With A Dry Red River Well; 8/13 Bakken Wells To DRL Status (Most, If Not All, For Operational Reasons)

Monday, December 9, 2013
  • 25091, drl, Statoil, Bill 14-23 5TFH, Alexander, no production data;
  • 25268, 311, Hess, BW-Rolfson-151-98-2116-5,  Siverston, no production data;
  • 25360, drl, Hess, CA-Halverson 154-95-0409H-3,  Hofflund, no production data,
  • 25465, 1,776, Oasis, Fairview Overlook 34-33HTF, Harding, t8/13; cum 10/13;
  • 25487, drl, MRO, Marland 41-14TFH, Reunion Bay, no production data; 
Sunday, December 8, 2013
  • 25514, drl, KOG, P Evitt 154-98-15-22-2-2H, Truax, no production data,
  • 25566, 432, CLR, Brogger 3-4H, Crazy Man Crreek; t9/13; cum 28K 10/13;
  • 25645, drl, Statoil, Bill 14-23 4TFH, Alexander, no production data;
Saturday, December 7, 2013
  • 24734, 1,208, Hess, LK-Pohribnak 147-96-16H-6, Cedar Coulee, t10/13; cum 32K 10/13;
  • 25042, drl, American Eagle, Roberta 1-3-163-101, Colgan, producing,
  • 25240, DRY, Whiting, K G Ranch 22-20, Delhi, a Red River well,
  • 25418, drl, Hess, CA-Halverson 154-95-0409H-4, Hofflund, no production data,
  • 25516, 28 (no typo), Hunt, Scorio 159-101-12-1H-1, Zahl, t9/13; cum 11K 10/13;
  • 25644, drl, Statoil, Bill 14-23 6H, Alexander, no production data,
**************************************

24734, see above, Hess, LK-Pohribnak 147-96-16H-6, Cedar Coulee:

DateOil RunsMCF Sold
10-2013297400
9-201316110

For The Archives: I Knew It Was Bad; I Didn't Know It Was This Bad -- 90% Of DFW Flights Canceled Due To Ice; Rhetoric Of The Warmists Is Tedious; RFK, Jr., Reminisces About The Goodl Ol' Days And All That Snow

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:
Call it "Icepocalypse" or "Icemageddon" — a bout of wintry precipitation and bitter cold air has brought unusually icy weather to a large swath of the country.
Subfreezing temperatures made Saturday the coldest Dec. 7 on record in much of the Great Plains and Tennessee Valley, said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. In two locations in Montana, temperatures plummeted to minus 42 degrees.
The Eastern Seaboard, which had been mostly spared by the storm thus far, will see snow starting Sunday, with ice storms in the mid-Atlantic region. Moderate snow will start in West Virginia on Sunday before moving across portions of the mid-Atlantic into New York by Monday morning.
Major Eastern cities such as Washington and Baltimore are not expected to see too much ice accumulate on roads, but interior parts of the mid-Atlantic could see a dangerous quarter-inch of ice or more, Hurley said. Freezing rain, which he called the "main weather story" for Sunday, is expected to continue through Monday.
This is unquestionably the worst, the very worst, ice storm I have seen since moving to the Dallas-Ft Worth are last July, 2013. I should have stayed in San Antonio. 

This is what the paper had to say about our area:
Though some parts of the country are used to frigid weather, it has proved to be particularly problematic for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where the temperature Saturday afternoon was 25 degrees.
Over the last few days, the region saw sleet and freezing rain that covered much of the cities in ice, inspiring the name "Ice Friday." Residents took to social media, posting photos of frozen fountains, cars covered in ice and trees brought down by heavy coatings of ice.
"The residential streets are almost like ice skating rinks," said Dennis Cain, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth.
The roads are so slick that Satori Ananda, who lives in Arlington, skipped the Kanye West concert that she had tickets for Friday night in Dallas.
"I can't leave my house because of all the ice in the street," Ananda, 37, said in a phone interview Friday night.
Because of the dangerous conditions, the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport canceled at least 400 departures Saturday, which is about half of its usual schedule.
The MetroPCS Dallas Marathon scheduled for Sunday was also canceled.
The streets and parking lots really were ice-skating rinks. I remember this only once in all the years I grew up in Williston, North Dakota. We could have ice-skated to Wilkinson Elementary. I remember it vividly. It's funny what one remembers. I also remember how cute my 10th grade biology partner was; I would mention her name, but I don't want to embarrass anyone.  But I digress.

From The Dallas Morning News:
  • Dallas marathon canceled for first in 44 years
  • ice halts 90% of DFW flights
  • glazes roads, disrupts DART
  • nearly 270,000 customers lose power; repairs may be slow
The US Postal Service did not make deliveries. The morning newspapers were not delivered. One 29-year-old died, rear-ending a truck on one of the area freeways. Starbucks at Tom Thumb opened late. Tom Thumb closed early.

************************************

The warmists now say this extreme cold weather was predictable; that all this snow was predicted.

They even noted that the Arctic ice mass was receding in 2012, "forgetting" to mention the Arctic ice mass hit new records in 2013.

Reuters is reporting:
Sea ice in the Arctic shrank to a record low in 2012 and the U.N.'s panel of climate scientists says it could almost vanish in summers by 2050 with rising greenhouse gas emissions.
But some scientists said other factors, including the usual vagaries of weather or changing sea temperatures, may explain some recent extremes rather than changes in the Arctic.
The comments are all right on target. This is my favorite of all:
From 2000: "According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia ,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event". "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said. David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold."
And this one:
So, let me get this straight: No hurricanes striking the U.S. for four straight years and record cold winters across Europe are meaningless because they are only regional and not "global" events, yet, when the U.S. has a hot summer or Europe has a rainy summer, suddenly, it means something? Oh, btw, Antarctica is doing just fine and has the largest ice mass since 1979, and that's where 90 percent of the world's ice is located, not Greenland or the Arctic. Not to mention, Greenland and the Arctic are relatively small regions and not "global." The rhetoric from the AGW crowd is sickening.
I will leave it there.  Except to say their rhetoric is not so much "sickening" as it is "tedious."

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For the archives, from N:ewsMax, February 14, 2010.
Back in September 2008, environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote an article raising the alarm about global warming and the resultant lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Feb. 8, as the nation’s capital dug out from under a ferocious snowstorm, The Washington Examiner reran an article from last Dec. 21, published as Washington was struggling to dig out from under an earlier snowstorm.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of people how they must live their lives in order to save the planet, wrote a column last year on the lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.,” wrote The Examiner’s Online Opinion Editor David Freddoso.
He quoted from the article written by Kennedy, a lawyer specializing in environmental law, which ran in the Los Angeles Times: “Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean [Va.], with a rope tow and local ski club.
“Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled.”
He reminisced about ice skating on a Washington canal, “which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate."

A Very, Very Interesting Story -- Win, Win, Win For Everyone

Entrepreneurial start-up: Mailbox Solutions Plus.  For $4,000 a major problem solved.

The Dickinson Press is reporting:
After noticing that many of his co-workers also had mail delivered to the office, and talking to a mail carrier about how the U.S. Postal Service was struggling to keep up with the area’s rapid growth, VanAssche decided to turn that challenge into a business opportunity.
He left his job and started MailBox Solutions Plus with less than $4,000, renting his first location from a local radio station.
“Out of a 10-by-10 room, I started renting mailboxes,” VanAssche said.
The U.S. Postal Service, which at times has had waiting lists for P.O. box rentals in Williston and other area towns, requires people to prove they have a local address to qualify for a P.O. box.
But for job seekers who move to the Bakken and live in cars, campers or other temporary housing, they can’t qualify and they don’t have a local address to list on job applications.
At MailBox Solutions, customers can get a Williston address even if they stay in their car.
The business has grown in Williston to a permanent location with about 600 mailboxes, and a second store is opening in Watford City in February.
The mailboxes cost $20 a month to rent, with cheaper rates available for long-term rentals.
I can't wait to see when he inaugurates drone-delivery service to rigs, ranches, and rodeos. 

This Is Exactly What Happens When You Start Believing All Those "Global Warming" Stories

The Dickinson Press is reporting:
A power outage in McKenzie County late Friday and early Saturday caused residents of 1,750 households to seek warmth as temperatures approached 20 below zero.
The outage, which for some lasted several hours, is prompting officials in the rapidly growing county to consider purchasing generators and taking other measures to protect residents in extreme cold emergencies.
The headline:  McKenzie County power outage prompts officials to make cold weather plans.

This is December. In North Dakota.

This is exactly what happens when you start believing all those stories about "global warming." You put off plans to prepare for cold weather. 

Doomsday: Public Sector Pensions

Updates

December 1, 2016: Dallas, TX, on the brink of bankruptcy due to generous public servant pensions approved years ago. 

October 1, 2014: a federal judge rules that public sector pensions are not protected when a city declares bankruptcy; Stockton, CA, bankruptcy proceedings.

March 9, 2014: I've been posting this issue for some time now. It's nice to see my thoughts being validated by none other than Warren Buffett. Business Insider is reporting, from page 21 of his annual newsletter:
Local and state financial problems are accelerating, in large part because public entities promised pensions they couldn’t afford. Citizens and public officials typically under-appreciated the gigantic financial tapeworm that was born when promises were made that conflicted with a willingness to fund them. Unfortunately, pension mathematics today remain a mystery to most Americans.
Investment policies, as well, play an important role in these problems. In 1975, I wrote a memo to Katharine Graham, then chairman of The Washington Post Company, about the pitfalls of pension promises and the importance of investment policy. That memo is reproduced on pages 118 - 136.
During the next decade, you will read a lot of news – bad news – about public pension plans. I hope my memo is helpful to you in understanding the necessity for prompt remedial action where problems exist.
Pensions are formally referred to as defined-benefit plans. They differ from defined-contribution plans like 401ks in that the employer guarantees a certain retirement benefit. 401k plans, on the other hand, include no such promise; if the employees' 401k plan investment go sour, they're in trouble.
Original Post

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:
It's not just Detroit retirees who are worried about their pensions. Financially troubled cities in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania will soon face decisions on what to do with chronically underfunded pension funds, and experts say the Detroit ruling has made it easier for cities to argue that pensions must be cut.
"If I were a retired public-sector pensioner, I'd be worried today," said Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and the director of the Pension Research Council.
For decades, representatives of public-sector pensions have depended on constitutional provisions in various states, including Michigan and Illinois, that protected pensions.
Now, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes' ruling has shown that federal bankruptcy laws preempt those state provisions. Any city that has underfunded pensions and troubled finances could soon look to bankruptcy as a way out of paying pensions, experts say, as long as their state allows them to file for Chapter 9 protection.
"This is really the first time that there's been a clear decision by a judge that, yes, pension promises are on the cutting board too," Mitchell said.

Two Great Questions From The Discussion Board

Updates

December 8, 2013: the answer to the "ULW" question --
It appears that Burlington Resources “ULW” means that this is a “Unit Line Well."  
The well will be drilled under or near the section line in a 2560 acre unit.   Other companies will likely come up with their own  “short-hand” notations for this type of well.  

December 8, 2013: a reader tells me that "it is still being worked." A QEP representative will be meeting with his congregation/church which happens to have an interest in that field. 

With regard to "ULW" -- "under Lake Wobegone." Probably not.
 
Original Posts

1. Does anyone know what the acronym "ULW" stands for; it is part of the name of several BR wells:
  • #24537, loc, BR, Midnight Horse 11-1MBH-ULW
  • 26069, ros, BR, Big Jon 11-2MBH-ULW, Camel Butte, 
  • 25892, loc, BR, Blue Ridge 41-20MBH ULW,  
2. Does anyone know whether QEP's request to unitize the Grail oil field was approved?