Wednesday - September 3, 2014; Australia Weather Bureau Doesn't Deny It Tampered With Weather Data

Active rigs:

	9/2/2014	09/02/2013	09/02/2012	09/02/2011	09/02/2010
Active Rigs	194	185	192	198	143

RBN Energy announces its Schools of Energy, Houston (Fall, 2014); Calgary (Spring, 2015)

The Wall Street Journal

Top story: video purports to show beheading of American journalist. President Obama sends more "non-combat troops" to Baghdad. Getting ready for the evacuation? Protests shut down Iraqi parliament.

The secret to the success of ISIS (ISIL).

Ukraine's dilemma: talk with rebels or right with Russia.

Banks' fee bonanza dries up.

Upbeat economic reports signal sustained improvement: a strengthening manufacturing sector is fueling expectations that the US economy will expand at a more robust clip in the second half of the year.

Apple: no iCloud breach. Okay. [Update, Sept 3, 2014: as suspected, there was an iCloud breach; Apple was less than forthcoming when the story first broke; the initial denial may cause Apple more harm than the actual breach.]

Home Depot with possible breach of credit-card data.

Dollar wins as policies shift. Important. For oil pricing.  

The Los Angeles Times

Top story, front page: President Obama approves 350 more "non-combat" troops for US Embassy in Baghdad. 

Limited water presents challenge for natural gas fracking. But no restrictions on golf courses except that all watering must be done at night (when golfers are not on the links). Perhaps they could limit fracking to night-time only.

Dunkin' Donuts opens first Southern California shop in Santa Monica. 

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Global Warming, Australian Style

Remember that story about Australia fudging climate data? Turns out to be very, very true. "Australia weather bureau" does not deny it tampered with climate data.  

And now it turns out that the troposphere has not shown any warming in the past ... drum roll ... 26 years: 

The nearly two-decade long pause in global warming may just be the tip of the iceberg for evidence against anthropogenic climate change. A new paper found that temperatures in the lower troposphere have not shown a warming trend in as many as 26 years.

“In the surface data we compute a hiatus length of 19 years, and in the lower tropospheric data we compute a hiatus length of 16 years… and 26 years” using satellite data sets.

Cognitive dissonance, I suppose.