China To Be #2 In Shale Gas Production By 2040; Apparenlty Canada, Argentina Will Be #3, #4

Data points for shale natural gas from Rigzone: China will be world's 2nd largest shale gas producer by 2040.

So, let's see the numbers. Some data points:

• world's natural gas production is set to grow 62% by 2040
• world's natural gas production will grow from about 350 bcf/d to about 550 bcf/d by 2040
• shale gas resources will be the largest component of this increase
• global shale gas production is projected to increase from about 40 bcf/d in 2015 to about 170 bcf/d by 2040
• shale gas production will account for about 30% of global production by 2040
• the US will remain the top shale gas producer
• 2015: shale gas accounted for about 50% of US natural gas production
• 2040: US shale gas will more than double from about 40 bcf/d to about 80 bcf/d 
• 2040: US shale gas will account for 70% of total US natural gas production (currently about 50%)
• 2040: China -- shale gas would account for about 40% of its total natural gas production
• 2015: China has drilled 600 natural gas wells in the last five (5) years
• 2015: China, producing 0.5 bcf/d of shale gas 
• 2040, shale gas:
• global: 170 bcf/d
• US: 80 bcf/d
• China: 20 bcf/d at this link
• 2015, shale gas:
• US: 40 bcf/d
• Canada: 4 bcf/d
• China: 0.5 bcf/d
• Argentina: 0.07 bcf/d

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The Art Page

I've often said that if I had all the money in the world, I would move to Boston, or the North Shore, or to the tip of Cape Cod. Maybe not year-round, but I would certainly have a house there. I miss some of the winters.

I also miss the art.

Today, The WSJ has a great review of a current exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. We visited often. We had a membership. We loved it.

Today's review is on American Impressionism: Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals.

Six miles off the Atlantic coastline, where New Hampshire abuts Maine, is the archipelago known as the Isles of Shoals. The largest of its nine landmasses is Maine’s Appledore Island—95 weather-beaten acres of rocky coves, tidal pools and knobby shrubbery, all anchored by nature-cleaved mounds of white-and-gray granite. From 1848 to 1914, its western shores were the site of Appledore House, a grand, rambling hotel owned and operated by the family of the poet, artist and naturalist Celia Thaxter (1835-1894).

Thaxter, Appledore’s resident cultural luminary, lived in an adjacent cottage. Vacationers craned to spy, through Thaxter’s vine-cloaked, wraparound porch, the celebrities at her summer soirées, including writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson and painters William Morris Hunt and Frederick Childe Hassam.

But like the artists who frequented Appledore, resort guests were probably more transfixed by the views from their own porches: surf driving against rocky shores; active, New England skies; the surrounding smaller islands and distant, hazy mainland horizon; glorious sunsets.

These sweeping vistas entranced Hassam (1859-1935), who nearly every summer visited and painted Appledore between 1886 and 1916. And those pictures are the subject of “American Impressionist: Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals,” a handsome exhibition of more than 40 marine oils and watercolors at Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum. Curated at PEM by Austen Barron Bailly, the museum’s curator of American art, the show was co-organized with the North Carolina Museum of Art in cooperation with the Shoals Marine Laboratory.

Hmmm. Some days, life seems too short. Some days, too long. Today life seems too short. If I did not have Sophia to care for, I would be on my way to Salem, MA.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Follow Your Passion

I guess it was last night, driving home from dropping off Sophia from a trip to the grocery store, I thought about the incredible experiences I had at Los Angele County hospital many decades ago. I saw cases on a daily basis that I would never see again, and at the time, did not think much about them. I did not have anything with which to put them into perspective.

I saw the results of the Los Angeles knife and gun club in the emergency room on Saturday nights. I saw newly diagnosed diabetics in keto-acidotic comas that my professor thought hum-drum. I saw one active case of tetanus, something I bet 99% of US physicians have never seen, much less treated. With the immigrants coming up from Mexico I saw infectious diseases that 95% of US physicians have probably never seen. I remember participating with paramedics with the Los Angeles Fire Department, racing to a "man down" call when the truck would slow down. I asked why we were slowing: "there is still active shooting. We want to arrive AFTER the police arrive." Oh.

I made diagnoses of appendicitis but they would not be operated on until hours later -- often after rupture -- because surgeons and operation units tied up with life-and-death motorcycle accidents and the aforementioned knife and gun club casualties.

I was the only non-nurse attendant in more than one delivery. As a student, I was the lone medical attendant with a woman who delivered her baby in the car in the parking lot. I was walking to my dermatology rotation. My preceptor, a male, wanted to date me. I declined.

In one 24-hour period I saw more "new" cases than I would see in a year some years later while serving with the US Air Force, but then the Air Force had its own rewards and challenges, very unlike USC-LAC, but just as compelling. I love that word, "compelling." It fits so often when I can't find the word I'm looking for. 

Before I married, I often thought I would have loved to remain at LAC-USC, living in the hospital or in an RV outside, just for the energy the environment gave off. Excitement was/is the wrong word. I think television medical shows changed remarkably, and for the worse, when they switched from an "individual" focus to an "ensemble" focus. I do not care for "Marcus Welby, MD," what little I remember of that show. For some reason, I have fond memories of "Dr Kildare" although I don't remember a single episode, and honestly don't remember if I ever watched more than a handful. Back in 1966, when it premiered, I would have been 15 and way too busy to watch much television.

After 1967, the only television I watched was what came on between 10:30 p.m. and when the local network signed off for the night, about 12:00 midnight or 1:00 a.m., I suppose.