Notes From All Over -- The "Siberia Weather" Edition -- June 28, 2020

Global warming: This past week, The Bismarck Tribune was played. They had a huge article (and a tweet) that the temperature in Siberia this past week hit an unprecedented 100°F. In fact, that temperature was previously recorded in 1915.

Worth a thousand words:

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The Literature Page

Enemies of Promise, Cyril Connolly, c. 1938; second printing, 1948; new foreword, 2008.

I absolutely cannot recommend this book to a general audience. One has to be an Anglophile through-and-through, and a "Brit lit' fanatic to maybe even come close to enjoying this book. I'm neither -- neither an Anglophile through-and-through or a "Bit lit" fanatic, but enough of each to really enjoy the book.

I enjoy the book for any number of reasons, but really unable to explain why.

Much of it has to do with my years in Yorkshire, northern England, where I started my very, very aggressive reading program back in 2002, I believe it was.

Perhaps, mostly, I like it because of the idioms and phrases, from a book which goes all the way back to 1938, from a writer who was in elementary school during WWI and a literary critic during WWII. 

The book is divided into three sections. The first two sections have to do with literary analysis. I skipped to the third section and am reading it first. The third section is the author's memoirs.

Cyril Connolly was about ten or eleven years old when he was sent away to his first 24/7 boarding school, St Wulfric's on the coast, the southeastern coast of England, south of London. From there he would "transfer" to Eton.

He says he was sent away to St Wulfric's when the war broke out -- if accurate, that was July, 2014, and he would have been eleven years old, or thereabout. St Wulfric's is for boys aged 4 to 14. 

I was blown away when I read that his two best friends were Cecil Beaton and George Orwell. Of course, I had not heard of the former, but everyone has heard of the latter. It turns out that Orwell and Connolly competed with writing poetry, and finding favor with the headmaster and headmistress by the list of books they checked out from the school's library.

But George Orwell. Wow. I never thought of George Orwell being ten years old. LOL. In fact, on page 163, Cyril Connolly writes this about Orwell: ".... he was one of those boys who seem born old."

I remember my summer at St Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, take a humanities course in Romanticism. It was there that I first met some of the boys that seemed born old. Wow, I was out of my element, but I survived -- one of the best experiences I ever had. It's too bad; due to Covid-19 a lot of those summer experiences are going to be missed by a lot of "kids." It makes me very, very sad when I think about it, and think about our oldest granddaughter. She is one of those that seems mature beyond her years and would benefit greatly from a "St Olaf" experience.

This is her, at the helm, last summer, on the Aegean Sea, sailing among the Greek islands.

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Old Love

Old Love, Twelve Bar Blues Band
Live at the BluesMoose Café, the Netherlands.

You can almost hear some riffs / some phrasing from some old Beatles songs.

And this is why, link here.

For You Blue, George Harrison, the Beatles

Apple Software Update -- May 26, 2020

First things first: twelve to go. NASCAR Gander Truck Series / Charlotte --Elliott leading Kyle Busch.

• ten to go: 0.34 second separation between Elliott (leader) / Kyle (second place)
• eight to go: 0.39 second separation; no one else in play for first / second
• six to go: 0.39 second separation; it's going to be a heckuva finish;
• four to go: 0.70 second separation; Kyle Busch got caught up in lap traffic;
• two to go: 1.10 second separation; Elliott needs to see the white flag;
• final lap: 0.77 second separation; 
• Elliott wins; well-deserved; good for him;

TCM: this is pretty coincidental. I went through a short Diana Ross (and the Supremes) stage over the weekend. I'm pretty much over it now. And, what do you know? On TCM now: "Lady Sings the Blues," for which Diana Ross was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Bille Holiday. 

APPL: I normally don't follow / pay attention to macOS updates -- the software that "runs" the Apple Macs. I simply download the new updates and leave it at that. It's generally a pain; once downloaded a few tweaks are necessary to bring the desktop back to the way I like it. Be that as it may.

Interestingly enough, the newest update, released this week, macOS Catalina 10.15.5, addresses two issues that actually caught my attention.

First, over the past few months, I've noticed that my computer would freeze up. It usually happened when large files were being downloaded; many of these files were being downloaded in the background of which I was not particularly aware. I thought it was simply "one of those things," re-booted, and moved on. But now I see it's a "recognized" problem for the current macOS version (10.14.6 - my current version). Apparently, the new version addresses this issue. I'm impressed.

Second, battery management. This is even more interesting and counter to what I had been told years ago about Mac batteries. Years ago I was explicitly told by Apple Store employees it was best to keep my Mac computer batteries fully charged. Interesting. From MacRumors:

The ‌macOS Catalina‌ 10.15.5 update introduces a new Battery Health Management feature for Mac notebooks. Battery Health Management is meant to extend the overall lifespan of a Mac's battery by reducing the rate of chemical aging.

Battery Health Management analyzes the battery health of a laptop and its charging pattern, and in some cases, it will preserve battery longevity and health by not charging a MacBook to its full capacity. Keeping a MacBook charged at its full capacity at all times can reduce battery health.

Very, very interesting.

My hunch is that Rush Limbaugh, if his chemotherapy was not "kicking his @$$" would have mentioned it on his show. I don't listen to all of Rush, but I do listen to much of Rush. He's an Apple aficionado and loves to tell listeners of these new developments. It's possible he's mentioned this on his show and I simply missed it. I missed his show today, for example.

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They Never Quit

It wasn't enough to destroy the global economy with a draconian response on the advice of the WHO, CDC, and others.

Now, they want to double down, triple down, quadruple down, whatever it takes.

Exhibit A: cover article in this week's issue of The Economist: seize the moment -- the chance to flatten the climate curve. No, I don't subscribe and I don't read, but I happened to see it at my son-in-law's house.

If two months of shutting down the economy can cause an economic depression, imagine what the faux environmentalists could do to the economy. 

Wow.

Amazon Is Back; Notes From All Over -- Nothing About The Bakken -- May 25, 2020

Same day delivery. I ordered writing pens and journals from Amazon just one minute ago -- 7:51 a.m. May 25, 2020 -- I expected delivery some time this week. Amazon says the order will be delivered by 1:00 p.m. today. Delivery free and items free with "cash back." Invoice: $0.00. What a great country.

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Global Warming 

North Texas

Wow, another day of rain. North Texas has already seen a lot of rain this spring, and the forecast calls for rain and thunderstorms all day. DFW monthly and annual precipitation data at this link.

• May, 2020: currently at about 4 inches of rain for this month, we have no chance of exceeding the drenching 17 inches of rain in May, 2015;
• April, 2020: at 1.90 inches, a fairly dry April, historically;
• March, 2020: a whopping 6.75 inches; going back to 1898
• March, 2002: 7.39 inches
• February, 2020: 3.88 inches; going back to 1898:
• February, 2018: a whopping 11.31 inches; several other years with more February rain than Feb 2020
• January, 2020: 5.00 inches; going back to 1898, only two previous months of January exceeded that:
• 2012: 6.18 inches
• 2007: 5.58 inches

Right now, 9:05 a.m. CT, another huge downpour. Amazing.

Enjoying breakfast on the covered patio, listening to non-stop Chris Isaak provided by Alexa.

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Global Warming
Wyoming

From a reader:

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One Last Note On Wuhan Flu Today

Brazil: US bans non-US citizens from Brazil entering the US, due to Wuhan flu. See stats here.

Five Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today: WPX; XTO; Whiting; CLR -- May 13, 2020

Snow! And very, very cold temperatures in Scotland this week. Link here. For those following "grand solar minima" (which is very new to me -- only over the past couple of years have I followed it), this is fascinating:

Monday’s polar blast has arrived with the news that six global organisations, including king warm-mongers themselves the Met Office, have combined to create a weather model for June through August, 2020 (well they’ve gotta spend all that funding on something, right, and the world is just screaming-out for MORE MODELS).

The six forecasters’ combined map shows a 1500 mile-wide “cool blob” covering the Atlantic and much of Europe.

They’ve predicted an overall UK summer temperature of 14.7C, which would be the coldest summer since 2015’s 13.9C.

However, that prediction –as with most-other things coming out of the UK Met Office– is likely on the warm side and something far-closer to 2015’s reading is probably on the cards — time will of course tell.

Tech: I see there's another browser out there competing with Chrome: Brave. I don't care one way or the other but I was talking with the granddaughters last night about their browsers. Apparently, Brave blocks ads and trackers which saves loading time. That's a huge irritant I have with current browsers -- I often watch spinning "clocks" as ads and trackers are downloaded. I have no idea. It was an ad for Brave. Brave has been around for awhile; this story from Computerworld, July 24, 2018. 

The web browser from Brave Software relies on an unusual business model: it strips out ads from websites, replaces them with its own ads, then allows users to send money to sites they like.

Boutique browsers try to scratch out a living by scratching out a niche underserved by the usual suspects. Brave is one of those browsers.

Brave has gotten more attention than most new browsers, partly because a co-founder was one of those who kick-started Mozilla's Firefox, partly because of its very unusual - some say parasitical - business model.

Florida Walt Disney World Reort: taking reservations for July 1, 2020, and afterward. 

Re-opening: if states that are re-opening are able to withstand the barrage of scare stories from the mainstream media and continue with re-opening plans, there is going to be a huge gap between states that fail to re-open and states that re-open. 

Twitter scroll: not much news but there certainly seems to be a suggestion that the worst is over for US oil. Certainly not much bad news. Considering. Bloomberg over at Rigzone.

FWIW: earlier, it was reported that experts predicted that global (?) CO2 emissions would fall 8%; today it's being reported that EIA predicts energy-related CO2 emissions to fall 11% this year. Link here.

OPEC basket: $22.71, link here. OPEC shows $22.83 today.

OPEC, May, 2020 report, various sources:

• OECD commercial oil stocks rose by almost 70 million bbls, month-over-month in March; now at 3,002 million bbls; 125 million bbls higher than last year;
• OPEC crude oil production rose by 1.798 million bbls per day month-over-month to 30.412 million bopd in May -- secondary sources
• Saudi Arabia: says it produced 12.007 million bpd in May -- if accurate, a huge production number going over 12 million bbls

Iraq: agrees to further cuts but less than OPEC+ target. 

International air travel? Emirates to begin flights from May 21, 2020, to London, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, and Melbourne. Note: Italy on the list; NYC not.

API, weekly:

• forecast: another large increase; 4.147 million bbls (note false precision)
• actual: almost double the forecast; a build of 7.58 million bbls

EIA, weekly data, link here, and here, pending, released at 9:30 a.m. CT -- 

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$25.68	5/13/2020	05/13/2019	05/13/2018	05/13/2017	05/13/2016
Active Rigs	17	64	60	51	27

Five wells coming off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, May 13, 2020: 42 for the month; 92 for the quarter, 319 for the year:

• 36634, drl, WPX, Nighthawk 6-34HD, Heart Butte,
• 36578, drl, XTO, Tong 34X-9E, Midway,
• 36131, 972, Whiting, Elma TTT Federal 43-4H, Sanish, t11/19; cum 98K 3/20; this must be great -- producing oil, selling oil, and not paying (some) bills while in bankruptcy?
• 35383, SI/A, CLR, Palmer Federal 11-25H1, Haystack Butte, t--; cum --; 23,426 bbls over 21 days extrapolates to 33,466 bbls/30-day month;
• 35381, SI/A, CLR, Palmer 9-25H1, Haystack Butte, t--; cum --; 16,344 bbls over 19 days extrapolates to 25,806 bbls/30-day month;

RBN Energy: factors influencing US LNG offtaker decisions to lift vs cancel cargoes.

Global natural gas demand disruptions and high storage levels resulting from the COVID crisis have turned international LNG markets upside down. Price spreads for U.S. LNG exports, which were well above $1/MMBtu two months ago, have disappeared and even flipped to negative, with the UK NBP and Dutch TTF price benchmarks — and briefly also Asia’s JKM index — trading below the U.S. benchmark Henry Hub for the first time since the U.S. began exporting LNG in early 2016. Despite the uneconomic price spreads, U.S. cargo liftings have slowed only modestly so far. That’s likely to change in the coming months as both Cheniere Energy and Sempra have confirmed cancellations or modifications to lifting schedules by some offtakers, and other terminal operators are likely facing the same pressure. However, many U.S. cargoes will still move, regardless of prices. What are the economics of cancelling versus lifting a seemingly out-of-the-money cargo? Today, we begin a short series examining the factors affecting U.S. LNG cargo liftings.

A few months ago, the idea of U.S. LNG cargo cancellations was implausible. While technically possible — U.S. LNG contracts afford offtakers the ability to cancel, though not without penalty — cancellations seemed the least likely of scenarios, especially given that (1) U.S. LNG contracts are take-or-pay, meaning offtakers would pay certain fees associated with the cargo whether they lift it or not, (2) long-term, committed offtakers also have contractual obligations tied to their offtake agreements, such as long-term vessel charters and delivery commitments with utility consumers in destination markets who rely on the gas, and (3) the contracts provide plenty of flexibility on what happens to the cargo once offtakers take possession of it. These factors kept U.S. cargo liftings steady and even rising to new heights through 2019 and early 2020, as additional liquefaction trains were completed and commercialized. This, even as international price spreads shrunk.

Global Warming -- Early Morning Edition -- May 12, 2020

Wow, there's been an incredible number of stories that I want to post regarding the weather and global warming, 2020, but just have not had time. In addition, I just haven't been interested. Too many other stories.

So, for now, this is simply a placeholder. I may or may not come back to it.

We'll see.

This summer when we have the usual hot weather, we will see a barrage of AP, MSNBC, and ABC news stories on global warming.

Cold weather: that will be reported as "weather."

Polar vortex, May, 2020:

• polar vortex unleashes rare May snow; shatters historic low temperature records; AccuWeather;
• historic blast of polar vortex sets scores of records, scatters rare May snow in eastern US, Washington Post;
• polar vortex brings May snow and freeze warnings to New York and New England, The [London] Guardian; 
• New York's Central Park: latest snowfall ever in history of the park; latest ever; Ice Age Now; 

From The [London] Daily Mail:

Arctic Blast To Hit The Northeast By Mother's Day -- May 5, 2020

Already burned out and it's only 9:28 a.m. CT!

I will be off the net for awhile. I'm already overwhelmed with all the news; simply can't keep up.

I need to take a break.

I think this was the story that brought everything to a halt, LOL: northeast to see several rounds of snow -- remember, this is May, the month when we should be seeing May flowers following April showers -- as an(other) Arctic blast pushes in. From a news source I can't link on the blog:

A bitter Arctic blast will settle into the Northeast in time for Mother's Day weekend with a possibility of snow, just as the Southwest faces record-heat.

After summer-like warmth over the weekend, cooler air already is spreading from the Great Lakes into the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. But even colder air is on the way, late this week into the weekend.

"The bigger story with this is we're gonna see several rounds of snow for parts of the interior Northeast. So this first batch moves in on Thursday, Friday, and then the second one, the more potent system, moves in on Mother's Day weekend."

The record heat in the southwest is going to push a lot of southern Californians to the beach. I assume that will be the big weekend story. 

I'm going to sit on the patio, have a third cup of coffee (decaf) and watch the robins. Read a book. But before we go, how is TSLA doing? Having another great day.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Global CO2 Emissions To Fall Significantly This Year -- NYT -- April 30, 2020

Holy mackerel. We only have to close down the global economy for a month or so each year, and we save the earth. Amazing. That's a small price to pay.

The NYT is reporting that global CO2 will likely drop 8% this year. Truly amazing. Link not provided. I'm sure it's easy to find.

The drop in atmospheric CO2 is already working: for the first time in recorded history Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) saw a low of minus 20°F (-28.9°C) this late in the season. Link here. Barrow is Alaska's northernmost town. I once spent a summer working in Barrow, Alaska. What great memories; what a great country.

The dumbest thing Alaska ever did was rename Barrow: Utqiagvik.

At best, the "global warming" story is a wash: the "flat earthers" (like me) can point to any number of articles that suggest not only is the earth not getting warmer, but there are indications it is getting cooler. Meanwhile, the Algoreans, like Joe Biden, can find just as many articles suggesting the earth is getting warmer. So it's a wash. However, the former, the "flat earthers" actually use real data; while the latter, the Algoreans, use adjusted data and corona-virus-derived models.

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What A Great Country

A reader sent me these photos overnight. I've posted a number of times how much I love lamb. The reader used a marinade of rosemary, thyme, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper; seared the rack of lamb and then grilled it over indirect heat. Internal meat temperature: 125°. The final result looks spectacular.

Whereas I will marinade overnight, the reader says he marinades for about five hours. 

He says his wife and two daughters enjoy lamb. The daughters were introduced to lamb years ago as "Australian steak."

He also does the same thing I do: look for bargains in the "manager's special" in the meat department. 

What impresses me most is how really simple and easy this is. I see a lot of very expensive and very fancy outdoor kitchens on sale, but this, again, was done on an old-fashioned, simple Weber grill.

By the way, my favorite grilling book: Weber's Big Book of Grilling, which can be found for under $2.00, about the spot price of a bbl of Saudi heavy oil.

Despite Rising Seas, Bill Gates Buy Beachfront Property; The Real Reason The Ocean Is Rising -- April 25, 2020

From What's Up With That.

This is a re-posting of an earlier story, but a different source, I believe. Maybe not. Whatever.

I would not have re-posted it except for the fact that it included a link to a very old article -- alluding to my measurements of the rising seas using markers on popsickle sticks to measure the rising seas. Remember that? Wow, that was a long, long time ago.

So, here's the link to that old story about the rising oceans, measured in millimeters.

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The Real Reason The Pacific Ocean Is Rising Along The California Coast

The Pacific Ocean along the California coast is rising due to displacement by 40 million bbls of Saudi Arabian oil in ULCCs and VLCCs sitting there with no place to go.

Alarmed by the rising seas, and the impact it might have on homes owned by Bill Gates, et al, President Trump is considering banning Saudi Arabian oil from entering the US.

Saudi Arabia is now considering re-routing those tankers.

I can't make this stuff up. From Aljazeera:

Saudi Arabia is considering rerouting millions of barrels of oil on board tankers sailing to the United States if President Donald Trump decides to block imports of crude from the kingdom, shipping and trade sources have told Reuters news agency.

Some 40 million barrels of Saudi oil are on their way to the US and due to arrive in the coming weeks, piling more pressure on markets already struggling to absorb a glut of stocks, according to shipping data and sources.

See photos of those ships off shore California at this post. 

Love him, or hate him, President Trump keeps his eye(s) on the ball.

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For The Archives -- Spring Snowstorm Shatters Records -- April 18, 2020

From AccuWeather, April 18, 2020:

Despite the calendar reading mid-April and Americans preparing to stow away their winter jackets, winter hit rewind on 2020, dumping record-breaking snow totals on the High Plains region Thursday night (April 16, 2020).

Through Friday morning, that snow turned treacherous in its path towards the East Coast, causing traffic hazards in the Great Lakes region.

In Nebraska, daily snow total records were smashed in cities like Lincoln and Grand Island following Thursday's spring storm. Farther east, by the border of Iowa, numerous areas around Omaha topped 5 inches, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

The amount of snow was not trivial. 

The cool weather in north Texas persists. I'm getting tired of this long, dragged out spring. North Texas has already broken all records for precipitation this calendar year -- something like 122 years -- I forget the exact number -- but essentially since records were kept -- and that was in March. It's been a long, cold, wet spring.

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Crawfish Season

Gol-dang it. I just realized I'm missing crawfish season.  I'll check in with my favorite crawfish restaurant on Monday. For takeout. Their website says they are open for takeout. $5.99 a pound. I really don't care about the price this year.

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Amazing Technology

For the archives. I put this in my journal this evening (edited, of course, for the blog):

Still in nationwide lock down. I’m watching “Casablanca” on Turner Classic Movies. Updating my calendar. I see an entry for a “Zoe _________” birthday coming up. Zoe was one year old in 2002. I was TDY, Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, when I met her and her parents. She was adopted. I really, really liked her dad. I doubt he remembers me. I think about Zoe periodically. As a pediatrician I met her once or twice when she was one or two years old. I googled the name, thinking that “Zoe __________” might be a bit unique. And, voila. Wow. Several hits — and all the same person — a preppie at _______________ Prep School in [western] MD. Her dad was in a federal service and it would be likely the family is living/working in the DC area. It appears she is a “star” player on the school’s girls’ soccer team. Tears come to my eyes. It’s so touching to see how things turned out for Zoe. I wonder if she has siblings. I wonder how her parents are doing. I would love to send a note to her prep school to give to her but it’s probably best not. No purpose to be served.

As noted Zoe was adopted. I wish I were less of a romantic; I wear nostalgia on my sleeves, as they say.

Wow, no matter how many times I watch "Casablanca" I never tire of seeing it. It seems I always see something I did not see before.

"We'll always have Paris."

For me, I'll always have Menwith Hill.

Daily Note, Early Morning Edition -- March 27, 2020

Breaking news: Boris says he has tested positive for Wuhan flu. 

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Global Warming Wrap-up

Cold:

Lake Mead, link here:

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EVs

Inside EVs.
Tesla slashes 75% of workforce at US gigafactory; Panasonic temporarily suspends work at the gigafactory (until April 14, 2020)

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SEAFLU

Link here. 

Not that anyone cares or is even following it.

Perhaps one of the worse, if not the worst, year for pediatric deaths due to "seasonal flu" -- you know the one -- the one that is not "novel" or called something scary like COVID-19.

CDC unable to provide exact numbers like it does with COVID-19; only provides broad estimates; annual flu cases are estimated, and "rounded off" in millions. In other words, we don't know if there have been 38 million cases in the US this year or 37 million cases.

We are well into this season; the season should be wrapping up, but here it is, from the CDC: the overall cumulative hospitalization rate for the season increased to 65.1 per 100,000. It had been running 57 to 59 per 100,000.

We are well into this season; the season should be wrapping up, but here it is, from the CDC:

the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 7.1%, below the epidemic threshold of 7.3%. 

Ventilators: think of the number of ventilators required for pneumonia/influenza hospitalizations at a rate of 65.1/100,000 -- seasonal flu and compare that to COVID-19 hospitalizations so far in the US -- 8,000 hospitalizations or 2.4/100,000. The numbers that Governor Cuomo says needed for NYC don't add up.

• COVID-19 hospitalizations, US, cumulative: 8,000
• SEAFLU hospitalizations, US, cumulative: 214,830 
• We are well into this season; the season should be wrapping up, but here it is, from the CDC: five more pediatric deaths due to SEAFLU reported this past week, bringing the total for the season to 149, one of the worse, if not the wrose record in modern history 

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Italy 

Another attempt to explain Italy's experience with Wuhan flu. Over at aljazeera. Virginia Pietromarchi does provide another interesting data point.

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Great Britain

Forecast of British deaths due to Wuhan flu have been revised ... downward ... and revised significantly downward. Link here.

Global Warming -- Corona Virus Hysteria Will Get Us First -- March 18, 2020

Whatever.

Clearing off the desktop.

Two recent reports regarding global warming which St Greta apparently overlooked.

Note: that St Greta is the Swedish phenom, not the Greta Vogel who wrote this story:

The global coronavirus outbreak is now curtailing research at the top of the world. Travel restrictions imposed by Norway have forced the cancellation of research flights in support of the Polarstern, the icebound German research ship that is the centerpiece of a $150 million mission to study the effects of climate change on the Arctic.

A series of 10 to 15 research flights due to take off from Svalbard, Norway, in March and April have been canceled, says Markus Rex, an atmospheric scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. “It’s very sad, but we had to cancel,” says Rex, leader of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC). A second set of flights, planned for August, might still happen, he says. “We just have to play it by ear.”

The mission is also facing a potentially more serious disruption: The next rotation of researchers, scheduled to join the Polarstern in early April, are also supposed to travel through Svalbard, a semiautonomous archipelago that has closed its borders to outsiders because of coronavirus concerns. Expedition leaders are working with Norwegian authorities to find a way to get 100 coronavirus-free researchers to the ship, which has not reported any cases of COVID-19.

Second: there appears no hurry to get the study done. USA Today grants the Arctic a 20-year reprieve. In 2009, scientists say that polar bears may disappear by 2014. Now? those same scientists say it will be at least 2034 before polar bears go extinct.

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- February 18, 2020

Boardings in the Bakken, January, 2020, passenger boardings commercial airports, across the entire state of North Dakota, up 12% over January, 2019:

• every commercial airport saw an increase in boardings except Grand Forks;
• Dickinson: up 13.5 percent
• Bismarck: up 12 percent
• Minot: up 9 percent
• Williston: up 5.4 percent
• the other three cities were not mentioned: Fargo, Jamestown, Devils Lake?
• anecdotally business activity is about the same year-over-year; 
• my hunch: some NoDaks are seeing huge increases in their net worth due to oil sector and are spending some of that money on winter trips to Hawaii and Phoenix;

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

The market: the Dow is not the market but it certainly seems ... we've discussed this before. Let's move on. The Dow was down about 300 points at its worst today but finished down about 160 points. Pretty amazing, considering.

Coronavirus statistics for February 18, 2020. I haven't seen them yet; let's look together, at the same time. Coronoavirus statistics.

We've leveled off at 6 to 7% worldwide, change in total, day-to-day, but change in daily was incredibly bad news. The change in daily, day-over-day, was a whopping 39%.

The biomedical statisticians should have fun with this.

One wonders if the Chinese going back to work has something to do with this. I would still like to see some analysis of the health status of the folks who died before they were infected with SARS-CoV-2.

NASCAR: still no "real" news regarding Ryan Newman, Daytona 500. NASCAR will look at this closely -- the events leading up to the accident, and the event that caused the accident -- but I'm not hopeful that any changes will be made. I might come back to this later.

Costs of renewable energy: back to Australia. The article is too complicated to review here. Elon Musk is salivating. He knows that Americans won't be able to figure this out -- but he will end up selling them a lot of batteries.

Cash-back: this credit card cash-back stuff is quite incredible. I just received my "cash-back distribution" from Costco today. And the annual distribution from USAA almost pays for car insurance for six months; in fact, I think it does and then some. Best of all: Amazon, of course. On top of that there are some incredible deals on Amazon. The other day I saw a hard-cover coffee-table book that was the cat's meow, as they say. At the local bookstore (not Barnes and Noble) it was selling for $50 and no discount. At Amazon, for some inexplicable reason, it was selling for $5.91. And it was being sold by Amazon, not a third party seller. It arrived yesterday (one-day free shipping), and brand-new, still in its shrink-wrap. 

Bernard Kerik: one of those folks that President Trump pardoned / commuted today. Interesting, interesting story for the crime he was serving.

Zero Hedge: one of the first -- if not the first -- to report the possibility of a Chinese lab "producing" the coronavirus. After that revelation, Zero Hedge was banned from twitter. More and more stories now coming from other sources suggesting that it was entirely possible that a Wuhan lab was responsible. Tonight, it is being reported that US Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) is suggesting that that story should be seriously entertained.

Barr: now we got the Democrats defending Barr.

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"Because they're crap!"

Vincent, Freddie Starr
The Brits are simply brilliant.

I assume that, subconsciously, Sophia painting on the iPad brought me here tonight.

Global Warming Hoax, Update -- February 14, 2020

With regard to global warming, perhaps one of the best updates ever -- concise and clear, link here.

Climate change hysteria has been dialed up to 11 over the last year or two. Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who knows little or nothing about the subject, apparently will continue being nominated for a Nobel Prize until she wins one.

But, hype aside, what is actually going on with the Earth’s climate? The original post is here.

Anthony Watts (the link) offers seven charts that show the effects of the last decade of alleged global warming. The first one has to do with the beneficial effects of increasing CO2–plant food–in the atmosphere.

From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25 2016. 

The greening over the past 33 years reported in this study is equivalent to adding a green continent about two times the size of mainland USA (18 million km2)…

This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015.


We constantly hear that temperatures are setting new records, but in reality, according to NOAA’s United States Climate Reference Network, average temperatures in the U.S. in 2019 were cooler than they had been at the start of the decade. The two peaks were, as usual, naturally-occurring El Nino years:

The alarmists’ models were created by activists to predict problematic levels of warming. That was the whole point. Unfortunately for the alarmists, enough time has now gone by that we can say, definitively, that the models are wrong. They grossly exaggerated any mild warming that has actually occurred. And a model that produces wrong predictions is worthless.

Much more at the link: five more graphs and great summaries. 

Notes From All Over, Part 3 -- February 13, 2020

This will not make tonight's ABC evening news with David Muir, from the international agency:

The story:

The United States led the world in tackling CO2 emissions last year while combining that singular success with solid economic growth.

It has also been confirmed while the U.S. was hitting its climate goals, at the same time “80 percent of the increase in CO2 emissions came from Asia and that China and India both contributed significantly” to global increases.

The story continues:

“The United States saw the largest decline in energy-related CO₂ emissions in 2019 on a country basis – a fall of 140 Mt, or 2.9%, to 4.8 Gt,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported Tuesday. “US emissions are now down almost 1 Gt from their peak in the year 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period.”

“A 15% reduction in the use of coal for power generation underpinned the decline in overall US emissions in 2019,” the IEA continued.

“Coal-fired power plants faced even stronger competition from natural gas-fired generation, with benchmark gas prices an average of 45% lower than 2018 levels. As a result, gas increased its share in electricity generation to a record high of 37%. Overall electricity demand declined because demand for air-conditioning and heating was lower as a result of milder summer and winter weather.”

U.S. success in leading the world in tackling CO2 emissions was not lost on those who support its current efforts.

Wind And Solar Energy Is Free -- That's Why It Costs More -- WSJ -- February 8, 2020

Reported with a straight face:

For Consumers, the plan involves generating more than half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2040, up from 11% last year. To do so, and offset losses from plant closures, it plans to add six gigawatts of solar power—requiring a total of 59 square miles of solar panels clustered across its service territory—as well as a smaller amount of wind power. Increasingly, both technologies compete on cost with natural gas, and because wind and sun are free, the utility will save hundreds of millions of dollars a year on fuel expenses. 

In the very next paragraph:

The transition will come at a cost. The company says it will spend at least $25 billion over the next decade to replace aging gas and electric equipment and prepare the grid for more renewables, batteries and electric vehicles—major capital investments that would eventually boost returns for shareholders. The expenditures will likely result in rate increases for customers, though Consumers anticipates keeping them below the rate of inflation in the coming years. 

But no, wind and solar energy is not free. In general, all wind and solar energy needs fossil fuel back-up.

An incredibly regressive "tax."

Top Story Of The Month -- Hands Down -- Top Story -- January 31, 2020

Okay, I don't care what you are doing. Set it down, put it aside, turn it off, this is a must-read.

I completely missed it and I subscribe to The WSJ. This was sent to me by a very, very alert reader. Huge thanks.

The story is behind a paywall, of course, so we will do a screenshot to prove I did not make any of this up. LOL.

The headline: Microsft strives for a carbon-free future. A setback in Fargo (North Dakota) shows the hard reality. The software giant ran diesel generators to power its North Dakota campus due to forces it couldn't control on the day of it bold climate pledge.

The story begins:

Hours after Microsoft Corp. MSFT -1.54% pledged to eliminate its carbon emissions within a decade earlier this month, the company was forced to fire up fossil fuel generators to power its corporate campus in Fargo, N.D.

The software giant ran the diesel-burning machines for about five hours to keep the lights and heat on for 1,600 employees. It is one of about 100 big companies in the Fargo region ordered to do so by the local electric cooperative, which faced high demand for power.

Microsoft receives a significant discount on its electricity rates in exchange for using backup power a few times a year.

The discharges were tiny relative to Microsoft’s ambitious climate goals, which include switching to 100% renewable energy in five years and eliminating by 2050 all the greenhouse-gas emissions it has produced since its founding in 1975. But they demonstrate a larger point: Corporations face a monumental challenge in living up to their climate pledges if they are reliant on other companies for energy.

Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s chief environmental officer, said he is confident the company can meet its goals but understands it will be difficult. He expects stumbles along the way.

And more:

“It isn’t a lack of willingness. It is just super-complex,” said Mathias Lelievre, Engie Impact’s chief executive. “You need to go very deep. It is not an easy journey,” he added.

Microsoft has met earlier climate commitments to reduce business travel and incorporate a carbon price for internal strategic plans. Its strategy for reaching its new goals is more comprehensive than at many other companies, requiring it to take more carbon out of the air than what it generates in its global operations and supply chain. It pledged to spend $1 billion over the next four years to develop carbon-removal technology that can be deployed on a large scale. 

And more:

Microsoft has had a presence in Fargo since it acquired Great Plains Software Inc. in 2001, and it has substantially expanded over the years. Its campus south of downtown is served by Cass County Electric Cooperative, which in turn gets its electricity from Minnkota Power Cooperative.

Based in Grand Forks, Minnkota generates two-thirds of its electricity from two large coal-burning plants. It is considering a $1 billion investment to capture carbon emissions at its largest coal plant and inject them underground, an idea made more financially feasible as a result of a new federal tax credit. Ben Fladhammer, a Minnkota spokesman, said it asks companies to deploy diesel generators on cold days, when power demand for heating rises sharply. The program is the “most economic, reliable and environmentally responsible way to manage peak load conditions,” he said.

Much more at the link, but you get the idea. LOL. 

On days like that one just has to call on St Greta to give Microsoft employees a motivational speech. To keep her journey carbon free, she can row over on an old Viking ship from Sweden and then Johnny-Appleseed-walk to Fargo, maybe picking up Paul Bunyan and Babe, the blue ox, on the way through Minnesota.

Climate Change And The Oil Industry -- January 28, 2020

Outgoing BP CEO has warnings for oil industry regarding climate change and getting too far ahead of one's headlights. I've had the very same thought, not with the oil and gas sector but with the automotive manufacturing sector. Glad to see I'm not alone in my thinking.

From the linked article:

BP Plc’s outgoing Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley warned Big Oil of moving too fast on investing in new technologies to counter climate change, because their failure could lead to financial ruin.

“If you go too fast and you don’t get it right you can drive yourself out of business,” Dudley said in a Columbia Energy Exchange podcastwith Professor Jason Bordoff.
Oil companies must retain a strong financial footing to be able to invest when game-changing technologies are developed, he said. In the early 2000s, before his tenure as CEO, BP invested heavily in solar technology only to write off much of the spending.

Boeing: new nominee for Geico rock award? Javier E. David -- writes that Boeing posts shock Q4, annual loss as 737 MAX crisis grow. Are you kidding? This was a shock?

Boeing on Wednesday reported a surprise loss in the fourth quarter, as the company struggles to contain the fallout from the grounding of its flagship 737 MAX plane, which shows no signs of taking to the skies again anytime soon.

The grounded 737 MAX plane — which has idled on runways for nearly a year in the wake of two fatal crashes — is bleeding billions from the company’s bottom line, and gave Boeing its first annual loss in over 20 years. The controversy forced Boeing to oust Dennis Muilenberg as its CEO last month, and the company still has no concrete timetable for when the plane can fly again.
Here’s what Wall Street expected on key metrics:

• revenue: $17.9 billion vs. $21.73 billion expected 
• adjusted loss earnings per share: $2.33 vs $1.30 profit expected 
• GAAP loss per share: $1.79

Politics: Senate impeachment trial. Suggestion for Mitch McConnell -- allow each senator to call two witnesses (two hundred separate and unique witnesses) and let's see how fast the US Senate votes to shut this charade down.

WTI Slips Below $53 -- January 27, 2020

Active rigs:

$52.98	1/27/2020	01/27/2019	01/27/2018	01/27/2017	01/27/2016
Active Rigs	55	65	57	38	47

No new permits today.

No permits canceled.

No permits renewed.

No producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed.

No runs, no hits, no errors. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Hedging: it should be noted that how oil companies hedge their contracts, the sudden drop in oil prices could benefit some oil companies, at least on paper, for the immediate short term. However, overall, I don't think anyone bullish on oil would be happy with price of oil right now.

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The Book Page

 

Updates

Can you spot the "Sixth Extinction"? Link here.

 

The Original Post

Now that I'm reading John Hands' Cosmo Sapiens again, c. 2015, it is fun to go back and read The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. Actually I've never read the entire book but I've seen the title often and have often paged through it while standing in Barnes and Noble. I couldn't imagine spending that much time reading one book with such a title but a "reader's digest" version would be welcome. It turns out there is, over at The New Yorker, May 18, 2009. Archived.

Kolbert's essay addresses early on the "fallacy" of her own title, the sixth extinction. In fact, there have been at least twenty global extinctions, but five were particularly huge, and so, for marketing, no doubt, this book was titled the "Sixth Extinction."

Depending upon how this all turns out, there is a question whether this "sixth extinction" will even be ranked among the top twenty, much less the top ten. And I guess it's agreed that it won't make the top five. I guess is if we don't kill off all the cockroaches, we won't see another global extinction make the top five. But I digress.

Reading the "reader's digest" version at The New Yorker suggests my initial hunches were correct. The sixth extinction had mostly to do with amphibians and buried deep in the article:

But, as the number of examples [of disappearing amphibians] increased, the evidence only seemed to grow more confounding. Though amphibians in some remote and—relatively speaking—pristine spots seemed to be collapsing, those in other, more obviously disturbed habitats seemed to be doing fine. Meanwhile, in many parts of the world there weren’t good data on amphibian populations to begin with, so it was hard to determine what represented terminal descent and what might be just a temporary dip.

I've never gotten too excited about the link between man and the potential extinction of amphibians. After all, as Kolbert herself noted:

The fifth [extinction] occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period, sixty-five million years ago. The end-Cretaceous event exterminated not just the dinosaurs but seventy-five per cent of all species on earth.

To the best of my knowledge, neither men in general nor one man in particular, Trump, had anything to do with the fifth extinction. And yet it occurred. Of the dinosaurs, only the birds survived. 

On another note: for me, amphibians have always been a transitional clade, one of two clades that solved the problem of preventing eggs from drying out for those adventurous animals that tried to move from the sea to the land. Amphibians never really pulled it off; they return to the "sea" to lay their egg; the amniotes succeeded where amphibians failed.

I'm always been more surprised by the fact that amphibians have survived this long, much less surprised that they might go extinct in the next several million years. With or without the help of man.

Along that same line, I always thought "reptiles" were a grab-bag of animals assigned to a clade (or better said, a grade) that really didn't fit anywhere else. The term "Reptilia" is falling out of favor to "Sauropsida" (wiki) and it appears Reptilia/Sauropsida are defined more by what they are not, than what they are. Despite their small number, it appears "Reptilia/Sauropsida" are gaining more "stature" among biologists, at least based on the amount of new information printed since I last studied them in high school.

From the internet/wiki: there are about 7,500 species of extant reptiles. There are approximately 8,000 species of amphibians, of which 90% are frogs.

From John Hands, page 279,

Estimates of the number of living eukaryotic species range from five million to 30 million, of which around two million have been described.
Only about 4,500 prokaryotic species (bacteria and archaea) have been described, but estimates of their total number in the top  one kilometer of the Earth's crust alone range from 10^8 to 10^17 (a hundred million to a hundred thousand trillion).

Mammals? 5,416 species.

And as long as I've gone this far, insects?

1.5 million beetle species and 5.5 million insect species, with about 1 million insect species currently found and described.

This is depressing.

Time for some music:

The Age of Aquarius, The Fifth Dimension   I've often wondered what the equivalent of the anaerobic St Greta of Thunberg would have "said" during the great oxidation event, also called the "oxygen holocaust," 2.4 billion years ago which not only caused almost all life on earth to go extinct but it happened relatively quickly, in the big scheme of things.

And Prince Charles is worried about a few inches in the rise of the Earth's oceans.

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- January 26, 2020

I'm watching our oldest granddaughter play in local water polo tournament, so I'm not watching TCM or the PGA golf tournament at the moment.

But I checked in, curious how Tiger Woods was doing. The leaderboard says he has moved up "two," tied at twelfth. I thought he was tied at 8th at the end of the third round, but perhaps I was wrong. Whatever.

Through eight holes, he is down one for the day, eight strokes below par for the tournament, halfway through the fourth round.

The current leader, Marc Leishman, jumped six positions to take sole possession of first place, 13 strokes under par. Through the same number of holes as Tiger today, Marc has shot five strokes under; Woods has shot one stroke under. And all the television commentary will be on Tiger Woods.

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CO2 And Oceanic Reefs

All these years we were told how dangerous CO2 was for oceanic reefs.

Now this, from UT News:

Diving 200 feet under the ocean surface to conduct scientific research can lead to some interesting places. For University of Texas at Austin Professor Bayani Cardenas, it placed him in the middle of a champagne-like environment of bubbling carbon dioxide with off-the-chart readings of the greenhouse gas.

Cardenas discovered the region – which he calls “Soda Springs” – while studying how groundwater from a nearby island could affect the ocean environment of the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines. The passage is one of the most diverse marine ecosystems in the world and is home to thriving coral reefs.

The amazing bubbling location, which Cardenas captured on video, is not a climate change nightmare. It is linked to a nearby volcano that vents out the gases through cracks in the ocean floor and has probably been doing so for decades or even millennia. However, Cardenas said that the high CO2 levels could make Soda Springs an ideal spot for studying how coral reefs may cope with climate change. The site also offers a fascinating setting to study corals and marine life that are making a home among high levels of CO2.

The scientists measured CO2 concentrations as high as 95,000 parts per million (ppm), more than 200 times the concentration of CO2 found in the atmosphere. The readings range from 60,000 to 95,000 and are potentially the highest ever recorded in nature. The CO2 levels fall quickly away from the seeps as the gas is diluted in the ocean, but the gas still creates an elevated CO2 environment along the rest of the coastline of the Calumpan Peninsula, with levels in the 400 to 600 ppm range.

Cardenas is a hydrologist and not an expert on reef systems. He discovered Soda Springs while researching whether groundwater from the nearby land could be discharging into the submarine ocean environment, which is a phenomenon that is generally ignored by scientists looking at the water cycle, Cardenas said.

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His Royal Hypocrisy

Meanwhile, over in Europe:

UK Going To Get Colder? -- The Guardian -- January 21, 2020

It's no longer the Gulf Stream. It's the North Atlantic Drift. The [London] Guardian.