Austerity—an unethical experiment on human beings

While I agree with Krugman that the economic prescriptions of the austerity ghouls are certainly unethical, I am not so sure I would call them "experiments."  I always thought an experiment was something you did when you do not know the outcome.  I would challenge the austerity ghouls to name one historical instance where austerity led to generalized prosperity.  Yeah, I know, the whole of the economics profession is littered with bald-faced liars who will claim with straight faces that bleeding will save the patient this time, but serious evidence this has ever worked?  Nah!  So without a reasonable doubt and predictable outcomes, the global austerity "experiment" is nothing more than naked plunder.

So God made a banker

As someone with both grandfathers as real, on-the-land, dirt farmers in central Minnesota and SE Kansas, and having grown up in a tiny town in the corn belt with less than 2000 souls, I thought the Dodge Superbowl ad was touching, as in—it nearly brought tears to my eyes.  The photography was spectacular and was authentic because those are real Montana farmers—who looked a lot like the folks who attended my father's churches.  I was hardly alone on this—real-life farmers absolutely loved it—you can read how the pork producers responded on their own website.

But to read the criticisms of this ad in nice liberal websites (esp. Crooks and Liars) you would think it was celebrating pedophilia.  Supposedly it was racist because all the faces are white—farmers like those pictured barely exist anymore.  It was patronizing, it was inaccurate, it used God to sell pickups.  It was a rip-off of a Youtube effort.  Worst of all, it used a speech by Paul Harvey to a 1978 Future Farmers of America convention.  So it was sentimental exaggerations by a guy who never learned political correctness.  Not. Even. Close.

Even though much of Harvey's speech was agricultural stump-speech boilerplate, some of it was pretty goofy.  Best example.  Harvey is talking about the ingenuity that is such a prized virtue in agriculture.  Unfortunately he talks about keeping the equipment running with baling wire.  Several problems.  Baling wire wasn't being used by 1978—it had been replaced by twine.  Guys who "fixed" things with baling wire were usually failing in other ways—it was the fussy-maintenance types who usually did best.  To make matters a bit more absurd, this comment appears in the ad nearly simultaneously with a picture of a magnificently restored tractor (fussy maintenance raised to an art form.)

So yes, Harvey was technologically obsolete even in 1978. But that's not really a problem—agriculture is applied science so we all know it evolves.

  But his narration was still good.  Farmers traffic in life.  Farmers must be involved with their community.  Farmers must be hard-working, honest, ingenious and technologically literate.  Farmers DO like it when they have kids who knowing what is involved, want to go into farming anyway.

  All I know is that at my Superbowl Party, everyone fell silent for this ad. With the exception about half-way through someone asked, "What's this trying to sell?"



Then this.  Someone who understood the sentiments that Harvey was glorifying has come up with a perfect update of the rural progressives who understood that while they had many crooks trying to steal their output, their prime enemy was the bankers with their mortgages that never slept.  This "So God made a banker" ad spoof is beyond superb.  But notice no one has turned this into a YouTube yet.  Making these things like the Dodge ad is really harder than it looks.

Saturday toons 9 FEB 13

How long?

How long? one wonders, will the Producing Classes of the developed world stand for the pirates stealing their livelihoods.  These situations do not go on forever.  Yes, of course, conditions are markedly different from the 1930s when there was only a minimal safety net for the unemployed, sick, and elderly.  So this time around, the deliberate destruction of jobs has gone on now for 35 years since at least the "glory" days of Margaret Thatcher and because there has been a safety net, there has been only tiny amounts of social disorder.  But now the greedheads are trying to steal the safety net—dumb, VERY dumb—so soon we will see similar conditions as in the 1930s.  Folks should be reminded of how well that turned out.

When factory workers threaten to blow up their factory, you can actually feel the extremes of desperation.  The factory is their creation, after all.  Blowing it up would be similar to killing their own children.

Greece is still a mess

The way the news is typically covered, the crews fly in to film the disaster and a few days later, fly on to get the next story.  The wreckage left behind and the efforts required to repair things are almost never covered.  The audience is left with the impression that somehow things will get better on their own.  In the world of living things, sometimes wounds do heal on their own.  But in the world of devices and institutions built by humans, things most certainly do NOT repair themselves.

And so it is February.  The crazy drought of last summer is hidden under an almost irrelevant but beautiful dusting of snow.  The lights are back on in New York after a devastating hurricane.  The USA elections could have had a worse outcome.  The stock market is going nowhere but at least it isn't going down.  Etc.

So this story about Greece is a vivid reminder that absolutely nothing has been solved since 2007.  There are more homeless, the economy is still run by fools/crooks, the climate is worse, the infrastructure is still a mess, our institutions are increasingly irrelevant, and nothing is being talked about that has even the slightest chance of fixing anything.  I scour the Internet every day for signs of life and hope and while I usually find some, there are not many of them.

I'll keep looking but in the meantime, I intend to cover more of those stories about how the creations of humans do not repair themselves.

Rare earths worth fighting over?

You cannot make something out of nothing.  These days, much leading-edge manufacturing involves the use of so-called rare earths.  The big user of rare earths are cellphones.  It doesn't matter that each cellphone only uses a tiny amount of these minerals, if it needs ANY at all, you need a secure supply or you are out of the cellphone business.  Suddenly China, which is the sole producer of many of these rare materials, has discovered the real importance of strategic materials and has banned their export.

But as it turns out, China is the sole source of many of these materials only because they have been more willing to trash their environment to get them.  But many countries actually have these minerals in the ground and folks in Western Europe have the clean mining technologies necessary to extract them.  In fact, the Germans are warning the Chinese that soon, they will have to import their rare earths because their primitive mining methods won't keep up with their manufacturing needs.

"Let us reason together," argue the Germans, "and we can engineer our way past this production bottleneck."  And if the critical industries can keep the Predators out of the mix, it is very likely reasonable people will solve these problems.

Stalingrad or Volgograd?

On 31 JAN 1943, in a basement room in the rubble of Stalingrad, Friedrich Paulus surrendered his 6th Army to General Zhukov. The most brutal single battle of human history would end three days later having lasted from August 23, 1942 – February 2, 1943 (5 months, 1 week and 3 days).  The German army would never recover—their war was lost.

So on the 70th anniversary of probably the most significant turning point in human history, an interesting question is being asked.  Should the city which was renamed Volgograd in 1961 after Stalin's monstrous crimes against humanity had been revealed change its name back to Stalingrad because that's the name in all the history books?  Since there are good arguments on both sides of this debate, there is now talk of holding a referendum.  Who knows—maybe they'll get this all straightened out before the 75th anniversary rolls around.

[Update. President Putin has declared that Stalingrad will never make it back on the map.]

Michael Lewis on Goldman Sachs

Michael Lewis certainly needs no help from me to become more famous and I have an almost religious aversion to linking to something from The New Republic, but this review from some supposed chastened Goldman Sachs insider asks some interesting questions.  So I have cut to those questions.

Now some very good arguments can be made that NONE of the activities of Goldman Sachs are remotely necessary for the community's survival and that it would be good to just put them out of business.  Some of my long-time readers insist this is true.  I am tempted to side with them except for one belief of mine—we institutionalists are convinced that an institution as big and powerful as Goldman Sachs would not exist unless it fulfilled some useful function at some level.  Now maybe GS is only socially useful 2% of the time but in an institution so large, this is still a lot of activity.

For example, I know a guy who went through some seriously rough economic times over the past fifteen years.  He went through an ugly divorce and then a wife who died of cancer.  All this was happening while he tried to start a business out of a small buyout settlement from a downsizing employer.  The one thing that got him through this string of disasters was his house in a nice neighborhood that was mostly paid for when all this started.  You know those "liar" loans that got packaged by the crooks?  Well his paper was in that pile.  He should have never been given those loans according to traditional banking standards and yet, they probably saved his life.  Yes he still has a lot of debt on a house that was once almost paid far, but his current mortgage is still less than 4% and I'm pretty sure it is not under water.

I understand most people got scammed during the housing bubble and are much worse off because of it.  But "loose" lending standards were probably not the problem and are not the big dilemma with the current economy.  Yes the hard-money austerity ghouls would like to make it the problem—they even use the term "moral hazard" un-ironically.  But they are wrong—the biggest problem facing the economy is the absurd costs of the 98% uselessness of Goldman Sachs and the rest of the banksters.  The real economy simply cannot afford these to-big-to-fail creatures.  Not only must they be broken up as Lewis suggests below, they must be scaled down to the costs of providing the services they claim we need.  The rest of us would be more forgiving of Goldman Sachs if they cost $0.02 on the dollar they cost us now.

Superbowl Sunday

Had some friends over for the midwinter ritual.  The football was pretty good.  The commercials were not especially inspired.  The half-time show was dazzling.  But nothing, absolutely nothing, topped the little demonstration of the rickety USA infrastructure when for reasons still to be announced, the lights went out in the Superdome during the second half.

That such a symbol of Leisure Class wretched excess as the Superbowl could be stopped by the reality of industrial neglect was a subject of some mirth around here.  Maybe the Leisure Classes will take notice when their symbols are disrupted but somehow, I doubt that means they will demand more investment in public goods.  Just a guess.

Oh the anxiety over a cheaper Yen

A cheaper Yen (up to a point) will certainly benefit the Japanese real economy.  Not so much some of her competitors who have made rapid gains during Japan's recent strong-yen period—such as the Korean automobile industry.

The question will be, "How will Korea act now that the won is destined for a period of over-valuation?"  After all, lots of people will believe an expensive won is an indication of Korea's economic virtue—many of them Koreans.  But as the exporters begin to howl in economic pain, the pressure to do something about the high-priced won will intensify.  We could easily see a period of competitive currency devaluations in Asia.

We intend to follow this story.

Steven Chu resigns

I haven't been especially complimentary about Steven Chu.

• December 14, 2009  Ouch! This hurts
• September 24, 2010  Green energy will be neither easy nor cheap
• September 24, 2012  Still the bad guys

I considered Chu lacking in imagination.  It seemed impossible but we had a Nobel Laureate in PHYSICS (a real Nobel) who seemed not to comprehend the scope of the problems that come from a changing climate.  This impression was hardly mine alone.  Chu arrived on the international stage with a thud—at the Ouch! This hurts link above, there are links to a Guardian article that is very patronizing.

But I actually feel I now owe the poor man an apology.  Even Chu's limited agenda was tenaciously opposed by fair means and foul.  Poor guy probably never did comprehend how organized ignorance and superstition can be.  I am not certain this forgives Chu's willingness to downscale his agenda in the face of such unreasonable opposition.  I am far from the world's greatest negotiator but I am under the impression you start out with your BIG wish list.

Moyers / Taibbi plus Uygur / Chomsky (video)

This Sunday's homilies on video.  First up, Taibbi on too big to jail banks.

Plus Chomsky on the rightward shift in USA politics.  Of course, any sentient being old enough to remember pre-Reagan can easily see this.  Even so, Chomsky seems especially qualified to speak to that topic.

Saturday toons 2 FEB 13

Job poaching

In the 1980s when pirate "capitalism" (leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers, greenmail, etc.) really got going, there were a few rearguard attempt to slow down the looting (legislation, lawsuits, shareholder activism, etc.)  These efforts were usually failures.  After all, institutional investors like city and union pension funds participated enthusiastically in the crimes against the economy.  I met a guy during that time who was responsible for investing the retirement funds of Lutheran missionaries.  I was actually shocked!  Obviously there are different kinds of Lutherans—I am absolutely positive my father would not have approved of his pension fund being parked at KKR.

The reason this looting was just plain WRONG lies in a basic understanding of how the Producer Classes make their money.  The basic strategy is to make something very difficult (or at least so difficult most people cannot make it themselves) and make it extremely well.  The crown jewels of American industrial capitalism were all examples of this.  Many were survivors of extremely competitive environments (the auto makers) had perfected technologies that bordered on magic (Xerox, Polaroid, Kodak) or built something so complex only a government could afford it (nuclear submarines, fighter aircraft.)  Sometimes it was a matter of doing something simple very well (Red Wing Shoes.)  Most of these companies had taken several generations to learn how to do what they did.  Nearby communities opened colleges to train their workers.  In perhaps the greatest act of vandalism in human history—and that includes World War II—pirates raided these crown jewels for something as simple as the pension funds or the cash set aside to fund R & D.

And the states and local governments watched this and did nothing.  Correct that, they opened thousands of "industrial development parks" and set about poaching each other's job base.  And "invested" their spare cash with the most odious of the corporate raiders (Calpers).  The Leisure Class in action.  They actively participated in wanton destruction because they thought it would make them easy money.  They glorified the pirates giving them cute names like "Chainsaw Al".  They held conferences to teach each other better methods of plunder.  De-industrialization became a central part of the culture.  Respectable people read The Economist—the official journal of the Predators.  It was insane.

Good questions about electronic money

A long-time reader named Meyers sent me this link yesterday.  It is of a Brit comedian who asks a perfectly reasonable question which is: Why should we wreck the economy simply because a bunch of drunken bankers typed in some foolish bets into their computers?  Instead of bailouts and austerity measures, why don't we just have these wankers type some new instructions into their computers?

Actually, I have been saying this for years.  In the early 1990s I wrote in Chapter Six of Elegant Technology “Are we really going to let a bunch of preindustrial, techno-illiterate, computer-chip idolators march this country down the road to ruin? Really?”

Mitchell is funnier.

Hydrogen vehicles? Really?

It's pretty hard to ignore the efforts of three of the world's biggest automakers—Renault-Nissan, Ford and Daimler—when they announce they're going to throw resources into another effort to make fuel cells work in cars.  But personally, I don't see it.  I spent part of my youth playing with hydrogen (long story) and came to conclusion that this was dangerously impractical stuff.  For example, because the hydrogen molecules are so tiny, just sealing the stuff into a container is damn near impossible.  And while in theory it is possible to separate hydrogen from oxygen in water, this process requires more energy than you get back when you recombine them in either an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.  And while supposedly it is possible to make a fuel cell work without using platinum, I haven't heard of it (although I am not privy to leading edge research in the matter).  And then there is the problem of no installed refueling infrastructure and even if there were some, it would probably be at least as inconvenient as it is for folks trying to power their cars with natural gas.

Even so, I am glad someone with money is willing to try to make fuel cells work one more time.  Some day, they may even produce a fuel cell reliable enough to power city busses and urban delivery vehicles and that would be an accomplishment all by itself.

The Dreamliner is grounded

If anyone ever needs a lesson in what happens when Predators take over a Producer company, Boeing will do perfectly.  In it's glory days, Boeing pretty much defined a Producer company.  Engineers ran the show.  The company would occasionally bet the farm on a breakthrough product.  There was a sense of pride you could feel the moment you passed through the plant gates.  And people who knew aircraft were often fanatically loyal to their output (It's Boeing or I'm not going.)  Yes, there were other companies that made large aircraft but sensible people would often ask "Why?"  Boeing was so sure about its products that for decades, it only had one salesman.  One was plenty because everyone knew what buying from Boeing meant.

And then it started to unravel.  In 1997, Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, a company that had lost its airplane-making chops and had become just another cost-plus supplier hanging off the big Defense Department teat.  Boeing also had significant ties to the defense industry but were babes in the woods compared to the sharpies from McDonnell Douglas.  Soon the sharpies were ensconced in senior management at Boeing and the rot began to set in.  The open assault on Boeing's engineering culture came out into the open during the SPEEA (Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace) strike of 2000.  The cordial atmosphere between the engineers that designed Boeing's products and the engineers that managed the company was broken.  Management even moved the headquarters to Chicago from Seattle to show the divorce was final.

Once the Boeing Producer / engineering culture had been trashed, the chance for breakthrough, industry-defining projects was trashed as well.  The Dreamliner, which was not even that revolutionary to start with, became an expensive, ongoing fiasco that demonstrated the truth of the most famous sign carried during the SPEEA strike "No nerds, No Birds."  And so now, after several years of delays and $Billions of cost over-runs, the few Dreamliners that have been delivered are grounded.  The problem isn't even an aerospace problem but rather faulty lithium batteries.  If the Predators of the "new" Boeing management were actually capable of feeling shame, they would be resigning en mass.  Yeah, that's going to happen (NOT)!

Iceland wins a big legal victory

This site, unfortunately, does not often traffic in good news.  But Iceland's victory over the demands of the greedhead bankers and their allies certainly qualifies as great news.  And just think, the weasel leadership in Iceland had already caved to the demands of England and Holland before the president stepped in with the choice of a democratic referendum.  So the citizens put a stop to paying extortion and yesterday, the European Free Trade Association upheld their judgement.

Of course, this ruling could have easily gone the other way.  Just because Iceland was clearly in the right in this matter was no guarantee that they would win.  In fact, the little countries in these sorts of disputes almost always lose so if there is some drinking and dancing in the streets of Iceland, it is totally understandable.

Everything here is from British sources.  So if there is more than just a whiff of "sore loser" about them, this is to be expected.

Oliver Stone's history lesson

As my regular readers know, I tend to get very serious about the subject of history.  As someone who hated the subject for the first, oh, 25 years of my life, I have more than made up for my late start once I discovered how important knowing history was to the understanding of my place in the cosmos.  Once I learned a little history, I rapidly joined the ranks of those who cannot understand how people navigate through life without this wonderful assist.  As I have said for at least 30 years now, I read history because I believe it is impossible to think as an adult without being historically literate.

This attitude leads often to a really good question.  "OK history nut," folks will ask, "what history book would you suggest I read?"  Because history is such a huge subject and I have read well over 1000 big fat history books, I often find myself reduced to helpless sputtering.  There is always Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States which is a good primer but doesn't answer the interesting questions like How exactly did the USA achieve industrial sophistication?  One of my favorites is William Manchester's The Arms of Krupp which goes a long way towards explaining how Germany became the bad guy of the 20th century—fascinating but narrow.  I consider Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope a stunner but hardly a first history book.  And so on.

Interestingly, it is recent history that folks typically know the least about.  The schools start out their American history courses with Columbus or Plymouth Rock and are lucky to get to the Grant administration before the school year ends.  So hardly anyone knows much about the Progressive Era, the Great Depression, or the World Wars.  And they know zip about the the Cold War and the rest of the madness of American Imperialism.  And what they think they know is usually comically wrong.

But now I have a new favorite answer for anyone who wants a history recommendation—watch Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States!  In ten hours you will know almost as much about the recent history of USA as I know having read hundreds of history books.  What makes Stone's history so remarkable is he has found incredible file footage (he's a film maker, after all.)  So while I might quibble with some of the points he makes, his series is must viewing because there nothing like seeing and hearing historical figures make their important speeches.

This is Stone's great gift to the nation.  I am certain the professional liars are working to discredit this series as I write.  But it's going to be damn hard to discredit with all the file footage.  So everyone, watch it—it will be the best ten hours you ever spend.  And if you cannot find a good copy of the series, be patient—someone will float a copy past you soon.  In the meantime, you can always read the book.

An end to the Age of Stupid?

Speculations on the second inauguration of Obama

Not long after the election, I was visiting a friend who has an interesting background in network television.  Naturally the topic turned to the election-night television coverage and since I now live in sat-dish country, I had sampled a couple of new channels plus some of the channels I had not seen in a while—CNN, MSNBC, RT, Current, etc.  I skipped the networks and Fox—there ARE limits to my curiosity.  This experience had brought out the full curmudgeon in me.  Considering the seriousness of the problems facing humanity, I found the level of political commentary just hopelessly superficial.

The guy who had bothered me the most was CNN's Wolff Blitzer.  Wolff?  Blitzer??  Not even an SS lieutenant would have been so arrogant as to have people call him that name.  He stares vacantly into the camera.  But mostly, this man cannot even imagine that there are sentient beings in places like Minnesota who would rather discuss politics on some higher level than the horserace.  Of course, part of his problem is that he is Israeli so he actually has some excuse for not understanding what the middle 95% of the country is up to.  I sputtered, "Don't we have enough total idiots in the land that we have to import another?"

Warming up I continued, "I am just totally amazed at what we are supposed to treat as informed and wise.  The sheer level of cluelessness is breath-taking.  Yes, I know we are all God's creatures and we are all entitled to an opinion.  But if I must listen to it, I want that opinion to be informed, reasoned and logical, thoughtful, and relevant.  New rule, unless folks are historically, mathematically, scientifically, and technologically literate, I don't want to hear their opinions on any subject whatsoever!"

"But," responds my friend, "that pretty much shuts up every public figure I can think of.  And it takes virtually every pundit on TV off the air."

We left it at that.  But somehow I don't believe my request was so unreasonable.  Think about it.  In most high schools in the land, virtually everyone can take chemistry, biology, physics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, several years of social studies that include some history, and even band or wood shop if you want to train your hands.  The point is that everything I consider the minimum to participate in the public debate are skills almost universally available at no cost to the student.  My minimum standard for someone participating in the public debate is merely the citizen that the taxpayers are paying for when they fund their high schools.  In other words, I am only asking that our public intellectuals know what they were expected to learn by 12th grade.

So the question becomes, "How can anyone in this era of universal opportunity for learning wind up as fucking goofy as Thomas Friedman or William Kristol?  What goes wrong?"

Reagan made lazy and stupid fashionable.  Actually, this phenomenon was predicted in the classic comedy Animal House.  The fraternity has just learned they have been kicked off campus and the head animal Blutarsky (played magnificently by John Belushi) is trying to fire up the troops for one last act of pure insanity.  He asks rhetorically "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"  Two of the upper class ringleaders give each other a puzzled look when Otter utters the phrase that will define the next 30+ years, "Forget it, he's on a roll."  Soon it would be, "Sure Ronnie, whatever you say.  An if you need an astrologer to help you plan your life, go for it.  After all, no one has ever been hurt by an astrology nut (cough-Hitler-cough)."

TV is stupid because on-air personalities are chosen for their looks and charm—NOT their journalistic abilities.  We forgot that an informed citizenry IS necessary for democracy.  Expense and time constraints made television what it was.  Yet depending on the market, there were local stations that spent their monopoly income on quality children's programming, well-researched documentaries on serious community problems, in-depth interviews, etc.  Here in Minnesota, the main proponent of on-air journalistic virtue was WCCO but others were forced to keep up.  Then in 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated and so soon were the programs of civic virtue.  By then, news was supposed to be a profit center so TV "journalists" took to chasing the vehicles with sirens—ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars because that's what the reptilian brain responds to.  Of course these tales of blood and mayhem were presented by pretty people with megawatt smiles who chatted cheerily when they sent us off to watch the prepackaged and scripted lies called commercials.

The preservation of archaic traits.  In a world made possible because of applied science, it is astonishing how few people understand the key concepts that allows scientific endeavors to vastly outstrip the other human endeavors in innovation, progress, and refinement.  People might be surrounded by an ocean of science, but it doesn't make their thinking scientific.  They cope with this disconnect using methods such as appeals to authority (example: fundamentalism and other religious-style social organizations.)  Perhaps the worst idea to emerge from the era was that effective collective action was impossible.  This stupidity of individualism stood in stark contrast to the cooperation and organization necessary to electrify a nation or build a transportation system.  Those who have attempted self-sufficiency soon discover how important honest and reliable trading partners, contractors, and yes even governments really are.  So while it may seem harmless to idealize the individual because it is impossible to ignore the practical benefits of cooperation and collective action, as a practical matter, this ideological waste of time came at a moment when we needed to organize a global cooperation to tackle the big problems like climate change.

Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.  Because everyone hates a thief, the Predators must operate in secret.  From that secrecy comes an economics that is utterly uninformed—bad ethics, bad history, a bad understanding of how science has transformed the land, and a bad understanding of how the Producers must run an economy.

Can we think like grown-ups in time to save our sorry asses?  In the final analysis, this is really the only interesting question we face.  On one hand, we just spent a generation telling ourselves that it was all right to be utterly ignorant if only we believed the unbelievable hard enough.  So any argument that ends with "Ignorance WINS" has plenty of evidence to support it.  Yet how can a society stay ignorant in the age of infinite information?  Yes, I understand that the Internet has large sections devoted to crackpot theories and the worship of ignorance.  But even if the sections devoted to reasonable debate backed with facts that can be demonstrated only account for 1% of Internet traffic by volume, the net is so large, this 1% could keep highly intelligent folks occupied nearly forever.  Ignorance may win but not without a serious fight.

And so for the first time in a very long while, we are seeing the pillars of organized ignorance such as neoliberalism and American exceptionalism trembling in the face of the reality that they are utter failures.  So while the old is dying—or at least at long last beginning to feel shame—a replacement narrative is struggling to be born.

Shale magical thinking

Three weeks ago, a cobbled together a post on fracking and secondary recovery.  If you recall, I am not much enthused about fracking's potential to supply a large market like USA's with petroleum.  Well, this Arthur Berman guy thinks the whole idea is just goofy.  If you follow this sample back to the original story, you will discover a bunch of powerpoint slides that pretty much demolish the whole Fracking-Will-Save-Us argument.

The tiny amount of petroleum we will get from fracking is nowhere near the costs of spoiled groundwater supplies alone.  Yes, humans need energy to survive—but they also need water.