Tag Archives: disaster

Chart of the Day: Oil Is Getting Harder and Harder to Find

by JulianaWillifor Posted on July 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Oil expert James Hamilton has an interesting summary of the current world oil market up today, and it’s worth a read. His bottom line, however, is that $100-per-barrel oil is here to stay:

The run-up of oil prices over the last decade resulted from strong growth of demand from emerging economies confronting limited physical potential to increase production from conventional sources. Certainly a change in those fundamentals could shift the equation dramatically. If China were to face a financial crisis, or if peace and stability were suddenly to break out in the Middle East and North Africa, a sharp drop in oil prices would be expected. But even if such events were to occur, the emerging economies would surely subsequently resume their growth, in which case any gains in production from Libya or Iraq would only buy a few more years.

The chart on the right shows the situation dramatically. In just the past ten years, capital spending by major oil companies on exploration and extraction has tripled. And the result? Those same companies are producing less oil than they were in 2004. There’s still new oil out there, but it’s increasingly both expensive to get and expensive to refine.

(And all the hype to the contrary, the fracking revolution hasn’t changed that. There’s oil in those formations in Texas and North Dakota, but the wells only produce for a few years each and production costs are sky high compared to conventional oil.)

In a hypertechnical sense, the peak oil optimists were right: New technology has been able to keep global oil production growing longer than the pessimists thought. But, it turns out, not by much. Global oil production is growing very slowly; the cost of new oil is skyrocketing; the quality of new oil is mostly lousy; and we continue to bump up right against the edge of global demand, which means that even a small disruption in supply can send the world into an economic tailspin. So details aside, the pessimists continue to be right in practice even if they didn’t predict the exact date we’d hit peak oil. It’s long past time to get dead serious about finding renewable replacements on a very large scale.

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Chart of the Day: Oil Is Getting Harder and Harder to Find

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Seven Hours of Sleep Is Just About Optimal

by LRTJoeldnli Posted on July 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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How much sleep does a normal, healthy adult need? The Wall Street Journal reports:

Several sleep studies have found that seven hours is the optimal amount of sleep—not eight, as was long believed—when it comes to certain cognitive and health markers, although many doctors question that conclusion.

Other recent research has shown that skimping on a full night’s sleep, even by 20 minutes, impairs performance and memory the next day. And getting too much sleep—not just too little of it—is associated with health problems including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease and with higher rates of death, studies show.

That’s sort of interesting. In the past, I would have had no idea how to guess at this. I always slept exactly the same every night, so I always felt about the same every morning. Over the past couple of years, however, my sleeping habits have become far more erratic, spanning anywhere from six to eight hours fairly randomly. And sure enough, I’ve vaguely come to the conclusion that six hours makes me feel tired throughout the day, and so does eight hours. Seven hours really does seem to be pretty close to the sweet spot.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have much control over this. I wake up whenever I wake up, and that’s that. Today I got up at 6, tried to get back to sleep, and finally gave up. There was nothing to be done about it. And right about now I’m paying the price for that.

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Seven Hours of Sleep Is Just About Optimal

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The (Possibly) Frightening Implications of the Halbig Case

by BobbieWhinham Posted on July 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the Halbig case that struck down subsidies on federal Obamacare exchanges earlier today, one of the key issues was deference to agency interpretation of the law. Longstanding precedent holds that courts should generally defer to agency interpretations as long as they’re plausible. They don’t have to be perfect. They don’t even have to be the best possible interpretations. They merely have to make sense.

The DC circuit court decided that there really wasn’t any serious ambiguity in the law, and therefore no deference was due to the IRS’s interpretation that state and federal exchanges were meant to be treated the same. The dissent was scathing about this, since the record pretty clearly showed tons of ambiguity. So if and when this case makes it up to the Supreme Court, what’s going to happen? A lawyer buddy of mine is pessimistic:

Sadly, I think the Supreme Court will eagerly uphold the challenge because it gets to an issue that conservatives have generally despised: deference to administrative agencies’ interpretation of statutes.

It’s long been a fundamental principle in administrative law that an agency’s interpretation of a federal statute that they are charged with enforcing is entitled to judicial deference, unless such deference is unreasonable. Conservatives would prefer that courts not defer to the government because #biggovernment. Thus, they want to weaken the deference standard and Halbig gives them basically a two-fer. Or a three-fer since the agency interpreting the statute is the IRS: Take out Obamacare, knock back the deference standard, and punch the IRS. This invariably will help advance the conservatives’ legal goals because with a lower deference standard, their eccentric theories (such as on tax issues) have a better chance of surviving.

In normal times, the deference standard would likely be left intact because weakening it raises serious issues with government enforcement across all agencies, and courts are loath to send the country into a tailspin. But those days are apparently long past. Truly frightening times.

So what’s next? In breaking news, the Fourth Circuit court has just upheld the federal subsidies in Obamacare, ruling squarely on deference grounds—and disagreeing completely with the DC circuit opinion, which held that the legislative language in Obamacare was clear and plain. In fact, said the Fourth Circuit, the statute is ambiguous, and therefore the court owes deference to the IRS interpretation. This is good news for Obamacare, especially if today’s DC circuit decision by a three-judge panel is overturned by the full court, thus giving the government two appellate court wins. If that happens, it’s even possible that the Supreme Court would decline to hear an appeal and simply leave the lower court opinions in place.

But I’d say an eventual Supreme Court date still seems likely. There’s no telling if my friend’s read of the politico-legal climate among the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is correct, but I thought it was worth sharing.

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The (Possibly) Frightening Implications of the Halbig Case

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Obama Planning to Retire to Rancho Mirage?

by KristofPatteson Posted on July 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Let the speculation begin!

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, could be the owners of a home in Rancho Mirage listed at $4.25 million before the month is out. The First Family is believed to be in escrow on a contemporary home in a gated community where entertainers Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby once maintained estates.

The White House said rumors regarding a home in Rancho Mirage are not true.

….The 8,232-square-foot compound in question sits adjacent to a bighorn sheep preserve on a 3.29-acre hilltop with panoramic views. The custom-built main house, constructed in 1993 and designed for entertaining, includes a gym, four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. A 2,000-square-foot casita has three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Over-the-top exterior features include a pool with a 20-foot waterfall, a rock lagoon, two spas, a misting system and a putting green with a sand trap.

I have to say that the Obamas don’t really strike me as Rancho Mirage kind of people, but who knows? Maybe I’ve misjudged them.

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Obama Planning to Retire to Rancho Mirage?

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Vladimir Putin’s Games Finally Blew Up In His Face Today

by WinifredTrimm Posted on July 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Josh Marshall practically reads my mind with this post:

Were it not for the hundreds killed, it would also be comical the ridiculous series of events Vladimir Putin’s reckless behavior led up to this morning. For months Putin has been playing with fire, making trouble and having it work mainly to his advantage….But the whole thing blew up in his face today in a way, and with repercussions I don’t think — even with all wall to wall coverage — we can quite grasp.

Find extremists and hot-heads of the lowest common denominator variety, seed them with weaponry only a few militaries in the world possess — and, well, just see what happens. What could go wrong?

Read the whole thing. It’s almost precisely what I’ve been thinking all day long. I’d only add one thing: It was sickening listening to Putin’s bleating prevarications and denials after the plane was shot down. Really, truly revolting. If anything could expose him, once and for all, as the petty schoolyard bully that he is, this was it.

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Vladimir Putin’s Games Finally Blew Up In His Face Today

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Has Hillary Clinton Evolved on Foreign Policy?

by UUQDannneuo Posted on June 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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In Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton says she disagreed with President Obama about the drawdown in Afghanistan; about arming Syrian rebels; and about getting tougher with Vladimir Putin. (She also thought we should have supported Hosni Mubarak more consistently and should have taken a softer line with the Israelis.)

At the same time, she also acknowledges that she made the wrong call on Iraq. This prompts an obvious question: Has the disaster in Iraq changed her approach to foreign policy at all? Presumably the answer is yes. At least, I hope it is. If the Iraq debacle doesn’t change your mind, what would?

And this prompts a second question: Are there any concrete cases from the past few years in which her approach was less hawkish than it would have been a decade ago? Can she name one example where the Hillary of 2002 would have recommended intervention but the Hillary of 2009-12 recommended caution?

Maybe I’m wrong, but it strikes me that the answer is no. This is one of the reasons that Democrats need more primary choices in 2016. I’ve never really had anything against Hillary Clinton, but I’m hesitant about nominating someone who, as near as I can tell, acknowledges poor judgment on Iraq but hasn’t let that actually change her views on much of anything. Maybe at her next town hall meeting, we could skip the endless nonsense about Benghazi, “dead broke,” evolution on gay marriage, and so forth, and instead ask whether her foreign policy views have changed at all since 9/11. I’m not a huge fan of all of Barack Obama’s foreign policy choices, but the more I hear from everyone else—including Hillary Clinton—the more I appreciate even the modest restraint that he’s demonstrated. It’s apparently a rare thing.

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Has Hillary Clinton Evolved on Foreign Policy?

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Here’s One Big Reason the Economy Is Still Treading Water

by AlysaConstance Posted on June 6, 2014

Mother Jones

David Leonhardt passes along this chart today, and it’s one of the most important ones you’ll see. It was my candidate for chart of the year in 2013.

What it shows is unprecedented: government employment fell during an economic recovery. This has never happened before in recent history. Employment rose during the Reagan recovery. It rose during the Clinton recovery. It rose during the Bush recovery. And that’s one of the reasons those recoveries were fairly strong.

Only during the Obama recovery did austerity fever force government employment to fall. It’s not the only reason this recovery has been so weak, but it’s certainly one of the leading causes. More here.

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Here’s One Big Reason the Economy Is Still Treading Water

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Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

by ansonsten Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’ve steered clear of the VA story for the past few days, though not for the obvious reason. Basically, I got to the point where the collective hypocrisy over the whole thing became too much to take. Rather than write an epic rant I might later regret, I decided to just shut up.

However, in one of my last posts on the topic, I urged everyone to keep at least two things in mind. First, there’s a difference between the backlog of vets trying to establish eligibility for VA health care and wait times for vets who are already in the system. Second, always ask: “compared to what?” If you’re claiming that VA health care is terrible on some metric or another, tell us how that compares to private sector health care.

Today, Phil Longman comes along to write knowledgeably about both topics. In particular, he takes on the second one. Here’s Longman on wait-times:

Here’s a key relevant fact that is just the opposite of what most people think. For all the wars we’ve been fighting, the veterans population has been falling sharply….I have visited VA hospitals around the county and often been unnerved by how empty they are. When I visited two of the VA’s four state-of-the-art, breathtakingly advanced polytrauma units, in Palo Alto and Minneapolis, there was hardly a patient to be found.

But at the same time there is a comparatively small countertrend that results from large migrations of aging veterans from the Rust Belt and California to lower-cost retirement centers in the Sun Belt. And this flow, combined with more liberal eligibility standards that allow more Vietnam vets to receive VA treatment for such chronic conditions as ischemic heart disease and Parkinson’s, means that in some of these areas, such as Phoenix, VA capacity is indeed under significant strain.

This regional imbalance in capacity relatively to demand makes it very difficult to manage the VA with system-wide performance metrics. Setting a benchmark of 14 days to see a new primary care doc at a VA hospital or clinic in Boston or Northern California may be completely reasonable. But trying to do the same in Phoenix and in a handful of other sunbelt retirement meccas is not workable without Congress ponying up for building more capacity there.

VA managers have known for years that some of their facilities were gaming the system by using paper lists and other tactics to mask long wait times. Mariah Blake has the whole story here. In other words, contrary to the legion of pundits who seem to have discovered the phrase “perverse incentives” just last week, VA managers aren’t drooling idiots who didn’t realize that incentive systems can be gamed. They knew it perfectly well and were trying to fix it. Rather, the problem was that (a) they failed to set different goals for different facilities, and (b) they’re apparently lousy at oversight.

Regional imbalances also explain why these problems show up only in some facilities and not in others. And it also explains why, on average, VA wait times are actually pretty good and why VA patients generally rate their care higher than private-sector patients. It helps you get a handle on the “compared to what?” question.

Longman’s piece isn’t an apology for the managers who gamed the system in order to spike their bonuses—or for their higher-ups who failed for years to get this under control—but it does explain why it’s happening in some places and not in others. And there’s more to come:

As I’ll argue further in future posts, the key question to ask when confronting the real deficiencies of the VA is “compared to what?” Once that context is established, it becomes clear that VA as a whole continues to outperform the rest of the American health system, making its true lessons extremely important to learn.

Longman is well worth reading if you genuinely want to understand more about how the VA works and how it compares to health care elsewhere. He’ll make you smarter, not dumber.

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Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

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Courts Should Be More Willing to Weigh in on "Political" Disputes

by CeceliaEllery Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Does the Bowe Bergdahl outrage on the right have legs? Yesterday I didn’t think so. Today I’m not so sure. We’ll see.

I want to steer clear of the fever swamp stuff for now,1 but one aspect of all this prompts me to finally get around to writing something that’s been on my mind for a while. One of the questions surrounding the Bergdahl prisoner swap is whether President Obama broke the law by releasing five Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo without giving Congress its required 30-day notice. Republicans says it’s a clear violation of the law. Obama says the law is an unconstitutional infringement of his Article II authority as commander-in-chief. Who’s right?

Here’s the thing: these kinds of disputes happen all the time in various contexts. Federal and state agencies take various actions and then go to court to defend them. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. It’s pretty routine stuff.

And that’s what should happen here. Congressional Republicans should challenge Obama in court and get a ruling. This would be useful for a couple of reasons. First, it would be a sign of whether Republican outrage is serious. If it is, they’ll file suit. If they don’t file, then we’ll all know that it’s just partisan preening. Second, we’d get a ruling. The scope of the president’s authority would become clear. (Or at least clearer.)

But this doesn’t happen very often. Sometime problems with standing are at issue, but not usually. Congress has standing to challenge this. No, the more usual reason is that it’s hopeless. Courts traditionally treat disputes between the president and Congress as political, and decline to weigh in.

This is fine if a dispute truly is political. But this, like many other so-called political disputes, isn’t. It’s a clear question of how far the president’s commander-in-chief authority extends and what authority Congress has to limit it. If Republicans truly believe Obama violated the law, they should be willing to go to court to prove it. And courts should be willing to hand down a ruling. It’s a mistake to simply wash their hands of these kinds of things.

1Speaking of which, you should have seen my Twitter feed after yesterday’s Bergdahl post. Hoo boy.

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Courts Should Be More Willing to Weigh in on "Political" Disputes

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Outlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot

by Myrna Posted on May 17, 2014

Chinese officials and preservationists have embarked on an ambitious effort to protect historic sites that could become a model for saving antiquities elsewhere. Read original article:  Outlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot ; ;Related ArticlesPanel Questions Experts on Closed Reactor RisksColin Pillinger, Who Set Europe’s Eye on Space, Dies at 70Rescuers Seek Survivors in Turkish Mine Disaster ;

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Outlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot

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