Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Economics, Technology and Society

Shale 2.0

22 Comments

Yeah, I fully expect to see oil go below $20, expecially after the shakeout and bankruptcies that allow pumping at lower prices. And it will be good for everyone except oil companies and oil kleptocracies. Other than California, look for gas below two bucks indefinitely.

[Update a few minuts later]

OK, well, this isn’t as encouraging:

During the 2007 crisis, central banks the world over made a coordinated effort that pumped large amounts of liquidity into the system, easing the pressure. However, since 2009, these same central banks have followed an easy monetary policy, inflating balance sheets to scary levels, as shown in the chart above. They will find it difficult to handle any future crises caused by low oil prices. They are now out of ammunition.

The current oil crisis will see regime changes in strategic places, and a currency crisis is in the offing. The world is staring at deflation. And while the 2007 crisis started in the US and then spread around the world, today’s crisis is affecting all major nations simultaneously. All are struggling due to low oil prices—some directly because of lower revenues, and others because of deflationary pressure.

The next crisis will be larger and longer and it will hurt a lot more than the last one. The windfall at the gas pump is a dark harbinger.

At least we’ll be able to afford to fill the tank, if we have jobs.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Hillary’s Email Problems

24 Comments

…aren’t going to go away:

All this angers Americans with experience in our military and intelligence services who understand what Ms. Clinton and her staff did—and that they would be held to far harsher standards for attempting anything similar. They know that brave Americans have given their lives protecting Top Secret Codeword information. They know that in every American embassy around the world, our diplomatic outposts that worked for Hillary Clinton, Marine guards have standing orders to fight to the death to protect the classified information that’s inside those embassies. That Hillary Clinton gave similar information away, by choice, is something she needs to explain if she expects to be our next Commander-in-Chief.

She has no explanation, at least not one that doesn’t make it look even worse.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Her disregard wasn’t casual. It was a conscious and involved scheme to avoid the Freedom of Information Act, and possibly also Obama Administration scrutiny of her actions. She put the nation as a whole at risk, along with individual lives of intelligence sources, for political reasons: to avoid accountability.”

As she’s been doing, and gotten away with, for decades. Why wouldn’t she assume that she’d continue to not be held to account?

[Update a while later]

The FBI director would like to indict both Clinton and Abedin.

Analysis: Likely.

Technology and Society, Weird

Browser Problem

19 Comments

Somehow, I got directed to a web site called windowssecurityhealthalert.com (DO NOT GO THERE), that opened a new instance of Firefox. It has a popup with this kind of crap in it:

WARNING!!! A security breach has been detected, your browser being hijacked and monitored. It is highly recommended to contact a Microsoft certified technician, Call toll free 1-844-798-3802 and get a scan done to resolve this serious issue.

WARNING!!! Your credentials aren’t safe, your PC is being monitored by malicious software by Trojan files installed on your PC, This is a serious security breach, This malware and Trojan agent can steal your credentials and use your PC and your TCP/IP address for criminal activity. STOP using your browser now and call a Microsoft technician at toll free 1-844-798-3802 and remove all traces of malware and Trojan files.

WARNING!!! Please stop using your browser until you get your PC scanned and removes all traces of malware, call toll free 1-844-798-3802 and get a computer scan done NOW !!!

Someone is monitoring your browser and can steal your credentials.

WARNING!!! A security breach has been detected, your browser being hijacked and monitored. It is highly recommended to contact a Microsoft certified technician, Call toll free 1-844-798-3802 and get a scan done to resolve this serious issue.

I’m running Linux.

Anyway, it won’t let me close it. Clicking on the upper-right X does nothing, and when I close the popup, it just repops. If it was Chrome I could kill the individual process for it, but Firefox only has a single process for tabs and instances. If I kill Firefox, it just comes back when I restart and restore. I cleared all cookies, but that didn’t help. Anyone know how to track down what’s allowing it to do this and killing it with extreme prejudice?

[Mid-afternoon update]

After a little research, I installed this add-on, which blocks trackers and javascript. Post installation, I was able to kill both the pop up and the instance.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Climate Models

7 Comments

Another example of their bogosity:

It occurs to me to wonder whether this error in the GISS-E2-R ocean mixing parameterisation, which gave rise to AMOC instability in the Pliocene simulation, might possibly account for the model’s behaviour in LU run 1. It looks to me as if something goes seriously wrong with the AMOC in the middle of the 20th century in that run, with no subsequent recovery evident.

But let’s make wealth-destroying policy based on this!

[Update on January 28th]

Insights from Karl Popper to break the gridlock in the climate debate.

It’s sad how so many people who (ironically) accuse me of being a “climate denier” or a “science denier” are so profoundly ignorant of how science actually works.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

An analysis from Judith Curry and Nic Lewis on the latest climate crap from Mann et al:

As I see it, this paper is a giant exercise in circular reasoning:

  1. Assume that the global surface temperature estimates are accurate; ignore the differences with the satellite atmospheric temperatures
  2. Assume that the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble can be used to accurately portray probabilities
  3. Assume that the CMIP5 models adequately simulate internal variability
  4. Assume that external forcing data is sufficiently certain
  5. Assume that the climate models are correct in explaining essentially 100% of the recent warming from CO2

In order for Mann et al.’s analysis to work, you have to buy each of these 5 assumptions; each of these is questionable to varying degrees.

You don’t say.

Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Thirty Years On

15 Comments

This is the thirty first year my birthday has been marred by the event. Leroy Chiao thinks that we shouldn’t have retired the Shuttle, but he assumes we did it for safety reasons. As I note in the book, Shuttle was retired because it cost too much, and the fleet had gotten too small to sustain it properly.

[Update a while later]

My thoughts on the anniversary, and lessons not learned, over at USA Today.

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark Lindsey has a link roundup on the anniversaries.

[Update a while later\

Doug Messier has some thoughts, and a warning to the space upstarts.