Cab Thoughts 3/3/12

97% of Marcellus water is not being treated, diluted, and discharged into local waterways. It's being put into the deep ground. The changes in the water in fracking areas are from acid mine drainage and coal scrubbers, not fracking.

I met a bartender today who opened his bar at 8 a.m. and left at 11 a.m.. His bar was filled with men and women going to work. The common drink was a doubleheader and a beer together, often two sets. Then off to work, some office workers, some laborers. Several were roofers.

The Braun decision is a mystery. How could he possibly be let off and how could anyone take testing seriously after? The sports editorials are virtually incoherent, firing away at anyone for anything but having a hard time coming to grips with what seems to have happened here.

The economic problems in Europe are apparently quieting down a bit but the basic problem, the failure of the welfare state, seems to be a forbidden topic. How else can one explain what is happening? The debt expansion and its attendant contraction has not even happened yet so that is not the problem. There are simply too many economic promises made and too little money to fulfill those promises. So working Germans pay for Greek retirement.

I wandered through an episode of The Housewives of Orange County last night. Pretty raunchy. It seemed to be an effort to create a sort of locker-room for women. While I hope it was just scripted sensationalism, maybe women are as tasteless as men.

A plank in Junger's thinking about war is the common feeling of comradeship and compassion. I remember the al-Qaeda interviews with their commanders saying the American disadvantage was their comradeship, their refusal to leave a wounded man behind. I wonder if Junger's generalities apply to religious wars or to primitive people. I do not remember the very tribal American Indian as showing much brotherhood either.

In the decade before the Americans went to Afghanistan, 400,000 civilians were killed in civil strife, in the decade after the Americans arrived, 10,000 were killed.

The owners of 106 coal plants, with 331 coal units at them, announced that those plants would retire--or have been retired since January 2010. The plants represent 42,895 megawatts or 13% of the coal fleet. represents about 3.3% of all electricity generated from all sources. The retiring plants also account for 9% of the carbon dioxide coming from all coal plants. It should also be noted that America builds typically 15,000 to 20,000 megawatts of new generation every year. The closings do not pose any threat to grid reliability. That is an accident. The slack is being taken up by the huge, surprising growth of natural gas conversion. Those plants were to be attacked by the regulators whether it had a negative impact or not.