Gas Charts

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. ~mathematician Blaise Pascal, 1670


A day behind.                       

Between now and 2050, CO2 emissions are projected to decrease by 4% in the OECD countries and increase by 36% in the non-OECD countries. To combat rising CO2, perhaps Greta Thunberg is lecturing the wrong people.

Where did the Russian oligarchs come from? Bill Bowder has some explanations in his book Red Notice. Voucher privatization was supposed to be a system in which every Russian citizen—all 150 million—would receive a privatization certificate exchangeable at public auctions for stock in one of the new companies. It turned into a scramble among insiders to “acquire” these vouchers by any means. This included, according to Browder, the hedge fund manager and the largest foreign investor in Russia at the time, the closure of regional airports to prevent employees and rival elites from getting to the auctions in Moscow. With competition suppressed, the value of each voucher did not exceed $20. As Mr. Browder notes: “Since these vouchers were exchangeable for roughly 30 percent of the shares of all Russian companies, this meant that the valuation of the entire Russian economy was only $10 billion! That was one-sixth the value of Wal-Mart!” 

This is how the oligarchs were born.

Kunstler, (from W.E.): "A trial ..[impeachment].. would be a rich spectacle for sure after subjecting the nation to three years of malicious, perfidious sedition. But other gusts of rumor intimate that senators on the Republican side would prefer to not open any cans of Ukrainian worms in a trial, since money laundered through the Ukrainian oligarch mills may have found its way into their pockets as well. Who knows…?"

On this day in 1688, William of Orange makes a triumphant march into London as James II flees.

                                Gas Charts

Thanks to their enterprising innovations in directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, domestic petroleum output has tripled over the past decade to more than 12 million barrels per day, while supplies of natural gas have surged 60% to a daily 113 billion cubic feet. The biggest overall beneficiaries have been everyday Americans—who now pay $100 billion less per year for fossil fuels. And because gas burns far cleaner than coal (which has lost a third of its market share), our national carbon dioxide emissions have dropped 15% from the 2007 peak.