Skip to main content

Posts

Educating students in 2011

On May 14, 2011, Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa published an unsettling Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, entitled "Your So-Called Education."  In it they show that roughly 1/2 of all undergraduates learns little or nothing in college, regardless of tuition costs. Never mind, much of the tuition goes to nicer dorms, bigger gyms and other amenities, while education is left behind. Apparently, education is not on top of priorities of the young undergraduate "customers" and their overly protective parents.

I presume that the authors refer mostly to the non-science and non-engineering students, because no engineering student would ever survive learning for just 11-13 hours per week.  This is why practicing engineers make only one-half of one percent of the population in the U.S.  It gets really lonely out there when we talk about rigors of engineering education, while other people stare at us in silence, their eyes saying: "You guys think too much, way …

Mr. Global Casino meet Ms. Reality

JPMorgan forecasts oil supply to fall short of demand by 600,000 barrels a day during the third quarter, even with the assumption that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries increases output by 1.2 million barrels a day in coming months.
The gap could narrow to 300,000 barrels a day by the fourth quarter, assuming Saudi Arabia increases production to 9.5 million barrels a day, Angola to 1.7 million and Iraq to 3 million, though “that may prove a stretch,” the bank said. Output from those three OPEC countries in March was 8.66 million, 1.56 million and 2.69 million barrels a day, respectively, it said.As I pointed out in the April 30 blog, the runaway Global Casino speculates on everything on the Earth and distorts all prices everywhere.  Mr. Casino is totally divorced from Ms. Reality, and his current bets on a lower oil price are as imaginary as his bets to the contrary. Earthlings beware! These speculative bets and brazen market manipulations can only last for seconds or d…

Global coal production revisited - again

On Friday, 06 May, 2011, Professor David Summers posted on OilPrice.com an oddly emotional article,  A Look at the Serious Energy Shortages in India and Pakistan.

Dr. Summers correctly points out that severe shortages of coal supply in India and Pakistan will not be quenched by imports from Australia, because China will outcompete anyone for the same coal imports.

From our analysis it follows that China's coal production will be difficult or impossible to maintain at the current high level. And China's coal demand is skyrocketing despite attempts to reign in coal burning by their most inefficient industrial enterprises.

Dr. Summers then goes on to say that the folks like Tad Patzek and Dave Rutledge have it wrong anyway, when they talk about the global peak of coal production and inability to satisfy demand that follows.  

Well, here we are: Too much demand worldwide, and not enough supply. The coal price goes up, way up, and still not enough supply.  How does one call this …

The Global Las Vegas

As an earth scientist, I deal with real resources, such as water, oil, natural gas or coal, and I am bewildered by the figure above. It shows that the sum of goods and services produced on the Earth, or the World Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is as large as credit default swaps, and 10 times less than the total face value of all financial derivatives, including the credit default swaps.  Therefore, in the global casino we have created, bets on all things in the world have exceeded the value of what we actually produce 10-fold.  So if only 10 percent of these bets went wrong, an equivalent of world's GDP would be wiped out.  And our clueless politicians are piddling with a couple of billions of dollars here and there.  Or our hapless Treasury is talking about controlling the "core" inflation.

A credit default swap (CDS) is a form of insurance that protects a lender if a borrower of capital defaults on a loan. When a lender purchases a CDS from an insurance company, the l…