Quick, What Are The Three Biggest Oil Producers In The World?

You are going to guess Saudi Arabia is one of them, that's easy.  But I will bet that many of you will guess Iraq, or Libya, or some other countries that have populations with turbans wound too tight.  According to this 2011 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, number 2 is Russia, and number 3 is the United States:

Russia (10.24) Saudi Arabia (11.15) United States (10.15) 

Yes, the U.S. produced very slightly less than Russia and only slightly less than Saudi Arabia.  This March 5,. 2013 Investors Business Daily report says that EIA is now reporting that as of November 2012, the U.S. has now passed Saudi Arabia:

In spite of the Obama Administration's hostility to carbon-rich energy, private actors with private capital deployed on private (and state) land have launched a game-changing revolution in domestic oil and natural gas production.

A scarcely reported milestone conveys the magnitude of this turnaround in the global energy landscape.

The U.S. passed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest petroleum producer in November 2012, according to recently released data of the federal Energy Information Administration.

Over the last five years, domestic oil output has risen 40% and continually outpaces projections. Last year, domestic output increased by 800,000 barrels per day. This is the largest increase in annual production since the first oil well was drilled in 1859 in Pennsylvania.

The report is here.  We are indeed now number 1 in petroleum production.  U.S. imports of petroleum are now down to about where they were in the mid-1990s.  In spite of the best efforts of the Obama Administration, more than one-third of that importation is coming from Canada, a country that, for all its differences from the U.S., is most unlikely to unleash terrorist attacks on our cities.  (I'm trying to imagine homegrown Canadian terrorism: excessive use of "eh" in conversation, followed by attempts to feed us poutine?)

Not Straining Their Necks

Instapundit's column today in the April 7, 2013 New York Post argues that an IQ test for politicians might be a good idea -- although there are some risks:

While politicians talk about expanding background checks for gun owners, I’m starting to think that what we really need are IQ tests for political officeholders. The only problem is, that might leave us with a lot of vacancies in Congress and America’s statehouses.

He points to Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO) who is leading the Democrats' campaign for a ban on high capacity magazines.  She violates a famous aphorism attributed to nineteenth century journalist Artemus Ward: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that ain't so."  DeGette apparently thinks that high capacity magazines are one-time use devices; banning new production and sales will make them quickly disappear.

Instapundit also links to this column by Professor Michael S. Greve of George Mason University about "Not-So-Expert Government":

For starters, it’s obvious that the experts don’t have a clue. The Fed’s pronouncements anno 2007, to the effect that everything was firmly in hand, are the stuff of legend, and its models have proven lamentably inaccurate in predicting even short-term economic performance. As for the experts’ climate change models about the planet’s behavior a century hence, right.

Even so, expert government proceeds on an implied premise of omniscience. The intergovernmental committee that decides, under and pursuant to the Endangered Species Act, whether the One-Eyed Toad shall live or die is called, only semi-ironically, the “God Squad.” (That would have been a terrific title for IPAB, but it’s already taken.) The squad’s reasoned decision-making is one step up from shooting dice. We can live with that, even if the toad cannot. However, expert ignorance increases with the scale, scope, and complexity of the experts’ mandate; and when we’re taking about the U.S. economy or the planet, that’s biggish. Still, we’re supposed to believe that there’s nothing wrong with the attempt to predict and manage these systems—nothing, that is, that can’t be fixed by an econometrician in the Fed’s basement or perhaps the Mann Brothers’ Earth Band (Michael with the hockey stick and Manfred with the keyboards).

My favorite is Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA), worried that deploying too many sailors to Guam for a building project will cause the island to capsize:


The admiral having to put up with this shows enormous restraint in not yelling, "Congressman, you are too stupid to sit in Congress.  You are too stupid to sit on a city council.  You are perhaps smart enough to manage a McDonald's, but only until a person of normal intelligence applies for the job."

The fact is that most people like to look up to their elected officials, but not so much as to strain their necks. There are some pretty smart people who get elected, but they are definitely the exceptions.

UPDATE: The Wikipedia article on Hank Johnson indicates that he was having health problems caused by Hepatitis C:

In February 2010, Johnson successfully completed an experimental treatment for Hepatitis C, which resulted in restored mental acuity, weight gain and increased energy.

 That's the month before the remarks above about Guam capsizing.  I shudder to think what might have happened if these hearings had happened a few months earlier.

New York Times On The Global Warming Threat

This from June 23, 1890:

Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate Summers and open Winters through several years, culminating last Winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade.

Time To Add Your Phone Numbers to the National Do Not Call Registry

When this was first created some years ago, I added all my phones to it, but these expire every few years.  I just received a robocall on my cell phone from some ambulance chaser seeking clients injured by Yaz.  So I re-registered all my phones.  It isn't perfect, but it is better than nothing.  Go here to do so.

UPDATE: A reader who clearly follows such things says that the law was changed in 2007; if you do the registration now, it will never expire.

Must Be Getting Old

I just paid $5 to download Ultimate Manilow, a Barry Manilow greatest hits album.  Songs like Mandy and Weekend in New England still sound so good, in a syrupy, romantic sort of way.  Of course, I'm a syrupy romantic kind of guy.

Pictures From Last Weekend

Most Americans, when you say Idaho, think of the pictures below -- even though much of the population lives in the southwestern part of the state, and looks nowhere near this nice.

We originally planned to try and get to Vulcan Hot Springs and some of the old mining camps east of Cascade, but the snow was simply too deep to consider this once off the cleared highways.  We did end up looking for lunch in the backwoods, and found ourselves at the North Shore Lodge on Warm Lake.

Okay, it looks like a redneck notion of "lodge," and in truth, it was: the food was basic home cooking, reasonably priced, the lodgekeeper was wearing a cowboy hat, and kept us entertained with the tricks his golden retriever/labrador mix could do, including bellying up to the bar for a drink. 

And yes, he told us that Warm Lake is so named because there are hot springs under the lake, and in summer, the top layer is 74 degrees.  (When I took the picture, the lake was completely frozen over.)

This was true everywhere we went.  At McCall, Lake Payette, which in summer is a popular waterskiing and wind surfing destination, was better suited to cross-country skiing:

This is the center of McCall -- which was a hopping and jumping with tourists, some of them clearly foreigners.

We stayed at the Ashley Inn in Cascade, partly because we have enjoyed some romantic weekends there before, and partly because we were given a gift card for the place.  Imagine a place decorated in cottage style, and you see why many women just go ga-ga over the place.  I am always amazed that someone manages to run this place at a profit, but my wife tells me that much of their business are Christian retreats and similar stuff that makes use of the meeting rooms. 

One example of how attentive they are to guest needs: they have milk and cookies at 8:00 PM downstairs.  My wife mentioned that she was gluten-intolerant, so she would probably not be participating.  And sure enough, they had gluten-free cookies that evening.  The next morning, they had mixed up some gluten-free waffle mix for the breakfast.  Very nice.

Cascade itself is a very small town -- and one that seems to be economically declining since the economic collapse.  We ate dinner in what appears to be nicest restaurant in town, overlooking the golf course and the lake.  (I do not remember the name, and I can't find them on any guides to Cascade.) 

From a decor and atmosphere standpoint, it wasn't much, and the menu seemed like it was designed to frustrate a gluten-intolerant person, but they were able to make some adjustments to come up with a pretty respectable meal for my wife.  I had a Cobb Salad, and it was pretty decent.  I do not expect that a fancy restaurant in the big city would have done a better job, and then, it would have been three times the price.

Lake Cascade, of course, was frozen over, except for a few cracks beginning to appear:

You may be familiar with Caspar David Friedrich's The Wanderer Above the Mists (1817):

For some reason, this picture of my wife before the lake made me think of it:

On BBC World Service at 6:00 AM GMT Thursday Morning

It should be fun.

UPDATE: It was!  Just got off the phone -- and I nailed this interview!  I explained that I had just finished the analysis of the effects and statistical significance or murder rate changes in states with mandatory background check systems (surprise, surprise, they don't seem to make a clear difference) and then launched into why the root cause is mental health care, and Professor Segal's work that shows what does make a difference.  The interviewer was clearly unprepared for what I was prepared to do!

Yahoo!

Now, if only there was some way to get on local radio stations here in Boise.

UPDATE: A reader found the interview and clipped it down to just my part of the news show.  This is the MP4 format version. And the MP3 version.  You will probably have to right click, Save Link As... to download these.