Shale gas is fueling a manufacturing boom in the US

Shale gas is fueling a manufacturing boom in the US, luring back chemical producers, which previously abandoned the country in droves:

The plummeting price of natural gas, which can be used to make a vast number of products, including tires, carpet, antifreeze, lubricants, cloth, and many types of plastic, is luring key industries to the United States. Just five years ago, natural gas prices were so high that some chemicals manufacturers were shutting down operations here. Now the ability to access natural gas trapped in shale rock formations, using technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has led to a surge in natural gas supplies that have lowered American gas prices to a fraction of prices in other countries (see “King Natural Gas”). --


The impact of cheap natural gas on manufacturing could extend beyond the production of various chemicals. Using natural gas as an energy source, rather than a chemical feedstock, could significantly lower costs for manufacturers who use a lot of energy, such as steel makers. (The steel industry is booming already for another natural gas-related reason—it’s supplying gas producers with pipes.) What’s more, cheap natural gas is prompting a shift away from petroleum based-fuels for trucking. Some companies are switching to trucks that burn natural gas directly. Eventually, even diesel trucks could be using fuel made from natural gas. The South African company Sasol plans to build a huge $14 billion plant in Louisiana partly to convert natural gas to diesel, potentially lowering fuel costs for conventional vehicles as well.

Overall, cheaper chemicals, cheaper steel, and cheaper transportation could make the U.S. a far more attractive place for a wide range of industries.

Read the entire article here

Good news from the New York Times: The paper is shutting down its climate change desk

Finally, some excellent climate change news from the New York Times:

The Gray Lady has decided to shut down its environment desk. 

Andrew Revkin and his warmist colleagues will be "redistributed" to the paper's other teams. The editors maintain that the move will not affect NYT's efforts to cover climate change, but not everybody is convinced:

Margaret Sullivan, the Times' public editor, expressed dismay at the news.

"Symbolically, this is bad news. And symbolism matters – it shows a commitment and an intensity of interest in a crucially important topic," Sullivan wrote.

"If coverage of the environment is not to suffer, a lot of people – including The Times’s highest ranking editors — are going to have to make sure that it doesn’t."

Andrew Revkin, who writes the Times’ DotEarth blog, described reaction to the decision on Facebook and Twitter as “shock and anger.”

We say a happy goodbye to the "green desk", and wish Andrew Revkin a bright future in another New York Times team -  perhaps in the sports department?

Putin's fight against corruption is a joke

Sergey Aleksashenko, director of macroeconomic studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics and a former deputy finance minister, does not agree with "experts" who declare that Vladimir Putin has now begun a serious fight against corruption in Russia:

I don’t agree. I prefer to wait and see those affair end up. Two years ago in the Moscow region an extensive network of illegal casinos was discovered which functioned with the support of the prosecutor’s office and police. During the investigation many people were arrested but all have since been released, and the prosecutor’s office declared that the evidence collected was not valid. The latest spate of financial scandals could come to the same conclusions.

Global experience suggests that independent and fair courts, and an honest and corruption-free state are indispensable conditions for a competitive, open economy and for sustained economic growth.

Putin seems to want to disprove this position. He would like a more efficient, fast-growing economy. But he does not believe in private incentives but in bureaucratic decisions. Moreover he knows perfectly well that the emergence of independent courts in Russia immediately conducts to the collapse of the political system created by him.

And he is not prepared to pay that price. Faced with the choice of keeping power or promoting institutional reform he has chosen power. I do not see why he would change his position in 2013. Can a leopard change his spots?

Read the entire article here

Aleksashenko is of course right. A real fight against corruption in Russia is possible only after  Putin, who recently was awarded an honourable mention as the most corrupt person in the world by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, has been replaced as president by an honest man.  

UK Met Office admits: No evidence that "global warming" is happening

James Delingpole takes on the UK Met Office, which now has had to admit that global warming has in reality stopped:

The Met Office quietly readjusted its temperature projections on its website on Christmas Eve. 

Until then, it had been confidently predicting temperature rises of at least 0.2 degrees per decade, with a succession of years exceeding even the record-breaking high of 1998.

Its latest chart, however, confirmed in a press release earlier this week, tells a very different story: no more global warming is expected till at least 2017. 

According to Dr David Whitehouse of the independent think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climbdown couldn’t be more dramatic or more devastating for the Met Office’s credibility. 

‘They’re panicking. All the predictions they’ve been making about man-made global warming these past 20 years have started to come crashing about their ears.’

For two decades the Met Office has acted as Britain’s foremost cheerleader for climate change alarmism. In 2007, its Hadley Centre for climate change research produced a briefing document for the Government claiming its state-of-the-art computer models left no doubt: man-made global warming was a very real threat which needed to be addressed urgently by policy-makers.

Read the entire article here

Slowly, but certainly the case for human caused global warming is collapsing ...

But before that, billions of taxpayers' money have been wasted on useless climate change policies and projects ....

Putin tops the list of the world's most powerful dictators

Ian Brummer, president of Eurasia Group, and a blogger for Foreign Policy Magazine, recently published a list of the world's most powerful people, which was topped by Vladimir Putin (as there was no number one). Russian commentators have been quick to notice Brummer's ranking:
Russian President Vladimir Putin is second on a list published by US magazine Foreign Policy of the world's most powerful people. The first position is held by 'Nobody,' as “in a G-Zero world, everyone is waiting for someone else to shoulder responsibility for the world's toughest and most dangerous challenges,” the magazine said, citing a survey of about 150 analysts of the political science consultancy Eurasia Group.

The list ranks individuals’ ability to singlehandedly “bring about change that significantly affects the lives and fortunes of large numbers of people”.

Putin’s second-place rank is due to “Russia's personalised system,” and the influence the country wields in regional affairs.

Fortunately, the editor of Foreign Policy Magazine has distanced himself from Brummer's list:

Joshua Keating, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, says in his article appearing on the magazine's website that Bremmer's post, which created a buzz in Russia's media, does not reflect the real position of the publication.

"It wasn't Foreign Policy, but one FP blogger; it's not an annual feature, and the item did not appear in the print magazine," Keating said.  

Brummer did a disservice to himself and the organization he leads  ("the world’s leading global political risk research and consulting firm", according to Eurasia Group's own description), by publishing his dubious ranking. He should instead have placed Putin on top of a list of dictators. 

Fadel Gheit, a senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer in New York, gives a correct description of Putin:

“There is no question in my mind that Putin is a tremendous dictator so he’s in control of Russia,” “Putin has no opposition; has nobody to really supervise what he does. He can do anything he wants so that’s the difference,”

France in free fall: "A shocking deterioration in competitiveness"

Karl Lagerfeld - not afraid of speaking out.

Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel recently grabbed headlines with this statement:

"Outside of fashion, jewellery, perfume and wine, France isn't competitive," Lagerfeld said. "The rest of our products don't sell. Who buys French cars? I don't."

France's socialist president Francois Hollande may not have liked the comment, but a look at the French economy shows that Lagerfeld's description is most accurate:

A deeper look shows that France is mired in no less than an economic crisis. The eurozone's second-largest economy (2012 GDP: 2 trillion euros) is suffering more than any other member from a shocking deterioration in competitiveness. Put simply, France's products -- its cars, steel, clothing, electronics -- cost far too much to produce compared with competing goods both from Asia and its European neighbors, including not just Germany but even Spain and Italy. That's causing a sharp and accelerating fall in its exports, and a significant decline in manufacturing and the services that support it.

The virtual implosion of French industry is overlooked by analysts and pundits who claim that the eurozone had dodged disaster and entered a new, durable period of stability. In fact, it's France -- not Greece or Spain -- that now poses the greatest threat to the euro's survival. France epitomizes the real problem with the single currency: The inability of nations with high and rising production costs to adjust their currencies so that their products remain competitive in world markets.

So far, the worries over the euro have centered on dangerously rising debt and deficits. But those fiscal problems are primarily the result of a loss of competitiveness. When products cost too much to make, the economy stalls or actually declines, so that even modest increases in government spending swamp nations with big budget shortfalls and excessive borrowings. In this no-or-negative growth scenario, the picture is usually the same: The private economy shrinks while government keeps expanding.

That's already happened in Italy, Spain and other troubled eurozone members. The difference is that those nations are adopting structural reforms to restore their competitiveness. France is doing nothing of the kind. Hence, its yawning competitiveness gap will soon create a fiscal crisis. It's absolutely astonishing that an economy so large, and so widely respected, can be unraveling so quickly.

Read the entire Fortune article here

Francois Hollande enjoys grandstanding in his role as president, with all the traditional trappings of a royal head of state, but - as we have said before - he is in reality nothing but an emperor without clothes. 

It will not take long before the citizens of the once mighty and powerful La France will wake up and ask the question, why on earth did we elect this incompetent party apparatchik as our president?

"Vorsprung durch Technik": Germans seem unable to build an airport

"Vorsprung durch Technik" ("Advancement through technology") is the familiar slogan of a well known German car manufacturer, also symbolizing the technical and industrial prowess of the eurozone paymaster in general. 

However, judging by what is going on in the capital Berlin, the German leadership role may have to be reconsidered:

The saga of Berlin's hapless efforts to build a new airport has taken another embarrassing twist with reports that its opening will be delayed for a fourth time because of continued problems with the fire safety system.

The opening of Berlin's new airport BER, set for Oct. 27, has been delayed for the fourth time and will not go ahead this year in a further blow to the city's reputation. Although not yet confirmed by official sources, the news has triggered calls on Mayor Klaus Wowereit to resign and spells at least another year of congestion at the city's two small, increasingly overstretched eastern and western airports.

Newspapers reported on Monday that the airport's management company had informed contractors in December that an opening before 2014 was unfeasible due to construction errors. The main problem, which also led to previous delays, is the fire safety system. --

Bild added that construction experts checking the building had found hundreds of other faults including cracks in the floor tiles, and more seriously, problems with the airport's local area network that steers everything from the check-in system to the runway lights.

Experts have also warned that the airport doesn't have enough check-in counters and baggage claim conveyor belts to cope with passenger numbers at peak times.

The new airport is, or was to have been, a major prestige project for the German capital, replacing the two ageing and outdated western and eastern airports, Tegel and Schönefeld, which are due to close once it opens.

Construction started in September 2006, and the airport was originally due to open on Oct. 31, 2011. It was then delayed to June 3, 2012, then to spring 2013, and finally to October 2013.

And in addition to the Berlin airport, there are several other construction scandals in Germany.