Free Republic

Yes, Lankford is doing a good job. Comey is cool under pressure...not nervous. But I’m surprised at how fast he’s talking and that he doesn’t think longer before answering questions.

A key point here is that Trump saying he hoped Comey can let this go could just be Trump’s emotional response to the investigation of Flynn—just Trump’s feeling about it. That kind of statement is not necessarily a direction to Comey or the FBI. It all depends on perception.

Just one more thing: Trump/Pence 2020! MAGA!

Loony global warming zealots will never get large numbers of people in western democracies to act against their own economic self-interest. The only way to reduce CO2 emissions substantially is by advances in science and technology that result in new methods of energy production. Eventually we will find a way to make clean nuclear fusion work well enough to generate most of the electric power used throughout the world. Scientists should be focused on developing better technology for energy production and for more efficient use of energy, not on grossly oversimplified alarmist theories about climate change. I will have more to say about those oversimplified alarmist theories in the months ahead ;-)

In this interview, Sen. Paul demolished the fake news networks and their mindless statements about discredited, faulty climate models that have massively overestimated future global temperatures. It’s obvious to any objective analyst that the current climate models that are widely used in government and academia have major flaws and need a serious overhaul or even complete replacement.

Looks like the polar bears are doing just fine. They’re up there just chillin’ out and living that great polar bear lifestyle...lol.

I’d say we’re out of climate agreements for a long time. Political leaders in other countries don’t want to make a fair deal with the US, and Trump will accept nothing less than a fair deal for America. MAGA...Trump/Pence 2020!

There’s a NATO airbase in Afghanistan that NATO uses to keep the pressure on Iran so that Iran doesn’t try to restart a full-scale nuclear weapons program. It’s all about Iran now. That’s why the US and NATO are still in Afghanistan.

Trump has to pull the US out of the awful Paris climate agreement, either by executive action or by submitting this treaty to the senate for ratification. It’s simply not possible for the United States to reach the CO2 emissions targets in this agreement by 2025 without a severe economic recession. It’s astonishing that the previous administration actually agreed to this disastrously bad deal for our country. The agreement requires us to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 2.3 to 2.8% per year from 2020 to 2025. That’s not possible without a serious recession caused by some kind of economic shock event or a big tax on coal and oil products, which would also cause a severe recession.

http://www4.unfccc.int/ndcregistry/PublishedDocuments/United%20States%20of%20America%20First/U.S.A.%20First%20NDC%20Submission.pdf

I’d like to see Trump quietly assign our very best scientists at the weapons labs in the Energy Dept. to a part-time project of developing a new climate model—a model that actually forecasts temperatures accurately. The current models greatly over-forecast temperatures and need to be overhauled or completely scrapped and replaced with a new model developed from a clean slate. The existing models are extremely inaccurate at temperature forecasting, and I suspect there are serious fundamental flaws in the underlying scientific assumptions in these models. I suspect that climate scientists in government and academia jumped into the forecasting business before they did enough basic research into atmospheric physics and the hundreds of other factors that affect the earth’s climate.

Trump should submit this treaty to the senate for ratification and force all the democrats to vote on the treaty, including the democrats who are facing election battles in 2018. That will put some of them in a tough situation, and if they vote for the treaty we can nail them with hard-hitting campaign adds that explain the real cost of this crooked treaty to America.

One last point: the amount of cash flow generated per barrel of oil produced at a $50 oil price is much higher than $10 in several large regions of North America. Profit is a different number that includes a lot of non-cash charges like depreciation of equipment and depletion of oil reserves. But I’ve heard some oil company CEO’s say that they can produce oil in some areas of Oklahoma and West Texas for only $10 per barrel in cash costs. Cash costs are just the total amount that is costs to drill the well, build storage tanks and pipelines, and pump the oil out of the ground. So the US oil industry is generating much more cash flow than the pessimists think in some big oil-producing regions. The productivity of oil drilling has increased dramatically in the last several years in North America and it’s still increasing.

Bond rating firms and bond fund managers put more weight on cash flow generated than reported earnings, so most companies should be able to refinance high-yield debt without much difficulty.

You have the right to move across the border to Nevada or Arizona, or places further east. I left California a long time ago, never to return.

The numbers in the Bloomberg chart are not consistent with the numbers in this article about a report from Moody’s:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/junk-bond-market-facing-record-refinancing-cliff-moodys-2016-02-16

Moody’s says the total amount of high yield debt that matures between 2016 and 2020 is $947 billion, and if you add up the numbers in the Bloomberg chart you get over $500 billion just for the energy industry. But debt in the energy industry is only about 15% of high-yield debt, so one of these articles is incorrect. If I had to pick the one that’s correct, I’d go with Moody’s.

As the Moody’s article states, energy companies are starting to issue new bonds to refinance the existing debt. That’s how they’re going to get out of a possible trap, by refinancing the old debt with new debt. Because of still very low interest rates on investment-grade debt, there’s strong demand for high-yield bonds and most companies should be able to refinance their high-yield debt to pay back the maturing debt. A number of energy companies with the biggest debt loads have already gone through the bankruptcy process where they wiped out most or all of their debt, and they’re back in business producing oil and natural gas. So some of this debt is already gone. The key thing for investors is to stay widely diversified and don’t get too heavily invested in high-yield bonds in any one industry, especially energy.

But who is subsidizing the price of the rides...the ride-hailing company or drivers who own their own vehicles?

Well when I see a car driving itself on a 2-lane highway out in the country where I live, then I’ll start to believe the technology actually works out here. So far I haven’t seen one.

You’ll never get people to give up driving their cars, trucks, and SUVs. People in the suburbs and the country will rebel against any legislators who vote for that kind of restrictive law. Any laws of that kind will be swiftly repealed in the next legislative session after those who enacted it are voted out of office.
;-)

I would bet quite a lot that it will never happen that fast. The technology will fail repeatedly in live testing in the suburbs and in the country. There will be numerous collisions and one-vehicle accidents in testing and the whole thing will be pulled back for more engineering work. That’s just my view on this as a former software developer. It will be interesting to see what actually happens in the testing phase.

Did you tell those drivers that they were making almost nothing, and if so how did they react? I just find this subject interesting.

I don’t think fully capable self-driving cars will exist in 3 to 5 years. It will be more like 25 years or more. The engineers are going to hit a wall in the next few years when they try to solve tough technical challenges like passing slower vehicles on 2 lanes roads in the country. That’s a very tough software development challenge and there’s zero room for error because any mistake can result in a fatal head-on collision. We might see fully autonomous vehicles in controlled environments in cities, where wifi beacons can tell the vehicles where they are at all times. Something like that might work, but there’s an astonishing number of situations that can occur out in the suburbs and in the country—things like frontage roads running right next to 2-lane highways with vehicles driving in the opposite direction on those frontage roads. That’s just one example; there’s so many situations and different kinds of road markings and weather conditions.

The litigation issue is complex. Autonomous vehicles could end up being safer drivers than humans overall, but when a human causes an accident, the victims can only sue that person and then his insurance company pays for damages. Those individual drivers generally don’t have very deep pockets so the damage payouts are generally quite limited. But auto manufacturers have deep pockets and the trial lawyers will go after them for billions of dollars if those autonomous vehicles cause numerous accidents, even if the accident rate per 1000 miles is much lower than the rate for human drivers. It’s a complex subject, but I think VC people are getting way ahead of themselves about fully autonomous fleets of vehicles.

Good point, and another really tough technical challenge is passing slow vehicles on 2-lane highways. That’s a challenge even for humans with good eyesight. I wonder if some of these venture capital people have actually driven a motor vehicles on a 2-lane highway in the country in the last 10 years.
;-)