Aaron Mair versus Senator Cruz

How to win a debate when you don’t know what you are talking about

>>> Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV >>>

First watch this exchange between Sen. Ted Cruz and Aaron Mair on climate change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=84&v=Sl9-tY1oZNw

Now, here are two guys who wouldn’t know the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current from the Circumpolar Current or a Hadley Cell from a Polar Vortex. Neither has the background to understand, let alone to contribute to research. You’d just as well have two 5th graders arguing.

Then, Cruz is a lawyer. I learned long ago that law is a sort of fundamentalism which argues to text and precedent. When you are unfortunate enough to go to court, you hope the verbal map of legal “reality” matches the physical world reality in which your incident happened. Often it doesn’t. We hear about people being absolved of crimes years after being convicted. Doubtless there are many innocent that are never absolved. Of course we never hear about them!

A lawyer is trained to serve the best he can the person who pays him, defense or prosecution. Justice is what we hope for, but not what the lawyer argues for. He argues to win. How it comes out depends on the judge, who tries to fit the lawyer’s work to the legal map of “reality.”

Let’s not talk about who pays Senator Cruz and how – you know anyway, since he wants to be President. Real high stakes!

Mr. Mair is obviously used to gentleman debate of academics, where you are supposed to use experts for things you don’t research yourself and specify where your claims come from. Go for the jugular is not his thing. Being right is more important than wining on points.

The video is not even a classy debate. Sen. Cruz may not be aware how much he looks like a bully. But some love that, just like they love to see a hero beat up the bad guy. This video went wild in Right-leaning circles.

The following is this author’s comment on the transcript from here:

Sen. Cruz:. “. . is this a frequent practice of the Sierra Club to declare areas of science not up for debate, not up for consideration of what the evidence and data show?”

Comment: Strong frontal attack, the appropriate answer: “NO! But we depend on expert opinion.”

Mair: “If you are relying on the evidence and data, the science, the preponderance of the evidence, are there.”

Comment: Correct, but not assertive.

Cruz: “But that’s a different thing than saying we should not debate a question, that the Sierra Club has declared this scientific issue resolved, and there should be no debate.”

Comment: Better answer: “Not so fast, Senator. What we say is that the experts have decided. And it is not appropriate for those of us who are not familiar with all the evidence, terms and all the data to cherry pick the little we have heard.”

Mair: “Based upon the preponderance of the evidence the science is settled. But the thing is that anything is up for debate, Senator. We can debate anything.”

Comment: Gentlemanly, but not long on points.

Cruz: “Well, I would note that even the phrase “preponderance of the evidence,” having been a practicing lawyer for many years, means 51%, that means 49 . . . at least 51% is what the preponderance means. You know, I would ask, for example, if you want to end debate, if you don’t want to address the facts, how do you address the fact that the last 18 years the satellite data show no demonstrable warming whatsoever?”

Comment: Better answer: “The fact is 97% of the people with the education, access to the tools and a lifetime invested have that view, That is a preponderance of evidence.”

Mair: “Sir, I would rely upon the Union of Concerned Scientists, and I would rely on the evidence, again, of our own NOAA officials, the data are there.”

Comment: Cruz ignores this key statement and instead goes on the attack with another assertion.

Cruz: Is it correct that the satellite data over the last 18 years demonstrate no significant warming?

Mair answered: “No.”

Comment: Here Mair made a big mistake. No such data exist, it is a very serious mistake for Mair not to have called him on it. His experts behind him, who he whispered to, apparently did not know, either.

Cruz: “How is it incorrect?’

Mair: [Confers with staff.] Based upon our experts, it’s been refuted long ago, and there is no longer, it’s not up for scientific debate.

Comment: A firm assertion “that data doesn’t exist” would have set Cruiz back on his heals. Mair’s experts should have known this, even if he didn’t. They improvised and the rout began. If Cruz denied their assertion that it didn’t exist, all they would have had to do is ask him for the name of the study or the scientists. In fact, even if the study had existed, subsequent studies disproving it could have been cited.

Further down Mair: “But Senator, 97% of the scientists concur and agree that there is global warming, and anthropogenic impact with regards to global warming.”

Cruz: “The problem with that statistic that gets cited a lot is that it’s based on one bogus study. And indeed your response . . . I asked about the science and the evidence, the actual data, we have satellites, they’re measuring temperature . . .

Comment: This was not a “bogus” study. Cruz claim must have been taken from the right-wing myth makers. The research on acceptance of climate scientists is here. It was published by NASA. It involves 18 American scientific societies and over 200 worldwide! It shows the “Temperature Anomaly” graph with figures from four of the most prestigious scientific bodies on earth in climate studies. There simply is no anomaly!

So, the only “science” Cruz brings up is one claim he got out of climate change denier literature. That seems to be his source and his limit.

As for the right wing sounding board, I used to go into a store which had a cartoon on the wall. It said “Never argue with a fool, bystanders don’t know the difference.”

P.S. Don’t miss all the good stuff at the bottom of the last reference!

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NOTE: GOP Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) of South Carolina on Climate Change

See also: www.Marcellus-Shale.us

Shale production retreats as oil & gas prices do not support the high cost of production

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

There were two impressive article in Bloomberg recently. One titled “Speculators Retreat From Oil as OPEC Oversupply Crowds Out Shale” and a second called “The Shale Industry Could Be Swallowed By Its Own Debt.” Deborah Rogers Lawrence has been predicting something of this sort for years, and now it seems to be coming to pass.

The first article says “Trading in futures is falling as WTI swings in a $5 range, the narrowest in 19 months. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped the most oil last month since October 2012, while the U.S. government says output will start falling from this month. Investors are watching a June 30 deadline for Iran and six other nations to reach a nuclear deal that could lift oil sanctions and further swell a global supply glut.’ The higher cost of extracting oil in the U. S. seems to be catching up with the market.

It continues ” Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest member, is ready to produce more oil if demand rises, Oil Minister Ali-Al Naimi said June 18. It has 1.5 million to 2 million barrels a day of spare capacity, he said.” and further, Libya may double output to 800,000 barrels a day by next month, according to Mohamed Elharari, a Tripoli-based spokesman for the state-run National Oil Corp.” Moreover, Iran wants to pump 4 million barrels a day, up from 2.8 million.

And according to a financial news letter I get, both Royal Dutch Shell and Total (France) want to return to Iran as soon as matters can be cleared up. Elsewhere the same source (out of Israel) says Total is seeking the equivalent of up to $15B in Chinese financing to fund its expansion in Russia, despite U.S. and European sanctions imposed on the country. The company expects Russia to be the most important region for its oil and gas output by 2020, when it hopes for production of around 400K bbl/day. Last year Total produced 2.2 Mbbl/day out of world production 94 Mbbl/day.

OPEC’s principal interest is to continue with its market share, while U. S. producers want to maintain oil’s current price, or put it back to where it was when they borrowed so much money. Futures traders are withdrawing, because they are not sure what the signals mean. Drillers are loosing their nerve. The number of rigs searching for oil dropped by 4 to 631 in the week ended June 19, the lowest level since August 2010, Baker Hughes Inc. data show.

The second article reports “The debt that fueled the U.S. shale boom now threatens to be its undoing. Drillers are devoting more revenue than ever to interest payments.” It gives as an example one company that is spending almost as much in interest as a company twenty times its size.

The reason this is dangerous is that oil has fallen 43% in the last year. Bloomberg says, ” Interest payments are eating up more than 10 percent of revenue for 27 of the 62 drillers in the Bloomberg Intelligence North America Independent Exploration and Production Index, up from a dozen a year ago. Drillers’ debt ballooned to $235 billion at the end of the first quarter, a 16 percent increase in the past year, even as revenue shrank.”

More from this Bloomberg article: “The question is, how long do they have that they can get away with this,” said Thomas Watters, an oil and gas credit analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York. The companies with the lowest credit ratings “are in survival mode,” he said.

The problem for shale drillers is that they’ve consistently spent money faster than they’ve made it, even when oil was $100 a barrel. The companies in the Bloomberg index spent $4.15 for every dollar earned selling oil and gas in the first quarter, up from $2.25 a year earlier, while pushing U.S. oil production to the highest in more than 30 years. (End of quote.)

Some 45 of the 62 companies are rated “junk bond” by Standard and Poor. The $20 billion in bonds of the 62 are trading as distressed bond yielding more tha 10% above U. S. Treasury bonds. the most conservative bonds available. S&P has lowered the investment ratings of 105 exploration companies. World-wide oil and gas companies comprised one-third of the 36 corporate- debt defaults.

One bad example given in this article: Oklahoma City-based SandRidge issued $1.25 billion of second-lien debt this month at 8.75 percent interest, more than all but one of their existing bonds, records show. The company paid $24 million in fees and will add $109 million a year to interest payments, which are already eating up 29 percent of its revenue.

So far this is all about oil. What about gas? The net-short position on U.S. natural gas (that is the promises to deliver by speculators) decreased 23 percent. Nymex gas rose to $2.894 per million British thermal units. Baker Hughes gas drilling rig count in the Marcellus has fallen from 141 in 10/28/11 to 64 in 6/19/15.

Gas and oil are somewhat linked since the principal use for both at the present is to burn them for energy. Oil can be moved as liquid cheaply, and gas can not. Gas lines are the big boom at present. The Energy Information Administration says that about 4,600 miles of new interstate pipelines could be completed by 2018. That’s on top of the 6,800 miles of existing pipelines as of April, 2014. Compare the two numbers. Quite a bonanza for the executives in the agencies that move the money and the companies that build them. It is reflective of very high optimism – or is it simply “get mine now, to hell with what follows.”

Is optimism about substituting gas for coal justified? The U. S Energy Information Administration says 205.7 pounds of carbon dioxide is given off per million BTU’s produced. With natural gas it is 117.0 pounds of carbon dioxide per Million BTU’s. 57% as much.

What’s more, the conservative Deutsche Bank has just concluded that in 14 states of the US, solar power is now as inexpensive as that from coal and natural gas. And get this: by 2016– next year! — Deutsche Bank concludes that solar will be competitive with coal and natural gas in all but three or four states.

Must be a lot of clenched toes and queasy stomachs among the oil and gas gamblers.