"Windfall" Profit Taxing

Full article (here).

Some have suggested taxing the “windfall” profits of oil producers. So let’s look at those profits.

It’s true that as crude prices have surged, so have profits for the companies that produce the stuff. Exxon Mobil last week posted a $10.9 billion profit for the latest quarter — the second-biggest U.S. quarterly corporate profit ever. It may help to put that number in perspective. (Many readers don’t really want to do that, but here goes anyway.)

The reason big oil companies post such huge profits is that there are only a handful of them left after the price crash of the late 1990s sent crude prices to $10 a barrel, below the cost of production.

Major U.S. oil companies also found themselves bidding against bigger and better-funded state-owned competitors. (Today, U.S. oil companies produce about 10 percent of the world’s crude oil.) To fund those projects they needed lots of capital; getting bigger by merging was one way to do that.

But, hey, $11 billion for three months' work? Isn’t that a little much? On the next page, let’s look at how that compares with profits reported by other industries.

Let’s start with drugs. There are eight major drug makers in the Standard & Poor's 500; collectively they made $36.2 billion over the past 12 months on revenues of $237.2 billion. That means they pocketed about 15 cents of every dollar’s worth of product sold. Not bad.

How about software? The seven big companies in the sector (including Microsoft, which jointly owns msnbc.com with NBC Universal) took in $92.3 billion in revenues and earned $23.6 billion in profits, or about 25 cents on every dollar.

Banking? Despite their problems with subprime loans, the eight big “money center” banks in the S&P 500 took in profits of $41.3 billion on revenues of $267.3 billion, about 15 cents on the dollar.

Now let’s look at the three oil majors in the S&P 500. In the last 12 months, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips took in $833.7 billion in revenues but reported profits of $71.8 billion. That works out to about 8.6 cents of profit for every dollar's worth of crude.

Refiners fared even worse. They sold $293.6 billion worth of gasoline and other fuels and made $11.9 billion in profits, or about 4 cents on the dollar.

We got our data from MSN Money's Stock Screener.

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

This one is from the liberal Huffington Post.

Full article (here).

A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. The Muslim world can match the FLDS sin for sin--Muslims commonly practice polygamy, forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating--but add to these indiscretions the surpassing evils of honor killing, female "circumcision," widespread support for terrorism, a pornographic fascination with videos showing the butchery of infidels and apostates, a vibrant form of anti-semitism that is explicitly genocidal in its aspirations, and an aptitude for producing children's books and television programs which exalt suicide-bombing and depict Jews as "apes and pigs."

Any honest comparison between these two faiths reveals a bizarre double standard in our treatment of religion. We can openly celebrate the marginalization of FLDS men and the rescue of their women and children. But, leaving aside the practical and political impossibility of doing so, could we even allow ourselves to contemplate liberating the women and children of traditional Islam?

Cleaner air to worsen droughts in Amazon: study

Full article (here).

Curbing a notorious form of industrial pollution may ironically harm Amazonia, one of the world's natural treasures and a key buffer against global warming, a study released Wednesday has found.

Its authors see a strong link between a decrease in sulphur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and a rise in sea temperature in the northern Atlantic that was blamed for wreaking a devastating drought in western Amazonia in 2005.

University of Exeter professor Peter Cox and colleagues created a computer model to simulate the impact of aerosols -- airborne particles that, like sulphur dioxide, are also spewed out by fossil-fuel power plants -- on Amazonia's climate.

The aerosols, while a bad pollutant, indirectly ease the problem of global warming as they reflect sunlight, making it bounce back into space rather than warm the Earth's surface.

In the 1970s and 1980s, according to Cox's model, high concentrations of aerosols over the highly industrialised northern hemisphere had the effect of buffering the impact of global warming on north Atlantic surface waters, which led to more rain over Amazonia.

But tighter curbs on sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants led to a reduction in aerosol levels, causing these Atlantic waters to warm. This changed patterns of precipitation, leading to the 2005 drought.

Photo: Piglets adopted by tiger that lost her cubs

Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming

Full article (here).

Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming.

Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR’s May 6 “Fresh Air” broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback.

“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.

Afghanistan Update from Lt. Mark

This came to me via e-mail. Lt. Mark is a friend of my brother-in law.

Friends and Family,

Though we haven’t done anything really exciting yet, I wanted to give those of you who are interested an idea of how things are going for 2/7. So, this is basically an update about why you don’t need an update from me yet. The battalion is spending its days in Kandahar as we prepare to begin the mission we were sent here to accomplish. The base here is a large, NATO base that plays host to the militaries (used loosely) of some 43 countries. This is a new experience for all of us and it has been very interesting to see how some of the other militaries conduct business. As far as the base is concerned, apparently US Marines are not the most popular folks stationed here. I know, I had a hard time believing it, too. I know what you’re thinking; these people clearly don’t base popularity on combat efficiency. Clearly. At any rate, our involvement in this conflict makes us all proud members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which, as you may have guessed from the lame title, is not a very impressive organization. The Marines have re-designated ISAF (pronounced eye-saf) as “I Suck At Fighting” and “I Saw Americans Fight.” Both of which can accurately be applied to the majority of the other countries whose involvement in this circus puts a multi-national face on the organization. That said, the British are pretty good. You should take comfort knowing that the men and women you sent over here are taking this whole counterinsurgency thing pretty seriously. (With a few exceptions, most of whom can be found lurking around the music room looking like criminals on karaoke night, hip hop night, salsa night, and during whatever other kinds of bullshit events they hold over on the other side of the camp. It’s what we call a “shit show” and I’m embarrassed to admit there are Marines over there at all). For most of the other countries, their military involvement here is indistinguishable from a civilian corporation that opened a branch in a foreign country. I think they probably do some kind of work, but setting up hockey rinks and volley ball courts down at the boardwalk (an actual place) is definitely the focus of effort. Many of the other nations are even more focused on personal amenities and comfort based resource allocation than the United States Air Force, if you can imagine that. I couldn’t before seeing it in person.

While there hasn’t been much going on here for the battalion, Toby Keith came to Kandahar to sing as part of a USO sponsored “support the troops” effort. (And no, Steph, I know what you’re thinking, but supporting the troops does not involve bringing them home. No, really, it doesn’t. Nice try). Anyway, I couldn’t name a Toby Keith song if you spotted me half the title, so I did not attend. But, for the first time since the USO began sending people to entertain the troops in the 1940s, an infantry unit actually got to see the performance. That is, until the “rocket attack” siren went off and everyone had to leave. This sounds far more sensational than it really was and I can assure you we weren’t in any danger. Though, much like in Camp Fallujah, I have seen several exaggerated accounts of this traumatic event that were no doubt written in an effort to make the author sound like he has a cooler job than he actually does, all while unnecessarily frightening his friends and family back home. Ridiculous. The two other XOs and I were joking that having an enemy mortar team adjust their rounds onto the house you’re occupying is a relatively terrifying event; hearing a siren and a muffled voice over a barely functional loudspeaker in the distance and asking your buddy, “Dude, is that the one for mortars?” is really not. Anyway, I thought the relative safety of this base was worth mentioning because I know some people on the list (my Mom) are inclined to overreact to news stories about rocket attacks on the places I live. You know Moms.

That’s really all I have for now. I will have more interesting things to report in the coming months as we begin conducting combat operations in zone, which really can’t come soon enough. Until then, take care and send updates.

Always Faithful,

Mark

Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming, Researchers Say

Full article (here).

Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

``Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. ``Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''

The Leibniz study, co-written by Noel Keenlyside, a research scientist at the institute, will be published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature.

``If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,'' Keenlyside said in an interview. ``There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''