I interview Obama´s former National Security Advisor.

Former US National Security Advisor Susan Raees has given me an exclusive interview on the electronic surveillance of the Trump building, US-Russia relations, and President Obama´s accomplishments in the Middle East and Latinamerica.   I managed this feat after I saw her coming out of Hillary Clinton´s New York mansion and faked her out saying I was an MSNBC reporter.

This was a great journalistic coup for yours truly.  The interview took place at a secret Democratic Party office, in a town I can´t disclose. Even though I have a reputation as a ferocious interviewer, she seemed quite relaxed during the question and answer session. She even sipped tea and munched on sugar coated donuts,  

Susan Raees during interview. Note how relaxed she looked. 

FL (that´s me): I think I'd like to start by asking how your passion for politics and secret intelligence work got started?

SR (that´s Susan Raees) When my brother and I were children, we used to take neighbor´s photographs, snooped around their mailboxes, and played at being President and CIA Director.   I mean, I've always felt it´s important to know what´s going on, and to make other people follow my orders.  

What I didn´t realize was that fame brings its dark side, the media likes to criticize me for Benghazi…you know, the bit where I said the attack on the US consulate was triggered by an anti muslim video, and had nothing to do with terrorists.

FL: Did you ever get frustrated because you couldn´t get rid of Fox News and Breitbart?

PW: Oh yes, I really hate them. When I was little I always knew I would be important.  But once I got to be National Security Advisor I found out I couldn´t just send CIA agents to bag them and drop them in the Nile river. That was incredibly frustrating.

FL: Maybe they got lucky. So how do you feel about Cernovich saying you were getting information from FBI wiretaps of the Trump team?

SR: In this morning’s papers I read Journalist Mike Cernovich named me as the official responsible for the unmasking of the incoming Trump team during incidental surveillance. I just want to say that´s an incredibly dirty thing to do. When I acted as National Security Advisor I only thought of the country´s future. This had nothing to do with me trying to torpedo the goddam Trumpites.

 FL:  This was apparently discovered after the White House Counsel's office reviewed your document log requests. It looks like the White House has the records and you did sort of mix up national security with an obsessive need to stop Trump from rolling back Obamacare, building his wall, and gutting the Clean Power Plan?

SR: I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports. I´m innocent!

FL: Did Trump transition officials, including the president, get swept up in surveillance of foreigners at the end of the Obama administration?

Transportation Security Agency (TSA) employee receives X-Ray eye implant

Surgeons in Fresno have performed the first bionic X Ray eye implant in a Transportation Security Agency employee who volunteered to become the first highly mobile focused X ray (HiMobX) Scanner. 

The TSA volunteer, Bob Ray Gunn, 54, was implanted with the Alternative Multisensor Device  (AMD) in a four hour operation, which has led to his acquisition of highly focused X Ray vision. The implant, located in the middle of his forehead, converts video images from a miniature X Ray video camera into signals which are sent to his occipital lobe through an artificial neural net developed by Microsoft. 

Mr Bob Ray Gunn with his wife Minnie and 

Doctor Smith chat after the operation. 

He can now make out solid objects and the body shape and even skin markings such as tattoo marks,  right through a person´s clothing, using the implant.

Mr Ray Gunn  said he was "delighted" with the implant and hoped in time it would improve his performance  to help him with day-to-day tasks searching passengers at the Fresno airport security points.

The AMD implant, manufactured by the US firm Freedom and Security Sight, has previously been implanted in chimpanzees and orangutangs at an experimental animal lab located at the Army´s Fort Detrick Medical Research facilities. The project´s original objective was to develop an eye implant which allows soldiers to see through walls. This was found to be impractical because the XRay lamp able to go through a cement block wall used too much power. 

Technical Post about CO2 emissions and Concentrations

This page is written to document the differences between the IPCC´s AR5 RCP8.5 Pathway (the one that´s called “Business as Usual” in IPCC propaganda and most media), and my estimate of emissions and CO2 concentration, which I documented partially in a post called “Burn Baby Bun" written in 2014.

The following graph shows emissions resulting from all anthropogenic factors (fossil fuel burning, cement, land use change, etc):

There´s a slight difference between the emissions shown in this graph and the one in my referenced post: I added the cement manufacture and other inferred from the difference between the EDGAR data base and the CMIP data, and extrapolated from 2015 at a constant value (1.33 Billion metric tonnes, where billion is the European convention, or 10 to the 12^th).

As we can observe in the graph, my estimate and RCP8.5 are both above the EDGAR actual value in 2015. It´s possible that EDGAR´s report only includes emissions from fossil fuel use, and it´s missing the other anthropogenic factors (the EDGAR report writing style could use some improvements).

Both RCP8.5 and my estimate climb over time (which may be an erroneous assumption given that CO2 emissions appear to have stabilized). However, by 2040 they show a large difference, because the IPCC team assumed the amount of fossil fuels resources was essentially endless, and that alternative technologies wouldn´t have much of an impact (this of course renders RCP8.5 less than worthless as a “Business as Usual Case”). On the other hand, I prepared a model which cut back on fossil fuel use because its price was increasing and this discouraged demand (it assumes something else intrudes in the market to replace fossil fuels as they become less competitive).

The following graph shows the CO2 concentration difference between the RCP8.5 and my estimate:

The key differences between the two are the emissions volume, and the carbon sink efficiency. RCP8.5 has a huge emissions increase, which in turn increases atmospheric concentration to very high values. The CO2 concentration extreme causes a large temperature increase, and the overall effect  of the two exaggerated values reduces the carbon sink ability to sequester CO2. This of course causes a larger increase in CO2 concentration as a function of emissions.

USA shale drillers versus OPEC

The 2017 oil market seems to be coming down to a battle between US shale developers and OPEC plus Russia. In this post I will ramble on about what I can see from 30,000 feet, without getting into a lot of technical details. The only conclusion I can reach is that oil prices are likely to oscillate around $63 per barrel for a while (say three years) and eventually will begin to climb towards a $75 to $100 per barrel range in the 2020´s. 

Hydraulic fracturing a well in Texas 

To understand what´s going on, it´s useful to understand the so called US “shales”. These rocks aren´t really shales. They are very low quality rocks, a mixture of shale with carbonates and sometimes silts and very fine grained sands. 

The quality of these rocks is so poor they weren´t produced much until the oil industry fine tuned a combination of horizontal wellbores which are fractured numerous times using sand, water, and a few chemicals (the “poisonous chemicals” the antifracking lobby likes to whine about, which happens to be quite irrelevant given that fracturing takes place thousands of feet below the surface and the fluids are pumped through very high strength concentric steel pipes). If you want to read a bit more about fracturing, go here:  Drilling Contractor Magazine describes greener fracturing .So... from now on, let´s call these “shales” even though we know they aren´t real shales, to makes things easier for the audience.

Anyway, the existence of the shales was well known for decades, but they were barely produced because they were lousy and we didn´t know how to drill horizontal wells and fracture the hell out of the rocks. Nowadays the oil industry doesn´t have much oil left to produce in conventional fields, which means there´s a lot of focus on the shales, which in turn means the tools and water and sand mixtures have improved a lot. And this means each horizontal well gets to produce enough oil to justify the investment (which ranges between say $4 million and $7 million per well)….if the oil price is high enough to cover the costs and allow for some profits.

The USA seems to have three world class shale rock regions, two in Texas (the Eagle Ford and the “Permian”, which for the most part means the Spraberry/Wolfcamp), and one in North Dakota (the Bakken/Three Forks).