Vermont Tiger

Legends and Facts

by Art Woolf

In an interesting story about the potential redrawing of Chittenden County's six-seat Senatorial district (it ain't gonna happen, folks) in Seven Days I came across this sentence

Problem is, because of Chittenden County’s explosive growth during the past decade, its voters are numerically underrepresented in the Senate...[emphasis added]

Chittenden County gained about 10,000 people between 2000 and 2010, and probably somewhere around a quarter to a third of that was due to enrollment increases at Champlain College and UVM.   Chittenden County's population growth was 6.8% over the decade--far less than one percent per year.  It was above Vermont's almost non-existent population growth rate of 2.8%.  But the U.S. population grew by 9.7% over the decade.  

Chittenden County's population growth was more like a thud than an explosion.  

A Little Class Envy, Please, Maestro

From a talk given recently in Montpelier:

In many ways, this economic recovery has a twilight zone feel.  It is a recovery that looks like no other – one month we’re threatened, the next month we’re encouraged.

Now we worry about Greece—it used to be a destination spot and now it’s a basket case.  I’m sure you all waited anxiously for news about Finland’s vote on Greece’s bailout. 

When was the last time you even thought of Finland.  Italy teeters; Spain is in recession, and France might follow.  The world seems to revolve on the head of a pin.

We turn away from our televisions in disgust when Washington speaks—they’ve forgotten us and instead seem more focused on ideology than doing the right thing.  Those of you who are Republicans must pine for Reagan, and those of you who are Democrats wish that Clinton was in his first term.

... regardless of their ideology, they were centrists and it is there, in the center, where real debate and real public policy gets done on behalf of our citizens.  Those two guys worked for us and took care of business at the same time.

The world is different and it has changed us—there is a sense of foreboding.  We are a lot more cautious, our risk horizons have come in, we spend less, and we worry that our children will not have the same quality of life that we have had

Sobering, compelling stuff.  The kind of talk that makes you sit up and pay attention and invites you to take the speaker seriously.  Unless, of course, you learned that he owned an apartment in Manhattan worth nearly $20 million.  That would change everything, wouldn't it?

The Rest of the Story

The Freeps has published an article on business which the editors evidently believe plows new ground since the headline reads:

Vermont leads the nation in exports per capita. Who knew?

The long article that follows this headline details the successes of some Vermont businesses and it is both interesting and encouraging.  Most Vermonters are happy to see local firms succeed and to do that, they must sell across the state line, the national border, and the oceans.

In Case You Didn't Know ...

there was an important event in Burlington yesterday.

And, you would not know it if you depended on the Burlington Free Press for all your news about what is happening in ... well, Burlington.

This event was an all-day forum on the future of health care in this state.  A topic of some small interest, one would think, to those people who still buy and read newspapers in Burlington.   Everyone in Vermont knows – or should know – that Montpelier has launched a very bold initiative to reform the way health care is delivered and paid for in this state.  It is a big story, with national implications.  Backers of the initiative promise great benefits; opponents warn of catastrophic consequences.  Many people are confused, uncertain, or consider themselves insufficiently informed on the matter.

More Natural Gas or Less?

disagreeing by a mere 82 trillion

by Tom Evslin

"Geologists Sharply Cut Estimate of Shale Gas" is the headline of a New York Times story today on a report from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

"USGS boosts amount of Marcellus Shale gas reserves" was the headline of a Wall Street Journal reprint of an AP story on the same USGS, which ran Tuesday.

Hmmm…. Time to check the original sources.

According to a press release from the USGS which accompanies the report:

"The Marcellus Shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids according to a new assessment by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS).

"These gas estimates are significantly more than the last USGS assessment of the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian Basin in 2002, which estimated a mean of about 2 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF) and 0.01 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.[hiliting mine]

"The increase in undiscovered, technically recoverable resource is due to new geologic information and engineering data, as technological developments in producing unconventional resources have been significant in the last decade. This Marcellus Shale estimate is of unconventional (or continuous-type) gas resources."

You'd have to agree that 84 trillion is a lot more than two trillion. Note that these two estimates are only nine years apart. The old one wasn't wrong for when it was written; just didn't take fracking into account.

However, the NYT's headline isn't technically wrong, just sloppy in comparing apples to oranges.

Hey NYTimes, Where’s the Link?

by Tom Evslin

It's no longer acceptable online to make a naked assertion on a controversial subject without at least a link to back it up, at least not for anyone practicing serious journalism and writing a news story. But here's what appeared in the New York Times online today in a story by John Broder headlined Energy Dept. Panel to Revise Standards for Gas Extraction:

"…the practice [hydraulic fracturing] also pours millions of gallons of dangerous chemicals into the ground and into wastewater treatment systems, which in some cases cannot remove all the potential toxins. There are also numerous documented cases in which fracking fluids leaked into aquifers [emphasis mine] and contaminated drinking water."

The article doesn't cite any of the "numerous documented cases"; it doesn't link to any source for this assertion. Although there have been allegations that fracking fluids leak into aquifers, there are good reasons why this is unlikely (see here) and I've never seen a "documented" case that it happened. I also believe he actually means millions of gallons of water which contain some toxic chemicals. Now I can be wrong and would like to know it if I am. I would've liked to follow a link from the NYTimes story to some documentation. But there is no link.

I understand why it's hard to put citations in print stories and this story also did appear in the paper edition. But paper now needs to be treated as the degenerate form of the story – the web makes it easy to link and easy for a reader to check sources and get more information. Links belong in online stories.

I modify my posts for print and sometimes have to remove links. If I think they're important for credibility, I put the text of the link into the article, although sometimes editors take those long strings out. If we're going to pay papers for online access (which I'm willing to do), we should expect good online practice to be followed. BTW, there is also no place for comments on this story in the online NYTimes, so I can't complain there.

We’ll Always Have 50 Years of Oil Left

    funny how that works

by Tom Evslin

Sixty years ago I read in Junior Scholastic that there were only fifty years of oil left. Since I intended to live that long, I was alarmed - so alarmed that I still remember the picture of the gushing drill rig that companied the article.

Well, it's still true. This morning the New York Times quotes a report from HSBC: "'We're confident that there are around 50 years of oil left,' Karen Ward, the bank's senior global economist, said in an interview on CNBC." Context makes it clear that she meant "only" 50 years.

Obviously (except to senior economists), we will never run out of oil – it will just get too expensive to use for certain applications.

#twitter has the #news about #ewr

by Tom Evslin

The pilot didn't know immediately why the control tower at #ewr (Newark Liberty International Airport) had gone radio silent and not acknowledged his request for pushback. But I knew as soon as I turned my Droid X back on, started the twitter app, and searched for #ewr (natch). The tweeting had already begun. In fact there were multiple explanations, which converged around a fire alarm leading the controllers to evacuate. Turned out this was the truth although apparently there was no fire.

In case you're not a frequent flier, EWR is the airport code for Newark. For readers who don't tweet, "#ewr" is an example of a hashtag (because it starts with a "#" or hashmark). You can use twitter and most apps which support twitter to look for all public tweets which contain a particular hashtag; you don't have to be following the person who tweeted the information you want. "How did you know what code to use?" the flight attendant asked me. I don't know of any authoritative dictionary; you just make them up on the fly and you're usually right.

Data Interpretation

by Leah Davis

I like to turn on Bloomberg or CNBC when I'm getting ready for school so I can stay relatively up to date on the financial markets. If you were also watching Squawk Box this morning (2/15), you were treated to a heated argument between Tea Party favorite Rick Santelli and fellow CNBC correspondent Steve Liesman. You can watch it here (the dramatics begin around the 8 minute mark). These two are frequent on-air foes.

Commenting on "Confessions"

by Tom Evslin

The Wall Street Journal publication of the lead article from my "Confessions of a Stimulator" series not only had a healthy comment thread of its own but led to other main stream media attention as well as blogosphere discussion.

Derek Thompson wrote a post entitled "Vermont Stimulus Czar Has Smart Critique of the Stimulus" on the Atlantic's website. Although he's not convinced of my assertion that the Stimulus had a negligible impact on overall employment, he says "But that aside, this is a smart criticism of the inner-workings of the stimulus and more evidence that even smart ideas in the abstract can run up against the messy array of interests at the local level."

On the other hand, after Ezra Klein at the Washington Post ran a link to the WSJ op-ed, he got a steaming email in response from Gary Burtless at the Brookings Institute which Klein ran almost in its entirety. Gary says the op-ed is "silly" and goes on to demonstrate. IMHO, that he doesn't understand how Stimulus actually worked. But it's worth reading his POV (and my comment at the end of that).