Thursday, June 10, 2004

Lake Mead in Drought Click here to view full image (4104 kb) Water is the lifeblood of the western United States. Not only does it sustain municipal drinking supplies and agriculture, it is also one of the primary sources of electricity. Dams along the Colorado and other rivers provide the steady water supply needed for large populations and agriculture as well as the electricity needed for industry. Perhaps the greatest symbol of water use in the west is the Hoover Dam and the massive reservoir it creates, Lake Mead. Shown in this Landsat composite image, Lake Mead is one of the largest reservoirs in the world and one of the most important water sources in the western United States. Over the past few years, however, rain and snow have been scarce, and water levels in the reservoir are steadily dropping. As of June 8, 2004, the U.S. Drought Monitor had placed the southwest in extreme hydrological drought, one designation above the worst in their drought intensity scale. The impact of the drought is apparent in the dwindling size of Lake Mead. (See Drought Lowers Lake Mead.) That the vast lake has shrunk visibly in satellite imagery indicates that the drought is severe. The Colorado River enters the lake from the east, image left, and exits to the south, image left. The Hoover Dam can be seen as a faint white line across the Colorado River just below the point where the river flows out of the lake. The top arm of the lake is formed by the Muddy and Virgin Rivers. The image is a natural color image made using red, green, and blue wavelengths. The Landsat 7 satellite captured the primary image on May 30, 2004. Images taken on April 28 and May 14 were used to fill in gaps in the data. This is not the most severe drought the southwest has ever endured. A five-year drought in the 1950s left many regions in the southwest so devastated that they were declared federal drought disaster areas. The current drought, which began in 1999, had been softened by a few wet years, though there has not been enough water to end the drought. Long-term climate records taken from tree rings reveal that patterns of drought are common in the southwestern United States. In the 16th century, a decades-long drought plagued the region. Other droughts, though none as severe, have occurred regularly over the past three centuries. For more information, see North American Drought: A Paleo Perspective. Image processing provided by Julia Barsi, Landsat Project Science Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 8:21:16 PM    comment []

FOSSILMAN QUIT HIS JOB AT PFIZER: POKER CHAMPION PATENT LAWYER QUITS JOB In a recent PATNEWS, I mentioned that a Pzifer patent lawyer, Greg Raymer, won this year's World Series of Poker tournament, and wondered if he was going to return to drafting patents.  Apparently not.  Tuesday's WSJ reports that Raymer is quitting Pfizer as of June 16th.  Best wishes. Now I wonder how many patent lawyers are going to start frequenting the online poker Web sites to practice, um ..., not patent law. 8:15:42 PM    comment []

Rumor has it that part of the old Arnold, White team has announced they are out the door. Also a new shareholder from Houston just announced move as well. Don't stand near the door at this place you may get run over by the exiting people. 8:11:00 PM    comment []

Those Jobs Numbers: More Bad News For College Graduates By Paul Craig Roberts Deceit about jobs is taking over from deceit about the Iraq war. Lost in the hoopla about 248,000 jobs created in May is the discouraging pattern of job creation. Why didn’t the pundits touting the “good news on the jobs front” tell us that 176,000 of the jobs—or 71%—are concentrated in low-paying domestic services that cannot be outsourced? Here is where the May jobs are: restaurants and bars 33,000; health care and social assistance 36,000; temporary help 31,000; retail trade 19,000; transportation and warehousing 15,000; financial activities 15,000; real estate 9,000; services to buildings and dwellings 8,000; education 8,000. This repeats the pattern of last month and, indeed, of every month in the new millennium. Our economy is not creating jobs that are part of the high tech global economy or that require university education. The jobs that made America a land of opportunity where people could rise are missing. If we add the 37,000 construction jobs created in May, then 213,000—or 86%—of May’s jobs are in sectors that do not face import competition and cannot be outsourced. Neither do they produce exports to close the massive trade deficit. The US economy might be part of the global economy, but jobs are not being created for the US work force in that part of the economy. Despite the obvious facts, pundits continue to mislead the public that all is well on the jobs front. Writing in the Washington Times (Offshoring Which Jobs?, June 6), Alan Reynolds touts the Bureau of Labor Statistics projection that one million new jobs will be created for computer specialists during the ten year period from 2002 -2012. What Mr. Reynolds doesn’t tell you is that the BLS does not say that these jobs with American firms will be filled by Americans. Neither does Mr. Reynolds tell you that of the 10 occupations predicted to provide the most jobs, seven require no college education. US firms might create 1 million jobs for computer specialists, be they Indian, Chinese, East European or American, by 2012, but so far the economy is still losing computer jobs. There are 8,000 fewer than a year ago and 223,000 fewer than in January 2001. For the last 40 months the only sectors of the US economy that have experienced net job growth are: construction, financial activities, education and health services, restaurants and bars, membership associations & organizations, and government. Together these sectors created 3.35 million jobs of which health care, government, and restaurants and bars account for 73%. During the same 40 months the US economy lost 4.35 million jobs in manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail, transportation & warehousing, utilities, information, and professional & business services. Despite Sarbanes-Oxley, legislation that greatly increased the accounting burden on US firms, Americans lost 64,000 accounting jobs, many of which were outsourced to the Philippines. Despite the loss of 1 million jobs, the US economy found the need for 67,000 more jobs in legal services. With fewer architectural, engineering, computer, information, and manufacturing jobs than four years ago, what becomes of university graduates trained for nonexistent jobs in the high tech economy? They have to retrain to wait tables and serve drinks when they graduate. When the vast majority of new jobs are in domestic services that only require short term on the job training, what sense does a university education make? Pundits are fond of citing “studies” paid for by Indian offshore jobs platforms that “only” 3.3 million US jobs will be outsourced in the next ten years. For an economy that has lost 1 million jobs since January 2001, this is a crippling amount. For an economy that has only 1.1 million jobs in “computer systems design and related” and only 1.26 million jobs in “architectural and engineering services,” 3.3 million more jobs to be outsourced is a devastating blow to students who pursue difficult curriculums in college in hopes of a career. Jobs deceit reached new heights with a New York Times columnist’s report from a visit to India. True, he said, Indians now have many of our computer jobs. However, he effused, Americans were getting rich as a result. The proof: Indians were working on American brand computers, cooled by American brand AC, drinking American brand soft drinks. The columnist was impervious to the fact that none of the American brands he named were made in America by Americans![The silver lining of outsourcing overseas, by Thomas L. Friedman, NYT February 27, 2004,] Americans are being taken for a ride on jobs, just as they were on Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorist links to al Qaeda. The jobs mess will be just as big and just as costly as the Iraq mess. Americans are being manipulated beyond their means. [Sources for the jobs data are the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Charles McMillion at MBG Information Services in Washington, DC] COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. Paul Craig Roberts was Associate Editor of the WSJ editorial page, 1978-80, and columnist for “Political Economy.” During 1981-82 he was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution: An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington 8:08:52 PM    comment []