Well, that was some exciting Qualifying while I was distracted with my Java melt down.  Looking at the pretty table you’d say Red Bull finished uncharacteristically low, but that’s not the full story.  It seems that team McLaren isn’t the only one capable of making mind boggling race management mistakes as Webber was left to coast down the back stretch without even fumes during Q2 and, failing to have the requisite 1 Liter in the tank for testing, is starting from the back and really racing at the sufferance of the stewards.

That coupled with the abandonment of team orders by Red Bull signals more clearly than any amount of press gossip that there is a big problem in the paddock, though Webber has said publicly he has no intention of leaving the team mid-season.

The Pirelli Softs, which have never been raced to date, are terrible and the drivers hate them because big chunks of rubber start falling off about as soon as you leave the pit.  Pirelli for it’s part insists they are designed to the direction of the FIA competitiveness committee.  Well, you know what they say about things designed by committee.  No team at all was on the track during the first 10 minutes of Qualifying and both Vettel and Hulkenberg stayed in the garage during Q3 to save tires.

How bad are they?  At best they last for 5 laps and they’re really only good for 2 of those.  They have a 2 second a lap advantage over the Mediums at peak and a pit stop takes around 3 seconds.

Not counting getting in and out of the pit under pit lane speed restrictions.

The team in the best shape on tires is Mercedes who have a fresh set for both (you have to start the tires you qualified on) and Grosjean of Lotus and di Resta of Force India also have a pair.

Expect the rest of the field to start Mediums and hope to advance as the top 10 pit on lap 2 or 3.  Button and Vettel will also start Mediums.

And at that the Mediums last none too long.  Last year Rosberg won on 2 stops.  This year almost everyone will have to make 3 (at least) and since you only get 3 sets of each unless it rains (which is not expected) cars might be on rims at the finish.

Formula One Management is having some trouble with ratings due to its switch from broadcast to cable (in Europe) and the unpopularity of the Shanghai race in particular.

Grand Prix Racing Faces a Test in New Shift to Pay TV

By BRAD SPURGEON, The New York Times

Published: April 12, 2013

Last year, the annual global television viewing figures for the series were slightly lower than in 2011, according to statistics released by FOM in February. This was attributed in part to a drop in viewers for the Chinese race.

As Formula One has fought to keep its audience in Europe watching the growing number of Grands Prix in Asia, it has set the Asian start times later in the day to allow for late-morning viewing in Europe. As a result, however, the races compete for local audiences with local sports and have lost local viewers.

…

“A small handful of territories didn’t meet expectations in terms of reach, with the Chinese market suffering a decrease, which could not be absorbed by a significant number of increases elsewhere,” Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One promoter, said in February.

…

Some loss of viewers is a result of a change in the very underpinnings of the Formula One success story: a continuing move from free-to-air broadcasts of the races to pay television.

…

The biggest such shift began last year in Britain, the traditional heart of Formula One. For the first time, the BBC went from full coverage of all races on free TV to showing only half of the races and the pay-TV company British Sky Broadcasting bought rights to show all the races. The trend has continued this year, with coverage in France, Italy and the Netherlands moving to subscription channels. In France, the free broadcaster TF1, which had shown the series for two decades, was out-bid by Canal Plus, which acquired rights to show the series on pay-TV for the next three years.

Bernie defends China as a strategic market though so it looks like the 10 year old Shanghai race will survive despite the cutting of some historic venues in Europe.  All I can say is it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.  I hope he dies destitute and is buried in a pauper’s grave.

Meanwhile-

Protests held in Bahrain ahead of Formula One

Al Jazeera

12 Apr 2013 20:19

Thursday night’s demonstration came as a report by Human Rights Watch said that police have been rounding up pro-democracy activists in bid to head off protests.

“Your race is a crime,” the protesters chanted, referring to motor racing bosses who have insisted on keeping the Bahrain Grand Prix on the Formula One calendar, witnesses said.

…

Human rights groups say a total of 80 people have been killed since February 2011.

Last year’s Formula One event went ahead against an ugly backdrop as police responded to protesters who were throwing petrol bombs by using tear gas, sound bombs and birdshot.

• Chinese Grand Prix
• Shanghai
• Guardian Interactive Track
• Formula One Interactive Track

• Formula One Official Site
• NBC Sports Motor Sports

Pretty tables below.

Well if a Lotus win was surprising, a Red Bull 1 – 2 is exactly what we’ve come to expect.  The only thing remotely interesting is that Vettel passed Webber against team orders and that’s all anyone can seem to talk about.

Wait- that’s boring too.

McLaren has decided to stick with their slow, new, and wastefully expensive chassis instead of unparking their 2012 car like every other team.  Money in the pot now I suppose, those development dollars are spent.  The major change seems to be they went with a push rod instead of a pull rod suspension and I guess they’ll spend the rest of the season proving to everyone that’s a really stupid idea.

Mercedes is running very low fuel loads to get their speed which is why they’ve been fading at the end.  The harder the compound the better for Red Bull and no one can figure out why.

Speaking of- Mediums and Softs.

The surface of all the tires has been scrubbing off more quickly this year which has been limiting the racing line.

Well, it’s been a busy, busy week for me, make that a month, and I’m just too tired and distracted to focus on Formula One so I’ll leave you with this for tonight-

The reason I cover sports is because it’s metaphor for politics, both a distraction and a way to make a point.  Sometimes, especially in the games of the super rich, they intersect.

Damon Hill challenges FIA president Jean Todt to clarify Bahrain stance

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Last year’s Bahrain race was a public relations disaster for both F1 and the country’s authorities. Almost everyone in the paddock did not want to be there, but the race still took place against a background of pro-democracy demonstrations, with stones and petrol bombs being thrown, while riot police fired teargas and birdshot and beat opposition activists. Hill, who now works as a Sky Sports F1 analyst, was one of the few people in the sport to question the wisdom of the race taking place a year ago.

And he voiced his concerns again when he said: “Jean Todt’s approach has been to say nothing, because otherwise you’re being critical, and I think that is a mistake. Because he’s being used, or the sport is being perceived as being used, by its engagement in the economy and the reputation of the country.”

…

Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone said last week that he had no concerns about the race becoming a target for anti-government protesters.

MP Richard Burden, who chairs parliamentary groups on motorsport and who was outspoken against last year’s race taking place, says: “The messages I’m getting from various people in the opposition – and there have been pretty regular street protest over the past three weeks – is that the F1 race will be more of a focus than it was last year. That’s what they anticipate happening.

“The quotes [Ecclestone] came out with is that everything will be fine. I just do not buy that. It is not the same evidence that I am hearing. Opinion is not difficult to come by in Bahrain saying either that the race should not go ahead and, if it does, there will be trouble.

“If anything happens it will be a tragedy for all concerned. I hope in the next few days that people will understand that words do have an impact.”

But Formula One shows no signs of having learned anything from its painful lessons of last year. They will probably say something trite about keeping politics out of sport next week – even though, contrary to the FIA’s charter – the Bahrain government promoted last year’s race as a way of unifying its people.

• Chinese Grand Prix
• Shanghai
• Guardian Interactive Track
• Formula One Interactive Track

• Formula One Official Site
• NBC Sports Motor Sports

Fire Nation- Yay!

When we started 2012 there were 3 Oil Companies with licenses to drill in the Alaskan Arctic- Statoil (Norwegian), Royal Dutch Shell, and ConocoPhillips.

Last fall Statoil announced it was not going to start Arctic activity before 2015, well before the scope and depth of the Shell failure became apparent.  Woefully ill-prepared Shell was forced to withdraw after they wrecked all their equipment (to the tune of $4.5 Billion and counting) and send it to South Korea for repair.

This week ConocoPhillips announced that it will not start operations until 2014 at the earliest either.

All these companies cite ‘regulatory uncertainty’ as the reason.  This means they are uncertain whether they will be regulated at all or be able to create Deepwater blowout whenever they want.

ConocoPhillips Suspends Its Arctic Drilling Plans

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, The New York Times

Published: April 10, 2013

The decision had been expected after last month’s announcement by the Interior Department that Shell Oil Company would have to provide a detailed plan addressing numerous safety issues before it could resume its drilling operations in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Shell was forced to remove its two drilling rigs from the area and send them to Asia for repairs after a series of ship groundings, weather delays and environmental and safety violations during the 2012 drilling season. Shell, which has spent more than $4.5 billion on its exploration program, also called off its drilling program for this year.

…

“Companies can’t be expected to invest billions of dollars without some assurance that federal regulators are not going to change the rules on them almost continuously,” she (Senator Lisa Murkowski R Alaska) said. “The administration has created an unacceptable level of uncertainty when it comes to the rules of offshore exploration that must be fixed.”

…

The Interior Department’s review, completed in early March, concluded that Shell had failed in a broad range of operational and safety tasks, including the towing of one of the two drilling rigs, which ran aground on an Alaskan island on New Year’s Eve. David Lawrence, the executive vice president who was in charge of the Alaska drilling program, recently left the company. The company said that the departure was “by mutual consent.”

ConocoPhillips joins hiatus in offshore Arctic operations

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

April 10, 2013, 1:19 p.m.

Statoil announced last fall that it was postponing its Arctic debut until at least 2015, and company spokesman Ola Morten Aanestad said even that is not a firm commitment. “The earliest possibility would be 2015, but we have not decided that it will be drilled in 2015,” he told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

…

ConocoPhillips had planned to drill one well, and possibly two, in its Devil’s Paw prospect about 120 miles west of the village of Wainwright, significantly farther offshore than Shell’s operations in 2012.

…

One issue undoubtedly delaying federal approval of ConocoPhillips’ drilling plans was the company’s intention to use for the first time in the Arctic a jack-up drilling rig, which, unlike the floating rigs Shell employed, would attach to the ocean floor.

Questions have been raised about whether the company would be able to operate safely in the event of swiftly arriving ice packs, as happened during the opening days of Shell’s season in 2012, when its rig was forced to sail away from an advancing ice floe.

Sources familiar with talks between the federal government and  ConocoPhillips  said there were also questions about how the company would comply with requirements that it be able to drill a relief well in the event of a blowout that couldn’t otherwise be contained.

…

“There’s no reason the government should be operating with these clearly failed standards and oversight, and Conoco’s decision really provides more room to move forward and make operations safe. We really need to make sure that accidents, mishaps and disasters stop,” Christopher Krenz, Arctic program manager for Oceana, said in an interview.

In a big blow to Arctic exploration, Conoco’s offshore-drilling program on hold

Alex DeMarban, Alaska Dispatch

April 10, 2013

The announcement means there may be little oil activity on Alaska’s outer-continental shelf this summer, in part because other companies, including Norwegian oil giant Statoil, have followed the lead of Shell and Conoco.

…

The report followed Shell’s blunder-filled inaugural season of Arctic exploration, capped by the grounding of the Kulluk drill rig near Kodiak during a powerful winter storm.

…

The Alaska Wilderness League said industry and the government need time to figure out the next steps, because the risks of drilling in the undeveloped Arctic are extreme.  

“This pause is a real opportunity for President Obama to revisit his position on Arctic Ocean drilling,” said executive director Cindy Shogan. “With no infrastructure or ability to clean up an oil spill in ice, and Shell’s extensive laundry lists of mishaps and failures, it is a no brainer to suspend drilling in the Arctic. If President Obama truly wants to address his climate change legacy, saying no to Arctic Ocean drilling would be a huge first step.”

She added: “Today’s announcement from ConocoPhillips is further proof that no oil company is ready to drill in the harsh and unpredictable environment of the Arctic Ocean.”

5 x Five

So what’s happened at Fukushima in the month since the 2 year anniversary?

Well, the cooling system has broken down at least once-

Fukushima Blackout Hints at Plant’s Vulnerability

By MARTIN FACKLER, The New York Times

Published: March 19, 2013

This week’s partial blackout, which started Monday, halted crucial cooling systems for as long as about 30 hours at four pools where used fuel rods are stored.

…

The four pools affected by the latest blackout contain more than 8,800 highly radioactive fuel rods, Tepco said, enough to cause a release much larger than the original accident, which forced the evacuation of some 160,000 residents in northeastern Japan.

…

With the company as the only source of information, it was impossible this week to independently assess the conditions at the plant, which sits in a contaminated zone that is closed to the public. On Tuesday, the company was criticized for waiting three hours before revealing the power failure to the public.

Tepco said a faulty switchboard might have been to blame in the latest power failure. Though the company has backup generators at the site, it appeared to have been unprepared for a switchboard failure.

There was a conference-

Fukushima Two Years Later: Many Questions, One Clear Answer

By: Gregg Levine, Firedog Lake

Monday April 8, 2013 7:30 am

A distinguished list of epidemiologists, oncologists, nuclear engineers, former government officials, Fukushima survivors, anti-nuclear activists and public health advocates gathered at the invitation of The Helen Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility to, if not answer all these question, at least make sure they got asked. Over two long days, it was clear there is much still to be learned, but it was equally clear that we already know that the downsides of nuclear power are real, and what’s more, the risks are unnecessary. Relying on this dirty, dangerous and expensive technology is not mandatory-it’s a choice. And when cleaner, safer, and more affordable options are available, the one answer we already have is that nuclear is a choice we should stop making and a risk we should stop taking.

…

The boiling water reactors (BWRs) that failed so catastrophically at Fukushima Daiichi were designed and sold by General Electric in the 1960s; the general contractor on the project was Ebasco, a US engineering company that, back then, was still tied to GE. General Electric had bet heavily on nuclear and worked hand-in-hand with the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC-the precursor to the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to promote civilian nuclear plants at home and abroad. According to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, GE told US regulators in 1965 that without quick approval of multiple BWR projects, the giant energy conglomerate would go out of business.

It was under the guidance of GE and Ebasco that the rocky bluffs where Daiichi would be built were actually trimmed by 10 meters to bring the power plant closer to the sea, the water source for the reactors’ cooling systems-but it was under Japanese government supervision that serious and repeated warnings about the environmental and technological threats to Fukushima were ignored for another generation.

Failures at Daiichi were completely predictable, observed David Lochbaum, the director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and numerous upgrades were recommended over the years by scientists and engineers. “The only surprising thing about Fukushima,” said Lochbaum, “is that no steps were taken.”

The surprise, it seems, should cross the Pacific. Twenty-two US plants mirror the design of Fukushima Daiichi, and many stand where they could be subject to earthquakes or tsunamis. Even without those seismic events, some US plants are still at risk of Fukushima-like catastrophic flooding. Prior to the start of the current Japanese crisis, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission learned that the Oconee Nuclear Plant in Seneca, South Carolina, was at risk of a major flood from a dam failure upstream. In the event of a dam breach-an event the NRC deems more likely than the odds that were given for the 2011 tsunami-the flood at Oconee would trigger failures at all four reactors. Beyond hiding its own report, the NRC has taken no action-not before Fukushima, not since.

…

If nuclear reactors were the only way to generate electricity, would 500 excess cancer deaths be acceptable? How about 5,000? How about 50,000? If nuclear’s projected mortality rate comes in under coal’s, does that make the deaths-or the high energy bills, for that matter-more palatable?

Well?  Are they?

Nuclear Industry Withers in U.S. as Wind Pummels Prices

By Julie Johnsson & Naureen S. Malik, Bloomberg News

Mar 11, 2013 4:13 PM ET

“Right now, natural gas and wind power are more economic than nuclear power in the Midwestern electricity market,” Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Chicago-based advocate of cleaner energy, said in a phone interview. “It’s a matter of economic competitiveness.”

…

Meanwhile, nuclear and coal plants must continue running even as this “negative pricing” dynamic forces them to pay grid operators to take the power they produce.

…

“We can’t find enough demand for the amount of energy created by Mother Nature,” said Doug Johnson, spokesman for the Bonneville Power Administration, which manages the grid in the Pacific Northwest. The transmission operator, based in Portland, Oregon, paid wind operators $2.7 million last year to stay off line so it could make room for the power from hydroelectric generators handling the runoff from melting mountain snows.

Now just this week we find out that the switchboard blackout was caused by a rat chewing through power lines and TEPCO’s ‘high tech’ response is to install anti-rat netting across all the holes they can.

I’ll bet those of you who’ve had rat problems can predict just how well that will work in an environment with thousands of shrapnel holes from the blasts and where even robots can’t work because the radiation fries their electronics.

Oh, and 3 of the 7 big radioactive water containment pools have been leaking.

Mishaps Underscore Weaknesses of Japanese Nuclear Plant

By HIROKO TABUCHI, The New York Times

Published: April 10, 2013

The biggest scare at the plant in recent days has been the discovery that at least three of seven underground storage pools are seeping thousands of gallons of radioactive water into the soil. On Wednesday, Tepco acknowledged that the lack of adequate storage space for contaminated water had become a “crisis,” and said it would begin emptying the pools. But the company said that the leaks will continue over the several weeks that it will likely take to transfer the water to other containers.

…

Tepco stores more than a quarter-million tons of radioactive water at the site and says the amount could double within three years.

But as outside experts have discovered with horror, the company had lined the pits for the underground pools with only two layers of plastic each 1.5 millimeters thick, and a third, clay-based layer just 6.5 millimeters thick. And because the pools require many sheets hemmed together, leaks could be springing at the seams, Tepco has said.

…

But Muneo Morokuzu, a nuclear safety expert at the Tokyo University Graduate School of Public Policy, said that the plant required a more permanent solution that would reduce the flood of contaminated water into the plant in the first place, and that Tepco was simply unable to manage the situation. “It’s become obvious that Tepco is not at all capable of leading the cleanup,” he said. “It just doesn’t have the expertise, and because Fukushima Daiichi is never going to generate electricity again, every yen it spends on the decommissioning is thrown away.”

On policy Barack Obama’s proposed budget is just massively bad.  Everyone admits that it is huge cut in benefits for our oldest, poorest, and sickest Seniors.  What you don’t hear so much is that it is also a substantial slash to Veterans, you know, those guys who risked their lives and lost limbs defending our country.  Finally, it is an enormous middle class tax increase falling most hard on annual incomes between $30 – $50,000, the people who actually represent the median instead of Boyars with 6 figure salaries who merely imagine they’re poor because they can’t afford their McMansion, their winter cruise to Aruba, private school, AND a new Mercedes every year.

More than that it’s a complete and utter failure in terms of reducing the deficit, as even Peter Orzag admits–

Consider what future projections look like if we instead assume that the chained index will grow just 10 basis points a year more slowly than the current indexes. In that case, the deficit reduction from switching to the chained index would be less than $150 billion over 10 years, rather than $340 billion. And the reduction in the long-term Social Security deficit would be about 7 percent, rather than 20 percent.

This would make a pretty big difference in the effect on Social Security benefits. For an 85-year-old who began receiving checks at 65, checks would be about 2 percent less, rather than 6 percent if the chained index were to grow 25 to 30 basis points more slowly than the standard index.

…

(I)f switching to the chained index reduces the 10-year deficit by less than $150 billion and the 75-year Social Security actuarial gap by less than 10 percent, can a “grand bargain” built around it really be all that grand?

So even if deficits were a problem (and they’re not as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has repeatedly pointed out), the measures in Obama’s budget are utterly ineffective at reducing them.  What does work?  Economic growth and even the pitiful little we’ve been able to achieve has succeeded in reducing the deficit to virtually nothing if you look at percentages instead of scary big numbers.

So why then?  As this Politico article points out, Barack Obama and his Administration think it will somehow get the Republicans to agree to new taxes.

For the past two years, Obama has championed what he calls “a balanced approach” to debt and deficit reduction, demanding $700 billion in high-earner tax hikes from Republicans earlier this year as a prerequisite to budget cuts and reform of runaway Social Security and Medicare costs.

The time to pay up is now, Obama’s aides say, and the White House needed to offer something to bring Republicans back to the bargaining table. They insist that he’s opposed to deeply cutting entitlements and is willing to do only the bare minimum needed to get a deal done.

A senior Democratic strategist close to the White House said Obama “didn’t have to put the chained CPI in the budget” but chose to do so as a “gesture of goodwill” to Senate Republicans, who have emerged as a recent bargaining partner.

Well, forget that $700 Billion.  Now the number is $580 Billion.

Mr. President- no amount of revenue is enough for selling out the elderly, poor and disabled; our Veterans who offered their lives; the broad middle class.

No amount of revenue is enough for you to break your promises to the millions who voted for you.

No amount of revenue is enough for you to ensure the Democratic Party faces a toxic electoral climate in 2014 and for the foreseeable future.

Who will ever trust you, or them again?

Well, but if we don’t do it now, just wait for those evil Republicans to get in.

“We’re not going to have the White House forever, folks. If he doesn’t do this, Paul Ryan is going to do it for us in a few years,” said a longtime Obama aide, referring to the 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate who proposed a sweeping overhaul of Medicare that would replace some benefits with vouchers.

What’s to stop them from doing it anyway?  Congress is not bound by the actions of a previous Congress.

But they are men of honor.

How did that Filibuster deal work out for you?

And it has always been so effective in the past.  Republicans are already backing away from this one.  From another Politico piece.

House Speaker John Boehner hit President Obama’s budget for failing to cut enough spending while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed it as “just another left-wing wish list.”

“It’s mostly the same old thing we’ve seen year after year,” McConnell said. “And that’s really too bad, because it’s not like we don’t know the kinds of things that need to be done to get our budget back to balance and Americans back to work.”

The president’s 3.77 trillion budget includes $580 billion in new tax revenue, while reducing deficits by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, White House officials contend. It does not balance the nation’s budget within the next decade, something Boehner pointed out while touting Republican budgets.

And then there’s this-

Transcript

Again Politico–

House Republican leaders did give Obama credit for including something known as “chained CPI” in the spending plan, which would slow the rate of growth for Social Security benefits. They were on message in calling for Obama to help them enact policies they agree on, without coming to terms on a large-scale deficit busting package.

“He does deserve some credit for some incremental entitlement reforms he has outlined in his budget. I would hope that he would not hold hostage these modest reforms for his demand for bigger tax hikes. Why don’t we do what we agree to do? Why don’t [we] find the common ground that we do have and move on that?,” Boehner asked, while accusing Obama of “backtracking” on other entitlement reforms the two had discussed in negotiations last year.

…

Added House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.): “Finally the president has offered his budget to the American people. And what we see inside the document is more of the same: more spending, higher taxes, more debt.”

“The speaker talked about the fact there are some things besides the tax increases that frankly we can find some agreement on,” he said. “I share the sentiment that if we ought to see if we can set aside the divisiveness and come together to produce some results for the people who sent us here.

If the president believes, as we do, that programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are on the path to bankruptcy and we can actually do some things to put them on the right course and save them, to protect the beneficiaries of these programs we ought to do so. We ought to do so without holding them hostage for more tax hikes.”

So Mr. President, you got nothing.  Nothing at all.  A fail on policy.  A fail on politics.

A fail on every level.

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