Report Sees U.S. as Top Oil Producer, Overtaking Saudi Arabia, in 5 Years

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

A pump jack near Greensburg, Kan. Increased oil production and new policies to improve energy efficiency mean that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in energy in about two decades, the International Energy Agency predicted.

The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer by about 2017 and will become a net oil exporter by 2030, according to a new report released on Monday by the International Energy Agency.

That increased oil production, combined with new American policies to improve energy efficiency, means that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs in about two decades — a “dramatic reversal of the trend” in most developed countries, the report says.

“The foundations of the global energy systems are shifting,” said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based organization, which produces the annual World Energy Outlook, in an interview before the release. The agency, which advises industrialized nations on energy issues, had previously predicted that Saudi Arabia would be the leading producer until 2035.

The report also predicted that global energy demand would grow by 35 percent to 46 percent between 2010 and 2035, depending on whether policies that have been proposed are actually put in place. Most of that growth will come from China, India and the Middle East, where the consuming class is growing rapidly. The consequences are “potentially far reaching” for global energy markets and trade, the report said.

Dr. Birol noted, for example, that Middle Eastern oil once bound for the United States would probably be rerouted to China. American-mined coal, facing declining demand in its home market, is already heading to Europe and China instead.

There are several components of the sudden shift in the world’s energy supply, but the prime mover is a resurgence of oil and gas production in the United States, particularly the unlocking of new reserves of oil and gas found in shale rock. The widespread adoption of techniques such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has made those reserves much more accessible, and in the case of natural gas, resulted in a vast glut that has sent prices plunging.

The report predicted that the United States would overtake Russia as the leading producer of natural gas in 2015.

The strong statements and specific predictions by the energy agency lend new weight to trends that have become increasingly apparent in the last year.

“This striking conclusion confirms a lot of recent projections,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Formed in 1974 after the oil crisis by a group of oil-importing nations, including the United States, the International Energy Agency monitors and analyzes global energy trends to insure safe and sustainable supply.

Mr. Levi said that the I.E.A. report was generally “good news” for the United States because it highlights the nation’s new sources of energy. But he cautioned that being self-sufficient did not mean that the country would be insulated from seesawing energy prices, since those oil prices are set by global markets.

“You may be somewhat less vulnerable to price shocks and the U.S. may be slightly more protected, but it doesn’t give you the energy independence some people claim,” he said.

Also, he noted, the agency’s projection of United States self-sufficiency assumed that the country would push ahead with improving gas mileage in cars and energy efficiency in homes and appliances. “It’s supply and demand together that adds up to this striking conclusion,” Mr. Levi said.

Dr. Birol said the agency’s prediction of increasing American self-sufficiency was 55 percent a reflection of more oil production and 45 percent a reflection of improving energy efficiency in the United States, primarily from the Obama administration’s new fuel economy standards for cars. He added that even stronger policies to promote energy efficiency were needed in the United States and many other countries.

The report said that several other factors could also have a large impact on world energy markets over the next few years. These include the recovery of the Iraqi oil industry, which would lead to new supply, and the decision by some countries, notably Germany and Japan, to move away from nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The new energy sources will help the United States economy, Dr. Birol said, providing continued cheap energy relative to the rest of the world. The I.E.A. estimates that electricity prices will be about 50 percent cheaper in the United States than in Europe, largely because of a rise in the number of power plants fueled by cheap natural gas, helping American industries and consumers.

But the message is more sobering for the planet, in terms of climate change. Although natural gas is frequently promoted for being relatively low in carbon emissions compared to oil or coal, the new global energy market could make it even harder to prevent dangerous levels of warming.

The United States’ reduced reliance on coal will just mean that coal moves to other places, the report says. And the use of coal, now the dirtiest fuel, continues to rise elsewhere. China’s coal demand will peak around 2020 and then stay steady until 2035, the report predicted, and in 2025, India will overtake the United States as the world’s second-largest coal user.

The report warns that no more than one-third of the proven reserves of fossil fuels should be used by 2050 to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, as many scientists recommend.

Such restraint is extremely unlikely without a binding international treaty by 2017 that requires countries to limit the growth of their emissions, Dr. Birol said. He added that pushing ahead with technologies that could capture and store carbon dioxide was also crucial.

“The report confirms that, given the current policies, we will blow past every safe target for emissions,” Mr. Levi said. “This should put to rest the idea that the boom in natural gas will save us from that.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 12, 2012

An earlier version of a photo caption with this article incorrectly identified the equipment used in an oil field in Greensburg, Kan. It is a pump jack, not an oil rig.

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Changing of the Guard: Chinese Communist Party Faces Calls for Democracy

BEIJING — As the Communist Party’s 18th Congress approached, Li Weidong, a scholar of politics, made plans to observe a historic leadership battle in one of the world’s great nations.

Instead of staying in Beijing to monitor China’s once-a-decade transfer of power, Mr. Li boarded a plane.

“I’m going to the United States to study the elections,” Mr. Li said in a telephone interview during a stopover in Paris. After witnessing the American presidential election on Tuesday, Mr. Li went on the radio for another interview. “I still think China’s politics remain prehistoric,” he said. “I often joke that the Chinese civilization is the last prehistoric civilization left in the world.”

With China at a critical juncture, there is a rising chorus within the elite expressing doubt that the 91-year-old Communist Party’s authoritarian system can deal with the stresses bearing down on the nation and its 1.3 billion people. Policies introduced after 1978 by Deng Xiaoping lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and transformed the country into the world’s second-largest economy. But the way party leaders have managed decades of growth has created towering problems that critics say can no longer be avoided.

Many of those critics have benefited from China’s stunning economic gains, and their ranks include billionaires, intellectuals and children of the party’s revolutionary founders. But they say the party’s agenda, as it stands today, is not visionary enough to set China on the path to stability. What is needed, they say, is a comprehensive strategy to gradually extricate the Communist Party, which has more than 80 million members, from its heavy-handed control of the economy, the courts, the news media, the military, educational institutions, civic life and just the plain day-to-day affairs of citizens.

Only then, the critics argue, can the government start to address the array of issues facing China, including rampant corruption, environmental degradation, and an aging population whose demographics have been skewed because of the one-child policy.

“In order to build a real market economy, we have to have real political reform,” said Yang Jisheng, a veteran journalist and a leading historian of the Mao era. “In the next years, we should have a constitutional democracy plus a market economy.”

For now, however, party leaders have given no indication that they intend to curb their role in government in a meaningful way.

“We will never copy a Western political system,” Hu Jintao, the departing party chief, said in a speech on Thursday opening the weeklong congress.

The party’s public agenda, which Mr. Hu described in detail in his 100-minute address, was laid out in a 64-page report that is in part intended to highlight priorities for the new leaders, who will be announced later this month. Much of the document had retrograde language that emphasized ideology stretching back to Mao and had little in the way of bold or creative thinking, said Qian Gang, the director of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong.

Most telling, there was no language signaling that the incoming Politburo Standing Committee, the group that rules China by consensus, would support major changes in the political system, whose perversions many now say are driving the nation toward crisis.

While Chinese who are critical of the current system generally do not expect a wholesale adoption of a Western model, they do favor at least an openness to bolder experimentation.

“To break one-party rule right now is probably not realistic, but we can have factions within the party made public and legalized, so they can campaign against each other,” said Mr. Yang, who added that there was no other way at the moment to ensure political accountability.

Only in the last few years has the idea of liberalizing the political system gained currency, and urgency, among a broad cross-section of elites. Before that, as the West foundered at the onset of the global financial crisis, many here pointed to the triumph of a “China model” or “Beijing consensus” — a mix of authoritarian politics, a command economy and quasi-market policies.

But the way in which China weathered the crisis — with the injection of $588 billion of stimulus money into the economy and an explosion of lending from state banks — led to a spate of large infrastructure projects that may never justify their cost. As a result, many economists now say that China’s investment-driven, export-oriented economic model is unsustainable and needs to shift toward greater reliance on Chinese consumers.

Constant lip-service is paid to that goal, and on Saturday, Zhang Ping, a senior official, reiterated that stance. But it will not be easy for the new leaders to carry it out. At the root of the current economic model is the political system, in which party officials and state-owned enterprises work closely together, reaping enormous profits from the party’s control of the economy. Under Mr. Hu’s decade-long tenure, these relationships and the dominance of state enterprises have only strengthened.

“What happens in this kind of economy is that wealth concentrates where power is,” said Mr. Yang, the journalist.

The 400 or so incoming members of the party’s Central Committee, Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee, as well as their friends and families, have close ties to the most powerful of China’s 145,000 state-owned enterprises. The growing presence of princelings — the children of notable Communist officials — in the party, the government and corporations could mean an even more closely meshed web of nepotism. It is a system that Xi Jinping, anointed to be the next party chief and president and himself a member of the “red nobility,” would find hard to unravel, even if he wanted to.

Mia Li contributed research.

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Oregon is No. 1 in AP Top 25; K-St 2, Notre Dame 3

NEW YORK (AP) — Oregon is No. 1 in The Associated Press college football poll after Alabama gave up the top spot following a loss to Texas A&M.

The Ducks have 45 of 60 first-place votes. Kansas State is No. 2 with 14 first-place votes. Notre Dame is third and received one first-place vote.

The Crimson Tide, which had been No. 1 for 10 straight weeks, dropped to fourth after a 29-24 loss to the Aggies in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Saturday.

Texas A&M moved up six spots to No. 9.

The Ducks were last No. 1 in 2010. That was the first season in the history of the program that Oregon reached No. 1, and the Ducks spent seven weeks there and reached the BCS championship game, which they lost to Auburn.

No. 25 Kent State is ranked for first time since Nov. 5, 1973.

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Mind Faded, Darrell Royal’s Wisdom and Humor Intact Till End

Three days before his death last week at 88, Darrell Royal told his wife, Edith: “We need to go back to Hollis” — in Oklahoma. “Uncle Otis died.”

“Oh, Darrell,” she said, “Uncle Otis didn’t die.”

Royal, a former University of Texas football coach, chuckled and said, “Well, Uncle Otis will be glad to hear that.”

The Royal humor never faded, even as he sank deeper into Alzheimer’s disease. The last three years, I came to understand this as well as anyone. We had known each other for more than 40 years. In the 1970s, Royal was a virile, driven, demanding man with a chip on his shoulder bigger than Bevo, the Longhorns mascot. He rarely raised his voice to players. “But we were scared to death of him,” the former quarterback Bill Bradley said.

Royal won 3 national championships and 167 games before retiring at 52. He was a giant in college football, having stood shoulder to shoulder with the Alabama coach Bear Bryant. Royal’s Longhorns defeated one of Bryant’s greatest teams, with Joe Namath at quarterback, in the 1965 Orange Bowl. Royal went 3-0-1 in games against Bryant.

Royal and I were reunited in the spring of 2010. I barely recognized him. The swagger was gone. His mind had faded. Often he stared aimlessly across the room. I scheduled an interview with him for my book “Courage Beyond the Game: The Freddie Steinmark Story.” Still, I worried that his withering mind could no longer conjure up images of Steinmark, the undersize safety who started 21 straight winning games for the Longhorns in the late 1960s. Steinmark later developed bone cancer that robbed him of his left leg.

When I met with Royal and his wife, I quickly learned that his long-term memory was as clear as a church bell. For two hours, Royal took me back to Steinmark’s recruiting trip to Austin in 1967, through the Big Shootout against Arkansas in 1969, to the moment President Richard M. Nixon handed him the national championship trophy in the cramped locker room in Fayetteville. He recalled the day at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston the next week when doctors informed Steinmark that his leg would be amputated if a biopsy revealed cancer. Royal never forgot the determined expression on Steinmark’s face, nor the bravery in his heart.

The next morning, Royal paced the crowded waiting room floor and said: “This just can’t be happening to a good kid like Freddie Steinmark. This just can’t be happening.”

With the love of his coach, Steinmark rose to meet the misfortune. Nineteen days after the amputation, he stood with crutches on the sideline at the Cotton Bowl for the Notre Dame game. After the Longhorns defeated the Fighting Irish, Royal tearfully presented the game ball to Steinmark.

Four decades later, while researching the Steinmark book, I became close to Royal again. As I was leaving his condominium the day of the interview, I said, “Coach, do you still remember me?” He smiled and said, “Now, Jim Dent, how could I ever forget you?” My sense of self-importance lasted about three seconds. Royal chuckled. He pointed across the room to the message board next to the front door that read, “Jim Dent appt. at 10 a.m.”

Edith and his assistant, Colleen Kieke, read parts of my book to him. One day, Royal told me, “It’s really a great book.” But I can’t be certain how much he knew of the story.

Like others, I was troubled to see Royal’s memory loss. He didn’t speak for long stretches. He smiled and posed for photographs. He seemed the happiest around his former players. He would call his longtime friend Tom Campbell, an all-Southwest Conference defensive back from the 1960s, and say, “What are you up to?” That always meant, “Let’s go drink a beer.”

As her husband’s memory wore thin, Edith did not hide him. Instead, she organized his 85th birthday party and invited all of his former players. Quarterback James Street, who engineered the famous 15-14 comeback against Arkansas in 1969, sat by Royal’s side and helped him remember faces and names. The players hugged their coach, then turned away to hide the tears.

In the spring of 2010, I was invited to the annual Mexican lunch for Royal attended by about 75 of his former players. A handful of them were designated to stand up and tell Royal what he meant to them. Royal smiled through each speech as his eyes twinkled. I was mesmerized by a story the former defensive tackle Jerrel Bolton told. He recalled that Royal had supported him after the murder of his wife some 30 year earlier.

“Coach, you told me it was like a big cut on my arm, that the scab would heal, but that the wound would always come back,” Bolton said. “It always did.”

Royal seemed to drink it all in. But everyone knew his mind would soon dim.

The last time I saw him was June 20 at the County Line, a barbecue restaurant next to Bull Creek in Austin. Because Royal hated wheelchairs and walkers, the former Longhorn Mike Campbell, Tom’s twin, and I helped him down the stairs by wrapping our arms around his waist and gripping the back of his belt. I ordered his lunch, fed him his sandwich and cleaned his face with a napkin. He looked at me and said, “Was I a college player in the 1960s?”

“No, Coach,” I said. “But you were a great player for the Oklahoma Sooners in the late 1940s. You quarterbacked Oklahoma to an 11-0 record and the Sooners’ first national championship in 1949.”

He smiled and said, “Well, I’ll be doggone.”

After lunch, Mike Campbell and I carried him up the stairs. We sat him on a bench outside as Tom Campbell fetched the car. In that moment, the lunch crowd began to spill out of the restaurant. About 20 customers recognized Royal. They took his photograph with camera phones. Royal smiled and welcomed the hugs.

“He didn’t remember a thing about it,” Tom Campbell said later. “But it did his heart a whole lot of good.”

Jim Dent is the author of “The Junction Boys” and eight other books.

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Chinese Official Reaffirms ‘Rebalancing’ of Economy

BEIJING — A senior Chinese official reaffirmed on Saturday a national goal of shifting China’s economy away from its dependence on investment and exports and toward a more sustainable emphasis on consumption spending.

In doing so, the official, Zhang Ping, the chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, glossed over recent data that suggested the reverse might be happening.

Mr. Zhang, whose agency oversees economic planning and coordinates the country’s economic ministries, said in a news conference held in conjunction with the 18th Party Congress that the Chinese economy was growing again, crediting government policies aimed at moving China away from its reliance on capturing an ever greater share of overseas markets for its exports. He also claimed success in easing the economy’s dependence on enormous investment, which has become less efficient and less productive as many industries struggle with overcapacity.

“Starting from August, the turn toward a slower economy has been effectively curbed,” Mr. Zhang said. “From the October economic data, we can see that the trend toward a rebalancing of the Chinese economy is all the more obvious.”

But independent economists question whether any such conclusion is justified. China’s General Administration of Customs announced on Saturday morning that the country’s trade surplus in October had soared to $32 billion, the highest level in nearly four years. Exports surged 11.6 percent from a year earlier, while imports rose 2.4 percent.

Chinese officials are acutely conscious of the frictions that their trade surpluses create with importer nations like the United States, and have argued for many years that the surpluses are temporary and should not be an issue because they might soon disappear. President Obama and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, vied during the presidential election campaign over who could be tougher in trade and currency disputes with China over the next four years.

Commerce Minister Chen Deming tried again on Saturday to allay foreign concerns about rising Chinese exports, describing the surge as unlikely to last. He said exports would probably not remain strong because of economic troubles in overseas markets and because of what Mr. Chen described as an international rise in protectionism.

“The trade situation will be relatively grim in the next few months,” he said, “and there will be many difficulties next year.”

Investment has also surged rapidly this autumn, government statistics released on Friday showed, as state-owned banks have lent heavily to state-owned enterprises.

A series of news conferences on economic policy — a third was held on Saturday evening on efforts to encourage industrial innovation — came as the 2,268 delegates to the Party Congress attended closed-door meetings on the third day of the gathering, which is held every five years. The Congress is scheduled to choose a new Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party this coming week, and that committee will approve a list of leaders who are expected to run the country for the next decade.

Mr. Zhang said in his news conference that the economy was becoming less reliant on exports and investment spending. He omitted October in citing data from 2012’s first nine months that he described as showing that consumption had been playing a bigger role than investment in economic growth. He also said exports had been a drag on growth.

But investment, which had slumped early this year as the government limited bank lending and restricted real estate sales to pop a housing bubble, has been bouncing back as the restrictions have been eased. Exports were also very weak early this year because of Europe’s difficulties, but are strengthening as American demand rebounds.

Wang Tao, a China economist at UBS in Hong Kong, said short-term changes in various sectors of the economy made it hard to draw any reliable conclusions about whether policy makers had been able to shift the foundations of the Chinese economy onto a firmer and more sustainable footing.

But she expressed skepticism that any fundamental shift had taken place so far, saying: “These are cyclical moves. Rebalancing happens very slowly.”

At the news conference on innovation, corporate executives expressed concern about China’s ability to create its own inventions. But Liang Wengen, the president of Sany Heavy Industry, a big construction equipment manufacturer, answered a last question on American investment policies.

Mr. Liang is widely viewed as a well-connected industrialist with the best chance of becoming the first business tycoon to join the Central Committee, possibly this coming week. He bitterly criticized the Obama administration on Saturday evening for its decision not to allow an American company owned by Sany executives to install Sany-made wind turbines in or near restricted airspace next to a United States Navy site where drones are developed.

Mr. Liang promised a long legal battle against the decision, saying: “We will fight to the end. We hope we will achieve final victory, because we believe in the justice of U.S. law, the courage of the American people and the justice of the world.”

Patrick Zuo contributed research.

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Google says multiple services blocked in China

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc said several of its online services have been blocked in China.

Traffic to Google’s services in China dropped sharply beginning Friday evening there, according to an online “Transparency Report” website operated by Google, which provides updates about access to its services in different parts of the world.

Among the sites affected were Google’s search engine and its Gmail web email product.

The disruptions come as China’s once-in-a-decade meeting to appoint new leadership gets underway.

A Google spokeswoman said the company did not know why the disruption was happening. Google said in a statement that it had “checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end.”

Google’s YouTube video service has been inaccessible in China since 2009, while access to other services in China are blocked sporadically.

In 2010 Google relocated its Chinese search engine to Hong Kong after a spat with authorities over censorship and cyber-attacks that Google said originated in China.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by John Wallace)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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NHL, union meet for small, informal lunch

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL and the players' association weren't quite ready to return to the bargaining table Saturday. But they put aside their differences long enough to at least have lunch together.

After negotiations hit a rough spot Friday on the fourth straight day of talks during the lockout, the sides stayed apart through the early part of Saturday. But they remained in contact during the day before meeting for a small, informal lunch in the afternoon, the players' association said in an email.

It was unknown if the sides would hold formal negotiations Saturday, the 56th day of the lockout that has delayed the start of the season and already forced it to be shortened. Talks broke off Friday night a few hours into a bargaining session on the core economic differences that separate the sides and threaten the season completely.

After those discussions ended, union executive director Donald Fehr held a conference call with the executive board and players on the negotiating committee. The players' association continued internal discussions Saturday before meeting with the league.

It became clear Friday night that the gap between the sides had grown wider. Whether negotiations took a step backward remains to be seen.

After three consecutive seemingly positive days of talks this week, discussions turned sour when negotiations ended for the night. The union was under the impression the numbers floated by each side indicated they were nearer to an agreement with the league, but NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman disagreed.

"Gary made a comment (Thursday) that there is still a lot of work to do. I think, given (Friday's) session, there is still a lot of work to do," Fehr said. "We looked at some of the numbers on the various proposals and we thought we were much closer together on the structure of a deal than the suggestions were. They came back to us and said, 'No, we are very very far apart on the structure of the deal.'"

There were vocal disagreements at the end of the session, and the union is beginning to feel that the NHL isn't ready to make a deal now, even if the players were suddenly willing to accept the league's offer in full — which they are not.

"We talked back and forth a little bit, and at one point the question was asked: 'If the players would agree to everything that's in your financial proposal, what you're saying is you still won't make an agreement unless the players give up everything in all of the player-contracting rights in your proposal? The answer was, 'Yes, because that's what we want,'" Fehr said. "One wonders if that's really the case. How do you get there from here?

"Given where we are, we're going to reconvene internally (Saturday) morning and we'll come to grips with where we are and try to figure out what we'll do next. I don't know what will happen next."

Bettman declined to reveal what was discussed or where the disagreements lie. He also wouldn't characterize the mood of the talks.

"I am not going into the details of what takes place in the room," he said. "I really apologize but I do not think it would be constructive to the process. I don't want to either raise or lower expectations. I won't be happy until we get to the end result and that means we're playing again."

The union fought to put out internal fires Friday after a memo to players summarizing Thursday's negotiations was leaked to the media. That led to suggestions that the players' association didn't fully convey the owners' most recent proposal to its membership accurately or completely.

Fehr sternly shot down the report, if for no other reason that there were players present at the negotiations when the offer was put forward.

"Their proposal is made in front of players in the room who hear it," Fehr said. "It's made in front of staff who hear it, it's made in front of former players who hear it. They're on the phone talking to everybody on an ongoing basis afterward.

"Owners can't come to meetings when they want to hear stuff directly, but every single player can at the union's expense. Come hear it for himself, make the judgments, and all the rest of it."

Ron Hainsey, the player representative for the Winnipeg Jets, backed Fehr's assertion in full.

"Every player is welcome in every meeting," the defenseman said. "Every player has the ability to get in touch with Don via phone, via email, or get in touch with me or any member of the negotiating committee via phone, via email. This notion that something was hidden over the past 24 or 48 hours is totally inaccurate. We feel that this should put this issue to rest.

"Obviously there aren't 30 owners in the room, there aren't 700 players, but we make sure everyone who wants to know exactly what's going on ... we're taking calls every night. It was a memo to summarize as quick as possible for players. At the end of that memo I believe it says if you want exact details of the offer, call us or email us."

The lockout has already caused the league to call off 327 regular-season games, including the New Year's Day Winter Classic in Michigan. The league is in danger of having a lockout wipe out a full season for the second time in seven years.

Bettman is scheduled to attend Hockey Hall of Fame inductions Monday night in Toronto, but developments in negotiations could prevent that.

The lockout began Sept. 16 after the collective bargaining agreement expired, and both sides rejected proposals Oct. 18. The players' association has agreed to a 50-50 split of hockey-related revenues, but that division wouldn't kick in until the third year of the deal.

During a second consecutive day of marathon negotiations Wednesday, the players' association made an offer on revenue sharing in which richer teams would help out poorer organizations, and another proposal regarding the "make-whole" provision that would guarantee full payment of all existing multiyear player contracts.

Revenue sharing and the make-whole provision are major hurdles. Both sides have made proposals that included a 50-50 split of hockey-related revenues. The NHL has moved toward the players' side on the "make-whole" provision and whose share of the economic pie that money will come from.

The NHLPA estimates that about $590 million is needed to guarantee the amount left to be paid to players on the "make-whole" provision, but so far the league is only offering $211 million.

The union accepted a salary cap in the previous labor pact, which wasn't reached until after the entire 2004-05 season was canceled because of a lockout. The union doesn't want to absorb the majority of concessions this time after the NHL had record revenue that exceeded $3 billion last season.

Players believe that dropping their share of hockey-related revenue from 57 percent to 50 percent is already a major concession on their part.

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The New Old Age Blog: The Emotional Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.

Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.

Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this in the voices of the older people they had been calling every day, people who were homebound and at risk because of medical conditions that compromise their physical functioning.

“They’re afraid of being alone,” she said in a telephone interview a few days after the storm. “They’re worried that if anything happens to them, no one is going to know. They feel that they’ve lost their connection with the world.”

What do we know about how older adults fare, emotionally, in a disaster like that devastating storm, which destroyed homes and businesses and isolated older adults in darkened apartment buildings, walk-ups and houses?

Most do well — emotional resilience is an underappreciated characteristic of older age — but those who are dependent on others, with pre-existing physical and mental disabilities, are especially vulnerable.

Most will recover from the disorienting sense that their world has been turned upside down within a few weeks or months. But some will be thrown into a tailspin and will require professional help. The sooner that help is received, the more likely it is to prevent a significant deterioration in their health.

The best overview comes from a November 2008 position paper from the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry that reviewed the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. After Katrina, “the elderly had the highest mortality rates, health decline and suicide rates of any subgroup,” that document notes. “High rates of psychosomatic problems were seen, with worsening health problems and increased mortality and disability.”

This is an important point: Emotional trauma in older adults often is hard to detect, and looks different from what occurs in younger people. Instead of acknowledging anxiety or depression, for instance, older people may complain of having a headache, a bad stomachache or some other physical ailment.

“This age group doesn’t generally feel comfortable talking about their feelings; likely, they’ll mask those emotions or minimize what they’re experiencing,” said Dr. Mark Nathanson, a geriatric psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center.

Signs that caregivers should watch out for include greater-than-usual confusion in an older relative, a decline in overall functioning and a disregard for “self care such as bathing, eating, dressing properly and taking medication,” Dr. Nathanson said.

As an example, he mentioned an older man who had “been sitting in a cold house for days and decided to stop taking his water pill because he felt it was just too much trouble.” Being distraught or distracted and forgetting or neglecting to take pills for chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease can have immediate harmful effects.

Especially at risk of emotional disturbances are older adults who are frail and advanced in age, those who have cognitive impairments like Alzheimer’s disease, those with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depression, and those with chronic medical conditions or otherwise in poor physical health, according to the geriatric psychiatry association’s position paper.

A common thread in all of the above is the depletion of physical and emotional reserves, which impairs an older person’s ability to adapt to adverse circumstances.

“In geriatrics, we have this idea of the ‘geriatric cascade’ that refers to how a seemingly minor thing can set in motion a functional, cognitive and psychological downward spiral” in vulnerable older adults, said Dr. Mark Lachs, chief of the division of geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Well, the storm was a major thing — a very large disequilibrating event — and its impact is an enormous concern.”

Of special concern are older people who may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia who are living alone. For this group, the maintenance of ordinary routines and the sense of a dependable structure in their lives is particularly important, and “a situation like Sandy, which causes so much disruption, can be a tipping point,” Dr. Lachs said.

Also of concern are older people who may have experienced trauma in the past, and who may suffer a reignition of post-traumatic stress symptoms because of the disaster.

Most painful of all, for many older adults, is the sense of profound isolation that can descend on those without working phones, electricity or relatives who can come by to help.

“That isolation, I can’t tell you how disorienting that can be,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City. “They’re scared, but they won’t tell you because they’re too proud and ashamed to ask for help.”

The best remedy, in the short run, is the human touch.

“Now is the time for people to reach out to their neighbors in high-rises or in areas where seniors are clustered, to knock on doors and ask people how they are doing,” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Don’t make it a one-time thing; let the older person know you’ll call or come by again, and set up a specific time so “there’s something for them to look forward to,” Dr. Kennedy said. So-called naturally occurring retirement communities with large concentrations of older people should be organizing from within to contact residents who may not be connected with social services and find out how they’re doing, he recommended.

In conversations with older adults, offer reassurance and ask open-ended questions like “Are you low on pills?” or “Can I run out and get you something?” rather than trying to get them to open up, experts recommended. Focusing on problem-solving can make people feel that their lives are being put back in order and provide comfort.

Although short-term psychotherapy has positive outcomes for older adults who’ve undergone a disaster, it’s often hard to convince a senior to seek out mental health services because of the perceived stigma associated with psychological conditions. Don’t let that deter you: Keep trying to connect them with services that can be of help.

Be mindful of worrisome signs like unusual listlessness, apathy, unresponsiveness, agitation or confusion. These may signal that an older adult has developed delirium, which can be extremely dangerous if not addressed quickly, Dr. Nathanson said. If you suspect that’s the case, call 911 or make sure you take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.

This is a safe place to talk about all kinds of issues affecting older adults. Would you be willing to share what kinds of mental health issues you or family members are dealing with since the storm so readers can learn from one another?

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DealBook: In Unusual Move, the Delaware Supreme Court Rebukes a Judge

As the chief judge of the Delaware Court of Chancery — the country’s most influential court overseeing business cases — Leo E. Strine Jr. has been called an activist. He has also been called an iconoclast, a genius and a humorist.

But this week, Delaware’s highest court called him out of bounds.

The Delaware Supreme Court issued a stinging rebuke of Judge Strine on Wednesday, criticizing him for what it said was an improper digression in an opinion. Judge Strine’s decision related to a contractual dispute but went off on an 11-page tangent about an obscure issue related to limited liability companies.

“The court’s excursus on this issue strayed beyond the proper purview and function of a judicial opinion,” the Supreme Court wrote, adding, “We remind Delaware judges that the obligation to write judicial opinions on the issues presented is not a license to use those opinions as a platform from which to propagate their individual world views on issues not presented.”

Famous among lawyers for his colorful opinions and courtroom meanderings — which are frequently laced with cultural references, both high and low — Judge Strine has supporters and detractors in the securities class-action bar. The Delaware Court of Chancery exerts a powerful influence on United States business because many large companies are incorporated in Delaware and litigate cases there.

Several lawyers, none of whom would be quoted by name because they all practice before him, said it was only a matter of time before someone sought to rein him in. “I’m only surprised it took this long,” said a corporate litigator from New York who has argued cases in Judge Strine’s courtroom.

The Supreme Court advised Judge Strine that if he wished to “ruminate on what the proper direction of Delaware law should be, there are appropriate platforms, such as law review articles, the classroom, continuing legal education presentations and keynote speeches.”

Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal and judicial ethics at New York University School of Law, said that the court’s admonition was highly unusual.

“You rarely see this type of ruling because judges understand that a judicial opinion has a distinct and narrow function and is not supposed to be a platform for your public agenda or your broader views on the law,” he said.

Reached by e-mail, Judge Strine, whose official title is chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, declined to comment.

The ruling came during a week when Judge Strine’s unique judicial stylings were on prominent display. During a hearing in a lawsuit between the fashion designer Tory Burch and her former husband, Christopher Burch, he described the dispute as a “drunken WASP fest.” At the center of the case is whether Mr. Burch, in starting his own retail stores, C. Wonder, borrowed too heavily from Ms. Burch’s successful chain.

During the hearing, Judge Strine addressed scheduling issues in the case, and said, “I didn’t see any reason to burden anyone’s Hanukkah, New Year’s, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Festivus with this preppy clothing dispute.”

He went on to consider why he gets assigned all the preppy clothing cases, noting that he had recently heard a dispute involving J. Crew. That led to a critique of a certain line of rain boots.

“What’s a duck shoe?” he asked. “You see all these freaks wearing this really ugly — I like L. L. Bean, but those duck shoes are ugly. I mean, there’s no way around it.”

He then said he was puzzled by his son’s recent purchase of a pair of Topsiders. “I’m like, what is this?” Judge Strine asked. “I mean, you know, how do you actually want to wear these things?”

As the hearing continued, Judge Strine suggested that there might be nothing unique about the clothing lines of Mr. Burch and Ms. Burch, who divorced in 2007. He stumped one of the lawyers in the case by quizzing him on Ralph Lauren’s original surname, which is Lifschitz.

After his lengthy sidebar on preppy attire, Judge Strine said he was deep in “an autumnal Cheever phase,” referring to the novelist and short story writer. He then encouraged the lawyers to read Cheever’s works, go see the Broadway revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and watch “Mad Men.”

“We’ll be all geared up and in the mood for this sort of drunken WASP fest,” Judge Strine said, and then proceeded to ask about the litigants’ religion. “Are the Burches WASPs?” he asked.

Robert Isen, the chief legal officer at Tory Burch, hesitated before responding, “Tory Burch is Jewish and Chris is not Jewish.”

The answer did not entirely satisfy Judge Strine. “But not Jewish doesn’t make you a WASP, because it could make you an equally excluded faith like Catholic, right?” he asked. “I mean, that’s not a WASP. You know, a WASP is a WASP.”

Mr. Gillers of N.Y.U. Law said that discussing religion in such a manner was conduct unbecoming of a judge. Even if it is done lightheartedly, he said, it could compromise the public’s confidence in the impartiality and integrity of the judiciary.

“Asking about religion, in my mind, is way off base,” Mr. Gillers said. “It’s certainly not legally relevant, and a judge certainly wouldn’t do that with race or sexual orientation.”

Judge Strine began his career in the early 1990s as a lawyer in the Wilmington, Del., office of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He then joined the staff of the Delaware governor Thomas R. Carper, who is now a senator. Judge Strine, who is 48, was named to the Court of Chancery at 34. Many of his opinions are considered among the most influential rulings in corporate law.

A lawyer based in Wilmington, Del., who described himself as a supporter of Judge Strine, said that behind this week’s Supreme Court ruling was a simmering tension between Myron Steele, the chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, and Judge Strine. That conflict appears to have its roots in a disagreement over an arcane subject: the default fiduciary duties of a limited liability company.

This lawyer said that he found Judge Strine’s rapier wit and off-topic asides to be a breath of fresh air in a judiciary that too often can be painfully dull.

“He’s a brilliant dude,” he said. “It’s just Leo being Leo.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 11/10/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: In Unusual Move, the Delaware Supreme Court Rebukes a Judge.

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