GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

[marsh]

“Weather control doesn’t exist.” 1:10 min

"WEATHER CONTROL DOESN’T EXIST.”

• WATCH

a WEF video

 

[marsh]

Shrinking U.S. cattle herd signals more pain from high beef prices

U.S. consumers grappling with soaring inflation face more pain from high beef prices as ranchers are reducing their cattle herds due to drought and lofty feed costs.

www.reuters.com

Shrinking U.S. cattle herd signals more pain from high beef prices

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO, Aug 9 (Reuters) - U.S. consumers grappling with soaring inflation face more pain from high beef prices as ranchers are reducing their cattle herds due to drought and lofty feed costs, a decision that will tighten livestock supplies for years, economists said.

The decline in cattle numbers, combined with stiff costs for other production expenses, illustrate why a recent fall in grain prices to levels not seen since Russia's invasion of major corn and wheat exporter Ukraine may not immediately translate into lower food prices at the grocery store.

Feed is the largest cost component of raising a cow for beef, so lower grain prices often help to reduce meat prices. But meat companies like Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N), which reported weaker-than-expected earnings on Monday, must pay top dollar for animals when there are fewer to slaughter. Processors are also paying more for labor, fuel and other items. read more

"There's really a lot of distance between the price of those grains and the price of those products at the meat counter," said Bernt Nelson, economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Corn futures prices have dropped 26% since hitting a 10-year high in April after the Ukraine war sparked worries about global supplies. Prices are still up 9% from a year ago at about $6 per bushel.

The lower prices benefit livestock producers, though U.S. government data shows ranchers on July 1 had already reduced the nation's cattle herd by about 2% from a year earlier to its lowest level for that date in about seven years.

Producers will likely liquidate even more cattle due to drought, said Shane Miller, Tyson Foods' president of fresh meats, on a conference call following the quarterly results. Chief Executive Donnie King projected prices for cattle and beef will rise moving into 2023 and 2024.

Ground beef prices have already jumped 10% from last year, U.S. government data shows. Rising cattle costs eat in to meatpackers' profit from high beef prices.

Tyson reported its beef unit's adjusted operating margins dropped to 10.2% in the April to June quarter from 12.7% the previous quarter and 22.6% a year earlier, while live cattle costs increased about $480 million. Margins will decline further to 5% to 7%, the company said.

Margins and meat supplies get a temporary boost as ranchers send more animals to slaughter, instead of keeping them to reproduce, analysts said. But consumers will ultimately be left with less beef, and it takes nearly two years to raise a cow once the liquidation stops, economists said. read more

"The prices are here to stay for a while," said Glenn Brunkow, a farmer who raises cattle and sheep in Wamego, Kansas.

Brunkow, a member of the Kansas Farm Bureau's board of directors, said high diesel fuel and feed prices continue to drive up his production costs. He recently paid about $475 per ton for sheep feed made with corn and other ingredients, up 40% from a year ago.

Some consumers are switching to chicken or cheaper types of beef to reduce their food costs, meatpacking executives said. Still, Tyson said beef demand remains strong and reported sales volumes rose 1.3% in the last quarter as prices slipped.

"Even though we may be seeing some relief in feed prices, that demand is going to hold (beef) prices where they're at," Iowa State University economist Lee Schulz said.

Other protein options have also become pricier. Tyson said its chicken prices soared 20.1% in the last quarter from a year earlier. Wholesale prices for white eggs, meanwhile, reached a record high of $3.40 a dozen on July 21 due to strong retail demand and avian flu outbreaks that killed egg-laying chickens, data firm Urner Barry said. read more

In Eugene, Oregon, accounting student and mother Blair Hickok, 40, said her monthly grocery bill spiked 40% to more than $1,200 due to climbing prices for beef, chicken, eggs and products like Johnsonville bratwursts. Her family stopped eating out to save money.

"We cannot sustain this for very long," said Hickok.

 

[marsh]

Talking Climate Change with Science-Deniers, Distorters, and Sound-Biters

It can be frustrating engaging in a discussion where facts are denied or distorted. Equally frustrating is dealing with beliefs that are treated as facts and dependent on sound bites. Climate change is one such topic. Climate...

www.americanthinker.com

August 13, 2022

Talking Climate Change with Science-Deniers, Distorters, and Sound-Biters

By Brian Spinosa

It can be frustrating engaging in a discussion where facts are denied or distorted. Equally frustrating is dealing with beliefs that are treated as facts and dependent on sound bites. Climate change is one such topic.

Climate change is a given. The Earth has never had a stable climate, which can be verified by scientific evidence. The relevant question involves the level of impact human activity is having on the climate.

The information that follows is a fraction of that collected over more than ten years. Let's organize the discussion by considering three questions.

a) What is the goal of the man-made climate change push?

Many people accept that the goal is saving humanity from an existential climate change threat. Evidence indicates that is not the case. Here is one example.

The United Nations has been one of the organizations leading the manmade climate change push. The paragraph below, from the February 10, 2015 Investor's Business Daily article "U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare" seems to state the goal clearly.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said.

b) Does science/data support the man-made climate change claim?

At a science denial forum, which can be watched at the link below, it took over an hour for panelist Michelle Thaller, with NASA, to admit it is not known if carbon dioxide, methane, or some other gas is causing climate change. The unstated assumptions being made appear to be that a gas is causing climate change and the total amount of the gas is primarily determined by human activity. This specific statement can be heard at timestamp 1:02:58.

The current push involves significantly reducing carbon dioxide levels, but does this make sense? Carbon dioxide makes up approximately 0.04% of all greenhouse gases. Estimates indicate that human activity contributes 50% of the total and the U.S. is responsible for 20% of that amount. In a stadium with 100,000 seats 0.04% amounts to 400 seats, 50% of 400 is 200 seats or 0.02%, and 20% of 200 is 40 seats or 0.004%. None of these percentages appear significant, including total elimination of man-made carbon dioxide.

During the age of dinosaurs, evidence indicates that carbon dioxide levels were up to ten times higher than current levels. Since life thrived with these much higher carbon dioxide levels, it raises doubts that current levels pose an existential threat. Much of the carbon composing the carbon dioxide at that time is unavailable to create carbon dioxide today, having been sequestered under the oceans as limestone.

Plants, a critical part of the food chain, require carbon dioxide to survive. Plants also utilize carbon dioxide to create the oxygen all other life requires. Too little carbon dioxide poses an existential threat to all life on Earth.

The existential threat predictions of climate change are based on computer models. Let's consider the accuracy of such models.

The climate is a complex dynamic system involving a number of sciences and even more inputs. Global climate models are much more complex than daily regional weather models. The ability to predict tomorrow's weather versus the climate 100 years from now might be considered as challenging as predicting a person's health tomorrow versus their health 50 years from now.

The accuracy of daily weather prediction models is questionable. Temperature predictions 12 to 24 hours into the future are not consistently accurate, not to mention other aspects of weather prediction. Multiple forecasting models are used concurrently to predict hurricane paths and severity. These rarely agree and are specialty models forecasting only a few days into the future. If such short term weather models lack accuracy what is the likelihood of accurate predictions from climate models?

Climate computer models exclude some significant inputs, such as changes in the sun's output. The Greenhouse Effect is the claimed climate change driver. Results from models not accounting for changes involving the primary energy source in that process must be questioned.

c) What climate is normal, and is that normal climate optimal for supporting human life?

As an example of potential variations in climate, let's consider a region near the Great Lakes. It has experienced the following climates based on scientific evidence. It was under the ocean, based on limestone and sea life fossils. It was hot enough to support lush plant life, based on significant coal formations. It was under a mile-thick glacier, based on geological evidence. Similar variations in climate conditions can be proven to have existed in regions around the world.

Such significant climatic variations suggest there is no such thing as a normal climate. An argument might be made that during much of the Earth's history, the climate has not been optimal for supporting human life over large portions of the planet. While humans can survive in a wide variety of climates, humanity thrives in many regions of the planet today solely due to technology.

In conclusion, science-distorters and sound-biters claim that the global climate is headed for a few degrees of warming, which will be disastrous, ignoring the fact that the Earth is coming out of a global ice age and warming is to be expected.

Evidence indicates that the push for carbon dioxide reduction involves changing the global economic model and not preventing an existential climate change threat. Science does not appear to support the hypothesis that human activity is creating an existential climate threat. Utilizing climate models of questionable accuracy raises doubts about prediction veracity. Finally, significant climate change is a given. Pursuing a goal of preventing climate change seems egotistical. Utilizing the human ability to adapt to the Earth's ever changing complex climate system seems a better option.

 

[marsh]

REPLAY: from ‘The Pit’ , A Vital Strategy Session presented by True The Vote 8/13/22 LIVE

REPLAY: from ‘The Pit’ , A Vital Strategy Session presented by True The Vote 8/13/22
Right Side Broadcasting Network Published August 8, 2022

From the producers of ‘2000 Mules’ brings us ‘The Pit’, an informative strategy session that lays out the groundwork to save this country. Features special guests as well as info about the latest technology that's being weaponized against the American people.

 

[marsh]

Episode 2075: The Great Reset And The War For The World 49:00 min

Episode 2075: The Great Reset And The War For The World (Alex Jones' book)
Bannons War Room Published August 13, 2022

^^^^^^
Episode 2076: The Great Reset And The War For The World Cont. 49:00 min

Episode 2076: The Great Reset And The War For The World Cont.
Bannons War Room Published August 13, 2022

^^^^
Excerpts:

Alex Jones Reveals His Early Life Formation That Propelled Him To Take On New World Order Today 13:31 min
Alex Jones Reveals His Early Life Formation That Propelled Him To Take On New World Order Today
Bannons War Room Published August 13, 2022

^^^^^
Alex Jones: ‘We’re At The Same Crossroads’ As Our Founding Fathers 11:08 min
Alex Jones: ‘We’re At The Same Crossroads’ As Our Founding Fathers
Bannons War Room Published August 13, 2022

^^^^
Alex Jones on The War Room: "If They're Able to Silence Me, They'll Be Able to Silence Everybody" 10:12 min
Alex Jones on The War Room: "If They're Able to Silence Me, They'll Be Able to Silence Everybody"
The Gateway Pundit Published August 13, 2022

 

[marsh]

Over 500,000 Americans Dead from the COVID Jab? Steve Kirsch Breaks Down the Numbers 1:06 min

Over 500,000 Americans Dead from the COVID Jab? Steve Kirsch Breaks Down the Numbers
Red Voice Media Published August 13, 2022

13,972 recorded U.S. deaths in the VAERS system multiplied by the underreporting factor of 41 equals 572,852 deaths.

COVID Vaccine Data - OpenVAERS

Full Video: Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths from the COVID Jabs: Steve Kirsch Joins the War Room [VIDEO]

 

[marsh]

Prominent cattle trader weighs in on the Dutch farmer rebellion 4:37 min

Prominent cattle trader weighs in on the Dutch farmer rebellion
Rebel News Published August 13, 2022
A well-known cattle trader in the Netherlands who is very actively involved with the protests across Holland gives his take on what these green policies from the Dutch government could mean for the future of his business.

^^^^^

Prominent cattle trader weighs in on the Dutch farmer rebellion

A well-known cattle trader in the Netherlands who is very actively involved with the protests across Holland gives his take on what these green policies from the Dutch government could mean for the future of his business.

www.rebelnews.com

Prominent cattle trader weighs in on the Dutch farmer rebellion
A well-known cattle trader in the Netherlands who is very actively involved with the protests across Holland gives his take on what these green policies from the Dutch government could mean for the future of his business.

• By Lewis Brackpool
• August 13, 2022

For a brief period, Rebel News was back in the Netherlands to scope out the current tensions and investigate what will happen next regarding the Dutch farmer rebellion.

As you are aware, protests have sparked across the Netherlands. In fact, these protests have been ongoing since 2019, when the Dutch government declared a nitrogen emissions cap. The cap means the farmers have to reduce fertilizer usage, are forced to cut livestock by up to 50% and face the worry of having to give up their land to the state.

Fast-forward to today in 2022 and the situation has escalated. The protests have grown substantially, with the government not backing down on their push towards the agenda 2030 goal, and the farmers are continuing to rally to show their discontent for the Dutch government and the World Economic Forum-pushed blueprints.

In this report, we speak with a well-known cattle trader in the Netherlands who is very actively involved with the protests and gives his take on what these green policies from the Dutch government could mean for the future of his business.

 

[marsh]

Thailand Authorities sign a 3 Year Deal for the advancement of Weather Modification systems 1:50 min

Thailand Authorities sign a 3 Year Deal for the advancement of Weather Modification systems
SettingBrushfires Published August 13, 2022

(No summary given. Did not watch)

 

[marsh]

A Giant Stride Toward Socialism | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

A Giant Stride Toward Socialism

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 09:30 AM
Authored by Grace-Marie Turner via RealClear Health,

Step by step, for nearly 70 years, liberals have been marching the United States toward government-controlled health care, and the Schumer-Manchin bill is another giant stride.

COVID provided the opening for Congress to enhance and expand Obamacare subsidies for two years, and the bill before the House would extend them for three more years. So much for a temporary program.

The added subsidies push up prices and premiums. And they are a regressive use of taxpayer dollars since much of the benefit accrues to higher-income people.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that, among subsidized Obamacare marketplace enrollees, taxpayers pay 82% of premiums. That generates substantial reliance on government for health insurance.

With taxpayers footing the bill, there are few incentives for insurance companies to moderate costs. Premiums for insurance in the individual market increased by 143% over six years to 2019, and deductibles also have skyrocketed. The average annual premium plus deductible for a family of four with an ACA plan was about $25,000 in 2021. And that is for coverage with extremely narrow physician networks and often limited access to the best hospitals.

Continuing the expanded and enhanced ACA subsidies would be a major entitlement expansion, and the bill will be voted on even before the CBO has a chance to estimate the full cost.

Here’s a question: Will the CBO be calculating how much will be raised when 87,000 IRS agents start going after people with Obamacare insurance who may have miscalculated their income and therefore received too much in subsidies?

Galen Senior Fellow Doug Badger explains that many people will lose their employer coverage if this bill passes. Smaller businesses that aren’t subject to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to provide insurance will have strong incentives to discontinue offering coverage to their employees. That means millions more people will have policies where politicians and government bureaucrats, not doctors and patients, make medical decisions.

Most of those who will benefit from the added subsidies are in the upper two income quintiles, many of whom drop their private coverage to take advantage of the taxpayer subsidies. For example, a family of four with a 60-year-old head of household earning $265,000 could end up eligible for more than $7,800 or more a year in taxpayer subsidies, according to an analysis by Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute.

Further, allowing the extra subsidies to expire would not change the number of people who have health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that next year 17 million people—the same number as this year—will have individual coverage, even without the extension.

“The goal of the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ is as straightforward as it is cynical: Transfer billions from Medicare Part D to bankroll green energy projects and subsidize premiums for wealthy Obamacare enrollees.,” Joel White of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage writes. “Worse, they are inserting government bureaucrats and politicians into every medicine cabinet in America.”

We have written in this space about the serious implications for pharmaceutical innovation if the bill’s price controls become law.

You do have to wonder if this strangulation of the private health sector isn’t part of a larger goal. Joel suggests it is: “Ultimately, this legislation sets the stage for a new federal government takeover of health care, starting with prescription drug benefits. Hospitals and doctors will be next on the price control list as Congress works to enact government-run health care one step at a time.”

The ACA has driven up health costs, reduced choices, and made it harder for sick people to get care—all while giving a blank check from taxpayers to health insurers, hospitals, and other big health care businesses.

This bill will mean many more decisions over your health care will influenced by political power—how much money companies and constituencies can spend to lobby for decisions in their favor—than by what is best for patients.

Health care is too local and personal for a Washington-driven, one-size-fits-all approach to work. We are anxious to shift our focus to proposals that will unleash the innovation and energy that are pent up in our health sector. Our goal must be to return power to doctors and patients. That is our task next year and for many years to come.

Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute focusing on patient-centered ideas for health reform.

 

[marsh]

It's Game-Over For The Fed - Expect A Monetary "Rug Pull" Soon... | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

It's Game-Over For The Fed - Expect A Monetary "Rug Pull" Soon...

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 08:30 AM
Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

You often hear the media, politicians, and financial analysts casually toss around the word “trillion” without appreciating what it means.
A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number.

The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. So let me try to put it into perspective.

If you earned $1 per second, it would take 11 days to make a million dollars.
If you earned $1 per second, it would take 31 and a half years to make a billion dollars.
And if you earned $1 per second, it would take 31,688 years to make a trillion dollars.
So that’s how enormous a trillion is.

When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, you are in dangerous territory.

And that is precisely what the Federal Reserve and the central banking system have enabled the US government to do.

From the start of the Covid hysteria until today, the Federal Reserve has printed more money than it has for the entire existence of the US.

For example, from the founding of the US, it took over 227 years to print its first $6 trillion. But in just a matter of months recently, the US government printed more than $6 trillion.

During that period, the US money supply increased by a whopping 41%.

In short, the Fed’s actions amounted to the biggest monetary explosion that has ever occurred in the US.

Initially, the Fed and its apologists in the media assured the American people its actions wouldn’t cause severe price increases. But unfortunately, it didn’t take long to prove that absurd assertion false.

As soon as rising prices became apparent, the mainstream media and Fed claimed that the inflation was only “transitory” and that there was nothing to be worried about. Then, when the inflation was obviously not “transitory,” they told us “inflation was actually a good thing.”

Of course, they were dead wrong and knew it—they were gaslighting.

The truth is that inflation is out of control, and nothing can stop it.

Even according to the government’s own crooked CPI statistics—which understates reality—inflation is breaking through 40-year highs. That means the actual situation is much worse.

No Inflation Without Representation
The US federal government’s deficit spending and debt are the most significant factors driving this money printing, resulting in drastic price increases.

The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace.

It took until 1981 for the US government to rack up its first trillion in debt. After that, the second trillion only took four years. The next trillions came in increasingly shorter intervals.

Today, the US federal debt has gone parabolic and is well over $30 trillion.

If you earned $1 per second, it would take over 966,484 YEARS to pay off the US federal debt.

And that’s with the unrealistic assumption that it would stop growing.

The truth is, the debt will keep piling up unless Congress makes some politically impossible decisions to cut spending. But don’t count on that happening. In fact, they’re racing in the opposite direction now that they’ve normalized multitrillion-dollar deficits.

Below is a chart of the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit projections for the next decade. These estimates will almost certainly be too rosy, as they often are.



Even by the CBO’s optimistic projections, the US government will have a cumulative deficit of over $15 trillion for the next ten years.

So, who is going to finance these incomprehensible shortfalls? The only entity capable is the Fed’s printing presses.

Allow me to simplify it in three steps.

Step #1: Congress spends trillions more than the federal government takes in from taxes.
Step #2: The Treasury issues debt to cover the difference.
Step #3: The Federal Reserve creates currency out of thin air to buy the debt.

In short, this insidious process is nothing more than legalized counterfeiting. It’s taxation without consent via currency debasement and is the true source of inflation. Mainstream media and economists perform incredible mental gymnastics to conceal and justify this fraud.

That’s how government spending, deficits, and the federal debt affect inflation.

As long as the average person doesn’t notice the rising prices, the system works well. However, once the price increases become painful enough, it creates political pressure for the Fed to combat inflation by raising interest rates.

The Fed Has a Serious Problem This Time
The amount of federal debt is so extreme that even a return of interest rates to their historical average would mean paying an interest expense that would consume more than half of tax revenues. Interest expense would eclipse Social Security and defense spending and become the largest item in the federal budget.

Further, with price increases soaring to 40-year highs, a return to the historical average interest rate will not be enough to reign in inflation—not even close. A drastic rise in interest rates is needed—perhaps to 10% or higher. If that happened, it would mean that the US government is paying more for the interest expense than it takes in from taxes.

In short, the Federal Reserve is trapped.

Raising interest rates high enough to dent inflation would bankrupt the US government.

We can see this dynamic in the below chart of the federal debt and the federal funds rate, the Federal Reserve’s primary benchmark interest rate. The higher the federal debt, the harder and more painful it becomes to raise interest rates.



In short, the US government is fast approaching the financial endgame. It needs to raise interest rates to combat out-of-control inflation… but can’t because it would cause its bankruptcy.

In other words, it’s game over.

They have no choice but to “reset” the system—that’s what governments do when they are trapped.

Think of it like this.

Imagine a spoiled child playing a board game, and rather than admit he is losing, he flips the board. This is what governments will do now that they are financially checkmated. They can’t win, even in their own rigged game, and now are left with the choice of losing power or flipping the board. Since power does not relinquish itself voluntarily, we should presume they’ll choose to flip the board.

Here’s the bottom line.

The current monetary system is on its way out. Even the central bankers running the system can see that. So they are preparing for what comes next as they attempt to “reset” the system.

I suspect it could all go down soon… and it’s not going to be pretty.

It’s going to result in an enormous wealth transfer from you to the parasitical class—politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them.

 

[marsh]

Africa Needs Conventional Fuels, Not Windmills And Solar Panels | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Africa Needs Conventional Fuels, Not Windmills And Solar Panels

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 06:20 AM
Authored by Manuel Tacanho via The Mises Institute,

The energy and climate goals that Western governments, the United Nations, and other organizations are pushing on Africa constitute a crippling blow to its economies. As the least developed region, Africa should unequivocally prioritize economic development. One would think that amid energy poverty in Africa, Western governments and “development” institutions would prioritize energy security for African countries over energy transition.

African countries must have reliable, abundant, and cheap energy (e.g., fossil fuels) to accelerate economic development. Fossil fuels power economies and people’s lives. To deny these countries the possibility of developing with fossil fuels by imposing climate goals that the Western world itself fails to achieve is hypocritical. And malicious.

Climate Alarmism and Energy Hypocrisy
Many environmental and energy experts acknowledge the imperative to address climate change but reiterate that there is no need for apocalyptic alarmism. Bjørn Lomborg is one such expert. In his book False Alarm, he makes the case that climate panic costs trillions of dollars and hurts people in undeveloped countries disproportionately. He warns:

With 194 signatories, the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the most expensive pact in human history, is likely to incur costs of some $1–$2 trillion per year by 2030. With ever more nations making promises to go carbon neutral over the next decades, these costs could escalate to tens of trillions of dollars annually in the coming years.

Any response to climate change will cost money (if addressing the problem made money, doing so wouldn’t be contentious and we’d already be doing it). If a relatively low-cost policy could fix most of the problem, that could be money well spent. However, it turns out that the Paris Agreement in its best-case scenario will achieve just one percent of what the politicians have promised (keeping temperature rises to 1.5°C (2.7°F)), and at huge cost. It is simply a bad deal for the world.

Worse still, like most governments, African governments are technically insolvent and thus dependent on systemic aid (i.e., loans and grants) to stay afloat. Africa’s tax burdens are rather heavy already. More debt, deficit spending, and heavier taxes further damage Africa’s economies.

Fiat money printing cannot help either. In short, African governments cannot afford Western/UN-imposed climate and energy transition goals.

Another such voice is Michael Shellenberger, a veteran environmentalist and author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

Shellenberger has penned a letter in which, on behalf of all environmentalists, he apologizes for the false climate scare. A part of the letter reads:

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years.

Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30. But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Climate alarmism, indeed.

In his article “The Reason Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To,” Shellenberger also notes that:

Between 2000 and 2019, Germany grew renewables from 7 percent to 35 percent of its electricity. And as much of Germany’s renewable electricity comes from biomass, which scientists view as polluting and environmentally degrading, as from solar. Of the 7,700 new kilometers of transmission lines needed, only 8 percent have been built, while large-scale electricity storage remains inefficient and expensive. “A large part of the energy used is lost,” the reporters note of a much-hyped hydrogen gas project, “and the efficiency is below 40% … No viable business model can be developed from this.”

Meanwhile, the 20-year subsidies granted to wind, solar, and biogas since 2000 will start coming to an end next year. “The wind power boom is over,” Der Spiegel concludes.

All of which raises a question: if renewables can’t cheaply power Germany, one of the richest and most technologically advanced countries in the world, how could a developing nation like Kenya ever expect them to allow it to “leapfrog” fossil fuels?

Though Germany may be one of the most severely affected countries in the developed world, the energy crisis is undoubtedly global. As such, Germany, the US, China, and other countries are looking to increase coal-fired power generation to mitigate the crisis. In the US, the Biden administration chokes off domestic fossil fuel production but asks Saudi Arabia to increase its own output. Likewise, Europe is looking to African and other countries to secure access to natural gas as the continent moves away from Russian energy.

So, the developed West is looking to fossil fuels to solve its energy problems, but undeveloped Africa should transition to solar and wind?

This brings us to the hypocrisy part. Lomborg wrote:

The developed world’s response to the global energy crisis has put its hypocritical attitude toward fossil fuels on display. Wealthy countries admonish developing ones to use renewable energy. Last month the Group of Seven went so far as to announce they would no longer fund fossil-fuel development abroad.

Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are begging Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are spending big on African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the nation will more than double its exports.

Meanwhile, South Africa is getting money from Western countries to phase out coal while the same Western countries look to increase coal-fired electricity generation. The display of hypocrisy is blatant and will severely undermine Africa’s economic development. But though Western meddling has been harmful, if today African economies are still undeveloped and in a precarious state—over fifty years since “independence,” Africans should look at the leadership, or the lack thereof, as the ultimate culprit.

Energy Transition? Not Exactly
In theory, there is an energy translation happening. In reality, no such thing is taking place. Today’s global energy crisis conclusively demonstrates that the world desperately needs more, not less, fossil fuels. Consider the case of biomass, the first energy source used by humans. Despite tremendous advancements in technology and the existence of coal, oil, and natural gas, biomass is still part of today’s energy mix. This being the case, it does not make sense even to talk about phasing out fossil fuels, which meet almost 80 percent of the world’s energy needs. To think otherwise is absurd.

There is no such thing as an energy transition happening. What we do have is energy source accumulation. Humanity started with biomass and over time added coal, hydro, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar. Today we can use these energy sources combined. Not exactly a transition.


Source: Visual Capitalist

A transition from fossil energy to wind and solar is unattainable for material, technological, and environmental reasons, among others. All existing wind and solar farms’ combined energy output does not even supply 5 percent of the world’s energy needs, yet their environmental harm is already noticeable. For example, West-funded wind farms in Kenya threaten birdlife, including endangered species. Same in the US, where wind turbines have been killing eagles and other rare birds.

Only one energy source can enable humanity to phase out coal, oil, and natural gas. And that is nuclear. Nuclear power can provide clean, reliable, abundant, and cheap energy for everyone and for the foreseeable future. So, if we are serious about net-zero emissions and environmental protection, we must embrace nuclear power. Yes, it is safe, and can be made even safer.



Africa’s Way Out of Energy Poverty
Before I was born, Angola already was mired in severe and chronic energy problems. I am gravitating toward forty years of age, and Angola is still mired in these problems.

The government controls the production and distribution of energy products and services through companies that it wholly or partially owns. Undeniably, the government has failed to provide Angolans with reliable, abundant, and cheap energy goods and services. Angola’s government is not the only African government that failed to deliver energy prosperity to its people. Energy woes are entrenched across the continent. Even in South Africa, Africa’s most developed energy state, the energy situation is going from bad to worse.

African governments should finally step aside, which is the least they could do after decades of accumulated policy failures, and let free enterprise and free trade reign in energy production and distribution. Anyone able and willing to produce, distribute, and sell energy goods and services should be free to do so.

The onerous mountains of regulations and bureaucratic measures must be removed.

Politicians failed to deliver energy prosperity. Now politicians should have humility and let markets perform their economic miracle. The free market is the fastest and most effective approach to making African societies sustainably energy rich.

Conclusion
Climate change is real. And so are climate alarmism, ecocolonialism, and Western energy hypocrisy. Environmental and energy policies based on pseudoscience and exaggerated reports are pushing even advanced economies such as Germany and California toward energy precarity and potential blackouts.

But that pales in comparison to the harm ecocolonialism can do, and in fact does, to African economies and lives. Still, however hypocritical and malicious Western regimes may be, the responsibility for energy abundance and economic development lies entirely with Africa’s decision-makers.

 

[bracketquant]

It's Game-Over For The Fed - Expect A Monetary "Rug Pull" Soon... | ZeroHedge

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It's Game-Over For The Fed - Expect A Monetary "Rug Pull" Soon...

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 08:30 AM
Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

You often hear the media, politicians, and financial analysts casually toss around the word “trillion” without appreciating what it means.
A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number.

The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. So let me try to put it into perspective.

If you earned $1 per second, it would take 11 days to make a million dollars.
If you earned $1 per second, it would take 31 and a half years to make a billion dollars.
And if you earned $1 per second, it would take 31,688 years to make a trillion dollars.
So that’s how enormous a trillion is.

When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, you are in dangerous territory.

And that is precisely what the Federal Reserve and the central banking system have enabled the US government to do.

From the start of the Covid hysteria until today, the Federal Reserve has printed more money than it has for the entire existence of the US.

For example, from the founding of the US, it took over 227 years to print its first $6 trillion. But in just a matter of months recently, the US government printed more than $6 trillion.

During that period, the US money supply increased by a whopping 41%.

In short, the Fed’s actions amounted to the biggest monetary explosion that has ever occurred in the US.

Initially, the Fed and its apologists in the media assured the American people its actions wouldn’t cause severe price increases. But unfortunately, it didn’t take long to prove that absurd assertion false.

As soon as rising prices became apparent, the mainstream media and Fed claimed that the inflation was only “transitory” and that there was nothing to be worried about. Then, when the inflation was obviously not “transitory,” they told us “inflation was actually a good thing.”

Of course, they were dead wrong and knew it—they were gaslighting.

The truth is that inflation is out of control, and nothing can stop it.

Even according to the government’s own crooked CPI statistics—which understates reality—inflation is breaking through 40-year highs. That means the actual situation is much worse.

No Inflation Without Representation
The US federal government’s deficit spending and debt are the most significant factors driving this money printing, resulting in drastic price increases.

The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace.

It took until 1981 for the US government to rack up its first trillion in debt. After that, the second trillion only took four years. The next trillions came in increasingly shorter intervals.

Today, the US federal debt has gone parabolic and is well over $30 trillion.

If you earned $1 per second, it would take over 966,484 YEARS to pay off the US federal debt.

And that’s with the unrealistic assumption that it would stop growing.

The truth is, the debt will keep piling up unless Congress makes some politically impossible decisions to cut spending. But don’t count on that happening. In fact, they’re racing in the opposite direction now that they’ve normalized multitrillion-dollar deficits.

Below is a chart of the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit projections for the next decade. These estimates will almost certainly be too rosy, as they often are.



Even by the CBO’s optimistic projections, the US government will have a cumulative deficit of over $15 trillion for the next ten years.

So, who is going to finance these incomprehensible shortfalls? The only entity capable is the Fed’s printing presses.

Allow me to simplify it in three steps.

In short, this insidious process is nothing more than legalized counterfeiting. It’s taxation without consent via currency debasement and is the true source of inflation. Mainstream media and economists perform incredible mental gymnastics to conceal and justify this fraud.

That’s how government spending, deficits, and the federal debt affect inflation.

As long as the average person doesn’t notice the rising prices, the system works well. However, once the price increases become painful enough, it creates political pressure for the Fed to combat inflation by raising interest rates.

The Fed Has a Serious Problem This Time
The amount of federal debt is so extreme that even a return of interest rates to their historical average would mean paying an interest expense that would consume more than half of tax revenues. Interest expense would eclipse Social Security and defense spending and become the largest item in the federal budget.

Further, with price increases soaring to 40-year highs, a return to the historical average interest rate will not be enough to reign in inflation—not even close. A drastic rise in interest rates is needed—perhaps to 10% or higher. If that happened, it would mean that the US government is paying more for the interest expense than it takes in from taxes.

In short, the Federal Reserve is trapped.

Raising interest rates high enough to dent inflation would bankrupt the US government.

We can see this dynamic in the below chart of the federal debt and the federal funds rate, the Federal Reserve’s primary benchmark interest rate. The higher the federal debt, the harder and more painful it becomes to raise interest rates.



In short, the US government is fast approaching the financial endgame. It needs to raise interest rates to combat out-of-control inflation… but can’t because it would cause its bankruptcy.

In other words, it’s game over.

They have no choice but to “reset” the system—that’s what governments do when they are trapped.

Think of it like this.

Imagine a spoiled child playing a board game, and rather than admit he is losing, he flips the board. This is what governments will do now that they are financially checkmated. They can’t win, even in their own rigged game, and now are left with the choice of losing power or flipping the board. Since power does not relinquish itself voluntarily, we should presume they’ll choose to flip the board.

Here’s the bottom line.

The current monetary system is on its way out. Even the central bankers running the system can see that. So they are preparing for what comes next as they attempt to “reset” the system.

I suspect it could all go down soon… and it’s not going to be pretty.

It’s going to result in an enormous wealth transfer from you to the parasitical class—politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them.

Wake me up when quadrillion is mentioned daily.

 

[marsh]

Spain Says New Gas Pipeline To France Could Be Ready In 8-9 Months | ZeroHedge

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Spain Says New Gas Pipeline To France Could Be Ready In 8-9 Months

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 05:45 AM

Triggered by Western sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Europe's energy crisis presents an opportunity for Spain and Portugal to significantly elevate their role in energizing Western Europe.

On Friday, Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said that a new gas link from Spain to France could be ready by April or May of 2023.

"This new interconnection, this gas pipeline, could be operating in about eight or nine months on the southern side of the border, that is, from the Pyrenees to Spain," Ribera told TVE. Pipeline construction would also be required in France to complete the link, and Spain's prime minister has said the EU would have to pay for interconnections.

Ribera's timeline is far more ambitious than one put forth by Spanish gas grid operator Enagas. The firm's CEO recently said the link could be built in two and a half years at a price of 600 to 700 million Euros.

Ribera said such a pipeline has the potential to boost Spain's gas export capacity by 20 to 30%.

"Much of Europe’s LNG import capacity lies on the Iberian peninsula, which is viewed in the industry as a gas “island” as there is limited pipeline capacity connecting it to northern Europe," explains the Financial Times.

Though Spain has several liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals to receive gas via the sea, the country has only two low-capacity pipeline connections to France. An earlier initiative to add a 120-mile, high-capacity pipeline -- the "MidCat Project" -- fell apart in the face of environmentalists' opposition and the collapse of financial backing.



With Russia throttling its exports and wholesale gas prices nearly 10 times recent levels, Western European leaders are pursuing new energy links with great urgency.

On Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a new pipeline from Portugal to central Europe via Spain and France. He said a pipeline from the Iberian Peninsula was "conspicuously absent" and that such a pipeline promises to make "a massive contribution" to alleviating the EU's energy woes.

 

[marsh]

Why Labor Productivity Has Collapsed | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

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Why Labor Productivity Has Collapsed

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 02:30 PM
Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

Recession. Raging consumer price inflation. A Presidential administration that seeks to confuse and obfuscate what’s really going on. These are the realities facing American workers in the dog days of August circa 2022.

For example, this week the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index results for July. According to the government number crunchers, the CPI decelerated from an annualized rate of 9.1 percent reported for June to an annualized rate of 8.5 percent in July.

Gas prices fell 7.7 percent from one month ago. But are still up 44 percent over one year ago. Food prices rose 1.1 percent on the month and are up 10.9 percent over the past 12 months. Rents also rose 0.7 percent in July.

President Biden, a man who alternates between being a world class liar and a world class moron, took the opportunity to tell an untruth the American people:

“I just want to say a number: zero. Today, we received news that our economy had 0 percent inflation in the month of July – 0 percent. Here’s what that means: while the price of some things go up – went up last month, the price of other things went down by the same amount. The result?: Zero inflation last month.”

With Biden, you’re never certain if he believes his own lies. Thus, we’ll make it real clear for the big guy just how the numbers work.

Price is the numerical value. Inflation is the first derivative. The monthly increase/decrease in inflation is the second derivative. The second derivative was reported as zero. But inflation itself is still off the charts.

In this respect, should you be happy that your money is only eroding at an annual rate of 8.5 percent instead of 9.1 percent? Does this mean the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes are working? Is the much anticipated pivot within sight?

These questions are important. But if you really care about wealth and prosperity there are much more important questions to be asking. Here’s why…
Money, Production, and Consumption

Money acts as a claim that its owner has to a certain portion of all market goods and services. It is, in essence, the means by which all market goods and services are distributed among people. The more money one has, the greater claims to goods and services they possess.

However, the creation of greater quantities of money by central planners does not magically increase the quantity of goods and services. The addition of new, freshly created money does not readily get matched by a corresponding increase in production.

New production may be stimulated by artificial increases to the money supply. But it is only to address false demand created by the resulting price distortions. These price distortions lead to excess production to meet the false demand. This excess production ultimately leads to supply gluts and economic pain.

Similarly, new, freshly created money does not increase people’s claims to goods and services. It does not increase how much they can consume. Rather, it dilutes each individual monetary unit, which is then expressed in rising prices.

The genesis of consumer price inflation can be found in money supply inflation.

Money supply inflation is the direct act of central planners. The inflation of the money supply comes first. Consumer prices then follow.

Most academic economists naively believe that lack of money is the source of economic stagnation. They advocate credit creation and money printing as a means to increase consumption. These policies generally lead to higher debt levels and higher asset and consumer prices.

Why price is important…

Why Price is Important
The primary regulator for how money is spent is price. The price of goods and services is what attracts or repels money. Generally, if two goods have equivalent utility and quality, money will be attracted to the lower cost item and repelled by the higher cost item.

Price also conveys information. Rising prices signal to business owners to increase production. Falling prices signal to reduce production.

When central planners monkey with the quantity of money in circulation they monkey with the price of goods and services. Moreover, when they monkey with the price of credit – the rate of interest – they disfigure the entire economy.

Artificially low interest rates stimulate false demand up and down the supply chain. In addition, pumping fabricated credit into financial markets for decades on end pushes the economy to a perilous and unstable state.

Wealth disparities become ever more extreme, as financial assets, which are largely owned by the wealthy, become inflated. Governments – federal, state, and local – use the cheap credit to become bigger, and more interventionist.
Consumer price inflation then takes hold.

The Fed’s attempts to smooth out the peaks and valleys of the business cycle have actually magnified them. The consequences to workers, savers, and retirees alike are remarkably harmful.

Eventually the damage is too great for even the Fed to ignore and they must reverse course. After letting credit run wild for over a decade, and making everyone dependent upon it, the Fed then reels it back. This tightening of credit markets has the effect of pulling the rug out from under financial markets and the economy.

Right now, for example, the Fed is operating within the rug yank phase of its monetary policy. As the Fed simultaneously raises the federal funds rate and reduces its balance sheet, credit markets are slipping and tripping all over themselves.

Yet all these money games are based on a flawed understanding of how the world and the economy works…

Why Labor Productivity Has Collapsed

The prerequisite for more consumption is not more money. It’s more production. The faster and more goods and services the economy produces, the faster and more each individual can consume. Production determines consumption.

This is a critical point. And it’s one the President failed to mention this week. Just one day prior to this week’s CPI report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its second quarter labor productivity report. The results were about as bad as they could possibly be.

In short, labor productivity decreased 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2022. Output decreased 2.1 percent while hours worked increased 2.6 percent. This marked the sharpest decline in labor productivity since 1948 – roughly 74 years ago.

What this means is that people are working more and producing less. They are, in essence, working in reverse. Hence, there will be less goods and services to consume, which will further drive consumer price inflation.

Why has labor productivity collapsed?

This, no doubt, is an important question. It is especially important if you care about wealth and prosperity.

The push for productive activity is provided by the mental and physical ability of workers to produce new goods and services with the least expenditure of energy and material possible. That is to say, to produce more at a lower cost. The ability to cheapen production leads to economic growth.

Alas, labor productivity has collapsed. The reasons range far and wide. But they all come back to a few critical things. Over regulation, over taxation, money printing, credit market manipulation, and, in summary, a near total intervention of economic and business life by a grossly out of control state.

Remember, production determines consumption. Production has collapsed. An extended period of economic decline will follow.

 

[marsh]

A Worrying Signal From Oil Traders Of A European Recession | ZeroHedge

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A Worrying Signal From Oil Traders Of A European Recession

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 05:10 AM
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

While politicians and economists might debate exactly what constitutes a recession, the reality of an economic slowdown is impossible to ignore.

The most recent signal that Europe may soon face a recession comes from oil traders, who are selling European gas oil futures while buying U.S. diesel futures.

It is not surprising that Europe is more at risk of a recession than the U.S. as it is hugely vulnerable to an energy shortage and will have to pass the high prices on to consumers.

Recession has always been a politically sensitive word. Today, it has become so sensitive that some economists and politicians are trying to redefine it to make it lose some of its sting. The reality of a recession, however, is impossible to redefine. In Europe in particular, consumers are feeling the slowdown in economic growth in their wallets, and so are traders. There is one big difference between the two though. When a recession is looming, consumers curb spending. Traders, on the other hand, begin selling.

Reuters’ John Kemp reported in his latest hedge fund column that hedge funds and other institutional traders sold the equivalent of 1 million barrels of European gas oil futures over the past three weeks. While this may not sound like a lot, over the last six weeks, total sales have added up to 20 million barrels. A significant reduction in the net position of traders.

Across the Atlantic, hedge funds and money managers have been buying U.S. diesel futures and options, increasing their position by 13 million barrels over the last three weeks. Kemp suggests this is a signal that the economic outlook of U.S. traders is brighter than that of their European peers.

It might be that U.S. traders are simply looking to profit from the diesel shortage Kemp himself wrote about earlier this month. He noted that U.S. distillate fuel inventories have fallen to critical levels, and it would take a recession to remedy things by destroying demand. Otherwise, diesel prices will only continue rising and traders would buy diesel futures.

Be that as it may, the danger of recession in Europe is certainly a lot more serious from an energy perspective. Unlike the U.S., which is rather self-sufficient when it comes to natural gas, Europe has revealed itself to be as embarrassingly dependent on imports of the commodity. A dash for gas has followed, where Europe is scouring the world for friendly gas, under a spot contract, if possible. It has not always been possible.

As a result of this, Europe is now diverting cargoes from Asia, which is not making it any friends there, and trying to consume less energy. Thanks to excessive prices, it is consuming less energy. Germany is preparing for energy rationing for industrial users and encouraging household austerity. Spain is mandating air-conditioners be kept at 27 degrees or above. And Norway just announced that it would curb its electricity exports to the EU.

Norwegian electricity normally goes to the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark. However, hydropower output, which accounts for the bulk of Norway’s total electricity output, has been low this year, and the country is trying to secure local sufficiency. More bad news for struggling Europe, where renewable power output remains uneven.

The picture is not pretty, and earlier this month, the IMF signaled it could become even worse as it advised European governments to pass on the additional energy costs to consumers to encourage energy savings. The fund argued that financial aid only keeps energy consumption high when it should be going down.

Meanwhile, Nomura analysts recently forecast that the eurozone, along with the UK, the U.S., South Korea, Australia, and Canada, are among the countries facing recession in 2023.

“Right now central banks, many of them have shifted to essentially a single mandate — and that’s to get inflation down. Monetary policy credibility is too precious an asset to lose. So they’re going to be very aggressive,” Nomura’s head of global markets research, Rob Subbaraman, said last month.

Add to this central bank aggressiveness the equally aggressive stance the EU is taking in its standoff with Russia, and there’s a recipe for recession right there.

Reuters’ Kemp predicted that at least four European economies will fall into a recession before the year’s end. Unfortunately, it’s the four largest - Germany, France, Italy, and Britain - which means the pain will be felt across the bloc and the rest of Europe, too. The silver lining: fuel prices might begin to fall once a recession settles in.

 

[marsh]

Why The “New World Order” Is Impossible to Implement Without Creating Mass Chaos

The events of the last few years have resurrected a recurring worry among people mindful of their liberty, property, and

noqreport.com

Why The “New World Order” Is Impossible to Implement Without Creating Mass Chaos

by Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski August 13, 2022 in Opinions

The Great Reset
The events of the last few years have resurrected a recurring worry among people mindful of their liberty, property, and personal dignity. This worry centers around the prospects of the emergence of the notorious “new world order,” a worldwide totalitarian plot hatched by globalist “elites” intent on destroying the surviving remains of free speech, free enterprise, and free thought.

Before asking how justified such worries are, let us note that the “new world order” narrative typically contains a “negative” and a “positive” element. The “negative” element describes how the global conspirators intend to bring about a worldwide socioeconomic collapse—i.e., eliminate the “old world order”—whereas the “positive” counterpart focuses on the nature of the global totalitarianism will be built on the ashes of destruction. In this connection, it is essential to note that new world order theorists almost always depict the totalitarianism under consideration as some form of technocratic feudalism with communist undertones, most closely reminiscent of present-day China coupled with Western-style “political correctness” and Malthusian eugenics.

When it comes to the “negative” part of the narrative in question, one can plausibly argue that far from consisting of conspiratorial speculation, it is blatantly unfolding before our eyes. Long-term coordinated global inflationism, persistent “stimulus spending,” the energy sector’s “environmentalist” strangulation, the destructive madness of lockdowns, and the relentless promotion of “woke” insanity clearly seem to be forming a perfect storm of worldwide planned chaos.

Obviously, none of these phenomena are spontaneous, and it does not take a genius to grasp the utterly ruinous consequences of their implementation. Thus, the ongoing devastation of the “old world order”—today most often referred to as the “Great Reset” or “building back better”—smacks of coordinated malevolence, giving rise to well-justified concerns.

The “positive” part of the new world order project, on the other hand, appears to be more of a bogeyman. This is because the kind of global totalitarianism that theorists typically envision is a praxeological impossibility.

First, comprehensive depopulation, far from centralizing nearly all productive resources in the hands of the parasitic “elite,” would vastly undercut its power by eliminating the bulk of the global economy’s productive potential. After all, as noted by Julian Simon, it is human beings, with their inventiveness and entrepreneurialism, that constitute the paramount driving force of economic development. Hence, by carrying out their Malthusian plans, elite globalists would saw off the branch on which they are sitting and eliminate themselves together with their victims.

Second, if the subjugated global population were to be literally enslaved rather than culled in a vast eugenic scheme, then the new world order would collapse in no time as well. This is because a stable, well-functioning international totalitarianism would have to rely on exceedingly complex technological solutions and massive amounts of high-quality capital goods.

However, armies of literal slaves cannot create or maintain such goods, nor devise and implement such solutions. After all, slaves are notoriously unproductive individuals, since they have no means and no incentive to invest in their talents, skills, contacts, and complementary resources. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that the masters would perform these tasks, since they would constitute a very small upper crust.

Third, if one were to suggest that the new world order could successfully operate based on highly advanced artificial intelligence solutions, then, once again, the natural question is who would devise and oversee the relevant infrastructure. The elite puppet masters, regardless of their cunning, would be too few to accomplish this task. Masses of slaves, as pointed out earlier, would be singularly ill-equipped to manage this feat.

Finally, a potential group of “semielite” middle management would also be of no use in this context. If today we are seeing how a full-blooded totalitarianism of this sort could look, members of this caste would have to be even more thoroughly indoctrinated in the “woke” ideology under such a system. And since this ideology can be summed up as a particularly deranged revolt against the nature of reality, it is a uniquely bad fit for technologically demanding environments.

Lastly, it must be pointed out that the new world order would be even more vulnerable to the Misesian calculation problem than its “classical” totalitarian predecessors. After all, political power and economic decision-making capacity would have to be much more heavily concentrated in the hands of a minuscule oligarchy than it was in the former Soviet bloc.

And while for a time, these countries’ rulers were able to maintain a semblance of economic rationality by calculating in terms of external prices and by tolerating the existence of internal black markets, no such solutions would be available in a global dictatorship of technocratic omnisurveillance. Thus, it turns out that such a dictatorship is a praxeological absurdity—a system that might look very menacing on paper but that is nothing more than a psychopathic pipe dream.

Thus, one has to wonder about the motives behind the globalist clique’s frenzied destruction of the present socioeconomic order. Surely, its members are cunning enough to realize the insurmountable nature of the challenges mentioned above. What, then, inspires their ruinous mania, if there is no additional money and power to be gained?

The only satisfactory answer is thoroughly chilling: it appears that having acquired all the money one can spend and all the power one can wield, the global elite remains capable of deriving perverse psychological satisfaction from engaging in large-scale acts of wanton destruction. In other words, its representatives do not seem to mind committing a spectacular suicide so long as it is a side effect of a vastly more spectacular democide.

While the realization that the new world order is a logically incoherent phantasmagoria might be soothing, the corollary awareness that the true goal of the ongoing worldwide ruination is no less insane should keep all right-minded people sober and watchful. Hence, even if one is not an enthusiast of the rapidly disintegrating “old world order,” one can steadfastly oppose the evil machinations of those responsible for that order’s dissolution.

Ludwig von Mises’s personal motto (also adopted by the Mises Institute) is instructive: “Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it.”

 

[marsh]

Is Economic Growth Synonymous with Ecological Destruction? The NYT Gets It Wrong (Again) | Frank Shostak

According to the New York Times (NYT) article July 17, 2022, “The pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end,” a major threat to our living standard is the obsession with economic growth.

mises.org

Is Economic Growth Synonymous with Ecological Destruction? The NYT Gets It Wrong (Again)

Frank Shostak

According to the New York Times (NYT) article July 17, 2022, “The pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end,” a major threat to our living standard is the obsession with economic growth. Herman Daly—an economist that has been exploring for more than fifty years the relationship between economic growth and individuals’ living standards—is of the view that the pursuit of economic growth causing ecological harm.

He developed arguments in favor of a steady-state economy, one that forgoes the insatiable and environmentally destructive hunger for growth, recognizes the physical limitations of our planet and seeks sustainable economic and ecological equilibrium. According to Daly, the basic question that should be asked is whether growth ever becomes uneconomic.

Daly was influenced by Georgescu-Roegen known for his 1971 “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process,” in which he argued that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity. As a result, at some point all of earth’s mineral resources would eventually be exhausted.

Consequently, this is going to pose a threat to human life. Hence, Daly advocates imposing permanent government restrictions on the flow of natural resources through the world economy. Georgescu-Roegen’s work was decisive for the establishing of ecological economics as an independent academic subdiscipline in economics.

Moreover, on this way of thinking if one accepts that aiming at economic growth is bad news for the ecology, then one also must believe that striving to make profits is also bad for human’s living standards.

What we have here is a similar argument to the one presented in 1798 by Thomas Malthus in his “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” According to Malthus, the food supply and other related resources expand at a linear progression while the population is growing at a geometrical progression, which at some point would threaten human life.

Wealth Generation and Ecological Issues
If free fluctuations in the prices of goods and services are allowed to occur, the market will resolve the issue of resource depletion. For instance, the increase in the price of resource A because of strong demand for it is likely to lead individuals to use the less-costly resource B. In addition, likely substitutes are going to be introduced to replace the resource A with some other more abundant resources.

Furthermore, in a free-market economy individuals’ property rights will make sure that environmental polluters are more likely to be penalized since he inflicts damages to the person and property of other individuals. When government enterprises cause pollution, however, taxpayers are forced to compensate pollution victims.

Changes in GDP Depict Monetary Growth Not Economic Growth
The ecological economists also erroneously associate wealth generation and profits with changes in gross domestic product, even though changes in GDP have nothing to do with economic growth. Increases in the money supply drive much of the GDP growth rate. Increases in the money supply set in motion the menace of the boom-bust cycle and economic impoverishment, so it is not surprising that the so-called economic growth in terms of GDP is associated with all the negatives portrayed by ecological economics.

It follows that in addition to the government interference with businesses, the tampering with the money supply by the central bank also undermines individuals’ living standards. Again, the market economy requires free fluctuations in the relative prices. (Observe that the prices of goods and services are expressed in terms of money). In a free-market economy where money is selected by the market, changes in the relative prices are likely to reflect the true state of the relative demands for goods and services.

Once the central bank money replaces the market money, this opens the door for the central bank tampering with money supply. As a result, the relative price fluctuations no longer reflect the true state of the demand for goods and services.

Consequently, changes in the relative prices most likely generate misleading signals, as businesses respond to false signals produce goods and services that are not on the highest priority list of consumers. The ongoing tampering with financial markets by the central bank also sets in motion the menace of the boom-bust cycle.

Rather than measuring the wealth formation process, GDP depicts movements in the monetary turnover because of changes in money supply. Consequently, environmental issues most likely occur because of the growth rate of GDP, which is in fact the growth rate in money supply. This however has nothing to do with genuine economic growth. Again, changes in GDP mirrors changes in money supply.

According to economist Thomas DiLorenzo:

If the profit motive is the primary cause of pollution, one would not expect to find much pollution in socialist countries, such as the former Soviet Union, China, and in the former Communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. That is, in theory. In reality, exactly the opposite is true: The socialist world suffers from the worst pollution on earth. Could it be that free enterprise is not so incompatible with environmental protection after all?

Moreover, according, to DiLorenzo:

The new German government has claimed that nearly 40 percent of the East German populace suffers ill effects from pollutants in the air. In Leipzig, half the children are treated each year for illnesses believed to be associated with air pollution. Eighty percent of eastern Germany’s surface waters are classified as unsuitable for fishing, sports, or drinking, and one out of three lakes has been declared biologically dead because of decades of untreated dumping of chemical waste. Much of the East German landscape has been devastated. Fifteen to 20 percent of its forests are dead, and another 40 percent are said to be dying. Between 1960 and 1980 at least 70 villages were destroyed and their inhabitants uprooted by the government, which wanted to mine high-sulfur brown coal.

With respect to the former Soviet Union, DiLorenzo writes:

According to economist Marshall Goldman, who studied and traveled extensively in the Soviet Union, “The attitude that nature is there to be exploited by man is the very essence of the Soviet production ethic.” … Water pollution is catastrophic. Effluent from a chemical plant killed almost all the fish in the Oka River in 1965, and similar fish kills have occurred in the Volga, Ob, Yenesei, Ural, and Northern Dvina rivers. Most Russian factories discharge their waste without cleaning it at all. Mines, oil wells, and ships freely dump waste and ballast into any available body of water…. The declining water level in the Caspian Sea has been catastrophic for its fish population as spawning areas have turned into dry land. The sturgeon population has been so decimated that the Soviets have experimented with producing artificial caviar. Hundreds of factories and refineries along the Caspian Sea dump untreated waste into the sea, and major cities routinely dump raw sewage…. The concentration of oil in the Volga is so great that steamboats are equipped with signs forbidding passengers to toss cigarettes overboard. As might be expected, fish kills along the Volga are a “common calamity.”

In a free market economy with property rights protection, it is in the interest of individuals to look after their property without violating the property rights of others. In the framework of government regulations and controls where the effective ownership is diluted, there is a diminished incentive to look after one’s own property. Hence, it is not surprising that in the former socialistic economies ecological problems were so widespread.

Conclusion
Contrary to ecological economics, the important factor behind the environmental pollution and various climatic issues is not economic growth but the lack of free market. In the framework of a free-market economy with minimal government and without central bank, economic growth emerges because of wealth generation. The expansion in wealth coupled with the property rights protection is likely to minimize the ecological problems.

This contrasts with the former socialist economies that suffered from terrible ecological issues. The erroneous view that strong economic growth is bad for the ecology is because economic growth is measured in terms of GDP, in which the key driving factor is money supply. Unfortunately, it is popular to blame the nonexistent free-market economy for the environmental pollution and climate issues. Further government interference with markets intensifies the undermining of efficient allocation of scarce resources. Consequently, this undermines individuals’ living standards and creates ecological issues.

 

[marsh]

Carbon Capture Didn’t Make Sense 12 Years Ago And It Doesn’t Make Sense Now

The reconciliation bill contains $3.2 billion in tax credits for carbon capture and storage, an expensive technology with limited success.

heartlanddailynews.com

Carbon Capture Didn’t Make Sense 12 Years Ago And It Doesn’t Make Sense Now

Heartland Author
August 13, 2022

By Robert Bryce
It appears the reconciliation bill that includes some $370 billion in energy-related spending is going to become law. The measure includes a panoply of tax credits for alternative energy technologies, including incentives for electric vehicles, hydrogen, energy storage, and of course, billions of dollars in tax credits for wind and solar energy.

The measure also includes, according to the Congressional Budget Office, some $3.2 billion in tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that has plenty of supporters but precious little in the way of commercially successful projects. Back in 2018, Al Gore blasted CCS, calling it “nonsense” and an “extremely improbable solution.”

The new tax credits for CCS remind me that I published a piece in the New York Times on May 12, 2010, about the technology. In looking back, the piece is still relevant today. In fact, I wouldn’t change a word of it. Furthermore, my prediction about the difficulty of siting the pipelines needed to move the CO2 has already come true. For proof, see this August 6, Wall Street Journal article about the opposition to a proposed CO2 pipeline in Iowa.

In any case, here’s my 12-year-old take on why CCS is a bad bet:

On Wednesday, John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman introduced their long-awaited Senate energy bill, which includes incentives of $2 billion per year for carbon capture and sequestration, the technology that removes carbon dioxide from the smokestack at power plants and forces it into underground storage. This significant allocation would come on top of the $2.4 billion for carbon capture projects that appeared in last year’s stimulus package.

That’s a lot of money for a technology whose adoption faces three potentially insurmountable hurdles: it greatly reduces the output of power plants; pipeline capacity to move the newly captured carbon dioxide is woefully insufficient; and the volume of waste material is staggering. Lawmakers should stop perpetuating the hope that the technology can help make huge cuts in the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions.

Let’s take the first problem. Capturing carbon dioxide from the flue gas of a coal-fired electric generation plant is an energy-intensive process. Analysts estimate that capturing the carbon dioxide cuts the output of a typical plant by as much as 28 percent.

Given that the global energy sector is already straining to meet booming demand for electricity, it’s hard to believe that the United States, or any other country that relies on coal-fired generation, will agree to reduce the output of its coal-fired plants by almost a third in order to attempt carbon capture and sequestration.

Here’s the second problem. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has estimated that up to 23,000 miles of new pipeline will be needed to carry the captured carbon dioxide to the still-undesignated underground sequestration sites. That doesn’t sound like much when you consider that America’s gas pipeline system sprawls over some 2.3 million miles. But those natural gas pipelines carry a valuable, marketable, useful commodity.

By contrast, carbon dioxide is a worthless waste product, so taxpayers would likely end up shouldering most of the cost. Yes, some of that waste gas could be used for enhanced oil recovery projects; flooding depleted oil reservoirs with carbon dioxide is a proven technology that can increase production and extend the life of existing oilfields. But the process would be useful in only a limited number of oilfields — probably less than 10 percent of the waste carbon dioxide captured from coal-fired power plants could actually be injected into American oilfields.

The third, and most vexing, problem has to do with scale. In 2009, carbon dioxide emissions in the United States totaled 5.4 billion tons. Let’s assume that policymakers want to use carbon capture to get rid of half of those emissions — say, 3 billion tons per year. That works out to about 8.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per day, which would have to be collected and compressed to about 1,000 pounds per square inch (that compressed volume of carbon dioxide would be roughly equivalent to the volume of daily global oil production).

In other words, we would need to find an underground location (or locations) able to swallow a volume equal to the contents of 41 oil supertankers each day, 365 days a year.

There will also be considerable public resistance to carbon dioxide pipelines and sequestration projects — local outcry has already stalled proposed carbon capture projects in Germany and Denmark. The fact is, few landowners are eager to have pipelines built across their property. And because of the possibility of deadly leaks, few people will want to live near a pipeline or an underground storage cavern. This leads to the obvious question: which members of the House and Senate are going to volunteer their states to be dumping grounds for all that carbon dioxide?

For some, carbon capture and sequestration will remain the Holy Grail of carbon-reduction strategies. But before Congress throws yet more money at the procedure, lawmakers need to take a closer look at the issues that hamstring nearly every new energy-related technology: cost and scale.

 

[marsh]

America's Police State

The Left has already employed the tactics of deception, subterfuge, lies, and violence to strike fear into the American population.

www.americaoutloud.com

America’s Police State
by George McClellan | Aug 13, 2022 | Law and Order, Politics

America whirls further into the chaos of political dysfunction, barely guided by a feeble-minded president who has embraced the socialistic politics of Marxism, is now in dire peril. As such, no other corrective outcome other than expected violence can possibly be imagined. Negotiations and cooperation between America’s political parties are no longer servants of the American equation.

For Democrats, it’s their way or the highway, and true conservatives seemed unprepared to stop it, until the outrage at Mar-a-Lago. Most, but not all of our elected Republican officials have shown little propensity to take on the Democrats and seem to have lost interest in defending our Constitution. “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” Is that even possible in today’s world of instant destruction? In fear of losing all, the Democrats are turning America into a police state.

Now, two years after his emplacement as president, Joe Biden’s government is actively planning the country’s economic collapse by imposing schemes to further tax Americans into penury using the tactic of rising Inflation (taxes) through obscene, excess government spending. Biden’s original discredited spending scheme, Build Back Better, laughingly renamed the Inflation Reduction Act, is a $750 billion dollar looting of America’s treasury.

The Biden administration is preparing to: “send hither a swarm of Officers to harass Americans and eat out their substance” by doubling and arming the IRS as his Tax Gestapo to attack Americans financially at every level of their economic and social achievements. Their sole aim is to eliminate the American middle class so that the population of doers, makers, and shakers becomes slaves to government for their survival. It is the definition of Communism and must be enforced by an expansion of the police state. We must remain armed!

What we do here now while we can, affects the course of the future. The Left has already employed the tactics of deception, subterfuge, lies, and violence to strike fear into the American population.

Under Biden’s direction, the Left has opened our borders to hundreds of thousands of diseased, third-world migrants and has purposefully dispensed them throughout America solely to pad their voter rolls in Red States to keep them in power. The violence visited on Blue cities around America in the past several years was by design. A cadre of sixties-era Marxist college professors has conditioned, as direct action advocates, young new Marxists to despise America and all it stands for.

Alarmed, conservative Americans coalesced into Tea Parties and other groups to find ways to resist the onslaught of socialism short of actual physical violence. That didn’t stop the Antifa’s and the BLM storm troopers of the Democrat party from engaging in their own violence protected by the Leftists media and Marxist politicians, lawyers, and judges to turn criminals back out onto the streets without consequence. As a result, street crime has flourished, the murder rate has risen, and prisons emptied.

Themselves now alarmed by the pushback from concerned Americans and fearful a president who wasn’t one of them will be swept back into office, the corrupted elements of the US Department of Justice, its leader Merrick Garland, the enforcement arms of federal justice, the FBI, IRS, ATF, et al., Biden has unleashed the odious apparatus of a totalitarian state, the FBI, to find or create evidence that would keep Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot.

The execution of the search on Mar-a-Lago brought with it, the expected government incompetence of poor planning, poor execution, lies, innuendos, and the arrogance of lower-level agents riffling through Melania’s dresser.

Here’s our problem:

“The ‘woke commis’ have seized every political, cultural, and economic center of power in the country from where they ruthlessly push their agenda. That agenda rests on the conviction that America is thoroughly bad (systemically racist) and must be destroyed.”… Thomas Klingenstein, Chairman, Claremont Institute.

Remember, freedom is the goal; the Constitution is the way. Now, go get ‘em!

 

[marsh]

Economics Experts Believe True Inflation Rate is Much Higher than the Government’s Official Figures - Big League Politics

The government’s figures should not be trusted.

bigleaguepolitics.com

Economics Experts Believe True Inflation Rate is Much Higher than the Government’s Official Figures

Jose Nino
Aug 13, 2022

Inflation has been the biggest economic issue in the last few months as people have seen the hard-earned money wither away thanks to a generalized cost-of-living crisis.

Earlier this week, the Biden regime bragged about the official inflation rate declining. However, several experts believe inflation is considerably higher than the official numbers indicate.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest figures, the headline inflation rate, as demonstrated by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), ostensibly fell down 8.5% in July from a 41-year high of 9.1% in June.

In addition, the month-over-month CPI inflation figure stood at 0%. In other words, the rate of price growth did not change between June and July. These numbers motivated Biden to declare victory against inflation by declaring that the “economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July.”

Though several analysts believe that the Biden regime’s “zero” inflation by contending that the president was cherry-picking the data by excessively concentrating too much on the month-over-month growth rate while casting aside the year-over-year rate of inflation. Tom Ozimek of The Epoch Times noted that the year-over-year inflation rate “remained a historically elevated 8.5 percent.”

On top of that, several contrarian economic observers argue that official inflation figures understate the true inflation rate. These analysts alluded to factors like lags in housing costs weighed in the government’s CPI inflation measures.

Economist John Williams has put forward an alternative metric for measuring inflation, which uses the same methodology that the US government used back in the 1980s. Per Wiliams’ figures, July’s inflation figure is around 16.8% in annual terms. This is almost double the official inflation figure. In a similar vein, June’s inflation numbers, per Williams’ metrics, were 17.3% — a 75-year high.

In Williams’ estimation, the present BLS methodology for determining inflation is flawed in how it measures how the average American experiences changes in their living standards.

Williams views the current BLS methodology for calculating inflation as a flawed measure of how members of the general public experience changes in their cost of living.

“Individuals look to the government’s CPI as a measure of the cost of living of maintaining a constant standard of living, as well as measuring that cost of living in terms of out-of-pocket expenses. Without meeting those parameters, an inflation measure has limited, if any, use for an individual,” Williams proclaimed.

“Where the CPI at one time met those parameters desired by the public, government efforts turned the CPI away from measuring the price changes in a fixed-weight basket of goods and services, to a quasi-substitution-based basket of goods, which destroyed the concept of the CPI as a measure of the cost of living of maintaining a constant standard of living,” Williams stated.

Indeed, the state has every reason to fudge inflation figures. Part of the ruling class’s staying power is its ability to manipulate public perception with regards to inflation and their overall living standards.

Many Americans have been duped to believe in accepting the notion their living standards are rising when in reality people can see with their own eyes notable declines in their living standards. America First must stand firmly against the central banking industrial complex and the regulatory state. These entities are responsible for the country’s current economic misery.

 

[marsh]

US Industry Starting to Buckle From Electric Costs

Soaring natural gas and electricity prices are starting to hit US industry, and plants are being forced to shut down because of it, sending...

halturnerradioshow.com

US Industry Starting to Buckle From Electric Costs

HAL TURNER
12 AUGUST 2022

Soaring natural gas and electricity prices are starting to hit US industry, and plants are being forced to shut down because of it, sending thousands of workers into unemployment.

At the second-largest aluminum mill in America, accounting for 20% of US supply, about 600 workers are now losing their jobs because the plant can’t afford an electricity tab that’s tripled in a matter of months.

Century Aluminum Co. says it’ll idle the Hawesville, Kentucky, mill for as long as a year, taking out the biggest of its three US sites.

A shutdown like this can take a month as workers carefully swirl the molten metal into storage so it doesn’t solidify in pipes and vessels and turn the entire facility into a useless brick.

Restarting takes another six to nine months. For this reason, owners don’t halt operations unless they’ve exhausted all other options.

At least two steel mills have also begun suspending some operations to cut energy costs, according to one industry executive, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

In May, a group of factories across the US Midwest warned federal energy regulators that some were on the verge of closing for the summer or longer because of what they described as “unjust and unreasonable” electricity costs. They asked to be wholly absolved of some power fees—a request that, if granted, would be unprecedented.

By the beginning of June, natural gas prices had tripled what they were a year earlier, threatening households and businesses alike with some of the biggest utility bills they’ve ever seen.

This summer, electricity rates for industrial customers are set to hit their highest levels ever, based on US government forecasts. Because US plants and factories depend on both electricity and gas, this could very well be the moment the rug’s pulled out from under American industry.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

None of this had to be, and none of it HAS to be.

Absolutely every aspect of the rate increases is directly tied to what the United States federal government is doing over the Russia-Ukraine situation.

They have imposed strangling economic sanctions upon Russia, demanding Russia halt its Special Military Operation into Ukraine. These economic sanctions are then applied to all our allies and trade partners worldwide, who are, themselves, told by the US that THEY cannot trade with Russia.

This means that all the countries of the world who used to purchase natural gas and oil from Russia, are forced to find other sources or face being barred from US markets.

The only other sources for oil and natural gas are the countries that have traditionally supplied them: mostly in the Middle East.

Well, with so many new buyers trying to grab oil and gas from the Middle East, the prices have utterly skyrocketed. . . supply and demand.

As the cost of energy has risen, the cost of everything else had to rise as well. Now, those costs have gotten so out of hand, that entire industries are being forced to shut down, which puts people out of work.

ALL OF THIS is because the US federal government won't mind its own business regarding Ukraine.

If we mind our own business, everything goes back to cheap, the way it was.

All of this economic harm is happening because the US Democratic Party refuses to mind its own business, and is thus causing havoc in all our lives.

It is time to remove those people from power at all levels of state and federal government. If the people of the United States do not take action to remove this destructive government, our entire society and way of life will collapse.

You can either take action now, or wait until YOU have to choose between heating your house this winter, or feeding your family. THAT is the choice that's coming because of what Democrats have done.

 

[marsh]

Pipeline Break Spills 45,000 Gallons of Diesel in Wyoming

BILLINGS, Mont.—A diesel pipeline in Wyoming owned by a company that's being sued by federal prosecutors over previous ...

www.theepochtimes.com

Pipeline Break Spills 45,000 Gallons of Diesel in Wyoming

By The Associated Press
August 13, 2022 Updated: August 13, 2022

BILLINGS, Mont.—A diesel pipeline in Wyoming owned by a company that’s being sued by federal prosecutors over previous spills in two other states cracked open and released more than 45,000 gallons (205,000 liters) of fuel, state regulators and a company representative disclosed Friday.

Cleanup work is ongoing from the spill that was discovered by the pipeline’s operator on July 27, said Joe Hunter, Emergency Response Coordinator with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. The fuel spilled into sandy soil on private ranchland near the small community of Sussex in eastern Wyoming and did not spread very far, he said.

Contaminated soil was being excavated and placed into a temporary staging area, and it will be spread onto a nearby dirt road where the fuel is expected to largely evaporate, Hunter said.

The line is operated by Bridger Pipeline, a subsidiary of Casper-based True companies, according to an accident report submitted to the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center.

The company initially reported only 420 gallons (1,590 liters) had spilled, but later revised its estimate to 45,150 gallons (205,250 liters), according to a National Response Center database.

Bridger Pipeline spokesperson Bill Salvin said the initial figure was based on what company personnel saw on the ground and reported immediately. The volume estimate increased as the site was excavated, he said.

True and its subsidiaries have a long history of spills. In May, federal prosecutors in Montana alleged that representatives of Bridger Pipeline had concealed from regulators problems with a pipeline that broke beneath the Yellowstone River near the city of Glendive in 2015. The break spewed more than 50,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of crude into the river and fouled Glendive’s drinking water supply.

In North Dakota, federal prosecutors and the state Attorney General’s Office are pursuing parallel claims of environmental violations against a second True companies subsidiary responsible for a 2016 spill that released more than 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of crude, contaminating the Little Missouri River and a tributary.

Representatives of the companies have denied violating pollution laws and rejected claims that problems with the Montana line were concealed from federal regulators.

The Wyoming spill was caused by a crack at a weld in the line, said Hunter, who did not know how long it was leaking before being discovered. The spilled fuel did not appear to reach any waterways and no enforcement actions for environmental violations were planned, he said.

“I’m not saying there wouldn’t be any down the road but for right now there won’t be” any enforcement actions by the state, Hunter said. “It’s an older pipeline and it’s one of those things that happen.”

The 6-inch (15 centimeters) diameter steel line was installed in 1968 by the original owner and later acquired by Bridger Pipeline, Salvin said. It was last inspected in 2019, using a device that travels inside the pipe looking for flaws, and no problems were detected, he said.

“We’re focused on minimizing the environmental impact and we’re going to replace the soil and restore the land as close as possible to its original condition,” Salvin said.

Kenneth Clarkson with the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Washington-based group that advocates for safer pipelines, said a thorough investigation into the spill’s cause needs to be conducted.

“It’s frustrating to hear of another spill by Bridger Pipeline LLC,” Clarkson said.

“This spill of 45,000-plus gallons of diesel into rural Wyoming negatively impacts the environment, wildlife, and surrounding communities.”

Violations of pipeline safety regulations would be handled separately and fall under jurisdiction of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Salvin said the agency has been notified about the spill, but officials did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press.

Bridger last year reached a $2 million settlement with the federal government and Montana over damages from the Yellowstone River spill. The company was previously fined $1 million in the case by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

 

[marsh]

Consumer Data Privacy, the FTC, and the Major Questions Doctrine are on a Collision Course

It might sound like a wonky topic, but you need to understand what is happening right now when it comes to consumer data privacy.

www.based-politics.com

Consumer Data Privacy, the FTC, and the Major Questions Doctrine are on a Collision Course

It might sound like a wonky topic, but you need to understand what is happening right now when it comes to consumer data privacy.
https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php...questions-doctrine-are-on-a-collision-course/
Hannah Cox
August 13, 2022

It’s times like these I wish I were more into sports, any sport, or maybe even just really good at a game that involves strategy, like chess. But unfortunately for all of you my hobby is politics and I don’t have the time to consume much else in detail.

Due to that, you aren’t going to get the metaphor you deserve to open this article.

But politics is like a sport. Each team has a game plan, various players are expected to fulfill their respective roles in the grand scheme of things, and at times, there’s a climax when the ball really is up in the air and you can’t tell which team is going to win or lose.

I need you to understand that is what is happening right now when it comes to consumer data privacy. I know, I know, this sounds like a wonky topic—how exciting can it be?

Listen to me: very.

The fact of the matter is that really big political decisions—ones that determine whether we move toward or away from capitalism, ones that decide just how much control the government is going to have over our economy and therefore our prosperity—they fly by night. This is intentional. They know you’re not watching.

But I am. So allow me to explain the policy superbowl showdown that is currently playing out and how it could impact you.

The Ball
At hand we have what I will refer to as the ball: consumer data privacy.

Americans actually rank this issue as one of their top concerns, and it makes sense. We increasingly live our lives online. And that means tech companies have unprecedented access to practically all facets of our lives.

Consumers worry about that level of access and just how securely companies are storing their data, not to mention how they’re selling it and using it for or against us. The Pew Research Center found that, “majorities think their personal data is less secure now, that data collection poses more risks than benefits, and believe it is not possible to go through daily life without being tracked.”

These concerns are even more heightened when the conversation turns to children. Parents increasingly worry about their child’s privacy online, as well as the impact that social media in particular may have on childhood development.

All of these concerns are well-founded. No matter what our federal government wants us to believe, privacy is an essential and important civil liberty that, if lost, can lead to the loss of overall liberty, finances, and reputation. It absolutely should be safeguarded.

The Playbook
Where there’s a potential problem (and power grab), especially one that involves children, you can always count on the government to insert itself. To that end, several states have passed or are considering passing bills that would limit the data collection tools at the disposal of tech companies. So far, the “solutions” these states are coming up with are bad news bears—both from a constitutional and a free market perspective.

In California, three new bills specifically violate the First Amendment in their content moderation demands of tech companies, box parents out of conversations around cyberbullying, and make it impossible for companies to offer run-of-the-mill service suggestions on their products. Texas and Florida passed similarly problematic bills, which courts have already found unconstitutional.

While this is obviously bad territory, Big Tech frankly has few people coming to its rescue. Conservatives hate the tech industry because they believe it censors their content and elevates one-sided perspectives. Democrats hate the tech industry because they believe it doesn’t censor people enough or shut down dissent that breaks with the official narrative being pushed by “experts” at the moment.

But, to be very clear, we don’t set public policies because we’re mad at a business—or at least that shouldn’t be the way we approach these matters.

Instead, we need laws that protect a free market economy while offering a fair and consistent playbook by which companies can operate—and that guarantees the civil liberties of all Americans. When it comes to consumer data privacy, that playbook simply has not been provided yet (we’re still relatively new at this whole internet thing).

While you will rarely find me advocating for the federal government’s involvement in an issue, when it comes to the internet these are matters that must be handled nationally. Asking tech companies to jump through different random hoops in every state is untenable and would lead to far less competition, innovation, and options in the sector.

The Teams
Now that we’ve covered the ball and the playbook (or lack thereof), allow me to introduce our two major teams in this saga.

First, you have Congress—the people who are supposed to be making the laws at the federal level. Mostly, they don’t do that anymore, they just appear on TV and chase talking point clips to drive donations. But, the issues around the tech sector have reached a fever pitch in recent years and it seems that enough lawmakers now agree they need to address the data privacy issue.

The bill under consideration is called the American Data and Privacy Act, and it’s a mixed bag. The focal point of a playbook for data collection should be on providing remedies for specific harms rather than merely outlawing tools, providing consumers with data portability, notifying consumers of data breaches, creating a private right of action, and safeguarding children online without limiting parental choice.

Still, Congress could work to implement suggested changes to the bill that would move it in the right direction. And at the end of the day, a body of our elected officials should be the ones debating these solutions and ultimately making such decisions.

However, their priorities have been elsewhere. Recently Congressional leaders used every ounce of power and every minute on their clock to shove the Inflation Reduction Act through before a scheduled recess. That means it will be a while before they can turn their attention back to this matter, and in their absence, the other team is gunning for a power-grab.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a federal agency made up of unelected bureaucrats. Purportedly they exist to protect “consumers and competition by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices through law enforcement, advocacy, and education without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.” But at the moment, the agency is run by a full-on socialist who hates the market, hates industry, and has it out for the tech sector in particular.

This week, the FTC announced it was “exploring rules to crack down on harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security.” They also began seeking public comment on the “harms stemming from commercial surveillance and whether new rules are needed to protect people’s privacy and information” under an Advance Notice of Proposed Rule making.

Netchoice, a free market tech trade association (where I am a Fellow) released a statement reacting to the announcement, saying “Notably, the two Republican commissioners dissented against the proposal. This latest power grab by FTC Chair Lina Khan represents an unauthorized and ill-advised rulemaking process that ignores the will of the people and undermines the ongoing efforts of Congress to address this issue in a constitutional manner.”

Many expressed concern over this power grab by the FTC, and it’s pretty obvious why anyone who supports free markets and capitalism would be weary of Chairman Khan’s FTC inserting itself in the market through this vehicle.

The Referee
Fortunately, there is a referee in this whole situation, and in recent years, it’s shaping up to be a pretty good one: the US Supreme Court.

Recently, SCOTUS handed down an epic decision in a case known as West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. While this case revolved around a separate matter, the implications of that decision could have monumental impacts on others in the same vein.

The case revolved around policies the EPA was setting in the market based on an old law—an old law that did not specifically give this agency the power to make such laws. As The Washington Post wrote at the time the ruling would “tackle to what extent federal agencies can make decisions on how to implement laws for issues of major national significance, including rules about vaccine mandates, eviction moratoriums and tech regulations, like data privacy and net neutrality.”

In that case, SCOTUS ultimately ruled that the agency could not make up authority not explicitly given to it by Congress and basically reasserted what all constitutionalists already believed to be true: Congress has the power to make laws–not unelected bureaucrats. Neither can those bureaucrats just assert such power when Congress isn’t doing what they want.

More importantly, in its ruling, the court invoked the major questions doctrine.

This important legal precedent instructs judges to evaluate statutes to avoid a “recurring problem: agencies asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.”

That’s not the only time this court has brought up the major questions doctrine in recent years, continuing to bake the principle into our law: Congress makes laws, not unelected bureaucrats at federal agencies.

So there’s reason to hope that, even if the FTC does attempt to seize control of the market through rule-making on consumer data privacy, the Supreme Court would likely strike down such laws as unconstitutional based on the major questions doctrine. Checkmate. Or touchdown. What have you.

And that’s the game. At stake: the free market and internet as we know it. Place your bets.

 

[marsh]

Potato Shortage Emerges In Idaho As Prices Surge At Supermarkets | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Potato Shortage Emerges In Idaho As Prices Surge At Supermarkets

SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 04:00 PM

The next food insecurity problem that may impact the way Americans eat could be an emerging potato shortage that began last year when yields were depressed due to a heatwave, according to Boise State Public Radio.

"I'm not sure if you remember last June, but we had some just unbelievably hot temperatures here in Idaho. It did a number on our potato crop," Jamey Higham, president and CEO of the Idaho Potato Commission, told the Idaho-based media outlet. "And so, our yields were significantly down last year."

Boise State Public Radio pointed out that last year's potato crop cycle should last through August, though the lack of the starchy vegetable has already presented consumers with higher prices at the supermarket.

"There is not a gap. There are just less potatoes being shipped right now than there normally are this time of year because of the shorter supply that we started the season with," said Higham.

He said Idaho produced the most potatoes in the county last year, and what happens to crop yields in the state will influence prices across the country.

"As the fresh market goes, the grocery stores – your Albertsons, Walmart, WinCo, that stuff – it is not just Idaho that's having high prices right now. It's the other states as well."

Higham expects potato prices to remain high through the rest of the year.

"I don't anticipate these prices staying high long term. And once harvest gets underway, it'll get back down into a better spot. But I do expect prices to be strong all year this year."

The local media outlet noted: "But it is still rather bizarre to be in Idaho of all places, and there's a shortage of potatoes."

... and all this means is more pressure on consumers' pocketbooks who've seen grocery inflation hit the highest levels since 1979.

Another shortage that could potentially emerge is beer as northern Mexico runs out of water. If you didn't know, Mexico is responsible for 76% of all the beer imported by the US last year (most of it's produced in the northern part of the country).

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUv7vLAWIz0

A Wild Warning Of Drought & Famine You Need To See


The Economic Ninja

A Wild Warning Of Drought & Famine You Need To See. The Rhine river Germany is drying up and what has emerged is amazing. The hunger stones are a warning of severe drought and famine from the year 1616. Don't wait for a Walmart food shortage or empty shelves to prepare when SHTF 2022.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article264446131.html

Water levels in rivers across Europe are dropping in the historic drought, revealing “hunger stones” carved with centuries-old warnings of famine and hardship. PETR DAVID JOSEK AP

Water levels have dropped in major rivers across Europe as the region suffers under a historic drought. In those dry riverbeds, centuries-old warning messages have emerged, locals report. The “horrifying” boulders are known as “Hungersteine,” or “Hunger Stones,” local German reporter Olaf Koens said in an Aug. 11 tweet. One of these stones is embedded in the Elbe River, which runs from the mountains of Czechia through Germany to the North Sea, POLITICO journalist Aitor Hernández-Morales tweeted the same day.

The stone, dating back to a drought in 1616, is once again visible in the dry riverbed, Hernández-Morales said. The warning reads, “Wenn du mich seehst, dann weine” – “If you see me, weep.” “Hunger stones” like this one were used as “hydrological landmarks” across central Europe, NPR reported when the stones last surfaced during a 2018 drought.

These stones are “chiselled with the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history,” a team of Czech researchers wrote in a 2013 study. “The basic inscriptions warn of the consequences of drought. It expressed that drought had brought a bad harvest, lack of food, high prices and hunger for poor people.”

The stones commemorate historic droughts, the researchers said. The recent droughts in Europe once again made visible the "Hunger Stones" in some Czech and German rivers. These stones were used to mark desperately low river levels that would forecast famines. This one, in the Elbe river, is from 1616 and says: "If you see me, cry" pic.twitter.com/uJTapWXN5y — Shoko Asahara Appreciation Consortium (@Citizen09372364) August 11, 2022 Europe’s current drought is certainly historic. Scientists at the European Drought Observatory said that the drought is on track to be the worst one in 500 years, Sky News reported.

According to the drought observatory, 47% of Europe is in drought warning conditions, meaning the soil has a moisture deficit. Another 17% is on alert, meaning the vegetation in the area is being affected by the dry conditions. Major rivers in Germany, Italy, and England – the Rhine, Po, and Thames,
respectively – are drying out, DW reported.

The outlet reported that rivers are “too dry, too low, and too warm,” which has consequences on wildlife, the economy and people. Water levels in the Rhine River are about half of their usual depth for this time of the year, with some sections having even lower water levels, DW reported.

This has made shipping on the river five times more expensive because cargo ships must carry less weight to make sure they do not run aground, Reuters reported. In Italy, the prime minister said that the country is experiencing, “the most serious water crisis of the last 70 years.”

The drought comes after months of high temperatures and little rainfall, The Washington Post reported. Human-induced climate change has also contributed to the “intensity, frequency and duration of heat events” and amplified droughts, the outlet reported. According to the European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, “Droughts have become our summer reality,” he tweeted.

Italy, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and France are all struggling under the drought, EuroNews and Sky News. Conditions aren’t expected to improve any time soon, with the European Drought Observatory telling Sky News that, “we have estimated a worsening of the situation in most of Europe.”

 

[marsh]

Michael Yon @MichaelYon
Aug 13, 2022 at 1:10pm
Cholera is Easy to Defeat
13 August 2022
Holland

We know what causes cholera. How it spreads. How to defeat it. These things have been known since the 1800s. I read a great book on Cholera called “Ghost Map.” Worth the time.

Cholera is super-deadly and even more super-easy to defeat.

If you heed advice from this this short video, you will beat cholera — and other waterborne killers — like a dusty rug. Cholera follows famine like hookers follow armies.

View: https://youtu.be/jG1VNSCsP5Q
4:28 min

The Story of Cholera
Dec 10, 2011

Global Health Media Project

A short animated film produced by the Global Health Media Project Global Health Media Project in collaboration with Yoni Goodman Yoni Goodman's Site.

This film makes visible the invisible cholera germs as a young boy shows how to help the sick and guides his village in preventing the spread of cholera.

The film shows how to make the basic homemade oral rehydration solution using sugar, salt , and safe water as these items were felt to be most widely available. However, a solution prepared with a readymade ORS packet is the first choice if supplies are available.

 

[marsh]

(Italy - electricity costs)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558513040944930816

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1558513040944930816
1:45 min

(Netherlands)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558449441916567552

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1558449441916567552
2:18 min

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558370092739866626

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1558370092739866626
1:10 min

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558177730516385793

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1558177730516385793
.14 min


(Germany)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558521331041259520

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1558521331041259520
.35 min

(Scotland - electricity rates)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558450952948031491

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1558450952948031491
.26 min

(Sierra Leone - inflation)

 

[marsh]

Why Greens Can't Keep Angry Farmers Down on the Farm, in the Netherlands or Globally

The Hague: Environmentally sensitive Dutch farmers are rebelling against government elites' more draconian green diktats -- and they're inspiring protests by other farmers across Europe. By Michael Sh

www.realclearinvestigations.com

Why Greens Can't Keep Angry Farmers Down on the Farm, in the Netherlands or Globally

By Michael Shellenberger, RealClearInvestigations
August 11, 2022

ALMERE, Netherlands — Farmers in the Netherlands reduced nitrogen pollution by nearly 70% through a voluntary system. But the government says that is not enough and is demanding that they cut pollution by another 50% by 2030.

By the Dutch government’s own estimates, 11,200 farms out of the roughly 35,000 dedicated to dairy and livestock would have to close under its policies; 17,600 farmers would have to reduce livestock; and total livestock would need to be reduced by one-half to one-third. The Dutch government has demanded that animal farming stop entirely in many places. Of the over $25.7 billion the government has set aside to reduce pollution, just $1 billion is for technological innovation, with most of the rest for buying out farmers.

This effort has sparked a fierce backlash among Dutch farmers, who argue that the government seems more interested in reducing animal agriculture than in finding solutions that protect the food supply and their livelihoods.

“Why would you buy out farmers or reduce livestock when you have the possibility to invest in innovation?” asked Caroline van der Plas, the founder and sole Member of Parliament for the Farmer-Citizen Movement party, or BBB in Dutch. “The car industry innovated for the past 40 years. There aren’t fewer cars and the cars we have are cleaner. We even have electrical cars. That's what I think is so crazy. Why don't we treat the farmers just like the car industry? Give them time to develop solutions or innovate? We can produce food in a much more efficient and cleaner way if we do that. And it's much cheaper also then by buying out farmers.”

Farmer protests in the Netherlands come at a time of heightened global food insecurity created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major wheat exporter.

The Netherlands is the largest exporter of meat in Europe and the second largest exporter of food overall by economic value in the world, after the United States, a remarkable feat for a nation half the size of Indiana. Farm exports generate nearly $100 billion a year in revenue. Experts attribute the nation’s success to its farmers’ embrace of technological innovation.

The Netherlands is just one of the countries where governments are pushing for sharp limits on farming. Canada, for example, is seeking a 30% reduction in nitrogen pollution by 2030. While the Canadian government says it is not mandating fertilizer use reductions, only pollution reductions, experts agree that such a radical pollution decline in such a short period will only be possible through reducing fertilizer use, and thus food production. The cost to farmers would be between $10 billion and $48 billion.

“If you push farmers against the wall with no wiggle room, I don’t know where this will end up,” said Gunter Jochum, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association. “Just look at what’s happening in Europe, in the Netherlands. They’ve had enough of it.”

Where the proposed Dutch restrictions are driven by land and air pollution concerns, the Canadian restrictions are driven by the desire for strong action on climate change. But greenhouse gas emissions from farming pale compared to those from energy. Where carbon emissions from farming in Canada rose 87% to under 8 metric tons between 1990 and 2020, emissions from oil and gas production tripled, adding 69 metric tons of carbon dioxide, during the same period. With the pollution, however, came more food. Canada’s spring wheat yields increased over 40% during the period.

The most dramatic consequences of government intervention occurred in Sri Lanka, where a 2021 fertilizer ban led to a massive reduction in yields, sparking starvation and an economic crisis that brought down the government in July. Because agriculture is a source of greenhouse gases, the efforts by the governments and the backlash they are fomenting may be a harbinger of a global crisis.

Why are politicians being so dogmatic, in the view of their critics, at a time of rising food insecurity? After all, it’s obvious the strategy is not working – not even for them. In the Netherlands, after farmers blocked highways, dumped manure on roads, and started fires in protests across the country, they won the support of the broader public. If elections were held today, the governing parties would lose a significant number of members in parliament while Van der Plas’ Farmer-Citizen party might win enough to form a new government, with Van der Plas as prime minister. In Canada, the federal government has sparked a backlash from the regional governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan. And now, Dutch farmers are inspiring protests by other farmers across Europe, including in Germany, Poland, and Italy.

What, exactly, is going on?

'The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness'

To better understand the situation, I visited the Netherlands in July, interviewing farmers, government officials, and agricultural experts. One of those experts was Dr. Rudy Rabbinge, Professor Emeritus in Sustainable Development and Food Security at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Rabbinge, 75 years old, has worked all of his life as a farmer, scientist, and cofounder, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, of the Green Revolution, which brought modern farming technologies to poor and developing nations starting in the 1960s. Speaking rapidly in excellent English, Rabbinge told me how he had converted his own family farm into a nature preserve, which he has shown off to hundreds of visiting dignitaries over the decades. Rabbinge advocates for “nature sparing” farming techniques to increase yields, and thus reduce the amount of land needed for farming, thereby creating more land available for nature conservation through the use of fertilizer and other chemical inputs.

“My neighbor, a dairy farmer, does his job very well,” says Rabbinge. “And we are right next to each other. I invite people to come see it. Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, came to visit, and together we started the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa. But in the Netherlands we have ministers who say that they are the boss and know the best policy, but often they have no experience, and leave the work to the people in the ministry.” None had come to visit, he said, since the controversy began.

Rabbinge traces the current crisis back to 2006 when the Dutch government ended the system of “mineral bookkeeping” he helped to create. Under that system, farmers measured nitrogen inputs in the form of feed and fertilizer and measured nitrogen outputs in the form of milk and meat. From that they could calculate how much was escaping as nitrogen pollution. Farmers took various measures to reduce pollution and paid fines for exceeding their limits. Between 1995 and 2006, this system, which set targets but let farmers decide how to meet them, slashed pollution by 70%.

This success ended when farmers revolted against government efforts to align its system with more prescriptive European Union regulations. Spooked by radicalized farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture halted the system of mineral bookkeeping. As a result, the continuous reduction in nitrogen emissions also ended. “It would have been better had they stuck with the system,” said Rabbinge, who blamed extremes on both sides – green-minded government ministers and radical anti-government farmers.

There are two forms of nitrogen pollution harmful to people and the environment: nitrogen oxide (NOx), a compound of nitrogen and oxygen, and ammonia (NH3), a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. Nitrogen oxide tends to come from industrial emissions, while ammonia mostly comes from farm animal manure and synthetic fertilizers. Data from the government show that ammonia flatlined after 2006.

Another pivot point happened a decade later. In 2015, the Dutch government introduced an emissions trading scheme, which would allow farmers to buy and sell from each other rights to pollute in the present in exchange for reductions in the future. In 2016, environmental groups sued the Dutch government. In 2018, the EU Court ruled against the Dutch government and said the nation’s pollution-permitting scheme was inadequate, and in 2019, a Dutch high court sided with the EU.

In response, the lower house in the Dutch parliament asked for an external committee of experts, including Rabbinge, to advise the government. Rabbinge and his colleagues proposed reviving the system of mineral bookkeeping. The government rejected it. “Our recommendations were never seriously considered,” he says.

The government sees it differently. “We made a promise 20 years ago to take care of our nature preserves,” a senior staff person who works for the governing coalition in the Dutch Parliament told me. “We never did because having a strong economy was more important.”

But Rabbinge stressed that if farming is done efficiently, it can significantly reduce negative side effects. “For example, you could produce the same 15 billion liters of milk that the Netherlands currently produces while reducing by 50% the amount of land, by reducing by 80% the amount of pesticide, and by 70% the amount of nitrogen pollution.”

Government officials latched on to hard targets and regulations. Rabbinge calls this the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” whereby bureaucrats lawyers and economists, in particular, tend to want to see hard-and-fast rules rather than the incremental and iterative approach of mineral bookkeeping and the similar "4R" program in Canada.

Consider the map published by the Dutch government in June. Government officials no doubt meant for it to be helpful. It showed which areas needed to reduce emissions by very specific amounts, which ranged between 12% and 95% depending on the location. But it alarmed farmers and, according to independent scientists, was based on false precision. Scientists simply don’t have a good enough understanding of the sources of nitrogen pollution to create such a detailed map.

One of the people who raised concerns about the accuracy of government maps of pollution is a microbiologist named Han Lindeboom, a member of the green-oriented D66 party that had pushed for strict pollution limits. Lindeboom says he debunked government claims about one of the sources of pollution. “I knew there was no ammonia coming from the North Sea and that they had simply added ammonia to their model. I went to the North Holland nature areas and found no critical excess of nitrogen pollution. Still, [government scientists] didn’t want to give in.”

Lindeboom says he wrote up a report and presented it to members of Parliament from the D66 party, but they ignored it.

In other words, the government is focused narrowly on shutting down farms near nature areas, even though the polluting nitrogen mineral deposits in the nature areas may have come from elsewhere. “You see that very often with policymakers and economists,” said Rabbinge. “They believe they know very well how society functions but don’t do experiments to test whether the outcomes of their models are in line with their simulations. As a result of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness you think you know things you don’t know. If you think pollution in a nature area is coming from a nearby stable, you might be wrong, because the pollution might be coming from higher levels in the air, and settling elsewhere.”

Rabbinge went on. “Economists and policymakers believe in the outcomes of models that have never been verified and are taken up by people sitting in an office in the Hague. They don’t know what’s happening in the stable or the field.”

Jeroen van Maanen, 44, loves cows. The windowsill in his kitchen in the Dutch countryside is cluttered with trophies he has won for his prize cows. “I have a lot more than this,” he explains. “These are from only from the last years, 2017, 18, and 19.”

Van Maanen is a dairy and beef farmer who has become radicalized by his government’s proposed crackdown on nitrogen pollution. We walk through his barn. “We milk about 130 cows. Sometimes my kids help but I got divorced five years ago, and so they live in the village most of the times.”

Van Maanen says he was born to be a farmer. “I was a very shy boy till I was 12 or 14. And the only reason I started talking was so I could talk about cows.”

At the same time, said Van Maanen, “It's not an easy life. There’s a lot of negative parts. In the past, you were just farming for high results.”

Back in the barn, Van Maanen said, “Now, there's demands for the environment or for the government. Every year there’s more. And it's increasing your costs.

They say the consumer wants it but the consumer’s not paying for it. The prices on the shelf are the same amount. People say they want small family farms. They say, ‘The farms are getting too big.’ Well, we had a ****ing system that made them get bigger.”

He continued: “You know, a farmer isn't a farmer for money. It’s the way of life. As long as there's people on earth, they need food. We need farmers for that. It’s a very responsible job. And I think every farmer in the whole world is doing the best he can, but it's not appreciated anymore. People don't really understand or respect farmers anymore.”

I told Rabbinge about what Van Maanen said. “Farming is not just a job,” Rabbinge stressed. “It's a way of life. And if you take that away, then you're taking away a lot of motivation to live. That's why you see more farmers killing themselves.” Indeed, researchers find higher suicide rates for farmers in Europe, Australia, the U.S., and India in what appears to be a global phenomenon.

Part 1 of 2

 

[marsh]

Part 2 of 2

Farmer-Citizen Party leader Caroline van der Plas and other farmer advocates believe the push to crack down on farming does not just stem from national governments. She said many are influenced by the World Economic Forum, which hosts a famous annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, for heads of state, think tank researchers, and environmentalists.

Both the Canadian and Dutch Prime Ministers have enjoyed close ties to the World Economic Forum. In 2017, WEF chief Klaus Schwab said, “We penetrate the cabinets” of governments, particularly singling out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau and I know that half of his cabinet, or even more than half of his cabinet, are actually [WEF] Young Global Leaders.” In 2021, WEF announced that the Netherlands would host the Global Coordinating Secretariat of WEF’s Food Innovation Hubs.

But it’s not so much that the WEF is the puppet master behind Dutch and Canadian government crackdowns and more that all three are influenced by environmental groups operating under the sway of pro-scarcity dogma, including agroecology, a kind of organic farming.

In the WEF’s founding document it cites as an inspiration the seminal 1972 report commissioned by the Club of Rome, “Limits to Growth,” which claimed the world would run out of silver, mercury, and tungsten by 2012, and see per capita incomes decline by 2020. Last year WEF published an article that claimed:

“Through natural processes and avoiding chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, agroecology reduces the environmental harm of food production while stabilizing yields.”

I asked Rabbinge if the experts were under the sway of 18th century British economist Robert Thomas Malthus, who wrongly predicted that humans were doomed to periodic overpopulation and starvation.

“Malthus was one of these economists who was extrapolating to his models,” he said. “He neglected the negative feedbacks [e.g. lower yields, crop failures] which always take place. Same thing with the Club of Rome which published the ‘Limits to Growth’ report in 1972. They eliminated negative feedbacks. But those negative feedbacks exist and result in innovation allowing higher outputs and fewer inputs.”

Rabbinge called organic farming “a religion.” Advocates oppose chemical fertilizers because, they say, they pose a danger to living systems. It’s a philosophy from Rudolf Steiner that is 100 years old. “As a result of the synthetic fertilizer ban in Sri Lanka there was yield reduction between 30 and 50% which created a shortage of food," said Rabbinge. “People say we should do without chemical fertilizers but if we did that on the world scale then we could only support two or three not 8 billion or ten billion which we expect in 2050. So they are creating a situation of chronic hunger.”

Misplaced concreteness and Malthusian pessimism are thus two sides of the same coin. “Decades ago we simulated yields of 11 to 12 tons of wheat per hectare,” said Rabbinge. “At the time they were less than five. People said achieving yields so high was ridiculous. Well, today they are between 10 and 11.”

Misplaced concreteness orients policymakers toward what they can do, reduce pollution, not toward what farmers can do, increase yields while reducing inputs.

Agroecology, for its part, provides green cover for what is ultimately a philosophy hostile to innovation and growth. “The organics advocates are against science-based agriculture, external inputs, and high productivity agriculture,” said Rabbinge. “They say with low productivity you can feed the world, which of course is impossible. They also say there are too many people. But if you want a lower population the best way is not through repression but by stimulating growth so both parents have an income sufficient to feed themselves and send their children to school. If you do that, you see that the population come down immediately.”

Malthusian ideology and misplaced concreteness are only made possible because elites, from heads of state to government ministers, spend many days every year jet-setting around the world to speak at conferences in places like Davos and Aspen, and spend little to no time visiting with farmers like Rabbinge and Van Maanen. If they did, they would not only gain greater empathy, they would also see that there are good solutions right in front of them.

“To give you a typical example,” said Rabbinge, “farmers who would like to reduce ammonia pollution know that the fluid component of the dung can be separated from the structural material like the straw. If you separate them within two hours you can avoid the creation of ammonia. But doing this is forbidden by law because the fertilizer has an animal origin, and raises the risk of disease. But farmers can prevent that risk. And so the policymakers, detached from reality, say they know better than the farmers what to do and treat them like children. The government has no empathy with the farmer community.”

Within a few weeks of the farmer protests, public support had turned in their favor. Dutch citizens showed their solidarity with farmers by flying the national flag upside down and waving red kerchiefs like the kinds worn by Dutch farming women in the past.

Polling shows that, were the elections held today, the Farmer-Citizen Party go from having one to 20 seats in Parliament while the ruling party, the liberal conservative party, or VVD, would go from having 34 seats to 21. “We would be the second biggest party in Holland,” said Van der Plas. “I never could have imagined last year when I was voted in parliament, that this would happen so quickly and so rapidly.”

I asked Van Maanen how he felt when he saw so much public support for the farmers. “It was great,” he said. “You could go on a hike, you could go on the highway, you could go on the beach, and there was support. I'm not nostalgic, but it felt like American or Canadian soldiers at the end of the war, you know? There were people all over the place waving and putting their thumbs up. No one actually knew why we were there. But they could all feel the feeling.”

I asked Van der Plas if she felt her party was ready to govern. “We are ready,” she said. “We were building our party from the moment we were voted into parliament. But when you are the biggest? Let's see if it happens. If there were elections, and we were the biggest party, that would mean I would be a candidate for prime minister. That's really crazy for me to say this. I think, ‘Am I ready for this? Am I ready to lead such a big party with everything that comes with it? All the people you have to hire?’ Yeah, it makes me a little bit nervous. I can say that.”

Van der Plas said she would act to reduce the EU’s scope of work. “I would like the EU to go back to how it was when it was formed. Cooperation between a few countries on trade and transportation and economics. It’s too big right now. We are a sovereign country. Let's keep it to trade and economics. And, I would say, quit the World Economic Forum. We have the EU. We already have 27 countries we can cooperate with. Why do we need all these CEOs and global leaders and young professionals? Choices we make about climate or nitrogen or immigration should be discussed in Parliament, not by the World Economic Forum.”

In late July, representatives from the government and from farmer organizations asked a former government minister, Johan Remkes, to serve as a mediator for negotiations. Last Friday, they met for the first time.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized for the publication of the now-infamous map saying, “Communication needs improvement.” But he refused to budge on the government’s goal to reduce nitrogen pollution 50% by 2030.

In response, radical farmers pledged more protests. “You can prepare for the toughest demonstrations FDF [Farmers Defense Front] has ever conducted,” warned the organization’s leader. “We’re definitely going to escalate.” That same day, police arrested a man accused of dumping waste that contained asbestos, and setting it on fire.

Lost in the drama is the fact that the Netherlands remains a model for the world in not only producing abundant food but also for reducing pollution.

 

[marsh]

‘Emotion and pain’ as Dutch farmers fight back against huge cuts to livestock

Farmers express fury at government drive to tackle nitrogen pollution through a major reduction in numbers of pigs, cattle and chickens in the Netherlands

www.theguardian.com

‘Emotion and pain’ as Dutch farmers fight back against huge cuts to livestock

Farmers express fury at government drive to tackle nitrogen pollution through a major reduction in numbers of pigs, cattle and chickens in the Netherlands

Senay Boztas
Thu 21 Jul 2022 01.30 EDT

Along roads and bridges in the Netherlands, people are hanging the Dutch flag upside down. It is a sign of solidarity with the Dutch farming sector, which will also be upturned by a radical 30% reduction in livestock numbers, a move being made to meet environmental targets.

In recent weeks, farmers have blocked off food distribution centres with hundreds of tractors, blockaded major roads and turned up outside regional assemblies and ministers’ homes to protest. One late-night protest ended with a police officer accused of firing a gun at a 16-year-old farmer’s son.

It comes as authorities in the Netherlands have released details of the cuts in ammonia, nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide needed to protect more than 150 nature reserves in the country. And it is the farming sector that is going to bear the brunt of emissions cuts.

“This is not a democracy any more: it’s a dictatorship,” says Jeroen van Maanen, a farmer with 130 cows in Zeewolde, central Netherlands, who has joined the protests.

Manure, when mixed with urine, releases ammonia, a nitrogen compound. If it enters lakes and streams via farm runoff, excessive nitrogen can damage sensitive natural habitats. The country has the seventh biggest livestock population in the EU but is comparatively small in size. This gives it Europe’s highest livestock density, with insufficient land to make good use of the waste from more than 100 million cattle, chickens and pigs.

Van Maanen says farmers are being unfairly targeted: “If you come for us and our families, you come at a farmer’s soul,” he says. “We’ve proposed all kinds of solutions but we are ignored. And finally, they come up with a plan for a reduction in livestock. No other sector has reduced nitrogen in the last 30 years [as much as] we have. This is why there’s a lot of emotion and pain.”

The latest government coalition has not, so far, been dissuaded by the protests from its drive to tackle the country’s environmental problems. After a landmark court ruling in 2019, it needs to reduce nitrogen emissions in order to allow building projects to go-ahead in the country.

There is no choice, says Rudi Buis, spokesperson for the agriculture ministry. “Even if you stop with the policy tomorrow, the problem doesn’t go away. If you want to build a house or a road, a lawyer will say: first reduce nitrogen and then you get a licence. We have to do something. It’s not a luxury. It has to happen.”

This is why, he says, the farming sector was addressed first in parliamentary briefings which asked provincial governments to come up with detailed plans for reductions within a year.

Farmers are furious that they have been singled out, says Jan Brok, vice-chair of BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB), a rural political party which has made huge gains in the polls. “All farmers in the Netherlands do something that releases nitrogen, but there is an unfairness: currently it’s only the farmers who have to reduce emissions but not the rest of industry,” he says.

“We know exactly what allowance each farmer has and what they produce, while a lot of industrial companies don’t need permission – but they emit nitrogen.”

According to documents released on Wednesday as a result of MP questions, finance ministry calculations suggest more than half of livestock farmers will have to stop or slim down. The government plans, reports the Financieele Dagblad, will affect five times more farmers than is strictly necessary.

Netherlands announces €25bn plan to radically reduce livestock numbers

The LTO farming union has refused to interact with a new government negotiator, Johan Remkes, saying the timeline is impossible and too focused on agriculture. “A country-level reduction of 50% in 2030 is simply unfeasible, and will have disastrous effects on not just agriculture but the economic, social and cultural viability of rural Netherlands,” said LTO spokesman Wytse Sonnema.

Many farmers do accept the need for change but fear the effect on their livelihoods. “A lot of people in the cities don’t see the link between what they eat every day and what we as farmers do,” says Alex Datema, an organic dairy farmer with 110 milk cows in Groningen.

Thousands of farmers at The Hague, Netherlands, 19 February 2020, during a protest against the livestock reduction plan.

Thousands of farmers at The Hague, Netherlands, 19 February 2020, during a protest against the livestock reduction plan. Photograph: Peter de Jong/AP
Natasja Oerlemans, head of the food team at WWF Netherlands, stresses that while the charity is keen for farmers to have a good income and positive social role, this does not mean a high livestock density. “This is the only country in the world where manure is regarded as a waste product instead of a valuable source of nutrients and soil health,” she says.

“We export 70%, keep all the rubbish, and the gains are all for private companies. It’s a system that’s not sustainable and can’t go on. We [the Netherlands] can be considered as a wake-up call for what happens with very intensive farming systems that don’t take into account the environmental conditions they have to operate in.”

Sign up for the Animals farmed monthly update to get a roundup of the biggest farming and food stories across the world and keep up with our investigations. You can send us your stories and thoughts at animalsfarmed@theguardian.com

The climate disaster is here, with temperatures soaring across Europe, the US and much of the northern hemisphere – and scorching summers becoming the norm. As scientific predictions become reality, the emergency is becoming palpable, indisputable and widespread, with dramatic weather events reported with an ever-increasing frequency. Such patterns have disastrous, far-reaching effects –for the natural world, global food supplies, health, infrastructure and more.

UN chief António Guterres has likened the crisis to ''collective suicide". The Guardian is one group of people who are trying to avert such a scenario, with daily reporting on the emergency. We are calling on you to support us, to ensure that even more people are made aware of the dangers — and opportunities — of this moment.

 

[marsh]

(Netherlands)

Farmers' highway protest life-threatening and unacceptable: Dutch PM

Prime Minister Mark Rutte finds the “protest actions by a small group of farmers” on the highways “unacceptable” and life-threatening, he said on Twitter. “There are plenty of other ways to express your dissatisfaction within the law. Most farmers do that too.”

nltimes.nl

THURSDAY, 28 JULY 2022 - 11:55

Farmers' highway protest life-threatening and unacceptable: Dutch PM

Prime Minister Mark Rutte finds the “protest actions by a small group of farmers” on the highways “unacceptable” and life-threatening, he said on Twitter. “There are plenty of other ways to express your dissatisfaction within the law. Most farmers do that too.”

Farmers dumped hay bales, manure, and car tires on several highways overnight. In some places, there is also asbestos in the rubbish. On the A7 between Groningen and Drachten, there was an accident involving several vehicles due to the waste dumping. No one got hurt.

“Willingly endangering others, damaging our infrastructure, and threatening people who help clean up crosses all lines,” Rutte tweeted. He expressed his support for the Rijkswaterstaat and the police “who are working with all their might to limit the consequences of these actions” and called on people who receive threats to report them to the police.

Rutte is on vacation but says he is in contact with the most involved Ministers. Several Ministers have expressed their concerns in written statements and called for an end to illegal actions, but other than that, they’ve been barely visible.

A spokesperson for Rutte said that there are “constant” consultations in the Cabinet. “It just doesn’t happen in front of everyone.” The Ministers “monitor and take action where necessary.”

The Ministry of Justice and Security also said that “a lot of” consultations are happening with the police, Public Prosecution Service, and municipalities, among others. A spokesperson said that it is “very clear” that the government finds these actions unacceptable and that “you cannot get away with it.” The fact that Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius hasn’t been physically visible has to do with the summer recess, he said.

The Ministry of Defense said when asked that it received no requests for help from the armed forces to clean up the mess on the highways. According to the law, the Ministry of Defense is only allowed to help if commercial pirates are unable to do so. “If there is a request at all, I do not expect Defense to be able to respond,” said a spokesperson.

D66 leader Jan Paternotte believes the Cabinet should draw a "hard line" to keep the Netherlands safe. He said civilians are being deliberately endangered, and activists are "constantly" committing threats and intimidation. "Let's really stop calling this 'demonstrating.' This is terrorizing."

Farmers' action groups Farmers Defense Force (FDF) and Agractie said the government could stop the farmers’ actions on and around the highways at any time by adjusting its nitrogen plans. “We don’t like the actions either, so the government has to start moving now,” said Erik Luiten of Agractie.

FDF chairman Mark van den Oever also said it’s time for the government to act.

“Because you notice that the farmers are no longer holding back and that the actions are escalating further. The government must immediately end the actions by scrapping the nitrogen letter from the table.”

“Accidents can, of course, never be justified,’ Van Oever said. “But as long as it’s a little bit of damage, I don’t find it that bad.”

FDF and Agractie claim not to be involved in the protest actions. “We understand the frustration of many farmers, and they express it. But we only call for demonstrations within the limits of the law,” said Luiten of Agractie.

Dirk Bruins of agricultural and horticultural organization LTO Noord disapproves of the new actions on the highways. “I am also very angry and disappointed in how the Cabinet is tackling the nitrogen policy,” he said on Twitter. “We are addressing politicians and campaigning for attention. But what happened today is not acceptable. Those who dumped rubbish on the highway today: take responsibility!”

 

[marsh]

Western Elites Blame the People for Resisting Failed Green Policies

The energy crisis in Europe is going to get way worse. But leaders are blaming the people instead of their own failed green policies.

www.dailysignal.com

Western Elites Blame the People for Resisting Failed Green Policies
Douglas Blair / @DouglasKBlair / August 11, 2022

COMMENTARY BY
Douglas Blair@DouglasKBlair

Europe is in a world of hurt when it comes to energy.

News outlet Die Welt reported last Sunday that the German government was preparing to deal with backlash from angry citizens who will need to deal with a massive energy crisis come winter.

According to the outlet, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told news broadcaster ARD in July that skyrocketing heating costs are a “powder keg for society.”

As the war in Ukraine continues to rage and failed green policies contribute to weak domestic energy production, the government has been forced to reckon with the fact that there will be shortages when things get cold.

Current proposals to save energy include keeping streetlights dark at night to requiring buildings keep lower temperatures. And, of course, begging citizens to use less electricity at home.

To aid in this endeavor, the government announced a new levy on gas that will likely cost the average German family of four 500 euros ($507) to 1,000 euros ($1,030) per year.

Germany isn’t the only country in Europe that’s feeling the heat with energy usage.

Spain announced earlier in August that it would regulate what the temperature for public and commercial buildings could be set at.

Amid a sweltering heat wave across the continent, the Spanish government forbid businesses from setting air conditioners below 81 degrees. That temperature control policy will extend into the frigid winter when businesses will be banned from heating their offices past 66 degrees.

But for as much as these policies are supposed to be a “we’re all in this together” sort of solution to the energy crisis, it’s obvious they will disproportionately impact the common man.

Does anyone really think that Europe’s elite will suffer from suffocating heat waves or bitterly cold nights? Of course not. They’ll be just fine.

It’s average citizens who will suffer when energy rationing happens, most among them the poorest whose homes might have poor insulation. But rather than address these genuine concerns from the citizenry, elites criticize them.

One need not look all the way to Europe. It’s happening in America, too.
Stories abound of politicians and celebrities who decry the hoi polloi for having the gall to fly in planes or drive cars getting caught doing something far worse for the environment.

Microsoft founder and climate alarmist Bill Gates routinely chastises Americans for their evil, Mother Earth-killing ways while simultaneously taking private planes to an endless number of climate conferences.

America’s illustrious Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who infamously told Americans worried about ballooning gas prices to just go out and buy an electric car and abandoned his post for so-called paternity leave during the worst supply chain crisis the U.S. has seen in decades, is also shockingly hypocritical.

In March 2021, Buttigieg claimed that a mileage tax, where Americans would be charged based on how far they drove, showed “a lot of promise.”

“If we believe in that so-called user-pays principle, the idea that part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive,” Buttigieg said. “The gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it; it’s not anymore. A so-called vehicle miles traveled tax or a mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be the way to do it.”

Buttigieg, of course, doesn’t use those icky cars to go anywhere. He bikes!
As Heritage Foundation experts have demonstrated, a mileage tax would result in more taxes for the average American family, not the ultra-wealthy.

Heritage Foundation policy analyst David Ditch argues that “even if the gas tax were to be eventually phased out, supporters of a mileage tax are clear that the main goal of the tax is to bring in more revenue than the gas tax currently provides.”

“Either way, that spells a tax increase, and one that will disproportionately hit blue-collar workers who can’t telecommute,” Ditch continued.

At the end of the day, Buttigieg and the German Bundestag are doing the same thing: blaming their citizens for failed green policies that hurt more than they help.

The people can’t roll over and accept these assaults on their standard of living from bureaucrats and elites who don’t even practice what they preach.

Dutch farmers in the Netherlands are protesting those failed green policies in their country, and they should serve as a model for those in the West sick of being blamed by elites for not radically upending their lives for the climate.
If the people don’t push back, we’ll be left out in the cold.

 

[marsh]

(Canada)

The Buffalo Ep. 4: Battling Trudeau’s Assault on Carbon 16:20 min

The Buffalo Ep. 4: Battling Trudeau’s Assault on Carbon
Rebel News Published August 13, 2022
As prime minister, Justin Trudeau has done nothing but suppress the development of Canadians, especially our ethical oil production.

The Buffalo Ep. 4: Battling Trudeau’s Assault on Carbon

As prime minister, Justin Trudeau has done nothing but suppress the development of Canadians, especially our ethical oil production.

www.rebelnews.com

The Buffalo Ep. 4: Battling Trudeau’s Assault on Carbon

As prime minister, Justin Trudeau has done nothing but suppress the development of Canadians, especially our ethical oil production.

By Sydney Fizzard | August 13, 2022 | News Analysis

Over the years, Justin Trudeau has used environmentalism as a rally cry to push through intensive taxes on the oil industry and shut down development of energy sectors across the country. Ultimately, he has ignored the pleas of Canadians who just want a fair shake at life, in order to pursue international allegiances.

Carbon has been at the forefront of Trudeau’s energy depreciation efforts since he was elected, most notably with the implementation of Bill C-12: An Act respecting transparency and accountability in Canada’s efforts to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. Developed after Trudeau’s signing of the Paris Agreement on climate change, this bill turned voluntary emission targets into legal obligations, enforceable by law.

On top of that, he’s also implemented a number of bills such as Bill C-69: An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, aimed at preventing the building of multiple pipelines.

In this episode we cover the implications of what Trudeau has done to our energy industry and we even hear from those who yearn for environmental strategy, suggesting that Trudeau’s approach is not only going to fail, but it simply isn’t the right way to approach the situation. Case in point is Canada's oil sands, one of — if not the most — ethical oil operations on the planet, host to technologically advanced production capabilities which make it efficient, cleaner, and a hub for further development.

Is this not an ideal situation for Canada? One that Trudeau is instead choosing to suppress. Oil and gas will be consumed no matter what Trudeau does about it in Canada. Emissions aren’t nearly as much our responsibility as he would lead us to believe, especially considering he gives a free pass to the greatest polluter on the planet — in fact, he befriends them. Even in his dealings at home, Trudeau continuously hinders Western energy for the sake of environmentalism while simultaneously giving the green light on raw sewage dumping into the ocean.

 

[marsh]

Judge reinstates Obama-era ban on coal sales from federal land, HALF the nation’s annual coal production - Geller Report

Any American who votes for these fiends is an enemy. Democrats destroy everything, hate everyone and work to ensure you are as miserable as they are.

gellerreport.com

Judge reinstates Obama-era ban on coal sales from federal land, HALF the nation’s annual coal production

By Pamela Geller - on August 13, 2022

Any American who votes for these fiends is an enemy. Democrats destroy everything, hate everyone and work to ensure you are as miserable as they are.
Environmentalism as a social principle . . . condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men’s return to “nature,” to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands. (Ayn Rand)

She knew.

‘Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for “harmony with nature”—there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears . . . .

In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire.”
“The Anti-Industrial Revolution,”
Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 277

^^^^
Judge reinstates Obama-era ban on coal sales from federal land

Almost half the nation’s annual coal production is mined by private companies from leases on federal land

[URL='https://www.foxnews.com/world/judge-reinstates-obama-era-ban-coal-sales-federal-land'[/URL]|

Landon Mion Fox News August 13, 2022:

A federal judge on Friday reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that had been implemented during the Obama administration.

The ban was lifted under former President Donald Trump.

Friday’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Brian Morris requires government officials to conduct a new environmental review prior to resuming coal sales from federal lands. The judge said the government’s previous review of the program during the Trump administration had not adequately considered the climate damage from coal’s greenhouse gas emissions, among other effects.

Almost half the nation’s annual coal production is mined by private companies from leases on federal land, mainly in Western states, including Wyoming, Montana and Colorado.

A federal judge has reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that was imposed under former President Barack Obama and then scuttled under former President Donald Trump, Friday, Aug. 12, 2022.

A federal judge has reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that was imposed under former President Barack Obama and then scuttled under former President Donald Trump, Friday, Aug. 12, 2022.

Coal combustion for electricity is one of the top sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions despite a number of power plants shutting down over the past decade over concerns about pollution and changing economic conditions.

According to government data, the coal program raked in about $400 million to federal and state coffers through royalties and other payments last year. The program is responsible for thousands of jobs and has the backing of industry representatives, GOP members of Congress and officials in coal-producing states.

President Joe Biden had suspended oil and gas lease sales in his first week in office, although such a move was later blocked by a federal judge. And environmental groups pressured him to take similar action against coal.

Last year, the Biden administration began a review of climate damage from coal mining on federal lands as it increased scrutiny of government fossil fuel sales that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. However, no changes were announced because of that review.

“This decision gives the Biden administration the opportunity to make good on its commitment to seriously battle the climate crisis,” Earthjustice attorney Jenny Harbine, who represented environmental groups and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in the case, said of the ruling.

“No progress has been made to reform the program or do what’s needed to phase out existing leases.”

 

[marsh]

SEC’s Proposed Climate-Change Rules Would Cripple Public Companies - The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator | USA News and Politics

The Securities and Exchange Commission is in the process of finalizing a rule requiring public companies to provide investors with information on the risks climate change poses to their prospective financial performance beginning next year. The proposed rule also would...

spectator.org

SEC’s Proposed Climate-Change Rules Would Cripple Public Companies

Is disclosing emissions for investors necessary? Helpful? Of course not — but that’s not the point.

by JORDAN MCGILLIS
August 12, 2022, 11:57 PM

The Securities and Exchange Commission is in the process of finalizing a rule requiring public companies to provide investors with information on the risks climate change poses to their prospective financial performance beginning next year.

The proposed rule also would require greenhouse gas emissions disclosures, including on companies’ direct emissions, e.g., from their own facilities and vehicles; their indirect emissions, e.g., those from on-grid power plants in their area; and, most expansively, emissions from upstream and downstream activities in their value chains, that is, the emissions from their suppliers and customers.

While quantifying firm-specific risks from climate change will entail substantial compliance costs, it is the requirement that a company report emissions from its own processes and those in its supply chain that invites sharpest scrutiny. In what respect do a company’s emissions impose risk to the company itself? After all, the operative claim against emitting greenhouse gases is that to do so is to externalize costs, foisting onto the public at large waste management expenses for which the company in question ought properly to account. While this charge may be grounds for legislation, the SEC fails to explain why externalized costs would redound to the disadvantage of the externalizer and, thus, to merit disclosure to investors.

Recognizing this, the SEC discards its customary standard of “materiality,” which considers a piece of information relevant if there is substantial likelihood that a reasonable investor would consider it important to buying and selling decisions. This approach diverges from the SEC’s 2010 interpretative release on climate change matters. With the proposed rule, the SEC claims the requirements advance some notion of “protection” for investors. Strangely, the SEC purports to maintain the ordinary materiality standard with respect to emissions from upstream and downstream activities in companies’ value chains, so-called “Scope 3” emissions over which a company has little control and from which it will incur no direct, firm-specific costs. Hester Peirce, a dissenting SEC commissioner, makes the common-sense observation that the materiality of these emissions is nothing more than a fiction.

Another possibility one can infer from its postulation of “transition risk” is that the SEC foresees more stringent climate legislation or regulation ahead and is suggesting that current emitting practices could find themselves laid directly on Washington’s chopping block. But protecting investors from Congress certainly was not Congress’s own intent in authorizing the SEC to regulate securities.

Whereas the risk to a company of its own emissions and the risk of looming tighter limits are amorphous, investors certainly have a material interest in the resilience of a company’s physical stock. Will drought cut the output of a public company’s hydroelectric dam? Will a port face damage from increasing storm surges? The materiality of such climate impacts is evident, but it also serves to undermine by comparison the alleged materiality of the emissions in a company’s supply chain. The manifest purpose of the emissions inclusion in the new SEC rule is not to protect investors, but to execute President Joe Biden’s “government-wide approach” to climate change and spur economy-wide decarbonization.

The recent Supreme Court decision in the case of West Virginia v. EPA presents a new, perhaps unexpected, hurdle to the SEC’s climate disclosure rule, and to the Biden approach more broadly. The Court ruled in West Virginia that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the environmental regulator to reconstruct America’s electricity grid from its Washington headquarters. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion, explicated the major questions doctrine truncating executive branch license to regulate on issues of great economic consequence where legislative intent is absent. As Paul Atkins, formerly of the SEC, and Paul Ray, formerly of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, summarized in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, “Agencies may not lightly presume that the legislature has delegated to them the most important policy questions of our day and simply decide those questions themselves.”

Will the arrival of the major questions doctrine on the judicial scene upend the SEC’s plans? Todd Phillips, lead corporate governance analyst at the Center for American Progress, says no, writing in the Hill that the SEC proposed rule is of little consequence. Against the charge that it verges on major questions, Phillips doth protest, “nothing could be further from the truth,” arguing that the rule would simply direct companies to provide material information consistent with investors’ interests.

Such a vehement denial can only but elicit Shakespearean skepticism.

If it has its way, the SEC will become a leading actor in climate policy, reforming public companies’ behavior from the inside out and driving decarbonization.

Such ends reside further beyond the outer stretches of the SEC’s mandate than the grid plan did vis-à-vis EPA’s. By demanding disclosure of ambiguous emissions-related information, the Securities and Exchange Commission deigns to play the part of climate change regulator, a major role for which it was not cast.

 

[marsh]

(Copied from Main Forum thread for archival purposes. All part of the puzzle as it emerges from the ether. Hat tip Zagdid.)

A Storm Brews in Heating Oil: Elements by Javier Blas

The US and Europe are running out of time to refill storage tanks.

www.bloomberg.com

A Storm Brews in Heating Oil: Elements by Javier Blas

The US and Europe are running out of time to refill storage tanks.

By Javier Blas August 12, 2022 at 7:16 AM EDT

Today’s Take: The Storm Brewing in Heating Oil
Heating oil is not what naturally comes to mind in the middle of August — particularly during a heat wave in Europe. Moreover, the market appears calm on the surface, with prices down 30% since March.

Dig a bit deeper, though, and there’s a storm brewing.

America and Europe ordinarily use the low-demand seasons of spring and summer to rebuild their stocks of middle distillates — heating oil and diesel — for use during the winter. So far, they have largely failed to do so.

In the US, middle-distillate inventories typically increase by 20 million barrels from mid-April to mid-September. However, stocks are up by only 2 million barrels this time as refiners concentrate on making gasoline and overseas demand drains local stocks. In Europe, the situation is similar.

The US East Coast is of particular concern. The region is home to New York Harbor, the pricing point for US heating oil. It’s also where the demand is: of the roughly 5.3 million households that use heating oil in America, more than 80% are in the Northeast. On a seasonal level, East Coast middle-distillate inventories are the lowest since at least 1992.

Typically, stocks start falling there by mid-September, and soon after in the rest of America and Europe, suggesting the industry has all but run out of time to rebuild the buffer.

High prices will be needed to force demand down and avoid running out of supply. But even high prices may not dent consumption enough because German industrial companies are switching from gas to oil, using more heating oil and diesel for electricity and steam production.

Ironically, Europe is for now relying on Russian diesel to fill the gap, with imports in June and July rebounding to prewar levels. Starting in February, however, Europe won’t be allowed to import Russian diesel as sanctions over the Ukraine invasion take effect. By then, the heating oil market may feel as hot as the weather does now.

 

[marsh]

Do The Ends Justify The Means For Electric Vehicle Production?

Despite the left’s apparent aversion to mining and drilling, I find it odd that no one questions the method of mining needed to switch the world […]

chicksonright.com

Do The Ends Justify The Means For Electric Vehicle Production?

Published by Ksenya on August 13, 2022Categories Tags

Despite the left’s apparent aversion to mining and drilling, I find it odd that no one questions the method of mining needed to switch the world over to electric vehicles. Where oil can be drilled for while keeping the surface relatively undisturbed, the minerals used in electric vehicles involved horizontal drilling. This means blasting the ground apart and conducting open-pit mining that is extremely damaging to large scale areas.

A lot of the minerals necessary in electric vehicles are sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Heard of it? They may have pinged on your radar before since their mining industry is littered with human-rights violations. One UNICEF report estimates that 40,000 children are working in DRC mines, where they are exposed to toxic dust and where the tunnels are prone to cave ins. But leftist politicians rarely visit the Congo, kind of like our southern border, and if you don’t see a problem it’s basically not happening. I’m sure operations in the Congo are fine!

Whatever the state of things may be on the ground, they clearly aren’t moving quickly enough or there simply aren’t enough resources in that one location. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg are backing Kobold, a California mineral exploration startup powered by artificial intelligence, and its exploration project in Greenland. I said a lot there. Take a second to take it all in.

“Fully electrifying the global economy is our generation’s greatest challenge,” the KoBold spokesperson said. “Partnering with this broad set of world-class investors will accelerate our efforts to find the key materials for the EV revolution.”

This group wants to find enough mineral deposits to power 100 million electric vehicles. I have not seen them mention who will handle the labor-intensive refinement process of these materials. Currently more than 90 percent of the production of rare earth minerals takes place in China. As expected, some of it comes from unsanctioned producers who don’t follow safety protocols, environmental rules, or labor laws. Even a few of China’s licensed refiners have been found to be contaminating nearby water sources, so we can only guess at what unlicensed producers are contributing to the overall environmental impact.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE). EV batteries are very heavy and are made with some exotic, expensive, toxic, and flammable materials.

Melting ice in Greenland has exposed areas previously impervious to exploration. It is said that Teslas use less minerals while also longer than the competition, so anyone who cared about their footprint would probably partner with Musk. But it’s totally fine guys! We’re saving the environment. Or something. I mean, not immediately, obviously. But after we destroy it a little, or okay a lot, then we won’t have to destroy it anymore for a while, and that sir, is the definition of clean energy! And what is clean energy if not the opportunity to make money. I mean, save the environment. Greenland, here we come!

 

[marsh]

DHS Source Claims Almost 2,000 Illegal Crossings in Last 24 Hours in Del Rio Border Sector 2:35 min

DHS Source Claims Almost 2,000 Illegal Crossings in Last 24 Hours in Del Rio Border Sector
Red Voice Media Published August 13, 2022

“There have been almost 2000 illegal crossings case in point… this morning just after sunrise of a large single group of about 150 people who came across all at once.”

 

[pinkelsteinsmom]

PROTESTS!! Until there are hundreds of the so called" betters" m issi ssippi w indchimes, nothing will stop this.

The weather is being manipulated by the "betters" and they are very close to making sure all of us no longer exist to "protest".

 

[marsh]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558708486686523392

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1558708486686523392
9:49 min
Neil Oliver