Why the West should NOT confront China the way it does right now.

  Here's the giant 2024 Guangzhou Fair. 74,000 booths. (Video - 18mn)

 And here the 2024 Beijing Auto Fair. (Video - 16mn)

  Now, here's my prediction: Whatever absurd and stupid measures Washington takes, Beijing will NOT attack Taipei. Why should they? China is on the bring of becoming the engine of the world. Imperial ambitions may come later but for now, Beijing means business. China is developing and needs to keep doing so for the foreseeable future. Eventually, it may represent a danger for the West, but to my opinion it would be far wiser to learn to deal with the country than systematically confront it in a way which will fare no better than the military confrontation with Russia. 

  China is not out of the woods yet. It still has to deal with its giant real estate bubble and a fight against pollution and land degradation which is far from won at this stage. Dealing with China means competition and cooperation. This is what we had 10 years ago to everybody's benefit. The desperate and absurd profiling of China as an enemy of the United States and therefore the West must be reversed. This is the only way we can walk away from the edge of the precipice. Will this happen? Let's be optimistic against the odds for once. The alternative will bring absolutely nothing to anyone, including the narrow minded elites who believe they can come on top of a confrontation. They can't! 

  Two important events will take place in the next few weeks: The G7 and the BRICS. If the G7 is conciliatory, unlikely but not impossible, the BRICS will be another "working cession". If not, the process of integration will accelerate and the confrontation will become more acute. As I predicted earlier, the world we live in from now on will be decided by the end of this month. Let's hope for the best. This may be our very last chance!

Douglas MacGregor Interview - The war in Ukraine is over! Now what? (Video - 18mn)

  For anybody who has been following this conflict, it was easy to understand that this was a war of attrition. Russia was not moving, just creating extremely difficult conditions for the Ukrainian army which for some reasons was expected to perform miracles with the much superior armament of the West. The weapons ended up stuck in the mud, the professional army was decimated and replaced by reluctant conscripts, add incompetence and corruption and it is obvious that the Ukrainians never stood a chance. It would have been wise to understand this 2 years ago. Now somehow, the war must end. 

  Can the West let it end or will they up the ante? Douglas MacGregor see some signs that the war will end. I am afraid it cannot be so easy. You only need to remember how the British sunk the agreements which were about to be signed to understand that the balance is fragile and it is extremely easy for people with bad intentions to create mayhem. Other factors, the beginning of a recession?, may convince a soon to be defeated US administration that war may in the end be an option. This is only a possibility among many. Although history says this is likely, we all know that it doesn't repeat, it only rhymes.

 

Virtual Home Invasions: We're Not Safe From Government Peeping Toms

  Some new technologies are becoming extremely dangerous from a privacy point of view. Personally, I have always declined working with IoT companies for that reason. The price of convenience is slavery, first virtually then eventually in the real world. When everything will communicate with everything else, your every move, action and thought will be registered, monitored and if needs be acted upon.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen—a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man’s life at will.”

- Justice William O. Douglas

The spirit of the Constitution, drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyranny of an imperial ruler, would suggest that one’s home is a fortress, safe from almost every kind of intrusion.

Unfortunately, a collective assault by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succeeded in reducing that fortress—and the Fourth Amendment alongside it—to a crumbling pile of rubble.

We are no longer safe in our homes, not from the menace of a government and its army of Peeping Toms who are waging war on the last stronghold of privacy left to us as a free people.

The weapons of this particular war on the privacy and sanctity of our homes are being wielded by the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries.

Government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting virtual home invasions using surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courts—to invade one’s home with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, and other monitoring devices.

Just recently, in fact, the Michigan Supreme Court gave the government the green light to use warrantless aerial drone surveillance to snoop on citizens at home and spy on their private property.

While the courts have given police significant leeway at times when it comes to physical intrusions into the privacy of one’s home (the toehold entry, the battering ram, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.), the menace of such virtual intrusions on our Fourth Amendment rights has barely begun to be litigated, legislated and debated.

Consequently, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.

Indeed, almost anything goes when it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invade your home and lay siege to your property.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

A byproduct of this surveillance age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.

Without our realizing it, the American Police State passed the baton off to a fully-fledged Surveillance State that gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like an electronic prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.

Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.

The key word here, however, is control.

In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”

By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”

As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.

It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.

These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.

Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.

The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.

Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices become government informants, reporting independently on anything you might do that runs afoul of the Nanny State.

Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.

It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:

Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.

Once technology is able to access and act on your thoughts, not even your innermost thoughts will be safe from the Thought Police.

Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug. Yet when the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

To our detriment, we are fast approaching a world without the Fourth Amendment, where the lines between private and public property are so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic—the hallmark of a healthy and free society—has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, none of this will change, no matter which party controls Congress or the White House, because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, we’ll still be prisoners of the electronic concentration camp.

The (Anti) Social Cost Of Carbon

  These people are completely destroying the industrial base in The US and Europe with made-up unachievable eco-targets. Then you wonder why the West ends up with armies which can't fight and companies which can't compete. Now would be a good time to wake up although history says it won't happen. 

Authored by Jonathan Lesser via RealClearEnergy,

Forty-two was the mystical number that explained “life, the universe, and everything” in Douglas Adams’ comic novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Today, another mystical number, the so-called social cost of carbon (SSC), is providing the excuse for the Environmental Protection Agency and green-energy-enamored state regulators to enact crippling energy policies.

The SCC is the thumb on the scale that can justify virtually any policy aimed at eliminating fossil fuels. When the EPA first proposed its rule to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the agency’s cost-benefit analysis determined the benefits would be minuscule. Any putative benefits, it turns out, would come instead from reductions in carbon emissions and, here’s the key, based on a calculated value for the SCC.  The same was true for the EPA’s earlier attempt at carbon regulation via a “Clean Power Plan,” which was shut down by the Supreme Court. But here we are again with the agency’s newest rules trying to force coal plants to further reduce mercury emissions and to force both coal and natural gas-fired power plants to capture 90% of their carbon emissions. The technology to accomplish this doesn’t exist and EPA Administrator Michael Regan admitted the rule will force the closure of fossil-fuel power plants.

The SCC values used by the EPA are derived from calculations in integrated planning models (IPMs). Those models assume a simplistic linear relationship between carbon emissions and world temperature (never mind that the validity of that linear assumptions is a subject of deep debate in scientific circles). The models then assume that the resulting temperature increases cause all forms of environmental doom – rising sea levels, more disease, and declining agricultural production – for which yet more estimates are made to assign future cost consequences. Here’s the key: the IPMs project these costs out for the next 300 years (not a typo). Then, those far future costs are “discounted” to estimate a value in today’s dollars by using truly absurd assumptions about such things as inflation and economic growth.

A tongue-in-cheek forecaster’s creed is “Give them a number or give them a date. Don’t give them both.” Attempting to predict the future three centuries hence may be standard fare for science fiction writers, but basing energy policies on such predictions is insane.

Imagine someone in the year 1724 predicting life – and technology – today. Benjamin Franklin was 18 years old and working in his father’s print shop. George Washington would not be born for another eight years. The French scientist Antoine Lavoisier, who first identified carbon as an element in 1789, would not be born until 1743. The first patent on a flush toilet would not happen for another half-century. Thomas Edison would not invent the light bulb and the telephone for another 150 years. Could anyone in 1724 have imagined automobiles, mobile phones, and MRI machines? How about integrated circuits, nuclear power, and B-2 bombers?

To presume we can accurately predict, or even imagine, what the world will look like 300 years from now is just as preposterous. Yet, simplistic models and arbitrary assumptions are being used to drive energy policy decisions today. Using the SCC estimates, and assuming that new technologies will magically appear, the EPA can justify virtually any pollution control regulation, including those that effectively mandate electric vehicles. Similarly, even though offshore wind generation costs five times more than natural gas and coal, the SCC can “prove” the benefits of offshore wind exceed its costs. New York State, for example, assumes that, by 2040, thousands of megawatts of “dispatchable emissions-free generators” (the equivalent of a natural gas generator burning pure hydrogen) will provide the necessary backup for unreliable offshore wind, even though no such generators exist.

Contrary to the economic fantasies peddled by green energy advocates, policies to eliminate fossil fuels based on the supposed benefits captured by the SCC will cripple the U.S. economy. Electricity prices, coupled with ill-considered plans to electrify virtually everything, will soar. Supplies will dwindle, requiring rationing, either explicitly or through rolling blackouts, such as those experienced every day in South Africa. Rather than creating some green energy nirvana, the lack of adequate and affordable electricity will cause societal decay.

All of this based on a made-up number.

Jonathan Lesser is a senior fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics and president of Continental Economics.

Russia's final warning to Macron and Cameron (Video - 46mn)

  I find it extremely strange to say the least that people are not panicking as we are on the very edge of a nuclear war which looks more probable by the day. Maybe this is due to the radio silence from the Medias in order not to spook the market. Maybe.

  The real worry is not per se what is being said but the dynamic and the fact that there is no turning back possible. We have the BRICS meeting coming, then the G7, a desperate Ukraine with a president soon to become illegitimate at least in the eyes of the Russians, a recession which except in name is already here, the US elections at the end of the year. If I was a Greek mischievous god, now would be a good time to sow more confusion!

 

The History of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the Climate Change Debate

 Excellent resume of how we went from climate science to climate ideology.

 The History of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the Climate Change Debate

By Amy Lee, Environmental Consultant

There is a book that I wish was required reading for everyone engaging in the climate change debate: “Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate” by astrophysicist Dr. S. Fred Singer. I have linked to a synopsis of the book on the Independent Institutes website in the references section of this post. I read this book in its first edition (published in 1997) not long after graduating with a Bachelor’s in Geoenvironmental Science and remember it left the following impressions then:

• The science presented appears to be in-line with all of my college coursework and research.
• That the human-race is often egotistical when it comes to derivation of solutions from often limited, flawed, biased, or constrained research knowledge.
• More unbiased scientific research is almost always needed before solutions can be formally proposed, evaluated, funded, and long-term investment can be made. We will not solve problems if we do not follow the science and we base decisions on ideology.

At the point of the publication of the first edition of this book, the Climate Change Debate - (then referred to as the ‘Global Warming Debate’) -  most eyes were focused on the ever-looming hole in the ozone layer of the Earth. This hole was promoted in the media at that time to be something that could destroy earth as we knew it. It was doomsday talk. It was often cited as a reason we were seeing micro-fluctuations in climate events, why skin cancer cases were increasing, and why your beach vacation may need a re-think. The Ozone layer as a matter of fuel for the debate about ‘Global Warming’ disappeared - along with the hole in the Ozone layer.

At that time, I read research papers about solutions to this global problem including dumping things into the atmosphere using a form of ‘cloud seeding’ to close the ozone hole, similar to technologies at the time which were researched to increase rain or snowfall from clouds. My opinion then and my opinion now is that good things rarely come from human intervention in the environment, however, in the case of the Ozone hole it’s probably humans that did fix it, but even that is debatable in science. What we see as a problem might in actuality be normal on Earth’s time-scales, but we often see only on the scale of our own human time-on-earth scales.

A re-read of the 3rd edition (2021) of this book helped me understand a bit more about CO₂’s role in the debate including:

• Since the late 1970’s an increase in governmental policy shifts with the desire to affect climate change have had no appreciable effect on CO₂ emissions controls worldwide. As new nations develop, so do CO₂ emissions. Therefore, the control of CO₂  has a direct influence on the potential economic development of third-world countries as well as potentially positive or negative implications on the environment regionally or globally. It is important to distinguish here between the fact that ‘government policy cannot affect climate change’ versus ‘government policy can affect climate change, however current policies have been ineffective at doing so’. Historic policies have had unnecessary detrimental effects on both the environment or people in certain regions.
  
  
• Lobby organization funding often drives policy which drives the approval for public funding or laws which then fuels (pun intended) more bad policies which further tax societies - potentially unnecessarily or with no net improvement towards what the policy aims to achieve. This results in more control of the economy and society by the government and other sister organizations.
  
  
• Climate change is not a problem of CO₂ alone. If we think of all of the variables required to make our atmosphere breathable, water drinkable etc. to allow humans to survive here, it would result in a room full of finely-tuned knobs and levers controlling millions of factors: Truly a fascinating miracle about Earth’s existence as a habitable planet.
  
  
• Natural variables such as water vapor concentrations, solar activity, cloud cover, and ocean health have been left out of the mainstream factors considered when it comes to climate change, even in this 2021 edition.
  
  
• We don’t know what we don’t know. A lot of the data that is being used for the current climate debate and policy changes is fraught with scientific debate, inaccuracies, scientific estimates (i.e., educated guesses), and conspiracy.
  
  
• Until the 1990’s it was generally accepted scientifically that CO₂ made up only a small percentage of greenhouse gas effects on climate and water vapor was the more influential factor.
  
  
• More research is needed. We still do not know enough about the CO₂ cycle on the planet like how the ocean uptakes CO₂, biology mass effects, mineralized storage of carbon, and how other CO₂ sinks function. Upon reviewing the geologic history of our planet, it is clear that atmospheric CO₂ levels play a role in the climate for the planet, but what is really lacking is an understanding of the sensitivity of the Earth System to changing levels of CO2 and, when does temperature change drive CO₂ change, and what is the real role of clouds. We have a pretty good idea how some solar and natural processes offset or reinforce human effects, but quantitative research never hurts. Clouds in particular are the largest fudge factor in trying to predict climate change in climate models. Depending on the situation, clouds can reinforce or oppose global warming.
  
  
• Since 2000, the book indicates that we have not seen appreciable warming trends in any reliable data set although other sources dispute this. The key point of interest is what are the reliable data sets.
  
  

We do know from science that:

• It is generally accepted by scientists that levels of Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere have increased as a result of human activities. From: CO₂ burning of fossil fuels, methane which has doubled in the last 100 from natural and human made activities like landfills – and water vapor and let’s not forget the role of deforestation. 

• A warming period from 1910 to 1945 was real and not human caused. We still don’t know the exact cause. There are multidecadal climate cycles that can influence climate such as the North Atlantic Oscillation; however, this has not been quantitatively linked to the 1910 to 1945 warming period to create consensus as to why it happened.
  
  
• Warming trends in data from 1978 to 1997 are most likely not correct due to instrumentation used and unreliable data sets including lacking or different calibration methods amongst instrumentation used. Using this as an argument predicting a future warming trend is therefore not precise. It is not the warming trend which is in doubt but the amount and significance. The problem with these earlier measurements is that the measurement methods used back then, while not wrong, are such that it is difficult to correlate their results with results from later instrumentation and measuring methods. Both sets of data indicate a clear upward trend but when you graph the later results with the earlier results, it looks like there is a sudden disjuncture between the two sets (the graph line jumps up while maintaining a similar trend). Another key issue related to measurements is: do we have enough actual data collection points related to atmospheric variables within our global 3-dimension atmosphere and how is the data being corrected to account for the role of the measurement station and surrounding activities on the raw data.
  
  
• Global Climate Models have been used since 1979 to predict future trends. It is known that older models forecast more warming than occurs in real-world observations. Models utilize a fudge factor that assumes a higher sensitivity of climate conditions to CO₂ concentration and then link this to anthropogenic factors. In many cases, modeled outputs, not objective facts or real world observation, are driving climate policy. It is important to remember that model output is not actual data and does not validate a hypothesis. A model is a mathematical representation of a hypothesis and models do not generate new data. Modeled output can be used to predict both historic and current conditions but that does not mean that the actual modeled variables used as inputs are correct and we can not forget that temperature increases may trigger more “natural CO₂ production”. The challenge here is that historical model sensitivities, instrumentation abilities, and variables selected for study vary from interpretation to interpretation. The goal is always that empirical models fit observable data with new data used to refine the model in order to make it better at making predictions, but when it applies to data, models, and reports that get sometimes overly simplified for policy creation - the reality of the predictions is often lost.
  
  
• There are many benefits to humans in a planet that warms a little including benefits to agriculture.The excess CO₂ could be exploited to promote photosynthesis to feed the growing planet, but the potential downside is that opportunistic plants that we classify as weeds may be more agile. The final result may be an increase in overall photosynthesis that may not result in an equivalent level of crop production and this may adversely impact productivity.
  
  
• The most reliable modern climate models for sea level rise data shows a steady increase of about 7 inches per century, but during the global temperature increase from 1910 to 1945, sea level did not rise at this rate indicating there is likely no correlation between air and sea temperatures on sea level rise, yet sea level rise is the main problem cited in mainstream media for solving the “problem” of and driving policies around climate change. In addition to sea level rise we also have erosion and subsidence. We need to spend time actually defining and understanding the root causes for problems before providing funding towards hypothetical solutions. These root causes may have multiple variables that include factors we can and can not control and may be related to past practices, such as paving the planet, building on unstable land, historic filling of wetlands, poor land-use practices, and changing land-use.

The History of the CO₂ debate with regard to climate change:

• In 1824 Joseph Fourier discovered that certain gasses of minor concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere (like CO₂) could prevent the escape of heat (infrared) radiation from the Earth’s surface - like a greenhouse, a concept which became the “Greenhouse Hypothesis.”

• In 1896 Svante Arrhenius, a chemist, published a paper calculating the potential rise in temperature based on this “Greenhouse Hypothesis.”

• In 1938 G.S. Callendar, a British steam engineer, asserted that the global temperature rise since the 1890’s was due to CO₂; however, other scientists at the time dismissed these ideas.

• In 1942 a textbook by T.A. Blair “Climatology: General and Regional” states that man does not influence climate except on a local basis for a certain period of time.
  
  
• In 1951 the “Greenhouse Hypothesis” was dismissed by Thomas F. Malone’s research indicated that heat radiation supposedly absorbed by CO₂ was already absorbed by water vapor.

• By 1955 there was not much support for the “Greenhouse Hypothesis” with arguments that the ocean as a carbon sink would instead act like a sponge removing the effects of burning fossil fuels.

• In 1956 Gilbert Plass, a physicist at Johns Hopkins identified flaws in Malone’s 1951 research that did not account for pressure effects in the atmosphere and pointed out that global temperature increases were of natural causes.

• In 1957 data by Charles David Keeling and Roger Revelle - “The Keeling Curve” - showed a steady upward trend in CO₂ in ice cores that matched pre-industrial concentrations; however the curve combined data from different instruments with different accuracy levels.

• Also in 1957 Revelle and Suess began investigating the ocean sponge effect of absorbing CO₂

• . Revelle, called “The Father of Greenhouse Warming.” found that much of the fossil-fuel burning products were remaining in the atmosphere and that time would be the grand experiment to reveal the consequences of human effects on the atmosphere.
  
  
• In 1971 a NASA team estimated the ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) of CO2 from which they extrapolated that if CO₂ were to double in the atmosphere, the global average temperature would increase from 0.6 °C to 0.8 °C over 1,000 years due to water vapor feedback. That feedback would work as follows: more atmospheric CO₂ leads to higher temperatures which means the atmosphere can hold more water vapor.  Water vapor, like CO₂, is a greenhouse gas so more atmospheric water vapor leads to higher temperatures in a positive feedback loop.

• A 1975 paper by Revelle pointed out the beneficial effects CO₂ has on agricultural yield.

• From 1975 to 1980 global temperatures began to rise quickly and we still do not know why.

• In 1978 there was a sense that Global Cooling was the main problem and that a coming Ice Age and return of the Glaciers was the largest threat to humankind on the planet. This was related to the long-term Milankovitch Cycles which were, and still are, promoting global cooling. In North America there was an extremely long and cold winter in 1977-1978. My sister and I were there in Northeastern Pennsylvania! It was a great year for snow forts along with fears of global cooling.
  ‍

The Author and Sister, Winter 1977-1978

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• In 1979 a National Academy of Sciences Study Group on CO₂ determined that the global temperature increase on Earth from a doubling of CO₂ would likely not be measurable. However, in combination with water vapor feedback, such a doubling may result in surface temperature increases of 1.5 to 4.5 °C.

• In the late 1970’s and 1980’s research pointed to the fact that air temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere had been dropping since about 1940. Some scientists thought an ice-age was coming, possibly due to aerosols from burning coal, but this work was largely ignored.

• In 1980 the global cooling debate was replaced by research fears of global warming but there were still scientists pushing the global cooling hypothesis.  In fact one of the reviewers of this article attended a presentation at Tufts University where a speaker stated that if we do not act now the climate would significantly change and by the year 2020 the state of Pennsylvania would be TUNDRA. (Oram, Brian; 2023).

• In 1984 Revelle was optimistic, not alarmist, about climate change.

• In 1988 a very hot summer and drought destroyed crops in the US and during a Senate committee chaired by Al Gore, a NASA scientist, James Hansen, announced he was 99% sure that climate change was here.
  
  
• In 1990-1992 Aerosols came back on the scene in climate change debates.
  
  
• In 1991 Revelle (since deceased) and Singer co-authored an article with Chauncey Starr acknowledging the increase in Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere, but with much still unknown in climate models to accurately predict the future. This article caught the attention of Al Gore and it became debated whether Revelle actually co-authored it.

• In 1985-1987 politics took over the climate debate.
  
  
• In 1992 the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro saw an updated 1990 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. At this time President George H.W. Bush brought the US into the debate. The UN’s climate change thinking at the time, called the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC),  was based on Greenhouse Gas theories. FCCC encouraged the spending of trillions of dollars to try to curb climate change against what scientists like Revelle and Singer had indicated would work. Some countries ratified the FCCC at this time others did not.
  
  
• In 1995 the countries that ratified the FCCC met in Berlin and produced a mandate for implementation of the FCCC.
  
  
• In 1996 the countries that ratified the FCCC met again in Geneva and accepted the main conclusion of a “discernible human influence on climate” as final and started to make action plans and emissions controls.
  
  
• The 1997 Kyoto Protocol re-invigorated the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) policies around CO₂ globally, but these policies never reduced CO₂ emissions, possibly because the policies were never implemented sufficiently to cause change.
  
  
• Many other meetings between governments on climate policy took place between 1997 and 2015, including the 2015 Paris Agreement meeting.
  
  
• The challenge now is whether it is science driving the facts around these policy agreements or politics and ideology.

$#!%&: "THEYRE NOT GOING TO STOP THIS" (Video - 44mn)

  Great interview! Canadian Preper is, well, preper, so no surprise there. Interviewing Rafi Farber, a Israeli economist is controversial at this point in time, but I guess we're past controversial now. What remains is the message and the line of thinking which I think is brilliant and worth listening to. So here it is:

 

Putin Doesn't Bluff

  This is a semi "establishment" article from Washington, so many points to disagree with but it is interesting nevertheless as it shows that people are starting to understand the predicament the West has painted itself into. 

  It is still overly optimistic in thinking that Ukraine will fall in a year or two. Replace that by months to get a more accurate picture. But the direction is unmistakable: Ukraine is about to fall and NATO cannot allow it. Meanwhile, indeed, "Putin doesn't bluff"...

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

Two weeks ago, the Congress passed (and President Biden signed) four key pieces of legislation related to national security.

Three of the bills provided assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. They received the most attention. The one that got the least attention was a mixed bag of provisions, such as a forced divestiture of TikTok.

Included in that bill was something called the REPO Act that authorizes the president to steal any Russian assets, including U.S. Treasury securities, that come under U.S. jurisdiction.

The impact of the REPO Act is limited by the fact that only about $10 billion of Russian sovereign assets are actually under U.S. jurisdiction. Yet the act contemplates that this theft will be a down payment on a much larger theft to be conducted by NATO allies in Europe.

$290 billion of Russian sovereign assets are being held in Europe. The act says that the assets stolen by the U.S. will be contributed to the Common Ukraine Fund.

No doubt, the U.S. will be the most powerful voice in the administration of the $290 billion common fund. The U.S. goal is to use the G7 summit in Apulia, Italy on June 13–15 as a platform for getting the other G7 members to go along with the Common Ukraine Fund and to steal any Russian assets under their jurisdiction.

So these people think that Russia will simply accept this act of theft without retaliating?

“Mirror Imaging”

One of the persistent problems in intelligence analysis is what experts call “mirror imaging.” This is jargon for an analytic flaw in which the analyst assumes that his beliefs and preferences are shared by an adversary. Instead of looking at the adversary as he actually is, the analyst is looking in a mirror while assuming he is looking at the adversary.

This is an extremely dangerous flaw.

You may be rational, but the mullahs who rule Iran are not. You may believe that leaders want economic growth, but Communist Chinese leaders elevate the party over all other considerations including the well-being of their people.

You may assume that Houthi rebels in Yemen want to avoid attacks by the U.S., but they don’t care — they live in caves anyway, so you can’t bomb them into the Stone Age because they’re already there.

Nowhere is this flaw more apparent today than in the U.S. intelligence analysis of Vladimir Putin. In 2008, President Bush said that Ukraine and Georgia should join NATO. A few months later, Putin invaded Georgia, annexed part of its territory and destroyed Georgia’s chances of joining NATO.

Putin Doesn’t Bluff

In 2014, the U.S. backed a coup d’état in Ukraine that deposed a duly elected leader. Three months later, Putin annexed Crimea from Ukraine and made it part of the Russian Federation. In 2021, NATO began formal processes to admit Ukraine as a member.

In February 2022, Russia began a special military operation that’s resulted in 500,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers. Some estimates are even higher. Ukraine’s chances of joining NATO are now zero.

In every case, U.S. analysts did not believe Putin would take the steps he did because they thought it might somehow weaken Putin or Russia. That’s mirror imaging at its worst. The truth is Putin doesn’t bluff. When he says he will do something, he does. When he says he will react to some Western act, the reaction takes place.

Putin said if the West steals Russian assets, Russia will retaliate by seizing billions of dollars of direct foreign investment in Russia owned by major European companies such as Siemens, Total, BP and others.

And sure enough, just days after Biden signed legislation to authorize the theft of Russian assets, a Russian court ordered $440 million be seized from JPMorgan.

The escalation in the asset seizure war has begun. Putin will win in the end. Unfortunately, escalation is also increasing on the geopolitical front. The U.S. and some of its European allies are becoming increasingly desperate about Ukraine’s ability to hold off Russia on the battlefield.

Short on Weapons, Short on Men

The recent $61 billion aid package for Ukraine (about two-thirds of which will go to U.S. defense companies) won’t be nearly enough to reverse the tide. The U.S. and its NATO allies have already given just about all they can afford to give Ukraine without jeopardizing their own security.

The problem isn’t a lack of money but a lack of weapons and ammunition. Before the aid package was approved, critics complained that Ukraine was losing because the U.S. was withholding desperately needed materiel. But that’s not really true.

The Europeans could have simply bought the weapons from the U.S. and delivered them to Ukraine. They didn’t. Why? Because the weapons simply weren’t there. Yes, there will always be a supply of weapons flowing to Ukraine — they’re not going to run out completely.

But Ukraine won’t have nearly enough weapons and ammunition to undertake meaningful offensive operations against the Russians. They’ll just have enough to keep them in the fight, which is the goal of NATO.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the problems run much deeper than a lack of equipment. They’re also running out of trained manpower. Former commander Valeriy Zaluzhny has suggested Ukraine needs an extra 500,000 troops. But they’re having trouble finding new volunteers. An estimated 650,000 fighting age men have fled Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Russian army is even larger than it was before the invasion, and Russian industry is churning out weapons and ammunition at astonishing rates.

Will France Cross the (Dnieper) Rubicon?

When you add up Ukraine’s lack of equipment and manpower shortages, you understand why the West is becoming increasingly desperate.

France’s Emmanuel Macron is continuing to say he might send French troops to Ukraine. Just days ago, he reaffirmed that he wouldn’t rule out sending troops if Russia broke through Ukrainian front lines and Ukraine requested it.

Well, it’s only a matter of time until Russia breaks through Ukraine’s remaining primary defenses east of the Dnieper River. Of course Ukraine is going to request French troops since Macron himself made the offer.

Would they be sent to western Ukraine in order to free up Ukrainian soldiers stationed there to go to the front?

Or would they send French troops to the front, thinking that Russia wouldn’t fire on them out of fears of starting a war with France? France is a nuclear power. It has a limited nuclear arsenal (mostly consisting of four ballistic missile submarines).

So France might believe it can deter Russia from advancing.

But Russia has already targeted French “mercenaries” in a missile strike some months back (they were likely Ukrainian and Russian members of the French Foreign Legion). And Russia has warned France that it will attack French soldiers if it sends them to Ukraine.

Remember, Putin doesn’t bluff. But it’s not just France suggesting a willingness to send troops to Ukraine.

Countdown to Nuclear War

I’ve been warning about the dangers of escalation since the U.S. committed itself to Ukraine’s defense. Unfortunately, it’s playing out exactly as I predicted.

On 60 Minutes last night, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “We can’t let Ukraine fall because if it does, then there’s a significant likelihood that America will have to get into the conflict — not simply with our money, but with our servicewomen and our servicemen.”

Ukraine’s going to fall, one way or the other. It might not be this year or even next year, although those are possibilities. But it will happen.

If Jeffries is correct that the U.S. will commit its military to confront Russia directly, then we’re signing ourselves up for a nuclear war because that’s where military confrontation will ultimately lead.

Every major simulated war game between the U.S. and Russia ends up going nuclear in the end.

Are we really prepared for that?

The "Soft Landing" Lie: A Global Economic Slowdown Is Already Underway

  The recession is coming. It is unavoidable, just as day follows night. But this particular recession "cannot" happen because it will blow the bubble of bubbles. This is why war is likewise unavoidable. Since human life is so short, we cannot build "context" and understand what is happening. If we could, we would see cycles like seasons repeating. The Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring again of life to borrow the tittle of a Korean movie, but applied to society.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

If people have learned anything from the past few years of Ivy League elites and TV talking heads feeding them economic predictions, I hope they finally understand that the “experts” are usually wrong and that alternative analysts have a far better track record. Whenever establishment economists make a a call the opposite generally turns out to be true.

By extension, alternative economic predictions are usually well ahead of the curve – What we talk about might be labeled “doom mongering” or “conspiracy theory” today. In three years or less it will be treated as common knowledge and the mainstream “experts” will claim that they “saw it coming all along” while taking credit for financial calls they never made.

This has been a long running pattern and it’s something those of us in the alternative media have come to expect.

For my part, I warned for years about the threat of the impending stagflationary crisis which ultimately struck hard in the “post-pandemic” US. The establishment gatekeepers denied such a thing was possible. When it happened, they claimed it was “transitory.” Now, they argue that a soft landing is imminent and there’s nothing to fear from trillions in helicopter money being pumped into the system. They claim nothing of significance will change.

I also predicted that the Fed would create a Catch-22 scenario in which interest rates are raised into economic weakness while inflationary pressures expand. I suggested that the central bank would keep rates higher for far longer than mainstream analysts claimed. This is exactly what has happened.  My position is simple – The Federal Reserve is a suicide bomber.

Who are you going to believe? Independent economists who have proven correct time and time again? Or, the Ivory Tower guys who have been consistently wrong? I’ll say this: If success in economics was actually based on merit and correct analysis, people like Paul Krugman or Janet Yellen would have been out of work a long time ago.

As for the ongoing narrative of a soft landing, the question I have to ask is HOW exactly they are going to make that happen? First, let’s clarify why central bankers are the problem (along with the governments they covertly influence)…

Central Banks Are At The Core Of Economic Troubles

There are only two logical reasons for central bank induced inflation: To hide the effects of a massive deflationary slowdown caused by too much debt, or, to deliberately trigger a currency collapse. Both motives could apply at the same time.

Central bankers don’t just facilitate this inflation at the behest of governments, they tell governments what to expect and what to promote to the public. Anyone that claims otherwise has an agenda. Central banks write their own policy and control their own mechanics. Governments have no say whatsoever in their operations, as Alan Greenspan once openly admitted.

The reality is, governments go begging hat in hand to central bankers and the banks decide whether or not to give them that sweet stimulus nectar. Politicians engage in collusion with central banks on a regular basis and they defer to bankers on an array of economic decisions. Economic advisers to the US president almost always include high level central bankers who then cycle right back into the Federal Reserve.

Central banks and their private international counterparts are in control, political leaders are simply pawns. Whenever there’s a crash the public focuses on government while the central banks fade into the background and avoid all scrutiny.

Inflation Addiction And The Ultimate Catch-22

Inflation for banks is a tool for fiscal change, but also social change. It’s not a coincidence that financial crisis events always lead to more centralization of global power into fewer and fewer hands; this is by design. Inflation allows the establishment to delay or initiate a crisis with greater precision.

An even more powerful tool is the WITHHOLDING of stimulus and cheap money once an economy is addicted to the flow of fiat.

I have been arguing for many years that central banks were constructing a situation in which the system is utterly dependent on fiat stimulus in order to maintain the illusion of growth. If the bankers return to lower rates and QE, inflation will continue to explode. If they stay with higher rates and a trickle of stimulus then a global crash is inevitable.

It’s one or the other, there is no soft landing when trillions in money creation are at play in such a short period of time. Central banks must return to near zero rates and QE if they hope to prevent a debt implosion. This might seem like a soft landing scenario at first, but when CPI ramps up (as it is starting to now at the mere mention of rate cuts) consumers will be hit even harder.

I’ll ask this question once again because I don’t think some people are getting it: What if their goal is to create a crash?

The Great Global Slowdown Has Already Started

In the past six months both the World Trade Organization and the World Banks released statements warning of an impending global slowdown. After an initial surge in exports and imports caused by massive pandemic stimulus measures, the effects of the helicopter money are now fading. By the end of 2024, global trade will register the slowest growth since the 1990s.

The UN also suggested growth deceleration was coming in the next year due to falling investments and subdued global trade. Keep in mind that the alternative media has been warning about this outcome for the past couple years at least as covid funding dried up. Globalist institutions are simply informing the public at the last minute; too little, too late.

The World Bank asserts that global trade is flatlining and international trade data supports this theory. China’s export market plunged by 7.5% in March, far more than expected and well below the 2.3% decline predicted by a major poll of mainstream economists by Reuters.

By the end of 2023 European exports declined by 8.8% compared to a year earlier and the union barely avoided a recession (according to official numbers). All hopes in Europe rest on the possibility of a steeper drop in inflation and central bank interest rate cuts. As I have been saying since 2021, don’t get too excited about banks lowering rates. It’s not going to happen at the pace that investors want, it’s not going to bring back QE anytime soon and when they do cut rates CPI will immediately spike once again causing panic among consumers.

I suspect that, after an initial rate cut event and an inflation resurgence, central banks will return to tightening with even higher rates in 2025.

In the US, a net importer of goods rather than a primary exporter, consumer volume has been in steep decline. Due to inflation, Americans are buying less goods while paying more money. And this is how inflation skews economic data. Higher prices on goods make retail sales look great, but in reality people are simply paying a higher price for the same amount of products (or less products).

Consumer credit data shows a steep decline in debt spending; credit card delinquency is at all time highs, APR is at all time highs and debt growth has collapsed in the past couple of months. Considering that the American consumer is a primary driver of global exports, it makes sense that international trade is now plummeting. Consumers are broke. The covid stimulus party is officially over and inflation is dragging the market down.

The IMF has recently noted the signs of global slowdown but, as usual, they argue that a “soft landing” is imminent. In other words, they claim there will be no serious repercussions for the economy. They do mention one interesting caveat in their analysis – The danger of global conflicts “derailing” the supposed recovery.

War leads to rising protectionism, the IMF says, and protectionism is a big no-no. In a world economy based on forced interdependency this is partially true, but the bigger picture is being ignored. The world economy should be built on redundancy, not interdependency. Interdependency creates weakness and the potential for dangerous domino effects. This is a fact that globalists would never willingly admit to.

For now, it appears that the global slowdown will become undeniable in the next six months, either right before the US elections in November, or right after. Central banks have chosen to create this Catch-22 and they are, for whatever reason, stalling the big drop. My theory? They have a scapegoat (or scapegoats) in mind and they’re waiting for the right time to unleash the next chaotic event. Covid is gone, so they’re going to need a war, multiple wars, or political conflict in the west and in many other parts of the world as a distraction.

Japan Is Now Caught In A Doom Loop

  A good article from a fellow Japan lover although he arrived at the very peak of the Japan bubble. (It was such a good time before. People will never know!) But that was 35 years ago. Now after all these years "investing" in US treasuries, Japan will need the money back to defend the Yen. So it was all for nothing in the end? Maybe investing in real assets would have been a better idea? Although of course the option was never on the table at the time. That's called monetary colonialism! (An interesting book of monetary policy on the subject is called: Super Imperialism by Michael Hudson.)

By Russell Clark, author of the Capital Flows and Asset Market substack

Japan and Treasuries

My interest in Japan dates from 1991 when I was fresh faced high school exchange student in Kobe. There are no prizes for finding me in the above photo. I was the only “foreigner” in the school, and would go days without seeing anyone else that looked like me or even speaking English. I managed to combine my knowledge and experience in Japan with my other love, economics. I don’t think its too much of an exaggeration to say I owe my career and wealth through studying the Japan experience carefully and then applying those lessons to the rest of the world.

One of the most fascinating things about Japanese, economically speaking, is that almost its entire foreign reserves are made up of US treasuries, with almost no gold. As the right hand side column below shows, the share of gold as foreign exchange reserves is highest for the “old world”, while new powers such as China, Japan, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia have relatively low shares.

In absolute terms, China and Japan are by far the largest holders of foreign exchange reserves.

While China has larger foreign reserves than Japan now, Japan basically “invented” the idea of sovereign bonds as foreign exchange reserves. During the gold standard days, if a country like the US wanted to consume more than it produced, it would need to transfer gold overseas. With limited gold supply, this limited consumption. Moving to a treasury based financial system essentially removed this constraint. The only issue is whether other governments would accept treasuries or not.

Why did Japan buy treasuries? Well when the bubble economy burst in the early 1990s, the BOJ cut rates to near zero, but the Yen did not collapse as expected.

In fact in the first stages of BOJ interest rates cuts, the Yen actually rallied. The failure of monetary policy to work as it should led the Ministry of Finance to intervene to try and help weaken the Yen, and official buying of US dollar assets took off.

In pro-labor terms, when a government is pro-capital it wants to devalue to reduce the wages of its workers. This creates a trade surplus, which should cause the currency to appreciate, but if the government wants to keep the exchange rate competitive (i.e. keep real wages low), then it needs to buy more and more treasuries. A pro-labor government is happy to see its currency appreciate, and hence does not build foreign currency reserves. What is odd recently is that even as the BOJ remains extremely tardy in its monetary policy response, the Ministry of Finance in Japan has started using foreign reserves to “strengthen” the Yen. As the Economist points out, Japan is currently intervening in the currency market to try and strengthen the Yen.

We don’t know the cost of the foreign exchange intervention at the moment [ZH: we do, it was $59BN], but as can be seen above, Japanese foreign exchange reserves have not been rebuilt since the last intervention in 2022. Japan also does not run the structural trade surplus that it did from 1980 to 2010.

With falling foreign exchange reserves, trade deficit, and the likely increase in defence spending that the Russian-Ukrainian war implies, BOJ policy looks increasingly wrong. Markets seem to agree, with 10 year JGB yields at 13 year highs.

With either a Biden or Trump presidency in 2025, the chances of an austerity driven fiscal policy or a change in trade policy looks unlikely to me. The Japanese may well be caught in a doom loop, where they need to sell more foreign reserves to prop up the currency, which cause US yields to rise, which causes the Yen to weaken further and so on.

Until and unless the BOJ becomes more aggressive, Treasuries look like to have a systematic buyer turn into a systematic seller. China is likely a seller of treasuries and buyer of gold for political and strategic reasons, and Japan is a seller of treasuries for economic reasons. I am still baffled to why retail investors prefer treasuries to gold.

Japan was the key to understanding why treasuries did so well form 1980 to 2020. I think it is now the key to understanding why treasuries are going to do poorly from 2020 onwards.