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UPDATED: See below
The Western World has mostly succeeded in reducing emissions by shifting their emissions to factories in developing nations. In industries like Steel, Cement and Plastic as much as 20 – 50% of all production has gone overseas.
All this was achieved in just 20 years or so…
…
In the game of emissions reductions the West will become irrelevant (and in so many other ways too):
…The even more important and larger question: even if the US succeeds, what about everyone else? Over the last 25 years, the developed world shifted much of its carbon-intensive manufacturing of steel, cement, ammonia and plastics to the developing world. As a result, developing world adoption of wind, solar, storage and nuclear power may end up being the primary determinant of future global emissions outcomes. That has certainly been the case over the last decade: Europe and Japan reduced primary energy use by 4%-6% but developing world increases were 6x higher than their reductions
–Michael Cembalist, JP Morgan Annual Energy Paper
UPDATE: David Wojick makes the good point that some of shift is due to an increase in China for China’s own use, as […]
I knew they were bad, but this was blistering:
Big Tech’s Monopoly Creep
by Napolean Linarthatos, The AmericanConservative
… generations that come after us will have the opportunity to wonder how on earth we had been duped for so long and so pathetically by a few Big Tech monopolists, how it was possible to have such a grand accumulation of power and wealth preserved by a system so bluntly corrupt in its modus operandi.
In October 2020, the House Antitrust Subcommittee issued a damning report of steamrolling corruption. It was so brazen, Amazon even sold counterfeit copies of products until the targets gave in — even big names, like Nike. The supergiant went into business against smaller companies, dumping product on the market in impossibly good offers, until it beat them, and stole their customers, and then bought them anyway. (After that customers discovered the deals were not so sweet.) Employees of Amazon even admitted they used private customer data to find market opportunities for Amazon to exploit. The situation is so rapacious now that little companies are not even bought out anymore, they are just cloned and crushed.
And it’s not just Amazon. Smaller partners […]
Evil weather-destroying equipment will be banished:
Photo Kwon Junho
Victorians building new homes will be denied the choice to pick their preferred heating and cooking appliances in the hope that this will stop storms and droughts for their great grandchildren.
As household prices rise, the money that could have been used for holidays, health, or education will be used to enrich a few corporations and make a small percentage of the population feel important and calmer.
If only the low carbon revolution was clean, green and cheap, no one would have to ban anything.
Suffer the children:
Push to turn off gas to help reach state’s climate goal
Tom Cowie and Nick O’Malley, The Age
Gas appliances including heaters, hot water services and cooktops would be phased out under a proposed moratorium on new gas connections to Victorian households to help the state achieve its 2030 target to cut carbon emissions by up to 50 per cent.
Victorians are the nation’s biggest users of natural gas for heating, hot water and cooking due to the state’s historically cheap and plentiful supply piped in from Bass Strait since the 1970s.
But […]
Who voted for Superannuation funds to decide energy policy?
And you thought we elected a government to manage our National energy policy?
Businesses must adopt Paris emissions targets even if the government fails to do so, big investors say.
The Guardian
So even if voters don’t want “climate action”, by default, it’s sneaking in the back door, unless they pay attention.
The “big investors” in this case being a small team of activists running a club that some Superannuation corporates have joined, though it’s not clear why. Perhaps they joined to “look Woke” or perhaps they are feeding the crocodile for fear of being targeted?
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) is not trying to persuade funds or investors to go Green with reason, instead they seem to operate by Cancel Culture principles on a corporate scale. Their aim, apparently, is to bully Directors of your Superfund into themselves bullying the companies they invest in. In a Saul Alinsky fashion they effectively threaten Directors that they might be personally isolated and targeted if they are not seen to be supportive enough of the Woke religion (ie, climate, slavery, femo-glass-ceiling stuff). Somehow ACSI may “recommend members […]
China has become the Wild West of bio-research
…
The ZMan spots a repeat cycle of knowledge-hauls as China siphons off Western intellectual property, often with the help of the West.
First China hauled (and we gave) the factories, then it was the hi tech industry, now it’s biomedical ingenuity. The pattern repeats. China offered cheap labor for manufacturers and the tech industry with few annoying environmental burdens. Now China offers money and freedom from ethical quandaries for researchers who want to clone, create bioweapons, or hybrid human-animal cells.
The question for the West is, if environmental or ethical standards matter at home, shouldn’t they matter overseas too? If we aren’t happy to buy shirts made by slaves at home, why are foreign slave shirts OK? If we aren’t keen to fund bioweapons research in our own lands, why was it OK to help do that in China? (Thank Anthony Fauci).
Chinese Ethics, The ZMan
China makes it so easy for Western Scientists to collaborate:
There is no doubt that most Western governments operate biological research facilities. The fact that China is doing the same is no surprise. The difference is Western governments have to […]
And so the mask comes off. After forty years of cheating in a “forced technology transfer” the game is up. Trump called China for the theft of intellectual property, then launched a trade war, but the CCP already had stolen much of the information it needed.
This is not just an economic war, this is a big wet blanket on some kinds of scientific research. With one big bad player in the game breaking the rules, there is less incentive for people to announce and share discoveries. Royalties can’t be enforced, and a competitor might copy and compete against you. Are we entering a new era cold war of secrecy?
Back to Zang: Now that there is no need to hide the theft, nor pander in the hope of taking more, another Chinese Professor openly bragged about the situation last week:
China ‘Copied Its Way’ to Economic Success, Chinese Professor Boasts
Nicole Hao and Cathy He, Epoch Times
For the past 40 years, the Chinese regime only did one thing: plagiarize, Zang Qichao, a prominent marketing expert and visiting professor of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told a group of Chinese entrepreneurs recently.
“We plagiarized wildly, […]
The latest academic voodoo doll tossed at Fossil Fuels is a study claiming that the industry gets $65 billion in “implicit” subsidies in the US.
The authors of the latest paper assume the broken climate models work, and then guesstimate what the cost of all that theoretical warming would be with economic models that aren’t much better. It’s a paywalled paper, but they don’t appear to account for all the net benefits of coal, oil and gas which include, keeping people alive and fertilizing forests and fields around the world for free. These aren’t guesstimates from the future but known good and great gifts from the last century or two.
Greening the Earth. Zaichun Zhu, (2016)
Send them the bill: the fossil fuel companies are subsidizing taxpayers
How much is a hundred years of free fertilizer worth?
If only academic institutions were more than Big Gov advertising agencies they might also have considered that fossil fuel companies are never paid for their part in boosting agricultural yields, nor in greening the forests. Some 18 million square kilometers of Earths surface has more biomass. Arid regions of the world are 11% greener, mostly thanks to CO2 and deserts are […]
The USA might just unify despite Joe Biden. There are not many things that can bring the Occupy and Antifa crowd together with Proud Boys but sticking it to the overlords of Wall Street is just the ticket.
The Gamestop monster battle between the ruling class and the peasants
The naked short sellers of Wall Street were never a healthy part of a free market — they were selling shares they didn’t own. Their predatory behaviour could create the very destruction they profited from, ruining potentially productive assets in the process. In a bonfire of gambling greed, the Predators could effectively sell more shares than even existed — betting they could drive the price lower and buy back for a bargain. But the little-guy-punters in the reddit/Wallstreetbets crowd got organized and called the bluff. They pushed the $4 stock to $400, busting the Smarty-pants players and reveling in it. There are estimates that hedge funds have already lost nearly $20 billion. One group of short-selling gurus have been burnt so badly they’ve abandoned publishing short selling research. The wake from this is just beginning.
The problem for the Democrats is that this wave is a form of Draining The Swamp. […]
By Jo Nova
Daniel Greenfield put’s his finger on the diabolical feedback loop the West is in.
Big Gov protects the Big Tech monster from market competition — and in return Big Tech protects Big Government from political competition. Democrats have outsourced political repression of their enemies to cabals of private companies.
Nice Racket if you can get it.
The Democrats wet dream is to tar and feather opponents and then ban them from even speaking, and the conglomerate multinational octopuses are happy to oblige by tweaking search results, and suspending the right accounts. In return, they get sweet government deals and Section 230 protection. Who knew Amazon has nearly 500 federal subcontracts? When Amazon employees donate to the Democrats they’re just protecting their jobs.
When Google invests another $2 billion in Renewables, the last thing they want is climate denier Commander in Chief.
Public-Private partnerships are the unholiest anticompetitive destroyer of free speech. Big Gov works to make sure Big Tech can protect its monopoly control, while Big Tech works to make sure sure Big Gov is protected from criticism by blocking and banning free speech.
Sweet.
DEMOCRATS OUTSOURCE POLITICAL REPRESSION TO CORPORATE MONOPOLIES
Daniel Greenfield,
Democrats […]
What happened to the first amendment?
Parler will be tossed off Amazon at midnight US time tonight. Friday, Parler jumped to the #1 app in Apple’s app store. Saturday Apple tossed it off.
The Tech Giants run the country. They control the conversations of millions of people.
ZeroHedge: Parler saw approximately 210,000 installs globally on Friday 1/8, up 281% from approximately 55,000 on 1/7, according to data from the analytics service Sensor Tower. “In the U.S., the app saw approximately 182,000 first-time downloads on 1/8, up 355% from about 40,000 installs on 1/7. Since Wednesday, the app has seen approximately 268,000 installs from across U.S. app stores,” a press rep from Sensor Tower wrote in an email. -TechCrunch
Parler promise to set up again by noon tomorrow
The defiant message from John Matze of Parler:
10:10 PM ET: Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet.
We prepared for events like this by never relying on amazons proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.
…Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort […]
Because Big Bankers really want to save the Earth, right?
BlackRock, the 10 trillion dollar “global investment fund” is urging the Australian company AGL to shut Bayswater and Loy B Yang Coal Plants much sooner than planned. BlackRock is a NY based and as wikipedia says “Due to its power, and the sheer size and scope of its financial assets and activities, BlackRock has been called the world’s largest shadow bank.”
The move only got 20% support from investors. Australian investors largely said “no thanks”. Where are The Greens in exposing multinational powers that want to influence Australia — they’re part of the Big Banker Promotion Team.
BlackRock turns up the heat on AGL’s coal exit plans
Nick Toscano, Sydney Morning Herald
AGL faced an investor revolt on Wednesday, as more than 20 per cent of the company’s shareholders backed a resolution for the board to align the retirement of the Loy Yang A power plant in Victoria and its Bayswater station in New South Wales with a strategy to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
This would mean shutting Loy Yang A, the largest brown coal fired power plant in Victoria, […]
The parasites take $1,300 per household each year in Australia
Australians could save $13 billion dollars a year if they weren’t forced to pay for pagan climate witchery.
If the bill collector knocked at the door and demanded $1,300 dollars each year to try to stop storms and floods a century from now, there would be riots in the streets. Instead the money is buried in complexity and taken in slices through unlabeled bills and receipts throughout the year. We list the GST. Imagine if we listed “the Climate Tax”?
Malcolm Roberts, a One Nation Senator has commissioned a study by Alan Moran to add up the cost. But why did he have to do that? Where was the Treasury, the Minister for Energy, the CSIRO, the ABC, the Labor Party, the State Premiers, and all our universities? All apparently, are out to lunch with the vested interests or running chicken, afraid of being called names.
Alan Moran adds up the state and federal subsidies, including the renewable schemes (like the SRET) that charge every electricity user for other people’s solar panels. He also includes the costs to businesses from higher electricity charges — which are invariably passed on to […]
Another hidden renewables tax buried in complexity
Here in Renewables World we now have to pay companies to make less of the products we want. It’s a sign of how fragile and dysfunctional the Australian grid is.
“Big energy users like factories and farms will be able to earn money by saving energy during heatwaves and at other times when electricity prices are high,” the Australia Institute’s energy lead Dan Cass said.
They call it “wholesale demand response”. We call it planned blackouts. All over the country equipment will be switched off when its needed most so that our green grid doesn’t fall over, or create billion dollar price spikes.
With some of the most expensive electricity in the world, there is already a strong price signal driving companies to use electricity efficiently. This new “price signal” drives them to be less efficient. Because the grid is now incapable of providing regular reliable electricity whenever it’s most useful to companies, the government is adding a whole new layer of complexity to try to squeeze out the spikes they can’t handle.
This move will mean more people will have to be employed in account-management, but the products made will […]
Just when you think banks are only in it for the money, along comes Goldman Sachs to advise us on the planetary atmosphere:
“Goldman Sachs released a 34-page analysis of the impact of climate change. And the results are terrifying.”
All these nice banks want to save Earth too.
Yusef Kahn, Business Insider, Sept 2019
For some reason (what could it be?) a few months ago the Goldman Sachs investment bank was gripped with a sudden urge to repackage the IPCC report. Perhaps they were afraid their clients didn’t watch CNN, the BBC, or, pick-any-channel, maybe they couldn’t afford a television?
A Goldman Sachs report on the impact of climate change on cities across the world makes for grim reading. The bank warned that “consequences of a warming world may well play out over several decades to come, even if efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions are successful today.” Rising temperatures would lead to changing disease patterns, more intense and longer-lasting heatwaves, more destructive weather events, and pressure on the availability and quality of water for drinking and agriculture.
“Despite the uncertainty around the timing and scale of the impact, it may be prudent […]
There’s another round of push-poll fake surveys telling us how much the public want action on climate change. Part of the aim is to scare politicians and trick them into thinking that voters won’t vote for skeptics and will be happy to pay more for electricity, food, cars, and everything. But the awful truth is that the voters “vote” with their own wallets every time they fly, and 98% of them don’t care enough to spend a single dollar. That’s even when the airlines do all the work and just ask their customers to “tick a box”.
So that’s six bucks to save the world but hardly anyone can be bothered
Climate change: Half world’s biggest airlines don’t offer carbon offsetting
By Dulcie Lee & Laura Foster, BBC News, May 2019
When airlines do offer a [carbon offset] scheme, generally fewer than 1% of flyers are choosing to spend more.
Prices vary but a return flight from London to Malaga, Spain, would cost around £4 to offset.
That tells us exactly how much the punters are panicking about climate change, and suggests that most western democracies are absolutely ripe-for-the-picking for any politician with […]
On fire — Ann Widdecombe lays out the situation.
The only kind of Brexit is a clean break.
October 18th 2019
“The Brexit party will take Leave and nothing else.”
“We gave Europe their freedom and in return they want to take ours.”
She’s 72, and has studied Latin, Philosophy at Oxford. She was a Minister in the John Major Government. What a powerhouse.
Bring on an election!
h/t Jim Simpson.
9.6 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
Add another billion to the cost of the Renewable Energy Target?
In the last few days Bluescope Steel (formerly BHP) has confirmed it will spend US$700m (AU$1b) to expand it’s North Star steel mill in Ohio. So there are multiple headlines. But back in February CEO Mark Vassella explained exactly why they were thinking of it, and his first reason was “energy prices”. Last week, high energy prices were even “a tragedy” for Australian manufacturing. This week however, he’s clarified his position by muddying it up. Now there other reasons and the solution is to fix our gas prices. He’s backpedaling and tossing quotes that happen to help the renewables industry.
Perhaps he’s been heavied by his PR and strategy team? Now he’s saying that energy costs matter, but labor costs do too and “we weren’t ever going to put another steel mill in Australia”. He’s even saying energy costs “did not play a role” — the complete opposite. These will become the quotes the renewable energy fans rely on. Apparently, now what he really wants is cheaper gas — which requires a socialist government-driven solution to fix gas prices, and it’s safe for anyone to mention anything that requires […]
Remember when we were told coal was dying?
Donald Trump is changing the rules which will keep older cheap coal plants running.
Trump ditches sole climate rule that aimed to reduce coal plant pollution
Emily Holden, The Guardian
Donald Trump’s administration is finalizing plans to roll back the US government’s only direct efforts to curb coal-fired power plant pollution that is heating the planet.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency will replace an Obama-era climate change rule with a regulation that experts warn could help some of America’s oldest and dirtiest coal plants to keep running.
His agencies have slashed programs designed to limit carbon dioxide from power plants, cars, and trucks, and encouraged oil drilling and coal mining.
Democrat states are expected to challenge the rule in courts, but Trump’s team argues that it doesn’t have the legal authority to regulate climate. Who does? God, maybe. If Trump wins that court case a whole lot of climate gravy may evaporate.
Trump will kill as many 80,000 people
One minute we’re talking about a pollutant that isn’t. Next thing, it’s a totally different pollutant that has nothing to do with CO2:
June 20th, 2019 | Tags: Coal, USA | Category: Economics |  Print This Post | |
A big new study by electricity grid nerds (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) shows that after all the money and pain of 20 years of forced transition Australia’s electricity has shifted from 85% coal powered to 75% coal powered, which cost billions and as a bonus, made electricity more expensive and unstable. We drove out some brown coal, but swapped it for black coal. Instead of ousting coal power, the extra solar and wind power replaced some gas and hydro.
The authors are genuine independent experts, and the report is incredibly detailed — so this is rare — but still suffers from serious drawbacks:
The team doesn’t question the need for an artificial expensive transition. Almost all the problems they describe are caused by government policies that task our grid with changing the climate as well as producing cheap and reliable electricity. In a grid being ruined by inept policy, the implied solutions almost all involve more regulation and government policy. If our gas prices are too high we could ban sales overseas, but then we lose the export income. The left hand steals from the right. The free market solution is to use another fuel, […]
Behold, the Victorian Govt are proving yet again that Soviet-style electricity management can crush lives, hopes and wallets. The free market is never as cruel and destructive as one run on “good intentions” or the desire to win virtue-signaling fashion parades.
The invisible hand of the market was replaced with Daniel Andrews whimsy. This might work if he was smarter than the collective brains of 5 million people. Apparently Andrews assumes serfs people don’t understand the true value of solar panels and the benefits of creating jobs in China, so he has mandated glorious subsidies in the hope of getting nice weather one day, and the desperate punters took them up in droves. The industry boomed. But now they’ve temporarily halted the free gifts, orders have disappeared as the free market returns to accurately valuing solar installations. So the workers are being sacked. The rebates will come back again in July, so business-owners somehow need to get a different income stream for two months, survive the turmoil, and then the golden gravy will run again.
As per usual ABC policy, no free market voices were harmed, interviewed or asked to provide comment:
Victorian solar company reeling after popular rebate […]
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