|
|
Warwick McKibbin reckons Vladimir Putin might be the best thing that’s ever happened to the energy transition.
Speaking at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Tuesday, the economist, academic and former Reserve Bank board member argued that surging commodity prices caused by the war in Ukraine could force the urgent shift to clean energy to accelerate.
Really?
In the parallel universe Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute has been sending warning signals for years that the push for intermittent energy in the west could have drastic geopolitical consequences. Here he explains how the conflict in the Ukraine has brought the drastic consequences upon us ahead of schedule.
Naivete about energy realities robbed the U.S. and its allies of important “soft power” options and helped finance Russia’s aggression. In the near term, our choices are limited, but continuing down the same energy path is a formula for yet more problems in the future.
He notes that the EU and the US over the past two decades spent more than $5 trillion and made countless mandates to replace oil, natural gas and coal.
This brought the hydrocarbon share of all energy use down by two percentage points […]
…
8.7 out of 10 based on 10 ratings
The joke
Biden Sells Alaska Back To Russia So We Can Start Drilling For Oil There Again
Babylon Bee
ANCHORAGE, AK—The deliberate and premeditated invasion of Ukraine by brutal dictator Vladimir Putin has forced the US to reassess the importance of energy independence. With this new resolve, the Biden Administration has taken its first step toward increasing oil production for Americans by selling Alaska back to Russia so we can start drilling for oil there again.
Jen Psaki praised Biden’s brilliance in finding a solution that would prevent an energy crisis while also preventing new drilling on American land. She pointed out succinctly to journalists, “You see, it’s not American land anymore; it’s Russian land.”
The truth
Joe Biden needs to stop buying oil and gas from the Russian dictator, but rather than getting it from the US or Canada he’s talking to a dictator in Venezuela.
President Biden is scrambling to contain soaring oil prices, which closed at more than $123 a barrel on Monday. It speaks volumes about this Administration that it’s seeking help from Vladimir Putin’s client in Venezuela and our estranged Saudi allies rather than U.S. shale […]
All anybody wants is free choice about what they get injected with. Two days to go. Send it to your friends.
Let the Nurses, Doctors, Truck Drivers, Teachers and everyone who wants to work or travel be free to choose.
Australian Parliament Petition EN3886 – Cessation of vaccine mandates 9.5 out of 10 based on 65 ratings […]
It’s the Great Reset in Global Energy complacency
There is pandemonium on the markets and suddenly many nations want to be energy sufficient. It’s perhaps not The Great Reset than the collective-types were expecting?
The gas flows from Russia to the EU are sporadically tightening, and the Yamal-Europe line has been cut off. Gas in Europe is now trading at €340/MWh which is fully 22 times the long term average. Newcastle coal normally trades around $60 per ton, but now is over $400 USD.
A few days ago the former head of MI6 in the UK called for an immediate lifting of the frakking ban which was set to see concrete poured down the only two shale gas wells in England by March 15th. Thirty-five Tory MPs and four peers sent a letter to Boris demanding the same thing. Now even Boris Johnson is suggesting the Green targets could be relaxed, not just for Britain, but for all the West. He went so far as to suggest The West could give itself a “climate change pass” while we figure out how to get energy that isn’t Russian gas.
Thanks to NetZeroWatch
So much for the end of Fossil […]
A year ago, one man sold his soul.
People were dying, hospitals were overflowing, but even by January 2021 we already knew ivermectin could save three quarters of those who died. Randomized trials of 2,282 people showed that only 2% of people on ivermectin died, compared to nearly 10% of the hapless people who missed out, yet he picked the “missed out” path.
Everything pointed in the right direction. The result of the meta-study was highly significant (p=0.0002!), the risks were almost nothing, the outcome was extraordinary, the effect was dependent on the dose, and the blood markers of inflammation were also reduced, as we’d expect. Yet the conclusion of the same paper was that we needed larger trials before the results could even be reviewed. And this single line that contradicted nearly everything in the paper, was quoted everywhere to say the evidence was “inconclusive”.
This was from the same man who said Ivermectin was “the way forward” and that he would give ivermectin to his own brother. Then suddenly he flipped. !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src=”https://rumble.com/embedJS/uy6ktw”+(arguments[1].video?’.’+arguments[1].video:”)+”/?url=”+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+”&args=”+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, “script”, “Rumble”);
Rumble(“play”, {“video”:”vttz4b”,”div”:”rumble_vttz4b”}); ….
A forensic analysis of that strange contradictory paper shows there were two or three other voices who influenced […]
It’s not a car, it’s a Quadricycle
Given that an EV is so impractical for long road trips, and is a “second car”, it makes some sense to have effectively a two seater shopping trolley, covered with plastic. At the moment, there is some loophole in the UK where this is allowed on the road, but doesn’t require a drivers license. Bureaucrats are bound to change that any second.
It looks ideally suited to slow London and Paris traffic and tight parking spots. But in higher speed Australian and US cities, I suspect accident stats would look ominous if the 485 kg plastic buggy met a two ton SUV at normal driving speeds. Not that it can do normal driving speeds. At 40km/hr top speed, its probably too slow to be legal on Australian roads, and too fast to be legal on sidewalks.
The sunroof is cute in cold climates, but here in Aus it might cause second degree burns and heat stroke in January. It has a 6kW motor and 5.5kWh battery pack — can it run an airconditioner AND a motor for half an hour?
I would be amazed if this were legal to drive unlicensed (or even […]
The eye-opening video about Chinese people in Ukraine, who weren’t evacuated, and who were “permitted” by the CCP to be excited at the arrival of Putin’s tanks, even hanging out Chinese flags to welcome their Russian comrades until suddenly they realized that wasn’t such a good idea. The CCP Flags were hurriedly packed away and some went so far as to pretend to be Japanese… because some of the malevolent intent here is just so toxic and word was spreading.
The commentator here, SerpentZA (Winston Sterzel), did videos of what was happening in China that I also posted on during the earliest days of the Wuflu — literally Feb 2nd, and Feb 8th, 2020.
A South African who lives in China — he has unusual insight.
H/t David, and one other, sorry, I must find.
9.4 out of 10 based on 51 ratings
Who were those Useful Idiots…
Strategically, Russia would be crazy if it weren’t funding Green Groups to scare the West out of using its own resources and hobbling its own energy grid.
Russia has the motive, the means and the opportunity. Ask not whether Putin was funding some Greens, but whether Putin would not be.
These dark money trails across international borders are almost impossible to pin down, but there are clues, leaks and links suggesting Russia was sending hundreds of millions of dollars to support anti-fossil-fuel Green environmentalists.
Yesterday Russian troops did a hostile takeover of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. So in that spirit it’s time to ask if Russia was funding Western Greens was it preparing for War or just worried about walruses?
Would Good Global Citizen Russia say No Thanks to a chance to gain dominant control of a key strategic market?
A lesson in energy masochism
The Wall Street Journal / The Australian
A mere 15 years ago, countries in the EU produced more gas than Russia exported. Yet European production has plunged by more than half during the past decade. Putin has happily filled the supply gap.
[…]
Too much to discuss still.
9.2 out of 10 based on 16 ratings
If only the $3 million dollar a day ABC could afford a science team that could do as much research as one unpaid volunteer does in a day?
Thanks to Cliff Ollier and Ken Stewart for the BOM graph of past Brisbane Floods. Clearly things were worse in the 1800s.
If CO2 has any effect perhaps it reduces flooding?
There have always been big floods in Brisbane | BOM Source | KensKingdom
One day when the ABC finally gets the Internet they’ll be able to find official pages like “Known Floods in the Brisbane and Bremer River Basin“. And one day the half billion dollar BOM agency will be able to update graphs like this within a week of a new flood peak, like bloggers did (above).
Ken Stewart went looking for lost Rain Bombs and found them
As Ken reports the ABC made a fuss over three Queensland sites recording more than 1 metre of rain in just four days. But neither the ABC or the BOM is telling Australians that there have been at least nine similar “Rain Bombs” before and most of them were more than one hundred years ago.
I went […]
At least eight people have died in dreadful flooding in South East Queensland and Brisbane. The slow moving rain system moved south through NSW, inundating towns, and has arrived in Sydney and surrounds, where evacuations have begun.
Despite the pain, some are already exploiting the situation for their climate religion or their retirement plan. What was torrential rain is now a rain-bomb, and to stop floods they yell at us that the Climate Change Emergency must be our priority!
A few days ago the floods in Brisbane peaked at 3.85m. Apparently this was due to a surplus of coal fired power or a lack of wind turbines, or something like that. But this photo below, was taken in Brisbane 129 years ago, when there were almost no coal turbines anywhere in the world, and CO2 levels were ideal, yet floods reached 8.3m.
Not climate change: the flood waters rose to 8.3m.
And in the land of flood, fire and drought, it keeps happening. In 1974, floods in Brisbane reached 5.45m. In 2011 the waters were 4.46m deep. Obviously things have changed a bit: the Wivenhoe dam wasn’t there during the first two floods, and the hydrology of city […]
Who will pay for the cleaning up job?
By 2050, the world will be throwing out 2 million tons of wind turbines and 6 million tons of solar panels every year.
One reason the world may be throwing away so much not-so-renewable waste is that recycling it costs ten times as much as what is recovered.
Who would have thought that collecting low density energy in extreme environments would create megatons of tough, non-biodegradable infrastructure, embedded with toxic heavy metals?
Graveyard of the green giants: It’s the hidden cost of our dash for windpower – thousands of decommissioned blades that are so difficult to recycle, they are just dumped as landfill,
writes TOM LEONARD, DailyMail
Scientists at America’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have warned that in the next few decades, the world faces a ‘tidal wave’ of redundant blades that will number ‘hundreds of thousands, if not more’.
By 2050, it’s predicted that the world will need to dispose of two million tons of wind turbine blade waste every year. In the UK, the volume already exceeds 100,000 tons per year.
The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that by 2050, up […]
All it took was a War.
Policies based on fashion can be dead-set one day and gone the next. Until Saturday Germany was about to close its last nuclear power plants, gas production had been falling for 20 years and it planned to phase out coal plants by 2030.
Germany was the largest energy consumer in Europe, but was also determined to pursue Energiewende, the policy of transitioning from fossil fuels.
On Sunday all that changed:
Nuclear, coal, LNG: ‘no taboos’ in Germany’s energy about-face
By Christoph Steitz, Riham Alkousaa and Maria Sheahan, Reuters
In a landmark speech on Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz spelled out a more radical path to ensure Germany will be able to meet rising energy supply and diversify away from Russian gas, which accounts for half of Germany’s energy needs.
“The events of the past few days have shown us that responsible, forward-looking energy policy is decisive not only for our economy and the environment. It is also decisive for our security,” Scholz told lawmakers in a special Bundestag session called to address the […]
The World watches Ukraine. As the citizens are turning themselves into an army, they are being trained on Twitter, on how to beat tanks, pick strategic targets, and of course, there will be a propaganda campaign. Nothing can be verified. Except for the remarkable bravery of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who knocked back an offer to be evacuated, and is fighting with the army. He is being treated as a hero — the new leader of the free world.
Winning hearts all over the world has a material benefit. Hackers are working to punish Putin, theatening an unprecedented cyberwar that will cripple his websites and expose all his secrets. “We are Anonymous. We are legion. Expect us”. There are reports #Anonymous has already taken down six Russian government websites, and have even hacked into Russian state TV stations as well, showing what is happening in Ukraine. “Soon you will feel the wrath of the worlds hackers many of which may reside in your country.” Elon Musk has also offered the Starlink Satellites for Ukraine to use.
While Russia used Shock and Awe, the Ukrainians appear to be winning now. Though if Russian armored columns make it through to Kyiv […]
…
9.3 out of 10 based on 6 ratings
John Hussman warns that people may not realize how much stocks are likely to crash
Dr David Evans supplied some interesting links and adds “The biggest theme in markets is that ratios eventually revert to their mean (or average). No, it’s not different this time. A return to average on this graph implies a drop of about 75%.”
Hassman Margin-Adjusted P/E (US stock market price-earning ratio (adjusted))
John Hussman: Investors are paying top dollar for top dollar
Why is it so hard to accept that speculative bubbles can burst? Interest rates were driven to zero for a decade. Yield-starved investors chased stocks to valuations beyond the 1929 and 2000 extremes. That speculation front-loaded more than a decade of future market gains into the present. Those gains are now behind us, embedded in breathtaking multiples. If history is any guide, a collapse in valuations is likely to return those gains to the future.
The process of losing speculative gains and recovering them over time is what I’ve often called a “long, interesting trip to nowhere.” It bears repeating that the S&P 500 lagged Treasury bills from 1929-1947, 1966-1985, and 2000-2013. 50 years out of an 84-year period.
Now, […]
Just another day in a cold Biotech War?
“The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.”
Image: Scientific Animations
To put this in perspective the whole virus is essentially a code with 29,000 bases in a row, and this story is about a sequence of 19.
The code is in the same four letter “alphabet”, more or less, as all life on Earth — A, T*, C and G. But in this new discovery there are 19 particular bases (or nucleotides) in a row. These are the bases that were so useful that Moderna patented the sequence in 2016. Oddly, no other coronavirus has that sequence. Indeed, nothing else in a virus or animal cell does either.
The reason these 19 bases are so interesting is that they make up the critical point called the “Furin Cleavage Site”. Furin is an enzyme inside our cells that acts like a specialist scissor, cutting only certain proteins in an exact way. A number of nasty germs sneak in and use our Furin snippy tools too — like HIV and Ebola, and […]
…
8.9 out of 10 based on 8 ratings
Join Peter Ridd, Jo Nova, Walter Starck and Alan Moran for the Great Barrier Reef Webinar
Tuesday March 1: Sign up here: AEF Webinar: Is the Great Barrier Reef Dying or Thriving?
Photo: Wise Hok Wai Lum
One side of politics has just spent another billion dollars to “save the reef”. The other side of politics may spend even more. But how much is our national policy set by scientific data and how much is controlled by scenic-disaster-shots? Do Australian academics and media activists craft a false notion of a fantasy Reef-Nirvana where bleaching never occurred, where cyclones were gentle, and where corals are supposed to live in aquarium-like conditions with constant pH and temperature 24 hours a day? Is the reef really in worse condition now than thirty years ago when half of our man-made emissions had not been emitted?
Walter Starck wants to know why we have one the largest fishing zones per capita in the world but most families struggle to afford to eat Australian fish?
A STICKY POST. Details below.
9.5 out of 10 based on 86 ratings […]
|
JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets To report "lost" comments or defamatory and offensive remarks, email the moderators at: support.jonova AT proton.me
Statistics
The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
|
Recent Comments