Even with the efforts, China could face a coal supply gap of 30-million to 40-million tonnes in the fourth quarter, Citic Securities analysts said in an October 8 report. A shortage of the fuel could cut industrial power use by 10% to 15% in November and December, which would potentially translate into a 30% slowdown in activity in the most energy-intensive sectors like steel, chemicals and cement-making, according to UBS Group AG.
The State Council said electricity prices will be allowed to rise by as much as 20% against a benchmark, compared with a current cap of 10%.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senate leaders revealed today that Biden’s “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan will include $86 Billion for a brand-new Capitol Building construction project. The Capitol will be expanded to hold 100 Senators, 435 Representatives, and 1,423 Pfizer lobbyists.
h/t Tom Nelson
Not satire:
There’s plenty more lobbying where that came from:
Pfizer reported $5.6 billion in net income during the second quarter of 2021 — that’s up more than $2 billion (from $3.5 billion) from its second quarter of 2020 report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the first half of 2021, Pfizer reported nearly $10.5 billion in net income. The company brought in $6.9 billion in the first six months of 2020.
In 2020, Pfizer spent $13.2 million on its lobbying efforts — that’s up from $11 million in 2019 and the most the company has spent on lobbying since 2009 during the debate over the Affordable Care Act.
Speaking of profiteering:
Merck’s 4,000% Markup of Taxpayer-Funded COVID Drug Is ‘Extortion,’ Critics Say
Pharma giant Merck is facing accusations of price gouging after it charged the U.S. more than $700 per patient for a taxpayer-funded coronavirus treatment that, according to research, costs just $17.74 to produce.
And plenty of ways to potentially lobby:
Political staffers and top bureaucrats score good Pfizer jobs. Nice career path if you can get it:
Many of the new Big Pharma hires have come from consulting firms with deep and historical links to the current White House, and President Joe Biden himself. In October alone Pfizer tapped Sudafi Henry, Joe Biden’s former legislative affairs director from his days as Vice President.
David Schiappa, a longtime Republican staff member of the Senate holding the role of Secretary for Leader Mitch McConnell, is also lobbying for Pfizer.
It might be all legal. What would stop this trainwreck? An investigative media.
Google is waging a war against skeptics because skeptics have the truth on their side and they win debates too easily. How do we know? There are plenty of wrong people on the internet, and acres of misinformation, but Google is happy to feed those creators. The Flat Earthers are not spreading fast on Youtube, they’re not attracting millions of views. But no one needs to cut off their money supply because their arguments aren’t persuasive. To stop those ideas from running amok, the world only needs free speech.
Google announces: …a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.
The tech giant claims it will be able to differentiate between content “that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim.”
Who needs scientists anyhow –just Google the truth instead of doing all those experiments?
It’s time for skeptics to hone their skills in satire and parody. Let’s screw those algorithms!
For content creators who were relying on Youtube adverts, losing the monetization could kill the business, it’s a cruel blow. Google’s behaviour is grossly unfair and deceptive. It sold itself as a “platform” deceived people into watching and sharing their creative talents, and on November 1 could wipe them out. But good talent can still find a way — not only are there other, better video homes, but it’s so much better to get a business model that doesn’t feed or rely on Google. My advice would be to connect with your audience, set up a blog or a website, and ask for help and donations. Use Youtube while you still can, to set up a list.
Does anyone believe the Google-excuse?
“In recent years, we’ve heard directly from a growing number of our advertising and publisher partners who have expressed concerns about ads that run alongside or promote inaccurate claims about climate change,” said YouTube in its policy update notice. “Advertisers simply don’t want their ads to appear next to this content. And publishers and creators don’t want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos.”
This is a company that specializes in harvesting data and placing customized adverts with a highly targeted audiences and they say they can’t stop solar panel adverts showing up on climate skeptic sites?
At the nub of it all, is the dangerous popularity of skeptics:
Bloomberg reports that on YouTube, inaccurate videos about climate change received more than 21 million views and frequently ran ads, according to research in 2020 from Avaaz. The explosive report prompted members of Congress to admonish the tech giant, which proudly boasts about its environmental record.
The latest censorship step shows how fragile the global warming movement has become. Google wouldn’t be silencing skeptics if it wasn’t losing the arguments. And Google wouldn’t be losing if they had truth on their side. They have billions of dollars, control of almost 90% of all internet searches and support from governments, uni’s, professors, the UN and the whole renewables industry.
The COP 26 organizers must be quaking in their chardonnay. Just when they need all the usual hyped up wind powered record headlines, they’re getting headlines of record gas prices, rocketing inflation, and industries thinking about shutting down.
Wholesale gas prices hit new all-time highs on Wednesday, prompting warnings that factories could be forced to shut down over winter or switch to more polluting fuels just as the UK hosts the Cop26 climate conference next month.
Trade body UK Steel said it was now “uneconomic” to make steel at certain times in the UK, with British firms facing double the electricity prices paid by rivals in Germany, France and the Netherlands.
Don’t say “oil” say “polluting fuels that had been abandoned”:
Paul Pearcy, the federation coordinator at the trade body British Glass, said companies that make windows could be forced to revert to powering their furnaces with polluting fuels that had been abandoned.
British Glass makers are thinking of using fuel oil again because gas prices are so unaffordable. One industry player said with “Cop26 around the corner, it’s not a great advert.”
Indeed.
EU spooked by energy prices running wild & Net Zero in doubt Bloomberg,
European energy prices are spiraling out of control. Gas prices have surged 60% in just two days, pushing industry in the region to the breaking point and rattling financial markets.
…environment ministers across the bloc are getting jittery, with a number of countries expressing growing concern over the EU’s plans to create a new emissions trading system for road transport and heating — something they deem will hit the poorest most.
Panic is spreading, and prices are rising to the point where people will be forced out of business or back to using coal
by Ole Hansen, Head of Commodity Strategy, Saxo Bank
The global energy crisis continues to gather momentum, and since the Chinese government issued its “whatever cost” order last week, the price of Dutch TTF gas, the European benchmark had by early Wednesday surged more than 80% to EUR 155 per MWh, before witnessing a sharp correction to EUR 115, reflecting an increasingly difficult market situation. The focus on ESG and green transformation has reduced producers’ normal long-cycle capex response to surging prices and rising demand. Without a response from producers, the only other option is for prices to reach levels that triggers demand destruction, and that is the phase we have now entered.
Some real hockey stick graphs in gas, coal, and cost of electricity:
….
The rally which started in Europe several months ago has during the past months been spreading like a wildfire to the rest of the world. The combination of gas in short supply, and lower-than-expected power generation from solar and wind has forced utilities to buy coal in order to maintain the required baseload across the electrical grid.
To put the current elevated prices in Europe into perspective, the price of Dutch TTF first month gas earlier today reached a record €155 per MWh or $52.5 per MMBtu or around eight times higher than the average seen during the previous five years. German power prices for 2022 delivery have risen to €155 per MWh and more than 4X the five-year average. Tight supply of gas has forced power generators to turn to coal…
Ole Hanson points out that the squeeze may ease up if the weather doesn’t get too cold, or if enough heavy industry shuts down so the storage tanks can be filled before winter.
GWPF says Boris should get serious about Shale Gas:
If Boris Johnson wants to avoid a worsening energy crisis that could threaten his premiership sooner rather than later, if he wants to bring down the price of natural gas, if he wants to level up by creating a new and high-wage industry in the North of England, if he wants to energise Britain and improve energy security, he should abandon his foolish ban on shale gas extraction and kick-start the much delayed shale revolution in the UK.
GWPF remind us of what Boris said, not that long ago:
“It [fracking] is glorious news for humanity. It doesn’t need the subsidy of wind power. I don’t know whether it will work in Britain, but we should get fracking right away.” — 9 December 2012, Telegraph
Strangely, making electricity affordable makes it harder to employ people. Who knew?
The IPA shows that nearly 650,000 Australian jobs are at risk from Net Zero policies, and most of those jobs will be lost in the regions and thus in National Party electorates. Seats predicted to escape that pain are in inner city areas.
Thus and verily, the price of Net Zero will be largely paid by the deplorables.
The Liberal Party (theoretically, conservative) holds many inner city seats. So we can explain the schism tearing the Coalition of the Liberals and Nationals apart on energy policy. The Coalition holds 17 of the top 20 electorates with jobs at risk, but also holds 12 of the 20 lowest risk electorates.
The IPA issued a report on likely job losses in February this year, and a report on the electoral landscape yesterday:
“A worker in an electorate represented by the National Party is threes times as likely to lose their job than a worker in an electorate represented by the Liberal Party under a net zero emissions target” according to the IPA.
An analysis of the employment impact of a net zero emissions target in Australia, estimated that up to 653,600 jobs could be put at direct risk as a result of a net zero emissions target and that potential job losses would be concentrated in the agricultural (306,200 jobs), heavy manufacturing (74,100 jobs), and coal mining (62,000 jobs) industries.
17 of the top 20 electorates with the highest proportion of jobs at risk from a net zero emissions target are held by the Coalition. Six of the top 10 electorates with jobs at risk are held by the members of the National Party Room.
73% of the seats in federal parliament held by the Nationals are ‘at risk’ seats, compared with just 10% of seats held by the Liberals, and 3% of seats held by the Labor Party.
With an election coming, it’s time to make sure The Deplorables and their MP’s know what the price is for trying to perfect the global climate.
“A net zero emissions target would be a carbon tax by stealth.”
CHENNAI: Indian utilities are scrambling to secure coal supplies as inventories hit critical lows after a surge in power demand from industries and sluggish imports due to record global prices…
Over half of India’s 135 coal-fired plants have fuel stocks of less than three days, government data shows, far short of federal guidelines recommending supplies of at least two weeks.
That is a lot of coal burning:
India is the world’s second largest importer of coal despite having the fourth largest reserves.
“Domestic consumption increased by about 10% in the last two years because of work from home and air conditioning,” a senior Tamil Nadu government official told Reuters.
The sun has just risen on South Pole after the coldest six month period on record since 1956. The last winter there was suddenly 2.2 degrees Celsius colder than the average for the last 30 years.
Remember when Polar Amplification meant Antarctica was melting?
The chill was exceptional, even for the coldest location on the planet.
The average temperature at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station between April and September, a frigid minus-78 degrees (minus-61 Celsius), was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957. This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average at this remote station, which is operated by United States Antarctic Program and administered by the National Science Foundation.
One hot weekend in Miami is Climate change but the coldest six months in Antarctic records is a blip:
While impressive and unexpected, scientists characterized this record as a mere blip and curiosity as both Antarctica and the planet continue to rapidly warm amid escalating extreme weather.
Climate change has been making Antarctic summers cooler too. Blips are everywhere.
Surface Air temperature over East Antarctica (presumably in summer) from Hsu et al 2021.
And the ocean around Antarctica is cooler too:
The extreme cold over Antarctica helped push sea ice levels surrounding the continent to their fifth-highest level on record in August, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
As usual, scientists didn’t predict the record cold — but they knew why it happened:
“Basically, the winds in the polar stratosphere have been stronger than normal, which is associated with shifting the jet stream toward the pole,” Amy Butler, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA, wrote in a message. “This keeps the cold air locked up over much of Antarctica.”
No climate story is complete without the cult litany:
Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming. Antarctica is notorious for its wild swings in weather and climate, which can run counter to global trends.
At minus 60C even the planes don’t go:
Matthew Lazzara, Antarctic scientist said “At these temperatures, it is difficult to operate aircraft,” he wrote in an email. “[B]etween -50°C and -58°C you put the aircraft at risk with the hydraulics freezing up or fuel turning into a jelly.”
This newspaper used Freedom of Information rules to obtain a cache of 32 emails about a secretive teleconference between British and American health officials held early in the pandemic.
But officials blacked out almost every word before releasing the crucial documents.
Before this discussion, several of the world’s most influential experts believed the new virus most likely came from a laboratory – but days later, the scientists began dismissing such scenarios as ‘implausible’ and branding them conspiracy theories.
At this point our rulers are mocking us. The people have no Freedom of Information, we only have “whatever the bureaucrats want to show us”.
The same people who tell us the vaccines are completely safe are hiding everything they said.
There should be immediate calls for dismissal until these emails are received. Presumably, the contents are so damning these people would be sacked, if not charged, so dismissal is the barest minimum:
The critical call is at the centre of concerns that the scientific establishment tried to stifle debate on the pandemic’s origins, as damning new evidence emerges of US ties to high-risk research on bat viruses in Wuhan, where the first cases emerged in late 2019.
The Mail on Sunday requested emails, minutes and notes on the call between Sir Patrick Vallance – Britain’s chief scientific adviser – and its organisers Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust medical charity, and Anthony Fauci, the US infectious diseases expert and presidential adviser.
Sir Patrick Vallance was Mr Herd Immunity, the man who stopped the UK from closing borders when Chinese Bioweapons could have been kept out, and 133,000 deaths, long-Covid, and debilitating long lockdowns could have been easily avoided.
Fauci, of course, was the man who sent millions of dollars to the Wuhan lab where the virus came from, then allowed the virus to enter the US.
Apparently many experts thought it was a bioweapon until this call:
These emails must be so radioactive that the tiny few sentences they reveal still don’t look good. There are “natural” inserts in viruses, but if that was what they were discussing, why the “blackout” of all that context?
The lines left intact include a demand for the discussions, involving 13 participants around the world, to be conducted in ‘total confidence’, and an intriguing email line suggesting ‘we need to talk about the backbone too, not just the insert’.
The Daily Mail describes how many experts were talking about how it looked like an engineered virus until something changed in this conference call.
The teleconference was led by Farrar, an expert on infectious diseases, who admits that he saw the ‘huge coincidence’ of a novel coronavirus erupting in ‘a city with a superlab’ that was ‘home to an almost unrivalled collection of bat viruses’.
Many prominent scientists, including several participants on the call, feared the new virus looked engineered – among them California-based immunologist Kristian Andersen, who told Farrar beforehand he was alarmed by Covid’s unusual properties.
He said the binding mechanism ‘looked too good to be true, like a perfect key for entering human cells’ while its furin cleavage site – a feature not found on similar types of coronavirus that allows it to enter efficiently into human cells – might be expected ‘if someone had set out to adapt an animal coronavirus to humans by taking a specific suit of genetic material from elsewhere and inserting it.’
After the call suddenly everyone was dismissing the idea of a lab leak as a “conspiracy theory.”
When billions of dollars and so many lives were affected, how can “the cost” of providing these documents be “too high”?
A request for emails, notes or transcripts of Vallance’s conversations with Farrar on origins of Sars-CoV-2 (the strain of coronavirus that causes Covid-19), Wuhan Institute of Virology or Shi Zhengli, its infamous ‘Batwoman’ expert, was rejected on cost grounds.
Even the former Head of MI-6 was warned to say nothing about the origins of Covid. The Swamp is so deep, and the corruption or infiltration of the West is so complete, that even at the highest levels in both government advice and in science, people were being censored.
Notice how the collectivists have changed the meaning of the word “conspiracy”. How do we discuss “a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” when even the word we most want to use is now used as a namecalling label, the implies the user is delusional. The derision is now automatically assumed. Who does that serve?
Our language is being destroyed. Gradually key words are weaponised against free thinkers.
….
The paper by Piplani et al (including Professor Petrosky) that was repeatedly rejected without the paper even being looked at. The authors expected a very different response when they submitted it. Normally, this kind of topical controversial paper would have been accepted quickly by journals wanting to grab the limelight and headlines.
It was eventually published in Nature in 2021. The paper showed that SARS-2 was extremely well adapted to attach to human ACE2 receptors, much more than any animal version of ACE2.
These findings show that the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 isolates were surprisingly well adapted to bind strongly to human ACE2, helping explain its efficient human to human respiratory transmission. (Piplani et al)
This suggests the virus was not a product of natural forces. The normal evolutionary path in a “jump” from one species to the next would find a virus that could bind partly to receptors from two species at the same time. After “jumping” to a new species, different selection forces would then cause it to adapt to the new species.
The last man to speak in the video above was David Asher, the main investigator from the US State Dept looking at the origins of Covid.
David Asher speaks further below — he was surprised that US intelligence knew so much, yet said and did so little for so long.
He was not aware of the strange flu at the Miliary Games of October 2019 in Wuhan until 14 months later when someone in the military called him.
Notice at The Military Games — was that President Xi launching it? Would he have knowingly released a highly infectious bioweapon at an event he was present at? Perhaps if he knew that it would not be released til he left.
Finally, the Bolt interview with Sharri Markson discussing how the ABC effectively works for China.
Sell the ABC now. It works for China against the Australians who are forced to pay for it.
REFERENCE
Piplani et al (2021) In silico comparison of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species and implications for virus origin, Scientific Reportsvolume 11, Article number: 13063 (2021)
Much of the Media’s true business model is probably not ads or customers or even profits. Controlling the narrative is power in itself. Those who hold the strings that give a party or candidate a ten point advantage, to some extent, control the party.
If it serves an industry to get one candidate elected, those that control the megaphone can describe said candidates flaws with the best possible spin, or not at all. If this is the major driver of media ownership it explains the Fox paradox. Tucker Carlson and Fox are scoring super high ratings, and competing on uncontested territory. Why does no one seems to want to mimic that and compete for those viewers?
Probably because Big Business doesn’t want “Power for The People” or small government or, euwh, competition.
So Big Business owns Big Media, and they both like Big Government. Nearly every big business benefits from big regulation by “friendly” regulators. They get a net of red tape that catches little fish competitors and a river of subsidies that make life sweeter for Big Fish.
And if Big Media hold the key to swing voters, then Big Government likes Big Media, so it’s a perpetual self feeding circle. The media effectively becomes an arm of the left wing large government parties. It’s all so predictable…
What if the true goal of a media conglomerate is not to produce a reliable and entertaining news service tailored to its audience, but rather to influence that audience on behalf of third parties? What if the purpose of a media company is not to be profitable for its own sake, but influential for the sake of others?
Users of Google, YouTube, and other internet/social media services might think of themselves as “customers,” but they are actually the product, as those services collect detailed data on users and sell it to third parties for advertising purposes.
The Amazon CEO bought The Washington Post
Readers might recall that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos purchased the Post for $250 million. The paper is of course notoriously biased against Trump, even by the standards of today’s mainstream media. This may be good for business and it may not be — but ultimately this is not what matters. What matters is that the Post is directly or indirectly profitable to its owner, Jeff Bezos. If it lost money, but influenced the public or other important constituencies in a manner that resulted in greater success for Amazon (a company 10,000 times its size), it would still be a worthwhile investment for Bezos.
Just as a social media company’s true product is its user data, the true product of a major media company is the flow of narratives that shape the perception of reality. Wielding influence over the public mind will always be more valuable than any profit that could be generated by optimizing the news to suit public tastes.
Bezos’ and Murdoch’s attitudes toward media explain why Twitter is so valuable despite losing over $2 billion since its launch. Twitter was allowed to operate at such a massive loss because it has a profound influence on shaping narratives that in turn influence the population.
What does it mean? That we need to Red-Pill people with a few truths they’ve never heard. A media like this can only survive if the people believe their news outlet is serving them, not using them. And even though the Media don’t make a profit from subscriptions, they can only maintain their power if politicans and owners believe the readers read the paper.
Some great Green plans are starting to come undone and it’s not even winter yet
But it is just in time for a reality check on COP26.
Europe’s energy crunch is continuing, as gas storage volumes have shrunk to 10-year lows. In the UK 12 energy companies have collapsed this year leaving 2.2 million customers stranded without an electricity provider. Things are so bad the Dutch government is thinking of reopening the Groningen gas field, Europe’s largest onshore gas field. This is a big backward step for the transition to magical energy. “Until recently, the plan was that Groningen would be closed completely by 2023, ending the large-scale gas production and export by the Netherlands with a bang.”
Unlike the unexpected, airborne virus that swept across the world at rapid pace, there is virtually no excuse for the Government not being fully prepared for what we’re experiencing now.
Britons are soon to pay the price. Even in the better-case scenarios, where gas supplies are ramped up and demand from Asian markets (who are paying big bucks to secure first priority) levels out, energy bills are now all but guaranteed to spike in the coming months.
For all the lofty promises made by successive governments to protect consumers from rising costs, it’s now being unveiled – in a financially painful way – just how empty such promises are, in the face of uncontrollable global pressures.
Yes, UK residents will be joining people worldwide paying higher energy prices. But the problem will be especially acute here, where gas reserves are merely several days’ worth, making Britain especially vulnerable in the case of shortages.
The decision not to push on with lower-carbon shale gas alternatives means looming fears of a 1970s-style energy crisis; whereas countries like the US are, for now anyway, fairly confident they can handle the spike.
Perhaps it’s dawning on officials why the Kremlin supported anti-fracking protests in Europe. Undermining the imperfect but far cleaner form of energy through disinformation campaigns wasn’t just about keeping its hold on gas supply (which it’s using to its advantage now, to try to push through Nord Stream 2). It was also a game of stability and security – one which the UK seems to be losing.
Meanwhile the UK Government is thinking of slapping a tax on people using gas to heat their homes in cold weather supposedly to save them from some slightly hotter days in 2095. As John Constable says at the GWPF, the proposed heating tax to fund Net Zero is a social and political disaster in the making. Let’s take high gas prices and make them even higher?
Meanwhile in China two thirds of the nation is rationing power
Right now in China there are reports that in some areas the lifts are not working, heating is off, and traffic lights are out. Chinese thermal coal futures have more than doubled in price in the past year and there are 242 container ships waiting for a spot to berth in Chinese ports.
Two-thirds of China’s provinces are now rationing power. Factories have closed or have reduced production. Households are going dark and street lights have been turned off. Demand for candles has soared. The impact on food processors is creating a threat to food security.
Heading into a winter that is typically extremely cold, China is facing threats to its people and its economy …
Nearly 60 per cent of China’s power is generated by coal, with about 90 per cent of that coal sourced domestically.
It was coal that powered China’s remarkable acceleration in economic growth over the past half century, which helped turn it into the world’s manufacturing base and which fuelled the decades-long construction and property booms at the heart of its domestic economy.
There is a supply chain crisis brewing too. Look at all those hockeysticks?
Print This Post | | 
Follow Jo's Tweets
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senate leaders revealed today that Biden’s “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan will include $86 Billion for a brand-new Capitol Building construction project. The Capitol will be expanded to hold 100 Senators, 435 Representatives, and 1,423 Pfizer lobbyists.
The IPA shows that nearly 650,000 Australian jobs are at risk from Net Zero policies, and most of those jobs will be lost in the regions and thus in National Party electorates. Seats predicted to escape that pain are in inner city areas.
Recent Comments