Steve Bull's Blog, page 124
February 25, 2023
Europe Turned an Energy Crisis Into a Green Energy Sprint
Credit…Ibrahim RayintakathThis was supposed to be a winter of energy crisis in Europe. Beginning last spring, not long after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fear of gas shortages spread across the continent, along with fears of what might follow. The coming winter crunch was compared to wartime, with energy experts less focused on whether it would bring rationing than how much. Others suggested that spectacular price spikes would mean suspensions of energy markets and that the continent as a whole would experience not a “cost of living crisis” but a crisis of “molecules” — in which there wasn’t enough energy to be had, no matter the price. A recession was simply taken for granted among the commentariat — almost like a badge of honor demonstrating the moral valor of standing up to Vladimir Putin.
Europe as a whole has indeed endured a lot through the cold months: dramatic spikes in energy prices, with wholesale prices for electricity and gas growing as much as 15-fold, often accompanied by similar spikes in government relief. Countries from Germany to Denmark and Italy spent more than 5 percent of G.D.P. to shield citizens from the crunch, enacting public conservation measures that darkened city streets and limited power use in other ways. In Britain, average bills were expected to grow by 80 percent before the government artificially lowered the average annual household energy bill to about $3,000. Across the continent, people turned their thermostats down and snuggled with hot water bottles at night. Industry was dialed back in places but also often found alternative power supplies.
All told, though, the worst has not come to pass. There were no blackouts, as experts were warning as recently as December…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Comer Launches Probe into State Department’s Alleged Funding of Group Blacklisting Conservative Media ‘Under the Guise of Combatting Disinformation’
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, delivers remarks during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, on Feb. 01, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter on Thursday to the U.S. State Department demanding records and a briefing by the agency regarding its alleged funding of a “disinformation tracking group” that is blacklisting conservative-leaning news outlets.
The letter (pdf) cites as evidence the Washington Examiner’s series of investigative reports uncovering the State Department’s alleged partnership with activist organizations, specifically one “foreign organization,” to “suppress lawful speech and defund disfavored news outlets under the guise of combatting disinformation.”
“The Committee is disturbed by recent reporting that taxpayer money ended up in the hands of a foreign organization running an advertising blacklist of organizations accused of hosting disinformation on their websites, including several conservative-leaning news organizations,” Comer wrote.
The letter goes on to detail the Washington Examiner’s findings.
According to the outlet, major ad companies look to “nonpartisan” groups that claim to detect and fight “disinformation” online to help determine which news outlets and websites they should avoid.
Some of these “disinformation monitors,” the Washington Examiner went on to explain, “are compiling secret blacklists and feeding them to ad companies, with the aim of defunding and shutting down disfavored speech.”
One such group is British Global Disinformation Institute (GDI), which has compiled a “dynamic exclusion list” of 2,000 websites and rates those outlets based on their “alleged disinformation ‘risk’ factor,” according to the Washington Examiner.
GDI’s website further explains its purpose. Calling itself an “independent, non-profit, open source, intelligence hub,” GDI “tracks disinformation and extremism across platforms online” to “serve a broad array of governments, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], online platforms, and media.”
…click on the above link to read the rest…
China Report Excoriates ‘US Hegemony’, War Crimes, CIA Coups 400 Foreign Interventions
Photo obtained via FlickrThe Chinese government has published a lengthy report condemning “US hegemony” and its destructive effects on the world.
The document analyzed the ways in which the United States has “abused” its hegemony politically, militarily, economically, financially, technologically, and culturally.
China’s Foreign Ministry noted that Washington has roughly 800 foreign military bases all around the world and has launched 400 foreign military interventions.
The United States committed genocide against Indigenous nations, imposed its colonialist “Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, and annexed independent territories like Hawaii, Beijing pointed out.
China denounced the US for sponsoring coups, regime-change operations, and “color revolutions” in dozens of countries, while constantly spreading “misinformation” and propaganda to destabilize foreign adversaries.
Just since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, wounded millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, Beijing recalled.
Support our Independent Journalism — Donate Today!SUBSCRIBE TO PATREONDONATE ON PAYPALThese devastating facts were laid out in the report “US Hegemony and Its Perils“, which China’s Foreign Ministry released on February 20. It was subsequently republished by major Chinese media outlets.
Beijing said the goal of the report was to “draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples”.
The Foreign Ministry wrote:
Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
February 24, 2023
We Underappreciate How Different We Are
Photo by Joshua Fuller on UnsplashAfter I started working for my current employer, I met a colleague with whom I simply could not work with. We disagreed on almost everything — not on a factual level, but rather on how we approach working with problems and identify solutions. I felt like that, despite many similarities, we are the diametric opposite of each other.
This was the time when I got interested in fundamental differences regarding how people think and feel about the world and themselves. I started out by trying to better understand myself: somehow I had a hunch that this conflict has to do something with personality types. I filled out countless personality tests, read tens — maybe hundreds — of articles on different methods for dividing people into personality types, on how these can (or cannot) predict future behavior and so on. Finally I settled with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, largely thanks to a fantastic website promoting the idea (full disclosure: I have no connection whatsoever to the creators and owners of that site and their personality test is free to use).
There were other factors at play, of course, like how differentiated the given personality descriptions are, but the fact that convinced me (and your mileage might greatly vary here) is the system’s ability to predict a certain type’s behavior in new situations, and the vast amount of additional information it revealed beyond the answers given by the participant in the questionnaire.
Figuring out my type (and guessing my colleague’s type with whom I could not work with) has led to one of the biggest revelations of my lifetime. I can still remember the moment. It was a cold but sunny winter day. As I was walking around a building in the campus pondering the issue I had a sudden epiphany. It was like a lighting strike.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
A road map that misses some turns
A review of No Miracles Needed
Mark Jacobson’s new book, greeted with hosannas by some leading environmentalists, is full of good ideas – but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
No Miracles Needed, by Mark Z. Jacobson, published by Cambridge University Press, Feb 2023. 437 pages.
The book is No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air (Cambridge University Press, Feb 2023).
Jacobson’s argument is both simple and sweeping: We can transition our entire global economy to renewable energy sources, using existing technologies, fast enough to reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions at least 80% by 2030, and 100% by 2050. Furthermore, we can do all this while avoiding any major economic disruption such as a drop in annual GDP growth, a rise in unemployment, or any drop in creature comforts. But wait – there’s more! In so doing, we will also completely eliminate pollution.
Just don’t tell Jacobson that this future sounds miraculous.
The energy transition technologies we need – based on Wind, Water and Solar power, abbreviated to WWS – are already commercially available, Jacobson insists. He contrasts the technologies he favors with “miracle technologies” such as geoengineering, Carbon Capture Storage and Utilization (CCUS), or Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide (DAC). These latter technologies, he argues, are unneeded, unproven, expensive, and will take far too long to implement at scale; we shouldn’t waste our time on such schemes.
The final chapter helps to understand both the hits and misses of the previous chapters. In “My Journey”, a teenage Jacobson visits the smog-cloaked cities of southern California and quickly becomes aware of the damaging health effects of air pollution:
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Russia Tells UN That Ukraine Crisis Is A “War With The West For Survival”
In two days of United Nations special sessions this week related to Ukraine as well as the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, Russia mounted a robust defense, arguing that it sees its ongoing military action in Ukraine is a matter of “survival”.
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya voiced the stark perspective on Wednesday, casting the war as one against the collective West. “As for our country, we see all of this as a war with the West for survival, for the future of our country, for our children, for our identity,” he said.
He stated that “Ukraine is nothing but a bargaining chip in this plot” – part of a broader plan which was long in implementation, going back to 2014.
Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Vasily Nebenzya, via APThe Russian diplomat’s words followed a surprise admission by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who in a Feb.14 press conference in Brussels described that “the war didn’t start in February last year. The war started in 2014.”
The day prior to Nebenzya’s remarks, the UN Security Council had convened at the urging of permanent member Russia to consider fresh allegations surrounding the Nord Stream sabotage. Nebenzia during that session called for establishing an independent investigation.
He specifically invoked Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report which said the pipelines were bombed as part of an elaborate covert CIA operation involving the US Navy and help from the Norwegians:
“This journalist is telling the truth,” Nebenzia said at the meeting. “This is more than just a smoking gun that detectives love in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a basic principle of justice; everything is in your hands, and we can resolve this today.”
…click on the above link to read the rest…
February 22, 2023
Iraqi central bank to drop dollar for yuan in trade with China
(Photo credit: AFP)
The Iraqi central bank announced on 22 February that, for the first time, it plans to allow trade from China to be settled directly in yuan instead of the US dollar to improve access to foreign currency.
“It is the first time imports would be financed from China in yuan, as Iraqi imports from China have been financed in (US) dollars only,” the government’s economic adviser, Mudhir Salih, told Reuters on 22 February.
According to a statement released by the Iraqi central bank, carrying out transactions in the Chinese currency would boost the balances of Iraqi banks with accounts with Chinese banks.
However, this option depends on the size of the central bank’s yuan reserves.
A second option to boost local banks’ yuan balances would involve converting US dollars held in the central bank’s accounts with JP Morgan and the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) to yuan before paying the final beneficiary in China.
The Iraqi central bank has been on a mad dash to compensate for a dollar shortage in local markets. This crisis prompted the cabinet to approve a currency revaluation earlier this month.
Last year, the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York began enforcing stricter controls on international transactions by Iraqi commercial banks, forcing them to comply with specific SWIFT global transfer system criteria to access their foreign reserves.
The move was allegedly meant to “curtail money laundering and the illegal siphoning of dollars to Iran and other heavily sanctioned [West Asian] countries.” However, the sudden rules change for Iraqi banks sent the economy reeling as 80 percent, or more of Iraq’s daily US dollar wire transfers could no longer be completed.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Neocons Need War Because Monetary System Collapsing – Martin Armstrong
Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong said at the end of last year the U.S. is being set up for a “nightmare fall.” Train derailments and political problems are spinning out of control, but the biggest threat is war. Armstrong explains, “They want a war, but they also need it because the monetary system is collapsing. . . . You have had interest rates at negative since 2014. So, suddenly interest rates are rising. Any bond owned by any institution in Europe is a loser. They have lost so much money, it’s incredible. What happens? Nobody is interested in long term debt – period. . . . If you have interest rates rising, and rates are going to be going up because the Fed cannot stop this kind of inflation. Then, you got war. You have untold billions of dollars being shipped into Ukraine which is absurd. This is what you have. . . . You also have to look at what Janet Yellen said, and she was concerned with the tons of new debt coming out. You are exceeding the balance sheets of the Primary Dealers. To be a Primary dealer you have to be able to guarantee you will be able to buy X amount of debt. If you can’t sell it, what happens? The bank is stuck with the debt, and then, they go bust. So, we have a real problem here. They cannot continue to issue this kind of debt in perpetuity. They have been borrowing money since WWII with no intention of paying anything off. . . . The Fed is independent, and they don’t want the long term debt. They have been moving towards the short end of the curve. How do you continue to fund a government if there are no buyers for the debt? This is on a global scale.”
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers
Listen to a reading of this article:
Research conducted by New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics into Russian trolling behavior on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election has found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”
Which is to say that all the years of hysterical shrieking about Russian trolls interfering in US democracy and corrupting the fragile little minds of Americans — a narrative that has been used to drum up support for internet censorship and ever-increasing US government involvement in the regulation of online speech — was false.
And to be clear, this isn’t actually news. It was established years ago that the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency could not possibly have had any meaningful impact on the 2016 election, because the scope of its operations was quite small, its posts were mostly unrelated to the election and many were posted after the election occurred, and its funding was dwarfed by orders of magnitude by domestic campaigns to influence the election outcome.
What’s different this time around, six years after Trump’s inauguration, is that this time the mass media are reporting on these findings.
The Washington Post has an article out with the brazenly misleading headline “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters“. Anyone who reads the article itself will find its author Tim Starks acknowledges that “Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior,” but the insertion of the word “little” means anyone who just reads the headline (the overwhelming majority of people encountering the article) will come away with the impression that Russian trolls still had some influence on 2016 voters.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
A realistic ‘energy transition’ is to get better at using less of it
Image via Shutterstock.In 2022, I authored two articles expressing doubts about society’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable solar and wind power. In this final article in the series, I’ll explain why my conclusions are based on experience as well as analysis.
My gloomy assessment of the prospects for renewable energy is not motivated by love of fossil fuels. In fact, I’ve spent the past two decades writing books and articles and giving hundreds of talks arguing that our collective adoption of coal, oil, and gas was the biggest mistake in human history. However, I don’t think, as some spokespeople for environmental organizations sometimes seem to do, that any criticism of alternative energy sources is a form of climate denialism.
At the other extreme, I disagree with the few hard-core environmentalists who believe that renewables are a complete dead end. After humanity’s fossil-fueled fever has eventually broken, we will return to renewable energy, one way or another. We’ve relied on renewable energy for untold millennia in terms of food, firewood, wind, and flowing water. It certainly would be preferable if we could partially transition to forms of renewable energy that would enable us to maintain some of the best of what we’ve accomplished over the past few energy-intensive decades—including scientific knowledge and creative works produced in a growing host of media, from sound recording to motion pictures to digital art. Unfortunately, that will be impossible without functioning electricity grids, which are challenging to maintain even in the best of times. If we could use hydro, solar, wind, and geothermal energy to power slimmed-down grids, that would greatly ease the transition away from fossil fuels.
In short, I have no reason to dislike renewable energy. In fact, I love it. And I live with it.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
