Steve Bull's Blog, page 1325
September 3, 2017
Meeting Paris Goals Means Dealing with Climate Impacts of Eating Meat
Environmental groups place a lot of attention on trying to stop new oil, gas, and coal development since current fossil fuel projects would likely already blow us past the less-than 2°C upper limit for warming laid out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. In fact, there’s a whole movement, known as “Keep It in the Ground,” predicated on this idea.
But when faced with a resurgence of support for fossil fuels from the White House, perhaps just as important is talking about how to “Keep It in the Cow,” according to some reports. Right now, experts predict agriculture is set to eat up half the greenhouse gas emissions the world can release by 2050 and still stay below 2°C (3.6°F) of warming.
That is, unless the world takes a big bite out of its meat consumption, especially from cattle and other livestock that chew their cud, say researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Raising these ruminants produces a lot of methane, a much more potent but shorter-lived greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
While “Meatless Mondays” is one approach to this problem, their studies show that it’s not necessarily how much meat people eat that’s linked to the climate impacts of their diet. Instead, it’s the amount of beef, lamb, and dairy.
A 2017 Chalmers study concluded that: “A switch from diets rich in ruminant meat to diets with meat from monogastric animals (pork, chicken) reduces [methane] emissions by almost the same amount as a switch to an entirely vegan diet.” Researchers at the University of Oxford in 2016 found similar benefits, concluding that shifting to a vegetarian diet could lessen greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds.
(If you want to eat vegan, of course, that’s also an option. In addition, eggs and dairy each have about half the climate impact of eating chicken and beef.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Van Halen, M&Ms, And The Next Market Downturn
Van Halen, M&Ms, And The Next Market Downturn
How watching the right indicators will avoid disaster
The planet-sized egos of rock & roll performers are legendary.
Few things symbolize this better than the outrageous requests they often make when on tour.
These requests are referred to as “riders”, and appear in the contract a tour venue receives in advance of the artist’s arrival. These contract riders specify the physical conditions that the singer/band requires to be in place before arriving to perform. Stage lighting settings, sound equipment, furnishings, etc — that kind of stuff.
And these rider requests can get pretty funky – often extremely so — when it comes to backstage perks the performers want.
For example: A wooden pond filled with koi carp (Eminem). A driver who will not speak or make eye contact (Katy Perry). 20 white kittens and 100 doves (Mariah Carey). Seven dwarves (Iggy Pop). 50,000 bees (Slayer). A sub-machine gun (Mötley Crüe). And, yes, even a great white shark (Hank III).
The practice of making these kind of outrageous demands stems from a rider Van Halen inserted into the contract for its 1982 world tour, which insisted on a bowl of M&Ms to be provided backstage, but with all of the brown M&Ms removed.
As this image below of the actual rider shows, the band was very explicit in its seriousness about this:
Once the media got whiff of this, it had a field day roasting the band’s narcissistic chutzpah. A new high-water mark of diva capriciousness had been established, which quickly became legend. A feat of prima donna pampering that subsequent performers have been trying to top ever since.
But as crazy as it sounds, Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” rider had nothing to do with caprice. There was a solid rationale behind it.
In fact, it was quite brilliant.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Don’t Mess With Yellowstone Supervolcano” Geologists Warn NASA
Two weeks ago, we reported that Brian Wilcox, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense, had shared a report on what the Space Agency considered one of the greatest natural threats to human civilization: the Yellowstone “supervolcano.”
Following an article published by BBC about super volcanoes last month, a group of NASA researchers got in touch with the media to share a report previously unseen outside the space agency about the threat Yellowstone poses, and what they hypothesize could possibly be done about it.
“I was a member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense which studied ways for NASA to defend the planet from asteroids and comets,” explains Brian Wilcox of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology.
“I came to the conclusion during that study that the supervolcano threat is substantially greater than the asteroid or comet threat.”
Yellowstone currently leaks about 60 to 70% of its heat into the atmosphere through stream water which seeps into the magma chamber through cracks, while the rest of the heat builds up as magma and dissolves into volatile gasses. The heat and pressure will reach the threshold, meaning an explosion is inevitable. When NASA scientists considered the fact that a super volcano’s eruption would plunge the earth into a volcanic winter, destroying most sources of food, starvation would then become a real possibility. Food reserves would only last about 74 days, according to the UN, after an eruption of a super volcano, like that under Yellowstone. And they have devised a risky plan that could end up blowing up in their faces. Literally.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 1, 2017
Rickards: “There Are Three Things Going On With Gold Right Now”
Jim Rickards joined Kitco News and Daniela Cambone to discuss the latest news and analysis from gold markets, geopolitics and even bitcoin. The Wall Street veteran took on the bigger picture facing metals investors and what could be just around the corner in a bubbling market.
Jim Rickards is the editor of Strategic Intelligence and is the New York Times best-selling author of The Road to Ruin. Rickards’ worked on Wall Street for decades and has advised the U.S intelligence community on international finance, trade and financial warfare.
When asked why certain geopolitical tensions have greater impacts on gold and hard assets than others Rickards remarked, “There are two things going on,
“… first is that the North Korean missile threat goes from high tension to back down again. This is a very serious threat and we are headed for war with North Korea. While I don’t know what it will take to not just get gold to go up but stocks and other sectors, ultimately markets are going to be impacted.”
“People seem to have very short attention spans but that’s not how to think about it. It’s possible to see that Kim Jong-un is not deviating from his path to get nuclear weapons, the U.S will not allow it. There’s no middle ground there. It would be great if we could have diplomacy. I think we should also ratchet up sanctions on China. But I don’t see either of those happening.”
“Don’t underestimate the extent to which gold is being impacted by hedge funds, leverage players, and others that are in the mix for the current high in gold. They don’t really care if it is gold, soybeans, etc. but it is simply another commodity. They receive a nice profit with tight profits, tight stops.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Venezuela Headed For “Messiest Debt-Restructuring In History” Thanks To US Sanctions
After being effectively shut out from global financial markets – a situation that was made more precarious by US sanctions prohibiting purchases of Venezuelan debt (unless you’re buying them off Goldman Sachs, should the bank’s asset-management arm desire to liquidate its $3 billion “hunger bond” position) – Venezuela is drawing ever-nearer to what the Financial Times describes as potentially the “messiest debt restructuring in history.”
So far, Venezuela has managed to forestall a default by stripping assets from its state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, commonly referred to as PVDSA, and shaking down local institutions of spare dollars – not to mention the explicit financial support of China and Russia. Recently, Rosneft, the largest Russian oil company, helped support its troubled ally, which enjoys the largest crude reserves in the world, by offering billions of dollars in advance payments for future crude supplies. Thanks to a deal brokered by deceased former President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has for years been Rosneft’s largest foreign supplier of crude. Last year, the oil giant accepted a 49.9% stake in PVDSA’s US-based subsidiary, Citgo, as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
However, thanks to the US sanctions, which prohibit purchases of newly issued debt and existing bonds that have so far not been sold outside of Caracas, the country will once again need to innovate or risk sliding into bankruptcy. Making matters all the more urgent, the country recently suffered a loss in US courts after a judge ruled that Canadian miner Crystallex can seize Venezuelan money held in a custody account at Bank of New York Mellon to cover a $1.4 billion judgment awarded by a World Bank tribunal.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Arkema Texas Plant Explodes Causing “Massive” Fire, “Black Smoke Fills The Air”
You can’t say they didn’t warn us: this afternoon, the VP of US manufacturing Daryl Roberts at French chemicals giant Arkema, said the company was on “high alert” as more fires could start at the doomed facility at any moment. Well, that moment took place around 6pm ET, when ABC Houston reported that the doomed Arkema plant has exploded, causing a “massive” fire and “sending dark, black smoke into the air.”
According to reports on the ground, light winds are not pushing into areas around the plant, but there is concern the smoke could injure others.
The smoke could be seen in the residential Newport area of Crosby, about 7 miles away. Harris County officials are advising residents who did not evacuate the 1.5-mile area around the plant to close their windows and turn off their air conditioning systems.
“You could call this a warning sign that more explosions or fires could
be coming soon,” Jeff Carr, a spokesman for Arkema, told the Houston
Chronicle.
Hazardous materials crews are headed to the scene.
Rachel Moreno at the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office said that the explosion was a result of the product inside the trailers reaching its combustion state, which is causing the black smoke. She said that residents should be safe if they adhere to the one-and-a-half mile evacuation zone, and advised those who are near the site to shelter in place, close all their windows and turn off their air conditioning.
Moreno said no change was made to the evacuation zone.
This is the second of nine trailers at the plant that has caught fire. The trailers each contain liquid organic peroxides, which needs to be cooled to a certain temperature, otherwise it will explode. Officials said that three of the nine trailers have lost power, according to KPRC.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Growing Threat of the Police State
Doug Casey, Jeff Thomas, and Nick Giambruno recently discussed a critical topic—the rise of a police state in the former “free” world.
Nick Giambruno: In my experience, the US has some of the most aggressive police in the world. I first noticed this when I started traveling many years ago.
I’ve also noticed that law-abiding citizens are more likely to encounter the police in the US. Both of these trends are accelerating.
What happened to “the boys in blue”—the friendly cop on the beat that everyone knew personally and trusted?
Doug Casey: The fact is that police forces throughout the US have been militarized. Every little town has a SWAT team, sometimes with armored personnel carriers. All of the Praetorian style agencies on the federal level—the FBI, CIA, NSA, and over a dozen others like them—have become very aggressive. Every single day in the US, there are scores of confiscations of people’s bank accounts, and dozens having their doors broken down in the wee hours of the night. The ethos in the US really seems to be changing right before our very eyes, and I think it’s quite disturbing. It’s a harbinger, I’m afraid, of what’s to come.
Jeff Thomas: Yes, this change has certainly been more prevalent in the US than elsewhere. And I don’t doubt that the black combat uniforms are intentional. Psychologically, combat gear is very threatening. It serves only one purpose—aggression. And blue is the color of officialdom, whilst black is the color of death. This, to me, was a very conscious change—maximum intimidation.
Nick Giambruno: Police training has also changed. The War on (some) Drugs and the so-called War on Terror have turbocharged police militarization. What are your thoughts?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]
llustration: Jim Cooke/GMG, photo: Getty
The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance.
The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank’s website “applauding” the European Commission’s decision to slap the company with a record-breaking $2.7 billion fine for privileging its price-comparison service over others in search results. That post was briefly taken down, then republished. Soon afterward, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for failing to abide by “institutional norms of transparency and collegiality.”
Google denied any role in Lynn’s firing, and Slaughter tweeted that the “facts are largely right, but quotes are taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong.” Despite the conflicting story lines, the underlying premise felt familiar to me: Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished.
I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then-new social network, Plus.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Weekend Reading: Harvey & The Broken Window Fallacy
As the waters recede from “Hurricane Harvey,” the rebuilding efforts begin. It will take quite some time before Houston fully recovers from the tragedy, but recover we will. Hopefully, lessons were learned by a city government that has avoided dealing with the drainage and flooding problems for far too long. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars extracted from the citizenry of Houston via a “rain tax,” the money was absorbed by the profligate spending of repeated feckless Mayors who chose to spend on “bike trails,” “green energy.” and other liberal agendas rather than resolving a critical issue that has plagued Houston for years.
We’ll see. But I won’t hold my breath as Houston continues to follow the shining examples of other fiscally responsible governments like Chicago, Detroit, and others. [sarcasm alert]
But that is a story for another day.
Currently, the mainstream story is the “economic boost” which will come from the recovery process. This is the essence of the “Broken Window Fallacy.”
“A window is destroyed, therefore the window has to be replaced which leads to economic activity throughout the economy.
However, the fallacy of the ‘broken window’ narrative is that economic activity is only changed and not increased. The dollars used to pay for the window can no longer be used for their original intended purpose.
There is no free lunch.”
To put a finer point on it:
“If natural disasters are such a good deal for the economy, why wait for Acts of God to come along? Why not nuke? https://t.co/nc5WBUVzKW
— Real Investment News (@RINonAir) August 29, 2017
She is right. Obviously, nuking cities to create economic growth is just plain silly.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Permaculture: A Holistic Approach to Life
PERMACULTURE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO LIFE
When we tell people we practise permaculture, we usually get some questions. The interesting thing is the type of questions we are asked. Usually, the person asking us has a plant or tree that has some sort of disease and we are asked what they can do about it. It is interesting how we are all so indoctrinated into thinking that someone who works with nature, plants, and animals should just know how to treat something that is diseased without doing any further research or knowing the circumstances…
We are so used to go to a doctor with our own ailments and being given a prescription for something or other which will “fix” the symptom, and we expect the same for our plants, trees, and animals. Holistic medicine is becoming more popular these days, and people are starting to understand that they have to research and look at the cause behind the symptom. However, even some holistic medicine practitioners still seem to think that there should be a blanket cure for symptoms of disease in plants or animals (or soil, or other non-human life…) This attitude is one of the reasons our planet is in such a mess.
As with the human system, other natural systems also suffer under stress. This stress can be caused by lots of different factors, as in humans. We as permaculturalists are holistic practitioners, and we need to look at improving the natural environment for all elements in a system, thus improving the health of each individual element. It takes time to truly understand how to look at everything holistically, as we have been brought up in a culture of band aid solutions to everything.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
