Europe is in trouble
I don’t understand how people can think that it’s smart to reduce your own energy supply in order to become dependent on the supply of others. How on earth would that even help the environment, if the environment is your concern? It seems nonsensical on the face of it, and yet politicians propose it and people vote for it. Is it an “extraordinary popular delusion” in order to virtue-signal?
And if you want to use alternate sources of energy that are greener, good luck. I might even say “more power to you” (pun intended). But you’d better be able to deliver, or you’re setting yourselves up for disaster.
Not to mention, of course, the sheer stupidity and folly of becoming dependent on a hostile foreign power for energy. Madness.
Of course, if you posit that the leaders of the Western world have as a goal to destroy the Western world, then all is explained. It’s the old “fools versus knaves” question. I happen to think that stupidity is a goodly part of it, with a generous heaping of “knave” thrown in as well.
In the piece by William Jacobson that I linked in the first sentence of this post, Professor Jacobson quotes this very alarming Twitter thread by Finnish economist and professor Tuomas Malinen:
I am telling you people that the situation in #Europe is much worse than many understand. We are essentially on the brink of another banking crisis, a collapse of our industrial base and households, and thus on the brink of the collapse of our economies. Short thread. 1/4
We are also totally at the mercy of the authorities, and we have very little knowledge what they have planned. Will they be able to stop the onset of the banking crisis, yet again? I don’t know, but I am doubtful. 2/
In any case the speed of deterioration is massive now, and it’s only a matter of time, when markets catch up.
Certain politicians in this country seem to want us to follow suit, and are doing their best to make it happen.
The trouble just got worse with the Queen’s passing. RIP.
The new King is green on many levels.
I think you give too much credit to “stupidity”. It is definitely a planned result. I know it’s a nano piece of evidence, but back when I was still working I was put on the college’s environmental committee, mainly to be a thorn in their side by some of my faculty friends. The college had just hired an environmental VP (yes that goes to my comment awhile back about exponential growth of administrative academia). This guy was quite upfront about the goal of “environmental justice” . Basically, he said that the purpose was not to end green house emissions etc, but to collapse the system in order to build a more “just” world. He was trained at Harvard.
They are working feverishly to collapse the western world in order to build their new utopia from the ashes.
Remember when our betters said we should be more like Europe?
“Burning wood was never supposed to be the cornerstone of the European Union’s green energy strategy.
When the bloc began subsidizing wood burning over a decade ago, it was seen as a quick boost for renewable fuel and an incentive to move homes and power plants away from coal and gas. Chips and pellets were marketed as a way to turn sawdust waste into green power.
Those subsidies gave rise to a booming market, to the point that wood is now Europe’s largest renewable energy source, far ahead of wind and solar.”
The jury is out whether burning wood for heat is carbon neutral. The jury would vote it’s not, except for a few obstinate jurors.
https://worldnewsera.com/news/europe/europe-is-sacrificing-its-ancient-forests-for-energy/
Watermellons, only the red is the old kind; the blood of victims.
Baltasar Gracian, S.J. wrote that fools are good for one thing and that is to be a negative example to the wise.
I gave the OPPD Board that quote and told them to drop their insane net zero carbon policy. I gave them that advice before I found out it will cost OPPD at least $28B to achieve net zero carbon.
If the US doesn’t learn from Europe’s failure, we are complete idiots. Or, I should say, the Dems are.
CAGW is the biggest scam in the history of the world. Nothing else comes close. It will wreck America.
It is a Reverse Robinhood scheme. Take from the poor and give to the rich.
But there is some hope. Local jurisdictions are starting to reject wind and solar. Thank God for federalism.
Certain politicians in this country seem to want us to follow suit, and are doing their best to make it happen
Cue Governor Hairgel, per the Babylon Bee: LOS ANGELES, CA — Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a power grid emergency due to energy usage being at a 5-year high. Still, Newsom has assured everyone that they will have plenty of electricity to spare as soon as everyone leaves the state to live in Florida instead. . . . “Look, folks, anyone willing to stoop so low as to move to a state with plentiful energy, strong education, and safe neighborhoods without hundreds of homeless is not Californian at all,” added Newsom. “And to people like that, we say GOOD RIDDANCE!” At publishing time, Gavin Newsom realized he’d made a huge mistake as the only people left in California were now himself and 200,000 homeless people.
https://babylonbee.com/news/newsom-promises-there-will-be-enough-electricity-for-all-californians-once-everyone-moves-to-florida
physicsguy has been warned!
“They are working feverishly to collapse the western world in order to build their new utopia from the ashes.”
Most of the ones in charge now are just hoping to die before the whole thing collapses. They can read the numbers like everyone else. But doing anything to change course now would require a lot of VIPs admitting they were VERY wrong about a lot of things.
Mike
It occurs to me that “virtue signaling” is done to impress others. Is there such a thing as virtue signaling to oneself? One is not virtue signaling by virtue–sorry–of a private vote. You can always lie about it.
You can talk a good game and vote otherwise, I suppose, although the person who does that is likely pretty rare.
We’re going to see some serious blamecasting and I’ll be tempted to stick it up the nose of my friends and acquaintances. Not sure how far a reasonably reasonable person can or should go before the Others suffer some kind of cognitive break. Eventually, blaming the evil corporations becomes a mantra the speakers don’t believe. But they have to say something.
Going to be interesting.
So I’ve been telling people for 25 years that global warming is a scam. There are many like me out there. What I don’t understand is that over the past ten years or so it’s become apparent that AGW is BS. And if it really is a problem the ONLY possible solution is nuclear energy. And it’s easy to see why only nuclear energy will work. It’s merely addition. So why haven’t we been building any nuclear power plants? And why haven’t more people, people of all income levels except the filthy rich, clamoring for nuke energy? It’s simple math.
I think it’s people in their media bubbles. They might hear someone they know like me and figure he’s just off the deep end on this. After all, NPR talks and acts like AGW is a huge problem and they’re not recommending nuclear power. Nobody on CNN or MSNBC, CBS, etc agrees with Yawrate here. So, he’s just insane about this subject. Besides, he’s conservative and probably voted for the orange man. They’re probably wondering how to turn me into law enforcement.
I’m moving to Florida.
There are a number of explanational factors at play in Europe’s coming winter disaster but perhaps they all boil down to a simple one: Men in Black’s Kay, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.
Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe.
Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet.
Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
The same explanation fits California’s juxtaposition of mandatory electric car usage with rolling blackouts and restricted use of major appliances and the charging of electric cars.
Richard Aubrey,
“It occurs to me that “virtue signaling” is done to impress others. Is there such a thing as virtue signaling to oneself?”
At base, all virtue signaling is to themselves.
re Nuclear Power, I see people who are quite intelligent making the following arguments:
–“cost per kwh of wind & solar is already less than nuclear…why bother with nuclear and its delays and potential safety issues?”
Problem with this is that an intermittent source is not the same thing as a reliable source…if you want to go with the former, you have to load it down with the additional costs of storage and backup. People seem have a really hard time understanding that electricity is a moment-by-moment sort of thing, very different from most commodities.
–“Wind and solar, especially solar, are declining sharply in price, as are batteries (a graph makes its appearance here)…no way can nuclear catch up with this decline curve, which will be like Moore’s Law for integrated circuits.”
Ignores the problem of *materials*, which often tend to get more expensive rather than cheaper when demand grows…also, the on-site human labor required to wire the solar panels together, etc. And the Moore’s Law comparison is a really bad one.
Off topic, but our local Public Utility District has signed an agreement with NuScale to explore building one of their modular power plants for future energy needs. The power plants will produce 50 megawatts and additional units can be combined for more production. Our PUD owns two dams on the Columbia River which produces 2,100 megawatts of power. We sell some of that power to California. The PUD is part owner of a wind farm, which allows the sale. Large hydro is not considered a renewable source of energy to the nuts down south.
NuScale is building the first plant at Idaho Falls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpX139PZguA
We are concerned about our friends in Germany and Switzerland and Sweden, and our family in California. But we do remember that the majority of them enthusiastically supported the “green” agenda. Saying we told them they were wrong isn’t really helping.
Nuclear is the way to go. I only hope enough people realize it before mass freezing and starvation occur. (Although those may be part of the Gaia-worshippers’ plans.)
The key to Small Modular Reactor economics is getting sufficient number of orders for the manufacturing economies of scale to really kick in. GE-Hitachi (the other major US SMR maker, in addition to NuScale) has cited a cost of about $2400/kw…for the ‘Nth of a kind’…but if you order a system today, you are going to pay a lot more than that. What is really needed is ‘pricing down the learning curve’, long used in semiconductors and some other industries; ie, sell cheap to build volume which will drive down your costs…but the amount of investment needed to do this would be vast.
Kate. Saying you told them they were wrong isn’t helping. But, except in terms of relationships, it can’t hurt. Maybe don’t use the “I told you and told you and told you…..” prequel and simply state the facts.
Or you could say, “Okay, how did you get into this fix?” and deal with the excuses.
Leland – It will be interesting to see how the new king gets along with the new Prime Minister. She wants to bring back fracking to Britain. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/07/liz-truss-vows-never-exorbitant-energy-bills/
Richard Aubrey, I’ve considered recommending to my brother that he leave LA and move to Florida. I don’t think he’d do it.
I’m convinced, as physicsguy said, “They are working feverishly to collapse the western world in order to build their new utopia from the ashes.”
Some of the “true believers” are real watermelons. Posing as Greens, when they are really Reds who are using climate change as a tool to take power.
There isa large group of useful idiots who have not done much research and thinking about the theory of CO2 causing global warming. And even more who have not done due diligence on how to make wind and solar actually work as our primary energy sources. The MSM has faithfully pushed the propaganda for many years now. Still, when polls are taken about issues that concern people, climate change ranks quite low. You would not guess that from the way Biden is proceeding.
Some true believers tell me that we can solve the intermittent energy problem just like we senit a man to the moon. Put enough money and technology into it and voila, problem solved. They just can’t grasp that the problem is much more difficult than sending man to the moon. I’ve been told it involves finding a way to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Hard!
We need a coherent plan to gradually transition away from fossil fuels. Not because of CO2 emissions, but because fossil fuels will eventually become scarce. When a coal plant reaches the end of its useful life, replace it with a natural gas plant. When the natural gas plants reach the end of their useful life, replace them with nuclear plants. This transition could take place over a seventy-five-year span. An orderly transition that always continues to provide adequate, affordable, reliable power.
If the climate changes, either warmer or colder, we must adapt to whatever the change is. We can only do that if we have enough reliable and affordable energy. That’s what California lacks and why they’re in trouble right now. As is Europe. It doesn’t have to be that way.
An op-ed that proposes energy from Azerbaijan as a potential solution to Europe’s difficulties:
“A potential solution for Europe’s energy crisis;
“Azerbaijan, a large energy producer, also has the potential to become a starting point on a green energy corridor to European markets”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/359522
FWIW.
We need a coherent plan to gradually transition away from fossil fuels.
No we don’t. When the effort which goes into getting them out of the ground, transporting them, and distributing them passes a certain threshhold, people will begin to develop alternative technologies so long as obstreperous political lobbies do not prevent it. Greens tend to loathe nuclear power. It’s available now.
@ physicsguy
Have been fortunate enough to travel on six continents, and my three criteria for understanding a nation are:
1) Education
2) Energy
3) Equality **
** = With the definition of Equality centered on which of these dominate: Rule of Law or Rule of Man. And the Rule of Law is both the most beneficial and challenging.
For me those three criteria are not exclusive of other criteria – they just have the best predictive value for trying to understand a nation’ Past, Present and Future.
***
100% agree that it is not an accident that Energy is under attack. It is simply not possible to have a modern society/ economy, or one that can support all citizens without energy (see every country that you consider “under privileged”). And keep in mind that in those “under privileged” countries, the ruling class has access to energy, goods, etc. Without energy the entire “middle class range” disappears – by design – and we end up with a “two-tiered society”.
***
Since Obama was elected, we have been getting closer and closer to the “tipping point” of becoming dominated by the Rule of Man.
Even though the laws, investigative powers, etc. are clearly being used to harm individuals that pose a threat to the fascist, they are being supported by people in numbers never thought possible. Why? Because they want to see those people harmed, with no thought being given to the long-term consequences. And the covid “feature” appears to be the final push needed to “tip over” the scales-of-justice in western civilizations. Once the Judicial branch of government is destroyed, there is no hope (see every country that you believe is run by a ruling class).
***
Education has been under attack long before Obama – he is probably a byproduct – and the indoctrination of the children has literally been written about in prominent manifestos about how to overthrow western democratic governments. And the fact that many of the new “adults-in-the-room” have no foundation themselves and/ or are seeking their children’s approval (i.e., the young & stupid) has turned out to be an accelerate.
***
We should all fear what has happened, and is happening – even the SJW/ Woke community.
Another theory is that the elites are purposefully trying to depress the economy in order to lower energy usage so that economic activity matches the amount of energy available. Lots of pain for the common people and even more so for underdeveloped nations.
@ JJ
• Long-story-short, read an article – literally decades ago when ‘Peak Oil’ was a hot topic – that stated the parameters of where oil can be found are wrong – and that there is still an abundance of oil to be found, in places that fall outside of what is considered scientific conventional wisdom.
• The following paper – see link – has me wondering again if the scientific conventional wisdom needs to be reevaluated – especially the definition of Renewable: “The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth (csun.edu)”
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html
Lots of pain for the common people and even more so for underdeveloped nations.
I think the problem is obtaining natural gas on the secondary market on the right time scale. Russia’s not going to stop exporting fuel and minerals. That’s most of their export revenue. (Russia’s accounted for about 11% of the world’s petroleum exports, so there may be no crisis there. It’s in natural gas exports that what they do is quite consequential).
I really wonder how many green zealots – esp. those in influential positions – could actually explain what causes the annual change of seasons?
Do you think Greta Thunberg, the first member of the Green’s “Young Pioneers,” knows this?
I am actually surprised they don’t trot her out in an all green uniform with an armband depicting a windmill or solar panels or both. Maybe when they figure out how best to salute their Fuhrer and Gauleiters, we will see her all dolled up in green, with an armband.
It’s simply astonishing how the ruling elites, here and in Europe, and despite their level of educational achievement, can be so stupid. They must have believed, despite 5,000 years (10,000 years ?) of human history , that the “end of history” was contemporaneous with the fall of the USSR.
There has to be some major deficiency in how the world’s best universities teach critical thinking skills.
Oh, I forgot, they don’t teach thinking skills, they just indoctrinate.
Let me guess what the Euro leaders line of thinking was;
” if we make Russia / Putin an integral part of the European economy (by virtue of Russia’s oil / gas sales to Europe) , combined with concomitant investments by European entities in Russia, then Russia/Putin will realize the economic benefits they accrue are so significant, they would never engage in any action that would jeopardize these economic (and social) benefits. Therefore, there is no downside to shuttering all the coal, natural gas and nuclear plants here in W.Europe because during the “great conversion to green” we can rely on Russia to maintain energy supply as needed, until no longer needed.”
How can anyone argue against such obvious facts? Hell, even Norman Angell would be on board with that !! (author of “The Great illusion).
And really now; does anybody actually believe that those advancing the green agenda are unaware that wind and solar are unreliable and intermittent sources of energy??
And where, when implemented, has solar or wind energy reduced energy costs to the consumer and actually met the demand for energy?
If you look at what’s going on in Australia or the electricity prices in Germany (before the Russian invasion of Ukraine) green implementation of energy has ALWAYS resulted in higher costs to the consumer and/or brownouts.
Yep, there are still elites (self anointed or otherwise) that still try to reshape human behavior and society to create the perfect society. People just need to be “encouraged” to change their ways, that’s all. And the smarter, more intelligent ruling elites have to show them the way (of course, by NOT leading from the front) to the utopian fantasy land.
It’s a combination of stupidity, arrogance and profoundly felt contempt for the average person, that motivated the leaders of Europe and those here in the USA that are emulating them, to embark on these suicidal policies.
Of course, the elites running the show will have all the electricity, natural gas, gasoline, private planes, armed guards, etc. they need or desire.
It’s just we schmucks that will have to actually bear the consequences of these policies.
As for small / modular nuclear energy, you can forget it. The elites and their pals in the media have convinced enough folks , with little real effort, that CO2 is a poison gas, akin to mustard gas. It will be a lot easier for them to portray any nuclear plant, irrespective of it’s small size, as the next Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 3 Mile Island and Fukushima all rolled into one.
Let’s not forget; the green movement is not about saving the environment at all. It’s about finding ways for the leftist elites to control and dominate the citizenry.
Formerly the greens (who used to self-identify as communists) at one time were pushing marxist-leniinst theology. That train derailed with the demise of the USSR.
It took a while for them to find another means of conveying their theology, and bingo!! , they discovered / invented the green theology.
And what a coincidence !!!
Both of these political theologies demand that the people be coerced, one way or another, to change how they live and what to think.
Miracle of miracles, wonder of wonder’s.
“I don’t understand how people can think that it’s smart to reduce your own energy supply in order to become dependent on the supply of others”
It’s worth noting that there is enormous environmental devastation in Other Places so that people in This Place can feel virtuous.
“Canada sends coal to China.
China burns coal to generate electricity, used to manufacture solar panels, which are then sent to Canada on ships which burn oil.
In Canada we install those solar panels and call it ’emissions free’ electricity.
Creative accounting at its best ….”
Photos of kids working at sites which extract rare earths are extremely depressing.
Physicsguy: the original kickoff for the global warming scam was at a 1988 Senate hearing led by Senator Tim Worth starring Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s GISS, and The Godfather of global warming. Wirth said afterwards he didn’t care if the science is true as long as it could be used to destroy Capitalism. Members of the UN’s IPCC, its global warming committee, have said the same, the goal is to institute socialism.
JJ: I have studied the global warming models and they need to violate the both First and Second laws of Thermodynamics to work. If they had tried this in the Physics department they would have been booted out into the street a long time ago.
Yes they have disemboweled themselves its not that surprising as one of the founders of the eu was aldo spinelli an italian communist
“When the effort which goes into getting them out of the ground, transporting them, and distributing them passes a certain threshhold, people will begin to develop alternative technologies so long as obstreperous political lobbies do not prevent it.”
An alternative technology doesn’t necessarily mean a perfect replacement. There may be nothing else on Earth that can actually substitute for fossil fuels, so just waiting around and hoping for a breakthru might not be the wisest course. Especially given how population collapse could destroy the financial infrastructure needed to develop those alternative technologies.
Mike
Well population collaose is fostered by these malign humanity destroying ideologies, this coruscating mind arson
Wind and solar were not the way in 1750 thats why there was an industrial revolution in the firsr place
Paul in Boston,
I know it all started with Hansen. It’s the most amazing scientific scam. I’m just shocked it’s actually more alive now some 34 years later.
Neo said: “I don’t understand how people can think that it’s smart to reduce your own energy supply in order to become dependent on the supply of others.”
The only plausible reason I can think of, at least as it relates to the US, is that the resources under our lands will remain sequestered, and would therefore never result in carbon being emitted into the atmosphere. On the other hand one might ask, when will mankind stop using fossil fuels? Answer: after the last retrievable bit has been burned.
As if china and india will stop using fossil fuels no its just a suicide pact the West has signed
I don’t understand how people can think that it’s smart to reduce your own energy supply in order to become dependent on the supply of others.
–neo
I’ve puzzled over this too.
I’m sure there are grifters who saw an opportunity to make megabucks or consolidate power, but I have concluded that some combination of groupthink and wishful think led governments, elites, financial advisors, scientists, engineers and activists to believe that climate change was a serious threat, green tech was around the corner, so the smart move was to look before you leap.
If you build it, they will come. And the tech will work. Because.
Which has really kicked my faith in scientists and engineers to the curb. But this is the Planet of the Apes.
Er, “leap before you look.”
And the gorillas are firmly in charge no dr zaius
Since I’m “All Things Zeihan Considered” lately…
Peter Zeihan is an unrepentant globalist and backs the post-WW2 elite consensus, therefore he is onboard with the climate change agenda and green tech.
He lives in Colorado and has solar panels on his roof. He wants green tech to succeed, but he is enough of an engineering realist to notice that only 20% of the world has enough sun or wind to make those technologies work today.
Two Zeihan predictions due to the Ukraine War is that we will see energy shortages in Europe this winter due to Russia withholding gas due to sanctions and food shortages later in 2023 because Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, has been knocked out.
I’m betting Zeihan is right on both counts.
Art Deco at 6:30: “No we don’t. ”
Agreed, if the pols let the markets work, which you noted. A coherent plan could calm the fears of the young folks who aren’t having children because the Earth is going to burn up.
that guy at 7:15: I remember the Peak Oil issue. Yes, directional drilling and fracking have opened up enormous new resources, especially of natural gas. If the less developed nations are able to get enough energy to grow and modernize, it’s going to take a lot of fossil fuels going forward. Wealthier nations can transition away from electricity generation with fossil fuels. Poorer nations can’t. Also, some transportation modes will always need fossil fuels. Electric airplanes? Long haul electric trucks? Even many personal cars. (Unless we can develop nuclear engines for such.) There’s a niche for electric vehicles, but it’s not as large as California wants to require.
I think we need to be as energy efficient as possible. Don’t waste it, it really is the elixir of modernity.
The Russian paper is interesting, but I would need much more evidence. I majored in petroleum geology in college and spent some time in the oil patch. The ideas of structural trapping in formations with the requisite porosity and permeability has held up pretty well. There is a whole lot of oil and gas trapped in formations that have porosity, but low permeability. That’s where fracking comes in. It creates the permeability to allow the oil/gas to flow to the well head. Vast formations of shales all over the world have gas trapped in them. This could be the energy that allows poor nations to become wealthier.
Coal rich formations like the Mesa Verde in Colorado have tight (low permeability) sandstone layers that have a lot of gas. It’s commonly theorized that the coal and other fossil fuels in these formations are the fossilized remains of plants and animals that were deposited simultaneously with the formations. Has anyone found oil/gas in an area or formation that doesn’t conform to our present ideas?
Paul in Boston at 8:30: ” I have studied the global warming models and they need to violate the both First and Second laws of Thermodynamics to work.” Thanks for that. Physics seems to take a back seat to their propaganda.
Subhead at Legal Insurrection “If you turned the electricity off for a few months in any developed Western society 500 years of supposed philosophical progress about human rights and individualism would quickly evaporate like they never happened.”
Take another look at the post from Jeff Deist (via ZeroHedge h/t Barry on another thread today).
https://mises.org/wire/inflation-state-sponsored-terrorism
You havent seen the half of it
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=28200#comment-319370
This reminds me of the Twilight Episode “Death’s Head Revisited” where an old Nazi camp guard goes back to visit the death camp he killed people at in WW2, only to be driven mad by the ghosts of his victims. (I believe it is also the only episode where Serling does not end his closing with the words “in the Twilight Zone).
Europe murders 6 million Jews (and is working with Iran to kill 7 million more) and have now gone mad
Of course it is all on purpose. Our actual current president is Barack Hussein Obama, now in his third term, and nobody ever hated America, and Europe, more than the racist, communist, Islamofascist Obama.
Expect Ukraine to go at least to tactical nukes. We have a completely unnecessary faceoff between the two great Christian empires, U.S. and Russia, on the battleground of 100% Christian and anti-Muslim Ukraine, surrounded by 100% Christian and anti-Muslim Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
It’s an OBVIOUS Obama-Muslim set-up. He just keeps waging his proxy war until Russia says, “okay, no more small ball.” And our corrupt Senate goes along, both parties, because the ones who go along get a cut of the foreign aid. That’s how it works.
test
“If you think Americans are divided today, and at each other’s throats—metaphorically, but more and more literally—imagine if they were cold and hungry!”
Energy, in whatever form it is available, is the life blood of civilization, from Og the Caveman burning sticks to modern thorium-fueled Molten Salt Reactors; if one wants Civilization, one must have energy with which to power it.
As our societies follow Hemingway’s Bankruptcy Dictum, the great danger is taking out our anger and frustration on each other rather than those who are responsible for the disaster.
I remember these discussions about climate change from about ten years ago. I never saw an adequate explantion for the adjustments that were made to the ground temperature records (adjustments that created or accentuated the warming trend). I never saw an adequate explanation for why the computer models consistently overshoot the actual observed temperature. Challenges to the party line just went away. Richard Muller changed his mind. Judith Curry went her own way and people seemed content to just ignore Roy Spencer.
But what can a layperson do? I certainly don’t have the expertise to judge Hanson/Mann v. Curry/Spencer. Neither does 99.99% of the citizenry. Neither do any of our politicians. About the only thing I can conclude from the outside is that the entire ediface of science is corrupted by ideology. (The most useful thing I’ve learned from Judith Curry is that she advises young scientists against pursuing a career studying climate change because they will feel pressure to conform their science to the preferred political narrative.)
But that doesn’t mean that the scientific establishment is necessarily wrong, just that it can’t be trusted. In other words, we don’t “know” the opposite of what the scientific establishment says. We just know that what the scientific establishment says isn’t necessarily true. In some ways, this is the negation of the Enlightement. We don’t “know” anymore, at least not with any confidence.
Also – on the political side – it was blindingly apparent in the early spring that Europe had placed itself at the mercy of Russian gas supplies (and that Biden was systematically dismantling US energy independence in a way that was going to make us more vulnerable to Russian supply shocks). What fools would ignore all of this and impose major sanctions on Russia anyway? Many of these folks seemed genuinely surprised when Russia responded by shutting off the gas supply to Europe. What did they think was going to happen?
That’s not a suggestion that Russia was right to invade the Ukraine or a defense of Russia in any way. I recently saw an old news broadcast from the early 1990’s when the Baltic states were pushing back against the USSR. Moscow was sending (or threatening to send) Soviet tanks to restore order. The United States (H.W. Bush) condemned Moscow and kept the issue in the news (i.e., shined a light on it as they say now). But we didn’t try to crush the Soviet economy or send massive arms packages to the Lithuanians. We had adults in charge who realized that there were limits to what the US could do in the backyard of another major power, even for a very worthy cause.
I really miss having adults in charge. It’s been a while.
This is what happens when the “adults [are] in charge”…
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/german-who-laughed-trump-un-wont-comment-presidents-warning-coming-true
(Not that anyone would really want to admit it…)
Mark Steyn: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe all over again.’
Steyn lays it all out… far too much to be coincidental.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay2L1OzRXqA
Clue: Putin is in charge of The Russian Federation (Roosia). He is an adult. Opportunity knocked, it seems.
Brandon’s junta sees other opportunities and priorities (Fundamental Transformation part Duex, you racist, fascist, hater) and have been reacting to Putin’s aggression in their own incompentent fashion.
Were adults in charge from 2016 – 2020?
“Were adults in charge from 2016 – 2020?”
When it comes to Russia, we had adults in charge from 2008 to 2020. They were grownups with differing opinions on Russia but grownups nonetheless who were willing to face reality.
Mike
No we had a petulant anti american punk from 2008-16, like the shambling man he installled
Power: Mechanical, National, and Personal
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/10164.html
Michael Doran, The Caravan (Hoover Inst.), 9/06/2022: In Syria, Pariahs Are Partners
Scott Johnson, Powerline, 9/09/2022: THE SUPREMACY OF ALBANIA
Some notes–
This is what happens when we have a serious lack of symmetry of economic self-interests in sharing information. It’s exacerbated by censorship and cancel culture. Lots and lots of people benefit by pushing the blatantly obvious scam. Not very many benefit directly from pointing out the scam. This is just another example of public choice theory at work.
Environmentalism grew exponentially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those who hated the free market shifted their devotion away from the failed communist model and embraced the green model for destroying free enterprise.
There isn’t any part of CAGW that makes any sense. The temp datasets are fraudulent in a number of ways. The models are obviously wrong. They don’t even agree with each other (if the science is “settled” why are there dozens of models with very different value assumptions for key metrics?). The “studies” like the hockey stick and polar bear study by Monnet relied upon by the IPCC and our EPA are so ridiculously incompetent and corrupt that no one can pretend to rely on them in good faith. The climategate emails demonstrate that the scientists pushing the scam knew they were lying.
Every time censorship and cancel culture are involved, it is ALWAYS a scam. Always. If a science professor who questions the global warming narrative will see his career crushed, that tells all of us the narrative is false. If a doctor who raises questions about Covid dictates is threatened with loss of board certification, hospital privileges, employment etc, we all KNOW the dictates are not based on science.
Richard Feynman — “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”.
I was reminded earlier this morning of “I, Pencil”. No one knows enough to mastermind every aspect of the economic activity required to produce a pencil. Or see Matt Ridley’s excellent TedTalk on his book, “When Ideas Have Sex” where he makes the same point that no one knows how to make a computer mouse. The key point made by the essayist in “I, Pencil” was all about the inability of government to be as effective as the Invisible Hand. It’s Hayek’s evisceration of communism and dictatorship, of the planned economy.
Our society has an unhealthy and totally unwarranted fetish for the pronouncements of supposed “experts”. It is quite literally killing people and harming all of us. Imagine an army of Faucis running every aspect of our lives. Corrupt, incompetent and supremely arrogant. It’s no way to go through life. (far worse than just fat, drunk and stupid)
We keep coming back to the same lessons over and over. Censorship is evil. Not just because it violates free expression, but because the free flow of information is critical to a growing prosperity, better medicine and healthcare, better govt policy. Censorship and cancel culture. They killed many during covid. They have killed many with global warming policies. They will continue to kill many this winter. Government isn’t the answer. It’s the problem.
Even if the global warming idiocy had not produced the coming horror this winter, the waste of trillions of dollars of lost economic resources means that improvements in medicine and healthcare (and all other economically valuable goods and services) that might have been possible will not be achieved in the future (or not as soon). The misallocation of resources kills. It kills in the present. It kills even more in the future. It degrades our lives. The lost productivity and wealth that wasn’t produced is gone forever. It cannot be recovered. Just as if it had been obliterated by a massive nuclear bomb.
We have to stop blowing up our lives with stupidity and corruption.
https://twitter.com/PeterSweden7/status/1568233829155864578
John Fisher said: It will be interesting to see how the new king gets along with the new Prime Minister. She wants to bring back fracking to Britain.
FWIW, Truss announced yesterday “that she is lifting the county’s ban on fracking to help reduce U.K. energy prices. . . . she will allow oil and gas developers to request permission from the government to increase domestic fuel supplies.
Truss said that her hope is that fracking operations will start in the next six months and is approving 100 new exploration licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. ‘We will make sure that the U.K. is a net energy exporter by 2040,’ Truss told Parliament. ‘We are supporting this country through this winter and next, and tackling the root causes of high prices so we are never in the same position again.'”
https://justthenews.com/world/europe/british-prime-minister-truss-lifts-fracking-ban-amid-energy-crisis
Part of the problem is that the “experts” are people who have never accomplished anything. What has Michael Mann done aside from his corrupt participation in the global warming thing? I would really like to know who is funding him. Biden’s whole regime is populated with people who know nothing about their alleged jobs. What does Buttplug know about transportation? What does Granholm know about energy ? The foreign policy team look like graduate students and stumble around. Biden has been a crook since he was “The Senator from MBNA.” Kerry knows nothing other than finding rich wives.
It is interesting hoe the classification of “grown ups” is mushy and malleable. Not a very usefull metric. Incompetent, corrupt, foolish people in charge reacting to the Roosians since the fall of the USSR.
Mike K said, “Biden’s whole regime is populated with people who know nothing about their alleged jobs.”
You’d think that the regime’s emphasis on diversity would require at least one competent person.
Bauxite on September 9, 2022 at 8:04 am said:
“But what can a layperson do? I certainly don’t have the expertise to judge Hanson/Mann v. Curry/Spencer. Neither does 99.99% of the citizenry. Neither do any of our politicians. About the only thing I can conclude from the outside is that the entire edifice of science is corrupted by ideology.”
1) Actually you (or I) could probably acquire sufficient expertise in this area with a week of dedicated study of the right sources, presuming we have decent core knowledge of chemistry and physics (and access to a computer modeling expert?). Part of the problem is the “official” reports are long and boring, hide critical commentary by the qualified experts in footnotes, etc., and end up being controlled by politicians for political purposes. Of course the MSM has also abandoned their role as “objective neutral” investigators and reporters, so the validity of the skeptics is not presented well.
2) But laymen don’t have to know the answers, as long as they trust the credentials of the Curry/Spencer et al. group that are raising skeptical positions. They can be believed until the IPCC or other proponents can prove Curry/Spencer, etc. to be wrong. That is the way science really works – over coming valid critical skepticism.
3) Your last paragraph essentially says the skeptics have not been proven wrong yet.
I found Steven Koonin’s book “Unsettled” to be very persuasive, as well.
Anthony watts is invaluable on this regard this is why they have strived to deplatform and black ball his site
@ PA Cat > “You’d think that the regime’s emphasis on diversity would require at least one competent person.”
Our regime is of the Left, and the only diversity of any value to them has no connection to competence or character. The same applies to every Western nation today, so it seems.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2022/09/09/heh-heres-the-context-in-which-the-nyt-is-suddenly-interested-in-intellectual-diversity-n2612827?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky2
If the leftistst didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any at all.
https://www.wizbangblog.com/2015/06/24/if-the-left-didnt-have-double-standards-they-wouldnt-have-any-standards-part-1384569/
https://mrericksonrules.com/2018/12/04/if-liberals-didnt-have-double-standards-they-wouldnt-have-any-standards-at-all/
What does Europe really stand for?
@ David Foster > “Power: Mechanical, National, and Personal”
I finally had time to read your post from 2009-11-11 ; it should be repeated every year with a running update!
This year’s is in response to one of the comments; it is just one of many from 2022, and I can go back a couple of more years with multiple examples.
https://notthebee.com/article/california-just-introduced-a-ban-on-gas-powered-cars-and-now-theyre-asking-citizens-to-not-charge-their-teslas-because-they-dont-have-the-electricity
August 31, 2022 — and it isn’t getting better.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-9-10-california-and-new-york-do-not-back-off-your-insane-green-energy-schemes
In some respects Europe is in better shape than we are.
Our national debt is 130% of GDP, while most European countries, with the exception of France, Greece, Spain and Italy are are half of that– so unless I’m missing something the governments can subsidize the energy costs to get through the winter.
“In some respects Europe is in better shape than we are.”
Very true.
The powers governing Europe haven’t declared a Manichaean war of elimination against their political adversaries, both the leadership and the voters who support them, i.e., over half the voting population.
(At least, not yet….)