Month: February 2019

Oil Discovery Could Make Guyana One Of The World’s Richest

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By Jason Hopkins – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Another two major oil discoveries have been made off the shore of Guyana, all but assuring the impoverished South American nation an immense flow of wealth.

ExxonMobil announced two big oil discoveries in a region approximately 120 miles off the shore of Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana. The finds were made at the Tilapia-1 and Haimara-1 wells in what is known as the Stabroek Block — a region that is now considered one of the most prolific offshore oil potentials on the continent.

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Was Climate Change Alarmism Always About Fears of Overpopulation?

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By Pierre Desrochers & Joanna Szurmak – Re-Blogged From WUWT

[Note: The following text is adapted from the authors’ recently published book Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change in which the validity of the belief in the inherent unsustainability of economic growth is challenged more thoroughly.]

Numerous population control advocates have linked anthropogenic climate change to population growth, or tried to revive interest in invoking anthropogenic climate change as the key negative outcome of continued economic growth linked to, foremost among causes, an increasing population. One pioneer of establishing and cultivating population growth – anthropogenic climate change linkage was the “Population Bomber” himself, Paul Ehrlich, who during a conference in 1968 identified anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions as a “serious limiting factor” to economic growth.[1] By the 1970s, Ehrlich, his wife Anne and his collaborator John Holdren raised fears that carbon dioxide “produced by combustion of fossil fuels in quantities too large to contain” may “already be influencing climate” and, as such, constituted one of the “gravest threats to human well-being. . . [i.e.] the loss of natural services now provided by biogeochemical processes.”

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Florida Appeals Court: “Everglades Open for Oil Drilling”

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Everglades open for oil drilling after court ruling

A Tallahassee appeals court reversed a decision by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection Tuesday, ultimately granting Kanter Real Estate the authority to drill.

By Samantha J. Gross Feb. 5

TALLAHASSEE — After nearly four years of legal battles, a Miami family that made its fortune in real estate will now be able to drill an exploratory oil well in the Everglades, just west of the Broward County suburbs.

A Tallahassee appeals court reversed a decision by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection Tuesday, ultimately granting Kanter Real Estate the authority to drill.

The land Kanter Real Estate President John Kanter is interested in drilling is on a 20 mile-wide, 150-mile-long stretch of shale between Miami and Fort Myers dubbed the Sunniland Trend. The western part of that stretch has been tapped into by a Texas oil company, but the Kanter family argues that they have found the potential for oil on the eastern part.

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France Just Saved Nord Stream 2?

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By Dave Keating – Re-Blogged From Forbes

What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday, things were looking bleak for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. After months of insisting it didn’t want to get involved in the pipeline dispute, a French foreign ministry spokeswoman suddenly announced the country will support a European Commission proposal to make construction more difficult.

Then, just as suddenly, France changed its mind today at a meeting of energy ministers in Brussels – saying it had reached a “compromise” with Germany.

A ceremony marking the start of Nord Stream pipeline construction in 2010 (Dmitry Lovetsky, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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More Severe Strain of Flu Spreading Widely

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By Health Day – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health

Americans aren’t out of the woods yet, as the flu season continues to spread across the country, health officials reported Friday.

One major shift that’s occurred is in the viruses that are circulating. At the start of the flu season, the predominant strain was influenza A H1N1, but now a more severe strain, influenza A H3N2, accounts for nearly half of all the new cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It looks like we are moving from an H1 wave to an H3 wave,” said Lynnette Brammer, lead of CDC’s domestic influenza surveillance team. “There’s still a lot of flu to come.”

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Women’s Lives Matter, Too?

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By Natalie Schreyer, Kaiser Health News – Re-Blogged From Headline Health

When a gay black man stages his own mugging by Trump supporters, his status as a ‘victim’ makes national news. When a woman is murdered by a man? Not so much. Kaiser Health News reports …  ‘These Women’s Lives Mattered’

Nurse Builds Database Of Women Murdered By Men

PLANO, Texas — In February 2017, a school nurse in this Dallas suburb began counting women murdered by men.

Seated at her desk, beside shelves of cookbooks, novels and books on violence against women, Dawn Wilcox, 54, scours the internet for news stories of women killed by men in the U.S.

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Record Lobster Production Defies Alarmist Climate Scare

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By James Taylor – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Marine fisheries data show New England lobstermen are benefiting from a new golden age of lobster, thanks in large part to a warming Earth. Yet Democrats in Congress and even lobster lobbyists asserted in House climate hearings earlier in February that global warming is causing a lobster apocalypse. Thankfully, facts and scientific evidence can help us put this latest global warming scare to rest.

On February 7, Democrats in the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife held hearings with the purpose of raising concern about global warming. Democrats called a witness from a Massachusetts lobster association claiming global warming is reducing the number and availability of lobsters to harvest in New England, specifically in the Gulf of Maine. The witness claimed that ocean acidification is making it more difficult for lobsters to calcify their shells and reach maturity. She also asserted that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any other ocean region in the world, and that the warming is chasing lobsters from coastal shores into deeper waters, where lobstermen have a more difficult time harvesting them. She further claimed global warming is chasing the lobsters north to Canada.

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Aussie Court Rejects New Coal Mine Because of Climate Change

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

An Australian court has just rejected an application to build a new coal mine, because of the alleged impact burning coal extracted from the mine would have on global warming.

Court rules out Hunter Valley coalmine on climate change grounds

Michael McGowan
Fri 8 Feb 2019 10.20 AEDT Last modified on Fri 8 Feb 2019 11.23 AEDT

…

In his judgment, Preston explicitly cited the project’s potential impact on climate change, writing that an open-cut coalmine in the Gloucester Valley “would be in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

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Extraordinary Changes Coming

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By Mike Gleason – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Dr. Chris Martenson of PeakProsperity.com, and author of the book Prosper! How to Prepare for the Future and Create a World Worth Inheriting. Chris is a commentator and a range of important topics such as global economics, financial markets, governmental policies, precious metals, and the importance of preparedness, among other things, and it’s always great to have him on with us.

Chris, welcome back, and thanks for joining us again.

Chris Martenson: Thank you. It’s a real pleasure to be back with you and all your listeners.

Mike Gleason: Well, Chris, when we spoke last in early November, we talked about the Fed printing money and expanding credit to prevent markets from correcting. The central planners there are always ready to intervene. At the time, equity markets were correcting and stock prices fell through the end of December. Officials must have then decided that enough was enough with all the selling because the Fed has very publicly signaled a change in course and instead of more rate hikes and more selling from the hordes of bonds accumulated during QE, the Fed is putting the brakes on tightening and looking to return to stimulus. Now the equity markets are off to their best start in something like 30 years. What do you make of the most recent intervention? Are they likely to get away with yet another round of bubble blowing here, Chris?

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‘Slippery’ Manoeuvres to Kill off British Fracking

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By August Graham  – Re-Blogged From City AM

The chairman of Britain’s biggest private company has accused the government of using “slippery back door manoeuvres” to kill off fracking in the UK.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire founder of Ineos, said the government is sticking to a plan which is “unworkable, unhelpful and playing politics with the country’s future”.

ECONOMY ANTWERP HARBOR INVESTMENT

Ratcliffe said the government ‘lacks a basic understanding of the Richter Scale’ (Source: Getty)

Wall Street is Chasing Ghosts

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From Pento Portfolio Strategies

Wall Street’s absolute obsession with the soon to be announced most wonderful trade deal with China is mind-boggling. The cheerleaders that haunt main stream financial media don’t even care what kind of deal gets done. They don’t care if it hurts the already faltering condition of China’s economy or even if it does little to improve the chronically massive US trade deficits—just as long as both sides can spin it as a victory and return to the status quo all will be fine.

But let’s look at some facts that contradict this assumption. The problems with China are structural and have very little if anything to do with a trade war. To prove this let’s first look at the main stock market in China called the Shanghai Composite Index. This index peaked at over 5,100 in the summer of 2015. It began last year at 3,550. But today is trading at just 2,720. From its peak in 2015 to the day the trade war began on July 6th of 2018, the index fell by 47%. Therefore, it is silly to blame China’s issues on trade alone. The real issue with China is debt. In 2007 its debt was $7 trillion, and it has skyrocketed to $40 trillion today. It is the most unbalanced and unproductive pile of debt dung the world has ever seen, and it was built in record time by an edict from the communist state.

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Central Planning Is More than Just Friction

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By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

It is easy to think of government interference into the economy like a kind of friction. If producers and traders were fully free, then they could improve our quality of life—with new technologies, better products, and lower prices—at a rate of X. But the more that the government does, the more it burdens them. So instead of X rate of progress, we get the same end result but 10% slower or 20% slower.

Some would go so far as to say, “The free market finds ways to work even through government restrictions, taxes, and regulations.” We won’t address cardboard straws emerging where plastic straws are banned. Or gangs selling illegal drugs on the black market, when they are prohibited by law.

As usual, we want to talk about the most important kind of government intervention. And it happens to be the one kind of government intervention that is accepted by nearly everyone. The intervention supported by the otherwise-free-marketers.

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2018 Wind Power

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Wind Power Stats Reveal 2018 Was a Huge Year, and There’s More to Come

It’s off to a flying start.

By Mike Brown on February 5, 2019
Filed Under Clean Energy, Power & Sustainable Energy

The amount of wind power capacity in North, Central and South America jumped 12 percent in the past year, a report revealed Tuesday. The Global Wind Energy Council found 11.9 gigawatts of capacity was added to the region, with the United States and Brazil among the biggest contributors.

The report bodes well for plans to transition more energy usage onto sustainable means, dropping the fossil fuels of yesteryear.

[…]

Inverse (of logic, reason and the real world)

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Stacking The Next QE On Top Of A $4 Trillion Fed Floor

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By Daniel Amerman – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

The Federal Reserve is currently communicating to the markets that it will likely pivot, and pause two strategies. The first pivot is to stop increasing interest rates. The second pivot is to stop unwinding the Fed balance sheet.

While the interest rate pause is getting the most attention – the balance sheet pause could be the most important one for investors over the coming years.

As explored herein, the impact of pausing the unwinding the balance sheet is to create a new floor at about $4 trillion in Federal Reserve assets. And if the business cycle has not been repealed and there is another recession – the Fed fully intends to go back to quantitative easing, potentially creating more trillions of dollars to be used for market interventions, and to stack another round of balance sheet expansion right on top of the previous round.

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American Energy Boom

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By Michael Bastasch – Re-Blogged From WUWT

President Donald Trump touted booming American energy production and exports during his State of the Union Address Tuesday night to thunderous applause, but not from Democrats.

“We have unleashed a revolution in American Energy – the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world,” Trump said. “And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.”

Republicans stood up and cheered the news, while Democrats stayed in their seats. However, Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin applauded Trump’s touting of booming American energy production.

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Fed Chairman Deceives

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By Mike Gleason – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

In a recent speech, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell told some real whoppers. We’ll address his misrepresentations head on, in just a bit.

But first, let’s review this week’s market action. Despite drama in Washington over averting a government shutdown and prompting President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency on the border, nothing too dramatic is happening in the gold market.

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U.S. Set To Pump More Oil Than Russia And Saudis Combined

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By Rystad Energy – Re-Blogged From OilPrice.com

In a major shift, the United States is set to produce more oil and liquids than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined by 2025.

In Rystad Energy’s base case oil price scenario, US liquids production is forecast to surpass 24 million barrels per day over the next six years, thereby outpacing the combined output from Russia and Saudi Arabia.

oil rigs

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #347

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The Week That Was: February 9, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “On specific energy and climate issues I’m guided by what the data tell me, not by claims made in the scientific literature. This is why you will find me disagreeing with most of the ‘consensus’ views on climate change but not all of them. My main concern for the future of my three grandchildren isn’t climate change, but that the misguided efforts of the people who want to save the world from it will leave them freezing in the dark.” – Roger Andrews, RIP.

Number of the Week: 1.4 million barrels per day (b/d)

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Our Major Western Cities Are Becoming Uninhabitable Hellholes

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By Michael Snyder – Re-Blogged From Freedom Outpost

Almost everyone that goes out to visit one of our major cities on the west coast has a similar reaction.  Those that must live among the escalating decay are often numb to it, but most of those that are just in town for a visit are absolutely shocked by all of the trash, human defecation, crime and public drug use that they encounter.  Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America’s accelerating decline.  The worst parts of our major western cities literally look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the hordes of zombified homeless people that live in those areas are too drugged-out to care.  The ironic thing is that these cities are not poor.  In fact, San Francisco and Seattle are among the wealthiest cities in the entire nation.  So if things are falling apart this dramatically now, how bad will things get when economic conditions really start to deteriorate?

Let’s start our discussion by looking at the rat epidemic in Los Angeles.  Thanks to extremely poor public sanitation, rats are breeding like mad, and at this point, they have even conquered Los Angeles City Hall…

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Amazon Dumps NYC Headquarters and Its Promised 25,000 Jobs

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By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Newsmax

Amazon.com Inc. abruptly dropped plans Thursday for a big new headquarters in New York that would have brought 25,000 jobs to the city, reversing course after politicians and activists objected to the nearly $3 billion in tax breaks promised to what is already one of the world’s richest, most powerful companies.

“We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York,” the online giant from Seattle said in a blog post announcing its withdrawal.

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Alternative to Spine Surgery: A Single Shot of Human Cells

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By Mary Martin – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health

What if a single-dose injection could cure degenerative disk disease, without going under the knife and through the recovery process of spine surgery? Though it sounds too good to be true, pioneering medical company SpinalCyte says not only is it possible, but it’s already being done.

In a recently concluded clinical trial, the company reported that a single injection of fibroblast cells — modified human cells similar to stem cells — resulted in significant improvements in disk height and pain reduction 12 months after the initial shot.

Mortgage Rates Fall to 12-Month Low as 30-year at 4.37 Percent

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By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Newsmax

U.S. long-term mortgage rates fell this week to a 12-month low, an enticement for prospective homebuyers in the upcoming season.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday the average rate on the benchmark 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage declined to 4.37 percent from 4.41 percent last week. The key 30-year home borrowing rate averaged 4.38 percent a year ago.

Germany Could Slow Phase-Out of Coal

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Re-Blogged From VOA News

Germany’s phasing out of coal-fired power stations could be delayed beyond 2038 if the deadline creates problems for the security of electricity supply, a senior legislator in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party said.

The phase-out, proposed last Saturday by a commission tasked with mapping out Germany’s transition to a more environmentally friendly low-carbon economy, drew criticism from some in industry who fear the impact of higher energy prices.

FILE - Water vapor rises from the cooling towers of the Jaenschwalde coal-fired power plant of Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG in Jaenschwalde, Germany, Jan. 24, 2019.
FILE – Water vapor rises from the cooling towers of the Jaenschwalde coal-fired power plant of Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG in Jaenschwalde, Germany, Jan. 24, 2019.

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New Idea Could Revolutionize the Electric Power Industry

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Re-Blogged From WUWT

University of Cincinnati researchers have developed a more efficient air-cooling system for power plants

University of Cincinnati researchers say they have found a solution to one of the biggest environmental problems facing the energy industry: water consumption.

The William H. Zimmer Power Station, located near Moscow, Ohio, is a 1.35-gigawatt (1,351 MW) coal power plant. Planned by Cincinnati Gas and Electric (CG&E) draws cooling water from the Ohio River.

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Gold-Stock Mega-Mergers Bad

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By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

The world’s two biggest gold miners both announced mega-mergers over the past 5 months or so.  These huge deals briefly garnered some interest in the usually-forgotten gold-stock sector, and fleeting praise from Wall Street analysts.  But gold-stock mega-mergers are bad news for gold-miner shareholders on all sides.  They reveal the serious struggles of major gold miners, and really retard future upside in their stocks.

For decades the largest gold miners in the world have been Newmont Mining (NEM) and Barrick Gold (ABX).  These behemoths have long dwarfed all their peers in operational scope.  While the gold miners are in the process of reporting Q4’18 results now, their latest complete set remains Q3’18’s.  As after every quarterly earnings season, I analyzed them in depth for the major gold miners of GDX back in mid-November.

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Amazon Cancels NY Headquarters

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By Pamela Geller – Re-Blogged From Freedom Outpost

The Amazon plant would have brought much-needed jobs to New York City. It would have employed thousands of people who now are out of luck because of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s socialism and virtue-signaling. She and other socialists don’t want people to work, they want to, as President Trump has said, turn this country into Venezuela, where people are searching through garbage cans for something to eat.

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‘Cooling Is Warming’: Climate Hoaxters Panic As US Freezes, Media Provides Cover

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By JOHN NOLTE – Re-Blogged From WUWT

From the “War is Peace” department…

America enjoys a winter filled with tons of snow and frigid cold weather and out pops the Climate Hoaxsters to assure this kind of weather only further proves our planet is getting, um… warmer.

This current Climate Hoaxster freak-out is largely in reaction to President Trump’s tweet earlier this week mocking the Climate Hoaxsters.

“In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded,” he tweeted. “What the hell is going on with Global Waming? [Sic] Please come back fast, we need you!”

 

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Fed Tightening Is Over: Markets Now Expect Cuts In 2019

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

People who assumed the Fed, along with the rest of the government, would cave the minute the financial markets got a little choppy turned out to be right. A couple of bad months and the “normalization” of both interest rates and the Fed’s balance sheet have stopped cold. Now the markets expect falling rates and (apparently) rising asset purchases. From today’s Wall Street Journal.

Debt Investors Embrace ‘Upside Down’ World After Fed Shift

Signs that the Federal Reserve may be done with its yearslong campaign to raise interest rates are sending ripples through fixed-income markets.

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Depression May Speed Brain Aging

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By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health

Memory and thinking skills naturally slow with age but now scientists are peeking inside living brains to tell if depression might worsen that decline — and finding some worrisome clues.

Depression has long been linked to certain cognitive problems, and depression late in life even may be a risk factor for the development of Alzheimer’s. Yet how depression might harm cognition isn’t clear.

One possibility: Brain cells communicate by firing messages across connections called synapses. Generally, good cognition is linked to more and stronger synapses. With cognitive impairment, those junctions gradually shrink and die off. But until recently, scientists could count synapses only in brain tissue collected after death.

Recognition of Important Soil Work

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By Dr. Tim Ball – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Two events provide the catalyst for this column. First, was the passing of a dear friend Elmer Stobbe, a soil scientist whose career at the University of Manitoba extended after retirement to consultation in Abbotsford BC. The second was my annual interview with a radio station in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, to discuss current weather patterns and expectations for the 2019 growing season. Elmer specialized in soil erosion and especially preventative measures including zero-till and minimum till. In Canada, this work was triggered by the work of Canadian Senator Herbert Sparrow. A farmer from Indian Head, Saskatchewan, also the site of a major agriculture research centre in western Canada. He lived through the dust storms of the late 1930s and witnessed first-hand images similar to a 1933 dust storm in Regina (Figure 1).

clip_image002

Figure 1

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Currencies Threatened By A Credit Crisis

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Money

In this article I draw attention to the similarities between the current economic situation and that of 1929, and the threat to today’s unbacked currencies. There is the coincidence of trade protectionism with the top of the credit cycle, and there are the inflationary events that preceded it. The principal difference today is in modern macroeconomic delusions, which hold that regulating inflation of money and credit is the solution to all ills. I conclude that economic salvation can only come from ditching today’s macroeconomic theories and by returning to monetary stability through credible gold exchange standards.

Introduction

There is an assumption in economic circles that when the general level of prices changes, it is always due to changes in supply and demand for goods and services. Prices change all the time, but without a change in the public’s preference for or against holding money and with all else being equal, the general level of prices simply cannot change. Changes in the general level of prices are due to changes in the purchasing power of the money, which stems from the public’s preferences for or against it and do not emanate from goods and services.

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Solar Cycle 24 Going Down As Quietest In Almost 200 Years

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By – Re-Blogged From No Tricks Zone

Solar Cycle 24 has had the lowest solar activity since the Dalton Minimum around 1810.

Von Frank Bosse und Fritz Vahrenholt
(German text translated / edited by P Gosselin)

Our sun was also very sub-normally active in December last year. We are writing the 121st month since the beginning of cycle number 24, in December 2008, and since 2012 (when we started the blog here) we could only reformulate the opening sentence once: In September 2017 when the sun was 13% more active than the long-term (since 1755) average.

All other months were below average. With the sunspot number (SSN) of 3.1 for the monthly average for December and a total of 24 days without any spot (throughout the second half of the month the sun was spotless) we are in the middle of the cycle minimum.

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A Wave Of Retail Stores Close

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By Mac Slavo – Re-Blogged From Freedom Outpost

Another economic red flag has appeared and its the closure of retail stores.  According to a new report detailing the precarious situation of the current economy, there is “no light at the end of the tunnel” as the closure of brick and mortar stores will continue.

Coresight Research released an outlook of 2019 store closures Wednesday, saying, there’s “no light at the end of the tunnel,” according to several reports, including one from Yahoo News.  According to the global market research firm’s report, a mere six weeks into 2019, United States retailers have announced 2,187 closings of physical stores.  That’s up 23 percent compared to last year. Those closings include 749 Gymboree stores, 251 Shopko store,  and 94 Charlotte Russe locations.

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Climate Change Friendly “Clean Gas” Movement Gathers Momentum

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Green plan to make natural gas from US fracking operations really expensive and dangerous.

Reenvisioning The Role For Natural Gas In A Clean Energy Future

Clean” gas, or hydrogen sourced from natural gas, represents an alternative that has been receiving increased attention.

Hindenburg Hydrogen Explosion Disaster

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Retail Apocalypse and Carmageddon Continue to Pick up Speed

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From Great Recession Blog

We now know that the Retail Apocalypse took another trip downhill during the all-important holiday season. December reports show retail sales declined more in one month than they have since … the Great Recession. Notice what a common refrain that comparison has become.

Retail Apocalypse snowballs downhill

Retail sales dropped 1.2% month-over-month in December, the largest drop since September 2009, according to data from the Census Bureau released Thursday. The dip was broadly unexpected – consensus estimates had foreseen a 0.1% increase in retail sales for the month, according to Bloomberg data. Excluding autos and gas, which can be volatile, core retail sales plunged 1.8%. “[The] fall in retail sales in December was every bit as bad as it looks,” Capital Economics’ Michael Pearce said bluntly. The weakness was broad-based.

Yahoo!

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Avoid the Financial Circus

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By Gary Christenson – Re-Blogged From The Deviant Investor

From Dr. Maya Shetreat, MD:

“Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown. Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.”

THE WALL STREET CIRCUS DISTRACTS PEOPLE.

Wall Street cheerleaders assure everyone stocks go up in the long term. Yes, they rise because the dollar is devalued every year, which they seldom discuss. Their cheerleaders avoid stating that corrections and crashes occur every five to ten years. Wall Street generates fees by encouraging individuals and pension funds to stay invested for the long term.

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Are Democrats Colluding with the Mexican Drug Cartels?

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[This is an opinion piece. I have not verified the facts laid out, although I expect much of it is true. -Bob]

By – Re-Blogged From iPatriot

The Democrats’ and President Trump’s positions on the wall are diametrically opposed.  Hillary Clinton insists: ‘There’s No National Emergency At Our Border’*; while the President insists we have a National Crisis.

Obviously, someone is lying.  Just consider the facts:

Drug Cartels have turned Mexico into an extremely dangerous and violent country.  In 2018, Mexico suffered 40,000 murders. A Mexican Mayor was shot and killed the day he took office.  Just today, Hugo Figueroa, a cattle rancher was kidnapped, tortured, tied up and then killed. In 2018, Cancun had 540 homicides.  Last week, dismembered body parts were dumped outside the Mayor’s office.  In January 2019 alone, there were another 30 executions in Cancun.

Drug Cartels bribe Mexican Politicians and get co-operation in return:  In a NY Court, El Chapo’s accountant admitted they regularly bribe Mexican politicians; and that  they paid a $100 million bribe to former President Enrique Pena Nieto The Mexican Government, in turn, colludes with the Cartels; provides temporary visas, food and housing for the illegals; and clears the way for the busses to bring them to our border.

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We Must Hope Dr. Soon is Right …

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By Jeffrey Foss, PhD – Re-Blogged From WUWT

And the global warming apocalypse is not nigh. Real-world evidence certainly supports him.

Everyone has heard the bad news. Imminent Climate Apocalypse (aka “global warming” and “climate change”) threatens humanity and planet with devastation, unless we abandon the use of fossil fuels.

Far fewer people have heard the good news. The sun has just entered its Grand Minimum phase, and the Earth will gradually cool over the next few decades.

Why should we all hope Earth will cool? Because nobody with any trace of human decency would hope the Earth will actually suffer catastrophic warming.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #346

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Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Influence of Greenhouse Gases: The past two TWTWs discussed that when liquid water changes phases and turns into a gas, water vapor, it absorbs heat energy, which is not measured by temperature. By convention, the energy is called latent heat. Most, but not all, of the idealized process takes place in the tropics or what was once labeled the Torrid Zone, lying between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. In the idealized model, solar energy transports the water vapor to the top of the troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere) where the water vapor condenses into rain, or freezes into ice, releasing the latent heat.

This idealized process, which TWTW called the weather engine, apparently accounted for a major amplification of the greenhouse gas effect emphasized by climate modelers discussed in the 1979 Charney Report. The speculated impact is called the “hot spot” and is common to global climate models. As TWTW previously discussed, 40 years of comprehensive atmospheric temperature trends and 60 years of more narrow weather balloon temperature measurements by separate instruments do not reveal an unusual rate of warming at the speculated (hypothesized) region. Thus, the prediction fails and one should no longer assume the speculated warming exists.

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What They Don’t Want You To Know About Prices

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By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Last week, in Part I of this essay, we discussed why a central planner cannot know the right interest rate. Central planner’s macroeconomic aggregate measures like GDP are blind to the problem of capital consumption, including especially capital consumption caused by the central plan itself. GDP has an intrinsic bias towards consumption, and makes no distinction between consumption of the yield on capital, and consumption of the capital per se…between selling the golden egg, and cooking the goose that lays golden eggs.

One could quibble with this and say that, well, really, the central planners should use a different metric. This is not satisfying. It demands the retort, “if there is a better metric than GDP, then why aren’t they using it now?” GDP is, itself, supposed to be that better metric! Nominal GDP targeting is the darling central plan proposal of the Right, supposedly better than consumer price index and unemployment (as Modern Monetary Theory is the darling of the Left).

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Fed Chair Powell’s Rate Pause Won’t Save Stocks

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From Pento Portfolio Strategies

Jerome Powell threw Wall Street a lifeline recently when he decided to temporarily take a pause with the Fed’s rate hiking campaign. The Fed Head also indicated that the process of credit destruction, known as Quantitative Tightening, may soon be brought to an end.  This move towards donning a dovish plume caused the total value of equities to soar back to a level that is now 137% of GDP. For some context, that valuation is over 30 percentage points higher than it was at the start of Great Recession and over 90 percentage points greater than 1985. So, the salient question for investors is: will a slightly dovish FOMC be enough to support the massively overvalued market?

The S&P 500 is now trading at over 16x forward earnings. But the growth rate of that earnings will plunge from over 20% last year to a minus 0.8% in Q1 of this year, according to FACTSET. It might have made sense to pay 19x earnings back in 2018 because it was justified by a commensurate rate of earnings growth. But only a fool would pay 16x or 17x earnings if growth is actually negative?

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Global Mean Surface Temperature

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By Bob Tisdale – Re-Blogged From WUWT

This is a long post: 3500+ words and 22 illustrations. Regardless, heretics of the church of human-induced global warming who frequent this blog should enjoy it. Additionally, I’ve uncovered something about the climate models stored in the CMIP5 archive that I hadn’t heard mentioned or seen presented before. It amazed even me, and I know how poorly these climate models perform. It’s yet another level of inconsistency between models, and it’s something very basic. It should help put to rest the laughable argument that climate models are based on well-documented physical processes.

INTRODUCTION

After isolating 4 climate model ensemble members with specific characteristics (explained later in this introduction), this post presents (1) observed and climate model-simulated global mean sea surface temperatures, and (2) observed and climate model-simulated global mean land near-surface air temperatures, all during the 30-year period with the highest observed warming rate before the year 1950. The climate model outputs being presented are those stored in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) archives, which were used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their 5th Assessment Report (AR5). Specifically, the ensemble member outputs being presented are those with historic forcings through 2005 and RCP8.5 (worst-case scenario) forcings thereafter. In other words, the ensemble members being presented during this early warming period are being driven with historic forcings, and they are from the simulations that later include the RCP8.5 forcings.

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Financial Sector Calls Gold ‘Shiny Poo.’

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By Mike Gleason – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Lawrence Parks, founder and executive director of the Foundation of the Advancement of Monetary Education. Larry has dedicated much of his life towards the study and promotion of sound money, having author articles that have appeared numerous times in publications like The Economist, The Washington Times, National Review, and The Wall Street Journal just to name a few. He even hosts a weekly TV show that airs on cable networks in the Manhattan area called “The Larry Parks Show”. He is given expert testimony in Washington to the United States Congress on monetary policy. He’s a real champion for sound money, and it’s great to have him on with us today.

Larry thanks for the time and welcome. It’s good to talk to you.

Larry Parks: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for hosting this.

Mike Gleason: Well Larry, to set the stage here briefly give us some background about the Foundation of the Advancement of Monetary Education and what motivated you to take the helm of the organization nearly 25 years ago, let’s start there.

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Reassessing the RCPs

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By Kevin Murphy – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A response to: “Is RCP8.5 an impossible scenario?”. This post demonstrates that RCP8.5 is so highly improbable that it should be dismissed from consideration, and thereby draws into question the validity of RCP8.5-based assertions such as those made in the Fourth National Climate Assessment from the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Analyses of future climate change since the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (AR5) have been based on representative concentration pathways (RCPs) that detail how a range of future climate forcings might evolve.

Several years ago, a set of RCPs were requested by the climate modeling research community to span the range of net forcing from 2.6 W/m2 to 8.5 W/m2 (in year 2100 relative to 1750) so that physics within the models could be fully exercised. Four of them were developed and designated as RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. They have been used in ongoing research and as the basis for impact analyses and future climate projections.

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Looking At Market Capitalization

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By Mark J Lundeen – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Another week of nothing much happening with the Dow Jones; since last Friday it has advanced by only 42.44 points.  What’s to make of that?  After the impressive advance that began after December 24th the market is taking a break.  Don’t be surprised should the coming weeks bring more of the same.

However I remain short-term bullish, expecting the Dow Jones to make additional BEV Zeros in the BEV chart below come this spring or summer.  These anticipated (but not guaranteed) new all-time highs will be the last hurrah of a monster bull market that began in August 1982.  Following them come the deluge; a deflationary bear market that will claw back most of the inflationary gains seen since Ronald Reagan was president.

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Energy Dept. to Roll Back Light Bulb Ban

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By Michael Barnes – Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘DOE is making such a dangerous proposal despite the recent dire warnings about the fate of our planet if we don’t urgently address climate change…’

If it’s not broken, government regulators are in a frenzy to fix it.

In many ways, that was the Obama administration’s command-and-control approach to the American economy, free-market proponents often assert.

Perhaps the single best example is its war on the incandescent light bulb—which has been brought back from regulatory oblivion this week.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qC7PlA3_3nk

On Jan. 19, 2017, or the day before President Donald Trump was inaugurated, the Obama administration’s Department of Energy published two final regulatory rules.

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China Tests New Deep Depth Fracking Method

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Stephen ChenBy Stephen Chen  – Re-Blogged From South China Morning Post

  • Scientists have developed an ‘energy rod’ that can fire multiple shock waves to frack sedimentary rock at depths of up to 3.5km
  • China has the world’s largest reserves of natural gas but current mining technology makes most of it inaccessible

China is planning to apply the same technology used to detonate a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima during the second world war to access its massive shale gas reserves in Sichuan province. While success would mean a giant leap forward not only for the industry but also Beijing’s energy self-sufficiency ambitions, some observers are concerned about the potential risk of widespread drilling for the fuel in a region known for its devastating earthquakes.

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Climate Fish Tales

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By Jim Steele- ReBlogged From WUWT

What’s Natural?

American folk lore is filled with stories of how Native Americans observed changes in wildlife and foretold future weather changes. I was fascinated by an 1800s story of Native Americans inhabiting regions around Marysville, California who had moved down into the river valleys during drought years. They then moved to higher ground before devastating floods occurred. Did they understand California’s natural climate cycles? Could changes in salmon migrations alert them?

Observing salmon has certainly improved modern climate science. In the 1990s climate scientists struggled to understand why surface temperatures in the northwest sector of the Pacific Ocean had suddenly become cooler while temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific suddenly warmed. Climate models predicted no such thing. However, fishery biologists noted salmon abundance in Alaska underwent boom and bust cycles lasting 20 to 40 years. When Alaskan salmon populations boomed, their populations from California to Washington busted. Conversely, decades later when Alaskan populations busted, those more southerly populations boomed.

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