Month: February 2020

Some Perspective on the #Coronavirus #COVID19 from the CDC

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Re-Blogged From WUWT

Folks fretting about the coronavirus are forgetting there’s another virus already running rampant in the United States, one that’s killed nearly 20 times as many people in this country alone.

Influenza has already taken the lives of 10,000 Americans this season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 19 million have caught the flu, and an estimated 180,000 became so ill they landed in the hospital.

“Influenza is easier to pick up and there are far, far more cases,” said Dr. Alan Taege, an infectious disease physician at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s already much larger than coronavirus has been so far in the whole world, in our own country alone.”

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China and India Rejecting Renewables for Coal-Fired Futures

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clip_image001[4]   By Ronald Stein – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California

China and India are NOT buying into the global alarm movement. Never in human history have we seen two countries (China and India), each with over a billion people, in need of such gargantuan amounts of energy to keep their economies accelerating and their citizens alive.

China and India are the two most populous countries in the world. As of 2018, China had almost 1.4 billion people, a figure that is projected to grow to 1.5 billion by 2045. India accounted for approximately 1.3 billion people in 2018 and is expected to grow to almost 1.7 billion by 2045.

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Michael Shellenberger’s Smack-Down of Alarmism

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All

Michael Shellenberger

I write about energy and the environment.

In July of this year, one of Lauren Jeffrey’s science teachers made an off-hand comment about how climate change could be apocalyptic. Jeffrey is 17 years old and attends high school in Milton Keynes, a city of 230,000 people about 50 miles northwest of London.

“I did research on it and spent two months feeling quite anxious,” she told me. “I would hear young people around me talk about it and they were convinced that the world was going to end and they were going to die.”

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Europe’s Anti-Science Plague Descends On Africa

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By From The GWPF – Re-Blogged From WUWT

European Scientist

The pests recently landed in Djibouti, Eritrea, Oman and Yemen. Swarms have also struck Tanzania and Uganda. They won’t stop on their own. According to the Food Agriculture Organization (FAO), “this is the worst situation in 25 years.

European activists are putting lives at risk in East Africa, turning a plague of insects into a real prospect of widespread famine.

Map: FOA

The fast-breeding desert locust has invaded Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, creating a state of emergency.

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Sins of Emission

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By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley – Re-Blogged FRrom WUWT

Much has been made of the alleged standstill in global CO2 emissions, which are asserted to have been about the same in 2019 as in 2018, at 33.3 gigatonnes of CO2:

Obsession over transient phenomena such as this is commonplace among the climate genociders, whose cruel, dangerous and expensive global-warming abatement policies are killing tens of millions annually through the coordinated refusal of most of the world’s leading merchant, central and intergovernmental banks to lend to developing countries to install the one kind of electricity they can afford and can maintain and are desperate for – coal-fired generation.

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The Great Melt-Up Melt Down

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

That didn’t take long. Just a month ago, I wrote, “Stock Market More Overpriced And Perilous Than Anytime In History  ,” stating that the market was poised for a big fall because “some of the market’s most fundamental valuation metrics are now printing at levels never seen before…. This market is tripping on some pricy hallucinogens.”

.And here we are! A single black swan has knocked the legs out from under the bull. It’s not a full-blown correction yet (requiring indices fall by, at least, 10%) or a crash (20% or more), though it looks like it could hit that mark by the end of today. That would be a full correction in just four days.

The market has fallen off such a steep cliff to where MarketWatch reported that Monday and Tuesday teamed up to be the largest two-day point drop in Dow history! (Some other sites have said it is the largest since the big drop I predicted for the start of 2018 when the market experienced its largest one-day point drop in history.)

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Is Recycling working?

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By Andy May – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The recycling movement started in the 1970s and it has been very popular in Western countries. Participation varies with location, but in our small community of The Woodlands, Texas, over 90% participate in our curbside recycling program. However, the value of recycled materials has fallen dramatically in recent years because far too much unrecyclable material is put in the bins by the public and much of what is recyclable is contaminated with water, food, or other contaminates that make the “good” stuff unusable. Waste disposal companies often charge “contamination fees.” In addition to the contamination problem, the value of recyclables is going down and cost to process them into a usable form is going up. Processing, that is cleaning and sorting a load of recyclable material, has gone from earning a community $25/ton to costing the community $70/ton or more in many areas. In 2015 recycling was a revenue generator for Houston and other cities in the area. Bellaire, for example, generated $12,000 in 2015 from curbside recycling, but in 2017, they lost over $80,000 for the same program.

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Will Corona Virus Lead To A Gold Standard?

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Even before the coronavirus sprang upon an unprepared China the credit cycle was already tipping the world into recession. The coronavirus makes an existing situation immeasurably worse, shutting down China and disrupting global supply chains to the point where large swathes of global production simply cease.

The crisis is likely to be a wake-up call for complacent investors, who are content to buy benchmark bonds issued by bankrupt governments at wildly excessive prices. A recession turned by the coronavirus into a fathomless slump will lead to a synchronised explosion of debt issuance for which there are no genuine buyers and can only be monetised.

The adjustment to reality will be catastrophic for government finances, and their currencies. This article explains why the collapse in overpriced financial assets and fiat currencies is likely to be rapid, perhaps giving ordinary people in some jurisdictions an early prospect of a return to gold and silver as circulating money.

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Want to Be Taller? Radical Surgery Permanently Extends Your Legs.

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By Dan Robitzski – Re-Blogged From Futurism

These surgeons will saw through your leg bones — and reset them to give you a permanent height boost.

IN THE LAST YEAR, at least 30 men have made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon named Dr. Kevin Debiparshad to have him saw through their perfectly healthy leg bones.

At his LimbplastX Institute in Las Vegas, Debiparshad cuts through patients’ femurs or tibias, forces the bones to separate with metal implants, and sends them on their way to heal. Once their bones grow back, they’ll be several inches taller — like that one scene in the 1997 sci-fi film “Gattaca.”

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Do ‘Green’ Buses Pass the Performance Test?

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By Duggan Flanakin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Do they even pass basic energy, environmental, economic and human rights tests?

Should Americans follow China in a massive commitment to supposedly eco-friendly battery-electric buses (BEBs)? California has mandated a “carbon-free” bus system by 2040 and will buy only battery or fuel cell-powered buses after 2029. Other states and cities are following suit.

Vehicle decisions are typically based on cost and performance. Cost includes selling price plus maintenance, while performance now includes perceived environmental impacts – which for some is the only issue that matters. But that perception ignores some huge ecological (and human rights) issues.

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Oregon Residents File Petition to Become Part of Conservative Idaho

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By Bradley Cortright – Re-Blogged From IJR

Residents in Oregon who are fed up with liberal policies in their state have introduced a petition to become part of neighboring, more conservative Idaho.

The group called Greater Idaho that started the petition is trying to secure enough signatures to get the petition on the ballot in November. The petition would also extend Idaho’s border into parts of northern California — swallowing several counties of those two states.

A review of the proposal found that if adopted, only 14 of Oregon’s 36 counties would be considered Oregon. The petition’s proposed map for Idaho’s new borders shows the state’s new boundary expanding to the coast.

John Rubino Interview

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By John Rubino of Dollar Collapse interviewed by Mike Manwell of Silver Doctors

All ASSET BUBBLES MUST BURST… Today’s guest, John Rubino, shares his thoughts on why this current bubble economy has lasted so long. During our chat he elaborates on how Central Banks and Governments are trapped into experimenting with more ways to keep the economy afloat. Unfortunately, the music has to stop at some point and the only people that will be left standing will be holders of sound money.

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U.S. Health Officials Urge Americans to Prepare for Spread of Coronavirus

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By  Reuters – Re-Blogged From IJR

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday alerted Americans to begin preparing for the spread of coronavirus in the United States after infections surfaced in several more countries.

The announcement signaled a change in tone for the Atlanta-based U.S. health agency, which had largely been focused on efforts to stop the virus from entering the country and quarantining individuals traveling from China.

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Baltic Dry, Copper, Oil, Tech And China Continue To Call For Market Crash Soon…

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By Clive Maund – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

In this update we are going to review a small but important range of commodities / lead indicators which strongly suggest that the seemingly endless bullmarket in US equities is living on borrowed time and will end sooner rather than later, and given how long it has lasted and how extremely overvalued it has become, the downturn will likely start with a crash phase.

Regardless of what the eventual impact of the Coronavirus epidemic is, US stockmarkets in particular seem to be in a state of denial about the actual real-world consequences of the Chinese shutdown and impact on the global supply chain and corporate profitability everywhere, and some elements even seem to be gloating about China’s misfortune and predicament, completely oblivious to the fact that this is going to have a negative impact on almost everyone.

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Why the West Won

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By Niall Ferguson

For the past few centuries, Western Civilization has dominated the world both culturally and economically. Why? Some point to imperialism, slavery, and colonial wars. But those sins are common to all empires throughout history. What separates the West from the rest? Stanford historian Niall Ferguson has the answer in this highly informative video.

Pleze watch the VIDEO

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COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Economic Impact Sweeps Down on Global Economy Like a Fat Black Swan

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From The Great Recession Blog

It is the senseless things of this world that sometimes knock sense into the high and mighty whose hubris causes them to believe they cannot fall. In this case, the tiny COVID-19 virus (coronavirus) is bringing down a global house of cards long perched to fall — locks, stocks, and barrels of oil.

Stock investors thought the over-Fed market’s bull run would prove immortal, but all the overripe market needed was for a fat, black swan to drop down on the market’s head and knock some sense into it. Economic damage worldwide, however, is far from limited to stocks. Some of it seems almost silly or bizarre, but such is the case when the entire global economy is already in ill health, having survived on Fedmed for a decade.

Female Athletes Sue Connecticut for Letting Boys Compete Against Them

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– Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘Forcing girls to be spectators in their own sports is completely at odds with Title IX…’

(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Three high-school girls and their mothers, with legal assistance from the Alliance Defending Freedom, sued Connecticut‘s public schools on Wednesday for letting boys compete in female athletics.

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What To Make Of The Bureau Of Lying Statistics’ Contradicting Jobs Reports

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From The Great Recession Blog

Employment has been the one stickler in my recession prediction for 2019, and finding a trustworthy measurement from the government’s statistics is like finding a virgin in a brothel. Depending on which official figures you look at, employment has refused to fall and new jobs are strong … or they stink.

We recently got two extremely conflicting reports from the same government agency that reveal, AGAIN, how dubious the official numbers from the government are. Because one report was stellar, the stock market blasted off like a rocket when it heard the news. Because the other report of the same item was abysmal, the stock market ignored it. The Fed, however, did not ignore it, and carries it in its official charts.

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This Team Wants to Capture Unlimited Energy From Inside the Earth

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Dan Robitzski – Re-Blogged From Futurism

Digging In

In central Italy, a team of scientists dug a well two miles deep in search of a functionally-unlimited supply of clean energy.

If the group of Italian and Swiss geologists manages to get a little bit deeper and reach the K horizon — the depth at which they expect to find reservoirs of highly-pressurized fluids — they would be able to tap into what Wired describes as “one of the most energy-dense forms of renewable power in the world.”

The trick, however, is digging that deep without triggering a massive earthquake along the way.

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Climate Policy Debate’s Corpse

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By Larry Kummer, Editor – Re-Blogged From Fabius Maximus

Summary: The climate policy debate ran for 30 years but produced little action (it ranks #17 of the public’s top 18 concerns). Now it has died. The autopsy reveals not just who killed it but also disturbing insights about America. This is post #404 in a series about climate change that I began 12 years ago.

Man drowning in sea - Dreamstime-27423027

ID 27423027 © Tom Wang | Dreamstime.

Bottom line: the climate activists are decisively winning. The science no longer matters in the public policy debate. Activists have moved beyond it and the major science institutions no longer defend it against the activists’ exaggerations and misrepresentations. There are rumors are that the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report will break with the past and fully embrace the hysteria. Meanwhile, skeptics are talking to themselves, like characters in Alice in Wonderland – vocal but effectively locked out of the news media.

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The Crisis Will Sink Stocks

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

There are no safe assets. In 2002 we recommended our investors to hold up to 50% of their financial assets in physical gold. Today in 2020, I consider that up to 100% is the right figure since there are no safe assets except for physical precious metals.

We are now at the end of the only truly global asset bubble in history, fuelled by a debt explosion of epic proportions. Never before have all major economies peaked together, powered by quadrillions of credit creation, money printing and derivatives.

UBER-OPTIMISTIC INVESTORS WILL BE SHOCKED

Although the magnitude of this bull market is greater than anything seen before, the psychology of the current market is similar to previous speculative bubbles whether we take 1929, 1973, 1987, 1999 or 2007. At the stock market peak of these periods, psychology reached uber-optimism. In 1929 for example, the Yale economist Irving Fisher stated in the New York Times: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau”. Three years later the Dow had lost 90%.

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Trump: US Ready to End War in Afghanistan if Truce Holds Until Saturday

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By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘I think the Taliban wants to make a deal too, they’re tired of fighting…’

President Donald Trump said Sunday he’s ready to sign a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan if a temporary truce holds in America’s longest war.

“Time to come home,” he said.

“They want to stop. You know, they’ve been fighting a long time. They’re tough people. We’re tough people,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to India. “But after 19 years, that’s a long time.”

Trump 4

AP Photo President Donald Trump with First Lady Melania Trump.

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We Will Use Those Tools…

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By Gary Tanashian – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

From Fed Chairman Powell…

Powell says Fed will aggressively use QE to fight next recession

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday the central bank would fight the next economic downturn by buying large amounts of government debt to drive down long-term interest rates, a strategy that has been dubbed quantitative easing, or QE.

Of course they will. The fix is always in, isn’t it? Wouldn’t want to let a system and associated economy so far out on a brittle limb weighed down by exponential debt leverage go it on its own, now would we? Wouldn’t want anything like a naturally functioning economy because until an utter and complete crash and clean out, there can be no such thing. So more debt manipulation it is!

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Americans Reluctant to Join the EV Train

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By Ronald Stein – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California

We’re constantly being bombarded with the EV movement, but Americans must have a multitude of subconscious reasons for not buying into one of the major movements to save the world from itself as they are showing their lack of enthusiasm by avoiding the dealerships.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, citing Edmunds data, The number of battery-electric models available more than doubled from 2018 to 2019, but EV sales budged in the wrong direction. In response to the major efforts by manufacturers, the horrific EV sales data shows that only 325,000 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold in the U.S. in 2019, down from 349,000 in 2018.

Those dismal numbers represent an embarrassing dismal 2% of the 17 million vehicles of all types sold in the United States in 2019. Are EV carmakers driving off a cliff?”

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Too Much Climate Research Money Being Spent on Science

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

I couldn’t make this sort of schist up if I was trying…

Very little money is actually spent on climate research
Researchers have looked at where USD 1.3 trillion in research funding is spent across the globe. Less than 5 per cent of this money has gone to climate research. Studies that examine how society can cope with the climate of the future are given a very small share of this pot.

Ulla Gjeset Schjølberg
JOURNALIST

Nancy Bazilchuk
ENGLISH VERSION

PUBLISHED Friday 07. February 2020

In a recent study, researchers at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and the University of Sussex reviewed how much of US 1.3 trillion (NOK 11.4 trillion) in research funding is dedicated to climate research.

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Climate Science Dials Back the ‘Worst Case Scenario’

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A surprising comment published January 29th in the leading scientific journal Nature said; “Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading – Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy.” This has thrown a monkey wrench in hundreds of studies and media stories that previously predicted dire climate consequences in the future due to increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere.

The consequences were predicted by a computer model called Representative Carbon Pathways (RCP) and the worst case scenario model, RCP8.5 had been cited over 2500 times in scientific journals and in hundreds of media stories as the primary need for “urgent action” on climate. Predictions from RCP8.5 model suggested maximum global temperature increases of nearly 6°C (10.8°F) by the year 2100, shown in Figure 1.

clip_image002Figure 1 – Image Credit: Neil Craik, University of Waterloo

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What If We Banned Frac’ing?

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Note: This is a politically charged post. If you don’t like such posts, don’t bother reading it.

What would happen if frac’ing was banned?

The short answer: We all freeze in the dark. For the long answer, read the US Chamber of Commerce paper.

The 2016 report was intended to lay out the implications of reckless, if not treasonous, energy policy demands of politicians and activists.

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Deceptive Rhetoric at Davos Could Bring Disaster

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

There is nothing ‘cohesive’ or ‘sustainable’ about ‘solutions’ demanded by WEF ‘stakeholders’

The World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland is billed as the globe’s most prestigious annual gathering of movers and shakers. Its mission is to “improve the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.”

This year’s theme was “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World.” Unfortunately, the lofty rhetoric belies the misleading, potentially disastrous realities of agendas supported by many participants.

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Wuhan Coronavirus

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By Rud Istvan – Re4-Blogged From WUWT

Introduction

The Wuhan coronavirus potential pandemic has been much in the news recently. ctm discussed my doing an update to a rather long comment a few weeks ago. I first agreed but then demurred until now.

The reasons for agreeing were the numerous analogies (below) to climate change ‘science’ and ‘prognostications’—albeit on usefully shortened testable time frames like this year, not 2100. Examples below include assuming we know what we actually don’t based on models, and reporting worst case but unlikely scenarios as ‘likely” because ‘if it bleeds, it leads’.

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Our Broken Climate Policy Debate

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By Larry Kummer, – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Summary: Progress in the climate policy debate comes too slowly. The use and misuse of RCP8.5 shows why. At this pace, the climate will give final answers before we get a consensus. We can’t afford this.

In 2015 I gave one of the early critiques of the RCP8.5 scenario. Is our certain fate a coal-burning climate apocalypse? No! And then Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions (it was the first Dr. Curry saw about the issue). I – and the many who followed – said two easily proven things.

  • The RCP8.5 scenario was a good worst-case scenario, showing what might happen if many things go wrong. It is either unlikely or impossible.
  • The RCP8.5 has been described as the “business as usual” (BAU) scenario and so become the central scenario for both researchers and policy-makers. It is not BAU (see below for details), and should not be the main case for either group.

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We Must Fight Climate Extremists Before They Upend Society

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By Ross Mckitrick – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Start learning the deep details of the science and economics instead of letting extremists dictate what you’re allowed to think or say.

Last year was the year the climate issue took a sharp turn towards extremism. Let’s hope 2020 is the year sanity makes a comeback.

There have long been three groups occupying the climate issue. To avoid pejoratives, I will call them A, B and C.

The A group are the doubters. They don’t believe greenhouse gases (GHGs) do much harm and they don’t support expensive climate-policy interventions. If we must choose between climate policy and the continued use of inexpensive fossil energy, they readily choose the latter.

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Corona Virus Map

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  By Bob Shapiro

Johns Hopkins has a Corona Virus map that appears to be updated daily showing where confirmed cases have been reported, along with stats on deaths and recoveries. It gives a breakdown by country – I was surprised that the US showed 15 confirmed cases.

Take a look at: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

CONTINUE READING –>

The Great Dichotomy

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By Michael Ballanger – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

One of the advantages of being a sexagenarian is that after forty years investing in stocks, bonds, commodities, and currencies you have a pretty good idea when something is not exactly “right.” If you have lived a good, normal life and you still have decent control of over your mental faculties and bodily functions, you remember moments in time that impacted your sensibilities, not unlike your first crush on a girl, or that final exam, or an authoritarian coach’s dressing-down.

However, given my chosen profession, nothing gets more indelibly etched into one’s psyche than a big price “move” in something one owns. Be it a loss or a win, one can recall all the inputs that created that “move” and, sometimes elatedly and sometimes sadly, one can recall all of the ramifications and repercussion from the “move.” You will, later in life, regale in the joy (or sorrow) of recounting the story of the “move” until people roll their eyes in angst upon being subjected to their ninth or tenth serving.

SEA LEVEL: Rise and Fall – Part 5: Bending the Trend

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By Kip Hansen — Re-Blogged From WUWT

USA Today shouts: “Rise in sea levels is accelerating along U.S. coasts, report warns”.   Many other media outlets have repeated the story:  The Guardian, The Hill, and U.S. News and World Report.   All of these make the same claims:

The report’s key message “is a clear trend toward acceleration in rates of sea-level rise at 25 of our 32 tide-gauge stations,” said Virginia Institute of Marine Science emeritus professor John Boon in a statement. “Acceleration can be a game changer in terms of impacts and planning, so we really need to pay heed to these patterns.”

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #399

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The Week That Was: February 15, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “”Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.” —Thomas Jefferson (1823)

Number of the Week: January 1736

 

Future Emissions Down, Climate Sensitivity Up? Writing in American Thinker, Anthony Watts draws attention to a surprising article in one of the climate establishment’s journals, Nature. In that article by Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters, the authors point out that great increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are unlikely to take place in the 21st century. Thus, the world will not warm as much as claimed using the standard modeling assumptions common to the global climate models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The authors propose that the IPCC modelers moderate their extreme emissions scenario, their storyline.

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Reversal of Obama Administration’s Land Grabs in Utah

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Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘Any suggestion that these lands and resources will be adversely impacted…is simply not true…’

The U.S. government implemented final management plans Thursday for two national monuments in Utah that President Donald Trump restored to their original size more than two years ago, that ensure lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling despite pending lawsuits.

The lands have generated little interest from energy companies in the two years since President Donald Trump cut the size of Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half, said Casey Hammond, acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management with the U. S. Department of the Interior.

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AP Photo: “Moonhouse” in McLoyd Canyon.

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JPMorgan Chase Confirmed as Target of Metals Price Rigging Prosecution

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By Clint Siegner, Money Metals News Service – Re-Blogged From Headline Wealth

The U.S. Department of Justice investigation of criminal activity in the precious metals markets has taken an interesting new turn.

According to Bloomberg, prosecutors are targeting the bank itself and not just the individual traders involved in rigging prices. If convicted, the bank as an institution could be held accountable for years of structured and pervasive cheating.

The DOJ investigation of JPMorgan’s metals trading desk began more than two years ago. It came on the heels of a guilty plea by Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank copped to spoofing prices and agreed to turn state’s evidence. DB then handed over hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, along with chat logs and voice recordings which featured traders gleefully conspiring with one another to cheat clients and other market participants.

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Chinese Military Stole Millions of Americans’ Credit Data, AG Barr Charges

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By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Headline Wealth

Four members of the Chinese military have been charged with breaking into the networks of the Equifax credit reporting agency and stealing the personal information of tens of millions of Americans, the Justice Department said Monday, blaming Beijing for one of the largest hacks in history to target consumer data.

The 2017 breach affected more than 145 million people, with the hackers successfully stealing names, addresses, Social Security and driver’s license numbers and other personal information stored in the company’s databases.

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Woke Discrimination: NYC Theater Charges Higher Ticket Prices for Whites

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By Tyler O’Neil – Re-Blogged From PJ Media

In a blatant act of woke discrimination, a New York City theater has launched a “voluntary” ticket pricing model for a new play based loosely on President Thomas Jefferson’s infamous sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. The pricing model seems intended to make a point about historic racial injustice, but it arguably perpetuates racial animosity — and may break the law, as the New York Daily News reported.

JACK, a theater in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn, introduced the pricing model for its play “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever.” Tickets are available via “Two-Tiered Pricing (suggested but not required): $22 (General Admission); $15 (Admission for those who identify as People of Color).”

Website screenshot of the art for the play “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever.”
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The ‘Skeptical Science’ Blacklisting

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Note from Anthony: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. writes this morning to say that he has been “locked out of Twitter” is response to calling out Dana Nuccitelli and John Cook of the dishonestly named “Skeptical Science” website over claims that Dr. Judith Curry has should be “unhirable” due to her views on climate science. The SkS kidz don’t like Dr. Curry and her reasonable voice. His essay below explains why and illustrates how childish this is.

A Climate Blacklist That Works: “It Should Make Her Unhirable In Academia”

By Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. – Re-Blogged From WUWT

(Reposted from Forbes at WUWT by request.)

A climate advocacy group called Skeptical Science, hosts a list of academics that it has labeled “climate misinformers.” The list includes 17 academics and is intended as a blacklist. We know of this intent because one of the principals of Skeptical Science, a blogger named Dana Nuccitelli, said so last Friday, writing of one academic on their list, “if you look at the statements we cataloged and debunked on her [Skeptical Science] page, it should make her unhirable in academia.”

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Coronavirus Cure: Print More Money

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

A few days ago the market was crashing on Coronavirus fears. But recently, the market has soared back based upon the hopes of a vaccine and some better than expected economic data in the US. The ADP January employment report showed that a net 291k jobs were created, and the ISM Services Index came in at a healthy 55.5. However, a couple of good data points doesn’t change the fact that US economic growth has contracted back to 2% trend growth and will absolutely become more anemic–at least in the short-term. This is because the measures needed to contain the virus are also GDP killers. I have no clue if the virus will become a pandemic or if it will fade away like the SARS and MERS viruses–without long-term economic damage. But, for the stock market to remain at record high valuations, nearly everything has to go perfectly. That is, the Fed has to keep pumping in money, and EPS growth must rebound sharply.

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The Monarch Abundance Roller-Coaster- part 2

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

To be published in the Pacifica Tribune February 2020

What’s Natural

Indeed, some Monarch populations have declined in recent decades. However, the species as a whole is not endangered. Monarchs experience booms and busts as do many insects. So, we still need to determine if recent population declines are part of natural cycles or due to human disturbance. Counter-intuitively, humans purposefully and unwittingly have both increased and decreased monarch populations.

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Last Decade of Climate Change in 7 Charts

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Re-Blogged From WUWT

This article on Grist (h/t to James Taylor, The Heartland Institute) tries to point out how “terrible” the last decade was due to “climate change”. They write:

As this hottest-on-record, godforsaken decade draws to a close, it’s clear that global warming is no longer a problem for future generations but one that’s already displacing communities, costing billions, and driving mass extinctions. And it’s worth asking: Where did the past 10 years get us?

The seven charts below begin to hint at an answer to that question. Some of the changes they document, like the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the number of billion dollar disasters that occur each year, illustrate how little we did to reduce emissions and how unprepared the world is to deal with the warming we’ve already locked in.

https://grist.org/climate/we-broke-down-the-last-decade-of-climate-change-in-7-charts/

We can also provide 7 charts that illustrate the last decade of climate change, and they tell a different story.

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Sugar Ants’ Preference for Pee May Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

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By University of South Australia – Re4-Blogged From WUWT

An unlikely penchant for pee is putting a common sugar ant on the map, as new research from the University of South Australia shows their taste for urine could play a role in reducing greenhouse gases.

Led by wildlife ecologist Associate Professor Topa Petit, the Kangaroo Island-based research found that sugar ants prefer urine over sugar – the food source after which they’re named – nocturnally foraging on it to extract nitrogen molecules, some of which could end up in the greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.


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Sugar ants mining urine in sand on Kangaroo Island Credit UniSA / Sophie Petit

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Human Trial Suggests CRISPR Could Be a Viable Cancer Treatment

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By Kristin Houser – Re-Blogged From Futurism

This could be great news for experimental cancer treatments.

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania just published the results of the first U.S. trial of CRISPR-edited cells in cancer patients — and they’re very encouraging.

In April 2019, UPenn confirmed that a team of its researchers had officially begun testing CRISPR-edited cells in humans.

For that trial, the scientists had removed immune cells from three patients with advanced, treatment-resistant cancers. They then used CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the cells in order to improve their ability to fight tumors before returning them to the patients’ bodies.

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Neural Network Transforms 124-Year-Old Film Into Crisp HD

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By Kristin Houser – Re-Blogged From Futurism

Movie Magic

When it premiered in 1896, the silent short film “L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat” was a cinematic wonder. Compared to today’s motion pictures, though, the quality of the black-and-white clip is downright primitive.

But now, YouTuber Denis Shiryaev has found a way to show what the film might have looked like if it had been recorded using more modern technology — by using artificial intelligence to upscale it to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second.

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Cooling the Past

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By Jennifer Marohasy – Re-Blogged From WUWT

It is not disputed that Blair Trewin under the supervision of David Jones (both working at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology) remodel all the historical temperature data generating trends and statistics that look quite different from the actual measurements.

The remodelled series are then passed on to university and CSIRO climate scientists who base much of their climate research on these ‘second-hand’ statistics.

So, when Michael Mann and David Karoly tell you it’s getting hotter and hotter, this is their interpretation of Blair Trewin’s statistics, not their interpretation of the actual data.

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Independence And Its Consequences

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Britain left the EU on the last day of January and is an independent nation once more. The new Johnson government is confident that Britain will do well outside the EU. Free trade will be embraced, and a no-deal outcome, now dubbed an Australian trade relationship, holds no fears for the British government.

This article summarises the political and economic consequences of this historic moment. The fly in the ointment is there is no sign that Britain’s government understands the importance of sound money, which will be crucial in the event a global economic and financial credit crisis materialises.

Independence and trade negotiations

Having given independence to all its colonies, now it’s Britain’s turn. On 1 February the UK became politically independent and entered an eleven-month transition period while trade terms with the EU and other trading nations are negotiated, with the objective of entering 2021 with freedom to trade without tariffs with as many nations as possible. If Britain succeeds in its initial objectives these trade agreements will include not only the EU but also America, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the other trans-Pacific Partnership nations and a host of sub-Saharan African nations in the Commonwealth. It amounts to about two-thirds of the world measured by nominal GDP, of which only 21% is with the EU.

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