Brazil

Brazilian Scientists and Academics Write an Open Letter on the “Science” of the #Coronavirus Pandemic

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By CONEXÃPOLÍTICA – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The coordinator of the statement is Marcos Nogueira Eberlin. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Campinas. After postdoctoral work at Purdue, he founded the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, growing it into a highly distinguished lab and supervising some 200 graduate and post-doctoral students, scientists who today work as researchers and professionals all around the globe.

Text of letter:

The “science” of the Pandemic

During this pandemic, the term “science” has been used “ad nauseam”, that is, has been repeated to exhaustion: “Science, science, science”, “I’m pro-science”, “For from the science, through the science and to the science I guide my decisions and acts” and “I am, therefore, fully right to do so”. It is clear that the intention here is to lead all of us to the idea of ​​decisions based on something unquestionable and infallible, as scientific as law, as the law of gravity.

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What Went Up Came Down And Up And Will Come Down Again

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

It can’t come as any surprise that the stock market’s lofty balloon ride during the past couple of months fell because of a few words this week. It only rode up on sweet tweets by Trump about trade, which created a thermocline for it to ride. So, of course, the market plummeted this week in the unexpected downdraft of Trump’s out-of-the-blue statement that his trade deal may be a year away … even for phase one.

I don’t know if ignorant traders drive these vain accessions and declensions or just ignorant machines that have no ability to discern truth, so blindly they take all presidential headlines at face value.

Who could be surprised that stocks got off to their worst December start since the beginning of the Great Recession when Trump said a trade deal might best be shelved until after the 2020 elections? It was, however, apparently a fleeting horror to those who had actually believed Trump about a phase-one deal being imminent this month. One could only watch the surprised reactions with amusement, given there was no reason there should have been any surprise at all.

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Expensive Climate Policies Sparked Chile Riots

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By: James Taylor – Re-Blogged From WUWT

From the unintended consequences department. The COP25 climate conference in Santiago Chile was cancelled, and now moved at the last minute to Madrid, Spain.

Climate activists and the United Nations are suffering a major black eye this week as protests and riots resulting from high energy prices have erupted in Santiago, Chile.

Chile, which will host a major U.N. climate conference in December, earned praise from climate activists for recently imposing a carbon dioxide tax on conventional energy sources and switching the Santiago Metro system to renewable power. Now, the people of Chile are rising up and firing a shot across the bow of other nations considering similar energy taxes and expensive renewable energy programs.

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Brazil Set To Post Record Harvest

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From The GWPF – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Brazil’s 2019-20 grain and oilseed crops are poised to reach record production of 245.8mn metric tons (t), boosted by an increase in acreage and a recovery in the soybean crop, which will also likely break a record.

Screen-Shot-2019-10-12-at-14.43.02

The number would mark an increase of 1.6pc from the last cycle. The total area planted is also expected to reach a record of nearly 64mn hectares (158mn acres), up 1.1pc from last year’s season, the country’s agricultural statistics agency (Conab) said today in its first report on the new season.

Farmers have already started planting soybean and corn in some southern and west-central areas of the country. Both commodities – including the winter corn crop, sowed after the soybean harvest – account for 90pc of all Brazil’s grain and oilseed crops. Other crops included in the total are sunflower, barley and peanuts, among others.

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Brazil’s Fires and Biofuels.

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

What’s Natural

Brazil’s Fires and Biofuels. Published in the Pacifica Tribune September 11, 2019

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From leaf cutting ants that cultivate fungus gardens to flowers that fool potential pollinating insects into having sex, the magic of rainforest ecology always inspired my love for nature’s creativity. So, it’s no surprise that any and every report of burning rainforests would rally deep concerns across the globe. Nonetheless I am disturbed by dishonest gloom and doom regards recent Amazon fires. NASA reports since 2003 the square kilometers of forest burned each year has dropped by roughly 25 percent. But such good news doesn’t get headlines.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #366

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The Week That Was: July 6, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.” – George Orwell [H/t John Dunn]

Number of the Week: 2012

Beauty in Physics: On his web site, The Reference Frame, string theorist Lubos Motl had a long post reporting his search for the terms beautiful, beauty, and pretty in the Feynman Lectures on Physics (1963). Richard Feynman was a co-recipient of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in Quantum Electrodynamics and an exceptional lecturer who insisted on teaching students introductory physics. Perhaps it is his expression of finding exceptional explanations of complex problems beautiful that makes Feynman’s lecturers so memorable. Fortunately, they are available to read online. One of the many examples Molt gives is on Kepler’s laws:

Here are the promised Kepler’s laws.

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Making Brazil Great Again

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

From the American Association for the Advancement of Science of America…

Brazil’s new president has scientists worried. Here’s why

By Herton EscobarJan. 22, 2019 , 3:25 PM

Brazil has long been a frontrunner in climate change policy and environmental diplomacy. The international conventions on climate change and biological diversity, for example, were born during the historic United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and Brazil played a key role in crafting and implementing both agreements.

That legacy is now at risk. Since he took office on 1 January, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has dismantled several government divisions dedicated to climate change. The former army captain and far-right congressman has also named Cabinet members who are openly hostile to the fight against global warming.

Government officials say climate change will continue to be a priority. But scientists and environmentalists are alarmed…

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Three Things That Will Definitely Happen In 2019

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

Much about 2019 is uncertain. But a few things are pretty much guaranteed, including the following:

Government debt will rise at an accelerating rate

Like a life-long dieter who finally gives up and decides to eat himself to death, the US is now committed to trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see. And that’s – get this – assuming no recession in the coming decade. During the next downturn that trillion will become two or more, but in 2019 another trillion-plus is guaranteed.

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Why We’re Ungovernable, Part 17: In Latin America, Soaring Population + Soaring Debt = “Brutal Justice”

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

There are two ways of looking at the intersection of debt and population. One way says that if debt is rising population should also rise to allow future workers to pay for the retirement of today’s. More people thus make debt easier to manage.

The other point of view is that debt and population soaring simultaneously creates a negative feedback loop that eventually destroys a culture.

Today’s Latin America appears to validate the second thesis. Debt and population are both soaring, and big parts of the culture seem to be collapsing.

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Termite colony the size of Great Britain ‘has been being built since the dawn of the Pyramids’

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By Rob Waugh– Re-Blogged From Yahoo

It’s a construction project unlike any on our planet: it’s the size of Great Britain, and has been going on for 3,820 years, since the Pyramids were first built.

But no humans have been involved in the huge landscape of 200 million mounds in Brazil – it was all built by termites.

Researchers in northeast Brazil sampled soil in 11 locations and found that some of it began nearly four thousand years ago.

Millions of termite mounds built by a single species are as old as the pyramids and cover an area bigger than Great Britain (PA)

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Venezuelan Crisis Bringing Back Major Diseases Thought Long Gone

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By Kathy Burke – Re-Blogged From Newsmax

Contagion from Venezuela’s economic meltdown is literally spreading to neighboring nations — in the form of potentially deadly diseases among millions of refugees, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Medical officials in Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela told the news outlet the collapse of Venezuela’s health system has turned the country into an incubator for malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, dengue and tuberculosis, as well as the virus that causes AIDS.

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80 Percent of Venezuelans Short of Food

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By Ben Kew – Re-Blogged From Breitbart

Around 80 percent of Venezuelans are now short of food, according to the new data compiled by NGO Human Rights Watch on Tuesday.

Following a trip to the Venezuelan border with Brazil by a team of health experts from John Hopkins University, researchers found that malnutrition continues to rise aggressively, with 80 percent of households unable to access enough food and rates of malnutrition among five years now over the World Health Organization’s crisis limit. In 2017, the average person lost around 11 kilos (24 pounds). In 2016, that number was 19 pounds; it is expected to have risen in 2018.

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Brazil President-Elect Vows to Move Embassy to Jerusalem

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By Jason Devaney – Re-Blogged From Newsmax

The president-elect of Brazil signaled his desire to follow in President Donald Trump’s footsteps by relocating his country’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Jair Bolsonaro posted on Facebook on Thursday he will follow through on a campaign promise regarding the embassy after he takes office.

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In Brazil, Any Anti-Corruption Mandate Will Meet Political Obstacles

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Re-Blogged From Stratfor.com

Highlights

  • The next Brazilian administration will come to power with a mandate to deepen anti-corruption probes and deliver greater results against perceived graft.
  • Brazil’s new government will have two general choices at its disposal: create institutions to more effectively detect and deal with corruption, or work within the existing institutions to indirectly target corruption through legislative amendments, including enacting stricter criminal penalties.
  • Obtaining funding to support extensive institutional reforms, balancing anti-corruption pursuits against competing political priorities, negotiating for legislative change with Brazil’s highly fragmented National Congress and other bureaucratic obstacles will shape the next administration’s anti-corruption policy.

A picture showing Brazilians rallying against far-right populist presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo on Oct. 20.

(NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images)

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Coffee Production Thrives, Despite Alarmists’ Dire Warnings

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By Michael Barnes – Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘Rather than admit uncertainty, alarmists will simply move on to the next claim…’

Another dire climate change disaster appears to be averted.

According to conventional climate change wisdom, and alarmist news reports, the world’s supply of coffee beans was supposed to be in jeopardy of near extinction.

coffee beans photo

IMAGE: Couleur (CC) via Pixabay

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A Submerging Global Economy

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Many emerging markets are now turning to submerging markets as country after country is experiencing falling economies, currencies and stock markets.

The currency is often the best indication of a country’s economic health. Just look at these six currencies submerging into obscurity:

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Tariffs on U.S. Soy Will Strengthen Brazil’s Hand in the Chinese Market

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Re-Blogged From Stratfor

Highlights

  • In the short term, China remains in a stronger position than the United States in terms of the soy market, with numerous alternative suppliers and substitutes for U.S. product available.
  • Still, the large share of the Chinese market held by U.S. soybean exporters means that Beijing likely will be unable to shut off all U.S. soy imports.
  • Tariffs will accelerate an existing trend that has led to increasing Brazilian soy exports to China.

Workers load imported soybeans onto a truck at a port in Nantong in China's eastern Jiangsu province. Chinese soybean stocks are at a 10-year high, which could help China absorb the loss of U.S. imports brought on by tariffs.

(AFP/Getty Images)

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Emerging Market Crisis Spreads To The Core, Central Banks Face Catch-22

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

One of the things giving “data-driven” central banks wiggle room on their pledge to tighten monetary policy is the fact there are several definitions of inflation. In the US the thing most people think of as inflation is the consumer price index, or CPI, which is now running comfortably above the Fed’s target. But the Fed prefers the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, which tends to paint a less inflationary picture. And within the PCE universe, core PCE, which strips out energy and food, is the data series that actually motivates Fed action.

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Oil, The Petrodollar, And The Next Emerging Market Crisis

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

Oil prices are up over the past year, which is bad if you’re, say, a developing country that imports a lot of the stuff. But the US dollar (aka the petrodollar) is also up, which compounds the problem because oil is priced in dollars. So Brazil, for instance, finds itself buying an appreciating necessity that’s priced in an appreciating currency:

Steep Oil and Strong Dollar Make Toxic Brew for Global Economies

‘Brutal’ rally in dollar-priced crude hammers governments, strains consumers from U.K. to Brazil.

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2018 Third-Quarter Forecast

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Re-Blogged From Stratfor

Table of Contents

(ALY SONG-POL/JOHANNES EISELE/HULTON ARCHIVE/MLADEN ANTONOV/TIMOTHY A. CLARY/ABID KATIB/KATJA BUCHHOLZ/DAVID MCNEW/ATTA KENARE/FOverview

China Remains in the U.S. Crosshairs. The United States will impose tariffs, sanctions and blocks on investment and research in a bid to frustrate China’s development of strategic technologies. China not only has the tools to manage the economic blow, but will also accelerate efforts to lessen its reliance on foreign-sourced technological components.

Trade Battles Fall Short of a Full-Fledged War. Trade frictions will remain high this quarter as the White House continues on an economic warpath in the name of national security. U.S. tariffs will invite countermeasures from trading partners targeting U.S. agricultural and industrial goods. As Congress attempts to reclaim trade authority, the White House will refrain from escalating these trade battles into an all-out trade war.

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Antibiotic Crisis: Fragile Supply Leads to Shortages

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By Thomson Reuters – Re-Blogged From Newsmax Health

Shortages of some life-saving antibiotics are putting growing numbers of patients at risk and fuelling the evolution of “superbugs” that do not respond to modern medicines, according to a new report on Thursday.

The non-profit Access to Medicine Foundation (AMF) said there was an emerging crisis in the global anti-infectives market as fragile drug supply chains – reliant on just a few big suppliers – come close to collapse.

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Comparing Homicide Rates to Gun Ownership

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Bu Onan Coca – Re-Blogged From Freedom Outpost

If you keep an eye on the media these days, you may notice that whenever they talk about guns, they talk about “gun homicide” as well. As if these two figures are inextricably linked and tell the whole story of the gun debate.

It’s simply not so.

An interesting graph that appeared on Facebook reminded me of the lies the anti-gunners tell using cherry-picked crime stats.

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Hezbollah in South America: The Threat to Businesses

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Re-Blogged From Stratfor

Analysis Highlights

South America is a strong base of operations for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has had a presence in the continent dating back to the 1980s. The group established finance and logistical networks, which it used to facilitate two bombings in Argentina in the 1990s. The first bombing in 1992 targeted the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and injuring 242 more. A second bombing in 1994 targeted the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and injured over 300. Since then, Hezbollah has shifted its operational focus from terror attacks to criminal activity to raise money, entering South America’s lucrative drug-trafficking business and dealing primarily with cocaine and heroin. Previously, we explored what Hezbollah now does in South America, and where it does it. Here, we will explore the threat Hezbollah poses to businesses in South America.

(Stratfor)

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World Population and Food Security

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By David Archibald – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Things have improved over the last 25 years according to this recent WUWT post. The future doesn’t look so rosy if you look at a larger data set. The world’s population growth will at some stage hit a resource constraint with dire consequences. How that will play out in detail can be determined from grain production and import statistics. As Chairman Mao said,“Take grain as the key link.” Mao should know with the biggest score of deaths caused by any communist leader. His personal tally was 45 million, mostly from the 1959 famine caused by taking grain from the provinces to pay for imported machinery.

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On the Ground in Paraguay

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By Mark Svoboda – Re-Blogged From International Man

Over the course of the last several months, we’ve followed the journeys of Mark Svoboda as he’s traveled from Singapore to Tanzania, Malaysia to Colombia. Today Mark stops off in Paraguay, where he and his wife traveled to start their residency process…

Paraguay – the Heart of America

In April of 2012, my wife and I traveled to Paraguay to start our residency process in the so-called “heart of America.” Our hope is to eventually receive a citizenship in the country without actively residing there. Since I suspect many International Man readers are, like me, interested in 1) obtaining Paraguayan residency in hopes of eventually receiving a citizenship, and 2) buying some of that cheap productive land, I thought it was high time I report on the country.

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Crisis Investing in Brazil

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By Doug Casey – Re-Blogged From International Man

Editor’s Note: Brazil is in crisis once again.

This time, Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, has been accused of corruption, bribery, and obstruction of justice.

When news of this scandal broke, it triggered a huge selloff in Brazilian stocks. The iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (EWZ), which tracks Brazil’s stock market, plummeted 18% in one day. It was the fund’s worst day since the 2008 financial crisis.

Most investors now want nothing to do with Brazilian stocks. But we’re not like most investors. We understand crises can actually lead to huge moneymaking opportunities.

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China Makes a Power Play in Brazil and Argentina

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 Re-Blogged From https://worldview.stratfor.com

The last two years have been hard on Argentina and Brazil. A sweeping corruption investigation and the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff have sent Brazil’s currency tumbling. The country’s economy contracted by 3.8 percent in 2015 and by another 3.6 percent the following year. The Argentine peso, meanwhile, fell 40 percent against the U.S. dollar after the government lifted currency controls in late 2015. But for foreign investors, the two South American nations’ economic hardship presents an opportunity. The depreciated currencies in both countries, combined with their governments’ need for investment, has enabled Chinese companies to buy up cheap assets and launch major infrastructure projects in Argentina and Brazil alike. The electricity sector in particular has been a focus of their activities.

(YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

Mexico Warns U.S. of Alternatives on Trade, Points to China

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By Thomson/Reuters – Re-Blogged From Newsmax

Mexico sent a stark message to U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, saying an upcoming visit by officials from Latin America’s No. 2 economy to China made it clear it had many other export markets if he tore up the NAFTA trade deal.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) underpins Mexico’s economy, prompting the government to try and diversify away from the United States, which takes 80 percent of its exports. Mexico runs a sizeable trade deficit with China, the destination of about 10 percent of its exports.

Trump indicated, in an interview with The Economist published on Thursday, that he wanted to get the U.S.-Mexico trade deficit down to about zero. He wants to renegotiate NAFTA to get a better deal for U.S. companies and workers, and has threatened to end the agreement if he does not get his way. Talks are expected to start later this year.

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #267

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By Ken Haapala, President, The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

Joint Petition to Reconsider: Although not discussed in prior TWTWs, SEPP joined the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in filing a joint petition to the EPA to reconsider its 2009 finding that greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, endanger public health and welfare. The petition was filed on February 17, 2017, and slightly revised on February 23.

Such actions fall under the “right to petition” stated in the 1st Amendment of the Constitution. The petition has added weight because both CEI and SEPP originally objected to the endangerment finding. The filing has been in the news, but TWTW has mentioned it only in passing. The legal issues were handled by CEI. The chance of success is not high, but the action is important.

By necessity the petition is short, and concise. It focuses on the strongest empirical science available in January, but not available in 2009, that contradicts the assertion that CO2 endangers public health and welfare. The testimony of John Christy on February 2, 2016, was chosen. [Christy’s written testimony to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on March 29, 2017, was even stronger evidence, but did not yet exist.]

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Why The Greater Recession Will Be Dollar Bearish

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From http://www.gold-eagle.com

The Great Recession of 2008 provided markets with an interesting irony: As the US economy was collapsing under the weight of crumbling home prices, investors curiously flocked to the US dollar under the guise of “The Safety Trade.”

But the truth is that investors weren’t running into the dollar for safety, what they were actually doing was unwinding a carry trade. In a carry trade an investor borrows a depreciating currency that offers a relatively low interest rate and uses those funds to purchase an appreciating currency that offers the potential for higher returns on its sovereign debt and stock market. The trade’s objective is to capture the difference between rates, while also benefitting from the currency that is rising in value against the borrowed (shorted) funds.

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Developing Countries Turn Citizens Into Debt Slaves

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

One of the big advantages of being a Latin American or Asian country used to be — somewhat counter-intuitively — the lack of credit available to most citizens. The banking system in, say Brazil or Thailand simply wasn’t “advanced” enough to offer credit card, auto, or mortgage loans on a scale sufficient to turn the locals into US-style debt slaves.

But that, alas, is changing as those countries adopt their rich cousins’ worst habits.

Brazil, for instance, was once seen as a Latin American success story and future world power. But then it ramped up government spending and started encouraging its people to become “consumers.” And the rest is familiar, if depressing, history.

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Dr Copper Back From The Dead

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By Sol Palha  Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.– Arthur Somers Roche

Once upon a time in the good old days, before QE changed everything, any signs of strength from copper could be construed as a sign that the economy was on the mend.  After QE, this story came to an end…and a new reality came into play.  The Fed manipulated the markets in favour of short-term gains through what could be determined as borderline illegal monetary policy; a policy that has maintained an ultra-low interest rate environment that favours speculators and punishes savers.

 

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