h/t Krishna Gans – According to the German climate website Kalte Sonne, the renewables obsessed German and city of Hamburg governments intend to shut down local coal and nuclear power plants, but have no serious plan to make up the resulting energy shortfall.
Suicide is viewed as a crime in many countries. In a court of law, it is a serious charge and the evidence needs to be conclusive for such an accusation to stand (e.g., did you actually see him attempt to jump off the bridge?). But when societies (or at least their leaders) attempt it, one can say that it safely falls under the rubric of the sovereign right to misrule oneself. In the hallowed tradition of Western liberal democracy, so long as its political leaders are elected in free and fair elections, misrule leading to societal death by suicide is merely an unfortunate outcome of either gross negligence or culpable intention led by, say, a death-cult ideology. Nevertheless, let us proceed with the case for the prosecution.
You would think that with all the added wind and solar energy in Germany, along with all the conventional power plants on standby, all totaling up to huge unneeded capacity, there would be no need to import any power at all. Well, think again.
This article examines two inflationary experiences in the past in an attempt to predict the likely outcome of today’s monetary policies. The German hyperinflation of 1923 demonstrated that it took surprisingly little monetary inflation to collapse the purchasing power of the paper mark. This is relevant to the fate of the “whatever it takes” inflationary policies of today’s governments and their central banks. The management of John Law’s Mississippi bubble, when he used paper money to rig the market is precisely what central bank policy is aimed at achieving today. By binding the fate of the currency to that of financial assets, as John Law proved, it is the currency that is destroyed.
Here’s another example illustrating just how volatile and unreliable wind energy really is.
Wind energy proponents like to claim that although turbines installed on land don’t produce so optimally, the ones at sea are wonderful because the wind there is always blowing and so it all kind of evens out.
The chart below shows the output of all wind turbines installed in Germany, both on land and offshore, from the five major German grid operators:
The dark horizontal line denoting 60,000 MW represents the so-called installed total capacity. Readers will note that less than 10% of rated capacity often gets produced. Only rarely does an output of 33% (20 MW) ever get reached.
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Irvine, California
Higher energy costs for Americans are eminent along with worldwide ecological degradation and human right abuses from mining for wind, solar, and EV materials
The social changes with COVID-19 may have been prelude to life with less fossil fuels. With COVID-19 we have seen extensive self-imposed social adjustments to transportation that are very similar to what will be required to live with less fossil fuels in the future, i.e., with virtually no airlines, cruise ships, or automobiles.
Quote of the Week:“Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.” – Richard Feynman
Number of the Week:2%
Oversimplified: Last week, TWTW presented a new paper from MIT Professor emeritus in Atmospheric Physics Richard Lindzen titled: “An oversimplified picture of the climate behavior based on a single process can lead to distorted conclusions.” The discussion was limited to what was presented in the No Tricks Zone blog. Further, TWTW did not draw a clear distinction between what the blog presented and what Lindzen actually wrote.
Starting with the UN and continuing through virtually all industrialized countries in the West, there is enormous political pressure to replace reliable fossil fuels with unreliable wind and solar power, particularly for electricity generation. Yet, no successful demonstration project exists showing this can be done at reasonable costs. Even the largest “battery” in the world, the Bath County Pumped [Hydro] Storage Station in Virginia, must be recharged, refilled, nightly by electricity from reliable nuclear and coal-fired power plants.
I was invited by Charles the Moderator to write an essay with the emphasis on Scottish wind derived electricity.
I’m not a scientist, nor an engineer, in fact barely educated beyond high school, so, whilst you won’t get ‘shorthand’ scientific terms here, you will get something laymen can grasp, hopefully.
And that’s important as, whilst there are a small number of scientists/engineers etc. in the world, the majority of voters are like me, just plain old laymen and the subject of climate change is now political so every voter is vital.
The European Commission has a plan to eliminate modern farming in Europe.
The details emerged last month, as part of a “European Green Deal” announced late last year that calls for the continent to become “climate neutral” by 2050.
The commission speaks of “turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities.” It also talks about “making the transition just and inclusive for all.”
It should have added three words: “except for farmers.”
‘There’s still going to be 25,000 American troops in Germany…’
After more than a year of threats to start pulling U.S. troops out of Germany unless Berlin increases its defense spending, President Donald Trump appears to be proceeding to cut the U.S. military contingent by more than 25%.
About 34,500 American troops are stationed in Germany — 50,000 including civilian Department of Defense employees — and the plan Trump reportedly signed off on last week envisions reducing active-duty personnel to 25,000 by September, with further cuts possible.
AP Photo: President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley – Re-Blogged From WUWT
To all the kind and generous readers who have donated to the appeal for Naomi Seibt, I should like to say how very grateful she for your support. Thanks to your contributions to her Patreon account, she now has $1800 a month in income, and skeptics everywhere are spreading the word. Stefan Molyneux, who has interviewed Naomi in the past, has just retweeted it, and from there it has been retweeted almost 1000 times. Latest news is that the State Media Authority in North-Rhine Westphalia has threatened Naomi with imprisonment.
Mike Gleason (Money Metals Exchange): It is my privilege now to interview our good friend, Greg Weldon, CEO and President of Weldon Financial. Greg has decades of market research and trading experience specializing in the metals and commodity markets and he even authored a book back in 2006 titled Gold Trading Boot Camp where we accurately predicted the implosion of the U.S. credit market and urged people to buy gold when it was only $550 an ounce. He’s made some fantastic calls over the last few years here on our podcast and it’s great to have him back with us.
We did speak to you back at the end of February before all this madness started. At the time, COVID-19 had begun seriously impacting economic activity in global markets, maybe not so much in the U.S. Now, just two months later, more than 30 million people have filed for unemployment, GDP was deeply negative in the first quarter and figures to be even worse here in Q2. But the equity markets are acting as if the worst is behind us. We got a major correction followed by an almost relentless rally. Our take is that equity markets are completely disconnected from reality. They are hitched, instead, to the Fed’s magic money machine. What is your take on how stock markets are behaving here, Greg?
The outbreak of the coronavirus has dealt a shock to the global economy with unprecedented speed. Following are developments Friday related to national and global response, the work place and the spread of the virus.
TEUTONIC SHIFT: Germany — Europe’s biggest economy — drifted into a recession in the first quarter as shutdowns there and beyond started to bite. The 2.2% decline in the first three months of the year was the second-biggest quarterly decline since Germany was reunited in 1990, exceeded only by a 4.7% drop in the first quarter of 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis.
Tables and chairs stand in an empty terrace bar in Madrid, Spain, Friday May 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Paul White)
This article asserts that infinite money-printing is set to destroy fiat currencies far quicker than might be generally thought. This final act of monetary destruction follows a 98% loss of purchasing power for dollars since the London gold pool failed. And now the Fed and other major central banks are committing to an accelerated, infinite monetary debasement to underwrite their entire private sectors and their governments’ spending, to prop up bond markets and therefore all financial asset prices.
It repeats the mistakes of John Law in France three hundred years ago almost to the letter, but this time on a global scale. History, economic theory and even common sense tell us governments and their central banks will rapidly destroy their currencies. So that we can see how to protect ourselves from this monetary madness, we dig into history for guidance to see who benefited from the Austrian and German hyperinflations of 1922-23, and how fortunes were made and lost.
The U.S. is staring at a Netflix-type apocalypse. You know, with feral animals eating human corpses, mutant plants reoccupying streets and buildings, empty restaurants and malls across the landscape….
Well, that last part is true, anyway. Not because of the disease but rather hysteria.
The purpose of this article is purely educational. Increasingly, the wider public is turning to gold in a spontaneous reaction to financial and economic problems that have become suddenly apparent, hastened by the spread of the coronavirus. For everyone now thinking of buying gold it is a leap into the unknown, so they should know why.
It is not just the financially inexperienced, but investment managers and financial advisors are equally unaware of what is happening to money and capital markets. We are in the early stages of a radical debasement of state-issued currencies which is on course to collapse the entire financial system.
I explain the two phases of this destruction of fiat money, the one experienced so far and the one we are about to suffer. I explain why sound money has always been physical gold and silver, returned to by the people after government and banks have collectively destroyed state-originated unsound money.
‘Unburdened by a restrictive central regulatory body … private companies moved quickly to mass produce those tests, meaning they could be rolled out rapidly to the population…’
Anthony Fauci / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
The great hero to emerge from the coronavirus crisis appears to be Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes for Health’s disease expert who has stood by the side of President Donald Trump and occasionally butted heads with him.
The Left, in particular, has made Fauci a focal point of its coronavirus rhetoric—claiming, when it is convenient to do so, that Trump should step aside and allow ‘experts’ to handle the situation, while generously heaping any blame on the president for a perceived lack of progress.
Trump, going against all instincts, has largely followed the advice of Fauci in areas such as the White House social-distancing guidelines, recently extended through April.
“Next five years is not about winning but surviving.” This is the headline of an article I wrote in early August 2019. At that point I was primarily thinking of economic survival. But now the world is facing multiple threats and multiple failures. As I have already stated, the Coronavirus is not the cause of global market crashes but the catalyst.
But even if I have been totally certain that the world will see an economic collapse greater than any crisis for 100s of years, this is the worst catalyst that anyone could have expected. Yes, a global virus was always one of the potential risks but of all triggers, this one was certainly the most unwelcome and horrible.
The EU and euro face a sudden deterioration in economic conditions due to the coronavirus, which seems certain to widen the differences between Germany and the spendthrift Mediterranean members. But a more immediate problem is the increasing likelihood that the ECB will lose control over financial asset prices, particularly those of government bonds.
In the short-term, it seems likely the euro will rise against the dollar as currency and financial distortions, principally in the fx swap market, are unwound. However, the eurozone faces a developing financial crisis comprised of the following elements: a collapse in economic activity, escalating payment failures, a drastic contraction of bank credit and a collapse in bond prices, as well as the medium used to buy them (the euro).
Eventually, Germany is could go it alone by introducing a gold-backed mark, which will only happen after the European Project is finally abandoned.
The Week That Was: February 29, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week:“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” – Benjamin Franklin
Number of the Week:$61,937
Green Dreams: Many political leaders and political factions have little or no understanding of the importance of reliable, predictable electricity to modern civilization and economic wellbeing. Without thoroughly demonstrated examples of success, a number of local and national governments have passed laws phasing out electricity generated by fossil fuels based on the belief that wind and solar can replace fossil fuels. This “green dream” may become a nightmare.
In the UK, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has produced a set of studies estimating that removing fossil fuels from:
Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructureof 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.
Iran said on Tuesday it had arrested people accused of a role in shooting down a Ukrainian airliner and had also detained 30 people involved in protests that have swept the nation since the military belatedly admitted its error.
Wednesday’s shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752, killing all 176 people aboard, has led to one of the biggest public challenges to Iran’s clerical rulers since they took power in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In a step that would increase diplomatic pressure, Britain, France and Germany launched a dispute mechanism to challenge Iran for breaching limits on its nuclear program under an agreement which Washington abandoned in 2018.
Protesters demonstrate in Tehran, Iran January 11, 2020 in this picture obtained from social media by Reuters via Reuters
The Week That Was: December 7, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Quote of the Week:“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.” – Richard Feynman (New Textbooks for the “New” Mathematics)
Number of the Week:Minus 89,000. Down from plus 13,442,000 b/d
The world stands on the edge of a cyclical downturn, exacerbated by trade tariffs initiated by America. We know what will happen: the major central banks will attempt to inflate their way out of the consequences. And those of us with an elementary grasp of economics should know why the policy will fail.
In addition to the monetary and debt inflation since the Lehman crisis, it is highly likely the major international currencies will suffer a catastrophic loss of purchasing power from a new round of monetary expansion, calling for a replacement of today’s fiat currency system with something more stable. The ultimate solution, unlikely to be adopted, is to reinstate gold as circulating money, and how gold works as money is outlined in this article.
Instead, central banks will struggle for fiat-based solutions, which are bound to face a similar fate with or without the blockchain technology being actively considered. The Asian and BRICS blocs have an opportunity to do something with gold. But will they take it?
More than 200 people, including dozens of scientists, are in hiding right now in Germany. I am one of them. I can tell you that I am in Munich, but I can’t tell you my hotel. I can tell you that the scientists will meet on Friday and Saturday to share scientific knowledge, but I can’t tell you where. The meeting, in which scientists will present evidence contradicting an asserted climate crisis, was scheduled to be open to the public, but fascist climate thugs have forced us into hiding. The German government, rather than protecting scientists and free speech, has explicitly refused to protect scientists from the threat of violence.
Just like the 1930s, and again Munich. There’s no question that freedom of science and speech are under heavy attack in Germany after dozens of distinguished but dissenting scientists have seen their long planned science conference cancelled due to intimidation by leftwing extremists.
Germany caving in to leftist extremists. A skeptic climate conference gets cancelled at last minute due to coercion. Image: Antifa action in Phoenix, 2017, cropped from Carptrash – I, Einar Kvaran, License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Germany’s parliament voted on Friday to formally accept most of a climate protection packet. The legislation aims to cut Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions to 55% of the 1990 levels by 2030.
German lawmakers voted to enshrine climate protection in law on Friday.
The new legislation will target sectors like energy, transport and housing. It aims to cut Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions to 55% of the 1990 levels by 2030. Parts of the so-called “climate packet” still need approval.
Five charts to contemplate as we prepare for the New Year
1. Gold’s annual returns 2000 to present
In the February edition of this newsletter, we ran an article under the headline: Will 2019 be the year of the big breakout for gold? Though we would not characterize gold’s move to the upside so far this year as ‘the big breakout,’ 2019 has been the best year for gold since 2010 even with the recent correction taken into account. Back in September when the price gold reached $1550 per ounce – up almost 22% on the year – 2019 was looking more like a breakout year. Now with the move back to the $1460 level, the market mood has become more restrained. As it is, gold is up 15 of the last 19 years and still up 14.45% so far this year.
By Leonid Bershidsky
Local politics are a bigger problem for renewable energy growth than competition from fossil fuels.
Despite their surging popularity in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the Greens did badly in last Sunday’s election in the German state of Thuringia, and the nationalists from the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) did very well. An important reason is that the Greens support wind energy and the AfD militates against wind turbines. The giant windmills have grown so unpopular in neighboring communities that their construction in Germany has all but ground to a halt.
Germany suffered two currency collapses in the last century, in 1920-23 and1945-48. The architect of the recovery from the former, Hjalmar Schacht, chose to cooperate with the Nazi successors to the Weimar Republic, and failed. In that of the second, Ludwig Erhard remained true to his free market credentials and succeeded. While they were in different circumstances, comparisons between the two events might give some guidance to politicians faced with similar destructions of their state currencies, which is a growing possibility.
Introduction
Let us assume the next credit crisis is on its way. Given enhanced levels of government debt, it is likely to be more serious than the last one in 2008. Let us also note that it is happening despite the supposed stimulus of low and negative interest rates, when we would expect them to be at their maximum in the credit cycle, and that some $17 trillion of bonds are negative yielding, an unnatural distortion of markets. Let us further assume that McKinsey in their annual banking survey of 2019 are correct when they effectively say that 60% of the world’s banks are consuming their capital before a credit crisis. Add to this a developing recession in Germany that will almost certainly lead to both Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank having to be rescued by the German government. And note the IMF recently warned that $19 trillion in corporate debt is a systemic timebomb, and that collateralised loan obligations and direct exposure to junk held by the US commercial banks is approximately equal to the sum of their equity.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley – Re-Blogged From WUWT
I am most grateful to Bob Irvine, in a recent column here, for repeating a point that I have tried to make many times, to squeaks of futile protest from assorted busybodies and concern trolls: the total feedback response until 1850 should not, as at present, be allocated solely to the directly-forced reference warming from the naturally-occurring, noncondensing greenhouse gases.
It must be distributed in some fashion between that natural reference sensitivity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the emission temperature that would obtain at the Earth’s surface in the absence of any greenhouse gases.
As things now stand, official climatology describes the 32 K difference between the 255 K emission temperature and the 287 K observed global mean surface temperature in 1850 as the “natural greenhouse effect”.
This story is about one of the world’s largest gold hoards stored in one of the largest most secure vaults ever built. The French stored their 2,500 tons of gold in their secure underground vault in Paris. When the Germans began their offensive, the French started to remove its gold as a precaution. When the Maginot Line was breached and it was clear Paris would be overrun the remaining gold was rushed out of France. The gold traveled over thousands of miles in different directions by ship, train, truck, and airplane during WWII. So grab your Indiana Jones fedora and a globe so you can follow along.
Last week’s failure in the US repo market might have had something to do with Deutsche Bank’s disposal of its prime brokerage to BNP, bringing an unwelcome spotlight to the troubled bank and other foreign banks with prime brokerages in America. There are also worrying similarities between Germany’s Deutsche Bank today and Austria’s Credit-Anstalt in 1931, only the scale is far larger and additionally includes derivatives with a gross value of $50 trillion.
If the repo problem spreads, it could also raise questions over the synthetic ETF industry, whose cash and deposits may face escalating counterparty risks in some of the large banks and their prime brokerages. Managers of synthetic ETFs should be urgently re-evaluating their contractual relationships.
Dr. Lars Schernikau has founded, worked, and advised many organizations in the energy, raw material, and coal sectors in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. Lars finished his PhD on the economics of energy, commodities, and the global coal business and published two industry trade books (Springer, available on Amazon) in 2010 and 2017.
Summary
· Costs for renewable power generation have dropped fast, but they will not improve 10-fold anymore… physical limits will be reached
· Common comparisons of renewables vs. conventional power generation are misleading. One cannot compare marginal costs for intermittent power with costs for base power
Pretty good if you ask me. Most economic indicators this year have moved relentlessly in the direction of recession, and now the Cass Freight Index is saying a US recession may start in the 3rd quarter, fitting up nicely to my prediction that we would be entering recession this summer.
Cass comes on board
The Cass Freight Index is one of the most robust proxies for the US and global economies there is. If freight isn’t moving, the economy is dying. As Cass says, their’s is a simple, fundamental approach to encapsulating the economy:
Brexit Britain’s overtures to U.S. President Donald Trump risk further complicating the search for common ground this weekend at a Group of Seven summit already clouded by transatlantic rifts over trade, Iran and climate change.
The summit host, President Emmanuel Macron of France, has set the bar low for Biarritz to avoid a repeat of the fiasco last year when Trump threw Canada’s G7 summit into disarray by leaving early, scotching the final communique.
Macron, an ardent europhile and staunch defender of multilateralism, will count on incremental advances in areas where a united front can be presented, with the meeting, which runs from Saturday to Monday, officially focusing on the broad theme of reducing inequality.
Germany could introduce a “meat tax” to protect the climate and improve animal welfare.
Currently meat in the country has a reduced tax rate of seven per cent but the Social Democrat party and the Greens are arguing that this should increase to the standard 19 per cent, with additional revenue spent on improving animal welfare.
We tend to think of a nation’s accounts as being split between government and the private sector. It is for this reason that key tests of a nation’s economic sustainability and prospects for the currency are measures such as a government’s share of a nation’s economic output, and the level of government debt relative to gross domestic product.
While there is value in statistics of this sort, it is principally to give a quick overview in comparisons with other nations. For a more valuable analysis it is always worthwhile following different analytical approaches in assessing the prospective evolution of a currency’s future purchasing power.
It appears that the two steps forward, one step backwards approach of mainland China isn’t working as Hong Kong citizens are protesting again. The increasingly violent protests have plunged Chinese-ruled Hong Kong into its most serious crisis in decades, and the situation appears to be getting worse every week. What does it imply for the gold market?
Hong Kongers Protest
On Monday, Hong Kong’s Airport Authority canceled flights as demonstrators poured into its main terminal. What is going on in Hong Kong? The protests began over plans that would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China. Although the bill was suspended, the protests continue, as people demand democratic reforms. The problem is that although Hong Kong – as a former British colony – still enjoys freedoms not seen in mainland China, they are on the decline. The protesters say that mainland China is meddling in Hong Kong, citing examples such as legal rulings that have disqualified pro-democracy legislators.
During WWII the Germans were in need of money to buy foreign materials to conduct the war. It is estimated they stole almost 500 metric tons (around 16 million troy oz equal to $23 billion USD @ $1,450 / oz) from various governments. Most was taken from Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The French gold (about 2,500 metric tons or 80 million troy oz) was saved from the Germans in a rather interesting story that I will save for later.
It is very roughly estimated that around 100 tons were passed through Switzerland and then sent to neutral countries to purchase goods. There are stories of the Vatican bank helping Germany to launder and store gold as well as the German gold train buried in a tunnel in Poland and secret gold transfers to Argentina. Those stories are undocumented and have been the subjects of speculation for decades.
It should have been no surprise that Boris Johnson is now Prime Minister. It should also be no surprise he will implement Brexit on 31 October, the last date agreed between Mrs May’s government and the EU. Johnson was elected by Conservative constituency members to do just that. His cabinet appointees are fully supportive, including ex-Remainers (that’s politics!) and he has appointed an aggressive rottweiler, Dominic Cummings, as his Brexit enforcer. Already, his influence over Brexit strategy can be detected. There are no compromises to be had, a point which slower minds in the commentariat find difficult to comprehend and accept.
It is likely there will be an agreement on the way forward after Brexit, which could involve a transition period, but nothing like that agreed with Mrs May. If, as seems unlikely, the EU digs its heels in, the UK will walk away. That is the message being given by the new administration.
Europe has found a way of circumventing U.S. sanctions on Iran. The governments of France, Germany and the United Kingdom have developed a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to enable European businesses to maintain non-dollar trade with Iran without breaking U.S. sanctions. That SPV, known as INSTEX, is now up and running.
The three governments announced the successful implementation of INSTEX at a meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on June 28, 2019. The meeting was chaired on behalf of the EU by the Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Helga Schmid, and was attended by representatives of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Iran.
A new global energy reality is emerging. The era of the hydrocarbon – which propelled mankind through the second stage of the industrial revolution, beyond coal and into outer space – is drawing to a close. The stone age ended not because we ran out of stones. The same with oil and gas.
BERLIN, June 18 (Xinhua) — A large majority of Germans said that the current climate debate has no influence on this year’s holiday plans, a survey conducted by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of Spiegel Online on Tuesday showed.
More than 70 percent of the 5,000 Germans that were part of the sample group for the representative survey stated that the current climate debate had no impact on their holiday plans for 2019.
11.8 percent of Germans surveyed said that they would refrain from travel by air in view of the climate debate this year. About three percent of the respondents said they had abandoned plans for travelling on a cruise ship.
By Rainer Zitelmann & Tichys Einblick – Re-B;ogged From GWPF
The Greens have long been defining the cultural and political agenda in Germany. The more the other parties have been currying favour with them, the stronger the Green Party has become: voters now choose the original, not the imitators.
“On many issues today, the Greens are setting the direction, then the SPD follows and finally the Christian Democrats follow, lagging behind with a clear delaying effect … The Green Party’s impact goes far beyond their involvement at state government level and their successes documented in elections. More importantly, the Green Party succeeds time and time again in determining the political agenda and assuming opinion leadership in public debate. This can only happen, however, because they have an above-average number of sympathizers in the media and because the ranks of their natural challengers, i.e. the Christian Democrats (CDU), have softened and leading CDU politicians have adopted key positions of the Greens.”
The Week That Was: By Ken Haapala, President, SEPP
Brought to You by www.SEPP.org, The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost [sic] upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of the castle and to see the battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth ( a hill not to be commanded and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below. – FromOf Truth, Francis Bacon [H/t Numberwatch, hopefully returning]
Number of the Week: 5 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG, which is equal to about 0.7 billion [standard, normal temperature and pressure] cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas
The Greenhouse Effect –Atmospheric Layers: The atmosphere is divided into distinct layers and the altitude of the layers depends on the latitude, the distance from the equator. One could think of an oval shape with the thickest (elongated) part being above the equator. (Seasonal variation will be ignored in this section.)
I have had a rough time for the last few weeks coming up with commentary that has anything new to say. It seems that we are bombarded day after day with talk of trade wars, tariffs and counter-tariffs.
Just today, April retail and industrial production numbers came out in China and in the USA. To say the least, the numbers were uninspiring at best.
In the USA retail sales for April contracted 0.2%. Much of the weakness was in auto sales because taking the auto numbers out there was a .1% gain in April. Electronics and building materials also fell. US industrial production, which has been stagnant all year, was not expected to grow in April either. It still surprised on the downside contracting 0.5%. That is the largest monthly drop since May of 2018.
Durable consumer goods dropped 0.8%. What caught my eye, however, was production decreased for business equipment, construction supplies and business supplies. This appears to confirm that 500,000 less people are actually working today than were at the beginning of 2019 even though we have “full employment”. What a joke that is! The only reason production wasn’t hurt worse was an increase in defense and space equipment materials.
Germany is joining the ranks of those countries betting on “electric highways” to foster eco-friendly trucking. The country has started real-world tests of an eHighway system on a 3.1-mile stretch of the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, with an electric-diesel hybrid truck merging into everyday traffic while it received power from overhead cables to keep it from using its combustion engine. Earlier tests in the country relied on either slow nighttime tests or the safety of an unused military airfield.
The very first eHighway launched in Sweden in 2016. The concept here is the same — the trucks use pantographs (the pickps on their roofs) to latch on to the overhead cables and draw electricity. Trucks can feed electricity into the grid when they brake, making the system particularly useful if there’s ever a jam.
European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi recently announced that the ECB would be required to approve any management of gold reserves within the euro zone countries.
The statement was specifically directed at two Italian members. Why was Italy singled out?
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By Ronald Stein – Re-Blogged From WUWT
