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Faulty Forecasts and False Climate Narrative Hold Nations Hostage

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By Vijay Jayaraj – Re4-Blogged From WUWT

The United States is the only major Western country that is not part of the Paris climate agreement, which seeks to restrict and reduce fossil fuel consumption across the world. But the country is not immune from the impacts of the restrictive energy policies the agreement imposes on its trade partners. One of those is my own country, India.

India imports large amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas from the U.S., mostly to generate affordable power for its electric grid. That grid must grow rapidly to meet the needs of over 1.3 billion people. Over 300 million of them—comparable to the whole U.S. population—currently have no electricity. But they need it desperately for their health and their escape from severe poverty.

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Greens Promote Child Slave Labor and Ecological Destruction

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Why don’t African black lives and ecological values matter? or impacts in and beyond Virginia?

The US Supreme Court recently ruled 7-2 to reverse a lower court ruling that had invalidated a permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will bring West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and North Carolina, for home heating, factory power, electricity generation and manufacturing petrochemical feedstocks.

Environmentalists had claimed the US Forest Service had no authority to issue the permit, because a 0.1-mile (530-foot) segment would cross 600 feet below the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail, which is administered by the National Park Service. Justice Thomas’s majority opinion scuttled that assertion.

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Remaking Post-Covid-19 Capitalism in the West: Lessons for the East

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By Tilak Doshi – Re-Blogged From WUWT

As the world emerges painfully from  the lockdown cure that is likely to be far worse than the disease of Covid-19, we are now being sold yet another bill of goods. We are told from almost every quarter that the economic recovery from the pandemic-panic induced lockdowns has to be “green”. Political leaders and mass media editors hitched to the climate change bandwagon cite the well-known if cynical slogan “never let a crisis go to waste” – commonly attributed to former President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.  Politicians and “thought leaders” ceaselessly claim that massive sums of money need to be spent on economic stimulus plans to recover from the self-induced economic coma and that the spending has to  be “sustainable” (aka “green”). Not only will this save us from the “crisis of capitalism” but it is deemed vital for the future of human civilization itself.

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Will COVID-19 Reset the Global Monetary Order?

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By Andrew Moran – Re-Blogged From Liberty Nation

In response to the Great Recession a decade ago, the international community fired off the big guns to stave off the inevitable decay of the global economy that had been manipulated and distorted through the Keynesian doctrine. Despite the massive fiscal and monetary stimulus at the time, many countries failed to recover from the financial crisis – and those that survived the market meltdown are still paying for the spending and bailouts. After pulling the trigger on the Coronavirus-targeted bazookas, the world’s pockets are empty, potentially creating a scenario for a reset in the global monetary order. On the other side of the lockdown, who will stand tall and reign supreme? If history is any indicator, it will either be the country with a lifetime supply of printing press ink or the one with a vault full of gold.

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How Exactly do they Plan to Replace Fossil Fuels?

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

They want to ban coal, oil and gas. Exactly how will they replace them? Who wins? Who loses?

Berkeley, CA, Takoma Park, MD and other cities; California, Connecticut, New York, Virginia and other states; Germany, England and other countries; the European Union – all plan to banish oil, natural gas and coal within 10, 20 or 30 years. A number of US states have joined Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiatives and proudly say We Are Still In … the Paris climate treaty, no matter what President Trump says or does.

Forget the headlines and models, and look at hurricane, tornado, sea level and other historic records. There is no crisis, no unprecedented warming or weather events, certainly nothing that proves humans have replaced the powerful natural forces that have always driven climate changes and weather events.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #400

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The Week That Was: February 22, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. [H/t Eric Wagner]

Number of the Week: £108.5 million (about $140 million) in 2018

The Scientific Method: There appears to be no clear, widely accepted definition of science or the scientific method. Professor of Applied Mathematics and philosopher Christopher Essex considers science to be an adventure. A long game of generations and part of the ascent of Man. Not just a fad invented in the 17th century. In an unpublished paper, “The Scientific Adventure,” he wrote for the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s 1905 discoveries, he stated:

“Others try to embrace it as a recipe. They say, to be scientific, do this, then do that, but not the other way around. They talk of the scientific method as if there is just one; as if scientific discovery were clean, orderly and uncontroversial, supervised by grizzled elders of authority. But the search for scientific discovery is anything but. It is messy, contentious, factional, but also wondrous, inspired, and above all serendipitous. It is human.”

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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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2019 Indian Monsoon — Blessing or Curse?

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By Kip Hansen  – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In India, the monsoons that bring the rains are not just weather or climate phenomena — they are  mystical and mythical entities —  entwined into the national character and the annual cycle of life.

Now that the 2019 Southwest Monsoon is officially over, it is reported to have delivered 110% of the long-term average amount of rain to this mostly dry sub-continent.  It was just months ago that the international press was touting stories about water problems in Chennai.    You may be more familiar with the previous name of the city, Madras.  The NY Times covered the story and threw in a line: “And then there’s climate change. It doesn’t bear direct blame for Chennai’s water crisis, but it makes it worse“

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Merchants of Thirst

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By Kip Hansen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Water tankers ply the city streets bringing essential supplies of fresh potable water to thirsty neighborhoods.

“For city authorities that are already struggling to maintain the current supply as climate change strikes, let alone source additional water, tankers can seem like a safety net they feel powerless to resist.’’

So Peter Schwartzstein writes in a feature piece in the New York Times titled “The Merchants of Thirst” in the 11 January 2020 online edition.

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America’s Trade Policy Will End Up Destroying The Dollar

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

America’s tariffs against China are already showing signs of undermining the global economy and will create a funding crisis for the Federal Government when it leads to foreigners no longer buying US Treasury debt and selling down their existing dollar holdings. A subversive attempt by America to divert global portfolio investment from China by destabilising Hong Kong will force China into a Plan B to fund its infrastructure plans, which could involve actively selling down her dollar reserves and hastening the introduction of a new crypto-based trade settlement currency.

The US budget deficit will then be financed entirely by monetary inflation. Furthermore, the turn of the credit cycle, made more destructive by trade tariffs, is driving the global and US economy into a slump, further accelerating all indebted governments’ dependency on inflationary financing. The end result is America’s trade policies have been instrumental in hastening the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, ultimately leading to its destruction.

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Asians Better Hope It’s A Trump Win In 2020

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By Tilak Doshi , originally posted at Forbes – Re-Blogged From WUWT

“On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking—everywhere.” So tweeted Elizabeth Warren, the likely Democratic presidential nominee. (Fracking combines horizontal drilling and hydraulically-fracturing shale rock with high-pressure liquids to force open existing fissures and extract “unconventional” oil and gas.) In the intention to ban all fracking in the US, she joins Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, her fellow presidential candidate hopefuls. In the demonization of fossil fuels and support for some variant of the multi-trillion dollar “Green New Deal”, Warren is not alone among the candidates running in the Democratic presidential primary. Nearly every nominee for the Democratic primary, including the other leading contender Joe Biden, has signed on to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s grand plan to save the planet from a 12-year deadline to global extinction.

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Dinner in Hanoi

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By Jeff Thomas – Re-Blogged From International Man

“Trump is doing the right thing. Without him, we have no protection against China. China doesn’t only wish to dominate Asia, but the world.”

Here in Hanoi, so said my dinner companion – a major manufacturer and worldwide exporter of steel products.

He, like so many other major Asian producers, sees an opportunity in international trade for all of Asia to capitalize on.

In the Western world, the argument rages as to whether the US tariff war will benefit the US or not.

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Coal to Remain ‘King’ in Southeast Asia

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Making Southeast Asia Great Again…

‘Coal is still king’ in Southeast Asia even as countries work toward cleaner energy

KEY POINTS

• Not only will coal continue to be the dominant fuel source in power generation in Southeast Asia, its use will grow and peak in 2027 before slowing, according to a Wood Mackenzie study.

• The Indonesian government has targeted generating 23% of electricity from renewable sources by 2025 — almost double the 12% now, but it will be “difficult to achieve because capacity expansion plans are still dominated by coal,” Moody’s analysts say.

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Climate Concerned India’s Coal Imports Surging

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

h/t ResourceGuy; despite a recent survey which suggested India is more concerned about climate change than most countries, Prime Minister Modi‘s determination to extend the electric grid to poor people, coupled with a drop in domestic production, appears to be driving a surge in demand for coal imports.

India coal imports
Indian coal imports surging. source Indian Central Electricity Authority
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India’s Massive, Scary New Detention Camps, Explained

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By Sigal Samuel – Re-Blogged From Vox

The Indian government stripped citizenship from 2 million people, mostly Muslims. Now it wants to put them in camps.

What would you do if the country you were born in, or the country you’ve lived in for decades, suddenly announced you had to prove your citizenship or else face detention and deportation?

This is the situation nearly 2 million people — most of them Muslims, some of them Hindus of Bengali origin — now find themselves in, because their names do not appear on India’s National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Four people sit at a table in front of an ornate window in India.
People check their names on the final list of the National Register of Citizens in an office in Assam.
AFP/Getty Images

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Solar Energy Badly Harms the Environment

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By Sanjeev Sabhlock – Re-Blogged From Times of India

The Modi government has been shovelling scarce taxpayer resources into solar energy, with a further $6.5 billion promised till 2022. This is over and above indirect subsidies that people pay through higher electricity bills because of renewable energy certificates. And while Donald Trump did the right thing by walking out of the Paris Agreement, Mr Modi unthinkingly remains committed to it and Niti Ayog has been touting subsidised electric vehicles.

Our party disagrees with this approach. First, because we oppose subsidies for any industry. But second, because we believe there is a strong case to impose Pigovian taxes on solar energy given the economic and environmental harm it causes.

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Wary of China, Modi Courts India’s Neighbors

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Re-Blogged From Stratfor
Highlights
  • China’s Belt and Road Initiative will compel India to deepen its engagement with its neighbors under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Neighborhood First” policy, as peripheral nations in South Asia seek to maximize their benefits from the competition between Beijing and New Delhi.
  • Because India wishes to maintain its regional influence to guarantee national security, it will prioritize investment and diplomatic overtures to countries like the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh.
  • But as India seeks to cultivate its influence on the periphery, it will find it difficult to compete with China and its Belt and Road Initiative given Beijing’s superior access to capital through state-owned enterprises.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih shake hands before a meeting on Dec. 17, 2018, in New Delhi.
(SANJEEV VERMA/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

Trump and Johnson Add Unpredictability to French Summit

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[Related: Trump offered to buy Greenland from Denmark whose Prime Minister said th idea was “absurd.” -Bob]

By Reuters – Re-Blogged From IJR

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.

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U.S. Media Conceal 4.5+ Billion Tons Increase of CO2 by Developing Nations – Push Meaningless “Sustainability” Propaganda Agenda

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In the politically contrived climate alarmist propaganda campaign by the U.S mainstream media there is no limit to the degree of distortion, deception and dishonesty employed in attempts to conceal from the public the reality of global energy use and resulting emissions that is underway in the world that clearly demonstrates their propaganda war of alarmism is already lost.

Global energy and emissions data through year 2018 documents that the world’s developing nations have increased CO2 emissions by over 4.5 billion metric tons during the last decade and now account for 64% of the global emissions total.

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The Third World Is Imploding

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By Maurice Jackson And Jayant Bhandari -Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

In this interview with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable, Jayant Bhandari presents his world view and discusses how it meshes with investment in the precious metals markets.

Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation is Jayant Bhandari, the founder of the world-renowned Capitalism and Morality seminar, and a highly sought-out advisor to institutional investors. Mr. Bhandari, welcome to the show, sir.

Jayant Bhandari: Thank you very much for having me, Maurice.

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India Reacts To Depressed Silver Prices

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By Ted Butler – re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Several recent articles have highlighted a surge of silver imports to India, prompting me to take a closer look. India has always been a big buyer of silver and gold, befitting the traditions and culture of the country with the world’s second largest population. The population of India, more than 1.3 billion citizens, is now only about 50 million less than that of China. Combined, both countries make up 35% of the total world population (7.7 billion) and have always been large buyers and holders of gold and silver. Together, India and China absorb close to 50% of total world gold and silver mine production.

One big difference between India and China is that the gold and silver buying in India is largely a grassroots phenomenon, emanating from the general population due to deep-rooted customs and traditions; where the buying from China is predominantly from official sources (similar to the gold buying by Russia). To me, this makes the gold and silver buying from India more “free market” and price-sensitive in nature because the more participants in any market, the freer the market is by definition. The many tens and even hundreds of millions of gold and silver buyers from India make the markets there the freest of all.

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Global Manufacturers Just Shrank For The First Time in 7 Years

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By Frank Holmes – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix    

Perhaps surprising no one, global manufacturers are now in contraction mode for the first time since 2012. That’s according to the most recent reading of the sector’s health, the purchasing manager’s index (PMI), which headed lower for a record 13th straight month in May. The PMI posted 49.8, down from 50.4 a month earlier. As a reminder, anything above 50.0 indicates expansion; anything below, contraction.

Less than half of world economies’ manufacturing sectors are expanding right now, “the worst showing since the throes of the euro area sovereign debt crisis in 2012,” according to analysis by Neil Dutta, head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research (RenMac).

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Space: The Final Frontier for War?

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 By Omar Lamrani – Re-Blogged From Stratfor
Highlights
  • The U.S. military will continue to debate the relative merits of creating a Space Force that is separate from the other branches of the U.S. armed forces.
  • In the absence of international standards regulating conduct in space, the risks will grow that the United States, China and Russia will accelerate their own efforts to militarize the theater.
  • Treaties stipulating a blanket ban on weapons in space are unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future because of their significant limitations and concerns over the ability to verify compliance.
The nighttime lights of the United States are seen from space.

From Startup to Exit: How Non-conventional Funding Can Help at Every Stage of Business

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By Shiv Nanda – Re-Blogged From Indian CEO

Every entrepreneur steps into business with a clear vision in mind. This vision is often fed and manipulated by managing and prioritizing the use of available financial resources.

The three main sources of funding for business are:

  • Revenues from business operations,
  • Investor finances such as owner’s, partner’s, or Angel/venture capital, and
  • Loan from individuals, business loan or personal loan for businessmen from banks and financial institutions.

Each company has to go through various stages. That’s the business lifecycle. And each of these stages is unique. Therefore, each stage needs a different funding strategy.

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China Coal Use Exploding

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In the scientifically unsupported wacky world of climate alarmism propaganda hype and media hysteria the public is threatened with claims that our country must commit economic and political suicide by abandoning all CO2 producing fossil fuel or man made climate change will destroy the earth.

The fact that this purely politically contrived scam is driven by projections from flawed and failed computer models which the U.N. IPCC long ago proclaimed as being unfeasible is dishonestly concealed from the public by climate alarmists and their media propaganda agents.

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SOLAR MINIMUM IS A TERRIBLE TIME TO BLOW UP A SATELLITE

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By Dr Tony Phillips – RE_Blogged From Space Weather

Note to space powers: If you’re going to blow a satellite to bits, solar minimum is a terrible time to do it. India is grappling with this important truth today as debris from their March 27th anti-satellite weapons test spreads through space. As many as 6,500 pieces of the Microsat-R Earth observation satellite are now circling Earth, according to a simulation created by Analytical Graphics Inc.:

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The Crisis of Europe’s Green Energy Agenda

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By Benny Peiser, GWPF – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Presentation at the De-Greening Day, Amsterdam 7 March 2019

The EU’s green energy policies have

* increased energy prices significantly

* reduced competitiveness of European industries

* failed to solve the technological Achilles’ heel of intermittent renewables

* increased energy insecurity and dependence on Russian energy imports

* increased division between Western Europe and Central & Eastern Europe

* given rise to widespread public discontent and the rise of populist parties opposed to the green energy agenda

Here is a link to the complete presentation.   Worth a read and spreading around~ctm

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188 Internet Shutdowns In 2018

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By Mark O’Byrne – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

– Internet’s “off switch” increasingly used to curb political and economic freedom
– Internet shutdowns were seen 188 times throughout the world in 2018 (see table)
– Democratic India experienced 154 internet shutdowns in just 30 months
– Technologically advanced EU countries Spain and Estonia experienced shutdowns
– Gallup poll shows people more worried about cybercrime than violent crime
– Governments use terrorism and war as reason for ‘internet kill switch’ powers
– Own physical coins and bars rather than ETF or digital gold on a single platform
– Internet shutdowns show physical gold is ultimate protection

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #352

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Brought to You by www.SEPP.org, The Science and Environmental Policy Project

By Ken Haapala, President

Changing Seas: Sea level specialists Nils-Axel Mörner, Thomas Wysmuller, and Albert Parker posted comments on ResearchGate stating TWTW’s comments on sea level rise were too superficial to be useful. Fortunately, Tallbloke posted the section of TWTW and the comments, so they can be easily viewed by all. The objective of TWTW is to be understandable by the competent reader, not to appeal to specialists or to be a scientific journal. Above all, it is not the last word in anything.

Of particular concern have been the claims of multi-foot and multi-meter increases in sea levels endangering coastal cities of the US. These claims have been made by employees of NOAA and by lead authors of the latest full Assessment Report (AR-5, 2014) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The recent effort by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco to sue ExxonMobil illustrates how these highly questionable claims are being used in litigation in hopes of collecting huge legal awards that are unjustified.

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European CO2 Emissions Don’t Matter

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By Edwin Timmer, De Telegraaf – Re-Blogged From GWPF

To tackle global climate change it is far more important that fast-growing developing countries do more than any well-intentioned steps in the Netherlands. “In fact, European emissions don’t matter,” says British climate scientist Nic Lewis.

“What really matters is: what happens in developing countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria”, says Lewis, who gave a presentation at De Groene Rekenkamer Foundation this week in Amsterdam. According to him, it is much more important that developing countries quickly become richer and how rising CO2 emissions that this entails can be limited.

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Conflict Over Kashmir Risks Nuclear Winter

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By Arkadiusz Sieroń – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Many important things happened yesterday. Cohen testified before the Congress, the US-North Korea Summit took place, while tensions between India and Pakistan escalated. Will these developments boost gold?

India and Pakistan Engage in Another Conflict over Kashmir

India and Pakistan are once again squaring off over the disputed region of Kashmir. It began with the suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed more than 40 people. As the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for the bombing, India retaliated and launched air strikes inside Pakistan, the first aerial attacks across the Line of Control dividing both countries since 1971. The results of these strikes are not confirmed. However, we know that two Indian jets were shot down and Pakistan army captured one pilot.

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Paris Agreement Fan Laments Massive Fossil Fuel Powered Industrialisation in Bangladesh

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Greens attacking Bangladeshis for trying to build a better future for their children.

From Paris to Bangladesh, how the climate change accord is imploding

By Divya Rajagopal

The onslaught of a new power plant on the fragile ecology of the Sunderbans is fresh proof of the futility of climate reforms. A ground report from ET.

Until two years ago, 28-year-old Sajjad Hossain Tuhin, a student of forestry, would walk up to the banks of the River Rupsa in Khulna, Bangladesh, to capture the moment of dusk, when the setting sun left the sky lit up like fireworks. In romantic Bengali literature, it is described as the moment to catch a glimpse of a new bride. But Tuhin doesn’t do this anymore. The sun now sets behind the boundary of an upcoming LNG power plant. The banks of the Rupsa are astir with vehicles ferrying rocks and cement to speed up the completion of the plant that will fire up Bangladesh’s economic growth.

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Trump Promises Citizenship Path for Skilled Workers from Outside U.S.

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By Agence France-Presse – Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘Rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay…’

Trump Promises Citizenship Path for Skilled Workers

Tech workers are increasingly moving from the United States to Canada due to the hassle in obtaining H1-B visas/PHOTO: AFP

(AFP) President Donald Trump said Friday he would make it easier for top-skilled workers to stay in the United States and become citizens.

Trump pledged to reform coveted H1-B visas, for which three-quarters of applicants are from India, most of them in the technology sector.

“H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship,” Trump tweeted.

“We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.”

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Gold – A Perfect Storm For 2019

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From GoldMoney

This article is an overview of the principal factors likely to drive the gold price in 2019. It looks at the global factors that have developed in 2018 for both gold and the dollar, how geopolitics are likely to evolve, the economic outlook and how it is worsened for the dollar by President Trump’s tariff war against China, the availability and likely demand for bullion, and the technical position in paper markets. Taken together, the outlook is bullish for gold.

2018 reprise

For gold bulls, 2018 was disappointing. From 11 December 2017, when gold made a significant bottom against the dollar at $1243, it has ended virtually unchanged today, after being 4.2% up. Gold had to struggle against a rising dollar, whose trade-weighted index rose a net 3.7% over the same period, and as much as 9.4% from its mid-February low.

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The State of Shale Gas and Oil in the U.S.A. Today

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By Andy May – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A few news items from The Shale Gas News, by Bill desRosiers of Cabot Oil & Gas. The main paragraphs below are adapted from desRosiers, but I’ve added some detail. Things are looking very good for the U.S. oil, gas and coal industries.

Fight Against Malaria Has Reached a Standstill

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By Donald G. McNeil Jr. – Re-Blogged From The Boston Globe

Progress against malaria has stalled, and the disease remains a significant threat to billions of people despite the expensive, decadeslong efforts to contain it, the World Health Organization reported Monday.

According to the WHO’s latest annual assessment, there were an estimated 220 million cases of malaria last year, and about 435,000 deaths from the disease. Of the dead, 262,000 were children under age 5.

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India’s Booming Economy Expected To Firm Up Gold Demand

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By Frank Holmes – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Starting today, the five-day festival known as Diwali—literally, “a row of lights”—will be observed by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains worldwide. A celebration of good triumphing over evil, the festival typically coincides with the Hindu new year. Regular readers of Frank Talk should know that Diwali is also an auspicious time to buy gold coins and jewelry as gifts for loved ones, and in the past the increased demand has been enough to move gold prices to the upside.

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We Should Ditch GDP As A Measure Of Economic Activity

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

This article exposes the false economic concepts behind GDP, which is only the visible tip of a large iceberg of economic deceit. Describing an increase in GDP as economic growth owes its meagre validity to imprecise definition. An economy does not grow, only the quantity of fiat currency deployed grows. A successful economy progresses our condition, our wealth, our standards of living. The evolution of misleading statistics such as GDP to their current condition is only governed by their usefulness to governments, not as an objective development of sound theory by seekers of truth.

There are perhaps two plausible reasons for producing the GDP statistic, other than employing statisticians, and both have nothing to do with economics. By compiling the figures, a government keeps track of its tax base, and it can enter into the game of my-country-is-bigger-than-yours.

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Inflationary Insolvency Will Make Gold And Silver Prices Explode

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

What happens to gold and silver prices when the Fed “goes all in” during the next financial crisis?

Money manager Michael Pento says, “They are going to explode when the stock markets melt down and deficits are rising where is the money going to come from?

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After a Collision in Doklam, India and China Are Correcting Course

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By Sarang Shidore Senior Global Analyst, Stratfor

Sarang Shidore

Re-Blogged From Stratfor

Highlights

  • Tensions between India and China have relaxed considerably since their armies faced off on the Doklam Plateau in the summer of 2017.
  • This change is a result of setbacks to Indian foreign policy and a more difficult global strategic environment for China.
  • Despite a return to limited cooperation, India will continue to see China as its biggest geopolitical rival, though it will compartmentalize its adversarial relationship.
  • India will continue to build up its military and establish new bilateral security ties to counter China, but it will also refrain from joining any anti-China military bloc, will soften its strident opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative and increase participation in Chinese-dominated multilateral initiatives.

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Challenging the Inevitability of the Liberal World Order

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Rodger Baker   Rodger Baker – Re-Blogged From Stratfor
Highlights
  • In contrast to the ideas of some of its proponents, the liberal world order is not the destiny of all societies around the world.
  • Those seeking to implement such an order have failed because they often don’t recognize realities on the ground, occasionally leading to chaos.
  • Acknowledging that the liberal world order is not inevitably for all of humanity is critical in improving our understanding of the world.
This picture shows a session of the U.N. General Assembly from June 13.
(DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)

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Why The Global Collapse Will Be Devastating

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From King World News

As the world edges closer to the next crisis, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE and historic moves in currencies, told King World News there is no way out and this is why the global collapse will be devastating.

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What If India And China Used Natural Gas And Oil Like The U.S.?

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By David Middleton, petroleum geologist – Re-Blogged From WUWT

From Forbes…

JUN 17, 2018

What If India And China Used Natural Gas And Oil Like The U.S.?

Jude Clemente , CONTRIBUTOR

BP’s just releasedStatistical Review of World Energy 2018 has got my wheels turning. The first thing you should know is that global energy consumption has essentially just begun: around 85% of the global population – 6 in every 7 humans – still lives in developing nations. They don’t live in rich cities, like San Francisco, Toronto, New York City, Los Angeles, London, or Tokyo; they live in poorer ones, like Mumbai, Lagos, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Calcutta, and Karachi. This is where the future energy action is man: at least 90% of future demand will be in nations that are currently not developed. We rich, “all the energy that we want at our fingertips” Westerners still aren’t grasping a sad and cold reality: most of the world is poor and energy deprived.

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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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Trump’s Paris Decision One Year Later: Looking Better and Better

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By Robert Bradley Jr. – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.

-President Trump on the Paris Climate Agreement, June 1, 2017

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Gold’s Monetary Rehabilitation

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com

There is a quiet revolution taking place in the monetary vacuum that’s developing on the back of the erosion of the dollar’s hegemony. It is perhaps too early to call what’s happening to the dollar the beginning of its demise as the world’s reserve currency, but there is certainly a move away from it in Asia. And every time the Americans deploy their control over global trade settlement as a weapon against the regimes they dislike, nations who are neutral observers take note and consider how to protect themselves, “just in case.”

Vide Europe over the Iran issue. And Turkey. These are rifts in NATO. Countries in Africa, and elsewhere are now taking China’s money. And to please the Chinese, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Panama and the Dominican Republic have all recently severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Small fry perhaps, but a weathervane showing which way the wind is blowing.

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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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U.S. Coal Industry Growth

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By Andy May – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

U.S. coal production declined from 2011 through 2016 as it was displaced in U.S. power plants by cheaper and cleaner natural gas. Some of the reduction was also due to the Obama Clean Power Plan regulations. However, the shale gas revolution in the U.S. has not spread to other countries, perhaps due to the “fracking” scare, so worldwide use of coal increased rapidly until 2013. From 2000 until 2013 global coal use increased at a rate of over 4% per year. This led to an increase in U.S. coal exports (see Figure 1) because the U.S. is a low-cost producer of high quality coal. Coal consumption worldwide has flattened and is expected to stay flat through 2040, according to ExxonMobil’s 2018 Energy Outlook as well as the EIA. Currently coal provides 25% of the global energy supply and this is projected to decrease to 20% by 2040 according to ExxonMobil.

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Wake the Odd Man of Asia

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By Viv Forbes – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Japan has 45 new high-energy, low-emission (HELE) coal-fired power plants on the drawing boards. These will probably burn high quality Australian coal. And despite the tsunami that hit Japan, nuclear power still generates about 20% of Japan’s electricity.

Chinese companies have plans to build 700 new coal power plants all over the world, mostly in China.  In addition China will bring five new nuclear power reactors online in 2018 and has plans for a further six to eight units.

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