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Indonesia

A Chinese Steel Giant Is Upsetting the Global Nickel Market

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Re-Blogged From Bloomberg

Behind one of China’s biggest industrial companies is a husband and wife team that reinvented how to make stainless steel.

The company founded by billionaire Xiang Guangda and He Xiuqin has transformed the stainless steel industry this century. Now, it’s upending the nickel market.

With cheaper production techniques, Xiang Guangda and his wife He Xiuqin helped change the industry in less than two decades — turning Tsingshan Holding Group Co. into a company that churns out a fifth of the world’s stainless steel and creating a billion-dollar fortune. Now it’s making waves in a different market: the London Metal Exchange.

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Solar Power From Australia to Light up Singapore

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By K.G. Chan – Re-Blogged From Asia Times

The desert outside Tennant Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory may hold the key to addressing Singapore’s future electricity supplies.

The world’s largest solar farm that could light up Singapore’s glittering shopping malls and office towers will be built on the barren dunes there.

It was reported that a huge amount of panels as well as supporting battery storage devices with a combined capacity of 10 gigawatts would be spread across 15,000 hectares of land there to ensure the solar farm could make the most of the outback’s clear skies and bright sunshine.

 

Solar power from Australia to light up Singapore

A solar farm in Australia. The nation has the best renewal energy mix in the developed world. Photo: Twitter

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Indonesia Threatens to Withdraw From Paris Agreement Over Palm Oil

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Re-Blogged From Telesur

Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan referenced the U.S. and Brazil’s withdrawal from the agreement.

As the European Union proceeds with a plan to ban crude palm oil (CPO) from use in raw bio-fuel materials, the government of Indonesia is threatening to back out of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The European Commission has approved acts that classify CPO as a non-sustainable product, removing it from a list of raw materials for the eco-friendly transport fuel. The European Union’s parliament will decide in a couple of months whether or not this classification will be enforced by 2030.

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U.S., EU Energy & Emissions Now Insignificant to Global Energy & Emissions Growth

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Climate alarmist propaganda activists and their supporting media here in the U.S. and EU have perpetrated a badly flawed fiction that somehow the U.S. and EU have the ability to control how the rest of the world deals with future energy use and emissions growth.

The hard and unequivocal reality is that neither the U.S. nor the EU will play a defining role in determining how much future global energy use or emissions growth will increase.

The energy use and emissions growth of both the U.S. and EU have become insignificant relative to future global growth.

This reality is illustrated by the emissions graph below which clearly displays that declining emissions by both the U.S. and EU coupled with continuing huge growths in emissions by the developing nations renders both the U.S. and EU inconsequential regarding future global emissions growth.

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Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe

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By Paul Homewood – Re-Blogged From WUWT

This is a long, but very readable piece from the New York Times Magazine:

I have only included the opening section, plus a few relevant paragraphs, but I would recommend reading it in full:

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The fields outside Kotawaringin village in Central Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, looked as if they had just been cleared by armies. None of the old growth remained — only charred stumps poking up from murky, dark pools of water. In places, smoke still curled from land that days ago had been covered with lush jungle. Villagers had burned it all down, clearing the way for a lucrative crop whose cultivation now dominates the entire island: the oil-palm tree.

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Time is Running Out to Save the Paris Climate Accord

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Newsbytes from around the web (h/t to Climate Dispatch)

Time is running out to save the Paris Agreement, UN climate experts warned Tuesday at a key Bangkok meeting, as rich nations were accused of shirking their responsibility for environmental damage. If nations cannot reach an agreement by a December summit in Poland—known as COP24—the Paris Agreement, carved out in 2015, will be at risk. Money is at the heart of the issue. —AFP, 4 September 2018

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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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Prison: A Training Ground for Terrorists

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Scott Stewart By Scott Stewart – Re-Blogged From Stratfor

Highlights

  • Hundreds of convicted jihadists are scheduled to be released from prison in the next few years, and their numbers will be bolstered by those prisoners who have embraced extremism while behind bars.
  • Prisons can serve as universities of crime for grassroots jihadists who lack terrorist tradecraft, and career criminals who convert will already possess skills useful in attacks.
  • The released extremists will add to the caseload for overburdened government forces working to counter the jihadist threat.

This photograph shows prisoners in a cell.

(LightField Studios/Shutterstock)

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China’s Belt And Road To Nowhere

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded China’s credit rating recently to A1 from Aa3. The rational being that it expects the financial strength of the economy to erode, as GDP growth slows and debt levels continue to pile up. What is Beijing’s response to the slowing economy and intractable debt accumulation that was just underscored by Moody’s: issue a mountain of new debt in order to pave over 60 countries around the globe?

China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) Initiative seeks to answer the age-old question of what a maniacal communist country does when they have exhausted the building of unproductive assets at home. The answer: China hits the road and attempts to rebuild the ancient trade routes once called the Silk Road; but in a much bigger way. With 52 million new homes built over the last few years that have a 10% occupancy rate, China has truly become masters of the “road to nowhere.”

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Indonesia’s Coal Consumption Has Doubled Since 2010

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

h/t JoNova – According to BP, Indonesia’s coal consumption has doubled since 2010, promoting coal to be the largest source of Indonesian energy.

Indonesia’s coal consumption remains high: BP

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The BP Statistical Review 2016 revealed on Wednesday that Indonesia’s coal consumption had doubled since 2010. Last year, coal became the country’s dominant source of fuel, accounting for 41 percent of total energy consumption.

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“Last year, Indonesia’s exports for coal fell sharply. The reason was because the global demand decreased at that time, during which China, one of the country’s key markets for coal exports, cut its use of coal,” Dale said.

energy-plugged-in-coal

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Enhance Prosperity And Improve Health: Slash Regulations

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment, Regulation , , , , ,

By Steven H Hanke – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com

Productivity and economic growth continue to surprise on the downside in most countries. While there is a great deal of handwringing over the so-called productivity puzzle, little attention is given to the real elixir: freer markets and more competition. Indeed, the policy tide is moving in the opposite direction in most places.

To get a grip on the productivity puzzle, let’s lift a page from the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” Yes. There is nothing better than a hard look at empirical evidence to see if it supports those who espouse freer markets or those who embrace the regulatory state as models to enhance our prosperity and health.

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