willem
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@aspnaz and @Red: The climate IS changing, but it always has and always will. I do not believe that human activity contributes significantly to these changes—they would be happening with or without us, and we must simply adapt. Neither do I believe in the CO2 thesis (it appears to lag rather than cause global temperature changes).
That being said, I also believe the case is very strong for quickly weaning ourselves off (among other things) fossil fuels. This is not because the planet is running out of them. It is because EROEI, energy returned on energy invested, is dropping rapidly, and what we ARE running out of are fuels that can be extracted for less energy than what can be recovered from them. This is a clear and observable worldwide trend.
A good example are the Canadian Tar Sands. I have seen the EROEI estimated at somewhere between 1.7:1 and 3:1. Compare this with 100:1 in the 1930s, which had already dropped to 10:1 as recently as the 1970s. Why would we use such an inefficient source if we could find something with a better return elsewhere?
If fossil energy disappears before we make some radical changes, it will be the end of industrial civilization. Most people don’t realize and can’t be easily persuaded that the changes this would bring will make their world unrecognizable, perhaps even unsurvivable.
One other big effect is on ammonia fertilizer. The Haber Process used to make most ammonia uses natural gas. It’s disappearance will take ammonia-based fertilizer along with it, leaving us only with nitrates we can dig out of the ground, like potash and saltpeter, or natural fertilizers like manure and guano. IF we have the energy needed to run the equipment that digs it up and transports it.
This is the reason for the gaslighting on climate change, “carbon”, and now “nitrogen” (as in “fertilizer”). It is an attempt to scare people into believing that building renewables and eliminating the use of fossil fuels will save them. The irony is that it WON’T. Anyone that has done the math knows that the most optimistic estimates on what we can put in for renewable generation will provide only a small fraction of today’s energy. (My own guess is maybe 5-10%.) That just won’t run our modern industrial society. It’s probably just enough power for the elites that will survive after most of us proles have choked to death on the bugs.
BTW, the Crypto Rich program Dr. D referenced (with Tom Luongo and Alexander Mercouris) is well worth the time. I like and follow both Tom and Alexander.
“Germany Risks Facing “Winter of Anger”:
Saxony’s interior minister, Armin Schuster, also told ARD that his ministry was preparing for “various” scenarios, adding that some “groups, activists or parties” might seek to “exploit” the current situation for their own narrow goals. Some of those who “mobilize and agitate” people had already drawn the attention of his ministry, he added.
More word games. Does he mean “exploit” like Klaus Schwab “using the pandemic as an opportunity to reshape and reimagine our world”? Maybe not, since “exploit” implies opportunism, whereas the pandemic itself was likely an intentional manufacture.
Still playing with vocabulary. Refining “recession” now. Or calling rich and corrupt people “oligarchs” when they are from countries we don’t like, but “philanthropists” if they are Western and have trusts set up to protect their wealth from taxation and scrutiny.
More and more we are seeing Western media backing away from Ukraine. No one, especially in government circles, wants to openly admit that Ukraine has already lost. Because of this, I suspect the Western public is being prepared for a withdrawal of Western support, using bad Ukrainian behavior as the excuse. The above article about the Amnesty International condemnation is one good example; here is another:
The Dr. D. theory about bots is an interesting one. I guess that would be the hi-tech social media equivalent of believing your own press, but that particular failing is usually not a group-wide phenomenon.
BTW, I think you’ll find that after the Top 3 (down through Pelosi) are taken out, there are yet more in the line of presidential succession. Next on the list after Pelosi would be the President of the Senate Pro Tempore, which right now is (I believe) Patrick Leahy. A quick search revealed that after him there is a long list of cabinet members. See https://www.voanews.com/a/us-presidential-line-of-succession/4674320.html.
@Positive Dennis: “Jennifer Rubin wrote no such article. Why does Raul keep doing this?”
I know, as I looked for it. But it’s easy to imagine now that such an article might be written, and that Jennifer Rubin would be the type of “journalist” that would write it.
@EoinW: Putin is no saint either. But you must admit that it has been a pretty good trick, running the US so badly into the ditch that Russia starts to look good by comparison. Maybe that is part of the plan…
RIM: Responding to your question about animals that can handle insects in the diet, I have heard it said that birds are the modern-day descendants of ancient reptiles. Perhaps there are digestive system similarities.
The New Economic World Map—“most of the ‘exploitable’ world has been dominated and what remains is Russia and China, plus a few stubborn or poor nations here and there… None of the dominated nations were, or are, happy with their predicaments. Despite that, they are unable to shake off the yoke of neocolonialism…They are too weak, deep in unpayable sovereign and non-sovereign debt, threatened by sanctions that cut off their livelihood, and if all fails, there are the heavy-handed tools of regime change with their accompanying bloody civil wars and/or direct invasion and bombardment by their masters.
It occurs to me that with the build-out of a new world financial structure, perhaps centered around the BRICS countries, that all of these nations could join hands with Russia and China, and simply declare themselves to be in default. After all, the US has shown that traditional concepts of money and property are dead by grabbing Russia’s money (as well as earlier grabs of money from weaker nations who displeased The Empire). I’d say they could usefully extend that concept to debt…
Soon there will no longer be a need to worry about being exiled from the world’s only financial system. And with the backing of the major BRICS countries and by acting in unison, the old strategy of toppling dictators would be pretty hard to implement…
Just sayin’…..
The push to define Taiwan as a US “national interest” is now well underway. See the following article. Part of it is apparently behind a paywall, but you get the general idea:
On a personal level, I hate to contemplate Taiwan getting trashed by all this. I have spent lots of time there over the last dozen years, and can speak from personal experience when I say that it is a delightful place with wonderfully friendly people. It is clear from surveys in recent years that most of the public would prefer that the country be allowed to go its own way, but many realize that it ultimately isn’t going to work out like that.
Speaking as a US citizen, I think our involvement is likely to make the inevitable transition even worse for the average Taiwanese citizen. When it comes to foreign policy these days, our fearless leaders can’t find their a## with both hands.
@Dr.D: Interesting theory on the WEF, but sounds a bit too “4D Chess-y” to me. In any case, even if the WEF could be used as a fall guy, the members, as you say, are also members of dozens of other identical clubs. So taking them all out of play would affect all those other clubs, too. And as they say, what you call that is “a good start.”
This is not to mention that the BACKERS would suffer the setback of losing a big part of their army of serviles, and have to go set up their recruiting station again.
But you are correct that you need to go back to the root backers. To kill the nest, you need more than bug spray—you need the ant trap.@Bill7: I, too, live on the central California coast, and concur with your opinion. It seems rather laid back here among most of the locals, but you can tell when the tourists are in town–they’re all coming up from LA and wearing masks everywhere, even outdoors on the beach sometimes, and there isn’t any place here that requires it.
@Bill7: Thanks for the link to the Patrick Lawrence article–a great read IMHO.
The mention earlier about red blood cells being “permanently” damaged seems to ignore the fact that your body constantly regenerates these. The red cells lost in a blood donation are replaced by your body’s blood-forming organs (bone marrow) in a couple of weeks.
BTW, if we’re going with fake headlines today, here’s my nomination:
GHISLANE MAXWELL SUCCUMBS TO MONKEYPOX
– Found dead in her cell
– Due to risk of infection, body is immediately cremated out of an abundance of cautionI can’t reconcile stories that report the ever-present need to draft Ukrainians with the assertion that NATO helped them build an army from almost nothing to a reported 500K soldiers. Can the losses possibly be THAT big that they’re running out of manpower already?
Every time AOC goes back to her New York district from Washington DC, she raises the average IQ of both places.
“GOP civil war on Ukraine builds between MAGA, Reagan Republicans”
I couldn’t hold back my reaction to the tripe expressed by some who were quoted in this article.
“If freedom is under assault by dictatorship and we don’t back up freedom, then what message does that send?” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) More like “dictatorship under assault by dictatorship,” perhaps? “We can’t allow domestic politics to overshadow the fact that there’s genocide going on in Ukraine right now.” There’s that word “genocide” again. But perhaps the right question is “by who?”
“I actually think there’s been very strong bipartisan support for Ukraine. It was a minority of people who voted against the aid, and they sort of vote against everything. I don’t expect that to change,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) So the only ones against military aid for Ukraine are the ones “against everything”?
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), a former CIA official who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called a potential GOP majority “deeply concerning” because “we see such an extremist element on the other side of the aisle that’s self-aligning with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, as well as a whole host of others with extreme positions.” I guess it is “extremist” now to be against encouraging a war that does nothing to serve our national interest.
And finally we have Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who traveled with Fitzpatrick to Ukraine in May, called it an “unholy alliance” between far-right isolationists and what he described as the anti-war left. Which religion considers it “unholy” to ally with like-minded people against military engagement? And it is beyond tiresome to keep hearing anti-interventionists characterized as “isolationist”—suggesting that there is no other way to engage in international relations other than to break out the guns.
DBS: Thanks so much for the obvious effort you took to put that story together. Not only is it a fascinating tale, but you are a very good storyteller!
I looked up Anachlik Island and saw that the airstrip there is named “Helmericks”, the same family your father’s buddy belongs to, I presume.
@DBS: Your insights much appreciated. And I for one would be interested in hearing your story sometime when you feel inclined to share it.
VP: I don’t know what’s up with the constant repetitions about gay men and monkeypox. But it’s clearly NOT an STD, and I think the explanation for why it’s showing up almost exclusively in gay men goes something like this:
1) Spreading monkeypox requires close bodily contact.
2) “Case zero” happened to be a gay man.
3) The infection is being passed on via close bodily contact between gay males, who rarely have intimate contact with any women or with heterosexual men. Hence the chain of infection has remained so far within the gay community.
The action by Tedros (WHO) to declare a global health emergency may have provided the perfect counter-narrative to those who want us to hand national sovereignty over to the WHO.
“Canada Joins the Netherlands in Operation Eat Bugs (CTH)” As Dr. D says, bugs eat stuff as they’re growing up. But perhaps more importantly: how many bug farts does it take to equal one cow fart? (Bugs DO fart, don’t they??)
@Noirette: Early on, I noticed that about Gonzalo Lira also. He’s entertaining, but any opinion he has that isn’t informed by something he has seen or experienced in Kharkov is just that—his opinion, which is probably not worth any more than many of those who can be found right here.Gonzalo Lira thinks the US is going to assassinate Zelensky, based on an offhand comment made yesterday at the Aspen Institute by Antony Blinken:
This “missile attack” on Odesa coming right on the heels of yesterday’s grain shipping agreement between Russia and Ukraine is interesting. The Russians deny involvement. The BBC, as usual, reports it as an “evil Russia” story:
Could this be one of the reasons for encouraging illegal immigration? Nothing more than to get everyone on Digital IDs?
Tony Blair Institution calls for the introduction of digital IDs
@WES: I think you’ll find that birds, just like humans, can only do this if they can see. Birds will stay close to the ground if visibility is poor. You can see this where I live, on the coast where it is often foggy. We have a lot of birds here, and they are essentially grounded on poor visibility days.
@DBS: Very well articulated. The goal is definitely to break trust in all institutions as a first step.
@oxymoron: Along the above lines about breaking trust, I agree also with your statement about the Western “elites” being happily along for the ride (at the very least) if not actively propelling it. In the US, for example, I think Tom Luongo expressed it well recently when he called the group of people behind Biden “vandals”, whose goal is just tearing down all of the nation’s institutions. Or like Matt Taibbi said awhile back, “It’s like these people went to anti-government school or something.”The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is promoting to youth an online chat space that discusses sex, polyamorous relationships, the occult, sex change operations, and activism, and is specifically designed to be quickly hidden while being used. It also mixes LGBT adults and children and is run in part by Planned Parenthood.
It’s way past time to question any government promoting content to children that includes specific instructions on how to hide it from their parents.
@Neal is correct. Watts are a measure of instantaneous power consumption; in other words, the RATE of power, rather than the quantity. You need a time unit to do a comparison of this kind (as in Watt-HOURS). Knowing the lifetime of the facility is necessary so you can make this comparison a meaningful one.
Military Summary channel today reported near the end of the program that the Ukrainians SOLD one of their US-provided HIMARS missile launchers to the Russians for $800K, plus another $300K for the missiles.
https://rumble.com/v1c1d1r-ukraine.-military-summary-and-analysis-12.07.2022.html
No trouble from here (California via VPN), but I’m having a few issues with a couple of other websites today.
@Red: Thanks for the Global Research article link, which allowed me to finally read the actual text of the UN hunger article causing all the recent buzz. According to author George Kent’s bio in the article sidebar, his latest book is “Freedom From Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food.” If not blatantly obvious from the article text itself, one can certainly conclude what the author’s real sentiments on the subject are, and that the professor was just using cynicism to make his point. In actuality, he makes a very good point—this is yet another problem that remains unsolved because, at least in part, it benefits the interests of the wealthy and powerful to have it remain that way.
While I’d agree that articles striking this kind of tone really don’t have a place in a UN publication that pretends to seriousness, I think the stir its recent “discovery” created is just another pathetic sign of our low IQ times, where one can no longer write with any subtlety on any serious topic.
@zerosum: I hear you; it is one of many wretched situations around the globe. And again, the US is doing it’s best (worst?) to “help.” Perhaps with the Saudis moving away from their close US relationship, the US will no longer feel so compelled to “help.”
The Yemenis are beyond mere protest and into rebellion, for all the good it’s doing them. Perhaps, sadly, it illustrates the futility of protest, at least if you live in a country no one “needs” anything from.
One thing is certain–people are upset around the world. This is quite a collection, and it is interesting that we find virtually no mention of ANY of this in legacy Western media:
After reading the below article this morning, and putting the info together with other stuff I read, I finally understand what is going on with the “Ukrainian” grain “stolen” by Russia. It turns out that this is grain from the Donbass being exported on Russian ships. I guess since no one in the West seems to know what has been going on in the Donbass for the last 8 YEARS, they would not understand why Donbass farmers might want to (or need to) use Russian shipping to export their grain.
Saker website would not function for me using Firefox (in California). I tried redirecting my VPN to Thailand and a few other locations, no luck. Tried Brave browser instead, still no joy.
Everything else seems OK, except that Revolver RSS feed has been down for at least three days now. I use RSS feeds for every website I follow–I have a couple hundred of them set up.
@Redneck said: “Amongst all the hype about oil there is one actual fact is that is presently being ignored , the undeniable and unavoidable fact that oil and gas ARE finite and will continue to become more and more expensive to the point that they will be no longer economically viable. Climate change is the catchword, carbon is supposedly the problem but the oil and gas and coal are going to run out eventually anyway…”
The climate is changing, but that is a natural and regularly occurring cycle with our planet. IMHO, Anthropogenic Global Warning (AGW) has yet to be proven. (See, for instance, the book “Unsettled” by Steven Koonin.)
I think the whole AGW narrative is intended to frighten the public into embracing the need to move away from combustible fuels. These, as you say, are definitely finite, and we are definitely somewhere on the backside of the Peak Oil curve already.
I’ve been reading “The Consciousness of Sheep” by Tim Watkins, who also blogs at his website of the same name (which I also follow). I have a couple of minor issues with some of what he says about economics (he is Marxist, for instance). But his insights into energy, the way those explain some of what we are seeing in the world economy, and his general explanation of the way in which it all fits into a “Limits to Growth” framework have altered my thinking about a lot of what is going on in the world.
After watching Gonzalo Lira today, I did a straw poll of friends and family (who mostly rely on MSM for their information), to see if any of them had even heard about the Dutch protests. All answered in the negative (surprise, surprise!)
@Redneck re: post 110891 (from yesterday): I completely agree with everything you say concerning the false equivalence being drawn between today’s Russia and that of the early Soviet regime. I was not trying to imply otherwise, simply pointing out the commonality in some modern European views along those lines.
Many in the US who have only 200-300 years of history to draw on don’t realize that people in many other parts of the world have racial memories that seem to sustain hatreds and irredentist dreams based on grievances going back hundreds or even thousands of years.
@Redneck: Back when I was in my 30s half a lifetime ago, I got friendly with an old man at my local chess club, and we ended up getting together off and on for chess and conversation. He was a Latvian immigrant to the US, and I remember one time we talked about his life in Latvia during WW II. Although they did not suffer through the same horrors as the Ukrainians, the Bolsheviks were very harsh on them as well. He told me that when the Germans arrived, the entire country viewed them as liberators.
I also heard a lot of stories about the Russians from my high school Russian teacher, who was Lithuanian. This was back in the late 60s, and he used to go back to Lithuania every year or two to visit relatives, and he had lots of interesting (and mostly negative) things to say about how they lived there under the Soviets.
The attempt to impose communism/collectivism on unwilling populations has always advertised itself by the intentional or incompetent creation of mass starvation and death. This has become such a reliable indicator that it is reason enough all by itself to oppose such systems.
