Category Global Climate Change Emergency

Jan 9 2023

The Great “Nihilistic” Gaslighting of the Professionally Republican Chattering Class


Posted originally on the CTH on January 8, 2023 | Sundance

Before going through some of the insufferable debates and positions amid the current political dynamic, something needs to be said, and we need to say it with the intent of stopping this insufferable pretending, breaking the cycle of battered conservatism and speaking bold truth.

The current chattering class of the professionally Republican have joined with the chattering class of the professional leftists and begun decrying the efforts of the 20 House Republicans as being ‘nihilistic’ in their efforts to reform the House rules and present pragmatic political defenses to the surge of destruction around us.

“Nihilism” is essentially a political belief advocating for destruction of current political systems without discernible constructive goals.

This is the opposition argument toward what they perceive as the goal and objective of the 20 House Republicans who fought for a new rules package and against the appointment of Kevin McCarthy until such changes were implemented.

As the argument is made against the House 20 group, they were/are nihilistic against modern political norms with the end result being their desired destruction of our constitutional republic.  That’s the position of the professionally Republican.  Now let me add some context to this ridiculous and insufferable gaslighting, because that’s exactly what this narrative is.

The same people claiming the House Republicans are nihilistic in their goals, are the same UniParty members in politics and media who have put us $32 trillion into debt.  They’re the same UniParty that has created a crisis at the border, millions of illegal aliens, massive omnibus spending leading to rampant inflation, ridiculous energy policy wrapped around the false premise of climate change and yet provide $100 billion to a foreign country, Ukraine.  In essence, a great UniParty effort that is destroying the very fabric of our nation.

Who is the nihilist in this scenario?

The Uniparty group who has spent us into a downward spiral of chaos and debt, created massive inflation and created a cultural collapse, OR the group trying to slam their foot on the brakes to keep us from going over the cliff into the abyss?

There has not been a budget passed under ordinary budgetary rules since September 2007, when the budget for fiscal year 2008 was signed into law.   The House of Representatives, responsible for the origination of all budgets and spending, has completely abandoned the main mission and purpose of the body.  All spending since 2009 has been a continuation of Omnibus spending packages and continuing resolutions using baseline budgeting… whereby all prior expenditures are baked into the spending and spent again…. over, and over, and over, and over.

Professional Republicans are killing us, albeit perhaps at a slightly slower rate than the professionally Democrat. And into this foray comes a pragmatic group of 20 House Republicans who are trying to stop this insane DC political quest that leads to our destruction.  Yet, the group of abusers, intent on a one-way mission that leads to ultimate chaos, are now lashing out furiously against those trying to stop the madness.  This my friends, is “gaslighting” in action.

Those whose intent and purpose is based on a need to operate in the land of pretending and deception will always find an audience willing to be deceived.  However, WE ARE NOT THAT AUDIENCE!

More to follow…

Jan 6 2023

The Real Cost of War


Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Jan 6, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Good Morning Mr. Armstrong, a long-time reader and client of Socrates and your conferences. I just read your entry for Belarus drafting 18 to 60-year-olds. I had a feeling that eventually, that would take place here in the states. I can tell you without a doubt, I will never comply. My family has served in WWII and Vietnam. We have given enough. I absolutely despise our government. I am wondering if this is part of the continued collapse of the government. With such low recruitment levels and the political fallout from the past few years, they must realize people will not be forced to serve. Especially those with the means to defend themselves. Is this a main component of civil unrest here with separatist movements? Just curious if you can elaborate on what you think will happen when they institute a draft here.
All the Best.

J

REPLY: My family has fought in every war since the American Revolution. My cousin still has the musket on his wall from the American Revolution. I lost half of my high school friends to Vietnam and my father and his three brothers were all in World War II and my grandfathers on both sides of the family were in World War I. There is no question that in a time of war, the first shot fired is both silent and never against an enemy. It is always against any truthful reporting of events.

The Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contain records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. The government propaganda site, Wikipedia also directed by the Deep State, has low-balled the casualties claiming in total, all US and allied military deaths reached 282,000. We claim that is a victory for the VC lost 444,000 to possibly 666,000. The civilians who died have been low-balled with estimates of 405,000 up to 627,000. Just turn to Britannica and you get:

“In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters.”

President Lydon Johnson knew there was no reason to enter Vietnam. He knew we could not get out easily. Still, he committed the country to war because the Neocons wanted it.

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This is a famous photograph from Vietnam that is probably the most memorable of all time. You see South Vietnamese forces following terrified children. At the center is 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phùc, as she and other children are running from an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972. The plane accidentally dropped napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. As always, just the collateral damage of war. The terrified girl had ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. This photo was taken by Nick Ut of The Associated Press that captured the horror of Vietnam worldwide. It was 1972 when President Nixon said enough and promised to bring the troops home.

This 9-year-old make girl running from napalm, Phan Thi Kim Phúc, had profoundly changed her forever. Such people are tormented for a lifetime. They wake up at night dreaming over and over about the horror of those events for the rest of their lives. Kim Phúc was bitter and full of hatred she said. Later, she picked up the Bible and converted to Christianity. Today, she lives in Toronto with her family and helps other children victims of war around the world. It is those who survive who are profoundly tortured for the remainder of their lives. That is the real cost of war that nobody cares about.

The official estimate of civilian deaths in World War II stands at a total of 70–85 million. The actual military deaths were 21,000,000 to 25,500,000. There is ALWAYS an equal amount of civilian deaths in times of war. Those in power never want to talk about that.

Jan 5 2023

Nunes: Schiff pushed Twitter to ban journalist for exposing his fake Ukraine whistleblower


Devin Nunes Published originally on Rumble on January 4, 2023

The corruption just keeps pouring out of the DC Swamp, you wouldn’t think that much crap could exist in one spot, but it does!

Jan 3 2023

Are the Immigrants Part of the Decline & Fall?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Migraction Re-Posted Jan 3, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

The invasion of migrants, both in Europe and the United States, is evolving into a major crime wave not seen in decades. In Germany, Berlin looked like a war zone. There were 3,943 incidents, but when recuse workers arrived, they were deliberately attacked. Some 15 firefighters and 18 police officers were injured. The Bild newspaper has reported that these incidents were “particularly bad attacks in the hotspot neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln with a high proportion of migrants.” They were setting up barricades, setting them on fire, and when the firefighters arrived, they were attacked by some 200 men. There were even attacking an ambulance, hurling objects inside the vehicle’s open rear doors.

I have been getting emails from people shocked here in the United States from towns that never had any homeless are suddenly inundated. This mass migration into Europe and the United States is reminiscent of the barbarian invasions into Rome. Rome officially fell in 476AD with the last emperor named Romulus Augustus (475-476AD).

The barbarians effectively took over and even issued coins pretending to be Roman. They imitated the Roman Coinage. There had even been laws passed insisting you only marry a Latin. Even to this very day, in Italy, they do not consider those in Sicily Italians in some parts. I had gone into a bakery in Rome and asked for a cannoli. The owner wanted to pull a knife on me yelling that’s not “Italian, it’s Sigii” meaning from Sicily.

These migrations are all part of the decline and fall. Just like in Rome, once that process began, there was no turning back. They bring a different culture that undermined the traditions that held society together creating a civilization that will no longer be. The migration of the 19th century from Europe to America did not take place because of welfare programs. People came to America for the land of opportunity to work and to buy property. They did not come looking for free money and then wage war and violence to out of frustration demanding every more free money.

Jan 2 2023

Time to talk about capacity factors


It is Time to Talk About “Capacity Factors”

It is Time to Talk About “Capacity Factors”

January 12, 2022

Dr. Lars Schernikau, energy economist and commodity trader, Switzerland/Singapore, https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsschernikau/

It is time to talk about “Capacity Factors”​

In electricity generation, capacity factor, utilization, and load factor are not the same.

A lot of confusion exists in the press and certainly in politics, and even amongst “energy experts”, about using the term “capacity factor”. It may be excused, since the distinction made in this article became only relevant with the penetration of variable “renewable” energy, such as wind and solar, in our energy systems.

  • Worldwide average solar natural capacity factor (CF) reaches about ~11-13%. Best locations in California, Australia, South Africa, Sahara may have above 25%, but are rare. (see www.globalsolaratlas.info, setting direct normal solar irradiance)
  • Worldwide average wind natural capacity factors (CF) reach about ~21-24%. Best off-shore locations in Northern Europe may reach above 40%. Most of Asia and Africa have hardly any usable wind and the average CF would be below 15%, except for small areas on parts of the coasts of South Africa and Vietnam. (see www.globalwindatlas.info, setting mean power density)

Natural capacity factors in Europe tend to be higher for wind than for solar. Wind installations in Northern Europe may reach an average of over 30% (higher for more expensive offshore, lower onshore), but less than 15% in India and less than 8% in Indonesia.

Average, and the emphasis is on average, annual solar PV capacity factors reach around ~10-11% in Germany, ~17% in Spain, ~25% in California, and may reach 14-19% in India, but they reach less than 15% in Indonesia’s populated areas. Carbajales-Dale et al. 2014 confirm higher capacity factors for wind than for solar; they estimate global average wind capacity factors to be around 21-24% and solar around 11-13% (see figure above).

The figure further below illustrates a two week period in May 2022 (when I wrote this chapter of our book on capacity factors), where the average wind capacity factor reached only ~5% for ALL German wind installations (on- and offshore).

To avoid confusion, I try to use “natural capacity factor” in my writing wherever possible

  •  The “natural capacity factor (CF)” is the % of the maximum possible output of the “power plant” (coal, gas, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, etc), achieved under the natural conditions of the site, assuming no operational or technological failures or outages.
  • I define “utilization” is the % of the power plant’s workable capacity used on average over the year, which is only reduced because of technological, operational, economical outages or curtailments… completely independent of the CF
  • The “net load factor” – in my definition – is then the product of natural capacity factor x utilization

Thus, when we speak of the natural capacity factor, we are only referring to the nature-derived capacity factor, not the technological or operationally driven “utilization” (often referred to as uptime, plant load factor, or PLF). In other words, when technology fails, or a power plant is turned off on purpose, this will reduce the utilization but not the natural capacity factor.

As mentioned, the natural capacity factor is due to the site, not the solar PV installation. Thus, even a perfect PV material still needs to deal with natural capacity factors with an annual average of 10-25%, not counting for other losses from conditioning, transmission, balancing, or storing highly intermittent sources of electricity (Schernikau and Smith 2021). 

The press has mentioned several times that coal or gas have capacity factors of 60% or less on average. This is at best misleading, more likely knowingly wrong for political reasons. However, such a number is not the nature-derived capacity factor; it is the utilization which declines with higher penetration of wind and solar, and contributes to electricity system cost increases.

Utilization never should and cannot be compared to natural capacity factors, they are very distinct. Conventional power plants have near 100% natural capacity factors, but their operational and technological utilization often falls significantly below 90%, also but not only because of the priority given to wind and solar in the system. Because of their high CF, the net-load factor is only slightly lower than utilization for a convention power plant.

Because utilization of wind and solar is often near 100%, their net-load factor is often only slightly lower than their natural capacity factor.

Figure: Germany’s wind generation 25 April to 10 May 2022 during a 2-week wind lull
Source: Agora 2022, Figure 10 in Book “The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy”, http://www.unpopular-truth.com

Needless to say, the natural capacity factor of wind and solar (even for hydro, because of natural river flows) cannot be predicted or guaranteed for any given time frame. The natural capacity factor can be estimated on an annual basis but still varies widely even annually (see Europe in 2021) and is very erratic, sometimes for days and weeks reaching near 0% for wind and solar, even in top locations.

Thus, natural capacity factors worldwide are a direct result of the location of the wind or solar installation; they do not in any way depend on and cannot be influenced by the technology employed.

The last point is important… no technological advances can change the natural availability of wind, solar, or river flows and therefore influence the natural capacity factor for a given installation. Technology CAN and WILL improve how much usable electricity you get out of the natural input product (wind, solar, river flow, gas, coal, uranium, etc)… this is called conversion efficiency and their limits are discussed further below.

Since the easy locations have already been “used up”, one can expect average natural capacity factors to decline over time… contrary to what Net-Zero plans assume (see International Energy Agency (IEA), McKinsey & Company, or International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)).

  1. For a photovoltaic (PV) park, the natural capacity factor CF depends entirely on the intensity and duration of the sunlight, which is affected by seasonality and cloudiness, day and night, and the ability to maintain the PV panel surface’s transparency, e.g., dust in the Sahara or snow in winters.
  2. Wind farms’ natural capacity factors depend on the site’s wind speed distribution and the saturation speed of the wind turbine. The CF of a wind turbine is determined by the number of hours per year in which the wind farm operates at or above the saturation wind speed (Smith and Schernikau 2022). If the design wind saturation speed is set low, e.g., 4-5 m/s, the wind farm produces little energy, even for high capacity factors. Typically, wind saturation speeds are 12-15 m/s.

It now becomes obvious why the installed capacity needs to be much larger for wind and solar than for dispatchable power such as nuclear, coal, gas, or hydro. This significant relative increase in energy generation capacity to produce the same available, but unpredictable, energy output is coupled with a significantly higher raw material input and energy input factor for variable “renewable” energy which must be offset from any fuel savings.

#Germany is a good example: Total installed power capacity more than doubled in the past 20 years, essentially all consisting of wind and solar (see figure below)

  • Wind and solar installed capacity is now above 125GW, more than 150% higher than peak power demand in Germany of around 80GW
  • Germany’ conventional installed power capacity consisting of coal, gas, and nuclear still barely matches peak power demand
  • With all this capacity addition in Germany, wind and solar made up less than 30% of total electricity generation in 2021 and about 5% of total energy consumption

Figure: German installed power capacity, electricity production, and primary energy


Source: Schernikau Research and Analysis based on Fraunhofer 2022, AGE 2021, Agora 2022
Figure 7 in Book “The Unpopular Truth…about Electricity and the Future of Energy”, http://www.unpopular-truth.com

The low natural capacity factor of wind and solar installations – without any doubt – is one of the key reasons for their low net-energy efficiency (https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4000800).

On Conversion Efficiency

Below figure summarizes energy conversion efficiencies for wind and solar and the laws they follow. Conversion efficiency measures the ratio between the useful output of an energy conversion machine and the input, in energy terms, thus after accounting for capacity factor.

Figure: Lhttps://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/image-202.png?w=974&ssl=1aws of physics limit technological improvements for wind and solar
Source: Schernikau and Smith Research and Analysis, Figure 11 in Book “The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy”, http://www.unpopular-truth.com

For more Details please see our book “The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the future of Energy” (on Amazon)… or www.unpopular-truth.com

This article can also be accessed at

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-talk-capacity-factors-lars-schernikau

Jan 2 2023

The Christmas/New Year’s Wars


Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Jan 2, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Many emails have come in asking if the January target is going to be geopolitical. Holidays are a favorite time to launch attacks. Remember the Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War? Of course, during Vietnam, President Richard Nixon ordered major bombings to begin on Dec. 18 when North Vietnamese walked out on peace talks. The bombings did not use Christmas as a tactic, but the Troops called it the “11 Days of Christmas.” 

Bet you did not know that in the Famous Battle of Trenton, New Jersey, and Washington’s Crossing the Delaware he used Christmas day to take the British off guard. He crossed the Delaware Christmas night and at dawn on December 26th, 1776, about 2,400 Continental troops pushed into Trenton, and they did indeed surprise the enemy, who surrendered within an hour and a half.

During the American Civil War, the Union tried to use Christmas to attack Fort Fisher but failed. They packed a warship with explosives and blow up the fort’s walls. The ship blew up and only warned the Confederates of the holiday attack. Then on Christmas Eve, the Union started bombarding the fort with heavy cannon fire. That fell short and missed its target. Then on Christmas morning, they shelled the fort and sent in the troops. But the heavy artillery was completely untouched and they had to retreat.

Russia invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979, not because the Afghans were celebrating, but because the entire West was taken by surprise.

This Christmas has been another opportunity to catch the West off-guard. Absolutely the entire East Asian region has exploded with geopolitical tension. China, Taiwan, Japan, North, and South Korea have all raised their military readiness to their MAX. China strategically sent 7 ships and 71 aircraft of which the majority, at least 43, had entered Taiwan’s air defense zone. This is a NEW RECORD. What I have been warning about is that China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia will all join together because of this insanity coming from the Biden Administration.

North Korea simultaneously entered the Airspace of South Korea which, up to now, was unprecedented! The military leadership of South Korea was forced to come out and publicly apologized to the people for this violation of their Airspace by the North Korean drones. Reports are surfacing claiming that they remained there for at least 3 hours and perhaps some up to 7 hours.

Iran’s staged a major military exercise on Friday ahead of New Year in the coastal area of the Gulf of Oman and near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. This was reported by state TV in Dubai. ABC News reported that they were testing their attack drones. Russia launched a major attack on New Year’s Eve and Zelensky still refuses to accept peace and let the Donbas go which is occupied by Russians. All Zelensky does is plead for endless money and Patriot missiles to attack Russia directly and engulf the entire world in this chaos. Zelensky is willing to sacrifice his entire country for this hatred of Russians. He said:

“For me, as the president, ‘just peace’ is no compromises as to the sovereignty, freedom, and territorial integrity of my country, the payback for all the damages inflicted by Russian aggression,”

It was Kyiv that started the war by sending troops to attack the Donbas in 2014 and that was the West’s installed “temporary” government that started the war – not any elected Ukrainian government. He was elected promising to pursue peace and end corruption. So much for campaign promises, They always say whatever they need to win, and then do the exact opposite.

Orthodox Christmas Day for the year 2023 will be observed on Saturday, January 7th, 2023. Strangely, most of the markets are showing turning points the week of January 2nd and/or 9th even with some markets showing Panic Cycles the week of the 9th following Orthodox Christmas.

Just a curious observation!

Happy Holidays!