Biden’s Most Preposterous Lie Is Too Much Even For The Washington Post
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 03, 2022
When President Biden talks, there may or may not be any connection between what he says and the real world. Yes, you need to give every politician some leeway, since most of what any politician says will fall in the general realm of political exaggeration or hyperbole. But even within the disreputable category of politicians, Biden can take the lack of connection with reality to a whole new level.
You may have your own favorite among Biden’s preposterous statements. For me, the very most preposterous is one that he has been making repeatedly for the past several months, namely that his energy plans, including expansion of wind and solar electricity generation together with fossil fuel suppression, will save American families the very specific amount of $500 per year each. This claim has popped up in multiple places and multiple formulations. One example came in the State of the Union speech back in March, where Biden said, “Let’s cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change.”
It’s just not possible for anyone who thinks about the subject for even a few minutes to believe that building more and more wind and solar generation facilities as our primary sources of energy will do anything other than vastly increase the costs of energy for the American people. Even in the early phases of the process, where wind and solar generation are well less than half of electricity generation (and electricity is then only about a third of total energy consumption), you obviously need full backup from some dispatchable source, almost always fossil fuels, to make your electricity grid work. That means that you will come to have two fully redundant electricity generation systems, when previously you had only one to produce the same amount of electricity. Two fully redundant systems can’t possibly be cheaper than just one. Then, if you insist on phasing out the fossil fuel backup and replacing it with battery or some other storage, you have to add the cost of that storage to the mix. Readers here know that the cost of backing up wind and solar electricity generation with battery storage is truly monumental, potentially a large multiple of the entire U.S. GDP. For more on that subject, see some of my prior posts, for example here and here.
And this is not just a question of models and projections that can be debated. As more and more wind and solar generation facilities have been added to the electrical grid in various places, the inevitable dramatic rise in cost to the consumer has in fact occurred. Steven Hayward at PowerLine in a post on Wednesday reproduces graphs showing the results for two of the most enthusiastic adopters of the wind and sun for electricity, California and Australia. Here is the chart for California:
As California has added more and more wind and solar generation, its electricity rates to the consumer have followed a sharply increasing pattern, up some 58.3% from 2008 to 2021. Even after adding all that renewable capacity, the percent of California’s electricity production from the wind and sun in 2020 was still only about a third, according to a February 2022 Report from the California Energy Commission. Thus California has not yet even begun to confront the challenge of phasing out fossil fuel production and trying to back up its electricity grid with batteries — that will occur when the percentage of electricity from intermittent renewables gets past 50%. But note that dotted red line near the bottom of the chart: the 41 states with “low penetration” of wind and solar generation only had rate increases of 9.5% between 2008 and 2021.
And here’s the chart for Australia:
After declining gradually for decades, Australia’s consumer electricity prices have about doubled since 2005. The doubling coincides with the rapid addition of new wind and solar generation facilities since that time. And as with California, Australia’s generation from the intermittent renewables remains well below 50% of electricity generation, meaning that again the vast cost increases inherent in phasing out fossil fuel backup have not yet begun to hit to any significant degree.
Similar patterns of electricity prices soaring as renewable generation increases can be found in other places with high penetration of renewables, for example Germany and Denmark.
With these data and plenty more like them out there, Biden continues to double down on his assertion of the supposed $500 per family per year “savings” from his plan for green energy transition. In a an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on May 30, Biden put it this way:
A dozen CEOs of America’s largest utility companies told me earlier this year that my plan would reduce the average family’s annual utility bills by $500 and accelerate our transition from energy produced by autocrats.
That line finally got the Washington Post’s “fact checker,” Glenn Kessler, on the job. Kessler’s June 2 piece has the headline “Biden’s fantastical claim of $500 in annual utility savings.” Kessler started by tracking down a White House transcript of the meeting that Biden held in February with the group of utility executives. There was no mention at all of a supposed $500 projected saving in “annual utility bills”:
But when we located the transcript of Biden’s conversation with utility executives on Feb. 9, we found no reference to $500 in utility savings. The figure was also not mentioned in the White House readout of the meeting.
When Kessler asked the White House for the source of Biden’s number, he was then referred to a report of something called Rhodium Group that projected an approximate $500 per household saving by 2030 not from lower utility bills, but largely from consumers switching to electric cars. Putting aside for a moment whether consumers switching to electric cars could save anybody any money as the government strives to destroy the electrical grid, Kessler points to these obvious flaws in Biden’s statement:
But he didn’t hear that [$500 figure] from utility executives. And the report he is citing is not about household utility-bill savings. Most of the claimed savings comes from the reduced cost of driving. And the estimate is for 2030 — when he would no longer be president, even if he served a second term.
Kessler then awards Biden four Pinocchios. And that’s without even figuring out that Biden’s plan to add more wind and solar to the grid is guaranteed to make electricity prices soar.
UK to ban all air travel by 2050
By Keeane Bexte | The Counter Signal | June 1, 2022
A report commissioned by the United Kingdom (UK) government says the entire country will need to ban most air travel within ten years and all air travel by 2050 to abide by impossibly lofty climate change laws.
“In her last significant act as Prime Minister, Theresa May changed the UK’s Climate Change Act to commit us to eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions in the UK by 2050. This decision is based on good climate-science, was a response to a great wave of social protest and has been replicated in 60 other countries already,” the Absolute Zero report commissioned by the UK government explains.
According to the authors of the report, the only way that the UK government can meet their Absolute Zero obligations is to phase out all air travel, implementing an outright ban in 2050 until such a time as the government can conceive of a means of producing planes that produce zero greenhouse gases at any point during an aircraft’s production or use.
It shouldn’t need to be stated, but this is absolutely impossible.
Nonetheless, the authors say that “All airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast [will] close” between 2020-2029 and “All remaining airports [will] close” by 2050.
The authors continue, saying that under the current legislation, the following changes to daily life will need to be taken as all will be illegal in 2050: stop using aeroplanes; end all shipping; take the train, not the car; rideshare; use an electric vehicle; reduce energy consumption, including and especially heating; reduce fertilizer use; reduce cement and steel use and imports, etc.
The authors say that progressively limiting red meat consumption will also be necessary, as lamb and beef will be outlawed in the UK by 2050.
“In addition, obeying the law of our Climate Change Act requires that we stop doing anything that causes emissions regardless of its energy source. This requires that we stop eating beef and lamb – ruminants who release methane as they digest grass – and already many people have started to switch to more vegetarian diets,” the report reads.
This is quite an astounding proposal, as the authors say that under the climate change legislation, all fertilizer use will need to be “greatly reduced,” as will all processed foods, and the total energy required to cook or transport food must be reduced by 60 per cent of today’s levels.
So, the UK will not produce meat, will not use fertilizer to produce vegetables, will reduce other food imports to avoid greenhouse gas emissions, and will not produce or import processed food as a substitute.
It isn’t clear what, if anything, the authors and the government expect the people of the United Kingdom will eat in 2050. By all accounts, this appears to be a policy of misery and death.
Radical climate protection: Air travel banned in Great Britain from 2050?
Free West Media | June 4, 2022
Great Britain has adopted an ambitious climate and energy policy. By 2050 all CO2 emissions are to be eliminated from the British Isles and Prime Minister Johnson wants to make Great Britain a model country for the energy transition. As early as 2019, the British climate targets were formulated in a comprehensive report entitled “Absolute Zero”.
The report is updated at irregular intervals. This time the tone of the authors has changed. They are now pointing out that the ambitious goals can only be achieved through drastic adjustments and changes in behavior.
The report offers a formidable refutation of the case that a solution to the climate emergency exists in the form of breakthrough technologies. The report’s lead author, Julian Allwood, Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge, stressed that no new technologies were available to replace our current energy needs.
“In the age of climate emergency, one of the central myths that breeds complacency is that breakthrough technologies will gallop to the rescue, when instead we require radical action,” Allwood said.
Specifically, in order to meet its Absolute Zero commitments, the UK government has no choice but to phase out all air travel by 2050 and then impose a total ban – until a way is found to produce aircraft that do not generate greenhouse gases at any time during manufacture or use.
The authors further specify their forecast to the effect that “all airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast should be closed between 2020 and 2029” and “all other remaining airports should be closed by 2050”.
But that’s not all. If the current legislation remains in force, further drastic changes in daily life would have to be made, since they would be illegal in 2050: no longer use airplanes; cease all shipping traffic; use the train instead of the car; use carpooling; use an electric vehicle; reduce energy consumption, including heating; reduce the use of fertilizers; reducing the use of cement and steel, imports etc. It will also be imperative to limit or ban the consumption of red meat as lamb and beef will be banned in the UK in the future.
“Additionally, to comply with the Climate Change Act, we must refrain from anything that causes emissions, regardless of the energy source. This requires that we refrain from eating beef and lamb,” the report states.
German-speaking public kept in the dark
It’s also worth taking a look at “Absolute Zero” for Germans, because the German climate protection requirements are very similar to the British ones. The only thing is that the inevitable consequences of a draconian climate policy are being hidden from voters.
In Austria, skyrocketing fuel prices and a decidedly car-hostile traffic policy are paralyzing car traffic. But those who switch to the train and prefer public transport are often left out in the rain these days in the truest sense of the word.
Since the introduction of the climate ticket, there are no longer enough seats on the trains. Hundreds of people traveling and commuting have already been expelled from the train because there is no space for them. Instead of purchasing new train sets and expanding the offer with foresight, it was simply made cheaper in accordance with the green doctrine and on behalf of Black-Green coalition, in order to celebrate this catastrophe with higher utilization figures as a “success” in the end.
Parking space brawls
In Vienna, this policy has led to even further extremes. The shortage of parking spaces there recently led to a mass brawl among Ukrainians.
The problem is home-made: For years it has been observed how the previous city administrations kept reducing parking spaces. This happened in part through opting for “bicycle parking spaces” or art installations that are not used by anyone and are only noticed by drivers looking for a parking space.
With the Ukraine crisis, the move was made to allow refugees to park for free, wherever they wanted, until May.
They were then deprived of this luxury and Range Rovers, Porsches and other expensive wheels now vie for the already scarce parking spaces. In line with the “sustainability” of Agenda 2030, people are first deprived of their freedom and self-determination of individual transport, in order to then banish them to train stations from which they cannot be transported to any destination due to a lack of capacity.
Fly-shaming
In Sweden, a movement was formed in 2018 to have a hundred thousand people sign up and pledge not to fly for a year. That led to ‘flight-shaming’ [flygskam]. As a result, if one looks at national statistics on take-offs in Sweden, the domestic ones have fallen and the government has responded by promising to invest more in rail as an alternative to aviation. Except that trains do not cross oceans.
Led by a small group of celebrities, including Olympic winter gold medallist Bjorn Ferry and the musician Malena Ernman, who also happens to be climate activist Greta Thunberg’s mother, their “commitment” to give up flying forced Swedes to comply.
The Facebook group’s Jag flyger inte – för klimatets skull [I’m not flying – for the sake of the climate] campaign managed to lower the number of international flights at Swedish airports by 4 percent within a year.
‘Putin’s Price Hike’? US National Gas Prices Officially Double Since Biden Took Office
Samizdat | June 4, 2022
Gas prices began to climb soon after the 2020 election, with President Joe Biden blaming Covid, and then Vladimir Putin, and insisting that his administration’s policies had nothing to do with the situation. The Russian president dismissed Biden’s claims, saying Western ruling elites’ greed, “mistakes, myopia and ambitions” were responsible.
The national average price of a gallon of gasoline has officially more than doubled under President Biden, climbing from $2.39 a gallon on 20 January 2021 to $4.81 a gallon as of Saturday, the American Automobile Association (AAA) has reported.
According to the AAA’s national stats, Californians are paying the most, with the state’s retail price averaging $6.29 a gallon. Meanwhile, observers in northern California outside San Francisco spotted prices as high as a whopping $9.60 a gallon for regular on Friday afternoon. Georgia enjoys the lowest average prices in the union, with its residents paying $4.25 per gallon on average.
For perspective, the Ford F-150, America’s best-selling vehicle, has a 23-gallon fuel tank, meaning that someone who owns one in California would have to spend nearly $145 to fill ‘er-up. Georgian F-150 owners, meanwhile, would have to fork out about $97.75.
Gas prices unexpectedly became a top concern for the Biden administration amid the looming November midterms, with the White House tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve this week and expressing support for an OPEC move to boost global output after spending months trying to blame forces outside its ability to control and foreign governments.
Republicans place the blame squarely at the feet of Biden and the Democrats, suggesting that the ruling party’s federal spending programmes and ill-considered push away from hydrocarbons toward renewable energy were responsible.
“Joe Biden’s war on American energy has forced families across the country to empty their wallets to fill their tanks,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, Biden is doubling down on his disastrous agenda because he’s not the one paying the price – the American people are.”
Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre deflected the administration’s responsibility in a briefing on Tuesday, blaming a resurgent pandemic and Putin. “This – when we talk about the gas prices right now, this is indeed Putin’s gas hike. This is what we have seen in the most recent months of what we’ve seen at the gas pump. And so, that is a fact,” she said.
The Russian president addressed attempts by Biden and other Western leaders to blame him and Moscow for the inflation, food and fuel crunch facing the US and its European allies. “The truth is that the current problems that millions of people in the West face are the result of many actions by the ruling elites of their states, their mistakes, myopia and ambitions. These elites are not thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens. They are obsessed with their own selfish interests and surplus profits,” Putin said in a briefing back in March.
Global food crisis a result of policy mistakes by US and EU: Putin aide
Samizdat | June 3, 2022
The looming global food crisis that could result from skyrocketing food prices was enabled by a series of policy mistakes by Washington and Brussels, Maksim Oreshkin, economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told RT.
The conflict in Ukraine alone could not have caused the crisis on such a massive scale, Oreshkin said.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s international food price index shows that between April 2020 and April 2022, global food prices rose by more than 60%. The increase occurred for the most part before February 2022, when Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine.
In the four years from 2016 to 2020, the index grew by less than 7 points, but it increased by a whopping 27 points, from 98.1 to 125.7, in 2020-21. After the second year of the pandemic, the index stood at 141.1.
Since Russia’s military operation began, the index has risen by a further 17 points.
“Swings like that, with such huge increases in prices, are not happening due to one reason. It’s always a combination of a number of reasons which is leading to such a result,” Oreshkin, Russia’s economic development minister from 2016 to 2020, said.
He points to America’s overreaction to the Covid-19 pandemic as one of the first major factors that triggered the food price hikes. Since February 2020, the US “increased the money supply by almost 40%,” he said, adding that the $6 trillion the US printed to support its economy ended up flooding global markets, and led to the rise in food, commodity and energy prices.
Europe’s over-reliance on renewable energy, which drew resources away from food production, and on short-term gas contracts that led to gas price hikes in late 2021, are also significant factors, according to Oreshkin.
In early May, German Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Svenja Schulze said that the focus of some nations on green energy contributed to the food shortage. According to Schulze, up to 4% of biofuel in Germany is made from food and animal feed. “It needs to be reduced to zero, and not just in Germany but potentially internationally,” she told Bild at the time.
Oreshkin said these factors also led to a decrease in fertilizer production, which in turn hit harvests and drove up food prices. The waves of sanctions unleashed by the US and its allies on Moscow after the start of the military operation in Ukraine significantly exacerbated the crisis.
“It’s about a lot of sanctions imposed on the different fertilizer producers in Belarus, in Russia, it’s sanctions on ships, it’s sanctions on payments which halted trade,” he said, adding that Russia and Belarus both want “to export more food … more fertilizers,” but the “sanctions are blocking access to the global market and, of course, limit supply.”
According to Oreshkin, the 20 million tons of wheat supposedly blocked in Ukraine, which has become a hot topic among Western politicians and media, account for 2.5% of global wheat production. He also stated that Russia is prepared to partially substitute potential losses of Ukrainian wheat by exporting 13 million more tons this year than in 2021.
He also pointed to global food inequality as a root cause. “In reality, there is enough food on this planet,” but developed nations such as the US are simply consuming much more food than the others, he said, adding that people in the US consume on average “more than 50% calories per day more” than people around the world.
“They’re printing the money, they’re taking all the food, and of course they are taking the food from those who cannot afford it.”
He added: “if countries like the United States consume less, there will be enough food for everyone.”
Political West ‘shocked’ by polls indicating most of world population likes Russia
By Drago Bosnic | June 3, 2022
Russophobia is defined as a racist or supremacist attitude towards Russia, its people, culture, etc. It most certainly isn’t a new phenomenon and it has intermittently been spiking or subsiding at various historical stages. This is especially true for the political West and their client states, particularly those with predominantly (neo)liberal views. In the last several months, especially since the start of Russia’s special military operation, this hatred has reached levels which can only be described as borderline mass psychoneurosis. Oftentimes, it’s so extreme, that it should be treated by highly trained medical specialists such as psychiatrists and studied thoroughly by clinical psychologists.
There were some claims that anti-Russian sanctions and generally anti-Russian actions of various Western institutions, governments and supranational organizations were not aimed against the Russian people, Russian culture, language, etc. And yet, this is precisely what has been happening. Sanctions imposed on Russia were designed specifically to target and bring down the Russian economy. And it’s not even a conspiracy theory, as most Western leaders openly stated this was their primary goal.
This attempt didn’t only fail miserably, but it even backfired, sending Western markets into a frenzy of high inflation and economic stagnation (or even recession), otherwise known as stagflation, a dreadful and volatile mix for anyone’s economy. And yet, the political West didn’t only fail to address the mounting issues resulting from their own actions, but they also decided to capitalize on these exact problems to push for more Russophobia by blaming Russia for literally everything.
That’s precisely how we got the mythical “Putin’s price hike” in the US, which started over a full year before Russia’s special military operation. However, even in the atmosphere of raging, media-incited hatred, people affected by the so-called “Putin’s price hike” are well aware this has nothing to do with Russia’s president. And yet, the hatred not only needs to be kept alive, but also fanned up to new extremes.
The latest trend is to blame Russia for global food shortages, including the shortages of baby food in the US. Some Western officials went as far as to blame Russia for the widespread man-made famine which has been ravaging Yemen for the last 7 years. One problem with this, however, is the involvement of the political West and its regional allies and clients, which have been keeping Yemen in a state of perpetual siege, blocking food imports and bombing the country daily. The sheer amount of hypocrisy and mental gymnastics necessary for one to blame Russia for the war crimes committed by the political West requires a thorough analysis in itself. Some of it medical.
When it comes to global food shortages, they can only be explained as entirely man-made. Russia expects a record harvest this year, as do many other countries. So, how come there is a shortage announced months in advance? Well, we should ask those announcing it. The statements about coming food shortages also drive up the prices, but the actual reason behind it can only be explained by Western sanctions which are preventing normal trade between Russia and other countries which need Russian food. The political West is also using this to capitalize on Russophobia, by blaming the Russian counteroffensive in Ukraine as the reason behind food shortages. A portion of the accusations is heavily focused on the nonexistent Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports. But the crews of ships stranded in Odessa, Nikolayev and Kherson tell a very different story. It was the Kiev regime’s placement of thousands of sea mines that makes sea transit from Ukraine virtually impossible.
But, it’s all Russia’s fault in the minds of clinical Russophobes. And no matter how much evidence is presented to disprove this false narrative (just one of many), they will find ways to spin it to their advantage. Still, the vast majority of the world simply doesn’t believe any of it. And the fact that the world doesn’t fall for Russophobia and anti-Russian propaganda is what truly “shocks” the political West. The ever-belligerent, (neo)colonialist block cannot comprehend why the world doesn’t share their views. Well, maybe because much, if not most of that same world has suffered tremendously under the jackboot of global (neo)liberalism for decades, centuries even. The most recent polls confirm this. The Guardian published the “shocking” statistics on 30 May.
“The sharp polarisation between mainly Western liberal democracies and the rest of the world in perceptions of Russia has been laid bare in an annual global poll of attitudes towards democracy. The annual Democracy Perception Index covers 52 countries in Asia, Latin America, the US and Europe. Majorities in Greece, Kenya, Turkey, China, Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa, Vietnam, Algeria, the Philippines, Hungary, Mexico, Thailand, Morocco, Malaysia, Peru, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Colombia thought economic ties with Russia should not be cut. Also, positive views of Russia have been retained in China, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Vietnam, Algeria, Morocco, Malaysia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. By contrast, among the 31 countries that favoured cutting ties, 20 were in Europe. The countries with a widely held most negative view of Russia included Poland (87%), Ukraine (80%), Portugal (79%), Italy (65%), UK (65%), Sweden (77%), US (62%) and Germany (62%). Thus, negative views of Russia are largely confined to Europe and other liberal democracies,” the report says.
Statistics such as this should always be taken with a grain of salt, as they could easily be rigged to further an agenda, if not through data manipulation, then through ambiguous questions which result in (intentionally) confusing or unclear answers. And yet, the results must be highly disappointing, with the massive trillion-dollar propaganda machine exposed as largely impotent outside of the political West. Long gone are the days when entire nations, such as Serbs, Iraqis or Syrians, among many others, could be demonized and then killed en masse with impunity.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
The REAL agenda behind the created food crisis
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | June 1, 2022
We’re in the early stages of a food crisis.
The press has been predicting this for years, but up until now it always appeared to be nothing more than fearmongering, designed to worry or distract people, but the signs are there that this time, to quote Joe Biden, it “is going to be real”.
Nobody knows how bad it could get, except the people who are creating it.
Because the evidence is pretty clear, it is being deliberately & cold-bloodedly created. We’ve been documenting it for months.
We have Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine driving up the price of staple foods, wheat and sunflower oil, as well as fertiliser.
We have the sudden “bird flu outbreak” driving up the price of poultry and eggs.
The soaring price of oil is driving up the cost of food distribution.
The inflation caused by huge influxes of fiat currency means families are spending more money on less food.
And as all this is happening, the US and UK (and maybe others, we don’t know) are literally paying farmers not to farm.
It’s pretty clear this is The Great Reset: Food Edition. The lockdown melody with slightly different lyrics. A process of breaking down the structures already in place so we can “build back better” with a more controlled and more corporatised food system
Just as the Covid “pandemic” was said to highlight “weaknesses in the multilateral system”, so this food crisis will show that our “unstable food systems are in need of reform” and we need to ensure our “food security”…or a thousand variations on that theme.
That’s not supposition. They already started, over a year ago.
The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems & Community Developments published a paper in February 2021 titled:
Dismantling and rebuilding the food system after COVID-19: Ten principles for redistribution and regeneration
In an interview from July last year, Ruth Richardson the Executive Director of the NGO Global Alliance for the Future of Food literally said:
Our Dominant Food System Needs to Be Dismantled and Rebuilt”
Later, in September 2021, the UN convened the first-ever “Food Systems Summit”, whose mission statement included the line:
Rebuilding the food systems of the world will also enable us to answer the UN Secretary-General’s call to “build back better” from COVID-19.
Writing in the Guardian two weeks ago, George Monbiot, weathervane for every deep state agenda, states with his trademark lack of subtlety:
The banks collapsed in 2008 – and our food system is about to do the same… The system has to change.
But what does “change” and “rebuilt” actually mean in this context?
Well, that’s no mystery, they’ve been talking it up for years.
- It will mean press and politicians alike pushing the WEF’s “planetary health diet”.
- It will mean conditioning children to eat bugs and seaweed.
- It will mean increased pushing of “gene-edited” or genetically modified foods.
- It will mean stigmatising meat-eaters whilst perpetually fluffing veganism.
- It will mean promoting lab-grown “meat” and bacterial slime mixed in giant vats over natural food.
- It will mean “carbon taxes” on red meat and imported food of all kinds.
- It will mean “obesity” taxes on foods high in sugar or fat.
- It will mean propaganda efforts to rebrand staple foods as “luxuries”.
Almost all of these are stories from just the past month or so, many of them talking points at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Conference.
As is almost always the case, the problem to which they’re currently “reacting” already has a series of pre-ordained solutions.
Just as we saw lockdowns break the economy to pieces whilst the billionaire class land record profits whilst corporate megaliths expanded their monopolies, so too will any proposed food security policies end up benefiting the already mega-rich or installing infrastructure for corporate control.
They just announced the building of the largest “cultured meat factory” in the world. Fake meat, of course, can’t be raised at home and is subject to patented processes of creation. Genetically edited or modified plants and animals are likewise subject to patents.
Supranational companies, with profits larger than the budget of some nations, are developing carbon footprint tracker apps which reward people for making the “right decisions”. That could easily be applied to food.
Bill Gates has quietly become the largest owner of agricultural land in the United States. Land on which he can grow new Frankencrops, or which the US government will pay him not to use.
The play is clear: Right now they’re getting ready to tear all our old food systems down, with the stated aim of building them back better.
But better for them, not us.
Four UK primary schools to feed youngsters insects
Free West Media | June 1, 2022
Insects are supposed to be nutritious and have a lower carbon footprint than regular meat, scientists have claimed. Young children will soon be eating insects to encourage a new generation to switch from meat to insects – and to convince their parents to follow their lead.
Pupils at four primary schools in Wales will be fed “alternative proteins” such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, grasshoppers and mealworms. The project to change people’s diets starts this week.
The researchers hope their findings will provide information on how to make British children – and by extension, their parents – believe in the environmental and nutritional benefits of edible insects.
Surveys, workshops, interviews and focus groups will give feed-back on the experiences of alternative proteins. Researchers have teamed up with teachers in the hope to convince five- to 11-year-old participants to give up meat and dairy.
“We want children to think about alternative proteins as real things for now and not just foods for the future, so sampling some of these foods is a key part of the research,” said Christopher Bear of Cardiff University.
“Although edible insects are not – yet – sold on a large scale in the UK, they are part of the diet of around 2 billion people worldwide. A large proportion of these live in parts of the world where they are part of a long-standing culinary tradition. And they’re becoming popular elsewhere, too,” he added.
A 2020 study estimated that around 9 million European consumers ate insects in 2019 and predicted a rise to 390 million by 2030, according to the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF), an insect producer.
Carl Evans, Head of School at Roch Community Primary School in Pembrokeshire, which is participating in the project, said that this was an “important link” to “wider global issues around sustainable development” even if it is “often confusing for them”.
Verity Jones of the University of the West of England in Bristol, said young children could “play a big role in family dietary changes”. According to Jones, most of us are already unwittingly eating insects: “Everyone eats insects every day – there are more than 30 parts of bugs in 100g of chocolate… Bread, fruit juices, hops… whatever you eat, you eat insects.”
Jones has tried to reassure children in this way that they would not get sick from eating insects because “all research, both in adults and children, showed that the notion of whole insects were unpleasant, “but crushed insects in food are very acceptable”.
“My research has found that, as with adults, boys are more willing to try new foods first,” she said.
The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is expected to allow insects to be temporarily sold in supermarkets and other retailers, with full approval expected next year.
But insects can compromise the nutritional value of many foods, especially those made from plants (like rice or flour). Some common anti-nutrients contained in them are phytic acid, tannins, and lectins. The exoskeleton, or “chitin,” of an insect has been found to contain these anti-nutrients.
Insects could have the same capacity to trigger allergic reactions as do crustaceans (like shrimp and lobster). Also, many insects feed on decaying matter: rotting food, animal corpses, human waste which are full of bacteria and is a common danger associated with wild insects. They can carry parasites which are harmful, or even deadly.
Notably vegans were significantly more determined than meat eaters that they would not eat foods of insect origin, even if they were nutritious, safe, affordable, and convenient. Insects are technically animals (they belong to largest phylum of the animal kingdom, arthropods) and are therefore not considered as a food source by vegans.
EU plotting to force Hungary to pay more for oil
Samizdat | June 1, 2022
The EU is reportedly considering imposing import tariffs on Russian crude if any members of the bloc refuse to implement the terms of the newly announced embargo on oil from the country, the FT reported on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, EU member states reached an agreement on a partial ban of Russian crude from the bloc’s market. The cushioned embargo will affect about 75% of Russian oil imports, with that percentage growing to 90% by the end of the year.
However, the measure allows a temporary exemption for pipeline supplies, which was introduced to win the support of Hungary and other landlocked countries that had been blocking the proposal for about a month. The exemption reportedly didn’t come with any agreed timeframe, raising concerns that Budapest may continue importing Russian crude for as long as it wishes.
To avoid this scenario, the EU is seeking tariffs on Russian oil imports if Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban doesn’t ultimately commit to a cut-off date, according to a senior European Commission official, as quoted by media.
The proposal of tariffs would reportedly require a qualified majority vote among the 27 member states, rather than the unanimity that is needed for normal sanctions, so Hungary could not veto the measure.
“The preferred option is the import ban,” the senior commission official told the FT, adding that tariffs are an “alternative possibility we can look into”.
If imposed, the tariffs are expected to make Russian oil less competitive, potentially forcing Moscow to discount its crude or Hungary and other nations to pay more.
Russian crude delivered through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, is reportedly 20% cheaper than the alternatives other member states have to use.
Britons warned of winter blackouts
Samizdat | May 30, 2022
As many as six million British households could be subjected to power cuts this winter if Russian gas supplies to Europe stop, The Times reported Sunday, citing a Whitehall document.
It said that imports of natural gas from Norway could halve next winter amid surging EU demand. Britain buys around half of its total supplies from the Nordic country.
Shipments of liquified natural gas from major producers such as the United States and Qatar could also halve this winter, the UK government warned, pointing to fierce global competition for supplies of the fuel.
Meanwhile, interconnectors from the Netherlands and Belgium could also be cut off in winter, as the two countries struggle meeting their own demand.
The UK, which has vowed to end the importation of Russian oil by the end of the year, is now seeking to bolster electricity supply by extending the life of its coal and aging nuclear power stations.
Thus, the lifespan of Somerset nuclear power plant Hinkley Point B could be extended by 18 months, despite plans to decommission the 50-year-old facility this summer.
According to the report, heavy industrial facilities could be told to stop using gas, while UK gas-fired power plants could be closed in order to preserve limited supplies.
That could reportedly result in shortages of electricity, with British households subjected to blackouts during peak times on weekday mornings and evenings.
If Russia cuts supplies of natural gas to the EU entirely, blackouts could last for three months, starting in December, and occur on both weekdays and weekends, the report said.
Irina Slav: “From arrogance to insanity: the EU path”
By Robert Bradley Jr. | Master Resource | May 26, 2022
Irina Slav is a voice speaking truth to power. Her posts and opinion pieces at OilPrice.com deserve reading and study.
One of her recent posts called out the perilous double-down-on-failure approach of the EU (and UK) on energy policy. It says much about the sorry state of energy thinking that environmentalists greenwash and complain about energy companies greenwashing. Climate alarmists/forced energy transformationists treat good news as bad in their religious compunction to rail against modern living and prosperity.
Her article follows.
The feeling of being right about something should be a pleasant one. Unless you’re right about something rather unpleasant. I tend to have the latter kind of experiences and the latest instance was this week, when media reported that the EU was planning to substantially facilitate the construction of more wind and solar farms, to the point of removing the requirement for an environmental impact assessment for projects.
This unleashed a flood of images that to some might be illustrations of our species’ progress but to me are images of environmental devastation. In case anyone thinks I’m being melodramatic, here’s a fact: you can’t build solar installations just anywhere. Land needs to be cleared and flattened for them, including forests, should they happen to be in the way. Same for wind mills but on a much, I believe, smaller scale.
Of course, the EU has tied its pants with the stipulation that only projects proposed for designated “go-to” areas will be spared the trouble of environmental impact assessments. It’s a completely worthless stipulation, however, since governments would rush to designate go-to area after go-to area whether out of a genuine if misplaced belief that renewables will save the world or pure, primal greed.
Here’s an FT quote I instantly fell in love with: ““Lengthy and complex administrative procedures are a key barrier for investments in renewables and their related infrastructure,” according to the draft. The plans could “result in the occasional killing or disturbance of birds and other protected species”, it added.”
It might also result in the disturbance of agricultural land and sensitive ecosystems because all ecosystems are sensitive and if you really get going building gigawatts of solar power, you will disturb them because, quite simply, everywhere is an ecosystem. And this plan comes from the same EU that has been fining Bulgaria (with reason, I’m sure and I’m not being sarcastic for a change) for violating environmental protection regulations.
So, the EU has since last September been suffering the consequences of a too fast buildout in renewable capacity, rooted in the arrogant assumption that it only takes a few million solar panels and wind turbines to save the planet from the effects of centuries of human activity.
Now, the bloc plans to accelerate this buildout even more because, of course, it never acknowledged the role that too-fast buildout had on its energy troubles. On the contrary, the overwhelming sentiment appears to be that European countries are not building wind and solar capacity fast enough.
The EU will also accelerate the acceleration even further because now Brussels has set its sights on completely quitting all sorts of fossil fuel imports from Russia by 2027. This would cost the bloc the modest sum of 195 billion euro, or 32.5 billion euro per year until 2027, on top of all other investments in renewable energy. The goal: to source 45% of its energy from renewable installations by 2030. Given the track record of wind and solar, this is, of course, totally feasible.
Meanwhile, European economies are panting under growing inflation weight, dumped on them by the same people who are now urging the accelerated ramp-up of wind and solar. At a time when all commodity prices are soaring. At a time of various material and equipment shortages.
Doing the same thing and expecting different results has been said to be the definition of insanity and the EU is acting like an excellent example of this definition. It refuses to acknowledge that the results of its actions in energy so far have been less than positive, so to speak. Except on the level of emissions. Those are falling, so that’s a win for the EU narrative (and for our lungs, if we’re talking about fine particulate matter). On the security and affordability front, however, things couldn’t be different-er.
In the UK, the FT reported this week, some households are being forced to take out loans in order to be able to pay their electricity bills. Meanwhile, the government is raising its 2030 renewable capacity target to 50 GW for offshore wind alone while Chancellor Sunak is berating the oil industry for not investing enough at home. As one reader would say, this reads like a soap opera script, and a bad one, at that.
The UK is not the EU but the energy policies of the two are remarkably identical. In the EU, as in the UK, member states are providing direct financial support to their citizens and businesses to help them cope with higher electricity prices. Those would be the same prices that are high precisely because of these governments’ energy policies. And even with that help, a lot of people are struggling with their bills.
At the same time, these same governments are providing direct financial support to wind and solar developers, while charging their citizens extra for the renewable power in their supply mix (Note: This is an extrapolation, based on the existence of renewable power surcharges in Bulgaria and Germany.). And they are planning to build more of the renewable power capacity that citizens pay more for the privilege of using to heat their homes and cook their food.
In other words, EU governments are paying aid to their citizens for excessive electricity prices while at the same time charging these same citizens more for the renewable electricity they want to produce more of. The aid will end, sooner rather than later. The surcharges are not going anywhere.
The outlook for European energy prices meanwhile remains quite grim. According to economists polled by the Wall Street Journal, energy prices in the EU will remain high and even rise further in the coming months thanks to Western sanctions on Russia that are reducing the availability of Russian oil for Europe.
The sanctions have also started reducing the availability of gas for Europe, first because of Poland’s and Bulgaria’s refusal to pay in rubles for gas deliveries and as of this week because the Ukraine decided to move the entry point of Russian gas into the country from one place to another, because the first one is controlled by Russian forces.
Gazprom said that was technologically impossible (for capacity reasons), so the Ukraine is turning the tap — which is one of the taps for Europe — off. According to the Ukrainian side, that channel accounts for a third of all Russian gas transited through the Ukraine to Europe. For context, in 2021, the total amount of Russian gas shipped to Europe via its eastern neighbour totalled 41.6 billion cu m.
Soon after this, Moscow sanctioned a host of Gazprom subsidiaries in Europe, cutting off their access to gas, in response to EU sanctions. Gas prices jumped further, as usual, and Brussels’ resolve to shake off the hydrocarbon chains tying it to Russia probably hardened. We might be about to hear about another revision of renewable targets for 2030, with the appropriate price tag, of course.
In all fairness, in this particular context of energy insecurity, the argument for local energy production from whatever you have handy, be it coal, nuclear, or wind and solar, makes a lot of sense. In fact, the “local supply = energy security” argument has always been the strongest pragmatic one in favour of wind and solar.
The problem is in details such as costs, energy density and, as always, reliability. But nobody in Brussels and national capitals seems to care about petty details. The political EU is firmly in “Whatever it takes” mode and we’re all footing the bill.
The “green energy world” is in a pickle. Only government intervention and deficit spending is holding the artificial boom afloat. And just imagine all of the good things that the same dedication of resources could have created if they had gone for goods and services that consumers wanted. That is a story for another day.
MIT Weighs In On Energy Storage
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | May 26, 2022
As I’ve been pointing out now for a couple of years, the obvious gap in the plans of our betters for a carbon-free “net zero” energy future is the problem of massive-scale energy storage. How exactly is New York City (for example) going to provide its citizens with power for a long and dark full-week period in the winter, with calm winds, long nights, and overcast days, after everyone has been required to change over to electric heat and electric cars — and all the electricity is supposed to come from the wind and sun, which are neither blowing nor shining for these extended periods? Can someone please calculate how much energy storage will be needed to cover a worst-case solar/wind drought, what it will consist of, how long it has to last, how much it will cost, and whether it is economically feasible? Nearly all descriptions by advocates of the supposed path to “net zero” — including the ambitious plans of the states of New York and California — completely gloss over this issue and/or deal with it in a way demonstrating total incompetence and failure to comprehend the problem.
And then suddenly appeared in my inbox a couple of weeks ago a large Report with the title “The Future of Energy Storage: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study.” MIT — that’s America’s premier university for matters of science and technology. The Report is 378 pages long, full of lots of detail, charts and graphs, mathematical equations, and technical jargon. It lists as authors some 18 members of the MIT faculty. Surely, if anyone can address this “net zero” energy storage problem competently, these will be the people.
Sorry. This is a product of modern American academia. MIT is as extreme left as any of them.
Having now spent about a week trying to wade through this morass, I am not impressed. The Report is an exercise by genius would-be central planners concocting enormously complex models that just happen to come to the results that the authors are hoping for, while at the same time they avoid ever directly addressing the critical question, namely what is the plan to get through that worst case sun/wind drought. Implicit in every page of the Report is that it is an advocacy document for the proposition that the U.S. should embark full speed ahead on crash “net zero” plans for our multi-tens-of-trillions-of-dollars economy without ever doing any kind of demonstration project to show it can work on any scale no matter how small.
You start to get an idea where this is going at the very beginning, when you come on page romanette v to a list of members of an “Advisory Committee” that appears to have given direction to the project. Members include John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, someone from the Environmental Defense Fund, an “Alternative Energy Research” guy from the Bank of America, an ex-World Bank guy (the World Bank being an organization dedicated to keeping poor countries from having access to energy that works), an environmental bureaucrat from the Massachusetts state government, several people from other alternative energy investors and environmental advocacy groups, and so forth. Clearly, this Report had to come to a pre-determined conclusion that energy storage issues do not pose any major impediment to net zero ambitions.
This being a product of left-wing academia, you can expect the usual touching faith in the ability of the federal government to solve all problems, no matter how intractable, by the magic of spending money out of the infinite federal pile. Thus, early in the Executive Summary, we find a recognition that the only battery storage technology currently being deployed in large amounts in commercial applications — namely Lithium Ion — cannot provide backup for periods longer than about 12 hours:
Li-ion batteries will continue to be a leading technology for EVs and for short-duration storage, but their storage capacity costs are unlikely to fall low enough to enable widespread adoption for long-duration (> 12 hours) electricity system applications.
OK then, what is the technology that will step up for the periods of a week or two that may need to be covered in a world without fossil fuels. From page xv:
To enable economical long-duration energy storage (> 12 hours), the DOE should support research, development, and demonstration to advance alternative electrochemical storage technologies that rely on earth-abundant materials. Cost, lifetime, and manufacturing scale requirements for long-duration energy storage favor the exploration of novel electro-chemical technologies, such as redox-flow and metal-air batteries that use inexpensive charge-storage materials and battery designs that are better suited for long-duration applications. (Emphasis in original).
The feds will “support research” into “novel technologies,” of course using the infinite money pile, and the technology will magically appear. And what exactly is the technology that will then emerge to rescue us? They have no idea:
While several novel electrochemical technologies have shown promise, remaining knowledge gaps with respect to key scientific, engineering, and manufacturing challenges suggest high value for concerted government support. Innovation in these technologies is being actively pursued in other countries, notably China.
You’ve got to hate those “knowledge gaps,” but clearly all that is needed to fill them is enough federal funding. And you can’t let those Chinese beat us!
Well, how about just using that ubiquitous element hydrogen, easily available through the electrolysis of water? They discuss that too:
[H]ydrogen produced via electrolysis can serve as a low-carbon fuel for industry as well as for electricity generation during periods when VRE [variable renewable energy] generation is low. . . . We support the effort that the DOE is leading to create a national strategy that addresses hydrogen production, transportation, and storage. In particular, the ability of existing natural gas transmission pipelines to carry hydrogen without suffering embrittlement, either at reduced pressures or if hydrogen is blended with natural gas or other compounds, remains an open question that deserves government-supported study by the DOE and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Funny that private investors aren’t putting any real money into this “hydrogen economy” thing. That’s because to get hydrogen out of water is extremely costly, and once you have it, it is inferior to natural gas in every way as a source of energy for the people. It’s less dense, more dangerous, and more difficult to transport and store. But again, throw in some of the infinite pile of federal money and it will all magically work.
Many of the charts and graphs are very complicated and technical, but if you spend some time with them, you start to realize that they are an insult to your intelligence. I’ll give you just one of my favorites, this one from page 191. Here we are considering what the electricity generation system will look like for two regions, the Northeast (New York and New England) and Texas, in various low and no-carbon scenarios. The cutoffs of 0g, 5g, 10g and No Limit at the left refer to how much carbon emissions are allowed per kWh of electricity generated.
Thus at the top right we see what a zero-carbon scenario will look like for Texas. Supposedly, with about a 3 to 4 times overbuild of a system having only wind and solar generation, then we will only need battery storage for about 50% of capacity and about 11 hours duration. Really? Does anybody remember February 2021? Texas’s wind and solar generators produced at less than 10% capacity for days on end. Can a three times overbuild of wind capacity and 12 hours of battery storage solve that? The answer is no. Not even close. And you could get a wind/solar drought of a full week. If you have no fossil fuel backup, you had better have enough storage to cover that.
And if you take some time to study this chart (not saying that I would recommend that) you can find multiple other equally implausible assertions.
Bottom line: I’m not trusting anybody’s so-called “model” to prove that this gigantic energy transformation is going to work. Show me the demonstration project that actually works.
They won’t. Indeed, there is not even an attempt to put such a thing together, even as we hurtle down the road to “net zero” without any idea how it is going to work.
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By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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