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“Unaffordable climate commitments have two leftist British parties racing to exit stage left.”

Europeans Ditch Net Zero

The Wall Street Journal reports Europeans Ditch Net Zero, While Biden Clings to It

You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy than the Americans do. Well here we are, Alice: Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker than their American peers.

The latest example—perhaps “victim” is more apt—is Humza Yousaf, who resigned this week as Scotland’s first minister. That region within the U.K. enjoys substantial devolved powers over its own affairs, including on climate policy. An administration led by Mr. Yousaf’s left-leaning Scottish National Party had hoped to rush ahead of the national government in London in slashing carbon emissions.

Until, that is, someone noticed the costs. A recent report from the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee noted Scotland had fallen far behind on its climate goals. The government aimed to reduce by 20% the aggregate distance driven by Scottish motorists, compared with 2019 levels, but had no plan to accomplish the reduction in personal mobility by the 2030 deadline. To get back on track with the government’s goal of a transition to home electric heat pumps, Scotland would have to replace natural-gas fire boilers at a rate of more than 80,000 households a year by the end of the decade. That’s a big ask considering that in 2023 it managed 6,000 boiler replacements. The government resisted imposing an aviation tax to discourage excess flying. And so on.

Mr. Yousaf did the only thing he could under the circumstances: He all but abandoned net zero. His administration announced it is ditching firm annual emission-reduction targets in favor of fuzzier “carbon budgets.”…

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EPA underestimates methane emissions from landfills and urban areas, researchers find

May 5, 2024

EPA underestimates methane emissions from landfills and urban areas, researchers find

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underestimating methane emissions from landfills, urban areas and U.S. states, according to a new study led by researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The researchers combined 2019 satellite observations with an atmospheric transport model to generate a high-resolution map of methane emissions, which was then compared to EPA estimates from the same year. The researchers found:

Methane emissions from landfills are 51% higher compared to EPA estimates
Methane emissions from 95 urban areas are 39% higher than EPA estimates
Methane emissions from the 10 states with the highest methane emissions are 27% higher than EPA estimates

“Methane is the second largest contributor to climate change behind carbon dioxide so it’s really important that we quantify methane emissions at the highest possible resolution to pinpoint what sources it is coming from,” said Hannah Nesser, a former Ph.D. student at SEAS and first author of the paper. Nesser is currently a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow in the Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The research, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, was a collaboration between scientists at Harvard and an interdisciplinary team of researchers from across the U.S. and around the world, including universities in China and the Netherlands.

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A True Bipartisan Scandal

May 5, 2024

A True Bipartisan Scandal

How out of control is our surveillance state? Read about a dubious investigation that swept up communications of some of the country’s most senior highest officials, and their families, in secret

Last October, current and former congressional staffers from both parties began receiving curious notices. They came from Google, which obeyed years of gag orders before finally informing House and Senate aides, legal advisors, even members of Congress themselves that their Gmail messages and Google phone records had been turned over to the Justice Department as part of a leak investigation.

Former Senate Judiciary Committee Chief Investigative Counsel Jason Foster, now at Empower Oversight, received a notice on October 19th last year, telling him the Justice Department obtained records for his Gmail account as well as “two Google Voice telephone numbers connected to his family’s telephones and his official work phone” back in 2017. At that time, he was coordinating with confidential sources and whistleblowers for the Judiciary Committee. A number of senior Congressional staffers from both parties with access to sensitive information were similarly targeted.

What’s the rub? Agencies like the Department of Justice get more latitude to demand, say, records of contacts between individuals than they do the contents of emails or phone calls. However, when dealing with things like the identities of whistleblowers, confidential sources, or journalists, the contacts are the content. Prosecutors didn’t tell Google this crucial context, that it was seeking records of its own congressional overseers. In an effort to find out if the state was similarly cavalier in what it told the court, Foster filed a motion yesterday to unseal the DOJ’s filings in the case. It described the bipartisan nature of the problem:

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The Oil and Energy Macro

May 3, 2024

The Oil and Energy Macro

U.S. oil reserves reached a new record in 2022. Crude oil and condensate proved reserves exceed 48 billion barrels (Figure 1). Reserves declined from 1969 to 2006 then increased with additions from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and Tight Oil. Tight oil accounted for 27 billion barrels (56% of total) in 2022.

Figure 1. U.S. proved oil reserves reached a new record in 2022.
Reserves declined from 1969 to 2006 then increased with deepwater Gulf of Mexico and Tight Oil
Source: EIA & Labyrinth Consulting Services

The U.S. does not, however, have world-class oil reserves. It’s a respectable, second-tier reserve holder similar to Libya. U.S. reserves are about half of Russia’s, one-third of Iraq’s, & about one-fifth of Iran’s & Saudi Arabia’s (Figure 2). It holds roughly 3% of the world’s reserves compared to Iraq’s 9%, Iran’s 12% and Saudi Arabia’s 15%.

Figure 2. The United States is a respectable, second-tier world oil reserve holder similar to Libya.
Reserves are about half of Russia's, 1/3 of Iraq's, & about 1/5 of Iran's & Saudi Arabia's.
Source: EIA & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. — Figure 2. The United States is a respectable, second-tier world oil reserve holder similar to Libya.
Reserves are about half of Russia’s, 1/3 of Iraq’s, & about 1/5 of Iran’s & Saudi Arabia’s.
Source: EIA & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

Countries in the Persian Gulf have almost half of the world’s oil, and 42% of the worlds remaining proved reserves are in just four countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. Iraq is now a vassal state of Iran—an enemy of the U.S.—and, together, they have more than 20% of the oil that’s left. Add Russia and our principal enemies control a quarter of the world’s oil.

Those are terrible odds. U.S. foreign policy after World War II was founded on oil security from the Middle East. The last four energy-blind U.S. presidents managed to undo that. One of those two will be the next president of the United States.

Most people know that the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East are serious but think of them in parochial terms—that they developed out of long-standing feuds between people who have always been at each other’s throats.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

David Stockman on the $1.3 Trillion Elephant In The Room

May 3, 2024

David Stockman on the $1.3 Trillion Elephant In The Room

These people have to be stopped!

We are talking about the nation’s unhinged monetary politburo domiciled in the Eccles Building, of course. It is bad enough that their relentless inflation of financial assets has showered the 1% with untold trillions of windfall gains, but their ultimate crime is that they lured the nation’s elected politician into a veritable fiscal trance. Consequently, future generations will be lugging the service costs on insuperable public debts for years to come.

For more than two decades these foolish PhDs and monetary apparatchiks drove the entire Treasury yield curve to rock bottom, even as public debt erupted skyward. In this context, the single biggest chunk of the Treasury debt lies in the 90-day T-bill sector, but between December 2007 and June 2023 the inflation-adjusted yield on this workhorse debt security was negative 95% of the time.

That’s right. During that 187-month span, the interest rate exceeded the running (LTM) inflation rate during only nine months, as depicted by the purple area picking above the zero bound in the chart, and even then by just a tad. All the rest of the time, Uncle Sam was happily taxing the inflationary rise in nominal incomes, even as his debt service payments were dramatically lagging the 78% rise of CPI during that period.

Inflation-Adjusted Yield On 90-Day T-bills, 2007 to 2022

The above was the fiscal equivalent of Novocain. It enabled the elected politicians to merrily jig up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and stroll the K-Street corridors dispensing bountiful goodies left and right, while experiencing nary a moment of pain from the massive debt burden they were piling on the main street economy..

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Permian Shrugs Off Below-Zero Natural Gas Prices in Texas

May 2, 2024

The Permian Shrugs Off Below-Zero Natural Gas Prices in Texas

Natural gas prices at the Waha hub slumped to a negative value of -$2.00 per MMBtu in April.
Major pipeline operators in the Permian basin haven’t yet seen any effect of the negative gas prices at the Waha hub in West Texas on activity.
In the oil rig basins, producers aren’t rushing to boost oil production, but aren’t scaling back production, either.

Permian producers are not shutting in oil wells with associated natural gas despite the fact that the Texas regional gas price has been stuck at below-zero levels since early March.

Major pipeline operators in the Permian basin haven’t yet seen any effect of the negative gas prices at the Waha hub in West Texas on activity as producers are look to maximize oil realizations at West Texas Intermediate crude prices at above $80 per barrel.

But the U.S. natural gas benchmark, Henry Hub, has been depressed below $2.00 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) since early February due to weak winter demand amid milder weather, record output at the end of 2023, and higher-than-average natural gas stocks.

Natural gas prices at the Waha hub slumped to a negative value of -$2.00 per MMBtu in April as the recent rise in oil prices prompted producers to bring drilled but uncompleted wells online. The Waha hub prices remained below zero for most of March and April amid high production and not enough takeaway capacity.

The price at the Waha Hub rose by $1.25 in the latest reporting week, from -$1.18/MMBtu to $0.07/MMBtu on April 24, only the second day the price was above zero since April 1, per EIA data.

The negative Waha gas prices and the supply glut are creating a problem for Permian producers regarding how they should dispose of part of the excess natural gas output.

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Record PBoC gold purchases may indicate that China is planning to invade Taiwan – Experts

May 2, 2024

Record PBoC gold purchases may indicate that China is planning to invade Taiwan – Experts

(Kitco News) – China’s massive and sustained central bank gold purchases are raising fears that the country may not only be shoring up its currency but may also be laying the economic groundwork for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, according to a Telegraph report published Tuesday.

“The relentless purchases and the sheer quantity are clear signs that this is a political project which is prioritised by the leadership in Beijing because of what they see is a looming confrontation with the United States,” Jonathan Eyal, associate director of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in the UK, told the newspaper. “Of course, it’s connected also to plans for a military invasion of Taiwan.”

China’s gold-buying spree began in October 2022, building up its official reserves to a record high of 2,262 tonnes, valued at $170.4 billion at current prices. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) added 27 tonnes of gold in just the first three months of 2024.

The PBoC’s current purchase streak came shortly after the United States and its Western allies froze $350 billion in Russian currency reserves held at foreign central banks in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

“There is absolutely no question that the timing and the sustained nature of the purchases are all part of a lesson that [China] have drawn from the Ukraine war,” Eyal said, adding that China’s burgeoning gold reserves are an attempt to insulate the country from the impact of U.S. dollar sanctions if and when it launches its own invasion.

“It was a major shock that it is possible to take sovereign holdings and freeze them,” Eyal said. “I think that was a fundamental change as far as Xi Jinping was concerned.”

President Xi Jinping devoted a part of his New Year’s address to the nation to calls for reunification with Taiwan.

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The Immense Hunger: US-Israel Joint Obsession to Obliterate the World

May 2, 2024

The Immense Hunger: US-Israel Joint Obsession to Obliterate the World

Like all living creatures, people need to eat to live.

Some people, eaten from within by a demonic force, try to deny others this basic sustenance.

All across the world people are starving because the powerful and wealthy create economic and political conditions that allow their wealth to be built on the backs of the world’s poor.

It is an old story, constantly updated. It is one form of official terrorism.

From the Irish famine with its terrible aftermath created by the imperialist British government in the 19th century that caused the death of between one and two million Irish and the forced emigration of more than a million more between 1846 and 1851 alone, to today’s savage Israeli genocide and forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, the stories of politically motivated famine are legion.

In their wake, as the historian Woodham-Smith wrote in 1962 of the Irish famine, it “left hatred behind.

Between Ireland and England the memory of what was done and endured has lain like a sword.” This Irish bitterness toward the English was strong even in my own Irish-American childhood in the northern Bronx more than a century later. Ethnic cleansing has a way of leaving a livid legacy of rage toward the perpetrators, especially in the Irish case when talk of of one’s ancestors’ perilous forced emigration on the Coffin Ships was ever broached.

Today’s Israeli government leaders must be historically ignorant or suicidal, for the Irish rage at the British led to the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the eventual establishment of the Republic of Ireland, where today in Dublin, its capital, huge throngs march in support of the Palestinian people and their fight against Israel.

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The Four Key Reasons Why The U.S. Will Never Stop Targeting Russia’s LNG Sector

May 1, 2024

The Four Key Reasons Why The U.S. Will Never Stop Targeting Russia’s LNG Sector

LNG has become the most important swing energy source in an increasingly insecure world.
Energy exports remain the foundation stone of Russia’s essentially petro-economy.
Russia’s LNG industry is closely associated in Russia with President Vladimir Putin personally.

Perhaps even more than its targeting of Russian oil exports, the U.S. has been laser-focused on its liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector as they key area it wants to effectively destroy over the long term. Last week’s suspension of Russia’s flagship Arctic LNG-2 project by lead operator Novatek is the latest of Washington’s trophies in this regard, but it is very unlikely to be the last. As U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt said on 24 April: “[Novatek] has recently had to suspend production at its Arctic LNG-2 liquefaction facility, in part because of sanctions that the Biden administration has led.” He added: “We’re going to keep tightening the screws […] We’re going to continue to designate a broad range of entities involved in development of other key energy projects, future energy projects as well, and associated infrastructure including the Vostok Oil Project, the Ust Luga LNG Terminal, and the Yakutia Gas Project.” So, why is the U.S. so concerned about Russia’s LNG sector?

The first of four key reasons is that LNG has become the most important swing energy source in an increasingly insecure world. Unlike oil or gas that is transported through pipelines, LNG does not require years and vast expenses to build out a complex infrastructure before it is ready to transport anywhere. Once gas has been converted to LNG, it can be shipped and moved anywhere within a matter of days and bought reliably either through short- or long-term contracts or immediately in the spot market…

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Unification Of CBDCs? Global Banks Are Telling Us The End Of The Dollar System Is Near

April 30, 2024

Unification Of CBDCs? Global Banks Are Telling Us The End Of The Dollar System Is Near

World reserve status allows for amazing latitude in terms of monetary policy. The Federal Reserve understands that there is constant demand for dollars overseas as a means to more easily import and export goods. The dollar’s petro-status also makes it essential for trading oil globally. This means that the central bank of the US has been able to create fiat currency from thin air to a far higher degree than any other central bank on the planet while avoiding the immediate effects of hyperinflation.

Much of that cash as well as dollar denominated debt (physical and digital) ends up in the coffers of foreign central banks, international banks and investment firms where it is held as a hedge or used to adjust the exchange rates of other currencies for trade advantage. As much as one-half of the value of all U.S. currency is estimated to be circulating abroad.

World reserve status along with various debt instruments allowed the US government and the Fed to create tens of trillions of dollars in new currency after the 2008 credit crash, all while keeping inflation under control (sort of). The problem is that this system of stowing dollars overseas only lasts so long and eventually the consequences of overprinting come home to roost.

The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 established the framework for the rise of the US dollar and while the benefits are obvious, especially for the banks, there are numerous costs involved. Think of world reserve status as a “deal with the devil” – You get the fame, you get the fortune, you get the hot girlfriend and the sweet car, but one day the devil is coming to collect and when he does he’s going to take EVERYTHING, including your soul.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Do U.S. Presidents Matter for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction?

April 30, 2024

Do U.S. Presidents Matter for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction?

The answer is not what most people will expect

Rare glimpse of the Energy Policy control panel in the White House Situation Room

Pop Quiz!

Before reading on, please provide your best guesses matching the presidential administration with with the annual rate of carbon dioxide emissions reductions over each president’s term in office — dating to 2005, which is the baseline year commonly used to assess U.S. emissions reduction progress.

I’ll provide the answers after sharing some data. The figure below shows overall U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 to 2025 (with 2024 and 2025 estimated in April 2024, via the outstanding U.S. Energy Information Agency).

You can see that over the past two decades U.S. emissions have declined very steadily, with notable departures in 2009 (Global Financial Crisis, GFC) and 2020 (COVID-19 pandemic) only to snap back more or less on trend. The steadiness of the decline is remarkable given that these two decades saw two U.S. presidents who championed emissions reductions (Obama and Biden) and two who did not (Bush and Trump).

This raises a question: How much do U.S. presidents matter for the annual pace of emissions reductions?

To get a better sense of the answer to this question, let’s look at annual rates of changes in emissions, shown in the figure below.

The biggest year-on-year changes were the years of the GFC and COVID-19, and respective bounce backs in the years following. The overall growth rate is negative, which is why U.S. emissions have decreased since 2005. But of note, there is no trend at all in the rate of change in that decline. There is no evidence of an acceleration in emissions reductions, due to policy or anything else, and no such indication is expected in the data before 2026.

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Falling From Grace

April 30, 2024

Falling From Grace

Years ago, Doug Casey mentioned in a correspondence to me, “Empires fall from grace with alarming speed.”

Every now and then, you receive a comment that, although it may have been stated casually, has a lasting effect, as it offers uncommon insight. For me, this was one of those and it’s one that I’ve kept handy at my desk since that time, as a reminder.

I’m from a British family, one that left the UK just as the British Empire was about to begin its decline. They expatriated to the “New World” to seek promise for the future.

As I’ve spent most of my life centred in a British colony – the Cayman Islands – I’ve had the opportunity to observe many British contract professionals who left the UK seeking advancement, which they almost invariably find in Cayman. Curiously, though, most returned to the UK after a contract or two, in the belief that the UK would bounce back from its decline, and they wanted to be on board when Britain “came back.”

This, of course, never happened. The US replaced the UK as the world’s foremost empire, and although the UK has had its ups and downs over the ensuing decades, it hasn’t returned to its former glory.

And it never will.

If we observe the empires of the world that have existed over the millennia, we see a consistent history of collapse without renewal. Whether we’re looking at the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, or any other that’s existed at one time, history is remarkably consistent: The decline and fall of any empire never reverses itself; nor does the empire return, once it’s fallen.

But of what importance is this to us today?

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Russia To Seize $440 Million From JPMorgan

April 27, 2024

Russia To Seize $440 Million From JPMorgan

Seizing assets? Two can play at that game…

Just days after Washington voted to authorize the REPO Act – paving the way for the Biden administration confiscate billions in Russian sovereign assets which sit in US banks – it appears Moscow has a plan of its own (let’s call it the REVERSE REPO Act) as a Russian court has ordered the seizure of $440 million from JPMorgan.

The seizure order follows from Kremlin-run lender VTB launching legal action against the largest US bank to recoup money stuck under Washington’s sanctions regime.

As The FT reports, the order, published in the Russian court register on Wednesday, targets funds in JPMorgan’s accounts and shares in its Russian subsidiaries, according to the ruling issued by the arbitration court in St Petersburg.

The assets had been frozen by authorities in the wake of the western sanctions, and highlights some of the fallout western companies are feeling from the punitive measures against Moscow.

Specifically, The FT notes that the dispute centers on $439mn in funds that VTB held in a JPMorgan account in the US.

When Washington imposed sanctions on the Kremlin-run bank, JPMorgan had to move the funds to a separate escrow account. Under the US sanctions regime, neither VTB nor JPMorgan can access the funds.

In response, VTB last week filed a lawsuit against the New York-based group to get Russian authorities to freeze the equivalent amount in Russia, warning that JPMorgan was seeking to leave Russia and would refuse to pay any compensation.

The following day, JPMorgan filed its own lawsuit against the Russian lender in a US court to prevent a seizure of its assets, arguing that it had no way to reclaim VTB’s stranded US funds to compensate its own potential losses from the Russian lawsuit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Houthis Launch Attack On US Cargo & Navy Ships Following Two Weeks Of Quiet

April 27, 2024

Houthis Launch Attack On US Cargo & Navy Ships Following Two Weeks Of Quiet

Yemen’s Iran-linked Houthis have announced new aggressive actions in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea regions, saying late Wednesday that projectiles were launched against more US and Israeli-owned commercial vessels, and that a US warship was also targeted. This follows a period of relative quiet this month.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a video address that an antiship ballistic missile was launched against the Maersk Yorktown cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, resulting in a direct hit.

The US military subsequently confirmed the fresh attack on the “US-flagged, owned, and operated vessel with 18 US and four Greek crew members”; however, the statement indicated no casualties or damage. The projectile may have exploded near the ship without hitting it.

“There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition, or commercial ships,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in the statement, without indicating whether there was any level of an actual direct strike on the ship. Commenting further, Maritime Executive details:

They received a report from a vessel of an explosion in the water approximately 72 nautical miles southeast of the port of Djibouti. The statement only said that there had been an explosion “at a distance,” and that the crew and vessel were reported safe.

CENTCOM further described that within hours of the attack on the Maersk Yorktown, US forces “successfully engaged and destroyed” four drones over Yemen.

The government of Greece this week also said it has been engaged in fresh counter-Houthi actions:

The Greek Ministry of National Defense said on Thursday that one of the country’s military ships serving in the European Union’s naval mission to counter the Houthis in the Red Sea intercepted two drones launched towards a commercial ship from Yemen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America’s plastic catastrophe

April 27, 2024

America’s plastic catastrophe

China stopped taking our plastic waste. Now we’re drowning in it.

A globe wrapped in plastic — Americans produce 40 million tons of plastic waste each year. And it has to go somewhere. Carl Godfrey for BI

America has long had a plastic problem. It’s an urgent question — what do we do with the 40 million tons of plastic waste we produce annually? One year of plastic waste is roughly enough to smother the entirety of Manhattan a meter deep, and it has to go somewhere. For years, the answer was simple: Make a lot of it, dump most of it in the landfill, and make the rest of it someone else’s problem — the US regularly exported 7 million tons a year to China alone. Some of it was melted into lesser plastic; the rest was incinerated or buried.

But then, in 2018, China cut off plastic imports.

Now, America is coming to terms with a hard truth: Plastic was never designed to be recycled and there’s no profitable way to recycle 91% of it. The environmental impacts have been disastrous. About 430 million tons of plastic are produced globally every year, accounting for 14% of global oil demand. The refinement of plastic alone emits up to 235 million tons of greenhouse gases a year. Most of that plastic breaks down into microplastics that make their way into the air, rain, and our bodies. Almost 95% of America’s water supply contains plastic fibers.

While the US, the UK, and other European countries responded to China’s ban by sending their waste to places like Thailand and Malaysia, those countries then followed China in cutting off waste imports. The message was clear: The Global South would no longer be a dumping ground for the West.

A scavenger drinks water while collecting plastic waste to sell to a recycling center at a landfill in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia in March 2024 — For decades, America sent its plastic waste to countries like China and Indonesia. Kartik Byma/AFP/Getty Images

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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