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The Bulletin: November 28-December 4

The Bulletin: November 28-December 4

Globalists Go For Broke: Plan To Trigger World War III Moves Forward – Alt-Market.us

Why Bunkers Won’t Save The Super Rich

Hydropower decline due to climate change may increase price tag to decarbonize the grid

Energy Crises & Global Power Shifts: The Struggle for Stability in Israel, Iran, and Beyond

The shocks that made me abandon the green movement

Exxon Pours Cold Water On Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” Plans | ZeroHedge

The Dilemma and Conundrum of Predicaments

Landman | Tommy Explains Why Even Wind Turbines Depend on the Oil Industry (S1, E3) | Paramount+

Here’s Why We Could See a Big Pivot Away From the Green Scam Agenda

This Dystopia Depends On Hiding Inconvenient Truths

Bankers, Fed Origins, and World War I | Mises Institute

The Civilizational Hospice Protocol

Small Farming, Urbanisation, and Climate Migration

Is Modernity Killing Itself?

Depopulation: Are the World’s Elites Planning to Kill Us?

“No Way Out” – French Credit Risk Spikes After Le Pen Confirms Backing Of ‘No Confidence’ Vote | ZeroHedge

Oil Producers Block Binding UN Treaty To Curb Plastics

Green Energy vs. the Mojave Desert

Babson’s Warning – Doug Casey’s International Man

‘Censorship Is About Stopping Ideas’: Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Prepares For Battle | ZeroHedge

Are Stocks Poised to Crash 55% Soon? – by David Haggith

Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in ‘remarkable’ Scotland rewilding project

Rethinking Energy, Productivity, and the Illusion of Endless Growth | Art Berman

DIY Microplastic Removal From Water? Study Says Yes

The Looming Debt Crisis: Is America Following the Path of Collapsed Empires?

A Mind-Blowing Leap | Do the Math

How Climate Change Is Framed to Disempower You | by Joe Brewer | Dec, 2024 | Medium

Carbon Dioxide: The Wonder Molecule

Don’t Buy Into Phony Anti-Establishment Schtick

Iran Ready To Send More Troops To Syria, But This Could Trigger Deeper Israeli Entry | ZeroHedge

House Oversight Report Supports Chinese Lab Leak Theory For Covid-19 Origins

Existential Risks: The Biggest Threats to Life as We Know It

It Leaked From a US-Backed Lab

It Leaked From a US-Backed Lab

For The New York Times, which started this whole fiasco dating from Feb. 27, 2020, with a podcast designed to drum up disease panic, it’s been a drip, drip, drip of truthiness ever since.

A fortnight ago, the paper finally decided to report on vaccine injury from shots that vast majorities never needed and that stop neither infection nor transmission. And now, as of June 3, we have as decisive an article as one can imagine that shows that “a laboratory accident is the most parsimonious explanation of how the pandemic began.”

“Whether the pandemic started on a lab bench or in a market stall, it is undeniable that U.S. federal funding helped to build an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan institute, as well as contributing to research that enhanced them,” the article reads. “Advocates and funders of the institute’s research, including Dr. Fauci, should cooperate with the investigation to help identify and close the loopholes that allowed such dangerous work to occur. The world must not continue to bear the intolerable risks of research with the potential to cause pandemics.”

The author is scientist Alina Chan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For purposes of documentation, let’s go through the points she makes.

1. The SARS-like virus that caused the pandemic emerged in Wuhan, Hubei Province, the Chinese city where the world’s foremost research lab for SARS-like viruses is located.

2. The year before the outbreak, the Wuhan Institute, working with U.S. partners, had proposed creating viruses with SARS‑CoV‑2’s defining feature.

3. The Wuhan lab pursued this type of work under low biosafety conditions that could not have contained an airborne virus as infectious as SARS‑CoV‑2.

4. The hypothesis that COVID-19 came from an animal at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan is not supported by strong evidence.

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

Civil Liberties Supporters Sue Trudeau’s Government for Freezing Bank Accounts

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Twenty plaintiffs heavily embroiled in the 2022 Freedom Convoy, have initiated a legal battle against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other high-ranking members of his cabinet, at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

The lawsuit results from the government’s decision to freeze their financial assets under the measures of the Emergencies Act—an act which they feel breached their Charter rights.

The list of defendants includes not only Trudeau, but names such as Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, former ministers Marco Mendicino and David Lametti, ex-RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki, acting Ottawa Police commissioner Steve Bell, and numerous banks across Canada. The lawsuit, lodged by the Calgary-based Loberg Ector LLP, calls for a total of $2.2 million in compensation for each plaintiff.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

The defendants are accused of malicious and high-handed misconduct, breaching contractual agreements, and committing an “assault and battery” on the plaintiffs by unlawfully seizing their bank accounts. These actions, the plaintiffs argue, violate section 2(b) and section 8 Charter rights, which protect their freedom of expression and safeguard against unauthorized search and seizure.

Text exchanges between Ben Chin and Tyler Meredith, senior advisers to the Prime Minister, reveal that the seizure of Freedom Convoy assets was planned as early as early February of 2022 when the Prime Minister’s Office started applying pressure on banks to do so.

Even given the political context, concerted efforts of banks and insurers to resist making moves against their clients were recorded. These exchanges were admitted into the Public Order Emergency Commission as evidence since the commission evaluates the appropriateness of invoking the Emergencies Act in situations like convoy protests.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Report: Lab Leaks Have Increased By 50% Since COVID Pandemic

Report: Lab Leaks Have Increased By 50% Since COVID Pandemic

“The apparent lab leaks in the UK alone show we are all sitting on a ticking time bomb.”

The Telegraph reports that it has found a FIFTY PERCENT increase in leaks and accidents at laboratories in the UK since the outbreak of COVID in 2020, warning of “potentially catastrophic consequences” in the future.

The report notes that a Freedom of Information Act request sent to all British universities, government research bodies and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) yielded results showing that “dozens of dangerous viruses and bacteria including anthrax, rabies and Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome) are being stored close to large populations, potentially placing citizens at risk.”

The investigation also found that since January 2020, there have been 156 reports of lab leaks or accidents, around 42 per year. That is a rise of 50 per cent on the years between January 2010 and December 2019, when 286 incidents were recorded in total, approximately 28 per year.

Some of the incidents recorded since 2020 include a worker dropping plates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bug responsible for TB at a former Public Health England lab at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham. At the same lab a worker was pricked with a needle containing HIV, human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 2, and Candida albicans.

At other facilities, avian flu leaked from a cracked sample tube, an accident involving the bacteria responsible for life-threatening sepsis was recorded, and a worker was stabbed by a needle containing the Vaccinia virus, similar to smallpox.

At another lab, workers “lost” a mouse that they had genetically modified.

The Telegraph notes that not all incidents were disclosed because “some of the biological agents involved are listed in the Terrorism Act.”

American molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright, who has been vocal regarding his opinion that the COVID pandemic was a gain of function lab leak, further highlighted several terrifying quotes from the Telegraph report:

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Defying Authority

DEFYING AUTHORITY

Stanley Milgram’s experiment was conducted in 1963, before the internet, social media, and the complete takeover of the U.S. by the Deep State. His estimate that only 20% of the population have the critical thinking skills to defy authority may have been true in 1963, but I think it is far lower today. The powers that be (invisible government per Edward Bernays) utilize every tool at their disposal to make sure their authority is not defied. They have perfected Bernays’ propaganda techniques, integrating lies, misinformation and fear into their formula of control.

 

Witness everything that has happened in the last several years as proof they have been successful in suppressing any substantive defiance to their authority. The entire Covid scamdemic was a modern day Milgram Experiment and the vast majority of the world population were duped into believing the annual flu was such a horrific threat that they agreed to be locked down, lose their jobs, treat others like lepers, mask & distance, give their government unlimited authoritarian power, agree to censor and cancel critical thinking dissenters, and ultimately be injected with an untested, toxic, gene therapy that failed to combat covid, but certainly has caused millions of “sudden deaths”, turbo cancers, and myocarditis in young people.

Those who questioned the clearly stolen 2020 presidential election have been systematically destroyed by those in authority. Make a critical thinking case about rigged voting machines, fraudulent mail in ballots, or ballot stuffing, and you lose your livelihood, like being shocked in a Milgram Experiment. The authorities declared January 6, 2020 an armed insurrection, but no Trump supporters were armed or killed anyone. An armed black government thug killed an unarmed woman, but he was declared a hero by the authorities that engineered the fake insurrection.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh VII–Science: It May Not Be All You Think It Is

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh VII

Oct 12, 2020
Pompeii, Italy (1993) Photo by author

Science: It May Not Be All You Think It Is

Ha! It’s poetry in motion
Now she’s making love to me
The spheres are in commotion
The elements in harmony
She blinded me with science
(She blinded me with science!)
And hit me with technology
-Thomas Dolby, 1982 (She Blinded Me With Science)

Science, it turns outs, is a process not an answer. And, it usually has many answers from various sciences, each having their own methods and standards. When someone tells you, “the science says,” be skeptical. They are usually being paid to say what they are about to say or at least have been thoroughly indoctrinated by others who are paid. There is never just one answer to any supposedly scientific question.
-Kurt Cobb (Why am I feeling so anxious? The end of modernism arrives)

Unfortunately, there are many other misconceptions about science. One of the most common misconceptions concerns the so-called “scientific proofs.” Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a scientific proof…all scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all available alternatives. Its status as the accepted theory is contingent on what other theories are available and might suddenly change tomorrow if there appears a better theory or new evidence that might challenge the accepted theory. No knowledge or theory (which embodies scientific knowledge) is final.
-Satoshi Kanazawa (Common Misconceptions About Science I: “Scientific Proof”)

In short, we can never be 100% that our perception of reality is accurate, and scientific experiments are virtually impossible to totally and completely control. Further, science often uses inductive logic, and it relies on probabilities to draw conclusions. All of this prevents science from ever proving anything with absolute certainty. That does not, however, mean that science is untrustworthy, or that you can reject it whenever you like. Science tells us what is most likely true given the current evidence, but it is a skeptical process that always acknowledges the possibility of being wrong.
-Fallacy Man (Science doesn’t prove anything, and that’s a good thing)

The answers you get depend on the questions you ask…What man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conception experience has taught him to see…Observation and experience can and must drastically restrict the range of admissible scientific belief, else there would be no science. But they cannot alone determine a particular body of such belief. An apparently arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical accident, is always a formative ingredient of the beliefs espoused by a given scientific community at a given time…Because scientists are reasonable men, one or another argument will ultimately persuade many of them. But there is no single argument that can or should persuade them all. Rather than a single group conversion, what occurs is an increasing shift in the distribution of professional allegiances…The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs.
-Thomas S. Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

Science! That is the refrain from some to argue for what IS and what IS NOT ‘true’ or ‘factual’ in this world of social media edicts and memes (and associated self-created echo chambers), especially regarding fake news, climate change/global warming, pandemics, politics, and life in general.

The idea that science provides us with ‘objective proof’ about issues is a common error I’ve encountered time and time again. It is held for many reasons, primary among them may be the ‘politicisation’ of the notion; that is, the use of ‘science’ by politicians and others to reinforce what are for all intents and purposes desired goals/policies/actions/narratives/etc., and their insistence about science providing definitive support. We are certainly seeing this more and more with competing narratives regarding Covid-19 and what should and should not be done to address certain concerns.

My enlightenment, as it were, regarding scientific ‘proof’ and associated beliefs came in two parts during my university education. First was a poignant discussion with a professor providing feedback on a paper I had written and used the idea of science proving something to support my conclusion. He stated rather bluntly that “‘proof’ is only relevant in mathematics and jurisprudence, not science.” He then went on to explain the concept in greater detail, but it was that short statement that has stuck with me and altered my view of ‘objective science’ as ‘proof’ of various beliefs.

The second tipping point for me was during a presentation on human intelligence by the psychology department of the university (I had become interested in the subject as I explored human evolution via physical anthropology classes and sat in on a presentation by a guest speaker). As I recall, the visiting professor asked somewhat rhetorically what was the definition of intelligence we could use to explore the concept. After entertaining a few responses (all of which were different) he stressed that if we were to ask 100 psychologists such a question, we would get back 100 different answers: there was no agreed upon definition. One’s particular perspective ‘coloured’ what was important and observed.

There were also a handful of texts I read that impacted my beliefs. Some of the most pertinent ones were: The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsThe Mismeasure of ManEver Since DarwinThe Interpretation of Cultures.

The two experiences described above and the books I read impacted my interests at the time and I set off exploring other ideas and perspectives, getting into deconstructivismphilologyhermeneuticsdialecticsepistemologyobjectivity versus subjectivity, and skepticism. More recently I’ve explored the somewhat related subjects of complexity and cognition.

All of these ‘colour’ my belief system and my arguments regarding ‘collapse’. Do I know for certain some of the things I pontificate about. Absolutely not. And I hope I couch my rhetoric in words such as ‘likely’, ‘evidence’, ‘probably’, etc. to demonstrate my uncertainty. Because when we get right down to it, not one of us can be certain about the future and our beliefs about it. As several people have been credited with stating: It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. We live within complex systems made up of complex systems that, because of the nonlinear feedback loops that exist and emergent phenomena that arise from them, can neither be predicted nor controlled. Of this, I am fairly certain.

Do I believe ‘collapse’ of our current globalised, industrial world will occur? Yes. The evidence, to me, seems overwhelming; particularly all the experiments involving complex societies that have been carried out before us and ended with decline/collapse (see Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies and Diamond’s Collapse) and the ‘fact’ that we live on a world with finite resources but are pursuing perpetual growth (see Meadows et al’s The Limits to Growth and Catton’s Overshoot).

Will, as some argue, our technology and human ingenuity save us in this current trial in complex societies? I’m doubtful; in fact, I’m fairly certain these things will simply expedite the fall as we rush into them to try and solve the problems we have created, bumping up against the real biophysical limits imposed by a finite world in the process and creating even more problems and dilemmas.

Of course, because I cannot predict the future with certainty, only time will tell…

Puppet Masters of the Pandemic. Part 2: What Did The CIA Do in Wuhan?”

Puppet Masters of the Pandemic. Part 2: What Did The CIA Do in Wuhan?”

Part 2 of an interview with the New American Magazine

From Part I – the interview left of with the big question of who is the puppet master? What’s behind all this propaganda and control over the past three years? I spoke of different theories that people had put out there, and ended with the beginning of the hypothesis that the CIA may in fact be that controlling element. Part II picks up the thesis there.

From Part I: Dr. Robert Malone: We <Bret Weinstein, Steve Kirsch and myself> talked about emergent phenomena, that this might just be the consequence of simultaneous things happening and separate actors acting on their own initiatives, and the result would be a vector sum of things (controlling the propaganda and globalized governmental policies). I’ve never felt comfortable with that as an explanation for why we would see this amazing harmonization of propaganda, censorship, messaging strategies, technical strategies like the purchasing of influencers, et cetera, globally.

Then, a colleague … a close colleague of mine who actually employs a former director of the CIA were discussing who is the puppet master? What’s behind all this? We had a discussion in which he related a conversation with his employee (former DCIA) regarding the global power and reach of the CIA, in which the former DCIA concluded that the CIA was currently the most powerful organization in the world, perhaps the most powerful global organization in human history. This is one of those things I haven’t wanted to believe…

Part II

If you are subjected on a daily basis to this advanced technology of nudging and information control and censorship, control of narrative, <governments and NGO> cooperating with press, cooperating with social media so that every single thing you encounter is manipulated to support the agenda and the narrative of whomever the dominant force is that is propagating this?

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Was the Covid response a coup by Western intelligence agencies?

Was the Covid response a coup by Western intelligence agencies?

On Thursday, friend-of-the-blog Michael P. Senger posted an important essay to Substack, in which he asks whether the “Response to COVID” was “effectively a coup by the Western intelligence community.” Everyone should read it, as it summarises in one place a range of evidence that Senger and others have collected pointing to the role of the defence and intelligence actors in promoting lockdowns, especially in America.

Many readers have asked me in sometimes polite and sometimes highly hostile and dismissive ways to comment on these ideas for a long time now. I find this surprising, as I don’t disagree with any of Senger’s specific observations, and I don’t think they’re necessarily in conflict with my own theses of What Happened in 2020. I’ve long held that the bureaucracy succumbed to very radical ideas about how to suppress SARS-2 between February and March 2020, and as the defence and intelligence sectors are part of the institutional apparatus of the government, it’s only logical to think that they should’ve fallen prey to these ideas too. Perhaps it is true, though, that my overall interpretation of events departs somewhat from the Intelligence Coup Thesis. In what follows, I’ll try to explain why.

Senger and others have surely shown that key members of the American defence establishment were very worried about SARS-2 and willing to follow the lead of China in pandemic policy from the beginning. Their advocacy, however, seems to be of two types. Either it occurs very early but doesn’t seem to be about mass containment specifically, or it occurs rather later and indicates an endorsement of lockdowns around the same time everyone else was endorsing them.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

How New Zealand Dealt with “Disinformation”

disinformation

How New Zealand Dealt with “Disinformation”

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is spectacular, with Orcs, Elves and breathtaking scenery filmed on location in New Zealand. The special effects were good too – the eye of Sauron looked very realistic – perhaps it is.

We have come across a minimally redacted 28-page draft of a Kiwi Government document entitled “Communications approach to managing disinformation, online harms and scams” dated 10 Dec 2021 (Available here).

The document’s aim appears to be coordinating countering disinformation seeking to harm “by threatening public safety, fracturing community cohesion and reduced trust in democracy.” All well and good then; it’s a bit like saying, do not open fire on the Red Cross.

Except that the object is “disinformation” relating to the Kiwi government’s response to the Covid pandemic. The definition of disinformation in the document is on page 5:

We will not summarise the complex and superficial content of the document other than to note that this is precisely the attempt at normalising the message of the pandemic that we have reported. The government has put out a message, and its credibility must be defended at all costs, with tech media partners, academics, the community and, of course, the armies of Sauron.

One consideration is that the Covid narrative in Middle Earth (as elsewhere) is based on the misuse and misinterpretation of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the death of clinical medicine, as we have made clear.

Cases may not have been active cases, hospitalisations may not be due to SARS-CoV-2, and deaths may be due to various causes related or unrelated to SARS-CoV-2. We will never know for sure. Why? Because the PCR cycle threshold for testing PCR “positive” in Middle Earth was 40 to 45, ensuring that most tested people would test positive even in the total absence of contamination (a very tall order).

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Pain of Listening To Twitter Censorship Testimony

The Pain of Listening To Twitter Censorship Testimony

Nasty, Ill-Dressed Technocrats, I Want My Life Back

As I type, I am undergoing the excruciating experience of listening to C-SPAN, which is airing “Twitter’s Response to Hunter Biden Laptop Story.” The larger issue is: who censored Twitter, and why, and whether there was illegal collusion (there was) between Twitter and the US government.

So I finally am seeing them — up close, in real life, in person. I am finally able to look at the faces of the heretofore faceless technocrats who took it upon themselves to try to destroy my life and ruin my name.

I am witnessing, as I see them seated primly in rows in a Congressional hearing room, the very faces — the somber, ill-cut but costly blue suits, the bad wire-rimmed glasses, the judgmental expressions — of those who were personally responsible for the misery, trauma, reputational damage, shattered dreams, and loss of income, in my one life, over the course of last two and a half years.

Here at last are the very people who took it upon themselves, or who oversaw their colleagues, to single me out, to collude with the White House, and with Carol Crawford of CDC, and with DHS perhaps, to suspend me — following an accurate tweet of mine that warned women of menstrual harms following mRNA injection.

The positions of these people, the views of them — their self-regarding, self-satisfied, smug certainty that their rightness is the only rightness that could ever be — do not remind me of the testimony or views of actual Americans. They remind me rather of the affect of functionaries in a Stalinist show trial, or of the nameless bureaucrats in Kafka’s The Trial.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

institutions lied

How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told. Public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from government health authorities, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking.

In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths, as described in the recently released Twitter Files (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms, to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to Covid-19.

They suppressed ‘the truth,’ even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM— misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm).

From fact-checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their ‘mis-/dis-information.’

“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation.” — Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC

But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?

Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and  academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

We Must Have The Truth

We Must Have The Truth

In an understatement of the century, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky recently summed up her agency’s role in promoting distrust in science by stating that they did not “reliably meet expectations.”

I am always happy to welcome new content from The Brownstone Institute, one of the last few beacons of common sense left in the world of actual journalism.

This week they published a new piece on Covid and our response to it, called We Must Have The Truth. I reached out to the publication last year and requested permission to share their content when I enjoy it, in full, with my readers, which they kindly granted. If you’re interested in the topic – or simply just having a grasp on the objective truth – I believe it is a “must read”.

The article is written by Pat Fidopiastis, who is a Professor of Microbiology at California Polytechnic State University.


On April 2, 2020, a paddle boarder was chased by authorities and taken into custody. This event should have caused unanimous outrage over the absurdity of what happened – law enforcement arrested a lone paddle boarder on Santa Monica Bay for the crime of “flouting coronavirus closures.”

Traditional voices that could have questioned unscientific authoritarian policy instead provided cover. The Los Angeles Times justified law enforcement’s ridiculous response by quoting a scientist who made the claim (presumably with a straight face): “..[SARS-CoV-2] could enter coastal waters and transfer back into the air.” Setting aside the absurdity of this and every other justification for closing beaches, hiking trails, and parks, think of the narrative it perpetuated — the virus is so insidious that even those who dared to paddle board alone on the ocean might somehow spread it to the rest of us.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

China’s Oil Demand Is Set To Hit A Record High In 2023

China’s Oil Demand Is Set To Hit A Record High In 2023

  • China’s oil demand is expected to hit a record high 16 million bpd this year, an increase of 800,000 bpd.
  • Having lifted its zero-Covid policy, China is currently suffering through an exit wave of Covid but should recover in the second quarter.
  • China is preparing for its reopening already, with the government issuing a huge batch of oil import quotas for its private refiners.

China’s oil consumption is expected to jump by 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year to a record 16 million bpd, after Beijing abandoned the strict ‘zero Covid’ policy and re-opened its borders, a median estimate of 11 China-focused consultants polled by Bloomberg News showed.

Following the initial exit Covid wave after the strictest curbs were lifted, Chinese oil demand is set to rebound from the second quarter onwards, also raising global oil demand for this year, many analysts say.

Despite the fact that China’s crude oil imports in 2022 were slightly lower than the previous year, for a second consecutive year, crude imports in December rose by 4% annually for the third highest monthly purchases in 2022, data showed on Friday.

Despite the current Covid wave, China is preparing for the re-opening with the issuance of a huge batch of oil import quotas for its private refiners.

“Higher quotas support the view of recovering Chinese demand this year and the quicker-than-expected change in Covid policy means that the demand recovery could be more robust than initially expected,” ING strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey said this week.

Global oil demand in 2023 is expected to grow by around 1.7 million bpd, of which 50% will be driven by China, according to ING, which says “There could be some upside risk to this” forecast.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

2023: Expect a financial crash followed by major energy-related changes

2023: Expect a financial crash followed by major energy-related changes

Why is the economy headed for a financial crash? It appears to me that the world economy hit Limits to Growth about 2018 because of a combination of diminishing returns in resource extraction together with rising population. The Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying financial manipulations hid these problems for a few years, but now, as the world economy tries to reopen, the problems are back with a vengeance.

Figure 1. World primary energy consumption per capita based on BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. Same chart shown in post, Today’s Energy Crisis Is Very Different from the Energy Crisis of 2005.

In the period between 1981 and 2022, the economy was lubricated by a combination of ever-rising debt, falling interest rates, and the growing use of Quantitative Easing. These financial manipulations helped to hide the rising cost of fossil fuel extraction after 1970. Even more money supply was added in 2020. Now central bankers are trying to squeeze the excesses out of the system using a combination of higher interest rates and Quantitative Tightening.

After central bankers brought about recessions in the past, the world economy was able to recover by adding more energy supply. However, this time we are dealing with a situation of true depletion; there is no good way to recover by adding more energy supplies to the system. Instead, the only way the world economy can recover, at least partially, is by squeezing some non-essential energy uses out of the system. Hopefully, this can be done in such a way that a substantial part of the world economy can continue to operate in a manner close to that in the past.

One approach to making the economy more efficient in its energy use is by greater regionalization. If countries can start trading almost entirely with nearby neighbors, this will reduce the world’s energy consumption…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

World Bank Warns Global Economy “Perilously Close To Falling Into Recession”

World Bank Warns Global Economy “Perilously Close To Falling Into Recession”

Six months ago, The World Bank slashed its global growth outlook for 2022 and 2023 to +2.9% and +3.0% respectively blaming “the war in Ukraine, lockdowns in China, supply-chain disruptions, and the risk of stagflation” for hammering growth.

Today, in its latest report on global economic prospects, The World Bank has slashed its growth forecast for 2023 by almost a half to just +1.7%, led by weaker growth in all the world’s top economies — the United States, Europe and China.

“Global growth has slowed to the extent that the global economy is perilously close to falling into recession,” the World Bank said.

That would mark the third-weakest pace of global growth in nearly three decades, overshadowed only by the 2009 and 2020 downturns.

The World Bank called on global central banks to remain alert to the risk that aggressively tightening monetary policy to fight inflation could spill across borders. The new report called for discussions between central bankers to “help mitigate risks associated with financial stability and avoid an excessive global economic slowdown in the pursuit of inflation objectives.”

“Weakness in growth and business investment will compound the already devastating reversals in education, health, poverty, and infrastructure and the increasing demands from climate change,” said David Malpass, president of the World Bank.

For now, those central bankers are facing their nemesis… Stagflation…

Though the United States might avoid a recession this year – the World Bank predicts the U.S. economy will eke out growth of 0.5% – global weakness will likely pose another headwind for America’s businesses and consumers, on top of high prices and more expensive borrowing rates.

The United States also remains vulnerable to further supply chain disruptions if COVID keeps surging or the war in Ukraine worsens.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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