Interesting link talking about how economic sanctions are the latest iteration of winning via aerial bombing Of Sanctions and Strategic Bombers

The air theorists’ faulty psychology reflected the general biases of their class: as a rule modernist intellectuals represented the masses as an easily manipulated and mercurial mob.6 But this was not the theorists’ only problem. Freedman and Michaels identify several conceptual flaws in their theory of victory that would pose problems for the belligerents even if enemy masses had acted as mob-like as the strategic bombers had hoped:
6
John Carey, The Intellectuals And The Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (New York: Faber and Faber 2005).
There was nothing stopping manipulative elites from using attacks on civilians to redirect anger away from themselves and towards a hated enemy.
There was no reason to believe that “a change in attitude [among the civilian population] would automatically result in a change in behavior—and that this would take the form of activism rather than apathy.”
There was no reason to believe that “the means would be available for mass activism to transform the government conduct of the war”—especially if said government was as coercive as its enemies portrayed it.7

Note this is not saying aerial bombing had no impact on World War 2.
What it is saying is that the original stated goal of winning through causing civilian populations to overthrow their rulers in anger and pain over aerial bombing proved to be false.
Now substitute “economic sanctions” for “aerial bombing” above.
Huh.

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 2 2022 15:26 utc | 4

Posted by: Leuk | Jun 2 2022 15:16 utc | 1
tabloid Express version: Biden takes aim at Britain – US threatens to STOP sharing intelligence over UK ‘obstacles’

Washington’s warning was prompted by a row over the takeover of British firm Ultra Electronics, a supplier of secret tech to nuclear submarines. Cobham, the private equity–backed buyer fund, is another UK defence business. However, if the deal goes ahead, it will in effect put Ultra under the control of the American Advent International, which has owned Cobham for the past 18 months and has already sold off most of its assets.

long story short: another antitrust farce from the makers of “free trade”

Posted by: sln2002 | Jun 2 2022 16:28 utc | 6

I find this hard to believe, we could be looking at increasing hostilities.
“U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said that the states will not regulate the firing range of THE HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems that will be delivered to Ukraine, this will be done by Kiev.
“We are talking about yesterday’s $700 million aid package, including HIMARS systems … The Ukrainian side will regulate the distance at which they will shoot,””
https://ria.ru/20220602/rszo-1792735619.html

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Jun 2 2022 17:49 utc | 8

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 2 2022 15:23 utc | 3:

As part of my due diligence for my latest (and probably last) project: I am looking very closely at the state of electricity and the grid.

Give yourself plenty of time to look closely at the ‘electricity and the grid’ thingy in the era of alternative energy. We are at the very beginning of the evolution, and have tons of ‘power physics’ to learn before finding the true essence of how to make interruptible generation resources work seamlessly on our grid. The large scale interconnection nature of our present grid grew out of city-based isolated systems way back in the early 20th century. It took until the 30’s for the Northeast network to form, as the poster child for other interconnected networks in the lower 48 states to copy afterwards, in the name of contingency diversity and enhanced reliability. It took decades of bumps and hit-ups to mature, under an era during which Power Engineering was a prestigious profession and attracted some of our best engineering minds. Today, ‘green energy’ is politically driven, dominated by demagogues and salesmen, not clear minded engineers (China is an exception, though). Many engineering aspects of the science have yet to be studied in serious manners, such as location diversity of resources to adhere to weather patterns in order to minimize interruptability of the output, storage efficiency and economics, complementarity of resources and control, etc. etc. There are very scanty IEEE papers on these subject matters, because we are not attracting enough bright engineers into the profession. There is a long way to go before “alternate energy’ can become a mundane stapple for us to enjoy.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Jun 2 2022 19:01 utc | 10

I woke up this morning worrying about Julian Assange. The USA doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to take possession of him. That has me thinking it may never take possession of him. Why bother bringing him to the USA or Guantanamo to stand trial? Just leave him in Bellmarsh prison in the UK to spend the rest of his life. The UK will be glad to keep him imprisoned indefinitely just in case the USA were to ask for him.

Posted by: Chas | Jun 2 2022 20:08 utc | 12

A question for USAns reading this. “did you notice that NZ PM Jacinda Ardern visited President Biden at the Whitehouse?”
I ask because I’m curious how much she is being put in your consciousness.

Posted by: tucenz | Jun 2 2022 20:37 utc | 14

Can anyone here confirm which Baltic ports bar RU ships? Regardless of container commodity?

Posted by: sln2002 | Jun 2 2022 21:54 utc | 16

Below is a link to a piece from The Register that is part of the asymmetrical neutron bomb going off in our civilization war
China’s top court calls for blockchain to record vast number of transactions
The take away quote

Published last week, the opinion* reveals that the Court has already recorded 2.2 billion items on a judicial blockchain. The Court now suggests 32 more initiatives, most of which concern using blockchain to enhance efficiency of, and trust in, the nation’s judiciary.
But the recommendations also go far wider, calling for the creation of “an interoperation collaborative mechanism with blockchain platforms”. That effort will allow “market regulation, property registration … and enable inquiry about and verification of information related to the ownership registration and status of transactions, such as basic business profile, variation of corporate equities, correlation between businesses, ownership of immovables and movables, financial leasing, precious metal trading, to facilitate the identification of ownership and transactions of property rights, so as to intensify the development of the classified and categorized supervision system based on data and credit, and to further improve the national business environment.”
The opinion also calls for blockchains to become part of China’s infrastructure to manage registration and protection of intellectual property, market regulation, property registration, data ownership, online data trading, transactions between financial institutions, and the insurance market.

Think for just a minute what sort of public transparency this provides to social intercourse of all kinds….
Where does lawyer’s discovery go if all evidence on blockchain?
How do you cut the corners off a digital coin to steal some of the intrinsic value?
The West will never go for this sort of technology application because it hinders their manipulation capabilities behind the curtain.
BOOM chakalaka

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 3 2022 1:24 utc | 18

Former Australian NSW Premier and Federal Labour Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, on the Israeli lobby after the recent change of Government:
For its part the Jewish News was to boldly state its preference for the Coalition only days before the election, quoting the Executive Council of Australian Jewry that “…we are still concerned at the prospect than an ALP government would unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state, withdraw Australia’s recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and revert to a voting pattern at the UN that is less sympathetic to Israel under the current government.”
https://johnmenadue.com/the-lobby-and-labor/

Posted by: Menz | Jun 3 2022 3:38 utc | 20

I meant the 2021 Texas Deep Freeze.

Posted by: Charles Peterson | Jun 3 2022 5:47 utc | 22

Posted by: Charles Peterson | Jun 3 2022 5:36 utc | 21
Actually since Texas is in “Tornado Alley”. The buildings erected are all cheaply made. On the basis, “No private cheaply /fast erected wood frame Building”. can withstand an F5 Tornado blowing through the town. The building standards in Texas , must so lax……….
In Oz, homes erected in the tropical cyclone areas. Are all built to a far stricter code standard. (Cyclones=Hurricanes)
Makes one wonder. Why the residents in Texas. Do not erect semi underground dwellings Covered by a large amount of insulating dirt. With no attached roof to be blown away.
Such dwellings by nature have stable all year round temperatures. External tall guyed stove pipes and venting. Light wells can be easily installed . Yet simple enough to use low cost heating and cooling. Yet one can even mow the roof top lawn too. As a bonus resistant to ‘drive by’ gun crazed Texan shooters .

Posted by: Bad Deal Motors On | Jun 3 2022 11:15 utc | 24

@Oriental Voice #10
I am presenting hard data – which is what informs my views on alternative energy, not ideology.
Texas has installed enormous amounts of alternative energy even as it has visibly retired fossil fuels. Overall, wind and solar PV now generate over 25% of all electricity in Texas – up from 11% in 2014.
Consider how much capital and human resources were deployed in order to make this happen; capital and human resources which were not deployed for other purposes like maintenance. 25GW of the total 34 overall alternative energy generation capacity was installed in the past 5 years alone.
Here are the relevant graphs for overall electricity generation in Texas in the past few years up to 2021:
Generation pic
Here is the breakout for wind:
Wind production and curtailment
Here is the breakout for solar:
Solar production and curtailment
The red is the amount of generated electricity thrown away. In 2021, Texas curtailed (threw away) approximately 7.4 terawatt hours of electricity.
Note this “throwing away” isn’t free. While wind and solar PV are not the only source of curtailment – overall curtailment was ~11.7 terawatt hours – it is absolutely driving up overall curtailment.
Basically 2/3rds of Texas curtailment is wind and solar PV.
The price paid for this curtailment ranges from $400 million to $2.1 billion depending on the specific definition used. And this matters: if we apply the proportional cost of curtailment for wind (6/11.7 * $400M = $205M) and divide this cost by the overall wind production ($205M / 92 billion kWh) – we get a wind curtailment cost of $2.23 to $11.70 per MWh.
EIA LCOE for wind is supposedly $34.37 source
I guarantee the LCOE doesn’t include curtailment costs, so curtailment alone adds 6.5% to 34% to LCOE.
Does LCOE also include the cost of backup and/or storage? I doubt it.
But even these costs issues at present aren’t the issue. Look at the historical curtailment vs. useable wind production graph again.
Note how the absolute amount of curtailment is rising every year. The amount of curtailment is a relatively small percentage (~6%) but it is scaling up and it is very costly. And yes, the absolute costs are scaling up too.
Is it likely that this curtailment percentage will fall if wind electricity penetration increases past 25%? Seems unlikely.
The report states also that wind is not good for peak load: most wind generation occurs overnight or off-season – a duck (or in Texas, dead armadillo) curve problem.
As I noted above, the overall curtailment is only 2/3rds due to wind/solar PV. The remainder is due to congestion issues: the US grid isn’t a “grid” per se, it is more like a very sparse branching tree or shrub. Congestion is when a given branch intersection is unable to handle the electricity throughput that the rest of the network asks of it.
At least some of this is due to the wind/solar PV – but more importantly: the grid is simply unable to handle even existing flows much less what is needed for say, full electrification of cars.
Overall, Texas has installed 34 GW of solar PV and wind vs. the all time peak demand day of 74.82 MW on 8/12/2019. (Note present solar PV+wind generation contribution is ~26%).
Can you see how the approach to net zero using solar PV and wind is going to require enormous grid changes? Plus magical battery storage or some other storage mechanism?

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 3 2022 15:31 utc | 26

@Bad Deal Motors On #17
There were going to be problems no matter what, but the complete and total failure of the Texas grid was significantly due to retirement of coal plants and replacement by wind/solar PV – both in direct resilience of the Texas power grid to negative effects and due to defocus on existing maintenance and resilience activities in favor of installing 25 GW of wind and solar PV in the 5 years leading up to 2021.
In other words, while the 2021 storm would have caused problems – it certainly would have been less bad if those coal plants were still online.
It is likely it may have been less bad if capital focus was not entirely on installing enormous amounts of wind and solar PV, but this isn’t 100%.

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 3 2022 15:51 utc | 28

I do believe that COVID was real (the impacts of “long COVID” is going to be a drag on society for years), and am not anti-vaccine, but have always been extremely uncomfortable with the MRNA technology usage. The FDA trie to keep the testing records secret or 75 years, but was forced to release them under FOIA. The details are extremely concerning, the impacts of the misuse of this technology will be with us for decades.
Dear Friends, Sorry to Announce a Genocide from Naomi Wolf

Posted by: Roger | Jun 3 2022 15:53 utc | 30

the war on violence in US schools, as the violence in Ukraine, can only be won by more violence, more soldiers, cops, guns, mercs, more armed “experts” with badges of authority herding surveilled gmo beef-fed sheep thru more and more gates and locks with taller fences.
what is a fence? a lock? a door? a security camera?
another cop. sitting around. doing nothing.
who knows that already if you can’t respond correctly to the “Papieren bitte” of the dogs in authority, you won’t get jack shit for help from officialdom in this country?
the principal achievement of capitalism, after the buffalo, etc., is the unbelievable waste of time. in American political parlance, people (not women of course or blacks or natives, but people nonetheless) form governments to “promote the general welfare”.
general welfare does not include baby food, but it sure includes a fuckton of guns. the US is so full of trash that it won’t even make a suitable compost heap at its imminent, eminent, much deserved and needed, death.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jun 3 2022 16:31 utc | 32

Well, I posted here thinking it was the Ukraine one, oh well. MilitarySummary on rumble just posted a Syria update. Succinct, he will have more updates on Syria in the future.

Posted by: paxmark1 | Jun 3 2022 17:09 utc | 34

Let’s all agree that we agree to disagree whether “mommy has two daddies” is suitable reading material. for anyone. let’s all fight and agree to fight about that, especially over the bodies of kids. should girls be boxing? what’s a girl?
BUT let’s also all agree that our children, who are our future, need more security. we cannot have a safe society in which just anyone can walk onto a school campus. anywhere.
we also need to do the same to the internet. filters, people. filters. you filter your water and air don’t you?
now where the hell is Shame Month? pride month. barf. what is there to be proud of? there’s some gay rats in the national Abbott Laboratory? but look! all addicted to Coke. all tased by the same cops. educated and surveilled by the same police state, now w/more ICE.
there’s a great review of “Brokered Bodies” up at wsws, about the gigantic and burgeoning “rehab industry” in the US. the big piece missed in the review, and almost entirely overlooked by that lot, is that this is the flip side of the Drug War. (they don’t voice opinions about things like drug legalization because of how distant they are from the actual working class. separate topic. stay on target.)
there’s not anything in this country that doesn’t run this way. money from disease and crime. you can see the ingredients if you take a moment to look at the words, not the glossy fiberglass coating, the words, on every box at the local grocery store. it’s all bread and circuses, now w/more gmo twinkies and ding dongs shoved in everyone’s mouths.
the populace, above all its “opinions,” are another resource to be exploited, like the trees and fish and snow.
America’s Cheetohs are crunchier than ever!

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jun 3 2022 17:35 utc | 36

since our elders and betters and creditors are busy informing us how awesome it is to win their approval at another one of their honeycomb hideouts, the spelling contest. buzz buzz over their garbage, little kids, soon more fly than bee.
enough 足夠的 足够的 Zúgòu de
tough 艱難的 艰难的 Jiānnán de
through 通過 通过 Tōngguò
dough 麵團 面团 Miàntuán
slough 泥沼 泥沼 Nízhǎo
(cf. rough, cough, stuff, slough off, etc.)
now Google can give me the traditional and simplified Chinese of these words, or so it claims. why haven’t these efficiency-mongers simplified the spelling of their own extraordinarily difficult language?
they aren’t even trying. non-native speakers learning English would immediately have a competitive advantage over the native herd. can’t let that happen. every other country in the world should take what they need of English, simplify the spelling, then teach their kids to read. watch how fast this indispensable American outhouse forgets how to wipe its own bum (oh wait, too late.)
like every social problem, the problem is multi-generational. too much effort is required to distinguish “son” from “sun”, even with computers to help us old lazy people out. despite how busy we are, this country is collapsing under how unfathomably uncreative it actually is. because the priesthood exists to recreate the priesthood, they keep the oogah boogah and social programming in place.
doesn’t mean that China or Iran or VZ or Pakistan has to do the same.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jun 3 2022 18:16 utc | 38

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 2 2022 15:23 utc | 3
Absolutely not. The outages (and they were long term) were due to the lack of regulations or enforcement and the failure of NUMEROUS gas-fired energy generation facilities to winterize. Period. Far West Texas and far East Texas were fine. They rely equally on some alternative forms of electricity generation and the only difference is they are federally regulated grids, the Eastern (regional) Interconnect and the Western (regional) Interconnect.
You’re clearly on a mission to push as much fossil fuel propaganda as you can and frankly it’s tiresome as hell. Take it from me – we were in our home for 2 days during the freeze without power or heat while the Republican fossil fuel hacks were busy pushing the narrative you’re still carrying on about. We finally found a place to stay for the remaining 3 days after the indoor temperature reached 34F. It was an absolute horrible failure to do due diligence because the offending generation facilities were incentivized NOT to do so. It was purely about the bottom line. Capitalism, baby.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 3 2022 19:02 utc | 40

Look at the data I post above: Texas installed 25 GW of wind or solar PV capacity in the 5 years leading up to 2021. That is a ginormous capital investment, as well as human resource deployment focus.
Posted by: c1ue | Jun 3 2022 15:33 utc | 27
Which has absolutely nothing to do with what happened, as has been explained to you. In fact the wind generation ‘plants’ off the Gulf Coast helped make up for some of the gas-fired plants that were down due to the lack of winterization, which was directly due to the profit motive. Unless ERCOT and the various energy sellers have vested interests in wind/solar, they will continue to subtly lay the blame at the feet of those programs.
The areas in green and red had very few problems at all
Do you not think that coal was retired in equal numbers for the Eastern Interconnection? The western region (El Paso) has different sources.

El Paso Electric now gets 66 percent of its power from natural-gas fired power plants located in El Paso County; 30 percent from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona; and 4 percent from several solar power plants, most of those in New Mexico, according to company officials.

How many gas fired plants in El Paso County failed?

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 3 2022 19:15 utc | 42

More information on the root causes of the Texas energy grid’s failure.
https://cz.boell.org/en/2021/03/19/texas-power-grid-failure-causes-lessons-learned-and-implications-eu-energy-market

In short, the root causes of the grid failure in Texas are threefold: the false promise of energy independence from federal regulation, the short-sighted deregulation of the energy market and the unwillingness to learn from similar incidents in the past.

Wind power played a tiny role.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/28/texas-power-outage-wind/

While Texas Republicans were quick to blame renewable energy during the storm — and have continued to target renewable energy for reform during this year’s legislative session — a recently updated report on the causes of generator outages during the week of Feb. 14 show that the most significant cause of the low power supply to the grid came from natural gas plants shutting down or reducing electricity production due to cold weather, equipment failures and natural gas shortages.
In ERCOT’s first preliminary report on the causes of the power crisis, released in early April, the grid operator included a chart that appeared to show power generation losses from wind as just slightly smaller than natural gas generation losses that week. But that analysis used the capacity of the state’s wind turbines to generate electricity, not what wind turbines would have actually generated if not for the outages.

and

The analysis also provided a more detailed picture of the reasons for natural gas outages, and showed disruptions in fuel supply to power plants were a bigger share of the outages than initially estimated. Fuel disruptions, mostly to natural gas plants, accounted for 18% of total outages at 8 a.m. Feb. 16, according to data provided by ERCOT — that’s 6% more than what ERCOT initially reported.

Paperwork and insufficient communications worsened the response

The desperate scramble to power up natural gas facilities again exposed a major structural flaw in Texas’ electric grid: Oncor and other utilities didn’t have good lists of what they should consider critical infrastructure, including natural gas facilities — simply because natural gas companies failed to fill out a form or didn’t know the form existed, company executives, regulators and experts said.
It’s the electricity customer’s responsibility to fill out the form, which is provided by electric utilities, usually online (ERCOT provides a second avenue with its own form). Retail electricity providers inform residents and businesses of their right to apply, according to a PUC rule.
At one point during February’s winter storm, more than half of the state’s natural gas supply was shut down due to power outages, frozen equipment and weather conditions, analysts estimate. More than 9,000 megawatts of power outages were caused by power plants not getting enough gas, enough to power 1.8 million Texas homes and accounting for at least 20% of the total outages during the week of the storm, according to ERCOT’s estimate.
As natural gas stopped flowing from the oil patch to power plants, big natural gas pipelines and production companies including Kinder Morgan, Targa Resources Corp. and Diamondback Energy Inc., kept Nye’s phone ringing off the hook during the storm, requesting that power be restored to their facilities, he would later tell state legislators at hearings the week after the storm.
“I don’t know where [power plants] are buying their gas, and I don’t know how that gas is getting to them,” Nye said during his testimony. “They’ve gotta tell me, or, whoever’s delivering that gas [does]. Take your pick.”

Again, how funny that this didn’t happen to the federally regulated interconnections/grids.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 3 2022 19:27 utc | 44

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jun 3 2022 19:24 utc | 43
I don’t know why I even bother. I won’t be responding to similar in the future. Blah blah blah (some equations) blah blah blah (insert another not-so-subtle attempt to blame alternative energy for something) blah blah blah.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 3 2022 19:32 utc | 46

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jun 3 2022 19:24 utc | 43
P.S. the deregulation was really kicked off by the idiot Rick Perry.

In 2002, the autonomy of Texas’ power grid allowed then-Governor Rick Perry to implement sweeping deregulation of the state’s electricity market. Perry and his Republican colleagues embraced a free-market approach whereby electricity is auctioned off in a wholesale marketplace coordinated by ERCOT. This neoliberal approach to energy distribution assumes that “markets are better at coordinating than centralized planning is” in the words of Leah Stokes, Professor at UC Santa Barbara.
In Texas, this system of de-centralized auctions means that the price of electricity, rather than the reliability and stability of its supply, has become the chief concern of energy providers. A race to the bottom ensued among Texas power generators as they fiercely competed with one another to offer the cheapest electricity possible and neglected crucial long-term investments into their power generating systems, such as protecting their transmission networks against severe weather conditions.
Additionally, the barely-regulated auctioning system meant that electricity prices can and do fluctuate wildly, especially in instances of a sharp increase in demand and insufficient supply. On 15 February 2021, in the middle of the snowstorms crippling the state, the wholesale price of one megawatt hour of electricity in Texas was $9,000 a whopping 10,000 % increase from the pre-storm prices of $50 per megawatt hour.

Bold face is mine, but isn’t it interesting? The whole thing is literally a case study on the failure of deregulation and “free markets” for mission critical services. Do state regulated services sometimes fail due to negligence or stupidity? Of course they do, but they are then held accountable and those providers must implement lessons learned. ERCOT, the PUC and energy producers had plenty of previous lessons and ample time to learn from them and implement fixes. Oh, sure some fools resigned from ERCOT’s board too, but they were mostly, if not all, people who didn’t even reside in Texas and had zero skin in the game except for profits.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 3 2022 19:40 utc | 48

let’s all fight and agree to fight about that, especially over the bodies of kids. should girls be boxing? what’s a girl?
@ rjb1.5 | Jun 3 2022 17:35 utc | 36
Wow, there sure is a lot of flagrant whatchacallphobia going around these days, as if nothing is of more intense personal interest to us than other people’s anatomies. There’s no reason my opinion should matter to anybody — that’s my opinion: People should make up their own minds and, incidentally, try to mind their own gosh-darn business. My opinion on gender-fluidity is it’s okay, nothing to be ashamed of, for goodness’ sake. Much of what I see promoted as “treatment” for gender issues looks like shaming and profiteering to me — employing state-of-the-art medical technology to force an ambiguous gender one way or the other. Rather than addressing the issue of society’s intolerance of ambiguity, we’ve got shysters selling treatments to accomodate either-or bigotry, it appears to me. I’d like to see a study of post-procedure patients, years later: Whether they regret it, whether the treatment made their lives happier.
This is a subject which makes almost everyone uncomfortable: There are objective metrics of gender ambiguity. Happy people can span the spectrum, but we also know our world is increasingly contaminated (speaking of Bayview Hunter’s Point) with endocrine disruptors, resulting in higher proportions of sexually ambiguous individuals. More people these days have had their gender somewhat chemically bent, at the very time such terror of neithers explodes all around us.
And here’s one more opinion, from the incomparable Susan Werner:
Herbicides (done made me gay)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxNpK06gcwg

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jun 3 2022 20:17 utc | 50

But yeah, it’s sure strange how we’re having 50- and 100-year weather events every 5 to 10 years, isn’t it?
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 3 2022 19:42 utc | 49
A few threads back, I was making the point that anyone claiming to have seen a worse drought in the Western US must be at least 1,200 years old, but people will continue to obsessively comfort themselves with absurdities, no matter how threadbare. The passage from a Matěj Jungwirth article you cite invokes “unwillingness to learn from similar incidents in the past”.
Can you detect a whisp of pollyannaism in that, to wit: What similar incidents? How can any structural engineer prepare for the unprecedented? You can’t just look into the past for tokens of concern — much worse stuff is just around the corner. I’m not faulting you or your sources for this tendency; it’s really hard to find geophysical honesty brutal enough to meet contemporary circumstance. Outspoken, honest prognosticators like KWA are rare, but compelling enough to leave me little time for anyone apparently dedicated to disinformation.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jun 3 2022 21:03 utc | 52

waynorinorway | Jun 3 2022 19:30 utc | 45
i don’t expect anyone w/facility in english to care. mission already accomplished.
moreover, adults are drowning in resentment. heaven forbid tomorrow’s kids not sit thru the same torture i went thru in school, b/c it makes my experience what it was all along: completely unnecessary.
there’s a history to spelling reform in the US. but today it’s just a click away. still doesn’t matter. no one will be allowed out of the rut the adults are in. about anything.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jun 3 2022 21:15 utc | 54

@pretzelattack #43
Yes, deregulation is to blame when Texas has a higher percentage of wind and solar PV than pretty much any other state.
No way that the billions spent on wind and solar PV could possibly have negative effects because those are the Holy Grail technologies!
The data shows clearly, otherwise.

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 3 2022 21:54 utc | 56

The ACLU had to decide between being true to its charter or becoming a political pawn for the liberals.
Any guesses which way they chose?
How A Celebrity Trial Exposed The Collapse Of A Celebrated Civil Liberties Group

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 3 2022 21:58 utc | 58

A question for USAns reading this. “did you notice that NZ PM Jacinda Ardern visited President Biden at the Whitehouse?”
I ask because I’m curious how much she is being put in your consciousness.
Posted by: tucenz | Jun 2 2022 20:37 utc | 14
You are the first to tell me of this, tucenz. And it may be so for other kiwis here. That’s because I shun mainstream media and am healthier for doing so. Also,only safe issues like gardening, births, deaths, marriages come up with family down there, otherwise they shun me. It’s just how it is.
I await the Awakening.

Posted by: juliania | Jun 3 2022 23:29 utc | 60

Bad Deal Motors On | Jun 4 2022 0:38 utc | 61
i hope no children are anywhere near you. what a dumbass comment.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jun 4 2022 2:09 utc | 62

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 3 2022 21:54 utc | 56
of course it is to blame, the power plants failed because the state did not and does not require them to spend money on updating their equipment, and ERCOT is a case of foxes guarding foxes.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jun 4 2022 2:21 utc | 64

waynorinorway | Jun 3 2022 19:30 utc | 45
i also really, really love the thought of fat ass americans on the couch munching on their KFC drooling over some kid from India whose parents forced him to learn to spell words like
appoggiatura.
don’t be surprised when the US Messiah turns out to be a pinball wizard named Tommy.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jun 4 2022 2:41 utc | 66

Putting out my general, periodic call for news of Ayatollah Mike:
Anyone seen Michael D’Andrea recently? Any news as to his whereabouts (in this world or the next)

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jun 4 2022 4:57 utc | 68

Posted by: Akash | Jun 3 2022 23:11 utc | 59
Don’t waste the time or pixels. c1ue has an agenda and he sticks to it without breaking character.
Never any straight answers either.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 4 2022 5:06 utc | 70

@30 Roger | Jun 3 2022 15:53 utc
Thanks for that link. It’s impossible to stay current with all the good sources we have bookmarked on the matter of the vaccines, we count on friends to tell us, as you did, when one of them makes an important post.
Naomi Wolf has been a strong voice cutting through the fog of the virus and the dementia of the propaganda related to vaccines. What she writes in this latest report from the trenches is horrifying. They are killing the babies, and they knew it from the beginning. How else to parse this, other than on scales of good and evil?
And it seems that you can’t tell anyone.
I posted the other day about FLCCC’s new protocol to treat the vaccine-injured (who are in the many tens of thousands), and I sent the link to a friend. She replies that she now has two close friends with injuries from the vaccine (one with epileptic episodes) – but that neither of them wants to hear one bad word about the vaccine. They refuse to put 2 + 2 together.
~~
Over on the Ukraine thread at the moment, many people report the same dissonance among friends and family with geopolitics. The media has done too good a job of saturating the culture with lies.
~~
That Naomi Wolf link again, for later readers:
Dear Friends, Sorry to Announce a Genocide – It’s Really True: They Know they are Killing the Babies [May 29, 2022]
She is speaking out of her appalled shock, trying to find a way to comprehend the criminality revealed. The findings she relates along the way from those who are studying the Pfizer documents are horrifying. The scale of these crimes is almost impossible to grasp.
I understand her shock. I am actually at a loss for words, as the meaning of what has happened, and what insists on continuing to happen, cannot yet even find a way to settle in my mind.
If you have any interest in this matter, I recommend the article.

Posted by: Grieved | Jun 4 2022 5:12 utc | 72

@ Grieved | Jun 4 2022 5:12 utc | 72 with the Naomi Wolf link again
I am one of the later readers, thanks….I passed it on
It is my understanding from somewhere that the pharma folks get total indemnity from prosecution across all age groups by getting their drugs into kids but not sure about pregnant women…sigh
How can this sort of genocide be going on? We really are a sick species given the perpetrators of this genocide are doing so consciously…..the depths of depravity when the God of Mammon is your religion.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 4 2022 5:34 utc | 74

@ Aleph_Null | Jun 4 2022 5:54 utc | 75 with the call of casually abusing the term genocide but does not provide an accurate alternative.
Your writing makes it sound that just because Big Pharma’s actions are not specifically “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” (definitive words of the 1948 convention) that they can kill humans in significant number and not be called out about it.
Please provide the MoA barflies with an accurate term to describe the deaths caused by Big Pharma’s application/test of drugs on the populace around Covid…..so we are not so shamefully repellent as you write so passionately. I would posit that like many types of genocide, we may never know good numbers about what is happening or has happened with Covid related deaths.
I am curious to know if you think Covid occurred naturally or is the result of human efforts?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 4 2022 6:17 utc | 76

Considerate adults who want to be taken seriously don’t compose torrents of facts freshly plucked from their nether regions.
Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jun 4 2022 5:31 utc | 73
Don’t waste the time or pixels. c1ue has an agenda and he sticks to it without breaking character.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 4 2022 5:06 utc | 70
Tiresome and officially on ignore.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 4 2022 5:08 utc | 71

I’ve found that ignoring both Scorpion and c1ue has reduced my reading time here by about half with no loss of info.
The only negative is a scrolling blister.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Jun 4 2022 7:02 utc | 78

Possibly some barflies are mystified by this methane business. While we were absorbed in the Warrior’s “face-slapping” fourth quarter of their first game in the playoffs, celebrity spats, and the very old Queen’s “mobility”, astonishingly massive permafrost-slumps keep etching themselves into the surface of our globe. The spooky leviathan pictured in this article is shaped just like a stingray.

“Permafrost is a sleeping giant,” explains Hugelius; as well as being vast and full of carbon, it responds very slowly to changes in the environment. “So we still haven’t really seen the permafrost wake up even to the warming that we’ve done so far.”
If, theoretically, we stopped global warming in its tracks today – at +1.2C above pre-industrial levels – the permafrost would still keep thawing for up to 200 years and emitting greenhouse gases for a long time.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/06/04/will-more-mouths-to-hell-open-up-because-of-climate-change-we-asked-a-permafrost-expert
Nothing like this has ever happened before, not in human history. The trajectory of atmospheric methane, now at 1,900 ppt, is notably steeper than other GHG’s. This is what exponential growth looks like:
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/
I see a global acceleration like that, I’m looking to find out why. On-the-ground accounts match in-the-air metrics. How bad can it get:
(1) Can permafrost methane release become self-sustaining?
(2) Is it, perchance, already self-sustaining?
Very seldom do I encounter people approaching such questions, which nobody wants to weigh soberly. My difficulty with Michael Hudson’s commentary: Hudson foresees a thirty-year continuation of human existence — something I find unlikely, given the presence of exponential, self-sustaining Arctic methane release.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jun 4 2022 8:14 utc | 80

Give me something with a head on it.
Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jun 4 2022 7:20 utc | 79

You live in Richmond I think. I was going to suggest running over to
Lucky Lanes in San Pablo for a Dos Equis but it’s been replaced by a
casino. You could still get a beer there I’m sure. Just leave some cash
in a sock for when you get back home.:)

Posted by: waynorinorway | Jun 4 2022 9:44 utc | 82

The U.S. is having to face some mean karma for ALL those years of brutality and outright murder of so many millions. It will not go easy on a nation as hostile as the U.S. has been over the past 70 or so years. Internal and largely unresolved contradictions with regard to race and the accumulation (hoarding) of wealth have made the current social climate one of tremendous insecurity and avoidance.
What kind of solutions will be found to sooth this outright hatred too many folks in the U.S. have toward each other and the rest of the world still remains hidden from view. But fear not, solutions will be found.

Posted by: thecelticwithinme | Jun 4 2022 11:36 utc | 84

@Tom_Q_Collins #69
You have yet to provide any actual detailed response to my data nor even bother to read what I posted, as such, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
All you unicorn fairy dust acolytes can do nothing but regurgitate what you read on Twitter or find on Google Search.
No personal brain activity required.

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 4 2022 13:11 utc | 86

@Aleph_Null #81
Typical idiotic nonsense.
It is quite clear you have no idea what you are regurgitating about.
Have you ever run MODTRAN? Perhaps then you might understand the difference between what methane does as a greenhouse gas (hint, it is not very significant) vs. what the consensus then does with its actual effects to extrapolate into DOOM!
That’s the problem with intellectual discourse these days: the consensus side is exclusively populated by those repeating what they are told.

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 4 2022 13:17 utc | 88

And back in the real world – as opposed to the future (any day now) fantasy unicorn fairy dust world:
More gas info – dailymail.co.uk
Yes, Daily Mail, I know but ignore the headlines and read the data

Supplies at the US’ refineries, however, remain tight. On Thursday, a US weekly inventory report showed crude stock had fallen by a more-than-expected 5.1 million barrels. Gasoline inventories have also dropped to dangerous levels.
…
Currently, the national average stands as nearly double the $2.41 average seen during former president Donald Trump’s last month in office. [Note: gas prices from 3/2020 to 1/2022 were COVID reduced, but they were still in the $2.50 to $3 range before COVID]
The rising rates have seen fuel supplies at US and Canadian refineries that normally supply Eastern US gas stations dwindle to crisis levels, which experts say could fall below levels seen in 2008, when the country experienced its worst recession since the Great Depression.
‘If exports persist at this elevated pace and refinery runs – already near the top range for reasonable utilization rates – fall within our expectations, gasoline inventories could continue to draw to levels below 2008 lows and retail gasoline prices could climb to $6/gallon or even higher,’ the analysts wrote.
At that rate, the analysts write, total US gasoline inventories could soon fall to levels not seen since the 1950s – an occurrence that would see gas prices swell even further.
Analysts at JPMorgan warned late last month that the national average could surpass the $6 mark by the end of the summer as the situation continues to worsen on an almost daily basis.
‘There is a real risk the price could reach $6+ a gallon by August,’ Natasha Kaneva, head of global oil and commodities research at the prominent investment bank, told CNN last week.
The uptick also saw the price of gas since top $4-a-gallon in each of the 50 states last week – a dubious achievement never before reached. [<--- reference Biden "I did that" sticker...] ... JPMorgan also warned that East Coast gasoline inventories are at their lowest level in more than a decade, due to higher-than-normal exports of gasoline triggered by rising gas costs overseas in Europe - an uptick worse than the one seen in the US. ... 'If exports persist at this elevated pace and refinery runs - already near the top range for reasonable utilization rates - fall within our expectations, gasoline inventories could continue to draw to levels below 2008 lows and retail gasoline prices could climb to $6/gallon or even higher,' the analysts wrote. ... Morgan warns that unless refineries 'immediately' nix most of its exports and shift toward producing its own gasoline, 'US consumers should not expect much in the way of relief in prices at the pump until the end of the year.'

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 4 2022 13:29 utc | 90

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 3 2022 21:52 utc | 55
Coal fired power stations produce a very large tonnage of solid waste. Well in excess of one million tonnes per year. This includes a very dangerous fine particulate ash collected by the chimney stack filters and washers.
Another well known fact that the coal fired plant boiler waste contains concentrated radioactive waste. Which means it is and remains well above existing background radiation levels for a very long time indeed. Due the half -life radioactive isotope rule. The so called clinker waste should not for safety reasons be recycled into concrete.
Question in whose backyard can I bury well in excess of one million plus tonnes annually of very dangerous radioactive coal fired boiler waste safely ? Complete with a sign do not disturb for several thousand years in the future. Could I dump this million tonne plus pile of radioactive waste in your back yard? Could I dump the next years pile of waste in the State/Federal Republican rep’s who proposed this “enrich my mate” scheme backyards? The answer will be ……………
For any short/long term mothballed coal fired power plants. Given age of the equipment installed and the actual condition of the plant. Order up million plus of tonnes of coal. To completely fill the site bunker. Given the variables time for safe full power output can be as low as six months to several years.
What very grand generous to a “T” concept of “fatten my re-election donor mates back pocket”. Let’s bring back all coal fired mothballed power stations. Don’t mention where to bury the million tonnes plus annual radioactive coal waste from each plant. The total plant overhaul and refurbishment costs. The total cost of rail freight shipping. Costs for the tens of millions of tonnes coal to burn! Don’t mention the time required to bring this dimwit grandiose “Dumb and Dumber” scheme to fruition. As for the consumer they have extremely very deep pockets(not) to finance this plan too.
In the interim . Poor USSA a former world’s super power in rapid decline. Is facing an economic massive stagflation depression. Plus large scale unemployment. In reality this era was last seen after the election of a Republican President “Richard Milhous Nixon” in 1968..
Duck and cover incoming…………..
Truth is truly stranger than fiction………………..

Posted by: Bad Deal Motors On | Jun 4 2022 13:57 utc | 92

@Bad Deal Motors On #92
Coal produces waste, but so does manufacturing tens of thousands of wind turbines and millions of solar panels.
43 million tons of waste produced in 2050 by wind turbines
Coal does have one major benefit: you can store coal by literally just piling it up outside the power plant.
I have no objection to replacing coal with a better technology. The problem is that it is very, very unclear that wind and/or solar PV is better beyond a fraction of base load.
And I can detail it further: that fraction is also season-dependent on top of being not reliable for any given hour of any given day/month/year.
And this matters because electricity is basically not storable. Generation has to match demand, and demand varies enormously even over the course of a single day:
Texas Daily Net Load 2021 – IMGUR
The report further notes that minimum net load (i.e. lowest point of electricity consumption during a day) has fallen in recent years – likely a direct function of offshoring of manufacturing.
Nor am I the least bit optimistic that cheap, high volume electricity storage is EVER going to happen.
The highest end rare earth batteries store about 1/3 the energy density of gunpowder today.
Increasing energy densities significantly more will result in literal bomb-level energy density – that doesn’t bode well for safety or stability, even ignoring cost and material availability issues (which are also enormous and unsolved).

Posted by: c1ue | Jun 4 2022 14:43 utc | 94

I should also note that a pragmatic attitude is vital when investing in alternative/green energy, and that utopian visions regarding its current viability risk cratering entire economies at a national scale. But continuing investment is essential in my mind, even if those investments have a less than attractive ROI in the near or even medium term.

Posted by: Akash | Jun 4 2022 15:08 utc | 96

@ Akash | Jun 4 2022 14:52 utc | 95
People who attempt honest, thorough, full life-cycle analyses of the energy and material resource inputs of solar PV — people like Ozzie Zehner, known for the book Green Illusions and the documentary film Planet of the Humans — are only occasionally heard, inevitably dismissed, ignored, forgotten — even accused of being pawns of fossil fuel!
To honestly analyze whether so-called “renewables” have any conceivable prospect of reducing GHG emissions is effectively verboten. To so much as notice the continual exponential growth in GHG, despite all “renewable” efforts? Why, that’s just rude! Gets in the way of timely profits for our great green manufacturers.
I have to put “renewables” in quotes, because it’s such an insultingly obvious lie. So very obvious because the basic concept violates the second law of thermodynamics — called entropy. Where in the world can we find a worse lie than the label “zero emissions vehicle” on something powered by a recharged battery? People are so childish, they want to think energy comes from green ledgers, or something — from make-believe. Time to get real.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jun 4 2022 15:19 utc | 98

@Aleph_Null #98
I should have put ‘green’ in quotes in my earlier posts, since there is no energy generation tech that through manufacture, application, and obsolescence won’t result in an adverse environmental foot-print. But I do think that wind and solar pv effects on the environment are comparatively less malignant than fossil fuel based energy generation, though I would be curious if my latter assumption is currently contradicted by known facts.

Posted by: Akash | Jun 4 2022 15:34 utc | 100