Wolfstreet on European inflation: record highs all over the place ranging from 25% in Estonia (and over 20% in all the Baltics) to record 8.8% in Germany…and that this started BEFORE Ukraine SMO start in 2/24/2022
Runaway Inflation in the Eurozone wakes up even the Ridiculously Reckless ECB

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 14:20 utc | 103

The key is this: the tropics have not changed in temperature hardly at all. It is primarily the areas closest and at the poles.
That’s because the tropics – despite having the highest incoming solar input – also have the highest energy dissipation. Willis Eschenbach has posted a long series of articles which feature satellite data clearly illustrating this.
Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 14:11 utc | 101
That is good to know, thank you (assuming it is true). The air mass moves straight up around the equator, IIRC, Doldrums, dumps it back in the “horse latitudes”. I claim no real expertise on climate, so I’ll leave it at that. I just think putting all your bets on CO2 is a mistake. “You can’t do just one thing.” It’s a very complex system. Climate change is real, how to drive it somewheres in particular, we have no clue yet (no offense).
I expect it will have many adverse consequences, as we pay very little attention long-term local hazards when siting our housing.

Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 1 2022 14:31 utc | 105

@Bemildred #105
As I understand it, there are a number of atmospheric phenomena which move energy from the tropics towards the poles ranging from the Hadley cells downward.
There are several keys:
1) The poles are actually major dissipators of heat because they have low to no cloud cover. If you look at an actual satellite map – you can see a line of clouds right around the equator – this is the localized heat dissipation going on via thunderstorms. The David Siegel video I posted also talks about this line – basically the line does move up and down in a range around the equator for reasons not perfectly understood but the placement of this line directly affects weather in the temperate zones (i.e. US, Europe, South America etc).
2) A number of people have also noted that land vs. ocean is dramatically different. The Willis Eschenbach articles I have posted before show that the actual radiative flux over ocean is dramatically different than land. Sun on water, the heat gets converted into warm moist air but on land, the heat gets absorbed and re-radiated by dirt, plants, buildings etc. That’s why the land masses are all very “hot” by radiative satellite views vs. the ocean.
Which in turn prompts the question: just how much are we affecting temperature just by replacing plants with pavement and buildings, for example? The temperature change (i.e. the energy absorption and re-radiation impact) of dry land vs. moist land vs. pavement vs. buildings vs. wild land vs. cropland is dramatically different. The Urban Heat Island effect is precisely a real world example of this.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 14:45 utc | 107

Which in turn prompts the question: just how much are we affecting temperature just by replacing plants with pavement and buildings, for example? The temperature change (i.e. the energy absorption and re-radiation impact) of dry land vs. moist land vs. pavement vs. buildings vs. wild land vs. cropland is dramatically different. The Urban Heat Island effect is precisely a real world example of this.
Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 14:45 utc | 107
A very good question. A greater (much greater) emphasis on insulation and ventilation as opposed to electricity and heat engines to maintain stable temperatures would help a bunch too. And use a f**king swamp cooler where they work. So simple, so easy to fix, so cheap. Etc.
If temperatures in the temperate zone keep getting more erratic, we are going to need all of that.
The way we do housing is nuts, too.
But enough of this, thank you for your comments.

Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 1 2022 14:57 utc | 109

Blast from the past: Matt Stoller on Obama’s legacy (from 2017)
Hat tip to NC to bringing this back up
https://web.archive.org/web/20200419003856/https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/12/democrats-cant-win-until-they-recognize-how-bad-obamas-financial-policies-were/?outputType=amp
Democrats Can’t Win Until They Recognize How Bad Obama’s Financial Policies Were

But Obama can’t place the blame for Clinton’s poor performance purely on her campaign. On the contrary, the past eight years of policymaking have damaged Democrats at all levels. Recovering Democratic strength will require the party’s leaders to come to terms with what it has become — and the role Obama played in bringing it to this point.
Two key elements characterized the kind of domestic political economy the administration pursued: The first was the foreclosure crisis and the subsequent bank bailouts. The resulting policy framework of Tim Geithner’s Treasury Department was, in effect, a wholesale attack on the American home (the main store of middle-class wealth) in favor of concentrated financial power. The second was the administration’s pro-monopoly policies, which crushed the rural areas that in 2016 lost voter turnout and swung to Donald Trump.
…
In January 2009, Obama had overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress, $350 billion of no-strings-attached bailout money and enormous legal latitude. What did he do to reshape a country on its back?
First, he saved the financial system. A financial system in collapse has to allocate losses. In this case, big banks and homeowners both experienced losses, and it was up to the Obama administration to decide who should bear those burdens. Typically, such losses would be shared between debtors and creditors, through a deal like the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s or bankruptcy reform. But the Obama administration took a different approach. Rather than forcing some burden-sharing between banks and homeowners through bankruptcy reform or debt relief, Obama prioritized creditor rights, placing most of the burden on borrowers. This kept big banks functional and ensured that financiers would maintain their positions in the recovery. At a 2010 hearing, Damon Silvers, vice chairman of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to monitor the bailouts, told Obama’s Treasury Department: “We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can’t do both.”
Second, Obama’s administration let big-bank executives off the hook for their roles in the crisis. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) referred criminal cases to the Justice Department and was ignored. Whistleblowers from the government and from large banks noted a lack of appetite among prosecutors. In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder ordered prosecutors not to go after mega-bank HSBC for money laundering. Using prosecutorial discretion to not take bank executives to task, while legal, was neither moral nor politically wise; in a 2013 poll, more than half of Americans still said they wanted the bankers behind the crisis punished. But the Obama administration failed to act, and this pattern seems to be continuing. No one, for instance, from Wells Fargo has been indicted for mass fraud in opening fake accounts.
Third, Obama enabled and encouraged roughly 9 million foreclosures. This was Geithner’s explicit policy at Treasury. The Obama administration put together a foreclosure program that it marketed as a way to help homeowners, but when Elizabeth Warren, then chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, grilled Geithner on why the program wasn’t stopping foreclosures, he said that really wasn’t the point. The program, in his view, was working. “We estimate that they can handle 10 million foreclosures, over time,” Geithner said — referring to the banks. “This program will help foam the runway for them.” For Geithner, the most productive economic policy was to get banks back to business as usual.
Nor did Obama do much about monopolies. While his administration engaged in a few mild challenges toward the end of his term, 2015 saw a record wave of mergers and acquisitions, and 2016 was another busy year. In nearly every sector of the economy, from pharmaceuticals to telecom to Internet platforms to airlines, power has concentrated. And this administration [Obama’s], like George W. Bush’s before it, did not prosecute a single significant monopoly under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Instead, in the past few years, the Federal Trade Commission has gone after such villains as music teachers and ice skating instructors for ostensible anti-competitive behavior. This is very much a parallel of the financial crisis, as elites operate without legal constraints while the rest of us toil under an excess of bureaucracy.
…
Trump, who is either tremendously lucky or worryingly perceptive, ran his campaign like a pre-1930s Republican. He did best in rural areas, uniting white farmers, white industrial workers and certain parts of big business behind tariffs and anti-immigration walls. While it’s impossible to know what he will really do for these voters, the coalition he summoned has a long, if not recent, history in America.
…
There’s history here: In the 1970s, a wave of young liberals, Bill Clinton among them, destroyed the populist Democratic Party they had inherited from the New Dealers of the 1930s. The contours of this ideological fight were complex, but the gist was: Before the ’70s, Democrats were suspicious of big business. They used anti-monopoly policies to fight oligarchy and financial manipulation. Creating competition in open markets, breaking up concentrations of private power, and protecting labor and farmer rights were understood as the essence of ensuring that our commercial society was democratic and protected from big money.
Bill Clinton’s generation, however, believed that concentration of financial power could be virtuous, as long as that power was in the hands of experts. They largely dismissed the white working class as a bastion of reactionary racism.

’nuff said.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 15:08 utc | 111

And last but not least: stealing French Bulldogs has become a thing
3 French bulldog puppies stolen from Mountain View home
New arrest in French bulldog theft in SF Marina district
French bulldog stolen from boy at gunpoint in Oakland
2 French bulldogs stolen from car in store parking lot in Oakland
Thieves snatch French bulldog while owner loads car in parking lot in San Jose
Never Mind Your Wallet. Armed Robbers Want Your French Bulldog – NYTimes
5 tips to keep your French bulldog safe from robbers and thieves

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 15:17 utc | 113

Scorpion | Sep 1 2022 14:29 utc | 104
Neoliberalism seems to be a word with many different elements and meanings contained within its bowl of seven syllables
I guess like human spermatozoa, ism jism also gives birth to the malleable. I mean, ideology, by definition, involves lots of impractical theorizing(or brainwashing), so it’s logical that there’ll be many interpretations and much lost in translation. And like you say, just the optics can be bewildering.
Anyhoo, I do agree with you that we need to apply some new language to our social/cultural/political smorgasbord if we want to actually comprehend.

Posted by: john | Sep 1 2022 16:37 utc | 115

Sorry, the last line in my third paragraph should read “compare favorably to the mass immiseration…”

Posted by: Cabe | Sep 1 2022 16:59 utc | 117

@ c1ue | Sep 1 2022 14:11 utc | 101
It would seem that the greater rise of temperature at the poles and in temperate zones versus the tropics is confirmed by the much higher temperature the earth had during the Eocene Mamimum 55-49 million years ago, when the average temperature of the planet was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit/8.5 degrees Celsius warmer than now. At that time, there were no or almost no glaciers or polar ice caps on the planet, and tropical flora flourished in Antarctica. Yet life also was flourishing all over the planet, including in the tropics, which evidently underwent less temperature rise.
Because the temperature changes were gradual, life had time to adapt. At the PETM (Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55.5 million years ago), the average temperature spiked rapidly from 63 to 73 F/11 to 17 C over a period of just 20,000 years. Probably a major problem with our current global warming is its rapidity, which is projected to be faster than that of the PETM, which could be more disruptive to life that might be able to adapt to slower temperature rises over a longer time.

Posted by: Cabe | Sep 1 2022 17:25 utc | 119

sister article:
https://sputniknews.com/20220831/gorbachev-was-promised-non-expansion-of-nato-his-mistake-was-to-believe-it-ex-us-official-says-1100199807.html
“Roberts pointed out that President Reagan realized Gorbachev’s greatness. “Reagan also realized that Gorbachev was limited in his ability to end the Cold War by distrustful elements in the Politburo,” he went on to say. “President Reagan’s plan, in which I was a participant, was to rescue the US economy from “stagflation” and then to put pressure of a threatened arms race – Star Wars – on the Soviet Union in order to enhance Gorbachev’s position in favor of ending the Cold War than to subject the struggling Soviet economy to an arms race with a revitalized US economy.”
“Reagan, despite the CIA’s opposition and that of the US military/security complex, carried out his plan not in order to win the Cold War, but, as Reagan repeatedly stressed to all of us involved, to end the Cold War,” Roberts added. “None of us, Reagan included, had any idea of Soviet collapse. Our purpose was to halt a gratuitous conflict that threatened humanity with nuclear Armageddon.”
What the US authorities did not realize, Roberts said, was that hardline elements of the Soviet Communist Party thought that Gorbachev was making too many concessions to the West too soon and without sufficient reciprocal concessions and guarantees.
“Apparently, Gorbachev himself did not realize it. Reagan proceeded with care,” he said. “He invited Gorbachev to the White House.”
Roberts recalled that Reagan convinced the distinguished American pianist, Van Cliburn, to come out of retirement and perform for Gorbachev in the White House.
“Van Cliburn had won, with Khrushchev’s approval, the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958,” he noted. “In addition to classics of Russian composers, Van Cliburn regaled Gorbachev with Russian folk songs. President Reagan absolutely forbade any derogatory reference to the Soviet Union. Nothing, not even the CIA, was to prevent the end of the Cold War.”
Roberts shared that after Reagan’s second term ended, he had less connection with his successor, his former vice president, George H. W. Bush.
“But I know for an absolute fact that Secretary of State James Baker gave assurances to Gorbachev that if Gorbachev permitted the unification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch to the East,” he shared. “There is no doubt about this, despite the denials by American neoconservatives and Clinton regime officials.”
Gorbachev in an interview last December said he believed the Soviet Union could have survived even after the August 1991 coup as a Union of Sovereign States. A Gallup poll taken in 2013 revealed that a majority of residents in former republics regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“The Soviet Union collapsed, not because of Reagan, but because the hardline Communists, disturbed, as is understandable, by Gorbachev’s trust in Washington’s word, attempted a coup and placed Gorbachev under house arrest. It was this miscalculation that brought about the collapse of the Soviet government and the rise of Yeltsin, who, intentionally or not, essentially was under Washington’s control,” Roberts said.”

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 1 2022 17:44 utc | 121

Thanks for comments by c1ue and Scorpion about my “neoliberalism” info post.
Of course, “efficient market” theory ignores all manner of inconvenient realities: bubbles and busts in the stock markets, monopolies/monosonies/oligopolies in various sectors of the economy, anti-competitive behavior ranging from subsidies to tariffs, that individuals don’t have perfect information, that self-interested actors obscure information, that individuals and organizations do not always act logically, etc etc.
Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 14:18 utc | 102
SeanAU: So true that! Especially your point about Asymmetric information a key issue of how “neoliberals” get away with all manner of manipulations and deceptions imho. Also neoliberals do not even realize they are neoliberals or practicing that “thought collective ideology”.
Neoliberalism seems to be a word with many different elements and meanings contained within its bowl of seven syllables.
Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 1 2022 14:29 utc | 104
SeanAu: Yes!!!
My playful attempt at a (neoliberalism) definition:………..
Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 1 2022 14:56 utc | 108
SeanAU: Scorpion, I think that’s very good actually. Captures the core of it imo.
fwiw, in my own words, neoliberalism is insidious in nature. It is at it’s core dishonest. A great Lie. It’s a shape-shifter, chameleon-like. It is essentially valueless. As Scorpion said it’s utterly materialist with no noble idealism. Justice doesn’t exist except to the “rightness” of abiding by whatever the “market” deems as being socially acceptable ie desired.
The thing is that what is socially acceptable is being manipulated by neoliberal thought collective itself … (like a nefarious mist in the wind). An example of that is how marketing/public relations drives public opinion, not the other way around. How Focus Groups were used since the 1990s to define actual political party policies for elections, eg Clinton and Blair and then the Iraq war etc. and now with Ukraine, Russia, China etc.
Neoliberalism is essentially selfish, narcissistic, unethical and immoral. But also vacuous. A neoliberal can happily seem to exist in any political party, from fascist to the extreme left. It’s more a religion than a political ideology.
Neoliberalism hides in plain sight. It cannot be tied down to a specific political position or justifiable belief or higher ethical/moral values. It’s Republican and Democrat. Liberatarian and Woke. It’s both pro and con climate change science and action.
also see this excellent doco The Century of the Self – https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/ – which never uses the word neoliberalism per se but that is what it addresses imho, especially the major shifts since thatcher/Reagan in western / global politics, up to Blair/Clinton in the 90s.
It is a Fake Liberalism … in appearances only. Gives lipservice to notions of individual liberty as if it is a collective of individuals who make up “the Market” – and therefore it posits it’s the most Democratic of all ideas. But being Populist and the Tyranny of the Majority is NOT Democracy nor Liberalism or Justice as we know it historically. Therefore the NEO comes in – pretending / masquerading to be a new kind of Liberalism when it is not.
Taken to the desired ends it is extreme far right elitist dictatorial and fascist. It is an insane anti-humanist pathology imho. Created by mad men made of stone. Sociopaths and Narcissists all.
eg from search results
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.
liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics.
Liberalism is a philosophy that starts from a premise that political authority and law must be justified.
Liberalism is based on the moral argument that ensuring the right of an individual person to life, liberty and property is the highest goal of
In Neo-liberalism this is all dismissed and the Supremacy of the Market (as deemed by the neoliberal elites who deem what the Market desires becomes the Highest Power of the moment.
And that Power is deemed to be Infallible. No one no idea no group of people from any part of society can possibly Know More Than the Market …. the representative of all Individuals in Society at any moment in time.
Neoliberalism is irrational, illogical, and pathological. It’s an insane ideology. Yet it permeates every aspect of our lives today, in the West especially. That’s where it came from and where it is most powerful.
Citizens United winning in the US Courts is a classic Neo-liberal Project. As is Obama, Clinton and Biden another.
In the UK that article by Craig Murry points to how much things have changed, and again it’s “Neoliberalism” (thought collective) that has been the driving force of that change … slowly by steadily and never named as such.
SEE “Believing in essentially the same things now, I find myself on the far left — without ever having moved!
Here are a couple of extracts from the 1974 Liberal manifesto which may surprise you. This kind of language you will not hear from Keir Starmer’s Labour Party — indeed it would probably get you thrown out:….”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/08/31/craig-murray-marx-was-right/
Another article explains the driving Neoliberal approach from another angle: The ‘Noble Lie’ of a Democratic West by Jonathan Cook.
“As Westerners, we are deeply attached to the idea not only that we live in democracies but that our way of life is economically, socially and morally superior to that of citizens in authoritarian states.
Following on from these two assumptions is a further one — today held less consciously, for the obvious reason that it smacks a little too uncomfortably of racism — that we, as the people who fought for and created our democracies, are superior to those who did not.” [….]
“As if in recognition of this problem, the more liberal parts of the establishment media have suddenly rediscovered “class war” and popular revolt. Not to champion it, of course, but as a warning, a clarion call to their counterparts in the conservative media to lobby governments — for which they are the public relations arm — to advance policies that will dissipate the mood of rebellion and return us to the dying status quo. The illusion of benevolent democracy must be maintained at all costs.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/08/30/the-noble-lie-of-a-democratic-west/
Like I said above, the best descriptor for Neo-liberalism at work is Insidious.
If Neo-liberalism had a Coat of Arms it’s central figure would be The White Ant.
I highly recommend looking up Prof. Philip Mirowski for more info on Neoliberalism if interested in the topic. eg http://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mt-pelerin.pdf
Best to all.

Posted by: SeanAU | Sep 2 2022 2:02 utc | 123

China life expectancy now exceeds US’

The US’s life expectancy continued its decline from 2020 to 2021, dropping sharply to 76.1 years.
With the latest decline, US life expectancy is now at its lowest since 1996, according to new data (pdf) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Center for Health Statistics. It also means that the gap in longevity at birth between people in the US and China has now widened to a full year.

But that’s fine with the US oligarchy – it is deplorables that are dying from opioid overdoses, suicide and various other diseases of despair…

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 2 2022 13:08 utc | 125

Wind: blows any time, right? Unfortunately, the real world data from Texas shows that a lot of the time, the wind is blowing around midnight – also a not peak demand period.
Posted by: c1ue | Sep 1 2022 14:38 utc | 106
Interesting. Where may one find this alleged hot air fairy Texas wind report? Perhaps the observer chose to observe the plants during off-peak electric power consumption times. Since many are installed on restricted access private property.
A quick check over at ‘accuweather’ Texas wind map daily shows regular winds keep on blowing across the Texas panhandle(tornado alley) all day.
After all wherever one finds a wind electric power generator turbine installed. There be plenty of stable daily wind patterns. With very few calm windless days.
Just ten miles away there exist five such wind turbines supplying power to a seawater desal plant. I have only seen them stop in the morning fog for five out of 365 days. Once the rising sun burns off the fog. The late morning winds arrive to restart the stalled wind turbines.
And they are not very annoying even when the prevailing wind is directly in your face. One can of course hear the HGV jake brakes on the highway. Less than 150 feet away six days of the week every thirty minutes(sand quarry trucks).

Posted by: Bad Deal Motors On | Sep 2 2022 16:51 utc | 127

psychohistorian | Aug 28 2022 19:12 utc | 13
>… over your “read limit” at a site.
This tip might help: Post the item heading into search bar….. often the item will be syndicated… you may be able to open it elsewhere.
I try this with paywall stuff and it works 7/10 or so…

Posted by: Melaleuca | Sep 4 2022 9:06 utc | 129