Blood and Gore Shown the Door

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary” - H.L. Mencken

In 2007, ignorance was bliss amidst the coming storm. The select few who saw the approaching housing and financial market crash early traded on it and made billions. Hedge fund executives Michael Burry and Steve Eisman are legendary for having done so. They were among the first to discover that subprime mortgages, the housing market and many Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) were built on a foundation of sand. Many thought they were crazy, and some friends and colleagues distanced themselves. How did they see what others missed? They actually looked where most had not.

Moral hazards were rampant, from home buyers (borrowers) to appraisers to the mortgage brokers and lenders. And, of course, to Wall Street investment banks and bond rating agencies like S&P, Moody’s and Fitch. Democrats and social justice groups bent the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beyond reason. Republicans, banks, Wall Street turned the situation into a three-ring circus.

Both parties had fingerprints all over the disaster. After the fact, it was easier to figure out who was not in on the grift than who was: The unfortunate middle-class homeowners who lost their homes and had their credit wrecked were the biggest losers (and speculators deservedly so).

What was always “unsustainable” (low interest rates, lax mortgage underwriting, nosebleed leverage by financial engineering) finally crashed under the weight of its own absurdity, illuminating what should have been obvious all along.

Foundation Concerns | Shutterstock

It is 2007 all over again, only this time the dark clouds are bankrupt Western environmental and energy policies. Few realize it yet, but we saw it coming 20 years ago.

The foundation of sand on which the entire “existential crisis” that isn’t – climate change – has just been quietly washed away, despite the usual attempts to paper it over with more fear. Who did it? The very same global political science organization that started the entire premise over 30 years ago, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC, or IPCC).  A documentary film produced by most unlikely critics in 2020 that few have seen foretold this day.

In 2020, we saw Jeff Gibb’s Planet of the Humans in the first twenty-four hours after its release. We were floored by its detailed take-down of wind, solar and biomass, and given who produced it (Gibbs and Michael Moore), we thought we might have a Covid-19(84) fever. The dirty secrets of “renewable energy” we had been screaming about in vain from mountains tops since 2007 were displayed in all their shocking glory.

Who was offended by Planet, and how they reacted, were telling. Josh Fox, Director of the environmental documentary “Gasland” (fracking, with tap water on fire in Pennsylvania) was among the quickest, most vocal critics. “Environmentalists” howled bloody murder, many openly lambasting Moore and Gibbs as “traitors”.

The EcoOutrage Machine succeeded in temporarily getting the film taken off the internet. YouTube thought better of the decision after they were crucified for it, but the fact that pressure from unhappy environmentalists caused them to pull it in the first place was a major tell. If you haven’t seen the film, we highly recommend it.

This week, energy writer Robert Bryce had Jeff Gibbs on his Power Hungry podcast. Among other revelations, Gibbs, a life-long environmentalist, said “both sides are equally insane” and “it ain’t gonna be a world powered by, you know, solar panels and wind turbines that gets us out of this.”

We differ from Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore on many issues, to say the least. If we understand their argument, they believe human “overshoot” (people, consumption) has overwhelmed earth’s ecosystems and we are on a rapid path toward resource exhaustion and collapse of the human race. They seem to believe some form of EcoStatism is the answer, where government force and control will solve all environmental problems.  Gibbs’ comments have a tinge of Malthusian “overpopulation”.  environMENTAL readers know where we stand on that. That said, we would not argue with their take on profligate waste, conspicuous consumption and the need for more sustainable use of all resources.

On Bryce’s podcast, Gibbs refers to Bill McKibben as “Environmental Jesus”. As for the proposition that green energy and neo-environmentalism will save us, he says “the green emperor has no clothes”. We agree.

When two ideologues as diametrically opposed as Tucker Carlson and Jeff Gibbs agree that “renewables” as a “solution” to the climate “crisis” are a scam, it’s a signal about how Twilight Zoned the world has become.  But the fact that they agree suggests there is something more going on here.  And more importantly, something with which we can work.

The problem keeping us from environmental/energy policy wisdom isn’t simply Democrats vs. Republicans. It isn’t EcoSocialists vs. Religious Conservatives, Social Democrats vs. AfD, Tory vs. Labor. It is just another age-old game of Rich vs. Poor. 

Both sides pretend to stand for the poor, professing to save them while flying around in private jets. Both gorge themselves at the Green Grift Cafe in a system they both had a hand in creating, at taxpayer expense.

John Kerry and Al Gore are “saving the planet”. Warren Buffett builds wind farms to save the planet, too. Just kidding. He builds them for the wind Production Tax Credits (PTCs) noting, “that’s the only reason we build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” The Oracle of Omaha wins either way, hauling oil on his Burlington Northern Santa Fe trains when he isn’t collecting wind PTCs. Charles Koch makes glass for solar arrays because progressive environmentalists forced a transition to solar, and for the same reason a dog licks himself: he can.

Need another example? Corn ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland and Chuck Grassley on one side, the Renewable Fuels Association on the other. The former proclaiming “energy independence” and the latter "saving the planet”.  Outcome? Both did neither. Consumers pay more for fuel, the planet is not being saved, wildlife habitat is being destroyed, ecosystem services lost, and dwindling bird populations pushed into Threatened/Endangered Species status.  See the game?

Solar and biomass subsidies? Ditto. Elon Musk and EV’s with $7,500 tax credits for the rich who can afford $100,000 green virtue-symbols on wheels, while 15 year olds die in tunnel collapses to feed their hunger for cobalt? Now you get the picture.

With a hat tip to BF Randall, the “Rube Goldberg” ruse has reached its apex. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a political leader with testicular fortitude, was the canary in the cobalt mine just before COP27 in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt last fall. Amidst Europe’s scramble to cover its self-inflicted energy suicide (still playing at a theater near you) while hoarding all the available natural gas and oil it could to save its hide at the expense of those below the equator, he said:

"We will not accept one rule for them and another rule for us. Europe's failure to meet its climate goals should not be Africa's problem. It is morally bankrupt for Europeans to expect to take Africa's fossil fuels for their own energy production but refuse to countenance African use of those same fuels for theirs."

Irrational Western environmental/energy ideology will soon collapse under its own weight, arrogance and the fear mongering it overplayed. The poor people of the world are beginning to realize they are the losers in a political game of Hatfields vs. McCoys.  

Sri Lanka collapsed partly because of irrational western environmental and energy ideology (in that case, organic farming policy/nitrogen reduction). Pakistan could not afford natural gas for its electricity generation plants last summer and fall because of it. People in Poland sat in their cars for three days last fall, reminiscent of Communist times, to buy coal because of it.  German industry is fleeing to other countries because of it.  Dutch farmers have blocked highways with tractors and dumped manure because of it.  In the ultimate irony, global CO2 emissions actually rose last year because of it, despite ~$5 trillion spent worldwide over the last 30 years to avoid exactly that outcome. Our prior work covering many of these abounding ironies wasn’t just to poke fun at regressive progressive environmentalists. Res ipsa loquitur.

This winter in Germany the world watched the ultimate irony play out as a theatrical drama. When Greta Thunberg and her traveling circus showed up to make their last stand at the Alamo – the Garzweiler coal mine where wind turbines were knocked down to dig up more coal – we couldn’t have asked for a better display of how the Green Zombie is defeating itself with physics and economics.

Got a Bit Carried Away | AP Photos

Germany and Europe still haven’t fully seen the errors of their ways, but the developing world has, and sees through the game. Indonesia has reacted swiftly, setting up long-term contracts for thermal coal and quickly laying plans to construct coal-fired power plants. In full Western fashion, Indonesian leaders announced a new “Green Industrial Park” to support metals mining for electric vehicles demanded by the advanced world. The electricity will be provided by the new coal-fired power plants, but will “eventually” shift over to “100% renewable energy.”  Note to European Charlaticians™ and “environmentalists” - when Indonesia is punking you, the gig is up.

President Museveni’s words and Indonesia’s actions prove the old adage: fool us once, shame on you. But there will be no fooling us twice. Pound sand.

The premise of a 30 foot rise in sea level, a global temperature increase of 11 degrees Fahrenheit, and a planetary apocalypse fear mongered the world into climate “action.” Last week, the entire foundation of sand was laid to waste by the very political body (masquerading as scientific) that created the mess in the first place.  The legacy media unsurprisingly reported around it with the usual “ticking time-bomb” pablum.

The IPCC released it’s “Synthesis Report” (summarizing its “Sixth Assessment Report” on Climate Change) last Monday. The new report uses a graphic/statistical gimmick attempting to avoid admitting that the “existential climate crisis” scare starting around 1995 might have been a bit over dramatized. Their worst-case scenario is now so unrealistic that they’ve quietly omitted it out of key figures in the report.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist – or climate scientist - to see it.

IPCC’s CO2 scare scenario for the last 20+ years, known most recently as RCP8.5, has magically disappeared from a key figure in their new report. The diagram below, from their last Assessment Report in 2014, graphically depicted the annual amount of global greenhouse gas emissions from RCP8.5 reaching ~130 Gigatons (Gt, in CO2 and “e” for “equivalents) by 2100.  THIS is the scenario that was used by legacy media, Charlaticians™, geopolitical organizations, celebrities, certain scientists, Hollywood and environmental non-profits to scare the world into “climate action”.  And THIS is the scenario that remained gospel until last week, including when the U.S. squandered $369 billion on more of the same “climate change action” in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Source | UN IPCC AR5

And below is a graph from last week’s IPCC Synthesis Report. Somehow, abracadabra:

• The scale of future emissions (Gt’s CO2, left axis) has been cut by almost HALF.

• The scary planet and humanity-ending RCP8.5 scenario not only disappeared but would actually be well outside the 95% confidence band if represented in the (top of pink cone on) new graph (meaning ~1%, or less probability).

• The current emissions trajectory to the year 2100 wipes out the worst predictions of the last 25 years – RCP8.5

Source | UN IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report

The new Synthesis Report now shows we remain on a trajectory of ~60 Gt’s CO2e annually, which is a level less than half of RCP8.5 at the year 2100. This means human CO2 emissions are near their peak according to the IPCC’s own latest assessment, without need for more immediate, draconian, wasteful, non-solutions or ideologically-driven mandates. Contrast that with how all the legacy media is reporting it (and watch how they continue to do so).

This was the UN and its IPCC grudgingly not only having to say, but show, the quiet part out loud. The world wasn’t led to believe that the worst scenario – RCP8.5 -  was a remote scenario, we were led to believe it was more or less THE scenario.

To be fair to climate scientists, most did not drive the fear mongering bus. The boogie monster zombies drove it for them. It was useful as a tool of fear for them, and even better, it was hard to disprove.  That’s in short how we ended up with the present meta-belief that every negative weather impact is caused by human activity.

When Everything Is Proof of Your Hypothesis, Nothing Is

We keep hammering our primary concern about misguided environmental and energy policy: the consequences for the world’s poorest. That thread that runs through virtually every one of our posts since our December launch.

Environment, energy, economics, physics, risk, cost/benefit, priorities, and resource limitations are not Left/Right political games. Advanced nations pretending so better wise up fast, before the developing nations and the world’s poor do it for them.

Hunger, privation, access to clean water, sanitation, access to affordable/reliable/abundant/on-demand energy are all more pressing to the developing world than climate change at the moment.  We can deal with all of them, including climate change. But not with Rube Goldberg machines, human food fueling vehicles, and diffuse, intermittent energy preventing industrialization and perpetuating poverty.

In our last post, we showed that the most ethical way to reduce birth rates is by helping the developing world to become wealthy. That will bend future population and emissions curves morally, with no need for government control.

Western civilization spent ~$5 trillion to over-subsidize wind, solar and biomass past their point of diminishing returns, driving up electricity costs, destroying wildlife habitat, not reducing emissions, destabilizing electric grids, and inviting a nuclear-armed tyrant to invade a neighbor. Further subsidizing them into marginal locations with even lower capacity factors is ignorant and economically destructive. Or worse.

All the while, we under-subsidized nuclear power and missed a 25-year head start opportunity. We should have been leveraging its physics to decarbonize the low-hanging fruit of electricity generation (~20% of global primary energy) and certain industrial processes with high CO2 emissions.  Doing so would also have had the advantage of getting us closer to scaling synthetic fuels, producing hydrogen from electrolysis and leveraging other opportunities from advanced nuclear power. All these things will eventually occur, unless we ignorantly stop them. (And if we do, that will be the ultimate line of demarcation between true environmentalists and “neo-environmentalists.” And virtually 100% on the backs of the latter.)

There are 8 billion people on earth. 3 billion are dirt poor and 3 billion more aren’t far behind. Billions live in energy poverty, 800 million in chronic hunger. They are being kept that way partly by misguided western environmental and energy policy.

While the divided western world runs around shouting “Fascist” at one another, they’re all pawns in a game. Oligopolies collaborate with government, neutralizing out-of-favor groups through censorship and government-funded science, picking winners and losers, and both benefitting from it.  Do you think Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock loses sleep worrying about “the environment”?  How about Al Gore and David Blood of Generation Investment Management, or John Kerry or Charles Koch?  Really?

The whole enterprise reeks of EcoFascism to us. While it might be fair to say one side has turned it into an art form, to pretend the other side hasn’t fed at the same green trough would be dishonest.

EcoFascism isn’t necessarily a conspiracy emanating from a smoke-filled back room at Davos.  Like other insidious forms of soft Fascism of the last 50 years, it can be a self-inflicted death by a thousand cuts, a voluntary crawling into the green pot like lobsters, believing that Big corporations and Big government have only our best interests at heart.

Instead, EcoFascism distorts markets and critical price signals, allows losers to pick government, drives up inflation and the cost of electricity and fuel, all without doing what it promised - reducing CO2 emissions and saving the planet and humanity. In the developing world, it does all this and worse to the poor, all under the faux altruist label of “Green”.

97% of people living today may never reach the living standards of most of the people reading this. They are human pawns in a theatrical production of Hatfields vs. McCoys set up and perpetuated by both sides.  And they have not understood it, until now.

As the world’s poorest figure out that all the crisis mongering around climate has constrained their ability reach the highest living standards, we wouldn’t want to be John Kerry or Klaus Schwab. Or Warren Buffett or Charles Koch. But we really wouldn’t want to be Blood and Gore.

Blood and Gore | Planet of the Humans

The developed world, despite its ideological divide, should equip the world’s poorest with the tools necessary to achieve modern western living standards. And we can do so while being good stewards of the environment. But not with a strategy built on a foundation of sand.

The developing nations are now beginning to realize the energy/environmental strategies of the last twenty-five years rest on a foundation that lacks not only a cornerstone but any stone at all. Their actions already show they see it.

There are only three conditions that will stop us from publishing critical analysis of neo-environmentalism:

1. All relevant publicly available data are removed from the internet

2. Pressure against voices likes ours shuts down Substack and places like it

3. The world comes to its senses, sees a better path, and pursues it to the benefit of all, especially the world’s poorest.

We see hopeful signs the third of these conditions is beginning to occur. On the day the new environmentalism arrives, we will be its close friends, exactly where we started out decades ago. We hope that day comes soon. We want to be friends again.