By Jo Nova
Wow. Just Wow. Trump gets elected and Reuters realizes renewable energy is unrealistic
In a rush, at least one opinion writer at Reuters is suddenly saying all the things skeptics have been saying for years: all the things Reuters has hidden from the world about renewable energy.
It is hard to believe, but it’s all there… the naked utter failure of solar and wind to reduce CO2, to reduce oil and gas, and to reduce prices. Edward Chancellor calls it a “resounding failure”. He has the devastating figures, and even the graph showing how countries with more renewables have more expensive electricity. He has another graph of the share market failure of renewables compared to the fossil fuel success, and he uses the words “tumbled” and “soared”. To grind it home, he explains how we just export our manufacturing to China which uses coal (is this news?). He calls Net Zero an “illusion” where we think we lower our emissions but we actually raise them overseas.
There is carnage among the sacred cows…
Climate policy requires a more realistic approach
LONDON, Feb 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewable energy, hydrocarbons still account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy and a similar share of recent increases in energy consumption, according to The Energy Institute. Coal, oil and natural gas production are at record highs. Emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise inexorably. The financial markets were already losing confidence in the energy transition before Donald Trump returned to the White House. A more realistic approach to climate policy is urgently needed.
What they don’t say is that all this was unmistakably obvious for a decade or more, that thousands of engineers and scientists have been telling the world this would happen, and that Reuters wouldn’t report them, not even when they had a Nobel prize.
Solar and wind power have grown to a mere 3.5% of primary energy production. The levelised cost of renewable energy – which measures of the net present value of electricity produced over a plant’s lifetime – has declined sharply over the years. But this has not resulted into lower electricity prices. In fact, as the share of the energy mix provided by renewables has risen, electricity prices have tended to increase. That’s because wind and solar power are intermittent. Since storing energy in batteries is uneconomic, traditional sources of power are still needed as backup, which is expensive.
Why now? Because reality is making Reuters look stupid — it’s not the reality of high costs or blackouts, but the reality that Trump won, and set fire to the “transition” fantasy by dumping Paris, dropping subsidies, opening gas fields, and installing a corporate energy CEO as the US Energy Secretary. Chris Wright and JD Vance are dropping truth bombs in speeches that can’t be ignored. Word is spreading fast, and if Reuters don’t report this, they risk being turned into the same irrelevant wreckage the US mainstream media channels already are. As the US economy ramps up, other countries will have to let go of their green delusions in order to keep up. The game changed. There’s no point upping the ante in the UN-poker game if the main player has played a Royal Flush.
Even the graph! An actual graph!
Source Reuters and Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2024
Two graphs!
Presumably the owners of Reuters have sold out of their renewable stocks. (Readers here read about this trend in October 2023.)
Source: Reuters, and S&P | P.Thal Larsen.
So this is arse-covering, forgive the language, but this is also an escape clause for allies and believers
The owners of Reuters (whoever they are) — are presumably part of The Blob, since they have covered up its failures for decades, and gave millions to Hillary. This article is also an escape clause for allies and a warning to jump ship. It’s full of excuses — we were misled by an era of low interest rates; we had good intentions; we didn’t realize China made all our stuff with coal, you know, and Energy transitions take a very long time. What a shock!
The way Edward Chancellor writes, anyone could have got this wrong. Even the oil giants made mistakes, you know, and are now looking to rebuild their fossil fuel business. Never is there any question that say, National Energy Managers ought to have done their homework, or that Energy Ministers should have done due diligence before recklessly trying to transform electricity grids based on what Al Gore and a teenage girl told them to do:
Not long ago, investors worried that traditional energy companies would be left with “stranded assets” – oil and gas fields abandoned as demand for fossil fuels dried up. Yet earlier this month Shell (SHEL.L), opens new tab announced a near-$1 billion writedown for its investment in a wind project off the New Jersey coast. BP (BP.L), opens new tab is scrapping targets for increasing generation of renewable energy and cutting oil and gas production. As Lees writes, “across the sector, oil majors that shifted their portfolios to green energy are now realising their mistake and are looking to rebuild their fossil fuel business.”
The world still urgently needs an alternative to fossil fuels.The energy expert Vaclav Smil has likened the costs of the planned energy transition to those incurred by a nation fighting total war for decades on end. The era of zero interest rates created a sense that the supply of capital was infinite and its cost negligible. Rising interest rates dispelled that illusion. The economics of wind and solar power, with their large upfront investment costs and relatively low operating expenses, have been upended. Wood Mackenzie calculates that every 2 percentage point increase in the risk-free rate raises the levelised cost of renewable electricity by around 20%.
I’ve always said there will come a day when everyone says “I was always a skeptic”
This is the start of that normalization. It’s not the end, but it’s the beginning of the end in the energy battle.
But it’s not even the start of the science battle. They’re still “believers” of big-gov bad-science. The world still urgently needs an alternative to fossil fuels….
What the world still urgently needs are real journalists and honest media. It needs accountable Ministers, and bureaucrats that get sacked. If we don’t learn from the last mistakes, the next episode of parasitic loot-and-pillage is just around the corner.
And Reuters is still covering up for them.
Hat tip to Climate Depot
Reuters knows which side their bread is buttered on.
I wonder what happened that changed their mind?
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Starts with US, ends with AID?
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I very much doubt that they do know which side their bread is buttered on.
For 37 years they held all the butter, and they are just now discovering that the tub is just about empty.
The questions now are, how big the crash and how sudden?
Our pre existing wars might be a welcome distraction. A buffer.
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The very idea that atmospheric CO2 is 33% from fossil fuels has never been proven.
In fact when it was first raised in 1958, it was disproven by a New Zealand physicist G. J. Fergusson and this was published by the Royal Society.
The very idea that humans can change the vapour pressure of CO2 gas which is 98% dissolved in the ocean has been disproved. Whether additional CO2 causes any warming is totally denied by atmospheric spectroscopy experts including Prof Will Happer. Man made Global Warming was a cunning invention of Al Gore and the UN/IPCC in 1988 in his first attempt to be the US President. And now a massive fraudulent industry. Free and eternal and adequate and reliable wind and solar. After 37 years, where is this true?
Even NASA has proven by satellite observations that as CO2 goes up, the number of trees go up in exact proportion. So Net Zero, Carbon Credits based on growing trees is farcical. The Australian government is stealing from all Australians and punishing all Australian companies to support a fantasy of the left.
Net Zero is non science. Why are Australians being punished by our own government and China rewarded? What sort of sense does that make? Do Australian politicians take their orders from Beijing?
The Albanese government is ratcheting up its 35% CO2 tax on all companies. And if the companies don’t go broke, we Australians will pay this massive Carbon tax, despite not a single government in 25 years being given a mandate for Carbon Taxes. And all this money goes overseas to buy carbon certificates from military dictatorships. It’s all fraud on fraud on theft. We Australians are left with zero. Not net zero. Zero.
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Fraud on fraud on theft! Indeed so!
I do believe that this must mark the beginning of the end of the scam. We have had a few false starts. Going back to the federal election of 2013, where an apparent landslide majority in the House of Reps was torpedoed in the senate by Clive Palmer’s PUP after coming under the influence of Al Gore.
That makes it 11 years that we have been rushing headlong in the opposite direction to that that we should have been, indeed that the people demanded in that election.
We must now calculate the cost of those 11 years. And we must answer the question,: How did democracy fail us so badly?
This was surely one of the most significant events in the history of our federation, with major policy determined by a foreign politician. And only Jo and I noticed.
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As of the start of April 2025 the UK domestic price will have gone up 3 times in 9 months, which means it’s up 18.44% compared to 9 months ago.
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“The financial markets were already losing confidence in the energy transition …”
An energy transition has always been illusionary. Had these folks been paying attention they would have recognized this long ago.** The delay has resulted in (a) some redistribution of wealth, and (b) much lost wealth.
**This site went public in September of 2008, I think.
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You cannot Mandate a Transition.
The Transition from the Horse and Cart to Steam and then to Hydrocarbons was Consumer driven and NOT mandated.
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To avoid domestic CO2 emissions, the world shipped it’s manufacturing tasks to china. This resulted in lower domestic emissions and also a reduction in domestic employment.
Everyone who lost a manufacturing job, seen as a blue collar task, was due to be retrained and become something elite, a coder. The only problem was, the world needs manufacturing effort several hundred times more that it needs coding effort. It always astounded me that no one picked that up. It should have been obvious when those same politicians bragged that the low paying blue collar jobs would end and the high paying coding jobs were the future. Of course, all this extra wage cost was not going to increase the cost of any goods. That should have sealed the fate of this brain fart, instead, the MSM just pumped the idea harder, telling everyone that their future lay in working smarter for more reward. It obviously never dawned on them that the coding would be done in china too.
Now that the manufacturing has been removed from the economy and the power prices, (domestically), have soared, it would be good to see the detailed plans of the Oz government for just exactly how they are going to increase manufacturing down under. They have the adverts. They have a budget. But where is the plan? And who would be silly enough to invest money into a loss making future where the minister for blackouts can unplug you at a moments notice. For your own good.
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In reply to Jo’s question of which bureaucrats or politicians should be sacked several come to mind. There’s Matt Kean, the boss of the CSIRO, the boss of the BoM, any of the climate agency employees, the Chief Scientist, the vast majority of university professors and lecturers and that is just the beginning. There are far too many politicians to mention so the only ones not to be shown the door are very few like Malcolm Roberts.
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Australian Federal Government should set their ABC, BoM and CSIRO free from the government trough. Let them fend for themselves in the real world. Then reality may prevail over the hopium that they peddle.
These three organisations are anti-Australian. They promote carp as if it is science.
I look forward to Australia’s next government following the leadership of the Trump Administration and separating itself from the UN and its undemocratic global government agenda.
USA does not have representation at this week’s IPCC meeting in China. Somehow I doubt China will fill the funding gap left by USA. But Australia is still playing the UN game.
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“Eh Gawd”
That ought to curdle “Elbow’s” morning cornflakes!
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He doesn’t read about real Science/Engineering. He doesn’t like reading or hearing about the Truth.
He is living in a Bubble and following a Fantasy World.
Reality is about to hit him right between the eyes. And he won’t see it coming.
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Huzzah! Great news for the 1st of March … as well as Z-man receiving a bollocking from Trump & Co in the Right House. Now I hear Beijing’s destroyers are battling the Bight as they chug westwards towards… Perth? Everyone’s going round in circles clucking “I was always a skeptic”. 🤣 Brilliant.
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But we here know who the true skeptics are – and we know which of our politicians and associates were true believers.
I wonder if Chris Bowen or Matt Kean have read this (or asked someone who can, to read it to them)
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Bowen will just see this as a reason to go harder. Clearly the rest of the world just isnt doing it right and Reuters has been corrupted by Trump or something and is now misinformation.
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Albo. “I don’t know what it’s all about. A bit like Chinese warships off our coast. Not a problem if we just ignore it all”.
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FWIW –
Fits here IOM
“The Process Of Rescinding The Endangerment Finding Has Begun”
https://hotair.com/headlines/2025/02/28/the-process-of-rescinding-the-endangerment-finding-has-begun-n3800281
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Impressive how up to date and cutting edge Reuters is.
I of course, expect nothing less from such highly educated professional journalists of the utmost integrity, which is the norm for highly educated professional journalists of the utmost integrity … like those at Reuters.
Like the other numerous highly educated professional journalists of the utmost integrity, that assisted our highly educated professional public health officials of the utmost integrity … guide us through the tribulations of Pandemic.
Where would we be without them?
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“Like the other numerous highly educated professional journalists of the utmost integrity, that assisted our highly educated professional public health officials of the utmost integrity … guide us through the tribulations of Pandemic.
Where would we be without them?”
Here
“Guess What’s Not a Question: WHO Is On the Verge of Collapse”
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2025/02/27/guess-whats-not-a-question-who-is-on-the-verge-of-collapse-n3800254
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This is the list of UN entities represented at the AR7 working group meeting in China:
UN Development Programme (UNDP)
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
UN General Assembly
UN Women
UN-Energy
UN-HABITAT
UN-Water
There is no single UN entity dedicated exclusively to water issues. Over 30 UN organizations carry out water and sanitation programmes, reflecting the fact that water issues run through all of the UN’s main focus areas. UN-Water’s role is to coordinate so that the UN family ‘delivers as one’ in response to water related challenges.
UN/ISDR
UNCCD MULTILATERAL ENVIRONMENTAL AGREEMENT BODY
UNCLOS MULTILATERAL ENVIRONMENTAL AGREEMENT BODY
UNCTAD
UNECA UN REGIONAL ECONOMIC & SOCIAL COMMISSION
UNECE UN REGIONAL ECONOMIC & SOCIAL COMMISSION
UNECLAC
UNESCAP
UNESCWA
UNFCCC MULTILATERAL ENVIRONMENTAL AGREEMENT BODY
UNFF
UNFPA UN PROGRAMME, AGENCY OR FUND
UNICEF
UNIDO
UNITAR
UNU
UNWTO
https://enb.iisd.org/participants?page=5
The USA taxpayers who fund most of this carp are no longer represented thanks to Trump. AR7 will be an extraordinary waste of time. As were all the previous IPCC reports. However, this time, the money pot has all but disappeared. If disillusionment followed COP29, then there is good prospects that COP30 will be the start of retribution for those perpetuating the Climate Hoax™. Trump should send a legal team to take names and investigate the corruption. The hoaxers should be severely punished.
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I say F them all
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What really worries me is that as the rational-thinking non-woke countries shut down the “renewables” SCAM, the renewables subsidy harvesters will be coming to the last holdout where both major parties remain committed to the scam.
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That would be Australia, of course.
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The fools who spout that “stranded asset” line, in the face of reality, have been beclowning themslves for a decade now. I expect this is the start of a quiet period from them.
An excerpt from the great series Landman, with someone getting a renewables reality check
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fmbZwxEnAFc&pp=ygUHTGFuZG1hbg%3D%3D
Highly recommend the show if you have access.
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It is unwoke words like these that frighten Simon and Peter away. Then where is the sport? You should be kind to wombats and numbats of both the marsupial and human variety..
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So, Umm, this Post from 2021 perhaps wasn’t such a wild guess after all then, eh!
I wrote this four years ago, and after a year or so, I mentioned to Ed, the site’s owner, that perhaps I should take it down from the top of the site where we put the Sticky Posts for periods of time.
Ed’s response was ….. “Tony, leave it there. You’ve been pretty much correct with nearly everything you’ve written all these years. Some of that ‘stuff’ from when you started in 2008 was, well, forgive me, I thought crackpot really, but I just kept learning that perhaps your finger actually was on the pulse! Whose pulse, it seemed only you knew that.”
Tony.
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That was fabulous. Trouble is it represents how some people think, or more to the point, don’t think.
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I’m sure your readers are willing to forgive your potty language Jo, especially when it’s right on the money and sums up the about turn perfectly.
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Speak up if you’re offended by common words.
…crickets…
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China discovers ‘limitless’ energy source that could ‘power the country for 60,000 years’
The Bayan Obo mining complex in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of northern China, could contain enough thorium to supply China’s household energy demands ‘almost forever’, a national survey reportedly found.
Scientists estimate the mining complex could yield 1 million tonnes of thorium if fully exploited, according to The South China Post, which obtained a declassified report of the survey.
The study has claimed that thorium resources in the country’s mining waste ‘remain totally untouched’ and if properly extracted could be large enough to end the worldwide dependence on fossil fuels.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14447257/China-discovers-limitless-energy-source-power-country.html
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Typical Chinese. They use coal, gas and nuclear whereas Australia isn’t allowed to do that.
Typical Indians, Koreans, Vietnamese, Philippines, Indonesians, Turks, Hungarians etc. They use coal, gas and nuclear whereas Australia isn’t allowed to do that.
Check out those countries that claim they want to cut CO2 emissions (because of Global Warming) and you will find that (almost) 86% of CO2 emissions come from those who don’t care. Presumably their scientists are ignored and not counted in the (fraudulent) 97% Climate Scientists agree.
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It’s odd that this has taken so long to come out in the Main Stream Media. In 1986 my father wrote to Prince Charles about the relative cost of different energy sources and the problems of supplying the growing energy needs of rapidly populating nations, primarily India and China. While not a lengthy paper it was data-based and had a dry, clinical ring. HRH never even acknowledged the letter.
My father had designed aeroplane wings, pre-stressed concrete bridges, various nuclear reactors and a wind-turbine and was well qualified to inform about “Energy Requirements for the 21st Century”. He had a low opinion of journalists and politicians.
It’s only taken Reuters 40 years to catch up with reality. It seems he was right about journalists too.
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There was a very good reason why the Queen hung on to the throne, right until her passing. She knew Charles wasn’t a fit and proper person to be King.
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Is that an Epst##n files reference?
It’s a sick world at the top.
/grin
The FBI needs to be “raided” and the Eppy files forcefully taken and disclosed.
Along with JFK, Nixon, UAP files…
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Oh no! David Attenborough will have to make another series of wildlife shows.
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Just keep him away from the walruses – it didn’t go too well for them last time.
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So, I am assuming that The Australian, SMH, The Age , Channel 10 and god forbid “their ABC” will be all over this narrative change immediately? Like a rash, so to speak. Now, for my next joke. Ross- Climate skeptic since 1983.
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Yeah! Like a pillow
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Great to see the liars and con merchants are starting to wake up.
Definitely true that toxic W & S DESTROY our global environments and are the most expensive and most UNRELIABLE energy for all countries.
Btw since 1988 and Dr Hansen’s BS DC speech the NON OECD countries have increased their ANNUAL co2 emissions by over 100% and OECD countries are now slightly under 1988s ANNUAL co2 emissions.
This takes just a few minutes to find the data and yet our left wing loonies would rather WASTE TRILLIONs of $ and achieve nothing but disaster for the poor OECD taxpayers. See OWI Data link.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29
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Talk about stranded assets I note the mr Zzzzzz meets Mr T and I pity the poor fool!
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Not me. I have been a heretic, unbeliever who has been stunned by the lack of arithmetic skills of our “elites” and peasants who swallowed the warming/changing garbage.
I have been gobsmacked by the lack of reason and logic displayed by our political betters.
The age of enlightenment and reason is well and truly dead. Which leaves the question of what we call this age.
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A fellow with a substack called Ground Truths {Eric Topol} has interviewed Carl Zimmer, author of Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe. The text of the podcast is available as Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne and the Big Miss With Covid.
I have not read the book.
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As worldwide skepticism grows,
The awakened throng now knows,
That the Emperor’s parade,
Was a climate charade,
All dressed up but wearing no clothes.
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Wow! I haven’t visited this site in years! Looks familiar.
Reuters sees the writing on the wall. The Thomas Corp in Canada owns the paper. The Thomas family owns sixty-six percent of the stock through the Woodbridge company. They may lean left, but with Trump changing the political landscape, the Thomas family has decided to go with the political flow and survive. Whether you like Trump or not, he is a man on a mission. He has declared global warming to be “a scam” and intends to end it! As soon as the money dries up, so will this ginned up climate emergency. Stacey Abrams, a failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate, was awarded a $2,000,000,000 grant for climate change, er, something or other. Somebody parked the money into an intermediary account recently opened with a balance of $100.00, and Stacy Abrams will never see a penny of it! The government is clawing it back. I believe Trump is going to cut off the money from the feds and force US-funded climate NGO’s out of business. Few funds will be available for global warming research under the Trump administration.
I for one relish the day and pray for its speedy arrival. How many people died because the money necessary was wasted fighting a phantom menace?
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Eddy, great to see you again. Yes, I saw the Wiki page on Woodbridge, and note the 67% ownership of one of the largest media entities in the world, and it’s almost a stump article. Who are these people?
The $2b to Stacey Abrams was part of the $20b EPA funds stashed away in Citibank and bragged about by the EPA staffer as like throwing gold bars off the Titanic. https://joannenova.com.au/2025/02/not-a-government-but-a-giant-money-laundering-racket/
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