How Larry Fink turned your pension fund into leftist activist machine

 

By Jo Nova

By forcing people to put money into pension funds in a form of investment that they weren’t necessarily comfortable with, governments created vast piles of money that was essentially left unguarded on the beach in a bay with a hundred pirate ships. Sure, there were regulatory agencies and accountants up the kazoo, but money is also power: the paper dollar would get returned to the owner, but the whole time it was out of his hands, its power was being used against him.

In a free market, millions of voters can vote with their wallet. It’s a form of democracy. But for hapless sleepy investors in a pension plan — sometime in the 1980s that power to choose the kind of industries and values they wanted to support was silently given away to a guy called Larry Fink and a few of his colleagues.

Snoozing-at-the-wheel, citizens voted for cheap energy every two years, while their money voted for “ESG” every day. And ESG is the expensive Environmental, Social, Governance kind of electricity which freezes your peas AND corrects the weather (in theory).

The size of the pension funds managed by the likes of BlackRock, Vanguard […]

It’s the Greatest Crime Scene in History — For the first time the healthy employed are worse off than the unemployed

By Jo Nova

Ed Dowd is the former BlackRock executive, who has been drawing attention to the excess death data. As a Wall Street trader he likes to find and arbitrage the realities that aren’t well known so he can bet against the realities that aren’t real. And so he found himself last year looking at death trends that were off the charts. At this point the trader turned into a human trying to warn hundreds of CEO’s of insurance companies (among others) but they did not want to know…

Of the 3.2 million newly disabled in the USA, it’s remarkable (though sad) that 1.7 million came from the employed sector. Normally working people are the healthiest group — but since February 2021 their disability rate is up 31%. That compares to a rise of just 9% across the “general population”. And in a complete turnaround — those who quit or got fired — normally the sickest ones — their disability rate rose only 4%.

So something changed. What could it be, we wonder, that took place in 2021 and caused more of those who stayed in their jobs to become disabled. Why was quitting work or being fired a […]

Hiding behind teenage girls again — so they can’t be ridiculed for saying silly things

By Jo Nova

The Pagan Witchdoctors send forth their girlie pawns

The science is so overwhelming they need 16 year old girls to evangelize for them. The girls are human shields sent to deliver the agitprop and protect it from scrutiny. If a man asks a girl a hard question they’re a misogynist, and if a women does, she’s rude. Grown-ups can’t even laugh at their transparent hypocrisy. That’s bullying you know, say the same people who call half the world “climate-deniers”.

Izzy Cook is the 16 year old version of Greta Thunberg in New Zealand. She unraveled spectacularly as a political leader and a climate star during a radio interview last September. Right after telling everyone that it wasn’t really necessary for people to travel to Fiji because of the climate crisis, Izzy Cook had to admit under questioning that she had just got back from a flight to Fiji. Interviewer Heather du Plessis-Allant laughed out loud at her vapor-thin dedication to the cause. As anyone would.

Apparently Izzy couldn’t really get out of the trip because her parents wanted her to go. Well, shucks.

But now some government Watchdog in New Zealand has declared it was an unfair […]

China approves two new coal plants every week to ensure stability “when renewables fail”

OWID

By Jo Nova

It’s the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth and one country is building six times as much new coal power as the rest of the world combined. But no one cares.

Sinful Australia hasn’t even built a coal plant in 12 long years, but Saint China is approving a new one every three and a half days. One nation is theoretically destroying the world’s corals, creating droughts, floods and bad storms, and making reef fish reckless but no one is gluing themselves to the Chinese Embassy. The same universities who lecture us on carbon pollution are not even boycotting Chinese students. We have to ask — do reef fish matter? Are floods a bad thing?

Either CO2 is just a shiny amulet or everyone who cares about it is functionally innumerate. It could be both.

CREA

Meanwhile on the cat-walks of intellectual fashion shows the Western world’s elite competes to be more concerned than the next guy about the dire problems of CO2. President Xi cheers them on, promises to act, then builds another coal plant.

Constructing 106 Gigawatts of coal power in 2023 doesn’t exactly sit well with President […]

Good News! Jo Nova wins the Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award 2023

By Jo Nova

What an honor. I am just so humbled to win the Dauntless Award of 2023. I mean apart from the towering giants of the Climate Skeptic world who have already won it, to be on the same page as Walt Cunningham, one of the three Apollo 7 astronauts, who risked their lives for science, is a career highlight. Walt Cunningham helped make NASA what it is, and he could have said nothing, but he became an outspoken skeptic of the way NASA was abusing the trust of the public, and abusing science. He was a fighter pilot and a physicist who flew on the first manned launch after the tragic fire that killed all three astronauts on Apollo 1. Sadly the world lost Walt only weeks ago.

Thanks to Ric Werne for the photo. Click to Enlarge.

 

Other Dauntless winners include Dr Jay Lehr (who helped set up the US EPA fifty years ago and then spent decades working to undo that) and legends like Marc Morano (Climate Depot), Professor Fred Singer, and Christopher Monckton. People who I have learnt so much from.

Craig Rucker announces the award from 25.20. From 28 minutes Heartland […]

Livestreamed Part 2: The True Crisis, Climate Change or Climate Policy?

UPDATE: Jo Nova honoured to be awarded the Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award for 2023. Previous winners include NASA Astronaut Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7), Dr Jay Lehr, Marc Morano, Christopher Monckton and Prof Fred Singer. More information soon!

___________________

More Presentations Livestreamed from Florida thanks to Heartland and CFACT



Breakfast Keynote – 8:00am – 9:45am ET

Marc Morano is the founder and publisher of ClimateDepot.com. He is expected to give an address about how the global elites are exploiting fears about the climate to gain more power and control over our lives.

Lunch Keynote – 1:00pm – 2:10pm ET

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is a member of the House Resources Committee.

Dinner Keynote – 6:30pm – 8:00pm ET

This is planned as an “Oxford Style Debate” on the question: “This House Believes There Should Be a Tax on Carbon Dioxide Emissions.” Dr. Peter Hartley will begin with the argument in the affirmative, and Dr. William Happer will bring the argument in the negative. There will be opportunities for rebuttals and questions, and then a vote of […]

Livestreamed: The True Crisis, Climate Change or Climate Policy?

Watch the 15th International Climate Change Conference Live Streamed from Florida

Amazing that with so many billion dollar Science Institutes, free market think-tanks run the best science conferences in the world.

Breakfast Keynote – 8:00am – 9:45am ET Watch Patrick Moore ‘s breakfast keynote speech.

Lunch Keynote – 1:00pm – 2:10pm ET Ian Plimer is a geologist and will give a science presentation. Marlo Oaks is the treasurer of the state of Utah. He will be speaking about his efforts in his state to fight ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) efforts.

Dinner Keynote – 6:30pm – 8:00pm ET Alex Epstein will speak about energy policy. Ken Haapala of SEPP will present the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award to Christopher Essex. Craig Rucker of CFACT will present the Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth Award to a mystery guest.

Schedule Below

9.7 out of 10 based on 41 ratings […]

The ecologist who says we *need* huge herds of cows and sheep to stop desertification?

By Jo Nova

Can cows shrink deserts?

Allan Savoury is a farmer from Zimbabwe who used to believe that livestock were destroying the land. He still believes the CO2 scary narrative, but even despite all that, he’s an ecologist who now argues we need large herds moving nomadically to stop desertification.

Years ago he was one of the scientists advising the Zimbabwe government to get rid of lifestock to save the land. In a great moment of ecology they even shot 14,000 elephants for land restoration which didn’t work. That was the saddest blunder of my life, he says. And when he went to the US he found national parks were desertifying too even though they had not had livestock on them. “Clearly we didn’t understand what was driving desertification”. He now claims that the soil of grasslands ends up encrusted with algae, which leads to water runoff and evaporation “and that is the cancer that leads to desertification”.

I’m sure cows don’t change the climate either way, but this sure flies in the face of the idea that livestock create deserts and eating meat destroys the land.

h/t to Notalotofpeopleknowthat

Cows are the missing link?

He points out […]

18 months too late: natural immunity is *almost* as good as vaccination (except when it’s better)

By Jo Nova

In the great Covid backpedalling of 2023, even the Australian ABC has finally admitted that natural immunity from Covid “lasts as long as vaccination” which is still false and misleading (because it lasts longer and is higher) but must have caused angst at the office. They go on to say their holy rosary incantation: “but experts have cautioned that vaccines are still the safer option”. Safer than what now, though? The new meta-review in the Lancet says nothing at all about side effects of vaccines or new variants, but people-who-believe-experts and people who think they are “good journalists” need to say their medical Hail-Marys, otherwise they have to admit to themselves that they were wrong and sometimes obnoxiously, insufferably, stupidly so.

The new Lancet metastudy looked at 65 studies from 19 countries. They found the reinfection rate of people who caught Covid was lower than people who were given Pfizer or Moderna. About a year after catching Covid, people with natural immunity still had about 37% protection against getting Omicron BA.1, about four times higher than people who had two Moderna doses. Yet the people with the better protection were locked out, punished, and sometimes even banned […]

Net Zero by 2050? We need about 10,000 years of current Lithium production to get there first

By Jo Nova

So much for Net Zero by 2050

Simon P. Michaux calls it “Minerals Blindness” — the inability to see that there are just not enough metals to get to Net Zero.

He is an Australian working for the Geological Survey of Finland. He’s an Associate Professor of Mineral Processing and Geometallurgy, and has added up the tonnage required to convert the first generation of the fleet needed (theoretically) to get to Net Zero. So that’s just 25 years worth of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.

And then we need to do it all again?

Michaux estimates that we need 944 million tons of lithium alone to go Net Zero (the first time). But at the moment every year we dig up about 100,000 tons a year, or 0.01% of what we need to reach the Net Zero target. Current total known reserves of lithium throughout the world in 2022 are just 26 million tons. Total known (best guess) resources are 98 million tons).* Obviously as the price of lithium rises, we will find a lot more. We haven’t been looking for lithium very long so we may even find ten times as much. But at our […]

Snowy 2.0 could win Prize for Most Globally Stupid Green Engineering Project

By Jo Nova

Tantangara Resevoir: A whole ecosystem to fill with invasive feral fish and a necrosis virus too.

The Snowy 2.0 Pumped hydro scheme will cost families big money, spread pests, endanger fish, and kill trees but it will allow some renewables investors to make a profit, and that’s all that matters right?

Overseas readers are invited to submit more stupid schemes, with points for delays, cost, incompetence, environmental damage and sheer lack of any public benefit.

Ted Woodley does the best synopsis of the Snowy 2.0 debacle I’ve seen, pointing out how it sets all the worst kinds of records, being delayed 300% with costs up 1000%. It was supposed to be built in four years and cost $2 billion, but will end up taking 12 years (at least) and probably cost $20 billion by the time the cost of the extra transmission lines is added in. As readers here know, the boring machines are the slowest on Earth, one having made it only 200m and being paused for months under a pile of sand.

It was supposed to pay for itself, and make electricity cheaper, but is already chewing through a $1.4 billion taxpayer “injection”, […]

Half of Americans believe the media is trying to mislead them, and the people running the USA are “unknown” to voters

By Jo Nova

Most people know

It’s an extraordinary poll and a nation unravelling.

Two thirds of American’s don’t trust the media. Half even think they are actively lying, and don’t care about their audience. Nine out of ten people think the media is politically biased. As the trust evaporates, people are switching off the national news. A vast majority of people on one side of the political spectrum now view the media unfavorably, and while that number had jumped in Republican and Independent voters in the last three years — it is even rising in Democrat voters too.

The Knight/Gallup — Trust in Media and Democracy poll reveals, bizarrely, that more than half of the nation thinks the people who really “run” the country are not known to voters. I don’t think I’ve even seen pollsters ask that question before. Effectively then, it follows that nearly six out of ten people think that Joe Biden is not the one running the country, and the same goes for Congress. Barely one person in five thinks voters are choosing the decision-makers.

It’s not just trust in the media that’s collapsing, but trust in the government, and even faith in the workings […]

University Experts say climate change causes Earthquakes. Let’s stop quakes with solar panels then?

By TheMartian

By Jo Nova

Blame Exxon for the dead children of Turkey, eh? It’s not the corrupt building codes, the crustal plates, or the solar magnetic field. Climate change sets off earthquakes, you know.

A High Priest Ecologist has read the chicken entrails and prophesies that things will get worse. Your car creates earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis — unless it’s an EV. It’s hard to satirize this, it’s too stupid.

Climate change is triggering more earthquakes. Big Oil’s interests are a factor

By Prof İbrahim Özdemir, UN advisor, Euronews

It’s not just earthquakes — it’s tsunamis and volcanoes too:

We do not know for sure what triggered this horrific natural disaster, but we do know there is growing scientific evidence that climate change increases the risk of such tremors, together with tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

Here comes Occult Science:

“If a fault is primed or ready to rupture, all that is needed is the pressure of a handshake to set if off […] Environmental changes associated with rapid and accelerating climate breakdown could easily do the job,” professor of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London Bill McGuire pointed out […]

Australia’s Biggest Renewable Energy Project, Snowy 2.0, grinds to a halt, with a stuck bore

The new hole in the ground in the Snowy 2.0 scheme.

By Jo Nova

Complexity has a price, and a renewables grid is a bit like a 240 volt moving Rubiks cube. Here we see an unnecessary project hit by a random factor that in turn will affect all the others, blowing out other costs and schedules.

Australia’s breakneck energy transition, driven like a crash test dummy by government subsidies, depends on finishing the massive pumped hydro scheme called Snowy 2.0. However it has hit another delay no one apparently saw coming.

“Australia’s biggest renewable energy project” is the $6 – 10 billion plan to pump water uphill so it can run back down again to generate electricity every time the windmills and solar panels suffer a catastrophic failure, which is nearly every day. The entire project is superfluous in a grid with coal power — as we know from the last fifty years when we didn’t need it.

Unfortunately a 2,400 ton Tunnel Boring Machine called Florence is quite stuck under a cave-in. According to the ABC she started ten months ago, and is supposed to be digging her way through 15 kilometres (10 miles) of mountain. […]

2 + 2 = 5 and you are a racist if you don’t think that adds up

By Jo Nova

It’s a song for the times by Hi-Rez – the rapper: 2+2=5 .

There really are professors explaining that maths proficiency is white supremacy.

Guest starring Robert Malone and JP Sears

2 + 2 = 5 Lyrics

Kick the fathers out the house Send the mothers back to work Let the school system parent your children right from the birth Make ’em ill, feed ’em pills Confuse ’em about what’s real Tell ’em facts don’t really matter, it’s all about how you feel Science and math are racist History, let’s erase it Indoctrinate a whole generation, you can’t escape it

8.7 out of 10 based on 84 ratings […]

Save Earth by blowing holes in the moon? Moon dust as a sunscreen for Earth

Art by Ofjd125gk87

By Jo Nova

In the next great environmental cult moment, “The Science” has a plan to explode a 10-billion-kilogram dust cloud off the moon between the Earth and the Sun. Shimmery white moon dust will dim the evil solar rays and “save us from our addiction to fossil fuels” (at least until we run out of Moon). The dust will disperse every couple of weeks, so we just need to keep topping up our global sunscreen by setting the explosives off. At least it probably won’t kill many whales.

The plan involves getting man back on the moon for the first time in fifty years, setting up a moon base, and a permanent mining colony, but (guard your coffee) — it might be cost effective:

Squirting a carefully calculated stream of Moondust from a future lunar station at the right point between the Sun and Earth might be the most cost-effective, risk-free means of keeping our cool until we come to our senses and cut emissions.

— PLOS Climate

But not as cost effective as spending 0.000000001% of that to check the science and blow up a few climate models instead.

[…]

Friday Open Thread

9.4 out of 10 based on 16 ratings

The US CIA blew up Nord-Stream — “An Act of War” — a bombshell broken from a blog

Nordstream explosion. Twitter Forsvaret, Danish Defence.

By Jo Nova

It was an act of terrorism that revolved around energy, but it’s also about free speech and the media. It’s a red-pill moment, and it was released on a blog, not in “the news”. Journalism lives — but it has moved.

Seymour Hersh is the same writer that broke the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib scandal. The veteran reporter won a Pulitzer prize and has an insider source and many details on his new substack blog. He claims The United States deliberately blew up the Nordstream pipes with help from Norway. The explosives were planted by divers in June under the cover of tine BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise. They were triggered by a sonar buoy dropped from a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane on Sept 26th, last year.

The WhiteHouse has flatly denied it, calling it “utterly false”, but the US always had the means, the motive and the opportunity, and we all remember the day when Joe Biden made the open threat “: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. … We will bring an end to it.” It turns out behind […]

Despite all that CO2, the world’s corals are doing OK

By Jo Nova

Dr Peter Ridd compiled the statistics on coral reefs around the world, and even though China has installed a million megawatts of coal fired power in the last twenty years, there’s no evidence that corals are suffering significantly.

Statistics on corals barely existed before 1980, and didn’t get semi reasonable until 1998 or so. But with twenty years of data there is no evidence suggesting we need to send in the SWAT teams with floating shade sails, giant fans, breeding teams, or sunscreen for staghorn coral.

We do however need to send in the SWAT team to rescue our universities.

Hard Coral around the world is not suffering a mass die-off due to climate change, GWPF

Bleached is not killed

Academic shaman have implied (tacitly) that bleached coral is like dead coral, but instead bleaching is more like home redecoration and the corals recover surprisingly fast. But amongst all this noise of loss and recovery, and with such short term data it’s been hard to see the big picture.

The uncertainty bars on early coral studies expand like an emergency flare. But notice that there is no significant, distinctive response from corals despite CO2 being […]

Great Reset unravels? Germany is thinking of using Green subsidies on weapons of war instead

By Jo Nova Remember how the war with Ukraine was going to accelerate the green energy revolution?

The Flakpanzer Gepard needs more ammo, not solar panels. Photo By Hans-Hermann Bühling

For some reason, unreliable wind and solar power are not helping German industry build more tank ammunition. Instead, the federal government is allegedly talking to the state governments about taking green subsidies and spending the money on factories to build shells instead. And they are building those factories near the coal plants.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the chief of Germany’s army warned that sending weapons and arms to Ukraine has left military stockpiles “bare”.

Germany led the way in the great Green Energiewende transformation spending in the order of €32 billion a year, every year, in a quest for green electrons. Instead of creating peace on Earth and better weather, it just made the legendary economic powerhouse of Europe weak and vulnerable.

Tell the world, if the Germans can’t run a nation efficiently on “renewable” power, who can?

It’s perhaps not the Reset Klaus had in mind:

Great Reset Fail? Germany Mulls Diverting Green Agenda Cash Aimed at Killing Coal to Arms Industry

Kurt […]