Energy Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land -- Part III

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Energy Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land -- Part III

  • JP Morgan Chase — that’s the largest bank in the country. It has been headed for almost 20 years by celebrity CEO Jamie Dimon.

  • For much of the 20 years, Chase and Dimon have been known for their fealty to woke orthodoxies, at least in their official pronouncements. For example, here is a Forbes piece from October 2020 citing Dimon on the subject of “systemic racism.” (Pithy quote: “Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history. . . . It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”)

  • The fealty to woke orthodoxies has in the past extended in particular to the subject of “climate change.” In April 2021 JPM put out a big announcement of plans to facilitate investment of some $2.5 trillion in what they called “climate action and sustainable development.” In October 2021, JPM joined the so-called Net Zero Banking Alliance, then being organized by the UN (led by Mark Carney), promising to starve fossil fuels of investment capital in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

  • But meanwhile, over at J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, they have a guy named Michael Cembalest, who currently has the title Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy.

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Trial of Mann v. Steyn: Post-Trial Motions Edition

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  • Way back in the ancient year of 2012 — before this blog had even been started — Penn State climate “scientist” Michael Mann brought a lawsuit for defamation against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, as well as against two websites (National Review and CEI) that had hosted the blog posts of those two individuals.

  • Mann asserted that his reputation had been damaged by the Steyn and Simberg posts, which had compared Mann to fellow Penn Stater Jerry Sandusky. The point of comparison was that Penn State had investigated and cleared both men around the same time over allegations of misconduct — scientific misconduct in the case of Mann, sexual misconduct in the case of Sandusky.

  • In the succeeding years, the case went through a truly unbelievable history of procedural twists and turns, including multiple motions to dismiss and appeals. The case finally reached trial in January 2024. Readers who are at all familiar with the case will recall that the jury awarded only $1 of compensatory damages against each defendant, but awarded punitive damages of $1000 against Simberg and $1 million against Steyn.

  • And then the case disappeared almost completely from the news for over a year. What, you may have wondered, was happening? The answer is “post-trial motions.”

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Markers On The Road To The Green Energy Wall -- Electric Trucks Edition

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  • In a post in December 2021, I first asked which state or country would be the first to hit the “Renewable Energy Wall” — described as “a situation where the electricity system stops functioning, or the price goes through the roof,” or some other aspects of impossibility become so unavoidable that the zero carbon fantasy must be abandoned.

  • In subsequent posts I have explored various ways that the Wall was starting to manifest — for example, cancellation of offshore wind energy developments, and abandonment of large investments in producing so-called “green hydrogen.”

  • Although the coming of the Wall has been obvious to intelligent observers for a long time, the green energy fantasists had set their statutory and regulatory mandates sufficiently far into the future that there was no immediate reckoning.

  • But now, five and more years on, that is starting to change. The first of the impossible mandates are suddenly looming. The arrival of President Trump on the scene has also been a huge negative for the green energy crowd. But for today I’ll focus on a subject that has much more to do with reality than with any action of the President. That subject is fully electrified heavy duty trucks.

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More On Counting Federal Spending As A Full-Value Addition To GDP

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  • My last post on Tuesday has inspired a spirited debate in the comments about how federal spending should properly be accounted for in GDP. What is the right answer? After reading the comments, it occurs to me that there are several more points to make.

  • For those criticizing or disagreeing with my post — led by prolific commenter Richard Greene — the main theme has been that many large categories of federal spending make an obvious positive contribution to the economy. Examples given include the Defense Department, teachers/education, and national parks.

  • Surely excluding those kinds of things entirely from GDP accounting would provide at least as deceptive an indicator of the true size of the economy as including them at full cost value. And if those kinds of things, and many others, are not included at full cost value, what is the alternative? Some flat percentage discount could be applied, but there is no obvious constant level of discount that would be appropriate for all categories of spending; and reasonable people could disagree on varying levels of discount for different categories. Maybe defense should even be included at a premium!

  • My answer to this critique was at least suggested in the prior post. . . .

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Is Some Honesty About To Come To Government Economic Statistics?

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  • A recurring theme at this blog over the years has been the rank dishonesty of many of our government’s economic statistics.

  • Rather than being neutral indicators of the state of the country and its economy, the most important government statistics have been crafted and manipulated to maximize their usefulness to advocates for increases in the size of government and in government spending. Here is a particularly detailed post on this subject from back in December 2016.

  • The two main areas of focus here have been the statistics on GDP and on poverty. Both of those come from the Commerce Department.

  • In the case of GDP, the biggest issue is that government spending on goods and services is counted as a 100-cents-on-the-dollar addition to GDP. That means that the most wasteful spending gives an apparent but false boost to the economy; and even more importantly, that any cut to government spending, no matter how wasteful the spending may have been, gets portrayed as a hit to the economy and a harbinger of recession.

  • For today, I’ll consider the GDP statistics.

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The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time -- Part XXXIII

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  • The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time is the fraud by which our government alters existing U.S. and worldwide temperature data in order to enhance an apparent warming trend, and thereby support a narrative of supposedly dangerous global warming.

  • This is Part XXXIII of this series, which goes back to July 2013. A composite link to all 32 prior posts in this series can be found here.

  • As has been widely reported and discussed, the arrival of the new Trump 2.0 presidency is bringing disruption and change to many areas of a previously complacent federal bureaucracy.

  • One of the areas where disruption appears to be hitting is an agency called NOAA — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is a part of the Department of Commerce. NOAA is the place where the world and U.S. temperature data are collected and compiled — and altered.

  • Will the new disruption shed some light upon the systematic alterations of our temperature data?

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