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Insanity, Congress and CNN
by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
(CNN) At certain points in history, when institutions and established leaders have failed to step up and take action, it falls to the youngest among us to take charge. That is happening again these two weeks as a 16-year-old girl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, is stepping onto center stage to mobilize the world against climate change.
Actually, no.
What Greta is stepping into demanding — and let’s be clear, she’s been conned, which is quite-easy to do when the target is sixteen — is fascism.
Outright, no-bull****, real fascism.
She was wearing an “antifa” T-shirt. The Press tried to read this as a “mistake” on her part, not understanding what Antifa really is.
Wrong. It appears her parents were wearing them too.
Greta might not have understood — but her adult parents sure as hell did.
This was no mistake — it was an intentional statement threatening violence if they don’t get their way with the adults sending forth their child to issue the threat.
We are at yet another moment in which the voice and efforts of the young are needed. The Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in power have proven unable to take action on a multitude of issues recently. But nowhere is their inaction more glaring than on the issues that threaten the safety of people everywhere and especially millennials and members of Generation Z: first guns and now climate change.
Let’s leave guns out of it for the moment, although only for a moment. So-called “climate change” is a scam, at least when it comes to the United States. Even assuming CO2 emitted by human activity is in fact going to be a calamity (it’s not) the United States is emitting less now than it was all through the 1990s; we’re back to 1980 levels of emissions despite having a lot more people in the country now than then!
Why?
Because of economics — not petulant and ignorant 16 year olds.
Simply put natural gas, which is nearly-all methane, produces about half as much CO2 per unit of energy released as does coal. In short CH4, methane, is at a much higher energy state than pure “C” (carbon, or coal) and both are at a higher energy state than CO2. So when you burn CH4 (natural gas) to get X BTUs of heat you produce about half as much CO2 as if you burn pure “C” (coal.) This sounds like a free lunch but it isn’t — the Sun originally “deposited” that energy when the CH4 was created (and when the “C” was created too); we’re just completing the other half of the chemical energy cycle.
Thus, even though it is a fact that behind every unit of GDP is a unit of energy, and our population has grown, CO2 emissions here in the US have gone down because it’s cheaper to burn natural gas than coal in the United States — and the reason for that is fracking.
Yes, that evil means of getting more gas (and oil) out of the ground faster has in fact cut the per-BTU production of CO2 roughly in half in the United States.
So where’s the problem?
Simple: There are lots of places on the planet that have lots of “C” and not a lot of CH4. Further, there are also a lot of places on the planet in that situation which also have no electricity to homes. China has electrified essentially 100% of its residences over the last 30 or so years on the back of coal-fired electricity and they are not going to turn it off. China in fact intends to build somewhere between 300 and 500 new coal-fired power plants in the next 10 years; to continue to build their “middle class” they have no choice but to do so as power demand continues to escalate. Both India and sub-Saharan Africa have, between them, about a billion people who have no electrical power in their homes (some ~40-odd percent of homes in South Africa have no electrical service!) and they’re not going to stop using — and increasing the use — of coal to provide power to them. In all three of these situations there is no other natural resource available at sufficient scale and which can be built out in a reasonable amount of time to provide that electrical power.
Greta and the other screamers are directing their ire here on a fraudulent premise; we’re not where increased CO2 emissions are coming from nor will we ever be, simply on the math — at least not until the fracking wells all run dry. Her premise is a fraud and the “adults in the room” know damn well that’s true. She doesn’t know because she’s ignorant of the basic facts of chemistry, energy balance and thermodynamics and she has been manipulated by a bunch of jackwads who ought to be in prison, starting with her parents. In fact they should be arrested for felony child abuse and exploitation right here and now, in the US.
Talking to the adults in power today, Greta has warned, “You’ve run out of excuses and we’re running out of time. We’ve come here to let you know that change is coming whether you like it or not.” Or again, “We children shouldn’t have to do this. But since almost no one is doing anything, and our very future is at risk, we feel like we have to continue. … We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.”
Oh really? And what’s the “like it or not”, otherwise known as the or else?
We know damn well what Antifa thinks it is: Violence. And she — along with her parents — are wearing their T-shirt.
Of course she hates guns too, I suspect. CNN sure thinks she does. Gee, let me see if I get this right: She and her parents want to remove your guns so when she shows up with a baseball bat or bag of concrete to bash in your head with you can’t stop her, even though her alleged “solution” will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions whatsoever.
It’s all a con job, in short.
This is typical 50 IQ thinking; those with a triple-digit IQ will respond to such a thinly-veiled threat by refusing to hand over the guns which they know they will need, and if the “insisting” goes from loud-mouth children preaching to something more-forceful they’ll decide that Antifa shirt looks awfully similar to a target and thank the wearers for voluntarily donning same.
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