Update(1950ET): It appears the short-lived coup attempt is over, with reports of the following: The President of Bolivia, Luis Arce has just stated during a Press Conference that the Leader of the Coup d’état in the Capital of La Paz, General Juan José Zúñiga has been arrested by his own Troops after they realized he was conducting a Coup against the Government; with all remaining Troops currently Returning to their Bases. News wires are also confirming:

BOLIVIA’S EX-ARMY GENERAL ZUNIGA ARRESTED AFTER COUP ATTEMPT

#Bolivia 🇧🇴: president Luis Arce and his cabinet appeared on the balcony of the Presidential Palace to greet his supporters.

A final confirmation that the government survived this coup attempt. pic.twitter.com/IShWEf4vdZ

— Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge) June 26, 2024

Now begins the speculation over whether there was any external state backer or hand in this brief episode.

It also seems that for now at least, Arce’s supporters were able to present enough of a showing to get the military leadership to back off.

The Leader of the apparent Failed Military Coup in Bolivia, General Juan José Zúñiga was seen earlier getting into his Armored Vehicle and Quickly Leaving the Area of the Presidential Residence in Downtown La Paz. pic.twitter.com/8FRdDE6P36

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 26, 2024

* * *

There are emerging reports of a military coup going down in Bolivia on Wednesday, with embattled President Luis Arce denouncing the “irregular mobilization” of some units of the national army.

He has accused the country’s top general, Gen. Juan Jose Zuniga,of plotting a coup, and warned “You need to respect democracy.”

According to Reuters, “Heavily armed soldiers and armored vehicles were seen gathering in the capital’s Plaza Murillo, according to videos shared on social media.”

“Former President Evo Morales, who has publicly split with Arce even though both belong to same socialist movement, announced a national mobilization of his supporters to support democracy in a separate post on X,” the report continues.

BREAKING: Bolivian armed forces have surrounded the government palace in Bolivia’s Plaza Murillo in an apparent coup attempt. pic.twitter.com/GfVsEMWPzJ

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) June 26, 2024

There are widespread reports that armored vehicles are destroying the door of the Presidential Palace, and that armed troops are breaking in.

Bolivia state TV is airing the following dramatic footage…

BREAKING: Military enters Bolivia’s Palacio Quemado by force, running an armoured vehicle into the palace doors as a coup is underway. @teleSURtv pic.twitter.com/DjX0Y8pkpT

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) June 26, 2024

Amid road blockages and works stoppages across the capital, each side is urging their forces and supporters to urgently assist: 

Presidential Minister María Nela Prada said military and tanks were taking over Plaza Murillo in La Paz, calling it an “attempted coup d’état.” The people are “on alert to defend democracy,” she said to local television station Red Uno.

The general commander of the army, Juan José Zúñiga, present in the same square, confirmed that there was a movement of uniformed officers, and said: “We are upset by the affront, enough is enough.”

Currently protesters supporting Arce are filling up some of the streets leading to the square while chanting pro-Arce slogans and on their way to confront the mutiny.

The following widely circulating and astounding photograph shows President Arce meeting the leader of the attempted military coup face-to-face at the doors of the Presidential Palace:

developing…

Authored by Connor O’Keefe via The Mises Institute,

On Sunday, activists from the environmentalist organization Extinction Rebellion stormed the green in the final, pivotal moments of the Travelers Championship, a professional golf tournament. The protesters tossed red and white chalk and smoke bombs before being tackled to the ground by police. The stunt came days after two protesters with the group Just Stop Oil, a youth-led offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, sprayed orange paint on Stonehenge.

The environmentalist protesters who do stunts like this are refreshingly honest about the destructive nature of their ambitions.

They see the comforts and leisures of modern life as maladies to be eradicated in the name of saving the climate.

But while the means these protesters used in the two high-profile stunts last week have come under wide condemnation, the environmentalist ends of such groups enjoyed blind acceptance in the news media amid a couple dramatic heat waves playing out around the world.

Temperatures rose to record-breaking heights for June across the eastern United States late last week and over the weekend. The United Kingdom experienced a heat wave that, while mocked by many in the US for being laughably mild, brought temperatures far higher than the region is used to. Most dramatically, extreme heat killed over a thousand people during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Overall, more than fourteen hundred temperature records were broken around the world last week.

The media has had a field day showing scary red maps and bringing on hysterical “experts” to terrify audiences into thinking it’s only a matter of time before we’re all roasting to death. Unless, we’re told, we “stop putting carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere,” as Bill Nye said in the clip linked above and the Extinction Rebellion protesters demanded on the eighteenth green on Sunday.

But if the goal is to avoid heat-related deaths, the worst thing to do is ban fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels, through technologies like air conditioning and refrigeration, make us safer from heat waves like those experienced last week.

Air conditioning is an incredible invention that is too often taken for granted. Back in the 1840s, long before air conditioning, a Florida doctor named John Gorrie found that his patients recovered better from disease when placed in a cool room. Gorrie developed a system to cool hospital rooms, but it required huge blocks of ice to be cut and transported from frozen lakes and rivers in the northern states. Gorrie’s system made no sense logistically, but his method for cooling a room laid the foundation for what would become modern air conditioning.

Sixty years later, a New York engineer named Willis Carrier expanded upon Gorrie’s design by utilizing cooling coils to heat and cool air. These first air conditioning units took up an entire room and cost as much as $1.5 million each in today’s dollars. But as Carrier and his competitors raced to improve upon their designs, air conditioning units became smaller, more efficient, and more affordable.

A big problem with early air conditioning units was that the compounds they used as refrigerants, such as ammonia and propane, were toxic, flammable, explosive, and not very effective. Then, in 1928, Thomas Midgley Jr. and his team in the Frigidaire division of General Motors synthesized the first chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), which they named Freon.

The adoption of CFCs like Freon provided a major boost to air conditioning. In the 1930s, when the US experienced the most severe heat waves in its history, air conditioning units began to be installed in movie theaters. Around the same time, the first window-mounted units were developed. But it wasn’t until after World War II that air conditioning started to become affordable and compact enough to become a common fixture in American homes. By the 1960s, most new homes in the US had central air conditioning.

Air conditioning did not merely make life more comfortable; it saved lives. Heat-related deaths fell by 80 percent after the adoption of air conditioning. Regions like the arid Southwest and the humid Southeast became more inhabitable for more people.

But as Mark Thornton has pointed out, the benefits of air conditioning extend far beyond staying cool on a hot day.

Because architects no longer needed to rely on windows for ventilation, air conditioning allowed for larger, sturdier buildings that could extend higher than had ever been possible. These skyscrapers significantly increased the supply of housing and office space in urban areas without requiring more land. That meant the air conditioning making residences and offices more comfortable was also making them more affordable.

The cooling and dehumidifying effects of air conditioning also help conserve things like books and historical artifacts. Thanks to modern HVAC systems, every major city in the country can have libraries, archives, and museums. That wasn’t true before. In fact, Willis Carrier first invented air conditioning not to cool hot rooms but to prevent magazine pages from wrinkling for a Brooklyn publishing company.

Air conditioning has helped enormously with textile production, surgeries, plant and animal breeding, pharmaceuticals, and transportation—not to mention the preservation and transportation of food through refrigeration. It is also crucial for cooling the vast data centers that, together, power the internet.

That’s all to say that it’s hard to overstate how much the world we all live in depends on our ability to control our indoor climates, regardless of the outdoor temperatures. But these systems rely on two central components: energy and refrigerants. And both of these components have come under attack from environmentalists and their allies in government.

Environmentalists are very clear that they want the world’s governments to force their populations off fossil fuels. They fantasize about a world where, after a few cleverly concocted government policies are enacted, the world transitions to energy sources like solar and wind, the weather improves, and we all get to live in an egalitarian, plant-filled, postscarcity utopia.

But those ambitions will never leave the realm of fantasy. So-called renewable sources like solar and wind power cannot support the world’s population at the current level of development. At best, things like air conditioning—which requires a lot of energy—will become more expensive.

More likely, modern HVAC systems will become unavailable for large swaths of the population. Because, in addition to the effort to ban fossil fuels, today’s environmentalists have also set their sights on the refrigerants these systems rely on.

It began in the nineties when the world’s governments seized on a scare that CFCs were causing a hole in the ozone layer (which was essentially a complete hoax) to ban the refrigerant and force a transition to a worse alternative called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The coerced adoption of HFCs made refrigerators, air conditioning systems, and even asthma inhalers more expensive and less effective. That’s the big reason why, as Thornton pointed out in the article linked above, air conditioning’s march to affordability reversed course in the 1990s and now costs so much.

But it gets worse. The US government has already passed legislation to phase in a total ban on HFCs. Most bans are set to kick in over the next couple of years, but unlike the CFC ban thirty years ago, there is no clear alternative this time around. If it’s mentioned at all, the other options presented are the same toxic, flammable, inefficient compounds like ammonia and propane that were used in the early air conditioning units ninety-five years ago. Companies have begun hoarding HFCs as the phaseout progresses and, earlier this year, the first arrest was made for smuggling the refrigerant into the country.

As air conditioning becomes even less affordable and available, all the benefits outlined above begin to slip out of reach as well. Life grows more expensive because internet, food, and rent prices will rise as the supply of data centers, refrigeration systems, and urban housing takes a hit. And, ironically, the warmest parts of the country will become less inhabitable, not because of a change in the climate, but because so-called green policies are destroying our ability to make them livable.

So, in a sense, environmentalists are right when they warn that heat waves will become more dangerous. But it’s not because of small increases in their average peak temperature. It’s because of the environmentalists themselves.

In a rare moment which appears a somewhat positive development (or at least it’s not more immediate escalation), the US and Russian defense chiefs spoke by phone Tuesday for the first time since March 2023.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin initiated the call, and the timing is important given it comes following Sunday’s deadly Ukraine missile attack on a crowded Sevastopol beach which killed five people and injured 124 more, including children.

Moscow has blamed Washington for providing the long-range MGM-140 ATACMS systems used in the attack, and has even said Kiev likely had satellite and targeting help from the Pentagon.

The Guardian noted that “The two sides gave widely divergent accounts of the discussion – the first between US defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Russia’s defense minister Andrei Belousov.”

Russian defense chief Belousov warned Austin against continued arms supplies to Kiev, citing the dangers of serious escalation. 

As for the US version of the call, the Pentagon readout was scant, only saying that Austin “emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication amid Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.”

The Kremlin is still pointing to Washington actions as being behind an ongoing escalation:

Russia’s defense ministry said Washington and Kyiv bore “responsibility for a deliberate missile strike on peaceful residents,” which it said used US-supplied ATACMS missiles.

Russia further called it a “terrorist act” and according to more details:

Videos posted on social media showed people running from the beach as explosions went off and people in swimming outfits carrying a stretcher. AFP could not verify their authenticity.

A local news channel on Telegram, ChP Sevastopol, cited witnesses as saying that an elderly woman was killed as she swam in the sea.

But despite this, elsewhere there were other rare positives. On Tuesday Russia and Ukraine conducted a prisoner swap involving 90 total POWs.

Sunday’s strike involved cluster munitions dropping on men, women, and children at a Sevastopol beach…

The moment when Cluster munitions from the ATACMS supplied by the United States is injuring and killing people on the beach in Sevastopol, Crimea couple a days ago. pic.twitter.com/WDQQxLeHTs

— I’m No Angel (@HappyCamper2626) June 25, 2024

This was the second biggest swap since May 31st, when the two sides returned 75 captives each. That exchange had come after a long lull in exchanges, and there is likely more to come this summer.

Authored by Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute,

The State Department has acknowledged that America’s top partner in Syria, the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), is still using underage fighters after more than 10 years of similar allegations. The Pentagon continues to work closely with the group regardless, as US troops illegally occupy large swaths of territory in northeastern Syria.

Published Tuesday, the department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report highlighted a number of armed factions employing child soldiers in Syria, among them notorious terrorist outfits like ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as more US-friendly groups.

“The recruitment or use of children in combat and support roles in Syria remains common, and since the beginning of 2018 international observers reported continued incidents of recruitment and use by armed groups,” the report said.

Those include several Kurdish militias, such as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an affiliated all-female brigade known as the YPJ, as well as the US-backed and armed SDF. The latter org is an umbrella group containing several others, including the YPG, and has long served as Washington’s main proxy force in Syria.

Another related Kurdish faction, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, was said to have tricked minors into joining up using “fraudulent announcements for educational courses in northeast Syria.”

Although the State Department said the SDF was implementing a 2019 UN-mandated “action plan” to end the practice, it noted reports that “SDF-affiliated armed groups recruited and used children in 2022 and 2023.”

Allegations of child trafficking and military recruitment have dogged the YPG for more than a decade, with rights groups reporting cases as far back as 2013. While YPG leadership claims to have ordered an end to the practice that year, the problem has only worsened since.

In 2020, the United Nations found the YPG, “under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces,” was the top recruiter of child fighters in Syria with 283 documented cases the prior year – even beating out the local al-Qaeda affiliate. While the UN later acknowledged SDF efforts to crack down on the use of underage fighters, it still recorded dozens of cases in April 2021.

Despite the official admission in the new State Department review, the US military continues a close partnership with the SDF and, by extension, the YPG. On Tuesday, the Pentagon deployed 40 vehicles and other hardware to reinforce a base in northwestern Syria, where US troops are embedded with Kurdish fighters. That move followed a similar deployment to Hasakah reported last April.

Throughout a decade of external efforts to topple Assad, the West and Gulf states facilitated the entry of tens of thousands of foreign jihadist fighters…

American forces have illegally occupied Syria for years despite repeated objections from the government in Damascus. While Washington insists the presence is necessary to ensure the lasting defeat of the Islamic State, US troops continue to hold significant energy resources in the oil-rich northeast, effectively controlling one-third of the country with the help of its Kurdish allies.

Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,

On June 20, the California Supreme Court ruled that the Taxpayer Protection Act, a ballot initiative that would have given voters veto power over new taxes, was a violation of the state constitution. The initiative, for which proponents had already gathered nearly 1.5 million signatures to qualify it for the ballot, was a desperate attempt by taxpayers and businesses to get California’s state and local government spending under control.

The court decision hinged on whether the initiative’s language constituted a “revision” of the state’s constitution or an “amendment.” The answer to this question is subjective and hinges on the “totality of the impact on the basic constitutional powers of government entities.” Ignoring ample contradictory evidence and precedent, the court decided that the changes proposed by the initiative were sufficiently sweeping to categorize it as a revision to the state constitution, and unlike amendments, revisions to the state constitution are only possible if the initiative is brought to voters by an act of the state legislature.

Thus, the Taxpayer Protection Act, which was a product of private grassroots groups, is dead. And with it, direct democracy – California’s last, best hope – is also dead.

Everything about this situation evokes a frustration that defies description. When assessing the “totality” of taxes and fees – sales tax, utility tax, excise tax, carbon emissions fees, payroll tax, income tax, property tax, permit fees, registration fees, payments on state bonds, municipal bonds, school bonds, the gasoline tax… the list of various fees on businesses is endless – Californians pay more to support their government than anywhere else in America. It is oppressive and it is driving people and businesses to flee to other states while it smothers the households and businesses that remain. The only people left making real money are the tech giants.

Some frustration may be directed at the proponents of this initiative. It isn’t unreasonable to wonder why, before they went ahead and spent millions of dollars to gather signatures and qualify this initiative for the state ballot, they didn’t anticipate a potentially devastating court ruling. The problem with that reasoning, however, is that it lacks the requisite cynicism with which to accurately regard any situation that threatens California’s special interests. Witnesses attending the proceedings left the court confident of an easy victory. Arguments by the initiative’s proponents were compelling. The state’s arguments were an incoherent stretch. That didn’t matter to the judges. Let the state keep on calling new taxes fees. Let the legislature raise taxes at will. That’s democracy in action – California style.

The overwhelming share of frustration must be directed at the corrupt elites who run California today. There is no doubt who these judges favored—and feared—the most. Here are the special interests that lined up to keep this initiative off the ballot:

Governor Gavin Newsom. The California Democratic Party. Public sector unions, including AFSCME, SEIU, and the California Professional Firefighters. Public agency associations, including the California Contract Cities Association, the California Special Districts Association, the California State Association of Counties, and the League of California Cities.

Notice what all these groups have in common. They are all supported by taxpayers, and the Democratic party, which they control, is their collection agency. The Taxpayer Protection Act would have taken away the most egregious prerogatives of this collection agency, which, for the last several years, has been out of control. It’s not hard to see why. The state legislature is currently empowered to raise taxes if they can get two-thirds of the state senate and two-thirds of the state assembly to vote in favor of the increase. That’s easy. Democrats control 78 percent of the seats in the assembly and 80 percent of the seats in the senate. They can raise taxes anytime they want, and they do, over and over.

It’s also not hard to identify the special interest that is at the heart of everything that has gone wrong in California. Public employee unions. If you want to know why California’s state general fund spending has increased from $96 billion in 2013 to $226 billion in 2023, it’s the unions. Even after adjusting for inflation, that is a per capita increase that has nearly doubled in only ten years.

Publicly available reports on campaign contributions to California’s state legislators make it all too clear who controls these politicians. In almost every case, the Democrats in the state legislature have received most of their campaign funds from public sector unions. The imbalance is almost absurd. Typically, the top ten largest contributions by amount come from government unions, and it is even common to see every one of a politician’s top twenty contributions coming from these unions.

In California, public sector unions collect and spend nearly $1 billion per year. During every two-year election cycle, they collectively pour hundreds of millions into political campaigns, with enough money to reach into every elected office, from a local water board, school board or city council all the way to seats in the legislature and top state offices, including the governor. These unions are joined by government agencies or government-supported associations, such as the League of California Cities, to fund allegedly non-political “information” campaigns. Hence the city funded flyers that inundate residential mailboxes, calculated to innocently “inform” voters of the consequences to public safety and child welfare if the latest local tax increase or bond issuance isn’t approved.

The public sector runs California, and if it seems cynical to suggest that for them, social failure equals government success, then just consider the evidence. The bigger the failure, the more new spending is required. Per capita government spending has doubled in the last decade in California. Has anything improved? Better schools, better roads, less crime, fewer homeless, more affordable anything? No. It’s all gotten worse.

To ensure that things continue to get worse, the state legislature and the governor are pulling out all the stops. As noted, they filed a lawsuit to make a biased court of handpicked judges throw a tax reform off the ballot. They have also placed two of their own pro-tax initiatives on the ballot. One of them, if approved by voters, will further erode the tax protections that Californians still retain. The other one will make any further attempts to use the initiative process to lower taxes virtually impossible. Expect them to spend tens of millions to con voters. As always, for these campaigns, they’ve got all the money they’ll ever need.

Things will also get worse in California thanks to a raft of last-minute, allegedly anti-crime laws that the legislature has passed, complete with poison pills. These new laws—which are too little, too late—include language to automatically nullify them if voters approve another grassroots initiative that will actually untie the hands of California’s law enforcement. They couldn’t get that one off the ballot, so they’re being extra clever in this case. Expect California’s attorney general to give this initiative, which would actually curb crime, a ballot description that reads something like this: “Initiative to Repeal Penalties for Crime.”

These are just a few recent examples of the convoluted gyrations of a totally self-interested cabal that wields absolute power in California. Normal working families in California endure obscene levels of taxation, crippling over-regulation of everything, failing public services, crime and disorder, and a punitive cost of living. In return, they are obligated to support a government that operates according to a simple, diabolical formula: the worse things get for them, the better things get for us.

Today’s market was brought you by the number 160 (yen per dollar) and the letters ‘A’ and ‘I’ as Japan’s Kanda spoiled the party in the FX markets and NVDA’s Huang failed to spark a panic back into AI stocks during today’s shareholder meeting.

USDJPY broke above 160 for the first time since 1986 as Japan’s currency chief failed to ignite enough fear with his comments about intervention…

Source: Bloomberg

NVDA failed to follow-through on yesterday’s big rebound even as CEO Jensen Huang delivered a rousing vision of the future for the use of his company’s products…

Source: Bloomberg

Well, everything went fucking vertical in the last few seconds of the day smashing NVDA into the green…

…and then Micron earnings hit after hours and NVDA tanked back into the red…

AI companies overall faded today, giving back much of yesterday’s gains (but the selloff was more broad-based today)…

Source: Bloomberg

But while AI stocks were hit, MAG7 basket rallied, thanks in large part to AMZN…

Source: Bloomberg

…as AMZN hit a new record high, topping $2 trillion market cap for the first time…

Source: Bloomberg

Add to all that the fact that the US housing market appears to have literally imploded in May (according to today’s new home sales data) and onemight have expected a more “bad news is good news” day… but instead, rate-cut expectations fell hawkishly…

Source: Bloomberg

Overall, Small Caps were the day’s biggest losers with the other US Majors clinging to either side of unchanged ahead of tonight’s bank stress test results. The last few seconds of the day saw everything go vertical as NVDA spiked…

Goldman’s trading desk noted that overall activity levels are down -5% vs. the trailing 2 weeks with market volumes flat vs the 10dma

• Our floor tilts -1% better for sale,  driven by HFs

• HFs lean -8% better for sale but short ratio back below 50%.  They are net for sale in every sector ex-REITs & Macro Products. Supply is heaviest in Tech where net supply is 3x larger than Energy, while the other sectors net supply is more modest.

• LOs are +2% better to buy, buying Tech, Staples, Energy, Fins & Macro Products.  Supply is heaviest in HCare & Industrials.

Bonds were dumped though with the longer-end underperforming on the day (2Y +4bps, 30Y +7bps)..

Source: Bloomberg

…which steepened the yield curve dramatically, back up to pre-CPI levels…

Source: Bloomberg

The yen weakness sent the dollar index soaring higher, closing at its highest since Nov 2023…

Source: Bloomberg

Dollar strength made gold suffer, with spot prices back below $2300…

Source: Bloomberg

…and oil, which was also piled on from a big crude build. WTI bounced back off the early selling but was sold back down to close basically unchanged…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin faded back from $62,000 as headlines around US Govt moving its Mt.Gox holdings to Coinbase sparked some selling pressure (though it appears the market has already soaked in the potential supply from that, which built on yesterday’s FUD-inspiring German govt move headlines)…

Source: Bloomberg

And finally, ahead of the first debate tomorrow night, Goldman Sachs shows us this chart shows how institutional investors view November’s outcome…Unified government is a major risk for bonds – Equities most sensitive to a Trump win…

Source: Goldman Sachs

Did today’s bond selloff and usd gains signal some bets that Trump will come away from tomorrow’s brawl for the better?

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco has signed a non-binding agreement to buy LNG from Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG project and potentially acquire 25% in the project’s Phase 2, the U.S. and Saudi firms said on Wednesday.

Under the non-binding Heads of Agreement (HoA), Aramco and Sempra are set to discuss a 20-year sale and purchase agreement for LNG offtake of 5.0 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) from the Port Arthur LNG Phase 2 expansion project. Today’s agreement further contemplates Aramco’s 25% participation in the project-level equity of Phase 2.

Phase 1 of the Port Arthur LNG project, an export terminal in Southeast Texas with direct access to the Gulf of Mexico, is currently under construction and consists of trains 1 and 2, as well as two LNG storage tanks and associated facilities.

The Port Arthur LNG Phase 2 project is a planned expansion of the site to include the addition of up to two trains capable of producing up to 13 Mtpa.   

“This agreement is a major step in Aramco’s strategy to become a leading global LNG player,” said Nasir K. Al-Naimi, Aramco Upstream President. 

This is the second heads of agreement Saudi Aramco has signed with a U.S. LNG developer in the past two weeks.

Earlier this month, Aramco and NextDecade Corporation announced a heads of agreement for a 20-year LNG offtake deal from train 4 at the Rio Grande LNG export facility in Texas.

Aramco, the world’s top crude exporter and the world’s biggest oil firm, has been seeking a greater role on the global LNG market as it plans to ramp up its natural gas production and trading business.

Last autumn, Saudi Aramco entered the global LNG business by signing a deal to buy a minority stake in LNG company MidOcean Energy, which was in the process of acquiring interests in four Australian LNG projects.

Going into LNG trading would be another lucrative business for the Saudi oil giant, considering that LNG demand is only set to grow in the coming years as Europe ditches Russian gas and Asia looks to use more natural gas instead of coal.

Tomorrow night, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will debate in Atlanta on CNN, moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

In a departure from debate tradition, there will be no studio audience following a demand from the Biden campaign, as well as two commercial breaks. What’s more, Tapper and Bash will be able to mute the candidates’ microphones at will.

Last week, Trump 2024 National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on CNN, where she had her own mic cut by anchor Kasie Hunt for pointing out that Tapper has compared Trump to Hitler in the past.

BREAKING: CNN host @kasie CUTS OFF Trump spokeswoman @kleavittnh the second she brings up Jake Tapper spending years comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler

This is a preview of how CNN will act during the debate pic.twitter.com/BS4LWjvCz4

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 24, 2024

And while many then replied with clips of Tapper doing just that, the network, which fired most of its Trump-era anchors to rehabilitate its image, made Trump-Hitler comparisons a frequent topic of discussion after the former President suggested that the flood of illegal immigrants into the United States is “poisoning the blood of our country.”

“If you were to open up a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. The Jew, Hitler wrote, quote, ‘poisons the blood of others,‘” Tapper said during a Dec. 19 segment.

Watch via the Daily Caller:

Debate Moderator Jake Tapper Compares Trump to HITLER?! pic.twitter.com/4zcUkWUfHZ

— DC Shorts (@theDCshorts) June 25, 2024

CNN of course claims that Tapper and Bash will remain impartial.

“Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined,” a spokesperson told the Daily Caller. “They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”

Right. Let’s see how the treat Trump during tomorrow’s 3-on-1 debate.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Let’s discuss the Kyoto Protocol climate objectives and dozens of reasons why a net zero by the 2050 target has virtually no chance.

The Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted on December 11, 1997. There are 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.

The ultimate objective of the convention is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system.

The current goal is net zero carbon emission by 2050.

Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050

The Fraser Institute reports that we are Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050 with virtually no progress, despite all the hoopla.

That article is 44 pages long and worth a read from start to finish. I post some key ideas below.

Carbon Impact on Climate

The Fraser Institute is not a carbon denier. Let’s start there to not immediately lose all of the climate cheerleaders.

The Earth is made hospitable for photosynthesis and habitable for all higher organisms thanks to the regulation of its atmospheric temperature by several naturally occurring trace gases—above all by carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and ozone (O3). Without their presence the planet’s surface would be permanently frozen at about -18oC, but by absorbing a small share of the outgoing (infrared) radiation these trace gases keep the mean tropospheric temperature at about 15oC or 33oC higher than in their absence (NASA, 2023).

There is nothing new about the realization that these trace gases could affect climate. In 1861 John Tyndall concluded that variation of atmospheric CO2 “must produce a change in climate” (Tyndall, 1861). In 1896 Svante Arrhenius explained that exponential rise of CO2 would result in a nearly arithmetic rise of surface temperatures and that the doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels might raise the Earth’s temperature by 5 to 6o C (Arrhenius, 1896).

Energy Transitions

The goal of reaching net zero global anthropogenic CO2 emissions is to be achieved by an energy transition whose speed, scale, and modalities (technical, economic, social, and political) would be historically unprecedented.

What is particularly clear is that (in the absence of an unprecedented and prolonged global economic downturn) the world will remain far from reducing its energy-related CO2 emissions by 45 percent from the 2010 level by 2030: for that we would have to cut emissions by nearly 16 billion tons between 2023 and 2030—or eliminate nearly as much fossil carbon as the combined emissions of the two largest energy consumers, China and the USA.

On the face of it, and even without performing any informed technical and economic
analyses, this seems to be an impossible task given that:

• We have only a single generation (about 25 years) to do it;
• We have not even reached the peak of global consumption of fossil carbon;
• The peak will not be followed by precipitous declines;
• We still have not deployed any zero-carbon large-scale commercial processes to
  produce essential materials; and
• The electrification has, at the end of 2022, converted only about 2 percent of
  passenger vehicles (more than 40 million) to different varieties of battery-powered cars and that decarbonization is yet to affect heavy road transport, shipping, and flying (IEA, 2023c).

Renewable generation also needs expanded high-voltage transmission lines (overhead wires and undersea cables from offshore wind sites) to bring the electricity from the windiest and sunniest places to often distant cities and industrial areas.

Moreover, there are many final energy conversions (ranging from heavy ocean shipping and long-distance commercial aviation to chemical industry dependent on fossil carbon feedstocks) that cannot be readily electrified. Further, we would need substantial quantities of solid and liquid fossil carbon even in the zero-carbon world for paving (asphalt) and for industrial and commercial lubricants. Producing what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization—cement, primary iron, plastics, and ammonia—now depends on fossil fuels, and replacing them with alternatives will require the development of new mass-scale industries and distribution networks ranging from green hydrogen (made by electrolysis of water by green electricity) and ethanol to new synthetic fuels (Smil, 2022a).

If more complex innovations are cheaper than the established ways, or if their higher costs are outweighed by higher quality, efficiency, and convenience, then the transitions can proceed rapidly. Examples include black versus color television, reciprocating engines versus jet engines in long-distance commercial aviation, landlines versus mobile phones, and high-efficiency natural gas furnaces versus coal stoves.

In contrast, renewable conversions start with the inherent disadvantages of having low power density and greater intermittency, and hence their full costs (with service comparable to the on-demand supply and reliability of fossil fuel converters) are considerably higher than the marginal cost of purchasing and installing new PV panels or wind turbines (Smil, 2015; Sorensen, 2015).

The cost differences have been narrowing but the latest comparisons of the levelized costs of electricity generation in the US indicate that the overall cost of solar PV (with a capacity factor of 28 percent) entering service in 2027 will be only 9 percent lower than the cost of combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT, capacity factor 85 percent), and that onshore wind will have the same overall cost but offshore wind plus battery storage will be still more than three times as expensive (US EIA, 2022).

Our Record So Far

The most obvious way to start assessing the progress of the required energy transition is to look at what has been accomplished during the past generation when the concerns about global decarbonization assumed a new urgency and prominence.

Contrary to common impressions, there has been no absolute worldwide decarbonization. In fact, the very opposite is the case. The world has become much more reliant on fossil carbon (even as its relative share has declined a bit). We are now halfway between 1997 (27 years ago) when delegates of nearly 200 nations met in Kyoto to agree on commitments to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases, and 2050; the world has 27 years left to achieve the goal of decarbonizing the global energy system, a momentous divide judging by the progress so far, or the lack of it.

The numbers are clear. All we have managed to do halfway through the intended grand global energy transition is a small relative decline in the share of fossil fuel in the world’s primary energy consumption—from nearly 86 percent in 1997 to about 82 percent in 2022.

But this marginal relative retreat has been accompanied by a massive absolute increase in fossil fuel combustion: in 2022 the world consumed nearly 55 percent more energy locked in fossil carbon than it did in 1997 (see figure 5). The conclusion is unequivocal: by 2023, after a quarter century of targeted energy transition, there has been no absolute global decarbonization of energy supply.

What It Would Take to Reverse the Past Emission Trend

After cutting our relative dependence on fossil fuels by just 4 percent during the first half of the prescribed post-Kyoto period, even if there was no further increase in CO2 emissions we would have to cut it by 82 percent by 2050.

Another revealing way of viewing the daunting magnitude of this challenge is to look at the cuts that would have to be made by G20 economies to meet the interim 2030 goals: for nearly all major economies, it would generally mean halving the 2020 emissions, with cuts of 45 percent for Canada and 46 percent for Saudi Arabia, to 55 percent for the EU, 56 percent for the US, and 63 percent for China (McKinsey, 2023). Only an unprecedented economic collapse could bring such cuts during the next seven years.

The Task Ahead: Zero Carbon Electricity and Hydrogen

Hydroelectricity now supplies about 15 percent of the world’s electricity generation, followed by nuclear fission, which generates about 10 percent (Energy Institute, 2023b). New renewables, wind and solar, have grown rapidly during the past three decades and in 2022 they supplied 12 percent of all electricity generation, still less than the total generated by the two older carbon-free alternatives. Moreover, primary electricity (hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, and a small contribution by geothermal plants) accounted for no more than about 18 percent of the world’s primary energy consumption, which means that fossil fuels still provided about 82 percent of the world’s primary energy supply in 2022.

What is clear is that the total addition of zero carbon electricity will have to go far beyond just replacing today’s fossil-fueled generation, which is about 62 percent of the total of more than 29 quadrillion watthours (PWh) in 2022. Electricity demand will continue to grow: the International Energy Agency forecasts annual growth of 3.3 percent until 2050 and that would raise the 2022 total nearly 2.5-fold to just over 72 PWh (IEA, 2022). Even if hydro and nuclear were to cover 20 percent of that total, wind and solar would have to reach about 58 PWh in 2050, about 17 times their 2022 output and almost exactly twice the 2022 electricity generation from all sources.

Spotlight Steel

Steel is, and it will remain, modern civilization’s dominant metal, indispensable for all infrastructure, housing, transportation, agriculture, and industrial production (Smil, 2016b). Roughly 30 percent of the world’s steel is made by recycling scrap metal: this is done in electric arc furnaces (EAF) and hence this effort can be fully energized by green electricity.

But 70 percent of the world’s steel comes from basic oxygen furnaces (BOF) using cast (pig) iron smelted in blast furnaces (BF) fueled with coke (made from coking coal), coal dust, and natural gas. In 2022, the output of this primary BF-BOF steel reached 1.4 billion tons. The forecasts are that no less than 2.6 billion tons of the metal will be needed in 2050. Even with raising the EAF steel share to 35 percent, demand would require roughly 1.7 billion tons of green iron (World Steel Association, 2023; ArcelorMittal, 2023).

Instead of reducing iron ores with carbon (and emitting CO2), in the zero-carbon world we would have to reduce them with hydrogen (Fe2O3 + 3H2  2Fe + 3H2O). This means that by 2050 the annual output of 1.7 billion tons of green steel would need about 91 million tons of green hydrogen

Spotlight Ammonia

Ammonia is an even more important product: about 85 percent of its annual production is used to make synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers without whose continuing applications about half of today’s world population could not survive (Smil, 2022a). Ammonia is now synthesized with nitrogen taken from the air and hydrogen produced through a shift reaction from natural gas, coal, and liquid hydrocarbons (N2 + 3H2  2NH3), with less than 5 percent coming from electrolysis of water (green hydrogen). In 2022 the annual output of ammonia reached about 150 million tons; forecasts are that at least 200 million tons will be needed by 2050.

Electrolytic production of green hydrogen needs about 50 MWh/ton: making 500 million tons of green hydrogen by 2050 would thus require about 25 PWh of green electricity, the total equal to about 86 percent of the 2022 global electricity use (IRENA, 2023). To repeat, this renewably generated electricity would be dedicated to the production of green hydrogen alone!

Spotlight Copper

A typical electric vehicle contains more than five times the amount of copper (80 versus 15 kg) of an internal combustion car engine. Replacing today’s 1.35 billion light-duty gasoline and diesel vehicles with EVs and supplying the expanded market (estimated at 2.2 billion cars by 2050) would thus require nearly 150 million tons of additional copper during the next 27 years. That is an equivalent of more than seven years of today’s annual copper extraction for all of the metal’s many industrial and commercial uses (EIA, 2021, October 26). In addition, the IEA estimates that, compared to 2020, the take-over of EVs by 2040 would need more than 40 times as much lithium as is currently mined, and up to 25 times the amount of graphite, cobalt, and nickel (IEA, 2021c). Cumulative demand for materials to achieve total decarbonization by 2050 has been estimated at about 5 billion tons for steel, nearly a billion tons for aluminum, and more than 600 million tons of copper (to list just the three largest items).

Such massive mineral needs bring not only technical and financial concerns, but also environmental and political implications (Energy Transitions Commission, 2023; Sonter, Maron, Bull, et al., 2023). Copper offers a stunning example of these environmental externalities. The metal content of exploited copper ores from Chile, the world’s leading source of the metal, has declined from 1.41 percent in 1999 to 0.6 percent in 2023, and further quality deterioration is inevitable (see figure 7) (Lazenby, 2018, November 19; Jamasmie, 2018, April 25; IEA, 2021c).

Using the mean richness of 0.6 percent means that the extraction of additional 600 million tons of metal would require the removal, processing, and deposition of nearly 100 billion tons of waste rock (mining and processing spoils), which is about twice as much as the current annual total of global material extracted including harvested biomass, all fossil fuels, ores and industrial minerals, and all bulk construction materials.

Extracting and dumping such enormous masses of waste material exacts a very high energy and environmental price as it puts new, supposedly “green” energy uses even further from the goal of maximized material recycling. Moreover, copper’s production is dominated by just a few countries (Chile, Peru, China, and Congo), and China alone refines 40 percent of the world’s supply. China processes even more of the other minerals required for green energy conversion: nearly 60 percent of lithium, 65 percent of cobalt, and close to 90 percent of rare earths (IEA, 2021d; Castillo and Purdy, 2022). That makes OPEC’s grip on crude oil (now 40 percent of global production) a relatively restrained affair!

Costs, Politics, and Demand

Nobody can offer a reliable estimate of the eventual cost of a worldwide energy transition by 2050 though a recent (and almost certainly highly conservative) total suggested by McKinsey’s Global Institute makes it clear that comparing this effort to any former dedicated government-funded projects is another serious category mistake. Their estimate of $275 trillion between 2021 and 2050 prorates to $9.2 trillion a year. Compared to the 2022 global GDP of $101 trillion, this implies an annual expenditure on the order of 10 percent of the total worldwide economic product for three decades.

In reality, the real burden would be far higher for two reasons. First, it cannot be expected that low-income countries could sustain such a diversion of their limited resources and hence this global endeavour could not succeed unless the world’s high-income nations annually spend sums equal to 15 to 20 percent of their GDP. More importantly, this ultimate global transformation project would face enormous cost overruns. As the world’s most comprehensive study of cost overruns (more than 16,000 projects in 16 countries and in 20 categories, from airports to nuclear stations) shows, 91.5 percent of projects worth more than $1 billion have run over the initial estimate, with the mean overrun being 62 percent (Flyvbjerg and Gardner, 2023).

Only once in history did the US (and Russia) spent higher shares of their annual economic product, and they did so for less than five years when they needed to win World War II. Is any country seriously contemplating similar, but now decades-long, commitments?

We must also consider the poorest continent, the population of which will grow from 1.2 to 2.5 billion by 2050. Africa has seen how China became relatively rich during the past generation by quadrupling its combustion of fossil carbon and becoming the world’s largest producer of cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia. Affluent countries themselves have no large-scale non-fossil alternatives that could be transferred to Africa and enable the continent to pursue green development. That is why “African Nations Tell COP27 Fossil Fuels Will Tackle Poverty” (Mcfarlane and Abnett, 2022, November 10).

Realities versus Wishful Thinking

Denmark, with half of its electricity now coming from wind, is often pointed out as a particular decarbonization success: since 1995 it cut its energy-related emissions by 56 percent (compared to the EU average of about 22 percent)—but, unlike its neighbours, the country does not produce any major metals (aluminum, copper, iron, or steel), it does not make any float glass or paper, does not synthesize any ammonia, and it does not even assemble any cars. All these products are energy-intensive, and transferring the emissions associated with their production to other countries creates an undeservedly green reputation for the country doing the transferring.

Responsible analyses must acknowledge existing energy, material, engineering, managerial, economic, and political realities. An impartial assessment of those resources indicates that it is extremely unlikely that the global energy system will be rid of all fossil carbon by 2050.

Belief in Miracles

Belief in near-miraculous tomorrows never goes away. Even now we can read declarations claiming that the world can rely solely on wind and PV by 2030 (Global100REStrategyGroup, 2023). And then there are repeated claims that all energy needs (from airplanes to steel smelting) can be supplied by cheap green hydrogen or by affordable nuclear fusion.

What does this all accomplish besides filling print and screens with unrealizable claims?

Instead, we should devote our efforts to charting realistic futures that consider our technical capabilities, our material supplies, our economic possibilities, and our social necessities—and then devise practical ways to achieve them. We can always strive to surpass them—a far better goal than setting ourselves up for repeated failures by clinging to unrealistic targets and impractical visions.

Failing to reach an unrealistic goal of complete global decarbonization by 2050 means failing to limit average global warming to 1.5oC. How much higher the temperature might rise will not depend only on our continued efforts to decarbonize the global energy supply but also on our success in limiting CO2 and other greenhouse gases generated by agriculture, animal husbandry, deforestation, land use changes, and waste disposal. After all, those contributions account for at least a quarter of global anthropogenic emissions but, so far, we have been almost exclusively focused on CO2 from fossil fuel combustion. But that is a topic for another inquiry.

Mish Comments

That’s a pretty long snip but it’s from 44 pages. I suggest reading the entire article if you have a few extra minutes.

Absolutely Brilliant Speech by British Satirist, Konstantin Kisin

Brilliant speech addressed to our ‘woke’ youth fighting #climatechange by Konstantine Kisin. pic.twitter.com/mFS8w0t2ip

— Brandon Taylor Moore (@LetsGoBrando45) January 14, 2023

Climate Deniers

I have been accused of being a climate denier. Mercy. Actually, I am a climate realist.

Climate change is real and constant and has been ever since the earth formed.

The debate is over how much is manmade and even more importantly, what to do about it, whether it’s manmade or not.

Let’s assume recent climate change is 100% manmade. So what do we do about it?

Play the above video then think about the path of China and India while noting the whole continent of Africa is not even on the scale.

Also note that India just passed China in population and would like to catch up economically. That requires more energy.

The Problem of Politics

The problems of politics and rushing things too fast are easy to spot.

On January 26, 2024, I discussed The Rise of the Farmer’s Daughter and Another Green Energy Revolt

Yet another farm protest in the EU has farmer’s spraying “merde” on the streets of France. Green energy regulations are at the heart of the protest.

An energy revolt also led to a collapse of the political center in the June 2024 Parliamentary Elections.

I discussed the results in Marine Le Pen Set for Record Win, Macron Calls Snap French Election

Winners: The Far Right
Losers: Renew Europe (Macron), and the Greens.

Ford Loses $36,000 on Each EV, Cuts Production of Electric Trucks

On January 20, I noted Ford Loses $36,000 on Each EV, Cuts Production of Electric Trucks

Demand for EVs is nowhere close to projections so car makers are slashing production.

Did I say $36,000. Oops, strike that.

Ford Loses $132,000 on Each EV Produced

On April 26, Ford admitted a new amount: Ford Loses $132,000 on Each EV Produced, Good News, EV Sales Down 20 Percent

Ford (F) reports a huge loss on every EV. Sales are down 20 percent holding the losses to $1.3 billion.

Please note the good news. Sales were down 20 percent holding the losses to a mere $1.3 billion.

Unsold Tesla’s Pile Up in Mall Parking Lots, Big Discounts Likely

On May 14, I noted Unsold Tesla’s Pile Up in Mall Parking Lots, Big Discounts Likely

Tesla is renting parking lots to store thousands of vehicles. This helps explain the mass layoffs.

This is what happens when governments mandate solutions.

Toyota ignored the hype and the US mandates and instead put a focus on hybrids. After laughing at Toyota, the big three are scrambling to catch up on hybrid technology.

If Trump wins the election, and I believe he will, the energy backlash is likely to set environmental goals back at least for years if not more.

Meanwhile, ironies abound.

Please note Biden Wants EVs so Badly That He Will Quadruple Tariffs on Them

Astute readers will immediately notice the title of this post makes no sense. It’s not supposed to. But it is exactly what President Biden is doing.

Wishful thinking coupled with unsustainable, hypocritical government mandates are worse than doing nothing at all.

Authored by Nik Hoffman via Bitcoin Magazine.com,

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has introduced legislation to allow federal income tax payments to be made in Bitcoin.

Exclusively reported first by the Daily Wire, this bill aims to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, instructing the Treasury Secretary to develop a plan for accepting Bitcoin.

According to Gaetz, his proposal aims to modernize the tax payment process by allowing federal income tax to be paid with BTC.

BREAKING: 🇺🇸 US Congressman Matt Gaetz introduces bill to allow federal income tax to be paid with #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/mcflCTQejI

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) June 25, 2024

Gaetz told The Daily Wire:

“By enabling taxpayers to use Bitcoin for federal tax payments, we can promote innovation, increase efficiency, and offer more flexibility to American citizens. This is a bold step toward a future where digital currencies play a vital role in our financial system, ensuring that the U.S. remains at the forefront of technological advancement.”

The legislation would require the Treasury Secretary to establish regulations for the acceptance of Bitcoin, including specifying when payments are considered received and mandating the immediate conversion of Bitcoin to its dollar equivalent. Additionally, the bill includes provisions for handling related non-tax matters, contracts, fees, and liability.

“The Secretary shall develop and implement a method to allow for the payment with bitcoin of any tax imposed on an individual under this title,” the bill reads. 

“The Secretary shall prescribe such regulations as the Secretary deems necessary to receive payment by bitcoin, including regulations that specify when payment by such means will be considered received, require the immediate conversion of any bitcoin amount received to its dollar equivalent at the conclusion of any transaction.”

This announcement comes following a recent explosion in Bitcoin support amongst US politicians. Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. both accept Bitcoin payments, while it was reported that the Biden campaign is also in talks to accept cryptocurrency donations. Biden Admin officials are expected to make an appearance at a Bitcoin roundtable in Washington D.C. in a few weeks hosted by Congressman Ro Khanna, as a response to Donald Trump embracing Bitcoin, pledging to “ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in America.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also recently met with both democrat and republican senators in D.C. “to discuss creating clear rules for the crypto industry.”

A couple weeks ago, US Congressman Thomas Massie stated that he decided to introduce a bill to end the Federal Reserve after reading The Bitcoin Standard book.