This via Paul Homewood's blog.

https://tomed.substack.com/p/is-the-manmade-climate-crisis-a-scam?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1284039&post_id=139272355&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=16n1qe&utm_medium=email

.,
Many thanks.

His argument has a red herring in it. OPEC power is about oil, and oil importing countries don't generate much electricity using oil. So the stuff about "renewables" seems to have little bearing on waning OPEC power. The rest of the article says essentially that a cartel only works if it has a near-monopoly. One or two greedy members, or a large external competitor can tumble it. Reasonable enough. We'll see how it works out.

The picture in my own crystal ball is at a smaller scale, but pretty clear: no tumbling prices at the pump.

I've made a couple of comments at Jo Nova's recently. Both have been in response streams following comments by David Wojick who does a lot of analysing of surface temperature figures and such. I think he's going where Steve McIntyre wisely stopped. McIntyre stayed focussed on where the alarmists were doing things wrongly. He didn't rise to the bait of people saying Ok smarty-pants, give us your best model (or whatever).

It's tempting to take a technical approach, but I think the whole campaign is political and therefore immune to logic. In the end it will only be beaten politically. I'd like to see some pushback on the redefinition of "climate". My Concise Oxford (1995) has:

climate n. 1 the prevailing weather conditions of an area. 2 a region with particular weather conditions.

Climate, refers to the long-term regional or global average of temperature, humidity and rainfall patterns over seasons, years or decades.

That newer definition of climate is interesting in what it leaves out too. Residents of Chicago (the windy city) and Wellington (windy Wellington) would be surprised that wind no longer counts as part of climate. Global average temperature, humidity and rainfall sound a bit sciency (the warmer, wetter world and all that), but blind Freddy could see that global average wind would be idiotic. So it gets dropped from climate.

Spectator on OPEC

Ross Lea,
That article was behind a paywall. I probably should subscribe. I remember the quality was high when I used to get the Spectator, but there was too much of it and the magazines piled up. I have a bit more free time now.

Anyhow, I didn't rush in, but thought I'd see if the author had any similar articles from which I could infer the Speccie one. A short search didn't turn up anything recent, but it seems that this one from 8 months ago was not so up-beat about the West. The change of mood suggests the author's crystal ball mightn't have the best reception.

A Jo Nova commenter linked to this Steve Kirsch interview, with an ex-nurse, about Californian COVID mania. Interview was ok, and accorded with my own views (especially on the harms of the "treatment protocols"), but will be shrugged off by the establishment side as being anecdotal and having no hard figures.

Funny when you think about it. The exacting arts of Winston Smith's vocation have been applied to the temperature record in order to make the future more alarming. Now the same skills will be applied to hospital records to make the past less alarming.

This is an interesting article from the Spectator obout the power of OPEC. If it turns out to be correct it will be a real game changer moving centre of power in favour of the West especially the US.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-opecs-power-finally-failing/

Greetings from 2024. Nothing remarkable so far, but it's 366 days until the only perfect square year we're likely to see.

tomo,
The greens have infiltrated and converted significant numbers in the media and that has bought them a lot of public and political power. The Jehova's Witnesses' methods can't compete. It's a good choice of comparison on your part. There would be significant overlap in their pools of potential converts.

Ross Lea,
The Savannah story is interesting. It's a bit of a shame its design as a freighter took a back seat to its design as a public relations exercise. OTOH, it was probably built too early. Old-style freighters spent relatively long periods in port and less time at sea because loading and unloading was pretty technical. Not as much advantage with nuclear power in those ships as in a modern container ship.

Enjoyed the EconTalk on AI, with Paul Bloom.

At one point they were discussing how people tended to convince themselves that they had arrived at their most cherished beliefs by a clear, logical process and that anyone who believed otherwise was irrational. Put them in the same room to thrash out their disagreement and each is saying "What's wrong with you, why can't you see that my view is right?". The COVID debate here (mostly between TinyCO2 and me) would be a fair example. Each of us was sure he had logic on his side and the other guy was ruled by emotion.

AI to the rescue. You don't get more logical than a computer so, since both sides of the argument are convinced of their sound logic, they're sure AI is going to back them up. Seems quite plausible that this sort of thinking was behind the initial enthusiasm for ChatGPT. Gloss has worn off a bit now, and we hear mutterings about "training".

Strikes me that there may be (or have been) a similar mindset about self-driving cars: Look at all these idiots on the road. If only their cars were driven by an all-seeing, all-knowing computer, they'd drive as well as I do, and then we'd get somewhere.

I read a figure recently that the NY Times gets about a 2.5% response rate to telephone surveys; that they needed to phone 200,000 people to get 5,000 responses. In any sane world, this would make the error bars so wide that you could conclude nothing. I spent a little while investigating what (a) was done and (b) can be done. (a) was essentially, nothing. Just assume that as many naysayers as yeasayers was hanging up on you. Great.

(b) led me to this R program. I'm sure it's one of many possibilities. No great complaint from me about the content. It does include warnings about assumptions made. The problem is that students just want the "magic formula" and will accept whatever nonsense the computer spews out. Then they get their qualifications and do it in real life. Which is how we get climatology and (e.g.) its widespread use of linear regression on non-linear systems.

The first nuclear merchant vessel was the NS Savanna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah) but foolishly no one would let it land so this obvious advance was strangled at birth but it will (must) come. To say Merchant Marine engineers are not up to the job is an insult. They need to cope when a ship breaks down in the middle of the ocean.

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The article didn't say what "glue" was used. Is it just an epoxy composite like fibreglass or carbon fibre with wood cellulose providing the fibre lattice? Appropriate for wood to be used as an eco-veneer on something no more biodegradable than other plastics.

In any case, the huge concrete footing is still going to be needed, which surely nixes the "carbon negative" rubbish.

tomo,
Good point on China's port buying-spree. Does strengthen their bargaining position.

I'm sure there are eco-nuts who hold their views sincerely, piously even; and I think there also might be a universal principle: where views are held religiously there is fertile ground for organised crime. While China and Russia/USSR have no doubt egged on eco-activism, I doubt their efforts have added all that much. We'd still have big green, and they'd still be milking the devout for all they're worth.

At JoNova's, a comment linked to this report on a survey in the US, where one in five young people said they had a favourable view of Osama bin Laden. Much huffing and puffing, but I think there's a simple explanation. A fair chunk of them confused Osama with Obama.