BY ZeroHedge - TYLER DURDEN - David Stockman - JUN 10, 2023

Two mindless projects of national impoverishment.

These are embodied in a proposed regulatory dragnet to force 67% of new auto sales into EVs by 2032 and a Washington-funded green energy plan to induce America’s great oil companies to build the equivalent of energy pyramids, likely resulting in corporate hari kari not too far down the road.

Literally, trillions of perfectly good capital stock–such as IC engine autos and coal-fired power plants—will be dismantled well before their useful lives are completed. And this wasted capital stock will be replaced with low and no efficiency interruptible wind and solar electric power and completely asinine schemes like carbon capture from the ambient air that will be heavily subsidized by Uncle Sam.

But to cut to the chase, the carbon capture scheme to which Occidental Petroleum, for example, plans to allocate billions is the equivalent of building 21st-century energy pyramids.

CO2 Air Capture Contraption

The Original Egyptian Pyramids

Huge amounts of energy and materials will be used to build and operate these monstrosities, but unlike present-day remnants of the Egyptian pyramids, we doubt that some future owners will even be able to charge tourist admission, meaning that the return to society on investment will be somewhere between nichts, nada, nugatory and nothing.

This loony idea apparently stems from the fact that Occidental recently took a stake in Carbon Engineering, a startup backed by Bill Gates, which developed a system to capture, purify and compress CO2. And, oh, Warren Buffett is Oxy’s controlling shareholder, to boot. It’s no wonder this once great American company is being led off the deep-end by these two and its Fortune 100-style woke CEO, Vicki Hollub.

In any event, these contraptions are to sit out by their lonesome in the open expanses of Texas, employing giant fields of fans which pull plain old ambient air into huge containers. Therein massive amounts of energy and chemicals will be deployed to bind with the CO2 to separate it from the air, eventually creating pellets. The pellets will then be heated to release pure carbon dioxide, which, in turn, will be compressed to be transported through pipelines and funneled deep underground.

Naturally, Oxy’s executives have been led to believe that they are doing god’s work, with a big helping hand from Uncle Sam’s lavish subsidies. For instance, Richard Jackson, Occidental’s president of U.S. onshore resources and carbon management, is clearly drinking the cool-aid in big gulps: “We can turn CO2 into value,” he said.

Well, no, they will be doing just the opposite: Turning valuable ambient CO2, on which the plant and animal life of the planet depends, into dead material to be buried deep in the earth, and an enormous waste of economic resources.

Thus, Occidental estimates its initial cost to remove a metric ton of CO2 would be between $400 and $500. It claims that as it manufactures more plants and efficiencies kick in, it will be able to roughly halve that to between $200 and $250 a ton by the end of the decade.

But so what? Waste is waste.

In turn, this deadweight loss to society will be compounded by federal tax credits. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by Sleepy Joe in 2022, rewards companies that capture and store atmospheric CO2 with a $180 tax credit per metric ton contained permanently.

So it’s obvious how Oxy intends to make this pencil out, given that the implied cost of carbon capture amounts to $90 to $180 dollars per barrel of oil equivalent. That is, the taxpayers will fork over the cost!

But there’s more. In its wisdom Washington will be mandating energy producers, auto producers, airlines, most other businesses, and eventually households, too, to purchase CO2 credits from schemes like Oxy’s carbon capture boondoggle for the privilege of engaging in daily economic life and commerce.

And that is just plain malefic. Oxy will be making money double-charging Americans for the idiocy of carbon capture—first in the tax credits and then in the higher cost of everyday goods and services impacted by the mandates to purchase carbon credits.

Here’s the thing. This sweeping attack on rationality and economic productivity might make sense if Co2 were a super-dangerous pollutant—one which threatened massive medical and economic harm to mankind.

But that is not remotely the case. The campaign against CO2 is a secular religious crusade against what amounts to the soft underbelly of industrial civilization. It’s as if a rampaging sect of misanthropes went looking for the molecule on which the planet’s very life and prosperity depend, found CO2, and declared it as the horrific poison of modern life.

Yet the very science of the matter and the history of the planet reveal the anti-CO2 crusade for what it is - a contemporary form of witchcraft.

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Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of this trend in motion. The best you can do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. Most people have no idea what really happens when a currency collapses, let alone how to prepare… How will you protect your savings in the event of a currency crisis? This just-released video will show you exactly how.

Click here to watch it now.

96% of U.S. Climate Data is Corrupted, New Report Finds

By Pamela Geller - on June 11, 2023

The report neglected to mention ‘deliberately’ corrupted — a means to a malevolent end.

96% of U.S. climate data is corrupted

By: Jazz Shaw,  June 11, 2023This seems like an appropriate time for a story like this to pop up since it involves both smoke clouds and climate change. You probably heard how AOC was quick to blame the clouds of smoke wafting down from the Canadian wildfires last week on climate change. As you likely expected without even needing to check, that turns out to be nonsense. But the underlying facts that prove its nonsensical nature turn out to be well rooted in science. And researching this question turns up something even more interesting, which we’ll get to in a moment.

You should check out the work of veteran meteorologist Anthony Watts of the Heartland Institute. He’s been studying the weather and the climate in general for a very long time. He travels around the country inspecting meteorological equipment and studies historical weather data from around the world. One of the first findings he would like the public to be aware of is that not only are wildfires common in many parts of North America, but the reality is that in the 21st century, they have actually been less numerous than they were in the past. They’re just getting more attention from the press and on social media.

Rather than focusing discussion on what the real or imagined harms may be, how to mitigate them, and how to help people, climate activists are taking the opportunity to blame “climate change” for the smoke. The reality is wildfires are becoming less frequent and severe as the planet modestly warms. As wildfires become less frequent, it is nonsensical to blame the few wildfires that remain on climate change…

“Peer-reviewed studies and verified satellite observations show beyond a shadow of a doubt that wildfires in the long term, mid-term, and short term have become less frequent and less severe as the Earth modestly warms. The likely reason is the measured increase in evaporation from the world’s oceans, which has resulted in more frequent global precipitation.”

That’s not the shocking part of the story, however. When discussing the “modest warming” that the planet has exhibited, there is a need to have solid data. But as Dr. Watts has examined weather stations around the country, he has discovered that the available data may be nearly useless when attempting to quantify very slight changes in average temperatures. That’s because more than 90% of the data is “corrupted.” And the reason for that is the reality that the vast majority of thermometers that NOAA relies on are improperly installed and maintained, leading to the recording of artificially higher temperatures.

A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.

The report, published by The Heartland Institute, was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States. The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects.