In the annals of history, there have been countless tales of rulers and leaders who, in their hubris, believed they could command the very forces of nature. The ancient Roman god Jupiter, King of Gods, was believed to be above the fray of mere mortals, wielding power over the skies and storms. Fast forward to today, and we see a modern-day “Jupiter Effect” manifesting in the realm of energy and climate policy. The recent article by Tilak Doshi in Forbes titled “The Jupiter Effect: Climate Change Policy From On High” offers a scathing critique of the hubris displayed by today’s leaders in their approach to climate change policy.
“In ancient Roman mythology, Jupiter (Zeus in Greek mythology) was the King of Gods, above the fray of mere mortals and the lesser gods. Over the last few weeks, the Jupiter effect in energy and climate policy was evidenced twice over.”
The article highlights the audacity of leaders like President Emmanuel Macron, who, with a wave of his hand, asked the fuel industry to “sell at cost price, that is to say that no one makes a margin”. Similarly, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent legislative actions seem to be more about virtue signaling than practical solutions.
“What is it about imperious “green” rulers who inflict impossible rules on demonized fossil fuel businesses that undermine the very foundation of their existence – namely, their capacity to deliver profits for their shareholders – to “fight climate change”? The hubris of leaders who imagine that their punitive “decarbonization” actions can have even the slightest impact on climate change is breath-taking.”
The article rightly points out the irony of these leaders’ actions. On one hand, they demonize fossil fuel businesses, and on the other, they fail to recognize the foundational role these businesses play in the global economy. The constant peddling of electric vehicles, solar and wind power, and other “green” technologies, often amplified by a scientifically illiterate mainstream press, is overwhelming for the average person. Yet, the real-world implications of these policies are far from the utopian visions they promise.
“King Canute apocryphally commanded the incoming waves to halt and not wet his feet or cloak. As the waves inevitably drenched him, he said: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but he whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” The humility and wisdom of Canute and his respect for eternal laws is evidently lost on the likes of Macron and Newsom.”
The article also touches upon the vilification of “Big Oil” and the misguided notion that these corporations are solely driven by greed. As Thomas Sowell aptly put it:
“I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not ‘greed’ to want to take somebody else’s money.”
The push for electric vehicles (EVs) is another area where the article sheds light on the glaring inconsistencies in the green narrative. Despite massive government subsidies, unsold EV models are accumulating in showrooms, and the economic viability of these vehicles remains questionable.
“The hype over electric vehicles has become ever more threadbare. Unsold models are “piling up” in showrooms and dealer lots across the US despite massive government subsidies.”
Furthermore, the article highlights the impracticality of relying solely on renewable energy sources like wind and solar. The intermittent nature of these sources requires massive energy storage solutions, which are currently not viable on the scale required.
“The viability of mass scale battery storage was examined in a report published last month by The Royal Society of Great Britain. Examining 37 years of wind patterns, the learned Society concludes that mass-scale battery storage is not a viable proposition for the national grid powered by intermittent wind and solar sources.”
In conclusion, the “Jupiter Effect” in modern climate change policy is a stark reminder of the dangers of hubris. Leaders who believe they can command the forces of nature and the global economy with edicts and decrees are bound to face the harsh realities of the world. As Friedrich von Hayek wisely noted:
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design”.
It’s high time our leaders took a page out of King Canute’s book and recognized the limits of their power. Only then can we hope for pragmatic and effective solutions real and not made up challenges we face.
King Canute just did not order the sea hard enough. How hard would that be? Hard enough for the sea not to rise!
Nice to see an article that gets the story of King Knut right, although it would have been nice to get the correct spelling of his name… Modern leaders would do well to emulate Knut.
And pray tell, what is the correct spelling of Munich, Moscow, Beijing?
Here’s a clue: spelling changes as languages change. He may have been Knut in Denmark and Cnut in Old English, but in modern English, Canute is as good as any.
In Knutsford Cheshire he is still Knut.🤡
Good for the people of Knutsford.
The people of Louisville Kentucky now refer to their namesake as King Luh (and chastise you if you say ‘Looee’).
My understanding is that St. Louis, Missouri is pronounced “loo iss” because Lewis and Clark started their 3 year adventure from there.
That’s the Missouri St. Louis not the Kentucky Louisville…
And it is louie, not loo iss for the locals.
That’s a great movie, but it’s not reality. I grew up there and the natives all say “Saint Looiss.” (In fact, many sound more llke “Sent Looiss)
FWIW, all of this has nothing to do with Lewis and Clark. Their expedition started in 1804, some 40 years after the date commonly noted as the founding of St. Louis. I remember lots of pomp and pageantry back in 1964 when we celebrated the city’s bicentennial. The original French trappers and fur traders who named the place undoubtedly pronounced it as Frenchmen do, as did Judy Garland and Margaret Bremmer in the film clip. But my grandparents were born there and both looked askance at anyone saying “Looie.” It was viewed as disrespectful slang. Proper people pronounced it “Loo-iss.”
I always heard it as LOO-A-VUL…
Creative spelling is a time honored tradition with English.
“It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”― Andrew Jackson
Knut, Cnut, Canute.My keyboard doesn’t have the runes…
He obviously was lacking the mellifluous voice of Prince Barack! Barack Hussein stated that sea level would stop rising, and then proved the depth of his faith by purchasing a seaside mansion!
That’s the sort of certainty that we should expect in our confidence men, but it does make for a little difficulty selling the Climate Apocalypse to all but the densest! Right, Nicky!
Whenever I see clips of BO speeches where he nobly raises his gaze to the ceiling and pauses for effect, I’m (disturbingly) reminded of Ruprecht’s (Steve Martin) poses in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”.
I would so dearly love to see one of them speeches that made the man famous for his great speeches. Far as I can hear, he ungrammatically glues together logically incoherent cliches, platitudes, non sequiturs and boasts. I still want to know: “Yes we can” HOW?
I can still see all them Young Democrats being herded through the streets, on the way from celebration to celebration, as their saviour was being
crownedanointed by CNN et cie. But why were the poor dears looking so bewildered?If he had been given another billion government grant I am sure he could have stopped tidal change
I was having a conversation at work with someone that claimed EVs were an unstoppable wave that was going to take the nation. No amount of pointing out power requirements or distribution challenges made a dent in his POV.
well they just have to find out for themselves as one formerly strong proponent of EVs that also has a blog on all things green recently concluded – PIA, PIA
“Just have to find out for themselves” unfortunately their process of discovery is very very expensive for all of us. Goes for everything “ they” currently espouse, from the Marxism that they don’t think is communism, to the “ Greene” energy that actually comes from fossil fuels. Some people are influenced by everything “pop”- its all just pop culture science click bait BS for useful idiots.
…and even if every single one of us had an EV, the ensuing power shortages will prove to them that they deserve special access to the grid, and us useless eaters are
stealing theirdenying them equitable access to electrix.They moan. The original distaste for unmanly men is not their dress code or sexual preferences, but their constant whining about their right to be treated like everyone else, only better.
Why don’t you make a poster of a Tesla at a charging station with a side panel showing Ron White with his “You Can’t Fix Stupid” observation, and leave it on your work colleague’s desk.
I have had many debates with greenerati converts – you cannot hold rational, factual discussions with them – their eyes glaze over and they begin to look like Reagan from the Exorcist, they are not legion, but their minds are held captive in Pandemonium (for those unaware of what Pandemonium is, read Paradise Lost by Milton)
Never attempt rational, factual (detailed) discussions with them. Just keep on explaining that extreme weather events have not grown worse in over 120 years of accurate recordkeeping; show where the liars are wrong about increasing extreme weather.
Y’know he could be correct – strip out the useless batteries, add a couple of horse’s in harness and you’ve got the transport of the (green) future!
G’Day Richard,
“…add a couple of horses…”
Ever been marching in a parade and had a group of horses ahead of you? Horse ‘exhaust’. That’s when you learn to do a quick shuffle to get back in step.
It is interesting how people who want something to happen will resist any and all facts that question the probability.
Even worse when they are being goaded by those they consider their betters to do something they really, fundamentally, do not understand. It is not the poor driving this nonsense, they hate The Man. It is not the rich driving this, they think they are The Man. It is the ambitious middle class, who will seek advice from anyone promising them riches and relevance, who are happy to enforce their religion on us, at the point of a sword, if need be.
The sooner we divorce Democracy from Voting, the better… But unfortunately, as it is happening around me, I have to stand aghast, screaming: “That’s not what I meant!!!
The useful idiots. The bourgeois intellectuals
A little reading might enlighten these poor, benighted souls. Then again, maybe not.
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Documents-Definitive-Collected/dp/0226320553
Careful, Shoki! It’s now considered very waaascist to ask poor souls, benighted or otherwise, to read or learn! Far better for our revered lords and masters if the plebes remain a mostly illiterate and innumerate mob; much easier to scare and control that way!
Illiterates are useful only to feudal tyrants in low technology societies. Far better, in our current society, to have highly educated people solidly grounded in pseudoscience and Doublespeak. That is the grade of populace that delivers you on the promise of silks and furs lording it over peasants in a pastoral enclave on Planet Happy.
Leaders in even the most tyrannical regimes can only operate through the acquiescence and support of significant numbers of those around them. Their edicts must be favored, or perhaps initiated, by influential voices that affect the generally incurious.
A single voice proclaiming impending good fortune or doom is disregarded unless reinforced. Currently academia, the source of scientific information; business, seeking to profit from that information; government, intent on regulating society; and the media, provided with sensationalist material by academia, are all intent on promoting an expensive solution to a non-existent problem by choosing to accept and obey leaders that advocate that solution. More nefarious yet is that important decision makers can and do belong to more than one of these groups.
Leaders that operate in this circle aren’t actually leaders at all. Electing photogenic and glib professional politicians with staffs of speech writers and public relations experts is a serious defect in the “democratic” system. Actor George Clooney could easily be voted into high office, as was Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwartzenegger, since such positions are a popularity contest rather than the result of individual analyses of candidate’s policies.
The real question is how deep the decisions of the leaders and their most devoted followers can intrude into the lives of the ordinary citizens. If President William Howard Taft had decided in 1911 that the pollution potential of ICE vehicles was so great that no one would be allowed to manufacture or drive them, would the proletariat have agreed? Why does the fact that a car can be driven from Davenport, IA to Rock Island, Il mean that the federal government has the authority over every car in the country? Every technology, including stone arrowheads, involves externalities that may or may not have a negative effect on someone else. How far can the Jupiters go in controlling these externalities.
Great point, gc; but you didn’t mention the tendency of modern elections to select for criminal behavior! Most of our US politicians of BOTH parties seem able to lie repeatedly without blinking an eye, and the lapdog media just wags their tails!
Washington, D.C., (probably London and Paris, too) is now an enclave of organized criminals who see honest, hard working folks as an adversary! The dark tetrad or Cluster B personality disorders seem to be a requirement for higher office now! This is not going to end well for someone!
We are the someones for whom it will not end well. Hillary has already imagined our reeducation camps.
Not just imagined… suggested their build and usage :<)
Modern elections are blighted by the party system that aggregates power to the few and so facilitating the purchase of votes through election bribes. These bribes are dressed and presented to appear other than bribes but bribes they are. It is criminal to both offer and accept a bribe so the voters are implicit in this crime.
The solution lies in the voters hands. The only way to reject these bribes is to vote for only independent candidates. Independents have no collective base from which to offer bribes. Besides, when considering an independent a whole new set of criteria emerge that have more to do with personal qualities rather than policy. Better people in will mean better results out. That this solution is only available to the mass of voters acting individually is telling. End of rant.
The very essence of most politicians is that they are lying when their lips are moving. They are basically used car salesmen with loftier goals than bringing home a paycheck.
Hubris be damned back in my day when men were men and women glad of it and a bloke could work on his own car because you damn well had to and so often-
Adelaide’s Tidal Wave. The One That Never Happened | Adelaide Remember When
Canute had nothing compared to us!
Thanks for this reminder.
The thing is – even if the tidal had arrived and wiped out Adelaide, the rest of the world would not have noticed.
Alternatively, the tidal wave might have caused $200 million in improvements.
🙂
That “hand wave” only came after his initial “request” that the industry should “temporarily” (until the end of the year / Christmas) sell petrol and diesel at a loss.
Saying that the response to that “request” was negative, even in the normally pro-Macron left-leaning sectors of the French media (BFM TV, LCI, France Info, …) is putting it mildly !
“It’s high time our leaders took a page out of King Canute’s book and recognized the limits of their power.”
I’m on the email list for Harvard Forest, an ecological research facility in central MA owned by Harvard U.
They put on a lot of Zoom events. Today’s email includes a couple of beauts.
They’ve got one coming up, “Managing the Risk of Climate Overshoot”.
https://environment.harvard.edu/event/managing-risk-climate-overshoot-0
At that link:
Apparently, they aren’t familiar with King Canute.
Breathtaking progress?
Renewable energy surging?
They notice that global emissions are increasing but they don’t care to insult their Chinese friends, given that so many Chinese students pay full price to attend Harvard.
Then they beg for “increased financial and policy support”. And of course the plan will include a “political and social coalition”.
Well, what you can expect from Hah-vid!
And, today’s email mentions another Zoom event: “The Changing Landscape of Western Wildfire Risk”.
https://environment.harvard.edu/event/changing-landscape-western-wildfire-risk
Deep conversations? how deep? Including who?
We’ll redesign the urban-wildland interface? Oh, just like that!
And, change the character of ecosystems? Another easy job. No problemo.
The deserved criticism of Harvard and its academic brothers is dismissed by them as being “anti-intellectual”. Somehow their reputations as centers of learning and research on almost every subject make their conclusions beyond question, even by other research.
That link:
We’re suppossed to trust agencies? And why are agencies doing ANY advocating? That’s not their job which is to implement laws written by legislatures.
Facts and reality? How arrogant and condescending- just like my wife’s relatives who stopped by the house a few days ago preaching to me. One said, “Joe, you don’t get around much- you need to travel more”. I almost flipped out when I heard that. So, I guess I’m just some right wing hick. One said, “but Joe, you see, I’m right because I’m an educator”.
Joseph, just point out to your in-laws that both the UN IPCC and US scientific bodies agree that extreme weather globally has not become more frequent, intense nor of longer duration over the past 120+ years other than for normal annual and decadal variations. Have a couple of graph from Roger Pielke, Jr. around for their edification. Then kick their obnoxious asses out of your house until they learn proper respect for your experience, research and knowledge.
The wife may fume for awhile but on the positive side you could get some of the “blessed silence” obtained in the move Remo Williams, The Adventure Begins. Nothing could be worse than being humiliated and run out of your own home. Early in our marriage I put my foot down on putting up with obnoxious in-laws but my wife came to see the need and benefits of ruling our own home. It was a part of my personality she hadn’t seen before but came to rely upon.
I know of a fair number of technologies whose prices are falling. However none of them are connected with any form of renewable power or electric cars.
90% of wildfires are due to humans not extinguishing their fires completely when in the wilderness.
https://ktla.com/news/california/humans-to-blame-for-about-90-of-wildfire-ignitions-report-finds
Prevent the peasant from using the resources, such as wood, minerals, and game animals, or trespassing upon, the king’s land.
Another definition of breathtaking is hyperventilation.
It’s pretty simple. People who can get what they want by their own actions, do so. People who cannot, fall back on using government to mandate inefficient or otherwise immoral actions.
“The constant peddling of electric vehicles, solar and wind power, and other “green” technologies, often amplified by a scientifically illiterate mainstream press, is overwhelming for the average person.”
Shame on the scientifically weak academics who push scientifically weak studies into the peer-reviewed journals for the scientifically illiterate media to push out there to the average person who may or may not be able to detect the unsoundness of it all.
Like this: https://scitechdaily.com/mass-extinction-predicted-extreme-heat-likely-to-wipe-out-humans-and-mammals-in-triple-whammy/
EVs are bad enough, but soon the EU will be mandating carbon free homes which will require an estimated expense for every household of $100k euros – of course most can’t afford that so Blackrock will come to the rescue and buy the home and rent it back – As the WEF says – you will own nothing and be perfectly happy – right
You will own nothing, and they will be perfectly happy.
They grossly underestimate the capability of the masses, when pushed too far, to push back, long & hard – history is full of it
Modern central planners look at the repeated failures of Marxism and don’t see a vast human-induced wasteland! No, no; they see lots of incorrect applications that they KNOW they could have improved!
And now they have the CCP model to strive for; where the market is strictly controlled by the party and anyone who becomes too wealthy or popular is used for spare parts! Looks like Canada is almost there with their new assisted suicide policies! I wonder; will if Fidel, Jr. market the goods world wide, or keep them here in North America?
I always think of these people as members of the Church of Me. They know they are smarter than everyone else. They know they know more than you or I and they aren’t afraid to show. They don’t believe it when you tell them it’s been tried and failed over and over again because doggone it, they are just so much smarter than the people who tried before.
Yeah. Just like socialism will work. Next time.
Socialism has done much better in China then capitalism did.
The big problem with socialism is that with all the power concentrated in the hands of the government it can easily turn into fascism.
Wrong. Capitalist Taiwan and communist china started at the same time. Taiwan looks better to me.
Yeah, tell that to the 80+ million people the Communists killed before adopting Marxist-led mercantilism (beggar your trading neighbor).
Well, they ARE suffering from the Dunning-Kreuger syndrome after all.
The whole thing reminds me of America’s prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages. The same sort of zealots and bureaucrats drove that.
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
As long as ‘climate change’ is driven by politics nothing will change until we change the politicians.
Todays politicians are not leaders they are followers. It will do nothing to change them. “We” must change ourselves in order to have leaders.
I have read several statements that EVs are not selling well and accumulating at production sites or on dealer’s lots. Here is an example:
Dealers Are Turning Away Electric Cars As Demand Cools (businessinsider.com)
The dealers have a point — if they can’t sell them, they won’t want to buy more.
I’d like to see numbers. I’d also like to know what a factory or dealer does with EVs that are not sold. It is not wise to let an auto set for months. Stuff happens. We used to worry about “parasitic” battery drain, but now the fact of drain is assumed and renamed “Vampire Drain.”
If you live 25 miles from a charging station — and don’t have a charger at home — how long can your EV sit and “drain” (can it be stopped completely?) before you can’t use it?
Back to “piling up on dealer’s lots.” Numbers, please!
25 miles is at least an hours drive each way in the city.
Actually folks, he was King Cnut, yes really. I think we have enough of them in the renewables camp.
Talking of hubris. Here’s another Cnut, from JSO, on the Julia Hartley-Brewer programme yesterday.
https://youtu.be/0ir90B0huB8?si=yzrCGsrlPgC8G6Cw
Hopefully, it’ll give you a laugh.
After reading 66 comments, I am wally disappointed that I seem to be the only one hoping the headline would lead to a scholarly thesis on how the effect Jupiter has on our climate, belittles every concern of the libtard climatrologist sciencers.
Alas…
You referring to this from John Gribbin,
The Jupiter Effect.
Nothing happened…..
LOL!
No, I’m not. Who the hell quotes romantic fiction when discussing science?
I cannot believe you are unaware that the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn correlates to sunspot activity and therefor Earth weather.
John Gribben indeed, jeez Louise!