By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The traditional theology of the Judaeo-Christian world has a useful concept known as invincible ignorance. It is an ignorance so profound, so all-pervading, so irredeemably, pig-headed, so irremediably scatter-brained, that nothing can be done to save its victims from themselves except to smile, shake the dust of their one-horse dorp off one’s cowboy boots, get astride one’s Ducati and thunder off to the next dorp.
One of the most difficult and highly specialist tasks in the counter-intelligence community is that of interdicting the agents of influence of hostile powers so that they cannot create or maintain a climate of invincible ignorance by deploying linguistic warfare, gaining control of our news media, suppressing freedom of speech, corrupting the minds of young people in schools and universities, canceling those who dare to speak the truth and eventually prosecuting or even executing the few brave and independent souls who continue to commit the gravest of all mortal sins against hate-filled totalitarianism: to dare to step out of the Party Line and politely suggest that the Emperor’s valet must have been off duty this morning.
But what if invincible ignorance has become so well established that the enemies of liberty and democracy, free markets and prosperity do not have to do anything except sit and wait until the hated free West collapses all by itself?
Here is perhaps the most spectacular instance of invincible ignorance I have come across in a long career studying this phenomenon and working to prevent its weaponization and deployment by those who mean harm to democracy. Here is a verbatim clip from a recent interview. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess who the interviewee is.
Interviewee: “The US government can’t go bankrupt because we can print our own money.”
Dim interviewer: “Like you say, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?”
Interviewee: “Well, um, the – er – so the – I mean – again, some of the stuff gets – some of the language that the – erm – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money, which is why – erm, er – the government definitely prints money, and then it lends that money by – er – by selling bonds – er – is that what they do? They, they – erm – they – yeah, they, they – erm – they sell bonds – yeah, they sell bonds, right, so as they sell bonds and people buy bonds and lend them the money – yup – so a lot of times, a lot of times – at least to my ear – with MMT the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to – um, er, uh – er – so – um – yeah, I – I – I guess I’m just – I don’t – I can’t really talk – eh, I don’t – I don’t get it – I don’t know what they’re talking about, like, ’cos – it’s like – the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this that ’n’ defic – conversation, so I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.”
I’ll give you a clue. It could have been (but wasn’t) the Cellar-Dweller, for he has given fewer interviews than any other President (real or purported) in my lifetime. It could have been (but wasn’t) his gibbering, cackling, grossly inadequate deputy, la Harris.
Some further clues. It wasn’t a typically ill-informed, inarticulate Communist undergrad trying and failing to debate Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA on campus.
It was a graduate in music from the Manhattan School of Music. He also holds a Master’s degree in “social” “work” from Hunter College and a Diploma in “social” “work” from Columbia “University” School of “Social” “Work”.
Give up? OK, I’ll tell you. The interviewee was one Jared Bernstein, of whom the world has hitherto justifiably heard little. Believe it or not, our Jared is a member of the U.S. Cabinet in his incapacity as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. I kid you not. That’s his job title.
I should explain that “MMT”, mentioned by Bernstein, is “Modern” “Monetary” “Theory”, which, like “Critical” “Race” “Theory”, is a non-subject manufactured by the shrieking far Left to advance its fell political objectives.
The purpose of MMT – which is not modern, is not monetary and is not a theory – is to induce the West to complete its continuing decline and eventual collapse by abandoning all monetary and fiscal discipline and bankrupt itself by overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxation and excessive money-printing.
It should be clear to all from the above verbatim transcript that Jared the Jejune is not the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors because he knows anything about economics. He is there because he is a Party Line footballer, and for no other reason.
Throughout history, the spend-borrow-tax-print regime has been tried over and over again, and has failed over and over again, from late imperial China via medieval England to the Weimar Republic. It doesn’t work. And that is precisely why it is so attractive to the West-hating far Left.
There is a visible overlap between the invincible ignorance of the Jareds of this world on how many beans make five and the invincible ignorance of the wider governing class in the West on the climate question.
Imagine trying to explain to the U.S. government’s musical “social” “worker” why it is that every cent squandered on interfering in the energy marketplace in the name of Saving The Planet from warmer weather is a cent entirely wasted.
The table shows that even if the Party Line on how much warming we may cause were correct, and even if all nations went directly from here to net zero by 2050, the world would be only 0.2 degrees cooler by then than if our influence on global temperature continued its near-linear increase of the past third of a century over the 26 years to 2050.
After adjustment for the fact that for 34 years global warming has occurred at half the predicted midrange decadal rate, the world would only be 0.1 degrees cooler than now if all nations actually achieved net zero emissions by the target date.
What of the cost? The least unrealistic figure I can find for what it might cost to get to net zero by 2050, the target year, is that of the UK’s National Grid, which has estimated that just to net-zero the UK grid will cost $3.8 trillion. But grid emissions are only a quarter of UK emissions, and UK emissions are only 0.8% of global emissions. So the pro rata cost of net-zeroing the entire planet would be of order $2 quadrillion.
Now for a question way, way over puir wee Jared’s head: value for other people’s money. The candy-cane question is the central question in economics. Tom Sawyer goes into a sweetie-shop, slaps a handful of sticky coins on the counter, points to a pile of candy-canes and says, “Gee, miss, how many candy-canes can I git fer this?”
By the age of ten, most kids know the value of the candy-cane question. Jared hasn’t gotten there yet. So let’s slap a sticky $1 billion of taxpayers’ money on the counter and ask, “Gee, miss, how many degrees’ global cooling by 2050 can I git fer this?”
Spend $1 billion and buy just one 20-millionth of a degree of global cooling by 2050. Even by the low standards of the far Left, that is surely the worst value for money in the history of macroeconomics since the construction of the Great Wall of China. Now we know why the male equivalent of a Karen is a Jared.
Contrast Jared’s invincible ignorance with the alertness of the preceding administration. One day President Trump’s then chief of staff asked me to send the President a brief on a scientific result obtained by my team. The main points of the brief are in two simple slides.
First, if temperature-feedback strength has not changed since 1850, final warming by doubled CO2 – roughly equal to all anthropogenic warming this century – will be 1.1 K, not 2 to 5 K.
Secondly, if the feedback strength has changed since 1850, one cannot use feedback analysis to predict global warming at all, because an increase of just 0.01 in the feedback multiplier would be enough to put up this century’s warming from 2 to 5 K.
Since uncertainties in data and in process understanding altogether prevent the constraint of feedback variables to any such precision as 0.01, feedback analysis cannot be used to predict global warming. But the methods of prediction that do not use feedback analysis tend to predict far less warming than those using that incorrect method, and using it incorrectly.
For instance, the total anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing in the industrial era is about equal to the forcing from doubled CO2. But the warming since 1850 is only 1.1 K. Since the sensitivity-relevant feedbacks are short-acting (days to years), 1.1 K (not IPCC’s predicted 2 to 5 K) is the final warming we may expect this century from anthropogenic causes. And that is the end of the climate “emergency”.
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It isn’t just the government people who are a problem it is also the badly educated people who vote poorly that install mediocre people into power a reflection of mediocre of the majority.
That is why the Western world is in decline.
Moving lots of big factories to China didn’t help the West either.
Just remember.. If the academics held the vote….. It would likely be 10 times worse.
Mediocre? You are being unduly generous.
The West is in decline because Progressive conscious conquest of Western institutions. Intentional, determined, ubiquitous, and long in progress.
Progressive teachers conquered K-12. They consciously exclude non-believers. They consciously indoctrinate the children to hate their society and individual freedom.
Progressives conquered the university administrations and most departments. They consciously exclude non-believers. They consciously indoctrinate the young adults to hate their society and individual freedom.
Progressives have conquered the media. Etc.
Progressives have conquered the U.S. government. Etc.
They now have police power and intend to keep it. They aim to corrode away the Constitution and individual rights.
They want a population ignorant, cowed, and dependent on handouts, including control of access to medical treatment. Slavery.
They’ll retain a technical class to keep the lights on (for them, especially), the water running (for them, principally), and chateaubriand on the table (for them, exclusively).
No access of the hoipolloi to park lands or vacation paradises, either.
It sounds like George Orwell’s “1984.”
Sounds like the true definition of socialism.
Having an easily-conned group of eligible voters doesn’t do much to stand in the way of an ignorant governing class, either.
Common sense is not common.
Good to see you posting here, Monckton of Brenchley!
Excellent points made, including your now-familiar takedown of exaggerated feedback in the climate system.
Be well.
The biggest boo-boo that blockhead made, was to think that people or entities that buy bonds are borrowing from the government. That’s exactly backwards. They are lending money to the government, and expect to be paid back with interest when the bond matures.
If Lord Monckton mentioned this, my apologies.
It is a fairly easy way to somewhat protect one’s money from inflation.
And when the good faith and credit of the country goes kaput so does the lending.
To be a climate True Believer, innumeracy is quite a help.
It’s a prerequisite.
Oh , I initially thought the top image was a transcript of a Joe Biden speech.
Biden couldn’t say that many words without mumbling and then falling asleep.
“Four more years, pause”.
It’s clearly not resident Biden. It has at least asubject and verb and ends with a period. Joe is totally incapable of that.
When human CO2 emissions declined by around 6% in 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, the CO2 level kept rising at the same rate.
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
A 6% drop for a couple of months is tiny compared to the annual variation in how much CO2 concentrations has been rising. It’s too small to see.
The drop for the whole year was about 6-10%. April alone was 14-18% lower.
That’s because human CO2 is only a small (around 5%) of the total CO2 flux.
The drop was just minor noise compared to total CO2 turnover.
CO2 was expected to rise perhaps +2.5 ppm from net manmade emissions
6% less would be +2.35 ppm
The actual CO2 increase in 2020 versus 2019 was +2.56 ppm
That is reasonably close to expectations
2019 Actual
411.65 ppm
2019 + 2.35 ppm
Expected 2020 increase
414 ppm
2020 Actual
414.21 ppm
Data Source:
Atmospheric CO2 ppm by year 1959-2023 | Statista
I have two very reliable ways of getting a deer-in-the-headlights look from my relatives who live in the bay area of California, in upstate New York, on Manhattan Island, and on Long Island.
These are people who believe that Net Zero is both possible and achievable; that we should be spending whatever monies it takes to get there; and who fully support their state’s Net Zero energy policies.
The first reliable way is to tell them that the true tax on the American people is what the federal government spends, not what the government collects in tax revenue, simply because the money the government spends is no longer available to the citizenry to spend themselves for their own purposes.
The second reliable way is to tell them that Joe Biden has legal authority to declare a climate emergency and then to impose a fossil energy lockdown on the American economy, an authority which he has chosen not to invoke. And so if there is in fact a true climate emergency, why hasn’t Joe Biden used his full authority as President to fight it?
He will, if he wins the election. If he doesn’t make it past the convention, then his replacement will invoke it if it wins.
And they’ll still call us fascists.
One of the Left’s successes was labeling Nazis and Fascists as right-wingers. If you examine their platforms, they are total and complete leftist. Although Jonah Goldberg is a never-Trump-er, he’s the author of Liberal Fascism. This is what he says about Nazis:
“Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term ‘National Socialism’). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities–where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.”
I don’t see much conservative/right-wing concepts there.
Jim Masterson: “He will, if he wins the election. If he doesn’t make it past the convention, then his replacement will invoke it if it wins.”
If this is how the election turns out, we should expect the Net Zero regulatory floodgates to open wide. Because any incentive The Powers That Be might have had in the past to pursue a moderate course of action will be gone.
“the money the government spends is no longer available to the citizenry to spend themselves for their own purposes.”
FALSE
Almost half of federal government spending is transfer payments to people who gain purchasing power, such as social security and other welfare recipients. SS sends me about $50,000 a year which I can spend on anything: Cigars, whiskey, hookers, whatever.
Transfers to individuals and businesses account for 48 percent of federal spending. Some of the largest transfer programs are Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and refundable tax credits.
What percentage of GDP is transfer payments?
By comparison, the government spent $2.8 trillion on these programs in 2019, 62 percent of the budget, 80 percent of revenues, and 13 percent of GDP. Transfer payments increased 46 percent from 2019 to 2022.
Apr 4, 2023
Transfer payments are payments by the government to individuals, such as Social Security. Transfers are not included in GDP, because they do not represent production.
RG, I am glad for you, that you receive such ‘free’ money. Oh, wait! Such transfers come out of your paycheck and the paychecks of others!
By your logic, every dollar of gummint spending can be said to go back into the economy — either as the transfer of $ or purchase of goods or services, etc. However, it is a net drain on the economy, as has been established for several generations of economists. You have fallen victim, have become irredeemably malinformed, to the Big Brother bromides.
Before government can give you free money, it has to take it from someone else. It also keeps a portion for itself.
No U.S. President can declare a national emergency to seize or shut down private-sector businesses operating on private property. See Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).. Such an action would also violate the Constitution’s “takings” clause. Finally, the enormous economic impact of such an action would certainly bring Congress into the matter, and under the National Emergency Act of 1976 it could countermand the order by issuing a joint resolution oppposing the move, which would kill it.
That said, the Biden administration is so lawless I can’t say they wouldn’t try!
Minor quibble, I don’t think you can use the cost of changing the UK grid as a proxy for all the other costs of net zero.
However, even if you set aside the non-grid expenses and say that the costs for upgrading the grid for all countries is about the same, you get 3.8 trillion div 0.8% which is… more than my calculator can handle. USD475 trillion? I believe the global GDP in 2022 was around USD100 trillion. Taxes and borrowings might pay for it between now and 2050, but the consequences would probably be catastrophic.
It was made explicit in the head posting that the UK Grid Authority’s estimate of the cost of net-zeroing the grid was the least unreliable of the various cost estimates of attaining net zero that I could find, and that pro rata the cost of global net zero would be of order $2 quadrillion.
It should also be obvious that, even if the $2 quadrillion estimate thus derived overstates the cost of global nut zero tenfold, net zero is still not worth doing.
Yes that video clip has gone a bit viral, I’d already seen it.
It’s odd because if you watch him in other videos he seems quite capable, both delivering prepared material and talking and answering questions off the cuff.
There’s something very odd about it.
likely he was trying to use his own brain instead of having answers fed to him via an earpiece.
Partisanship aside that was my impression also, the video has definitely been manipulated maybe using AI, Mr Berstein’s hand movements look unnatural, at around 1:18 there is a definite cut.
Mr Bernstein:
Agreed – definitely a jump at that point. Very odd interview.
Let us suppose that the video – which has been widely circulated – was in any material respect false. In that event, given the proven litigiousness of the Biden “administration”, a lawsuit would have been filed by now, and CNN and MSNBC would have dutifully reported it.
Besides, on verifying Jared’s non-credentials, it is plausible that he does not have the faintest idea what he is talking about.
Thanks for all your postings.
Spokesmen for both the Obama and Biden administrations have said they are “managing the decline.” What they really meant was: Initiate the decline. Insure the decline. Speed the decline. Maximize the decline. The Democrat policies actually enhance China, Russia, and Iran, not the U.S.
Three points:
A. US is the global banker. It enjoys the huge privilege of having its money accepted anywhere globally. They have squandered that privilege and China along with other developing nations are out to replace the US as the global banker. China has been reducing its holding of US debt. Printing ever more USD becomes highly inflationary when other countries no longer accept US denominated debt. The current privilege has a value of USD20tr:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IIPUSNETIQ/
Money owed to other countries that will never be paid back.
B. None of the current weather-dependent electricity generators reduce carbon. Their break even on carbon would require an operating life in excess of 200 years. Fair estimates of the cost to transition is $200tr. That buys 2,000GT of coal, which is 250 years at current consumption.
C. CO2 does not contribute to Earth’s energy balance in any measurable way. Atmospheric water in gas, liquid and solid forms control the global energy balance.
The precession cycle shifted Earth into a warming phase starting 500 years ago. The oceans in the NH have only begun a 9,500 year warming trend. By the end of it, the sea level will be 10 to 20m lower than present. The reason I know this is that it is repeating what has occurred 11 times in the past million years. The key driver is the precession cycle and it is eventually limited by the land ice carrying capacity, which has been occurring after 3 to 4 precession cycles since the Panama isthmus formed..
In 9,000 years, summer solstice sunlight over London is now will be 20W/m^2 higher than present. By then, the Thames will be a drain and Scandinavia will buried under ice.
The past 7,000 years has been one of the most stable climate periods in Earth’s history (maybe not for the Sahara). The notion that current changes are unprecedented is the problem. They are incredibly stable compared with what is to come over the next 200 years then the changes really start with sea level falling 4mm or more per year within 2,000 years.
A.
The whole reason the U.S. dollar is the global reserve currency is that our accounting has been more transparent, honest, and organized than other countries.
The honesty and transparency has degraded.
No one trusts the Chinese or Russians to be honest or transparent. That is the only reason we are still the global reserve currency.
If we continue to degrade our honesty and transparency there will no longer be a difference so all bets are off.
B.
Bird/bat choppers and slave panels are the result of successful hype and fear inducing indoctrination.
As P.T. Barnum once said, there’s a sucker born every minute – and two to take them. I believe that unscrupulous politicians and businesses have taken advantage of the useful idiots that have succumbed to the indoctrination to gain money and power. We have given too much power to government to control our lives and businesses have cashed in on wielding the political power they have bought.
C.
CO2 created by human activities is pretty much noise in the signal. We have very little knowledge of the totality of what changes the climate, which will change pretty much regardless of what humans do.
If money printing worked, there would be no need to collect taxes.
To many on the left, the purpose of taxes is not to gather money for government to spend, it’s to punish rich people for having too much of it.
Actually, the government thinks all money belongs to them. It’s just by their good graces that anyone gets to keep some.
Some “punishment”! More ‘rich’ people than ever before.
Mr. W: Also, the left follows the “Lake Wobegon” Rule, where anyone above average is rich, and we are all above average.
What a perfect refutation of Progressive Economics. Chapeau!
A bit more, surely? 450 million tons out of 38 billion? Doesn’t affect the point, but should be stated correctly.
That is not what invincible ignorance means. Invincible ignorance refers to a person who does not know certain truths of the faith because he has never heard them or had the ability to study them. Because parts of the deposit of the faith are not discernable through the use of natural reason but require revelation, a person who had never been preached to could not be blamed for not knowing what he is otherwise bound to know in order to be saved. Thus, his ignorance could not be attributed to any fault of his own and is therefore invincible.
Lord Benchley grew up in a nominally Christian country and even carries the first name of Christopher. I don’t think the basics of Christian theology are quite dead in the nation of which he is an hereditary peer. A Lord should know better.
News to me. The Jesuits used the expression to mean that a person was utterly resistant to their arguments.
Somewhat correct, ID, but not fully so. You appeal to the Catholic view (and perhaps CoE), but even therein you are only partly right. My point is not to quibble, but to say that the phrase has a wider meaning than the one the priests’ share — namely ‘contumacious pigheadedness’.
Here is what claude.ai (an intelligent word calculator) has to say about this, supporting Dasein’s view:
‘Invincible ignorance’ is a concept in Catholic theology that refers to a person’s lack of knowledge or understanding of the Christian faith, which is not due to their own fault. In other words, it describes a situation where an individual is unaware of the truth of Christianity, and this unawareness is not a result of their own actions or decisions.
The concept arose in the context of Catholic discussions about salvation and the fate of those who had never heard the Gospel message. It was developed to address the question of whether individuals who had no opportunity to learn about Christianity could still be saved.
The term ‘invincible ignorance’ was coined by the Catholic theologian Pius IX in the 19th century. In his encyclical “Quanto conficiamur moerore” (1863), he stated that those who are invincibly ignorant of the true religion are not held guilty in the eyes of God for this ignorance.
The concept is based on the idea that God is just and would not condemn someone for not believing in something they had no chance to learn about. It suggests that those who have never heard the Christian message, but who follow the moral law to the best of their ability, may still be saved through the grace of God.
However, the concept of invincible ignorance does not imply that explicit faith in Christ is unnecessary for salvation. The Catholic Church teaches that tnhose who are aware of the truth of Christianity have an obligation to embrace it.
[Edit] But of course everyone, including Lord Moncton, are free to use the term in any way they please. That is how languages evolve.
Please do not rely on AU (Artificial Unintelligence), which has been pre-programmed to give prejudiced answers on questions such as this.Traditional Catholic theology is a great deal more generous to those who are invincibly ignorant than “[Un]intelligent Dasein” [it’s actually spelt ‘Design’] and “Johanus” imagine.
The Catholic theological tradition is rooted in two sources of revelation – the Bible as the fons et origo and the magisterium or teaching authority of the Church, which provides a due and just interpretation of the Bible for the benefit of the faithful.
The Lord of Life, on the Cross, prayed for the Romans and the Jews, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But both the Romans and the Jews had heard His teaching. They were invincibly ignorant not because they had not heard the teaching of the Lord of Life but because they did not or would not understand what they had heard. That is invincible ignorance.
Likewise, St Peter tells the “men of Israel” that they “denied the holy and righteous one, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the author of life”. St Peter adds, “I know you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.” (Acts III:12-17).
Cruising in to check on WUWT, I spotted the title, “The Invincible Ignorance of the Western Governing Class” and immediately, almost reflexively, thought, ‘an offering by Christopher Monckton!’
No one else has that sort of insight. Or that facility of expression.
I saw a video of Jared’s interview. Painful. Incredible stuttering ignorance. Here’s the link if you can bear to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAuoBOtPJKs minute 2:44.
The government can just print the money. Right. With the advent of Weimar America and the fiat dollar, we’ll look forward to the new criminal class of malinformers — the courageous who point out the economic insanity of printing green paper and calling it wealth — condemned by the media, misrepresented by fact-checkers, harassed by the woke mob, pursued by the DOJ, excoriated on X, Instagram, &c, and identified everywhere as value-deniers.
The old Soviet Union had the ubiquitous and invented “wreckers” on whom to blame their failures, to publicly pursue and humiliate, to put on show trial, and to consign to the silence of the gulag.
The U.S. is now catching up with the “deniers.” They get all the blame for the beyond-sane-comprehension policy failures and outright crimes of our present governors — CO₂/climate, Covid/Wuhan, gender-misapplication, mRNA jabs, sabotaged energy grid, EVs, and soon, if the ship isn’t righted, the wrecking of the dollar, the economy, and everyone’s lives.
I like to convince myself that I have some facility with the manipulation of the English language, but I am a naif compared to the good Lord Monckton.
How very kind of Pat Frank and MarkW to write as they have. I am flattered. Pat’s paper on the propagation of uncertainty in the time-step algorithms that lurk at the heart of the misguided climate models is the most important paper ever to be published on the climate question.
Christopher Monckton:
You say “For instance, the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing in the industrial era is about equal to the forcing from doubled CO2”.
The problem with the above statement is that anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing due to CO2 does not exist.
For example, all of our modern era warming (since circa 1980) can be shown to have been due to decreased levels of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in the atmosphere, because of “Clean Air” legislation and Net-Zero activities. Decreased atmospheric pollution levels increases the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface, inevitably causing warming, which has wrongly been attributed to rising CO2 levels.
See: Scientific proof that CO2 does NOT cause global warming.
https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2024.21.3.0884
I willl term this an unscientific paper. It is nonsense.
There is no attempt to explain any mechanism how a minute concentration of any material in the atmosphere can cause warming or cooling. It is as silly as the notion that CO2 causes warming.
The atmosphere has gained an average of 650GT of water over the last 30 years. And the warming started 500 years ago, well before there were industrial processes producing SO2.
Rick Will:
You obviously did not understand the article. The “minute concentration” is a haze of micron-sized droplets of Sulfuric Acid in our atmosphere, which NASA states “reflects sunlight, and cools the Earth’s surface underneath”.
NASA SO2 “Chem map” images also show a clear decrease in the amount of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere between 1980 and the present.
And I think that you would agree that a decrease in atmospheric SO2 aerosol pollution would increase the intensity of the Solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface, and cause warming.
The US Treasury only prints money (currency) at the request of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. Currency (2.3 trillion) is about 11% of the total M2 money supply (20.8 trillion), which is controlled by the FRB.
The FRB is authority to create credit out of thin air but have not been doing that since April 2022. That’s why the inflation rate decline
Of course the FRB caused the high inflation rate in 2021 and 2022 by funding the HUGE Federal Budget deficits by credit creation
Fiscal years 2020 and 2021 federal budgets were signed by Trump and approved by Republicans in the Senate.
The US Treasury stopped “printing money” (silver certificates) decades ago! What passes for “currency” now is clearly marked “Federal Reserve Note”. As you say, this fiat currency a small fraction of the “money supply” which is mostly digital records in various bank accounts. Just as it costs more now to mint various coins than the face value of the coin, so, too, does it cost more to print and circulate various low value FRN’s than their face value. Thus the push for CBDC’s.
There was time when a $20 bill in the USA had the buying power of an ounce of gold today.
At that time $20 coins were in circulation also. They were actually an ounce of gold.
(I think in the UK, money (bills and coins) were based on a pound of silver. Same thing. Different metal.)
Now everything seems to based on paper.
(In my dresser drawer I have a bill with a face value of $20,000,000,000. but I’d have to travel to Zimbabwe to cash it in. The paper the receipt was written on would be worth more than the bill. Literally.)
Is there a point in this didactum?
The Federal Reserve, as America’s central bank, is responsible for controlling the supply of U.S. dollars. The Fed creates money by purchasing securities on the open market and adding the corresponding funds to the bank reserves of commercial banks.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/understanding-how-federal-reserve-creates-money.asp#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,bank%20reserves%20of%20commercial%20banks.
Selling bonds to the Fed is what creates money.
With every passing year, a return to the gold standard looks better and better.
What would be more immediate is if the House of Representatives actually did their job and controlled the purse strings. Although, a gold or other commodity standard looks better and better. Imagine an oil, gas, or energy based standard.
The legislature keeps funding short term finance bills instead of annual budgets. In those bills, there are all sorts of earmarks to fund disastrous policies.
I would opt for bills that are no longer than ten pages long, written in plain language stating the purpose and proposed execution of the bill. I would also opt for decimating most of the government bureaucracy.
Very nice. Energy production and transmission are too important to be left to government. Even the fittest government is a mess.