Month: April 2022

High Cost of Green Wishful Thinking

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) admits, “We’re in Trouble,” as President Joe Biden (center) struggles to respond to the worst energy crisis in 50 years, and as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (right) makes homelessness worse.

Michael Shellenberger explains at his substack page Why Wishful Liberal Thinking Led to Disasters in Ukraine, Homelessness, And Climate.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and some headers. H/T Tyler Durden

The good news is that everything is changing — and fast

In the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberals in the West have denounced their political opponents as deniers of climate change, science, and reality in general. Progressives and neoliberals alike argued that they alone could see the shape of the new world being born. It would be increasingly globalized, democratic, and focused on new threats, like climate change.

It’s now clear that all of that was a delusion.

Neither China nor Russia is democratizing and both have become more autocratic and totalitarian. Neither nation views climate change as a major threat. On the contrary. Russia views climate change as an opportunity to expand agriculture and shipping through its newly ice-free waters. Where both Putin and Chinese Premier Xi used to give lip service to climate change, neither even bothered to attend last fall’s United Nations climate talks.

It’s true that the West has imposed sanctions on Russia, and the Ukranian people are battling the Russians fiercely and admirably. A few days ago, Russians retreated from the capital city of Kyiv. Western nations froze bank accounts of Russian oligarchs, hammering the ruble. And European governments are calling on their citizens to reduce energy consumption.

But those are hiccups on the way to a rapidly changed world. Consider that:

♦  China aided Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through a massive cyberattack on Ukraine’s military and nuclear facilities, according to intelligence memos obtained by The Times of London.

♦  Europe continues to import Russian energy while China and India are buying Russian oil at a steep discount. There is little reason to believe conservation measures by Western consumers will make much of a dent in energy consumption.

♦  And Russia’s retreat from Kyiv appears to be temporary and strategic.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes at the very same time as: the collapse of the West’s climate and renewables agenda; an energy crisis triggered by climate activists; and a worsening drug, crime, and homeless crisis in America’s cities.

What do all these events have in common?
They all point to the grave dangers of irrational liberal optimism.

Western Leftists Soft in Defending Civil Freedoms

When it comes to the West’s failure to deter an increasingly totalitarian and violent Russia and China, the growing scarcity and unreliability of energy, and the destruction of America’s cities by open air drug scenes, the fault lies squarely with people on the Left end of the political spectrum.

Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, French President Emanuel Macron, and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, all denied to themselves, and to others, what was plainly obvious to many analysts for years: Putin intended to invade Ukraine.

Even as Russian forces prepared for war games last fall, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan wondered “why Russia would take such a military action at that time,” according to a reconstruction of the events leading up to Putin’s invasion by the Wall Street Journal.

Western Leftists Indulged in Renewables Delusion

On climate change, center-Left parties around the world deluded themselves into thinking their high-energy economies could be powered by renewables, which energy historians have known for centuries had to be abandoned for fossil fuels in order for the industrial revolution to happen. And around the world it was liberals not conservatives who fought to shut down nuclear plants and block natural gas pipelines and infrastructure.

Liberals and progressives could have embraced a climate and energy strategy focused on domestically-produced natural gas and nuclear, as I have urged them to do for over a decade, and which Putin did, allowing him to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supplies.

Such a strategy was the only one that ever made any sense from an environmental point of view. Nuclear and natural gas are the two technologies that are most responsible for declining emissions by the US and Europe since the 1970s.

Instead, the Left in Europe opted for importing fossil fuels from Russia and the Left in the US for importing solar panels made by enslaved Muslims in China.

Leftist Cities Governed into Ruin

On crime, liberal cities have gradually reduced consequences for breaking laws, whether from addiction or malevolence, resulting in rising homicides, burglaries, and open air drug scenes. Relatedly, on homelessness, progressives have funneled hundreds of billions into “Housing First,” which gives away apartments to homeless drug addicts without requiring sobriety.

The result is that, today, well over 50 percent of the people on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles are from out of town, according to expert insiders, homeless outreach workers, and the homeless themselves.

Why do liberals keep making the same mistake over and over again?

Leftists Projecting Own Mindset, Ignoring Reality

In part, it’s because of what cognitive psychologists call “theory of mind.” Liberals tend to think that other people think like they do. Western liberal leaders thought Putin was one of them, a liberal democrat committed to rule of law, even though he repeatedly said he wanted to reconstruct the Soviet empire.

Similarly, leading liberal leaders think homeless drug addicts are seeking a better life, and just need their own apartment to quit drugs, get a job, and re-connect with family and friends. In truth, many if not most homeless addicts maintain their addiction until they are forced to quit.

On energy and climate change, progressives indulged in the fantasy that we could power the world with energy sources that have no negative consequences. They convinced themselves that renewables were better in every way than either fossil fuels and nuclear, even as they demanded massive subsidies for, and the right to kill endangered species in, their deployment.

And liberals engaged in wishful thinking that high standards of living can be maintained with much lower levels of energy consumption, and that poor and working people will accept low standards of living.

There were financial rewards for such wishful thinking. Politicians like Newsom can raise much more money from homeless housing developers than from homeless shelter providers. Center Left parties take money from renewable energy companies all over the world. And it’s now clear that climate activists in Europe, and perhaps the United States, took, took money from the Russian government to fight fracking and natural gas production.

Stunning Failure of Leftist Governance 

The good news is that the failure of elites to govern at local, national, and international levels points to a coming change of leadership, triggered by covid, but ultimately resulting from the exhaustion of post-Cold War ideologies and institutions.

It will gradually become clear that the West must defend itself more vigorously against resurgent illiberal regimes, particularly Russia and China, which could well invade Taiwan, or even attempt to take a Japanese island, in the coming months or years.

And major political changes are afoot. Republicans will likely take one or more house of Congress, and President Joe Biden is unlikely to run again in 2024. The result will be major changes within both parties. California, long a leader of change, for good or ill, will likely see the recall of district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the election of a new attorney general, and the election of a new, more moderate, governor.

In this context, it becomes clear that the claims of reality denial by progressives were a kind of psychological projection. It was progressives who denied the realities of climate change and energy, the intentions of Vladimir Putin, and homelessness. The good news is that people are waking up, and quickly.

The trend toward the dismantling of civilization could soon reverse itself.
But, ultimately, what happens next is up to us.

 

 

Toxic Feminizing Running Amok

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Preface

In a previous post Is “Emotional Intelligence” an Oxymoron? I began by reflecting on a pattern often seen in organizational settings.

Warning: This post will express sincere thoughts that are politically incorrect, for example accepting that males and females have differing predominant behaviors and traits.

The title refers to a notion that came up in the fields of management science and industrial psychology, coincidental with increasing numbers of women practicing in those disciplines. I am prompted to write about this upon realizing that our present social divide is more fundamental than many think. This century, we see increasing numbers of people choosing to operate from emotions rather than intelligence.

This pattern is in contradiction to the trajectory of Western civilization placing reason as primary and individual rights and freedoms as essential.

In a recent article thread a comment caught my attention. “It has been said men rank, women exclude, and that is very true IMO. All-female groups are very exclusionary to anyone who does not fit in.” That expression of Ranking vs. Excluding was new to me, and it may be changing this century, what with women competing with other women in sports, and with men as well in the workplace. Still, it points to our present social struggle whereby “diversity” is employed to divide a nation into identity groups to protest prejudice and claim reparations against grievances. The US as usual is the leading example of this culture war. Ironically, tribalism is rearing its ugly head in precisely the nation-state that so successfully created an American tribe that included any and all ethnic and religious groups.

Ranking vs. Excluding also explains such events as the Senate hearings on Judge Kavanaugh. Clearly his opponents sought to exclude him not only from the Judiciary, but to banish him from the human race. Their fierce and unrelenting animus to this day is frightening for the republic. Ironically, Kavanaugh prevailed in the process only by an emotional outburst, his outrage finally waking others up to the enormously evil beheading underway. This was out of character for a man by all accounts extremely reasonable and unprejudiced, and even in this testimony his intelligence was evident and in control.

It also shows up in the warfare between Trump and the leftist media. From the moment of Trump declaring candidacy, the left has been focused on excluding Trump from legitimacy, not only as President, but as an human being. Meanwhile, he is focused on the ranking: Winning is what matters, coming in first place. And despite the media’s attempts to paint him racist and sexist, I see no evidence that he excludes losers in a contest. On the contrary, he and Senator Rubio are on the same side pushing back against election fraud in Florida. The media can not recognize Trump is driven by intelligence despite his determined actions pursuing rational policy goals, and unbowed by social pressure and disapproval.

This modern tribalism emerged from the academic world and has now spread into the wider society as graduates gain employment in private and public sector institutions. However, many of them carry a virus along with whatever knowledge and skills they have been able to acquire in their studies.

Philip Pippin brings the issue up to date writing on the corrosive social effects from today’s male/female culture warfare in his America Greatness article Who’s Toxic Now?  Excerpts on in italics with my bolds and added images.

Is America suffering from toxic masculinity—or toxic femininity?

So far this year, events are rapidly unwinding in chaos both at home and abroad. Inflation is soaring; the nation’s southern border is effectively dissolving; violent crime is escalating in many cities, seemingly unchecked; radical indoctrination is replacing proper education in public schools; and Russia is emulating the Nazis’ savage blitzkrieg-cum-genocide strategy of conquest, with relative lassitude by America.

It is vital to reflect on what autocratic Democratic rule—yes, rule, not governance—in Washington, D.C. has produced since Joe Biden’s inauguration and the leftist seizure of near-total control of the national legislative agenda. Such reflection can emanate from a myriad of perspectives, both mundane and esoteric, but there is a cultural lens I’d like to peer through here in this critical election year.

Those who value fact-based realities over “social constructs” meant to facilitate and justify ideological imperatives like identity politics and tribalism accept that there are two—and only two—sexes. Social “innovations” such as “gender fluidity” and the heated efforts exerted by their proponents to normalize them are designed to confound, disrupt, and ultimately destroy the organic social order that has evolved over centuries of experimentation across many societies. These proponents euphemistically label this “fundamental transformation”; those well-acquainted with world history and the relentless delusions of social utopians, foreign or domestic, more accurately call this “social engineering.” Usually, decadence in all forms attends the drive towards “perfecting” society by “perfecting” all the people who live in it. Rampant amorality, the debasement of all civilized norms of behavior, and the successful elevation—even glorification—of perversions of all kinds become milestones on the way to “utopia.” The result? Narcissistic elites prosper, and everyone else slides into misery and poverty as mere tools for the elite’s aggrandizement of power and lucre.

One of the modern whipping boys to advance this savage menace has been “toxic masculinity,” embodied in and epitomized by white, hetero, generically (but not exclusively) Christian, middle- and working-class males. Traits of this supposed scourge include tendencies toward emotional aggression, physical intimidation and violence, attitudes of patriarchal disdain and supremacism, and the usual laundry list of demonic isms and phobias: racism, sexism, various LGBTQ-centric phobias, and Islamophobia.

In a word, men are the problem, and particularly white, heterosexual men who possess natural masculine attitudes, values, and predispositions.

This perspective deliberately ignores the positive traits of masculinity that have long been esteemed and celebrated in America and throughout all organized societies. These include the capacity to design and build structures and organizations; the ability to preserve and protect through exertion of physical strength; the ability to produce and amplify material wealth by the use of rational thought and physical labor; and the ability to produce food and water supplies. “Toxic masculinity” is really just a propaganda meme of the utopian Left created for the purpose of besmirching the strong individualism and independent mindset of society’s motivated producers, who, predominantly, happen to be male.

So, what of femininity? If in fact there is a tangible taint known as “toxic masculinity” beyond just being an inflammatory meme designed to divide and alienate people from one another for purposes of aggrandizing political power, is there something rightfully labeled “toxic femininity”? I assert there is, and it is likely even more menacing.

If “toxic men” can be overly aggressive and intimidating, then “toxic women” may be overly passive-aggressive and covertly conniving, working behind the scenes to get what they want by subterfuge. If “toxic males” can be too direct and “in your face” with their demands, needs, and wants, then “toxic females” can be intentionally indirect, coy, sly, and even deceitful to get whatever they want. If the former can be physically violent based on emotions gone awry, then the latter can be emotionally manipulative towards others, playing on their personal fears, vulnerabilities, and sensitivities.

If men and women share both masculine and feminine traits, in varying degrees, then this discourse can hardly be defamed as a diatribe aimed invidiously at women as women. Rather, these behaviors exist in the politics, ideological conflicts, and rivalries bedeviling our nation today—modes employed by both men and women.

Today, Democratic politicians at every level of government and their ideological cohorts in major media, academia, Hollywood, and Big Tech are increasingly being outed as serial liars, deceitful spin artists, subversives, and cynical manipulators of our people’s basest emotions and instincts. Their predations did not start with the 2020 elections, of course. However, in achieving greater normalization, they threaten to subvert and topple not only our own civil society and republican form of government, but the world order, which is predicated on unparalleled American military strength, economic power, and historical values.

If not checked decisively this year by the sane, the rational, the historically literate, and the spiritually conscious, historians of the future may well ascribe America’s devolution and ultimate collapse as a free, independent, and sovereign nation primarily to a pandemic of “toxic femininity.”

It is, to be emphatic, a fully inclusive, “pan-gender” affliction embodied in men and women of all “gender orientations.” That said, the biological men in power today acting as “toxic females” will be most to blame. There are many: Biden, Blinken, Austin, Garland, Kerry, Mayorkas, Buttigieg, Milley, Schumer, Schiff, and Nadler. So, the ladies will have to move over. They have once again been usurped.

See Also To Be a Man, Or Not to Be (Fight Degendering)

Why Ocean Keeps Its Cool at 4 Celsius

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Water (H2O) has magical properties that make our planet suitable for us.  The video explains why most of the ocean water is about 4 degrees Celsius.  A transcript from another presentation draws the implications. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

At the surface, ocean water can vary wildly in temperature – the water at the equator is around 30 degrees Celsius and the water at the poles is, well, freezing.  But surface waters are only a small fraction of the total water in the ocean.  Dive a little deeper, and you’ll find that a whopping 75 percent of the ocean’s water is all at the same temperature…and we’re not talking averages or anything – the vast majority of ocean water is 4 degrees Celsius.  And that’s not just a coincidence – it’s because water is weird.

As a liquid cools, its molecules slow down and the liquid generally gets denser and denser.  That’s how molten metals, wax, nacho cheese, and basically everything else behaves – except water.  Water does become denser as it cools though, but only up to a point.  Then it reverses course and actually gets less dense.

This happens because once water molecules slow down enough, intermolecular forces due to the water molecule’s unique shape start pushing the molecules apart until – at zero degrees and below – they form a lattice-like structure.  That’s why ice is less dense than water.

But the magic temperature where water is actually densest is 4 degrees Celsius. This weird maximum density is what causes the vast majority of the ocean to be stuck at the same temperature.

By about 1000 meters down, water has cooled to around four degrees. Any water here, or below, that happens to warm up – say, via heat from a hydrothermal vent or underwater volcano – will get a little less dense and float upwards, as less-dense things tend to do – out of this 4-degree zone.  Strangely, water cooler than 4 degrees will behave the same way; any water that loses a little bit of heat will also become a little less dense and balloon upwards.

As a result, all the ocean water below 1000 meters or so is about 4 degrees. 
Well, almost all the water. 

The very deepest parts of the ocean can get just a tiny bit colder, because of salt.  When salt ions are stuck to water molecules, they weigh them down, making saltier water a little denser than less salty water.  So when polar ice forms, salt gets pushed into the surrounding water, making it super-salty.  This super-salty water is most dense slightly below 4 degrees, in addition to being a little denser than less salty water, so, it has the tendency to plummet straight to the seafloor.

This heavier, colder water makes the deepest depths of the ocean slightly colder and denser than the water above.  Expeditions to the deepest parts of the ocean, like the Challenger Deep of Mariana’s Trench have recorded temperatures of 1 degree.  However, the same rules apply down there as they do in the rest of the water column – any water that warms or cools, even a bit, will become less dense and float away into the higher, less dense layers above.

If these weird water density rules didn’t apply – if water behaved like, say, nacho cheese – ocean water would just solidify from the bottom up as it’s cooled, and we wouldn’t have liquid oceans at all.

 

 

Pfizer’s Paxlovid Pill–Just Say No

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Hypothetical model illustrating the inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 replication by ivermectin mediated through the blocking of α/β1-importin (imp) as well as 3CLpro enzymatic activity. Mody et al (2021)

The Medical Pharmaceutical Industrial complex waged psy-ops warfare against effective and safe generic medicines, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.  Now FDA approves pills from Pfizer and Merck for “emergency use”, and in Quebec where I live, they follow along like lemmings rolling out Paxlovid, claiming the pill is a “game changer.”  All this ignores that once again trials have been compressed so that longer term side effects are unknown, and Pfizer and Merck have no liability while expecting billions in profits.

As the background post below shows in some detail, these pills are not only pale substitutes for the proven generic therapeutics, they risk stimulating further viral mutations and prolonging the infectious activity in vaccinated and pill-popping developed societies.  Fortunately, Africa and much of Asia and South America will be spared this latest public health experiment, as they have natural covid immunity from the virus itself with HCQ and IVM protecting people from severe illnesses.

IVM Beats Pfizer and Merck One-Trick-Pony Pills

John Campbell explains in the video below how the new Pfizer pill copies one trick from Ivermectin, without IVM’s other anti-viral mechanisms, resulting in an inferior and dangerous medicine.  I have transcribed the basic message along with excerpts and links to several papers to which he refers. Excerpts are in italics with my bolds.

Pfizer’s new antiviral drug PAXLOVID™ shows very high levels of efficacy in preventing serious disease hospitalization and people dying.  And that drug works in a particular way, what we call a pharmacodynamic action.

But there’s another generic drug called Ivermectin that you might have heard of that works in exactly the same way as that. Now no one’s saying that information has been deliberately suppressed for years while millions of people have died but what we are going to show on this video is conclusive proof from the literature that this modality of action is the same.

How Coronavirus Infects Its Host

Before we crack into that we need to look at what’s happening so when a virus, in this case coronavirus2 gets into a cell. What happens is it makes lots of proteins. It starts off making  these long proteins, out of hundreds of amino acids sometimes. A few thousand amino acids all strung together.

The problem is they’re too long for the job that’s required. So it’s a bit like a building site and when a big log of wood arrives it needs to be trimmed down into bits that fit in your door frames and your window frames. So these proteins need to be trimmed down and it has to be done in a biochemical way.

In the case of coronavirus two, there’s an enzyme called 3CL protease which breaks
down protein into smaller pieces. it’s what we call proteolytic and it will take these long proteins and it will chop them into shorter proteins it’s what we call an endopeptidase. So now instead of having one long protein we’ve got two short ones and these fit together just nicely for the new virus that we’re we’re trying to make.

These new drugs are what we call protease inhibitors because they stop the protease from working. If the protease is like this scissor, the inhibitor is like this tape stopping the cutting up of long proteins.

When there’s another long protein that needs to be processed the 3CL protease comes along ready to chop this up. But now these drugs have bounded up the active site of the protease and they stop the protease from chopping up the big proteins into smaller strings of amino acids. Since they can’t build the virus, it inhibits viral replication.

This is the new Pfizer drug which is designed to block the activity of the sars coronavirus2 3CL, so that 3CL protease now won’t work. It won’t open so i can’t chop my proteins into the correct length to build a nice new virus.   And of course a 3CL protease inhibitor will stop it from making sars coronavirus2 and is therefore anti-viral.

Everyone in human biology has heard of chymotryptin. It’s an enzyme released by the pancreas to digest protein. It’s a protein chopping up enzyme so this chymotryptin-like protease inside the virus is working in a very similar way to the chimbotryptin that your pancreas produces to digest your proteins.

Evidence from Pfizer News Release

Pfizer’s novel COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment candidate reduced risk of hospitalization or death by 89% in interim analysis of phase 2/3 EPIC-HR study.

  • PAXLOVID™ (PF-07321332; ritonavir) was found to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% compared to placebo in non-hospitalized high-risk adults with COVID-19
  • In the overall study population through Day 28, no deaths were reported in patients who received PAXLOVID™ as compared to 10 deaths in patients who received placebo
  • Pfizer plans to submit the data as part of its ongoing rolling submission to the U.S. FDA for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) as soon as possible.

If approved or authorized, PAXLOVID™, which originated in Pfizer’s laboratories, would be the first oral antiviral of its kind, a specifically designed SARS-CoV-2-3CL protease inhibitor. Upon successful completion of the remainder of the EPIC clinical development program and subject to approval or authorization, it could be prescribed more broadly as an at-home treatment to help reduce illness severity, hospitalizations, and deaths, as well as reduce the probability of infection following exposure, among adults. It has demonstrated potent antiviral in vitro activity against circulating variants of concern, as well as other known coronaviruses, suggesting its potential as a therapeutic for multiple types of coronavirus infections.

Evidence for 3CL protease inhibitors from September 2020

Identification of SARS-CoV-2 3CL Protease Inhibitors by a Quantitative High-Throughput Screening Zhu et al. (Sept 3, 2020)

Viral protease is a valid antiviral drug target for RNA viruses including coronaviruses. (13) In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, great efforts have been made to evaluate the possibility of repurposing approved viral protease inhibitor drugs for the clinical treatment of the disease. Unfortunately, the combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, both approved HIV protease inhibitors, failed in a clinical trial without showing benefit compared to the standard of care. (14) To address this unmet need, several virtual screens and a drug repurposing screen were performed to identify SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro inhibitors.

In conclusion, this study employed an enzymatic assay for qHTS that identified 23 SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro inhibitors from a collection of approved drugs, drug candidates, and bioactive compounds. These 3CLpro inhibitors can be combined with drugs of different targets to evaluate their potential in drug cocktails for the treatment of COVID-19. In addition, they can also serve as starting points for medicinal chemistry optimization to improve potency and drug-like properties.

Ivermectin Emerges as Top Antiviral Candidate for CV2

Identification of 3-chymotrypsin like protease (3CLPro) inhibitors as potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 agents Mody et al. (2021), source of diagram at top. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Fig. 4: Ivermectin exhibited complete inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro enzymatic activity whereas micafungin partially inhibited the enzyme.

The off-target drugs that are being used to treat non-viral ailments selected by in silico studies were screened for their inhibitory activity against SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro enzyme.

Interestingly, one of the OTD (Off Target Drugs), ivermectin was able to inhibit more than 85% (almost completely) of 3CLpro activity in our in vitro enzymatic assay with an IC50 value of 21 µM. These findings suggest the potential of ivermectin to inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 replication. In support of this, a recent finding suggested that ivermectin (5 µM) inhibited the replication of live SARS-CoV-2 isolated from Australia (VIo1/2020) in Vero/hSLAM cells23. They found that >5000-fold viral counts were reduced in 48 hr in both culture supernatant (release of new virion: 93%) as well as inside the cells (unreleased and unassembled virion: 99.8%) when compared to DMSO treated infected cells.

Earlier studies have demonstrated that the possible anti-viral mechanism of ivermectin was through the blockage of viral-protein transportation to the nucleus by inhibiting the interaction between viral protein and α/β1 importin heterodimer, a known transporter of viral proteins to the nucleus especially for RNA viruses19,20,21,22,23. However, in this study, we have reported that ivermectin inhibits the enzymatic activity of SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro and thus may potentially inhibit the replication of RNA viruses including SARS-CoV-2. These studies suggest that ivermectin could be a potential drug candidate to inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 replication and the proposed anti-viral mechanism of ivermectin presented in Fig. 8 and in vivo efficacy of ivermectin towards COVID-19 is currently been evaluated in clinical trials (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04438850).

Ivermectin Strong Against Multiple Targets

Inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 key target proteins in comparison with suggested COVID-19 drugs: designing, docking and molecular dynamics simulation study.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Double-click on image to enlarge.

In conclusion, both ivermectin and remdesivir could be considered potential drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Ivermectin efficiently binds to the viral S protein as well as the human cell surface receptors ACE-2 and TMPRSS2; therefore, it might be involved in inhibiting the entry of the virus into the host cell. It also binds to Mpro and PLpro of SARS-CoV-2; therefore, it might play a role in preventing the post-translational processing of viral polyproteins. The highly efficient binding of ivermectin to the viral N phosphoprotein and nsp14 is suggestive of its role in inhibiting viral replication and assembly. Remdesivir may be involved in inhibiting post-entry mechanisms as it shows high binding affinity to N and M proteins, PLpro, Mpro, RdRp, and nsp14. Although the results of clinical trials for remdesivir are promising (Beigel et al., 2020; Wang Y. et al., 2020), similar clinical trials for ivermectin are recommended. Both these drugs exhibit multidisciplinary inhibitory effects at both viral entry and post-entry stages. Source: Molecular Docking Reveals Ivermectin and Remdesivir as Potential Repurposed Drugs Against SARS-CoV-2

Conclusion from John Campbell

So whereas the Pfizer drug is only working as far as we’ve been told in the proviso press release against one biochemical modality of viral replication, the Ivermectin mechanism is working at many different levels. The fact that the the the Pfizer medicine is only working against one particular biochemical pathway means to me that the virus could learn to avoid that. It could evolve to be drug resistant as indeed the early antiretrovirals did with HIV.

With ivermectin, because it’s working on so many different levels, it is improbable, to put it mildly,that a virus would mutate in a dozen different ways to avoid all those different mechanisms. We’ve talked about six mechanisms today. It’s very unlikely that we get six mutations that could dodge all of those all at the same time.

So I’ve a brief message to world leaders, people that are making the decisions about this. Come on you all, you’re not a horse and you’re not a cow. You’ve got a human intellect. Let’s use it to follow the scientific evidence to save human pain, suffering and death.

Comment

Ivermectin is the most successful and proven protease inhibitor in production. Just as with Paxlovid, ivermectin decreases the protease enzyme but…the benefits of ivermectin in Covid treatment are obvious and not present in paxlovid. Additional actions of ivermectin include anti-coagulant action and anti-inflammatory actions, both observed in Covid infections. Hydroxychloroquine is also a protease inhibitor and also works against COVID.

So why PAXLOVID? Because it’s from big pharma, is less proven than other drugs in terms of safety, and was approved without input from the external committees and the public. If that inspires confidence, then I don’t know what will give you pause.

Footnote:  This video focused on Pfizer’s pill, but Merck’s Molnupiravir pill is also a one-trick-pony.  See Why Merck Dissed Its Own Invention Ivermectin

Vexing Truths About Energy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Philip Dick’s insight has a corollary:  Reality is also that which doesn’t happen no matter how much you want it to.  Chris Wright explains the contradictions with energy fantasies in his Denver Gazette article Inconvenient truths about energy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The energy transition is not happening. Or not nearly at the pace that everyone believes or wishes. At current rates the “transition” is set to finish in the mid-2600s. The U.N. Rio Convention and subsequent Kyoto Protocol launched the energy transition drive in 1992. Global energy consumption from hydrocarbons has grown massively since then, with market share only declining by four percentage points over the last 30 years from 87% in 1992 to 83% today. I am not celebrating this fact as I have spent years working on energy transition technologies.

The energy transition isn’t failing for lack of earnest effort. It is failing because energy is hard, and 3 billion people living in energy poverty are desperate for reliable and scalable energy sources. Meanwhile, 1 billion energy-rich people are resistant to diminishing their standard of living with higher cost and an increasingly unreliable energy diet.

There is no “climate crisis” either. If there is a term more at odds with the exhaustive literature surveys of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) than “climate crisis,” I have not heard it.

Climate change is a real global challenge that is extensively studied. Unfortunately, the facts and rational dialogue about the myriad tradeoffs aren’t reaching policy makers, the media, or activist groups. Or are they are simply ignoring these inconvenient truths?

For example, we hear endlessly about the rise in frequency and intensity of extreme weather. This narrative is highly effective at scaring people and driving political action. It is also false. The reality is detailed in countless publications and summarized in the IPCC reports. Deaths from extreme weather have plunged over the last century, reaching new all-time lows last year, an outcome to be celebrated. This is not because extreme weather has declined. In fact, extreme weather shows no meaningful trend at all.

Deaths from extreme weather events have declined because highly energized, wealthier societies are much better prepared to survive nature’s wrath.

My Mind is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts. H/T Bjorn Lomborg, WUWT

Recognizing reality

You are not supposed to say out loud that there is no climate crisis or that the energy transition is proceeding at a glacial pace. These are unfashionable and, to many, offensive facts. But let’s be honest. Energy transition ambitions must recognize reality. Otherwise, poor investment decisions and regulatory frameworks will lead to surging global-energy and food prices. This is exactly what is happening. We are here today in large part because energy transition efforts that previously encompassed solely aggressive support of alternative energy policies, economics be damned, have recently supplemented this strategy with growing efforts to obstruct fossil fuel development.

Fossil fuels make the modern world possible.

The real crisis today is an energy crisis. It began to reveal itself last fall with a severe shortage in globally traded Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). The LNG crisis has not abated and it gives Russia’s Vladimir Putin tremendous leverage over Europe. Without Russian gas, the lights in Europe go out. Amid war, public outrage, and intense sanctions, Russian gas flows to Europe remain unchanged. Russian oil exports have continued with minimal interruption. The world can talk tough about sanctioning Russian energy exports, but those exports are vitally needed; hence they continue. Energy security equals national security.

The world energy system, critical to human wellbeing, requires meaningful spare capacity to handle inevitable bumps in the road. In the electricity sector, which represents only 20% of global energy but 40% in wealthy countries, this is called reserve capacity. In the oil market, spare production capacity today is shrinking and concentrated in OPEC nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Also, there is a massive global storage network in both surface tanks and underground caverns. In natural gas markets, there are both extensive underground storage reservoirs and typically spare export capacity through pipelines and large industrial LNG export and import facilities.

The last several years have seen this spare capacity whittled away due partly to lower commodity prices and poor corporate returns shrinking the appetite to invest.

Excess capacity has also shrunk due to regulatory blockage of critical energy infrastructure like pipelines and export terminals. Roadblocks for well permitting and leasing on federal lands, together with a mass public miseducation campaign on energy and climate alarmism, are also stymieing hydrocarbon development. Investment capital is further constrained by a corporate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) movement, and divestment campaigns. These factors are shrinking hydrocarbon investment below what it otherwise would be in response to price signals and outlook for supply and demand.

The net result is a constrained supply of oil, natural gas, and coal, which means higher prices and greater risk of market dislocations like the one unfolding today.

High energy and food price inflation is the cruelest form of tax on the poor. After a few specific examples, I’ll return to what we should do now to reverse these damaging and deeply inequitable trends.

In denial about demand

Why does the world today suffer from a severe shortage of LNG? Demand for natural gas has been growing strongly for decades. It provides a much cleaner substitute for coal in electricity production, home heating, and a myriad of industrial and petrochemical uses. Rising displacement of coal by natural gas has been the largest source of GHG emission reductions. Unfortunately, the aforementioned factors have prevented supply from keeping pace with rising demand. Energy shortages drive rapid prices rises and have cascading impacts on everything else. Energy is foundational to everything humans do. Everything.

Perhaps the most critical use of natural gas is nitrogen fertilizer production. Roughly a century ago, two German chemists, both subsequently awarded Nobel Prizes, developed a process to produce nitrogen fertilizer on an industrial scale. Before the Haber-Bosch process innovation, nitrogen content in soil was a major constraint on crop productivity. Existing nitrogen sources from bird guano, manure, and rotating cultivation of pea crops were limited. Today, elimination of natural gas-synthesized nitrogen fertilizer would cut global food production in half.

The now six-months-long LNG crisis translates into a worldwide food crisis as skyrocketing fertilizer prices are cascading into much higher food prices. Wheat prices are already at a record high and will likely head higher as spring plantings suffer from under fertilization.

Global LNG markets are tight because rising demand has outrun the growth in LNG export capacity in the United States, now the largest LNG exporter. We have an abundance of natural gas in the United States. Unfortunately, we have a shortage of pipelines to transport this gas and LNG export terminals, preventing us from relieving the energy crisis in Europe and around the world. These pipeline and export terminal shortages are due in large part to regulatory blockage. The result is that natural gas prices in the United States and Canada are five to ten times lower than in Asia and Europe. This deeply disadvantages consumers and factories (like fertilizer factories) in Europe and Asia that rely on LNG imports to fulfill their needs.

Failed energy policies

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not cause today’s energy crisis. Quite the reverse. Today’s energy crisis is likely an important factor in why Russia chose to invade Ukraine now. Europe’s energy situation is both tenuous and highly dependent on Russian imports. Russia is the second-largest oil and natural gas producer after the United States. Russia is the largest exporter of natural gas, supplying over 40% of Europe’s total demand. Additionally, Russia is the largest source of imported oil and coal to Europe. Europe put itself in this unenviable position by pursuing unrealistic, politically-driven policies attempting to rapidly transition its energy sources to combat climate change.

Europe’s energy pivot has been a massive failure on all fronts: higher energy costs, grave energy insecurity, and negligible climate impacts.

Germany is the poster child of this failure. In 2000, Germany set out to decarbonize its energy system, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this effort over the last 20 years. Germany only marginally reduced its dependence on hydrocarbons from 84% in 2000 to 78% today. The United States matched this 6% decline in hydrocarbon market share from 86% in 2000 to 80% today. Unlike in the US, Germany more than doubled its electricity prices — before the recent massive additional price increases — by creating a second electric grid. This second grid is comprised of massive wind and solar electric generating sources that only deliver 20% of nameplate capacity on average, and often less than 5% for days at a time. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Hence, Germany could only shrink legacy coal, gas and nuclear capacity by 15%. It now must pay to maintain both grids. The legacy grid must always be flexing up and down in a wildly inefficient manner to keep the lights on, hospitals functioning, homes heated, and factories powered. Outside of the electricity sector, Germany’s energy system is largely unchanged. It has long had high taxes on gasoline and diesel for transportation, and lower energy taxes on industry. Germany subsidizes industrial energy prices attempting to avoid the near-complete deindustrialization that the UK has suffered due to expensive energy policies across the board.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has seen two shale revolutions, first in natural gas and then in oil.

The net result has been the U.S. producing greater total energy than consumed in 2019 and 2020 for the first time since the 1950s. The U.S. went from the largest importer of natural gas to the second-largest exporter in less than fifteen years, all with private capital and innovation. The shale revolution lowered domestic and global energy prices due to surging growth in U.S. production. Surging US propane exports are reducing the cost and raising the availability of clean cooking and heating fuels for those in dire energy poverty still burning wood, dung, and agricultural waste to cook their daily meals. U.S. GHG emissions also plunged to the lowest level on a per capita basis since 1960. Imagine the world’s energy situation today with the American shale revolution.

We are starting to hamstring and squander the enormous benefits of the shale revolution. The same misinformed anti-hydrocarbon crusade that impoverished Europe and made it heavily dependent on Russia is now sweeping the US. California and New England had already adopted European-style energy policies driving up electricity prices, reducing grid reliability, and driving manufacturing and other energy-intensive, blue-collar jobs out of their states. Colorado is not far behind.

California, a state with a plentitude of blessings, managed to create the highest adjusted poverty rate in the nation with an expensive, unstable power grid increasingly reliant on coal-powered electricity imports from Nevada and Utah.

New England’s proximity to Pennsylvania’s clean low-cost natural gas resources was a stroke of luck. But it refused to expand the natural gas pipelines running from Pennsylvania, leaving it chronically short of natural gas, its largest source of electricity and cleanest option for home heating. Instead, it remains heavily reliant on fuel oil for home heating and occasionally imports LNG from Russia to keep the lights on. Last winter New England burned copious amounts of fuel oil to produce electricity which went out of fashion in the 1970s elsewhere in the US.

Texas has not been immune from energy illiteracy and collateral damage. Texas’ poorly designed electric grid, structured to encourage investment in renewables, led to hundreds dying last year in the Uri cold spell. No one would pay the same price for an Uber that showed up whenever convenient for the driver and dropped you off wherever they desired. But that is what Texas does with electricity: paying the same price for reliable electricity that balances the grid as they do for unreliable, unpredictable electricity. No wonder the reliability of the Texas grid has declined and is headed for more trouble.

Misplaced faith

The common thread in these cases is unrealistic beliefs in how rapidly new energy systems can replace demand for hydrocarbons, currently at all-time highs. Political intervention and miscalculation have led to over-investment in unreliable energy sources and, far worse, under-investment in reliable energy sources and infrastructure. The full costs of this colossal malinvestment have been somewhat hidden from view as spare capacity in the global energy network has mostly kept the train on the tracks. Now that excess capacity has shrunk to a critically low level, more impacts are hitting home.

Like the disease itself, the cure takes years to run its course. But that longer time frame is no excuse not to act now in a thoughtful fashion to begin rectifying historical blunders.

Steel, cement, plastics and fertilizer are the four building blocks of the modern world and all are highly reliant on hydrocarbons.

Most critically this means removing the growing myriad obstacles to hydrocarbon development, justified in the name of fighting climate change. This is nonsense. Overly cumbersome hurdles to hydrocarbon development in the U.S. do nothing to change oil and gas demand. They simply displace U.S. production overseas where production practices are less stringent and less ethical. Resulting in increased GHG emissions and other air pollutants, reduced economic opportunities for Americans, and increased geopolitical leverage of Russia and OPEC — see the invasion of Ukraine.

Climate change is a long-term problem best addressed with technologies cost-effective today like natural gas, energy efficiency, and nuclear. The solution requires combining today’s commercial low-carbon energy sources with research and technology development in carbon sequestration, next-generation geothermal, and economical energy storage to make solar and wind more viable.

Today the price mechanism must destroy energy demand to bring it in line with short-term supply. This reduces the quality of living, especially for low-income families. The price mechanism will also incent new supply to the extent possible in the face of growing regulatory hurdles, infrastructure shortages, and capital starvation. A revaluation of all three of these factors is urgently needed.

♦  Is the overarching goal “energy transition” at all costs?
♦  Or is it humane policies that better human lives and expand opportunities for all?

We need to replace the former mindset with the latter.

Chris Wright is chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based hydraulic fracturing company. Read “Bettering Human Lives”, a report released last year for more information on the above issues.

 

 

April 1 Resilient Arctic Ice (No Fooling)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Previous posts showed 2022 Arctic Ice broke the 15M km2 ceiling in February, followed by a typical small melt in March.  Climatology refers to the March monthly average ice extent as indicative of the annual maximum Arctic ice extent.  The graph above shows that the March monthly average has varied little since 2007, typically around the SII average of 14.7 M km2.  Of course there are regional differences as described later on.

The animation shows ice extent fluctuations during March 2022. Bering Sea (lower left) gained ice over the month, while ice in Okhotsk (higher left) retreated. At the top Kara and Barents seas lost and then gained ice.  Baffin Bay lower right lost ice during March.  The main changes were Baffin losing ~360k km2 of extent and Okhotsk losing ~260k km2.

The effect on NH total ice extents is presented in the graph below.

The graph above shows ice extent through March comparing 2022 MASIE reports with the 16-year average, other recent years and with SII.  Hovering around 15M km2 the first week, 2022 ice extents dropped sharply mid month, then stabilized and at March end matched the average. Both 2020 and 2021 ended nearly 400k km2 below average. The two green lines at the bottom show average and 2022 extents when Okhotsk ice is excluded.  On this basis 2022 Arctic was nearly 400k km2 in surplus, then declined mid month before ending nearly 200k km2 in surplus to average, except for the ice shortage in Okhotsk.

Region 2022090 Day 90 Average 2022-Ave. 2021090 2022-2021
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14563095 14616765  -53670  14266634 296461 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070776 1070116  660  1070689 87 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 963906  2100  966006 0 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1086102  1035  1087137 0 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 896958  887  897827 18 
 (5) Kara_Sea 935023 918083  16941  935023 0 
 (6) Barents_Sea 748326 645014  103311  602392 145934 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 616239 652388  -36148  620574 -4334 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1441014 1400528  40486  1243739 197275 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854685 852982  1703  854597 88 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260903 1254217  6687  1260903 0 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3245216 3232275  12941  3192844 52373 
 (12) Bering_Sea 785874 720525 65348  549939 235935 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 52068 63446  -11377  33543 18525 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 596190 849221  -253031  942085 -345895 

The table shows that the large deficit in Okhotsk is only partially offset by surpluses in Bering and Barents Seas.  All other regions show typical extents at end of March

 

April 1st Footnote:

It has been a long hard winter, requiring overtime efforts by Norwegian icebreakers like this one:

In addition, cold March temperatures led to unusual sightings of Northern creatures:

Not only Polar bears are flourishing!