Trust the Science Fraud drove the COVID-19 pandemic – which seems to be petering out despite desperate efforts to prolong it.  What’s coming next?  Damage control and a whitewash of history?  More Big Lie coverups?  A reckoning for those responsible?  Do they have natural immunity for fraud?

Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate physicist, was an investigator of the Challenger disaster.  He identified its probable cause – launch control error.  It was too cold to launch.  He explained why simply and clearly and observed: “Nature cannot be fooled.”

He was right.  Nature can’t be fooled.  But we can be.  And we have been fooled about COVID.  Mark Twain: “It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.”  It’s still true.  Look at mask wearers who didn’t wear them before COVID.  Do they all have allergies now?

Trust the Science Fraud is also driving the Global Warming/Climate Change/Green Energy mania.  We’ve been fooled about it too.  But it’s not petering out.  Capital flows into green energy are accelerating.  Energy security is the latest rationalization.  Investments in BlackRock, Inc. increased over $100 billion in Q1.

War in the Ukraine and sanctions against Russian oil and gas have upset world energy markets.  The story line is that wind and solar energy will help this somehow.  A leading promoter of this fraud and ESG investing is BlackRock, Inc. of New York.  It’s the world’s largest asset manager with over $10 trillion in public company stocks.  Environmental, Social, and Governance investing is about political agendas and virtue signaling.

The green mania’s first Elmer Gantry was Al Gore.  Global warming sin was revealed to him in 2006.  His “An Inconvenient Truth” was inspired by analyses of ancient ice cores.  It got cause (higher temperature) and effect (higher carbon dioxide levels) backwards.  The analyses did show correlations between higher temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels.  But they also showed higher carbon dioxide levels came hundreds of years after higher temperatures.  Cause doesn’t usually come after effect.

A plausible explanation is that natural climate variations (which happen) caused higher temperatures which caused carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans to outgas and increase atmospheric carbon dioxide subsequently trapped in the ice cores.  Outgassing happens too. Ever opened a warm can of Coke and had the dissolved carbon dioxide outgas and spew foam?

But Gore said burning fossil fuels increased atmospheric carbon dioxide which caused the earth’s temperature to rise.  And if it continued, glaciers would melt causing sea levels to rise and other disasters.  Temperatures have stopped rising (natural variation).  Predicted disasters are past their due dates.  Future disasters have yet to be seen.  But the Elmer Gantrys are sure they are coming.  And that Net Zero Carbon is our only salvation.  Just trust science.  Don’t worry about cost and consequences.

Legacy and social media narratives promoting both frauds have been disruptive and destructive – for rich and poor alike.  But the very poor have been hurt the most by shortages and higher prices of oil and gas – a consequence of promoting green energy and attacking carbon fuels.

Ironically, COVID causalities and damages were greater for prosperous Europeans and Americans.  They were denied cheap life-saving legacy drugs to boost demand for experimental vaccines, expensive designer drugs, lockdowns, and other social experiments.  The poor in developing countries got cheap hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin (which worked) and escaped lockdowns (which didn’t).  They fared better.

All the adverse effects of COVID experiments may take years to unfold.  However, more are becoming obvious despite censorship and attacks on independent research.  The experiments were in the name science.  But censorship of research results and informed opinions that challenge Big Lie narratives is anti-science.  Truth is revealed by free and open debate.  Not by experts’ decrees.

Richard Feynman also said: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.” (I think he meant experts are not infallible.)  Big Tobacco experts said smoking doesn’t cause cancer.  They were wrong.  Trial lawyers and independent researchers showed it does.  Tobacco companies paid billions in damages.

Of course tobacco companies didn’t have litigation immunity for smoking’s effects.  Pharmaceutical companies do for their vaccines.  But that’s no hill for a trial lawyer to climb if the companies lied.  And if health care bureaucrats did too.  Hold my beer while I buy some litigation futures.

Wind and solar investments are increasing.  So is demand for oil and gas.  Isn’t it strange that more green energy hasn’t reduced demand for natural gas?  Maybe it’s because wind and solar power require natural gas backups to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow, and the sun doesn’t shine – which is most of the time.  More green electricity creates more demand for natural gas.  It also increases the cost of electricity.

Despite growing demand for hydrocarbons and higher prices, oil and gas investments are not increasing as usual.  Historically, oil and gas drilling increased almost immediately in response to tight supplies and higher prices.  And production increased soon thereafter.  But not now.  Why?

Halliburton is a major supplier of drilling supplies and services.  Its CEO recently reported that customers are not drilling as usual.  They are not drilling expensive, high-risk, big return prospects with long life production increases – which also take a long time to pay off.  Why?  Maybe it’s the political environment.

They are drilling cheaper, smaller, lower risk prospects.  When drilling stops, production from these “short cycle barrels” falls immediately.  More “short cycle barrels” mean faster production cuts when prices fall and tighter supplies and higher prices sooner thereafter.

You can’t make gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, fertilizer, plastics, antifreeze, and other everyday essentials from windmills and solar panels.  You need natural gas and oil.  Utilities can’t sell green electricity without natural gas backup.  U.S. natural gas prices will increase as LNG exports to Europe decrease gas surpluses here.  So will U.S. electricity prices.  And inflation.

Science frauds are expensive.  Energy ignorance is too.

 

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