Well. It happening. 11 days ago, I penned an article that suggested we were "T-14 days" until the narrative blew up. In the intervening time, the Governor of New York has acknowledged "with" is different than "of." The media has had an epiphany that reporting on cases "might be" fanning the flames of fear. And yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that, in fact, OSHA had followed in the path of the CDC as federal agencies who MASSIVELY overreached their power.
Said the Court in the majority opinion that won the day 6-3: "Although COVID– 19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases. Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life—simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock—would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization."
So, I can keep my job without a weekly test that was punitive not protective given that we know and have written about since before May that the vaccinated can a) catch b) spread and c) have the same viral load as the unvaccinated. Yay for the courts.
To the larger point, I’ve reflected a lot during sober January and those who have been long time HTOTD readers know that I rarely get the prediction AND timing right. Things I think are obvious, aren’t, and I am a special kind of stubborn to constantly fight the narrative . Typically, I have been right on the macro prediction and wrong on the timing by 2 years. Weathermen have a better track record. Arguably, so does a broken clock. The “what” and the “when” are both essential if you want to make money.
In November 2018, when I said oil and gas companies should restore the balance sheet, stop growing production and focus on free cash flow, that wasn't viewed as a good plan, until it was in 2020.
In September 2019 when I said US oil had peaked (it did in November, 5 months before COVID), I said the world would be undersupplied oil and that $65 made a lot of sense. I bought a lot of CDEV, and then COVID happened. Had I only been in a coma for the last 2 years I would be less cynical with the world and my stock would have more than doubled.
In March 2020, I was criticized as desiring to kill the old people in your family when I said "we have to live with this", "age and co-morbidities drive risk" and the most offensive thing "you can't pump trillions into an economy without repercussions." In 2 years, you know that what I said never changed even while saying it got me banned multiple times from social media. So while epiphanies are being had left and lefter, it turns out that yea, the Diamond Princess cruise Petri dish data was all we needed. Then and now.
I'm hopeful my next ”prediction” based on data takes less than 2 years for the world to come to terms with: climate change is a money grab, not something we can solve. I have said for the last few months that millions of people will die and 10s of millions will go bankrupt as a result of poor energy policies that started in Europe and have made their way to North America, while China and India give less F's than me. Making CO2 the bad guy is easy to spin, it’s a chart that a 7 year old understands.
What’s much harder to explain is why the models are constantly not able to be back tested. That water vapor is 3x more impactful on the greenhouse than is CO2 and at 71% of the planet, is hard to call a pollutant. And that temperatures have changed LONG before fossil fuels changed the way we live.
I am hopeful that with videos like Chuck Schumer defending the filibuster and Mike Wallace reporting on the lies around swine flu in 1976, the populace at large wakes up to the fact that government, pharma, companies and the media don’t have your best interests at heart. They simply want your money.
Record tax collection by feds....1/13/22
$1,051,873,000,000:
Record Federal Tax Collections Top $1 Trillion in 3 Months
Water vapor 3x more impactful the green house than CO2? I would say it’s much more impactful than that.
First of all a molecule of H2O radiates more thermal energy than a molecule of CO2 because it captures a wider spectrum of thermal radiation than CO2, raising its energy state and then shedding that absorbed energy in the form of radiant heat transfer.
Second, there are a hell of a lot more water molecules in the atmosphere than CO2. Water vapor concentration ranges from near zero at the poles (10 ppm) to as high as 5% (50,000 ppm) at the equator. Solubility of trace gases like water vapor and CO2 are a function of temperature, so like water vapor, CO2 concentration is also near zero at the poles and gets up to 0.04% (400 ppm) at the equator.
Water vapor is also a much lighter molecule than CO2 (18 MW vs 44 MW for CO2), much lighter in fact than the average MW of air (29 MW). Which is why moist air being lighter than cold dry air causes the convection currents that takes water vapor up to 20,000’ or more before it condenses into rain and snow. CO2 on the other hand, being much heavier than air remains low to the ground allowing plants to live.
But anyway, when you apply simple math, assuming the average concentration for water vapor (a stronger greenhouse molecule) at 35,000 ppm (quoted by numerous sources) and CO2 at 400 ppm, that works out to water vapor having 87.5 times more impact on our greenhouse than CO2.
In fact H2O concentration can fluctuate 10,000 ppm or more between night and day in a given area, that fact alone dwarfing the impact of CO2.