Wednesday, July 27, 2022

For today


When The Lies Come Home

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/when-lies-come-home
by Tyler Durden
Saturday, Jun 18, 2022 - 10:44 PM

Authored by Douglas MacGregor via TheAmericanConservative.com,

After lying for months, the media are preparing the public for Ukraine’s military collapse...

Diogenes, one of the ancient world’s illustrious philosophers, believed that lies were the currency of politics, and those lies were the ones he sought to expose and debase. To make his point, Diogenes occasionally carried a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daylight. If asked why, Diogenes would say he was searching for an honest man.

Finding an honest man today in Washington, D.C., is equally challenging. Diogenes would need a Xenon Searchlight in each hand.

Still, there are brief moments of clarity inside the Washington establishment. Having lied prolifically for months to the American public about the origins and conduct of the war in Ukraine, the media are now preparing the American, British, and other Western publics for Ukraine’s military collapse. It is long overdue.

The Western media did everything in its power to give the Ukrainian defense the appearance of far greater strength than it really possessed. Careful observers noted that the same video clips of Russian tanks under attack were shown repeatedly. Local counterattacks were reported as though they were operational maneuvers.

Russian errors were exaggerated out of all proportion to their significance. Russian losses and the true extent of Ukraine’s own losses were distorted, fabricated, or simply ignored. But conditions on the battlefield changed little over time. Once Ukrainian forces immobilized themselves in static defensive positions inside urban areas and  the central Donbas, the Ukrainian position was hopeless. But this development was portrayed as failure by the Russians to gain “their objectives.”

Ground-combat forces that immobilize soldiers in prepared defenses will be identified, targeted, and destroyed from a distance. When persistent overhead intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, whether manned or unmanned, are linked to precision guided-strike weapons or modern artillery systems informed by accurate targeting data, “holding ground” is fatal to any ground force. This is all the more true in Ukraine, because it was apparent from the first action that Moscow focused on the destruction of Ukrainian forces, not on the occupation of cities or the capture of Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper River.

The result has been the piecemeal annihilation of Ukrainian forces. Only the episodic infusion of U.S. and allied weapons kept Kiev’s battered legions in the field; legions that are now dying in great numbers thanks to Washington’s proxy war.

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Energy Transition Goals At Risk As EU May Label Lithium As Toxic


by Tyler Durden
Sunday, Jun 19, 2022 - 02:20 PM
 
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/energy-transition-goals-risk-eu-may-label-lithium-toxic

Via Rystad Energy,

  • European Commission could move to put lithium on a list of toxic substances.

  • This piece of regulation could drive up prices across the battery supply chain.

  • Should the European Commission take this decision, it may undermine the EU’s energy security.

A potential European Commission (EC) act to classify lithium as a Category 1A reproductive toxin in this year’s fourth quarter could undermine the European Union (EU)’s attempt to create and support a domestic battery materials supply chain.

The EU currently relies heavily on imports of lithium to supply its nascent electric vehicle (EV) production sector and the classification may increase its reliance on other regions, at a time when the union is focused on energy security and reducing emissions. Europe has announced plans to expand lithium battery-grade Li Carbonate production from nothing today to 8.3% of global production by 2025, according to Rystad Energy research.

Europe has similar ambitions for lithium hydroxide, which is crucial for long-range EV batteries. Even without the potential decision by the EC, it will still fall well short of closing the estimated 218% deficit gap in lithium hydroxide processing that Europe is facing by the end of 2030, according to Rystad Energy research. The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)’s Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) at the end of 2021 published its opinion that it agreed with French proposals to classify three lithium salts as Category 1A reproductive toxicants. It determined that lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide and lithium chloride should be classified under the Classification, Labelling & Packaging (CLP) Regulation as substances that may damage fertility and unborn children. It also agreed that the substances may harm breastfed children.

Initial proposals were presented to the EC on March 23 and 24 and are now under review and consultation, with the EC set to publish its first draft of the act between October and December. EU member states can still object to these proposals through the summer.

While the classification would not stop lithium usage, it is highly likely that it would have an impact on at least four stages in the EU lithium battery supply chain: lithium mining; processing; cathode production; and recycling. Several administrative issues, risk management and restrictions could hit each of these fledgling industries in Europe, which would drive up costs.

 

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Boris Johnson's Flagshop Net Zero Policy Flops As Few People Take Up Grants To Replace Boilers With Heat Pumps 


An air source heat pump - Picture: ecosolar heating australia

Sometime last year  besotted Boris Johnson  unveiled his flagship policy for heating all our homes with zero emissions heat sourced from ... wait for it ... the cold air outside our homes. Under the Government’s “boiler upgrade scheme”, 'woke' and environmentally conscious homeowners would be able to  apply for vouchers that knock up to £6,000 off the cost of installing heat pumps to transfer heat from outside our homes (on a winter's day,) into our baths, showers and heating systems. 

Now there is nothing wrong with heat pumps, they are simply a refrigerator or air conditioninh unit in reverse and the technology has been around for over a hundred years. And in places like Australia where our picture was taken, they work very well. But in Britain in the depths of winter? There's a bit of a difference. If you are curious to know how heat pumps work we reported in detail on the technology a year ago HERE, There are problems with heat pumps of course, mainly because the scientists who dreamed up this latest green idiocy were working with mathematical models of a home, its occupants and an average day. And as usual the mathematical models work just fine but have nothing to do with reality. One is that they require shitloads of electricity to run them, and on those cold, windless, sunless days of a typical British winter when output from wind turbines and solar panels is negligable, if we have abandoned fossil fuels and declined to build new nuclear plant because the Exstinktion Rebellion crusties don't like it, where will that eletricity come from?

The governments envisaged three-year programme to 'nudge' us all to throw out our efficient boilers and storage heaters and rely on inefficient, unreliable technologies included a scheme to make the devices more affordable and stimulate domestic demand, with ministers hoping that plumbers will be installing 600,000 per year by 2028.

But despite 30,000 vouchers being made available for the current financial year, only 4,100 applications have been received and only 2,500 issued since the scheme opened on May 23. A big part of the problem was that the vouchers are worth £6000 and the heat pump plus installation costs upwards of £25,000 (£10,000 for the heat pump, the rest for upgrading and adapting electrical and plumbing systems.

Former chancellor Rishi Sunak, who is currently campaigning to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, has hinted he could scrap the scheme altogether and divert cash towards efforts to improve household insulation.

Craig Mackinlay, a Tory MP who chairs the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, claimed the figures underlined “the futility of a target-led approach which attempts to force consumers into adopting technologies which they simply don't want, are expensive and don’t work very well”.

MacKinlay said: “Just like the period of subsidies for electric cars, heat pump vouchers are only likely to be used by those with the additional resources to pay for such expensive playthings.

“Although the Treasury has been unable to spend as much money as they were hoping to, this still equates to large sums of money wasted on people who don't need state hand-outs.

“The Government urgently needs to develop a market-friendly approach to decarbonisation which focuses on developing technologies people would choose to use without compulsion.”

Meanwhile, green campaigners have also criticised the government scheme for not being ambitious enough, but as always with the Greens all they offer is ideology because they have no practical solutions. As with sustainable sources for electricity there are many 'green' technologies that look great on paper but when it comes to transposing theory into real world performance they fall short simply because the sciencetits had simply ignored evidence of flaws in their theory.


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