I congratulate The Guardian

A note to The Guardian's editor:  

Its refreshing to see the Guardian finally reveal the truth about what has been happening in Venezuela. What is missing from your coverage is how the Chávez and Maduro regime have allowed the penetration of Venezuela's military, security and government agencies by Cubans sent by the Castro dictatorship. 

It's easy for you to verify how Cubans control parts of the bureaucracy, such as public notaries and the SAIME, which issues government IDs. I myself saw them in both cases, they can be recognized by their accents. 

Cubans are also reported to have influential positions in the armed forces and the SEBIN, the political secret police. It will harder for the Guardian to get this confirmed, but you can start by trying to interview senior retired military personnel who used to support Chávez but are speaking out against the Cuban interference in Venezuela. If you could interview Baduel you would get a treasure of information, but I doubt you can reach him. 

Raúl Isaias Baduel, former Defense Minister, complained about the Cuban military presence inside Venezuela. 

Raúl Isaias Baduel is a retired general, former Defense Minister under Chavez, jailed under false charges in 2008. Baduel was jailed after he complained about the Cuban military presence and opposed Chavez' proposed constitutional amendment to allow his indefinite reelection. . 

Another issue looming over the horizon is the fact that Venezuela's oil reserves are mostly the Orinoco Oil Belt extra heavy crude, which happens to be identical to Canadian extra heavy. The difference between the two is reservoir temperature, which allows the Venezuelan crude to be produced using horizontal well's equipped with progressive cavity pumps. This however is only part of the story. That crude is so viscous the recovery factor will be, at best, 6 %. The official reserves assume steam will be injected soon to recover more oil. This means the Venezuelan fields will look like Canada's heavy oil fields in the future, that is, they will have tens of thousands of horizontal wells, and about half will be injecting steam. 

Maduro comes out of the closet

Nicolás Maduro is facing a recall referendum which he's likely to lose. The Venezuelan constitution says that, if the referendum takes place in 2016 and Maduro loses, elections must be held to pick a new president. But it also says that, if the referendum takes place in 2017, Maduro's hand picked vicepresident becomes his successor. This is the reason why the regime is using illegal measures to delay the recall referendum until 2017, moves which lead to street demonstrations, and which in turn drove Maduro to declare an emergency and a "state of exception" which amounts to a self coup. As of right now,  for all intents and purposes, Maduro is running a military dictatorship covered by a thin veneer of democracy. 

Maduro and his generals

The opposition, which controls 2/3 of the National Assembly, insists it will press on with demonstrations. But the regime does have military and security agency backing. And it also has an extensive Castro dictatorship presence in Venezuela, including military as well as secret police. In a sense, we can think of Venezuela as a Cuban protectorate/quasi colony. 

Maduro´s regime appears to be a subsidiary

 of the Castro family dictatorship

This point seems to have escaped the opposition leaders, which keep forgetting they face Raúl Castro in a very high level struggle. The current situation led me to write the following thoughts at "The Devils Excrement":

I  would announce that if the dictatorship delays the referendum past mid December the referendum is off. I hear Raúl Castro and the Venezuelan decision makers (which include Cilia Flores, Padrino, Tareck, etc) agree that Maduro needs to be replaced. They are counting on a better manager and climbing oil prices to get out of the hole. 

This means the opposition, if it proceeds with the referendum in 2017, will be playing into their hands. 

To win this game you do have to accept that you are playing high level chess with Raúl Castro. This is a conflict between Venezuelans and a stealth invasion force which has colonized the country. But you are too proud to face it. What amazes me is that chavismo has given you a rallying cry to unite Venezuelans against a real foreign enemy. This isn’t about imaginary forces sent by uribe from Colombia, this is about real Cuban military and security personnel running Venezuela, and Venezuelans sitting on their behinds ignoring the truth. 

If you ever manage to accept what’s going on, then your moves have to be made to isolate Maduro and a few traitorous Venezuelans and the Cuban dictatorship on one side, and the majority of Venezuelans on the other. Once you get the idea, and understand that you do need to use strikes as a weapon, you have a slim chance. 

The world´s "real" temperature versus projections

In earlier posts I explained why I think the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been exaggerating the world’s future temperature rise.  See for example this

http://21stcenturysocialcritic.blogspot.com.es/2014/09/burn-baby-burn-co2-atmospheric.html

The IPCC likes to use their RCP8.5 projection as the “Business as Usual Case“, which projects horrendous temperature increases. However, this case uses unrealistically high fossil fuel resources (please see the post above for more details).

The IPCC studies use other projections, two of which are designated RCP6 and RCP4.6. These two use more reasonable fossil fuel resource burn rates. The groups preparing these cases weren’t too focused on the resources, they shifted emissions to meet IPCC target forcings (the 8.5 in RCP8.5 means the greenhouse gas forcing reaches 8.5 watts per square meter at the end of the 21^st century).

RCP6 and RCP4.5 used ‘’more reasonable’’ emissions from fossil fuels purely by accident. But they are definitely better than RCP8.5. Below I’ll show a graph with  the Hadley Center’s HADCRUT4 temperature anomaly data, updated through March 2016, and the temperature projections made by climate models using the three RCPs I mentioned. These three RCP climate model result curves were copied from a post at Climate Etc, but the original creator was Ed Hawkins. The HADCRUT4 data was downloaded from the Hadley center and dumped into Excel.

https://judithcurry.com/2013/02/22/spinning-the-climate-model-observation-comparison/

Hawkins likes to post these comparisons at Climate Lab Book. Here’s the latest I’ve seen

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/comparing-cmip5-observations/

Figure 1. HADCRUT4 data and the three RCP projections,

or climate model ensemble results,  copied from Ed Hawkins.

The graph shows the climate models’ temperature anomaly projections. As you can see, RCP4.5 and 6 are fairly close to each other. RCP8.5, the scary ‘’Business as Usual’’ case has a much higher temperature outcome.

Chanel rolls in Castro's vomit

Prior to and during WWII, many merchants and well known corporations traded and did business with Hitler's Nazi regime. Some used slave labor, others went as far as manufacturing poison gas used to genocide millions of people. This happened, and when it happens nobody cares, they look the other way, some even laugh, others like it, and others justify this behavior "because there's nothing we can do about it". 

Models parading in Castro's vomit

It's interesting to see how the media does free propaganda for these savages. It's the decadence of the 21st century, when the European Union, Obama, and Pope Francis call themselves the good guys while they cooperate, help, and collaborate with the Nazis of the 21st Century.

A response to Robert Bradley

I just wrote a response to Robert Bradley about peak oil. It turned out to be longer than I expected, so I decided to copy it here and link you back to his post. 

The post is hard to digest for somebody like me. I worked 40 years in the oil and gas industry, retired recently, and therefore I come at the "peak oil" issue from the inside. 

Bradley's post is here: https://www.masterresource.org/peak-oil-fixitydepletion/no-peak-lynch/#comment-50191

Approximately 25 years ago I was asked to look at industry exploration results in the previous 10 years, the pace of technology development, and  political changes such as the fall of the USSR. Our conclusion as a group was that exploration for oil was a very low return business, there was a need to high grade the effort, and reduce staff and investment. 

My personal conclusion was that we were clearly entering a phase where exploration wouldn't replace production. The corollary was that we needed to focus on capturing hydrocarbon molecules in the ground, which could be held under contract for the future, and wait as technology and higher oil prices allowed us to develop them. This however was my minority opinion. 

As the years have gone by, I have seen nothing to change my mind: we are depleting the easy to get oil, and are having to exploit low quality rocks and fluids, often located in incredibly difficult places. I'm not a "peak oiler" as such. I've simply reached the conclusion that we, as an industry, will demand ever increasing prices to satisfy the market. And these prices are gradually reaching levels which enable competitors to emerge (such as hybrid plug in vehicles and Brazilian biofuels).