Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Big Tech joins up with Big Brother to turn your private health data into $38bn ‘public treasure’

By Helen Buyniski | RT | January 21, 2020

Big Tech is poised to rake in tens of billions of dollars from a new healthcare record keeping standard that scorns privacy for convenience, creating massive opportunities for extortion and other abuses by criminals and government.

“Wouldn’t life be easier if you could view your full medical history with a few taps on your smartphone?” an upbeat piece touting Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) – a new data standard for healthcare patient data – asked, somewhat rhetorically, on Tuesday in Kaiser Health News. This oversimplified, no-downside spin on a truly ominous technology neglects to warn anyone who’s ever used a health clinic that the medical details of their private life are about to get a lot more public, data-privacy laws be damned, and there will be no putting this particular genie back in the bottle.

The US government has officially thrown its weight behind the rollout of FHIR, mandating in 2020 that all medical providers who receive government funding make patient data available through FHIR-compatible apps. This move cements an unspoken alliance between Big Tech and Big Brother that has repeatedly seen the former deployed to circumvent troublesome constitutional restrictions imposed on the latter. The government may not be able to violate Fourth Amendment provisions against unreasonable search and seizure, but if, say, the FBI wants access to a target’s health records, it no longer has to show up at their doctor’s office with a warrant – those records will be sitting in an unsecured corporate database on the cloud, if history is any guide. Unless the medical records industry seriously overhauls its idea of what constitutes information security, patient data will be fair game for everyone from the NSA to the lowliest basement-bound hacker.

Americans’ health data is supposed to be protected under a law called HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that, at least in theory, gives the patient autonomy over how and where their records are shared. The US Department of Health and Human Services claims 2018 was the biggest year yet for HIPAA enforcement, and a glimpse at the agency’s newsroom shows a constant stream of multi-million-dollar payouts from companies found guilty of treating patient privacy like an afterthought, even a nuisance. Keeping in mind that even this lengthy list only represents the violators who got caught, it’s safe to assume that healthcare providers violate patient privacy on an almost-daily basis, whether by failing to encrypt or otherwise secure patient data or failing to ensure those accessing the data have the authority to do so. FHIR lacks any sort of new provisions to hold these companies responsible for data breaches, which with every patient’s information on the same server will be orders of magnitude more devastating than they already are. FHIR is also expected to stream data from wearable devices like fitness trackers directly into patients’ medical records, opening up a whole new dimension of surveillance.

Without the new government mandate, healthcare providers had been slow to embrace the idea of Google or Microsoft essentially sticking a billion-dollar straw into their patient records and slurping heartily. Health Level Seven International, the private company that devised FHIR, has boasted of the “public treasure” of information exchange that will result from “breaking open the silos” and unleashing decades of stored health data on the world. Paper-based records are described as “chaos,” and even electronic records are lamentably “isolated in electronic silos.” Inert data is not “working for the industry” – never mind that the data legally belongs to patient and practitioner, not “the industry,” and that under FHIR it will be leveraged by private-sector players with no intention of paying any of the parties whose data makes the system valuable. Providers who don’t want to participate in this orgy of financial speculation (the electronic health record “market” is predicted to be worth $38 billion by 2025) aren’t protecting their patients – they’re “information blocking,” according to financial penalties Congress has imposed since 2016. With the 2020 mandate, they’ll be exiled from government pastures entirely, unless they give up their data. Your data.

If this all sounds like paranoid technophobia, look no further than Blue Button, the government-backed initiative to create consumer demand for FHIR by making it the go-to standard for patients to download their personal health records. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce plus the US government have thrown their considerable resources behind this surveillance-state bonanza, which seems designed to trick consumers into prioritizing convenience over safety. The project’s webpage informs patients that the onus is on them to protect their medical data once downloaded, even though the average US internet user knows next to nothing about information security and their government likes to keep things that way. One need only witness US Attorney General William Barr lecturing Apple about the evils of encryption last week in regard to an already-solved case to observe how information security is treated by Washington as an obstacle to what was once called Total Information Awareness before some clever soul in the Pentagon decided the name (but not the concept) was too Orwellian for the public.

FHIR is hardly the first attempt to sell a privacy-destroying technology using convenience, or the first attempt to specifically target medical privacy as a sort of ‘final frontier’ of the surveillance state. But anyone who doesn’t want their latest STD test, abortion, rehab stay, life-threatening allergy, Viagra prescription, or other formerly-private clinical experience ending up in the public domain would be wise to advocate for stricter privacy protections – and steeper penalties for violators, especially app developers – before it’s too late.

January 22, 2020 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

Bolivia: MAS Presidential Candidate Becomes Target of Lawfare

Luis Arce at a news conference after being announced as the Movement to Socialism's presidential candidate, in Buenos Aires, Argentina Jan. 20, 2020.

Luis Arce at a news conference after being announced as the Movement to Socialism’s presidential candidate, in Buenos Aires, Argentina Jan. 20, 2020. | Photo: Reuters
teleSUR | January 22, 2020

Bolivia’s Office of the Prosecutor expanded an investigation against Evo Morales’ former officials, among whom is Luis Arce, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) presidential candidate.

The announcement was made by prosecutor Heidi Gil one day after the MAS unveiled that Arce would be its presidential candidate in the upcoming elections in May.

The judicial process is related to the alleged diversion of public resources from the Indigenous Development Fund (Fondioc), a case in which former Presidency’s Minister Juan Ramon Quintana has also been mentioned.

“If the Prosecutor finds enough evidence during the extension of the investigation, they will be called to testify,” Gil said referring to Arce and Quintana.

The extension of the judicial investigation was requested by the current Fondioc director, Rafael Quispe, a well-known opponent of the Morales administration who was appointed to that position by the government of Jeanine Añez.

Since the coup d’etat consummated on November 10 in Bolivia, numerous MAS militants have been subject to judicial persecution.

In this regard, the MAS leader Evo Morales said that the current U.S.-backed de facto regime does not seek justice but “revenge and impunity.”

Former Minister of Economy Luis Arce is one of the intellectuals who designed the economic model that allowed Bolivia to keep high growth rates for more than a decade.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

January 22, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Jewish Congress launches campaign against ‘antisemitism’ (aka support for Palestinian rights)

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin demonstrates the new Instagram campaign against “antisemitism.” EJC and Israel consider opposition to Israeli human rights violations “antisemitic.”
Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | January 22, 2020

UPDATE: In the midst of impeachment proceedings, House Leader Nancy Pelosi has gone to Israel to take part in an event organized by the Russian-Israeli oligarch described below – see update at end of post.

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) has announced the launch of a worldwide, star studded social media campaign against what it calls “antisemitism,” but which is often advocacy for Palestinian human rights and opposition to Israeli apartheid. EJC is the regional affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, one of whose main missions is to advocate for Israel.

The EJC considers anti-Zionism to be a form of anti-Semitism and employs a newly created definition of antisemitism in which certain types of statements about Israel are supposedly “antisemitic.” As a result, EJC’s opposition to “antisemitism” often consists of censoring information that exposes Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.

Its new campaign, called “Stop This Story,” particularly focuses on Instagram, although it will also use YouTube and other platforms. According to the EJC, the campaign will be the “first global initiative of its kind that will leverage Instagram’s AR (Augmented Reality) effects to drive a global movement.” It claims to have recruited “some of the world’s leading AR effects’ creators.”

The campaign says it has enrolled a number of “international stars” and “international influencers, each of them with millions followers.” Among these are supermodel Bar Refaeli, actress Vanessa Kirby (from ‘The Crown’), former NBA player Omri Casspi, and “many other international figures, actors, entertainers, and sportsmen and women.”

The man behind the campaign

Russian-Israeli oligarch Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, president of the EJC and numerous other entities, is a billionaire whose top priority is strengthening Israel.

The individual behind the new campaign is EJC President Moshe Kantor, also known as Viatcheslav Kantor, He explains the reasoning underlying the campaign: “The best way to spread any message today is through social media because social networks and those who use them have the power to make the necessary changes in our societies.”

Kantor is a Russian-Israeli billionaire dedicated to Israel. He has stated that the creation of the State of Israel is the “biggest achievement” of Diaspora Jewry, and believes that all Jews must work to “strengthen our beloved state.”

In 2008 Kantor enunciated his core belief: “The reality of today requires that European Jews care not only about the preservation and security of Israel, but also the way it is treated by the rest of the world. This must be the leading priority of the European Diaspora.”

Kantor heads up and sometimes even originated, a network of pro-Israel international entities.

In addition to being president of the European Jewish Congress, he is founder and president of the World Holocaust Forum Foundation, founder and chairman of the European Jewish Fund, originator and president of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, co-founder and president of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, vice president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, a member of the International Board of Hillel, and the former president of the Russian Jewish Congress, to name just some of his affiliations.

His ability to accomplish all this stems from his enormous wealth. In addition to being an “international philanthropist,” as he identifies himself, Kantor is an international businessman with $4 billion at his disposal. He has been accused of unscrupulous business dealings and financial fraud.

Like other Russian oligarchs, Kantor made his fortune in the first years of Russia’s “new capitalism”– sometimes called “gangster capitalism” – when, under the guise of “privatization,” Russia’s economy was massively looted, causing ruin to many Russian citizens who saw their life savings vanish, sometimes in a matter of weeks. Kantor’s father, a former Red Army soldier, reportedly served prison time for “speculation and embezzlement of state property in a large scale, taking bribes and forgery.” Kantor was among the many individuals in the Russian Jewish community who flourished; many – perhaps most – of the Russian oligarchs have ties to Israel.

Kantor is known for a variety of international activities. Along with notorious oligarch Boris Berezovsky, Kantor is said to have been a “sponsor of the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine in 2005, which led to the cancellation of the initial results of the presidential election.” Berezovsky later bragged that he had funded the revolution. In 2006 Kantor received an award from Ukraine’s new president for “distinguished services” to the country.

Stamping out ‘Antisemitism’ and ‘Intolerance’

Kantor has been involved in a global campaign to embed a new, Israel-centric definition of antisemitism in European governments and institutions. The EJC says that the definition of anti-Semitism must be “clarified” because “the new form of anti-Semitism” supposedly “emanates from pro-Palestinians.” Kantor says that BDS, the international boycott of Israel over its violent human rights abuses, is “antisemitic.” (BDS works to “uphold the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.”)

Kantor advocates that governments punish antisemites as harshly as they punish terrorists. He has been working to convince European governments to adopt a bizarre 13-page program of “concrete and enforceable obligations that ensure tolerance and stamp out intolerance.”

The Orwellian program, entitled “National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance” (revised version here), would restrict freedom of expression, impose re-education programs, enact surveillance structures, and institute criminal penalties for “antisemitism” and other “intolerance.” Expressing views specified as impermissible would be “regarded as criminal offenses punishable as aggravated crimes.”

The document proposes a deeply authoritarian structure controlling multiple aspects of society to coerce “tolerance,” and anyone who doesn’t get with the program would be taken care of, e.g. “Juveniles convicted of committing crimes listed in paragraph (a) will be required to undergo a rehabilitation programme conducive to a culture of tolerance.” Big Brother in the form of a “National Tolerance Monitoring Commission” would ensure that no one says or does anything that the Commission determines is “intolerant.”

The program is being promoted by Kantor’s “European Center for Tolerance and Reconciliation” (ECTR), and may be on the way to becoming a reality. Kantor has secured former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as the ECTR Chairman and French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy as a member.

According to its website ECTR has formed a joint task force with the European Council to work on implementing the program throughout Europe. The European Council, composed of the heads of state or government of the 28 EU member states, defines the EU’s overall political direction and priorities.

‘Global Pandemic’

Kantor recently said that antisemitism is now a “global pandemic” and that the “crisis of antisemitism is a slippery slope to global catastrophe.” He warns that Jews could “disappear completely as a people from Europe,” and raises the alarm about what he describes as “mass killing at synagogues.”

Media reports on the new EJC campaign similarly emphasize recent tragic attacks on Jews, and reference the assaults in the cities of Monsey, Jersey City, Halle, Poway, and Pittsburgh.

These terrifying attacks killed a combined total of 14 Jews.

News reports on the alleged perpetrators of the assaults, who were of diverse races, indicate a variety of motivations. One attacker said he had been inspired by a 2019 assault on two New Zealand mosques that had killed 51 Muslims.

Previous fatal shootings have also occurred at other religious sites. The largest number of fatalities in the US may have been at a Christian church, where 26 worshipers were killed in 2017.

While Kantor and the EJC claim the existence of massive antisemitism, Jewish Americans are reportedly the wealthiest group in the US, and this also appears to be the case for Jews worldwide.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have killed almost 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children since 2000 and injured tens of thousands; Palestinian resistance forces have killed approximately 1,200 Israelis (details here).

Such disproportion is not new.

Twenty-five years ago, an Israeli author wrote: “In the last 40 years the number of non-Jews killed by Jews is by far greater than the number of the Jews killed by non-Jews.”

Many Jews around the world, including in Israel itself, have long strenuously opposed Israeli violence. According to Kantor and his cohort, these individuals are also “antisemitic.”

The bodies of five children from the same family killed in an Israeli air strike on 14 November 2019 lie in a hospital ward in Gaza (information on Gaza is here)

Fifth World Holocaust Forum

The new campaign comes just before the Fifth World Holocaust Forum to be held in Israel tomorrow,  January 23rd, co-sponsored by the president of Israel. The forums are another one of Kantor’s many projects.

Over 45 heads of state and world leaders have said they plan to attend the event, including the presidents of France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, the kings of Spain and Belgium, and Britain’s Prince Charles. Vice-president Mike Pence and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will also attend.

The event is being held at Yad Vashem, Israel’s holocaust complex, a vast, sprawling institution with dozens of Israeli flags and tree-studded walkways leading to exhibits, archives, monuments, sculptures, and memorials.

The event website proclaims that the Holocaust is “the most horrific tragedy in human history” and states that “a new wave of antisemitism unseen since World War II poses an existential threat to European Jewry.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, among the forum’s features will be speeches by select heads of state, a Holocaust survivor, video clips, and “musical interludes performed by an orchestra and an international choir.” The event will be live streamed and conclude with the Israeli national anthem.

Yad Vashem is in Jerusalem where there is evidence all around – for any with eyes to see – of another genocidal program, one that has been going on since the one commemorated by Yad Vashem ended. An historian calls this one the “Palestinian holocaust” and describes it: a land was “occupied, emptied of its people, its physical and cultural landmarks obliterated, its destruction hailed as a miraculous act of God, all done according to a premeditated plan, meticulously executed, internationally supported, and still maintained today…”

Yad Vashem overlooks one of the obliterated landmarks emptied of its people: an almost empty field where the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin once stood.

On April 9, 1948 Zionist forces systematically exterminated 110 men, women, and children as part of a plan to rid Palestine of its Muslim and Christian population in order to make way for the Jewish state. This was one of 16 such Zionist massacres that took place before the official start of Israel’s founding war of ethnic cleansing, and over a month before a single Arab Army joined the conflict. In contrast to Yad Vashem’s monuments and memorials, Deir Yassin has no marker.

More recent evidence of the ongoing oppression can be found in the Issawiya neighborhood of Jerusalem, where heavily armed Israeli police have raided over 500 Palestinian homes and arrested more than 700 residents since May, apprehending children as young as five. Israeli forces shot dead a 21-year-old at close range and have injured over 300 people of all ages. Soldiers beat and humiliate residents at will. One resident says the area “has turned into a ghetto.” (Another such ghetto is Gaza, where Israeli forces yesterday killed three young men who had reportedly temporarily escaped from their prison.)

Not far from Issawiyah is Israel’s mammoth apartheid wall, confiscating additional Palestinian land and helping to imprison over two million people. In 2002 Israeli media reported that Israeli generals were studying how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto for use in Israel’s next campaign against Palestinians.

The Holocaust Forum program states that the world leaders “will be invited to lay a wreath at the base of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument created by world-renowned Jewish sculptor and artist Nathan Rappaport.”

Perhaps some of the world leaders could also visit the unmarked site of Deir Yassin, and lay a wreath on one of its crumbling graves. And then go to Israel’s wall and echo a famous demand from a previous head of state: “Tear down this wall.”

And maybe a future social media campaign could focus on ending all genocides, injustice, and oppression.

UPDATE:

Nancy Pelosi and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Jan 22, 2020 at Israeli state dinner sponsored by Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor.
(Pelosi’s Congressional offices are not telling constituents where she is.)

The UK Guardian reports that many of the heads of state have now arrived and that Israeli President Rivlin is hosting a state dinner today. Officials said organizers of the dinner “had tuned the grand piano, brought in 800 candles and hired 200 servers and ushers to serve Israeli cuisine. For space reasons, tents were set up outside and the heads of the foreign delegations were asked to bring only one guest…”

The article also reports: “Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has looked to capitalise on the event to rally international support against Iran” and hopes to procure “backing for his attacks on the international criminal court, which is investigating allegations of war crimes in the Palestinian territories.”

The Guardian reports that Russian president Vladamir Putin, French president Emmanuel Macron, and Prince Charles are expected meet with Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.

A controversy involving Macron has already occurred:

“Macron also visited the old city of Jerusalem on Wednesday, where he was filmed by a French journalist working for Le Parisien shouting at an Israeli security officer. He appeared to be yelling at the man, who may have been assigned to his security detail, to leave the church of St Anne’s. The church has been owned by the French government since it was gifted by the Ottomans to Napoleon III in 1856, and is still considered French territory.

“Everybody knows the rules,” he said firmly in English. “Outside, please,” he shouted. “Please respect the rules. They [have been in place] for centuries. They will not change with me.”

“Macron’s altercation mirrored that of another French president, Jacques Chirac, who in 1996 refused to enter the same church until Israeli security left.”

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

January 22, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

‘Obvious malicious intent’: Tulsi Gabbard hits Clinton with defamation suit over ‘Russian asset’ smear

RT | January 22, 2020

Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard is suing two-time White House runner-up Hillary Clinton over her claim that Gabbard was a “Russian asset,” alleging that the lie hurt not just her campaign but the entire election.

Clinton “lied about her perceived rival Tulsi Gabbard… publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent” when she claimed Gabbard was “the favorite of the Russians,” the campaign alleges in the suit, filed on Wednesday in the federal Southern District of New York. While Clinton isn’t technically running against Gabbard in the 2020 contest, the filing drily notes that the role of president is “a position Clinton has long coveted, but has not been able to attain.”

The filing alleges Clinton harmed not just Gabbard but also “American voters” and “American democracy” by pushing the baseless smear, citing “scientifically conducted opinion surveys” indicating that millions of potential voters believed Clinton’s claims due to her status as a political insider and authority figure with likely access to non-public information. Over 200 articles have been published amplifying the smear since Clinton first uttered it in an October episode of Democratic strategist David Plouffe’s ‘Campaign HQ’ podcast, and the campaign estimates the former secretary of state’s attacks cost Gabbard $50 million in lost donations, lost votes, and reputational damage.

While Clinton never retracted the inflammatory claim that Gabbard was working for the Kremlin – despite a formal request from the Hawaii congresswoman’s campaign – her representatives did attempt to retrospectively muddy the waters. After Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill verified that she was indeed referring to Gabbard with a snarky “if the nesting doll fits” after Clinton’s initial comments in October, he subsequently backpedaled, trying to claim that Clinton meant Republicans – not Russians – were pulling the candidate’s strings. The resulting “corrections” streamed unevenly through the media, confusing no one bar a few copy-editors.

The Gabbard campaign has requested a jury trial in addition to legal restrictions on republishing the smear, and also seeks at least $50 million in compensatory, punitive and special damages. The filing painstakingly lays out Gabbard’s history of service to her country, indicating that Clinton could not possibly have believed the Iraq war vet and House Foreign Relations Committee member was “the favorite of the Russians,” and must therefore have been deliberately lying. It cites Clinton’s “long-time grudges” as the likely rationale for the attack, recalling that Gabbard resigned her post as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee in protest and voiced support for Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders after it emerged that the DNC had put its thumb on the scale in the 2016 primary contest to help the former New York senator.

Clinton has not publicly responded to the lawsuit as of Wednesday afternoon. The former First Lady has shown no signs of letting go of 2016-era rivalries, however, recently claiming in an interview that “no one likes” or wants to work with Sanders, who recently polled as the most popular member of the US Senate.

January 22, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | 2 Comments

Hotter than the hottest thing ever

Climate Discussion Nexus | January 22, 2020

So 2019 was hotter than anything ever was hot, except 2016 which was itself the hottest thing ever. We’re all going to die! Unless we don’t because it wasn’t. As Anthony Watts observes, if you measure from the depths of the natural Little Ice Age you get an upward line. But if you take a longer perspective you get ups and downs, within which our era is not remarkable. Even worse, as Watts also shows on a graph, the most credible numbers from the United States, which has the best temperature measurements in the world, show 2019 as cooler than 2005… and 2006… and 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. But hey, who’s counting?

Alarmists frequently assert that they rely on science whereas “deniers” rely on oil money and slippery rhetoric. But in addition to the contradictions between reasonably complete American temperature records (that, among other things, show the number of really hot days falling over the past century) and very patchy records from most of the rest of the planet, Watts raises some very basic statistical issues that the Armageddon types do not seem eager to discuss.

For instance, Watts’ Jan. 15 post objects to suspect statistical selectivity in the findings. Particularly glaring is an inconsistent baseline for comparisons because NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) clings to the coolest available period (1951-80, though without wishing to discuss why there was a cooling from around 1920 even as the atmospheric CO2 that supposedly drives temperature increased) whereas the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), equally alarmist in its views, uses 1981-2000.

His Jan. 17 post makes another point that deserves far more attention than it usually gets. He takes aim at “a press release session that featured NOAA and NASA GISS talking about how their climate data says that the world in 2019 was the second warmest ever, and the decade of 2010-2019 was the hottest ever (by a few hundredths of a degree).” But as every competent statistician knows, results can never be more accurate than inputs. And since nobody claims to be measuring temperature in hundredths of a degree outside a laboratory, there must be a lot of people within NOAA and NASA writhing in shame at this claim.

It gets worse. As we were told in high school math, and some of us even listened, if you measure two things to one decimal place and multiply them correctly, you may very well get a number with two decimal places. Thus 0.5 times 0.5 is 0.25. And that second decimal place yields an apparent increase in precision. But it’s worse than apparent, it’s deceptive, unless you know the two factors are exactly right. If I give you exactly half of a buck and a half, that is, exactly 0.5 times 1.5 dollars, I give you exactly 75 cents. But if the two factors are just estimates, if I try to split the leftover doughnut and a half from the meeting evenly between us, giving you about .5 times roughly 1.5, it is fatuous to say you got exactly .75 of a doughnut which beats the measly .73 you had last week.

The right procedure in such cases is not to keep two decimal places or even one. It is to round it to a whole number to accommodate the growing uncertainty as you combine uncertainties. “I got most of a stale doughnut again” is the best way to characterize what happened.

Such spurious precision is a chronic feature of climate science as of a great many things in the modern world. Thus David Middleton mocks a publication called The Anthropocene for asserting that death will get worse due to climate change including “an additional 1,603 deaths from injuries each year in the United States”; as Middleton rightly asks, “Are they sure it’s not 1,602 or 1,604?” And since the actual piece said “Global warming of 1.5 °C could result in an additional 1,603 deaths from injuries each year in the United States, an international team of researchers reported yesterday in the journal Nature Medicine” there’s an Ossa of estimated temperature rise beneath a Pelion of “could result” medical modeling that ought to have shamed the authors into saying “about 1,500”.

When it comes to global temperature, no sane person would ever claim to have measured the temperature anywhere outside a laboratory within a few hundreds of a degree. So there is no possible way that we know the temperature of the entire Earth, most of which has no temperature stations at all, to within even a few tenths of a degree let alone a few hundredths.

Putting all this legerdemain together, if that press release that galloped around the world while the statistics were pulling on their boots was not a lie then, to borrow a phrase from Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls, it will do until a lie comes along.

January 22, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment