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Media Amplification of Forister’s Feeble Butterfly Science and Climate Fearmongering

By Jim Steele | Watts Up With That? | March 10, 2021

Last week the Guardian proclaimed Butterfly Numbers Plummeting in US West as Climate Crisis Takes Toll. Numerous media outlets flooded the internet with similar versions in response to the research article Fewer Butterflies Seen by Community Scientists Across the Warming and Drying Landscapes of The American West  by lead author Dr. Matt Forister.  For the factors examined, their research found climate change had the greatest statistical effect associated with changing butterfly populations. Warmer summer temperatures however had a positive effect, while warmer autumn temperatures had a negative effect. Of course, in an age where chicken little catastrophes sell, only warming fall temperatures and butterfly extinctions could promote a profitable climate crisis. Worse, the public was misled to assume “all” western butterflies were declining.

For example, a  University of Arizona press release (home of Forister’s co-author) stated, “Western butterfly populations are declining at an estimated rate of 1.6% per year,… The report looks at more than 450 butterfly species.” However, the researchers only stated their databases “encompassed more than 450 species”. In reality their analyses addressed just 290 species of which only 182 or 40% of the 450 species exhibited declining populations. Another 106 species were stable or increasing, and 251 lacked sufficient data for analysis.

It’s expected that during any given decade various populations of a butterfly species will randomly increase in one area but decrease in another, but with no overall declines as recently reported for USA insects. So correctly, Forister et al. asked if a species’ population trend was restricted to a local area or widespread. To answer that they examined 3 independent datasets. The North American Butterfly Association (NABA) supplied their once‑a‑year butterfly counts, typically held around July 4th, of which only 72 different sites had the required 10+ years of data (average was 21 years) with which to determine a species’ abundance trend.  A second data set came from Dr. Art Shapiro’s northern California bi-weekly surveys but covered only 10 sites from the San Francisco Bay area to the Sierra Nevada crest at Donner Pass. A third database used iNaturalist’s citizen science data that only provided flashy optics suggesting  widespread coverage. Although iNaturalist is a great application that easily connects laypeople with experts for accurate identifications and determines the presence of a species in a given locale, it doesn’t provide trustworthy trend data.

To argue for widespread declines, a species had to be declining in at least two of their three datasets. Comparing trends in the NABA & Shapiro datasets, only 104 species exhibited declines in both. In other words, only 23% of the ballyhooed 450 species showed a possible widespread decline. However, when interviewed by the Washington Post for the article Butterflies Are Vanishing Out West. Scientists Say Climate Change is to Blame,  Forister contrarily stated, “The influence of climate change is driving those declines, which makes sense because they’re so widespread”

Despite the real number of examined species, National Geographic still trumpeted 450 Butterfly Species Rapidly Declining Due to Warmer Autumns In The Western U.S. while shamefully ignoring the positive summer warming. Indeed Forister had reported, “locations that have been warming in the fall months have seen fewer butterflies over time”, adding an unsupported hypothesis that “fall warming likely induces physiological stress on active and diapausing stages, reduces host plant vigor, or extends activity periods for natural enemies.” But most butterfly species are no longer flying or laying eggs or feeding during the autumn. Instead, they have snuggled into relative safety from environmental changes to overwinter until the next flush of new springtime vegetation.

The larvae (caterpillars) of some declining species feed on grasses (i.e. Eufala Skipper and Sachem skipper), or herbs (i.e. Cabbage White or Sara Orange-Tip). But most grasses and herbs are dead or dormant by the end of summer. Other larvae of declining species feed on the young leaves or needles produced by trees in the spring (like Propertius duskywing or Western pine elfin). Autumn warmth has no effect on the “vigor” of dead or dormant food plants. Autumn temperatures are simply not critically important. Natural enemies like parasitic wasps typically evolved similar sensitivities to the same environmental cues as their caterpillar hosts and insect eating birds begin migrating south in August. Claiming global warming somehow selectively hurts butterflies but helps their enemies is a totally unsupported claim hurled far too often by those fabricating a climate crisis.

Disturbingly, Forister et al. simultaneously downplayed known benefits of summer warming, suggesting it only increased ‘butterfly visibility’ stating, “warming in the summer influences adult activity times directly and hence increases the probability of detection”. But to power their flight, butterflies sunbathe to raise their body temperature above ambient air temperature. Increased activity is needed for mating and finding host plants. Greater summer warmth also enables faster larval growth, which in some species enables an increased number of generations each year enabling larger summer populations (i.e. Monarchs). In other species like Edith’s checkerspot the caterpillars seek hotter surfaces to grow fast enough each summer and reach a required size allowing overwinter survival. Warmer summers benefit many species in many ways.

To my knowledge not one media outlet reported the summer benefits or the most telling conclusion of Forister et al. “Although our analyses point to warming fall temperatures as an important factor in insect declines, we acknowledge the multifaceted nature of the problem and how much remains to be understood about climate change interacting with habitat loss and degradation.”

If Forister et al. were truly trying to decipher the causes for observed butterfly declines, they should have at least adhered to the most basic scientific principle of controlling for known confounding factors. To blame climate change, confounding effects must be removed. But they were not. Thus, declining trends could be completely caused by insecticides and land use. And Forister was well aware of such important factors.

In a 2010 paper co-authored with Dr. Shapiro he found, “most severe reductions at the lowest elevations, where habitat destruction is greatest.” In a 2014 paper Forister concluded  “Patterns of land use contributed to declines in species richness, but the net effect of a changing climate on butterfly richness was more difficult to discern.” In his 2016 paper he modelled negative effects of neonicotinoid insecticides. Listed as Forister’s 37th most declining species, the media highlighted the recent 99% decline of western Monarch butterflies. Yet the Monarch’s big killers are also land use change and herbicides, not climate change.

In the 1970s scientists discovered virtually all monarchs breeding east of the Rocky Mountains migrate to extremely small patches of high mountain forests in central Mexico. When that critical wintering habitat was logged, it opened the forest canopies removing its insulating effects. In January 2002, a storm brought cold rains followed by clear skies. Without the clouds’ greenhouse effect, or an insulating forest canopy, temperatures plummeted to 23°F (- 4°C). Millions of damp butterflies froze in place. Many millions more fell creating an eerie carpet of dead and dying butterflies several inches deep. Distraught researchers calculated 500 million butterflies died that winter, wiping out 80% of the entire eastern population. Similar cold events happened in 2004, 2010 and 2016.

In contrast, monarchs breeding west of the Rockies winter along the California coast to Baja where the ocean moderates temperatures and prevents freezing. Nonetheless those wintering populations also plummeted by 81% by 2014. Interestingly, tagging studies and genetics suggest California and Mexican wintering populations intermingle. Although it’s not clear if one wintering population contributes to the other, their abundance has fluctuated very similarly. In addition, a 1991 statewide study implicated land use as 38 overwintering sites in California were destroyed.

Herbicides severely reduced the monarch’s food plants, milkweeds. Adapted to colonizing open disturbed landscapes, milkweed species began invading the fertilized ground between rows of crops. As 1900s monarch populations boomed, farmers’ crops suffered. Milkweed competition reduced harvests of wheat and sorghum by 20% and most states declared milkweed a noxious weed. Attempts to eradicate milkweed by tilling only stimulated underground roots promoting more milkweed. The 1970s discovery that the herbicide glyphosate (i.e. Roundup) killed the whole plant, turned the tide against milkweed. When genetically modified herbicide‑resistant soybean and corn crops were developed in 1996, herbicide use dramatically increased, furthering the milkweeds rapid decline. That loss of milkweed now hinders monarch recovery. For monarch lovers, our best safeguard is planting more milkweed in our gardens. Likewise, we can plant butterfly friendly gardens for all species. On the bright side of climate change, warming could allow an added monarch generation.

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism and a member of the CO2 Coalition

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | 1 Comment

COVID Kids: Protocol Demands TWO WEEKS With No Parental Contact

Rebel News | March 4, 2021

The Ezra Levant show reveals how children in Toronto, Canada who are banned from school with ‘asymptomatic’ COVID19 are being required to quarantine alone in their bedroom and have no access to their parents or siblings. ‘Solitary confinement’ for two weeks for having NO SYMPTOMS.

Moreover, all the other children in the family home are likewise forced to quarantine in the family home, no access to school or outsiders.

Why are people tolerating this nonsense? Are citizens really so fearful of out of control government diktat that they will roll over and follow every inhumane demand from politicians?

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 1 Comment

To What Extent does the Testimony given by DPRK Defectors Represent a Credible Source?

By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 10.03.2021

On February 21, 2021, South Korean media outlets reported that four North Korean defectors plan to sue Unification Minister Lee In-young for defamation over his recent remarks casting doubt over what defectors say about the North’s human rights situation. The matter is that on February 3, Lee said during a press conference with foreign media reporters that human rights-related testimonies of North Korean defectors “lack a process of checking and verifying” their validity.

The four defectors affirmed that Lee deemed their testimonies as “untrustworthy lies”, while their stories represented just the tip of the iceberg of the horrible plight happening in North Korea. “Speaking to the foreign press as if their testimonies are lies is an act threatening the defectors who fled (to the South) for freedom”.

In addition, the complainants believe that Lee was unable, or is unwilling, to protect North Korean defectors and improve the human rights situation in North Korea, although this is a key responsibility borne by the Ministry of Unification. The fact is that South Korea  for two consecutive years opted out of co-sponsoring a North Korean human rights resolution at the UN. Seoul sponsored the bill from 2008 to 2018, but decided not to do so in 2019 or 2020, drawing heavy backlash from the country’s conservative lawmakers as well as professional “fighters against the North Korean regime”.

At a February 22 press conference, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Unification “sweetened the pill” just in case, declaring that the testimony given by North Korean refugees was “valuable material” to help shed light on the human rights situation in that closed country. He added that their words are constantly being heeded in Seoul to create an “accurate picture” of the situation occurring in the North. In addition, it was reported that while the complainants assert that Lee In-young considered their testimony to be “untrustworthy lies,” in fact the minister simply stated that their statements could not be verified. That is no wonder, because according to South Korean law, libel can be punishable by up to two years in prison, or a fine of up to 5 million won (4,520 USD). Moreover, the laws do not speak about libel, but about defamation of character, when a person can be incarcerated for the truth if that causes reputational or moral damage.

But for the author, the fuss over the lawsuit raises the issue about to what extent the testimony given by the DPRK defectors represents a valid source, especially when it comes to heartbreaking stories of human rights violations.

The problems with defectors’ testimony can be broken down into two groups. The first has to do with the testimony of witnesses in general, and these difficulties are well comprehended by specialists.

First, not a single witness can remember a situation with complete accuracy. When people remember an event after a long time has passed, they deliberately or unwittingly distort the details involved. Second, the witness may misunderstand what is perceived. The most striking example is the statement made by one Russian journalist that there is no central heating in the DPRK because he did not see any radiators anywhere. However, in both the North and South of Korea, the traditional heating system is a “warm floor”, where the space heating system runs underneath it. Third, knowing the consequences of their actions, witnesses often engage in self-justification, or position themselves as having guessed everything from the very beginning, which makes the events in their recitals look more predictable and “orderly” than they are in reality. Fourth, people who have experienced traumatic experiences have a need to speak out and try to purge themselves of certain experiences.

That is why reconstructing events according to testimony that is given is usually done by comparing the testimony from several people. If the story told by one person may be inaccurate or biased, then describing an event from the hearsay given by numerous witnesses makes that picture more complete.

However, in regard to defectors, the issue of counterchecking their testimony runs up against certain difficulties: these people fled during different periods of time, from different places, and therefore it could be difficult to find two opinions about the same event.

And this is important, because while stories that buck against a certain trend usually elicit a desire to cross-check them (with the hope of refuting them), when a person who is a personal witness to something says things that fit well into the procrustean bed of underlying expectations, nobody counterchecks something “that is common knowledge”. Everyone already knows the recipe for the main course, and a specific story will only differ in the proportion of spices used, or where the side dish is located on the plate.

Now let’s focus on the idiosyncrasies that directly have to do with defectors from the DPRK, for whom storytelling is often an important way to improve their social status and financial situation.

First, it is important who is interviewing the defector. Son Ji-young, who has interviewed refugees for over 20 years, notes how much everything depends on how well the researcher is acquainted with a person’s context: it is easier to “pull the wool over white foreigners’ eyes”, since they do not understand the context in the same way that a Korean does.

Second, people interviewing defectors often perceive them as victims rather than witnesses. Generally speaking, they arouse sympathy in the interviewers, by virtue of which interviewers are less critical of what they hear, and therefore they do not have the desire to expose the narrator stating lies, or look for inconsistencies in the testimony.

Third, defectors try to make sure that interviews are held with them regularly and constantly, since for most defectors the fees they charge are a major increase in their income. This means that the defector can adapt to their interlocutors, and tell them things that they would like to hear. And if a fairly inexperienced interviewer gives tips about desirable responses with questions, such as “have you witnessed mass rapes at the stadium?” then the other party in the conversation may take this question as a cue to talk about that, regardless of whether he or she even saw it, heard some rumors about it, or simply thought it all up.

Some defectors embellish, exaggerate or trade their stories for money, she and other defectors said. Finally, it must be understood that the life of defectors in the South is closely controlled by the National Intelligence Service, which closely monitors the activity of defectors, and if something like “singing the praises of North Korea” is observed then they could face penalties under the National Security Act, and then the reputation of being a North Korean spy. Someone that has escaped from a totalitarian hell must expose the regime, not defend it.

These factors lead to the fact that within a set of defectors a subset of those forms that can be called “career defectors”. The most typical example is Shin Dong-hyuk. Back in 2014, his testimony was considered valid, and the basis of that the well-known UN Report on Human Rights in North Korea was drafted, drawing a direct comparison between the DPRK and Nazi Germany. However, already by early 2015 even its official co-author Blaine Harden “was forced to make an announcement that Shin admitted to making up most of his heartbreaking stories, which he fabricated to heighten their dramatic quality, and he needs to be pronounced an unreliable storyteller.

Nonetheless, in this kind of environment lying about the DPRK is not only allowed, it is something that is desirable. Kim Seong-min, the founder of Free North Korea Radio, in one of his interviews directly responded to a question about his attitude toward the most fantastic rumors that sometimes spread about what is happening in the North: “Any stories – whether they are truthful or not – are good, as long as they do not put the DPRK in a favorable light”.

However, a slew of widespread errors can be encountered in the stories told by this kind of community. They can be used to identify an “unreliable storyteller” whose testimony should be counterchecked at a minimum. The most obvious one is when the stories begin to resemble a “soap opera”, and narrators drastically overdo it with “heartbreaking details” that are aimed at evoking emotions.

A typical example of this is one quote from the stories by the famous defector Lee Soon-ok:

“… they use a kiln to bake bricks. When the newly fired bricks are removed, they push a person into this furnace. In a matter of seconds, the victim suffocates and loses consciousness… I resisted the best that I could, and burned by palms… Then they put me barefoot in the snow. As a result, I lost my toes…”

All that is left for the author to add is that the temperature in that furnace at that particular time was about 800 degrees.

As a result, while the testimony by defectors on other topics could be credible (especially when it comes to the body of testimony or conversations with ordinary, rather than career, defectors), the topic of human rights really does require additional verification. Otherwise, we get “boiled babies”, and one important problem gets its ears chewed off by fictitious stories. The more heartbreaking a story is, the more caution a scientist or journalist needs to take.

But unfortunately, given the power anti-Pyongyang propaganda has, attempts to cast doubt on this testimony provokes a reaction: “Those who have gone through such horrors cannot lie, and if you dare to doubt their words, then you yourself are no better than their executioners”. And these kinds of lawsuits are one consequence of that.

Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, is a leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Biden’s awkward threat of retaliatory cyber attacks belies US uncertainty and insecurity on all things Russia

By Scott Ritter | RT | March 9, 2021

By leaking plans for “covert” cyber-retaliation against Russia, the Biden administration allows domestic political considerations to trump legitimate national security concerns by painting Russia as the all-purpose bogeyman.

In a front-page story, the New York Times disclosed that the Biden administration was planning a range of “clandestine” cyber-attacks targeting Russia, ostensibly in retaliation for Russia’s alleged role in masterminding the SolarWinds hack that continues to resonate across the United States. According to the Times, these attacks are expected to unfold over the course of the next three weeks and are “intended to be evident to President Vladimir V. Putin and his intelligence services and military but not to the wider world.” These attacks, the Times notes, will most likely be combined with other actions by the Biden administration, including additional economic sanctions against Russia, and actions to “harden” US government networks against future attacks.

Even as the Biden administration struggles to piece together a response to  the SolarWinds breach, it must wrestle with a new cyber-attack targeting a vulnerability in Microsoft’s email systems that exposes the communications and cyber architecture of a whole host of US government and private clients. Unlike SolarWinds, the current attack is believed to have been carried out by “state actors” operating on behalf of China.

Seen together, the SolarWinds and Microsoft email intrusions represent a daunting challenge for Anne Neuberger, a former Director of Cybersecurity for the National Security Agency who was appointed to serve in the newly created position of deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies. Neuberger has been tasked with overseeing what Washington, DC calls a “whole of government response” to these events. It is a thankless task, one made even more so by the fact that any response she develops must assuage domestic political pressures as well as address any genuine cyber threat that may exist.

The plan of action described in the New York Times is remarkable on several levels. First and foremost, it assumes as fact a linkage between the Russian government and the SolarWinds cyber-attack. While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the National Security Agency (NSA) have released a joint statement which attributes the SolarWinds attack to “an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor, likely Russian in origin,” no evidence has been provided to sustain this allegation. For its part, the Russian government has denied any involvement in the SolarWinds attack.

While the Russian denial must be taken with a grain of salt–no one would expect the Russians to openly admit to carrying out such an attack–the Russian silence serves to illustrate the most disconcerting aspect of the New York Times’ story–that the Biden administration is openly telegraphing what it has said will be “clandestine” attacks targeting Russia.

Neuberger, a career veteran of the secretive world of cyber-sleuthing, is familiar enough with the lexicon of intelligence terminology to know that telegraphing your punch is–literally and figuratively–the antithesis of a “clandestine” activity. It should be clear to all who read the Times story that the intended target of the leak was not Vladimir Putin, his generals and/or his intelligence services. Rather, it was the domestic American consumer of news-based information. By injecting this tidbit of information into the news cycle, the Biden administration is prioritizing public posturing over any vestige of national security.

This does not mean that the US is incapable of sending Russia a clandestine slap on the wrist in retaliation for cyber-attacks it may or may not have conducted. According to some media reports, the NSA and Cyber Command possess the capability to deliver crippling cyber-based blows against the totality of the Russian state and economy, shutting down energy production, energy supply, financial, telecommunication, transport, military, and government networks at will. If ordered to do so, the NSA and Cyber Command could activate these tools in a selective fashion, targeting some or all of Russia. The announced clandestine strike would most likely not consist of a destructive attack on Russian networks, but rather a probe intended to let the Russian leadership know that the US was buried inside its networks, and as such able to shut things down at will.

If such a message were in fact to be sent, in the form of a clandestine (i.e., unannounced) cyber probe, then it might have the kind of consequences intended–Russian officials, having detected such an intrusion, would scale back their actions against US targets for fear of triggering a greater retaliation. The key to this kind of activity is that it is being done in the shadows, away from public scrutiny, never to be acknowledged by either party. By announcing its intention to conduct “clandestine” cyber retaliation, the Biden administration has nullified any potential gain it may have achieved if it had kept the actions truly covert in nature. Russia will continue to deny any role in the SolarWinds cyber event, and will either make public the US actions, thereby painting the US as the cyber aggressor, or just ignore the US actions altogether, leaving the US to either admit it did something, or to look as if what it did had no impact.

In its rush to attribute the SolarWinds cyber-attack to Russia without providing any evidence to back this assertion up, the Biden administration only feeds into the existing high level of Russophobia that permeates American society today. By telegraphing its intent to retaliate against Russia, the Biden administration has shown that it has allowed itself to be taken hostage by its own history of anti-Russian rhetoric.

Far from being a sign of strength, the actions of the Biden administration only underscore the extent to which it is prisoner to the fickle ignorance of an American public all too willing to accept at face value any narrative that paints Russia as the bogeyman. The subordination of legitimate national security interests to domestic politics is the most visible symptom of the impotence that has taken hold of the Biden administration when it comes to putting substance behind Joe Biden’s empty contention that “America is back.” As Tywin Lannister reminded the youthful Joffrey Lannister in G. R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords, “Any man who must say ‘I am king’ is no true king at all.”

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Russophobia | , | 3 Comments

COVID: To Governors who are re-opening your States—how to defeat the attacks against you

By Jon Rappoport | NoMoreFakeNews | March 10, 2021

Governors:

Talk to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He understands the game.

In December, his office issued an order to all state labs processing COVID PCR tests. They must now report “the number of cycles” they deploy in every test they perform. [1] [1a]

Roughly speaking, a cycle is a quantum leap which increases the sensitivity of the test. As readily asserted by Anthony Fauci, any test using more than 35 cycles is meaningless. [2] [2a]

—Not only meaningless, but laden with false-positive results. The patient is falsely claimed to be “infected.”

However, the FDA and the CDC, since the launch of the COVID PCR test, have been recommending using 40 cycles; and therefore labs have been following this advice. [3] [3a] [3b]

The outcome, in terms of falsely inflated case numbers, has been a disaster.

Furthermore, as reported by the New York Times, testing labs never tell the patient or the doctor how many cycles they use in running the PCR. [4]

Governor DeSantis understood the massive testing problem. That’s why his office, and his state department of health, ordered the labs to report “numbers of cycles.”

Armed with this background, you governors can meet and overcome challenges as you re-open your states. Why do I say this? Because the attacks coming your way will be based on three statistics:

The number of COVID cases in your state; the number of COVID deaths; and the number of COVID hospitalizations.

“Well, these numbers are rising. The governors must lock down again. Otherwise, they are contributing to disease and death.”

But you see, all three statistical categories depend on a positive PCR test. And since the test, improperly run, has resulted in huge numbers of false-positives, you can restore sanity and more accurate data by following Governor DeSantis’ lead.

Once your state labs report how many cycles they are using for each PCR test they run, you can reject any test that deploys over 35 cycles. You can eliminate vast numbers of false-positives, and when you DO…

The number of COVID cases, COVID deaths, and COVID hospitalizations in your state will decline, as they should.

And those who would attack you, based on those numbers, will have no ability to make their case.

In a nutshell, a vast fraud has been perpetrated on The People, and you can stop it.

You can restore sanity, re-open your states, and make the stranglehold of COVID restrictions a thing of the past.

Readers of this article: you can perform a valuable service by forwarding the article to the governor’s office in your state.

SOURCES:

[1] https://www.flhealthsource.gov/files/Laboratory-Reporting-CT-Values-12032020.pdf

[1a] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/12/08/florida-forces-labs-to-report-number-of-pcr-test-cycles/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Vy6fgaBPE (starting at 3m50s)

[2a] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/12/03/lockdowns-are-based-on-fraud-open-letter-to-people-who-want-freedom/

[3] https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download (page 37 (pdf page 38))

[3a] CDC-006-00019, Revision: 06, CDC/DDID/NCIRD/ Division of Viral Diseases, Effective: 12/01/2020; see: https://web.archive.org/web/20210102171026/https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download

[3b] CDC-006-00019, Revision: 05, CDC/DDID/NCIRD/ Division of Viral Diseases, Effective: 07/13/2020; see: https://web.archive.org/web/20200715004004/https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download

[4] nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

Distorting the Levelized Cost of Electricity

By Don Dears | February 16, 2021

The levelized cost of electricity was, for decades, an honest method for comparing the cost of electricity generated by different methods.

With the advent of wind and solar generation, there has been a continuing effort to demonstrate they are competitive with coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants. 

Because the cost of electricity, based on LCOE calculations, for wind and solar were always higher than the cost of electricity from coal, natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) and nuclear power plants, efforts were made to adjust the LCOEs so that wind and solar would seem to be competitive.

It should be noted that the media would seize and promote any LCOE number, no matter how contrived, purporting to show that wind and solar were competitive with traditional methods for generating electricity.

An early attempt at “adjusting” LCOEs was done by Lazard. 

A previous PowerForUSA article, Misleading Costs for Wind and Solar, showed how Lazard used contrived capacity factors (CF) to calculate LCOEs favorable to wind and solar.

The media, even the Wall Street Journal, fixated on these manufactured LCOEs to report that wind and solar were competitive with traditional methods for generating electricity. 

Few, if any, reporters looked into how these LCOEs were calculated.

We now have history repeating itself.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) published a joint report on December 9, 2020, showing that LCOEs for wind and solar were competitive with traditional methods for generating electricity.

In its conclusion, the report said: 

“Renewable energy costs have continued to decrease in recent years and their costs are now competitive, in LCOE terms, with dispatchable fossil fuel-based electricity generation in many countries.”

But the truth is buried in the report, where it said:

“With the assumed moderate emission costs of USD 30/tCO2, their costs are now competitive…”

In other words, wind and solar are competitive if fossil fuel power plants are penalized by using a $30 per ton charge for CO2 emissions.

The IEA and NEA report is misleading in at least two respects. 

  • First, its stated conclusion omits the fact that fossil fuel power plants are penalized by including a charge of $30/ton of CO2 in the LCOE calculation.
  • Second, the tables in the report omit references that LCOEs for NGCC and coal-fired power plants include a $30 charge for CO2 emissions.

The end result is that reporters, and the media in general, can report that wind and solar are competitive with fossil fuel power plants … which is patently misleading.

Even so, none of the purported lower cost calculations ever account for the fact that wind and solar require backup or storage, which adds to their costs. These real costs are never included in LCOE calculations.

It could be concluded that the IEA and NEA are intentionally misleading the public by burying the facts deep in their report, and omitting them from the report’s conclusion.

The truth remains: Wind and solar are more expensive than coal-fired and natural gas power plants for generating electricity.

They are also unreliable and can’t provide electricity when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. Freezing temperatures and snow can result in blackouts.

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Economics | Leave a comment

Dr Scott Jensen Announces Candidacy for Governor of Minnesota

21st Century Wire | March 10, 2021

Over the last 12 months, one of the leading voices opposing pandemic hysteria has been former Minnesota state senator Dr. Scott Jensen. According to a press release obtained by the Minnesota Reformer, Jensen is expected to announce his candidacy for governor of the state next week.

Dr. Jensen, 66, a qualified physician, gained global popularity after appearing on national TV and coming out challenging the government response to COVID-19 and explaining how reactionary policies are out of proportion in relation to the actual risk posed by this seasonal coronavirus. His popular testimonials have since been serialized in thousands of video presentations online.

Jensen also questioned his state’s Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines regarding how deaths from COVID-19 were being recorded.

He also took on the official ‘consensus’ of politicians and the medical community and exposed the scandal of how hospitals had a financial incentive in declaring a patient a COVID “case”, as well as financial incentives for hospitals to needlessly place people on ventilators – a dangerous procedure which many do not survive.


Based on the adversarial tone of the Reformer’s report, it seems that the political and medical establishment are afraid of Jensen: “His status as a physician could give him credibility to attack Walz on the governor’s COVID-19 response, except by the fall of 2022 the pandemic is likely to have evaporated. And, Jensen’s comments about the pandemic will likely face intense scrutiny.”

According to the their report, Dr. Jensen has confirmed the announcement with the headline “Jensen Announces Run for Minnesota Governor” had indeed been drafted, and is set to be released on March 16th.

Some of the text of the release includes:

“He will elevate thoughtful discourse, engage in difficult conversations, and will not allow pandering groupthink to impede the vital contributions science can provide,” the release reads. “Scott is excited to embark on this journey and looks forward to meeting with his fellow Minnesotans across the state and restoring their hope and freedom.”

Jensen, a Republican, would be the first candidate to run against first-term Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Tim Walz.

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 3 Comments

No Safety Data? No Problem!

US, UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Singapore Will Let New-Variant Vaccines Onto the Market Without Safety or Efficacy Testing

By Rosemary Frei, MSc | March 9, 2021

On March 4 and 5, Canada, the UK, Australia, Switzerland and Singapore released identical guidelines for fast-tracking release onto the market of vaccines for the new variants. The countries issued the recommendations under the banner of the ‘ACCESS Consortium.’ ACCESS is an acronym based on the first letters of the five countries’ names.

A few days earlier, on February 22, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a similar set of recommendations. They allow Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for “investigational” vaccines for new variants, letting them be used on the general public without first showing evidence of safety or effectiveness.

The recommendations all state that companies don’t need to conduct new clinical trials before putting the new-variant vaccines onto the market and potentially into millions of people’s arms. Requiring new trials, the ACCESS document asserts, would cause “considerable delay” and “bears the risk that the virus is evolving even further, potentially making a new vaccine version outdated at the time of approval again.”

Instead, the safety record of the currently used Covid vaccines can be used to judge the safety of the new ones, the countries’ regulatory agencies declare.

And they claim that the currently used vaccines are safe and effective: “[T]here is considerable safety experience accumulating as the pandemic progresses and vaccines are rolled out, and [in any case] efficacy has been established for the initial vaccine candidate [i.e., the original Covid vaccines] via large clinical Phase 3 studies,” the ACCESS document states.

This is despite the fact that many observers have documented significant safety problems associated with the Covid vaccines, including high death rates.

That helps explain why public-health officials and politicians around the world are bending over backwards to assert that Covid vaccines are very safe and effective. This gives the green light for all future forms of these vaccines to be used without safety testing.

(The regulatory authorities also say these new guidelines can only be used for vaccines that are modifications of the Covid vaccines already in use. But there’s enough wiggle room in the new recommendations that I believe they also will be used for new entrants into the Covid-vaccine race.)

Rather than full clinical trials, only a small amount of data needs to be put together by the manufacturers prior to seeking an EUA. Then after the EUA is granted further data can then be gathered from people in the general population who are given the vaccines.

This approach apparently is modeled on the approval of new flu vaccines every year. The flu-vaccine regulations were in turn, “developed based on ample experience gained through years of seasonal vaccinations, and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic,” the ACCESS guidelines state.

The latter claim is particularly alarming. The H1N1 swine-flu ‘pandemic’ never materialized. Hundreds of people were needlessly severely injured by the main vaccine for it, GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix. Furthermore, Glaxo was not required to compensate victims; instead, the UK government paid tens of millions of pounds to people who were brain injured by Pandemrix.

The ACCESS and US FDA recommendations only require that companies measure the level of antibodies that people produce when they are given the vaccine. The regulatory agencies will accept this as a proxy for effectiveness.

The ACCESS document states that “the correlations of antibody titres [levels] to effectiveness is not established.” They therefore suggest that the World Health Organization (WHO) create an “International Standard and Reference Panel for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody as use of standardized reference material” for all such antibody-level tests.

Such antibody testing is conducted by measuring whether a quantity of virus or other protein-containing substance are or aren’t all bound by antibodies in a person’s blood sample. This method has been used for years.

However, as I showed in my last article and video, The Antibody Deception, there is no objective evidence that there is in fact binding of antibodies only to the novel coronavirus. Instead, antibodies that purportedly are specific to the novel coronavirus frequently bind to other things.

Therefore this is a fatally flawed approach to determining whether vaccines are effective in any way.

There is a field of other red flags in these new recommendations. For example:

1. They don’t address the fact that until 2020 scientists were unable to develop any effective vaccines against coronaviruses, despite decades of effort. Then suddenly in 2020-2021 they were able to create at least seven. And now six countries are poised to allow vaccines for new variants to be used one after another in quick succession. The regulatory authorities don’t appear interested in objectively reconciling this contradiction.

2. The ACCESS guidelines have no references. So it’s very hard to check whether their points are accurate. The U.S. FDA recommendations have 13 references. That’s more than zero, but it’s still not a lot in a document that’s rewriting how Covid vaccines are authorized for use in hundreds of millions of people.

3. There’s not a single mention of the fact that pummelling populations with vaccines will make the viruses they’re aimed at become less susceptible to the vaccines. This phenomenon is known as resistance.

Resistance has been a concern for many decades with respect to antibiotics. But we rarely  hear about viral resistance — even though it is inevitable, particularly because other treatments such as antivirals and monoclonal antibodies.are being used against the novel coronavirus in parallel with vaccines.

4. On February 22, 2021, the USA FDA also issued a new guidance (PDF here) for development of monoclonal antibodies for treating Covid including the new variants. The document outlines how the FDA will significantly speed up this approval: “when scientifically supported, FDA will streamline the data necessary to support the development of monoclonal antibody products targeting SARS-CoV-2 and also expedite the review of these data.”

In addition, the document states that the “FDA strongly recommends that individual monoclonal antibody products be developed with the expectation that they will be combined with one or more monoclonal antibody products that bind to different epitopes [very short protein segments] to minimize the risk of losing activity against emergency variants.”

However, as I indicated in my ‘The Antibody Deception’ video and article, there’s no proof that antibodies, whether used singly or in combination with others, are effective against Covid, whether the ‘original’ virus or variants.

This all seems designed to allow new vaccines and monoclonal antibodies for the new variants onto the market with very little regulatory oversight.

After obtaining an MSc in molecular biology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, Rosemary Frei became a freelance writer. For the next 22 years she was a medical writer and journalist. She pivoted again in early 2016 to full-time, independent activism and investigative journalism. Her website is RosemaryFrei.ca

March 10, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments