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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 | Leave a 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 | | Leave a comment

RT’s German-language service prepares lawsuit after notorious tabloid ‘Bild’ falsely accuses its journalists of SPYING

RT | March 9, 2021

RT in Germany is planning to take legal action against the tabloid Bild, after the Berlin newspaper ran a sensationalist tale that relied on leaked Telegram chats from a former employee, who claimed he had to spy for the channel.

In the article published on Tuesday, reporter Julian Roepcke, who has previously been aligned with the ‘Disinformation Portal’ of NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct, claims that, according to Bild’s information, President Vladimir Putin ordered a spy op on his “public enemy number one.” It allegedly targeted opposition figure Alexey Navalny and two of his close aides. The supposed snooping is said to have happened during the activist’s treatment for alleged Novichok poisoning last year at Berlin’s Charité clinic.

On top of that, writes Roepcke, “Russia’s leadership used the Russian foreign broadcaster RT DE, which in turn relied on two German employees.” To back up the claims, Bild also ran an interview with Daniel Lange, then an employee of RT DE, who claimed he had a feeling of having been used as a spy in the case. Lange also leaked to Bild what he says were internal chats with his bosses.

Calling out Roepcke’s article, the head of RT in Germany Dinara Toktosunova said Lange had leaked Telegram chats in which he was merely being asked to do his job, after he’d failed to get any exclusive and newsworthy material about Navalny’s stay in Germany.

“We remind our colleagues of the German legislation that (for now) protects the press by allowing it to collect information about matters of public interest,” Toktosunova added.

The Bild article comes just days after Commerzbank told the parent company of RT DE and Ruptly that it would be ending their business relationship and closing their accounts at the end of May. Since Commerzbank changed its terms of service last November, RT DE had been trying to find an alternative bank, but 20 other financial institutions have either ignored its enquiries or flatly refused to open accounts on its behalf.

Toktosunova believes this to be part of a wider campaign to obstruct RT’s work in Germany. “We have every reason to believe that RT in Germany has been targeted by what is essentially a financial embargo,” she said on March 4, after the Commerzbank announcement.

Navalny was flown to Germany in August 2020, with his staff claiming he had been poisoned with Novichok, frequently described as the world’s deadliest nerve agent. He was treated at Berlin’s Charité clinic. Moscow said that Germany had refused Russia’s requests for detailed information about his condition.

Bild itself followed Navalny’s every move in Germany; not only did it gain access to the clinic, but it also published photos taken right at the entrance to Navalny’s treatment room.

The blogger and self-styled anti-corruption activist, regarded as the Russian “opposition leader” in the Western press, despite polling in the low single digits, returned to Moscow in January, where he was arrested for violating parole conditions in a case he regards as politically motivated.

March 9, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Experts Linking Covid To Every Medical Condition Ever Diagnosed

By Richie Allen | March 9, 2021

Add Diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and eye damage to the ever expanding list of medical complaints that so-called experts are linking to coronavirus.

Don’t forget brain damage, lung damage, psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis. Covid is the virus that keeps on giving. Professor Francesco Rubino, an expert on type 1 diabetes, based at King’s College London told The Daily Mail :

“We started to become very concerned about diabetes within the first couple of months of the pandemic, when we began to get reports from around the world of an increase in cases among hospitalised Covid patients.

These were patients in whom diabetes suddenly developed at the same time as they were sick with Covid.”

The link is tenuous. In a study published by the journal Diabetes Care, 0nly 5 children out of 30 who were diagnosed with diabetes, had coronavirus. Karen Logan, a clinical nurse specialising in diabetes, admitted that a proper controlled study is needed to prove causation.

But that doesn’t matter. Government scientists are appearing on UK media this morning warning of the terrors of “Long Covid.” Presenters just nod along as professors list all manner of ailments thought to be linked to the virus.

I never know whether to laugh or cry when after listing all of these terrifying diseases, the experts finish by saying, “more research is needed.” God help me. My kingdom for just one (w)anchor to say “You mean you’ve just made all of that up? Why are you scaremongering?” I can dream.

According to today’s Mail Online :

Thousands are already thought to be afflicted by so-called ‘long Covid’ — symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness, chest pain, muscle aches, pounding heart and depression that persist for weeks or even months after the initial infection.

Now it seems the virus may also be capable of sparking serious and potentially incurable autoimmune conditions — where the body’s immune system attacks tissues, causing not just type 1 diabetes but the skin condition psoriasis and the joint disease rheumatoid arthritis, for example.

Meanwhile, emerging evidence points to lasting, potentially even permanent, harm to the hearts, kidneys and even the eyes of some Covid patients.

Emerging evidence? This is ridiculous. Using this logic it’s easy to see how they are doing it. If someone tests positive for covid and has an ingrowing toenail, you could conceivably claim that there is emerging evidence linking ingrowing toenails to covid. It’s laughable.

But I seem to be the only one laughing. I’m surrounded by people who are lapping it up. People haven’t suspended their disbelief, they’ve flushed it down the toilet.

In France recently, a woman was found running naked in a basement. She told paramedics that voices told her to do it. I swear to God, they linked her behaviour to coronavirus. Did the French say “pull the other one?” No! It was reported with a straight face.

In my opinion, these preposterous “Long Covid” stories are designed to scare people into having the jab and the jabs to come this Autumn. Uptake is a real problem for the government.

Hundreds of thousands of NHS workers have said they won’t have a jab. Under-40’s are far less likely to have it too. The propagandists are upping the ante.

March 9, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Nicaraguan Coffee Farmers Are Thriving, Contrary To Claims

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | March 8, 2021

You would think that a publication calling itself Christian would actually place a premium on telling the truth. Sadly it is only propaganda that matters to the Christian Science Monitor :

image

Jinotega, Nicaragua

Maria Gonzalez knows that growing coffee in Nicaragua’s northern mountains – as she has done since she was a little girl – gets harder and harder each year.

Rising temperatures are spoiling harvests when berries ripen too fast and a coffee leaf disease wiped out about half of the region’s crop between 2012 and 2014, killing most of Ms. Gonzalez’s plants.

Just as her new plants were starting to flourish, whipping winds and torrential rains from hurricanes Eta and Iota last November uprooted the bushes and shook the unripe berries to the ground.

With an initial hard few years now stretching into a decade, coffee farmers like Ms. Gonzalez face a tough decision: stay loyal to their coffee crop or find a new way to survive.

“I’m experimenting with a lot of things because if I see that one is doing better, I’ll stick with that,” she said. “And if not, we’ll be there fighting for our coffee.”

A coffee picker carries sacks of coffee cherries at a plantation in the Nogales farm in Jinotega, Nicaragua January 7, 2016.

Soaring temperatures in Central America due to climate change are forcing farmers to pull up coffee trees and replace them with cocoa, spurring a revival in the cultivation of a crop once so essential to the region’s economy.

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2021/0302/How-Nicaraguan-coffee-farmers-are-adapting-to-climate-change

This article could hardly be further from the truth.

Coffee production in Nicaragua has been rocketing in recent years, and is double what it was a couple of decades ago:

chart-1

Nicaragua Coffee Production 1961-2019
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

Of course, there are inevitably years when harvests are poor, but the decline in output between 2012 and 2014 was no greater than many other years since 1961.

It is estimated that harvest losses from the two hurricanes, which frequently hit Nicaragua, will be between 10% and 15%., taking output back to 2017 levels. Again, drops of this magnitude are commonplace in Nicaragua.

And far from the Jinotega region being particularly vulnerable as claimed, it is recognised as the best in a country noted for the quality of its coffee:

image

https://enjoyjava.com/nicaraguan-coffee/#:~:text=%20Here%20are%20the%20major%20coffee-producing%20regions%2C%20as,fruity%20notes%20and%20expected%20flavor%20profile…%20More%20

The simple fact is that coffee plantations are thriving in Nicaragua.

Shame on the Christian Science Monitor for peddling lies.

March 8, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Russian Disinformation to Undermine US Mass-Jabbing for Covid?

By Stephen Lendman | March 7, 2021

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal cited an unnamed State Department Global Engagement Center official, saying Russian intelligence is trying to undermine confidence in US mass-jabbing for covid.

No evidence was cited like virtually always when Russia and other invented US enemies are accused of things they had nothing to do with.

Russia aside, there’s nothing remotely safe and effective about rushed to market, inadequately tested, experimental Pfizer and Moderna mRNA technology.

The same goes for J & J covid vaccine and AstraZeneca’s entry in Europe.

They’re all unapproved, granted emergency use authorization when no emergency exists.

Less than two months after mass-jabbing began, countless thousands suffered serious adverse events including deaths.

No one should be a mass-jabbing guinea pig for Pharma.

No one should risk their health and well-being so Pfizer, Moderna, and now Johnson & Johnson can cash in big on a bonanza of profits at the expense of individuals duped to believe they’ll be protected from what’s too hazardous to touch.

According to State Department disinformation, New Eastern Outlook, Oriental Review, News Front, and Rebel Inside truth-telling about mass-jabbing hazards is Russian propaganda.

According to the unnamed US official, “Russian intelligence services bear direct responsibility for using these four platforms to spread propaganda and lies (sic),” adding:

“We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services (sic).”

“They’re all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States.”

“They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they’re all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem (sic).”

According to the neocon/Russophobic Alliance for Securing Democracy that’s militantly hostile to the notion everywhere:

“The emphasis on denigrating Pfizer is likely due to its status as the first vaccine besides Sputnik V to see mass use, resulting in a greater potential threat to Sputnik’s market dominance.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov debunked the above fake news, saying:

“It’s nonsense. Russian special services have nothing to do with any criticism against vaccines.

“If we treat every negative publication against the Sputnik V vaccine as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour and in every Anglo-Saxon media.”

The Journal explained that the unnamed US official “didn’t provide specific evidence linking the publications to Russian intelligence” — because none exists like time and again earlier when phony accusations are made.

Unlike US rushed to market experimental drugs for mass-jabbing, introduction of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine last summer followed over 20 years of vaccine research, according to Sechenov University’s Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology director Vadim Tarasov.

Technology used to develop Sputnik V is based upon adenovirus, the common cold.

Tarasov explained that the vaccine may not entirely stop covid from spreading. It’ll make symptoms milder, he said, adding:

“We can really talk about a breakthrough as our country has shown itself to be one of the leaders in the global pharmaceutical industry due to the fact that it has retained and developed new competencies in drug development.”

There’s no ambiguity about the health hazards of experimental US drugs for mass-jabbing.

Using them as directed risks serious self-inflicted harm or death — why it’s crucial to avoid them.

March 7, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Believing in impossible things – and COVID19

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | March 6, 2021

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

1: ‘The Concept of Coronavirus Herd Immunity Is Deadly and Dangerous’ https://www.self.com/story/coronavirus-herd-immunity

Since COVID19 first hurtled over the horizon, before landing upon us all with great force, I find that I have been asked to believe in many impossible things. First, I was told that attempting to create herd immunity was not achievable. It would also be extremely dangerous and would inevitably result in many hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

Then the vaccines arrived at fantastical speed and I was told that mass vaccination, by creating herd immunity, would be the factor that would allow us to conquer COVID19 and return to normal life. I am not entirely sure which of these things is impossible, but one of them must be.

2: ‘Vaccines, on the other hand, are believed to induce stronger and longer lasting immunity.’ https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/does-the-vaccine-give-better-protection-than-having-fought-off-the-virus_uk_601c0663c5b62bf30754c563

I was then told the vaccine would provide greater immunity than being infected with COVID19. Which was interesting. I am not sure if this is actually impossible, but it seemed unlikely that anyone could make such statements after about three hundred people had actually been studied, and just two months had passed.

At the time I was aware of two people proven to have been re-infected with COVID19, out of about ten million cases. So, getting infected certainly seemed to provide a pretty good degree of immunity. A re-infection rate of 0.00005%

I also know that vaccinations can only ever really create an attenuated response. Whereas a full-blown infection triggers a full-blown immune response. So, I think it is pretty close to impossible that vaccination can provide greater protection than that from getting the actual disease. Which is why I think it is utterly bonkers we are actually vaccinating people who have circulating antibodies in their blood.

3: ‘Universal mask use could save 130,000 U.S. lives by the end of February, new study estimates.’ https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/universal-mask-use-could-save-130000-lives-by-the-end-of-february-new-modeling-study-says/

I am also being asked to believe that face masks are essential to stop the spread of COVID19 and prevent millions of deaths worldwide. The use of masks to prevent viral spread is something I actually researched in depth before COVID19 arrived (for various reasons), as did the WHO. They looked at non-pharmaceutical interventions for prevention of influenza, and produced a hefty report, which covered the use of masks.

Yes, I agree, influenza is not exactly the same as COVID19. But it is pretty much the same size of virus, and it is thought to spread in much the same way. Anyway, the WHO reported their views on masks in 2019, using data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – the gold standard.

‘Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.’ https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1

Since then, there has only been one RCT done on COVID19 transmission, in Denmark. It did not find any significant benefit from masks in reducing spread. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/

Never has a trial been subjected to such immediate and hostile reporting. Fact-checkers (whoever exactly they might be, or what understanding they have of medical research) immediately attacked it. One such, called PolitiFact, made the following judgement, which amused me.

“Social media posts claim, “The first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.”

The study concluded that wearing masks did not offer a very high level of personal protection to mask wearers in communities where wearing masks was not common practice. The study noted, however, that the data suggested masks provided some degree of self-protection.

We rate this claim Mostly False. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/”

So, according to PolitiFact, masks provided self-protection, but not personal protection. An interesting concept. Note to self, try to find out the difference between these two things.

In fact, this was just one of hundreds of critical articles, with self-anointed fact checkers clearly desperate to pull it to pieces. Yes, we have now entered a world when political fact checkers feel free to attack and contradict the findings of scientific papers, using such scientific terms as ‘Mostly false.’ Maybe they should have called it ‘very unique’ at the same time. Or, like the curate’s egg, that was good in parts.

Ignoring the modern-day Spanish Inquisition, and their ill-informed criticisms, I will simply call this study. More evidence that face masks don’t work. Perhaps someone will come along with a study proving that face masks work. So far … nada. Another impossible thing.

4: As of the 2nd March 2021 there have been 122,953 deaths from COVID19 in the UK.

Unlike many people I have actually written COVID19 on death certificates. Mostly they have been educated guesses. On at least five of them, early last year, there had been no positive swab to go on. So, I was just going on probable symptoms. As were many other doctors at the time.

Which means that you can take five off that number for starters. Although, of course, once written, that is very much, that … when it comes to death certificates. In fact, early on in the pandemic, we were probably underdiagnosing as often as over diagnosing deaths from COVID19. Although no-one will ever know. With no positive swab – and few swabs were being done – and almost no post-mortems – you were simply guessing.

As for now … NOW we have the very strange concept that any death within twenty-eight days of a positive COVID19 swab is recorded as a COVID19 death. Simultaneously, I am told that if I have a positive test at work, and then take some time off work (I can never remember the latest guidance). I am not to have another swab for ninety days.

How so? Because it now seems (I actually knew this a long time ago), that swabs can remain positive for months after the infection has been and gone [or was maybe never there to begin with]. Or to put this another way, you can have a positive swab long after you have been infected – and recovered. There are just some bits of virus up your nose that can be magnified, through the wonders of the PCR test, into a positive result.

Which means that an elderly person, infected months ago, can be admitted to hospital for any reason whatsoever. The they can have a positive swab – everyone is swabbed. Then they can die, from whatever it was they were admitted for in the first place. Then, they will be recorded as a COVID19 death.

In truth, this is just the start of impossible things when it comes to the number of COVID19 deaths. Do not get me started on PCR cycle numbers, and false positives. We would be here all day.

Equally, how many people have truly died of COVID19, instead of simply with COVID19? If I painted a blue circle on your forehead, then you died, I would not say that you died of a blue circle painted on your forehead. I would say that you died with a blue circle painted on your forehead.

5: The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. It Shouldn’t Be a Model for the Rest of the World

This was actually the headline title from an article in TIME magazine. The article went on to state that ‘The Swedish way has yielded little but death and misery. And this situation has not been honestly portrayed to the Swedish people or to the rest of the world.’  https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

Death and misery. Hmmmm, I might make this the title of my next book. Bound to be a best seller.

Yes, Sweden has been attacked from all sides with terrific venom, for holding out against imposing severe lockdown. How dare they… follow the WHO’s initial advice. That everyone else ignored.

So, have they done well with regard to COVID19 deaths? Not particularly. Have they done badly? Not particularly. On Worldometer they rank twenty fourth highest for deaths per million of the population. Which is pretty much bang on average for Western Europe.

One reason why they might not have appeared to do better is that, in the year 2019, they had their lowest rate of death for at least ten years. Three and a half thousand less in total than in 2018 https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ . In Norway, a country  used to beat Sweden with, due to their very low COVID19 deaths there was no difference in death rate between 2018 and 2019. To be blunt, the elderly population in Sweden had some catching up to do.

Once you factor this in, the much-lauded difference in deaths, between Norway and Sweden, kind of disappears.

‘Our study shows that all-cause mortality was largely unchanged during the epidemic as compared to the previous four years in Norway and Sweden, two countries which employed very different strategies against the epidemic. Excess mortality from COVID-19 may be less pronounced than previously perceived in Sweden, and mortality displacement might explain part of the observed findings.’ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v1.full

In absolute figures. Sweden had

  • 92,185 deaths in 2018
  • 88,766 deaths in 2019
  • 97,941 deaths in 2020

A drop, then a rebound. Perhaps another way to look at the figures is to compare 2020 with a bad Swedish year in the past. In 2012, 91,938 people died. However, the population was lower at 9.5 million vs 10.2 million. So:

  • The absolute death rate in 2012 was 0.957%.
  • The absolute death rate in 2020 was 0.969%.

The difference between 2012 and 2020 is 0.012%. That is 120 extra deaths per million of the population, which is 1,224 people in population of 10.2 million. The statistics tell us that twelve thousand people died from COVID19 in Sweden. Maybe you can make all that add up. Frankly, I find it impossible.

6: Lockdowns have worked.

Before COVID19 came along, no country had ever attempted a lockdown – ever. So, no-one had any idea if such a thing could possibly work. There was no evidence, from anywhere, to support its use.

It was the Chinese who started it, and who claimed great success for their jackboot lockdown tactics. Well, they convinced me… not. Frankly, if I had to choose a country from which to obtain high quality, unbiased information, about anything, China would not feature in my top one hundred and ninety-four countries

But there you go, lockdown worked under the control of the kind and caring CCP. Hoorah, cheering all round, and the first person to stop cheering gets shot. Well, we don’t want any damned nay-sayers, do we? After that, according to almost everything I have read, everywhere, it worked for everyone else too. Remarkable.

Yes, it is certainly true you can find countries that locked down, closed their borders, and kept the rates low. That, however, is not proof of anything at all. The scientific method requires a little more rigour than this.

In fact, the main thing that scientific rigour requires is that you specifically do not go around looking for facts that support your hypothesis. Because that, I am afraid, is the exact opposite of science. What you need to do, instead, is to go around looking for facts that disprove your hypothesis. This is what Karl Popper called falsification.

For example, my hypothesis is that “all swans are white”. I seek, and find, only white swans. So, this makes my hypothesis is correct? No. What science requires you do is to hunt tirelessly for black swans. If you never find one, fine. However, you need to be aware that the moment you do, your hypothesis has just been disproven. In real life things are very rarely as simple as this, but that is the basic principle.

However, with lockdown (and I recognise that no two countries locked down in the same way) the hypothesis is that countries which did not lockdown will have higher rate of death for COVID19 than those that did.

So, let us look, first, at the countries with the highest rate of COVID19. Excluding very small countries e.g., San Marino, or Gibraltar, we have, in descending order of deaths per million of the population https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .

  • Czechia
  • Belgium
  • Slovenia
  • UK
  • Italy
  • Montenegro
  • Portugal
  • USA
  • Hungary
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • North Macedonia
  • Bulgaria
  • Spain
  • Mexico
  • Peru
  • Croatia
  • Slovakia
  • Panama
  • France

Every single country in this list carried out fairly strict lockdowns. The UK, apparently, has the strictest lockdown in the world, this winter.

Four countries that have been roundly criticized for having far less restrictive lockdowns are: Sweden, Japan, Belarus and Nicaragua (Realistically there are others, in poorer countries, where lockdowns have not happened – because they can’t afford it)

In these four ‘non-lockdowns’ countries, the death rate is, on average 391 per million.

In the top twenty ‘lockdown’ countries, the death rate is, on average 1,520 per million.

The only non-lockdown country in the top ninety for death rates is Sweden. It comes just below France, at number twenty-four.

Now, if the difference between lockdown and non-lockdown countries were ten per cent, or even fifty per cent, I would fully accept that there are many other variables that could explain such finding away. Although, of course, we should really look at a higher rate in the non-lockdown countries, not a lower rate.

Yet although this evidence is out there, I am being asked to believe that lockdowns work. At least the WHO agrees with me on this impossible thing. As Dr David Nabarro, the WHO special envoy on COVID19 said:

“We really do appeal to all world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary method of control,” he said.

“Lockdowns have just one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-12/world-health-organization-coronavirus-lockdown-advice/12753688

Lockdowns, according to the WHO, in unguarded moments, have just one consequence. They make poor people an awful lot poorer.

‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If this is granted all else follows.’

March 6, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

As the Insurrection Narrative Crumbles, Democrats Cling to it More Desperately Than Ever

Pelosi: We Need to Protect the Capitol from ‘All the President’s Men out There’
By Glenn Greenwald | March 5, 2021

Twice in the last six weeks, warnings were issued about imminent, grave threats to public safety posed by the same type of right-wing extremists who rioted at the Capitol on January 6. And both times, these warnings ushered in severe security measures only to prove utterly baseless.

First we had the hysteria over the violence we were told was likely to occur at numerous state capitols on Inauguration Day. “Law enforcement and state officials are on high alert for potentially violent protests in the lead-up to Inauguration Day, with some state capitols boarded up and others temporarily closed ahead of Wednesday’s ceremony,” announced CNN. In an even scarier formulation, NPR intoned that “the FBI is warning of protests and potential violence in all 50 state capitals ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.”

The resulting clampdowns were as extreme as the dire warnings. Washington, D.C. was militarized more than at any point since the 9/11 attack. The military was highly visible on the streets. And, described The Washington Post, “state capitols nationwide locked down, with windows boarded up, National Guard troops deployed and states of emergency preemptively declared as authorities braced for potential violence Sunday mimicking the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump rioters.” All of this, said the paper, “reflected the anxious state of the country ahead of planned demonstrations.”

But none of that happened — not even close. The Washington Post acknowledged three weeks later:

Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation’s statehouses. In Tallahassee, just five armed men wearing the garb of the boogaloo movement — a loose collection of anti-government groups that say the country is heading for civil war — showed up. Police and National Guard personnel mostly ignored them.

All over the country it was the same story. “But at the moment that Biden was taking the oath of office in Washington, the total number of protesters on the Capitol grounds in Topeka stood at five — two men supporting Trump and two men and a boy ridin’ with Biden,” reported The Wichita Eagle (“With Kansas Capitol in lockdown mode, Inauguration Day protest fizzles). “The protests fizzled out after not many people showed up,” reported the local Florida affiliate in Tallahassee. “The large security efforts dwarfed the protests that materialized by Wednesday evening,” said CNN, as “state capitols and other cities remained largely calm.”

Indeed, the only politically-motivated violence on Inauguration Day was carried out by Antifa and anarchist groups in Portland and Seattle, which caused some minor property damage as part of anti-Biden protests while they “scuffled with police.” CNN, which spent a full week excitedly hyping the likely violence coming to state capitols by right-wing Trump supporters, was forced to acknowledge in its article about their non-existence that “one exception was Portland, where left-wing protesters damaged the Democratic Party of Oregon building during one of several planned demonstrations.”

Completely undeterred by that debacle, Democrats and their media spokespeople returned with a new set of frightening warnings for this week. The date of March 4 has taken on a virtually religious significance for the Q-Anon movement, announced NBC News’ Ben Collins, who was heard on NPR on Thursday speaking through actual, literal journalistic tears as he recounted all the times he called Facebook to plead with them to remove dangerous right-wing extremists on their platform (tears commence at roughly 7:00 minutes in). Valiantly holding back full-on sobbing, Collins explained that he proved to be so right but it pains and sorrows him to admit this. With his self-proclaimed oracle status fully in place, he prophesized that March 4 had taken on special dangers because Q-Anon followers concluded that this is when Trump would be inaugurated.

This is how apocalyptic cult leaders always function. When the end of the world did not materialize on January 6, Collins insisted that January 20 was the day of the violent reckoning. When nothing happened on that day, he moved the Doomsday Date to March 4. The flock cannot remain in a state of confusion for too long about why the world has not ended as promised by the prophet, so a new date must quickly be provided with an explanation for why this is serious business this time.

This March 4 paranoia was not confined to NBC’s resident millennial hall monitor and censorship advocate. On March 3, The New York Times warned that “the Capitol Police force is preparing for another assault on the Capitol building on Thursday after obtaining intelligence of a potential plot by a militia group.” All this, said the Paper of Record, because “intelligence analysts had spent weeks tracking online chatter by some QAnon adherents who have latched on to March 4 — the original inauguration date set in the Constitution — as the day Donald J. Trump would be restored to the presidency and renew his crusade against America’s enemies.”

These dire warnings also, quite predictably, generated serious reactions. “House leaders on Wednesday abruptly moved a vote on policing legislation from Thursday to Wednesday night, so lawmakers could leave town,” said the Times. We learned that there would be further militarization of the Capitol and troop deployment in Washington indefinitely due to so-called “chatter.” NPR announced: “The House of Representatives has canceled its Thursday session after the U.S. Capitol Police said it is aware of a threat by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol complex that day.”

Do you know what happened on March 4 when it came to violence from right-wing extremists? The same thing that happened on January 20: absolutely nothing. There were no attempted attacks on the Capitol, state capitols, or any other government institution. There was violent crime registered that day in Washington D.C. but none of it was political violence by those whom media outlets warned posed such a grave danger that Congress has to be closed and militarization of Washington extended indefinitely.

Perhaps the most significant blow to the maximalist insurrection/coup narrative took place inside the Senate on Thursday. Ever since January 6, those who were not referring to the riot as a “coup attempt” — as though the hundreds of protesters intended to overthrow the most powerful and militarized government in history — were required to refer to it instead as an “armed insurrection.”

This formulation was crucial not only for maximizing fear levels about the Democrats’ adversaries but also, as I’ve documented previously, because declaring an “armed insurrection” empowers the state with virtually unlimited powers to act against the citizenry. Over and over, leading Democrats and their media allies repeated this phrase like some hypnotic mantra:

But this was completely false. As I detailed several weeks ago, so many of the most harrowing and widespread media claims about the January 6 riot proved to be total fabrications. A pro-Trump mob did not bash Office Brian Sicknick’s skull in with a fire extinguisher. No protester brought zip-ties with them as some premeditated plot to kidnap members of Congress (two rioters found them on a table inside). There’s no evidence anyone intended to assassinate Mike Pence, Mitt Romney or anyone else.

Yet the maximalist narrative of an attempted coup or armed insurrection is so crucial to Democrats — regardless of whether it is true — that pointing out these facts deeply infuriates them. A television clip of mine from last week went viral among furious liberals calling me a fascism supporter even though it did nothing but point out the indisputable facts that other than Brian Sicknick, whose cause of death remains unknown, the only people who died at the Capitol riot were Trump supporters, and that there are no known cases of the rioters deliberately killing anyone.

(Two FBI operatives have since anonymously leaked that it is looking at a “suspect” who may have engaged with Sicknick in a way that ultimately contributed to his death. But nothing still is known; Sicknick’s mother claims he died of a stroke while his brother says it was from pepper spray; and all of this is worlds away from the endlessly repeated media claim that a bloodthirsty pro-Trump mob savagely bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.)

What we know for sure is that no Trump supporter fired any weapon inside the Capitol and that the FBI seized a grand total of zero firearms from those it arrested that day — a rather odd state of affairs for an “armed insurrection,” to put that mildly. In questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Thursday’s hearing, a senior FBI official, Jill Sanborn, acknowledged this key fact:

(The “one lady” who died referred to by this FBI official was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Trump supporter who was killed when she was shot point blank in the neck inside the Capitol on January 6 by an armed Capitol Police Officer).

The key point to emphasize here is that threats and dangers are not binary: they either exist or they are fully illusory. They reside on a spectrum. To insist that they be discussed rationally, soberly and truthfully is not to deny the existence of the threat itself. One can demand a rational and fact-based understanding of the magnitude of the threat revealed by the January 6 riot without denying that there is any danger at all.

Those who denounced the excesses of McCarthyism were not insisting that there were no Communists in government; those denouncing the excesses of the Clinton administration’s attempts to seize more surveillance power after the Oklahoma City court bombing were not denying that some anti-government militias may do violence again; those who objected to the protracted and unhinged assault on civil liberties by the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations after 9/11 were not arguing that there were no Muslim extremists intent on committing violence.

The argument then, and the argument now, is that the threat was being deliberately inflated and exaggerated, and fears stoked and exploited, both for political gain and to justify the placement of more and more powers in the hands of the state in the name of stopping these threats. That is the core formula of authoritarianism — to place the population in a state of such acute fear that it acquiesces to any assertion of power which security state agencies and politicians demand and which they insist are necessary to keep everyone safe.

There is, relatedly, a massive political benefit from convincing the population that the opponents and critics of those in power do not merely hold a different ideology but are coup plotters, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. That is the same political benefit that accrued from trying to persuade the population that adversaries of the Democratic Party were treasonous Kremlin agents. The more you can demonize your opponents as something monstrous, the more political power you can acquire.

And as Democrats and liberals now gear up to demand a new War on Terror, this one domestic in nature, it should be no surprise that the rhetorical leaders of their effort now are the same lowlife neocon and Rovian slanderers — Bill Kristol, David Frum, Steve Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace, Rick Wilson — who demonized everyone who questioned them as part of the first War on Terror as traitors and terrorist-lovers and subversives. It is not a coincidence that neocons are leading the way now as liberals’ favorite propagandists: they are the most skilled and experienced in weaponizing and exaggerating terrorism threats for political gain and authoritarian power.

Ultimately, if this “armed insurrection” and threat of domestic terrorism are so grave, why do media figures and politicians in both parties — from Adam Schiff to Liz Cheney — keep lying about it and peddling fictions? Politicians and media figures do that only when they know that the threat, in reality, is not nearly as menacing as they need it to be to fulfill their objectives of political gain and coercive power.

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

CNN.com Gaslights Readers on Failed Ocean Predictions – Now Claims Opposite

By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | March 2, 2021

Just one year after climate activists and their media allies spread fear with claims that global warming is causing the world’s ocean currents to speed up, CNN.com is now claiming the opposite – and claiming scientists predicted a slowing of ocean currents all along. CNN’s attempt at “Gaslighting” (a term derived from the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which a man attempts to convince his wife that she cannot believe her own memory) reveals the lack of honesty and lack of scientific basis for alarmist climate claims.

CNN published an article this morning titled, “The slowing down of ocean currents could have a devastating effect on our climate.” In the course of claiming all sorts of existential threats caused by slow ocean currents – including stronger hurricanes, heat waves, and sea-level rise – CNN asserted, “The slowdown of ocean circulation is directly caused by warming global temperatures and has been predicted by climate scientists.”

Except that “climate scientists” and the activist media were telling us exactly the opposite just one year ago.

On February 6, 2020, NASA published an article titled, “Arctic Ice Melt Is Changing Ocean Currents.” The article claimed global warming is speeding up ocean currents. According to the article, “A major ocean current in the Arctic is faster and more turbulent as a result of rapid sea ice melt, a new study from NASA shows. The current is part of a delicate Arctic environment that is now flooded with fresh water, an effect of human-caused climate change.”

On February 6, 2020, Scientific American published an article titled, “Ocean Currents Are Speeding Up, Driven by Faster Winds.” The article claims, “Climate change may in part be spurring the acceleration, which could change how heat and nutrients are pushed around the oceans.”

On February 5, 2020, Science magazine published an article titled, “Global warming is speeding up Earth’s massive ocean currents.” Quoting a scientist reviewing data on ocean-current speeds derived from instruments on Argo robotic floats, Science reported, “The evidence in the Argo data is absolutely astonishing,”

On February 6, 2020, the website Live Science published an article titled, “Ocean currents are getting faster.” The article claimed, “The change is driven by global warming and wind.”

To ensure the public was sufficiently aware and sufficiently alarmed about accelerating ocean currents, Washington Post climate change reporter Chris Mooney published a February 5, 2020, article titled, “World’s oceans are speeding up – another mega-scale consequence of climate change.” According to the article, “It’s the latest dramatic finding about the stark transformation of the global ocean — joining revelations about massive coral die-offs, upheaval to fisheries, ocean-driven melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, increasingly intense ocean heat waves and accelerating sea level rise. … This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show.”

On February 11, 2020, NBC News published an article titled, “Climate change models predicted ocean currents would speed up – but not this soon.” According to the article, “Climate models had predicted that ocean circulation would accelerate with unmitigated climate change, but the changes had not been expected until much later this century … The disparity suggests that some climate models may underestimate the effects of global warming.”

Now, quickly and completely forget everything you just read. New data are destroying all those claims of climate change speeding up ocean currents. As CNN reports this morning, ocean currents now appear to be slowing down, not speeding up, due to global warming. And, remember, as CNN tells us, climate scientists predicted this all along.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Mass Rejection of Covid Jabs by US Military Families

By Stephen Lendman | February 28, 2021

Leading promoter of hazardous experimental covid jabbing NYT expressed angst over mass rejection of getting them by US military families.

According to The Vaccine Reaction on February 21, a Blue Star Families (BSF) survey found that 53% of US military families reject being used as Pharma guinea pigs for unapproved Pfizer and Moderna experimental mRNA jabs.

According to BSF head Kathy Roth-Douquet, “military families are expressing a lot of concern about” jabbing with what they don’t trust.

One military spouse likely spoke for many others, saying she, her family, and other service members don’t want to be “guinea pigs” for what hasn’t be adequately tested or proved safe.

According to Air Force General Paul Friedrichs, the US war department cannot or will not mandate what hasn’t received FDA approval, just emergency use authorization even though no real emergency exists.

At this time — what could change ahead — to be jabbed or not jabbed for covid is a personal decision by US military personnel at all levels.

Vaccines take years to develop. Pfizer and Moderna entries into the covid mass-jabbing sweepstakes are high-risk, experimental, gene altering mRNA technology.

They’re not vaccines. They were rushed to market with inadequate testing.

Since mass-jabbing began in December, large numbers of adverse events and deaths were reported, especially among elderly nursing home residents in the US and Europe.

If what’s experimental and unapproved is mandated, it would be an unprecedented experiment with human health virtually certain to turn out badly because of what’s already known.

According to one nursing home health worker, residents and some staff are “dying like flies” after jabbed.

No credible evidence suggests that mRNA technology is safe or effective.

The same holds for Johnson and Johnson’s covid vaccine about to be granted emergency use authorization.

Joseph Mercola explained that rushed Pfizer and Moderna trials were “rigged” to produce results that aren’t credible.

Their mRNA technology wasn’t evaluated on the ability to prevent infection and viral transmission.

Last November, associate editor of the BMJ publication for health professionals Peter Doshi said Pfizer’s claim of 95% effectiveness is false.

Its risk reduction to flu-renamed covid is less than 1%, rendering it virtually useless for protection.

The same holds for Modern’s mRNA technology and most likely for J & J’s vaccine as well.

On Friday, the NYT understated the number of US military families who decline to be jabbed for covid, claiming it’s about “one-third” of US forces, mostly younger personnel.

Young healthy people need no protection for flu, now called covid.

Over 99% of young people who contract covid recover normally with no special medical intervention for help.

The Times expressed concern about millions of US military personnel who refuse to be jabbed with what may cause irreversible harm to their health, saying:

It’s “a warning to civilian health officials about the potential hole in the broad-scale immunity that medical professionals say is needed for Americans to reclaim their collective lives.”

Unexplained by the Times and other establishment media is that mass-jabbing provides no protection, no immunity, no ability to prevent covid from spreading from one person to others.

It only risks great harm to health that in some cases is lethal.

What major media should headline and repeat time and again, they suppress.

Instead of wanting public health protected and preserved, the corporate fourth estate is pushing what risks unprecedented harm to millions of people in the US and elsewhere by promoting hazardous mass-jabbing.

The Times is the lead print culprit, providing press agent services for US dark forces and Pharma profiteers — at the expense of public health.

The broadsheet falsely claimed that concerns shared by countless millions of people in the US and elsewhere is from “misinformation that has run rampant on Facebook and other social media.”

What the self-styled newspaper of record calls “misinformation” is refuted by indisputable hard evidence of mass-jabbing hazards.

Protecting and preserving what’s too precious to lose requires saying “no” to what won’t protect and risks great harm if use as directed.

February 28, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Forbes Blames Global Warming for Record Cold – Science Disagrees

By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | February 17, 2021

In a major victory for Newspeak, the propaganda language in George Orwell’s novel “1984,” Forbes.com published an article yesterday blaming global warming for the record cold pummeling much of the nation. Google News, moreover, promoted the Forbes article by placing it at the top of search results for “climate change.”

The title of the Forbes article is “Blackouts In Texas and California Teach A Hard Lesson: Climate Change Is Costly.” The author writes, “These grid failures are wake-up calls and provide further proof that the impacts of climate change are not geographically constrained, nor do they take aim at one political party. One way or another, the cost of climate change on each of us will make itself known: in this both California and Texas can now agree.”

The author does not, however, explain how or why global warming causes record cold temperatures. Climate activists have occasionally, and when politically convenient, claimed climate change causes more polar-vortex extreme cold events. However, the scientific data strongly contradict Forbes’ assertion that global warming is to blame for the cold outbreak in Texas. Indeed, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data show the number days each year with below-freezing temperatures in Texas is neither unusually high nor unusually low so far this century.

Similarly, NOAA data for neighboring Oklahoma – which is also getting walloped right now by cold weather – show a decline in the frequency of very cold weather events in recent decades.

So, there clearly is no recent increase in the frequency of severe cold events in Texas and Oklahoma. So, by what logic does Forbes blame the current very cold conditions on global warming? Well, the author of the Forbes article is Chief Science Officer and Chief Commercial Officer at New Energy Risk, which is comprised of “climate-conscience venture capitalists” seeking to make money promoting “green” energy.

Forbes clearly has no conflict-of-interest standards for its authors and articles, nor does it attempt to investigate what the scientific data show regarding its articles’ claims.

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

No, NY Times, Climate Change Does Not Threaten Power Grids

By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | February 19, 2021

The New York Times published a February 16 article claiming climate change is making America’s power grid more vulnerable due to an increase in extreme weather events. However, objective data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the Times’ claim that extreme weather is becoming more common is false. The evidence indicates it is policies promoting wind and solar power to fight climate change, rather than climate change itself, that is putting the most pressure on power grids.

The Times story, “A Glimpse of America’s Future: Climate Change Means Trouble for Power Grids,” claims, “Systems are designed to handle spikes in demand, but the wild and unpredictable weather linked to global warming will very likely push grids beyond their limits.” The story continues saying “as climate change accelerates, many electric grids will face extreme weather events that go far beyond the historical conditions those systems were designed for, putting them at risk of catastrophic failure … it is clear that global warming poses a barrage of additional threats to power systems nationwide, including fiercer heat waves….”

This Times’ claims are convincingly refuted by objective climate data. Let’s examine them, one at a time.

The Times says climate change is making heatwaves worse, yet, as shown in Climate at a Glance: Heatwaves, data from NOAA demonstrates heatwaves have become far less frequent and severe in recent decades than they were in the early part of the 20th century (See the graph).

Indeed, temperature records show, the vast majority of each state’s all-time high temperatures were set during the first half of the 20th century – approximately 100 years of global warming ago. In fact, 40 states’ record-high temperatures were set before 1960, with 25 of the record highs being set or tied in the 1930s alone. That is three times more than have been set in the 33 years since 1988, when NASA’s James Hansen first pronounced humans were causing dangerous global warming. Only two states have set new record highs since 2000, fewer than the number of temperature records set in the 1890s alone, 130 years of global warming ago.

In addition, the most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.

Similarly, objective data destroy allegations that climate change is to blame for record cold that struck Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere this past week. NOAA data show the number days each year with below-freezing temperatures in Texas is neither unusually high nor unusually low so far this century. Similarly, NOAA data for neighboring Oklahoma show a decline in the frequency of very cold weather events in recent decades. The assertion that climate change makes extreme temperatures more frequent on both ends of the temperature spectrum is destroyed by science – on both ends of the temperature spectrum.

Data from NOAA and the IPCC make it equally clear other extreme weather events that might be thought to cause power failures, like cold spells, floods, hurricanes, or tornados, have not increased in number or in severity as the earth has modestly warmed. You can see the evidence for yourself via the links in this paragraph.

While weather extremes aren’t increasing, policies enacted with an intent to prevent climate change are making the grid less reliable and flexible in response to peaks in power demand. In particular, state mandates to incorporate ever-greater amounts of intermittent wind and solar power, and federal and state subsidies for the same purpose, have resulted in the premature retirements of tens of thousands of megawatts of baseload coal power plants over the past decade. These power plants have been replaced by wind and solar industrial facilities which cannot be relied upon to provide a consistent flow of power to the grid because they are dependent on weather conditions. Nor can they be relied upon to provide on-demand power or peaking power during emergencies.

Even if the Times was right that climate change is making extreme weather events more common and severe, relying on increasing amounts of intermittent power can only worsen the problems of grid reliability, both during normal operation and during extreme weather events. Wind turbines don’t work if the temperature is too cold or if winds die down. Solar panels don’t provide energy at night, on cloudy days, or if covered by ice, snow, dust, or dirt.

Texas’s recent power emergency came as thousands of megawatts of wind power went off-line when the weather turned unusually cold, even before any ice and snow hit. Meanwhile, California has experienced repeated rolling blackouts during the summer months. What these two states have in common is they have both come to rely on increasing amounts of intermittent electric generating sources to power their respective grids. The evidence shows replacing reliable sources of electric power, like coal, natural gas, and nuclear with ever more intermittent power makes power failures more likely, whatever the weather. That’s the fact the New York Times should report.

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

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