BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 8, 2023
Government-controlled surface datasets, the bedrock of climate thermogeddon fears promoting Net Zero, cannot possibly be accurate, and are only “an estimate with high uncertainty”. The claim comes from the noted U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, who has spent the last decade highlighting the numerous flaws built into global temperature monitoring systems. Data are collected by government bodies from a weather station network, “that was never intended to detect a ‘global warming signal’”, notes Watts. He goes on to call for a new independent global climate database. Given that governments are spending billions of taxpayer dollars on climate mitigation programmes, “doesn’t it make sense to get the most important thing – the actual temperature – as accurate as possible”, he asks.
To date, continues Watts, there is only one network of climate capable weather stations that is accurate enough to fully detect a climate change signal. This is the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), started in 2005 as a state-of-the-art automated system designed specifically to accurately measure climate trends at the surface. It comprises 114 stations across North America sited well away from any non-climatic effects, such as urban heat caused by humans.
The USCRN graph above shows that there has been no significant warming trend over the last two decades in the United States. “Unfortunately, the data from the USCRN network are buried by the U.S. Government, and are not publicly reported in monthly or yearly global climate reports. [The network] has also not been deployed worldwide,” observed Watts.
Watts notes that past temperature records were collected to validate weather forecasting. Temperatures were rounded by volunteers to the nearest whole degree of Fahrenheit. When comparing such “coarsely recorded” data to claims of 1.8°F global warming since the late 1800s, “obvious questions” of accuracy arise. Referring to his own recent work, Watts says that even more concerning is the widespread corruption of data by urbanisation. Many stations are compromised by being placed next to air conditioners, jet exhausts and concrete, asphalt and nearby buildings. This happens not just in the USA but in many other territories, including the U.K.
In the U.K., the state-funded Met Office has become highly politicised in recent years as it relentlessly pushes the collectivist Net Zero project. Despite writing a paper on the temperature standstill between 2000-14, it removed the pause in later retrospective adjustments to its HadCRUT global database. In under 10 years it added 30% extra warming to the recent global record, at a time when accurate satellite measurements suggested global warming started running out of steam about 25 years ago. Last summer, the Met Office confirmed and promoted a new U.K. record temperature of 40.3°C at Coningsby. In fact the record was set halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, home of Typhoon fighter jet squadrons, and lasted just 60 seconds. It was achieved with a sudden spike in temperature of 0.6°C followed by an almost immediate drop. To this day, the Met Office has refused to answer questions from the Daily Sceptic asking if jet aircraft movements were a contributing factor.
Watts is not the only scientist raising important concerns about the databases at the heart of the political campaign to promote panic about rising temperatures. Recent work by Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville found that up to a fifth of all warming reported across the planet by around 20,000 weather stations is invalid due to corruption from non-climatic data. The stations form part of the Global Historical Climate Network and are an important constituent of all global datasets. Interestingly, the two scientists noted that the U.S. weather service NOAA claims to remove urban heat distortions, but they found that on average it is “spuriously warming station temperature data trends when it should be cooling them”. The detailed reasons are given in a note published by Dr. Spencer, where he asks why NOAA adjustments are going in the wrong way. “To say the least, I find these results … curious”, he adds.
Lopping off chunks of recent warming at a time when very little ‘heating’ is occurring would be unwelcome in Net Zero extremist circles. Scientists such as Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen point out that the warming since the ending of the Baroque mini ice age is already tiny. Evidence continues to accumulate that recent periods were much warmer than the present. In February, a group of bio scientists (Brozova et al., 2023) presented evidence showing that the Arctic around Svalbard was 6°C warmer in the early Holocene around 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. Further scientific evidence showing past warming can be found here, here and here.
Global surface temperatures recorded and compiled by government agencies are said by Watts to be a mishmash of rounded, adjusted and compromised readings, rather than being an accurate representation of Earth’s temperature. “Given the Government’s monopoly on use of corrupted temperature data, questionable accuracy, and a clear reticence to make highly accurate temperature data from the USCTN available to the public, it is time for a truly independent global temperature record to be produced,” Watts concludes.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
They charged Kirk Moore with a crime. Dr. Moore is allowed discovery to prove his innocence. JACKPOT!
By Steve Kirsch | April 9, 2023
Executive summary
The US Attorney in Utah issued a criminal indictment against Dr. Kirk Moore for “running a COVID-19 Vaccine Scheme to Defraud the Government and CDC.”
But what if Dr. Moore was actually saving lives instead and is a hero?
Since this is a criminal proceeding in federal court, Dr. Moore cannot be denied discovery to show that the vaccines are deadly.
This is relevant due to the opportunity for jury nullification where a jury has the right to issue a “not guilty” verdict if they believe the law is unjust.
If the judge denies Moore the discovery, he can appeal because there is no country in the world that has correlated the death-vax data and released the records for public analysis. They all keep it hidden behind closed doors and all attempts to get that data have been rebuffed.
A federal court has jurisdiction over all 50 states and can order the CDC and all states to turn over COVID vaccination records and death records. You know, the records that the states and CDC don’t want to be made public for some reason. Those records.
So Dr. Moore is now empowered to do something that nobody else in the world can do: access the secret public health records of every state in the US that will finally show to the entire world what everyone in power wants to hide from the public: the truth.
Kirk is one of my followers on Substack and I reached out to him today to suggest the records he should request to aid in his defense.
The judge can allow these records to be made public if they are in the public interest, which they will be.
Finally, it is the job of the courts to find the truth. And thanks to the US Attorney in Utah, we are finally going to find the truth!
Introduction
Not a single country, state, or even county health official anywhere in the world has correlated the vaccination data with the health data. I wonder why?
But now, courtesy of the US Attorney in Utah, Dr. Kirk Moore will have the right to do that.
And people are going to be stunned at what it will reveal. I can promise you that.
More about jury nullification
Some background on Jury Nullification, for those unfamiliar with it:
Department of Justice discussion (1993)
NY Times discussion focus on marijuana, but applies to all (2011)
Vox discussion focused on race, but applies to all (2016)
Jury nullification is a powerful check on abusive government and unjust laws. But most Americans aren’t aware of it and lawyers aren’t allowed to inform a jury of their right to nullify a law. It will take a massive public education effort to make enough Americans aware of the power they hold in jury duty to make a difference in trials. So spread the word!! Tell two friends.
You can follow Dr. Moore on Twitter
You can follow Dr. Moore on Twitter here.
You can donate to help his defense here
If you are a lawyer and want to help out on this case
Fill out the form here.
Why the court has to allow the discovery
There is a necessity defense. The discovery is crucial to showing that this defense is justified.
Also, the prosecution has to show criminal intent to harm the US government. Could it be that Dr. Moore’s intent was to save the life of his patients? Is that a crime in America today?
Summary
The bottom line is the US Attorney in Utah has given Dr. Moore the ability to end the narrative worldwide. And I have a feeling that Dr. Moore will take full advantage of the opportunity.
I leave you with this post Dr. Moore recently made on my Substack:
This is the biggest opportunity ever to end the narrative. The US government has literally opened up the secret books in every state (aka our public health data) for inspection. I could not be happier that the truth will finally be known.
British Study Reveals Alarming Risks of Suicide and Homicide
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | April 9, 2023
Many of us have been struck by the rapid rise in clinical interest and reported studies on transgender persons. The main clinical indication for gender change medication and or surgery is gender dysphoria. This means that individuals are afflicted with a syndrome in which they are not happy with their natural gender from birth. While changing biological gender the opposite is associated with a modest improvement in gender dysphoria scores, one may wonder if there is a price to pay for such a substantial and and relatively permanent intervention for a psychiatric illness?
Jackson et al, recently reported on the outcomes of total of 1951 British transfeminine (male at birth) (mean [SE] age, 36.90 [0.34] years; 1801 White [92.3%]) and 1364 transmasculine (female at birth) (mean [SE] age, 29.20 [0.36] years. The normal control group was matched to 68,165 cisgender men (59 136 White [86.8%]) and 68,004 cisgender women (57 762 White [84.9%]). Compared with cisgender men, there was an increased risk of overall mortality for transfeminine (MRR, 1.34; 95%CI, 1.06-1.68). Compared with cisgender women, there was an increased risk of overall mortality for transmasculine (MRR, 1.75; 95%CI, 1.08-2.83) adults.
The most notable relative risks for those who changed genders was suicide and homicide as shown in the table. These data suggest that psychiatric and behavioral determinants arising from background gender dysphoria and the transgender process contribute to death at a relatively young age among those who have chosen to change from their original biological gender to the opposite.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 6, 2023
Bombshell vaccine safety surveillance data out of Western Australia shows it was reactions from the Covid vaccine that were overwhelming local hospitals. Data shows Australia’s zero-Covid plan was for nothing, as cases have spiked.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 6, 2023
In March 2022, Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, faced significant criticism for advising against the COVID-19 vaccine for children under 17, citing reported risks outweighing the benefits. Now, W.H.O. has rolled back its own recommendation on the vaccine for healthy children and teenagers. Dr. Ladapo joins Del for a nice ‘I told you so’.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 6, 2023
No matter what political affiliation, American’s are now entertaining the idea that someone in their family may have died from a Covid jab. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and others now approach the 2024 elections, vaccine safety and mandated medicine have become a top issue.
BY IAN MACLEOD | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 3, 2023
The battle of ideas around Covid has few clashes as hotly contested as Long Covid. Alarmists have hyped the frequency and severity with which infection causes long-term damage. Sceptics see no reason for panic. A new study helps to settle at least part of this debate.
The paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s (JAMA) Network Open looked at “post–COVID-19 condition (PCC) in young people after mild acute infection” to find how common it was and to find risk factors. Participants were aged between 12 and 25.
The authors offer this straightforward conclusion: “PCC was not associated with biological markers specific to viral infection.” That is, participants were equally likely to suffer from ‘Long Covid’, whether or not they had suffered from acute COVID-19.
The researchers concluded that Long Covid is predicted by “initial symptom severity” and, intriguingly, “psychosocial factors”.
The full article is available on JAMA Network Open.
The main results from the present study were: (1) the prevalence of PCC six months after acute COVID-19 was approximately 50%, but was equally high in a control group of comparable SARS-CoV-2-negative individuals; (2) acute COVID-19 was not an independent risk factor for PCC; (3) the severity of clinical symptoms at baseline, irrespective of SARS-CoV-2 status, was the main risk factor of persistent symptoms six months later.
Symptom prevalence data are consistent with other controlled studies of young people after acute COVID-19 reporting a high symptom load, with only subtle differences between individuals testing positive and negative for SARS-CoV-2. Correspondingly, a large population-based study found no associations between most persistent symptoms attributed to COVID-19 and serological evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. …
These findings suggest that persistent symptoms in this age group are related to factors other than SARS-CoV-2 infection, and therefore question the usefulness of the WHO case definition of PCC.
Worth reading in full.
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 7, 2023
People who receive Pfizer’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine should be monitored for Guillain-Barré syndrome, according to the authors of a Pfizer-funded study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
The paper — one of several published Wednesday reporting interim analyses for Pfizer’s phase 3 clinical trials for the RSV vaccine — concluded the vaccine was effective in preventing RSV in adults age 60 and over “without evident safety concerns.”
But that same article also flagged Guillain-Barré syndrome as a safety concern moving forward with the vaccine.
“If RSVpreF vaccine [Pfizer’s RSV vaccine] is approved and recommended, these adverse events warrant close monitoring in future studies and with real-world data and post-marketing surveillance,” the authors of the NEJM study said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for older adults in May.
Safe and effective?
Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks its own nerves. Symptoms can range from brief weakness to paralysis.
The FDA asked Pfizer to include the condition as an “important potential risk” of the vaccine and to develop a safety study to monitor for potential cases if the shot is approved, CNBC reported.
When the FDA vaccine advisory panel met in February to review Pfizer’s data pre-publication, there was substantial disagreement about the data on safety and effectiveness, although the majority of the committee voted to recommend the vaccine for approval.
Four of 12 committee members voted that the safety data was not adequate for approval — and one abstained — because of their concerns with the Guillain-Barré cases.
Four committee members also voted the evidence of vaccine effectiveness was not adequate for approval, while seven said it was and one member abstained.
In the NEJM study, one person developed Guillain-Barré syndrome and another developed Miller Fisher syndrome, a subset of Guillain-Barré. The symptoms appeared six and seven days post-vaccination, respectively.
The person with Miller Fisher syndrome recovered. The person diagnosed with Guillain-Barré continues to suffer from loss of motor function.
CNBC reported:
“In the New England Journal of Medicine article, the scientists said the two cases occurred in patients who were in an age group that has an increased risk of developing Guillain-Barré. Potential factors other than the vaccine also could have caused the individuals to develop the syndrome, they added.
“But the FDA said the agency views the Guillain-Barré cases as possibly related to the vaccine because the patients developed the syndrome shortly after receiving the shot, according to briefing documents published in February.
“Pfizer concluded that the cases were unrelated, and the clinical trial’s data monitoring committee did not identify any safety concerns with the vaccine.”
Dr. Hana El Sahly, the FDA committee chair and professor of molecular virology and microbiology and infectious diseases at the Baylor College of Medicine, said Guillain-Barré has an incidence of about 1 in 100,000 among people ages 60 and older. But in the vaccine trial, the rate was closer to 1 in 9,000, which is significantly higher.
“It’s significant in terms of incidence,” she said. The FDA advisors told Pfizer that safety monitoring for Guillain-Barré after FDA approval “would be crucial,” CNBC reported.
There is currently no vaccine approved to prevent RSV, a lower respiratory disease that is one of the most common causes of childhood cold-like illness and was first discovered in humans in 1956.
The illness is mild for most people.
In children under age 5, RSV causes 58,000 to 80,000 hospitalizations per year and 100 to 300 deaths.
In adults ages 65 and older, RSV causes 6,000 to 10,000 deaths and 60,000 to 160,000 hospitalizations per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Research shows the virus originated in monkeys housed in a Maryland facility where they were used to conduct polio vaccine research.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender :
“I find it ironic that Pfizer is creating a vaccine for RSV, an illness that was created due to the development of the polio vaccine. It seems like vaccine manufacturers are paid to prevent diseases that they already created.
“The incidence of Guillain-Barré is very troubling and although many patients recover, there is nerve damage associated with it leading to permanent weakness, numbness and fatigue.”
The NEJM study reported that the vaccine was 86% effective at preventing lower respiratory tract illness with three or more symptoms, and 66% effective at preventing the illness with two or more symptoms, among adults over age 60.
The study determined there were not enough cases of severe RSV-associated lower respiratory tract illness — meaning cases needing hospitalization or ventilation or extra oxygen — to determine whether the vaccine was effective for those cases, CNN reported.
RSV vaccines for pregnant women failed to meet major goal in trials
Pfizer is also seeking FDA approval for its vaccine to protect infants from RSV by vaccinating pregnant mothers.
However, in the interim data on clinical trials, also published Wednesday in the NEJM, the vaccine failed to meet one of its two main goals.
Last year, Pfizer reported that its vaccine was highly effective at protecting newborns from RSV. The drugmaker also sought rapid FDA approval for the vaccine for pregnant mothers.
The FDA is expected to decide by August.
According to the study published Wednesday, the vaccine was 82% effective in preventing severe lower respiratory tract illness — such as very low oxygen levels or need for ventilator support — in infants in the first 90 days of life, but that dropped to 69% efficacy up to 180 days after a baby is born.
But the vaccine failed to meet its second big goal: reducing non-severe RSV-associated lower respiratory illness in infants.
The study enrolled 7,128 women — half received the RSV vaccine and half received the placebo.
Severe illness occurred within three months in six infants whose mothers received the vaccine, compared with 33 infants from the placebo group who contracted serious RSV infections.
The company evaluated 3,570 infants as part of the study, Reuters reported.
Big Pharma’s race for the RSV vaccine
The RSV virus causes annual outbreaks of respiratory illnesses in all age groups, typically during the fall, winter and spring in most regions of the U.S. It has existed for decades and doesn’t usually spark alarm.
But RSV made headlines last fall as part of a “tripledemic” — COVID-19, flu and RSV — scare, just as these new RSV products were preparing to come on the market.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman-on-leave, said at the time, “fear sells,” tweeting:
As The Defender reported, pharmaceutical companies have been working on the development of a vaccine for RSV since the 1960s — at times with deadly outcomes.
After a disastrous attempt at producing a vaccine, where 80% of vaccinated children were hospitalized, RSV vaccine development was put on hold.
Over the last several years, “lured by the prospect of a large untapped global RSV vaccine market,” four manufacturers set their sights on RSV vaccine development for infants, pregnant women and the elderly.
Initially, Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic also were developing RSV vaccines, but the former dropped out of the race last month and Bavarian Nordic’s clinical trials are in progress.
That leaves Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), who have been in a tight race to be the first Big Pharma player to tap into the RSV vaccine market, which is estimated to be over $5 billion and could exceed $10 billion by 2030, Reuters reported last month.
Both companies have RSV vaccines under regulatory review with the FDA.
The FDA advisory committee voted unanimously in favor of GSK’s vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing lower respiratory tract disease caused by RSV in adults aged 60 and above, and voted 10 to 2 for its safety last month, based on interim data presented last October, Reuters reported.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Concerning increase in mortality in New Zealand
By Ian Miller | Unmasked | April 7, 2023
COVID has unfortunately created any number of repetitive stories.
Jurisdiction imposes mask mandates, population complies, masks prove ineffective, media claims masks didn’t work because of lack of compliance.
Another example would be when countries with extraordinary compliance, such as Singapore or South Korea, would see increases ignored entirely, or blamed on the population not wearing masks of a correct level of quality.
Yet as a general rule, the most consistently predictable repetitive storyline has been the media and expert community declaring that a country was a pandemic success, only for their results to dramatically change in a relatively short period of time.
This was the case with the Czech Republic, with Australia, with Taiwan and many other locations.
Even within the United States adjustments showed that states like California – heralded as pandemic winners – actually had significantly worse results than previously realized.
But few places on earth have been as heavily praised as New Zealand.
Their science-following leadership was repeatedly hailed, honored, and praised for their effective communication, endless lockdowns, tyrannical response to protests, and prolific commitment to mandates.
All of the above, combined with their strict border controls, should have meant that New Zealand would avoid the significant increase in negative outcomes seen in other parts of the world.
At least, that’s what the media and activist public health authorities claimed would happen.
The reality is far more complicated.
Throughout 2020 and into 2021, New Zealand saw very little COVID transmission.
Unsurprisingly, the BBC praised the country for their efforts, explaining in detail how the country had become “COVID free.”
Jacinda Arden, now former prime minister, was once so completely committed to maintaining an illusion of infallibility that she claimed that the only source of accurate information available to the public was the government.
Of course, Arden then made the provably inaccurate claim that those who were vaccinated would net get sick and would not die.
The ridiculous over-confidence in the proclamations of public health authorities led to Arden convincing New Zealanders that strict mandates and interventions could stop the spread of the virus.
As winter and new variants arrived in 2021, Arden and local leaders predictably enforced increasingly strict measures. Mask mandates, lockdowns and “red traffic light” policies include vaccine passports.
Surprise. None of it worked.
After several months of completely unchecked spread, even the country’s cumulative metrics, once seemingly so impressive, exploded in dramatic fashion.
Consistently and exceptionally high mask wearing rates were also entirely ineffective.
And yet defenders of New Zealand’s authoritarian policies still believed that the country’s strategy was warranted, for one specific reason.
They had delayed the spread of the virus until the COVID vaccines became widely available.
In theory, that was supposed to prevent a substantial increase in deaths, especially considering their extraordinary rate of uptake.
That didn’t work either.
While these rates were generally lower after adjusting for population than many other countries, they still represented an obvious, significant surge compared to previous time periods.
But COVID related deaths only tell a part of the story, often influenced by attribution methodology and testing.
In theory, New Zealand’s exceptional vaccination rate and consistently high mask compliance should have meant that all cause mortality would also remain low.
So did it?
Fortunately, thanks to the New Zealand government’s own data, we now have an answer. And just as the country’s failure to stop omicron, it presents another contradiction to the endless media praise.
Despite the exceptionally high vaccination rate, despite their exceptionally high booster rate, despite vaccine passports, strict lockdowns, “red traffic light” policies and border controls, the pandemic came for New Zealand as well.
The government’s own data shows that all cause deaths in New Zealand jumped significantly in 2022, to the highest level in recorded data.
The country universally praised for their dedication to following The Science™, whose leadership told the public that following her dictates would keep them safe, stop the spread and control outcomes, has seen a record level of all cause mortality.
Exactly the same as other countries who were criticized for their supposedly less effective response.
Even after adjusting for population, the scale of the surge in 2022 is exceptional.
In fact, it represents an over 17% increase from 2020.
Not to mention that the one year increase, over 10%, represented the largest single year increase in New Zealand since the 1918 flu.
So why didn’t their policies prevent this? Why didn’t waiting for widespread vaccination to open up prevent this?
The New Zealand government themselves blame COVID for at least a portion of the increase. So why were so many people dying of COVID given the country’s exceptional vaccination and booster uptake and masking?
After all, ~95% of the population over 12 had been fully vaccinated by the middle of 2022, with over 90% fully vaccinated by early 2022. Similarly, adult booster rates were nearly 80% by early in 2022.
Why didn’t it work?!
Some may try to claim that their results would have been worse had they not had such policies.
But countries like Sweden thoroughly debunk that theory. Sweden had one of the least restrictive responses anywhere on earth, yet their results were among the best in their region.
Even throughout 2022, excess deaths remained low.
So why did New Zealand fail?
Compared to other countries, New Zealand’s cumulative COVID mortality rate still remains low. But the all cause mortality tells a different story.
Their strict policies and delayed opening were supposed to prevent this exact situation from occurring. All because the government put their faith in experts.
The experts mistakenly believed that vaccinations would prevent virtually all deaths, as Jacinda “we are your sole source of truth” Arden explained.
Obviously that was not the case.
It’s not clear what percentage of the excess mortality rate came from vaccinated people. But even more importantly, the majority of the increase was entirely unrelated to COVID.
Nearly 6,000 more people died in 2022 than did in 2020, despite a relatively small population increase. Yet the government says just 2,400 were associated with COVID.
So what caused the other 3,600 unexpected deaths?
In raw numbers, nearly 7,500 more people died in 2022 than in 2016. Accounting for population increases, that meant virtually 100 more people per 100,000 died in 2022 than in 2016.
What happened?
Whatever it was, it’s almost certainly related to New Zealand’s mistaken assumptions. Ancillary lockdown-related causes, missed health screenings, side effects — any or all of it could have contributed to the dramatic increase.
And all of it was because the government mistakenly proclaimed that they could control COVID. Instead, they delayed the inevitable.
Governments have many lessons to learn from the pandemic, but the first should be to never, ever, put blind faith in “experts.”
All too often they’re flying blind themselves.
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 5, 2023
The BBC recently ran a story claiming that the Antarctic ocean currents were heading for collapse, and to drive home the scare there was even a reference to the 2004 climate disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow. Rapidly melting Antarctic ice was reported to be causing a dramatic slowdown in deep ocean currents, “and could have a disastrous effect on the climate”. Like most of these fanciful scare stories, “could” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting work. But alas, missing from this Net Zero-promoting, model-inventing Armageddon tall tale was a note that the Antarctica ice cap appears to be in balance, and is not actually melting.
According to a paper written by NASA satellite ice-mapping scientists in 2021, Antarctica is “close to balance” in the period 2012-16 at -12 +/- 64 Gt a-1. Gt are gigatonnes and the formula is a scientific way of saying that as near as damn it, well within a margin of error, the Antarctica ice sheet loss is, more or less, zero. Back to 1992, the scientists found large total gains for the sheet.
According to the story in the BBC, reported faithfully in numerous media, as fresh water from the ice cap melts, sea water becomes less salty and dense and a downwards movement of water towards the sea bottom is interrupted. This in turn can affect world oceanic currents. The activist science blog the Conversation reported that “torrents of Antarctic meltwater are slowing the currents that drive our vital ocean ‘overturning’ – and threaten its collapse”. The BBC noted that a similar collapse in the North Atlantic was depicted in The Day After Tomorrow.
As regular readers will recall, the Daily Sceptic has observed that Antarctica is a difficult neighbourhood for activists to get a good scare story going. Over the last seven decades, there has been little or no warming over large parts of the continent. According to a recent paper, (Singh and Polvani), the Antarctica sea ice has “modestly expanded”, and warming has been “nearly non-existent” over much of the ice sheet. According to NASA figures, the ice loss is 0.0005% per year.
The latest scare arises from a paper published in Nature. It is the product of climate models – the BBC noting that the scientists spent 35 million computer hours over two years collecting their results. However, this story is also of considerable interest since it shows that the BBC and most mainstream media are seemingly incapable of questioning any statement that promotes human-caused climate change and the proposed command-and-control Net Zero political solution. This endemic lack of curiosity means that vast areas of science, including atmospheric physics and chemistry, together with weather, geology and geography, are simply off limits in case any doubt should be cast on the suggestion that humans control the CO2 climate thermostat.
The study lead author, Professor Matthew England from Sydney’s University of New South Wales, is able to state, without any inquiring question or contradiction, that “our modelling shows that if global carbon emissions continue at the current rate, then the Antarctica overturning will slow by more than 40% in the next 30 years”. The BBC repeats emissions continuing at the current rate, but England’s paper states that his model has been loaded with a “high emissions” scenario. The paper is behind a paywall, but the abstract in which this admission occurs is freely available.
These “high emission” scenarios are almost certainly RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 that forecast global rises in temperatures of 4-5°C within less than 80 years. As Dr. Judith Curry has recently pointed out, these have been dropped in many science circles on the grounds they are recognised as implausible. Global warming of barely 0.1°C over the last 20 years is almost certainly a factor in this reassessment. Nevertheless, Curry notes that many of the extreme events based on the scenarios are still quoted in IPCC documents. “Rejecting these extreme scenarios has rendered obsolete much of the climate literature and assessments of the last decade,” she states.
Not at the BBC, of course. Settled science – the Science – cannot move on because it suffers from the anti-science proposition that it is somehow settled. Model results suggest deep water circulation in the Antarctic could slow at twice the rate of decline in the North Atlantic, reports the BBC. “It’s stunning to see that happen so quickly,” said climatologist Alan Mix from Oregon State University, a co-author of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. “It appears to be kicking into gear right now. That’s headline news,” he told Reuters. No, Dr. Mix, it’s a model based on assumptions that are regularly contradicted by the data. Some climatologists it appears have trouble distinguishing fact from their own fevered predictions.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | April 4, 2023
Dark times for political opponents, skeptics of dubious science.
Governments weaponizing the justice authorities to go after political opponents and protest movement leaders seems to have become vogue nowadays in the once democratic western hemisphere.
Victims of the tactic often face dubious charges, some even having to spend months in detention as authorities drag their feet carrying out the “legal” process.
For example, in Germany a number of physicians have been charged and even jailed for allegedly issuing “false mask exemptions” or “false vaccination exemption” certificates to patients who fear the experimental, shoddily launched COVID vaccine. Critics accuse the authorities of using these heavy handed tactics to intimidate legitimate political opponents into silence.
Ballweg released after 9 months of detention
One high profile example in Germany is Michael Ballweg, the founder of the Corona restrictions protest movement dubbed “Querdenken” (unorthodox thinking). Today we know that the “querdenkers” were right about a lot of things, and huge amounts of damage could have been avoided had their warnings been taken seriously.
But instead, the government and media got paranoid and scared of the Ballweg’s protest movement. The media characterized the movement as fringe right wingers who threatened “our democracy”. Last June, Ballweg was arrested and dragged to jail on dubious charges.
Today, after more than 9 months detention, he was finally allowed to leave Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. The Stuttgart Higher Regional Court on Tuesday lifted the arrest warrant in exchange for a condition.
Ballweg had been in pre-trial detention since June 2022 on suspicion of money laundering and fraud. Suspicion is all that’s needed nowadays to arrest unwanted voices.
AUF 1 reports:
Previously, several appeals against Ballweg’s pre-trial detention had come to nothing. As part of the nine-month trial, he can now leave prison. The reason for the revocation of the arrest warrant was proportionality. The expected punishment in case of a conviction was too small to justify a longer pre-trial detention.
Ballweg’s lawyer Dr. Alexander Christ commented on the decision: “I am happy for my client!”
Allegations reduced, allegations dropped
Last week, the allegations were significantly reduced: for example, parts of the money laundering allegations against Ballweg were dropped. Most recently, Ballweg had only been accused of attempted fraud. The prosecution worked with the daring legal construct of an “unsuccessful attempt”. Nobody had ever been harmed by Ballweg.
Lawyer Dr. Alexander Christ from Ballweg’s legal team appeared in an interview with Austria’s AUF1 last week and reported numerous inconsistencies in the 120-page indictment. For example, money laundering allegations that had already been dropped resurfaced in the indictment. “A tale,” summarized Dr. Christ.”
The release of Ballweg is certainly good news. But leading a protest and speaking up against the government still remains dangerously risky today.
Twin Epidemics of Concordant Neuropsychiatric Disease
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | April 3, 2023
The CDC indicates that 1 in 36 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. This represents a sharp increase up from 1 in 10,000 in 1970. There has also been a less well delineated rise in gender dysphoria (GD) which is driving the clinical development of transgender medicine.
A natural question is: could ASD and GD be linked? While the epidemiology of both conditions is not well developed, several papers have reviewed the available evidence and have found a link. Van Der Miesen et al, in a narrative review concluded that about 20% of GD patients indeed have ASD.
When large, well performed epidemiological studies are completed it would not be a surprise if ASD is found to be an independent risk factor for GD. More complex analyses will be needed to understand if both conditions, which co-exist, have common pathophysiological determinants.
So the next time there is a news story on transgender rights, surgical advancement, hormone therapy, and psychological outcomes, keep in mind that autism is likely playing a role in the interpretation of what is portrayed to the public.
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Press TV – August 25, 2017
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel felt threatened by Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East. Netanyahu expressed his Iranophobic view in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday. Press TV has asked Scott Rickard, former American intelligence linguist from Tampa, Florida, and Brent Budowsky, a columnist at The Hill from Washington, to give their thoughts on the issue.
Rickard said Tel Aviv is concerned about the fact that the regime could not carry out its old project to spread sectarian divisions and pave the way for dismemberment of the countries in the Middle East region because of the Iranian-led resistance against Israeli policies, not only in the occupied territories of Palestine but also in the whole region.
“Iran is not a threat to Israel whatsoever. The threat that Israel sees is the fact that their Oded Yinon Plan is being put to a hold by Iran,” the intelligence linguist said on Thursday night.
“They (the Israelis) look at Iran as a threat only because they have no influence on their governments and Iran is autonomous and is not under the Zionist influence,” he added.
Since the victory of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, Tehran has been critical of Israel’s policies in the region, whereas “no leaders [of other states] even dared to speak out against Zionism,” Rickard argued. … continue
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