Twitter isn’t censoring accounts to keep users ‘safe’, but to spoon-feed establishment narratives

By Eva Bartlett | RT | April 30, 2021
It’s one thing to have policies against violence, abuse, and harassment. But in “protecting” users, Twitter is hell-bent on censoring voices that rock the boat, even when all they have tweeted is a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
Last week, Simon Goddek, who has a PhD in biotechnology and researches system dynamics, tweeted a link to a scientific study titled, “Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?”
Some time later, his account was frozen and he received a notice from Twitter that it would remain frozen until he deleted the offending tweet, and for the 12 hours following that.
In his Telegram group, he wrote:
“I was put into Twitter jail for citing a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Cancel science is real.
“What’s especially concerning is that I didn’t make any personal comment on the paper’s content. I only said that regarding that paper, masks CAN lead to massive health damages. It’s the conclusion of a scientific piece of work that has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 experts in the field.”
According to Twitter, Goddek violated their policy on, “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19.”
The article in question wasn’t even as risqué as others and merely addressed undesirable side effects of mask wearing. How is that “misinformation”?
I spoke with Goddek to learn more about what happened. Turns out, it’s not the first time.
“The first time I got censored because I cited a scientific, peer-reviewed paper on masks. I was just citing their work, and I got put into Twitter jail. In that tweet, I was saying, ‘Look, it seems masks don’t work.’ So, I also said my opinion.
“This time, I found another study on masks, which says there are adverse effects if you wear masks. So, I was citing the paper without putting my own opinion, and they censored me again, made me delete it and put me into Twitter jail again.”
On April 17, Naomi Wolf tweeted she had been locked out of Twitter for the fourth time for sharing a Stanford study, “proving the lack of efficacy of masks.” That study was also peer-reviewed.
This isn’t merely a case of Twitter deciding that Goddek and Wolf were not in the position to be discussing the efficacy or dangers of masks. Twitter is censoring pretty much anything about Covid that doesn’t match the narrative promoted by the WHO, CDC, and other such bodies.
Even a well-known epidemiologist has faced Twitter’s wrath. An article in the American Institute for Economic Research noted:
“Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff and co-creator of the Great Barrington Declaration, one of the most cited epidemiologists and infectious -disease experts in the world has been censored by Twitter. His tweet on how not everyone needs a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was not taken down. He had a warning slapped on it and users have been prevented from liking or retweeting the post.”
That article also emphasized:
“Dr. Kulldorff serves on the Covid-19 vaccine safety subgroup that the CDC, NIH, and FDA rely upon for technical expertise on this very subject.”
On April 10, a group called Drs4CovidEthics tweeted:
“Not a month on Twitter & we were locked out of our account, forced to delete our pinned tweet. We must self-censor or be banned says Twitter (paraphrasing) We mustn’t contradict official sources. But our letters contradict official sources. With good reason. Which we can’t tweet.”
What do they know better than Twitter censors? They’re merely “doctors & scientists from 25+ countries, including heads of ICU, world leading immunologists, experts in public health, drug safety, respiratory illness, GPs, researchers in vaccines, pharmacology, virology, biochemistry…”
I searched for more examples of extreme Twitter censorship and found further censorship of vaccine related information, and one person’s hypothesis on why vaccine talk is so particularly taboo: “$157 billion buys a lot of Facebook and Twitter bans.”
The popular independent website Off Guardian recently was locked out of Twitter for sharing one of its own articles on Covid vaccines, they told me.
In fact, Twitter has been censoring Off Guardian for at least a year. When users try to open a tweet to an Off Guardian article, they are met with a warning that the link could be potentially spammy or unsafe.
The warning continues with a large blue button advising to return to the previous page, and a teeny tiny “continue” on to the article option. Same thing for the independent Canadian website Global Research.
Last year, I tried to tweet an article written by respected journalist F. William Engdahl for New Eastern Outlook (NEO). Twitter wouldn’t allow me to even tweet it, instead giving me an error message about the link being “potentially harmful.”
And it’s not only matters of Covid. Just now, I tried to tweet another NEO article, not related to Covid, and was again met with the same message.
A Twitter account focusing on the propaganda around Xinjiang had his account suspended.
And when the New York Post wrote exposés about Hunter Biden’s emails, Twitter locked the Post’s account.
Which makes it all the more clear this isn’t about “facts” or “safety” but blatant censorship.
Whether or not you agree with a point or comment being made by one of the people censored by Twitter, we should be allowed to access their perspective, research for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. We don’t need Twitter to hold our hands and spoon-feed us establishment narratives.
Twitter’s “rules” page reads:
“Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
If you believe that, as the saying goes, I have a bridge to sell you.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Europe’s heavy industry unlikely to survive Net Zero
GWPF – 30/04/21
It is becoming ever more evident that much of Europe’s heavy industry is unlikely to survive the EU’s unilateral Net Zero policy.
The EU’s carbon price reached a new record high of 45 euros ($54) a tonne on Tuesday.

As the carbon price is expected to increase much further in the next few years, European industrial groups are desperately calling for the introduction of a carbon border tax, hoping that it will save them from international competitors that are able to produce much cheaper.

Even higher carbon prices are coming. BloombergNEF expects carbon prices to hit 100 euros by 2030.
They warn that rising energy and carbon costs will force energy-intensive manufacturing to shut down and relocate to countries with less stringent CO2 targets if the EU does not introduce protectionist carbon protection.
It is rather doubtful, however, whether the EU can afford to introduce a carbon border tax, knowing full well that China, India and much of the rest of the emerging and developing world would simply retaliate in return, threatening to tax European products out of Asian and African markets altogether.
European and American politicians should be reminded that we have been warning for years about this inevitable outcome of unilateral climate policies.
The Anti-Lockdown Movement Is Large and Growing

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | AIER | April 29, 2021
Feeling outgunned, outnumbered, overpowered, smothered, and censored? Many people who oppose Covid lockdowns and all their associated restrictions feel this way. It’s hard not to. You can hardly post on social media without triggering warnings, corrections, and sometimes outright blocks.
Bans are part of the mix too, the complete deplatforming of people merely because they want their freedoms back. It’s creepy. We never thought we would see these days but here we are.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media continues to push restrictions – mask mandates and vaccine passports – just as it has for the past 14 months. The technology of intimidation is getting more sophisticated.
But how true is it that anti-lockdown people are a small and increasingly marginalized minority?
Consider:
- The Wall Street Journal is one of the world’s largest circulation newspapers, with twice the physical circulation of the New York Times. Its editorial page has been consistently against lockdowns nearly from the beginning.
- Fox News has been running anti-lockdown commentary for a full year. It very easily dominates all cable TV news, hosting 6 of the top 10 shows. It is trouncing CNN, for example, which is struggling for viewers.
- The top-rated commentary show for this year and last has been Tucker Carlson Tonight, which offers gripping anti-lockdown interviews and commentary on every show, including interviews with scientists and activists left and right.
- Elon Musk, among the most prominent tech entrepreneurs in the world, has fiercely spoken out against lockdowns.
- Joe Rogan has the most popular podcast in the English language, and he has been consistently against lockdowns and Covid mandates for a year, most recently telling his audience the common-sense point that healthy young people should not be forced to be vaccinated since the virus is no threat to them.
- The Onion once ruled satire on the web but the site has been terrible on lockdowns. Its traffic has been sinking steadily. The anti-lockdown Babylon Bee started low and has soared to new highs, often beating The Onion. The Babylon Bee has been ruthless in satirizing Covid hysteria, and is being rewarded for doing so.
- The Epoch Times has as much web traffic as the Wall Street Journal and has been fantastic on lockdowns, running a full 45-minute long interview with Great Barrington Declaration signatory Jayanta Bhattacharya.
- Polls show strong opposition to all stringency measures among Republicans (40% want immediate opening of everything) and much less opposition among Democrats. It’s tragic and wrong that there should be any partisan divide on what is a question of science and good sense but that’s what happens when you politicize a disease.
- The scientists who drafted the Great Barrington Declaration were pilloried last year but now cannot come close to keeping up with interviews, testimonies, article requests, and media contacts. Last year this time, they were quiet scientists; now they are among the most famous epidemiologists in the world.
- Even the CDC is playing catchup to the anti-lockdown position, adjusting its advice on the J&J vaccine in light of Martin Kulldorff’s article in The Hill, even as they shoved him off their vaccine evaluation commission.
- Protests are rarely reported by the national media but they are happening. The Five Freedoms campaign pushed by the DailyClout is gaining traction. Those freedoms are: no vaccine passports, no mask mandates, no emergency law, open schools up 100%, and freedom of commerce, worship, and petition.
- Noncompliance is nationwide. Many parts of the country were speakeasies since last April but now the push to live life normally is spreading even to New York, where the Hardcore scene this past weekend publicly flouted all regulations and is thus being investigated.
The most important reason why anti-lockdowners should not feel demoralized is that the facts are overwhelming on the side of freedom and traditional public health principles.
Consider for example this CDC chart of 3 states that imposed strict measures (Michigan, California, and Massachusetts), and still enforce many measures plus mask mandates, versus 3 states that have been open with no such mandates (Florida, Texas, and South Carolina). Look at the trajectory of severe outcomes from the virus:

The early spikes in Massachusetts and Michigan are obvious, tracing to a surprising extent to the number of nursing homes in each state. In Michigan, 31% of the deaths are in nursing homes, and, though the numbers in Massachusetts are always being revised, it could be anywhere from 40% to 61%.
Following that fiasco in which regulations often failed to protect the vulnerable, the trajectory of the virus follows a common pattern, reducing in severity as it mutates over time and herd immunity creates endemicity through natural immunity and vaccines. It’s the path of a respiratory virus that has been known for the better part of 100 years. Nothing surprising here. Perhaps the only real surprise in the data is how the completely open states did not perform badly compared with the closed states. Texas is a case in point. It’s open with no disaster.
The lesson: lockdown policies failed to protect the vulnerable and otherwise did little to nothing actually to suppress or otherwise control the virus. AIER has assembled fully 35 studies revealing no connection between lockdowns and disease outcomes. In addition, the Heritage Foundation has published an outstanding roundup of the Covid experience, revealing that lockdowns were largely political theater distracting from what should have been good public health practice.
Finally, it appears that even Mayor Bill de Blasio is promising a “full reopening” of New York City by July 1, a change he credits to vaccines (which is fine but unprovable) but also reflects a huge shift in public opinion. Other states are racing to open as well. These people track polls. They sense the shift.
Here’s what I see coming in the rest of the year. Once most everything is opened, and more and more people calm down from disease panic, there will be a realization, slow at first and then all at once, that what happened over these 14 months was a catastrophic disaster of public health without precedent. The collateral damage is unfathomable.
The reason why the lockdown advocates are intensifying their perception and exercise of hegemony right now is to forestall the possibility that the entire lockdown praxis will fall into massive disrepute. They will not get their way. Let the blowback begin.
Daisies Under Threat From Climate Change! says the Telegraph
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 30, 2021
Where do they dredge up these dolts?
From the Telegraph :
Perhaps somebody should tell Dr Dines the difference between “weather” and “climate”!
Spring last year was a dry one, but there is nothing at all unusual in that, and there have been eight drier springs on record. Nor is there any sort of trend in spring rainfall:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series
Shame on the increasingly absurd Telegraph, not to mention dopey Olivia Rudgard for printing this nonsense.
Doctor Breaks Ranks With Elite For Truth And Freedom
Principia Scientific | April 29, 2021
Until recently, Dr Christiane Northrup was a rock star of the Liberal media, with three New York Times Bestsellers, 10 appearances on Oprah! and numerous TV appearances on The Dr. Oz Show, Today, Rachel Ray Show, The View, 20/20 and eight PBS Specials, which raised millions of dollars for the network. She was a celebrated Feminist on the front lines of women’s Mind-Body Medicine, when doing this was still OK – before the Big Pharma global coup d’état.
Today, she is eviscerated on her Wikipedia page for having “embraced QAnon ideology during the COVID-19 pandemic,” based on this article, which is totally laughable. “QAnon” has become the latest iteration of the term, “conspiracy theorist”, used to discredit truth-telling opponents of the criminal establishment.
I’ve seen it used against others and it was recently used against me, as if I live and breathe “QAnon” and therefore, I am garbage, so don’t listen to anything I say. It looks like low-rent “journalists” are being hired to systematically deploy the “QAnon” label in hit pieces against those who question the corporatist narrative that has hijacked the planet since March, 2020. These derogatory articles are designed to appear in internet searches of the target’s name.
The “QAnon” trope is one of total disparagement, falsely associating those to whom it is ascribed with “extreme right wing” “white supremacist” “domestic terrorism” (despite Q promoting none of this); even PBS’ very own Dr Northrup, with eight blockbuster seasons, not including re-runs is now a suspected Nazi. The patent absurdity of this beggars belief.
As Dr Northrup explains here, “In 2013, I was one of Reader’s Digest Most Trusted People in America, and now, in 2021, I am one of the ‘Disinformation Dozen’, along with Sherri [Tenpenny], those of us accused of 70% of the disinformation about vaccines on the internet – which is an astounding fall from grace, until you understand who is determining what grace is.”
That “who” is Big Pharma and the world’s largest corporations, which have been weaponized by the Globalists to bypass the world’s legal systems and to commit a litany of COVID crimes against humanity over the past 14 months, not the least of which are the so-called “vaccines”.
Dr Northrup, who unlike Clif High is a physician and was a clinical assistant professor of OBGYN for 25 years corroborates Clif’s report last week of miscarriages and other reproductive dysfunction in both men and women.
Disturbingly, she also corroborates what Clif said about these problems being seen in non-vaccinated women working in proximity to vaccinated people, all but confirming his most serious concern, that the synthetic spike protein antibodies shed by the vaccinated could conceivably lead to the complete sterilization of the human species – including the unvaccinated.
Dr Sherri Tenpenny has described the spike protein antibodies produced by the COVID injection as “Absolutely deadly.” According to her, these injections and their synthetic spike proteins have so far been found to do the following, usually by Day 19 after exposure:
- Attack your lung tissue and break it down.
- Attack your pancreas: Cause diabetes in non-diabetics and aggravate diabetes symptoms in diabetics.
- Cause adverse reactions in 27 out of 55 of the tissue types exposed to the serum.
- Cause anaphylaxis, probably from the polyethylene glycol.
- Inhibit your anti-inflammatory M2 macrophages, sometimes resulting in a deadly cytokine storm.
- Attack your astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, which are two different kinds of brain/nerve cells; attacking by two different mechanisms, through the inner mitochondria membrane and through the neurofilament protein of the motor neurons, leading to uncontrolled seizures.
- Cause debilitating fatigue by attacking your mitochondria and the intracellular antigen, GAD 65 inside of your mitochondria.
- Cause autoimmune disease in roughly 48 weeks and;
- Cause mutant strains of COVID, in what Dr Tenpenny describes as “A perfectly-designed kill machine.”
Worst of all, there is no “off” switch to stop the cells’ manufacture of these spike protein antibodies, once the messenger RNA (mRNA) in the COVID shots instruct the cells to start making them. Therefore, this mRNA may not only lead to a runaway train of adverse health consequences for the vaccinated but it may also lead to the mass sterilization of the unvaccinated.
During her speech at Clay Shaw’s Health & Freedom conference in Tulsa, Dr Northrup warned those who wished to remain unvaccinated about the potential hazards of being exposed to the bodily fluids of those who are.
In this video, Dr Northrup says,
“My feeling on this is there is some kind of bioweapon; some kind of bioweapon that the body is now secreting, transmitting, as it were, as you said, Sherri, from somebody who’s had the shot. Because, as we know: this is not a normal immunization. This is something that causes the body to make a synthetic protein against a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. It is a synthetic protein that’s never been seen and the body begins to produce this as a factory. It doesn’t shut off.
I’ve had people say ‘Well, maybe, you know, in two weeks, this will stop.’ There is no way this is going to stop, because it’s made your body into a factory for a synthetic protein that’s never been seen before, that theoretically can be in your saliva, urine, feces, sweat, seminal fluid, blood, flatus, maybe.
And so when you’re around a person, then I think this is coming out of their bodies and possibly adversely affecting the most delicate hormonal system. I mean, to get pregnant and stay pregnant is an enormously complex system and we know that that spike protein antibody cross-reacts with syncytin 1 and 2, and those are proteins absolutely essential for the placenta, for fertilization, for maintaining a pregnancy.
We now have women who are miscarrying, they are unable to get pregnant, they’re having heavy bleeding. We don’t know why. But my feeling about this is that something is being produced by the body of a vaccinated person that is possibly adversely affecting others and it is of great concern to me.”
See more here: forbiddenknowledgetv.net
There is no scientific foundation to the concept of Vaccine Passports: Doctors for Covid Ethics
By Oliver May • THE DAILY EXPOSE • April 29, 2021
Doctors for Covid Ethics, a group of doctors across Europe and North America, say studies on Covid-19’s closest-related virus to infect humans, SARS, revealed that those who had acquired natural immunity in 2003 remain protected even now. They also maintain that, even before the onset of vaccination campaigns, most people had become immune to Covid-19, either through infection with the virus itself, often without symptoms or with only mild, uncharacteristic ones, or due to cross-immunity conferred by other, naturally occurring coronaviruses.
But under an Article of Law Decree just published by the European Union, its proposed Digital Green Pass will have validity for just six months. Once this expires the holder would need to be re-vaccinated or have had Covid in the last six months or take a test every 48 hours in order to regain their freedoms.
Doctors for Covid Ethics argue there is no rational case for such a pass, which is currently being used in Israel and proposed in the UK, adding that immunity from infection is likely to be durable and unaffected by variants.
Doctors for Covid Ethics said: “There is no scientific foundation to the concept of vaccine passports and no rational case at all for vaccine passports. To set a six-month cut-off is bizarre and arbitrary. Examining the time course of antibodies in blood samples is not a valid approach to the question of, ‘how long does immunity last?’.
“This is because antibodies aren’t the most important host defence mechanism in immunity to viruses. That’s considered to be T-cell memory (cytotoxic as well as ‘helper’ lymphocytes) and B-memory (antibody producing) cells. Antibodies naturally fall over time if you’re no longer constantly rechallenged with the infective pathogen. As community prevalence falls away, this re-exposure to the virus also diminishes.
“When durability of immunity to the closest known virus, SARS, was studied, those who had acquired immunity naturally, through infection in 2003, all retained immunity 17 years later. There is speculation that ‘variants’ of SARS-CoV-2 might ‘break through’ the immunity gained through natural infection or vaccination. There is absolutely no evidence for this at all.
“In fact, there is very strong evidence to the contrary – that no variant is sufficiently different from the original virus that it’s even possible for ‘immune escape’ to occur. Several groups of immunologists have shown convincingly that people immune to one variant have T-cells which recognise all the other variants tested. This isn’t a surprise, for no variant differs from the original sequence by more than 0.3 per cent.
“In fact, those who had retained immunity to SARS also possessed cross-immunity to SARS-CoV-2. These two viruses differ by approximately 20 per cent. Obviously, if our immune systems easily recognise two viruses which share 80 per cent similarity, it follows that differences of 0.3 per cent are completely irrelevant, from an immunological perspective.”
The group went on to add that focusing on antibodies in the context of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 is “flawed” and so coercing people into so-called booster vaccines in order to regain their freedoms withdrawn by Governments is wholly inappropriate.
“The whole concept of antibody-based immunity against an air-borne pathogen is flawed because the antibodies are on the wrong side of the wall and cannot intercept viral entry into the respiratory tract epithelium,” added the group.
“Secreted IgA antibodies play no significant role either: selective IgA deficiency does not enhance susceptibility towards coronavirus infections.”
The group also highlights that vaccine companies have been exempt from legal liability for vaccine-induced harm, adding that, for the vast majority of people, SARS-CoV-2 is a non-lethal, typically mild to moderately severe illness. They said: “The overwhelming majority of people are not at risk from COVID-19 and do not require vaccination for their own protection.
“The vaccines have been touted as a means to prevent asymptomatic infection and, by extension, asymptomatic transmission. However, “asymptomatic transmission” is an artefact of invalid and unreliable PCR test procedures and interpretations, leading to high false-positive rates. Evidence indicates that PCR-positive, asymptomatic people are healthy false-positives, not carriers. A comprehensive study of 9,899,828 people in China found that asymptomatic individuals testing positive for COVID-19 never infected others.
“In contrast, the papers cited by the Centre for Disease Control to justify claims of asymptomatic transmission are based on hypothetical models, not empirical studies; they present assumptions and estimates rather than evidence. Preventing asymptomatic infection is not a viable rationale for promoting vaccination of the general population.”
They have written to MEP’s, putting them on notice that liability for adverse reactions to the vaccines will fall on them, should they vote for the Digital Green Pass, which was debated on Wednesday.
And last week, Doctors for Covid Ethics wrote their third letter to the European Medicines Agency, warning executive director Emer Cooke that cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) dominates the list of adverse reactions from the vaccines and is not as rare as the EMA suggests.
More False Positives Than True Positives in the First Two Weeks of School Testing
By Michael Curzon • Lockdown Sceptics • April 29, 2021
A member of SAGE warned back in February that the return of unvaccinated children to the classroom would create a “significant risk of a resurgence” of Covid infections. This was not the case – only 0.06% of rapid Covid tests of students produced positive results in the week that schools reopened. But how many of these results were actually positive? Professor Jon Deeks, a biostatistician from the University of Birmingham, said in March: “We would expect far more false positives than true positives amongst those testing positive in schools.” New data from the Department of Health and Social Care has now confirmed that more false positive results were produced than true positives in the first two weeks of school testing.

Department of Health and Social Care
This data, as Professor Deeks points out, is a damning indictment of the use of rapid Covid testing in schools and has resulted in many children having to isolate at home unnecessarily – with their classmates often being sent home too. (At one stage, more than 200,000 schoolchildren were having to self-isolate, forcing them to miss out on much-needed catch-up work in classes.)
[The] proportion[s] false were 62% and 55% in these two weeks.
Of 2,304 positive tests, 1,353 were likely false, with one positive per 6,900 tests done.
The use of PCR tests to confirm or (in more cases) deny lateral flow test results is itself a strange choice, as Lockdown Sceptics’ Will Jones points out, and could mean that the true impact of rapid testing in schools is even worse than this data suggests.
It is interesting that they assume confirmation from a PCR test defines true and false positives, even though PCR tests are more sensitive than LFTs so are no less likely to give a positive from fragments or contamination. What if in some cases the PCR tests are just confirming the false positive of the lateral flow tests?
The British Medical Journal has been warning against the use of PCR tests for “case finding, mass screening, and disease surveillance” since last September (if not before):
PCR is not a test of infectiousness. Rather, the test detects trace amounts of viral genome sequence, which may be either live transmissible virus or irrelevant RNA fragments from previous infection. When people with symptoms or who have been recently exposed receive a positive PCR result they will probably be infectious. But a positive result in someone without symptoms or known recent exposure may be from live or dead virus, and so does not determine whether the person is infectious and able to transmit the virus to others.
Clearly, testing requirements for schools must now change. But the problem is not limited to the classroom. Professor Deeks says that false positive data should now be released for all forms of lateral flow testing.
Obama administration scientist says climate ‘emergency’ is based on fallacy
By Dr. Steven E. Koonin | New York Post | April 24, 2021
The Science,” we’re told, is settled. How many times have you heard it?
Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed.
Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that — to paraphrase the classic movie “The Princess Bride” — “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says.”
For example, both research literature and government reports state clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile.
These are almost certainly not the only climate facts you haven’t heard. Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn from recent published research or assessments of climate science published by the US government and the UN:
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- Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century.
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- Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago.
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- The global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record.
Why haven’t you heard these facts before?
Most of the disconnect comes from the long game of telephone that starts with the research literature and runs through the assessment reports to the summaries of the assessment reports and on to the media coverage. There are abundant opportunities to get things wrong — both accidentally and on purpose — as the information goes through filter after filter to be packaged for various audiences. The public gets their climate information almost exclusively from the media; very few people actually read the assessment summaries, let alone the reports and research papers themselves. That’s perfectly understandable — the data and analyses are nearly impenetrable for non-experts, and the writing is not exactly gripping. As a result, most people don’t get the whole story.
Policymakers, too, have to rely on information that’s been put through several different wringers by the time it gets to them. Because most government officials are not themselves scientists, it’s up to scientists to make sure that those who make key policy decisions get an accurate, complete and transparent picture of what’s known (and unknown) about the changing climate, one undistorted by “agenda” or “narrative.” Unfortunately, getting that story straight isn’t as easy as it sounds.
I should know. That used to be my job.
I’m a scientist — I work to understand the world through measurements and observations, and then to communicate clearly both the excitement and the implications of that understanding. Early in my career, I had great fun doing this for esoteric phenomena in the realm of atoms and nuclei using high-performance computer modeling (which is also an important tool for much of climate science). But beginning in 2004, I spent about a decade turning those same methods to the subject of climate and its implications for energy technologies. I did this first as chief scientist for the oil company BP, where I focused on advancing renewable energy, and then as undersecretary for science in the Obama administration’s Department of Energy, where I helped guide the government’s investments in energy technologies and climate science. I found great satisfaction in these roles, helping to define and catalyze actions that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the agreed-upon imperative that would “save the planet.”
But doubts began in late 2013 when I was asked by the American Physical Society to lead an update of its public statement on climate. As part of that effort, in January 2014 I convened a workshop with a specific objective: to “stress test” the state of climate science.
I came away from the APS workshop not only surprised, but shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed. Here’s what I discovered:
Humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate. The results from many different climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of observations. In short, the science is insufficient to make useful predictions about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.
In the seven years since that workshop, I watched with dismay as the public discussions of climate and energy became increasingly distant from the science. Phrases like “climate emergency,” “climate crisis” and “climate disaster” are now routinely bandied about to support sweeping policy proposals to “fight climate change” with government interventions and subsidies. Not surprisingly, the Biden administration has made climate and energy a major priority infused throughout the government, with the appointment of John Kerry as climate envoy and proposed spending of almost $2 trillion dollars to fight this “existential threat to humanity.”
Trillion-dollar decisions about reducing human influences on the climate should be informed by an accurate understanding of scientific certainties and uncertainties. My late Nobel-prizewinning Caltech colleague Richard Feynman was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. At the 1974 Caltech commencement, he gave a now famous address titled “Cargo Cult Science” about the rigor scientists must adopt to avoid fooling not only themselves. “Give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another,” he implored.
Much of the public portrayal of climate science ignores the great late physicist’s advice. It is an effort to persuade rather than inform, and the information presented withholds either essential context or what doesn’t “fit.” Scientists write and too-casually review the reports, reporters uncritically repeat them, editors allow that to happen, activists and their organizations fan the fires of alarm, and experts endorse the deception by keeping silent.
As a result, the constant repetition of these and many other climate fallacies are turned into accepted truths known as “The Science.”
This article is an adapted excerpt from Dr. Koonin’s book, “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” (BenBella Books), out May 4.
Facemask Wearing Runner Collapses After Winning 800 Metre Race
By Richie Allen | April 28, 2021
Track runner Maggie Williams, a student in Bend, Oregon, broke a school record in an 800 metre race last week. Williams won the race, but fainted as she crossed the line. She had run the race while wearing a facemask.
When she recovered enough to speak, the junior athlete said that she felt unable to breathe during the race. State guidelines mean competitors must wear a face covering during competition.
“In the past, this has never happened,” Williams said. “Then this race I was wearing a mask and it did happen, which I don’t think is a coincidence.”
Her coach Dave Turnbull agrees with her. He said:
“It was a different response than I’ve seen for kids that have collapsed to the track just because they were exhausted. She wasn’t sure where she was.”
Oregon’s health authority (OHA) released a statement yesterday. It said:
“The Oregon Health Authority regularly reviews COVID-19 guidance based on medical evidence and evolving science. We are revising the current guidance on the use of masks outdoors during competition. The guidance will allow people to take off face coverings when competing in non-contact sports outdoors and maintaining at least 6 feet of distance from others and the other virus protective protocols.
* The exception will not apply while training and conditioning for these sports or for competitions.
* The exception will not apply before and after competing.”
There is no evidence that facemasks protect the wearer or anyone they come into contact with. There is an abundance of evidence that facemasks are harmful.
Wearing one while running can kill you.
Don’t wear one, ever.

