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Trudeau makes Covid-19 aid intended to ‘save Canadian jobs’ conditional on meeting climate change goals

RT | May 11, 2020

Adding insult to the injury of Covid-19 closures, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that businesses seeking emergency payroll funding will have to demonstrate their compliance with ‘climate charge’ guidelines.

Citing the need to protect “Canadian middle-class jobs and safeguard our economy,” Trudeau on Monday rolled out the expansion of the Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility (LEEFF), intended to provide bridge liquidity to companies unable to meet their payroll due to the shutdown.

There is, of course, a catch. Among the standard safeguards listed in the government announcement – limits on stock buybacks, verification of a company’s tax status, protections for unions and pensions, among other things – there was this as well:

“In addition, recipient companies would be required to commit to publish annual climate-related disclosure reports… including how their future operations will support environmental sustainability and national climate goals.”

Asked whether the aid would be given to oil and gas companies, Trudeau said the government expects them to “put forward a frame within which they will demonstrate their commitments to reducing emissions and fighting climate change,” and that many have already made commitments to net-zero emissions by 2050.

The climate requirement is the only one on the list that has nothing to do with preventing the funding from going to companies that don’t need it, or being abused. The ideological requirement seems particularly onerous given that bridge liquidity is needed in the first place because of government-mandated closures to counter the spread of the coronavirus.

Trudeau’s conditioning of LEEFF funding on climate change compliance closely resembles the measures proposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in late March, when they scuttled the Senate-approved coronavirus aid bill in favor of their own. US Congressman James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) called the pandemic “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision” at the time.

With a Republican in the White House and the GOP majority in the Senate, they could only do so much, however, and mainly managed to delay the aid by several weeks. Trudeau has no such constraint, and he apparently took Clyburn’s words to heart.

In addition to pushing climate change measures, Trudeau invoked the Democrats’ rhetoric to impose a sweeping ban on “assault-style firearms designed for military use” via the Canadian equivalent of executive orders earlier this month. The list of prohibited weapons is so extensive that it includes an airsoft pellet gun and even a blend of coffee made by the US-based Black Rifle Coffee Company.

May 11, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Harvard Howler: Study claims PM2.5 increases risk of death from COVID19

By Steve Milloy | Junk Science | April 7, 2020

Never waste a crisis. A new study from Harvard claims that 1 microgram per cubic meter increase in PM2.5 is associated with a 15% increase in deaths from COVID19. This is totally absurd.

Here are the links you’ll need:

Here’s why this is a totally bogus claim.

  1. There is no biological plausibility to the notion that PM2.5 causes death.
  2. A change in exposure to PM2.5 of 1 microgram per cubic meter is not significant, discernible or detectable.
  3. If this claim were true, the death toll in Wuhan, China would be astronomical since, for example, the PM2.5 level in Wuhan is 158 micrograms/m3 — about 10 times higher than average US air.

But now that the Harvard fraudsters have made this data available, perhaps they’d be wailing to share their Harvard Six City study data?

May 10, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

BBC Climate Check – May

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | May 10, 2020

For the second month running, the BBC’s Climate Check has failed to find any bad weather to blame on global warming.

The best they could find was some heavy rain which fell in East Africa in February, leading to the locust swarm. Sadly for the BBC, they were unable to provide any evidence that this had anything at all with climate change. Or that such events had not happened regularly in the past.

This month, therefore, they focussed the video on reduced air pollution as a result of lockdowns. Nothing to do with climate or weather, but a good excuse for a bit of propaganda nevertheless!

The presenter, Ben Rich, reckons that emissions of CO2 could drop by 5%, which of course would mean that about 32 billion tonnes of the stuff would be sent up into the atmosphere.

He tells us scientists say the world would need to cut emissions by 7.5% every year for the next decade, to stay on track for 1.5C.

In other words, the world would need to get annual emissions down to 8 billion tonnes by 2030! Fat chance of that.

He then goes on to look at air quality, with some interesting graphics on nitrogen dioxide at about 1.10 mins. Whilst there is clearly a dip in levels of NO2 over China and Italy, there seems little evidence over northern Europe, unless my eyes are getting dodgy.

But back to the locusts. In flat out BBC disinformation mode, Rich warns of biblical famines, as a result of climate change, conflict and economic struggles. This is a reference to East Africa and the locust swarms.

There is simply no evidence that climate change has had any effect whatsoever, and neither does Rich offer any. He just says it, so “it must be true”.

This is typical of the BBC’s disregard for factual reporting, as far as climate change is concerned.

Just in case viewers have forgotten the reason for this monthly series, Rich ends by reminding us that climate change is still a global concern, and that governments will have to think carefully as they look beyond the lockdowns and consider any trade offs between economic recovery and the possible costs to the environment.

When was it a BBC weatherman’s job to attempt to influence government policy?

May 10, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

ALEC Behind Recent Push For Mandatory Vaccination

By Brandon Turbeville | Activist Post |

Over the last several months, Americans have witnessed an increase in media propaganda regarding the “dangers” of “anti-vaxxers,” the “proven science of vaccines,” and the “tragedies” that ensue from the failure to vaccinate. That propaganda blitz has resulted in massive hysteria stemming from similar levels of ignorance.

Also resulting from the push by Big Pharma-funded corporate media outlets is the emotional and panicked campaign of pro-vaxxers, vaccine pushers, and adherents to the relatively recent new religion of “scientism” – the religious belief in anything labeled as science or scientific, regardless of whether or not that concept directly contradicts observable reality and experience or even regardless of whether or not it is actually scientific.

The so-called vaccine debate – which is not truly a debate since a debate requires the participation of two opposing sides – is generally nothing more than a shouting and shaming campaign against parents who have come to the conclusion that vaccines are not safe, effective, or neither.

Indeed, it is the unbridled emotion of the pro-vaccine camp that has been provoked and subsequently harnessed into a powerhouse of vitriol and social pressure that is then presented as a public health crisis. The howling of the trendy masses, glued to their televisions, sitcoms, and NPR, is then presented as an organic public outcry in the media, resulting in the conveniently timed response of politicians and lawmakers.

Of course, with the creation of the false debate, there is also the political polarization of the issue – the left must be pitted against the right – in a typical but tried and true method of divide and conquer strategy.

Originally, holding questions regarding the safety or effectiveness of vaccinations was something that bridged political boundaries. Granted, the individuals who held these views were a minority. However, those numbers were growing and could be found in the midst of liberals and conservatives, libertarians and socialists, and even those completely unaligned to any ideology.

Now, however, that is beginning to change. The Big Pharma companies that fund the mainstream media and the political parasites infecting the federal and state capitols have managed to turn this debate into a partisan issue.

The propaganda campaign has been successful among members of all political denominations, but particularly so among the left. This is because the left is made up of a population that is well-trained to believe anything presented to them under the guise of science in much the same way as the right who are designed to believe anything presented in a religious context.

The result of this massive absorption of indoctrination is that we have the passage of bills mandating that children be vaccinated by force of law in California and even the attempt to force adults to be vaccinated as well.

With mandates coming out of California, North Carolina, and Vermont, clearly there is a nationwide agenda at foot.

But while those on the left continue to attack Koch Industries and ALEC for funding a number of horrific economic policies and divisive domestic campaigns, painting any idea they oppose coming from the Republican camps as a “Koch-funded” program (it often is), the reality is that the leftists are the biggest dupes in the vaccine game.

This is because, while leftists hawk vaccines and pride themselves on their obedience to doctors and “scientists,” they are doing nothing more than falling into line with a massive Koch-funded and ALEC-facilitated propaganda campaign.

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 

For those who may not be familiar with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the council is considered a “non-profit organization” made up of Conservative state legislators and corporate private sector “partners.” This mixture of government officials and corporate agents then meet regularly, replete with funding from major corporations all across the world to discuss, plan, write, and submit legislation that is beneficial to the corporations.

In one sense, ALEC is a massive corporate lobbying firm. In another, however, ALEC is much more, since much of the legislation submitted by the attentive congressman is actually written for the Senator or Representative by the agents of the organization. It is an organization that provides funding and direction (marching orders) for Congressmen, particularly those at the state level.

While slimy billionaires like George Soros act as the guiding force behind much of the American left, ALEC and KOCH Industries tend to fill the same void for the right; although, in truth, most of the corporations that make up ALEC are those who also fund Democratic candidates. Presentation, however, in a carefully crafted political theatre like the United States, is paramount.

As Alan Greenblatt describes the organization in his article for Governing,

For decades, the American Legislative Exchange Council has been a force in shaping conservative policies at the state level. Today, its impact is even more pervasive. Its legislative ideas are resonating in practically every area of state government, from education and health to energy, environment and tax policy. The group, which brings together legislators with representatives from corporations, think tanks and foundations to craft model bills, has rung up an impressive score. Roughly 1,000 bills based on ALEC language are introduced in an average year, with about 20 percent getting enacted.

Brendan Greeley of Bloomberg Business describes ALEC in a similar fashion. He writes,

For three decades, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the meeting’s host, has brought together corporations (including Pfizer (PFE), AT&T (T), and ExxonMobil (XOM)) and state legislators to write what it calls model bills—pieces of legislation the industries would like to become law. Often this means protecting favored tax treatment or keeping regulations at bay. ALEC has also approved model bills on social issues, including gun control and voter registration. The bills then get passed around among the 1,800 mostly Republican legislators who are ALEC members. They introduce the model bills about 1,000 times a year in state capitols around the country, the group says. About 200 become law. ALEC pays for the meetings through membership fees (called donations) that corporations pay. The legislators receive travel stipends (called scholarships) to attend the meetings. ALEC is registered with the IRS as a nonprofit that provides a public service, not as a lobbyist that seeks to influence.

This offers two benefits: Corporate members can deduct yearly dues, which run up to $25,000—more if they want to sponsor meetings; and ALEC doesn’t have to disclose the names of legislators and executives who attend. That’s important, because if ALEC operated with complete openness it would have difficulty operating at all. ALEC has attracted a wide and wealthy range of supporters in part because it’s done its work behind closed doors. Membership lists were secret. The origins of the model bills were secret. Part of ALEC’s mission is to present industry-backed legislation as grass-roots work. If this were to become clear to everyone, there’d be no reason for corporations to use it.

While ALEC has pushed a number of bills regarding divisive wedge issues (it has to keep up its conservative veneer), it focuses mostly on economic issues promoting free market, Austrian school, deregulation, free trade, and other policies supported by major banks and corporations.

But ALEC is also a major pusher of laws regarding medical issues – not merely in the context of the American healthcare system, but also in the context of personal choice.

Despite all the rhetoric of ALEC and its puppets in Congress, the position of the organization and its puppets is not necessarily in favor of personal choice. This much has been made clear in the form of mandates and force of law, particularly in the area of vaccination.

This should not be surprising considering ALEC’s many Big Pharma members. While the organization is made up of a plethora of major corporations Big Pharma makes up a sizable portion of its ranks.

Below are a very small few of pharmaceutical companies that are part of ALEC’s operations.

  • Astellas Pharma Inc.
  • Bayer
  • Dupont (Dupont Merck Pharmaceuticals)
  • Eli Lilly
  • Endo Pharmaceuticals
  • Express Scripts
  • GlaxoSmithKline
  • Hoechst- Roussell Pharmaceutical Corporation
  • Hoffman La-Roche
  • Imperial Chemical Industries Pharmaceuticals
  • Johnson & Johnson
  • Mylan Pharmaceuticals
  • Novo Nordisk
  • Pharmacia and UpJohn
  • Purdue Pharma
  • Pfizer
  • Solvay Pharmaceutical
  • Takeda Pharmaceutical
  • TEVA Pharmaceuticals
  • TogetherRX Access (made up of ABBVIE, GSK, Janssen, Lifescan, Pfizer, Stiefel, Viiv Healthcare, Vistakon Pharmaceuticals)
  • The UpJohn Co.

These names are only a small few of the myriad of pharmaceutical companies, vaccine manufacturers, and other interested parties who are listed as members of ALEC. Many of these companies are concealed even further by a veil of umbrella “organizations” acting as front operations.

ALEC And Vaccines

With such a massive list of major pharmaceutical companies amidst ALEC’s ranks, it should come as no real surprise that ALEC would be one of the driving forces behind the recent spate of “mandatory vaccine bills” popping up all across the country. Indeed, its motto should be “Personal Choice For Corporations. Government Enforced Mandates For People.”

Remember, it was ALEC that crafted the “model” legislation “Immunization of Minors On TANF,” legislation that would have required parents on TANF assistance to require proof that their children were fully vaccinated according to the “recommended” levels. If those families did not show proof of their child’s vaccination, those families would lose their TANF benefits.

While exemptions were left intact in this “model” legislation, ALEC has stepped up its attack on parental rights by going after the exemption status in later bills.

For instance, consider the attempt to remove Vermont citizens’ rights to a philosophical exemption to vaccination known as SB 199, a bill that caught many in Vermont by complete surprise. Of course, when one takes a look at the key players and possible motivations, it becomes more obvious as to how this bill came to be and why.

SB 199 was submitted in the Senate by ALEC’s Vermont Chair Senator, Kevin Mullin, and in the House by a notorious vaccine pusher and vaccine damage denier. As Barbara Loe Fisher writes for National Vaccine Information Center,

S199 was introduced in the state Senate by Kevin Mullin, who is VT chair of the Pharma-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and was introduced in the state House by Representative George Till, M.D., at the request of Harry Chen, M.D., Vermont’s Health Commissioner. Dr. Chen, who was a Vermont state representative and former chair of the Vermont House Health Care Committee for four years, has publicly downplayed vaccine risks.

S199 was supported by the VT Dept. of Health and state government supported institutions, such as the University of Vermont, as well as medical trade associations that receive money from pharmaceutical corporations selling vaccines in the U.S., including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), March of Dimes, Every Child by Two and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Other organizations endorsing elimination of the philosophical exemption included the Vermont Academy of Family Physicians, Fletcher Allen, Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, Voices for VT Children, Vermont Pharmacists Association, Rutland Medical Center, and Vermont Medical Society.

Edward Kentish seconded Fisher’s criticism in his op-ed for VTDigger.com when he wrote,

Here ALEC’s Vermont chairman, Republican Sen. Kevin Mullin, introduced S.199, a bill seeking to end the “philosophical exemption” in the childhood vaccine laws. A Republican introducing a health care bill, one that removes a parent’s rights, one that obliges all children to participate in a health care plan. … An ugly duckling if ever there was one! Just doesn’t look like all the rest.

The duckling looks even uglier in the light of Vermont’s exemplary health statistics. We rank right up there on general health, low incidence of infectious diseases, and low child mortality. What’s the problem, what motivates such a bill? Well, several corporations have recently publicly cut their ties with ALEC over ALEC’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, underscoring the reality that ALEC is funded by corporations, and we may guess has their interests at heart more than your child’s well-being.

One might be tempted to argue that the vaccine bill submitted in Vermont was merely an anomaly. That is, one would be tempted to make this argument if the Vermont bill was the only such bill submitted and supported by ALEC and its members.

In California, the infamous and fascist SB 277 which unfortunately became law was introduced by another vaccine fanatic and high priest of the religion of scientism, Richard Pan. Ben Allen, however, the second State Senator to introduce the legislation into the California state Senate is himself connected to ALEC. As Maureen Cruise of LA Progressive wrote in regards to Allen’s funding,

Among other wealthy conservative donors are William E. Oberndorf, a California billionaire investor who funds conservative causes such as the privatization of education which he promotes via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). He has contributed to the Karl Rove PAC and to Jeb Bush and the GW Bush Foundation. The Fisher Family of Gap and a dozen other corporations are fans of privatization of the public sector and charter schools.

Oberndorf, the ALEC big wig, is a major donor of Allen.

Cruise also points out that a sizable portion of Allen’s campaign contributions come directly from pharmaceutical interests.

A similar story is discovered in North Carolina, where notoriously arrogant and corrupt Senator Jeff Tarte – in between fits of whining and rage – introduced a bill that would have removed all vaccine exemption rights (except for medical exemptions) from parents and children, including homeschool children.

As if his last name did not accurately describe his disposition, Senator Tarte was one of the main sponsors of the NC bill SB 346, a bill that would have eliminated the “religious exemption” clause in the recommended vaccine schedule for children entering NC public schools. He was also a main contender for the title of worst public relations interaction with a constituent in the state of North Carolina in the last several years.

In keeping with the trend of recent events, however, Tarte is also a member of the ALEC organization, a feather in his cap that he was not shy in advertising in his weekly newsletter. Tarte not only is a member, but an active participant taking part in speaking events and even a seat on the ALEC Education Council.

Conclusion

The goal of forced vaccination has been in existence for quite some time, going back to a number of elite think tanks decades ago and the halls of pharmaceutical companies. Major pharmaceutical companies, for many obvious (or should be obvious ) reasons would also like to mandate vaccination. Increased profits from the vaccine sales and the treatment of resulting disease, as well as the cover-up of vaccine risks by a population free of a control group are but a few of the reasons such corporations are supporting the vaccine mandates.

After all, as Bertrand Russell stated as far back as 1953,

Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .

But, while the push to mandate vaccines for children and adults is by no means an ALEC-centric conspiracy, this recent push for such laws was indeed formulated in ALEC councils.

For this reason, it is highly ironic that the political left should be the half of the paradigm that takes up the charge for mandatory vaccination laws. After all, it is the left (at the lower levels) who seems to live by the motto “If ALEC supports it, we oppose it.” This time, all it took was some clever propaganda, trendy nudging, and social shaming and the left was marching right behind ALEC as militantly as if they were Republicans all along.

The entire vaccine debate can scarcely even be labeled a debate. It is an exercise in social shaming, shouting down opposing views, and religious devotion to television and anyone wearing a lab coat or claiming to be an expert.

With the culprit behind the recent mandatory vaccine/eliminate exemption push now revealed, it is time to begin working toward repealing these laws and making sure that no similar bill is ever politically viable.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real ConspiraciesFive Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

May 10, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World

Watch on BitChute / LBRY / Minds / YouTube or Download video / Download audio

Corbett • 05/01/2020

TRANSCRIPT

Part One

Part Two: Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World

POPPY HARLOW: Ten billion dollars. I mean, just speak about the magnitude of that. That is by far the biggest commitment of the foundation, isn’t it, Bill? I mean this is by far the largest.

BILL GATES: That’s right, we’ve been spending a lot on vaccines. With this commitment, over eight million additional lives will be saved. So it’s one of the most effective ways that health in the poorest countries can be dramatically improved.

SOURCE: Gates Foundation: $10 billion for vaccines

In January of 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates used the World Economic Forum at Davos to announce a staggering $10 billion commitment to research and develop vaccines for the world’s poorest countries, kicking off what he called a “decade of vaccines.”

GATES: Today we’re announcing a commitment over this next decade, which we think of as a decade of vaccines having incredible impact. We’re announcing that we’ll spend over $10 billion on vaccines.

SOURCE: PBS News Hour January 29, 2010 6:00pm-7:00pm EST

Hailed by the Gates-funded media . . .

HARI SREENIVASAN: For the record, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a NewsHour underwriter.

SOURCE: PBS News Hour January 29, 2010 6:00pm-7:00pm EST

. . . and applauded by the pharmaceutical companies who stood to reap the benefits of that largesse, the record-setting commitment made waves in the international community, helping to underwrite a Global Vaccine Action Plan coordinated by the Gates-funded World Health Organization.

But contrary to Gates’ own PR spin that this $10 billion pledge was an unalloyed good and would save 8 million lives, the truth is that this attempt to reorient the global health economy was part of a much bigger agenda. An agenda that would ultimately lead to greater profits for big pharma companies, greater control for the Gates Foundation over the field of global health, and greater power for Bill Gates to shape the course of the future for billions of people around the planet.

This is Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World.

You’re tuned into The Corbett Report.

Given Gates’ pledge to make this a “Decade of Vaccines,” it should come as no surprise that, since the dawn of this coronavirus crisis, he has been adamant that the world will not go back to normal until a vaccine has been developed.

GATES: We’re gonna have this intermediate period of opening up, and it won’t be normal until we get an amazing vaccine to the entire world.

SOURCE: Watch CNBC’s full interview with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the coronavirus pandemic and his work toward a vaccine

GATES: The vaccine is critical, because, until you have that, things aren’t really going to be normal. They can open up to some degree, but the risk of a rebound will be there until we have very broad vaccination.

SOURCE: Bill Gates on where the COVID-19 pandemic will hurt the most

GATES: They won’t be back to normal until we either have that phenomenal vaccine or a therapeutic that’s like over 95% effective. And so we have to assume that’s going to be almost 18 months from now.

SOURCE: Bill Gates on Finding a Vaccine for COVID-19, the Economy, and Returning to ‘Normal Life’

GATES: And then the final solution—which is a year or two years off—is the vaccine.

COLBERT: Just to head off the conspiracy theorists, maybe we shouldn’t call the vaccine “the final solution.”

GATES: Good point.

COLBERT: Maybe just “the best solution.”

[GATES LAUGHS]

SOURCE: Bill Gates: Global Innovation Is The Key To Achieving A Return To Normal

More interestingly, since Gates began delivering this same talking point in every one of his many media appearances of late, it has been picked up and repeated by heads of state, health officials, doctors and media talking heads, right down to the scientifically arbitrary but very specific 18-month time frame.

ZEKE EMANUEL: Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications.

SOURCE: Dr. Zeke Emanuel On The Return To ‘Normal’

DOUG FORD: The hard fact is, until we have a vaccine, going back to normal means putting lives at risk.

SOURCE: Premier Doug Ford and Ontario ministers provide COVID-19 update – April 18, 2020

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: This will be the new normal until a vaccine is developed.

SOURCE: PM Trudeau on modelling data and federal response to COVID-19 – April 9, 2020

NORMAN SWAN: The only thing that will really allow life as we once knew it to resume is a vaccine.

SOURCE: Life will only return to normal when there’s a coronavirus vaccine, Dr Norman Swan says

DONALD TRUMP: Obviously, we continue to work on the vaccines, but the vaccines have to be down the road by probably 14, 15, 16 months.  We’re doing great on the vaccines.

SOURCE: Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing

The fact that so many heads of state, health ministers and media commentators are dutifully echoing Gates’ pronouncement about the need for a vaccine will not be surprising to those who saw last week’s exploration of How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health. As we have seen, the Gates Foundation’s tentacles have penetrated into every corner of the field of public health. Billions of dollars in funding and entire public policy agendas are under the control of this man, an unelected, unaccountable software developer with no medical research experience or training.

And nowhere is Gates’ control of global public health more apparent than in the realm of vaccines.

Gates launched the Decade of Vaccines with a $10 billion pledge.

Gates helped develop the Global Vaccine Action Plan administered by the Gates-funded World Health Organization.

Gates helped found Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, aiming to develop “healthy markets” for vaccine manufacturers.

Gates helped launch Gavi with a $1 billion donation in 2011, going on to contribute $4.1 billion over the course of the Decade of Vaccines.

GATES: And so I’m pleased to announce to you that we’re pledging an additional billion dollars—

[APPLAUSE]

GATES: Thank you.

[CONTINUED APPLAUSE]

GATES: Alright, thank you. It’s not everyday we give away a billion dollars.

[LAUGHTER]

SOURCE: Gates’ mammoth vaccine pledge

One of the Gates Foundation’s core funding areas is “vaccine development and surveillance,” which has resulted in the channeling of billions of dollars into vaccine development, a seat at the table to develop vaccination campaigns in countries around the globe, and the opportunity to shape public thinking around Bill Gates’ pet project of the past five years: preparing rapid development and deployment of vaccines in the event of a globally-spreading pandemic.

GATES: If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus.

SOURCE: The next outbreak? We’re not ready | Bill Gates

GATES: Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists show through their models that a respiratory spread pathogen would kill more than 30 million people in less than a year and there is a reasonable probability of that taking place in the years ahead.

SOURCE: Gates: Millions could die from bio-terrorism

BABITA SHARMA: Many high-profile personalities have been meeting at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, which aims to discuss the globe’s most pressing issues. Amongst them is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose foundation is investing millions in the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to help combat infectious diseases. Here’s some of what he had to say about his push to develop new vaccines.

SOURCE: BBC Newsday January 19, 2017

GATES: Unfortunately, it takes many years to do a completely new vaccine. The design, the safety review, the manufacturing; all those things mean that an epidemic can be very widespread before that tool would come along. And so after ebola the global health community talked a lot about this, including a new type of vaccine platform called DNA/RNA that should speed things along.

And so this Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiative [sic], CEPI, is three countries—Japan, Norway, Germany—and two foundations—Wellcome Trust, [who] we work with on a lot of things, and our foundation, the Gates Foundation—coming together to fund . . . actually trying to use that platform and make some vaccines. And so that would help us in the future.

SOURCE: Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum

NARRATORS: We know vaccines can protect us. We just need to be better prepared. So let’s come together, let’s research and invest. Let’s save lives. Let’s outsmart epidemics.

SOURCE: Let’s #OutsmartEpidemics

Given Gates’ mammoth investment in vaccines over the past decade, his insistence that . . .

GATES: Things won’t go back to truly normal until we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world.

SOURCE: Bill Gates on his 2015 ‘virus’ warning, efforts to fight coronavirus pandemic

. . . is hardly surprising.

What should be surprising is that this strangely specific and continuously repeated message—that we will not go “back to normal” until we get a vaccine in 18 months—has no scientific basis whatsoever. Medical researchers have already conceded that a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 may not even be possible, pointing to the inability of researchers to develop any kind of immunization against previous coronavirus outbreaks, like SARS or MERS.

But even if such a vaccine were possible, serious concerns remain about the safety of developing, testing and delivering such an “amazing vaccine” to “the entire world” in this remarkably short timeframe. Even proponents of vaccine development openly worry that the rush to vaccinate billions of people with a largely untested, experimental coronavirus vaccine will itself present grave risks to the public.

One of these risks involves “disease enhancement.” It has been known for over a decade that vaccination for some viral infections—including coronaviruses—actually enhances susceptibility to viral infection or even causes infections in healthy vaccine recipients.

ANTHONY FAUCI: Now, the issue of safety. Something that I want to make sure the American public understand: It’s not only safety when you inject somebody and they get maybe an idiosyncratic reaction, they get a little allergic reaction, they get pain. There’s safety associated. “Does the vaccine make you worse?” And there are diseases in which you vaccinate someone, they get infected with what you’re trying to protect them with, and you actually enhance the infection.

SOURCE: Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing (March 26)

This is no mere theoretical risk. As researchers who were trying to develop a vaccine for the original SARS outbreak discovered, the vaccine actually made the lab animals subjected to it more susceptible to the disease.

PETER HOTEZ: One of the things we are not hearing a lot about is potential safety problems of coronavirus vaccines. This was first found in the 1960s with Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccines done in Washington with the  NIH and Children’s National Medical Center. Some of those kids who got the vaccine actually did worse, and I believe there were two deaths as a consequence of that study. Because what happens with certain types of respiratory virus vaccines, you get immunized and then when you get actually exposed to the virus you get this kind of paradoxical immune enhancement phenomenon and what—and we we don’t entirely understand the basis of it. But we recognize that it’s a real problem for certain respiratory virus vaccines. That killed the RSV program for decades. Now the Gates Foundation is taking it up again. But when we started developing coronavirus vaccines—and our colleagues—we noticed in laboratory animals that they started to show some of the same immune pathology that resembled what had happened 50 years earlier.

SOURCE: Hotez Coronavirus Vaccine Safety Testimony

This specific issue regarding coronavirus vaccines is exacerbated by the arbitrary and unscientific 18-month timeframe that Gates is inisisting on for the vaccine’s development. In order to meet that deadline, vaccine developers are being urged to use new and largely unproven methods for creating their experimental immunizations, including DNA and mRNA vaccines.

KELLY O’DONNELL: For a self-described wartime president victory over COVID-19 equals a vaccine.

TRUMP: I hope we can have a vaccine and we’re going to fast-track it like you’ve never seen before.

O’DONNELL: Adding Trump-style branding, the administration launched “Operation Warp Speed,” a multi-billion dollar research and manufacturing effort to shorten the typical year-plus vaccine development timeline.

SOURCE: Trump Administration’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’ Aims To Fast-Track Coronavirus Vaccine | Nightly News

ANTHONY FAUCI: We’re gonna start ramping up production with the companies involved, and you do that at risk. In other words, you don’t wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing. You at risk proactively start making it, assuming it’s going to work.

SOURCE: Dr Fauci Discusses Operation Warp Speed’s Goal Of 100s Of Millions Of Vaccine Doses By January

BECKY QUICK: You’re thinking 18 months even with all the work that you’ve already done to this point and the planning that you are taking with lots of different potential vaccinations and building up for that now

GATES: Yeah, so the there’s an approach called RNA vaccine that people like Moderna, CureVac and others are using that in 2015 we identified that is very promising for pandemics and for other applications as well. And so if everything goes perfectly with the RNA approach we could actually beat the 18 months. We don’t want to create unrealistic expectations.

SOURCE: Watch CNBC’s full interview with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the coronavirus pandemic and his work toward a vaccine

RHIJU DAS: So the concept of an RNA vaccine is: Let’s inject the RNA molecule that encodes for the spike protein.

ANGELA RASMUSSEN: It’s making your cell effectively do the work of creating this viral protein that is going to be recognized by your immune system and trigger the development of these antibodies.

DAS: Our bodies won’t make a full-fledged infectious virus. They’ll just make a little piece and then learn to recognize it and then get ready to destroy the virus if it then later comes and invades us.

[. . .]

DAS: It’s a relatively new, unproven technology. And there’s still no example of an RNA vaccine that’s been deployed worldwide in the way that we need for the coronavirus.

RASMUSSEN: There is the possibility for unforeseen, adverse effects.

AKIKO IWASAKI: So this is all new territory. Whether it would elicit protective, robust immune response against this virus is just unknown right now.

SOURCE: Can Scientists Use RNA to Create a Coronavirus Vaccine?

Rushing at “Warp Speed” to develop a new vaccine using experimental technology and then mass producing and delivering billions of doses to be injected into “basically the entire world” before adequate testing is even done amounts to one of the most dangerous experiments in the history of the world, one that could alter the lives of untold numbers of people.

That an experimental vaccine—developed in a brand new way and rushed through with a special, shortened testing regime—should be given to adults, children, pregnant women, newborn babies, and the elderly alike, would be, in any other situation, unthinkable. To suggest that such a vaccine should be given to the entire planet would have been called lunacy mere months ago. But now the public is being asked to accept this premise without question.

Even Gates himself acknowledges the inherent risks of such a project. But his concern is not for the lives that will be irrevocably altered in the event that the vaccines cause damage to the population. Instead, he is more concerned that the pharmaceutical companies and the researchers are given legal immunity for any such damage.

GATES: You know, if we have you know, one in 10,000 side effects, that’s, you know, way more, 700,000, you know, people who will suffer from that. So really understanding the safety at gigantic scale across all age ranges—you know, pregnant, male, female, undernourished, existing comorbidities—it’s very very hard. And that actual decision of, “OK, let’s go and give this vaccine to the entire world,” governments will have to be involved because there will be some risk and indemnification needed before that can be decided on.

SOURCE: Watch CNBC’s full interview with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the coronavirus pandemic and his work toward a vaccine

As we have already seen, in the arena of global health, what Bill Gates wants is what the world gets. So it should be no surprise that immunity for the Big Pharma vaccine manufacturers and the vaccination program planners is already being worked on.

In the US, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a declaration that retroactively provides “liability immunity for activities related to medical countermeasures against COVID-19,” including manufacturers, distributors and program planners of “any vaccine, used to treat, diagnose, cure, prevent, or mitigate COVID-19.” The declaration was issued on March 17th but retroactively covers any activity back to February 4, 2020, the day before the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced an emergency $100 million to fund treatment efforts and to develop new vaccines for COVID-19.

The plan to inject everyone on the planet with an experimental vaccine is no aberration in Bill Gates’ envisioned “Decade of Vaccines.” It is its culmination.

The Decade of Vaccines kicked off with a Gates-funded $3.6 million observational study of HPV vaccines in India that, according to a government investigation, violated the human rights of the study participants with “gross violations” of consent, and failed to properly report adverse events experienced by the vaccine recipients. After the deaths of seven girls involved in the trial were reported, a parliamentary investigation concluded that the Gates-funded Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), which ran the study, had been engaged in a scheme to help ensure “healthy markets” for GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, the manufacturers of the Gardasil and Cervarix vaccines that had been so generously donated for use in the trial:

“Had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the universal immunization program of the concerned countries, this would have generated windfall profit for the manufacturer(s) by way of automatic sale, year after year, without any promotional or marketing expenses. It is well known that once introduced into the immunization program it becomes politically impossible to stop any vaccination.”

Chandra M. Gulhati, editor of the influential Monthly Index of Medical Specialities, remarked that “It is shocking to see how an American organization used surreptitious methods to establish itself in India” and Samiran Nundy, editor emeritus of the National Medical Journal of India lamented that “This is an obvious case where Indians were being used as guinea pigs.”

Throughout the decade, India’s concerns about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its corporate partners’ influence on the country’s national immunization programs grew. In 2016, the steering group of the country’s National Health Mission blasted the government for allowing the country’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation—the primary body advising the government on all vaccination-related matters—to be effectively purchased by the Gates Foundation.

As one steering group member noted: “The NTAGI secretariat has been moved out of the [government’s health] ministry to the office of Public Health Foundation of India and the 32 staff members in that secretariat draw their salaries from the BMGF. There is a clear conflict of interest—on one hand, the BMGF funds the secretariat that is the highest decision making body in vaccines and, on the other, it partners the pharma industry in GAVI. This is unacceptable.”

In 2017, the government responded by cutting all financial ties between the advisory group and the Gates Foundation.

Similar stories play out across the Gates Foundation’s Decade of Vaccines.

There’s the Gates-founded and funded Meningitis Vaccine Project, which led to the creation and testing of MenAfriVac, a $0.50 per dose immunization against meningococcal meningitis. The tests led to reports of between 40 and 500 children suffering seizures and convulsions and eventually becoming paralyzed.

There’s the 2017 confirmation that the Gates-supported oral polio vaccine was actually responsible for the majority of new polio cases, and the 2018 follow up showing that 80% of polio cases are now vaccine-derived.

There’s the 2018 paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health concluding that over 490,000 people in India developed paralysis as a result of the oral polio vaccine between 2000 and 2017.

There’s even the WHO’s own malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, who complained in an internal memo that Gates’ influence meant that the world’s leading malaria scientists are now “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group,” and that the foundation “was stifling debate on the best ways to treat and combat malaria, prioritizing only those methods that relied on new technology or developing new drugs.”

Kochi’s complaint, written in 2008, highlights the most common criticism of the global health web that Gates has spun in the past two decades: That the public health industry has become a racket run by and for Big Pharma and its partners for the benefit of big business.

At the time that Kochi was writing his memo, the executive director of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health program was Tachi Yamada. Yamada left his position as Chairman of Research and Development at GlaxoSmithKline to take up the position at the Gates Foundation in 2006, and left the foundation five years later to become Chief Medical and Scientific Officer at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Yamada’s replacement as head of Gates’ Global health program, Trevor Mundel was himself a clinical researcher at Pfizer and Parke-Davis and spent time as head of development with Novartis before joining the foundation.

This use of foundation funds to set public policy to drive up corporate profits is not a secret conspiracy. It is a perfectly open one.

When the Center for Global Development formed a working group to “develop a practical approach to the vaccine challenge,” they concluded that the best way to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to produce more vaccines for the third world was for governments to promise to buy vaccines before they were even developed. They titled their report “Making Markets for Vaccines.”

ALICE ALBRIGHT: The project “Making Markets for Vaccines” was really designed to address a problem that’s existed for a long time, which is insufficient research and development budgets as well as investment capacity in vaccine development and production for the third world. How do you create better incentives to get the pharma community—the vaccine community—to produce products that are specifically dedicated for the developing world.

RUTH LEVINE: Michael Kramer, a professor at Harvard, had been thinking about this problem for many years.

OWEN BARDER: He realized that if the rich countries of the world were to make a promise that they would buy a malaria vaccine if somebody produced it, that would give an incentive to the pharmaceutical industry to go and do the research and development needed to make one. But this idea was unfamiliar. No government had made a commitment to buy a product that didn’t already exist.

SOURCE: Making Markets for Vaccines

When the first such “Advanced Market Commitment” was made in 2007—a $1.5 billion promise to buy yet-to-be-produced vaccines from Big Pharma manufacturers—there was the Gates Foundation as the only non-nation sponsor.

The Gates-founded Gavi Vaccine Alliance is an open partnership between the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the vaccine manufacturers. Their stated goals includes “introducing new vaccines into the routine schedules of national immunization programmes” and to engage in “market shaping efforts” to ensure “healthy markets for vaccines and other immunization products.”

If “introducing new vaccines” and ensuring healthy markets for them was the aim of Gates’ “Decade of Vaccines,” there can be no doubt that COVID-19 has seen that goal realized in spectacular fashion.

URSULA VON DER LEYEN: Let’s start the pledging.

KATIE STEPHENS: The EU kicked off its fundraising drive with 1 billion euros. In the hours that followed, pledges were beamed in from across the globe.

TAWFIG ALRABIAH: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has pledged 500 million dollars.

STEPHENS: Even pop icon Madonna made a last-minute donation of a million euros.

SOURCE: What’s behind the global €7.4 billion vaccine pledge? | Coronavirus Update

MELINDA GATES: By combining the world’s expertise and brainpower and resources, we can attack this disease in the way it’s attacking us: globally. Our foundation is proud to partner with you and I’m pleased to announce today that we will pledge a hundred million dollars towards this effort.

SOURCE: #Coronavirus Global Response International Pledging Conference

KATIE STEPHENS: Germany was one of the leading donors, pledging over five hundred million euros. The money is earmarked for international health organizations and research networks in a bid to speed up the development of a vaccine.

SOURCE: What’s behind the global €7.4 billion vaccine pledge? | Coronavirus Update

And there, at the center of this web, is the Gates Foundation, connected to every major organization, research institution, international alliance and vaccine manufacturer involved in the current crisis.

Certainly, the Gates—like the Rockefellers—have profited from their years as “the most generous people on the planet.” As curious as it might seem to those who don’t understand the true nature of this monopoly cartel, despite all of these grants and pledges—commitments of tens of billions of dollars—Bill Gates’ personal net worth has actually doubled during this Decade of Vaccines, from $50 billion to over $100 billion.

But once again we come back to the question: Who is Bill Gates? Is he motivated simply by money? Is this incessant drive to vaccinate the entire population of the planet merely the result of greed? Or is there something else driving this agenda?

As we shall see next time, money is not the end goal of Gates’ “philanthropic” activities. Money is just the tool that he is using to purchase what he really wants: control. Control not just of the health industry, but control of the human population itself.

May 8, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Cold air rises—what that means for Earth’s climate

Tallbloke’s Talkshop | May 6, 2020

Are these researchers proposing a kind of reverse greenhouse effect in the tropics?

Conventional knowledge has it that warm air rises while cold air sinks, says Phys.org.

But a study from the University of California, Davis, found that in the tropical atmosphere, cold air rises due to an overlooked effect—the lightness of water vapor.

This effect helps to stabilize tropical climates and buffer some of the impacts of a warming climate.

The study, published today in the journal Science Advances, is among the first to show the profound implications water vapor buoyancy has on Earth’s climate and energy balance.

“It’s well-known that water vapor is an important greenhouse gas that warms the planet,” said senior author Da Yang, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at UC Davis and a joint faculty scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“But on the other hand, water vapor has a buoyancy effect which helps release the heat of the atmosphere to space and reduce the degree of warming. Without this lightness of water vapor, the climate warming would be even worse.”

Humid air is lighter than dry air under the same temperature and pressure conditions. This is called the vapor buoyancy effect. This study discovered this effect allows cold, humid air to rise, forming clouds and thunderstorms in Earth’s tropics.

Meanwhile, warm, dry air sinks in clear skies. Earth’s atmosphere then emits more energy to space than it otherwise would without vapor buoyancy.

The study found that the lightness of water vapor increases Earth’s thermal emission by about 1-3 watts per square meter over the tropics. That value compares with the amount of energy captured by doubling carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The authors’ calculations further suggest that the radiative effects of vapor buoyancy increase exponentially with climate warming.

Full article here.


Update – new research article published:

The lightness of water vapor helps to stabilize tropical climate
Seth D. Seidel and Da Yang
Science Advances 06 May 2020

Quote from the article:

Here, we offer a different explanation of the tropics’ climate stability by way of a robust clear-sky feedback. The magnitude of this feedback may be estimated with greater certainty than for feedbacks depending on changes in clouds and circulation.
. . .
This paper will show that the lightness of water vapor has a profound impact on Earth’s energy balance and climate stability.

May 7, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

New “Chimera” to Target the World

By Valery Kulikov – New Eastern Outlook – 06.05.2020

Nowadays, as the attention of the global community is drawn to discussions about whether the Coronavirus is man-made or not and the potential involvement of US biolabs in its creation, it is certainly worth mentioning the latest invention: a new “mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic bottles for recycling in hours.”

According to The Guardian, scientists from the company Carbios created a mutant bacterial enzyme “that recycles plastic bottles in hours.” An article about this research was even published in Nature, a highly respected journal. “It’s a real breakthrough in the recycling and manufacturing of PET (polyethylene terephthalate),” said Dr. Saleh Jabarin, a Professor at The University of Toledo, Ohio and a member of Carbios’ Scientific Committee. “Our goal is to be up and running by 2024, 2025, at large industrial scale,” Martin Stephan, the Deputy Chief Executive at Carbios, stated. With that in mind, the Consortium, Carbios and L’Oréal, has partnered with other companies, such as Pepsi and Nestlé Waters, which will “help support the circular plastics economy using Carbios’ breakthrough enzyme-based enhanced recycling technology.”

Considering the fact that billions of tonnes of “plastic waste have polluted the planet, from the Arctic to the deepest ocean trench”, the bacterial enzyme is already being promoted as a novel solution to a global problem. According to the article in The Guardian, 100,000 micro-organisms were screened to find promising candidates, such as the “leaf compost bug”. Mutations were subsequently introduced into it “to improve its ability to break down the PET plastic from which drinks bottles are made.” It also said that the research team had “used the optimized enzyme to break down a tonne of waste plastic bottles, which were 90% degraded within 10 hours.”

In 2018, another team of scientists revealed “that they had accidentally created an enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles.” A separate report has stated that German researchers identified a strain of bacterium that can metabolize some of the chemical components that make up polyurethane (PU). PU in landfills decomposes slowly releasing toxic and carcinogenic chemicals that usually kill most bacteria. It was, therefore, surprising that the identified strain not only survived, but also used polyurethane to thrive. “This finding represents an important step in being able to reuse hard-to-recycle PU products,” said microbiologist Hermann Heipieper from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ in Germany.

In light of recent developments, a cautionary tale comes to mind. It is about the creation of another “Chimera” in the United States: Mycoplasma laboratorium or Synthia, a synthetic species of bacterium. It can self-replicate and has numerous uses. Although there have not been many reports in mainstream media that Synthia was used to clear an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, some suspect that it was. Apparently, in 2011, synthetic bacteria were introduced into the ocean to eliminate oil droplets that posed a threat to the environment. The poorly researched and thought through decision soon resulted in disastrous consequences, as the microorganisms became uncontrollable. There were several reports about diseases caused by bacteria, and deaths of marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. Incidentally, all the aforementioned articles about the negative impact of the measures taken to deal with the oil spill were published by media outlets and not by scientific journals.

A number of news sources printed photographs that showed the effect of the cleanup on people and marine life. And according to The Huffington Post, the number of oil-eating bacteria, including the genetically modified strains, had been expected to soar as a result of the oil leak. Vibrio vulnificus (a species of Gram-negative bacteria) was suspected of proliferating in ocean waters polluted with oil and chemicals used to clear it. Vibrio can infect humans through contact with a cut or wound. Once in the body, “the bacteria infiltrates the layer of flesh between muscle and skin, where it releases a toxin that destroys the tissue.”

There were also reports about people whose deaths were attributed to Vibrio. Some of them passed away after having swum in the Gulf of Mexico. According to The Guardian, Vibrio vulnificus had “infected the shores of the Gulf Coast”, from Texas to Florida. In fact, there is no central authority tracking such infections in the USA, as individual states are not “required to report cases to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in Atlanta” but can do so voluntarily. The article stated that several people got sick after swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Vibrio can also cause sickness in humans who consume raw seafood, such as oysters. According to experts, the potentially lethal bacteria can infect people through raw or undercooked shellfish or through scratches and open wounds.

The scale of the impact of the efforts to clear the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been covered up by the US government.

There is no known treatment for Vibrio vulnificus and people can die as a result of infection with this pathogen. Having entered the blood stream via a small wound, the bacteria proceeds to damage tissue unless the infected part of the body is amputated.

Vibrio vulnificus, which can adapt to different environments, can eventually spread to the rest of the world via the Atlantic Ocean and rain clouds, and then cause fear among swimmers in oceans, seas and even rivers, and among those who consume raw sea food (including oysters and sushi).

As for Synthia, researchers who had created it said that they were creating new life from existing life. The synthetic bacterial cell can be utilized to develop more effective pharmaceuticals and efficient new biofuels, etc. However, experts also believe that the knowledge used to synthesize Mycoplasma laboratorium could also be employed to create a pathogen.

Researchers are currently studying the rate at which the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, mutates.

Microbiologists are well aware of spontaneous mutations caused by chance errors during replication of bacteria and viruses that can lead to changes in structural or colony characteristics.

Hence, we sincerely hope that the latest Chimera from Carbios does not play a similar dirty trick on us.

May 6, 2020 Posted by | Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

China ‘Not the Only Place to be Blamed’ if Wuhan Facility Released COVID-19 – Microbiologist

Sputnik – May 5, 2020

Members of the scientific community have recently come to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s defense, as US officials and prominent individuals around the world have accused the facility of manufacturing or accidentally releasing the COVID-19 coronavirus. Despite the protests, one microbiologist tells Sputnik there may be some truth in the attacks.

Dr. Dady Chery, a microbiologist, co-editor-in-chief of News Junkie Post and author of “We Have Dared to Be Free,” joined Radio Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Monday to discuss why she disagrees with the assertion that the novel coronavirus is a product of nature, rather than a lab.

“China is not the only place to be blamed for this,” Chery noted to hosts Bob Schlehuber and Jamarl Thomas. “I think the Wuhan Institute of Virology was almost certainly involved in the SARS-CoV-2 research, but the Wuhan Institute of Technology was actually built with French help for $42.4 million.” (SARS-CoV-2 is the virus strain that causes COVID-19.)

She asserted that, from the start, China has had a number of international partners assisting in endeavors at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Chery explained that according to the lab’s website, scientists from France, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Pakistan and Kenya have all been within the highly secure facility.

Furthermore, its list of financial partners includes the European Union, United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization and the EcoHealth Alliance established under a project by the United States Agency for International Development.

Chery highlighted that the EcoHealth Alliance “finances to go and find very, very nasty pathogens in animals, and in humans, and bring them to biosafety level four [BSL-4] labs for research.” She added that there are only around 30 BSL-4 labs, featuring the highest level of biosafety precautions, that deal with that type of research.

“No legitimate scientist can really verify their research unless they also have access to a BSL-4 lab and want to take those kinds of risks,” she said.

When it comes to the virus itself, Chery explained that of the 16 proteins present in it, the spike protein is the focal point for scientists. This particular protein is the one responsible for recognizing the receptor protein on the surface of human cells so that it can enter them.

According to the WHO, the novel coronavirus is of “animal origin” and has not been “manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else.” While many have attributed US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of the WHO statement and his anti-China rhetoric as nothing more than xenophobia, it’s possible that he may be correct about the virus’s origin.

Chery noted that when it comes to SARS-CoV-2, it was believed that its closest relative is SARS-CoV, which was identified back in 2002 and causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). However, genetic sequence data published by Chinese researchers showed that RaTG13, a type of bat coronavirus, is the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2.

“The only problem with that is that the main resemblance between [RaTG13] and SARS-CoV-2 is in the spike protein,” she pointed out. “There’s a whole lot more to the virus.”

Chery asserted that the scientists in Wuhan sit on the editorial boards of six different scientific journals and are incredibly powerful in the scientific community, because they “give money to scientists all over the world.”

However, she said, French virologist and medicine Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier has argued that there are HIV sequences present in SARS-CoV-2, which is not likely to happen in something that occurs in nature.

“I did not just take his word for it,” Chery stressed. “I went and I actually read the papers [referenced].”

It’s worth noting that Montagnier’s comments have been opposed by many of his colleagues, including Jean-Francois Delfraissy, an immunologist and head of the French government’s advisory council for COVID-19.

Delfraissy, speaking to France’s BFM TV, said the hypothesis that the SARS-CoV-2 was made in a lab sounds like “a conspiracy vision that does not relate to the real science.”

May 5, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Big Pharma Beware: Dr. Montagnier Shines New Light on COVID-19 and The Future of Medicine

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 30, 2020

This April 16th, Dr. Luc Montagnier became a household name around the world. This occurred as the controversial virologist decided to publicly state his support for the theory that Covid-19 is indeed a laboratory-generated creation and not a naturally occurring effect of viral evolution.

Referring to a study published at the Kusama School of Biology in New Dehli on January 31st, Montagnier (the 2008 Nobel Prize winner for his 1983 discovery of the HIV virus) made the point that the specific occurrence of HIV RNA viral segments spliced surgically within the COVID-19 genome could not have originated naturally and he described it in the following words:

“We have carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus. We weren’t the first, a group of Indian researchers tried to publish a study showing that the complete genome of this virus that has within the sequences of another virus: that of HIV.”

While the Indian team was induced to retract their publication under immense pressure from the mainstream medical establishment (which never bothered to seriously refute the content of the study’s research but rather used the “random-mutation-makes-anything-possible” argument), Montagnier stated “scientific truth always emerges”.

Not China: Montagnier Misdiagnoses the Culprit

Montagnier’s political ignorance became all too clear when he was asked who the culprit could possibly be.

By asserting his belief that China’s BSL4 lab in Wuhan was the source, Montagnier has fallen into a trap set by Anglo-American Intelligence circles which have been promoting a military confrontation between the USA and China for a very long time.

Now even though Montagnier denies that China released this virus with malicious intent (unlike many fanatical droves of neoconservatives currently itching for war), the “Wuhan Lab origin” hypothesis completely ignores the reality of the Pentagon’s globally extended 25 bioweapons laboratories which have openly created novel coronaviruses including varieties that arose in bats as journalist Whitney Webb’s remarkable February 2020 paper demonstrated.

Even though a 2014-2017 temporary ban on “dual-use” funding was imposed onto America’s bioweapons research, nothing prevented this work from occurring internationally or even covertly within the 11 military labs on American soil itself and tied to the same Fort Detrick that was shut down in July 2019 under suspicious circumstances. As I pointed out in my previous paper The Project for a New American Century, 9/11 and Bioweapons, over $50 billion has been spent on bioweapons research since 2001 which the Project for a New American Century manifesto claimed would play a major role in the arsenal of 21st century warfare stating: “advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.

Luc Montagnier’s Wave Therapy: Quackery or Brilliance?

The most powerful aspect of Montagnier’s April 16th intervention into world politics in my view is not really found in his support for the laboratory-origins theory, but rather in the scientist’s often overlooked proposition for an international crash program in something called electromagnetic wave therapy. Rather than investing in vaccines, Montagnier has explained that it would be much wiser for nations of the world to launch a crash project into a very different approach to viral treatments than is currently common in polite society saying:

“I think we can make interference waves which are behind the RNA sequences that can eliminate those sequences with waves and consequently stop the pandemic”

Before brushing this off as “quackery” as so many are wont to do, one should keep in mind that President Trump himself has indicated his interest in Montagnier’s approach in his April 23rd briefing telling reporters:

“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous … whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you are going to test it… And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you are going to test it.”

While Trump has been vilely attacked as “unscientific” for these utterances, it is only due to the vast ignorance of Montagnier’s incredible discoveries into the electromagnetic properties of life that such mockery can go unchallenged. Montagnier’s innovations into “bleaching therapy” which Trump referenced in the same speech are also much more complex than mainstream detractors assume and has nothing to do with simply “injecting”disinfectants into the blood stream. These therapies are highly interconnected with the electromagnetic waves emitted by certain types of bacteria which Montagnier has discovered to be the most likely driving mechanism to many of the diseases both chronic and acute plaguing humanity. More will be said on that below.

What is Optical Biophysics and What did Montagnier Discover?

Optical biophysics is the study of the electromagnetic properties of the physics of life. This means paying attention to the light emissions and absorption frequencies from cells, DNA, and molecules of organic matter, how these interface with water (making up over 75% of a human body) and moderated by the nested array of magnetic fields located on the quantum level and stretching up to the galactic level.

Not to discount the bio-chemical nature of life which is hegemonic in the health science realm, the optical biophysician asks: which of these is PRIMARY in growth, replication, and division of labor of individual cells or entire species of organisms? Is it the chemical attributes of living matter or the electromagnetic properties?

Let me explain the paradox a bit more.

There are approximately 40 trillion highly differentiated cells in the average human body, each performing very specific functions and requiring an immense field of coherence and intercommunication. Every second approximately 10 million of those cells die, to be replaced by 10 million new cells being born. Many of those cells are made up of bacteria, and much of the DNA and RNA within those cells is made up of viruses (mostly dormant), but which can be activated/deactivated by a variety of methods both chemical and electromagnetic.

Here’s the big question:

HOW might this complex system be maintained by chemical processes alone- either over the course of a day, month or an entire lifetime?

The simple physics of motion of enzymes which carry information in the body from one location to another simply doesn’t come close to accounting for the information coordination required among all parts. This is where Montagnier’s research comes in.

After winning the 2008 Nobel Prize, Dr. Montagnier published a revolutionary yet heretical 2010 paper called “DNA Waves and Water” which took the medical community by storm. In this paper, Montagnier demonstrated how low frequency electromagnetic radiation within the radio wave part of the spectrum was emitted from bacterial and viral DNA and how said light was able to both organize water and transmit information! The results of his experiments were showcased wonderfully in this 8 min  video:

Using a photo-amplifying device invented by Dr. Jacques Benveniste in the 1980s to capture the ultra low light emissions from cells, Montagnier filtered out all particles of bacterial DNA from a tube of water and discovered that the post-filtered solutions containing no material particles continued to emit ultra low frequency waves! This became more fascinating when Montagnier showed that under specific conditions of a 7 Hz background field (the same as the Schumann resonance which naturally occurs between the earth’s surface and the ionosphere), the non-emitting tube of water that had never received organic material could be induced to emit frequencies when placed in close proximity with the emitting tube! Even more interesting is that when base proteins, nucleotides and polymers (building blocks of DNA) were put into the pure water, near perfect clones of the original DNA were formed!

Dr. Montagnier and his team hypothesized that the only way for this to happen was if the DNA’s blueprint was somehow imprinted into the very structure of water itself resulting in a form of “water memory” that had earlier been pioneered by Jacques Benveniste, the results of which are showcased in this incredible 2014 documentary “Water Memory”.

Just as Benveniste suffered one of the most ugly witch hunts in modern times (led in large measure by Nature Magazine in 1988), Montagnier’s Nobel prize did not protect him from a similar fate as an international slander campaign has followed him over the past 10 years of his life. Nearly 40 Nobel prize winners have signed a petition denouncing Montagnier for his heresy and the great scientist was forced to even flee Europe to escape what he described as a culture of “intellectual terror”. In response to this slander, Montagnier stated to LaCroix magazine:  “I’m used to attacks from these academics who are just retired bureaucrats, closed off from all innovation. I have the scientific proofs of what I say”.

Describing the greatest challenges to advancing this research, Montagnier stated:

“We have chosen to work with the private sector because no funds could come from public institutions. The Benveniste case has made it so that anyone who takes an interest in the memory of water is considered… I mean it smells of sulphur. It’s Hell.”

Casting Montagnier’s Research in a New Light

In a 2011 interview, Dr. Montagnier recapitulated the consequences of his discoveries:

“The existence of a harmonic signal emanating from DNA can help to resolve long-standing questions about cell development, for example how the embryo is able to make its manifold transformations, as if guided by an external field. If DNA can communicate its essential information to water by radio frequency, then non-material structures will exist within the watery environment of the living organism, some of them hiding disease signals and others involved in the healthy development of the organism.”

With these insights in mind, Montagnier has discovered that many of the frequencies of EM emissions from a wide variety of microbial DNA is also found in the blood plasmas of patients suffering from influenza A, Hepatitis C, and even many neurological diseases not commonly thought of as bacteria-influenced such as Parkinsons, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumathoid Arthritis and Alzheimers. In recent years, Montagnier’s teams even found certain signals in the blood plasmas of people with autism and several varieties of cancers!

Over a dozen French doctors have taken Montagnier’s ideas seriously enough to prescribe antibiotics to treat autism over the course of six years and in opposition to conventional theories, have found that amidst 240 patients treated, 4 out of 5 saw their symptoms either dramatically regress or disappear completely!

These results imply again that certain hard-to-detect species of light emitting microbes are closer to the cause of these ills than the modern pharmaceutical industry would like to admit.

A New Domain of Thinking: Why Big Pharma Should Be Afraid

As the filmed 2014 experiment demonstrated, Montagnier went even further to demonstrate that the frequencies of wave emissions within a filtrate located in a French laboratory can be recorded and emailed to another laboratory in Italy where that same harmonic recording was infused into tubes of non-emitting water causing the Italian tubes to slowly begin emitting signals! These DNA frequencies were then able to structure the Italian water tubes from the parent source a thousand miles away resulting in a 98% exact DNA replica!

Standing as we are, on the cusp of so many exciting breakthroughs in medical science, we should ask: what could these results mean for the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industrial complex which relies on keeping the world locked into a practice of chemical drugs and vaccines?

Speaking to this point, Montagnier stated:

“The day that we admit that signals can have tangible effects, we will use them. From that moment on we will be able to treat patients with waves. Therefore it’s a new domain of medicine that people fear of course. Especially the pharmaceutical industry… one day we will be able to treat cancers using frequency waves.”

Montagnier’s friend and collaborator Marc Henry a professor of Chemistry and Quantum Mechanics at the University of Strasbourg stated:

“If we treat with frequencies and not with medicines it becomes extremely cost effective regarding the amount of money spent. We spend a lot of money to find the frequencies, but once they have been found, it costs nothing to treat.”

Whether produced in a lab as Montagnier asserts or having appeared naturally as Nature Magazine asserts, the fact remains that the current coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a collapse of the world financial system and forced the leaders of the world to discuss the reality of a needed new paradigm and new world economic order. Whether that new system will be driven by Pharmaceutical cartels, and sociopathic bankers running global health policy for a technocratic elite of social engineers or whether it will be driven by nation states shaping the terms of that new system around human needs, remains to be seen.

If nation states manage to stay in the driver’s seat of this new system, then it will have to be driven by certain fundamental principles of healthcare for all, science practice reform and broader political/economic reform whereby the sacredness of human life is placed above all considerations of monetary profit. In this light, such crash programs into long term projects in space science, asteroid defense, and Lunar/Mars development will be as necessary in the astrophysical domain as crash programs in fusion energy will be in the atomic domain. Uniting both worlds, is the domain of life sciences that intersects the electromagnetic properties of atoms, cells and DNA with the large scale electromagnetic properties of the Earth, Sun and galaxy as a whole.

May 1, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Hopefulness Despite 2.9 Billion Lost Birds

By Jim Steele | Watts Up With That? | May 1, 2020

What’s Natural

In 2019 bird researchers published Rosenberg et al “Decline of the North American Avifauna”, reporting a decline in 57% of the bird species. They estimated a net loss of nearly 2.9 billion birds since 1970, and urged us to remedy the threats, claiming all were “exacerbated by climate change”, and we must stave off the “potential collapse of the continental avifauna.” Months before publication the researchers had organized an extensive media campaign. Typical doomsday media like the New York Times piled on with “Birds Are Vanishing From North America” and Scientific American wrote, “Silent Skies: Billions of North American Birds Have Vanished.”

As I have now been sheltering in place, I finally had ample time to thoroughly peruse Rosenberg’s study. I had a very personal interest in it, having professionally studied bird populations for over 20 years and had worked to restore their habitat. I also had conducted 20 years of surveys which were part of the study’s database. Carefully looking at their data, a far more optimistic perspective is needed. So here I join a chorus of other ecologists, as reported in Slate, that “There Is No Impending Bird Apocalypse”. As one ecologist wrote, it’s “not what’s really happening. I think it hurts the credibility of scientists.”

First consider since 1970 many species previously considered endangered such as pelicans, bald eagle, peregrine falcon, trumpeter swan, and whooping crane have been increasing due to enlightened management. Despite being hunted, ducks and geese increased by 54%. Secondly, just 12 of the 303 declining species account for the loss of 1.4 billion birds, and counterintuitively their decline is not worrisome.

Three introduced species – house sparrows, starlings and pigeons – account for nearly one half billion lost birds. These birds were pre-adapted to human habitat and are considered pests that carry disease and tarnish buildings and cars with their droppings. Across America, companies like Bird-B-Gone are hired to remove these foreign bird pests. Furthermore, starlings compete with native birds like bluebirds and flickers for nesting cavities, contributing to native bird declines. The removal of starlings is not an omen of an “avifauna collapse”, but good news for native birds.

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When European colonists cleared forests to create pastures and farmland or provide wood for heating, open-habitat species “unnaturally” increased. Previously confined to the Great Plains, brown‑headed cowbirds quickly invaded the newly opened habitat. Unfortunately, cowbirds parasitize other species by laying its eggs in their nests. A cowbird hatchling then pushes out all other nestlings, killing the parasitized species’ next generation. The loss of 40 million cowbirds only benefits our “continental avifauna”.

Several bird species had evolved to colonize forest openings naturally produced by fire, or floods or high winds. Those species “unnaturally” boomed when 50% to 80% of northeastern United States became de-forested by 1900. Still, eastern trees will reclaim a forest opening within 20 years, so open habitat species require a constant supply of forest openings. However as marginal farms and pastures were abandoned, fires were suppressed and logging reduced, forests increasingly reclaimed those openings. With a 50% decline in forest openings, their bird species also declined; now approaching pre-colonial numbers. Accordingly, birds of the expanding forest interior like woodpeckers are now increasing.

White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos quickly colonize forest openings but then disappear within a few years as the forest recovers. Those 2 species alone accounted for the loss of another quarter of a billion birds; not because of an ecosystem collapse, but because forests were reclaiming human altered habitat. Nonetheless those species are still 400 million strong, and juncos remain abundant in the open habitat maintained by suburban back yards. If environmentalists want to reclaim the abundance of their boom years, they must manage forest openings with logging or prescribed burns.

Insect outbreaks also create forest openings. For hundreds of years forests across Canada and northeastern US have been decimated every few decades by spruce bud worm eruptions. So, forest managers now spray to limit further outbreaks. Today there are an estimated 111 million living Tennessee Warblers that have specialized to feed on spruce bud worms. But the warbler’s numbers have declined by 80 million because insect outbreaks are more controlled. Still they have never been threatened with extinction. Conservationists must determine what is a reasonable warbler abundance while still protecting forests from devastating insect infestations.

The grassland biome accounted for the greatest declines, about 700 million birds. Indeed, natural grasslands had been greatly reduced by centuries of expanding agriculture and grazing. But in recent times more efficient agriculture has allowed more land to revert to “natural” states. However fossil fuel fears reversed that trend. In 2005 federal fuel policies began instituting subsidies to encourage biofuel production. As a result, 17 million more acres of grassland have been converted to corn fields for ethanol since 2006.

Although still very abundant, just 3 species account for the loss of 400 million grassland birds: Horned Larks, Savannah Sparrows and Grasshopper Sparrows. Horned Larks alone accounted for 182 million fewer birds due to a loss of very short grass habitats with some bare ground. To increase their numbers, studies show more grazing, mowing or burning will increase their preferred habitat.

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It must be emphasized that the reported cumulative loss of 2.9 billion birds since 1970, does not signify ecosystem collapses. But there are some legitimate concerns such as maintaining wetlands. And there are some serious human-caused problems we need to remedy to increase struggling bird populations. It is estimated that cats kill between 1 to 3 billion birds each year. Up to 1 billion birds each year die by crashing into the illusions created by window reflections. Collisions with cars and trucks likely kill 89 to 350 million birds a year. Instead of fearmongering ecosystem collapse, our avifauna would best be served by addressing those problems.

Questioning Bird Models

Population estimates for most land birds are based on data from the US Geological Surveys Breeding Bird Surveys (BBS). I conducted 2 BBS surveys on the Tahoe National Forest for 20 years. Each survey route consists of 50 stops, each a half‑mile apart. At each stop for a period of just 3 minutes, I would record all observed birds, the overwhelming majority of which are heard but not seen. Many birds can be missed in such a short time, but the BBS designers decided a 3-minute observation time allowed the day’s survey to cover more habitat. Each year on about the same date, the BBS survey was repeated.

Each BBS route surveys perhaps 1% the region’s landscape. To estimate each species’ population for the whole region, the survey’s observations are extrapolated and modeled. However, models rely on several assumptions and adjustments, and those assumptions can inflate final estimates. For example, in 2004 researchers estimated there were 6,500,000 Rufous Hummingbirds. By 2017, researchers estimated there were now 21,690,000. But that larger population cannot be deemed a conservation success. That tripling of abundance was mostly due to new adjustments.

Because singing males account for most observations, the number of observed birds is doubled to account for an unobserved female that is most likely nearby. Furthermore, it is assumed different species are more readily detected than others. The models assume that each stop will account for all the birds within a 400‑meter radius. Because a crow is readily detected over that distance, no adjustments are made to the number of observed crows. But hummingbirds are not so easily detected. The earlier surveys assumed a hummingbird could only be detected if it was within an 80‑meter radius. So, to standardize the observations to an area with a 400‑meter radius, observations were multiplied by 25. Recent survey models now assume hummingbirds can only be detected within 50 meters, so their observations are now adjusted by multiplying by 64.

Thus, depending on their detection adjustments, one real observation could generate 50 or 128 virtual hummingbirds. That number is further scaled up to account for the time‑of‑day effects and the likely number of birds in the region’s un-surveyed landscapes.

Setting aside assumptions about the regional homogeneity of birds’ habitat, one very real problem with these adjustments that has yet to be addressed. If one bird is no longer observed at a roadside stop, the model assumes that the other 127 virtual birds also died.

Survey routes are done along roadsides and up to 340 million birds are killed by vehicles each year. Many sparrows and warblers are ground nesters and will fly low to the ground. Many seed eating birds like finches will congregate along a roadside to ingest the small gravel needed to internally grind their seeds. Every year I watched a small flock of Evening Grosbeaks ingesting gravel from the shoulder of a country road, get picked off one by one by passing cars. Roadside vegetation often differs from off-road vegetation. Roads initially create openings that are suitable for one species but are gradually grown over during the lifetime of a survey to become unsuitable habitat. So, it should never be assumed that the loss of roadside observations represents a decline for the whole region.

The larger the models’ detectability adjustments are for a given species, the greater the probability that any declining trend in roadside observations will exaggerate a species population loss for the region. The greatest population losses were modeled for warblers and sparrows and most warbler and sparrow data are adjusted for detectability by multiplying actual observations 4 to 10-fold. It is worth reporting good news from recent studies in National Parks that used a much greater density of observation points and were not confined to roadsides. Their observation points were also much closer together and thus required fewer assumptions and adjustments. Of the 50 species they observed, all but 3 populations were stable.

Pushing a fake crisis, Rosenberg et al argued that declining numbers within a species that is still still very abundant doesn’t mean they are not threatened with a quick collapse. He highlighted the Passenger Pigeon was once one of the most abundant birds in North America and they quickly went extinct by 1914. That doomsday scenario was often repeated by the media. But comparison to the Passenger Pigeon’s demise is a false equivalency. Passenger Pigeons were hunted for food when people were suffering from much greater food insecurity.

Rosenberg et al summarized their study with one sentence: “Cumulative loss of nearly three billion birds since 1970, across most North American biomes, signals a pervasive and ongoing avifaunal crisis.” But it signals no such thing. Wise management will continue. With better accounting of the natural causes of each species declines, plus more accurate modeling, it will be seen that Rosenberg’s “crisis” was just another misleading apocalyptic story that further erodes public trust in us honest environmental scientists.

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism.

May 1, 2020 Posted by | Environmentalism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

NY Times Caught Exaggerating Antarctic Ice Loss – If There Is Any Loss at All

By James Taylor | Climate Realism | April 30, 2020

The New York Times is attempting to panic people with an article today claiming alarming ice loss in Antarctica. However, as recently as 2015, NASA reported satellite measurements show Antarctic ice mass has been growing since at least 1992, when satellites began taking measurements. Clearly, either the New York Times story is wrong or the Times is telling an unnecessarily alarmist story about a few years of minor ice loss after many more years of ice gain.

The Times article claims, “Researchers have known for a long time that, while the continent is losing mass over all as the climate changes, the change is uneven.” The assertion is only half true. Given that less than five years ago, NASA satellite instruments reported long-term and continuing growth in Antarctic ice mass, it is factually inaccurate for the Times to state, “Researchers have known for a long time that … the continent is losing mass….”

On the other hand, the Times is correct that any current asserted ice loss is “uneven.” The ice-change map accompanying the Times article shows that a much larger portion of Antarctica is gaining ice than is losing ice. The asserted overall ice-mass loss comes primarily from a relatively few locations along the very edge of the West Antarctic ice shelf. Those locations line up almost perfectly with locations where scientists have recently discovered volcanoes under the ice.

The more accurate overall picture is that scientists have documented long-term growth in the Antarctic ice sheet, even during most of the past 40 years. If there is a recent trend of ice loss, the trend is minor, confined to just a small portion of West Antarctica, has been occurring for less than five years, and is likely due in significant part to undersea volcanoes rather than climate change.

May 1, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The real climate change deniers

By Paul Driessen | CFACT | April 26, 2020

Fifty years ago, I helped organize Earth Day #1 programs on my college campus, calling attention to serious pollution problems that afflicted much of the USA. Over the ensuing decades, laws, regulations, and changed attitudes, practices and technologies reduced most of that pollution, often dramatically.

I didn’t buy the 1970 end-is-nigh, doom-and-gloom, billions-will-die hysteria that Ron Stein and Ron Bailey recapture so deliciously, including the manmade global cooling crisis. I don’t buy it today, either – certainly not this year’s Earth Day focus on the alleged manmade global warming crisis, also blamed on emissions of carbon dioxide and water vapor, the same gases that humans and animals exhale, and plants use to grow. We’re told the crisis is unprecedented, and poses existential threats to humanity and planet.

What I find fascinating in all this is the steadfast, often nasty determination of scientists, politicians and interest groups promoting alarmist themes – and profiting immensely from them – to reject and deny any science, history and evidence that undermines their claim that nothing like this ever happened before.

The “highest ever” temperatures may be just a few tenths or even hundredths of a degree above previous records set many decades ago. The United States may have enjoyed a record 12-year respite from Category 3-5 hurricanes, ended finally by Harvey and Irma in 2017. Violent tornadoes may be far fewer during the last 35 years than during the 35 years before that, and the complete absence of violent twisters in 2018 may have been truly unprecedented. Modern day floods and droughts may be nothing compared to past floods or the multi-decade droughts that devastated Anasazi, Mayan and other civilizations.

However, alarmists insist, Earth’s climate and weather were stable and unchanging until humans began using coal, oil and natural gas. We must eradicate fossil fuels now, they say, regardless of what impacts biofuel, battery, wind and solar replacements (and mining for raw materials to manufacture them) might have on wildlife, scenery, environmental values or human rights. The disconnect from reality is truly amazing.

Equally fascinating is the notion that melting glaciers are something new. It amounts to asserting that everything was just peachy until American, European and Greenland glaciers started melting a few decades ago, threatening us with catastrophic sea level rise. It amounts to claiming the glacial epochs never happened; their mile-high ice sheets never blanketed a third of the Northern Hemisphere, multiple times, with balmy periods in between; and seas haven’t risen some 400 feet since the Pleistocene ice age.

It amounts to claiming the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods never happened, and weren’t followed by the Little Ice Age, when priests performed exorcisms, asking God to keep glaciers from inundating villages in the Alps of Europe. It’s as though we couldn’t possibly be finding what we are finding today.

In the latest example, government and university researchers recently found numerous Viking-era artifacts along a Norwegian mountain pass that had been heavily traveled for at least 700 years, but then was buried beneath the ice and lost to history for 1,000 years. Locals used the rough 2,200-foot-long pass to travel between summer and winter lodgings, while long-distance trekkers used it as a trade route.

Among the treasure trove were tunics, mittens, horse shoes and bits, remnants of sleds used to haul food and gear over winter snow, a small shelter, and even the remains of a dog with a collar and leash. They all came to light because the glacial ice is again receding, as Earth continues its post Little Ice Age warming.

Alarmists insist the warming is due to fossil fuels, and deny that it is just part of natural climate cycles. Much more evidence of past warming and cooling periods has also come to light in recent years.

In 1991, German hikers found the incredible mummified and heavily tattooed remains of “Oetzi the Ice Man” sticking out of the ice in the Oetzal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border, at an altitude of some 10,000 feet. A partial longbow, bearskin hat and other artifacts were found nearby. He had died about 5,300 years ago from an arrow wound and had the blood of four different people on his clothes and weapons. He is further evidence of human habitation in these alpine areas during past warm periods.

Tourists and archeological teams have also discovered parts of shoes, leather clothing, fragments of a wooden bowl and numerous other items from 3000 to 4500 BC (BCE) that have emerged from the alpine ice. They are among the oldest objects ever found in the Alps. A Bronze Age pin, Roman coins and early Medieval artifacts have also been found. They show how these mountain passes and trails, impassible during cold, more glaciated periods, served as vital trade routes in periodic warmer centuries.

Norwegian ice fields show shrinkage and growth patterns similar to those of the alpine glaciers, says Norwegian glacial scientist Atle Nesje. The archaeological findings “seem to fit quite nicely with our glacier reconstructions,” he adds, which helps us understand past, present and future climate changes.

Years of research by Swiss and other scientists have produced similar findings – sometimes human artifacts, but also plant and animal remains, in areas of newly melted ice. In one location in the Swiss Alps, University of Berne geology professor Christian Schluechter found pieces of wood 12-24 inches thick and the remains of a moor. Melting waters had flushed them out from under the glacier. That means the ice there is hardly “perpetual,” he says. There were multiple periods of warmer weather and less ice.

In fact, carbon-14 dating shows ten “clearly definable time windows” over the last 10,000 years – times when glaciers were limited to regions up to 1,000 feet higher in the Alps than today. This means that, for multiple long periods of time, “the Alps were greener than they are today,” Schluechter concludes.

Inca children sacrificed 500 years ago in Argentina’s Andes have also emerged from melting glaciers.

Off the Florida coast, the Mel and Deo Fisher archeological diving team didn’t just find the famous Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank during a ferocious 1622 hurricane, or only the British slave ship Henrietta Marie, which went down during a 1700 hurricane, after leaving 190 Africans in Jamaica, to be sold as slaves. They also found charred tree branches, pine cones and other remnants from a forest fire 8,400 years ago, when this vast ocean area was still well above present day sea levels!

Even an entire forest has been discovered, protruding from the melting Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska – an area I visited several years ago. Roots, stumps and large segments of entire upright spruce or hemlock trees have been found across several acres already. They are the remains of a forest that thrived there for as long as 2,350 years, until it was buried by glacial ice around 1,000 years ago.

The chronicle of amazing discoveries yielded by melting glaciers goes on and on. Their most important lesson is that our current climate is but a snapshot in time, on a vibrant planet where climate change and extreme weather have been “real” since time began. Only a science-denying climate alarmist would refuse to recognize this. Simply put, there is nothing “unprecedented” about what we are seeing today.

Now it may be that carbon dioxide and water vapor from wheezing, snorting horses, oxen and humans – laboring at the edge of exhaustion doing what our fossil-fuel-powered vehicles and equipment do for us today – caused these past climate changes. But it’s far more likely that they were due to a complex and still poorly understood combination of solar and other powerful natural forces.

Climate alarmists may not want to recognize or discuss these natural fluctuations. But the rest of us should. Improving our knowledge of what these forces are and how they work together will enable us to better predict, prepare for and adapt to future climate changes. Continuing to focus on carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases,” as the primary or sole cause of climate changes and weather events, will ensure that we never get beyond the politically driven battles in which we are now engaged.

April 30, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment