Mann, Hayhoe try to erase the Medieval warm period
By James Taylor | CFACT | October 1, 2019
Climate alarmists Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe have been caught using dubious, revisionist temperature data in their attempt, as one Climategate email author put it, to “deal a mortal blow” to the extensively documented Medieval Warm Period.
Before climate change became a political issue, it was scientifically well-established that a significant global warming event occurred between approximately 900 AD and 1200 AD. For example, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report presented a temperature history and visual graph documenting that the Medieval Warm Period existed and that it brought temperatures at least as warm as today (at pg. 7). Multiple peer-reviewed studies provided additional confirmation of the Medieval Warm Period.
The warming climate of the Medieval Warm Period spurred abundant crop production, fewer extreme droughts and floods, growing human population, and improving living standards. The Little Ice Age terminated the Medieval Warm Period and brought devastating weather extremes, widespread crop failures, famines, plagues like the Black Death, and a contracting human population. (For a good summary of the extensive benefits of the Medieval Warm Period and the devastating harms of the Little Ice Age, see the excellent book, “In the Wake of the Plage: The Black Death and the World It Created.”)
The existence of large historical temperature fluctuations, warmer temperatures than today, and many documented benefits of those warmer temperatures presented a powerful obstacle in alarmists’ attempts to brand our current modest warming an unprecedented climate crisis. One of the many embarrassing emails leaked in the Climategate scandal showed how alarmists deliberately set a goal of eliminating the historical existence of the Medieval Warm Period. Alarmist climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck wrote in an email to fellow alarmist Keith Briffa, “I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature.”
Also, scientist David Deming testified to Congress that a prominent figure working in the field of climate change asserted to him, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
We have often been told that the science is settled. Apparently, that doesn’t apply to scientific data and evidence invalidating climate alarmism. Mann last month favorably retweeted an assertion that present temperatures are the warmest they have been for at least the past 5,000 years. Hayhoe earlier this year gave a presentation in which she presented a graph (without any scientific citation) asserting temperatures steadily and consistently declined for 4,000 years – without any significant variation – prior to the warming of the past 120 years that finally and mercifully brought an end to the Little Ice Age (at 7:41).
As documented above, the existence of substantial historical climate variations such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were scientifically well-documented and not in dispute before climate activism politicized the issue. Alarmist scientists were on record searching for justifications to eliminate these inconvenient climate variations that blew gaping holes in their alarmist theories. Now, conveniently, alarmists like Mann and Hayhoe claim the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and other well-documented warm and cold periods simply did not exist.
An old sarcastic saying goes, “When the facts doesn’t fit the theory, change the facts.” Mann and Hayhoe provide perfect real-world examples of such perniciousness. Powerful scientific evidence supported near-universal agreement about the existence of the Medieval Warm Period. Then Mann and Hayhoe, supported by little or no compelling evidence, waved a magic wand and made the Medieval Warm Period conveniently disappear.
Climate realists, however, will stick with the powerful scientific evidence, the long-established scientific “consensus,” the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the findings of the IPCC. Sorry, Mann and Hayhoe, but you have been caught red-handed.
Extinction Rebellion is a carnival for middle classes who love to dress up as activists
By Professor Frank Furedi | RT | October 7, 2019
I know a protest when I see one. Walking around in London today it is evident that the tens of thousands of adults playing at being children are not so much protesting but putting on a performance of protest.
Unlike normal protest the men and women wearing uniforms in London today, are not there to police but to be helpful and assist this very noisy and very colorful performance.
For their part the chanters of apocalyptic slogans and the boisterous participants declaring that they know what’s best for everyone, have rehearsed their role for this mass expensive street theatre. Queuing up to get arrested is all part of this drama. There are even celebrities lurking about to provide a sense of the occasion.
When I encounter a group of middle aged distinguished-looking activists tucking into their lunch, while sitting on the pavement by the Embankment, I am reminded of the kind of street parties that occurred during the Queen’s Jubilee. Talking to these chaps and chapettes, it becomes evident that not only are they having the time of their life, they are also under the impression that their picnic contributes to the saving of the planet. When I put to them my view that ‘this is a self-indulgent carnival of reaction’, they don’t argue back. One of them tells me to go to hell. An elderly lady sneers at me and simply states that ‘I will not have a bad word said against these young people’. As far as she and her companions are concerned, Extinction Rebellion now possesses the kind of moral authority previously associated with the Church and the institutions of the state.
The ease with which Extinction Rebellion has succeeded in occupying the moral high ground has little to do with the quality of their arguments and the strength of their case. In all but name, the political establishments of the western world have given up the attempt to exercise moral authority. The elite no longer upholds the values of their ancestors and is all too aware of its loss of legitimacy. It no longer believes in itself and is evidently prepared to be flagellated by its environmentalist critics. In turn Extinction Rebellion knows that when it instructs its posh friends to jump, their answer is likely to be ‘How High’!
A lot of people on the streets of London and elsewhere are of course really miffed and angry about the way this carnival of reaction has disrupted to their life. In private conversations they murmur and swear at ‘these wastrels’. But as long as the performers enjoy backing of the media, the cultural elites, a significant section of the political establishment, and of course the all-important celebrities, their voice can be safely ignored by the protesters.
Until now participating in a Climate Extinction performance has been a risk-free activity. Unlike real protests which always incur serious risks, this week’s performance is unlikely to cost the performers very much. The cost will be borne by an increasingly fed-up public who was never asked whether or not they wanted their life to be turned upside-down.
Professor Frank Furedi is a sociologist and author. His, ‘How Fear Works: The Culture Of Fear In The Twentieth Century’ is published by Bloomsbury.
An Open Letter to ‘Science and Global Security’
Do Not Succumb to Political Censorship on Syria
By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | October 6, 2019
Dear Editors at Science and Global Security
Science and Global Security (SGS) has been publishing technical articles on arms control and related issues since 1989. I urge you not to succumb to political censorship.
Recently it was announced you are withholding publication of an article titled “Computational Forensic Analysis for the Chemical Weapons Attack at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017.” The article presents evidence that a crater in the road in the town of Khan Sheikhoun (Syria) could have been caused by an “improvised rocket-propelled artillery round with a high explosive warhead” rather than an aerial bomb dropped by a Syrian plane. The paper was authored by seven scientists from prominent universities and laboratories in the USA and China and based on advanced modelling techniques and computer simulations.
According to the article “Scientists clash over paper that questions Syrian government’s role in sarin attack” a campaign to stop you from publishing the analysis was launched by Gregory Koblentz. He is a political scientist not an engineer or physical scientist. His criticism of the article is because of the conclusion.
The political bias of Koblentz is clear from his article titled “Syria’s Chemical Weapons Kill Chain.” It accuses the Syrian government of using chemical weapons and speculates on the chain of command. It distorts the findings of the UN report on the attack of August 21, 2013. Actually, the UN lead investigator, Ake Sellstrom, suggested that it was a “fair guess” that the rockets carrying the sarin travelled 2 kilometers. This would have put the launch firmly in opposition held territory, directly contradicting Koblentz’s assertions that the Syrian government was to blame.
Facts and Investigations
You may not be aware of the following facts:
* The report of the Joint Investigative Mechanism was definitive about the crater. On page 7/33 it says, “the Mechanism assessed that the crater was most probably caused by a heavy object travelling at a high rate of velocity, such as an aerial bomb with a small explosive charge… The Mechanism also examined whether an IED could have caused the crater. While this possibility could not be completed ruled out, the experts assessed that that scenario was less likely….. ” (emphasis added).
* Some of the most proven investigative journalists have concluded that the incident was staged by the opposition. For example, the late Robert Parry wrote an article titled “Did Al Qaeda Dupe Trump on Syrian Attack.” He noted that “Buried deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity.” As Parry wrote, “More than 100 patients would appear to have been exposed to sarin before the alleged warplane could have dropped the alleged bomb and the victims could be evacuated, a finding that alone would have destroyed the JIM’s case against the Syrian government. But the JIM seemed more interested in burying this evidence of Al Qaeda staging the incident …”
* Seymour Hersh is another proven journalist. His research confirmed that no chemical bomb was used at Khan Sheikhoun. The Russians had even informed the US military ahead of time that they would be bombing an important meeting of groups that even the US defined as “terrorist”. Hersh’s conclusions are outlined in the article “Hersh’s New Syria Revelations Buried from View.”
* Yet another proven journalist, Gareth Porter, did a detailed investigation including confidential interviews with scientists with close ties to the OPCW. His in depth report is titled “Have We Been Deceived Over Syrian Sarin Attack? Scrutinizing the Evidence ….” Among many points he debunks the notion that the crater could have been caused by a chemical weapons bomb which is designed to release chemicals and NOT burn them in a large explosion.
* Finally, yet another proven journalist, Robert Fisk, has written about bias at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in an article titled “The evidence we were never meant to see about the Douma ‘gas’ attack.“
Global security is being threatened by claims and counter-claims about weapons of mass destruction. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on such claims. The “intelligence community” was certain but wrong. Now, in Syria there are similar claims and counter-claims. Two nuclear armed countries, the US and Russia, are involved.
The US has already attacked Syria on the basis of media reports to the approval of people like Gregory Koblentz. The pattern of aggression on the basis of dubious or false evidence is very dangerous and could lead to much greater conflict.
Political censorship does not serve science or global security. Publish the article.
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com.
Faster than expected except where slower
Climate Discussion Nexus | September 18, 2019
When you get a news story about climate change, it inevitably tells you scientists have looked at something going on in the world, discovered it’s worse than we thought, and concluded that greenhouse gases are to blame. Which at least saves you the trouble of reading further. Except that if you do, you sometimes learn that scientists did not find what journalists claimed up front. For instance we learn from Eurekalert that the Thwaites Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica is being “thawed by a warming ocean more quickly than previously thought.” So why does the lead scientist mention something being more stable than previously thought?
The story in question results from a creative experiment involving “newly digitized vintage film” dating all the way back to the 1970s when, over eight years, scientists flew over the Antarctic recording ice-penetrating radar readings on 35 mm film. Subsequent radar soundings were sporadic until after 2009. So the scientists found a way to digitize the 1970s records to make them comparable to the modern ones.
The result? Glaciers melting and washing away Manhattan? Not exactly. One part of the Antarctic, the Thwaites ice shelf, thinned between 10 and 33 percent over the 40 years of records. Another part, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf basal channel, didn’t change at all. And part of the Thwaites ice shelf regrounded and became stable. And maybe it’s all due to a warming ocean. Except the rate of submarine melting slowed between the 1978-2004 and 2004-2009 segments.
The conclusion? In the underlying article the authors don’t say it’s “worse then we thought”, more like “we didn’t know what to expect and we saw lots of interesting patterns.” The Eurekalert article quotes the lead author that “[We] were able to have one ice shelf where we can say, ‘Look, it’s pretty much stable. And here, there’s significant change’.” The headline rephrases that as “Thwaites Glacier ice shelf melting faster than previously observed.” Well yes, because it wasn’t previously observed so any data would be new; it could also be phrased as “melting slower than previously observed”. And what about the other parts? From there the journalist spins out the money phrase “thawed by a warming ocean more quickly than previously thought” in the first sentence of the article. Maybe hoping you wouldn’t read any further.
If urgent climate action is needed, then let’s #BanPrivateJets
By Mark Jeftovik | Guerrilla Capitalism | October 4, 2019
As the din of climate hysteria grows ever louder, the eco-pious and super-rich call for urgent and drastic action on climate change. Justin Trudeau, still licking his wounds from being outed for his multiple episodes of blackface and brownface, took more heat today as he’s criss-crossing the country ahead of the forthcoming federal election with not one, but two private jets.
As these calls for immediate climate action are accelerating, in fact we’ve seen numerous trial balloons floated from a complicit mainsteam media (or as Canada’a reigning Liberals call it “Approved Media”).
These trial balloons / admonitions include:
- Eating less meat, or no meat, or perhaps eat maggots or eat people, to reduce carbon output.
- Driving less, fewer cars on the road, ban on gas powered vehicles, to reduce carbon output.
- Have less children, or no children, to reduce carbon output.
And of course:
- Fly less. Let’s have fewer planes in the air, to reduce carbon output.
These guidelines are understandably hard sells for Joe Public, as many common people like to eat meat, or need a car to get to-and-from work, and children, as demanding as they can be, eventually grow up and can mow our lawns and do chores around the house.
So if we’re serious about drastic climate action, right now, before the world ends, we need to do something that has maximum bang for the buck, while disrupting as few lives as possible. This way, the rabble masses will see that our leaders and elites are serious and they have the will to take whatever action necessary to make this happen.
#BanPrivateJets
The top 50 countries in the world in terms of private jet ownership have a total fleet of nearly 18,000 jets. According to Statista, private jet ownership is soaring in most developed countries (as wealth inequality accelerates thanks to central bank interventions and 10 years of Cantillon Effects).
According to The Independent, the most popular private jet is the Cessna Citation XLS, which I believe climate alarmist Leonardo Di Caprio may be boarding in the picture below, having been shunted to the runway via a private helicopter…
A Cessna Citation XLS burns approximately 6,030kg of CO2 per three hour flight.
It’s back-of-the-napkin, but let’s say a typical jet does 4 legs per week, at 3 hour legs. We get:
17,947 jets X 6,030 kg CO2/flight X 4 flights/week X 52 weeks = 22,509,845,280 kilograms of Co2.
Over 22 billion kilos of C02. Per year.
Of course, that estimate of 4 legs per week could be low. Elon Musk has a private jet that logged 150,000 miles in 2018. Enough to circle the globe 6 times.
But if we banned private jets, with immediate effect, no exceptions, very few working class and middle class people would be affected. In fact even upper class, lower-tier wealthy would be relatively unscathed. It would only affect the tiny sliver at the top of the wealth pyramid, the same ones who seem most vociferously adamant on drastic climate action now and who could best afford to make alternate arrangements for attending climate summits or other important events. The annual Davos summit could be held via Skype, for example.
Taking the important step now will set the tone for the coming, rapid and drastic restructuring of every aspect of our lives, and it will be an easier pill to swallow when the elitists driving this change are leading the charge by example. Be the change you wish to see! #BanPrivateJets
My forthcoming book, Unassailable: Defend Your Content Against Deplatform Attacks, Cancel-Culture and Other Online Disasters will be out soon. If you want to be notified when it’s ready, sign up for my mailing list and I’ll let you know (I may even give a copy away for free to everybody on my list).
New study finds slim evidence for apocalyptic warnings about red meat
RT | October 4, 2019
A new study has found slim to nonexistent evidence for apocalyptic warnings about red meat consumption causing cancer, and the scientific establishment hell-bent on turning humanity vegan for environment’s sake is now outraged.
A team of 14 researchers from seven countries looked at over 130 articles and a dozen randomized trials, concluding that evidence linking the consumption of red and processed meat to cancer, heart disease, and mortality was of low quality and unreliable. Their findings were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a publication of the American College of Physicians, last week – to howls of protest from the scientific and nutritional establishment.
“This report has layers of flaws and is the most egregious abuse of evidence that I have ever seen,” declared Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Harsh words, to be sure, especially since one of the study’s authors is Gordon Guyatt, a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Canada and one of the creators of GRADE, a strict methodology for assessing the certainty of scientific evidence.
Guyatt said the reactions to the study are approaching levels of what he would call “hysteria.”
“If you’re the emperor, and somebody points out that you haven’t any clothes, this is not going to be a very appealing situation,” he said. “It’s very threatening, and people are defending their territory.”
Indeed, Willett is a leading member of the EAT-Lancet Commission, which advocates for a plant-based diet for the sake of the environment – and Harvard is the institution behind the infamous “food pyramid,” used for decades by the US government to advise its citizens to eat less meat and fat in favor of grains and carbohydrates.
Those guidelines have been a smashing success – in driving up the rates of obesity and diabetes, that is. If you want to see a real “hockey stick” graph, look at the percentage of overweight Americans skyrocket since 1980, when the US government began promoting the Harvard food pyramid.
The study also comes at the worst possible time for the scientific establishment, right amid its global crusade against farming and ranching in the name of saving the planet. One after another, scientists have argued that raising cattle destroys forests and releases carbon, so humanity must change its way of eating to focus on vegetables and insects – by force, if need be.
Some governments have already imposed a “meat tax” on behalf of the environment, and there has even been talk of outlawing meat for promoting “ecocide” and being as dangerous to public health as smoking.
No surprise, then, that Harvard has attacked the study as ignoring the environmental impact of meat, because “climate change and environmental degradation have serious effects on human health” and are therefore “important to consider when making recommendations.”
One California public health official echoed the same line of reasoning in a comment to the Annals of Internal Medicine, arguing the research shouldn’t have been written, let alone published, “without concern for the environmental effects of food choices.”
“Please let us, as physicians, wake up to the fact, that our climate crisis poses the most profound risk to individuals and public health and that we have a responsibility in guiding the public on how to confront this threat: in part, with food choices,” wrote Henning Ansor of Santa Barbara.
In other words, it doesn’t matter if the science is solid, the higher moral calling demands that the scientists lie – or stay silent – in the name of Mother Earth? That’s not how science works. That’s not how any of this works.
Poroshenko fails to appear for polygraph
Credit Image: © Pavlo_bagmut/Ukrinform via ZUMA Wire
By Padraig McGrath | October 3, 2019
Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko failed to appear at the Kiev Research Institute of Forensic Expertise for a polygraph test on October 1st. The test was scheduled to be conducted by Ukraine’s National Bureau of Investigations, having been authorized by a Kiev court on August 13th. The polygraph test was scheduled to be conducted in connection with a tax-evasion investigation being carried out by NBI. Poroshenko is currently the focus of over a dozen criminal investigations which have been opened by multiple Ukrainian law-enforcement bodies since he lost the presidential election to Volodymyr Zelensky on a landslide in April. These investigations are in connection with indictments for tax-evasion, embezzlement, illegal abuse of authority, interference in judicial proceedings, forgery of documents and of lawmakers’ signatures, money-laundering, and other corruption-schemes.
The criminal exploits of the Yanukovich family seem quite modest by comparison.
On August 1st, the Vesti Ukraine newspaper reported that Poroshenko had made appeals to American lobbyists for protection from prosecution, including to the BGR Group, where former US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker acts as a senior advisor. This is a shrewd move on Poroshenko’s part. Over the past 70 years, between the United States government and its myriad puppets, there has been an unspoken agreement.
If you do our dirty work for us, impunity is guaranteed.
And indeed Poroshenko did a lot of dirty work. As president, he was an extremely loyal servant of US foreign policy. Even if President Trump has consistently indicated that he has little interest in Ukraine, there will doubtlessly be voices in the State Department advising him that it sets an extremely unhelpful precedent for the future if the US fails to protect Poroshenko now.
This latest controversy involving Poroshenko is just one instance of a pattern which has emerged steadily in Ukraine, in particular over the past 5 years – the country has developed a love-affair with the polygraph. In January, Ukraine’s most senior military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, announced that he planned to develop a “polygraph program” in order to identify Russian collaborators and “separatists.”
Used in this way, the technology’s express purpose will be to identify thought-criminals.
As it currently stands, polygraph tests have already been made standard components within job-interviews for many positions in banking, the tax-service, anti-corruption agencies and the military. In addition, polygraph-results are admissible as evidence in Ukrainian courts, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and criminologists worldwide who are familiar with the methodology and theory behind polygraphy regard it as a pseudo-science. There is very little evidence that polygraph-results are reliable, and lots of empirical evidence to the contrary.
The legal codes of the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu and the Babylonian Hammurabi stipulated the practice of “trial by ordeal,” a practice which survived well into the medieval period in Europe. Polygraphy, which involves monitoring physiological reactions during a line of questioning, is obviously a less physically dangerous method of establishing a person’s innocence or guilt than trial by ordeal, but no less superstitious. Honestly, you may as well be attempting to determine a person’s truthfulness or deception by entrails-divination.
The Ukrainian psychotherapist Irina Muzychuk, a vocal critic of polygraphy, has argued that the proliferation of this pseudo-scientific fad has partially ideological and emotional roots. She argues that in what she calls “highly unstable societies” such as Ukraine, the polygraph offers “hope that the truth will be found.” In a society which has been mired in oligarchism and corruption since it untethered itself from the Soviet Union in 1991, with the result that trust has completely broken down not only on the societal level but also on the interpersonal level, the polygraph operates as a fetishistic, pseudo-scientific substitute for trust.
However, if we were to analyze the phenomenon genealogically, we might also admit that it had deeper roots. Every society, every distinct ideological order, has its own ideologically driven, privileged pseudo-sciences. For example, in the United States, the most privileged pseudo-sciences are psychology and macro-economics. In the post-Soviet space, many privileged or legally mandated pseudo-sciences are hangovers from the “scientism” (in Russian “naukoobrazye”) which inhered in “scientific communism.”
For example, the disciplines which we call “political science” (in Russian “politologia”) and “geo-politics” are pseudo-sciences, insofar as they do not have methodologies which essentially distinguish them from the study of history. Their methodologies essentially centre on making historically-grounded comparisons. Nothing essentially wrong with that in itself – this would make “politologia” essentially a sub-discipline within the venerable study of history. The problem is that most political scientists don’t think as deeply or as long-term as historians. They compensate for this by maintaining scientific pretensions.
In the post-Soviet world, most high-profile purveyors of “politologia” are people who managed to crawl from the epistemological wreckage of “scientific communism” 30 years ago.
I would contend that the widespread use of the polygraph in Ukraine’s juridical process is another clear example of a particular type of “scientism,” this naïve trust in methodologies which purport to be “scientific.” As previously stated, almost every ideological order has its own privileged pseudo-sciences. “Scientism” is certainly not unique to the post-communist world. In the case of Ukraine’s contemporary polygraphy-craze, rather than “scientific communism,” it would count as an example of “pseudo-scientific post-communism.” For those under criminal investigation in Ukraine today, this is a somewhat brutal irony, when we consider the spate of “anti-communization” statutes which have been signed into law in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d’etat. Ukrainian society is just the flip-side of everything it thinks it’s reacting against.
You see, just like religions, secular ideologies cannot simply be erased or surgically removed. They can only morph or mutate. In spite of “secularization,” religion never really culturally disappears – it simply morphs into some post-religious form.
Precisely the same point holds for ostensibly secular ideologies such as communism or liberalism.
Childish Fantasies vs Real World Energy Needs
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | October 2, 2019
Certain politicians are making promises about carbon dioxide emissions and the year 2050 – three full decades from now. Certain adults are telling elementary school children that transforming the world’s energy system is easy peasy.
But that’s not the case. In an article titled Net-Zero Carbon Dioxide Emissions By 2050 Requires A New Nuclear Power Plant Every Day, Roger Pielke Jr. delivers the harsh, mathematical truth. Even if every person in the world thought abandoning fossil fuels made sense, even if every last government was committed to such a plan, the sheer size of the task would remain. In Pielke’s words: “The scale…is absolutely, mind-bogglingly huge.”
In an entire year, a nuclear power plant is capable of producing 1 “million tons of oil equivalent” of energy – or 1 mtoe for short. Says Pielke:
In 2018 the world consumed 11,743 mtoe in the form of coal, natural gas and petroleum… there are 11,051 days left until January 1, 2050. To achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions globally by 2050 thus requires the deployment of >1 mtoe of carbon-free energy…every day, starting tomorrow and continuing for the next 30+ years. Achieving net-zero also requires the corresponding equivalent decommissioning of more than 1 mtoe of energy consumption from fossil fuels every single day.
Let us be honest and grownup here. The chances of this happening are remote.
Now let’s remember that many people insist nuclear power is off the table. We’re supposedly in the midst of a climate crisis caused by CO2 emissions, yet low-emissions nuclear power is forbidden.
Such people think we should rely on wind power, instead. According to Pielke’s calculations, that would require the construction of 1,500 wind turbines every single day from now until 2050.
Currently, the US consumes approximately 20% of the energy used across the globe. Its share of the 1,500 new wind turbines required daily would therefore be 300.
Despite years of massive subsidies designed to encourage wind energy investment, fewer than 10 turbines are currently installed in the US each day. Surely even a child understands that ramping up from 10 turbines a day to 300 is a massive challenge that couldn’t possibly happen overnight. Even in an affluent country with a booming economy.
And please, let us also put aside fairy tales about wind power being environmentally friendly. As Mark P. Mills explained recently in the Wall Street Journal :
Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic. Solar power requires even more cement, steel and glass…
Those who “dream of powering society entirely with wind and solar farms” says Mills, are actually demanding “the biggest expansion in mining the world has seen.”
How to Evaluate the Evidence of Contrarians – Scientifically
By Jennifer Marohasy | September 21, 2019
FUNDAMENTAL to the scientific method is the assumption that reality exists independently of our belief systems; that there is such a thing as evidence, and that it matters.
There seems to be general agreement on this point from both the left and right sides of Australian politics.
Indeed, in an article in The Weekend Australian newspaper (page 18) written by Graham Lloyd entitled ‘No place in debate for contrarian hijackers’, Misha Ketchell who is the editor of the influential academic publication The Conversation is quoted claiming to care so much about the evidence that the opinions of ‘sceptics’ must be excluded.
But this begs the question: how do we define scepticism, and on what basis do we discount the opinion of a so-called sceptic?
If their opinions are at complete odds with the evidence: then wouldn’t it be more useful to show this? To use them, and their wrong claims, to explain the truth within the theory of human-caused global warming?
It is claimed that sceptics like myself have an undue and powerful political influence, repeatedly successfully thwarting attempts to implement necessary public policy change.
Indeed, if my arguments are so devoid of evidence, this should be easily proven. Except that the skills scores from my rainfall forecasts, when compared with reality, are far superior to anything forecast by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
There has always been a role in science for models and predictions — that can be objectively tested against reality/the evidence —- so the predictions of sceptics could be juxtaposed against predictions from the consensus.
Another way of finding universal truths is through simple observation. If we have catastrophic sea level rise, for example, then this should be evident when we visit the beach, or somewhere like Sydney Harbour. It should be evident in our coastal landscapes. I explained some of this in a recent talk I gave at the Maroochydore Surf Life Saving Club that the Institute of Public Affairs had filmed and that is now available on YouTube.
Given science is about real world phenomena, it should not be that difficult for Misha Ketchell to test the evidence repeatedly being put forward by particular individuals, like myself, against what comes to pass in the real world — what is observed.
But instead of relying on such simple tests of the truth — in my rainfall forecasts or in a coastal landscape or at a coral reef — those in authority, and who edit important journals and websites, have decided that I should be banned.
As Graham Lloyd explains on page 18 of today’s Weekend Australian, I’m listed, in, of all places, the journal Nature as a dangerous dissident who must be shunned, and denied, because, it is claimed, that I misrepresent the evidence. That so many of us are actively de-platformed is only just now being acknowledged, and I am grateful that it has today been explained in The Weekend Australian.
The conspiracy against me dates to at least 2008 when Bryant MacFie gifted $350,000 to the University of Queensland (UQ) in a donation facilitated by the Institute of Public Affairs to pay for environmental research scholarships. After I set all of this up, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) intervened and told the Law and Agricultural facilities that if the program was to go ahead it must be without me … because as someone sceptical of global warming I lacked integrity.
I was replaced by Richard Burns, as the team leader. And more recently, in January just this year, after another strategic intervention perhaps involving the Bureau this time, I was removed as team leader from a project with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
The University of Queensland program did go ahead without me back in 2008.
I moved to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. The Blue Mountains is, of course, a great place for bush walking, which is a great way to reconnect with the natural world. It is in nature that we find evidence for the universal truths that exist independently of any and everything Misha Ketchell, and other such Australian opinion leaders, choose to publish — or not.
So, while I have repeatedly tried to escape to nature, it draws me back to science … as a method for transcending the chatter now everywhere in our scientific institutions and their publications.
I have kept showing that David Jones and Blair Trewin at the Bureau of Meteorology keep changing the temperature record, and more recently that the journal Nature publishes incorrect information from David Wachenfeld, the chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, as detailed in the article that follows.
Science is a method, science is never settled. We must therefore always be open-minded, tolerant and ready to be proven wrong. But history will eventually show that it is Misha Ketchell who is wrong and that this editor is not using a reasonable, or in any way evidence-based, criteria for deciding what should be published. This is so very wrong and so very harmful to science, democracy and the capacity of other opinion leaders and academics to evaluate the evidence which is so necessary if they are to get to the truth in such matters as climate change.
****************
The following article was published in The Weekend Australian on 7th September 2019.
Coral death knell exaggerated, says rebel quality assurance survey
The death of inshore corals near Bowen had been greatly exaggerated, according to the findings of a rebel quality assurance survey by reef-science outsiders Peter Ridd and Jennifer Marohasy.
The shallow reef flats of Stone Island have played a key role in divisions over the health of the – inshore Great Barrier Reef and the impact of run-off from agriculture.
Dr Ridd was disciplined for attempting to blow the whistle on the widespread use of before and after pictures taken a century apart near Stone Island that suggested coral cover had disappeared.
A follow-up paper by Queensland University reef scientist Tara Clark, co-authored by Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority chief scientist David Wachenfeld, confirmed the coral loss.
Despite winning his unfair dismissal case against JCU and being yesterday awarded more than $1.2m by the Federal Court, Dr Ridd effectively has been dismissed as a crank by other scientists.
An expert scientific panel last month accused him of spreading scientific misinformation like pro- tobacco lobbyists and anti-vaccination campaigners.
But Dr Ridd and Dr Marohasy have spent the past two weeks documenting the corals around Stone Island, which they found were still very much alive. … continue
Because Greenland really needs more ice
Climate Discussion Nexus | September 25, 2019
“SPECIAL REPORT: As their home melts, Greenlanders confront the fallout of climate change” shrieks NBC in a Sept. 17 email teaser (not available online) that warns that “Greenland is ‘ground zero’ for global warming, a place where the effects of rising temperatures and melting ice could have the most dire consequences. The shorter winters and longer summers have opened new waterways for fishing and tourism — but they’ve also endangered hunting, dogsledding and other traditional ways of life for the island’s 55,000 residents.” Oh really? Then why do long-term temperature records for Greenland show almost no warming in the last 60 years, or the last hundred?
There’s a famous story in Plutarch about Philip of Macedon the Great sending an ultimatum to the Spartans to surrender because “If I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city” to which the Spartans replied simply “If”. And NBC’s casual use of “As” in the phrase “As their home melts,” not even as a premise to be explored but as an assumption to be swallowed untasted, we reply that if their home is not melting, nothing you say about what happens as it does tells us anything except that you are either gullible or zealots.
The NBC story to which the teaser links of course draws on the wisdom of the ancestors about the dramatic unpleasant changes, including one elder who said a thunderstorm was scary because in the good old days “We maybe hear some thunder one time in 30 years.” NBC did not delve into the question of whether in fact Greenland gets a thunderstorm every three decades.
Instead reporter Denise Chow breathlessly recounted being stuck near a glacier when the helicopter didn’t arrive and recalling with relief that fellow scientist David Holland had brought “a shotgun – just in case he needed to fend off polar bears.” Hmmm. Not so much threatened as threatening, are they?
As it happens, the bears stayed away and Chow ended up having a lovely night camping in exotic Arctic scenery before a chopper whisked them away the next day and “I found myself missing the peace, solitude and absolute splendor of Helheim Glacier.” But it was still terrifying because the Helheim glacier is melting rapidly and “Holland’s team is trying to understand what’s driving the staggering ice melt. This summer alone, an estimated 440 billion tons of ice has been lost from Greenland’s ice sheet — and some scientists say it could be more.”
We know what’s driving the main melt. It’s called summer. It happens every year and then the ice sheet grows again in winter. As for the glacier, well, many are retreating, including in Alaska, due to the natural temperature rebound from the Little Ice Age that saw them shrink dramatically before 1900.
Perhaps these journalists are seeing what they expect to see and their editors want them to see not what is actually there. NBC also sent star anchor Lester Holt “to Alaska – where he spent part of his childhood — to get a personal perspective of a climate in crisis. Scientists are warning that rising temperatures are having a significant impact on the state – including melting glaciers – which contributes to rising sea levels and warming oceans.” And Al Roker to Greenland to study… wait for it… “its record melt and heat wave.” Which he duly found, even though the data suggest that the widespread post-Victorian temperature rebound seems largely to have passed Greenland by. As we noted in August, its ice cap is about the same size today it was in 1850, and Greenland as a whole appears to have been cooling gently since the 1920s. Awkward.
Chow also failed for some reason to camp by Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier that has recently baffled scientists by growing instead of shrinking. Instead she had an excellent adventure and filed the usual story.
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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