British Funeral Director: Dead Babies Are Piling Up in Morgues
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | November 5, 2021
A British funeral director says he’s seeing untold numbers of dead babies and newborns in cold storage and piling up in mortuaries waiting for their funerals.
The unprecedented numbers of babies that he and other morticians are dealing with are matched only by the excessive number of younger people in their 30s and 40s who have been dying since the COVID-19 vaccine rolled out, he says.
When the pandemic first began the mortuaries saw a flurry of deaths which, in a few months, calmed down, even though media continued to hype COVID deaths. There was an uptick in suicides in the summer of 2020 in mostly younger men, but when fall 2020 came, everything was rather quiet.
And then, he said, “Come January [2021] the numbers were going through the roof … and that’s since people were being vaccinated.” Now he’s having the most funerals he’s ever seen in a period of two weeks, and in younger people, he’s averaging about 12 “in one go,” when before the vaccine he would see only “four or five funerals going, not 12, and not all in that age group.”
And now, he says, what he’s seeing is a lot of newborn babies … “really high, about 30” when he’s used to seeing only three or four. In other words, about 10 times the number of newborn babies are dying than he normally would see — so many they’re having to keep them in the adult section, where there’s more room. “Obviously they’re either miscarried or full-term births, but not a lot is being said about it,” he says.
To put the causes of deaths in perspective, he says he’s only had one COVID death this year. All the rest are myocarditis, infarctions (heart attacks) and some pneumonia. He also notes that “anybody and everybody” who died when the pandemic started was marked as COVID on their death certificates, but that’s not happening since the vaccine was introduced.
Mirror source: Brighteon November 4, 2021
Infection Rates More than Twice as High in the Vaccinated, New UKHSA Data Shows, as Agency Dismisses Own Data as ‘Biased’.
But Why No New VE Estimate Since May?
By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • November 5, 2021
The latest UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance report was released Thursday, and its authors are now bending over backwards to keep their critics happy. Following a telling-off this week from the U.K. Statistics Authority, the UKHSA’s Head of Immunisation, Mary Ramsay (pictured above), published a blog post explaining what they’ve done to appease their detractors, while the report now states no fewer than four times, twice in bold typeface, that “these raw data should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness”. Ramsay grovels:
To make our data less susceptible to misinterpretation, the U.K. Health Security Agency has worked with the UK Statistics Authority to update some of the data tables and descriptions in the report, specifically around rates of infection in vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. In our commitment to transparent and clear data, we regularly review our publications to ensure they reflect the current situation within the pandemic, and we will continue to work with our partners at the statistics bodies, to ensure our reporting is as scientifically robust as possible.
As I noted last week, the UKHSA does not accept the criticism of its population estimates levelled by, among others, David Spiegelhalter, who declared that using them was “deeply untrustworthy and completely unacceptable”.
The agency instead takes the view that the problem is systemic biases in the data which mean it “should not be used” to estimate vaccine effectiveness. But as I have noted repeatedly, those biases just mean that the estimate will be of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness, which is a perfectly legitimate quantity to estimate and has its uses, particularly when looking at trends or when there is reason to think the biases may be relatively small. (For instance, a recent vaccine effectiveness study in California adjusted its raw data for 22 different factors but in almost all cases the adjustments were tiny.)
The UKHSA report itself correctly gives the definition of vaccine effectiveness: “Vaccine effectiveness is estimated by comparing rates of disease in vaccinated individuals to rates in unvaccinated individuals.” The U.S. CDC, likewise, states the definition as “the proportionate reduction in disease among the vaccinated group”. The CDC distinguishes “vaccine efficacy”, estimated from controlled studies, from “vaccine effectiveness”, which is used “when a study is carried out under typical field (that is, less than perfectly controlled) conditions”. It is therefore not appropriate for the UKHSA, a Government agency, to insist that its data “should not be used” to estimate vaccine effectiveness, which is a false statement and amounts to attempted Government censorship of scientific enquiry.
The report explains that “vaccine effectiveness is measured in other ways as detailed in the ‘Vaccine Effectiveness’ Section.” However, that section is clear that each estimate “typically applies for at least the first three to four months after vaccination”, and “there may be waning of effectiveness beyond this point”. The report discusses this waning, but only for the Alpha variant: “Data (based primarily on the Alpha variant) suggest that in most clinical risk groups, immune response to vaccination is maintained and high levels of VE are seen with both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.” What use is data based primarily on the Alpha variant, which went almost extinct around six months ago? There is no attempt to present adjusted estimates of vaccine effectiveness based on the most up-to-date data. Instead, we are just given repeated insistences that the data is not showing what it appears to be showing because it is subject to unquantified biases.
What are those biases? Last week the report claimed that vaccinated people “may engage in more social interactions because of their vaccination status”, which didn’t fit with the more usual idea of unvaccinated people as a less cautious sort. Neither did it fit with the other reason they gave, that the vaccinated “may be more health conscious and therefore more likely to get tested for COVID-19”. This week they kept the latter but changed the former to the entirely ambiguous: “People who are fully vaccinated and people who are unvaccinated may behave differently, particularly with regard to social interactions.”
The other two biases they suggest are that “many of those who were at the head of the queue for vaccination are those at higher risk from COVID-19” and “people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19” previously. (The latter they say gives a person “some natural immunity to the virus for a few months”, which seems a very pessimistic view of natural immunity, particularly seeing how optimistic they are about the effectiveness of the vaccines.)
The report asserts categorically that the unvaccinated have higher previous infection rates, but cites no evidence to support this. Why not? Why, almost a year into the vaccination campaign, are researchers still so often waving their hands when talking about the differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups? Where is the published data? Precisely how much more likely are the unvaccinated to have had a previous infection? This is a simple data comparison. Why hasn’t it been done? The study in California mentioned earlier found that 2% of the vaccinated had recovered from Covid against 2.3% of the unvaccinated, so not a large difference. Is England similar? Why don’t we know? Likewise, how much more likely are vaccinated people to be tested? This is just a comparison of the testing rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Why hasn’t it been done? This is not good enough. We want more data from UKHSA, not lectures on how not to use the meagre amounts of data they release.
In her blog post, Mary Ramsay points to studies PHE (UKHSA’s predecessor) has published in the past:
These factors are all accounted for in our published analyses of vaccine effectiveness which uses the test-negative case control approach. This is a recommended method of assessing vaccine effectiveness that compares the vaccination status of people who test positive for COVID-19, with those who test negative.
This method helps to control for different propensity to have a test and we are able to exclude those known to have been previously infected with COVID-19. We also control for important factors including geography, time period, ethnicity, clinical risk group, living in a care home and being a health or social care worker.
While PHE did publish such studies earlier in the year (I analyse them here and here), they have not published anything based on data more recent than May, over five months ago. This was just as Delta arrived, and before infections surged over the summer and the raw data started showing infections in the vaccinated eclipsing those in the unvaccinated.
So where is the update? It’s all very well writing pages at the behest of the U.K. Statistics Authority policing how people use your data, but where are the studies setting the picture straight? We’ve had studies from California, Sweden and Israel using data from over the summer, all showing sharp decline in vaccine effectiveness. Where is the U.K.’s contribution to this emerging understanding of the vaccines?
Yes, we had that dubious study in August from Oxford University based on the ONS Infection Survey. But there’s been no update from UKHSA to its studies based on Government testing data.
Here’s a suggestion. Why don’t Daily Sceptic readers write a (polite!) email to the UKHSA’s Mary Ramsay (address here, Twitter here) asking for an update on their very useful test-negative case control study with data from the summer and autumn. You might say you have been concerned about the data in their Vaccine Surveillance reports showing high infection rates in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated, but note they say vaccine effectiveness can only be properly estimated in a study, so would be grateful for an update on this.
Here’s this week’s table of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness and the updated graphs showing how it is changing over time. It shows infection rates currently twice as high in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated for those aged 40-79, corresponding to an unadjusted vaccine effectiveness of minus-100% or more. Vaccine effectiveness is negative for all over-30s, and almost zero for those aged 18-29 (and still declining). It remains high for under-18s, and effectiveness against hospital admission and death is holding up. This week the decline appears to have stopped, or at least paused, in most age groups.
Yemen on the Brink of Disaster, Poverty, and Extinction
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 03.11.2021
UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder has just returned from Yemen with some tragic news about children living in what the United Nations calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva, he said: “The Yemen conflict has just hit another shameful milestone: 10,000 children have been killed or maimed since Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign started in March 2015. That’s the equivalent of four children every day.” Elder told reporters that the estimates provided by the international UN agency were likely an understatement of the actual number of children killed and injured, which is rarely recorded by anyone. “These are of course the cases the UN was able to verify. Many more child deaths and injuries go unrecorded, to all but those children’s families.”
International experts have identified four significant dangers that have brought the country to the brink of humanitarian collapse. First of all, it is a brutal and protracted military conflict, and the blame for unleashing it lies entirely with the US and Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the colossal economic devastation that struck all regions of the country resulted from the military conflict. Also, there is a lack of infrastructure and social services, i.e., health, nutrition, water and sanitation, social protection, and education. Finally, the UN is critically underfunded.
It may be recalled that the war with Yemen began in March 2015, when Saudi Arabia brazenly and cynically launched a bombing campaign to restore the former regime, which obeyed orders from Riyadh, essentially maintaining Yemen’s status as a parallel and subordinate state to the Saudis. This had been the case before the popular revolution in the country, which triggered powerful Saudi airstrikes. The United States sold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of arms to the Kingdom during this war, in addition to intelligence and logistical support for Saudi military aircraft. Evidence shows that the UK is the second-largest supplier of arms to Riyadh, which is being actively used in an undeclared war, mostly against civilians. Other Western countries, including “democratic” France and Canada, have also profited enormously from this war, supplying the Saudis with mountains of offensive weapons.
These are the words and deeds of the so-called democratic West. Calling for democracy and freedom in their words, Western countries in reality supply arms and military equipment at every opportunity, thus fomenting military conflicts in which hundreds of thousands of people die in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya. It makes one wonder where are the so-called international organizations which allegedly aim to prevent conflict and prosecute those who incite and encourage these bloody wars?
The United States, the skilled cheaters of double standards in politics and human rights, has once again manifested itself concerning Yemen. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has loudly reiterated that resolving the conflict in Yemen remains an alleged top priority of US foreign policy. These comments were made during a telephone conversation with the newly appointed United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg. And this was said at a time when the Pentagon was sending a new shipment of aerial bombs to Saudi Arabia, which the Saudis are actively using in their war against, as Riyadh says, “the fraternal Yemeni people.”
So far, only human rights groups have accused these countries of complicity in Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen. One investigation found that the bomb dropped from a Saudi warplane in August 2018, which hit a school bus and killed more than 40 children, came from the United States. But it was just one bomb, while Yemeni officials say most Saudi airstrikes have targeted residential areas, and all Saudi bombs and missiles are purchased abroad from “democratic” countries.
The head of the UN Children’s Agency also presented journalists with these grim figures on the suffering of Yemeni children, from malnutrition to education and sanitation. For example, he said: “Let me share a few more numbers: Four out of every five children need humanitarian assistance; that’s more than 11 million children, and 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition More than two million children are out of school. Another four million are at risk of dropping out. Two-thirds of teachers, more than 170,000, have not received a regular salary for more than four years. 1.7 million children are currently internally displaced because of violence. As the violence has intensified, especially in the Marib area, more and more families have fled their homes. A staggering 15 million people (more than half of them, about 8.5 million, are children) do not have access to safe water, sanitation or hygiene. With the current level of funding and without an end to the fighting, UNICEF will not be able to help all these children.” And he went on to predict a grim prognosis: “There is no other way to help them without a lot of international support, which will result in a large number of Yemeni children dying.”
But does it matter to the gentlemen in western capitals who make huge profits from the blood of Yemeni children and the supply of arms, which allows them to eat sweet and sleep well? It’s none of their business. As they usually say in the United States, it’s just business, nothing personal.
Despite the efforts of UNICEF and other international organizations, the severity of the humanitarian situation in Yemen cannot be overemphasized. The economy is in a critical state. GDP has fallen 40% since 2015 when neighboring Arab Saudi Arabia decided to punish Yemenis for their “disobedience.” Vast numbers of people lost their jobs, causing family incomes to plummet. About a quarter of people, including many health workers, teachers, engineers, and sanitation workers, rely on civil servants’ salaries that are paid irregularly, if at all. And while the displacement and destruction of schools have resulted in classrooms that can hold up to 200 children, teachers are showing up. Yes, unpaid teachers come in and teach on their enthusiasm to educate the next generation.
In addition to the Saudi-imposed war, with the US behind it, many Yemenis are starving not because there is no food but because there is not enough money to buy it. “But such people have no choice, which means they are forced to sell everything from jewelry to pots just to feed their own children,” writes Egypt’s Al-Ahram. “But their children continue to starve, as families end up selling off all their possessions and cannot buy simple food for themselves or their children.”
Economists believe that UNICEF alone urgently needs more than $235 million to continue its life-saving work in Yemen until mid-2022. Failure to do so will force the agency to reduce or terminate life-saving assistance to vulnerable children. “Funding is critical,” notes Al-Ahram. “We can draw a clear line between donor support and lives saved,” it adds. And perhaps the newspaper’s most emotional comment was the following: “Yemen is the most brutal place in the world to be a child. And, incredibly, it’s getting worse.”
Last month, the United Nations warned that 16 million Yemenis, more than half the population, are facing starvation. Unless the international community steps up support, food aid could soon dry up. Doctors warn that a staggering 99% of Yemenis have not been vaccinated against Covid-19. The country is now battling a third deadly wave of infections in which large numbers of people, especially children and the elderly, will die due to a lack of vaccines. How the West treats the suffering of Yemenis, who are direct co-conspirators in Saudi Arabia’s shameful war, was directly commented on by Yemen’s Al-Sahwa : “We need the promised vaccines, but it is also shameful that by buying up all the vaccines for themselves, rich countries like the UK and Germany are blocking all decisions to get the medicine we need into our country.”
Many countries worldwide are well aware of the plight of the Yemeni people, especially the children and elderly, and deplore the fact that Saudi Arabia still seeks a military solution to the Yemeni crisis, stating that this approach will lead to nothing but death and destruction. They have repeatedly called on Riyadh to abandon a military solution and instead seek political ways to end the devastating war in Yemen. Speaking at a briefing for journalists, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said: “Unfortunately, the Saudi government is still looking for a military solution for Yemen, even though it knows and has understood after a long time that war has no other result than killing innocents and civilians, damaging the peoples of the region and security.” The sooner the Government of Saudi Arabia shows its commitment to political solutions and ends this destructive war, the better for the country and the region, as well as for the peace and security in the entire region.
Your child’s education will be safeguarded by common sense, facts, political will and a new bill.
By Laura Dodsworth | November 5, 2021
This is a rapid response to a video released on Twitter by the Department of Health and Social Care which states that “Your child’s education will be safeguarded by them being vaccinated.”
“Your child’s education will be safeguarded by them being vaccinated.” @VHSchool teacher Stephanie explains how the #COVID19 vaccination is helping to keep 12-15 year olds in school and learning. Watch 👇 More info: nhs.uk/conditions/cor…
This video is an example of logical fallacy. Here are few facts to support alternative reasoning:
- Locking down schools was a political decision. The UK had the second longest school closures in Europe. In contrast, Sweden only closed upper secondary schools (16 years+).
- Schools did not play a significant role in driving transmission of Covid-19, but rather they reflect the level of transmission in the community.
According to Dr Shamez Ladhani, Consultant Paediatrician at PHE, the latest results of the School Infection Survey show that infection and antibody positivity rates of school children did not exceed those of the community. Dr Ladhani commented, “This is reassuring and confirms that schools are not hubs of infection.”
This was also indicated by the PHE study from England’s school re-opening in August 2020, which concluded that “infections in the wider community likely driving cases in schools.” - The vaccines do not stop transmission or infection, although they may reduce the risk of transmission, and they reduce the severity of symptoms and the risk of hospitalisation. There are too many conflicting reports and papers to offer one definitive link, but there is broad consensus for these points.
- Covid is not a serious illness for children and young people and symptoms are normally very mild.
- The key point: Three quarters of children aged between five and 14 have already been infected with Covid, and as a result cases are now falling. Overall, Covid cases are falling.
- Closing schools was incredibly damaging to children and young people, and there’s now a proposed ‘triple lock’ bill, The Schools and Education Settings (Essential Infrastructure and Opening During Emergencies) Bill, to prevent such a terrible disaster befalling the younger generation again.
Vaccination should be chosen by parents and their children for the medical benefits it confers, and based on an informed consideration of the benefits and risks. Parents and children should not be subtly threatened with further school closures.
The News is being Nudged
A joint report from Sky and the UK government’s Nudge Unit reveals a startling collaboration
By Laura Dodsworth | November 2, 2021
propaganda, n
The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view.
– Oxford English Dictionary
Is the news still news when it is being nudged by the UK government’s behavioural scientists?
Sky announced this week that behaviour change on climate can be driven by TV. It released a video which opened with the lines, “We cannot understate the urgency. But faced with issues of such enormity, what role can we play?”
It’s not actually a question, they have already decided their role. Sky announced that it was collaborating with the “independent Behavioural Insights Team”. That sounds more palatable than collaborating with the government doesn’t it? But the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is one third owned by the Cabinet Office and appears to be on permanent tenure at Downing Street. Can a company which is one third owned by the government be fairly described as “independent”?
BIT’s report The Power of TV: Nudging Viewers to Decarbonise their Lifestyles makes a number of startling admissions.
“Behaviour change via broadcasting and traditional media has historically been aimed at improving public health, boosting gender equality, and reducing violence. Imagine the potential for emissions reductions if the same methods were used to encourage sustainable behaviours!”
The key word is “historical”. If you have ever suspected that social and political issues were being confected somewhat artificially in TV programming, you were right. This is an admission of social engineering.
According to a joint survey by Sky and BIT, 70% of people across Europe are willing to change their behaviour to address the climate crisis and 80% support TV broadcasters ‘nudging’ viewers to think about the environment, whether that’s through documentaries, advertising or increasing the coverage of environmental issues in the news.
Climate policy is a tricky nut to crack – persuading us to have under-performing and expensive boilers, asking us to switch insects for meat, stop taking foreign holidays and drive our cars less is going to be a hard sell. So the nudgers are going to use the telly box to persuade the recalcitrant masses.
The survey itself uses ‘social conformity’. Ah, you are supposed to think, if 80% of people think TV programming should be used to ‘nudge’ us, then that’s what I think too. Notoriously, however, there is a gap between what people say they want in surveys and what they actually want. The ultimate proof will be in behaviour and ratings.
The report states that broadcasters and content creators have a “unique opportunity to make a difference for the planet”. (I wonder what difference it would make if Sky’s CEO stopped commuting transatlantically by private jet?)
According to the report, the British public are unwilling to take supposedly “high impact” actions, such as eating less meat and dairy, switching to electric vehicles, using public transport, and switching to green pensions.
The Power of TV: Nudging Viewers to Decarbonise their Lifestyles
The report is audaciously bossy about how broadcasters and content creators should change the British public’s behaviour.
Advice such as “Frequency of exposure to green themes could be enhanced by building ecological beliefs and traits into core characters within a show so that green issues can fluently be raised time and time again,” sounds potentially tedious.
You will see fewer characters “carelessly drinking from a plastic bottle”. But you will see more kids programming centre on green issues to influence you as well as the kids to promote “intergenerational spillover”.
Suggestions continue with “a family could discuss reducing their waste” in a comedy show. Making that funny is quite the gauntlet throw. News segments could “explore barriers to acting green and share stories for overcoming them,” which doesn’t sound particularly newsworthy. An episode of a drama could include references to buying an electric vehicle and, of course, characters should order vegetarian options in restaurants.
Plump the cushions, grab a cuppa and get ready for the green themes in your favourite psyopera, I mean soap opera. During COP26, storylines are converging on the environment. Soap ratings have diminished over the years and is it any wonder? People don’t want to be preached to. Creativity cannot be programmed and storytelling is an art. It is naïve arrogance to believe this sort of technocratic tinkering will engage viewers. We gravitate to good stories.
Mercifully, BIT suggests that broadcasters “avoid a negative tone” and warns that “fear-mongering, guilt-tripping, blaming, or preaching can be counter-productive.” (I wonder if a certain book had an impact?)
In addition to Sky, another eleven major UK media brands, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, RTE, Britbox and Discovery, have pledged to increase the amount and “quality” of their climate coverage. So expect the airwaves to be flooded with the techniques suggested in the BIT report. At the same time, expect very little media scrutiny of this astonishing collaboration between nudgers and newscasters. And in print and online, the BBC, The Guardian, The Times and the Financial Times have added specific climate sections to their news.
A few months after the publication of A State of Fear, a government advisor told me that the behavioural scientists are “very pleased with themselves” and “Britain is seen as leading the way in how to manipulate people. There is skipping in Whitehall corridors. The public have been proved to be incredibly sheepish, so there’s more nudge coming.” And so there is.
My book concluded that the UK government’s use of behavioural science during the Covid epidemic lacked transparency and was anti-democratic. BIT’s report might appear to rebut both accusations. Don’t be fooled. It rests upon a survey which says people want to be nudged through the media. But research conducted by biased and vested parties is not a substitute for a democratic mandate. The British public never voted for or consented to the creation of a Nudge Unit to subliminally influence them and then set the news agenda. Furthermore, when behavioural scientists – and by extension the government – influence the news, it risks the inquiry, debate and balance that the media owes the public.
Whatever you believe about climate, or Covid-19, or any other agenda, can any mental contortions justify the news being nudged? We would criticise such blatant propaganda if it happened in any other country and we should not tolerate here. We should switch it off.
Useless Green Energy Hitting The Wall
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | October 13, 2021
In the field of litigation settlements, people sometimes talk about a “win, win” scenario — a settlement structure where both sides can get some advantage and simultaneously claim victory. By that criterion, what is “green” energy (aka intermittent wind and solar power)? The public pays hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies to get the things built, and in return it gets: sudden shortages and soaring prices for coal, oil, gas and electricity; and dramatically reduced reliability of the electrical grid, leading to periodic blackouts and risks of many more of same; and despite it all fossil fuel use doesn’t go down. It’s a “lose, lose, lose.”
As the world comes out of the pandemic and the international economy returns to attempting to fulfill normal consumer demand, you can see green energy hitting the wall pretty much everywhere you look. It’s just a question of which data points you want to collect for a day’s entertainment.
The current energy crisis in Europe and Asia is of course getting next to no coverage in the U.S. media. But over at Bloomberg News they have a big story on October 4. That’s Bloomberg News as in Mike Bloomberg — the man with four private jets and at least ten houses who devotes his public life to hectoring you to cut your “carbon footprint.” But now suddenly the Bloomberg News people seem to have figured out that periodic energy crises are an inevitable consequence of increasing reliance on the undependable wind and sun. The headline of the article is “Global Energy Crisis Is the First of Many in the Green Power Era.” The Bloomberg piece itself is behind paywall, but extensive excerpts can be found at Climate Depot, where they call it a “moment of clarity”:
The next several decades could see more periods of energy-driven inflation, fuel shortages and lost economic growth as electricity supplies are left vulnerable to shocks.. . . . The world is living through the first major energy crisis of the clean-power transition. It won’t be the last. . . . Wind and solar power production have soared in the last decade. But both renewable sources are notoriously fickle — available at some times and not at others. And electricity, unlike gas or coal, is difficult to store in meaningful quantities. That’s a problem, because on the electrical grid, supply and demand must be constantly, perfectly balanced. Throw that balance out of whack, and blackouts result.
No kidding.
Meanwhile, the latest place to get hit with blackouts due to an unreliable grid is China. (Previous rounds of blackouts traceable to over-reliance on unreliable wind and/or solar power have hit South Australia in 2016, California in 2020, and Texas in February this year.). From the New York Times, September 27:
Power cuts and even blackouts have slowed or closed factories across China in recent days, adding a new threat to the country’s slowing economy and potentially further snarling global supply chains ahead of the busy Christmas shopping season in the West. The outages have rippled across most of eastern China, where the bulk of the population lives and works.
But didn’t the same New York Times just tell us on October 8 that China is “the world leader” in both solar power and wind power? Somehow, neither of those seems to help when electricity demand suddenly ramps up. Just yesterday the Guardian reported that the recent power chaos is causing China to re-emphasize what they call “energy security,” which the Guardian takes to mean fossil fuels, particularly coal:
China plans to build more coal-fired power plants and has hinted that it will rethink its timetable to slash emissions. . . . In a statement after a meeting of Beijing’s National Energy Commission, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, stressed the importance of regular energy supply, after swathes of the country were plunged into darkness by rolling blackouts that hit factories and homes. While China has published plans to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, the statement hinted that the energy crisis had led the Communist party to rethink the timing of this ambition, with a new “phased timetable and roadmap for peaking carbon emissions”. . . . “Energy security should be the premise on which a modern energy system is built and and the capacity for energy self-supply should be enhanced,” the statement said.
Over in the UK, somebody has now finally taken the time to do a calculation of how much it would cost to provide sufficient battery storage to get the country through an extended (ten day) period of dark and calm in the winter, assuming a grid relying 100% on wind and solar generation. The calculation has been made by Professors Peter Edwards and Peter Dobson of Oxford University, and Gari Owen of Annwvyn Solutions, on behalf of Net Zero Watch, which is a project of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. (Full disclosure: I serve on the board of the American affiliate of this organization.). The answer that Edwards, Dobson and Owen come up with is approximately 3 trillion British pounds. For comparison, UK GDP in 2020 was just under 2 trillion British pounds. And if you look at the Edwards/Dobson/Owen calculation, you will realize that they assume zero loss of energy on the round trip into and out of the batteries. That’s rather a favorable assumption, given that in practice an all-wind-and-solar system would need to store power all the way from the summer to the winter. What percentage of your cell phone’s battery charge is left if you leave the device unplugged on the shelf for six months? But then, it’s all fantasy anyway, so what does it matter?
And finally, the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency has just (October 6) come out with its annual International Energy Outlook. This is the sage projection of our wisest gurus of how the production and consumption of energy will change over the three decades from now until 2050. Surely then these guys will show us how the world will achieve the true path to Net Zero carbon emissions within that time frame, if not much sooner.
OK, then, here is the key chart:
Wait a minute! Could they really be saying that, rather than being on a path to oblivion, all major fossil fuel categories (petroleum, natural gas and coal) will continue to see increased usage right on through 2050, and with no indication that any decline will have begun even then? Yes, that is exactly what they are saying. Indeed the projected increases in consumption of two of those fuels are quite dramatic — up in the range of 50% for natural gas and 40% for petroleum. Yes, so-called “renewables” are projected to increase dramatically; but after thirty years of this, they will still, according to EIA, provide only about 25% of “primary energy consumption,” which is less than petroleum alone, and barely a third of the combined contribution of petroleum, natural gas and coal.
But don’t worry, prices for gasoline and electricity will increase by a multiple, and we’ll have regular blackouts.
Internet Trolls Face Jail For Causing “Psychological Harm!”
By Richie Allen | November 1, 2021
The Times is reporting this morning that trolls could be sentenced to two years imprisonment for sending messages or posting content that causes psychological harm.
Writing in this morning’s paper, Home Affairs Editor Matt Dathan said:
Ministers will overhaul communication laws by creating new offences in the forthcoming Online Safety Bill, the flagship legislation to combat abuse and hatred on the internet.
The Department for Culture, Media & Sport has accepted recommendations from the Law Commission for crimes to be based on “likely psychological harm”.
The proposed law change will shift the focus on to the “harmful effect” of a message rather than if it contains “indecent” or “grossly offensive” content, which is the present basis for assessing its criminality.
A new offence of “threatening communications” will target messages and social media posts that contain threats of serious harm. It would be an offence where somebody intends a victim to fear the threat will be carried out.
A “knowingly false communication” offence will be created that will criminalise those who send or post a message they know to be false with the intention to cause “emotional, psychological, or physical harm to the likely audience”. Government sources gave the example of antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue.
The new offences will include so-called “pile-ons” where a number of individuals join others in sending harassing messages to a victim on social media.
I have been warning Richie Allen Show listeners for several years now, that this was coming. Long before the advent of covid-19, I predicted that people would eventually be prosecuted and even imprisoned for expressing their opinions.
You might well ask, how could the state prove that someone “knowingly” sent an anti-vaccine communication? In a fair and just world it would be next to impossible to prove that the accused antivaxxer didn’t believe what he/she was saying. But these are not fair and just times. It’s open tyranny now.
You might think that all any defendant would need do is march into court with the latest Yellow Card reports. UK citizens who believe that they have had an adverse reaction to a jab can report it on the government website. It’s known as the Yellow Card scheme.
Again, in a righteous world, that would be the end of it. But there’s nothing righteous about our world right now.
The Online Harms Bill was dreamt up to destroy the independent media. Three years ago, I was approached by academics from Salford University and an old friend who still works for the BBC.
They told me that they were coming for the independent/alternative media and that The Richie Allen Show was top of the list in the UK. You’ll remember me telling you that at the time.
Three years ago, The Department for Culture, Media and Sport held hearings about online harms and misinformation, to gather the facts before publishing the Online Harms white paper. As the producer of the country’s most popular independent news show, I peppered them with emails, asking to be allowed to provide a statement to the hearing about what it is that I (and others) do and why we do it. I never received a reply.
Throughout the scamdemic, I have platformed academics from long established universities and colleges, men and women who have challenged lockdown, the claims about covid and of course, the vaccines.
Every one of those guests earned the right to express their opinions in a public forum. But that just won’t do. If your agenda is to regularly inject everyone on the planet with mRNA and DNA jabs, you must first rid yourself of any opposition. It’s happening now.
I said it already, it’s open tyranny. Your government is proposing to lock up its citizens for expressing opinions based on their own personal experiences or what they have read elsewhere, often in official documents.
Some day soon, it’ll be an offence to question vaccine safety and a crime to declare that you do not believe the global warming narrative on the basis that expressing such thoughts causes real harm to others.
I can hardly believe that this is happening. But it is.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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