Monday, June 22, 2020


Pro-Abortion Biden Says Climate Change Damaging Unborn Children

The NYT article appears too be referring to the Bekkar et al. study.  One notes that Bekkar et al considered only 68 out of 1831 relevant articles.  One wonders what the other articles said and whether or not their conclusions influenced their inclusion in the survey. There is much room for biased inclusion in such studies.

They also comment that "Accurate comparisons of risk were limited by differences in study design, exposure measurement, population demographics, and seasonality."

So the conclusions are very shaky, particularly when we note that the effects in studies of this sort are very weak.  Most of the articles will have reported effects that explain only a tiny amount of the variance -- so could easily have been influenced by extraneous factors


The media should launch a thorough investigation into determining whether Joe Biden has any brains at all. “Yes, but he talks a lot,” Biden defenders might say. “You can’t talk if you don’t have brains.”

Well, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz reminds us, “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.”

Exhibit A in the case for no brains for Biden comes via a tweet that Biden posted responding to New York Times climate change reporter Hiroko Tabuchi.

Researchers looked at data from studies covering more than 32 million births from 2007 to 2019. Women exposed to high temperatures or air pollution are more likely to have premature, underweight or stillborn babies, a look at 32 million U.S. births found.

Biden’s reply was unintentionally hilarious.

Climate change is linked to increased pregnancy risks — and heartbreakingly, Black mothers are being hit the hardest. As President, I'll work every day to tackle the climate crisis head-on and root out injustice. Because they are intertwined

Protecting mothers and unborn babies is important, but Biden does not support the most fundamental of all protections: a right to life. Quite the opposite, he supports the so-called “right” to abort an unborn baby. And, to use Biden’s words, “heartbreakingly” black mothers and unborn babies are hit the hardest by abortions.

Since 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, approximately 20 million unborn black babies have been aborted in America.

Though abortions hurt families of every race and culture, statistics indicate that abortions disproportionately hurt the African American community. Census data indicates that African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, but they have nearly 40 percent of all abortions. And New York City health statistics indicate that more African American babies are aborted in the city than are born each year.

Does Biden realize the idiocy of his statement? How can you be for aborting babies and saving them at the same time?

He promised to end the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer-funded abortions in Medicaid. He also said one of his first acts as president would be to restore funding to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in America.

In March, he even suggested using taxpayer funds for abortions as a solution to overpopulation in poor countries. Then, in April, he went so far as to call the killing of unborn babies an “essential medical service” during the coronavirus pandemic.

I can recall the slippery slope argument of pro-lifers when Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. They warned that eventually, abortion would be used to control populations, as they were already doing in China. The pro-life lobby was ridiculed for saying such nonsense. Through the years, everything that the pro-life lobby has warned about — including killing babies up to the moment they’re born — was dismissed as the ranting of lunatics.

Biden is looking to shamelessly pander to those who think abortion is a religion. He hit the trifecta by also pandering to blacks and greens. It’s like he has a checklist of groups that he has to reassure with every public utterance.

And yes, that’s brainless.

SOURCE





IPCC’s core hypothesis is dead

by Ed Berry, PhD, Atmospheric Physics, CCM

1. Introduction

1.1 IPCC’s claims are based on invalid hypothesis
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1] bases all its climate claims on its core hypothesis. This hypothesis has three parts:

Natural carbon emissions remained constant after 1750.
Natural carbon emissions support a CO2 level of 280 ppm.
Human carbon emissions caused all the CO2 increase above 280 ppm.

IPCC claims its core hypothesis is true and concludes without scientific validation:

“With a very high level of confidence, the increase in CO2 emis­sions from fossil fuel burning and those arising from land use change are the dominant cause of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.”

“The removal of human-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere by natural processes will take a few hundred thousand years (high confidence).”

The truth is IPCC’s “high level of confidence” vanishes because it assumes incorrectly that IPCC’s core hypothesis is true.

1.2 What this paper does

Simple observation of IPCC’s report [1] shows IPCC’s human carbon cycle does not agree with its natural carbon cycle. IPCC’s own Figure 6.1 shows something is wrong with IPCC’s human carbon cycle.

To test the above observation, this paper derives a “Physics” carbon cycle model that uses only one simple hypothesis:

Outflow equals level divided by response time, herein called e-time.

This hypothesis is used in many scientific and engineering models. Even IPCC uses this hypothesis in several places. It is the simplest possible hypothesis for carbon cycle models.

This simple hypothesis is compatible with all applicable physical and chemical laws. This simple hypothesis shows it is possible and preferable to calculate the natural and human carbon cycles separately. The results of the separate calculations can be added together to produce the total carbon cycle.

IPCC’s carbon cycle model has four key reservoirs: land, atmosphere, surface ocean, and deep ocean. IPCC’s data show carbon levels for each reservoir and the flows between the reservoirs for both natural and human carbon cycles. IPCC’s data for its natural carbon cycle is not perfect but it may be the best data we have. IPCC says its natural carbon cycle data is good to about 20 percent accuracy.

This paper calculates the six e-times for IPCC’s natural carbon cycle data by simply dividing levels by their outflows. Why six? Because the atmosphere and surface ocean have two outflows while the land and deep ocean have only one. With these six e-times, the Physics carbon cycle model is complete, and it exactly replicates IPCC’s data for its natural carbon cycle.

Then this paper calculates the human carbon cycle model. This model begins with all reservoirs empty and inserts IPCC’s data for annual human carbon emissions into the atmosphere. In each model year, the Physics model lets human carbon flow between the reservoirs according the e-times defined by IPCC’s natural carbon cycle.

This simple calculation shows the “true” human carbon cycle because it requires human carbon to obey the same physical rules as IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. However, this “true” human carbon cycle differs significantly from IPCC’s claimed human carbon cycle.

The fact that IPCC’s human carbon cycle is significantly different from the true human carbon cycle – that corresponds to IPCC’s natural carbon cycle – proves IPCC’s human carbon cycle is invalid. IPCC treats human and natural carbon differently, which is unphysical.

Inspection of IPCC’s data shows IPCC did NOT derive its human carbon cycle from its data for the natural carbon cycle or from any data at all. IPCC forced its human carbon cycle to match its core hypothesis without any consideration of IPCC’s natural carbon cycle data.

Therefore, IPCC’s human carbon cycle has no basis in science. Put politely, IPCC’s human carbon cycle is a fraud.

This conclusion is independent of whether IPCC’s natural carbon cycle or the Physics natural carbon cycle properly represent the unknown true natural carbon cycle. All models are approximations to reality.

All that matters here is that the Physics model properly represents IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. Therefore, the Physics model properly calculates IPCC’s true human carbon cycle. This is sufficient to prove IPCC’s human carbon cycle is a fraud and that IPCC’s core hypothesis is false.

All three parts of IPCC’s core hypothesis listed in Section 1.1 are false. There is no other testable hypothesis to replace IPCC’s failed core hypothesis.

The political implications of IPCC’s scientific fraud are significant. IPCC told the world that its human carbon cycle was valid. IPCC’s fraud negates all its claims about human-caused climate change. IPCC’s fraud negates all IPCC’s so-called scientific papers that incorrectly assume IPCC’s core hypothesis is true. All such “scientific” papers are wrong.

Henceforth, no true scientist can claim or assume that natural carbon emissions stayed constant after 1750 and human carbon emissions caused all the increase in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.

SOURCE





No, Google, Climate Change Is Not Killing Americans, It Is Saving Them

At the top of Google News searches this morning for “climate change” is an article titled, “Climate Change Is Killing Americans. Health Departments Aren’t Equipped to Respond.” The article, published by Columbia Journalism Investigations and the far-left British tabloid The Guardian, claims “a rise in dangerous heat in the United States” is causing a dramatic rise in climate-related deaths. However, just the opposite is the case, as objective evidence proves warmer temperatures are reducing deaths in America and around the world.

The Columbia article claims, “In contrast to a viral pandemic, like the one caused by the novel coronavirus, this [the asserted rise in heatwaves] is a quiet, insidious threat with no end point.” The article provides, as an illustrative example, the story of an Arizona man who lived alone, in isolation, in his rural desert home. When people hadn’t heard from him for three weeks, police checked on his home and found his dead body. His air conditioner had broken down and it was 99 degrees. An autopsy ruled “heat exposure” as his cause of death.

The premise of the Columbia article is that global warming caused the high summer temperatures in the Arizona desert that caused the man to die. As if Arizona was a cool, temperate, refreshing summer oasis prior to global warming causing the Arizona desert to begin getting hot in the summer just 50 years ago. People with common sense know better.

If you don’t trust your common sense, we can look at objective evidence. As shown in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Temperatures, there has been no warming in the United States since at least 2005, which is when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration implemented its most precise-ever temperature network throughout the United States. It seems rather odd that Columbia would publish an article claiming “Climate Change Is Killing Americans” by virtue of higher temperatures when there has been no increase in American temperatures for at least the past 15 years.

Also, scientists report cold temperatures cause more deaths than warm temperatures. In a peer-reviewed study published in the prestigious medical journal  Lancet, researchers found that colder-than-ideal temperatures kill 20 times more people globally than warmer-than-ideal temperatures. That includes the United States, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control report far more Americans die each day during the cold winter months than during the warm summer months. Therefore, even if temperatures were warming in the United States, any such climate change would save the lives of far more people than would die because of the warmer temperatures.

It is a shame that Google doesn’t “fact check” itself to avoid promoting clearly deceitful alarmist articles as top results for climate change “news.”

SOURCE





Rooftop solar power law acts as subsidy for the wealthy

A policy meant to encourage more rooftop solar power generation could be costing all ratepayers and subsidizing the affluent.

The policy —net metering— allows consumers to offset their electric bill with electricity generated from rooftop solar panels. When the solar panels produce more electricity than the home is using, excess electricity is put back onto the grid. The meter “spins” backward, deducting the electricity generated from the resident’s bill. Homeowners pay only for the net amount their meter records, hence the name “net metering.”

Under Missouri law, net metering customers are paid at the retail electricity rate for the power they generate. However, retail electricity prices include more than just generation. Transmission and distribution costs, among other items, are included in a ratepayer’s retail electricity price. In Missouri, only about a third of the retail price is from electricity generation costs.

When net metering customers are paid retail rates, they receive payments not just for the electricity they produce but also the parts of retail rates that are used to maintain the electric grid, which they neither provide nor maintain. But the costs of providing and maintaining transmission and distribution infrastructure don’t disappear—utilities pass on the costs of net metering programs to other customers through higher rates.

The costs passed on to other customers can be quite high. According to research by the Brookings Institute, if a net metering customer zeroes out their monthly bill entirely, they shift $45 to $70 onto regular customers. Before reforms were enacted in 2016, net metering customers in Arizona shifted over $9 million in annual costs onto regular customers. Net metering customers in Nevada received a roughly $500 annual subsidy from regular customers; reforms in 2017 lowered that dollar amount, but only slightly.

Moreover, this cost shift has regressive effects. A survey by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that solar panel owners have incomes 50 percent higher than the median income of households that don’t own solar panels. Asking lower-income earners to subsidize wealthier solar panel owners is hardly an ideal policy.

So what can be done about this problem? One solution is to compensate net metering customers at wholesale, not retail, prices. Net metering customers would be paid the costs the utility saves by not generating this electricity, which would not include the many other costs—transmission, distribution, administration, etc.—that the retail rate includes. This approach better reflects the value of the electricity produced and doesn’t lead to such drastic cost shifting. Alternatively, an additional monthly fee could be charged to net metering customers to offset retail price overcompensation, as Kansas has done.

Rooftop solar power has room for growth in Missouri, but current net metering laws unfairly reward those with solar panels and punish those without. Missouri should consider altering the net metering policy to make it fairer for all ratepayers.

SOURCE

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