CO2 Has Been Indicted by Consensus, Not Real Science or Critical Thinking

I have spent most of my 81 years trying to combat scientific wooden heads so I strongly endorse the article below -- JR

When asking those who believe that CO2 is a major climate antagonist to make their strongest argument, their most common response is: “CO2 has been identified as the primary Climate culprit by the majority of experts (e.g., climatologists) and scientific organizations (e.g., the IPCC).” This is clearly a consensus claim.

I’ve repeatedly warned that one of the major fights we are in, is to defend genuine Science, as its enemies are actively trying to replace it with political science. This situation is a dead giveaway, as consensus is the currency of politics, NOT Science!

Put another way, the claim of consensus is deference to authority. They are saying don’t ask any questions! Just be quiet as others know a lot more about this matter than you do. Further, they continue, it’s not possible that all those experts would be lying to us!

Both of these are very reasonable viewpoints. However, whether or not they should end the conversation is the question. Let’s look at a recent very close Science parallel for enlightenment. Here is a layperson’s history of what happened…

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There are roughly 8 Billion people on the planet who periodically experience stomach ailments (i.e., gastrointestinal distress). The concern often is: will these common human pains turn into something much more major — like an ulcer?

An ulcer is a perforation of the stomach lining, which is a serious matter, and there are about 4 Million cases of these in the US, every year — so it is relatively common.

For nearly 200 years the medical establishment believed that stomach ulcers (technically peptic ulcers) were caused by stress. The hypothesis was that stress produced excess (gastric) acid in the stomach, which (in turn) eventually ate away some of the stomach’s lining. (The first connection between these was made in 1822.)

In this case when I say “medical establishment” I mean worldwide 100% of relevant PhDs, MDs, RNs, PAs, etc.

Also 100% of hospitals (like the Mayo Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center). Also 100% of universities and medical schools (like Johns Hopkins and Yale). Also 100% of medical textbooks.

Also 100% of medical journals (like the Lancet and NE Journal of Medicine). Also 100% of medical organizations (like the American Medical Association and American Gastroenterological Association).

Also 100% of government medical agencies (like the FDA, CDC, DOH). Also 100% of pharmaceutical companies (like Pfizer and Merck). This was also the position of the MD’s bible: the Physician’s Desk Reference…

As a point of reference, the combined number of worldwide medical experts here is roughly a hundred times the amount of worldwide anti-CO2 experts.

They were ALL wrong!

The basic reason that these many thousands of highly educated people were wrong, is that none of them actually applied the Scientific Method to the accepted and sensibly sounding hypothesis about the cause of stomach ulcers! Instead of taking the time and effort to perform a genuine Scientific assessment of this common worldwide issue, they relied on intuition — plus the fact that other experts were on board. (This is very similar to what is going on regarding Climate and the faulting of CO2.)

What’s the Truth?

The Truth regarding stomach ulcers was discovered when two Australian scientists (Dr. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall) decided to apply the Scientific Method (!) to the medical establishment’s ulcer hypothesis. (Note that what we still have regarding CO2 is a scientifically unproven hypothesis as to its full relationship with Climate.)

The short story is that in 1982 Drs Warren and Marshall proved that most stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria: H. pylori — NOT stress-induced excess acid production! Note that this scientific finding is not even remotely similar to the stress/acid hypothesis that tens of thousands of medical experts had fully bought into, for many decades…

This was a VERY BIG DEAL. This NIH study says about their work: “Advances in drug therapy for peptic ulcer have had a significant impact on quality of life and work potential of many millions of affected persons and have contributed to a remarkable decrease in the prevalence of the disease, frequency, and severity of complications, hospitalizations, and mortality.”

Why this Catastrophic Failure of Experts?

This failure is particularly hard to understand regarding pharmaceutical companies, which have thousands of qualified experts (e.g., PhD Biologists and Chemists). Why didn’t those scientists figure out the truth through scientific experiments, since they have the experts, labs, and money?

Because, exactly like the IPCC, they started with an unproven assumption. In this case, it was that excess acid was causing most ulcers (and that stress was causing the acid)… A cynic would say that there is a second major reason: they didn’t want to get to the Truth, as that was not in their financial best interest!

In any case, following the unproven ulcer hypothesis, pharmaceutical companies produced two types of “solutions”: 1) drugs to reduce stress (anti-anxiety meds like Xanax and Valium) plus 2) drugs to reduce stomach acid (Nexium, Tums, etc.). But neither of these do anything meaningful to address the primary cause of ulcers!

There is an exact parallel with industrial wind energy and solar proposed (by experts) as “solutions” for the climate issue, as neither of those has genuine scientific proof that they work (i.e., save a consequential amount of CO2).

What happened after this Discovery?

What followed Drs. Warren’s and Marshall’s published peer-reviewed study is also instructive.

To begin with, there was great skepticism by the medical establishment (aka the “experts” who have been wrong for many years).

In 1996 (14 years after Drs. Warren’s and Marshall’s findings were published and verified) the FDA finally approved the first antibiotic for treatment of ulcer disease.

In a 1997 study (15 years after their findings were published and verified), data show that about 75 percent of ulcer patients were still treated primarily with antacid type medications, and only 5 percent receive antibiotic therapy!

This shows the powerful resistance by “experts” to accept the Truth — especially when it exposes the fact that said experts were totally WRONG, for decades…

Prompted by this study, in 1997 the CDC, with other government agencies, academic institutions, and industry, launched a national education campaign to inform health-care providers and consumers about the link between the H. pylori bacteria and ulcers.

Drs. Warren and Marshall subsequently won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine for following the Science.

What’s the Takeaway?

Please reflect on the original question: can tens of thousands of well-educated experts, universities, medical journals, textbooks, medical organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies, be dead wrong? Absolutely YES!!!

Is this because they are ignorant? (Not in general, but they certainly were ignorant about how Science works.) Is this due to a conspiracy? (Hard to say.)

Summary: the experts were wrong as they lazily went with intuition, plus the comfort of consensus of their peers Furthermore, they decided it was too much trouble to apply scientific rigor via the Scientific Method to their ulcer hypothesis. Lastly, for some of the medical experts, it was in their financial interest to not reveal the truth.

Today we have an almost identical situation with the hypothesis against CO2…

https://criticallythinking.substack.com/p/co2-has-been-indicted-by-consensus

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The coming ‘power supply crisis’ in America

The USA and other nations are closing coal and natural gas power plants in pursuit of net-zero emissions and are approaching a critical point where the lights will start to flicker every night when there is no sunshine and the wind is low.

The subsidized and mandated wind and solar-generated electricity that is intermittent is displacing, but not replacing, the continuously uninterruptible generated electricity via fossil fuels.

America’s reliance on UNRELIABLE generated electricity from wind and solar is a fool’s game.

Led by California, the fourth largest economy in the world, as well as Britain, Germany, and South America, have passed the critical “tipping point,” and they survive by importing power from neighboring states and shedding power-intensive industries. Isolated grids like Australia and Texas are seriously at risk.

U.S. Policymakers are oblivious to the fact that people use CONTINUOUS electricity for lighting, heating, cooling, and refrigeration and for operating appliances, computers, electronics, machinery, and public transportation systems.

There are several needs for CONTINUOUS and UNINTERRUPTIBLE electricity that wind and solar CANNOT provide. For safety, security, and life support, here are a few that need CONTINUOUS electricity:

Computers
Communications
Telemetry
Datacenters
Airports
Air Traffic control
Hospitals

In addition to our personal consumption of electricity, there is massive demand from smelters, heavy industry, and the burgeoning use of AI and cloud storage for data centers. Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute claims that the cloud is on the way to becoming the biggest infrastructure project in human history. Two years ago, Mr. Mills reported that the cloud was consuming twice as much electricity as Japan, the world’s third-largest economy.

It is incomprehensible that American policymakers are adopting goals to move to 100 percent “clean” ELECTRICITY by 2050. The elephant in the room that no policymaker understands nor wants to discuss is that:

The nameplate generation capacity (installed capacity vs actual generation) of both solar and wind equipment is a total farce. Time of day solarization and the vagaries of weather determine the power output of both systems; this has no relationship whatsoever with the nameplate capacity value. As these systems also exhibit frequent mechanical failures due to wear and damage from weather conditions, they should be subject to penalties for periods of inactivity. Further, they should be subject to additional penalties for failure to provide adequate backup generation during periods when there is no sun illumination or the wind speed level is inadequate.

A 3-minute video on How Wind Turbines are Built is a MUST viewing, especially since all those efforts and materials are for the generation of electricity dependent on breezes that do not work most of the time! Before we continue to fund the albatross idea of occasional electricity generated from wind, a worthwhile article that should be read is The Titanic scale of floating wind turbines quantified by David Wojick.

American policymakers setting “green” policies are oblivious to the reality that Electricity came AFTER the discovery of oil 200 years ago.

ALL electrical generation from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are ALL built with the products, components, and equipment that are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

All EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines are also built with the products, components, and equipment that are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Electricity is the lifeblood of modern society, alongside the incredible range of more than 6,000 petrochemical products.

https://www.americaoutloud.news/the-coming-power-supply-crisis-in-america/

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UK Car Dealers Being Forced To Limit New ICE Car Sales

Car makers are rationing sales of new petrol and hybrid vehicles in Britain to avoid hefty ‘Net Zero’ fines, according to one of the country’s biggest dealership chains

The Telegraph has the story.

Robert Forrester, Chief Executive of Vertu Motors, said manufacturers were delaying deliveries of cars until next year amid fears they will otherwise breach quotas set for them by the Government.

This means someone ordering a car today at some dealerships will not receive it until February, he said.

At the same time, Mr. Forrester warned manufacturers and dealers were grappling with a glut of more expensive electric vehicles (EVs) that are “not easily finding homes”.

He said: “In some franchises there’s a restriction on supply of petrol cars and hybrid cars, which is actually where the demand is.

“It’s almost as if we can’t supply the cars that people want, but we’ve got plenty of the cars that maybe they don’t want.

“They [manufacturers] are trying to avoid the fines. So they’re constraining the ability for us to supply petrol cars in order to try and keep to the Government targets.”

The Chief Executive blamed the zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which requires at least 22 percent of cars sold by manufacturers to be electric from this year.

This target will gradually rise each year before reaching 80% in 2030, with manufacturers made to pay £15,000 for every petrol car that exceeds their quota – unless they have so-called carbon credits to spend.

But the scheme has prompted stark warnings from bosses at major brands, such as Vauxhall owner Stellantis and Ford, which have said they cannot sacrifice profits by selling EVs at large discounts indefinitely.

Instead, they have previously warned they may be forced to restrict petrol car supplies to artificially boost their ZEV mandate performance.

The warning from Vertu is the first confirmation that carmakers have now begun doing so….

Mr. Forrester said: “What the Government’s actually doing is constraining the new car market, which has a big impact on VAT receipts for them, and creates a business environment in the U.K. where manufacturers may question whether they want to make cars here.

“As Carlos Tavares [chief executive of Stellantis] has said, why should they sell cars at a loss because of U.K. Government policy?

“The new car market is no longer a market, unfortunately. It’s a state-imposed supply chain.”

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The global warming fantasy versus conservation -- again

Mining for gold in Suriname Yolanda Ariadne Collins, CC BY-NC-ND
Illegal mining for critical minerals needed for the global renewable energy transition is increasingly driving deforestation in Indigenous lands in the Amazon.

In recent years, these illegal miners, who are often self-employed, mobile and working covertly, have expanded their gold mining operations to include cassiterite or “black gold”, a critical mineral essential for the renewable energy transition. Cassiterite is used to make coatings for solar panels, wind turbines and other electronic devices. Brazil, one of the world’s largest exporters of this mineral, is now scrambling to manage this new threat to its Amazon forests.

The need for developing countries such as Brazil to conserve their forests for the collective global good conflicts with the increasing demand for their resources from international markets. To complicate matters further, both the renewable energy transition and the conservation of the Amazon are urgent priorities in the global effort to arrest climate change.

But escalating deforestation puts these forests at risk of moving from a carbon sink – with trees absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they release – to a carbon source, whereby trees release more carbon dioxide than they absorb as they degrade or are burnt.

Indigenous and other forest-dwelling communities are central to forest conservation. In 2014, I spent a year living in Guyana and Suriname, two of the nine countries that share the Amazon basin. I studied the effectiveness of international policies that aim to pay these countries to avoid deforestation.

I met with members of communities who were bearing the brunt of the negative effects of small-scale gold mining, such as mercury poisoning and loss of hunting grounds. For decades, mining for gold, which threatens communities’ food supply and traditional ways of life, has been the main driver of deforestation in both countries.

Small-scale mining operations can damage both communities and the natural world. Gold mining, which generates gold for export used for jewellery and electronics, usually begins with the removal of trees and vegetation from the topsoil, facilitated by mechanical equipment such as excavators. Next, the miners dig up sediment, which gets washed with water to extract any loose flecks of gold.

Miners usually then add mercury, a substance that’s known to be toxic and incredibly damaging to human health, to washing pans to bind the gold together and separate it from the sediment. They then burn the mercury away, using lighters and welding gear. During this process, mercury is inhaled by miners and washed into nearby waterways, where it can enter the food chain and poison fish and other species, including humans.

My new book, Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield, highlights the colonial histories through which these countries were created. These histories continue to inform the land-use practices of people and forest users there. Having seen the dynamics firsthand, I argue that these unaddressed histories limit the effectiveness of international policies aimed at reducing deforestation.

Some of the policies’ limitations are rooted in their inattentiveness to the roughly five centuries of colonialism through which these countries were formed. These histories had seen forests act as places of refuge and resistance for Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. I believe that power structures created by these histories need to be tackled through processes of decolonisation, which includes removing markets from their central place in processes of valuing nature, and taking seriously the worldviews of Indigenous and other forest-dependent communities.

But since 2014, small-scale mining-led deforestation in the Amazon has persisted, and even increased. The increase in mining worldwide, driven partly by the renewable energy transition, indicates that these power structures might be harder to shift than ever before.

Added pressure

When crackdowns on illegal gold mining took place in Brazil in the 1970s and ’80s, miners moved en masse to nearby Guyana and Suriname, taking their environmentally destructive technologies with them. Illegal miners of cassiterite are now following a similar pattern, showing that the global effort to reduce deforestation cannot simply focus on a single commodity as a driver of deforestation on the ground.

My work shows that the challenge of mining-led deforestation in the Amazon is rooted in historically informed, global power structures that position the Amazon and its resources as available for extraction by industries and governments in wealthier countries. These groups of people are now seeking to reduce their disproportionately high emissions through technological solutions and not through behavioural change.

These tensions also have roots in the readiness of governments and forest users in postcolonial countries, like Brazil and Guyana, to respond positively and unquestioningly to international demand for these resources.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/renewable-energy-demand-rises-mining-161321521.html?guccounter=1

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