The Global Warming Golden Goose
Climate science was an obscure and unimportant corner of academia until the professors lucked out with global warming. The global warming idea apparently struck a spark with the government and media establishments and caught fire. Money and influence flooded from Washington to academia.
In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the scientific-technological elite being dependent upon government grants. Eisenhower feared that the elite would use their influence and expertise to warp public policy for their own benefit. That is exactly what is happening. Global warming is only one of many current scientific frauds that enhance the welfare of the scientists and bureaucrats promoting the frauds.
Since World War II, the increasing flow of big money from Washington has contributed to a gradual change in the character of research universities. Money became more important than science. Administrators who were focused on money and power grew in number and became dominant. This change in character was documented in an important essay by the MIT scientist Richard Lindzen.
Global warming provided the professors and academic administrators with a junk science golden goose. They were determined to stop anyone from killing the goose.
A narrative was developed to crush “deniers” who dared to question the global warming narrative. The deniers were depicted as agents of the international oil companies. This is somewhat comical since the oil companies were constantly searching for someone to accept their surrender. The oil companies not only had no chance of winning a propaganda war with academia and the media, they didn’t want to try. They were ready to swear allegiance to the global warming narrative. They knew perfectly well that global warming nonsense was no threat to their business. But the mob needs a villain so they weren’t allowed to surrender.
Many fighters against global warming fraud dislike the label “denier.” They consider it an attempt by the global warming crowd to lump their opponents in with Holocaust deniers. My feeling is that we might as well wear the label proudly and thus destroy its effectiveness.
We deniers come from a small contingent of people with argumentative personalities, scientific background, and a job or income that gives some immunity to retaliation. Deniers are adult versions of the child who said that the emperor has no clothes.
It’s easy for the establishment to depict deniers as crackpots. Who are they to challenge the scientific consensus? That a few deniers actually are crackpots doesn’t help. But there are far more crackpots promoting phony climate scares, many of them in the most privileged ranks of human society.
Climate science groups have been spending billions of dollars developing computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere in an attempt to support the global warming narrative. The computer models are obedient to their authors. The scientists can manipulate the models to show whatever result that supports the desired conclusion — global warming or global cooling. Kevin Trenberth, no denier and one time head of modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), may have clarified the situation when he said: “None of the models… correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.”
The beauty of a black box computer program with hundreds of thousands of lines of code is that it is difficult to know if it is an amazing work or a futile exercise. Academic scientists dare not criticize anything that brings money into their organization. When they do, they quickly learn that tenure is a joke compared to the importance of the money flow from Washington.
The average scientist promoting global warming really believes in global warming. It’s easy to believe in doctrines that bring in money. Academics outside of climate science who could challenge the global warming fraud prefer to keep quiet. Criticizing someone else’s junk science is dangerous for those who live in glass houses.
Professional climate scientists who are openly critical of the global warming narrative are either retired or so scientifically distinguished as to be impossible to fire. To my knowledge there is no such thing as a critical early career climate scientist. Such an aspiring scientist would not last long.
There are organizations fighting against the global warming fraud, but they don’t have the advantage of billions of government dollars to spread their message. They are always under attack by those supported in grand style by big government science. The Heartland Institute and the CO2 Coalition are two of many denier organizations.
There are numerous websites run by deniers or denier groups. One of the best, realclimatescience.com, is run by the electrical engineer Tony Heller. He hilariously exposes the lies of the global warming crowd as well as the sensationalism of the media. His specialty is exposing the tampering with climate data to make it agree with global warming theory. If a theory fails to agree with real world data, tampering with the data is one method of promoting the fraud.
People are fooled by prophets or gurus who pretend to have understanding beyond that of ordinary people. Such people may be called witch doctors by anthropologists studying African tribes. One has to ask who are the witch doctors fooling the anthropologists? The American Anthropological Association released a statement on climate change giving all-out support to the global warming fraud.
I don’t see an end to junk science because there’s too much money in it and the credible institutions that could puncture it lack objectivity and expertise. The ideological bias of the mainstream media attracts them to any crackpot theory that calls for more government money and power mobilized to solve the “problem.” For them the global warming narrative is wonderful because it provides an excuse for the government to regulate nearly everything.
A possible reform is sending the money and control of scientific research to the states. That at least would provide fifty different approaches, even if some may turn out to be disasters. It would also promote competition and diversity of opinion. The top Washington bureaucrats could be offered early retirements. The younger bureaucrats could look for jobs with the states.
https://co2coalition.org/2022/07/12/the-global-warming-golden-goose/
********************************************************Children Die When 'Eco-Lies' Disrupt the War Against Mosquitoes
I am glad to be alive after a bout with dengue fever. But many across the world are not so fortunate. More than 4000 die each year due to dengue, a severe mosquito-borne disease.
It all began 10 days ago with intense fever. My body consistently clocked above 102 degrees Fahrenheit for 48 hours. Then followed severe pain in every part of the body. Once the fever and aching subsided, the second phase of the struggle began, with the blood platelet count falling dramatically.
Often, as in my case, the blood platelet count recovers on its own slowly. But in case of mismanagement, as the World Health Organization (WHO) reports, some people develop “complications associated with severe bleeding, organ impairment and/or plasma leakage.” In the worst cases, it results in death.
Contrary to expectation, the prevalence and incidence of cengue has increased in recent decades.
WHO says, “the number of dengue cases reported to WHO increased over 8 fold over the last two decades, from 505,430 cases in 2000, to over 2.4 million in 2010, and 5.2 million in 2019. Reported deaths between the year 2000 and 2015 increased from 960 to 4032, affecting mostly younger age group.”
“Before 1970,” the report went on, “only 9 countries had experienced severe dengue epidemics. The disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries in the WHO regions of Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific.”
Why is there a dramatic increase when we have effective disease control mechanisms at our disposal? Because the application of those solutions has been hindered by environmental movements.
The increase in dengue can partially be attributed to radical environmentalists’ opposition to the most effective killer of mosquitoes, DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane). The Aedes aegypti mosquito is the primary vector (carrier) of dengue. As per WHO, the mosquito is now “well adapted to urban habitats and breeds mostly in man-made containers/spaces.” DDT remains one of the most effective deterrents of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Thanks to Rachel Carson’s unscientific claims about DDT in her 1962 book Silent Spring, the environmental movement against DDT began with blind stupidity. In 1972, the U.S. EPA banned DDT. Then in 2004, several countries decided to ban DDT at the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Today, most arguments (and movements) against DDT can be traced back to the inspiration from this fallacious fear-mongering unscientific book and its claims on DDT.
Not only were Carson’s claims untrue, but they have also managed to cause the deaths of thousands across the globe during the last three decades by acting as an active ideological hurdle to employing DDT to kill the deadly mosquitoes.
Some cities in India for example are influenced by the lies from her book and fail to proactively fumigate public places with DDT. Instead of using DDT as a preventive method, DDT fumigation is limited to a responsive measure, fumigating only when dengue cases occur.
And so far, we have addressed only dengue. The benefits of DDT fumigation appear far more critical if we are to consider their role in prevention of Malaria. Malaria affects 300 million people every year. The situation is far worse in the African continent, where malaria kills two children every minute. DDT can prevent the transmission of malaria by as much as 90% if employed efficiently.
I am thankful that I have recovered, and I am thankful that our government in India has not banned DDT. In fact, India is supplying DDT to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia for malaria control.
DDT is a life saver, and any country with mosquito-borne diseases should allow its use. Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods,” including mosquitoes. Let not the lies of Rachel Carson rob millions of African children of their very lives.
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British heatwave green hysteria is out of control
If you find yourself wondering over the next few days why it is so swelteringly hot, I have an answer for you. It’s because of rich people. It’s because of those wealthy elites with all their gas-guzzling vehicles and reckless holidaymaking. It’s their fault you’re sweating on the Tube.
This infantile claim really is being made, and by supposedly serious politicians. Labour’s Richard Burgon, over on his Instagram account, is wringing his no doubt sweaty hands over the filthy rich folk who apparently landed us in this weather apocalypse.
‘As we face 40C temperatures and the first ever Red Extreme Heat Warning, remember this climate crisis is driven by the wealthy’, he cries. His stern words are accompanied, naturally, by that Met Office map showing half of Britain coloured dark red – the hellish hue that has been chosen to illustrate how dire our predicament has allegedly become.
Is anyone else tiring of all this green hysteria over the heatwave? There is something medieval about it. There is something creepily pre-modern in the idea that sinful mankind has brought heat and fire and floods upon himself with his wicked, hubristic behaviour. What next – plagues of locusts as a punishment for our failure to recycle?
The unhinged eco-dread over the heatwave exposes how millenarian environmentalism has become. Climate-change activism is less and less about coming up with practical solutions to the problem of pollution and more about demonising mankind as a plague on a planet, a pox on Mother Earth. These people really do view hot weather as an indictment of humanity, and a forewarning of the imminent heat death of our world that we’ve brought about with all our evil pollution and consumption.
They’re all at it. Caroline Lucas says, ‘The climate emergency is right here, right now’. One observer describes Europe as a ‘continent on fire’ – which just isn’t true, is it? – and says the hot weather is proof of ‘the ravages of climate change’. The words ‘heatwave hell’ are appearing everywhere, and many in the opinion-forming set know exactly who’s responsible for this hell: me and you and everyone else who has dared to live modern, technological lives.
This isn’t the first time a weather event has been depicted as a hell of man’s own making. When the latest IPCC report was published last year, hell talk was widespread. ‘If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could well become some kind of hell on Earth’, said an Oxford prof. And of course we brought all this fiery punishment upon ourselves just as surely as Sodom and Gomorrah invited God’s divine retribution by being so perverted. We are ‘guilty as hell’, the Guardian’s environment editor cried, sounding for all the world like one of those crackpot millenarian preachers you’d see on street corners in the old days.
To my mind, there could be no better proof that climate-change activism has become an End of Days cult than the fact that its chief ideologues are now even incapable of enjoying hot weather. They feel the sun’s rays on their faces and all they can think about is the Armageddon that the modern masses have created with their cheap flights and their 4X4s and their addiction to disposable fashion. When you see everything as a sign, as further proof of your own apocalyptic belief system, you have a problem.
Let’s have some perspective. Propagandistic terms like ‘extreme weather’ and ‘Weather of Mass Destruction’ are meant to whip up fear in the populace every time there’s sunshine or floods. And yet, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, the number of people dying in climate-related disasters has plummeted spectacularly over the past hundred years.
In the 1920s, close to 500,000 people died every year in storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves. In 2020, just 14,000 people died as a result of such natural calamities. That means global annual deaths from climate disasters have fallen by 96 per cent. The modernity that eco-warriors so disdain has actually helped to protect humanity from the violent whims of Mother Nature. Lomborg also points out that in most parts of the world, cold deaths ‘vastly outweigh’ heat deaths. So while the warming of the planet might increase heatwaves, it will reduce coldwaves. Which will be very good for human life. Are we allowed to look on the bright side anymore?
This isn’t the first time extreme weather events have been blamed on wicked human beings, whether it’s Richard Burgon’s wealthy elites or just people in general driving their diesel cars and taking two easyJet flights a year. No, in the Middle Ages, too, scapegoats were often sought whenever there was a scary climatic event.
As the German historian Wolfgang Behringer has documented, in the 14th and 15th centuries ‘unnatural climatic phenomena’ were often blamed on ‘a great conspiracy of witches’. During the Little Ice Age in particular, when crops failed in many parts of Europe, there was a frenzy of witch-hunting. Some in society ‘held the witches directly responsible for the high frequency of climatic anomalies’.
Sound familiar? I definitely hear echoes of that old, regressive belief that sinister people are responsible for weird weather in today’s attempt to pin heatwaves on the rich or on coal-mining or on motorists. Environmentalism has rehabilitated in pseudo-scientific form the age-old instinct to find the witch or the sinner who is to blame for society’s misfortunes.
Everyone needs to calm down. We’re safer from weather than we have ever been. It’s sunny. Go outside. Sit in the shade. Have an ice-cream.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/the-heatwave-green-hysteria-is-out-of-control/
**************************************************Cost of living crisis is caused by 'fool' politicians who are pursuing 'green dreams' and printing money, says Australian MP turned TV host
Sky News TV host Cory Bernardi says the world's global cost of living crisis has been 'caused entirely by politicians' pursuing 'green dreams'.
Inflation, war and supply chain issues have triggered skyrocketing prices of groceries, mortgage repayments, electricity bills and fuel - with the conservative commentator pointing to the 'fools' in power around the world.
'The cost of living crisis is a global phenomenon that's caused entirely by politicians. Do not believe when they try and shift the blame to Russia or China or someone else,' the former politician said on Sky News.
'The fools that run this country and other western nations have chased green dreams that have jacked up the price of power.
'They've printed money fuelling inflation, they've campaigned against domestic manufacturing capacity which has led to supply shortages,' the Sky News host added. 'And we could go on and on and on,' he said.
Prices are soaring as the nation stares down a perfect storm of Covid and spiralling fuel and power bills while flood-ravaged farmland sees food prices skyrocket.
The battle against inflation is being fought globally - and although Australia's hurting, the 5.1 per cent inflation rate here is still among the best in the world.
China has so far emerged almost unscathed while most other countries suffer the hangover of Covid stimulus packages which have overheated the global economy.
In New Zealand, inflation is currently running at 6.9 per cent and has brought some families to the brink of starvation as they struggle to cope with the soaring prices.
Despite being the original source of Covid, China has kept inflation down to a near world-best 2.5 per cent, just behind Saudi Arabia's G20 nations-topping 2.3 per cent.
But although they've kept inflation under control, Beijing now faces an embarrassing and damaging recession and the end of their much-lauded 'economic miracle'.
The Communist superpower has seen a dramatic slump in its GDP after massive Covid shutdowns in Shanghai devastated production lines and exports.
On Friday, China admitted its GDP shrunk 2.6 per cent in the last quarter and was up only 0.4 per cent year on year, compared to previous annual growth of 5-6 per cent.
Unless production bounces back in the next quarter, it will send the country into a technical recession, ending decades of soaraway growth since 1976.
In Australia, the current 20-year high inflation rate of 5.1 per cent is widely expected to worsen when the latest figure is released on July 27, possibly hitting 6.3 per cent.
In a double whammy, the runaway inflation is causing interest rates to rise, adding hundreds of dollars to mortgage payments for families across the country, while wages lag behind and the cost of living soars.
But among G20 countries, Australia's inflation rate still ranks sixth-best, far ahead of struggling allies like the US and UK, both on 9.1 per cent, with even economic superpower Germany on 7.6 per cent.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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