Arctic Ice Moment of Truth 2023

Posted on by Ron Clutz

For ice extent in the Arctic, the bar is set at 15M km2. The average peak in the last 17 years occurs on day 62 at 14.986M km2 before descending, though some years the extent can be above 15M much later.  Ten of the last 17 years were higher than 15M, and recently 2020, 2022 and now 2023 ice extents cleared the bar at 15M km2. The actual day of annual peak ice extent varied between day 59 (2016) to day 82 (2012).

All of this means that 2023 peaked while passing the 15M km2 threshold two days later than average.  The graph below shows the situation evolving over the last four weeks anticipating the annual maximum.

The NH ice extent gap on day 77 is at 269k km2, or 1.8%.  After the day 62 peak, 2023 extents declined sharply until day 71 before recovering to reduce the deficit. (Note that ice extent is affected also by winds piling up drift ice, as well as melting from intrusions of warmer air or water.) SII has shown lower extents throughout this period, averaging 250k km2 less than MASIE.

March monthly average extents in recent years have been below average. While average extents will decline furher, we shall see what this year does with only two weeks left to make a difference.

Region 2023077 Day 77 Average 2023-Ave. 2018077 2023-2018
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14649553 14918812 -269258 14528206 121348
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1070266 700 1070445 521
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 965801 206 966006 0
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087109 29 1087137 0
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897837 7 897845 0
 (5) Kara_Sea 934539 922767 11771 934807 -268
 (6) Barents_Sea 605659 637818 -32159 689702 -84043
 (7) Greenland_Sea 835991 617943 218048 514678 321313
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1249789 1546282 -296493 1399951 -150162
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854843 853118 1724 853109 1734
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260903 1259573 1330 1257207 3696
 (11) Central_Arctic 3243341 3217827 25514 3131403 111939
 (12) Bering_Sea 739914 760728 -20814 445480 294434
 (13) Baltic_Sea 67881 80745 -12864 127449 -59568
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 822356 982054 -159698 1136990 -314633

The main deficit to average is in Baffin Bay and Sea of Okhotsk, partly offset by a surplus in Greenland Sea. Smaller pluses and minuses are found in other regions.

Typically, Arctic ice extent loses 67 to 70% of the March maximum by mid September, before recovering the ice in building toward the next March.

What will the ice do this year?  Where will 2023 rank in the annual Arctic maximum competition?

Drift ice in Okhotsk Sea at sunrise.

For more on the Pacific basins see post Meet Bering and Okhotsk Seas

Fed Reserve Hijacks US Democracy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

For those who missed it, Simon Black explains in his blog article The Federal Reserve just hijacked American democracy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

It was only Tuesday of last week that the Fed Chairman testified before a committee of concerned senators who thought the Fed may be tightening monetary policy (i.e. raising interest rates) too quickly.  This was a valid concern; rapid interest rate hikes DO create a LOT of risks. And one of those risks is that asset prices– especially bond prices– plummet in value.

And yet last week the Fed Chairman completely rejected this risk, telling worried senators flat out that “nothing about the data suggests to me that we’ve tightened too much. . .”  In other words, he believed the Fed’s rapid interest rate hikes posed ZERO risk.

Talk about a terrible prediction; just THREE DAYS LATER, one of the largest banks in the US imploded, multiple bank runs unfolded across the country, the bond market fell into turmoil, and the Fed had to essentially guarantee the entire US banking system in order to restore confidence. (More on that in a moment.)

The mental image of bank runs in America, just days after the Chairman dismissed
any risk, is the Fed’s equivalent of the Afghanistan debacle. It’s shameful.

But what’s REALLY concerning is the Fed’s response to this panic– their de facto guarantee of the entire US banking system. Because ultimately they just put YOU on the hook for the potential bond losses of every bank in America. I’ll explain–

So when the FDIC decided to guarantee every depositor at Silicon Valley Bank, including those with balances exceeding $250,000, it means they’re bailing out SVB’s wealthy customers at the expense of big Wall Street banks.

But most people seem to have missed the real story…
because the ACTUAL bailout is coming from the Fed, not the FDIC.

Despite the Chairman’s terrible prediction in front of the Senate Banking Committee last week, the Fed now seems keenly aware of the risks in the US banking system. They realize that there are LOTS of other banks that are sitting on massive unrealized losses, just like SVB.  So in order to prevent these banks from going under, the Fed invented a new facility they’re calling the “Bank Term Funding Program”, or BTFP.

But the BTFP is really just an extraordinary lie designed to make you think that the banking system is safe. They might as well have called it, “Believe This Fiction, People”, and I’ll show you why.

How Bank Credit System Works

Whenever people borrow money from banks, we normally have to provide some sort of collateral. Banks make home equity loans using real estate as collateral. They make car loans where the car is collateral. Manufacturing businesses borrow money using factory equipment as collateral.

Well, banks do the same thing when they borrow money. And sometimes banks will even borrow money from the Federal Reserve. This is actually one of the reasons why the central bank exists– to act as a “lender of last resort” if banks need an emergency loan.  And when banks borrow money from the Fed, they have to post collateral too.

Instead of automobiles and houses, though, banks use their financial assets as collateral– specifically their bonds.  This is actually codified by law (12 CFR 201.108) whereby Congress lists specific assets that the Fed can accept as collateral when making loans to banks. The list is basically different types of bonds.  But this is the root of the problem. Banks are in financial trouble because their bond portfolios have lost so much value. Some banks (like SVB) are even insolvent because of this.

So now, through the BTFP, the Fed will now accept banks’ sagging bond portfolios
as collateral, but loan the bank MORE money than the bond portfolios are worth.

Let’s say you’re an insolvent bank that invested, say, $100 billion in bonds. Those bonds are now worth $85 billion, and your bank is about to go under. “NO PROBLEMO!” says the Fed.  The bank simply posts their bond portfolio (which is only worth $85 billion) as collateral, and the Fed will loan the bank the full $100 billion… as if those losses never occurred.  It’s a complete lie. Everyone is pretending that the banks haven’t lost any money to give you a false sense of confidence in the financial system. “Believe the Fiction, People.”

Remember that banks in the US have more than $600 billion
in unrealized bond losses right now.

And that number will keep increasing if interest rates continue to rise.  So this means that the Fed has essentially guaranteed that entire $600+ billion. Commercial banks won’t lose a penny— they can now pass their financial risks down to the Federal Reserve.

This isn’t a bailout… it’s a time bomb.

We can keep our fingers crossed and hope that this time bomb never explodes. But if it does, the Federal Reserve is going to be looking at hundreds of billions in losses… which would trigger devastating consequences for the US dollar.

This means that everyone who uses US dollars… including every man, woman, and child in America, is ultimately on the hook for the potential consequences of the BTFP.  And that’s what is so remarkable about this: the Fed just made this decision all on its own.  Congress didn’t pass a law. There were no hearings, no judicial oversight, no votes.

Instead, several unelected bureaucrats who have been consistently wrong
got together in a room and decided to guarantee $600+ billion in bank losses…
and stick the American people with the consequences.

      • This is the same organization that said in February 2021 that there was no inflation.
      • The same organization that said in July 2021 that inflation was transitory and would pass in a few months.
      • The same organization that said in June 2022 that they finally understand “how little we understand about inflation.”
      • The same organization that said THREE DAYS before SVB’s collapse that “nothing about the data” suggested any risks with their policy actions.

The Fed has been wrong at every critical point over the past few years. And they’ve now unilaterally signed up every single person in America to a $600+ billion bank bailout without so much as a courtesy phone call to Congress.

This is apparently what Democracy means in America today.  We’ve all been subjected to endless vitriol over the past few years with people on all sides howling that “Democracy is under attack.”

Well, we just watched an unelected committee of central bankers hijack democracy
and stick the American people with a potential $600+ billion bank bailout.

 

 

Multiple Choice Question re Green Energy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jack Hellner poses the issue in his American Thinker article. A single multiple choice question for the ‘green’ energy pushers.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Here is one burning question for scientists, entertainers, journalists, politicians,
bureaucrats, and others who claim they can control the climate:

Which of the following has caused the reservoirs to fill up rapidly in California and elsewhere in the West?

A. The Paris Climate accord.

B. The misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” in which the Democrats claimed they can control the climate by handing out huge amounts of money to “green” pushers.

C. All the United Nations gabfests where people fly in private jets to stump about the need to cut emissions.

D. Shuttering coal and natural gas utility plants.

E. Transitioning the peasants to cricket and mealworms as “food” to control cow flatulence.

F. Making people buy inefficient, expensive, impractical electric cars powered by the dangerous, highly-flammable pollutant lithium.

G. Sequestering CO2, a clear, innocuous, non-pollutant gas that makes plants thrive and allows the world to be fed.

H. Record rain and snow that came cyclically and naturally.

(I’m sure you guessed, but the correct answer is: H.)

According to scientists, this winter’s downpour in California and other western states turned out to be a positive, as it brought relief to the drought-ridden environments:

All the moisture has helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. Even major reservoirs on the Colorado River are trending in the right direction.

Of course, the scientific “experts” who somehow failed to predict this record rain and snow, warned of the “stubborn” aridity:

But climate experts caution that the favorable drought maps represent only a blip on the radar as the long-term effects of a stubborn drought persist.

Here is a hint: The Sahara Desert used to be fertile until around 9,000 years ago. A stubborn drought has persisted since then and it was not caused by oil, coal, CO2, cars, methane, or any of the other things “climate experts” blame for causing droughts, flooding, too much snow, too little snow and whatever else with which they want to scare the public.

Why should we trust scientists or anyone else whose dire predictions of doom and gloom on the climate or global warming have been 100% wrong the last hundred years?

Everyone should understand that scientists and others who push the “green” agenda make a lot of money pretending they can control the climate. They would have their spigot of money cranked off if they told the truth that the climate is and has always changed cyclically and naturally. As always, follow the money.

The same people who claim they can control the climate:
    1. Apparently lack the ability to properly regulate banks…and then blame Trump for the problem.
    2. Can’t control or tell the truth about the crisis at the borders…and then blame Trump for the problem.
    3. Can’t tell the truth or control the “spread” of COVID. Why would anyone trust the so-called “experts” at the CDC and the WHO who spread so much misinformation about COVID and destroyed so many businesses and people with their government edicts?
    4. Told so many lies about Obamacare, including the “you can keep your doctor” and “keep your plan” shticks, premiums would go down substantially fib, and that it would lower the deficit. And most of the media still says how great it is.
    5. Can’t educate children — no matter how much money they throw at it — to read or do math at grade level. 

Yet we are told that these people can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity forever if we just give them trillions of dollars and allow them to destroy industries that produce reasonably priced energy and thousands of other products that have greatly improved our quality and length of life.

They have trouble predicting the climate a few days out and did not predict the record amount of rain and snow in California this year but supposedly they can predict temperatures within one degree one hundred years out, with all the natural variables?

Does it sound remotely intelligent to believe these people?

 

Would-Be Lawyers in Need of Disclosure

Posted on by Ron Clutz

We are seeing lately that distructive social behavior bears no consequences to the perpetrators when it suits the agenda of institutional powers, and can even be celebrated and encouraged when it serves a partisan cause.  Prime example is the debacle at my alma mater Stanford when the free speech rights of a senior judge were cancelled by law shool students, aided and abetted by a DIE dean.  Charles Lipson is concerned about future lawyers substituting their personal preferences for constitutional rights and freedoms.  He proposes a means of restoring demeanor and accountability in his Spectator article How to stop law students from blocking free speech.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Let employers and state licensing boards know what they did

When a federal appellate judge speaks at a major law school, he should expect tough questions from a learned audience. He should not expect to be shouted down. When he tries to speak but is heckled, jeered and disrupted, he should expect a university administrator to step in, read the students the riot act and restore order. He shouldn’t expect that administrator to sympathize with the disruptive students and let the trouble continue, as the feckless bureaucrat at Stanford Law School did.

Her shameful behavior is hardly unique. It’s characteristic of mid-level bureaucrats hired to push “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” at universities across the country. They show very little concern for free speech, alternative views or robust debate. That’s a very big problem since those are the very essence of higher education in a democracy.

These metastasizing DEI bureaucracies endow political ideologues with unchecked power over students’ lives and campus activities. The episode at Stanford shows how they use it. That needs to be fixed. One path to doing that (and lowering the cost of higher education, now encumbered by top-heavy administrative structures) is to abolish the entire DEI apparatus.

The victim at Stanford was federal appellate judge Kyle Duncan
and all the students who came to hear him.

True, the university later apologized, but that’s just cheap talk unless it is followed by serious actions against the disruptive students and the administrator who failed in her basic responsibility. Of that, we have heard nothing. Only the naive expect much better from Stanford (or Yale, Harvard, Columbia and dozens more). Stanford students are so committed to their illiberal views, so cloaked in moral righteousness, that they actually protested the dean even issuing an apology.

“Hecklers’ Vetoes” like this would be bad enough if they were rare. They aren’t, even at law schools, where an appreciation of the First Amendment should be foundational. Such disruptions would be even more prevalent if these institutions invited speakers whose views challenged their students. They seldom do.

Yet intellectual challenges — from professors, invited speakers, fellow students and assigned readings — are essential to a good education. That point was put perfectly by Hanna Holborn Gray, a distinguished historian who once headed the University of Chicago. “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think,” she said. “Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.” The hecklers’ veto rejects her profound insight. So do the administrators who tolerate it.

It shouldn’t take a PhD to understand why Professor Gray’s point is vital to higher education. It shouldn’t take a legal education to understand why free speech is vital to our democracy. It is essential for students, faculty and administrators to understand that value and to go beyond an abstract understanding and implement it in practice. That means students don’t have to attend speeches if they don’t want to, but they have no right to prevent others from attending or listening to them. That means students can demonstrate their opposition to a speaker outside the auditorium, but not inside. That means they are welcome to hold their own events, but not to block others from holding theirs. That means they should never prevent an invited speaker from making her case and never prevent her audience from listening and reaching their own, independent conclusions.

That means students, faculty, and administrators who cross those red lines
are undermining basic values in higher education
and should face serious consequences.

Fortunately, there is a straightforward way to stop this mischief, at least in law schools, and to underscore the importance of free speech on campus. If students are found to have disrupted a speaker (after a fair hearing, in which they can defend themselves), they should face a simple penalty: disclosure.

Disclosure means that information should be included in a student’s record
and available to anyone who legitimately seeks it.

If a law firm requests the student’s record, for example, the firm should be informed that the student was found guilty of obstructing free speech on campus, in violation of the speaker’s First Amendment rights and the university’s own rules. The same disclosure should be provided to state bar associations, which seek those records as part of their licensing requirements. Prospective employers and bar associations can use that information as they see fit.

The university should let students know these rules and expectations in advance. They should be stated clearly in the students’ letters of acceptance. They should be told that, if they come to this university, they cannot disrupt events on campus and will face serious consequences if they do. That point should be repeated during orientation sessions and enforced by disciplinary committees.

The goal is deterrence, not punishment. In a better world, that threat wouldn’t be necessary to prevent the heckler’s veto. Students wouldn’t need it to behave like decent citizens in a democracy. They would have internalized these fundamental principles long ago. Since some students clearly have not, they need to understand that bad behavior comes with bad consequences.

The simplest, most effective consequence is transparency. Let anyone who seeks their academic records know what a disciplinary board has found. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, “Depend upon it, sir. It would concentrate their minds wonderfully.”

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma professor of political science emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security, and a Spectator contributing writer.

Canada: No Border, No Nation

Posted on by Ron Clutz

When I emigrated decades ago from Boston and settled in Montreal, I learned many things. One surprise was discovering the underground railway that transported black slaves from southern US had some ending up in Montreal. It seems that some freemen got jobs as porters on the actual railroad linking New York with Montreal. They discovered that the prejudice was much less than in the US, and began to make their homes north of the border. Thus, a black community formed which became a base to welcome immigrants from Caribbean countries, as well as Africa itself and other places. So for more than a century, Montreal has had a vibrant black community with a wide mix of national origins, and of course additional generations born and bred here. Currently, our hero tennis player is Felix Auger-Aliassime, who does us proud every time he steps on the court.

Now, in 2023, we have a strange upside down transportation of illegal aliens (including not only latin americans, but chinese and drug mules, and God only knows who else. Because our fearless PM, Justin Trudeau, long ago decided that Canada is “post-national.” In other words, in true global socialist fashion, Canada is (in his mind) a place without borders, where anyone has the right to come in and take advantage of the social safety net and government largess.

An officer speaks to migrants as they arrive at the Roxham Road border crossing in Roxham, Quebec, Canada, on March 3, 2023.

The symbolic portal for this intrusion of aliens is Roxham Road, south of Montreal, where entry controls have been relaxed, similarly to the US border with Mexico. From CNN:

On a snowy March afternoon, a small convoy of taxis and hired cars rolled north along a New York country road that dead-ends at the Canadian border. Among those onboard: a Nigerian family of five, a Russian man traveling alone and a tearful South American woman named Giovanna.

“I also believe I’ll have a better quality of life in Canada, and I have some family there,” said Giovanna before walking up to the invisible line in the ice that’s guarded by Canadian authorities at a makeshift post. CNN is not using her last name because of threats she says were made against her in Colombia.

“Hello madam. How are you?” asked a Spanish-speaking Canadian officer on the other side. “You cannot enter Canada here,” he informed Giovanna. “If you do, we will arrest you. Understand? You decide.”

Giovanna responded by taking five steps into Canada where officers then informed her of her rights and processed her for unlawful entry, a process which usually ends with the defendant being released into Canada to petition for asylum.

The twist is, unwanted intruders in Texas are taken north to New York (among other places), and now New York buses them to Roxham Road. And so these arrivals begin their stay in Canada with the criminal act of crossing a border, even though the Feds refuse to enforce it. How likely is it that other criminal behavior will occur? How likely that Canadian traditions of lawful, tolerant and industrious behavior will be manifest in these newcomers? How long will proud Canadians accept to be a dumping ground for illegals by way of the US?

Additional context is provided by Brian Giesbrecht  in his article Most Canadians Don’t Think Canada Is a ‘Post-National State’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

When newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a bewildered Canada in 2015 that Canada was a “post-national state” not many of us knew what he was talking about.

Doesn’t “post-national” mean that Canada was once a nation, but no longer is one? Was he really saying that Canada was no longer a nation—that it had somehow graduated from nation status to some higher stage?

He didn’t explain, but perhaps what is happening now at Roxham Road can be at least partly explained by Trudeau’s unusual conception of what the country he is governing is all about.

At Roxham Road illegal immigrants simply walk into Canada with no permission to do so. Unlike the thousands of people waiting patiently in foreign refugee camps and poor villages who have filled out immigration forms, and complied with the many other requirements for formal admission to Canada, the Roxham Road crossers simply arrive on Canada’s doorstep with suitcases in hand—and walk in.

They are not refugees fleeing persecution. They are economic migrants residing in the United States. In many cases, their transportation to the border has been provided by American officials.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of the Roxham Road migrants are probably good folks, just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. But the fact is that they are taking the place of those who have done everything right, and have been carefully vetted by immigration officials.

The Roxham Road people haven’t been vetted at all. We have no idea
what their qualifications—or criminal records—look like.

Past governments, Liberal and Conservative, insisted that potential immigrants must follow the rules. They also believed in borders.

So, why does the Trudeau government completely depart from past practices and allow these people to simply walk into the country? The only possible answer I can see is Trudeau’s truly strange belief that Canada is a “post-national state,” and no longer a nation.

Because a state that is no longer a nation no longer needs borders. To Trudeau, borders seem to be simply an anachronism; a vestige of more primitive times. If the world is evolving from nation-states to one big—what, I’m not quite sure—we no longer need outdated concepts like borders and border controls.

We now know that “borders are bad” is just one of the World Economic Forum (WEF) talking points that Trudeau subscribes to. “Fossil fuels are bad” is another. Trudeau is one of the junior “philosopher kings” of that organization and appears to fervently believe in everything they preach.

But something I’m pretty sure of is that most Canadians do not believe that Canada
is a “post-national state” that no longer needs border controls.

Most Canadians believe that our previous immigration policy was basically sound. We need immigrants, but applicants should be carefully vetted, and only those with the necessary qualifications should be admitted. People who don’t even bother to apply—who simply show up on our doorstep—should be refused entry.

Trudeau is perfectly aware that a policy of allowing anyone entry to Canada, no questions asked, is unacceptable to voters. Yet, he does it anyway. Is this the new method of governance by which “post-national states” will be governed from now on? An organization of philosopher kings who are not accountable to voters will make the rules—rules voters would never stand for. And “Manchurian Candidates,” like Trudeau, will slip their policies into place?

Is this how obviously problematic policies, like “Just Transition”
and “Carbon Zero” will get past voters?

Recent revelations about election interference and infiltration of our systems at all levels by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) make Trudeau’s view that Canada is a “post-national state, with no core identity” even more ominous.

Canadians know who we are and what we are. We are a proud nation. A nation with borders.

 

 

 

How Covid Policies Strangely Defied What We Knew

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Robert Clancy expresses his consternation about the last three years in his Spectator Australia article Strange times.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

We live in strange times, when the globalisation of a narrative formulated and
promoted by powerful interests linked to the lure of massive profit and control,
threatens 500 years of the enlightenment and science.

As a clinical immunologist with a research interest in mucosal immunology and airway infection, the Covid-19 pandemic became a point of convergence for my interests in medicine, research and history.

The Rise of Pandemic Expert Knowledge

A pattern of confusion had evolved in Australian pandemics in the 20th century, followed by a science-based rebound led by great Australians such as Ashburton Thompson with plague in 1900 and, Macfarlane Burnet and Peter Doherty with influenza in 1919, 1957,1968 and Frank Fenner and eradication of smallpox in 1980. Lessons were learned and the community prepared for the next pandemic.

The response to the Covid pandemic by a powerful pharmaceutical industry
became a point of difference.

Earlier pandemics were a tussle between medical and political leaderships, which between 1900 and 1970 diminished as science-based programmes were adopted and supported. Outcomes included strong public health systems and world leading research programmes in immunology and infection control.

An Australian response to pandemics over 70 years was a critical influence in public health and applied research reflecting informed leadership.

The Covid-19 pandemic has not followed that course.

Suddenly everyone was an ‘epidemiologist’, dominating the airwaves and working with political and regulatory organisations to protect the global narrative, reinforced and uncritically accepted by the mainline press, to ‘combat spread of harmful vaccine disinformation’.

Three years ago, there was every reason to fear Covid-19. High mortality and transmission rates were reported in China, and the world experience with pandemics was sobering. No effective drug or vaccine existed, with management focused on public health measures. Genetic vaccines were available from January 2021, with Australia becoming one of the most vaccinated countries. Total Covid-19 deaths per million paralleled global mortality, though later in the pandemic from the less virulent Omicron variant. This surge followed relaxation of lockdowns, and the vaccine booster programme

Returning to 2020, it was natural to think that vaccines may play a role in managing Covid-19. In various forms, vaccines were used in earlier pandemics without playing a decisive role. But there were important lessons that should have informed a less sanguine approach to the narrative of mRNA vaccines being the global panacea for Covid-19. This information was available before 2021!

The apologists backtracking on mistakes in the vaccine roll-out,
with ‘we just did not know’, have no argument.

First, 80 years of vaccine development for inhaled viral infections, failed to develop one sterilising vaccine capable of inducing herd immunity.

Second, no vaccine induces stronger immunity than that following the disease, yet it took a recent Lancet meta-analysis to confirm that post Covid-19 trumps vaccine immunity.

Third, respiratory viruses like Sars-CoV-2 infect a mucosal space subject to the rules of mucosal immunology. The major difference from the systemic immune response to invasive pathogens is suppression of all immune responses by T reg cells (to control the inflammatory response to the sea of microbes bathing mucosal surfaces). With Covid-19, immunity following injected vaccines is limited; repeated ‘boosters’ favour progressive immune suppression with more frequent and more severe infections. ‘Allergy-shots’ do the same – they turn off damaging immune responses to inhaled antigens. There is little cross-over between compartments: injected vaccines will not prevent infection, or transmission of disease (a claim used to support community vaccination).

Fourth, RNA viruses undergo mutations facilitating ‘immune escape’, risking ‘selection’ of mutant virus by non-sterilising vaccines.

These ‘rules’ predict outcomes of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out. Vaccination induced systemic immunity probably prevented admission to hospital and death by neutralising virus that ‘escaped’ from the mucosal compartment, but only early in the pandemic when vaccine antigen matched prevailing virus and before priming of suppression from repeated vaccinations. There was no impact on infection or transmission of the virus. Repeated ‘boosters’ gave 30 to 40 per cent protection for a couple of months, followed by cumulating ‘negative protection’ with more severe and frequent infections. New Zealand figures indicate higher Covid-19 mortality in every age bracket, in those with ‘boosters’, reflecting a global pattern described by some as a ‘pandemic of the vaccinated’.

The mRNA vaccines differ from classical antigen vaccines.

They spread and persist for months, producing Spike protein (the viral antigen stimulating immune protection) on cells throughout the body. The consequences are an uncontrolled amount of antigen that can downregulate antibody, and a new target for T cells to attack. Reports of serious adverse events following Covid-19 vaccination including heart and brain damage and deaths outstrips combined reports for all other vaccines. Prospective study of adolescents using laboratory and MRI technology showed 2 to 3 per cent had myocarditis, contrasting with less sensitive hospital figures of one in 10,000 vaccinations.

Asymptomatic myocarditis leaves a scar, claimed to underpin a recent spate
of adrenaline-initiated deaths on sporting fields.

German post-mortem studies confirm vaccine pathology as a significant cause of sudden unexplained deaths. Statisticians across the world are seeing an increase in deaths of the order of 10 to 20 per cent greater than noted in previous years, time-matched with vaccine rollouts. These data demand proper assessment despite dismissal by authorities. Reversal of mRNA encoded information into host DNA has been documented, with unknown impact on the recipient or their progeny.

The point is this. How could a novel vaccine involving mRNA with scarce testing, with no demonstrated advantage over traditional vaccines, against all principles of mucosal immunology, and likely complicated by major adverse events, not be red-flagged by the medical-regulatory network charged with our protection? Peter Doshi, an editor of the prestigious BMJ, co-authored a review of the trial data used to underpin vaccine mandates. The authors concluded, ‘the risk of serious adverse events surpassed the risk reduction for Covid-19 hospitalisation’, demanding a ‘formal harm-benefit analysis’. This never occurred. How can it be?

We live in strange times, when the globalisation of a narrative formulated and promoted by powerful interests linked to the lure of massive profit and control, threatens 500 years of the enlightenment and science. In Australia, acceptance of the Covid-narrative was made easy by the unrecognised power of these interests and a disintegration of core medical structures that once would have demanded science-based analysis, regulatory integrity and effective review. The introduction of unique, clever technology blindsided mainstream professionals who failed to understand the implications of genetic vaccines, or the immunology of the airway. These ‘experts’ and bureaucrats made poor decisions which became rubber-stamped by administrators and politicians. ‘Cancellation’ threats to those scientists and clinicians wishing to speak out against the narrative, enabled disinformation to become convention, with frightening unknown consequences.

Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy AM was Foundation Professor of Pathology in the Medical School, University of Newcastle. He is a clinical immunologist.

 

 

Climate-Cancelled by a Friend

Posted on by Ron Clutz

I have a long-time friend and tennis partner who posted a comment on his Facebook wall yesterday, to which I posted a reply.  An hour later my comment was gone.  So I made another comment:

“Hey *******, my comment disappeared. Shall I post it again, or are you objecting to it?”  So far no reponse.
(Update:  Now my question is gone as well, so yes, he objects to my comment and erased it.)

Below is most of what he wrote, followed by my response.  Judge for yourself if I was disrespectful or merely being contrary, or in fact proposing an important alternative point of view.

Facebook Post by My Friend

After years of studying Human Nature, I’m now pretty sure that we are going the wrong way toward saving the planet because we simply can’t be proactive. It’s not who we are. Unfortunately, real change is seen by most of us as a menace. So instead of making the hard decisions, we try to make changes as painless as possible. As a consequence, we fail to make real changes. Meanwhile, we are destroying our children’s legacy. Your legacy. To be blunt, we have failed you. Not intentionally, but nevertheless, the damage is progressing. Regardless of your age, you know that as well as I do.

I can see priorities

I can see them all around me, here at home, in my province, my country and on this and every other continent. It looks like most nations are struggling with important priorities other than the planet such as poverty, discrimination, disease, desertification, famine, overpopulation, war, rule of law… to name a few. Those are, for better or worse, adult priorities.

Short term issues for adults and legacy issues for young people

While adults are struggling to keep things going, not breaking down and turning our lives upside down, young people are noticing that their future is being compromised. Two segments are in play: adults and young people. They are heading in different directions. That’s not a problem, in fact it’s a good thing. I call it the evolutionary gap. It’s a natural biproduct of generations living and dying. Call it evolution. Call it the survival of our species. Regardless of how you may wish to describe it, with each new generation of boys and girls, the reshaping of our future is triggered. We adapt and we survive.

However, this time, will we adapt fast enough?

Whether you’re in high school, a technical school or a university, what should you do?
Because adults are not going to do the right thing quickly enough, the world will need you to nudge, to push, to jolt and to shove adults in the right direction. You must help them reorient and focus their priorities.

Here are a few suggestions: every Canadian high school, technical school and university should reserve one day every week to do the “pushing” around. Perhaps we should focus our teaching and research programs toward finding ways and means to accelerate the changes required to stop climate change before it becomes irreversible. Perhaps, we should close all high schools, technical schools and universities for a semester or two, or three, to provide our youth with the time to deal with adult priorities and claim their legacy now, while it’s still possible.

It’s clear to me

I have a notion that the future of our planet depends on what young people will do today. Now. As I said earlier, if we think about it, adults are too busy taking care of now and not of tomorrow. Tomorrow’s their job.

Question to the young
So, what are you going to do?

My Facebook Comment in Response

On the other hand, it does not take someone with a degree in psychology to understand why children are depressed about the climate or starting a family. Every day, children are told by Trudeau, Harris, Biden, most journalists, entertainers, and other nihilists that humanity’s use of natural resources is destroying the planet and overpopulation is a dire threat to us all — impending doom and apocalypse is always just around the corner. Our “leaders” use words like “emergency”, “catastrophe”, and “crisis”. Girl Scouts dole out patches to girls as young as five that depict sad polar bears floating away on tiny, melting chunks of ice, and the media runs images of smoggy dystopian cityscapes, or just plain invention, deeply freakish in nature.

Our children are told the lie that species are dying rapidly because of humans. They are told that too many humans are breathing out too much CO2, and in turn, that clear, innocuous, non-pollutant gas is heating up the planet and causing the existential threat of “climate change.”

Why wouldn’t they be depressed if those talking points are all they hear? They are indoctrinated that the science is settled and anyone who dares tell the truth that the climate is and has always changed cyclically and naturally is a climate change denier who shouldn’t be taken seriously. They are taught to repeat what they are told instead of to ask questions or do research.

Liberals and Democrats seek to scare the public every day about a coming cataclysmic event — whether it’s an ice age or a burning hellscape they aren’t sure — by saying we only have a few years left. Then, they pretend they don’t understand why people, including children, are depressed.

It’s true that the future will be invented by the next generations, but the kids are not alright. Let’s hope, for their sake, that enough of them are able to rise above the rubbish stuffed into their heads, that they can address real problems instead of imaginary ones.

Footnote:

(Question to then IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri) “What do you see as the next tools you could utilize to create change?
(Pachuri Response) “Children. I think we have to sensitize the young and tell them how their future is going to be affected if we don’t take action today. I think if we can get them to understand the seriousness of the problem they would probably shame adults into taking the right steps.”

Update March 14: 

My friend phoned me yesterday saying he had not seen my comment, only my question about it.  Apparently there was some glitch in Facebook.  He asked me to repost, so I did.  Of course he disagrees with much of it, but he’s pleased to have a contrary opinion there.

I should note that my friend does at times say and write things to be provocative, and he knows me well enough not to be surprised at my counter POV.  So it shows that being needed as a tennis partner gets me latitude to have a maverick opinion.  In organizations, this is called “eccentricity credits” extended to persons with indispensible abilities.

Many years ago, a CEO famously said, “Corporate cultures don’t exist.  They were invented by consultants to make money.”  However, more recently, Corporate HR departments have become hives of DIE activists, and there’s no margin for not conforming to the ideology.  Maybe it confirms what the CEO said, when you see that DIE staff at universities are paid more than professors.

Far-Left activist and intolerant bully Tirien Steinbach, who is also Stanford’s associate dean of “diversity and equity,” attempts to shut up guest speaker Fifth Circuit Judge Duncan.

Stanford Univ Issues Apology for Disgusting “Equity and Diversity” Dean Who Ambushed and Bullied Trump-Appointed Judge During Speech He Was Invited To Give To Immature Law Students Who Shouted Him Down

Greens Living on Some Other Planet

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Despite climatists’ insistance on “No Planet B”, their ideas and plans assume some reality other than this world.  Judith Sloan explains the problem in her Spectator Australia article Greens off on another planet.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Today’s Greens make their predecessors look sensible

Let me get back to the chasm that the Greens deliberately create by advocating much higher government spending while calling for all sorts of perverse measures, up to and including the banning of coal and gas projects. Without these projects, there is no prospect there will be sufficient revenue to fund their over-the-top spending aspirations.

The Greens’ wish list is close to endless: free childcare, free TAFE and university, free dental care, higher dole, higher rental assistance, more public housing, more public transport, more spending on government schools, more foreign aid and on and on it goes.

Unless you believe that government spending is costless and never-ending – OK, for a while the crazy advocates of Modern Monetary Theory held sway until the ugly face of inflation reared its head and the interest payable on government debt began to rise – the Greens cannot escape that perennial political question: how are you going to pay for it?

But here’s the thing: the main reason Australia is not completely in the fiscal dog-house is the surging company tax revenues from mining companies and high commodity prices. Now I know some Speccie readers are a little bit allergic to numbers, but bear with me if I point out a few simple facts.

Take iron ore, which is a mainstay of our budget. For every $US10 increase in the price of iron ore per tonne, there is a lift of $600 million in company tax receipts. The high prices of coal, both thermal and coking, as well as liquefied natural gas, have similarly led to rapid growth in company tax receipts.

At the time of the election last year, the Treasury expected company tax revenue for 2022-23 to come in at a tad over $90 billion. It now expects it to be $127 billion – a jump of nearly one third. Company tax revenue is now at an historic high which, in turn, is mainly because of the surging tax being paid by the mining companies so reviled by the Greens.

Talk about contradictory: it’s not just having your cake
and eating it too; it’s about having the whole bakery.

This underscores my conclusion that the Greens are now living on a different planet rather than partying at the bottom of the garden. They want to shut down most of the resource sector but think that government spending can be jacked up big-time.

And let’s not forget here that federal Labor already has substantial spending plans. Next financial year, it expects to spend $666 billion and in 2025-26, the figure is $729 billion, an increase of over 9 per cent in real terms. The Greens’ ambitions are in addition to this increase.

Don’t get me onto some of the other proposals from the Greens. The geniuses in the party think that imposing national rental controls is the answer to our housing rental crisis. The fact that the attractiveness of residential real estate for investors has declined is regarded as neither here nor there by them. And this is before the full impact of the higher cost of investment loans.

They also want to achieve net zero by 2035, think that the ambition of B1(Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen) to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 is woefully inadequate and want 100-per-cent renewable energy by the end of the decade.

In Bernie Sanders’ style, they think that ‘taxing the billionaires and big corporations’
will release oceans of revenue and a 6 per cent annual wealth tax is the way to go.

Walshy must be spinning in his grave; he would surely conclude that the dotty Greens of his era were sensible pragmatists compared to today’s loopy lot.

 

Why Are Climate Crisis Dissenters Labeled “Deniers”?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

1500+ Scientists Agreed and Declared No Climate Emergency

Lembit Tork provides an answer at Quora  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Why are scientists who challenge the so-called “consensus” on climate change often called “deniers”?

Renowned climate activist G. Thunberg: “People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. This is all wrong”.

Accused climate denier J. Peterson: “One of the consequences of carbon dioxide overproduction is that paradoxically and contrary to all of the predictions of the environmentalists, the planet is now 15% greener than it was in the year 2000. That’s larger than the area of the United States, and it isn’t obvious to me that’s a bad thing… and it’s more than that, the most remarkable greening has occurred in semi-arid areas, and so the deserts are supposed to be expanding as the globalist globe warmed and the climate changed… yet the green has invaded semi-arid areas.”

Denier, denier, pants on fire? Call the phenomenon: Exaggeration for Action. Why? Because the political consensus is about action. It’s Consensus Fundamentalism that loves things black and white, and hates nuance. Because the lukewarmists and others like Peterson are upsetting the catastrophism that the mainstream Consensus Totalitarians need you to buy into. Because there are two kinds of modes: Thought and Action. They want action. I’d bet these Psychological Totalitarian Action Figures also need it personally, out of hidden fear of having their own suppressed doubts triggered.

So they fight back. They label challengers with something hugely ugly. The term Deniers lumps them together with Holocaust deniers. It doesn’t get uglier!

One prolific poster here calls these status quo name-callers Neoliberal Totalitarians. Whatever the name, totalitarian runs through. See if the following rings true.

The Totalitarians are of 2 categories. The first are run of the mill self-interested Monopolists, who know a good game when they see one. The second are the Ideologues, both Evil and the Misguided Do-Gooders. The evil ones seldom admit it, you have to read a lot and use your imagination. They love the sport of slavery and dominance, pure and simple. Call them Egoic Psychopaths. They live for the Power Pleasure of getting you to do unspeakable things to yourself, and the side-slapper is when you ask for more. Their curiosity is piqued by how wayward society will go. It’s perverse, it’s a tradition. Their methods are psychological and scientific. They do, because they can.

The Misguided Do-Gooders, which account for the vast majority,
actually believe they have the Solutions for the Greater Common Good.

But the Stupid People and the Democracy Delusion get in the way, even as they need to play Democracy, Transparency and Equity to win your trust. They thrive on fashionable buzzwords. Their gambit is to defer to the Experts for whom The Science Is Settled. Mostly it isn’t. Instead, the Science is weaponised. Their tactic is to get you to Trust while tweeking your Sensitivity and Guilt Buttons, resulting in Obedience and Compliance. They cannot admit their Infallibility. Ever. Because this reduces their Trust Quotient, which together with their Solemn Smiles they’ve staked everything on. So they double down. Into Tough Love and Pretzel Logic. They’ll eagerly jump through burning hoops of absurdity and hypocrisy forwards, backwards and sideways, even resort to Legalising Censorship and the Comeback of Shaming to keep up the Illusion.

If this last variant sounds like Justin Trudeau in Canada, the Dems in America,
and some Euro parliamentarians, you’re probably right.

 

Satellite Temps Hit Bottom: February 2023

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean.  But as an overview consider how recent rapid cooling  completely overcame the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November 2021, and in February and June 2022  Now at year end 2022 and continuing into January 2023 we have again global temp anomaly lower than average since 1995. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020).

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~60 ppm, a 15% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

gmt-warming-events

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event.  The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4.  This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C.  Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C.  Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.

Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate.  On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. 

Update August 3, 2021

Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT

image-8

 

mc_wh_gas_web20210423124932

See Also Worst Threat: Greenhouse Gas or Quiet Sun?

February Update  Land and Sea Temps Bottom Out

banner-blog

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  While you will hear a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast the cooling set in.  The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino was fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions. After a warming blip in 2022, land and ocean temps dropped again with 2023 starting below the mean since 1995.

UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for February 2023. Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month came ahead of updated records from HadSST4.  I have previously posted on SSTs using HadSST4  Ahoy! Cooler Ocean Ahead, January 2023  This month also has a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years. Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes.  For example in February, Tropical ocean temps alone moved upward, while temps in all land regions rebounded after hitting bottom..

Note:  UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021.  In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same but the anomaly values change with the baseline reference shift.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  Thus the cooling oceans now portend cooling land air temperatures to follow.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

After a change in priorities, updates are now exclusive to HadSST4.  For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are now posted for February.  The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the revised and current dataset.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean air temps since January 2015.

Note 2020 was warmed mainly by a spike in February in all regions, and secondarily by an October spike in NH alone. In 2021, SH and the Tropics both pulled the Global anomaly down to a new low in April. Then SH and Tropics upward spikes, along with NH warming brought Global temps to a peak in October.  That warmth was gone as November 2021 ocean temps plummeted everywhere. After an upward bump 01/2022 temps reversed and plunged downward in June.  After an upward spike in July, ocean air everywhere cooled in August and also in September.   After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, all regions were into negative territory. Now in February, an uptick in the Tropics led a small rise globally slightly above zero.

Land Air Temperatures Tracking Downward in Seesaw Pattern

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for February is below.

Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land.  Land temps are dominated by NH with a 2021 spike in January,  then dropping before rising in the summer to peak in October 2021. As with the ocean air temps, all that was erased in November with a sharp cooling everywhere.  After a summer 2022 NH spike, land temps dropped everywhere, and in January, further cooling in SH and Tropics offset by an uptick in NH.  Now in February both SH and Tropics along with NH pulled up the Global land anomaly.

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

The chart shows monthly Global anomalies starting 01/1980 to present.  The average monthly anomaly is -0.06, for this period of more than four decades.  The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20.   An upward bump in 2021 was reversed with temps having returned close to the mean as of 2/2022.  March and April brought warmer Global temps, later reversed, and with the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January temps, there was no increase over 1980. Now in February there is a slight rebound over zero.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak.  Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.