Month: March 2021

Media Racial Profiling Mass Killers

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Amber Athey writes at the Spectator When does the media cover a horrific crime? Excerpts in italics withe my bolds.

Answer: When the perps are white.

screen-shot-2021-03-28-at-1.56.08-am-960x532-1-e1617033917963-730x475-1

What makes a tragic death a major news story? The races of the perpetrators and the victims, of course. As the media goes all in on critical race theory, many journalists have decided to only provide obsessive coverage of horrific crimes when they can be used to advance the idea — as so eloquently explained by NBA star LeBron James — that minorities are being ‘literally hunted’ by evil white people.

Proof of this phenomenon has never been so clear as in the past several weeks.

It all started when a white man was charged with killing eight people — including six Asian women — at three different massage parlors in the Atlanta area. The shooting capped off weeks of media outlets reporting that hate crimes against Asian-Americans were skyrocketing, spurring the hashtag #StopAAPIHate. The media blamed this trend on President Trump because he had called COVID-19 the ‘China virus’ or ‘Wuhan virus’ and white supremacy. Most journalists ignored the fact that the majority of suspects in hate crimes against Asian Americans are other minorities. Also brushed aside was the fact that the Atlanta shooter claimed his motivation was not about race, but anger stemming from his own sex and pornography addiction. When a law enforcement official tried to relay the shooter’s alleged motivation to the public, Vox reporter Aaron Rupar selectively edited a video to spark outrage at the officer. How dare he suggest this was anything but a race-based crime?

Just a few days later, another mass shooting occurred in Boulder, Colorado. Initial videos from the incident showed a light-skinned individual being detained by police, so writers and activists rushed to blame ‘white men’ and insisted that the suspect would’ve never been taken alive if he were a minority. The shooter was later identified as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, a Syrian immigrant, who friends and family say was bullied for his Middle Eastern name and was often paranoid about being attacked because of his race. Still, some found a way to double down and blame whiteness, including Kamala Harris’s niece, who wrote, ‘I made an assumption based on his being taken into custody alive and the fact that the majority of mass shootings in the US are carried out by white men.’ In any other context, her remarks would have been roundly condemned as prejudice. Even when white men are not the suspects, they are still somehow the culprits. [That assumed “fact” is false, as shown later below.]

Both of these shootings received wall-to-wall coverage. Meanwhile, a shooting that saw eight people injured and two dead in Virginia Beach was hardly touched on cable news. The suspects are black, so the liberal outrage machine did not kick into gear. [Also not mentioned was a white girl raped and killed in Florida on spring break with two black males as suspects.]

Finally, this week in Washington DC, an Uber Eats driver was murdered after two teenage girls tried to hijack his car. The girls allegedly tased Mohammad Anwar, a 66-year-old Pakistani immigrant, before trying to drive away as Anwar was still hanging out of the driver’s side of the car. He was killed when the vehicle crashed. The video is horrifying, particularly as one of the suspects expresses more concern for her phone being left in the car than she does the man she just killed. This story, which caps off a year of skyrocketing carjackings in the DC area, should be top news. However, the two teenage girls are black.

So instead, we got CNN referring to Anwar’s death as an ‘accident’ in which he was ‘fatally injured’. DC mayor Muriel Bowser sent out a scheduled tweet telling residents they can prevent auto theft by locking their cars and avoiding parking in unsafe areas.

Yahoo News! reporter Hunter Walker accused conservatives of highlighting Anwar’s death because the girls were black. It is sad that terrible crimes are now merely pretexts for ugly media posturing. But it is right to point out the glaring double standard that so many in the media deploy to advance anti-whiteness. The events of the past few weeks have only cemented this vile tendency toward desperate and divisive race-baiting.

Footnote: Photo Collage Reveals Who Commits the Mass Shootings in the US Today

mass-shooters-2019-557x600-1

Democrats continue to push the ridiculous talking point that white men commit the majority of mass shootings in the United States.  The left continues to push this with every mass shooting.  A Wiki Page was created to list every mass shooting in the US in 2019.

The list does not include those shootings where no one will speak to police.

At least 20 of the mass shootings in 2019 were in Chicago, Illinois.

More than 140 mass shootings are unsolved largely because no one will give descriptions to the police.

media_mind_control

Mann vs. Steyn Update: Getting to the Truth

Posted on by Ron Clutz

81l2bhewvc4l

Thanks to the Manhattan Contrarian for providing a March update on the eight-year long legal action conducted by M. Mann against M. Steyn.  His post is Update On Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn Litigation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.

Mann’s central allegation in his case against Steyn is that this passage is defamatory because the “hockey stick” graph is not “fraudulent”; and therefore Steyn’s statement that the graph is “fraudulent” is false.

Remarkably, eight and a half years into this case, only now is the truth or falsity of the claim that the “hockey stick” graph is fraudulent being addressed.

The issue was finally raised in a motion for summary judgement filed by Steyn on January 22 — although almost as an aside, in a motion dealing with many other issues; and then the issue was much more squarely addressed in a response by Steyn to a motion for summary judgment by Mann, filed by Steyn on March 3. I have been sent a copy of the March 3 filing, but I have not been able to find a link for it online.

The Steyn motion papers point to three ways in which the Hockey Stick graph is fraudulent.

hide-the-decline-using-mikes-nature-trick

  1.  Mann Deleted Data Adverse to the “Hockey Stick” Shape

Of the three, the most compelling is the deletion by Mann of certain adverse data that would have destroyed the neat “hockey stick” shape of the graph. The graph shows a reconstruction of world atmospheric temperatures from about the year 1050 to 2000, where the first 900 years have temperatures flat or slightly declining, followed by a sharp upward move in the last 50 or so years. The 900 year flat period was derived from several collections of data from tree rings, one of which was provided by a Mann colleague named Keith Briffa. However, in the most recent years (post-1960) the Briffa series showed a decline in temperatures — an inconvenient fact that would have greatly undermined the intended visual impact of the graphic. Mann then decided simply to delete the portion of the Briffa data post-1960, while still using the rest. From the Steyn March 3 submission:

The [Hockey Stick graph as published in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report in 2001, in a portion written by lead author Mann] omitted tree ring proxy data collected by climate scientist Keith Briffa that showed a decline in temperatures after 1960, a message inconsistent with the prized hockey stick shape. . . . The IPCC TAR did not disclose the deletion of this data. . . . As lead author, Mann decided to omit the Briffa data without the input of his other lead authors.. . . Mann’s own collaborators cautioned him against the deletion. IPCC TAR Coordinating Lead Author Chris Folland wrote to Mann that Briffa’s data “contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly.”. . . Briffa himself urged Mann not to succumb to “pressure to present a nice tidy story” by “ignor[ing]” his post-1960 results. . . . Mann agreed with them on the merits but bemoaned the data’s political impact: “[I]f we show Keith’s series . . . skeptics [will] have a field day.” . . . To prevent a “skeptics’ field day,” he chose to delete the data.

One would think that this is about as clear a demonstration of scientific fraud as it is possible to have.

2.  Mann “Cherry-Picked” Data to Show Flat Temperature Trend

huang-pollack-boreholes-97-close-up-600

3. Mann Showed One Record Upside Down to Support the Desired Shape

And as indicated, this is just one of three instances of fraud in the Hockey Stick graph that are set forth in detail in Steyn’s March 3 submission. The other two involve: (1) “cherry picking” of data, in the selection of proxy data series to show a flat-to-declining temperature trend from 1050 to 1950, by simply omitting to use any of the many available series that show the existence of a “medieval warm period” warmer than the present, and (2) misinterpreting one series to use the results upside down and then, when the error was pointed out, continuing to use the series in that way because it supported the desired visual presentation.

mann-et-al-corrected

The original MBH graph compared to a corrected version
produced by MacIntyre and McKitrick after undoing Mann’s errors.

Anyway, Mann gets to throw at least one more brief into this mix, and then we will await the court’s decision. As clear-cut as this may appear from the excerpt I provided, the court’s decision could well not come out until late in the year. If sumary judgment is denied, there will then be a trial. Another possibility is that the court grants summary judgment to Mann as plaintiff. I find that possibility almost too ridiculous to contemplate, but the fact is that when things get as politicized as the “climate change” thing has become, the human mind loses almost all rational capability.

Background: Rise and Fall of the Modern Warming Spike

image_thumb9

The first graph appeared in the IPCC 1990 First Assessment Report (FAR) credited to H.H.Lamb, first director of CRU-UEA. The second graph was featured in 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) the famous hockey stick credited to M. Mann.

Update: Two of Four Seasons Gone, Because Climate Change

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Yale Climate Connections reports on the seepage of climatism into classical music:  Composers, scientists, designers update Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ for an era of climate change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Three hundred years ago, Vivaldi wrote “The Four Seasons.” It portrays the natural world, from birdsong to summer storms.

But the warming climate could radically alter the natural world by 2050, so a new version of “The Four Seasons” has been altered, too.

“We really wanted to walk that line between being too ridiculously catastrophic and kind of meaningfully changing this to make it sound what we think it might feel like to live in that time,” says Tim Devine of AKQA.

The design agency partnered with composers and scientists to develop an algorithm that translates projected environmental changes into musical changes. It allows them to create localized versions for any place where the piece is performed.

In the version played by Australia’s Sydney Symphony Orchestra, missing notes reflect declining bird populations, and the summer storm is more intense and prolonged.

For listeners, the result is familiar, but unsettling – and a warning about how the world could change if nothing is done to reduce global warming.

Background from previous Post–Spoof Becomes Woke Reality

From the NewsThump, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons reduced to Two in light of climate change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concerti will now consist of just two seasons, because that’s all there are these days.

The conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Simon Williams commented, “The current generation doesn’t really understand the idea of four different seasons of weather, so in a bid to appeal to a modern audience we’ve updated the concerti to be more representative of 300 years of environmental damage.

“Overall, the suite will be much more discordant and unpredictable. The part representing winter will be doubled in length and feature woodwind solos to signify the yearly rising of floodwaters. A choir of scientists will sing the aria ‘Te Lo Abbiamo Detto’ (We Told You So).

“Spring and autumn will be done away with altogether.

“Summer has also been greatly extended, as has the ‘languor caused by the heat’ bit, occasionally broken up strings phrases to represent next door’s kids on the trampoline.”

How quickly does a virtue-bestowing idea spread.  What was spoof news a year ago is now performed on stage.  And the musical score adjusted with the help of a computer warming model.

Update: Why Wu Flu Virus Looks Man-made

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update March 27, 20121 Ex-CDC Director Believes Wuhan Flu Escaped from a Lab

Live Science reports Ex-CDC director believes COVID-19 escaped from a lab, but cites no evidence

Excerpts in italics with my bolds.  A previous post is reprinted further on showing the evidence not discussed and hand-waved away by Fauci, whose NIH funded the Wuhan research facility from which the virus likely came.

Dr. Robert Redfield told CNN that this was his opinion on the origins of the virus.

“I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” Redfield told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “Other people don’t believe that, that’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out.”

Still, a number of scientists say the most likely explanation is that the virus emerged naturally, passing from bats to another animal and then to humans, Live Science previously reported. Recently, a team from the World Health Organization, which is investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2, said that it agrees with this hypothesis — WHO officials said the virus likely passed from bats to animals on wildlife farms in China, and then to humans, Live Science previously reported.

Redfield said he didn’t believe the bat theory. “Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonosis to humans, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission,” Redfield told CNN. “I just don’t think this makes biological sense.”

The former CDC chief wasn’t suggesting SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered virus — another theory with no supporting evidence — just a natural escapee. “In the lab, you think that that process of becoming more efficient was happening?” Gupta asked. [Note:  There is significant evidence of an engineered virus documented in the discussion below.]

“Yeah, let’s just say I have coronavirus that I’m working on. Most of us in the lab, we’re trying to grow a virus, we try to help make it grow better and better and better … so we can do experiments,” Redfield responded.

Why Wu Flu Virus Looks Man-made ( previously posted Sept. 2020)

A virologist who fled China after studying the early outbreak of COVID-19 has published a new report claiming the coronavirus likely came from a lab.  This adds to the analysis done by Dr. Luc Montagnier earlier this year, and summarized in a previous post reprinted later on.  Dr. Yan was interviewed on Fox News, and YouTube has now blocked the video.

If you are wondering why Big Tech is censoring information unflattering to China, see Lee Smith’s Tablet article America’s China Class Launches a New War Against Trump  The corporate, tech, and media elites will not allow the president to come between them and Chinese money

Doctor Li-Meng Yan, a scientist who studied some of the available data on COVID-19 has published her claims on Zenodo, an open access digital platform. She wrote that she believed COVID-19 could have been “conveniently created” within a lab setting over a period of just six months, and “SARS-CoV-2 shows biological characteristics that are inconsistent with a naturally occurring, zoonotic virus”.

The paper by Yan, Li-Meng; Kang, Shu; Guan, Jie; Hu, Shanchang  is Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Overview

The natural origin theory, although widely accepted, lacks substantial support. The alternative theory that the virus may have come from a research laboratory is, however, strictly censored on peer-reviewed scientific journals. Nonetheless, SARS-CoV-2 shows biological characteristics that are inconsistent with a naturally occurring, zoonotic virus. In this report, we describe the genomic, structural, medical, and literature evidence, which, when considered together, strongly contradicts the natural origin theory.

The evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 should be a laboratory product created by using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21 as a template and/or backbone.

Contents

Consistent with this notion, genomic, structural, and literature evidence also suggest a non-natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. In addition, abundant literature indicates that gain-of-function research has long advanced to the stage where viral genomes can be precisely engineered and manipulated to enable the creation of novel coronaviruses possessing unique properties. In this report, we present such evidence and the associated analyses.

Part 1 of the report describes the genomic and structural features of SARS-CoV-2, the presence of which could be consistent with the theory that the virus is a product of laboratory modification beyond what could be afforded by simple serial viral passage. Part 2 of the report describes a highly probable pathway for the laboratory creation of SARS-CoV-2, key steps of which are supported by evidence present in the viral genome. Importantly, part 2 should be viewed as a demonstration of how SARS-CoV-2 could be conveniently created in a laboratory in a short period of time using available materials and well-documented techniques. This report is produced by a team of experienced scientists using our combined expertise in virology, molecular biology, structural biology, computational biology, vaccine development, and medicine.

We present three lines of evidence to support our contention that laboratory manipulation is part of the history of SARS-CoV-2:

i. The genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 is suspiciously similar to that of a bat coronavirus discovered by military laboratories in the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing, China) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (Nanjing, China).

ii. The receptor-binding motif (RBM) within the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which determines the host specificity of the virus, resembles that of SARS-CoV from the 2003 epidemic in a suspicious manner. Genomic evidence suggests that the RBM has been genetically manipulated.

iii. SARS-CoV-2 contains a unique furin-cleavage site in its Spike protein, which is known to greatly enhance viral infectivity and cell tropism. Yet, this cleavage site is completely absent in this particular class of coronaviruses found in nature. In addition, rare codons associated with this additional sequence suggest the strong possibility that this furin-cleavage site is not the product of natural evolution and could have been inserted into the SARS-CoV-2 genome artificially by techniques other than simple serial passage or multi-strain recombination events inside co-infected tissue cultures or animals.

Background from Previous post June 30, 2020:  Pandemic Update: Virus Weaker, HCQ Stronger

In past weeks there have been anecdotal reports from frontline doctors that patients who would have been flattened fighting off SARS CV2 in April are now sitting up and recovering in a few days. We have also the statistical evidence in the US and Sweden, as two examples, that case numbers are rising while Covid deaths continue declining. One explanation is that the new cases are younger people who have been released from lockdown (in US) with stronger immune systems. But it may also be that the virus itself is losing potency.

In the past I have noticed theories about the origin of the virus, and what makes it “novel.” But when the scientist who identified HIV weighs in, I pay particular attention. The Coronavirus Is Man Made According to Luc Montagnier the Man Who Discovered HIV. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Contrary to the narrative that is being pushed by the mainstream that the COVID 19 virus was the result of a natural mutation and that it was transmitted to humans from bats via pangolins, Dr Luc Montagnier the man who discovered the HIV virus back in 1983 disagrees and is saying that the virus was man made.

Professor Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, claims that SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated virus that was accidentally released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Chinese researchers are said to have used coronaviruses in their work to develop an AIDS vaccine. HIV RNA fragments are believed to have been found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

“With my colleague, bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus,” explains Luc Montagnier, interviewed by Dr Jean-François Lemoine for the daily podcast at Pourquoi Docteur, adding that others have already explored this avenue: Indian researchers have already tried to publish the results of the analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus, … the HIV virus (AIDS virus), but they were forced to withdraw their findings as the pressure from the mainstream was too great.

To insert an HIV sequence into this genome requires molecular tools

In a challenging question Dr Jean-François Lemoine inferred that the coronavirus under investigation may have come from a patient who is otherwise infected with HIV. No, “says Luc Montagnier,” in order to insert an HIV sequence into this genome, molecular tools are needed, and that can only be done in a laboratory.

According to the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine, a plausible explanation would be an accident in the Wuhan laboratory. He also added that the purpose of this work was the search for an AIDS vaccine.

In any case, this thesis, defended by Professor Luc Montagnier, has a positive turn.

According to him, the altered elements of this virus are eliminated as it spreads: “Nature does not accept any molecular tinkering, it will eliminate these unnatural changes and even if nothing is done, things will get better, but unfortunately after many deaths.”

This is enough to feed some heated debates! So much so that Professor Montagnier’s statements could also place him in the category of “conspiracy theorists”: “Conspirators are the opposite camp, hiding the truth,” he replies, without wanting to accuse anyone, but hoping that the Chinese will admit to what he believes happened in their laboratory.

To entice a confession from the Chinese he used the example of Iran which after taking full responsibility for accidentally hitting a Ukrainian plane was able to earn the respect of the global community. Hopefully the Chinese will do the right thing he adds. “In any case, the truth always comes out, it is up to the Chinese government to take responsibility.”

Implications: Leaving aside the geopolitics, this theory also explains why the virus weakens when mutations lose the unnatural pieces added in the lab. Since this is an RNA (not DNA) sequence mutations are slower, but inevitable. If correct, this theory works against fears of a second wave of infections. It also gives an unintended benefit from past lockdowns and shutdowns, slowing the rate of infections while the virus degrades itself.

lb210330c20210330112317

The World Since I Was Twelve

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This is a reblog of  David Kreutzer’s article The World Since I Was Born at IER (Institute for Energy Research).  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.  My title change is due to me being a few years older than he.

Some climate Tweeters have taken to adorning their Twitter bios with the atmospheric CO2 concentration in the year of their birth. If there were room in my bio I would list that and some other stuff.

david-kreutzer-table

[Note: Superscript numbers refer to data sources linked in IER article.]

Since 1953, the increase in energy consumption may well be the primary driver of rising CO2 concentrations, but it has also been critical to the economic growth that drives phenomenally beneficial trends in virtually every metric of human wellbeing.

Rising energy consumption is almost certainly responsible for a portion of that 1.6 degree warming, but over the past century, the even greater warming has not been associated with any significant rising trends in world-wide hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, or wildfires.

My Comment:  As Alex Epstein and others have pointed out, the introduction of energy from fossil fuels made possible an extraordinary rise in human flourishing, shown in these graphs.

15-3.1

And in support of his concluding remark:

giss-gmt-to-2018-w-co2

us-wet-dry-co2rev-1

post-glacial_sea_level

Resource Document:  Advance Briefing for Glasgow COP 2021

March 25 Arctic Melt Season Ensues

Posted on by Ron Clutz

As anticipated in a previous post, Arctic ice extent appears to have peaked under the 15M km2 threshold.  An earlier discussion noted that the wavy Polar Vortex that froze Texas with cold Arctic air in February, allowed warmer southern air into Arctic regions, reducing ice extent.  The ice recovered afterward ( see March 1, 2021 Arctic Ice Recovers from PV Hit ), but 2021 was no longer going to reach 15M km2.  As shown by the graph below, ice extents this year did persist and draw close to the 14 year average, before beginning the melt season this week.

Arctic2021083

Starting March MASIE 2021 shows Arctic extents were about 400k km2 below average, but for the first 20 days added 200k while the average lost about 100k, reducing the difference to 85k km2 on day 80.  Now in the last 3 days the melt season has erased the gains in 2021 and restored the deficit to nearly 300k km2, 2% of the 14-year average.  SII reported mostly lower extents than MASIE, but presently the two are similar.  The table shows the distribution of ice over the Arctic regions.

Region 2021083 Day 083 Average 2021-Ave. 2007083 2021-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14565743 14844057 -278315 14412819 152924
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070689 1070239 450 1069711 978
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 965879 127 966006 0
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087066 72 1087137 0
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897827 897599 228 897845 -18
 (5) Kara_Sea 935023 918802 16221 904153 30870
 (6) Barents_Sea 689316 649153 40163 472230 217086
 (7) Greenland_Sea 657096 631454 25642 609918 47178
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1284957 1509201 -224244 1323453 -38496
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854597 853068 1529 852767 1830
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260903 1260717 186 1259717 1186
 (11) Central_Arctic 3203492 3230083 -26591 3234061 -30569
 (12) Bering_Sea 592244 746974 -154730 883221 -290977
 (13) Baltic_Sea 46648 70687.87 -24040 70484 -23836
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 1010021 938704 71317 765577 244443

Interestingly, both Okhotsk and Barents Seas peaked well above average, and are still in surplus after starting to retreat.  The main deficits are in Bering and Baffin Bay.  The central Arctic, Siberian and Canadian regions remain solidly frozen.

Background previous post Arctic Ice Moment of Truth 2021

For ice extent in the Arctic, the bar is set at 15M km2. The average peak in the last 14 years occurs on day 62 at 15.04M km2 before descending, though the average can still be above 15M at late as day 73.  Nine of the last 14 years were able to clear 15M, but recently only 2016 and 2020 ice extents cleared the bar at 15M km2; the others came up short. The actual annual peak ice extent day varied between day 59 (2016) to day 82 (2012).

The animation shows in two weeks how this year’s ice extents contracted and then regrew greater than before, coincidental with the wavy Polar Vortex (PV) first admitting warmer southern air and then keeping the cold air in.

As reported previously, most of the action was firstly in the Pacific, especially Sea of Okhotsk upper left, ice shrinking one week by 200k km2 and rapidly growing back 210k km2 ice extent the next.  Okhotsk ice is now 1.1M km2, 96% of 2020 max.  On the Atlantic side, Barents sea upper right lost 100k km2 retreating from Svalbard, then gained 120k km2 back.  Greenland Sea ice middle right lost 100k km2, and then gained 150k km2.  Barents now has 3% more ice than 2020 max, while Greenland sea ice is 85% of last year’s max.

Drift ice in Okhotsk Sea at sunrise.

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

Just One Number Keeps the Lights On

Posted on by Ron Clutz

windmill20scam

David Wojick explains how maintaining electricity supply is simple in his CFACT article It takes big energy to back up wind and solar.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds. (H/T John Ray)

Power system design can be extremely complex but there is one simple number that is painfully obvious. At least it is painful to the advocates of wind and solar power, which may be why we never hear about it. It is a big, bad number.

To my knowledge this big number has no name, but it should. Let’s call it the “minimum backup requirement” for wind and solar, or MBR. The minimum backup requirement is how much generating capacity a system must have to reliably produce power when wind and solar don’t.

For most places the magnitude of MBR is very simple. It is all of the juice needed on the hottest or coldest low wind night. It is night so there is no solar. Sustained wind is less than eight miles per hour, so there is no wind power. It is very hot or cold so the need for power is very high.

In many places MBR will be close to the maximum power the system ever needs, because heat waves and cold spells are often low wind events. In heat waves it may be a bit hotter during the day but not that much. In cold spells it is often coldest at night.

Thus what is called “peak demand” is a good approximation for the maximum backup requirement. In other words, there has to be enough reliable generating capacity to provide all of the maximum power the system will ever need. For any public power system that is a very big number, as big as it gets in fact.

Actually it gets a bit bigger, because there also has to be margin of safety or what is called “reserve capacity”. This is to allow for something not working as it should. Fifteen percent is a typical reserve in American systems. This makes MBR something like 115% of peak demand.

We often read about wind and solar being cheaper than coal, gas and nuclear power, but that does not include the MBR for wind and solar.

What is relatively cheap for wind and solar is the cost to produce a unit of electricity. This is often called LCOE or the “levelized cost of energy”. But adding the reliable backup required to give people the power they need makes wind and solar very expensive.

In short the true cost of wind and solar is LCOE + MBR. This is the big cost you never hear about. But if every state goes to wind and solar then each one will have to have MBR for roughly its entire peak demand. That is an enormous amount of generating capacity.

Of course the cost of MBR depends on the generating technology. Storage is out because the cost is astronomical. Gas fired generation might be best but it is fossil fueled, as is coal. If one insists on zero fossil fuel then nuclear is probably the only option. Operating nuclear plants as intermittent backup is stupid and expensive, but so is no fossil fuel generation.

What is clearly ruled out is 100% renewables, because there would frequently be no electricity at all. That is unless geothermal could be made to work on an enormous scale, which would take many decades to develop.

unicorn

It is clear that the Biden Administration’s goal of zero fossil fueled electricity by 2035 (without nuclear) is economically impossible because of the minimum backup requirements for wind and solar. You can’t get there from here.

One wonders why we have never heard of this obvious huge cost with wind and solar. The utilities I have looked at avoid it with a trick.

Dominion Energy, which supplies most of Virginia’s juice, is a good example. The Virginia Legislature passed a law saying that Dominion’s power generation had to be zero fossil fueled by 2045. Dominion developed a Plan saying how they would do this. Tucked away in passing on page 119 they say they will expand their capacity for importing power purchased from other utilities. This increase happens to be to an amount equal to their peak demand.

The plan is to buy all the MBR juice from the neighbors! But if everyone is going wind and solar then no one will have juice to sell. In fact they will all be buying, which does not work. Note that the high pressure systems which cause low wind can be huge, covering a dozen or more states. For that matter, no one has that kind of excess generating capacity today.

To summarize, for every utility there will be times when there is zero wind and solar power combined with near peak demand. Meeting this huge need is the minimum backup requirement. The huge cost of meeting this requirement is part of the cost of wind and solar power. MBR makes wind and solar extremely expensive.

The simple question to ask the Biden Administration, the States and their power utilities is this: How will you provide power on hot or cold low wind nights?

Background information on grid stability is at Beware Deep Electrification Policies

More Technical discussion is On Stable Electric Power: What You Need to Know

cg4bbc1c620f5bf0

Medical Ideology Made Covid Worse

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Pillars Needed Missing

Love of Theory is the Root of all Evil — Statistician Matthew Briggs

During the pandemic anti-viral treatments were dismissed and their usage cancelled by medical bureaucrats. The rise of “evidence-based medicine” was a major advance in medical science by putting the focus on patient outcomes as the measure of a treatment’s success. Yet during this pandemic in modern western nations, the experiences and observations of primary care physicians and their patients were set aside deliberately in favor of ideology favoring Big Pharma solutions over more available, inexpensive and proven treatment protocols. Pierre Kory suffered directly from this biased, authoritarian discrimination and writes about it in his Real Clear Politics article Censorship Kills: The Shunning of a COVID Therapeutic. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Doctors fighting COVID-19 should be supported by their profession and their government, not suppressed. Yet today physicians are smothered under a wave of censorship. With coronavirus variants and vaccine hesitancy threatening a prolonged pandemic, the National Institutes of Health and the broader U.S. medical establishment should free doctors to treat this terrible disease with effective medicines.

For centuries, doctors have addressed emerging health threats by prescribing existing drugs for new uses, observing the results, and communicating to their peers and the public what seems to work. In a pandemic, precious time and lives can be lost by an insistence on excessive data and review. But in the current crisis, many in positions of authority have done just that, stubbornly refusing to allow any repurposed treatments.

This departure from traditional medical practice risks catastrophe. When doctors on the front lines try to bring awareness of and use such medicines, they get silenced. 

I’ve experienced such censorship firsthand. Early in the pandemic, my research led me to testify in the Senate that corticosteroids were life-saving against COVID-19, when all national and international health care agencies recommended against them. My recommendations were criticized, ignored and resisted such that I felt forced to resign my faculty position. Only later did a large study from Oxford University find they were indeed life-saving. Overnight, they became the standard of care worldwide. More recently, we identified through dozens of trials that the drug ivermectin leads to large reductions in transmission, mortality, and time to clinical recovery. After testifying to this fact in a second Senate appearance — the video of which was removed by YouTube after garnering over 8 million views — I was forced to leave another position. 

I was delighted when our paper on ivermectin passed a rigorous peer review and was accepted by Frontiers in Pharmacology. The abstract was viewed over 102,000 times by people hungry for answers. Six weeks later, the journal suddenly rejected the paper, based on an unnamed “external expert” who stated that “our conclusions were unsupported,” contradicting the four senior, expert peer reviewers who had earlier accepted them. I can’t help but interpret this in context as censorship. 

The science shows that ivermectin works. Over 40 randomized trials and observational studies from around the world attest to its efficacy against the novel coronavirus. Meta-analyses by four separate research groups, including ours, found an average reduction in mortality of between 68%-75%. And 10 of 13 randomized controlled trials found statistically significant reductions in time to viral clearance, an effect not associated with any other COVID-19 therapeutic. Furthermore, ivermectin has an unparalleled safety record and low cost, which should negate any fears or resistance to immediate adoption. 

Our manuscript conclusions were further supported by the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) Panel. Following the World Health Organization Handbook of Guideline Development, it voted to strongly recommend the use of ivermectin in the treatment and prevention of COVID-19, and opined that further placebo controlled trials are unlikely to be ethical. 

Even prior to the BIRD Panel recommendations, many countries have approved the use of ivermectin in COVID-19 or formally incorporated it into national treatment guidelines. Several have gone further and initiated large-scale importation and distribution efforts. In the last month alone, such European Union members as Bulgaria and Slovakia have approved its use nationwide. India, Egypt, Peru, Zimbabwe, and Bolivia are distributing it in many regions and observing rapid decreases in excess deaths. Increasing numbers of regional health authorities have advocated for or adopted it across Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. And it is now the standard of care in Mexico City, one of the world’s largest cities. 

It’s time to stop the foot-dragging. People are dying. The responsible physicians of this country, and their patients, need to be able to rely on their government institutions to quickly identify effective treatments, rather than waiting for pristine, massive Phase III trials before acting. At minimum, the NIH should immediately recommend ivermectin for treating and preventing COVID-19, and then work with professional associations, institutions, and the media to publicize its use.

If it doesn’t, the organization will lose credibility as a public institution charged with acting in the national interest — and doctors will ignore its guidance in the future. 

My story is not unique. Physicians across the country are fighting a pernicious campaign to denigrate all potential treatments not first championed by the authorities, and others have faced retaliation for speaking up. Sadly, too many of our institutions are using the pandemic as a pretext to centralize control over the practice of medicine, persecuting and canceling doctors who follow their clinical judgment and expertise. 

Actually “following the science” means listening to practitioners and considering the entirety and diversity of clinical studies. That’s exactly what my colleagues and I have done. We won’t be cowed. We will speak up for our patients and do what’s right.

Pierre Kory, MD, is president and chief medical officer of the Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.

Post Script: Evidence from Comparing France and India

20210307-ive-hcq-france-india

We learn that 30 million Indians have been cured by ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine,

Does there still exist in France a single journalist able to move away from the clandestine restaurant of BFM to look at what is happening outside the ring road? 

India has conquered the disease with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, uses a traditional vaccine, exports experimental vaccines for these idiotic Westerners 

India is the first country in the world for the production of drug molecule, but it is also a developing country. Populated by 1.4 billion inhabitants, it still has 90 million over 60 years also exposed to covid. It is the second country in the world for no number of cases. India followed the Raoult and Borody protocol to the letter …

The rate of reproduction of the virus continues to decline and the country (India) which has known at least 11 million declared cases has reached the threshold of collective immunity.

There are 1,230 deaths per million inhabitants over 65 (six times less than in France). If we had listened to Raoult and followed the Indian model, today we would have 500 cases of covid per day and 75,000 fewer deaths …

Additionally, About those Covid death statistics:

From The Center Square, Illinois:  Coroner questions Illinois’ COVID-19 death tally, seeks statewide audit.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

But a county coroner is calling for a full audit after reviewing some of the deaths in his county.

“My concern is, I’ve reviewed several cases, (of 100 cases) about ten of them here in Monroe County, that the state has deemed COVID-related deaths and none of them have had underlying conditions or contributing factors to COVID,” Monroe County Coroner Bob Hill said. “So my concern is no matter when the person was tested positive, the state is automatically giving them a death classification as related to COVID.”

He said one case in January was an accidental drug overdose, but the decedent had tested positive for COVID-19 in October.

“Don’t automatically put a statistic out there of a (COVID) death when it hasn’t been confirmed what the cause is,” Hill said.

Hill questioned if the motivation to rush reporting of COVID-19 deaths without a full audit was about money.

“The only assumption I can make is the hope the state is seeking some federal money coming down the system for all the numbers of deaths we’ve had due to COVID-19,” Hill said. “That’s the only thing that I can assume. Why else would you want to inflate numbers especially related to COVID.”

 
 

 

They Swallowed It: Hook, Line and Sinker

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Trapped

Many will recognize the expression for taking on an idea or proposition so deeply in your gut that, like a fish on the line, there is no escape no matter how hard you try. Jacques Parizeau, one time separatist Premier of Quebec coined a similar idiom regarding voters resisting the referendum on Quebec independence from Canada. Meeting privately with foreign diplomats, he said that in the event of a Yes vote, the result would be like a “lobster pot.” That refers to the traditional wooden traps that have a one-way gate allowing a lobster to get in, but not out.

These expressions come to mind concerning the plight of US citizens following the installing of Biden-Harris in the White House. The intention of this administration is clearly to fundamentally transform America: From “The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave,” to “The Land of the Victims, Home of the Afraid.” The movement in this direction has been a long time in the works, and was only recently triggered by the election of Trump and the leftist need to cancel the alternate ideology of “Make America Great Again.” Time will tell if those now in power are reaching too far, too fast, going for broke before the majority were caught in the pot.

No doubt the program to undermine American global dominance has been operating for several generations. Those not familiar with the Marxist revolutionary four-stage process can read my synopsis article Four Steps to Take Down a Free Society

Pioneered by the Soviets and exported into many countries before their empire collapsed, the method is now employed by the Chinese Communist Party updated with cyber tools, along with traditional espionage tactics of honey traps and buyouts. The first stage of demoralizing involves teachers indoctrinating students to disparage their national heritage and destroy commitment to traditional social values and customs. Tom Wolfe wrote with his satirical wit and historical knowledge about the demise of liberal US academia into leftist dogma in his essay In the Land of the Rococo Marxists. My synopsis is Warmists and Rococo Marxists.

Of course the present manifestation flies under a different banner: Social Justice. And the reverent refer to George Floyd rather than Karl Marx. But Critical Race Theory is so obviously intended to divide and conquer a free and democratic society, you would have to be in a trance (claiming to be “woke”) to be taken in by it. Yet, indoctrinated children, now adults abound in the ranks of corporate management, others churning out copy for mass media or organizing activists in the streets and in cyberspace.

The protests in city streets of developed countries are coordinated and led by Social Justice Warriors indoctrinated in Western academies of higher education, after elementary school slanted teaching. If neo-Marxist progressive post-moderns take pride in this as accomplishing their agenda, consider what happened in China’s cultural revolution in the 1960s and is repeating itself in 2020. The useful dupes, like teachers, become outcasts and themselves targets for cancellation once power and control is seized. See article Teachers Beware Your Cultural Revolution Turning on You.

Have the scales yet tipped in favor of the slide into a socialist autocracy? Will Americans mount a resistance to this revolution? Depends on who and how many are on the line or trapped in lobster pots.

Unmasking Biden’s Climate Shakedown

Posted on by Ron Clutz

kn121419dapc20191213114523

At Spectator, Real Jean Isaac explains How to End Biden’s Fake Climate Apocalypse.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.

If there’s no pushback against the Left, we’ll see a dramatic drop in our standard of living.

With the wave of executive orders and legislation coming from the Biden administration, and the cultural antics of his woke supporters, Biden’s war on fossil fuels has received insufficient attention. Yet energy is the lifeblood of our economy, and making traditional energy sources vastly more expensive is the single most destructive aspect of Biden’s policies. If this country does not successfully mobilize against these policies, the vast majority will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living.

mrz012921dbp20210129124515Supposedly the assault on fossil fuels — via regulation; cancellation of pipelines; concocting a huge, wholly imaginary “social cost of carbon”; taxes; and solar and wind mandates — is necessary to save the planet from imminent catastrophe produced by man-made global warming.

But genuine climate scientists, as we know from those who dare to speak up, are amazed and horrified. Richard Lindzen, long at the top of the field as a former professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT, laments that the situation gets sillier and sillier. He told the recent CPAC conference (his message was read by the Heartland Institute’s James Taylor):

“One problem with conveying our message is the difficulty people have in recognizing the absurdity of the alarmist climate message. They can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance. Consider the following situation. Your physician declares that your complete physical will consist in simply taking your temperature. This would immediately suggest something wrong with your physician. He further claims that if your temperature is 98.7F rather than 98.6F you must be put on life support. Now you know he is certifiably insane. The same situation for climate is considered “settled science.”

So how did an absurd message gain such widespread acceptance? The answer is something people find it hard to wrap their heads around: we aren’t dealing with science at all. We confront an apocalyptic movement, the kind of movement, recurring across time and space, that Richard Landes describes in Heaven on Earth: Varieties of the Millennial Experience. Its scientific veneer makes it credible to a modern audience. If today a charismatic leader cried, “Repent. Sacrifice your goods. The end of the earth is nigh,” at best he might attract a few dozen oddball followers. But when essentially the same message is clothed in the language of science, it sweeps the world.

In Roosters of the Apocalypse I point out the uncomfortable similarities between the global warming apocalypse and the apocalypse that led the Xhosa tribe (in today’s South Africa) in 1856 to destroy their economy, which was based on cattle as ours is on energy. Relying on the vision of a 15-year-old orphan girl, the Xhosa killed an estimated half million of their cattle, ceased planting crops, and destroyed their grain stores. In return the girl promised the Xhosa’s ancestors would drive out the British and bring an even greater abundance of cattle and grain. By the end of 1857 a third to a half of the population — between 30,000 and 50,000 souls — had starved to death.

cg5d8c4e469b40d

Even the age of the “prophetic” girl suggests a modern parallel. Greta Thunberg didn’t start the global warming apocalypse, but she was 15 when she began spending her school days in front of the Swedish Parliament carrying a sign reading “School Strike for Climate,” heralding the international children’s crusade against global warming she would lead a year later.

In some ways the current apocalypse is surprising. Landes reports that to be successful, an apocalypse needs to bring elites on board, and elites tend to be a hard sell, especially when prophecies demand a society self-mutilate. But in this case not only have elites been won over with breathtaking ease, but they have proved more susceptible over time than the man in the street. A recent Gallup poll found only 3 percent of the public citing climate as a key concern.

gv020921dapr20210209064505

If people understand the menace that global warming policies pose to their way of life, there should be a huge pool of followers.

Dissent is drowned out as educational, political, media, cultural, and business elites speak with one voice. Even fossil fuel companies have thrown in the towel. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top lobbying group, is set to propose setting a price on carbon emissions. Children are being indoctrinated in global warming doctrine from kindergarten on, in humanities as well as science classes. My granddaughter, in sixth grade in a Manhattan public school, has a class in “Clifi” (Climate Fiction), where the children read stories on the dreadful aftermath of a climate apocalypse. Politicians at the state and local level pass mandates for expensive (and unreliable) renewables to replace fossil fuels at ever earlier dates. Even conservatives are caught up in the fever. At the most recent CPAC a group urged Republicans to “get in front” on the issue and outflank the Democrats.

What can be done to prevent the global warming locomotive from steamrolling over our economy?

Thus far efforts have focused on countering global warming science with better science. The Chicago-based Heartland Institute has organized 13 international conferences since 2008. The media has all but blacked out coverage, so neither the conferences nor the steady stream of climate research the Institute publishes receive any notice. The CO2 Coalition, which emphasizes that CO2, far from being a pollutant, is a nutrient vital for life, is given similar short shrift. For example, although the coalition includes distinguished scientists, Wikipedia defines it as “a climate change alarmist denial advocacy organization,” whose claims “are disputed by the vast majority of climate scientists.”

There are also excellent websites, such as Climate Depot, offering space to scientific research casting doubt on apocalyptic claims. Marc Morano, who runs the site, had the distinction in 2009 of being chosen by news outlet Grist as one of only five “criminals against humanity, against planet Earth itself” and in 2012 of being named “Climate Change Misinformer” of the Year by Media Matters.

Pitting one scientific study against another hasn’t worked. That’s because most climate scientists are on the global warming grant gravy train, the public can’t follow the abstruse language of academic studies of climate, and the apocalypse is only superficially about climate anyway. Under the circumstances, a mass movement against this folly would seem to be the only way to get through to a larger public. If people understand the menace that global warming policies pose to their way of life, there should be a huge pool of followers. Texas might be a good place to start, given its recent unexpected stay in the freezing dark, and the stark failure of its wind turbines. One advantage of such a movement is that it would cross party lines. Democratic-voting union members stand to lose their well-paid jobs in fossil fuel industries, with workers in China cornering much lower-paid jobs in solar and wind (despite pie-in-the-sky promises by President Biden and newly appointed climateer-in-chief John Kerry).

gv012621dapr20210126094504

The new movement could be titled “Lights On.” Participants should have fun. There was never a claim of “settled science” more ripe for ridicule. How about contests for college students rewarding those who can document the largest number of disproven prophecies of global warming doom (for example, the end of snow, no more Arctic glaciers, U.S. coasts under water, all with specified dates now long past)? In Breitbart, John Nolte recently claimed to have found 44 of them. There can be no shortage of candidates for an award of “False Prophet of the Year.” Or “Global Warming Hypocrite of the Year,” for which John Kerry would be an outstanding candidate with his private jet, yachts, multiple mansions, and cars. And what about an award to a prominent media figure for the most absurd claim for global warming causation? One of Lindzen’s favorites is the Syrian civil war.

And how about reviving the chronicle of Climategate, which almost wiped out faith in the apocalypse before the media buried the scandal? In 2009, a hacker downloaded candid emails among top climate scientists in England and the United States that bemoaned recalcitrant data, described the “tricks” (their term) used to coax the data, reported efforts to keep the views of dissenters out of reputable journals and UN reports, and boasted of deletion of data to make it unavailable to other researchers. “If science is on your side, why do you need to make it up?” would make a good bumper sticker or t-shirt slogan.

cb030221dapr20210302094524

There could be a bumper sticker with comedian George Carlin’s line: “The Planet has been through a lot worse than us.” There could be t-shirts that proclaim, “Wind Is for Sailboats.” There should be songs and cartoons (many of these can already be found on the website WattsUpWithThat.com).

The movement can have fun, but it must also be serious: members will only back politicians prepared to fight to maintain our access to cheap, reliable energy. To the extent solar and wind can someday compete on an even playing field, without subsidies and mandates, they are welcome to the energy mix.

For the current apocalypse to come to an end, the notion that man-made global warming poses an existential threat must come to be seen as ridiculous. Otherwise the policies of shutting down our traditional energy supplies to stave off this absurd end of days will themselves become an existential threat.

Gang Green