Why Science Matters
Month: November 2021
How Voter Fraud Is Revealed in 35 US States
Jay Valentine reports on the behind-the-scenes canvassing organizations documenting widespread fraud in the 2020 elections. Surprisingly, even in states carried handily by Trump, there were large numbers of illegal ballots counted in state and local races. His article at American Thinker is Meet the Technology That’s Uncovering 2020’s Voter Fraud. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.
Were You a Phantom Voter? Now You Can Find Out.
The search for phantom voters is over. Phantom voters are sitting next to you at the restaurant or standing next to you at the bank. They are your friend and neighbor. You may be a phantom and not know it.
Phantom voters, the definition, is morphing from fake voters hiding in UPS boxes to people who advanced computer models predict will not vote.
Don’t get me wrong — there are thousands of phantom voters living in churches, R.V. parks, cemeteries, homeless shelters, hotels, and virtual mailboxes. It’s just that there are as many, perhaps more, who live active, healthy, honest lives on voter rolls. They just don’t know they voted.
You’ve heard the stories, denied by the mainstream press and almost every secretary of state: “there is no significant voter fraud.” Why not say that? There is no way you can check.
Now there is.
After the 2020 election results stopped in the middle of night and vote trajectories magically changed when they fired up again, thousands of people, just like you, didn’t buy it. They formed armies of canvassers in 35 or more states. They did something that has not been done at scale in the history of the country: they started checking voter rolls.
They did more. They filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests at unprecedented levels. Secretary of state offices, once a murky sinecure, had to answer real questions about what was going on.
Here’s what popped out.
Leftists are different from you and me. Unlike us, they care that every vote is cast, and if you do not cast your vote, they will do it for you. And they did. At scale.
In one midwestern state, voter rolls costing tens of thousands of dollars were bought by a billionaire leftist every month for over a year. Why would someone buy a list that doesn’t change much?
Voter lists show people who move. They show people who never or seldom vote.
The white hat canvassing team built a query for one state: “voters who voted in 2020 who never voted before.” Guess what! 265,000.
In the same state, thousands of people came forward with stories that when they showed up to vote, they were told someone had voted for them. Get the picture?
In a southwestern state, in its second largest city, there was a 21-day daily tabulation of cast ballots. Once a ballot is cast, it should not be changed. Not here.
When the millions of cast votes across over 21 snapshots were compared, thousands of ballots had been altered. Some were minor alterations, like a slight name change. Others were more interesting — like when someone voted in person, but his vote was later changed by an absentee ballot.
It gets better.
Those FOIA requests are mining gold. Our midwestern state has documents showing that the state election organization gave online access to a leftist group for weeks during the voting. Citizens had to pay over $20,000 for one shapshot of the voter roll. Leftists could, and did, access it online throughout the process. For free.
And access it they did. Witness statements are being gathered, lots of them, that in the largest city, election officials were trading cell calls about how many votes were needed, and someone was then providing the phantoms to meet the quota.
They knew the names of the phantoms — they had direct access to who voted, who didn’t, and who was likely to never show up.
This is not exclusively a blue-state phenomenon.
In a deep red state, canvassers found more traditional phantoms.
There were the 21 people at the fraternity house. Nothing to see here — until they sorted them by age. All these kids were active voters, many voted, and their age range was from 115 to 57. Some frat house.
These red-state canvassers went deeper. They showed that the phantoms did not vote en masse in the 2020 presidential election. Phew! Feeling better. But wait. They vote in droves in state, county, municipal elections.
Aha — here was another interesting pattern, never seen before.
This deep red state that voted for Trump by double-digit margins did not call out its phantom army when it could not move the needle. When local, state elections were up, well, those people voted — even the 21 at the county jail and the 41 registered at the Recreation Commission.
In earlier American Thinker articles, we created the phrase “sovereign fraud.” That means your government is in on it.
As more than 35 state citizen organization now are using the most advanced search and big data technology to look into voter rolls, and cross-check them with churches, R.V. parks, fictitious street locations, they are concluding the office of secretary of state is corrupt, incompetent, or often both.
Let’s take incompetent.
In about every state, there are voters old enough to have fought in the Civil War, and they still vote. In one state, there are voters — a bunch of them older than Julius Caesar — the Roman guy.
States have voter rolls with multiple people using the same voter ID. When pressed, they have some screwy excuse that it’s a sequencing anomaly. At least one state adds every new voter to the end of its voter ID sequence, as one would expect. Except when it doesn’t. These people have numbers that skip by two and later ten, and they insert voters there, not at the end.
There are hundreds I have personally seen, thus thousands in every state — examples of 16 people, with different last names, living in that one-bedroom, 876-square-foot house. Really?
Let’s go to corrupt.
Secretaries of state, when pressed to cough up those voter rolls, after the confiscatory price is paid, change the data in such a way that it cannot be searched with traditional technology. Tough luck for them; our canvassing friends have search technology five generations ahead, so it gets done.
Canvassers in 35 or more states are digging, and the more they find, the more relentless they become. We are pleased to provide technology that runs a thousand times faster than anything available to any secretary of state or leftist voter fraud group.
These canvassing organizations are the Minutemen of this generation. They come from every background, organize with no central leadership. They blindly figured out how phantom voting was happening, and they are forcing states to audit their voter rolls.
They aren’t blind anymore. They are organized. They have resources and technology, and things are about to change in a big way for phantoms.
Economics of Infrastructure Investment
Mathew Kahn discusses the ramifications of the major transportation spending recently passed by the US Congress. Of course, as the pie chart shows, infrastructure as many people think of it—construction or improvement of bridges, highways, roads, rail and subways, ports, waterways, and airports—accounts for only $157 billion, or 7%, of the plan’s estimated cost. Still that is a lot of money (“A billion here, a billion there, and soon it adds up to real money”–US Senator), and Kahn provides a list of concerns in his article What Insights Does Economics Offer About the Nascent Biden Administration Transport Infrastructure Investment Program? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.
The Washington Post has published a piece stating that the Secretary of Transportation, Peter Buttigieg, is the big winner of the Biden Infrastructure Bill as he will be attending many ribbon cutting ceremonies as grateful local mayors shake his hand.
Economic research offers many insights here about the efficiency and equity effects of this multi-billion dollar investment.
Point #1: This is an irreversible investment. When a city builds a new subway line, this billion dollar project cannot be later sold on Ebay and use the $ to do something else. In contrast to light rail and subway lines, dedicated buses feature more option value because they can be sold off or redeployed on different routes in the same city. Given that we don’t know how cities will develop over time, this real option has value.
Point #2; Past expansions of public transit have not significantly increased ridership with the exception of Washington DC. In the case of Los Angeles, improves in rail service (such as the Light Rail on Exposition that I ride) has taken bus riders away from the bus. See our 2005 paper. If crime rates continue to be a concern in cities then the middle class will be even less likely to use the “shiny new” infrastructure. The poor do rely on public transit to move around cities and an expansion will improve their quality of life. An economist would ask whether they value this benefit more than the cash equivalent?
Point #3: The older infrastructure in the nation is located in older cities, where the population is barely growing (or shrinking) and where the voters are mainly Democrats.
Point #4: The highways tend to be built in the suburbs where the voting base leans Republican. My 2011 Brookings piece with David offers several constructive ideas for how to “build back better” here.
Point #5: If progressive cities gain better infrastructure due to the Biden Investment AND if they don’t build much housing (the progressive city NIMBYism is well documented) , then housing prices will rise and the poor and middle class will be further squeezed by this new investment.
Point #6: There are many economics consulting firms that intentionally offer extremely optimistic ridership estimates ex-ante and this helps ambitious government officials to justify projects (i.e to say that it passes a cost/benefit test) when in reality — ex-post evaluations show low usage of the new infrastructure. See Pickrell 1992.
Point #7: Given that unions are powerful in progressive cities, what is the marginal cost of infrastructure creation in these cities? Is the Department of Transportation seeking to build a new capital stock or to enrich a special interest group that supports the Democrats? How many middle class new construction jobs will be created? Will the expansion of the public capital stock crowd out the expansion of the private capital stock as construction crews work on transport infrastructure rather than building private sector projects? What is the shape of the construction supply curve?
Point #8, once the new infrastructure is completed — will this greatly improve urban quality of life in cities such as Baltimore that have been shrinking? How will the Mayor and local civic leaders and private sector stakeholders change their investments and policy decisions? What positive synergies might emerge? Our 2021 Unlocking Book explores some of these themes of investment co-ordination between the private and the public sector.
IVM Beats Pfizer and Merck One-Trick-Pony Pills
Hypothetical model illustrating the inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 replication by ivermectin mediated through the blocking of α/β1-importin (imp) as well as 3CLpro enzymatic activity. Mody et al (2021)
John Campbell explains in the video below how the new Pfizer pill copies one trick from Ivermectin, without IVM’s other anti-viral mechanisms, resulting in an inferior and dangerous medicine. I have transcribed the basic message along with excerpts and links to several papers to which he refers. Excerpts are in italics with my bolds.
Pfizer’s new antiviral drug PAXLOVID™ shows very high levels of efficacy in preventing serious disease hospitalization and people dying. And that drug works in a particular way, what we call a pharmacodynamic action.
But there’s another generic drug called Ivermectin that you might have heard of that works in exactly the same way as that. Now no one’s saying that information has been deliberately suppressed for years while millions of people have died but what we are going to show on this video is conclusive proof from the literature that this modality of action is the same.
How Coronavirus Infects Its Host
Before we crack into that we need to look at what’s happening so when a virus, in this case coronavirus2 gets into a cell. What happens is it makes lots of proteins. It starts off making these long proteins, out of hundreds of amino acids sometimes. A few thousand amino acids all strung together.
The problem is they’re too long for the job that’s required. So it’s a bit like a building site and when a big log of wood arrives it needs to be trimmed down into bits that fit in your door frames and your window frames. So these proteins need to be trimmed down and it has to be done in a biochemical way.
In the case of coronavirus two, there’s an enzyme called 3CL protease which breaks
down protein into smaller pieces. it’s what we call proteolytic and it will take these long proteins and it will chop them into shorter proteins it’s what we call an endopeptidase. So now instead of having one long protein we’ve got two short ones and these fit together just nicely for the new virus that we’re we’re trying to make.
These new drugs are what we call protease inhibitors because they stop the protease from working. If the protease is like this scissor, the inhibitor is like this tape stopping the cutting up of long proteins.
When there’s another long protein that needs to be processed the 3CL protease comes along ready to chop this up. But now these drugs have bounded up the active site of the protease and they stop the protease from chopping up the big proteins into smaller strings of amino acids. Since they can’t build the virus, it inhibits viral replication.
This is the new Pfizer drug which is designed to block the activity of the sars coronavirus2 3CL, so that 3CL protease now won’t work. It won’t open so i can’t chop my proteins into the correct length to build a nice new virus. And of course a 3CL protease inhibitor will stop it from making sars coronavirus2 and is therefore anti-viral.
Everyone in human biology has heard of chymotryptin. It’s an enzyme released by the pancreas to digest protein. It’s a protein chopping up enzyme so this chymotryptin-like protease inside the virus is working in a very similar way to the chimbotryptin that your pancreas produces to digest your proteins.
Evidence from Pfizer News Release
- PAXLOVID™ (PF-07321332; ritonavir) was found to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% compared to placebo in non-hospitalized high-risk adults with COVID-19
- In the overall study population through Day 28, no deaths were reported in patients who received PAXLOVID™ as compared to 10 deaths in patients who received placebo
- Pfizer plans to submit the data as part of its ongoing rolling submission to the U.S. FDA for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) as soon as possible.
If approved or authorized, PAXLOVID™, which originated in Pfizer’s laboratories, would be the first oral antiviral of its kind, a specifically designed SARS-CoV-2-3CL protease inhibitor. Upon successful completion of the remainder of the EPIC clinical development program and subject to approval or authorization, it could be prescribed more broadly as an at-home treatment to help reduce illness severity, hospitalizations, and deaths, as well as reduce the probability of infection following exposure, among adults. It has demonstrated potent antiviral in vitro activity against circulating variants of concern, as well as other known coronaviruses, suggesting its potential as a therapeutic for multiple types of coronavirus infections.
Evidence for 3CL protease inhibitors from September 2020
Identification of SARS-CoV-2 3CL Protease Inhibitors by a Quantitative High-Throughput Screening Zhu et al. (Sept 3, 2020)
Viral protease is a valid antiviral drug target for RNA viruses including coronaviruses. (13) In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, great efforts have been made to evaluate the possibility of repurposing approved viral protease inhibitor drugs for the clinical treatment of the disease. Unfortunately, the combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, both approved HIV protease inhibitors, failed in a clinical trial without showing benefit compared to the standard of care. (14) To address this unmet need, several virtual screens and a drug repurposing screen were performed to identify SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro inhibitors.
In conclusion, this study employed an enzymatic assay for qHTS that identified 23 SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro inhibitors from a collection of approved drugs, drug candidates, and bioactive compounds. These 3CLpro inhibitors can be combined with drugs of different targets to evaluate their potential in drug cocktails for the treatment of COVID-19. In addition, they can also serve as starting points for medicinal chemistry optimization to improve potency and drug-like properties.
Ivermectin Emerges as Top Antiviral Candidate for CV2
Identification of 3-chymotrypsin like protease (3CLPro) inhibitors as potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 agents Mody et al. (2021), source of diagram at top. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Fig. 4: Ivermectin exhibited complete inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro enzymatic activity whereas micafungin partially inhibited the enzyme.
The off-target drugs that are being used to treat non-viral ailments selected by in silico studies were screened for their inhibitory activity against SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro enzyme.
Interestingly, one of the OTD (Off Target Drugs), ivermectin was able to inhibit more than 85% (almost completely) of 3CLpro activity in our in vitro enzymatic assay with an IC50 value of 21 µM. These findings suggest the potential of ivermectin to inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 replication. In support of this, a recent finding suggested that ivermectin (5 µM) inhibited the replication of live SARS-CoV-2 isolated from Australia (VIo1/2020) in Vero/hSLAM cells23. They found that >5000-fold viral counts were reduced in 48 hr in both culture supernatant (release of new virion: 93%) as well as inside the cells (unreleased and unassembled virion: 99.8%) when compared to DMSO treated infected cells.
Earlier studies have demonstrated that the possible anti-viral mechanism of ivermectin was through the blockage of viral-protein transportation to the nucleus by inhibiting the interaction between viral protein and α/β1 importin heterodimer, a known transporter of viral proteins to the nucleus especially for RNA viruses19,20,21,22,23. However, in this study, we have reported that ivermectin inhibits the enzymatic activity of SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro and thus may potentially inhibit the replication of RNA viruses including SARS-CoV-2. These studies suggest that ivermectin could be a potential drug candidate to inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 replication and the proposed anti-viral mechanism of ivermectin presented in Fig. 8 and in vivo efficacy of ivermectin towards COVID-19 is currently been evaluated in clinical trials (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04438850).
Ivermectin Strong Against Multiple Targets
Inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 key target proteins in comparison with suggested COVID-19 drugs: designing, docking and molecular dynamics simulation study. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Double-click on image to enlarge.
In conclusion, both ivermectin and remdesivir could be considered potential drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Ivermectin efficiently binds to the viral S protein as well as the human cell surface receptors ACE-2 and TMPRSS2; therefore, it might be involved in inhibiting the entry of the virus into the host cell. It also binds to Mpro and PLpro of SARS-CoV-2; therefore, it might play a role in preventing the post-translational processing of viral polyproteins. The highly efficient binding of ivermectin to the viral N phosphoprotein and nsp14 is suggestive of its role in inhibiting viral replication and assembly. Remdesivir may be involved in inhibiting post-entry mechanisms as it shows high binding affinity to N and M proteins, PLpro, Mpro, RdRp, and nsp14. Although the results of clinical trials for remdesivir are promising (Beigel et al., 2020; Wang Y. et al., 2020), similar clinical trials for ivermectin are recommended. Both these drugs exhibit multidisciplinary inhibitory effects at both viral entry and post-entry stages. Source: Molecular Docking Reveals Ivermectin and Remdesivir as Potential Repurposed Drugs Against SARS-CoV-2
Conclusion from John Campbell
So whereas the Pfizer drug is only working as far as we’ve been told in the proviso press release against one biochemical modality of viral replication, the Ivermectin mechanism is working at many different levels. The fact that the the the Pfizer medicine is only working against one particular biochemical pathway means to me that the virus could learn to avoid that. It could evolve to be drug resistant as indeed the early antiretrovirals did with HIV.
With ivermectin, because it’s working on so many different levels, it is improbable, to put it mildly,that a virus would mutate in a dozen different ways to avoid all those different mechanisms. We’ve talked about six mechanisms today. It’s very unlikely that we get six mutations that could dodge all of those all at the same time.
So I’ve a brief message to world leaders, people that are making the decisions about this. Come on you all, you’re not a horse and you’re not a cow. You’ve got a human intellect. Let’s use it to follow the scientific evidence to save human pain, suffering and death.
Footnote: This video focused on Pfizer’s pill, but Merck’s Molnupiravir pill is also a one-trick-pony. See Why Merck Dissed Its Own Invention Ivermectin
If CV Vaccines Work, Why Aren’t They Working?
The issue is discussed by Brian C. Joondeph, M.D. in his American Thinker article If the Vaccines Work, Why Aren’t They Working? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
In the movie Moneyball, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane queries his team of scouts when discussing a prospective player, “If he’s a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?” The scouts all have solid explanations, at least in their minds, of why a prospect might be a good hitter, from the sound of the crack of the bat when they hit the ball to the player’s good looks.
These explain why the player should be a good hitter, but what if the numbers, from batting average to on-base percentage, tell a different story? The question Billy poses is obvious in its simplicity, good hitters should hit good. And if they don’t, then perhaps they are not really good hitters.
What if we ask the same question about COVID vaccines, rephrased as “If the vaccines work, why aren’t they working?”
This is the time when I must add the necessary disclaimer that I am not anti-vaccine, having been personally fully vaccinated almost a year ago. Nor am I offering medical advice, only an analysis of current news of COVID cases rising in many highly vaccinated locales, seemingly against common sense.
Some readers have asked why such a disclaimer is necessary. I am a practicing physician, although I don’t treat COVID patients, administer vaccines, or offer medical advice regarding COVID to my retina patients. But today, just having an opinion can be hazardous to one’s livelihood.
The American Federation of Medical Specialists makes it clear, “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”
Hopefully asking thoughtful questions and observing how the medical authorities like Dr. Anthony Fauci have changed their own positions on vaccines is not considered “misinformation.” Or that citing the CDC and major news organizations won’t be considered “disinformation.” In the 1950s, x-raying pregnant women was standard practice, and questioning that harmful procedure, were such a thing to be done in the 1950s with today’s climate now might be considered mis- or disinformation.
If you think such medical censorship is all conspiracy theory, ask Dr. Mary Bowden, a Houston ear, nose, and throat specialist suspended from her Houston hospital for tweeting about vaccine mandates and ivermectin.
Back to COVID vaccines: “Safe, Effective and Free”
The CDC website states, “COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and free.” Those three words are all relative. Let’s quickly unpack them.
CV Vaccine Safety
VAERS is the “Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.” From their website, one can compare adverse events from COVID vaccines from the past 11 months they have been available to adverse events from all vaccines for the past 30 years, 1990 and onward.
Graph shows VAERS data up to Nov. 12, 2021. Source: https://vaersanalysis.info/2021/11/19/vaers-summary-for-covid-19-vaccines-through-11-12-2021/
Note this is 11 months versus 30 years of side effects and in most categories, the cumulative cases are similar between the two groups, despite a 30-fold time difference of data recording. Of note, hospitalizations, deaths, permanent disabilities, and birth defects were greater for 11 months of COVID vaccines than they were for 30 years of all other types of vaccines – such as shingles, influenza, measles, mumps, hepatitis, and so on.
VAERS is voluntary reporting. For a variety of reasons, all cases do not make it to the VAERS database. How much is this underreporting? VAERS did their own analysis about ten years ago and found, “Fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.” Their words, not mine.
This means adverse events could be happening far more frequently than what we are being told by the corporate media who don’t even report VAERS’s current data. What if these adverse events are 10 or even 100 times more common than VAERS reports? To paraphrase Billy Beane, “If the vaccines are safe, why aren’t they safe?”
CV Vaccine Effectiveness
Are they effective? The CDC answers an emphatic yes,
COVID-19 study shows mRNA vaccines reduce risk of infection by 91 percent for fully vaccinated people. Vaccination makes illness milder, shorter for the few vaccinated people who do get COVID-19.
Does the real world agree and support the CDC’s optimism? Gibraltar is more than fully vaccinated, they are 118 percent vaccinated, meaning that many fully vaccinated have had booster injections too. Yet this headline doesn’t jive with CDC assertions, “Most vaccinated place on Earth told to cancel holiday plans amid an exponential rise in COVID cases.”
Pick another country: “93% vaccinated Ireland has gone into partial lockdown, including midnight curfew.” This recent headline too, “COVID surge in Singapore despite 80 percent vaccination.” Or from the U.K. where the Spectator reported, “The rates of Covid infection per 100,000 are now higher among the vaxxed than the unvaxxed.”
Closer to home it’s much the same, “Vermont has the highest vaccination rate in the country. So why are cases surging?” My home state of Colorado is singing from the same hymnal, “Colorado’s COVID hospitalizations jump again as virus’ statewide death toll surpasses 9,000.” Colorado’s 12 and up population is over 80 percent partially or fully vaccinated.
If these numbers are misinformation, tell that to big media. I am quoting their headlines. Will their licenses be threatened?
Relationship between cases per 1 million people (last 7 days) and percentage of population fully vaccinated across 68 countries as of September 3, 2021
The CDC on its website claims, “Research provides evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing COVID-19.” Yet cases in highly vaccinated locations are surging, now almost two years into the COVID pandemic. As Billy Beane might say, “If the vaccines work, why aren’t they working?”
CV Vaccines Are Free
Last is the “free” claim. Nothing from the government is “free.” Recipients may not be charged but that is not the same as “free.” The government produces nothing and therefore is not able to offer anything for free. They confiscate money from those they lord over and redistribute it back to those from whom they took it.
The Pfizer vaccine costs the government about $20 per dose, with the other COVID vaccines in the same ballpark. Some 445 million doses of vaccine have been administered in the U.S. to date. That’s $9 billion right there. Spending on research and development has been estimated at $40 billion, pushing the total north of $50 billion, and likely much higher given the many hidden or non-transparent costs.
If these numbers seem off, major vaccine maker Pfizer expects $36 billion in COVID vaccine revenues in 2021, in the same range as the above numbers. While the vaccine may be free to the person getting jabbed, someone is paying the tab for the vaccine, syringe, and time of the person administering the shot. It always works that way – nothing is really “free.” As Billy Beane might say, “If the vaccines are free, why do they cost so much?”
There is nothing wrong with the medical establishment saying, “we don’t know” or “we’re not sure” about COVID prognostications, rather than being cocksure about everything until reality turns their pronouncements upside down. Gaslighting the public, being wrong more than right, doesn’t engender confidence.
Those who preach “follow the science” seem to neither understand nor desire to actually follow the science, instead letting politics replace science with our COVID policies often not following the science.
Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged the new vaccine reality in a New York Times podcast last Nov. 12,
“They are seeing a waning of immunity not only against infection but against hospitalization and to some extent death, which is starting to now involve all age groups. It isn’t just the elderly.”
When others observe and acknowledge this reality, they are ostracized and shamed. How long has Dr. Fauci known this? Last May, the CDC said that once vaccinated, you can return to a normal life. How is that working out?
Instead of transparency, we see this, “FDA wants 55 years to process FOIA request over vaccine data.” Is this, “part of the FDA’s commitment to transparency” as the FDA itself claims? This is the same FDA that took only 108 days to review Pfizer’s clinical trial data, deeming it safe and effective enough for FDA approval. But for the public, the FDA needs 20,000 days to “review” the same data before public release.
The published concept of “imperfect vaccinations enhancing the transmission of highly virulent pathogens,” meaning that vaccinating during a pandemic can create new vaccine-resistant virus strains, is never discussed. Neither are off-label therapeutics that while not a panacea, may save lives. Instead, the government and medical establishment balkanized the world, vaccinated versus unvaccinated, us versus them, the worthy versus the lepers, creating further division in an already divided society.
Despite the shaming and ridicule, here we are, almost two years into the COVID pandemic, with a mostly vaccinated population, and hospitals and ICUs are overrun with COVID cases. This pandemic should be in the rearview mirror, yet in some respects, it is bad as it was last year. Leaving Billy Beane to ask, “If the vaccines work, why aren’t they working?”
Footnote: A Major part of the answer is due to Mucosal Immunity
Ivermectin and the African Enigma
Double-click to enlarge image.
This post provides a synopsis of the PubMed paper COVID-19: The Ivermectin African Enigma. by R. Guerrero et al. (2020 Dec 30) Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Overview
1) Why was this study conducted?
Ivermectin has been used since 1995 for the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC). Currently, it is being considered as the possible target drug for SARS CoV-2. The low frequency of cases and deaths from the SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 virus in some countries of Africa prompted us to assess the possible influence of this community-based strategy. (Note Onchocerciasis is commonly referred to as “river blindness.”)
2) What were the most relevant results of the study?
APOC Countries with a Community-directed treatment with ivermectin strategy show 28% lower mortality (RR= 0.72, 95% CI: 0.67-0.78) and 8% lower rate of infection (RR= 0.92, 95% CI: 0.91-0.93) due to COVID-19; compared with non-APOC countries.
3) What do these results contribute?
Our data suggest that a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use. Additional studies are needed to confirm it.
APOC is a partnership programme including 19 countries with active involvement of the Ministries of Health and their communities, several international and local NGDOs, the private sector (Merck & Co., Inc.), donor countries and UN agencies. The World Bank and WHO acted as Fiscal Agent as Executing Agency, respectively. A Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin was the delivery strategy of APOC. With the purpose of achieving sustainability, local communities were empowered to administer and distribute ivermectin in their own villages. The programme which was extended until 2015 intended to treat over 90 million people annually in the 19 countries, protecting an at risk population of 115 million, and to prevent over 40,000 cases of blindness every year 1,2. In 1998 the Program was expanded to some Asian countries to combat lymphatic filariasis and APOC countries continued to use ivermectin, in association with albendazole, in this program 3
We used generalized Poisson regression models to obtain effect estimates of APOC status on SARS-CoV-2 cumulative infection and mortality rates. The models included country characteristics to adjust for socioeconomic differences between countries that could affect their response capacity and quality to the pandemic. To measure the impact of confounding variables like health, education, and standard of living we decided to control them by using the Human Development Index (HDI)5. HDI is a geometric mean of normalized indices of the three key dimensions of human development: health, assessed by life expectancy at birth; education, measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged ≥25 years and standard of living measured by gross national income per capita. Although it does not reflect poverty, security, empowerment, or inequalities, we consider that it is the best indicator that represents the global situation of a country.
Striking differences in the evolution of COVID-19 mortality are observed Figure 1B and APOC countries appear to have lower rates. Analysis of raw data, as shown in Table 1, indicate that APOC countries had lower infection (as indicated by lower case detection) and mortality rates due to COVID-19 (p <0.001). The ratio of mortality rates was 0.12 (95% CI: 0.12-0.13) and the ratio of infection rates was 0.16 (95% CI: 0.16-0.16), indicating that the APOC group was associated with lower mortality and infection rates compared to non-APOC countries, that is 88% and 84%, respectively. In addition, the APOC countries also had a lower number of detected cases and a lower frequency of tests.
Mortality, detection of new cases and number of tests performed were positively and significantly associated with HDI. The Figure 2 shows the COVID-19 Cumulative Mortality Rate per million in APOC countries compared with non-APOC countries.
Death rates were directly associated with HDI in all African countries, while number of infections were inversely associated in APOC countries, that is the higher the HDI the lower the expected number of infections. In African regions with HDIs above Z-score means, the expected number of deaths and infections was lower in APOC countries. In contrast, in the regions with the lowest HDI Z-score (less than 0), the estimated number of deaths and infections was lower in the non-APOC countries compared to APOC countries (See Figure 15 at top).
No country knows with certainty the total number of subjects infected by SARS-CoV-2 within its territory, only an approximate number provided by the people who are tested; then, the number of tests performed largely determines the count of confirmed cases of the disease. In developed countries the number of tests performed can reach larger proportions of the population, like Iceland that had almost half of its population tested, 483 per thousand people7, however, on the African continent the tests performed per million inhabitants can be as low as in South Sudan 1,072 and Egypt 1,311 4.
A high HDI indicates longer life expectancy, better education and a higher standard of living. Our results coincide with others that show higher infections and death rates associated with high HDI 10,11. This can be explained because the component “life expectancy at birth is associated with a higher percentage of population >65 years. Our non-APOC group had a larger population in the >65 category and larger life expectancy (9 years) than the APOC group. That is why it is crucial to control for this confounding variable.
Mbow et al.12, analyzed the low morbi-mortality by COVID-19 in Africa compared to European countries and US, concluded that it is unlikely that it may be due to race, quality of reporting and death registration, different population age composition, lockdown stringency or other sociocultural aspects. Mbow mentions that studies of African COVID-19 patients show clear differences in the activation, proinflammatory and memory profiles of the immune cells compared not only versus Europeans but also among Africans with high and low exposure to microorganisms and parasites. Also suggest, that the virus may be spreading differently and with an attenuated outcome in Africa.
It is not known if a residual ivermectin effect increases the number of asymptomatic in the APOC countries. It is also unknown whether there are differences in susceptibility between populations of different African countries or regions. The ivermectin is considered a drug of choice for various parasitic and viral diseases and shown to have in vitro effects against SARS-CoV-2 13-16. Although there have been suggestive clinical studies 17,18, and >50 trials are currently in progress worldwide 19. There is the need of good designed clinical trials to conclusively ascertain its benefits in humans.
Overall, the reasons are not clear, yet present data suggests that a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use.
For a more recent update on Ivermectin Covid effectiveness see Ivermectin Invictus: The Unsung Covid Victor
Covid The New State Religion
Tim O’Brien explains the rites and rituals in his American Thinker article COVID: A New State Religion? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
What started as a virus quickly became epidemic and then a global pandemic. The spread of a contagion laid the groundwork for what has become an industry, and it’s now morphing into a religious ideology with all of the familiar trappings.
That’s a total of $55.5 billion in vaccine sales for 2021 just from the three biggest providers of vaccine in the U.S. And this does not include a wide range of products, services, and industries that have cropped up to service the nation’s and the world’s COVID needs.
From makers of masks, cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer and ventilators, to major pharmacy companies paid millions to distribute vaccines, COVID has become a major industry.
Politicians and bureaucrats at the local, state, and federal level have seized on the COVID crisis to achieve unprecedented levels of power through vaccine mandates, lockdowns, restrictions, and of course, overnight changes to election procedures.
Then, there is the public health sector. These are its glory days. . .COVID is a new field of study, complete with federal grant moneys to analyze every aspect of COVID, so long as the research does not detract from the approved narrative.
COVID is an industry. It’s here and it’s not budging. But it’s more than that. It’s also an ideology with all of the accoutrements of an established religion.
The Baptism of Vaccination
The COVID vaccines are widely understood to be ineffective at preventing the spread of the virus. So, why the relentless emphasis on turning society on its head over flawed vaccines?
Like Christian baptism, the vaccine is the baptism into this new faith. The waters of baptism don’t physically clean one’s soul of sin any more than the vaccine can completely prevent contraction of COVID. In the ideological context, it’s a symbolic rite of passage into the faith.
Once injected, you can count yourself among the faithful, unlike the “unvaccinated” who are the COVID ideology’s equivalent to atheists circa 1400 A.D. It’s okay to shun them, demonize them, discriminate against them, even deny them life-saving healthcare. In fact, you have an obligation to do so, so they learn their lessons and step in line. Otherwise, they will be made an example.
It doesn’t matter that they may have their own religious objections, they may have personal medical histories, or they may even have natural immunity from the virus which is much more effective at preventing spread. What matters is that they can be dubbed “anti-vax,” a term that coincidentally or not sounds uncomfortably similar to “anti-Christ.”
To the faithful, if you’re unvaccinated for any reason, you’re selfish, you don’t care about others. You’re putting yourself before the majority, before the faith.
The Rites of COVID Ideology
Just as Catholicism has its rites in the form of seven sacraments, the COVID ideology does, too. One is the booster shot. If you were vaccinated a year ago, but have not yet gotten your booster shot, you are at risk of being labeled “unvaccinated” once again. Do you want to risk that?
Of course, once boosted, you have the privilege of knowing you are ‘born again.’
This new ideology even has the rite of confession. Were you asked by your employer, or the front office at the football stadium or basketball arena to disclose your vaccination status? How much different is that from the Catholic rite of reconciliation?
The practice of faith often involves sacrifice. The COVID ideology is not without sacrifice. Since adverse effects of the “safe and effective” vaccine are “extremely rare,” the burden is on you to take the risk. If you are one of those who contract chronic heart problems, permanent neurological disorders, or some other life-altering condition, that’s the sacrifice you must be willing to take for the good of the ideology.
COVID’s High Priests
Of course, no faith would be complete without its high priests, the most visible one being Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is routinely asked by leaders and journalists to bless one activity, behavior, or medical treatment over another. A legion of people seeks his final approval or disapproval on behaviors that until now were considered un-sinful. Some may even regard the pontifical bureaucrat as infallible.
He’s not alone. There is an army of COVID clergy with titles like “public health director,” “governor,” “mayor,” “human resources director,” “Silicon Valley billionaire,” “editor,” “producer” and “reporter” all of whom are the keepers of The Word when it comes to COVID. Each has front-line authority to make decisions on enforcement of COVID ideology.
To counter The Word or the narrative of this new faith is to be guilty of the sin of “misinformation,” punishable by banning, censorship, and denial of “communion” in the word’s most literal sense. The only way to regain access to the congregation is to recant.
If you belong to an established faith that holds dear the original Ten Commandments as handed down to Moses from God, you may recall the first one, which says, “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.”
Keep that in mind, because you may be asked to choose. The God of our fathers, or the god of COVID? Just know that the god of COVID is a jealous god.
Media Ignore Worldwide Revolt Against Covid Tyranny
Brownstone Institute compiled videos from around the world showing citizens protesting irrational restrictions imposed by Covid despots. The article is Protests and Rage Against Lockdowns and Mandates All Over the World
As deadlines loom for mandatory vaccines, and the more lockdowns come to many countries of the world, people have taken to the streets in protest. In the typical case, local media either neglects to report on this or improperly characterizes them as “right wing” or “anti-vaxx.” It is likely that most people who get their news only from mainstream TV or The New York Times know nothing about what is happening.
The videos below, carefully chronicled by our friend Aaron Ginn, document what the media has neglected, even though this is the largest global protest movement to appear in decades. Keep in mind that this is only footage from select places from the last week. There are many more not appearing here and such protests have been building for more than a year.
These videos indicate the arrival of a turning point. Governments can continue to press these lockdowns and mandates against all scientific evidence and good public health or they can listen to the pains and anger of their own people.
Genova, Italy
Tbilisi, Georgia
London, England
Vancouver, Canada
Melbourne, Australia
Northern Ireland
Switzerland
Vienna, Austria
Linz, Austria
New Zealand
Budapest, Hungary
New York City
Croatia
The Netherlands
Toronto, Canada
Denmark
Oslo, Norway
Finland
Manchester, England
Milan, Italy
Rome, Italy
Turin, Italy
Naples, Italy
Florence, Italy
Perth, Australia
Brisbane, Australia
Paris, France
Nice, France
Montpellier, France
Guadaloupe, Caribbean
Greece
Prague, Czech Republic
Slovakia
Germany
Iran
Spain
Oregon, USA
Colombia
To be continued…
Why You Need Mucosal Immunity
Paul Hunter, Professor of Medicine, University of East Anglia explains at The Conversation COVID-19 vaccines are probably less effective at preventing transmission than symptoms – here’s why. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Countries where COVID-19 vaccines have rolled out quickly, such as Israel and the UK, are starting to give an indication of how well they work. Their early results suggest the vaccines are highly effective at preventing people from being hospitalised or dying from the disease.
However, it’s less clear how good the vaccines are at stopping people from spreading the virus. But given what we know about how they work, we shouldn’t be surprised if they are less effective at stopping people transmit the virus than preventing them becoming ill. This is because the type of immunity they generate is likely to be better at fighting off severe rather than mild infections.
How immunity is created
There are a number of distinct phases in the course of a coronavirus infection. Usually the virus starts with what’s known as a “mucosal infection” because it infects the lining of the nose and throat, the nasopharyngeal mucosa.
This is the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic phase. Mild symptoms such as cough or altered taste or smell may then develop. However, in a proportion of people, the infection then spreads down the respiratory tract to the lungs, causing more serious problems. Some may develop very severe illness, leading to respiratory and other organ failure. At this point, with the virus moving around the body and causing problems in multiple areas, the infection is “systemic”.
People are most infectious during the early stages of infection, when the virus is largely restricted to the nasopharyngeal mucosa. Indeed, it’s possible for people to be highly infectious without the virus spreading to other parts of the body or causing severe illness.
Importantly, the immune system responds differently to mucosal and systemic infections.
A systemic immune response, which works across large swathes of the body, is associated with creating one type of antibody, IgG. Immunity generated in the mucosa (also called secretory immunity) is associated with creating another, IgA. As a result, immunisations that focus on generating systemic immunity – which is what injected vaccines do – rarely induce mucosal immunity. This likely applies to all the COVID-19 vaccines currently available.
And yet, the nasopharyngeal mucosa is ground zero for most coronavirus infections. So while COVID-19 vaccines may generate a response that’s highly protective against systemic disease in the lungs and other organs, the vaccines are less likely to generate strong mucosal immunity that’s effective against the mild but infectious early stage of infection in the nose and throat. We should therefore expect some difference in the vaccines’ effects on preventing severe disease and blocking infection and transmission.
We don’t yet know if there’s a difference in the development of systemic and mucosal immunity for COVID-19. Emerging evidence suggests there might be, but it isn’t conclusive, and much of this research still needs to be fully reviewed.
Finally, it’s worth remembering that even if these vaccines don’t end up blocking infections to a high degree, that doesn’t mean they won’t make a major contribution to suppressing viral spread. Even if people still get infected, COVID-19 vaccines are likely to reduce the amount of virus generated during an infection, lowering what can be passed on.
Practical Implications of Mucosal Immunity
What happened in Central Europe on Oct 10-13 so that many people started to become ill?
Nothing significant happened on Oct 10-13. But the nights turned cool and heating was needed everywhere overnight from Oct 9. Along with the temperature drop, absolute humidity of the air also dropped. It dropped almost by half within a couple of days, it dropped to the level where it had not been since the spring.
The air arriving to the lungs should contain 35 g/kg of water. In summer, the air contained about 10 g/kg and the epithelium had to add 25 g/kg. From October 9 on, 20% more water was needed from the epithelium overnight
20% increase in any burden is tough even for a short period. Replace a 75 g racquet by a 90 g one and ask a good badminton player to play his standard play. He will need a rest very soon or be broken. Epithelium would also need a rest but it can’t. Mucus covering the upper respiratory epithelium is responsible for moisturizing the inhaled air, acting as a barrier between the environment and the epithelial cells. The mucosal microbiome also turns the inhaled viral particles harmless.
When absolute humidity drops, the water supply to the epithelium should be increased but do we know how fast such change can take place? And is there a limit to the water supply? How many have no idea of the importance of mucosal hydration of the air at all? In the winter 2020/21, Estonia had two major drops of absolute humidity. From average 8 g/kg to average 5 g/kg on Oct 14-20, triggering the rapid increase in infection. Average humidity then gradually decreased to average 4 g/kg by December, population acclimatized…
The waves of COVID-19 have broken when the absolute humidity has increased and not dropped back below customization level for a while. It happened so in the spring 2020, in the spring 2021, and also in the autumn 2021 in all Baltic countries simultaneously.
People in moderate climate have been suffering from infectious diseases from every autumn till spring and the epidemiological pattern is very similar each year. Diseases start with the beginning of the school and peaks in the second half of each winter. Since the emergence of centralized heating, the problem of indoor humidity has only become worse. Modern HVAC systems are aimed at supplying fresh air at low energy cost but these systems are still failing to address indoor humidity and maintain its healthy level.
It has been long known that the incidence of viral diseases is higher in very dry and very wet air, i.e. in nordic winter with and in tropical heat, both causing body to dehydrate. (Fig from Tamerius, Shaman et al. 2013)
My Comment:
1. The superiority of natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity is not mentioned. Dr. Robert Clancy explains:
Another issue is the recognition that genetic vaccines have limited value. While doctors support the current vaccine roll-out, reported “danger signals” must be clarified. Both the DNA-vector vaccine (AstraZeneca) and mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) behave as predicted by biology relevant to airways’ protection (something not understood by the vast majority of “experts”): short duration of protection limited to control of systemic inflammation, with little impact on infection of the airways.
Israel was used as a laboratory for the Pfizer vaccine. Six months after vaccination, there was essentially no protection against infection or mild disease, although protection against severe disease remained at 85-to-90 per cent. Thereafter came a rapid and progressive loss of protection against more severe disease. Infected vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects have similar viral loads and transmission capacity.
Immunity following natural infection is better and more durable than that induced by vaccination, so there is no sense in immunising those who have had COVID infection in the preceding six months.
2. Ivermectin Effectively Blocks viral entry at ACE-2 receptors in the nasal and oral cavity.
Article is High expression of ACE2 receptor of 2019-nCoV on the epithelial cells of oral mucosa
It has been reported that ACE2 is the main host cell receptor of 2019-nCoV and plays a crucial role in the entry of virus into the cell to cause the final infection. To investigate the potential route of 2019-nCov infection on the mucosa of oral cavity, bulk RNA-seq profiles from two public databases including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Functional Annotation of The Mammalian Genome Cap Analysis of Gene Expression (FANTOM5 CAGE) dataset were collected. RNA-seq profiling data of 13 organ types with para-carcinoma normal tissues from TCGA and 14 organ types with normal tissues from FANTOM5 CAGE were analyzed in order to explore and validate the expression of ACE2 on the mucosa of oral cavity. Further, single-cell transcriptomes from an independent data generated in-house were used to identify and confirm the ACE2-expressing cell composition and proportion in oral cavity. The results demonstrated that the ACE2 expressed on the mucosa of oral cavity. Interestingly, this receptor was highly enriched in epithelial cells of tongue. Preliminarily, those findings have explained the basic mechanism that the oral cavity is a potentially high risk for 2019-nCoV infectious susceptibility and provided a piece of evidence for the future prevention strategy in dental clinical practice as well as daily life.
Fig. 1 A schematic of the key cellular and biomolecular interactions between Ivermectin, host cell, and SARS-CoV-2 in COVID19 pathogenesis and prevention of complications.
Ivermectin; IVM (red block) inhibits and disrupts binding of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein at the ACE-2 receptors (green). The green dotted lines depict activation pathways and the red dotted lines depict the inhibition pathways.
Ivermectin also had the highest binding affinity for TMPRSS2. By binding so well to all three — the spike, the ACE2 receptor and the TMPRSS2 secateurs that prune or prime the spike, ivermectin makes it much harder for the virus to get inside a cell.
See How Much Does Ivermectin Fight Covid19? The Count is 20 ways.
2021 Update: Climate Reductionism
In the aftermath of Glasgow COP, many have noticed how incredible were the pronouncements and claims from UK hosts as well as other speakers intending to inflame public opinion in support of the UN agenda. No one in the media applies any kind of critical intelligence examining the veracity of facts and conclusions trumpeted before, during and after the conference. In the interest of presenting an alternate, unalarming paradigm of earth’s climate, I am reposting a previous discussion of how wrongheaded is the IPCC “consensus science.”
Background
With all the fuss about the “Green New Deal” and attempts to blame recent cold waves on rising CO2, it is wise to remember the logic of the alarmist argument. It boils down to two suppositions:
Rising atmospheric CO2 makes the planet warmer.
Rising emissions from humans burning fossil fuels makes atmospheric CO2 higher.
The second assertion is challenged in a post: Who to Blame for Rising CO2?
This post addresses the first claim. Remember also that all of the so-called “lines of evidence” for global warming do not distinguish between human and natural causes. Typically the evidence cited falls into these categories:
Global temperature rise
Warming oceans
Shrinking ice sheets
Glacial retreat
Decreased snow cover
Sea level rise
Declining Arctic sea ice
Extreme events
However, all of these are equivocal, involving signal and noise issues. Note also that all of them are alleged impacts from the first one. And in any case, the fact of any changes does not in itself prove human causation. That attribution rests solely on unvalidated climate models. Below is a discussion of the reductionist mental process by which climate complexity and natural forces are systematically excluded to reach the pre-determined conclusion.
Original Post: Climate Reductionism
Reductionists are those who take one theory or phenomenon to be reducible to some other theory or phenomenon. For example, a reductionist regarding mathematics might take any given mathematical theory to be reducible to logic or set theory. Or, a reductionist about biological entities like cells might take such entities to be reducible to collections of physico-chemical entities like atoms and molecules.
Definition from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Some of you may have seen this recent article: Divided Colorado: A Sister And Brother Disagree On Climate Change
The reporter describes a familiar story to many of us. A single skeptic (the brother) is holding out against his sister and rest of the family who accept global warming/climate change. And of course, after putting some of their interchanges into the text, the reporter then sides against the brother by taking the word of a climate expert. From the article:
“CO2 absorbs infrared heat in certain wavelengths and those measurements were made first time — published — when Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States,” says Scott Denning, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “Since that time, those measurements have been repeated by better and better instruments around the world.”
CO2, or carbon dioxide, has increased over time, scientists say, because of human activity. It’s a greenhouse gas that’s contributing to global warming.
“We know precisely how the molecule wiggles and waggles, and what the quantum interactions between the electrons are that cause everyone one of these little absorption lines,” he says. “And there’s just no wiggle room around it — CO2 absorbs heat, heat warms things up, so adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm the climate.”
Denning says that most of the CO2 we see added to the atmosphere comes from humans — mostly through burning coal, oil and gas, which, as he puts it, is “indirectly caused by us.”
When looking at the scientific community, Denning says it’s united, as far as he knows.
A Case Study of Climate Reductionism
Denning’s comments, supported by several presentations at his website demonstrate how some scientists (all those known to Denning) engage in a classic form of reductionism.
The full complexity of earth’s climate includes many processes, some poorly understood, but known to have effects orders of magnitude greater than the potential of CO2 warming. The case for global warming alarm rests on simplifying away everything but the predetermined notion that humans are warming the planet. It goes like this:
Our Complex Climate
Earth’s climate is probably the most complicated natural phenomenon ever studied. Not only are there many processes, but they also interact and influence each other over various timescales, causing lagged effects and multiple cycling. This diagram illustrates some of the climate elements and interactions between them.
Flows and Feedbacks for Climate Models
The Many Climate Dimensions
Further, measuring changes in the climate goes far beyond temperature as a metric. Global climate indices, like the European dataset include 12 climate dimensions with 74 tracking measures. The set of climate dimensions include:
- Sunshine
- Pressure
- Humidity
- Cloudiness
- Wind
- Rain
- Snow
- Drought
- Temperature
- Heat
- Cold
And in addition there are compound measures combining temperature and precipitation. While temperature is important, climate is much more than that. With this reduction, all other dimensions are swept aside, and climate change is simplified down to global warming as seen in temperature measurements.
Climate Thermodynamics: Weather is the Climate System at work.
Another distortion is the notion that weather is bad or good, depending on humans finding it favorable. In fact, all that we call weather are the ocean and atmosphere acting to resolve differences in temperatures, humidities and pressures. It is the natural result of a rotating, irregular planetary surface mostly covered with water and illuminated mostly at its equator.
The sun warms the surface, but the heat escapes very quickly by convection so the build-up of heat near the surface is limited. In an incompressible atmosphere, it would *all* escape, and you’d get no surface warming. But because air is compressible, and because gases warm up when they’re compressed and cool down when allowed to expand, air circulating vertically by convection will warm and cool at a certain rate due to the changing atmospheric pressure.
Climate science has been obsessed with only a part of the system, namely the atmosphere and radiation, in order to focus attention on the non-condensing IR active gases. The climate is framed as a 3D atmosphere above a 2D surface. That narrow scope leaves out the powerful non-radiative heat transfer mechanisms that dominate the lower troposphere, and the vast reservoir of thermal energy deep in the oceans.
As Dr. Robert E Stevenson writes, it could have been different:
“As an oceanographer, I’d been around the world, once or twice, and I was rather convinced that I knew the factors that influenced the Earth’s climate. The oceans, by virtue of their enormous density and heat-storage capacity, are the dominant influence on our climate. It is the heat budget and the energy that flows into and out of the oceans that basically determines the mean temperature of the global atmosphere. These interactions, plus evaporation, are quite capable of canceling the slight effect of man-produced CO2.”
The troposphere is dominated by powerful heat transfer mechanisms: conduction, convection and evaporation, as well as physical kinetic movements. All this is ignored in order to focus on radiative heat transfer, a bit player except at the top of the atmosphere.
There’s More than the Atmosphere
Once the world of climate is greatly reduced down to radiation of infrared frequencies, yet another set of blinders is applied. The most important source of radiation is of course the sun. Solar radiation in the short wave (SW) range is what we see and what heats up the earth’s surface, particularly the oceans. In addition solar radiation includes infrared, some absorbed in the atmosphere and some at the surface. The ocean is also a major source of heat into the atmosphere since its thermal capacity is 1000 times what the air can hold. The heat transfer from ocean to air is both by way of evaporation (latent heat) and also by direct contact at the sea surface (conduction).
Yet conventional climate science dismisses the sun as a climate factor saying that its climate input is unvarying. That ignores significant fluctuations in parts of the light range, for example ultraviolet, and also solar effects such as magnetic fields and cosmic rays. Also disregarded is solar energy varying due to cloud fluctuations. The ocean is also dismissed as a source of climate change despite obvious ocean warming and cooling cycles ranging from weeks to centuries. The problem is such oscillations are not well understood or predictable, so can not be easily modeled.
With the sun and the earth’s surface and ocean dismissed, the only consideration left is the atmosphere.
The Gorilla Greenhouse Gas
Thus climate has been reduced down to heat radiation passing through the atmosphere comprised of gases. One of the biggest reductions then comes from focusing on CO2 rather than H20. Of all the gases that are IR-active, water is the most prevalent and covers more of the spectrum.
The diagram below gives you the sense of proportion.
The Role of CO2
We come now to the role of CO2 in “trapping heat” and making the world warmer. The theory is that CO2 acts like a blanket by absorbing and re-radiating heat that would otherwise escape into space. By delaying the cooling while solar energy comes in constantly, CO2 is presumed to cause a buildup of heat resulting in warmer temperatures.
How the Atmosphere Processes Heat
There are 3 ways that heat (Infrared or IR radiation) passes from the surface to space.
1) A small amount of the radiation leaves directly, because all gases in our air are transparent to IR of 10-14 microns (sometimes called the “atmospheric window.” This pathway moves at the speed of light, so no delay of cooling occurs.
2) Some radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by IR active gases up to the tropopause. Calculations of the free mean path for CO2 show that energy passes from surface to tropopause in less than 5 milliseconds. This is almost speed of light, so delay is negligible. H2O is so variable across the globe that its total effects are not measurable. In arid places, like deserts, we see that CO2 by itself does not prevent the loss of the day’s heat after sundown.
3) The bulk gases of the atmosphere, O2 and N2, are warmed by conduction and convection from the surface. They also gain energy by collisions with IR active gases, some of that IR coming from the surface, and some absorbed directly from the sun. Latent heat from water is also added to the bulk gases. O2 and N2 are slow to shed this heat, and indeed must pass it back to IR active gases at the top of the troposphere for radiation into space.
In a parcel of air each molecule of CO2 is surrounded by 2500 other molecules, mostly O2 and N2. In the lower atmosphere, the air is dense and CO2 molecules energized by IR lose it to surrounding gases, slightly warming the entire parcel. Higher in the atmosphere, the air is thinner, and CO2 molecules can emit IR into space. Surrounding gases resupply CO2 with the energy it lost, which leads to further heat loss into space.
This third pathway has a significant delay of cooling, and is the reason for our mild surface temperature, averaging about 15C. Yes, earth’s atmosphere produces a buildup of heat at the surface. The bulk gases, O2 and N2, trap heat near the surface, while IR active gases, mainly H20 and CO2, provide the radiative cooling at the top of the atmosphere. Near the top of the atmosphere you will find the -18C temperature.
Sources of CO2
Note the size of the human emissions next to the red arrow.
A final reduction comes down to how much of the CO2 in the atmosphere is there because of us. Alarmists/activists say any increase in CO2 is 100% man-made, and would be more were it not for natural CO2 sinks, namely the ocean and biosphere. The claim overlooks the fact that those sinks are also sources of CO2 and the flux from the land and sea is an order of magnitude higher than estimates of human emissions. In fact, our few Gigatons of carbon are lost within the error range of estimating natural emissions. Insects produce far more CO2 than humans do by all our activity, including domestic animals.
Why Climate Reductionism is Dangerous
Reducing the climate in this fashion reaches its logical conclusion in the Activist notion of the “450 Scenario.” Since Cancun, IPCC is asserting that global warming is capped at 2C by keeping CO2 concentration below 450 ppm. From Summary for Policymakers (SPM) AR5
Emissions scenarios leading to CO2-equivalent concentrations in 2100 of about 450 ppm or lower are likely to maintain warming below 2°C over the 21st century relative to pre-industrial levels. These scenarios are characterized by 40 to 70% global anthropogenic GHG emissions reductions by 2050 compared to 2010, and emissions levels near zero or below in 2100.
Thus is born the “450 Scenario” by which governments can be focused upon reducing human emissions without any reference to temperature measurements, which are troublesome and inconvenient. Almost everything in the climate world has been erased, and “Fighting Climate Change” is now code to mean accounting for fossil fuel emissions.
Conclusion
All propagandists begin with a kernel of truth, in this case the fact everything acting in the world has an effect on everything else. Edward Lorenz brought this insight to bear on the climate system in a ground breaking paper he presented in 1972 entitled: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” Everything does matter and has an effect. Obviously humans impact on the climate in places where we build cities and dams, clear forests and operate farms. And obviously we add some CO2 when we burn fossil fuels.
But it is wrong to ignore the major dominant climate realities in order to exaggerate a small peripheral factor for the sake of an agenda. It is wrong to claim that IR active gases somehow “trap” heat in the air when they immediately emit any energy absorbed, if not already lost colliding with another molecule. No, it is the bulk gases, N2 and O2, making up the mass of the atmosphere, together with the ocean delaying the cooling and giving us the mild and remarkably stable temperatures that we enjoy. And CO2 does its job by radiating the heat into space.
Since we do little to cause it, we can’t fix it by changing what we do. The climate will not stop changing because we put a price on carbon. And the sun will rise despite the cock going on strike to protest global warming.
Footnote: For a deeper understanding of the atmospheric physics relating to CO2 and climate, I have done a guide and synopsis of Murry Salby’s latest textbook on the subject: Fearless Physics from Dr. Salby
Science Matters 