Month: January 2022

It’s Energy Will Make or Break the World Now

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains how Energy has become the first and foremost world public concern in her Spectator article Energy is the most important issue in the world.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Gas prices are climbing, Russia is building pipelines, yet we’re focused instead on appeasing climate activists

One issue more than any other will dominate airtime and influence policy in 2022: energy. Americans are seeing the highest prices at the pump in seven years. Since Biden took office, average gas prices are up by more than $1 a gallon. In November, gas prices in Mono County, California hit more than $6 per gallon, forcing some residents to drive to Nevada (where gas taxes are lower) to buy fuel.

The price of natural gas in the US is at its highest in seven years, and up more than 180 percent in the last year alone. In Europe, the situation is even worse.

Europe’s gas reserves are at record lows. In Germany, which already had the EU’s highest energy prices, bills are up 30 percent in a year. If the European winter is harsh, supplies for heating homes and businesses may have to be rationed.

Domestic energy is a foreign policy issue. The threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine was one of the factors driving gas prices up in late 2021. In December, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, warned that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany “could not come into service.” That would mean serious shortfalls in Germany’s energy supply this winter, as Germany is dependent on Russian natural gas. Germany’s economic affairs minister, Robert Habeck, now calls Germany’s assent to Nord Stream 2 a “geopolitical mistake.” Days before Christmas, Russia reversed flows on Yamal, another pipeline to Germany. European energy prices reached new peaks. Russia claimed the reversal had no “political implications.”

Europe is splitting over nuclear power as the answer to secure supplies of green energy. France pushed to classify nuclear energy as “sustainable,” a move that would unlock billions of euros in state aid and private investment, earmarked for green energy. An EU proposal was recently put forward to do just that — despite opposition from Germany, which threw its lot in with Nord Stream 2 and Putin’s natural gas under Angela Merkel.

And don’t forget Iran. Its march toward acquiring nuclear arms creates severe vulnerabilities for the US and its allies — especially Israel, but also the oil-rich Gulf states. China continues to underwrite the regime in Tehran by purchasing Iranian oil and evading and ignoring US sanctions.

Energy will determine elections in Europe and the US in 2022 and beyond. It will determine foreign policy decisions. It will be an overarching and enduring theme for years to come. But energy has always been part of the conversation. What makes this year different? Wasn’t there an even bigger energy crisis in the 1970s?

The answer to both those questions is this: unlike in the past, our current energy crisis derives from our own mistakes. We’ve put all of our eggs into the basket of renewable energy, but its promise has been oversold. The costs of solar and wind power generation may have fallen, but they cannot provide stable energy sources because of fluctuations in the weather. That tends to reduce the overall efficiency of power grids.

The green movement also underestimates the true costs of renewable energy. As Michael Shellenberger explains, a wind farm requires 370 times more land than a nuclear plant does. If we shift away from nuclear energy and toward renewables as Joe Biden’s climate plan proposes, the impact on America’s natural environments would be devastating. Yet the Biden administration remains committed to renewables as a “green” solution.

After Angela Merkel phased out nuclear plants almost entirely, Germans now pay the highest energy costs in Europe, not least because a renewables surcharge of 20 percent is added to their bills. The various European and British decisions to ban fracking have had similar effects on the cost of heating a home. The effect of opposition in the US will be no different.

Fracking played a key part in the US’s transition from coal to natural gas, which led to significant reductions in American emissions of carbon dioxide. But some Democratic-run states are attempting to ban fracking entirely through legislation and, as in California, denying permits. Shale oil production barely grew in 2021, and we are unlikely to see a fracking revival in the near future. A return to energy dependence on other countries is becoming unavoidable. We’ve seen this already: in November, Biden appealed to OPEC to increase production.

Americans and Europeans have become so focused on appeasing climate activists that they’ve forgotten the importance of power — in the sense of geopolitics, not kilowatts. While the West was debating ways to reduce emissions at the UN’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, Russia and China didn’t even bother to show up. While we fall over ourselves to acclaim Greta Thunberg, Russia builds strategic gas pipelines and China builds coal-burning power stations.

The politics of energy will impact the lives of everyone this year, the poor especially. To avoid a new self-inflicted energy crisis, unlike in the 1970s — the West must reassess the costs of the “green transition.” We need a strategy that generates power efficiently, and without handing geopolitical power to our strategic rivals.

 

 

 

Green Electricity Facts on the Ground

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Francis Menton writes at Manhattan Contrarian How About A Pilot Project To Demonstrate The Feasibility Of Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Electricity Generation?  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.H\T John Ray

At this current crazy moment, most of the “Western” world (Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia) is hell bent on achieving a “net zero” energy system. As I understand this concept, it means that, within two or three decades, all electricity production will be converted from the current mostly-fossil-fuel generation mix to almost entirely wind, solar and storage. On top of that, all or nearly all energy consumption that is not currently electricity (e.g., transportation, industry, heat, agriculture) must be converted to electricity, so that the energy for these things can also be supplied solely by the wind, sun, and batteries. Since electricity is currently only about a quarter of final energy consumption, that means that we are soon to have an all-electric energy generation and consumption system producing around four times the output of our current electricity system, all from wind and solar, backed up as necessary only by batteries or other storage.

A reasonable question is, has anybody thought to construct a small-to-moderate scale pilot project to demonstrate that this is feasible? Before embarking on “net zero” for a billion people, how about trying it out in a place with, say, 10,000, or 50,000, or 100,000 people. See if it can actually work, and how much it will cost. Then, if it works at reasonable cost, start expanding it.

As far as I can determine, that has never been done anywhere. However, there is something somewhat close. An island called El Hierro, which is one of the Canary Islands and is part of Spain, embarked more than a decade ago on constructing an electricity system consisting only of wind turbines and a pumped-storage water reservoir. El Hierro has a population of about 11,000. It is a very mountainous volcanic island, so it provided a fortuitous location for construction of a large pumped-storage hydro project, with an upper reservoir in an old volcanic crater right up a near-cliff from a lower reservoir just above sea level. The difference in elevation of the two reservoirs is about 660 meters, or more than 2000 feet. Here is a picture of the upper reservoir, looking down to the ocean, to give you an idea of just how favorable a location for pumped-storage hydro this is:

The El Hierro wind/storage system began operations in 2015. How has it done? I would say that it is at best a huge disappointment, really bordering on disaster. It has never come close to realizing the dream of 100% wind/storage electricity for El Hierro, instead averaging 50% or less when averaged over a full year (although it has had some substantial periods over 50%). Moreover, since only about one-quarter of El HIerro’s final energy consumption is electricity, the project has replaced barely 10% of El Hierro’s fossil fuel consumption.

Over at the website page for production statistics, it’s still more excitement about tons of carbon emissions avoided (15,484 in 2020!) and hours of 100% renewable generation (1293 in 2020!). I think that they’re hoping you don’t know that there are 8784 hours in a 366 day year like 2020.

So why don’t they just build the system a little bigger? After all, if this system can provide around 50% +/- of El Hierro’s electricity, can’t you just double it in size to get to 100%? The answer is, absolutely not. The 50% can be achieved only with those diesel generators always present to provide full backup when needed. Without that, you need massively more storage to get you through what could be weeks of wind drought, let alone through wind seasonality that means that you likely need 30 days’ or more full storage.

Then take a look at the picture and see if you can figure out where or how El Hierro is going to build that 40 times bigger reservoir. Time to look into a few billions of dollars worth of lithium ion batteries — for 11,000 people.

And of course, for those of us here in the rest of the world, we don’t have massive volcanic craters sitting 2000 feet right up a cliff from the sea. For us, it’s batteries or nothing. Or maybe just stick with the fossil fuels for now.

So the closest thing we have to a “demonstration project” of the fully wind/storage electricity has come up woefully short, and really has only proved that the whole concept will necessarily fail on the necessity of far more storage than is remotely practical or affordable. The idea that our political betters plow forward toward “net zero” without any demonstration of feasibility I find completely incomprehensible.

See also Green Electrical Shocks

 

 

Wake Up And Derail The Great Reset

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Chris Irons explains in his article Waking Up And Derailing The Great Reset.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and some added images.

The Age Of Censorship

First, we live in an age where narratives can’t be questioned without you being considered a conspiracy theorist.  Substack is filling an important free market demand for uncensored content. I first touched on this when I started writing on Substack back in August of 2021 in this article called “Ending Social Media Censorship And The Meteoric Rise of Substack”.

There are two narrative shifts occurring right now: Covid and inflation.

Inflation Marks An Impasse For the Fed

Regarding inflation, the Fed is at a fork in the road between popping the stock market bubble or allowing persistent inflation to brutalize the middle and lower class (or, as Jerome Powell put it this week, ‘some people are prone to suffer more’).

The Fed is trapped, and unlike in the past, they don’t have a viable way out. In the past they were able to avoid inflation and the Fed was able to pretend to successfully engineer the appearance of monetary prosperity.  Now, there is no way for the average person to ignore Fed policy with high inflation. The Fed is running out of excuses and room to wiggle.

The Fed’s feet are being held to the fire in a way that has never occurred before…politicians aren’t going to be able to overpromise anymore, as reality takes hold. Inflation is now the number one political issue in the country.

Also crypto has brought financial understanding to a new generation who want to understand monetary policy. Despite my criticisms of crypto, namely that:

(1) many of its advocates are charlatans,

(2) it is most certainly a risk asset and,

(3) we can never be certain a cataclysm in crypto won’t occur,

still it is helping a younger generation to quickly understand the flawed nature of our existing system.

This, in turn, is a huge problem for the Fed because the new generation understands the Central Banking ponzi scheme.

A Hyperinflationary Mindset Is Right Around The Corner

We’re not far from a hyperinflationary mindset in the country and our leaders are terribly ignorant,  believing they can micromanage the economy and stunned when their actions don’t work, . I wrote about this months ago when President Biden shut down the nation’s oil pipeline projects and then mulled the high price of gas in the coming months.

Instead, Harris Kupperman in a recent interview with me told me that oil traders “will break the Fed” and will make Jerome Powell “cry uncle”. Kupperman thinks oil prices are going higher and simply cannot be stopped.

The Covid Pivot Is Next, And Beware Of The Great Reset

I think capitalism and common sense are going to end vaccine mandates and intrusion into our lives – something I wrote about at length just hours ago.

Finally about Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset” idea. I note that a large amount of people are seeing the global elite’s future plans for a system that will strip us of civil liberties while enriching central planners. I tell Tom that I don’t believe globalists have a viable way out of the system as it stands today.

Two sides of the same coin.

This runs hand-in-hand with Part 1 of an interview with George Gammon I did this week, where George reminded us that the global only care about “usurping control”.

The more educated people become to the system, the fewer options will be left for the elite. “We’re all just in different stages of waking up.”

See also Canadian Covid Freedom Convoy

 

 

 

Media Covid Quotes Retracted by History

Posted on by Ron Clutz

At zerohedge is an article “The Virus Stops With Every Vaccinated Person” – Eight Quotes From The ‘Experts’ That Aged Horribly.  Excerpts in italics with added bolds.

I began an article yesterday with the line: If coordinated lies could stop the spread of respiratory viruses, Covid would have ended in March of 2020. It applies just as much to this article. The following quotes come from Tony Fauci, Joe Biden, Rochelle Walensky, Bill Gates, Albert Bourla, and others who promised – promised! – us that the vaccines were going to end this alleged pandemic.

From the beginning, all talk of preventative care, repurposed drugs, alternative treatments were not only ignored but disparaged. Several states threatened to pull the licenses of doctors and pharmacists who either prescribed or filled prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Even now, a doctor in Maine has had her license suspended and made to undergo a psychiatric evaluation for dispensing these beneficial treatments. (Seriously, even if they did nothing, how is that worse than injecting yourself with a brand-new, lab-made cocktail of goodness knows what?). It isn’t just medications; something as cheap and simple as supplementing with vitamin D or going outside in the sun were actively suppressed. Southern California, home to some of the most beautiful landscapes and endless supply of Pacific sunshine, shut down beaches and parks upon threat of arrest. 

From the beginning, only vaccines would get us out. They told us that. They promised us that. We would have to die unnecessarily at home since hospitals didn’t treat anything and sent us home until we were too sick and every potential medication was blackballed, but it would all be worth it. If only we hunkered down until a vaccine could be developed, then there would be an eventual light at the end of the self-imposed tunnel. Amazingly, right after Donald Trump was defeated, pharmaceutical companies announced their foregone results to the world: The vaccines were here and life could get back to normal.

Don’t take my word for it; take theirs:

  1. Joe Biden: “You’re Not Going To Get COVID If You Have These Vaccinations.”
  2. Tony Fauci: “You Become A Dead End To The Virus.”
  3. Rochelle Walensky: “Vaccinated People Do Not Carry The Virus — They Don’t Get Sick.”
  4. Alberta Bourla: “[O]ur COVID-19 vaccine was 100% effective in preventing #COVID19 cases in South Africa. 100%!”
  5. Bill Gates: “A key goal [of the vaccination program] is to stop transmission.”
  6. Rachel Maddow: “Now we know that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.”
  7. Francis Collins: “‘[R]eason to be pretty optimistic’ that the available COVID-19 vaccines will be effective against the new Omicron variant of the virus; All of the other variants that have emerged during this COVID-19 pandemic have shown response to the vaccine, including Delta
  8. Brian Stelter: “The newspaper [USA Today] describes ‘America’s fourth Covid-19 surge,’ noting this ‘didn’t have to happen,’ since vaccinations are so widely available. The headlines are followed by a call to action: ‘Let’s end it now.’”

9, Honorable Mention, any of your obnoxious friends or family members: “You’re an anti-vaxxer. The vaccines are safe. They work. I’m doing my part. I’m better than you. You’re unsafe to be around. Just do your part. You’re selfish. Trust the science. Do you know more science than Fauci? Trump wahhhhhhhh!”

So that didn’t age well.

And before anyone says the science changed, just ask yourself: Do you really believe that? This entire vaccine debacle is the result of intentional lies and propaganda. 

If the medical and political entities had been honest from the beginning about supplements, preventative lifestyle changes related to diet and exercise, alternative treatments, and, indeed, optimism over a new delivery system for the purpose of inoculation, then so be it. If they had treated us like adults – free citizens, not subjugated peasants – then it seems unlikely we’d be at this crossroad. Instead, they have lied with gusto and mandated we take the vaccine upon threat of lost livelihoods. It is criminal what they have been and are still doing.

And they lied this whole time.

Already n 2020 it was known that HCQ or IVM plus nutritional supplements were effective early treatments for Covid19.

Canadian Covid Freedom Convoy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

An insightful essay into this movement comes from Jeffrey Tucker at Brownstone Institute Justin Trudeau Ducks the Great Trucker Revolt.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The resistance reveals itself always in unexpected ways. As I type, thousands of truckers (numbers are in flux and are in dispute) are part of a 50-mile-long convoy in Canada, headed to the capital city of Ottawa in protest against an egregious vaccine mandate imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

They will be joined upon arrival by vast numbers of protestors who are defying the restrictions, closures, and mandates of the last nearly two years.

The triple-vaccinated Trudeau, meanwhile, has decided that he has to go into deep hiding because he was exposed to Covid. A clean, ruling-class, fit, and fashionable lefty like him cannot be expected to face such a pathogen directly. As a member of the vanguard of the lockdown elite, he must never take risks (however small) and must keep himself safe. It is merely a matter of coincidence that he will be locked away in hiding as the truckers arrive together with hundreds of thousands of citizens who are fed up with being treated like lab rats.

Previously, Trudeau had said nearly two years ago that the truckers were heroes. On March 31, 2020, he tweeted: “While many of us are working from home, there are others who aren’t able to do that – like the truck drivers who are .working day and night to make sure our shelves are stocked So when you can, please #ThankATrucker for everything they’re doing and help them however you can.”

It’s true. Like many “essential workers” in the US, these truckers bravely faced the virus and many already gained natural immunity, which Canadian law does not recognize. Trudeau decided that they needed to be forced to get the vaccine anyway. Keep in mind: these are the people who get food to the stores, packages to homes, and all products that keep life moving. If they don’t drive, the people don’t eat. It’s that simple. Now Trudeau must deal with #truckerconvoy2020.

Few events in modern times have revealed the vast chasm that exists between the ruled and rulers, especially as it pertains to class. For nearly two years, the professional class has experienced a completely different reality than the working class. In the US, this only began to change once the highly vaccinated Zoom class got Covid anyway. Only then did we start seeing articles about how there is no shame in getting sick. It appears that in many countries, the working class that was forced into early confrontation with the virus are saying that they aren’t going to take it anymore (and many are playing that song to make the point).

It’s a massive workers’ strike but not the kind of communist dreams. This is a “working class” movement that stands squarely for freedom against all the impositions of the last two years, which were imposed by an overclass with almost no consultation from legislatures. Canada has had some of the worst, much to the shock of its citizens.

The convoy is an enormous show of power concerning who really keeps the country running.

The convoy is being joined by truckers from all over the US too, rising up in solidarity. This is easily the most meaningful and impactful protest to emerge in North America. It is being joined by as many as half a million Canadian citizens, who overwhelmingly support this protest, as one can observe from the cheers on the highway along the way. Indeed, it’s likely to break the record for the largest trucker convoy in history, as well as the most loved.

Trudeau, meanwhile, has dismissed the whole thing as a “small fringe” of extremists and says it means nothing to him and will change nothing. This is because, he says, these truckers hold “unacceptable views.”

This is setting up to be one of the most significant clashes in the world in the great battle between freedom and those governments have set out to crush it.

Meanwhile, I’m looking now for information on this in the mainstream media. It is almost nonexistent outside social media. Fox is covering some of it but that’s about it. The Epoch Times is a wonderful exception, as we’ve come to expect in recent months. It’s not being covered in any depth in Canadian papers and TV. All the usual subjects in the US have completely ignored this mighty movement.

It’s almost like these venues have created an alternate version of reality, one that denies the astonishing reality that anyone can see outside the window.

Yes, I know that we have all come to expect that the corporate media will not cover what actually matters, and much of what it does cover it does only with a strong bias toward narratives crafted by ruling elites. Even so, it seems to stretch credulity beyond any plausible extent for the major media to pretend that this isn’t happening. It is and it has massive implications for the present and the future.

This is not really or just about vaccine mandates. It’s about what they represent: government taking possession of our lives. If they can force you to get an injection in your arm over which you have doubts, all bets for freedom are off. There must be evidence that you complied. The phone app is next, which gets tied to your bank account and your job and your access to communications and your ability to pay your rent or mortgage. It means eventually 100% government control over the whole of life.

The technology already exists. Everything going on now with these passports is driving to this point.

This is why the truckers are striking this way. It is an act of bravery but also of desperation. Once the tyranny of health passports arrives, there will be no escape. The window of opportunity to do something about this will have closed. So this is the moment. There might not be another one. Something needs to be done to fight for human rights and freedom, and put in place systems that make lockdowns and mandates impossible in the future.

This is the largest and latest example of the revolt and one that could make the biggest difference yet. But it is only one sign among many that the ruling elites in most countries have overplayed their hand. They have arrogantly imposed their plans for everyone else based on the opinions of only a few and without real consultation with experts with differences of opinion or with the people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the pandemic response.

In the US the revolt is taking many forms. There was the rally in DC this past weekend. It was impressive. Also the latest polls on political alliances show that the Democrats have lost a major part of their base. Virginia right now points to where this is headed. The party lost vast amounts of its political power in elections last year and now Republicans rule the state with great popularity.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at Biden’s latest poll numbers. I almost cannot believe my eyes. We are talking about an overall 14-point split between approve and disapprove. If this is an indication of what happens to the pro-lockdown political elite, it stands to reason that Trudeau should be worried.

In the Vietnam War, many Americans fled the draft by going to the safe haven on the northern border. That’s one way that Canada had earned its long reputation for being delightfully normal, peaceful, and mercifully boring. Pandemic policies in Canada changed that, with some of the longest-lasting stringencies in the world.

No one asked the workers. Now they are rising up. Nor does it matter that 90% of the Canadian public is vaccinated. Possessing that status alone does not mean that people no longer feel resentment for being forced to accept what they do not believe they needed and did not want in the first place. The vaccinated do not automatically give up their longing to be free and to have their human rights recognized.

The resistance to tyranny in our times is taking many unexpected forms. There will be many confrontations on the way, and there is still a very long way to go. At some point, and no one knows when or how, something has to give.

 

 

Sea Level Scare Machine 2021 Update

Posted on by Ron Clutz

3047060508_737c7687bd_o.0.0

Such beach decorations exhibit the fervent belief of activists that sea levels are rising fast and will flood the coastlines if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels.  As we will see below there is a concerted effort to promote this notion empowered with slick imaging tools to frighten the gullible.  Of course there are frequent media releases sounding the alarms.  Recently for example:

From the Guardian Up to 410 million people at risk from sea level rises – study.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The paper, published in Nature Communications, finds that currently 267 million people worldwide live on land less than 2 metres above sea level. Using a remote sensing method called Lidar, which pulsates laser light across coastal areas to measure elevation on the Earth’s surface, the researchers predicted that by 2100, with a 1 metre sea level rise and zero population growth, that number could increase to 410 million people.

The climate emergency has caused sea levels to rise and more frequent and severe storms to occur, both of which increase flood risks in coastal environments.

Last year, a survey published by Climate and Atmospheric Science, which aggregated the views of 106 specialists, suggested coastal cities should prepare for rising sea levels that could reach as high as 5 metres by 2300, which could engulf areas home to hundreds of millions of people.

The rest of this post provides a tour of seven US cities demonstrating how the sea level scare machine promotes fear among people living or invested in coastal properties.  In each case there are warnings published in legacy print and tv media, visual simulations powered by computers and desktop publishing, and a comparison of imaginary vs. observed sea level trends.

Prime US Cities on the “Endangered” List
Newport, R.I.

Examples of Media Warnings

Bangor Daily News:  In Maine’s ‘City of Ships,’ climate change’s coastal threat is already here

Bath, the 8,500-resident “City of Ships,” is among the places in Maine facing the greatest risks from increased coastal flooding because so much of it is low-lying. The rising sea level in Bath threatens businesses along Commercial and Washington streets and other parts of the downtown, according to an analysis by Climate Central, a nonprofit science and journalism organization.

Water levels reached their highest in the city during a record-breaking storm in 1978 at a little more than 4 feet over pre-2000 average high tides, and Climate Central’s sea level team found there’s a 1-in-4 chance of a 5-foot flood within 30 years. That level could submerge homes and three miles of road, cutting off communities that live on peninsulas, and inundate sites that manage wastewater and hazardous waste along with several museums.

UConn Today:  Should We Stay or Should We Go? Shoreline Homes and Rising Sea Levels in Connecticut

As global temperatures rise, so does the sea level. Experts predict it could rise as much as 20 inches by 2050, putting coastal communities, including those in Connecticut, in jeopardy.

One possible solution is a retreat from the shoreline, in which coastal homes are removed to take them out of imminent danger. This solution comes with many complications, including reductions in tax revenue for towns and potentially diminished real estate values for surrounding properties. Additionally, it can be difficult to get people to volunteer to relocate their homes.

Computer Simulations of the Future

Newport Obs Imaged

Imaginary vs. Observed Sea Level Trends (2021 Update)

Boston, Mass.

Example of Media Warnings

From WBUR Radio Boston:  Rising Sea Levels Threaten MBTA’s Blue Line

Could it be the end of the Blue Line as we know it? The Blue Line, which features a mile-long tunnel that travels underwater, and connects the North Shore with Boston’s downtown, is at risk as sea levels rise along Boston’s coast. To understand the threat sea-level rise poses to the Blue Line, and what that means for the rest of the city, we’re joined by WBUR reporter Simón Ríos and Julie Wormser, Deputy Director at the Mystic River Watershed Association.

As sea levels continue to rise, the Blue Line and the whole MBTA system face an existential threat. The MBTA is also facing a serious financial crunch, still reeling from the pandemic, as we attempt to fully reopen the city and the region. Joining us to discuss is MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak.

Computer Simulations of the Future

Boston Obs Imaged2

Imaginary vs. Observed Sea Level Trends (2021 Update)

New York City

Example of Media Warnings

From Quartz: Sea level rise will flood the neighborhood around the UN building with two degrees warming

Right now, of every US city, New York City has the highest population living inside a floodplain. By 2100, seas could rise around around the city by as much as six feet. Extreme rainfall is also predicted to rise, with roughly 1½ times more major precipitation events per year by the 2080s, according to a 2015 report by a group of scientists known as the New York City Panel on Climate Change.

But a two-degree warming scenario, which the world is on track to hit, could lock in dramatic sea level rise—possibly as much as 15 feet.

Computer Simulations of the Future

NYC Obs Imaged

Imaginary vs. Observed Sea Level Trends (2021 Update)

 

Philadelphia, PA.

Example of Media Warnings

From NBC Philadelphia:  Climate Change Studies Show Philly Underwater

NBC10 is looking at data and reading studies on climate change to showcase the impact. There are studies that show if the sea levels continue to rise at this rate, parts of Amtrak and Philadelphia International Airport could be underwater in 100 years.

Computer Simulations of the Future

Philly Obs Imaged

Imaginary vs. Observed Sea Level Trends (2021 Update)

Miami, Florida

Examples of Media Warnings

From WLRN Miami: Miles Of Florida Roads Face ‘Major Problem’ From Sea Rise. Is State Moving Fast Enough?

One 2018 Department of Transportation study has already found that a two-foot rise, expected by mid-century, would imperil a little more than five percent — 250-plus miles — of the state’s most high-traffic highways. That may not sound like a lot, but protecting those highways alone could easily cost several billion dollars. A Cat 5 hurricane could be far worse, with a fifth of the system vulnerable to flooding. The impact to seaports, airports and railroads — likely to also be significant and expensive — is only now under analysis.

From Washington Post:  Before condo collapse, rising seas long pressured Miami coastal properties

Investigators are just beginning to try to unravel what caused the Champlain Towers South to collapse into a heap of rubble, leaving at least 159 people missing as of Friday. Experts on sea-level rise and climate change caution that it is too soon to speculate whether rising seas helped destabilize the oceanfront structure. The 40-year-old building was relatively new compared with others on its stretch of beach in the town of Surfside.

But it is already clear that South Florida has been on the front lines of sea-level rise and that the effects of climate change on the infrastructure of the region — from septic systems to aquifers to shoreline erosion — will be a management problem for years.

Computer Simulations of the Future

Florida Obs Imaged

Imaginary vs. Observed Sea Level Trends (2021 Update)

Houston, Texas

Example of Media Warnings

From Undark:  A $26-Billion Plan to Save the Houston Area From Rising Seas

As the sea rises, the land is also sinking: In the last century, the Texas coast sank about 2 feet into the sea, partly due to excessive groundwater pumping. Computer models now suggest that climate change will further lift sea levels somewhere between 1 and 6 feet over the next 50 years. Meanwhile, the Texas coastal population is projected to climb from 7 to 9 million people by 2050.

Protecting Galveston Bay is no simple task. The bay is sheltered from the open ocean by two low, sandy strips of land — Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula — separated by the narrow passage of Bolivar Roads. When a sufficiently big storm approaches, water begins to rush through that gap and over the island and peninsula, surging into the bay.

Computer Simulations of the Future

Galv Obs Imaged

Imaginary vs. Observed Sea Level Trends (2021 Update)

San Francisco, Cal.

Example of Media Warnings

From San Francisco Chronicle:  Special Report: SF Bay Sea Level Rise–Hayward

Sea level rise is fueled by higher global temperatures that trigger two forces: Warmer water expands oceans while the increased temperatures hasten the melting of glaciers on Antarctica and Greenland and add yet more water to the oceans.

The California Ocean Protection Council, a branch of state government, forecasts a 1-in-7 chance that the average daily tides in the bay will rise 2 or more feet by 2070. This would cause portions of the marshes and bay trail in Hayward to be underwater during high tides. Add another 2 feet, on the higher end of the council’s projections for 2100 and they’d be permanently submerged. Highway 92 would flood during major storms. So would the streets leading into the power plant.

From San Francisco Chronicle:  Special Report: SF Bay Sea Level Rise–Mission Creek

Along San Francisco’s Mission Creek, sea level rise unsettles the waters.  Each section of this narrow channel must be tailored differently to meet an uncertain future. Do nothing, and the combination of heavy storms with less than a foot of sea level rise could send Mission Creek spilling over its banks in a half-dozen places, putting nearby housing in peril and closing the two bridges that cross the channel.

Whatever the response, we won’t know for decades if the city’s efforts can keep pace with the impact of global climatic forces that no local government can control.

Though Mission Creek is unique, the larger dilemma is one that affects all nine Bay Area counties.

Computer Simulations of the Future

SF Obs Imaged

Imaginary vs. Observed Sea Level Trends (2021 Update)

 

Summary: This is a relentless, high-tech communications machine to raise all kinds of scary future possibilities, based upon climate model projections, and the unfounded theory of CO2-driven global warming/climate change.  The graphs above are centered on the year 2000, so that the 21st century added sea level rise is projected from that year forward.  In addition, we now have observations at tidal gauges for the first 21 years, 1/5 of the total expected.  The gauges in each city are the ones with the longest continuous service record, and wherever possible the locations shown in the simulations are not far from the tidal gauge.  For example, NYC best gauge is at the Battery, and Fulton St. is also near the Manhattan southern tip.

Already the imaginary rises are diverging greatly from observations, yet the chorus of alarm goes on.  In fact, the added rise to 2100 from tidal gauges ranges from 6 to 9.5 inches, except for Galveston projecting 20.6 inches. Meanwhile models imagined rises from 69 to 108 inches. Clearly coastal settlements must adapt to evolving conditions, but also need reasonable rather than fearful forecasts for planning purposes.

Footnote:  The problem of urban flooding is discussed in some depth at a previous post Urban Flooding: The Philadelphia Story

Background on the current sea level campaign is at USCS Warnings of Coastal Floodings

And as always, an historical perspective is important:

post-glacial_sea_level

 

Wisconsin’s Long List of Election Infractions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A resolution has been submitted to the rules committee of the Wisconsin State Assembly listing the many violations rendering the 2020 election results untrustworthy as they concern the US President and Vice-President. The full document is:

Resolution Relating to Wisconsin election reform and reclaiming the electoral ballots for President and Vice President that were certified under fraudulent intent and purpose.

This synopsis provides the bullet points detailed in the document, in italics with my bolds.

♦ the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) enabled the illegal use of over 500 voter drop boxes in Wisconsin

♦ Dane and Milwaukee County Clerks issued guidance on Facebook suggesting all voters could declare themselves indefinitely confined because of the pandemic

♦ certification of the 2020 election was rushed before time for filing an appeal of the recount had passed

♦ 3,000 documents and e-mails show connection to election manipulations by the CTCL in five of Wisconsin’s largest cities

♦ data expert studies of historical voter trends reveal a statistical impossibility

♦ WisVote database reflects 7.1 million registered voters in a state with a population of 5.8 million and a voting age population of 4.5 million

♦ grassroots canvassing efforts reveal 200 addresses in 31 counties in Wisconsin that have 200 to 400 registered voters at a single address,

♦ upgrades on Dominion voting machines were allowed on September 9, 2021, with no reassurances of protecting the data of the 2020 election

♦ the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau identified 44,272 voters who did not provide proper voter identification in the 2020 general election

♦ 50 of the 69 county GOP parties released letters of support or resolutions asking for further investigation into the elections process

♦ Elections Commission prevented the deployment of special voting deputies to care facilities

♦ a multitude of irregularities in Wisconsin voter rolls, including that 93.7 percent of active voters participated in the 2020 general election, 205,355 voter registration applications were dated November 3, 2020

♦ Wisconsin voter rolls were inflated to the maximum possible number of voters according to census population data for every presidential election in Wisconsin since 2008 and then the voter rolls were purged shortly after each such election

♦ money provided by the CTCL and Mark Zuckerberg to local governments in Wisconsin relating to the 2020 general election violated Wis. Stat. § 12.11, which prohibits election bribery

♦ CEIR also received funding from Mark Zuckerberg, along with the CTCL, and the CEIR is seeking to provide pro bono defense attorneys to election officials who used the CTCL money in the 2020 general election

♦ ballot harvesting and returning absentee ballots to drop boxes are not legal methods to cast absentee ballots in Wisconsin

♦ the U.S. Supreme Court has found that fraud vitiates and nullifies any contract

Whereas,
the November 2020 Wisconsin general election, as regulated and directed by the Elections Commission, was one of the most haphazard, controversial, and poorly managed elections in state history, shaking citizens’ confidence in fair elections across Wisconsin, and with the culmination of these evidences, prove the results of the commission’s certification of the 2020 election are considered fraudulent; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the assembly, the senate concurring, That the accumulated evidence proves the actions taken by the Elections Commission to certify the 2020 presidential election shall be considered contrary to law and fraudulent under Wis. Stat. §§ 6.84, 6.87 (6), 6.875, 12.11, and 12.13 (2) (b) 7

Resolved, That the Wisconsin Legislature, pursuant to its authority under Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution and 3 U.S.C. § 2, and consistent with guidance provided by the Constitutional Counsel Group in a memorandum dated December 30, 2021, acknowledges that illegality took place in conducting the 2020 general election and reclaims Wisconsin’s 10 fraudulent electoral ballots cast for Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris; and, be it further

Resolved, That the Wisconsin Legislature shall pass legislation with the intention to clean up the WisVote database and create separate servers for active and inactive voters; and be it further

Resolved, That the Wisconsin Legislature supports a full forensic physical and cyber audit of the 2020 general election, that this full forensic physical and cyber audit should be conducted by an independent and nonpartisan auditing firm with a scope statement approved by the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beware Leftist Social Tampering

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Disney’s portrayal of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in over his head.

Our time is marked by progressives seeking to transform societies with magical words and rituals.  The damages from these mistaken projects is becoming more evident and likely to worsen unless they are stopped and reversed.  Anthony Matoria explains in his American Thinker article The Infrastructure of Progress.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds, headers and added images.

A Parable from the Soviet Era

At the end of World War II, stories circulated of returning Soviet soldiers, many from undeveloped towns and farms, who were impressed by the modern amenities that they observed in defeated Nazi Germany. They were especially impressed with electrical lighting and indoor plumbing and, consequently pilfered light bulbs and plumbing fixtures to take back to their more primitive homes in the hopes that they too could have electrical lighting and indoor lavatories.

The stories have something of the nature of a parable. It is tempting to mock the backwardness and naivete of thinking that one can have electric lighting without an electrical distribution system, or indoor running water without external supply and sewer lines. The stories highlight the apparent folly of thinking that one can experience the benefits of technological progress by acquiring only the most visible aspects of that progress, e.g., light bulbs and commodes, without regard to the more extensive and hidden elements that make the whole thing work. It is also tempting to ridicule someone who is so unsophisticated and backward that they do not recognize that folly.

Yet, this same folly is apparent in the agenda of the political left in Western societies.

To the extent that the stories of the simple Soviet soldiers is a parable, the lesson that is illustrated is that progress has preconditions. It requires a type of infrastructure that is congenial to the changes that are intended by reformers. The modern Left often misses this point. There are multiple examples of this.

Political Authority Fallacy

The most obvious fallacy is that a President can fundamentally transform a Republic without a clear popular mandate to do so. Mistaking a transient and tenuous legislative majority for such a mandate is as fallacious as thinking that having a light bulb is all that is necessary to have electric lighting. Similarly, imposing unpopular and capricious mandates is futile if there is insufficient public willingness to abide by them. Public acceptance and consent beyond simple majorities is a form of political infrastructure that is necessary to properly functioning government, and overwhelming acceptance and consent is necessary for “fundamental change.”

Social Engineering Fallacy

The folly of the leftist enterprise is more extensive than merely mistaking a majority for a mandate. The fallacies do not stop with superficial legislative and bureaucratic pronouncements, but involve deeper misjudgments regarding the lives of average, decent people. One such fallacy is that which is often cited by Glenn Reynolds: that governmental schemes to create the benefits of good character and diligence, e.g., home ownership, a college degree, and productive employment, without requiring good character and diligence is not only futile, but ultimately detrimental. Good character, i.e., honesty, responsibility, resilience, respect for others, etc., are a type of infrastructure necessary to personal success and societal flourishing, and thinking that they can be replaced by government subsidy or intruding regulation is every bit as ridiculous as shoving a shower head into a mud wall and expecting it to produce hot water.

Institutional Power Fallacy

Progressives are confident that they do not need popular assent to policy, or civic virtues beyond those that are useful to their agenda as long as they have “the institutions.” This is another fallacy. It is certainly true that usurpation of institutions such as the educational system, corporate boards, the media, and local prosecutors’ offices can produce change, but the change is uniformly destructive. One can certainly change the quality of society by refusing to enforce criminal laws, pandering to identity group grievances, and expanding government at the expense of personal liberty. Such change will not be improvement. Crime, grievance and loss of liberty are inherently destructive and incapable of producing any sort of tangible benefit beyond the abstractions and indulgences of self-assured ideologues.

Behavioral Training Fallacy

The progressive “march through the institutions” makes some assumptions that are unsupported by common experience. The most prominent of these is that people can be taught to want certain things, and that all behaviors are essentially learned behaviors. The progressive enterprise presumes that personality traits, moral character, the lessons of personal experience, and individual affections and aversions can be overcome by pedagogy and propaganda. What the progressive overlooks in his zeal for control of modern society is that individual personality traits, moral character, personal experience and individual affections and aversions are the infrastructure necessary to a healthy society. The progressive may take some encouragement from the experience of totalitarian regimes and religious cults that there is a measure of efficacy in indoctrination and programming, but only with the condition that such does not produce healthy societies or, in fact, produce anything that endures. There is a particularly blinkered and anti-human notion that the nuclear family is undesirable, when it is the infrastructure of every enduring civilization throughout history. Families are vital because they are unique, just as people are unavoidably unique. The progressive notion that there is virtue in uniformity is an idea best suited to anthills and beehives, and is unworthy of the dignity of human beings.

It is unsuited to a population that finds happiness and joy in a vast variety of different experiences and ambitions, and is a prescription for stagnation and decay.

Information Control Fallacy

Free expression and the competition of ideas is another form of infrastructure that is necessary to flourishing and enduring societies. The progressive idea that thoughts and facts can be suppressed as “misinformation,” so that ideas that are friendly to progressive ideologies will prevail, is naïve to the point of delusion. Such a scheme assumes a level of credulity and lack of curiosity and creativity on the part of the citizenry that is hopelessly unrealistic. Facts are stubborn things, and people tend to believe their own experience over the harangues of the self-interested elite. Ideas that cannot survive competition with other ideas will not survive human nature or the unsentimental realities of the world. Truths do not become less so because Twitter and Facebook do not like them.

The ability to recognize and evaluate facts and infer truth from them is essential infrastructure without which no society or civilization can flourish.

Fairness Fallacy

Justice also has an infrastructure. It does not arise from grievances that are pursued to the point of fanaticism, nor from bigoted theories that all humans are defined as either oppressed or oppressors. The infrastructure of justice is not fairness or empathy, desirable as those things are in a just system. The infrastructure of justice is recognition of the dignity and worth with which all humans are born. This requires respect for the persons and property of others, and understanding that individual choices have natural consequences, which denial of responsibility cannot negate.

Disdain of History Fallacy

The progressive disdain for the institutions and traditions that have produced the modern world is, at base, an ignorance of the conditions and structures that are necessary to civil society. They arise from an arrogance that believes that ideologies are facts and that policies can command nature. Societies and states may improve the imperfect levels of justice, opportunity and well-being of their citizens, but they cannot do so while ignoring and attacking the very truths, traditions and institutions that have provided the highest degree of justice, opportunity, and progress that the world has ever known.

 

The Forever Health “Emergency”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ryan McMaken writes at Mises Institute Why They Want to Keep the “Health Emergency” Going Forever. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Last month, Colorado governor Jared Polis ended statewide mask mandates and social-distancing provisions, stating that “the emergency is over.“ This, of course, does not mean Colorado is now laissez-faire in terms of covid. Public higher education institutions—thanks to Polis’ tacit approval—still have free rein in terms of imposing vaccine and mask mandates, and in forcing classes to “go online” whenever the college bureaucrats grow sufficiently alarmed about covid. Moreover, local officials were quick to react to the governor’s nonemergency by imposing a variety of mandates of their own.

More than 80 percent of the state’s population still lives in counties with mask mandates.

For even this extremely mild and timid move in the direction of personal freedom, Polis was raked over the coals by the state’s left-of-center activists. Within days, The Sentinel, a newspaper out of Aurora, Colorado, issued an unsigned editorial declaring “No, Gov. Polis, the pandemic emergency is not over.” The column excoriated the governor for daring to end mask mandates and for categorically refusing the idea of future lockdowns.

Polis was also forced to walk back comments he made about how it’s not the job of health officials to “tell people what to wear“ in an apparent reference to mask mandates. Polis rather unconvincingly “clarified” that what he really meant was this was not the proper role of state health officials; it’s fine for local officials to tell people what to wear.

The fact that Polis himself had earlier claimed this was, in fact, the role of health officials is now beside the point. Incoherence and inconsistency from politicians is a given. The point now is that when a governor—even a Democratic one—tries to slightly scale back covid mandates, he or she is likely to meet furious opposition from the Left.

The lesson here is that no matter what the policy is, there will be no shortage of covid-obsessed college professors, politicians, and activists who will vehemently demand that more draconian policies be imposed immediately and everywhere.

No moderation of any kind is to be tolerated.

Indeed, so many bureaucrats, politicians, and technocrats have doubled down on covid mandate maximalism, it’s difficult to see them ever letting go. We should expect them to search out new ways to extend current “health emergencies“ indefinitely into the future by forever moving the goal posts and finding new diseases that justify continued mask mandates and social distancing rules.

Moving the Goal Posts

Back in January of 2021, Karol Markowicz at the New York Post warned that there are many out there who want the covid emergency state “to go on forever.“ Nearly a year after the initial covid panic, when it was clear covid was not a civilization-ending disease and hardly “the plague of the century,“ these technocrats were pushing for more masks and more isolation for children.

Much of this strategy has long been pushed through constant movement of the goal posts. While vaccines were initially being sold to the public as a cure-all that would allow everything to go back to “normal“ this soon evolved into a series of explanations as to why vaccines actually changed nothing. Rather, vaccines might do some good, but the public should nonetheless be prepared to wear masks forever. Then they decided their “uniquely effective” vaccines were so effective that it was necessary to “protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.” Even lockdowns were still on the table into late 2021. The story was then changed to a narrative in which so long as every single child is not vaccinated, schools must remain closed, and everyone must remain masked.

These mandates might also come in handy whenever some new bird flu or swine flu crops up. Yes, earlier flu-based “emergencies” had failed to command widespread hysteria as with the swine flu scares of 1976 and 2009. But now the health bureaucrats finally had seized the authority they always wanted: keep emergency “pandemic powers” in place forever so that if the CDC or the World Health Organization identifies a new “threat,” lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine passports can be forced upon the population until the “danger” is past.

Institute a Warning System

Another key challenge will be to keep the public always on the edge of alarm. On this, the mandate enthusiasts could take a page from the War on Terror propaganda employed in the wake of 9/11. In March 2002, the Bush administration instituted a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale designed to indicate the terrorism “threat level.” This presumably allowed the public to gauge just how much they should be living in fear of terrorism at any given time. As propaganda it was helpful as a means of constantly reminding the public that the government keeps them safe, and that an all-powerful national security state is a necessity.

A similar scheme could easily be used to address health “threats.” Naturally, the scale would never be moved to “low” because if some actual epidemic did break out, that would make the “experts” look like they were asleep at the switch. So, naturally, the scale would always be at “guarded”—perhaps in the summertime—but would reliably be raised to “elevated” in the wintertime as hospital beds filled up with flu and pneumonia sufferers. Then, if any muttering of some new bird flu out of Asia hit the headlines, the technocrats could raise the threat level to “high.” This could then be used to justify the imposition of new mask mandates, vaccine requirements, or even lockdowns.

Then when summer weather returned and the hospital beds emptied, the experts would insist they had prevented disaster by imposing new mandates.

The only way these health experts will stop with their perpetual emergency is if they’re forced to. Health bureaucrats must be stripped of their far-too-expansive “emergency powers” and their agencies reined in. Their “scientific” opinions should be treated as the thinly veiled political statements they so frequently are. As I wrote in 2020, the pandemic only ends when the public decides it is over.

Some politicians have figured out that it’s dangerous to keep pushing the same old covid mandates into election season this fall. This is surely why Polis now appears uninterested in haranguing the public about covid on a daily basis as he was doing back in 2020.

But the academics and technocrats who can afford to live in their echo chamber—thanks to taxpayer money—are unlikely to relent. They’ll be singing the same tune twenty years from now and calling for new mandates—for the disease du jour—every year. Let’s just hope that the world will have finally stopped listening.

 

 

BMJ Calls for Vax Raw Data Now!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The BMJ editorial by Peter Doshi is Covid-19 vaccines and treatments: we must have raw data, now.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Data should be fully and immediately available for public scrutiny

In the pages of The BMJ a decade ago, in the middle of a different pandemic, it came to light that governments around the world had spent billions stockpiling antivirals for influenza that had not been shown to reduce the risk of complications, hospital admissions, or death. The majority of trials that underpinned regulatory approval and government stockpiling of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) were sponsored by the manufacturer; most were unpublished, those that were published were ghostwritten by writers paid by the manufacturer, the people listed as principal authors lacked access to the raw data, and academics who requested access to the data for independent analysis were denied.

The Tamiflu saga heralded a decade of unprecedented attention to the importance of sharing clinical trial data.

Public battles for drug company data, transparency campaigns with thousands of signatures, strengthened journal data sharing requirements, explicit commitments from companies to share data, new data access website portals, and landmark transparency policies from medicines regulators all promised a new era in data transparency.

Progress was made, but clearly not enough.
The errors of the last pandemic are being repeated.

Memories are short. Today, despite the global rollout of covid-19 vaccines and treatments, the anonymised participant level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public—and are likely to remain that way for years to come. This is morally indefensible for all trials, but especially for those involving major public health interventions.

Unacceptable delay

Pfizer’s pivotal covid vaccine trial was funded by the company and designed, run, analysed, and authored by Pfizer employees. The company and the contract research organisations that carried out the trial hold all the data.  And Pfizer has indicated that it will not begin entertaining requests for trial data until May 2025, 24 months after the primary study completion date, which is listed on ClinicalTrials.gov as 15 May 2023 (NCT04368728).

The lack of access to data is consistent across vaccine manufacturers. Moderna says data “may be available … with publication of the final study results in 2022.” Datasets will be available “upon request and subject to review once the trial is complete,” which has an estimated primary completion date of 27 October 2022 (NCT04470427).

As of 31 December 2021, AstraZeneca may be ready to entertain requests for data from several of its large phase III trials. But actually obtaining data could be slow going. As its website explains, “timelines vary per request and can take up to a year upon full submission of the request.”

Underlying data for covid-19 therapeutics are similarly hard to find. Published reports of Regeneron’s phase III trial of its monoclonal antibody therapy REGEN-COV flatly state that participant level data will not be made available to others. Should the drug be approved (and not just emergency authorised), sharing “will be considered.” For remdesivir, the US National Institutes of Health, which funded the trial, created a new portal to share data,  but the dataset on offer is limited. An accompanying document explains: “The longitudinal data set only contains a small subset of the protocol and statistical analysis plan objectives.”

We are left with publications but no access to the underlying data on reasonable request. This is worrying for trial participants, researchers, clinicians, journal editors, policy makers, and the public. The journals that have published these primary studies may argue that they faced an awkward dilemma, caught between making the summary findings available quickly and upholding the best ethical values that support timely access to underlying data.

In our view, there is no dilemma; the anonymised individual participant data from clinical trials must be made available for independent scrutiny.

Journal editors, systematic reviewers, and the writers of clinical practice guideline generally obtain little beyond a journal publication, but regulatory agencies receive far more granular data as part of the regulatory review process. In the words of the European Medicine Agency’s former executive director and senior medical officer, “relying solely on the publications of clinical trials in scientific journals as the basis of healthcare decisions is not a good idea … Drug regulators have been aware of this limitation for a long time and routinely obtain and assess the full documentation (rather than just publications).”22

Among regulators, the US Food and Drug Administration is believed to receive the most raw data but does not proactively release them. After a freedom of information request to the agency for Pfizer’s vaccine data, the FDA offered to release 500 pages a month, a process that would take decades to complete, arguing in court that publicly releasing data was slow owing to the need to first redact sensitive information. This month, however, a judge rejected the FDA’s offer and ordered the data be released at a rate of 55 000 pages a month. The data are to be made available on the requesting organisation’s website (phmpt.org).

In releasing thousands of pages of clinical trial documents, Health Canada and the EMA have also provided a degree of transparency that deserves acknowledgment. Until recently, however, the data remained of limited utility, with copious redactions aimed at protecting trial blinding. But study reports with fewer redactions have been available since September 2021, and missing appendices may be accessible through freedom of information requests.

Even so, anyone looking for participant level datasets may be disappointed because Health Canada and the EMA do not receive or analyse these data, and it remains to be seen how the FDA responds to the court order. Moreover, the FDA is producing data only for Pfizer’s vaccine; other manufacturers’ data cannot be requested until the vaccines are approved, which the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are not. Industry, which holds the raw data, is not legally required to honour requests for access from independent researchers.

Like the FDA, and unlike its Canadian and European counterparts, the UK’s regulator—the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency—does not proactively release clinical trial documents, and it has also stopped posting information released in response to freedom of information requests on its website.

Transparency and trust

As well as access to the underlying data, transparent decision making is essential. Regulators and public health bodies could release details such as why vaccine trials were not designed to test efficacy against infection and spread of SARS-CoV-2. Had regulators insisted on this outcome, countries would have learnt sooner about the effect of vaccines on transmission and been able to plan accordingly.

Big pharma is the least trusted industry. At least three of the many companies making covid-19 vaccines have past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars. One pleaded guilty to fraud. Other companies have no pre-covid track record. Now the covid pandemic has minted many new pharma billionaires, and vaccine manufacturers have reported tens of billions in revenue.

The BMJ supports vaccination policies based on sound evidence. As the global vaccine rollout continues, it cannot be justifiable or in the best interests of patients and the public that we are left to just trust “in the system,” with the distant hope that the underlying data may become available for independent scrutiny at some point in the future. The same applies to treatments for covid-19. Transparency is the key to building trust and an important route to answering people’s legitimate questions about the efficacy and safety of vaccines and treatments and the clinical and public health policies established for their use.

Twelve years ago we called for the immediate release of raw data from clinical trials.1 We reiterate that call now. Data must be available when trial results are announced, published, or used to justify regulatory decisions. There is no place for wholesale exemptions from good practice during a pandemic. The public has paid for covid-19 vaccines through vast public funding of research, and it is the public that takes on the balance of benefits and harms that accompany vaccination.

The public, therefore, has a right and entitlement to those data, as well as to the interrogation of those data by experts.

Pharmaceutical companies are reaping vast profits without adequate independent scrutiny of their scientific claims. The purpose of regulators is not to dance to the tune of rich global corporations and enrich them further; it is to protect the health of their populations. We need complete data transparency for all studies, we need it in the public interest, and we need it now.