Month: July 2022

Time to Cross Examine Climatists

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Kurt Schlichter explains at Town Hall Cross-Examining the Climate Change Cultists.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Well, I’m a lawyer. I question scientists for a living.

Now, I have no scientific training to speak of. I majored in communications and political science, so the only science I studied at UC San Diego had to do with the physics of foaming when I poured Coors into a glass, as well as the mechanics of human reproduction. Don’t expect me to discourse deeply on the heat retention coefficient of CO2 – I don’t even know if that is a thing, but it sure sounds sciency.

Instead, I hire scientists in most every case I try. Sometimes I hire several in different disciplines. The other side does too, and here’s the weird thing – at trial, the other side’s scientists always, always, disagree with my scientists.

A smart attorney wants a scientist who tells you what he really thinks and who has a solid, rational basis for his conclusions. You need to know if your case is strong or weak – if it is weak, you want to resolve it before trial.

But the fact is that two scientists with good credentials can look at the same set of facts and come to different conclusions. This happens all the time. So, how do you know which one is right?

Well, that’s where the lawyer magic comes in. See, our job is to punch some holes in what the other side’s scientists say. That’s what a lawyer does, and it is critical to the pursuit of truth. You have to test the testimony, because otherwise it is just a one-sided monologue. You know, like the cross-examination-free January 6th Kongressional Kangaroo Kommittee. Those amphibians made sure there was no cross-examination because they did not want their phony case questioned.

You want a lawyer who, besides making his own case,
takes the evidence from the other side and slices and dices it.

Cross-examination, it has been said, is the greatest engine for the discovery of the truth man has yet created. And when someone wants to prevent vigorous, even brutal cross-examination of his case, that’s a giveaway that it is weak.

And I’m looking at the climate change hoax. The weather cultists even have a uniquely dumb and offensive slur for people who dare test their evidence, such as it is: “Denier.”

The art of cross-examination is designed to illuminate the reasons not to believe the other side.

Expose the Bias

The actual order you do a cross in varies, but let’s start with attacking bias. Bias is huge. Bias is any interest in the testimony outside of simply offering the truth for the truth’ sake. If a person has an interest in a particular answer, then his testimony in support of that answer is questionable. Is he getting paid by someone with an interest in his answer? That can show bias. In the climate arena, is he getting climate change grants? Remember, it’s not just getting hired but the potential for getting fired that can show bias. “Assistant Professor Warmingnut, in fact, if you were opposed to the idea of human-caused global warming being an existential threat, you would have zero chance of ever getting tenure as a full professor at the University of College, correct?”

An awful lot of these science folk have a huge personal interest in providing a pro-climate hysteria answer, whether from gaining cash to saving their careers. And that matters. But for some reason we are not supposed to point that out because scientists are these neutral monks without human drives like greed, fear, and pride. Hang around some scientists for a while and see if you buy that.

Bore into the Supporting Foundation

Then you would test the foundation that supports their conclusion. You might point out that we have only a human temperature record going back a few hundred years. You could also point out the “heat sink” issue – urban areas tend to retain more warmth than rural areas, and measurements are often closer to urban areas than out in the boonies. They would talk about tree rings and ice cores and such, but you would point out that these are not direct evidence of the temperature like directly measuring it is – we think we can extrapolate from them how hot it was in 2000 BC, but it is really only an educated guess. And then you might question the various adjustments to the raw data that they make before presenting it.

Challenge the Conclusions Directly

You would also want to cross-examine the conclusions themselves. It’s pretty popular to claim that the recent heatwave in Europe proves global warming. But then, why doesn’t a cold wave disprove it? In fact, what set of facts would disprove the climate change theory? Isn’t the scientific method about generating a theory for a phenomenon and then testing it by trying to find facts that disprove it? So, what would disprove global warming?

None, of course. Everything always proves it. How sciency!

And while we are at it, since “global warming” has been replaced by “climate change,” what, precisely, is the climate we need to maintain? What is the “correct” temperature? Is the goal to stop all climate change? Do we need to counteract natural climate change? You do agree that climate does change naturally, right? All those Americans with those SUVs and BBQs were thousands of years from coming into being when the ice age happened, so what caused that? And what caused the subsequent global warming after it? Are those same phenomena absent today? If not, how much are they causing now?

There are lots of nits to pick. How about the constantly retreating goalposts? What is the current climate apocalypse deadline? Didn’t Al Gore tell us in the 2000s that we would be suffering a climate catastrophe right now in 2022? Florida is still above water, right? So, the scientists Al listened to were wrong, weren’t they? So, Dr. Warmingnut, you concede that scientists have been wrong about climate? The ones in the seventies projecting another ice age in a decade were wrong, correct? So why are the scientists today right?

Object to Adverse Implications

And then cover the implications. So, you are recommending a pretty radical program of ending the use of fossil fuels and getting rid of cows because they tend to act like Eric Swalwell in order to treat global warming? So, what, exactly, will be the effect of America doing that on the global part of the warming issue? Will it matter what America and Europe do if India and China maintain their current carbon footprints? And how much, in dollars and disruption, will your remedies cost? How does that compare to the cost of ameliorating some climate change effects like higher ocean levels and hotter temperatures?

And then you need to point out some macro issues with questions on the real agenda. So, Dr Warmingnut, can you name a single major climate change remedial initiative, such as higher taxes and increased bureaucratic authority, that does not correspond to something the political left wants to do anyway? Can you name one climate remedial initiative that supports a conservative objective? Does it strike you as odd that the people supporting climate change wanted all the things they now demand because of climate change long before climate change became a thing?

And does it seem strange to you that climate advocates like John Kerry are zipping across the Atlantic to party in Davos and folks like Barack Obama are buying beachfront property if this is an existential crisis?

I know, I know, shut up, denier!

I’m not a scientist. But I am a lawyer. My job is to dig out the truth through cross-examination. And it seems very telling that the climate change hoaxers are desperate to avoid any examination of their ridiculous assertions at all.

Footnote:  Jason Johnson wrote an extensive cross examination of global warming/climate change, pdf available here:   Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination

Scientists who have been leaders in the process of producing these Assessment Reports (“AR’s”) argue that they provide a “balanced perspective” on the “state of the art” in climate science, with the IPCC acting as a rigorous and “objective assessor” of what is known and unknown in climate science. Legal scholars have accepted this characterization, trusting that the IPCC AR’s are the product of an “exhaustive review process” – involving hundreds of outside reviewers and thousands of comments. 

It is virtually impossible to find anywhere in the legal or the policy literature on global warming anything like a sustained discussion of the actual state of the scientific literature on ghg emissions and climate change. Instead, legal and policy scholars simply defer to a very general statement of the climate establishment’s opinion (except when it seems too conservative), generally failing even to mention work questioning the establishment climate story, unless to dismiss it with the ad hominem argument that such work is the product of untrustworthy, industry-funded “skeptics” and “deniers.”

This paper constitutes such a cross-examination. As anyone who has served as an expert witness in American litigation can attest, even though an opposing attorney may not have the expert’s scientific training, a well prepared and highly motivated trial attorney who has learned something about the technical literature can ask very tough questions, questions that force the expert to clarify the basis for his or her opinion, to explain her interpretation of the literature, and to account for any apparently conflicting literature that is not discussed in the expert report. My strategy in this paper is to adopt the approach that would be taken by a non-scientist attorney deposing global warming scientists serving as experts for the position that anthropogenic ghg emissions have caused recent global warming and must be halted if serious and seriously harmful future warming is to be prevented – what I have called above the established climate story.

See also Critical Climate Intelligence for Jurists (and others)

 

Trudeau Government Out Of Service

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The view from National Post is Trudeau fiddles, while the federal government crumbles around him.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Trudeau Liberals are failing to deliver even the most basic government services

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits children at the Okanagan Boys and Girls Club childcare centre in Lake Country, B.C., on July 18. PHOTO BY ARTUR GAJDA/REUTERS

The federal government is broken — but you wouldn’t know it from following the summer adventures of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It’s no secret that the prime minister loves photo-ops, but he usually manages to at least tangentially connect them to some sort of issue. War in Ukraine? Time for a heavily photographed European tour. Outrage over residential schools? Someone find him a teddy bear and a well-lit place to kneel.

But his latest string of photo-ops don’t even bother with rhyme or reason as he tours the country seemingly at random, for no real purpose, doing basically nothing. One day he’s playing camp counsellor in the woods, the next he’s all smiles and no mask on a sightseeing train. Next thing you know, he’s picking cherries and chumming it up with fruit growers in British Columbia.

So far, no one’s been able to figure out quite why he’s doing this. He hasn’t used the trips to make any policy or funding announcements, wasn’t in town for fundraisers and the notion of a fall election seems absurd even by Liberal standards.

It’d be great if the media could ask him during one of his many photo-ops, but he’s forbidden journalists from posing questions. He wouldn’t want anything to distract from his carefully curated tableaus, and reporters have a pesky habit of wanting to talk about things other than children’s stories and fruit.

Meanwhile, across Canada, people are literally camping outside Service Canada locations in attempts to secure passports. Airports suffer from rampant flight delays and cancellations, lost luggage, long lines and staff shortages.

Pilots can’t get certified or re-certified because, according to Dario Matrundola, president of Canadian Flyers Aviation College, Transport Canada “completely dropped the ball.” In Quebec, hundreds of court cases are being postponed due to a shortage of judges.

Emergency rooms are closing due to staffing and capacity issues. Both hospitals in Saint John, N.B., hit capacity last weekend, forcing some residents to drive over an hour to receive emergency care. In Montreal, a children’s hospital was recently forced to turn away patients.

The immigration system is backlogged with over 2.7 million applications in the queue. We have stopped taking new applications to resettle the Afghans who helped our Forces and now face persecution from the Taliban.

Many Indigenous communities still don’t have potable drinking water. The federal government’s idea of solving what many believe is a housing crisis is to spend public money on building a paltry 260 new homes — a bad, government-centric response that helps almost no one.

The ArriveCAN app is glitching and ordering vaccinated travellers into quarantine. If you live in the downtown core of many Canadian cities, it’s impossible to miss the growing numbers of people sleeping, eating and even defecating on the streets.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Where is the Liberals’ new China policy that they’ve been promising since 2019? Or someone to fill the ambassador to China role that’s now been vacant for over six months? Is anyone even enforcing our Russian sanctions (when the federal government itself isn’t breaking them)?

It’s becoming harder to find areas of government that aren’t in crisis than ones that are. Chaos and dysfunction are seemingly everywhere. The Trudeau Liberals are failing to deliver on even the most basic government services.

Ironically, it’s the same politicians and political staffers responsible for these failures who can’t seem to fathom why voters are losing trust in Canadian institutions. They view frustration with government “gatekeepers” as unfounded and dangerous, rather than the predictable result of their negligence and general apathy toward average Canadians.

Canadians are frustrated that they cannot receive even basic government services in a timely manner, and that their vacation plans are being disrupted, after over two years of complying with coronavirus restrictions. But the Liberals can’t see that because they’re too busy patting themselves on the back for their supposed moral authority, and Trudeau doesn’t want to hear it while he tours the nation’s summer camps.

It’s often Conservatives who are accused of wanting to let government services erode, in order to usher in privatization. But under the Liberals, those services have all but collapsed.

If the left believes that big government is the solution to the problems that plague our nation, they couldn’t be doing more to undermine their own ideology. Rather than demand change, Liberal supporters seem determined to defend and deflect, sacrificing their party’s credibility to serve Trudeau’s cult of personality.

What Canada needs right now is for the prime minister to start demonstrating a real commitment to getting the federal government working again. That means focusing on real, tangible results, rather than taking an extended vacation. School children may be out for the summer, but as our head of government, Trudeau does not have that same luxury — especially when his government is in such a state of disarray.

 

Fake Climate Emergency on Horizon

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The editors of IBD explain at Issues and Insights Climate Emergency?  What a Crock.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Joe Biden did not declare a climate emergency last week, as many in his party urged him to do. One Democratic senator claimed that the changing climate required “bold, intense executive action” from the president. Another said Biden needed to move because “the climate crisis is a threat to national security.” But there’s no emergency. It’s a wholly manufactured charade.

Though he put off an executive action, Biden said last Wednesday that he has “a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that’s what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger. The health of our citizens and our communities is literally at stake.”

His non-COVID fever continued:

“Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world. … Right now, 100 million Americans are under heat alert – 100 million Americans. Ninety communities across America set records for high temperatures just this year, including here in New England as we speak.”

On the same day Biden issued an authoritarian’s threat:

“Since Congress is not acting on the climate emergency, I will,” he tweeted. “And in the coming weeks my Administration will begin to announce executive actions to combat this emergency.”

Most Americans who aren’t named Barack Obama like to think that the U.S. is the center of our world if not the universe. But just because much of the country has been hot, it doesn’t mean the entire Earth is on fire. Yet our politicians and media focus on unusual heat despite the obvious:

If the global temperature “is just about average” – and it is –
“then clearly it must be well below average somewhere else.”

The facts, not the Democrats and activists’ political desperation, show that global temperatures have gone nowhere over the past four decades, which is the only period of time they can be accurately measured and compared. Anyone who believes that the temperature record before 1979 is reliable is fooling themselves (and also a blind ideologue).

The only data that can be trusted, that makes a genuine apples-to-apples comparison, are the measurements from satellites. All other temperature reconstructions require faith in subjective readings of often poorly placed primitive instruments, and compromised tree ring signals.

So, then what do the satellite data tell us? That we just went through “the coolest monthly anomaly in over 10 years, the coolest June in 22 years, and the ninth coolest June in the 44 year satellite record,” says University of Alabama at Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer. [See Tropics Lead Remarkable Cooling June 2022]  Repeat the line:

Last month was “the coolest monthly anomaly in over 10 years,
the coolest June in 22 years,
and the ninth coolest June in the 44 year satellite record.”
Yeah, that’s some emergency.

But then June 2022 is just one month of many. What about the rest of the record? While global temperature based on satellite readings has trended upward, the increase has been slight. “The linear warming trend since January 1979” is a mere 0.13 of a degree Celsius per decade, says Spencer. June 2022 was also cooler than a number of months on Spencer’s chart, quite a few of them going back more than 20 years.

Other evidence than the emergency exists only in the overly political minds of Democrats, their communications department (the mainstream media), and the usual zealots include:

♦  “Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is still plenty of sea ice over Arctic regions this summer, supplying feeding platforms for polar bears, ice-dependent seals, and walrus cows nursing their young calves.” – Watts Up With That?

♦  “If you took a very careful look with consistent data over long periods of time, you will find that these (natural) disasters are not increasing. In fact, the health of the world is increasing tremendously. For example, deaths from weather disasters and so forth have gone down about 95% in the last hundred years. … They really aren’t increasing in frequency or intensity.” – John Christy, University of Alabama at Huntsville climatologist

♦ “The ice caps on Mars have been shrinking in sync with ice caps on earth. To me, that’s fairly good evidence that the sun is involved but NASA assures us that’s not so.” – Bookworm Room

♦ “Natural variability of the atmosphere was the proximate cause of the (recent) warmth and does not represent an existential threat to the population of Europe. Clearly, there’s no cause for alarm, no matter what the media says. But the media won’t tell you any of that, because it ruins their narrative of being able to blame the heatwave on climate change, while hoping you don’t notice their distortion of the truth about ordinary weather events we see every summer.” – Anthony Watts

It’s probably an even bet that Biden will eventually declare a climate emergency. His handlers probably think doing so would help pull his miserable ratings out of their tailspin. But we don’t think Americans want their presidents to act like dictators, especially when they are as feeble of mind as Biden is.

 

ESG Woke Social Credit System for Global Government

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From Think Civics ESG Is A Globalist ‘Scam’ Meant To Usher In ‘One World Government’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

James Lindsay, author of “Race Marxism” and other books challenging woke narratives, has taken environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores into his crosshairs, calling ESG a weapon in the hands of “social justice warriors” to shake down corporations and a tool in the hands of those seeking to impose “one world government.”

Lindsay told NTD’s “The Nation Speaks” program in a recent interview that the ESG scoring system was initially conceived as a way for investors to track the likelihood that a corporation would be a good bet for investment over the long term.

“In the early 2000s, a few very socially minded socially activist investors got together and thought up this idea that, well, it’s probably the case that companies that are bad at environmental policy, bad with social responsibility, and bad corporate governance are going to be bad bets in long term investment,” he said.

Lindsay believes the ESG concept was suspect from the very beginning and it’s unclear whether higher scores translated into good long-term profitability for participating corporations.  Lack of transparency in how ESG scores are determined is an open door for abuse, Lindsay further contended.

Worse still, he argued that, over time, ESG scores have been hijacked
and “weaponized” by “social justice warriors.”

“They have the leverage to be able to use this like a … financial gun to the head of any corporation that doesn’t do what it wants them to do,” he said, calling it a “blatant weaponization.”

“In fact, it’s racketeering is what it is, is just criminal racketeering, using what looks like a responsible measurement tool as the mechanism. So nobody’s directly responsible for engaging in what is really a mob shakedown of corporations,” he argued.

Even more troubling is Lindsay’s argument that ESG fits into a “broader global agenda” that he said wants to make the West energy poor—to the benefit of countries like China—and as a way of social control.

“They want to implement the exact same control system because they see that it works to control people in China,” adding that, in his view, the “power elite” in the West “often do want to control people.”

“And so they would be using that as a tool to try to get toward one world government,” Lindsay said.

Insider Intelligence estimates that, in 2022, there was $41 trillion in ESG assets under management worldwide.   By 2025, this figure is expected to climb to $50 trillion.

Authored by Cindy Drukier and Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times

See Also Federal Climatists Target US Personal Pension Funds

…

 

WHO Spells It “Moneypox”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Robert Malone writes at Brownstone Institute Delete the K in Monkeypox.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In a move that is sure to trigger widespread discussion concerning the independence, objectivity and wisdom of granting authority to the WHO to manage global infectious diseases responses, the monkeypox outbreak has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization.

The declaration was made unilaterally, in direct contradiction of independent review panel advice, by WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Tedros made the declaration despite a lack of consensus among members of the WHO’s emergency committee on the monkeypox outbreak, and in so doing overruled his own review panel, who had voted 9 against, 6 for declaring the PHEIC. Tedros asserted that this committee of experts (who met on Thursday) was unable to reach a consensus, so it fell on him to decide whether to trigger the highest alert possible.

When the group met in June, the breakdown was 11 against and three for. It is not clear what has changed in the intervening four weeks to justify the change in Tedros’ position, although comments from internet pundits raise concerns that the unilateral action was taken in response to pressure from special interest advocacy groups.

There has also been a sudden burst of coordinated social media postings raising concerns regarding Monkeypox risks to children, which raises the question “If Monkeypox is a sexually transmitted disease, why are kids getting it?”

On Friday, the U.S. confirmed the first two cases of monkeypox in children, Centers for Disease Control Prevention and Control (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday. The CDC has said children, especially those under 8 years old, are among those at “especially increased risk” for severe monkeypox disease.

At a virtual event with the Washington Post on Friday focused on new coronavirus variants, Walensky stated that:

“Both of those children are traced back to individuals who come from the men-who-have-sex-with-men community, the gay men’s community,”

The WHO defines a PHEIC as “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.”  

The WHO further explains how this definition implies a situation that is serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected; carries implications for public health beyond an affected country’s border and may require immediate international action.  Since the procedures to declare a PHEIC were implemented in 2005, the WHO has only done so six times. The last time was in early 2020, for Covid-19.

Tedros’ statements clearly demonstrate that he unilaterally substituted his own opinions for those of the convened panel, raising questions of his objectivity, commitment to process and protocol, and whether he has been unduly influenced by external agents.

As the outbreak continues to grow, epidemiologists are split as to whether the WHO’s decision was correct. The meeting was the second time the emergency committee convened, after a meeting on June 23 when it decided the outbreak had not met that threshold.

Dr. Jimmy Whitworth, a professor of international public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine:

“It is a tricky decision for the committee, in some senses, it meets the definition — it is an unprecedented outbreak widespread in many countries and would benefit from increased international coordination.

On the other hand, it seems to be an infection for which we have the necessary tools for control; most cases are mild and the mortality rate is extremely low.”

The PHEIC designation comes from the International Health Regulations (IHR) created in 2005, and it represents an international “agreement” to help the prevent and respond to public health risks that have the potential to spread around the globe.

These are the same IHR which the Biden administration sought to further strengthen, but the attempt to implement proposed modifications were placed on hold after an international, multi-country outcry concerning loss of national autonomy. The unilateral actions of Tedros in this current situation clearly demonstrate that these concerns were warranted.

In an article supportive of the declaration, Vox news provided a summary of the potential financial beneficiaries of this declaration; that being vaccine manufacturers and the holding companies who have invested in them.

My Comment on Monkeypox Hygiene Guidelines

The usual suspects are stirring the panic pot over Monkeypox, and so far our trusted sources of health guidance, like CDC and FDA and NIH, have been silent.  So in the public interest I put forward a two-step program by which every individual can self-protect against Monkeypox.

1.  Do not handle monkeys, squirrels or other rodents,
2.  Do not have sex with anyone who does, or who has open skin sores.

There you go.  Refrain from these two activities and no vaccine required.

More from Dr. Malone, who actually is trustworthy:

Don’t be Worried By Monkeypox (Unless it’s Genetically Altered!)

Trudeau Wants Canada to Imitate the Dutch and Sri Lanka

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From The Counter Signal, in italics with my bolds

As per a Government of Saskatchewan news release, both the Alberta and Saskatchewan’s Ministers of Agriculture have expressed “profound disappointment” in Trudeau’s decision to attempt to reduce nitrogen emissions from fertilizer.

“We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,” Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture David Marit said. “The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.”

According to Alberta Agriculture Minister Nate Horner, “This has been the most expensive crop anyone has put in, following a very difficult year on the prairies. The world is looking for Canada to increase production and be a solution to global food shortages. The Federal government needs to display that they understand this. They owe it to our producers.”

“Fertilizers play a major role in the agriculture sector’s success and have contributed to record harvests in the last decade. They have helped drive increases in Canadian crop yields, grain sales, and exports,” a news release from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reads.

And indeed, according to a report from Fertilizer Canada:

    • Total Emission Reduction puts a cap on the total emissions allowable from fertilizer at 30% below 2020 levels. As the yield of Canadian crops is directly linked to proper fertilizer application this creates a ceiling on Canadian agricultural productivity well below 2020 levels….
    • It is estimated that a 30% absolute emission reduction for a farmer with 1000 acres of canola and 1000 acres of wheat, stands to have their profit reduced by approximately $38,000 – $40,500/ annually.
    • In 2020, Western Canadian farmers planted approximately 20.8 million acres of canola. Using these values, cumulatively farm revenues from canola could be reduced by $396M – $441M on an annual basis. Wheat famers could experience a reduction of $400M.

Moreover, Fertilizer Canada doesn’t believe that forcibly decreasing fertilizer use will even lower greenhouse gases but could lead to carbon leakage elsewhere.

Why WEF Elites are Attacking Agriculture

Cameron Smith explains in his ACHS article ‘Regenerative’ Farming: AOC’s Overhyped Climate Change Solution excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently came out in support of “regenerative” farming as a solution to climate change. There is little evidence to justify her advocacy.

The reality is that regenerative agriculture, as commonly defined today, can’t “protect” the global food supply from climate change; it can’t even feed a small country. To achieve the kinds of sustainability gains Ocasio-Cortez described, we need technology-driven farming that utilizes every available tool.

What is regenerative farming?

It’s actually difficult to pin down a clear definition. Most growers and agricultural scientists are interested in sustainable, efficient farming practices that allow us to feed more people while preserving our natural resources. But that’s not what advocates of regenerative farming typically mean when they use the term; their definition is often couched in ideological assumptions.

NRDC went on to explain that “Regenerative farmers and ranchers make every effort to reduce their reliance on synthetic inputs, such as herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers.” The problem with using this sort of technophobia as a guiding principle is that it excludes workable solutions to the problems everybody wants to mitigate.

Genetically engineered (GE) crops that require less water or naturally fight off pests are two very practical, innovative tools that “regenerative” advocates almost universally disdain. There is no justification for this bias since the genetics of a plant have little to do with how you grow it. A few agroecology advocates have made the same observation; they see no problem in growing GE crops according to agroecological principles.

The same goes for low-toxic pesticides. Widespread use of the weed killer glyphosate, the boogeyman in modern environmentalism, allowed many farmers to reduce or eliminate tillage as a form of weed control, significantly cutting their CO2 emissions. Herbicide-tolerant seeds introduced in the 1990s accelerated the adoption of no- and low-till agriculture.

In 2018 alone, farmers who cultivated these GE crops reduced their carbon emissions by 23 billion kilotons, the equivalent of pulling 15.3 million cars off the road. NRDC acknowledged the value of no-till farming, calling it “a technique that leaves the soil intact when planting rather than disturbing the soil through plowing.” But the group has also lambasted glyphosate as “a toxic weed killer.”

This isn’t to say that agrochemicals have no negative impact on the environment, because they certainly do. But that externality has to be balanced against the enormous production increases pesticides and fertilizers enable, which reduce the amount of land we dedicate to farming while feeding more people.

In any case, the solution isn’t to ban technologies that have proven their efficacy in spades. We instead have to devise new solutions that build upon earlier innovations. The end result is an increasingly sustainable food system. This is the key concept Ocasio-Cortez and other ideologues miss when they wax poetic about “regenerative farming techniques.” Let’s give Nordhaus and Saloni the last word:

… [t]here is no shortage of problems associated with chemical-intensive and large-scale agriculture. But the solutions to these problems—be they innovations that allow farmers to deliver fertilizer more precisely to plants when they need it, bioengineered microbial soil treatments that fix nitrogen in the soil and reduce the need for both fertilizer and soil disruption, or genetically modified crops that require fewer pesticides and herbicides—will be technological, giving farmers new tools instead of removing old ones that have been proven critical to their livelihoods.

Footnote When Will Justin Trudeau Stop Acting Like Dumb and Dumber?

 

Beware the Benevolence Bandwagon

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In his American Greatness article Roger Kimball warns of Big Government Benevolence.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole for its object, with unbridled moralism is a toxic, misery-producing brew.

Consider, for example, the actor Jim Carrey, who back in 2018 told Bill Maher that “we have to say yes to socialism—to the word and everything. We have to stop apologizing.”  What a card! Were socialism to be instituted in the United States, one of the first things that would happen is that people like Jim Carrey—estimated net worth, $180 million—would be instantly pauperized. For what are the two fundamental pillars of socialism? 1) The abolition of private property and 2) the equalization of wealth. And the cherry on top of this fudge sundae is that Jim Carrey actually starred in a movie called “Dumb and Dumber,” which is about “two unintelligent but well-meaning friends from Providence, Rhode Island.” Talk about art imitating life.

Let’s leave the latest incarnation of really-existing-socialism—the country of Venezuela—to one side. That is a laboratory demonstration of what happens when you take a prosperous country and rigorously impose socialist policies on it. The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was partly right when he said that the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez showed that there was “another way” of doing politics and “it’s called socialism.”

Corbyn forgot to add: that way leads to universal immiseration and societal collapse, which is exactly what is happening in the once-rich country of Venezuela now.

Jim Carrey—like “It” Girl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—likes to talk about the wonders of socialism whenever there are cameras nearby. It is practically a Pavlovian response: bring media into proximity with educationally challenged scions of capitalist success and, glossolalia-like, out pop nostrums in praise of socialism.

It is easy to make fun of such prognostications. But it is important to understand 1) the emotional motor that continues to drive them—hence Carrey, Ocasio-Cortez, Jeremy Corbyn, et al.—and 2) the disastrous reality that is the inevitable obverse of that smiling emotional impulse.

So, what is the emotional motor of socialism? In a word, benevolence.

That may seem counterintuitive. Isn’t benevolence a good thing?

That depends. Benevolence is a curious mental or characterological attribute. It is, as the philosopher David Stove observed, less a virtue than an emotion. To be benevolent means—what? To be disposed to relieve the misery and increase the happiness of others. Whether your benevolent attitude or action actually has that effect is beside the point. Yes, “benevolence, by the very meaning of the word,” Stove writes, “is a desire for the happiness, rather than the misery, of its object.” But here’s the rub:

the fact simply is that its actual effect is often the opposite of the intended one. The adult who had been hopelessly ‘spoilt’ in childhood is the commonest kind of example; that is, someone who is unhappy in adult life because his parents were too successful, when he was a child, in protecting him from every source of unhappiness.

It’s not that benevolence is a bad thing per se. It’s just that, like charity, it works best the more local are its aims. Enlarged, it becomes like that “telescopic philanthropy” Dickens attributes to Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House. Her philanthropy is more ardent the more abstract and distant its objects. When it comes to her own family, she is hopeless.

The sad truth is that theoretical benevolence is compatible
with any amount of practical indifference or even cruelty.

You feel kindly towards others. That is what matters: your feelings. The effects of your benevolent feelings in the real world are secondary, or rather totally irrelevant. Rousseau was a philosopher of benevolence. So was Karl Marx. Yet everywhere that Marx’s ideas have been put into practice, the result has been universal immiseration. But his intention was the benevolent one of forging a more equitable society by abolishing private property and, to adopt a famous phrase from Barack Obama, by spreading the wealth around.

An absolute commitment to benevolence, like the road that is paved with good intentions, typically leads to an unprofitable destination.

Just so with the modern welfare state. It doesn’t matter that the welfare state actually creates more of the poverty and dependence it was instituted to abolish. The intentions behind it are benevolent. Which is one of the reasons it is so seductive. It flatters the vanity of those who espouse it even as it nourishes the egalitarian ambitions that have always been at the center of Enlightened thought. This is why Stove describes benevolence as “the heroin of the Enlightened.” It is intoxicating, addictive, expensive, and ultimately ruinous.

The intoxicating effects of benevolence help to explain the growing appeal of politically correct attitudes about everything from “the environment” to the fate of the Third World. Why does the consistent failure of statist policies not disabuse their advocates of the statist agenda? One reason is that statist policies have the sanction of benevolence. They are “against poverty,” “against war,” “against oppression,” “for the environment.” And why shouldn’t they be? Where else are the pleasures of smug self-righteousness to be had at so little cost?

The intoxicating effects of benevolence—what Rousseau called the “indescribably sweet” feeling of virtue—also help to explain why unanchored benevolence is inherently expansionist. The party of benevolence is always the party of big government.

The imperatives of benevolence are intrinsically opposed to
the pragmatism that underlies the allegiance to limited government.

The union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole for its object, with unbridled moralism is a toxic, misery-producing brew.  This “lethal combination” is by no means peculiar to Communists. It provides the emotional fuel for utopians from Robespierre to the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today, not to mention chattering celebrities like Jim Carrey who think it is chic to praise a philosophy that, were it instantiated, would entail his impoverishment and probably his incarceration.

Perhaps these folks mean well. Or perhaps they are just unstoppable narcissists and intolerant ideologues. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they really do seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Maybe inequality really does outrage their sense of justice.

Such attitudes are all but ubiquitous in modern democratic societies. Although of relatively recent vintage, they have spread rapidly. The triumph of this aspect of Enlightened thinking, as David Stove notes, marked the moment when “the softening of human life became the great, almost the only, moral desideratum.”

The modern welfare state is one result of the triumph of abstract benevolence. Its chief effects are to institutionalize dependence on the state while also assuring the steady growth of the bureaucracy charged with managing government largess. Both help to explain why the welfare state has proved so difficult to dismantle.

Is there an alternative? Stove quotes Thomas Malthus’ observation, from his famous Essay on the Principle of Population, that “we are indebted for all the noblest exertions of human genius, for everything that distinguishes the civilised from the savage state,” to “the laws of property and marriage, and to the apparently narrow principle of self-interest which prompts each individual to exert himself in bettering his condition.” The apparently narrow principle of self-interest, mind.

Contrast that robust, realistic observation with Robert Owen’s blather about replacing the “individual selfish system” with a “united social” system that, he promised, would bring forth a “new man.”

Stove observes that Malthus’ arguments for the genuinely beneficent effects of “the apparently narrow principle of self-interest” “cannot be too often repeated.” Indeed. Even so, a look around at the childish pretended enthusiasm for socialism makes me think that, for all his emphasis, David Stove understated the case. Jim Carrey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and a college student near you) would profit by having a closer acquaintance with the clear-eyed thinking of Thomas Malthus.

Footnote: Don’t Forget Brazil

 

 

 

US Feds Directing Big Tech Censorship? Discovery Begins.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Adam Mill explains in his American Greatness article Is the Government Directing Big Tech Censorship? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Details in a case filed in a federal district court suggest government-directed censorship on social media and the most comprehensive interference in a domestic election in the history of the nation.

We’ve heard it a thousand times: “The First Amendment doesn’t apply to private social media platforms.” That statement, however, presumes the private company’s independence from government action. But what if the social media platform defers censorship decisions to the government itself? Can the government circumvent free speech protections by using a cut-out to censor citizen speech critical of its policies or preferred political candidates?

An explosive case filed in the Federal District Court of the Western District of Louisiana may shine a light on the federal government’s role in Big Tech censorship.

On July 12, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty (appointed by President Trump in 2017) granted permission for plaintiffs to conduct discovery into whether federal agencies violated the First Amendment rights of Americans by allegedly directing social media platforms to censor disfavored viewpoints and content. These topics include, “Speech about the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns, and speech about election integrity and security of voting by mail.” More importantly, these agencies stand accused of working with social media companies to suppress, “The Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 Presidential election.”

If true, the government-directed censorship constitutes the most comprehensive interference in a domestic election in the history of the nation.

According to plaintiffs, the alleged government-sponsored tech censorship is ongoing. Plaintiffs filed a “Motion for Preliminary Injunction,” requesting an order prohibiting government defendants from, “taking steps to . . . encourage, pressure . . . any social-media company or platform to censor, suppress,” etc., “. . . any speaker, content, or viewpoint expressed on social media.” The attorneys general for the states of Missouri and Louisiana brought the lawsuit against various federal agencies on behalf of residents of each of these states.

The government opposed the lawsuit arguing that the states lacked standing to challenge government efforts to suppress speech on social media platforms. The court denied this challenge noting the states have standing because the laws and constitution of each state guarantee their residents free speech. The court noted that the lawsuit alleged injuries which, “are ‘imminent’ and allegedly ‘on-going,’ due to allegations of social media suspensions, removals of disfavored viewpoints, and censorship.” Federal agency suppression of citizen free speech, if proven, violates the laws and constitutions of those states.

The plaintiffs seek to force the federal government to reveal “the identities of federal officials who have or are communicating with social-media platforms about disinformation, misinformation . . . or any form of censorship or suppression of online speech,” in addition to “the nature and content of such federal officials’ communication with such social media platforms.” The plaintiffs have also asked for permission to “serve third-party subpoenas,” on selected social media platforms seeking, “similar information about the identity of federal officials who communicate with them, and the nature and content of these communications.”

Anticipating bad-faith objections and legal gymnastics to obstruct discovery, the plaintiffs further requested the court to rule on all objections. The court found, “the requests are reasonable,” and that, “Missouri and Louisiana have shown good cause for expedited,” discovery to aid in the resolution of the requested preliminary injunction. The court granted permission to the plaintiffs to serve the federal agencies with written discovery and third party subpoenas on “up to five major social-media platforms,” regarding the alleged coordination between the government and the platforms to censor and suppress speech. The judge then granted a mere 30 days for the federal agencies to respond.

What’s more, the court informed the federal agencies that it would promptly rule on any attempts to thwart the requests. The court even established a schedule for ruling on the preliminary injunction.

In October 2020, immediately after the release of the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the Daily Mail reported Facebook told Congress that it censored the information after the FBI told the platform that the information came from a “hack and leak” Russian disinformation campaign. The New York Post, which exclusively reported on much of the information, fiercely contested this claim—providing a detailed account of how a computer repair store owner legally obtained the laptop. Indeed, the Daily Mail published copies of a receipt bearing Hunter Biden’s signature which appeared to confirm the Post’s account of the origins of the story.

While the public has known about a letter signed by more than 50 former intelligence officials characterizing the laptop story as Russian disinformation, this is something different. A confirmation that current government officials helped censor the story would represent a significant development in the saga. As noted by the Epoch Times, the media coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story likely impacted the election outcome. If, as the plaintiffs allege, the social media companies acted at the direction of federal agencies falsely disputing the authenticity of the laptop, such a scandal would raise serious questions about the fairness of the 2020 election.

Footnote on Free And Fair Elections

Those who monitor elections internationally evaluate whether the process was both “Free” and “Fair.”  A free election is one in which all voters have unfettered access to all messaging by all candidates.  Violations include silencing opposition by putting them in prison or by destroying their media.  A fair election is one in which each eligible voter has one and only one vote counted.  Pieces of paper with marks on them are not ballots until it is determined that those marks were made by a lawful voter in the time and manner prescribed by the legislature. Only after that bar is crossed for every ballot is it possible to have an election.

Spanish Eyes Imaginary Climate Crisis

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Itxu Díaz  writes from Spain in American Spectator This Hyperventilating Climate Columnist Needs to Calm Down.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Take a deep breath, buddy.

Let me tell you something. The idiot who presides over the government of my country went a couple of days ago to get his picture taken in front of a still smoldering burnt forest after one of the most serious waves of wildfires in the history of Spain. The origin of the fire was unknown at the time of the visit, although we already knew the causes of its rapid spread: the local people are no longer allowed to manage the forest in the way they have been doing for centuries. Rural people are no longer allowed to keep the forests clear of undergrowth, nor are they allowed to bring in sheep and other animals that help to balance it. A barrage of green laws like the ones you are calling for are behind these bans.

When the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, arrived there and made statements, I assumed he would apologize or just show some sympathy towards the victims. But no. All he said was that climate change was to blame for the fire! You might imagine the expressions on the faces of the old farmers as they looked at him from behind blackened faces, their hands swollen and bloody after three days of intense fighting against the flames that had scorched their forest and homes. The funny thing is that he unwittingly told the truth: a reforestation company operating in the area has just admitted that it caused the fire while digging holes for the plantations. This is one of many companies that, driven by climate hysteria, is carrying out massive reforestations to sell greenhouse gas offset credits to large corporations.

So, indeed, climate change was to blame for the fire,
but not in the way you and Sanchez would have us believe.

My prime minister has the same pathology as you. However, Sanchez pretends he cares about the climate because he knows it is the progressive trend of the moment; the truth is that he doesn’t care because of his extreme psychopathy. I’m sure your claim is much more sincere.

I worry about the weather when it’s time to go to the beach, but what keeps me anxious at all hours is inflation, fuel prices, and the threat of a recession in the fall. Things I can touch with my hands. You worry about climate change, and that’s fine, everyone chooses their own ghosts; the bad thing is that the solutions you propose always consist of shearing the middle class with green taxes, sending us to work on bicycles, forcing us to not eat meat, and hindering the work of farmers and ranchers, thanks to whom rich Democrats eat their delicious salads and supreme steaks in Washington.

In short, the solution is to force us to live like back before the first industrial revolution, while the rich and the rulers get to enjoy all the luxuries of the 21st century, use private jets, eat huge steaks, and move around in giant cars escorted by even bigger cars, which I assume all run on rose petals as fuel.

I don’t know, kiddo, go on being overwhelmed by climate change if you want,
but do it with your savings.

You can afford your expensive vices and belief in the climate apocalypse is one of them. Of course, I’m a firm believer in freedom, but you can have them as long as you pay for them with your own damn money. And take a deep breath, buddy, or breathe into a paper bag like in Analyze That, as I heartily wish you a prompt recovery from this nervous climate crisis. I don’t want to even begin to think about your poor nervous system the day you have to deal with, God forbid, a real problem.

Footnote: The Fable of Political Survival

A provincial political leader won the parliamentary election and on the day to take the oath was greeted by the outgoing premier.  Wishing him well, his predecessor gave him three envelopes, explaining it was a tradition.  The envelopes contained advice to be consulted later on if difficulties were encountered.

Not long after taking office, criticisms started up, and the new premier opened the first envelope.  It explained:  “Blame it on the previous administration.”  He followed that advice pointing to past financial mismanagement, and the difficulty undoing bad policies and programs he had inherited.

That calmed things down for awhile, but a year later the excuses were wearing thin.  So he turned to the second envelope which gave the advice:  “Blame it on the federal government.”  A new campaign of announcements focused on delays and shortfalls of federal funding, poor coordination and liaison by federal counterparts, and counterproductive federal policies.

This quieted critics for more than a year, but alas it too began to fall on deaf ears.  It was time to open the third envelope:  ” Blame it on climate change, or else prepare three envelopes.”

See also Climateers Tilting at Windmills 

Ocean SSTs Stay Mild June 2022

Posted on by Ron Clutz


The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

  • The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
  • SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
  • A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated.  HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3.  The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies than v.3. This analysis concerns more recent time periods and depends on very similar differentials as those from v.3 despite higher absolute anomaly values in v.4.  More on what distinguishes HadSST3 and 4 from other SST products at the end. The user guide for HadSST4 is here.

The Current Context

The 2021 year end report included below showed rapid cooling in all regions.  The anomalies then continued in 2022 to remain near the mean since 2015.  This Global Cooling was also evident in the UAH Land and Ocean air temperature ( Tropics Lead Remarkable Cooling June 2022 )

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through June 2022.  A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016. 

Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 were first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in January 2016, and steadily declining back below its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added three bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year.  A fourth NH bump was lower and peaked in September 2018.  As noted above, a fifth peak in August 2019 and a sixth August 2020 exceeded the four previous upward bumps in NH. A smaller NH rise in 2021 peaked in September of that year.

After an upward bump in August, the 2021 yearend Global temp anomaly dropped below the mean, driven by sharp declines in the Tropics and NH. Now in 2022 all regions remain cool and the Global anomaly remains lower than the mean for this period. Despite an upward bump May and June in NH, other regions remained cool leaving the Global anomaly little changed. This year the summer NH upward bump is not joined by warming in the Tropics.

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, double click or open image in new tab.

The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations.  Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015.  This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since.  The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies.  Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July.1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.  The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99.  For the next 2 years, the Tropics stayed down, and the world’s oceans held steady around 0.5C above 1961 to 1990 average.

Then comes a steady rise over two years to a lesser peak Jan. 2003, but again uniformly pulling all oceans up around 0.5C.  Something changes at this point, with more hemispheric divergence than before. Over the 4 years until Jan 2007, the Tropics go through ups and downs, NH a series of ups and SH mostly downs.  As a result the Global average fluctuates around that same 0.5C, which also turns out to be the average for the entire record since 1995.

2007 stands out with a sharp drop in temperatures so that Jan.08 matches the low in Jan. ’99, but starting from a lower high. The oceans all decline as well, until temps build peaking in 2010.

Now again a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cool sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off.  But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average.  In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16.  NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH are offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.)  Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021, then all regions rose to bring the global anomaly above the mean since 1995  June 2021 backed down before warming again slightly in July and August 2021, then cooling slightly in September.  The present 2022 level compares with 2014 and also 2018.

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH.  The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before.  After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

But the peaks coming nearly every summer in HadSST require a different picture.  Let’s look at August, the hottest month in the North Atlantic from the Kaplan dataset.

The AMO Index is from from Kaplan SST v2, the unaltered and not detrended dataset. By definition, the data are monthly average SSTs interpolated to a 5×5 grid over the North Atlantic basically 0 to 70N. The graph shows August warming began after 1992 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since, including 2020, dropping down in 2021.  Because the N. Atlantic has partnered with the Pacific ENSO recently, let’s take a closer look at some AMO years in the last 2 decades.

This graph shows monthly AMO temps for some important years. The Peak years were 1998, 2010 and 2016, with the latter emphasized as the most recent. The other years show lesser warming, with 2007 emphasized as the coolest in the last 20 years. Note the red 2018 line is at the bottom of all these tracks. The heavy blue line shows that 2022 started warm, dropped to the bottom and now is in the middle of all the tracks pictured.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century.  SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.”  The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect.  The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? If the pattern of recent years continues, NH SST anomalies may rise slightly in coming months, but once again, ENSO which has weakened will probably determine the outcome.

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

HadSST is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST4 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean