Author: Ron Clutz

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

 

 

Stopping Phantom Voters Deciding US Elections

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jay Valentine reports what is known about the phantom voting industry and those fighting it for the sake of US election integrity.  His American Thinker article is Election Heroes Are Stopping Fraudulent Voting…Right Now.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The soul of phantom voter fraud is the occasional, non-committed voter.
They show up at the last minute, delivering winning margins.

Actually, nobody shows up. Nor does anyone return an absentee ballot. That magic comes from a wonderful customer service innovation, the Phantom Voter Concierge, who casts the non-committed voters’ votes for them.

1.  Building Reserves of Phantom Voter Identities

Let’s go there.  Voter rolls are crammed with millions of voters who seldom, occasionally, or never vote.  Democrat-leaning organizations run voter registration drives in edge communities, collecting identities they expect will never vote.  You remember ACORN registering drug addicts on city streets? You might have said, “Why?   They will never vote!”

They aren’t expected to vote. They are simply voter identity placeholders
later used by vote-harvesters.

State-funded groups like ERIC are paid by a dozen state governments, some with clueless Republican governors, to make sure almost nobody is ever taken off voter rolls. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) provides institutional cover to this national phantom voter scam.

During early voting, vote-harvesters track those who never voted
or have not voted yet and vote for them.

In some states, like Wisconsin, leftist groups had access to the online voter rolls — something nobody else had. They could track every voter and vote for all of them if they did not show up in 2020.

Remember the stories in 2020 of people coming out to vote, often for the first time in years, to be told, “Sorry, you already voted”? Your Voter Concierge voted for you! Saved you the gas money to drive to the polls!

There are people voting from Salvation Army Food Banks who registered at that address twelve years ago. Those people are likely dead or living in a tent in Austin now — but still voting.

There are people at the Alabama college dorm, registered since 1984, still active and voting.

In Wisconsin, the Voter Concierges went to cognitive care facilities, where the patients did not recognize their own children. Their Voter Concierge voted them. Now part of a criminal investigation, this is how it’s done.

So how bad is the problem?

The Wisconsin voter integrity team did a deep dive, using U.S. government and state databases, and found 225,000 active, current voters who had “issues.” Those included addresses that did not exist; locations that could not be a true registration address, like a jail; and scores of others.

Elections are often decided by 1% of the vote. The Wisconsin team identified potential phantom voters easily able to impact an election.

2.  Creating a Surplus of Empty Ballots

The other half of the scam is sending out absentee ballots to addresses that don’t line up.

For instance, there may be an apartment building at 145 Essex Street. The ballot-harvesting industry registers people there, deliberately skipping their apartment number.

Their mail gets returned to — you guessed it, smarty-pants! Those absentee ballots accumulate at the local Post Office.

The Wisconsin voter integrity team, one of the best in the country, found evidence that the Post Office collected those ballots and gave them to the Voter Concierges — to vote. Pretty good USPS customer service!

You might think this would be caught with signature matching. Right! That is why so many states or counties eliminate the signature match — like Maricopa County in Arizona.

If your blood is boiling right now, you just don’t get it. This is customer service on a whole new level. The Voter Concierge gets votes counted – even if the voter never casts that vote.

3.  Scrubbing Clean the Voter Rolls

Voter integrity teams are now applying advanced computer technology to thwart the Voter Concierge by deep-cleaning the rolls.

In 2022, the vote-harvesting industry will again flood the zone in swing counties with over 250,000 new registrants from September to November.

Several voter integrity teams, using advanced artificial intelligence technology, can check every registrant, at silicon speed, against over 30 databases, with a billion records, ensuring that the registrant is not living in an R.V. park, a church, or a UPS store, and that his address meets current legal standards.

Sorry, Beto, but registering every itinerant is no longer the key to the Texas Governor’s Mansion.

For the first time, phantom voters are being identified before their registrations take effect.

Living in an apartment where you do not designate the apartment number? Sorry, pal — you aren’t voting this year. Registering from a church? There had better be enough bathrooms to meet the certificate of occupancy requirements for that county.

More voters showing up in a county than there are eligible citizens? Flagged hourly! Alert issued before the ballots are counted!

4.  Applying Real-Time Voter Integrity Technology

As ballots arrive during early voting, artificial intelligence snapshots aggregate voter identities. That guy who voted on day 2 in person, disappeared on snapshot 8, reappeared on snapshot 11 with his ballot changed to absentee…is identified.   Before that ballot is tabulated, it is red-flagged, and the voter integrity team files a protest.

Thirty-five thousand inactive voters, changed to active — then voted, then changed to inactive again? The A.I. systems pick this up with snapshot analysis. That scam is over!

For the first time, voter integrity teams have technology ballot-harvesters cannot outrun.

When Sheriff Clarke and Mike Lindell started supporting these kinds of technologies, after the 2020 election, the focus was voter roll anomalies. Anomalies were abundant.

The battlefield has changed to real-time analysis, driven by artificial intelligence.

The combined knowledge of a dozen gifted voter integrity teams, with 16 months of experience, is built into an artificial intelligence engine, identifying phantom voters before they are registered, before they can illegally vote.

Every time a fake vote is cast by a Voter Concierge, an American is disenfranchised.  Artificial intelligence helps the good guys protect the vote and gives confidence to all Americans that their elections are legit.

Voter integrity teams learned that chasing 2020 voter fraud after the election is too late.  Some leading election integrity teams are stopping phantom voter fraud before it impacts elections.  Cleaning up voter rolls just became an A.I.-driven, real time endeavor.

Jay Valentine led the team that built the eBay fraud detection engine and the TSA No-Fly List. Jay’s website is JayValentine.com. He can be reached at Jay@ContingencySales.com.

Explaining Our Enduring Mild Climate

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This post from some years ago was in response to David A. elaborating on his thinking and questions on this topic. There is much uncertain and unknown about the functioning of our climate system. I listen when a seasoned expert such as John Christy says:

“The reason there is so much contention regarding “global warming” is relatively simple to understand: In climate change science we basically cannot prove anything about how the climate will change as a result of adding extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.   So we are left to argue about unprovable claims.”
See Christy’s Data-Based Climate Science

So everyone is theorizing and wondering if and when the best theory will win–that is, become the new conventional wisdom. According to Christy, the science is far from settled, and he has examined the datasets extensively, having built some of them himself.

I have also learned a lot from Nullius in Verba, who is one of best explaining these things to us laymen. For example, he comments:

“It would be slightly more accurate to say that the lapse rate is the vertical temperature gradient at which convection switches off and therefore stops cooling the surface.

The sun warms the surface, but the heat escapes very quickly by convection so the build-up of heat near the surface is limited. In an incompressible atmosphere, it would *all* escape, and you’d get no surface warming. But because air is compressible, and because gases warm up when they’re compressed and cool down when allowed to expand, air circulating vertically by convection will warm and cool at a certain rate due to the changing atmospheric pressure. Air cools as it rises and expands, and warms as it descends and is compressed. This warming/cooling effect means that hot air no longer rises when it would cool faster from expansion than the surrounding air. Cold air can sit on top of warm air and be stable. The adiabatic lapse rate is why the tops of mountains are colder than their bottoms.

It’s a bit like the way a pot of boiling water sticks at a temperature of 100 C. If you turn the gas up, the water boils more vigorously, carrying more energy off as steam, which balances the extra energy supplied and keeps the temperature still at exactly 100 C. The rate at which heat escapes is very non-linear – extremely fast for temperatures above the threshold, extremely slow for temperatures below it. So long as the system is driven hard enough, it will get driven up against the non-linear limit and held there. The lapse rate does the same thing, except that instead of fixing the temperature, it fixes its gradient so you get a rigid slope that can freely float up and down in level.

The temperature at the average altitude of emission to space converges on the temperature that radiates the same energy the Earth absorbs. All levels above and below it are held in a fixed relationship to it by the lapse rate. The temperature at any other level is the temperature at the emission altitude plus the lapse rate times the difference in heights. Hence, the temperature at the surface differs by the lapse rate times the average height of emissions to space.”

“It’s interesting to consider what would happen if you had a strongly absorbing greenhouse material but a zero lapse rate. You’d get lots of backradiation, but no greenhouse warming. By marvelous happenstance we do have such a physical situation in the oceans. Water absorbs all thermal radiation within about 20 microns, making it something like 20,000 times more powerful a greenhouse material than the atmosphere. It’s a (relatively) easy calculation to show that if radiation was the only way heat could be transported, as the backradiation argument assumes, the temperature a metre down would be several thousand degrees! But water is almost incompressible, having a lapse rate of around 0.1 C/km, and so convection nullifies it entirely. Fortunate, eh? . . .”

“The direction of net energy flow is determined only by the difference in temperatures, not the amount of stuff. If you have a big body at a cold temperature next to a small body at a very hot temperature, the cold body might be emitting more heat overall because of its bigger surface area, but the net flow is still from the hot body to the cold. Most of the heat emitted from the big cold body doesn’t hit the small body, because it’s so small. Only the temperature matters.

The way this is arranged varies depending on the configuration, but it always happens. People have had a lot of fun over the years trying to construct exotic arrangements of mirrors and radiators and insulators and heat engines to try to break the rule, but nobody has succeeded yet. The second law of thermodynamics is one of the most thoroughly challenged and tested of all the laws of physics. I do encourage people to try though. The prize on offer is a perpetual motion machine to the lucky winner who defeats it!”

hat tip to Homer Simpson

Nullius in Verba holds forth here:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2471448?currentPage=5

David, I am not a fan of thought experiments about hypothetical worlds with or without CO2. I have read too many threads that go around in circles until everyone turns into wheels.

I do like what E.M. Smith (Chiefio) said sometime ago:

“It is peculiar that everyone is so taken in by the whole notion of the so-called ’radiative greenhouse effect’ being such an ingrained necessity, such a self-evident, requisite part, as it were, of our atmosphere’s inner workings. The ’truth’ and the ’reality’ of the effect is completely taken for granted, a priori. And yet, the actual effect is still only a theoretical construct.

In fact, when looking at the real Earth system, it’s quite evident that this effect is not what’s setting the surface temperature of our planet.

The whole thing can be stated in a simple, yet accurate manner.

The Earth, a rocky sphere at a distance from the Sun of ~149.6 million kilometers, where the Solar irradiance comes in at 1361.7 W/m2, with a mean global albedo, mostly from clouds, of 0.3 and with an atmosphere surrounding it containing a gaseous mass held in place by the planet’s gravity, producing a surface pressure of ~1013 mb, with an ocean of H2O covering 71% of its surface and with a rotation time around its own axis of ~24h, boasts an average global surface temperature of +15°C (288K).

Why this specific temperature? Because, with an atmosphere weighing down upon us with the particular pressure that ours exerts, this is the temperature level the surface has to reach and stay at for the global convectional engine to be able to pull enough heat away fast enough from it to be able to balance the particular averaged out energy input from the Sun that we experience.

It’s that simple.”

Update 1 May 5,2015

David, an additional point of some importance: There is empirical support for the lapse rate existing independent of IR activity.

Global warmists share an assumption that CO2 raises the effective radiating altitude, thereby warming the troposphere and the surface. Now this notion can be found in textbooks and indeed operates in all the climate models. Yet there is no empirical evidence supporting it. What data there is (radiosonde balloon readings) detects no effect from IR active gases upon the temperature profile in the atmosphere.

“It can be seen from the infra-red cooling model of Figure 19 that the greenhouse effect theory predicts a strong influence from the greenhouse gases on the barometric temperature profile. Moreover, the modeled net effect of the greenhouse gases on infra-red cooling varies substantially over the entire atmospheric profile.

However, when we analysed the barometric temperature profiles of the radiosondes in this paper, we were unable to detect any influence from greenhouse gases. Instead, the profiles were very well described by the thermodynamic properties of the main atmospheric gases, i.e., N 2 and O 2 , in a gravitational field.”

While water vapour is a greenhouse gas, the effects of water vapour on the temperature profile did not appear to be related to its radiative properties, but rather its different molecular structure and the latent heat released/gained by water in its gas/liquid/solid phase changes.

For this reason, our results suggest that the magnitude of the greenhouse effect is very small, perhaps negligible. At any rate, its magnitude appears to be too small to be detected from the archived radiosonde data.” Pg. 18 of referenced research paper

Open Peer Rev. J., 2014; 19 (Atm. Sci.), Ver. 0.1. http://oprj.net/articles/atmospheric-science/19 page 18 of 28

In summary David, it is observed and accepted by all that there is a ~33C difference between the temperature at the surface and at the effective radiating level (the tropopause, where convection stops). Warmists attribute that increase in temperature to the IR activity of CO2.

Others, including me, contend that it is the mass of the atmosphere, mostly O2 and N2 delaying the loss of heat from the surface until IR active gases are able to cool the planet effectively without obstruction. That retention of heat in the atmosphere is measurable in the lapse rate. And 90% of the IR activity is due to H2O, especially in the lower troposphere.

See Also Global Warming Theory and the Tests It Fails 

Wrightstone’s Climate Truth Canceled by LinkedIn

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Gregory R. Wrightstone writes at Real Clear Energy LinkedIn Shuts Out Truth — Again.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and some added images

Censors at LinkedIn have permanently banned me from the social media site after I presented data drawn from peer-reviewed data used by the preeminent promoter of the narrative that man-made global warming threatens the planet— the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

How can this be? Well, first, my offending posts placed today’s level of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the context of geological time, suggesting that life would be well served if there were more CO2 — exactly the opposite of what climate alarmists say. Secondly, I’ve had the audacity to publish facts — also know as the truth, multiple times on LinkedIn— that contradict the theory that humans face an “existential threat” from a harmless gas of which each of us daily exhales two pounds.

“Your account has violated the LinkedIn User Agreement and Professional Community Policies,” read the email from the site. “Due to the number and/or the severity of these violations, this account has been permanently restricted.”

The posts were of two charts. One showed that carbon dioxide levels were nearly 6,000 parts per million (ppm) 600 million years ago when many animal life forms first appeared in the Cambrian Era. Another illustrated a 140-million-year decline of CO2 levels — from 2,500 parts per million (ppm) to the current 420 ppm.

Implied in the data is that carbon dioxide levels eventually would drop to 150 ppm, at which point plants — and ultimately all life — begin to die from CO2 starvation. The concentration got as low as 180 ppm in the last ice age about 12,000 years ago. It was at 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

The addition of 140 ppm since then have likely come from man’s activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. If so, human activity has saved the planet from the existential threat of too little CO2. In any case, more of the powerful plant food is a good thing, as evidenced by the overall greening of Earth and record crop harvests of recent decades.

As executive director of the CO2 Coalition, I’ve had previous run-ins with LinkedIn censors. One involved a post about a CO2 Coalition paper on global temperatures. Although LinkedIn did not identify the broken rules, the only possible “violation” would have been an admonition to “not share false or misleading content.” The censored paper, The Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Record, was fully sourced and written by two of the top climate scientists in the world, Richard Lindzen and John Christy.

These are no lightweight scientists. Dr. Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an award recipient of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was a lead author of the IPCC’s third assessment report’s scientific volume.

Professor Christy is the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and has been Alabama’s State Climatologist since 2000. Along with Dr. Roy Spencer, he has maintained one of the key global temperature data sets relied on by scientists and government bodies. For this achievement, they were awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.

Figure 4. As in Fig. 3 except for seasonal station and global anomalies. As noted in the text, the inhabitants of the Earth experience the anomalies as noted by the black circles, not the yellow squares.

The main thrust of the paper was to put the modest one-degree rise in temperature since 1900 in its proper perspective. When compared to wide swings in temperature experienced on a daily and yearly basis, that slight rise in global temperature over the last 120 years does not appear as alarming as portrayed by the purveyors of climate doom. Like so many others who challenge the notion of catastrophic man-made warming, the authors risked being censored by the intellectual elite — or those who identify as such. And they were.

The CO2 Coalition has been attacked by other climate cultists, including Facebook and members of a political class that insists on forcing its ideology on everybody. Obviously, we care more about the truth — and our freedom — than anybody’s approval.

As noted philosopher of science Karl Popper said, “Democracy (that is, a form of government devoted to the protection of the open society) cannot flourish if science becomes the exclusive possession of a closed set of specialists.”

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist, executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and author of “Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know.” He has been an IPCC expert reviewer.

Woke Rights Nullify Others’ Liberties

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Georgi Boorman writes at The Federalist Woke ‘Rights’ Are All Based On Coercion.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The litany of woke entitlements alleged by the left infringe on existing rights,
restricting the freedoms of some in order to benefit others.

When the political left finds a meme they really think sells, they go all-in. Such is the case with “forced birth” or “forced motherhood” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and stated a Constitutional right to abortion does not exist. I wrote recently about how “forced birth” is a nonsensical description of pregnancies resulting (as is almost always the case) from consensual sex. Babies are a natural consequence of sex and procreation is the primary reason sex exists in the first place.

“Forced birth” or “forced motherhood” are projections of the left’s own brutality and reliance on force onto their political and cultural opposition. Abortion is force. Abortion kills; it is a brutal denial of this tiny, developing human’s right to life, the most fundamental of all rights. For the woman’s “right” to be exercised, another life must end.  This wretched truth differs from the left’s construction of other “rights” only in degree, not in kind.

They predicate many of their “fundamental rights” on the coercion of others,
and if a so-called “right” is based on coercion, it is not fundamental,
merely an entitlement guaranteed by a bully state.

Of course, when we speak about coercion, abortion advocates point to exceptional cases such as pregnancy resulting from rape. As I wrote in my last piece, nonconsensual sex, especially resulting in pregnancy, is a grave loss of autonomy. Yet the innocent baby’s more essential right to life supersedes this loss of autonomy for nine months, as difficult a circumstance as it may be. One tragedy should not be compounded by another.

A baby’s right to life obviously doesn’t supersede a mother’s right to life.

That may be a reason to deliver a baby early, even too early to survive, but not a reason for deliberate destruction. What opponents of abortion are referring to, and what is being debated, is not situations in which carrying a preborn baby endangers the mother. The practice we condemn is the premeditated killing of a baby in the womb because that baby is not wanted, whether because of his paternity, apparent defect, or general inconvenience to the parents.

One of the definitions of “coerce” is “to deprive of by force.” So, it is fitting we call this kind of “right” a coercive entitlement. That classification extends far beyond abortion, though abortion is the most heinous of all.

Before further characterizing these coercive entitlements, let me address the other objection that will doubtlessly arise: that all our rights rely on at least the threat of the use of force, so what’s the difference? Force wielded by the state on those who would violate a right, which is the only way rights can be protected, is not the same as coercion or restrictions applied to people in order for a right to be exercised in the first place.

If I give a public speech and someone who hates my views comes and tries to drag me off the stage to shut me up, police should intervene to protect my right and take the perpetrator into custody. If, on the other hand, the police themselves drag me off the stage because my speech violates a law against “hate speech” meant to “protect” certain demographics, or if I don’t make that speech in the first place due to the threat of being dragged off to jail, that is force necessarily applied or threatened in order to guarantee this “right” to not be a victim of “hate speech.”

The Right Not to be Offended

Woke rights are entitlements to coercion and the restriction of others’ rights previously recognized. To protect certain people’s “right to live their true selves,” for example, the far left alleges it has the constitutional right to limit others’ free speech so that some groups are not offended or emotionally wounded. With “misgendering” and “dead-naming,” we must in some cases be forced into certain speech for this right to “be one’s authentic self” to exist.

Again, with transgender athletes: it isn’t “equality” unless all institutions are forced to allow them to compete with the sex with which they identify. The right of parents to protect their children is also threatened by the left as children far below the age of consent are alleged to have the “right” to do permanent and severe damage to their bodies with so-called gender transition. They allege this “right” while children face social contagions they’re poorly equipped to handle and gender doctrines that confuse rather than elucidate. The right of parents to make medical decisions for minors are critical in these circumstances, and the far left would have them erased.

More Coercion Regarding Gays, Lockdowns

The alleged “right to equal treatment” for gay couples a la Masterpiece Cake Shop also relies on coercion. The left claims true “equality” isn’t achieved unless bakers, photographers, and floral designers can be forced to express views or support behaviors they disagree with.

Consider more recently the left’s fervent support for lockdowns in the name of a supposed “right” to not be infected, smearing those who disagree with them, who simply want to exercise their freedom to live a normal life, as “reckless” and “murderous.” The alleged entitlement to a reduced threat of Covid infection (or insert latest panic-inducing pathogen here) is dependent on restricting the more basic freedoms of others. Mask and vaccine mandates follow the same flawed logic.

Affirmative Action and Taxes

Universities likewise violate the right to equal treatment under the law through affirmative action. Applicants of certain minority statuses are given preferential treatment while non-minority applications may be “downgraded” simply due to applicants’ ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. The left would see affirmative action expanded and racial quotas in employment, now banned, used widely.

Even the most basic right to keep the money you earn has been infringed upon for decades by the government expressly for the purpose of distributing it to others who earn less. Those with fewer resources are entitled to the resources gained by others, according to the left.

Supplanting Natural Rights

The new, “woke” set of rights are just more aggressive iterations of this long-standing belief of the left: government must take some of the wealth, opportunity, freedoms, and rights of some in order to benefit others. Thus, the leftist coercive rights supplant natural rights identified by the Framers of our Constitution, rights that come from the Creator. Abortion as a “fundamental” right supplants the right to life. They cannot coexist. The rights to not be “victimized” by disfavored speech and to “be one’s true self” and be “equal” supplant the right to free speech. The “right” to not be infected with a certain pathogen supplants the rights to move about freely and to peaceably assemble. The latter rights must be abridged to uphold the new ones.

The “forced birth” talking point discussed above reminds us what is inside this trojan horse of entitlements alleged to be “civil rights” or “fundamental human rights:” bondage. The only real fundamental right leftists believe in is the right of the state to use force in enacting their agenda. From abortion to so-called gender transition, these new rights are definitionally authoritarian, abridging pre-existing rights to support themselves.

The quest of the woke left to free themselves from biological realities and natural order, as in the case of abortion, gender, and sexuality, and to achieve a more “equitable” society, relies on submission, subjugation, and if necessary, lethal force. The truth remains amid the temper tantrums and the angry memes:

There is no free, thriving society that can be achieved through the use of force
by one group of citizens in the name of another.

 

Trans Ideology Vs. Anthropology

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Lucy Exhibit, 3.2 million year old humanoid, National Museum of Ethiopia

The woke progressives are hell-bent on erasing all historical wisdom in order revolutionize society.  If you thought traditional disciplines like Archeology and Anthropology would be spared, think again.  The gender and racist zealots are outraged that ancestors like Lucy were given feminine names, (or others masculine ones) despite our not knowing whether or not they identified with their own anatomy.  And as well, it’s an insult to the living who want to keep their gender options open.

The woke worms are hard at work on the foundation of human knowledge about humans, as Christian Schneider writes at College Fix Gender activists push to bar anthropologists from identifying human remains as ‘male’ or ‘female’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Argue scientists cannot know how an ancient individual identified themselves

As soon as ancient human remains are excavated, archaeologists begin the work of determining a number of traits about the individual, including age, race and gender.

But a new school of thought within archaeology is pushing scientists to think twice about assigning gender to ancient human remains.

It is possible to determine whether a skeleton is from a biological male or female using objective observations based on the size and shape of the bones. Criminal forensic detectives, for example, do it frequently in their line of work.

But gender activists argue scientists cannot know how an ancient individual identified themselves.

“You might know the argument that the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex,” tweeted Canadian Master’s degree candidate Emma Palladino last week.

She is not alone. Gender activists have formed a group called the Trans Doe Task Force to “explore ways in which current standards in forensic human identification do a disservice to people who do not clearly fit the gender binary.”

“We propose a gender-expansive approach to human identification by combing missing and unidentified databases looking for contextual clues such as decedents wearing clothing culturally coded to a gender other than their assigned sex,” the group’s mission statement reads.

This February, University of Kansas Associate Professor Jennifer Raff published “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” in which she argued that there are “no neat divisions between physically or genetically ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals.”

Raff suggested scientists cannot know the gender of a 9,000 year-old biologically Peruvian hunter because they don’t know whether the hunter identified as male or female – a “duality” concept she says was “imposed by Christian colonizers.”

Some archaeologists push back at the effort to de-gender human remains.

San Jose State archaeology Professor Elizabeth Weiss told The Fix that eliminating gender classifications amounts to “ideologically-motivated fudging.” Weiss said there is a move among academics “toward getting all of the academy’s favored shibboleths to accord with one another.”

Weiss said the recent explosion in the number of people identifying as transgender suggests that trend is “social and not biological,” so “retroactively de-sexing obscures this obvious fact.”

She noted that applying biological sex to remains often helps dispel myths detrimental to women.

“Some early anthropologists sometimes mistook some robust female skeletons as male skeletons, particularly in the Aleut and Inuit collections; this reinforced false stereotypes that females were not as hard working as males,” she said. “Over time, biological anthropologists and archaeologists worked hard to determine which traits are determined by sex, regardless of time and culture. This new policy of erasing this progress is a step back for science and women.”

“Sexing skeletal remains is a critical skill in forensics and any diminishing of this skill will negatively impact criminal investigations, denying the victims and their families justice,” she said.

Weiss is joined by University of Cambridge scholar Jennifer Chisolm, who has argued analyses that posit transgender individuals played a large part in Indigenous populations are often ahistorical, and can even distract “from the contemporary discrimination [such individuals] face within their own communities.”

Gender politics are not the only ideology to work its way into anthropology and archaeology. Some activists have called for scientists to cease classifying remains by race, as well.

“Ancestry estimation contributes to white supremacy,” DiGangi and Bethard wrote, labeling the practice “dangerous.”

Others have called for changing primate names that were derived from white white men from the northern hemisphere. The activists argue that continuing to use the current names is “perpetuating colonialism and white supremacy.”

“This is just another attempt to insert a current woke ideology where it doesn’t belong,” Weiss said.

 

 

 

 

 

Monkeypox Hygiene Advice

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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!)

Growing Backlash Against Covid/Climate Tyranny

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Andrea Widburg writes at American Thinker Fighting back against COVID and Climate Change tyranny.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The phrase “New World Order” (“NWO”) is a loaded term. For starters, the people who are pushing for a single world government prefer to call it “The Great Reset.” Additionally, NWO sounds like the ultimate conspiracy theory, complete with indivisible dots, imaginary lines, and tin foil hats. And yet there’s no doubt that the self-anointed elites across the world have coalesced around a single vision that involves ending fossil fuel and achieving total control over individuals to “protect” them from COVID. Still, people across the globe are pushing back and one group has a global vision of what this pushback can look like.

During COVID’s first two years, we learned that most First World governments happily embraced tyranny. Even in the face of mountains of evidence that the lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates did nothing to improve the situation, governments not only didn’t stop, but they also dug in deeper, systematically taking away people’s rights.

No person embodied this more than Canada’s Justin Trudeau, who went from fuzzy tree hugger to steely-eyed tyrant overnight. Canada is still in deep lockdown mode, right there with China, with millions of gleeful fascist apparatchiks happily imposing the government’s diktats:

With COVID losing its power to frighten people, the world’s budding dictators are reverting to Climate Change to clamp down on power. The most recent outburst of this madness was in Holland, where the government announced that it was shutting down farmland (i.e., the place where food is grown) essentially to stop fertilizer and cow farts. (I simplify a bit but you know what I mean.) The farmers pushed back hard.

The Hague: Thousands of farmers drove their tractors along roads and highways across the Netherlands, snarling morning traffic as they headed for a mass protest against the Dutch government’s plans to rein in emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia.

And indeed, although it never makes it to the New York Times or Washington Post unless they can no longer avoid the topic, people all over the world are pushing back at COVID and Climate Change totalitarianism:

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which records protests worldwide, 11 countries are currently seeing protests of more than 1,000 people in response to the rising cost of living and other economic woes in 2022. As of July 5, Carnegie had recorded protests of more than 120,000 people in France, 100,000 in Spain, 10,000 in Greece, 10,000 in Kazakhstan, 10,000 in Sri Lanka, 10,000 in India, 5,000 in Iran, 5,000 in Peru, 1,000 people in Argentina, 1,000 in Morocco, and 1,000 in the U.K.

It’s Americans who are behind the curve on this one for two possible reasons. One, we believe our Constitution will protect us. And while it certainly offers protections in theory, there’s every reason to believe that the Democrats currently controlling the federal government have no intention of letting it offer those protections in fact. Two, the Democrats’ January 6 “insurrection” hysteria has frightened Americans into abandoning their First Amendment rights.

But just as the tech world offers governments unprecedented power to control individuals by monitoring their every word, thought, and move, technology also can still be used to bring people across the world together in one giant, peaceful “NO!” against the gathering forces of tyranny. That’s the goal of an organization called Reignite World Freedom.

The organization’s mission is simple: End the globalism that is wrapping itself around the earth like a giant chain, magnifying the power of world governments stealing away their citizens’ liberty. The organization hopes to have what it calls a “global walk out.”

A unified, global event and convoy to your capital city.

Unelected bureaucracies like The World Health Organization (WHO) and The World Economic Forum (WEF) should not have the power to dictate policies in our countries.

Let’s send them a clear message they can’t ignore.

It’s time for governments around the world to consider replacing and leaving these ‘globalist’ organizations.

I.How will the Global Walkout work?

1.A global WALK OUT from the society they’re trying to enslave us into, including an optional convoy to occupy your capital city. The length of the walkout will depend on the momentum built in each country.

2.We will not announce the walk out dates until we have enough pledges worldwide.

3.If you can’t participate in the convoy, that’s fine. You can still commit to walk out for as long as you can.

4.You can choose one or more of these options when you pledge;

  • Walk out of work and have a holiday.
  • Walk your children out of school.
  • Walk away from spending money at corporations that support globalism.
  • Walk away from consuming any mainstream media or streaming channels.
  • Convoy to your capital city on the scheduled dates (yet to be announced).
    Read more here.

The organizers want people to sign a pledge before setting a date.

I don’t know how well this fascinating idea will work in the U.S., especially because of the January 6 crackdown. Still, if people don’t push back against the COVID and Climate Change cudgels, we will enter a new dark age (literally dark, as in no fossil fuels) in which most Westerners, after decades of prosperity, live in squalor and despair.