Oceans Cooling May 2020

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, the latest version being HadSST3.  More on what distinguishes HadSST3 from other SST products at the end.

The Current Context

The cool 2020 Spring is not just your local experience, it’s the result of Earth’s ocean cooling off after last summer’s warming in the Northern Hemisphere.  The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3 starting in 2015 through May 2020.
A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.  In 2019 all regions had been converging to reach nearly the same value in April.

Then  NH rose exceptionally by almost 0.5C over the four summer months, in August exceeding previous summer peaks in NH since 2015.  In the 4 succeeding months, that warm NH pulse has reversed sharply.  May NH anomaly is up a little from March but matching last November.  SH and Tropics SSTs bumped upward in March, but dropped sharply since. In May the Global anomaly is the same as December 2019.

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 exceeded the four previous upward bumps in NH.

And as before, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one.  The major difference between now and 2015-2016 is the absence of Tropical warming driving the SSTs.

A longer view of SSTs

The graph below  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.

To enlarge open image in new tab.

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 0.2C 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 0.4C.  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 0.4C, 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 peak came in 2019, only this time the Tropics and SH are offsetting rather adding to the warming. Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. Now in January 2020 last summer’s unusually high NH SSTs have been erased. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.)

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 warming began after 1992 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since. 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 black line shows that 2020 began slightly warm, then set records for 3 months before dropping below 2016 and 2017.

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 HadSST3

HadSST3 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.

HadSST3 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

George Was Foil for Climate Uprising

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The rampage in Minneapolis was apparently planned ahead of time by organizers of the Sunrise Movement, who are committed to mayhem in the name of climate, as much or more so than Extinction Rebellion.  The scoop comes from Millenium Millie, supported by undercover reporters.
 
 
We have sources imbedded within these groups to get to the bottom of where all this leftist radicalization is coming from. We got their plans, manuals, intercepted internal communications, and have recordings of their zoom chats.
 

What you are about to see is part of a two year undercover investigation into the leftist radicalization imbedded within the climate justice movement that contributed to the riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this first video, we are going to show how the Sunrise Movement played a preemptive role in carrying out the mayhem, taking advantage of George Floyd’s death and using it as a trigger point, to further push their Green New Deal agenda and promoting the abolition of the police.

What some parents may have thought were innocent youth organizations genuinely fostered and ran by children are actually top-down monolithic structures with private intelligence, military contractors, and foreign interests influencing children to carry out their subversive objectives.

The events that erupted in Minneapolis, Minnesota were not a spontaneous reaction to the murder of George Floyd. These were well planned events anticipating some perfect trigger point to bring about the “new normal” – a world without police, without borders, without industry, without wealth, without private property, without an economy – a world based on communist ideals imbedded within the Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal is not about climate change, it is about climate justice – a radical new ideology hellbent on destroying western civilization under the false pretense that white supremacy is the leading cause of climate change, social injustice and all problems globally.

The organizers of these Youth Non-government Organizations, or Youngos, embellish white supremacy as a systemic problem, hyper-focusing on statistically rare instances of racial inequality and injustice, while ignoring great strides of progress the United States has made over the past century towards equal opportunity and criminal justice reform. However, in order to normalize radical policies put forth by the Green New Deal, crises have to be capitalized on to further their agenda while destroying the great accomplishments of civil rights movements of the past.

We didn’t expect to find organizers radicalizing middle school and high school children teaching them military tactics and preparation for high risk actions. Some of these tactics include escalation provocation techniques, blocking freeway traffic, and how to get arrested bogging-down law enforcement in the name of destroying capitalism to make way for the Green New Deal.


N. Atlantic May 2020

Posted on by Ron Clutz

RAPID Array measuring North Atlantic SSTs.

For the last few years, observers have been speculating about when the North Atlantic will start the next phase shift from warm to cold. The way 2018 went and 2019 followed suggested this may be the onset.  However, 2020 started out against that trend, now backing off a bit.  First some background.

. Source: Energy and Education Canada

An example is this report in May 2015 The Atlantic is entering a cool phase that will change the world’s weather by Gerald McCarthy and Evan Haigh of the RAPID Atlantic monitoring project. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

This is known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and the transition between its positive and negative phases can be very rapid. For example, Atlantic temperatures declined by 0.1ºC per decade from the 1940s to the 1970s. By comparison, global surface warming is estimated at 0.5ºC per century – a rate twice as slow.

In many parts of the world, the AMO has been linked with decade-long temperature and rainfall trends. Certainly – and perhaps obviously – the mean temperature of islands downwind of the Atlantic such as Britain and Ireland show almost exactly the same temperature fluctuations as the AMO.

Atlantic oscillations are associated with the frequency of hurricanes and droughts. When the AMO is in the warm phase, there are more hurricanes in the Atlantic and droughts in the US Midwest tend to be more frequent and prolonged. In the Pacific Northwest, a positive AMO leads to more rainfall.

A negative AMO (cooler ocean) is associated with reduced rainfall in the vulnerable Sahel region of Africa. The prolonged negative AMO was associated with the infamous Ethiopian famine in the mid-1980s. In the UK it tends to mean reduced summer rainfall – the mythical “barbeque summer”.Our results show that ocean circulation responds to the first mode of Atlantic atmospheric forcing, the North Atlantic Oscillation, through circulation changes between the subtropical and subpolar gyres – the intergyre region. This a major influence on the wind patterns and the heat transferred between the atmosphere and ocean.

The observations that we do have of the Atlantic overturning circulation over the past ten years show that it is declining. As a result, we expect the AMO is moving to a negative (colder surface waters) phase. This is consistent with observations of temperature in the North Atlantic.

Cold “blobs” in North Atlantic have been reported, but they are usually winter phenomena. For example in April 2016, the sst anomalies looked like this

But by September, the picture changed to this

And we know from Kaplan AMO dataset, that 2016 summer SSTs were right up there with 1998 and 2010 as the highest recorded.

As the graph above suggests, this body of water is also important for tropical cyclones, since warmer water provides more energy.  But those are annual averages, and I am interested in the summer pulses of warm water into the Arctic. As I have noted in my monthly HadSST3 reports, most summers since 2003 there have been warm pulses in the north atlantic, and 2019 was one of them.

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 the warmest month August beginning to rise after 1993 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since.  December 2017 set a record at 20.6C, but note the plunge down to 20.2C for December 2018, matching 2011 as the coldest years since 2000. December 2019 shows an uptick but still lower than 2016-2017.

December 2019 confirmed the summer pulse weakening, along with 2018 well below other recent peak years since 1998. Then came a surprise in 2020.  Because McCarthy refers to hints of cooling to come in the N. Atlantic, let’s take a closer look at some AMO years in the last 2 decades.

The 2020 North Atlantic Surprise

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 was at the bottom of all these tracks.  2019 began slightly cooler than January 2018, then tracked closely before rising in the summer months.  Through December 2019 tracked warmer than 2018 but cooler than other recent years in the North Atlantic.

In 2020 following a warm January, N. Atlantic temps in February, March and April were the highest in the record. Now May 2020 temps are still warm but lower than May 2016 and 2017.  That is a concern for the upcoming hurricane season, along with the lack of a Pacific El Nino providing wind shear against developing tropical storms.

More recently, temps in higher Atlantic latitudes (45N to 65N) have cooled, as shown in this graph and map from Tropical Tidbits (Levi Cowan)

Footnote:  Levi Cowan’s Tropical Tidbits is an excellent source of information regarding tropical storm activity, even before disturbances are assigned names, as well as ones like tropical storm Christobal now raining over states in the midwest.

Update: Stories vs. Facts

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This post revisits a previous discussion of how public discourse is increasingly governed by stories at the expense of facts.  The recent street violence provides another example.  NYT columnist Bari Weiss provides an insider’s look at how the media produces stories instead of reports.

Bari Weiss Twitter Thread

The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same. (Thread.)

The Old Guard lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism. They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption.

The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it “safetyism,” in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.

Perhaps the cleanest example of this dynamic was in 2018, when David Remnick, under tremendous public pressure from his staffers, disinvited Steve Bannon from appearing on stage at the New Yorker Ideas Festival. But there are dozens and dozens of examples.

I’ve been mocked by many people over the past few years for writing about the campus culture wars. They told me it was a sideshow. But this was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them.

I’m in no way surprised by what has now exploded into public view. In a way, it’s oddly comforting: I feel less alone and less crazy trying to explain the dynamic to people. What I am shocked by is the speed. I thought it would take a few years, not a few weeks.

Here’s one way to think about what’s at stake: The New York Times motto is “all the news that’s fit to print.” One group emphasizes the word “all.” The other, the word “fit.”

W/r/t Tom Cotton’s oped and the choice to run it: I agree with our critics that it’s a dodge to say “we want a totally open marketplace of ideas!” There are limits. Obviously. The question is: does his view fall outside those limits? Maybe the answer is yes.

If the answer is yes, it means that the view of more than half of Americans are unacceptable. And perhaps they are. https://theweek.com/speedreads/917760/plurality-democrats-support-calling-military-aid-police-during-protests-poll-shows …

“A plurality of Democrats would support calling in the U.S. military to aid police during protests,…
President Trump on Monday threatened to call in the United States military in an effort to curtail protests across the United States, and it turns out most Americans — even some of those who think the president is doing a poor job of handling the demonstrations against police brutality — would support such an action.”

Background from Previous Post

Facts vs Stories is written by Steven Novella at Neurologica. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

There is a common style of journalism, that you are almost certainly very familiar with, in which the report starts with a personal story, then delves into the facts at hand often with reference to the framing story and others like it, and returns at the end to the original personal connection. This format is so common it’s a cliche, and often the desire to connect the actual new information to an emotional story takes over the reporting and undermines the facts.

This format reflects a more general phenomenon – that people are generally more interested in and influenced by a good narrative than by dry facts. Or are we? New research suggests that while the answer is still generally yes, there is some more nuance here (isn’t there always?). The researchers did three studies in which they compared the effects of strong vs weak facts presented either alone or embedded in a story. In the first two studies the information was about a fictitious new phone. The weak fact was that the phone could withstand a fall of 3 feet. The strong fact was that the phone could withstand a fall of 30 feet. What they found in both studies is that the weak fact was more persuasive when presented embedded in a story than alone, while the strong fact was less persuasive.

They then did a third study about a fictitious flu medicine, and asked subjects if they would give their e-mail address for further information. People are generally reluctant to give away their e-mail address unless it’s worth it, so this was a good test of how persuasive the information was. When a strong fact about the medicine was given alone, 34% of the participants were willing to provide their e-mail. When embedded in a story, only 18% provided their e-mail.  So, what is responsible for this reversal of the normal effect that stories are generally more persuasive than dry facts?

The authors suggest that stories may impair our ability to evaluate factual information.

This is not unreasonable, and is suggested by other research as well. To a much greater extent than you might think, cognition is a zero-sum game. When you allocate resources to one task, those resources are taken away from other mental tasks (this basic process is called “interference” by psychologists). Further, adding complexity to brain processing, even if this leads to more sophisticated analysis of information, tends to slow down the whole process. And also, parts of the brain can directly suppress the functioning of other parts of the brain. This inhibitory function is actually a critical part of how the brain works together.

Perhaps the most dramatic relevant example of this is a study I wrote about previously in which fMRI scans were used to study subjects listening to a charismatic speaker that was either from the subjects religion or not. When a charismatic speaker that matched the subject’s religion was speaking, the critical thinking part of the brain was literally suppressed. In fact this study also found opposite effects depending on context.

The contrast estimates reveal a significant increase of activity in response to the non-Christian speaker (compared to baseline) and a massive deactivation in response to the Christian speaker known for his healing powers. These results support recent observations that social categories can modulate the frontal executive network in opposite directions corresponding to the cognitive load they impose on the executive system.

So when listening to speech from a belief system we don’t already believe, we engaged our executive function. When listening to speech from within our existing belief system, we suppressed our executive function.

In regards to the current study, is something similar going on? Does processing the emotional content of stories impair our processing of factual information, which is a benefit for weak facts but actually a detriment to the persuasive power of strong facts that are persuasive on their own?

Another potential explanation occurs to me, however (showing how difficult it can be to interpret the results of psychological research like this). It is a reasonable premise that a strong fact is more persuasive on it’s own than a weak fact – being able to survive a 3 foot fall is not as impressive as a 30 foot fall. But, the more impressive fact may also trigger more skepticism. I may simply not believe that a phone could survive such a fall. If that fact, however, is presented in a straightforward fashion, it may seem somewhat credible. If it is presented as part of a story that is clearly meant to persuade me, then that might trigger more skepticism. In fact, doing so is inherently sketchy. The strong fact is impressive on its own, why are you trying to persuade me with this unnecessary personal story – unless the fact is BS.There is also research to support this hypothesis. When a documentary about a fringe topic, like UFOs, includes the claim that, “This is true,” that actually triggers more skepticism. It encourages the audience to think, “Wait a minute, is this true?” Meanwhile, including a scientists who says, “This is not true,” may actually increase belief, because the audience is impressed that the subject is being taken serious by a scientist, regardless of their ultimate conclusion. But the extent of such backfire effects remains controversial in psychological research – it appears to be very context dependent.

I would summarize all this by saying that – we can identify psychological effects that relate to belief and skepticism. However, there are many potential effects that can be triggered in different situations, and interact in often complex and unpredictable ways. So even when we identify a real effect, such as the persuasive power of stories, it doesn’t predict what will happen in every case. In fact, the net statistical effect may disappear or even reverse in certain contexts, because it is either neutralized or overwhelmed by another effect. I think that is what is happening here.

What do you do when you are trying to be persuasive, then? The answer has to be – it depends? Who is your audience? What claims or facts are you trying to get across? What is the ultimate goal of the persuasion (public service, education, political activism, marketing)? I don’t think we can generate any solid algorithm, but we do have some guiding rules of thumb.

First, know your audience, or at least those you are trying to persuade. No message will be persuasive to everyone.

If the facts are impressive on their own, let them speak for themselves. Perhaps put them into a little context, but don’t try to wrap them up in an emotional story. That may backfire.

Depending on context, your goal may be to not just provide facts, but to persuade your audience to reject a current narrative for a better one. In this case the research suggests you should both argue against the current narrative, and provide a replacement that provides an explanatory model.

So you can’t just debunk a myth, conspiracy theory, or misconception. You need to provide the audience with another way to make sense of their world.

When possible find common ground. Start with the premises that you think most reasonable people will agree with, then build from there.

Now, it’s not my goal to outline how to convince people of things that are not true, or that are subjective but in your personal interest. That’s not what this blog is about. I am only interested in persuading people to portion their belief to the logic and evidence. So I am not going to recommend ways to avoid triggering skepticism – I want to trigger skepticism. I just want it to be skepticism based on science and critical thinking, not emotional or partisan denial, nihilism, cynicism, or just being contrarian.

You also have to recognize that it can be difficult to persuade people. This is especially true if your message is constrained by facts and reality. Sometimes the real information is not optimized for emotional appeal, and it has to compete against messages that are so optimized (and are unconstrained by reality). But at least know the science about how people process information and form their beliefs is useful.

Postscript:  Hans Rosling demonstrates how to use data to tell the story of our rising civilization.

Bottom Line:  When it comes to science, the rule is to follow the facts.  When the story is contradicted by new facts, the story changes to fit the facts, not the other way around.

See also:  Data, Facts and Information

Covid Decline in Canada and World June 8

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Reported at Just The News Doctors around world say COVID-19 may be losing its potency, becoming less deadly

Doctors in Italy, Israel and U.S. say the coronavirus may be losing its potency and becoming less deadly even as it spreads.

Doctors across the world are offering preliminary but encouraging reports that the coronavirus may be losing steam and becoming less deadly: a behavior observed in at least one respiratory pandemic before, and a welcome sign for a world weary of nonstop COVID-19 fears.

But numerous prominent doctors and scientists in the last few weeks and months have begun to question that narrative, pointing to evidence that suggests the coronavirus may, unexpectedly, be dying out on its own.

Virus appears to behave the same regardless of lockdown measures

Yitzhak Ben Israel, a professor at Tel Aviv University, offered early speculation to that effect when in April he said, based on the observed behavior of the virus across the globe, that the virus appears to function more or less the same no matter what a country does to mitigate it. He said the virus appears to follow a fixed pattern in which there is “a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures” that is “similar to the countries with closures.”  See post on Ben Israel Good Virus News from the Promised Land

Those observations may indicate that the virus is not an unstoppable juggernaut: If it works more or less the same with or without mitigation efforts, then it is likely less of a danger than was initially imagined, insofar as the disease is less hampered by lockdowns than experts thought but also less deadly without them than was initially feared.

Yet apart from the epidemiological path the pandemic might or might not take, there are also signs that the virus itself is weakening, growing less potent, more diffuse and less deadly, meaning that even if a region experiences a significant amount of infections, it may amount to fewer hospitalizations and deaths than medical experts have predicted over the past few months.

That’s the contention of two top Italian doctors, who argued this week that the disease appears to be rapidly declining in potency. The coronavirus “clinically no longer exists in Italy,” San Raffaele Hospital Director Alberto Zangrillo told Reuters, claiming that recent swabs of infected patients have shown “a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago.”

Matteo Bassetti, meanwhile—the head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in Genoa—said that “the strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today” and that “it is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different.”

The Italian government is still cautioning its citizens to continue to treat the virus as highly dangerous.

Covid Decline Evident in Canada

The media and governmental reports focus on total accumulated numbers which are big enough to scare people to do as they are told.  In the absence of contextual comparisons, citizens have difficulty answering the main (perhaps only) question on their minds:  What are my chances of catching Covid19 and dying from it?  The map shows a lot of cases, and the chart looks like an hockey stick, going upward on a straight line. So why do I say canadians are safer than it looks like from such images?

First let’s look at daily numbers to see where we are in this process.  All the statistics come from Canada Public Health Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Outbreak update.

By showing daily tests, new cases and reported deaths, we can see how the outbreak has built up, peaked and declined over the last 3 months.  The green line shows how testing grew to a sustained daily rate of 29,000, then dropped, before rising to a new level. (all numbers are smoothed with 7 day averages ending with the stated date.) Note that the curve is now descending after peaking at 1800 on April 22, now down to 679 new cases per day.  This lower rate of infections is despite the highest rate of testing since the outbreak began. Deaths have also peaked at 177 on May 6, down to 72 June 7. The rate of people testing positive is down to 2.2%, and deaths are 0.22% of the tests administered.

But it matters greatly where in Canada you live. Quebec has been the province leading the nation in both cases and deaths.  Quebec has always celebrated being a distinct society, but not in this way. Below is the same chart for the Quebec epidemic from the same dataset. The province has about 23% of the national population and does about 26% of the tests.  But Quebec contributes 56% of the cases and 64% of the deaths, as of yesterday.  Here how the outbreak has gone in La Belle Province.

The Quebec graph is more lumpy showing cases peaking May 1-9, including several days inflated by data catchups. Cases have dropped off recently, from 1100 May 7 down to 256 yesterday.  Deaths are also dropped, declining from 110 on May 7 to 48 June 7 (7-day average). The animation below shows the epidemic in Canada with and without Quebec statistics.

But clearly everywhere else in Canada, people are much safer than those living in Quebec.  So what is going on?

To enlarge image, open in new tab.

The graph shows that people in Quebec are dying in group homes, the majority in CHSLD (long term medical care facilities) and also in PSR (private seniors’ residences).  The huge majority of Quebecers in other, more typical living arrangements have very little chance of dying from this disease. Not even prisoners are much at risk.

 

 

When a Hate Cult Took the Streets

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The opportunistic justice warriors creating chaos in city streets are unfortunately themselves vulnerable people who’ve been sucked into a guilt trip.  Ryan Bomberger saw through the activism and bluntly denounced it writing at Town Hall Top 10 Reasons I Won’t Support the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Every life unjustly killed deserves justice. In the cause to make things right, I will not join a movement that has nearly everything wrong. More innocent lives have now been killed (including cops) since these predominantly violent protests began over George Floyd’s horrific death. What about the black lives killed in this nationwide chaos? Do they matter?

Yes, #BlackLivesMatter. But Truth matters. As a Christian, the Church should be leading on these issues instead of sheepishly following a deceptive movement hostile to the Gospel.

The original BLM founders, the #BlackLivesMatter Foundation (BLMF), created it to radically shift culture. The far-left Ford Foundation, the world’s largest population control organization, vowed in 2016 to raise $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives (MFBL)—a nationwide coalition of BLM groups (including BLMF). MFBL released a shocking manifesto of policy positions that are deeply political and deeply disturbing.

Drawing mostly from those positions, here are the top 10 reasons why I will never support the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

The premise isn’t true.

I hate racism. And I hate when it’s used as a political weapon. According to the FBI’s latest homicide statistics, I’m 11 times more likely to be killed by someone of my own brown complexion than a white person. Also, a comprehensive 2019 study concluded: “White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.” Every loss of life is tragic, but Washington Post’s database on police-involved deaths puts things into further context. In 2020, among those killed were (all males): 2 Native Americans, 9 Asians, 46 Hispanics, 76 blacks, 149 unlabeled individuals and 149 whites (whose deaths don’t get reported by national mainstream media). Only nine black individuals were actually unarmed.

There is no goal of forgiveness or reconciliation.

None. It’s never mentioned on their sites. You can’t talk about the sins of the past and expect to move forward if there is no intention of forgiveness. I’m tired of the deeply prejudiced oppressed/oppressor critical race theory paradigm. It’s not Gospel-centered. This should, immediately, be a deal-breaker for Christians.

It’s all about Black Power.

It’s plastered all over the MFBL website. BLMF founders explain their “herstory”: “It became clear that we needed to continue organizing and building Black power across the country.” I don’t promote a colorblind society; I love all of our diverse hues of skin. But I’m so much more than my pigmentation. Martin Luther King promoted “God’s power and human power.” I’m with him.

They heavily promote homosexuality and transgenderism.

“We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.” I’m not embracing confusion. Loving every human being is not the same as loving every human doing.

They completely ignore fatherhood.

From BLMF: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” Well, every “village” that has fatherless families is a village that suffers higher crime rates, higher drug usage, higher abortion rates, higher drop-out rates, higher poverty rates, and so much more. #DadsMatter.

They demand reparations.

Ok. Sooooo, I guess the white half of me will have to pay the black half of me? If progressives want to push reparations, start with the Party of Slavery and Jim Crow—the Democrat Party! Let them ante up. But the #BlackLivesMatter movement bizarrely demands: “Reparations for…full and free access for all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education…retroactive forgiveness of student loans, and support for lifetime learning programs.” Uhhh, good luck with that.

They want to abolish prisons and police forces.

And…cue utter chaos. MFBL asserts: “We believe that prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished…” Defund and remove the police have been rallying cries. That would be anarchy in any community. I advocate some needed police reforms and better community/police relations, but this is just foolishness.

They are anti-capitalism.

Oh the irony of this declaration made by a movement that is the result of capitalism: “We are anti-capitalist. We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system.” The videos that make us aware of police brutality are captured on phones that are a result of capitalism. The best way to elevate people out of material poverty? Capitalism. This system is why the United States is the most charitable nation.

Colin Kaepernick supports it.

A “biracial” adoptee, Kaepernick is now obsessed with his “blackness.” He idolizes the late murderous Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and worships Malcolm X (just see his social media feeds). Malcolm X was anti-integration, pro-violence and a member of the virulently racist Nation of Islam (who forced him out). Kaepernick makes millions from Nike—a company whose entire Executive Leadership Team is white (isn’t this white supremacy???)—that makes its shoes in the most murderous regime in the world. Kaepernick, of course, is completely silent on that. But you know, #SocialJusticeWarrior.

Apparently, not all black lives matter.

Pro-abortion BLMF declared: “We deserve and thus we demand reproductive justice [aka abortion] that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities while ensuring that our children and families are supported, safe, and able to thrive.” Aborted children don’t thrive. BLM groups announced “solidarity” with “reproductive justice” groups back in February 2015. You cannot simultaneously fight violence while celebrating it.

Infected with Hateful Ideology

For those of us who missed seeing the rise of “woke” ideology and its cult-like following, James Lindsay provides a thorough assessment of the racial component of this, writing at New Discourses Do Better than Critical Race Theory. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Many of you have noticed that more people than ever are presenting the stock Critical Race Theory ideas. Do not be alarmed. This is correct. Critical Race Theory mainstreamed during the Black Lives Matter protests following a similar incident in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. The rapid mainstreaming of Critical Race Theory is actually a problem, but you don’t need to despair. Critical Race Theory is definitely mainstreaming more than ever now, but on the other hand, not only do more people know what it is now than in 2015 and before, more people than ever are also connecting the dots that something in it is leading not to healing but to harm. We have an opportunity to steal the motte and bomb the bailey, as it might be phrased, and hopefully get this conversation and our country back on track.

The present circumstances are volatile, and fighting for sense in mayhem like this is like trying to talk sense into a hurricane. This public rage, like all public rage, will not last forever. Thus, right now presents a valuable opportunity to educate ourselves and then others clearly about Critical Race Theory, including its role in the present outrage (some of it quite justified) and mayhem (utterly unjustifiable). We have a chance to learn how and why, while it points to important problems, Critical Race Theory is a bad way to deal with the real problems we are put face-to-face with now and to realize that there are better ways. To be clear, Critical Race Theory points to real problems, but it diagnoses them incorrectly and prescribes poisonous solutions that will only make the problems worse. And there are resources to do this now.

Many of us have seen the very compelling footage of one black man talking down another very angry one and instructing a younger black teenager to find a better way because what people are doing now isn’t working. I watched that video. I heard that man’s pain. I know he’s right. A better way to deal with whatever racism may be is needed, and having read a God-awful lot of it, I can tell you for certain, it isn’t to be found in Critical Race Theory. There are ways, but not that way. Finding that better way is now. The systems we’ve been using clearly aren’t working as well as they could. A different way is needed, for sure, and, equally surely, Critical Race Theory isn’t that way.

I’m not going to tell you we know for sure what the better way is, but we have some clear hints about what it looks like and what it doesn’t look like, and we can set to building it together. Our society, which is built upon liberalism, has the capacity to answer these problems and make good on the promises of a genuinely free society for every individual in it. It works. It has worked. It was working. It can work again, even if we have to use liberalism to make amendments to our society.

To understand, we need to understand Critical Race Theory. This theoretical, not evidenced, approach proceeds on a number of mostly bad assumptions. First, it insists racism is ordinary in society, sometimes also said to be permanent. If racism is ordinary and permanent, it cannot be fixed. How can such a Theory offer a solution, then? It can’t, and it wouldn’t want to because that would render it useless.

Second, Critical Race Theory accepts a thesis known as “interest convergence.” This idea comes from the forefather of Critical Race Theory, the late Derrick Bell of Harvard Law. Bell, for all his insights and contributions, was remarkably pessimistic and cynical, if not downright paranoid. His interest convergence thesis insists that white people only care about and help other races out of their own self-interest. If you’re white and feel moved by the appeals of Critical Race Theory or the real (and/or narrativized) circumstances we face and want to be an ally, then, you’re only doing it because it makes you a better white person, a “good white” who is ultimately the biggest part of the problem of systemic racism. How are we supposed to build a better world when people aren’t allowed to help?

Third, Critical Race Theory believes that liberalism is a force that upholds racism. It allegedly does so by making “minoritized” races believe they’re more enfranchised than they actually are and thus unjustly disinterested in agitating for further radical change. We shouldn’t believe this or that we need radical change when liberal change is and has been working. Liberalism is an unparalleled means of resolving conflicts between citizens and ideas, and it, better than anything else, can resolve the conflicts of racism. That the societies that have called themselves liberal and have espoused liberal principles up until now have not done this perfectly or maybe even satisfactorily doesn’t mean that the method itself needs to be destroyed. They are, in fact, the least racist societies the world has ever seen. For all it’s imperfection, no other method has come close to doing as well as liberalism, and this is for good reasons (which are documented in the book Kindly Inquisitors, which everyone alive should read, twice).

Fourth, Critical Race Theory is actively disinterested in evidence and even reality, which it identifies through a gross (but academically established) reference to slavery that frames rigorous methodologies and civil society (really) as a part of the “master’s” toolkit, which will never dismantle oppression. Instead, it prefers to forward storytelling as a form of knowledge. It calls these, when activist in nature, “counterstories,” and they’re meant to disrupt and deconstruct the “dominant narratives,” which are believed to be white and thus white supremacist. (That’s insanely hyperbolic, but it’s also now standard belief across much of the left half of the political spectrum and a core belief of Critical Race Theory, from which it arose.) If we want to solve our real problems, though, we have to know what those real problems are, in reality. We know this, and we can do better than hot-takes and highly emotional stories. Highly interpretive takes that we know are intentionally biased will not work, and, of course, the people who will get hurt most by getting this wrong are the people Critical Race Theory pretends to speak for, especially black people. Being hostile to science, evidence, reason, and truth will not advance anyone’s interests very far, unless we just meant the short-term political interests of the Theory-masters pushing this garbage.

Instead, Critical Race Theory says that “real” knowledge resides in the lived experience of oppression, but only when this experience is interpreted through, you guessed it, Critical Race Theory.

So, if the statistics don’t support the narrative spun by Critical Race Theory, the statistic were produced by a “white” method that wanted to keep black people down, even if all the researchers aren’t white (they might be “acting white,” or “seeking white approval,” or “white-adjacent”). Worse, if a black person speaks up and says something Critical Race Theory doesn’t agree with, then he’s a “race traitor, or “not politically Black,” or “not Black,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates said about Kanye West. In other words, Critical Race Theory believes that if you aren’t black according to how Critical Race Theory says you have to be black, then you’re not authentically black. There is no individual in Critical Race Theory. You are an emissary of your race, and you have to speak on its behalf the way Critical Race Theory says you have to. How is this supposed to help anybody except the grifters pushing it?

Let this sink in. Critical Race Theory explicitly urges an “identity-first” approach to race, where it defines what that political identity looks like and then demands conformity.

This is captured in the famous injunction that it means something more and more important to be a “Black person” than a “person who happens to be black.” It puts identity first and programs what that means. Thus, Critical Race Theory holds up race as a core feature of one’s identity and then says you have to be that race to know what it is to be that race, and one’s politics must go from that place. But we know that increasing racial salience like this is divisive poison.

Because of these things, Critical Race Theory doesn’t believe progress is possible, that it’s a myth (indeed, one created by white people to keep black people and people of other races down). But if an approach tells us progress is impossible, it by definition cannot lead us to progress. Why should we use it? Because it’s the only voice in the game? It’s not, but to the degree that it’s true, it’s because it destroyed every other voice by calling it a racist until it was silenced. Critical Race Theory is pessimistic, cynical, and paranoid to the core, and it teaches these as though they’re virtues, filling young black people especially with a belief that society is against them. This is utter poison. Learning to see problems is good; dwelling on them isn’t.

What do I mean by intentionally impossible? This, a thousand things just like this, straight out of the Critical Race Theory playbook: If you see race, it’s because you’re a racist; if you don’t, it’s because you’re privileged enough to ignore it and are therefore a racist. In the end, you’re going to get wrecked for how problematic your allyship is (it can’t be done right), for being a “good white.” And people care so much about racism they continually sign up for this, mainstream this, become an ally, and endlessly pledge to do better, like some kind of victim of an abusive marriage. Eventually, they fail, get called racist, and get destroyed for it, and then still pledge to “do better.” Why? Because if you reject Critical Race Theory, you must have done so because of your racism. Critical Race Theory is abusive; there’s no other way to put it.

We can do better than Critical Race Theory. We can do better than a sloppy “theoretical” approach that’s really about pushing divisive grievance politics into our society, one that treats people as props for the narrow politics that primarily, if not solely, benefit the elite grifters who know the Theory. Critical Race Theory advances them at everyone else’s expense. And we already know a lot of how to tackle these problems better than Critical Race Theory can. We already know how to be liberals, apply liberalism, judge by the content of character rather than anything to do with identity or color of skin. And we already know that liberal approaches are open to reform and improvement of the societies that employ them.

Footnote:  James Lindsay describes the cultish aspects of this movement in The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness

Background:  See also Battle of Presidents Park

Heart of the Matter

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This song by Don Henley came up on my playlist today.  It brings a message for people full of fear and anger these days. As he said introducing the song, it took 42 years to write and four minutes to sing. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. Lyrics below:

I got the call today, I didn’t want to hear
But I knew that it would come
An old, true friend of ours was talkin’ on the phone
She said you found someone
And I thought of all the bad luck
And the struggles we went through
And how I lost me and you lost you
What are those voices outside love’s open door
Make us throw off our contentment
And beg for something more?

Chorus: I’m learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes
The more I know, the less I understand,
All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again
I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore

These times are so uncertain
There’s a yearning undefined
People filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness
How can love survive in such a graceless age?
Ah, the trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness
They’re the very things we kill, I guess
Oh, pride and competition
Cannot fill these empty arms
And the work I put between us, you know it doesn’t keep me warm

Chorus

There are people in your life
Who’ve come and gone
They let you down
You know they’ve hurt your pride
You better put it all behind you baby
‘Cause life goes on
You keep carryin’ that anger
It’ll eat you up inside baby

I’ve been trying to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me

I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter
Because the flesh will get weak
And the ashes will scatter
So, I’m thinkin’ about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if , even if you don’t love me
Forgiveness, forgiveness, baby
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Forgiveness, forgiveness

From Terrorism to Climatism to Pandemism

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In 2004 BBC aired a 3-part documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear. The episodes start with this narration (in italics with my bolds):

In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and today people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life, but now they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority.

Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand.

And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism, a powerful and sinister network with sleeper cells in countries across the world, a threat that needs to be fought by a War on Terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It’s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media. This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits.

At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world, and both had a very similar explanation of what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret organized evil that threatens the world, a fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age.

And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

I was impressed at the time by the writing, imagery and presentation of the premise: Our societies are now warped by the use of fear for political gain. A lot has happened in the last 16 years, including the demise of Osama Bin Laden, disruption of Al-Qaeda, the rise and fall of ISIS. With terrorism increasingly on the back burner, politicians turned to climate fears, emphasized at the 2009 Copenhagen COP, ramped up to the Paris Accord in 2015, and further amped to SR1.5 in 2019 to claim a “climate emergency”, leading to schoolchildren protesting rather than learning, and violence from groups like the “valve turners” and Extinction Rebellion.

The Power of Nightmares explained the symbiosis between radical revolutionaries and elected officials. Public fear of damage and destruction cedes power and authority to governing politicians.They invited Greta to speak at Davos for the very same reason:  she empowers them. At first the menace was Islamist Terrorists, who did achieve much killing and suffering in places they were able to occupy, or in attacks such as the Twin Towers. Then the media turned to extreme weather events, extinctions, sea level rise, arctic amplification, acid oceans, and fear of everything from Acne to Zika virus. The latter was a prelude to our current obsession with the coronavirus.

In all cases, the fear has been seized upon for outlays of public monies in massive spending, unheard of in normal times. And from the Patriot Act, NSA surveillance, and FISA courts, on to environmental regulations and obstacles, and now to lockdowns and distancing orders, civil liberties are quashed to gain safety from an invisible enemy.

Ironically, the most hated leader is Donald Trump, who broke from the doom and nightmare script, instead offering a promise to “Make America Great Again.” Elected on that hope, Trump was riding high on the theme “The power of Promises Kept.” And then came the pandemic filling the media and stoking public fears. Most recently, the fear mongers are promoting racism as a reason to undo law and order in favor of passion and violence. They are literally playing with fire threatening the roots of civil society in their pursuit of power.

Moderate May for Land and Ocean Air Temps

Posted on by Ron Clutz

banner-blog

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for May 2020.  Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HADSST3. This month also has a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

HadSST3 results were delayed with February and March updates only appearing together end of April.  For comparison we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are now posted for May. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI). In 2015 there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the new and current dataset, Version 6.0.

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

The graph above shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015. After all regions peaked with the El Nino in early 2016, the ocean air temps dropped back down with all regions showing the same low anomaly August 2018.  Then a warming phase ensued which peaked in February 2020. As was the case in 2015-16, the warming was driven by the Tropics and NH, with SH lagging behind. After the up and down fluxes, oceans temps in May were similar to last June.

Land Air Temperatures Showing a Seesaw Pattern

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for May 2020 is below.

Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures, first by NH land with SH often offsetting.   The overall pattern is similar to the ocean air temps, but obviously driven by NH with its greater amount of land surface. The Tropics synchronized with NH for the 2016 event, but otherwise follow a contrary rhythm.  SH seems to vary wildly, especially in recent months.  Note the extremely high anomaly last November, cold in March 2020, and then again a spike in April. In May 2020, all land regions converged, erasing the earlier spikes in NH and SH, and showing anomalies comparable to previous Mays since 2017.

The longer term picture from UAH is a return to the mean for the period starting with 1995.  2019 average rose but currently lacks any El Nino to sustain it.

These charts demonstrate that underneath the averages, warming and cooling is diverse and constantly changing, contrary to the notion of a global climate that can be fixed at some favorable temperature.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, more than 1C lower than the 2016 peak, prior to these last several months. TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

Battle of Presidents Park

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Rachel Cooper, tripsavvy, What to see in Lafayette Park, Washington D.C.

Lafayette Park, also known as Presidents Park or Lafayette Square, is a seven-acre public park located across from the White House in Washington, D.C. The green space provides an arena for public protests, ranger programs, and special events.

When the park, as Lafayette Square, was first established it was to be used to enhance the grounds of the White House. Through the years it is said it has been used as a race track, a graveyard, a zoo, and a camp for soldiers during the War of 1812.

The park, bounded by Jackson Place on the west, Madison Place on the east, and Pennsylvania Avenue, is now a popular site for those who want to take photographs of the White House. The park is home to five statues, four honoring foreign Revolutionary War heroes and one of President Andrew Jackson.

Battle of Lafayette Park Sunday May 31, 2020

But Lafayette Park was attacked and vandalized Sunday night, as reported by the Washington Blade Damage, looting as D.C. protesters ignore curfew.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Similar to the D.C. protests that unfolded on Friday, May 29, and Saturday, May 30, the Sunday protests joined by about 1,000 people began peacefully at the site of the White House and Lafayette Park earlier in the day.

But shortly after nightfall when police blocked access to the White House area the protesters scattered into smaller groups and marched through downtown streets. Some of them wielded metal baseball bats to smash windows and glass doors of stores and office buildings, according to media reports.

Some of those engaging in vandalism, whom D.C. police and Bowser have said appear to be radical agitators who do not share the goals of protesting the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, set fires inside the buildings they broke into.

Among the buildings partially damaged by fire was the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church located across the street from Lafayette Park near the White House known as the Church of the Presidents. Also set on fire was the lobby of the AFL-CIO building two blocks away at 815 16th Street, N.W.

According to local TV news reports, it took D.C. police and fire department personnel close to an hour to arrive on the scene to clear away protesters and begin putting out the fires at the church and the AFL-CIO building.

In an announcement on Sunday night, D.C. police released the names of 18 people they said police arrested for felony rioting related acts mostly on Saturday, May 30. TV news reporters on the scene of the disturbances on Sunday night reported additional arrests, but police didn’t immediately disclose the number of arrests on Sunday and early Monday morning.

Battle of Lafayette Park Monday June 1, 2020

On the green of Lafayette Park is St. John’s Episcopal Church, a short walk away. Often called the “Church of Presidents,” the building sustained damage in a fire after protests on Saturday night. Every president since Madison has at least visited the church, though the last two who regularly attended services there were George H.W. Bush and Franklin Roosevelt. On the morning of his 2017 inauguration, Trump attended the service at St. John, where a pastor who campaigned for him delivered a sermon centered on how strong leaders don’t get distracted.

Just after 10 p.m. on Sunday, someone set a fire in the basement of the parish hall, which firefighters quickly extinguished, The Washington Post reported. The fire was contained to a nursery room, although there was smoke and water damage to other areas of the basement, according to the Rev. Rob Fisher, the church’s rector.

Fisher told Episcopal News Service that the nursery room is “completely destroyed,” but it could have been much worse. Nobody was hurt and none of the church’s “irreplaceable” historical items were damaged, he said in an interview.

President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Rose Garden around 6:30 p.m., where he said he was taking “swift and decisive” action and dispatching “thousands and thousands” of military personnel and law enforcement.

As Trump spoke, explosions could be heard in the background.

“What happened in the city last night was a total disgrace,” Trump said, later adding “Our 7 o’clock curfew will be strictly enforced. Those who threaten innocent life and property will be arrested, detained, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

As law enforcement cleared out the area around the White House, Trump walked across the street after his address for a photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church, which briefly suffered a fire Sunday night. Every president since James Madison has visited the more than 200-year-old church.

Battle of Lafayette Park Tuesday June 2, 2020

D.C. Protests Remain Markedly Peaceful After Days Of Intense Clashes reports DCist. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

By Tuesday night, nearly every conceivable law enforcement agency was stationed in the District. Images of the National Guard positioned on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and looming over protesters below seemed destined to become iconic. At the start of the night, people handed out goggles and helmets to fellow protesters.The crowd near the White House appeared to grow to its biggest size in five consecutive nights of large demonstrations in the District.

Yet as the District girded for a fifth night of violent clashes, there was instead overwhelming calm.

Protesters looped throughout the city — walking up to U Street, passing under the Convention Center, marching through Dupont Circle, chanting on K Street, passing long lines of voters at polling stations, returning to the area around the White House — for hours after the District’s 7 p.m. curfew went into effect. Demonstrators were trailed at times by Metropolitan Police Department officers on bicycles, but law enforcement didn’t try to stop the peaceful demonstrations.

What Do We Learn from the Battle of Lafayette Park?

Mollie Hemingway explains at The Federalist Media Falsely Claimed Violent Riots Were Peaceful And That Tear Gas Was Used Against Rioters.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Following days of violent riots and looting in cities across the country, Washington, D.C., announced a 7 p.m. curfew on Monday night. About the same time, President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Rose Garden. Afterward, he walked through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, which rioters had set on fire the night before. Standing before the church sign, which reads “All are welcome,” President Trump, who previously said he’d be paying his respects to a very special place, held up a Bible.

The speech announcing the country would return to rule of law and protection of civil liberties, the walk through a park that the night before had been given over to rioters, and the visit to the vandalized historic church where every president has worshiped since James Madison, were reassuring to many in the country.

For the media, however, these actions were further proof that Orange Man Bad is literally the worst, restoring rule of law is criminal, and standing in front of a church holding a Bible is an assault on the American conscience. They focused on how the Park Police had cleared the area ahead of the city-wide curfew declared by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Protesters sit atop structure in Lafayette Park, facing police defying curfew.

After thousands of false tweets, print stories, and broadcast stories to the contrary, local journalist Neal Augenstein of WTOP reported that a Park Police source said “tear gas was never used — instead smoke canisters were deployed, which don’t have an uncomfortable irritant in them.” Further, the source said the crowd was dispersed because of projectiles being thrown by the “peaceful protesters” at the Park Police and because “peaceful protesters” had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night.  Statement by United States Park Police acting Chief Gregory T. Monahan:

On Monday, June 1, the USPP worked with the United States Secret Service to have temporary fencing installed inside Lafayette Park. At approximately 6:33 pm, violent protestors on H Street NW began throwing projectiles including bricks, frozen water bottles and caustic liquids. The protestors also climbed onto a historic building at the north end of Lafayette Park that was destroyed by arson days prior. Intelligence had revealed calls for violence against the police, and officers found caches of glass bottles, baseball bats and metal poles hidden along the street.

To curtail the violence that was underway, the USPP, following established policy, issued three warnings over a loudspeaker to alert demonstrators on H Street to evacuate the area. Horse mounted patrol, Civil Disturbance Units and additional personnel were used to clear the area. As many of the protestors became more combative, continued to throw projectiles, and attempted to grab officers’ weapons, officers then employed the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls. No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners to close the area at Lafayette Park. Subsequently, the fence was installed.

Mollie provides numerous examples of media false statements about these events, concluding with this: NPR hit a trifecta by falsely reporting about tear gas, falsely reporting about peaceful protesting, and as a bonus downplaying the arson against the church:

The entire narrative the media glommed onto in lockstep was that Trump was a monster who tear-gassed peaceful protesters to do something meaningless. None of that was true. But it took a day of reporting to get the truth out, long after the lie took hold.

At times it seems as if there is nothing that many in the media won’t lie about to accomplish their political goals.

In related news, despite or perhaps because of the media hysteria, polls show overwhelming majorities of Americans support the use of the National Guard and the military to bring peace to the cities the media claim aren’t being targeted by violent riots.

Comment:  Is anyone confused about the Battle of Lafayette Park?  The tragic death in Minneapolis was only the pretext for taking the “Resistance” to a new level.  After the Mueller Russian Hoax collapse and the stupid House Impeachment farce, the next stage is for social justice warriors to take the public square away from anyone who disagrees.  Make no mistake, this was a militant occupation to deny Trump access to the “Presidents Park” and the “Presidents Church.”  Give leftist control freaks an inch, and they will take miles, which Trump sees clearly, and so should we all.  Meanwhile the media stirs up trouble and remains lost in their bubble.