Oceans Stay Cool February 2023

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 chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through February 2023.  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 in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes.  That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period.  In 2021 the summer NH summer spike was joined by warming in the Tropics but offset by a drop in SH SSTs, which raised the Global anomaly slightly over the mean.

Then in 2022, another strong NH summer spike peaked in August, but this time both the Tropic and SH were countervailing, resulting in only slight Global warming, later receding to the mean.   Oct./Nov. temps dropped  in NH and the Tropics took the Global anomaly below the average for this period. After an uptick in December, temps in January 2023 dropped everywhere, strongest in NH, with the Global anomaly further below the mean since 2015. In February Global SSTs stayed the same, with slight warming in SH offset by further cooling in NH and Tropics

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge image open 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. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2. 

SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8,  a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12.  Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

Now a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cooled 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 were 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.  Now in 2021-22 there are again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.  The graph shows the warming spikes since 2015 lifted the Global anomaly by about 0.2C above the mean since 1995.

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 stayed near the lower tracks.  Note the strength of that summer’s warming pulse, in September peaking to nearly 24 Celsius, a new record for this dataset. January 2023 starts similar to 2022.

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 will likely decline in coming months, along with ENSO also weakening will probably determine a cooler 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

Footnote Rare Triple Dip La Nina Likely This Winter

Here’s Where a Rare “Triple Dip La Niña” Might Drop the Most Snow This Winter Ski Mag

The unusual weather phenomenon might result in the snowiest season in years for some parts of the country.

The long-range winter forecast could be good news for skiers living in the certain parts of the U.S. and Canada. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that the chance of a La Niña occurring this fall and early winter is 86 percent, and the main beneficiary is expected to be mountains in the Northwest and Northern Rockies.

If NOAA’s predictions pan out, this will be the third La Niña in a row—a rare phenomenon called a “Triple Dip La Niña.” Between now and 1950, only two Triple Dips have occurred.

Smith also notes that winters on the East Coast are similarly tricky to predict during La Niña years. “In the West, you’re simply looking for above-average precipitation, which typically translates to above-average snowfall, but in the East, you have temperature to worry about as well … that adds another complication.” In other words, increased precip could lead to more rain if the temperatures aren’t cooperative.

The presence of a La Niña doesn’t always translate to higher snowfall in the North, either, as evidenced by last ski season, which saw few powder days.

However, in consecutive La Niña triplets, one winter usually involves above-average snowfall. While this historical pattern isn’t tied to any documented meteorological function, it could mean that the odds of a snowy 2022’-’23 season are higher, given the previous two La Niñas didn’t deliver the goods.

 

 

Great News! IPCC Final Warning Now!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

OK, they’ve exaggerated before, so could be that “final” may not stick.  For anyone following climate science and politics, this is not their first rodeo (or circus, if you prefer.)  But we can hope for peace at last from the doomsters.  Chris Morrison goes into what’s unconvincing about this final warning in his Daily Sceptic article Latest UN Climate Doom Report Falsely Claims Global Temperatures Are “Highest for 125,000 Years”.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Doomsday had to be postponed for five months, but ‘pausing’ IPCC writers have finally delivered another ‘Net Zero or Else’ report highlighting increasingly improbable climate change scenarios. Every IPCC report ramps up the desperation, and this latest ‘Synthesis Report‘ known as SYR is long on opinions, attributions and modelled results, but somewhat shorter on actual scientific facts.

The latest document collates the IPCC’s sixth assessments reports (AR6) into a short format that was originally scheduled to ramp up fears ahead of last year’s COP27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh. But in May and June last year, the planet-saving authors seem to have gone on strike. A few details about the incident are referred to in recently published IPCC minutes, which record how attempts were made with the writers to “rebuild the trust required to have them end their pause in writing, and to engage in the SYR production process”. Not before time, since IPCC reports need to be agreed with large numbers of interested parties, including almost 200 member governments. ‘Settled’ science, it need hardly be added, demands a lot of happy and settled funders.

Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice

Current global temperatures are said by the IPCC to be the highest for 125,000 years, an astonishing claim given the many scientific surveys that show much higher temperatures in the recent past. It is also claimed that temperatures will rise by 0.4°C in around a decade, an interesting opinion, based presumably on surface records that can be retrospectively adjusted, but an unlikely scenario given global warming ran out of steam over two decades ago. By 2100, the IPCC says global warming could rise to 4.4°C, although things need to be moving on a bit smartish given barely 0.1°C warming in the first two decades of the century.

Satellite Global Warming Up and Down

There have been one or two concerns of late that the IPCC’s scare tactics have sent half the world doolally with climate fear, especially the impressionable young. These criticisms seem to have been taken on board. UN Secretary General Antonio ‘Code Red’ Guterres hailed SYR as a “survival guide to humanity”. All we need to do, continued the Left-wing Portuguese radical, is for all countries to bring forward their Net Zero plans by a decade. Dr. Friederike Otto from Imperial College specialises in so-called ‘attribution’ studies and the pseudoscience of claiming specific weather events are caused by the activities of humans. She helped write the latest report and was also in optimistic mood telling the BBC: “If we aim for 1.5°C and achieve 1.6°C, that is still much better than saying, it’s too late and we are doomed and I’m not even trying. And I think what this report shows very, very clearly is there is so much to win by trying.”

Extinctions Overblown

Back on Planet Reality, it might be noted that there are a number of possible disadvantages connected to removing fossil fuels, a reliable, inexpensive energy supply that powers 80% of global needs, within less than 17 years.

Starvation, death, widespread warfare, societal and economic breakdown and rampant disease being just a few that come immediately to mind.

Coastal Flooding, Not

Traditional Landing Site of Mayflower Pilgrims.

It is not difficult to see why the IPCC continues to claim current global temperatures are the highest for 125,000 years, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that shows this is untrue. The rebound rise of about 1°C seen over the last 200 years is very small, and similar changes have obviously occurred countless times in the historical and paleo past, sometimes over even shorter time periods. It is difficult to worry too much about something that seems natural and in fact is beyond the control of humans. Placing the rise in the longer context of 125,000 years and adding all manner of invented weather event attribution and ‘tipping’ point stories adds some firepower to a political narrative ultimately designed to move society towards the collectivist Net Zero agenda.

Net Zero:  Who Gains, Who Loses

The Daily Sceptic has reported on a number of science papers that track the higher temperatures in the past, in particular the period since the last ice age started to lift about 12,000 years ago. A sample can be read here, here and here.

Earlier this year, a group of European scientists published a paper analysing tree remains that suggested there was a much warmer climate in the Alps during most of the last 10,000 years.

Adjusting Temperature Records.

‘Settled’ science, it might be observed, needs consensus from the world and his wife. The recent IPCC minutes, for instance, noted that the SYR team, “should ensure policy relevance and usefulness for policymakers”. Needless to say this is not to the taste of some independent-minded scientists, especially those retired with no need to hustle for state research or Left-wing foundation funds. In fact they can be quite disobliging about the entire IPCC process. In a recent paper titled ‘Challenging “Net Zero” with Science‘, Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen of Princeton and MIT respectively called Net Zero “scientifically invalid and a threat to the lives of billions of people”. In fact they have previously dismissed the peer review system around climate change as a “joke” – pal review, not peer review, they quipped. The IPCC is “government controlled and only issues government-dictated findings”.

Sketchy Warming Evidence

Source: Real Climate Science

“Climate science is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence,” they added.

Footnote: So What Happens Next

As I said above, we’ve seen this show before.  Caleb Rossiter explains how it goes down:

For years I assigned statistics students to pick any apocalyptic climate claim in the media and trace it back through the UN reports to its genesis in a scientific study. I knew they would discover that these reports are not scientific documents based on the peer review process, but political documents “approved by governments” and intended to scare the public into supporting constraints on the production and use of energy.

A powerful publicity machine magnifies the alarm, bombarding citizens with exaggerations and claims of certainty that are proven wrong as you dig down to their underlying scientific studies:

  • Public figures, news editors, and commentators make claims that are more alarmist than what individual IPCC authors say at the release of the report.
  • Individual IPCC authors make claims at the release of the report that are more alarmist than what the official press release says.
  • The official press release makes claims that are more alarmist than what the report’s summary for policy-makers says.
  • The summary for policy-makers makes claims that are more alarmist than the various chapters of the reports.
  • The chapters of the report make claims that are more alarmist than the studies they reference in the footnotes.

More at

UN Horror Show

How Fake Addresses Get Blank Ballots and Covid Payments

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Another report by Jay Valentine on the abuse of government databases in his American Thinker article A Gigantic Egg All Over Brad Raffensperger’s Face.  The title refers to a statement by the Georgia Sec. of State saying anyone questioning the ERIC voter databases is “extremist.”  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Last week, when Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger publicly supported ERIC after it was tossed out of Florida, West Virginia, and Missouri, we issued the Raffensperger Challenge.

The Raffensperger Challenge is the application of Fractal analysis
to any entity that currently uses ERIC. 

Brad Raffensperger says anyone outing ERIC is “extremist.”  Today, two more extremists joined in: the secretaries of state of Iowa and Ohio.  Looks like lots of extremists showing up for work.

Much in our complex lives is a matter of opinion. Still, there are a few things that are a matter of data, and we are so looking forward to helping Brad Raffensperger, and the diminishing remaining Republican secretaries of state, see how useless ERIC truly is.

This week, we finished the first Raffensperger Challenge — in ERIC “cleaned” Washoe County, Nevada.  Let’s go there.  This is a county with about 600,000 people on the voter rolls.  Many are C = cancelled, others I = inactive.  Our friends there want to include all voters in the analysis, since we have such a deep history of secretaries of state converting inactive voters to “active,” voting them, and turning them back to inactive.

Every person on every Nevada voter roll we examined was “cleaned” by ERIC. Not a couple of them, not the left-handed ones, but every single voter was ERIC-certified as being a real person, protected by our laws and needs to vote.

We chose to use two data sources — both official — as our original data for comparison: the official Nevada voter roll, published by its secretary of state. We added the Washoe County property tax roll, published by the Washoe County tax authority.

We compared the address on the tax roll with the names and addresses on the voter roll:

    • People registered in vacant lots: over 4,200
    • Registered in hotels: over 2,000
    • Registered in parking lots: over 2,500
    • Registered in R.V. parks: 1,600

Amazing how voter rolls — cleaned by ERIC — grow voters like barnacles in hotels and vacant lots up to an even-year election date — then they disappear afterward. This is in the data!  We have the official tax records saying a “residence” is a field and the voter roll saying the same address is a residence — leaving off that it is a field.

Some states who use ERIC, like Arizona, allow people to register in hotels, and we are told some states, again Arizona, allow voters to register in vacant lots. Perhaps. We are further informed that some states, like Arizona and Nevada, allow the registration of “no known address.”

Voters are certainly registered there — at places that are no known address. If it is legal or not, we leave to others.   We have a much bigger story to share with you, dear reader: how do people in hotels, R.V. parks, vacant lots, and “no known address” get a mail-in ballot?  You cannot mail a ballot to a vacant lot — it doesn’t get mail. You can mail a ballot to the R.V. park, but the guy registered in 1991 — do you think he is still there in his camper?

In 2021, we worked with former sheriff Clarke and the Wisconsin team to find phantoms. Phantoms were found by the trainload; they were unfortunately not able to be taken off voter rolls.  In 2023, we are focusing on addresses — conveniently and precisely provided by widely available property tax records. We can now profile every address of every building in every city, town, or hamlet in America — down to square feet, number of baths and bedrooms, description, and category — updated monthly.

For every address in America, every single one, we can know with precision:

    • This address cannot receive mail (vacant lot, field).
    • This address can receive mail but not a ballot (bank, insurance company).
    • This address can receive mail, and a ballot, but it cannot receive a ballot for Jim Smith because Jim does not have his apartment number on his voter registration record.

Welcome to the Undeliverable Ballot Database.
Like it or not, the world of mail-in ballots is upon us.

State after state is registering 16-year-olds, and the registration becomes active when they turn 18. Every vagrant in every homeless shelter has at least one registration. We found, in Michigan, some people with 17 registrations.

The issue in 2024 is “who can receive a mail-in ballot?”  The presidency of the most powerful country in history rests on a single question: who can get a mail-in ballot?  Well, now we know. ERIC doesn’t.

We know with precision, or can know, for every physical entity in America, which is listed on a tax roll — even if it is not taxed, like a church — whether it can get a ballot or not. We now can determine in every multi-unit apartment building in every city in every state for every voter — can that person legally be mailed a ballot or not?

Having better technology than the government is a very entertaining experience — as we are learning in Washoe County, and as Brad Raffensperger is about to learn when we publish Brad’s Georgia tax comparison data. It’s really ugly — for Brad.

The Fractal team at Project Omega is working, again, with 14 states, many using ERIC, to deliver demonstration projects like Washoe County, Nevada. We have enough experience in most of these states from 2022 to know the end of the movie. Their voter rolls do not match their tax rolls — to a degree embarrassing to any secretary of state.

There’s more:   $$$$

Three county sheriff’s departments contacted our team because they were interested in this kind of voter fraud — registered voters in vacant lots. They each, separately, performed other analyses and found that vacant lots had accumulated fraud.

Many of those addresses harbored clearly fake voters — or real voters who were not there. When they ran those addresses against the PPP (Payroll Protection Program), where Biden gave out free dough — guess what! You got it! Those address might not be able to get mail, but somehow, they got the dough!

An intrepid team in Florida, working with law enforcement, found some of those scammy addresses harbored “contribution mules.” The contribution mule is the guy who has no discernible wealth but makes 4,000 donations a year, to candidates all over the country, in $50 increments. So where does that guy get his dough?

ERIC protected voter rolls from scrutiny for years. The Gateway Pundit guys busted the gig with their reporting. The Fractal team started showing voter teams how inaccurate ERIC really is.

Now the game is up. ERIC is bleeding clients. It’s just a matter of time until they are running lefty states with zero credibility.

So next time you get depressed because the good guys never seem to win, check in on ERIC and smile as you see it bleed into obscurity.

 

 

Arctic Ice Moment of Truth 2023

Posted on by Ron Clutz

For ice extent in the Arctic, the bar is set at 15M km2. The average peak in the last 17 years occurs on day 62 at 14.986M km2 before descending, though some years the extent can be above 15M much later.  Ten of the last 17 years were higher than 15M, and recently 2020, 2022 and now 2023 ice extents cleared the bar at 15M km2. The actual day of annual peak ice extent varied between day 59 (2016) to day 82 (2012).

All of this means that 2023 peaked while passing the 15M km2 threshold two days later than average.  The graph below shows the situation evolving over the last four weeks anticipating the annual maximum.

The NH ice extent gap on day 77 is at 269k km2, or 1.8%.  After the day 62 peak, 2023 extents declined sharply until day 71 before recovering to reduce the deficit. (Note that ice extent is affected also by winds piling up drift ice, as well as melting from intrusions of warmer air or water.) SII has shown lower extents throughout this period, averaging 250k km2 less than MASIE.

March monthly average extents in recent years have been below average. While average extents will decline furher, we shall see what this year does with only two weeks left to make a difference.

Region 2023077 Day 77 Average 2023-Ave. 2018077 2023-2018
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14649553 14918812 -269258 14528206 121348
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1070266 700 1070445 521
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 965801 206 966006 0
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087109 29 1087137 0
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897837 7 897845 0
 (5) Kara_Sea 934539 922767 11771 934807 -268
 (6) Barents_Sea 605659 637818 -32159 689702 -84043
 (7) Greenland_Sea 835991 617943 218048 514678 321313
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1249789 1546282 -296493 1399951 -150162
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854843 853118 1724 853109 1734
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260903 1259573 1330 1257207 3696
 (11) Central_Arctic 3243341 3217827 25514 3131403 111939
 (12) Bering_Sea 739914 760728 -20814 445480 294434
 (13) Baltic_Sea 67881 80745 -12864 127449 -59568
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 822356 982054 -159698 1136990 -314633

The main deficit to average is in Baffin Bay and Sea of Okhotsk, partly offset by a surplus in Greenland Sea. Smaller pluses and minuses are found in other regions.

Typically, Arctic ice extent loses 67 to 70% of the March maximum by mid September, before recovering the ice in building toward the next March.

What will the ice do this year?  Where will 2023 rank in the annual Arctic maximum competition?

Drift ice in Okhotsk Sea at sunrise.

For more on the Pacific basins see post Meet Bering and Okhotsk Seas

Fed Reserve Hijacks US Democracy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

For those who missed it, Simon Black explains in his blog article The Federal Reserve just hijacked American democracy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

It was only Tuesday of last week that the Fed Chairman testified before a committee of concerned senators who thought the Fed may be tightening monetary policy (i.e. raising interest rates) too quickly.  This was a valid concern; rapid interest rate hikes DO create a LOT of risks. And one of those risks is that asset prices– especially bond prices– plummet in value.

And yet last week the Fed Chairman completely rejected this risk, telling worried senators flat out that “nothing about the data suggests to me that we’ve tightened too much. . .”  In other words, he believed the Fed’s rapid interest rate hikes posed ZERO risk.

Talk about a terrible prediction; just THREE DAYS LATER, one of the largest banks in the US imploded, multiple bank runs unfolded across the country, the bond market fell into turmoil, and the Fed had to essentially guarantee the entire US banking system in order to restore confidence. (More on that in a moment.)

The mental image of bank runs in America, just days after the Chairman dismissed
any risk, is the Fed’s equivalent of the Afghanistan debacle. It’s shameful.

But what’s REALLY concerning is the Fed’s response to this panic– their de facto guarantee of the entire US banking system. Because ultimately they just put YOU on the hook for the potential bond losses of every bank in America. I’ll explain–

So when the FDIC decided to guarantee every depositor at Silicon Valley Bank, including those with balances exceeding $250,000, it means they’re bailing out SVB’s wealthy customers at the expense of big Wall Street banks.

But most people seem to have missed the real story…
because the ACTUAL bailout is coming from the Fed, not the FDIC.

Despite the Chairman’s terrible prediction in front of the Senate Banking Committee last week, the Fed now seems keenly aware of the risks in the US banking system. They realize that there are LOTS of other banks that are sitting on massive unrealized losses, just like SVB.  So in order to prevent these banks from going under, the Fed invented a new facility they’re calling the “Bank Term Funding Program”, or BTFP.

But the BTFP is really just an extraordinary lie designed to make you think that the banking system is safe. They might as well have called it, “Believe This Fiction, People”, and I’ll show you why.

How Bank Credit System Works

Whenever people borrow money from banks, we normally have to provide some sort of collateral. Banks make home equity loans using real estate as collateral. They make car loans where the car is collateral. Manufacturing businesses borrow money using factory equipment as collateral.

Well, banks do the same thing when they borrow money. And sometimes banks will even borrow money from the Federal Reserve. This is actually one of the reasons why the central bank exists– to act as a “lender of last resort” if banks need an emergency loan.  And when banks borrow money from the Fed, they have to post collateral too.

Instead of automobiles and houses, though, banks use their financial assets as collateral– specifically their bonds.  This is actually codified by law (12 CFR 201.108) whereby Congress lists specific assets that the Fed can accept as collateral when making loans to banks. The list is basically different types of bonds.  But this is the root of the problem. Banks are in financial trouble because their bond portfolios have lost so much value. Some banks (like SVB) are even insolvent because of this.

So now, through the BTFP, the Fed will now accept banks’ sagging bond portfolios
as collateral, but loan the bank MORE money than the bond portfolios are worth.

Let’s say you’re an insolvent bank that invested, say, $100 billion in bonds. Those bonds are now worth $85 billion, and your bank is about to go under. “NO PROBLEMO!” says the Fed.  The bank simply posts their bond portfolio (which is only worth $85 billion) as collateral, and the Fed will loan the bank the full $100 billion… as if those losses never occurred.  It’s a complete lie. Everyone is pretending that the banks haven’t lost any money to give you a false sense of confidence in the financial system. “Believe the Fiction, People.”

Remember that banks in the US have more than $600 billion
in unrealized bond losses right now.

And that number will keep increasing if interest rates continue to rise.  So this means that the Fed has essentially guaranteed that entire $600+ billion. Commercial banks won’t lose a penny— they can now pass their financial risks down to the Federal Reserve.

This isn’t a bailout… it’s a time bomb.

We can keep our fingers crossed and hope that this time bomb never explodes. But if it does, the Federal Reserve is going to be looking at hundreds of billions in losses… which would trigger devastating consequences for the US dollar.

This means that everyone who uses US dollars… including every man, woman, and child in America, is ultimately on the hook for the potential consequences of the BTFP.  And that’s what is so remarkable about this: the Fed just made this decision all on its own.  Congress didn’t pass a law. There were no hearings, no judicial oversight, no votes.

Instead, several unelected bureaucrats who have been consistently wrong
got together in a room and decided to guarantee $600+ billion in bank losses…
and stick the American people with the consequences.

      • This is the same organization that said in February 2021 that there was no inflation.
      • The same organization that said in July 2021 that inflation was transitory and would pass in a few months.
      • The same organization that said in June 2022 that they finally understand “how little we understand about inflation.”
      • The same organization that said THREE DAYS before SVB’s collapse that “nothing about the data” suggested any risks with their policy actions.

The Fed has been wrong at every critical point over the past few years. And they’ve now unilaterally signed up every single person in America to a $600+ billion bank bailout without so much as a courtesy phone call to Congress.

This is apparently what Democracy means in America today.  We’ve all been subjected to endless vitriol over the past few years with people on all sides howling that “Democracy is under attack.”

Well, we just watched an unelected committee of central bankers hijack democracy
and stick the American people with a potential $600+ billion bank bailout.

 

 

Multiple Choice Question re Green Energy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jack Hellner poses the issue in his American Thinker article. A single multiple choice question for the ‘green’ energy pushers.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Here is one burning question for scientists, entertainers, journalists, politicians,
bureaucrats, and others who claim they can control the climate:

Which of the following has caused the reservoirs to fill up rapidly in California and elsewhere in the West?

A. The Paris Climate accord.

B. The misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” in which the Democrats claimed they can control the climate by handing out huge amounts of money to “green” pushers.

C. All the United Nations gabfests where people fly in private jets to stump about the need to cut emissions.

D. Shuttering coal and natural gas utility plants.

E. Transitioning the peasants to cricket and mealworms as “food” to control cow flatulence.

F. Making people buy inefficient, expensive, impractical electric cars powered by the dangerous, highly-flammable pollutant lithium.

G. Sequestering CO2, a clear, innocuous, non-pollutant gas that makes plants thrive and allows the world to be fed.

H. Record rain and snow that came cyclically and naturally.

(I’m sure you guessed, but the correct answer is: H.)

According to scientists, this winter’s downpour in California and other western states turned out to be a positive, as it brought relief to the drought-ridden environments:

All the moisture has helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. Even major reservoirs on the Colorado River are trending in the right direction.

Of course, the scientific “experts” who somehow failed to predict this record rain and snow, warned of the “stubborn” aridity:

But climate experts caution that the favorable drought maps represent only a blip on the radar as the long-term effects of a stubborn drought persist.

Here is a hint: The Sahara Desert used to be fertile until around 9,000 years ago. A stubborn drought has persisted since then and it was not caused by oil, coal, CO2, cars, methane, or any of the other things “climate experts” blame for causing droughts, flooding, too much snow, too little snow and whatever else with which they want to scare the public.

Why should we trust scientists or anyone else whose dire predictions of doom and gloom on the climate or global warming have been 100% wrong the last hundred years?

Everyone should understand that scientists and others who push the “green” agenda make a lot of money pretending they can control the climate. They would have their spigot of money cranked off if they told the truth that the climate is and has always changed cyclically and naturally. As always, follow the money.

The same people who claim they can control the climate:
    1. Apparently lack the ability to properly regulate banks…and then blame Trump for the problem.
    2. Can’t control or tell the truth about the crisis at the borders…and then blame Trump for the problem.
    3. Can’t tell the truth or control the “spread” of COVID. Why would anyone trust the so-called “experts” at the CDC and the WHO who spread so much misinformation about COVID and destroyed so many businesses and people with their government edicts?
    4. Told so many lies about Obamacare, including the “you can keep your doctor” and “keep your plan” shticks, premiums would go down substantially fib, and that it would lower the deficit. And most of the media still says how great it is.
    5. Can’t educate children — no matter how much money they throw at it — to read or do math at grade level. 

Yet we are told that these people can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity forever if we just give them trillions of dollars and allow them to destroy industries that produce reasonably priced energy and thousands of other products that have greatly improved our quality and length of life.

They have trouble predicting the climate a few days out and did not predict the record amount of rain and snow in California this year but supposedly they can predict temperatures within one degree one hundred years out, with all the natural variables?

Does it sound remotely intelligent to believe these people?

 

Would-Be Lawyers in Need of Disclosure

Posted on by Ron Clutz

We are seeing lately that distructive social behavior bears no consequences to the perpetrators when it suits the agenda of institutional powers, and can even be celebrated and encouraged when it serves a partisan cause.  Prime example is the debacle at my alma mater Stanford when the free speech rights of a senior judge were cancelled by law shool students, aided and abetted by a DIE dean.  Charles Lipson is concerned about future lawyers substituting their personal preferences for constitutional rights and freedoms.  He proposes a means of restoring demeanor and accountability in his Spectator article How to stop law students from blocking free speech.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Let employers and state licensing boards know what they did

When a federal appellate judge speaks at a major law school, he should expect tough questions from a learned audience. He should not expect to be shouted down. When he tries to speak but is heckled, jeered and disrupted, he should expect a university administrator to step in, read the students the riot act and restore order. He shouldn’t expect that administrator to sympathize with the disruptive students and let the trouble continue, as the feckless bureaucrat at Stanford Law School did.

Her shameful behavior is hardly unique. It’s characteristic of mid-level bureaucrats hired to push “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” at universities across the country. They show very little concern for free speech, alternative views or robust debate. That’s a very big problem since those are the very essence of higher education in a democracy.

These metastasizing DEI bureaucracies endow political ideologues with unchecked power over students’ lives and campus activities. The episode at Stanford shows how they use it. That needs to be fixed. One path to doing that (and lowering the cost of higher education, now encumbered by top-heavy administrative structures) is to abolish the entire DEI apparatus.

The victim at Stanford was federal appellate judge Kyle Duncan
and all the students who came to hear him.

True, the university later apologized, but that’s just cheap talk unless it is followed by serious actions against the disruptive students and the administrator who failed in her basic responsibility. Of that, we have heard nothing. Only the naive expect much better from Stanford (or Yale, Harvard, Columbia and dozens more). Stanford students are so committed to their illiberal views, so cloaked in moral righteousness, that they actually protested the dean even issuing an apology.

“Hecklers’ Vetoes” like this would be bad enough if they were rare. They aren’t, even at law schools, where an appreciation of the First Amendment should be foundational. Such disruptions would be even more prevalent if these institutions invited speakers whose views challenged their students. They seldom do.

Yet intellectual challenges — from professors, invited speakers, fellow students and assigned readings — are essential to a good education. That point was put perfectly by Hanna Holborn Gray, a distinguished historian who once headed the University of Chicago. “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think,” she said. “Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.” The hecklers’ veto rejects her profound insight. So do the administrators who tolerate it.

It shouldn’t take a PhD to understand why Professor Gray’s point is vital to higher education. It shouldn’t take a legal education to understand why free speech is vital to our democracy. It is essential for students, faculty and administrators to understand that value and to go beyond an abstract understanding and implement it in practice. That means students don’t have to attend speeches if they don’t want to, but they have no right to prevent others from attending or listening to them. That means students can demonstrate their opposition to a speaker outside the auditorium, but not inside. That means they are welcome to hold their own events, but not to block others from holding theirs. That means they should never prevent an invited speaker from making her case and never prevent her audience from listening and reaching their own, independent conclusions.

That means students, faculty, and administrators who cross those red lines
are undermining basic values in higher education
and should face serious consequences.

Fortunately, there is a straightforward way to stop this mischief, at least in law schools, and to underscore the importance of free speech on campus. If students are found to have disrupted a speaker (after a fair hearing, in which they can defend themselves), they should face a simple penalty: disclosure.

Disclosure means that information should be included in a student’s record
and available to anyone who legitimately seeks it.

If a law firm requests the student’s record, for example, the firm should be informed that the student was found guilty of obstructing free speech on campus, in violation of the speaker’s First Amendment rights and the university’s own rules. The same disclosure should be provided to state bar associations, which seek those records as part of their licensing requirements. Prospective employers and bar associations can use that information as they see fit.

The university should let students know these rules and expectations in advance. They should be stated clearly in the students’ letters of acceptance. They should be told that, if they come to this university, they cannot disrupt events on campus and will face serious consequences if they do. That point should be repeated during orientation sessions and enforced by disciplinary committees.

The goal is deterrence, not punishment. In a better world, that threat wouldn’t be necessary to prevent the heckler’s veto. Students wouldn’t need it to behave like decent citizens in a democracy. They would have internalized these fundamental principles long ago. Since some students clearly have not, they need to understand that bad behavior comes with bad consequences.

The simplest, most effective consequence is transparency. Let anyone who seeks their academic records know what a disciplinary board has found. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, “Depend upon it, sir. It would concentrate their minds wonderfully.”

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma professor of political science emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security, and a Spectator contributing writer.

Canada: No Border, No Nation

Posted on by Ron Clutz

When I emigrated decades ago from Boston and settled in Montreal, I learned many things. One surprise was discovering the underground railway that transported black slaves from southern US had some ending up in Montreal. It seems that some freemen got jobs as porters on the actual railroad linking New York with Montreal. They discovered that the prejudice was much less than in the US, and began to make their homes north of the border. Thus, a black community formed which became a base to welcome immigrants from Caribbean countries, as well as Africa itself and other places. So for more than a century, Montreal has had a vibrant black community with a wide mix of national origins, and of course additional generations born and bred here. Currently, our hero tennis player is Felix Auger-Aliassime, who does us proud every time he steps on the court.

Now, in 2023, we have a strange upside down transportation of illegal aliens (including not only latin americans, but chinese and drug mules, and God only knows who else. Because our fearless PM, Justin Trudeau, long ago decided that Canada is “post-national.” In other words, in true global socialist fashion, Canada is (in his mind) a place without borders, where anyone has the right to come in and take advantage of the social safety net and government largess.

An officer speaks to migrants as they arrive at the Roxham Road border crossing in Roxham, Quebec, Canada, on March 3, 2023.

The symbolic portal for this intrusion of aliens is Roxham Road, south of Montreal, where entry controls have been relaxed, similarly to the US border with Mexico. From CNN:

On a snowy March afternoon, a small convoy of taxis and hired cars rolled north along a New York country road that dead-ends at the Canadian border. Among those onboard: a Nigerian family of five, a Russian man traveling alone and a tearful South American woman named Giovanna.

“I also believe I’ll have a better quality of life in Canada, and I have some family there,” said Giovanna before walking up to the invisible line in the ice that’s guarded by Canadian authorities at a makeshift post. CNN is not using her last name because of threats she says were made against her in Colombia.

“Hello madam. How are you?” asked a Spanish-speaking Canadian officer on the other side. “You cannot enter Canada here,” he informed Giovanna. “If you do, we will arrest you. Understand? You decide.”

Giovanna responded by taking five steps into Canada where officers then informed her of her rights and processed her for unlawful entry, a process which usually ends with the defendant being released into Canada to petition for asylum.

The twist is, unwanted intruders in Texas are taken north to New York (among other places), and now New York buses them to Roxham Road. And so these arrivals begin their stay in Canada with the criminal act of crossing a border, even though the Feds refuse to enforce it. How likely is it that other criminal behavior will occur? How likely that Canadian traditions of lawful, tolerant and industrious behavior will be manifest in these newcomers? How long will proud Canadians accept to be a dumping ground for illegals by way of the US?

Additional context is provided by Brian Giesbrecht  in his article Most Canadians Don’t Think Canada Is a ‘Post-National State’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

When newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a bewildered Canada in 2015 that Canada was a “post-national state” not many of us knew what he was talking about.

Doesn’t “post-national” mean that Canada was once a nation, but no longer is one? Was he really saying that Canada was no longer a nation—that it had somehow graduated from nation status to some higher stage?

He didn’t explain, but perhaps what is happening now at Roxham Road can be at least partly explained by Trudeau’s unusual conception of what the country he is governing is all about.

At Roxham Road illegal immigrants simply walk into Canada with no permission to do so. Unlike the thousands of people waiting patiently in foreign refugee camps and poor villages who have filled out immigration forms, and complied with the many other requirements for formal admission to Canada, the Roxham Road crossers simply arrive on Canada’s doorstep with suitcases in hand—and walk in.

They are not refugees fleeing persecution. They are economic migrants residing in the United States. In many cases, their transportation to the border has been provided by American officials.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of the Roxham Road migrants are probably good folks, just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. But the fact is that they are taking the place of those who have done everything right, and have been carefully vetted by immigration officials.

The Roxham Road people haven’t been vetted at all. We have no idea
what their qualifications—or criminal records—look like.

Past governments, Liberal and Conservative, insisted that potential immigrants must follow the rules. They also believed in borders.

So, why does the Trudeau government completely depart from past practices and allow these people to simply walk into the country? The only possible answer I can see is Trudeau’s truly strange belief that Canada is a “post-national state,” and no longer a nation.

Because a state that is no longer a nation no longer needs borders. To Trudeau, borders seem to be simply an anachronism; a vestige of more primitive times. If the world is evolving from nation-states to one big—what, I’m not quite sure—we no longer need outdated concepts like borders and border controls.

We now know that “borders are bad” is just one of the World Economic Forum (WEF) talking points that Trudeau subscribes to. “Fossil fuels are bad” is another. Trudeau is one of the junior “philosopher kings” of that organization and appears to fervently believe in everything they preach.

But something I’m pretty sure of is that most Canadians do not believe that Canada
is a “post-national state” that no longer needs border controls.

Most Canadians believe that our previous immigration policy was basically sound. We need immigrants, but applicants should be carefully vetted, and only those with the necessary qualifications should be admitted. People who don’t even bother to apply—who simply show up on our doorstep—should be refused entry.

Trudeau is perfectly aware that a policy of allowing anyone entry to Canada, no questions asked, is unacceptable to voters. Yet, he does it anyway. Is this the new method of governance by which “post-national states” will be governed from now on? An organization of philosopher kings who are not accountable to voters will make the rules—rules voters would never stand for. And “Manchurian Candidates,” like Trudeau, will slip their policies into place?

Is this how obviously problematic policies, like “Just Transition”
and “Carbon Zero” will get past voters?

Recent revelations about election interference and infiltration of our systems at all levels by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) make Trudeau’s view that Canada is a “post-national state, with no core identity” even more ominous.

Canadians know who we are and what we are. We are a proud nation. A nation with borders.

 

 

 

How Covid Policies Strangely Defied What We Knew

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Robert Clancy expresses his consternation about the last three years in his Spectator Australia article Strange times.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

We live in strange times, when the globalisation of a narrative formulated and
promoted by powerful interests linked to the lure of massive profit and control,
threatens 500 years of the enlightenment and science.

As a clinical immunologist with a research interest in mucosal immunology and airway infection, the Covid-19 pandemic became a point of convergence for my interests in medicine, research and history.

The Rise of Pandemic Expert Knowledge

A pattern of confusion had evolved in Australian pandemics in the 20th century, followed by a science-based rebound led by great Australians such as Ashburton Thompson with plague in 1900 and, Macfarlane Burnet and Peter Doherty with influenza in 1919, 1957,1968 and Frank Fenner and eradication of smallpox in 1980. Lessons were learned and the community prepared for the next pandemic.

The response to the Covid pandemic by a powerful pharmaceutical industry
became a point of difference.

Earlier pandemics were a tussle between medical and political leaderships, which between 1900 and 1970 diminished as science-based programmes were adopted and supported. Outcomes included strong public health systems and world leading research programmes in immunology and infection control.

An Australian response to pandemics over 70 years was a critical influence in public health and applied research reflecting informed leadership.

The Covid-19 pandemic has not followed that course.

Suddenly everyone was an ‘epidemiologist’, dominating the airwaves and working with political and regulatory organisations to protect the global narrative, reinforced and uncritically accepted by the mainline press, to ‘combat spread of harmful vaccine disinformation’.

Three years ago, there was every reason to fear Covid-19. High mortality and transmission rates were reported in China, and the world experience with pandemics was sobering. No effective drug or vaccine existed, with management focused on public health measures. Genetic vaccines were available from January 2021, with Australia becoming one of the most vaccinated countries. Total Covid-19 deaths per million paralleled global mortality, though later in the pandemic from the less virulent Omicron variant. This surge followed relaxation of lockdowns, and the vaccine booster programme

Returning to 2020, it was natural to think that vaccines may play a role in managing Covid-19. In various forms, vaccines were used in earlier pandemics without playing a decisive role. But there were important lessons that should have informed a less sanguine approach to the narrative of mRNA vaccines being the global panacea for Covid-19. This information was available before 2021!

The apologists backtracking on mistakes in the vaccine roll-out,
with ‘we just did not know’, have no argument.

First, 80 years of vaccine development for inhaled viral infections, failed to develop one sterilising vaccine capable of inducing herd immunity.

Second, no vaccine induces stronger immunity than that following the disease, yet it took a recent Lancet meta-analysis to confirm that post Covid-19 trumps vaccine immunity.

Third, respiratory viruses like Sars-CoV-2 infect a mucosal space subject to the rules of mucosal immunology. The major difference from the systemic immune response to invasive pathogens is suppression of all immune responses by T reg cells (to control the inflammatory response to the sea of microbes bathing mucosal surfaces). With Covid-19, immunity following injected vaccines is limited; repeated ‘boosters’ favour progressive immune suppression with more frequent and more severe infections. ‘Allergy-shots’ do the same – they turn off damaging immune responses to inhaled antigens. There is little cross-over between compartments: injected vaccines will not prevent infection, or transmission of disease (a claim used to support community vaccination).

Fourth, RNA viruses undergo mutations facilitating ‘immune escape’, risking ‘selection’ of mutant virus by non-sterilising vaccines.

These ‘rules’ predict outcomes of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out. Vaccination induced systemic immunity probably prevented admission to hospital and death by neutralising virus that ‘escaped’ from the mucosal compartment, but only early in the pandemic when vaccine antigen matched prevailing virus and before priming of suppression from repeated vaccinations. There was no impact on infection or transmission of the virus. Repeated ‘boosters’ gave 30 to 40 per cent protection for a couple of months, followed by cumulating ‘negative protection’ with more severe and frequent infections. New Zealand figures indicate higher Covid-19 mortality in every age bracket, in those with ‘boosters’, reflecting a global pattern described by some as a ‘pandemic of the vaccinated’.

The mRNA vaccines differ from classical antigen vaccines.

They spread and persist for months, producing Spike protein (the viral antigen stimulating immune protection) on cells throughout the body. The consequences are an uncontrolled amount of antigen that can downregulate antibody, and a new target for T cells to attack. Reports of serious adverse events following Covid-19 vaccination including heart and brain damage and deaths outstrips combined reports for all other vaccines. Prospective study of adolescents using laboratory and MRI technology showed 2 to 3 per cent had myocarditis, contrasting with less sensitive hospital figures of one in 10,000 vaccinations.

Asymptomatic myocarditis leaves a scar, claimed to underpin a recent spate
of adrenaline-initiated deaths on sporting fields.

German post-mortem studies confirm vaccine pathology as a significant cause of sudden unexplained deaths. Statisticians across the world are seeing an increase in deaths of the order of 10 to 20 per cent greater than noted in previous years, time-matched with vaccine rollouts. These data demand proper assessment despite dismissal by authorities. Reversal of mRNA encoded information into host DNA has been documented, with unknown impact on the recipient or their progeny.

The point is this. How could a novel vaccine involving mRNA with scarce testing, with no demonstrated advantage over traditional vaccines, against all principles of mucosal immunology, and likely complicated by major adverse events, not be red-flagged by the medical-regulatory network charged with our protection? Peter Doshi, an editor of the prestigious BMJ, co-authored a review of the trial data used to underpin vaccine mandates. The authors concluded, ‘the risk of serious adverse events surpassed the risk reduction for Covid-19 hospitalisation’, demanding a ‘formal harm-benefit analysis’. This never occurred. How can it be?

We live in strange times, when the globalisation of a narrative formulated and promoted by powerful interests linked to the lure of massive profit and control, threatens 500 years of the enlightenment and science. In Australia, acceptance of the Covid-narrative was made easy by the unrecognised power of these interests and a disintegration of core medical structures that once would have demanded science-based analysis, regulatory integrity and effective review. The introduction of unique, clever technology blindsided mainstream professionals who failed to understand the implications of genetic vaccines, or the immunology of the airway. These ‘experts’ and bureaucrats made poor decisions which became rubber-stamped by administrators and politicians. ‘Cancellation’ threats to those scientists and clinicians wishing to speak out against the narrative, enabled disinformation to become convention, with frightening unknown consequences.

Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy AM was Foundation Professor of Pathology in the Medical School, University of Newcastle. He is a clinical immunologist.

 

 

Climate-Cancelled by a Friend

Posted on by Ron Clutz

I have a long-time friend and tennis partner who posted a comment on his Facebook wall yesterday, to which I posted a reply.  An hour later my comment was gone.  So I made another comment:

“Hey *******, my comment disappeared. Shall I post it again, or are you objecting to it?”  So far no reponse.
(Update:  Now my question is gone as well, so yes, he objects to my comment and erased it.)

Below is most of what he wrote, followed by my response.  Judge for yourself if I was disrespectful or merely being contrary, or in fact proposing an important alternative point of view.

Facebook Post by My Friend

After years of studying Human Nature, I’m now pretty sure that we are going the wrong way toward saving the planet because we simply can’t be proactive. It’s not who we are. Unfortunately, real change is seen by most of us as a menace. So instead of making the hard decisions, we try to make changes as painless as possible. As a consequence, we fail to make real changes. Meanwhile, we are destroying our children’s legacy. Your legacy. To be blunt, we have failed you. Not intentionally, but nevertheless, the damage is progressing. Regardless of your age, you know that as well as I do.

I can see priorities

I can see them all around me, here at home, in my province, my country and on this and every other continent. It looks like most nations are struggling with important priorities other than the planet such as poverty, discrimination, disease, desertification, famine, overpopulation, war, rule of law… to name a few. Those are, for better or worse, adult priorities.

Short term issues for adults and legacy issues for young people

While adults are struggling to keep things going, not breaking down and turning our lives upside down, young people are noticing that their future is being compromised. Two segments are in play: adults and young people. They are heading in different directions. That’s not a problem, in fact it’s a good thing. I call it the evolutionary gap. It’s a natural biproduct of generations living and dying. Call it evolution. Call it the survival of our species. Regardless of how you may wish to describe it, with each new generation of boys and girls, the reshaping of our future is triggered. We adapt and we survive.

However, this time, will we adapt fast enough?

Whether you’re in high school, a technical school or a university, what should you do?
Because adults are not going to do the right thing quickly enough, the world will need you to nudge, to push, to jolt and to shove adults in the right direction. You must help them reorient and focus their priorities.

Here are a few suggestions: every Canadian high school, technical school and university should reserve one day every week to do the “pushing” around. Perhaps we should focus our teaching and research programs toward finding ways and means to accelerate the changes required to stop climate change before it becomes irreversible. Perhaps, we should close all high schools, technical schools and universities for a semester or two, or three, to provide our youth with the time to deal with adult priorities and claim their legacy now, while it’s still possible.

It’s clear to me

I have a notion that the future of our planet depends on what young people will do today. Now. As I said earlier, if we think about it, adults are too busy taking care of now and not of tomorrow. Tomorrow’s their job.

Question to the young
So, what are you going to do?

My Facebook Comment in Response

On the other hand, it does not take someone with a degree in psychology to understand why children are depressed about the climate or starting a family. Every day, children are told by Trudeau, Harris, Biden, most journalists, entertainers, and other nihilists that humanity’s use of natural resources is destroying the planet and overpopulation is a dire threat to us all — impending doom and apocalypse is always just around the corner. Our “leaders” use words like “emergency”, “catastrophe”, and “crisis”. Girl Scouts dole out patches to girls as young as five that depict sad polar bears floating away on tiny, melting chunks of ice, and the media runs images of smoggy dystopian cityscapes, or just plain invention, deeply freakish in nature.

Our children are told the lie that species are dying rapidly because of humans. They are told that too many humans are breathing out too much CO2, and in turn, that clear, innocuous, non-pollutant gas is heating up the planet and causing the existential threat of “climate change.”

Why wouldn’t they be depressed if those talking points are all they hear? They are indoctrinated that the science is settled and anyone who dares tell the truth that the climate is and has always changed cyclically and naturally is a climate change denier who shouldn’t be taken seriously. They are taught to repeat what they are told instead of to ask questions or do research.

Liberals and Democrats seek to scare the public every day about a coming cataclysmic event — whether it’s an ice age or a burning hellscape they aren’t sure — by saying we only have a few years left. Then, they pretend they don’t understand why people, including children, are depressed.

It’s true that the future will be invented by the next generations, but the kids are not alright. Let’s hope, for their sake, that enough of them are able to rise above the rubbish stuffed into their heads, that they can address real problems instead of imaginary ones.

Footnote:

(Question to then IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri) “What do you see as the next tools you could utilize to create change?
(Pachuri Response) “Children. I think we have to sensitize the young and tell them how their future is going to be affected if we don’t take action today. I think if we can get them to understand the seriousness of the problem they would probably shame adults into taking the right steps.”

Update March 14: 

My friend phoned me yesterday saying he had not seen my comment, only my question about it.  Apparently there was some glitch in Facebook.  He asked me to repost, so I did.  Of course he disagrees with much of it, but he’s pleased to have a contrary opinion there.

I should note that my friend does at times say and write things to be provocative, and he knows me well enough not to be surprised at my counter POV.  So it shows that being needed as a tennis partner gets me latitude to have a maverick opinion.  In organizations, this is called “eccentricity credits” extended to persons with indispensible abilities.

Many years ago, a CEO famously said, “Corporate cultures don’t exist.  They were invented by consultants to make money.”  However, more recently, Corporate HR departments have become hives of DIE activists, and there’s no margin for not conforming to the ideology.  Maybe it confirms what the CEO said, when you see that DIE staff at universities are paid more than professors.

Far-Left activist and intolerant bully Tirien Steinbach, who is also Stanford’s associate dean of “diversity and equity,” attempts to shut up guest speaker Fifth Circuit Judge Duncan.

Stanford Univ Issues Apology for Disgusting “Equity and Diversity” Dean Who Ambushed and Bullied Trump-Appointed Judge During Speech He Was Invited To Give To Immature Law Students Who Shouted Him Down