by Judith Curry
“I’m reaching out to scientists this week about the election. How do you feel about it? Which of the candidates has the best plan, for you, in science and technology?”
The above question was emailed to me today by a reporter.
My response:
I am not happy with either the Democratic or Republican plans for science in the U.S. Both sides seem to want to use and misuse science as a club to further their political agendas. The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science, while the Democrats cherry pick science to further their political agendas.
Here is the long response,some text from something that I’m working on:
Dutch regulatory lawyer Lucas Bergkamp summarizes the challenge in this way. Science has become an instrument used by politicians and agencies to arm themselves with powerful arguments in complex value-laden debates. Scientists have let the politicians hijack the scientific enterprise. Both policy makers and scientists exploit scientific uncertainty to avoid debate on the relation between science and politics, facts and values. Armed with science, politicians are able to avoid accountability for decisions. Serious debate is avoided because politicized science has purged doubt and skepticism. Activist climate science makes use of a series of strategies and tactics to influence public opinion and politics. Bergkamp concludes that climate science itself has come under siege.
Scientization of policy is a response to intractable political conflicts that transforms the political issues into scientific ones. The rationale for scientization is the belief that science can act as a neutral arbiter of policy — if we could only determine the facts of a matter, the appropriate course of action would become clear. The problem is that science is neither neutral nor capable of answering political questions. The answers that science gives depend on what questions are asked, which inevitably involves value judgments. Science is not designed to answer questions about how the world ought to be, which is the work of politics.
Policy makers are culpable in the misuse of science for policy making by:
- regarding science as a vehicle to avoid ‘hot potato’ policy issues
- expecting black-and-white answers to complex problems
- demanding scientific arguments for their desired policies
- using scientific facts as a substitute for matters of public concern.
Scientists are culpable in the misuse of science for policy making by:
- naivete about expecting scientific evidence to drive policy
- conflating evidence with expert judgment
- playing power politics with their expertise
- combining expert knowledge with values that entangle disputed facts with identity-defining group commitments.
In political debates, ‘I believe in science’ is a statement generally made by people who don’t understand much about it. They use such statements about science as a way of declaring belief in scientific proposition that is outside their knowledge and understanding. The belief of such individuals in climate change is often more akin to believing in Santa Claus than relating to actual understanding of science.
In the context of the climate change, ‘I believe in science’ uses the overall reputation of science to give authority to the climate change ‘consensus’, shielding it from questioning and skepticism. ‘I believe in science’ is a signifier of social group identity that supports massive government legislation to limit or ban fossil fuels. ‘Belief in science’ makes it appear that disagreement on this solution is equivalent to a rejection of the scientific method and worldview. When exposed to science that challenges their political biases, these same ‘believers’ are quick to claim ‘pseudo-science,’ without considering (or even understanding) the actual evidence or arguments.
On the other side of the climate debate, calls for ‘sound science’ are made that weaponize uncertainty and rigor to make it more difficult to use science in regulatory decision making. Individuals promoting ‘sound science’ work to amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests. The ‘sound science’ tactic exploits a fundamental feature of the scientific process: science does not produce absolute certainty but is provisional and subject to change in the face of new evidence.
Encroachment of values into science is unavoidable. Problems arise when:
- Driven by external pressures or for their own political purposes, scientists ignore data and research paths that would make their political point weaker or undermine their ideological perspective.
- Politicians interfere with the activities of science
- Narrow framing of the scientific problem by policy makers, whereby government funding draws the efforts of scientists towards a narrow range of projects that supports preferred policies.
- Politicians, advocacy groups, journalists and even scientists attempt to intimidate or otherwise silence scientists whose research is judged to interfere with their policy preferences.
The war on science is being fought on two fronts: politicians ignoring science; and using bad science to justify a political agenda.
In 2005, science journalist Chris Mooney published a best-selling book, The Republican War on Science, which examines the politics of science policy in the U.S. The book focuses on the behavior of the U.S. Republican party, particularly the administration of President George W. Bush. The book argues that the Bush administration regularly distorted and/or suppressed scientific research to further its own political aims.
Science journalist John Tierney provides a different perspective from Mooney’s, again with reference to U.S. politics. He correctly states that both sides cherry-pick research and misrepresent evidence to support their agendas, and that stupidity and dishonesty are bipartisan. He also argues that Conservatives just don’t have that much impact on science, asking “where are the victims?”
Tierney regards the real dangers to science to come from the political Left. The first threat from the Left is confirmation bias, since academics have traditionally leaned left politically. The second threat from the Left is its long tradition of mixing science and politics. Leftists have much more confidence in experts and the state, leading to temptations to politicize science. By contrast, Conservatives are concerned by what Friedrich Hayek called the ‘fatal conceit:’ the delusion that experts are wise enough to redesign society. Conservatives distrust central planners, preferring to protect individuals’ natural rights.
Good balance.
Excellent article, but I didn’t see the obvious solution — strip politicians of the power to fund any research except military and criminal research which are government’s legitimate functions. All other research must be returned to the private sector where stupidity and dishonesty cause loss of profits.
For those who are getting rich promoting green energy projects that are more harmful than good, the profits depend on stupidity and dishonesty.
Judith,
Thank you for this post. It is excellent.
Balance is exactly what we need. The mission of the IPCC is to determine the anthropogenic impact on climate. Government funding focuses on the same issue. If one were to say split the funding and the organizational support to allow some equality in the study of “natural” climate change, there would be many more scientist and departments making a living on determining those natural process. This would create a constituency for that question and essentially fund the skeptical side of the argument. Even for those who wish to emphasize the Anthropogenic side of the equation, a better understanding of natural change processes help to better.define the real role of mankind in climate change. If I were advising a skeptical president, I would promote this. It would be hard for any scientist to suggest that it was not worthwhile.
Agreed. Great common sense thinking CMS.
> On the other side of the climate debate, calls for ‘sound science’ are made that weaponize uncertainty and rigor to make it more difficult to use science in regulatory decision making.
Nice to see some even-handedness…
> Tierney regards the real dangers to science to come from the political Left. The first threat from the Left is confirmation bias, since academics have traditionally leaned left politically. The second threat from the Left is its long tradition of mixing science and politics. Leftists have much more confidence in experts and the state, leading to temptations to politicize science. By contrast, Conservatives are concerned by what Friedrich Hayek called the ‘fatal conceit:’ the delusion that experts are wise enough to redesign society. Conservatives distrust central planners, preferring to protect individuals’ natural rights.
Ooops. Didn’t last long, though. Confirmation bias exists for more than just political reasons. It exists on both sides of the climate wars, from scientists themselves, from policy-makers, from how policy-makers use science, and from observers of the process. The tradition of mixing politics and science is hardly something that only “leftists” due.
What’s interesting is how such a taxonomy of the politicization of science ignores what science says about how ideological biases are not proportionally distributed in association with ideology.
“The right” is just as “the left” to appeal to “experts” so as to justify their belief systems.
But I will acknowledge that at least a sliver of even-handedness did get in.
Mighty nice of you.
Actually, I think Tierney was even-handed. I also agree with his opinion that the Left is the bigger danger right now. The Left is using doxing and other “cancel culture” tools to intimidate anyone who disagrees with them; the Right almost never. No matter our politics, we all should remember those brave words of Dr. Li Wenliang: “I believe that a healthy society should not have only one voice,” and that is just as true of a healthy scientific enterprise.
> Mighty nice of you.
Thanks! I work hard at being nice.
> The Left is using doxing and other “cancel culture” tools to intimidate anyone who disagrees with them; the Right almost never.
I disagree. I see it as being ubiquitous on both sides. And there is a long tradition of such intimidation against “the left” in the sense of the “establishment” having power against those not in the establishment (civil rights, gay rights, etc.).
Any characterizations should be subjected to due skeptical diligence. The “science” in this regard says that we should expect unrealistic determinations to be made in terms of “outgroup homogeneity.”
https://tinyurl.com/y6ac6lvz
I don’t know how one would even go about a scientific process of determining that an imbalance exists, as opposed to, ironically enough, a lot of people confirming their biases.
Perhaps you could walk me through your process of reaching your unbiased viewpoint?
The left is burning down building, assaulting people, and ki-l-l-ing people. The left is doing this in the US FAR, FAR more than the right. And worse, left-wing politicians in some cities are letting their people off while prosecuting those on the right who understandably use their 2nd amendment right to defend themselves. There is no comparison between the right and left when it comes to violence.
Although if the left keeps it up or it gets worse, the balance could well shift.
jim2: ..here is no comparison between the right and left when it comes to violence.
Spot on.
“Between 1994 and 2020, there were 893 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States. Overall, right-wing terrorists perpetrated the majority—57 percent—of all attacks and plots during this period, compared to 25 percent committed by left-wing terrorists, 15 percent by religious terrorists, 3 percent by ethnonationalists, and 0.7 percent by terrorists with other motives.”
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states
Rune – Unfortunately, I don’t have time to dive into the CSIS study, but I’m not talking about 1994 to now. I’m talking about 2020!! What is going on now is what matters and the left is k–ii–ll–in-g people, a-salt-ing people, burning down buildings (private property), and looooting. It is the LEFT doing this, not the right.
Rune – “Between 1994 and 2020, there were 893 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States. Overall, right-wing terrorists perpetrated the majority—57 percent—of all attacks and plots during this period, compared to 25 percent committed by left-wing terrorists, 15 percent by religious terrorists, 3 percent by ethnonationalists, and 0.7 percent by terrorists with other motives.”
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states
That is a grossly flawed study –
54 right wing terrorists attacks in 2017 in the USA – not even remotely possible.
Far too many unaffiliated nut cases incorrectly classified “right wing”
Far too many left leaning nut cases incorrectly classified as ” right wing”
Right Joe. How by any stretch of imagination is an “incel” considered right wing??? If I had time I would first investigate the people running the CSIS organization.
CNN and Joe Biden assure us that looting and shooting are protected Democratic Party political activities and drug dealing is a left wing inalienable right. Therefore, Chicago alone produces a body county from left-wing terrorist activity (as defined in this thread) that is higher than all right-wing violence nationwide. And they do it every week. Yay team blue!
Rune –
1) Doesnt it strike as odd, that the study has multiple links to other stories claiming the same “right Wing ” terrorist activity, but zero links to the underlying source data.
2) White supremists are not part of the republic party, yet they are labeled right wing to imply that they are.
3) the left terrorism , BLM , Antifa are all embraced by the democrat party.
Rune, that study is pure propaganda. They call all anti government acts as right wing. Maybe they missed the Antifa activities that stretch back a decade, and police attacks (those are 99% leftists). By this author George Washington would be a terrorist, as would Frederick Douglass.
Political differences are based on cultural values that are in turn founded on a rich legacy of ideas and experience. One side understands Hayek’s problem of knowledge and is committed to democracy, the rule of law, the primacy of markets and open economies.
https://www.heritage.org/index/images/book/2019/Chapter1/EF%202019%20index%20at%2025%20chart%202.png
“Economic freedom has taken an upturn in the majority of world economies. The global average economic freedom score of 61.1 is the highest ever recorded in the 24-year history of the Index.
Economic freedom improved globally for the sixth year in a row, with the average score up by two-tenths of a point from the previous year. The world average is now more than three points higher than in the first edition of the Index in 1995.” https://www.heritage.org/index/images/book/2019/Chapter1/EF%202019%20index%20at%2025%20chart%202.png
Economic freedom brings higher income and better health, education and environmental outcomes.
Opposed to this is a myopic vision involving narratives of moribund western economies governed by corrupt corporations collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions – leading to less growth, less material consumption, less CO2 emissions, less habitat destruction and a last late chance to stay within the safe limits of global ecosystems. And this is just in the ‘scholarly’ journals.
With a deep if unintended irony – Joshua brings a false postmodernist equivalency to the table. We are as biased as each other with no objective choice between opposing viewpoints. Although both sides may with little enough diligence claim the socially important imprimatur of science – ultimately it is a clash of incompatible values that comes down to enlightenment ideals versus another reign of terror.
Ellisony
“Economic freedom improved globally for the sixth year in a row,”
oh, I remember 2019, the good old days !
We lost more economic freedom in 2020 than in the prior 70 years. In almost every country.
????????
https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
thecliffclavenoffinance – you must define “economic freedom” as your ability to move US jobs to China as you get insanely rich doing it. That is what was happening. Trump has fought against that. Is he 100% successful in that fight? No, but at least he fights. Politicians before Trump wouldn’t even talk about it.
i suspect he is referring to the unprecedented intrusions into the economy due to the pandemic.
Ellison
Stop looking at surveys, and look at the real world in 2020.
The year is not over yet but the loss of freedom, including economic freedom was huge. 23 million Americans are still collecting unemployment compensation seven months after the pandemic started. Being forced OUT OF WORK from government mandated partial shutdowns is NOT economic freedom.
http://el2017.blogspot.com/2020/10/think-of-these-continuing-unemployment.html
Many small businesses have been crippled in 2020 by unconstitutional state government mandates that shut them down. A good friend who relied on his small business for all of his income for many decades has had zero income since March, and is selling business assets to pay bills.
The worst possible example of the loss of economic freedom is having your state government mandate the shutdown of your business. And consider the arbitrary rules, where it was okay to sit five inches from a stranger while eating your meal when seated in an airplane, while it was illegal to sit five feet away from strangers at the next table eating your meal inside a restaurant !
Trump’s negotiations with China were a complete failure. China’s promises of buying a lot more US agricultural products were an empty promise, because they significantly cut food purchases at first — and they are not even back to where they were originally.
The Trump tariffs were paid by American businesses IN THIS COUNTRY who bought goods from China. Trump kept bragging about the “income” from the tariffs, as if Chinese people were paying them. New tariffs on imports from China are not economic freedom.
And Trump’s complete failure to reduce the theft of intellectual property by the Chinese does not promote American industry.
And don’t give me grief for telling the truth about Trump, because I voted for him this year. He was leader of a successful business, so was a much better candidate than the leader of a crime family, Joe ‘hidin’ Biden, whose mind is slidin’.
The methodology is defined by the Heritage Foundation in concert with the Wall St journal – and it is not a survey. The rest of your complaints are so much flim flam with no bearing on fundamental principles.
ELLERSON
Your beloved Heritage Report is g a r b a g e !
It is several authors sitting at their computers making lots of judgement calls on economic freedom, using published data, as if data from nations run by dictators can be trusted.
Different authors would have different results because so many judgement calls are required.
The main failure of the arbitrary Heritage ‘index” is that PEOPLE living in the countries being rated were NOT contacted, asked about life and business IN THEIR HOME COUNTRIES, and then extensively quoted in the Heritage “report”.
Actual life and business in those nations is NOT going to be exactly what is posted online, or in books. Bribes may be required for government officials. Would that be documented at a website, or in a book?
Lawsuits attacking businesses may be documented, but settlements are often not disclosed. Fear of lawsuits affects economic freedom — how would you get that information from a website?
Heritage authors are passing judgements about “economic freedom” in nations they’ve never even visited. They are acting as “armchair quarterbacks”, all biased by being employed by the Heritage Foundation. These biased authors present a batch of arbitrary numbers with many judgement calls that no outsider can refute. The arbitrary index can not be falsified, so it is not worth reading.
In plain English, the Heritage report on Economic Freedom is a pile of steaming farm animal digestive waste products — based on too many personal opinions by ‘outsiders’, sitting at their desks, in front of computers, with no contacts with people living in almost all of the countries they rate.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, I suppose
nd in my opinion bombastic running off at the mouth with with prejudicial rants that miss the point again is especially worthless. Where does this come from for God’s sake.
“Inevitably, any discussion of economic
freedom will focus on the critical relationship between individuals and the government. In general, state action or government control that interferes with individual autonomy limits economic freedom.” https://www.heritage.org/index/pdf/2020/book/chapter2.pdf
And in my opinion…
Messed that up.
You have to remember as well that the right’s of others are balanced against one’s own – and thus freedom is not absolute.
Science doesn’t support left or right. But politicians invoke science like the Cardinals supported the authority of the church during Inquisition.
So what is the mythical “science”? Some all-knowing force in the universe? Nope, just folks trying to make sense of what is going on. No surprise there is a diversity of opinion and that is healthy.
Has science told us how to respond to Covid? No, people with differing values, judgment, knowledge and prejudices told us. Science measures the results.
The answer is obvious: science by scientists, politics by politicians.
Anyone crossing the border from science to politics, is no longer a scientist. They are a politician and their views treated as such.
Sort of like the scientist in Feb saying no masks. Then later saying no masks was not science, but policy. Mask is the real science trust me I am not doing policy now.
“The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science, while the Democrats cherry pick science to further their political agendas.”
I would suggest that a greater distinction be made between “science” and “scientists,” whoever they are. It is doubtful that you could get much agreement on the current state of the “science” on hot topics such as Covid-19 or Climate. Many of the current “activist” climate scientists deserve to be ignored; and yes, to an extent we all cherry pick which of the latest reports we choose to believe.
All-in-all another well written, thought provoking letter written by Dr. Curry.
Judith, you have written about the science arguments supporting various climate change policies, but the underlying reasons for the politicization of science also has a psychological aspect.
Consider the victim/rescuer/perpetrator Karpman drama triangle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle
There is a huge political benefit in being perceived as a rescuer because that is a virtuous role. To engage in virtue signalling to your party base you must display conspicuous virtue, such as by being the rescuer of an important victim: the climate. A rescuer needs a victim, without which it can’t be a rescuer. If a victim doesn’t exist a would-be rescuer needs to invent one. It helps if the invented victim isn’t human, because a human could deny being a victim, whereas the climate as alleged victim cannot.
If there is no victim the rescuer becomes unnecessary, and the triangle drama is over. But the climate victim in this game has to be focussed on one’s own country because it has to be a crisis to be solved through our domestic political effort. Hence the need to pretend that the victim is worsening domestic weather, flooding, wildfires, etc., which can then be rescued by a Green government. Like some others, Americans can, and must, save the planet, all by themselves. That hubris underlies the Green New Deal.
If the US government were to treat climate change as a political problem at the planetary level voters would see that this much different “victim” can only be rescued by a coordinated, effective and enforceable global climate law. Currently, such a global law, which would have to be imposed by a global government, has few supporters. But if US politicians admitted the necessary global scope of climate policy the US as rescuer would be recognized as being only 12% of the rescue, and entirely dependent on what the remaining 88% of global CO2 emissions was doing.
Perhaps it would help if scientists pointed out that a molecule of CO2 is the same wherever emitted, and that the average global temperature is not taken with a thermometer in Washington.
Andrew, Very well stated! It’s all about psychopathic politicians needing to control ignorant people who have never been taught the principles of causation and hence are not capable of understanding science. What is missing here, is understanding that the purpose of science is to question everything because all truths are temporary and provisional, while the purpose of politics is to sell certainty.
We have to vote for Trump. Biden will destroy America. Biden and Harris have sold our to socialism and communism. Biden is anti fossil fuels which made America and the developed world comfortable , able to travel quickly and safely and produce plastics and metals and electricity cheaply and continuously. Nuclear can only produce some of this. I could go on. Trump is learning slowly. He is doing many good things of which the public are unaware. He has personally emailed me everyday and I have given him advice and good wishes directly. Most US media is left wing socialist and foreign owned now.
Paulg23
“Maintaining a separation of science and politics is a requisite for protecting life and liberty.”
No exceptions?
Scientists are scrambling for a way to deflect dangerous meteorite, and ask the President/Congress for government assistance.
“Sorry, we’d rather not concern ourselves with science issues”
Power corrupts all who seek it and all who exercise it. That’s why politicians lie and why “scientists” who get involved in politics subvert their thinking to serve political ends. Imagine turning over direction of the economy and control of our lives and property, to either Joe Biden or Donald Trump – or to any other politician – in the hope of controlling the future of climate change. Maintaining a separation of science and politics is a requisite for protecting life and liberty.
This article is a good example of what is wrong with science — many broad generalizations and conclusions not backed up by data and specific examples. Without data you are just another person with an opinion. Like the so called climate models, which represent the personal opinions of their owners about what causes climate change. That’s not real science.
The only thing missing from the article is a prediction of science in the future … sort of like the always wrong, wild guesses of the future climate.
And don’t buy a used car from a scientist !
“Tierney regards the real dangers to science to come from the political Left. The first threat from the Left is confirmation bias..”
A good example of this is from Marianne Lavelle who misses the point that “NOAA led a team that showed global warming is detectable at the bottom of the ocean..” is an obvious anomaly to a scientist because this slight warming exists under vast columns of cold water, yet she writes very disparagingly of a new NOAA team member who likes to keep an open mind on other causes of climate change.
IPCC chapter head Prof Baylor Fox-Kemper dismisses the notion of increasing geothermal heating because it’s too small to consider relative to surface heating. The IPCC is not open minded enough though to consider altered gravity theory which could be increasing mantle convection. He was kind enough to say that the warming of Lake Tanganiyka at 900m+ over time was “interesting”.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23102020/noaa-climate-denial-david-legates?amp
Here is some new policy related science (to say the least):
Study suggests no more CO2 warming
By David Wojick, Ph.D.
Precision research by physicists William Happer and William van Wijngaarden has determined that the present levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are almost completely saturated. In radiation physics the technical term “saturated” implies that adding more molecules will not cause more warming.
In plain language this means that from now on our emissions from burning fossil fuels could have little or no further impact on global warming. There would be no climate emergency. No threat at all. We could emit as much CO2 as we like; with no effect.
This astounding finding resolves a huge uncertainty that has plagued climate science for over a century. How should saturation be measured and what is its extent with regard to the primary greenhouse gases?
In radiation physics the term “saturation” is nothing like the simple thing we call saturation in ordinary language, just as the greenhouse effect is nothing like how greenhouses work. Your paper towel is saturated when it won’t pick up any more spilled milk. In contrast greenhouse gases are saturated when there is no more milk left to pick up, as it were, but it is far more complex than this simple analogy suggests.
Happer is probably best known to our readers as a leading skeptical scientist. He co-founded the prestigious CO2 Coalition and recently served on the staff of the National Security Council, advising President Trump. But his career has been as a world class radiation physicist at Princeton. His numerous peer reviewed journal articles have collectively garnered over 12,000 citations by other researchers.
In this study Professors Happer and van Wijngaarden (H&W) have worked through the saturation physics in painstaking detail. Their preprint is titled “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases“. They have gone far beyond the work done to date on this complex problem.
To begin with, while the standard studies treat the absorption of radiation by greenhouse molecules using crude absorption bands of radiation energy, H&W analyze the millions of distinct energies, called spectral lines, which make up these bands. This line by line approach has been an emerging field of analysis, often giving dramatically new results.
Nor do they just look at absorption. Here is how Professor Happer put it to me:
“You would do our community a big favor by getting across two important points that few understand. Firstly: Thermal emission of greenhouse gases is just as important as absorption. Secondly: How the temperature of the atmosphere varies with altitude is as important as the concentration of greenhouse gases.”
So they looked hard, not just at absorption but also including emissions and atmospheric temperature variation. The work is exceedingly complex but the conclusions are dramatically clear.
Happer and van Wijngaarden’s central conclusion is this:
“For the most abundant greenhouse gases, H2O and CO2, the saturation effects are extreme, with per-molecule forcing powers suppressed by four orders of magnitude at standard concentrations…”
Their graphical conclusions are especially telling:
“Fig. 9 as well as Tables 2 and 4 show that at current concentrations, the forcings from all greenhouse gases are saturated. The saturations of the abundant greenhouse gases H2O and CO2 are so extreme that the per-molecule forcing is attenuated by four orders of magnitude…”
The other three greenhouse gases they analyzed are ozone, nitrous oxide and methane. These are also saturated but not extremely so like water vapor and carbon dioxide. They are also relatively minor in abundance compared to CO2, which in turn is small compared to H2O.
To begin with, while the standard studies treat the absorption of radiation by greenhouse molecules using crude absorption bands of radiation energy, H&W analyze the millions of distinct energies, called spectral lines, which make up these bands. This line by line approach has been an emerging field of analysis, often giving dramatically new results.
Nor do they just look at absorption. Here is how Professor Happer put it to me:
“You would do our community a big favor by getting across two important points that few understand. Firstly: Thermal emission of greenhouse gases is just as important as absorption. Secondly: How the temperature of the atmosphere varies with altitude is as important as the concentration of greenhouse gases.”
So they looked hard, not just at absorption but also including emissions and atmospheric temperature variation. The work is exceedingly complex but the conclusions are dramatically clear.
Happer and van Wijngaarden’s central conclusion is this:
“For the most abundant greenhouse gases, H2O and CO2, the saturation effects are extreme, with per-molecule forcing powers suppressed by four orders of magnitude at standard concentrations…”
Their graphical conclusions are especially telling:
“Fig. 9 as well as Tables 2 and 4 show that at current concentrations, the forcings from all greenhouse gases are saturated. The saturations of the abundant greenhouse gases H2O and CO2 are so extreme that the per-molecule forcing is attenuated by four orders of magnitude…”
The other three greenhouse gases they analyzed are ozone, nitrous oxide and methane. These are also saturated but not extremely so like water vapor and carbon dioxide. They are also relatively minor in abundance compared to CO2, which in turn is small compared to H2O.
https://www.cfact.org/2020/10/26/study-suggests-no-more-co2-warming/
The link to the paper works in the CFACT posting.
This is huge!
David
Combine Happer and van Wijngaarden’s findings with the message in Ed Berry’s new book “Climate Miracle” and you can understand why no correlation can be found in properly detrended time series of CO2 changes and temperature changes.
DMA, “why no correlation can be found in properly detrended time series of CO2” is the human-contributed portion of net global CO2 concentration change and rate of change cannot be detected with math and statistics tools. Since the human portion of CO2 flux is too small to be detected within the net global CO2 flux, it should be obvious that amount of human-contributed CO2 is far too small to affect any climate variable, e.g. temperature or greening. Salby, Munshi and others have been saying this for years.
There is a significant correlation between rising temperature trend and rising net global concentration trend. But not the reverse.
Professor Munshi’s paper at the link below is exceptionally informative science. The examples used are helpful to understanding the statistical tools used. Since this work only involves two components of a single climate variable, i.e. CO2, the many other climate variables cancel out and may be ignored for the purpose of this work. This is extremely important because simultaneity bias, which should always be removed from the many entangled, interdependent climate variables but unfortunately has been rarely considered in climate studies, requires solving multiple simultaneous differential equations including many assumptions and uncertainties. But, that is not needed in the method described so well by Munshi and Salby. This is a home run.
Summarizing again, the human contribution to CO2 concentration due to all sources including burning fossil fuels, cement production, etc is so small that it has no measurable effect on the overall natural growth rate of CO2 concentration … regardless the net global CO2 concentration trend is increasing or decreasing. By logical inference, human CO2 cannot have any measurable effect on global temperature or any other climate variable co-dependent with CO2. The human portion of CO2 is smaller than the statistical noise in the measurement of net global atmospheric CO2 concentration.
The human portion used in climate models and studies is a calculation based on assumptions rather than a measurement in the real world. There are studies based on carbon isotope ratio mass spectrometry, but there is no global measurement regime. About 34 minutes in this video, refuting IPCC claims based on isotope ratio, Salby concludes that human emissions are only 5/150 of natural emissions. https://youtu.be/2ROw_cDKwc0
The slope (or first derivative) of net atmospheric CO2 concentration which we see in the Keeling curve from Mauna Loa is determined by Henry’s gas law which is based mostly on the temperature of the oceans. According to Henry’s gas law, there is about 50-60 times more gaseous CO2 in ocean water than in the air above that ocean water. When the ocean warms, CO2 gas is emitted from the water and vice versa. The ocean temperature trend since the end of the last ice age has been waming. The dominant source of the increasing net atmospheric CO2 concentration is that giant reservoir of gaseous CO2 in the ocean. Since the oceans have enormous heat capacity, we can expect to see the slowly increasing CO2 concentration trend for the forseeable future.
There is a huge instantaneous flux of absorption and emission happening continuously worldwide of CO2 from oceans, land and plants. The net sum of all these absorption events and emission events is represented by the upward sloping line of the net global atmospheric CO2 concentration measured by the instruments on Mauna Loa. These instruments are sensitive enough to detect with precision the seasonal changes in CO2 concentration and the rate of change, represented in the shark’s teeth pattern on the Keeling CO2 trend line, but not sensitive enough to detect the human CO2 contribution. This means the human contribution is very much less than the seasonal variation.
Dr. Munshi is Professor Emeritus at Sonoma State University. He taught applied statistics in the Business Administration department. He earned a BS Chemical Engineering at San Jose State University, MS Chemical Engineering Colorado School of Mines, and PhD from University of Arkansas. Professor Murray Salby is well known.
Professor Jamal Munshi: https://www.academia.edu/14863648/RESPONSIVENESS_OF_ATMOSPHERIC_CO2_TO_ANTHROPOGENIC_EMISSIONS_A_NOTE
Professor Murray Salby: https://youtu.be/b1cGqL9y548
This is irrelevant at best – more a terminal monomania than rational science at worst.. A multi-gas and aerosol strategy reducing pollutants across the board is required – CFC’s, nitrous oxides, methane, black carbon and sulfate. Ongoing decreases in carbon intensity and increases in efficiency and productivity retain economic competitiveness. And technical innovation across sectors – energy, transport, industry, residential and agriculture and forestry conserves environments and builds industries of the future. Along with hardening infrastructure to cope with whatever nature deals out in a nonlinear world.
There have been many such self delusional claims that rely on simplistic math rather than empirical evidence. These are waved about by climate warriors like regimental standards. I have no more time for such nonsense. It is time to be politically practical and pragmatic.
Ellison – This is what I referring to earlier. You have gone off the rails here.
There is no PROOF that CO2 emissions will be problematic. PROOF!! Man!
There is proof that CO2 is one of the ‘greenhouse’ – and that the world is nonlinear. And you just miss the point of doing things that should and are be done. Missed the point Man.
David,
Have just read first pass through Happer and van Wijngaarden and am working through the math. Imprssions at this stage are that a number of past uncertainties are addressed, with results that look solid by comparison with observations in clear sky conditions.
The conclusions about saturation of the ability of so-called greenhouse gases to respond much more to higher concentrations in the air, should that happen, is highly significant for policy settings.
In familiar old analogy terms, the window pane has had so many coats of paint that another coat will hardly affect its transparency – it is saturated.
Radiation physicists, spectroscopist etc – comments much appreciated.
This paper has the capacity to take all politics out of climate change as presently portrayed by the IPCC, because it indicates that further GHG increase will have negligible effects on future climate. Geoff S
Further,
Appart from the Happer and van Wijngaarden findings others need to explain the lack of change in atmospheric CO2 following an estimated 8.8% reduction in CO2 anthropogenic emissions in the first 6 months of 2020, as a Covid lockdown response.The GHG concentration of the air seems now to be on a road to political irrelevancy. Geoff S
Geoff,
A very good point you make! There is more to this matter than anyone is discussing or, for that matter, have ever discussed to my knowledge. NASA has publicised that there has been a “greening” of the earth by between 8% and 16% over the last 40 years. By “greening” they are measuring to the total leaf area using satellites. For any given amount of sunlight, leaf area is proportional to a plant’s ability to photosynthesise CO2 into starches, sugars and cellulose. If the biosphere’s capacity to absorb CO2 has grown by more than twice the estimated total human emissions then, by simple queuing theory, the atmospheric CO2 concentration should have been dropping quite sharply. It is not and this suggests that mankind’s emissions have nothing to do with increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration (and we should be very grateful for this increased concentration as David Legates has asserted many times in the past!).
I have examined raw temperature data for Australia, the US and other locales. All of this raw data shows that, over the last 100+ years, the earth’s atmospheric temperature has been decreasing in fits and starts. The chances of this data being universally wrong is infinitesimally small.
Before scientists start worrying about the causes of global warming, they should first establish beyond doubt that it is occurring. My studies indicate that it is not!
Reading the first page and announcing that this makes perfect sense and changes everything? Sigh. As for the other. There is some perfectly ordinary and obvious math and elementary science involved in understanding what is observable.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/covid2.html
And La Nina doesn’t help the cause. Red is carbon flux from oceans to atmosphere.
https://galenmckinley.github.io/CarbonCycle/images/takahashi_co2_flux.png
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and steel cement production – from 1750 to 2011 – was about 365 billion metric tonnes as carbon (GtC), with another 180 GtC from deforestation and agriculture. Of this 545 GtC, about 240 GtC (44%) had accumulated in the atmosphere, 155 GtC (28%) had been taken up in the oceans with slight consequent acidification, and 150 GtC (28%) had accumulated in terrestrial ecosystems.
It would be interesting to know, how much fossil carbon has left in Earth’s deposits.
Maybe in 50 years there wouldn’t be any fossil fuels left.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Isnt this just an MS – work in progress? I thought we dealt with peer-reviewed punblihed papers here
Alan
Alan, the title of the blog is Climate, ETC The Etc. means not everything here is peer-reviewed.
David,
I am sorry to say that your summary of the paper by Wijngaarden and Happer shows a complete misunderstanding of their findings.
Far from revealing anything even remotely controversial, their findings provide support for mainstream results from many previous single-point LBL studies based on similar assumptions, a point which the authors make themselves.
In particular:-
(i) They confirm previous estimates of the instantaneous net TOA and top-of-tropopause incremental forcing estimates associated with a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (from 200ppm to 400ppm and from 400ppm to 800ppm). These values are 3W/m2 and 5.5W/m2 for TOA and top-of-tropopause respectively.
(ii) They confirm and explain the approximate logarithmic relationship between net forcing increments at the tropopause and atmospheric concentration of CO2; and similarly for TOA.
(iii) They confirm previous clear sky, single-point estimates of ECS for the distinct assumptions of
a. constant lapse rate and constant absolute humidity,
b. constant lapse rate and constant relative humidity and
c. adiabatic lapse rate with constant relative humidity.
I can see absolutely nothing here which challenges mainstream science on the issue, and nothing which would support your assertion that the paper suggests no further CO2 warming.
You seem to have completely misinterpreted the authors’ textual references to “saturation” to mean that change in CO2 concentration will have no further effect, despite the quantified results which the paper shows. All that Chapter 6 is actually demonstrating is that a small quantity of CO2 added to a CO2-free atmosphere has an effect on flux change which is orders of magnitude larger than adding the same small quantity of CO2 to an atmosphere that already has, say, 400 ppm concentration of CO2. This is not new.
Note that the term “forcing” used in Chapter 6 is a measure of the altitude-dependent difference between, on the one hand, the outgoing flux estimated for an optically transparent atmosphere with a given surface temperature and, on the other hand, the outgoing flux estimated for a compositionally-modified atmosphere with the same given surface temperature. It is not the incremental forcing associated with a perturbation to the atmospheric composition.
Using this definition of flux forcing, the authors calculate that the shift from an optically transparent atmosphere to a standard atmosphere with 400ppm CO2 results in a “forcing” (i.e. a flux change) of 137 W/m2 at top-of-tropopause (see Figure 7). Using this definition of flux forcing, the authors write appropriately:-
“Doubling the current concentrations of the greenhouse gases CO2, N2O and CH4 increases the forcings by a few percent for cloud-free parts of the atmosphere.” This “few percent” translates into values which are very close to previous estimates of forcing increments from changing concentrations of CO2. I can see nothing new here.
kribaez | November 2, 2020 at 4:22 am
Good Post
Biden says he will eliminate use of oil in the country and supports the green climate plan. Electing that candidate will bring disaster and economic ruin to all. That is all we need to know.
The way things are going, getting politics out of the US Supreme Court may be one of the most consequential acts of DJ’s first term.
How do you figure? Did you miss the hearings for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett?
The 3 justices you list make decisions based on the law and facts of the case and NOT predetermined policy goals. You don’t know how those 3 will rule on any particular case.
You do know how the dem appointed judges will rule. That is the problem.
To see my thoughts in detail regarding “climate change” (the pseudonym/euphemism for Anthropogenic Global Warming) please go to http://www.nvtech.com.au/Climate/AGW.html.
This world has a deadly problem that threatens to destroy Western civilisation. It is misinformation. Its vector is the Internet and its facilitator is government populated by the technologically illiterate.
We are now seeing this same phenomenon with COVID-19. Without doubt, the response to this virus has been a disaster to Western economies. Sweden was the only significant Western nation to respond sanely to this epidemic.
If the Democrats gain power, it will be very bad for the whole world, not just for American citizens. History teaches us that human societies do best when there is free enterprise and minimal government, ie, only sufficient to maintain law and order. That is because, under these arrangements, you harness the ingenuity and intellect of the whole population; everyone working in their self interest (you can game this.) but doing the least harm to others. The more centralised control is, the more you stifle those qualities that give rise to prosperity and freedom. That is why deregulation has had such a profound effect to the US economy and why those States, typically run by Democrats, are mired in poverty and decay.
Regulation is contested in the cut and thrust of politics – and much is permissible without sacrificing freedom. Health, education, infrastructure, social welfare, etc. Even Singapore – ranked as the most free economy by the Heritage Foundation – has a government share of GDP of 17%.
RIE,
So what are your best suggestions to lower regulation even more?
Geoff S
Win elections of course..
Balance in the politics of teachers and “educational” institutions.
sweden
sweden loses its grip
https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/coronaviruset/jatteokning-i-stockholm-vi-har-tappat-greppet/
“Stricter advice
On October 29, stricter general councils were introduced in Stockholm County, among other places. It is not yet visible in the numbers because it takes a while from the time someone is infected until the person gets symptoms, is tested, gets a positive test result and possibly is admitted to hospital.
In the Uppsala Region, which was the first in the country to introduce stricter general guidelines on 20 October, the number of infected people has since increased sharply. But even there, it is not certain that the majority have been infected after the advice was introduced, according to the infection control doctor there.
– We need to see that fewer people move around in society, that people avoid going to parties and being crowded in shops. It has to happen now, says Björn Eriksson.”
“Sweden was the only significant Western nation to respond sanely to this epidemic.”
no western nation has responded sanely.
every western nation chose to give themselves the trolly problem.
They haven’t reached herd immunity, but deaths are still minimal:
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
> but deaths are still minimal:.
Deaths are 10 X per capita what they are in Finland.
So Finland is having 0 to 1 deaths and Sweden is having 0 to 10?
(deaths per day, that is)
And why is Finland having a big case spike, bigger than March-April??
https://virusncov.com/covid-statistics/finland
> The overall cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rate through the week ending October 17, 2020 was 193.7 hospitalizations per 100,000 population. Since the week ending September 26 (MMWR week 39), weekly hospitalization rates have increased for all age groups combined, driven primarily by an increase in rates among adults aged 50 years and older.
> The overall cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rate through the week ending October 24, 2020 was 199.8 hospitalizations per 100,000 population. Since the week ending September 26 (MMWR week 39), weekly hospitalization rates have increased.
The science of how the Sun discretely drives temperature extremes invalidates the main supposed danger of climate change. Science like that cannot be misused, it brings certainty where there was none, and helps to explain climate change. And without the imagined perils of weather from hell, it’s hard not to see a little global warming as a good thing.
There are many perils facing civilization, climate change is but one. But it will surly be the most challenging because we are so fixated on the fierce urgency of the present.
“The trick is learning how to treat the last ten thousand years as if it were last week, and the next ten thousand as if it were next week. Such tricks confer advantage.” – Stewart Brand 01999
https://thesideview.co/journal/skillful-perception-at-the-scale-of-civilization/
Here’s a good example of using science to justify one’s politics:
Beside the same, Marx discovering the laws of the motion of society or social evolution expanded the theory relating to the laws of natural science (of dialectics and of physics) to the social evolution. In other words, historical materialism and dialectical materialism are branches of one single ideology.,/i>
https://www.peoplesreview.in/opinion/2018/05/karl-marx-the-man-of-science/
So what do you make of this? Is it just to impress American consumers? Sure seems like they are planning to de-carbonize their entire economy because they are listening to their scientists.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Japan to net zero by 2050 in his first policy speech in parliament.
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/10/7a5539cd0324-japan-pm-suga-vows-goal-of-net-zero-emissions-by-2050.html
Japan is restarting nuclear power plants so they might actually come sort of close to their pledge.
The EU is pledging to close their nuclear power plants and increase natural gas pipelines, so they will obviously not come close to any pledges.
And, of course, in keeping with the topic of this post- the climate gliteratti have declared for 30 years that “basic physics” doesn’t apply to Chinese CO2 molecules, a “scientific” finding so bizarre that globe has tuned out climate science with the occasional exception of a press release to placate the nuttier members.
I would add that climate “science” suffers more recently because the left has gone overboard with the tactic of using people in white coats to shut down debate. Some of it has resulted in epic failures.
Sciency-sounding “studies” claimed practically every woman on a college campus had suffered assault (so broadly defined that a man sitting alone reading a book might be accused of it hourly). That was all the rage in the media until Rolling Stone magazine upended the fun by accidentally revealing the whole game was fiction from activists. And the Democrats nominated a person in 2020 who fit their definition of assaulter. Again.
The resolute “scientists” of the greenish tint happily pushed the fairy tale of inexpensive and highly functional “renewables” to the point that a handful of governments foolishly built them and accidentally disproved the whole genre. Most famously in California right now.
And for the layman, who doesn’t pay much attention to climate science, they are happily enjoying the absolute hilarity of watching the “pro-science” politicians insist that men can menstruate and there is no physical reason to prevent 220 pound men from playing women’s rugby if they make some sort of political declaration of identity.
Is IPCC a scientific organization? Is Climate Change a science? Is Physics a science? Is Biology a science? Is Psychology a science? Is ‘Political Science’ a science? Is Astrology a science?
” The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science, ”
Judith is correct , but neglects to mention that this White House is ignoring most of Reagan and Bush’s science advisors:
Who needs Chris Mooney when Trump’s war on Republican scientists has become the extension of politics by other means?
Progressives seek to use the authority of science more frequently than classical liberals because progressives want to do more with the government than classical liberals. This used to be more obvious in US politics because “conservative” used to be more aligned with classical liberalism. Though there was plenty of classical liberal thought in both major parties. Now there is very little classically liberal thought in either of the major parties.
After reading the arguments in this article, it is a bit difficult to see what is so bad about politicians “ignoring” science. Clearly science is a minefield that can reasonably be left to scientists to sort out.
Serious question: How can a politician possibly tell when science on any particular topic is settled?
“Serious question: How can a politician possibly tell when science on any particular topic is settled?”
Serious answer: Science on any particular topic is rarely ever settled. Or as Albert Einstein said, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know”
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Another good article JC. You went pretty easy on the scientists themselves. The point isn’t absent but it’s “lite”. The process of doing science (especially govt-funded science) has been badly hijacked by ideology and the funding model such that most clear-thinking people are rightfully inclined to be a sceptical of anything and everything that “science” says. Frankly, I no longer trust or believe anything at all I hear from “science”. As you rightly point out, such is not to be sceptical of the scientific method and the two should not be confused.
Riley,
But there are still many scientists doing good work that improves society in good ways, tiny or large.
Please do not talk bad of scientists. Reserve that for non-scientists who try to pervert or ignore such work. Geoff S
I agree with both Riley and Geoff. “I no longer trust or believe anything at all”, except I go beyond science to include everything I hear or read. What ever I hear or read, I try to find the most authoritative source and get a second or third opinion to at least have a balanced perspective.
“But there are many scientists doing good work…”. I agree with that as well. All of them shouldn’t be thrown under the bus, but even the best and most honorable can make mistakes at times or can have their very good work superseded by breakthroughs with better science.
On a personal and very narrow subject, what I had been told about US budgets and taxes since I was a child just wasn’t so. Conventional wisdom doesn’t mean it is factual.
I believe it was Stephen Schneider who said in the 70’s that scientists have to exagerate in order for the message to get through. RealClimate blog was started for this reason: ” We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary”.
To believe that there is some sort of equivalency these days between Republican and Democrat approaches to science is absurd. Why the **** are climate sceptics correlated with corona-19 denial? Please. Someone enlighten me.
rmdobservations, I would really like to know the answer to that question too. Maybe a Venn Diagram of religion, education, sex, age and political affiliation would reveal a common denominator?
https://www.mdpi.com/philosophies/philosophies-02-00017/article_deploy/html/images/philosophies-02-00017-g001-550.jpg
Any science in your diagram?
Interesting response George. Can you do science without philosophy? Judy frequently deflects scientific consensus opinion with appeals to critiques of higher education.
But your mind is clear of conflict and your conclusions are transparent. You don’t buy any of this psychobabble do you?
OK, Jack
First, define what the terms “climate denier” and a “covid denier” mean. No sidestepping, low-level sarcasm. Just answer the question.
rmdobsrvations said: Why the **** are climate sceptics correlated with corona-19 denial? Please. Someone enlighten me.
That is a fact-free statement. Where is your proof?
I do not have quantifiable proof. It is just an impression based on my news sources. I live in the Netherlands and initially I noticed people who were wary of the CDC (Here RIVM) advice were associated with alternative medicine. They were already primed not to trust the official advice. Then I came to Climate Etc and read similar responses.
I admit it is not very scientific. My frustration is that one only need to look at this hospitalization numbers to agree that something serious is occurring. This is too serious to have people magnifying unimportant details. The numbers are increasing in Europe because every country has a certain percentage of contrarians. Unfortunately, the Corona-19 virus is so infectious that it only needs small numbers to spread.
The term COVID19 denial is thrown around in the same way climate change denial is thrown around. Neither of those terms means anything in any context except a political context. In a country of 330 million people it is easy to find actual examples of people who believe COVID19 or climate change are left wing conspiracies. It is just as easy to find people who think the world will end in 12 years from climate change if we do nothing, or that COVID19 is as bad as the 1918 flu pandemic. That is not where the serious discussion on either issue lies though. Anyone who uses this as talking points isn’t looking for a serious discussion IMO.
It’s worse than that. France and Spain have the highest surges in case counts right now- France in particular. Paris specifically.
By Joshua logic that’s because climate denial and Trump must be hugely popular in Paris.
Because Lord knows you’re “anti-science” if you dare to ask why masks, contact tracing and lockdowns aren’t “working” in wealthy western country that has none of the alleged “deplorables” issues the US has.
Following up on Jeffn’s comment – All the Northern European (northern in comparison the the latitude of the USA) are having surges/second waves . Additionally interesting is it seems to be no correlation to the extent of efforts to surpress the transmission.
> Why the **** are climate sceptics correlated with corona-19 denial? Please. Someone enlighten me.
Certainly true for online “skeptics,” or at least those who are commenting on Covid. Pretty obvious that political orientation is a correlate (as a always obvious with climate change “skepticism”) . Doesn’t mean causal – could obviously be a mediating moderating variable.
Another fact-free comment from Josh. I wear a mask in public. I’m a “global warming” skeptic. Again, no proof, just a fictitious narrative.
Jim –
Read the comments about COVID here and at places where online climate “skeptics” hang out. like WUWT, Breitbart, etc.
> I wear a mask in public. I’m a “global warming” skeptic.
For two phenomena to be correlated in certain groups doesn’t mean it applies for everyone. Especially if you aren’t asserting causality. I assumed you understood that and so I didn’t have to explain. My bad. I won’t make that assumption next time.
Joshua – It appears you have perhaps some anecdotal evidence (WUWT, etc.) But no real evidence, like a poll or whatever. That was my point.
You are trying to sling mud at climate skeptics, but your evidence is sketchy.
Steven Schneider, 1989:
” So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. ”
https://judithcurry.com/2011/07/21/stephen-schneider-and-the-%E2%80%9Cdouble-ethical-bind%E2%80%9D-of-climate-change-communication/
Don B,
It is important to add that Steven Schneider was addressing his remarks to people involved in environmental research, then a newly-emerging sector that lacked the maturity and wisdom of long-established scientific sectors like Physics and Chemistry.
It still lacks. We wait with diminishing hope for it to griow up, Geoff S
I prefer the term dominant scientific paradigm – one that has solid support in the community of experts, has empirical evidence and has extraordinary explanatory power. Something real as Michael Ghil put it. Rather than the always vague consensus used to buttress any wild speculation of future catastrophes.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/ghil-e1519934086457.png
And as for paradigms – there are dinosaurs and upstarts. I’ll let Geoff figure out which he is.
“ Why the **** are climate sceptics correlated with corona-19 denial? Please. Someone enlighten me.”
Simple. Global warming and the virus have both been ridiculously exaggerated, and anyone with a lick of sense can see this. Politicians and news stations are both largely yellow journalism.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H L Mencken
I love this article thanks and indeed its the politics of today
We just need to change the mind set of voters and empower the youth most to change for the future otherwise the future is to change us
Watch this space …
Some have speculated that the reason none of the major journals wishes to publish the study is because its findings contradict the official narrative that masks are a vital tool in combating the spread of coronavirus.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/10/27/top-medical-journals-refuse-to-publish-landmark-danish-mask-study/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
The Nature article is an opinion piece. Full of caveats, as it should be.
SARS and Ebola both are transmitted primarily by droplets. Both did not spread to become global pandemics. Not surprising since most of us aren’t in the habit of coughing or sneezing in faces. It seems likely, to me at least, that this disease is spread by aerosols. Masks are not very effective against aerosols. It is also not realistic to believe we will wear masks in our homes at all times when they might make the most difference. Instead we wear them doing things like grocery shopping, where disease transmission is unlikely mask or no mask.
What a great marketing strategy –
create an obviously bogus study, claiming Oreos will prevent COVID, or cancer, for that matter, and submit the study to a major journal.
The journal would refuse to publish the study, and sales of Oreos would skyrocket among Breitbart readers.
jim2,
The next time you or somebody who love or care about has an operation feel free to tell the surgeon and OR nurses not to bother with the masks.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Paul_F%C3%BCrst%2C_Der_Doctor_Schnabel_von_Rom_%28coloured_version%29.png
You are comparing Apples and Oranges. Frankly, I would read the paper before jumping to contusions. It, well, hasn’t yet been published, so I will have to wait.
This is another example of a non-serious discussion tactic. Surgeons wear masks to prevent droplet transmission of pathogens that could be harmful in an open wound. Many of those pathogens are harmless in biologically external systems like digestive tracks and respiratory systems. It is instructive to understand that surgical rooms also have overhead UVC sterilization lights to address pathogens contained in aerosols.
james
There is no comparison whatsoever between a surgeon wearing a properly fitted mask in a highly sterile hospital environment to ward off germs and the general public.
The latter grouping, in order to prevent a virus spreading, perform a constant mask hokey cokey, pulling badly fitting masks on and off, on and off, in between touching surfaces, the face, the hands, wearing them below their chins, pushing them above their eyes, stuffing them into pockets when temporarily not in use.
Many wearers -from a recent UK study-believe a disposable mask can be worn for weeks and washable masks don’t need washing after every outing.
Infections have risen when masks are introduced but there could be other factors of course. Wearing them in the open air is nonsensical and just sustains hysteria.
I would like to see a proper report that researched the matter of mask wearing in a real world -not sterile hospital-situation
tonyb
Tonyb
Ijust read an article that said most deaths in the spanish flu resulted from lung infections from contaminated masks recirculating air and not the actual flu. I don’t have it in front of me now but will look for it and post.
Always pleased to see your comments.
Scott
Tonyb
See attached link. Actually not as strong an article as I thought.
https://elemental.medium.com/why-gauze-masks-failed-in-1918-and-what-we-can-do-better-e735406f0e36
Scott
Scott
Many thanks for that. I have extracted a couple of edited sections that seem to echo my comments
‘Sometimes they only covered their mouth but left their nose exposed. Others constantly touched and moved their masks around, especially while smoking.( today substitute eating and drinking)
2. Shoddy masks gave people a false sense of security
To his horror, Kellogg saw that people who wore poorly constructed masks took more risks than they would have if they weren’t wearing masks. Even though their skimpy masks offered no protection, they felt comfortable and safe — and acted that way.
3. People wore their masks incorrectly
Although the board of health posted fliers instructing people how to wear a mask, Kellogg noticed that people often wore their masks incorrectly. Sometimes they only covered their mouth but left their nose exposed. Others constantly touched and moved their masks around, especially while smoking.’
Are today’s masks better? Many are home made or made locally in small quantities and consist of two or three layers of cloth. Washing is rare. Disposable masks are often nothing of the sort. People still believe the wearing of them provides some immunity from keeping your distance.
All in all you have opened up an avenue I have not explored before so I will see if there are any other studies of mask wearing during pandemics
Tonyb
Here is a very good article on mask wearing during the spanish flu outbreak of 1918 whoch has considerable echoes with our time.
https://theconversation.com/face-masks-what-the-spanish-flu-can-teach-us-about-making-them-compulsory-137648
Within the article is a link ‘Not unlike ours’ which compares the mask wearing of 1918 with today.
Back then many of the masks were gauze. Today they tend to be cloth or disposable but unless worn correctly, which most clearly aren’t and unless disposed off or washed after every outing, when clearly they aren’t, their effectiveness Is open to question.
wearers often seem to believe they provide immunity and social distancing is not therefore needed, the jury is put as to whether masks do more harm than good.
Tonyb
I’m surprised you guys aren’t agreeing with your idol Vladimir.
But it does work in the operating room, you agree. Does it work in the ER? How about the doctor’s office? Should all health care workers except those in the OR go without masks?
Most of the the supposed mask wearers who have gotten sick had been to dine-in restaurants.
“Most of the the supposed mask wearers who have gotten sick had been to dine-in restaurants”
I’m sure you have quantifiable commissar tabulations to back that up.
James
Many of us have gone to the trouble to demonstrate you are comparing apples and oranges.
Medical people might wear masks properly but the vast majority of ordinary people do not wear them properly and when looking at the real world that must give us pause for thought that perhaps, just perhaps , masks generally do more harm than good.
As for your dine in restaurants quote, evidence please, as it’s certainly not the case here in the UK where unfortunately it is care homes and hospitals that are the infection danger areas.
Tonyb
More evidence on masks:
-Hospitals that predominantly serve patients from areas without masking requirements (the <25% group) continue to see the highest rate of growth in hospitalizations. As the percentage of patients residing in mask-requirement counties increases, the growth curve “flattens,” indicating much lower growth in hospitalizations. It is also clear that masking alone is not a silver bullet: since early October nearly every region of the state has seen growth in hospitalizations. Again, however, this growth has been most dramatic in hospitals that draw a large percentage of patients from areas without mask requirements.
https://www.vumc.org/health-policy/sites/default/files/public_files/Vanderbilt%20COVID19%20Report-Oct%2027.pdf
-The study also finds that eating and drinking on-site at bars and restaurants increases the risk of contracting COVID-19, with two times as many COVID-19-positive patients reporting dining at restaurants than COVID-19-negative patients.
https://www.ormanager.com/briefs/cdc-85-of-covid-19-patients-report-always-or-often-wearing-masks/
The first link would be more useful if it included actual numbers of cases rather than just changes in cases normalized to July 1st.
doug,
Do you actually see a first link? What I see where the link is supposed to be is huge amount of white space. I don’t know what WordPress did to what I posted but it didn’t look like it does to me.
Yup I see a link to an article from Vanderbilt. The link worked when I went to it.
When this is all over there should be some interesting retrospective analysis on the effects of masks on a wide range of aerosol spread illnesses. The verdict is definitely not in yet.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/10/experts-dont-count-mild-flu-season-amid-covid-19
That is interesting. Perpetual lockdown hardly seems a practical solution to seasonal influenza though. Even the most risk averse surely can see that never ending lockdowns would kill far more than seasonal influenza does.
“Belongia wants to debunk dangerous misinformation on the Internet that says that flu vaccination could render people more vulnerable to COVID-19. He strongly urges everyone to get vaccinated against the flu and be prepared for a severe flu season.”
It is not misinformation to report that flu vaccines can make coronavirus infection more likely or more severe. That is what at least one study has shown. That study is certainly not dispositive regarding COVID19 since COVID19 did not exist at the time the study was conducted, but to call it misinformation is to lie. Disturbingly, there is an increasingly large number of people who want to keep inconvenient information from others and thereby not allow an informed decision.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7126676/
Even if the odds of death are small a rational decision was made.
“South Korean authorities stick to flu vaccine plan after deaths rise to 48”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea-flushot/south-korean-authorities-stick-to-flu-vaccine-plan-after-deaths-rise-to-48-idINKBN2790G8
There is a mountain of evidence that shows masks are ineffective at stopping the spread of COVID-19. That is to be expected as it has long been known that the primarily means of contraction is by contagion, not by aerobic means. That is why it has been found that in preschools that washing of hands with soft soap that gets up under a child’s finger nails has a significant attenuating effect on the spread of colds throughout that population.
The misinformation that this disease spreads by aerobic means was simply a ploy to get people to wear masks and to further disrupt Western society. As it is, masks do nothing to stop viruses from escaping into the air. They only stop nose dropping and spray.
I plan to get one also, as I have for years. That doesn’t make the statement I quoted less misleading.
Judith, good article. Until federal funding of university science is significantly reduced, I see no way to take the politics out of science and vice versa.
We have a version of the problem Eisenhower first warned about.
I wholeheartedly agree.
“Ike was someone so concerned about keeping politics out of strategic resources he refused to vote while he was a military officer. To him, it was a conflict of interest because he was paid by the government. His concern only grew while he was president during the bulk of the 1950s and government took more and more control of science funding. As politicians funded more of it, he believed, academia was going to self-select for those who also believed in big government and it would no longer be non-partisan. And corporations were going to control academic science by controlling politicians. Academics who “play the game” were going to get more funding and head up grant committees and panels.”
The real problem, IMO, is that we think of scientist and politician as separate people. If that was clearly demarcated, no problem. But way too many scientists cannot refrain from their personal policy biases and knowingly or otherwise shade answers — quite often encouraged by interested non-scientist as well as scientists. Keeping the two separate in a scientist is is difficult. A politician is more “honest” in this since they are all policy and do not pretend to be a scientist;
Same problem with journalists — sort of like scientist that are supposed to report reality.
There’s another politics vs science debate due to precede the date of Friday 13th 2029, when the asteroid Apophis is on course for a flyby of planet Earth.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-massive-asteroid-subject.amp
I propose the exotic core hypothesis of a stronger gravitational force along the orbital plane is partly responsible for the deviation from it’s expected path which has been attributed to the Yarkovsky effect. It’s analogous to the ‘Pioneer gravity anomaly’ which passed through the solar plane imo:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12070-exotic-cause-of-pioneer-anomaly-in-doubt/
Pingback: Science and politics |
Not being a US citizen, but being affected by US foreign policy, I would like to say the following about the ‘left-right’ ‘centralisation vs remaining local’ debate.
My view is that there is no right answer, merely appropriate decisions taken in particular fields at particular times given the nature of what is possible, politic and timely.
For example, it is demonstrably sound economics for particle physics nowadays to be a global endeavour. Yes, you can still have certain accelerators under national/regional jurisdiction, but the costs of building more powerful accelerators nowadays points to a very small number of globally funded ones. It may not yet be politically feasible, but it is certainly economically sensible. Perhaps the key question is whether such facilities should merely provide infrastructure for researchers the world over to buy contract services or whether science could actually function effectively with only one body of scientists at one location?
Equally, there has been cogent evidence the past 40 years and more that at the earliest stages of cutting edge innovation in new scientific fields, you may well find the most revolutionary work done in quite surprising places. The concentration of ‘expertise’ into centres like Boston, Cambridge, Palo Alto etc may be best when fields start to mature, but total revolutionaries may not be political animals and may do best when located in less high powered large institutions. Rutherford’s famed quotation of ‘We have no money, so we must use our brains instead’ does come to mind….
Pingback: Climatologist: Science and Politics Shouldn’t Mix – Green Jihad
The latest Guardian article of perpetual climate alarmism: “The slope sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases – known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide….but the point is that this process has now been triggered….the most likely cause of the instability is an intrusion of warm Atlantic currents into the east Arctic. This “Atlantification” is driven by human-induced climate disruption.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-giant-arctic-methane-deposits-starting-to-release-scientists-find
I say the sooner Venus can confirm the exotic core hypothesis the sooner this “climate feedback loop” BS can be put behind us, so it stops terrifying young school children.
Here is a very good article on mask wearing during the spanish flu outbreak of 1918 whoch has considerable echoes with our time.
https://theconversation.com/face-masks-what-the-spanish-flu-can-teach-us-about-making-them-compulsory-137648
Within the article is a link ‘Not unlike ours’ which compares the mask wearing of 1918 with today.
Back then many of the masks were gauze. Today they tend to be cloth or disposable but unless worn correctly, which most clearly aren’t and unless disposed off or washed after every outing, when clearly they aren’t, their effectiveness Is open to question.
As wearers often believe they provide immunity and distancing is not therefore needed, the jury is put as to whether masks do more harm than good.
Tonyb
Another problem… folks, and especially the media, are inclined to interpret endorsement of an idea by a scientist as “scientific evidence” of same.
I try to counter this with… Does the fact that some scientists believe in God constitute scientific proof that God exists?
“The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science”
WALLACE: Do you believe human pollution, greenhouse gas emissions contributes to the global warming of the planet?
TRUMP: I think a lot of things do, but I think to an extent, yes. I think to an extent, yes.
The latter is the lukewarmer position in a nutshell.
The climate alarmists need to get honest about what they ACTUALLY know. Not what may, might, possibly, perhaps, somewhat, maybe, could, tend to, … happen.
I can show you graph after graph compiled using raw data that shows the earth’s atmosphere is cooling in fits and starts over the last 100+ years at least. It is only when the data is adjusted that a warming trend is shown. I have examined the reasons for making these adjustments and all are without scientific merit and can be shown empirically to have not sound basis.
I am therefore very surprised that no one in this group has not gone back to the foundation of this scientific fraud and seriously investigated whether there is actually an increase in the enthalpy of the atmosphere. I am now certain that there has not been. Not even a slight one when viewed over a timeframe of 120 years. This is the case in the US, Asia and Australia.
Investigate why raw data has been adjusted and you will find that this is pseudo-science to the point of being criminal.
KL,
In Australia, there is a small group that has been studying temperatures and their uncertainties for a decade now. It is not a pretty picture, but nbdy wants to know about it. Our BOM disdains evidence of errors and states their impossibility of considering any material that has not been peer reviewed in a journal. Some of the errors are so simple, little more is needed than an ability to add up and take away numbers, hardly material for a scientific paper in a system clogged with papers, many of which can not be replicated. So, there it sits, wallowing in official ignorance. Geoff S
Seem and prefer. Qualified. An argument made about oil jobs, that is primarily that, minimizes the environmental impacts. I think every refinery in the U.S. is doing a good job. I think coal is the way to go, but there are impacts.
What is known – and has been for a very long time – is that climate surprises are inevitable. The science is very obvious – although politicians and amateur climate scientists are clueless.
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/unstable-ebm-fig-2-jpg1.jpg
Just for GS – Ghil’s model shows that climate sensitivity (γ) is variable. It is the change in temperature (ΔT) divided by the change in the control variable (Δμ) – the tangent to the curve as shown above. Sensitivity increases moving down the upper curve to the left towards the bifurcation and becomes arbitrarily large at the instability. The problem in a chaotic climate then becomes not one of quantifying climate sensitivity in a smoothly evolving climate but of predicting the onset of abrupt climate shifts and their implications for climate and society.
Abrupt climate change requires some excess energy to flow out.
Abrupt climate change is a result of a long time scale energy accumulation.
The long time scale energy accumulation is orbital forced slow planetary process.
We can see the analogue (in short time scale) in weather abrupt changes.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
It vortices in turbulent flow. From Kolmogorov’s study of turbulence partly comes the name for the phenomenon of Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics. Vortices if observed patiently enough appear in the same location and the same size. Perturb the flow and vortices change a little or a lot.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/river-in-mountains.jpg
It is observed in geophysical series. The system is forced to cross a threshold and transitions to a new state as an outcome of and at the pace determined by internal dynamics of interacting subsystems. In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia.
Robert E – Thank you for providing some sense of reality with this quote from Ghil. Given these facts and many more causal relationships involved with climate, I would hope that some of these commenting scientists would realize that there is no way you can model such a complex system; but then arrogance springs eternal in some.
Many are – too many to recount. But there are risks in such a changeable system.
Abrupt climate changes are short time scale events. They do not have the strength to trigger something big – the Ice Ages for example.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Glacials emerge as runaway ice sheet feedback.
We should know what gets us out of Glacial then.
http://www,cristos-vournas.com
“In and out of glacial extremes by way of dust−climate feedbacks.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2026
Hey will you look at that! Judy has links into the new politically appointed staff leading NOAA staff. #STOPNationalClimateAssessment
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/climate/trump-election-climate-noaa.html
An early sign of the shift came last month, when Erik Noble, a former White House policy adviser who had just been appointed NOAA’s chief of staff, removed Craig McLean, the agency’s acting chief scientist.
Mr. McLean had sent some of the new political appointees a message that asked them to acknowledge the agency’s scientific integrity policy, which prohibits manipulating research or presenting ideologically driven findings.
The request prompted a sharp response from Dr. Noble. “Respectfully, by what authority are you sending this to me?” he wrote, according to a person who received a copy of the exchange after it was circulated within NOAA.
Mr. McLean answered that his role as acting chief scientist made him responsible for ensuring that the agency’s rules on scientific integrity were followed.
The following morning, Dr. Noble responded. “You no longer serve as the acting chief scientist for NOAA,” he informed Mr. McLean, adding that a new chief scientist had already been appointed. “Thank you for your service.”
“NOAA officials have tried to get information about what role the new political staff members would play and what their objectives might be, with little success. According to people close to the administration who have questioned climate science, though, their primary goal is to undercut the National Climate Assessment.
The assessment, a report from 13 federal agencies and outside scientists led by NOAA, which the government is required by law to produce every four years, is the premier American contribution to knowledge about climate risks and serves as the foundation for federal regulations to combat global warming. The latest report, in 2018, found that climate change poses an imminent and dire threat to the United States and its economy.
…
“The real issue at play is the National Climate Assessment,” said Judith Curry, a former chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who said she has been in contact with Dr. Maue, the new chief scientist. “That’s what the powers that be are trying to influence.”
In addition to Dr. Curry, the strategy was described by Myron Ebell, a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a former member of Mr. Trump’s transition team, and John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabamain Huntsville.
“The latest report, in 2018, found that climate change poses an imminent and dire threat to the United States and its economy.”
And it was wrong. Now we have to correct that. A dire threat to the United States. What is that? The threat is coming from the money spent on renewables. They are doing something wrong. Fix it. I’d fire everybody too. The anti-threat was all the fossil fuel we opened up. Being in the Middle East is a dire threat to the United States.
Good article, Judy.
“The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science”
I am still waiting for a science experiment proving the greenhouse effect. Most climate scientists seem to be ignoring actual science.
Judy, have you ever considered geothermal?
Yes, I tweeted a good article on geothermal a few days ago.
Ethical Skeptic’s “Beneath our feet”?
He now references me in that article.
Have you seen
http://phzoe.com/2020/10/05/geothermal-to-the-moon/
?
Elections have consequences and in a month or so we will know a great deal about the US position on global warming for the next 4years
Judith –
Since you opposes scientists politicizing science, and scientists acting as policy advocates, I am wondering if you explain in a bit more detail your involvement in the activities described in this article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/climate/trump-election-climate-noaa.html?ref=oembed
You mean spending 15 minutes on the phone answering questions from a NYTimes Reporter? I referred her specifically to this blog post, which explains my stance on this topic. I have no involvement with folks at NOAA, apart from the SBIR program, downloading alot of their data for hurricane forecasts, and apart from knowing Ryan Maue for a number of years.
Do you have a car or truck?
— If yes, do you use gasoline, or is it a Fred Flintstone push it yourself car?
— If you use gasoline, then you are “involved” with the fossil fuel industry !
— But if you don’t fly around the world on a private jet, going to climate change conferences, then you get credit for that.
— None of this really matters, because the world is coming to an end in ten years, according to my favorite cllimate science perfesser, with the initials AOC.
Thanks for clarifying. It wasn’t clear to me from the article that you weren’t involved other than 15 minutes talking to the reporter.
This is the reporter that asked the question that motivated this post
Great news for global warming and global economic growth. But bad news for the countries that are damaging their economies with crazy polices to reduce CO2 emissions.
ASIA CALLING
Coal import forecasts (Mt)
Actual Estimates Estimates
2019 2025 2030
China 218 250 250
India 169 200 243
Japan 137 256 145
Vietnam 32 68 107
All Asia 834 1013 1109
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/d2a58763334d3999e63cf1d215b29721
Source: The Australian, 2020-10-28: ‘Export surge tipped as Asia eyes coal’. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/export-surge-tipped-as-asia-eyes-coal/news-story/8623789c6082b866d165b237ab7891b4
ASIA CALLING
Coal import forecasts (Mt)
Actual Estimates Estimates
2019 2025 2030
China 218 250 250
India 169 200 243
Japan 137 256 145
Vietnam 32 68 107
All Asia 834 1013 1109
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/d2a58763334d3999e63cf1d215b29721
Source: The Australian, 2020-10-28: ‘Export surge tipped as Asia eyes coal’. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/export-surge-tipped-as-asia-eyes-coal/news-story/8623789c6082b866d165b237ab7891b4
ASIA CALLING
Coal import forecasts (Mt)
…………. Actual Estimates Estimates
2019… 2025… 2030
China…… 218…. 250…. 250
India……. 169…. 200…. 243
Japan…… 137…. 256…. 145
Vietnam… 32…… 68….. 107
All Asia… 834…. 1013… 1109
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/d2a58763334d3999e63cf1d215b29721
Source: The Australian, 2020-10-28: ‘Export surge tipped as Asia eyes coal’. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/export-surge-tipped-as-asia-eyes-coal/news-story/8623789c6082b866d165b237ab7891b4
So good he posted it thrice?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/hele-e1550170804379.jpg
Coal exports from Australia were never in never in doubt.
https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/NDCStaging/Pages/All.aspx
Great post. Yes, Republicans will minmize the science if something they consider more important is being decided. A read a CFACT deal on Facebook the other day. They ignored that CO2 does raise the temperature and talked about natural sources of CO2. They don’t even realize they could be more effective.
Democrats are evil:
I don’t like anyone in the race, especially
Biden’s policies and Trump’s personality.
The definition of “prostitute” is precisely the same as the definition of “politician”.
There is a big problem in addressing the interaction of science and politics. There are two distinct aspects: science policy and public policy in areas to which science has some relevance. The former is about how the government supports basic science, and the latter is about how decisions outside of basic science use scientific information.
Presidents George W. Bush, Lincoln and Eisenhower rank in the top four Presidents for science policy, with Harry Truman of course way ahead in first place. Other Presidents of course have made significant individual decisions on science policy, but not in foundational ways as these four have (the Human Genome Program, for example, was started by Ronald Reagan, but that is a single decision).
Much about public policy picks isolated scientific facts or numbers and uses them without proper scientific analysis. This is certainly true in climate science. It is especially strange that some politicians blame the 2020 fires in the western states on “global warming” or “climate change”, because in fact there are far fewer acres of forest burning now than up to the middle of the 20th century. The U.S. now has ~10 million acres burn a year, but from 1926 to 1950 at least 15 million acres burned a year, and more than 20 million acres in most years. In 1930 and again in 193l more than 50 million acres burned:
https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
(and those numbers do not include Alaska, Hawaii, or Arizona until the 1960s) Also, California had more million acres burn in most years until the late 19th century, from the tribal records and early Spanish settlers histories. If forest fires are so much less now due to climate change, then climate change must be very, very good.
This is one of many such examples, where isolated scientific statistics are used to make political claims that do not take into account other factors that could change the claims or invalidate them.
Hirsch
Look up the details about widlfires in the US sorted by ‘fire district” (I don’t remember the specific term) and you will see warnings that data prior to 1950 or 1960 are much less reliable than later data. A huge number of acres burned prior to World War II can be explained by prescribed fires, mainly in southeastern US states, (not in California and other western states where prescribed fires can get out of control much easier).
It seems that there were many prescribed fires in the southeastern states deliberately set to burn up dead brush, so that no out of control wild fires could happen.
It seems that the US government employed many able-bodied unemployed men during the Great Depression years — planting tress and prescribed burns were some of their jobs … until they were needed to fight World War II in 1942.
“Several celebrities served in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) before they were famous. Actors Walter Matthau and Raymond Burr worked in Montana and California, respectively. American league baseball hall-of-famer Stan Musial also worked for the CCC, as did test pilot Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.”
The post is immature and amateurish as it fails to raise an obvious and necessary question. What is the motive for using science for “political agenda purposes?” Why does Biden want to reduce CO2 emissions, and why do large parts of the American right seem to think that the whole climate issue is a hoax. I see no other motive in Biden and sane heads of state in rest of the world that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be beneficial for further social, economic and political development. What other motives should they have? To let the UN create a socialist world government so that the United States, Germany, Great Britain and France lose their position as influential nations? Can any of the “skeptics” here at Climate etc. soon enlighten me, I have been asking this question for years, and all I have been served is pathological conspiracy theories. This left/right nonsense is an American phenomenon. There is broad political agreement in the rest of the world regardless of left or right affiliation when one disregards the extremists on both sides. There we have the hoax gang on the far right, and “we are about to boil the earth gang” on the far left.
It is all political rhetoric. I had Bjorn Lomborg in my inbox yesterday saying that only a small part of Biden’s 2 trillion dollar climate fund would do any good. Energy innovation. The rest is ideologically inspired pork barrelling.
e.g. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/hope-in-hell/12806334
Pollution reduction, blue carbon, soil carbon, ecosystem carbon, next gen nuclear – conservatives are way out in front.
>>>These are all speculations, but not “climate changes that are actually observed”.
Nonsense. I wrote “I have difficulty seeing that the climate has changed in such a way that it is noticeably neither positive nor negative for my part of the world.” The theme is changes, and here we already have clear changes. Whether these are negative or positive in this specific case is not the topic, one can be sure some changes are positive, others negative. Here is one:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2647
And the enormous changes in the Arctic as a whole should be common knowledge, at least on a climate blog. It all boils down to whether one looks at these questions from quarter to quarter or in a perspective of decades.
Doesn’t relate to my comment at all. But I’ll bite.
“Since “panta rhei” was pronounced by Heraclitus, hydrology and the objects it studies, such as rivers
and lakes, have offered grounds to observe and understand change and flux. Change occurs on all time scales, rom minute to geological, but our limited senses and life span, as well as the short time window of instrumental observations, restrict our perception to the most apparent daily to yearly variations. As a result, our typical modelling practices assume that natural changes are just a short-term “noise” superimposed on the daily and annualcycles in a scene that is static and invariant in the long run. According to this perception, only an exceptional and extraordinary forcing can produce a long-term change. The hydrologist H.E. Hurst, studying the long flow records of the Nile and other geophysical time series, was the first to observe a natural behaviour, named after him, related to multi-scale change, as well as its implications in engineering designs. Essentially, this behaviour
manifests that long-term changes are much more frequent and intense than commonly perceived and, simultaneously, that the future states are much more uncertain and unpredictable on long time horizons than implied by standard approaches. Surprisingly, however, the implications of multi-scale change have not been assimilated in geophysical sciences. A change of perspective is thus needed, in which change and uncertainty are essential parts.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02626667.2013.804626
The problem of change goes well beyond simple cause and effect to the behaviour of a complex dynamical Earth system over moments to aeons.
“The 1976 Pacific climate shift is examined, and its manifestations and significance in Alaskan climatology during the last half-century are demonstrated. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation index shifted in 1976 from dominantly negative values for the 25-yr time period 1951–75 to dominantly positive values for the period 1977–2001.
Mean annual and seasonal temperatures for the positive phase were up to 3.1°C higher than for the negative phase. Likewise, mean cloudiness, wind speeds, and precipitation amounts increased, while mean sea level pressure and geopotential heights decreased. The pressure decrease resulted in a deepening of the Aleutian low in winter and spring. The intensification of the Aleutian low increased the advection of relatively warm and moist air to Alaska and storminess over the state during winter and spring.” https://journals.ametsoc.org/jcli/article/18/22/4824/30925/The-Significance-of-the-1976-Pacific-Climate-Shift
What is climate change and what is weather than?
Of course by weather we mean change, but at very short time scale – few days, a week at most.
The climate change is a long term continuous process that goes on cycles. Climate changes are orbital forced changes.
Is there changes that cannot be called weather, and not seasonal changes?
By the way, seasonal changes are orbital forced changes. It is the very first degree of orbital forced changes – the seasonal.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
The dominant climate paradigm is control variables in a chaotic system. Both orbits and greenhouse gases are – inter alia – control variables. Crossing a threshold causes the system to move abruptly to a new state. This is observed in the climate system as Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics.
“Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.” NAS 2002
“The global coupled atmosphere-ocean, land-cryosphere system exhibits a
wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical,
biological, and chemical feedbacks that
collectively result in a continuum of
temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.” https://journals.ametsoc.org/bams/article/90/12/1819/59597/A-Unified-Modeling-Approach-to-Climate-System
What is the motive for using science for “political agenda purposes?”
Is this not clear to you?
The trillion$ of “Green New Deal” is a clear example.
Taxing and spending are political power.
Only frightening the public allows politicians/governments to wield this power.
To be clear, they are not “using science” but ABusing science.
There is no science to justify:
“Global warming is an existential threat to humanity,” Biden said. “We have a moral obligation to deal with it and we’re told by all the leading scientists in the world we don’t have much time.”
Certainly not:
“Unchecked, it is going to actually bake this planet. This is not hyperbole. It’s real.”
Saying hyperbole is not hyperbole is the kind of assault on logic I resist.
That politicians lie is hardly news, but accepting lies leads to tyranny.
“What is the motive for using science for “political agenda purposes?”
Do you not understand that taxing and spending and government control are political motivations? Scare tactics are tools of government control.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H L Mencken
“There is broad political agreement in the rest of the world”
That there is broad political agreement doesn’t mean it is correct.
There we have the hoax gang on the far right, and “we are about to boil the earth gang” on the far left.
As I mentioned to you, most hoaxes have elements of truth.
Global warming can be both real in principle ( and observations ) while many presumed climate changes ( increased drought, increased tropical cyclones, etc. ) can be false.
One problem is that climate change by the year 2100 is not subject to falsification, so “climate change” isn’t actually strictly subject to scientific methods. But I’ll ask you:
What climate changes that are actually observed do you believe are actually harmful and deserving of political response at all?
What climate changes do you believe are beneficial?
Population growth is rapidly decelerating, especially among the developed economies. This bounds the upper end of CO2 emissions.
Can you conceive of the possibility that annual mean global warming is not in and of itself a problem? And that CO2 and climate change do not and will not pose significant harm?
>>> Do you not understand that taxing and spending and government control are political motivations? Scare tactics are tools of government control.
This is possebly the perception in parts of the United States where people arm themselves to the teeth, build survival rooms and waits for the goverment to take away their guns and then brainwash them. As long as we live in complex industrialized societies and the climate issue can only be resolved through international cooperation, the decisions must necessarily be left to elected bodies.
And the rest of the world cannot let the useless and dysfunctional political system in the United States become the standard for how to organize and solve this kind of questions. Trump has now declared the Covid pandemic solved and out of the world, this at the same time as the infections and deaths are only increasing, other leaders of states can not relate to such clowns.
As for the consequences of climate change and that these will be both negative and positive, is a completely different discussion. Science is already «settled enough» that we can at least start thinking about doing something, and personally I think this is less complicated than the “skeptics” claim. Eight years ago, functional electric cars were an unrealistic dream of the future, now I wonder why we have not had such cars for 20 years. And this independent of the climate issue, the ICE is similarly as primitive in relation to an EV, as the steam locomotive was in relation to the diesel-electric locomotive in the 1930s. And I’m glad this breakthrough was done in the US and not in China. The next big one could come from China unless the Americans get their act togheter.
Rune, thank you for your reply.
You wandered away from climate, which I’d like to confine to.
Science is already «settled enough» that we can at least start thinking about doing something
If that were really the case, I would think you’d point to actual harms, not just a claim.
I’ll ask again:
What climate changes that are actually observed do you believe are actually harmful and deserving of political response at all?
>>What climate changes that are actually observed do you believe are actually harmful and deserving of political response at all?
As of today, I have difficulty seeing that the climate has changed in such a way that it is noticeably neither positive nor negative for my part of the world. (Well my favorite winter destination has not had stable snow conditions in almost 15 years, I have to find one that is located higher in the mountains)
But that’s not what this is about. We could well have lived in a climate with 800 ppm CO2, with seven meters higher sea level, where the Sahara was an oasis and the countries north of the Mediterranean were a desert. The problem is that we do not have such a climate, nor have we had it for many thousands of years. And this at the same time as the world is fully booked, there are not two Americas and a whole Australia to move to.
Major climate changes will change the precipitation patterns, move water resources, change sea temperatures so that resources move or disappear, and trigger a number of consequences that will cause both political and economic unrest on a large scale. You can start by telling me where we are going to move the approx. 35 million people living in the delta area of Bangla Desh. Today the area is already barely habitable, a few decimetres of sea level rise will make it uninhabitable.
Rune
If i am understandings you correctly, you see no harms of any significance today, but you are so wòrried about what might happen over the very long term that you want drastic actions taken today.
Don’t you think you need to have reasonably strong evidence that these future harms are really going to occur before taking drastic action?
But that’s not what this is about. We could well have lived in a climate with 800 ppm CO2, with seven meters higher sea level, where the Sahara was an oasis and the countries north of the Mediterranean were a desert. The problem is that we do not have such a climate, nor have we had it for many thousands of years.
Fortunately, humans seem quite adaptive to climate.
And humans self-induced far more climate change by migrating to every climate of earth than will ever occur from global warming:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Early_migrations_mercator.svg/1200px-Early_migrations_mercator.svg.png
“Major climate changes will change the precipitation patterns”
This is a claimed but not observed.
Please see figure 24 of this paper. A quadrupling is modeled to increase high latitude precipitation, but with little change elsewhere. Decelerating CO2 emissions would seem to make it unlikely that we will ever see a quadrupling of atmospheric CO2.
move water resources, change sea temperatures so that resources move or disappear, and trigger a number of consequences that will cause both political and economic unrest on a large scale. You can start by telling me where we are going to move the approx. 35 million people living in the delta area of Bangla Desh. Today the area is already barely habitable, a few decimetres of sea level rise will make it uninhabitable.
Hmmm…
These are all speculations, but not “climate changes that are actually observed”.
I don’t think we can use speculation as a guide to policy – there have been many scary speculations that have been ultimately proved wrong.
Please see the history of eugenics for another example of what you insist is a pathological conspiracy theory.
>>>Please see the history of eugenics for another example of what you insist is a pathological conspiracy theory.
Scientifically, eugenics works excellently, why do you think we have hens that can produce 300 eggs a year, and chickens that grow 1.2 kg in a few months, it is called systematic breeding and selection, similar methods used on humans; eugenics. That eugenics has such a bad reputation today is due to how this was used politically and socially a few decades ago, not that the science was wrong per se. In addition, there is beginning to be a fine line between eugenetics and so-called humangenetic counseling.
You clearly do not understand the eugenics movement as it actually existed. The science of genetics is well supported. The eugenics movement took an elementary understanding of genetics and extrapolated it into a political narrative. This narrative blamed every possible human failing from poverty to promiscuity on genetics and an irreparable inferiority in those so targeted. This simplified the world into those who were worthy and those who were not. It was eugenics that supported Wilson’s segregation of the Federal Government, Jim Crow laws, laws about interracial marriage, etc. Tens of thousands of people where sterilized against their will in the USA in the name of improving the human race.
Hitler’s antisemitism was based on the US eugenics movement of the early 20th century.
https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php
[Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti- Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. Hitler’s race hatred sprung from his own mind, but the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.
During the ’20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany’s fascist eugenicists. In “Mein Kampf,” published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. “There is today one state,” wrote Hitler, “in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.” ]
The movement was nowhere stronger than in California, and this was the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Hereditary genetics is well supported science. Eugenics was, and is, pseudoscience used to further an agenda.
>>>You clearly do not understand the eugenics movement as it actually existed.
Wrong, you cherry-pick the most perverted part of the practice without seeming to know that eugenics survived Hitler and was practiced thousands of years before WWII and is still in use to some degree. And modern scientific eugenics is not of American but of British origin by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. That systematic breeding of humans works is not in doubt, in the same way as it works on animals. Among other things, practiced by Hitler’s descendants in the GDR where male and female athletes were asked to mate to create the next generation of athletes. Systematic breeding and selection as a scientific discipline is alive and well, the extent to which this science should be applied to humans is an ethical and political question.
PS: In my opinion, this article summarizes the problem, it works, but is it ethically justifiable to use the technique?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279154/
“it works, but is it ethically justifiable to use the technique?”
It works toward a predefined goal, be it sweeter oranges, a super-soldier, or a super-progressive being. The goal is not necessarily a “better” organism; we don’t know evolution’s intentions.
Rune – Why does the right treat climate science AGW as a hoax
First the right side of the political spectrum does not treat AGW as a hoax. That is a false narrative promoted by the activists. However there are several reasons why the right is more skeptical of the claims of AGW. Most of which are due to the behavior of the climate activists.
1) The right side of the political spectrum recognizes that capitalism has brought great prosperity through the world where as socialism has achieved the opposite. The solution for AGW is some form of world governance to control the world wide problem. the right is naturally skeptical of a solution that encompasses increased socialism which has brought increased poverty everywhere it has been tried. If the climate scientists lack to mental capacity of understand the solution has been a failure everywhere, then how can the climate scientists have sufficient intellectual capacity to actually understand climate science.
2) The renowned climate scientists havent been able to provide via empirical evidence that co2 is the actual cause of the warming earth. There is a lot of correlation between rising co2 and temps, so theorytically it seems logical,.
There is reasonable support for the period mid 1900’s through today. It is therefore reasonable to infer that a 50% increase in co2 may be a cause of the warming. The climate scientists have been able to bridge that gap between theory and actual empirical evidence. But at the same time, the climate scientists have also been unable to provide a coherent reason for why there was a pronounced shift from a cooling trend to a warming trend starting in the mid to late 1800’s, A shift that is equal to or greater than the warming post 1950’s. That shift occurred when the co2 went from 280ppm to 281 ppm. Hard to explain why 1ppm or even 5ppm caused a shift from a cooling trend to a warming trend.
3) The third major reason for the skepticism is the frequency in which the climate scientists are caught being dishonest. Maybe its just the climate activists that are being dishonest, but if so, the honest climate scientists arent doing enough to police the activists such as hansen, mann , gergis etc. or activists groups such as those affiliated with the likes of skeptical science and other similar organization. For just one example is the sub field of temp reconstructions. The temp reconstructions are rife with cherrypicking proxies, overweighting etc, especially gergis, mann, pages 2k,
police the dishonest activists and you will be amazed how quickly, climate science will be accepted across the right spectrum.
Progress is defined and moderated in the modern era such that the least amount of harm occurs. Biden et al plans and proposed policies seek first and foremost to reduce perceived harm to the earth/climate. Trump and US right et al plans seek first and foremost to reduce perceived harm to the economy and livelihoods. Both positions are seen by their adherents as the moral one. It is common to see the left claim danger is imminent hence justifying their position, whereas the right tends to reckon any danger is much farther in the future (if danger at all.)
Regarding the nastiness of positions — in the case of Biden / US left, they’re justifying policy claiming “science” supports this position and no other, that if you disagree with their propositions, you disagree with science itself. In sum Biden et al presume that their position is science personified. Trump and the right see this position for what it is. Where “hoax” come in usually refers to the assumption of “leftist policy = science” i.e. the rejection of equating the leftist position as the only science based one.
Well put.
I would offer that the claimants are those claiming that climate change harm is forthcoming and the onus of proof is on them to substantiate this claim.
This is difficult, because what will happen in 2100 is not yet observable, thus not provable.
Judith: When thinking about science and politics, I start in a different place than you did. I begin with the claim that the scientific method is the best way for finding out what it true in the world – at least for questions and ideas that can be addressed via well-controlled experiments. Religion, philosophy, logical deduction, intuition, etc have contributed only modestly to our advancement compared with science. The adversarial system used in law and politics, where both sides have an opportunity to present their case – and distort, omit, deceive, perform, etc – is vastly inferior. Consider the issue of whether HCQ is useful. Experience has taught that random assignment clinical trials (placebo-controlled and double-blind when appropriate) provided a definitive answer that non-scientists playing politics (including some commenters here) have yet to accept. The problem with science is that it is limited to problems that can be addressed by well-controlled experiments that are difficult or impossible to conduct when people or societies are involved.
The left is currently infatuated with the idea of reducing inequality via a wealth tax, while the right is philosophically opposed. Neither side wants to discuss what has happened in countries where a wealth tax has been tried and abandoned. Poor imitations of scientific experiments have been run, but neither side is usually willing to let the reality of those “experiments” interfere with their philosophical prerogatives.
There is another huge gap between politicians and scientists. Scientists are comfortable dealing with and hopefully quantifying uncertainty. Politicians deal in certainty – they sell their certainty about governing to the public. President Truman famously requested a one-handed economist, because he was frustrated with continuously hearing “on one hand …, but on the other hand, …” President Bush disdained advisors who weren’t confident enough in their position to skip the caveats – as if the advice of those who did skip the caveats were superior. One of the many failings of the IPCC is that their Summary for Policymakers much be unanimously agreed upon by more than one hundred political appointees. Their work product is unlikely to contain the caveats that are essential to science.
This is typical of what happens when politicians try to make use of scientists – they recruit scientists to confidently help sell whatever the politician is already selling to the public. The scientist’s role should not be to sell, but to informed about what scientific experiments and knowledge predict will happen if policymakers choose option X vs option Y, with all of the uncertainties.
Franktoo,
What of the role of scientists who have plausible, opposing views and/or data to the politically-funded Establishment views on important issues, particularly global warming and it’s offshoots?
There must be many scientists who understand the fragility of current climate change dogma, like the inability to quantify sensitivities such as ECS, but who have not come forward with those views and prosecuted them with vigour such as Dr Curry has.
For me, it has long been regrettable that so-called learned societies and people in posts like national chief scientists have just gone with the flow and endorsed it with no evidence of adequate depth of research and next to no evidence of questioning the perceived wisdom.
Many regard questioning wisdom as a hallmark of a good scientist. Geoff S
Geoff: Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I like to quote Schneider’s definition of ethical science: “promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts”. It is the job of elected policymakers and those they choose to advise them to use that information to “make the world a better place”. Politicians need to get “loads of media coverage”, by offering up scary scenarios, making simplified, dramatic statements, and have pretend to have no doubts about what to do. Climate scientists are trying to do the politician’s job of deciding what to do without having been elected and without having heard from all other parts of society that will be effected by the loss of cheap fossil fuels.
Just once, I’d love to question a consensus climate scientist in front of a Congressional hearing. Do you agree that Schneider has provided a good definition of ethical science? Does the written statement you have provided include any caveats? Are there any caveats in one of these Summaries for Policymakers? Why doesn’t each conclusion begin with “if our climate models are correct, then we project….”? Can you prove a climate models are correct? Box said all models are wrong, but some models are useful. How do we know your models are useful? Can they predict the observed amount of warming given the our understanding of the forcing produced by rising GHGs and aerosols? Isn’t the TCR of a model the appropriate parameter for comparing observed and modeled transient warming?
The Guardian also concerned about the late sea ice freeze in the Laptev Sea region of the Arctic. Pls see
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/28/arctic-warming-alarm-of-october-2020/
Sabine Hossenfelder gives a gripping YouTube presentation on ‘Herd Immunity – The Facts and Numbers’ and talks about her opinion of the Great Barrington Declaration:
https://youtu.be/NENhBmN_tps
This passionate perspective on Covid-19 policy includes surprising statistics stated by Dr. Rushworth of Sweden:
https://youtu.be/OkCEh2HC2y4
Sabine Hossenfelder is a wannabe Carl Sagan, but comes off more like a Bill Nye, goofy guy.
I don’t see much to criticize in the SH video. She discusses herd immunity and explains why so much is uncertain. Discussing many of the same issues that have been discussed here by Nic Lewis and others. She then correctly discusses the value based decisions regarding the GBD. She specifically discussed that science can not answer these value based questions.
Doug: Sabine Hossenfelder also said that the authors of the GBD never explained how “Focused Protection” [of the vulnerable] would be achieved. IMO, it currently can’t be achieved. In fact, we failed to protect the vulnerable president of the United States!
I looked up data for infections in nursing homes during the last week of September – a time when Rapid Assays for COVID were available and we had six months of experience learning how to protect nursing homes. Despite everything we’ve learned and all of the efforts we are making, the average resident in a nursing home was 6 times more likely to test positive for COVID than the average person in the United States.
The reasons for this should be obvious. It is difficult to practice social distancing in a nursing home. Residents need extended and close contact with a variety of staff every day, any one of which may be infected and asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. The typical facility in the US has about one hundred residents and one hundred staff. In the US, most places are reporting between 10 and 100 new confirmed cases per 100,000 per day. If the average person is infectious for 5 days and if there are 3 undetected cases for every detected case, then there are between 200 and 2000 infectious people per 100,000 at any time, which is 0.2% in safer areas and 2% in less safe areas. So, in dangerous areas of the country 2 out of 100 staff members of the nursing home are infectious, but likely asymptomatic or presymptomatica at any time. In safer areas 20% of the time there would be one infected staff member. The only thing that can protect nursing home residents is to rapid test every staff member every day before they come on duty (and even then the tests will miss 3% of infected staff). This is why our professional athletes have insisted on daily testing. However, states have only have 100 million rapid tests for the last 3+ months of 2020, about 1.5 million staff to test every day and a need for rapid testing in schools and other facilities. On 60 Minutes, Dr. Fauci asserted that our country should be able to produce all the rapid tests everyone might want to use for about $1 each, but the administration hasn’t invoked the defense production act to ensure that we have perhaps 100 such tests available per American for 2021.
Vulnerable people in the community are also living in the midst of 0.2% to 2% infected people at any given time and many of those aren’t even wearing face masks. Society is not capable of protecting these vulnerable people either, but many are protecting themselves by minimizing contacts and wearing masks. In Germany this summer, less than 0.02% of people were infectious at any time. In South Korea, 0.002% and Taiwan, 0.0002%. This is “protecting the vulnerable” and allowing most of society to return to normal.
Currently, Focused Protection is a meaningless SLOGAN, not a viable strategy. However, it is a politically useful slogan at the moment,
Along with a lower level of rapid testing, elder care communities could create systems for staff to stay on sight for extended periods – maybe a week or more. Ll – so there would be less coming and going. Less cost effective than mass producing rapid tests OK some ways, less logistically complicated in others. Older people, particularly those with comorbidities could be paid to stay home for work. People could be hired to deliver them groceries and meals and other supplies. Special transportation could be arranged for them to visit doctors or other nececessaey appointments.
But that would all require a massive state infrastructure and massive funding thst would need to be paid for by taxes.
And in general, the same political cohort of people who promote a “protect the vulnerable” approach are those who would object to thst kind of centralized state action and the needed taxation.
It’s like people who promote nuclear energy in a massive scale but who would object to the centralized state policies that have enabled those countries who have larger scale nuclear energy to achieved thar goal.
In reality, for the most part, promoting “protect the vulnerable” is a convenient political tool used to promote a political agenda of fostering victimhood among people who get a charge out of being outraged thst their “freedoms” are being taken asay. Nothing more and nothing less.
Joshua is all over the map. Taxes, nuclear power, people outraged about freedoms taken away (a good thing to be outraged about, BTW); the subject is protecting the elderly.
And I note he has no solution for that. Joshua uses the topic to bash conservatives, a typical ploy of the left. Tests are not the answer because they always have a certain percentage of false negatives.
If Pelosi could focus on CV19 rather than bailing out mismanaged pension funds in blue states and legalizing ballot harvesting, money could be earmarked for nursing homes. That money would go to PPE on steroids. Moon suits if we have to. Also, the FDA could approve for compassionate use the Regeneron antibody cocktail for people over 60. I’m sure creative, imaginative, energetic, and positive people could find more potential solutions.
So those are some possible solutions. Politicized BS isn’t the answer, Joshua.
We have never before been so hopelessly unrealistic in our expectation that the government should protect us as we are in this pandemic. We expect a level of testing from the government that has never been achieved or expected in the past. We expect the federal government to provide protection at a level and in a manner never expected before.
Why do we expect the government to do things we have never expected or received in the past. Things the government, by its nature, is not good at doing.
-snip-
In The Lancet Healthy Longevity, Maria Brandén and colleagues4 use compelling data from a population-based observational cohort to report COVID-19 deaths among older adults during the first epidemic wave in Stockholm, Sweden. The authors categorise all deaths among individuals aged 70 years and older in Stockholm from March 12 to May 8, 2020, using administrative data to link deaths to detailed household characteristics, geographic location, and household size. Older adults living in care homes had the greatest increase in risk of death among all categories of household. Older adults who lived with an adult of working age (<66 years) also had higher risk of COVID-19 mortality compared with those who lived with other older adults. Furthermore, older adults living alone had a similar risk to those living with younger adults. This could be due to a lack of social support for necessary activities, including pharmacy and food shopping, which prevent older adults living alone from physical distancing. Older adults in crowded housing and those in population-dense neighbourhoods also had increased COVID-19-related mortality compared with those living in less crowded or less densely populated settings, respectively. The authors conclude that contact with working-age adults, whether in a household, a care home, or in a neighbourhood with high population density, was associated with higher mortality from COVID-19 among older adults
-snip-
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(20)30035-0/fulltext
Alan Lowey,
Thank you for this. This SH presentation is one of the most intelligent presentations I have seen in terms of objectively presenting the challenges facing decision-makers.
Murders in U.S. cities across the country have jumped, in many cases sharply, following months of protracted COVID-19 lockdowns and shutdowns as well as sustained domestic unrest fueled by Black Lives Matter- and antifa-led activism.
https://justthenews.com/government/local/murders-chicago-50-last-year-after-months-unrest-lockdowns
I was impressed with Dr. Curry’s knowledge and ability to answer audience questions on climate issues, with this YouTube video dating to 2015. The ‘bi-polar seesaw’ seen in glacial data (53:20) has an orbital explanation with the exotic core hypothesis: the Earth is traversing/becoming flatter to Jupiter’s orbital plane in one direction and then the other on the next cycle of inclination.
https://youtu.be/D4AAN0H8MRg
Inclination is a better fit to the data than eccentricity for the 100,000-year glacial cycle. Unfortunately, a stronger tidal force on the orbital plane wasn’t considered as a driver of climate change in this scientific paper:
https://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8329
“Perhaps the most significant sign of the existence of dark matter, however, is our very existence,” observes Harvard theoretical physicist, Lisa Randall in Nature about the elusive substance that permeates the universe, exerts detectable gravitational influences, and yet eludes direct detection. “Despite its invisibility, dark matter has been critical to the evolution of our universe and to the emergence of stars, planets and even life.”
Is it too theoretical or too heretical to consider it may reside beneath our feet??
Alan,
Thank you for Dr. Judith Curry lecture.
Christos
The 100,000-year cycle would be attributable to the stronger gravitational force on the Solar plane, whilst the 405,000-year cycle would be attributable to Venus and Jupiter, adding to the extra tidal influence. This makes more intuitive sense than a 5% change in distance from the Sun imo:
In Ancient Rocks, Scientists See a Climate Cycle Working Across Deep Time – A Repeating Shift in Earth’s Orbit Spans Hundreds of Millions of Years:
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/05/07/milankovitch-cycles-deep-time/
https://youtu.be/4UVB2s4cqTo
Due to the ‘Apophis effect’ the inclination orbit of Earth would be 101,250-years to the solar plane (plane of angular momentum of the solar system) and every fourth (glacial) cycle Venus and Jupiter would become flatter to the solar plane, increasing the tidal forcing due to exotic matter exerting a stronger gravitational force on the orbital plane.
101,250 x 4 = 405,000 year cycle.
Alan Lowey comments:
“This makes more intuitive sense than a 5% change in distance from the Sun imo:”
Why, 5% difference in distance from the sun cannot be neglected.
If 5% closer to the sun, it is 2,6% more intense irradiation.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos – the eccentricity change is 1-5% and doesn’t intuitively equate to 5km high glaciers stretching from the poles down to Bristol in the UK etc
Gravity acts across the entire body, whereas irradiance only affects the surface.
Christos – the exponential increase in precipitation required to create extensive kilometer high glaciers at both polar regions is missing from Milankovitch theory.
Alan:
“Christos – the exponential increase in precipitation required to create extensive kilometer high glaciers at both polar regions is missing from Milankovitch theory.”
Please explain, what exactly is missing from Milankovitch theory. Why there should be an exponential increase in precipitation. There was plenty of time for glaciers to grow.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
“There was plenty of time for glaciers to grow” .. I disagree. The ice is always melting, especially during the summer. Milankovitch cooling is gradual and wouldn’t be enough of an effect to initiate glaciation.
The alternative of hugely increased precipitation at high latitudes due to inclination gravity forcing is a better fit to the data imo. This option has only been overlooked by the mainstream because it requires a modified gravity theory, which is currently a taboo in climate science. I predict that this will soon change.
Why do you think the gravitational forcing is so powerful in cooling in high latitudes.
We have the Everest’s almost 9 km elevated glacier. And Everest is at a medium latitude. So does the Kilimanjaro in Africa.
What is the trend according to the gravitational forcing theory now. Is it now a cooling trend, or is it a warming trend.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
The increase in inclination gravitational forcing is a viable alternative to Milankovitch forcing which fits the data better than eccentricity and therefore should be explored:
https://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8329
The two mid-latitude glacial regions you mention are at high altitude, where lower temperatures would decrease melting of increased snowfall due to increased global tidal strength. Therefore glaciation is expected.
The increase in inclination gravitational forcing acts upon the equatorial regions, increasing the amplitude of earth tides (which are currently 1m high):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_tide
The heat is increasingly redistributed from the equatorial regions to higher latitudes via ocean tides and currents. The equator is therefore currently in a cooling trend and mid to high latitudes in a warming trend.
The N.hemisphere is warming at a higher rate due to the bipolar nature of orbital inclination – the Earth’s orbit is flattening to the solar plane in one direction (from South to North) and then the other direction in the next cycle (from North to South).
This hypothesis can be tested by satellite observation of the solid body earth-tides. Science needs to be 100% sure of the driver of climate change before making economic sacrifices to reduce CO2 emissions, which could prove to be unnecessary.
Christos – to clarify the bipolar nature in the glacial data & the current N.hemisphere warming:
I’m proposing that the inner core is composed of nucleic density matter which can tilt independently to the rest of the planet. Therefore the core would be currently tending to tilt just above the surface equatorial line, increasing the amount of tidal energy in the N.hemisphere relative to the S.hemisphere.
Alan, do you conclude that the higher rate of precipitation is happening because of the orbital forced global warming trend.
Which has enhanced the tropical ocean’s evaporation process.
And as a result the increased snowing and the rapid growth of Greenland’s glaciers…
Does that mean the intense glaciations occur in the Earth’s orbital forced warming trend periods?
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos – I have created an alternative mechanism other than “orbital forced global warming” for glaciation, which is “orbital gravity forced equatorial cooling/mid-latitude warming”.
It started at school when my physics teacher first explained that “the Moon pulls on the oceans to create the tides”.. I intuitively knew that this didn’t make sense but didn’t know what the real picture was. Now I imagine the Moon’s core pulling on Earth’s core, creating a solid earth bulge, which pushes the oceans from beneath.
This is why the Moon isn’t seen to tidally influence the clouds in the same way as the ocean. It makes more logical sense in my mind. I’m now 100% convinced that this is the true picture of reality. I’m just waiting for the global science community to catch up.
Christos – listen to Dr. Judith Curry talk about the science of climate and keep in mind the equatorial cooling/mid-latitude warming hypothesis:
https://www.voanews.com/episode/judith-curry-climate-change-plugged-greta-van-susteren-3795531
Alan, I listened carefully to what Dr. Judith Curry said on “Climate Change Plugged In with Greta Van Susteren January 10, 2019 11:35 AM.”
https://www.voanews.com/episode/judith-curry-climate-change-plugged-greta-van-susteren-3795531
I had in mind the equatorial cooling/mid-latitude warming hypothesis.
Dr. Judith Curry just questioned what caused warming before 1950.
Alan, do you think that the warming is caused by the equatorial cooling/mid-latitude warming hypothesis?
You wrote above:
“The 100,000-year cycle would be attributable to the stronger gravitational force on the Solar plane, whilst the 405,000-year cycle would be attributable to Venus and Jupiter, adding to the extra tidal influence.”
And
“Due to the ‘Apophis effect’ the inclination orbit of Earth would be 101,250-years to the solar plane (plane of angular momentum of the solar system) and every fourth (glacial) cycle Venus and Jupiter would become flatter to the solar plane, increasing the tidal forcing due to exotic matter exerting a stronger gravitational force on the orbital plane.
101,250 x 4 = 405,000 year cycle.”
Alan, at what point in that 405,000 year cycle do you estimate we are now. Are we at the beginning of the warming, or we approach the end of the cycle? The end of the warming period.
Because I think it is somehow different and complex.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos – Judith talks about science not knowing the mechanism of climate change previous to 1950, and mentions The Little Ice Age.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
The 100,000-year glacial cycle contains abrupt millenial cycles. These would be attributable to the lunar orbit becoming flatter to the Earth’s equatorial plane. It is exactly analogous to the Earth becoming flatter to the solar plane.
Extra tidal energy would transport heat from the equator to higher latitudes causing The Medieval Warm Period, lasting ~200 years or so. The cold snaps following would be due to the warm air being pushed upward into the Polar Vortex because the shape of a globe has decreasing area towards the poles. This extra energy then gets released in a series of cold snaps, famously causing the Thames freeze over periodically.
…
The end of the article states we’re not due for the 405,000-year effect, although I still believe Venus is showing tell-tale signs of equatorial cooling/mid-latitude warming.
Alan,
“The 100,000-year glacial cycle contains abrupt millennial cycles. These would be attributable to the lunar orbit becoming flatter to the Earth’s equatorial plane. It is exactly analogous to the Earth becoming flatter to the solar plane.”
Lunar orbit becoming how much flatter to the Earth’s equatorial plane.
Do we consider solar irradiation constant.
What I think is that the solar irradiation is what determines the amount of energy involved in global temperatures development.
Also I realized that depending on the Earth’s axis orientation the ability to absorb solar energy by the surface may slightly increase therefore leading slowly out of the ice ages.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos – the Moon currently orbits at an anomalous angle of 5° to the equatorial plane.
https://earthsky.org/space/why-is-the-moons-orbit-tilted-collisionless-encounters
I propose a *strong gravitational* interaction between the two cores which is especially strong when on the same plane. This is the extra energy which causes both the Medieval Warm Period as well as the later cold snaps of The Little Ice Age.
I don’t consider irradiance or insolation as the primary driver of climate change. These are in the glacial data of course, but I tend to lower their significance as more of a signal in the data.
Alan,
“Christos – the Moon currently orbits at an anomalous angle of 5° to the equatorial plane.”
Alan, why Wikipedia says:
Moon, from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
Axial tilt
1.5424° to ecliptic
6.687° to orbit plane[2]
24° to Earth’s equator [8]
What do you mean by “the Moon currently orbits at an anomalous angle of 5° to the equatorial plane.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit
Also from the same Wikipedia article:
“Unlike most satellites of other planets, the Moon orbits closer to the ecliptic plane than to the planet’s equatorial plane. The Moon’s orbit is subtly perturbed by the Sun and Earth in many small, complex and interacting ways. For example, the plane of the Moon’s orbit gradually rotates once every 18.61 years,[142] which affects other aspects of lunar motion. These follow-on effects are mathematically described by Cassini’s laws.[143]”
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos – thank you, I should have said 5° to the Earth-Sun plane as in the link provided.
It doesn’t detract from the basic imagery or that the inclination orbit of the Moon is a mystery.
A bit of topic, but but very important to shed light on the claim about the Swedish success and Tegnell’s “wisdom” which has been a recurring theme on Climate etc.
“Swedish municipalities close down: – It is serious now.
The infection is increasing in 17 of Sweden’s 21 regions. Several municipalities in Skåne are closing down businesses as a result of increasing infection. On Tuesday, the Public Health Authority decided to tighten the infection control councils in the Skåne region as a result of increasing infection. The advice will apply for the next three weeks. Residents of the region are encouraged to avoid public transport and not associate with people outside the household. In Skåne, 57 are hospitalized with covid-19. The infection is now increasing in 17 of 21 regions in Sweden, according to Aftonbladet. In Trelleborg, the municipality closes a museum, pool, three libraries and leisure centers. Also in Åstorp, they take the advice from the Public Health Authority seriously: “In view of the situation we are now in and to protect our risk groups, we prefer that there are no visits to any of our nursing homes”, writes social manager Monica Enberg on the municipality’s website according to Expressen. Osby municipality has also decided to introduce a visit ban on nursing homes, close swimming pools and libraries, according to Expressen. Since Friday, 5,191 new infections have been registered in Sweden. During Tuesday’s press conference, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said that he takes the situation seriously. – We are beginning to approach a critical point. It has not resulted in deaths so far, he said.
https://www.abcnyheter.no/nyheter/verden/2020/10/28/195715374/svenske-kommuner-stenger-ned-det-er-alvor-na
Rune – I am not that familiar with stats from Sweden – the question is whether the increase in infection is a second wave or second first wave in different regions.
Here in the US, we have not had a second or third wave (contrary to any hype) . What have had is 3 or 4 separate first waves with each first wave occurring at different times and different regions.
same question applies to France , spain
> Rune – I am not that familiar with stats from Sweden – the question is whether the increase in infection is a second wave or second first wave in different regions.
The numbers are up in Stockholm as well as in other regions.
The infections are up in sweden – but the 7 day average death rate is sitting at 2. That is 6-7 weeks after the surge in infections. That is an IFR of 1%ish vs 6%-8% IFR back in April/May.
The increase in IR due to more testing or more people actually getting covid. The decrease in IFR due to better treatment or picking higher number of mild or asymtomatic infections.
Either way, the “surge ” infections seems to be more of a nothing burger at this point, except to those few.
Or better described as what you want to happen, get the infection and develop immunity (the quicker the better). Hiding from the virus is not viable and a poor long term solution. A vaccine for a coronavirus hasnt sure much success in the past, so it is probably not a good long term realistic solution.
Joe –
We’ve been over this and you keep bringing up the same garbage responses:
>The infections are up in sweden – but the 7 day average death rate is sitting at 2. That is 6-7 weeks after the surge in infections. That is an IFR of 1%ish vs 6%-8% IFR back in April/May.
It’s still too early to say. For example, the surge could originally have been because of increased infections in younger people and then after a period of time the increased infections moves across age distinctions. The numbers of hospitalizations and ICU admissions IS increasing in line with what you’d expect.
> The increase in IR due to more testing or more people actually getting covid.
First you say that you don’t know the numbers, then you say something like that. Actually, people who are studying this, including people like Tegnell, say that the massive increase infections is NOT explainable by more testing – although more testing might be a contributing factor.
> The decrease in IFR due to better treatment or picking higher number of mild or asymtomatic infections.
I’m sure that it has to do with both. But you are making assumptions about the IFR too early. There are lags in reporting and there are lags across age demographics.
> Either way, the “surge ” infections seems to be more of a nothing burger at this point, except to those few.
Totally dismisses all kinds of impact beyond just deaths. Hospitalizations is an important impact. Just illness is a significant impact. And the rise in infections is already causing a big disruption in life as “normal” in Sweden – more isolation for older people, business slowing down, etc. And that is all true even though Sweden, among all the world’s countries, is among those best suited to dealing with this kind of problem for many obvious reasons.
> Or better described as what you want to happen, get the infection and develop immunity (the quicker the better). Hiding from the virus is not viable and a poor long term solution.
Tell that to the Swedes, who seem to be ignoring your advice – for the obvious reasons. This whole “hide from the virus” binary thinking – as if that’s what people are doing or advocating, is beyond useless.
> A vaccine for a coronavirus hasnt sure much success in the past, so it is probably not a good long term realistic solution.
Long-term, realistic solutions require reasonable analysis not something based on rhetorical gamesmanship.
And I love how you move from the one argument to the next.
“It’s not a 2nd wave, it’s infections in other areas.”
“Infections are up in Stockholm (and in other areas that were hit hard earlier).”
“It’s a nothingburger because people are dying.”
…aren’t dying..
That all said…it is good news that (1) the overall infection numbers reflect, at least for now, a higher % positives among younger people and (2) outcomes among seriously sick people are getting better:
-snip-
Early reports showed high mortality from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Mortality rates have recently been lower, raising hope that treatments have improved. However, patients are also now younger, with fewer comorbidities. We explored whether hospital mortality was associated with changing demographics at a 3-hospital academic health system in New York. We examined in-hospital mortality or discharge to hospice from March through August 2020, adjusted for demographic and clinical factors, including comorbidities, admission vital signs, and laboratory results. Among 5,121 hospitalizations, adjusted mortality dropped from 25.6% (95% CI, 23.2-28.1) in March to 7.6% (95% CI, 2.5-17.8) in August. The standardized mortality ratio dropped from 1.26 (95% CI, 1.15-1.39) in March to 0.38 (95% CI, 0.12-0.88) in August, at which time the average probability of death (average marginal effect) was 18.2 percentage points lower than in March. Data from one health system suggest that mortality from COVID-19 is decreasing even after accounting for patient characteristics.
-snip-
-snip-
The Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre found that Covid-19 patients treated in intensive care units in England, Wales and Northern Ireland after September 1 had much better chances of survival than those admitted before that: 12% of patients have died since the beginning of September, compared to 39% of those admitted between the start of the pandemic and the end of August.
-snip-
https://www.journalofhospitalmedicine.com/jhospmed/article/230561/hospital-medicine/trends-covid-19-risk-adjusted-mortality-rates?channel=28090
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/28/europe/coronavirus-death-rate-second-wave-lower-intl/index.html
Please go to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ to see their death rate and their present infection rate. You will see that their infection rate is going up steadily but their death rate is now stagnant. They did not have lockdowns nor were masks mandated.
Then go to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/ for New York. There you see cases rising but the death rate is just about nil. Same as Sweden.
Anyone under the age of 70 who does not have a serious medical complication, including metabolic syndrome (ie, grossly overweight) has little to fear from this disease. Therapeutics, especially Hydroxychloroquine plus Azithromycin plus Vitamin D&C plus an anticoagulant like low dose aspirin has been found to be very effective in treating this disease when this medicine is administered immediately a patient presents with COVID-19-like symptoms.
This whole affair has been one huge self-inflicted disaster because of ignorant politicians who are scientifically illiterate, cowardly and devoid of imagination.
Cases and deaths are also up in NY state and New Jersey. The 7 day moving average number of cases and deaths have at least doubled in both states since the summer lows. The only way the NY and NJ numbers look good is when compared to the horrific numbers during the “first wave”.
I suspect this is basically true for all of the northern tier states.
Stockholm up and at the same level as several months ago:
Week 42: 1660 new cases, second highest after week 25 with 1732.
>>The infections are up in sweden – but the 7 day average death rate is sitting at 2.
No, the seven day rate is eight times higher at 16, 11th of October 5884 deaths, 25th of October 5916 deats.
And the deaths is just a part of it, the swedish health care system is extremely exhausted, hundreds have quit, many are on sick leave and the psychological pressure resulting from an expectation of more infected and even more hospitalizations is enormous.
Sweden’s case count is rising. The seven day moving average for number of deaths per day (not integrated over 7 days) has been 1-3 for weeks. That said, Sweden today reported 7 deaths, the highest number of daily deaths in weeks if not months.
Source: Worldometers
Rune’s comment – “No, the seven day rate is eight times higher at 16,”
rune – how is it that the current 7 day average is 16 when the the highest number of deaths over the last 30 days is 7. Worldometers shows the 7 day average has crept up from 1 to 2 as of today. (and not adjusted for rounding)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
>>>rune – how is it that the current 7 day average is 16
A misunderstanding on my part. I read Your post as death per. week, not per. day. But this will unfortunately increase in line with the increase in cases of infection, it takes a week or two before it strikes.
The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science, while the Democrats cherry pick science to further their political agendas.
I think it is fairer to say that Reps and Dems focus on different science.
Can you please link to some science that claims that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.
https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-and-republicans-congress-global-warming-2019-2?r=US&IR=T#alabama-1
I’ll do that right after you prove that Unicorns don’t exist.
>>>I’ll do that right after you prove that Unicorns don’t exist.
Wrong, I can actually link to such material, we have The Dragons Slayers, Harde, Humlum, Solheim and Gerlich and Tscheuschner, among others. But there are not many who want to talk about these jokers anymore.
This might be what you are looking for.
Precision research by physicists William Happer and William van Wijngaarden has determined that the present levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are almost completely saturated. In radiation physics the technical term “saturated” implies that adding more molecules will not cause more warming.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/10/26/study-suggests-no-more-co2-warming/
The one who seeks finds. But do I remember wrong if Happer even became too much for Trump?
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/why-high-profile-climate-science-opponent-quit-trump-s-white-house
What Trump thinks of Happer or vice versa is irrelevant.
Totaly agree, what Trump and Happer thinks about climatechange should be irrelevant.
Rune
the paper by Happer and his colleague are very interesting. The maths and theory are all there. I look forward to your disproving it in a scientific manner. I will go and get a cup of coffee whilst I wait.
tonyb
“the paper by Happer and his colleague are very interesting”
On the contrary, the usual contrarians failing to clear the low bar of peer review with tedious predictability.
Whatever it is, interesting it is not.
But you’re not being serious here, are you?
Peer review somehow magically determines truth. Interesting position to take. It’s kind of like religion.
I am somewhat skeptical of the Happer paper because GHGs are not homogeneously mixed in the atmosphere, and I don’t see how this issue is solved any easier than other issues of solving for future states in a temporally and spatially chaotic system. That said, saturation and competition are certainly real phenomena in radiation physics. They play a significant role in nuclear core design. For this reason non-condensing GHGs, such as CO2, certainly play a larger role in a dry atmosphere than they do in a moist atmosphere.
That said, peer review is no bar at all to scientific veracity.
>>> I look forward to your disproving it in a scientific manner. I will go and get a cup of coffee whilst I wait.
Take a three week vacation instead, but you will not yet see any debunking of the Happer paper by me. I try my best not to repeat the usual “skeptic move,” namely to speak publicly about scientific disciplines I am not competent. But I pay taxes and thus the salaries of thousands of atmospheric scientists, physicists and other professionals who probably have something to say about the Happer paper. If there is anything in it it will be embraced, or it will be slaughtered. I believe most in the latter, but what do I know?
dougbadgero | October 29, 2020 at 9:03 am | said:
I am somewhat skeptical of the Happer paper because GHGs are not homogeneously mixed in the atmosphere, …
Right. The paper uses a model and doesn’t attempt to model every detail.
Skeptics frequently point out the inadequacy of complex climate models. Frequently they will respond that all science is expressed via models.
That’s essentially true. However, not all models are the same.
Newton’s laws are used as a model to predict the path of an artillery shell. That model has been tested extensively in times of war and times of peace. It has proved to be a life saver :)
There are numerous other models that vary in the level of complexity.
Climate models are among the most complex. They haven’t been well tested and the output varies wildly depending on starting parameters, and that doesn’t even address the huge variations among different models. At their current maturity level, they can’t be trusted to predict future climate, much less save lives.
RuneValaker: ‘I try my best not to repeat the usual “skeptic move,” namely to speak publicly about scientific disciplines I am not competent.’
An admirable attitude. Please start sticking to it.
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.” https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
It can be seen in a family of solutions in a single model with 1000’s of feasible differences in initial parameter values. There are ways around this presently intractable problem – it requires 1000’s of times more computing power. Having modelled for decades – I eagerly anticipate quantum computing.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/rowlands-2012.jpg
Until then trying to convince the public that useful information at multi decades or regional scales can be extracted from the current generation of models is a hoax at worst and delusional at best. This devalues great swathes of climate science.
“While climate models exhibit various levels of decadal climate variability and some regional similarities to observations, none of the model simulations considered match the observed signal in terms of its magnitude, spatial patterns and their sequential time development. These results highlight a substantial degree of uncertainty in our interpretation of the observed climate change using current generation of climate models.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6
This shows another problem. A lack of fundamental knowledge. As Lorenz* said long ago perhaps ‘we can visualize the day when all of the relevant physical principles will be perfectly known. It may then still not be possible to express these principles as mathematical equations which can be solved by digital computers.”
The third problem is the variability of climate over decades to millennia. This is not random noise superimposed on a signal. It is called all sorts of things in an effort to communicate mathematical chaos in Earth systems. At scales from micro eddies to planetary waves.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/nile-e1527722953992.jpg
“It is well known that current equilibrium-based models fall short as predictive descriptions of natural ecosystems, and particularly of fisheries systems that exhibit nonlinear dynamics.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25733874/
“The term synchronization as used here describes how two or more coupled nonlinear oscillators adjust their (initially different) natural rhythms to a common frequency and constant relative phase. In the case of the Polar Regions heat and mass transfer through the intervening ocean and atmosphere provided the coupling.” http://www.ajsonline.org/content/312/4/417.short
Climate science that assumes all recent change is anthropogenic and linearly extrapolates short term data over a century or more are poor science. Life is too short for bad science.
* Lorenz E. N.. 1969 Three approaches to atmospheric predictability. Bull. Am. Met. Soc. 50, 345-351. Google Scholar
Siberian sea ice cover is virtually flat-lining and the difference of 2020 to previous years is astounding (I’m unable to copy the detailed graph image from my clipboard unfortunately)
https://theconversation.com/wheres-the-sea-ice-3-reasons-the-arctic-freeze-is-unseasonably-late-and-why-it-matters-148918
*Atlantification* will be the new buzzword of the climate debate – how can so much warm Atlantic water be entering the Arctic basin and melting the ice shelves from beneath??
Hints:
(i) Anomalous warm abyssal deep ocean detected in Brazil basin, above which are columns of much colder water.
(ii) Anomalous increase of 25% in tidal range recorded by tidal gauges on US east coast.
(iii) Anomalous motion of heavenly bodies known to deviate from Newton’s gravity theory.
Here’s the latest shocking evidence of the consequences of mandatory mask wearing in Australia:
https://youtu.be/3FXrR6zHOH8
Central Planning, Like Venuzala no doubt!
The incredible Peta Credlin shows how democracy needs to be restored to the righteous side of history. A government scandal which led to over 800 covid-19 deaths and numerous small businesses destroyed is under her relentless scrutiny for justice:
https://youtu.be/fAIJRP2n0QI
The loony left criticizes Trump for “not doing enough” (a lie right out of the box), then criticize him for shutting down the economy, which inflicted economic pain. They can’t have it both ways.
And today, the US clocked GDP growth at 33% !!!!!
“The right” ridicules forecasts of millions of deaths and ignores Trump’s claims that he saved millions of lives.
> And today, the US clocked GDP growth at 33% !!!!!
That’s such hilarious logic that I’m not even going to bother to explain why. It would be pointless. Anyone who doesn’t see it immediately is beyond hope.
Joshua – you don’t seem to be able to distinguish logic from a simple statement.
The Commerce Department announced Thursday morning that the U.S. economy grew at an unprecedented 33.1% annualized pace in the third quarter.
No matter how the Democrats and their media allies attempt to qualify it, that was the biggest GDP surge ever. It beat the previous historic high of 16.7% in the first quarter of 1950, as well as the third-quarter estimate of 32% from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/gdp-numbers-trump-economy-andy-puzder
The GDP fell at a record pace in the second quarter (31.4%), and Dems were eager to blame POTUS.
The GDP surged back on the third quarter, and, big surprise, Trump tries to take credit.
The reality? Similar results in both quarters had my cat been President.
Jim –
I bet you so no problem with this logic from Pence either….
-snip-
“We’ve already created more jobs in the last three months than Joe Biden and Barack Obama created in their eight years in office.”
-snip-
And then there “the right” saying that shutting down the economy is tyranny except when Trump’s task force does it and then it’s “decisive action.”
“Similar results in both quarters had my cat been President.”
So Trump pushing for reopening the economy didn’t have any impact on the shape of the recovery? He may have been wrong about the initial shutdown, but pushing for widespread reopening is absolutely positively impacting the shape of the recovery curve.
Dems delaying reopening in States under Dems leadership has shown that those States have had slower recoveries. That’s a longer period impacted by the virus, and more longer term economic and social harm to people.
While I see that you have discovered Pence is a politician, but policy does have an effect on the economy and doesn’t require a “magic wand” as asserted by Community Organizer Obama. Better trade deals, cutting taxes, extricating the US from treaties harmful to US citizens and the economy, and getting rid of tons of onerous regulations has given the economy a shot in the arm.
Trump shut it down once and it was decisive action. It hurt economically. Unlike some who shall remain nameless, Trump learns from his experience. He then adjusts course. Shutting down again would be id-ee-ot-ick.
Jim –
> While I see that you have discovered Pence is a politician,
So if that’s his excuse for making such an inane statement – what’s yours?
Not to mention the $3,000,000,000,000 in stimulus.
Rob Starkey
“Dems delaying reopening in States under Dems leadership has shown that those States have had slower recoveries.”
Could you show me the State-by-State third quarter GDP results?
This shows the first-to-second quarter changes in GDP, by state, but not sure if second-to-third quarter results are in yet:
https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-10/qgdpstate1020_0.pdf
It’s a ridiculous point to begin with. States closed down and opened up on the basis of how hard they were hit by the virus. And their economies were affected by the spread of the virus. This just goes back agaim to the inanity of the argument that the economic effect of the SIPs and NPIs can somehow be magically disaggregated from the economic impact of the virus itself.
Joshua- not ridiculous at all.
Look at prohibitions and limitations for restaurants and entertainment places in Dem vs Reb states. I travel a lot between AZ, NY, and MI and the difference is stark.
You think the MI governor (as an example) has kept the state as locked down as it is without political motivations? It sure isn’t due to a threat to hospital capacity.
Joshua,
“It’s a ridiculous point to begin with. States closed down and opened up on the basis of how hard they were hit by the virus.”
Huh? Just about every state closed down in March, regardless of how hard they were hit. Similar with reopenings at the start of Summer.
And school opening/closing seems to be willynilly. Montana, for example, recorded 4 new cases on March 14. Two days later, schools were ordered closed.
The state recorded 928 new cases on October 22, and schools have remained open.
Weak tea, Josh. You have to up your game!
Bob –
> Huh? Just about every state closed down in March, regardless of how hard they were hit. Similar with reopenings at the start of Summer.
Hmmm. “just about.” Let’s see:
April 1:
> California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
About 1/2 of the states.. Most of them hit hard, early. A few not hit hard, for sure. Which ones that were hit hard and early aren’t there, pray tell? As near as I can tell every state that was hit hard, early, were among those who closed down earliest.
> And school opening/closing seems to be willynilly. Montana, for example, recorded 4 new cases on March 14. Two days later, schools were ordered closed.
So you select out schools closing as the one metric, and then give one example to make a generalization. The CDC recommended that opening, specifically, be based on rates of spread. For sure some states effectively ignorus in es the guidelines. I’m willing to admit if I’m wrong and the general rule was that all states or almost all states ignored the guidelines. Do you have something more than one example along one metric?
Here, this might get us a head start to answering the question:
See How All 50 States Are Reopening (and Closing Again) https://nyti.ms/2Y37Ezj
There’s no doubt there were exceptions. There’s no doubt the response was poorly coordinated across the states. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t general patterns. A
Joshua,
My claim was off, but only by a few days. Most States had some sort of stay-at-home order in place by April 12:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_government_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic
Bob –
I could be wrong but I still think that the general overall patten is that states opened and closed in association with the severity of the virus. Thus, even if it were true that economic harm was associated with closing earlier and/or opening later (Rob assumes this is true but provides no evidence to support his assumption and steadfastly ignores evidence otherwise), it could easily just be a confounding variable for impact of the virus itself.
What is the science behind; “shutdown the virus”? Where can I read about the concept?
That “science” hardly exists, it is rather a reflection of logic. WHO does not recommend lockdowns as a general tool, only in cases where the spread is out of control. And the science is simple, if people do not meet, the virus will not spread, or at least spread much more slowly.
I think many underestimates that a very large part of the motive behind the closures is not primarily the number of deaths that will occur, but the political and social consequences if the health care system does not manage to treat everyone who needs it, and where a large part, even in younger age groups, will perish without necessary health care.
Who decides that the spread is out of control?
If the hospital system is overwhelmed then the virus is out of control. If the system isn’t overwhelmed, we’re on a path to putting the virus behind us.
Rob Starkey
Nice to find something we agree on!
I took my son to the ER – high fever and in great pain – and had to wait about an hour and a half to see a doctor. And that was before COVID.
He had a ruptured appendix, and a long wait could have been life threatening.
> we’re on a path to putting the virus behind us
What does that even mean? You could say we were “on a path to putting it behind us” as soon as it started.
1. Follow the number of infections.
2. As soon as hospitals are overwhelmed, declare a lockdown.
Is this really what you are saying?
If the healthcare system is overloaded, the virus has already been out of control for several weeks.
> Follow the number of infections.
Good point:
https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1322527556126605313
Reconciling science and politics requires a polity clever enough to grasp the core idea and wise enough to devise the most pragmatic and effective response. Mostly we just muddle through. Climate is complex, uncertain and – with today’s methods – unpredictable. Although future tipping points are inevitable whatever we do.
“As our nonlinear world moves into uncharted territory, we should expect surprises. Some of these may take the form of natural hazards, the scale and nature of which are beyond our present comprehension. The sooner we depart from the present strategy, which overstates an ability to both extract useful information from and incrementally improve a class of models that are structurally ill suited to the challenge, the sooner we will be on the way to anticipating surprises, quantifying risks, and addressing the very real challenge that climate change poses for science. Unless we step up our game, something that begins with critical self-reflection, climate science risks failing to communicate and hence realize its relevance for societies grappling to respond to global warming.” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390
In engineering – and indeed in environment science – we analyse the problem in a multidimensional – economics, technology, society and culture, science – context and devise an operationally optimal response. Global warming can be solved. Electricity is 25% of the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. A comprehensive multi-gas and aerosol strategy is required – CFC’s, nitrous oxides, methane, black carbon and sulfate. Along with ongoing decreases in carbon intensity and increases in efficiency and productivity. And technical innovation across sectors – energy, transport, industry, residential and agriculture and forestry. And building resilient infrastructure for whatever nature throws at us.
In part the old methods of social organisation – what has worked in the past – must be remembered in order to conserve and sustain fisheries, forest, rangeland, aquifers, rivers, lakes and oceans. Iriai is a Japanese word meaning to enter into the joint use of resources. There are ways to a bright future for the planet, its peoples and its wild places – but these need to be consciously designed in a broad context of economics and democracy, population, development, technical innovation, land use and the environment. There is a stark choice in which narratives of catastrophe and economic, environmental and social collapse have no place. Which future is for you and your children? Economic collapse, civil strife, war – or prosperous and resilient communities in vibrant landscapes?
And to be brutally frank – the only resource capable of fuelling this future is next gen nuclear. The future is cyberpunk. The singularity occurs on January 26th 2065 when an automated IKEA factory becomes self-aware and commences converting all global resources to flat pack furniture. Until then – endless innovation on information technology and cybernetics will accelerate and continue to push the limits of what it is to be human and to challenge the adaptability of social structures. New movements, fads, music, designer drugs, cat videos and dance moves will sweep the planet like Mexican waves in the zeitgeist. Materials will be stronger and lighter. Life will be cluttered with holographic TV’s, waterless washing machines, ultrasonic blenders, quantum computers, hover cars and artificially intelligent phones. Annoying phones that cry when you don’t charge them – taking on that role from cars that beep when you don’t put a seat belt on. Space capable flying cars will have seat belts that lock and tension without any intervention on your part. All this will use vastly more energy and materials this century as populations grow and wealth increases.
Robert,
You are getting the hang of how science works as you continue to shed your green cloaks of old.
But you seem to approve of “Some of these may take the form of natural hazards, the scale and nature of which are beyond our present comprehension.”?
Why is it necessary to impart this sci-fi type of shock horror? My private expectation of the next 1,000 years is that it will be monontonous and boring and with hardlyany excitement naturally, but stuffed around enormously by peope who are ignorant while they think they are wise.
Is the globe well prepared for emerging natural problems? While we know about near earth objects that can get nearer one time, we do not seem to have much of a plan for a minor but troublesome impact. They are devilish hard to predict and to prevent. Have a look at the most recent NASA page on NEOs. A week ago there was no threat. Since then, bodies coming from odd angles and mising earth by not much at all. Nasa is picking some up, 3 hours after they passed us.
Do you think we should wind down alarm on global warming and covid-19 to let some informed, mature views into the daily debate, like how can we stock hospitals with merchandise that would be useful after an impact?
Are our politicians and their advisers any good at listening to scientists who predict that there could be an NEO hit, or a california quake, in present lifetimes? Geoff S.
The Earth system exhibits Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic at scales of micro eddies to planetary waves and from moments to aeons. The statement you object to is a quote from the brilliant and conscientious climate modeller Tim Palmer. And it is clear that you have no capacity to move beyond your habitual condescension, arrogance, lack of open intellectual curiosity and inflexible ideology to achieve even a modicum of understanding.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/images/18.3110ee8c1495db74432636f/1459560224012/PB_FIG33_media_11jan2015_web2.jpg
As for my conservation credentials – cows, blue carbon, precision farming and water sensitive cities are a big part of the practical response to reducing immediately apparent anthropogenic pressures on the Earth system.
Yet you prattle on with an utterly baseless and empty prophecy of 1000 years of not Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics. What – this system will suddenly start behaving itself?
This is perfect:
-snip-
It is “futile and immoral” to seek herd immunity as a protection from a pandemic, and the transmission of an infectious disease like Covid-19 cannot be fully halted without a vaccine, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has said.
-snip-
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-herd-immunity-sweden-covid-cases-anders-tegnell-b1421541.html
Should we continue to hide from Covid awaiting the development of a successful Covid vaccine – especially considering the history of success development of other coronavirus vaccines?
Statement from NCBI –
“The emergence of the strain of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and its impact on global health have made imperative the development of effective and safe vaccines for this lethal strain. SARS-CoV-2 now adds to the list of coronavirus diseases that have threatened global health, along with the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) coronaviruses that emerged in 2002/2003 and 2012, respectively. As of April 2020, no vaccine is commercially available for these coronavirus strains.”
Josh – I ask again – do you really think this is a viable plan vs herd immunity?
Joe – the non epedimiologist –
The Herd Immunity option. Not too different than some of the social patterns seen in studies of Behavioral Sink syndrome in prison populations. A common (and sometimes fatal) defect of social vertebrates. I am not drawing a one-to-one comparison but billions of anonymous people connecting through social media may be a problem ya think?
https://youtu.be/NgGLFozNM2o
Dr. Curry, I have to respectfully disagree with you regarding this statement.
“The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science, while the Democrats cherry pick science to further their political agendas.cherry pick science to further their political agendas.”
I will refer you to your own blog post from November 21, 2016, titled, The Real War on Science. This is from the piece of the same name by John Tierney over at City Journal. I bookmarked Tierney’s piece that day because I thought he made some interesting points.. It might be worth revisiting.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/11/21/the-real-war-on-science/
https://www.city-journal.org/html/real-war-science-14782.html
The book of science only gives methods, never final answers. Scientists are still working on Einstein’s gravity equations and Feynman’s QED, although the latter yields astonishingly precise results. And mathematicians still wonder about derivatives. I don’t think we could find any area in science where a final solution has been obtained. We are always chasing asymptotic curves.
snorna – you make a good point that Einstein’s gravity theory is not the final answer. There is a fundamental problem in that it is irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. There is also the problem of basic Newtonian gravity theory, which is why science is searching for the elusive ‘dark matter’, which is reputed to make up ~84% of all matter of the universe.
There is an alternative point of view which hasn’t been philosophically explored by science: that Newton’s imagery and equation were fundamentally wrong from the very beginning. It’s possible that a nucleic density matter exists at the centre of the Earth, which is very different from objects we find on the surface. This idea would negate the need for ‘dark matter’, because the extra gravitational effect comes from within the heavenly bodies themselves.
This strong gravitational interaction from core to core can even explain climate change as an alternative to greenhouse warming. If a stronger gravitational force exists on the orbital plane, giving the solar system it’s generally flat shape, then extra tidal energy could be transporting heat away from the equator, giving the effect of global warming. This would happen because the Earth is spending more time on the disk shape of the solar system.
What percentage chance do you give this new idea as being a true picture of reality?
Go on – I dare you.
How wearing masks might worsen pandemic:
Random guesses.
1. Wearing a mask is causing wearer to feel safer and could thereby increase risky behavior…moral hazard.
2. Human breath has added water vapor and CO2 and slightly decreased O2 and the viral particles restrained in interstices of mask fibers may react chemically and become more capable of binding to receptors.
3. Delayed transit velocity of virions in mask interstices might cause slight warming of virus and enhanced adherence of spike proteins to ACEII receptors as virus reaches type II pneumocytes in alveolar membranes.
4. Laminar air flow in unmasked noses and mouths and pharynges might be replaced with turbulent flow because of mask and this turbulence might enhance virus-receptor adhesion.
5. Turbulence about upper border of mask might drive viral particles onto conjunctiva of eyes where attachment to receptors could occur. We don’t know about significance of conjunctival route of infection.
6. Masks might reduce total alveolar air perfusion. This would lead to slight increases in CO2 and H2co3 and protons in serum which is saying the patient might become slightly acidotic. This could affect virion binding to receptor sites and would stimulate increase rate of breathing. This could increase total exposure to virions.
7. Masks probably decrease speaking and eating and accordingly socialization. This is vitally required by H. sapiens. Something like depression would be the cost of this.
snorma,
“How wearing masks might worsen pandemic”
Do you think masks have worsened the pandemic in Japan?
Japan: 14 deaths/million
USA: 706 deaths/million
The problem is that in the critical early days, when preventive measures would have been most effective, the medical community told us NOT to wear masks, to go about our lives as normal. Influenza was seen as the bigger threat.
Snorna: 1) We can teach citizens that ordinary masks do not provide complete protection and that engaging in hazardous activities while wearing a mask can be more dangerous than avoiding hazardous activities and not wearing mask. The best solution is obviously to avoid hazardous activities as much as possible and wear a mask away from home.
2) 3) 4) Viruses and cells in your body are surrounded by water at roughly 98.6 degF when the viral spike protein engages with the ACE2 receptor. What happens to the spike protein of viruses trapped in a mask is irrelevant unless you are stupid enough to not wash or sanitize your hands after removing your mask. Even then viral transfer from hands to your face isn’t common mechanism of transmission. Viruses in air are surrounded by a layer of water or droplet of water.
5) If you want to worry about getting infect through your eyes, wear glasses or google. Medical professionals do. A mask can fog your glasses, but that is with air YOU breath out, not the potentially infectious air you breathe in.
6) We know N95 and other high quality masks provide excellent protection to medical professionals working in extremely hazardous environments despite disputing air flow even more than less masks.
7) Humans need to socialize. Masks make socialization safer.
Bob’s comments – “Do you think masks have worsened the pandemic in Japan?
Japan: 14 deaths/million
USA: 706 deaths/million”
Similar very low death rates as japan throughout aisa, viet nam, korea, taiwan, etc (excluding china).
Similar high death rates as USA throughout most of the european countries.
The differences are too large to be explained by higher compliance with mask wearing and contract tracing. Better Hygiene/sanitation cant explain the difference especially korea and Vietnam with lower levels of hygiene throughout most of the countries
Most likely some form of genetic factor or much higher exposure in the past with other coronaviruses.
Here is a very interesting graphic showing deaths in the US over the last century
https://mobile.twitter.com/VoidSurf1/status/1313777624674709506
I can’t vouch for its accuracy but if correct they put covid into its context
Tonyb
Tonyb
Wow.
Thanks for that.
Any update plans for sea level parts 2 & 3?
I use part 1 and dogger banks w my kids.
Scott
Yes, that’s an interesting graphic isn’t it?
Sea levels Is in my programme for the winter but the big problem will be gathering information from the met office libraries which I do in person, but will be much more diffucult this year.
In the meantime Wuwt recently carried ny article on the ozone hole and hopefully in the next few days my Christmas reading list of new books on climate will be published there.
Tonyb
Doesn’t this have to be the general shape, simply based on the increase in life expectancy? Life expectancy was only about 50 in 1920, 70 in 1965, and about 79 now.
Dougbadgero
“Doesn’t this have to be the general shape, simply based on the increase in life expectancy”
That was my initial thought. But consider COVID, where average age of death is about 75, and life expectancy is around 80.
Very little impact.
My hunch is that the increase in life expectancy tracks more closely with a decrease in infant mortality, or, more generally, a trend towards fewer deaths among young people.
Bob
You are correct. Once the first year of life had been navigated then life expectancy was not hugely different than today. In 1920 if a woman livto to 65 for example she would have around 11 years of life expectancy left. Today it is 18 years
Tonyb
Good points. Points if I had thought about I would have considered. For example, that does explain why the spike from COVID19 is far lower than for 1918 pandemic. Even considering the overall increase in life expectancy.
Moving to this post, like my Doctor said …
Now a new, peer-reviewed study in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents may add fuel to a fire that seemed to be burning out. The study finds that outpatients with the coronavirus who were treated with hydroxychloroquine combined with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin were less likely to be hospitalized. Fewer than 3% of outpatients who took the drug regimen ended up in the hospital versus 15% who did not take it.
A number of studies have found that hydroxychloroquine has no effect on inpatients. But critics have said that patients who are already in the hospital may be too sick for the drug to have any effect. Outpatients, they claim, often present with milder symptoms, and thus, hydroxychloroquine may prove effective.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/study-shows-hydroxychloroquine-may-be-effective-for-outpatients-with-covid-19
Hunter Biden and his associates have been under investigation for money-laundering since 2019. What does Bernie Sanders think of this? He could’ve been the Presidential nominee. If the FBI hadn’t kept this under wraps during impeachment for Trump looking at the Biden family, Sanders would be elected the next President. As a consolation prize, you get Joe Biden. Thank you for playing D.C. establishment power politics.
Here’s a longer term chart for deaths in Sweden.
https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851-768×393.jpg
https://swprs.org/covid-in-sweden/
juim2
So with mine for the US and yours for Sweden we have 2 very good graphs which seem to put covid into context. If you ever come across a similar one for the UK I would be interested to see it.
This graphic shows excess winter deaths in the UK, which is not the same criteria, but again illustrates that pandemics are quite common. It covers the period from 1950 to 2018 but obviously doesn’t show the 2020 figures. 1951 was worst in the record with the 50000 deaths as recently as 2017/18 apparently forgotten
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6446399/More-50-000-people-died-winter-England-Wales-severe-flu-outbreak.html
tonyb
We live in charmed times, Tony. I am grateful.
COVID-19 mortality rate declines significantly in Sweden
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201028/COVID-19-mortality-rate-declines-significantly-in-Sweden.aspx
COVID-19 is some 40 times more deadly than seasonal flu – with commensurate rates of long term morbidities – with similar reproductive numbers and infection pathways.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/q-a-similarities-and-differences-covid-19-and-influenza?gclid=CjwKCAjw8-78BRA0EiwAFUw8LHqZwftRctbXuOoBg-_-YuEOjxsyop-e2F_Ha7uZeUmfum3ZeQUlGBoCmv4QAvD_BwE
In Australia there have been 27,582 cases and 907 deaths. Overwhelmingly in Victoria and mostly originating with a single family entering the country and a failure of quarantine.
https://www.google.com/search?q=australian+covid+deaths&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU873AU874&oq=australian+covid&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0j0i433j0i20i263j0j0i20i263j0.13393j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/one-family-of-four-source-of-90-per-cent-of-australia-s-second-wave-20200818-p55mu7
The stringent lockdown provisions (including face masks) in the Melbourne area have brought infection rates under control. But it is an object lesson in letting such a virulent and deadly disease loose. Once the infection numbers are under control – contact tracing is the first line of defence. Along with washing hands and avoiding contact. It is all – however – just a stopgap measure to avoid overwhelming health systems and minimise deaths while treatments and vaccines are developed.
You can babble on about science – commonly without much science – all you like. All confident in your unempirical rationalizations. That seems to be the true comparison between COVID-19 and climate change. But all you need to know is that it is a deadly and highly infectious disease – and devise a public health strategy on that basis. And we find what works.
It is clear after 8 months of this that COVID19 is not 40 times more deadly than seasonal flu.
Best estimate age stratified infection fatality ratios for COVID19:
0-19 years: 0.00003
20-49 years: 0.0002
50-69 years: 0.005
70+ years: 0.054
Note that the 70+ estimate is not applicable to people over 80 years old.
Best on these estimates and actual pediatric fatalities COVID is actually less dangerous than the flu for children.
https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1311764842160644096?s=20
Thanks Joshua. That info looks about as I would expect. This is the pandemic year for COVID19. I would expect virulence will decrease in future years as other viruses do. The genetic descendants of the H3N2 virus that caused the ‘68 pandemic still circulates today. It has killed millions of people in the last 50+ years, but it was much more severe during the pandemic year.
Doug
In that sense the fact that coronaviruses evolve slower than say adenoviruses, rhinoviruses and flu viruses is a problem. We need it to evolve faster to lose its sharp tail of virulence and severe lung pathology.
Unfortunately, I suspect that is true.
A simple and more relevant comparison can be made using the CDC’s estimate annual average death toll from influenza: 30,000. The current COVID death toll is 230,000 or about 30,000/month. So one simple answer is to say that COVID is about 12 times as deadly. In both cases, our elder are the most vulnerable.
Of course, influenza cases and deaths occur mostly in winter. If we are watching the early stages of COVID becoming seasonally more easily as transmitted in winter months as the usual seasonal increase in influenza transmissibility, COVID might turn out to kill 50 or 100 times as many as influenza on an annual basis. Fortunately, pandemic respiratory illnesses tend to be less seasonal than seasonal influenza, so I’m hoping things don’t get this bad
When you are discussing the infection fatality rate you are not paying any attention to the fact that COVID is more easily transmitted. It causes more deaths because each infection is more deadly and because there are more infections.
There are other big differences. We have drugs such as Tamiflu that can help prevent influenza deaths that are significantly more effective than Resdemivir. Treatment with Tamiflu, but not Resdemivir, causes a significant reduction in viral load in nasal swabs. Resdemivir only causes a shortening of hospitalization and even that is controversial. And about 50% of people, heavily weighted to older vulnerable people get annual flu vaccinations that protect from about 50% of the flu strains circulating in an average year. And we have partial resistance/some protection from death from earlier flu infections and possibly earlier coronavirus infections too. Finally, if you survive influenza, there are rarely long term effects because only cells in the respiratory tract have receptors used by flu. In the case of COVID, ACE2 receptors are also found in heart, nerve and other tissues, and you immune system kills whatever cell type a virus invades. Some people have “long COVID” and take many months to recover or may have permanent damage from fighting the battle against COVID.
Doug – this is the key point. If you are under 70 the odds are huge you will easily survive covid. This is why cases don’t matter so much. That said, it is very important to protect those who are older than 70 or have other medical issues. It would suck for them to be isolated, but it sucks for everyone when the economy tanks.
My comment was intended as a response to the previous comment by Robert.
The estimate was from the WHO link – and not some unspecified website of uncertain reliability.
Australia has a crude mortality rate from COVID-19 of 3.2%. On top of death rates – there is lung and other organ damage. Unlike seasonal flu – this is not a disease in which children are a primary vector. The mortality rate for seasonal flu is less than 0.1%.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351#:~:text=The%20virus%20can%20damage%20the,completely%20within%20a%20few%20weeks.
Organ complications can occur from pretty much all infectious diseases. Just search on “causes of myocarditis”, for example. I will wait for actual studies that describe the prevalence and nature of complications from COVID19.
COVID-19 is the pandemic de jour. The Mayo Clinic reporting not good enough for you?
Huh? I have no issues whatsoever with the linked Mayo Clinic article. I note that it says most people recover without complication and some have long term complications. How is this different than other diseases? I do have some concern about longer term lung damage. It is not unusual at all for full recovery from pneumonia to take some time. I had pneumonia as an infant and my mother was told it would be dangerous for me to get another respiratory illness for some time afterward…that was 56ish years ago.
That other infectious diseases cause organ damage is not at al a relevant point in the throes of a COVID-19 pandemic. .
My source is the CDC website. Sorry I should have linked.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html
I do wonder what you base your opinion on though. I read the WHO website you linked, it doesn’t say what you claim. It compares apples and oranges…early CFR for COVID and IFR for influenza.
The WHO page gives the crude mortality rate of COVID-19 – and mortality rates of seasonal flu as ‘usually well below 0.1%’. It says exactly what can be said.
At a time when the city was under (threat)…
And I don’t much appreciate an attempt to marginalise my comments on the basis of what amounts to an ad hom that I am utterly mistaken in how I read an obvious comparison between COVID-19 and seasonal flu – clearly in the title of the page – from the WHO.
Then the WHO mislead you. This issue has been discussed here multiple times. And was pointed out by epidemiologists in March. You simply can’t compare CFR and IFR, except to understand that the CFR will be higher than the IFR for any disease.
No disrespect was intended to you. I read your comments with interest and have for literally years.
So – it was you who misread the WHO page.
And what we have with seasonal flu numbers is death certificates and the number of diagnosed cases – the latter quite possibly much less than actual infections. That is – closer to CFR than IFR. Even if we did have the true number of infections – it would only make a jot of difference.
What we have here is an argument based on flawed abstract reasoning that you assume invalidates the WHO comparison. But we are talking orders of magnitudes differences in mortality rates that a lack of more precise numbers cannot explain away.
I have not read much of the extensive COVID-19 coverage here. Too much opinion and a lack of pragmatic public health practices. Does it boil down to locking up the old and sick and letting the disease run rampant? Or letting the disease run rampant and clearing the decks of the old and sick? In fact I could see the economic point of the latter – if I weren’t old and sick.
No it was not. It was you that claimed COVID was 40 times more deadly than flu. Not me. Good grief. WHO compared a CFR with an IFR and did not make that clear enough. You made an erroneous conclusion.
Why start now with a circular COVID-19 discussion? Diogenes is remembered for holding his lantern in the faces of Athenian denizens saying he was ‘looking for an honest man’. Rabelais in the epic tale of Gargantua and Pantagruel – with its many diverse, clever, amusing and remarkable allusions to the beast with two backs – a phrase later purloined by Shakespeare – has another account of Diogenes. Diogenes lived in a tub. At a time when the city was under and all the denizens were making frantic efforts to prepare defenses – Diogenes was seen to be rolling his tub around the city. When asked why he was punishing his tub in such a manner – Diogenes replied that at such a time he could not just sit back and be a slacker when the denizens were all so busily and usefully employed. This is my tub.
whoops – At a time when the city was under (threat)…
In the UK we seem to have made a dog’s dinner out of SARS-CoV-2 and trying to understand why will give you an almighty headache if you think you will ever find a simple answer.
Firstly it was confirmed to us by Government that our health service was under immense pressure. We knew this already from those who worked in the NHS and had been warning anyone who would listen that a bad influenza season (e.g. 2018) had already played havoc with A&E and hospital bed management.
Aside from castigating our politicians for complacency what else were we supposed to do? I thought, like most ordinary people, that scientists had told the Government what the health and public health issues were and politicians had simply ignored them but a new threat would change things and they would act wisely from now on.
But this novel virus simply brought things to a head for these complacent buffoons and they ran around in a panic. It didn’t matter whether or not this virus was more or less serious than any previous ‘flu outbreak, and all of us paid a price for that which was loss of life for some, loss of livelihood for some, loss of schooling and education for some, and loss of freedom for all of us at least for a time.
Throughout this epidemic our media has sensationalised this virus and continues to do so, just as it appears to be doing so in most western cultures. At first scientists who disagreed with policy were given media time and exposure. But, slowly and very surely, the consensus ensured they would be censored and shut up. The media also began to heavily censor anti-consensus comment and continue to do that even now just as they have done with climate change commentary. Apparently it is dangerous to quote research that runs counter to what ‘scientists of the moment’ say.
I live in a part of London which was once the beginning of outer London but is now representative of much of the capital outside the City. We have a predominately elderly population because people are, by virtue of our treasured NHS, living longer. The official figures for my area suggest this virus is slightly worse than the highest previous excess death rate in 2018, but making simple comparisons is hindered because collection of Covid-19 data has frequently undergone intended and unintended change. If I adapt the local data to allow for likely false positive tests of people who died ‘with’ Covid-19 then this ‘flu season looks much like any other normal ‘flu season and nothing out of the ordinary at all. But, of course, I cannot adapt the data because I have no idea what it is really saying or how it has been put together, and we are not being given true figures for false positive tests because no one is looking out for them. In fact our testing regime is a big ingredient in the dog’s dinner.
And so I simply ask myself the following questions:
Are the media reporting this pandemic in a measured way? (My answer: No.)
Are politicians surrounding themselves with a mix of the best scientists for the task? (No.)
Have politicians been following a script that, for some reason or other, has determined that this virus is ‘end of normal life’, period? (Often feels like chaos but who writes chaos?)
If so who wrote this chaotic script and why? (I haven’t got a clue and I don’t believe anyone else knows either.)
Why are we, as freedom loving individuals, not fighting back and telling our media that propaganda with zero debate is propaganda with zero debate no matter who writes or broadcasts it? (Because those the media employ don’t want to lose their livelihoods and they know they can be easily replaced because they are as common as muck.)
Uk weather lass
Nice post. I think very few of those on SAGE are qualified in the sense we would understand it and mathematicians, modellers and epidemiologists are all thin on the ground. Respiratory deaths are running exactly as would be expected at this time of year. 2020 ranks 8th out of the last 27 for the number of such deaths including covid. How could we so quickly forget the 50000 flu deaths in 2017?
Do lockdowns work? Where is the evidence? Or have we forgotten march to July already?
Do masks work? The evidence seems to show otherwise, here is the actual graphic record of the date of introduction of masks in various countries and the UK and the subsequent rise in infections
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/29/these-12-graphs-show-mask-mandates-do-nothing-to-stop-covid/
If we wore proper masks as expertly as surgeons and under the same sanitary conditions then they would help, but we don’t. At best they do little to prevent infection, at worst these often dirty bits of cloth could be fuelling infections
Tonyb
“Respiratory deaths are running exactly as would be expected at this time of year.”
Yup. Everything normal.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1322237884569714688
The problems with cherry picking to confirm biases Tony….
-snip-
Three states — New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts — were responsible for 30% of the excess deaths in the country between March 1 and Aug. 1. But those states also reported short spikes in cases, experiencing brief, acute surges in the early spring. Their excess death figures returned to baseline by May.
States that eased restrictions in early May, including Texas and Florida, saw their excess deaths steadily climb throughout the summer. This suggests, said Woolf, that states that were more stringent keeping businesses closed and requiring masks did a better job limiting their excess deaths.
“If states are being less forceful in encouraging the public to separate themselves from each other or avoid transmission by wearing masks, the virus will continue to go through the community and persist,” Woolf said.
-snip-
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2771761?
-snip-
Areas of Tennessee where residents regularly wear masks in public have seen notably smaller increases in COVID-19 hospitalizations since June, researchers at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine found.
-snip-
https://www.foxnews.com/health/mask-mandates-lower-rates-coronavirus-hospitalizations
> Masks dehumanize us, and ironically serve as a constant reminder that we should be afraid….
That’s hilarious…
I feel so “dehimanized” every time I wear my mask, as I’m sure so so the millions of Japanese and South Koreans as they contemplate the fewer deaths and less illness they experience on a massive scale.
It’s amazing how fragile the snowflakes over at The Federalist are. Something like wearing a mask makes them feel “dehumanized.” Must be hard to go through life when you’re so fragile.
I have no problem wearing a mask. I’ve been leaving it hanging in the car for Summer temperatures to get rid of any CV19. Now, I’ll have to sterilize it some other way.
VTG
I am talking of the UK. I have no idea of the situation in the US
tonyb
Joshua
I put forward some graphics on masks. I made no reference to anyone’s personal feelings on wearing them. Clearly masks have not worked as expected. Those in Spain and France are fined many thousands of Euros for infringements. It has not stopped the constant flow of deaths nor the recent upsurge.
As I say above, worn properly as in a surgical setting is one thing, but clearly people wear them much more casually
tonyb
Tony –
> Clearly masks have not worked as expected…
So says someone looking to confirm a bias that they don’t work and excepts something from the minority of evidence in support – that had absolutely zero evidence of a scientific approach to analysis.
People find what they want to find. Willis attributed low deaths in Japan to mask-wearing until it became politically correct for him to argue that masks were tyranny. Then he decided they don’t work, even as more evidence accumulated that they DO work.
What made it even funnier was that he claimed he changed his mind after looking at the evidence (after more evidence accumulated that they DO work) which means that he first formed an opinion withoir evaluating the evidence.
It’s all sameold sameold.
Joshua
Can you tell me from those graphs I linked to, just where and when masks have eliminated infections and deaths? Because it doesn’t show in those upwards curves.
Tonyb
Tony –
I only looked briefly. I saw they were comparing across states without controlling for variables. So I didn’t bother looking further. Besides, you’re asking me to prove a negative?
I suggest that you stick with the work of serous scientists and not stuff thrown together by political advocates with a political axe to grind. There’s actually some good quality evidence on both sides of the ledger. I’d say that there is a preponderance on the yay side but there’s clearly some level of uncertainty. The question is how do you weigh the risks in the face of uncertainty?
Here Tony –
This is the kind of work I think merits some consideration – not stuff from people who say goofy stuff like that masks are “dehumanizing.”
https://voxeu.org/article/unmasked-effect-face-masks-spread-covid-19
Tony, the graph is for England.
It’s in the title.
Say Tony –
What do you think about Boris shutting England down? Dang statists trying to limit freedoms and make Trump look bad again?
“This suggests, said Woolf, that states that were more stringent keeping businesses closed and requiring masks did a better job limiting their excess deaths.”
This is a lie. New York and New Jersey have deaths per million above 1700. No other state comes close including Florida and Texas (780 and 630 respectively). California is not far behind at 440. New York has worse statistics than virtually any other country too. It’s true they may have achieved herd immunity by accident.
What this silly thread shows is that the evidence for masks is weak and inconclusive with both sides (especially little Josh) citing things to support their narrative.
There have been 3 double blind studies of masks. In community settings there is no significant benefit even though in a household setting there was a benefit. For health care workers there was a benefit for wearing an N95 mask continuously even though compliance was a big problem with only 67% compliance in this arm of the study.
This shows that government officials are imposing restrictions with regard to masks without real scientific support.
David –
> This is a lie. New York and New Jersey have deaths per million above 1700.
Lol. Read the article for context for the quote.
How many months ago did you declare the pandemic over? You know, when you said that the summer surge was only an artifact of more testing or testing younger people and wouldn’t result in a surge in deaths?
Decades of epidemiology said that masks don’t work for general public use. Seven months ago some inexplicably decided we all needed to wear masks because masks work???? Data now indicates that there is no correlation between mask wearing and disease outbreak. We don’t need double blind studies to know that mask wearing is performance art at this point.
And let’s not forget your silly statements about how many more infections (or was it per capita infections?) there were in NY than Florida and Texas?
> In community settings there is no significant benefit
I seriously love how someone who has been so wrong, so often, completely ignores all the uncertainties to make statements like that. Remarkable.
> Data now indicates that there is no correlation between mask wearing and disease outbreak. We don’t need double blind studies to know that mask wearing is performance art at this point.
Remarkable.
Josh, You are being childish again. You can’t contradict anything I said so you must try to discredit it by claiming (without proof) that I’ve been wrong in the past. I’ve been wrong in the past as any other human being has, but generally I’ve been right.
David –
Are you denying that you were wrong about your prognostications with the rate of deaths associated with the summer surge?
Are you denying that you were wrong about per capita infections in NY, Florida, and Texas respectively?
Are you denying that you (laughably) declared the pandemic over, months ago?
Pathetic.
Here David –
https://judithcurry.com/2020/07/27/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought-update/#comment-922021
I forgot about this – when you doubled down.
https://judithcurry.com/2020/07/27/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought-update/#comment-922074
And what a bizarre thing to be wrong about. So easily checked. It’s not like some kind of conjecture. Why would you make such obviously wrong statements? You never clarified.
Apparently it was late June when you posted that the pandemic was over:
https://judithcurry.com/2020/07/27/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought-update/#comment-922210
Oops. Mid- to late-July. My bad.
Not at all remarkable. Tobacco use impacts were not discovered based on d-b studies. How precisely would one do a double blind mask study?
Doug –
What’s remarkable is your certainty about the state of the evidence
> There have been 3 double blind studies of masks.
Citations needed.
I love the idea of a double-blind study of masks. Neither the patient, nor the doctor, knows if the patient is wearing a mask or a placebo :-)
I agree that the media coverage of covid19 is little better than propaganda and is supporting their narrative that with proper measures the virus can be “crushed” or eliminated. The modern media are more corrupt than at any tine since the 19th Century. Even the NewYork Times (a former newspaper) has admitted that they are trying to promote the woke narrative which itself is a lie.
The worst of the corruption of our media was trumpeting every hour phony “case” and fatality numbers implying that more than 10% of people who get the disease will die. That’s simple scare mongering. Case numbers were in March and April lower by a factor of 10-50 than actual infections. The actual IFR according to latest CDC best estimates is probably in the 0.1%-0.2% range. The breakdown is
Age 0-19: 0.003%
Age 20-49: 0.02%
Age 50-69: 0.5%
Age 70+: 5.4%
This disease is not very dangerous for anyone under 70 and in good health. In fact, it’s an almost negligible danger for anyone under the age of 50. A targeted strategy is really by far the best approach. That would require actual government competence however.
> The actual IFR according to latest CDC best estimates is probably in the 0.1%-0.2% range.
Can you link to update from the most recent CDC overall IFR “best estimate” that I can find, which was 0.65%? Obviously, because of improved treatment it is considerably lower now than what they estimated back in July, (when you were wrong about that also) but I haven’t seen that they provide the overall best estimate that you say is currently “probably” their current best estimate.
https://reason.com/2020/09/29/the-latest-cdc-estimates-of-covid-19s-infection-fatality-rate-vary-dramatically-with-age/?amp
> Age 50-69: 0.5%
Age 70+: 5.4%
This disease is not very dangerous for anyone under 70 and in good health…
If we reached “herd immunity” at 40% population infection rate, how many people would die with an IFR AT 0.5% and 5.4% for people 50-59 and over 70, respectively. I’m guessing over 1,500,000?
And then there would be many, many more people serioualy ill and/or hospitalized. Many sick enough to miss work. Many suffering from long haul covid. Interesting that you dismiss such issues as being insignificant, particilarly since there’s so much evidence that so much illness and so much death would have such a significant economic impact
Josh, You are pulling numbers out of your nether regions. You will need to put down the laptop for an hour and actually look up some demographics for the US to have more credibility than an anonymous non scientist on the internet, which is exactly zero. Are you really assuming that efforts to protect vulnerable groups will be ineffective?
Antibody studies in blood donor populations (healthy under 70) in Denmark suggest an IFR of 0.07% per Ioannidis. That’s about as serious as the flu.
dpy
“Antibody studies in blood donor populations (healthy under 70) in Denmark suggest an IFR of 0.07% per Ioannidis”
Whereby you conclude that if you exclude the highest risk part of the population, the mortality is lower. Amazing insight.
Further, if you compare to a different population for flu, you can draw the conclusion you wanted in the first place.
And all without a citation for either piece of analysis.
Since Josh is apparently incompetent to do so, I did the math with US demographics by age. 34 million are over 70 years of age out of a total of 320 million. 80 million are 50-64, 126 million are 20-49 (where the danger is minimal) and 80 million are 0-19 where the danger is vanishingly small.
Contribution to total IFR from over 70 group: 5.4*0.11 = 0.54. Assuming that as Josh suggested herd immunity is reached at 40% infected, 0.54*0.4 = 0.216.
For the 50 to 64 age group, its 0.5*0.25 = 0.125*0.4 = 0.05.
Neglecting the really small other age group contributions, that’s 0.266 a much smaller number than 0.65 even though not inconsistent with Ioannidis’ article this spring doing a meta study of antibody studies.
But that’s not surprising. Every epidemiologist knows that estimates of the IFR decrease as an epidemic progresses, often dramatically.
Re: “Antibody studies in blood donor populations (healthy under 70) in Denmark suggest an IFR of 0.07% per Ioannidis. That’s about as serious as the flu.”
That’s nonsense. For example, flu deaths are skewed towards older people as well. So you’re comparing population-wide seasonal flu IFR, to SARS-CoV-2 IFR that is not population-wide since you restricted the age group and said they must be healthy. That is a ridiculous, apples-to-oranges comparison meant to willfully minimize how dangerous SARS-CoV-2 is in comparison to the flu.
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1299430210568425473
And the fact that you’re relying on a blood donor study is.. quaint. They’re already known to over-estimate seroprevalence, and thus under-estimate IFR:
“Blood Donors. Only a small fraction of blood donors are ages 60 and above—a fundamental limitation in assessing COVID-19 prevalence and IFRs for older age groups—and the social behavior of blood donors may be systematically different from their peers.[13, 18] These concerns can be directly investigated by comparing alternative seroprevalence surveys of the same geographical location. As of early June, Public Health England (PHE) reported seroprevalence of 8·5% based on specimens from blood donors, whereas the U.K. Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported markedly lower seroprevalence of 5·4% (CI: 4·3–6·5%) based on its monitoring of a representative sample of the English population.[19, 20]”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v7.full.pdf
But for fun, let’s compare the blood donor study you’re discussing, to what you previously claimed:
Dpy says:
“There are at least now 10 more meaningful serological studies from around the world.
1. There is a Danish one of blood donors Joshua pointed out. IFR is 0.08.”
https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/06/covid-discussion-thread-vi/#comment-916993
Dpy says:
“There are by now at least 10 serologic data sets around the world. They pretty much uniformly show an IFR less than 0.5% with the best ones showing perhaps 0.12% to 0.31%.”
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/05/08/so-the-real-scandal-is-why-did-anyone-ever-listen-to-this-guy/#comment-1333886
The research actually shows an IFR ~10X larger than what you claimed, DPY. Do have the integrity to admit you were wrong, for once, dpy. I predict you’ll instead evade all the evidence, probably with some reference to how text is too long to read. Or maybe Curry will block this comment to protect you, as she’d done in the past for Lewis.
“The IFR for the adult Danish population aged 17 years or older was 0.81% (95% CI: 0.52%-2.2%).”
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1627/5939898
An insignificant 3 deaths per 100,000 infections.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/health-infant-fig3.png
Judith Curry talks about the early days of getting involved with scepticism of the mainstream view of climate science:
(Interview starts at 4:30)
https://youtu.be/Auq8vh8hKWk
Everything flows. Marriage is not what it used to be. Free speech is not what it used to be. Racism is not what it used to be. Science is what is printed in the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Science is about to back eddy, before flowing anew. Who would have thought orbital gravity forcing is more of a driver of climate than orbital insolation?
If only Jan Oort had thought there was a possibility of Einstein’s gravity theory being wrong before introducing the concept of ‘dark matter’.
If only Einstein had thought there was a possibility of Newton’s gravity theory being fundamentally wrong. If only one of his contemporaries had considered nucleic density matter existing at the Earth’s core, there wouldn’t be the need for invisible matter that continues to evade detection to this day.
If only
Newton considered gravity as a force in a Galileian co-ordinate system in which time and space were absolutes. That it works well enough goes without saying. Einstein considered relative inertial frames in which the speed of light in vacuo is constant. A measured quantity. It required that space and time be relative and curved.
Dark matter was posited as an explanation of accelerating expansion of the universe first observed in 1998 from the Hubble Telescope. It requires gravitational attraction from beyond the universe greater than that of baryonic matter.
I can’t see what you’re considering – but it seems inevitably idiosyncratic.
Robert – you aren’t fully aware of the crisis in physics & cosmology wrt the lack of progress in the fundamentals over the last 40 years. It’s a huge problem. Einstein’s gravity theory is incompatible with quantum mechanics. A ‘theory of everything’ is still a complete mystery to mainstream top physicists.
P.S. it’s *dark energy* which is invoked to explain the expansion of the observable galaxies. It was Jan Oort who first proposed *dark matter* to try and explain the galaxy rotation curve anomaly.
Psychologist Emma Kenny gives a passionate, straight talking response to the covid lockdown strategy of the elite:
https://youtu.be/y5YVxHa7aHY
(CNN)The US Food and Drug Administration has approved remdesivir for the treatment of coronavirus infection, the drug’s maker, Gilead Sciences, said Thursday.
It is the first drug to be approved for treating Covid-19. The drug, sold under the brand name Veklury, has been used under emergency use authorization since May.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/22/health/remdesivir-fda-approved-covid-19/index.html
The is no evidence of a large national increase in hospitalizations other than “The COVID Tracking Project” run by the rabidly liberal “The Atlantic” magazine. Even it doesn’t show a record number of hospitalizations. It’s running about what is was back in August.
The COVID Tracking Project does not use a consistent definition of what constitutes a case. I don’t believe this is a reliable source.
Cases (confirmed plus probable)
API field name: positive
Total number of confirmed plus probable cases of COVID-19 reported by the state or territory, ideally per the August 5, 2020 CSTE case definition. Some states are following the older April 5th, 2020 CSTE case definition or using their own custom definitions. Not all states and territories report probable cases. If a state is not reporting probable cases, this field will just represent confirmed cases.
Same with ICU stats:
Currently in ICU/Now in ICU
API field name: inIcuCurrently
Individuals who are currently hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit with COVID-19. Definitions vary by state / territory. Where possible, we report patients in the ICU with confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases per the expanded CSTE case definition of April 5th, 2020 approved by the CDC.
https://covidtracking.com/about-data/data-definitions#cases
For those alarmed about potential global warming, it might be worth taking time to get some perspective. First, understand the range of temperatures that have existed in the past and how the current temperatures compare with past temperatures – start by looking at the charts on pages 10 and 12 here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324017003_Phanerozoic_Temperatures_Tropical_Mean_Annual_Temperature_TMAT_Polar_Mean_Annual_Temperature_PMAT_and_Global_Mean_Annual_Temperature_GMAT_for_the_last_540_million_years
The Quaternary (last 2.6 Ma) is the second coldest multi-million year period in the past 542 Ma. The coldest was 280–260 Ma ago; GMST dropped to about 4 °C colder than present.
The warmest period was about 250 Ma ago following late Permian mass extinction event. GMST peaked at about 21 °C higher than present. Other hot periods were:
• 540–460 Ma, GMST 11–13.5 °C higher than present
• 440 Ma, GMST 13 °C higher than present
• 420 Ma, GMST 14.5 °C higher than present
• 385–360 Ma, GMST 15–17.5 °C higher than present
• 255–40 Ma, GMST 3–17.5 °C higher than present; for about half this period GMST was more than 7 °C higher then present
Next look at the charts on page 20. Notice how the equator to polar region gradients flatten as the planet warms. They show that most of the warming is extra-tropical with little change in the tropics.
For Denizens who encourage to get some perspective, it might be time appreciate that things are not so simple:
https://twitter.com/nevaudit/status/1322726400223256577
There is no need to look that far away to witness differentials of more than 50C. Earth haz them every day.
Go team!
Willard,
My comment and the link are about GMST and the equator to poles temperature gradients over the past 542 Ma. They are not about the causes or consequences of higher and lower GMST and GMST changes. Those who take the necessary time to understand what the temperatures have been over the Phanerozoic Eon, and that they were much warmer than now for nearly all the past 542 Ma, can then discuss the impacts of warmer and cooler climates.
P. 20 shows tropical temperatures varying considerably – despite some flattening of the equator/polar temperature gradient. It’s only the beginning of theoretical difficulties with Langs thesis. But poor wee willie is understandably too busy waiting for the global economic planning AI overlord to arrive – possibly from the future – to waste time on such trifles as understanding paleontology.
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/81/f4/ab/81f4abddca809e06c761869f6ecb5294.jpg
Let’s not forget where the virus came from:
https://youtu.be/7NTdnJM1WMY
-snip.-
esults
Compared to younger/middle aged adults, susceptibility to infection for children aged under 10y is estimated to be significantly lower, while estimated susceptibility to infection in adults aged over 60y is higher. Serological studies suggest that younger adults (particularly those aged under 35y) often have high cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the community. There is some evidence that given limited control measures, SARS-CoV-2 may spread robustly in secondary/high schools, and to a lesser degree in primary schools, with class size possibly affecting that spread. There is also evidence of more limited spread in schools when some mitigation measures are implemented. Several potential biases that may affect these studies are discussed.
-snip-
https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa691/5943164
This is science and politics at it’s most deceitful: “the cover-up being being worse than the crime”. The incredible Peta Credlin uncovers the scandal:
https://youtu.be/QKxrfVYOfzI
dpy6629
“The actual IFR according to latest CDC best estimates is probably in the 0.1%-0.2% range. The breakdown is
Age 0-19: 0.003%
Age 20-49: 0.02%
Age 50-69: 0.5%
Age 70+: 5.4%
This disease is not very dangerous for anyone under 70 and in good health. In fact, it’s an almost negligible danger for anyone under the age of 50. A targeted strategy is really by far the best approach. That would require actual government competence however.”
I agree. Key metrics:
– Ages 0 – 30 make up 50% of the global population. – Older in developed nations, but at least 1/2 are still younger than age 50.
– In the USA, 1/2 are under the age of 40.
If herd immunity is reached at ~ 40%, seems like a targeted strategy could work. Lockdowns are well intended, but big picture, the economic impact has been horrible:
________
{The COVID-19 pandemic has placed enormous pressure on the global food supply chain as unprecedented quarantine orders and border closures have disrupted trade and created labor shortages.
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warned of “a looming food crisis,” stating that the pandemic could have a devastating impact on global hunger and poverty – especially on the poorest and most vulnerable populations. Global poverty is projected to increase for the first time since 1998, reversing decades of global progress against hunger and malnutrition.
David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, said that the world “could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions.” Economic crisis, conflict, and a decline in aid create a “perfect storm,” according to Director Beasley, stressing that there is “a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself.”
As many as half a billion people could be pushed into poverty just as the world experiences the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.
David Malpass, President of the World Bank, warned that COVID-19 may have already pushed an additional 100 million people into extreme poverty.
Three dozen countries – including Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen – could experience famines in 2020, pushing an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation.
According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 14 to 22 million people will slide into extreme poverty for every 1% decline in global economic growth.
The spread of desert locusts in Africa is compounding the devastating impact of COVID-19 as the biggest locust invasion in 70 years threatens to push 25 million East Africans into hunger.
Supply chain disruptions due to COVID-19 and increased consumer demand for food have drastically increased food prices across the globe – exacerbating the severity of food insecurity for 821 million hungry people in developing countries who already spend most of their income on food.
The world food prices increased for the third straight month in August, hitting their highest levels since February, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In the United States, grocery prices in April recorded the sharpest increase in 50 years, led by rising prices for meat and eggs. U.S. meat prices could increase as much as 20% as supplies could shrink by nearly 30%.
China’s food prices increased by 11% in August compared with the year before with pork prices jumping by 53%.
South Sudan saw prices of wheat and cassava skyrocket by 62% and 41% since February 2020 and the price of maize in Kenya rose by 60% since 2019.
The price of rice in Nigeria rose by more than 30% and food prices in Sudan tripled.
Ghana saw the price of basic food products jump by as much as 33%.
Prices of wheat and rice – two of the most importance staple crops in the world – increased by 15% and 12% respectively with rice prices reaching the highest level since 2013.
Globally, there is an ample supply of staple foods to weather the temporary surge in food prices. But experts are urging immediate actions to mitigate the destructive impact of the pandemic in developing countries. “COVID-19 is a health crisis. But it could also lead to a food security crisis if proper measures are not taken,” said Shenggen Fan, former Director General of IFPRI as he highlighted the Ebola outbreak’s negative impact on food and nutrition security. For example, when the disease struck West Africa in 2014:
The price of cassava in Liberia skyrocketed by 150% and labor and transport disruptions left a large percent of farmland uncultivated.
Rice prices in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone rose by 30%, reducing household incomes and increasing the level of hunger and malnourishment across the region.
The economic downturn due to the COVID-19 has also affected the availability and affordability of nutritious food. With nutrient-rich foods like eggs, fruits, and vegetables 10 times more expensive than staple foods like rice or wheat in sub-Saharan Africa, vulnerable families in developing countries are turning to cheaper and less nutritious food to survive – contributing to the rise in malnutrition and obesity.
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to exacerbate child hunger and malnutrition as the pandemic has forced more than 1 billion children out of school, depriving their access to nutritious meals.
85 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean, who heavily relied on school feeding programs to combat malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, no longer have access to this crucial social safety net.
In South Africa, school closures have stopped a national feeding program that provided nutritious meals to 9 million poor children.
The economic impact combined with disruptions to routine health services could result in deaths of 2.3 million children over the next year – a 45% increase in under-five child deaths per month. This is in addition to the nearly 3 million children who are already dying from malnutrition annually.
Trade is key to advancing global food security as the world’s transportation system moves “enough maize, wheat, rice and soybean to feed 2.8 billion people” every year. However, export restrictions and border closures to stop the spread of the virus have led to labor shortages and transportation delays, placing significant pressure on the global food supply chain. FAO chief economist Maximo Torero said, “We need to be careful not to break the food value chain and the logistics … If the labor force is threatened because people can’t move then you have a problem.”
The shortage of migrant farm workers may force farmers in the United Kingdom to throw out a third of their harvests. The U.S. State Department has also eased visa restrictions to help American farmers secure migrant farmworkers needed for the upcoming harvest season.
France is experiencing a shortage of truck drivers to transport grain to ports. Additionally, border checks across Europe have slowed the passage of trucks carrying food and supplies, creating a 50-mile traffic jam.
14 countries have implemented trade restrictions on the flow of staple foods to protect their domestic supplies. Russia, the world’s largest grain exporter, has limited exports of buckwheat, rice, rye, and sunflower seeds until July. Other countries – Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Serbia, Vietnam, and Ukraine – have also imposed temporary restrictions, including setting quotas, to limit their food exports.
These trade restrictions are the “worst possible response to safeguard food security.” For example, these protectionist policies contributed to a 45% increase in rice prices and a 30% increase in wheat prices during the 2007-08 food crisis. High food prices subsequently pushed more than 130 million people into poverty and led to riots in 48 countries.]
Can anyone comment on the flu’s apparent disappearance?
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/504625-covid19-flu-disappeared-replaced/
Well up until early October, flu was responsible for more deaths than covid according to the ONS in the UK…twice as many in fact. But all forms of respiratory illnesses were down a bit probably due to social distancing measure for covid. So I dunno why they are saying the flu has gone away…that’s puzzling in itself.
agnostic –
> Well up until early October, flu was responsible for more deaths than covid according to the ONS in the UK…twice as many in fact.
Gotta link?
A Google got me this:
-snip-
Three times as many people have died from Covid-19 than from flu and pneumonia in England and Wales this year, according to official figures.
Between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to Covid-19 compared to 13,600 from pneumonia. Only 394 were due to flu.
-snip-
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/health-54463511
Joshua, enjoy
sweden loses its grip
https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/coronaviruset/jatteokning-i-stockholm-vi-har-tappat-greppet/
“Stricter advice
On October 29, stricter general councils were introduced in Stockholm County, among other places. It is not yet visible in the numbers because it takes a while from the time someone is infected until the person gets symptoms, is tested, gets a positive test result and possibly is admitted to hospital.
In the Uppsala Region, which was the first in the country to introduce stricter general guidelines on 20 October, the number of infected people has since increased sharply. But even there, it is not certain that the majority have been infected after the advice was introduced, according to the infection control doctor there.
– We need to see that fewer people move around in society, that people avoid going to parties and being crowded in shops. It has to happen now, says Björn Eriksson.”
Well, not enjoyable but it is intersting. Looks like hospitalizations may be on the brink of growing exponentially:
https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1323342875845820417
I’ve never been a fan of Sweden’s approach, which seems to have been to try to be the “smart country” by lock-down lite, taking advantage of their geography but also throwing care-home residents under the bus, as a Swedish friend of mine told me. It’s sad to see cases rising sharply, they haven’t dodged the second wave and it seems they will have to buckle up like the rest of us and lockdown.
Joshua – apologies for the tardy response. Yes I do have a link:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending6november2020
Scroll down to figure 2.
It should be pointed out that the numbers of Flu and pneumonia deaths may also include some CV19 which would increase those numbers. It’s not clear in those cases that CV19 was the underlying cause of death however.
Phil, Sweden didn’t “throw” nursing home residents under the bus. They simply didn’t understand enough about the virus until it was too late.
Judith, As usual you present a thoughtful and well balanced discourse. There is an aspect of this issue that seems to me to be very destructive to the fabric of society. It is the tendency to negatively stereotype and demonize groups and individuals with whom we disagree, or who challenge us for partisan influence and power.
I have four adult children who have run the gauntlet of higher education as well as various postgraduate degrees and training. My wife and I did not push any particular partisan political point of view other than through basic values we tried to instill in them. I’m proud of all of them and we remain a close family. I grew up in a traditional multi-generational Republican family with conservative notions. My wife was raised by a single mother who immigrated from Canada and paid little attention to partisan U.S. politics. We share similar conservative political values after 45 wonderful years together as a couple, parents, and now grandparents.
All four of our children came out of their university experiences having been told/preached/indoctrinated to think that Republicans were anti-science and racists. They think we are some kind of unusual exception and they forgive us our demons. They are all married and their spouses have similar experiences and views. As they have matured beyond their academic lives, their views evolved, but they still find it difficult to support Republican candidates because of what they learned and what their age peers accept. We’ve had some deep and intense discussions in the last four years.
Bigots can be found in both political parties and among other groups as well. People who don’t trust or understand science likewise may be found everywhere you look. I fault the media for colluding with the Democrat party and many in the academy for perpetuating these myths and consciously and deliberately distorting, propagandizing, indoctrinating, demonizing, and even silencing those with whom they may disagree. It is truly destroying our society.
Dear DocStephens,
1) I’m Canadian and, though my husband, a social and political philosopher, thinks I’m political, I’m not, as he observes, invested in any particular political identity on left or right, up or down, or whatever.
I was quite interested to read about your wife’s disinterest in partisan US politics. A lot of people here in Canada used to be like your wife, but things have changed. People are not only paying attention to partisan U.S politics, but are also aligning themselves with each political party. And the hyper-identification of profs and students with US politics within the Canadian academy is bizarre. I think this identification is affecting research, at least in the humanities. And I agree, from my experience, that these departments seem to be generally left-leaning, as your Dems. E.g. my philosophical interest is in belief acquisition and maintenance. When I submitted my masters thesis proposal to my since-fired supervisor, I was told “You sound like Fox News. And you don’t want to sound like ‘that’, do you?” I was warned. My thesis never went to defence. And, there was a lot of headache and heartache involved. I could have written a ‘safer’ thesis (my thesis put the doxastic warrant of my supervisors’ beliefs on par with that of their nemeses) but I walked away — which bothers me. However, I’m fed, clothed, and housed as a lot of students aren’t, so walking away was an option for me.
(Also, a lot of students become enamoured with their profs and imitate them, which is another aspect of this story beyond the scope of my comment.)
A broader worry is that I find it hard to have conversations with many of my friends, family, and peers because they identify so intensely with US parties and politicians. Everything we talk about seems to go through a calculus of which category — left, right, or alt-right — each thing belongs. This sortal is becoming so pervasive and extreme, friends in my circle are becoming alienated from their families. And I’m hearing about this alienation from other people talking about their own friends and families. I’m so glad to hear your family is intact.
Like you, I place (some degree of) fault with the media. But I give equal fault to the big 3 partisan stations: CNN, MSNBC, and FOX. The people in my social circle regularly talk about Chris Cuomo, Rachel Maddow, and Tucker Carlson. As for Canadian news celebs, my older peers might be able to name a relic like Rex Murphy. My younger peers someone like Jian Ghomeshi for his sex scandal. I grant you that Canadian news and politics are boring compared to the States. But still.
If you’re interested, here’s a short analysis of the US/Canada situation from my blog: http://pam-mentations.com/2020/11/01/a-meditation-on-the-character-of-a-political-speaker-and-by-extension-a-voter/”
2) A few point form thoughts:
i) A Roser-Renouf et al study ( Six Americas) notes, to my recollection, Republican men — cast as climate deniers — have a higher level of education, are more science literate, and follow science and technology in the news more closely than other groups in their study. This characterisation hardly sounds “anti-science.”
ii) And what in the blue-blazes is it to be “anti-science”?! Definition, please. And one that does not die the death of a thousand qualifications. Good luck. I suppose one might start by identifying which scientific proposition someone rejects or mistrusts and explain how she is thereby anti-science. It’s pushing credibility that there is anyone who rejects all or even most scientific propositions. And don’t scientists, by definition, assert and deny propositions? Are scientists anti-science? I’m sorry, this point requires much longer analyses. In a nutshell, I suspect “anti-science” is an ad hominem.
As for understanding science, which science? Many of us will have some basic scientific understanding. Some have a great deal of understanding because some of us are scientists, professional or amateur. But even one’s scientific expertise will not span all of the various disciplines, specialities, and particular projects within the domain of things called science. (Some argue about which kinds of things, methods, and practices are included within the boundaries of this domain; e.g. Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM.) Concerning science apart from their particular domains of expertise, many scientists are about as conversant and competent as lay people.
iii) I know good people who hold right views and good people who hold left views. Some will say, in a derogatory way, that this makes me sound like Trump. This ‘pick a side’ business is wearing.
My best regards, Pam
Pam,
This was posted today and attempts to explain this behavior.
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-anti-science-trend.html
It’s easy to be ‘anti-science’ when the predictions and discussions around a topic are grossly exaggerated and apocalyptic. Both AGW and COVID effects have been touted as existential threats with only 12 years until doomsday or 2-3 million dead, both of which are clearly absurd and not in keeping with anyone’s actual experience.
I blame both the scientists who exaggerate the hazards to get attention (and funds) and the ‘news’ media who have become sensationalistic ’yellow’ journalists (for circulation and profit). Both profit from the attention they get from titillating reports without having to face significant consequences when reality exposes them.
Pam, Thank you for your response to my comment on Climate, Etc. Much to think about. Now that the election has entered the litigious stage, we all wait for an official result. You can read my thoughts about the election, if you are interested at DocStephens.org.
Gravitational anomalies would have been noticed.
Robert – self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) is a mainstream proposition where dark matter interacts strongly with itself and only very weakly with baryonic matter. It is mainly considered in modelling galaxy interactions. 84% of the known matter is “missing”, according to conventional thinking. I’m invoking unconventional thinking in order to resolve the mega anomaly.
The two GRACE satellites were used to detect subtle changes in Earth’s gravity field, according to known theory. It’s a different experiment to test whether exotic matter exists at the Earth’s core.
The test needed for this is to use satellites to carefully monitor the solid body earth-tides, which are predicted to be increasing significantly. This wouldn’t be expected with conventional gravity theory.
I don’t have a problem with dark matter – other than the usual ones. Such as where is it. But I am still in the dark about what it is you are considering. As I said in my comment on Newton and Einstein above. Normally – with science we would expect some observations. An apple or the speed of light in vacuo for instance.
GRACE detects subtle gravitational differences to a model of the world built on this conventional gravity theory you disdain. You expect it’s wrong. What can I say.
Robert – what’s your opinion on manmade CO2 emissions being responsible for climate change? Dr. Judith Curry is on the side that natural variability accounts for more than 50% of the phenomenon. Do you concur with her on this contentious issue?
Orbital inclination gravity forcing is a possible driver of climate change imo. A polymath has assessed the hypothesis and declared that it’s not logically wrong, just “very leftfield”.
It’s not surprising that you find it difficult to understand where I’m coming from. It’s contrary to what has been taught as fact for over 300 years, so yes, it will take time to be accepted as a possibility by the establishment.
Incidentally, the ocean tidal range increase is a fact, endorsed by the mainstream. An assumption is made that atmospheric warming then heats the ocean which somehow conveys greater tidal energy. The GRACE data would have an algorithm to subtract the assumed constant tidal influences of the planets, Moon and Sun.
Although anthropogenic warming is superimposed on internal Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics – Judith Curry would reference serious scientific work. I understand from your WordPress page that you have given up on an ebook and written songs about it instead.
Robert – the seem a little obsessed with the Nile river being shown to have drastically altered it’s course in the millennial past. You don’t seem to be too concerned about the underlying mechanism which causes this millennial scale change in precipitation. There has to be a reason for it, surely?
…
I really enjoyed my singing tuition over the years and clicked immediately with my multi-instrumentalist teacher last year. Our 6 song EP has been well received from friends and acquaintances. I live in the hope of scientific breakthrough & recognition so that we can continue our journey. 🎶🎵🎶 (she does most of the singing btw, I provide the poetry & lyrics)
The underlying cause of Nile Basin precipitation variability is somewhat random but influenced by sea surface temperature in both the Pacific and Atlantic. As is precipitation in the US (including Alaska), Australia, Indonesia, India, China and the Mediterranean.
e.g. http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/medieval.shtml
The Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics – however – have an origin in dynamical complexity. Seen originally in analysis of 1000 years of Nile River flow by Hurst – and in observations of turbulence by Kolmogorov. It adds new dimensions in state space to the problem of climate.
e.g https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/6/525/2010/ – https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
You need to understand the spatio-temporal chaos of Earth’s globally coupled flow field. Notice the author below. It is really not about skeptics and a misguided mainstream.
e.g. http://www.wyattonearth.net/images/9Wyatt_Curry_2013_author-version_manuscript.pdf
Only science matters and you don’t seem to have any. That’s the problem I have with you if you want to push it. But you are an accomplished hand waver.
I’m a “hand waver” who’s made some very specific predictions:
(i) Earth’s equatorial oceans will be found to be increasingly cooling.
(ii) Venus will be found to have equatorial cooling/mid-latitude warming.
(iii) Satellite monitoring of Earth’s solid body earth-tides will be found to be exponentially increasing.
(iv) Dark matter will never be detected as a particle stream.
(v) Exotic nucleic density matter will be recovered from anomalous high energy impact craters (which don’t have conventional meteorites).
(vi) A new energy source from recovered exotic matter will initiate a new world economic recovery & a new world religion.
Tropical oceans may indeed cool as hundreds of years of a cooler and cloudier Pacific emerge.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/sst_anomaly_amsre_2008105.jpg
Driven by solar modulation of the polar annular modes. Multi-decadal variability in the Pacific is defined as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (e.g. Folland et al,2002, Meinke et al, 2005, Parker et al, 2007, Power et al, 1999) – a proliferation of oscillations it seems. The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947).
But you are doing it arse about. One has to have geophysical observations on which to infer mechanism. Not have off the planet ideas and assure us that the observations will follow. Not that I can decipher – and I am no slouch in that department – just what these off the planet thought bubbles entail.
“…Words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined…but taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.” —Albert Einstein
But even Einstein started with facts.
“It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is.”
— Richard P. Feynman
Robert
It’s curious that the current La Nina is centered in the Nino 3-4 region, the mid Pacific, not off Peru (Nino 1-2). This means that it’s a La Nina “Modoki” to borrow Bob Tisdale’s nomenclature. It’s clearly not a Bjerknes feedback driven reaction to el Nino since there was no el Nino. Thus the warm water off Peru although paradoxically the Peruvian anchovy fishery is showing strength indicating robust upwelling. So even with Peruvian upwelling, some other mechanism is causing even more robust mid equatorial cooling. It could possibly be something tidal, as Alan is referring to.
Phil – thanks for the information & for the acknowledgement.
Germany’s Potsdam Institute finds that the covid19 global lockdown has caused a “massive” reduction in CO2 emissions.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201014082806.htm
While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, the first half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in CO2 emissions — larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of the 1979, or even World War II. An international team of researchers has found that in the first six months of this year, 8.8 percent less carbon dioxide was emitted than in the same period in 2019 — a total decrease of 1551 million tonnes.
With mainstream opinion agreed that CO2 emissions are dangerous, it’s a little surprising that no-one is commenting on this fall. For instance – saying that it is a good thing. To expect any such statement would be monstrous naïveté of course. That would mean admitting that a human activity (the lockdown) can be beneficial to the environment and that would cause a moral-ideological short-circuit.
An even more stony silence has fallen over an even more inconvenient aspect of this drop in CO2 emission – it has had no measurable effect on atmospheric CO2.
Phil
It has had no discernible effect on co2 as mans contribution is 4% of the total. An 8% reduction on that 4% will have no discernible impact on the overall emissions rise. cftb
tonyb
👌👌 nice post
It is said that methane (CH4) is a much stronger and more harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2) is.
It is said methane (CH4) has 80 times stronger greenhouse warming effect than carbon dioxide (CO2).
Isn’t this 80 times figure much exaggerated?
How it comes a single CH4 molecule to have 80 times stronger greenhouse warming effect than a single CO2 molecule?
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
I read that it’s an 80 times stronger greenhouse gas over 20 years. It’s the amount of time that greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere which is a crucial factor to their ability to warm the planet (allegedly).
Here’s the Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-giant-arctic-methane-deposits-starting-to-release-scientists-find
I did a quick google search which stated that methane stays in the atmosphere for approximately 9 years, whilst carbon dioxide lasted 300 to 1000 years.
So, it still doesn’t make that much intuitive sense..
Alan, thank you.
Yes, indeed, it doesn’t make any intuitive sense.
There are only traces of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
The common sense and the intuitive sense say – there is not any greenhouse gases warming effect problem in Earth’s system.
The Earth’s system greenhouse gasses warming effect is so weak, it cannot be measured.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos – I can understand where you’re coming from but feel compelled to stick with “natural variability is likely to contribute more than 50% of current climate change”.
Judith,
An excellent article.
The ancient Greeks seem to have been the first to start recording the process of thinking about thinking. Aristotle, in particular, attempted to distinguish between the different elements involved in inferential reasoning. During the 19th Century, Greek philosophy was used as the main foundation on which philosophers crystallised the modern concepts of deduction, induction and retroduction (aka abduction). Hence, it is easy to find a continuous thread between the ancient Greeks, Popper’s Falsifiabiliy Principle and, more recently, Feynman’s “How Science Works”; the latter is perhaps the shortest possible summary of the importance of retroduction in science, as well as highlighting the fact that inductive logic is ignorance-preserving.
It is unfortunate that many modern scientists are either unacquainted with these ideas, or wilfully decide to ignore their importance. It is unfortunately now very common to see catastrophic overconfidence in inference as well as confusion about the role of model-prediction in science.
It is noteworthy that all of the above profound philosophical thought is focused only on one single question, which is: How do you reach a valid inference about the “true” nature of things?
Decision-making is completely different. While there are a few tools available which can assist people in certain types of decision-making, humanity has never achieved any level of profundity to ensure decisions are the best available. Good science and good intelligence can inform decision-making, but ultimately choices of objective – the aim of the decision – are always dictated by motives and values, inseparable from individual or collective belief systems. In real life, action is then always further constrained by what is possible and what is perceived to be possible. As individuals, we are generally very poor at stating our objectives unambiguously; politicians as a class are much worse than individuals in this.
Claiming that a decision is informed by science is plausible and may be reasonable, but is always conditioned by the value-based choice of objective(s). Claiming that a decision is “dictated by science” is always fallacious.
Science can sometimes offer reasonable certainty on feasibility of outcomes – if and only if the outcomes are dependent on well-tested science.
Ironically, even having this limited science “truth” available does not guarantee easy decision-making. In 1962, when JFK made his famous speech about putting a man on the moon, the technology was not available to achieve it. Science could not inform feasibility, since future developments were not predictable in any absolute sense. Kennedy’s decision-making was founded on beliefs and values, driven in large part by his desire to gain a technological (and propaganda) lead in the cold war, plus a belief that the focused effort itself would produce major gains in US technology even if the effort failed to achieve its objective. His rhetoric was magnificent, but made up entirely of declaratives (unsupported statements of intent):-
“.We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Informed by science? Perhaps. Dictated by science? Definitely not.
There is a phrase, which I’ve just read, which goes something like this:
“Scientists warn that the delay in re-freezing could further accelerate the decline of sea ice because, as The Guardian writes, “a smaller area of ice means less of a white area to reflect the sun’s heat back into space.”
Is there any scientific proof that this is what happens in reality? Have there been experiments which conclusively show this is the case, that I’m simply unaware of?
I know that *light* is reflected from a white surface back into space, but *heat* isn’t as intuitive. Am I missing something?
From my experience of snowscapes with clear blue skies and full sunshine, I don’t recall feeling any heat from white snow when I turned my face away from the hot sun. What % of energy is supposedly reflected back into space?
This is the only YouTube experiment I could find:
https://youtu.be/xHFmVvDS8rQ
Two points I noticed:
(i) I was unimpressed by the relatively small difference in rate of melting.
(ii) Someone in the comments said “I think the dye you used to make the ice block dark could be skewing the results.
Alan, there is much more than the ice having a higher albedo.
The Arctic sea ice has a warming and not a cooling effect on the Global Energy Balance:
https://www.cristos-vournas.com/444523537
Christos – I find your argument interesting but don’t find your linked to site easy to follow unfortunately.
How does emissivity relate to specific heat capacity, for example? (This is not my area of knowledge)
Is there anyone else who also believes “sea ice has more of a warming than cooling effect”?
Alan,
“Is there anyone else who also believes “sea ice has more of a warming than cooling effect”?”
Alan, it is the Arctic sea ice.
Arctic sea ice behaves like this because the conditions the ice is in dictate it.
Artic sea ice is a very high latitudes sea ice formation.
And the open oceanic waters at Arctic high latitudes do not absorb much solar energy:
https://www.cristos-vournas.com/444523537
It only maters if the changes to the biosphere don’t get out of hand.
There are commercial opportunities, but at a cost.
https://www.miragenews.com/sea-ice-loss-to-disrupt-almost-all-arctic-chemistry-and-ecosystems/
Since all this is happening far away it’s not very important to most people who are more concerned with short term issues.
So you’re saying that “sea ice reflects heat back into space” *isn’t* strictly true, it’s more to do with other consequences of depleted sea ice cover?
“ From my experience of snowscapes with clear blue skies and full sunshine, I don’t recall feeling any heat from white snow when I turned my face away from the hot sun. What % of energy is supposedly reflected back into space?”
Go skiing in the mountains. You can get a sunburn even in January from the sunlight reflected off the snow adding to that which falls on you directly. People returning from ski trips often have very tan faces where they were not covered with white circles around their goggle shaded eyes.
Yes, I know that, but it’s not proven to be from the reflected snow. Being out all day in clear blue skies gives someone a tan even without snow. It could be a factor of dry air which is more important than snow I suspect.
bigterguy:
“Go skiing in the mountains. You can get a sunburn even in January from the sunlight reflected off the snow adding to that which falls on you directly. People returning from ski trips often have very tan faces where they were not covered with white circles around their goggle shaded eyes.”
I agree, the reflection from the snow is the cause of sunburn in January.
We do not get face sunburn in the summer, because the rays are coming from high in the sky, the angle with the face is low. The rays mostly slide from the face.
When exposed to the low angle sun rays reflection from the snow skin experiences very strong solar energy hit.
I have explained the mechanism and have photos on the matter relating to the sea surface reflection, because it is very spectacular.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com/444020463
Christos – I’m convinced it’s the sun’s low position in the sky in combination with clear very dry air which gives a suntan in January. No UV reflected off snow is required.
I’m not making any predictions about the election, but I can savor a bit of irony now. Trump has closed the gaps in the polls and now the Dimowits really need a good turnout tomorrow. But they may have scored an own-goal by scaring the be-jesus out of their own constituents over CV19. They are probably afraid to open the drapes for fear of getting it. They won’t be getting out of the house to vote. Sweet.
NOAA newly appointed chief scientist shared some previous thoughts which I can sympathise with:
“The Extinction Rebellion climate nutjobs compared their train disruption to civil rights activist Rosa Parks in a now-deleted tweet. These climate cultists are delusional.”
https://heated.world/p/noaas-new-top-scientist-deletes-evidence
Professor of climatology John Christy argues that Earth’s climate simply isn’t that sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30102020/john-christy-alabama-climate-contrarian?amp&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&__twitter_impression=true
“My analysis showed that it doesn’t make a difference which rule you pick,” Christy, a professor and interim dean of the College of Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said in an interview. “You can have the California rule for the whole country or California accept the rest of the country’s rule and the amount of carbon emissions are so tiny relative to the world, it’s not going to make a difference in whatever the climate is going to do.”
Here’s a previous interview with Professor John Christy talking about the lack of proof for what would happen to climate if there was a doubling of atmospheric CO2 etc (starts at 2:00):
https://youtu.be/gjyq7sEcH98
The HOTHOUSE EARTH hypothesis is best understood as a response to the failure of the Paris Accord.
https://wp.me/pTN8Y-5ax
8:11 pm
Tuesday, 3 November 2020 (AEST)
As yesterday dawns over New York and the polls open.
I’m predicting that a modified gravity theory is responsible for the acceleration of Apophis when it crosses the solar plane, akin to the ‘pioneer gravity anomaly’.
https://earthsky.org/space/asteroid-99942-apophis-encounters-2029-2036-2068
On Monday morning Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford suggested, during a TalkRadio broadcast, that the UK Government’s Thursday lockdown was effectively policy before the statistical evidence was selected to support it for Saturday’s live announcement. He said that it is hard for politicians and scientists to perform the dialogues necessary to understand that …
…(a) the ‘poor’ testing accuracy of much of the UK’s testing regime for identifying the things that positive test results indicate i.e. the person tested may still be shedding the evidence of an infection that is possibly three months’ old, and
… (b) the statistics used are out of date and can be proven to be wrong by looking at more recent values for the things being highlighted meaning they are wrong, period.
That suggests to me that there is something very wrong about the selection of scientists the UK Government has made for its highest medical and science offices, but how can that be remedied?
The whole interview can be seen on the TalkRadio, YouTube website.
> but how can that be remedied?
I think you need a quota system whereby scientists are picked based on their political views.
A quota system should not be necessary.
UK civil servants are expected to be politically neutral, acting for all voters and not just those who backed the winning horses. Vallance and Whitty have chosen to front for the Government which perhaps suggests they may not be either neutral or objective.
Thatcher once politicised our police forces (the UK miners’ strike) and we know how that panned out. If academic statistical modelling, projections and advice have also been politicised (for public domain importance, monetary gain or favour) then we are headed for disaster on a big scale and very rapidly, no matter what the short term problems may be. Isn’t that how we have made such a shambles of climate change, climate science, and inappropriate reliance on solar and wind?
A consequence of consensus driven politics where no proper debate has ever occurred.
UK Weather Lass – great post 👌
Is the Ozone Hole an election issue? Should it be one? NASA scientists and space age technology found a huge ozone hope opening up in 2020.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/04/the-ozone-hole-of-2020/
Here’s an example of how a concept can be misinterpreted across an entire scientific community imo:
“Changes in global sea level have been ongoing throughout the Earth’s geological history, driven by the growth and decay of ice sheets…The Last Glacial Maximum is the most recent time that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Around 33,000 to 20,000 years ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered by large ice sheets.”
https://researchoutreach.org/articles/coastline-evolution-rise-fall-sea-level-time/
This terminology suggests that the *height* of glaciers was at their maximum around 25,000 years ago, which is towards the end of the 100,000-year glacial cycle. I’m convinced that what they’ve been measuring is the point in time when the thinning glacial ice sheets have suddenly retreated. This is to be expected when once thick glaciers undergo melting to a point when they begin to disappear at high rate.
There’s a very subtle difference in imagery that this phrase can give. I’m convinced that the maximum *volume* of glaciers occurred around the middle of the 100,000-year cycle, which is inline with a bell curve increase in precipitation at high latitudes.
This view supports the modified gravity theory, increasing tidal energy via orbital inclination forcing.
Judith – please can you look into this possible logical error and misinterpretation of the phrase “extent”, meaning maximum “position” as opposed to *maximum volume* which has been assumed by sea-level assessing scientists:
“Abstract – We used 5704 14C, 10Be, and 3He ages that span the interval from 10,000 to 50,000 years ago (10 to 50 ka) to constrain the timing of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in terms of global ice-sheet and mountain-glacier extent. Growth of the ice sheets to their maximum positions occurred between 33.0 and 26.5 ka in response to climate forcing from decreases in northern summer insolation, tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures, and atmospheric CO2.”
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5941/710.abstract
…
Emanuelle Lodolo kindly replied in my inquiring email:
Dear Alan,
thank you for your comments on the article that appeared in “Research Outreach”.
According to Clark et al. (2009), LGM is defined as the time period in which continental ice sheets reached their maximum total mass during the last ice age; the range in which this occurred was between 26.5 and 19 kyr BP. Perhaps, the use of the term “extent” in the article was not very appropriate (I am not a native English speaker). However, it can be interpreted as “height” of the ice cap or, better in this case, as “thickness” of the ice cap.
Kind regards, E.
I’m suspicious that sea-level interpretation was influenced by the insolation driver hypothesis. Dating of corals in uplifted seabeds appears correct for 55ka-30ka, especially due to abrupt changes corresponding to Heinrich iceberg armada events:
“Sea-levels from 30 to 55 ka were approximately 80 m lower than present. Superimposed on this general trend, four periodic sea-level high-stands were found, at 6–8 ka intervals, approximately at 30, 38, 44 and 52 ka, that appear to be synchronous with rapid climate variations previously observed in ice cores and in deep sea sediments.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618201000453
…
This concurs with Fig2 of The Last Maximum by Peter U. Clark et al. (But why does the coral dating stop at 30ka in the above paper?)
…
I think I’ve spotted a problem with oxygen isotope data which previously assumed a constant temperature of the abyssal deep ocean. The exotic tidal forcing hypothesis, in conjunction with the latest data from the Brazil Basin, would allow for vastly changing bottom ocean temperatures.
“From the time that detailed oxygen isotope records derived from foraminifera living in the constant-temperature environment of the abyssal ocean became available, there has been a discrepancy between the ice volume record that these records imply, and that derived from the altitude of dated coral terraces around the world. Here, we re-examine the data and conclude that the temperature of the abyssal ocean has been an actively varying component of the climate system.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/324137a0
Okay, I’m deeply suspicious that the excellent source of data from the uplifted Huon Peninsula in New Guinea is being ignored after 30ka because it doesn’t fit with preconceived ideas of Mikankovitch insolation modelling:
“Global ice sheet growth after 30 ka complicates interpretation of the Huon Peninsula record.”
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017AGUFMPP21E..05Y/abstract
The orbital exotic tidal forcing hypothesis completely invalidates the data interpreted from deep sea foraminifera due to vastly altering deep ocean temperature, mixing and surface precipitation.
“Foraminiferal tests are a common component of many marine sediments. The oxygen isotope ratio (δ18O) of test calcite is frequently used to reconstruct aspects of their life environment. The δ18O depends mainly on the isotope ratio of the water it is precipitated from, the temperature of calcification, and, to a lesser extent, the carbonate ion concentration. Foraminifera and other organisms can potentially preserve their original isotope ratio for many millions of years, although diagenetic processes can alter the ratios. Work on oxygen isotope ratios of foraminifera was instrumental in the discovery of the orbital theory of the ice ages and continues to be widely used in the study of rapid climate change. Compilations of deep sea benthic foraminifer oxygen isotopes have revealed the long history of global climate change over the past 100 million years. Planktonic foraminifer oxygen isotopes are used to investigate the history of past sea surface temperatures, revealing the extent of past ‘greenhouse’ warming and global sea surface temperatures.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-paleontological-society-papers/article/oxygen-isotopes-in-foraminifera-overview-and-historical-review/CD34EFBFFB6AC31DB85A61BB7E6FA64F
Democrats distort and misuse science to further their political agenda. For example recent Democrat administrations mis-funded climate science by only funding scientists to research and promote man-made climate change. They’re distorting climate science to drive an anti-fossil fuel agenda. This flooded climate science with misinformation and incompetent scientists who don’t understand how the climate works, and misrepresent the scientific method. In the mass media, these bad scientists have intellectual authority over good scientists honestly trying to make sense of our complex climate. This is hindering our understanding of the climate. As we enter a grand solar minimum we need to fund good climate science so we can be on top of events as they happen. So that we can be prepared should the climate and weather take a turn for the worse.
Yep.. and it’s going to get worse before the dam breaks:
“Another inappropriate term is tipping pointwhich comes from the phenomenon where a tipped object falls over—and does not return to its initial position—once the center of gravity lies outside the base. By extension, a climate tipping point would be one in which (say) the planet gets inexorably hotter, never to cool down. The term is utterly inappropriate for describing the earth which swings back and forth from glacial to interglacial periods.”
The term comes from the field of complex systems theory. Emphasis mine.
“We develop the concept of “dragon-kings” corresponding to meaningful outliers, which are found to coexist with power laws in the distributions of event sizes under a broad range of conditions in a large variety of systems. These dragon-kings reveal the existence of mechanisms of self-organization that are not apparent otherwise from the distribution of their smaller siblings. We present a generic phase diagram to explain the generation of dragon-kings and document their presence in six different examples (distribution of city sizes, distribution of acoustic emissions associated with material failure, distribution of velocity increments in hydrodynamic turbulence, distribution of financial drawdowns, distribution of the energies of epileptic seizures in humans and in model animals, distribution of the earthquake energies). We emphasize the importance of understanding dragon-kings as being often associated with a neighborhood of what can be called equivalently a phase transition, a bifurcation, a catastrophe (in the sense of Rene Thom), or a tipping point. The presence of a phase transition is crucial to learn how to diagnose in advance the symptoms associated with a coming dragon-king. Several examples of predictions using the derived log-periodic power law method are discussed, including material failure predictions and the forecasts of the end of financial bubbles.”
A term that that better defines the nature of variability in geophysical time series is Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics. A concept originating in hydrology and hydraulics but applied in many disciplines.
e,g, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02626667.2015.1125998
“This is hindering our understanding of the climate. As we enter a *grand solar minimum* we need to fund good climate science so we can be on top of events as they happen. So that we can be prepared should the climate and weather take a turn for the worse.” – mark4asp
Are you saying climate change is due to change in heat output of the sun? Do you think this is the driver of past climate change cycles?
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Pfizer has a 90% effective, 2 dose vaccine.
Science and technology saved our butts again!
Now let’s see if we can convince the public it’s safe.
Very good news. I’m watching the CEO in a live interview now.
Interesting twist is that Pfizer rejected the governments terms on Warp Speed funding.
“Pfizer CEO: Company refused taxpayer money for COVID-19 vaccine development to ‘liberate our scientists’
https://news.yahoo.com/pfizer-ceo-refused-taxpayer-money-175100171.html
Yes, good news. However it has been rushed and I would probably rather be in a second wave of vaccinations rather than the first.
Tonyb
“However it has been rushed”
In what way?
Be specific: “fast””rushed”; “rushed” implies cutting corners.
Rushed? Surly you jest?
Breaking! Novavax has announced their vaccine to be released 1Q21.
By this time next year there will be 4-5 different vaccines just for COVID-19.
I hope they keep the R&D teams together and keep up the momentum but switch the focus to some of the other contagious diseases in both humans and wildlife.
Pfizer’s vaccine is based on CRISPR gene editing technology. In this case it requires special handling and may need to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Some-coronavirus-vaccines-need-to-be-stored-at-15711275.php
90% effective would be amazing.
tonyb,
It will be interesting to see if public will take it. From what I have read they have a very high distrust of science. But let’s not fool ourselves – Americans in general, both right & left, are a superstitious lot and they will have to educated (ie. brainwash) them to take it.
Okay, good news. There’s an issue in the UK who have just been put in a second lockdown, who many have suggested won’t be lifted until the end of March (with a break for Xmas). A promise of a reliable vaccine, although many, many months away, was what probably persuaded the UK medical advisers to stick with their lockdown strategy until it (presumably) arrives:
“The two companies say they can supply 50 million doses by the end of 2020 and 1.3 billion by the end of 2021. The UK government has secured around 100 million doses in an agreement with the two firms.”
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-pfizer-vaccine-found-to-be-90-effective-in-great-day-for-science-and-humanity-12128452
They used false figures to justify the lockdown btw:
“Data used to justify England’s second national lockdown is ‘proven’ to be false, Prof Carl Heneghan claims.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/03/data-used-justify-englands-second-national-lockdown-proven-false/
A very English take on the election result:
https://youtu.be/y0YTM8iO4_s
Now agriculture is under renewed attack from climate alarmists:
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/09/hypocrites-and-greenwash-greta-thunberg-climate-crisis
“Thunberg is particularly scathing about the EU’s MEPs who in October approved almost €400bn (£360bn) in subsidies for farmers, the majority of which has weak or non-existent green conditions attached. Agriculture is responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, and Thunberg said: “It is a disaster for the climate and for biodiversity.””
Getting science applied to policy requires widespread access to science. Here is an article about how access is growing:
Free science is here and growing fast
By David Wojick
Most of my readers are interested in science. Many of my blog articles are scientific and these are often followed by lengthy technical discussions in the comments. Some of my scientific articles have had thousands of comments; one article was over 5,000 when comments were closed. And there are many other blogs like this.
Thanks to the miracle of online commenting the discussion of science, especially related to policy, is now a major popular pastime.
The good news is that the scientific community is responding big time to this extensive popular interest. We are in the midst of a huge wave of activities designed to make the latest science available to everyone who is interested in it, free of charge.
Here are just a few great examples:
Open access (OA). This term refers to various ways to make journal articles freely available. This is a serious challenge because journals have mostly been paid for via expensive subscriptions, usually by rich university libraries. Total cost is estimated at over ten billion dollars a year. People with no connection to a major school have no access to the journals, which publish well over two million technical articles a year.
The most common form of open access is the author pays model, called Gold OA. The author, actually typically the research grant, pays the cost of publication so the article is free to all. There are now many OA journals, as they are called, funded entirely by author pays. Some are huge, called mega journals, publishing tens of thousands of free articles a year. In addition, many subscription journals offer their authors an OA option, for a price.
Repositories for articles. Many universities host what is called a repository, where their faculty deposits their published journal articles, which are then freely available to all. If the article is in a subscription journal there is typically a waiting period before it becomes open, usually 12 months from the date of publication. This is called Green OA.
By far the biggest system of repositories is hosted by the US Government, under the Public Access Program. Every journal article that flows from federal funding, in whole or just in part, must be deposited by the author. If it is OA then it becomes freely available immediately; if subscription then after 12 months. This includes well over 100,000 articles a year. I helped develop this program. There are also subject matter repositories.
Given the huge number of published articles it can be challenging to find the right stuff. By far the best free service for doing this is Google Scholar. It provides full text search for millions of articles in tens of thousands of journals, often going back 60 years or more. There is a powerful advanced search window that supports all sorts of specialized searches. Click on the three horizontal bars in the upper right to get the window. Repository copies are often listed and unlike Google the number of hits listed is real information about how much research has been done,
Preprint servers. Here authors post their draft articles before submitting them to a journal. Given that it can take years to get published this is a good place to find the latest science. I recently did an article based on a preprint. Most journals allow preprints and some even use these servers for article submission. In some cases the preprints are never submitted, making them another form of communication. A great many new preprint servers have recently been created. To my knowledge there is as yet no combined search service for these proliferating servers.
Speaking of other forms than the journal article, some federal agencies publish the final report from their funded research projects. These reports tend to be much longer than journal articles, often ten times longer, so they contain a wealth of information. Many of these reports can be found using the Science.gov portal, which I also worked on.
In turn, Science.gov is part of a global science search system that includes many national systems, called WorldWideScience.org. This global system features a unique translation algorithm that searches repositories in other languages. I helped develop the WWS.org system and the translation feature was my idea. It searches hundreds of millions of pages of science and engineering.
In short there are a huge number of science and engineering research results that are freely available to the world with more coming on. Finding just what you need can be time consuming but a lot of people are working on that as well.
A grand revolution in scientific communication is upon us. Go for it.
Adapted from: https://www.cfact.org/2020/11/09/free-science-is-here-and-growing-fast/
There are many active links in the version on the CFACT site.
Please share this.
David
Hope for HCQ:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.30.20204693v1
Were zinc and azithromicin used in the HCQ protocol? Otherwise this study will be rejected by most HCQ proponents – as they have said results of other studies were useless when those other treatments weren’t included.
Joshua: as they have said results of other studies were useless when those other treatments weren’t included.
Quote or citation? Opinions have been all over the place, but I have not read that one. The problems arise when HCQ treatment is confounded with Zinc, Vit D, or azithromicin, not when these adjuncts are uniformly present or absent. These authors claim to be reporting on RCTs, where such confounding would be slight or absent. I have not double-checked their selected studies. As we have found, reporting isn’t always accurate.
David Wojick: https://www.cfact.org/2020/11/09/free-science-is-here-and-growing-fast/
Thank you for that post, and for the link.
Another note on “cases” of COVID-19 revealed by RT-PCR tests.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2020/11/09/dr-fauci-told-the-truth-about-covid-19-tests-in-july-and-has-been-misleading-the-public-ever-since-n1131938
Amazing how that article laments the rise in positive tests being conflate with “cases” yet neglects to note that the rise in “cases” is correlated with both hospitalizations and deaths.
But don’t let that get in the way of conspiracy ideation or portraying poor widdle Donny as a victim.
“Amazing how that article laments the rise in positive tests being conflate with “cases” yet neglects to note that the rise in “cases” is correlated with both hospitalizations and deaths.”
Except the rise in deaths , even with the 4-6 week lag, isnt even close to the rise in cases. there are only a few regions/ countries / states where deaths are rising anywhere close to rise in case
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-on-track-to-smash-record-for-covid-19-hospitalizations-2020-11
And if course, even deaths and icu admissions and hospitalizations are only part of the story. There are the illnesses. And the damage to society from a raging pandemic.
It completely ignores the correlation.
And you haven’t fully allowed for the lag yet.
You never learn, do you?
Josh you keep spitting out the same garbage
Look at worldometers – the rate of the increase in death isnt even in the same ballpark as the rate of increase in cases, even counting for a 4-6 week lag.
Yet you keep repeating the same garbage.
Even more ridiculous is the charts in the business insider article you linked doesnt support the headline and doesnt support your assertions.
Joe. There’s a directly proportional correlation between increases in “cases” and increases in illnesses, hospitalizatons, ICU, admissions, and deaths. And the article doesn’t even mention those correlations.
It’s the same garbage that the rightwing spouted during the summer when they stupidly thought that increases in identified infections would be decoupled from illness and death.
Yes, the proportion is changed from the first wave. The extent to which that is true is not as of yet not known.
One might think you would have learned this summer but you never learn, do you?
Josh’ comment – “There’s a directly proportional correlation between increases in “cases” and increases in illnesses, hospitalizatons, ICU, admissions, and deaths. ”
true there is a correlation – but it is not what you keep claim – Look at the data
The source data
The link you cited says otherwise.
https://twitter.com/COVID19Tracking
After posting the link to the twitter feed – I can see why Josh keeps repeating the same garbage – The headlines of the articles repeatedly make statements that are contradictory to the actual data.
The actual data doesnt support either Josh or the agenda driven headlines.
josh -big hint – look at the actual data – not the headline
Joe *
The “data” show that as cases go up, so do hospitalizations, and then ICU admissions, and deaths.
I’d think you might learn from Nic’s mistake in thinking that the rise in cases in Sweden might be a “blip.”
This whole “casedemic” nonsense is no less idiotic than the arguments that all these places had already reached herd immunity or that there wouldn’t be 2ns waves. Good thing you never made those dopey arguments, righ…
Oh, wait.
Joe –
The “data” show that as cases go up, so do hospitalizations, and then ICU admissions, and deaths.
I’d think you might learn from Nic’s mistake in thinking that the rise in cases in Sweden might be a “blip.”
his whole “casedemic” nonsense is no less inane than the arguments that all these places had already reached herd immunity or that there wouldn’t be 2ns waves. Good thing you never made those dopey arguments, righ…
Oh, wait.
Anyway, you do realize that the change in proportion of positive cases to hospitalization and death is not only a reflection of a drop in IFR, right? It’s also because yes, a higher % of (true) cases are being identified. In one sense that is good, for sure. In another sense it isn’t good because it suggests that we’re likely to see a period of similar rates of hospitalization and death as we did during the first wave.
Summary of Josh’s arguments – “OMG – its worse than we thought”
“The data doesnt support it – but its worse than we thought”
> “The data doesnt support it – but its worse than we thought”
Deaths in the US are up by close to 30% over the past couple of weeks.
Y’all are just some weird individuals.
This is climate change, hail storm in Saudi desert:
https://youtu.be/zP8qKI7kNHM
Monster storm in the Gulf of Mexico. hail and flooding in Saudi Arabia, a blizzard in Alberta. OMG – it’s all true.
Robert-the-salesman – I’m sure you’re aware that the western half of Saudi Arabia was once known to be a green and fertile land, much like the Nile delta.
Alberta had giant crocodiles. So what.
“So what”?
So if the deserts of Saudi Arabia started to turn to grassland, you’d say that it’s just “stochastic” or “chaos theory” and nothing to do with large scale climate cycles, as evidenced in the past?
Or if North Africa became lakes and prairie again? Change is perpetual as hydrologist Demetris Koutsoyiannis says. Panta rhei – as Heraclitus said – and nothing remains the same.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/tsonis-2009-figure-1.png
Laguna Pallcacocha, ENSO proxy – greater red intensity shows El Niño like conditions prevailing (Source: Tsonis, 2009)
Moy et al (2002) present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by Pacific Ocean variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation is associated with a warmer eastern Pacific. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 11,000 years. It shows periods of high and low red intensity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from a cool eastern Pacific to warm that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of a very warm eastern Pacific associated with drought in the Mediterranean and the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
Climate data shows the chaotic heart of Wally Broeckers beast pounding through woodland and savannah. It moves with immense power and speed across landscapes and oceans. It shifts suddenly and fiercely. We ain’t seen fierce in the 20th century – we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. But what shall we do now with this wild and angry beast? Other than poking it with a stick that is.
There are approaches mooted – including shibboleths of neo-green-leftists – that are not worth worrying about. But there are a plurality of solutions to other problems each with intrinsic greenhouse gas mitigation or sequestration potential. I can point to a couple of dozen off the top of the heads of Nobel laureate economists. I like to see it as part of a global mission to secure prosperous communities in vibrant and resilient landscapes this century.
Robert, you have a very annoying habit of posting graphs without the source link. I’m interested in the details, so please provide the article or paper where they come from. Thank you.
Your data is consistent with the millennial climate cycle that has numerous signals in proxy data from all over the world:
“Climate during the last glacial period was far from stable. Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events, occurred repeatedly throughout most of this time. Scientists Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger first reported the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events in Greenland ice cores. Each of the 25 observed D-O events consisted of an abrupt warming to near-interglacial conditions that occurred in a matter of decades and was followed by a gradual cooling.”
They are known to be linked to precipitation:
“Heinrich and D-O events had a global footprint. During cold phases in the North Atlantic, large regions of North America and Eurasia became colder and drier. A southward shift of the tropical rain belt caused drier conditions in the Northern Hemisphere while moistening many parts of the Southern Hemisphere.”
– NOAA (link broken)
It is not “chaos” but a mechanism which is yet unknown to mainstream science. I’m convinced it’s new physics with the Moon causing tidal forcing, moving warm water away from the equator.
Moy et al 2002 is a very famous study. Google it. You don’t understand optics or chaos. Don’t take it hard.
Try this one for a soft start,
https://www.nap.edu/booksearch.php?record_id=10136&term=do+events
More flooding in Saudi Arabia. I’m predicting that this will be a continuous trend, greening the land once again:
https://youtu.be/dFmVm-WBnlM
Western Saudi Arabia will soon be greening again:
https://youtu.be/xg4eH1YYyGA
Cyclone Gati hits Yemen
https://youtu.be/4NY2jgD3SOE
The north-west direction of cyclones in the Indian Ocean is interesting and fits with past climate cycles and the greening of the horn of Africa and the western Arabian peninsula:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/55034547
Try this – https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/2
It does require an intuitive leap to the idea that changes in ice, cloud, biology, dust and ocean and atmospheric circulation – and their interactions – drive climate change on decadal to geological scales.
On a multi-decadal scale the Global Stadium Wave – Judith Curry has done some work on it – is responsible for half the warming of the past 40 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VbgzCahx8o&ab_channel=ScienceVio
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6?WT.feed_name=subjects_climate-change
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6?WT.feed_name=subjects_climate-change
Robert – what’s your ‘expert’ opinion on the reason for the drought forecasts for southwestern Africa?
“Three consecutive years of dry winters from 2015-17 in southwestern South Africa led to the severe water shortage from 2017-18.”
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-world-cape-town-day-drought.amp
I’m of the opinion that precipitation is being pushed to higher latitudes in general, which will have some global locations prone to droughts, whilst other previously dry locations prone to heavy rainfall as we’ve just seen on the southwestern Arabian peninsula.
Put the cursor over the area of interest and an SPEI graph will popup. It looks dry in the period from 1950. Put it down to global warming.
https://spei.csic.es/map/maps.html#months=1#month=8#year=2020
As terrestrial precipitation is 90% sourced from oceans – I would look at the TSA as a contributing factor.
https://stateoftheocean.osmc.noaa.gov/sur/atl/
More scholarly debate?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8925427/amp/Official-data-exaggerating-risk-Covid-500-academics-tell-Boris-Johnson.html
Or just a typical phony appeal to authority.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Kit_Yates_Maths/status/1325519463232499713
verytallguy: Or just a typical phony appeal to authority.
Apparently none of the signatories are epidemiologists.
Quite. Set up to sound authoritative (500 academics!!) but not actually so on closer examination.
Not so fast on the vaccine?
https://nypost.com/2020/11/09/trump-deranged-democrats-endanger-lives-by-blocking-vaccines/
A very balanced and nuanced piece.
verytallguy: A very balanced and nuanced piece.
Whew! I was afraid you’d tell me it was false. Did Cuomo not really advise New Yorkers to wait … ?
“Did Cuomo not really advise New Yorkers to wait … ?”
I don’t know Matt, did he?
verytallguy: I don’t know Matt,
What Cuomo (and Newsom) said was that the vaccine could not be used in New York (California) until that state’s soon-to0be-empanelled group of experts approved it.
But you still don’t “know” because I have not supplied a link. It’s only my fallible memory.
Here’s a classic case where tidal forcing is an immediate fit to the data, yet is not even on the radar of consideration:
“But the mysterious Weddell Polynya – occurring above the oceanic plateau of Maud Rise, in the Weddell Sea waters of the Southern Ocean – is a rather extreme example of this environmental phenomenon. Why it opens up so dramatically and yet so infrequently has long puzzled scientists.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/invisible-rivers-of-air-flowing-in-the-sky-are-leaving-giant-holes-in-antarctic-ice/amp
So called ‘sky rivers’ are given as the cause yet the fact that the giant holes in ice sheets occur above underwater plateaus is somehow disregarded.
Listen to this attack on climate scepticism “..saying whether you believe or don’t believe in climate change is like saying you don’t believe in gravity..”
https://youtu.be/hCatjG9AOfo
The irony being I believe climate change is due to a modified theory of gravity, the current gravity theory requires dark matter, ~84% of all matter is “missing” but this interviewer is obviously unaware of this small fact..
There’s interesting talk about different covid-19 response strategies between nations and about how science is subjective…. but then they say “the laws of physics are the laws of physics..” (!)
https://youtu.be/1GGkgOvsyLQ
Michael Shellenberger: STOP terrifying our kids
https://youtu.be/9nTHY2ZApmE
Really, good post thanks jcurry. Some of the comments are pretty disappointing. I’m no scientist. However, it would be great for any policy science based or not if we could take off the tribal hats of Democrat and Republican, Conservative or Liberal, deal with the facts and make the best decision we can at the time. Maybe we could create some contingency plans to account for the possibility we might be wrong and have a mechanism that allows us to review and correct when necessary. It’s really tiresome to read through something that is 80 percent correct and then have to come back to figure out where political agenda got the author off track.
Climate science uncertainty adds up to a conclusion you may or may find very surprising — and you get points for guessing which denier said this. “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” Science is on board not in the clumsy sense of consensus but as scientific paradigm. The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
It means that most of “the science” — the data interpretation, the methods and the linear extrapolations are utterly inadequate to the task of explaining climate for us. But both sides of the climate wars continue to insist on a certainty that is impossible – and continue a battle in which one side is heavily outgunned. The global warming battalion is all of the world’s scientific institutions, the progressive press, governments, major scientific journals, etc. Opposed is a ragtag collection of a few marginalized cheerleaders for curmudgeons with crude and eccentric theories they insist is the true science. The curmudgeons are remarkably persistent – and abrupt climate shifts may give them a strategic advantage as the planet doesn’t warm over the next decade or two – or even more. The battle is absurd and unwinnable – by either side. One side has succumbed to fear – the other to wishful thinking. I heard an estimate recently that there are 30,000 odd activists in Australia. They are noisy and dominate political forums. We call them the chattering classes. But they are extreme minorities with intransigent opinions.
The rest of us are concerned that the real objectives of humanity are not lost sight of. It is simple to take the initiative on the broad front of population, development, energy technology, multiple gases and aerosols across sectors, land use change, conservation and restoration of agricultural lands and ecosystems and building resilient communities. What we really want is much more clarity on effective policy responses – a focus on the real issues of global economic progress and environmental protection. Emissions of greenhouse gases or loss of biodiversity are far from intractable problems — but economic growth is the foundation of any practical measures. What we are hoping for is a neo-liberal utopian policy platform.
“…we must be able to offer a new liberal programme which appeals to the imagination. We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia…a truly liberal radicalism…the main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals…. (F.A. Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” 1949)
And a pragmatic way to a bright future – e.g. https://judithcurry.com/2020/11/11/disconnect-in-the-relationship-between-gmst-and-ecs/#comment-932318.
“The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization.” https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/climate-pragmatism-innovation
Robert – you missed out that the mechanism of past abrupt climate cycles on the millennial scale should be sought after by the mainstream and not ignored. The regularity of the events suggest an orbital origin.
Research on the 100,000-year glacial cycle shows that the inclination angle of Earth’s orbit is a better fit to the data than eccentricity. This would supersede Milankovitch warming as the main driver of climate change.
If you combine these two major anomalies with a third, namely, the gravity anomaly, where ~84% of all matter is “missing”, then a paradigm-shifting theory comes into play.
Yeah – no paradigm shifting here.
Robert – if you continue to use the word “denier” instead of “sceptism” wrt the climate narrative then I’ll mention that you’re only on here as a glorified salesman, who’s on commission to sell high tech products to the developing world.
Couldn’t recall using the word – reread it – the denier in that instance was the IPCC. No points Allan. And I prefer the term curmudgeon to skeptic.
“And I prefer the term curmudgeon to skeptic.” – Robert I.Ellison
I find it unacceptable that you would call Dr. Judith Curry, who hosts this site, a “curmudgeon” because she is of the belief that natural climate variation accounts for more than half of current climate change.
I suggest that Judith Curry has a far more nuanced and sophisticated understanding than you.
Robert-on-commission-Ellison
I am a technologist – using advanced technology all my professional life. From sophisticated control electronics to ion exchange chemistry for acid mine drainage. I have read over decades on a ridiculous number of technologies. This is a product from a New York based company that sells very cool consumer products all over the world – and uses revenue to spread their technology into India and Africa. It is essentially a rocket stove with added electronics that power an internal fan and includes a USB jack for a light or charging smartphones. It uses 50% less wood than open fires and produces 95% less particulate matter. This according to Allan is technology foisted on developing nations by corrupt western industrialists. My check is in the mail.
https://row.bioliteenergy.com/
I’m only pulling your leg Robert. I’m not against new technology being sold to developing countries. The point I’m making is that they should be creating the technology themselves ideally. A lot easier said than done.
It is a cast iron body with electronics that can be purchased on ebay. Most likely from China. Electricity from heat powers smartphones – and Africa is as I said 7% of that global market. A smartphones is an enabling technology – bringing knowledge to and opening up markets for local landholders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0HjQFFf_5o&app=desktop&ab_channel=SKILFULLIFE
Increased agricultural productivity, increased downstream processing and access to markets build local economies and global wealth. Economic growth provides resources for solving problems – conserving and restoring ecosystems, better sanitation and safer water, better health and education, updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon and reduce the health and environmental impacts, developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity, replacing cooking with wood and dung with better ways of preparing food thus avoiding respiratory disease and again reducing black carbon emissions and millions of avoidable deaths.
“Maybe we could create some contingency plans to account for the possibility we might be wrong and have a mechanism that allows us to review and correct when necessary.” – John Kirker
The physicist and author Carlo Rovelli would agree with you. He explains that current gravity theory could be turned on it’s head at any moment:
” Does this mean that we should take everything he did as correct? That he never made mistakes? On the contrary. In fact, few scientists have made as many errors as Einstein. Few have changed their minds as frequently as he did.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/science/carlo-rovelli-making-mistakes-sign-of-intelligence-einsteins-errors-757427
Relativity has been confirmed experimentally many times. We should regard it as true at least such time as Allan conclusively falsifies it.
Relativity has been confirmed experimentally many times. We should regard it as true at least until such time as Allan conclusively falsifies it. And take politically pragmatic action on climate change as well.
“This pragmatic strategy centers on efforts to accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures — three efforts that each have their own diverse justifications independent of their benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation.” op cit
“..found that even in the most extreme of conditions, his argument and calculations cannot be disproven. Does this mean that we should take everything he did as correct? That he never made mistakes? On the contrary. In fact, few scientists have made as many errors as Einstein. Few have changed their minds as frequently as he did.” – Carlo Rovelli
Einstein *can* be disproven by empirical evidence. The solid body earth-tides are predicted to be increasing. A rise in the height of the solid earth tidal bulge would account for the increase in sea level. This hasn’t been taken into consideration by mainstream climate science.
It should be tested for immediately.
Relativity can only be falsified with one experiment. But you are not the man for the job.
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Albert Einstein
I’ve already done the hard work in not only finding where both Newton and Einstein made their mistake but have incorporated the new vision in an EP of 6 songs.
It now needs someone brave enough and in a position of influence to persuade mainstream science to fund the test.
Robert – I have found the perfect experiment to disprove Einstein and show nucleic density matter exists at planetary body cores. NASA’s DART mission will impact an asteroid moonlet in 2022:
“The system is composed of two asteroids: the larger asteroid Didymos (diameter: 780 meters, 0.48 miles), and the smaller moonlet asteroid, Dimorphos (diameter: 160 meters, 525 feet), which orbits the larger asteroid. The DART spacecraft will impact Dimorphos nearly head-on, shortening the time it takes the small asteroid moonlet to orbit Didymos by several minutes.”
The exotic core hypothesis predicts that the moonlet will have more natural momentum than predicted by Newtonian dynamics and so will be a lot less affected by the spacecraft impact than anticipated.
https://dart.jhuapl.edu/Mission/index.php
Momentum is mass times velocity. What Alan seems to be saying is that everything has more mass because there is what I presume to be condensed neutron star matter at the core of everything. Thus it all has much more mass.
Even if there was neutron star matter everywhere the apple will fall at the observed rate space/time curvature won’t depart from predictions of general relativity field equations.
Alan misunderstands light because of something his art teacher said – and disposes of Newton and Einstein in an EP of 6 songs. It’s all a bit hippy dippy don’t you think?
It’s a solid prediction with only 2 years to wait. A new gravity theory won’t seem so dippy once it’s realised Didymos’s orbit is shortened by only half as much as calculated.
When the tides are finally proven to be increasing, it will be an instant boost to the energy industry:
“We design, build and operate tidal turbines that generate electricity from the natural ebb and flow of the tide.
Our underwater turbines have zero visual impact and work in harmony with the marine environment, with no barriers or barrages.
Tidal energy is an abundant, predictable and clean source of energy. Our technology can be installed in deep water, shallow water, estuaries and large rivers; creating a global opportunity for this vast untapped market.”
https://www.novainnovation.com
As a conservative hydraulic and hydrological engineer – I can assure you that my house is founded on rock and above the tsunami inundation level – with clear escape routes. Where coastal setbacks are difficult – build defences. We are looking at 50mm or so increase in highest water level for every meter of sea level rise. Safety margins on seawalls are in the order of 2-3 meters. I have worked with water for decades. Occasionally – I liked to get my hands dirty with big boys toys. I have planned and built marinas and ocean defences among other things.
There are many things that influence water levels – but orbits change hardly at all on generational time scales.
https://knowablemagazine.org/do/10.1146/knowable-042120-1/feature/media/I-solar-and-lunar-tides.gif
https://knowablemagazine.org/article/physical-world/2020/tides-they-are-changin-and-its-not-just-climate-change
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17056-z
https://www.intechopen.com/books/estuaries-and-coastal-zones-dynamics-and-response-to-environmental-changes/tidal-evolution-related-to-changing-sea-level-worldwide-and-regional-surveys-and-the-impact-to-estua
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GL087002
I have been in, on or under water all my life. Occasionally all three at once. I turned a boat turtle on the Pioneer River in Northern Queensland once. Emerged braced against the swiftly flowing tide – looking about – vaguely wondering if I should worry about bull sharks or crocodiles – deciding it was too late to worry about either. When I was interrupted by a small voice saying help. There are more than enough real hazards in the world without Alan adding to the unfounded litany of coming catastrophes. There are risks but I would put this one into the vanishingly unlikely category.
“There are more than enough real hazards in the world without Alan adding to the unfounded litany of coming catastrophes.” – Robert
What I’m advocating is good news for business and the entire species of humanity. It would mean no obsession about CO2 emissions or trying to take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. There are no “tipping points” to worry about, no methane-release “feedback cycle” of disaster. We’d need not blame ourselves. It’s a natural cycle that we will learn to live with, in dignity.
It’s not just savings in $billions of dollars that are spent on unnecessary search for dark matter particles but a renewed industrial revolution due to a Theory of Everything. It’s what science has been searching for, the holy grail of understanding all the known forces, uniting gravity with the quantum world.
Thank you for admitting that it’s not in your knowledge area to denounce the tidal forcing hypothesis of climate change. You’re not a scientist, physicist or astronomer. I wish you well in your underwater endeavors Robert.
My science degree – on top of engineering hydrology and stream, estuarine and coastal dynamics – is Environmental Science – specialising in biogeochemical cycling. Including that most fundamental element carbon. Lots of math, physics and computer modelling.
I have been studying internal variability for 40 year’s. And it isn’t tidal. On top of that there are some fundamental forcings that are not so easily dismissed. This is not of course consensus – that I continue to reject – but a Popperian paradigm.
https://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/images/large_image_for_image_content/radiation_budget_kiehl_trenberth_2011_900x645.jpg
But I note that you have found the holy grail. It will give you something else to sing about.
Yes, indeed. An Environment Science course doesn’t include philosophical questioning of matter and forces, especially those that could be drivers of past climate cycles.
All educational courses have become rather rigid and dogmatic. There’s little room for adversarial discourse and debate. That’s the problem. All students now suffer from tunnel vision. You’re a perfect example.
How would you know what an engineering education involves – or what I have studied over decades? You are a perfect example of someone with delusional pretensions and a 6 song EP heralding a scientific revolution. .
lol..
I can’t imagine why anyone would take you seriously. Where are all the ‘sceptics’?
When will the physicists admit that the actual increase in tidal range could be due to a new gravity theory?? The evidence is very real:
“In some areas like Annapolis, the numbers are even more extreme. Annapolis had a record 18 days of high-tide flooding from May 2019 to April 2020, according to flooding thresholds for the city established by NOAA. That’s up from the previous record of 12 days in 2018. Before 2015, the record number of high-tide flood days in one year was seven, and the yearly average of high-tide floods from 1995 to 2005 was two.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3041/beating-back-the-tides/
It would be difficult as there is no new gravity theory.
Robert, you’re a well educated, experienced engineer, right? Let me ask how you think the Earth was weighed?
“The torsion balance consists essentially of two small masses at different elevations that are supported at opposite ends of a beam. The latter is suspended from a wire that undergoes torsion because the masses are affected differently by the force of gravity.”
This force of gravity between two surface masses was found to be very weak but the same value, irrespective of their sizes. This value was called the ‘gravitational constant’.
The volume of the Earth can be deduced from calculation.
Is this *proof* that nucleic density matter which experiences a much higher gravitational attraction between two nuggets (if found on the surface), doesn’t exist at Earth’s core?
Once the value of G is determined experimentally – mass falls out of Newton’s equation. Doesn’t matter whether it is cheese or unicorns.
You didn’t answer the question:
(i) Is this *proof* that nucleic density matter doesn’t exist at Earth’s core which could have a much higher gravitational constant?
(ii) Could this resolve the perpetual mystery of “missing mass” of the universe?
https://youtu.be/e5VSNXfcvRs
Much higher than what? Strange quarks?
https://media.nature.com/lw800/magazine-assets/d41586-020-00590-8/d41586-020-00590-8_17759976.jpg
Okay, you’re getting the idea.
The answers are:
(i) no
(ii) yes
…
Apparently 1up, 1down & 1strange quark is the best candidate for nucleic density matter at the Earth’s core which would have a much higher gravitational constant ie. the *strong* gravitational force between stars and planets etc.
We weigh what we weigh at the bottom of a gravity well. You expect that to change? What I am is bored. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You prove it. That’s how science works. And as Feynman said – you should start by questioning your assumptions.
How bizarre that the world’s richest man is donating $10 billion to fund action to stop manmade global warming yet we have deduced from basic principles that such steps are misguided, due to a misconception in physics.
Amazing
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/11/16/21569902/jeff-bezos-first-recipients-10-billion-climate-change-fund
As I say – you claim to have guessed – just like Feynman – something or other. It doesn’t change the essential scientific paradigm.
When I say “much higher gravitational constant” I mean higher than the value G deduced from the torsion balance experiments on baryonic matter.
Non-baryonic matter will soon be excavated from embedded deep in the surface rock which impacted in anomalous crater events that left no surface meteorites:
“We report results from excavating such a crater. Hydrodynamic simulations indicate fractured granite below the crater and under 4.7 m of soft sediments is the first observational evidence of MQN dark matter.”
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.04826
When two ‘nuggets’ are retrieved, the same type of experiment can be performed to deduce their gravitational attraction.
This will give a value for G(strong).
Whether further dark matter nugget meteorites retrieved will also obey the same principle is not guaranteed. Hopefully so, because it will make the new mathematics of planetary motion a lot easier.
It goes back to Galileo.
Our emotions on the discussion are mutual but thanks for the opportunity anyway.
I’ll try my luck gaining online psychic chemistry with Ireneusz. He’s linking solar wind as a driver of the El Nino cycle. The strong gravitational core hypothesis allows for another mechanism linked to tidal forcing.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/lam-2013-geopotential-at-polaes.png
Dr. Vandevender was kind enough to reply to my email. I’m not sure why he is so certain that a dark matter nugget wouldn’t get lodged in the crust if it came in at an acute angle for example. He seems to think the Earth’s core can be quark matter but doesn’t agree about a stronger gravitational constant:
…
Thank you for your email, Alan. Once the mass density is nuclear density, the gravitational force per unit area of the quark nugget making the crater is much greater than the yield strength of materials. So it sinks to the center of the Earth.
However, we do hope to eventually collect one from asteroids or from space. The measurement you suggest could then be made but we have no reason to think it would disagree with the standard gravitational constant.
All the best,
Pace
….
Robert – if you’re so confident in manmade global warming & sea level rise, why doesn’t the mainstream rule out increasing solid body earth tides which could be a component?
“The Earth tide encompasses the entire body of the Earth and is unhindered by the thin crust and land masses of the surface, on scales that make the rigidity of rock irrelevant.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_tide
This getting weird now. A whole list of academic activists are calling for the removal of ‘greenhouse gases’ from the atmosphere as soon as possible:
“This is why we believe the ideal solution to the climate crisis would be to go beyond net zero, and start to restore the climate. This would be done by, on top of reducing emissions to zero, removing huge amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere. As such, we aim to restore the climate to as close to a safe climate as possible.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/13/hitting-net-zero-is-not-enough-we-must-restore-the-climate
Do you think they’re afraid to be outed for not doing so?
Have you been meditating on your sense of entitlement?
https://t.co/is2NGHdwRP?amp=1
Infections seem to be peaking in much of Europe. They implemented interventions, of course.
When will infections peak here, where it’s so important to have the “freedom” if being mask free?
Joshua
‘Sweden got it wrong’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8953315/Coronavirus-Sweden-Wishful-thinking-left-country-exposed-second-wave.html
Tonyb
Thanks Tony –
Still have to wait for full analysis…some of the focus on sustainability seems reasonable to me…but the current higher infection rate even with a higher population infection rate pretty flatly dispels “herd immunity” theory. Although Gomes says that there’s always an expectation of crossing back and forth over the HIT, that was never presented as part of the expected scenario in Sweden (or by Nic for that matter). Also, there’s crossing over and then there’s massively jumping over as seems to be the case in Sweden currently.
UK seeing a flattening of infection rates all across Europe. That’s a good thing. Probably because of interventions although the herd immunity crowd will claim “burnout.”. At any rate, it’s good and should be accompanied by a flattening death rate in a coile of weeks.
We may not see that here, however. Failures at federal and local levels are inexcusable.
Joshua
It will be interesting to see what nic makes of this.
Our infection rate in the UK was dropping before the latest lockdown last week, as it was in the first lockdown in march
. People had already substantially modified their behaviour without being told, then further restrictions were put in place limiting numbers of people who could meet up etc.
personally I wouldn’t go anywhere near a place that had anything resembling a crowd, even when the lockdown eased in july, such as a pub or a crowded restaurant . I have no concerns of catching anything outside but the days of eating outside are sadly over for a few months.
My sister who lives in Australia tells me Adelaide has had a sudden outbreak of cases with 15 traced to one family . So the state borders may be shut again
Tonyb
“Our infection rate in the UK was dropping before the latest lockdown last week”
Unequivocally false. Current rates of infection are still higher than they were pre lockdown.
The *rate* of increase was falling, but increasing it still was.
Vtg
You seem to have truncated some of my post.
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/maths/news/2020/peak-lockdown.html
If you disagree with the calculation please take it up with prof Simon wood of the school of mathematics at the University of Bristol
Tonyb
Tony, how about the more recent situation?.
By the way Tony, do you think that Boris is as much of a tool of the establishment scientists as Nigel seems to think?
Vtg
Here is the data from the office of national statistics about the second lockdown
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8917845/Weekly-Covid-19-infection-rates-dropped-82-countrys-149-local-authorities.html
Data is determined using various criteria. The reasons for the lockdown were our large northen cities had been showing huge rates of increases primarily due to the young partying.
The govt then decided all parts of the country should suffer the same punishment of lockdown whether or not our infections, cases, deaths, or whayever other criteria you want to apply, were increasing or not and irrespective of our general infection rate which in our part of the world was far below that of the north.
The data from the northern cities are available ndividually and again these showed that the rate was already falling.
Hope you and your family remain safe and well
Tonyb
Joshua
Boris doesn’t like to say no to advisers and has used the science as a cover for his actions, many of which, but not all, were carried out without thinking it through. He is an ideas and big picture man, not a details man.
The scientific advisers use the precautionary principle of course and err very much on the side of caution and have no regard at all to other considerations such as the effect on the economy, on mental health, on employment or deaths from other causes. So their remit is very narrow but to be fair these other considerations are political.
Boris has been unwilling to take these political decisions as he is a ditherer and the death toll has been much greater than it need have been because of care home infections, hospital infections , not closing the borders not getting enough PPE etc.
Btw I am a govt supporter but think the level of competence shown has been very poor
Tonyb
Joshua
I should add that boris is not the person he was a year ago. Remember he took pver as party leader and then he had a very brushing time with parliament over brexit, then the general election, the EU has been very recalcitrant, then he got divorced, got engaged, had to cope with the pandemic then was very seriously Ill himself
I suspect he is much more cautious than is his natural instinct and taking far more notice of scientists than he normally would or at the least is not consulting with the very many scientists that would offer different advice
Tonyb
Tony –
> The scientific advisers use the precautionary principle of course and err very much on the side of caution and have no regard at all to other considerations such as the effect on the economy, on mental health, on employment or deaths from other causes.
Wow. What’s your trick for diving other people’s motivations, tony?
Tony –
> The govt then decided all parts of the country should suffer the same punishment of lockdown whether or not our infections, cases, deaths, or whayever other criteria you want to apply, were increasing or not
We’re you in favor of disallowing travel so as to allow people to move from one part of the county to another (as apparently they’re considering in Sweden) or so you have skmw other method in mind for keeping higher infection rates limited to the North? Magic Covid herd immunity pixie dust, perhaps?
You know, the same stuff conservatives, libertarians, and other freedom fighters sprinkled on Sweden to prevent infections there (I guess they ran out a coupla months ago?)
Tony,
Let us note:
(1) your cite for the March lock down is a clear cherry pick. Much as the rightwing press enjoyed publicising those claims the peak predated the lockdown, almost no scientists agree. Go take it up with Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7
(2) Your various obfuscations don’t challenge at all the point that cases ere not falling pre 2nd lockdown as you claimed. Unfortunately, as of today, no clear decline is yet seen. Hopefully it will come.
I also hope you and yours are safe and well.
“I suspect he is much more cautious than is his natural instinct and taking far more notice of scientists than he normally would or at the least is not consulting with the very many scientists that would offer different advice”
Reality is a cruel mistress.
Vtg
The university of Bristol mathematics school is part of the right wing press? You have obviously never been to the University of Bristol.
It seems that everything you disagree with is right wing or a cherry pick whilst no doubt all your cites are somehow magically free of any detailed cherry selection
Tonyb
Tony –
I assume you supported Boris for quite a while?
If so, seems that by your assessment you went along quite a while supporting a politician who is weak and quite fickle and sways this way and that just based on political expediency.
Have you considered revisiting your determination of Biden’s status as the weakest politician in the history of the world in that light? Maybe you should consider being a little less absolute in your judgments?
Tony –
https://judithcurry.com/2020/10/26/science-and-politics/#comment-932690
Tony
Please consider what I actually wrote rather than what it would have been convenient to your argument that I might have written.
Note the difference between “publicised by” and “originated from”
Next, meditate upon the meaning of “cherry pick”
Finally, acknowledging cases were not falling prior to 2nd lock down, your original claim you’re still trying to avoid, would be nice.
VTG
Can I point out your own cherry picking? You truncated my original post to reference the 2nd lockdown only so presumably you agreed about the first lockdown.?
. You are now homing in on the second lockdown. I quoted the ONS figures and they can be used for either of us to make a large number of Cherry pies
Rates were dropping in all the age groups under 35’s but marginally increasing in the age groups above that. The most infected areas-the cities of the North primarily-saw cases dropping as their mayors, newspapers and others were asserting- before the national lockdown.
The rates were still high so undoubtedly they should not be surprised that restrictions should remain in place.
My point was that they are using the high but dropping rates of the north to impose a national lockdown to include other areas that have a low rate of infection that perhaps have been following guidelines more strictly.
We need every bit of the economy that can function to do so. My local low infection area was just starting to get back on its feet but is now locked down and is barely functioning as an economy so is requiring a great deal of taxpayer support
Yes, we are all safe and well thank you. We have fortunately only known 2 people that dies of covid and both went into hospital for other reasons ands caught the infection there.
Infections introduced into Care home and hospital. contributed a very large number of the overall deaths . If they had been better handled overall deaths would have been those of a normal flu season.
Unfortunately 28 million GP appointments were cancelled and several million operations so it seems likely the cure will be worse than the cause
tonyb
Joshua
The reason I can divine their motivations is that their remit is specifically to look at the science and to draw a line between that and policy decisions
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/09/10/between-science-and-policy-scrutinising-the-role-of-sage-in-providing-scientific-advice-to-government/
Tonyb
Joshua
I think you misunderstand our political system. we do not have a President so NO, I have not supported Boris for a long time. I am not a Londoner so did not vote for him either time as Mayor. I am not a member of the Tory party so did not elect him as leader. In the 2019 GE I voted for the party not the PM.
As I say, Boris has had an awful lot on his plate and the person I observed up to February 2020 is not the same figure we now see as his trials and tribulations have affected him
Now forgive me if I no longer comment on this thread but the length of it and my ageing computer means it is an extremely slow and long winded process.
tonyb
My mistake, tony. My assumption was that even if you didn’t vote for Boris, you have long supported the political aspirations for which he is a leader.
Pro-democracy officials in Hong Kong speak out at the authoritarian power of communist China to quash anyone who speaks out against them. It’s analogous to the climate alarmists in the western world who now have the power to quash anyone who questions ‘manmade global warming’:
https://youtu.be/jRlkYGwBtVI
-snip –
The White House removed the official in charge of the federal program that produces the U.S. government’s definitive reports on climate change, three people familiar with the situation said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/11/09/trump-removes-climate-program-director/
Here’s a free version:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/trump-removes-head-of-climate-science-report-435620
“…definitive reports…” Did they keep the one that just did the regular reports? Regular is good enough for me.
These reports go to eleven. Why can’t you just have ten be the best reports?
Politics can easily divide us with one group opposed against the other. By searching what the bible says about sickness and death we learn about how these will be done away with via Gods Kingdom. (Revelation 21: 4) The bible says at Daniel 2:44 “In the days of those kings the God of the heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever.” From this we all can learn that Gods Kingdom is a kingdom in heaven that will soon put an end to all other governments, all sickness, all death here on earth and will last forever, allowing us to enjoy a life we’ve never known! How I long for that day :)
There are two cities – as Augustine said a thousand years ago – the Earthly city of humanity and the city of God. The one is transformed in the image of the other by beings of light. There is light within a being of light, and they light the whole world. If they do not shine, there is darkness. Now the apocalypse is upon us – the end of times – the great disaster. Even that passes. Then – as all the old stories tell us – there is a revelation given to those with eyes to see. In the nexus between night and day – in the dawn of a new era for the world – a new song cycle is ignited in the moment expanding to embrace eternity and infinity. A shining city takes shape in our imaginations. :)
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/solar-city-maree-faulkner.jpg
You’re getting all poetical now Robert?
Remind us all of the fantastic painter, who’s picture you have posted?
Maree Faulkner – https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1124784/remembering-the-inimitable-maree-faulkner/
“The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by the virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through the millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight is truly desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart.” Joseph Campbell
Where’s Nic?
I am intrigued by discussions about statistical analysis of data leading to decisions regarding our health, well being, and freedom. If the data is reliable and good then surely equally reliable and good analysis would always be helpful in making the correct key policy decisions. But what if the data is suspect, the analysis slightly off key or even hugely discordant, and the policy haphazard, do we speak out and become enemies of the state or do we remain obediently dumb and consensus doomed?
In the UK the evidence is stacked against what the Government has done through one historical error – our national health services and our public health resources have been poorly assessed and funded through policy for many years. Was that funding policy ever based on reliable data, perfect analysis of that reliable data? Was that policy ever intended to protect our health, well being and freedom for the forseeable future or were politicians well warned they were taking big risks?
Surely, only by answering that conundrum can we ever be certain that we are improving the qualities of science in the areas where they need to be improved as an ongoing process of making life better for everybody … but, as it stands we seem ever cursed to take two steps forwards and at least three back because modern science and politics are corrupted by big money interests and the data is pretty hopeless too.
I think this one could be improved:
“The Republicans seem to prefer to ignore science, while the Democrats cherry pick science to further their political agendas.”
I’d say there’s science behind picking energy fuel sources and the advantages and drawbacks of each one. Applied science or engineering is supported by Republicans. Farming is applied science. Versus some faith in organic farming that cannot feed the world.
We can find some extreme Republicans, but they are not pushing or driving politics. One can argue Trump deregulated for good reasons. Plenty of regulations remain in place relating to real pollution. And acceptable risks after looking at the science is getting into the policy area.
Republicans argue the GMST’s small increase. And the impact of X amount of renewables on the decrease in future GMSTs. They are argue the slow rise of sea levels.
The broad perception is they ignore the science.
‘The Republicans often are portrayed as ignoring science, while the Democrats cherry pick science to further their political agendas.’
Does the above lose balance? When it is said they ignore science that can justify the Democrats doing what they do.
First ask yourself if science drives the technology or does technology enable the science to reveal an expanded perception of reality? Just remember, humans value wisdom but technology doesn’t.
PS: It’s time to uninstall that Trump 2020 app and turn on the Biden/Harris COVID-19 tracker that’s already installed on your phone by Apple & Google.
“COVID-19 tracking apps may get a boost from Biden’s task force
National coordination of contact-tracing smartphone applications developed with Apple and Google may be necessary to curb the coronavirus”
https://www.rollcall.com/2020/11/17/covid-19-tracking-apps-may-get-a-boost-from-bidens-task-force/
“…humans value wisdom but technology doesn’t.”
The best I can do is, a wind turbine is not concerned with wisdom. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with that except for in remote locations.
Well that wind turbine isn’t going hurt you and poison or deform your children.
Just one of hundreds of thousands of novel molecules our chemical manufacturing technology dumps into the biosphere every day.
PFAS
Chemist using science (structured thought processes) and physics and precise manufacturing technology gave us Polyfluoroalkyl.
PFAS molecules are made up of a chain of linked carbon and fluorine atoms. Because the carbon-fluorine bond is one of the strongest, these chemicals do not degrade in the environment.
There is a long list of bad stuff linked to PFAS.
Reproductive and developmental toxicity: Laboratory tests associated PFAS exposure with decreased survival of young, disrupted reproductive cycles, and impaired growth of the uterus and ovaries. In addition, a number of large epidemiological studies have related higher maternal exposure to PFCs to lower birth weight.
Nearly every U.S. resident has PFAS in his or her body, with biomonitoring studies finding PFAS in blood, breast milk, umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid, placenta, kidney, liver, testicles and other tissues.
Bon Appetite!
tonyb –
In case you see this, this one’s for you. my brother:
https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1329034619841343494
Here you go as a check on your bogus math for Sweden:
https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1329133636851953665?s=19
Seriously, you should think of how to avoid descendeding into self-parody.
Meditate on it.
My heart sinks when I read headlines like these:
“Oxford University students vote to BAN beef and lamb from the campus canteens menu in order to combat climate change.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8957369/amp/Oxford-University-students-vote-BAN-beef-lamb-campus-canteens.html
Seminar: Reforming Environmental Science
Date: 24 November
Time: 8.30am London / 7.30pm SE Australia (ACT, NSW, VIC, TAS)
The seminar will focus on how to reform the quality of the environmental research that underpins environmental policy in Australia, with particular reference to the Great Barrier Reef, bushfire prevention and management, and the Murray-Darling Basin.
Each of our three speakers will briefly survey the failures in the research in one of these areas, before engaging in a panel discussion of how to reform the quality assurance systems and practices in environmental science.
You can register for the webinar by clicking here https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=14d55913b1&e=d3ab024ae2
Speakers
Dr Peter Ridd
Peter Ridd is a geophysicist with over 100 publications in international journals and books to his name. He worked on the Great Barrier Reef for 35 years and invented and commercialised scientific instrumentation used in marine science, mining and agriculture. He is now most interested in Quality Assurance systems to improve the scientific evidence used for public policy and legislation.
Jo Nova
Jo Nova is an award-winning blogger. She wrote “The Skeptics Handbook” and her blog gets more than half a million readers each year. She has appeared as a regular guest on Sky News and ABC radio. She once hosted a children’s television series, and managed a Science Circus. Jo Nova is a prize-winning graduate in genetic engineering, and formerly an associate lecturer in Science Communication at The Australian National University.
Alan Moran
Description
Alan Moran is an economist and policy adviser on energy and environmental issues. He has authored books on the interplay of environmental issues and economics, chapters on Australian energy in five international compendia, and the energy chapter in the recently released “Keeping Australia Right”. His latest book is “Climate Change: Treaties and Policies in the Trump Era'” published by Connor Court.
The Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) and the UK Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) are jointly hosting this webinar. It will focus on how to reform the quality of the environmental research that underpins environmental policy in Australia, with particular reference to the Great Barrier Reef, bushfire prevention and management, and the Murray-Darling Basin.
Each of our three speakers will briefly survey the failures in the research in one pf these areas, before engaging in a panel discussion of how to reform the quality assurance systems and practices in environmental science.
That discussion will be open-ended but will focus on answers to the following questions:
• Do we need independent audits of individual research projects?
• Which elements of a research project should be audited and by whom?
• How should we manage and fund studies to test the replicability of policy-critical research?
• Should the conduct of publicly-funded research projects be fully transparent to the public?
• Should governments set up independent bodies to regulate QA practices in such research?
• How should we protect such regulators from capture by those who are meant to be regulated?
Attendees will be able to use Zoom’s Q&A feature to submit questions for the Moderator to put to the speakers.
The webinar will run for one hour.
Environmental science is a practical, team based, multidisciplinary field that solves complex problems that have ‘wicked’ dimensions of culture, history, economics and environment. It synergistically – the whole is greater than the parts – integrates physical and biological sciences within a real world context of society. It provides the most flexible and comprehensive approach to designing sustainable futures, assessing and managing environmental risk and environmental planning and management. The alternative is the politics of despair.
Data should be quality assured.. Data from Great Barrier Reef monitoring program is, it is available online and reported on factually. There are three threats to the reef. Cyclones, nutrients from land and larval recruitment of crown of thorns starfish and bleaching. Cyclones will be with us always – and have been far more frequent and severe in northern Australia is past centuries. It is related to persistent La Nina like conditions between the medieval warm and the modern period. Nutrients from land both has a legacy of nutrients leaching from sediments and still to much sediment being delivered to the coast. A slow process of improving land management is in progress but COTS will need to continue to be harvested by hand for the foreseeable future. Coral bleaching happens at high water temperatures – and the connection is obvious even if the recovery, genetic or migration responses are not.
https://www.aims.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-08/mantatow_v15_1152px.jpg
https://www.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/gbr-condition-summary-2019-2020
Science synthesis is another matter – it involves connecting data points and seeing patterns. Science here is self correcting as they say. Peer review is neither here nor there – merely imposing journal publication standards. The real review is from the community of science – and this has taken decades on occasion. It is not suitable as a subject of a contest in a 24 hour news cycle cheered on by partisan enthusiasts. Quality assurance here is an attack on the freedom and integrity of science that curmudgeons dislike. A slippery slope obviously.
Reducing soil loss and reversing soil organic loss is the win/win solution.
Farmers may be way ahead of environmental scientists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehat-C21ivw&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=MaiaGrazing
Wow. Lockdown back down by South Australian government of 2 million people because a single pizza worker lied to contact tracers. Unbelievable:
https://youtu.be/TIVMTzxkvGA
Bleep show. Give the government more power.
Some insightful comments from Peta Credlin with regard to Australian political attitudes to energy and climate change:
https://youtu.be/yyN1fiGaHJY
I am listening to another interview of Abigail Shrier. I don’t recall much discussion about the trans issue here. It seems that the science has just been trampled. When we hear about climate deniers, that’s not half as bad as the situation with the trans subject.
I think what we have is the failures of scientists and doctors, but also the failure of the average person to accept some of what’s going on.
https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/an-interview-with-lisa-littman-who-coined-the-term-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria/
Also the failure of Universities and Colleges. Some blame this all on the activists. We could blame activists for the climate debacle.
I lost interest when you used the term “climate deniers” instead of “climate contrarians”..
My ally:
https://www.womensliberationfront.org/news/hecox-little-amicus-brief-filed
Donald Trump made me support them on this issue.
“WoLF points out that Title IX athletic regulations actually “require differential treatment on the basis of sex in order to assure equal opportunity,” further noting that ‘[t]he Appellees’ argument that sex should be determined by a person’s internal sense of their own identity is antithetical to the reasoning behind single-sex teams.””
And Joe Biden is a fraud. He will fight WoLF on this. Good job.
Not just the greening of the western Arabian peninsula but also the birthplace of civilisation:
https://youtu.be/fRwJIVQuSmM