by Judith Curry
My interview on the Jordan B Peterson podcast is now available.
If you don’t know who Jordan Peterson is, he is quite an interesting character [Wikipedia]. He is a Canadian psychologist and best selling author, media commentator, and his podcast has over 6M subscribers.
Here is a link to the podcast of my interview [link]. The main interview is 1.5 hours; the supplemental 2nd interview is 30 minutes. From my perspective, the 30 minute add on was most interesting part of the interview (I at least had a chance to mention my new book Climate Uncertainty and Risk)
Jordan Peterson is currently quite interested in the climate change topic, he has also done recent interviews with
I haven’t listened to either of these (I prefer reading interviews, rather than listening to podcasts), but I would expect them both to be very good — both have accumulated lot of views, likes and favorable comments on youtube.
Jordan Peterson’s podcast is quite a production, here is some ‘behind the scenes’ info. We agreed on a start time for the interview of 8 am local time; I figured this would give me sufficient time to get my act together. The day before the interview, I received an email saying that the production crew would arrive at 6 am! A little after 6 am, about half dozen people arrived, the first arrival shoveled my front walk way (we had overnite snowfall) so they could bring all the equipment in.
Furniture in the selected room was completely rearranged (they even took down the Xmas ornaments from my potted Norfolk pine tree). Big camera and recording setup. At about 6:45 am, the makeup artist/hair stylist arrived. I figured I could wear big headphones like Joe Rogan, which hides a bad hair day; no such luck – earbuds. I insisted on an extremely small amount of makeup and very limited touching of my face (trying to keep my shingles nerve pain under control). I do have to admit I looked significantly better than usual. Start time was delayed to 8:30, with about 30 minutes of sitting in the interview chair and testing everything.
My dogs had a great time through all of this setup (and the crew was very friendly), but the dogs and Peter were exiled to a bedroom during the actual interview. I have to confess I had not previously listened to a Jordan Peterson podcast, so I was a bit taken aback by his interview style – he talks a lot and encourages his interviewees to interrupt him (interrupting people is not my style, but Peter would disagree).
All in all, a very interesting experience and I think overall a good podcast. It is rapidly accumulating views on youtube, I will be checking closely to see if this one gets shadowbanned by youtube like my previous interview on BizNews, apparently once it reached 500K views.
The comments are pretty entertaining, look at the most recent ones to get a better sampling of the strange ones (rather than looking at the most popular ones).
p.s. I have been really busy, unfortunately little time for blog posts. I have a few interesting guest posts in the pipeline, stay tuned.
Judith – I think this interview captured both your essential position on the issue and the attitude that you bring to the matter – which I respect.
I think Jordan Peterson complemented your perspective and prompted you to bring yours excellently.
I hope that this increases your visibility and shfits more of the conversation into the mode that you champion.
Well played!
Oh Dr Judith Curry, you’re a gadfly among climate hysterics. Thank you for sobering up to reason some of those.
An interview almost as edifying as Tucker Carlson’s discussion of climate economics with Mencius Moldbug
It should make the national news :
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/02/hopes-rise-for-climate-tabloid-revival.html
Glad you liked it. Peterson is wanting to interview you.
I can only encourage not just to focus on CO2. With aviation induced cirrus clouds we have far more reasonable explanation for the NH warming we see since the 1970s. And this knowledge has been around for a while..
IPCC special report:
“The potential effects of contrails on global climate were simulated with a GCM that introduced additional cirrus cover with the same optical properties as natural cirrus in air traffic regions with large fuel consumption (Ponater et al., 1996). The induced temperature change was more than 1 K at the Earth’s surface in Northern mid-latitudes for 5% additional cirrus cloud cover in the main traffic regions.”
NASA:
“This result shows the increased cirrus coverage, attributable to air traffic, could account for nearly all of the warming observed over the United States for nearly 20 years starting in 1975.:”
https://greenhousedefect.com/contrails-a-forcing-to-be-reckoned-with
Christ. Now contrails. Con – trails. Get it? Con – as in “condensed.” As in condensed water. And where does condensed water go? Eventually it goes to ground, then to the ocean. That’s why it’s called the “water cycle.”
The earth is 8,000 miles in diameter – solid and liquid, weighing about 7.7 sextillion tons. It gets its internal heat from decaying radionuclides and a nearby star. yet we are supposed to believe a trace atmospheric gas somehow swamps those galactic-level forces.
The atmosphere is a thin sliver around it, less than 50 miles thick, with half below 3 miles altitude.
In that incredibly thin atmosphere, CO2 is a trace gas – 0.04%. Second, 97% is from nature; only 3% is man-made, and of that 3%, the US accounts for 14%. You do the math: 0.000168 percent of the atmosphere is CO2 from the U.S. and theoretically available for “reduction.” Sheer lunacy.
The earth has been much hotter and much colder at times. Just what IS the “perfect” air temperature? Well, since cold periods have been devastating to human beings and warm periods times of prosperity and plentitude, I’d like to see it a couple of degrees hotter.
Finally we’ve completely debunked the CO2 nonsense; now we’re supposed to take contrails seriously. Give me a break.
This podcast is assured of a warm welcome in Orlando
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/02/hopes-rise-for-climate-tabloid-revival.html
There are other parameters that affect more than contrails.
Adjustments in satellite measurements alone are much larger.
In addition, the atmospheric refraction, as well as the Earth’s axial tilt, are ignored
Judy: I see this as good news. It will be on my must watch list for this evening. I appreciate your comment about JP interrupting speakers. I felt that was definitely the case when he interviewed Richard Lindzen. Still my assessment is that, in general, JP listens carefully and his interruptions are driven by his prior thinking about the topic rather than an agenda per se.
Great interview; I do not trust anything from the IPCC or Mann at all based upon uncertainty and questionable datasets and analysis. I am not always a fan of Dr. Peterson, but he hit it well here.
I have not found the link to your Jordan Peterson Podcast
Alex: I couldn’t find it either. I simply went to YouTube and put both their names in the address and it popped up. The link proffered simply goes to Judy’s general business site and I could find no link on it.
Yikes! Link is fixed
Thanks, I will try that, later, no time now.
As you, I prefer to read rather than listen, it takes less time.
Any chance?
The youtube link is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q2YHGIlUDk
You can download the captions as a transcript as an option under the three horizontal dots.
Congrats Dr. Curry
A well-presented production and good discussion. I’m glad to see you appearing in conversation with Canadian media figures, Dr. Curry (the Rex Murphy interview, for example). We really need to hear more well-informed ‘climate crisis’ skepticism here in Canada. I like Jordan Peterson’s work for the most part and applaud him for doing these interviews but I wish he would interrupt and editorialize a little less during these discussions. I find this can disjoint the flow of conversation. Aside from that, well done!
Judith … I saw the 1.34 hour first interview. But I can’t find the second 30 minute one.
Great job on the first one!
Not sure but it appears that the 2nd 30 min interview is @ dailywire.com. If someone has more specific info would appreciate it.
Thoroughly enjoyed your interview with JP. IMHO, he talks too much at the expense of his guests whom, presumably, he interviews because of their expertise and knowledge. JP, word of advice – talk less, listen more! Dr. Curry your calm and measured style was a delight to listen to. Congrats on your new book.
I listened to the first hour and a half today, It was excellent! It’s gona boost those book sales :-)
My take is that JP talks to test his own understanding of what is being said. It is annoying because he seldom says that what he is doing and he does it too frequently when the issue should be pretty clear to many listeners/viewers. He also uses that time to think of penetrating questions. On the other hand he is listening pretty hard and is pretty accurate in putting stuff into his own words.
I am at the 53 minute mark, as I write this.
Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner and set the playback speed (last line) to 1.50. Otherwise it’s too lengthy / draggy.
JP misinterpreted Judith’s statement that a 30-year period of cooling is possible in this century as meaning that the NEXT 30 years might cool. I want someone on our side to be the one to point this out.
I’m still not seeing a link to the second, 30-minute segment.
JP is Teddy Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena.
I have listened to Judy Curry many times, I have read what she wrote on a regular basis, listening to Jordan Peterson impressions of Curry and his thoughts and opinions was most important for me. The interaction made this the best interview of Judy Curry that I have watched and listened to.
I have not listened to the 30 minute extension yet.
I still have not found a link to the 30 minute extension
I think you have to subscribe to the Daily Wire Plus to access it. They are the ones that set-up the physical interviews https://www.dailywire.com/episode/tbd-239
Just listened to the podcast and its fantastic. Great job Judith. I also want to talk about Daily Wire. All Jordan’s content is available there to members. They are trying to develop an alternate media to the current legacy media and are doing a great job. They are of course devoted to free speech and also entertainment media that are not contaminated by woke ideology.
they rely on memberships to fund their entire growing operation.
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JC reminded me of how much is owed to Steve McIntyre!
Dear Judith,
great interview!
I can see how Petersons style is irritating.. I would not want to discuss with him.. He is smart and good with words, not shy to take the discussions and summarizes snippets leading to his next question.
One big problem is that beside him being better informed than most, he frequently gets it wrong which derails the discussion.
For example you had to reiterate that the ocean cycles influence cloud patterns, when he was (incorrectly) summarizing your last discussion to be about ocean warming and CO2 going into the ocean. Which are also climate concerns, but have little to do with the question at hand..
I am still watching, but there already were a few of those examples.
You keep your cool and try to stay on topic as much as he lets you, I think this is very good!
And to be fair the interview is so good because of Petersons style! Somehow after all he gets you to speak about many different aspects of the debate and your position and knowledge are showing quite clearly!
Dr. Peterson is psychologist and not a climatologist which I think explains his misinterpretations. I do not believe that he was purposely trying to twist her words and explanations. He is trying to provide true open dialog so that we “commoners” can better evaluate the complex and conflicting ‘stories’ being spread. We need much more of this type of discussion !
An excellent interview that can be understood by a broad audience as both you and Dr. Peterson avoided unnecessarily esoteric language in the questions and answers. I have saved the link for sharing.
Got to keep spreading the word about how fake the mainstream climate change narrative is.
Big platforms like this are a great way to inform as many people as possible that none of the mainstream narrative makes sense.
A very enjoyable interview.
I like interviews that follow the 5%/95% rule, where the interviewer speaks 5% or less and the interviewee speaks 95% or more. For the first 1:20 Peterson did pretty well with a few exceptions. Some of those early interruptions were slightly annoying but they allowed Judith to clarify or elaborate on her thoughts and overall they added to the product.
After 1:20 Peterson seemed to be infatuated by his command of multi syllabic words and that took away time from what Judith could have shared, particularly the issue of harming growth prospects for the third world with green initiatives.
Funny how those who are purportedly most concerned about the poor at home have no compunctions about sticking it to poor in other countries. Out of sight, out of mind, apparently. Or maybe they don’t represent a voting bloc and are of no use for the Democrats to maintain political power.
Peterson says himself that he has a lot of flaws. He was thrust into this role just a short while ago, and with his diazepam-fueled adventure, it’s amazing that he made a comeback at all. I heard him say that at some point he would say the wrong thing and his whole construct would come crashing down – and given the enmity he has from the Left, you can bet that they are carefully parsing every word for just that opportunity.
I signed up for his new anti-globalist consortium. I hope it does well; if we don’t counter these fascist bastards, we are lost. The planet and humanity itself are lost.
“After 1:20 Peterson seemed to be infatuated….” says CKid, I took a different message from JP at this point. He pressed the incomprehensibility argument of alarmists “solutions”, concluding that at best it is contradictory — or worse, deliberate nihilism. I’m with him, here. JP appears to be calculating a counter-strike effort against irrationalism among the saintly eco-hysterics. A point he emphasised is cheap virtue armouring amounting to piffle. Only it is much worse as Judith agreed: she chimed in with approving, calling it eco-colonialism and development apartheid or simply just evil. We’re witnessing a re-moralisation of the debate — the High Ground of “Saving The Earth” is not easy to displace and course correct, but I think that’s really what’s going on in this later segment. The creation and articulation of a counter-moral agenda. THIS IS GREAT NEWS to me. Long overdue.
Recommend listening to Youtube at 1.75-2x speed to save time. Stopped listening at 59 minutes when Peterson invokes Godwin’s Law.
I have heard Curry make these arguments about uncertainty for a long time. Even if one accepts the premise that the human contribution to global warming is less than 100%, it only means that the date for fully decarbonizing is not 2050 but maybe 2060 or a bit later. The arguments fundamentally don’t change the pathway that needs to be taken, which is to protect what rainforests we have left and to move from fossil fuel energy sources which are depleting rapidly and take increasingly more capital to find and develop. And if Curry is wrong about the uncertainty then the world will have lost trillions of dollars in misallocated capital, like building cities in flood plains and along coast lines. And misallocated capital has more dire effect on developing countries which rely upon that investment for their population’s well-being.
Curry also has a fallacy that economic development in the poorer parts of the world needs to look the same as development in Europe and the US. And that is just crazily myopic because it doesn’t account for innovation. For example, there is absolutely no way that Africa is going to have the same type of electrical grid like in the US where the government in the 1930s strung power lines to farmers in rural electrification. The cost would be prohibitive compared to the alternative which is distributed energy micro-grids comprised of solar and battery back-up with perhaps a diesel/gasoline generator for critical needs. Trying to replicate the US electrical system would only result in stranded capital in obsolete fossil fuel equipment as low cost renewables are developed. Back in the 1990s during Kyoto, there were global warming skeptics making fun of putting solar panels on houses, but if you go to Africa today they are everywhere powering lights for school kids to read and cell phones which are ubiquitous.
As to the point that models run hotter, the atmospheric scientists that I’ve spoken with at the University of Washington (who know Curry quite well by the way) say that the Arctic is changing much faster than anyone anticipated, which always seems to be left out of her standard talking points.
I would say that the underlying assumption for Jeff is that global warming is a bad thing. That’s not actually an obvious conclusion.
The only undisputed negative is rising sea level. But that’s been happening for thousands of years. We will simply have to adapt. It is also true that in many parts of the Northern hemisphere relative sea level is falling because the land is rising in the rebound from the ice age.
Weather is an area where there is a growing literature that shows no strong evidence either way according to the IPCC. Generally as the planet warms, the pole to equator temperature gradient will decrease quite a bit. This gradient is what drives our weather at mid latitudes. Lower gradients should lead to less severe weather and that is happening for example with US tornadoes. Similarly for hurricanes there is only at worst a weak signal. But the same argument in the vertical direction shows that the gradient has not changed much because the “tropical hot spot” seems to be missing despite the simplified “theory” claiming it should develop.
Then there is global greening which is in full swing. Ecosystem productivity will continue to increase as CO2 increases. Drought tolerance of plants also will increase. Northern areas in Canada for example will get longer growing seasons, etc. This looks like mostly a positive picture to me.
The case for decarbonization is generally quite weak and mostly based on activist scientists like James Hanson whose prognostications have proven to be badly wrong. And its based on a media/academia fueled panic that is emotional and not fact based.
I won’t go into the solar panel / battery thing. This avenue is not really scalable globally because of resource limitations. Without pumped storage all these intermittent sources of power are not really viable.
Right on the money. The benefits of the minimal increase in atmospheric CO2 is well documented. Why anyone would want to deprive the world of a plant food that is used to produce 100% of the oxygen that keeps animals – like, say, humans – alive, as well as benefitting plants grown for food is beyond me.
Dpy6629 wrote:
The only undisputed negative is rising sea level. But that’s been happening for thousands of years. We will simply have to adapt. It is also true that in many parts of the Northern hemisphere relative sea level is falling because the land is rising in the rebound from the ice age.
I dispute that sea level is currently rising.
About Sea Level Rise:
A rising sea level would increase the Inertia of the Earth Crust.
More Land Ice is near the spin axis of the rotating earth crust while much more ocean is near the equator where sea level rise would significantly increase the inertia of the spinning earth crust.
Conservation of Momentum would slow the Rotation Rate of the Earth Crust. The Atomic Clocks were put in place to measure Time Extremely Accurately, in 1972. More Leap Seconds would need to be added more frequently, but Less Leap Seconds have been added to the time every decade since 1972. The last leap second was added in 2016 and none expected to be added.
This is valid Proof that Sea Level is Lower Now than it was in 1972!
Sea Level has Fallen for Fifty Years, yet they say it has risen and the rise rate is accelerating.
If sea level Ever Rises, Added Leap Seconds will be an Immediate Indicator.
Herman, I don’t believe your argument is valid. We can measure sea level and have very accurate tide gauge records going back several hundred years. We also know whether the coastline is rising or falling from satellite data.
You need to think about that a bit. The earth is of more or less fixed volume, since neither solid nor liquid compress significantly. We know that the earth’s crust is just that – a thin crust only a few miles thick on an 8000 mile diameter, mostly liquid mantle, and the core I believe is thought to be solid. We also know that thin crust rises and falls with tectonic action, as well as the process of erosion.
So tell me – what does the “ocean rising” really mean? Does that mean it’s because of melting, or are there too many variables to tell? If it really is rising, in reference to what – a moving crust? Maybe that (floating crust) is dropping or a tectonic plate is dropping. Maybe an ocean plate is rising. Knute-the-polar-bear seems to be doing just fine, and in fact thriving.
Maybe there’s no way to know; maybe it doesn’t matter; or my favorite: maybe these people just don’t know what they are talking about ….
Jeff Berner wrote:
the atmospheric scientists that I’ve spoken with at the University of Washington (who know Curry quite well by the way) say that the Arctic is changing much faster than anyone anticipated
There were political decisions made decades ago, that natural climate change was too chaotic to understand and also too insignificant to matter much. They built a static climate model and displayed it as a static energy balance that would not change unless man-made emissions changed. When the Arctic naturally changed more than their guesses, they were delighted that they could scare people more.
They have chosen to not study natural causes of climate change, past present or future, therefore they can never be expected to make any kind of valid forecasts of future climate change.
On the other hand, easy studies of history and ice core records give a more accurate forecast for the future, what has happened, will happen again, in the future, due to the same causes. Increasing CO2, by emissions or any cause, will only improve the growth of green plants, trees, the food we eat, things like that which all have been proven. More CO2 has and will improve the efficiency of how green plants use water.
The green alarmism with the obscene subsidies and tax credits have made our elite leaders extremely rich and they will fight anyone who attempts to study natural climate change. Every time there is a weather extreme, the price of fossil fuel, natural gas, makes many of the elites richer over a few days than during the rest of the year.
Proper understanding of natural climate change would destroy this green gravy train.
@Herman A (Alex) Pope. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to convince you to change your view, but I would remind you that James Hansen wrote a paper in Science in 1981 that was very accurate in terms of future physical observations.
Here is the paper’s summary:
“Summary. The global temperature rose by 0.20C between the middle 1960’s and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4°C in the past century. This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980’s. Potential effects on
climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.”
Hansen is correct here in both the conclusions that global warming temperatures will exceed natural variability by 2000 and in the loss of polar ice cover. The fact that Hansen was able to make this claim in 1981 when there was little empirical evidence that polar ice was decreasing undercuts your entire argument.
Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,
J. Hansen, D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff P. Lee, D. Rind, G. Russell, Science, 28 August 1981, Volume 213, Number 451
Link here: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html
*Dr* Curry to you…
And the Models are running too hot.
Jeff,
There are several papers that note that just about everywhere in the world has had claims to be warming far faster than average. One has to deep dive into original measurements and metadata to unstick silly claims. While the Arctic might be warming faster than elsewhere, it is also true that measurements there are harder than usual. There is a lot of extrapolation of actual temperature measurements Cowtan & Way style and more difficulty with polar satellite coverage and coping with ice properties. Uncertainty is high at the Poles. Uncertainty is important, as Judith stresses. There is no shortage of authors disregarding it or cherry picking the alarmist end of the uncertainty range.
Geoff S
Jeff: “And if Curry is wrong about the uncertainty then the world will have lost trillions of dollars in misallocated capital, like building cities in flood plains and along coast lines. And misallocated capital has more dire effect on developing countries which rely upon that investment for their population’s well-being.”
But if Curry is right, we are pouring billions upon billions down the drain already on foolish development of luxury fuels and processes. The Dutch show that a few meters (that’s more than 500-1000 years of ocean rise at the current rate) of water level increase are completely tolerable. So, there will be almost ZERO misallocated capital if Curry is wrong.
And, of course, Curry is right.
I would like to address a subject a little off topic, because it is something I know a lot about, but is never discussed, as far as I can tell. The subject is petroleum refining as it relates to the retreat from fossil fuels.
Most people seem to think it’s a simple matter. As we transition to EV’s, gasoline demand goes down and refiners dial down production. As we begin to transition into airplanes on renewable fuels or electricity, kerosene demand falls and refiners dial that down to meet demand. As electric utilities shift more and more to renewable sources, demand for fuel oil and diesel goes down and refiners adjust and shrink, eventually to zero as they produce that last gallon.
It simply does not work that way.
The reality is that crisis in the refining sector comes pretty quickly when demand is no longer in balance with refinery capabilities. A super-brief explanation: When a refiner buys a crude oil, it comes with an assay, describing the percentages of the basic products it contains, that will become various fuels, asphalt, and petrochemicals. These are fixed, natural properties. The most sophisticated refineries can adjust crude processing a little and buy crudes with assays that yield more or less of each product, based on demand and value. But they can only “twist the dials” so much before they can no longer do the impossible with those natural molecules. They might achieve a 10% shift by extreme and expensive reprocessing, but that’s it.
It only takes a small disruption in product balance to put a refinery economically underwater, at which time the losses build up rapidly. Then you have no refinery in that market anymore, and whatever result that produces. Many would mindlessly cheer that result and declare victory.
But a physical problem will arrive with the economic problem. If you want only one product (say, jet fuel), you have to process a barrel of crude anyway, and all those other products continue to come out of the crude tower, whether anyone wants them or not. Physically, this imbalance soon becomes an impossible situation, as tanks get full after a few days of insufficient demand. Let’s say raw gasoline comes out of crude oil at about 30% in a 300,000 barrel a day refinery. So 100,000 barrels a day of raw gasoline, unrefined because there is no reason to refine it with nothing but EV’s out there, comes streaming out daily. How long can that last? A day or two? Where would it go? There is no alternative use for gasoline, and CO2 activists like it that way. Of course, what happens is the entire refinery shuts down very quickly, before the tanks of this volatile material overflow. Exporting it becomes a huge problem, because there are now a billion EV’s in the world, and all refiners now have the same problem: a valueless byproduct. Ditto for diesel. Ditto for kerosene. Ditto for utility fuel. But not all in concert. Significant reduced demand for any of these at any point in time is a death sentence for refiners. For awhile, they would likely be able to pay people to take their excesses, mostly to third world countries starving for cheap fuel, wanting to get a leg up economically, and seeing climate change as not their problem. If you cannot combust those molecules, you cannot do anything with them. Put it back in the ground? Let it evaporate? Send it to the sun? Processing of ANY crude oil has to stop once demand for one product falls below a certain point.
Greta would gleefully announce, “Mission Accomplished!” Really? And what about petrochemicals? Everyone focuses on fuels as the bad boys when they talk about petroleum. But hundreds of petrochemicals, also (and only) produced from petroleum, give us virtually every product, food, and raw materials used in the manufacture of billions of the end products we call The Modern World. Without petrochemicals, lifestyles basically go back to the 19th century. Can some sort of biology come to the rescue, like paper plates and reusable water bottles? This is the world economy we’re talking about, not just consumer conveniences.
All this will come to a head when/if the first target, gasoline, starts to see a significantly reduced demand due to EV’s. Governments, showcasing EV adoption as evidence of their immediate efforts to keep climate change at bay, are rushing headlong with all sorts of tax breaks, charging stations, roof top solar charging, batteries, and every other form of research and incentive they can think of. Auto and truck manufacturers are obliging, turning a whole industry in a different direction. We have to believe EV’s will proliferate. No one cares about the fate of the petroleum industry, that has given us everything we enjoy today. Let those evil oil big wigs who ruined our world pay for their sins! Well, it is all of us who are about to pay when, like the supply chain issues we recently experienced, needed petroleum becomes visibly in short supply.
As a final point, this country is remarkable in its sensitivity to gasoline prices. When electricity costs $2 per KWH, and gasoline costs $.10 a gallon as a distressed by-product, how attractive are good old internal combustion engines going to look? What do we do when our military demands to retain the energy density, reliability and resupply assurance of petroleum fuels? Commercial aviation? Aeronautical engineers have analyzed electric airliners and have said basic physics precent them from flying very far on anything but kerosene jet fuel. What happens when jet fuel, if you can get it, costs $500 a gallon? You think I’m exaggerating? The embedded fixed costs of the industry are the largest on the planet for any industry. Add to that the cost of disposing of unwanted petroleum products. Whatever form refining survives in, it will have to pay back those costs or disappear. Government will suddenly have to figure out how to deal with the inevitable flow of excess products as the imbalance becomes critical. They can’t fix that by taxes or laws.
Super discussion. I always notice the Left leads with their heart; science be damned; the Right leads with science but often doesn’t understand that the average public-schooled American has no idea of anything except their “feelings.”
Brian
Thanks for your perspectives. I suspect there will be a lot of unintended consequences that are going to provide a painful wake-up call. Things just aren’t that simple….even though many think they are.
I am always heartened by responses that get to the nitty gritty of policy enforcement reality rather than the irresponsible hype that surrounds decision making processes courtesy of our box ticking media outlets in this age of consensus everything but detail deficient.
Thank you, Brian, for providing some flesh to an issue I have been unable to get some feedback on from ‘responsible sources’. The trouble with NetZero is that it is just so plain glib.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. ”
H. L. Mencken
Hence, Net Zero.
Brian … I’m sure you’re aware that the last large refinery built in the USA was over 45 years ago. Supply has been kept up through tweaking existing facilities, less demand in certain sectors, and the building of smaller facilities, less than 50,000 bpd (?). The small facilities fall below several regulatory thresholds, which has been a (the) significant impediment to building a new large facility. The silver lining to the regulatory cloud has been that the number of smaller facilities could grow and serve regional needs. And, demonstrate new ‘cleaner’ technology and methods, which may be adaptable to larger facilities. William Prentice, of Meridian Energy Group, is quite the character:
> When asked whether the state of North Dakota has given the Davis Refinery any support over the past decade, like the recent $350M given to Marathon Oil to enhance ethanol at their Dickinson, ND, refinery, Prentice became quite blunt and apologetic at the same time.
> “I apologize to the state of North Dakota and my shareholders that I do not know how to do that. I do not know how to seek government aid to built a pure free market facility for a development stage company who wants to be an agent of change in this business,” Prentice said. “I think the market should be the basis for what we are trying to do, and it’s not our policy to ask for anything from the government.”
I hope he’s successful!!!
https://www.thecrudelife.com/2022/06/23/meridian-energy-ceo-says-were-currently-building-refineries-in-the-us/
“It simply does not work that way.” Why not?
Sixty years ago I was taught that refineries produced gasoline by “cracking” heavier fractions with hydrogen. Want to discontinue gasoline? Stop cracking.
I am a dinosaur, and this bit of knowledge may no longer be true. Are you sure your knowledge is up to date?
George, if you were a bit more curious you could do a bit of research and learn that jet and diesel fuel are also produced by the cracking process. The cracking process can be fine tuned a bit, but there will always be lots of products made in addition to jet fuel.
Excellent Brian! But you failed to mention that once petroleum and all its products are not available how are they going to build their EV’s?
There is absolutely no way solar and wind will be able to power the mining of raw materials from the earth, transport them to a processing plant that has to convert those raw materials into steel, or aluminum, or – wait a minute… what about plastics, and all the super light materials that currently come from petroleum? – and – wait a minute… what about rubber? Plant more rubber trees? – and the manufacturing facilities where the EV’s are put together!? Oh, and highways? Where is the concrete and asphalt going to come from. Oh, not to mention batteries!
I read an article several months ago where some scientist/mathematician figured out if we put solar on every square mile of desert/prairie/farm/backyard etc., and had the batteries to store the power it wouldn’t be enough to power all the above mentioned requirements. Wind? hahahahaha oh excuse me. Same thing applies to them.
Now, once they have all that figured out (year 2500?) How about food production, clothing, buildings, homes (forests have been cleared for solar and wind), TV’s, cooking utensils, heat for cooking (remember all that power will be needed to build and power the EV’s who will have nowhere to go because , well, roads?), water (we’ll have to drill for it or transport it and then, oh shit, now we have to pump it into homes? We’ll set up a bucket brigade!), and the list goes on and on.
I am not against solar. I’m an RVer and I use it everyday. Wind power? I hate them. They are disgustingly ugly and dangerous to wildlife – birds and bats. If I could I would power up my solar powered chain saw and cut everyone one of them, that is on public land, down!
I am all for nuclear. Their safety record far exceeds that of any other source of power. We just have to educate (and don’t get me going on that) the public that our moronic leadership in Congress and the Hill are feeding them lies about nuclear power.
End of rant.
I’m a forester (for 50+ years now) and when I went to college we were taught everything about the environment and how it was all tied together to work as nature intended. Then they started all the specialties and specialists told us how to grow trees (don’t listen to those other specialists, my specialty is more important) and that is why California is burning up! Yeah!! I also took computer science and learned about algorithms and how complicated it was to grow a forest on a computer. I have only an inkling of the complexity of climate modeling but I also know how easy it is for programmers to model whatever outcome money can buy. I also took and taught statistics and that opened up a whole new world of understanding for me and misunderstanding for those who have no f@$#&*g idea of what they are talking about.
By the way Dr Curry, I’ve been following you for many years and you did not disappoint me or many others. Thank you for your fabulous input.
JC: Here’s a title for an article you (or someone here) should write: The Engineering of Consensus.
Jordan Peterson is quite good at summarizing what he hears from in the podcast interview, but I think he expects to be corrected on nuanced points such as Judy Curry did on occasion in this podcast. The podcast covered a lot of ground, but I thought Judy’s introductory remarks on her going from hero with the paper on increased frequency of the Category 4 and 5 hurricanes to villain after taking a stand on climategate was both forthcoming and informative. I remember that paper and that I could not find flaws in the methodology for the data used for the period covered. You had to be there to truly appreciate the how the mood changed on these two events.
Excellent review of the AJW hoax and scare tactics. Freeman Dyson was not alone in his belief that, “environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion,” and that scientists must rediscover how real science is done.
“Carbon dioxide levels have risen inexorably since the 1700s. Yet despite this, climate sensitive indicators of human and environmental wellbeing that carbon dioxide affects directly, such as crop yields, food production, prevalence of hunger, access to cleaner water and biological productivity, and those that it affects indirectly, such as living standards and life expectancies, have improved virtually everywhere. In most areas they have never been higher, nor do they show any sustained signs of reversing.” ~Freeman Dyson
I’m a very fast reader, and written text has far fewer superfluous insertions than podcasts, so I rarely watch them. But I watched enough of this to appreciate it and echo comments on Peterson’s interventions. He’s one of the good guys though, I appreciate much of what he’s done..
Hi Dr. Curry, I listened to your talk with Jordan Peterson and at the end when you were talking about the impact of climate hysteria on children it made me think of all the ways kids are indoctrinated in this craziness beyond the public school classroom. Museums seem to be utterly sold out to the climate dogma as well as science magazines aimed at children such as National Geographic for children. Somehow this needs to be debunked in a way that can reach children! Maybe in your blog you could comment on how to cultivate healthy skepticism about the “scientific consensus” when talking to our own children, or how a (properly informed) teacher could handle this in a public school setting. Thanks for all you do and God bless you.
Hi Bob,
( Warning…. Put your irony meter on high alert !! )
Here’s an interesting video with Mehdi Hasan interviewing Richard Dawkins.
Dawkins on religion: Is religion good or evil? | Head to Head
Note carefully the exchange that starts at 19:40 to 22:00 exploring Dawkins comment that being raised Catholic is a worse form of abuse than sexual abuse (of children)
Dawkins on historical Catholic Hellfire teaching
https://youtu.be/U0Xn60Zw03A
Richard Dawkins, although not his field of Biology, nevertheless supports “The Science” : (
He even suggested New Zealand offer refuge to Top Scientists seeking to escape the ignorance of Brexiteers in UK, and escaping Climate Denial in US (with election of Trump)
The two largest nations in the English-speaking world have just suffered catastrophes at the hands of voters—in both cases the uneducated, anti-intellectual portion of voters. Science in both countries will be hit extremely hard.
Snip
There are top scientists in America and Britain—talented, creative people, desperate to escape the redneck bigotry of their home countries
Snip
Yes, dear New Zealand, I know it’s an unrealistic, surreal pipe dream. But on the day after U.S. election day, in the year of Brexit, the distinction between the surreal and the awfulness of the real seems to merge in a bad trip from which a pipe dream is the only refuge
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/richard-dawkins-and-other-prominent-scientists-react-to-trump-rsquo-s-win/
And from Dawkins website
“It’s also a place where people are welcome to ask questions about climate change but please note we will not provide a platform for anthropogenic climate change denial.”
Steve McIntyre provided an hilarious commentary on the very similar statements by Sir David King and Lovelock that Fred Singer slightly conflated in Swindle
David King: Hot Girls and Cold Continents
https://climateaudit.org/2008/07/22/david-king-hot-girls-and-cold-continents/
King’s complaint pertained to a statement by Fred Singer at the end of Swindle:
“There will still be people who believe that this is the end of the world – particularly when you have, for example, the chief scientist of the UK telling people that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the earth will be the Antarctic. And humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic. I mean this is hilarious. It would be hilarious actually if it weren’t so sad
You mean Dawkins the militant atheist wants to substitute the “The Science” clerisy for the Mideval church clerisy? My how the hypocracy of the great and the good keeps growing.
Dawkins is completely blind to his own religiosity.
The result of “The Science”. advocates new Hellfire dogma are Greta Thunberg et al
The following article by none other than Boris Johnson (in 2006) is actually quite close to truth and a useful commentary, framing the issue in religious terms. (Religion abhors a vacuum. I think Jordan Peterson would agree)
We’ve lost our fear of hellfire, but put climate change in its place By Boris Johnson (2006)
“Billions will die,” says Lovelock, who tells us that he is not normally a gloomy type. Human civilisation will be reduced to a “broken rabble ruled by brutal warlords”, and the plague-ridden remainder of the species will flee the cracked and broken earth to the Arctic, the last temperate spot, where a few breeding couples will survive
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3622794/Weve-lost-our-fear-of-hellfire-but-put-climate-change-in-its-place.html
Which begs the question. Who is preaching Hellfire now?? The answer of course is the mainstream ( I.E Alarmist) Science community.. “The Science” says so : (
Judith,
You have impressive recall of numerous events and topics that you discuss fluently in detail without notes. Well done.
You seem in control on camera of the postherpetic neuralgia, which is a horrible, painful affliction. Now, if you can reduce the “You know” fillers, so much the better.
There was not much in your words that a reasonable viewer could find objectionable. Realistic, matter-of-fact concentration on several contentious issues should bring understanding rather than more argument. Most people, sadly, have not thought much about uncertainty. Let us hope that more people are induced to understand it better. Geoff S
This comment is not about the Florida Everglades even though the papers I’ve just read are. This comment is about Judith’s discussion of natural variability and centennial changes in our climate.
I’ve been staying in the Florida panhandle since January 1st and, prompted by the discussion of SLR above, I wondered what the literature said about subsidence in the panhandle. Instead of that, the first study coming up was about changes in the Everglades over the Holocene. One of the studies found evidence of droughts in the region of 2-4 centuries. This is the same length I have found elsewhere around the globe in other studies. In today’s hysteria these lengthy droughts would be proof positive of AGW.
I also found a study on the centennial variability in the Atlantic Thermohaline, affecting a variety of ecological conditions in this region.
My little 20 minutes investigation into the literature of changes in climate and the regional environment just reminded me , once again, how insignificant we are compared to the very long process of changing dynamics that have proceeded us for millennia.
Now back to my original search about subsidence in the panhandle.
I am also in the FL panhandle. It will sink – from the many, many buildings being built. We have been coming here 9 years and have seen the explosive growth.
Ever notice that when the do archaeological “digs,” they always have to “dig?”
That’s because over decades and centuries, buildings sink. That’s what they do. I was digging a drainage ditch at an old homesite many years ago and ran across a roughly cubical cut stone about 6″ underground. The old guy who was helping me thought about it a minute and said, “My God, there was an old outbuilding there when I was a boy; that is one of the foundation stones.” Completely submerged in only a few decades.
You typed 6″ (six inches). Is that what you meant?
I said six inches. I meant six inches. Out in the country, outbuildings are often built on roughly cubical or oblong cut stones that simply sit on the ground surface. Over this old man’s lifetime the stone had sunk more than a foot – from sitting on the surface to 6″ underground.
bigterguy
About the same time for me as well. Incredible growth. Every year just more development. We stay in PCB. In a couple of decades no rural land between here and Destin. Going to Hilton Head Friday. Then back to snow.
CKid, we love the panhandle. That’s why we bought a condo in Miramar Beach.
But I see the panhandle going much like the Eastern shore of Mobile Bay. When I first went there in the 1970’s it was partly rural and had some very nice little towns like Fairhope and Malbis. Malbis was a sleepy little town with a beautiful Greek church. Now, it’s like one big shopping mall.
Be careful, the Thought Police (Biden Police) are watching you. Your phone is probably tapped. George Orwell was right. The Chinese weather balloon looks an awful lot like the unidentified flying saucers we have been hearing about for the past few years.
Loved the interview. I’ve always regarded the blinkered “human-caused-climate-change-disaster” people as pursuing a phantom goal. Such a goal is unachievable and the claim itself is non-falsifiable.
For those who are interested, it might be enlightening to read Anthony Pratkanis’s short article “How to Sell a Pseudoscience.” In it, he outlines the 9 steps one can take to get people to believe in film-flam. It’s short, enlightening and entertaining IMO.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1995/07/22165104/p21.pdf
Was pleasantly surprised with the alert that you were on JBP. I enjoyed your interview but the format is not as informative as your blog. Since JBP has joined up with the Daily Wire the production values have been boosted. I find JBPs interview style a bit difficult but he does it in order to be precise. No doubt you will be doing another with JBP when your book is out and needs promoting.
Enjoyed the interview. Well done in all respects. Miss your presence at GaTech. Ron
Hello Ron! Send me an email curry.judith at yahoo.com, would be good to catch up
I have watched Your discussion with Jordan Peterson and I have two questions ; Do You trust the temperature data we are being fed now ? Why do You believe the greening of the Earth is not overwhelmingly caused by Green life’s adaptation of less pores on the leaves being necessary to absorb higher levels of CO2?
I enjoyed your discussion with Dr Jordan Peterson. The more I listen to the “climate denier” experts, the more I hear a very common theme of how presumptuous it is of mankind to think that anything we have the ability to do would acutely affect the global climate in either a negative or positive way. When I say acutely, I mean within the last 3 centuries. We have a hard enough time remembering what happened within this time frame that any model we would come up with would most assuredly be flawed to say the least. I implore you to continue to beat your drum repeatedly and as loudly as you possibly can. Maybe cooler heads will prevail in the near future. Thank you for your work!
Re Taylor Stevens comment on nature versus human influence on climate. Here’s one illustration: the rate of annual change in CO2 levels, as seen in the Keeling Curve, are affected not by industrialization’s periodic crises, but by ENSO, which redistributes warmer waters and cooler waters northward and southward from the equator, depending on the phase of the PDO and it’s inherent intensity.
Very good point on the uncertainty of the Sun and various aspects of the sun’s heat, radiation , cosmic rays and other factors of the sun that are not yet understood.
Very good point on the ICPA 6 admintting in chapter 2 (?) that they dont have an understanding of the suns role. though after admitting the lack of understanding – I get the impression that the IPCA is basically stating that we should ignore the fact that we dont understand the sun
I thought Peterson was quite impressive with his command of the subject. I haven’t heard a single interviewer on this topic who was more knowledgeable. I also was highly impressed with the production quality. Very impressive podcast.
Your command of the facts and topic in general was top notch, Judith. It was an excellent primer on the global warming … may I call it a scam? Thanks.
I’m only a little over halfway through the video so maybe you’ll address this but the one thing I wish you or he would do is call the entire climate scam a crime. It is an epic crime and the most successful political scam of my lifetime. The response to Covid was equally nefarious but it only had a two-year half-life. The climate scam goes on and on and on.
I couldn’t find a recent “science” thread, but the West Antarctic gets a mention above. Hence this seems like the most appropriate place to share this news:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2023/02/new-record-antarctic-sea-ice-minimum-extent/
According to the Alfred Wegener Institute:
“On 8 February 2023, at 2.20 million square kilometres, the Antarctic sea ice extent had already dropped below the previous record minimum from 2022 (2.27 million square kilometres on 24 February 2022). Since the sea ice melting in the Antarctic will most likely continue in the second half of the month, we can’t say yet when the record low will be reached or how much more sea ice will melt between now and then,”
What would Jordan make of that, do you suppose?
What should anyone make of that? This so called record low happens less than 10 years after the so called record high in Antarctica sea ice. If that doesn’t qualify for natural variability, I don’t know what does.
Personally I think it’s insane to conclude anything when we have such limited reliable data about how these last few decades or even last few centuries compare to the entire Holocene. If we have reliable data from the Roman Warm Period and Medieval Warm Period and the recent low levels of sea ice beat those amounts, then we have something. But we don’t. So, we have nothing.
Mornin’ Kid (UTC),
“Natural variability” or not it still counts as “scientific news”, in my book at least.
Is it possible to embed images in comments here yet? If so, we do have 2023:
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/csm_20230122_Polarstern_in_ice-freeBellingshausenSea_DanielaRoehnert_d506eb0672.jpg
It seems not!
Sadly you’ll have to click a link for a visual comparison with 1898:
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Belgica_dans_la_glace.jpg
Hi Jim
I’m teasing you a little. I know of your interest in the polar regions.
You have provided 2 pictures without any other documentation. How do we know that the 1898 pic wasn’t taken in Austral winter at very high latitude and the other picture taken in austral summer at lower latitude near tip of Antarctica Peninsula? We don’t. Those pictures don’t necessarily prove what you might think they do. There is plenty of literature that discusses variability and the winds and oceanic dynamics are cited as the major influences.
I’m still interested in knowing how the sea ice was during the MWP and RWP. There is some research that the sea ice was reduced. However, there are limitations on proxy records and we will never know PRECISELY how those conditions compare to the so called “record” low this year. My gut feeling is that next year conditions will change and recover. Recent Research has shown that the Ice Shelves in the Amundsen Sea have recovered after declining for years. The sea ice probably will be following suit soon.
A couple of papers found evidence that when sea ice diminished during the Holocene it was when the Northern Hemisphere was cooling. I’m not sure if I should go out to buy some more long underwear.
Proving anything is unprecedented is nearly impossible.
Hello again Kid,
Vast amounts of relevant information, including additional images, are available to interested readers via the link I helpfully provided in my initial comment. To summarise for those with flat batteries in their mice:
1) The research vessel Polarstern is currently cruising around a virtually ice free Bellingshausen Sea.
2) The “steam yacht” Belgica became trapped in ice near the northern boundary of the Bellingshausen Sea on February 28th 1898.
Gotta link to the “recent research” you mention?
Hi Jim
Even NSIDC says Natural Variability is dominant in Antarctica Sea Ice.
“ Antarctica, in contrast, is surrounded by the vast Southern Ocean. Antarctic sea ice extent is likely driven primarily by natural variability of the Southern Ocean.”
https://nsidc.org/learn/ask-scientist/how-does-antarctic-sea-ice-differ-arctic-sea-ice
The literature on the primary drivers of sea ice variability in Antarctica is all over the board. SAM, ENSO, IPO, Ozone, wind, precipitation, ocean stratification, Thermohaline, SO, sea salt concentration, water mass transportation, AMOC, etc etc.
These papers had their hypothesis on 2016 “record” low sea ice only 2 years after the “record” high sea ice. At least you waited 9 years after the record high to suggest it proves anything. The authors found natural variability.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL074319
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL074691
Other papers found a bipolar, see saw NH cooling relationship affecting sea ice during the Holocene.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep08909
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325478792_Beyond_the_bipolar_seesaw_Toward_a_process_understanding_of_interhemispheric_coupling
The author who suggested that the Thwaites/Pine Island Glacier complex is inherently unstable here provides some evidence that there might not have been ANY sea ice in the 1500s.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016RG000545
Afternoon Kid (UTC),
Thanks for those links.
Gotta link to where I “suggest it proves anything”?
To the best of my admittedly ageing memory I merely reported on the Antarctic numbers and AWI’s comments on them.
Admittedly I did also pose the so far unanswered question:
“What would Jordan make of that, do you suppose?”
Or is Jordan just “anyone” in your opinion?
“This intense melting could be due to unusually high air temperatures to the west and east of the Antarctic Peninsula, which were ca. 1.5 °C above the long-term average”
And then the graphic of January 2023 indicating almost all of the Antarctic coast experiencing lower than average temperature.
Confirmation bias does this.
Dynamics could explain this, but we are psychologically anchored to temperature, so few can even consider alternatives.
Good morning Eddie (UTC),
I’m pleased to discover that your batteries are evidently not flat!
As mentioned in their press release, the AWI specifically referred to the “unusually high air temperatures to the west and east of the Antarctic Peninsula”
“As mentioned in their press release, the AWI specifically referred to the “unusually high air temperatures to the west and east of the Antarctic Peninsula”
Yes, while some 90% of the Antarctic coast experienced lower than normal temperatures.
To be fair to the article, the following sentences -were- about the dynamics driving this event.
But this is kind of ‘burying the lead’.
Confirmation bias led to temperature being mentioned first.
And, confirmation bias led to a small area of positive temperature anomaly being mentioned instead of the much larger area of negative anomaly.
Jim
Most likely being a layman in these issues Jordan has little idea of the significance of the numbers. Even those who are most well versed in the numbers, that is the climate scientists, probably aren’t swayed by one year. A year does not a trend make. For those scientists who have researched the variability over the Holocene probably say “Oh, yea? Who cares.”
This specific topic, just like every other topic in climate science, is rife with uncertainties and knowledge gaps. The authors of all these papers freely admit such. They, more than any other groups, know the difficulty in making bold statements about conclusions. It’s the media, politicians and activists who project an absolutism that is not warranted based on the evidence.
As humans we inherently want to believe we know more than is possible to know. There are some things that are and will forever be unknowable.
In other (slightly stale!) news I once interviewed Steve Koonin about his unsettling (then new) book. However it didn’t last as long as I would have liked. You can read all about it here:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/unsettling-defence-of-the-undefensible/
According to Steve:
“Limited space (and time writing the book) meant Arctic sea ice didn’t get much mention. The topic is also somewhat distant from ordinary folks’ perception (unlike storms, heat waves, SLR, …).“
A decrease in Arctic sea ice was one of Manabe’s early predictions from CO2 radiative forcing, so it is consistent.
Of course, there’s no counterfactual to know what else may be causing current decrease and some evidence of dynamics effecting ice export.
Still, how significant is it?
Humans have been in the Arctic since the last glaciation and also through the Holocene Climatic Optimum when the tree line being at the coast meant that summer sea ice was likely absent.
It would appear that we are made of sterner stuff.
Good point – The northern tree line in most all of siberia is 75-150 km further north than present day. (approx 2k-6k years ago). Just one of the many points which conflict with the “non-existent MWP ” and non-existent “roman warm period” according to the “peer reviewed “paleo reconstructions.
Please remind me.
What was the combined population of London and New York during the Holocene Climatic Optimum?
Jim Hunt’s comment – “Please remind me.
What was the combined population of London and New York during the Holocene Climatic Optimum?”
Care to explain what that has do with Eddie’s comment – deflection perhaps
Evenin’ Joe (UTC),
I was alluding to the fact that if “summer sea ice [became] absent” in the 21st Century, and if the Greenland ice sheet was diminished as a consequence, a lot more humans and a lot more infrastructure would be adversely affected than “through the Holocene Climatic Optimum”
I’m checking the Census now.
Pending those numbers, I do know the potential was a lot greater during the HCO than it was when each were covered by kilometers thick ice sheets.
I did just scan [sic] Wiki and found:
“In 2010, foundations of a large timber structure, dated to 4800–4500 BCE,[44] were found on the Thames’s south foreshore downstream from Vauxhall Bridge.”
That’s the tail end of the HCO. Evidently the warmth and deglaciation did benefit our ancestors a bit.
Though such numbers would belong in the speculative bin, I can’t find any evidence of benefit to high, mid, or low latitude residents from the existence of greater amounts of Arctic sea ice.
Approx 4650bce was an Eddy cycle peak, always a point where civilisations peaked. (see fig 122 at https://judithcurry.com/2018/06/28/nature-unbound-ix-21st-century-climate-change/ )
From that point to now all civilisations’ peaks can be followed in step with that cycle, and are known (in some places). However temperature anomaly still increased up to two peaks later (from ice cores at both poles and equatorial)..
This podcast was the kind of one I’ve been waiting for. It was great. Best of luck in the spotlight.
Good lord. Jordan P. Is such an insufferable midwit narcissistic clam-trying to listen to the interview among his unceasing assault of interruptions is brutal-the intervening clips by his knowledgable guest are very interesting.
Thank goodness his xanax seems to have kicked in later in the interview and he interrupted a little less.
Judith, watching the podcast I was disappointed to see Peterson semi-authoritatively describe Mann’s hockey stick as a distortion of the vertical axis. The denizens here I think were hoping you would jump in. You must remember that the public is largely unaware of basic facts, like that the temperature record is only 170 years old and “hide the decline” was referring to the fact that the tree ring proxy data indicated a global temperature decline since the 1960s, (“the divergence problem”). That global temperature as measured by weather stations went to the opposite direction of Mann’s post 1960 data completely invalidated the paper’s scientific assumption and chart. Also, even if the tree ring and other proxy data were true they were low frequency data, guaranteeing a vague trend as compared with the highly sensitive temperature data that was quietly spliced in place to hide the post 1960 decline of the tree rings. Also the method used for validating which tree rings to use would produce a hockey stick out of red noise as proven by McIntyre and McKitrick (2005). They only used post hoc selected trees that helped their data and amplified them as much as 32 times over the marine sediment data that was used only as trendless wrapping paper to claim multi-proxy consensus.
If you could have spent 10 minutes on the falsification of the hockey stick and how the media and climate science joined to circle the wagons to protect Mann (to this day) every soul would understand why you split off from their clique.
Off-topic: You and DPY questioned my judgment when I said the costs of China ending its Zero-COVID policy must be measured against cost of ending it. The NYT article summarizes the (unacknowledged) cost as 1-1.5 million deaths, roughly 1000/million (0.1% of the population), versus 3370/million in the US, 2000/million in Germany and 500-700/million in some Asian countries. And unlike the US, China suffered most of its deaths from the far less deathly Omicron strain with an IFR in the US about 10-20 fold less that earlier variants (thanks to partial resistance from vaccination and previous infection). China bought a lot of time with its expensive Zero-COVID policy, but didn’t use it effectively to reduce the price they would pay someday.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/15/world/asia/china-covid-death-estimates.html
This is the same New York Times that won a Pulitzer for a completely fraudulent story about Russian collusion and published scores of fraudulent stories over several years hyping this fictional conspiracy theory. The story is paywalled and I’m not going to support a paper that specializes in disinformation peddling from deep state anonymous leakers. But I guess Frank you bought in totally. This is why you lose credibility with me. Until you acknowledge that this whole exercise to destroy Trump and his supporters is fraudulent, I won’t trust anything you say. And then there is the Hunter Biden laptop story. Again there was a massive collusion between the FBI and CIA, corporate media, and big tech to censor this story and spread disinformation to interfere in our election. This is the big story, not fictional Russian interference.
In any case, China is an extremely authoritarian country. No Western country has been able to implement a “zero covid” policy that worked. Instead we had various half measures that didn’t work but had a huge economic impact and set precedents for suspending the Constitution that are unprecedented in American history. No amnesty for the CDC’s lies and authoritarianism. They apparently still have up on their web site the Kansas mask study which is cherry picked end date to skew the data. They are recommending covid jabs for children. They are disinformation central.
Some light reading to document the utterly fraudulent nature of the whole Russian collusion and interference narrative pushed relentlessly by most of the corrupt corporate media.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/02/15/its_true_what_they_say_about_the_nyt_148860.html
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/02/15/unchastened_by_its_russiagate_embarrassment_the_ny_times_doubles_down_in_its_special_counsel_coverage_881457.html
And then there is this. It appears that the rats are fleeing the sinking ship of the Hunter Biden laptop disinformation campaign by our own deep state.
https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/14/james-clapper-cant-stop-lying/
Documentation of the massive Russiagate disinformation campaign by the media and the deep state. Now the Times has started a disinformation campaign to discredit Durham’s investigation.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/02/15/its_true_what_they_say_about_the_nyt_148860.html
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/02/15/unchastened_by_its_russiagate_embarrassment_the_ny_times_doubles_down_in_its_special_counsel_coverage_881457.html
Frank, I appreciate your comments now, in the past and in the future, as they are always thoughtful, respectful and researched, even if I usually disagree with some facts or conclusions. I can see DPY’s point though about the state of informational chaos, a relatively new phenomenon in the US. That one can not be free to freely cite facts from the former newspaper of record is an American travesty. The NYT should give back the Pulitzers even if Columbia doesn’t want them back.
Actually, Columbia would be a great place to start to decide for the record what the Trump-Russia investigation was, a legitimate search for truth based on real leads, or a USIC domestic information op. It matters.
I agree with DPY in that it is hard to go on with two diverging histories. What was done to Trump, his family, his cabinet and half the country was sinister. Or, if you believe the NYT, Putin’s stooge has captured the hearts of half the US and is positioned to become president again. The truth needs to be out and admitted and accounted for either way.
As far as Covid policy, if we can’t trust the government to tell us what is going on, or the legacy media to dare to find out, I think the default position is to resist any mandates, shut downs or any extra-constitutional powers for “emergencies”.
Frank, here is John Stossel’s final assessment on lockdowns to compare against your NYT. I’m sure they are very different on what they left out. https://www.johnstossel.com/covid-who-was-right-pandemic-experts-lockdown/
DPY: I’m perfectly aware of the social justice warriors who distort coverage at the NYT and the blatant LIARS at FOX News who promoted a Stolen Election despite personally ridiculing the idea.
Until recently, I simply read the WSJ until I found that only the NYT and WaPo had the resources to pursue stories that I wanted to research, like the consequences of ending China’s Zero COVID policy. This was a article summarizing the findings of many professional epidemiologists studying the problem. No one in their right mind should trust the official statistics published by the Chinese government.
After dismissing the Chinese experience as being irrelevant because they are so authoritarian, DPY wrote: No Western country has been able to implement a “zero covid” policy that worked.” He sounds just like the tree-ring cherry-pickers dismissing data as a “divergence problem”. Plenty of NON-AUTHORITARIAN Asian countries did a great job of limiting the spread of COVID. Their current death tolls are as low or LOWER than those estimated for China. For example, South Korea’s death toll is 1/6 of ours today WITHOUT LOCKING DOWN BUSINESSES, SCHOOLS, OR THE BORDER. Based on their experience with SARS1 and MERS, they had an excellent test and trace system in place. The trick is that one needs to get close contacts of those testing positive to isolate before they can transmit to others before developing symptoms and getting tested. (We could have paid Americans to isolate and monitored their compliance with cell phone app like the Asians used.) South Korean kept their pandemic under control (1/20th our death rate) until they had vaccinated their people (85%) and the less deadly Omicron variant had taken over. Then they relaxed their restrictions.
So Frank, you admit that my statement about Western countries is correct. Generally Asian countries have stronger authoritarian cultures and in some cases governments. Just look at Singapore. You and I are not going to agree about covid. It’s over fortunately.
But I’m more interested in your retracting your massive mistakes in accepting the Russian collusion and interference conspiracy theory that was just Clinton campaign propaganda. You also seemed to really want to believe the New York Times that you acknowledge is biased. I think you should think carefully about how bias can cause people to believe the most absurd theories cooked up by a deeply corrupt media, political disinformation spreaders and the deep state. How about the Hunter laptop disinformation campaign and the media’s active participation in spreading a big lie?
And Frank, How about the information from the laptop and eyewitnesses that OldJoe was involved with Hunter and benefitted from his corrupt influence peddling? How about the FBI covering this up and slow walking this? Seems to me to show just what a political sham Trump’s first impeachment was. It almost looks as if Democrats were colluding with the FBI to cover up Biden family corruption which was a perfectly fine subject for Trump to be asking about.
And what do you think about the Twitter files? Just business as usual or a massive illegal collusion to censor and hide the truth from the people? The FBI was actively involved in censoring the Hunter laptop story even they knew it was all true. That’s a vastly more consequential “interference” in our elections that Putin only dreams about.
Also Frank, you seem to be demonizing Fox news. They are not perfect and a lot of the wilder theories about 2020 election fraud were clearly wrong. But Fox is absolutely necessary as the only place with a big audience where conservative and populist voices can be heard. Greenwald and Gabbard regulars on Tucker for example and are not conservatives. It’s funny to watch the corrupt elites start to attack Greenwald, Musk, Taibbi, and Gabbard for daring to point out how dangerous our current elites have become.
However, there are very strong reasons to suspect large amounts of fraud in 2020, not to mention a vast conspiracy to feed the public narratives favoring Biden and disfavoring Trump. The Carter commission in the 1980’s concluded that mass mail in balloting was much more susceptible to fraud than in person voting. In 2020 many states switched to mass mail in voting. Some allow ballot harvesting and there is evidence it happened anyway even where it is illegal. An audit in Nevada showed that its common for people to actually be registered in more than one state. Most of that is just innocent error, but for partisans, its an opportunity to vote twice.
It is implausible to me that Biden could have gotten 15 million more votes than Clinton or Obama. (15 million +-3 million as memory is inexact.). If Covid had not happened Trump would almost certainly be president today. Covid enabled the media and deep state attempts to hide the fact that Biden was a senile old man with a mid double digit IQ who was very corrupt and actually supported segregation in the past as well as being mentored by an actual Klansman. He’s a habitual plagiarist and liar, regularly inventing incidents from his past that didn’t happen. Biden’s previous campaign failed badly for these reasons. In 2020, they were hidden from the public.
The obsequious coverage of the old man right now shows that corporate media and big tech deserve the moniker of “state media.”
Hi Frank, I agree with your praise for Korea, add Singapore. At least we can take comfort that the winners were societies that modelled after the concept of democratic principles and personal liberty. It’s just a shame that the patriarch nation of those principles is similar to a decaying, old money business dynasty, fraught with corruption and nepotism, separated now from its lost generation of inspirational leaders.
In February of 2020 I emailed an associate in Hong Kong to stay safe and not to travel on our behalf. He replied to me, “Don’t worry we are fine. You should get some masks though.” I thought to myself that he doesn’t know America. The people here would never put up with a totalitarian clamp down. Obviously, I did not know how wrong I was. The CDC, in fact, was driving blind, unable to supply their centinel hospitals with a competently made a test for the new virus after barring private industry from doing so. What’s worse is that we did not learn we were blind until mid March, when in a matter of a week we went from watchful waiting to national panic and school closings. Yes, last week was not the first time our administrative state let a China balloon float across the entire country before reacting, and then shot down anything that floated in the sky.
It seems like the Cochrane, the most prestigious international medical analysis collaboration, says masking (including N95) has zero effect on Covid spread. But the CDC is not having it because some of the studies involved viruses other than Covid. Sensible science should have taken the default assumption of lack of efficacy since there had never been a virus shown to be blocked by a mask. But China…
“But I’m more interested in your retracting your massive mistakes in accepting the Russian collusion and interference conspiracy theory that was just Clinton campaign propaganda.”
If there was a massive mistake it is was made by hundreds of millions. I am more interested in still refining our understanding of who was mistaken about what. Was it Clinton campaign propaganda? Is that an accurate description?
Mistaken information can become a consensus by several means, some innocent; some not. For example, I believed masks had some utility, especially N95 ones by innocent lack of skepticism. It is completely possible that a salacious rumor could be propagated innocently but helped by bias. IG Horowitz described the failures of the FBI and DOJ as a finger pushing on an open door rather than a criminal breaking and entering. Though he found massive bias and corruption, including 26 specified violations of policies and procedure in the Carter Page FISA, he did not find the opening of the investigation to be have been one of those violations.
One can imagine that Clinton, naturally wanted dirt on Trump, particularly related to Russia, knowing she needed to distract away from her connections to Russia through Frank Giustra and the Uranium One sale to Russia recently revealed by Clinton Cash in late 2015 in the NYT. So she hired Glenn Simpson, (through Perkin Coie), who hired Steele, whom was already investigating Manafort, we know now, for his Russian oligarch client, Oleg Deripaska. Interestingly, Manafort was an associate of Tony Podesta, the agent used for Uranium One.
TBC…
I’d be careful Ron. Singapore has some very draconian and savage laws. And their citizens generally comply vastly better than in any Western culture. That’s a pretty stark cultural difference. Japan also has a culture of compliance. Ethnically and culturally Japan is a very non-diverse country. I’m not sure about Korea.
If Western cultures were unable to even reasonably contain AIDS where very simple measures such as tracking and tracing for certain groups and behavioral changes would have stopped it dead in its tracks, there was never a realistic chance with covid.
Frank has yet to explain cases such as Florida vs. New York or Sweden vs. Britain. There is indeed pretty good circumstantial evidence that most measures didn’t work.
American culture has become so divided and “diverse” that tracking and tracing is as impossible as it would have been in 1910 when vast swaths of the public didn’t speak English.
Also consider our irrational TSA screening system. Other countries do it with interviews of a select few passengers who have certain flags. But our fetish with “civil rights” makes everyone surrender fundamental freedoms.
Generally, the US has terrible public policy in virtually every arena at the moment, from TSA to covid to woke discrimination (which is illegal) to energy policy, to emissions policy to immigration policy to firearms policy based on 1930’s laws to transportation policy. Our government just sucks because of terrible and incompetent leadership and a set of cultural narratives that amount to science and common sense denial.
“Our government just sucks…”
A young person recently asked what is the difference between a liberal and a conservative. A liberal next to me answered that liberals understand that individuals have natural flaws that need government oversight in order to protect them and society.
And then I added conservatives understand how difficult it is to find people that will know what polices to enact or will be honest when their ideas cause unintended harms and will blame failures on the very people that trusted them with their power. Conservatives are not even sure that such people exist. And thus, believe in a free and independent press.
DPY writes: “Until you acknowledge that this whole exercise to destroy Trump and his supporters is fraudulent, I won’t trust anything you say.”
When you prove to me that someone from the Clinton campaign instructed Danchenko what to report to Steele, then I will acknowledge that there was an exercise to destroy Trump. So far, Danchenko’s extended employment by the FBI (who interviewed him extensively and some of his sub-sources) is the best evidence that he accurately reported on the gossip and bar talk he heard from his unsuspecting Russian friends. The reliability of what they said and knew about Trump and Russia is the usual dilemma associated with such raw intelligence, though one poorly communicated by both the liberal and conservative media. Buzzfeed should rot in hell for publishing such unconfirmed raw intelligence. One thing we know for sure – rumors of a Trump sex tape were circulating in Moscow because both Dolan and Cohen heard them. And Cohen didn’t go to Prague.
When you prove to me that Mifsud was sent to Papadopoulos by by Trump’s enemies, then I’ll acknowledge a plot to destroy Trump. Barr anticipated finding such evidence, but has reported he failed.
DPY continues: “Then there is the Hunter Biden laptop story. Again there was a massive collusion between the FBI and CIA, corporate media, and big tech to censor this story and spread disinformation to interfere in our election.”
What Hunter Biden laptop story are you talking about? The one Giuliani withheld until just before the election because he wasn’t sure it was true? The one he gave exclusively to the NY Post, because he knew they wouldn’t wait for confirmation before publishing?
Are you talking about the copy of the laptop that contains some authentic information and some information known to have been added after it left Hunter’s hands? The laptop that the FBI has now had for three years without the Trump-appointed Assistant US Attorney managing the investigation convening a grand jury to even consider indicting Hunter for the allegations raised more than two years ago by the NY Post. At least the effing Dossier wasn’t published immediately before the 2016 election, thanks to the ethics of the FBI and MSM. I can’t wait for Jim Jordan to put Chris Wray under oath so we can learn some reliable information about the laptop story, as I did when Comey testified about the HRC email investigation. Unfortunately, both sides excoriated Comey for sharing the FBI’s findings about an unindicted US citizen, Trump officially fired Comey for doing so, and the DoJ IG severely criticized Comey’s actions. So I expect Wray (and Garland) to refuse to say ANYTHING, despite it clearly being in the public interest to inform.
After the 2016 election, Silicon Valley social media companies were embarrassed by how they had been used by the Russian IRA to assist Trump and spread dissension. Investigation showed that about 1/3 of Twitter accounts were bots, many designed to amplify Russian propaganda. (BTW, they are almost certainly still at it, but covering their tracks better.) They didn’t want their platforms being used in this way and told the FBI they would be interested in hearing about Russian disinformation programs. Twitter then made their own decisions as a private company about what to do with the information the FBI provided.
In 2020, Twitter became concerned that disinformation about COVID (especially vaccines) was going to result in unnecessary deaths and that Trump intended to (and did) attempt to steal the election before the official results had been announced. These were all noble efforts to protect their customers from mis- and disinformation that ran into the usual problems when anyone tries to censor: Where do you draw the line? How can you fairly censor with a team of Silicon Valley liberals? They banned the laptop story for 2 days and partially reversed their decision. They decided to simply make it hard to find tweets from some of those they want to censor, so they didn’t have to publicly ban them. Colleges that don’t follow the Chicago Principles have made a mess of censoring speech for at least two decades. I predict Florida schools will make a mess of censoring teachers. What I’ve read about the Twitter files simply shows what happens when even well-intentioned people attempt to censor – which is their privilege as a private company. Censorship invariable results in a mess. Musk proclaims freedom of speech, but the richest man in the world can’t survive without money from advertisers and subscriptions and free content (Tweets) from high profile customers. They don’t want doesn’t want porn or doxxing or abuse of children. Musk doesn’t want the location of his private plane posted on Twitter or conspiracy theories about Telsas. Censorship has costs AND so does free speech.
Frank, you are an intelligent and rational minded scientist. How can you limit yourself to only to the writings of dissenting views? I subscribe to the RCP front page to get a daily email of a selection of the most popular editorials on either side of particular issues. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/
There are so many inaccuracies in your information that almost all your logics suffer so deeply it is almost overwhelming. But if you have the patience I and others can point you to information you obviously missed. And you can point us to information we missed.
DPY, please be respectful to Frank as he is far from alone in having to make judgements without access to the entire picture on almost every current and past event.
Franktoo comment – “Are you talking about the copy of the laptop that contains some authentic information and some information known to have been added after it left Hunter’s hands? The laptop that the FBI has now had for three years without the Trump-appointed Assistant US Attorney managing the investigation convening a grand jury to even consider indicting Hunter for the allegations raised more than two years ago by the NY Post. ”
Frank – a few points in response
A) “information added after the it [the laptop] left Hunter’s hands? ” that statement is unlikely to be true.
B) The laptop in the hands of the FBI – the same FBI that was involved in the russiangate hoax
C) Trump had just gone through an impeachment related to the hunter’s corruption in the Bursima/Urkaine – what do you think the optics would have been.
DPY: “But I’m more interested in your [Frank’s] retracting massive mistakes in accepting the Russi@n collusion and interference conspiracy theory that was just Clinton campaign propaganda.”
If there was a massive mistake it is was made by hundreds of millions. I am we are still refining our understanding of who was mistaken about what. Was it propaganda? Who was it from?
Mistaken information can become a consensus by several means, some innocent; some not. For example, I believed masks had some utility, especially N95 ones by innocent lack of skepticism. It is completely possible that a salacious rumor could be propagated innocently but helped by bias. IG Horowitz described the failures of the FBI and DOJ as a finger pushing on an open door rather than a criminal breaking and entering. Though he found massive bias and corruption, including 26 specified violations of policies and procedure in the Carter Page FISA, he did not find the opening of the investigation to be have been one of those violations.
One can imagine that Clinton, naturally wanted dirt on Trump, particularly related to Russi@, knowing she needed to distract away from her connections to Russi@ through Frank Giustra and the Uranium One sale to Russi@ recently revealed by Clinton Cash in late 2015 in the NYT. So she hired Glenn Simpson, (through Perkins Coie), who hired Steele, whom was already investigating Manafort, we know now, for his Russi@n oligarch client, Oleg Deripaska. Interestingly, Manafort was an associate of Tony Podesta, the agent used for Uranium One.
Frank, DPY, do you guys agree so far?
Joe, just to clarify for Frank, the laptop showing Hunter’s influence peddling with Ukraine was seized by the FBI while Trump was impeached for suggesting to Zelensky as an aside on the phone call that he might want to investigate the Biden firing of the Ukraine inspector general that was looking into Burisma. In other words, the FBI had in their hands a complete vindication, not only of the legitimacy of Trump’s suspicions, but the proof they were correct. Instead the FBI put the laptop in a very very large warehouse somewhere — picture the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
We would not know about the laptop had the repair store owner not wisely distrusted the FBI and made a copy. He did not give the copy to Steve Bannon until about a month before the election, when he realized the FBI had buried it. The FBI got wind of this becuase they had Giuliani (and likely Bannon) under electronic surveillance. So they saw Giuliani contact the NYP, which allowed them to prewarn other news outlets to ban the story when it would break. The letter from the 50 former intel officials adds to the breadth of that conspiracy. If you think the conspirators were on your side I am interested to your point of view of how misinforming you helps you or me.
Ron – I am in complete agreement with your assessment.
One of the concerns I have is the extent that others would believe otherwise in the face of overwhelming information
Joe, Matt Taibbi likened some of his former liberal compatriot journalists to Japanese soldiers isolated on a remote pacific island for years after WWII.
The unwillingness to address counter evidence or engage in debate was born in the climate justice movement. This is why we should be kind to those who debate.
Exactly where did you get this “information” that only part of the laptop contents are authentic, Frank? The New York Times? It’s been confirmed now by many outlets that it is authentic. But that was obvious at the time. It would have been impossible to fabricate all the photos and videos of Hunter himself talking to the camera.
That you compare it to the dossier shows a very strong bias. The dossier was garbage and everyone knew it. Even Comey in front of congress said it was salacious and unverified.
Ron is right, you really need to contemplate where this strong bias comes from. It strongly detracts from your credibility on other subjects.
Where is the evidence that Russian bots influenced the 2016 election? Lets see the evidence from 1st hand sources. We do know from the Twitter files that the FBI was lying to Twitter about Russian accounts in 2020 and that they had very little reach. The FBI is a flaming pile of lies and bias. And don’t cite the Mueller report. Mueller was a joke of a witchhunt. He didn’t look at the origins of the Dossier or any of the important issues about this such as whether Russians hacked the DNC. We will never know now because the FBI never seized and examined the server. Instead a Hillary paid hack looked at it and reached a conclusion that Hillary wanted.
Your assertion that private entities can censor what they want shows a profound ignorance of US law. Companies for example cannot misrepresent their products just as an example. First these companies are illegal monopolies. Second, it is settled law that it is illegal for government agencies to deputize other entities to do what the agency itself cannot do. This is obvious. It is illegal for example for a policeman to hire a private detective to conduct an illegal search of someone’s house or car. The FBI is a Federal police force. It is illegal for them to tell private entities to censor people or especially true information.
You never Frank came to grips with the Hamilton 68 disinformation operation to fabricate “Russian” accounts revealed by Taibbi. You don’t know whether the information you got from mainstream corrupt media is based on this fraud or not.
Ron, The reason I have little patience for Frank is that he is a perfect instantiation of what threatens our Democracy. There is a massive disinformation and propaganda machine that has been created by the deep state in collusion with big tech and corporate media. We are literally drowning in a flood of falsehoods that many spread knowingly for a political purpose. Frank exhibits the classic symptoms of Trump derangement syndrome. It is not rational but based on the fear that his comfortable world or information and biases will be disrupted and discredited. Restoring a functioning democracy will not happen spontaneously by itself. Those of us who value freedom and truth need to actively work to call out the lies but also to monetarily support alternatives such as the Daily Wire who are a lot more honest about their biases or Jordan Peterson, or Tulsi Gabbard or Glenn Greenwald. These are the brave people who are willing to stand up for principle.
Exactly where did you get this “information” that only part of the laptop contents are authentic, Frank? The New York
Times? It’s been confirmed now by many outlets that it is authentic. But that was obvious at the time. It would have been impossible to fabricate all the photos and videos of Hunter himself talking to the camera.
That you compare it to the dossier shows a very strong bias. The dossier was garbage and everyone knew it. Even Comey in front of congress said it was salacious and unverified.
Ron is right, you really need to contemplate where this strong bias comes from. It detracts from your credibility on other subjects.
Where is the evidence that Russian bots influenced the 2016 election? Lets see the evidence from 1st hand sources. We do know from the Twitter files that the FBI was lying to Twitter about Russian accounts in 2020 and that they had very little reach. The FBI seems to be able to manufacture whatever they want these days. And don’t cite the Mueller report. Mueller was a joke. He didn’t look at the origins of the Dossier or any of the important issues about this such as whether Russians hacked the DNC. We will never know now because the FBI never seized and examined the server. Instead a Hillary paid hack looked at it and reached a conclusion that Hillary wanted.
Your assertion that private entities can censor what they want shows a profound ignorance of US law. Companies for example cannot misrepresent their products just as an example. First these companies are illegal monopolies. Second, it is settled law that it is illegal for government agencies to deputize other entities to do what the agency itself cannot do. This is obvious. It is a serious crime for example for a policeman to ask a private detective to conduct an illegal search of someone’s house or car. The FBI is a Federal police force. It is illegal for them to tell private entities to censor people for things protected by the first amendment and especially true information.
You never Frank came to grips with the Hamilton 68 disinformation operation to fabricate “Russian” accounts revealed by Taibbi. You don’t know whether the information you got from mainstream corrupt media is based on this fraud or not.
Ron, The reason I have little patience for Frank is that he is a perfect instantiation of what threatens our Democracy. There is a massive disinformation and propaganda machine that has been created by the deep state in collusion with big tech and corporate media. We are literally drowning in a flood of falsehoods that many spread knowingly for a political purpose. Frank exhibits the classic symptoms of Trump derangement syndrome. It is not rational but based on the fear that his world or information will be disrupted and discredited. This is the threat to our Democracy that needs to be addressed. Pushing back is part of this but also supporting alternatives such as Daily Wire, Jordan Peterson, Glenn Greenwald, and Tulsi Gabbard. Use Twitter and help Musk succeed. This problem will not go away spontaneously. We need to generate a movement of brave people who will speak the truth to whoever will listen.
And this. It appears that jounalists and editors are now totally open that they should and do move beyond objectivity.
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/02/18/gallup-fifty-percent-of-american-believe-media-lies-to-promote-agenda/
Did you not see Frank the Expose of Hamilton 68 which was a site that identified “Russian accounts” mostly fraudulently. This was then relied upon by the FBI and the media to foster more censorship or ordinary Americans. Check your sources on 2016. What first hand evidence is there for Russian interference having an effect? I’ll bet you have nothing but biased media and anonymous sources.
Frank, I’m still working my way down your comment and several of my reply attempts never posted.
You wrote: “After the 2016 election, Silicon Valley social media companies were embarrassed by how they had been used by the Russian IRA to assist Trump and spread dissension. Investigation showed that about 1/3 of Twitter accounts were bots…”
An NYU study published in January completely evaporated this leftwing myth.
Matt Taibbi recently revealed the Twitter internal communications that they were mystified by the Russian bot allegations in the media and could not find any. Taibbi, a couple months later exposed William Kristal’s “Hamilton68” index of Russian propaganda on Twitter as a long-running hoax. The only account found to be Russian was Russia Today’s account.
https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/31/the-astounding-saga-of-hamilton-68-illustrates-scope-of-americas-institutional-rot/
Comey was still spreading the Moscow hookers lie on “60 Minutes” years after his agents heard the entire dossier source confess they were ideas brainstormed over drinks with childhood friends. Either Comey was misinformed by his agents or he never read their reports or he was a bold and vicious liar. BTW, that confession by the former analyst of the Clinton associated Brookings Institute came just 6 days after Trump’s inauguration. And the agents already knew truth before the that but it took some weeks for the source’s lawyer to negotiate a way he could have unconditional immunity and perpetual anonymity. It took four more years for us non-believers of the hoax to get a true and accurate picture of what really happened. The people that still rely exclusively on the MSM information are still largely in the dark, like yourself. This was the motivation behind Jeff Gerth’s four-part series in the Columbia Journalism Review last month (link above somewhere). He was hoping the media finally stops destroying their past generation’s earned brand as well as our country’s.
Ron, This piece summarizes well what happened to journalism. They themselves now say they are moving beyond objectivity toward activism.
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/02/18/gallup-fifty-percent-of-american-believe-media-lies-to-promote-agenda/
DPY wrote: “So Frank, you admit that my statement about Western countries is correct. Generally Asian countries have stronger authoritarian cultures and in some cases governments. Just look at Singapore. You and I are not going to agree about covid. It’s over fortunately.”
Frank replies: Why would I argue about the performance of Western countries during the pandemic? The fact is that the differences in outcomes are disgustingly small given all the controversy about it. The same is true for differences in the performance of US states, which I’ve posted here, though I’m appalled that people STILL ignore that many deaths in NY and NJ occurred in April and May of 2020, when they couldn’t have been prevented by lockdowns. Nevertheless in absolute terms, hundreds of thousands of American lives could have been saved if we had Germany’s death rate or all US states did as well as Washington state.
We could agree upon far more! We could stop ignoring the massive difference between Asia and the West and pretending it is due ONLY to authoritarian systems. Sure, China and Singapore are models we can reject for the US, but not South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. By closing our eyes, we miss the reason for their success: They had a superb system for testing, contact tracing and getting close contacts to isolate BEFORE they tested positive (because transmission occurs just before and as symptoms develop). Here in the US, we could have PAID people $1,000/day to isolate, required monitoring their compliance with a cell phone GPS app (as South Korea did) and warned them they wouldn’t be paid if they didn’t answer their cell phones from home when called. That would have been vastly cheaper than paying millions of people not to work!
We could agree that COVID “isn’t over” for the vulnerable. Today’s “endemic” 12,000 deaths/month are about 4 fold higher than the average annual death rate from influenza, but roughly equal to its peak seasonal rate. For the vulnerable (I’m entering that age group), a 5-fold increase in the risk of dying from a respiratory infection is non-trivial, but heart disease and cancer ARE bigger risks I could focus on. For sake of our/my sanity, we probably shouldn’t focus on this, but our health care system and policy-makes should.
Finally, we should stop saying that lockdowns, social distancing and other measures “didn’t work”. Those measures took the reproduction rate from 3.5 (a 4,000-fold increase in March 2020) to around 1.0 (0.7-1.3 until omicron) in the late spring of 2020. By contrast, the peak reproduction rate during the Omicron surge in the US was only 1.7. Our measures totally eliminated seasonal influenza in the winter of 2020/21! What those measures didn’t do was keep our reproduction rate below 1.0, so that the pandemic would be as effectively suppressed as it was in Asia. WE WERE SO CLOSE TO SUCCESS, but would have had trouble sustaining success when the danger receded. Germany and some European countries dropped their infection rate by 10-fold by the summer of 2020. Their success was negated by the arrival of the alpha variant (or complacency or weariness or less cooperation) in the fall of 2020.
Please admit that the epidemiologists got the most important aspects of this pandemic right: Roughly 2 million American lives WERE at stake in the spring of 2020 and we saved about 75% of them by the 2021, when a vaccine became available. If we have been as effective as South Korea, we could have saved 90% at a much lower price. Roughly 1 million Chinese would die from ending their Zero COVID policy.
Finally, I’ll be happy to admit that demonstrating any societal benefits from masks in the real world is hard due to compliance and other issues. I won’t admit that individuals can’t get at least 50% protection by wearing a well-fitting N95. I wish I knew how long its protection lasts before it needs to be replaced. (BTW, Asians wear masks because of the horrible air pollution in China, which blows into Korea. They don’t trust their government to tell them when the air is dangerous.)
Looking forward to more scientific agreement.
Frank, I agree with your points about contact tracing being more economical than PPP loans and enhanced unemployment payments. I also agree to some extent about likely partial efficacy of N95 masks properly sealed. Where we disagree in hindsight is whether partially blocking a bursting dam of airborne spread was a wise policy. Scott Atlas and Jay Bhattacharya and the Barrington declaration proponents were mostly correct that our primary focus should have been protection of the vulnerable. Allowing the virus to take its course in the general population was frightening but it would have shortened the time of needed isolation and other protections for the vulnerable.
Of course, the calculus changes completely depending on the variables. Do we know that we can build an effective therapeutic or vaccine in short order? Do we know who is vulnerable? In short, all strategy needs to be based on clear information. That requires good science. It looks to me like that is the main place the US was lacking.
Back to contact tracing, the world’s public health community should be setting up rules and protocols NOW for effective contact tracing for the next outbreak, including international cooperation for rapid test development.
Ron wrote: “An NYU study published in January completely evaporated this leftwing myth [about Russian impact through Social Media companies].
Nonsense. The over-hyped NYU study dealt with the impact of ads on just one platform (which was Twitter IIRC). Read the Mueller report for definitive information, not the Gateway Pundit. If I remember correctly (not guaranteed), both Twitter and Facebook removed about a 1/3 of their accounts in 2017 because they were bots, some of which amplified propaganda. The Right want to forget that Russia’s biggest influence on the 2016 election was the hacking of the DNC. They forget that the IRA organized pro-Trump rallies here in the US from Leningrad. They forget the fake websites. They want to pretend that this effort has stopped, when my guess is that it has merely become more subtle. They were particularly effective in suggesting that the Syrian rebels used poison gas near the end of the Syrian civil war, when there is no doubt the government was responsible for the deadliest Sarin attacks, only the government has the training to handle it, and they never allowed inspectors immediate access to sites where poison gas was used. If the Syrian government knew the rebels had used poison gas, they would not worry about the safety of a few inspectors! (I’m mystified why Steve M chose to write about this subject, but he is smarter about something than I.) I suspect their anti-Ukraine propaganda is succeeding too.
My personal position is that, in a democracy, the citizens are responsible for sorting through all false information and making a sensible decision – despite Russia and the increasing difficult of doing so. In 2022, voters in purple states rejected many so-called election deniers, costing the Republicans control of the Senate and real control of the House. So I personally attribute the election of Trump to voters and not Russia, and am skeptical of all attempts to quantify Russia’s influence on the 2016 election.
Nevertheless, the social justice warriors in Silicon Valley don’t agree with me, which is their privilege. They didn’t want their platforms to be hijacked in 2020 after being badly embarrassed in 2016. They own these platforms and are currently legally allowed to censor if they want and listen to the FBI if they want. The fact that “small government” Republicans want to regulate these entities shows their hypocrisy. (A Trump appointee regulating them would make us into China.)
Over the past six years, I’ve listened to competing experts from all perspectives debate on National Constitutional Center podcasts about free speech on the internet, including a few who served on Facebook’s independent “Supreme Court”. Two things stick in my mind: 1) The head of FIRE (the organization that supports free speech on college campuses) preaches that censorship has COSTS and BENEFITS. One of the costs is that human are biased and fallible, making today’s scandals inevitable. Private organizations need to decide what system best meets their needs. If Musk wants advertisers and free content from users, Twitter can’t be the Wild West of free speech. Trolls will publicize the current location of his private plane and do far worse. Mastadon, Telegram, Signal and other competitors are nipping at his heels. Diversity in approaches to censorship is good (but I fear a partisan political division into separate worlds is inevitable.) Interntionall platforms deal with Western countries that demand more censorship than the US (about the Holocaust, for example). 2) Justice Brandeis didn’t say that more speech is the solution to bad speech. He said: “IF THERE BE TIME TO EXPOSE THROUGH DISCUSSION, THE FALSEHOODS AND FALLACIES, TO AVERT THE EVIL BY THE PROCESS OF EDUCATION, the remedy to be applied [to bad speech] is more speech, not enforced silence.” Twitter’s sound bites aren’t intended to educate.
Frank, I think you are repeating narratives that are not supported by much evidence.
1. The DNC hack has never been definitively shown to be “Russians”. The FBI never examined the server. Hillary hired a 3rd party whose conclusion of course was convenient for her, just as the Steel dossier was convenient. I believe Steve McIntyre was unable to definitively reach a conclusion.
2. The Mueller report was totally unbalanced. He never looked at the origins of the dossier for example. He never looked at the FBI agents who were rightly fired. The FBI and the deep state at the moment is spreading disinformation and lies. This causes me to not place confidence in Mueller’s report. One proven example is the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. They also spread misinformation to Twitter about “Russian” interference in 2020. Twitter knew these to be falsehoods.
3. I notice you don’t actually cite anything concrete on 2016 and “Russians.” The whole Russian conspiracy theory we know was cooked up by Clinton operatives the day after the election to explain why she lost. The disinformation campaign in fact continues to this day with people recycling unproven stuff from press reports based on anonymous sources and deep state lies.
4. As I recall Mueller did indict about a dozen Russians who conveniently will never go to trial so we will never know if these charges are true or inventions of overzealous prosecutors who hated Trump more than they love justice.
5. A far bigger issue is the interference in our elections by a giant collusion between the deep state, big tech, and our corrupt corporate media. These elite institutions are indeed a danger to our Democracy that Putin dreams he had. You still haven’t said much on this front.
6. There is always foreign interference in elections. We did it in Ukraine and in Israel for example.
If you have some “real” sources for this outside of our corrupt corporate media please cite them. BTW, pre Must Twitter employees are a terrible source. You saw how they dodged when questioned by Congress.
In short the “Russian interference and collusion” disinformation campaign was one of the largest and most destructive in American history and probably changed the outcome in 2020 according to all polling data.
Frank, It’s hard to know where to start here. I’ll just look at a couple of points.
1. You keep repeating that lockdown in spring 2020 dramatically reduced the reproduction rate. There is so far as I can see only a correlation which does not prove causation. If you look at the daily death chart for the USA, you will see a peak around April 15 2020 around the time of the 2 week lockdown, another around January 15, 2021, and another around January 29, 2022. This indicates a strong seasonal component to covid spread that is also shown by data from other countries. How effective various measures were is mostly a matter of speculation on the part of “experts” who have a poor track record.
2. Epidemiologists did not “get the most important aspects right.” There was strong disagreement among the best epidemiologists. There were the lockdown advocates such as Fauci. Another contingent included Ioannidis, Battacharia, Makary, Kuhldorff and many others who thought targeted measures would work better. The CDC has a terrible track record that you don’t and probably can’t defend in detail. Masking, school closures, vaccinating young people, and putting up flawed studies on their web site on things like masks.
3. We were never “close to success” with covid. Just like the flu, covid will be with us for a long time. Comparing East Asian societies with the US is misleading. We don’t know what differences there are in terms of obesity or diet for example, or pre-existing immunity or cultural practices. These comparisons are not very meaningful in my opinion.
The truth of the matter Frank is that we will all die. Most men will eventually get heart disease and prostrate cancer and die from that if they don’t get another cancer first. My brother just had a serious heart attack at age 67 despite having essentially no plaque in his arteries. It was caused by one of his 2 (most men have hundreds) soft plaques bursting and causing a blood clot. Medical science is very good at fixing anatomically related things such as cataracts or retinal separation or broken bones, or blocked arteries. But these are often only temporary fixes. A heart bypass for example is really only good for about a decade. Eat healthy, lose weight, and get a lot of aerobic exercise and hope for the best. And ditch the New York Times and the deep state liars. We live in exciting times and I think a revolution against our elites is coming.
Frank, I recognize that you have gifted intelligence, as you recognize Steven McIntyre’s. You also wisely point out the even the wisest among us can go astray. Hopefully, those with such wisdom of universal fallibility will carry with it the courtesy of hearing the other side.
I believe Louis Brandeis had those humble thoughts in mind when he delivered his famous quote, which I applaud you for revisiting. There is indeed always time to correct history.
The Mueller report is not definitive information.
When it came out one could claim it was definitive because of the 30-40 million and years spent to produce it. But once Mueller himself was under oath and sheepishly could not answer who Fusion GPS was one needed to start questioning their priors. Was this actually a fair and impartial investigation? That all the investigators wiped their cell phones as soon as they heard Barr was going to investigate them is another hmm. But there is so much more. DPY, is mistaken when he says the Russian collusion was invented when Trump won. We have Peter Strzok’s own texts telling his muse not to worry.
The surprise election of Trump simply put an already developed operation into the public phase. They had to that point primed the hundreds of agents in multiple departments of the DOJ and USIC with the predicate. It’s true, we see now that the origin of the dossier was Hillary Clinton via her close associate, Charles Dolan, to G@lkina and D@nchenko in a loop back to Clinton via Steele. Everyone was compartmentalized enough not to see the loop. Except the FBI did uncover the loop and that the dossier was a black op, the worst and most sophisticated dirty trick of all time!
So what do does Comey do with Strzok and Page and the hundreds of agents in multiple agencies that saw tens of thousands of man-hours put into the investigation? Comey must decide. Mercy. The Potus and AG and DNI and CIA director have all been following this closely. Even senate majority leader Harry Reid’s hair was on fire with this for weeks (as we know from his letter to Brennan). Does Comey tell them all that it was a hoax, a red herring; or that it needs more investigation? Maybe if Trump loses it will all be a moot point and can quietly be filed away for eternity. Or, as Andy apparently pondered, it could be valuable as an insurance policy.
Frank, for Pete’s sake, the Mueller leg of the operation was the tail end of this same op. How can you see it as definitive anything? It said Kilimnick was a Rus intel agent. We know now he was a confidential asset of the US DoS. Do I need to build more of the timeline?
We know without a question what D@nchenko confessed on Jan 26, 2017 the dossier was “brainstorming” and from an anonymous call. We know even that was a lie. He was covering up for Dolan (and Clinton) by trying to pin the Moscow Ritz allegation on Sergei Millian, from an alleged anonymous phone call, which by chance was impossible, which is why Durham charged him with lying to the FBI.
The FBI knew all was bogus but Comey conspired with the White House to formulate their plan to take out Flynn. Months later, after Trump fired Comey (at Rosenstein’s urging, curiously), there was already clearly the Mueller plan in place. Comey took his absconded files to the NYT to get the predicate for Rosenstein to turn around and appoint Mueller (whom we know now was a senile figurehead). Lisa Page drafted the talking points for the congressional intel committees where she calls the dossier “Crown intelligence.”
Mueller’s team, including former Clinton lawyers, continued to contact Steele through Bruce Ohr and pretend to run down all the intel for two years while indicting phantoms and leaving you and half the country in suspense for when Trump would be impeached. Admit it, they had you primed for it. You should be angry now — hopefully not at me.
Ron, Thanks for all this detail. In retrospect it is almost unbelievable that Republicans were fooled for so long. People like Lindsey Graham for example. And the Rinos in the media like David Brooks and David French. What frauds.
It should go down in history as the biggest and most successful disinformation campaign ever outside of wartime. We can’t have a functioning republic or democracy in this climate of deep state fabrications and lies. We need a president with the balls to fire half the deep state on his first day in office. Trump’s massive mistake was the level of trust even he showed in his establishment advisors. Why did Pence for example turn on Mike Flynn? Trump or DeSantis will know they need fighters even crusaders in their cabinets. Nikki Haley I doubt has the stomach for it.
Frank, here is an excerpt from an article today about over classification showing one of the problems being the ability for partisans and partisan media to mislead the public with selective leaks.
There are many different opinions from denizens as Josh and Willard exhibit. Skeptics of Mann would have appreciated a stronger response.
“Informational chaos”, indeed.
Mann-fred the Red Baron, “stick II”. The original used his stick to great effect, demonstrably confirming his work. Confirmational standards have been in decline for many decades, as such they’re ironically a burning wreck.
I feel sure CK will approve of this recent missive from the NSIDC?
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2023/02/new-record-antarctic-sea-ice-minimum-extent/#Feb-14
“Antarctic sea ice extent appears to have broken the record low set last year. With a couple more weeks likely left in the melt season, the extent is expected to drop further before reaching its annual minimum. Much of the Antarctic coast is ice free, exposing the ice shelves that fringe the ice sheet to wave action and warmer conditions…
Overall, the trend in Antarctic minimum extent over 1979 to 2023 is near zero. The current downward linear trend in the Antarctic minimum extent from 1979 to 2023 is 2,400 square kilometers per year, or 0.9 percent per decade, which is currently not statistically significant.“
The Great British Broadcasting Company is the latest mainstream media organisation to jump on the Antarctic sea ice bandwagon:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64649596
“Scientists consider the behaviour of Antarctic sea-ice to be a complicated phenomenon which cannot simply be ascribed to climate change.
Looking at the data from the last 40-odd years of available satellite data, the sea-ice extent shows great variability. A downward trend to smaller and smaller amounts of summer ice is only visible in the past few years.“
Perhaps it’s worth pondering what Jordan ponders about?
https://twitter.com/thebadstats/status/1625249621168779264?s=20
One can acknowledge that there was a questionable ponder while still acknowledging that there were substantive issues that 99% of the time are spot on.
In his CJR review of the U.S. media’s Russiagate reporting, Jeff Gerth concludes that the Times and other outlets have consistently failed “to report facts that run counter to the prevailing narrative.” This conduct, he warned, marks “the erosion of journalistic norms” and “adds to people’s distrust about the media.”
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2023/02/14/columbia-journalism-review-garbles-public-opinion-stats/
The criticism made at the link seems a rather minor point in a very long series of carefully sourced articles. I’ve seen conflicting numbers too on trust in media, but Gerth’s statement is pretty mild. Surely Russiagate has provided solid evidence of corruption that has undermined some people’s confidence in the New York Times in particular.
The main point is that the Russian collusion idea was a conspiracy theory cooked up by Hillary and her operatives and then fed to the FBI and CIA and the media who blew it up into a full blown disinformation campaign to hamstring the Trump administration.
And only those afraid of the truth would seek to denigrate and deny what was discovered by the Mueller Report.
“I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments — that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election,” he said. “And that allegation deserves the attention of every American.”
The attention of every American…except those who don’t want to face the truth.
JMurphy “And only those afraid of the truth would seek to denigrate and deny what was discovered by the Mueller Report.”
This is a great point. Denial is not our friend here. And, when any every truth can be twisted into a lie in Orwell fashion there is no protection to the public. We are all then completely vulnerable.
Thus, on such a central question of whether our former president and potential future president is an agent of a global adversary, and arguably mad dictator, must be answered.
It is knowable where the allegations came from. It’s knowable who covered up and lied. One cannot securely go about your business with your associates and even family members believing the Trump-Russia collusion and the other believing it was the largest domestic information op of all time. This is just not tenable. That is what I think Jeff Gerth’s CJR series was getting to without rubbing anyone’s nose directly in it.
Ron –
One can acknowledge that there were problems with the reporting while still acknowledging that there were substantive issues that merited investigation.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/columbia-journalism-review-spiked-different-russiagate-story.html
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/04/russia-and-the-us-press-the-article-the-cjr-didnt-publish/
https://newrepublic.com/article/170328/charles-mcgonigal-throw-2016-election…
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/04/russia-and-the-us-press-the-article-the-cjr-didnt-publish/…
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/02/07/cjrs-error-at-word-18/
And I know you’re not a fan of Corn (and I certainly don’t think he’s above criticism), but…
https://link.motherjones.com/public/30540895
Sorry – meant to link this and not the other one twice:
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/07/who-watches-the-watchdog-the-cjrs-russia-problem/
I personally like that the Seth Rich story comes up.
How can anyone talk about the inaccuracies in the media’s Trump/Russia coverage without mentioning that?
That’s akin to not noticing Taibbi’s selectivity in reporting on government pressure on Twitter to monitor tweets.
Josh – We see your 6-7 links to those In depth russian interference / election influence analytical articles.
Your ability to find highly deceptive & partisan agenda driven articles is very impressive. Try to develop basic skills in logic so that you are not so easily fooled.
Hint – the credibility of those articles which you linked are incredibly pathetic.
Stepping out of the weeds re reporting at The Nation – the question is whether Gerth’s article is really a basis in which the “Russiagate” narrative can be vindicated.
Methinks not. And methinks that a view that much of the Trump/Russia reporting (pm both sides) was problematic is not mutually exclusive with a view that there were legitimate concerns and legitimate evidence of self-dealing, a long history of interaction with Russian mafia-types, and corruption of government power, etc.
Certainly, there’s a harmful effect from hysterical claims that Trump is a Russian agent, just as there is from arguments that the entire investigation was a hoax, and hysterical claims that confidence in media was destroyed by a triggered woke mob of librul journalists colluding with Big Tech and the deep state.
The core problem, imo, is that so many throw aside anything that conflicts with their world view, so as to leverage these issues to reinforce ideological biases. How can you get to the real issues at hand when that’s the prevailing dynamic?
Just another battlefield in the ideology wars, like climate change, the pandemic, blah, blah. Unchecked motivated reasoning leaves no other pathway.
Josh comment – “Just another battlefield in the ideology wars, like climate change, the pandemic, blah, blah. Unchecked motivated reasoning leaves no other pathway.”
Josh – check the mirror!
The fact is that the Russian collusion conspiracy theory was concocted by Hillary and her operatives to tarnish Trump. They paid Steele for a fraudulent “dossier” that was the basis for an FBI “investigation” of Trump.
What are these “concerns?” They are based largely on lies and paid for propaganda.
Josh always has concerns and great sourcing from corrupt media sources.
All you have to do is contrast the treatment of Trump with the non-investigation of Hunter Biden and his Dad. There was a vast collusion to deny this story and make sure it was censored.
Joe –
I see you’ve joined the hall minotaur will nothing to say other than “nanny nanny boo boo,” so until you have an actual critique to offer, this will stand as my universal response:
https://youtu.be/lBDcx0IJY20
This is such tripe. Of course there was and is “Russian interference.” It had a negligible effect. There was Chinese interference. Obama interfered in an election in Israel.
The vastly bigger story is the Twitter files that revealed a vast collusion by the deep state, media, and big tech to interfere in the 2020 election. Polling showed that it had a big effect and ensured that Biden won.
Josh’s both siderism is here quite intense and nonsense. He can’t show any evidence that “Russian interferene” had any significant effect because it didn’t.
It was a concocted talking point invented by Hillary’s campaign to distract from her mishandling of classified materials.
Just because Senator Joe McCarthy was a liar who recklessly made unsubstantiated allegations of Communist influence in the US government doesn’t mean that the concern wasn’t legitimate. Josh, you are so gullible. “Concerns” is not a basis for anything and has no legal basis for conducting a massive “investigation” that came up empty.
Josh’s New Republic link is trash. It’s by a “journalist” who is now claiming that he knows more than the FBI about how Trump was compromised by Russia. I see so now the FBI which really wanted go get Trump at all costs and lied to a FISA court to do so is really ignoring what a 3rd rate journalist can dig up from 30 year old business dealings of Trump.
Josh, I was hoping Frank would come back after reading the Gerth series. After all, this is a 28-year veteran of the NYT publishing in what is the most prestigious journalism academic institution, the bestowers of the Pulitzer Prizes that he now demonstrates were based on a mistaken premise.
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php
I am confident that the strongest fact that you can come up with in all of your articles is simply that “it must be true” if so many still believe it. Any specific verifiable fact that you present from them can now be proved false if by nothing else the overwhelming evidence that Hillary Clinton’s operatives were eventually caught red-handed in fabricating the Steele dossier, Trump Towers meeting with Jr. and the Trump Tower-Alfa Bank server secret communications allegation.
The Twitter files reveal perplexed executives that don’t see the Russia influence in 2016 or in any organized fashion, like the just debunked Hamilton68 army of supposed Russian bots. The only Russian fingerprint on any of 2016 was the Cozy Bear intrusion into the DNC server that Dutch Intelligence told the FBI about in the summer of 2015 but Hillary and her network vendor, MIS Inc, left the virus on there until June 2016 to conveniently announce a Russian intrusion in mid operation of their Russia Hoax.
Durham might have failed to gain any convictions in DC courts but only because his prosecution was arguably disingenuous, not because the Clinton agents didn’t lie to the FBI, but because that was irrelevant when they all lied, the legacy press lied and are still lying. Trying to scapegoat the bit players, no matter how low they were, without going after their bosses would have been an injustice. But this doesn’t mean we put our heads in the sand or surrender. The truth is not simply whatever one wants to believe. This is not climate science. These facts are knowable.
Ron –
> I am confident that the strongest fact that you can come up with in all of your articles is simply that “it must be true” if so many still believe it.
At least you’re remarkably consistent in that there’s not ever a belief you attribute to me that I actualky have.
And this
> Durham might have failed to gain any convictions in DC courts but only because his prosecution was arguably disingenuous,
Fits perfectly with the pattern of unfalsifiability. “I must be right because any time I don’t prove right it’s because of corruption or some other special pleading.”
Just assign to me a fallacious ad populum belief and run with it (or should I say Ron with it). Why not? No need to do otherwise unless you’re attempting good faith engagement.
If Ron misstates your beliefs Josh, why don’t you try harder to say what those beliefs are? Perhaps its because your intellect is incapable of coming up with a consistent and well thought out position.
looks like my critique flew past Josh’s ability to comprehend!
hint – you are using highly deceptive / partisan / biased articles to point out everyone’s biases without recognizing the your personal biases. Hence the Mirror!
Professor Jordan Peterson on climate change and climate policy at the Cambridge Union
The CAGW agenda was launched upon the public when James Hansen made a famous speech to Congress in 1988(?), followed by a Thatcher speech wrt Climate (at behest of Crispin Tickell).
Margaret Thatcher – UN General Assembly Climate Change Speech (1989)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg
On November 8th 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave an inspiring speech to the UN General Assembly about the environment and climate change. Over the course of her half hour speech, she set out the problems we face and how we could resolve them. It was one of a number of inspiring climate change speeches by the then Prime Minister.
Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity discussed wanting a Fox News reporter fired after she pushed back on Trump’s election lies
https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-sean-hannity-fox-news-reporter-fact-checking-trump-2023-2
They knew the pillow guy and the “release the Kraken” lady was lying on their shows, and pushed back on their own reporter who was fact checking. Because stock prices.
And you guys think the public lost confidence in the media because “Russiagate?”
Tucker is laughing at you boyz.
And no one cares. Gerth has uncovered the biggest disinformation campaign in American history and Josh posts irrelevancies about his newest whipping boys, who are mostly good journalists.
Just because there were crazy theories about 2020 doesn’t mean there wasn’t a massive disinformation campaign by media, the deep state, and big tech to interfere with the outcome.
What about it Josh? Why do you tend to dwell on very minor issues?
Josh, I find myself agreeing with you mostly in you points. If you are not just playing then welcome to the club of “truth seekers” (or conspiracy theorists as the MSM’s likes to label those who question them).
On the NS2 sabotage it is way to early to hope to know with high confidence what exactly happened. For reference we still don’t have all the CIA docs on the JFK assassination though they were ordered by law to be done releasing them 5 years ago. On Benghazi it took until months after the 2012 election before the legacy media would start slowly accepting Fox’s reporting from the CIA contractor heroes who came forward the week after the attack to tell the real story. We did not know definitively that Clinton knew it was an attack the day of the event until Guccifer 1.0 hacked Sidney Blumenthal’s emails with her and Jim Jordan confronted her with them three years later. This might be the first you are hearing of that. It was the day where the media vilified the GOP for keeping her up so late.
We are still learning what the Watergate break in was about.
.
If the USIC did end the NS2 like Biden promised you can look to root causes being that it is possible for the USIC to do a lots when they can control US reporting (except for Fox and NewsMax at the moment; they offed OAN already).
One can acknowledge that there were some deficiencies while still acknowledging that there were substantive issues that merited investigation.
Wrong. There was never an adequate predicate for the FBI to open an investigation. From the beginning this was a witch hunt based on Clinton campaign disinformation designed to cripple Trump’s campaign and then his administration.
I was referring to the efforts to determine election fraud, not about the Clinton/”progressive” war against Trump.
jim –
> One can acknowledge that there were some deficiencies while still acknowledging that there were substantive issues that merited investigation.
And I don’t see how progress on these issues can be achieved without that recognition. I don’t see how progress on the substantive issues that merited investigation can be made without acknowledging the substantive problems in the investigation (and the reporting) . I don’t see how progress can be made in dealing with the problems with the reporting and the investigation without recognition that there were substantive issues that merited investigation.
AFAIC, categorical and back and white good guy/bad guy cartoonish takes on these overlapping, specific issues, will merely perpetuate tribalism. Which I think is the proximal goal for many of not the underlying motivation.
There are many other issues I see similarly, where the specific issues become a battleground for identity-based aggression and defense.
As I’ve long.(and often) said in these threads, specific to the issue of climate change but also more generally, in my view there is an underlying problem where many people (and particularly prevalent among on-line discussants) whereby because of ideological triggering, people approach discussion from a zero sum orientation, where people battle it out over different positions rather than looking to converge on shared interests.
Of course, this happens on both sides of these issues. I don’t see any reason to think the tendencies are distributed disproportionately across the battle lines. The underlying causal mechanisms are the cognitive attributes (and biases) and psychological traits we all share.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
https://twitter.com/lieven_anatol/status/1626207718142009344?s=42&t=5bWMQN84jBD42wmzvA63xw
I think, to his credit, Tucker may have trained this on his show?
Not that I think this is black and white either. I don’t just accept Hersh’s reporting at face value – even as a long time consumer of his work. And I’d say the tweet is rather hyperbolic and overly dramatic. But sure the general lack of discussion is problematic.
In response to Jim2 and DPY6629
There was sufficient info that definitely warranted an investigation of the russian infiltration. However, it was extremely evident very early that it was a clinton fraud operation initiated by Hillary Clinton and gang. At that point, an honest FBI should have shifted to an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s involvement and appropriate criminal investigation of Clinton including but not limited to providing false documents to the FBI for political purposes.
But while IMO, Hersh’s piece SHOULD be a subject of discussion…
… within the larger frame its fascinating that some of the issues raised in this article below, which track directly with the pearl-clutching about “Russiagate” reporting from the TDS-triggered woke mob, are ignored by by the “Russiagate” pearl-clutchers (like Glenn Greenwald who just appeals to Hersh’s authority) and Tucker.
Everything becomes a weapon in the arsenal of identity-oriented combatants.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/sy-hersh-swings-big-misses-lee-smith
BTW –
Robert Wright, quoted in the Responsible Statecraft piece, has a podcast that’s a good source for discussions on Ukraine…
He’s where I got the terminology of “cognitive empathy” from, and he’s long advocated for a non-zero sum orientation to conflict. (Although as an aside I have to say, he’s a bit too all in on the “Russiagate” narrative, in my view.
Most issues are really easy to understand. That’s particularly true of the massive censorship regime the Biden administration has set up.
I don’t know what happened to Nord Stream. I do know the US government can’t be trusted to tell us the truth about anything.
Even Russiagate is easy to understand as a vast disinformation campaign to undermine Trump who is the biggest threat to our elites and their lies in a century.
Greenwald is also easy to understand. He is very antiwar, a position I am sympathetic with. He also has come to believe that the corporate media are totally corrupt, which I think is transparently true. His main point about the Democratic party, media, big tech complex is also correct.
Democrats have abandoned everything they used to believe and are all in on the new clerisy and their demands we comply. They used to be staunch defenders of free speech. Not they demand Soviet style censorship. They used to be antiwar. Now they love war. They used to be neutral on Russia. Now Russia is the new Nazi Germany. They used to emphasize civil liberties. Now they love the FBI and DOJ’s two tiered system of “justice” because it is a weapon they can use to retain power.
“But while IMO, Hersh’s piece SHOULD be a subject of discussion…”
Imo a meaningful discussion requires that people say what they mean and mean what they say. You generally write to be intentionally obtuse and easily misunderstood.
I think Josh here is just fanticizing some bothersiderism narrative. Russian interference has been shown by theTwitter files to be mostly a deep state/media delusion. Vastly vastly more consequential is the deep state / media /big tech collusion to interfere (successfully I would add) in our elections by actively supressing the truth and spreading lies.
Joshua – When it comes to Hersh’s piece, there is nothing substantive to discuss. I haven’t seen any definitive, reliable information on who blew up the pipeline. It is beyond the ken of almost all of us. Only some people in some governments know the truth. That said, it is plausible that a Western government or coalition of Western governments could have blown up the pipelines. They are doing everything else they can think of to deprive Russia of funds. But again, we serfs just don’t really know.
Jim –
I agree that it’s hard to pull anything specific out of the article. I’ve subsequently read some interesting material critiquing the credibility of Hersh’s piece.
I think the larger question is more along the lines of why the NS2 sabotage isn’t a more general topic of discussion and investigation. Like with the lab leak theory, there are circumstantial elements that merit investigation, imo. There are circumstantial signs to indicate it was an American operation and it’s hard (for me and many others) to see a viable explanation for who else would have done it. If this were some covert American operation it would have troubling ramifications.
At another level. It’s fascinating to see how some of the “Russiagate!” crowd fail to apply the form of criticisms they have of the Trump/Russia coverage to Hirsh’s reporting on NS2. It’s fascinating to see how, with all the public support for funding the Ukrainian war, there’s not more interest in investigating this critical event.
Imo, it’s just another window into how broadly so many issues are being treated selectively by many people pursuing ideology-based agendas.
Josh, Most people are rational and know that the NS2 issue is not a big deal compared to Russiagate or the Twitter files. That you find a way to turn everything into a critique of “people” who you don’t name is just childish innuendo.
Josh – In the US, the country appears to be split pretty evenly down the political middle. Many on both sides are convinced the US is going to hell in a hand basket and thus are very passionate. There are so many other things going wrong, and my sense is this applies to both sides, the pipeline is just the noise of a mouse sneezing under Niagara Falls.
Joshua, you are pointing out true and false media reports with the confident assumption that we can trust the truth will still ultimately come out over time. My point is that once we can no longer count on journalist to keep digging, and officials to cooperate, we are all no longer in a free country. Your examples of false stories, Seth Rich’s laptop, hackable electronic voting machines, etc…, were never proven false. They just stopped developing. Bill Bar blocked any investigation after he was told there was nothing to it by his FBI, the same FBI that helped conspire with Clinton on the Russian interference, the same FBI that were spying on Giuliani and knew he had obtained a copy of the Hunter Biden laptop they ceased from the repair shop owner 10 months earlier and put on ice. The Seth Rich story never developed partly because we know now that the FBI have Rich’s laptop also on ice (going on 7 years now).
We would still be thinking the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous protest about a Youtube video that turned into a murderous mob if the Fox News did not exist. There are dozens of stories the legacy media won’t cover because of government control. We just learned out deepest fears about Twitter were true only because the Richest man in the world actually cares that we don’t destroy ourselves in an Orwellian dystopia (where even comedy ceases to exist). That you think this is a both sides do it thing is ridiculous. There is clearly one party that is compromised or colluding or however you want to characterize it.
Ron –
> Joshua, you are pointing out true and false media reports with the confident assumption that we can trust the truth will still ultimately come out over time.
Why do you keep doing this, thinking you know what I assume or don’t assume without quoting what I’ve said or asking for clarification?
Your assumption is wrong, and so any argument you build on that premise related to my views, will likewise be wrong!
Since you Josh seem unable to state your views clearly, you are to blame for this alleged issue.
You keep citing articles with a particular point of view so its natural to assume you agree with what you cite. They are mostly minor cavils that in no way detract from the mountain of evidence that we have a really bad regime directed censorship and disinformation problem. The Russiagate hoax is perhaps the worst disinformation campaign in American peacetime history.
Since you guys brought up the election, this court filing by Fox News is a good read. Here’s an excerpt (I added some *):
<i.Mark Beckstrand, a Dominion Sales Manager, confirmed that other parties “have gotten ahold of [Dominion’s] equipment illicitly” in the past. Ex.E3, Beckstrand Dep. Tr. 127:8-127:22.
Beckstrand identified specific instances in Georgia and North Carolina and testified that a Dominion machine was “hacked” in Michigan. Id. Beckstrand confirmed that these security failures were “reported about in the news.” Id. And just weeks before
the 2020 presidential election, Dominion’s Director of Product Strategy and Security, Eric Coomer, acknowledged in private that “our s**t is just riddled with bugs.” Ex.H2, Coomer Email (Oct. 30, 2020). Indeed, Coomer had been castigating Dominion’s failures for years. In 2019, Coomer noted that “our products s**k.” Ex.H3, Coomer Message (Nov. 5, 2019). He lamented that “[a]lmost all” of Dominion’s technological failings were “due to our complete f— up in installation.” Id. And in another instance, he identified a “*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results.” Ex.H4, Coomer Email (Jan. 5, 2018). He went on to note: “It does not get much worse than that.” Id. And while many companies might have resolved their errors, Coomer lamented that “we don’t address our weaknesses effectively!” Ex.H5, Coomer Email (Sept. 25, 2019).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/5765049b-4772-4bc6-a92c-2aa11e450617.pdf
A shocking finding:
Abstract
In the United States, liberals and conservatives disagree about facts. To what extent does expertise attenuate these disagreements? To study this question, we compare the polarization of beliefs about COVID-19 treatments among laypeople and critical care physicians. We find that political ideology predicts both groups’ beliefs about a range of COVID-19 treatments. These associations persist after controlling for a rich set of covariates, including local politics. We study two potential explanations: a) that partisans are exposed to different information and b) that they interpret the same information in different ways, finding evidence for both. Polarization is driven by preferences for partisan cable news but not by exposure to scientific research. Using a set of embedded experiments, we demonstrate that partisans perceive scientific evidence differently when it pertains to a politicized treatment (ivermectin), relative to when the treatment is not identified. These results highlight the extent to which political ideology is increasingly relevant for understanding beliefs, even among expert decision makers such as physicians.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120
The findings here are shocking:
Abstract
In the United States, liberals and conservatives disagree about facts. To what extent does expertise attenuate these disagreements? To study this question, we compare the polarization of beliefs about COVID-19 treatments among laypeople and critical care physicians. We find that political ideology predicts both groups’ beliefs about a range of COVID-19 treatments. These associations persist after controlling for a rich set of covariates, including local politics. We study two potential explanations: a) that partisans are exposed to different information and b) that they interpret the same information in different ways, finding evidence for both. Polarization is driven by preferences for partisan cable news but not by exposure to scientific research. Using a set of embedded experiments, we demonstrate that partisans perceive scientific evidence differently when it pertains to a politicized treatment (ivermectin), relative to when the treatment is not identified. These results highlight the extent to which political ideology is increasingly relevant for understanding beliefs, even among expert decision makers such as physicians.
[…]
To measure bias in the evaluation of information, we embedded an experiment in surveys administered to both samples. Participants read an abridged research abstract (physicians) or a research summary written in a journalistic style (laypeople), both of which reported the results of the TOGETHER trial (17), a well-powered randomized controlled trial that failed to find evidence that ivermectin was effective for treating COVID-19.* Between subjects, we randomized whether the treatment was identified as ivermectin or was anonymized (“GL-22”). We then elicited beliefs about the study’s informativeness, its methodological rigor, and the likelihood that its authors were biased.]
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120
Test:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120
Once again – josh finds a politically biased study to demonstrate political bias.
The study conveniently omits any question of remdesivir which was highly touted by fauci and gang and which turned out about as effective as hxc or ivermectin.
Josh – do you lack the basic mental capacity to recognize you own biases?
Can’t get the abstract psa the filterz so here’s the title:
The political polarization of COVID-19 treatments among physicians and laypeople in the United States
Nothing exactly shocking on the findings.
Ron: Thanks for the link to the Cochrane review. I presume you know that the results are cumulative, and 95+% of the data predates the COVID pandemic, and there wasn’t enough new data to change the outcome.
The main goal of Cochrane reviews is to combine the results of many small studies in hopes of finding or more clearly seeing a statistically significant effect or side effect. However, the studies need to be random assignment and similar enough to be combined. There are almost 100 studies on ivermectin with many too small to produce a statistically significant effect. However, you can’t combine most of them because they used different dosing schedules, different patient populations and different endpoints for judging success.
In this case, the review doesn’t doesn’t take into account my biggest concern – compliance. Masks certainly can’t protect those who don’t regularly wear them! The author of this review thinks from the perspective of a public health official: If a trial fails to show a statistically significant benefit because only half the trial subject wore masks regularly, one quarter didn’t cover their nose, and half wore cloth masks – the pubic health official correctly concludes that masks don’t work! If the public health official recommended masks, all of these compliance problems will occur in the real world and the intervention will fail. However, the public health official perspective doesn’t tell me as an individual how much benefit I can gain from religiously and properly wearing the best mask I can find (those N95s professionals use with elastic straps around the head to make a tight fit). Nor do the old studies with influenza tell us how much better compliance will be with COVID, which once was about 20-fold more likely to kill you if you were older or vulnerable.
Here is one study in the review from this pandemic in Denmark: “A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear surgical masks for one month, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%)…. Although the difference observed (82% relative risk) was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection. The conclusion is that masks didn’t work The study was designed (powered) so that a 50% reduction in infection would be found statistically significant reduction 80% of the time and statistically insignificant 20% of the time. What happens if 50% of volunteers rarely wore their masks?
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
This isn’t the quality experiment I am looking for. The clinical trials of COVID vaccines were designed to detect a difference between a 50% reduction and a 40% reduction in detected infections (probably with 95% confidence). A vaccine that reduced infections by 50% had been had been designated by experts as worth distributing to the public before the trial was run.
Consider another type of experiment involving high risk subjects – member of the same household. When someone in a family comes down with the flu, family member wear masks in the intervention group and not the control group. Unfortunately, by the time the initial family member figures out he has the flu OR has a positive test proving he has flu, family members may already be infected! Family members wearing masks may behave differently around the infected person than controls. Such trials have produces a modest statistically insignificant reduction in transmission to family members. From the perspective of the public health official, this mask intervention failed – even if most of the transmission occurred before masks were worn. The public health official will be right – this mask intervention failed even though the masks themselves may not have failed.
Are masks worth wearing if they only reduce MY chances of dying of COVID by 50% rather than 90%? Absolutely. What about my chances of catching influenza? Probably not. Are masks worth mandating if they reduce the average wearer’s chances of transmission by only 20%? Possibly. In the long term, there is a big difference between an R (reproduction rate) of 1.0 and 0.8. In two months (about 10 transmissions), 0.8^10 = 10% as many infections. My perspective is different from the author of the Cochrane Review.
Since no one is doing definitive experiments, I might say: There is amply evidence that masks are capable of blocking infectious aerosols and droplets. It’s your job to prove they DON’T work. To adopt this approach, I need to be sure the vast majority of transmission is through the air to the nose and mouth. How likely is this to be correct? With all of the superspreader events that have been studied, transmission through the air is a virtual certainty, but the author of the Cochrane review disagrees with me. (I need to know more about entry through the eyes, but vastly more air goes in through the nose and mouth.) What fraction of air is filtered by my mask and what fraction escapes around the edges? How much does the efficiency of my mask deteriorate in the real world, especially if I wear it for too long? What fraction of transmission is by aerosols that can get though a mask that has lost its electrostatic charge? This chain of reasoning makes masks worth wearing – at least until someone does a really good trial.
Frank, I agree with you that theoretically if the N95 mask is worn properly blocks aerosols then there must be some benefit. And you are likely correct that the main confounding aspect is getting people to properly wear masks and at the appropriate times. All that said, I disagree that the health establishment should mandate things that don’t have proof of effectiveness. They should be consistent with their health standard for private industry, which is one can’t sell a therapeutic or prophylactic that is not proven effective. This is even before looking at the privacy intrusion issues and unintended social harms by masking children or health consequences to adults with respiratory issues, or how many lives are impacted by shielding violent criminals from identification.
At the beginning of Covid masking I set my company policy to require masks at all times indoors but then allowed it to be voluntary after vaccine was available and I also saw studies showing that ventilation was far more important than masking. A few employees still wear masks but I haven’t except when I thought I might be coming down with a sore throat one morning. I also ask employees to mask up for a day if they are coming back to work after a contagious illness of any type.
In a related topic, Bill Maher is sore at the MSM for blocking news accepted by 60 other countries that natural immunity to Covid is likely superior to vaccine immunity. If the media keeps blocking the news they are going to lose not only Bill Maher, they may lose Josh now. I hope you will join them too. https://twitter.com/i/status/1627499246961192960
Ron: I agree that ventilation is at least as important as masks. For influenza, you need to breath in about 1,000 viruses to successfully start an infection, which could come in one sprayed droplet or 1,000 aerosol particles. Ventilation and filtration can dramatically reduce the number of aerosol particles in the air, which means that one can remain in a room a few feet away from someone who is infected for much longer before having a high probability of becoming infected through aerosols. I’ve read non-definitive experiments that suggest this number is much lower for COVID. The most “dangerous” place I go is the gym where I still wear a mask despite knowing it limits my oxygen supply. (It is like exercising at 5,000 or 10,000 feet, which isn’t hazardous IMO amateur opinion, though DPY linked a publication contradicting me. Scott Gottlieb was very critical of the CDC setting 6 feet as the minimum safe distance, prompting schools to close because they could only place desks 4 or 5 feet apart.
The WSJ and NR have been promoting the “benefits” of immunity acquired through infection. Lunacy! Nearly everyone is destine to gain immunity to COVID (multiple times) through vaccination or infection (or both), but the PRICE of gaining immunity from infection is high: originally a 1% chance of death, a 5% chance of hospitalization, a roughly 50% chance of a miserable week of illness and isolation, and a chance of long COVID, lingering lost of smell and taste etc. The whole point of vaccination is to avoid paying this high PRICE for immunity (whether it lasts a lifetime or a year). Given a choice of acquiring immunity to polio through vaccination of natural infection, which would you choose? BTW, Only about 1% of polio infections resulted in death or paralysis, so the risk of COVID and polio infections were actually comparable! Conservatives have been downplaying the risk of COVID infection, often successfully because that risk is concentrated in the elderly and vulnerable. That is who we should be focused on protecting. The last round of boosters were only authorized for those over 55? or otherwise vulnerable.
Now the GBD folks claimed they wanted to protect the vulnerable, but didn’t have a practical plan for doing so in the fall of 2020. And when we did have an excellent way to protect the vulnerable – a vaccine – they encouraged Republican governors to remove restrictions before they had finished vaccinating the vulnerable! In the first months of 2021, Miami-Dade county had the highest percentage of their population who had tested positive, and twice the national average. I’m normally much happier poking holes in the liberals woke policies and plans to fight climate change, but it is trivial to reject much of the BS the right since Trump and his conspiracy theorists took over the Republican party.
Now, there was a serious question whether those who had previously tested positive should be vaccinated in 2021. We knew that the level of antibodies acquired from previous infection was falling and that a few people had already been re-infected. How long would this immunity protect the previous infected and their families and co-workers? Another 6 months? 12 months? 18 months? 2 years? We also knew that the mRNA vaccines produced higher levels of neutralizing antibodies than infection because that was the goal of their development plan – and the reason for going with a two-dose vaccine. In a world without vaccine resistance and partisan politics, the conservative approach was to vaccine everyone and try to get to herd immunity as soon as possible. The arrival of the Delta variant and then the Omicron variant changed everything.
Franktoo comment – ” but the PRICE of gaining immunity from infection is high: originally a 1% chance of death, a 5% chance of hospitalization, a roughly 50% chance of a miserable week of illness and isolation, and a chance of long COVID, lingering lost of smell and taste etc. ”
Franktoo – your statement is not even remotely close to being factually accurate.
One additional point in regard to all your covid comments – Your comments seem to be heavily influenced by the fear of covid instead of a rational assessment of short term and long term risks and solutions.
On Frank’s numbers: They may be correct for the original variant, but are now a lot lower. The best studies show that the IFR of covid (the original variant) was around 0.3% for example Ioannidis has a paper on this looking worldwide. But it is probably true that for people over 65 it may have been 1%. or even more.
I do recall reading that the average age of covid fatalities was 82 or 83. At 80 a man in the US has a life expectancy of 7 years. For young people under 50, I recall a number like 0.02 which is not a significant danger. It’s much lower if you exclude people with serious health issues. I remember that as of last fall only 30 healthy people under 18 had died from covid in a cohort of 75 million. This is an epsilon.
But the newer variants are much milder than the original.
All in all, I personally am not going to do anything to keep from getting exposed to covid. I am also not taking any boosters either. And I think covid will go down in history as the biggest surge in authoritarianism in US history. Biden is continuing the trend with his deep state attempting a Russian style control over media.
For older men, you are vastly more likely to die from heart disease than from any infection or virus. And dying from heart disease is not a fun process. Likewise for prostrate cancer. We should be investing our research dollars in what will benefit the most people.
However, I think that Frank misstates the CDC position on boosters. The CDC is recommending covid immunization for all children!! The vaccines are more dangerous for children than covid so this recommendation is unethical. In Europe several countries like Denmark say those under 50 in good health don’t need any more boosters.
Polio was a much more serious disease than covid for children and young people. Also, polio vaccine was a conventional vaccine, whereas the mRNA vaccines never underwent what used to be the required long term double blind trials and does have a much worse side effect profile.
I also think Frank that you need to look at the media/deep state/big tech censorship machine and the Russiagate disinformation campaign to see that those of us on the right are not the ones pushing damaging conspiracy theories. Trump did believe some crazy theories for example about Obama’s birth certificate, but most of what he believes about the deep state war machine and the Russia hoax or about the Biden crime family is actually true. Molly Hemmingway wrote an excellent book about the 2020 election and how covid was leveraged to turbocharge fraud. Universal mail in voting was the primary way this was done. Even the Carter commission in the 1980’s said that in person voting was vastly more secure. I think I recall seeing an analysis of Nevada voting rolls showing that 20,000 people were registered in Nevada and some other state, mostly California. It is true that the media has erected this religious faith in our elections. But its never been true and it wasn’t true in 2020 either. Hemmingway’s book is well sourced and researched.
The actual death rate is something like 20% of the rate the Fed came up with. There were a lot of cases from Sept. 2019 until the virus got publicized. Most were asymptomatic. So there were deaths of course, but probably not something that required a global lock-down. Maybe just lock-downs of nursing homes and advice to the elderly. (The study was done in Italy. Unfortunately, it appears not being done elsewhere even though I’m sure there are plenty of blood samples around from that time, before, and after from other studies and whatnot.)
Franktoo makes some good points.
“Ex-Senator Jim Inhofe Retired Due to Long COVID, Says at Least 5 Other Congress Members Also Have It”
https://newrepublic.com/post/170783/jim-inhofe-retired-due-long-covid-says-least-5-congressmembers-have-it
Even now there are still millions of people in the world who have never had COVID or a vaccine. Here in the US they call themselves “Pure Bloods” since it sounds more hip than anti-vaxx.
No Frank, Compliance is one of the big problems with mask especially N95’s. They are uncomfortable and cause a lot of side effects such as hypoxia, increased blood CO2, face rashes, and decreased blood O2.
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/8/4344/htm
Hypoxia is quite dangerous and can cause fainting and accidents.
N95 masks work pretty well but even health care workers don’t comply so the general public won’t either. You can’t change human nature.
In any case cloth and surgical masks are not going to work and simple CFD shows why. Viral particles are several orders of magnitude smaller than the gaps in the fabric. In any enclosed space convection and diffusion will quickly spread these particles throughout the space. Outdoors of course they will dissipate quickly and so outdoors is the safest place in a pandemic.
I don’ know Frank why you live in some kind of idealized world where human nature doesn’t exist and a sufficiently authoritarian government can change human nature. This personality defect causes people to submit to authoritarians. Good scientists and really smart laymen know that authorities have been wrong on almost all the issues with regard to covid. They also know that viral epidemiology is a primitive field driven by crude mechanistic narratives such as the one embodied in your long winded comment that lack quantification.
DPY: Masks with “melt-blown” (non-woven) polypropylene have an electrostatic charge that attracts particles and aerosols that are small enough to pass through the holes that admit air molecules. Such membranes are found in the middle of N95 and surgical masks. I’ve heard a number of talks on this subject and the video below is reasonably accurate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQmZou7TaVc
Whether the mechanism that captures aerosols is call electrostatic or adsorption, experiment with artificial aerosols show that aerosols are captured.
The problem here Frank is that surgical masks have gaps below the eyes and air leaks out there. There are often gaps at the sides too. In my case, my beard creates gaps under the chin too. Diffusion and convection does the rest.
N95’s if properly fitted don’t have gaps so they actually have a chance to work. But most people won’t put up with the discomfort and other sometimes serious side effects.
Franktoo – there is a major fatal flaw in the Mask protocol logic.
Even assuming that masking actually works – Masking is a serious determent to achieving the only viable long term solution to a respiratory virus.
The only viable long term solution is developing broad immunity throughout the general population. Nothing else can or will ever work. period!
pro maskers operate on the delusional assumption that slowing the spread is a viable long term solution. Its never worked and can never work.
Franktoo comment -Franktoo | February 24, 2023 at 7:04 pm |
Joe wrote: “there are two major flaws which are common in the mask studies that show masks work”.
“The tricky word when discussing masks is what you mean by the word “work” or the phrase “masks don’t WORK”. Then you need to specify what kind of mask. Then you need to discuss compliance.”
Franktoo – you keep missing the important question –
What is the end game?
All respiratory virus pandemics throughout history have always ended the same way – When the viral spread flames out / immunity is development throughout the general population.
Masking – even if it worked – which doesnt – can never assist in achieving the end game.
The failure to grasp the basic concept and understand – ” What is the end game” – has been the leading cause of the bad science , bad reasoning associated with covid.
Ron wrote: “Safe and effective for worker protection from sprayed aerosol during an intubation procedure is not a qualification for safe and effective for 8-hour continuous wear to filter potential viruses. That said, I wore an N95 mask and suffered for months with the lines on my face that hopefully disappeared in a few hours after demasking.”
Masks weren’t just being used in in hospitals for brief intubation procedures. OSHA demands that thousands of employees working in dusty conditions or around aerosols work in N95 masks for most of a working day. Others were hazmat suits. When an employees life or health is a risk, masks are required. During this pandemic, lives were certainly at risk. Admittedly, when your job requires you to wear a mask you have the freedom to find a different job that doesn’t require a mask. And during a pandemic, you have the choice of staying home if you don’t want to wear a mask. During times of war, citizens have had to put up with lots of hardships (including a draft); but pandemics kill more Americans than wars. That’s why we long ago gave enormous powers to government to fight pandemics.
Ron wrote: “IMO the broad forgiveness by the left of the poor science and unsupported policy is likely due to the leadership’s focus on vilifying its critics as being rightwing protesters. I would agree that some of the dissent was political but if people are willing to risk their health then that is evidence of a leadership failure. Stupid vaccine drives like offering free burgers and fries to NYC residents by de Blasio likely had the opposite effect of persuasion. Putting a deadline of the free status and limiting availability to those not already having an infection would have increased participation. People are leery of being herded like cattle by government.”
You mentioned leadership, which was sadly lacking, especially in the WH. The president’s job is to consider the health implications of policy options from people like Fauci, the economic implications from his economic advisors, the educational implications from those experts, psychological impact of isolation … and then make a decision. Then he needs to push his experts on what can be done to minimize disruption caused by his decision. That wasn’t Trump’s style. If your recommendations run contrary to Trump’s desires, you are the enemy to be publicly insulted and replaced by a yes man from outside the mainstream. Trump’s unwillingness to wear a mask was a real problem.
Mltch Daniels was a great leader at Purdue. He wrote in the op-ed explaining his actions that his team started with the premise that Purdue University existed for the benefit of the students and we HAD to find some way to stay open SAFELY to minimizing risk to the older people in our community
I fantasized about an “America Held Hostage” style program during the pandemic, but perhaps at an earlier hour. We might have been able to greatly reduce vaccine resistance with information about how the vaccine was being tested. With 20/20 hindsight an Election style evening for unblinding the clinical results might have been great.
Frank wrote: “The president’s job is to consider the health implications of policy options from people like Fauci, the economic implications from his economic advisors, the educational implications from those experts, psychological impact of isolation … and then make a decision. Then he needs to push his experts on what can be done to minimize disruption caused by his decision. That wasn’t Trump’s style.”
Frank, I think it is even more complex than that when you have a media that highly politicized. But I agree, as do many Trump voters, that he could have had better personnel and provided stronger leadership. He recently admitted this himself and lamented that he did not have adequate knowledge about the landscape (the swamp). Not only should he have cleaned out the old wood like Fauci before an emergency hit, but he foolishly acquiesced to Fauci and others that were loyal to Fauci (or at least to opposed Trump). Scott Altlas revealed in his book that Deborah Birx had such loyalty to Fauci and against Trump that she organized a pact between her, Fauci and Redfield that if Trump tried to remove any one of them that the team would resign in mass.
The media echoed Biden’s accusation of racism against Asians by Trump for instituting a China travel ban on Jan 31. The media and opposition downplayed the danger until the news from Italy and Spain in mid March threw the US into near panic. Then when Trump tried to calm fears he was accused of downplaying the virus for personal political concern. Meanwhile, the public and media had no idea that the official government expert they looked to for the science was himself covering up personal political vulnerabilities from his gross miscalculation of the risk of GOF research, and his very strong political and financial biases involved in policy.
Amidst all the political complexity, the guiding moral of preserving liberty proved much stronger with the conservatives than the liberals. We saw Fauci under Trump vow that vaccine mandates were off the table then under Biden unleash any authoritarian means available to implement state policy while castigating governors of GA and FL for “killing people”.
BTW, the NYT is now admitting that mask mandate policy was unfounded. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/opinion/do-mask-mandates-work.html
Frank, both you and Ron are making an assumption that is obviously wrong, viz., that “science” gave us a blueprint for good policy.
Science has been in deep trouble for at least 20 years because of perverse incentives that reward sloppy methods, p harvesting, and selection bias. There is also a very strong positive results bias (see my post on CFD).
https://www.nature.com/articles/524269f
But the pandemic caused a further deterioration. Many of the early covid papers were essentially fraudulent. Many of the narratives such as the lab leak hypothesis were just politically motivated rubbish. Ioannidis has an excellent paper last summer on the alarming prevalence of zombie trials. These trials have no paper trail for the underlying data.
https://associationofanaesthetists-publications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ftr/10.1111/anae.15297
This essay is to me the most definitive and well documented reference for the way the pandemic rubbished “science.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/pandemic-science
This one examines the extreme lengths that censors and cancelers went to ensure “concensus enforcement.” This campaign is the envy of Putin.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36340971/
In this climate of fear, censorship and cancellation, and a corrupt media intent on using everything including covid to destroy Trump, we saw a complete collapse of the CDC’s credibility.
1. Denial of natural immunity.
2. Denial of the rapid decline of vaccine induced immunity
3. The magic belief that if enough people got vaccinated covid would vanish.
4. The denial of the vanishingly small risks for the young and healthy. Capped of course by the anti-science decision to put this vaccine on the recommended vaccination list.
5. All the lies about mask mandates despite the pre-covid concensus that mask mandates don’t work.
6. The school closures solely because teachers union leaders wanted their members to be able to stay home and still get paid.
7. The trashing of the lab leak idea.
8. The nonsense political narratives around possible treatments and the seeming preference for Big Pharma solutions.
It is impossible to exaggerate how strong the grasp of the new authoritarians are in the deep state, corporate media, and big tech. You simply can’t think clearly if you believe what these corrupt institutions say.
As Ron Graff correctly notes or alludes to with this comment – “Biden unleash any authoritarian means available to implement state policy while castigating governors of GA and FL for “killing people”.
And as DPY notes regarding the misleading / deceptive media and health authorities –
It should be noted that covid death rates by age group were remarkably similar across almost every state and every county with near zero correlation as to whether the state or the county was a blue state/county or a red state/county. Quite simply – mother nature doesnt care about politics.
Sorry, I meant to say that the narrative that the lab leak hypothesis was a wild conspiracy theory was rubbish.
Franktoo –
there are two major flaws which are common in the mask studies that show masks work
1) in all the studies showing masks reduce the case rates cover too short of a period, usually 8-12 weeks. Follow up periods all show the positive case rate benefit reverse around the 10-16 week period and the case rates are similar or slightly elevated in the mask population vs the unmasked population. The kansas mask study is prime example.
2) the supposed to benefit of the lower case rates in the masked population theoritically is supposed to reduce the exponential growth. The empirical evidence with covid has never supported that theory. Further, the empirical evidence has never supported that theory for any respiratory virus for any pandemic with or without masks.
Joe wrote: “there are two major flaws which are common in the mask studies that show masks work”.
The tricky word when discussing masks is what you mean by the word “work” or the phrase “masks don’t WORK”. Then you need to specify what kind of mask. Then you need to discuss compliance.
For me, the most basic question is do masks work for those who always wear them indoors away from home. If a mask can reduce my changes of getting infected and dying by 50%, I’d call that working. Others may not. Masks only stop working when people stop wearing them or they fail to replace them when they get old.
As I’ve mentioned, we have the public health official’s definition of work. Do masks reduce disease in the community when they are encouraged or mandated? From this perspective, if people don’t wear masks, they don’t “work”. People are more motivated to wear masks to avoid COVID, so all the studies involving influenza in the Cochrane review are potentially meaningless for COVID. You also need to consider whether a study is adequately powered to pick up a small reduction in cases.
The problem with successful interventions is that the number of cases going down, people become less scared and start engaging more risky activities. After the holiday surge in late 2020, cases fell 4-fold in a month beginning in mid-January. The optimists saw this decline as a sign of approaching herd immunity, but it was driven a reproduction rate that averaged 0.85. Then fear declined (IMO) and the reproduction rate rose above 1 and the number of new cases rose modestly to a peak in mid-April despite about 30% of Americans being vaccinated during this period. Everyone was optimist that during this period, vast number of people went back to work and there were vastly more opportunities for transmission that were negated by the increasing number of people who were resistant from vaccination. In professional sports, people say “nothing recedes like success” as ego grow and everyone wants a bigger contract. In fighting a pandemic, all successful interventions also appear to stop working (except herd immunity).
Frank, I agree with some of what you say about the likely partial effectiveness of masks, especially for the curtailment of infectious particles exhaling from an new actively infected person. This does not change three central points:
1) The NIH failed to do the science or find good studies that show effectiveness of masks. In the absence of evidence of effectiveness the medical protocol has always been “do no harm,” meaning rejecting intervention.
2) If there was good science that studied both the benefits and pitfalls of masking then the protocol is to allow the individual to be informed of the risks and benefits and allow them to decide if they want the intervention.
3) If in the rare case that a large public health benefit can be achieved at the expense of a very small personal risk, and this is proven with good science, local authorities have legal power to mandate said intervention, for example mass vaccination.
In the case of Covid the science was not there to support any mandated intervention for masking or vaccination or school closings, and likely not even small business closings. This does not mean that vaccination could be a benefit to some or most. I got vaccinated. But in this case the public benefit of mandated mass vaccination was too small since it did not prevent infection and transmission, (only severity of infection). And personal risk was not trivial, especially for reproductive and cardio health in young people who have little risk from Covid.
Ron wrote: “The NIH failed to do the science or find good studies that show effectiveness of masks. In the absence of evidence of effectiveness the medical protocol has always been “do no harm,” meaning rejecting intervention.”
Ron: You’ve got the wrong starting point. The FDA had approved the use of surgical masks and N95 respirators in hospitals by medical personnel decades ago. They served different purposes: surgical masks were never intended to make an air-tight fit to the face and mostly protect a surgeon from sprayed blood, whereas (IIRC) the fit of an N-95 was supposed to be validated for each person by a professional. Real N95s have two elastic straps that go around the head and make a much tighter fit than ear loops. Both use the same melt-blown polypropylene filter material that attract (by charge) and adsorb the finest particles. However the standards for N-95 masks were original created by OSHA (NIOSH) for workers in dusty environments. As best I can tell, there is no doubt that these masks have been proven safe and effective in hospital settings. So there wouldn’t be much reason to expect that they posed serious risk of harm.
Public health officials had long been interested in seeing if masks might be useful in an influenza pandemic. According to my reading, there has been a long debate in the CDC about the definition of an air-borne or aerosol-born disease, which led at the beginning of the COVID pandemic to placing too much emphasis on transmission by sprayed droplets and too little on aerosols. So the people doing experiments with masks to prevent the spread of influenza often used surgical masks to stop sprayed droplets. Most of those experiments were failures for a variety of reasons. However, I did read one that showed that surgical masks were a failure at preventing transmission to a population of college student volunteers, but that those in the subpopulation who reported highest compliance saw a 50%? reduction. I doubt compliance was very good among college students. So the Cochrane reviews of masks claimed they didn’t work before COVID nor was that conclusion likely to be changed by a few studies from this pandemic. The Cochrane review is deeply flawed because it doesn’t consider compliance nor recognize that compliance is a much bigger problems when your “treatment population” is trying to avoid seasonal influenza than COVID.
My HYPOTHESIS: Given this background, authorities initially discouraged the use of high-quality masks that were in short supply in any case and keep doctors and nurses alive and on the job. Then it presumably dawn on many that compliance was likely to be higher when a more deadly pathogen, COVID, was circulating than ordinary seasonal influence was the danger. They had already established that these masks were safe and effective for medical professionals. Yes, in theory the blocked viruses might be carried by hands from the front of a cloth mask or any type of mask to a person’s mouth or nose, but at least the direct path was blocked. Yes, medical professionals probably handle potentially infectious masks more carefully than most of us – especially me. At first, we only had cloth masks with no proof of efficacy, but which should be able to physically block sprayed droplets. Production expanded and there were plenty of surgical masks and eventually N-95s. However, as better and better masks became available, I can’t figure out why the CDC recommend using something besides cloth masks when possible. Perhaps, the subject of masks had become so politicized and toxic that the CDC decided not to dig a deeper hole.
“Most of those experiments were failures for a variety of reasons. However…”
Frank, this reminds me of the cartoon in Judith’s post today where the scientist tells the policy guy that the all they have is bad data. The policy guy then asks, “Does the bad data support what we want to do anyway?” The scientist answers, “Yes.” The policy guys says, “Then I call that good data.” This is what you are doing when you data snoop for a subset.
“As best I can tell, there is no doubt that these masks have been proven safe and effective in hospital settings. So there wouldn’t be much reason to expect that they posed serious risk of harm.”
Safe and effective for worker protection from sprayed aerosol during an intubation procedure is not a qualification for safe and effective for 8-hour continuous wear to filter potential viruses. That said, I wore an N95 mask and suffered for months with the lines on my face that hopefully disappeared in a few hours after demasking. I allowed my workers to wear any mask or bandana. (I relaxed the policy after the vaccine came out.)
IMO the broad forgiveness by the left of the poor science and unsupported policy is likely due to the leadership’s focus on vilifying its critics as being rightwing protesters. I would agree that some of the dissent was political but if people are willing to risk their health then that is evidence of a leadership failure. Stupid vaccine drives like offering free burgers and fries to NYC residents by de Blasio likely had the opposite effect of persuasion. Putting a deadline of the free status and limiting availability to those not already having an infection would have increased participation. People are leery of being herded like cattle by government.
This is a long winded discussion. Basically mask mandates don’t work in the community setting. The effect of N95’s for health care workers provides some protection but the numbers I recall are around 50%. (but only if worn all the time). Compliance was only around 65% because people have to take off their masks to drink and eat and the masks are very uncomfortable and have noticeable side effects.!!!
Cloth and surgical masks have gaps, often big gaps around the edges. Simple CFD shows they can’t be effective. Our mask fanatics want us to not be human beings. Short answer is NO, NO, NO, I will not comply.
This science was known before the pandemic. Why our “experts” changed their minds is a testimony to how corrupt they are. Offering the public false hope is as bad as scaring them with falsehoods about IFR’s.
TAKE OFF THAT MASK!
Serf pre-Covid verse on why wear a mask?
( Since Covid, raison d’etat and other
motivation regarding the wearing of masks.)
Take Off That Mask!
Masks, like the spots and stripes of
tigers or leopards lurking in undergrowth
may be a cover up for sinister intent,
for a Macbeth, say, who smiles and smiles,
yet may, behind that smiling mask, be
a damned villain waiting for nightfall
to carry out an undercover
nefarious (or murderous) event.
Just as likely though, wearing a mask
may be concealment for a shrinking self
the donning of a protective covering
like the turtle and the whelk, or as in classic
drama, putting on the mask of an Achilles,
now there’s a way for an un-heroic actor
to become a hero, just for one day.
Wearing a mask may introduce inconvenient side effects such as interferring with the effectiveness of your immune system which requires daily exercise from infection risks to maintain its success rate against all attacks (unless you have been professionally categorised as more vulnerable than average and needing protection).
We should be aware that out of all the ‘killers’ out there we still do not know where SARS-CoV-2 (and all its many variants) stands in the threat table (although we can be sure at least one variant is now rated as of the bad cold variety) and so what do masks actually achieve? Certainly little of benefit to almost everyone (which was what WHO believed to be the case pre-2020).
As always it is the individual who should decide and not some average IQ politician who happens to have been put in charge of something s/he has no clue about.
The WHO however even mismanaged the simple advice about masks and avoiding risks and yet still functions unchanged and unchallenged (as does also the IPCC who have made much the same mess with carbon dioxide). Perhaps people should be able to have the chance to vote on whether the UN is still a good idea or in need of urgent reform especially the WHO and IPCC. Its leader certainly appears to have not a clue about sea level change from recent embarrassing speeches and that is surely worth having an open debate about followed by a referendum on the subjects concerned perhaps. Perhaps the the world will have both public health excellency and energy polcy excellency … rather than the nonsense we have currently
Ron: Above you suggested that both sides may be lacking critical information about what has been going on. Above you wrote:
“Joe, just to clarify for Frank, the laptop showing Hunter’s influence peddling with Ukraine was seized by the FBI while Trump was impeached for suggesting to Zelensky as an aside on the phone call that he might want to investigate the Biden firing of the Ukraine inspector general that was looking into Burisma. In other words, the FBI had in their hands a complete vindication, not only of the legitimacy of Trump’s suspicions, but the proof they were correct. Instead the FBI put the laptop in a very very large warehouse somewhere — picture the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
We would not know about the laptop had the repair store owner not wisely distrusted the FBI and made a copy. He did not give the copy to Steve Bannon until about a month before the election, when he realized the FBI had buried it. The FBI got wind of this becuase they had Giuliani (and likely Bannon) under electronic surveillance. So they saw Giuliani contact the NYP, which allowed them to prewarn other news outlets to ban the story when it would break. The letter from the 50 former intel officials adds to the breadth of that conspiracy. If you think the conspirators were on your side I am interested to your point of view of how misinforming you helps you or me.”
First, it is totally absurd to believe that Joe Biden publicly bragged in front of the Council of Foreign Relations about getting Ukraine’s chief prosecutor fired simply because that prosecutor had been pursuing Hunter. I can’t for the life of me understand why so many Trump supporters are SO gullible, when they know the man routinely lies. The right place to look for information would be to look back at what was written around the time Ukraine’s chief prosecutor was dismissed. For example:
1) In February 2016, the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus, led by Rob Portman and containing Ron Johnson sent a letter to President Poroshenko to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary”. These Senators knew that corruption was one of the main causes of the Revolution of Dignity and that the credibility of Poroshenko’s government depended on indicting some corrupt oligarchs, in particular Zlochevsky.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/politics/gop-senators-echoed-biden-on-ukraine-reforms-kfile/index.html
After Parliament overwhelmingly approved Shokin’s dismissal, the EU envoy to Ukraine publicly praised the action.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sacking-of-ukraine-s-prosecutor-viktor-shokin-1.2591190
Ukrainian citizens were protesting Shokin in the streets and Shokin’s deputy had resigned in protest.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-protest-prosecutor-shokin-dismissal/27639981.html
So, back in 2016, the firing of Shokin was widely praised in the West as necessary for the anti-corruption credibility of the Poroshenko government. Now, years later Shokin and others were thrilled to get revenge when conspiracy theorists started questioning Joe’s motivation. For all I know, Shokin could have secretly begun an investigation of Hunter’s activities. What I am sure of is that Joe demanded the firing of Shokin because it was good for Ukraine and its friends.
Now, I’m not aware of any crimes the laptop shows Hunter committed working for Burisma. It did lead to stories showing a Burisma official met Joe in the presence of a group on a busy day that Joe claimed not to remember. And Hunter’s presence in Ukraine was a bad example of our morally corrupt, but perfectly legal, system of influence peddling. Joe was an idiot to permit it, but it happened at a time when Joe’s other son was dying, Hunter was dealing with addiction and Joe’s political ambitions were dying with his son. It is still inexcusable. FWIW, Hunter was not totally unqualified to serve on a board, he had been appointed to the board of Amtrak by President Bush.
I think that what you present Frank is based on mainstream media and on Ukraine and Russia they are untrustworthy.
I know from first hand experience of over a decade that there is a strong element of corruption in cultures in that part of the world. What is clear is that the US deep state took an interest in Ukraine and interfered to facilitate a regime change. Was that new regime better? I doubt it. It’s not plausible to me that it was vastly better for the reasons I state. So why is the US and certain neo-con deep staters allowed to interfere in the affairs of another country and a few Russian bots in 2016 and 2020 are blown up into the worst thing in American history?
The Hunter Biden laptop did show crimes being committed. Along with Bobolinski (whose testimony was suppressed by the same media you rely on) show a pattern of influence peddling and almost certainly a quid pro quo since Biden knew about Hunters activities. There is a great book by Peter Schweitzer that would be a better source for you than the media. One crime was money laundering whereby money went from Burisma (and other corrupt foreign entities) to Hunter (who performed no work to earn it) and to Joe Biden by various indirect methods. A lot of that money was spent on illegal drugs, prostitutes, and luxury goods. The former two are illegal activities. It strains credibility to believe Uncle Joe didn’t know his son was barely able to function coherently most of the time. Perhaps Uncle Joe was already becoming senile. He still cashed the checks.
Miranda Devine found one email from Hunter to Archer that is very exceptional in that it was a long and seemingly insider analysis of Ukraine politics and where things were likely to go. Devine says it reads like a government assessment, possibly a classified one.
Especially considering how the FBI hounded Trump and his associates, lied probably thousands of times using leaks to further the collusion and narrative and indeed did charge Flynn on a bogus charge that resulted from entrapment. Others were persecuted. It shows a police state mentality and a deeply corrupt agency that Biden’s investigation has resulted in no charges and NO leaks. Why do you think that is Frank?
But the problem here is that the contents of the laptop have been nearly invisible due to the FBI stonewalling this and the media strong desire to cover up any Biden crimes. There are all the signs here of another front in the collusion and disinformation campaigns of our elites to make me disbelieve most of what deep state sources say on this. Just like in Iraq, when this same phalanx of liars got us into a long and costly war, there was never much evidence that Hussein had WMD or that he was a particularly big sponsor of terror. Iran has done vastly vastly more and caused the deaths of tens of thousands.
Hunter admitted in a TB interview that he probably wouldn’t have gotten the gig if his name had been anything other than Biden.
And the overlap in expertise between a US non-profit passenger train service and a natural gas company is what? Frank, you are grasping at straws.
Frank, if you think it’s absurd that Biden would brag about using his clout to remove the Ukraine prosecutor general investigating a company his son was taking money from, then you might also find it absurd that Biden would vow publicly that Putin must be removed from office or that the Nord Stream pipelines would cease to be, that he would “end it.” Just because Biden is not allowed to talk much now doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to talk.
“The right place to look for information would be to look back at what was written around the time Ukraine’s chief prosecutor was dismissed.”
That is one place to look. Other place would include the pattern of reported events since then. You ask the question of how can I be so gullible. I do my best not to be, as do you. And I ding the credibility of those who reported falsely without regard for correcting later, especially if they fooled me. For example, I am very skeptical of anything coming from the USIC. If I were you, and was fooled by Fauci for claiming science proved the virus was natural, I would ding his credibility after learning he covered up.
In the case of Hunter, it’s a good thing I already thought the USIC was worthless. But it still angers me they were able to fool so many other people, especially the well read and intelligent.
If I’m correct your position is that Hunter Biden was a slime for cashing in on his last name but it was not illegal and no major harm was done and not the biggy that the out of control Republicans are making it out to be. I suppose your defense of him was that he was minimally qualified to sit on the board of Burisma since he sat on the Amtrak board at one time. That might have been plausible if we did not have the laptop that shows the pattern of dealings with every US adversary that could benefit from compromising his father. Also, the laptop reveals that Hunter is a non serious person with no skills beyond X-rated ones. Also, I looked up the Amtrak appointment and all the nominating senator, Tom Carper (D) DE, could say in his nomination of Hunter is that he rode Amtrak often. So instead of not looking for corruption in the Burisma and with the Chinese PLA and others I would be looking at what Bush and Carper banked for the favor.
But we are picking on Hunter too much. Joe’s brother Jim is the true pro in the family. I was searching for Ken Vogel’s Politico article that started the whole Shokin firing story in autumn 2018 but it seems to be gone. But I found this Politico article that exposes the Biden family business way back in Aug 2019. https://www.politico.eu/article/joe-biden-presidential-bid-family-business-history-democrats/
BTW, not only did the fired Ukrainian prosecutor general claim it was due to Hunter Biden sensitivities, the replacement one wouldn’t refute that claim. Here is an interview by the Daily Mail with Yuriy Lutsenko.
Judith: I found time to list to you interview with Jordan Peterson. Did like his attitude that he knew more than his guest and that his mind was already made up too. Your answers are mostly great.
I never understand why we say that 50% of warming might be due to rising GHG’s and the other 50% to natural variability? Natural variability can work both ways, can’t it. 50% to 150% of warming could be due to rising GHGs and +50% to -50% could be due to natural variability, couldn’t it?
Grand solar max in late 20th century: warming
Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1976: warming (through end of 20th C)
Dr Curry –
thanks for the comment about the grand solar max and the great pacific climate shift
Can you provide some elaboration
again thanks
Alex Berenson found this in a 2002 interview of Fauci advocating for a massive increase in funding. Berenson added some context outside the quote marks.
“The medical community must be prepared to admit that it doesn’t know or have the answer, and that saying otherwise can lead to even more problems. “The medical community and the public health officials need to be able to say, ‘I don’t know,’ at the same time that they say what they do know,” and to give the calculated level of risk, he said. “If you act like you do know and something [unexpected] happens, then you lose all of your credibility…”
“When the general public think of science, they think of absolutes,” as if there were a mathematical formula. “What they don’t experience, or are not privy to, is the completely iterative nature of science.”
Science, he said, consists of “starts and stops, until you get the right answer.” When there isn’t an absolute answer, the scientific community and the public health community still “want to give to the public what they demand.” The public needs to realize that science may not be able to give you the answer right away, he said.”
Fauci can and does say so much “stuff” that he occasionally tells the truth. Where was this humility in 2020? Swallowed by a desire to exercise power or discredit Trump?
Wow, that’s awesome you did an interview with JP! Right now it’s really quite scary. They are out in the open now supporting positions the people I know on the right were warning us of at the beginning of Covid, that they were going to use Covid as a model for how to control the populace with fear, using climate fear next. https://medium.com/@sosofancy/the-secret-diary-of-a-sustainable-investor-part-1-70b6987fa139
I don’t think many of them have any idea that this same fear has been biasing climate science for decades. People who go into a field based on fear of the climate apocalypse and wanting to be a hero and “save the world” are not the unbiased ideal scientists we should be encouraging in all fields, especially those who want to use the results of their models to fundamentally change the world and make everyone poorer. We all have our biases, but being motivated by curiosity and the search for truth are better motivations for making the world a better place in the long run. Truth always wins eventually.
You were the first scientist I ever saw critiquing the climate change alarmists at the APS March meeting in Denver, was it 2014? I was so impressed with you. You’re one of my science heroes!