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February 2022

BOOKS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Misrepresentation Of The Scientific Consensus On Climate Change Iain Aitken

By on February 11th, 2022

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/10/the-misrepresentation-of-the-scientific-consensus-on-climate-change/

[Note: This essay is abstracted from my eBook Myths: Widely Held But False Beliefs In The Climate Change Crisis, available on Amazon]

In their Fifth Assessment Report the IPCC, the ‘internationally accepted scientific authority on climate change’, gave their opinion of how much of the recent global warming was caused by human activity: ‘It is extremely likely [95-100 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic [i.e. man-made] increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together’. Reflecting that opinion Wikipedia states that the ‘Scientific consensus on climate change’ is that ‘the Earth is warming and… this warming is mainly caused by human activities’. It claims that 97-100% of actively publishing climate scientists endorse this opinion. Similarly, NASA claim that, ‘A consensus on climate change and its human cause exists… human activities are the primary cause of the observed climate-warming trend over the past century.’ And in an October 2020 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes climatologist Dr Michael Mann said, ‘There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.’ So is it actually true that 97-100% of climate scientists explicitly or implicitly endorse this key IPCC opinion?

Although science is not remotely democratic (it only needs one scientist to prove that the ‘consensus view’ is wrong and it is wrong) the fact remains that if this 97-100% consensus assertion is true then it is indeed very powerful. If the ‘internationally accepted scientific authority on climate change’ says something is almost certainly true and almost all climate scientists in the world agree then it almost certainly must be true – mustn’t it? Whilst there is undoubtedly almost total scientific consensus amongst the scientific authorities (literally dozens of scientific academies from around the world explicitly or implicitly endorse the IPCC’s opinions) that does not necessarily reflect the consensus view amongst climate scientists themselves. So what exactly is it that climate scientists agree on?

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

License to Misinform Gavin Newsom defends California’s lockdown policies with dodgy data. Kerry Jackson

By on February 11th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/gavin-newsoms-license-to-misinform-on-covid

Last summer, while trying to survive a recall effort, California governor Gavin Newsom claimed that Texas middle-class families “pay more taxes than middle-class families in California” and challenged doubters to “look that up.” A few months later, he swore that “violent crime and property crime” is “higher in Texas than in California.”

The facts didn’t land on his side. Comparisons showed that taxes are a greater burden in California, and there’s little difference in crime between the states in recent years.

Because Newsom is a media darling, his exaggerations didn’t hurt him politically. So he’s free to continue to dish out misinformation. “We’d have 40,000 more Californians dead” if he had followed Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s approach to the pandemic, Newsom said last month while appearing on ABC’s The View. Though Newsom seems to have pulled that 40,000 number out of the ether, it is true that California did do a little better than Florida when looking at Covid deaths per 100,000 residents (California’s number currently stands at 110, against Florida’s 128—both of which are below the national average of 138). But if he believes that his lockdown regime was the reason for California’s lower rate, he’s deluding himself.

A year ago, one media outlet called California “the most locked down state across the country,” and San Diego County “the most locked down county in the state, with Los Angeles County about the same.” It might be hard to recall now, but California was the first state to shut down its economy and movement of people, and it appears that it will be the last to restore those lost liberties. While Newsom and other public officials were telling Californians that they were better off hiding under their beds, people were “flocking to Florida to find freedom, as other states and countries continue to keep their citizens locked down,” according to the James Madison Institute. In the spring of 2020, while Newsom was increasing his powers through executive orders, making a dodgy $1 billion mask deal with a Chinese company, and holding his made-for-TV performances every day at noon, DeSantis was already easing restrictions. By September of that year, all statewide rules in Florida were gone, never to return.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

ITS TIME TO ASK: WERE ANY OF THE COVID LOCKDOWNS. MANDATES, CLOSURES WORTH IT?

By on February 11th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/11/its-time-to-ask-were-any-of-the-covid-mandates-closures-lockdowns-worth-it/

With COVID deaths now topping 910,000, the Biden administration and the rest of the Democratic left are deciding to ease up on their mandate regime. We need to learn to live with COVID, they say – repeating advice President Donald Trump issued back in October 2020.

We’re all for ditching the left’s COVID police state, even if Democrats’ reason is political, as we pointed out in this space yesterday.

But that leaves us with a question: Was any of it worth it? Did any of the guidelines, mandates, orders, shutdowns, cancelations, lockdowns do anything to alter the course of the disease, or change in any way the number of people who died from it?

Was it worth the massive disruption to our jobs and lives, the education losses suffered by our children, the trillions in debt piled up? Was it worth shutting down dissent by Tech Giants? Or the unleashing of mask scolds? Or vaccine passports? Or the divisiveness all of it fueled?

After all, even with all that in place, Centers for Disease Control data show that more than 77 million Americans have contracted COVID, and 910,373 deaths are linked to the disease.

What would have been different if we’d done nothing, other than encourage people to use common sense?

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Bankrolling terrorism and moral equivalence Ruthie Blum

By on February 11th, 2022

The refusal of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to stop bankrolling terrorists is well known. Nevertheless, it’s worth reiterating in light of the efforts by the administration in Washington and government in Jerusalem to give it a good gloss-over. 

The attempts by Washington to deny or obfuscate the PA’s true agenda is aimed at returning to the non-existent two-state solution to the literal and figurative table. To fulfill this goal, it assigns moral equivalence to both sides of the Palestinian war against the Jewish state.

As the target of the aggression, Jerusalem doesn’t unequivocally embrace such a tactic; however, the current coalition has been more open to providing excuses for Palestinian hostility than its predecessor. It does this by espousing the view that appeasing Ramallah is in Israel’s best interest.

That neither of the above has ever led to anything other than an uptick in anti-Zionist violence does not seem to register on the diplomatic-Richter-scale. The constant need to restate the obvious is astonishing, but it’s not as jaw-dropping as the chronological proximity of Western goodwill gestures to bloodcurdling Palestinian statements and the actions they spur.

Only examine the events of the last couple of months. On December 22, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Ramallah, where he met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to discuss strengthening the ties that the Palestinian leadership severed with America during the administration of former president Donald Trump.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What the Truckers Want I’ve spoken to 100 of the protestors gathered in the Canadian capital. What’s happening is far bigger than the vaccine mandates.Rupa Subramanya’

By on February 11th, 2022

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/what-the-truckers-want?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNDc5

For two weeks, the 18-wheelers, the semis, the tractors and the pick-up trucks streamed through the snow and ice into the center of Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

They came from across the country. Vaxxed, unvaxxed, white, black, Chinese, Sikh, Indian, alone or with their wives and kids. They huddled around campfires. They set up pop-up kitchens and tents with block captains doling out coffee and blankets. They honked (and honked and honked). They blasted “We Are the World.” And everywhere you looked, someone was waving the Maple Leaf.

It dipped to 4 degrees. The mayor declared a state of emergency. And they didn’t budge.

The truckers were scared of running out of gas—freezing to death in their little truck beds in the middle of the night. The city threatened to arrest anyone who brought it to them. In response, hundreds of Ottawans did just that. The truckers stayed put. 

They are a city inside a city whose inhabitants—there are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000—were outraged with a country that seemed to have forgotten they existed. This past Sunday, as if to confirm that suspicion, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has yet to meet with Freedom Convoy leaders, took a personal day. On Monday, during an emergency debate at the House of Commons, he called them “a few people shouting and waving swastikas.” 

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