RUTHFULLY YOURS

Only forty-some years ago, “climate science” suddenly turned from advancing a theory of global cooling to one of global warming. A 123-page paper by Christopher Booker, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), explains this sudden change in terms of a “groupthink” belief system formulated and perpetuated by a few strong personalities. Through key positions, and with sympathetic lobbyist groups, the theory overwhelmed politics during its formative years in the 1970s from its center in various United Nations agencies until its unraveling began in the late 1990s.

The first of those personalities was Swedish meteorologist Professor Bert Bolin (1925-2007), who believed that increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide from industrialization would inevitably lead to global warming. Bolin presented his views in 1979 at a first-ever meeting of the “World Climate Conference,” sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO is a 191-member-country agency of the United Nations (U.N.), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Bolin had developed his theory in the 1950s during thirty-five years of declining temperatures. Through the 1970s, many scientists, activists, and policymakers had voiced alarm at global cooling. A common view was that the cooling effect of more dust in the atmosphere, from volcanoes and industrial smokestacks, more than offset the warming effects of carbon dioxide and might require dire policies, such as those proposed by Dr. Arnold Reitze, to include banning the internal combustion engine, regulating industrial research and development, and limiting population.

The climate debate is one of the most important discussions in the world today. At stake are billions of dollars, millions of jobs, and — if people like Canadian environmental activist Dr. David Suzuki are right — the fate of the global environment. Consequently, we need all parties in the debate to behave responsibly.

Sadly, climate discussions are often poisoned by misrepresentations and errors in reasoning. Suzuki does this in “Climate science deniers’ credibility tested,” his March 1 article attacking those of us who question the science promoted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Published on the David Suzuki Foundation website and reproduced by media across Canada, Suzuki’s attack is typical of what independent thinkers about climate science experience on a regular basis. For that reason, his article is worth examining in detail.

Suzuki implies that the argument presented by Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, that glaciers “are basically dead zones,” is somehow wrong. Similarly, Suzuki mocks as “anti-climate-science” the position I (Harris) promote: that “carbon dioxide is harmless plant food.” In neither case does Suzuki explain in his article what is mistaken with these statements. Perhaps this is because both are obviously true.

While he may not understand glaciers, one would assume that, as a biologist, Suzuki would comprehend that carbon dioxide is the stuff of life, an essential reactant in plant photosynthesis on which all life on Earth depends. That’s why commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1,500 parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide concentration. Plants inside grow far more efficiently than at the 400 ppm in the outside atmosphere.

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, a report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, cites over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies that document rising productivity of forests and grasslands as carbon dioxide levels have increased, and not just in recent decades, but in past centuries.

Despite the excited proclamations of climate activists, increasing carbon dioxide levels poses no direct hazard to human health. Carbon dioxide concentrations in submarines can reach levels well above 10,000 ppm, 25 times current atmospheric levels, with no harmful effects on the crew.

Aside from these two issues, and his false claim that I doubt “the existence of human-caused climate change altogether,” Suzuki says nothing about the science we present. CONTINUE AT SITE

I’ve written often enough about how much the Scientific American has to do with lefty culture wars and how little it has to do with science. But now it had to actually pretend that Obama’s “bitter clingers” slur is science.

Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns? Research suggests it’s largely because they’re anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market and beset by racial fears

By research, SA means the prejudices of the people doing this “research”.

The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male

A member of the majority of the population is most likely to own a gun? #Science

When Northland College sociologist Angela Stroud studied applications for licenses to carry concealed firearms in Texas, which exploded after President Obama was elected, she found applicants were overwhelmingly dominated by white men. In interviews, they told her that they wanted to protect themselves and the people they love.

So obviously she decided that they’re insecure and racist.

Cancer is a scary disease, but Californians have been determined to scare themselves more than most with warnings about the supposedly cancer-causing material in everything from shoes to cat litter. Now a federal judge says these mandatory fright signs may violate the First Amendment when not backed by accurate science.

Judge William Shubb issued a preliminary injunction two weeks ago blocking California from compelling businesses to issue warnings about a chemical known as glyphosate. Farm groups and businesses sued after the state required new cancer warnings on food products that contain wheat, corn, soybeans and other crops exposed to the common herbicide.

The Environmental Protection Agency has deemed that glyphosate is safe, and California’s Office on Environmental Health Hazard Assessment also found it “unlikely to pose a cancer hazard to humans.” But under the 1986 state Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, also known as Prop. 65, California defers to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. In 2015 the France-based United Nations outfit claimed glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic.”

Reuters later revealed that the U.N. agency ignored substantial evidence showing no link between glyphosate and cancer. One adviser to the agency, Christopher Portier, worked on the glyphosate decision even as he received pay from Lundy & Lundy, a law firm that brings cancer-related class-action lawsuits, according to a deposition in a different lawsuit.

The U.N. outfit is notorious for bad science. The group has assessed 1,067 products and ruled only once that a substance was “probably not carcinogenic to humans.” The group’s list of cancer risks includes eating red meat, french fries or “pickled vegetables (traditional Asian),” drinking “very hot beverages,” using fluorescent lights, working the late shift, having your dentist fill a cavity, getting your hair colored, and using aloe, talc or Tylenol.

Debates over climate change are filled with dire estimates of its cost. This many trillions of dollars of damage, that large a share of gross domestic product destroyed, so-and-so many lives lost, etc. Where do such figures come from? Mostly from laughably bad economics.

This has nothing to do with the soundness of climate science. The games begin when economists get their hands on scientific projections and try to translate temperatures into human impacts. They conduct statistical analyses of the effects that small year-to-year temperature variations have on things like mortality and economic growth, and try to extrapolate to the effect of very large, slow shifts in underlying climate. This creates absurd estimates that ignore human society’s capacity for adaptation. This is the latest iteration of the same mistake environmental catastrophists seem insistent on making in every generation.

The best illustration lies deep in a 2015 paper published in Nature by professors from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. They found that warm countries tended to experience lower economic growth in abnormally warm years, while cold countries experienced higher growth in such years. Applying that relationship to a much warmer world of the future, they concluded that unmitigated climate change would likely reduce global GDP by more than 20% from what it otherwise would reach by century’s end.

That is roughly an order of magnitude higher than prior estimates, and it has received widespread media attention. But it is as preposterous as it is stunning.

Climate change is amazing! In addition to being responsible for colder temperatures, warmer temperatures, less snowfall, more snowfall, and terrorism, now it seems that it can also cause heart attacks.

Yes, someone really said that.

University of Michigan cardiologist Hedvig Andersson recently stated: “Global warming is expected to cause extreme weather events, which may, in turn, result in large day-to-day fluctuations in temperature. … Our study suggests that such fluctuations in outdoor temperature could potentially lead to an increased number of heart attacks and affect global cardiac health in the future.”

In other words, as we experience more extreme weather, it will put more strain on people’s hearts, thus creating more heart attacks.

Anderson notes that while the body has processes for dealing with fairly extreme weather, it might be too much for our natural systems to deal with. “While the body has effective systems for responding to changes in temperature, it might be that more rapid and extreme fluctuations create more stress on those systems, which could contribute to health problems,” he said.

The truth is that this was an epidemiological study that simply looked at the weather and hospital records and looked for a correlation. As we all know, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. In this case, the greater the temperature swing, the greater the supposed risk for a heart attack.

The 1970s were a great time for disaster movies. There was Earthquake with Charlton Heston, Towering Inferno with Steve McQueen, the Poseidon Adventure, and many more.

By the 1990s, disaster movies had taken on a distinctly sci-fi element, such as the movie Armageddon, which highlighted the twin disasters of an asteroid striking the Earth and a plan to send Ben Affleck into space.

That’s where we are today, except our science fiction is being portrayed as science fact by liberals who want to scare us with the global warming bogeyman. In their latest attempt, they have produced a map showing which parts of the San Francisco Bay Area will be plunged underwater by 2100 due to global warming:

Points for discussion:

Notice that San Francisco is spared from flooding, but Oakland in the northeast and San Jose in the south (right next to Santa Clara) are subject to a lot of it. S.F. is largely white, but Oakland is home to many black people and San Jose to many Hispanics. Can a natural disaster be racist?
Note again that San Francisco is largely untouched by the flooding. Do you think all those Prius-owners in S.F. will go back to driving gas-powered cars since they now know they have nothing to worry about?
Foster City is to be heavily hit by global warming. It’s a city with a large Asian population. Should we care because Asians are a minority, or should we not care because they are not a minority favored by liberals?
Palo Alto and much of Silicon Valley are slated to go under water. If the people at Google and Facebook really believe this nonsense, why have they not put forward a plan to start waterproofing 100,000 web servers?
This disaster will heavily impact a very liberal metropolitan community. There seem to be no consequences at all for conservative areas. Do you think the authors of the study are inadvertently incentivizing conservatives?
In the original Superman movie, Lex Luthor plotted to detonate a nuclear device in the San Andreas Fault, which would supposedly cause the western edges of California to slide into the sea. Luthor had previously arranged to buy up land in Nevada, which would instantly become valuable waterfront land. Instead of conducting a real study, do you think the authors simply cribbed the map from Superman?
If this reminds you of the plot of a bad sci-fi movie from the 1990s it’s because it is the plot of a bad sci-fi movie from the 1990s. Let me refresh your memory of Escape from LA:

Do you know anyone who denies that there’s such a thing as climate? Do you know anybody who hears the word “climate” and says, “Nuh-uh! You can’t fool me, that’s just made up!” I don’t. Yet whenever somebody questions any aspect of the prevailing global warming orthodoxy, he or she is labeled a “climate denier.” It’s a clever little bit of deceptive rhetoric, linking climate change skeptics with deniers of the Holocaust. A Holocaust denier is an awful thing to be, so a “climate denier” must be just as bad.

You don’t want to be one of those deniers, do you? You know how those people are.

That’s why my climatically skeptical ears perked up when I heard that somebody in Australia had written a stage play with the subtlest title ever: Kill Climate Deniers. Here’s a synopsis of the play, courtesy of killclimatedeniers.com:

As a classic rock band take the stage in Parliament House’s main hall, 96 armed eco-terrorists storm the building and take the entire government hostage, threatening to execute everyone unless Australia ends global warming. Tonight.

Now, the embattled Environment Minister has no choice but to pick up a gun and stand up for her ideals, pushing back against the threat which has engulfed her country – one terrorist at a time.

Sounds like a real crowd-pleaser. They even made a trailer of sorts for it:

Oh. Um… Ha ha?

Now, I tend to be a small-l libertarian about these sorts of things. I think you should be able to espouse any ridiculous conspiracy theory you want, even if it involves the belief that people are destroying the planet by leaving their phone chargers plugged in when not in use. That’s fine. You’re entitled to your religious views, no matter how stupid and insane they may be.

And I don’t think anybody will be inspired to actually kill climate skeptics just because they saw a play called Kill Climate Deniers. I don’t believe that movies or video games or novels or comic books or anything else will make anybody do anything. Let alone stage plays.

But just imagine the uproar if somebody produced a play called Kill Tree-Huggers. Or Kill Feminists, or Kill Militant LGBTQ Activists, or Kill [Fill in Some Other Protected Class Here]. Then it would be different. Then it would be time to hit the panic button. The 24/7 news cycle would be filled with solemn warnings about “hate speech” and “toxic rhetoric” and other euphemisms for “We don’t like what you’re saying and we want you to shut up.” CONTINUE AT SITE