RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/gmo-fungus-mass-kills-malaria-mosquitoes/

The late Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug worked tirelessly on GMO to prevent famines and cultivate crops on poor soil….but the junk science purveyors thwarted all his efforts….rsk

Genetically modified organisms offer so much potential to save lives, improve the environment, and generally promote a more prosperous and healthier future. For example, “golden rice”–genetically modified to contain vitamin A — promises to be a great preventative of blindness and death for destitute children in the developing world.

In the latest example, scientists have genetically modified a fungus that infects malaria mosquitoes to contain lethal spider venom. In a controlled test, the population of these dangerous insects collapsed once the GMO fungus was introduced into the population. From the BBC report:

A 6,500-sq-ft fake village – complete with plants, huts, water sources and food for the mosquitoes – was set up in Burkina Faso. It was surrounded by a double layer of mosquito netting to prevent anything escaping. A so-called “mosquitosphere” tests the fungus in real-world conditions, without releasing it into the wild

The fungal spores were mixed with sesame oil and wiped on to black cotton sheets. The mosquitoes had to land on the sheets to be exposed to the deadly fungus. The researchers started the experiments with 1,500 mosquitoes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democrats-curious-disdain-for-nuclear-power/

Until they embrace nuclear energy as a key to reducing emissions, the party’s many presidential candidates will be hard to take seriously on climate change.

Climate change is the No. 1 issue for Democrats, with a recent poll showing 82 percent of Democratic voters listed it as their top priority. To appeal to those voters, contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination routinely call climate change an “existential threat” to the nation and the world. But amid all their rhetoric and promises of massively expensive plans to tackle the problem, these same Democrats — with the notable exception of Senator Cory Booker — steadfastly refuse to utter two critical words: nuclear power.

The Democrats’ disdain for nuclear energy deserves attention, because there is no credible pathway toward large-scale decarbonization that doesn’t include lots of it. That fact was reinforced Tuesday, when the International Energy Agency published a report declaring that without more nuclear energy, global carbon dioxide emissions will surge and “efforts to transition to a cleaner energy system will become drastically harder and more costly.”

How costly? The IEA estimates that “$1.6 trillion in additional investment would be required in the electricity sector in advanced economies from 2018 to 2040” if the use of nuclear energy continued to decline. That, in turn, would mean higher prices, as “electricity supply costs would be close to $80 billion higher per year on average for advanced economies as a whole.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/examining-the-latest-false-alarm-on-climate-11559256615

You’ve probably seen the latest alarming headlines: Rising sea levels from climate change could flood 187 million people out of their homes. Don’t believe it. That figure is unrealistic—and it isn’t even new. It appears in a new scholarly paper, whose authors plucked it from a paper published in 2011. What the earlier paper actually found was that 187 million could be forced to move in the unlikely event that, in the next 80 years, no one does anything to adapt to dramatic rises in sea level.

In real life, the 2011 paper explained, humans “adapt proactively,” and “such adaptation can greatly reduce the possible impacts.” That means “the problem of environmental refugees almost disappears.” Realistic assumptions reduce the number to between 41,000 and 305,000—at most, less than 1/600th of the figure in those headlines.

Sober findings get less attention than alarming and far-fetched speculation. The United Nations’ climate-panel scenarios all show that the world will be far richer and more resilient by the end of the century. That means we’ll be better able to tackle challenges like flooding—as much poorer societies have done for centuries. We have more know-how and technology than ever to build dikes, surge barriers and dams, expand beaches and construct dunes, make ecosystem-based barriers like mangrove buffers, improve building codes and construction techniques, and use land planning and hazard mapping to minimize flooding.

Journalists looking for alarming headlines get help from climate scientists who gloss over adaptation and from public-relations teams that know their audience. A 2018 paper looked at two scenarios. In the first, sea levels rise almost 3 feet during the next 81 years, yet no one thinks to change the height of a single dike anywhere in the world. That would cost $14 trillion globally a year.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/30/sorry-alarmists-climate-chaos-not/

Climate isn’t the same as weather—unless, of course, weather happens to be politically useful. In that case, weather portends climate apocalypse.

So warns Elizabeth Warren as she surveyed Iowan rainstorms, which she claims, like tornadoes and floods, are more frequent and severe. “Different parts of the country deal with different climate issues,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–Malthusia) cautioned as she too warned of extreme tornadoes. “But ALL of these threats will be increasing in intensity as climate crisis grows and we fail to act appropriately.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.) recently sent a fundraising email warning Democrats that climate change was causing “growing mega-fires, extremely destructive hurricanes, and horrific flooding” which put “American lives are at stake.”

Even if we pretend that passing a bazillion dollar authoritarian Green New Deal would do anything to change the climate, there is no real-world evidence that today’s weather is increasingly threatening to human lives. By every quantifiable measure, in fact, we’re much safer despite the cataclysmal framing of every weather-related event.

How many of those taken in by alarmism realize that deaths from extreme weather have dropped somewhere around 99.9 percent since the 1920s? Heat and cold can still be killer, but thanks to increasingly reliable and affordable heating and cooling systems, and others luxuries of the age, the vast majority of Americans will never have to fear the climate in any genuine way.

Since 1980, death caused by all natural disasters and heat and cold is somewhere under 0.5 percent.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273850/climate-change-political-loser-bruce-thornton

First came Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016, after a campaign in which he rejected the “scientific consensus” on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), and proved true to his rhetoric by withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords. Then a few years later, France was rocked by the “yellow vests” movement that started with protests against a tax on fuel that President Emmanuel Macron, in true globalist technocratic fashion, proposed as a way to “nudge” the masses into using less of the carbon-based energy allegedly heating the planet. And now comes Australia, where contrary to the predictions of the globalist elite, the anti-carbon progressive who had proposed job-killing regulations to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, failed to defeat the conservative incumbent who would rather save jobs than “save the planet.”

Climate change is looking like a losing election issue.

The global technocrats, for whom Climate Change has been one of those “crises” that progressives “never let go to waste,” no doubt are wishing they could “dissolve the people” rather than change the government through democratic elections. Persuading free citizens with arguments based on fact, or with appeals to their interests, is difficult when your “crisis” is nothing more than a politicized hypothesis based on appeals to authority, rigged computer simulations, and apocalyptic predictions laced with insults to the skeptics’ intelligence and morals.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273850/climate-change-political-loser-bruce-thornton

First came Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016, after a campaign in which he rejected the “scientific consensus” on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), and proved true to his rhetoric by withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords. Then a few years later, France was rocked by the “yellow vests” movement that started with protests against a tax on fuel that President Emmanuel Macron, in true globalist technocratic fashion, proposed as a way to “nudge” the masses into using less of the carbon-based energy allegedly heating the planet. And now comes Australia, where contrary to the predictions of the globalist elite, the anti-carbon progressive who had proposed job-killing regulations to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, failed to defeat the conservative incumbent who would rather save jobs than “save the planet.”

Climate change is looking like a losing election issue.

The global technocrats, for whom Climate Change has been one of those “crises” that progressives “never let go to waste,” no doubt are wishing they could “dissolve the people” rather than change the government through democratic elections. Persuading free citizens with arguments based on fact, or with appeals to their interests, is difficult when your “crisis” is nothing more than a politicized hypothesis based on appeals to authority, rigged computer simulations, and apocalyptic predictions laced with insults to the skeptics’ intelligence and morals.

The politicians should have seen the signs of global warming’s declining utility as an electoral scare-tactic. In the U.S., “climate change” for years has ranked low on the list of issues voters are concerned about. Before last year’s midterm elections, in a Gallup Poll “climate change” ranked next to last of 12 issues that voters judged “extremely/very important,” just above investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Of course, people will tell a pollster they’re “concerned” and think “something should be done” about climate change, because they’ve been told that’s what the “right” people think. But when it comes to election day, most will vote for a growing economy, wage increases, more jobs, lower taxes, and fewer federal Nurse Ratcheds trying to cram more social or environmental “justice” pills down their throats.

Moreover, we’ve had decades now of hysterical predictions followed by “never mind” when they are belied by facts, along with the vicious demonization and ostracization of scientists who question the dominant narrative of CAGW. The hypocrisy of this very unscientific demand for unquestioned obeisance not to a scientific fact, but to a working hypothesis has now become blatantly obvious. Real science, which is usually reluctant to claim it’s “settled,” works quite the opposite. As philosopher Karl Popper defined it, “The method of science is the method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/27/climate_is_unpredictable_weather_you_like_it_or_not_140411.html

They say all politics is local; so is all weather.

So on behalf of my fellow Westerners, I have to ask: What’s up with all this cold weather? It may not be a crisis yet, but in the two weeks leading up to Memorial Day — the traditional start of summer activities — much of the country has been donning sweaters and turning up the heat.

I know, I know. Weather is not climate, and you can’t generalize from anecdotal evidence of localized weather conditions to a unified theory of thermal dynamics, but isn’t that exactly what the climate alarmists have done, on a larger scale, for the past 25 years?

Haven’t we been brainwashed by political scientists (oops! I mean climate scientists!) to believe that the Earth is on the verge of turning into “Venus: The Sequel.” You know, catastrophic overheating from greenhouse gases, rising oceans, death and mayhem — oh, yeah, and the world ending in 12 years if we don’t ban carbon or something.

But despite the best fake climate data and the scariest computer simulations, Mother Nature doesn’t seem to be cooperating with the global-warming scare scenario. Sure, there is warm weather in other parts of the country, but here in Montana we have been desperately seeking spring. Instead of enjoying our beautiful outdoors, we are stuck in perennial chill mode, shivering under our blankets and wondering if it will snow in late May.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/sciences-untold-scandal-the-lockstep-march-of-professional-societies-to-promote-the-climate-change-scare/

When we started our careers, it was considered an honor to be a member of professional societies that helped practitioners keep up with the latest developments in their fields through relevant meetings and publications. Senior author Dr. Jay Lehr had the privilege of leading one of these societies long ago.

But things are different now. Whether it be chemistry, physics, geology or engineering, many of the world’s primary professional societies have changed from being paragons of technical virtue to opportunistic groups focused on maximizing their members’ financial gains in support of the climate scare, the world’s greatest science fraud. In particular, they continue to promote the groundless hypothesis that carbon dioxide emitted as a result of mankind’s use of fossil fuels is leading to environmental catastrophe. You have been hearing about it for the past decade and more, with 21 candidates for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in the next election promoting some form of a Green New Deal—a plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and replace them with wind and solar power thereby returning society to the lifestyle of the 1880s.

Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, wrote in 1994 that radical greens had taken over the organization after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leaving him no choice but to resign. The takeover of environmental institutions by extremists is now almost complete, the most important of which may be the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). President Donald Trump is aggressively trying to win back the EPA in the best interests of the nation, but it is an uphill battle as the climate cult has also taken control of academia, political parties, and governments themselves.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273845/fact-free-politics-thomas-sowell

In this era when there has been more information available to more people than at any time in the past, it is also true that there has been more misinformation from more different sources than ever. We are not talking about differences of opinion or inadequate verification, but about statements and catchwords in utter defiance of facts.

Among the most popular current catchwords are “climate change deniers.” Stop and think. Have you ever — even once in your entire life — seen, heard or read even one human being who denied that climates change?

It is hard even to imagine how any minimally knowledgeable person could deny that climates change, when there are fossils of marine creatures in the Sahara Desert. Obviously there has been quite a climate change there.

The next time someone talks about “climate change deniers,” ask them to name one — and tell you just where specifically you can find their words, declaring that climates do not change. You can bet the rent money that they cannot tell you.

Why all this talk about these mythical creatures called “climate change deniers”? Because there are some meteorologists and other scientists who refuse to join the stampede toward drastic economic changes to prevent what others say will be catastrophic levels of “global warming.”

There are scientists on both sides of that issue. Presumably the issue could be debated on the basis of evidence and analysis. But this has become a political crusade, and political issues tend to be settled by political means, of which demonizing the opposition with catchwords is one.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/uprooting_the_epas_climate_fraud.html

During the Barack Obama presidency, a poisonous seed was planted by bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency to enable radical regulation of CO2 emissions, eventually strangling the economy. That seed was an official “endangerment finding” (E.F.) that declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant” — absurd on its face, since CO2 is necessary for life.

Writing at Townhall, Paul Driessen explains how the roots that have sprouted from the poisonous seed can and must be pulled up by action from President Trump:

[T]here has never been any formal, public review of the EF conclusion or of the secretive process EPA employed to ensure the result of its “analysis” could only be “endangerment” — and no awkward questions or public hearings would get in the way.

Review, transparency and accountability may finally be on the way, however, in the form of potential Executive Branch actions. If they occur — and they certainly should — both are likely to find that there is no valid scientific basis for the EF, and EPA violated important federal procedural rules in rendering its predetermined EF outcome. (One could even say the EF was obtained primarily because of prosecutorial misconduct, a kangaroo court proceeding, and scientific fraud.) Failure to examine and reverse the EF would mean it hangs like Damocles’ sword over the USA, To the consternation and outrage of climate alarmists, keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground radicals, and predictable politicians and pundits, President Trump may soon appoint a Presidential Committee on Climate Change, to review “dangerous manmade climate change” reports by federal agencies awaiting the next climate-focused president.