It never happened. The London Guardian reports:
The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005.The finding is surprising, the researchers say, given that carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to rise and trap ever more heat over that time.
Antarctica has gained ice in recent years, despite increasing average global temperatures and climate change, a new study finds. ...Sounds like a lot to me, but I guess it is a big continent.The ice sheet gained mass from 2021 to 2023 at an average rate of about 119 billion tons (108 metric tons) per year. Four glaciers in eastern Antarctica also flipped from accelerated ice loss to significant mass gain.
Biden's trans diversity hire Rachel Levine was excited to embark on Black History Month because it gave Levine a chance to talk about health equity and climate change.So says the man dressed up as a woman, and promoted to a high Biden administration position.Levine stood in front of a black, green, orange and red backdrop, the colors of which were reflected in the graphics, to explain why black history month and climate change alarmism go hand in hand.
"This Black History Month," begins the assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, "I'm pleased to partner with OMH in advancing better health through better understanding for black communities."
"Climate change is having a disproportionate effect on the physical and mental health of black communities," said Levine, who believes himself to be female. Levine has also pushed for sex changes for minors.
"Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to live in areas, in housing, that increase their susceptibility to climate-related health issues."
"And 65 percent of black Americans report feeling anxious about climate change's impact."
Axos Science reports:
"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data," wrote Simberg in reference to the former Penn State football coach who was convicted of child sexual abuse the same year the Competitive Enterprise Institute published his blog.As I understand it, the technical issue was whether it was proper for Mann to combined dissimilar data into one graph. Hann used tree dinv data to infer ancient termperatures, and got the blade of the hockey stick from modern direct temperature measurements.Steyn referred to Simberg's post in a National Review article, writing, "Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change "hockeystick" graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus."
What they found: The jury unanimously found both writers guilty of defaming Mann with "multiple false statements and awarded the scientist $1 in compensatory damages from each writer," per the New York Times.
It also determined that the writers' statements were written "maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm," and added punitive damages of $1 million against Steyn and $1,000 against Simberg, according to the NYT.
This case is ridiculous. Mann is a Penn State professor, but he had nothing to do with the Penn State personel who were framed for child abuse. Whether he represented tree ring data properly is a matter of opinion.
Climate science can have a big effect on public policy, and we should all be free to criticize it.
Reuters reports:
The European Union's executive has started to compile guidelines for Big Tech platforms to prevent disinformation, hate speech and counterfeits from disrupting the process of democratic elections.They will allow misinformation if it favors the approved positions on global warming, vaccines, migration, etc, but not otherwise.Over a third of the world's population will go to the polls this year at a time when the power and influence of tech giants is under growing scrutiny.
They will approve arguments that Trump should not be on the ballot, but not similar arguments against Biden, Harris, or Haley.
London Guardian op-ed:
We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights ...Based on the pronouns, it appears that controlling CO2, killing Jews, and neutering humans are all related somehow.Advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights. ...
We are now seeing a sharp increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic statements, actions and hate crimes in Sweden and the world. ... We unreservedly condemn all forms of discrimination, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. ...
Silence is complicity. You cannot be neutral in an unfolding genocide. ...
This article was written by:
Greta Thunberg (she/her), a Swedish activist who inspired Fridays for Future, a movement of school strikes against global climate inaction
Alde Nilsson (all pronouns), a global development student and climate justice activist with Fridays for Future Sweden
Jamie Mater (they/them), a researcher and climate justice activist with Fridays for Future Sweden
Raquel Frescia (she/they), a writer/researcher and climate justice activist with Fridays for Future Sweden
If she really thinks this, then she should be speaking out against White Genocide also. Her Sweden is being destroyed by Moslem migrants.
There is no social justice until there is justice for Whites.
Our aim is to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere.Apple is going to kill us all. Once carbon is removed from the atmosphere, all plant life on Earth will die.
The rest of the ad is worse. A Magic Negro is Mother Nature, and demands environmental sound bites. Tim Cook and some diverse actors say a lot of dopey things.
If you want to save the environment, it is never to pay big bucks for premium products. Everyone who gets a piece of that money is going to use it to consume resources. There is no way around that.
Apple also supports an assortment of destructive Leftist policies, such importing Third World folks into the USA where they will use 10x the resources.
The continent of Africa stands as a stark reminder of what we stand to lose by embracing erroneous ESG standards. As more African nations and people strive for a path to sustainable development and flourishing, international treaties and alliances threaten to rob them of their opportunity for growth. All developed nations have relied on cheap and abundant energy to achieve economic growth, but they are now threatening to close the door behind them and leave Africans in the cold. Climate activists argue that because Africa is at greater risk of climate-related events, it is in their best interest to forgo abundant energy sources.I did not know that. ESG is all a plot to cheat Africans out of energy.
Of course Africa has still benefited enormously from Western economic development. Even if they could not burn their own oil, they are still getting modern food, medicine, technology, and everything else.
Vice President Kamala Harris made a verbal slip on Friday that fed a frenzy of conspiracy theories, after she spoke of the need to 'reduce population' instead of pollution.If you want to combat climate change, it is not clear that electric vehicles will do any good at all. Maybe in 50 years, but not now.'When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water,' Harris said during a speech in Baltimore on combatting climate change.
The White House official transcript of the remarks corrected the obvious error, crossing out the word 'population' and adding 'pollution' in brackets to indicate what Harris intended to say.
The activists like to look long-term, such as to the year 2100. On that scale, the best things that can be done are to reduce population, and stop immigration into developed countries.
I have heard people argue that the CO2 contributions from countries like India and Nigeria are neglible compared to rich Americans. But it is just not true. By 2100, they will have contributed much more. Population growth and migration are the big problems.
Update: Here is the video. "The clock isn't only ticking, it is banging." It is pretty dopey, even when corrected.
Philanthropy is my full-time job these days, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how — in addition to helping people be more productive — AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. Globally, the worst inequity is in health: 5 million children under the age of 5 die every year. That’s down from 10 million two decades ago, but it’s still a shockingly high number. Nearly all of these children were born in poor countries and die of preventable causes like diarrhea or malaria. It’s hard to imagine a better use of AIs than saving the lives of children.No, this is all foolishness.I’ve been thinking a lot about how AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities.
In the United States, the best opportunity for reducing inequity is to improve education, particularly making sure that students succeed at math. The evidence shows that having basic math skills sets students up for success, no matter what career they choose. But achievement in math is going down across the country, especially for Black, Latino, and low-income students. AI can help turn that trend around.
Climate change is another issue where I’m convinced AI can make the world more equitable. The injustice of climate change is that the people who are suffering the most — the world’s poorest — are also the ones who did the least to contribute to the problem. I’m still thinking and learning about how AI can help, but later in this post I’ll suggest a few areas with a lot of potential.
Climate change is not an injustice. Increasing CO2 was a consequence of industrialization. Nearly everyone agrees that industrialization was a good thing, and not a problem. Those poor countries did not contribute to industrialization but benefited from it anyway.
The math achievement is not cause by school, and improving education will close the gap. We did a big experiment called No Child Left Behind, and it did not work.
I don't know why he cares so much about Third World babies dying. Everybody dies eventually. Those countries with high child mortality just make more babies and are not concerned about the deaths.
AI has lots of important applications, but not what Gates says.
The NY Times reports:
Year after year, calls have steadily grown louder for industrialized nations responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions already heating up the planet to own up to the problem — and pay for the damage. ...I guess the argument is that the Industrial Revolution somehow made Bengladesh worse off. But that is absurd. It previously had much worse poverty and famines and other problems. Those countries have no damages at all.“The term ‘loss and damage’ is a euphemism for terms we’re not allowed to use, which are ‘liability and compensation,’” Mr. Huq said. “‘Reparations’ is even worse.”
The United States, which is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases historically, has long been cool to the idea. But in Glasgow, it signed a statement agreeing to “increase resources” for loss and damage, without committing to anything more specific. ...
Estimates of the amount of money required to address loss and damage varies widely, from roughly $300 to $600 billion a year by 2030. At the moment, rich countries have failed to shore up the $100 billion they promised to deliver annually by 2020. That aid is designed to help countries adapt to climate change; it doesn’t include funds to address permanent damage.
Another NY Times article reveals:
Documents show how the conservative group worked with lawyers to gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices could go before running afoul of federal laws.The paper acts as if it has stolen documents to reveal a scandal. But all it tells us is that a conservative group was careful to abide by the law.
Update: Today's Science Friday is on:
Activists And Vulnerable Nations At COP26 Seek More Than PromisesI haven't heard it yet, but leftists have taken over science communications, so I am sure it favors paying Third World reparations.Action on climate change is slower than many activists would like. And why payment for “loss and damage” is crucial for vulnerable nations.
I found this in my Facebook feed.
Greta is a mentally ill teenager with no substantive opinion on what to do about climate change, even though she complains about it all the time.
I am watching Kyle's trial, and I have yet to see any evidence of wrongdoing. He showed up at a riot, offering to help law enforcement or anyone needing medical assistance. A couple of deranged lunatics chased him, and tried to beat him up and take his gun. He did everything to avoid a fight, and ran away. When they got to him, he shot them.
What was he supposed to do? Run faster? Let the crazies take his gun? Assume that his attackers had good intentions?
No. If someone is chasing a guy with a gun, you have to assume that the chasers are looking to do lethal harm.
Perhaps Kyle's shooting was reckless because there were a lot of people present, and he could have hit an innocent bystander. Kyle did not appear to have the training and experience to avoid such an accident.
If Kyle had hit an innocent party, then probably a manslaughter charge would be appropriate. But he didn't. He only shot criminals who were physically attacking him and directly threatening to kill him. From what I have seen of the trial so far, it appears to be completely justified self-defense.
Also showing our cultural divide is a Neflix show:
In his new coming-of-age Netflix series, "Colin in Black & White," former NFL quarterback-turned-civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick is running deep into controversy, this time by equating professional football's draft process with modern-day slavery.Kaepernick is not really Black. He was born to a White woman, and then adopted by a White couple. It is not known that he has any slave ancestors.As the first episode opens, a flurry of football players, portrayed by Black actors, are seen charging across a field in front of white coaches.
"What they don't want you to understand is what's being established is a power dynamic," Kaepernick, dressed all in black, says.
"Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod and examine you searching for any defect that might affect your performance," he continues. "No boundary respect. No dignity left intact."
The story is about how he learned to hate White people anyway.
His football career ended after he had a very bad season, and quit.
A NY Times advice column complains about White adopting Black kids, especially if the parents believe that All Lives Matters. It suggests dishonestly befriending the family in order to teach the Black kid a racial hatred that he might not otherwise learn. It quotes a Black woman saying “As a Black community, these are our kids.” So the Black kid belongs to the Black community, not the White parents, must be instilled with Black identity.
She said Black kids adopted by non-Black families can have a hard time when their parents take a “colorblind” approach to parenting. This might look like deciding that a school is “good” based on academics alone,
Apparently, to a lot of Blacks, having an anti-White identity is more important than anything else.
The Social Cost of Carbon: Advances in Long-Term Probabilistic Projections of Population, GDP, Emissions, and Discount RatesThe paper mentions the effect of climate change on agriculture, but no one knows whether the cost will be positive or negative. Much of the paper is devoted to discussing how to figure the economic growth rate, and suggests using 2% or 3%.This paper, coauthored by scholars at RFF and top research universities, examines the key methods and challenges involved in estimating a more accurate social cost of carbon.
If the economy really grows at that rate for 200 years, then everyone will have so much wealth that atmospheric carbon will be insignificant.
I was struck by the UN population projections, as shown above. As you can see, the world will be overwhelmingly African and Asian. Mostly African. Maybe 20 billion of them. Whites will be an insignificant fraction of the world.
So where is all that economic growth going to come from? Will Africans enslave the Whites and force them to invent new technologies? Where will the Africans get enough food to feed themselves?
If this kind of population growth takes places, there will probably be famines and wars that kill billions of people. They might burn coal just to increase atmospheric CO2 and crop yields. A small temperature increase will be the least of their problems.
As Trump Again Rejects Science, Biden Calls Him a ‘Climate Arsonist’ ...Actually, before industrialization and global warming, California had forest fires ten times as big as the worst fires of today. See this:“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires?” Mr. Biden asked. ...
But Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary for natural resources, pressed Mr. Trump more bluntly. “If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians,” he told the president.
This time, Mr. Trump rejected the premise. “It’ll start getting cooler,” he insisted. “You just watch.”
“I wish science agreed with you,” Mr. Crowfoot replied.
“Well, I don’t think science knows, actually,” Mr. Trump retorted, maintaining a tense grin.
Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California. Between 1982 and 1998, California’s agency land managers burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres. The state passed a few new laws in 2018 designed to facilitate more intentional burning. But few are optimistic this, alone, will lead to significant change. We live with a deathly backlog. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published this terrifying conclusion: California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to restabilize in terms of fire.I have pointed out that all of Trump's critics show low intelligence, and this is a good example. Another is how they all cite Bob Woodward's new book.…When I reached Malcolm North, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service who is based in Mammoth, California, and asked if there was any meaningful scientific dissent to the idea that we need to do more controlled burning, he said, “None that I know of.”
Bob Woodward has a long record of dishonest journalism, and even sounds as if he is mentally retarded. In interviews, he doesn't even make any sense.
Trump's reported interview comments for the book very closely match his public statement. The anti-Trump pundits keeps trying to tell us that there is some contradiction, but they are never able to show us just what the contradiction is. Fauci and the other experts adamantly insist that Trump was conveying the best medical wisdom at all times, and the experts were saying the same things publicly as well.
I am not sure whether Woodward really is mentally retarded, but I don't think it matters. The anti-Trump pundits are presenting falsehoods to voters, and the voters can readily verify that they are false.
For most of human history, people have lived within a surprisingly narrow range of temperatures, in the places where the climate supported abundant food production. But as the planet warms, that band is suddenly shifting north. According to a pathbreaking recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the planet could see a greater temperature increase in the next 50 years than it did in the last 6,000 years combined. ...World temperatures are only projected to increase a couple fo degrees. And that will be certain death for hundreds of millions in India and China?
A 2017 study in Science Advances found that by 2100, temperatures could rise to the point that just going outside for a few hours in some places, including parts of India and Eastern China, “will result in death even for the fittest of humans.”
Here are some facts few people know:
Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
Fires have declined 25 percent around the world since 2003
The amount of land we use for meat—humankind’s biggest use of land—has declined by an area nearly as large as AlaskaThe build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and CaliforniaCarbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s
The Netherlands became rich, not poor while adapting to life below sea levelWe produce 25 percent more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
... Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”
The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.” Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.
America’s Enduring Caste System Our founding ideals promise liberty and equality for all. Our reality is an enduring racial hierarchy that has persisted for centuries.So what is the evidence?
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” he once asked, ...So if trends continue, he argues, people from Rwanda might not want to come here, and Norway might not let Americans in. Too bad it is too late to send him back to South Africa, where he could witness his leftist ideologies in action.
As an immigrant from South Africa, ... I am in favor of throwing America’s borders wide open to much of the world. ... American exceptionalism is impossible without immigration. ... The only way to do that is to invite in the other 95 percent. ...
If we keep shutting foreigners out, what justifies our arrogant assumption that the world’s best and brightest will keep wanting to come here?
Consider, for instance, Rwanda,
If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers.Sounds impressive, right? Not really.
And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83 percent — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated.
Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May.
“We now know that geography played a large role. 54 percent of all U.S. deaths were in the 100 counties in or within 100 miles of NYC.”While the death toll is more than I expected, the disease impact on most of the population is far less that what anyone was predicting.
Covid-19 deaths — more than 90,000 so far — are “concentrated among the elderly,” Horowitz continues, and the “virus lopsidedly targets people with particular underlying conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes.”
The death rate, Horowitz claims, “doesn’t even climb above .1% until you reach over 70, with a steep and dangerous growth of risk over 75 and 80.”
“You come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” a visibly angry Thunberg told the high-level audience gathered for the UN Climate Action Summit in New York.I think he is right here. This is yet another example of Baby Boomers selfishly protecting their generation, at the expense of everyone else.
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing,” thundered the 16-year-old Swedish girl, who has galvanized youth across the world to mobilize against climate change.
This was a debatable point at the time, but just six months later children around the world were cut off from their playgrounds, their friends, and their schools (i.e., most of their “childhood”)! Bizarrely, one of the only countries where this did not happen is Sweden, home of infidels who reject the True Church of Shutdown.
So… Greta Thunberg might turn out to be wrong regarding atmospheric physics, just as the academic researchers who’ve gotten grants for climate modeling may turn out to be wrong (Cato article on a paywalled Nature paper). But I think she got the generational dynamics correct! Given the chance to cut their personal risk of contracting Covid-19 by a percentage point or two, older adults had no difficulty deciding to rob children of their childhood.
LONDON, Jan 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Climate-change-related threats such as extreme weather, large-scale biodiversity losses and a failure of political leaders to slow planetary heating are now the top long-term risks facing the globe, business and other leaders said on Wednesday.Really? The history of humans on Earth has been progressively more violent and destructive wars. Another world war would surely be a lot bigger threat that the ocean level rising a few inches.
An annual risk survey published ahead of the World Economic Forum next week put climate threats ahead of risks ranging from cyberattacks and pandemics to geopolitical conflict and weapons of mass destruction for the first time.
"That's new. Last year we didn't have it," said Mirek Dusek, deputy head of the Centre for Geopolitical and Regional Affairs and an executive committee member of the World Economic Forum, of the rise of environmental issues up the list.
Much as Greta has been doing for the other essential truth here, that civilization’s current m.o. is producing an unfolding catastrophe on a scale where, to find its approximate parallel, you’d have to go back past WWII, past the Black Death, past the extinctions of the Ice Ages, all the way to something like the Chicxulub asteroid? ...This is way beyond anything predicted by the IPCC.
I’m mostly worried about so-called “tail risk,” of runaway warming basically ending both the natural world and agriculture as human beings have known them. And I’m worried mostly because of an additional thing I believe, which is that one generation’s “tail risks” become the next generation’s “tailbone risks” become the rump risks of the generation after that, which indeed is how we got to where we are now. And the world has shown no ability to coordinate on anything as big as decarbonization, to get out of defect-equilibria, and it’s not obvious to me that that will change, even if I imagine the plausibly desperate situations 50 or 100 years from now.
It’s the End of California as We Know ItYes, California is doomed. He does not even mention the biggest problems.
The fires and the blackouts are connected to a larger problem in this state: a failure to live sustainably.
But lately my affinity for my home state has soured. Maybe it’s the smoke and the blackouts, but a very un-Californian nihilism has been creeping into my thinking. I’m starting to suspect we’re over. It’s the end of California as we know it. I don’t feel fine.
It isn’t just the fires — although, my God, the fires. ...
Now choking under the smoke of a changing climate, California feels stuck. We are BlackBerry after the iPhone, Blockbuster after Netflix: We’ve got the wrong design, we bet on the wrong technologies, we’ve got the wrong incentives, and we’re saddled with the wrong culture. The founding idea of this place is infinitude — mile after endless mile of cute houses connected by freeways and uninsulated power lines stretching out far into the forested hills. Our whole way of life is built on a series of myths — the myth of endless space, endless fuel, endless water, endless optimism, endless outward reach and endless free parking.
One by one, those myths are bursting into flame. We are running out of land, housing, water, road space and now electricity. Fixing all this requires systemic change, but we aren’t up to the task.
