Thursday, February 18, 2021

Fact Check: Why is Canada Doing So Much Better Than The U.S.? [UPDATED]


[This piece has been UPDATED and flips the original conclusions.  See below.]

I don't mean to beat a dead horse.  I realize most people are dug-in when it comes to the off-patent treatments for COVID.  Some trust the studies that claim they work, and some trust the studies that say they don't.  (For a complete list of all the studies on these and other therapies, go to c19study.com)

For example, I made my mind up a long time ago on Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and wrote about it here, here, and here.  Most of the countries I had researched that had unusually good outcomes, like South Korea, Greece, Norway, Egypt, India, Israel, and dozens of others, had at times embraced the use of HCQ, often with zinc.  More recently many have employed Ivermectin (IVM), which seems to be the most effective to date.  [UPDATE 4/26/21 - Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state with 230 million people, is the only state that hands out kits with Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, D3, etc to anyone regardless of PCR test results, and it has been relatively unaffected by the recent deadly spike in India.]   

But one country puzzled me: Canada.  Canada has been very successful [see UPDATE at bottom!] with Coronavirus but did not use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin.  Moreover, Canada, if anything would be expected to fare worse than its sunnier neighbor to the South.  But that's not the case.  Canada is doing almost three times better than the U.S. in deaths per million population.  That translates to the equivalent of about 300,000 lives saved!   

I finally looked into this and found a possible culprit, or should I say, a possible secret: Colchicine.  Colchicine is chemically distinct from HCQ but shares some interesting similarities.  Both originated long ago as plant based medicines, and they both have strong anti-inflammatory properties that are not fully understood.  Moreover, both seem to benefit Coronavirus infections.  Colchicine is not known as an antiviral, but with what we've learned about zinc ionophores, ie chemicals that transport zinc into cells, that may change.  [CORRECTION: Colchicine is a known antiviral.]     

Canada approved the use of Colchicine for Coronavirus last summer.  It is the only approved pill based treatment for early COVID in Canada.  

The fact is, outlier countries that have unusually low death rates have at least one pill based early outpatient treatment recommended for Coronavirus.  It doesn't seem to matter which one they choose, as long as they choose at least one.  India, one of the best performing large countries, has several and makes them available for free. [UPDATE only Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, does this and they are among the best performing states during India's deadly second wave.] But in the U.S., we literally have NO early pill based approved treatments: not HCQ, IVM, DOX, AZ, Colchicine, Quinine, Artemisinin, Favipiravir, or any of the others being used around the world. None. 

In fact, the official U.S. protocol for treating early outpatient Coronavirus and COVID is identical to the protocol for the common cold: isolation, fluids, & rest.  

That's why we are dying at a rate that proves we have perhaps the dumbest medical bureaucracy on the planet.  But not just dumb, criminally dumb. (Yes, I'm looking at you Dr. Fauci.)

[UPDATE:  I used population normalized deaths for this analysis and that may have been a mistake.  My assumption was that case fatality rates were so skewed by testing rates that they have lost meaning.  That may not be true for a number of reasons.  As it happens, Canada continues to have a significantly HIGHER case fatality rate than the U.S. AND is experiencing a current spike in cases (March, 2021).  Their lower death rate is entirely due to lower cases and that is changing.  Bottom line: at this point Canada is not doing so well, and Colchicine does not appear to be changing much of anything.  We'll keep watching though.]

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Fact Check: Why Did We Allow 500,000 To Die? [UPDATED 4/26/21]

                                             

Is Dr. Stella Immanuel right?  Does she deserve an apology? Did all those people die needlessly?  

I can name dozens of qualified Doctors and scientists off the top of my head who tried their level best to get the word out that there was no need to die from COVID-19.  People like Didier Raoult, Chris Martenson, Zev Zelenko, Paul Marik, Pierre Kory, Simone Gold, Jane Orient, all the Dr.s at America's Frontline Doctors, and all the Dr.s at The Front Line Covid Critical Care Alliance did what they could.  Even Donald Trump made an early attempt.  But, all were suppressed, cancelled, ridiculed, and publicly shamed. Many lost their jobs. They all deserve apologies. They've all been vindicated.  And what's more, anyone who ridiculed them and spread misinformation about these therapies should be shamed and sued into oblivion. 

There was just too much money and power at stake for these cheap remedies to be allowed to succeed. Fake studies proliferated claiming they were useless and even harmful.  The media ran with the fake studies.  The medical bureaucracies, beholden to the pharmaceutical industry and aligned against Donald Trump, ran with the fake studies.  Your own doctor (and mine) ran with the fake studies.   

The fact is, these early treatments were well known from day one to be effective.  Countries that adopted them in early outpatient settings have radically better outcomes.  At current rates, India has one death from COVID for every 123 we have in the U.S.  They hand out Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine , Doxycycline, D3 and Zinc to their people. They are saving millions of lives and it costs them under $3.00 per citizen. 

[UPDATE 4/26/21 - Only one state, Uttar Pradesh, hands out the Ziverdo Kits for early outpatient treatment and they have been relatively unaffected by India's recent sharp spike in infections and deaths.  Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state with 230 million people.  Today I saw that India's top medical bureaucracy for the central government just endorsed Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine for the first time.  Hopefully that will have a positive impact in some of the hardest hit states like Maharashtra and Delhi.] 

Bottom line: we killed hundreds of thousands of our own citizens knowingly and maliciously to help Big Pharma make billions and to defeat Donald Trump.  It is a genocide-level crime.

And among the criminals I hold responsible, a dishonorable mention must go to Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Not only did he champion the very experiments that likely led to the creation of this virus, but he funded them and lied about it. He was at the top of the chain-of-command when U.S. taxpayer money went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to pay for the very reckless "gain-of-function" experiments that created this FrankenVirus.  

But Fauci's lies did not stop there.  He also lied about masks, Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, and the significance of randomized controlled trials.  More than anyone else he is responsible for not only the origin, but the tragic handling of this virus as well.  

Of course it is only fitting that Anthony Fauci is the highest paid person in our entire government and the most respected voice on matters of all infectious diseases, including this virus. What a truly insane world we live in.    

[For links and summaries to every scientific study done on HCQ, IVM, D3, ZINC, C, and more, go to:  c19study.com ]

[UPDATE: Anthony Fauci was just awarded a $1 million Israeli prize for "defending science".  Can't make this shit up.]    

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Fact Check: Has There Been A Cure All Along? [UPDATED]

Has there been a cure for COVID all along?  Yes, more than one.  I myself, a mere blogger, have known this for many months.  Sadly, your doctor and mine do not know this.  Why is that?  

The story of how a rogue Chinese virus could be allowed to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans when practical cures are in our grasp is one for the ages.  It's a tale that involves money, greed, power, politics, corruption, bureaucracy, and plain old incompetence. All together, it amounts to a holocaust-level crime.  I elaborated on this in July in a piece titled, "How To Survive Coronavirus in Three Easy Steps".  

As of today, with the virus rampaging in its 12th month, the official treatment protocol in the US for early COVID is exactly the same as it would be for the common cold.  No difference!  Go home, rest, drink fluids, take Tylenol, and come back when your lips turn blue and you're gasping for breath!  We spend about $50 BILLION per year between NIH and CDC and that's the best they've come up with.  Meanwhile, people are dying, hospitals are stressed, the economy is on life support, and survivors have myriad complications.  This is no common cold.  And yet doctors are still not allowed to prescribe the readily available cures in an early outpatient setting.  There's no excuse for this. 

For the latest on the cures and the fight to get our government bureaucracies to allow them, here are two powerful testimonies from yesterday's Senate hearing on outpatient therapies:  

Dr. Pierre Kory: 

(Sorry, since we now live behind a digital "iRon Curtain", Dr. Kory's Senate testimony has been memory-holed off YouTube. This platform, like YouTube, is owned by Google and only allows it's own videos to be embedded.  Here's a RUMBLE link to that testimony:  

https://rumble.com/embed/vaodyr/?pub=4 )




Dr. Jane Orient:


Here's a link to that testimony for those who can't see the embedded video:  Dr. Jane Orient testimony  

(Note: the above clip is from Bloomberg which misleadingly labels Dr. Orient anti-vaccination.  She is pro-vaccination, but does not think government mandates are justified by the science.  That makes her anti-mandate, not anti-vaccination.) 



Amazingly, after three hours of powerful testimony amounting to information that would instantly end the pandemic and save untold lives, the best the Senators could do is promise to write a strongly worded letter to the NIH.  That's it!  

Truth is, our elected representatives have no power over the corrupt bureaucracies which have choreographed this entire nightmare.  The bureaucracies are wholly owned by the pharmaceutical industries, which have a vested interest in keeping these inexpensive and effective cures out of our hands.  They have way more to gain by selling expensive vaccines, cloned antibodies, and hospital medications and it is irrelevant to them that possibly millions will die.  

[UPDATE 12/15 - On October 30th, 2020, a week before the election,The American Medical Association (AMA) quietly posted some internal pushback on it's March 2019 recommendation that Hydroxychloroquine not be prescribed for Coronavirus and COVID-19.  The announcement was on page 18 of a revised handbook and escaped notice until recently.  The AMA is the largest medical lobbying group in the country and has massive influence with all of the US govt bureaucracies dealing with the pandemic. The world has known about the effectiveness of HCQ from the beginning, and countries that use it early (especially w/ zinc) have fared remarkably better than the US:  (click on the graph to enlarge it)


On average, you are four times more likely to die from COVID if you live in a country that strictly limits Hydroxychloroquine vs if you lived in a country that uses it early.  [UPDATE 7/2021:  READ TO END] Two countries stand out on this comparison - Sweden and Norway.  Though they share a long border and are similar in many ways, they took opposite approaches with HCQ and have vastly different results.  You are ten times more likely to die from COVID in Sweden where HCQ is basically outlawed, than you are in Norway which uses it widely.  Being so similar in demographics, climate, diet, culture, etc. and so different regarding HCQ makes this comparison the closest thing to a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) for HCQ ever done with 15 million people.*

*[UPDATE 7/2021:  I have heard from multiple sources in Norway that HCQ was originally embraced, but was subsequently discredited by their FDA equivalent. Therefore, the large difference in fatalities between Norway and Sweden remains a mystery, at least as it pertains to recent results.  My original information regarding Norway vs Sweden came from early observational studies that named Norway as an HCQ adopter.  Then there was this map from www.c19hcq.com that showed Norway as green and Sweden as red:  


Despite the map, the commentary section now states that Norway's HCQ use is unclear. Whether or not they use Ivermectin, Colchicine, Favipiravir, Fluvoxamine, or some other repurposed antiviral is in doubt based on the local reports I have received.  The challenge with all Covid analysis is that everything is a moving target.]      

For a comprehensive list of all medical studies to date on HCQ, IVM, D3, Zinc and others go to C19Study.com.

For a great piece on the AMA's deadly deception, read "The AMA Lied...How Many Died?"  ]



   


Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Fact Check: Whose Job Is It To Prove Fraud?

I’d like to give you a different perspective on the 2020 election.  By now you’ve heard that roughly half the country believes the election was fraudulent.  The other half believes it was fair and accurate.  How are we supposed to sort this out? 


I don’t intend to make the case either way.  That’s been done by more capable and knowledgeable people than me.  If you are interested in some of the stronger arguments for fraud they are here and here and here.  And if you are interested in the case that the election was fair, read this, and this, and this.  


My point has to do with the burden of proof.  The Republicans claiming fraud are doing what they can in the extremely short time-frame to “prove” the case that the election was decided by fraud.  And the Democrats claiming a fair election are saying there is no “proof” that fraud occurred.  On its face, this framing seems reasonable.  But a closer look reveals why this is backwards, and is actually a dagger to the heart of the Republic.


Consider: if the government charges you with a crime, it is up to them to prove you did it.  If they fail to prove the case, you are deemed “not guilty’ and are set free.  You are small and the government is big, so that’s the way it has to be in a free country.  Otherwise, government tyranny can run roughshod over the powerless people.


Like criminal courts, elections are run by governments.  Voters have no power other than their lone vote.  That’s it.  Fair and trustworthy elections are the glue that holds the Republic together.  Without them, governments can just pick their own successors and the whole idea of democracy is moot.  So whose job is it to prove elections are fair and trustworthy?  Who has the burden of proof, the voters or the government?


Prior to 2020, this was never an issue.  Voting was mostly done in-person, many states required a government ID, most states required a signature, and every step was done under bipartisan observation.  Everyone agreed elections were mostly fair and trustworthy, with a few exceptions in historically one-party places known for old-fashioned ballot-stuffing and non-citizen voting.


But 2020 changed all that.  Two centuries of election integrity practices were thrown out the window ostensibly over COVID.  The upshot is that most votes this time were not in-person,  ID’s could not possibly be checked, there was no signature matching, envelopes were separated from ballots without any way to audit them , chain of custody was non-existent, ballots were then scanned into a machine with proprietary software, the machine data and software was easily accessible through a USB port, and the machines may have been connected to a vote tallying system on the internet. Moreover, in many one-party places, observers from the other party were not allowed anywhere near the actual vote counting. 


There is no way to audit such an election.  There is no way to prove it was free of fraud and trustworthy.  It is not the voter’s or the candidate's job to prove fraud.  It is the government's job to prove they are running a fair and trustworthy election, and this time they absolutely cannot.  Period.  That’s the issue.  


So what’s the remedy?  Obviously, a fair election is the proper remedy - an auditable and trackable redo in the disputed states.  In the age of overnight vaccine development, blockchain cryptocurrencies, and billions in secure stock trades every minute, I think we can probably develop a secure voting system by January 20th.  


Because if you can’t prove votes are legal, if you can’t reconcile the number of legal votes and the number of ballots, if there's no chain of custody, if voters can't verify their votes were properly recorded, if you can’t audit the machines and software, if you can’t observe the process at every step, and if you can’t trust the entire election from top to bottom, then You. Don’t. Have. A. Republic.       

Friday, October 23, 2020

Fact Check - The Real Truth About Global Warming [UPDATED]

Global warming is perhaps the most important political issue today, or at least that's the way it appears based on the number of questions the media has asked during the 2020 presidential campaign.    That's why it's really important to get the science right on global warming, aka climate change.   Fortunately, and thanks to the Coronavirus, we have a new appreciation for how science works... and sometimes doesn't work.

As it turns out, there's not always a straight line from ignorance to certainty when it comes to science.  There are lots of twists and turns along the way.  Take the simple issue of whether or not masks work.  There are credible scientific voices on both sides of this debate.  In fact, the top scientist in the U.S. Government on matters of infectious disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has himself been on both sides of the mask issue. Which scientists are we to believe when they often say opposite things?  The same would apply to lockdowns, Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesevir, the value of randomized controlled trials, the value of testing, and more.

Unlike COVID-19, climate change has been around for 4.5 billion years.   Since you may have only heard about the last several decades, here is the rest of the story:



A Socratic Guide To The Burning Question Of Our Time


Intro I

There's an old Jewish joke that goes something like this:

No matter what Shlomo did in bed, his wife could never achieve an orgasm. 
Since by Jewish law a wife is entitled to sexual pleasure, they decide to consult their Rabbi. 
The Rabbi listens to their story, strokes his beard, and makes the following suggestion: "Hire a strapping young man. While the two of you are making love, have the young man wave a towel over you. That will get God's attention and he will provide an orgasm."

They go home and follow the Rabbi's advice. They hire a handsome young man and he waves a towel over them as they make love. It does not help and the wife is still unsatisfied. Perplexed, they go back to the Rabbi.

"Okay,' he says to the husband, "Try it reversed. Have the young man make love to your wife and you wave the towel over them."

Once again, they follow the Rabbi's advice. They go home and hire the same strapping young man.

The young man gets into bed with the wife and the husband waves the towel. The young man gets to work with great enthusiasm and soon she has an enormous, room-shaking, ear-splitting, screaming orgasm.

The husband smiles, looks at the young man and says to him triumphantly, "See that, you schmuck? THAT'S how you wave a towel!"

_________________________________________________________________________________

Intro II

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.


Michael Crichton, author of "Jurassic Park", "Andromeda Strain", "Westworld", and numerous other works of fiction and non-fiction. Crichton also held a medical degree from Harvard.
_________________________________________________________________________________

A Brief History of the Theory of Global Warming (aka Climate Change)


It all began back in the 1700s when some rock stars - no, not that kind of rock star, geologists actually - were traipsing around Europe and noticed that some of the boulders in the valleys matched the rocks on distant peaks.  The only plausible explanation for how those boulders traveled so far was that they must have been carried by ice.  This idea was fleshed-out a few decades later by a scientist studying skeletons and frozen remains of large mammals in Siberia.  Thus was born the idea of The  Great Ice Age.  But that opened up a whole new can-o-worms; if ice once covered the Earth, what melted the ice?

In 1824, around the same time these ideas were percolating, a scientist named Joseph Fourier figured out that Earth would be much colder without its atmosphere.  Air was trapping heat from the sun and keeping us warm, he said.  Fourier had discovered the greenhouse effect.

Building on Fourier's work, other scientists found that about 70% of the greenhouse effect was due to water vapor, 20% was due to carbon dioxide (CO2), and the final 10% was due to methane, ozone, and other gasses.  A theory developed that maybe changes in the atmosphere had ended The Great Ice Age.

Water vapor was dismissed as a cause because excess water condenses and falls-out as precipitation.  CO2, methane, and ozone do not cycle as quickly, so the theory of melting ice focused primarily on CO2, which while only .04% of the atmosphere, accounts for 20% of the warming effect.

Two things were going on at the same time as all this.  One was the industrial revolution and the burning of coal in newly invented steam engines.  The other was the observation that the existing glaciers were continuing to melt!   Could they be related and tied back to changes in CO2?

Along came a Swedish scientist named Svante Arrhenius, who in 1898 calculated the hypothetical climate change that would result if atmospheric CO2 was cut in half.  He calculated that the Earth would be glaciated...as it was during The Great Ice Age!  He also calculated that if CO2 doubled, we'd have melting ice and ...global warming!  So, the "modern" CO2 theory of global warming dates back to the calculations Arrhenius did 120 years ago in an attempt to explain the onset and demise of The Great Ice Age.   

Meanwhile, we've been burning progressively more carbon fuels like coal, oil, and gas in the last 120 years.  Finally, in 1960, an American scientist named David Keeling began measuring CO2 levels at an observatory in Hawaii.  What he discovered was that CO2 was trending up at an alarming rate!  

So with Keeling showing CO2 skyrocketing, Arrhenius' saying we are going to fry if CO2 rises, and glaciers continuing to melt, that eventually leads to Al Gore, Kyoto, Paris, The UN IPCC, and a scientific "consensus" saying global warming is an "existential threat". (Meaning, the end is nigh!)

In 2009, the U.S. government under Barack Obama officially declared that CO2 emissions endangered life on Earth.  Whole generations now believe we are doomed.  Some have even stopped having children thinking there is no future.   

All from a gas that humans exhale, that plants inhale, that makes up only .04% of our atmosphere, and that formed the basis of a theory developed in the 1800s to try and explain the The Great Ice Age!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Pop Quiz:

So, what really ended The Great Ice Age?
A. CO2
B. Mr. Milankovitch

Since this whole CO2 inquiry began as an attempt to explain The Great Ice Age, one of the first questions to ask is, was the premise right?  Have we learned anything new since Fourier, Arrhenius, Keeling, et al?  Do we now know what caused and ended The Great Ice Age?

You are probably certain it was CO2.  After all, you've been told for years that CO2  drives climate.  Since the 1800s and Arrhenius we've believed that changes in CO2 can have dramatic effects.  We still believe CO2 is melting glaciers today.  It's "settled science" after all.

Except, that's not what happened.  It turns out, Mr. Milankovitch did it.  (Yup, our climate has been hacked by the Russians! Actually, he was Serbian, just sounds Russian.)  Milutin Milankovitch was a scientist who figured out in the 1920s that the Earth has a cyclical relationship to the sun.  It tilts. It wobbles. It's orbit changes.  Some cycles take 100,000 years to complete.  Some take 41,000 years.  Some take 23,000 years.  The effect of all this is rather dramatic... ta da... climate change!

MILANKOVITCH CYCLES



Of course, Milankovitch was instantly dismissed as a kook.  Even today as I'm typing this, his name is unrecognized by the spell-check gremlins in my computer.  Fourier, Arrhenius, and Keeling, however, are spell-check VIPs.

Until 1998, Milankovitch got no respect.  But then a funny thing happened down in Antarctica.  Scientists drilled an ice core at a place called Vostok (more Russians!) that gave them a 420,000 year climate history, and voila, there were major ice ages and warmings every 100,000 years.  There were also shorter cycles in between.  Milankovitch could no longer be dismissed, except of course by spell-check.

           



Then in 2000 another Antarctic ice core was obtained at Dome C that goes back 800,000 years.  Again it confirmed Milankovitch.  The Great Ice Age now had a plausible explanation.  The Earth's relationship to the sun caused major climate change - global coolings and global warmings - going back as far as we can see.

Dome C Temperature Estimates


If major climate change happens at least every 100,000 years, as Milankovitch theorized, and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, then there have been 45,000 of those alone.  The Great Ice Age was just the latest in a countless series of coolings and warmings!

Another name that should get mentioned at this point is Eddy, as in John A. Eddy.   Eddy was one of the most recent astronomers to study the cyclical output of the sun.  He published a groundbreaking study in 1976 and named the most recent solar minimums and maximums.   While Milankovitch cycles play out over tens of thousands of years, solar cycles can be as short as 11 years.  They are also closely correlated with...ta da...climate change!

Here are some of the solar minimums and maximums from recent Earth history that resulted in major global warmings and mini-ice ages:



You can see why glaciers are melting today by looking at the right side of the solar activity graph. We are also near a peak in the Milankovitch cycle.  Something would be horribly wrong if glaciers were NOT melting today!

So between Milankovitch's orbital cycles and Eddy's solar cycles, these are the bases for ice ages and their demise.  These are the bases for perpetual climate change.  In addition, one-time events like volcanoes and asteroids can also produce dramatic and sudden climate swings.

[UPDATE 7/31/23:  In addition to volcanoes and asteroids, undersea volcanoes and exothermic releases must be considered.  We are currently experiencing a dramatic and sudden rise in ocean temps which largely occurred over a 4 week period beginning in March, 2023.  The theory is that heat from the Earth's core did this.  An ocean cannot be rapidly heated from above due to marginally hotter air. But an exothermic release from the Earth's core (as hot as the surface of the sun!) could do that.  This theory has been brilliantly fleshed-out over a few years in a post on theethicalskeptic.com website.  https://theethicalskeptic.com/2020/02/16/the-climate-change-alternative-we-ignore-to-our-peril/ 

Moreover, in January, 2022, the largest undersea volcano ever recorded erupted and sent unprecedented amounts of water vapor into the stratosphere.  As we know, 70% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, and the amount from this undersea release is expected to take years if not decades to cycle through.  Unknown is the thermal footprint this had on deep Pacific Ocean temps because our measurements are largely based on surface temps.   https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere ]


So, CO2 did not cause either The Great Ice Age or any of the many tens of thousands of cyclical coolings and warmings that preceded it.  It's the fluctuating sun and our wonky orbit that cause climate change.

(A newer ice core at Allan Hills, Antarctica claims to go back over 1.2 million years, and it also confirms Milankovitch.)
_________________________________________________________________________________

Pop quiz:
Still, within the Milankovitch and Eddy cycles, we know that:
A. CO2 drives climate change 
B. Climate drives CO2 change
Just because Arrhenius et al were wrong about The Great Ice Age doesn't mean they are also wrong about what will happen if we add massive amounts of CO2 to our atmosphere.  According to the CO2 theory of global warming, as CO2 increases, so will temperatures.
    That's why you are probably certain that CO2 still drives climate change.  A consensus of scientists, academics, politicians, and celebrities have been telling you for years that higher CO2 concentrations will cause the Earth to get hotter.  As we burn more and more fossil fuels, that releases more CO2 into the air.  CO2 is a greenhouse gas, ergo the Earth gets hotter.  It's simple.

    Except, that's not what happens.  Along with temperature records going back 800,000 years, we also got CO2 records for the same time span.

    Here's the CO2 and temperature record from the Dome C ice core: 

    Dome C Temperature and CO2 for 800,000 Years (Red = CO2, Blue = Temps)




    At first glance temperature and CO2 appear to be closely correlated.  One might even conclude that Arrhenius was right and that CO2 caused the ice ages.      

    But when zooming in on this graph, something interesting is revealed; CO2 trails temperature by 1200 years, + or - 700 years!  

    Climate Change (blue) precedes CO2 Change by 1200, + or - 700 Years


    CO2 and the other atmospheric gasses behave somewhat like water vapor, except over a longer timeframe.  We know that hotter air can retain water vapor in greater concentrations than colder air.  There is also a water cycle that is constantly moving water from vapor, to precipitation, to ground, to sea, and then back to vapor.  CO2 has a similar cycle, just not as quick. (See Henry's Law)  

    A number of datasets from ice and sediment cores confirm this finding.  The hotter it gets on Earth, the more CO2 can be found in the atmosphere.  Contrary to what you've been told, CO2 does not drive climate.  Climate drives CO2!  The alleged cause is actually an effect.
             
    _________________________________________________________________________________

    Pop Quiz:
    Still, pumping CO2 into the atmosphere is a new thing, and that's what makes this an existential threat!
    A. True
    B. False 
    As everyone since Keeling knows, CO2 levels are in-fact rising.  And who can forget Al Gore on the scissor lift in his movie showing CO2 going literally off the chart?  And as everyone knows since Arrhenius, more CO2 makes Earth hotter, right?

    Except, that's not what's happening.  Yes, we are in a warm period due to both Milankovitch and Eddy, and accordingly, CO2 is rising.  That's to be expected.  But the question remains: is this time different because we are burning fossil fuels?  Can CO2 work both ways?  Can it both be driven by temperature and also drive temperatures up?

    If greenhouse gasses both increase as temperatures go up, and then cause even more warming, why is the greenhouse effect not a runaway reaction? According to Arrhenius and modern global warming theory, the greenhouse effect should create a feedback loop.  Why isn't that visible in the ice core data? 

    The answer has to do with the light spectrum and each gasses' role in trapping radiation in the troposphere.  

       

    At the affected upgoing wavelengths, which are the ones involved in global warming, CO2 is already absorbing 100% of the radiation it is capable of absorbing.  Adding more CO2 into the atmosphere can not trap more than 100% of the affected radiation!  This is why the greenhouse effect is not a runaway reaction or a feedback loop.  It's a self-limiting reaction.

    In the 1800s, when Arrhenius was doing his calculations, the instruments for measuring the light spectrum this accurately did not exist. (Then again, neither did antibiotics, airplanes, Model T Fords, transistors...)

    Additionally, as CO2 increases, the CO2 cycle speeds up.  Here's an example of how the biosphere absorbs CO2 at faster rates:



    So, adding more CO2 into the atmosphere will not effect climate, and any CO2 increases will just grow the biosphere.  
    _________________________________________________________________________________

    Pop Quiz:
    Still, there is a scientific consensus that says CO2 is uniquely warming our planet, and no one can prove otherwise.     
    A.  True
    B.  False

    Anyone who's taken a middle school science class knows the value of a control group.  Luckily, scientists have the ability to track temperature and CO2 on some of the other bodies around Earth.  Venus, Mars, and the Moon are particularly close to us and have yielded some interesting data.  If global warming theory is right, temperatures on those bodies should be un-correlated to Earth temps because they are free from the effects of industrialization!

    Except, that's not what's happening.  In an odd coincidence both Mars and the Moon are warming!  (Of course, it's still man's fault!)  Milankovitch is particularly relevant to the Moon, because as goes the Earth, so goes the Moon.  Eddy is particularly relevant to Mars, because as goes the Sun, so goes Mars.

    But there's more.

    In our solar system, only Venus, Earth, and Mars have atmospheres with CO2. Of the three, Venus is closest to the sun, has a dense atmosphere, is very hot, and has about 200,000 times the CO2 concentration of Earth.  Mars is furthest from the sun, has a very light atmosphere, is quite cold, and  still has about 14 times the CO2 concentration of Earth!  It appears that distance from the sun is what primarily drives climate on these three planets, not CO2. _________________________________________________________________________________


    Pop Quiz:

    Still, we know that global warming is true because all the predictions have been right!
    A. True
    B. False

    Real science can accurately predict the future.  If a cannon ball with a known mass, is fired from a cannon with a known amount of force, at a known trajectory, etc., science can predict exactly where it will land.  That's how science works.

    If global warming science is real and quantifiable, scientists would be able to similarly predict the future of climate.

    Except that's not what has happened.  In fact, every single dire prediction has been proven wrong.  100% wrong.  Here's a brief summary of what the experts have predicted:

    • Global famine by the year 2000 - Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Nobel Prize recipient, Professor 
    • Entire nations wiped out by 1999 - Noel Brown, U.N. Environmental Director
    • Ice caps will melt away and oceans will rise causing massive flooding by 2014 - Al Gore, VPOTUS, global warming evangelist
    • End of snow in England by 2015 - Dr. David Viner,  climate scientist at The University of East Anglia
    • Increased tornadoes and hurricanes - James Hanson, professor of climate at Columbia University & the high priest of global warming, and The U.N. IPCC
    • New Ice Age in Europe - Dr. Paul Ehrlich
    • Sub-Saharan Africa drying up - U.N. and World Bank
    • Massive flooding in China and India - Asian Development Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
    • Polar Bear extinction - National Geographic, The New York Times, Guardian, among many.
    • Drastic Temperature Increases - James Hanson
    • The Earth will be in a “True Planetary Emergency” by 2016 unless greenhouse gasses are reduced - Al Gore
      None of those predictions came true.  Not one.  And that is just a tiny sampling.   


      And here are some of the bad predictions from just this past year!

      _________________________________________________________________________________

      Pop Quiz:

      Still, we are under an existential threat because the Earth is progressively getting:
      A: Hotter 
      B: Colder 
      You are probably certain that the Earth is getting hotter.  The name global warming itself describes the danger.  You are probably familiar with the apocryphal "hockey stick" graph featured in "An Inconvenient Truth":



      Except, that's not what's happening in the long run:
        




      The Earth is actually getting cooler! 

      Five million years is not much when you consider the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.  That would take 900 - five million year graphs!  So, here's another graph estimating 65 million years of global climate change, still only a fraction of Earth's life.  Again, it clearly shows Earth is cooling.  

          
      The existential threat is that we will eventually freeze, not bake!

      _________________________________________________________________________________

      Pop quiz:
      Still, in the 200,000 year history of mankind:
      A. It has never been this hot
      B. It's been much hotter before 

      No doubt you are sure it's never been this hot.  It says so on the "hockey stick" graph.  And just consider the melting glaciers!

      Yet, we know that 1100 years ago, when the Vikings first went to Iceland, there were no glaciers there.  Today, glaciers cover much of Iceland.  Similarly, Vikings settled on Greenland around the same time and successfully farmed there for 500 years.  But they abandoned Greenland in the mid 15th century, presumably because it got too cold.  Those two events are known as the Medieval Warm Period and The Little Ice Age. Curiously, you won't find either of those events on Al Gore's graph.

      Here's a graph that shows 10,000 years of climate change from ice cores on Greenland:





      And here's a map of glacial retreat in Glacier Bay, Alaska going back 2 1/2 centuries.  As you can see, glaciers have been in retreat since long before your SUV!





      We have enough data to know that this warm period is nothing new.   It's been hotter than this many times before, even in man's brief 200,000 year history.

      _________________________________________________________________________________

      You are still free to believe in the CO2 theory of global warming.  Heck, you are free to believe in anything you want, including Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy!  But any serious person who looks into global warming must reflect long and hard before blindly waving a towel for the consensus.

      _________________________________________________________________________________

      I was the founder of Kindzone.com, one of the first companies to test market retail carbon credits.  I've been closely following the science and consensus of global warming for over 20 years.

      Ron Reich   

      Tuesday, October 20, 2020

      Fact Check: What Are Trump Voters Thinking?

      From the comments on this:  

      "If you could reason with a Democrat, there wouldn't be any Democrats." Clint Eastwood

      Alexandra Lains explains:


      Steal This Meme

       


      Monday, October 12, 2020

      Amy Coney Barrett v. RBG - A Tolkien Analogy



      "Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power."

      The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #186



      Well, here we are in another Supreme Court confirmation death-match.  Yay!  It’s so great to see our leaders behaving in such a rational and fair manner.  It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!  (Oh wait, that’s nausea. Never mind.)


      Last time it was Brett Kavanaugh’s turn in the hot seat.  Democrats went so far as to accuse a highly respected accomplished lawyer and family man of serial gang rape!  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  It defied explanation.   


      And Kavanaugh was just the latest.  This slimy Kabuki theater has played-out every single time a conservative justice has been named, but never when liberal ones are.  Why is that?  And what could possibly turn these seemingly normal looking Democrat Senators into such vile sub-humans? 


      I found my answer in the pages of J. R. R. Tolkien. 


      If you’ll recall, "The Lord of The Rings" is a story that revolves around the fate of a certain magical ring in a fantasy world known as Middle Earth.  Though there were twenty of these rings forged, the story is about one ring that has power over all the others.  Whoever possesses it has super-powers like immortality, invisibility, and under certain circumstances, totalitarian power over Middle Earth.  But there’s a serious downside; so intoxicating and addictive is its power, it can transform its owners into unrecognizable, twisted, slimy, deranged, creatures. 


      And that’s exactly what happens when it comes to the absolute power of the courts.  The essential challenge for anyone who wears a black robe is to subordinate their personal agenda to a document written over two hundred years ago.  Not an easy job.  It takes an extraordinary amount of self restraint to put the original intent of the U.S. Constitution above one's own politics.  Moreover, just like the ring that grants immortality, Justices serve as long as they can breathe.  Even Presidents don’t have that kind of power for that long.


      Imagine how intoxicating, tempting, and corrupting that power can be for a Justice, or for a Senator involved in confirmation?  Don’t like a law or policy;  just change it at the court!  All you need is five like minded Justices and you have totalitarian power over all social, economic, and political policy in the U.S..   No need to go through the icky time-consuming process of passing laws or amending the Constitution.  Just have your allies put on a robe, wave a magic pen, and voila!  Imagine how much strength of character one would need to resist that temptation?  Imagine having the magic ring in your pocket and resisting its allure out of fealty to our founding principles?


      Democrats long ago realized they needed the courts for their agenda to succeed.  And what is that agenda?  It’s often referred to as “progressivism”, which translates to progressively more power to the government, going well beyond what the Constitution envisioned.  Ask yourself this, have you ever seen a Democrat proposal that didn’t grow the power and scope of the federal government?  I don’t think you have.  Just look at the last Democrat administration.  Have a problem with student loans?  Nationalize them!  Have a problem with healthcare?  Nationalize it!  Have a problem with education? Nationalize it under something called Common Core!  Have a problem with the internet?  Nationalize it under something called Net Neutrality!  And this list could go on for pages.  


      The problem with all that nationalization is that a) everything becomes politicized, and b) everything ends-up at the Supreme Court.  The courts become the "sine qua non" for the agenda's success.  But the real problem in the long run is that if you take this progressive power grab out to its logical conclusion, it ends in totalitarian government.  


      So just like the one ring, the Supreme Court is the key that opens the door to infinite power.    


      Which takes us to the current situation in which Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being replaced by Amy Coney Barrett.       


      RBG was certainly beloved by her fans.  Women of all stripes looked up to her as a role model.  No doubt she was a tiny person who left a big mark.  She’s been lauded as a champion for social justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, the downtrodden, etc.  And many called her courageous.  Similarly, ACB looks to be another beloved, courageous, female role model who promises to leave a big mark. Yet among the people who worshipped RBG, she is considered a pariah.   That’s because unlike RBG, ACB is expected to be a champion for only one thing - the U.S. Constitution.    


      We call these two judicial approaches liberal/progressive vs. conservative, or activist vs. originalist.  But what they really represent are two perspectives on the Constitution.  One side sees the Constitution as an obstacle to progress, and the other sees it as the limiting principle that makes us exceptional. Justices are granted the magical power to either abide by the Constitution or ignore it.  There’s no penalty for ignoring it, and no reward for abiding by it.  Sorry RBG fans, it takes no courage for a Justice to ignore the Constitution.  The only courage involved is in resisting the siren song of totalitarian power. 


      Did you ever wonder why so-called Conservative judges often start out that way and then transform into activist or progressive ones?  Recent cases include the current Chief Justice, John Roberts, who has single-handedly re-written major laws to advance the progressive agenda. And have you ever noticed that it never goes the other way?  Activist judges never eschew their power and turn originalist.  There are many ways temptation and power can corrupt an individual.  But self restraint can only result from a courageously strong character, and that's either present or it's not.  


      So why does a Justice like RBG sail through confirmation with bipartisan support including almost every Republican, while the equally qualified Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t get any Democrat support?  Why does it always go that way and not the other?  Democrats need the courts in a way Republicans do not.  They have pinned their hopes on subverting the limits laid out in the Constitution, and that can only be done with activist judges.  Republicans are either oblivious or ambivalent to this strategy.  


      So why did RBG stay on the court knowing she had cancer?  Why not retire while Obama was President and have him name a successor?  Recall that Tolkien’s character Smeagol starts out as a mild mannered Hobbit type character, but is corrupted by the ring’s power into the twisted, slimy, deranged creature called Gollum. That metamorphosis is the same one that affects Democrats who embrace the corrupting power of activist courts.  One can picture RBG in her later years mumbling to herself:



      With John Roberts and even Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh as unknown quantities, it’s safe to say that ACB will not be a “fires of Mount Doom” event for the activist Supreme Court.  The Constitution will never be safe.  It will always take tremendous self restraint, strong character, and courage to hold this Republic together.  The enemies of constitutionally limited government will never rest.


      For now, the best we can hope for is that ACB is confirmed, has the courage of Frodo, and never transforms into Gollum.