Archive for the ‘Alarmism’ Category

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Common influenza has killed 20 times more people than coronavirus in the last 2 months

March 8, 2020

The global mortality due to all strains of conventional influenza is greater than 1000 deaths per day (between 400,000 and 600,000 deaths per year). The flu season in northern climes runs from about September to March and most fatalities occur at this time.

The current Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has resulted in 3,600 deaths, globally, in the last 50 days with over 2,000 just in China.

During the same period influenza has killed at least 50,000 (and more likely around 80,000) around the world.

The number of influenza deaths occur in spite of there being vaccines for some strains of the virus. There is no vaccine yet for Covid-19. There is no “cure” for influenza and neither is there a “cure” for Covid-19. However treatment of influenza is much better established than for the new virus.

Common influenza – even with vaccines available and with better established treatment –  has killed at least 20 times more people than Covid-19 in the last 2 months. So why the unnecessary and ridiculous panic?

I suspect it is because we have now been conditioned by Alarmism and are governed by fear. I note that cowardice is when actions are subordinated to fear (and bravery is when fears are subordinated to actions). The alarmist world has become a more cowardly place.

#coronavirus

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All the doomsday predictions throughout history that have come true

February 7, 2020

list:

 

 

end:

 

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It’s a very good thing that climate does not pay attention to “climate scientists”

June 8, 2019

Perhaps I will heed the climate charlatans a little more when they abandon the practice of religious orthodoxy, regenerate their sense of inquiry and return to a proper process of science.

Glacier National Park Quietly Removes Its ‘Gone by 2020’ Signs

May 30, 2019. St. Mary, Montana.

Officials at Glacier National Park (GNP) have begun quietly removing and altering signs and government literature which told visitors that the Park’s glaciers were all expected to disappear by either 2020 or 2030.
In recent years the National Park Service prominently featured brochures, signs and films which boldly proclaimed that all glaciers at GNP were melting away rapidly. But now officials at GNP seem to be scrambling to hide or replace their previous hysterical claims while avoiding any notice to the public that the claims were inaccurate. Teams from Lysander Spooner University visiting the Park each September have noted that GNP’s most famous glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier and the Jackson Glacier appear to have been growing—not shrinking—since about 2010. (The Jackson Glacier—easily seen from the Going-To-The-Sun Highway—may have grown as much as 25% or more over the past decade.)

…. As recently as September 2018 the diorama displayed a sign saying GNP’s glaciers were expected to disappear completely by 2020. ……. But at some point during this past winter (as the visitor center was closed to the public), workers replaced the diorama’s ‘gone by 2020’ engraving with a new sign indicating the glaciers will disappear in “future generations.” Almost everywhere, the Park’s specific claims of impending glacier disappearance have been replaced with more nuanced messaging indicating that everyone agrees that the glaciers are melting. Some signs indicate that glacial melt is “accelerating.” ……. 

Last year the Park Service quietly removed its two large steel trash cans at the Many Glacier Hotel which depicted “before and after” engravings of the Grinnell Glacier in 1910 and 2009. The steel carvings indicated that the Glacier had shrunk significantly between the two dates. But a viral video published on Wattsupwiththat.com showed that the Grinnell Glacier appears to be slightly larger than in 2009.

The ‘gone by 2020’ claims were repeated in the New York Times, National Geographic, and other international news sources. But no mainstream news outlet has done any meaningful reporting regarding the apparent stabilization and recovery of the glaciers in GNP over the past decade. 

It is not that climate does not change. Of course it does. It always has. It always will. It is the semi-religious claims that make climate “scientists” charlatans.

 

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Apocalypse Now (yet again) or the false god of biodiversity

May 7, 2019

Here we go again.

The UN (who else) has its annual freak-out about a million species being threatened by humans. (There are about a trillion species on Earth). The 6th mass extinction is upon us! The solution is mass suicide by humans! The humans left will be happily dead ever after. Failing that we could have World Government.

When life on earth began, there was no biodiversity. As individual life-forms survived environmental changes, new species were created. Sometimes the parent species survived and sometimes not. Sometimes the new species did not survive further changes. The results of survival we call evolution. As for anything else there is an optimum number of species for any given environment, in any given place at any given time. Too many species is a worse thing than too few. Too few, and new species will always be formed to exploit the available environment. Too many, and every species is miserable.

All invasive species are – by definition – successful species. All endangered species are – also by definition – failing species. “Protecting” failed, but somehow attractive, species is entirely an emotional response by humans but it has no rational purpose. The rational and responsible approach to biodiversity would be to genetically modify failing species to survive or to let them become extinct in a world where they have no place.

Judging by the posts I have been driven to write in recent years, I must find all sanctimonious, self-righteous apocalypse predictions somewhat obscene.

Mass extinctions correct for evolution’s greater than 99% failure rate

Earth has too many failed species and 30% need to go extinct

There was no biodiversity to begin with

Raging biodiversity – “One trillion species on earth”

I just repeat my post from 2018.

The biodiversity myth (or How many species should there be?)

How many species should there be?

In any given environment, even with no change in the environment, natural selection will see to it, given enough time, that the number of species will increase to fill the available space. Competition between species will increase with increasing biodiversity. Species incapable of coping with the competition will restrict themselves to protected niches or disappear. As environment changes, modifications will also follow. As environment changes, species which were once viable may become extinct, continue in a suitable niche or adapt.

As far as we know the earth is the only planet on which life has developed.

……… 

Time and the laws of the Universe were established soon after the Big Bang singularity occurred some 13.8 billion years ago. ………… The earth itself was formed when it congealed about 4.54 billion years ago……. Chemistry between atoms and molecules happened. About a billion years later chemistry became biochemistry. Somehow RNA molecules (the RNA world) appeared. Some of these were replicating molecules. Some of these arranged themselves into single celled organisms. Single celled life began. Around 500 million years ago, complex multi-cellular life took off.

In the 500 million years since there have been at least 10 major extinctions and 5 Great Mass Extinctions. The last one was around 50 million years ago when the large dinosaurs “disappeared” (though that disappearance may have taken many thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of years). Nevertheless it was the spaces left vacant in the environment which enabled, and were filled by, the mammals and in turn the primates and humans. …..

 

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Staggering from one false environmental catastrophe to the next

April 17, 2019

Throughout my life (and I am now 71), humanity has always been facing some environmental catastrophe or the other. Each has been a “consensus position” of “scientists” primarily concerned with drumming up funding or earning brownie points or securing TV careers. Not a single one of the supposedly imminent catastrophes has ever come within light-years of ever occurring.

Nobody seems prepared to carry out sanity checks on the doomsday scenarios any longer. This is partly because the headlines and funding and fame that can be generated by alarmism is so lucrative. The key ingredients for any “successful” alarmist theme are:

  1. that the catastrophe should be at least one decade away,
  2. not more than 3 decades away, and
  3. that the onset of the catastrophe be either undetectable or not measurable.

The list of environmental catastrophes that humanity has faced just in my lifetime:

 

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Global population will likely start reducing by 2070

July 19, 2017

The alarmist meme of a global population explosion leading to catastrophic depletion of resources and mass famines was already obsolete 20 years ago. The alarmism reached its peak in the 1970s and 1980s  (peak oil, peak food, peak water, peak resources ….). At least the panicky stridency of the alarmism about a population explosion has long gone (though it has now shifted to become panicky stridency about catastrophic global warming).

The 2017 Revision of the UN World Population Prospects is now available.

  • the world’s population reached nearly 7.6 billion in mid-2017. The world has added one billion people since 2005 and two billion since 1993. In 2017, an estimated 50.4 per cent of the world’s population was male and 49.6 per cent female.
  • the global population is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to the medium-variant projection

However the projections are very sensitive to fertility rates and their development – especially in Africa. Actual fertility rates have always tended to be below UN projections of fertility.

In the 2017 review, the sensitivity to fertility rate is highlighted;

  • Future population growth is highly dependent on the path that future fertility will take, as relatively small changes in the frequency of childbearing, when projected over several decades, can generate large differences in total population.
  • In the medium-variant projection, it is assumed that the global fertility level will decline from 2.5 births per woman in 2010-2015 to 2.2 in 2045-2050, and then fall to 2.0 by 2095-2100.
  • fertility levels consistently half a child below the assumption used for the medium variant would lead to a global population of 8.8 billion at mid-century, declining to 7.3 billion in 2100.
  • fertility has declined in virtually all regions of the world. In Africa, where fertility levels are the highest of any region, total fertility has fallen from 5.1 births per woman in 2000-2005 to 4.7 in 2010-2015. Over the same period, fertility levels also fell in Asia (from 2.4 to 2.2), Latin America and the Caribbean (from 2.5 to 2.1), and Northern America (from 2.0 to 1.85). Europe has been an exception to this trend in recent years, with total fertility increasing from 1.4 births per woman in 2000-2005 to 1.6 in 2010-2015. Total fertility in Oceania has changed little since 2000, at roughly 2.4 births per woman in both 2000-2005 and 2010-2015.

As with Asia, I expect that the decline of fertility in Africa will accelerate with development and GDP growth. If global fertility turns out to be as much as 0.5 children/woman less than the medium assumption, global population will start declining already by 2050. It may not happen quite that fast but it is now very likely that the decline will have begun by 2070. By the end of this century global population may not be much more than it is today.

It is only a matter of time before the alarmists start getting panicky and strident about the impending population implosion.

 

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Humanity’s existential threats (sans alarmism)

July 13, 2017

Many so-called “scientists” indulge in phony-science which is entirely geared to winning funding. Alarmism is often misused. Such “scientists” and insurance companies cannot be trusted with risk assessments. They have a vested interest in exaggerating the risk, either to get more funding or to increase the sale of highly profitable insurance products.

(Insurance companies are expert at assessing risk. However their business is built on perceived risk being higher than actual risk. Their profits provide the evidence for how well they have succeeded both in raising perceptions of risk and in accurately predicting actual risk. “Scientific” papers authored or sponsored by insurance companies and their reports must always be taken with a large bushel of salt. Their publications are all about building up risk perceptions. They are probably very good at assessing the real risk, but that material will never get published. The risk of alarmism is multiplied when scientists are sponsored by insurance companies).

Politicians like exaggerated risk assessments where the causes of the risk are outside their control. This provides a bottomless pit of “allowable taxes”, ostensibly to “fight” against causes which are not understood and outside their control, but  provide for increased budget revenues.

Scientists, politicians and insurance companies inevitably try to arouse emotions and “fear level” to their own purposes.

The actual existential risks for humanity are a long way below what the alarmists would have us believe and need to be considered unemotionally. Risk assessment is an exercise which primarily needs common sense and which must not get mired in  “political correctness”.

The most serious existential threats facing humanity in the next 1,000 years come from the almost inevitable eruption of a super-volcano (which is overdue) and the continuing decline in global fertility which could give serious depopulation by 2100.

(I am quite happy to offer odds of 10 million to one to anybody who wishes to place money on a large asteroid impacting earth – say – within the next 5 years. The risk that the punter and I will both survive such an event. such that I have to pay out, is as close to zero as you can get).

 

 

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Conservation denies tigers a future as a species

June 13, 2017

There are, it is thought, around 4,000 tigers still living in the “wild”. There may be as many as 8 – 9,000 in captivity (3,000 in China and perhaps 5,000 in the US). The tigers in captivity are in zoos and parks and are, in the US, often bred for “hunting”. Very few (< 100 perhaps) of those in captivity are returned to the “wild” every year. Breeding hybrid tigons and ligers once used to be very popular in zoos but less so now though it is still prevalent for entertainment purposes. The numbers are not very significant.

Tigers are magnificent animals and a cultural icon for humans. No doubt the sabre-toothed tiger was an even more magnificent creature. It is surely a matter of regret that they became extinct a long time ago. As a species they were replaced by others which were more suited to the changing world. If present-day tigers (considered endangered) were to become extinct, it would also be a matter of much regret. But I find the rationale for “conservation” efforts flawed and illogical. The WWF (which is close to being one of my least favourite organisations) writes in a typical woolly-headed, gushing style:

Yet they are more than just a magnificent animal – they are also crucial for the ecosystems in which they live. As top predators of the food chain, tigers keep populations of prey species in check, which in turn maintains the balance between herbivores and the vegetation upon which they feed. Balanced ecosystems are not only important for wildlife, but for people too – both locally, nationally and globally. People rely on forests, whether it is directly for their livelihoods or indirectly for food and products used in our daily lives. ……… Tigers not only protect the forest by maintaining ecological integrity, but also by bringing the highest levels of protection and investment to an area. Tigers are an “umbrella species” – meaning their conservation also conserves many other species in the same area. They are long-ranging and require vast amounts of habitat to survive; an adult male’s home range varies from 150 km2 – 1000 km2.

Tigers are endangered because their habitats are disappearing. That habitat loss is fundamentally irreversible. As a species they already have no significant role to play in the ecosystem prevailing. They have already become a redundant species biologically even if the concept of majestic tigers roaming wild forests still has a massive emotional impact on the selfish human psyche. Creating new tiger reserves – constrained in area by various means –  is little more than creating glorified zoos. They are just parks where the cages are a little bigger.  The tigers themselves are “frozen” into their current, unsuccessful, unsuitable, failed genetic state. They are doomed to continue unchanged and unchanging in a shrinking and ever more unsuitable habitat. There are no natural selection pressures (or artificial selection measures) in play which would make their descendants more capable of surviving in the new habitats due to changes that have already happened and have yet to come. This “conservation” is not about helping the tiger to survive by evolving but is only about freezing them into an increasingly untenable form. It is backwards looking and all about preserving failure.

I am even more convinced that traditional “conservation” is misguided and is done just to satisfy the emotional needs of humans, and not, in any way, forward-looking to help endangered species to adapt and survive into the future.

Fighting against species extinction is to deny evolution   – (ktwop – 2013)

So what then is the objection to – say – tigers becoming extinct which is not just an emotional reaction to the disappearance of a magnificent but anachronistic creature?  The bio-diversity argument is not very convincing and is of little relevance. To artificially keep an unsuccessful species alive in a specially protected environment has no genetic value. It increases the mis-match between the existing environment and the genetic profile needed to survive in that environment. In fact the biodiversity argument is only relevant for “life” in general and never for any particular species or group of species.  It can serve to maintain a very wide range of genetic material in the event of a catastrophe such that some form of life has a chance of continuing. But given a particular environment biodiversity in itself is of little value. …

…. All those species which succeed into the future will be those which continue to “evolve” and have the characteristics necessary to thrive within the world as it is being shaped and changed by the most successful species that ever lived (though we cannot be sure how far some particular species of dinosaur may have advanced). Putting a tiger into a zoo or a “protected” environment actually only preserves the tiger in an “unsuccessful” form in an artificial environment. Does this really count as “saving the species”? We might be of more use to the future of the tiger species if we intentionally bred them to find a new space in a changed world  – perhaps as urban tigers which can co-exist with man.

Smilodon image DinoAnimals.com

I’ll still make a donation to Project Tiger but that is about helping individuals to survive and has nothing to do with saving the species.

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California normal

April 17, 2017

So much for the global-warming induced, permanent drought that had afflicted California. Population in California has doubled since 1979 but water resources infrastructure has not changed much. Ground water is being consumed and depleted at an increasing pace. Yet normal weather variations are taken to be man-made global warming.

California remains normal, but Californians …….

USNews: 

An index of precipitation at eight sensors showed that just under 90 inches of rain and snow have fallen this winter in the northern Sierra Nevada. The previous record of 88.5 inches was set in the winter of 1982-1983. The average for the region is 50 inches a year, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

The record was surpassed less than a week after Gov. Jerry Brown officially declared an end to California’s drought emergency — a largely symbolic pronouncement that left in place some water-conservation rules for the 40 million residents of the nation’s most populous state.

More snow and rain is likely to pad the record before the wet season ends.

 

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The power of the global warming religion

March 14, 2017

Roy Spencer says it:

Global warming theory is in fact so malleable that it predicts anything. More cold, less cold. More snow, less snow.

What a powerful theory.

And what’s even more amazing is that climate change can be averted by just increasing your taxes.

But what nobody ever reports on — because it would be boring — are the storms and severe weather events that haven’t happened. For example, U.S. tornado counts have been running below average, or even at record lows, in recent years.

Amazingly, the low tornado activity has been blamed on climate change. So, too, have actual tornado occurrences!

What a grand and gloriously useful theory global warming provides us.

……. 

Winters in the U.S. are notoriously variable. Typically, if it’s warm in the East, it’s cold in the West. This is exactly what has happened this winter, except for this brief reversal before winter’s end.

Normal people call it weather. More enlightened people, in contrast, call it climate change. Next winter it could be the opposite. No one knows.

Like death and taxes, though, what is certain is that anything “unusual” that happens will somehow be blamed on your SUV.

Too much rain, too little rain, drought, flood, storms cyclones, hurricanes and – for the true fanatics – even earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are somehow due to global warming (which of course means carbon dioxide emissions).

I find the European statements (and especially the Swedish government’s) about “climate goals” particularly arrogant and idiotic.

“The government’s goal is for Sweden to be a global role model in climate conversion”.

They really think that they can change the climate? From what to what? The arrogance is boundless.

 

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