Andrew Chen reports at Epoch Times Constitutional Rights Group to Take Legal Action Against Quebec’s Tax on the Unvaccinated. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
A Calgary-based charter rights advocacy group says it will launch a legal challenge against the government of Quebec regarding its plan to impose a “health tax” on residents who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
On Jan. 11, Quebec Premier Francois Legault said a “significant” financial penalty will be imposed as a tax for those who refuse the vaccine. He didn’t reveal how much the penalty will be or when it will be implemented, but said later in the week that a bill to impose the measure will be put forth to the province’s legislature in February for a vote.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announced that it will take legal action against the province in a statement issued Thursday.
“The proposed Quebec ‘health tax’ is an egregious violation of the Charter rights of Quebecers and an affront to equality which Canada was, in times past, known for,” the Justice Centre’s president John Carpay said.
“This is a blatant attack on a minority of society. Historically, persecution of a minority through taxation has paved the way for further and worse measures. We will fight this discriminatory and unscientific tax in court and defend the right to bodily autonomy of Quebecers and all Canadians. This injustice has no place in Canada.”
In May 2021, Legault said he would gradually lift restrictions and return to normalcy if 75 percent of adult Quebecers were vaccinated.
Currently, the province has exceeded that goal, with 85 percent of eligible residents receiving at least one shot, and 78 percent fully vaccinated with two required doses.
Quebec has implemented some of the strictest public health measures in North America. On Dec. 31, 2021, the province reintroduced a nightly curfew from 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., which will be lifted on Jan. 17. Quebec had previously imposed a similar curfew for five months from January to May 2021.
On Jan. 13, Legault said the province will extend its “vaccine passport” requirement to large indoor retail settings of more than 1,500 square metres, including big box stores like Canadian Tire, Wal-Mart, and Costco. Grocery stores and pharmacies are some of the exceptions, which are deemed essential.
“The announcement of a tax on those who decline the COVID injections, like the ‘vaccine passport,’ is discrimination and wrong,” Carpay said.
“Vaccines do not stop people from contracting or spreading COVID, so there is no medical or scientific justification for the financial persecution and discrimination against vaccine-free citizens.”
The Justice Centre noted that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that every individual has the right to “bodily autonomy,” which means a person has the “right to control his/her own bodily integrity.”
Another civil rights group, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), criticized Quebec’s proposal in a statement released Wednesday, saying it raises “significant equity concerns.”
“We know that some of those who remain unvaccinated are individuals who face serious barriers to accessing health care, and many have a low level of trust in the system because of negative experiences in the past,” said Cara Zwibel, director of Fundamental Freedoms and acting general counsel for the CCLA.
“This is a divisive measure that will end up punishing and alienating those who may be most in need of public health supports and services.”
A number of European countries have imposed some kind of financial burden on unvaccinated citizens. In Austria, the first nation in Europe to create such a tax, a fine of up to 3,600 euros (roughly C$5,100) will be levied on people aged 14 and over who refused to receive a vaccine every three months.
In Greece, individuals over 60 years old will incur a fine of 100 euros (C$143) if they still haven’t received a shot by Jan. 16.
NOAA published its global climate report for year end 2021 highlighting that its global temperature anomaly measurements showed 2021 being the sixth highest of its recorded measurements. NOAA’s global annual measurement for 2021 was 0.84 degrees C.
NOAA chose to emphasize that the annual 2021 temperature anomaly was in the top ten of its recorded years as follows:
“The year culminated as the sixth warmest year on record for the globe with a temperature that was 0.84°C (1.51°F) above the 20th century average. The years 2013–2021 all rank among the ten warmest years on record.”
What NOAA failed to highlight was that the year-end 2021 global temperature anomaly measurement marked the continuing decline of its global temperature anomaly measurements that have now fallen for the last 6 years since peak year 2016 as shown in their graph below. These declining measurement outcomes make a complete mockery of recent climate alarmists scientifically unsupported politically contrived “climate emergency” propaganda claims.
The decline in NOAA’s global temperature anomaly measurements over the last 6 years since peak year 2016 is shown in more detail in the truncated NOAA graph below.
NOAA’s annual highest global temperature anomaly measurement is year-end 2016 which is now shown as 0.99 degrees C (second highest year is 2020 at 0.98 degrees C) compared to its year end 2021 annual anomaly measurement of 0.84 degrees C with a +/-0.15 degrees C confidence level. This year end 2021 global temperature anomaly measurement decline amounts to a 15% global temperature anomaly measurement collapse since peak year 2016.
Furthermore, the NOAA analysis clearly establishes that the monthly and annual global temperature anomaly measurement behaviors are strongly controlled by El Niño and La Nino events (red and blue highlighted portions of the NOAA graph respectively) which are naturally occurring climate phenomena and not driven by man made contributions to atmospheric CO2 levels.
NOAA has exaggerated the importance of both monthly and annual temperature anomaly changes with as small a difference as +0.01 degrees C as a basis for climbing “hottest temperature ever” hype as was done for the July 2021temperature anomaly data even though the confidence level for this measurement is +/-0.19 degrees C as discussed in WUWT articles here and here. Additionally, and more significantly no other global temperature anomaly measurement systems including NASA GISS, UK Met Office, UAH and RSS support NOAA’s “hottest temperature ever” hyped July claims.
NOAA’s July 2021 global temperature anomaly update release originally claimed July’s global temperature anomaly as 0.93 degrees C then changed that in the August temperature anomaly update release to 0.92 degrees C but by the November temperature anomaly update had changed the July temperature anomaly once again back to 0.93 degrees C.
NOAA makes extensive temperature anomaly measurement updates every month where large numbers of prior temperatures are changed again and again. For example, NOAA’s August 2021 temperature anomaly update compared to NOAA’s November 2021 temperature anomaly update shows that in the period between 1954 and 2021 over 250 monthly anomaly temperatures were increased always by +0.01 degrees C with about half of these upward adjustments made in the 1992 to 2021 period.
Thus, more than 1/3rd of the monthly temperature anomaly measurements between 1992 and 2021 were adjusted upward by 0.01 degrees C just between NOAA’s August and November temperature anomaly update releases. These large numbers of constantly on-going upward adjustments result in increasing changes in reported data values with for example the highest annual global temperature anomaly measurement as reported originally for year-end 2016 increasing from 0.94 degrees C to 0.99 degrees C in the year-end 2021 report.
Additionally, these NOAA updated temperature anomaly measurement adjustments between August and November 2021 for years prior to 1954 were also adjusted but in this case always downward by -0.01 degrees C for more than 100 of the prior to 1954 monthly data values.
The justification for NOAA’s never ending upward and downward large number of adjustments that always lower the long past historical data and always increases more recent historical data is extremely perplexing and clearly suggests concerns that these changes are driven by climate alarmist politics (especially by the Biden and other Democratic Party Administrations) versus credible science.
The global yearly annual temperature anomaly decline between year-end 2016 and year end 2021 has occurred despite continuing increases in global atmospheric CO2 levels as shown in the graph below showing CO2 atmospheric concentrations growing from 402 ppm to 417 ppm based on measurements from the Mauna Loa Observatory. Flawed and failed climate “models” would of course depict increasing global temperature anomaly outcomes from this data.
In addition to NOAA’s global temperature anomaly decline since year end 2016 all other global temperature anomaly measurement systems used by climate scientists worldwide all show declining global temperature anomaly measurements during the period from 2016 through 2021 as shown in the graphs below for surface global temperature anomaly measurement systems from NASA GISS and UK Met Office and for satellite global temperature anomaly measurement systems from UAH and RSS respectively.
Despite the usual climate alarmist grossly exaggerated hype by NOAA and NASA in their year 2021 annual reports trying to conceal the clearly obvious downward global temperature anomaly measurement trends while global atmospheric CO2 levels are continuing to climb the annual global temperature anomaly outcomes for year-end 2021 and the last six years do not support and in fact clearly dispute recent climate alarmist claims that we are in a “climate emergency” driven by man-made CO2 missions.
Actual global temperature anomaly measurements by NOAA, NASA, UK Met Office, UAH and RSS all show downward anomaly trends versus the upward climate “computer models” temperature anomaly trends with these speculative “model” trends unsupported by measured data. The failed debacle of the last COP26 climate alarmist confab seems clearly appropriate based upon these latest global temperature anomaly measurement results.
However, all these politically contrived climate alarmist driven COP cabals that commenced in the 1990s have a spectacular track record of failure as noted above.
COVID-19 vaccines are harming people. This fact is now extensively documented in the peer-reviewed medical literature.
We’re told these events are rare. So what’s the magic number? How many reports of alarming medical outcomes are necessary before we admit the ‘cure’ might be worse than the disease?
Most people who contract COVID don’t develop serious medical issues. But the small percentage who do can overwhelm the health care system.
Most people who receive a COVID vaccine don’t develop serious medical issues. But the small percentage who do can also overwhelm the health care system. Everyone wants to talk about the first problem. No one wants to talk about the second.
Here are the first 100. I’ve numbered, and verified them. In some cases, I’ve updated the hyperlink. This research is emerging from numerous countries including Belgium, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Qatar, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and the US.
2. Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia with disseminated intravascular coagulation and death after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination: [fatal blood clots, Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases, Sept. 2021] https://www.strokejournal.org/article/S1052-3057(21)00341-4/fulltext
7. US case reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis with thrombocytopenia after vaccination with Ad26.COV2.S (against covid-19), March 2 to April 21, 2020: [stroke, Journal of the American Medical Association, June 2021] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2779731
9. Management of cerebral and splanchnic vein thrombosis associated with thrombocytopenia in subjects previously vaccinated with Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca): position statement of the Italian Society for the Study of Hemostasis and Thrombosis (SISET): [blood clots, Blood Transfusion, July-Aug. 201] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8297668/
10. Vaccine-induced immune immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after vaccination with COVID-19; a systematic review: [blood clots, Journal of the Neurological Sciences, Sept. 2021] https://www.jns-journal.com/article/S0022-510X(21)00301-4/fulltext
34. Early results of bivalirudin treatment for thrombotic thrombocytopenia and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after vaccination with Ad26.COV2.S: [blood clots, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Oct. 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196064421003425
39. Anti-PF4 antibody negative cerebral venous sinus thrombosis without thrombocytopenia following immunization with COVID-19 vaccine in an elderly non-comorbid Indian male, managed with conventional heparin-warfarin based anticoagulation: [stroke, Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, July-Aug. 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871402121002046
46. Vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, a rare but severe case of friendly fire in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic: What pathogenesis? [blood clots, European Journal of Internal Medicine, Sept. 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0953620521002314
47. Diagnostic-therapeutic recommendations of the ad-hoc FACME expert working group on the management of cerebral venous thrombosis related to COVID-19 vaccination: [stroke, Neurología, Spanish Neurology Society, July-Aug. 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2173580821000754
48. Thrombocytopenia and intracranial venous sinus thrombosis after exposure to the “AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine Astrazeneca” exposure: [stroke, Journal of Clinical Medicine, Apr. 2021] https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/10/8/1599/htm
52. COVID-19 vaccination: information on the occurrence of arterial and venous thrombosis using data from VigiBase: [stroke, European Respiratory Journal, July 2021] https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/58/1/2100956
54. Cerebral venous thrombosis following BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination of BNT162b2 against SARS-CoV-2: a black swan event: [stroke, American Journal of Hematology, June 2021] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajh.26272
55. The importance of recognizing cerebral venous thrombosis following anti-COVID-19 vaccination: [stroke, European Journal of Internal Medicine, May 2021] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34001390/
58. First dose of ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines and thrombocytopenic, thromboembolic, and hemorrhagic events in Scotland: [blood clots, Nature Medicine, June 2021] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01408-4
60. First report of a de novo iTTP episode associated with a COVID-19 mRNA-based anti-COVID-19 vaccine: [blood clots, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, June 2021] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jth.15418
68. Temporal association between COVID-19 vaccine Ad26.COV2.S and acute myocarditis: case report and review of the literature: [heart inflammation, Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine, Aug. 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1553838921005789
72. Fulminant myocarditis and systemic hyper inflammation temporally associated with BNT162b2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in two patients: [heart inflammation, International Journal of Cardiology, Oct. 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167527321012286
80. Temporal relationship between the second dose of BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine and cardiac involvement in a patient with previous SARS-COV-2 infection: [heart problems, International Journal of Cardiology: Heart & Vasculature, June 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352906721000622
84. A series of patients with myocarditis after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 with mRNA-1279 and BNT162b2: [heart inflammation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging, Sept. 2021] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1936878X21004861
90. Risk of severe allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines among patients with allergic skin disease: practical recommendations. An ETFAD position statement with external experts: [allergic reactions, Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, June 2021] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdv.17237
91. COVID-19 vaccine and death: causality algorithm according to the WHO eligibility diagnosis: [fatal blood clots, Diagnostics, May 2021] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/11/6/955
94. Skin reactions reported after Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccination: a study based on a registry of 414 cases: [skin problems, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Apr. 2021] https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(21)00658-7/fulltext
95. Clinical and pathologic correlates of skin reactions to COVID-19 vaccine, including V-REPP: a registry-based study: [skin problems, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Sept. 2021] https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(21)02442-7/fulltext
96. Skin reactions after vaccination against SARS-COV-2: a nationwide Spanish cross-sectional study of 405 cases: [skin problems, British Journal of Dermatology, July 2021] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjd.20639
97. Varicella zoster virus and herpes simplex virus reactivation after vaccination with COVID-19: review of 40 cases in an international dermatologic registry: [herpes, Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, Sept. 2021] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdv.17646
98. Immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia (VITT) associated with the COVID-19 vaccine: diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations for a new syndrome: [blood clots, European Journal of Haematology, May 2021] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejh.13665
99. Laboratory testing for suspicion of COVID-19 vaccine-induced thrombotic (immune) thrombocytopenia: [blood clots, International Journal of Laboratory Hematology, June 2021] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijlh.13629
100. Intracerebral hemorrhage due to thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome after COVID-19 vaccination: the first fatal case in Korea: [brain bleed, Journal of Korean Medical Science, Aug. 2021] https://jkms.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3346/jkms.2021.36.e223
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The Week That Was: 2022-01-15 (January 15, 2022) Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org) The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” – Attributed to Abraham Lincoln
Number of the Week:$433 trillion (20+ times the US GDP)
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: Last week, TWTW emphasized three important developments during 2021: 1) Forty-three years of atmospheric temperature trends where the greenhouse effect occurs show a modest warming, not a drastic or dangerous one; 2) the calculations based on atmospheric observations by William van Wijngaarden and William Happer show that the effectiveness of all five major greenhouse gases on global temperatures (water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrous oxide, and methane) is largely exhausted, depleted, and that they do not have a major influence on global temperatures, and 3) contrary to what climate scientists assert, econometrician Ross McKitrick has shown that studies using Fractional Attribution of Risk (FAR) or Optimal Fingerprinting are not grounded on established probability theory and statistics. Probability assertions attributing the likelihood that an extreme weather event was caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide are meaningless. As discussed in the July 24 TWTW, one example was the flooding of the Ahr River Valley in Germany where climate specialists asserted that it was caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide, but a similar flood occurred in 1910 and a worse one in 1803.
This week, some other developments in 2021 are briefly discussed: 1) the January publication of significant problems with the US National Climate Assessment; 2) the August publication of the significant disagreement among solar scientists of the role of the changing sun on the globe’s climate; and 3) the February Texas Blue Norther, demonstrating that for public safety in the Great Plains, electricity generation needs to be winterized.
Issues regarding the credibility of government entities are discussed, particularly how government experts are undermining the credibility of their agencies. Also discussed are studies on the costs of making wind and solar power reliable with a Net Zero Policy showing that the costs are enormous, and that reliable and affordable wind and solar power are a myth.
US National Assessments: The January 9 TWTW discussed that The Office of Science and Technology Policy under David Legates has published nine information briefs on climate change from various scientists and scholars in North America. These briefs embody the view expressed by Einstein that in the search for truth, the weaknesses as well of the strengths of a concept must be expressed. The weaknesses to the view that carbon dioxide is the primary cause of climate change are not expressed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), particularly in its politicized Summary for Policymakers, and this pattern continues through its followers including the US National Assessments. Pat Michaels gave an excellent overview of the problems in the four US National Assessments.
The esschangays cover issues such as surface temperatures, ability of computer models to predict climate, radiation transfer, the general circulation, hurricanes, and the claimed climate emergency. See links in the January 9. 2021 TWTW.
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The Changing Sun: On a number of occasions in September and October, TWTW discussed that twenty-three distinguished scientists made independent assessments of the role of the sun in the earth’s climate. There is considerable disagreement among these scientists. Their paper was published in the scientific journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA). Immediately “fact checkers in social media began to censor the publication and falsely claimed that the paper was “incorrect” and “misleading.” The “fact checkers” blindly accepted the claims in the UN IPCC AR6, which asserted that solar variation has negligible effect on the earth’s climate since the 1800s.
Willie Soon gave presentations on this paper to the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness conference in August and the Heartland’s International Conference on Climate Change on October 16. The abstract of the paper states:
“Sixteen different estimates of the changes in TSI since at least the 19th century were compiled from the literature. Half of these estimates are “low variability” and half are “high variability”. Meanwhile, five largely-independent methods for estimating Northern Hemisphere temperature trends were evaluated using: 1) only rural weather stations; 2) all available stations whether urban or rural (the standard approach); 3) only sea surface temperatures; 4) tree-ring widths as temperature proxies; 5) glacier length records as temperature proxies. The standard estimates which use urban as well as rural stations were somewhat anomalous as they implied a much greater warming in recent decades than the other estimates, suggesting that urbanization bias might still be a problem in current global temperature datasets – despite the conclusions of some earlier studies. Nonetheless, all five estimates confirm that it is currently warmer than the late 19th century, i.e., there has been some “global warming” since the 19th century. For each of the five estimates of Northern Hemisphere temperatures, the contribution from direct solar forcing for all sixteen estimates of TSI was evaluated using simple linear least-squares fitting. The role of human activity on recent warming was then calculated by fitting the residuals to the UN IPCC’s recommended “anthropogenic forcings” time series. For all five Northern Hemisphere temperature series, different TSI estimates suggest everything from no role for the Sun in recent decades (implying that recent global warming is mostly human-caused) to most of the recent global warming being due to changes in solar activity (that is, that recent global warming is mostly natural). It appears that previous studies (including the most recent IPCC reports) which had prematurely concluded the former, had done so because they failed to adequately consider all the relevant estimates of TSI and/or to satisfactorily address the uncertainties still associated with Northern Hemisphere temperature trend estimates. Therefore, several recommendations on how the scientific community can more satisfactorily resolve these issues are provided.”
Asserting that solar variability has little or no role in the earth’s recent climate change is unjustified. We simply do not know. Note that this paper is different from the recent paper by Soon, et.al. “Group Sunspot Numbers: A New Reconstruction of Sunspot Activity Variations from Historical Sunspot Records Using Algorithms from Machine Learning” published in the journal, Solar Physiccreds with an earlier version published in Advances in Space Research. The latest paper makes predictions, the paper in RAA is an historical account. See link under Science: Is the Sun Rising? and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5kX4XeTmsA for Soon’s presentation.
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Blue Norther: In February what Texans call a Blue Norther hit as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. In Oklahoma they are called a Blue Darter and elsewhere called a Blue Whistler. In the US they come south from Canada on the east side of the Rocky Mountains and quickly drop temperatures in various sections of the Great Plains. Although severe, they are not unusual. It serves to show that in the Great Plains, electricity generators need to be winterized to be reliable. Unfortunately, in the false belief methane is a major contributor to global warming Texas natural gas producers were forced to obtain electricity from the grid rather than generate electricity from the natural gas they produce. Thus, the natural gas producers were knocked out by excessive regulation during this weather emergency. See links in the February 20 & 27 TWTW.
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Credibility: Two separate essays in the Wall Street Journal address the credibility problems that the current administrations in the US and the UK face. In “Omicron Has Killed Certitude” Daniel Henninger writes:
Thank you, President Biden. Your administration has achieved herd immunity. Alas, it has nothing to do with your promise to ‘shut down the virus’ or vaccinate all 330 million Americans. What you’ve done has long been thought even more impossible than finding a cure for Covid. You’ve immunized the American people against politics. Give this man the Nobel Peace Prize.
This happy news emerged from a question inside the recent Associated Press-NORC poll, which asked, ‘Thinking about the problems facing the United States and the world today, which problems would you like the government to be working on in the year 2022?’
Naturally some 68% said the economy—with the worst inflation since 1982—needed some thought. But astonishingly, the percentage who want the government to work on Covid-19 is 33%, a 20-point drop from a year ago.
Partisans whose job it is to stand in front of a microphone and explain Mr. Biden’s policies will say, ‘See, we’re winning. Our policies have removed Covid as a daily concern.’
Umm, no. Identified U.S. Omicron infections are arriving at hundreds of thousands a day. Sagas abound of burned-out hospital workers and depleted workforces. Holiday air travel was a historic nightmare. The promised supply of rapid antigen tests is today’s equivalent of the bridge to nowhere. Cloth masks worked, until they didn’t. School’s out—forever.
It was remarkable how often one saw people interviewed while standing in lines to be tested say: ‘I don’t understand how this can be happening after two years.’ People are flying the pandemic white flag: They’ve stopped caring what the government, the politicians or ‘science’ is telling them about Covid.
The Covid pandemic is altering many multiples of behavioral patterns, and one of the biggest, for which we should thank the virus, is the death of certitude.
From Covid’s start in 2020, public and scientific authorities across the world said: ‘Trust us. We know what we are doing.’ We now see that this unshakable, public-facing certitude was false.
Today, it’s fair to say that no one but the hopelessly credulous believe much of anything Mr. Biden, Jen Psaki, Anthony Fauci or Rochelle Walensky says about Covid and Omicron. The list of doubted authorities worldwide could extend to the horizon.
My purpose is not to discredit public authority or science. We need both. Public authorities in 2020 cleared the regulatory path for Operation Warp Speed, which let private-sector scientists develop protective vaccines. My intention is to re-establish a necessary virtue that looks altogether lost to public life and its scientific representatives: intellectual modesty.
Political leaders try to convey the impression of control over events, insofar as most are always on thin ice with the public. With the pandemic, the most visible faces of U.S. authority across two years—Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo, Joe Biden—became caricatures of the in-control public figure. In their world, we were always winning.
At the center of this collapse of public confidence sits science, which has a lot to answer for. The problem is not the process of scientific discovery as understood for centuries. The problem is ‘science,’ a politicized totem now used routinely to silence legitimate challenge, for example regarding what happened in Wuhan.
Science triumphalism didn’t begin with the National Institutes of Health’s Anthony Fauci. Science as a political weapon originated with the battle over climate policy.
After discussing the complexity of medical issues, Mr Henninger concludes:
Of its nature, public health is authoritarian, ordering the masses into compliance for some larger social good, such as food-handling hygiene. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now fitfully run by the White House-compliant Dr. Walensky, occupies a gray realm between issuing directives and serving as a scientific clearinghouse. During the pandemic, serious scientists—in and out of public life—have let their status as discoverers of important but ever-contingent knowledge be hijacked by the authoritarians of certitude. Omicron has ended their reign.
Entering our third year with Covid, the AP-NORC result effectively means some two-thirds of the population is telling its government, ‘Thanks for nothing.’ That is an overstatement, but not by much. And it won’t get better until doubt and dissent get more respect than they have now.
In “Boris Johnson’s Other Disaster” the editors discuss the other problem:
Boris Johnson is fighting for political survival amid a scandal over parties during pandemic lockdowns in 2020. And if only that were the U.K. Prime Minister’s only problem. ‘Party-gate’ is proving so damaging because the news has landed on an electorate already exasperated with Mr. Johnson over soaring energy costs.
The government estimates the average household’s energy bill rose 6% in 2021 for electricity and gas combined, to £1,339 ($1,837). That may conceal much bigger increases for some households. Some 25 suppliers have failed since August, pushing thousands of businesses and some two million domestic customers (8% of all households) to new suppliers potentially at higher rates.
The cause of this fiasco is green-energy favoritism amid a global surge in fuel prices. Retail suppliers were unprepared for surging wholesale gas and electricity prices, thanks to a cap on household energy prices imposed by Mr. Johnson’s hapless predecessor Theresa May. That cap, which became Tory Party orthodoxy, prevented retailers from accruing higher profits when wholesale prices were lower to protect themselves from supply shocks. But it also offers little lasting protection for consumers. Rising wholesale prices could force regulators to increase the price cap by 50% at its six-monthly review in February.
Britons are paying the price for decades of green policies that have made their energy grid less resilient and less affordable. Mr. Johnson didn’t start this bad-policy trend, but he has done his best to make it worse.
The main culprit is chronic preferential treatment for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Since the early 2000s, the government has mandated that utilities buy from renewable generators an increasing share of the power they sell to consumers. London also subsidizes new renewable capacity by guaranteeing suppliers a higher-than-market price for the electricity they plan to sell. The cost reaches to about £10 billion a year.
Renewables other than nuclear now account for nearly half of Britain’s installed electric-generating capacity, compared to 4% in 2000. The problem is that the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun definitely doesn’t always shine in the famously rainy U.K. Nuclear capacity has fallen to 8% of electricity generation from 16% two decades ago, leaving gas to fill the gap—the same gas that has seen rapid price increases.
It’s expensive to ramp up electricity supplies in a hurry. The national grid operator expects to spend £3 billion in the current fiscal year in so-called balancing costs. That’s what it needs to pay to backup suppliers to fill temporary gaps between supply and demand, most of which these days are caused by insufficient renewable generation.
The essay goes into specifics such as Mr Johnson wanting to ramp up “decarbonization” before concluding with:
But the energy-price debacle is giving his party another reason to oust him on top of the Covid garden-party scandals. All of this is a warning to parties of the right around the world [political consertives] tempted to indulge green illusions at the expense of kitchen-table realities.
Mr. Johnson has foolishly believed the popular press on the cost of wind and solar. It is neither affordable nor reliable. It makes delivering reliable electricity extremely expensive. See links under Questioning European Green, Energy Issues – Non-US, and Articles 1 & 2.
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Destroying Credibility: Possibly nothing will destroy the credibility of experts in the US government more completely than the false claims of reliable and affordable wind and solar as the government continues to subsidize and promote them. No government agency has published a systematic analysis of the costs of Net Zero or “clean energy” in totally replacing fossil fuels. That is left to independent private analysts who do not have a stake in the outcome.
The late engineer Roger Andrews provided exceptional reviews of efforts to make certain islands “energy independent.” The planners grossly underestimated the extent to which wind power fails. A look at wind generation in the “windy” Columbia River Gorge shows that for the past week wind power briefly achieved one-third of its rated nameplate capacity. Except for that period of less than 24 hours it has been generating less than 15% of capacity. It is now flatlining – generating little or nothing. Those who use nameplate capacity for actual capacity or use average capacity without discussing extremes mislead the public.
Writing in Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton discusses estimates by independent engineer Ken Gregory of the Friends of Science in Calgary using various scenarios. The cost of Net Zero in the US is staggering. Boris Johnson is beginning to discover that his great plans to lead the UK and free world to Net Zero may cost him dearly. The UK public is slowly becoming aware that Net Zero, or “clean energy,” is an economic disaster.
Instead of using resources to calculate the costs of Net Zero or “clean energy” to the US public, the Department of Energy is using its $62 Billion windfall in the infrastructure bill to create a federal Clean Energy Corps to produce “’solutions to climate change,’ the Clean Energy Corps will seek to ‘create good paying jobs’ and ‘spur economic growth.’” As seen in reviews of the US National Assessments, Washington cannot state the problem correctly, thus it cannot find “solutions.” See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, Change in US Administrations, Article # 4, and https://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/twndbspt.aspx
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Number of the Week: $433 trillion (20+ times the US GDP). Ken Gregory estimates that pure Net Zero will cost the US public $433 trillion, or more than twenty times the 2020 US Gross Domestic Product of $20.9 trillion. Can we expect to see realistic estimates from the Department of Energy on the costs of Mr. Biden’s Green New Deal? To understand the limits of these estimates see links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, especially the assumptions discussed by Mr. Menton.
“Virtually every data source shows just the opposite (and there is more I could have provided to you).
“Unfortunately, this exaggeration of drought by [NOAA’s] Drought Monitor is found in other areas as well. The nation is not well served by exaggerating drought. As a result, poor decisions are made.”
Shipping Liquid Hydrogen Would Be At Least 5 Times As Expensive As LNG Per Unit Of Energy
All of the projects proposing to manufacture hydrogen where sunshine and wind are constant and cheap and ship it to where energy is consumed are clearly based on hand-waving, ignorance, sheer #hopium or outright larceny.
“Assuming the same-sized ship, the delivered BTUs of energy would be about 27% of the LNG. This is because even liquified, hydrogen has less energy by volume than LNG, but also because liquifying hydrogen takes about 33% of the energy in the liquified hydrogen, as opposed to the 10% required for LNG. Different gases, different temperatures required for liquification. Amazing stuff with liquid oxygen for space travel, but not so much anywhere less exacting.”
Will the Climate Industry Move the Goalposts Again?
Global temperature was on course to meet the 2-degree target without any emissions cuts.
By Benjamin Zycher, Real Clear Energy, Jan 13, 2022
“In summary, the sign of global streamflow trends remains uncertain, with slightly more globally gauged rivers experiencing significantly decreasing flows than significantly increasing flows since the 1950s (low confidence).”
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
How much water is in Earth’s atmosphere?
By Joe Phelan, Live Science, Jan 10, 2022 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
“As a result, global warming could conceivably speed up. Water vapor is a very effective greenhouse gas, and when more of it is in the atmosphere, it will contribute to warming and enhance the greenhouse effect.”
[SEPP Comment: Obvious the author read the Charney Report or did not understand it. The “speed up” is not happening!]
Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations globally affect photosynthesis of peat-forming mosses
Press Release, Umea University, Via WUWT, Jan 14, 2022
Link to paper: Global CO2 fertilization of Sphagnum peat mosses via suppression of photorespiration during the twentieth century
By Henrik Serk, Nature Scientific Reports, Dec 31, 2021
From the press release: “Although peatlands have dampened CO2-driven climate change so far, the changes have already had devastating effects. If human CO2 emissions are not strongly reduced, the atmospheric CO2 concentration will further increase by hundreds of ppm by 2100, and average global temperatures will rise several degrees C above pre-industrial levels. It is unclear how peatlands will be affected by this.” [Boldface added]
[SEPP Comment: The physical evidence does not support this claim.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Matt Ridley on Net Zero
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Jan 10, 2022
“Matt Ridley’s interview is well worth watching, especially between 18 and 30 mins:”
“It is a myth that you can have energy that is renewable, affordable, and reliable.”
Why Disasters Have Declined
And why did they rise from 1900 to 2000 before declining?
“The USGS now estimates there are roughly 8.8 billion barrels of available oil in the reserve and adjacent state lands, up from just 896 million barrels in 2010.”
We’re Saved!? Biden Admin: 7 federal agencies announce ‘plans that will activate the entire government to fight climate change’
By: Marc Morano, Climate Depot, Jan 12, 2022
False Alarm: Today–and Back in the 1970s
By Robert Bradley Jr, Master Resource, Jan 15, 2022
Biden administration announces actions bolstering clean energy
“On offshore wind, the administration announced on Wednesday that it will hold a lease sale in the New York Bight — off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.
“This lease sale could result in the generation of up to 7 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power 2 million homes, according to a White House fact sheet.”
[SEPP Comment: Does White House fact sheet stipulate what times the 2 million homes will get power?]
Seeking a Common Ground
Does the Massive Cascade Snowpack Mean We Don’t Have to Worry About Global Warming?
“According to NASA’s temperature record, Earth in 2021 was about 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer than the late 19th century average, the start of the industrial revolution.”
[SEPP Comment: Is this an appeal to return to the famine and starvation during the Little Ice Age? What are the locations of reliable record keeping in the 1880s in Greenland, the Arctic, the Congo, Antarctica, in the Pacific to name a few locations?]]
“The big picture: According to Copernicus, the annual global average surface temperature was 1.1-1.2°C (1.98-2.16°F) above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).”
[SEPP Comment: Surface temperatures include the effects of urbanization. Also, how were the temperatures measured in the Arctic, the Antarctic, central Africa, South America, Australia, in the oceans in 1850?]
The World Has Been Getting Much Colder For The Last Six Years
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Jan 11, 2022
“You might also note that the satellite data begins in 1979, which just so happens to be the coldest period of the 20thC. At the time it was acknowledged that global temperatures had decline by 0.5C since 1940, which offsets most of the increase since 1979.
“This decline in temperatures coincides with the cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which has been in warm phase since the 1990s and is soon due to revert to cold.”
1920 or 2020? Hobart Tasmania Edition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Jan 12, 2022
“There is also the factor of mobility: for instance, as it was getting colder, some animals that were unable to move to warmer environments may have gone extinct.”
“These broad patterns and concepts from past extinctions can be applied to understanding similar patterns researchers are seeing today, says Pier, where some groups fare well while others die out.”
Changing Seas
Coastal Land Area Is Expanding So Fast That ‘Catastrophic’ Sea Level Rise Cannot Keep Up
“Deaths from these CPI-adjusted events have also increased in recent years. There has been an average of 361 deaths each year from billion-dollar storms overall since 1980, but an average of 904 per year over the past five years.”
[SEPP Comment: The 1927 flood of the Mississippi River killed about 500 people and left about 700,000 homeless, many for months. It is not considered in the NOAA report.]
20 ‘Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters’ Hit U.S. in 2021
By Aaron Larson, Power Mag, Jan 13, 2022
Magical seven year record wins the Hottest-ever Bingo of 2021
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Jan 13, 2022
Another Record: Ocean Warming Continues through 2021 despite La Niña Conditions
By Lijing Cheng, et al. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Accepted Jan 10, 2022 [H/t John McClaughry]
“The increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities traps heat within the climate system and increases ocean heat content (OHC).”
“The year-to-year variation of OHC is primarily tied to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).”
[SEPP Comment: Advances in Atmospheric Sciences ignoring atmospheric measurements of temperature and temperature effects of greenhouse gases? How does a modest warming of the atmosphere cause a greater warming of the oceans?]
“’Poverty is perhaps the greatest social injustice and not providing the means for farmers to improve yields, reduce toil and suffering while advancing their lives economically and financially is hardly something to commend.
“’If you don’t allow farmers to access insecticides or seeds resistant to infestations and disease, you are condemning more women to longer hours bent over in the hot sun breaking off leaves. If you deny basic herbicides to smallholders, the backbreaking job of hand-weeding will pass down to their children (who should be in school).’”
[SEPP Comment: Adding “social justice” to the four repugnant trends in science journalism: “fair-weather advocacy”, “conclusions in search of evidence”, “lack of nuance”, and “promoting censorship.”]
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Climate-driven disease devastates seagrass health
Researchers find more seagrass wasting disease outbreaks
“It is now habitual to look back around the beginning of January and declare that the past year was the most climate changey ever.”
“So let us guess: 2022 will feel different too, with unprecedented blah blah blah whatever just happened constituting unprecedented and final proof of climate change that ends the debate again.”
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Time is running out. Here’s how the climate movement can level up.
The high-risk, high-reward stakes of building a more radical movement.
“With all that cash, you’d think they could do their own research. Whereas instead the bottom line here, with all due respect to the harried, underfunded, overworked and underappreciated communications staff of two different departments, is that nobody knows where the Minister [of Natural Resources (NRC)] got that number or, if they do know, they are too embarrassed to say. It is not because of his deep study of the matter. It is not because of his well-informed and dedicated staff of nearly 5,000 NRC employees”
Don’t look, or listen, up
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Jan 12, 2022
Expanding the Orthodoxy
DHS unveils effort to recruit climate change professionals
“This two-year program will be run by the DHS Office of the Chief Readiness Support Officer and provide participants with hands-on opportunities to contribute to new initiatives that have the potential to substantially help DHS adapt to climate change and improve resilience. Upon successful completion of the program, participants will receive a Climate Change Professional accreditation from the Association of Climate Change Officers and be eligible for permanent, full-time positions at DHS.”
Progressives say they care more about working people and climate change than Republicans and moderate Democrats. Why, then, do they advocate policies that make energy expensive and dirty?
Biden scientific integrity report validates Young v. EPA
By Steve Milloy, JunkScience.com, Jan 13, 2022
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Environmental Levies
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Jan 14, 2022
“These levies, apart from the gas levy, are all subsidies for renewable energy – all paid direct except for capacity market payments, which are paid to generators to provide standby for intermittent renewables; as such they are still regarded as part pf the cost of renewables, and therefore an indirect subsidy.”
Deaths from 1 degree of warming nothing compared to an Electricity Grid collapse for a year
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Jan 8, 2022
Firm action on Green Levies and funds could win back support for government
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Jan 12, 2022
Link to report: The Net Zero Watch Guide to the Energy Bills Crisis
By Staff, Net Zero Watch, January 2022
Fossil Fuel Generation Outpaces Renewables in 2021 – IEA
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Jan 14, 2022
“My view is that the IEA are ultra optimistic in even that assumption, as we know that coal power is still meeting the majority of extra demand in China and India. It is unlikely in the extreme that Europe and the US can offset this.
“While [Executive Director] Fatih Birol whistles in the dark, the fine words at COP26 hit the wall of reality.”
AEP Wakes Up & Smells The Gas! [Columnist for The Telegraph]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Jan 14, 2022
“Fall in both onshore and offshore wind production amid rising demand leads to growth in coal and nuclear in 2021”
Largest Capacity Solar Farm in Indiana Begins Operation
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Jan 13, 2022
“’We are pleased to own and operate this large-scale solar project,’ said Matt O’Brien, president of CC&L Infrastructure. ‘As long-term investors, we believe in responsible investment. CC&L Infrastructure is focused on investing in essential infrastructure projects that support local communities while creating value for customers, employees and investors.’”
[SEPP Comment: What about costs of electricity when solar does not work?]
Wind Power: Still Uneconomic, Government Dependent
Robert L. Bradley Jr. IER, Jan 10, 2022
BOEM Launches Offshore Wind Actions for California, Gulf Coast, New York Blight
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Jan 13, 2022
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Ethiopian GERD Mega-Dam Readying to Test Power Production
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Jan 6, 2022
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
NineDot Lands Carlyle Investment for New York Battery Projects
Private-equity firm spent over $100 million on separate investments as it expands into the market for large-scale electricity storage
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said this month that the state would double its 2030 energy storage target to 6,000 megawatts. The state has 130 megawatts of energy storage currently operational and 1,240 megawatts under contract, a NYSERDA spokeswoman said.”
[SEPP Comment: No estimate on costs]
Tesla unveils its giant Megapack battery project in Texas
By Fred Lambert, Electrek, Jan 6, 2022
“The project has a capacity of 100 MW/200 MWh – making it one of the biggest Tesla energy storage projects in the world.”
[SEPP Comment: No statement of cost.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Achilles Heel of Battery-Powered Vehicles, Part 2
By Donn Dears, Power For USA, Jan 11, 2022
[SEPP Comment: Don’t count on battery powered vehicles during or after an extreme weather event.]
California Dreaming
Is California About to “Stumble” in its Fight Against Climate Change?
By David Middleton, WUWT, Jan 13, 2022
Newsom allocates $22.5 billion to climate crisis in California budget proposal
The philosophy teacher at Dickerson College begins:
“The media have noticed that experts disagree. ‘A strange unity of confusion is emerging,’ the Washington Post reports, ‘a common inability to decipher conflicting advice and clashing guidelines coming from government, science, health, media and other institutions. On seemingly every front in the battle against the coronavirus, the messages are muddled: Test or don’t test? Which test? When? Isolate or not? For five days? Ten? Go to school or not? See friends and resume normal life, or hunker down again?’
“Deferring to the experts appears central to many people’s value systems and political identities and is emphasized relentlessly by the Biden administration and the media. For people who have staked their lives on doing whatever the experts tell them to do, the strange unity of confusion has induced an epistemic crisis.”
After discussing the bewildering arrays of expert opinion, the author concludes:
“Consider a hypothetical person who was born in 1922 and has resolved for the past century to believe all and only what the experts said. On topics such as race and sex, economics and law, astronomy and physics, psychology and medicine, our centenarian would have beliefs now entirely incompatible with those he had at the beginning. If he were to reflect on these changing beliefs, he’d have to conclude that most of the things most of the experts in most areas had said for most of the past 100 years were false. He’d do well to assume that most of what they’re saying now is false as well.
“Such a person couldn’t exist, because at every moment on almost every matter for the whole century, experts disagreed. Sheer deference would fetch you up in complete incoherence. And experts are people too. They’re muddling through like we are; they are confused too; they forget a key detail; they see what they expect or want to see.
“And finally, I’d like to urge us all to show some pride. Nodding along isn’t enough. Not only can’t we off-load responsibility for our own beliefs, we shouldn’t try.”
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4. Jennifer Granholm’s Green Brigade
The Department of Energy launches a Clean Energy Corps.
“These are boom times in Washington, as the executive branch is expanding to spend all the money Congress has bestowed in the last two years. For sheer enthusiasm, no one beats Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who unveiled her plan on Thursday for a federal Clean Energy Corps.
“The recent infrastructure legislation included some $62 billion in funding for clean energy, and Ms. Granholm now plans to recruit a thousand federal employees in the effort.
“‘Your country needs you! Your planet needs you!’ she proclaimed in a YouTube video, accompanied by a soaring sound track. She added that ‘we need project, grant and portfolio managers to help us get these investments out the door and deploy, deploy, deploy clean energy!’
“She also wants ‘scientists, analysts, engineers—nuclear, mechanical, electrical and civil—to help us design and evaluate the electric vehicle charging networks and the nuclear reactors of the future. We need IT, cyber security professionals, we need people managers, we need HR professionals, we need mission-support teams to keep everything running. In other words, we need you on our team!’
“You have to respect her enthusiasm, and amid a labor shortage it can’t be easy attracting people to work for the federal government. As the department explained in a news release, the Clean Energy Corps is ‘the largest staff expansion’ in its history. No wonder the secretary is thrilled.
“If Ms. Granholm discovers a solution to climate change, she’ll go down in history herself. But short of that miracle, we’ll be watching to see how she and her climate recruits spend those tens of billions of dollars.”
The editorial describes examples of failures of Ms. Granholm as governor in Michigan and of the Department of Energy under the Obama Administration before concluding with:
“We suppose we should say better luck this time—to Ms. Granholm, her idealistic recruits, and especially American taxpayers. Let’s hope that among those 1,000 employees, she’ll include some auditors to follow the money.”
Andrew Chen reports at Epoch Times Constitutional Rights Group to Take Legal Action Against Quebec’s Tax on the Unvaccinated. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Iowa Climate Science Education 