What follows is the data from Casa Blanca, Cuba.

GHCN V3 Unadjusted data shows the station had a cooling trend since 1880, while V4 Unadjusted data shows a moderate warming trend.

According to NASA, both are unadjusted data.

Even worse, the GHCN V4 adj – homogenized data show that the station doesn’t have any annual temperature data from 1880 to 1916, and has had a rapid warming trend.

NASA just likes changing data.

The unfaithful media have not reported this, despite the many similar cases.

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November 19, 2020 at 10:51AM

The first-ever randomized controlled trial (4,862 participants) for mask-use effectiveness in the COVID-19 era reveals that people who wear face masks properly in public are infected only 0.1 of a percentage point less often (2.0% vs. 2.1%) than those who do not wear masks in public.

In 2018 the United States’ Center for Disease Control (CDC) cited a study that said  wearing a cloth mask is only effective 1% of the time in preventing viral transmission. This is because facemasks do not tightly seal to the face and thus they “cannot prevent particles in the air from bypassing the filter.”

Image Source: CDC

In the spring of 2020, just as COVID-19 was surging throughout the world, the CDC reviewed 10 randomized controlled trials of mask effectiveness in preventing influenza-like viral infections. In each instance they found “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks” and the “overall reduction in ILI or laboratory-confirmed influenza cases was not significant” and “none of the household studies reported a significant reduction in…influenza virus infections in the face mask group.”

Image Source: CDC

On the 18th of November, 2020, the first comprehensive randomized controlled trial study (Bundgaard et al., 2020) assessing mask effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic was made available online.

The study was conducted in Denmark, a country where health authorities did not recommended universal mask use during the study period (April and May, 2020). There were 4,862 participants who completed the study in either the control group (no masks) or mask-wearing group. Only about half (46%) of the mask-wearing group admitted they wore their masks in the way they were instructed (i.e., always fully covering the nose and mouth).

When comparing the proper mask-wearing group to the no-masks control group, the authors found no statistically significant difference in the rates of COVID-19 infection: 2.0% of those who wore masks properly in public were infected with the virus compared to a 2.1% infection rate for those who did not wear masks in public.

So out of 1,000 participants, 1 more person (20 vs. 21) wearing a mask (properly) avoided infection when directly compared to 1,000 participants who didn’t wear a mask at all.

Image Source: Bundgaard et al., 2020

Perhaps this now-affirmed lack of effectiveness is the reason why there is no less of a surge in new COVID-19 cases after mask mandates are put into place across the world.

Image Source: worldometer

via NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard on 19. November 2020

New Controlled Study Finds Wearing NO Mask In Public Prevents COVID Infection As Often As Wearing One Does

See more

Netflix faked ‘Our Planet’ walrus deaths in order to blame them on climate change – polar bears actually were the cause of walrus falling to their deaths from a Siberian cliff, independent video evidence from Russia shows.

A new video published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation on this new evidence. h/t Mark.

Press release 16 November 2020 from the Global Warming Policy Foundation:

London, 19 November: In a GWPF video released today, Dr. Susan Crockford, a Canadian wildlife expert, provides new evidence that the 2019 Netflix documentary film series, ‘Our Planet’, withheld facts behind the controversial walrus story it promoted as evidence of climate change.

If there was ever any doubt that polar bears, not climate change, were the cause of walrus falling to their deaths from a rocky cliff in Siberia a few years ago, new evidence presented here seals the deal: a Russian photographer has released independent video of the event that clearly shows polar bears driving walrus over the cliff to their deaths.

In 2019, a sequence in the Netflix documentary ‘Our Planet’ showed a highly disturbing piece of footage of several walrus bouncing off sharp rocks as they fell from a high cliff to their deaths. It transpired this event happened in late September 2017 at a well-known walrus haulout at Cape Schmidt on the Chukchi Sea.

Narrator Sir David Attenborough blamed the tragedy on climate change, insisting that lack of summer sea ice due to climate change was to blame for the walrus falling to their deaths without provocation. A few months later, however, using some of the same walrus footage, Attenborough’s BBC series called ‘Seven Worlds, One Planet’ featured a number of polar bears driving walrus off the very same cliff. It was damning evidence that the ‘Our Planet’ account of walrus deaths had been a false narrative constructed to elicit an emotional response from the public.

New independent video footage of the same event shot by Russian photographer Yevgeny Basov corroborates the BBC evidence that polar bears drove the walrus over the cliff. Basov is a friend of Netflix ‘science advisor’ Anatoly Kochnev and was apparently invited to observe the commercial filming.

Like the original Netflix footage, this scene is not for the faint of heart. It captures a raw but natural encounter between predator and prey. Walrus hauling out on land during the summer are natural events that happen even when sea ice is available. Polar bears are known to stalk such herds until they stampede, leaving the weak or unwary crushed in their wake. Cliffs are not essential to this polar bear hunting strategy but are especially efficient.

This brutal film footage of nature in action is not evidence of climate change or species on the brink of extinction. It does prove, however, that the walrus narrative promoted by Sir David Attenborough in the Netflix documentary ‘Our Planet’ is a manipulative sham with no resemblance to reality.

My video below published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation

Although the location is not specified in the original Russian video, by Russian photographer Yevgeny Basov, entitled simply ‘Walruses and polar bears of Chukotka’ (posted 17 May 2020, see below), it is clear that the location shown early in the film footage (up to the 4:00 mark) is of the cliff and walrus haulout at Cape Schmidt, which the author described in a photo essay published in November 2017 here.

See also:  

The truth about Attenborough’s falling walruses (below):

Falling Walrus: Attenborough Tacitly Admits Netflix Deception (below)

#attenborough, #chukchi-sea, #extinction, #netflix, #our-planet, #polar-bears, #sea-ice, #video, #walrus

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November 19, 2020 at 10:01AM

The reference is to the public dismay when beloved baseball player “Shoeless” Joe Jackson was accused as one of the 1919 Chicago White Sox participating in a conspiracy to fix the World Series.   One day historians may look back upon the 2020 election in this way; or not if it is the victors who write the record.

In any case this post is actually about a timely article by Joel Kotkin at Real Clear Energy.  I have posted a number of his insightful essays in the past, but have mixed feelings about this one.  He expresses a number of things I fear are true, but the effect is so discouraging as to suggest throwing in the towel.  Judge for yourself: The article is The End Game.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.

With the election of Joe Biden, the environmental movement has now established suzerainty over global economics. Gone not only is the troublesome Donald Trump but also the Canadian skeptic Steven Harper. Outside of those dismissed as far right, there is virtually no serious debate about how to address climate change in the U.S. or Western Europe outside the parameters suggested by mainstream green groups.

In reality, though, few electorates anywhere are ready for extreme policies such as the Green New Deal, which, as its widely acknowledged architect, Saikat Chakrabarti, has acknowledged, is really a redder, more openly anti-capitalist version of the Great Depression-era original.

Yet getting hysterical about the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a waste of emotional energy. The real power of the environmental movement derives from those who occupy “the commanding heights” of our society – at the corporate, media, and academic realms. Though arguably not holding views as economically ludicrous as AOC’s, mainstream corporate greens are far more likely to successfully impose their version of environmental justice on the rest of us.

A finer shade of green

The modern environmental movement was launched from the top of the economic food chain. The Rockefeller Brothers, for example, funded some of the earliest environmental work, notably on population control. Today, these depositories of old money built on fossil fuels, including not just the Rockefellers but also the Fords, have become leading advocates of radical climate policies.

In 1972, the influential book Limits to Growth was published with backing from major corporate interests, led by Aurelio Peccei of Fiat. The book’s authors suggested that the earth was running out of natural resources at a rapid pace and called for establishing “global equilibrium” through restrictions on growth and “a carefully controlled balance” of population and capital. These conclusions, mostly accepted in top media, academic, and political circles, turned out to be almost comically off target, as production of food, energy, and raw materials accompanied not the predicted mass starvation but arguably the greatest rise of global living standards in history.

Yet despite this record, a growing and powerful faction of the corporate aristocracy still embraces the ideals of the Club of Rome, seeking to cut human consumption and limit economic progress. Like religious prelates in the Middle Ages, today’s environmentalists – who The Nation’s Alexander Cockburn has aptly named “greenhouse fearmongers” – see no contradiction between imposing austerity on the masses and excusing the excesses of their ultra-rich supporters. Like sinful aristocrats and merchant princes in medieval times, our “green rich” can even buy a modern version of indulgences through carbon credits and other virtue-signaling devices. This allows them to save the planet in style. In 2019, an estimated 1,500 GHG-spewing private jets were flown to Davos carrying attendees to a conference to discuss the environmental crisis. Few high-profile climate activists, including celebrities, seem willing to give up their multiple houses, yachts, or plethora of cars.

The de-growth solution

These worthies likely don’t share the notion advanced by Barry Commoner, a founding father of modern environmentalism, that “capitalism is the earth’s number one enemy.” Today’s green elites have no interest in breaking up tech oligarchies, limiting Wall Street’s financial power, or lessening the burdens of green policies on the poor and working class. Nor are they likely, at least for now, to embrace such things now bandied about by extreme green academics and activists, such as considering an insect diet, restricting meat, curbing procreation, or even advocating total human extinction.

Rather, many elites have embraced the concept of “degrowth,” which foresees less economic expansion, a declining population, and a radical end to upward mobility. One set of proposals from the IPCC endorses this notion and openly rejects “a capital-oriented culture“ seeing a more centralized approach as critical to saving the planet.” The World Economic Forum’s founder Klaus Schwab, the lord of Davos, for example, envisions the rise of a new business class motivated by “virtuous instincts” that include such things as eliminating fossil fuels. This woke corporate mindset is sold as a form of “stakeholder capitalism,” while following the progressive cultural agenda on gender and race as well.

Though couched in laudable intentions, this agenda also is remarkably self-serving. The British Marxist historian James Heartfield suggests that “Green capitalism” provides a perfect opportunity to maximize return on artificially scarcer resources, like land and agricultural products, notably through mandates and tax breaks for renewable energy. The green economy has already spawned its first mega-billionaire, Elon Musk, whose core businesses benefited enormously on regulatory and tax policies that favor his products. In the future, expect other, less innovative oligarchs happy to take advantage of centrally imposed scarcity, making money under the pretext of “human survival.”

Who pays when things don’t work

The wealthy, such as Jeff Bezos – who earlier this year gave $10 billion to environmental groups – can demand strict policies to curb climate change because they can afford the effect of these policies. It won’t restrict their ability to make billions, maintain mansions in the style of Hapsburg royalty, or fly in private jets. By contrast, oil riggers, factory employees, or construction workers who drive old trucks to work will be seriously harmed by bans on fossil fuels. For them, the forced march to a prearranged green utopia won’t be so sweet, and the promise of “green jobs” no substitute for the real thing,

For these workers and their families, the price of green piety is reduced resources for schooling, medical bills, or even food. California, with its lion’s share of multibillionaires, suffers the highest poverty rate, adjusted for costs, of any state and a widespread expansion of energy poverty. These policies are already threatening to raise costs on the east coast, where wind energy prices are estimated to be five times conventional electrical generation. Similarly, as many as one in four Germans, and three-fourths of Greeks, have cut other spending to pay their electricity bills, which is the economic definition of “energy poverty.”

To date, these negatives have done little to slow California’s madcap attempt to go “all electric.” This policy is doomed to fail as it seeks to boost electricity use while removing the most affordable and reliable ways to supply it. Worse yet, these policies will also have damaging environmental effects, forcing the creation of massive new solar plants in the state’s most vulnerable agricultural areas and open space. A 2015 study by the Carnegie Institution for Science and Stanford University suggests that building enough solar power to reduce U.S. emissions by 80 percent in 2050 could require upwards of more than 27,500 square miles, destroying both farmland and unique natural habitats along the way.

California is seeking similar emissions cuts by mandating building and transport electrification using solar and wind power, but state climate leaders have yet to disclose the location or scale of devastated land that their policies require. According to a 2019 report by The Nature Conservancy and the state’s own technical experts, as much as 3 million acres – nearly 4,700 square miles – could be sacrificed by 2050, including much of the state’s Central Valley and, if neighboring states agree, sprawling industrial development throughout the western U.S. Overall, electric-car production and solar plants pose their own, though rarely reported, environmental problems, particularly connected to mining for rare-earth materials.

The “Test run”

The tragic, and relentlessly disruptive, coronavirus lockdowns can be justified as a real response to a clear, present, and sometimes-lethal danger. But some greens also see the lockdowns as a “test run” for the kinds of regulations we may face under future green regimes. The “visionary” Davos mogul Schwab, for example, sees the pandemic as an opportunity for a major “reset,” one preliminary to a post-growth regime based on the more enlightened values of the economic elect.

This new order would follow the Davos script, locking down whole parts of the economy and restricting consumer choice, notably for housing and transportation. To sell this somewhat unpalatable agenda, greens and their elite allies have imposed an orthodoxy that excludes dissent. Today, open rational discussion about how to best protect the planet is about as rare as open debate over God’s existence would have been in the Catholic Church of the eleventh century. There’s even a movement, already adopted in France and Belgium, to make what’s called “ecocide” a crime.

Today even veteran climate scientists – such as Roger Pielke, Judith Curry, or Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, are treated as heretics for questioning global-warming orthodoxy. Longtime activists such as Michael Shellenberger and even radical propagandist Michael Moore, whose recent documentary “Planet of Humans” exposed the ecological impact and corporate profiteering of “green” power, have suffered de-platforming for offending the sensibilities of green activists and their billionaire patrons. 

This is a poor way to tackle a complex scientific issue, where open inquiry and debate are needed, observes Steve Koonin, President Obama’s undersecretary of energy for science.

Are there better, fairer solutions?

What the green end game is likely to produce is an increasingly static and hierarchical society, perhaps torn apart by raging class conflict between the oligarchs and their allies, on one side, and the beleaguered middle and working classes, on the other. We can already see signs of this in California, where Latino and African-American activists object to paying for the fantasies of the green grandees, a phenomenon also seen in grassroots movements in France, the Netherlands, and Norway. The impact on developing countries, in particular, could be severe, with potentially gruesome consequences.

But, ultimately, we may not have to choose between a better economy and a better environment.

For example, we could encourage, not ban, the substitution of cheap and plentiful natural gas for higher emission fuels, such as coal or diesel, a strategy that has already proven to substantially reduce U.S. emissions, and that could become even more effective if carbon capture or renewable gas technologies mature. We also could encourage the current trend to online dispersion of work, which could hold terrific opportunities not only for reducing emissions but also for reviving family life and encouraging entrepreneurialism.

We must not let our lives be constrained by the concentrated power of an unelected ruling class, whose agenda would reinstate a version of the hierarchical society of feudal times.

#environmental-scares, #social-ideologies

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November 19, 2020 at 09:39AM

Another example of climate journalists and researchers not looking carefully at the data they are reporting.

It is on the face of it it is an interesting and significant story showing the tragic effects on humans as a result of a warming world.

More people are falling into the water and drowning due to walking on unstable ice or having their snowmobiles and other vehicles break the ice at times of the year when it had previously been stable. It seems, as the headlines proclaim, that warmer winters are linked to increased deaths according to a study just published in Plos One. It is reported that deaths from drowning were five times higher when warmer weather made the ice thinner and weaker.

My first thought was to wonder if those experienced in ice travel would judge safe conditions by the calendar using what the state of the ice would be on average at a certain time of the year rather that looking at the actual ice conditions. It made me want to look at the actual data in the research paper.

It comes from Canadian researchers who looked at data on 4,000 drowning events in 10 countries. “We can confidently say that there is quite a strong correlation between warmer winter air temperatures and more winter drownings,” Sapna Sharma from Your University in Toronto told the BBC.

It seems a simple story until one looks at the data which, as I suspected, paints a different picture than the headlines.

Look at their Figure 2 which shows deaths (per million people) plotted against December-March air temperature. An initial concern would be taking the average temperature over 4 months – this will include some variation in air temperature before and after the coldest temperatures of the year. But never mind, it is not the main concern there is with the data.

The authors of the report consider that Fig 2 shows that drowning deaths “increased exponentially” in regions with warmer winters when air temperatures exceeded 0°C. This is in my view is not a robust conclusion.

Clearly Estonia and Latvia are outliers: they have a far lower population that other countries in the data, yet have as much an ice culture as the others. Because of this I suspect that the data is in part a result of cultural and administrative factors in those countries.

The variance of Latvia’s data is huge, and Estonia’s data is sparse and is also widespread. Remove these two countries from the graph and the increasing exponentially effect disappears, as does the fundamental conclusion of this study.

In conclusion, this report has some interesting things to say about Latvia and Estonia but nothing to say about a worldwide effect on whether winter ice deaths are increasing as the world warms. It’s another example of specialist reporters of climate change only reading top lines, and not looking at the data of the stories they are reporting.

Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com

The post Climate change claim on thin ice appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

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November 19, 2020 at 08:46AM

By Paul Homewoodhttps:

London, 19 November: In a GWPF video released today, Dr. Susan Crockford, a Canadian wildlife expert, provides new evidence that the 2019 Netflix documentary film series, ‘Our Planet’, withheld facts behind the controversial walrus story it promoted as evidence of climate change.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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November 19, 2020 at 08:30AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Patsy Lacey

Presumably this only applies to the peasants!!

People should move to “tiny homes” with less floor space to help fight climate change, a UN report has said.

The International Resource Panel, an international group of scientists, said that “trendy” smaller homes and group living could cut carbon emissions.

Lead author Edgar Hertwich, international chair in industrial ecology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said: “Limiting the growth in the size of our homes, and sharing rides and vehicles turned out to be the most effective ways to reduce emissions.”

The group’s analysis showed that reducing demand for domestic floor space by up to 20 per cent could lower greenhouse gas emissions from building materials by 73 per cent in 2050.

Policies making energy more expensive and larger houses less desirable could be one way of achieving this, the report said, as could policies encouraging downsizing such as stamp duty cuts.

While average home sizes have been growing, a “social movement” to encourage downsizing has emerged driven by concerns about resource use and efficiency, the authors added.

Homes as small as 20 square metres have been showcased by architects as solutions to the high cost of living space in some cities, though critics argue that they represent a step backwards for people’s quality of life. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2020/11/18/tiny-homes-fix-climate-crisis-un-report-suggests

BTW

As usual, this Telegraph article is behind a paywall. I cancelled my subscription months ago, but have found out that you can still download the articles simply by disabling javascript on your browser.

Disabling this, of course, is not a good idea normally, but as I never use Chrome, I have simply disabled it there.

Try it, it works!

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November 19, 2020 at 08:24AM