Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
From The Rebel News
The information about the Canadian government’s dealings with the World Economic Forum was made available through an order paper question posed by Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis.
http://ExposeTheReset.comย | MORE:ย https://rebelne.ws/45aRZgl
The feds returned 127 pages of contracts and agreements between the Canadian government and the unelected oligarchs at Klaus Schwab’s crypto-global government.
From Science Matters
ย byย Ron Clutz
I learned alot from a recent extended discussion at Climate Etc.ย Causality and Climateย responding to a paper Demetris Koutsoyiannis et al. (2023)ย Onย Hens, Eggs, Temperatures and CO2: Causal Links in Earthโs Atmosphere.ย ย My previous post on this paper was:
I recommend the discussion thread at climate etc. (on going) as a tutorial for the competing paradigms regarding the CO2 cycle. I gained clarity from the lead author (a frequent and constructive participant) as well others on the core misunderstanding that has plagued such discussions for decades. Some comments are below in italics with my bolds.
First, note that the paper had a narrowly defined scope: to demonstrate from available data that changes in atmospheric CO2 lag rather than lead temperature changes. Because the authors recognized that this finding is contrary to IPCC consensus climate science, appendices were supplied to counter the expected objections crediting human CO2 emissions from hydrocarbons as the main, or sole source of rising CO2 since the Little Ice Age (LIA). As Koutsoyiannis explained in a summary comment near the end:
Demetris Koutsoyiannis September 29, 2023 at 4:54 pm
I think I have rebutted all the different critiques ON MY PAPERS. I am not going to reply to critiques on any other issues related to the issue of climate. Please make your critiques SPECIFIC, by quoting phrases in my papers that you think are incorrect. And before it, please read the papers.
For example you say:
> And that would be the cause of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere?
If you read the paper you will see that we write (p. 17): *What is the cause of the modern increase in temperature? Apparently, this question is much more difficult to reply to, as we can no longer attribute everything to any single agent. We do not claim to have the answer to this question, whose study is far beyond the articleโs scope. Neither do we believe that mainstream climatic theory, which is focused upon human CO2 emissions as the main cause and regards everything else as feedback of the single main cause, can explain what happened on Earth for 4.5 billion years of changing climate.*
We have proposed a necessary condition for causality, which is time precedence of the cause over the effect. I hope you accept that necessary condition, am I wrong? We make our inference based on this necessary condition. Your numbers make no reference of time succession. When you find a way to test whether the direction in time is reversed, that will be great. But for now, all this looks to me an unproven conjecture. I hope you can excuse me that, being a Greek, I have to stick to Aristotelian logic.
You also say:
> While there is an elephant in the room, human emissions that released twice as much CO2 as measured in the atmosphereโฆ
If this is the elephant, what is (copying from our paper, p. 25), *a total global increase in the respiration rate of ฮR = 31.6 Gt C/year. This rate, which is a result of natural processes, is 3.4 times greater than the CO2 emission by fossil fuel combustion (9.4 Gt C /year including cement production)*.
My Comment: The confounding issue in all this was identified as the mistaken analogy treating CO2 fluxes as though they are cash transactions between bank accounts. Within that notion, a natural source/sink must net out intakes and releases. Yet as others commented, geobiologists know that both absorption and release can be increasing or can be decreasing. The source/sinks function dynamically, not statically as assumed by the analogy.
clydehspencer | September 29, 2023 at 3:07 pm |
โOur knowledge of net global uptake over this period is good to 15%.โ
How do you justify making such an assertion when no one has mentioned what is happening in the Arctic, the NASA observation of โgreening,โ and the utterly unknown situation of submarine volcanic emissions?
How do you propose to identify and dismiss spurious correlations?
Ferdinand Engelbeen | September 29, 2023 at 4:13 pm |
Clyde as said elsewhere, we do not need any natural flow for the carbon balance: that is exactly known from human emissions minus increase in the atmosphere: that is exactly what nature did in the same year: always more sink than source in the past 60 yearsโฆ
Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 4:23 am |
โIn detail: both the oceans and vegetation are proven, increasing (!) sinks for CO2, thus these two canโt be cause of the increase in the atmosphere.
It really is that simpleโฆโ
And ironically, this is exactly where you are wrong. Just because they are increasing as sinks does not mean they cannot be increasing as sources. I think you are too stuck on the idea of a โbudgetโ, itโs a linear view. Itโs the โnetโ thing that is where the misunderstanding is.
The biosphere is indifferent to our contribution. If there is more CO2 available it will expand regardless of where it came from. Temperature increase, particularly in winter, means that more CO2 is released in biodegradation than normal. If it releases more than is fixed during the summer growing season, then atmospheric CO2 levels will increase.
During the growing season, if there is more CO2 available, then the biosphere can grow more vigorously and expand. Some of this is semi-permanently fixed, and some will only fix during the growing season to be available to be released as CO2 during the next winter.
If the humans made no contribution, the atmospheric CO2 would still go up, though perhaps not by as much, just as it did in other warm periods during the holocene. This โbudgetโ idea is what is causing the confusion.
Agnostic October 1, 2023 at 4:02 am
Ferdinand writes: โIf humans are not to blame, what is the โotherโ source (both oceans and vegetation are increasing net sinks) and where resides all that human CO2?โ
The same question has to be asked to explain the high variability of CO2 atmospheric concentration prior to industrialisation. The CO2 had to come from somewhere: during the MWP it was as high as 380-390ppm before dropping to 285ppm. During the Bolling-Allerod CO2 increased to as much as 420ppm while temps were actually cooling, a break in the pattern of Temp leading CO2 which holds over all timescales.
The answer is that the biosphere is massively more complex than you are appreciating. You claim that the biosphere is net sink because our emissions are grater than the amount that atmospheric CO2 is rising, but that thinking is too simplistic. It is likely, almost certain given previous periods of warming, that atmospheric CO2 would have risen anyway, but perhaps by not as much, which is our contribution.
The biosphere is expanding because more CO2 is available and is therefore a source as well as a sink. Were we not contributing our share, it would be a net source.
Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 5:38 am |
โAll the variability is in the net sink (not source!) rate of CO2 into nature, while sinks are increasingly negative and temperature is slightly increasing over the same time 60+ years time spanโฆ
Thus temperature is NOT the cause of the increase.โ
No โ this is where you are completely wrong.
The source is ALSO variable. Highly variable. The sinks which you describe as โvariableโ are ALSO sources, they are interdependent and non-linear in their relationship.
During the growing season, some of the growth fixed via photosynthesis is trapped and some decays during the winter. How much decays is predominantly temperature dependent. The is why you see CO2 follow temperature on ALL timescales that we reliably measure.
Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 5:33 am |
Processes that release C into the atmosphere (biodegradation) are far more temperature dependent than processes that fix it (photosynthesis). So there is already a systematic imbalance regardless of anything we do. It is not just a linear โbudgetโ.
During cooler periods, the rate at which CO2 is removed is greater than the rate at which it is released, leading to lowering of CO2 in atmosphere such as LIA. During periods of warmth, especially winter, more CO2 is released than is fixed leading to an increase. But the relationship is not linear.
As more CO2 is available, the transient biosphere expands and grows more vigorously. Some is trapped and some is released at the end of the season. How much is released is dependent on warmth (and to a lesser extent moisture in soils).
We hear the biosphere being described as a โnet sinkโ which is growing because humans emit more C than is remaining in the atmosphere. But it is faulty thinking.
If we did not contribute, then atmosCO2 would still go up, making the biosphere a โnet sourceโ. Thatโs because the biosphere expands and contracts depending on how much CO2 is available and how warm it is. The CO2 comes from trapped sources particularly in the soils, released by increased temperatures which is a much larger overall source than human emissions.
IMO, it is better to think of carbon sources and sinks as dynamic reservoirs that are never perfectly in balance and which have a non-linear relationship with each other. We contribute to the source side, but the biosphere canโt tell the difference between manโs CO2 and naturally emitted, so characterising it as โbudgetโ is where the confusion arises. The โbudgetโ is always changing in non-linear interdependent way. It is not fixed.
Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 7:59 am |
I have read other similar papers that came to the same conclusion, one in particular by statistician. They were adamant that from a statistical POV you cannot claim causality the way round it is traditionally viewed.
I am NO expert on the carbon cycle, by any means. But it has been bone stuck in my head for a long time because I AM interested in paleoclimatological record. Ice core data is what is generally used to show that CO2 levels are at โunprecedented levelsโ, yet we know that ice core data is unreliable and too low resolution to speak about short intervals of warming of 300 to 400 years which we appear to be in.
High resolution proxies clearly show similar concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
to today, yet that is not put into context. Where did THAT CO2 come from?
The other thing that bothers me is the โbudgetโ approach to CO2 as if there was a fixed amount of C that can be released or absorbed yearly. Yet just the tiniest forays into biodegradation and soil hydrology shows how an incredibly complex and interdependent picture it is, and thatโs to say nothing of the oceans.
As usual with climate science, conclusions are made to support a narrative
or a pre-existing conviction and the complexity be damned.
From The Daily Sceptic
BYย DAVID CRAIG
As our leaders bicker over how fast Britain should get to Net Zero, youโll hear politicians, eco-zealots and media pundits claiming that Britain is leading the world in reducing our countryโs CO2ย emissions. This is one of the few statements about climate made by our ruling elites which does actually appear to be true. Since 1990, Britainโs CO2ย emissions have almost halved from 604 million metric tons to just under 350 million tons by 2022. That equates to a drop from 10 metric tons per capita in 1990 to below five tons per capita:
While celebrating this great supposed โsuccessโ, our politicians, media and eco-activists often seem less keen to explain how this reduction in CO2 emissions was achieved.
Hereโs another chart. It shows the share of the U.K.โs GDP made up by manufacturing:
Since 1990, the year U.K. CO2 emissions started falling, the percentage of U.K. GDP from manufacturing has also halved from just over 16% to around 8%.
Moreover, during the same period, the number of people employed in U.K. manufacturing has dropped from 4,963,000 to just 2,601,000. A cynic mighty be tempted to wonder what happened to all those hundreds of thousands of highly-skilled, highly-paid green jobs that our rulers promised us would be created in Britain by the energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewables.
For years the U.K. has had some of the worldโs highest energy prices due to our replacement of cheap, reliable fossil fuels with expensive, unreliable and intermittent supposed โrenewablesโ. In 2022, in the U.K., which gets only 42% of its electricity from fossil fuels, household energy cost $0.41/kWh. In France, where 70% of its electricity comes from cheap, reliable nuclear, electricity costs were just $0.21/kWh โ almost half the U.K. price. In the U.S., which generates about 60% of its energy from fossil fuels, the price was $0.18/kWh โ less than half the U.K.โs cost. In China, where 55% of electricity comes from coal and a total of 83% comes from fossil fuels, household electricity costs are only $0.08/kWh โ a quarter of the U.K.โs cost. There is a similar picture in India, where over 75% of electricity generation is from fossil fuels, of which three quarters comes from cheap, energy-rich coal, household energy costs only $0.07/kWh โ a sixth of the U.K. cost.
So, just to put all of this into context, we can look at how much of the U.K.โs GDP comes from manufacturing โ making real things that people in Britain and abroad want to buy โ compared to our major competitors. In 2022, 8% of the U.K.โs GDP came from manufacturing compared to 9% for France, 12% for the U.S.A., 13% for India, 14% for Italy, 18% for Germany and a massive 28% for China.
A picture is emerging which suggests that the more a country relies on renewables for its electricity, the higher are its energy costs and the lower is the percentage of its GDP made up by manufacturing.
Economist Richard Salsman wrote: โThe science of economics is clear: the production of money and debt is not equivalent to the production of real wealth. To claim otherwise is to follow fantasy, not reality โ or science.โ
As we in Britain enthusiastically print money and increase national debt in pursuit of our Net Zero goals, we seem to be wrecking U.K. manufacturing with high energy prices thus committing economic suicide as U.K. manufacturing moves to countries with lower energy costs. Itโs more than astonishing that not a single one of our politicians and media supposed โexpertsโ seem to understand or are willing to admit what is actually happening and how the U.K. is committing an extraordinary act of self-mutilation by cutting the countryโs CO2 emissions.
If there really was a climate crisis, the U.K.โs economic suicide to supposedly save the planet might be justified. But as I try to explain in my most recent book There is No Climate Crisis, there is no emergency that warrants such extreme actions. Yes, the Earth has probably warmed up a little since the freezing 1960s and 1970s when many experts were panicking about global cooling and the advent of a new ice age, which experts predicted would cause crop failures, mass starvation, the migration of millions from the cooling North towards warmer countries and wars over scarce food supplies. But this warming is just part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling driven mainly by the Earthโs rotation, solar activity and cloud cover. Moreover, the ice caps arenโt melting, in spite of the Guardian and the New York Times regularly predicting their demise. The polar bears are doing fine. In fact there may be so many of them that they may have difficulty finding sufficient food. The Great Barrier Reef has record levels of coral. Around five times as much U.S. forest burned each year in the scorching hot 1920s and 1930s as is burnt now. Even the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) admits that there has been no acceleration in sea level rise for the last 100 years. And the number of people killed by extreme weather events has fallen by over 95% in the last 120 or so years in spite of the worldโs population quadrupling from under two billion in 1900 to almost eight billion now.
Itโs a pity that those dragging us towards their Net Zero nirvana arenโt a bit more forthcoming about the economic devastation that their deluded policies are inflicting upon us.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
From CFACT
By Ronald Stein
World leaders continue experiencing a โdangerous delusionโ of a global transition to โjust electricityโ that that they believe will eliminate the use of the crude oil that made society achieve so much in a few centuries.
Crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society as discussed in an education and entertaining 27-minute podcast interview between Ronald Stein and Armando Cavanha in Brazil.
Itโs shocking that the public has bought into the current rhetoric โlock, stock, and barrelโ to STOP THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS, which simulates the resurrection of the 1978 mass murder-suicide of religious cult members of the Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, Jonestown, Guyana?
In September 2023 , 45 years after the Jim Jones tragedy in Jonestown, President Biden used his executive power to establish the American Climate Corps, which will employ and train 20,000 young people in the work of climate resilience without fossil fuels.
When this author watches the TV coverage of protesters, both politicians and teenagers, carrying signs to STOP THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS, what he SEEs on those posters is:
RID THE WORLD OF AIRPORTS, JETS, SHIPS, SPACE PROGRAMS, and STOP SOCIAL MEDIA, and THE PRODUCTION OF CELLPHONES, COMPUTERS, and PORCELAIN TOILETS that are dependent on the derivatives manufactured from crude oil!!
Shockingly, very few parents, teachers, students, politicians, and those in the media, have any clues or understanding about the basis of the products in our daily lives! Energy Literacy at its best!!!
As John Stossel so often said, โgive-me-a-breakโ!
From the proverb โyou canโt have your cake and eat it tooโ tells us that:
Just a few hundred years ago, before oil, when the worldโs population was around just one billion, the world was unspoiled, decarbonized, and dominated by mother nature and the wild animal kingdom. In the 1800โs there were no airports, automobiles, trucks, planes, cruise ships, coal fired power plants, natural gas power plants, electronics, or space programs, as the Beverly Hillbillies had not yet discovered oil!
Fossil fuels make products for humanity and support more bountiful harvests and a measure of food security that allowed time and energy for innovation and the onset of the Industrial Revolution that allowed the world to populate from 1 to 8 billion in 200 years because oil can be manufactured into thousands of usable, life-enhancing and life-saving products.
On the other hand, renewables can only generate occasional electricity, but cannot manufacture anything for humanity, while fossil fuels manufacture everything for humanity.
A couple centuries ago, there were fewer humans competing with the animals due to humanityโs limited ability to survive what mother nature provided. Before oil, life was hard and dirty, with many weather and disease related deaths.
World leaders are not cognizant enough to recognize that there are no plans for the replacement of the products and fuels now manufactured from fossil fuels, which are the basis on every infrastructure segment that are supporting the 8 billion on this planet!
The 3 fossil fuels of crude oil, coal, and natural gas, do different things for society. Crude oil is the only one seldom used to generate electricity as it is primarily used to manufacture fuels and products for society that are the basis of the worldwide economy.
Eradicating the world of crude oil usage, without first having a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths, and could be a greater threat than climate change to the worldโs eight billion population.
This Epoch Times TV 1-minute video about the lack of a backup plan to replace oil is short, educational, and entertaining. The video has already been viewed by more than 834,000 on social media at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/stf2YrznkZU.
By contrast, โtransitioningโ humanity to just electricity means converting to wind and solar systems that can manufacture none of the vital products now being used by humanity. That will very likely cause the death of BILLIONS of people from diseases, malnutrition, lowered living standards and weather-related disasters, whereas projections of millions of fatalities from โcarbon emissionsโ and climate change are based on computer models that take none of these realities into account.
Russiaโs Vladimir Putin and Chinaโs Xi Jinping are great World War I and II historians. They both know there is no substitute for fossil fuel product dominance in the foreseeable future, even on a longer-term horizon. To believe a transition to just electricity from renewables is possible from the products now manufactured from fossil fuels and act accordingly is suicidal for humanity. As former Congressman Don Ritter of Pennsylvania wrote โItโs the real โexistential threat.โ
Occasional electricity from renewables cannot run modern civilizations households, businesses, hospitals, militaries, space programs, jets, and cruise ships, and no products and fuels that are now based upon crude oil!
The silence is deafeningย from billionairesย likeย Bill Gates, John Kerry,ย Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, President Biden, and the media that continues to refrain from asking a John Stossel styled โgive-me-a-breakโ question:
Can you imagine our world without jets, airports, merchant ships, cruise liners, militaries, hospitals, social media communications, space programs, and toilets?
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book โClean Energy Exploitations.โ
From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
One of the โscientific expertsโ who attended the BBC seminar in 2006 was Andrew Simms, who wrote this for the Guardian in 2008:
If you shout “fire” in a crowded theatre, when there is none, you understand that you might be arrested for irresponsible behaviour and breach of the peace. But from today, I smell smoke, I see flames and I think it is time to shout. I donโt want you to panic, but I do think it would be a good idea to form an orderly queue to leave the building.
Because in just 100 monthsโ time, if we are lucky, and based on a quite conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions
Itโs the same sort of tired, unscientific drivel weโve read times many in the past.
Simms, of course, is entitled to his views, no matter how wrong they may be.
But it says everything about the BBCโs approach to climate change that they would rather listen to his views instead of the many sceptical scientists they could have invited.
From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
My heart bleeds for this planet saving hero!!
Driving an electric car should be a win-win, saving money and the planet. So David* was shocked when the insurance on his Tesla Model Y came up for renewal, and Aviva refused to cover him again, while several other brands turned him away.
When David did secure a new deal, the annual cost rocketed from ยฃ1,200 to more than ยฃ5,000.
โMy insurer was Aviva from July 2022 to July 2023, but when it was coming up for renewal, I received a letter stating that they would not be covering the Tesla Model Y any more,โ David says. โI am a member of a Tesla UK owners forum, and lots of other people seem to be having the same issue.โ
In the Facebook group, members share stories of horror renewal quotes, with increases ranging from 60% (up to ยฃ1,100) to a staggering 940% (a jump from ยฃ447 to ยฃ4,661, according to a screengrab shared by one driver).
โI spent weeks on every comparison site as well as trying individual insurers and specialist brokers, but either they wouldnโt cover the car or the quotes were ยฃ5,000 or more,โ says David, whose only change in circumstance was three points on a licence.
Privilege, Vitality, Axa and the specialist broker Adrian Flux were among the brands he found were โunable to insure him at this timeโ before he nailed down a policy with Direct Line, albeit at a price.
โThe best quote I could get was from Direct Line at ยฃ4,500,โ he says, adding that the total cost exceeded ยฃ5,000 once the interest for paying monthly was included, โbecause who has got that kind of money in one go?
But it is not only owners of Model Ys โ which with a starting price of about ยฃ45,000 was the bestselling electric car in the UK last year โ who are finding that, like the government, insurers are wobbling about the cost of net zero.
Alex Gerlis, who bought a Smart EQ Forfour last year, had insurance from John Lewis Finance but, before the mid-August renewal date, it advised him it would not be able to offer a renewal because it was not insuring electric cars
It comes as all motorists face soaring insurance costs, with prices said to be at an all-time high. A recent cost of living bulletin from the Office for National Statistics revealed that the price of car insurance โ which for many Britons is one of their biggest household bills โ is up by 52.9% in the last 12 months.
However, this average masks bigger increases for electric car owners, according to Confused.com. Its figures, derived from quotes, show that insurance premiums for electric vehicles are 72% โ or ยฃ402 โ higher than this time last year, at a typical ยฃ959. Meanwhile, for petrol and diesel car drivers, the increase is 29%, or ยฃ192, taking the figure to ยฃ848.
I have no sympathy for these fools, who have been more than happy to taxpayer subsidies for their cars and avoid paying thousands of pounds in fuel duty, and then preen themselves under the illusion they are saving the planet.
The trouble is that all of this is coming our way as well in the not too distant future.
ย From ย Master Resource
By David Simon
This past February marked 25 years since my fatherโs death. In 2001, CEI began awarding the Julian Simon Memorial Award. My family deeply appreciates not only that CEI established this award, but also that CEI now has continued this award for 23 years.
The first award went to my fatherโs long-time collaborator, Stephen Moore. Steve, by the way, now leads the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. I hope you all subscribe to the Committeeโs excellent and free Hotline.
This yearโs award recipients, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley, began working together a few years ago on a very ambitious project that last year reached an apex with the publication of their book, Superabundance. My father would have loved this book.
About two months after my father died, Milton Friedman wrote an Appreciation for the paperback version of my fatherโs book, The Ultimate Resource 2. It starts with the following:
Julian Simonโs untimely death has deprived us of our most effective tilter at environmental myths. This book will unfortunately be his final blast.
And what a blast it is. Julianโs command of economic analysis, his dedication to understanding at a deep level the phenomena he discusses, and his incredible persistence in unearthing evidence of those phenomena has produced a book that is at once a stirring manifesto and an encyclopedic source of information on every aspect of the popular environmental movement.
Friedmanโs description of my fatherโs book also describes Superabundance.
Another of my fatherโs books shows in a different way why my father would have greatly appreciated Superabundance. He dedicated The Economic Consequences of Immigration to the three economists that he most admired:
To the memory of Simon Kuznets โฆ And Friedrich Hayek โฆ And also for Milton Friedman โฆ Their younger colleague.
Kuznets did some of the most important early work on the economics of population growth.
He is most famous, however, for making the economics professionโs greatest contributions to econometrics โ by developing national income measurements, like Gross Domestic Product.
Superabundance confirms my fatherโs findings regarding population growth, builds upon them, and again shows that โ contrary to continual doomsday claims โ population growth increases the supply of resources, reduces their cost, and increases prosperity.
Superabundance also makes important contributions to econometrics: the Simon Abundance Index; time prices; time price multipliers; and price elasticities of population.
Hayekโs work emphasizes the failure โ and danger โ of central economic planning โ and the critical role of markets and spontaneous order in the evolution of economies and societies. Superabundance also emphasizes these points, particularly the horrendous failure of government population planning. Think of Chinaโs only recently ended barbaric one-child policy.
Friedmanโs work elevates empirical evidence and analysis over theory and makes the case for the importance of freedom in the creation of prosperity.
Superabundance broadly and deeply surveys economic theory, but its findings regarding population growth are products of powerful empirical evidence and analysis.
Its empirical findings include the importance of combining freedom with population growth to maximize economic benefits.
The biggest and most important point is that Superabundance powerfully continues vindicating my fatherโs explanation of the central mechanism of human progress: People are โthe ultimate resource.โ A growing population, particularly with greater freedom, has โ and will continue to โ overcome every challenge and will, in virtually every measurable way, continue to enjoy greater prosperity. This makes Superabundance especially important right now.
The President of the United States is hellbent on doing everything he can to destroy this nation. Among other things, he is using quasi-religious, Chicken Little policies against what the data show to be beneficial trends of a warming planet and increased CO2 emissions that have been saving millions of lives.
On this point, I hope all of you will read the article in National Review that I co-authored with John Fund in August about Bidenโs fraudulent climate emergency.
With all of this in mind, I say:
Marian and Gale: Thank you for this great book! Kent and CEI: Thank you for honoring them for this book! And to all of you: Thank you for supporting CEI!
โโโโโโโโ
David M. Simonย is a lawyer in Chicago. His father, the economist Julian L. Simon, did path-breaking work concerning the economics of population growth, immigration, natural resources, and the environment, and developed the market-based solution used by airlines to voluntarily resolve overbooking. With his father, Mr. Simon co-authored articles concerning the economics of state liquor distribution systems and the effects of state regulations on liquor prices. Mr. Simon is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and an honors graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University, William Happer discussed common misconceptions in climate science, especially the negative reputation given to CO2, on Sky News Australia.
The IPA has hosted Professor Happer on a tour around Australian where he spoke to audiences in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
To find out more about the IPAโs research visit: http://www.ipa.org.au
From Watts Up With That?
Just when we thought we had a grip on the major culprits of pollution, a new villain emerges from the shadows. And this time, itโs not the ominous black smoke billowing from exhaust pipes or the industrial chimneys spewing toxins into the atmosphere. No, itโs something far more inconspicuous, yet equally, if not more, detrimental: tire dust.
A recent article from The Drive sheds light on a rather overlooked aspect of vehicular pollution. While the world has been fixated on tailpipe emissions, a silent perpetrator has been wreaking havoc, largely unnoticed. The article states,
โScientists have a good understanding of engine emissions, which typically consist of unburnt fuel, oxides of carbon and nitrogen, and particulate matter related to combustion. However, new research shared by Yale Environment 360 indicates that there may be a whole host of toxic chemicals being shed from tires and brakes that have been largely ignored until now.โ
Ah, the irony! As the world clamors for electric vehicles (EVs) as the saviors of our environment, it seems weโve missed a crucial detail. The article goes on to reveal, emphasis mine,
โItโs an emissions problem that wonโt go away with the transition to EVs, either. According to data from Emissions Analytics, EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more from their tires due to their higher weight and high torque compared to traditional internal combustion engine-powered vehicles.โ
So, while EVs might not have tailpipe emissions, theyโre not exactly the pristine, green machines theyโre touted to be. The heavier weight of EVs, thanks to their bulky batteries, means they wear out their tires faster, releasing even more of these harmful particulates into the environment. A classic case of the road to hell is paved with good intentions, all puns intended.
But letโs delve deeper into the implications of this tire dust. The article cites a report from the Pew Charitable Trust which found that a staggering
โ78 percent of ocean microplastics are from synthetic tire rubber.โ
These toxic particles often end up ingested by marine animals, leading to
โneurological effects, behavioral changes, and abnormal growth.โ
Itโs not just the oceans that are at risk. The particles are so minuscule that they can pass directly through our lungs and into our bloodstream, even crossing the blood-brain barrier.
While thereโs been a relentless push for recycling and reducing plastic waste to save the oceans, the real elephant in the room has been the cars we drive daily. On one hand, weโre told to reduce, reuse, recycle, and on the other, weโre sold the dream of โcleanโ electric vehicles, which, as it turns out, are making problem worse.
The article also touches upon the challenges of studying these particulate emissions. Unlike tailpipe emissions, which can be easily captured and studied, understanding the full impact of tire and brake dust requires a more nuanced approach. But as the saying goes, where thereโs smoke, thereโs fire. And the initial findings are alarming enough to warrant immediate attention.
The revelations from this article serve as a stark reminder that environmental issues are complex and multifaceted. Simplistic solutions, like the blind push for EVs, often miss the mark. Itโs high time we adopt a more holistic approach to environmental conservation, one that takes into account all aspects of pollution, not just the ones that make for catchy headlines.
To the proponents of electric vehicles and the so-called โgreen revolution,โ I say this: Itโs always wise to look before you leap. And in this case, it seems the leap towards EVs might just land us in a pile of tire dust. We told you so.
Tire Dust Makes Up the Majority of Ocean Microplastics, Study Finds
For more issues with the rush to adopt Electric Vehicles, see our EV section on ClimateTV
From Jennifer Marohasy
October 2, 2023ย Byย jennifer
I was back at John Brewer Reef yesterday looking for the same coral that was reported as badly bleached in March 2022. Do you think I could find it?
Some journalists have a tendency to extrapolate from the specific to the general. For example, Graham Readfearn, writing in The Guardian on March 22, 2022, extrapolated from the condition of one coral at one reef to the entire Great Barrier Reef. Quoting marine biologist Adam Smith he wrote 18 months ago:
Weโve definitely just seen corals that are stressed and whiteโฆ This is one of the healthiest reefs off Townsville and one of the best reefs on the whole Great Barrier Reef. So for these corals to be stressed and damagedโฆ well, itโs likely itโs the same at other reefsโฆ
The online clickbait was a photograph of Smith looking at a branching Acropora with some bleaching, growing from the centre of a plate Acropora that showed no bleaching at all.
Just a few days later the situation was reported as even more dire with Readfearn this time quoting government scientists:
โThe Great Barrier Reef has been hit with a sixth mass coral bleaching event, the marine parkโs authority has confirmed, with aerial surveys showing almost no reefs across a 1,200km stretch escaping the heat.
The Guardian understands a United Nations mission currently under way to check the health and management of the reef will be briefed on the initial findings of the surveys as early as Friday in Townsville โฆ
Government scientists said the confirmation showed the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions that were driving the repeated mass bleachings. [end quote]
The story went around the world, accompanied mostly by stock images of bleached coral or aerial footage from so high in the sky it was impossible to see individual corals. There was a map to make it even more official.
The government scientists had spoken and almost everyone believed them โ that this represented a sixth mass coral bleaching, and the Great Barrier Reef was ruin.
After the bleaching in 2016, leading marine biologists claimed 65 percent of the worldโs coral reefs had been destroyed. Yet Iโve been unable to find even one reef that hasnโt recovered.
In short, it is my experience that leading marine biologists and government scientists just make stuff up. In my opinion many of them should be in jail for fraud.
Anyway, I organised a trip to John Brewer reef. I was there just a few weeks after the headlines in The Guardian, on April 10, 2022, with underwater macro photographer, Leonard Lim, and on April 12, 2022, with underwater cinematographer Stuart Ireland who filmed transects. We have the beginnings of a documentary that you can watch here.
On those two visits and on every visit since, I have gone looking for that same coral that featured in The Guardian; that was shown as evidence that,
One of the Great Barrier Reefโs healthiest coral reefs [John Brewer Reef] has succumbed to bleaching.โ
I photographed that same coral in July, with my daughter holding a colour chart in front of it. You can see with reference to the university colour chart that the corals that were bleached in March were a good beige colour by July corresponding to a healthy E4 on the colour chart. The University of Queensland Coral Watch chart explains, โAvoid measuring growing tips of branching and plate corals since they are naturally white.โ .. below the white tip they are more usually shades of beige.
Back in July 2022, I did not extrapolate from the condition of the corals at John Brewer Reef to any other reef. I was content to just report my findings for this reef, and particularly this one coral for that moment in time.
The article that I posted explained:
Just as a team from the United Nations were flying into Australia at the behest of James Cook University Professor Terry Hughes โ seeking to have the Great Barrier Reefโs world heritage status downgraded โ Adjunct Associate Professor Adam Smith was posing for photographs at John Brewer Reef for The Guardian newspaper. At that time, back on 20 March (2022), the mild bleaching and fluorescing at John Brewer reef was being described by Professor Smith as part of a fourth mass bleaching event and in an article for The Conversation, Professor Smith suggested it could take the corals 12 years to recover.
My daughter and I were back at John Brewer reef on Sunday 10th July, the coral that was featured in The Guardian on 22 March as severely bleached is now a healthy beige. It appears to have made a full recovery in less than three months.
Most of the corals at the reef crest at John Brewer are now various shades of beige to chocolate brown, and so the reef is looking exceptionally healthy.
That was the extent of what I wrote.
There was more information in the captions accompanying the ten photographs, but again this information was limited to John Brewer Reef. The blog post was republished by the Institute of Public Affairs.
Facebook subsequently attached a โwarningโ, indicating that my article had been โFact Checkedโ and found to be โmisleadingโ.
This is a serious accusation.
Only because Scott Hargreaves, Executive Director at the IPA, was prepared to check the detail of the RMIT University FactLab allegation, my article was not simply removed from the IPA website. Scott saw through the hypocrisy. He encouraged me to submit an appeal, which I did on August 2, 2022. That appeal was dismissed on August 5 with reference to an unrelated blog post as evidence I inappropriately extrapolate from the specific to the general this time with reference to the speed of recovery from the bleaching.
In April 2022, when John Brewer reef was reported as bleached white, it was actually unusually pink. This is the colour of the florescent proteins in many of the plate corals at John Brewer Reef.
Many of the large brown plate corals had kicked out their symbiotic algae and so the natural pink pigmentation in the corals at this reef could be seen. The pink colour is from florescent proteins in the coralโs polps that is often masked by the zooxanthellae, which are the corals symbiotic algae more usually a brown or green colour. There were some corals at John Brewer Reef in April 2022 that had bleached white, but relatively few, perhaps 10 percent. More had bleached pink, and some had not bleached at all.
I went looking for the exact same coral that The Guardian had featured as a symbol of catastrophe in April 2022, and then again when I visited with my daughter in July 2022, and I have looked for it every visit since.
I was at John Brewer Reef on October 20, 2022, and again yesterday on October 1, 2023. I found that same coral, again. It has grown some, and it is looking so healthy.
Everyday we are confronted with misinformation from government scientists paid by Australian taxpayers. More concerned about job security than the truth, they claim the reef is sick, when the reef is healthy.
And so, children around the world have been led to believe that the Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven wonders of the world, is dying. When it is not.
There are children who lie awake at night fretting, when they could be told the story of the branching Acropora coral at John Brewer Reef that bleached a little in March 2022, but was all recovered by July that same year. That it went a bit white, after stressing unnecessarily, and kicking out some of its zooxanthellae.
They could be assured that it is still there. That it has grown bigger.
It is still there. When I looked really carefully at it, which I did yesterday with a magnifying glass and a flash light, I could see it even has florescent tips.
I went out to the reef yesterday on one of the regular charters withย Adrenalin Snorkel and Dive. It was just me, the crew, and a bunch of regular tourists. Later this week I am returning with some celebrities including Peter Ridd.
Institute of Public Affairs
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