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.
Ever since dumping the world’s most popular princess, King Charles has embraced climate and other left wing media narratives in an attempt to curry favor, wash away his sins, and crown his wife Camilla Paker Bowles, Queen. The Queen part worked.
As the King (and CFACT) were preparing to travel to Dubai for COP 28, the year’s most important UN climate summit, the new tell all book Endgame, was summarily withdrawn from bookshelves in the Netherlands. The Dutch edition (accidentally?) listed two members of the royal family as “racist royals” for obsessing over the skin color of Harry and Meghan Markle’s unborn son Archie.
As the King was preparing to deliver a key opening speech at the conference, Piers Morgan revealed on television that the two so-called “racist royals” were future Queen Kate Middleton and King Charles himself.
Scrambling for cover, the Royal Family yesterday released a COP 28 itinerary for the King which is heavily laden with unscientific narratives and group pandering.
The King is embracing the radical line that the horrors of global warming will fall heaviest, and wisdom is to be gleaned from women, youth, “indigenous” peoples, and island nations. The Royals actually proclaimed that “traditional” indigenous knowledge stands “alongside scientific knowledge to address the climate and nature crises.”
Perhaps His Majesty can scientifically end drought with a rain dance.
Do you think King Charles is aware how many new airports and luxury beach resorts are under construction in supposedly sinking island nations?
The edgy animated series South Park recently coined a new term in a hard-hitting episode about Disney entitled “Enter the Panderverse.”
Entering the panderverse appears to be the royal strategy for COP 28, as King Charles casts about looking for favored groups to which to pander.
The King may face yet bigger problems, as many of his subjects question whether it is appropriate for Charles to be pushing political narratives at a UN climate conference at all.
Britain’s unelected royal family has for decades refrained from weighing in on politics. Queen Elizabeth II was known for her masterful royal restraint.
As British Academic Lisa McKenzie said on GB News, the royal family has no scientific expertise, “and no concept of what it is like to live in a cold house… or to turn your heating off.” (Though we do hear castles can be drafty). McKenzie reminded viewers that King Charles lives the ultimate lifestyle of privilege, as he “lives in publicly funded mansions, flies around the world in private jets… and has his energy bills paid for by the British public.”
CFACT’s COP 28 delegation asks:
Can the free world survive the UN climate agenda?
Will the British Royal Family survive King Charles?
The Biden administration has pledged millions of dollars to a de facto international “climate reparations” fund at the United Nations (UN) climate summit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The fund, referred to by its proponents as a “loss and damage fund,” is intended to have developed countries transfer money to the developing world as compensation for the impacts of climate change. The U.S. promised more than $17 million to the fund on Thursday, according to Axios.
“We’ve delivered history today. The first time a decision has been adopted on day 1 of any COP. And the speed in which we have done so is also historic.
Getting this done demonstrates the hard work of so many, particularly members of the transitional committee who worked… pic.twitter.com/vPIpX5QBjw
The fund will be administered by the World Bank on an interim basis, according to Axios. In addition to the American pledge of $17.5 million, the U.K. pledged $75 million, the UAE and Germany each offered $100 million and the European Union pledged 200 million Euros.
The U.S. has repeatedly emphasized that all payments into the fund are voluntary and therefore are not an admission of legal liability, according to Axios. It is unclear whether these pledged payments will actually be made in full, or whether taxpayer dollars will be used; it is possible that private dollars or more innovative funding mechanisms are used.
Notably, China is not considered a developed nation by the UN, even though the country is by far the world’s leading emitter and second-largest economy.
The State Department and the White House did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Winter Storm Elliott over the East Coast of the U.S., December 23, 2022. Credit: Wikipedia.
Chris Keefer, the Toronto-based physician and founder of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, calls the electric grid a “civilizational life support system.”
Keefer, of course, is correct. The most critical systems in our society — medical, water, wastewater, traffic lights, telecommunications, and lighting — depend on reliable electricity. But earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation issued their final report on a winter storm that hammered the northeastern U.S. last year. And that report proves that our natural gas grid is just as essential as our electric grid. FERC and NERC have repeatedly said that the two grids are intertwined, interdependent, and irreplaceable. Indeed, a reliable and resilient natural gas grid is critical to our energy security, and therefore, our national security.
Put short, policymakers ignore the importance of the gas pipeline system at our extreme peril.
In bone-dry language, the report “Inquiry into Bulk-Power System Operations During December 2022 Winter Storm Elliott,” explains how the gas pipeline network in New York nearly failed last Christmas when temperatures plummeted during the bomb cyclone. Freeze-related production declines, combined with soaring demand from power plants, homes, and businesses, led to shortages of gas throughout the Northeast. The lack of gas, as well as mechanical and electrical issues, resulted in an “unprecedented” loss of electric generation capacity totaling some 90,000 megawatts. While the lack of electricity was dangerous, the possibility of a loss of pressure in the natural gas network should send a bone-chilling shiver through the sacroiliac of every politician and bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., New York and the Northeast.
The report explains that if the gas pipeline system had failed, the recovery process in New York City would have taken “months.” In addition, the property damage due to damaged water pipes in homes and buildings would likely have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Left unsaid in the report is that the collapse of the gas grid during the period in which temperatures in New York City stayed below freezing would have caused a calamity unlike any other in U.S. history. The cold that lasted from December 23 to December 28 could have resulted in thousands, or even tens of thousands, of deaths. The damage from burst water pipes would have rendered untold numbers of residential and office buildings in New York City unusable.
A friend who works for the federal government in Washington, D.C., and is familiar with the FERC/NERC report told me last week that the loss of gas in New York City would have required evacuating most of the people in the city. Let that soak in for a minute. New York City has roughly 8.5 million residents. Evacuating even 25% of Gotham’s residents during extreme cold would have required a herculean effort. But even assuming such an evacuation could be accomplished, imagine how the country would handle 2 million displaced New Yorkers who could not return to their homes for months. And while you’re at it, imagine if those 2 million New Yorkers had their homes soaked by broken water pipes.
In short, the U.S. narrowly averted both a humanitarian and economic crisis that could have put the country’s economy into a tailspin. Imagine America’s financial capital in such disarray that money center banks and Wall Street could not function because their office buildings didn’t have heat.
Here’s the critical section of the report, which explains that Winter Storm Elliott “greatly impacted the operations” of Consolidated Edison, the electric and gas utility that serves much of New York City. It continues:
On Christmas Eve morning, the five interstate natural gas pipelines serving Con Edison began experiencing drops in pressure at Con Edison’s citygate due to production losses and operational issues. The pressures declined precipitously and at noon, the pipelines informed Con Edison that they had exhausted their line pack and storage withdrawals, and pressures would not improve until demand decreased… Had Con Edison’s citygate pressures not recovered, it was in danger of losing pressure on, or needing to cut service to, all or large portions of its system. Even losing service to 130,000 customers would be considered a major outage and could have taken five to seven weeks to restore, depending on the availability of mutual aid. Had it lost the majority of its system, over a million customers in New York City and nearby areas would have been unable to heat their apartments and houses while the outside temperature was in the single digits…”
Slide from a FERC/NERC September 21, 2023 presentation showing gas pipeline pressure in New York City during Winter Storm Elliott.
The report also provides a good explanation for why restoring gas service is so complicated:
System outages for a local natural gas distribution company generally take longer to restore than firm load shed, or even cascading outages, on the electric grid. Once electricity is restored to a circuit, all of the homescan return to their normal functioning— lights turn back on, heating or air conditioning systems return to normal function, etc. By contrast, for the natural gas local distribution system to return system outages to normal operation, workers must go house-to-house and individually light every pilot light. Con Edison estimated it would have taken months to restore service, even with mutual assistance from other utilities, had it experienced a complete loss of its system.
A recent gas outage in the Pacific Northwest demonstrates the challenge of restoring service. On November 8, a gas transmission pipeline near Pullman, Washington, was damaged in an accident. The accident resulted in a shut off of gas to about 35,000 customers served by Avista Corp. Due to the loss of line pressure, the company had to dispatch a crew to every gas customer in the affected areas of their gas network and manually shut off each meter. After the pipeline was repaired, the utility deployed over 800 Avista employees, along with 300 workers from other gas utilities (who were responding under mutual-aid agreements) and about 60 private contractors, to begin the process of turning the gas system back on and relighting pilot lights on stoves and water heaters. It took nearly a week for the utility to restore service to the affected customers.
If it took a week to restore service to 35,000 gas customers in Washington state, it’s easy to understand how challenging it would be to restore service in a city as big and complex as New York. Con Edison has 1.1 million gas customers in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Westchester County. Put another way, Con Ed’s gas system is about 240 times as large as Avista’s. Even with a crew of 10,000 workers, it could take months to restore New York’s gas system if it failed.
It appears policymakers have been numbed into complacency about large generation outages and near-catastrophic misses over the past decade that include events like Winter Storms Uri and Elliott. But this latest near-catastrophe must be put into context. As mentioned above, NERC and FERC have repeatedly warned that the electric grid has become too dependent on natural gas. I love natural gas. And the increased use of gas (at the expense of coal) in the power sector has helped the U.S. cut its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country in the world. But unlike coal — and the enriched uranium that fuels a nuclear power plant— gas is a just-in-time fuel. That makes it vulnerable to disruptions in service. And if gas supplies run short, so will electricity supplies.
In August, NERC again warned about the overreliance on natural gas, saying that gas and electricity markets “are significantly out of synchronism.” It continued, saying, “Natural gas access is further challenged by multiple priority uses, including home heating and industrial processes. Coordination should focus on…the challenges electric generators face in accessing natural gas during critical periods, such as severe winter weather events.” It also said the grid is increasingly vulnerable to “long duration temperatures as well as wind and solar droughts.”
In September, Jim Robb, the CEO of NERC, commented on a preliminary finding about Winter Storm Elliott, saying it “underscores the need to take urgent action on the interdependence between the bulk electric and natural gas systems, including the need for sufficient and reliable gas and electric infrastructure to sustain energy reliability.”
The other key backdrop to this report, of course, is the headlong rush to shutter coal-fired power plants, a push that is being funded, in part, by billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg. As I reported here last month, Bloomberg is giving another $500 million to a group of NGOs who are diligently working to:
shutter the bulk of our most important power plants — the ones that burn coal and natural gas and are therefore dispatchable and weather-resilient — and, in Bloomberg’s words, replace them with “renewable energy.”… A more radical agenda is difficult to conjure. The coal and gas plants that Bloomberg and his allies in the anti-industry industry want to shutter produced about 40% of all the electricity used in the U.S. last year.
In all, Bloomberg has committed more than $1 billion to a group of radical NGOs — including the League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Earthjustice, all of which have operating budgets of more than $100 million per year — who are aiming to undermine the integrity, affordability, and resilience of our electric grid.
The punchline here is obvious: America’s critical energy networks are nearing catastrophic breaking points due to underinvestment in reliable sources of fuel and generation, and by that, I mean pipelines, nuclear plants, and coal- and gas-fired power plants. As my friend in Washington told me last week, the energy sector doesn’t need more regulation; “it needs more infrastructure.” But the northeastern U.S. doesn’t have enough gas pipelines to meet demand during extreme weather. That’s particularly true in the wake of the closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York. The output of that plant was replaced by gas-fired power plants.
We’ve been warned. In fact, we’ve repeatedly been warned by both FERC and NERC that we don’t have enough gas pipelines and that our electric grid is relying too heavily on natural gas-fired power plants and weather-dependent sources like wind and solar.
Policymakers should believe them and begin taking action before we have to evacuate New York City due to events like the bomb cyclone that struck last Christmas.
“While gas appliances may presently be losing some market share to electricity due to Green New Deal discrimination, there are also increasing indications that the public is both weary and wary of such ‘watermelon’ policies. It’s not about saving the planet from the ravages of fossil fuels; it’s about enslaving the planet by banning fossil fuels.”
Yes, the President of the United States has pulled out a Korean War authority (Defense Production Act) to fight against American energy that Americans prefer. It is an overreach that is being noted widely, as outlined below as well as here and here.
The American Gas Association (AGA) started this latest flurry with a press release November 17, 2023. The same day, Reuters and Fox News published their articles. Epoch Times published its article (and video) on November 20, 2023. The Reuters article most noteworthy contribution is that it names recipients of the Biden Administration’s [mis]appropriations of DPA funding. Both the Reuters article and Fox News article cite the AGA’s press release.
The AHRI data clearly shows that gas appliances are losing at least some ground to electric equivalents as evidenced by the above graphs. Moreover, this trend appears to have accelerated under the Biden Administration. AHRI’s discussion of the IRA and DPA is non-committal advocacy (an oxymoron?).
Conclusions
“While gas appliances may presently be losing some market share to electricity due to Green New Deal discrimination, there are also increasing indications that the public is both weary and wary of such ‘watermelon’ policies. It’s not about saving the planet from the ravages of fossil fuels; it’s about enslaving the planet by banning fossil fuels.”
The eighteenth-century naval hero John Paul Jones was doing battle with a British ship when his own ship was badly damaged, and the British commander called over to ask whether Jones had surrendered. He answered, “I have not yet begun to fight.” He and his crew then captured the British ship. While regulatory capture of the “administrative state” appears to be the rule and not the exception at present, this bit of history should be remembered so we do repeat it and recapture a government “for the people” as our Founding Fathers intended.
President Joe Biden allotted $169 million for electric heat pump projects with his emergency authority on the basis of climate change.
This is the first time a president classified climate change as an emergency by utilizing the Defense Production Act, which was established during the Cold War. Now, the money stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act will be divided among 15 sites dedicated to manufacturing the necessary parts and entire units of a variety of heat pumps.
“The President is using his wartime emergency powers under the Defense Production Act to turbocharge U.S. manufacturing of clean technologies and strengthen our energy security,” Biden’s National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said in a statement.
John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation, similarly celebrated the move, applauding the president for “treating climate change as the crisis it is.”
However, American Gas Association President and CEO Karen Harbert disagreed with the recent move from the White House, writing in a statement, “We are deeply disappointed to see the Defense Production Act, which is intended as a vital tool for advancing national security against serious outside threats, being used as an instrument to advance a policy agenda contradictory to our nation’s strong energy position.”
“Increased use of natural gas has been responsible for 60% of the electrical grid’s CO2 emissions reductions. This vital tool for emissions reductions and energy system resilience should not be unfairly undermined through misuse of the Defense Production Act.”
Among the facilities, two new factories will be constructed: a Treau, Inc. DBA Gradient plant in Michigan and a Mitsubishi Electric plant in Kentucky. Neither company has announced exact locations yet. Treau will receive over $17 million, and Mitsubishi will receive $50 million toward construction.
The Energy Department predicts roughly 1,700 jobs will be created in the various projects to promote more heat pump products. All the sites are centered in “disadvantaged communities” for their benefit.
Last year, the Energy Information Administration reported that natural gas was the water and space heating source of about 42% of U.S. residential spaces. The residential sector makes up 15% of overall natural gas consumption. However, heating and cooling across residential and commercial buildings drive more than 35% of the country’s energy consumption.
Footnote on Declaring Climate Emergency for Spending Purposes
Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, is contracting as surging energy prices and trade tensions cast doubt on its export-oriented business model. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government had been counting on that old virtue signaling switcheroo – a flood of spending on “green-energy projects and technology”, from chips to batteries, to revive the old model. That way, if anyone asks why Germany is deficit-spending its way to mercantilist utopia, Berlin could always lie and say it was doing the right thing for the world and wasn’t interested in a debt-funded stimulus. Alas, now the “Cardinals of Karlsruhe” have made this impossible.
Berlin’s decision to freeze all federal spending for the rest of the year came after the court defunded the government’s €60 billion —the equivalent of more than $65 billion—green-transition project. The court said Berlin couldn’t repurpose unspent credits originally earmarked to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic to fund environmental and energy projects. It said Berlin was bound by the country’s constitutionally enshrined fiscal rules that limit budget deficits to 0.35% of gross domestic product in normal times.
Senior government officials said one option under consideration would be to retroactively declare a state of budgetary emergency for 2023, invoking a clause in the fiscal rules that allows for a suspension of the spending limits in exceptional circumstances. Previous governments invoked the exception during the pandemic.
Unfortunately, for Germany’s stimmy-starved politicians, the plan is fraught with legal difficulties, in part because the constitutional court prepared for just this eventuality when it raised the bar for declaring such emergencies, according to Lars Feld, an economist who advises the government.
Strengthening resilience and transforming the economy amid geopolitical crises and climate change was seen as a necessity that required taking on debt, but the court ruling has challenged those assumptions, Feld wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
Hilariously, the court said that unlike war and natural disasters, climate change was a foreseeable crisis that had been long in the making and could no longer justify emergency spending. Which, however, means that all Germany will have to do is politely request that the CIA start a new war… or that Fauci mail orders a new virus from Wuhan.
…when using the same assumption-based methodology to arrive at the conclusion only 0.5% of scientific papers reject AGW.
In a new study, six scientists (Dentelski et al., 2023) effectively eviscerate a methodologically flawed 2021 study (Lynas et al.) that claims 99.53% of 3,000 scientific papers examined (by subjectively classifying papers based only on what is written in the abstracts) support the anthropogenic global warming, or AGW, position.
The Lynas et al. authors begin with the assumption that a consensus on the human attribution for global warming not only exists, it is ensconced as the unquestioned, prevailing viewpoint in the scientific literature. So their intent was to effectively quantify the strength of this assumed widespread agreement by devising a rating system that only assesses the explicit rejection of AGW in the paper’s abstract as not supporting the presumed “consensus.”
Of the 3,000 papers analyzed in Lynas et al., 282 were deemed not sufficiently “climate-related.” Another 2,104 papers were placed in Category 4, which meant either the paper’s authors took “no position” or the position on AGW was deemed “uncertain”…in the abstract. So, exploiting the “if you are not against, you are for” classification bias, Lynas and colleagues decided that the authors of these 2,104 scientific papers in Category 4 do indeed agree with AGW, as what is written in the abstract does not explicitly state they do not agree.
Interestingly, if this classification bias had not been utilized and the thousands of Category 4 (“no position” or “uncertain”) papers were not counted as supporting AGW, only 892 of the 2,718 (climate-related) papers, or 32%, could be said to have affirmatively stated they support AGW. So, simply by assuming one cannot divine the AGW opinions of authors of scientific papers by reading abstracts, it could just as facilely be said that 67% (1,826 of 2,718) of climate-related papers reject AGW.
Dentelski and colleagues also point out that by their own analysis, 54% of the papers they examined that were classified by Lynas et al. as only “implying” support (Category 3) for AGW or Category 4 (“no position” or “uncertain”) actually described a lack of support for AGW in the body of the paper itself. But since this expressed non-endorsement of AGW was not presented in the abstract, these papers were wrongly classified as supporting AGW anyway.
To fully grasp the subjective nature of the methodology employed by Lynas and colleagues, Dentelski et al. uncover the internals of the study indicating 58% of the time two independent examiners did not agree on numerical classification scale (from 1 to 7) for a paper. If two people agree just 42% of the time when classifying papers, it cannot be said that the rating system is sufficiently objective.
The Lynas et al. paper appears to be little more than an exercise in propaganda.
In the new episode of “Climate Change Roundtable,” guest host Jim Lakely leads a thought-provoking discussion with experts Steve Milloy, H. Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken on the latest developments from the COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Our panel delves into a critical analysis of the conference’s many shortcomings, challenging the prevailing narratives pushed by the mainstream media, and explores alternative perspectives on climate change.
The episode aims to debunk common climate change myths, focusing on a comprehensive understanding of the conference’s implications and strategies.
Join us as we navigate through the complexities of global climate policies and their real-world impacts, offering our listeners a unique viewpoint that goes beyond conventional climate change alarmism.
Whether you’re a climate enthusiast, a policy expert, or just someone curious about the different facets of climate change discourse, this episode promises to provide a fresh and insightful take on the discussions from COP28.
The PVV (Party for Freedom) led by Geert Wilders (pictured above) emerged victorious in a seismic election in the Netherlands last week that resulted in fears from left-wing climate activists’ groups that it will adversely impact on the country’s global warming objectives.
The party is projected to win 37 seats in the 150 seat Dutch parliament, putting it in the driver’s seat to form a new government.
“We are shocked,” Extinction Rebellion Netherlands says. “This outcome will likely mean a rollback of climate measures, new fossil investments, exclusion of marginalised groups, and more.”
Friends of the Earth Netherlands spelled out what PVV’s rule could mean for Dutch society: “A Wilders government will mean four years of climate change denial, exclusion and a breakdown of the rule of law.”
Their concerns are based on the PVV manifesto which declares: “We have been made to fear climate change for decades… we must stop being afraid!”
“The climate is always changing. When conditions change, we adapt. We do this through sensible water management, by raising dykes when necessary and by making room for the river.”
“But we stop the hysterical reduction of CO2, with which, as a small country, we wrongly think we can ‘save the planet’.”
The manifesto also calls for more oil and gas extraction from the North Sea and keeping coal and gas power stations open.
While the PVV is too right wing for the majority of Dutch people, his win should ultimately lead to the formation of a far more sensible centre-right coalition if he can convince other parties to join the PVV in order to form government.
That in turn should lead to a realistic stance on global warming that dispels the myth that we are all going to die from extreme heat and must destroy our economies by unnecessarily transitioning to unreliable and costly renewables like solar and wind.
Meanwhile, things have gone from bad to worse for climate activists in Germany this week after a court ruling that’s forcing the government to do something truly shocking: be honest to voters about how much the net-zero energy transition will really cost.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Greens Minister for Climate Action Robert Habeck
The country’s highest constitutional court ruled this month that one of the coalition government’s main gimmicks for funding green projects violates Germany’s version of a balanced budget amendment.
That amendment, known as the debt brake, caps the government’s fiscal deficit at 0.35% of gross domestic product per year except in emergencies.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration had planned to devote €60 billion in emergency borrowing approved – but not spent – during the pandemic to subsidize green projects such as battery production and decarbonized steel.
The point was to conceal the true cost of these plans by averting new legislative votes. The judges saw through this when they ruled that emergency authorization to borrow in the past can’t be re-purposed for entirely different projects in the future.
This fiscal moment of truth has exploded into a political crisis in Berlin. It’s becoming clearer that the unwieldy coalition of Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the eco-leftist Greens and the free-market Free Democrats (FDP) of Finance Minister Christian Lindner can’t agree on any other method of funding green priorities.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lindner’s ministry says it believes a separate fund worth up to €200 billion may also be unconstitutional under the same principle.
The German government planned to use this pot of money for energy subsidies just as German households and businesses struggle to cope with skyrocketing prices created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and their left-wing government’s enthusiasm for costly and unreliable renewable energy. At least the €100 billion special budget Berlin is devoting to defence is safe, since Mr. Scholz secured a constitutional amendment allowing that spending.
But that might be the only new money Berlin can spend as negotiations over the 2024 budget collapsed this week as politicians grapple with the fallout from the court ruling.
The Bundestag is unlikely to approve either a new or retroactive “emergency” declaration to allow this spending.
That leaves tax increases that Mr. Lindner would oppose, social-welfare cuts Mr. Scholz would hate, or an end to ambitious green spending in an embarrassment to Robert Habeck, the Green Party minister for economic affairs and climate action.
In other words, the government might have to make hard fiscal choices.
The push for Net Zero is coming undone as the Dutch and Germans are now discovering the reality of just how that will impact on their quality of life and also how much it will cost them as taxpayers.
It follows UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s declaration that, “We’re not going to save the planet by bankrupting the British people.”
Hopefully, one day, we will have a government in Australia that is equally pragmatic.
Thanks to the Net Zero Watch newsletter (newsletter@netzerowatch.com) for much of the commentary in this article.
Cliff Reece is the retired Principal of consulting firm Crisis Risk Management, former Executive Director/CEO of the National Safety Council of Australia (NSW/ACT) and divisional manager with KPMG.
Peter Lilley raised a very pertinent question about the ZEV mandate in the House of Lords on Monday:
In reply, the Minister Lord Davies answered a separate issue raised by Lord Lilley, but gave no answer at all about the China question.
Either he simply does not understand how the system will work, or was afraid to admit that we could end up paying billions in subsidies to Chinese EV manufacturers:
The single bullet theory and evolution may not have all that much to do with climate, but they’re absolutely related to skepticism and offer some analogies. When I say the single bullet theory is like evolution, I mean that they are both facts that many (probably most) people don’t believe and they both require science to explain. They also both elicit strong polarizing reactions in people even today just like that other subject.
Today is the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination. This year will also mark the 30th anniversary of the book, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK published in 1993 on the 30th anniversary of the assassination. I read a lot of non-fiction books and this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I first ran across it from watching its author, Gerald Posner, as a guest on Dick Cavett’s cable TV show (it’s almost surely buried in my deteriorating VHS collection somewhere). What really caught my attention was Posner showing some new state of the art computer graphics showing the single bullet going through Kennedy’s neck, then tumbling, hitting Governor Connally’s back sideways, exiting his chest, hitting his wrist and then lodging in his thigh. He also showed two cones that start from Kennedy’s neck and head that lead up to circles that almost center on the South window on the 5th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Cavett’s reaction was: “Convinces me.”
I want to go a little bit into Gerald Posner’s career because it has a real nice parallel into the climate issue. I read Case Closed a couple of times since it was so good and became a little bit of a JFK buff. I read some other JFK books and some of Posner’s books on other subjects. He attracted a lot of attention and did a lot of interviews because of Case Closed. He was lauded by many prominent public intellectuals. IMO he single handedly crippled the JFK assassination industry. Because of this he was vilified by conspiracy theory authors and even accosted while out in public by angry conspiracy buffs. But his enemies finally got in a dig in 2010. A writer named Jack Shafer found some plagiarized passages in a book on Miami and in The Daily Beast. Posner apologized, gave his explanations and resigned a position at The Daily Beast. This does not negate a very long string of widely acclaimed books on such varied topics as political assassinations, the Holocaust, Ross Perot, 9/11, the recording industry and more. Jack Shafer is a writer known for exposing lax standards in journalism (or perhaps being a busy body, depending on your point of view). The only thing I can find of his on the JFK assassination is a long rant about how there’s so much rehashing on the 50th freak’n anniversary! The last of the four paragraphs of his short Wikipedia page is about Posner. I can’t find any books on Amazon that look like they were written by him.
For hockey stick and Climategate buffs, this should remind one of the Wegman Report. Edward Wegman was, of course, the renowned statistician who did a study that validated the work of Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in evaluating the utterly discredited, famous hockey stick paper by Michael Mann. A computer scientist and entrepreneur named John Mashey wrote a report that made charges of plagiarism in the reference material of the Wegman report. Cliscep contributor, Tom Fuller wrote of it at WUWT:
And we’ve all read recently about Mashey’s attack on Edward Wegman, accusing him of plagiarism in a 250 page document that is straight out of the movie Conspiracy Theory, with color-coded themes and memes, and an outrageous accusation that Steve McIntyre was recruited, trained and funded by the George Marshall Institute–something I hope Mashey can back up.
These charges consist of phrases cut and pasted from Wikipedia and paraphrasing without attribution stuff listed in the bibliography. I see the charges against Posner as being along a similar line. He’s an incredibly busy writer and it’s easy to see him getting notes mixed up and forgetting attributions. One of the great things about his writing is that it is full of interesting detail and copiously supported with footnotes. He did make a blog post about these charges that can be found in the Wayback Machine. He accepts full responsibility for mistakes and attributes them to the change from the world of book writing to the fast paced world of online reporting.
I have a few things to say about the head shot, because I want to use a bit of this information in some bullet points later. A great many people think this shot was made from the front because they can clearly see Kennedy’s head move back and to the left as famously reiterated by Kevin Costner in the movie JFK. Enhancements of the Zapruder film actually show Kennedy’s head jerk forward a little before it moves back. The bullet entered the back of Kennedy’s head and exploded out the right side. X-rays and autopsy photos show this. A detailed, photorealistic drawing made from an autopsy photo shows the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy’s head. There is a flap of scalp and bone on the right side of his head hanging forward. There’s also a drawing of the entrance wound on his right upper back. Why does his head move back? Neuro-muscular reaction may have played a part, but there is also a phenomenon of physics called the jet effect. All the energy released when the head explodes out the side can cause the material that is sprayed out to have more momentum than the bullet going in. In order for total momentum to be conserved, the head has to gain momentum going backwards. Momentum is mass times velocity. Energy is one half mass times velocity squared. While momentum is proportional to velocity, kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared. That is that it exponentially increases with the speed of the high powered rifle bullet. In the Zapruder film, the material coming out of Kennedy’s head goes mostly up, forward and to the right, all with a vector component of forward momentum plus some rightward vector component. If this total forward vector is more than that of the bullet moving forward, then to end up with the same total momentum Kennedy’s head goes .. back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left. .. This 10 minute YouTube video has the best succinct graphic explanation of the two shots:
Dan Rather has Gerald Posner on to explain the shots. Some interesting points brought up:
Co-workers Harold Norman and Bonnie Ray Williams are shown in a photo in the window below Oswald seconds after the shots. They describe hearing the shots, the rifle bolt action and the cartridges hitting the floor.
The Warren Commission thought Oswald had about five seconds after the first shot to make the other two.
Physicist Luis Alvarez found jiggles in the film corresponding to the shots that gave him 8 seconds.
At Alvarez’s first shot, Kennedy brings his right hand down from a wave and a girl running beside the limo stops and looks back.
CBS tests and finds that Zapruder’s camera model will make jiggles when shots are fired.
Assistant council to the Warren Commission, David Belin is credited with the Single Bullet theory. Kevin Costner credited and derided future Pennsylvania senator, Arlen Specter with the Single Bullet Theory. Case Closed does not give anyone credit for it.
PBS did a wireframe analysis a few years earlier that showed if Connally was slightly turned, the single bullet path lined up.
The Zapruder film shows that right after they pass the sign, Kennedy’s arms move up and Connally’s right lapel moves forward covering his white shirt. This marks the time of the second shot.
The red cloud is shown forming by the front of the head in the Zapruder film.
Cyril Wecht is included arguing against the Single Bullet Theory and for a shot from the front. Wecht is a famous pathologist who often comments on prominent cases in the media. he was a consultant to Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone. He also appears in many JFK conspiracy documentaries. He’s also debated Posner on talk shows. Posner has accused him on Crossfire of knowing about Connally’s lapel movement and suppressing it. Wecht’s motives are clearly suspect.
Before I go any further, I’ll give a brief rundown on evolution. Evolution versus creationism has long been a staple for skeptic writers like Martin Gardner, Michael Shermer and James Randi. Some scientist writers also got into the act such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan. Sagan declared in an episode of his Cosmos series that. “Evolution is not a theory. It is a fact.” Creationism was for the most part considered to be just another area of religious pseudoscience to be debunked. Then in 90’s a new offshoot showed up claiming that there were scientific arguments against evolution. They dubbed their new movement, Intelligent Design (ID). Reason magazine’s science correspondent, Ronald Bailey, wrote a long piece entitled, Origin of the Specious. He listed many of the new books, magazine articles and writers on the subject and evaluated the subject matter. he found no merit in it. he also questioned the motives and veracity of ID’s conservative promoters. As for the actual evidence for evolution, here’s a video of opening arguments that Bailey did in a debate at Freedom Fest on evolution vs ID:
I’ll limit my rehash to this one point. Mammals have a gene that makes vitamin C. Humans and apes have this gene, but it’s broken and broken in the same place. But for the Single Bullet Theory, I want to make a long bullet point list from Posner’s book of the overwhelming evidence:
88% of witnesses expressing an opinion on the number of shots thought they heard three.
The acoustics of Dealey Plaza make it hard to locate the shots. From 178 witness statements, 44% couldn’t determine where they came from, 28% said the School Book Depository, 12% said the grassy knoll and 17% said elsewhere. Only 2% thought they came from different locations.
Only five doctors at Parkland saw the throat wound in its original condition: Drs. Baxter, Carrico, Jenkins, Jones and Perry.
Dr. Charles Carrico felt under Kennedy’s back looking for an exit wound and missed the small entrance wound in the back. Nobody turned him over at Parkland.
Dr. Perry initially said it looked like an entrance wound, but couldn’t be sure. Dr. Jones called it an entrance wound, because he did not know about the back wound. Drs. Baxter and Carrico said it could be either an entrance or exit wound.
Dr. Jenkins, who had the most experience with gunshot wounds, thought it was an exit wound, because it was larger, not as neat and did not have a black halo.
Dr. Carrico inserted a breathing tube in Kennedy’s mouth.
Anesthesiologist, Dr. Pepper Jenkins took up a position at Kennedy’s head obstructing the view of it from most people in the room. He said most people in the room did not know he had a head wound.
Dr. Malcolm Perry did the tracheotomy over the throat wound, because he’d done it many times before and that’s the best way to do it.
As Kennedy’s condition was deteriorating, Dr. Jenkins pointed out the head wound and Neurosurgeon, Dr. Kemp Clark examined it and declared it too massive.
The body was taken to Bethesda for the autopsy. There was pressure to finish it, because Jackie and RFK insisted on remaining in the building. A thorough one would have taken longer, perhaps days.
The autopsy doctors did not know about the neck wound. They did not know about the holes in his shirt and tie.
They conjectured that a bullet may have entered Kennedy’s back, penetrated a couple inches and then fallen out. Later, Dr. Perry had a telephone conversation with the head autopsy doctor and cleared things up for him.
In 1968, a panel appointed by Ramsey Clark studied the autopsy results and concluded that Kennedy was struck by two shots from behind. In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission on CIA activities confirmed these results.
In the late 70s, the House Select Committee also confirmed these results. They had a budget that allowed them to do the latest scientific tests such as neutron activation analysis of the bullet fragments and new photo enhancement techniques.
The House Select Committee’s forensic panel used photo enhancing techniques on the original autopsy photos and found an abrasion collar on the back wound that indicated it was an entrance wound. They could even tell the bullet was moving right to left from it.
The House Select Committee concluded there was a forth shot based solely on a tape made by a microphone on a police motorcycle. This result was then utterly refuted and harshly criticized by sound and ballistic experts. A drummer in a rock band listened repeatedly to the recording that was published on a vinyl insert of the adult magazine, Gallery. He heard a voice that all the experts hired by the Select Committee missed that placed the motorcycle at the Trade Mart instead of Dealey Plaza.
Eight principal doctors who attended Kennedy at Parkland all told Posner that reports of a large rear headwound were false.
While evolution vs creationism has this supposed intermediate Intelligent Design position and the climate issue has its lukewarmers, is there an intermediate position between Oswald acting alone and the conspiracy theorists with multiple gunmen? I have three examples of people who’ve studied the case, believe Oswald acted alone, but just can’t accept the Single Bullet Theory. Clint Hill is the Secret Service agent who jumped onto the back of the limo and pushed Mrs. Kennedy back into her seat. He did a 60th Anniversary interview with Gerald Posner. He read and praised Posner’s book, but they both agreed to disagree on the Single Bullet Theory.
Next is Mark Fuhrman of OJ Simpson bloody glove fame. He got caught on tape using racial epitaphs while bragging to a reporter and had to plead no contest to charges of perjury. He went on to have some success writing nonfiction books on crime. His book on the Martha Moxley murder was turned into a TV movie where he was portrayed by actor Christopher Meloni. He wrote a book on the JFK assassination entitled, A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963. He pretty much agrees with the Warren Report, except for the Single Bullet Theory. He has a bizarre take where the first bullet goes through Kennedy and hits the top of the windshield.
Then there is John Ziegler (groan). He’s the journalist who I describe in my twoposts on the Mann vs Steyn case. He thought Joe Paterno was getting a raw deal in the Jerry Sandusky case and did a bunch of digging, only to find out that the media got everything wrong and was forced to conclude that Sandusky was innocent. Because of this, he is the world’s most beat up journalist since Woody Harrelson’s Harry Barber in the movie, Palmetto. I’ve been following his work on this case for half a decade and think it’s the best shoe leather journalism of the new millennium. He’s a fan of Gerald Posner and has done lots of interviews with him (here’s twolinks). One of the reasons I decided to follow this case is because I saw that he was followed by Gerald Posner on his Twitter profile. On episode 71 of his The Death of Journalism podcast, he does a long explanation of his theory. It is embarrassingly amateuristic. While his journalistic experience and expertise in sports, the media and politics make him the perfect journalist for the Sandusky case, he is woefully out of his depth when it comes to physics and ballistics. He admits he’s not a ballistics expert, yet he makes some very specific claims. You’d think he might want to consult one of the many actual ballistics experts who’ve perused this case. He has the first shot being a misfire that only penetrates slightly into Kennedy’s back. He notes that there are descriptions of it sounding like a fire cracker. The actual first shot went through the foliage of an oak tree where it hit a branch and was deflected. From Case Closed:
Neutron activation analysis of bullet fragments found in the limousine show they came from only two bullets. No part of the first bullet was ever found.
The Warren Commission never studied the oak tree.
Firearms expert Robert Kraus told Posner that bullets can be significantly deflected by tree branches and that the copper jacket can be separated from the lead core.
Deputy sheriff Buddy Walthers saw blood on James Tague’s cheek. he said something stung him. He was standing 500 feet from Oswald’s window. They found a strike mark on a curb that was in line. Later traces of lead and antimony were found on the curb.
Firearms expert Art Pence told Posner that the rotational energy of the bullet could tear the copper jacket off and the lead core could pretty much continue on a similar trajectory. No trace of copper was found on the curb.
Ziegler just dismisses these claims saying that there’s no evidence, but they are observations and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. He does cherry pick claims that fit his theory. He notes that Secret Service man, Roy Kellerman (riding shotgun with driver William Greer), says he heard JFK say, “My God, I’ve been hit” after the first shot. This is uncorroborated by everyone else in the limo. He’s all excited about the new claims made by Secret Service agent Paul Landis that he found the single bullet on the back seat of the limo, put it in his pocket and then put it on Kennedy’s stretcher — and he’s just making this claim now, 60 years later! He mentioned it to Clint Hill ten years earlier. Hill does not believe him. Ziegler also presents things like the girl running beside the limo and Kennedy’s arms jerking up being a neurological reaction as if he’s the first person to notice them. He should’ve reread Posner’s chapters on the shooting and autopsy. Just about everything he brings up is much more completely covered in the book.
Every November, I always have a fun argument with Ziegler over the Single Bullet Theory. This year, he got so mad that he blocked me on Twitter. I’m still a big fan of his work on the Sandusky case and think he’s a very astute observer of presidential politics. I’ve never seen a better prognostication of the 2020 election than his. Oh well, Thomas Sowell said they will forgive you for being wrong, but not for being right.
There are a couple more things about the assassination I would like to note:
About the first shot being said to sound like a backfire or fire cracker, I wonder if hitting a branch could’ve slowed its speed down to below the speed of sound and affected the crack as it went overhead.
Oswald’s bullets are fully jacketed. This is so that they will easily pass through bodies without mushrooming.
Kennedy’s arms going up in front of his throat are a neurological reaction to trauma near the C6 vertebra first described and named after William Thorburn in 1887. It’s described in a Select Committee PDF.
Finally, don’t get fooled by this new documentary about what the doctors saw. This is just the last gasp of C-list bit players.
The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for November, 2023 was +0.91 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, statistically unchanged from the October, 2023 anomaly of +0.93 deg. C.
The linear warming trend since January, 1979 still stands at +0.14 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.19 C/decade over global-averaged land).
Various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 23 months are:
YEAR
MO
GLOBE
NHEM.
SHEM.
TROPIC
USA48
ARCTIC
AUST
2022
Jan
+0.03
+0.07
-0.00
-0.23
-0.12
+0.68
+0.10
2022
Feb
-0.00
+0.01
-0.01
-0.24
-0.04
-0.30
-0.49
2022
Mar
+0.15
+0.28
+0.03
-0.07
+0.23
+0.74
+0.03
2022
Apr
+0.27
+0.35
+0.18
-0.04
-0.25
+0.45
+0.61
2022
May
+0.18
+0.25
+0.10
+0.01
+0.60
+0.23
+0.20
2022
Jun
+0.06
+0.08
+0.05
-0.36
+0.47
+0.33
+0.11
2022
Jul
+0.36
+0.37
+0.35
+0.13
+0.84
+0.56
+0.65
2022
Aug
+0.28
+0.32
+0.24
-0.03
+0.60
+0.51
-0.00
2022
Sep
+0.25
+0.43
+0.06
+0.03
+0.88
+0.69
-0.28
2022
Oct
+0.32
+0.43
+0.21
+0.05
+0.16
+0.94
+0.04
2022
Nov
+0.17
+0.21
+0.13
-0.16
-0.51
+0.51
-0.56
2022
Dec
+0.05
+0.13
-0.03
-0.35
-0.21
+0.80
-0.38
2023
Jan
-0.04
+0.05
-0.14
-0.38
+0.12
-0.12
-0.50
2023
Feb
+0.09
+0.17
0.00
-0.11
+0.68
-0.24
-0.11
2023
Mar
+0.20
+0.24
+0.16
-0.13
-1.44
+0.17
+0.40
2023
Apr
+0.18
+0.11
+0.25
-0.03
-0.38
+0.53
+0.21
2023
May
+0.37
+0.30
+0.44
+0.39
+0.57
+0.66
-0.09
2023
June
+0.38
+0.47
+0.29
+0.55
-0.35
+0.45
+0.06
2023
July
+0.64
+0.73
+0.56
+0.87
+0.53
+0.91
+1.44
2023
Aug
+0.70
+0.88
+0.51
+0.86
+0.94
+1.54
+1.25
2023
Sep
+0.90
+0.94
+0.86
+0.93
+0.40
+1.13
+1.17
2023
Oct
+0.93
+1.02
+0.83
+1.00
+0.99
+0.92
+0.62
2023
Nov
+0.91
+1.01
+0.82
+1.03
+0.65
+1.16
+0.42
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for November, 2023 and a more detailed analysis by John Christy, should be available within the next several days here.
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