Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Climate change is simple: David Roberts at TEDxTheEvergreenStateCollege

In response to...


This is completely one-sided doom and gloom and the sky is falling.  It doesn't explain the evidence for future temperature increases, while past predictions have failed miserably.  It just so happens that the Climate Alarmism argument calls for authoritarian control and an end to free markets.

It has taken 140 years for the average atmospheric temperature to go up 1 degree Celsius. It is going to take 5,000 more years for the polar ice caps to melt, but by the year 2100 we will run out of most fossil fuels, at which point a 2 to 3-degree increase in temperature might be mildly inconvenient for some, but it is not a global disaster. Humans are adaptable, and the proposed solutions are far more damaging. Getting rid of fossil fuels now, as some have proposed, will have a huge negative economic impact, especially on the poor. So-called renewables are inefficient and have huge environmental impacts of their own. By the time we run out of fossil fuels, we probably will have nuclear fusion which will solve most of our energy problems.

Something funny happens with the climate roughly every 100,000 years. Due to the Milankovich cycles which affect Earth's orbit, we get an 8 to 15-degree spike in temperature followed by a 10 to 15-thousand-year warm period, which is then followed by a rapid decline in temperature and at least 85,000 years of mass glaciation. New York gets covered by a mile of ice. The "normal" state is very cold and all of human civilization arose during a brief 12,000-year warm period since the last cold period. During these 12,000 years, the planet Earth has gone from its maximum tilt, which melts glaciers, to halfway toward its minimum tilt, which will produce the next period of glaciation. We should already be in the cool-down cycle, except for those pesky humans who have warmed the planet a little bit. The preindustrial period from 1500 to 1850 was unusually cold and is labeled "the little ice age."

Atmospheric CO2 has been in a steep decline for about 40 million years. Calcifying marine organisms are sequestering the carbon at the bottom of the sea. It got so low during the last period of glaciation that it was close to the level where all terrestrial plants would die from CO2 starvation. Sometime in the distant future, we are going to have to put CO2 back into the atmosphere to either prevent the next mass glaciation or to support plant life. We can do this with lime.  

"We are not the enemy of Nature, but its Salvation.." - Patrick Moore.

Saturday, November 19, 2022

United States: COVID-19 weekly death rate by vaccination status, 50+

Nations reach preliminary deal on payments as climate talks grind through overtime

Governments from around the world reached a preliminary deal Saturday on paying the most vulnerable nations for the damage they're suffering from climate change, negotiators said — a move that would represent a major concession from the United States and European Union.

Scientists are funny

New Rule: Revenge of the Normies

Re: COVID Vaccine and disease transmission

Andy Saffle
There is also this beautiful Gem floating out there... And no we're not Anti vaccine... We just actually follow evidence and Science

Andy Saffle As presented, I'm not sure that this is actual science. He expresses an opinion that these deaths are caused by the vaccine, but we would need a study to show that the vaccine causes excess deaths. I think that this kind of study has been done and I would have to look for it. If you look at the study that he quotes, it is showing deaths of 2 per million injections. First, we would have to show that this is actually caused by the vaccine and not just random noise. Meanwhile, the same study claims that the cardiac risk is much higher with the actual disease. In the United States, we have had a hundred million cases with 1.1 million deaths, which is a far greater risk than the vaccine. Roughly one out of every 300 people has died from the disease, including a cousin of mine. Given a choice between 2 out of a million or a 1% death rate that is a pretty obvious choice.



John Coffey Fact checks prove the point to be true EVERY TIME.. 100% of the time.. every Fact check that had been done Since 2015 has been proven to be true at some point.. I can give hundreds of examples of this..
Please keep citing fact checkers..


On some fact-checking sites, I agree that there is an extreme bias.
Confirmation bias is a very strong thing. People almost always believe things that match their preconceived notions.
Anecdotal evidence is not science. We need peer-reviewed studies that show excess deaths associated with the vaccine. I have seen something like this before, and I will try to find it. Even if there were excess deaths, which by all accounts is extremely low, we would have to balance that with the risk from the disease.


Andy Saffle
Oh don't worry, there's more <includes a picture of an article>

Here is the link to the article, which doesn't actually prove anything: https://www.nbcnews.com/.../vaccine-trials-should-monitor...


Brandolini's law, also known as the "bullshit asymmetry principle," holds that "the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than what's needed to produce it." This truism highlights that while the battle against misinformation more generally must be fought "face to face," the larger war against belief in misinformation won't be won without prevention. Once people are set in their ways, beliefs are notoriously hard to change.


John Coffey
The adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccines have been well documented, and serious side effects are rare. The most common adverse event is soreness at the injection site, which for me seemed worse than usual.
You have a choice between a vaccine with rare serious adverse effects and a disease that has killed 1.1% of the people who got it. It is your body and your choice, and you may think that you are young and healthy and won't die from the disease, and you probably won't, but I have read about several cases of people in their 20s who have died.
One study found that the average brain shrinkage from a COVID-19 infection was 2%. Another study showed that COVID adversely affects every organ in the body. A large percentage of people have had adverse symptoms for up to a year.
This isn't just the seasonal flu. One of my friends lost his mother recently. I lost my cousin.
If a medicine had a 2 out of a million chance of killing you, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take the medicine. Chemo has worse odds, and so does driving. It depends upon the risk of not taking the medicine.



Wednesday, November 16, 2022

COVID Vaccine and disease transmission

Around October 11nth, Pfizer executive Janine Small testified to the EU parliament that Pfizer did not test the vaccine for preventing transmission of Covid prior to it being made available to the public.  This was not actually a requirement for the Emergency Use Authorization.   They only had to show that it was safe and that it prevented people from getting the disease.  She explained that they did not have time to test for how the vaccine would affect transmissibility.  Additional studies would eventually come out showing that the vaccine reduced the transmission of the disease. (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2116597)

The anti-vaxers and the conspiracy theorists took this "admission" and ran with it.  People I listen to on a regular basis started claiming that Pfizer admitted that the vaccine does not prevent transmission of the disease and that the government officials lied to us about it.   Some even claimed that the vaccine doesn't work, or that it was never tested.
https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-transmission-test/


However, none of these statements logically follow from the testimony of Janine Small.  The initial vaccine was 95% effective against the wild-type SARS-CoV-2.  If you reduce the infection rate then it is very likely that you also would reduce transmission of the disease.  It is possible for someone who is asymptomatic to transmit the disease, but would you rather hang out with someone who has full-blown COVID, or someone who is asymptomatic and has been vaccinated?

These kinds of errors in logic also have led to claims that the vaccine didn't work against the Omicron variation or that masks don't work.  A May 2022 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the booster shot was 49% effective against the Omicron variant.  For me, that was better than nothing, and the new bivalent booster is more effective. (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2208343).  

A study published in the Yale Medical Library Journal July 28, 2022 found that those wearing masks only had a 7% infection rate while those who didn't wear masks had a 52% infection rate.

Despite actual evidence suggesting otherwise, those who criticize the vaccines or masks often claim that they are following the science.

--
Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Monday, November 14, 2022

Re: National Debt


On Mon, Nov 14, 2022 at 1:39 PM GRANT wrote:
>
> Clinton's was the last administration to have a balanced budget year--even a surplus.  So, where did this 30+ trillion debt come from?

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John

Grant,

The national debt in 2000 was 5.7 trillion dollars.  Clinton did have a surplus, but it was somewhat artificial because of the dot-com boom.  When dot com went bust, so did the surplus.  

The extra 25 trillion was from 22 years of spending on all sides.

I prefer that the government spend within its means.  We have more government than we can afford.

--
Best wishes,

John Coffey


Four Midterm Realizations Conservatives Must Learn To Swallow

Sunday, November 6, 2022

Bill Maher RIPS APART Pandemic Response

It's time to wake Up!! Jordan Peterson

Bill Maher | EVERYBODY WAS COMPLETELY FINE WITH IT

New Rule: Democracy's Deathbed | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)



I always thought that Bill Maher engaged in straw man arguments, like when he called Ronald Reagan a racist and accused him of using racist "dog whistles" for calling out a "Chicago" welfare cheat. Whenever Maher talks about Republicans, racism is the first thing he brings up. I don't know a single Republican who is racist, but the left plays the race card whenever they can because people fall for this. Ronal Reagan was not a racist.

They have taken this strategy to a new level by equating the Republicans to fascist dictators. 

Maher sets up a vision of Trump and the Republicans that has little to do with reality. Biden will be impeached if he gets impeached at all, for his egregious graft, which everybody knows is true but the far-left press has been suppressing the news stories. 

Maher equates Trump to Hitler and assumes that he will put into power extremist groups that Trump wants little to do with. There is a very small partial truth here because Trump tends to welcome support from wherever he can get it. The Democrats do the same. 

The Democrats are likely to lose on Tuesday because of very bad policies. Maher praises authoritarian China for constructing a boondoggle bullet train that cost billions and continues to lose money and will never make economic sense. This is what happens when authoritarian governments make economic policies. 

Unlike Biden, Trump was a very effective President, getting things done that people said would be politically impossible. 

Democrats had the means and will to cheat in the 2020 election. This was probably not enough to sway the election, but there were a ton of election irregularities and outright rule violations. Biden is such a liar that every time he says that the election was the most fair and legitimate, I assume that he knows something that he is not revealing. Whatever he says, you would be wise to assume the opposite. He has lost what little credibility he had to begin with.  

Every accusation the left makes about the Republicans is much more true of the political left. They are the authoritarians, the censors of free speech, and the election cheats. They hide these facts by accusing their opponents of their crimes.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Jordan peterson heavily criticises trump

The not so secret ingredient all good Star Wars needs... (Thor's Lightning Takes)

No, the U.S. isn’t going to run out of diesel fuel in 25 days

Tucker Carlson: The US is about to run out of diesel fuel

 

This mean that truckers and trains cannot transport food and other commodities.  The economy could collapse.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUZoli8oekg



Mansfield warned that at the U.S. economy level, consumers may feel pain at the pump, but for businesses that rely on diesel for operations, supply will still be available.

"That is not to say there will not occasionally be situations where there is a true physical lack of products," the company said. "Some cities might run dry on diesel for a few days, at least at the terminal level. But the fuel supply chain is dynamic, and suppliers will rally to fill in any gaps in supply."


This is also the time of year that refineries are doing maintenance. They tend to do that in the spring and fall, which is when demand is lower and the weather is decent. So, refinery capacity drops at this time of year.

Third, U.S. refinery capacity has fallen in the past few years as several unprofitable refineries were closed. So, that's a new factor that has appeared in the past couple of years.

But the primary reason is the cutoff of Russian imports. Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day (BPD) of petroleum and petroleum products. Most of those imports were finished products and refinery inputs that boosted distillate supplies in the U.S.

The loss of those Russian imports has caused problems for refineries as they struggle to fill holes in their product slates. Refineries do have a small amount of flexibility in shifting gasoline production to diesel production. But it's a relatively small amount (e.g., ~5% in a refinery I once worked in). That also means that if refiners do shift production, it also potentially creates shortages in the gasoline market.

Some relief is on the way, as some diesel imports are on the way from Europe to the East Coast. But, the distillate market won't likely return to normal before next summer at the earliest.