Nothing So Strange

 

Nothing So Strange

 

‘There’s nothing so strange as folks.’ Was the sage saying of my old mate Albert, who also called liars, ‘Tom Pepper’. Tom Pepper is mythological fella who could out-lie the devil himself, so was booted out of hell. Last night Tom Pepper came to mind when I caught a report where the Melanesian islands of Vanuatu are taking Britian to court claiming that she is responsible for the climate change that causes devastating hurricanes to the islands. There were two faces shown, one an islander, probably the PM and another, the lawyer who presumably, the Vanuatuan government has engaged to bring the case to court. Suspicious as ever, I spent about two minutes searching the record, and found ‘devastating’ hurricanes have hit the New Hebrides, which is the islands’ old name, in the following years: 1893, 1898, 1904, 1905, 1911, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1932… we have no record of earlier hurricanes, but the trend is obvious. There’s irony in Albert’s first quote because my country, being a member of the Pacific, always provides assistance to New Hebrides/Vanuatu and other Pacific nations when disaster strikes, and as the New Hebrides were under the umbrella of France, they no doubt provided aid too. Now they are now wanting another bite of the cherry. Proving free money is never really appreciated. Charles Darwin might have figured out about evolution, but during his trip across the Pacific he figured out how the islands grow… and they are growing, not sinking as the lawyer is bound to allege. Of course, with climate change being so widely propagandised, it’s worth the islands and their lawyer to have a crack at the British taxpayer, because judges will just go along with the narrative.

Modern television outfit like the clickbait of weather-related disasters, and in another episode, there were cars piled against a bridge in Valencia, Spain, which was quickly attributed to climate change. The fact is, Valencia is sitting on a riverbed, and because of a ‘devastating’ flood in 1957, they ‘relocated’ the river’s course instead of the town, this flood has returned the river to its historic course as rivers so often do. I found flooding has been recorded at Valencia since 1321, but again two minutes of research revealed floods during the following years: 1879, 1888, 1891, 1907, 1909, 1912, 1919, 1926, 1935, 1937, 1940, 1941, 1957 and 1971. It is apparently difficult to say in a television news bulletin, that the area is a floodplain and has always been prone to flooding. In fact, all floodplains are prone to flooding.

‘There’s nothing so strange as folks’ might come down to people seeing the same thing differently, one group might believe their winning football team won on its merits, while the other team’s supporters believe their team only lost because of the referee’s poor calls. People tend to lie to themselves… why is that?  There are a number of reasons, but a strong motive is for some perceived advantage as in the Vanuatu case, both from the islanders’ and the lawyer’s point of view. Old Scruff, who used to skin possums from a similar habitat as me, reckoned he was paid twice as much for his skins as I was… from the same buyer too. To me what was important, was the interaction between the buyer and me, I knew the truth from his body language. The old-timers used sayings as a learning tool, and old Bert used to say, ‘You can’t fix stupid.’ But opinion on that is in the eye of the beholder… isn’t it?

There’s self-esteem, boasting, preventing a perceived threat, control and, avoiding guilt to consider, but topping the reasons for fibbing is the will to deceive oneself to believe in what others believe so as not to look different. None of these reasons have any logic about them, because somehow, sometime the truth will out but folk become swept along on the tide. I’ve always been interested in the weather more so than the climate, because understanding weather was part of my job and to me it’s obvious that we’re being led down the path by a bunch of people about the so-called climate emergency. What also fascinates me is peoples’ response and willingness to agree and thus comply with what are often draconian rules.

A good example was complying with the Covid rules. There was more known about the virus than we were told, and banning family at the deathbed of kin was a gross infringement of humanity. Our country didn’t even allow citizens to come home from overseas! A mate of mine travelled three hundred kilometres to see his dying sister in a rest home, where he was given fifteen minutes… there’s no logic in that, the near-dead aren’t going to die any earlier. Since the 1970’s it has been known that breathing in your own carbon dioxide inside a facemask has all sorts health risks, especially for children, yet wearing them was mandated… it was also known the weave was too open to keep out viruses. And the dangers of lockdowns were also known, and worse still, the populus weren’t allowed to ask questions.

Oddly, an earlier quote from the United Nations was that climate policy is not environmental policy, it is economic policy. If you consider wind turbines and solar panels, climate policy can’t possibly be environmental policy because putting aside the land degradation caused by mining for the minerals, the impacts on wildlife and the changes to the landscape, it certainly isn’t caring for the planet. Yet here they are saying that their climate policy will save the planet! The real damage to the environment, is that the lifespan of so-called green energy is so short and there’s no adequate way of recycling them, so they present a toxic hazard for the next generation to cope with… but for the politicians and bureaucrats, 25 years is just long enough for another regime to be the benefactors of the toxic menace, which is counterintuitive to a healthy economy as well.

So far there’s been no sensible approach to energy. Most western nations brought in electric vehicles when already their power grid was stretched and there was hardly any charging infrastructure. No credit has gone to the refining process of liquid fuels or the catalectic converters on vehicles that greatly reduce emissions. We were remonstrated by a teenage truant girl about collapsing ecosystems and people dying, but hey, the greening planet hosts biodiversity and habitat and carbon dioxide has contributed to record crop yields as in SW Ontario and elsewhere with per acre yields twice that of the 1970’s. Basically if there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, plants don’t need so much water, plant growth is better, which has to be good for humanity.

Climate change is much the same as the Covid experience, with the imposed narrative that we should trust the science, but both are easily exposed by applying simple research and logic. There is a wealth of information that can easily be found on the internet… but here’s a warning: Claus Swarb the WEF big noise, has said the algorithms on various search engines have been modified so their version of the climate narrative appears first. I’m not about to prove their climate change narrative is wrong here, I’d rather you do it yourself, but here’s a guide… the first step is to consider critically why Swarb said what he did, why there’s a need to do that if the narrative stacks up? For climate change to be real, there needs to be a long-term trend of the same weather pattern (usually temperature) for a minimum of thirty years or more realistically one hundred. Consider this and check that I’m accurate; 760-910AD there was a drought in Mexico which brought down the Mayans… no question it happened. Check these other changes in climate; 300BC-300AD was the Roman Warm Period, The Medieval Warm Period occurred 900AD-1250AD, you will no doubt see that, your search engine will say, ‘these periods were localised, but the Mayan experience fits, and Mexico is far away from Europe. Later, along came the Little Ice Age 1330-1850 and there’s literature on the living conditions in Europe at that time. The timing of the end of the Little Ice Age coincided with the end of the Industrial Revolutions 1760-1850, and why people wanted to exit Europe. Since the Industrial Revolution together with the end of the Little Ice Age, we have had a warming trend. Question: How does an ice age end? Here’s another, since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen steadily, why then, hasn’t the temperature risen steadily with it? Look at the temperature graphs… you will see on many that they start at 1980 because the 1970’s were a period of low temperatures and they don’t want you to know. The other question to ask is, ‘if there were storms and weather-related loss of life before say, 1950, when atmospheric carbon dioxide started to increase, how come storms and loss of life is less now when there is more atmospheric carbon dioxide? Help to answer those questions can be found from Tony Heller, realclimatescience.com. Consider the strongest blast on the planet in one hundred years, which was the Tongan undersea volcanic eruption, which increased the moisture content of the stratosphere by ten percent or more… why is such a significant blast hardly mentioned? The likely aftermath, you’d think, would be floods and heatwaves for up to five years after the event, but it fits rather nicely with climate alarmism, so climate change it is. Search the Laki Haze of 1783/4 and also Gilbert White who diarised its aftermath at the English village of Selbourne, and think about it being an anomaly within the Little Ice Age. The power of volcanic action on the planet can be significant.

Climate change is one of the tools the United Nations are using to encourage us to accept their Agenda Thirty. One of their goals is to reduce world poverty, which is a laudable idea, but it here’s the method they intend to achieve that aim. Shortly there is to be the next climate forum known as a COP29, at this one, they intend to punish the nations that have benefitted from the Industrial Revolution. They are debating how much ‘compensation’ those nations will pay to poor nations of the world for the damage to them that man-made climate change is causing… the figure they are proposing is in the trillions. To help get your head around one trillion; one trillion seconds equates to 31,688 years. If that doesn’t concern you, nothing will.  

The Tom Peppers of the world are trying hard to extend the time before they are totally exposed, but it will happen… there’s nothing so strange as folks. Basically, the climate and cosmos are so complicated nobody truly understands them, and to say carbon dioxide is a control knob, simply lacks credibility.

 

       

Transparency

 

 

 

 

Transparency

There are some obvious aspects of so-called anthropogenic climate change that don’t make no sense, the main one being how or why is carbon dioxide tied to extreme weather events. Through my eighty years, I’ve seen plenty of extreme weather events and since around the year 2000 I’ve compared the so-called extreme weather events of the day, to the written record of the past when atmospheric carbon dioxide was low levels, to find there isn’t much difference. The written record goes a long way back in Europe, even before the thermometer was invented, there you find similar extreme weather events happened back when fossil fuels were hardly used. Therefore, it’s reasonable to question how today’s extreme weather can be attributed to carbon dioxide. Here’s local example that needs explanation. The Franz Joseph glacier, with some variability, has generally been retreating to now. During 1895 it was recorded as nearly reaching the sea, and from 1895 to 1907 it retreated quickly, but after 1907 it began to advance again. How can that initial retreat be explained by carbon dioxide induced warming?

This sort of thing is confirmed in the IPCC’s AR6 report on pages 1855-56, where they say the few climate indicator trend changes that are upward are largely benign and for most climate indicators, there is no or negative change. There’s also a table there. The information is there in black and white, so it is fair to ask, why isn’t this common knowledge and why are we still hearing alarm rhetoric that the indicators are worsening. The Secretary General of the United Nations silly rants are an example. The alarmism comes mainly from politicians and the media, which raises another question, how many politicians or media people have actually read the full AR6 report?

Repeatedly, we have been told to ‘trust the science’, but we have recently been let down by science over the Covid issue, and how the cost of energy has increased, solely because of climate policy made from scientific advice. Fairy stories used to begin with ‘Once upon a time’, but nowadays they begin with, ‘Experts say,’ and if anyone raises an opinion to the contrary, it is termed ‘hate speech’. Here’s how the corruption of climate science happens. Politicians create policy, and climate policy comes from the United Nations, who it could be argued, need the climate change narrative as a reason to implement their Agenda 30, which is a kind was of saying, ‘hobbling us all.’ If the policy is so good, why do we need inducement?  Anyway, governments signed up to an agreement to cut emissions… without public debate, but as policy rather than based on sound scientific data. Western governments through peer pressure (for want of a better term) appear mandated to stick to the agreement no matter what, and even though the agreement didn’t include measures to constrain food production, most intend to. Who pays for climate research? Governments of course, and they will not fund scientific research unless it meets their climate change agenda. Similarly, the peer review process ensures that papers the governments don’t like, aren’t printed. Which amounts to censorship by omission. The same government control happens in schools, and the trouble is, there are now generations who have been through the system fearing climate change, making climate enlightenment difficult.

To justify what I have just said, we go back to the Hunga-Tongan undersea eruption which happened from 20 December 2021 to 15 January 2022. The eruption was remarkable in two ways; the original blast was the most powerful on the planet for 100 years; and it was an undersea eruption, therefore it threw a huge volume of moisture into the stratosphere. Science and the media have been unusually quiet about this eruption, so it is reasonable to ask why, because is well known that volcanic eruptions can change weather patterns for several years. The eruption increased the moisture in the stratosphere by at least ten percent, so what did it do to the normal atmospheric rivers and have there been unusual flooding since 2022? Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but water vapour is far more powerful, and have there been any unusual heatwaves since 2022? Science and the media have been quiet about the effect of the eruption, and the only logical reason is that the effects don’t fit their climate narrative.  Yet they are loud about dodgy information such as - displaying billowing smokestacks to symbolise carbon dioxide pouring into the atmosphere when carbon dioxide is actually odourless and colourless. In other words, invisible. Most smoke contains water vapour, and some environmental nasties… but on the other hand, smoke distributes much-needed plant micronutrients around the planet. Polar bears were said to be endangered but they are clearly not. Corals were said to be bleaching and suffering from warming oceans, but bleaching is a natural process and anyway, corals evolved in even warmer waters. Wholly natural geological processes have always been driven by extreme weather events, rich floodplains have always been formed by sediment during erosion events and floods, and those processes haven’t stopped, but we’re told the extreme weather, and subsequent damage are indications of a changing climate. Arctic ice is held up as an indicator of climate, with the inference that melting will cause sea level rise, but melting sea ice cannot raise sea levels, because the ice is already in the sea, only land-based ice will rise sea level. But do government-funded scientists tell us these things? And it’s government scientists who advise governments on policy? Therein lies a problem.

‘Trusting the science’ became even more difficult after the climategate email of 2009, where a couple of eminent climate scientists colluded to wipe the record of the warm period of the 1930-40’s to make their models ‘look better’. However, the historical record remains in old newspapers… but largely, they got away with it. And of late, climate academics make up historical temperature data, ‘by proxy’ in regions where even now temperature data is at best scratchy because of a lack of thermometers. One of the major questions climate scientists must answer is about ‘not allowing the planet’s average temperature to rise by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial revolution levels.’ A simple statement maybe, but where’s the science behind that statement and who figured it out? You’d think, because of the huge cost of net zero policy, the media or someone would have scrutinised the theory, but no. First, nobody has said exactly when ‘preindustrial revolution’ they are talking about… this is singularly important because the industrial revolution began in 1760 while the little ice age began during 1330 and ended 1850. Extreme weather events during the little ice age were far worse than today! The little ice age was a bad time for humanity, so we wouldn’t want to go back there voluntarily – and luckily, going net zero has no hope of taking us there. But the idea or theory is illogical. And who said that 1.5°C more than the middle of an ice age is best for humans or the planet?  On what basis? For 59% of the past 600 million years,  Earth’s average temperature was 22°C, during which time life evolved and thrived only to be nearly extinguished by various ice ages. Has anyone noticed humanity thrives in warmer conditions rather than cold? Right now we are in one of the coolest periods of the last 600 million years! Is there a  scientist who can deny that? They have no idea what the optimum world temperature might be.

Even the ‘greenhouse effect’ is a misnomer. The best example of the greenhouse effect is when a car with its windows up, heats up in the sun and likewise a glasshouse with its vents closed… but school kids are taught that carbon dioxide froms a blanket around the planet, which traps heat in…. easy to imagine but erronious. In a closed vehicle or greenouse, there’s no convection, but the atmosohere is not enclosed, as air rises, it expands causing it to cool and the movement allows cooler air to take the place of the warm. As there is no blanket, bits of our atmosphere incuding heat can drift into space. ‘The science’ says the sun’s variability has no effect on climate… but logic disagrees, solar activity differs with sunspots and solar flares, there’s also the variability of our planet’s orbit, which isn’t exactly the sun’s variability but it explains the variability of the sun’s rays hitting the planet.

It's staggering when agencies like the World Economic Forum the United Nation or COP meetings take more notice of a school girl than lhearing from evel-headed scientists, like Happer, Curry, Lindzen or Koonin (there’s a raft of them). But of course, what they have to say doesn’t fit the required narrative… again, censorship by omission. The schoolgirl read from the political copybook saying that because of atmospheric carbon dioxide, ecosystems are dying and there are mass extinctions. However satelite data shows the planet is greening, which equates to more habitat and more biodiversity.  Data  shows human life expectancy has never been longer, crop yeilds have never been higher, wildfire area is down, numbers landfall hurricanes are down, and sea level rise doesn’t match the rise of carbon dioxide. The more that is understood about the climate, the more there is to learn, but what is obvious, carbon dioxide is a red herring. Yet ‘scientific consensus’ says that carbon dioxide is the control knob of climate. In fact, consensus is the enemy of innovation and truth.

There is no doubt the climate changes, nothing stays the same for ever, but scientists can’t pinpoint how much of the change is because of human activity or how much is natural variability. There are clamate anomalies that happen from time to time, but climate scientists don’t recognise them. And considering carbon dioxide, ninety five percet of atmospheric carbon dioxide is natural, so which bits are dangerous? Nothing we do will prevent extreme weather events, for them we are at the mercy of the cosmos. There is no need to rush into foolish mitigation strategies, because the evidence is that the climate is in no hurry. We should be wary of placing new infratructure in unsafe locations. Fossil fuels are not demonic, nor are belching livestock, we will need them for some time yet… the so-called green energies aren’t green at all, although they might have a place. The cost of reticulation seems to limit their effective use without subsidies , and their useful lifetime is too short for most cost centres.

Here’s the thing, the political and media’s interpretation of climate science is at the very least flawed and arguably, purposely so. They can roll out scientists with facts that support their point of view… but job retainment means they have a vested interest. Climate realists can also roll out the scientist, and the likes of Judith Curry will confirm that speaking against the narrative, indeed is career-costly, which is why the transparency of open debate is so necessary. Climate change is defined as, the same weather trends over a long period, the shortest time being thirty years, but the sensible period would be one hundred. How many times does the media report, ‘the worst in one hundred years’? Well, the current event can’t be a trend when a similar event happened one hundred years ago. But let’s take temperature. The world record was recorded in Death Valley 1913. From 1910 to 1940 there was an upward trend, from 1940 to 1978 there was a downward trend, from 1980 to 1990 the trend was flat and since 2000 there has been an upward trend. None of that can be equated to atmospheric carbon dioxide induced climate change because during the same period, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen at a steady rate. Therefore, the conclusion has to be that climate is the product a myriad of complicated cycles, influences and invisible fields that aren’t yet fully understood. Therefore, building policy based on carbon dioxide alone can’t be justified.