Well-conducted clinical trials are essential for us to advance medical care. Full disclosure of the results will improve the public’s confidence in the effectiveness of new treatments, improve participation in clinical trials and benefit all of us – but only if they really give a true picture of the results and what they actually mean.
In 2022, the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) put out a consultation related to the legislation around clinical trials. The original clinical trials regulations were introduced in 2004 primarily to improve patient safety and ensure that data obtained from the trials was both reliable and of good quality . However, they were rather burdensome, didn’t really differentiate between small-scale academic trial and large-scale Big Pharma trials and simply made things more complicated than they needed to be; a change was long overdue.
At the time of their introduction, I found it frustrating that regulations imposed by the EU were foisted upon the U.K., and we had no power to write our own legislation that may have been more appropriate to our situation, perhaps allowing some flexibility for the small, ground-breaking clinical studies, led by academics, that I was involved in.
An update to the regulations was written by the EU in 2014. This new regulation (Regulation 536/2014) was more pragmatic, simplifying some of the bureaucracy, improving transparency (by including a public database and layperson summaries) and making provisions to support academic and non-commercial trials. But, in a twist of irony, due to the delay in implementing these changes and the U.K.’s departure from the EU during that time, this regulation was never written into U.K. law. However, regulation 536/2014 was introduced in the EU, thereby offering the EU a distinct R&D advantage over the U.K. What should have been an advantage of Brexit turned into a disadvantage – I hear the Remainers’ jeers!
The MHRA’s consultation seemed to be, at least in part, in response to this – not the jeers of the Remainers but the U.K.’s lack of competitiveness in drug discovery. It asked many questions relating to the existing legislation and proposed legislative changes. The proposed changes are generally welcomed, although the delay in introducing them into U.K. law is not. A comment piece this month in Nature Medicine looks at one change, which was very much supported by the people who replied to the consultation, but which may end up being quite controversial and over which I have some concerns.
The change will introduce a requirement “to offer trial findings with participants in a suitable format or explain why this is not possible”. Part of the problem, as the authors of the comment piece point out, is that it is not clear how best to implement this policy. The authors set out to propose a framework for what information should be summarised for participants, how results should be summarised and when. For example, they suggest that the information should answer these four questions: what question did the trial set out to answer? what did the trial find? what effect have the trial results had, if any, in changing treatment or prevention? and where can the participants find out more?
In the article, the authors make reference to the six-page summary provided to participants involved in the RECOVERY trial. For those not familiar with the trial, it was a large ‘Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy’ carried out in the U.K. to try to find effective treatments for COVID-19. However, we need to be careful when we summarise the findings of such studies because the information omitted is just as telling as the information provided, and unless all the information is freely accessible for scrutiny, the information provided can be more misleading than providing no information at all.
If we take the case of hydroxychloroquine used in the RECOVERY trial, the summary says quite clearly that there was “No clinical benefit from use of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalised patients with COVID-19.” The evidence from the study seems to support this, but, of course, the summary fails to mention that hydroxychloroquine was never expected to be effective in patients already hospitalised with severe COVID-19; it was thought that it would most likely be useful in the early stages of COVID-19. If it had been administered earlier, in an outpatient setting, at a reasonable dose, the results may have been quite different.
An Italian study investigated early intervention in around 400 patients in early stages of COVID-19 from November 2020 to March 2021. Doctors were able to select from a range of drugs and to choose those most appropriate for individual patients. This included the use of hydroxychloroquine (200mg twice a day for seven days) usually in cases where ivermectin was not available and where hydroxychloroquine was not contraindicated (this was in approximately 30% of patients in the study). Patients in the early stages of the illness who took part in the study, seldom (8% in phase 2a) or very rarely (4.6% and 1.6% in phase 1 or phase 0 respectively) required hospital admission. The main result of the study concerned the overall mortality; only one patient died from COVID-19 (a lethality of 0.2% compared with national statistics indicating a lethality of around 3% for similar patients). So, the early intervention appeared to be effective, but the complex nature of the study made statistical evaluation difficult.
What the summary also doesn’t say is that the dose of hydroxychloroquine used in the RECOVERY trial was much higher than standard treatment. For the treatment of malaria, the standard regimen may be something like 800mg initially followed by a further 400mg dose six hours later, then another 400mg 24 hours following the initial dose and another 400mg 48 hours after the initial dose (a total of 2000mg over 3 days). In the RECOVERY trial, patients received 800mg initially then 800mg 6 hours later, followed by a further 400mg six hours later, followed by a dose of 400mg every 12 hours after that for the next nine days. So, participants received a whopping 2400mg within the first 24 hours of treatment. This is clearly going to affect the adverse event profile and impact patient outcomes. Contrast this with the Italian study where 200mg was given twice a day for seven days in the early stages of the disease.
On reading the summary of the RECOVERY trial relating to hydroxychloroquine, you would be forgiven for thinking that hydroxychloroquine had been shown to be of no use in the treatment of COVID-19. In fact, the UKRI headline summary simply states “Hydroxychloroquine has no clinical benefits.” The situation of hydroxychloroquine (and similarly ivermectin) were so highly politically charged that fair reporting of studies was practically impossible. The summary presented was quite misleading in this case, and I can imagine many similar scenarios where the summary would fail to tell the whole story.
However, this is just one problem. Another problem relates to how the data is presented, since it is easy to show one thing when the actual data shows something different. To really understand these problems, I’d suggest reading Prof. Norman Fenton’s paper on the Simpson Paradox. In this paper, he clearly shows how results can be presented, very plausibly, in such a way to show that a drug is more effective than a placebo, even when it isn’t. Similarly, if you want to see his detailed analysis of the illusion of the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and other similar data, then I suggest looking at Prof. Fenton’s website.
A further problem touched on in the paper relates to when the results should be made available. Some might say “as early as possible”, but I see problems with this. Firstly, this doesn’t give an opportunity to fully investigate the long-term safety and efficacy of a new treatment. Secondly, to really understand the full impact of a study, it may take many years. For example, if you are looking at the outcome of a certain cancer treatment, you may need to wait 5-10 years (or more) to really see if one drug was more effective than another (time to relapse, for example, will hopefully be many years ahead or not at all if the drug is really good). So, presenting results early (which happens all the time in the published literature for obvious reasons) may give an untrue picture of how good the drug really is.
Public engagement in clinical trials is really important. It can help inform scientists about their proposed studies, provide insights that we, as scientists, don’t even think about because we are caught up in our own little research bubble, and improve the study significantly, thereby improving outcomes for patients and strengthening the results of the trials. Participants in clinical trials should have the right to see the results of the study, so I wholeheartedly support the proposal made by the MHRA to be more open with the public in reporting results of studies that they have been involved in. However, I would go further and propose that all the data is easily accessible, warts and all, so that the results can be properly analysed, and the true effectiveness of the study drug assessed independently. After all, although the information about the drug is confidential to the company, they are asking the general public to take part in studies, so the general public has the right to know the outcome of the study. If that is a step too far for drug companies, then I would suggest that the summaries should be written by independent scientists with full access to all the data so that a fair unbiased summary is presented. I’m not even sure if that is possible anymore but I live in hope that we can get full disclosure on the results of clinical studies so that we can all know if the drug is truly beneficial, to whom, in what setting and at what dose. Although we’d all like to put a positive spin on our results, this isn’t usually in the public’s best interests. As the authors of the Nature Medicine comment note, “Communication of trial results must happen whether the trial has positive, inconclusive or negative results.”
Dr. Maggie Cooper is a pharmacist and research scientist.
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Patrick Vallance of eco-health alliance (spook front and viral GoF research exporters to Wuhan) fame?
This is the problem you face when you have an essentially very weak personality occupying the position of PM, someone who is easily swayed, does not have the courage of their own convictions and is likely to be easily pushed down an extreme route, as opposed to someone of strong mind who is capable of thinking for themselves.
Whatever the doomsayers might spout, I am sure the UK must make some kind of contribution to carbon reduction, but the course the PM has steered the country into would almost have you believe that the UK alone is responsible for all of it and has to adopt the most draconian and bankrupting of measures because no other country can “save the world”. Absolutely ridiculous, especially when neither China nor India, two of the world’s worst polluters can seemingly be made to make any kind of commitments never mind the type of sacrifices ordinary people in the UK are expected to make. Utter madness.
Where is a sense of proportion when it is most needed?
The Climate Change scenario took attention away from industrial pollution of the kind that big companies could afford to remedy, if they spent some of their profits on it or simply thought more carefully about what they were doing. Instead, we were all offered constant fear.
We could control the fear by entering into Desmet’s Mass Formation. If we watched ourselves every step of the way and obeyed instructions about recycling and anything else we were told to do in order to “save the planet”, we would at least know that we were virtuous – doing the right thing.
A small step to saving the NHS (or any other “health system”) by another display of uncritical, unquestioning obedience.
Please look into CO2 levels in the geological past. They have been multiple times higher than now and didn’t cause a greenhouse effect, nor will they now.
Maybe that was on slide 12. Johnson only saw 11.
There is no need whatsoever to contribute to lowering CO2, which is similarly well within natural variable limits. Because it’s provable that CO2 concentration has no effect on global temperatures, which are not going up anyway.
The whole thing is yet another gigantic money-diverting scheme which is now collapsing in on itself…
If it can’t be empirically proven atmospheric CO2 has an effect on global temperatures (which has never been done) it can therefore never be empirically proven it doesn’t have an effect.
Global temperatures have risen since the 1850’s (not by much though) but as the planet is around the coldest it’s ever been without being in a full blown ice age, it’s no bad thing. 1.5ºC cooler would be catastrophic.
The true indicator, if there is one, of the ideal level of atmospheric CO2 is Mother Nature herself.
C3 plant’s (95% of all plant life) flourishes around 1,000ppm – 1,200ppm. Personally, I think that’s a big clue as to where the ideal CO2 content of the atmosphere should be.
Sadly though climate change is exactly like Covid. Spread nonsense and doom-mongering into the general sheep population and then close down any other debate.
Stretching back to the 1960’s we have had at least 50 “climate emergencies” almost one a year professing doom if we don’t act now. And guess what? The planet is still here, the Maldives aren’t underwater, the ice age never did come etc etc etc
As with Covid, I am just staggered how many gullible, thick people there are on this planet. Reading comments on this website is a bit of a release from their grip!
“global temperatures, which are not going up anyway”
That’s nonsense. Temperatures are on a rising trend.
The question is not about that, but whether anthropogenic CO2 is significant, and whether that rising trend – lower than the catastrophe predictions -is cause fora panic narrative.
My concern is that the focus on ‘climate change’ – which is always happening -distracts from the wider, obvious issues of human impact on the environment.
Why must we make some reduction? Carbon Dioxide -to give it it’s proper name instead of ‘carbon’- is not a pollutant.
Revealed, the true cost of Net Zero insanity … £18,000 a year for every household
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/revealed-the-true-cost-of-net-zero-insanity-18000-a-year-for-every-household/
Andrew Montford
–
Let’s keep getting the message out with our friendly resistance.
Thursday 10th February 5pm
Silent lighted walk behind one simple sign
“No More Lockdown & Covid Rules Are Barking”
Bring torches, candles and other lights
meet outside Town Hall, between Rose Inn & Costa
Wokingham RG40 1AP
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Professor… Belcher?
They are making this shit up!
Yep. Been making it up for the best part of forty years now.
True, but some people still believe in Santer.
Assuming we got rid of the windmills, where would we get our gas?
The inconvenient truth is that if we don’t do some sort of deal with Russia to buy gas at long term fixed prices, we are screwed.
Drill for gas; dig for coal.
It’s a shame you can’t shop around for electricity produced only by coal power. It would be about 10p/kWh. In April the price cap is going up from 21p to 28p.
if they stopped dumping so much red-tape on nuclear it would cost about half that.
Mine went from 14p to 24p 2 months ago, then they sent an email saying this…
I got the same crap from Octopus. Perhaps they could divert some funds away from their BLM campaigns and use them to reduce tariffs
LOL! A down-vote from Big Al…?
Is he still getting his chakras off in his beachfront mansion?
Assuming the address of Gores mansion is correct, it’s a few hundred feet up a hill overlooking the beach. You can see it on Google maps.
The guy you might want to question is Obama with a $14m estate on Martha’s Vineyard, some 3m above sea level, and the genuine beachfront property ha’s building in Hawaii.
Gore is another Biden, as thick as two short planks and equally unprincipled.
My question is, how did Obama, who was virtually broke when he became POTUS, amass a fortune large enough to spunk $20m or so on two properties, on a salary of a few hundred thousand for 8 years……..
Perhaps Obimi got a borrow from Billy Boy.
That’s an easy one….
Obama gave Pearson Publishing $350 million to create Commoncore text and Pearson gave Obama a $65 million dollar book deal in return.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/obama_gave_commoncore_contract_to_publisher_got_65_million_book_deal_in_return.html
Amazing how no one in the media questions this, yet absolutely everything Trump did was scrutinized until they found some fault or something they could claim was corrupt. I have absolutely no idea what Obama did to rate the adoration heaped upon him.
Coal, gas and oil reserves around the world are pretty much known. We raeched a peak in conventional oil production in 2005-6 and have been kept going by fracking. Gas sources are closely linked to oil sources.
Absolute bollox. Peak Oil is a myth perpetuated by the greens. America was the largest Oil and gas producer under Trump. How did that happen if peak Oil was breached in 2006?
There are massive Oil reserves yet to be tapped, the question is, is it economical to tap it.
As technology advances so it becomes more viable to access these reserves.
Perhaps we should stop pissing the Russians off until we are properly self-sufficient
We don’t buy Russian gas.
Exactly, but Russian gas has kept us going indirectly by its effects on the European gas market. NB – we stopped being self sufficient in gas many years ago.
Our energy independence has nothing to do with Russia.
Nor has the gas price much to do with Russia either, it’s more to do with China’s ongoing expansion and it buying up as much gas on the global markets as it can. Ships are being diverted mid passage in response to a bidding war.
It’s also true that Germany in particular has far too few LNG facilities so can’t take advantage of supplies from the US and Australia.
If anyones to blame for this situation it’s Germany with it’s ridiculous policy of shutting Nuclear down following Fukushima (a green excuse), insistence that renewables are a viable energy source, it’s failure to ensure it’s own gas stocks were maintained and it’s reliance on Russia for gas.
The UK’s problems are of its own making largely because successive governments have insisted on promoting the welfare state ahead of national infrastructure including energy security.
It’s as if lots of ex geman leaders are on Gazprom sinecures and have a vested interest in making sure germans have to buy PutinGas(TM)
No. I don’t believe it.
And what do you think happens when those countries who do buy Russian gas cannot and start competing against us to secure supplies elsewhere Einstein?
See my response below to Londo Mollari, Einstein.
The UK doesn’t use Russian gas.
See previous answer.
See my response to your ridiculous Peak Oil post, which I assume is the one you are referring to.
Fracking: Why wouldn’t we extract the ‘trillion pounds of gas treasure under our feet’| Richard Tice – YouTube
Then there’s all the coal seam gas ripe for fracking.
Simple answer – so much energy is used in the production of fracked oil and gas that there’s scarcely any surplus energy.
Would you care to supply some evidence for such a bold claim?
Don’t bother asking. The guy is a clown.
Of all the stupid statement you have made, that one pretty well tops them all.
Shale gas extraction sites have the physical footprint of a couple of football fields. The technology employed is simple, straightforward and extremely efficient.
The labour element is almost zero.
http://exploreshale.psu.edu/
And all the protesters that have effectively killed it should be the ones paying the excessive energy prices that their high mindedness has brought about, but instead it’s the rest of us as usual.
http://exploreshale.psu.edu/
Shale.
http://exploreshale.psu.edu/
The windmills have hardly turned all winter. Donnington power station has been burning coal, like it is going out of fashion, since October. Maybe the complete lack of wind is indicative of climate change, but relying on the wind to keep the lights on doesn’t look like a great plan.
I like Josh.
The Great Global Warming Swindle – 15 years old but still a brilliant film to show climate alarmists:
https://youtu.be/oYhCQv5tNsQ
And to think they showed it on national TV – Channel 4!!!
Climate Hustle (2017) (odysee.com)
You might like this one
Or on bitchute
Climate Hustle (Documentary) (bitchute.com)
All the money that has gone into making crap renewables like wind and solar could have been spent making sure coal-fired power stations were cleaner.
I’d like to know where all this “cheap” renewable electricity the greens tell us is coming from renewables that we subsidise to the tune of £11Bn a year is????
The fact is, the government (Nut Nuts) will use this global gas price anomaly to broadcast just how cheap renewable electricity is.
There’s some great stuff on Gettr
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/pfizer-quietly-adds-language-warning-unfavorable-pre-clinical-clinical-or-safety-data-may
https://gettr.com/post/ptdupy3e29
As we also reported, the event, which came to light recently after an FOI request, was described by the climate writer Paul Homewood as a “childish attempt to scare the PM”.
Well judging by the PM’s policies it seems to have worked.
I’ve come to the conclusion that not only is Johnson lazy and easily fooled but regardless of his privileged Eton upbringing I also suspect he is as thick as two short planks as well.
Of course. Eton’s raison d’etre is to get thick rich boys punching well above their weight. Cameron is another example – Mr Nice But Dim.
Not an unreasonable conclusion to draw however, had you read some of the dribble published in his newspaper columns you would have realised it many years ago.
Ironically, the only thing he did write sensibly about is climate change, or lack thereof.
I also think he’s the only person I know of to have done a ‘U’ turn from being a climate sceptic to becoming a believer.
Brown is another dismal PM who suddenly got a strange female “wife” and also suddenly seems to decide globalist welfare state was the best thing to spend British taxpayer’s money on.
WUWT does a better job of it IMO.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/02/uk-pm-boris-johnson-duped-by-uk-activists-climate-slides-climate-depots-point-by-point-rebuttal-to-help-deprogram-the-propaganda-johnson-absorbed/
The climate may be changing and man may be having a small effect (deforestation, geo-engineering, pollution etc) but it is NOT a reason to give the un-elected UN (and elected national governments without a referendum) huge powers to control harmless CO2 (ergo all human activity) that governments around the world can use and abuse to their own advantage with liberties possibly never returning. (Their over-reaction to Covid is a taster of what is to come).
If you read the article about Mark Carney – former Canadian governor of the Bank of England with ambitions to become Canadian premier [watch out Justin, he fancies your job] then you will see that that is precisely what he intends to happen and thinks it will be wonderful. God help us all.
Carney is one of the dark horse bad boys currently taking up too much space on this planet.
“and man may be having a small effect “
Assuming atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm as fast as the greens would have us believe, judging by known scientific historical certainties, mankind’s ongoing contribution would take ~25,000 to raise global temperatures by ~2ºC.
This was the original point of global catastrophe until the greens realised it was unachievable so they lowered it to 1.5ºC, which, arithmetically speaking, is still in excess of 10,000 years away.
There is nothing scientific at all about forecasting future events, it’s all guesswork no matter how much money and how many computer projections one throws at it. For example, if the live volcano in the Yellowstone area erupted the planet would be plunged into a catastrophic cold period for decades.
Yellowstone erupting is far more likely than mankind warming the planet to any meaningful extent.
It’s about rent-seeking from every single person on the planet. I couldn’t think of a better way to describe “globalism”.
Save the earth… no, wait!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/04/green-wrecking-ball-germany-clearing-undisturbed-1000-year-old-forest-make-way-for-massive-wind-park/
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/mining-the-planet-to-death-the-dirty-truth-about-clean-technologies-a-696d7adf-35db-4844-80be-dbd1ab698fa3
A green taxi…?
It’s blue…….
the cartoon above hits home as poverty is a real issue effecting millions of people, its disgraceful when people are going to food banks or can’t afford food, heating etc etc ol boris and co will never know the decision to eat or heat.
Extreme poverty is relative. Foodbanks are a luxury western nations can afford.
Meanwhile, global extreme poverty has fallen dramatically over the last few decades thanks to prosperity.
Excellent point that somehow never makes it onto the front pages.
We probably have foodbanks and other indignities because benefits and pensions are about half as much as they were in 1975, *relative to average UK income.* I looked this up recently and was quite shocked. Unemployment benefit then seemed to be about one third of a normal wage. But Universal Credit now, 47 years later, is about £5,000 per annum and a typical income is £30,000/annum.
One result of incomes rising over this 45-50 year period was that house prices and market rents also rose, at least in step with income. However, benefits claimants and to some extent old age pensioners have an obvious problem if this happens. Rising rents make it more difficult for these groups to afford a roof over their head. Their own income hasn’t kept pace with the prosperity of the rest of the economy.
House affordability has fallen massively as wages haven’t kept pace with credit growth (which drives title prices).
Not really. With the recognition that life expectancy and health outcomes have dramatically improved in the last generation or two, and state retirement isn’t until 67 for our youth now, mortgages terms are up to 45 years in some instances, from 25 years in the 70’s.
A very good illustration of Joe public’s neglect of their personal old age provision since the welfare state began.
What you do neglect to mention is, that whilst unemployment benefits have been eroded, so other welfare provisions have manifested themselves.
Rising rent’s aren’t too much of a problem for ‘council house’ tenants once they are in. Councils simply don’t throw people with kids, disabilities, or the elderly into the street just because they can’t pay rent.
Whatever society does there is a hardcore of unemployed who will never be employed because they don’t want to be employed, some of them going back generations. Realistically, there aren’t that many of them as Unemployment Figures would probably be better expressed as Employment Turnover. The former has been variously used by governments to their political advantage, or to the oppositions advantage when the reality is, most people are only short term unemployed.
If we accepted there is a hard core and concentrated on creating decent employment opportunities (the SNP in Scotland haven’t attracted a single major manufacturer to the country in 15 years) Employment Turnover would be much faster and less of a strain on the public purse.
There are many people near me on benefits of one sort or another. None of them struggle to pay for anything, because in reality they don’t have to pay much. No rent, no rates. They all drive, all have holidays, satellite TV, smart phones- and food banks are hardly ‘indignities’- at least in Sheffield because most using them don’t mind in the least. I have a friend who works in one and she is often reduced to tears- not by the depravation, but by the shameless abuse of the kindness being shown by those who use foodbanks to make sure they can afford their booze. How does she know this? Because they come straight out of Morrisons with their booze and collect their free food on the way back to the car. And is there any particular reason why they can’t work? Every pub, shop, cafe, care agency and a variety of other small businesses are struggling to fill vacancies so there is plenty of work out there. Lastly, at least round here, the typical wage is significantly south of £30,000- even before you lose half of it taxes of one sort or another. We all know there are some that need help, but equally we all know there are many who have no intention of working whilst we pay them not too.
“Government’s Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance”
They must study how to run a scam at University these days, as part of their “scientific” degree courses.
As the last ice age ended only 11500 years ago which in geological terms is very recently, the earth is still warming up and the land is still recovering. The is a photo of an area of land in Scandinavia taken over 100 years ago. There is a photo of the same area 100 years later and it’s changed because the land is still rising after being compressed by ice for 100000 years.
We are in the warm interglacial period and if there is global warming it’s because we are in the warm interglacial period and not due to CO2 which only takes up 0.04% of the earths atmosphere (which nature is responsible for 97% of).
I know, like I said, where is there sense of proportion or any kind of idea of the bigger picture.
Its not about facts – its just about politics
‘The science’ of climate change has been debated by scientists for half a century now at least.
The problem is, politics and big money has hijacked it by lying to the general public who have little understanding of science.
Less that 10% of the worlds population are scientists. Even if they were all persuaded that climate change wasn’t a threat, that’s only 10% of the world’s voters.
The great unwashed have been coopted by cultivated hysteria by the likes of Al Gore telling unscientific porkies. Boris has fallen victim to precisely this because he’s not a scientist.
The subject will never be put to bed whilst the public are presented with science they don’t understand, which is why propaganda has been so effective in persuading them climate change is a threat.
With the certainty of ignorance, too many think they do understand – and lecture those who ask inconvenient questions.
“Understanding”, in the eyes of zealots, is the ability to recite the appropriate narrative.
That hot-head Hansen has a lot to answer for….
1988: James Hansen And Tim Wirth Sabotaged The Air Conditioning In Congress
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/1988-james-hansen-and-tim-wirth-sabotaged-the-air-conditioning-in-congress/
What does Paddy Vallance know about climate science?? Does he know anything about infectious disease?? Does he know anything about Public Health?? Is he a virologist?? Is he an Epidemiologist?? Nope… he is a vascular biologist… Need I say more…
He knows about the clot shot harms then! But says nothing.
Most of the ‘scientists’ forming the global warming consensus have no qualifications in atmospheric physics. Their opinion is as valid as a plumber talking about an electrical installation.
I don’t agree with that. There are an enormous number of things that affect the climate including Oceans, the Biosphere, the Sun, Weather itself, Astro Physics, Radiant Gasses etc.
The problem is, no one person has the time to become proficient in all of them to make a reliable judgement on climate.
Oh, so much more! He knows how to speak to politicians – how to flatter, how to cajole. He is a courtier. Most of the best scientists are not.
I’m pretty sure he also has a little black book of distasteful proclivities……..
What does Vallance know about ANYTHING? ( Apart from how to scare the living daylights out of the sheeple- including Bozo, and how to make a stack of cash for himself!).
Chance of achieving net zero?
Zero.
Poor Pfeffel, apparently so confused and easily mislead into one cock-up theory after another.
Daily Sceptics has spent a sizeable amount of time claiming the plandemic was a cock-up, and now trying to convince us Pfeffel is some kind of victim to bad advice again.
Look, it’s all here, written on the government website what this is all about. It’s been on there for years.
The mere concept that governments imagine they can plan a route 13 years hence is patently ludicrous.
Covid is a case in point, as was the 2008 global financial crash. Dogmatic insistence that the future of the UK will be shaped by British politicians alone, is now facing yet another stark sanity check, the prospect of war between Russia and Ukraine.
Whatever one thinks of the rights and wrongs of it, if it does happen there will be global implications, and if it doesn’t happen, there still will be global implications.
On the Web, 20 years ago, … pronouncements of Global Warming “science” were mainly coming from two sources: the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the (US) National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The CRU and NCAR were linked by the presence of Tom Wigley, who’d taken over at CRU after the 1978 retirement of truly-gifted climatologist Hubert Lamb, and who’d moved to NCAR-Boulder in 1993.
Today, no one seems wiling or able to go back and trace the history of where all this came from. The hockey-stick graph’s been trashed, but people still seem fixated on arguing “science”, even when the entire climate thing was obviously revolutionary politics in the first place.
If one traces the networks, one will find linkages between GW/CC and Zero Population Growth, the Cloward/Piven strategy, Marcuse’s impact on the “Manifestos” of the early 70’s, JournoList, and things like the Weather Underground and the Open Society Institute.
But we don’t want to get into History, do we? … Naw, that’s old stuff, and it requires effort to learn.
George Santayana’s aphorism about not knowing history will wind up biting you, big time.
11-28-2009: “The Times of London is reporting in its Sunday edition that the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has destroyed the original data used to construct the historical climate record that purports to show a temperature increase.”
— and —
“The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.”
(This blog article’s link to the Times article no longer works, but one might be able to find it, or find other reports on this event. It made rather large waves at the time, stomping the CRU’s face into the dirt. It basically ended the mentioning of the CRU in the everyday press.)
PIMF — here’s the link to that blog article
http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2009/11/no-science-is-possible-cru-has.html
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) got its data from the CRU.
Whatever the IPCC said about Climate Change was based on the CRU’s deliberately-corrupted end-data (and then, the CRU got rid of the evidence.)
As Covid fear exits, climate fear grows. They’ve got us. I’m in awe of how the words ‘carbon’ and ‘carbon dioxide’ have taken on social and moral (well at least virtue signalling) meanings. Carbon was once the Philosopher’s Stone. The whole plant world, the basis of our life on earth, is predicated on it. Now it is the evil that humans spew out to kill polar bears. We’re truly not very far from treating the invisible enemy carbon dioxide like the invisible enemy SARS-COV-2. “But Daddy”, said the child “don’t we make carbon dioxide when we breathe?”. Hmm… Maybe after “useless eaters” and “disease spreaders” have run their course, along will come “useless breathers”. I’m praying for sanity.
An online poll run by the UN, based on 16 priorities people view as important in life; like education, employment and health provision, including climate change, down to internet access found climate change coming last, behind internet access.
There were over 10m responses, and the poll was taken down.
Don’t fool yourself. The loony West is engulfed in MSM nonsense about it whilst the rest of the world is far more pragmatic.
The greens have reached ‘peak’ hysteria and people are beginning to understand that green policies are expensive beyond comprehension. The conversion to climate sceptic has nothing to do with science, it has all to do with wallets.
When they realise that their “green” expense funds lavish establishment lifestyles they’ll be even more angry!
I understand where you’re coming from, but the die is already cast. The anti-carbon pandemic has been launched, and we must follow the ‘measures’ that our masters dictate. Were you consulted on whether to ban the internal combustion engine, or chuck out your gas boiler or log stove? With COVID their goal was to make us totally dependent on the vaccination pass, it may even still be the goal, I don’t know. With the carbon pandemic, I think the goal is to make us all totally dependent on electricity. And unlike the virus pandemic which everyone knows can only last a maximum of 3 years, and is now expiring, the carbon pandemic, like the “war on terror”, can run virtually forever.
Kristen Nagle shames CBC workers in the streets of Ottawa. CBC people have no heart. This is a must watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYMDi3HrrDg&ab_channel=MarcelIrnie
Boris is so gullible he probably takes advice from an autistic Swedish high school dropout.
https://kanekoa.substack.com/p/was-peter-daszak-working-for-the
Was Peter Daszak Working For The Central Intelligence Agency?An EcoHealth Alliance whistleblower steps forward
EcoHealth Alliance received the majority of its funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a State Department subsidiary that serves as a frequent cover for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Their second largest source of funding was from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the Department of Defense (DOD) which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.”
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a long history of acting as a contract vehicle for various CIA covert activities.
“The event was organised by the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance and presented, using 11 slides…”
Good to know that Johnson now has an in-depth knowledge of the subject…
The author of this piece is being naive if he truly believes the self-serving British Prime Minister is (again!) the victim of bad advice from “experts”.
The man has shown himself more than willing to join the “Build Back Better” chorus of suborned political puppets prepared to dance to the tune of Klaus Schwab And The Great Resetters.
It appears Johnson now has a leading role in the strateegic pivot from the dying shamdemic to a revamped climate change horror story as the driving force for the globalist agenda.
Hopefully, the British are less “green” than their leader and will see through this obvious ploy.
I really can’t understand what everybody is worried about. Long before any climate armageddon is likely to strike, we will all be digital avatars living in the Metaverse rather than on terra firma.
Unless. . . unless. . .
Time to trash the whole global warming scam; the greatest con I have ever experienced. Consider the UN and WEF plans which Boris is a fan of; they provide the reasons behind it and the push for vaccines not related to Covid.
Good morning! It might have been more efficient to put Monbiot’s name at the top of the pile, to save time.
Climate emergency? What climate emergency? If only the authorities would deal in “the (actual) science” when it comes to issues which could affect us all, like pandemics and net zero goals, for example. Having Patrick Vallance spearheading both causes should be an instant red light! Evidence, real, actual empirical evidence must be the framework for any policies going forward. Certainly not modelling, which has been proven time and time again to be skewed, biased, or complete b*llox ( are you reading this, Neil Ferguson?). The “road to Damascus”, or being led up the garden path, in Johnson’s case, is based on the crazy notion that CO2 is the villain of the piece. When a theory is based on a plain wrong assumption, is it any wonder that disaster will be waiting at the end of that road? How we convince our “great leaders” that they are being sold a pup I don’t know. Perhaps they are all in on it, anyway. Maybe the Great Reset is under way and Bozo, Fudeau, Brandon, etc. are already reaping the rewards? Let us hope they get their just desserts instead!
Surprise surprise, chief doomsayer and “scientific” liar in residence, Chris Whitty led the meeting.
What a shock!
Great cartoon. Might have to “borrow” it.
For a more balanced comment on the slides (and a few comments on Morrison’s previous article) see Mallen Baker’s excellent video
At the 5-minute point, Mallen talks about Vallance’s Slide 6 – restrictions on future human CO2 emissions needed to keep global warming to under 1.5 degrees C. I’ve tried to tackle Mallen before about the error of assuming the validity of the key point of contention.
The mistake he makes is the same as the IPCC computer modelers make, that of assuming that a certain increase in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 produces a certain average global temperature increase. In Slide 6, Vallance effectively tells Johnson that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere causes a 3 degrees C increase in average temperature.
But Vallance’s ‘agreed’ science is not agreed. Nothing in the published science supports his 3 C figure.
Recent (2020) clear-sky calculations by Wyngarden and Happer find a CES (Climate Equilibrium Sensitivity, ie global warming per doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) of 1.5C to 2.5C.
Coe et al (2021) produced an all-skies (clouds included) estimate of 0.25 C.
Thanks for an interesting comment. I don’t think it is fair to accuse Vallance of assuming 3C. The chart show a wide range of temperature ranges and we don’t know what Vallance actually said about it.
Also it is a bit unfair to accuse the IPCC modelers of just assuming a CES (or TCR). The IPCC has a best estimate of 3C but explicitly recognises there is a wide range of possible values with a likely range of 2-5 C (so the Wyngaden and Happer estimate overlaps this range) and this is based on multiple lines of evidence (see IPPC V6 WG1 Tech Summary page 57). This Carbon Brief article shows the many, many estimates that have been done over the last 20 years. It only goes up to 2018 so it doesn’t include the two papers you refer to but it does put them in context.
When do we make the big pitch to the Chinese and the Indians, both of whom are pressing ahead now with plans to build hundreds more coal-fired power stations, and both of whom put out more CO2 each year than our entire output. ‘Look, you two. We’re doing it. We’re self-immiserating, reverting to medieval technology, pre-industrial living standards. We’ve set the example. And you can do it too.’
This, setting the example, I mean, has to be the point, right? Cutting our own miserable little bit of CO2 will make damn all difference to the atmosphere. It’s about showing the way, then persuading the big dirty two to follow.
But won’t they just ask for a bit more from us first: ‘You’re over-populated you know. There were 5 million in the UK in the 16th century. Ok, you’ve impoverished yourselves, medievalised, and that’s good – up to a point. But, if you’re serious about tackling climate change, you really need to get rid of yourselves, don’t you?’
This is all well and good, nice to be able to ridicule the climate nutters and all that, but the school kids round here are absolutely terrified of a harmless gas – they think it’s a pollutant- and nothing you say has any effect. Until they actually suffer the consequences of their paranoia, ( not being able to charge their smart phones or watch Netflix/ Tube would wake them up a little!), we’re stuffed.