Jessica Weinkle, Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, says the rationale of the media coverage on climate change and its consequences often leaves much to be desired. She cites examples of how natural disasters and extreme weather events have been communicated. Following the news, one might get the impression that the increase in extreme weather events is an undeniable fact. The fact that the damage caused by natural disasters, measured in monetary terms, has increased significantly is often offered as proof of this.
However, Weinkle explains that this is a little misleading. Of course, weather events such as hurricanes or floods caused by heavy precipitation are a major problem for a society experiencing them. However, it is misleading to attribute the associated material losses, which have increased over time, necessarily to climate change. “There’s two separate issues in that. There’s the geophysical event, and then there’s the social impact. And you might measure the social impact by cost,” Weinkle explains. This social impact, or the financial damage associated with these events, which increases over time, is importantly linked to the state of the society as a whole, she says. For example, one would have to examine how many houses are there and how much could their location be potentially affected by a disastrous event. Or how many cars would be damaged by extreme weather conditions? What kind of property is there in those houses and cars that could potentially be destroyed? It is logical that if extreme weather destroys property in, say, the United States, the amount of property destroyed and hence the financial cost of the event would be significantly greater than in a poorer country.
Inflation is another separate issue. If economic losses are increasing nominally over time, this does not automatically mean that the situation in general has gotten any worse, since the depreciation of money or inflation has to be taken into account as well.
Extreme weather events are not on the increase
And if we do take these things into account, can we say that extreme weather events have become more frequent, and more powerful and that the associated losses are increasing? “If you adjust disaster losses or economic losses from these events for changes in inflation over time, changes in population and changes in wealth, the trend is minimised. There’s no trend afterwards,” Weinkle says. In fact, she adds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not detect increasing trends in the types of extreme weather events that are the leading causes of disaster losses. The finding is either an inability to detect trends or the message is so nuanced that it is of little practical meaning for understanding societal experiences with disasters.
But at the same time, Weinkle argues, it doesn’t even matter if climate change is causing slightly more heatwaves in some regions and a bit more rainfall in others. She says that linking problems to climate change does not help to create any practical solutions needed to deal with extreme weather events. She cites the example of wildfires in the U.S. state of California. Because it is hot and dry in California, the risk of wildfires is always high. This is regardless of whether or not climate change has made California a little drier. At the same time, the fact is that forest management in California has been very poor for a long time. “And so now when we have fires, they’re very bad. They’re big. But there are all sorts of reasons for them because of the policy choices that we’ve had in the past,” Weinkle explains. “So climate change makes it perhaps a bit drier, perhaps a bit hotter there. But the fires would be an issue still. They’re not necessarily more of an issue because of the overall warming,” she adds, noting that the same logic can be applied to the analysis of all other extreme weather events.
What would probably help best are practical steps, and the wealthier the society is, the easier it would be to take them. If, on the one hand, more wealth means greater potential damage from extreme weather events, on the other hand, it makes society more resilient to extreme weather. “These disaster events are incredibly challenging for individuals, communities and nations that don’t have the wealth to deal with them,” Weinkle says.
Climate science and climate industry
Losses associated with extreme weather events are just one of the topics in which Weinkle, as a scientist, has been interested in and has written extensively about. As an expert, she has also testified before the U.S. Senate on the topics of her research. Weinkle holds a PhD in Environmental Studies and is currently focusing on climate science and policy analysis and mapping conflicts of interest in the field.
It is on the conflict-of-interest front that Weinkle makes an interesting observation. One of the cornerstones of modern climate science, she says, is the “emission scenarios”, or models, that the IPCC uses as a basis for calculating the increase in the greenhouse effect and the future temperature rises. “There’s been a lot of controversy about those emissions scenarios. Not only in the extent to which they constrain the way that we understand the future, but in some of them, and the most prominent ones, being incredibly implausible, misleading,” Weinkle says.
So, according to her, the most unlikely scenarios should be discarded, but they are not. And one of the reasons they are still run is that there are commercial interests behind the retention of these models. “There is a lot of business that’s been set up on these emissions scenarios. And they work with the financial industry,” Weinkle says. She is talking about analytical firms that offer their services in assessing climate change risks. Initially used by insurance companies, these climate risk analyses based on misleading scenarios are now being sold much more widely, particularly to the financial sector. This has led to a situation where these misleading emission scenarios are already being relied on by basically the entire financial system, from central banks and insurance companies to real estate lenders who are governing mortgages. “That’s a lot of weight on the IPCC to hold on to those conceptions, because it’s holding up this entire industry that has engaged itself with the financial structures, financial institutions of the world,” Weinkle comments. “Because you have a lot of people that are deeply embedded within the IPCC, also consulting with financially oriented groups, and because the IPCC work has become embedded within and as a legitimacy for this climate analytics industry, it’s a lot of pressure to keep things the way that they are, to keep the narrative the way that it is,” Weinkle adds.
Trapped in climate anxiety
One issue that Weinkle has also analysed is the emergence of climate anxiety, particularly among young people. It is worth pointing out that for some interest groups – such as climate activists or renewable energy developers and their associated lobbyists – the widespread dissemination of messages about climate catastrophe is useful for promoting their interests and making profits.
The emergence of climate anxiety among young people is probably an inevitable consequence of our current media environment. When the media constantly talks about natural disasters and says that they are the result of man-made climate change, it is to be expected that there will be anxiety and even guilt among the population. Or even blame put on the older generation for making the wrong choices in the past. It is also understandable that this anxiety is fuelled further when prominent political figures use particularly colourful imagery to talk about climate catastrophe. For example, UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently declared that humanity is on the highway “to climate hell”.
One of the possible consequences of such messaging and this kind of framing of the whole climate issue is the traumatisation of younger people in particular. “They’re told that they are experiencing climate change through the disasters which are traumatic. Now it’s like a cascade of trauma that’s being lumped up under climate change,” Weinkle notes.
While for some people at least, climate anxiety is a logical outcome of such an environment, something else is happening as well, Weinkle says. “If you’re anxious about it, you should become more advocacy-oriented. And so it’s kind of like breeding advocacy, it’s breeding advocates,” she says, adding that she doesn’t think it’s very fair to these young activists. The point is that young people are genuinely concerned about what they see or read in the media. For example, they are surfing on their phones and are told that climate change is to blame for extreme weather conditions when in reality there is no such direct causal connection. Or they are told that we should quickly abandon fossil fuels and use only wind and solar power to save the planet, but the problems with this choice – e.g. that such electricity can only be guaranteed when the conditions are right, i.e., when the wind blows or the sun shines – are not explained to them at all. “None of them really want to see the lights turned off, right? They need their electricity, so they need to be engaged in a more pragmatic discussion about energy and how nations need energy and you need energy, and how are we going to have this cheap energy to keep you plugged in while also addressing the other problems that you’re concerned about,” Weinkle says.
In conclusion, Weinkle’s message here is that, be it energy policies, urban planning, reactions to extreme weather or something else, the approach should always be a practical one, aiming to solve the problem rather than succumbing to emotions. All in all, it does not matter whether you experience a great storm because of climate change or something else. What matters is how you can cope with it and what kind of resources you have at your disposal.
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well covid doesn’t really affect the under 60s. its only really interesting the vaccine effect in the terminally ill because that’s who’s dying of covid
Expanding on that, Steve, the vaccines would always appear to work well in under 60’s because their natural immune system will stop or lessen infection. Those older are more likely to have poorer immune systems so more likely to be affected.
Allowing young healthy people to build natural immunity is the only way we will ever get out of the pandemic. Vaccinating everyone will only prolong the pandemic, and is incredibly dangerous. What happens to a virus that can circulate indefinitely in hosts that neither die nor become properly immune? We don’t know, because it has never been tried before. By all means protect the vulnerable, but we must allow people who are willing to take the risk to catch the virus and become immune.
its going through our primary school like crap through a goose. half my daughters class are off
Just think if that had been allowed to happen last year – we would have a tremendous reservoir of real immunity.
In my grand daughter’s case, children are being sent home at the emergence of a sniffle, even when known to have had SARS. Doh!
yes. we would have been done by now. closing schools (and universities) was moronic
They didn’t close down Universities, just tried and failed to stop students ‘mingling’ in the way that students do, with fantastic results.
They were to all intents and purposes closed – campuses largely off limits, most or all teaching online, social and club/society activities and trips shut down, various restrictions in uni accommodation. A shit experience.
A shit experience no doubt but it didn’t prevent them mingling round our way.
When the entire student body were asked to test prior to going home for Xmas all bar 6 were found to be negative having recovered and so safe to share Xmas lunch with Granma.
If AIUI it’s no more dangerous to children than chickenpox, why’s the policy not the same as for chickenpox? (aka let people live as normal.)
Not that it’s overly important but am curious to understand why it didn’t do that last year. Was it school closures, delta variant or simply more testing now?
I think the vaccines caused it. They caused the delta variant to appear in the first place (the virus mutating in a successful attempt to evade the vaccine), and the vaccinated caught the Delta variant in their droves but were less symptomatic than the unvaccinated. They were therefore the superspreaders responsible for the most recent “wave” amongst younger people.
I’m nostalgic for the Kent variant that was looming on the horizon a year ago.
What is Latin for
I came
I saw
I disappeared?
Veni
Vidi
?
in peak 1 in march 2020 I knew about 3 people that had covid mildly
almost everybody I know had it in the last 6 months – mainly double vaxxed
I had it milder than anyone I know and unvaxxed – my unvaxxed wife had it even milder (tickly throat for a day)
Same here – OH jabbed and Covid tested positive a couple of weeks ago as have a number of colleagues in the last couple of months. Me, unjabbed and exposed to all of these people, not even a sniffle!
As advised by irrelevant NHS 111 recorded message en route to getting put through.
‘Most people who contract Covid19 will experience minor symptoms comparable to a cold. Please stay indoors and self medicate with over the counter flu and cold remedies’.
If that doesn’t spell it out, nothing will.
By virtue of being at a state school with lots of parents who work in the NHS, I think it has already been through everyone in my kids’ classes; parents as well. Parents have given up on masks and are ignoring the head teachers request to keep wearing them in the playground. It’s over in that school, despite the best efforts of the authorities to keep the panic alive.
our primary is totally normal. lots of covid, no masks, no special rules, no shits given by anyone
As per usual since mass schooling began, just like Freshers flu?
Are any ill? The most sensible course would be to get them all infected asap then get back to normal.
The only ‘pandemic’ we witnessed was a pandemic of PCR false positives.
What happens to a virus that can circulate indefinitely in hosts that neither die nor become properly immune?
It’s promoted to a proper, unicelluar organism.
Viruses cannot do this because they aren’t bacteria and are not capable of independent reproduction. Virus replication works by killing host cells as a side effect (slightly simplified), hence, the only way to stay healthy after getting infected with one is immune system stops virus reproduction by eliminating it and the only other possible outcome is death.
I note a sentence in the recent UKHSA vaccine surveillance reports:
This suggests that the vaccinated are not forming a complete immune response when they become infected with covid19. Given that the vaccines give all vaccinated people an identical immune response (to the original spike protein from 2 years ago) it is rather likely that once fully vaccine escape variants come along they will find it more difficult to form an effective protection (this is almost certainly Original Antigenic Sin in action).
This will likely have the effect of prolonging this epidemic and increasing the impact of each infectious season once it becomes endemic.
By vaccination everyone we look to have made things worse for everyone.
But its not about what they say its about.
‘Worse for everyone’?…..not quite.
Yes, that’s what I was alluding to. It’s an incredibly dangerous experiment to perform on the entire world population. At the very least, vaccinating the world with a “leaky” vaccine almost certainly prolongs the pandemic. At worst .. we just don’t know what happens.
‘Allowing young people to build natural immunity is the only way to get out of the pandemic . . .’
We would never have been in a ‘pandemic’ if they had taken note of S.Korea before UK Lockdown one.
Initially they had been reporting X per hundred mortality (hospitalisations/deaths) until they randomly tested several hundred of thousands of citizens and found that a high proportion of mostly young people had already had Covid but barely noticed.
As the number of deaths remained the same this reduced mortality rates to X per 10,000.
Not an epidemiologist or nothing but it struck me as significant at the time.
Can we now just accept that the ” vaccines ”
Do not stop transmission. Do not stop infection. Offer very limited mitigation of symptoms and are, for want of a better word, Pish!
Worse than that. If being “vaccinated” makes you more likely to test positive for covid than being unvaccinated (if you’re over 30), and vaccination offers no significant protection from death with covid in the over 60’s, doesn’t that mean that you are more likely to die “with covid” if you are over 60 and vaccinated (v unvaccinated)?
Something is affecting bozo,
Here he has a half minute Biden moment.
The Guardian YouTube slags him off for talking about Pepa Pig but of more interest is the first thirty seconds.when he loses his place in his speech, cannot ad lib and repeats himself.
Bullingdon boys are supposed to be good at recovering from lapses like this.
spike proteins backing up in his brain?
Sorry about the Guardian link, most others edit out those very illuminating first thirty seconds.
You really think he had the full monty?
probably. I think they actually believe it works. boris had covid and now 2 jabs and a booster. he’s probably addicted to spike proteins
I really believe they all have had it. I don’t believe the saline-jab theory. The point is, these people are true believers in the vaccine, and for a true believer to have a saline-jab, would be to betray thrie faith.
I think some believe up to a point, but probably they figured it was best to have it to avoid anyone discovering that they had cheated, which would be politically disastrous
The truth is probably above their pay grades. If you were a super-villian like Gates, would you trust the truth to a bumbling bafoon like Bozo?
Bumbling bafoon in this clip certainly.
He’s certainly not oozing confidence these days but I think he’s far from a buffoon. It’s an act.
I don’t think it is an act. He is a corrupt P.O.S. psychopath who would probably sell his kids’ kidneys if it meant he could keep nut nuts happy with some new designer wallpaper. A conniving bafoon perhaps.
Corrupt, POS, psychopath – I would not disagree
I don’t think you can get to be PM if you’re stupid.
Political parties can get any malleable turd into a safe seat.
Very normal behaviour in a functioning alcoholic!
That doesn’t seem to follow where the risk is being over 60. If initial vaccination does not prevent death, why would a third be expected to do so?
Soo, how did they find out that the individuels in the tested group had Covid, only with a Pcr Test ? Hopefully not, that would make the study completely useless.
“ those who had been vaccinated at least 14 days prior to infection”
Get back to me on the stats for death within 14 days of injection….
Also, let’s get the data on cancer diagnosis for jabbed and non jabbed.
TIA
It seems that even amongst the sceptical, there needs to be a constant reminder that SARS-CoV-2 really is no big deal – even for the ‘vulnerable’ groups. The increased mortality in the older spectrum largely reflects increased mortality from anything :
and Sweden showed zero excess mortality. its just old people dying of old age and this entire panic is being driven by people writing the name of a novel coronavirus on the death certificate instead of writing ‘old age’
of course they will find younger people that died and go on about them. I had a friend die of a heart attack in his 30s. and another died of sepsis at 40. shit happens but this is not a pandemic of note
look at Sweden – no lockdown, no masks and no bloody deaths!
its all bullshit
Yes, the zero-to-small excess mortality (depending on country) is the give away. Absentia Covid, the people who dies of Covid would have died of something else.
No vaccine protects against infection itself. What they do is enable the body to combat the virus once infected, so that you don’t develop the disease or it’s symptoms.
The question for me is; how effective are the vaccines at protecting against developing symptoms of the disease vs naturally acquired immunity?
I find it fascinating how amazing the immune system is. it can literally fight off anything but chooses not to because there are evolutionarily other things of importance (getting food, finding a mate). so it dials it down to the minimum to conserve energy (something we have in abundance) and sometimes gets wrong footed.
I’ve posted this a couple of times myself. Pfizer also never demonstrated that the vaccine supposedly prevented infection, only that it supposedly prevented mild cases of COVID-19 and not asymptomatic cases of PCR-positivitis. Efficiency against infection is just another propaganda lie from the Covid forever for all the others! camp.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8546144/
and the jabs have effects…
our study recommends additional caution when vaccinating people with pre-existing clinical conditions, including diabetes, electrolyte imbalances, renal dysfunction, and coagulation disorders.
as does lockdown
https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/20/coronavirus-lockdown-cause-200000-extra-deaths-13014848/
Coronavirus lockdown could cause ‘200,000 extra deaths’
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.10712
Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test
Any study that begins by saying “Vaccination has proven effective against infection with SARS-CoV-2, as well as death and hospitalisation following COVID-19 illness” cannot be trusted. We already know the absolute efficacy is close to zero and during the ‘trial’ more people died in the ‘vaxed’ group than in the placebo group. So we dont meed any more number fiddling thank you.
As last year people were locked down in the ‘peaks’ now they can act like that the vaccines are working. As there is almost 0 control group left you will never be able to prove otherwise.
Anyone that’s studied the medical literature, particularly the Pfizer study is aware that these jabs have NO efficacy and a horrendous safety profile. Slowly but surely the facts are becoming undeniable. It is becoming patently obvious with every passing day and the news from Europe, that this is fundamentally about one thing; Control of the ‘Useless eaters’. There is no Science anymore only politics. If we halt this. Which we must. We must forever be vigilant. We became complacent while the enemy infiltrated all our institutions and slowly erroded the Christian values that this country is based upon. Hold the line. We will succeed!
The 95% confidence intervals for >65 are very large. This means the difference is statistically insignificant but it could be quite big. Also it is curious that the mean difference between vaccine and unvaccine in >65 seems to get larger as the time after vaccination gets greater.
The virus is yesterdays news.
The pandemic now is the injuries and deaths caused directly by the experimental jab, but will be blamed on Covid, which will become worse with each so-called booster.
Just as well since most are brain dead already…
They test for the flu since they’ve never isolated Covid-19. Which makes me wonder how they can tell there is a delta variant. They never isolated the virus but they use a test to show the damage of a solution does on monkey kidney cells then show the cellular debris as proof of the virus. So, they can use this method to claim an UNENDING! amount of variants. A lot of cancers and “viruses” are probably just different forms of parasites. Since the tests can’t differentiate between cold and flu and covid then doesn’t that mean ivermectin cures both the cold and the flu? Welcome to “they’ve been lying to us our entire lives about everything”. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Just say it, the mRNA toxic chemical cocktail is a dud.
“To the extent that the vaccine protects against infection, it will protect against serious illness and death too”.
What the heck does this even mean?
The vaccine doesn’t stop transmission, so it won’t stop you getting infected with the Kung Flu or passing it on.
Let’s all stop tap-dancing around the pseudo-vaccines ponzi scheme and call it out for what it is – the greatest medical scam in history.
Why even the argument for over 60s. It was never meant to and never have been proven to protect anyone from anything. On the contrary it has been designed to do harm.
“This inclusion criterion thus excludes patients with obvious vaccine hesitancy (so-called ‘anti-vaxxers’) as this is correlated with other health-related behaviours that might confound associations with COVID-19 outcomes”
Which people < 60 don’t get the annual Flu vaccine? I would wager the healthiest ones who don’t see Flu as a problem. Since when has skipping the Flu vaccine become an anti-vax position?
This study could also say: having the Flu jab increases your chance of death from Covid in the < 60’s.
Could the declining vitamin D status of the elderly be playing a part here? Among the elderly, might this not be a relevant critical component in their immune response capacity?
Hi there, I just wanted to comment that I do not agree with what you have said a few times recently and having coined the expression ‘healthy vaccine effect’ I would say it’s the opposite from personal experience, as an extremely healthy 55 year old nutritional therapist who has decided not to take the jab: i am on no medication, I eat very well, i am a good weight, i look after myself etc etc there are many many like me who decided to trust in our immune systems being able to cope rather than taking an unknown, experimental vaccine. I am not an anti Vaxxer just never felt the need to have flu jabs ( never had flu) and although I had COVID it was very mild, after an antibody test I see I am still naturally protected after a year, thus this offers better protection than the vaccine which wanes after 6 months supposedly…I believe in the power of good food, and relevant supplements like vitamin c, d, zinc etc. So although there may be some who cannot take the vaccine as they may have an underlying condition – especially an autoimmune disease which the vaccine may make worse – or they may have had an adverse reaction to the first jab and decided not to continue…I think there are many like me who do not rely on a a’ magic bullet’ to solve this crisis but prefer to see it out naturally…also I think I am actually quite sensible and risk averse – just not fear averse! in good health to you all…