There follows a guest post by George Santayana, the pseudonym of a senior executive of a pharmaceutical company, who says it all went wrong when the focus of public health changed to be about minimising COVID-19 at all costs.
A few months ago, I heard a discussion on the Today programme about the lifting of ‘Plan B’ restrictions in care homes. What was most notable (and depressing) about this was the casual way the contributors talked about the impact these restrictions had had on the care home residents and how the endless cycle of COVID-19 testing and resulting constant trickle of positive results meant that effectively some homes were in permanent lockdown. Meaning that frail, vulnerable people were effectively locked in their rooms for days, if not weeks, on end, with relatives unable to visit and staff close to breaking point. What was so tragic was the matter-of-fact way in which this was discussed. The ‘we-had-no-choice-ness’ of the conversation and the fact that although it was obvious that this was cruel and inhumane, what else could we do? And to give the contributors their due, they didn’t really have much choice as they had to either follow COVID-19 guidance or shut down.
But it got me thinking, how did we get here? How can it be that the very people we were aiming to protect from COVID-19 became victims to policies that essentially resulted in their incarceration, swapping the risks of a significant respiratory infection for the realities of a miserable, isolated existence? How did we get to the point where we had to destroy living in order to save lives?
I think the answer to this question goes right back to the beginning of the pandemic and the shift in public health policy that occurred in the first few weeks of COVID-19 hitting our shores.
When COVID-19 emerged as a significant new human disease, it was inevitable that lots of people would get ill and that some, unfortunately, would die. Chris Whitty said as much at the beginning. Given these facts, what should have been the public health response? Simply put, it should have been to minimise the impact of COVID-19 on the health and wellbeing of the population. An aim that while recognising the seriousness of COVID-19, doesn’t make it a special case but instead something to be managed within the broader context of overall public health. By considering this broader context and recognising that there are other health needs within the population, attention would focus on achieving the ‘biggest bang for the buck’ and in protecting those most vulnerable. We’d anticipate beefing up of necessary medical support and, for the longer-term, investing in the development of new treatments, including vaccinations. There would be advice and guidance, but government would most likely be promoting a ‘keep calm and carry on’ approach, especially once it became clear that the disease was not significant to a large segment of the population. As we learned more about COVID-19, so our approaches would evolve and become more refined.
Broadly speaking, this sort of thinking is what sits behind proposals like the Great Barrington Declaration and other focused protection initiatives. Ironically, such approaches have been criticised for being ‘discriminatory’ because they would have resulted in vulnerable people shouldering the burden of restrictions. But judging by the discussions about care homes I heard, it’s difficult to see how much more burdensome they could have been. But this is an aside.
The trouble is that strategies which focus on minimising the impacts of COVID-19 are balanced and mean accepting that some people will inevitably die of COVID-19. It is this point that makes them politically extremely challenging. Something I suspect that the newly minted public health experts at No.10 armed with a whiteboard and a few marker pens probably realised fairly soon into the pandemic. And so, whipped on by a generally scientifically illiterate media crying ‘for something to be done’, an opposition poised to jump on any misstep and supported by dubious computer modelling and highly vocal computer modellers predicting corpses piling up in the street, the Government altered the original public health aim from ‘trying to minimise the impact of COVID-19’ to ‘trying to minimise the impact of COVID-19′. A goal that is politically much easier to state and build policy around.
Although superficially similar (and of course one way of minimising the impact of COVID-19 is to minimise the amount of the disease), these two aims are profoundly different because by making the goal the minimisation of COVID-19 elevates COVID-19 to a unique position amongst diseases and disorders. It places COVID-19 and its reduction/elimination above everything else. In effect we turn a new coronavirus infection into Space Plague; a disease unknown to man against which any measures are justified as long as they might reduce the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Almost everything that has happened during the pandemic flows from this apparently simple change in public health focus.
To illustrate the impact of this change in focus you only have to look at lockdowns. Under the broader public health aim, the question would not be whether lockdowns reduce the amount of COVID-19 in the country, but whether they are effective at reducing its impact. Answering this question means seeing whether lockdowns stack up against the twin needs of having a positive balance of benefit and risk and being cost-effective. Taking each in turn.
To understand the balance of benefit and risk of lockdown we’d not only consider how many COVID-19 infections and subsequent deaths might be avoided (the benefit) but its negative impact on non-COVID-19 health and wellbeing (the risk). As is now becoming clearer and clearer, the negative impacts of lockdowns are profound, broad, long-lived, and given that almost every person under lockdown suffers from a loss of quality of life to some extent, probably vastly outweigh any positive benefits. So, from the perspective of an impact on public health and wellbeing, lockdowns clearly fail the benefit/risk test.
Looking now at the cost-effectiveness of lockdowns. From a purely pounds spent point of view the costs of lockdowns are eye-watering – for example, think of the billions spent on keeping healthy people off work. But analysing the cost-effectiveness of lockdown is not just about the money spent on it but recognising that with finite resources (and resources are always finite) spending money on one thing means not spending it on something else, the so-called lost opportunity costs. For lockdowns, the lost opportunity costs are staggering; all the treatments we didn’t do as we tooled up the health service to focus only on COVID-19, all the cancer screening visits missed, all the operations cancelled, all the R&D pounds and dollars redirected to COVID-19 that now won’t be spent on other diseases. The lost careers, the lost businesses and livelihoods, the lost years of schooling, the lost visits to loved ones, the lost opportunities for millions of people both young and old. These are the true costs of lockdowns and goodness only knows what they really are and what their impacts will be in the long-term. So, again, lockdowns spectacularly fail to meet the grade.
When you look at lockdowns in this way, it is hardly surprising that the original pandemic plan dismissed them as an unviable approach and groups like the WHO originally didn’t support their use. From a public health perspective they simply create more issues than they solve. But the trouble is that the modified public health aim of ‘minimise COVID-19’ queers the pitch because COVID-19 cases and deaths count above everything else. So, just like the discussion that I heard on care homes, it isn’t that we’re blind to the side effects or the costs, it’s just that compared to the goal of minimising COVID-19 they are deemed unimportant. Is it any wonder that sceptical voices failed to be heard? The arguments against lockdown aren’t really about how effective it is at ‘limiting the spread’ or reducing deaths due to COVID-19 (probably not very as it turns out) but how much harm and damage it does in meeting this aim. But if we only focus on a singular aim as important, then who cares about the other stuff?
Lockdowns, masks, screening, social distancing, self-isolation, school and business closures, travel restrictions, vaccinations of healthy youngsters etc., etc. – all are valid whatever the cost or collateral damage as long as they might reduce COVID-19. It’s this COVID-19 monomania that also justifies the use of dubious psychological fear tactics to ensure compliance and is why we came to obsess over COVID-19 screening results and deaths in isolation from all other diseases or causes of injury and death. It’s how we ended up with a disease whose only symptom might be two lines on a testing stick, but which then demands that healthy people suffer days of self-imposed, isolated existence.
All medicine is about the balance of benefit and risk. There’s a good reason why ‘first do no harm’ is part of the medical mantra as it recognises that medical intervention has the real potential to make things worse rather than better. Non-pharmaceutical interventions shouldn’t be immune from this kind of thinking – why should they be? Why shouldn’t we look at the mental, physical, and financial misery caused by things like lockdown and weigh these up against the perceived COVID-19 benefits? This isn’t putting money over lives, it’s recognising that non-COVID-19 suffering is as equally important as COVID-19 suffering.
I wouldn’t want to be a politician facing the challenges of COVID-19, as there are no easy decisions. There is no ‘zero deaths’ option that sets the clock back to pre-COVID-19. Regardless of what is done, some people will suffer and no doubt this suffering will be writ large in newspaper pages, social media posts and websites. COVID-19 might be the cause of this suffering, but it doesn’t mean that should be the sole focus of our efforts to reduce its impact.
Finally, I am fearful that the Public Inquiry will also be skewed by assuming the special status of COVID-19 and accepting the false prospectus that the aim of policy should have been to ‘reduce COVID-19’. If this happens, it will inevitably conclude a ‘should have been faster and harder’ outcome. No doubt there will be acknowledgement of the harms caused, and being caused, by our response to COVID-19, but ultimately, rather like that discussion on the harms to vulnerable people in care homes, they will be simply written off as ‘we-had-no-choice’ and an acceptable price for the greater goal of trying to minimise COVID-19.
I still feel all of this hangs over us like the sword of Damocles and it will only take enough bleating in Boris’s ear for us to move back into restrictions and mandates.
But today I’m going to enjoy the sun and maybe head to the pub for a few beers with friends. If lockdown has taught us anything, it is to not take things for granted and enjoy life when and where you can.
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Eight years or so ago, a slew of reports appeared saying that the Great Barrier Reef was ‘dead”.
At the same time, numerous holiday companies were offering snorkelling trips on the Great Barrier Reef.
It seemed odd at the time.
Interview with Darren Nesbit, of The Light Paper & Daz Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJzGLgZefRk
Resistance GB
Don’t get complacent. Let’s keep getting the message out with our friendly resistance.
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The Great Barrier Reef Hoax, a subset of the Great Climate Change Hoax.
Add to this Covid Pandemic hoax and the Covid vaccine hoax….. where does it end …..looks like we just might have… a ‘conspiracy’!
Who could possibly have guessed?
So…..we ask…exactly who might gain from all this?
I went to the sea life centre in Darwin about 5 years ago. The chap who ran it said the local reef was fine and that the Great Barrier Reef was dying because of agricultural run off.
Yep – it’s not climate change. It’s pollution that’s the problem. But it’s easier to point the finger at people and say we’re responsible rather than at companies and corporations that dump their toxic shit all over the place. A classic ‘look over there’.
Read Dr Moore’s book ”Fake Invisible Catastrophes” – that’ll explain it to you.
Please don’t interrupt Australia when it is in the process of destroying itself.
The downvote is the stupidest way to express yourself on the internet. What exactly are you against? You think Australia should be interrupted? Or Australia isn’t destroying itself? Or you just don’t like anything loopy? Grow a pair, come out from hiding behind the couch, and if you’ve got a point, make it. Or carry on being a bit of a dick, your choice.
The downvote exists for when someone says something stupid but not interesting enough to bother to engage with. It lets them know you think the comment is daft without you having to waste time with engaging with someone who isn’t worth engaging with.
I don’t disagree with what you said in your original comment, and I didn’t downvote it. Just letting you know what the downvote is for.
I did downvote your response to yourself though. Never respond to yourself.
And never respond to someone who responds to themselves. And further, never respond to someone who responds to themselves, who responds to themselves.
FWIW I usually enjoy loopDloop’s posts. I sense tongue-in-cheek in their remarks.
In it’s present mood, Australia will probably depth-charge the GBR for un-Australian conduct in either dying or thriving – depending on whether it suits ‘The Science’. Whatever happens, it will lead to a slew of heart-attacks and strokes among the people.
Destruction for the sake of destruction is not a virtue.
Yeah but without global warming the reefs would have been cooler.
Save our tuna.
They need to change their tuna.
They need to stop carping on about global warming
They’re skate-ing on thin ice.
They’re selling their soles over this. I’ve haddock nuff now.
I’ve always thought that AGW was a load of Pollocks anyway.
Carp are fresh water fish – they should be more worried about phosphate poisoning .
So the question used to be, how do they get away with such blatant lies?
Now, post-Covid propaganda blitz, we understand many people only use mainstream sources of information, and often just skim headlines at that.
We have all seen the technique in action; bold headline e.g. Children may be at risk of death from Variant X, then on the second last paragraph of the article it states some resemblance of fact e.g. scientists conclude that few children will be exposed to Variant X, the study had a tiny sample size, this is probably not an issue etc.
Do we just let it run its course? In time the world will not burn, we won’t all die of thirst because of global warming etc.
I am at a loss as to how to counter this. Most people I know are far from being eco fanatics, but do accept the basic premise of anthropogenic climate change. Much like they didn’t question the Covid narrative.
I do despair at times as counter information is so easy to find.
Not much we can do. When seated in a circus, try to laugh at the juggling trapeze elephants.
Truth is also a matter of will. We can make info and arguments available, but can’t make them see sense unless they want truth and ‘activate’ it.
Eventually cumulative effects add up and they absorb passively: claiming they always knew we were right.
Yes, you are correct. The efforts is in waiting for people to catch up, and being able to stomach the notion they knew all along. Like the tens of millions of people who were secretly part of the French Resistance all through the war.
You forgot Russia to invade Ukraine on Wednesday.
Not before I’ve watched Countdown, I hope.
I think it is Russia’s false flag event scheduled for Wednesday. So now the west can actually lob a rocket at Russia and the media will lap it up as Putin’s false flag. It is so pathetically transparent. The Russians seem far more skillful than our reprogrammed military commanders so hopefully the west will be outplayed, again. That is if course under the assumption that both sides aren’t being choreographed by the same powers.
This is a good example. The lies from Western countries are blatant to the extent Russian commentators are pointing out the falsehoods as well as priming the world for the false flag events to come. They even ridicule Western audiences as unable to see through quite poorly constructed lies from their own news agencies.
Depressing in many respects.
It used to be necessary for education to include some prescribed features, like the three Rs. Beyond that, and even in LA/state education, pupils were then encouraged to read, experiment and so forth, to develop their ideas and understanding. This encouraged critical and independent thought; by no means ubiquitous, but more prevalent than now.
This is no longer so, and the thoughts and perceptions of many are just the regurgitated propaganda from the few (the “influencers”), which is now spoon-fed by way of “educators”, social media, Big Tech, Big Pharma, government advertising, the MSM and other parties. It’s very much a case of “can’t see the wood for the trees”.
I agree. But those techniques also need a receptive audience. I do believe the underlying issue is comfort. Life is pretty good. We have not had any major threat to our existence in recent times.
I’m not suggesting we subject people to constant existential threats of course. But that these things are self correcting. An entire generation is emerging into adulthood seemingly unable to cope, and expecting Big Gov to solve every problem they encounter which it cannot do.
Perhaps that will trigger a collapse and a period of reflection.
You make good points. The encroachment of the State upon the individual has been insidious, and rapid. I have always thought that any decent relationship (employer and employee, government and citizen, marriage/partnerships etc.) has to be a two-way street, with respect, rights and obligations on both sides, but in some balance or equilibrium.
When that balance is “out of kilter”, then the relationship almost always begins to degrade, with one party acquiring power or influence over the other. Sometimes this change is voluntary, but I think mainly not. Of course, the most recent example is the behaviour of the populace and government during Covid. It then becomes moot, as to if or how the relationship can be brought back into balance; always assuming that it should be, which I believe is essential .
Indeed, there is a reason a preoccupation for rules emerged so early in the UK, especially England. Our seminal early episode being Magna Carta. We have this within us, even if the younger generation seem indifferent to free speech and seem riled by “hate speech” and the like. It lurks there in the background acting as some kind of counterbalance.
My own concern is the effect of mass immigration on this. We are importing people with absolutely no traditions of freedom or preoccupation with keeping the State in check, and no analogs to Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights from 1689. The young may be indifferent but that could just be youth. But what to make of those who’ve had authoritarianism hammered into their genome over centuries and millenia?
Much of the recent push for things like the Hate Crime Bill in Scotland, for example, are very much shrouded in discussions about ethnicity, culture and the tensions caused by mass immigration. The solution to these inevitable tensions is for us to change to accommodate them.
I have some faith in equilibrium being the end state; a generation can initially be lax about freedom, but soon learns why the Barons put King John under the cosh. They learn through experience why that matters. But I have more concerns about those hostile to freedom itself, many of whom we are importing.
No doubt my little blast of white superemacy will get a few downvotes
Good points.
The problem is MASS immigration. But pointing that out leads to accusations of being against immigration per se.
Just as being against COVID-19 vaccination leads to being called an antivaxer.
A standard attack that is difficult to explain to the average normie.
I am against immigration per se. In a country with millions unemployed there is an extremely limited number we need. I’d like to see more people make this case; why have immigration at all? We are not a teeny country of a few millions.
I am happy to ignore that restriction for some sectors, the most obvious being academia; I’d be happy for them to attract whatever talent they need.
But mass immigration for us means the world’s poor. The miasma of racism that surrounds these discussions prevents any normal discussion about the practical realities e.g. how exactly does the UK benefit from importing someone with an IQ under 85 who will have five kids? Throw in the emerging prospect of foreigners who seem to be raising kids to hate white Europeans and all we are doing is setting the stage for conflict further down the line.
I couldn’t agree more.
Indeed if only those classed as “workers” had been allowed in with time-limited work permits then much of the mess could have been avoided. No property purchase rights could have prevented the growth of the various ghettos around our country.
the reason behind the problems of mass immigration is that all below average wage immigrants harm the wider economy.
but…
They lower wages and increase rents and the people who control the government benefit from that as they pick up the effective subsidies the harmful migrants benefit from (at taxpayer expense).
I get the economic effects of low-wage immigrants. But the demographic timebomb is the element they are desperate for people not to discuss. There are certain cultural groups we are importing in substantial numbers, now in their fourth generation, who still speak foreign languages to their children at home (naming no names of course). These groups cannot be said to be assimilating, which was the counterargument made in the 1950s when concerns were raised; any objection to immigration was racist because their kids would be British etc. That’s what concerns me. The low wages are just speeding the descent of our own poor.
Correct – see Soros’ “Open Society” objectives and of course the infamous Coudenhove Kalergi plan.
We are experiencing the planned “Untergang des Abendlands” predicted by Oswald Spengler back in the early 1920s
I absolutely agree. I used to keep it to myself. But we need to lose the fear of being labelled as imperialist dogs just because we like our own homeland
And don’t get me started on Soros, lol.
No downticks from me
Thanks for this. I think it’s really perceptive to link these different issues by the common element of the health of their relationship. Vital information.
I wish it would hurry up and collapse so the free can start building the new world.
I agree to this extent. It’s the comfortable in any society who seem to delight in worrying about climate change. The ones for whom life isn’t pretty good are too busy managing as best they can with the world as it is – they have real, daily problems on their plate.
If they follow Truss’s geography, they’ll never find Ukraine anyway.
My son’s girlfriend, a Russian passport holder, was unimpressed to find out that the city she lives in (Rostov-on-Don) is not part of Russia. She was scathing about Truss.
There’s a long but interesting article here: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-washington-has-lost-its-mind-over-ukraine-200513 suggesting that the proposed “invasion” of Ukraine is an invention of the West (even Ukraine’s President says so), that the Russians would have the manpower for an invasion but not for the subsequent occupation, and it wouldn’t be popular with the Russian people, although it would be popular with residents of the Donbas. When the alleged “invasion” doesn’t take place, Biden can take the credit for it.
When I have pointed people towards alternative sources of information, they don’t want to know, or label it “conspiracy theories”.
One even said ” how do we know that they are telling the truth?”.
Yeah, like the BBC never lies, you mean?
I have had the same experience. You point them towards a scientist on Substack, for example. Someone with a calm, rational take on things, using ONS stats etc. But they don’t want to know.
We all make the mistake of thinking most people are pretty much like ourselves. Yes they can be deceived, but we assume the deception is an external force, propaganda imposed by some nefarious group of which they are unaware. While this is true to an extent, it is difficult to fully grasp how receptive most people are to obvious faslehoods. That is the bit I find hard. Like you I have friends and family members who reject any rational challenge to a narrative they clearly want to embrace, presumably for emotional reasons.
Most people on the planet (90%+) don’t understand science which is why the green blob embraced propaganda instead. Everyone gets propaganda.
It’s also why they politicised the subject. Politics is the only area of authority that doesn’t require any qualifications. Everyone is allowed a political opinion no matter how extreme.
The winds of political dissent are now beginning to gently whistle through the corridors of politics as the reality of renewable energy begins to bite.
That’s where change will come and politicians never want to be the fall guy for anything. They are already backing away from the loony fringe and finding a source of blame, Nut Nut’s in the UK, Biden (obviously) in the US. Even the monster raving loony greens in Germany are beginning to face reality and shuffling sideways now.
You’ll also notice that Boris has not so subtly introduced nuclear as a topic for discussion and renewables now have competition as the EU has announces gas and nuclear are now green fuels.
The language is also subtly changing, the ‘environment’ is replacing ‘green’. Green politics has nothing to do with saving the planet, but the majority of the grass munching public just won’t notice the difference.
Steve Baker, Ian Duncan Smith and David Davis have come out the closet and written columns in the Telegraph openly criticising Boris’ approach to NetZero. That’s a big deal as politicians don’t break cover without considerable support.
Covid was also instructive with, I believe, getting on for 30% of the adult population unvaccinated. And whilst much of the country walked around like extra’s from the Living Dead movies, many more people did, and are, waking up to our government’s rank stupidity over every major subject it meddles in.
The talk now from Boris’ new appointee is that our incumbent government will be rolling back its interference in the public’s lives. What does that mean?
In addition, global temperatures aren’t doing quite what the green blob wants them to. As of February 2022 satellite readings show there has been no warming for seven years and that temperatures are now lower than in the late 80’s.
And what’s the green blob doing about all this? After 50 years of blaming CO2 as the single most important contributor to global warming, they are now trying to drag Methane into the conversation. Arguably a more potent greenhouse gas, but an even smaller fraction of the atmosphere than CO2.
Pathetic.
You make some great points. Very rational too.
The recent challenges to the NetZero obsession you mentioned do mimic the same turnaround on Covid. You are right in that the secret to understanding politicians behaviour is not to superimpose statesmanlike motives, but to understand everything they do is for effect. That is maddening when intelligent MPs embrace obvious nonsense like reducing meat consumption to save the planet. But it also provides a mechanism to bring it to a halt. They’ll respond equally swiftly when the winds change and we all become pro-meat etc.
It is easy to forget that aspect. Those who believe in nothing, and back any winning horse, will back your winning horse too.
I must be part of the 90% that doesn’t understand science although by today’s educational standards I am probably at under graduate level. However, I am here on DS and despite my non-logical brain I worked out over thirty years ago that global warming was bollox. I also worked out within six weeks at most that C1984 was a scam.
How did I manage these intellectual feats?
No idea really, perhaps it is simply that I am an awkward bugger and don’t like being told what to think, so if I don’t agree I find evidence to back me up.
Mass Formation psychology seems to reveal something. Not saying that hypothesis is actual. Just that it explains a lot, when there is no sense in observed behaviours.
These kind of ‘formations’ go through cycles in social organisation over the ages. They are born, grow strong, then weaken and eventually die. We happen to be maybe near the peak of growth today.
Given these repeat cycles appear to be driven by the outer development of people on the whole(scientific religiosity, militant materialism, god shaped hole etc), if one wants to ‘act’, then how about a focus on the inner development.
For one can change oneself for the better, in the morning. This is a certainty we can all change, with the will.
Imagine if a majority of people were to make an attempt at it. How high might we then climb?
I am not sure about mass formation either, although the more generic term mass hysteria perhaps works just as well.
But we should also remember whole chunks of society have not bought into it. I’ve noted near me those least likely to wear masks in supermarkets and cafes are working class men. I often see tradesmen working nearby nipping in to Tesco’s to buy lunch. Not a mask in sight. (The most hilarious episode being two guys who looked like plasterers walking in to a supermarket maskless, in their splattered work clothes, with professional respirators round their neck; these are more effective than paper masks, but they were for work use of course)
We perhaps overstate the influence of the bedwetting chattering classes. The fearful types with just enough to lose in life to make them hesitate and toe the line. I strongly suspect much of the background murmur of white supremacy, extremism and the very obvious attempts to link it with football supporters is the awareness of the social engineers there is a whole strata of society that is indifferent to their machinations. They are not horrible transphobic racists, they are simply ignoring the signals. I do think the Western societies that will survive the tender mercies of the WEF are those who look after the great unwashed, not those who pander to the laptop class.
Partly this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M
If global warming is caused by humans then there is a problem with the number of humans on the planet and our numbers need to be reduced. What the planet needs is some sort of pandemic to reduce the number of CO2 producing humans. Oh wait a minute didn’t we have a pandemic and the worlds population went up by 80 million. Looks like the planet is screwed then.
The planet is screwed. Or rather, we are. The planet will recover after we’ve gone, and produce new life forms, hopefully less toxic than we are.
Oh please. The planet is fine. Never been better. It is fairly big too, which helps.
Examples of how the planet is screwed please.
IPCC WHO UN UNESCO Government ….
The IPCC is remarkably benign about the fate of the planet.
All the bodies you cite are bureaucratic organisations, not physical planetary phenomenons which is what was being discussed.
Invariably I tend to agree with you Annie but to suggest the planet is “screwed” is nonsense.
“Nothing to see here. Move along while we just ‘revise’ the earlier temperatures down to fit in with our false narrative”.
This is what’s happening to all early temperature records, and even more recent ones, as this graphic from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (which is part of NASA) shows.
GISS is affiliated with the Gates-funded Columbia University Earth Institute. The institute is located at Columbia University, which was home to the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxism – so it has a long history of animosity towards Whites and has consistently worked to undermine and ultimately destroy their societies.
“Hide the decline….” Google it.
I get emails every week from http://www.consciousplanet.org. It’s a big worldwide movement that’s currently starting up. They reckon that soil quality and farming practices are the primary issue. Rising CO2 levels are only a symptom.
Their scientific foundation for this is?
I don’t know. Ask them.
You promoted it but don’t know anything about it?
Regenerative farming could absorb a lot of CO2, if that’s what we want to stabilise the planet’s average temperature at around 15 degC … which is where it stood in the mid 20th.C.
We don’t wish to precipitate a new ice age though, as I said in an earlier comment. That would really ruin our day.
Anthropomorphising inanimate objects without agency is always a sign of nonsense IMHO
The planet is not conscious.
Neither it seems are most of the people on it!
I cannot disagree.
Anthropomorphic climate change…brought too you by “Limits to Growth” from the Rockefeller Club of Rome, you know, the same people who brought you big pharma as an offshoot of the oil industry! So it’s absolutely a crock of shit….
If I never read another of those ‘Great Barrier Reef faces extinction due to [insert horror de jour here]’ headlines in my lifetime, I’ll die with a slightly better opinion of my fellow human beings.
I wonder if anyone had added up all the claims of “X% of the Great Barrier Reef died this year”.
We must be knocking on 1000% by now, surely.
There is a website that tracks every single prediction made by the climate alarmist groups, and annotates it with updates. It is a litany of excitable nonsense. It is however satisfying seeing quotes from prominent people from as far back as 1990 saying things like “there will be no ice caps by 2010”, or “young children today (1995) in the UK will never see snow”.
There are many examples of this. The fact that it cuts no ice (lol) with the media is the best proof of their collusion. Even a junior trainee journalist could produce an article listing a handful of key predictions similar to today’s pronouncements and compare now to then.
Where would I find that site? It sound like a good read.
Caption Competition
‘Spot the mint humbugs’
The only way to save the reef is first isolate it and then vaccinate it
Static temperatures are proof of both global warming and climate change, according to the doomsday cult.
Summary:
COVID is a scam, like H1N1 swine flu 2009, just better covered up/censored.
Climate change is much more complicated. Read James Kunstler’s book in 2005 ‘The Long Emergency’. He covers it quite well. (He has a good regular blog.)
The Daily Sceptic should concentrate on the scam it knows, rather than spreading its efforts too thinly. We have to fight and defeat the bastards who are trying to install medical dictatorship first of all.
On climate change, it’s possible that 250 years of fossil fuel burning prevented the next ice age, which was due about now. We don’t seem to know for sure. I do remember a magazine front cover from 1975 about ‘the next ice age’.
Is that why the south pole has just recorded its coldest 6-month period since records began?
Oh I read something about that sort of thing.
It’s because climate change means we have extremes happening. Like, you know, as the globe warms some places (like the South Pole) will be/get extremely cold. And some places will have lots of rain and others none.
It’s really amazing and very scary.
We could all play the game of guessing how many times they will have written the term “climate change” on the script for various tangentially linked programmes by the usual suspects, many of which had a good reputation in the past!
It’s worth noting that, notwithstanding any real variation in the natural system compared with our behaviour, we live in an ‘interesting’ part of the world for meteorological volatility. Relatively minor variations to the jet stream have a major effect on things like rainfall, wind speed and so on in any given area. Each season tends to vary a lot from year to year (and it has been like that for half a century or more).
The other side of the coin is, where would we be if no coal was burned over the last 250 years? Not here, for sure. Many of us would not exist at all.
Is this the same as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which no-one can find either (except with photos taken after a tsunami!)
Off subject
The regime in Wales has been handed the money for the cost of living poll tax rebate by The Treasury
Instead of passing the rebate on to home owners the regime will divert the money to subsidise low wages in the care sector
Every care worker will receive a £1,000 bonus from the regime at a cost of £96m
I can understand the regimes thinking. Why give the money to home owners who are unlikely to vote Labour when you can give it to care workers who will/may give you their vote in return
As with most people who couldn’t run a whelk stall the communists have not worked out that 30% of that money will go straight back to the Treasury in the form of income tax and national insurance payments
The regime seem also not to realise that they are in fact subsidising the ‘capitalist scum’ that run most of the care industry in Wales. Why increase staff wages if the regime will do it for you?
Oh the deep joy of socialism
(I make no party political point……a curse on all their houses)
More “Climate Emergency” lies exposed then? I thought all the coral were supposed to be dead by now?
The conspiratorial use of a climate “catastrophe” ( all our fault so we must be punished ) as one of the tools to ‘justify’ to the gullible ( especially the weaponised children) the imposition of Fascist Global Government by Corporates, Billionaires and Bankers seems to get clearer by the day.
What an “Inconvenient Truth” this must be for Al Gore, who has dined out in style on his ‘Climate Change Horror Show “for two decades!
No doubt Zuckerberg will “fact check” this into a Social Media black hole and Gates will buy up even more land for his Mealy Worm farms.
(“What’s to stop the billionaires from ‘poisoning’ the coral anyway to even-up their ‘truth’? After all as their Marxist allies say: “The end justifies the means”, doesn’t it ?)
I am confused by the Peter Ridd chart. He doesn’t give a link to his data and it doesn’t seem to tie up with AIMS own report.
A bit off-topic but I notice they have almost convinced the poor that they should eat insects instead of meat, and will use the climate to increase airfares so they cannot travel, reserving the nicer bits of the world.
Any evidence showing up the global warming nonsense for what it is should be welcomed. Real pollution is a different matter.
Fallen Icon by Susan Crockford is worth reading about the great Walrus deception by ‘national treasure’ Sir David Attenborough.
More people need to read Dr Patrick Moore’s ”Fake Invisible Catastrophes And Threats Of Doom”. Lots of information there, from someone who knows his stuff.