Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Why Are Progressives So Illiberal? - American Greatness

Why Are Progressives So Illiberal? - American Greatness: One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that progressive ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even…

 

Why Are Progressives So Illiberal?

One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that progressive ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda. Its reach resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.

Pan-progressivism

To be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or a NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 98 percent of Big Tech political donations went to Democrats in 2020. Censorship and deplatforming on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies is decidedly one-way. When Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley donate $500 million to help officials “get out the vote” in particular precincts, it is not to help candidates of both parties.

Google calibrates the order of its search results with a progressive, not a conservative, bent. Grandees from the Clinton or Obama Administration find sinecures in Silicon Valley, not Republicans or conservatives.

The $4-5 trillion market-capitalized Big Tech cartels, run by self-described progressives, aimed to extinguish conservative brands like Parler. Ironically, they now apply ideological force multipliers to the very strategies and tactics of 19th-century robber-baron trusts and monopolies. Poor Jack Dorsey has never been able to explain why Twitter deplatforms and cancels conservatives for the same supposed uncouthness that leftists routinely employ.

Silicon Valley apparently does not believe in either the letter or the spirit of the First Amendment. It exercises a monopoly over the public airwaves, and resists regulations and antitrust legislation of the sort that liberals once championed to break up trusts in the late 19th and early 20th century. As payback, it assumes that Democrats don’t see Big Tech in the same manner that they claim to see Big Pharma in their rants against it.

Wall Street donated markedly in favor of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden in their respective presidential races. Whereas conservative administrations and congressional majorities are seen as natural supporters of free-market capitalism, their Democratic opponents, not long ago, were not—and thus drew special investor attention and support from Wall Street realists.

The insurrectionist GameStop stock debacle revealed how “liberals” on Wall Street reacted when a less connected group of investors sought to do what Wall Street grandees routinely do to others: ambush and swarm a vulnerable company’s stock in unison either to buy or sell it en masse and thus to profit from predictable, artificially huge fluctuations in the price.

When small investors at Reddit drove the pedestrian GameStop price up to well over a hundred times its worth, forcing big Wall Street investment companies to lose billions of dollars, progressives on Wall Street and the business media cried foul. They compared the Reddit buyers to the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6.

One subtext was: Why would nobodies dare question the mega-profit making monopolies of the Wall Street establishments? The point that neither the Reddit day-traders nor the hedge-fund connivers were necessarily healthy for investment was completely lost.

Surveys of “diverse” university faculty show overwhelming left-wing support, reified by asymmetrical contributions of 95-1 to Democratic candidates. The dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. to make race incidental to our characters no longer exists on campuses. Appearance is now essential. More ironic, class considerations are mostly ignored in favor of identity politics. “Equity” applies to race not class. The general education curricula is one-sided and mostly focused on deductive -studies courses, and in particular race/class/gender zealotry that is anti-Enlightenment in the sense that predetermined conclusions are established and selected evidence is assembled to prove them.

We are also currently witnessing the greatest assault on free speech and expression, and due process, in the last 70 years. And the challenges to the First and Fifth Amendments are centered on college campuses, where non-progressive speakers are disinvited, shouted down, and occasionally roughed up for their supposedly reactionary views—and by those who have little fear of punishment.

Students charged with “sexual harassment” or “assault” are routinely denied the right to face their accusers, cross examine witnesses, or bring in counterevidence. They usually find redress for their suspensions or expulsions only in the courts. What was thematic in the Duke Lacrosse fiasco and the University of Virginia sorority rape hoax was the absence of any real individual punishment for those who promulgated the myths.

Indeed in these cases many argued that false allegations in effect were not so important in comparison to bringing attention to supposedly systemic racism and sexism. In Jussie Smollett fashion, what did not happen at least drew attention to what could have happened and thus was valuable. It was as if those who did not commit any actual crime had still committed a thought crime.

Almost all media surveys of the last four years reflect a clear journalistic bias against conservatives in general. Harvard’s liberal Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy famously reported slanted coverage against Trump and his supporters among major television and news outlets at near astronomical rates, in some cases exhibiting over 90 percent negative bias during Trump’s first few months in office. Liberal editors can now be routinely fired or forced to retire from major progressives newspapers if they are not seen as sufficiently woke.

No major journalist or reporter has been reprimanded for promoting the fictional “Russian collusion” hoax—and certainly not in the manner the media has called for punishment, backlisting, and deplatforming for any who championed “stop the steal” protests over the November 2020 elections. The CNN Newsroom put their hands up and chanted “hands up, don’t shoot”—a myth surrounding the Michael Brown Ferguson shooting that was thoroughly refuted. Infamous now is the CNN reporter’s characterization of arsonist flames shooting up in the background of a BLM/Antifa riot as a “largely peaceful” demonstration. BLM, of course, has been nominated for a Nobel “Peace” Prize. After the summer rioting, one could better cite Tacitus’s Calgacus, “Where they make a desert, they call it peace”.

A George W. Bush or Donald Trump press conference was often a free-for-all, blood-in-the-water feeding frenzy. A Barack Obama or Joe Biden version devolves into banalities about pets, fashion, and food. The fusion media credo is why embarrass a progressive government and thus put millions and the planet itself at risk?

Andrew Cuomo’s policies of sending COVID-19 patients into rest homes led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Still, the media gave him an Emmy award for his self-inflated and bombastic press conferences, many of which were little more than unhinged rants against the Trump Administration. Anthony Fauci’s initial pronouncements about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, its risks and severity, travel bans, masks, herd immunity, vaccination rollout dates—and almost everything about the pandemic—were wildly off. Yet he was canonized by the media due to his wink-and-nod assurances that he was the medical adult in the Trump Administration room.

It would be difficult for a prominently conservative actor or actress to win an Oscar these days, or to produce a major conservative-themed film. Bankable actors/directors/producers like Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson operate as mavericks, whose films’ huge profits win them some exemption. But they came into prominence and power 30 years ago during a different age. And they will likely have no immediate successors.

Ars gratis doctrinae is the new Hollywood and it will continue until it bottoms out in financial nihilism. When such ideological spasms contort a society, the second-rate emerge most prominently as the loudest accusers of the Salem Witches—as if correct zeal can reboot careers stalled in mediocrity. Hollywood’s mediocre celebrities from Alec Baldwin to Noah Cyrus have sought attention for their careers by voicing sensational racist, homophobic, and misogynist slurs—on the correct assumption their attention-grabbing left-wing fides prevents career cancellation.

Hollywood, we learn, has been selecting some actors on the basis of lighter skin color to accommodate racist Beijing’s demands to distribute widely their films in the enormous Chinese market. Yet note well that Hollywood has recently created racial quotas for particular Oscar categories, even as it reverses its racial obsessions to punish rather than empower people of color on the prompt of Chinese paymasters.

Ditto the political warping in professional sports. Endorsements, media face time, and cultural resonance often hinge on athletes either being woke—or entirely politically somnolent. A few stars may exist as known conservatives, but again they are the rare exceptions. For most athletes, it is wisest to keep mum and either support, condone, or ignore the Black Lives Matter rituals of taking a knee, not standing for the flag, or ritually denouncing conservative politicians. Those who are offended and turn the channel can be replaced by far more new viewers in China, who appreciate such criticism directed at the proper target.

Again, what is common to all the tentacles of this progressive octopus is illiberalism. Of course, progressivism, dating back to late 19th-century advocacy for “updating” the Constitution, always smiled upon authoritarianism. It promoted the “science” of eugenics and forced race-based sterilization, and the messianic idea that enlightened elites can use the increased powers of government to manage better the personal lives of its subjects (enslaved to religious dogma or mired in ignorance), according to supposed pure reason and humanistic intent.

Many progressives professed early admiration for the supposed efficiency of Benito Mussolini’s public works programs spurred on by his Depression-era fascism, and his enlistment of a self-described expert class to implement by fiat what was necessary for “progress.”

Even contemporary progressives have voiced admiration for the communist Chinese ability to override “obstructionists” to create mass transit, high-density urban living, and solar power. Early on in the pandemic Bill Gates defended China’s conduct surrounding the COVID-19 disaster. Suggesting the virus did not originate in a “wet” market was “conspiratorial”; travel bans were “racist” and “xenophobic.” In contrast, had SARS-CoV-2 possibly escaped by accident from a Russian lab, in our hysterias we might have been on the brink of war.

So it is understandable that progressivism can end up as an enemy of the First Amendment and intellectual diversity to bulldoze impediments to needed progress. To save us, sometimes leftists must become advocates of monopolies and cartels, of censorship, or of the militarization of our capital.

The new Left sorts, rewards, and punishes people by their race. And some progressives are the most likely appeasers of a racist and authoritarian Chinese government and advocates of Trotskyizing our past through iconoclasm, erasing, renaming, and cancelling out. San Francisco’s school board recently voted to rename over 40 schools, largely due to the pressure of a few poorly educated teachers who claimed on the basis of half-baked Wikipedia research that icons such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Washington were unfit for such recognition.

Absolute Power for Absolute Good

There are various explanations for unprogressive progressivism. None are necessarily mutually exclusive. Much of the latest totalitarianism is simple hula-hoop groupthink, a fad, or even a wise career move. Loud progressivism has become for some professionals, an insurance policy—or perhaps a deterrent high wall to ensure the mob bypasses one for easier prey elsewhere. Were Hunter Biden and his family grifting cartel not loud liberals and connected to Joe Biden, they all might have ended up like Jack Abramoff.

More commonly, progressivism offers the elite, the rich, and the well-connected Medieval penance, a vicarious way to alleviate their transitory guilt over privilege such as a $20,000 ice cream freezer or a carbon-spewing Gulfstream by abstract self-indictment of the very system that they have mastered so well.

Progressives also believe in natural hierarchies. They see themselves as an elite certified by their degrees, their resumes, and their correct ideologies, our version of Platonic Guardians, practitioners of the “noble lie” to do us good. In its condescending modern form, the creed is devoted to expanding the administrative state, and the expert class that runs it, and revolves in and out from its government hierarchies to privileged counterparts in the corporate and academic world.

Progressivism patronizes the poor and champions them at a distance, but despises the middle class, the traditionally hated bourgeoise without the romance of the distant impoverished or the taste and culture of the rich. The venom explains the wide array of epithets that Obama, Clinton, and Biden have so casually employed—clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, ugly folk, chumps, and so on. “Occupy Wall Street” was prepped by the media as a romance. The Tea Party was derided as Klan-like. The rioters who stormed the Capitol were rightly dubbed lawbreakers; those who besieged and torched a Minneapolis federal courthouse were romanticized or contextualized.

Abstract humanitarian progressives assume that their superior intelligence and training properly should exempt them from the bothersome ramifications of their own ideologies. They promote high taxes and mock material indulgences. But some have made a science out of tax evasion and embrace the tasteful good life and its material attractions. They prefer private schooling and Ivy League education for their offspring, while opposing charter schools for others.

There is no dichotomy in insisting on more race-based admissions and yet calling a dean or provost to help leverage a now tougher admission for one’s gifted daughter. Sometimes the liberal Hollywood celebrity effort to get offspring stamped with the proper university credentials becomes felonious. Walls are retrograde but can be tastefully integrated into a gated estate. They like static class differences and likely resent the middle class for its supposedly grasping effort to become rich—like themselves.

The working classes can always make solar panels, the billionaire John Kerry tells those thousands whom his boss had just thrown out of work by the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It is as if the Yale man was back to the old days when the multimillionaire and promoter of higher taxes moved his yacht to avoid sales and excise taxes and lectured JC students, “You study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

There is no such thing as “dark” money or the pernicious role of cash in warping politics when Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg, both through direct donations and through various PACs and foundations—channeled nearly $1 billion to left-wing candidates, activists, and political groups throughout the 2020 campaign year.

In sum, the new tribal progressivism is the career ideology foremost of the wealthy and elite—a truth that many skeptical poor and middle-class minorities are now so often pilloried for pointing out. Progressives have adopted identity politics and rejected class considerations, largely because solidarity with elite minorities of similar tastes and politics excuses them from any concrete concern for, or experience with, the middle classes of all races. The Left finally proved right in its boilerplate warning that the “plutocracy” and the “special interests” run America: “If you can’t beat them, outdo them.”

Self-righteous progressives believe they put up with and suffer on behalf of us—and thus their irrational fury and hate for the irredeemables and conservative minorities spring from being utterly unappreciated by clueless serfs who should properly worship their betters.

 

 

About Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won (Basic Books).

Monday, January 4, 2021

Climate Change Causation And The Scientific Method | Climate Change Dispatch

Climate Change Causation And The Scientific Method | Climate Change Dispatch

 

Climate Change Causation And The Scientific Method

roman empire

 Let’s have yet another go at trying to apply the scientific method to the subject of causation of climate change. This is just basic logic, and not that complicated. We can do it.

As simple and basic as this is, you will shortly see that the agglomeration of all of the world’s leading “climate scientists” can’t figure it out. They are completely lost and befuddled. Check me and see if I’m wrong.

The proposition we are addressing is the one for which you see a constant drumbeat of advocacy. It runs something like, “the climate is changing, and we are the cause.” OK, nobody denies that the climate is changing; but how about the “we are the cause” part? What is the proof?

Let’s apply the scientific method. We start with the basic maxim that “correlation does not prove causation.” Instead, causation is established by disproof of all relevant alternative (“null”) hypotheses.

Everybody knows how this works from drug testing. We can’t prove that drug A cures disease X by administering drug A a thousand times and observing that disease X almost always goes away.

Disease X might have gone away for other reasons, or on its own. Even if we administer drug A a million times, and disease X almost always goes away, we have only proved correlation, not causation.

To prove causation, we must disprove the null hypothesis by testing drug A against a placebo. The placebo represents the null hypothesis that something else (call it “natural factors”) is curing disease X.

When drug A is significantly more effective at curing disease X than the placebo, then we have disproved the null hypothesis and established, at least provisionally, the effectiveness of drug A.

Back to climate change. The hypothesis is “humans are causing significant climate change.” An appropriate null hypothesis would be “observed climate change can be fully explained by some combination of natural factors.” How might you test this?

The most obvious test would be to ask, in Earth’s recent history, has it been warmer than the present — the present having been the subject of significant human greenhouse gas emissions?

If periods in the recent past prior to human emissions have been warmer than the present, then quite obviously some combination of “natural factors” is sufficient to bring about temperatures as warm or warmer than we are experiencing.

And it doesn’t matter whether or not we know what the alternative “natural factors” might be, any more than, in the failed drug trial, it matters whether or not we know why the placebo beat the experimental drug.

In the failed drug trial, it could have been the human immune system, or it could have been gut bacteria, or it could have been the weather, or anything else. The fact is that, whatever they might have been, the “natural factors” outperformed the experimental drug.

For the test of the climate hypothesis, consider a December 28 blog post from retired physicist Ralph Alexander titled: “New Evidence That Ancient Climate Was Warmer Than Today’s.”

Alexander summarizes the results of two recent studies:

The Margaritelli et al piece analyzes proxy data from “fossilized amoeba skeletons found in seabed sediments” to reconstruct Mediterranean Sea temperatures over the past 2000 years.

“The ratio of magnesium to calcium in the skeletons is a measure of the seawater temperature at the time the sediment was deposited; a timeline can be established by radiocarbon dating.”

Conclusion:

With the exception of the Aegean data, the results all show distinct warming during the Roman period from 0 CE to 500 CE, when temperatures were about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average for Sicily and western Mediterranean regions in later centuries, and much higher than present-day Sicilian temperatures.

The Baraniuk study, from Norway, analyzes large new finds of ancient artifacts, including arrows, arrowheads, and clothing, that have been revealed by recent retreats of glaciers in that country.

But of course, the existence of the artifacts in these areas implies that the areas were not covered in ice at the time the artifacts were deposited:

That the artifacts come from several different periods separated by hundreds or thousands of years implies that the ice and snow in the region must have expanded and receded several times over the past 6,000 years. During the Holocene Thermal Maximum, which occurred from approximately 10,000 to 6,000 years ago and preceded the period of the stunning Norwegian discoveries, global temperatures were higher yet. In upper latitudes, where the most reliable proxies are found, it was an estimated 2-3 degrees Celsius (3.6-5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than at present.

Whether 2,000 years ago (the Roman Warm Period) or 6,000 years ago (the Holocene Thermal Maximum), these periods clearly long preceded any significant human greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Obviously, then, some combination of “natural factors,” whatever they may be, is sufficient to cause terrestrial temperatures to increase to levels as high or higher than we are experiencing today, in the era of human use of fossil fuels.

I should mention that the two papers discussed by Alexander are just the latest of many dozens of studies giving evidence for the proposition that times in the recent geologic past — either the Medieval Warm period, or the Roman Warm Period, or the Holocene Thermal Maximum — were warmer than today.

One collection of many papers, mostly focusing on the Medieval Warm Period, can be found at Craig Idso’s CO2 Science website.

You would think that the mainstream climate “science” would be focused like a laser beam on trying to deal with these early periods that were warmer than today. But instead, these guys have almost entirely taken a different approach.

They call their approach “detection and attribution.” Of many examples of the art, here is a major paper from 2018, sponsored by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with the title “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes.”

The authors are a who’s who of the official climate establishment, including the likes of Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Gerald North, Gabriele Hegerl, and Ben Santer.

Instead of evaluating whether available data refute either their main hypothesis (human causes) or the null hypothesis (natural factors), these guys adopt a different approach which I would describe as “we can’t think of anything else other than human greenhouse gas emissions that could be causing this, so therefore human emissions it is.”

They create so-called models of what they think natural factors might cause in the way of warming and then test those against the data. Since when does that prove anything?

The article is very long and riddled with nearly impenetrable jargon that makes it nearly impossible to get a good quote, but here are a couple of the best:

Attribution studies have applied multi-signal techniques to address whether or not the magnitude of the observed response to a particular forcing agent is consistent with the modeled response and separable from the influence of other forcing agents. The inclusion of time-dependent signals has helped to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic forcing agents. As more response patterns are included, the problem of degeneracy (different combinations of patterns yielding near-identical fits to the observations) inevitably arises. Nevertheless, even with the responses to all the major forcing factors included in the analysis, a distinct greenhouse gas signal remains detectable. Overall, the magnitude of the model-simulated temperature response to greenhouse gases is found to be consistent with the observed greenhouse response on the scales considered.

And here’s another:

To detect the response to anthropogenic or natural climate forcing in observations, we require estimates of the expected space-time pattern of the response. The influences of natural and anthropogenic forcing on the observed climate can be separated only if the spatial and temporal variation of each component is known. These patterns cannot be determined from the observed instrumental record because variations due to different external forcings are superimposed on each other and on internal climate variations. Hence climate models are usually used to estimate the contribution from each factor.

Apparently, this kind of mumbo jumbo is good enough to fool pretty much all of academia, and almost all journalists, not to mention gaggles of billionaires. But how about the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period? Don’t those refute the whole thing?

Read more at Manhattan Contrarian

New York Can’t Escape Blackouts With A Very Pricey Mega-Battery | Climate Change Dispatch

New York Can’t Escape Blackouts With A Very Pricey Mega-Battery | Climate Change Dispatch: New York is investing in the largest industrial battery that will power only 0.02% of NYC during a heatwave.

 

New York Can’t Escape Blackouts With A Very Pricey Mega-Battery

tesla industrial battery 

 New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest industrial-scale battery system. It’s designed to back up the city’s growing reliance on intermittent “renewable” electricity.

At 400 megawatt-hours (MWh), this cluster of batteries will be more than triple the existing 129 MWh world leader in Australia.

Mark Chambers, NYC’s Director of Sustainability (I am not making this title up), is ecstatic. “Expanding battery storage is a critical part of how we advance momentum to confront the climate emergency,” he brags, “while meeting the energy needs of all New Yorkers. Today’s announcement demonstrates how we can deliver this need at a significant scale.” [emphasis added]

In the same nonsensical way, Tim Cawley, president of Con Edison, New York state’s power utility, gushes thus: “Utility-scale battery storage will play a vital role in New York’s clean energy future, especially in New York City, where it will help to maximize the benefit of the wind power being developed offshore.”

In reality, the scale here is vanishingly insignificant. The official enthusiasm puts the Con in Con Edison. (And few New Yorkers and other East Coast residents are going to tolerate thousands of 850-foot-tall wind turbines off their shores. People don’t want them in their onshore backyards either.)

When it comes to the scale needed to reliably back up unreliable pretend-renewable electricity generation – and keep business, industry, social media, and civilization functioning – New York’s and America’s policymakers need to start living in the Real World. Otherwise, blackouts will become common.

For simplicity, let’s suppose New York City is 100% wind-powered. (Including solar in the generating mix makes it more complicated but does not change the unhappy outcome very much.)

NYC currently peaks at around 13,000 MW – just to keep the city running during the extreme summer heat. If Mr. Biden makes all the cars and trucks electric, total demand could eventually hit 20,000 MW. But let’s stick to present-day reality.

This peak occurs because of enormous air conditioning demand during summer heatwaves, which is bad enough. But to make matters even worse, those heat waves are caused by stagnant high-pressure systems called Bermuda highs.

These highs often last for a week and because they involve stagnant air masses – and an absence of breezes – there is no wind power generation.

Wind turbines require something like sustained winds of 10 mph to move the blades and more like a whistling 30 mph to generate full power.

During a Bermuda high, folks are happy to get the occasional 5 mph breeze. These huge highs cover many states, so it is not like we can get the juice from next door.

So for reliability, we need seven days of backup: 168 hours. Here’s the math:

13,000 MW x 168 hours = 2,184,000 MWh of stored juice needed to just make it. Mind you, for normal reliability, we usually add 20% or so as a safety measure.

Did I mention electric cars? Replacing natural gas with electricity for cooking, water heating, and other needs? Charging all those batteries? Maybe they need to add 40% to account for all this, plus emergency circumstances. But let’s ignore that for now.

Let’s also ignore the energy and raw materials required to manufacture (and replace) all those batteries.

The key point is, 400 MWh is not a “significant scale.” It is a trivial, infinitesimal scale. Virtually nothing.

Nada. A piddling 0.02% of what the City would need amid a 7-day heatwave. It might as well not exist. It might be enough to power Gracie Mansion and City government offices during a summer heatwave, but that’s about it.

More specifically, 2,184,000 divided by 400 = 5,460. That means New York City just needs another 5,459 additional battery clusters to meet those peak needs.

On the other hand, this measly 400 MWh battery array may well cost half a billion dollars, which is significant, especially to the New Yorkers who will have to pay for it. No cost figures were given because the system is privately owned (and the numbers would be hugely embarrassing).

However, the Energy Information Administration says the average utility-scale battery system runs around $1.5 million per MWh of storage capacity. That works out to $600 million for this insignificant climate-obsessing toy.

So what would it cost to reliably back up wind power, at this MWh cost and NYC scale? Just over $3,000,000,000,000. THREE TRILLION DOLLARS! I have not seen this stupendous sum reported in the media. Perhaps Con Ed has not mentioned it. (You think?) They certainly know about it.

But hey, maybe the cost will come down a trillion – though not if we create a seller’s market by rushing into intermittent renewables, which is certainly where we are headed.

After all, this is just New York City. Imagine what backing up America with batteries might cost. Don’t bother because it is impossible.

I should also add that we have no idea how to make 2 million MWh of batteries work together. The tiny 400 will be a challenge. Millions of megawatt-hours on-demand may not be possible.

Then too, New York State has the same problem. Only much bigger if New York City is included, which it often is. New York State peaks at about 32,000 MW, which works out to 5,376,000 MWh of stored juice at a cost of EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS for enough batteries to make 100% wind reliable.

And again, this is without phasing in electric cars and trucks, phasing out gas heat, a 20-40% reserve, etc.

Note that New York State has a law saying they will build at least 3,000 MWh of batteries over the next decade. Like NYC’s grand 400 MWh battery system, this is nothing compared to what is needed to keep the lights on.

Nor does the New York Power Authority mention the many trillions of dollars needed to make renewables reliable.

All of this battery backup hype is a scam, and not just in New York. The papers are full of this con, from coast to coast. Solar plus batteries or wind plus batteries, as though the batteries mattered, when they do not.

The utilities know perfectly well that these loudly touted battery buys are a hoax, but they are getting rich building the mandated and subsidized wind and solar systems the politicians are calling for. Adding a trivial battery makes it sound like renewables work. Which they don’t.

On a larger scale, consider PJM. This is the electric power coordinating group of utilities that oversees the central part of the Eastern USA (not including New York State). Its primary mission is system reliability, so it should be very interested in this impossible battery cost problem.

PJM peaks at around 150,000 MW, so a week of backup battery juice is 25,200,000 MWh. At $1,500,000 per MWh, that is just under a mere THIRTY-EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS!

This too is without electrifying all our fossil-fueled cars, trucks, buildings, appliances, and whatever else the climate-emergency central planners can think of. Yet PJM says not a mumbling word about the impossibility of delivering reliability using all renewables and batteries.

The voters are oblivious to these impossible numbers since they are repeatedly told that intermittent wind and solar are cheaper than reliable coal, gas, and nuclear.

That may be true only when the sun shines bright and the wind blows hard, which is not all that often. Now do the math for the entire United States.

Maybe fracked geothermal, the only reliable renewable, is the answer. Or how about reliable coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power? Too bad they are all out of fashion.

Reality is just sitting there, waiting. 100% renewables cannot work, so they will not work. At this point, it is just a question of how and when we find out the hard way.

The key then is for voters and electricity users to learn this stuff, ask hard questions, demand honest answers, and not be Conned any longer.


David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic, and human rights in public policy, and the author of numerous articles on these topics.

Sunday, January 3, 2021

10 Scriptural Reasons Not To Follow Rick Warren

10 Scriptural Reasons Not To Follow Rick Warren

 

Rick Warren Purpose Driven Movement.

Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven movement has, in a relatively short period of time, become what TIME magazine has referred to as a “Purpose Driven empire.”1 The word empire is defined in the dictionary as “supreme rule; absolute power or authority; dominion.” It also means “an extensive social or economic organization under the control of a single person, family, or corporation.”2 For all intents and purposes, Rick Warren has become the titular head—the almost emperor-like CEO—of an increasingly apostate postmodern church. But while Warren continues to be embraced by much of the world and much of the church, it is not too late for people to reconsider their involvement with him and his Purpose Driven movement. Here are ten scripturally based reasons why people with any love of the truth should not involve themselves in Warren’s “Broad Way” Christianity:

10 Scriptural Reasons Not To Follow Rick Warren

1) Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven movement offers a Broad Way Christianity. One of the mysteries of the Christian faith can be found in Jesus’ warning that the way to life is “narrow” and that “few” would actually find it. Jesus is telling us in advance that the “broad way”—no matter how well intentioned—is not from Him. With Rick Warren’s reformation movement based on deeds and not creeds, everyone is invited to partake in this global effort. But biblical principles are watered-down and often cast aside.

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

2) Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity does not declare all the counsel of God. Rick Warren teaches only what he wants to teach from the Bible. As a result, there are many important teachings that he skips over, de-emphasizes, and leaves out—particularly in regard to prophecy and spiritual deception.

For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. (Acts 20:27-31)

3) Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity does not discern the spiritual signs of the times. Just as the leaders in Jesus’ day discerned the weather but not the signs of the times, Warren discerns many of the social and economic problems, but not the spiritual signs of the times.

O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? (Matthew 16:3)

4) Rick Warren’s “Broad Way” Christianity is ignorant of Satan’s devices. Whereas the apostle Paul stated that he and other believers were not ignorant of Satan’s devices, Warren’s Broad Way Christianity states that Satan’s schemes are entirely predictable.3 By being ignorant of Satan’s devices, this Broad Way Christianity has fallen prey to Satan’s devices—particularly in the area of the New Age/New Spirituality/New Worldview.

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Corinthians 2:11)

5) Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity does not expose spiritual evil. Warren’s version of Christianity does not sound a true warning about the deceptive spirit world and spiritual deception. There is much more to evil than the problems that Rick Warren is seeking to remedy with his Purpose Driven P.E.A.C.E. Plan. We are told to expose false prophets and false teachers, not to study under them, spiritually join with them, and further their plans.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. (2 Timothy 3:13)

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. (Ephesians 5:11)

6) Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity does not “earnestly contend for the faith.” By not declaring all the counsel of God, by not discerning the signs of the times, by being ignorant of Satan’s devices, and by not exposing spiritual evil, Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity is not fighting “the good fight of faith.”

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. (Jude 3)

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. (1 Timothy 6:12)

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (Ephesians 6:13)

7) Rick Warren and his Broad Way Christianity are loved by the world and it’s leaders. Jesus loved the world, but the world did not love Him. Jesus warned his followers they would be hated, persecuted, and even killed by the world—just as the world hated, persecuted, and killed Him. In his compromised effort to reach out to the world, Warren and his Broad Way Christianity have become the world.

They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. (1 John 4:5)

Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets. (Luke 6:26)

Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. (2 Timothy 3:12)

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. (Matthew 10:22)

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? (Matthew 10:25)

8. Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity is engaged in a process of ungodly change. Rick Warren describes himself as a “change agent” but in his attempt to change the world, he and his Purpose Driven movement are actually changing biblical Christianity. The Bible warns about those who push for unbiblical and ungodly change.

My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change. (Proverbs 24:21)

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. (Hebrews 13:8)

For I am the LORD, I change not. (Malachi 3:6)

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. (Amos 8:11)

9) Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity is frequently double-tongued and double-minded. Rick Warren’s attempts to seemingly distance himself from the New Age/New Spirituality while simultaneously spiritually aligning himself with New Age sympathizers is double-tongued, double-minded, and deceptively self-serving. In the Psalms, David refers to those who speak with flattering lips and a double heart.

Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. They speak vanity every one with his neighbor: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. (Psalm 12:1-2)

Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre; Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. (1 Timothy 3:8-9)

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. (James 1:8)

10) Rick Warren’s Broad Way Christianity is not valiant for the truth. Warren has demonstrated, in numerous ways, that he is politically and spiritually expedient when it comes to the truth. His Broad Way Christianity plays to the world and embraces the world because it is the world. It does not hold fast to the truth because it is not valiant for the truth.

And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth. (Jeremiah 9:3)

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:31)

The Time is Here

The apostle Paul preached the importance of adhering to God’s Word. He warned that the time would come when believers would not endure sound doctrine but would find teachers who would tell them what they wanted to hear:

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

As Rick Warren’s broad way Christianity seems to be headed down the broad way of the New Spirituality, it is very clear that his Purpose Driven movement is anything but the narrow way that Jesus Christ described in Matthew 7:14.

It is important to understand what is at stake here—the centrality of the Cross as the one and only true Gospel—without which the hope of salvation is lost. Jesus Christ, dying on the Cross for our sins, is the central message of the Gospel. It is the plumb line for ultimately discerning truth from error. But in discerning truth from error, it is essential that we must adhere to all the counsel of God (Acts 20:27).

Jesus is the one and only Savior—the one and only true Christ. Science cannot and will not prove otherwise (1 Timothy 6:20). God is not in everything. We are not Christ, and we are not God. What is born of the flesh is flesh. What is born of the Spirit is spirit. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50). It is not as above, so below. The apostle John states:

He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. (John 3:31)

Jesus Christ is Lord. His name is above all names (Philippians 2:9). He is not the “Jesus” of The Shack, and He is not the “Jesus” of the New Age/New Spirituality. Most assuredly, He is not the “quantum Christ” of a deceived world and an apostate church.

The apostle Paul describes the simplicity of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:3). According to many of today’s spiritual and religious leaders, it has taken humanity 2000 years to finally get it. They say we need quantum physicists, cellular biologists, Ph.D. mathematicians, New Age channelers, and emerging postmodern preachers to finally understand what Jesus was trying to tell us back in the first century. No, this is not the simplicity that Paul was describing. This is the deceptive work of our Adversary as he tries to transform the creation into the Creator and co-opt God’s creation to himself.

Unfortunately, many of today’s pastors have forgotten that Satan is the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4) and that we are to stand against the wiles of the devil (Ephesians 6:11). As a result, the church is now catapulting into great spiritual deception.

For those who still rightly divide and depend upon the Word of God, the Bible warns that the coming deception will be so great that most of the world will be deceived (Revelation 13:13-14). Jesus warned that His way is not the broad way but the narrow way of continuing in His Word (John 8:31). And it is His way that leads to eternal life.

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke 21:28)

Excerpt from Warren Smith’s book entitled “A Wonderful Deception”

Saturday, January 2, 2021

King Herod slaughtered innocents to keep his political power. Little has changed since then.

King Herod slaughtered innocents to keep his political power. Little has changed since then.

 

King Herod slaughtered innocents to keep his political power. Little has changed since then.

Herod, innocents

 

On December 28, Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents in remembrance of the children slaughtered by King Herod in his quest to kill the newborn Jesus. A king who feared losing his power, Herod had already killed anyone he saw as a threat, including three of his own sons. When he learned about the Christ Child, he set a plan in motion to ensure Jesus didn’t live to take his throne, either. When the Magi, having been warned in a dream not to tell Herod where Jesus was, failed to return to Herod as he had instructed them to, Herod had every little boy age two and under in Bethlehem killed. He deduced that if Jesus was indeed in Bethlehem, his death would be guaranteed through this brutal act.

Herod isn’t the only political figure of the past to order the mass killing of innocent children because he feared losing his power. Afraid that the Israelites would become “too numerous,” Egypt’s Pharaoh came up with a plan to secure his power: control the population of the people he didn’t want reproducing. He ordered that all Hebrew baby boys must be thrown into the Nile River.

With their twisted desire for power, Herod and Pharaoh have something in common with politicians of our day. A mass slaughtering of innocents is happening today in the United States, where 2,363 babies are killed daily through abortion. Many politicians, including some who claim to care about the most vulnerable of society, will stop at nothing to keep their political power. To do this, they allow and even promote the genocide of innocent preborn children.

Planned Parenthood’s powerful pocketbook

Each election year, the abortion industry ups the ante for the politicians it feeds from its pocketbook. Planned Parenthood, for example, is a powerful organization with $45 million to burn in campaign spending to help abortion-friendly politicians get elected. Because of this, the pro-abortion agenda in America has evolved from a “safe, legal, rare” and difficult decision to a whenever-wherever-whoever, free of charge, celebrated “right.” The end goal is abortion with no restrictions, paid for by American taxpayers.

Planned Parenthood, which committed a record 345,672 abortions in 2018 despite an overall national decline in abortions, has deep pockets — $1.6 billion in revenue in 2018, $2 billion in assets, and $45 million to spend on the 2020 election. Power-hungry politicians who are funded by Planned Parenthood and who want to ensure they retain a hold on their Congressional “thrones,” so to speak, must bend to the will of Planned Parenthood or risk losing it all.

Like Herod and Pharaoh, these politicians believe that in order to secure and maintain their political futures, they must allow innocent children to die.

The Hyde Amendment

The fight over the pro-life Hyde Amendment is just one example of how the abortion industry holds power-hungry politicians in the palm of its hands. The Hyde Amendment is a rider to the federal budget first introduced by Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde in 1976. It prevents taxpayer dollars from being used to pay for abortion through the federal Medicaid program. It has been added to every appropriations bill since 1976, and every single president — including pro-abortion presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — has signed and accepted it. It has saved 2.4 million lives from abortion, and that is why the abortion industry wants it gone. Fewer abortions mean fewer profits.

At the start of the 2020 presidential election cycle, every single Democratic candidate came out against the Hyde Amendment, even one who had previously stood in favor of it: Joe Biden. On June 5, 2019, Biden supported the Hyde Amendment… yet in a whiplash move, the very next day after Planned Parenthood criticized him for it, Biden decided he opposed Hyde. For Biden (and countless other politicians), the brutal killing of innocent children equals retained political power and status. Nine days later, on June 15, Planned Parenthood officially endorsed Biden for president.

 

Aborting minorities 

Pharaoh wanted to control the population of a people group in his kingdom. Surprisingly, some American politicians have the desire to control the population of certain people groups.

Today, Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are disproportionately located in minority neighborhoods, with reportedly 86% of these facilities located in or near communities of color. Though Black people account for just 13% of the nation’s population, Black women account for 36% of all abortions in the US, and are five times more likely to have an abortion than white women. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger believed that certain populations should not reproduce, and said in reference to her plan to influence and infiltrate the Black community with her birth control agenda, “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…”

Planned Parenthood has continued Sanger’s legacy with help from legalized abortion. Pro-abortion politicians are aiding in these efforts to reduce the population of minorities and underprivileged Americans by pushing far beyond legalized abortion to taxpayer-funded abortion. But according to a 2017 Marist poll, even the poorest of Americans don’t want the government to pay for them to kill their children. Americans with lower incomes were less likely than those with higher incomes to support government funding of abortions through Medicaid. In addition, a Harvard poll found that support for taxpayer funding of abortion is nearly twice as high among voters who make more than $75,000 a year as those who earn $25,000 or less. This is a red flag, showing that government-funded abortion is discriminatory by nature.

Even Late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted that she believed the Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade with a eugenic motive. “There was concern about population growth and particularly growth in the populations that we don’t want to have too many of,” she said in regard to the Hyde Amendment and the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision to uphold it in Harris v. McRae. Opponents of Hyde claim it is racist and discriminatory, but the opposite is true. When asked by a Congressional subcommittee if she believes the Hyde Amendment is racist, pro-life advocate Christina Bennett explained:

No. I will never believe that an amendment that has helped save over 2.4 million lives — many of them Black — is racist. I don’t think that racists are in the business of trying to preserve Black lives and generations of children that will come after them. It’s absolutely ridiculous to claim that the Hyde Amendment is racist.

Roe v. Wade

With the addition of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court in the last four years, the abortion industry and abortion-friendly politicians are terrified that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. They are scrambling to codify abortion into state constitutions as a right, because, like Herod and Pharaoh, they feel threatened. New York expanded abortion, Massachusetts and Vermont are in the process of codifying extreme abortion laws, and more states will follow. Why? Because pro-abortion politicians fear losing their power if they don’t bend to the will of the abortion industry and allow innocent children to be slaughtered. Even those who call themselves ‘personally pro-life’ as Biden has, will allow these horrific deaths to continue to save their own political futures.

Now that Biden is set to take office as president in 2021, Planned Parenthood has already issued its “day one” demands of him and his administration. Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood, told Newsweek, “The first thing we would like to see would be an executive order on day one, within the first 100 days, that demonstrates the administration’s commitment to sexual and reproductive health care.” Planned Parenthood will stop at nothing to control the politicians it owns.

The majority of women who have had abortions admitted they did so under pressure. Like the mothers who watched powerless as Herod’s and Pharaoh’s brutal orders were carried out, these women are haunted by the deaths of their children — but for different reasons.

The pain and injustice of abortion may never end while politicians are afraid to stand for life against the profitable abortion industry and risk losing their own political status to save the innocent.

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Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Creation Ex Nihilo by Derek Thomas

Creation Ex Nihilo by Derek Thomas

 

Creation Ex Nihilo

by

No sentence is more pregnant with meaning than the opening one of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). It tells us several things all at once, four of which are worth reflecting upon: First and foremost, it tells us that God is the ultimate Being. Before there was a universe, there was God. He exists independently of matter and sequence of time. God transcends space and time. He is not limited by spatial considerations (He is everywhere in His fullness continually). Nor is He locked into the present in any way. It is not strictly accurate to say that before the universe was created there was “nothing,” for this, too, is a spatial and temporal idea: before the created universe existed, there was God. Theologians speak of God’s immensity, infinity, and transcendence to describe this and our minds race at the thought of it, unable to take it in. All we can do is acquiesce and worship.

Second, everything that exists originates from God. Genesis employs a special Hebrew verb for the act of creation (bārā’) the subject of which is always God. No other subject is employed or implied. Man, too, “creates” (poetry, music, literature, architectural wonders, for example) but not in this sense. “To create” is exclusively an act of God, and by employing it in the first and last verse of the creation story (1:1 and 2:4), the writer is employing something that looks like “bookends” that encase the central idea that God is at work. Easy as this is to write (and read!), try to imagine the power it takes to bring into existence the entire cosmos!

Third, He creates “out of nothing.” A grammatical possibility has given rise to at least one translation of the opening verses suggesting that when God began His work of creation, matter already existed: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void” (nrsv). Contrast that with the English Standard Version: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void.” The point of this second rendition is to emphasize a crucial issue that God created out of nothing (ex nihilo). Other ancient Near Eastern creation stories (from Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example) assume that their gods worked with material that already existed. However, biblical testimony here and elsewhere insists that at the point of the beginning there was nothing apart from God (Heb. 11:3; Rev. 4:11), and what exists apart from God was brought into being by Him.

Fourth, and this is particularly interesting, that which He initially creates is not its final form. He creates in order to employ further artistry and design. Beginners in Hebrew at seminaries can often be heard repeating a phrase from Genesis 1:2: “The earth was without form and void.” What God initially brought into being was “tōhu vabōhu,” “formless and empty mass.” Initially, the created universe had no distinctive shape; its structure would be formed by the artistry and design of God. In this sense, we are like God. We, too, fashion and mold and make things that are often beautiful. It is, in part, what Genesis 1:26–27 means by saying that Adam was created “in the image of God.” Man, too, creates, or better, re-creates, shapes his environment in such a way as to reflect something pleasing and good. Once man fell, this capacity became as much a liability as a blessing: his capacity to fashion became a means to idolatry.

What should we make of this? Again, several responsive features are worth consideration, but two will suffice here:

In the first place, God is to be worshiped as the Creator; creation is to be viewed as a reflection of the signature of God. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Ps. 104:24). We live out our lives in a world that He has created and sustains. All around us and within us there are fingerprints betraying His handiwork. Knowing this (as we do whether we acknowledge it or not) should make us live dependently, reverently, and expectantly.

In the second place, creation is never to be viewed as inherently evil (as some philosophies have taught). God intends in His plan of salvation to re-create this fallen world and provide for His redeemed children “a new heavens and new earth” in which to live. Even now, the present creation waits (8:19) — subjected to futility as it has been by sin (Rom. 8:20) — groaning in sounds that resemble childbirth (8:22), for the “new world” (Matt 19:28), the home of the righteous (2 Peter 3:13). The resurrected redeemed will thus dwell in a (transformed) physical universe in union and communion with their resurrected Lord. This strand of biblical teaching ensures that we never view creation (and our physical bodies) apart from God’s claim of ownership and demand for holiness. We are, as Paul insists, to present our “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” as an act of “spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). The story of creation signals that we are God’s handiwork — made by Him and for Him and that (through redemption) forever.

Monday, December 28, 2020

Twelve Times The 'Lockdowners' Were Wrong | ZeroHedge

Twelve Times The 'Lockdowners' Were Wrong | ZeroHedge

 

 

 

Twelve Times The 'Lockdowners' Were Wrong

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Sunday, Dec 27, 2020 - 23:35

Authored by Phillip Magness via The American Institute for Economic Research,

This has been a year of astonishing policy failure. We are surrounded by devastation conceived and cheered by intellectuals and their political handmaidens...

 

The errors number in the thousands, so please consider the following little more than a first draft, a mere guide to what will surely be unearthed in the coming months and years. We trusted these people with our lives and liberties and here is what they did with that trust. 

  1. Anthony Fauci says lockdowns are not possible in the United States (January 24):

When asked about the mass quarantine containment efforts underway in Wuhan, China back in January, Fauci dismissed the prospect of lockdowns ever coming to the United States:

“That’s something that I don’t think we could possibly do in the United States, I can’t imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles, but the judgement on the part of the Chinese health authorities is that given the fact that it’s spreading throughout the provinces… it’s their judgement that this is something that in fact is going to help in containing it. Whether or not it does or does not is really open to question because historically when you shut things down it doesn’t have a major effect.”

Less than two months later, 43 of 50 US states were under lockdown – a policy advocated by Fauci himself.

  1. US government and WHO officials advise against mask use (February and March)

When mask sales spiked due to widespread individual adoption in the early weeks of the pandemic, numerous US government and WHO officials took to the airwaves to describe masks as ineffective and discourage their use. 

Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted against masks on February 29. Anthony Fauci publicly discouraged mask use in a nationally broadcast 60 Minutes interview on March 7. At a March 30 World Health Organization briefing its Director-General supported mask use in medical settings but dissuaded the same in the general public. 

By mid-summer, all had reversed course and encouraged mask-wearing in the general public as an essential tool for halting the pandemic. Fauci essentially conceded that he lied to the public in order to prevent a shortage on masks, whereas other health officials did an about-face on the scientific claims around masking. 

While mainstream epidemiology literature stressed the ambiguous nature of evidence surrounding masks as recently as 2019, these scientists were suddenly certain that masks were something of a magic bullet for Covid. It turns out that both positions are likely wrong. Masks appear to have marginal effects at diminishing spread, especially in highly infectious settings and around the vulnerable. But their effectiveness at combating Covid has also been grossly exaggerated, as illustrated by the fact that mask adoption reached near-universal levels in the US by the summer with little discernible effect on the course of the pandemic.

  1. Anthony Fauci’s decimal error in estimating Covid’s fatality rates (March 11)

Fauci testified before Congress in early March where he was asked to estimate the severity of the disease in comparison to influenza. His testimony that Covid was “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu” stoked widespread alarm and provided a major impetus for the decision to go into lockdown. 

The problem, as Ronald Brown documented in an epidemiology journal article, is that Fauci based his estimates on a conflation of the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) and Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for influenza, leading him to exaggerate the comparative danger of Covid by an order of magnitude. Fauci’s error – which he further compounded in a late February article for the New England Journal of Medicine – helped to convince Congress of the need for drastic lockdown measures, while also spreading panic in the media and general public. As of this writing Fauci has not acknowledged the magnitude of his error, nor has the journal corrected his article.

  1. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” (March 16)

The lockdowners settled on a catchy slogan in mid-March to justify their unprecedented shuttering of economic and social life around the globe: two weeks to flatten the curve. The White House Covid task force aggressively promoted this line, as did the news media and much of the epidemiology profession. The logic behind the slogan came from the ubiquitous graph showing (1) a steep caseload that would overwhelm our hospital system, or (2) a mitigated alternative that would spread the caseload out over several weeks, making it manageable. 

To get to graph #2, society would need to buckle up for two weeks of shelter-in-place orders until the capacity issue could be managed. Indeed, we were told that if we did not accept this solution the hospital system would enter into catastrophic failure in only 10 days, as former DHS pandemic adviser Tom Bossert claimed in a widely-circulated interview and Washington Post column on March 11. 

Two weeks came and went, then the rationale on which they were sold to the public shifted. Hospitals were no longer on the verge of being overwhelmed – indeed most hospitals nationwide remained well under capacity, with only a tiny number of exceptions in the worst-hit neighborhoods of New York City. 

A US Navy hospital ship sent to relieve New York departed a month later after serving only 182 patients, and a pop-up hospital in the city’s Javits Convention Center sat mostly empty. But the lockdowns remained in place, as did the emergency orders justifying them. Two weeks became a month, which became two months, which became almost a year. We were no longer “flattening the curve” – a strategy premised on saving the hospital system from a threat than never manifested – but instead refocused on using lockdowns as a general suppression strategy against the disease itself. In short, the epidemiology profession sold us a bill of goods.

  1. Neil Ferguson predicts a “best case” US scenario of 1.1 million deaths (March 20)

The name Neil Ferguson, the lead modeler and chief spokesman for Imperial College London’s pandemic response team, has become synonymous with lockdown alarmism for good reason. Ferguson has a long track record of making grossly exaggerated predictions of catastrophic death tolls for almost every single disease that comes along, and urging aggressive policy responses to the same including lockdowns. 

Covid was no different, and Ferguson assumed center stage when he released a highly influential model of the virus’s death forecasts for the US and UK. Ferguson appeared with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on March 16 to announce the shift toward lockdowns (with no small irony, he was coming down with Covid himself at the time and may have been the patient zero of a super-spreader event that ran through Downing Street and infected Johnson himself). 

Across the Atlantic, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx cited Ferguson’s model as a direct justification for locking down the US. There was a problem though: Ferguson had a bad habit of dramatically hyping his own predictions to political leaders and the press. The Imperial College paper modeled a broad range of scenarios including death tolls that ranged from tens of thousands to over 2 million, but Ferguson’s public statements only stressed the latter – even though the paper itself conceded that such an extreme “worst case” scenario was highly unrealistic. A telling example came on March 20th when the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof contacted the Imperial College modeler to ask about the most likely scenario for the United States. As Kristof related to his readers, “I asked Ferguson for his best case. “About 1.1 million deaths,” he said.”

  1. Researchers in Sweden use the Imperial College model to predict 95,000 deaths (April 10)

After Neil Ferguson’s shocking death toll predictions for the US and UK captivated policymaker attention and drove both governments into lockdown, researchers in other countries began adapting the Imperial College model to their own circumstances. Usually, these models sought to reaffirm the decisions of each country to lock down. The government of Sweden, however, had decided to buck the trend, setting the stage for a natural experiment to test the Imperial model’s performance. 

In early April a team of researchers at Uppsala University adapted the Imperial model to Sweden’s population and demographics and ran its projections. Their result? If Sweden stayed the course and did not lock down, it could expect a catastrophic 96,000 deaths by early summer. The authors of the study recommended going into immediate lockdown, but since Sweden lagged behind Europe in adopting such measures they also predicted that this “best case” option would reduce deaths to “only” 30,000. 

By early June when the 96,000 prediction was supposed to come true, Sweden had recorded 4,600 deaths. Six months later, Sweden has about 8,000 deaths – a severe pandemic to be sure, but an order of magnitude smaller than what the modelers predicted. Facing embarrassment from these results, Ferguson and Imperial College attempted to distance themselves from the Swedish adaptation of their model in early May. Yet the Uppsala team’s projections closely matched Imperial’s own UK and US predictions when scaled to reflect their population sizes. In short, the Imperial model catastrophically failed one of the few clear natural experiment tests of its predictive ability.

  1. Scientists suggest that ocean spray spreads Covid (April 2)

In the second week of the lockdowns several newspapers in California promoted a bizarre theory: Covid could spread by ocean spray (although the paper later walked back the headline-grabbing claim, it is outlined here in the Los Angeles Times). According to this theory – initially promoted by a group of biologists who study bacterial infection connected to storm runoff – the Covid virus washed down storm gutters and into the ocean, where the ocean breeze would kick it up into the air and infect people on the nearby beaches. As silly as this theory now sounds, it helped to inform California’s initially draconian enforcement of lockdowns on its public beaches. 

The same week that this modern-day miasmic drift theory appeared, police in Malibu even arrested a lone paddleboarder for going into the ocean during the lockdown – all while citing the possibility that the ocean breeze carried Covid with it.

  1. Neil Ferguson predicts catastrophic death tolls in US states that reopen (May 24)

Fresh off of their exaggerated predictions from March, the Imperial College team led by Neil Ferguson doubled down on alarmist modeling. As several US states started to reopen in late April and May, Ferguson and his colleagues published a new model predicting another catastrophic wave of deaths by the mid-summer. Their model focused on 5 states with both moderate and severe outbreaks during the first wave. If they reopened, according to the Imperial team’s model, New York could face up to 3,000 deaths per day by July. 

Florida could hit as high as 4,000, and California could hit 5,000 daily deaths. Keeping in mind that these projections were for each state alone, they exceed the daily death toll peaks for the entire country in both the fall and spring. Showing just how bad the Imperial model was, the actual death toll by mid-July in several of the examined states even fell below the lower confidence boundary of its projected count. While Covid remains a threat in all 5 states, the post-reopening explosion of deaths predicted by Imperial College and used to argue for keeping the lockdowns in place never happened.

  1. Anthony Fauci credits lockdowns for beating the virus in Europe (July 31)

In late July Anthony Fauci offered additional testimony to Congress. His message credited Europe’s heavy lockdowns with defeating the virus, whereas he blamed the United States for reopening too early and for insufficient aggressiveness in the initial lockdowns. As Fauci stated at the time, “If you look at what happened in Europe, when they shut down or locked down or went to shelter in place — however you want to describe it — they really did it to the tune of about 95% plus of the country did that.” 

The message was clear: the United States should have followed Europe, but failed to do so and got a summer wave of Covid instead. Fauci’s entire argument however was based on a string of falsehoods and errors. 

Mobility data from the US clearly showed that most Americans were staying home during the spring outbreak, with a recorded decline that matched Germany, the Netherlands, and several other European countries. Contrary to Fauci’s claim, the US was actually slower than most of Europe to reopen. Furthermore, his praise of Europe collapsed in the early fall when almost all of the lockdown countries in Europe experienced severe second waves – just like the locked down regions of the United States.

  1. New Zealand and Australia declare themselves Covid-free (August-present)

New Zealand and Australia have thus far weathered the pandemic with extremely low case counts, leading many epidemiologists and journalists to conflate these results with evidence of their successful and replicable mitigation policies. In reality, New Zealand and Australia opted for the medieval ‘Prince Prospero’ strategy of attempting to wall themselves from the world until the pandemic passes – an approach that is highly dependent on their unique geographies. 

As island nations with comparatively lower international travel than North America and Europe, both countries shut down their borders before the as-of-yet undetected virus became widespread and have remained closed ever since. It’s a costly strategy in terms of its economic impact and personal displacement, but it kept the virus out – mostly. 

The problem with New Zealand and Australia’s Prince Prospero strategy is that it’s inherently fragile. All it takes to throw it into chaos is for the virus to slip past the border – including by accident or human error. Then heavy-handed lockdowns ensue, imposed with maximum disruption at the spur of the moment in a frantic attempt to contain the breach. 

The most famous example happened on August 9 when New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared that New Zealand had reached 100 days of being Covid-free. Then just two days later a breach happened, sending Auckland into heavy lockdown. It’s a pattern that has repeated itself every few weeks in both countries. 

In early December, we saw a similar flurry of stories from Australia announcing that the country had beaten Covid. Two weeks later, another breach occurred in the suburbs around Sydney, prompting a regional lockdown. There have been embarrassing missteps as well. In November the entire state of South Australia went into heavy lockdown over a single misreported case of Covid that was mistakenly attributed to a pizza purchase that did not exist. While both countries continue to celebrate their low fatality rates, they’ve also incurred some of the harshest and most disruptive restrictions in the world – all the result of premature declarations of being “Covid-free” followed by an unexpected breach and another frantic lockdown.

  1. “Renewed lockdowns are just a strawman” (October)

In early October a group of scientists met at AIER where they drafted and signed the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement calling attention to the severe social and economic harms of lockdowns and urging the world to adopt alternative strategies for ensuring the protection of the most vulnerable. Although the statement quickly gathered tens of thousands of co-signers from health science and medical professionals, it also left the lockdown supporters incensed. They responded not by scientific debate over the merits of their policies, but with a vilification campaign

They answered by flooding the petition with hoax signatures and juvenile name-calling, and by peddling wildly false conspiracy theories about AIER’s funding (the primary instigator of both tactics, ironically, was a UK blogger known for promoting 9/11 Truther conspiracies). But the lockdowners also adopted another narrative: they began to deny that lockdowns were even on the table. 

Nobody was considering bringing back the lockdowns from the spring, they insisted. Arguing against the politically unpopular shelter-in-place orders in the fall only served the purpose of undermining public support for narrower and more temperate restrictions. The Great Barrington authors, we were told, were arguing with a “strawman” from the past. 

Over the next several weeks in October a dozen or more prominent epidemiologists, public health experts, and journalists peddled the “lockdowns are a strawman” line. The “strawman” claim saw promotion in top outlets including the New York Times, and in an op-ed by two principle co-signers of the John Snow Memorandum, a competing petition that lockdown supporters drafted as a response to the Great Barrington Declaration. 

The message was clear: the GBD was sounding a false alarm against policies from the past that the lockdowners “reluctantly” supported in the spring as an emergency measure but had no intention of reviving. By early November, the “strawman” of renewed lockdowns became a reality in dozens of countries across the globe – often cheered on by the very same people who used the “strawman” canard in October. 

Several US states followed suit including California, which imposed severe restrictions on private gatherings up to and including meeting your own family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And a few weeks after that, some of the very same epidemiologists who used the “strawman” line in October revised their own positions after the fact. They started claiming they had supported a second lockdown all along, and began blaming the GBD for impeding their efforts to impose them at an earlier date. In short, the entire “lockdowns are a strawman” narrative was false. And it now appears that more than a few of the scientists who used it were actively lying about their own intentions in October.

  1. Anthony Fauci touts New York as a model for Covid containment (June-December)

By all indicators, New York state has suffered one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world. Its year-end mortality rate of almost 1,900 deaths per million residents exceeds every single country in the world. The state famously bungled its nursing home response when Governor Andrew Cuomo forced these facilities to readmit Covid-positive patients as a way to relieve strains on hospitals. The policy backfired as most hospitals never reached capacity, but the readmissions introduced the virus into vulnerable nursing home populations resulting in widespread fatalities (to this day New York intentionally undercounts nursing home fatalities by excluding residents who are moved to a hospital from its reported numbers, further obscuring the true toll of Cuomo’s order). 

New York has also fared poorly during the fall “second wave” despite reimposing harsh restrictions and regional lockdown measures. By mid-December, its death rate shot far above the mostly-open state of Florida, which has the closest comparable population size to New York. All things considered, New York’s weathering of the pandemic is an exemplar of what not to do. 

Cuomo’s policies not only failed to contain the virus – they likely made it far more deadly to vulnerable populations. Enter Anthony Fauci, who has been asked multiple times in the press what a model Covid response policy would look like. He gave his first answer on July 20th: “We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York.” 

Fauci was operating under the assumption that New York, despite its bad run in the spring, had successfully brought the pandemic under control through its aggressive lockdowns and slow reopening. One might think that the fall rebound in New York, despite locking down again, would call this conclusion into question. Not so much for Dr. Fauci, who told the Wall Street Journal on December 8: “New York got hit really badly in the beginning” but they did “a really good job of keeping things down, and still, their level is low compared to the rest of the country.”