Fake climate marketing

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Der Spiegel 15/02/2018 article titled "Climate Change Disinformation. Catastrophe Business"

Desinformation zum Klimawandel; Das Geschäft mit der Katastrophe. Axel Bojanowski

English translations of the article quotes and comments are reposted after this blog:

Surprise! Spiegel Online Slams Profiteering From Climate Alarmism… Munich Re Admits: “No Climate Signal”

All have been playing it loose with the data on weather events and exaggerating (at times grossly) and with the aim of deriving profit, Spiegel reports.

German Railway: climate change as a cover for poor management

Bojanowski begins by describing how today the German Railway (Deutsche Bundesbahn) – once heralded for its outstanding punctuality and overall efficiency – has discovered how to use climate change to deflect blame away from its recent poor management, which over the years has often led to lousy service.

Over the years, the Bundesbahn has made the maintenance of its tracks a victim to cost cutting. Trees and vegetation along the tracks no longer get sufficiently cut back, and so it is common for routes to get blocked during stormy weather. What better excuse than climate change could the Deutsche Bahn have to explain all the disruptions?

Data in fact show no increasing trend in extreme weather

All the cancellations, service shutdowns and delays are of course due to ever increasing storm intensity and frequency, the Deutsche Bahn management likes to claim, and they get the full backing of the media, policymakers and alarmist climate scientists. Yet Bojanowski calls out these claims by the Bundesbahn for what they are: lame excuses based on hyped up science.

The Spiegel journalist writes that a number of scientists have shown that there has in fact been no increase in storm intensity and frequency in Europe, commenting:
That’s amazing, as many scientists anticipate fewer storms in Central Europe as a consequence of climate change.”


Munich Re bilking the public with climate hype?

Another industry caught hyping up extreme weather activity is the reinsurance industry, which insures regular insurance companies against major claims events. The reason for the added hype: justification for hefty premium increases, Bojanowski suggests.

Munich Re admits no real climate signal

One company Bojanowski cites is the world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, which annually publishes a report on “natural catastrophes”, in which the company likes to blame climate change, cite alarmist experts and claim there is today a “new normal”. When asked by Spiegel to comment concerning data showing that it isn’t really so, a climate expert from Munch Re was forced to admit:

The blanket statement that weather-dependent damages worldwide show a climate signal cannot be supported.”

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Environmental companies spreading climate hype
Recently there was a panel of climate experts at the IFAT industrial trade fair for wastewater technology, which saw 3000 environmental companies participating. The panel held a “future dialog” dubbed: “Weather extremes – are we defenseless?” Bojanowski reports that the panel spoke of which weather extremes have been on the increase, but how they kept silent about this still being very much in dispute among climate scientists.
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Unmentioned by the panel, Bojanowski writes, was the fact that the UN “could not detect any relationship between floods and storms and global warming“.

and the last but not least comment from the blog itself:

Shameless exploitation/hypocrisy

Unfortunately Spiegel — in its otherwise praiseworthy article — failed to mention two other parties who have a major stake in climate hype: the media (like Spiegel itself), who have profited immensely from spectacular climate claims, and politicians, who unabashedly exploit climate catastrophism to try to gain more control over society.

Data graphs from the article.

ABC: Experts say flu shot potentially caused the flu epidemic

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ABC: Experts say flu shot potentially caused the flu epidemic (Shocker, in mainstream no less)
By Erin Elizabeth - February 8, 2018

New anti-viral melanoma therapy

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TV interview with medical doctor prof Andrzej Mackiewicz (in Polish)

Quote:

Oncologist prof. Andrzej Mackiewicz, creator of the melanoma vaccine, was a guest of "Dzien Dobry" ["Good Morning"] TVN program. It is a vaccine that heals, not just prevents melanoma! It could have helped several hundred sick people each year if it was officially registered and approved, however that is very expensive. Why is the melanoma vaccine not available to all patients? - We are scientists who have developed a medicine that works, and that seems to pose a huge problem for certain people or authorities - said prof. Mackiewicz on Good Morning TVN.

Non-interferon Hepatitis-C therapy

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Article (in Polish)

Quote (translated):

2. What is non-interferon therapy?

The non-interferon therapy involves the use of drugs that contain substances such as ombitasvir, paritaprevir, ritonavir (1 EAN code) and dasabuvu, which have maximum efficacy in the treatment of hepatitis C.

These modern drugs can be used in patients of all ages, regardless of the stage at which they have the disease. The patient requires constant medical supervision, however, hospitalization is not needed. This means that the patient is not exposed to stress and can undergo the therapy, which lasts from 12 to 24 weeks and costs about 60,000 zl (about 17600 US$). The therapy is completely safe and does not cause side effects, and most importantly - eliminates the virus in 90 to 100 percent of patients.

Older hepatitis C treatment therapies are much longer and more expensive - they last up to 72 weeks, and their cost often exceeds 160,000zl (47,200 US$).
In addition, they cause severe side effects - patients complain of very high fever, hair loss and skin problems. The success rate of healing hepatitis C with these older therapies is 70%.

New Ice Age?

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It is possible, the Sun is cooling!

Scientists warn of unusually cold Sun: Will we face another ice age?

Quote:

A study by the University of California San Diego has claimed that by 2050, the Sun is expected to become cool. You might think "what's the big deal," but remember that this means the solar activities that create the heat of the Sun to sustain life on Earth may diminish. And the last time it happened was in the 17th Century, when the Thames River froze. Scientists call this the "Maunder Minimum".

Physicist Dan Lubin at the university and his team studied the past event and concluded that were are in for a worse case. The Sun is expected to get much dimmer than last time and, in scientific terms, it is a "grand minimum" -- a time period in the 11-year solar cycle when the solar activities are at the lowest point.

Also read: Scientists warn of 'mini ice age' that could hit Earth and freeze major rivers by 2030

According to the study, titled Ultraviolet Flux Decrease Under a Grand Minimum from IUE Short-wavelength Observation of Solar Analogs and published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, this grand minimum will be 7 percent cooler than such periods from the past.

I have to explain this. The effect if diminishing of the solar activity upon the atmophere is indirect. Even though the total energy flux is reduced by a small fraction of a percent, the total Sun light reaching the surface in some areas, especially the oceans may be reduced by a very large factor (tens percents) caused by increased cloud formation, the "cloud seeding" effect caused by increasing galactic cosmic rays flux striking the upper atmosphere. To summarize it, the causuality chain is as follows:

1) reduced Solar activity
2) reduced coronal flares
3) reduced intensity of the solar wind
4) reduced magnetic flux carried by the solar wind away from the sun out to the outer reaches of the solar system (beyond Kuiper Belt)
5) reduced solar magnetic flux means less shielding of the inner planets of the Solar System against high energy galactic particles ("Cosmic Rays")
6) less magnetic shielding means higher intensity of the Cosmic Rays seen at the Earth.
7) High energy cosmic ray particles cause microscopic condensation trails when striking the atmosphere.
8) The microscopic condensation trails cause water vapor condensation which leads to accelerated formation of clouds, accelerated - compared with the situation when there were no particle trails. Note that condensation by cosmic ray microtrails is the major factor in cloud seeding, another one are dust particles.
9) Increased rate of cloud formation causes higher average cloud coverage over the portions of the Earth surface, reflecting the Sunlight back out to space. Causing cooling of the climate.

Sea level supposedly rising but Tuvalu getting bigger!

More data points towards Global Warming being the fact-denying religion rather than the fact!

Not so long ago Tyvalu and other Pacific islands have been prominently featuring on the 3 major international Global Warming conferences: Kopenhagen, Kyoto and Paris. Their leaders have been dramatically calling upon the industrialized Western countries to reduce carbon emission to save their islands from disappearing under the ocean

There is a small problem - the islands have been growing in size!


'Sinking' Pacific nation is getting bigger: study

Quote:

The Pacific nation of Tuvalu—long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels—is actually growing in size, new research shows.

A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery.

It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu's total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average.

Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose.

Viruses more important than we realise

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Deposition rates of viruses and bacteria above the atmospheric boundary layer

Quote:

Abstract
Aerosolization of soil-dust and organic aggregates in sea spray facilitates the long-range transport of bacteria, and likely viruses across the free atmosphere. Although long-distance transport occurs, there are many uncertainties associated with their deposition rates. Here, we demonstrate that even in pristine environments, above the atmospheric boundary layer, the downward flux of viruses ranged from 0.26 × 10⁹ to > 7 × 10⁹ m⁻² per day. These deposition rates were 9–461 times greater than the rates for bacteria, which ranged from 0.3 × 10⁷ to > 8 × 10⁷ m⁻² per day. The highest relative deposition rates for viruses were associated with atmospheric transport from marine rather than terrestrial sources. Deposition rates of bacteria were significantly higher during rain events and Saharan dust intrusions, whereas, rainfall did not significantly influence virus deposition. Virus deposition rates were positively correlated with organic aerosols < 0.7 μm, whereas, bacteria were primarily associated with organic aerosols > 0.7 μm, implying that viruses could have longer residence times in the atmosphere and, consequently, will be dispersed further. These results provide an explanation for enigmatic observations that viruses with very high genetic identity can be found in very distant and different environments.

Asparagus - not so good for cancer!

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Wiki Asparagus

The Guardian article.


Asparagine bioavailability governs metastasis in a model of breast cancer

Quote:

Here we show that asparagine bioavailability strongly influences metastatic potential. Limiting asparagine by knockdown of asparagine synthetase, treatment with -asparaginase, or dietary asparagine restriction reduces metastasis without affecting growth of the primary tumour, whereas increased dietary asparagine or enforced asparagine synthetase expression promotes metastatic progression. Altering asparagine availability in vitro strongly influences invasive potential, which is correlated with an effect on proteins that promote the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. This provides at least one potential mechanism for how the bioavailability of a single amino acid could regulate metastatic progression.

Social studies covering up leftism vs psychoticism correlations

As was demonstrated by the forced retractions and erratum of some social studies publications on political views versus certain character traits.

Lovely! That's a kind of data obfuscation and "accidental" words reversal in conclusions, to be expected - if the authors themselves are psychotics!

This procedure was uncovered and reported by students (Steven G. Ludeke and Stig H. R. Rasmussen) for a number of publications. Which then lead to a forced retraction and erratum published by the authors. This article on Retraction Watch website describes what happened:

Retraction Watch
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process

Conservative political beliefs not linked to psychotic traits, as study claimed

(thanks Drew Maharaj!)

Quote:

Researchers have fixed a number of papers after mistakenly reporting that people who hold conservative political beliefs are more likely to exhibit traits associated with psychoticism, such as authoritarianism and tough-mindedness.

As one of the notices specifies, now it appears that liberal political beliefs are linked with psychoticism. That paper also swapped ideologies when reporting on people higher in neuroticism and social desirability (falsely claiming that you have socially desirable qualities); the original paper said those traits are linked with liberal beliefs, but they are more common among people with conservative values.

I would like to point out a theory (originally proposed by Stan P. aka "Dozent") and some of my articles linking collectivism with the atavistic fall-back to a hierarchical primate heard society, see here.
and here

Specifically:

Lack of social skills made us human

Scientists find liberal gene

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Human regression, anthropology

Quote:

"Nomadic" (Homo Sapiens)	"Boomers" (Simian Sapiens)
outwardly - individualists, inwardly - co-operative	outwardly - collectivists, inwardly - aggressive and competitive
introvert	extrovert
disobedient	followers
adaptive, flexible	static, rigid
racially blind	intolerant of strangers
value creativity	afraid of new
dislike static order	value stability
rely on individual work	work unconnected to wealth
authorities = problems	authorities = source of wealth
strong team bonds	strong social group bonds
manipulate environment	manipulate people
technical and science skills	lack of technical abilities
logic and math	verbal reasoning and rhetorics
observe what works	observe what others say
individual survival priority	group has priority
idealizes religions	uses religions
support commerce	consider it unfair profiteering
nomadic mentality	settled mentality
highly focused on 1 task	multitasker
"What I produce belongs to me"	"What you produce belongs to us"

Last but not least, I recommend Susan Cain's book "Quiet..." on introvertism: where she describes some characters of people that would traditionally be associated with individualism (as opposed to collectivism). See also this.

Heretic

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Can anyone comment on this paper? Thanks

Effects of prior influenza virus vaccination on maternal antibody responses: Implications for achieving protection in the newborns.