Funny Isn't It? "Global Warming/Climate Change" Can Do Everything

Including even messing up a Paris Olympics event: 

The Detroit News:  Olympics bet against climate change with swimming in Seine and may lose. Scientists say told you so

In short, the planners for the triathalon thought it wouldn't rain much during the Olympics so it wouldn't be a major issue to have the swim in the Seine.

It in fact did rain, a lot, which caused sewer runoff into the Seine. The fact that it rained is being blamed, of course, on Climate Change.

Now, where would the planners have gotten the idea that it wouldn't rain much?

Why, from the proclamations of scientists that climate change was causing drought and a lack of rainfall - as recently as 2022 and 2023: 

France 24:  France’s unprecedented drought shows climate change is ‘spiralling out of control’

euronews: ‘We can’t escape the reality’: France is preparing for 4°C of warming by 2100

So, the Olympics may have went with the prior proclamation from climate change scientists that Climate Change was going to cause droughts and lack of rain rather than today's proclamation -- conveniently after heavy rainfall too place --that climate change causes heavy rain. Or, maybe they just relied on a long-range weather forecast that proved to be wrong?

"Climate Change" bears far more similarity to an unfalsifiable religion than to science as everything, including contradictory things, can be conveniently to be blamed upon it in an ever-changing narrative.

CDC: There's A Midterm Election Coming, Time To Change The Covid Metrics

Up until today, per the CDC, all of Michigan and indeed  the majority of the country at large were considered to be areas of "High" or "Substantial" Covid risk and thus per CDC rules had to use masks in schools, indoors. etc for 95% of the country.  Nice and scary.

Then the polls were read.  The midterm elections grow ever closer.

Now, the CDC has suddenly decided to change how Covid is measured.  

Nothing has actually changed with our Covid numbers in the past couple days. But now we have new friendly pandemic risk metrics and just like that, suddenly 70% of Americans no longer need to mask up per the CDC. Quite a drop to 30% from 95% the day before, neh?

Now it is time for figures to lie and liars to figure to make everything happy again.  What was an area claimed to have a substantial or high risk of death yesterday is now a friendly low risk area today.

It's a medical miracle, really, quite simply astonishing.

The Detroit Free Press: CDC's new COVID-19 metrics plunge majority of Michigan into medium risk category.

This takes 66 out of 83 Michigan counties out of the substantial/high risk zone that they were all in under the old scary metric just a day ago, and puts 12 of them into the really friendly low risk zone and 54 into the pretty comfy  medium no mask zone under the new measurement. Suddenly case rates of Covid no longer matter.

An amazing change pretty much overnight, totally unconnected to the upcoming midterms, nor to any actual change in any facts on the ground. 

Dad's Travel Back To Cana-Duh

The Canadian government when it comes to dealing with travelers in the age of Covid is just plain stupid.

The border is, of course, still closed to non-essential travelers, vaccinated or not. Which is stupid.

However, let's talk about Canadians returning to Canada.

My dad has returned to Canada,  He was fully vaccinated here in the US when he went there in March as it was taking forever for him to get an appointment to get a vaccine there.  His brothers of similar age have still not received their second shots and may get them in July.

So he's vaccinated but he still had to get a PCR test 72 hours before returning to Canada.  And he had to sign up for ArriveCan.

The Canadian government information technology people who designed ArriveCan seem to be a bunch of idiots. 

The ArriveCan system, as it turns out, is not compatible with Google Chrome.

But it doesn't tell you that.  

Instead it gives you an error when you create a password stating the password doesn't meet their requirements even when it does, and doesn't let you proceed but instead states it sent you a verification email, which it does not do.

Try to get a 77-year old to diagnose that problem and know why it is not working.  Good luck.

He then let me know, and I looked it over and then figured it out that it was probably a browser problem.    I then used Safari instead and got it working, setup his password, and got the verification email.

Once we figured that out it was on to the rest of the form.  You have to input how you're traveling, your travel documents and when you will arrive and since he's crossing the border by car, its always hard to know exactly when you'll cross.

There is no provision to indicate you're vaccinated, nor any exemption for being so.

But he gets a nice printout he can show the border services.

So, my dad when he gets home has to quarantine alone for 14 days which makes absolutely no sense considering he's fully vaccinated.  He can't see anyone, nor leave his condo under penalty of law for 14 days. It's stupid and cruel both.

The best part, after being driven across the border and dropped off in Windsor, he was on a Train to Toronto which ArriveCan specifically stated he could do to travel back to his condo.  That kinda gets rid of the whole concept of a quarantine considering he would be exposed and exposing his vaccinated self to any train-travelers in his compartment.

We couldn't drive him as neither of us is considered essential, but had to have a paid driver deliver him across the border. 

So at the border he handed in his ArriveCan receipt, showed his ID and his negative Covid Test within the last 72 hours.  They then had him get tested again right there which again is stupid as he's vaccinated.

Then he was allowed to proceed to the train, got on the train, with others on board no less and got to Union station in Toronto, got picked up there and went home, where he is now stuck for a total of 14 days alone with no direct human contact.

Like I said, it's stupid and cruel both, but it lets the government proclaim they're doing something.  

Meanwhile, we can't visit Natasha's mom on Canada as we don't have somewhere to stay for 14 days away from anyone over 68 years old even though we're both vaccinated. First both my dad and her mom are over that age and two, spending 14 days stuck somewhere in a room in Canada unable to leave before seeing them is kinda useless and not practicable at all.  

This stupid border closing especially when Covid is well and truly already out among the population in Canada, and ignoring the fact that vaccinated people are definitely fine to travel farce and don;t need this goofy quarantine really needs to end. 

Study - Systemic Racism To Blame For Everything, Even When It Is Not

Even when systemic racism can't be shown to actually exist, it is easy to assign blame to it as an un-falsifiable theory.

One of the great things for progressives about the cant of systemic racism is it deprives Blacks, Browns, what have you, of agency.  Clearly if systemic racism is to blame, it can't be their fault, and AWFLs (Angry Woke Female Liberals) must then come in and save them from themselves while dealing with self-loathing and hating on western civilization.

Systemic racism can be blamed for everything, even when the data shows there are actual and real explanations not linked to the mythical and unproven theory of systemic racism.

Take Covid for example.

The Detroit News: Systemic racism drove higher COVID-19 mortality for Black people study says

Black people are more likely to die of COVID-19 than their White counterparts due to systemic racism, according to a Wayne State University study published in April.

. . .

They found that people were more likely to die from COVID-19 if they lived in environments with high rates of poverty, unemployment and other social determinants of health that often are caused by systemic racism, Chopra said. 

Hmm, sounds bad. But wait, there's more:

The study found no relationship between COVID-19 mortality and the color of a person's skin, Chopra noted. What mattered were the conditions in which they lived. 

Wait a sec, they just said systemic racism is to blame, but then say there is no correlation found between mortality and race.  Is there systemic racism to blame here or not?

"There was no relation between COVID-19 mortality and race," she said. "We found that the Black population in large urban centers — these populations are not inherently at greater risk for higher mortality, but our results supported the possibility that it is the social/economic vulnerability.

So again, the study says it is not race but living in urban centers and making certain lifestyle choices that can be unhealthy? Who knew?

“Systemic racism is implicated because we feel it shapes the circumstances and policies that are responsible for the inequitable distribution of resources across communities of color,” Chopra said.   

Ah, so this determination is based on feelings, not data.  If you assign people no agency, systemic racism must be to blame.  Did they study Blacks and other minorities outside of urban centers for mortality?  Was there any difference form whites in the same areas that would demonstrate systemic racism?  Of course they did not.  

Heck did they compare mortality between comparable poor urban whites and blacks in the study - no, reading the study it shows they did not.   They solely looked at a majority-minority area for their study.

The study actually finds that people in crowded environments, having low socio-economic status and using public transportation make one more likely to be vulnerable to Covid.  The racial aspect is tacked on as they only looked at a poor urban area in Detroit with a 90% Black population and did not control or compare to a similar socio-economic area that is predominantly white. 

The study at most shows that if you are poor, have comorbidities, live in crowded housing, and take public transport, you are more likely to die of (or with) Covid than if you are none of these things. 

In short, the study's conclusion as to systemic racism is abject junk science, but it does get headlines.

Yet Another Crazy Column On Covid: It's Turtles All The Way Down

The Globe and Mail, a pretty prestigious and major nation-wide Canadian newspaper, ran an op-ed that in more sensible times would have never been published in a major paper.

The real cure for COVID is renewing our fractured relationship with the planet

Now behind a paywall, at least some of the time (your access may vary), it's a fun read by:

James Maskalyk is an emergency physician, associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and author of the forthcoming book Doctor: Heal Thyself.Dave Courchene is the founder of the Turtle Lodge International Centre for Indigenous Education and Wellness and chair of its National Knowledge Keepers’ Council.

Between the title and the description of the authors, you can kinda tell where it is going to go from there, can't you?

If humanity is to endure, the coming months must hold healing, not just of populations across the globe from the coronavirus, but of the Earth herself. As is true of many zoonoses (diseases that jumped from animals), this virus emerged from pressure humans put on a global ecosystem.

Yep, it's the Gaia-worshiping Malthusians to the fore, with their idea that this virus instead of leaking from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is instead caused due to lack of our relationship and healing of the earth.

A lack of healthy, natural habitat weakens the immune systems of animals and the resulting sicknesses pass rapidly through them. Birds, prairie dogs, pigs, bats. With each infection, a chance for a virus to mutate into one that can sicken humans, and sometimes, global livelihoods. As such, a vaccine alone, no matter how effective, will not tip the balance toward health because COVID-19 is not a disease; it is a symptom of an exhausted planet. The renewal of a healthy relationship to our one shared mother, planet Earth, is the cure.

"COVID-19 is not a disease; it is a symptom of an exhausted planet" - What? remember the first-named author is a physician. I thought modern-day doctors had given up on both the sickness is caused by angry earth spirits and the bad humors school of sickness a long time ago.

But, it appears we are regressing.

The article to goes on about how indigenous peoples are much better stewards of the earth and the cure to Covid is being nice to the earth.  Really.

There is good news. We do not need to wait to determine how, because the answer is already here, and has been known for thousands of years. It is in the wisdom and sacred teachings of Indigenous people across the world. They have the deepest connection to the spirit of the Earth and its history, and from this intimacy, healing can occur. 

Puh-leeze.  The indigenous people's intimacy with the earth didn't help with healing Smallpox, nor Ebola, nor other viruses.  Still doesn't today.  Viruses are indeed a natural occurrence, as is the mosquito.   

I might also note this persistent myth of the noble savage is getting rather tiresome.

At least the authors are not yet advocating for adoption of ancient indigenous intimate practices like human sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, heal the earth,  and fend off Covid.  

At least not yet.

Oh, But We Should Listen To Science!

Seeing a lot of posts on Facebook that we should listen to scientists during this crisis.

Unfortunately it's the "I Love Science!" Crowd herding us along towards far worse effects than the virus alone.

So do we listen to Ferguson of the Imperial College model fame, the one who has been prophesying doom and gloom in every crisis and saying millions would die if there wasn't a lockdown?

The one who then after the governments bought into his overstated models and the lock downs were declared revised his models on the current crisis downward by over a factor of 20?

While a stopped clock may be correct twice a day, he has in my opinion been consistently wrong in each of his past predictions, so the world has been listening to the wrong scientist.

But wait there's more! It turns out that the model software itself that made these projections and scared the globe into this whole lock down mess is a bunch of hot garbage.

But wait, there's even more!

While we are told that we should listen to Science, meaning Ferguson in his projections of doom and mass death if we don't lock down, he certainly has not been following his own advice and proclamations of doom if lock down is not followed.

Instead, he's been busy stepping out of lockdown for regular shtupping of his married mistress on the side. The best part, his mistress was married and living with her husband who by her account was having the symptoms of being an active Covid-19 case.

No, you really can't make this up.

So in following the advice of scientists, do you follow what they and their models, that have been consistently proven to be wrong, say and follow their prescription of a lock dow? Or do you do as they do and treat the situation as not serious enough to bother with a lock down?

Hickory Dickory Dark, The Clock Has Jumped The Shark

Since the fear of an all-out nuclear war has declined since the end of the Cold War, the Bureau of Atomic Scientists are in a desperate search for relevance and craving attention.

With a flourish of the dramatic, and massively overstating reality, they announced that this year Doomsday Clock moves closest to midnight in 73-year history.

Blink.

Yep, right now, according to the BAS we're at this very moment the closest we've come to annihilation ever.

As if.

With the threat of total nuclear annihilation at one of its lowest levels ever, with decent relations between the US and Russia, missiles off alert launch-on-warning status, the Bureau of Atomic scientists chose to advance the clock to the closest it has ever been to scary midnight, past even the highest tensions of the Cold War.

Why? Mission creep.

It's no longer all-out nuclear war they're warning about, but instead they've announced it's due to climate change and governments failing to do what they feel is good policy. Yes really from their FAQ:

In 2020, the Science and Security Board set the time to 100 seconds to midnight, largely because of worldwide governmental dysfunction in dealing with global threats. Before 2020, the closest the hand was set to midnight was two minutes; in 1953, after the United States and the Soviet Union each tested their first thermonuclear weapons within six months of one another, and 2018, largely due to nuclear risk and the rising threat of climate change.

Verily, the Bureau of Atomic Scientists' clock has just officially jumped the shark.

They Say That Like It's A Bad Thing.....

Detroit Free Press: Nation's capital sinking into the sea, study says

How To Cry With Statistics - Safe Real Estate Edition

Yet another feel good survey using a methodology so questionable that even the newspaper headline trumpeting it takes pains to point that out.

The Detroit News: Report has flaws but names Detroit safest city from natural disasters

Detroit has been named the safest city in the nation. When it comes to natural disasters anyway. ... “One thing that is problematic about the study is that it only includes the last 10 years,” Thompson said. “It seems to be more of a climatology of weather events over the last 10 years more than a risk assessment. We still have the possibility of tornadoes, hail, strong winds, flooding, and major snowstorms.

This is how the study also concludes that San Francisco is ranked third of the cities safest from natural disasters.

You'll note the study is also silent on man-caused disasters.

Global Warming, My Frostbite!

Here's the latest in Michigan Global Warming news:

Bitter, cold temperatures settle in across Michigan

Bitter cold temps cover 79% of Great Lakes in ice

Yeah, that Global Warming theory is working out real well.

Reality is dousing it with a bucket of cold snow.

Clicking on that link takes you to post where you'll graphically see that even as the IMF Chief tries to scaremonger the ever-coming threat of Global Warming, none of 73 of the global warming climate models match the actual observed temperature. None of them. All of them are instead way too high predicting warming that is not happening.

The IMF, IPCC, Obama and assorted other progressives want to throw our economy and indeed the industrialized world's economy into an even greater tailspin based on such shoddy "science". Or instead of calling it shoddy science, should we say instead it's based on shoddy progressive policy preferences pretending to be science?

Go check out the Hockey Schtick blog. It's worth your while as you huddle to keep warm this winter under all this global warming.

A New Anti-Gun Junk Science Study, For The Children Of Course

Interesting how this Free Press article featuring a study from Pediatrics, a journal with a rather time-worn anti-gun bias just comes along now.

It's a prime example of how to craft a misleading study and article. Expect the antis to start quoting from it root and branch and ignore the obvious faults with the study.

Let's go to the headline -

The Detroit Free Press: Twenty young people a day hospitalized for gun injuries

Oh, that sounds bad, doesn't it? The two leading paragraph makes it sound even worse:

Almost one child or teen an hour is injured by a firearm seriously enough to require hospitalization, a new analysis finds. Six percent of the 7,391 hospitalizations analyzed resulted in a death, says the study in February's Pediatrics, released today.

The damage caused by gun-related injuries rarely gets the same attention as fatalities, "but that every day, 20 of our children are hospitalized for firearms injury, often suffering severe and costly injuries, clearly shows that this is a national public health problem," says Robert Sege, director of the Division of Family and Child Advocacy at Boston Medical Center and a co-author of the study.

Must be an unbiased source, that. With a study like that, whose heart-strings could not be pulled by the thought of 20 children a day being hospitalized for being shot?

It takes reading down to the sixth paragraph to find out the definition of children apparently has a much wider range than in common use:

Researchers analyzed a nationally representative sample of discharge data collected on children and adolescents (up to age 20) in 2009. The data, released in 2011, are the most recent available, Sege says.

Now that's defining childhood upward. Not only can you stay on your parent's Obamacare policy until age 26, but to this study you're still just a wee child at age 20.

Now while any child being unintentionally shot is a tragedy, that isn't the bulk of those studied, as noted in paragraph 10:

Rates were highest for those ages 15 to 19 (27.94 per 100,000.)

Prime no-goodnik age indeed, and two of those five years in that span are old enough to be charged as adults without any special actions by the prosecutor because under the law, THEY ARE ADULTS, NOT CHILDREN.

You can see how well-crafted this study and article is to come to a biased conclusion now can't you?

Indeed, the study shows you're most likely to be a hospitalized "child" victim of a shooting if you're a black male in the 15-19 age range as result of being a victim of an assault, not an accident.

The study detailed a significant racial gap: Black children and adolescents comprised 47% of all hospitalizations, 54% of hospitalizations resulting from assaults, 36% from unintentional injuries and 54% from undetermined causes.

You can draw your own conclusions as to where said teens were and what they were doing at the time, as the study surely does not...

Luckily for the study, no analysis of poverty or indeed criminal activity on the part of those shot was considered:

Noting the significantly higher poverty rate for young black males compared with young white males, Sege says the data did not allow researchers to "separate the effects of poverty from the effects of race."

Nor did the data indicate what types of guns were used or where the injury occurred.

So it's biased stats full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, all the way down.

What is the first conclusion the authors of the study come to? That they need more funding, of course

The findings emphasize "the need for funding for public health research to find the best way to reduce children's access to firearms," he says.

That's findings-speak for "Don't confuse us with the facts, or ask us to look at what the fact sactually might mean, just give us more money so we can fund scientifically sounding junk to press for gun bans."

His second conclusion, that flies in the face of the studies admission that "Nor did the data indicate ..... where the injury occurred." is even more unsupported:

In the absence of such research, Sege says, the best advice is to follow the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that "the safest home for children and teens is one without guns,"

Talk about your non-sequitur. The study by his own admission does not state where the shooting injury occurred, or what the "child" was doing. Indeed, it shows that most of the shootings were due to assaults not accidents, but he confidently states that the safest home is one without guns. What?

Allegedly, Pediatrics is a peer reviewed journal. Draw your own conclusions of the wisdom of the particular peer reviewers approving publishing this dreck as a scientific study rather than an advocacy hit-piece thinly veiled with misleading statistics.

In short yet another example of the peudo-medical establishment with an anti-gun agenda trying to jump on the ever popular funding gravy-train with anti-gun distorted studies. No Thanks.

Everything Causes Cancer in California

The Detroit Free Press: Coke, Pepsi make changes to avoid cancer warning
In an example of the effects of junk science coming out of the Golden State, Pepsi and Coke are changing the ingredient for the caramel color in their products as a result of one study that found the ingredient might cause cancer in lab rats - at a dosage equivalent of a person drinking more than 1000 cans of Coke or Pepsi per day.

I daresay, if you do drink more than 1000 cans of Coke or Pepsi per day, you've got way more to worry about health-wise than the minuscule possibility of 4-methylimidazole causing cancer.

Oh, and the careful science that led California to require the "causes cancer" warning for the chemical:

The American Beverage Association also noted that California added the coloring to its list of carcinogens with no studies showing that it causes cancer in humans. It noted that the listing was based on a single study in lab mice and rats.

California.

A Global Warming Lie Is HalfwayRound The World Before The Truth Has Got Its Shoes On

Vodkapundit notes that contrary to scientifically settled proclamations of doom, the glaciers are not melting.

Within the article Vodkapundit links to is the statement that

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350.

However the amazing part is linked by a commenter who provides a link to a Daily Mail article with the rather amazing revelation by the scientist that made the "mistakenly stated" claim originally in 2007 - he made it up for political gain.

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Lai admitted his lie three years after making it, and people are still claiming the Himalayan glaciers are melting and will be gone based on his lie and related scientific statements.

How many more politically convenient lies were placed in the IPCC reports that have yet to be admitted?