Civil Defense Perspectives 33(1): January 2018

The basis for draconian anti-carbon regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the Endangerment Finding issued in 2009. This finding created a statutory obligation to regulate carbon emissions on the basis that greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO₂, endanger human health and welfare.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has recently acknowledged that agency staff short-circuited the science review early in the regulatory process. Sen. James Inhofe (R, Okla.) had asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General, in April 2010, to assess the adequacy of the peer review of the Technical Support Document, writes Ross McKitrick (https://tinyurl.com/y7tjz2tv). The OIG found that the EPA had violated its own rules, but agency staff responded with a preposterous legal fiction that the docu- ment was not a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment that should have been reviewed as such.

A petition requesting reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding (https://tinyurl.com/y7aokaqm), filed by the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, states that the lines of evidence on which the Finding is based have all been invalidated. The essential “greenhouse fingerprint” or “tropical hot spot” is not to be found. If the theory of how greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic warming is correct, it is “critical and necessary” to see evidence in the tropics that the upper tropo- sphere is warming faster than the lower, which is warming faster than the surface because of greenhouse gases blocking heat trans- fer into space. But we don’t see this. Models are not evidence.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) also filed a Petition (https://tinyurl.com/ya68nab3). It emphasizes that “there has been no statistically significant atmospheric warming despite a continued increase in atmospheric [CO₂] levels.” The “warmest year on record” (2016) was reportedly 0.02 °C warmer than 1998, only one-fifth as much as needed to be statistically significant. A warming of 2 °C would fall within the natural range of variability over recent geological time. Moreover, “at the current level of

~400 ppm we still live in a CO₂-starved world. Atmospheric lev- els 15 times greater existed during the Cambrian Period (about 550 million years ago) without known adverse effects.”

The Four Fears

On Dec 10, 1948, the 3-year old-UN adopted in its Univer- sal Declaration of Human Rights what Eleanor Roosevelt called the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Now, it appears that a principal purpose of the UN is not to protect freedoms, but to promote fears. The Summary for Policymakers of the Synthesis Report, of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR-5, 2013 & 2014) for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPPC) predicts a dire future from continued use of carbon-based fuels. The four phantom fears, based on never-validated models, are:

• Fear of Dire Temperature Increase
• Fear of Sudden Sea Level Rise
• Fear of Ocean Acidification (change in chemistry) and
• Fear of Famine

These are debunked by Ken Haapala (The Week That Was 12/9/17, https://tinyurl.com/y9k8yv2w), and also in the Cli- mate Change IQ Project of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (www.ddponline.org).

Global Health and Welfare

Since 1950, as atmospheric CO₂ has climbed, the percentage of the world’s population living in absolute poverty (a condition of severe deprivation of basic human needs) has decreased from around 72% to less than 10% in 2015 (https://tinyurl.com/ yb7q45ms). Since 1990, hunger, illiteracy, and child mortality have all declined (https://tinyurl.com/ybnbj8fg).

Poverty is the world’s greatest killer. Income rises with CO2 emissions, and life expectancy rises with income (https:// tinyurl.com/y9dumthf). Also necessary is the legal and eco- nomic system that provides incentive to work, invest, and inno- vate: free markets (https://tinyurl.com/yacmbckg). The de- struction of capitalism is the expressed goal of Christiana Fi- gueres, executive secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (https://tinyurl.com/yabex9wr).

Insurance, or Suicide? 

Will Happer, Director of the Office of Science in the U.S. Dept. of Energy from 1991-1993, compares the climate change consensus to Pascal’s Wager (https://tinyurl.com/yak8o93t). As with the existence of God, the stakes are said to be so high that it is far better to act and discover it was not necessary, than not to act and discover it was. Cutting CO₂ emissions is just an “insurance policy.” However, as John Christy pointed out in testi- mony to Congress, a total elimination of U.S. emissions would have a near zero impact on global climate despite devastating economic consequences. Happer writes:

But the insurance salesmen, like the Laputan professors of Gulliver’s Travels, “instead of being discouraged, … are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and  despair.” This is a protection racket, not insurance.

The German Energiewende provides a preview of the results (http://www.nber.org/papers/w22467). Electricity cost Ger- man households $0.30/kWh in 2016, vs. $0.17 in France. Wind and solar supply 16% of German electricity and 3.5% of total energy. Wind production was 5.85 GW (installed capacity, 35.92 GW); solar 3.7 GW (installed 37.34 GW). Volatility is buffered by conventional plants, which cannot operate profitably and must pay feed-in tariffs guaranteed for 20 years to assure “fairness.” The viability of huge power companies is at risk (also see p 2).

“If [Matt] Ridley is right and the earth is slowly slipping back into a proper ice age,” writes Maurice Newman, former head of Deutsche Bank, in The Australian, “our successors will need a plentiful supply of cheap, reliable energy, impossible given to- day’s intelligentsia’s religious objection to low-cost fossil and nuclear fuels. It’s not carbon dioxide that threatens us with ex- tinction but blind ideology dressed up as science” (https:// tinyurl.com/y8ugb7xv).

Publication Schedule

Civil Defense Perspectives (formerly DDP Arizona Newsletter) was continuously published as a bimonthly from November 1984 until September 2015, although the later issues were often written months after the issue date. The editor constantly fell behind owing to other obligations, especially work on the fifth edition of Sapira’s Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis, which should be re- leased by Wolters Kluwer around April 2018. Volume 32 con- tains three issues: #1 (November 2015), #3 (March 2016), and #6 (September 2016). No issues were published in 2017, so volume 33 will commence with this issue.

Physicians for Civil Defense continued to work during 2017. We sent nine news releases through PR Newswire, which were viewed 1,936 times by the public, 763 times by media outlets, and more than 41,000 times by webcrawlers. (Click “press releases” tab on www.physiciansforcivildefense.org.) In addition, we provide substantial support to the annual meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (www.ddponline.org.)

Numbers

• $40 billion: amount spent by U.S. government on Climate Sci- ence, including funding of IPCC, without finding hard evidence that CO₂ is causing dangerous global warming (TWTW11/25/17, sepp.org.) See Searching for the Catastrophic Signal: The Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by Bernie Lewin and https://tinyurl.com/y6v7wh64 for IPCC history.
• $100 billion: amount spent by  S.  to  “fight  climate change” (ibid.). Climate is still changing.
• $350,000,000: annual operating budget of Greenpeace,

<$200,000 for the CO₂ Coalition (a “CO2 Anti-Defamation League”) (https://tinyurl.com/ya5zxrwb).

• 800,000 German households: number unable to pay the elec- tric bill (the “second rent”) (https://tinyurl.com/y8majnlw).
• $77 million: active EPA research grants held by scientists on EPA scientific advisory boards over the past 3 years prior to di- rector Scott Pruitt’s policy to exclude them from such positions (Science 11/9/17).
• 8: number of manufacturing jobs lost in Ontario per “green job” (often temporary) created by government policy (TWTW 11/11/17).
• 220 tonnes: coal needed to produce steel for 1 MW wind elec- trical generating capacity (or 220 small cars).
• 000014%: amount by which Virginia cap-and-tax plan would reduce global CO₂ emissions by 2030 (AP 11/16/17).
• 18%: reduction in production of wheat, maize, rice, and soy-

beans that would result from return to pre-industrial temperature and CO2 levels, with serious consequences for food security (TWTW 11/18/18, www.sepp.org).

The Great Manure Crisis

In 1894, the London Times predicted that in 50 years, every street in London would be buried under 9 ft of manure. In New York City, about 100,000 working horses produced 2.5 million pounds of manure per day. About 20,000 New Yorkers died each year of diseases related to this. Fortunately, the government did not intervene by subsiding steam engines. Free markets brought the far superior internal combustion engine (WSJ 11/13/17).

New York City et al. Sue Exxon/Mobil

Along with several California jurisdictions, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio has sued Exxon/Mobil and other oil majors for climate conspiracy covering up the claims that CO₂ is causing dangerous climate change. Exxon/Mobil is pointing out to the court that these plaintiffs either ignored the “irreparable” harms in its bond offerings, which would be a severe securities violation, or claimed that risks were unpredictable. Exxon also calls the municipalities “eager consumers of energy” that emit substantial amounts of greenhouse gases. (https://tinyurl.com/y9q55vrw).

Buffering Volatility of Wind and Solar

The unreliability of wind and solar electricity places an upper limit on wind and solar generation. Without relying on neighbor- ing nations, if Germany tried to handle the volatility of wind and solar production without using stores, while replacing all nuclear and carbon-based fuels, on average 61%, and at the margin 94% of wind and solar capacity would have to be wasted, states Hans- Werner Sinn, one of Germany’s top economists (NBER, op. cit.). The best form of storage of excess power production is pumping water to a higher reservoir—pumped-storage plants or PSPs, of which Germany has 35 and few additional potential sites. To expand wind/solar to 100% would require 39,854 PSPs. The round-trip efficiency of storage is about 75%.

The “Norwegian solution”—relying on Norway’s huge hy- droelectric dams for backup—has several constraints. The trans- mission capacity would have to be increased 60-fold relative to today and 20-fold relative to what has been planned. Also, hy- droelectric plants can’t run in reverse (ibid.).

Sinn also believes that the cost of the Energiewende will end up far exceeding the earlier government estimate of 1 trillion eu- ros. Moreover, he says that Germany is also transforming its idyl- lic landscape into a large industrial park. Journalist Holger Doug- las commented: “In the ensuing discussion [after Sinn’s presenta- tion] one of the gravest consequences of the Energiewende emerged: the credibility of science. At almost every single re- search institute experts have been making every effort to dodge the fundamental laws of physics and nature in order to justify the Energiewende after the fact” (https://tinyurl.com/y8e2dspt).

Endangerment from Wind Power

• Toxic spill. Four giant batteries, installed to help the Royal Adelaide Hospital in southern Australia meet its emissions stan- dards while providing power when the wind wasn’t blowing, ex- ploded, spilling 80 liters of sulfuric
• Ice Throws. A wind turbine can throw a 400-pound chunk of ice 1,000 feet. The American Wind Energy Association calls the danger a myth, but large chunks of ice are seen on the ground and steel steps leading to the turbine have been broken. Uses of property—such as children’s swings—are restricted. Some call it “trespass zoning” (https://tinyurl.com/yaxadvcr).
• Sleeplessness: In diaries kept by families near a wind farm in south Australia, sleep disturbance was the most common symp- tom. Some awakenings were from “sensations,” not audible noise. Disturbances did not occur during 10 days when turbines were shut down. More events occurred during changes in power level (https://tinyurl.com/y6vgv6dx).

Civil Defense Perspectives March 2016 Vol 32 No 3

The new public health panic, which the World Health Organization (WHO) elevated to the same level as Ebola—a Public Health Emergency of International Concern—(www.who.int/emergencies/zika-virus/en/) is a previously little known disease called Zika virus disease (ZVD). Zika virus (ZIKV) is carried by same mosquito, Aedes aegypti, as other Third World diseases, including dengue and chikungunya.

ZIKV is a flavivirus that was first identified in humans in 1947 in Uganda’s Zika Forest (http://tinyurl.com/hl3u53e). Other flaviviruses are yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, West Nile, and Japanese encephalitis. Possible cross-reactivity of antibodies complicates diagnosis. There is also concern that previous infection with or vaccination against one flavivirus might mediate antibody-dependent enhancement of a second infection. (Haug et al. NEJM, http://tinyurl.com/hwfuh3b). Continue reading “Zika Virus Disease”

Civil Defense Perspectives November 2015 Vol 32 No 1 [published March 6, 2016]

In November 2015, Paris, once the capital of a great world power, was the scene of two battles in the war on the West: one waged by Islamic jihadists, and one by wealthy globalist elites. Terror attacks were followed by the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change [global energy rationing and wealth redistribution].

Superficially, rampaging terrorists mowing down random civilians with assault rifles or knives do not resemble bathed, well-dressed delegates with briefcases, arriving by private jet and luxury limousine. But both have the same enemy: the West, especially the U.S. They despise the institutions that arose in Christian Europe: individual freedom, limited government, private property, and capitalism. Both aim for totalitarian rule: one under the will of Allah, as determined by the caliphate, and one by a global bureaucracy claiming to know what is best for the Planet and Society. Both have zero tolerance for apostasy. Jihadists inflict instant death; climate extremists so far just murder careers or businesses. The ultimate death toll from either could be massive, even if the Green socialists don’t follow the road of the Reds to mass purges, through wrecked economies and energy starvation. The West is guilty, and must pay for its sins. Continue reading “War In Paris”

Civil Defense Perspectives July 2015 Vol 31 No 5 [published Nov 30, 2015]

Claiming a “climate emergency” caused by atmospheric CO₂,  the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is trying to impose the “Clean Power” Rule, which is supposed to save tens of thousands of lives because of decreasing “carbon”—not the life-giving gas but the elemental form, soot, that comes in small particulates less than 2.5 microns in size (PM_2.5s). It happens that coal-fired electrical generating stations emit PM_2.5s, as well as CO₂, and health harm is said to come from the particle size, regardless of composition or source. It could be soot, diesel exhaust, or dust from storms or agriculture.

The reductio ad absurdum, used so brilliantly by 18th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat, does not work well today, so accustomed are we, like the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, to believing six impossible things before breakfast—as long as propounded by government-approved “scientists.” Continue reading “Banning Dust”

Civil Defense Perspectives Sept. 2015 Volume 31 No. 6

While some U.S. presidential candidates (Hillary Clinton, John Elias Bush [JEB], Marco Rubio, and Carly Fiorina) have expounded on the U.S. establishing a “no-fly” zone in Syrian airspace, Russia has established that it is not our airspace. U.S. pilots, conducting bombing raids on ISIS, were ordered to change course to avoid coming within 20 nautical miles of a Russian aircraft (http://tinyurl.com/poepl2q). Syria and our supposed ally Iraq have both invited Russia into their airspace to help quell ISIS—and the U.S.-supported insurgency that is trying to oust duly elected president Bashar al-Assad.

Over one week, Russia claimed to have destroyed 19 command facilities, two communications centers, 23 depots with fuel and ammunition, six plants for making improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and several training camps (RT.com 10/7/15, http://tinyurl.com/nvl5u6l). The U.S has not been announcing comparable claims. In addition to the well-tried workhorses like the Su-24 frontline bomber and the armored Su-25 ground-support fighter jet, designed decades ago, the Russian air force used the new Su-34, which can hit targets from an altitude of 5,000 feet, far from the range of the militants’ anti-aircraft weapons. The bombs include sophisticated laser-guided Kh-25Ls and steerable KAB-250s, and bunker-busting BETAB-500s (ibid.). Continue reading “War Over Syria”

Civil Defense Perspectives May 2015 Volume 31 No. 4

The sharpest dividing line between hominids and all other organisms is the use of fire, wrote the late Isaac Asimov (A Choice of Catastrophes). There is evidence of fire having been used by Homo erectus in caves in China half a million years ago. A method of starting a fire from scratch was probably discovered by a member of Homo sapiens around 7000 B.C.

In Greek mythology, the Titan god Prometheus stole fire, which Zeus had withheld from men, and delivered it to mortals. In retaliation, Zeus ordered the creation of Pandora, the first woman, to bring misfortune to the house of man. Continue reading “Unholy Fire”

Civil Defense Perspectives March 2015 Volume 31 No. 3

The U.S. long ago adopted the nonstrategy of deliberately leaving its citizens completely unprotected against nuclear weapons. For prevention it has depended on the concept of nuclear deterrence. This depends on the enemy being rational, concerned about its own survival, and identifiable—and the willingness and ability of the U.S. to utterly crush the foe.

Nuclear proliferation, unilateral U.S. disarmament, technological change, and the rise of many enemies willing or eager to die in the process of killing infidels mean that nuclear deterrence is much less reliable—or even impossible. Continue reading “Scandalous Civil Defense”

Civil Defense Perspectives January 2015 Volume 31 No. 2

All the calls for people to work to “Save the Planet” suggest that the Planet could have eternal life if only we banished the demon carbon dioxide to the nether regions of Earth. But of course the Planet had a beginning, and it will have an end. For perspective it is worth reviewing the late Isaac Asimov’s 1979 book A Choice of Catastrophes: the Disasters That Threaten Our World.

The heat death of the entire universe would seem to be an inevitable, inexorable end to everything not already destroyed.  The Earth could be rendered uninhabitable by collision with an asteroid, or by changes in the sun as it became a red giant and eventually a white dwarf. But on a smaller than astronomic scale, the force with the greatest likely impact is climate.  There have always been droughts, and floods, and storms, but could the Earth become a planetary Sahara or a planetary Greenland? The popular press in the 1970s was filled with threats of global cooling, which were endorsed by all major scientific organizations (http://tinyurl.com/q7pkmp4). Continue reading “A Choice of Catastrophes”

Civil Defense Perspectives November  2014 Volume 31 No. 1

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may claim 95% confidence in its predictions, but 111 (97%) of 114 runs of climate models predicted temperature changes greater than observed (TWTW 8/23/14). After a 35-year simulation, models over-predicted actual temperatures by 200% to 750%. Would a 300-year simulation fare better (TWTW 11/8/14)?

Previously, the climate-research establishment denied the existence of a pause in the inexorable warming, but admitted that it would invalidate their theories. A 2008 report from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more” (Matt Ridley, WSJ 9/4/14). Continue reading “97 Percent Wrong”

Civil Defense Perspectives September 2014 Volume 30 No. 6
[published November 2014]

In March, a devastating Ebola epidemic was building up in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, and was belatedly recognized as an international emergency by the World Health Organization only on August 6. At the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meeting in Knoxville, Tenn., July 25-28, Steven Hatfill, M.D., gave an in-depth presentation on Ebola and other emerging diseases (http://tinyurl.com/mb3ftzo).

Some key take-home lessons: Continue reading “Emerging Viral Disease”