Age of Hysteria

Oh dear,

Changing what we eat is a radical act that will make us and nature healthier and happier. By making nature-conscious eating choices and helping to spread the word, each of us can contribute to keeping planetary warming within the 1.5° Celsius limit laid out in the Paris agreement. A healthier plate makes for a safer planet.

We’re living in an age of hysteria.

There’s no way of “keeping planetary warming within the 1.5° Celsius limit laid out in the Paris agreement.” That “limit” is a nonsense. We’ve always been helpless passengers aboard a planet on a roller-coaster ride around the Sun. We’re in control of next to nothing. We have no control whatsoever of the orbit of planet Earth, nor of the Sun’s radiation, nor of the solar system’s planets and asteroids and comets. Nor are we even in control of the gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, including the tiny fraction of CO2, much of which is produced by plants.

Part of the problem is a widespread belief in some sort of equilibrium state of the world from which we have willfully and sinfully departed, But there is no equilibrium, We live in a dynamic, ever-changing system. There have been a long succession of ice ages over the past few million years, none of them affected by humans in the slightest degree. It’s no different today, except we’re now far more conceited about our powers than ever before.

There’s also a belief that we can control the Earth’s climate simply by reducing CO2 emissions. But CO2 is just one small component of a very complex climate system, over which we have next to no control.

The last 100,000-year-long ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. We’re due to re-enter an ice age any time now. We ought to be more worried about global cooling than global warming. With luck our current slight warming will delay the onset of the next ice age.

Even the British prime minister has joined the hysteria.

My friends, the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end. We are approaching that critical turning point, in less than two months, when we must show that we are capable of learning, and maturing, and finally taking responsibility for the destruction we are inflicting, not just upon our planet but ourselves. It is time for humanity to grow up. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister, U.K.

We are incapable of doing anything significant. Human life is in its infancy, not its adolescence. We are not capable of learning, and maturing, and taking responsibility for something over which we have no control, and for which we have very little understanding.

Even the church is joining in.

“Together with the COVID-19 pandemic, safeguarding creation is among the most urgent challenges facing humanity,” Cardinal Parolin told a meeting of the presidents of the European Bishops’ Conferences Friday. “Not even the current health crisis must stop the commitment to take care of our common home,” Parolin continued.

The best we can do is to enjoy life while we may. Let other people worry themselves to death.

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A cure far worse than the disease

https://underdogsbiteupwards.wordpress.com/2021/09/19/tetanus-gangrene-botulism/#comment-63744

Once they have everything centralised, step out of line and they turn off your bank account. Again, that’s started. Nigeria has announced that the unvaccinated will not have access to banking services.

I wonder how long I’d last without my bank account? I’d not be able to buy any food, so I’d be consuming my current stocks. Also I guess that gas and electricity and water would soon be cut off too, for non-payment of bills. I’d also likely be unable, without a phone, to arrange a vaccination even if I wanted to comply.

I’d be dead in weeks. Maybe even days with the extreme worry.

And so would millions of other people. There’d be mass death.

And all this over a disease which only apparently kills the elderly and obese, and not all of them. This is a cure that is far worse than the disease.

P.S. Seems the story could be true.

Delay the Next Ice Age

Breitbart:

During an event in Cambridge, England on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that despite communist China’s long list of human rights abuses, the United States must partner with them to fight climate change.

Does she want to start a new ice age?

Vostok ice core data

This shows ice ages lasting about 100,000 years punctuated by brief interglacials lasting around 10,000 years. We’re overdue for a new ice age.

Which is why I’m all in favour of global warming. I want more CO2-driven global warming. It might manage to delay the onset of the next ice age.

The Earth has a naturally oscillating climate. CO2 is just a small component of it. It’s not the controlling factor.

It’s only over the past 12,000 warm years that human civilisation has arisen.

A new ice age would rapidly end it.

In my own models I’ve seen repeating ice ages. There is no equlibrium. Climate is always changing.

Isolated Protected Smokers

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-most-damning-article-about-vaccines

Britain has pursued a mass vaccination strategy as aggressively as any country. It approved Pfizer’s vaccine even before the FDA. More than 80% of Britons over 16 are now fully vaccinated.

But Britain is in far worse shape than it was at this time last year, when no one was vaccinated. It is now averaging about 140 deaths a day, roughly 10 times as many as mid-September 2020. And hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise.

Same in Israel.

I’m one of the 20% unvaccinated Brits.

Why should I worry about it? I never go out anywhere since I was expelled from society by the 2007 smoking ban. I stay at home all the time.

Perhaps that may explain why smokers seem to be resisistant to Covid-19?

It’s simply that they’re an excluded minority. Many of them just stay home like me. There’s nowhere they can go where they’re welcome. So they’re less likely to get this bug.

And also it looks like the Pfizer vaccine doesn’t work.

No Privacy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9954265/Staff-banned-smoking-working-HOME-Japanese-brokers-Nomura.html

A Japanese brokerage firm has banned its staff from smoking, even while working from home. Nomura, the country’s biggest investment bank, has asked its local staff to give up smoking during the working day in a move labelled as ‘intrusive’. More than half of the company’s staff in Japan are currently working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nomura announced the move in an internal memo on Tuesday, saying in a statement the following day that the new policy – introduced without plans for monitoring or punishment for rule breakers – will improve employee health and the workplace environment….

What will they demand next? No alcohol? No meat? No TV?

They’ve started invading the privacy of their homes.

Jardim Botânico

When, many years ago, I lived in Rio de Janeiro, I spent many hours wandering around its botanical gardens.

It’s a pleasure to revisit.

Why No Parachutes On 9/11?

The 20th anniversary of 9/11, when about 3000 people died trapped in the World Trade Centre, prompts a question that I’ve never heard asked or answered:

Why didn’t they use parachutes to escape?

Were they high enough above the ground to use parachutes? Yes they were.

While soldiers of the parachute regiment balk at exiting a plane below 250ft, those involved in an extreme form of parachuting called “base jumping” regularly leap from further down. In 1999 a base jumper (base stands for building, antennae, span and earth) parachuted from the 100ft statue of Christ that overlooks Rio de Janeiro.

The WTC North tower was 1368 feet high: they had plenty of height.

Could they get out of the windows? Yes, they could: many were standing on the window ledges. And many jumped to their deaths.

Could they have had enough time to don a parachute? I don’t know the answer to this, but if the parachute is already packed it can’t take more than a couple of minutes to strap one on. And anyway, in principle, people could have worn them all the time. The South Tower stood for 56 minutes, and the North Tower for 102 minutes.

Two main dangers come to mind. First, parachutes (35 foot diameter) may have collided with the building as they opened. It would probably have been best to jump 20 feet out on the downwind side of the buildings to prevent his happening. Second,  parachutes may have collided with other buildings or cables in New York City. But parachutes can be steered, and so, in principle, safe landings could be achieved.

What if unskilled parachutists jumped? Assuming their parachutes opened, they would have drifted on the wind, slowly descending, landing wherever they might.. In Manhattan you’d have about one chance in three to land in a street rather than than on top of a building.

It would have helped a lot if it had all been pre-planned, with parachute drills in which people put on parachutes and simulated jumping out in rapid succession. They had regular fire drills for using the stairs.

So, assuming that only about 10% of 3000 occupants were killed by plane impacts, and the rest parachuted out, some 2500 people could have been saved. And there would have been no need for firefighters (343 killed) to climb the buildings to try to save people. 9/11 movies would show a cascade of parachutes falling from the towers, and several parachutes hanging from street lamp posts.

But none of this happened. Nobody jumped out of the WTC with a parachute. Why not? Did nobody ever think of doing this?

Perhaps they thought that they could easily escape down the stairs. But at about 10 seconds per floor it would have taken 18 minutes to descend 110 floors. And the 44-inch-wide stairs soon got crowded, and a lot of people were still on the stairs when the buildings fell, It would have taken less than a minute to descend 110 floors by parachute.

Perhaps it was simply unthinkable to jump out of a 110 storey tower. And it still seems to be unthinkable. But some people have thought about it:

Having been a skydiver in the past, I can tell you that perhaps some people might have been saved but many more would probably have been killed horribly in accidents resulting from putting the thing on improperly; chutes that didn’t open (chutes aren’t supposed to sit indefinitely for months of years and then be expected to open), the inability of the untrained to actually pull the rip cord; the inability of some people to actually jump; the lack of a reserve chute or the time to deploy it; the possibility of a parachute malfunction; the minimum height requirements for using them might have driven more people upwards to get the chutes, only to die using them; the possibility of being driven into other buildings by wind and currents, or wires, or other obstructions.

These are all good objections. But I’ve answered some already. They had plenty of height. Sure, some would have hit other buildings, but many would have survived. If pre-planned, chutes could have been opened by fixed wires, with no need to pull the rip cord. Regular rehearsals would have obviated other problems,

The best objection seems to be that parachutes aren’t supposed to sit indefinitely for months of years and then be expected to open. But if they were regularly replaced or repacked? Or designed to open easily? Why store them in folded packs, if they’re not going to be carried anywhere?

Others are more positive:

I realise this seems to be an easy target for naysayers, but you certainly wouldn’t be in a position to naysay this idea if you were in such a position yourself. Even something that MIGHT save your life would be welcomed with extreme positivity at this point. I therefore think that this idea is very viable.

What servicing is needed?

The parachute has a combined service life of 16.5 years; service life is 12 years and shelf life is 4.5 years. The T-10D Parachute must be repacked every 120 days.

If parachutes are kept ready-opened in 60 foot lengths, they could be slid out from tubes and deployed with fixed cables.

Other ideas. Why not stairs like helter-skelters to slide down at 2 seconds per floor?

 

 

Crazier and Crazier

It gets crazier and crazier

During his speech at the White House on Thursday, President Biden announced that he will have the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandate that private companies with 100 or more employees implement vaccine mandates or require negative tests. When announcing his mandate, the president frequently characterized the unvaccinated as selfish people who have made the pandemic worse, granting no exceptions to people who have been previously infected (natural immunity) or people in low-risk demographics:

• • “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.”

  • “Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated.”

  • “I understand your anger at those who haven’t gotten vaccinated.”

  • “We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers.”

First obvious question: Aren’t vaccinated workers already protected? Isn’t that what vaccination means? Why should anyone be worried about Covid if they’re vaccinated against it?

Second question: Why should vaccinated workers be angry or frustrated or impatient at those who haven’t gotten vaccinated? They’re protected, aren’t they?.It’s going to be the vaccinated workers funerals, not theirs.

One simple answer seems to be: vaccination doesn’t work. In Israel 95% of people over 80 are vaccinated, but…

The number of infections in Israel has increased more than tenfold in the last month. There are 3,000 to 4,000 a day. This is a country of nine million people,

But does it matter anyway? It’s not like this is the Black Death that killed some 30% of Europe’s population. Something like 99.9% of people survive Covid.

This looks like yet another exaggerated health threat. Just like smoking.

We might even suggest that all health threats are exaggerated health threats these days, And if all health threats are exaggerated health threats, pretty soon people will stop worrying about all health threats. It’s what happens when people cry wolf too much. It’s what’s bound to happen.

So I predict a collapse in faith in Public Health.

In my case I already have no faith in Public Health: I’m a smoker who has already been expelled from society by smoking bans. I don’t belong to their society any more. And I don’t want to belong to their society. Us smokers just got their a bit earlier than them.

Health has become a new religion. Health has become the only thing that matters. Not truth or justice or peace or honour or decency or anything else: just Health. Which is why truth and justice and peace and honour and decency have all gone out the window. Which is why Public Health tells monstrous lies about everything, as long as it serves their purposes.

Maybe health doesn’t matter to them either, and what they really want is power or money.

They say they’re Saving Lives. But we all die one day anyway. The best they can do is to delay death a little while. And now maybe not even that. Because Joe Biden is now setting Americans against each other, and that can’t end well. Everyone is being set against everyone else. Smokers against non-smokers, vaccinated against unvaccinated, climate alarmists against climate sceptics.

Perhaps it’s that now that most of us no longer believe in life after death, we’re frantically trying to stave off death. Hence the modern obsession with health. It’s not love of life that drives it, but fear of death. Hence all the fear-mongering – about tobacco and alcohol and sugar and Covid and climate and asteroid impacts.

Ignore it all. It’s all bad craziness.

The Vaccinated and the Unvaccinated

ZeroHedge

Society is rapidly turning into a two-tier culture of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

It’s just like smokers and non-smokers all over again.

I’m one of the unvaccinated, It’s not that I’m anti-vax. It’s just that I never go out anywhere (thanks to the smoking ban), so I’m very unlikely to be infected.

It’s just yet another division in an already divided society.

ZeroHedge:

…more and more people have come to see it for what it is, not “insanity” or “an overreaction,” but, in fact, a new form of totalitarianism, a globalized, pathologized, depoliticized form, which is being systematically implemented under the guise of “protecting the public health.”

It’ll be the death of Public Health.

Which will be a good thing.

We’ll carry on smoking anyway.

The Demonisers Will Be Demonised

The Mail’s shameful witch-hunt of ‘selfish’ vaccine refusers

In his Ten Stages of Genocide Professor Gregory H Stanton presented a process of steps which lead to a final solution: a division of the population into ‘them and us’; the passing of laws which exclude one group from all areas of society; people are no longer individuals but are ‘the Jews’, ‘the Gypsies’, ‘the Unvaccinated’; dehumanisation equates the group with animals, disease, vermin, filth. Stanton placed dehumanisation at number four in his ten stages. We are almost halfway there.

Smokers have had this experience for years. They’re reviled. They’re regarded as diseased and filthy. They’re excluded from society: There are smoking bans almost everywhere.

The article isn’t about smokers, of course. It never is. It’s about the demonisation of the Covid-Unvaccinated.

I’ve not been vaccinated either, so I guess I’m now twice-demonised.

I don’t care. They can demonise me all they like.

I’m a climate change denier. Or at least a global warming supporter: I think we need more global warming to delay the impending next ice age. So really I’m thrice-demonised.

At this rate, pretty much everybody is going to wind up demonised for one reason or other.

There’ll just be a few pundits and health experts left who’re doing all the demonising.

And then they’ll get demonised in their turn. The moving finger will settle on them one day.

Oh yes it will.

I can’t wait for it to happen.