Dr Carl Heneghan, Dr Tom Jefferson: Here Endeth the “Superflu” (England)

Before Christmas, we pointed to the “Superflu” Contradictions, the utter untrustworthiness of the mainstream media and the change in box thinking that occurred on December 19th when the narrative didn’t fit the panicked messaging.

The latest surveillance data shows the “superflu” has ended; that is, for now.

NZCPR Weekly: Alarmism

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week, we look into the danger of alarmism in public policy with reference to New Zealand’s harsh lockdown and the most stringent carbon restrictions in the world, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Michael Shellenberger apologises for the climate alarmism that he and his fellow environmentalists have created, and our poll asks whether you believe that the Government should put New Zealand’s climate response on hold so it doesn’t undermine our economic recovery. 

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Matt Ridley: Laundered Lies

‘The whole aim of practical politics,’ wrote H.L. Mencken, ‘is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’ 

Newspapers, politicians and pressure groups have been moving smoothly for decades from one forecast apocalypse to another (nuclear power, acid rain, the ozone layer, mad cow disease, nanotechnology, genetically modified crops, the millennium bug…) without waiting to be proved right or wrong.

Increasingly, in a crowded market for alarm, it becomes necessary to make the scares up. More and more headlines about medical or environmental panics are based on published scientific papers, but ones that are little more than lies laundered into respectability with a little statistical legerdemain. 

Tim Ball and Tom Harris: Avalanches of Global Warming Alarmism

 Throughout the United Nations Climate Change Conference wrapping up in Bonn, Germany this week, the world has been inundated with the usual avalanche of manmade global warming alarmism. The UN expects us to believe that extreme weather, shrinking sea ice, and sea level rise will soon become much worse if we do not quickly phase out our use of fossil fuels that provide over 80% of the world’s energy.

There is essentially nothing to support these alarms, of course. We simply do not have adequate observational data required to know or understand what has happened over the past century and a half. Meaningful forecasts of future climate conditions are therefore impossible.