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The Big One » Notes to Self by Mark OBrien

In case you missed the memo, kids, we’re in deep kimchi.

That’s right. According to this measured and highly objective headline in that paragon of levelheadedness and evenhandedness, The Washington Post, “World has nine years to avert catastrophic warming, study shows.” See what I mean? We’re on the brink of an apocalyptic something or other, but it’s not the same apocalyptic something or other that a varied assortment of fatalistic cranks and superstitious crackpots have been predicting since God invented dirt.

What’s most amusing about this story is that the cranks and crackpots in question can’t even manage to agree with each other:

Yet even as scientists warn of the world’s dangerous trajectory, leaders here at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, [in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt] have advocated for natural gas as a “transition fuel” that would ease the world’s switch from fossil energy to renewables … This rhetoric has alarmed scientists and activists who say expanding natural gas production could harm vulnerable communities and push the planet toward a hotter, hellish future.

Harm vulnerable communities? What about the communities that will freeze this winter for lack of fossil fuels? What about the communities that already live in abject poverty and don’t have the means to erect wind turbines and install solar panels to keep themselves in the good graces of COP27? What about the communities of electric vehicle drivers who have no idea how the electricity with which they charge their cars is generated? What about the communities of settled scientists who’ll be talking like some combination of Ralph Kramden and Porky Pig when their fraud is exposed? And what generates more hot air, the attendees of COP27 or the private jets they flew in on?

Good Grief.

WTF, Batman?

I’m hoping I can get to Sharm El Sheik by Friday because I have an idea to present to the cranks and crackpots variedly assembled there. Here it is: If they’re all so positive carbon emissions are the cause of climate change — particularly the warming in which so many people around the world are going to freeze to death in their respective winters (to say nothing of the mold that will grow and poison them in their unheated homes) — why don’t we use carbon emissions for heat?

And you can call this a coincidence, an accident, or serendipity if you like. But it just so happens I’m working on an affordable PCE (portable carbon emitter) as we speak … well … write. In fact, I’m so sure this will work, I’m going to donate a free PCE, with free installation, to every member of the IPCC. And because I’m the kind of guy I am, I’m going to donate three PCEs to Dr. Michael E. Mann — one for his main residence, one for his office at Penn State, and the other to heat the hot tub at his vacation getaway in Antarctica.

I’m being so generous to Dr. Mann because he developed the famous Hockey Stick Theory which predicted the precipitous uptick in global … oh, shit:

This improper normalization procedure [the hockey stick program] tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape … the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.

Well. Ya can’t win ‘em all. But you sure as hell can buffalo most of ‘em. That’s why trillions of dollars will be squandered and the standards of living for billions of people will be reduced, all in the ostensible effort to stop climate change that’s been predicted by flawed models and allegedly settled science.

And that’s exactly why the fat cats at Sharm El Sheik are squabbling about nothing — on our dime and at our greater expense — to feel good and to look good in photo ops.

Say, “Cheese!” And if you believe in net zero, pray you’re not on Candid Camera.

Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/

Mark O'Brien Writer, Blogger

I'm the founder and principal of O'Brien Communications Group (obriencg.com) and the co-founder and President of EinSource (einsource.com). I'm a lifelong writer. My wife, Anne, and I have two married sons and four grandchildren. I'm having the time of my life.

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