Links tagged “flashback”

As it turns out, climate doomsayers weren’t seeing so 20-20 when it came to 2020.

2000: John Passacantando, surprisingly, is not overly concerned about them. With oil prices rising and more attention being focused on vehicular safety issues, he ultimately expects the trend to pass. "I view the SUV trend as a bad stylistic choice," he says. "They're like bell-bottoms. They'll go away and we'll laugh at them. Ten years from now we'll see them in retro movies."

"In my opinion, the markets are going to take care of that," he adds. "These vehicles are unstable and wickedly unsafe and to drop $80 at the gas pump to fill your Suburban will at some point be either financially impossible or downright embarrassing to most people."

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Reality Check NYT in 2020: Rise of S.U.V.s: Leaving Cars in Their Dust, With No Signs of Slowing - May 21, 2020: “S.U.V.s made up 47.4 percent of U.S. sales in 2019 with sedans at 22.1 percent,” said Tom Libby, automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “By 2025, we see the light-truck segment that includes S.U.V.s, vans and pickups to make up 78 percent of sales compared to 72 percent now.”

2006 study on viruses lockdowns, social distancing & masks:

On masks: "But studies have shown the ordinary surgical mask does little to prevent inhalation of small droplets bearing influenza virus. The pores in the mask become blocked by moisture from breathing, and the air stream simply diverts around the mask."

The final paragraph begins: "Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted."

On "Prohibition of Social Gatherings": "During [flu] epidemics, public events with an expected large attendance have sometimes been cancelled... There are, however, no certain indications these actions have had any definitive effect on the severity or duration of an epidemic."

"But a policy calling for communitywide cancellation of public events seems inadvisable."

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Also see: The Case Against Mandatory Mask Regulations

A 2015 study on masks of 1600 health-care workers showed those wearing masks were 6 times as likely to have flu-like illnesses as those in the control group after 4 weeks..." - The conclusion: "This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks... moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks, and poor filtration may result in an increased risk of infection."

More here: 

Flashback: Associated Press article says:

“…it was 100 degrees on June 27, 1915, in Fort Yukon, [Alaska] according to official records of the National Weather Service. Records date back to 1904.”

Inconveniently, that pretty much cools down Bill McKibben's claim of “the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle”.  Both Verkhoyansk, Siberia and Fort Yukon, Alaska are well above the latitude that defines the Arctic Circle. How is it, that in 1915, when “climate change” supposedly due to increased carbon dioxide in our atmosphere wasn’t even a factor, it got that hot? Inquiring minds want to know.

According to the Moscow Times:

“Verkhoyansk holds the Guinness World Record for the highest recorded temperature range of 105 C, fluctuating from minus 68 C to a high of 37 C. The previous temperature record for the isolated town of around 1,300 residents stood at 37.3 C in July 1988.” 

In other words, such extremes are normal for the place. With just over a hundred years of temperature records there, and the planet being billions of years old, it isn’t at all surprising that we still haven’t measured the extremes of natural variation, both hot and cold, for this place.