Pine beetle doom-sayers barking up the wrong tree

The turbulent science that blames humanity for climate change marks itself with smoke and mirrors. Opportunities to settle the truth are somehow sidelined. Tricks are employed to obscure the truth. When direct measurements show a negative temperature trend, indirect methods are sought to show the desired warming.
 
Then it is that we hear that polar ice is disappearing, polar bears are in peril, coral reefs are bleaching, there’s more rainfall, less rainfall, seasons are being disrupted, extinctions are occurring, glaciers are retreating, there’s more extreme weather, and on and on.
 
But these events, where true, and they often are simply untrue, are influenced by factors other than warming, so the believers also use slippery reasoning to pretend they’re caused by warming. We’re fed stories of disaster that could only be true if the temperature were going up, but it’s propaganda: when the science fails, the believers resort to misdirection. Even if it were warming, so what? What’s the cause? Believers never address the cause of warming – though that’s essential if we’re trying to stop the warming – because by now everyone thinks it’s themselves.
 
Rather than taking tales of alarm at face value, we try to investigate them. So to the humble North American Mountain pine beetle…

pine beetle

The Mountain Pine Beetle is tiny — about 5 mm long (same as the word “tiny”), but it packs a mighty punch: it can flatten forests.

The little beetles make interesting reading in the light of claims that the current outbreak in parts of the USA and Canada is caused by global warming.

Those claims are frivolous. Epidemics have been observed since Europeans arrived in America, long before the recent warming. In any case, the current epidemic is waning and could be over. Continue Reading →

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