the police reports of the 'dancing Israelis' who were working for a Mossad front known as Urban Moving Systems.
I've heard the story. Frankly I don't know what to make of it. I don't view it as proof towards Israeli involvement in the 9/11 plot though.
Plenty of examples across a wide range of industries and government policies.
Maybe it's due to being a Canadian, but in my experience, our government can be a byzantine bueraucracy, but most people involved in day-to-day functioning do take at least a little pride in their work. I know people who work in the Federal government as well as the administrative staff of one of the universities here, and they describe a similar picture. I would absolutely believe it's a different scenario "south of the border" though.
that vaccine-strain polio injuries are now greater than wild polio.
Isn't that what you'd expect? A related thing happens when you attempt to test for infrequent conditions with a test that has less than perfect accuracy: most of the positives will be false positives. And a crude form of ethical calculus suggests that in a tradeoff between the return of viral polio, and a small but nonzero amount of polio vaccine reactions, the reactions are undouibtedly less harmful to fewer people, overall.
However I think this is one of your (and many others') "sacred cows" namely that vaccines are safe and effective.
The WHO rates of any negative reaction to a vaccine are suprisingly low: 1 per 2 million cases. Here in Canada we monitor the incidence of vaccine neagtive reactions and publish the data. The figures for 2018 show that, between
every single vaccne administered in a calendar year there are only about 250 serious reactions total. Counting even realtively mild reactions like skin irritation, rash, pain at the injection site etc gives a worst case number of about 3000 cases, The yearly birth rate in Canada is 385,000 surviving children per year. If we are super pessimistic and assume only 1/4 of them are vaccinated every year (a gross undersimplification I think), the rate of mild reactions is 3 percent, severe lethal reactions 0.25%. That number is an absolute worst case, mind you, but still looks superior to the rate of complications someone would experience if they had whooping cough.
Out of my peer group and extended family (and thirty or so of my elementary school classmates - school children generally are given meningitis and Hepatitis B vaccines in grade 4 here in Canada. You can opt out but it is generally accepted as nothing to be concerned over.) I can't say I have met personally anyone who has experienced a negative response to vaccination, beyond one girl in high school with a fear of needles, who had a panic attack. I am also thankful that nobody in my social circles has suffered whooping cough, or measles, or any number of the other nasties. And a very entertaining Maltese woman who lives in my building actually recieved BCG vaccine as an immunotherapy for bladder cancer - as far as the we can tell she's doing much better now, so I can actually proivide a concrete example of vaccines doing some good. My mother had actually suffered tuberculosis as a child and survived - between that and an education in virology/genetics she is very confident in the beneficial effect of vaccination.
So it's not a sacred cow belief as I understand it. I figure between my personal observations and experiences, the established mechanism of vaccines and how they prime the immune system, and a little bit of trust in humanity, I am personally in favour of vaccinating children reasonably quickly. I don't exactly trust the brain of a 6 year old to be able to make a learned judgement about the risks, and know from experience some people will opt out simply 'cause they don't want to get poked with a scary needle. Between my two brothers and I, none of us have any complaints nor regrets of being vaccinated as children. I'm sure if I were aware of multiple cases of death or other awful consequence from vaccinations occuring on the regular, I'd think otherwise.
I checked out Vaxxed too. After I realized that Wakefield himself was behind the production I suddenly lost all interest. You discount governmental statements - I tend to reject statements from profiteering fearmongers who were struck off the medical register. Turnabout is fair play, right?
The Earth's atmosphere is not a backyard greenhouse.
I would argue it's
the backyard greenhouse, the most important one we have actually. What makes you so certain that it cannot be modeled?
his wild claim that CO2 levels is somehow a control knob for global temperature has not been proven.
I don't think I ever made the claim that CO2 is the sole factor causing global warming. That's an oversimplification of course - there are a multitude of factors that play into the maintenance of a steady state in the enviroment, CO2 levels being only one factor. There are different sources and sinks for CO2, diffusion takes time to move CO2 across global distances, and also factors like clouds, greenery, and polar ice will alter the surface albedo, and change the temerature somehow. James Lovelock and his Gaia hypothesis, while a little hokey, are an interesting way to view the Earth's dynamics, SimEarth is a useful little toy to play with too...
I was also well aware of CO2's effect on plant growth. I've met farmers of both marijuana as well as other greenhouse plants that actually vent the furnace flue gases directly into the greenhouses, providing both heating in the winter months, and elevated levels of the limiting resource needed in plant growth. I think it's up int he air (pardon the pun) whether or not that will counteract the insulatory effect of CO2.
CO2 follows temperature changes, not precedes it.
Where did I claim that CO2 causes instantaneous temperature increase? It's like adding a winter coat as an extra layer if you are cold: the application of the coat doesn't raise the temperatures directly, it simply reduces heat loss from your core, and will take some time to reflect an appropriate amount of heat to warm you up fully. Now factor in the humongous volume of the global atmosphere, and the relatively long time it takes for total mixing of gases in one area, and the effects of smoothing on the ice-core temperture data... doesn't seem that strange to me.
Like I keep saying, it's elementary physics to demonstrate CO2 has an effect as an insulator. Why would this property disappear on a larger scale? Would you also discount the insulatory effect of other gases with much stronger insulating effects, like nitrous oxide or Halon/Freons?
And out of curiosity, what do you consider to be evidence that proves a causal relationship? You don't seem to be a very stong believer in determinism.
Are you aware that Mann's hockey stick graph was fabricated? What do you think of that graph?
I was aware of that, actually. I never referenced it or mentioned it for that reason. There's other graphs done by other people, drawn with data from other sourcers too. Is the implication that there are no data sources you would consider trustworthy enough to use? Because most sources I check (off the top of my head, Environment Canada, NOAA, NASA, historical records of weather station observations, and even things like my friend's amateur temerature logger constructed from an Arduino), all show a rise in global temperatures. Not a catastrophic one, but definitely measurable. Occam's razor says it's more likely that the temperatures are accurrate, than the alternative, which would be all of these suppsedly independent organizations all basically coming up with the same incorrect data. For all the good it'll do, Wikipedia and a selection of other sites are confident enough to declsre a general consensus that the Earth is warming. There was a review paper which checked a truly absurd number of published studies on temperature (on the order of several thousand) and the agreement was that temperatures have gone up.
Welcome to my world. You'll be fine. Join the club. Doesn't mean I think "everything is fake" but a healthy dose of skepticism is required, especially considering track records and conflicts of interest.
I think what you would consider healthy skepticism, I would view as a chronic distrust of authority. I am definitely not as quick to shoot down publications by research organizations or even the portions of government that actually focus on scientific methodology just bevause they came from an authority. That's the opposite of the meaning of the word "authority" as I understand it.
I hate the phrase, but maybe we will have to agree to disagree... thank you for an engaging discussion, even if we can't seem to agree on anything at all. It's an opportunity for me to write more, which I'm finding myself doing a lot of...