Opinion by Kip Hansen – 17 June 2022
Reuters is one of the largest news organizations in the world. It is considered to be a reliable news source and is often quoted by other news agencies – the ubiquitous “according to Reuters” tag line. Back in 2013, Reuters was attacked by the infamous Joe Romm and Stefan Rahmstorf for writing well-balanced climate stories. [ source ] Those two critics can rest easy now, Reuters is fully onboard with the climate change crisis reporting gig.
How much penetration does Reuters have in the news world today? Here’s a tiny example using this climate-alarm story from Reuters:
In hottest city on Earth, mothers bear brunt of climate change by Charlotte Greenfield and Gloria Dickie
To check penetration, a simple web search on the article’s title is revealing: over 1,600,000 hits with the first three pages of Google Search results showing news outlets that did simple copy-and-paste re-prints of the Reuters original story, plus hundreds more that re-wrote the story and quoted Reuters. One news outlet used a tagline of “climate change is killing women.”
Here’s is the Reuters lede:
“JACOBABAD, Pakistan, June 14 (Reuters) – Heavily pregnant Sonari toils under the burning sun in fields dotted with bright yellow melons in Jacobabad, which last month became the hottest city on Earth.
Her 17-year-old neighbour Waderi, who gave birth a few weeks ago, is back working in temperatures that can exceed 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), with her newborn lying on a blanket in the shade nearby so she can feed him when he cries.
“When the heat is coming and we’re pregnant, we feel stressed,” said Sonari, who is in her mid-20s.”
These women in southern Pakistan and millions like them around the world are at the searing edge of climate change.” [ original story link – repeated ]
If we were to do a real Fact Check – that is, actually check statements in the article to see if they are true – we would be in for a few surprises.
1. “….Jacobabad, which last month became the hottest city on Earth.” Jacobadad is hot – even by Pakistani standards. But the claim to be the ”hottest city on Earth”? Using Duck-Duck-Go and Yahoo! searches, the first half dozen sites listing “hottest cities on Earth”, none list Jacobadad in the top ten. Actually, the “hottest city on Earth” quip is a Reuters self-reference in the same article: ”…on May 14, the day temperatures in Jacobabad hit 51 C, making it the world’s hottest city at that time.”
What is really the “Hottest City on Earth”? The Triple A (AAA) says it is Ahvaz, Iran with an Average High of 116 degrees F (46.6°C) and a Record High of 129 degrees F (53.8°C). Maybe…. Ahvaz is mentioned on several lists, but not all.
2. “These women in southern Pakistan and millions like them around the world are at the searing edge of climate change.” Is the climate changing in Jacobadad? Even if it isn’t the “hottest city in the world”, is it hotter there now than it was before?
No. Yes, it is that simple. It is not hotter there now than in the past.
From the best records, it appears that Jacobadad is always hot, hot and hot. These are 30-year averages. The hottest days of June average around 120°F – that means that it has hotter than that half the time on June’s hottest days. Being incredibly hot in Jacobadad is their normal climate, from April through October, every year.
Don’t like “modelled” temperature charts? Then look at the chart taken from NOAA data:
Amusingly, summer daily high temperatures are literally “off the chart”, April through September, dropping down to a more comfortable High 80s (31 °C) in the depths of winter. Oddly, at only 28 °N and at an elevation of less than 200 feet (60 meters) daily lows in the winter months are near freezing.
Reuters’ reporters add in a death of a woman, just to give emotional weight to their mostly fact-less story:
“Nazia, a young mother of five, was preparing lunch for her visiting cousins. But with no air conditioning or fan in her kitchen, she collapsed and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead from a suspected heat stroke
District health officials did not answer requests for comment about Jacobabad’s record of heat-related deaths in recent years, or more specifically about Nazia’s case.”
Of course, they have no idea if the woman died from the heat or a heart attack or complications from her last birthing.
This is not journalism, this is propaganda using emotional coercion – and the skipping of all those annoying aspects of a reporter’s job, like actually checking facts, writing well-rounded stories, presenting an issue from more than one side.
The real horror of this story is not the fact that it is HOT in Jacobadad – which it is every summer for months at a time. The story is that Pakistan’s people are so poor, have so little access to simple dependable electrical power that homes and kitchens don’t have even a single electric fan.
It is true that the profoundly poor suffer more when weather or climatic conditions are harsh, storms roll in or unexpectedly high and low temperatures hit. It is not a matter of climate change, it is an issue of extreme poverty that has been allowed to continue to exist while the rest of the world advances. India and Pakistan have had a literate civilized culture for far longer than Europe and North America – and yet still suffer from almost prehistoric poverty. And the Davos crowd turn their heads and look away…..
Reuters does highlight the depth of these people’s poverty, but then promotes action to fight climate change action as a solution: “climate change policies in the future needed to address the specific needs of women”.
Reuters ought to tell the real story.
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Author’s Comment:
In recent times I have dealt personally with extreme poverty in the Dominican Republic (DR) — especially among Haitian immigrants, many of whom do not even own their personal identity – having no birth certificates or other official proof of existence. My teenage son, traveling with us at the time, visited a Haitian batey with his school and remarked, “But Dad, these people have nothing!…really, nothing!” And that is the truth.
In the DR, rural people still cook over wood or charcoal fires, inside their homes. Just like they do so in Pakistan and many other places as well. I have had many a meal in such homes – hot, often full of smoke, and these homes are some of the friendliest places I’ve ever been.
And, yes, when natural disasters strike, the poor take the hardest hit – when they have nothing, it is easy to lose everything.
Thanks for reading.
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Yeah, well, in areas of the US that routinely get extremely hot in the summer months, and always have, such as the lowlands in southern Arizona and the very low deserts of southern California (called “Death Valley” ever since 1850 when “Forty Niners” began traversing through it) the standard thing is to not go outdoors in the middle of the day, unless you positively have to. A few unfortunate workers may still have to work outdoors in the summer there, but they are normally well prepared with shade, lots of water to drink, fans, loose fitting cotton clothing that breaths and conducts sweat, etc.
But in very poor areas, as in the post here, many people may not have that option.
Duane ==> In my life’s travels, I have found that people that are born and grow up living in HOT places are physiologically more able to function at those higher temperatures. Took my wife and I several years to be able to move around in the afternoon when temps exceeded 95°F or so, but after five years, we hardly noticed.
Sure, Kip … but there is also quite a bit of difference between 95 deg F and 118 deg F as it gets to in the Phoenix area, or up to 130 deg as Death Valley has seen on the hottest days of summer. Relative humidity matters quite a bit too – 95 deg in Phoenix is very different and more tolerable than 95 deg in Chicago or Baltimore or Miami, because high humidity reduces the body’s ability to cool itself with sweating.
Extreme heat as experienced in certain parts of the world requires special measures to avoid heat stroke, a total breakdown in the body’s cooling mechanism. Shade, drinking plenty of fluids, salt tablets, airflow, loose light clothing, etc. being some of the key measures. There’s really not much that can be done just by “getting used” to such heat.
Duane ==> Certainly there are limits to the temperatures that to which human beings can accustom themselves. Humans can not live in Antarctica without specialized clothing and shelter. How the residents of Jacobdad live year around with those temperatures is an example of human adaptability.
Extreme poverty means that those specialized means of accommodation are not going to be available to them. If it were me, I would simply move to someplace more comfortable….but I am comparatively rich and they are profoundly poor with few options.
Thanks for the article and analysis, Kip!
Heat doesn’t drive them away, because Jacobabad is in an agriculturally abundant region of Pakistan, along with a number of cities scattered along the Indus River Valley, stretching from Mari Indus, Pakistan in the north all the way to the Arabian Sea at Karachi, Pakistan. Look at GoogleEarth, and you’ll see a wide green strip of land extending all along the river. Like most cultures and nations of similar climatic regions of Africa and Asia (e.g., Libya Egypt,Syria, Jordan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan), vast parts of their land areas are practically uninhabitable desert. Capitals and population centers are almost entirely located along their countries’ major rivers or near bounding seas or oceans.
Likewise, the founding and growth of cities such as Phoenix and Tucson in the U.S. Desert Southwest were originally supported by rivers. It gets hot, but they (so far) have access to the key essential – water.
But back to your main point, Kip. Reuters shows a total disregard of background or facts in order to promote the climate change narrative. Keep countering their lies with the truth.
Pflash ==> Thanks, and you are right. Although, in the American Southwest, cities have even built in harm’s way, there is not enough water for that many people.
Could we build a pipeline from a place that has water?
Derg ==> Look at the history of the Colorado River…..piped all over the Southwest until it has been more than used up.
Much of Arizona’s early development came about due to large irrigation projects built during the Great Depression of the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC built many parks and public works projects throughout the U.S., employing impoverished workers and operating much like a military force. Men wore uniforms and stayed in work camps, like a deployed army.
Before he married and while still a teen, my future father-in-law spent time in the CCC in Arizona building irrigation canals. We have a few family photos of the tent camps there.
Pflash ==> The CCC was an interesting and productive program. Many were married men sending money home to keep their families alive. It wasn’t just that they were impoverished, it was also that there were simply no paying jobs for them — so, CCC to the rescue.
20% of that water is ending up on the east slope, does that make any sense?
No pipelines! Of any kind allowed. Pipelines are evil don’t you know
Pure BS not enough water. Solution which the financial class is betting on(they are buying the land between Phoenix and Tucson) nuclear power and reverse Osmosis. Now do we have the political will to reverse the Greens maybe, maybe not. The sad story on this may be the financial class my be supporting the greens to drive prices down/
Excuse me were you here last summer, dry heat my ass.
“It’s a dry heat”
So’s your oven
Much depends on the level of humidity.
I lived in Grand Junction Colorado for a couple of years. Elevation 5000ft, semi desert climate, 100 degF mid afternoon much of the summer.
BUT – very low humidity. Played a lot of tennis on those 100 F summer aftrrnoons, 3 to 5 sets easy. Living in Houston, same temp, high humidity 1 set MAX.
Brian ==> True that, while living in the DR, I went up to the mountains to enjoy the snow above 10,000 feet……(rare snow, but real snow for 48 hours.)
agreed every summer in Tucson same old heat especially in June as the longer days seem to make that happen. Maybe they can write a story in the Albany NY Standard and make it seem like the people are on file and stuck to the pavement. BS is alive and well in climate change circles
The film crew could give him a sandwich.
I believe they’ve earned the name “Al-Reuters” in other matters as well…
CJ ==> Ah….I see what you’ve done there….
A woman works all her life in exactly these conditions, and suddenly drops dead.
Is there really a story here?
“Of course, they have no idea if the woman died from the heat or a heart attack”
AHA! A clue, Mr. Watson, a clue. A sudden heart attack.
This sounds like SADS – The Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.
SADS was unknown just prior to the COVID “jab”. Once people get the “jab” they become susceptible to abrupt heart failure and resulting death. Myocarditis and pericarditis along with cardiac blood clots are strongly indicated.
After the “jab”, SADS started appearing everywhere the “vaccine” had been widely used.
Doctors baffled by the sudden appearance of SADS. Nobody has any idea what could be causing such widespread SADS.
TonyL ==> Some 56-60 million people die each year….only in developed countries is there even a rough idea of how man die from which specific causes — which even when recorded these are not believed to be truly definitive. (see mine: Cause of Death and its follow-up).
People die, and even with modern forensic autopsies, causes are often hard to discern.
People dropping dead has been going on for as long as there have been people.
@ Kip
@ Mark
Actually, I do agree. I was just going a bit over the top.
You both point out the same thing, that people have been dropping dead since forever.
In other words, there is absolutely no story here at all.
How about that?
TonyL ==> Well, I could have written a good piece on the heat in Jacobadad…it is a story with some interest. Who in the U.S. knows that people happily live and work where temperatures are over 110 regularly in the summer — for months?
The Reuters piece is just a climate crisis sob story which misses the real point.
The mechanics that work on my car here in Arizona do not have air condition in the work areas. They are not dropping dead. Arizona does not have dry heat in July and August. Our dew point were above 60 today. They were like that last summer also.
None of us get out of this world alive. To bad the young people think they are suppose to live forever.
People like you who even suggested there may be problems got censored. Brandon even created
the “Ministry of Truth” to censor everything that disagreed with him. It got shelved for a while & may
be back as Giggles is now heading a new internet policy task force to develop “programs & policies
to protect political figures & journalists from disinformation, abuse & harassment.” Same game,
different name! Letting people speak the truth could drop his poll numbers even more!
https://bongino.com/is-biden-s-ministry-of-truth-back-already
In other news, USA Today, a fact check partner for Facebook & possibly Twitter, had to pull 23
stories from a reporter they fired for using fabricated sources.
https://thepostmillennial.com/usa-today-removes-23-articles-after-reporter-caught-fabricating-sources
Old Man ==> (Meaning you, not me….)
Thanks for the link on the Fact Checkers….
Reuters does highlight the depth of these people’s poverty, but then promotes action to fight climate change as a solution:
_______________________________________________________________
As proverbs go, Reuters fails to meet the spirit of
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Steve ==> Yes, the real story is that millions of women (and men) live in homes that are barely more than huts and shacks, still cooking over three rock fires (or their functional equivalent) inside the hut/shack, with no “stovepipe” to carry away the smoke and excess heat.
These are the peoples of whom this quote speaks: “The Hindu literature It is one of the oldest. It is estimated that the first record emerged more than 4000 years ago in what is now India and in some regions of Pakistan. It is also known as Sanskrit literature because most of the pieces are written in Sanskrit, ancient language consisting of several types of scriptures.
In general terms, Hindu literature talks about wisdom, religion, worship and social norms, themes that were treated throughout the writings. It should be noted that the oldest writings found are compiled in a book called Vedas (from the term”truth”), and these became the basis of the Hindu religion.” [ source ]
To me, an incredible mystery — at the same time, many of the best Big Tech programmers and system designers come from Pakistan….
Taking what is normal and without others having knowledge making it into some kind of a crisis is what they do best. We are being herded into a climate change net and rolled over the cliff called false beliefs . Facts don’t count when false emotions rule the mind
Reuters is a partner of the “climate clowns now” (CCNow) and thus deserves nothing but contempt and mockery as all the climate scamsters listed here :
https://coveringclimatenow.org/partners/partner-list/
Petit ==> Yes, linked that in the article (kind a a subterfuge on my part, not saying it outright…) Thanks for providing the link and a shout-out on that…..CCNow is one of the major purveyors of climate crisis propaganda in the United States, and pumps it out all over the world.
Thanks for posting that. Comes to: 584 Magazines TV, Radio & Podcasts, Newspapers, and Institutions. And the number is growing
Steve ==> “All aboard the Gravy Train!”
Well reports that people in the DR own nothing but are happy are scary. Is Klaus Schwab right?
Terry ==> Some people in the DR, and almost everywhere else in the less-developed world, own nothing. It is not an economic or political issue — it is a societal issue in which a society fails to help those with nothing to find and perform meaningful work in exchange for a livable wage. There is always necessary meaningful work to be done but the society, often the government, fail to connect those willing and able to do that work with those willing to pay to have that work done.
Kip, nice post. There is NO MSM that is not climate co-opted. At least none that I can identify anywhere in any of my three languages. But it matters much less than it did a few years ago because of alternative information channels like WUWT and authors like you.
That is something Samuel Clemons did not foresee when he said:
”If you don’t read the newspapers you are uniformed; if you do you are misinformed.” We now have a third choice.
Rud ==> Yes, the word “dis-informed” was not yet available to ole Sam.
The WHO informs us 4m people a year in developing nations die every year as a direct consequence of heating/cooking indoors using timber or dung.
Women and children are particularly susceptible as females traditionally run the household, do the cooking and look after the children.
The main causes of death are, largely, respiratory diseases and heart conditions. Assuming the woman who collapsed and died in this article was at the poverty level necessitating the use of timber/dung then it’s probably neither surprising nor unusual she collapsed and died.
Much of this needless death could be alleviated by helping these countries build fossil fuelled power stations to deliver cheap, reliable electricity into homes. Instead, Joe Biden is promising the end to fossil fuels in which case, this is where we will all be in a few short years, burning timber and dung in our homes to heat and cook with.
The consequence is, of course, we will all be forced to find timber from somewhere. As sources are rapidly depleted timber will become the new criminal enterprise. People will literally wind up stealing from, and killing others to secure sufficient timber to survive.
The almost romantic notion that rain forests around the world are being plundered by commercial loggers, or slash and burn farmers is complete nonsense.
Commercial loggers treat the rainforest’s like a crop. They replant what they cut down so when they return in a hundred years there is a rich crop for them to cultivate.
The ‘culprits’ are the ‘illegal loggers’. These guys are, however, responding to demand, they don’t cut trees down for fun. All that timber required for the poverty stricken to burn, in the absence of cheap electricity, has to come from somewhere.
The illegal loggers don’t have the resources to replant as they cut down, apart from which they are pursued by authorities so just move on as soon as they have finished.
Farmers follow them and burn the remaining brush before planting crops for the three years the land will support them. They then move on, the soil dries out and blows away.
Unsurprisingly the farmers can’t afford fertilisers even if there were any, but there isn’t because they take fossil fuels to produce in any quantity and they are essentially banned by the international community.
None of this is fantasy or theory. My late father in law was a UN forester and spent 40 years from the 50’s working in these regions helping governments plan 300 year cultivation and exploitation plans. The plywood used in your home is very likely to come from a facility he helped establish.
By 2050 over 100m caught in a poverty trap across developing nations will die from the effects of smoke inhalation. Women and children first.
Meanwhile, not one single person on planet earth has died as a consequence of Climate Change since the phenomenon was first ‘identified’ over 40 years ago and fossil fuels vilified as the cause.
The fact is, using the IPCC’s own numbers, and assuming CO2 is the culprit of climate change, mankind’s insignificant contribution would take 25,000 years to double thereby increasing global temperatures by 2ºC.
HotScot ==> Much of what you say is true, and WHO blames PM2.5 for far more deaths than it is responsible for. Breathing smoke, however, with all its chemical components is BAD for human health. Doing so for hours each day will eventually cause health problems and h those who breath that smoke do not have access to advanced health care. Some smoke is more bad than other smoke. Smoke from some woody material is actually poisonous.
It breaks my heart all this is utterly ignored by the west.
Kip,
I think that what you meant to say is acutely poisonous. All smoke, from whatever source, is a chronic poison, which may or may not significantly shorten one’s life span. Some tobacco smokers live to ripe old ages, they just look like they have lived forever. Then there are those who smoke marijuana who rationalize that it doesn’t hurt them. Because they rarely have a non-smoking twin to compare themselves to, they assume that their health and appearance is what it should be. The body can heal many injuries. However, it doesn’t seem to do well with insults to the lungs.
The claim I’ve seen many time is that stopping NOW, i.e. anytime one doesn’t already have a cancer diagnosis, will, on average, greatly reduce the chance of ever getting such a diagnosis.
re: “is it hotter there now than it was before? No.”
Kip provided no genuine evidence to back this claim. None. Even a competent middle schooler would realize that graphs of mere average seasonal trends over the past 30 years are not “evidence” to back this claim.
Meanwhile, it takes only a few minutes to go find the historical station data for that location in order to correctly evaluate this claim, i.e. to look at the trend over time. Looking at the last 30 years of available data (in order to make an apples to apples comparison with Kip’s 30 year average claims) one sees that yes, it has most certainly been getting warmer in Jacobabad.
See attached graph. Over the 30 year timeframe, there is a statistically significant warming trend in Jacobabad (p <0.0004) of almost 4 degrees C per century.
It is “not” getting hotter? Oh please.
Graphed data is from:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_PKXLT245085_14_0_1/station.txt
Yet another rather typical “skeptical” misrepresentation.
To quote Kip himself: “This is not journalism, this is propaganda”.
For those readers interested: The correct link is
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=PKXLT245085&dt=1&ds=14
Data before the 1940s is not reliable — MGC’s graph is Average Annual Temperature and not Highest Daily or Highest Monthly Temps, and shows that the average temperatures in Jacobadad have been a rather comfortable 80°F to 82°F up to 2013 — when the data ends. The offered graph does not answer the question asked: Is it hotter now than before?
Download the monthly data (ends in 2013) here: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_PKXLT245085_14_0_1/station.csv
Look at the June-July-August average column. In the earliest part of the record, the 1880s, J-J-A average in 34 thru 35 degrees C. In the last decade of the record, J-J-A averages are in 34 and 35 degree C range.
For those not interested in the facts, please:
Lots of handwaving excuses from Kip. He wants to pretend that only max temperatures matter for the question “is it hotter” ?? But there are many different ways to answer “is it hotter”.
Heat stress health issues can be the result of not just max temps but also prolonged high temperatures, including at night. It’s not just a function of what the daily high happened to be.
And it’s rather ironic that Kip claims (without evidence, by the way) that “data before the 1940s is not reliable” but then almost immediately thereafter tries to make a point by saying “look at the earliest part of the record, the 1880s”.
Holy Direct Contradiction, Batman!
The links Kip posted are also to the exact same dataset as the link I posted. So we can disregard his “the correct link is … ” red herring.
What you are really demonstrating is the urban heat island effect with increasing population density.
Note the pattern of heat for the recent Indian heat wave:
Sorry, Clyde, but this map is nowhere near sufficient “evidence” to be able to rationally conclude that the decades long warming trend in this area is a result of “only” urban heat island influences and nothing else.
So all that would really matter to any of us is –
if we were unfortunate to have to travel to Jacobabad,
what sort of weather conditions should we expect?
From https://www.traveltill.com/destination/Pakistan/Jacobabad/climate.php
Highest temperature average of 98°F (37°C). During the month of June the temperature usually reaches between 120° and 131°F (49 to 55°C)
Pass!
Clyde ==> I put the warning up . . . .
You have the hubris to attack Reuters’ journalism standards, then fail to meet your own, then attack anyone who you think might disagree with you. Yeah, but luckily we have WUWT the find out the truth. ROFL.
What a weird little echo-chamber this is.
No kidding Loydo, Simon comes on here with all kinds of Russia Colluuuusion journalism. Heck the NY Times won a Pulitzer for their hard hitting stories.
It was all fake except the FBI spying. Those 3 letter agencies can even get Reuters to publish propaganda.
“You have the hubris to attack Reuters’ journalism standards”
“Journalism standards”! That’s funny! All they are is a propaganda outfit when it comes to climate change and/or leftwing politics.
re: “All they are is a propaganda outfit when it comes to climate change”
Another classic example of the pot calling the kettle black.
“What a weird little echo-chamber this is.”
You get to sprew your venon here, don’t you? Are you part of the echo chamber?
Culture and (bad) government are the leading causes of extreme poverty. In countries with good government that protect basic human rights and ostensibly administer laws fairly there is still poverty but it isn’t anywhere close to the extreme poverty of Third World countries.
stinkerp ==> Yes, when we think poverty in the US, we mean people stuck on perpetual welfare, government housing and free health care (which ain’t great). When I say “extreme poverty” I mean starving, undernourished, little or inadequate shelter, rags and cast-offs for clothing.
The two are not even vaguely related.
“free health care (which ain’t great)” Sorry to inform you the ain’t great is about everything except the Mayo Clinic. Oh by the way I grew up poor and was once on Medicated no problem getting health care including dental and vision. I have spent weeks in the Mayo clinic both my wife and I have clinic numbers(she is alive due to them.) and now I am on Medicare I have no access to them, except out of pocket.
Kip,
Something that I have trouble understanding is that the Yahoo news tab for the US is often dominated by Reuters and other British news sources. Can’t Yahoo find US news sources? It was particularly noticeable during the 2020 election cycle when the British sources were clearly supportive of Biden and critical of Trump. That almost smacks of foreign operatives interfering in our elections.
Clyde ==> Expertocracy has existed in media (newspapers) for a long time. There was a time when newspaper prided themselves in accuracy.
“And the Davos crowd turn their heads and look away…..”
I don’t think the Davos crowd is looking away. I think they are trying to bring more people into the economic condition to where they don’t have the means to ameliorate natural weather swings, hot or cold. I think they are committed to remove the poorest and least adaptable. Then they will work on everybody else that opposes them.
Brad ==> That is a possibility…..
Correction: ” Reuters used to be considered to be a reliable news source….”
I stopped respecting Reuters and AP shortly after 2000.
Since before 2016, they sank to be amongst the worst of news sources
There is a pattern here: non-democratic countries tend to have the most poverty. The reason seems pretty simple: once an elite is established. it looks after itself at the expense of the rest of the population. In democracies, the people have the power to protect themselves by changing their rulers. But I feel that today’s elites have worked out how to disable democracy: 1. Load up the education system with useful idiots as teachers. 2. Concentrate people into cities so that they have no understanding of how the stuff they use is produced or how anything else in the real world actually works. 3. Generate emergencies which can be used to justify more authoritarian government. (H L Mencken had a lot to say re #3).
You can see that their methods are working: Schools and universities are corrupting young people’s minds at an ever-increasing rate, and inner-city dwellers are clamouring for things like the energy and food supply that support their lives to be disabled, because they have no idea how they actually work. “Climate change” is a confected emergency designed to justify more authoritarian government, and then the coronavirus delivered another wonderfully useful emergency and the leaders of the ‘democracies’ who were left-wing cranked up the authoritarianism – Biden in the USA, Trudeau in Canada, Carrie Johnson in the UK, Macron in France, etc. At some point, the elites will have weakened the democratic process so much that they can simply take permanent control.
We the citizens might be able to turn it around for a while, but another wave of authoritarianism will come. And another. And another. Hello, Pakistan, here we come.
H L Mencken:
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
“The whole aim of practical politics 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.”
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Biden was always a moron and now he’s a decrepit, senile moron. We got a double whammy with that one.
“Carrie Johnson in the UK”
I see what you did there.
Mike Jonas –
re: ” ‘Climate change’ is a confected emergency designed to justify more authoritarian government”
Same tired old zero evidence conspiracy theories.
re: “The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars”
A perfect description of today’s GOP.
re: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
That’s already happened twice now … in 2000 and in 2016.
It is the political right that is currently the greatest danger to American democracy since the Civil War. They are openly working to trash the free and fair election process, using ludicrous lies about election “fraud” as their rationalization.
You really don’t have a clue do you. Read everything and learn something. Don’t think videos will tell you anything. Humans speak at 30 word per minute a good reader can get information ten time faster.
You’ll have to be a little more specific, mal.
From where I sit, the folks who “don’t have a clue” are the ones believing all those far right falsehoods.
Northern Territory Times and Gazette June 1919:
“THE HOTTEST PLACE.
Between India and Africa lies the hottest place on earth … The following are the temperatures at some of the hottest places in different countries: Hyderabad, 105 degrees; Lahore, 107 degrees; El Paso, 113 degree; Mosul, 117 degrees; Agra, 117 degrees; Death Valley, 122 degrees; Alberts, 127 degrees; Fort Yuma, 128 degrees; Jacobobad [sic], 122 degrees; Bahrein 140 degrees”.
“The Triple A (AAA) says it is Ahvaz, Iran with an Average High of 116 degrees F…”
I lived in the “Inland Empire” of Southern California for 28 years, living most of the time in Redlands, and working most of the time in San Bernardino. I don’t remember a summer that we didn’t hit 116 F. It was no big deal.
I was just about to make a joke about taking the word of anyone from AAA, but decided against it….
Michael ==> They have a travel site that includes info about destinations. I went through about a dozen lists of the ten hottest cities….
I spent many a summer in nearby Colton…..
You wouldn’t want to spend 10 minutes in Colton these days. As the San Bernardino-Riverside (and even Redlands) communities collapsed economically, Colton led the way into an abyss which makes Juarez, Mexico look cosmopolitan by comparison.
I fled the area in 2008, and am enjoying the prosperity of Northern Virginia with my wife and seven chickens…
Michael ==> I left California when I was 21 and have only visited a few times since, to see family that is still trapped there.
But had some awesome summers swimming in the Colton City Plunge with my cousins.
Mesa average for July and August is 107 with humidity. July and August is where in a normal year we get half of our rainfall. Hot here is in the teens real hot is when we get to 120. Oh by the way I grew up in Minnesota and live my adult life in North Dakota low person temp is -50 high person temp there is 104. Larges temp swing over 80 degrees in a little over 24 hours minus 50 Christmas eve morning nearly plus 40 Christmas day.
Michael – grew up in Riverside. My memory is the same. And I recall a few heat waves (real ones) over 120.
“In a recent spell of hot weather in South Australia makes interesting some figures contained in a bulletin issued by the Weather Bureau of the United States of America. In this bulletin Professor Mark W. Harrington states that the hottest place in the world is to be found in the Colorado Desert, and he gives the following table of hottest places:—Maximum temperature Fahr. in shade—Mammoth Tank, Colorado, 128; Paehpadra, Rajpootana, India, 123.1; Jacobabad, Sinde, India, 122.2; Death Valley, California, 122; Dera, Zsmaeel, Punjaub, India, 121.5; Hyderabad, Sinde, India, 121; Gardai, Algerian Sahara, 118.4; Mooltan, Punjaub, India, 118.4.”
Adelaide Observer (SA : 1843 – 1904), Saturday 13 December 1902, page 24
so 50.1 °C over 100 years ago when CO2 levels and Western living standards were perfect.