“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Word of The Week:
trinitite
noun
Trinitite, also known as atomsite or Alamogordo glass, is the glassy residue left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The glass is primarily composed of arkosic sand composed of quartz grains and feldspar that was melted by the atomic blast.
You’ll see why I chose trinitite later in this post.
OK – here is the epic orchestral Wheatie music I was looking for….
Maybe some “Celtic mystique” music?
How about “Viking folk music”? No guarantees of authenticity here.
But let’s finish with some orchestral-backed vocals…..
OK – that was inspiring!
Carl was back on Sunday! Praise God!!!
I know it has been a while since I said “Trust The Plan”, but every once in a while I realize that it’s there.
Some very interesting posts (and replies) on X. Let me give you a guided tour.
This is an oldie but goodie on an old QAnon account that does indeed put time frames in perspective.
Now That We Have Confirmation From Dr. Jan Halper-Hayes That There Is In Fact A Military Intelligence Plan In Place Playing Out, This Timeline Puts Things Into Perspective. pic.twitter.com/dNOPGzlz5j
I found the reply here terribly interesting. It’s worth looking at Brian’s full tweet.
You have an enduring spirit—and always keep in mind, in prayer we are saved, even though we cannot see what it is (that’s called faith). With reason, we can see and test it because we can see and touch it…faith and hope are things that you cannot see, you need to trust that one…
This is also going to be big – Lara Logan’s new production on January Sixth.
Trennis Evans pled guilty to one misdemeanor charge of entering a restricted building & he is forced to serve out his sentence in jail where he is held in solitary confinement for a few days at a time. The cell where he is housed is where they put prisoners to punish them. All… https://t.co/OhCoMlGpXn
Now – check this out – a long train of tweets to some fascinating references.
First – UGH – the photo on the right.
Munchausen by proxy (MBP), also known as factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), is a mental health disorder in which a caregiver, often a parent or guardian, intentionally fabricates or exaggerates physical or psychological symptoms in someone under their care. This could… pic.twitter.com/QbahOR55cn
That post notes the prior self-cutting by the young woman, visible in the photo. A pro-trans poster excuses the cutting as a result of gender dysphoria thereby requiring the surgery, while I might see the surgery as the ultimate form of “cutting”.
As an aside, I think the mom may be relieved of some guilt here. She was likely ready to believe anything that the doctors and trans activists told her. Thus, it is to some extent likely to be a kind of “Stockholm syndrome X Munchausen by proxy syndrome”.
The original poster responds with an excellent old article questioning trans surgeries.
Jest to zwyczajnie nieprawda: nawet lewicowe publikacje były wielokrotnie zmuszone przyznać, że "tranzycja" nie pomaga:https://t.co/4GIbkxsUfj
New Data Show “Gender-Affirming” Surgery Doesn’t Really Improve Mental Health. So Why Are the Study’s Authors Saying It Does?
This is an absolutely fascinating example of “agenda science” and intentional misrepresentation of data. Check out the summary of the article:
Data from a new study show that the beneficial effect of surgery for transgender people is so small that a clinic may have to perform as many as 49 gender-affirming surgeries before they could expect to prevent one additional person from seeking subsequent mental health treatment. Yet that’s not what the authors say. That the authors corrupted otherwise-excellent data and analyses with a skewed interpretation signals an abandonment of scientific rigor and reason in favor of complicity with activist groups seeking to normalize infertility-inducing and permanently disfiguring surgeries.
This is EXACTLY what is wrong with science all over the place now. COVID science is just like this. Mask science, too. This dishonesty of interpretation is everywhere. AGENDA SCIENCE.
Here is the full text of the article, saved from censorship.
A new study appearing last month in the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that “gender-affirming” surgery is associated with reduced demand for subsequent mental health treatment in a sample of persons diagnosed with “gender incongruence.” Predictably, such news received wide media interest and coverage. And yet even a cursory reading of the study itself tells a far less optimistic story than the media narratives—as well as the authors’ own inexplicable confidence—have offered. Indeed, the analyses would seem to suggest the benefit of a hormonal or surgical course does not outweigh the demonstrable physical and financial costs of such treatments. Future studies might suggest otherwise, but not this one.
The study’s shortcomings have nothing to do with the data, nor the methods employed by its authors (and public health researchers) Richard Bränström and John Pachankis. The data come from the Swedish Total Population Register, a massive, longitudinal survey effort that collected information from over 9.7 million Swedes, or about 95 percent of the country. No complaints there. The analyses are high-quality: the authors tracked respondents over time and assessed their use of mental health treatment (for a mood or anxiety disorder) in 2015, as well as other related measures (such as hospitalization after a suicide attempt), as a function of time since gender-affirming hormone and surgical treatment. Its measurement precision is excellent, and would satisfy most methodological purists. So far, all good news. But then come the scholarly interpretations of the study’s results, which are remarkably out of step with the far more modest conclusions they merit.
The study found no mental health benefits for hormonal interventions in this population. There is no effect of time since initiating hormone treatment on the likelihood of subsequently receiving mental health treatment.
First, a word about the hormones: the study found no mental health benefits for hormonal interventions in this population. There is no effect of time since initiating hormone treatment on the likelihood of subsequently receiving mental health treatment. Given the surge in interest, demand, and supply of hormonal therapies to self-identified transgender persons today, you would think that it is a solution that pays obvious benefits in reduced subsequent need—over time—for treatment of mood or anxiety disorder, or hospitalization after a suicide attempt. Yet there was no statistically significant effect. In fact, the confidence intervals actually reveal a nearly significant aggravating effect of hormonal treatment on subsequent mental health needs.
It is the surgical effect, however, that has grabbed all the attention. Bränström and Pachankis detected a statistically significant effect of time since last “gender-affirming” surgery on reduced mental health treatment. The adjusted (for controls) odds ratio for this was 0.92, meaning that, among respondents diagnosed with “gender incongruence” who then received gender-affirming surgical treatment, the odds of being treated for a mood or anxiety disorder (in 2015) were reduced by about 8 percent for each year since the last surgery. In other words, it would appear that the surgery—or more typically, the series of surgeries—benefited their mental health.
But the authors discuss a “linear decrease” in seeking subsequent mental health care that is simply not visible in the study’s graphs, where post-surgical mental health treatment hovers stably around 35 percent among those in their first nine years after surgery, and then drops to only 21 percent of those patients who are in their tenth (or higher) year since their last surgery. However, only 19 total respondents reported their last surgery as having been completed 10 or more years ago. By contrast, 574 (out of 1,018 total) reported their last surgery as having been conducted less than two years ago. (Surgical treatment is clearly surging.) This means that the apparently helpful overall effect of surgery is driven by this comparatively steep drop in mood/anxiety treatment among only 19 patients. By the math, that would seem to indicate that four out of these 19 Swedes (i.e., 21 percent) sought help in 2015 for mood/anxiety problems.
While the study reports the adjusted odds ratio of the overall effect of time since surgery (0.92), which I cannot replicate without having data access, you don’t need the data to calculate an unadjusted odds ratio from the information presented there. This can tell us the baseline effect of time since surgery on receiving mood and anxiety treatment, only without the controls (like age, income, etc.). Doing this reveals the fragility of the study’s key finding: if a mere three additional cases among these 19 had sought mental health treatment in 2015, there would appear to be no discernible overall effect of surgery on subsequent mental health. The study’s trumpeted conclusion may hinge on as few as three people in a data collection effort reaching 9.7 million Swedes, 2,679 of whom were diagnosed with gender incongruence and just over 1,000 of whom had gender-affirming surgery.
The study’s trumpeted conclusion may hinge on as few as three people in a data collection effort reaching 9.7 million Swedes, 2,679 of whom were diagnosed with gender incongruence and just over 1,000 of whom had gender-affirming surgery.
An increase of just three treated individuals (from 4 to 7 of 19) brings the overall effect to zero. On the other hand, a decrease of just three treated individuals (from 4 to 1 out of 19) yields an (unadjusted) odds ratio of 0.88, which would enable a claim of a 12-percent reduction in mental health assistance from getting the surgery. These large swings in estimates are due to very small adjustments in the data. As is often the case with small samples, tiny changes lead to large fluctuations in estimated effects. But, for this patient population, you are not going to find larger data collection projects than the Swedish data. This is as good as it gets when it comes to studying transgender medical experiences and outcomes.
Another helpful statistic I calculated is called the NNT, or “Number Needed to Treat.” It’s a measure of clinical impact. In this study, the NNT appears to be a staggering 49, meaning the beneficial effect of surgery is so small that a clinic may have to perform 49 gender-affirming surgeries before they could expect to prevent one additional person from seeking subsequent mental health assistance [ref] In this case, the NNT = -1 * [1/[(OR-1)UER] + OR/[(OR-1)(1-UER)]]. Using an adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 0.92 and an unexposed event rate (UER) = 0.453, I get NNT = 49 cases. The UER I employ here comes from the mood/anxiety treatment rate for “perioperative” individuals with gender incongruence, as reported in the study’s Figure 1. The term “perioperative,” however, is vague and not defined by the authors. (It could mean right before or right after surgery.) It is not, however, a control group (that is, of Swedes diagnosed with gender incongruence who have not pursued surgical treatment). However, even such a control group would have limitations, including selection bias (e.g., screening for co-occurring mental illness or a lower level of gender dysphoria). Indeed, a prospective randomized controlled trial is not possible with this population. Nevertheless, the number employed offers a reasonable baseline UER, given the available data. NNTs below 10 “usually denote a worthwhile difference when comparing one intervention with another,” notes Leslie Citrome in “Quantifying Clinical Relevance.”[/ref]. If no other treatment was available, or the treatment was not invasive and the hazards were insignificant, clinics might consider surgery a low-risk but low-payoff approach. But none of those applies here. Conducting 49 surgeries to secure one additional patient who benefits? Unheard of.
The authors are nevertheless quick to declare that “this study provides timely support for policies that ensure coverage of gender-affirming treatments.” I cannot see how such confidence is merited. Time since hormonal treatment yielded no discernible effect on subsequent use of mental health treatment, while the modest effect of surgery hinges on a handful of cases from an earlier era (10 or more years ago) when very few gender dysphoric patients pursued surgery at all. And it’s not a leap to wonder whether those who did so a decade ago are a different kind of group than those who do so today. Moreover, suicide—the threat that seems to prompt all the urgency in doing something radical to alleviate psychological distress in these patients—may well have claimed an unknown number of Swedes who had had gender-affirming surgery ten or more years ago. We just don’t know, because the study does not track completed suicides for this sample.
If this were a clinical trial seeking to establish the efficacy of a particularly invasive medical treatment in comparison with a non-invasive standard protocol, there is no way that these published results would favor the invasive treatment—in this case, “gender affirming” surgery—when the statistical difference in outcomes was so tiny and fragile. This is not, contrary to what Bränström told ABC News, an evidence-informed treatment. That the authors corrupted otherwise excellent data and analyses with a skewed interpretation signals an abandonment of scientific rigor and reason in favor of complicity with activist groups seeking to normalize infertility-inducing and permanently disfiguring surgeries.
Physicians should not be pushed to prescribe such profoundly consequential treatment by threat of call-out, malpractice suits, patient demand, or—in this case—the overreaching interpretations of quality data. Clinicians are being bullied into writing a radical prescription based on fear, not on sensible conclusions from empirical data.
But this reasonable position is getting more difficult to defend. Less than two months after another team of activist psychiatrists landed a weak study on “conversion” therapy in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, its lead author has commenced a movement aimed at a wholesale ban on such a notion. This is alarming, especially since the idea itself—“converting” from having become convinced you are born in the wrong body to concluding that you can live with the body you have—is nonsensical. There is no defined psychotherapeutic method for treating gender dysphoria that can be widely characterized and consistently identified as “conversion therapy” in order to be banned. Nor has there been a clinical trial evaluating specific psychotherapeutic methods of counseling gender dysphoria that could potentially demonstrate whether such methods are helpful or harmful.
This is not how normal medical research works.
Can’t end this discussion without some interesting discussion of trinitite.
Right, there was probably a meteor strike. No way something like that doesn’t get the “why did this happen” treatment from generations to follow. Here’s the Forbes article.https://t.co/6WVj4kxPzs
My thesis here is that the Cabal learned, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, that the earth was likely heading into an ice age. I documented this in GREENHOUSE, ICEHOUSE OR CLIMATIC MADHOUSE? h/t Neuman and Hearty (1996) They decided to hide that fact from the general population while preparing for glaciation by consolidating power, conserving resources and reducing world population growth. Via grant money they also directed research into genetic manipulation of plants and animals, surveillance techniques and other technology. They knew that over the last 5 to 8 million years during glaciation, CO2 dipped dangerously low, forcing the evolution of C4 plants and the extinction of mammals. This explains many of their disinformation campaigns such as ‘Global Warming, CO2 is BAD, Feminism, abortion is good, and having too many kids is BAD. It even explains the nuclear power scares. They are well aware that the Grand Solar Maximum that lifted the earth out of the Little Ice Age has now ended, and they may truly think that a new Ice Age is imminent.
No one wants to stick their neck out and predict glaciation, but it does not matter. The only choices are glaciation or a climatic ‘madhouse.’ Either way the only climate we will see in the near future is the ‘madhouse.’
Before I get into the evidence showing why the Cabal wants to conserve coal, oil and nuclear fuels for use during the coming cooling/ice age, I want to point out another indicator that the Cabal is expecting the transition to glacial conditions AND THEY EXPECT IT NOW. Since William McClenney wrote Glacial Inception: the climatic ‘madhouse’nine years ago, his link to the Neuman & Hearty paper has gone dead … Imagine that!!! Since I started to write this paper even more ‘clean-up’ of ‘inconvenient’ information has occurred so I am going to address that as a separate topic.
CLIMATIC MADHOUSE
I would also like to point out the recent change in the Cabal’s rhetoric. The talking heads no longer use ‘Global Warming,’ since it is no longer warming, and instead use ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Climate Disruption’. Hearty uses the phrase ‘Climatic Madhouse’ for the same phenomena. That is certainly a good reason for the Cabal to deep six the paper referenced by McClenney at WUWT. They do not want a reference pointing out that ‘Climate Disruption’ is not only natural, but an indication that we are heading into either Little Ice Age conditions or a full blown Ice Age.
The geology of the Last Interglaciation (sensu stricto, marine isotope substage (MIS) 5e) in the Bahamas records the nature of sea level and climate change. After a period of quasi-stability for most of the interglaciation, during which reefs grew to +2.5 m, sea level rose rapidly at the end of the period, incising notches in older limestone. After brief stillstands at +6 and perhaps +8.5 m, sea level fell with apparent speed to the MIS 5d lowstand and much cooler climatic conditions. It was during this regression from the MIS 5e highstand that the North Atlantic suffered an oceanographic “reorganization” about 118±3 ka ago. During this same interval, massive dune-building greatly enlarged the Bahama Islands. Giant waves reshaped exposed lowlands into chevron-shaped beach ridges, ran up on older coastal ridges, and also broke off and threw megaboulders onto and over 20 m-high cliffs. The oolitic rocks recording these features yield concordant whole-rock amino acid ratios across the archipelago. Whether or not the Last Interglaciation serves as an appropriate analog for our “greenhouse” world, it nonetheless reveals the intricate details of climatic transitions between warm interglaciations and near glacial conditions.
And a paper by different authors looking at a different part of the world showing a similar chaotic transition from the warm phase to the cold phase.
This is a review of several different studies. The scientists are looking at both the geochemical data and the biological data (pollen), two independent methods of determining the climate of the past showing the same chaos.
1. INTRODUCTION
The time intervals of global large-scale transitions between glacial and interglacial epochs are characterized by instable stages throughout Quaternary climate course. During such warm-cold transitions an increase of mid- and small-scale climate variations can be expected….
At the very end of the Eemian (PAZ E7) and just before the complete change to glacial conditions, a brief phase of warming is recognized from all geochemical indicators. This is indicated by the coordinate increase of contents and stable isotope values of both lake carbonate and the organic sediment fraction…
…Comparable findings were also described by earlier investigations of the Neumark–Nord profile (Litt, 1994). A pronounced increase of fluctuations in arboreal vegetation during the final stage of the Last Interglacial in LPAZ N8 is observed…. at least two stages of degradation of coniferous forest vegetation, while birch woodlands became widespread. Together with geochemical data, these can be interpreted as an indicator of increased climatic instability caused by short warming events during the very end of the Last Interglacial (Eemian)….
The earth’s climate seems to be bistable so that a temperature ‘low point’ has “increased climatic instability” as seen during the Little Ice Age. So whether we are looking at the very end of the Holocene and Glacial inception OR the earth bumping along at the low point with “cooling over the next ~90,000 years.” – Dr.Lorraine Lisiecki, April 6, 2010 at 7:31 pmthe chances are the earth will be experiencing increasingly unstable weather and the Cabal, darn well KNOWS THAT. Hence the new term ‘Climate Disruption’.
WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTIC WE CAN EXPECT OF A COMING ICE AGE?
‘Arid, Windy, Dusty’ from lack of rain plus much lower CO2. Combine that with a shorter cooler summer growing season and you are looking at starvation, UNLESS you have greenhouses with Heat, CO2 and desalinated water. Under those conditions, coal, oil, gas and nuclear are priceless resources.
….The close correlation between climate and vegetation is evident in every part of the world. (The cold, dry conditions of Antarctica and the moist & humid conditions of the tropical rain forests in South America are just two examples of this powerful interaction.) The strong connection between the two is also proving to play a key role in categorizing and dividing the global climate into more specific zones….
Late in the 19th century, climatologist and botanist Wladimir Köppen developed a climate classification system based on vegetation. He used the correlation between vegetation and climate in different regions to divide the world’s climate into specific zones….
Climatologists continued to make amendments to Köppen’s climate classification. Rudolf Geiger was probably the most influential in making important amendments, and the subsequent Köppen-Geiger Classification System is one of the most widely used today….
The following graphs shows the Köppen Climate Boundary for mid America. If you look at the bottom graph, you can see how the cooling in the 1970s moved the Köppen Climate Boundary south by about 150 to 200 miles. Think what that did to the grain harvests in not only the USA, but also in Canada, Russia and China. World leaders were panicking as world grain stores were depleted to a 30 day supply by1969 per 1974 CIA Report mentioned below.
This is the December 3, 1972 Letter from George Kukla and others warning Nixon of a coming Ice Age. I originally saw this letter at Tony Heller’s site. Between the time I started writing and now it was removed. However I found another copy.
An important conference was held in January at Brown University: “The Present Interglacial, How and When Will it End?” As a result, the following letter was sent to the President. The media has not reported this, but you should be aware of the letter and its significance.
Dear Mr. President:
Aware of your deep concern with the future of the world, we feel obliged to inform you on the results of the scientific conference held here recently. The conference dealt with the past and future changes of climate and was attended by 42 top American and European investigators. We enclose the summary report published in Science and further publications are forthcoming in Quaternary Research.
The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.
The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on recent studies of deep sea sediments.
Existing data still do not allow forecast of the precise timing of the predicted development, nor the assessment of the man’s interference with the natural trends. It could not be excluded however that the cooling now under way in the Northern Hemisphere is the start of the expected shift. The present rate of the cooling seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century, if continuing at the present pace.
The practical consequences which might be brough by such developments to existing social institution are among others:
(1) Substantially lowered food production due to the shorter growing seasons and changed rain distribution in the main grain producing belts of the world, with Eastern Europe and Central Asia to be first affected.
(2) Increased frequency and amplitude of extreme weather anomalies such as those bringing floods, snowstorms, killing frosts, etc.
With the efficient help of the world leaders, the research …
With best regards,
George J. Kukla (Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory) R. K. Matthews (Chairman, Dept of Geological Sciences, Brown U)
And a 1974 article by the Guardian. Again, H/T Tony Heller. Funny, this one was not deep-sixed like the above image.
The Malthusian Eugenicists like John D Rockefeller seized on this coming Ice Age information to further scare world leaders into going along with their Depopulation plans as documented in the 1974 Kissinger Report, otherwise known as the National Security Study Memorandum NSSM 200[my excerpts]. (See the rest of my Depop series listed at the end of the article.)
As secret reports like 1974 NSSM 200 and the 1974 CIA Report: “A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems” were being written about the coming cooling/ possible glaciation, Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller’s lapdog, was screaming about ‘Global Warming’ at the UN Conference on the Human Environment, (June 1972.) There he was busytelling the newly formed NGOs to go home and raise hell. NGOs BTW were Strong’s brainchild based on YMCA International who he had worked with.LINK
It is instructive to read Strong’s 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992.Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise hell at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe. http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
A year later the Rockefeller OPEC puppets — Think ARAMCO who Strong worked for — implemented the 1973 oil embargo quadrupling the price of oil by 1974. Remember, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the U.S. gold window and the Petrodollar Agreement was implemented in 1973.
“..There was a phony “nationalization” of Aramco in the 1970s… the Saudi government took over Aramco, formally, but then immediately turned around and granted the Aramco-Rockefeller consortium the exclusive contract to “manage” the operation…” LINK
So any bets the Malthusian Rockefellers were behind OPEC?
COOLING VS THE FOOD PROBLEM – First there is the problem of WATER.
I think everyone is aware of what shorter growing seasons do to the food supply, at least I hope so. I also hope people can connect increase in solar energy going into the oceans with an increase of evaporation and thus an increase in rain. Likewise a DECREASE in solar energy will mean less evaporation and less rain. Compared to the Holocene, the Wisconsin Ice Age was very dry.
“Summary map of vegetation cover at 8,000 14C years BP. By 8,000 14C y.a., the Earth was under a full interglacial climate,[the Holocene]with conditions warmer and moister than present in many parts of the world. Tropical forest in Africa (and probably also Asia) was expanded in area, and the areas of desert in Africa and Asia were much reduced.”
Africa is interesting. The present potential looks more like the full glaciation map than it does like the Early Holocene map.
Full glaciation
Early Holocene
Present Potential
So the first problem in an Ice Age (and now) is the lack of RAIN.
Greenhouses take the chaotic weather out of the picture
“The ice that had formed from falling snow during the transition from the last of the cold, dry, windy ice ages to the first of the warm, wet calms of the modern 10,000-year-long Holocene climate is 1,678 meters, just over a mile, down the GISP2 core. Rendered in ice, what exactly would it look like, this boundary of epochs? The young American scientists had read the literature from Chet Langway, Willi Dansgaard, Hans Oeschger, Wally Broecker, and others, and they had heard from the Europeans, who were about a year ahead of them in drilling at Summit. Yet still they were not entirely prepared for what they saw that day in the ice, for the suddenness of it.”…
“‘You did not need to be a trained ice core observer to see this,’ recalled Alley. ‘Ken Taylor is sitting there with the ECM and he’s running along and his green line is going wee, wee, wee, wee – Boing! Weep! Woop! And then it stays down.’ Dust in the windy ice age atmosphere lowered the acidity of the core to a completely new state. ‘We’re just standing there and he just draws a picture of it,”‘Alley said.”….
“𝗜𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗜𝗦𝗣𝟮 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘆 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘆’𝘀 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗰𝗲. “𝗜𝘁 𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜’𝗺 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀: ‘𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗮 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗮 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗮 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 – 𝘄𝗼𝗼𝗽𝘀, 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲’𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗳 𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗸.’ 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗮 𝗵𝘂𝗴𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗰𝗲, 𝗶𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁.” [The clear thick ice would be the Holocene and as they go deeper they see the transition to the Wisconsin Ice Age. – GC]
Paper after paper began to roll off the scientific presses from 1992 on, and just like the unfolding recognition of plate tectonics which preceded it by a few decades, it was literally riveting for all of us geologists fascinated by the Quaternary. So we get our first trap-speed 👉 𝕔𝕝𝕚𝕞𝕒𝕥𝕖 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕤𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕔𝕙 𝕒𝕓𝕣𝕦𝕡𝕥𝕝𝕪 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕝𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕞 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕖 𝕚𝕟 𝕛𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕪𝕖𝕒𝕣.….” — William McClenney, Geologist THE END OF THE HOLOCENE
Notice the optimal range is 700 to 1200 PPM over double the current ambient levels. Also note plants suck the CO2 down to around 200 ppm. Outdoor studies have shown the same. Technology has even advanced to the point there is now a CO2 OPTIMIZER.
Growers tend to supplement CO2 in their greenhouse using a combination of educated guesswork and their talent and skill for growing crops. Adding CO2 is a matter of ‘feeling’, because it is simply not possible to measure the effectiveness of CO2. That is, until now. Ridder has, in partnership with Wageningen University, developed the CO2 Optimizer. This smart and helpful software module calculates the optimum level of CO2 in the greenhouse, enabling the grower to determine the most effective CO2 dose. The result: no more worrying about your CO2 strategy – it will always be on point for the best possible yields!
That device would certainly be useful in Ice Age greenhouses.
URANIUM AND NUCLEAR POWER
An obvious solution to the ‘cold, dry, windy ’ problem of an Ice Age is desalination. Israel put into large scale use the reverse osmosis technology developed in the USA in the early 60s. LINK 1 as well as water conservation methods in agriculture LINK 2-Israel agi.
Desalination was first developed in Israel in 1965, when Mekorot, Israel’s national water utility, established the first seawater desalination facility using vaporization technology in an effort to address the chronic thirst of the city of Eilat, located at the extreme southern tip of Israel on the Red Sea. A highly energy-intensive process, Mekorot looked for an alternative, energy-saving process, which it found in the reverse osmosis (RO) technology developed in the United States. In the early 1970s after the energy crisis of the Yom Kippur War, Mekorot began installing small-scale brackish water RO-desalination plants and, within the decade, established 15 desalination plants that supplied water to the Arava valley residents. Increasing demand and decreasing supply of freshwater in the coming years encouraged Mekorot to develop seawater desalination as an additional source, and the first plant (which desalinated a mixture of seawater and the reject brine from desalinated brackish water) commenced operation in 1997 in Eilat (Mekorot 2006). The motivation behind desalination of seawater in Israel stems from the fact that current demand and projected future demand cannot be met by natural freshwater sources alone – a disparity that results from population growth, overconsumption, misallocation, and pollution…
Nuclear desalination can be considered one of the most viable means of producing fresh water in arid areas. This publication addresses environmental concerns, and aims to improve understanding. It provides an overview of the nature and magnitude of the environmental impacts of nuclear desalination. In addition to detailing experimental data and the experience gained in operating nuclear desalination projects, it highlights risks perceived by the public. The publication encompasses environmental and socioeconomic information provided by specialized sources including some Member States with extensive experience in operating nuclear desalination systems. Addressing these concerns can be of critical importance for the effective use of nuclear desalination to its full potential….
The U.S. was among the first commercial adopters of nuclear energy in the 1950s, explaining the number of aging reactors today.A building boom between the 1960s and 1970s created today’s nuclear power plants in the United States. Of the five reactors completed in the 1990s and the one finished in 2016, all were holdovers of delayed construction projects from the 1970s experiencing roadblocks due to regulatory problems and mounting opposition to nuclear energy…
So despite nuclear energy being CO2 neutral and the southwest’s need for water, the USA has not approved new construction since the 1970s…. There is that critical 1970s decade again when everything changed.
Giving society cheap, abundant energy … would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.
Paul Ehrlich, “An Ecologist’s Perspective on Nuclear Power”, May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report
Not only was the area in the USA/Canada/Russia/China moved south by 100 to 200 miles in the seventies, CO2 is very soluble in COLD WATER (van ‘t Hoff equation.) So as the earth cools CO2 gets sucked up by the oceans thereby lowering the amount of CO2 available for plants.
As ocean temperatures rise, the solubility of CO2 in seawater declines. Thus increasing ocean temperature moves CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, and decreasing ocean temperatures move CO2 out of the atmosphere and back into the ocean. As you can see in the graph below, a 10C shift in temperature causes about 30% reduction in dissolved CO2. Closely corresponding to what we see in the measured ice core graph above. — Tony Heller
Under stress seeds will not even start and the cut off is ~220 ppm CO2. The Climastrologists played games with the measurements of ice cores and came up with 150. AGAIN the chemistry is CO2 loves water so the air bubbles have less CO2 than the entire ice sample. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski explains that dis-info campaign HERE.
Plant fossils obtained from sedimentary rocks and peat deposits are a relatively new tool being used to unravel Earth’s carbon dioxide (CO2) history. Tiny pores on plant leaves and needles called stomata regulate carbon dioxide absorption and water vapor release. Stomata numbers decrease during times of high atmospheric CO2, and increase when atmospheric CO2 is low….
The vast majority of land plants we rely on for human food and energy use the C3 pathway, which is the oldest of the pathways for carbon fixation, and it is found in plants of all taxonomies. Almost all extant nonhuman primates across all body sizes, including prosimians, new and old world monkeys, and all the apes—even those who live in regions with C4 and CAM plants—depend on C3 plants for sustenance….
The problem is the C3 pathway needs more water and CO2 than the C4 pathway and both were in short supply during the last Ice Age and are certainly not at optimum levels now as shown by the African desertification since the Holocene Optimum.
The Rancho La Brea tar pit fossil collection includes Juniperus (C3) wood specimens that 14C date between 7.7 and 55 thousand years (kyr) B.P., providing a constrained record of plant response for southern California during the last glacial period. Atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) ranged between 180 and 220 ppm during glacial periods, rose to 280 ppm before the industrial period, and is currently approaching 380 ppm in the modern atmosphere. Here we report on [delta]13C of Juniperus wood cellulose, and show that glacial and modern trees were operating at similar leaf- intercellular [CO2](ci)/atmospheric [CO2](ca) values. As a result, glacial trees were operating at ci values much closer to the CO2-compensation point for C3 photosynthesis than modern trees, indicating that glacial trees were undergoing carbon starvation. In addition, we modeled relative humidity by using [delta]18O of cellulose from the same Juniperus specimens and found that glacial humidity was 10% higher than that in modern times, indicating that differences in vapor-pressure deficits did not impose additional constrictions on ci/ca in the past. By scaling ancient ci values to plant growth by using modern relationships, we found evidence that C3 primary productivity was greatly diminished in southern California during the last glacial period.
“…glacial humidity was 10% higher than that in modern times…” as the below maps show. This may indicate why the Cabal wants California and the US Southwest cleared of those pesky ‘Deplorables.’
At the most extreme stage of the last glaciation, most of Canada and much of the northern USA were covered by an ice sheet thousands of metres in thickness. Colder and often drier than present conditions predominated across most of the USA. The eastern deciduous and conifer forests were replaced by more open conifer woodlands with cooler-climate species of pines and a large component of spruce. The open spruce woodland and parkland extended somewhat further west than present, into what is now the prairie zone. As a result of aridity and lowering of sea level (which lowered inland water tables), much of Florida was covered by drifting sand dunes. Notably moister than present conditions occurred across much of the south-west, with open conifer woodlands and scrub common in areas that are now semi-desert.
The decline of atmospheric CO2 over the last 65 million years (Ma) resulted in the ‘CO2-starvation’ of terrestrial ecosystems and led to the widespread distribution of C4 plants, which are less sensitive to CO2 levels than are C3 plants. Global expansion of C4 biomass is recorded in the diets of mammals from Asia, Africa, North America, and South America during the interval from about 8 to 5 Ma. This was accompanied by the most significant Cenozoic faunal turnover on each of these continents, indicating that ecological changes at this time were an important factor in mammalian extinction. Further expansion of tropical C4 biomass in Africa also occurred during the last glacial interval confirming the link between atmospheric CO2 levels and C4 biomass response. Changes in fauna and flora at the end of the Miocene, and between the last glacial and interglacial, have previously been attributed to changes in aridity; however, an alternative explanation for a global expansion of C4 biomass is CO2 starvation of C3 plants when atmospheric CO2 levels dropped below a threshold significant to C3 plants. Aridity may also have been a factor in the expansion of C4 ecosystems but one that was secondary to, and perhaps because of, gradually decreasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Mammalian evolution in the late Neogene, then, may be related to the CO2 starvation of C3 ecosystems.
Lower CO2 levels PLUS lower moisture with a COLD boot from glaciation did lead to the evolution of C4 and CAM plants which use a different but more energy expensive chemical pathway to conserve water.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society -biological sciences -1998
…Changes in fauna and flora at the end of the Miocene, and between the last glacial and interglacial, have previously been attributed to changes in aridity; however, an alternative explanation for a global expansion of C4 biomass is carbon dioxide starvation of C3 plants when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dropped below a threshold significant to C3 plants. Aridity may also have been a factor in the expansion of C4 ecosystems but one that was secondary to, and perhaps because of, gradually decreasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.Mammalian evolution in the late Neogene, then, may be related to the carbon dioxide starvation of C3 ecosystems.
C4 photosynthesis is a series of anatomical and biochemical modifications that concentrate CO2 around the carboxylating enzyme Rubisco, thereby increasing photo-synthetic efficiency in conditions promoting high rates of photo-respiration. The C4 pathway independently evolved over 45 times in 19 families of angiosperms, and thus represents one of the most convergent of evolutionary phenomena. Most origins of C4 photosynthesis occurred in the dicots, with at least 30 lineages. C4 photosynthesis first arose in grasses, probably during the Oligocene epoch (24–35 million yr ago). The earliest C4 dicots are likely members of the Chenopodiaceae dating back 15–21 million yr; however, most C4 dicot lineages are estimated to have appeared relatively recently, perhaps less than 5 million yr ago. C4 photosynthesis in the dicots originated in arid regions of low latitude, implicating combined effects of heat, drought and/or salinity as important conditions promoting C4 evolution. Low atmospheric CO2 is a significant contributing factor, because it is required for high rates of photorespiration. Consistently, the appearance of C4 plants in the evolutionary record coincides with periods of increasing global aridification and declining atmospheric CO2. Gene duplication followed by neo- and nonfunctionalization are the leading mechanisms for creating C4 genomes, with selection for carbon conservation traits under conditions promoting high photo respiration being the ultimate factor behind the origin of C4 photosynthesis.
Speaking of plants, while scientists will lie to keep the grant money coming, plants do not.
Gail, put this in your bookmarks…….they found the cut off was 220 ppm….not 200 I don’t know where people got the idea that it’s 150 and keep repeating that….220 stops them
What is interesting is ALL the archived versions of this June 2010 paper prior to September 28, 2019 have been scrubbed…
Side note on ‘disappearing’ info: Climate Alarmism Central actually does exist. It is part of the Aspen Global Change Institute. I will be getting into that mess in my next article.
…Such studies have shown that the average biomass production of modern C3 plants is reduced by c. 50% when grown at low (180–220 ppm) vs modern (350–380 ppm) [CO2], when other conditions are optimal (Sage & Coleman, 2001; Fig. 5). There is, however, variation in this response among C3 species (Fig. 5), as well as within C3 species, whereby reductions in biomass may vary by 40–70% among genotypes (Ward & Strain, 1997; Hovenden & Schimanski, 2000; Mohan et al., 2004). In addition, as [CO2] declines to 150 ppm, biomass production may be reduced by as much as 92%, as was observed in A. theophrasti (Dippery et al., 1995; Figs 2, 5)….
Notice the LIE by omission? They are talking BIOMASS and not how well the plants do from seed germination to producing the seeds for the next generation during a growing season.. Under stress the seeds will not even start to grow.
The biology of seeds can be divided in three important phases: development that includes zygotic embryogenesis, dormancy that prevents seeds from germinating under unfavorable conditions and germination (seed emergence). The transition between dormancy and germination represents a critical stage in the life cycle of higher plants and it is an important ecological and commercial trait. Seed germination is regulated by endogenous hormonal cues and external environmental signals such as water, low temperature and light, which influence whether an imbibed seed completes germination or remains dormant. Seed dormancy, a temporary quiescent state that is observed in seeds from many plants species, prevents untimely germination and ensures plant survival by adjusting vegetative development to seasonal changes in the environment. A dynamic balance between synthesis and catabolism of the abscisic acid (ABA) and gibberellins (GAs) controls the equilibrium between dormancy and germination. At the molecular level, the ABA/GA balance is in part determined by the antagonistic control of ABA and GA on each other through their reciprocal regulation of the transcription of their metabolic genes.
The ABA, derived from epoxycarotenoid cleavage, serves as a plant-specific signal during development and in response to environmental stresses such as cold, drought and high concentrations of salt in the soil. The ABA also elicits, among others numerous physiological functions, the closure of stomatal pores to restrict transpiration, adjustment of metabolism to tolerate desiccation and cold temperatures, and inhibition seedlings growth. Likewise, ABA represses germination and is presumed to function to stabilize the dormant state. ABA, like other hormones, functions through a complex network of signaling pathways where the cell response is initiated by ABA perception which triggers downstream signaling cascades to induce the final physiological effects….
Even C4 plants do better in higher CO2 atmospheres.
…In summary, it is clear that C4 plants do indeed respond positively to increases in the air’s CO2 concentration by exhibiting reduced stomatal conductances and transpirational water losses, which contribute to increases in water-use efficiency. Hence, knowledgeable researchers are suggesting that the long-held view that C4 plants will not be benefited by elevated concentrations of atmospheric CO2 needs to be replaced with this more correct assessment (Wand et al., 1999; Zhu et al., 1999). Clearly, as the atmospheric CO2 concentration increases, most C4 plants will almost certainly display increases in water-use efficiency, which should allow them to better deal with conditions of water stress. Consequently, this phenomenon should allow plants of the future to expand their ranges into areas where they currently cannot survive due to limited soil moisture availability, thereby contributing to a great “greening of the globe.”
There is another more subtle aspect to the CO2 starvation level and that is the change in partial pressure as the elevation above sea level increases.
…. Carbon limitation due to lower ambient CO2 partial pressures had a significant impact on the distribution of forest on the tropical mountains, in addition to climate. Hence, tree line elevation should not be used to infer palaeotemperatures….
Estimates of glacial-interglacial climate change in tropical Africa have varied widely. Results from a process-based vegetation model show how montane vegetation in East Africa shifts with changes in both carbon dioxide concentration and climate. For the last glacial maximum, the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration alone could explain the observed replacement of tropical montane forest by a scrub biome. This result implies that estimates of the last glacial maximum tropical cooling based on tree- line shifts must be revised.”
…While [CO2] does not vary with elevation, CO2 partial pressure decreases in proportion to total atmospheric pressure. Under modern conditions, partial pressures of CO2 at high-elevation sites are 10–30% lower than at low-elevation sites, producing an even more conservative comparison between glacial and modern conditions….
That means if the CO2 level is around 210 ppm you can kiss trees and other C3 plants growing above sea level goodby and that is most of the earth.
…According to Barnola et al (1987) the level of CO2 in the global atmosphere during many tens of thousands of years spanning 30,000 to110,000 BP were below 200ppm. If this were true then the growth of C3 plants should be limited at the global scale because their net Photosynthesis is depressed as CO2 concentration in air decreases to less than about 250ubar (less than about 250ppmv)(McKay et al 1991) This would lead to the extinction of C3 plant species . This has however not been recorded by paleobotanists (Manum 1991).”
http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf
Again, plants do not lie but the scientists owned by the Cabal do.
Since I have mentioned Köppen several times and I remember this information but not who said it, I feel it only fair to post E.M. Smith’s (ChiefIO‘s) comment:
From “Ice Age” by John and Mary Gribbin (a wonderful read, gives the richness of the characters in the discovery of the ice ages, the history of the process, and a gentle introduction to some of the science involved.):
Pg.53: […]the single most important thing to emerge from these discussions was Koppen’s realization of the key season in the Ice Age saga. Adhemar and Croll had thought that the decisive factor in encouraging Ice to spread across the Northern Hemisphere must be the occurrence of extremely cold winters, resulting in increased snowfall. At first, Milankovitch had shared this view. But it was Koppen who pointed out that it is always cold enough for snow to fall in the Arctic winter, even today, and that the reason that the Northern Hemisphere is not in the grip of a full Ice Age is because the ‘extra’ snow melts away again in the summer.
[EMS: Note that the Southern Hemisphere is similarly irrelevant to the ice age cycle since it is always cold enough for snow to stay frozen. It just doesn’t change enough to matter.]
Pg 54: He reasoned that the way to encourage the ice to spread would be to have a reduction in summer warmth, because then less of the winter snowfall would melt. If less snow melted in summer than fell in winter, the ice sheets would grow – and once they had started to grow, the feedback effect of the way the ice and snow reflect away incoming solar energy would enhance the process.
Pg 57: It isn’t so much that Ice Ages occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce particularly cool summers, rather what matters is that Interglacials only occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce unusually warm summers, encouraging the ice to retreat. Without all three of the astronomical rhythms working in step this way, the Earth stays in a deep freeze.
End Quote.
So, to summarize:
1) The south pole doesn’t matter to the process, it’s always frozen.
2) We are normally in a long ice age and only pop out for short intervals when conditions are just right.
3) The ‘just right’ is Northern Hemisphere summers warm enough to melt the snow and ice.
4) Warm enough is when the N. hemisphere: must be pointed at the sun in summer when: at close approach to the sun with the right elliptical shape, with the pole tilted over far enough, with… or we freeze.
I would add a note that I think it is particularly illuminating that we are near the end of an Interglacial (next stop is an ice age), the only thing that keeps it away is the summer Arctic ice and snow melt. So what is the AGW crowd in histrionics about? That the Arctic ice and snow are not sticking through the summer… Think about….
Right now Earth is nearest the sun during northern winters, farthest from the sun during northern summers. If E.M. Smith’s theory is correct, we’re headed for another ice age in the near future. This shift is called the precession of the equinoxes and has a period of 26,000 years. In only 12,000 years the perihelion will be in July. The summer solstice, 21 June @ 65◦ N is what most scientist use for measuring the critical solar insolation.
“As of 2014 the Holocene is exactly 11,717 years old (based on the end of the Younger Dryas cold interval). Or pretty much about half a precession cycle.” — William McClenney
Now, in 2023 it is 11726 years and we just went through the warm bump before the dive into the cold….
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Word of The Week:
Dunning–Kruger effect
noun
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task.
People are actually fairly good at estimating relative abilities, but they are not as good at estimating actual abilities – and the fit is increasingly bad at lower abilities, where people overestimate their own competence.
The effect is commonly used as a justification of authoritarianism by leftists and elitists, and as an argument in favor of the anti-popular positions of scientism.
In words
“The more you know, the more you know that you don’t know.”
“The less you know, the less you know that you don’t know.”
Relevance
There is a fake news site that exists for the purpose of fooling conservatives, and thereby discrediting them in the eyes of everybody else. As a form of insult to its victims, this website calls itself the “Dunning-Kruger Times”.
While the Dunning-Kruger Times (DKT) website claims that its stories are satire, the stories are always remarkably unfunny, and IMO are clearly not intended to be funny.
They are intended to be believable.
True satire sites of a similar nature typically run stories which slowly increase the level of absurdity until the reader recognizes hyperbole and begins to get the joke. These sites can be incredibly (no pun intended) funny, and have often had me breathless with laughter.
DKT never crafts funny satire. The goal appears to be to get reasonable people to see the story and recognize that the story is reasonable, likely to have occurred, and affirming of conservative values. The stories are easily posted to social media. The trouble is, the stories are never true.
As I have said, the stories are discrediting of whoever posts them, and many famous conservatives (Gov. Greg Abbott and Juanita Broaderick, most recently) have been fooled.
The stories are ALMOST libelous, but under the cover of satire, they remain protected and legal speech. Moreover, because the false allegations are very plausible, the accusations anticipate likely real positions by the people who are libeled, and are thus unlikely to be argued against.
It is my belief that these sites and stories are the work of the 3-letter agencies and/or the DNC, both as a psychological operation against Americans, and in particular as a way of discrediting those who would be expected to post or “like” the stories on social media.
For example, Juanita Broaddrick posted this valid tweet, showing significant public sentiment in favor of country music artist Jason Aldean.
Personally, I think that the DKT needs to be investigated all the way back to their (IMO) CIA, big tech, or DNC roots.
DKT is a discreditation site – a psy-op – and NOT a regular satire site.
Hey @elonmusk! Should @Twitter do something about "fake satire sites" that are designed to discredit target groups under the undeserved protection of "parody"? The very unfunny nature of DKT stories gives away their game of psy-op and plausibility.https://t.co/pu0tenqmhl
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Norgestrel is a synthetic progestin comprising a 50% racemic mixture, in which levonorgestrel is the biologically active form. Levonorgestrel’s most common use is as a contraceptive agent either alone or in combination with the synthetic estrogen ethinyl estradiol.
For your enjoyment, some country music!
As the election season approaches, I will be getting more and more involved in local politics. I may do some more placeholders, particularly for the final weeks before the election. I’ll just have to see how much time I have. My top priority on this site will be interacting with people, and reading the content that people bring here, rather than bringing my own content.
I just want to make sure people know that I’m not losing interest in this site, by my not being here or by my not doing more analytical posts. Between necessary time for health, family, and local politics, something has to give, and it will typically be posting my own content on this site.
But like Wheatie always said. We WILL get through it!
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
I have decided to be short, blunt, and to the point.
Here it is, very simply.
I was part of the cover-up of the early failure of Affirmative Action.
And when I say EARLY, I mean it failed during the alleged TESTING – meaning the very first year they put AA students on campus, which was supposed to be a test, but was really an unstoppable, unchangeable, unarguable implementation, that was going to happen, no matter what.
Let me be crystal clear.
Affirmative Action failed RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE.
I was there, and was an integral part of the disaster and the cover-up. And, quite frankly, I’m lucky I’m still alive. But I learned to keep my mouth shut for a very long time, and how to stay ahead of the people who needed me “gone” in some legal, plausible, and useful fashion.
Here is a bullet list of what happened. It’s long, but it gets the point across quickly, how the failure of Affirmative Action became known, and was then covered up.
I was working on an advanced science degree at a very fancy university
The university was informed that we would be getting Affirmative Action students
There were only a few of these students
This was supposed to be some kind of test, but it really was more of a “done deal”
I was warned by a friendly superior to steer clear of these students, and I did, but I didn’t realize why
One AA student in my professor’s class was caught cheating
I got the scoop from the teacher involved – the cheating was stupid and desperate – it was almost a cry for help
The student was clearly out of their depth
The failure was likely to mean the student would fail the course
AT THIS POINT, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS IN TROUBLE – if this was really a “test”
It was obvious to me that Affirmative Action would require a “fix” to actually work
I was an idiot and thought I could help Affirmative Action work
I suggested the idea of a remedial program, which had worked for unprepared math students at my previous university
That was it – I just mentioned this to the professor
TIME GOES BY – we hear nothing
The next thing I know, this same student was placed into our research laboratory, as an undergraduate researcher, by orders from the university
This was absolutely insane, dangerous, and utterly backwards to all common sense – only the BEST students are normally allowed into undergrad research in any university
The professor could not stop this – it came from too high up the chain
As one might predict, there was a DISASTER involving this student.
The disaster resulted in a lawsuit
The next five parts are very important – it’s about LAWFARE
(1) The lawsuit conveniently prevented the university from reporting anything about the student to the government, due to “conflict of interest”
(2) The lawsuit therefore prevented the university from reporting anything bad for Affirmative Action
(3) The lawsuit prevented the university from taking any public position regarding Affirmative Action
(4) The lawsuit created leverage on everybody involved, to hide what happened
(5) The lawsuit resulted in NDAs on everybody involved, to silence them on what happened
Bottom line, the “forced disaster” protected the truth about Affirmative Action from ever being known
However, that’s just the superficial, top-level view.
I was close enough on this sucker, and paying enough attention, that I realized things were EVEN WORSE THAN THAT.
This disaster didn’t just happen because putting a deficient student in a dangerous place is a dangerous idea.
SOMEBODY MADE SURE THERE WAS A PROBLEM.
Yes. This was a scam – an engineered accident. And the technology used to pull it off was astounding. So much so, that it was unbelievable, and I had to hide it. I simply could not testify to something that people could not believe.
For a long time I thought that the money of the lawsuit was the driving force behind SOMEBODY deciding to use cutting-edge technology, but the economics just were not there. Nope – it was the millions, and then billions, and eventually TRILLIONS of dollars at stake.
Once I realized that this was really a deep-state thing for billions and trillions of dollars, and not just a lawsuit for measly low millions, it all started making sense.
Now, I don’t want to get any deeper into how they pulled this off, than what I’ve already revealed, because I like keeping a few nukes handy, in case somebody wants to make this into a big deal. They want to go there, I can REALLY make this a big deal.
If you want to know more details than that, just read this earlier post I wrote about the topic.
This post is rather long, and it ultimately leads to VALIDATE what Q said about MK. And beyond. WAY beyond. I’m choosing to spill enough now that no matter what happens, or what happens to me, they will no longer be able to keep using MK for murders and getting away clean. People will SPOT …
Now, let me be clear – I’m not saying that all Affirmative Action students can’t handle the rigor of the universities they are pumped into, over more qualified students. But we are lying to ourselves to think that there is no downside to lowering standards of admission. I encountered that downside in the very first Affirmative Action student to come through our department’s classes.
An interesting debate on the topic is this one, which involves Michelle Obama. She was, if I’m dating things properly, admitted in the second year of Affirmative Action.
As a fellow Princeton student at the time Michelle Robinson was there, I have to make a few comments. Her claim that she was one of the "few" Black students is ridiculous. Affirmative action was in full force, and the Third World Center was a popular campus destination for… https://t.co/Zc2Zd0e8Cl
In my opinion, both sides arguing in the linked article are “right and wrong” about things. There were definitely VERY FEW Affirmative Action students in the first year, and not that many in the second year, if I remember things correctly. Bear in mind – not all black students were Affirmative Action cases. Eventually, though, the effect on the student population was very noticeable. The timing, IMO, isn’t all that important.
Nevertheless, I would not be surprised if Michelle Obama really felt isolated on campus, despite likely being among perhaps a few hundred other AA-admitted students.
But much of what the rabbi is saying is quite right. Students who are not qualified to enter these schools were being prioritized over students who were qualified, due to race, and it was eventually a very big deal, that caused a LOT of problems.
So what’s the point, in the end? We know the Deep State does what it wants. They make their money in the name of some good thing that they inevitably lie about and FAKE.
The Deep State can and will roll over anybody that they need to roll over. We’ve seen what they did to Trump.
But yet, all that is not what matters.
Thanks to all this stuff, I found God. I mean, not like I did when I was a kid. I mean deeply, and in a big way, and as an adult.
It’s DIFFERENT when you walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and you LEARN the hard way that GOD is your only real ally. And it’s not just magic, or the belief in magic, but the reality of how one deals with the universe, and how the universe deals back. God is a very “complex” thing, with both “real” and “imaginary” components. I am grateful for ending up with the understanding that I eventually got.
I lost a lot of things IN THIS WORLD, but in many ways that was purifying. I was stripped of much corruption and my worldly idols, and was left with GOD and the best teacher of all, the LORD JESUS CHRIST, the carpenter who dared to speak truth in a world of lies.
Affirmative Action was a noble cause, for those who believed in its truth, just as the response to 9/11 was a noble cause, for those who believed in its truth.
The problem is, neither one was completely true. Affirmative Action was never meant to be a logical reality. It was Hollywood. It was a story. It was Potemkin. It was fake. It was a societal version of “fake it until you make it”. They had no intention of doing it right.
I still believe in the “ends” of Affirmative Action – that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream can and will be achieved. But that end will NOT be achieved through these means – through deception and lies. It can only be achieved through truths. Sometimes those truths will be painful. Sometimes they will be joyous. But in the end, they will be part of the story – the TRUE story – that makes America great.
This week, we begin a new half-year of Monday posts.
I am returning the post format to “Wheatie-style brevity” while sometimes adding short topics or notifications.
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
For your enjoyment, some epic heroic orchestral music in Wheatie’s favorite style.
I will soon be publishing a statement on the end of Affirmative Action in university admissions. I thought that I might include that statement with this open thread, but I wish to do a better job and not rush it into print. Please bear with me.
Thank you, and God bless you all! -W
ENJOY THE SHOW
Have a great week!
W
Thanks to Valerie for this and other images.
PS – may you have a very, very patriotic Fourth of July!
Next week, we will start a new half-year of Monday posts.
I may take some liberties with the format! Be brave!
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
And yes, it’s Monday…again.
But we WILL get through it!
‘Cuz Wheatie Sez!
Just like Trump!
So HOLD ON for the ride of your life!
Dedication
WHEATIE – OUR WARRIOR ANGEL
by Duchess01
Please forgive us, Wheatie, we did not know That you had left us with armor in tow We had no idea with what you dealt We did not know the pain you felt And now we can only imagine With you what really did happen Cause rarely did you complain And/or share your personal pain Of one thing we are most certain You are flying high behind the curtain Watching over us above the crowds Our Warrior Angel above the clouds Thank You, Wheatie, for caring for us While you were here among the fuss We miss you dear you have no idea Since time began in the pangaea With you there was no time In your wisdom you would chime To clarify and magnify The what where how and why We did not question when you left We were not slightly bereft But over time we wondered why You did not at least stop by Now we know where you have gone With the break of this new dawn We could be angry but are not Tho with an arrow we’ve been shot Rest peacefully Warrior Angel dear Send us a sign that you are near A butterfly a flower a kiss of rain From your love do not refrain God sends Angels to watch over us And now we have an Angel Plus A Warrior Angel of Magnificence From today and forward hence
Boilerplate, more or less, but worth reading again and again, if only for the minor changes, and to stay out of moderation.
MINOR CHANGE NUMBER 1
Now shortened.
Give them nothing.
Play smart. Every minute, the COUPISTS who stole the election – who lied – who deserve to be at the business end of the very same laws they are using so wrongly against the January Sixth defendants – are trying to set you up. Don’t be a chump. Turn everything back against THEM. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second.
YOU are responsible for your own comments, if they come knocking. YOUR choice. Just remember this…..
For an updated version…..
And for a version that includes your having righteously defended yourself…..
OTHER THAN THAT…….
The bottom line is Free Speech. Theories and ideas you don’t agree with must be WELCOME here, and you must be part of that welcoming. But you do NOT need to be part of any agreement.
Bottom line – respect other people’s FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.
Our only additional requirement is that you do so NICELY. Or at least try to make some effort in that direction.
SO….. [ENGAGE BOILERPLATE…..]
We must endeavor to persevere to love our frenemies – even here.
Those who cannot deal with this easy requirement will be forced to jump the hoops of moderation, so that specific comments impugning other posters and violating the minimal rules can be sorted out and tossed in the trash.
In Wheatie’s words, “We’re on the same side here so let’s not engage in friendly fire.”
That includes the life skill of just ignoring certain other posters.
We do have a site – The U Tree – where civility is not a requirement. Interestingly, people don’t really go there much. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in an “argument” that can’t really stay civil, please feel free to “take it to the U Tree”. The U Tree is also a good place to report any technical difficulties, if you’re unable to report them here. Please post your comment there on one of Wolf’s posts, or in reply to one of Wolf’s comments, to make sure he sees it (though it may take a few hours).
We also have a backup site, called The Q Tree as well, which is really The Q Tree 579486807. You might call it “Second Tree”. The URL for that site is https://theqtree579486807.wordpress.com/. If this site (theqtree.com) ever goes down, please reassemble at the Second Tree.
If the Second Tree goes down, please go to The U Tree, or to our Gab Group, which is located at https://gab.com/groups/4178.
We also have some “old rules” and important guidelines, outlined here, in a very early post, on our first New Year’s Day, in 2019. The main point is not to make violent threats against people, which then have to be taken seriously by law enforcement, and which can be used as a PRETEXT by enemies of this site.
In the words of Wheatie, “Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven that Wolf has created for us.”
A Moment of Prayer
Our policy on extreme religious freedom on this site is discussed HERE. Please feel free to pray and praise God anytime and anywhere.
Thus, please pray for our real President, the one who actually won TWO elections.
By grace you have been saved through faith; not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8-9
You expect me to believe that Ben Brody a political science student at UCR, a liberal college in California who was unmasked at a protest event is a member of the “far right” organization Patriot Front? Yea right, this guy is an Antifa crisis actor hired by the Feds. pic.twitter.com/BkBNJsO4Jf
I’m proud to say that Peter Hotez has blocked me. 🤣🤣🤣 Given that he has a PhD in propaganda, I’m going to take this moment to reflect on what I did that was so effective. I will then do more of the exact same thing. Tyrants might be liars, but at least they’re cowards too. pic.twitter.com/pYnsE4m7dk
What is an implosion, and what would it have been like for the Titan sub passengers?
The Titan submersible was so deep, experts told NBC News, that the forces crushing it would have been equivalent to the weight of the Eiffel Tower.
The deep-sea water pressure that appears to have crushed the 22-foot craft would have been roughly equivalent in weight to the 10,000-ton, wrought-iron Eiffel Tower, experts told NBC News on Friday. The colossal forces would have acted so quickly that it would be like the vehicle’s carbon-fiber hull “suddenly vanishing” before anyone inside knew what was happening, one expert said.
“They would have known nothing — the minute this body of water hit them, they would have been dead,” said Paul White, a professor at England’s University of Southampton, who specializes in underwater acoustics and forces.
…
“The air inside would compress down to a point, and the forces of the water rushing in and the collapse would be enormous,” he said. “Structurally,” he added, it would be equivalent of the capsule housing the crew “suddenly vanishing.”
“This whole process from start to finish is happening in the blink of an eyelid, the click of a finger,” he said. “I don’t think there would have been any suffering or any knowledge of what happened.”
(I have no idea if this is real or Photoshop – we report – you decide!)
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
And yes, it’s Monday…again.
But we WILL get through it!
As we were always assured by our Wheatie Warrior!
Take it from Trump!
And GRAB THE RAIL if it all gets too exciting!
Dedication
WHEATIE – OUR WARRIOR ANGEL
by Duchess01
Please forgive us, Wheatie, we did not know That you had left us with armor in tow We had no idea with what you dealt We did not know the pain you felt And now we can only imagine With you what really did happen Cause rarely did you complain And/or share your personal pain Of one thing we are most certain You are flying high behind the curtain Watching over us above the crowds Our Warrior Angel above the clouds Thank You, Wheatie, for caring for us While you were here among the fuss We miss you dear you have no idea Since time began in the pangaea With you there was no time In your wisdom you would chime To clarify and magnify The what where how and why We did not question when you left We were not slightly bereft But over time we wondered why You did not at least stop by Now we know where you have gone With the break of this new dawn We could be angry but are not Tho with an arrow we’ve been shot Rest peacefully Warrior Angel dear Send us a sign that you are near A butterfly a flower a kiss of rain From your love do not refrain God sends Angels to watch over us And now we have an Angel Plus A Warrior Angel of Magnificence From today and forward hence
Boilerplate, more or less, but worth reading again and again, if only for the minor changes, and to stay out of moderation.
MINOR CHANGE NUMBER 1
Now shortened.
Give them nothing.
Play smart. Every minute, the COUPISTS who stole the election – who lied – who deserve to be at the business end of the very same laws they are using so wrongly against the January Sixth defendants – are trying to set you up. Don’t be a chump. Turn everything back against THEM. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second.
YOU are responsible for your own comments, if they come knocking. YOUR choice. Just remember this…..
For an updated version…..
And for a version that includes your having righteously defended yourself…..
OTHER THAN THAT…….
The bottom line is Free Speech. Theories and ideas you don’t agree with must be WELCOME here, and you must be part of that welcoming. But you do NOT need to be part of any agreement.
Bottom line – respect other people’s FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.
Our only additional requirement is that you do so NICELY. Or at least try to make some effort in that direction.
SO….. [ENGAGE BOILERPLATE…..]
We must endeavor to persevere to love our frenemies – even here.
Those who cannot deal with this easy requirement will be forced to jump the hoops of moderation, so that specific comments impugning other posters and violating the minimal rules can be sorted out and tossed in the trash.
In Wheatie’s words, “We’re on the same side here so let’s not engage in friendly fire.”
That includes the life skill of just ignoring certain other posters.
We do have a site – The U Tree – where civility is not a requirement. Interestingly, people don’t really go there much. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in an “argument” that can’t really stay civil, please feel free to “take it to the U Tree”. The U Tree is also a good place to report any technical difficulties, if you’re unable to report them here. Please post your comment there on one of Wolf’s posts, or in reply to one of Wolf’s comments, to make sure he sees it (though it may take a few hours).
We also have a backup site, called The Q Tree as well, which is really The Q Tree 579486807. You might call it “Second Tree”. The URL for that site is https://theqtree579486807.wordpress.com/. If this site (theqtree.com) ever goes down, please reassemble at the Second Tree.
If the Second Tree goes down, please go to The U Tree, or to our Gab Group, which is located at https://gab.com/groups/4178.
We also have some “old rules” and important guidelines, outlined here, in a very early post, on our first New Year’s Day, in 2019. The main point is not to make violent threats against people, which then have to be taken seriously by law enforcement, and which can be used as a PRETEXT by enemies of this site.
In the words of Wheatie, “Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven that Wolf has created for us.”
A Moment of Prayer
Our policy on extreme religious freedom on this site is discussed HERE. Please feel free to pray and praise God anytime and anywhere.
Thus, please pray for our real President, the one who actually won TWO elections.
You may also pray for our nation, our world, and even our enemies.
Musical Interlude
In honor of dear Wheatie, we now present some music to soothe, inspire, invigorate, or relax.
Only one this time. Busy weekend.
Not sure whether I like this or hate it. You decide!
Damn. Can’t just leave on that one. Let’s have another!
OK – that’s enough. LOL.
Call To Battle
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
My teen has a new boyfriend. He's super sweet. One of the trans-girls in the group is SPITTING MAD that he's dating my child, having tantrums that he "wouldn't give her a chance." This boy is straight and he's being made to feel transphobic that he didn't want to date a bioboy.
— Bronwyn E Millar Author (@gingerhaderach) June 15, 2023
Oh, you gotta read the drama! LOL!
Can you IMAGINE the horror of being exposed to an idea you don't agree with?!?
— Photo of John Wayne (@ThatOldCoyote) June 16, 2023
OMG! Le horreur, or however they say it.
If you are LGBTQ+, you should move to Michigan.
If you are a woman who wants to make your own damn decisions, you should move to Michigan.
If you are a worker who wants rights, you should move to Michigan.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
🧵1/ BREAKING: We've obtained internal docs from @FoxNews employees. Fox Corp is celebrating Pride by encouraging employees to read about “glory holes,” supporting a group that gives sterilizing hormones to homeless youth, & deployed woke AI to monitor everyone. EXPLICIT CONTENT:
Good. Judges are an embodiment of the Constitution.
Even Obama judges!
FWIW I’m still pushing for public release of relevant footage with full understanding of security concerns and custodial issues. That said, I’m confident that what I will present will provide important context to what actually happened on January 6.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Wolfie’s Wheatie’s Word of the Week:
litmus test
noun
A test for chemical acidity or basicity using litmus paper.
A test that uses a single indicator to prompt a decision.
A simple test for the acidity or alkalinity of a substance, using litmus paper.
Use in politics:
In politics, a litmus test is a question asked of a potential candidate for high office, the answer to which would determine whether the nominating official would proceed with the appointment or nomination. The expression is a metaphor based on the litmus test in chemistry, in which one is able to test the general acidity of a substance, but not its exact pH. Those who must approve a nominee may also be said to apply a litmus test to determine whether the nominee will receive their vote. In these contexts, the phrase comes up most often with respect to nominations to the judiciary.
Lichen source of litmus (one of many):
Chemical structure of the color principle of litmus:
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
And yes, it’s Monday…again.
But we WILL get through it!
With Wheatie style!
With our wonderful REALPOTUS in the lead!
HANG ON!!!
Dedication
WHEATIE – OUR WARRIOR ANGEL
by Duchess01
Please forgive us, Wheatie, we did not know That you had left us with armor in tow We had no idea with what you dealt We did not know the pain you felt And now we can only imagine With you what really did happen Cause rarely did you complain And/or share your personal pain Of one thing we are most certain You are flying high behind the curtain Watching over us above the crowds Our Warrior Angel above the clouds Thank You, Wheatie, for caring for us While you were here among the fuss We miss you dear you have no idea Since time began in the pangaea With you there was no time In your wisdom you would chime To clarify and magnify The what where how and why We did not question when you left We were not slightly bereft But over time we wondered why You did not at least stop by Now we know where you have gone With the break of this new dawn We could be angry but are not Tho with an arrow we’ve been shot Rest peacefully Warrior Angel dear Send us a sign that you are near A butterfly a flower a kiss of rain From your love do not refrain God sends Angels to watch over us And now we have an Angel Plus A Warrior Angel of Magnificence From today and forward hence
Boilerplate, more or less, but worth reading again and again, if only for the minor changes, and to stay out of moderation.
MINOR CHANGE NUMBER 1
Now shortened.
Give them nothing.
Play smart. Every minute, the COUPISTS who stole the election – who lied – who deserve to be at the business end of the very same laws they are using so wrongly against the January Sixth defendants – are trying to set you up. Don’t be a chump. Turn everything back against THEM. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second.
YOU are responsible for your own comments, if they come knocking. YOUR choice. Just remember this…..
For an updated version…..
And for a version that includes your having righteously defended yourself…..
OTHER THAN THAT…….
The bottom line is Free Speech. Theories and ideas you don’t agree with must be WELCOME here, and you must be part of that welcoming. But you do NOT need to be part of any agreement.
Bottom line – respect other people’s FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.
Our only additional requirement is that you do so NICELY. Or at least try to make some effort in that direction.
SO….. [ENGAGE BOILERPLATE…..]
We must endeavor to persevere to love our frenemies – even here.
Those who cannot deal with this easy requirement will be forced to jump the hoops of moderation, so that specific comments impugning other posters and violating the minimal rules can be sorted out and tossed in the trash.
In Wheatie’s words, “We’re on the same side here so let’s not engage in friendly fire.”
That includes the life skill of just ignoring certain other posters.
We do have a site – The U Tree – where civility is not a requirement. Interestingly, people don’t really go there much. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in an “argument” that can’t really stay civil, please feel free to “take it to the U Tree”. The U Tree is also a good place to report any technical difficulties, if you’re unable to report them here. Please post your comment there on one of Wolf’s posts, or in reply to one of Wolf’s comments, to make sure he sees it (though it may take a few hours).
We also have a backup site, called The Q Tree as well, which is really The Q Tree 579486807. You might call it “Second Tree”. The URL for that site is https://theqtree579486807.wordpress.com/. If this site (theqtree.com) ever goes down, please reassemble at the Second Tree.
If the Second Tree goes down, please go to The U Tree, or to our Gab Group, which is located at https://gab.com/groups/4178.
We also have some “old rules” and important guidelines, outlined here, in a very early post, on our first New Year’s Day, in 2019. The main point is not to make violent threats against people, which then have to be taken seriously by law enforcement, and which can be used as a PRETEXT by enemies of this site.
In the words of Wheatie, “Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven that Wolf has created for us.”
A Moment of Prayer
Our policy on extreme religious freedom on this site is discussed HERE. Please feel free to pray and praise God anytime and anywhere.
Thus, please pray for our real President, the one who actually won TWO elections.
You may also pray for our nation, our world, and even our enemies.
Musical Interlude
In honor of dear Wheatie, we now present some music to soothe, inspire, invigorate, or relax.
Let’s start off in a “Wheatie way” with some epic orchestral violins!
OK – how about some country music? I just heard this one on the radio. Never heard it before.
Now this is just interesting. YouTube keeps trying to suggest Taylor Swift to me, but the first song it suggested was a duet with one of the [Dixie] Chicks, which shows you exactly where Menshevik YouTube was trying to send me – to MARXIST QUISLING CITY.
Well, I looked further down the list of treasonous suggestions, and the same guest vocalist Luke Bryan in the above video is in this one, but it’s six years earlier.
Remember – Taylor Swift started off in country / folk. Then Hollywood does its thing.
Useful strategic information in the culture wars.
But let’s finish off with a real treat.
Some country line dancers send off one of their friends with his favorite song.
OK – I’m not done. ONE. MORE. SONG!!!
Let’s finish off with something “fresh” in SuSE world!
Call To Battle
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
Pursuing his twisted agenda, Biden dishonors the American flag and breaks federal law.
4 U.S.Code Ch. 1, Sec. 7(e): “The flag of the United States of America should be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags…are grouped and displayed…” pic.twitter.com/knFt1ATe4j
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) June 11, 2023
MSM got a memo – “stop using ‘classified documents’ verbiage and change to ‘sensitive documents’…
JENNIFER BILEK: Is humanity ready for LGBTQ+ tech babies and the full erasure of women from reproduction? | Human Events | humanevents. @11thBlog https://t.co/OrZNO1VFuf
Wolbachia is a genus of intracellular bacteria that infects mainly arthropod species, including a high proportion of insects, and also some nematodes. It is one of the most common parasitic microbes, and is possibly the most common reproductive parasite in the biosphere. Its interactions with its hosts are often complex, and in some cases have evolved to be mutualistic rather than parasitic. Some host species cannot reproduce, or even survive, without Wolbachia colonization. One study concluded that more than 16% of neotropical insect species carry bacteria of this genus, and as many as 25 to 70% of all insect species are estimated to be potential hosts.
History of Wolbachia:
The genus was first identified in 1924 by Marshall Hertig and Simeon Burt Wolbach in the common house mosquito. They described it as “a somewhat pleomorphic, rodlike, Gram-negative, intracellular organism [that] apparently infects only the ovaries and testes“. Hertig formally described the species in 1936, and proposed both the generic and specific names: Wolbachia pipientis. Research on Wolbachia intensified after 1971, when Janice Yen and A. Ralph Barr of UCLA discovered that Culex mosquito eggs were killed by a cytoplasmic incompatibility when the sperm of Wolbachia-infected males fertilized infection-free eggs. The genus Wolbachia is of considerable interest today due to its ubiquitous distribution, its many different evolutionary interactions, and its potential use as a biocontrol agent.
Why Bill Gates is probably interested in Wolbachia:
Note: This is just the beginning. Look HERE for more.
These bacteria can infect many different types of organs, but are most notable for the infections of the testes and ovaries of their hosts. Wolbachia species are ubiquitous in mature eggs, but not mature sperm. Only infected females, therefore, pass the infection on to their offspring. Wolbachia bacteria maximize their spread by significantly altering the reproductive capabilities of their hosts, with four different phenotypes:
Male killing occurs when infected males die during larval development, which increases the rate of born, infected females.
Feminization results in infected males that develop as females or infertile pseudofemales. This is especially prevalent in Lepidoptera species such as the adzuki bean borer (Ostrinia scapulalis).
Parthenogenesis is reproduction of infected females without males. Some scientists have suggested that parthenogenesis may always be attributable to the effects of Wolbachia. Though this is not the case for the marbled crayfish. An example of parthenogenesis induced by presence of Wolbachia are some species within the Trichogramma parasitoid wasp genus, which have evolved to procreate without males due to the presence of Wolbachia. Males are rare in this genus of wasp, possibly because many have been killed by that same strain of Wolbachia.
Cytoplasmic incompatibility is the inability of Wolbachia-infected males to successfully reproduce with uninfected females or females infected with another Wolbachia strain. This reduces the reproductive success of those uninfected females and therefore promotes the infecting strain. In the cytoplasmic incompatibility mechanism, Wolbachia interferes with the parental chromosomes during the first mitotic divisions to the extent that they can no longer divide in synchrony.
Several host species, such as those within the genus Trichogramma, are so dependent on sexual differentiation of Wolbachia that they are unable to reproduce effectively without the bacteria in their bodies, and some might even be unable to survive uninfected.
One study on infected woodlice showed the broods of infected organisms had a higher proportion of females than their uninfected counterparts.
Wolbachia, especially Wolbachia-caused cytoplasmic incompatibility, may be important in promoting speciation. Wolbachia strains that distort the sex ratio may alter their host’s pattern of sexual selection in nature, and also engender strong selection to prevent their action, leading to some of the fastest examples of natural selection in natural populations.
The male killing and feminization effects of Wolbachia infections can also lead to speciation in their hosts. For example, populations of the pill woodlouse, Armadillidium vulgare which are exposed to the feminizing effects of Wolbachia, have been known to lose their female-determining chromosome. In these cases, only the presence of Wolbachia can cause an individual to develop into a female. Cryptic species of ground wētā (Hemiandrus maculifrons complex) are host to different lineages of Wolbachia which might explain their speciation without ecological or geographical separation.
Wolbachia infection has been linked to viral resistance in Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila simulans, and mosquito species. Flies, including mosquitoes, infected with the bacteria are more resistant to RNA viruses such as Drosophila C virus, norovirus, flock house virus, cricket paralysis virus, chikungunya virus, and West Nile virus.
In the common house mosquito, higher levels of Wolbachia were correlated with more insecticide resistance.
In leafminers of the species Phyllonorycter blancardella, Wolbachia bacteria help their hosts produce green islands on yellowing tree leaves, that is, small areas of leaf remaining fresh, allowing the hosts to continue feeding while growing to their adult forms. Larvae treated with tetracycline, which kills Wolbachia, lose this ability and subsequently only 13% emerge successfully as adult moths.
Muscidifurax uniraptor, a parasitoid wasp, also benefits from hosting Wolbachia bacteria.
In the parasitic filarial nematode species responsible for elephantiasis, such as Brugia malayi and Wuchereria bancrofti, Wolbachia has become an obligate endosymbiont and provides the host with chemicals necessary for its reproduction and survival. Elimination of the Wolbachia symbionts through antibiotic treatment therefore prevents reproduction of the nematode, and eventually results in its premature death.
Some Wolbachia species that infect arthropods also provide some metabolic provisioning to their hosts. In Drosophila melanogaster, Wolbachia is found to mediate iron metabolism under nutritional stress and in Cimex lectularius, the Wolbachia strain cCle helps the host to synthesize B vitamins.
Some Wolbachia strains have increased their prevalence by increasing their hosts’ fecundity. Wolbachia strains captured from 1988 in southern California still induce a fecundity deficit, but nowadays the fecundity deficit is replaced with a fecundity advantage such that infected Drosophila simulans produces more offspring than the uninfected ones.
Wolbachia often manipulates host reproduction and life-history in a way that favours its own propagation. In the Pharaoh ant, Wolbachia infection correlates with increased colony-level production of reproductives (i.e., greater reproductive investment), and earlier onset of reproductive production (i.e., shorter life-cycle). Infected colonies also seem to grow more rapidly. There is substantial evidence that the presence of Wolbachia that induce parthenogenesis have put pressure on species to reproduce primarily or entirely this way.
Additionally, Wolbachia has been seen to decrease the lifespan of Aedes aegypti, carriers of mosquito-borne diseases, and it decreases their efficacy of pathogen transmission because older mosquitoes are more likely to have become carriers of one of those diseases. This has been exploited as a method for pest control.
The first Wolbachia genome to be determined was that of one that infects D. melanogaster fruit flies. This genome was sequenced at The Institute for Genomic Research in a collaboration between Jonathan Eisen and Scott O’Neill. The second Wolbachia genome to be determined was one that infects Brugia malayi nematodes. Genome sequencing projects for several other Wolbachia strains are in progress. A nearly complete copy of the Wolbachia genome sequence was found within the genome sequence of the fruit fly Drosophila ananassae and large segments were found in seven other Drosophila species.
In an application of DNA barcoding to the identification of species of Protocalliphora flies, several distinct morphospecies had identical cytochrome c oxidase I gene sequences, most likely through horizontal gene transfer (HGT) by Wolbachia species as they jump across host species. As a result, Wolbachia can cause misleading results in molecular cladistical analyses. It is estimated that between 20 and 50 percent of insect species have evidence of HGT from Wolbachia—passing from microbes to animal (i.e. insects).
Wolbachia species also harbor a bacteriophage called bacteriophage WO or phage WO. Comparative sequence analyses of bacteriophage WO offer some of the most compelling examples of large-scale horizontal gene transfer between Wolbachia coinfections in the same host. It is the first bacteriophage implicated in frequent lateral transfer between the genomes of bacterial endosymbionts. Gene transfer by bacteriophages could drive significant evolutionary change in the genomes of intracellular bacteria that were previously considered highly stable or prone to loss of genes over time.
The small non-coding RNAs WsnRNA-46 and WsnRNA-59 in Wolbachia were detected in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and Drosophila melanogaster. The small RNAs (sRNAs) may regulate bacterial and host genes. Highly conserved intragenic region sRNA called ncrwmel02 was also identified in Wolbachia pipientis. It is expressed in four different strains in a regulated pattern that differs according to the sex of the host and the tissue localisation. This suggested that the sRNA may play important roles in the biology of Wolbachia.
Outside of insects, Wolbachia infects a variety of isopod species, spiders, mites, and many species of filarial nematodes (a type of parasitic worm), including those causing onchocerciasis (river blindness) and elephantiasis in humans, as well as heartworms in dogs. Not only are these disease-causing filarial worms infected with Wolbachia, but Wolbachia also seems to play an inordinate role in these diseases.
A large part of the pathogenicity of filarial nematodes is due to host immune response toward their Wolbachia. Elimination of Wolbachia from filarial nematodes generally results in either death or sterility of the nematode. Consequently, current strategies for control of filarial nematode diseases include elimination of their symbiotic Wolbachia via the simple doxycycline antibiotic, rather than directly killing the nematode with often more toxic antinematode medications.
