The Butterfly Effect

The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. This concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings which leads to a tornado half-way across the world.

[Butterfly]

 

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City has expressed it on several occasions to his congregation this way (see https://andynaselli.com/watergate):

·       He planted Redeemer Church because he entered a Presbyterian denomination that encouraged church planting.

·       H entered that denomination because in his last semester at seminary he took two courses with a professor who convinced him to adopt Presbyterian theology.

·       He sat under that professor because at the very last minute the professor arrived at the seminary after having bureaucratic visa problems (the professor was British).

·       While that professor was having visa problems, the seminary dean prayed one day about how he didn’t know how they were going to get the professor to arrive, and his prayer partner happened to be a seminary student named Mike Ford.

·       Mike Ford happened to have some clout to get them through the bureaucratic snag because he was the son of Gerald Ford, the sitting President of the US.

·       Gerald Ford was the President of the US because Richard Nixon had resigned.

·       Nixon resigned because a bunch of burglars broke into Watergate and were caught.

·       The burglars were caught because one of them happened to leave a door unlatched to an office they had just bugged, and the night watchman happened to walk by and notice the unlatched door.

Keller half jokes, “if that burglar had latched the door, if the door had been closed just two more inches, we wouldn’t be here tonight.”

I’d like to use this blog to relate a few “butterfly effect” moments in my own life – events which seem quite simple, but which have had enormous effects.

 

Exact Timing

In the fall of 1972, I was looking to change jobs. Because the economy in 1971 had a significant impact on available employment as I was finishing grad school, I had taken one of the few available jobs – working for Uniroyal where I had worked for a couple of summers. In 1972, the job market was opening back up and I was looking for other employment. I had had a couple of job interviews, had received a job offer from Lockheed at their Bridgeport CT office the prior Friday and was planning on calling them on Monday to accept their offer.

On Sunday afternoon, I received a phone call at home from my former boss’s boss, Charlie Smith. He had left Uniroyal a few months before and had taken a new position as the MIS Director at Olin Corporation, Winchester Division, in New Haven. He had an opening that he felt I was well suited for and asked if I had ever considered leaving Uniroyal. I responded that yes, I had considered leaving, and that I was actually planning on accepting an invitation from Lockheed the following day. He then requested that I delay accepting that job offer and come see him in New Haven the following day because he had a great position for me. Since my wife and I wouldn’t even have to move to take a position in New Haven (just drive in a different direction each day), I agreed, took the day off from work and drove down to see him.

I ended up taking that position for the next nearly 3 years. In the process, I acquired the skills that gave me the exact experience to later take a position at Air Products in PA, where I spent the next 30+ years.

If Charlie had not called that Sunday, but had waited one more day to call me on Monday instead, I would have already accepted the position at Lockheed, and my career would have gone in an entirely different direction. What a difference that one day made!

 

The Right Door

It was a nice day in March of 1970. The Spring quarter was just beginning at MSU. A friend, Trent, from the off-campus housing unit where I was living in East Lansing, and I were planning on walking to campus. We came down the stairs from the second floor to the first-floor landing. At that point there were two ways we could have gone. We could have opened the door to the living room, walked across that room, then gone through the double doors that led out to the sidewalk in front of the building. That way was the shortest but would have involved going through three sets of doors. The second way was down another half-flight of stairs, out the back door of the building into the parking area, then around the end of the building to the sidewalk. Slightly longer, but only one set of doors. We chose the latter.

Just outside that door, we noticed a car (which we did not recognize). Sticking out from under the car were the legs of a female. Being the gentlemen we were, we thought that she apparently needed help, so we pulled her from under the car and asked if we could help. It turned out that she was trying to unjam the linkage of the manual transmission. She had borrowed the car from her brother who had converted it from a “three on the tree” to a “four on the floor”. But he had explained to her that it wasn’t aligned properly and would sometimes get stuck in first. He had shown her how to unjam it, but apparently had neglected to explain that you had to push in the clutch while doing so. Trent and I worked together to unjam it for her.

The female who had the car was there for her only quarter on campus because of the program she was in. I was in grad school and was beginning to look at marriage prospects – figuring that there were more eligible females available in the university setting than I might have after graduation. This girl, about my age, was resourceful and that gave her a good standing in my eyes. Learning her name, I began seeing her regularly – eventually getting pinned, then engaged, and marrying her the following year. (We’ve now been married for 52 years!)

If Trent and I had made the decision to go through the living room and out the front door, then this encounter would not have happened. I would probably have seen her in the dining room of the housing unit later that week, but she would have been at a table of girls and it would have been unlikely that I would approach her in that situation.

Deciding to use the back door has had a tremendous impact on my life!

 

Skipping a Grade

I’ve mentioned before (see here) about how when I began first grade at Alcott School that my teacher, Miss Chandler, recognized that I was already quite academically advanced – knowing how to read, being skilled in math, etc. She suggested that instead of having to be bored in first grade that I be admitted to second grade. But the second-grade teacher, Mrs. Bane responded, “Just keep him in first, his classmates will catch up to him soon enough.” (They didn’t.) Being a first-year teacher, Miss Chandler, deferred to Mrs. Bane. But consider what would have happened if Miss Chandler pushed her idea a bit harder, or perhaps involved the principal. How would my life have been different?

·       I’d have a totally different set of friends from my hometown (one-quarter of my fellow high school graduates are still friends of mine on Facebook).

·       I would not have learned about public speaking from being on the inaugural debate team in 7^th grade that was organized by Mr. Carroll during his first year of teaching.

·       I would not have been able to take calculus in high school as that AP class was only approved my senior year – this would have meant that I would not have been able to get credit for it which was partially responsible for my being able to graduate a year earlier than normal.

·       I would not have been able to enter graduate school in the computer science department as I might have graduated the year before that major was made available.

·       I might not have been on campus in 1970, thus I would not have met my wife.

By not following through on her instincts, Miss Chandler’s acquiescence and keeping me in first grade had a tremendous impact on my life.

 

Conclusion

These are just three small incidents in my life. But they are ones that have had very significant outcomes. What are the situations in your life where such small things like a short delay, or the choice of door have been like that flap of a butterfly’s wing?

Anatomy of a Scammer – Part 2

A few months ago I wrote about an attempt by someone who tried to establish a relationship with me that was a scam (see here). At 11:08 last night I got another attempt. Some of the same signs were there, but others were slightly different.

 

The Signs

One – there were a total of 16 reactions to some of my posts from the last several weeks, plus one comment. But all of these were time-stamped as having been made in less than 60 seconds. That’s far too fast for a real person to read and click “like”  - implying that it was an automated process.

Second – if one of my friends had selected more than just the “like” such as a heart, then this scammer would have also selected that same type of response – trying to make it appear that there was genuine concern by mimicking one of my real friends.

Third – the comment was generic and didn’t have my real name. It said:

[Comment]

 

Fourth – There is a sparsity of details, but all her posts indicate an interest in golfing (and nearly all posted on the same date), where her profile says “she” is interested in skiing and speed skating. Her pictures (again all posted recently) include one in a restaurant somewhere in east Asia, and one in a US Army uniform petting a dog – again designed to be attractive to men.  “She” says she’s from Worcester, MA and works as an ER Registered Nurse.

[Nora]

 

Fifth – her Facebook name is Nora Lia White, but her ID is saconzye.gh, giving a hint of someone from Ghana being behind this.

 

My Actions

Unlike my previous encounter of a scammer, this one has provided so few details (no employer, no current city, no education), that I could not find out much more. My tendency would be just to ignore her comment. However, her account showed one friend (and only one) who is someone I actually know. So someone has fallen for her deception.

In looking at his account, I can see a few other of his “friends” who appear to also be a scammer (attractive picture, only friends are men from around the world, all details established in a short period of time). So I’m going to contact him privately and see if I can release him from the influence of this scammer and any others who he may have friended.

The moral of the story – just like my previous posting on this subject – be vigilant!

 

Memories of the Kilwins

Don’s Story

Donald Alfred Kilwin was born in Detroit, MI on March 9, 1923 (100 years ago this year). Except that his name was not actually Kilwin. All four of his grandparents had come to this country from Germany – or at least from parts of Europe that are now part of Germany.

His paternal grandparents were Adolph and Marie Luise [Krebs] Kilwinski and they had come to the US from what was known as East Prussia. The Kilwinski surname is more Polish than German. They had one daughter with them when they arrived in March 1893 and had two sons in the years after arrival, including Donald’s father, Alfred, who was born in January 1894.

His maternal grandparents, Hugo Hafenfeld and Antonia Rahn, had come as young children in 1879 and 1887 respectively, and they married in 1895, also in Detroit. Donald’s mother, Antoinette, was born there in 1898.

Alfred and Antoinette married in 1921 and Donald was born in 1923, the oldest of an eventual three children with Roy being born in 1925 and Eileen in 1927.

The family kept the Kilwinski surname at least through Adolph’s death in 1938. But with the war in Europe beginning in 1939, Alfred changed the family name to Kilwin as having such a German/Polish name was leading to discrimination. In the 1940 census the name Kilwin appeared for the first time in public records. That must have been a bit traumatic for a 16-year-old boy, still in high school!

Following graduation from high school in 1941, Don attended the Dunwoody baking school in Minneapolis. Then he found employment as a baker in Detroit.

 

Katy’s Story

Katy was from Manistique, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her father’s ancestors had been in Canada since the 1600s – primarily in Quebec as they were French-speaking (the name Richey had been derived from Richard). In contrast, Katy’s mother, Catherine McEachern, was of Scottish origin and her ancestors had only been in Canada or northern Michigan since the early 1800s.

Katy, legally Kathryn Ann Richey, had been born in 1925 and lived there until her graduation from high school. She then got a job as a bookkeeper at a local bank. It was in Manistique that she met Don a few years later.

 

Don and Katy – the Early Years

Don was not eligible to serve in WWII as he had very poor eyesight. A friend of his, Ted, was getting married in Manistique and he asked Don to be his best man in the wedding. Ted’s fiancée, Fern, was a friend of Katy’s and so Don and Katy met at the wedding. It was apparently love at first sight.  Don applied for their marriage license on June 18, 1945, in Detroit, and they were married in Katy’s hometown of Manistique two weeks later on June 30, 1945.  For the next two years, they remained in Detroit and Don kept working at a local bakery.

But Don really wanted to own his own bakery. Since Katy was from the Upper Peninsula, he was open to buying a bakery in that part of the state. In 1947, having seen an advertisement in a Detroit newspaper, they purchased the Weimer Bakery in Petoskey and named it Kilwin’s. They lived on the 2^nd floor above the bakery. Being in the northern part of Michigan, there were not as many customers as during the summer and they soon realized that the bakery business didn’t have enough customer base in the winter. So they diversified and started to make chocolates as well. (See here for some of the details).

It was in 1957 that the new Mackinac Bridge opened. This would have resulted in increased traffic and visitors in Petoskey. In 1958, Don and Katy built a new building on the corner of Jackson and West Mitchell for their new store. They also bought the house behind it for the two of them. They found that the excessive heat from their new kitchen was not conducive for the making of chocolates, so they then purchased the building next door in 1967 and turned it into a chocolate and gift store. They also rented part of it to a family friend for use as a hair salon.

 

Crossing Paths

It was about this time that my wife first encountered the Kilwins. She had graduated from high school in 1966 and after working for a short time in a local factory had gotten a job working in Kilwin’s Bakery as an early morning helper and clerk. She had moved out of her family home outside of town and was renting a low-priced room in a nearby home.

In the Spring of 1967, the Kilwins suggested to her that she might take some classes in the local junior college (North Central Michigan College) – just a short distance away. She did so, taking just one class to see if she liked it, then enrolling full-time that fall. Don and Katy, who had no children of their own, took her under their wing. She continued working for them while taking a full load of classes. It was about this same time that Don and Katy began renting a summer cottage on Walloon Lake outside of town (more on this below).

After graduating from NCMC, my wife enrolled in the Education Intern Program at Michigan State University. The EIP program offered students the opportunity to work as full-time teachers under a mentor teacher. By getting 60% of the salary of a regular teacher, the up-and-coming teachers could essentially pay for their education at the same time. The mentor teacher in the Alpena area was Ruth Richey, Katy’s sister-in-law, so Donna had an “in”. Her only times spent at the MSU campus would be that first summer of 1969 and a ten-week quarter in the spring of 1970. All her other time would be spent in Alpena.

It was during that spring quarter of 1970 that I met Donna (that’s a story for elsewhere). When she went home for the summer (and working for the Kilwins) I visited her most weekends – making the 200-mile drive from East Lansing to Petoskey in record time. Don and Katy vetted me and evidently found me acceptable to marry their “daughter”. It was also that summer that they decided to build a new house on a bluff on the shore of Walloon Lake so they could give up both the rental facility a short distance away as well as their house in Petoskey.

There were a number of significant events in 1971. Most important (at least to me), was my wedding to Donna. While my best man, Doug, and I stayed in a nearby motel, Donna and her maid-of-honor, Kay, stayed at the Kilwins. [Perhaps repeating the experience of Don and Katy 26 years earlier, Doug and Kay fell in love with each other and married just 5 months later on New Year’s Eve of 1971 – they’re also still married over 50 years later.]

At the wedding, we had the traditional bride’s side and groom’s side sitting, but we also had Don and Katy sit right in the middle of the front row – indicating that they were important to both of us. Their wedding gift to us was Katy baking and decorating our beautiful tiered wedding cake.

That same year, they sold their bakery (now called Johan’s Bakery) and concentrated on the candy and gift shop business. They moved that back downtown in 1974 – right across the street from their original bakery. The first floor was the candy shop and they made the candy down in the basement in a large open room where they had poured a new smooth floor more suitable to candy making than concrete.

 

A Continued Relationship

Don and Katy were not just friends to my wife and I, they were more like family. We had no children yet, so used to make the trek to Michigan (initially from CT, then later from PA) pretty much every summer, and staying for a few days in their lake house on Walloon. A few memories from this period stand out.

One summer we had just gotten there and were unloading our car when my wife accidentally shut the trunk while the car key was sitting on the top of a box in the trunk. After vainly trying to get it open, we ended up calling a trusted neighbor back in PA, giving him instructions on how to use a ladder to reach an unlocked egress on the 2^nd floor and where to find our spare keys. He express mailed them to us so we were able to get the trunk unlocked.

Another summer Don and Katy were making chocolate-covered cherries while we were there and they invited us to join them for the day. Donna helped coat the cherries and enrobe them in chocolate before putting them on a conveyor belt through the cooler. I had the task of taking them off the belt and packing them in storage boxes. If you’ve ever seen the video clip of Lucille Ball doing this and being overwhelmed, that’s what my job was (see here). For the record, you are allowed to eat a few, but you quickly get tired of them. We also helped/watched the making of peanut brittle (all mixed in a large pot, then spread on a large aluminum-topped table until it cools after which it can be broken up into pieces) and fudge (spread on those same tables with long bars of aluminum to keep it from running off onto the floor, then cut up into squares).

Finally, there was the Easter when  they made us a custom pair of chocolate Easter bunnies. You’ve probably seen them in stores – the big ones that are over a foot tall. But where most such Easter bunnies are hollow inside (except for the ears which may be solid), these were custom made just for us. Mine was filled with my favorite nuts – cashews. And Donna’s was filled with chocolate mints. A truly unique pair of rabbits!

In 1978, they were approached by Wayne Rose, a businessman who had owned the local Ford dealership and was interested in franchising the Kilwin operation. A few years earlier, Don had developed a candy base and had trademarked it under the name “Kandy Wink”. If Wayne took over the manufacturing of candy, then Don and Katy could concentrate on a part of the business they really loved – helping others get set up in the business.

Don had teamed up with another entrepreneur from MA, Alan Hilliard (www.hilliardschocolate.com) who had begun making chocolate equipment (tempering and cooling) in his basement. Don would meet with individuals all up and down the east coast, selling them the appropriate pieces of Hilliard equipment, having them buy the Kandy Wink bases for locally-made items and becoming a franchisee of Kilwin’s for things that were best made in the chocolate factory back in Petoskey. It was not just sales, but a real hands-on education for each of these new chocolate shop owners.

They would also regularly attend candy conventions in various places. When it was in eastern PA, we would be invited to meet them there for the day. One such meeting was in Reading – only a half-hour from our home – and another was in Valley Forge – about an hour away.

It was on one of these trips in late 1982, when they were driving in Beaver Falls, PA (Katy did all the driving as Don’s eyesight did not enable him to get a license) that Don had a massive heart attack and passed away a few days later at the age of 59. It was not totally unexpected, as Don’s father had also died of a heart attack at age 63, but it still saddened us.

Don had been very involved in many things. He was a member of the local Rotary Club and an officer of the local Chamber of Commerce. He was also a member and board member of the Retail Bakers of America, a member of the Retail Confectioners, International, and served on the board of trustees of the Michigan State Chamber of Commerce. He and Katy were also charter members of the Petoskey Whirlaways, the local square dancing club.

But none of those accolades mattered to us – Don and Katy were good friends and more like family than friends. Our concern at the time was for Katy as she and Don were not only husband and wife but also business partners who spent nearly all their time together.

 

Life Goes On

We visited Katy at the Walloon Lake home once more the following summer. By then she had decided to sell that home and move back into Petoskey into a condominium where she wouldn’t have to be involved in any property maintenance. As part of that move, we were invited to take a few things that reminded us of Don. We chose to take his small Hammond organ (Don couldn’t read music, but he loved to play by ear), and part of their large collection of salt and pepper shakers.

Katy had a lovely place at the condo. In addition to the living area upstairs, there was a large room downstairs where she set up her Hilliard Chocolate Machine and continued making chocolates for family and friends. (In this picture, she had the one in the middle.) Whenever we visited we were always given a supply to take back to PA with us (all things that would not melt of course). We always enjoyed our visits, taking along our children to see their blessed “Aunt Katy” – they stayed on the pull-out couch downstairs while we had the guest room upstairs.

It wasn’t until 1996 that Katy remarried – to Paul Varga, a retired salesman from “down state” who had moved to Petoskey to be closer to his son in Emmet County.  They had met while playing bridge. Katy eventually sold the Kandy Wink business to a relative – Paula and Ken Fineout. Paula’s maiden name was McEachern, the same as Katy’s mother. In 1997, she celebrated “Fifty Years in Business” and announced her retirement. We, of course, were in attendance.

Paul and Katy were married for 18 years when he passed away in 2014. Katy stayed in the condo for a while, then in early 2017 she moved into a local retirement/assisted living center. That summer we went to Michigan for the wedding of a family member, taking two of our grandsons with us, and visited her. In September, it became obvious that Katy was failing (at age 92). Donna had been calling her weekly and you could tell from Katy’s voice. We quickly set up an emergency visit so Donna could see her one last time – with Donna traveling out by bus. Katy passed away about a week after that visit. (See obituary here.)

There was no funeral, so we did not go out again. But it was a little surprising when we discovered that Katy had named us as beneficiaries of an annuity in her will.

 

The Beat Goes On

While Don and Katy have both passed on, the Kilwin name continues. Since that name had its origins in Don’s father changing the name in 1939, the name is unique and the 2.6 million references in Google are all about the business that Don started in the late 1940s in Petoskey. There are now 160 Kilwin’s Chocolates stores in 26 states.

As the article in the Petoskey News above states, “The Kilwin’s name is everywhere you turn. … It makes one proud to be standing in one of the many Kilwin’s stores and letting everyone know you too are from Petoskey. Don and Katy Kilwin probably never imagined their idea of making chocolates in the winter to supplement their business would have made their name so recognizable to so many.”

While that tribute is nice, I’m happy that I knew the people behind that name – our good friends, Don and Katy Kilwin. And it’s them that I remember – not the candy.

 

Climate Change

Yesterday I posted to social media (Facebook) the following:

Well, here's one of the dumbest things coming out of the Biden administration that I've heard of in a while - https://www.foxnews.com/.../white-house-report-signals...

Let's spray aerosol into the atmosphere to prevent the sun rays from reaching the earth in order to negate climate change. It's called Solar Radiation Modification (SRM). There's a great quote near the end of the article - "SRM offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years."

Yes, folks, instead of the impact of "global warming" (and there are those who believe it as well as those who don't), we'll just use SRM and bring on the next ice age. Anyone else see the potential for significant downside to these "experiments"?

 

Several hours later, someone responded to this posting:

You only have half the info as this is a fox report. Go read other sources. There is NO plan to do this. It was a federally mandated base research report.

You are a smart man, so use multiple resources to get your information before making claims.

Here is one example of research but there are others as well: https://www.cnbc.com/.../white-house-releases-report-on...

 

I have both friends and relatives who disagree with me, and I have no problem with that. We (myself included) can all learn from each other as long as we agree to be civil about our interactions. So, let me look at some of the aspects of this response. This is too long for a social media posting, so I’m choosing to turn this into a blog entry that I can then refer to.

 

Go read other sources

This is good advice and is something that I regularly do. Beside our local paper, I have three news sources pinned that I read regularly – Fox, CNN, and BBC. I have each of these three for a reason.

Fox – I generally agree with the conservative viewpoints reflected here. However, I avoid reading the opinion articles of Hannity and others as they are designed to inflame rather than to inform.

CNN – In order to balance the definite “right wing” Fox views, I have chosen CNN as a representative of the more “left wing” viewpoints. I could have chosen CNBC (as referenced above), or MSNBC, or something else, but I wanted to have one representative of the MSM (mainstream media) so I can see both sides of any current issues.

BBC – I’ve done enough international traveling that I recognize that both of the above sources are heavily weighted to US news and as a result important things taking place outside of the US are often not covered well. When I got stranded in Europe following 9/11, I greatly appreciated being able to watch the news from the non-US perspective. Again, I could have chosen others, but I regularly check the headlines on BBC to ensure that I don’t get bogged down in the US-centric views of news importance.

When there are important news stories that I really want to get involved in and understand, I will also do further research (thanks Google). So I’m primarily relying on the above three sources to keep me informed about what’s going on and to spur that further research.

As I mentioned, I also read our local newspaper. But I do not rely on it to trigger any further research into non-local issues as it tends to be repeats of what was reported elsewhere the day before.

 

You only have half the info

I disagree. While the article title on Fox is (as is often typical of them) designed to inflame the reader (“White House report signals openness to manipulating sunlight to prevent climate change”), the closing sentence in the article reads:

“In a separate statement, the White House assured readers that ‘there are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.’”

This parallels a line in the CNBC article which reads:

“The Biden-Harris administration has no plans underway to launch a comprehensive research program into solar radiation modification, according to a senior administration official.”

As a reflection of the way that news articles can be biased, I should note that the above line in the Fox article was at the very end of the article, where the parallel statement in the CNBC article was at the beginning of the article. So the same info was in both but with this perhaps unnoticeable (to most) tweaking of the order that reflects the two organizations support or non-support of the current administration.

 

Climate Change

I have both a science-engineering background as well as a minor in mathematics in my college career. I tend to look at things from those perspectives. There are a few aspects I’d like to mention here that bother me when encountering “scientific” topics like climate change. One is giving too much credit to short-term trends and ignoring the longer-term data. Another is choosing data to fit a pre-determined narrative and ignoring data which does not fit that narrative. And finally is the use of alarmist scenarios. Let’s look at some examples of each in the climate change “debate”.

 

Short-term v. Long-term

Here is a chart from temperaturerecord.org showing temperature variations for the last 1000 years.

[Temp chart]

 

Looking at this chart can cause one to be concerned. The temperature rise in the last 100 years certainly looks dramatic. One could conclude that this is all since the industrial revolution with the burning of fossil fuels, and the result of human activity. And 1000 years seems like a long period of time. But now let’s look at a chart prepared by NOAA (climate.gov) that shows the estimated temperature over the last 500 million years.

[Temp chart]

 

Gives a very different perspective, doesn’t it? Even with the blip in the very end of the data, we are still in a relatively cool period in Earth’s history. And those red areas in our past are definitely not manmade. Let me give an illustration with just four data points.

Consider the data series 4, 3, 1, 2. If I look at the last two points (1, 2), I can exclaim, “the numbers are up by a factor of two!” But if I plot a trendline using all four points I get just the opposite result, “the trend is downward by a factor of two!” There is a saying, “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” While I don’t mean to imply that the climate alarmists are deliberately lying, one needs to ask what is the basis of their conclusion.

 

Predetermined Narrative

I recently read an article by the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, Bjorn Lomborg. He stated the following (see https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/thinking-smartly-about-climate-change/):

“U.N. Secretary General António Guterres and many Western leaders, including the current administration in the U.S., tend toward the end-of-the-world point of view: “The world is facing a grave climate emergency. . . . Every week brings new climate-related devastation. Floods. Drought. Heatwaves. Wildfires. Superstorms. . . . We are in a battle for our lives. . . . Climate change is the biggest threat to the global economy.” These claims are echoed endlessly in the media. But are they true?

Consider the supposed rise in “superstorms” such as stronger hurricanes. What do we actually know? The annual number of hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S. since 1900 is slightly declining, not increasing. The same is true for major hurricanes (category three and above) hitting the U.S. We see the same thing if we look at world data for total hurricane energy in the satellite era, 1980-2022. In fact, 2022 was the second lowest recorded year. Did you hear that reported anywhere? No, because it doesn’t fit the dominant narrative.

What about the supposed increase in wildfires due to climate change? A typical example was the media coverage of the forest fires in Australia in 2019 and 2020, which left readers and viewers with the impression that almost all of Australia was burning. Looking at the satellite imagery, however, it was clear that although there were a lot of fires close to where the news crews lived in Sydney and Melbourne, it was one of the lowest levels of burning due to fire on record for Australia as a whole.

As for the amount of burned area due to fire on a global level, satellite data shows a dramatic decline over the past 25 years. Journals like Science and Nature have covered this story, but it’s not what you see on television or read in newspapers. Perhaps the implementation of a strong climate policy might reduce instances of fire, but even if we do nothing, the number of fires will almost certainly continue to decline. In other words, the world is not going to go up in flames, contrary to what you hear from politicians or read in The New York Times.”

 

In both the case of superstorms and fires, the news reports are alarmist and we don’t get the figures that don’t support that narrative. These are just two examples – there are many others.

 

Alarmist Attitudes

In 2007, Al Gore made the following statement.

“Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is ‘falling off a cliff.’ One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.”

This was accompanied in the news by pictures of polar bears floating on very small ice floes, getting thinner as they could not move around as before. However, fast forwarding to 7 years later, an article in Commentary magazine was entitled, “Good News for Polar Bears. Bad News for Al Gore.” This article noted:

“…satellite photographs confirm that not only has the ice not vanished, in the last two years it has increased somewhere between 43 and 62 percent since 2012. … since the evidence shows that the ice cap is larger than at any point since 2007, it’s certainly worth noting.”

The article also talks about the “global cooling” that has been going on since 1997. Wait a minute! Global COOLING? Which is it, global cooling or global warming? Since both of these terms keep getting it wrong, why do you think the current term of “climate change” is being used? It’s because no matter whether temps are going up or down it’s still “changing” and so this new terminology is never wrong.

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed in 2019 that the world will end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change! We’re now four years into that twelve year period – and it doesn’t look like the world is ending, Miami FL is not yet under water, the polar ice caps are doing just fine, etc.

But we will continue to get bombarded by alarmist statements. It reminds me quite a bit of the story of the boy who called “wolf”. After a while, no one believed him anymore.

 

Conclusion

I hope that we are not at the point like the boy who called wolf. There are things that we ought to do. History has shown again and again that human ingenuity is good at solving problems. But we need to really think through things and not mandate solutions by government fiat.

The town of Scottsbluff NE had converted to solar power – but they found out last week that one hail storm could wipe out their entire farm of solar panels. Electric cars have their place – but currently they require mining of cobalt by children in Africa and we’re not yet sure how to deal with the problem of old batteries. The power lines on the street where I live do not have sufficient capacity to even support half of the homes putting in fast chargers if we went to electric cars in our neighborhood.

We also need to be careful in thinking that we can “play God”. Humans make mistakes. A slight miscalculation in implementing any solution such as those being researched in the Solar Radiation Modification that I referenced at the beginning of this blog could wipe out mankind instead of being a solution.

In the words of Yogi Berra, “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.” Or to quote Elmer Fudd, “Be vewy vewy careful!”