NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 – Plus Study finds Earth’s tree cover increased by 7% since 1982

"Since NASA satellites program MODIS began collecting measurements there has been a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent." --NASA Earth Observatory, August 2019
"News reports about the Amazon fires strike a fear that one of the last great forests is disappearing.  That’s completely untrue. Forests are making a comeback! More precisely, the tree cover of the planet is increasing.  Since 1982, a recent peer-reviewed paper in Nature suggests, the planet’s tree cover increased by 2.24 million km2 (an increase of roughly 7%)."  --Vincent Geloso, American Institute for Economic Research, 26 August 2019

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotAugust 29, 2019 1:02 PM with 0 comments

https://mailchi.mp/40731058388a/nasa-global-wildfires-drop-by-25-since-2003?e=f4e33fdd1e

GWPF Newsletter 29/08/19

NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 Science Goes Up In Rain Forest Smoke Since NASA satellites program MODIS began collecting measurements there has been a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent. —NASA Earth Observatory, August 2019 News reports about the Amazon fires strike a fear that one of the last great forests is disappearing.  That’s completely untrue. Forests are making a comeback! More precisely, the tree cover of the planet is increasing.  Since 1982, a recent peer-reviewed paper in Nature suggests, the planet’s tree cover increased by 2.24 million km2 (an increase of roughly 7%).  –Vincent Geloso, American Institute for Economic Research, 26 August 2019 1) NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 NASA Earth Observatory, August 2019 2) Science Goes Up In Rain Forest Smoke Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, 28 August 2019 3) Reality Check: Forests Make a Comeback American Institute for Economic Research, 26 August 2019 4) Matt Ridley: The Most Dangerous Thing About The Amazon Fires Is The Apocalyptic Rhetoric The Spectator, 31 August 2019 5) U.S. Democrats Are Getting More Concerned About Global Warming, Republicans Remain Cool Pew Research Center, 28 August 2019 6) Sanjeev Sabhlok: Climate Hysteria Is A Great Opportunity To Teach Children To Ask Questions Times of India, 25 August 2019 7) And Finally: The Doomsday Cult Of Pre-Modern Climate Hysteria The Sun, 28 August 2019 1) NASA: Global Wildfires Drop By 25% Since 2003 NASA Earth Observatory, August 2019 Since NASA satellites programme MODIS began collecting measurements there has been a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent. The control of fire is a goal that may well be as old as humanity, but the systematic monitoring of fire on a global scale is a much newer capability. In the 1910s, the U.S. Forest Service began building fire lookout towers on mountain peaks in order to detect distant fires. A few decades later, fire-spotting airplanes flew onto the scene. Then in the early 1980s, satellites began to map fires over large areas from the vantage point of space. Over time, researchers have built a rich and textured record of Earth’s fire activity and are now able to analyze decadal trends. “The pace of discovery has increased dramatically during the satellite era,” said James Randerson, a scientist at the University of California, Irvine. “Having high-quality, daily observations of fires available on a global scale has been critical.” The animation above shows the locations of actively burning fires on a monthly basis for nearly two decades. The maps are based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. The colors are based on a count of the number (not size) of fires observed within a 1,000-square-kilometer area. White pixels show the high end of the count—as many as 30 fires in a 1,000-square-kilometer area per day. Orange pixels show as many as 10 fires, while red areas show as few as 1 fire per day. December 1, 2014 – August 31, 2015 The sequence highlights the rhythms—both natural and human-caused—in global fire activity. Bands of fire sweep across Eurasia, North America, and Southeast Asia as farmers clear and maintain fields in April and May. Summer brings new activity in boreal and temperate forests in North America and Eurasia due to lighting-triggered fires burning in remote areas. In the tropical forests of South America and equatorial Asia, fires flare up in August, September, and October as people make use of the dry season to clear rainforest and savanna, as well as stop trees and shrubs from encroaching on already cleared land. Few months pass in Australia without large numbers of fires burning somewhere on the continent’s vast grasslands, savannas, and tropical forests. But it is Africa that is truly the fire continent. On an average day in August, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites detect 10,000 actively burning fires around the world—and 70 percent them happen in Africa. Huge numbers of blazes spring up in the northern part of continent in December and January. A half year later, the burning has shifted south. Indeed, global fire emissions typically peak in August and September, coinciding with the main fire seasons of the Southern Hemisphere, particularly Africa. (High activity in temperate and boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere in the summer also contribute.) August 29, 2018 JPEG The second animation underscores how much fire activity shifts seasonally by highlighting burning activity during December 2014, April 2015, and August 2015. The satellite image above shows smoke rising from the savanna of northern Zambia on August 29, 2018, around the time global emissions reach their maximum. Though Africa dominates in the sheer number of fires, fires seasons there are pretty consistent from year-to-year. The most variable fire seasons happen elsewhere, such as the tropical forests of South America and equatorial Asia. In these areas, the severity of fire season is often linked to cycles of El Niño and La Niña. The buildup of warm water in the eastern Pacific during an El Niño changes atmospheric patterns and reduces rainfallover many rainforests, allowing them to burn more easily and widely. Despite the vast quantities of carbon released by fires in savannas, grasslands, and boreal forests, research shows that fires in these biomes do not generally add carbon to the atmosphere in the long term. The regrowth of vegetation or the creation of charcoal typically recaptures all of the carbon within months or years. However, when fires permanently remove trees or burn through peat (a carbon-rich fuel that can take centuries to form), little carbon is recaptured and the atmosphere sees a net increase in CO2. That is why outbreaks of fire in countries with large amounts of peat, such as Indonesia, have an outsized effect on global climate. Fires in equatorial Asia account for just 0.6 percent of global burned area, yet the region accounts for 8 percent of carbon emissions and 23 percent of methane emissions. On October, 25, 2015, the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera aboard the DSCOVR satellite acquired an image (below) of heavy smoke over Indonesia; El Niño was particularly active at the time. One of the most interesting things researchers have discovered since MODIS began collecting measurements, noted Randerson, is a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent. Full story 2) Science Goes Up In Rain Forest Smoke Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, 28 August 2019 If journalists as well as politicians, celebrities, presidents and the Pope can so easily slip into scientific myth and get the facts so wrong what credibility do they have on other issues of climate science? The idea that the Amazon rain forest are the lungs of the world is so embedded in our minds that few questioned its widespread use when news about fires in the Amazon was reported this summer. The idea is everywhere – so it’s obviously true. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (bad), don’t they, and give off oxygen (good), and there are billions of trees in the Amazon, so surely it makes sense. Responding to the fires in the Amazon the Pope has said that the, “Lungs of the forest are vital for the planet.” Emmanuel Macron tweeted, “The Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of the planet’s oxygen – is on fire.” Leonardo DiCaprio has almost 3 million likes for his Instagram posting saying, “The lungs of the Earth are in flames.” Christiano Ronaldo tweeted that The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” adding #prayforamazonia Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says “It’s the lungs of the Earth…which provides 20% of our oxygen.” Barry Gardiner Shadow Minister for International Climate Change tweeted he couldn’t agree with Macron more. Lib Dem MEP’s say the lungs of our planet are literally burning. Even Donald Tusk, the President of the European Commission tweeted of “…the destruction of the green lungs of Planet Earth.” The Rainforest Alliance say, “The lungs of the world are in flames.” Friends of the Earth want a deal to stop the fires adding, “They need to say ‘we won’t do a deal with you if you are effectively condoning burning the lungs of the world’.” WWF says the Amazon is popularly known as the lungs of the world. DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance has formed an emergency Amazon Forest Fund with an initial commitment of $5 million to focus critical resources on the key protections needed to maintain the ‘lungs of the planet.’ However, as the saying goes, it’s not that simple – things never are in science. Check where the figure comes from (and it’s actually not that straightforward to do) and you will find that it’s not that simple. It’s actually wrong. Geology’s Gift The Amazon rain forest is not the lungs of the world and they do not produce 20% of the world’s oxygen as is so often said. The Amazon rainforest is a vast, vital wonder, full of biodiversity and photosynthesizing plants producing 9% of the world’s photosynthetic output but, here is the key figure, 0% of its net output. You could destroy all of the world’s forests and it would hardly affect our oxygen supply. In fact you could destroy every living thing on Earth and still not dent it because our atmosphere of 20.9% oxygen is the gift of geologic time, slow to build up and we have enough to last millions of years. Yet this idea of the world’s lungs and of atmospheric oxygen needing to be refreshed and replenished, ideas unsupported by science, is everywhere. Surely journalists would act differently from advocacy groups, celebrities and politicians and check this fact before writing and broadcasting about it. After all journalists, especially science and environment journalists who are experts in their field, always check figures and statistics? Oh no, they don’t. Just Google the phrase to see how many time it is repeated, by the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, The Australian, to name a few. ITN in particular has risen above much of the other coverage with its over-the-top reporting. They say the Amazon is burning on a scale never seen before (nonsense). That the Amazon can never be replaced (nonsense), and that Nature is being killed (Oh come off it)! Who spoke up? If journalists as well as politicians, celebrities, presidents and the Pope can so easily slip into such scientific myth and get the facts so wrong what credibility do they have on other issues of climate science? Where are their science advisors? Surely they should make this mistake only once before being given proper advice. Or is it that if any of them goes against the trend they fear the condemnation? This is not the way to tackle the important environmental issues we face. Look how much we had to go through for science to wrench our minds free of what is “obviously true” and seek proof. Is climate science, or at least the public side of it, immune from normal scientific standards? And where are the high profile, “public” scientists setting the record straight, highlighting that the Amazon rain forests are not the lungs of the world? Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com 3) Reality Check: Forests Make a Comeback American Institute for Economic Research, 26 August 2019 Vincent Geloso In the last week, there have been many reports about the fires in the Amazonian forests. Many of these reports led news shows or were on the front pages of leading newspapers. The Amazon forest, which produces about 20% of earth’s oxygen and is the world’s largest rainforest, is often referred to as “the planet’s lungs.” The nickname strikes the imagination and it is frequently used in campaigns regarding the perils of deforestation. As such, the news reports about the fire strike a fear that one of the last great forests is disappearing. That’s completely untrue. Forests are making a comeback! More precisely, the tree cover of the planet is increasing. To be sure, it is nowhere near what it was at the beginning of the 19th century when the world’s population was below 1 billion individuals (most of whom were abjectly poor). Indeed, many forests on the planet were destroyed and cleared as population grew in number and wealth. However, globally speaking, the tree cover has begun to recover. Since 1982, a recent peer-reviewed paper in Nature suggests, the planet’s tree cover increased by 2.24 million km2 (an increase of roughly 7%). The transition also differs by region as some countries saw a recovery of forest much earlier. Many European countries saw the beginning of this recovery in the early decades of the twentieth century (and some began the transition much earlier). For the United States, there are some studies placing the beginning of the recovery in the 1930s but many states (especially in New England and the Middle Atlantic states) saw their forest recoveries begin as early as 1907. To be sure, some regions on Earth are experiencing falls in forest cover. This is the case for Brazil and many other Latin American countries (not all as Chile and Uruguay have already seen their forest recoveries begin). Nevertheless, the global picture is one of optimism. And there is cause for being optimistic that the trend will continue. Geographer Pierre Desrochers and economist Hiroko Shimizu noted that nine-tenths of all the deforestation caused by humans took place before 1950. The main reason for this was that forest-clearing was one of the easiest channels by which to increase the food supply while also providing energy. However, as we are now vastly more productive in our agriculture, we require less land to feed the same population. The effects of productivity growth in agriculture are so strong that some agricultural scientists are speaking of “peak farmland” – the idea that we will need less and less land to feed a growing population. Moreover, as transports and communication technologies have also improved, we have been able to concentrate production in the most productive areas of the planet in ways that explain a sizable share of total gains in productivity. As we grow more productive in farming, mankind can now leave some acres to return to nature to be reforested. With the prospect of new advances in bio-engineering, meat printing, sky-farms and other innovations, this is a force for reforestation that will only strengthen. Full post 4) Matt Ridley: The Most Dangerous Thing About The Amazon Fires Is The Apocalyptic Rhetoric The Spectator, 31 August 2019 Cristiano Ronaldo is a Portuguese expert on forests who also plays football, so when he shared a picture online of a recent forest fire in the Amazon, it went viral. Perhaps he was in a rush that day to get out of the laboratory to football training, because it later transpired that the photograph was actually taken in 2013, not this year, and in southern Brazil, nowhere near the Amazon. But at least his picture was only six years old. Emmanuel Macron, another forest ecologist who moonlights as president of France, claimed that ‘the Amazon rainforest — the lungs which produce 20 per cent of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire!’ alongside a picture that was 20 years old. A third bioscientist, who goes under the name of Madonna and sings, capped both their achievements by sharing a 30-year-old picture. […] Around the world, wild fires are generally declining, according to Nasa. Deforestation, too, is happening less and less. The United Nations’ ‘state of the world’s forests’report concluded last year that ‘the net loss of forest area continues to slow, from 0.18 per cent [a year] in the 1990s to 0.08 per cent over the last five-year period’. A study in Nature last year by scientists from the University of Maryland concluded that even this is too pessimistic: ‘We show that — contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally — tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km2 (+7.1 per cent relative to the 1982 level).’ This net increase is driven by rapid reforestation in cool, rich countries outweighing slower net deforestation in warm, poor countries. But more and more nations are now reaching the sort of income levels at which they stop deforesting and start reforesting. Bangladesh, for example, has been increasing its forest cover for several years. Costa Rica has doubled its tree cover in 40 years. Brazil is poised to join the reforesters soon. Possibly the biggest driver of this encouraging trend is the rising productivity of agriculture. The more yields increase, the less land we need to steal from nature to feed ourselves. Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University has calculated that the world needs only 35 per cent as much land to produce a given quantity of food as 50 years ago. That has spared wild land on a massive scale. Likewise, getting people on to fossil fuels and away from burning wood for fuel spares trees. It is in the poorest countries, mainly in Africa, that men and women still gather firewood for cooking and bushmeat for food, instead of using electricity or gas and farmed meat. The trouble with the apocalyptic rhetoric is that it can seem to justify drastic but dangerous solutions. The obsession with climate change has slowed the decline of deforestation. An estimated 700,000 hectares of forest has been felled in South-East Asia to grow palm oil to add to supposedly green ‘bio-diesel’ fuel in Europe, while the world is feeding 5 per cent of its grain crop to motor cars rather than people, which means 5 per cent of cultivated land that could be released for forest. Britain imports timber from wild forests in the Americas to burn for electricity at Drax in North Yorkshire, depriving beetles and woodpeckers of their lunch. Full post & comments 5) U.S. Democrats Are Getting More Concerned About Global Warming, Republicans Remain Cool Pew Research Center, 28 August 2019 Brian Kennedy and Med Hefferon The share of Americans calling global climate change a major threat to the well-being of the United States has grown from 40% in 2013 to 57% this year, Pew Research Center surveys have shown. But the rise in concern has largely come from Democrats. Opinions among Republicans on this issue remain largely unchanged. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overall, 84% say climate change is a major threat to the country’s well-being as of July 2019, up from 58% in a March 2013 survey. Views among Republicans and Republican leaners have stayed about the same (27% in 2019 vs. 22% in 2013). Nearly all liberal Democrats (94%, including independents who lean to the party) consider climate change a major threat to the nation now, up 30 percentage points from 2013. Three-quarters of moderate/conservative Democrats say the same, up from 54% in 2013. By contrast, there has been no significant change among either moderate or conservative Republicans on this issue. (While the share of moderate/liberal Republicans who see climate change as a major threat is up 9 percentage points since 2013, this change is not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level.) The partisan trend is similar on a related question. More Americans said in January 2019 that dealing with global climate change should be a top priority for Congress and the president (44%) than did so in early 2015 (34%). But the increased interest in prioritizing climate policy stems from Democrats, not Republicans. Two-thirds of Democrats (67%), including 83% of liberal Democrats, said this year that dealing with global climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. This was up from 46% of Democrats in 2015. In contrast, about two-in-ten Republicans (21%) said this year that climate change should be a top priority – a virtually identical share as in 2015 (19%). Full story 6) Sanjeev Sabhlok: Climate Hysteria Is A Great Opportunity To Teach Children To Ask Questions Times of India, 25 August 2019 Only when our children have developed the strongest possible level of scepticism, first introduced to the world by Charvaka and later emulated by Socrates, can they be said to have been educated. Most adults have little or no time to investigate the claims about climate change. They either accept them, assuming that “authority figures” have done their homework, or sit on the fence. Some consider that only scientists are supposed to understand science. But everyone has an equal place at the table of science and if our questions are not answered or the evidence doesn’t stack up, we are free to reject that “science”. Climate alarm has long given up the pretence of any link to science. Millions have been successfully “converted” – and they get duly worked up if their belief is questioned: “have you been outside recently?”, “erratic climate events are everywhere!”, “rainfall is getting less every year!”, “flash floods, including in Rajasthan are clear proof!”. Some of them have gone to the next stage and become missionaries. They go about distributing their religious pamphlets in schools, indoctrinating innocent lower-IQ children. Hopelessly confused children like Greta Thunberg are being churned out as a result. At an age when children like her should be learning to ask questions, they have become the brainwashed front for the climate religion. … Sanjeev Sabhlok, Senior leader of India’s Liberal Party (SBP) In my view, if anyone tells a child that climate change is man-made just because someone says so (such as a missionary “scientist” but now increasingly, “royals” and “celebrities”), that person has committed a sin against the enlightenment, against human progress. I would personally have been supportive of Greta Thunberg if she had been a prodigally intelligent child who dazzled her teachers with amazing questions, then found the answers and was now promoting a view that she thoroughly understood. It would not matter to me that she had come to the wrong conclusion. After all, no one can be right on everything all the time. But she suffers, sadly, from mental issues and speaks as a missionary – she cannot answer a single question about the science. We are very prone as a species to superstitions, panics, delusions, manias and hysterias. We have gone through thousands of them (many still underway), such as religion, alchemy, witchcraft, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, the Y2K bug, the SARS panic, much of Ayurveda and Chinese traditional medicine and all of homeopathy. The climate hysteria will ultimately pass, but to avoid such hysterias in the future we need to get our children to start thinking and stop believing. Climate change is a superb topic for teachers and students to explore. I stumbled upon the ideas of Socrates and Voltaire when I was a child and since the age of twelve, I have been a deep sceptic. “God” would have to pass through a thousand hurdles if “He” came by and tried to make me believe. For example, I recall being the only one staring into the eyes of Sathya Sai Baba in Bangalore in 1981 when all others had prostrated themselves before him. He obviously failed to pull a fast one over me. Today, Michael Strong, author of The Habit of Thought, is one of the few educationists who actively uses the Socratic method. Our educationists must learn from him. I believe that children from age 10 onwards should attend one class each week only on questions. They should list various topics and then ask as many questions as they can on that topic. As they grow older their ability to ask questions will get deeper and more sophisticated. The topic of climate change can lead to many questions. What is climate? What factors impact the climate? (Answer: at least a few hundred). How is the Earth’s temperature measured? (Long-term quality thermometer measurements have only been available in a few European and American sites, with most of them now contaminated by urbanisation. Let children also ask about satellite measurements and about the only reliable surface measurements – from the US Climate Reference Network.) How is the sea level measured? (Let them ask whether the land itself can sink – indeed it does: it is very common.) What is the proof of the greenhouse gas effect? (Let them ask and find out that there is no robust way to prove it in a laboratory.) How is CO2 measured? What information is needed to confirm (or reject) the CO2 hypothesis? What is the correlation between CO2 and temperature over the recent past? (Answer: very little.) What is the correlation as we stretch out to hundreds and then millions of years? (Answer: zero.) What climate “model” predictions could prove the hypothesis? What would nullify it? What are the strengths and weaknesses of temperature and CO2 estimates of the past? (Eg tree rings, ice core, marine sediments, pollen. Tree ring data is a better measure of rainfall than of temperature, ice cores show that CO2 increased when the Earth’s wobbles first made it warmer – CO2 was thereafter ejected from the oceans.) Are extreme events increasing? Let the children read IPCC’s reports that say: “there is only low confidence regarding changes in global tropical cyclone numbers over the last four decades”, there is “low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and the magnitude of floods” and that there is a “decreasing trend in the global number of tropical cyclones and globally accumulated cyclonic energy”. Full post 7) And Finally: The Doomsday Cult Of Pre-Modern Climate Hysteria The Sun, 28 August 2019 Archaeologists believe the kids, born into the Chimú empire, were sacrificed in a ritual to stop disasters linked to the El Niño phenomenon.   The mass grave contains the skeletons of 227 children Credit: AFP or licensors EXPERTS believe they have found the burial site of the largest child sacrifice ritual ever recorded. The skeletons of 227 kids, who were slaughtered at the same time, have been uncovered in a mass grave on the north coast of Peru. Archaeologists believe they have found the burial site of the largest child sacrifice ever recorded Credit: AFP or licensors Archaeologists believe the kids, born into the Chimú empire, were sacrificed in a ritual to stop disasters linked to the El Niño phenomenon. The youngsters, between the ages of four and 14, are understood to have been brutally killed up to 1,400 years ago. Some still have skin, hair and were found to have been wearing silver earmuffs. The religious leaders who carried out the killings were part of the Chimú empire, a powerful society that predated the Incas. Archaeologists found the mass slaughter site in the Pampa La Cruz sector in Huanchaco, a coastal municipality of Trujillo, north of Lima.   The youngsters, between the ages of four and 14, are understood to have died up to 1,400 years ago Credit: AFP or licensors Archaeologists found the mass slaughter site in the Pampa La Cruz sector in Huanchaco Credit: AFP or licensors “We are the largest place where remains of sacrificed children have been found. There is no other” in the world, archaeologist Feren Castillo told AFP. It is thought the youngsters were sacrificed to appease gods and stop bad weather. “They were sacrificed to appease the El Niño phenomenon, we have found more evidence of rainfall in the findings,” Mr Castillo added. This weather phenomenon, which occurs when the Pacific Ocean becomes very warm, can have disastrous impacts in Peru and other countries. In 2017, El Niño triggered flooding and landslides that killed 162 and destroyed thousands of homes. The Huanchaco child grave is not the first mass discovery of kids slaughtered in Pampa La Cruz. In June 2018, remains of 56 children were discovered.

NASA Admits That Climate Change Occurs Because of Changes in Earth’s Solar Orbit, and NOT Because of SUVs and Fossil Fuels 

NASA Admits That Climate Change Occurs Because of Changes in Earth’s Solar Orbit, and NOT Because of SUVs and Fossil Fuels

David August 31, 2019  

 

After many years of ignoring the left’s false claims on global warming, NASA has come out and said that changes in the weather are due to our solar orbit and not because of the use of fossil fuels. Under Barack Obama, NASA actually used their money to perpetuate the myth of global warming, even though there has been no warming since 2005.


The plain truth is that our orbit around the sun is inconsistent at best, sometimes placing us nearer to the sun than at other times. That is why planets like Mars shows the effects of global warming despite no burning of fossil fuels whatsoever.
From Natural News

“Even the maximum eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit – 0.07 – it would be impossible to show at the resolution of a web page,” notes the Hal Turner Radio Show. “Even so, at the current eccentricity of .017, the Earth is 5 million kilometers closer to Sun at perihelion than at aphelion.”
For more related news about climate change and global warming from an independent, non-establishment perspective, be sure to check out  ClimateScienceNews.com.

The biggest factor affecting earth’s climate is the SUN

As for earth’s obliquity, or its change in axial tilt, the below two images (Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC) show the degree to which the earth can shift on both its axis and its rotational orientation. At the higher tilts, earth’s seasons become much more extreme, while at lower tilts they become much more mild. A similar situation exists for earth’s rotational axis, which depending on which hemisphere is pointed at the sun during perihelion, can greatly impact the seasonal extremes between the two hemispheres.
Based on these different variables, Milankovitch was able to come up with a comprehensive mathematical model that is able to compute surface temperatures on earth going way back in time, and the conclusion is simple: Earth’s climate has alwaysbeen changing, and is in a constant state of flux due to no fault of our own as human beings.
When Milankovitch first put forward his model, it went ignored for nearly half a century. Then, in 1976, a study published in the journal Science confirmed that Milankovitch’s theory is, in fact, accurate, and that it does correspond to various periods of climate change that have occurred throughout history.

EXCLUSIVE.... SOMEONE IS LYING! Dates of When FBI Received Comey's Memos Don't Agree with Prior FBI Reporting!

EXCLUSIVE.... SOMEONE IS LYING! Dates of When FBI Received Comey's Memos Don't Agree with Prior FBI Reporting!

EXCLUSIVE…. SOMEONE IS LYING! Dates of When FBI Received Comey’s Memos Don’t Agree with Prior FBI Reporting!

by Joe Hoft August 30, 2019 92 Comments

The dates surrounding when the FBI obtained Comey’s memos are confusing at best.  Multiple dates are provided via the IG report and other reports from the FBI.

In yesterday’s IG report concerning former fired and disgraced FBI Director Jim Comey’s actions related to his memos created after his discussions with Donald Trump, the dates don’t make sense.
In the report the IG states that the FBI conducted a classification review of Comey’s memos between June 1st and 6th of 2017 –

Notice that this review included all of Comey’s memos.  The IG reports that the FBI must have had the memos on that date in order to classify them.

 

The IG also reports that Comey gave his partner in crime, James Rybicki copies of his memos –

He also generated a duplicate set of “originals” of Memos 2 through 7 for his Chief of Staff, James Rybicki, to maintain at the FBI.

Of course the dates that Rybicki received the memos are not noted in the report.  But we know that the memos were reviewed for classification in early June.
Then the IG reports that on June 7th the FBI obtained all of Comey’s emails –

The problem with these dates and reporting in the IG report is that the FBI swore in a prior court that the FBI recieved the memos on May 12th, 2017 –

May 12, 2017, is also the day that President Trump warned Comey that there may be recordings of his meetings with Comey –
This is the same time Comey started leaking his memos to the press [which now according to the IG report is fine to do if you work at the FBI and want to embarrass someone, anyone, even the President!] –

In addition a text between corrupt FBI agent and attorney Strzok and Page show that the FBI likely had Comey’s memos in May –

The dates don’t add up.  The story that copies of Comey’s memo’s were given to a partner in crime make no sense.  Why would they go to Comey’s house on June 7, 2017 if they already had the memos?  Someone is lying!

OPINION | The president has delivered on every promise made to Colorado workers

OPINION | The president has delivered on every promise made to Colorado workers

• Thomas Hicks, Jr.
• Aug 30, 2019 Updated 4 hrs ago

President Donald Trump, with first lady Melania Trump, speaks to the media before boarding Air Force One in Morristown, N.J., Sunday, Aug. 4, 2019.

Today, Trump Victory is hosting an “Open for Business Roundtable” in Fort Collins to highlight the promises President Trump has made and kept to American workers in the Centennial State.
Since President Trump’s election, 159,500 new jobs for Coloradans have been created. Last month, 7,200 jobs were added, further lowering the unemployment rate to 2.9 percent — the seventh-lowest in the United States. Colorado’s soaring job market has also led to strong wage growth, with earnings increasing over 5 percent year over year.
Nationally, there are more Americans working today than ever before. Our country has the lowest unemployment in a generation and there are more women working today than in the last 70 years. Small business optimism is off the charts and more than $800 billion in overseas earnings have been brought back to the United States since President Trump’s historic tax cuts were signed into law. Nearly 4,000 jobs in Colorado have been added due to tax reform, deregulation, and optimism under the Trump economy. To top it off, the United States is now an exporter of crude oil to a record 31 countries.
None of this is a surprise, of course, because President Trump has delivered on every single promise he’s made to the American worker. He’s committed to maintaining America’s energy independence and recognizes that a huge piece of that is strong, steady support for fossil fuels.
It’s astonishing then why nearly every 2020 Democrat is hell-bent on pushing a $32 trillion Green New Deal that would strip 2 million American natural oil and gas workers of their jobs.
The Democrats have gone so far to the left that they’re running on the promise of job loss. Colorado has a multi-billion dollar energy industry, and during the last debate Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrat field vowed to eliminate it entirely.
Contrary to what some in the mainstream media argue, the Democrats’ plan to ban all fossil fuels would not create a more energy independent America. It would do exactly the opposite and would cost nearly 250,000 Coloradans their jobs. The $24.1 billion in wages and almost $31.4 billion that the natural oil and gas industry pours into Colorado’s local economy would be wiped out, while local tax revenue that funds schools and fire departments would be eliminated. Key sources of income that hundreds of thousands of Coloradans depend on—like trucking services, retail, construction, transportation, and manufacturing—would also suffer.

Sadly, many Coloradans are already witnessing the consequences of the left’s anti-energy crusade firsthand. Last spring Colorado Democrats passed a new anti-energy law SB 181 that they are now using to drown energy development in red tape. Nearly a dozen municipalities have issued moratoriums on energy permits, jeopardizing countless jobs for working Americans. Make no mistake, if Colorado Democrats succeed with their assault on energy workers locally, other industries like agriculture and manufacturing that support hundreds of thousands of jobs will be next. Given the record of anti-energy Democrats in Colorado, when Joe Biden says he wants to eliminate fossil fuel development voters ought to take him seriously.
In the next Democrat debate slated for Sept. 12, you can expect Democrats to continue discounting the vital importance of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, President Trump will keep doubling down on his commitment to maintain America’s energy independence and protect jobs.
President Trump is building a legacy of promises made and promises kept to American families and businesses. He has the backs of businesses—small and large—that rely on fossil fuels and that are open for business because of them. Colorado’s economy is booming, and four more years of President Trump’s leadership means four more years of soaring job growth and rising wages. Let’s keep it that way by re-electing President Trump in 2020.

DOJ inspector general: Comey 'violated' FBI rules

by Daniel Chaitin

 & Caitlin Yilek

 | August 29, 2019 10:12 AM

The Justice Department inspector general released a scathing report on former FBI Director James Comey's notes memorializing his conversations with President Trump, finding that he disclosed them without authorization "to achieve a personally desired outcome."
The 83-page report on Comey's handling of "sensitive information," released Thursday, said the investigation found "no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the Memos to members of the media."
But Inspector General Michael Horowitz faulted Comey for his behavior, saying his actions, "violated Department or FBI policy, or the terms of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreement. As described in this report, we conclude that Comey’s retention, handling, and dissemination of certain Memos violated Department and FBI policies, and his FBI Employment Agreement."
Horowitz criminally referred Comey to the Justice Department for his conduct, but the agency declined to prosecute.
The report concluded that Comey "failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information."
Comey, who was fired by Trump in May 2017, testified to Congress that he gave his notes of conversations he had with Trump to his friend Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor, to leak to the New York Times. He said he hoped this would spark a special counsel investigation. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed that same month to lead an investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.
Horowitz did not approve of Comey's course of action, criticizing him for not attempting other "lawful" ways to secure the appointment of a special counsel.
"Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a Special Counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure. What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome," Horowitz wrote.
In a pair of tweets, Comey emphasized how the report cleared him of leaking classified information to the media and took shots at his critics who said he leaked classified material to reporters, which includes Trump, and deserves to go to prison.
"DOJ IG 'found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.' I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a 'sorry we lied about you' would be nice," Comey tweeted soon after its release on Thursday.

"And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me 'going to jail' or being a 'liar and a leaker'—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president," he added.

Comey's critics were quick to trumpet his disregard for the rules, including Trump, who lashed out at his former FBI director on Twitter.
"Perhaps never in the history of our Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector General’s Report. He should be ashamed of himself!" Trump said.

In a statement from the White House, press secretary Stephanie Grisham called Comey "a proven liar and leaker." Trump's Republican allies in Congress also piled on Comey.
"Today's report is a disappointing reminder that the former FBI Director put partisanship and personal ambition over patriotism and his legal obligations to the American people. By leaking his confidential communications with the President in an attempt to save face in the wake of his firing, Mr. Comey believed he was above the rules of the DOJ," Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
"His actions were disgraceful and part of a wider effort within the Obama Justice Department to undermine President Trump. I am grateful that the Inspector General brought these issues to light and look forward to his and Mr. Durham's findings related to abuses of the FISA process," the Georgia Republican added.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said the report is "a stunning and unprecedented rebuke of a former Director of the FBI" and thanked Horowitz and his team for their work.
“This is the first of what I expect will be several more ugly and damning rebukes of senior DOJ and FBI officials regarding their actions and biases toward the Trump campaign of 2016," the South Carolina Republican said. “I appreciate the time and effort Mr. Horowitz and his team spent documenting the off-the-rails behavior of Mr. Comey regarding the leaking of law enforcement materials to the media. I also appreciate Mr. Horowitz for reinforcing the proper standards expected of senior DOJ and FBI officials. Well done Mr. Horowitz.”

Comey also had his defenders, downplaying Horowitz's report.
"This is perhaps the stupidest investigation the IG has ever done, and one of its dumber conclusions. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns, " tweeted Matthew Miller, an Obama-era spokesman for the Justice Department. "The IG has basically faulted Comey for speeding on his way to tell the village that a fire was coming. Such a narrowly-scoped view of the world."
Comey, 58, served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in the early 2000s before joining the FBI. He became FBI director in 2013, under former President Barack Obama, and led the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails. He has been a target for Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans often criticize him for recommending no charges against the then-Democratic presidential candidate. Meanwhile, Clinton and her allies blame Comey for contributing to her loss to Trump by reopening (then closing) the emails investigation weeks before election night.
In a 2018 report, Horowitz criticized Comey for being “insubordinate” and “affirmatively" concealing in his intentions from Justice Department leadership during the investigation into into Clinton's private email server. However, the watchdog did not find that bias tainted the investigation.
There were seven contemporaneous memos Comey wrote of his interactions with Trump between January and April 2017, spanning from prior to the inauguration to weeks before he was fired. They contain such claims as Trump seeking a loyalty pledge from Comey and pushing his FBI director to drop an investigation into his national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump has vociferously denied both these accounts.
Only a handful of FBI officials knew about Comey's memos in those days, and they told the inspector general they were "official government records." However, Comey described at least some of them as being personal. "Comey's characterization of the Memos as personal records finds no support in the law and is wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining Federal records, and the terms of Comey's FBI Employment Agreement," Horowitz wrote.
The first memo focuses on Comey's first one-on-one meeting with Trump on Jan. 7, in which he first notified the president-elect of an unverifed dossier, compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, on his alleged ties to Russia. Witnesses interviewed by Horowitz said they "discussed Trump's potential responses to being told about the 'salacious' information, including that Trump might make statements about, or provide information of value to, the pending Russian interference investigation."
Horowitz noted that "[m]ultiple FBI witnesses recalled agreeing ahead of time that Comey should memorialize his meeting with Trump immediately after it occurred."
There was some concern among the FBI's top officials that the memos about his conversations with Trump would look bad. Former FBI General Counsel James Baker told the inspector general that, "at the time, it was his understanding that the small group of people who had access to the Memos 'really didn't want anyone to know the Director…was recording at this level of detail his interactions with the President' because any perception that Comey was 'keeping…book' on the President would upset any effort to have an effective and ongoing working relationship."
Comey defended his creation of the memos. Horowitz wrote that Comey said it was "was important for FBI executive managers to be 'able to share in [Comey's] recall of the…salient details of those conversations.' Comey also said that an additional concern, shared by the members of his management team, was that if the briefing became 'a source of controversy' it would be important to have a clear, contemporaneous record because Trump might 'misrepresent what happened in the encounter.'”
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who may soon be facing criminal charges for lying to federal agents, told the inspector general, "that, in his view, it made sense for Comey 'to capture his … contemporaneous recollection' because there were “millions of ways that [the FBI] could get follow-up questions, or criticism…and [Comey] wanted to recollect exactly, from his perspective, how it had taken place.'”
Some of the memos did contain classified information, but not the ones that were leaked to the media. The inspector general report explains the creation and handling of each memo, including a detailed timeline of events.
Horowitz said his team conducted 17 interviews, including with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and Richman, and found the FBI did not learn that Comey had shared any of the memos with anyone outside the FBI until Comey testified to Congress on June 8, 2017.
Comey told the inspector general that he feared cyber intrusion, printing out copies of his memos before deleting an electronic file. He also scanned some of the memos and used a private email account to send them to his attorneys. "Comey explained to the OIG that he is 'a maniac … about hacking of [his] personal devices' and that he is 'obsessive' about deleting files from his personal accounts. He told us that he 'never keep[s] any emails, personal emails' and tries 'to maintain almost a maniacal hygiene about records,'" the report said.
Last month, documents obtained by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information lawsuit showed FBI special agents from the Washington Field Office paid a visit to Comey's home on June 7, 2017, at which time he gave these them four of the memos as "evidence." These copies were kept in a safe, to which he told the inspector general "in theory" his wife had access, but not a key.
When Comey was fired, Trump initially cited a memo written by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which focused on the "mistakes" Comey made in handling the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unauthorized email server. But a couple of days later, the president suggested a different motive in an interview with NBC, saying the “Russia thing” was a factor in firing Comey.
Comey, who has been a vocal critic of the president and his treatment of the FBI, is also a possible target of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigation into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse. He signed three of the four FISA applications targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page before being fired by Trump. Horowitz's report is expected to be released after Labor Day. It is also likely that Comey's actions as FBI director will be scrutinized during the "investigation of the investigators," a review of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, being led by Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, said as recently as last night on Fox News that Comey should go to prison for lying to the FISA Court.
"The reality is that Comey's conduct was outrageous for a prosecutor. Any decent prosecutor, when we’re bouncing off the walls, starting with the completely fixed Hillary Clinton investigation. That was a sellout, a fix from day one. It’s a disgrace. I don't think J. Edgar Hoover ever did that," he told Fox News.

China Emits More Carbon Dioxide Than The U.S. and EU Combined

China Emits More Carbon Dioxide Than The U.S. and EU Combined

 China Emits More Carbon Dioxide Than The U.S. and EU Combined

Robert Rapier Senior Contributor

 

In this Dec. 30, 2016 photo, a truck leaves with metal products from the sprawling complex that is a part of the Jiujiang steel and rolling mills in Qianan in northern China's Hebei province. Faced with choking smog in the Chinese capital, Chinese media and policy circles often point to a list of culprits: the central government's inability to shut down polluting steel mills, the middle class's insatiable demand for cars, poorer segments of society's insistence on burning coal. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In the previous article, I discussed the relentless upward march of global carbon dioxide emissions. According to data from the 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the world reached a new all-time high for global carbon dioxide emissions in 2017.

Today, I want to discussion trends and relative contributions from the world's most significant carbon dioxide emitters.
Since 1965, no country has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the United States. The 264 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide the U.S. has emitted to the atmosphere represented 22.5% of global emissions during that time, and was well ahead of the cumulative 216 billion metric tons from the European Union (EU). In second place among countries was the 188 billion metric tons emitted by China.
But as China has industrialized -- with a heavy reliance on coal-fired power -- Chinese emissions have rocketed past both those of the U.S. and the EU:

Carbon dioxide emissions from 1965 to 2017.

Robert Rapier

China's emissions passed those of the U.S. in 2005, and by 2012 had surpassed the combined contribution of both the U.S. and the EU. Should recent trends continue, China will be responsible for the most atmospheric carbon dioxide in less than 20 years.
China has lots of regional company, t00. The Asia Pacific region is home to both China and India -- the world's two most populous countries and two of the largest carbon dioxide emitters. It is also home to other fast-growing and/or populous countries, like Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Japan. Over the past decade, this region's carbon dioxide emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 3.1%, which was nearly triple the global average. As a result, Asia Pacific is now responsible for nearly 50% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
 

 Thus, Asia Pacific as a whole continues to drive global carbon dioxide emissions higher:

Asia Pacific carbon dioxide emissions continue to climb.

Robert Rapier

There are some positives in the data. Over the past decade, the U.S. has decreased annual carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 800 million tons. This is by far the most of any country in the world, and is primarily a result of shifting coal-fired power to natural gas and renewables. The EU has also made significant strides, reducing its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 681 million tons.
These reductions paled in comparison to China's two billion ton per year increase in emissions, but China's emissions have been relatively flat since 2013. This, combined with the decreases in the U.S. and EU, have helped slow the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions in the past decade versus the previous decade:

Global carbon dioxide emissions.

Robert Rapier

 

It is true that the U.S. has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country, and that U.S. per capita emissions are among the highest in the world. But it is also true that the U.S. won't solve this problem alone (even if we weren't dropping out of global climate treaties).
Regardless of the actions taken by developed countries, the primary driver of carbon dioxide emissions in coming decades will be areas of the world with huge populations, but with low, and growing per capita emissions. A small increase in those per capita emissions can result in a huge increase in overall emissions -- amply demonstrated by Asia Pacific's skyrocketing emissions.
Thus, the most pressing need in the world today is to ensure that countries can develop without a heavy reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, because this is the reason for the status quo.

Trump can change history by declassifying three Obama-era documents

Trump can change history by declassifying three Obama-era documents

By John Solomon, opinion contributor — 08/28/19 07:30 PM EDT 4,565

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

 

My sources tell me President Trump is putting the finishing touches on a White House initiative to declassify documents that have remained hidden from the public for far too long.
This welcome effort to provide more public transparency and accountability almost certainly will focus early on the failings of the now-debunked Russia collusion probe. And I’m sure it will spread quickly toward other high-profile issues, such as the government’s UFO files that have been a focus of clamoring for decades.
But my reporting indicates three sets of documents from the Obama years should be declassified immediately, too, because they will fundamentally change the public’s understanding of history and identify ways to improve governance.
The first includes the national security assessments that the U.S. intelligence community conducted under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concerning the Russia nuclear giant Rosatom’s effort to acquire uranium business in the United States.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) — made up of Secretary Clinton and eight other senior federal officials — approved Rosatom’s purchase of mining company Uranium One’s U.S. assets in fall 2010, even as the FBI was gathering evidence that the Russian company’s American arm was engaged in bribery, kickbacks and extortion.
Sources who have seen these classified assessments tell me they debunk the last administration’s storyline that there were no national security reasons to oppose Rosatom’s Uranium One purchase or Vladimir Putin’s successful efforts to secure billions of dollars in new nuclear fuel contracts with American utilities during the Obama years.
“There were red flags raised, and the assessments expose other weaknesses in how CFIUS goes about these approval processes,” one knowledgeable source told me.
Under Obama, sensitive foreign acquisitions almost routinely were rubber-stamped by the CFIUS, and the approval process sometimes was delegated by Cabinet officials on the CFIUS to lower-ranking aides.
Clinton, for example, claims she allowed a deputy to decide the Uranium One purchase, even as her family foundation collected millions in donations from parties interested in the transaction and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, collected a $500,000 speech fee from Moscow.
Since Trump took office and Steve Mnuchin took over as Treasury secretary, laudable legislative and administrative changes have been designed to tighten up the CFIUS process, and the percentage of rejected foreign acquisitions has increased because of more aggressive national security vetting.
But sources say the release of the Rosatom intelligence assessments would identify additional steps that can improve the process and finally would give Americans a complete picture of what happened during one of the most politically controversial CFIUS decisions in history.
A second body of documents crying out for declassification is Obama’s private correspondence with Iranian leaders — in particular, the Oct. 7, 2014, cable he penned to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, setting the terms for the controversial Washington-Tehran nuclear deal reached in early 2016.
My sources tell me that letter conflicts with what the Obama administration was telling the American public as it tried to sell the deal politically, and it shows a level of courtship, concession and trust with Tehran that exceeded the U.S. intelligence assessments at the time.
For example, my sources tell me that Obama promised Iran it could have a “domestic enrichment capacity” and that Tehran could be restored to a nation “in good standing” under the world’s nuclear non-proliferation treaty, even though U.S. intelligence had corroborated an extensive weapons program that violated that treaty for years.
The 2014 letter was preceded by at least three other private communications between Obama and officials in Tehran, including two in 2009 and one in 2012. All need to be declassified and released for Americans to better understand the merits of Obama’s approach with Iran.
Trump since has canceled the 2016 deal with Iran and imposed crippling new sanctions. But the true circumstances, promises and communications that led to the deal remain secret. The American public has much to gain from more transparency on this critical issue affecting world peace.
The final Obama-era tranche that requires declassification concerns Hillary Clinton’s email controversy — a highly classified set of documents that FBI agents identified as important and necessary in the investigation into whether she violated the law by transmitting classified emails on her unsecured private server.
As I wrote last week, the agents never got to review those documents in 2016 before then-FBI Director James Comey unilaterally decided not to seek criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton.
The Justice Department’s internal watchdog in 2018 provided Congress a classified annex explaining how the FBI intended to examine that secret evidence, but never did. Sources who have seen the annex say it contains explosive revelations about what really happened with Clinton’s emails and the national security concerns that her conduct raised.
Uranium One, the Iran deal, Clinton’s emails — all have dominated headlines for many years without a full public accounting.
Trump has an unprecedented opportunity to close the loop on these controversies and to give Americans more transparency and visibility into what happened, as well as how we can make government better when national security is at stake.

Opinion: The media is lying to you about Trump’s China tariffs

Published: May 15, 2019 10:04 a.m. ET

The hysteria must have a political agenda because the amount that’s being charged is peanuts

Reuters

President Donald Trump

By

BrettArends

Columnist

Are you kidding me?
I’m used to partisan, inaccurate drivel from all sides these days, but the media’s coverage of President Trump’s tariffs and the so-called “trade war” takes some kind of cake.
There’s no serious doubt that some in the media would absolutely love to tank the stock market. They figure that would hurt Trump’s re-election chances in 2020. Monday’s stock market slump, which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.05% tumble 2.4% and the Nasdaq Composite 3.4%, looked just like what the doctor ordered.
I write this, incidentally, as someone who is no fan of the president. But I remember when politics was supposed to stop at the water’s edge.
And, anyway, facts are facts. Most of what the public is being told about these tariffs is either misleading or a downright lie.
I’ve been following the coverage all weekend with my jaw on the floor.

It wasn’t long ago the media was complaining because Trump was cutting taxes. Now it’s complaining that he’s raising them. Confused? Me too.

Uncle Sam benefits

Yes, tariffs are “costs.” But they do not somehow destroy our money. They do not take our hard-earned dollars and burn them in a big pile. Tariffs are simply federal taxes. That’s it. The extra costs paid by importers, and consumers, goes to Uncle Sam, to distribute as he sees fit, including, for example, on Obamacare subsidies.
It wasn’t long ago the media was complaining because Trump was cutting taxes. Now it’s complaining he’s raising them. Confused? Me too.
And the amounts involved are trivial. Chicken feed.
President Trump just hiked tariffs from 10% to 25% on about $200 billion in Chinese imports. In other words, he just raised taxes by … $30 billion a year.
Oh, no!
The total amount we all paid in taxes last year — federal, state and local — was $5.51 trillion. This tax increase that has everyone’s panties in a twist is a rounding error.

Investors panic needlessly

Meanwhile, the total value wiped off U.S. stocks during Monday’s panic was about $700 billion. More than 20 years’ worth of the new tariffs.
Even if Trump slapped 25% taxes on all Chinese imports, it would come to a tax hike of … $135 billion a year. U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) last year: $20.5 trillion.
So even this supposedly scary “escalation” of this “tariff war” would, er, raise our total tax bill from 26.9% of GDP all the way to 27.5% of GDP.
Oh, and isn’t it interesting to see some people’s priorities? Apparently the most shocking part of this trivial tax hike is that it might raise the price of new Apple AAPL, +0.14%  iPhones.
Last I checked, these were luxury items, right?

U.S. consumers gain

Meanwhile, the trade spat seems to be bringing down food prices. China is going to take less of our farm products. So wheat prices are down 20% since the start of the year. Soybeans are at 10-year lows.
Good for consumers, right?
No, no, of course not! Silly you. This is also bad news … for farmers!
And all this ignores the much bigger picture, anyway.
The tariffs are simply a means to an end. The president is trying to get China to start buying more of our stuff. He knows the so-called Middle Kingdom, which now has the second-biggest economy in the world, responds to incentives more than to nice words. These tariffs give China an incentive to open up.
OK, so China’s first reaction is just to retaliate. Big deal. That’s just posturing.
Right now we export less to China than we do to Japan, South Korea and Singapore put together. That’s the point. So the effect of China’s new tariffs on the U.S. are yet another rounding error. Even if China banned all imports from the U.S., that would amount to only 0.6% of our gross domestic product. And we’d sell the stuff somewhere else.
Don’t buy the hysteria. President Trump is simply trying to pressure our biggest competitor to buy more American goods. That should be a good thing, even if you don’t like him.