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the Tipping Point,by Malcolm GladwellThe tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.top 5 the tipping point quotes“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”“To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.”“Emotion is contagious.“If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.”“There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves by andrew ross sorkinAndrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience.top 5 too big to fail quotes1-“While the financial crisis destroyed careers and reputations, and left many more bruised and battered, it also left the survivors with a genuine sense of invulnerability at having made it back from the brink. Still missing in the current environment is a genuine sense of humility.”2-“There are no atheists in foxholes or ideologues in a financial crisis. Ben Bernanke”3-“Everyone thinks Goldman is so fucking smart,” he railed. “Just because Goldman says this is the right valuation, you shouldn’t assume it’s correct just because Goldman said it. My brother works at Goldman, and he’s an idiot!”4-The relevant figure would ultimately be the one that represented the most they could possibly ask from Congress without raising too many questions. Whatever that sum turned out to be, they knew they could count on (Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury) Kashkari to perform some sort of mathematical voodoo to justify it:”5-“This generation of Wall Street CEOs could be the ones to forfeit America’s trust. When the history of the Great Recession is written, they can be singled out as the bonus babies who were so shortsighted that they put the economy at risk and contributed to the destruction of their own companies. Or they can acknowledge how Americans’ trust has been lost and take the first steps to earn it back.”By far the best book on ancient and medieval IndiaThe Wonder That Was India,BY Arthur Llewellyn Bashamhis book covers comprehensive Indian history that includes culture, religion, governance, social evolution, tradition, languages, philosophy and science. It reveals the glorious pas of India from the time of Harappa civilization and settlement to Aryan invasion theory.Starting from Indus Valley civilization along with detailed information about Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the book explores early time periods that throw light on India’s rich cultural heritage.TOP 3 The Wonder That Was India QUOTES1-“It is not wholly surprising, however, that, when India began to reassert herself, two nations should have replaced the single British Raj; but all impartial students must regret that the unity of the Indian sub-continent has been once more lost, and trust that the two great nations of India and Pakistan may soon forget the bitterness born of centuries of strife, in cooperation for the common welfare of their peoples.”2-“If for a time Buddhism became to all intents and purposes a separate religion, denying the [Page 266] Vedas, the ordinary layman might not see it in that light. For him Buddhism was one of many cults and faiths, by no means mutually exclusive, all of which led to salvation, and all of which were respectable and worthy of honour.3-“The course of training of the yogī was divided into eight stages, reminding us of the eightfold path of Buddhism, but far less practical: (1) Self-control (yama), the practice of the five moral rules: non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity, and the avoidance of greed. (2) Observance (niyama), the regular and complete observance of the above five rules. (3) Posture (āsana), sitting in certain postures, difficult without practice, which are thought to be essential to meditation. The most famous of these is padmāsna, the “Lotus Posture”, in which the feet are placed on the opposite thighs, and in which gods and sages are commonly depicted. (4) Control of the Breath (prānāyāma), whereby the breath is held and controlled and the respiration forced into unusual rhythms, which are believed to be of great physical and spiritual value. (5) Restraint (pratyāhāra), whereby the sense organs are trained to take no note of their perceptions. (6) Steadying the Mind (dhāranā), by concentration on a single object, such as the tip of the nose, the navel, an icon, or a sacred symbol. (7) Meditation (dhyāna), when the object of concentration fills the whole mind. (8) Deep Meditation (samādhi), when the whole personality is temporarily dissolved.“THE SECRET TO HAVING HIGH SELF -CONFIDENCE IS HAVING HIGH SELF-ESTEEM”Six Pillars of Self-Esteem,BY NATHANIEL BRANDENThis book is the culmination of a lifetime of clinical practice and studyand the most significant work on the topic. Immense in scope and vision and filled with insight into human motivation and behavior, The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem is essential reading for anyone with a personal or professional interest in self-esteemTOP 3 Six Pillars of Self-Esteem QUOTES1-“The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.”2-“Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”3-“Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail to treat them with respect--not realizing that they have signalled others that it is not necessary to treat them with respect.”Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology,BY Allan Ropper and Robert H BrownA modernizing revision will make it one of the most comprehensive books that incorporate new findings in growing areas of neurology, memory, genetics, imaging and biochemistryTOP 3 Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology QUOTES1-The establishment of a biologic timescale of human development requires observation of a large number of normal individuals of known ages and testing them for measurable items of behavior2-Pain is an important sign of illness, and it stands preeminent among all the sensory experiences by which humans judge the existence of disease within themselves. Indeed, pain is the most common medical symptom.3-It is apparent to us that in highly specialized medical centers, and often even in "pain centers," few physicians are capable of handling difficult and unusual pain problems in any comprehensive way. In fact, it is to the neurologist that other physicians regularly turn for help with these mattersA Perfect book for saving yourself from personal crisis.The Power of your Subconscious Mind,BY JOSEPH MURPHYDid you know that your mind has a 'mind' of its own? Yes! Without even realizing, our mind is often governed by another entity which is called the sub-conscious mind.This book can bring to your notice the innate power that the sub-conscious holds. We have some traits which seem like habits, but in reality these are those traits which are directly controlled by the sub-conscious mind, vis-à-vis your habits or your routine can be changed if you can control and direct your sub-conscious mind positively. To be able to control this 'mind power' and use it to improve the quality of your life is no walk in the park. This is where this book acts as a guide and allows you to decipher the depths of the sub-conscious.TOP 3 THE POWER OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND QUOTES1-“Just keep your conscious mind busy with expectation of the best.”2-“The only path by which another person can upset you is through your own thought.”3-“Prayer is the soul's sincere desire. Your desire is your prayer. It comes out of your deepest needs and it reveals the things you want in life.”THE BOOK WHICH TEACHES YOU TO CREATE A BILLION DOLLAR SUSTAINABLE START-UP“THE FASTEST ROUTE TO BECOME A BILLIONAIRE IS TO CREATE A BILLION DOLLAR STARTUP WHICH HAS A MONOPOLY IN ITS FIELD”SO, HOW TO CREATE A BILLION DOLLAR START UP?READ,ZERO TO ONE,BY PETER THIELZero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is a 2014 book by venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel along with Blake MastersIf you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One , legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.TOP 3 ZERO TO ONE QUOTES1-ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.2-“The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.”3-“Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?”BHAGAVAD GITA,BY LORD SHRI KRISHNAThe Bhagavad Gita, often referred to as simply the Gita, is a 700 verse Hindu scripture in Sanskrit that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata.TOP 3 BHAGAVAD GITA QUOTES1-“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”2-“A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return”3-“No one who does good work will ever come to a bad end, either here or in the world to come”STEVE JOBS,BY WALTER ISAACSONThe book is no doubt the best. It's inspiringIt will urge to do something in your life rather fulfilling it for some other person's dream.TOP 3 STEVE JOBS BIOGRAPHY QUOTES1-“One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”2-“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (Steve Jobs)”3-“If you act like you can do something, then it will work.

Hi there,In February, 1891, the first couple of promotions began showing up in quite a while: "Ouija, the Wonderful Talking Board," blast a Pittsburgh toy and oddity shop, portraying an enchanted gadget that responded to questions "about the past, present and future with glorious precision" and guaranteed "never-bombing entertainment and amusement for all the classes," a connection "between the known and obscure, the material and unimportant." Another ad in a New York paper announced it "fascinating and baffling" and affirmed, "as sProven at Patent Office before it was permitted. Cost, $1.50."This secretive talking board was fundamentally what's sold in prepackaged game paths today: A level board with the letters of the letters in order exhibited in two semi-hovers over the numbers 0 through 9; the words "yes" and "no" in the highest corners, "farewell" at the base; joined by a "planchette," a tear formed gadget, normally with a little window in the body, used to move about the board. The thought was that at least two individuals would lounge around the board, place their fingertips on the planchette, offer a conversation starter, and watch, astounded, as the planchette moved from letter to letter, explaining the appropriate responses apparently willingly. The greatest contrast is in the materials; the board is currently normally cardboard, as opposed to wood, and the planchette is plastic.In spite of the fact that reality in publicizing is difficult to find, particularly in items from the nineteenth century, the Ouija board was "fascinating and strange"; it really had been "demonstrated" to work at the Patent Office before its patent was permitted to continue; and today, even therapists accept that it might offer a connection between the known and the obscure.The genuine history of the Ouija board is just probably as secretive as how the "game" works. Ouija antiquarian Robert Murch has been exploring the account of the board since 1992; when he began his exploration, he says, nobody truly knew the slightest bit about its beginnings, which struck him as odd: "For a particularly famous thing that strikes both dread and marvel in American culture, by what means can nobody know where it came from?"The Ouija board, truth be told, came straight out of the American nineteenth century fixation on mysticism, the conviction that the dead can speak with the living. Mysticism, which had been around for quite a long time in Europe, hit America hard in 1848 with the abrupt noticeable quality of the Fox sisters of upstate New York; the Foxes professed to get messages from spirits who rapped on the dividers in response to questions, reproducing this accomplishment of diverting in parlors across the state. Helped by the anecdotes about the VIP sisters and different mystics in the new public press, mysticism arrived at a huge number of followers at its top in the second 50% of the nineteenth century. Mysticism worked for Americans: it was viable with Christian authoritative opinion, which means one could hold a séance on Saturday night and have no second thoughts about going to chapel the following day. It was an adequate, even healthy movement to contact spirits at séances, through programmed composing, or table turning parties, in which members would put their hands on a little table and watch it start shake and clatter, while they all announced that they weren't moving it. The development additionally offered comfort in a time when the normal life expectancy was under 50: Women passed on in labor; kids kicked the bucket of illness; and men kicked the bucket in war. Indeed, even Mary Todd Lincoln, spouse of the revered president, led séances in the White House after their 11-year-old child kicked the bucket of a fever in 1862; during the Civil War, mysticism picked up disciples in huge numbers, individuals urgent to associate with friends and family who'd disappeared to war and never return home.Be that as it may, opening the entryways of damnation wasn't at the forefront of anybody's thoughts when they began the Kennard Novelty Company, the principal makers of the Ouija board; truth be told, they were generally hoping to open Americans' wallets.As mysticism had filled in American culture, so too did dissatisfaction with how it required to get any important message out of the spirits, says Brandon Hodge, Spiritualism antiquarian. Getting down on the letters in order and sitting tight for a thump at the correct letter, for instance, was profoundly exhausting. All things considered, fast correspondence with breathing people at far distances was a chance—the message had been around for quite a long time—is there any valid reason why spirits shouldn't be as simple to reach? Individuals were urgent for strategies for correspondence that would be snappier—and keeping in mind that few business visionaries understood that, it was the Kennard Novelty Company that truly nailed it.In 1886, the youngster Associated Press covered another wonder assuming control over the mystics' camps in Ohio, the talking board; it was, in every practical sense, an Ouija board, with letters, numbers and a planchette-like gadget to highlight them. The article went all over, however it was Charles Kennard of Baltimore, Maryland who followed up on it. In 1890, he arranged a gathering of four different financial specialists—including Elijah Bond, a neighborhood lawyer, and Col. Washington Bowie, an assessor—to begin the Kennard Novelty Company to only make and market these new talking sheets. None of the men were mystics, truly, however they were every one of them sharp finance managers and they'd distinguished a specialty.Be that as it may, they didn't have the Ouija board yet—the Kennard talking board did not have a name. In opposition to prevalent thinking, "Ouija" isn't a blend of the French for "yes," oui, and the German ja. Murch says, in light of his examination, it was Bond's sister-in-law, Helen Peters (who was, Bond stated, a "solid medium"), who provided the now in a split second conspicuous handle. Lounging around the table, they asked the board what they should call it; the name "Ouija" came through and, when they asked what that implied, the board answered, "Best of luck." Eerie and secretive—however for the way that Peters recognized that she was wearing a memento bearing the image of a lady, the name "Ouija" over her head. That is the story that rose up out of the Ouija originators' letters; it's entirely conceivable that the lady in the memento was celebrated writer and mainstream ladies' privileges extremist Ouida, whom Peters appreciated, and that "Ouija" was only a misreading of that.As per Murch's meetings with the relatives of the Ouija organizers and the first Ouija patent record itself, which he's seen, the narrative of the board's patent solicitation was valid: Knowing that on the off chance that they couldn't demonstrate that the board worked, they wouldn't get their patent, Bond carried the key Peters to the patent office in Washington with him when he documented his application. There, the central patent official requested an exhibit—if the board could precisely illuminate his name, which should be obscure to Bond and Peters, he'd permit the patent application to continue. They all plunked down, communed with the spirits, and the planchette dependably illuminated the patent official's name. Regardless of whether it was supernatural spirits or the way that Bond, as a patent lawyer, may have recently known the man's name, all things considered, that is indistinct, Murch says. However, on February 10, 1891, a white-colored and obviously shaken patent official granted Bond a patent for his new "toy or game."The primary patent offers no clarification with respect to how the gadget functions, just attests that it does. That equivocalness and secret was essential for a pretty much cognizant advertising exertion. "These were extremely wise financial specialists," notes Murch; the less the Kennard organization said about how the board functioned, the more puzzling it appeared—and the more individuals needed to get it. "At last, it was a cash producer. They didn't mind why individuals thought it worked."Also, it was a cash producer. By 1892, the Kennard Novelty Company went from one plant in Baltimore to two in Baltimore, two in New York, two in Chicago and one in London. What's more, by 1893, Kennard and Bond were out, inferable from some interior weights and the familiar proverb about cash making a huge difference. At this point, William Fuld, who'd made a move before anyone else of the juvenile organization as a representative and investor, was running the organization. (Prominently, Fuld isn't and never professed to be the creator of the load up, however even his eulogy in The New York Times proclaimed him to be; likewise outstandingly, Fuld passed on in 1927 after a monstrosity tumble from the top of his new plant—a manufacturing plant he said the Ouija load up advised him to work.) In 1898, with the gift of Col. Bowie, the dominant part investor and one of just two leftover unique financial specialists, he authorized the elite rights to make the board. What followed were blast a very long time for Fuld and dissatisfaction for a portion of the men who'd been in on the Ouija load up from the earliest starting point—public quarreling about who'd truly created it happened in the pages of the Baltimore Sun, while their opponent loads up dispatched and fizzled. In 1919, Bowie sold the leftover business interest in Ouija to Fuld, his protégé, for $1.The board's moment and now, over 120 years after the fact, drawn out progress indicated that it had taken advantage of a bizarre spot in American culture. It was showcased as both mysterious prophet and as family diversion, fun with a component of other-common energy. This implied that it wasn't just mystics who purchased the board; truth be told, the individuals who detested the Ouija board the most would in general be soul mediums, as they'd recently secured their position as otherworldly broker cut out. The Ouija board spoke to individuals from across a wide range of ages, callings, and schooling—generally, Murch claims, in light of the fact that the Ouija board offered a great route for individuals to have confidence in something. "Individuals need to accept. The need to accept that something different is out there is amazing," he says. "This thing is something or other that permits them to communicate that conviction."

Outdoor cooking air pollution is the greatest environmental challenge facing humanity according to the World Health Organization. Breathing the noxious outdoor smoke destroys health causing early deaths for as many as 4 million annually far worse than Covid 19.4 Million People a Year Die From Indoor Cooking SmokeHousehold smoke may be the world’s deadliest environmental hazardGlobal campaigns have failed to change how poor people heat their foodInternationalApr 7th 2018 editionApr 5th 2018SOKONE, SENEGALIMAGINE building a small pile of wood and kindling in the smallest room in your house, and setting fire to it. You can keep the door open, to let out some smoke, but cannot switch on an extractor fan. You must tend the fire for an hour. Repeat the process three times a day.This is how Fatou N’Dour lives. Her kitchen, separate from her home and built of mud bricks, measures roughly two metres by two. She usually cooks indoors because of the winds that whip across Lambayene, the village where she lives in central Senegal. Asked about ventilation, she points to a hole in one wall, which is about ten centimetres square. Other women in the village cook rice, couscous and meaty sauces in similar conditions, using wood from a nearby forest.Wood and charcoal in Africa; coal in East Asia; wood and animal dung in South Asia—in much of the world, food is heated by burning primitive solid fuels. Each fire is tiny, but the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based research group, estimates that 5% of the world’s primary energy demand in 2016 was supplied by “traditional solid biomass”. Wind turbines and solar panels combined generated less than half as much energy.The awful effects of these fires begin with their impact on human health. Household smoke is thought to be the world’s most lethal environmental problem, killing 2.6m people a year. Where wood and charcoal are burned, trees often disappear. Africa loses some 0.5% of its forests every year, a higher rate of destruction than South America’s. Soot from domestic fires also warms the planet, particularly when it settles on snow. Black carbon like that from dirty cookstoves is thought to be the third most important cause of climate change after carbon dioxide and methane.Governments, aid agencies and charities have for decades tried to coax people towards cleaner fuels like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and electricity. Those who must burn wood and dung are prodded to do so in more efficient stoves.Progress has been astoundingly slow. Since 2000 the number of people living in extreme poverty has plunged from 1.7bn to about 600m. Neonatal deaths have fallen by 49%. Yet the number of people heating their food with dirty fuels has stuck at 2.5bn-2.8bn, according to the IEA, largely because of growth in Africa (see chart). The Global Alliance for Clean Cooking, which uses a slightly different measure, estimated in 2015 that the number might even have risen. As for those improved cookstoves, researchers who hand them out in a village almost invariably find, when they return several years later, that people have gone back to cooking over handmade mud stoves or large stones.That efforts to change how people cook have fallen so short for so long can be blamed on weak markets, unco-ordinated charity interventions and muddled priorities. It also illuminates why development is so much harder in Africa than in Asia.Cooking over an open fire is no fun, especially if you have to do it every day. In another village in western Senegal, Felane, women complain that their kitchens are always hot and smoky. The smoke stings and irritates—one woman blames it for colouring the whites of her eyes. Firewood is becoming ever harder to find. A local man, Cheikh Diouf, who has nine children, says that wood-collecting may take four trips a week, each one of up to four hours.Those who have a simple metal cookstove with a clay liner, known as a jambaar, say it is better than the traditional method of balancing a pot over three big stones atop a fire. The jambaar is more efficient, needing less wood. Surveys in other countries show that many poor women realise this. A jambaar can also be moved outside when the weather allows. And it just feels superior: one woman in Lambayene describes it as “civilised”.Yet jambaar stoves are seldom on sale at the weekly markets. People seem not even to know how much they cost. Gunther Bensch and Jörg Peters, both of the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Germany, gave jambaar stoves to Senegalese villagers in 2009. When they checked, in 2015, almost all had worn out. Hardly any had been replaced.The problem is not only poverty. Mr Bensch and Mr Peters have tried auctioning jambaar stoves. They found that villagers often bid more than they would pay in nearby towns. Perhaps they do not buy them in markets because shopping is seen as women’s work, and women are not allowed to spend much without consulting their husbands. Or perhaps it is too difficult to carry stoves from town to village. One urban stove vendor, Malick Niang, says he would not try to sell the stoves in villages. They are heavy and breakable, and demand there is uncertain. Another problem is that, being safe, poor and French-speaking, Senegal attracts charities and aid agencies. Some at times hand out stoves for little or nothing. That confuses people about their true value, and can wreck markets.Even better cookstoves may not do much to improve health. The linkage between household smoke and harm seems not to be linear, says Kevin Mortimer of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Above a certain level, breathing more smoke might not make a person much sicker. Even the most efficient wood stoves expose cooks to many times the level of smoke that the World Health Organisation regards as safe. Mr Mortimer was involved in a large trial in Malawi, using a top-of-the-line stove, which found no evidence of an effect on rates of childhood pneumonia.Perhaps it is better to pick a genuinely clean fuel (clean to cook with, not necessarily in the planet-preserving sense) and promote it hard. Brazil, Ecuador and Indonesia, among others, have all subsidised LPG. Since 2016 the Indian government has made LPG available to 34m households, giving them gas stoves and one cylinder free. The petroleum ministry says that four-fifths of the newly connected households have bought a replacement cylinder. On average, they buy four cylinders a year, which implies they get at least half of their cooking energy from wood, dung and the like. Still, this is rapid progress.So switching fuels rather than stoves seems the more hopeful approach. “We were fooling ourselves, thinking that we could pick any old fuel off the ground and make it burn cleanly,” says Kirk Smith, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is involved with India’s programme. Not only is LPG much cleaner than solid fuel. It also feels like a step up in the world and is easier to use (even men can cook with it).Subsidies make for poor policy tools. They are snaffled by wealthy, well-connected people. They create lobbies supporting them, and become hard to cut. Particularly in small countries, subsidised goods are likely to leak over borders. Subsidies may also vary from year to year with the government’s budget. That is a particular danger in the case of cooking fuel, because cooks prize reliability. If people cannot always obtain clean fuel, they will probably revert to dirty stuff, says Radha Muthiah, the departing head of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.These are mighty problems even for large middle-income countries with more-or-less competent governments. India, which for years frittered away money on LPG for the middle class, has managed to steer the subsidies—the world’s biggest cash-transfer programme—more accurately towards the poor, partly thanks to the Aadhaar biometric-identity scheme. But in smaller, poorer, more corrupt countries, LPG subsidies are probably out of the question. India has found a tricky, costly way of clearing the air. In sub-Saharan Africa, the smoke lingers.This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "How the other half cooks"Household smoke may be the world’s deadliest environmental hazardByKatherine MartinkoUpdated October 11, 2018©. K MartinkoAir pollution is a big problem, from the spewing smokestacks and grey-brown skies of cities like Beijing and Delhi to the hormone-disrupting phthalates that off-gas from furniture and carpets inside new homes. But there is another type of air pollution that kills four million people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and that is the pollution caused by cooking indoors over open fires.The WHO estimates that 7 million people die prematurely each year due to inhaling unhealthy airborne particles, which makes indoor cooking fires the biggest culprit for these deaths. It’s hard for many North Americans to imagine cooking over an open fire, since that’s not typically done here anymore, but it continues to be a part of daily life in many developing countries where dung, coal, wood, and crop waste are used as fuel instead of gas.Kirk Smith, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, describes having an indoor cooking fire as being equivalent to burning 400 cigarettes an hour. According to an article in Quartz:“The smoke from these fires pumps a harmful fog of fine particles and carbon monoxide into homes. Lousy ventilation then prevents that smoke from escaping, sending fine particle levels soaring 100 times higher than the limits that the WHO considers acceptable.”4 Million People a Year Die From Indoor Cooking SmokeHousehold air pollution and health8 May 2018العربيةKey factsAround 3 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simple stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal.Each year, close to 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution from inefficient cooking practices using polluting stoves paired with solid fuels and kerosene.Household air pollution causes noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.Close to half of deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 years of age are caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.Indoor air pollution and household energy: the forgotten 3 billionAround 3 billion people still cook using solid fuels (such as wood, crop wastes, charcoal, coal and dung) and kerosene in open fires and inefficient stoves. Most of these people are poor, and live in low- and middle-income countries.These cooking practices are inefficient, and use fuels and technologies that produce high levels of household air pollution with a range of health-damaging pollutants, including small soot particles that penetrate deep into the lungs. In poorly ventilated dwellings, indoor smoke can be 100 times higher than acceptable levels for fine particles. Exposure is particularly high among women and young children, who spend the most time near the domestic hearth.Impacts on health3.8 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution caused by the inefficient use of solid fuels and kerosene for cooking. Among these 3.8 million deaths:27% are due to pneumonia18% from stroke27% from ischaemic heart disease20% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)8% from lung cancer.PneumoniaExposure to household air pollution almost doubles the risk for childhood pneumonia and is responsible for 45% of all pneumonia deaths in children less than 5 years old. Household air pollution is also risk for acute lower respiratory infections (pneumonia) in adults, and contributes to 28% of all adult deaths to pneumonia.Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseaseOne in four or 25% of deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adults in low- and middle-income countries are due to exposure to household air pollution. Women exposed to high levels of indoor smoke are more than twice as likely to suffer from COPD than women who use cleaner fuels and technologies. Among men (who already have a heightened risk of COPD due to their higher rates of smoking), exposure to household air pollution nearly doubles that risk.Stroke12% of all deaths due to stroke can be attributed to the daily exposure to household air pollution arising from cooking with solid fuels and kerosene.Ischaemic heart diseaseApproximately 11% of all deaths due to ischaemic heart disease, accounting for over a million premature deaths annually, can be attributed to exposure to household air pollution.Lung cancerApproximately 17% of lung cancer deaths in adults are attributable to exposure to carcinogens from household air pollution caused by cooking with kerosene or solid fuels like wood, charcoal or coal. The risk for women is higher, due to their role in food preparation.Other health impacts and risksMore generally, small particulate matter and other pollutants in indoor smoke inflame the airways and lungs, impairing immune response and reducing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.There is also evidence of links between household air pollution and low birth weight, tuberculosis, cataract, nasopharyngeal and laryngeal cancers.Mortality from ischaemic heart disease and stroke are also affected by risk factors such as high blood pressure, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity and smoking. Some other risks for childhood pneumonia include suboptimal breastfeeding, underweight and second-hand smoke. For lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, active smoking and second-hand tobacco smoke are also main risk factors.Household air pollution and healthSadly instead of environmental action pushing coal or natural gas based grid electricity for rural electrification do gooders focus on improving the technology of puny cook stoves.Open-Fire Stoves Kill Millions. How Do We Fix it?Pollutants from crude stoves are responsible for many deaths – a D.C.-based NGO has a solutionhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/open-fire-stoves-kill-millions-how-do-we-fix-it-132348165/Because cooking chores often fall to women, they are among the primary victims of smoke-related illnesses. (Ami Vitale / Ripple Effect Images)By Ingfei ChenSMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBEDECEMBER 2012Making dinner shouldn’t be fatal. But millions of people in the developing world die each year from illnesses linked to smoke spewing out of crude stoves—a scourge that has frustrated experts for decades. Now a Washington, D.C.-based group with a new approach hopes to place “green” stoves in 100 million homes worldwide by 2020.Open-Fire Stoves Kill Millions. How Do We Fix it?OPINION: COVID-19, air pollution and cooking: a deadly connectionby Hajia Samira Bawumia & Dymphna van der Lans | @SBawumia | Clean Cooking AllianceWednesday, 15 April 2020 09:56 GMTClean Cooking AllianceAlmost 3 billion people still rely on open fires or inefficient stoves to cook, filling their homes with harmful smoke and increasing their vulnerability to respiratory infectionsPeople exposed to air pollution are more likely to die from COVID-19 than people living in areas with cleaner air, according to a new study. Though the study’s findings focus on the United States, they align with similar results from Italy.This research is an ominous sign for many developing countries, where air pollution levels often far exceed World Health Organization guidelines. More worrying still, air quality inside people’s homes can be magnitudes worse than the air they breathe outside, due in large part to how people cook.Globally, almost three billion people still rely on open fires or inefficient stoves to cook their food, filling their homes with dangerous levels of smoke. It is well documented that household air pollution from cooking increases susceptibility to respiratory infections such as pneumonia and aggravates respiratory illnesses like asthma – which may, in turn, lead to poorer outcomes after a COVID-19 infection.Not only does cooking with polluting fuels and technologies increase people’s vulnerability to COVID-19, but effective social distancing is a significant challenge in countries dominated by informal job markets or overcrowded urban settlements.On top of that, many families face the impossible decision of risking increased exposure to the virus – including to collect or purchase cooking fuel – or foregoing the income needed to buy other necessities.Even for households that have already transitioned to cleaner cooking fuels like electricity, LPG, or ethanol, the current economic slowdown could mean a necessary return to firewood or other polluting cooking methods.But while COVID-19 is an unprecedented challenge, there are proven methods to boost access to clean cooking, which can be incorporated into broader containment and response efforts.CLEANER FUEL SUPPORTGovernments in developing countries can tackle this issue on two fronts. First, they must make clean cooking part of their pandemic emergency response plans.India’s government has already announced that it will give away millions of cylinders of cooking gas to those in need. In Ghana, the government’s COVID-19 relief package subsidizes electricity for three months, fully absorbing electricity costs for the poorest consumers (those using up to 50 kilowatt hours per month), and providing all other consumers with a 50 percent discount.Other governments should follow their lead, while also ensuring that clean cooking fuel providers are categorized as essential and provided with the critical resources needed to minimize supply chain disruptions.Second, governments must not allow short-term responses to the pandemic to undermine long-term health goals. For example, to support costs of its COVID-response, the Kenyan government is considering tax hikes on cooking gas and stoves, which could slow the uptake of clean cooking.As the new COVID-19 study shows, even a slight increase in air pollution in the years before the emergence of virus is associated with higher death rates. Clean cooking solutions are critical to reducing household air pollution and building people’s longstanding resilience to respiratory illnesses.FINANCE CRITICALAs they juggle competing demands in responding to the pandemic, developing countries are going to need strong support. Developed-country governments, multilateral organizations and other donors must help fill the gap.Countries such as the Netherlands, Norway and Britain are already strong supporters of efforts to build markets for clean cooking solutions, as are groups such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank. This support must continue, and where possible be expanded, while new donors must step up to join their efforts to address the household air pollution crisis. This issue is more critical than ever, and cannot be solved without concessional, public sector finance.Public and private capital providers also have an important role to play. Many clean cooking businesses are pioneering scalable business models and high-impact technologies, but are at a pivotal stage of development. Impact investors must urgently offer those businesses the financial resources to ensure their long-term sustainability and ability to provide a growing market with modern cooking solutions.We know that a person exposed to household air pollution will likely have a worse outcome if they are exposed to the coronavirus. As we brace ourselves for the next wave of the current pandemic – and possibly future pandemics of an unknown nature – it is more important than ever for governments, donors, investors and others to continue their work to bring clean, affordable and appropriate cooking solutions to the three billion people who live each day without them.Providing emergency solutions for clean fuels while reducing household air pollution is not only critical to saving lives, but also to promoting resilience and recovery in this changing landscape.Hajia Samira Bawumia is the Second Lady of Ghana, and Dymphna van der Lans is CEO of the Clean Cooking Alliance.COVID-19, air pollution and cooking: a deadly connectionAll government action has a cost benefit analysis often ignored and is so much ignored in the climate change debate. The cost of demonizing CO2 industry emissions is to take away the benefit of cheap and plentiful coal powered grid electricity in the developing world particularly India, China and Africa.Grid electricity is the answer to this environmental/health tragedy and fossil fuels are the necessary resource, especially cheap coal power and cleaner natural gas. These phony efforts are pathetic failing millions who will die annually from this number one environmental hazard. Some of these deaths must be a direct result of insane carbon footprint pseudo science and the fall out from the unscientific Paris Accord.EXPANDING THE GRID WITH COAL OR NATURAL GAS IS THE HOPE FOR THE FUTURE.India’s energy demand has almost recovered to pre-covid levels, said Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan.Govt vows to end ‘energy poverty’: Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan2 min read . Updated: 17 Dec 2020, 10:45 PM ISTUtpal BhaskarGoal is to make India self-reliant in energy, says Dharmendra PradhanIndia, one of the world’s top energy consumers, is preparing a road map to achieve Aatmanirbhar Urja or self-reliance in energy, petroleum and natural gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Thursday.The plans for energy security span increased crude oil and natural gas production to hydrogen gas and solar and wind power as it seeks to meet rising domestic demand.India is also pushing for a gas-based economy. Gas comprises about 6.2% of India’s primary energy mix, far behind the global average of 24%. The government plans to increase this share to 15% by 2030. “We have envisaged a spend of $60 billion in creating gas infrastructure till 2024, including for pipelines, LNG terminals and city gas distribution networks," Pradhan said.Govt vows to end ‘energy poverty’: Oil minister Dharmendra PradhanUnfortunately natural gas power hit a big road block and old plants abandoned because of rising costs.SBI chairman says no future for gas-based power plants in the countryThe Committee in its observations hoped that this time the Ministry has made a realistic assessment unlike in the case of KG D6, which triggered the setting up of gas based power plants in the country.Bilal AbdiETEnergyWorldJanuary 04, 2019, 19:04 ISTSBI chairman says no future for gas-based power plants in the country - ET EnergyWorld“THE SOCIAL INJUSTICE OF ENERGY POVERTYEnergy Poverty is devastating“Energy poverty is devastating for more than 2 billion impoverished peoples living without electricity for light and heat. Cooking happens the way it has for centuries before – over smoky indoor fires that do no favors for lungs or life expectancies. I witnessed the tragedy first hand working in the China countryside in the winter where peasants are forced to live with their animals in a vain attempt to keep warm. Their weathered faces from the harsh life in the dark without heat is very sad.Once upon a time, social justice was synonymous with equal access to modern amenities — electric lighting so poor children could read at night, refrigerators so milk could be kept on hand, and washing machines to save the hands and backs of women. Malthus was rightly denounced by generations of socialists as a cruel aristocrat who cloaked his elitism in pseudo-science, and claimed that Nature couldn't possibly feed any more hungry months.Now, at the very moment modern energy arrives for global poor — something a prior generation of socialists would have celebrated and, indeed, demanded — today's leading left-wing leaders advocate a return to energy penury. The loudest advocates of cheap energy for the poor are on the libertarian Right, while The Nation dresses up neo-Malthusianism as revolutionary socialism.Left-wing politics was once about destabilizing power relations between the West and the Rest. Now, under the sign of climate justice, it's about sustaining them.”Why are climate-change models so flawed? Because climate science is so incomplete - The Boston GlobeShock news : UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate HumanityAuthor: Jamie Spry |Sadly the Paris Accord and the climate alarmists demonize Co2 emissions from fossil fuels and coal power in particular. . Based on ancient disproven theory about so called greenhouse gases causing a global warming catastrophe. The result is long term deprivation of vital grid electricity for the more than 2 billion living in the dark off grid.ENERGY (OIL, ELECTRICITY, COAL)WCA: Coal still deemed essential by many countriesBy: Ronnel Domingo - @inquirerdotnetPhilippine Daily Inquirer / 05:12 AM December 28, 2020The continued use of coal for power generation cannot be dismissed, especially since many countries are looking to it as key to their economic recovery from the ravages of the pandemic, according to a global industry lobby group.The United Kingdom-based World Coal Association (WCA) was reacting to a report of Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). The report, Coal 2020, stated that global coal demand was primed for a rebound in 2021, riding on the expected global economic recovery. However, the IEA also noted that there was little sign that the world’s coal consumption would decline substantially in the coming years, with rising demand in some Asian economies offsetting declines elsewhere. “In the acute stages of COVID-19, many countries identified coal as essential, critical to their economies during the pandemic and key to their recovery,” WCA chief executive Michelle Manook said in a statement.WCA: Coal still deemed essential by many countriesThere is no global warming to fear as NASA admits temperatures have not risen even 1’ C over the past 150 years. Recently temperatures are now falling.0.56’ C across the US.References in SupportThree Billion People Cook Over Open Fires ― With Deadly ConsequencesIn Guatemala, locally made cookstoves are helping combat toxic smoke—but economics and tradition keep many people from using them.6 MINUTE READSan Lorenzo el Cubo: Albertina Pamal cooks on a raised concrete slab. Though the slab allows her to stand while she works, she still has to inhale the smoke from the open fire.BY MICHELLE NIJHUISPHOTOGRAPHS BY LYNN JOHNSONPUBLISHEDAUGUST 14, 2017“ON EASTER SUNDAY morning, in the small town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes in central Guatemala, Elbia Pérez and her sister, daughters, and 18-month-old grandson are crowded around their kitchen table. On the table, a large pot of tamales, handfuls of spicy meat and corn dough wrapped in plantain leaves, stands waiting to be steamed. The room is filled with talk, laughter, and smoke—gritty, eye-watering smoke that sticks in the throat and provokes deep, scratchy coughs.The problem isn’t that the family lacks a functioning stove. In fact the aluminum-sided kitchen—part of a compound that shelters 45 extended-family members—contains three. But the two-burner gas stove is out of fuel, and the Pérez family can’t afford to fill it.Their efficient woodstove, a knee-high concrete cylinder donated by an aid group called StoveTeam International, is too small to support the tamale pot. So, as she does about once a month, Perez has fired up the old wood-burning stove, a crumbling, chimney-less brick ruin whose smoke pours directly into the unventilated kitchen. Everyone notices the smoke, but it’s a familiar annoyance—and compared with the daily challenge of affording food and fuel, it’s a minor one.1/10VIEW SLIDESHOWTania López, seven, plays with her cat in a room whose walls were blackened by an old open fire; the new stove, provided by StoveTeam International, is efficient and safe to touch.PHOTOGRAPHY BY LYNN JOHNSONBut the López family's new stove is unventilated, so the smoke still pours into the kitchen, where Tania's mother and grandmother also do their weaving. Her grandmother Augustina… Read MorePHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONFiorentina Hernandez, 37, has three children, two of whom have special needs—including Magda Noelia, 4 (right). Hernandez cooks breakfast over an open fire. “It’s smoky but this is how life is,” she says. She has a new cookstove but it's small and slow—and in the morning she doesn’t have the time.PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONAlma Iris Garay, 50, who fled violence in El Salvador as a child, who has lost a son to drugs, beams as she stirs her vat of corn on a street corner, where the smoke from the open fire won’t choke her. She makes tortillas on a gas stove inside her home in Guatemala City.PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONAt Paso a Paso School in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, the kids make lunch with a stove made by the Ecocomal company, whose co-founder, Ana Luisa Herrera, also started the school. Safe, smokeless cook stoves promote education—because they help protect children’s health.PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONMaria de Jesus Lopez Pérez, 62, (center) is the matriarch of a clan of weavers living in a cramped compound in San Antonio Aguas Calientes. To provide the family of 45 with a normal Sunday meal, all the women hover around fires in one corner of the compound.PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONThe new yellow stove is efficient, but the old open fire is better for the giant pot in Etelvina Pérez's kitchen in San Antonio Aguas Calientes.PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONNear Antigua Guatemala, eight-month-old Pablito keeps an eye on breakfast as his mother, Angélica Epatal Garcia, tends to the makeshift barrel stove. She and her daughters walk 45 minutes each way to collect the wood for three daily fires.PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONA month's worth of propane for the small gas stove costs Rosa Vicente Garcia (flanked here by her two daughters) and her husband more than two days' work at the Guatemala City landfill, where they scavenge for plastic and metal.PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN JOHNSONMaria García Cruz grew up with a gas stove, but she and her husband, Venancio Juárez, can't afford one. "I've never gotten used to this," she says of the smoke. The children have respiratory problems.PHOTOGRAPHY BY LYNN JOHNSON”https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/photography/PROOF/2017/July/cook-stoves/33-dispatch-cook-stoves.adapt.1900.1.jpg“Some three billion people around the world cook their food and heat their homes with open or barely contained fires, and while the smoke dissipates quickly, its accumulated costs are steep. The typical cooking fire produces about 400 cigarettes’ worth of smoke an hour, and prolonged exposure is associated with respiratory infections, eye damage, heart and lung disease, and lung cancer.”AP PHOTO/RAJESH KUMAR SINGHSilent killer.BREATHLESS IN THE KITCHENThe fruitless quest to save Indian women from slowly choking to deathBy Gayathri VaidyanathanDecember 13, 2018“Outside a mud house in an urban slum near Patna, a city in eastern India, an older woman is perched atop a wooden cart, waiting for her daughter-in-law, with whom she has a bone to pick. When a local nonprofit named the Centre for Environment and Energy Development (CEED) distributed new wood-burning cookstoves in this slum, each family received only one. It went to the woman’s daughter-in-law.I ask if I can see her daughter-in-law’s new cookstove. She waves me into a tiny, one-room mud home, where an old, traditional cookstove, or chulha, sits in the windowless, soot-painted kitchen. In the entryway, given pride of place, is a different, second stove—one powered by liquified petroleum gas (LPG). The woman’s grandson points at a high shelf in the living area, where the wood-burning cookstove from CEED is perched, inside its original cardboard box, unused.This is not an unusual fate for advanced biomass cookstoves. (“Biomass” refers to non-fossil fuels, including wood, animal dung, and agricultural byproducts.) Studies have shown that these cookstoves have not caught on in low-income parts of the world, despite the decades of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars that the nonprofit sector has spent trying to convince people—almost always women—to use them.The advanced cookstoves are meant to cut down on the toxic gases that come from burning biomass on traditional stoves or open fires. Globally, more than three billion people use either coal, kerosene, or biomass for cooking, and the fumes from these indoor fires constitute the second leading environmental cause of death in the world, after outdoor air pollution. Some 3.8 million people die prematurely each year from diseases related to indoor air pollution, such as pneumonia, stroke, heart and respiratory diseases, and cancer.It has long been assumed that giving people around the world better cookstoves is an easy and effective way to save lives. So why aren’t those who really need the stoves using them?In 2010, the UN Foundation and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state at the time, launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. At the heart of their plan were “clean” cookstoves that would burn biomass more efficiently and cleanly than existing stoves. They would reduce the amount of wood needed for cooking, which would, in turn, cut down on deforestation and help tackle climate change.The appliances cost between $25 and $40 (Rs1,790-3,500), which is expensive in many countries, so subsidies poured in from development organisations. But soon afterward came health studies indicating that the stoves, once in the field, didn’t actually improve the health of the women and children who were disproportionately exposed to indoor fumes.“I’m a health scientist, so basically my criterion is, what would I be happy with my pregnant daughter using?” says Kirk Smith, a public health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “There isn’t even one biomass stove in the world that meets that criterion.”ENGINEERING FOR CHANGE/CC BY-SA 2.0Women in India (left) and Nepal (right) cook on examples of traditional cookstoves.The community of clean cookstove proponents and developers, known as “stovers,” came out of the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s, in which (mostly Western) experts argued that poorer people are stuck in poverty because of simple, inefficient technologies that could, and should, be easily improved. One of these unsatisfactory technologies is the humble cookstove, which continues to kill millions of people with fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and other fumes at levels well above safe limits. That level of exposure is particularly toxic to children under the age of five; almost half the global deaths from pneumonia among this age group can be traced to indoor air pollution from cookstoves.In the years since the clean cookstove movement began, stovers have engineered a variety of improved cookstoves, including the chimney, rocket, and charcoal stoves. The cleanest of them all are gasifier stoves, which contain a fan. A class apart are stoves that burn LPG, which is made from the propane or butane left as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction. Finally, there are biogas, alcohol, and solar stoves—but these are rare and expensive.In 2002, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formed the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air, a group made up of nonprofits, manufacturers, and other stakeholders who supported initiatives to improve cookstoves in lower-income countries. The agency championed the kinds of advanced biomass stoves that use local, renewable woody resources, rather than stoves that use climate-changing fossil fuels like LPG. The EPA believed that better biomass stoves could halve exposure to toxic fumes, thus improving women’s health and reducing rates of severe pneumonia in kids.The partnership was a precursor to Clinton’s 2010 Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which set a new, ambitious target of converting 100 million households to clean stoves by 2020. But Alliance members decided that they wouldn’t just give the stoves away; rather, they would create a global market for clean cooking solutions. Small businesses would sell at village shops at a profit, solving the air pollution problem and boosting the economies of low-income communities at the same time.But the Alliance never defined what a “clean cookstove” is. No one had yet calculated a “safe” level of cookstove emissions. It wasn’t until November 2014 that the World Health Organization (WHO) released its first indoor air pollution standards, setting acceptable levels of exposure to fine particles and carbon monoxide from stoves—and most of the “advanced” cookstoves promoted by the alliance didn’t meet the new criteria. “So, suddenly, the alliance was in a situation of promoting so-called clean stoves that weren’t clean by WHO standards,” Smith says.Not only that, but these cookstoves performed even worse in the field than the alliance had expected, having little to no effect on quality of life. In 2012, scientists from Harvard published the result of tracking a project to hand out chimney cookstoves—as in, stoves with chimneys that direct fumes out of homes—in Odisha, India, over four years. They found that, even though there was an improvement in the first year of the programme, over time women stopped using the new stoves, and most households still ended up with the same hazardous air as they’d had with the traditional chulhas. The key realisation was that people simply didn’t value the stoves enough to maintain and continue using them. It’s a pattern that has been repeated across the world.Further indoor air pollution studies have found even more problems with stovers’ assumptions and plans. The biggest example is a 2017 study in rural Malawi in which scientists compared 10,750 children from households that used either a traditional cookstove or a fan-driven gasifier stove, which is the cleanest improved biomass cookstove available on the market today. The researchers were surprised at how frequently the advanced stoves broke down, given that “these products had been specifically designed and developed for the indications, end users, and environments in which [researchers] assessed them.” They found themselves acting as a repair service, so that the families they were tracking would continue to use the new stoves. Still, by the second year, usage fell to 50%.Even worse, the scientists found that the new cookstoves hadn’t reduced rates of pneumonia in children under five. Either the cookstoves were not actually cutting indoor air pollution or the Malawian kids in the study were being exposed to so many other air pollution sources—burning garbage, for example, or tobacco smoke—that addressing cookstove smoke on its own wasn’t enough to protect against pneumonia. Both conclusions undermine the alliance’s raison d’être.With the writing on the wall, the cookstove sector is now changing direction. Last month, the Global Alliance changed its name to the Clean Cooking Alliance, and the organisation is now promoting the act of clean “cooking” rather than cookstoves specifically. The focus is no longer primarily on the kind of fuel being burned.Biomass cookstove makers are now fighting a rearguard action against these criticisms. Browsing the Clean Cooking Catalog, you can find new kinds of biomass stoves, like the compact Mimi Moto gasifier, which, the organisation claims, is extremely clean—and ideal for households that cannot afford LPG. And there are scattered examples of local-level cookstove companies, like Inyenyeri in Rwanda, that seem to be having success in getting people to fully convert to biomass.There’s one final argument that’s still used to advocate for advanced biomass cookstoves: they’re undeniably better for the climate than LPG is, because fuels like wood are renewable. While true, this is an argument with fewer takers. “No matter what the poor are using to cook, it’s not going to affect climate change,” argues Smith. “It’s the rich of the world that are causing climate change.”ENGINEERING FOR CHANGE/CC BY-SA 2.0Women from the mountain villages of Rajasthan, India, collect and carry around 70lbs of firewood on their heads every day.If not biomass, then what? LPG stoves are the only other such appliances that meet WHO pollution standards. Some nations, like India, are rapidly expanding access to LPG through subsidies and social welfare programmes. But other nations are not as lucky or rich, says Tom Price, the director of strategic initiatives at Inyenyeri. In Rwanda, increasing the number of people using LPG from 1% to 10% would create a deficit of $100 million, he says.“Obviously, an LPG stove is very clean, but if someone cannot afford it, who cares?” he says. “We’re solving the problem for the rich, but not solving the problem for the base of the pyramid.” For those people, biomass stoves remain the solution, Price claims. But he admits that, out of the roughly 2,000 stove companies worldwide, not a single one has succeeded in building a stove that’s simultaneously clean, accessible, and profitable to sell at scale.Price believes that his company will be the first. Inyenyeri distributes the Dutch-made Mimi Moto, which has been certified by Colorado State University as the best biomass cookstove available today. (However, it has thus far only undergone testing in the lab, not in the field.) It costs $75, so the company gives the stove out for free and then charges for the fuel—pellets made from eucalyptus. Price claims that the average Rwandan family spends $23 a month on charcoal, while Inyenyeri supplies a month’s worth of pellets for $16, therefore saving users money. And for those who prefer to collect free wood, Inyenyeri allows wood to be exchanged for pellets. In order to break even, though, the company need to hit 75,000 customers. Right now, they have 4,000.Similar gasifier stoves are being put through trials by the World Bank in Laos and other countries. However, Fiona Lambe, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, urges caution. The 2017 Malawi study that found gasifier stoves didn’t work in the field as well as in the lab was focused specifically on a model of stove designed and manufactured by Philips in the Netherlands. It’s yet to be seen if the Mimi Moto will fare any better in the real world.One answer to the cookstove conundrum might be to promote and perfect a variety of stove types. Just as people in higher-income countries, like the US, use various devices to cook—gas burners, microwaves, tea kettles—most poor women, when given a choice, also like to use a variety of methods and fuels, from traditional stoves to LPG to biomass. (This is called “fuel stacking” in the world of non-governmental organisations.)If people have money, they’ll prefer LPG for its convenience. It’s an aspirational product, just like a flat-screen TV. If they don’t have money, they’ll prefer traditional cookstoves, like the Indian chulhas, which have the bonus of making better-tasting food than the average biomass stove can. Biomass stoves tends to only be preferred in select situations, such as cooking outdoors, because they’re often portable. But studies suggest that there is virtually no advanced biomass cookstove on the market today that is as clean, in terms of air pollution, as an LPG stove is.”WIKIMEDIA COMMONS AND ENGINEERING FOR CHANGE/CC BY-SA 2.0Left: A woman in Nigeria cooks on a small LPG cookstove. Right: A solar cookstove in Nepal.As such, it’s better to view the clean cookstoves problem as part of a cooking system, where different people bring different needs into play, depending on their specific situation, their income, and their family size. A biomass stove can still be useful in certain situations. It’s just not useful in every situation.“No one is using any one stove,” says Lambe. “I’ve never come across a household that will use just a three-stone fire. They’ll have something for emergencies—a kerosene burner, a charcoal stove, something.” Trying to replace all these diverse cooking needs with a single true stove is unrealistic, she argues. “As soon as [the cookstove] gets into the household, there’s so many things that can happen. There’s a huge difference in terms of what happens in real-life situations and the lab.”In Patna, the mother-in-law’s neighbor, Devi, also has an advanced biomass cookstove—she uses it to cook outside. She has an LPG stove as well, on which she whips up a quick tea and breakfast each morning, but she can only use it sparingly; a refill costs Rs700 ($9.50). She prepares lunch on her traditional stove.Devi demonstrates how she lights the biomass cookstove. She fills the chamber with wood, picks up an empty plastic detergent packet, sets it on fire, and drops it into the stove to give the firewood a kickstart.Noxious fumes fill her courtyard, blowing into the faces of her three boys.The fruitless quest to save Indian women from slowly choking to deathThe fruitless quest to save Indian women from slowly choking to deathBecause we have declining temperatures from the past 7000 years then the onus to rebut this cooling and declare a new weather pattern of warming that amounts to ‘climate change’ is high and has not happened since our industrialization.“Holocene climatic optimum - WikipediaThis graph is taken from Wikipedia. It shows eight different reconstructions of Holocene temperature. The thick black line is the average of these. Time progresses from left to right.On this graph the Stone Age is shown only about one degree warmer than present day, but most sources mention that Scandinavian Stone Age was about 2-3 degrees warmer than the present; this need not to be mutually excluding statements, because the curve reconstructs the entire Earth's temperature, and on higher latitudes the temperature variations were greater than about equator.Some reconstructions show a vertical dramatic increase in temperature around the year 2000, but it seems not reasonable to the author, since that kind of graphs cannot possibly show temperature in specific years, it must necessarily be smoothed by a kind of mathematical rolling average, perhaps with periods of hundred years, and then a high temperature in a single year, for example, 2004 will be much less visible.The trend seems to be that Holocene's highest temperature was reached in the Hunter Stone Age about 8,000 years before present, thereafter the temperature has generally been steadily falling, however, superimposed by many cold and warm periods, including the modern warm period.However, generally speaking, the Holocene represents an amazing stable climate, where the cooling through the period has been limited to a few degrees.”History of Earth's ClimateThis chart shows the seesaw hot and cold blips over 100 + years but ending where the temperature started and now returning to the colder temperatures from 1950 to 1980.Evidence is the climate was warmer in the 1930s with severe drought but no correlation with industrialization growth.Science Newsfrom research organizationsNASA study finds 1934 had worst North American drought of last thousand yearsDate:October 14, 2014Source:NASANASA study finds 1934 had worst North American drought of last thousand yearsSummary:“A new study using a reconstruction of North American drought history over the last 1,000 years found that the drought of 1934 was the driest and most widespread of the last millennium. Using a tree-ring-based drought record from the years 1000 to 2005 and modern records, scientists found the 1934 drought was 30 percent more severe than the runner-up drought (in 1580) and extended across 71.6 percent of western North America.”NASA study finds 1934 had worst North American drought of last thousand yearsWith Climate Change, the Past is the key to the Present and to the FutureNovember 1, 2017Format: PaperbackThe words “climate change” can technically mean a number of things, but usually when we hear them, we understand that they are referring to something in particular. This would be a defined narrative, an idea which has been repeated so often in the media that it is taken as almost axiomatic. This narrative goes something like this:“Carbon dioxide produced by mankind is dramatically changing the climate and is leading to unprecedented temperature extremes, storms, floods, and widespread death. If we fail to apply the emergency brake now, and hard, then the climate will be irreparably damaged and there will be little hope for averting the approaching cataclysm. In just a few more years it may be too late. The measures proposed for averting disaster are costly, very costly, but the anticipated damage from climate change will be even more expensive, so there is little alternative but to act quickly and decisively.”Furthermore, we are told, the science is settled, it represents a scientific consensus, and opponents are rightfully called “climate deniers,” deserving the rhetorical connotations and stigma attached to the label because they might as well be denying the reality of the Holocaust.Now is this true? Are we even allowed to ask the question? If it is not true, how could we tell? The authors, coming from different backgrounds and having different reasons for developing suspicions of the received narrative, present a detailed, 400-page argument which carefully (and I think persuasively) makes the case that the sun, and only secondarily human activities, are the primary driver for climate change.This book gives public exposure to the work of many, many climate scientists whose conclusions are deemed politically incorrect and are thus ignored. In the authors’ own words, “We were able to cite hundreds of scientific studies showing that the changes in the sun’s activity and oceanic decadal oscillations are responsible for at least half of the recent warming, which means that the contribution of CO2 is at most half.”Most of us have no way of evaluating the computer models which predict, to varying degrees, catastrophic future warming with CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning being the sole culprit.The authors maintain, however, that “the past is the key to the present and to the future,” meaning that it is better to gather data on how the climate has acted in the past, and use this to calibrate projections into the future, than it is to create models calibrated to agree with a pre-ordained conclusion.This approach reveals a few surprises. First, neither the degree nor the rate of warming we are currently experiencing is unprecedented. Second, warming in the past was not caused by rising CO2 levels. Third, cycles of warming and cooling occurred at regularly repeating intervals over the past several thousand years and beyond, and closely match cycles of increased and decreased solar activity. Fourth, currently accepted climate models which are centered on CO2 cannot reproduce these past warming and cooling events. And finally fifth, the current halt in global warming since the year 2000 was not anticipated by these models, but it is completely consistent with a sun-centered approach which takes into consideration not only CO2 but also solar cycles and ocean oscillations.So here I, the average Joe, the taxpayer who doesn’t have in-depth scientific knowledge of the issues, is being asked to adjudicate between two opposing claims. And it does matter, because the choice I and the rest of society make will have a significant impact on the world our children inhabit. If the alarmists (if I may use that pejorative label for the sake of simplicity) are right, we have a moral obligation to give up our financial prosperity in order to maintain a world that is inhabitable for future generations.And it just so happens that it is this position (that of the alarmists) that “holds the microphone,” so to speak. We are bombarded with claims that the “science is settled” and only the ignorant and those with financial interests in maintaining the status quo would disagree.It seems to me that if this boils down to a matter of trust, and to some degree it does, then we are entitled to see if that trust is earned. And we can do that in a few ways. One is by listening carefully to the alarmists and trying to see if they are telling us the whole story, or are they selectively publicizing information that furthers their cause on the one hand, while withholding information that does not, on the other hand.One testable example that leaps to mind is Al Gore’s new book, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” Early in the book he prominently displays a graph of increasing temperatures over the past number of decades. No comment is given to the stagnating temperatures between the years 2000 and 2014, but we see an apparent resumption in the warming in the final two years, 2015 and 2016.So here Mr. Gore has told us part of the story. But has he told us the whole thing? No. He has utterly ignored the vast literature cited in “The Neglected Sun” which carefully shows how natural climate oscillations, and particularly an unusually active sun, have contributed, not only to recent temperature fluctuations, but also to those seen throughout the historic temperature record.And second, he has neglected to mention what our authors have made clear, namely, that it is inappropriate to include El Niño years in long-term projections, because these phenomena, which can produce remarkable short-term increases in global temperatures, are just that: they are short-term blips that vanish after a couple of years. Al Gore leaves us with the impression that these two years are further evidence of man-made global warming when the reality is nothing more than they are in fact El Niño years.Another way the average Joe can navigate this confusing terrain is to spend some time reading “The Neglected Sun.” It is not hard to read, the citations to peer-reviewed literature are numerous, and as it does give a place, albeit a secondary one, for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, it gives a feeling of balance, and also an admission of the infancy of much of our knowledge, an admission that is entirely missing from popular presentations from the other side, in particular from Al Gore.Spend some time reading the book and it will become clear that the claims of scientific consensus and that the science is settled are false. And it seems to me that when what we can test is found to be wanting, this gives us reason to be suspicious of that which we cannot test. In other words, it looks sneaky and it looks like they haven’t got the goods.Now the authors make it clear that they are not denying that we need to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, but they are arguing that because projections based on solar activity are actually going to give us a few decades of cooling, we can make the change in a rational, rather than a panicked, way.The stakes are high, as we are on the verge of decisions that can dramatically alter the prosperity of not only our children and grandchildren, but of those in developing countries that need at least short-term access to fossil fuels in order to keep from sliding further backwards in poverty.Al Gore and the alarmists are right about one thing: the climate debate is a moral issue, but just not in the way they see it. Because if our authors are right, then we are faced with the following reality: as much of an economic inconvenience that an abrupt shift away from fossil fuels would be for those of us in the wealthy West, it is actually a life-and-death situation for those in the developing world whose ability to move out of poverty would be taken away from them.”And that is immoral.I will add peer reviewed climate research from around the world with my own choice of art metaphors that seem relevant and introductory.First, a rare research study using lab experiments not just thought experiments to assess the validity of blaming CO2 for overheating the climate with the greenhouse gas effect.CO2 IS INNOCENT BASED ON REAL SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHAtmospheric and Climate Sciences > Vol.10 No.2, April 2020The Influence of IR Absorption and Backscatter Radiation from CO2 on Air Temperature during Heating in a Simulated Earth/Atmosphere ExperimentThorstein O. Seim1, Borgar T. Olsen2,3,41Inst. of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway; Inst. of Physics, University of Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway.2Institute of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.3Max-Planck-Institute for Physiological and Clinical Research, Bad-Nauheim and Munich, Germany.4Telenor (Televerkets) Research Department, Kjeller and Fornebu, Norway.DOI: 10.4236/acs.2020.102009 PDF HTML XML 399 Downloads 678 ViewsAbstractThe Greenhouse Effect was simulated in a laboratory setup, consisting of a heated ground area and two chambers, one filled with air and one filled with air or CO2. While heating the gas the temperature and IR radiation in both chambers were measured. IR radiation was produced by heating a metal plate mounted on the rear wall. Reduced IR radiation through the front window was observed when the air in the foremost chamber was exchanged with CO2. In the rear chamber, we observed increased IR radiation due to backscatter from the front chamber. Based on the Stefan Boltzmann’s law, this should increase the temperature of the air in the rear chamber by 2.4 to 4 degrees, but no such increase was found. A thermopile, made to increase the sensitivity and accuracy of the temperature measurements, showed that the temperature with CO2 increased slightly, about 0.5%.The Influence of IR Absorption and Backscatter Radiation from CO2 on Air Temperature during Heating in a Simulated Earth/Atmosphere ExperimentThis is not only experiment that refutes the fear of back radiation - Allmendingers 2006 is along similar lines: “The thermal behavior of gases unthe influence of infrared-radiation” DOI: 10.5897/IJPS2016.4500.All alarmist predictions fail like fears of Pacific Islands sinking into the ocean.In fact, one recent paper found, for example, that the South Sea Tuvalu islands have grown, the shaming climate scientists!Time for competent and honest institutionsThe time has arrived where government offices, authorities, weather services, media headquarters and educational institutes become staffed by educated and independent persons who are able to see the reality in the interrelationships of weather and climate and report them in an unfalsified manner.It’s the sun, water, clouds, vapor, ice, snow that determined the weather of our planet, and not life-sustaining trace gas CO2, which makes up only 0.04%of our atmosphere.Anyone who vilifies trace gas CO2 as a pollutant conducts him/herself in a manner that is hostile to life and is thus not suited to be a scientist, teacher, professor, journalist or politician!Global Warming Pause Extends…Becoming Clear IPCC Grossly Overstated Projected WarmingIdentification of the driving forces of climate change using the longest instrumental temperature recordNew research confirms the view of leading climate scientists and scholars that trace amounts of Co2 emissions are not destabilizing the planet. Co2 is essential plant food and therefore green energy. I will summarize leading science paper that do not support the deniers of natural variability from CHINA, FRANCE, CANADA, GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES.First China scientists with new research with the longest instrumental temperature record thus far.Hisorical Chinese Painting.The authors Geli Wang & Peicai Yang and Xiuji Zhou are scientists at the CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE and Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China 中国气象科学研究院ANTHROPOGENIC (human activity). The driving forces are“the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively.”The title of the study published in the prestigious NATURE Journal is: Identification of the driving forces of climate change using the longest instrumental temperature recordhttps://www.nature.com/articles/...Their study confirms THE DRIVING FORCES OF GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE ARE NATURALThe “driving forces” of climate change are natural and not Co2 plant food emissions. A new Chinese study confirms climate change comes from natural cycles. This research is based on the longest actual temperature data of more than 400 years from 1659 to 2013, including the period of anthropogenic warming.AbstractThe identification of causal effects is a fundamental problem in climate change research. Here, a new perspective on climate change causality is presented using the central England temperature (CET) dataset, the longest instrumental temperature record, and a combination of slow feature analysis and wavelet analysis. The driving forces of climate change were investigated and the results showed two independent degrees of freedom —a 3.36-year cycle and a 22.6-year cycle, which seem to be connected to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively. [Emphasis added]. Moreover, these driving forces were modulated in amplitude by signals with millennial timescales.James Matkin 
This research is very relevant and should make climate alarmists pause in their crusade against Co2 emissions from fossil fuels. Far too much focus on Co2 like a one trick pony in a big tent circus where solar radiation is a more compelling show. The thrust of recent research has demonstrated that climate changes continually and is determined by natural forces that humans have no significant control over. Many leading scientists have presented research of other "driving forces" and cautioned against the arrogance of many that "the science is settled." See Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and blogger at Climate Etc. talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about climate change. Curry argues that climate change is a "wicked problem" with a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the expected damage as well as the political and technical challenges of dealing with the phenomenon. She emphasizes the complexity of the climate and how much of the basic science remains incomplete. The conversation closes with a discussion of how concerned citizens can improve their understanding of climate change and climate change policy.
http://www.econtalk.org/arc...https://www.nature.com/articles/...JAMES MATKIN•2017-08-23 10:03 PMThe great failure of the Paris accord is the failure to accept that the IPCC Al Gore hypothesis of anthropogenic warming is not settled science. Indeed, none of the predictions of doom have occurred. New research confirms the view of leading climate scientists and scholars that trace amounts of Co2 emissions are not destabilizing the planet. Co2 is essential plant food and therefore green energy. The “driving force” of climate change is natural and not Co2 plant food emissions. A new Chinese study confirms climate change comes from natural cycles. This research is based on the longest actual temperature data of more than 400 years from 1659 to 2013, including the period of anthropogenic warming. The authors Geli Wang & Peicai Yang and Xiuji Zhou are scientists at the CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE and Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China 中国气象科学研究院 Their study confirms THE DRIVING FORCES OF GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE ARE NOT ANTHROPOGENIC (human activity). The driving forces are “the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively.” The title of the study published in the prestigious NATURE Journal is: Identification of the driving forces of climate change using the longest instrumental temperature record Identification of the driving forces of climate change using the longest instrumental temperature record This means that climate change cannot be stopped as Paris attendees believed. Co2 is very beneficial plant food and we need more not less. Why climate change is good for the world | The Spectator It is good news for civilization that the Paris targets are not being met around the world.https://www.nature.com/news/prov...Genghis Khan established what would later become the largest contiguous empire in history.IPCC FUDGED Data in 2001 to remove the MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD to make today seem unprecedented.MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD CHANGED WORLD ECONOMIC HISTORYGenghis Khan sweeps across the lands, conquering and subsuming all who stand in his way." the tree-rings showed that the years between 1211 and 1225—a period of time that coincided with the meteoric rise of Genghis Khan, who died in 1227—were marked by unusually heavy rainfall and mild temperatures.Eventually the Mongols would establish the largest land empire in history, ruling over modern Korea, China, Russia, eastern Europe, southeast Asia, Persia, India and parts of the Middle East.[1] W.“Human CO2 at only 0.01% of atmospheThe entire misnamed greenhouse gases (these are infared gases that have absolutely nothing to do with greenhouses) together make up less than 4% of the earth’s atmosphere. The major gases are Nitrogen at 76.56% and Oxygen at 20.54 %. How can such a puny amount < 4% control the climate warming? It cannot.This critical graph of all the gases in the atmosphere is always ignored by climate alarmists because they know it would sow doubt about their ridiculous view that the science is settled.Don J. Easterbrook, PhDProfessor Emeritus of GeologyWestern Washington UniversityWhat we have found1. We are not warming the planetFor several decades now, it has been widely believed that humans are causing unusual global warming by increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.Our research has convinced us that this man-made global warming theory is wrong. We will explain why we have come to this conclusion on this website.It is true that humans have been increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because of our use of fossil fuels. Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide seems to have been about 0.03% of the atmosphere, while it is now about 0.04%.However, our research has shown that:It doesn’t matter whether we double, treble or even quadruple the carbon dioxide concentration. Carbon dioxide has no impact on atmospheric temperatures.We carried out new laboratory experiments, and analysed the data from millions of weather balloons, to calculate exactly how much global warming carbon dioxide was causing. When we did this, we discovered that the answer was zero.It turns out that some of the assumptions used in man-made global warming theory (and in the current climate models) had never actually been tested. When we tested them, we discovered that they were invalid.See the link below for a discussion of why:Summary: “The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere I-III”In addition, we have also shown that:The “unusual global warming” that has caused such concern is not unusual, after all.We found that the world naturally switches between periods of global warming and periods of global cooling, with each period lasting several decades.We also identified a number of serious mistakes in the studies which had claimed that there has been unusual global warming. These mistakes meant that the amount of warming in the last global warming period (1980s-2000s) was overestimated and the amount of cooling in the last global cooling period (1950s-1970s) was underestimated.When these mistakes are corrected, it turns out that it was just as warm in the 1930s-1940s as it is now.See the following links for our global temperature analysis:• Summary: “Urbanization bias I-III”• Summary: “Has poor station quality biased U.S. temperature trend estimates?”Summary: “Global temperature changes of the last millennium”Start Here - Global Warming SolvedDon J. Easterbrook, Emeritus Professor of Geology| WWUWill HapperWill Happer is another, highly-respected physicist out of Princeton who compares the anti-CO2 crowd to the prohibitionists prior to the passage of the 18th Amendment. While he does acknowledge long-term warming, he thinks the influence of CO2 is vastly overstated, and that the benefits of a modest reduction in it will be negligible.In testimony to Congress, he used the following analogy what he means:The earth's climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth's temperature -- on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds.DR. ANTHONY LUPOGlobal Warming Is Natural, Not Man-Madeby Anthony Lupo(NAPSA)—One of the fundamental tenets of our justice sys- tem is one is innocent until proven guilty. While that doesn’t apply to scientific discovery, in the global warming debate the prevailing attitude is that human induced global warming is already a fact of life and it is up to doubters to prove otherwise.To complete the analogy, I’ll add that to date, there is no credible evidence to demonstrate that the climatological changes we’ve seen since the mid-1800’s are outside the bounds of natural variability inherent in the earth’s climate system.Thus, any impartial jury should not come back with a “guilty” verdict convicting humanity of forcing recent climatological changes.Even the most ardent supporters of global warming will not argue this point. Instead, they argue that humans are only partially responsible for the observed climate change. If one takes a hard look at the science involved, their assertions appear to be groundless.First, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant as many claim. Carbon dioxide is good for plant life and is a natural constituent of the atmosphere. During Earth’s long history there has been more and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we see today.Second, they claim that climate is stable and slow to change, and we are accelerating climate change beyond natural variability. That is also not true.Climate change is generally a regional phenomenon and not a global one. Regionally, climate has been shown to change rapidly in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Life on earth will adapt as it has always done. Life on earth has been shown to thrive when planetary temperatures are warmer as opposed to colder.Third, they point to recent model projections that have shown that the earth will warm as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.One should be careful when looking at model projections. After all, these models are crude representations of the real atmosphere and are lacking many fundamental processes and interactions that are inherent in the real atmosphere. The 11 degrees scenario that is thrown around the media as if it were the main stream prediction is an extreme scenario.Most models predict anywhere from a 2 to 6 degree increase over the next century, but even these are problematic given the myriad of problems associated with using models and interpreting their output.First, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant as many claim. Carbon dioxide is good for plant life and is a natural constituent of the atmosphere. During Earth’s long history there has been more and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we see today.Second, they claim that climate is stable and slow to change, and we are accelerating climate change beyond natural variability. That is also not true.Climate change is generally a regional phenomenon and not a global one. Regionally, climate has been shown to change rapidly in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Life on earth will adapt as it has always done. Life on earth has been shown to thrive when planetary temperatures are warmer as opposed to colder.Third, they point to recent model projections that have shown that the earth will warm as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.One should be careful when looking at model projections. After all, these models are crude representations of the real atmosphere and are lacking many fundamental processes and interactions that are inherent in the real atmosphere. The 11 degrees scenario that is thrown around the media as if it were the main stream prediction is an extreme scenario.Most models predict anywhere from a 2 to 6 degree increase over the next century, but even these are problematic given the myriad of problems associated with using models and interpreting their output.No one advocates destruction of the environment, and indeed we have an obligation to take care of our environment for future gen- erations. At the same time, we need to make sound decisions based on scientific facts.My research leads me to believe that we will not be able to state conclusively that global warming is or is not occurring for another 30 to 70 years. We simply don’t understand the climate system well enough nor have the data to demonstrate that humanity is having a substantial impact on climate change.Anthony R. Lupo is assistant professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri at Columbia and served as an expert reviewer for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.http://www.napsnet.com/pdf_archi...It is essential to understand the complexity of measuring human made Co2 emissions and to realize at a detail level the trace amounts are indistinguishable from natural sources of co2.Through the burning of fossil fuels, humans are also responsible for having boosted atmospheric CO2 emissions from some 300 ppm to 400 parts per million, which translates into a difference of 0.01% of the atmosphere. So whatdo the alarmists conclude from this:“0.01% of the world’s biomass and 0.o1% of the atmosphere are today almost solely responsible for climate change.” ???Charles Tips QUORA writer and former Science Editor organized these facts.]“Fact 1: We are in an ice age, the Quaternary to name it, and have been for 2.58 million years. Given that the previous four ice ages lasted for right at 30 my, we likely have more than 27 my to go (the two ice ages that kicked things off were of snowball-Earth proportions and lasted much longer. Ice ages occur every 155 my, and we don’t know why. That’s a much longer cycle than Milankovitch cycles can account for. Those tell us things like why North Africa has been a desert for 5 ky when before that it was a populated savanna.“Fact 2: We are in an interglacial, the Holocene epoch to give it its name, a respite from glaciation. During an ice age, interglacials occur at 90 to 125 ky intervals and last approximately 7 to 14 ky. The Holocene is 11.7 ky old, but there is new evidence that the Allerød oscillation 13.9 ky ago was the actual start with a meteor strike 1 ky in producing the Younger Dryas cooling.* If we are actually, 13.9 ky into our interglacial, then natural cycles tell us we will be rapidly descending back into glaciation in 5… 4… 3…“The combination of glacials and interglacials looks like this:THE sun continues to be very quiet and it has been without sunspots this year 62% of the time as we approach what is likely to be one of the deepest solar minimums in a long, long time.Daily observations of the number of sunspots since 1 January 1977 according to Solar Influences Data Analysis CenterNew research shows fear of global warming is bad science.Marine species evolved, thrived, and diversified in 35 to 40°C ocean temperatures and CO2 concentrations “5-10x higher than present-day values” (Voosen, 2019 and Henkes et al., 2018).(Voosen, 2019 and Henkes et al., 2018).During the Little Ice Age, average global temperatures were 1-1.5 degree Celsius (2-3 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than they are today. The cooler temperatures were caused by a combination of less solar activity and large volcanic eruptions. Cooling caused glaciers to advance and stunted tree growth.Jun 20, 2008THE Insane Result Of The Mad Switch To Costly, Symbolic, Unreliable Energy – Wind and SolarPosted: October 11, 2017 | Author: Jamie Spry |PAYING YOU TO USE LESS OF THE GREEN POWER THEY FORCED YOU TO PAY FORPaying you $36 million to use less, not spending our money instead to provide more:“Few things are so deadly as a misguided sense of compassion.” – Charles ColsonWE really are living in the age of collective, global warming climate change insanity. We will look back on this era of “save the planet” virtue-signalling and wonder what the hell were we thinking…The federal government will pay households and businesses across three states to turn down their air conditioning, furnaces and cool rooms to stave off blackouts during peak demand.Under a $36 million program to be launched today by Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, thousands of households in NSW, Victoria and South Australia will also be ­invited to voluntarily cut their ­energy use in return for incentives such as rebates on power bills.SO they’ve spent your money on subsidising green power, and having run short of electricity will now spend your money to use less of it. Meanwhile your power bills keep rising.AND remember: none of this will cut the world’s temperature. It’s all for nothing.DOESN’T this strike you as stark, staring, raving mad?COMMENTjamesmatkinwritingsDecember 18, 2017 at 5:51 amAs the blackouts increase and heat poverty kill more than road accidents in the UK due to subsidies for renewables the fantasy of the mad switch to renewables at all cost is crumbling – thankfully. The Wall Street Journal published a must-read on this insanity issue –“Recognize and study reality. Dead calms occur frequently when temperatures are at their highest, or their lowest – when families, businesses, hospitals and schools need electricity the most. Clouds can blanket regions for days or weeks on end. Reliance on wind and solar is risky, and reliable backup is essential.The justification for eliminating coal and mandating 50% wind and solar is heavily rooted in fears of catastrophic manmade climate change. But the alleged crisis has no basis in observed evidence. The 18-year pause continues apace, with the El Niño temperature spike of 2015-16 gone … and average global temperatures back down to where they were in March 2015. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts are in line with or below multi-century historic trends and fluctuations and are hardly unprecedented. Greenland just recorded its most frigid July temperature reading in history: -33 C (-27 F).”https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017...THE Insane Result Of The Mad Switch To Costly, Symbolic, Unreliable Energy – Wind and SolarFuel poverty kills more people than road accidentsAT least 2,700 people die every winter because they can’t afford their soaring heating bills.AT least 2,700 people die every winter because they can’t afford their soaring heating bills.More people lose their lives because they are too poor to heat their homes than are killed in road accidents, a Government-commissioned report has revealed.Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics, who led the study, said the figure was a “conservative estimate” and could be much higher.The damning report comes after £30billion profits made by the Big Six power companies over the last five years were exposed. But while the energy companies have been making a fortune, fuel poverty in the UK has soared.In 2004 1.2 million people were living in fuel poverty – defined as where more than 10% of a person’s income is spent on heating their home – but this year the figure has jumped to 4.1million.Between 2004 and 2009, the fuel poverty gap – the extra amount families in badly insulated and poorly heated homes would need to spend to keep warm – increased by 50% from £740million to £1.1billion.Professor Hills said: “The evidence shows how serious the problem of fuel poverty is, increasing health risks and hardship for millions, and hampering urgent action to reduce energy waste and carbon emissions.”Caroline Flint, Labour’s Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, added: “This report lays bare the dire situation facing millions of people this winter, and the urgent need for action on spiralling energy bills.“But this Government is so out of touch and unable to stand up to vested interests in the energy industry that its only answer is to lecture people about shopping around for a better deal and cut help for pensioners.“Warm words will not do. The Tory-led Government needs to get a grip and demand energy companies use their profits to cut bills now.”Sally Copley, Save the Children’s head of UK poverty, urged the Government to deal with the crisis before it is too late.She said: “No parent wants their children doing their homework or going to bed in a freezing cold house, yet this is the reality for many families and it badly affects health and education.“Poorly insulated houses and outdated heating systems mean many families will never be able to afford to keep their homes warm.”And there was an icy blast from the economy last night as Vince Cable admitted that a double-dip recession could not be ruled out. Speaking exactly a year on from George Osborne’s spending review which laid out massive cuts, the Business Secretary said the “brutal reality” was that the economy is in worse shape now.Asked to rule out a slump, he told ITV News: “I can’t do that.”His comments came as a ComRes poll found 67% of people are pessimistic about the future of the economy and almost half (48%) felt their standard of living fell in the last year.Energy Secretary Chris Huhne also appeared to attack the Government when he praised a Labour motion which said: “With a cold winter forecast and Government support cut millions of families will struggle to heat their homes.” Mr Huhne said: “There is nothing we disagree with in the motion.”Britain has had enough of power companies raking in massive profits while the elderly and hard-up struggle to heat their homes.Back our campaign today and send a message to the government and fuel bosses that it is time for a fair price on fuel.1. Pledge to drop bills as soon as wholesale energy prices fall2. Cut gap between standard and other tariffs3. Use cold weather payment data to target rebates at vulnerable households4. Launch Competition Commission inquiry into market5. Limit number of tariffs firms can offer and simplify themhttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-...View allThe Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period. Although it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. WikipediaDescriptionEpic And Massive Flooding In Europe During The Little Ice AgePublished on June 24, 2016Written by http://iceagenow.orgKilled more than 500,000 people.Andrew McKillop has a new article posted at The Market Oracle. Here are some excerpts.This is the global cooling fearIntense flooding in the low countries of Europe became “darkly repetitive” during the Little Ice Age, writes McKillop. The cooling period lasted 450 years,For the Dutch, the Grote Mandrenke is nothing to do with Linux software, but means “The Great Drowning” and is named for the epic and massive flooding that occurred, more and more frequently in the Low Countries of Europe’s North Sea region as Europe’s Little Ice Age intensified.Grote Mandrenke flood killed at least 100 000Normal or predictable spring and autumn flooding was increasingly replaced by large-area and intense flooding, sometimes outside spring and autumn from about 1300, in recurring crises which lasted into the 18th century. In the Low Countries and across Europe, but also elsewhere, the cooling trend starting in the late 13th century became more intense. It brought long cold winters, heavy storms and floods, loss of coastal farmlands, and huge summer sandstorms in coastal areas further damaging agriculture. Climate historians estimate that major flooding on an unpredictable but increasingly frequent basis started as early as 1250. Extreme events like the Grote Mandrenke flood of 1362 which killed at least 100 000 people became darkly repetitive.Other giant floods probably killed 400 000Other giant floods in the region through the next 200 years probably killed a total of 400 000 persons in the coastlands of what is now Belgium, Germany and Holland. At the time, Europe’s population was at most a quarter of today’s, meaning that corrected for population size these were really catastrophic disasters. During this time, the Zuider Zee region of northern Holland was inundated and its former farmlands disappeared under water – for several centuries.Crop failures and faminesThe basic reasons was that the weather was getting colder, as well as more unpredictable. As the climate cooled, it also became wetter. Combined with the cold, this caused more crop failures and famines spread as the northern limit of farming retreated south. The start of the cooling – called Europe’s Little Ice Age by glaciologist Francois Matthes in 1939 – in the 13th century was in fact the start of a long, sometimes steep dip in temperatures that held sway on an unpredictable, on-and-off basis until at least the first decade of the 19th century. Overall, the cooling lasted about 450 years.Preceded by more than two centuries of much warmer more predictable weatherMaking things worse, the cooling had been preceded by more than two centuries of much warmer and better, more predictable weather. Farming moved northwards, seasons were predictable, food supplies had expanded. Europe’s population also grew, in some regions tripling in 200 years. The colonization of Greenland, which failed when the cooling intensified, was a well-known historical spinoff from the previous warming, but by the 16th century there was no trace of Europeans in Greenland. Only ruins of their farms and homes could be found, but with few or no tombstones dated beyond the early 15th century, leading to the theory that these early “Climate Refugees” packed their longboats and sailed south, to what is now the New England coast. Where they became easy prey for American Indian tribes along those coasts.And as more evidence shows that the Medieval Warm Period was no isolated event in Europe but was a global phenomenon, McKillop’s analysis takes on more immediate relevance:The climate historian Hubert H. Lamb in his 2002 book ‘Climate History and the Modern World’ dates the cooling to two main phases. The first leg of this change he places at about 1200-1400, but his second phase of about 1500-1825 which for some climate historians is Europe’s Little Ice Age, was marked by much steeper drops in average temperatures. Indicators used by Lamb and other climate historians like Emmanuel Leroy Ladrie and Wolfgang Behringer include food price peaks as cold summers followed cold and wet springs, with increasing examples of “climate wars”, such as Louis X’s Flanders campaign where the climate chilling was a sure factor in play.I fear that we’re headed into such a period of great cooling and repetitive catastrophic flooding right now.This while our leaders prattle on about global warming, leaving us almost totally unprepared.Andrew McKillop is former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission, and co-author of ‘The Doomsday Machine’, Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.Epic and massive flooding in Europe during the Little Ice Age | PSI IntlEurope weather: Italy and France hit by flooding after torrential rainfallReceding waters in the Italian port city of Genoa have revealed heaps of overturned cars, furniture and mud strewn across the streets after flash floods that killed six people. Genoa was gutted by flash floods that erupted when 356 millimetres of rain - or a third of the average annual rainfall - came down in six hours on Friday.Picture: APCountries in central Europe have been hit by severe flooding this week. Extreme rainfall has caused rivers across the region to break their banks, with the Danube and Elbe particularly affected. People living in affected regions in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia have been evacuated from their homes. 13 people are known to have died.People living in affected regions in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia have been evacuated from their homes. People living in affected regions in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia have been evacuated from their homes.Torrential Rain Slams Parts of East Coast with Historic FloodingMillions are bracing for more deadly and catastrophic flooding on the East Coast as more heavy rains threaten an already crippled South Carolina.Extreme flooding cripples Washington, DCTUE, JUL 09, 2019Washington, D.C., was paralyzed by a month's worth of rain in one hour Monday, causing stranded vehicles and water rescues. The historic flooding is to be followed by even more rain. TODAY's Al Roker has the forecast.Torrential Rain Slams Parts of East Coast with Historic FloodingMillions are bracing for more deadly and catastrophic flooding on the East Coast as more heavy rains threaten an already crippled South Carolina.Canada: extreme floods show climate threat as experts warn of further tumultThousands evacuated from eastern Canada as Justin Trudeau admits urgent action necessary to improve climate preparednessTue 30 Apr 2019 13.31 BSTCanadian police in a flooded street in Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac in the suburbs of Montreal. Experts say the floods show Canada has not done enough to prepare for such disasters. Photograph: Sebastien St-Jean/AFP/Getty ImagesNews footage showed people boating where they once walked, homes and cars filled with muddy water, volunteers searching for lost pets. Thousands of people in eastern Canada have been forced from their homes as heavy rains and meltwater cause unprecedented flood evacuations.One of the worst-hit areas was a Montreal suburb where more than 6,000 people were evacuated after a dike burst on Sunday. A further 3,000 people were evacuated in other parts of Quebec, and in Ontario and New Brunswick, hundreds more are waiting out the floods in hotels and shelters.“This year’s flooding is very extreme,” said Ursule Boyer-Villemaire, an associate professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal who specializes in disaster management and climate resilience planning.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/30/canada-flooding-quebec-montreal-justin-trudeau-climate-changeFEBRUARY 3,'Unprecedented' flooding to hit northeast Australiaby Glenda KwekA handout picture provided by the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services shows floodwaters as they rush over the Aplins Weir in Townsville after days of torrential rainThousands of people in northeast Australia should expect "unprecedented flooding", authorities have warned, after relentless downpours forced a dam to be fully opened on Sunday.Once-in-a-century floods have turned streets into rivers and caused thousands to abandon their homes in Townsville, in Queensland state.Australia's tropical north experiences heavy rains during the monsoon season at this time of the year, but the recent downpour has surged far above normal levels.The Bureau of Meteorology late Sunday issued a "major flood warning", announcing that spillway gates at the Ross River dam had been opened to their maximum setting and a rapid rise in the water level was predicted to follow."Dangerous and high velocity flows will occur in the Ross River Sunday night into Monday. Unprecedented areas of flooding will occur in Townsville," a statement said, adding there was a "risk to life and property".Many homes in the city had already been left without power and cut off by flooded roads.More severe weather could whip up tornadoes and destructive winds in the days ahead, Bureau of Meteorology state manager Bruce Gunn told reporters.Up to 20,000 homes are at risk of being inundated if the rains continue.Military personnel were delivering tens of thousands of sandbags to affected locals, as Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk warned residents to be careful."It's basically not just a one in 20-year event, it's a one in 100-year event," she told reporters Saturday.A year's worth of rainThe Bureau of Meteorology said a slow-moving monsoonal trough was sitting above Queensland, with some areas expected to receive more than a year's worth of rainbefore conditions ease.Bureau meteorologist Adam Blazak told AFP the downpours could continue until Thursday, while floodwaters would take some time to recede even when the rains lessen.Many homes in the city have been cut off by flooded roadsThe region receives an average of about 2,000 millimetres (6.5 feet) of rain annually but some towns were already on track to pass that.The town of Ingham, north of Townsville, received 506 mm of rain in 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday, of which 145 mm fell in just one hour, Blazak said."I've never seen anything like this," Townsville resident Chris Brookehouse told national broadcaster ABC, adding that his house was flooded with water more than one metre deep."The volume of water is just incredible. Downstairs is gone, the fridge and freezer are floating. Another five or six steps and upstairs is gone too."Blazak said that with adverse weather predicted to continue for up to 72 hours, some regions could see record-breaking levels of rainfall.There has been a silver lining to the deluge, with drought-stricken farmers in western Queensland boosted by the soaking."It is a welcome relief, especially in our western communities, to not only get the rain but also to fill up their dams," Palaszczuk said Sunday."We're getting food supplies in there. We still have many roads that are cut around those areas."The deluge comes amid a severe drought in the eastern inland of the vast Australian continent, including parts of Queensland state, that has left graziers struggling to stay afloat.Extreme heatwaves during the southern hemisphere summer have led to maximum-temperature records being broken in some towns.High temperatures are not unusual in Australia during its arid southern hemisphere summer, with bushfires a common occurrence.But scientists say climate change has pushed up land and sea temperatures and led to more extremely hot days and severe fire seasons.In the southern states of Victoria and Tasmania, firefighters in recent days have been battling numerous bushfires threatening homes and communities.