There is no "Climate Catastrophe"

Have a look outside. Nice, isn't it? But wait! We're told we're in the midst of a grand "climate catastrophe". What gives?

This topic is more in my husband's area of expertise. It was the first "red pill" I ever swallowed. I had no reason to disbelieve the standard narrative, and back in 2016 when I mocked Trump for saying the climate crisis was a made up thing, my husband said, "myeh, you may want to have a look at that for yourself." I pressed him on it and got the whole download that I give you here.

This thing is based on the following chain of reasoning

1. Man burns fossil fuels (FFs).
2. Burning FFs emits carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.
3. The emitted CO2 causes the parts per million (ppm) of CO2 to rise significantly.
4. The Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.
5. The increased ppm of CO2 due to FF burning directly causes this warming.
6. The amount of that warming is so large that it constitutes a "catastrophe" for mankind.
7. Extreme weather, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, draughts and fires are all getting worse as a result.
8. Replacing FFs by wind and solar is a practical response.

Number 1 and 2 are trivially true, but big questions exist on all the rest. This whole hypothesis is called "Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming". Anthropogenic means caused by man. It's shortened to CAGW.

We are told that "97% of scientists agree", like "9 out of 10 dentists recommend Crest" but MORE certain than that. There was never any poll of "scientists". If you think about it, the entire statement is an absurdity. How do they define "scientist". What is the question they put to them? It never happened. The 97% is based on two sloppy studies that asked the wrong question of the wrong people. It is true that various Associations and Academies of Science have come out in favour of CAGW, but it is not put up for a vote amongst the members, it is a political statement by the Directors. Besides, science is not done by political consensus anyways.

Let's take the parts in order.

1. Man burns fossil fuels (FFs).

You bet we do! It's been responsible for a vast decrease in poverty. Very little of modern-life can be done without FFs. No cars, airplanes, tractors, trucks. No plastics, cement, no steel. No manufacturing. No food therefore. And so on.

At one time in the history of the earth, CO2 was much more plentiful in the atmosphere. Ten times higher than it is now (and, no, there was no runaway Greenhouse effect, obvi). During that time the plants and little animals thrived. Over time, these plants and animals got buried deeper and deeper and squeezed harder and harder. These carcasses of dead plants and animals, these fossils, are in fact our Fossil Fuels. All that CO2 that used to be plentiful on Earth is now locked away in the FFs deep underground, and yes, we are releasing it slowly now.

Burning of FFs used to be a very dirty thing, emitting real pollutants into the air. However, modern technology combined with responsible regulation has reduced pollutant emissions to negligible levels. That is true for oil, natural gas, and clean coal. The air we breathe in North America and Western Europe is clean and clear. The same cannot be said for other parts of the world that have not yet caught up. THAT is where we should be making a fuss and helping out if we want to improve things.

2. Burning of FFs emits carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.

Yes, absolutely. But important for people to understand the CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on earth. Do not confuse with carbon monoxide (CO) which can kill you. And do not call it "carbon" - that's a sooty black powder (or a diamond, depending on how you take it). We breathe in and out CO2 constantly, and we create CO2 as a by-product of living. Plants use CO2 to grow. Greenhouses inject extra CO2 into the air to make the plants grow better.

The earth has been greening due to more CO2 in the atmosphere. A paper from NASA Goddard Earth Sciences analyzing changes in satellite imagery shows this (Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds). From 1981-2015 the greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.

3. The emitted CO2 causes the parts per million (ppm) of CO2 to rise significantly.

This is where the first doubt starts creeping in. It certainly seems logical, but the amount of CO2 emitted by burning FFs is a drop in the bucket compared to the total CO2 exchanged in and out of the atmosphere daily.

The above is the Carbon Cycle showing all the exchanges of CO2 between earth and atmosphere. It shows the earth putting 217 billion metric tons per year of CO2 into the atmosphere, of which human activity accounts for 5.5 of that, or about 2.5%, with FF burning even less than that. Note, however that the above was an older diagram and no longer up-to-date. More modern analysis suggests that fossil fuels emit about 1/20th of the total exchange per year, still small.

The biggest things that sets the atmospheric level of CO2 is the balance between the ocean and the air. CO2 dissolves into the ocean. The higher the ocean temperature, the less CO2 it can hold, and the more CO2 will be held in the atmosphere as a result. Therefore, if the ocean warms, for whatever reason, you would expect to see more CO2 in the atmosphere. This raises the interesting question, does more CO2 cause warming, or does warming cause more CO2?

Despite all of that tonnage exchanging, CO2 makes up only a tiny amount of the atmosphere. It is currently just over 400 parts-per-million. That's 0.04%. No typo. That is WAY LESS than 1%. Earth's atmosphere is mainly Nitrogen with a bit of Oxygen mixed in. Very little of anything else. Yet CO2 is vital to life.

The ppm of CO2 in the air has been reliably measured at the top of Mouna Loa in Hawaii since 1960. This is what it looks like.

Here we see a zoom on the last few years.

What is interesting is that the global pandemic, now on for over a year that ostensibly reduced economic output and hence FF burning considerable, seems not to register at all. Also, we do not see great accelerations in atmospheric CO2 corresponding to the acceleration in our use of FFs.

In fact, in the past CO2 rise has always lagged temperature rise. We can tell this by looking at ice core samples from the Antarctic. You put a big drill down and pull up a very long tube of ice. The deeper the ice, the further back in time it represents. Scientists can tell what the temperature and atmospheric CO2 was back then. And it turns out that changes in CO2 lag behind changes in temperature, throwing doubt on the claim that CO2 causes temperature to rise.

It is definitely a combination of man-made emissions, and warming oceans that pushes CO2 up, but how much is due to each is a bit of an open question (hint: it's very hard to know how much the ocean has warmed - the ocean is a very big thing and we have very few measurements of it by comparison).

4. The Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.

When you think about it, it is remarkably hard to know the average temperature all over the earth at any point in time. So difficult that it may in fact be a somewhat meaningless concept.

We can observe the temperature at any one place consistently over time if we are very, very careful. But over the whole earth? Including every square foot of land, every cubic foot of soil, every cubic foot of ocean, and every cubic foot of atmosphere, and average them all at one instant point in time? Hard. The best we have are some very rough approximations.

What makes most sense to my little brain is looking at individual well-maintained, rural weather stations over time. A good one is run in Ithaca New York, by the scientists at Cornell University.

This is a plot derived from the daily min and max temperatures recorded each day of the year. The min and max were averaged each day. Each day of the month were then averaged together to get a monthly. And then each month of the year was averaged together to get the above plot. The years from 1916-1927 had a lot of missing months so they were excluded.

The reason to choose Ithaca is because it has a long history, was very well-calibrated, well-maintained, and zealously measured throughout its history, and it's away from airports and big cities which are subject to the "Urban Heat Island" effect (air above concrete and around buildings is hotter).

So where exactly is this climate crisis? We see no net warming over the period. I know you'll say we cherry-picked, but the only thing we "cherry-picked" for was a well-maintained rural station where we could access the raw data online.

Here is another chart for North America of unadjusted data for a consistent set of stations with a long history and where no TOBS adjustment was needed. (TOBS stands for "time-of-day bias" and refers to a change in practice at some stations where the time of day at which the min and max were reset was changed at some point in the station's history - it is is unclear if TOBS has any impact at all, but it has been used to justify an adjustment that warms the present and cools the past, so I would prefer to avoid those stations impacted by it).

We see the pattern very consistent with the Ithaca data.

• The earth was warming up out of the so-called "little ice age" from 1900-1930. Of course, during that time there was very little man-made emission of CO2, and yet the warming slope is quite steep. By the way, nobody can explain that warming.
• From 1930 to 1980 there was a long period of cooling. During this period, use of FFs exploded, so that's a point against CAGW. There were even worries over the "next ice age" coming in round one of "climate catastrophe, the game".
• Form 1980 to 2000 the temperature went up, supposedly due entirely to FF usage.
• From 2000-2015 there was a "pause" in temperature rise, while FF use was still exploding.

Why "cherry-pick" North America? North America has the most extensive set of weather stations over the longest period of time, so it has the best directly measured temperature data. Also, you can still get raw unadjusted data for it. Japan and UK are pretty good also, and they also show no long-term warming when the unadjusted data is looked at in the same way. And if "Global Warming" were truly happening, it would be very, very, odd indeed if the entirety of North America was totally skipped over.

The best source of data that approximates a global average is from satellites that measure radiative emissions from near the surface across the entire earth. This has ben going on since about 1980. Here is the latest from the University of Alabama at Huntsville assembled by Profs Christie and Spencer.

We again see the rising temperatures from 1980 to 2000, the pause from 2000 to 2015, then a rise after that due to a very strong double El Nino (ocean current thing - same as in 1998) which we are just coming off of now.

So in conclusion, yes the earth has warmed since 1980 in my opinion, but it's nothing special. It was just as warm in the 1930's.

So if you say to me, but the ice caps, but the polar bears, but this, that, and the other, then hey, we agree. The earth has been warming since 1980. But is it due to man-made CO2, or is it more due to natural causes, such as what happened up to 1930 which is not explainable by man-made CO2, and what about 1930-1980 when the Earth cooled? Lots of questions. No "catastrophes".

To put global temperature in a bigger context, we can use Greenland ice core data to get a good picture of how temperature varied over the last 4000 years (with a bit of temperature station grafted onto the end in red).

We are in what is called the "Modern Warm Period". Previously there was the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and the Minoan Warm Period, all of have been written about historically, and which we can see on the ice core temperature proxy data from Greenland. Burning of FFs sure did not cause those. The cause of those is not well understood.

We can go even further back in time, and see the entire extent of the current interglacial period we are in.

This is showing us warming up from the previous glacial period (colloquially called the "ice age", but in fact the ice age is a bigger thing that we are now in). The axis is in "Years Before Present". 15,000 years ago we were deep into the glacial period. The ice was over a mile high above my hometown of Toronto. Suddenly it came to an end. The "double ending" we see here is particularly mysterious. Some believe, based on good evidence, that a big asteroid hit the earth to cause the sudden rise and then decline before the rise into the interglacial period we now enjoy.

On an even longer scale than this, we can see the glacial and interglacial periods of our current ice age. Here is the last 700,000 years.

Notice how sharp the peaks are. Those are the nice toasty warm interglacial periods in our current ice age. The long descent down seems to be more business as usual on a 100,000 year cycle. The peaks last around 10,000 years or so. We are 11,000 years into our current peak. We have a lot more to worry about regarding the next glacial period that is for sure coming than we have about any dubious global warming.

5. The increased ppm of CO2 due to FF burning directly causes the Earth to warm.

Getting back to the subject at hand, the next contention is that the warming we have seen since 1980 is directly due to man-made CO2, but does science back that up? So it doesn't look good that previous unexplained warming cannot be due to CO2, and global cooling while a lot of CO2 was being emitted cannot be explained either, but we are for sure to trust that since 1980 more man-made CO2 correlating with increasing temps is for sure due to this? Right.

The entire question about global warming centers around the temperature of the air near the surface of the earth. The overall "temperature" of the earth as seen from space is only dependent on one thing, the amount of solar energy incoming. Energy out exactly balances energy in. The near-ground temperature that we experience is the net effect of many different heat transfers and heat reservoirs.

The sun directly warms the surface of the earth without much warming the atmosphere on the way down. Clouds tend to bounce the sun's energy back out into space without warming up too much themselves. So more clouds generally mean a cooler earth (you have experienced this first hand, no doubt).

What is warmed by the sun is the top little bit of earth or of water. On land that heat conducts down into the earth where it gets slowly stored in the summer and slowly released in the winter. In the oceans that heat conducts down into the water where wind and waves and ocean convection take over to move the heat in some cases way down into the ocean where it might circulate for literally thousands of years before popping up somewhere at the surface as a warm current.

These ocean currents have a long-term impact on the temperatures we feel. There are currents such as the El Nino and the La Nina which operate on sub-decadal time scales. There there are longer time scale current such as the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). When these current decide to turn around and do their thing is very largely a chaotic and random process, and this injects a lot of random noise into the temperature record that is hard to separate out from any longer-term trends over less than a 50 year period (i.e., the entire time the earth has been recently warming).

To see this, below are four separate plots of randomly generated "pink noise" which is the sort of thing that happens with these random and chaotic ocean currents of various periodicity.

To my eye, they all look pretty similar to those temperature records that I showed you above. The point is, are you really seeing a cause-and-effect CO2 sort of thing, or does the chaotic randomness of the ocean current explain it all, and how do you separate out the one from the other?

So, heat from the sun hits the land and water and the heat is stored away to re-appear much later. On a more daily timescale, heat conducts up into the atmosphere mainly by moist and dry convection.

Dry convection is the earth heating a little parcel of air in contact with it. That little parcel gets warmer and gets lighter as a result (hot air rises). As the air rises it gives off its extra heat to its surroundings and then stops rising. This is what conducts heat up into the atmosphere and away from the ground.

The other major mechanism is moist convection or evaporation. Water that is on the ground (or on the surface of the water) is evaporated and turned into water vapour continuously. It takes a fair amount of heat energy to convert water from its liquid state to its vapour state with no accompanying rise in temperature. Once it's been evaporated and mixed in with the air, it rises because moist air is less dense than dry air. Once the moist air rises high enough where the surrounding air is colder, it releases its energy to the surrounding air and the water vapor goes back to a liquid droplet state, which is clouds. When there's too much water up there for the clouds to hold, it drops as cool rain.

Those are the two major ways of moving heat up into the atmosphere, and based on that alone you would expect a temperature change from cold up there to warmer down here that is very predictable and is called the "lapse rate" - the rate at which temperature changes with altitude, and its mainly due to the pressure being more on the surface and less high up. That is the main thing that keeps us warm at night and not boiling during the day (like on the moon).

There is one more way that heat is exchanged up into the atmosphere from the ground. It is called "radiative transfer".

Anything that is warm emits radiation. Some of that radiation is light, and we can see it (think of a red hot coal). But a lot of that radiation falls into the infrared. We can feel it against our skin. It is actually light that is too long-wave for us to see, but can heat things over a distance, even across the vacuum of space. The light from the sun that heats up the earth is mainly shorter-wave infrared radiation (SWIR). SWIR passes straight through water and CO2 and heats solid surfaces. The earth radiates heat away at a longer wavelength, called Long-Wave Infrared, or LWIR. All of the energy that hits the earth from the sun is eventually radiated back into space, a lot of it from LWIR.

LWIR typically does not travel too far off the surface of the earth before being absorbed by either water vapour or CO2 (or methane to a lesser extent). The LWIR is absorbed and heats up these molecules. These molecules both bounce into other molecules to transfer their energy, or re-emit more LWIR in all directions (up, down, and sideways).

We can compare the relative strengths of these mechanisms with reference to the following chart taken Roy Clark's The Dynamic Greenhouse Effect.

This is data taken from a sophisticated weather station in a dry part of California. The vertical axis is energy moving per unit area per unit time. Positive numbers are movements down (including down beneath the surface), and negative numbers are movement up.

• We can see the sun providing all of the energy during the daylight hours, peaking at around 900 Watts per meter squared at high noon. Offsetting that is everything else in the diagram.
• A big portion, peaking at around 250 is the subsurface flux, which moves the heat down into the earth during the day, and releases some of it back at night.
• The biggest one at around 450 is dry convection, or hot air carrying the heat away from the surface.
• Because it is dry location, latent heat (evaporation) carries relatively little away here, but it would get much bigger in a wetter place.
• Then there's the net LWIR radiative transfer, which netly transfers around 200 away from the earth. By net, it means that LWIR is both transferring energy into the earth, and the earth is transferring it out at the same time. We see the net effect here.
• We also see on this scale, the tiny impact that a 200ppm change in CO2 has. ~1.7 W/m2 (this is the change in CO2 from pre-industrial times until now'ish).

Clarke judges any contribution from a change in CO2 in the atmosphere to be negligible and to impact temperature by only a fraction of a degree when properly averaged out over the day and over the seasons.

This may fly in the face of other things you may have heard. Let me try to reconcile it for you.

There is no question that, all else being equal (key phrase that), that more CO2 in the atmosphere would increase the surface temperature of the Earth by around 1C from pre-industrial times to now. There is good physics behind this. It is computed using a simulation called MODTRAN that models a column of gas like our atmosphere, provides an energy source like the sun shining in at the top, and computes what the temperature of the gas mix near the bottom would be. The simulation assumes only radiative transfer is present, no other types of heat exchanges that we have discussed above, only radiative. When you increase the amount of CO2, MODTRAN computes that the air at the bottom of the column would get about 1C hotter as a result.

That is cut and dry science. No question there in our opinion. So if you say, "but the physics says CO2 warms the earth" I say, yes, all else being equal.

But all else is certainly not equal, and it is the biggest challenge in climate science is to compute the "Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity" (ECS). ECS is defined as the change in global surface temperature resulting from a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial times.

All else being equal, and considering ONLY radiative energy transfers, a doubling of CO2 would raise the temperature by 1.7C according to MODTRAN. If there are feedback effects that amplify this, then the net might be +5C. If, on the other hand, the feedbacks are negative, the net effect may only be +0.2C. In either case the ECS would be 5C or 0.2C.

Here is what science currently has to say about ECS.

We see that over time, scientists assessment of the ECS has been going down and down and down as the earth has not been warming catastrophically according to their expectations. If you think "the science is settled" on the key question of what is the ECS, you sure have another think coming now.

All of these estimates though are quite bogus in our opinion. They are based on models called General Circulation Models (GCM), which are similar to weather modelling but done on a much larger scale and on a longer time frame. They make all sorts of assumptions about initial conditions and simplify all manner of the problems, such as the impact of clouds, to something pretty trivial. These models also need to be calibrated based on the past. The calibrations assume that any unexplained warming since pre-industrial times has been due to CO2. So that's a big flaw, and that's why ECS has been dropping as they re-calibrate to the actual world.

In fact, taking all the heat transfers into account, not only radiative, creates a giant system with many variables of non-linear equations (equations with lots of powers and roots in them). Such systems are known to be chaotic. That is to say the answer depends very sensitively on the starting conditions. This is how a butterfly can flap its wings in Africa and you can get a hurricane in Florida as a result. The GCMs are therefore doomed to failure for this purpose, but it's very useful in advancing the art of weather prediction, which has a similar problem and is solved in similar ways.

Roy Clark's approach is to use observation from sensitive weather stations to figure out the ECS. And he thinks its 0.1C at most. We're going with that.

6. The amount of that warming is so large that it constitutes a "catastrophe" for mankind.

So we think the ECS is small, but the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (the UN-IPCC) thinks it's higher than that, around 4C. We could go on a lot about the hyper-political nature of the UN-IPCC and the dirty tricks they play to get the results the politicians want in order to keep hyping the "crisis' and to keep their funding going, but I won't bother here.

Even if it is 4C, then so what? It will stave off the next ice age for a few thousand of years. It will create more arable land. Food will grow better, and the climate will get more pleasant for us all around.

Ocean levels would indeed rise, and previously occupied places might become unlivable, but that will happen very, very, slowly, over a time period longer than the time people live in one place, so mankind will adapt.

A Danish economist called Bjorn Lomberg computed the GDP impact of the UN IPCC's ECS. He computed it to be negligible on the timescales we are talking about, and suggests there are other problems that can be solved with all the money being directed to climate change, such as child poverty, that would make a much greater impact. His latest book is False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.

Moreover, Bjorn reminds us that the "cure" would result in increased energy prices that would have a devastating effect on the poorest amongst us.

7. Extreme weather, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, draughts and fires are all getting worse as a result.

So this is an entirely false narrative and even the UN-IPCC agrees with that. As the earth has warmed since the 1980's the frequency and strength of hurricanes and tornadoes has decreased. Floods have caused more economic damage than ever before but are less severe in real terms. Draughts have not been getting more severe. Forest fires are more due to forest management practices than to very slight changes in temperature. They all seem worse because of the breathless reporting on the news channel, but if you look at actual data, it is not the case.

8. Replacing FFs by wind and solar is a practical response.

Windmills and solar panels are the most foolish reaction you can find anywhere. Countries such as Germany who have tried it have become utterly dependent on their neighbours for reliable electricity. 

And they absolutely do not cost less. If they did, you wouldn't need government subsidies to keep these things afloat.

A big problem is that with an electrical system that does not use batteries you need to instantaneously match the electricity generated with that consumed. The only reliable way to do this is with either hydro, nuclear, or fossil fuels, all three of which methods the "Greens" discard out of hand. Battery technology is nowhere near being able to keep up, and is a very eco-unfriendly technology to boot.

Here in Ontario for example, we have subsidized wind and solar. we guarantee that whenever these ventures produce any electricity we will turn down our other sources and pay them a ridiculously high fee to use theirs. Guaranteed for 20 years! It does not save us a cent, as there are frequent times when wind and solar produces nothing and so we need to build and maintain all the hydro, nuclear, and FF anyways. The incremental cost of turning up those sources a slight bit to make up for the lack of wind and solar is tiny, whereas the cost to the taxpayer of that wind and solar is astronomical by comparison. As a result, our electric bills have doubled in Ontario.

And who gets hurt most by that? Rich people who maybe pay 0.1% of their income on electricity, or poorer people where the electric bill is significant? It's f'ing evil and unscrupulous people are getting rich off of this thanks to government subsidies and crony capitalism.

And to try to spend ridiculous sums to reduce CO2 emissions when China, India, and Africa continue using them is pure folly, as the net impact of something like the Paris Accord, even if fully implemented, would be almost nothing.

The right answer is more nuclear. Our Canadian Cando reactors have proven to be a very safe design. 4th Gen nuclear is even safer, can burn the waste from old nuclear reactors, and leaves no nuclear waste of their own. They also don't emit CO2, but we consider that a bad thing. As the next ice age approaches, we will need to develop nuclear tech to keep us warm.

So what about this climate catastrophe thing? Is this a grand conspiracy to fool us? I don't believe in grand conspiracies. I believe in selfish people getting rich and powerful off lies.

I believe that the left, starting with Al Gore, have made this a huge issue to scare us with so that we will vote for them and put them into power. One is more shameless than the next, with current winner being the $75 Trillion "Green New Deal". Yeesh.

I believe that scientists have gone along with this without objecting strongly as their grant money depends on them toeing the government line. And most of them are only peripherally impacted. You can keep studying your butterfly reproduction so long as you say it is a paper about climate change's impact on butterfly reproduction. Need to say that to get the grant.

I believe the businessmen see government subsidized get rich quick schemes building wind and solar.

The weather is actually quite nice outside. Enjoy it before it takes a turn to the colder.

Paying the Price for Disrespecting my Husband

I just got a spanking from my husband. And now he says that if I show him the least little bit of disrespect during the next week, that I'll be getting another spanking...

If you're a spanking couple like us, you know the problem. You crave to spank and be spanked, for real, but gosh darned it, we're actually adults, and we don't really misbehave nearly as often as we want spankings to happen. So what's to be done?

I tried a while back instituting a Domestic Discipline Contract. It gave my husband authority to punish me when he saw fit. It had a set of standards that I wanted to hold myself to, and it asked David to punish me if I fell short. There was also some maintenance spanking thrown in: spankings for when you don't misbehave in a given week. But those didn't feel nearly as real as spankings for actually misbehaving. But the whole arrangement fell apart because I am actually a very disciplined person in real-life. I held myself to my standards and even exceeded them. So I never got spanked for real. So that was stupid. Deliberately falling short just to earn a spanking felt like a big lie to boot.

We're up at the winter cabin, just the two of us. We watched a movie yesterday. After the movie we had a little nightcap. I presented him with my little conundrum: "I wished I misbehaved more so that you could spank me more."

"Well, just be a little disrespectful towards me, and I'll teach you some respect, woman."

Ok. That was the right thing for him to say. I felt my pussy tingle and gush just a little as he said it. I visibly squeezed my thighs together.

"That excites you does it?" he asked, observing my wriggling and stroking my thigh.

"Yes," I said.

"Ok then. What if we try it for a week. Anytime you want to be reminded of your place, show a little disrespect and see what happens."

"Deal," I said. "But the week after, we'll switch, ok?"

"Deal," he said with a big smile.

"I'm a little scared," I told him.

"You should be. The slightest inkling of disrespect, and you'll find yourself across my knee with your panties at your ankles. Starting right now." He said it with a smile.

"Will it be hard?" I asked him breathlessly. Now we were playing.

"Oh yes. You're not a little girl where a little spanking is all that's needed. You need a lot more than that."

"I do," I admitted. "You'll really punish me?" I asked.

"I will. It'll be bad enough that you won't even think of disrespecting me for at least a couple of days, guaranteed."

"It's what I need."

"It's what I need, Sir," he corrected me.

"It's what I need, Sir."

"It's definitely what you need."

"Take me to bed, Sir?" I asked him.

He stood and took me by the hand and guided me up to our bedroom. We got on the bed and we undressed one another. As he knelt up I knelt low in front of him and started sucking on his cock. Very respectfully!

"Let's see if you do as good a job as your sister," he said, rubbing it in, referring to his Christmas present from her (a handie-blowie). I didn't want to be spanked right then and there, so I held my ire in check and just said, "I'll try, sir."

David lay down on his back on the bed and I started giving him a very proper blowjob. Lots of saliva, hand, and mouth action.

I could feel him and taste him getting closer. He pulled me up off of him by my hair and said, "still needs work."

Ha! I smirked to myself. He was close.

"How do you want to be fucked?" he asked me.

"Bent over pillows, sir?" I asked hopefully.

"Get them piled," he said.

Oooh. This was fun and a bit embarrassing. I built my little pillow altar in front of me, stacking three pillows. It seems like a lot, but once you get on them they smoosh down and you're happy for the extra ass-elevating height.

He made me kneel up in front of the pillows. He had me put my hands behind my head. He explored my breasts, my ass, and my pussy as I held position.

He then gave me a smack on my ass and told me to bed over the pillows. I bent forwards and draped myself across them.

When I'm lying in this position I am automatically thinking about being spanked. I wondered how strict he was going to be with me. I thought that I'd do something small tomorrow, and see if it's enough to get me spanked. I hoped it would be. I wanted to be well-mastered.

David gets behind me and starts licking my pussy. Mmmmm...  He gets me close.

"Put your fingers on your clit," he instructs me.

Alright. A bit of an admission here. As much as I'm a super-kink, this simple act still embarrasses me every time I am made to do it. I put the fingers of my left hand on my clit. I am right-handed. When I solo-masturbate the Hitachi or the dildo goes in my right hand, my left fingers my clit. I need to lift a little and squeeze my hand between the pillows and me.

"Rub it," he tells me. I start rubbing around and on my clit. His tongue is still darting around back there. He even licks my busy fingers, the perv.

"Keep going," he says as he pulls away from me and spreads my legs widely. He holds me there like that for a while, watching me rubbing my own clit from behind. I am embarrassed, but horny as hell and humping my pillows as I rubbed.

Next I feel the tip of his cock at the entrance to my pussy. I reach my fingers a bit back and touch him. He pushes into me doggy style. He begins fucking me as I continue rubbing my own clit. He slaps me on my ass.

"Are you going to respect me, woman?"

"Yes sir," I say, and rub my clit a little more intensely.

"What happens if you don't?"

"You'll... spank me... sir."

Saying the word "spank", in this position, and with this much sexual stimulation brings me close to the edge. I rip my hand back to my mouth, lick my fingers, and dive it back onto my clit.

"How will I spank you?" he asks. It's an open-ended question.

"You'll... take me across your knee, pull my panties down, and spank me on my bare bottom with your hand."

"Will it be a hard spanking, if you disrespect me?"

"Yes sir. A punishment spanking, sir."

As we're talking like this I am rubbing myself more and more intensely and he's fucking me more and more intensely and also slapping my ass and flanks as he does it. 

A punishment spanking. A real punishment spanking. If I disrespect him, it will be for real. Whether I want it or not in the moment. Whether I put up a fight or not. He will physically overpower me, strip me, and spank me until I am howling for mercy. A real... punishment... spanking... He will not stop until he believes I have been thoroughly mastered. And there will be nothing at all I will be able to do to make him stop. I will be at his complete mercy. I think I'm going to cum from this!

"Will that teach you to respect me, woman?"

"Yes sir.  But... but what if I disrespect you in front of Daddy?" Hey! Don't judge me. I'm trying to cum here.

"I'll spank you anywhere and anytime you disrespect me, girl. If you mouth off in front of your Mom and Dad, I'll put you right across my knee and give you a spanking right in front of them."

I feel extra tingles. 

"But not on my bare bottom, ok?" I prod him.

"Absolutely bare bottom, young lady. Those panties would come down, and I'd hike you up extra high so they both have a great view of their daughter getting her spanking."

"No! Daddy will see my pussy!"

"He certainly will, and your little brown hole also." As David said that I felt his thumb rub my asshole and penetrate it.

"No! Please! Not again! Please!" I yell frantically, flashing back to the acute embarrassment I felt when this actually happened to me.

"Oh yes. He'll see everything there is to see of his naughty little girl, just like he did before."

"no... No... NO... NOOOOOOO!" and I came hard, fully flashing back to being across David's knee, my pussy and bumhole exposed, spanked in front of Daddy and Mommy. And just as I came, David, came into me at the same time. Simultaneous orgasms, baby! Top that!

Sex is so mental, isn't it? I mean, you need the friction and everything, but it's the mind that orgasms, right? That's what's so nice about having a steady partner that you share everything with. If they're observant, and if they care, they know all your kinks and use them.

By mutual agreement between me and David, we are cooling any further overt friskiness around my parents, so there will not be a public spanking like that. That's become just fantasy talk now.

I knew the real game will happen in private, between the two of us. How much disrespect will he not even notice, or notice and put up with, until enough is enough and he teaches me a little respect for the man of the house. Even though we talked about just going over his knee and him using his hand, there is nothing that restricts him to just that, especially if I remain sassy during my spanking. Is something like this in my future?

Naked and strapped frantic with his belt? We'll all be finding out...

So I'm writing this Monday morning from the cabin. I was up a bit earlier than he. I padded down to the kitchen to make myself a coffee and to work on the jigsaw puzzle I started yesterday. David came down about an hour later.

"What's for breakfast?" He asked. This was my chance for a spanking, I thought.

"We have bacon if you'd like."

"Sounds great."

"Turn on the oven to 400 then," I told him.

He did that and added, "Ill turn the oven on, but I expect you to make it." He was playing also.

"Are you an invalid? I'm working on my puzzle here. You can make the breakfast for once."

"I believe that's the wife's job, missy."

"Fuck you," I said. That ought to do it!

David stormed over to me, grabbed my arm, pulled me up, and dragged me over towards the couch. "I'll teach you a little respect, woman!" He sat and pulled me across his lap.

"No! Don't you dare!"

I was wearing my PJs. He yanked the bottoms down to my knees and started spanking my bare backside.

"No! Please!" I begged. The spanks were hard from the very first. After what was somewhere around 100 spanks my bottom was getting very sore. "I'm sorry!" I wailed. "I'll make your breakfast, Sir! I'll make your breakfast!"

David stopped spanking me and lay his big hard hand on my hot bottom. "Have you learned your lesson?"

"Yes Sir..."

"Go make me my breakfast now, woman."

"Yes Sir," I said as I stood up with my PJs at my ankles, rubbing my sore bottom, my waxed slit on display.

"Give me your PJ bottoms." Ohhhh. I kicked them off and handed them to him. He took them and said, "you'll get these back after breakfast is made and served. Any more disrespect from you today and you'll get the paddle."

"Yes sir."

I walked over to the kitchen, my bare red buns on display to him. I got the bacon ready on a baking tray and slipped it into the pre-heated oven. I made some toast. I got out some lettuce, tomatoes and avocado and sliced them. I set the table and placed everything down nicely. I got out the mayo and put that on the table. I collected the toast and put that down and covered it. The bacon was done so I put that on a plate and served it. I put out two glasses of OJ and made David a double espresso.

As soon as all that was done I went over to David and said, "your breakfast is ready, Sir."

David stood up and inspected. I stood there nervously, without any pants. David handed me my PJ bottoms. "Good girl," he said. I put them on and we sat to ate. No mention was made of my spanking or our little game. We were just getting started, after all.

But you know what? Yes it was a game and everything. But I felt a certain happy subservience as I ate breakfast sitting on my sore butt, watching David laying into his big BLT sandwich, and felt proud that my man tolerated no lip from his mouthy wife.

I am still contemplating if I'm going to disrespect him again today. He promised me a paddling if I did, and he won't go easy on me assuming I'm asking for an escalation. I don't think I can take that again today. He'll get my full respect the rest of the day. But tomorrow is another day... 😈

Porn Addiction and Guilt

On the subject of things I probably have no business writing about, I thought I'd tackle porn addiction and feelings of guilt while using porn, and feelings of guilt about our own sexuality.

I know there is a big "no fap" movement out there. A lot of people feel they have been overdoing it on the porn. I wonder if it's a symptom, or a disease, or nothing at all?

Certainly porn has at no time in the history of humanity been so ridiculously and readily available. And there are kids growing up being exposed to all manor of porn from a very young age, and this is a brand new thing and we don't know the developmental effects. We imagine it can't be good. I am not one of these gradualists who think that Grandad railed against that new fangled Television and what it was doing to kids' brains, and this is just the latest iteration of it. I really don't think so. What we're seeing with social media and porn is in a whole different league.

Ironic that I'm writing this, as I am absolutely a creator and purveyor of porn. Do I feel any guilt at all about that in light of what's going on? I do not.

It's a challenging time to be growing up. There are very few stable things to hold onto. Not the family unit in many cases, not the Church, not the government, not the schools, not the media. Trust nobody. Uncle Frank is a racist. School is useless. Authority figures are a joke.

We have social media and the interweb instead.

Kids are not naive. They know that most of what they read there is fake. They surf it like the waves on the ocean. Yes they have short attention spans, but they are amazing multi-taskers. They can pull on a thread from a Tweet, surf three different sites in less than a minute, and get to their own sense of what may or may not be true so quickly. They may not find "the truth", but they sure have good bullshit detectors. Porn is just part of that landscape they surf.

Will porn ruin them for "real relationships"? I don't think so. A real human partner is like super 3D ultra-high-def super-sensormatic porn. What's not to like about that? They do not expect real partners to act like porn actors. They know the stuff they see on porn is made up shit. As I said, they have real good bullshit detectors.

Porn allows them to discover their true sexuality early on. Are they cis or gay or bi? They'll find out fast with porn. What are their fantasies? Are they into BDSM? And if so, what flavour? They'll find out fast with porn.

I have a number of young men who contact me. If they are underage, I remind them about that super-secure warning banner on their way into my site, and suggest they might enjoy http://disney.com instead. Sometimes I become their Mom a bit (not the kinky kind) and give them some life advice when they ask.

A lot of both young and older men have trouble bridging from their fantasy life into real-life.

Some feel really messed up that they have the fantasies that they do, and that they can't keep away from material like mine.  I've seen fans swear it off completely, only to come crawling back a few months or even a few years later, tails between their legs.

Guys. It's OK. It's ok to fantasize about shit. Even very, very dark shit. Keep it real and gentle and consensual and rough when she wants it in the real world, and all is cool. Have you fantasized about raping a girl? As a victim of rape, I can tell you nothing about it in the real world is at all cool. It messed me up for years. I'm still a bit messed up because of it. But I still fantasize about it. I fantasize about being taken by force, belt whipped, tied up, and raped in every hole. I fantasize about getting wet and my abuser laughing at my turn on. It's my demons being exercised and exorcised. I fantasize about raping asshole guys. Macho guys who absolutely don't want it. I don't even care if they get excited. The limper their cocks the better as far as I'm concerned. Stripped under gunpoint. Tied down to a horse. Whipped until they are howling with pain. Raped with my biggest strap-on dildo in their boy holes. If they don't please me by moaning like a horny little bitch while they take it, well that's what the big cutters are for...

Oh dear. Did I say that aloud?

It's fantasy. It's cool. Don't act it out unless with a consenting partner, and then be safe. (and ps, you can have them at the ready, but don't ever use those big cutters :-)

A lot of guys are super distressed about wanting to be submissive to a woman. Or not being transgender but wanting to be "made to" dress like a woman, or take it like a woman. Guys, it's all cool. You are the interesting people. I'm reminded of the scene in Annie Hall.

Woody: You look like a very happy couple. Are you?
Her: Yeah.
Woody: So how do you account for it?
Her: Ahhh, I'm very shallow and empty, and have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Him: And I'm exactly the same way.

But some of these guys, they really want a partner like me. I counsel them not to worry about it so much. Don't obsess on finding a girl who exactly matches their kink. Find a nice girl. Find a girl they feel comfortable with, who is fun, who they can explore with. Had they hooked up with me when I was young, I would not have been into BDSM at all, and look what a prodigy I turned into! Luck of the draw.

A lot of men wind up with pretty vanilla wives. Hey, BDSM is not for everybody. The most common thing is that they try a bit with their partners, but they sense their partners are not into it, and they back off as a result. I think the woman in the relationship should be more understanding and put out more than that, but hey, whatever. A life partnership is about a lot more than just kink.

And that's where I come in. I was lucky enough to find my kinkmate in my husband. Many don't. So I post stuff on here that allows (mainly men) to live vicariously through our relationship. Don't get me wrong. that is not the purpose of this blog. I write because I enjoy writing. I write to sort out my feelings on things. I write for the great interactions I get. I write because I'm a little attention whore. I admit it all! But... there is this beneficial side effect, so that's cool.

I have posted some education stuff along the way, such as Advice for Wives and Beating your man properly, some of my most-visited pages. But the most important thing is providing an outlet for men of all ages to jerk off to my material.

And honestly, that is my biggest kick imagining the men out there rubbing their hard cocks and spurting in front of their computers or tablets, making a sticky, gooey, white mess. Mostly they are hiding it from their wives or girlfriends. Dirty little cheaters! I feel like a dirty whore of a mistress for them. It turns me on. It's why I got into posting some pictures of myself, even though when I started off I swore I would never, ever, ever do that. I couldn't resist. I even succumbed to the temptation of posting a couple of videos. I am your little exhibitionist whore, aren't I?

But what turns me on most is painting a word picture for you. Trying to describe the emotional richness of a situation beyond what a photo could convey. Finding pics off the web that match my feelings and including those for a visual stim. I know you guys love the words, but also like to fixate on a visual stim to get off.

More than anything else, this constant need to generate new source material is what causes me to be so adventurous out there with my husband. Unthinkable to return from a vacation without some titillating story to tell you. So I wanted to give you all a big thank you from me for keeping my kinky sex life so adventurous over the years.

So please, young or old, male or female, enjoy my blog.

And guys, please, please remember my rule: if you cum while looking at my blog, you eat it, and you make damned sure you get every last drop down the hatch you little fuckers, or else...

;-)

David Came Early for Christmas

It's become a bit of an on again off again tradition that David gets a "sexual treat" from my sister some Christmases. Christmas came a bit early this year for David. Or rather, David came a bit early for Christmas!

The tradition sort of started way back in 2011. It was just before Christmas that I told my sister about this new spanking thing we had gotten into. On Christmas Eve, in front of the whole family, she gave him a set of wooden spoons. She let me know privately that she would be happy to come over and use them on his bum if that was what we wanted. We did!

You have to understand, my sister is one of the kinkier people we know. She used to model fetish clothes in San Francisco and was exposed to a lot of alternative lifestyles. In her personal life she's a lesbian and likes sexually dominating her serial girlfriends.

Over time the Christmas spanking evolved into a Christmas hand job combined with a spanking. The first time she did it with yellow rubber kitchen gloves, dishwasher detergent, and into the kitchen sink with a finger up his ass!

Sister "Milks" Husband

As a confirmed lesbo, she approaches inducing these orgasms in my husband in a very clinical sort of way. She says it amuses her and brings back memories, and seems like a nice gift he enjoys. Sue was very popular in high school and college, had not come out yet, and gave lots of boys handjobs and sometimes blowjobs to avoid having to give anything more. Sue considered herself talented at getting guys off in record time.

Sue was over for dinner on the weekend. She is part of our relatively small circle along with my Mom and Dad. My younger brother is out of town, and my younger sister sees Mom and Dad separately from us.

I guess Sue was bored with pandemic (she is living alone right now) because she asked if it was ok if she gave David his Christmas gift early this year? I'm sure david's cock immediately sprang to life, because he knew what that would likely entail.

"What's he getting this year?" I asked coquettishly.

Sue answered, "I thought, a little combo handjob and blowjob, and you spank him after while I watch, if that's ok with you?"

Blowjob was bit of an escalation of the Christmas tradition. She had given him one once before, not entirely with my permission in advance, and she had made a subby girlfriend of hers with a fantasy along those lines (being "made to" suck a boy's cock by a girl).

"That's fine by me," I answered. I've always been of the mind that so long as it's me giving the ok, he deserves treats from other girls, my sister included.

I told David we would clear the table, and he should go upstairs and make himself pretty for us. "Come back down in just your panties after you've cleaned yourself up."

My husband knows that he should make sure his ass is cleaned out just in case anal will be in play, and shower and scrub with soap and water until squeaky clean.

We were finished up and in the living room when david sheepishly appeared wearing a favourite pink lacy panty. We had acquired it on a memorable shopping expedition described in detail in Chapter 7, Panty Shopping, of my first ebook

The first half of the chapter is exactly as it happened, the part after checking out is pure fantasy.

It was already apparent he had an erection. "I think he's excited for his Christmas present," I told Sue, referring to his tented panty.

Sue sat on one side of the 3-seater couch and patted the seat in the middle beside her. "Come here," she said. David went and sat there and I excitedly sat on the other end of the couch so David was between us. This was going to be fun, I thought. Life is dull without these brief spurts of excitement, especially now. I was grateful.

Sue gingerly pulled the waistband of his panty around his hard cock and placed it under his balls. She reached with her hand and started gently stroking him. "Is that nice?" she asked.

"Yes Ma'am," he said. Good boy.

She leaned over and let a big glob of saliva out of her mouth directly onto his cock. Then she rubbed that in. David moaned audibly.

"May I put you in my mouth?" she asked David.

David turned and looked at me.

"You may say yes," I told him, "but if you do, you're getting the strap from me afterwards." David nodded his head up and down. He knew that. He turned to Sue and said, "Yes please, Ma'am."

You see, I allow him sexual favours from other women, but there is always a penalty he owes me afterwards. It's to remind him who owns his ass.

Sue pushed her hair back over her shoulder and bent down to engulf my husband's dick in her mouth.

She started bobbing up and down on his cock as she used her hand on his shaft in a rhythmic way. I reached over and stroked my husband's inner thighs and balls as she did that. She put her mouth all the way down right to the root and stayed there for a few seconds, then came up for air.

"In my mouth or my hand?" she asked as she continued rubbing him.

David again looked over at me. He wanted the mouth, I knew. "You can ask for Sue's mouth if you like, but then I'll have to add the Delrin cane."

"In your hand, please, Ma'am," he told Sue. Ha ha! He wanted no part of that Delrin cane!

"Chicken!" Sue said and continued mouth and hand. What if she made him cum in her mouth? Would he still get the cane? I thought yes.

But it was just to get him off quicker, when he got near she took her mouth off him and continued vigorously with her hand until he shot his load onto his tummy.

"Merry Christmas," she said as he spurted the remnants of his white goo.

"I'll get the strap," I said, going upstairs to fetch the two-tailed heavy leather tawse I favour.

By the time I got back, Sue was cleaning David off with a washcloth.

"Over the arm of the sofa," I told him. Sue put a clean dry dish towel there, and David groaned and moved  into position. I pulled his panty farther down his legs towards his ankles and stroked his bare bum with my hand saying, "you know I allow that from other women, sweety, but you have to pay the price after."

"Yes Ma'am," he agreed, knowing a post-orgasm strapping was going to be hard to take.

I lifted the strap and whipped it down across both cheeks. I went only midling hard but it seemed to leave an impression nonetheless. I confined my strokes to his ass, but made them harder and harder. I gave him about fifty in total, getting them really hard towards the end with a full body swing and wrist snap. His poor bum was very strap-marked.

Sue stood there watching him catch his strapping with a little smirk on her face. I think Sue really likes it that I do this to him afterwards.

After some particularly hard ones, with david yelping and whimpering, Sue encouraged him, "come on, take it like a man," she said.

"You listen to Sue," I said, "If you can't take it like a man, I'll put on my strap-on and make you take it like a woman," I warned.

"No, please!" he begged, but I knew he wanted it, and especially in front of Sue, my little shame slut.

"There we go," I said after I gave him the last stroke."What do you think Sue, did he take it like a man?"

Sue looked really dubious, "I don't know," she said, "there was an awful lot of squealing and kicking of legs..." Sue had sealed his fate.

"I'll get my strap-on," I said, going upstairs to put the tawse back and to prepare.

David told me afterwards that Sue teased him while I was gone about havng to "take it like a woman."

I put on some tights below and a T-shirt above and strapped on his midsized purple dildo.

I went back downstairs and Sue commented, "you're in for it now!"

I had his lube with me and went to collect a few kitchen paper towels. I removed his panty, spread his legs and lubed his butthole and then my dildo. His height was just about right over the arm of the sofa, with a bit of squatting down. I played the tip of the dildo around at the entrance to his ass.

"Beg me for the cock," I demanded. I wanted him to say it in front of Sue.

"Please, Ma'am, may I have your cock inside of me."

"Very good!" said Sue gleefully with a little clap.

I shoved it in quickly and David spasmed involuntarily at the sudden intrusion beyond his tight anal sphincter. I began fucking him slowly and then increasing the speed and the depth of the thrusts.

"As for it harder," I told him.

"Oh no! Oh Please! Oh Please give it it to me harderrrrrrr," he said.

"Oh, she likes it hard, does she?" said my sister.

"Oh yeah," I answered, "this little slut loves a good hard ass fucking. Tell Sue how much you love it," I said as I continued fucking him.

"I love it! I love it!" he was forced to say.

"I can't hear you," I said.

"I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT!" he shouted out as I banged his ass hard.

"What do you love?"

"I LOVE YOUR HARD COCK UP MY ASS, MA'AM!"

"Yes you do, you little tramp," I said as I slowed down and then pulled out, quickly wrapping the dildo in paper towels, though there was little mess.

"Stay there," I told him as I went into the kitchen to carefully remove my dildo and strap-on harness and put the dildo into the kitchen sink.

I came back with some more paper towels and wiped his ass for him. "Gross," I commented as the towel came back brown and lubey. I showed it to Sue.

"Need more fiber in your diet," she told him.

I finished cleaning him up and told him, "put your panties back on, empty and load the dishwasher, and clean off your dildo. Then go up to our bedroom and wait for me. You're on tongue duty tonight, and I better get three good ones or that cane IS coming out."

"Yes Ma'am!" David said.

"Nice!" said Sue.

After an orgasm he always needs extra motivation to do a proper job sexing me.

"Before you go," I added, "get down on your hands and knees, crawl over to Sue, kiss her feet, and say 'thank you Goddess.'"

David went over to Sue, buck naked, crawling on hands and knees, and bent submissively in front of her feet.

He planted a gently kiss on each of her feet and said "Thank you for my Christmas gift, Goddess."

"You should thank your wife, also," Sue said.

David immediately crawled over to me, and kissed my feet in the same way, and repeated, "Thank you, Goddess".

"Was you Christmas gift worth it?" I asked him.

"Yes Ma'am!" he said enthusiastically.

Boys will be boys.

COVID-19 Asymptomatic Transmission

WARNING: IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY NON-MAINSTREAM VIEWS AROUND COVID-19, DO NOT READ THIS BLOG!

Before I go off into my somewhat non-mainstream views, let me first say what I DO believe about COVID-19

• A respiratory corona-virus related to SARS, MERS, and common colds, originated in Wuhan China and spread very quickly around the world.
• The virus was most deadly for the elderly and people with certain co-morbidities, exceeding a 10% case fatality rate, which is dreadful. This has resulted in considerable excess deaths around the world.
• People at greatest risk should absolutely take the new vaccination.

Early on in the pandemic, this notion of "asymptomatic spread" first appeared. I recall at the time thinking that didn't make much sense. These respiratory viruses are spread by droplets that come from coughs and sneezes. In fact, the reason we cough and sneeze when we get this type of virus is precisely to spread it. From a virus evolutionary point-of-view, that is the purpose of inducing coughing and sneezing, to better spread itself. So I was initially quite skeptical that this virus somehow spread effectively when a person has the virus but has no symptoms of having the virus (is "asymptomatic"). My common-sense bullshit meter was tingling, but who knows?

In fact, I was even skeptical if a person can properly said to "have" the virus if they have no symptoms. That flew in the face of standard medical practice. In general a "case" has always in the past required symptoms of some sort. In this instance, we said that if a PCR test returned positive, that was called a "case" even with no symptoms. We'll come back to this later.

I was relieved when on June 8, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove the Technical Lead for the COVID-19 response at the World Health Organization said asymptomatic spread was "very rare", in accordance with all experience of such viruses in the past. Here is a clip from the news conference where she says that.

She is saying that it is very rare for an asymptomatic transmission person to transmit the disease. She is asking for quarantine and contact-tracing for symptomatic individuals as a top priority.

A furor arose as a result of her statements, and she pseudo-walked the statement back, saying it was based on relatively few studies (4 peer-reviewed), included some unpublished information she had received from expert-briefings from member countries, and that it did not include "computer models" that concluded a wide-range of possible numbers for asymptomatic transmission, up to about 40%. It was clear however, that her judgment remains that it is rare. If you want to hear her "walk-back", you can find it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RcJ2yyNkUk&t.

I revisit this because there has been a new, major peer-reviewed study published out of Wuhan, China, in Nature on Nov 20, 2020 that has recently come to my attention: Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China. Of course, take anything out of China with a grain of salt. And in fact, this paper made the point that Wuhan is "good to go" and "open for business" (using scientific jargon) - and so we are to infer China as a whole as well, so there is a political point. But the interesting result is that out of 10,000,000 people tested they identified no symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases. The did contact tracing on the 300 asymtomatic cases out to an additional 1174 close contacts, and found no transmission to any of them. The number of cycles of the PCR test run on the 300 was around Ct=35 with a range as low as 30 and as high as 39. I'll get back to the significance of this later as well.

This is strong evidence that, in the real world, people who test positive for COVID-19 in a PCR test DO NOT transmit the disease. And that is sort of, yeah, duh. As Jeff Tucker writing about this study in Asymtomatic Spread Revisited re-quoted himself from June as saying:

What this suggests, of course, is that there is nothing mysteriously magical or insidious about this new virus. It behaves like the viruses that scientists have been studying for one hundred years. What we do with a normal virus is be careful around others when we have symptoms. We don’t cough and sneeze on people and generally stay home if we are sick. That’s how it’s always been. You don’t need lockdown to achieve that; you just proceed with life as normal, treating the sick and otherwise not disrupting life.

I make this point in the context of lockdowns causing huge negative health and social outcomes. Increases in suicides, un-diagnosed and missed medical treatments causing death, increases in mental health issues and drug addictions, increases in incidences of domestic violence, people losing their livelihoods and being driven into poverty.

On to the question of the COVID-19 PCR tests. I previously covered this a bit, but let me restate in the context of this information about lack of spread from asymptomatic cases.

DNA (Deoxryboynucleic Acid) is the blueprint for life.

It is a spiraled double-stranded chain of nucleic acid made up by assembling base-pairs in a certain order. The bases are named A, C, T, and G. The ordering of these create chemical factories that are the body's instructions on how to produce proteins inside the cell. The proteins then go on to regulate all aspects of how we develop and operate as humans. Identical DNA is contained inside all our cells, and comprise a unique sequence of 3 billion of these base pairs for each of us.

DNA replicates by splitting the pair of strands into two single strands. Once split, only the right complementary molecule can bind to the site of the split. All the building blocks are floating around loosely and those that can bind do bind, and that way you get back to having two identical double-helix strands.

RNA (rybonucelic acid) is a close relative of DNA. DNA splits and repairs, constructing an RNA strand in the process which then leaves the nucleus of the cell and goes out into the cell to manufacture the proteins. RNA is made of basically the same stuff as DNA, but has only a single strand. An RNA molecule can reproduce in a way similar to DNA, by attracting complimentary bases and then splitting into two RNA strands. The genetic material of viruses is in fact RNA bundled inside a little delivery capsule made of proteins. It cannot reproduce outside of cells, but must bind to a cell and inject its RNA into a cell. Inside the cell, the RNA finds a fertile ground to reproduce itself, eventually killing the cell and bursting out with multiple copies of itself.

This brings us to the PCR

The initials "PCR" stands for "Polymerase Chain Reaction". DNA Polymerase is an enzyme that can bind to DNA strands and cause them to replicate. the PCR test contains a custom-made enzyme that can cause a matching fragment of DNA to replicate if it is present. This is done over and over again to amplify that little bit of DNA, in the process binding molecules that fluoresce to that DNA segment. Once enough of that DNA is made, the light from the fluorescence can be detected. The number of cycles of replication needed to achieve that is denoted by Ct, the cycle threshold. If that can be done after relatively few cycles, there was lots of that DNA present. If after midling many, then there was just a few. If you run it enough times, you will always find the thing being looked for. PCR was initially used for forensic testing of DNA by law enforcement. You used DNA taken from the suspect to create a PCR test. you then run the PCR test against a sample found on the crime scene.

The PCR test was invented in the 1990s by a wild and crazy pot-smoking, LSD-experimenting, surfer named Kary Mullis who eventually won the Nobel Prize for it. He was on the OJ Simpson trial team. He wrote a book about his exploits

Here is Kary Mullus in 1993 talking about the PCR test in the context of detecting the HIV virus.

With PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody, it starts making you believe in the sort of Buddhist notion that everything is contained in everything else. Because if you can amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure, which PCR can do, then there's just very few molecules that you don't have at least one single one of in your body, ok? So that can be thought of as a misuse of PCR just to claim that it's meaningful.

Mullis was no fan of Fauci. Here he is commenting on him regarding his involvement in the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Kary Mullis died suddenly in August, 2019, just prior to CORONA-19 hitting, unfortunately.

In many jurisdictions, in Ontario for example, you can be said to test positive up to Ct=45. That is universally regarded as too high! Here is a little chart that explains why.

The red line shows how a typical COVID-19 viral load proceeds in a patient exposed to the virus. For a while it is nothing, then it very suddenly spikes. The body is very, very good at fighting off things like this, and once the immune system kicks in it rapidly drops the viral load. You would be considered asymptomatic on either side of that spike (before day 4 and after day 9).

The dotted blue lines show at what Ct a COVID-19 PCR test detects a viral load. It shows that with a Ct=25, you're pretty safe, but juice it to Ct=30 to be extra safe. Ct=35 is overkill (the difference between 30 and 35 cannot even be seen on this scale). This is covered in the following video from Professor Michael Mina, MD, Ph.D.Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Immunology, and Infectious Diseases at Harvard. A pretty trusted source in my opinion.

Here is another graphic that demonstrates how this stuff is known. You run a PCR test and see how many cycles it takes to hit. You also attempt to culture the sample to grow the virus. This tells you fairly definitively if there is any live virus. If no live virus, you are not infectious.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.05.20168963v1

 

After 30, it's very rare. Below 27 it's safe to say you have live virus and should be quarantined.

Earlier studies out of Massachusetts, New York, and Nevada carried out in July showed that up to 90% of people testing PCR-positive for COVID-19 carried barely any traces of the virus. That was covered by the New York Times in late August: Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn't Be.

In an unusual move, the WHO on Dec 14 released a memo saying the Ct values should be checked to ensure we are not getting overly many false positives:  https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users. That's as official as it gets.

So what am I saying? I am saying that the PCR tests are overly sensitive, and a very significant number of people are testing positive that are not at all infectious. Therefore end lockdowns and mask mandates. They're scientifically dumb and have extremely bad side effects, both health and economic. Focus on quarantining the ill as we have done forever, and make a special effort to protect the elderly who are at particularly high risk.

Trust the properly interpreted science, not the politicians. Politicians, mainstream media, and social media are outdoing one another with doom porn to get virtue points. Safe to ignore.