Robert Walker BSc, fact checker for scared people Profile picture
Our voluntary fact checkers on Facebook Group "Doomsday Debunked" can help you if scared. Clickbait can impact mental health. @DoomsdayDebunks@mastodon.world
Nov 30 35 tweets 12 min read
BLOG: Sky News' military analyst, Sean Bell to young kids:

“we are NOT on the verge of World War 3” and

“we are NOT about to have a nuclear confrontation”

READ HERE: robertinventor.substack.com/p/sky-news-mil… Video here

Transcript of Sean Bell's answers to two of the kids' questions, see graphic: youtube.com/embed/eDkfX17K…    TRANSCRIPT:      Rosie: How likely is it that there will be a World War 3?      [USING SKY NEWS’ WRITTEN SUMMARIES of the questions]      "The short answer is we are not on the verge of World War 3.      I served on the military for 35 years. We were worried about the former Soviet Union and Russia. But actually Russia has struggled against Ukraine.      It's lost a load of tanks and fighter jets and frankly it's had a real mauling at the hands of Ukraine. And therefore it is very very unlikely that Russia will be in any fit state to attack anybody else any time soon.      Leo: Pre...
Oct 24 11 tweets 4 min read
SHORT DEBUNK Trump if elected CAN'T use the military as soldiers on US soil
- only as extra National Guards, or relief workers (as for hurricanes)

doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Trump_if_… SHORT DEBUNK: Why NATO would hardly change if Trump is elected president and ignores all the US commitment to NATO
- and Europe is already well on its way to taking over funding to Ukraine

SEE: doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Why_NATO_…
Sep 26 5 tweets 2 min read
BLOG: Dare to Hope
- Climate Restoration
- Three ways to get CO2 levels back to pre-industrial 300 ppm by 2050
- potentially pay for themselves
- many more ways to remove CO2 in IPCC AR6 chapters 7 and 12
See: robertinventor.substack.com/p/dare-to-hope…    Many ways to do carbon dioxide removal      - might need these in 2nd half of century      to stay at zero emissions once we get there      Cross-Chapter Box 8, Figure 1: Carbon Dioxide Removal taxonomy  . Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change  AR6 / WG3. I wrote this blog post on Quora originally. Updated it and shared on my substack because so many seem completely unaware of AR6 / WG3 / Chapter 7 and Chapter 12 - even sometimes write articles on the topic of carbon sequestration that show they never so much as saw this figure.
Jul 8 14 tweets 6 min read
If worried about project 2025:

BLOG: Far right Republican Project 2025 is mostly an illegal fantasy - most of it can’t be done at all - “Schedule F” would face legal challenges and likely be struck down
CLICK HERE TO READ:

Screenshot of first page. doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Far_right…
Image 2/ This is impossible. I 'll do a new post when I get time. Most things require new laws and they can't get a far right majority in either house. Schedule F is the main executive decision option. If he tries again it is likely shot down as illegal. Meanwhile short thread.
Jun 15 25 tweets 11 min read
1/n Yes we ARE headed for 1.7°C if countries keep to announced pledges
- most make realistic pledges and achieve or overachieve
- 77% of IPCC authors CAN be wrong if it is the remaining 23% who study how countries translate pledges into action

See BLOG: robertinventor.substack.com/p/yes-we-are-h…
    TEXT ON GRAPHIC      As technology improves we expect it to be EASIER to achieve these pledges and improve on them.      APS [Announced Pledges Scenario]      Most of these pledges are      - economically feasible      - from countries that historically equal or exceed pledges.      The 1.7°C scenario assumes countries achieve their announced pledges.      Why do so many say 1.7°C is impossible?      It can't be, by definition.      Highlighted text: "In the Announced Pledges Scenario (APS), the temperature rise in 2100 is 1.7 °C"      This graphic is from the latest IEA repor... 2/ About why climate scientists often are so pessimistic about action on climate change.
- hardly any study the economic models
- IPCC / AR6 had a cut off date just before the COP26 net zero pledges
- so couldn't evaluate the feasibility of India / China's net zero plans.     Text on graphic: IPCC / AR6 cut-off date was before the net zero pledges of India and China.      More important figure : 23% of climate scientists expect a rise of 2 C or less      Less than 10% of IPCC scientists study the economics of climate change and Integrated Assessment Models use older simpler economic methods
Oct 3, 2022 11 tweets 8 min read
@GerogeBush6 @mikestabile 1/ This is an inaccurate summary. It is about exceptions to the law not overturning it. There are many exceptions already itif.org/publications/2…
This case is specifically about how YouTube recommends videos to users (continues) @GerogeBush6 @mikestabile 2/n The case is about whether Google is liable if its algorithm recommends illegal content to users. It is NOT liable for hosting user generated illegal content - that's established. Video summary.
c-span.org/video/?c503199…
Oct 3, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
1/4 Many people are misreading what Putin said in his annexation speech. He did NOT say Hiroshima and Nagasaki create a precedent for the world to use nukes today

- that would be a very radical
- that would reverse all Russian nuclear policy for decades. 2/4 It is very clear in context that Putin said
- the Allied carpet bombing in WW2 in Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne
- set a precedent for the use of the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

They clip the video just before the second paragraph which makes that clear.
Oct 1, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read
Putin speech misleadingly clipped
- said nukes against civilians are BAD
- did NOT say bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a precedent for Russia to follow
- said US / UK used carpet bombing in Germany as a precedent
- for nuclear bombs in Japan
debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Putin-speech-m… ImageImage I don't speak Russian. But this is based on the official Kremlin translation into English. That section of the speech is always clipped just before the next bit which makes it clear he is talking about USA using carpet bombing in Germany as a precedent for nuclear bombs in Japan.
Sep 21, 2022 12 tweets 5 min read
Reminder you can't use a nuke to win wars. Image For Putin to try to use a nuke to stop Ukraine from doing its counteroffensive is like trying to use a cannon ball to stop midges that are already biting you. debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Russia-can-t-w… Image
Aug 13, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read
Short explanation of how a pandemic spreads and how you can stop it by breaking chains of transmission without stopping all the cases. First this is how it spreads. In this toy pandemic each person infects exactly 2 others. Needs to infect at least 1 other for a pandemic. Most diseases that jump to humans stop themselves. In this toy outbreak only one person in 2 infects anyone else and infects exactly one other. Starting with 4 infected, after 2 steps they infect 7 and that's the outbreak over.
Aug 9, 2022 12 tweets 4 min read
🧵The sun is not getting hotter or whiter, can’t go supernova (wrong kind of star) and can’t do a superflare debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/The-sun-is-not…

It's actually cooling right now temporarily. People remember the sun as yellow from their childhood but it's actually white and always has been. You notice that when it's behind clouds, a yellow sun would look yellow behind clouds too.
Aug 6, 2022 24 tweets 9 min read
Yes we are headed for 1.8 C - for countries that peak in the 2020s it’s natural to plateau before falling so their zero emissions goals are credible - but if they can fall earlier that’s great! debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Yes-we-are-hea… If China peaks before 2030 and US halves by 2030 they will be at identical emissions per capita.

China CAN halve emissions by 2030 but it's a far larger challenge than for the US.
Aug 6, 2022 28 tweets 15 min read
#positivenewsclimate China continues to add more renewables each year than it did the previous year, since 2019 - world leader on renewables

debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/positivenewscl… Image What I'm doing is postive framing. Not rosy tinted glasses. We need stories about TRUE good things happening and positive things to motivate us to do those positive things ourselves, at least most people do.
debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/How-to-motivat… Image
Aug 4, 2022 46 tweets 22 min read
“We focus on keeping people safe during these displays, instead of panicking over proclamations of full war, which would require months to prepare…
Communist officials are encouraged to issue violent threats, but not expected to follow through…

So no, China won’t launch WWIII” Image 🧵That's by Wen Lii (@wen1949) director of Matsu office, a tiny island archeapelago which belongs to Taiwan, 20 km from mainland China. Tourists vist it for its "blue tears" bioluminescence.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E7%…
See:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsu_Isl…
Thread here:
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1555096… ImageImageImageImage
Aug 3, 2022 15 tweets 10 min read
🧵about this story which is panicking many of those I help with my voluntary fact checking of scary stories.

Please don't be scared by it.

- it hit the BBC TV news, and mainstream media but it is ultra low quality research with many knowledge gaps. 1/12 (will add to this later) Image 1. The authors can't have read IPCC AR6 / WG1 / Ch 7

At least they don't cite or discuss this chapter.

Should be central to discussions of what IPCC say about sudden warming.

IPCC says "virtually certain" this can't happen.

Find out more in my:
debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/We-can-t-have-… 2/12 Image
Jun 20, 2022 9 tweets 6 min read
@Familyofivefan3 Okay he is talking about this result. Reserchers who searched through temperature / humidity records of numerous weather stations, most never got even close to 35 C wet bulb. But a few briefly for a few days did. Hot places near coast, when moist air came in from the sea. 1/n @Familyofivefan3 This is one of those places Ras al-Khaimah, in the UAE between the Persian gulf and gulf of Oman - when there were hot humid winds from both seas blowing inland into the city. 2/n
Jan 22, 2022 5 tweets 6 min read
@jpsalvesen @aria606 @diana_kayser @hjelle_brian This may be relevant. Measles seems to have arisen in the 6th century BCE back when big cities were first developed, related to rhinderpest in cattle. Perhaps it was the first zoonotic transfer to benefit from high transmission in enclosed environments? ph.ucla.edu/news/press-rel… @jpsalvesen @aria606 @diana_kayser @hjelle_brian If so, would still need to explain why SARS-CoV2 is the first coronavirus to evolve in this way, as the 3 -pre-existing ones all jumped long after the 1st big cities (229E and NL63 diverged from common ancestor jumped around 1200). science20.com/robert_walker/…
Jan 22, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
WHO live Q/A on vaccines - on long term side effects.

1. > 100 years experience on how vaccines stimulate your own immune system to protect you when you encounter the disease.
2. None of our vaccines has a long term side effect not picked up in short term 3. Most are based on platforms used for other vaccines.
4. Though mRNA is a new platform, we know a lot about the mRNA approach - no hypothetical way to have a long term effect.
Listen / watch here for:
Dec 31, 2021 23 tweets 21 min read
@AvreddyReddy @davidsirota 1. humans have intermediate levels of diversity of both types of DNA. Graphic from: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Narwhal and brown hyena have very low genetic diversity. The brown hyena is rare but not breeding itself out of existence.
newscientist.com/article/220128… @AvreddyReddy @davidsirota What species need is to preserve enough genetic diversity to deal with the situations they encounter. Humans have that. Example, developed lactose tolerance when we kept cows for milk, butter and cheese. dairyreporter.com/Article/2007/0… /2
Dec 16, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
IMHO our vaccine doses in the UK should be stockpiled in the arms of people in Africa through batch swapping with COVAX and we should be operating "just in time" with enough doses stockpiles to deal with short term delivery glitches only. Graphic from: ourworldindata.org/explorers/coro… We can't run short of vaccines in UK, 150 days supply at a million a day, still getting new vaccines supplied to us top priority, 5 million last week. That's great!

But Africa & COVAX waits at the back of the queue, for us to say we have enough for now:
Dec 15, 2021 8 tweets 3 min read
I added labels to this graphic and now many are sharing it rather than the original - please bear in mind that antibodies are only part of the immune response.

I am no expert, just added labels to a graphic from @florian_krammer here:

Antibodies are only part of the picture! There's the T-cell response too which kills cells after they turn into virus factories - especially important for stopping severe disease - and memory B cells which means the body can ramp up with antibodies faster than first time.