My life has been very different than most people’s.  Starting as a student at the University of Chicago, I was introduced to the concept of reading original documents. It has shaped me, positively and for a more interesting way to live.

Then while starting two corporate marketing research departments, I learned how to easily handle data. Which I have done for the last 60 years.  I did it often as a court- certified expert witness in many fields. I use data to shape my views of the world.

In 1992, looking at  global population data on a spreadsheet, I was among the first human beings to discover that the population explosion was over.  I threw a big party to celebrate it. 

A few years later I put all the data for global surface temperature on another spreadsheet and found that there was no global surface temperature rise in the past 100 years.  No rise, no way to blame it on human generated CO2.  I’ve followed temperature data ever since.  Satellite data confirmed what I had learned and reported in many blogs.  Then while showing a young friend how to collect the data, he found the most reliable numbers in radiosonde measurements accurate daily back to 1950.  Fifty seven point 4 F (57.4 then and now) no change in the global surface temperature.  Look at this chart, lower right. Surface temperature has gone down in the past 18 years. (Source.)

There is an even better source with daily data. No change from 1950 when global surface temperature was 57.4F.  Here.

Data on Covid

Now we have a reliable source (National Bureau of Economic Research) that has looked at the covid data to see what government policies worked and what led to excess deaths in most states in the U.S. (data.)

• First, closing schools was counterproductive in many ways.  Measurable loss of education and no excess deaths in that age group with or without classes.
• Mandating masks on people who were not potential spreaders, people not dealing with the public, were not productive. The closing of businesses cost millions of jobs and destroyed over a million businesses. Unproductive from a contagion perspective.
• Putting hospital patients in retirement homes created additional excess deaths among the elderly.

That data will hopefully inform governments in the future.  Governments need to act more like Utah and Florida and less like New York and California.

I end up with a unique and different view of the world because I like data and know how to make use of it.  Hopefully more people, over time, will join me.  It is comforting to be in a world of reliable first hand data.