Monday, March 11, 2019

Why you Shouldn't Care About 'Climate Change'

I enjoy watching JEOPARDY each weeknight not only to be entertained by the quiz show that tests the general knowledge of some very smart contestants but also to be reminded about how dumb experts can really be.

No doubt the contestants have a great well of knowledge, quick recall and good reflexes under pressure, but they also generally (certainly not all) suffer from a distinct lack of understanding of game theory and basic applied mathematics.

While extremely smart and capable, they are mostly stupid when it comes to betting strategically.
Many games have been lost by contestants making the wrong bet at the wrong time, something that is painfully obvious to those who watch who aren't as smart but who understand betting and strategy.

Every player who participates in the World Series of Poker has a better understanding of how betting strategies affect outcomes, compared to 75% of Jeopardy players..
My wife who admittedly doesn't answer as many questions correctly has a background in book-keeping  and an uncanny ability to analyze and point out how stupidly contestants bet, with simple and devastating logic and deconstruction that is unassailable.

All to say that though experts and scientists may have an overwhelming handle on the subject that they have devoted their life to, it doesn't mean they can extrapolate their expertise into realms or fields that they have no special expertise in.
Like Jeopardy contestants, they can be brilliant, yet painfully stupid as well.
As they say ...Experts built the Titanic.

The same climate experts who cannot predict whether our Sunday picnic will be rain-free are telling us with absolute certainty that the world is on the eve of climate destruction.
Of course, the apologists will lecture us not to confuse weather with climate whenever we are hit with a particularly harsh winter (like this year,) but when a particularly hot or dry spell occurs, scream to high Heaven that it is because of climate change.
They have the distinct aura of doomsday predictors whom have plagued the Earth since the rise of mankind.
I'm reminded of those cult leaders who predict the end of the world on a certain date, only to see that date come and go. You'd think followers would leave in droves but the leader just picks a new distant date and count on the gullibility of adherents who remain faithful.
As for the media, it is complicit in fostering panic with predictions of doomsday climate scenarios, frightening us because it sells newspapers or keeps eyes on the news channel. Most reporters and pundits are lazy and stupid and editors are loathe to present arguments against the conventional wisdom.
This past summer Montreal was hit with a heat wave which of course triggered panicked reports in the media of increased of deaths caused by climate change.
Quebec health authorities say that up to 70 deaths have been linked to the recent heat wave that gripped the province for nearly a week. screamed the headlines
Dozens of similar stories appeared across the media, but months later when the data was analyzed by Santé Quebec, the number of reported deaths during the heat wave period was the same as the year before.
Did that make headline news?
The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.
In other words, cold climate kills twenty times more people than hot climate.
How come the media never runs stories about deaths caused by extreme cold?

Let us examine some issues;

THE SCIENTIFIC TRACK RECORD:

Scientists and global warmers celebrities like Al Gore have been predicting all sorts of disasters since the 1990s. According to Gore, we'd all be under water by now and the world would be on the brink of disaster.
The Northwest passage was to be clear of ice and the shorelines of coastal areas like Florida flooding.

The famous 'Hockey Stick graph is an illustration of dumbing down the science in order to elicit a sympathetic public response.
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider......let some unusual truth slip when he told Discover magazine in 1989, “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.”
And so the great "Hockey Stick" graph (it resembles the shape of a hockey stick) of 2001 which was presented so that even idiots could see the bad situation that the Earth was in.

The hockey stick graph is widely regarded as controversial, if not plain wrong. “The hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics,” physicist Richard Muller wrote in Technology Review in 2004. Others have described it as rubbish or even as a downright fraud.
So much for the past.
What is galling is that these same debunked scientists and promoters have never apologized for frightening us for nothing. They continue today to brush off past false predictions with new predictions.

This AP story was written by PETER JAMES SPIELMANN June 29, 1989
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.
Ha! ha!
Has Mr. Brown apologized for his alarmism?
Nope... He soldiers on in the climate world of misinformation.
In 2003, three years after his predictions of climate doom were debunked, he was awarded an Honorary doctorate from Pace university.  Hooray!!

Let me present a simple scenario to you climate-change fanatics.
You have a stockbroker who tells you that he has a stock that is set to triple in price because he has inside information.
You're excited and you throw a huge chunk of your savings into the stock.
Instead of tripling, the stock tanks and you lose most of the invested money.
Your broker never apologizes for his gaffe and instead phones you a few months later to tell you that he has another stock that will quadruple in price.
You're a sucker, so you give him a second chance and invest more, but the stock, like the first, tanks anyways.
Are you furious when he phones you a year later to announce a new sure-fire stock? (Assuming you haven't fired him yet)
If you are a climate fanatic you probably give him yet another chance because you are a sucker, the same one that PT Barnum told us is born every day.
That is why Al Gore still has a fan base.
Every ten years we are told we have only ten years to react to global warming, yet ten years have come and gone three or four times during the debate and we haven't seen the predicted collapse.
Ho-hum...

Pseudo-Scientists like Bill Nye are so dumb that his predictions can only be accepted by the most naive and stupid.
He has told an interviewer that as the world heats up food production in North America will shift north to Canada, a place according to him that doesn't have the infrastructure or technology to handle the load.
His ignorance of capitalism (and Canada) is appalling. Canada already produces and exports agricultural and meat products. Ramping up production is what capitalists love to do. Telling us that Canada can't do so is based on ignorant conjecture.

The same goes for scientists that produce maps showing the coastline of Florida disappearing under several feet of seawater created by melting ice caps.
Do you actually think that building a four, five or ten feet sand berm is beyond the capability of our society? Will we actually let our coastlines sink into the ocean when a relatively cheap sea wall can take care of the problem with relatively little expense versus climate remediation?

Ever since I can remember, scientists have told us that the population explosion will destroy Earth, because the planet cannot possibly support so many new people.
That prediction itself was false as modern technology in agriculture has done very well in meeting the needs of hungry new mouths. But there's no doubt that an increasing population does put a strain on the environment and reducing population is perhaps the greatest remedial action we can take vis a vis the environment.
Of course, nobody would dare demand families reduce the number of babies they produce, as China did with its one-baby policy.

But lo and behold the world's population is set to peak soon and then to dramatically decline.
Already in the western developed world, the birth rate has declined to the point that population levels cannot be maintained naturally. We see this in Canada as in the rest of 'richer' countries where immigrants are needed to shore up the population.
In Europe and North America we haven't seen the decline in population because we import people from the third world, but in Japan, a country that is loathe to import non-natives, the reality of population decline is already a fact, with population declining steadily over the last seven years.
As the under-developed world modernizes, so too will population levels fall in these countries as women no longer desire to pump out babies as their primary function.
China gave up its one-baby policy in 2016 because of a falling population and despite allowing families to have more children, the population is dropping precipitously.
This trend (and I'm loathe to make predictions) seems ready to sweep the undeveloped world as women become empowered and see motherhood has a part of their lives, but not the only thing in their lives..
Of course, it is a trend 'experts' could not have foreseen, a so-called 'black-swan event,' but the effect on the environment will be staggering.

Climate doomsayers cannot or will not consider the effect because it is beyond their scope. The coming population collapse is perhaps the 'deus ex machina ' of the climate debate, precluding the need for remedial action.

As for the dire predictions of catastrophe with increased temperature, the predictions are figments of imagination.  Nobody really knows.
If some areas of the world become uninhabitable because of heat, other areas in Russia and Canada will become more inhabitable.

All that being said, if man-made global warming is real, and it's going to affect our lives, don't worry about it because there's nothing to be done.

Good intentions aside, mankind hasn't been able to end war and it won't be able to reduce our impact on climate. Period

Are we really going to reduce our standard of living by the required effort?
Will you get rid of your car.
Will you sell your big homes and move to a tiny apartment?
Will you become a vegetarian?
Will air travel cease?
Will your backyard BBQ be banned?
Will you tolerate $10-litre gas prices?
Will you willingly pay three times as much to heat your home with green energy?
Will commuting to work by any means be banned from the suburbs with people forced to live near their jobs?

What happens when your job is cut because of its impact on climate?
We have witnessed the collapse of the oil industry in Alberta, causing a catastrophic loss of over 100,000 jobs. What would happen if that trend was felt across the country as jobs are shed because of climate considerations?
While we accept the job losses in Alberta, will we accept the loss of a million jobs in Quebec and Ontario?
We are all heroes when it is someone else who is suffering or paying the bill. Not so much when it is us

Those of you who say you are willing to sacrifice for generations to come are liars.
In Canada, our federal government is borrowing and spending tens of billions of dollars a year to make our present lifestyle more agreeable.
This money will have to be repaid by future generations.
Where is your outrage over this theft of wealth from our children?
We say we care about the future, but we don't give a hoot, not when it will seriously cost us in the present.

I don't care about climate change because everything about it is a con.

To those of you committed to climate-change hysteria, take the first step by massively reducing your carbon footprint. Then tell us how we should do the same.
  • Become a vegetarian
  • Get rid of your house and move to a small apartment.
  • Get rid of your car.
  • Move closer to work
  • Consume less manufactured goods.
  • Give up air travel.
  • Stop accepting government benefits that are paid for by future generations.
Otherwise ....shut up.

I've written this blog piece not to convince the climate change committed. It is as likely to succeed in that regard as trying to convince a religious zealot that God doesn't exist.

Instead, I've written this for those of you who haven't quite bought into the climate-change hype and to help reinforce your critical thinking in making your mind up.

14 comments:

  1. Excellent post, Phillip. When I was a kid back in the late 60's, I remember the big concern was when the next ice age was going to begin.
    In Canada we're told two things: we have to reduce our carbon footprint and we need large numbers of immigrants because of our low birth rate. The 2 are in direct conflict. You can't expect to lower carbon production when you're bringing 350,000 people (about 1% of our population) into a climate where they need to be heated 8 months of the year, air-conditioned another 2 months, and where public transit really doesn't seem to be a big priority. Thus, I could potentially buy into one policy but not both. You can't suck and blow at the same time (well, the federal government can, if you get my drift). If we were seriously committed to fighting 'climate change', we'd reduce immigration to zero and indeed encourage Canadians to emigrate to places closer to the equator where their carbon footprint would be smaller.
    I'm going back to sleep. Wake me when they decide which is the higher priority.

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  2. "Ice everywhere but no hockey sticks" -- Mark Steyn

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  3. Re: the scientific track record.

    Remember that skepticism is the rule in science, not the exception. Albert Einstein was skeptical of the accepted consensus that time was absolute (I dare say that if they took opinion polls of scientists at the time that 99.9% of scientists would have agreed that time was absolute).

    Well, Einstein demonstrated through his "theory of relativity" (actually, at the time, an unproved hypothesis) that time was relative. But, unlike Al Gore, even Einstein didn't have the hubris to declare this as gospel. He basically said: let's wait and see...let's test the hypothesis in real world conditions in order to see whether it stands.

    And, of course, it did.

    Today, I dare say that 0% of scientists believe that time is absolute...some 110 years or so after Einstein published his theory and 99.9% of scientists said the opposite.

    Science isn't a democracy where you get to vote on what the physical reality of the universe is. So the next time you hear that 97% of scientists hold a consensus on climate change, ask them to state their hypothesis of catastrophic man-made climate change (most won't be able to) and then compare the hypothesis to real world observations.

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  4. You remind me of the people walking out onto the Ocean bed as the sea receded a half-mile, oblivious to the abnormality and their impending death.

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    1. I'm curious to know, Cliff, what the abnormalities in climate are that have convinced you that impending doom is going to occur?

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  5. I agree mostly with you Philip. I am very skeptical of the global warming thesis..it is a very complicated subject and science is not perfect. We have seen countless major mistakes in science over the past several centuries. My hair always stands up when a thesis is so accepted that it is treated like a religion. Its literally sacrilege now to even question the possibility that the scientists are wrong on this? We all know that many of these scientists also rely on funding and if you question the whole man made climate change theory you are at risk of losing this funding.

    Having said that I think its still quite possible..maybe probable that the theory is true or partly true..but I keep an open mind. And as Philip says are we all really going to go back to the stone age in the name of climate change. However I do believe that government can play an important role in reducing our carbon footprint. I do think for many reasons it is a good idea to push for more electric vehicles..especially in areas like Quebec which have pretty clean electricity. It will reduce air pollution..the idea of more wind and solar energy is a good one also.

    I do find that Canadians in general are a pretty lazy lot when it comes to conserving energy. We waste more energy than likely any other country in the world partly because its so cheap and we have so much of it. How many times have I see people driving a few blocks because they are too lazy too walk..notably driving their kids to school when their kids could have walked in 5-10 minutes. I have seen parents idling their cars in front of their childrens schools for 10-15 minutes in warm weather when the child (overweight also) could have easily walked. How many vehicles are on the road with one person in them and how many people really need large SUVs in the city..come on. People whine about the price of gas but they have no problem buying huge vehicles and driving short distances with one person in them.

    I thinkt there should be tolls on all bridges leading into Montreal..tired of people living further and further away because they want the perfect brand new house at a cheap price and also dont want to pay their fair share of property taxes. On top of it they want everyone to pay for the bridges they mainly use. Putting a price on these bridges would make the people who use it the most pay for it..reduce the flood of people off
    island and allow more revenue to come in to maintain the bridges properly so they last longer. Building new bridges only encourages more urban sprawl..hence the idea of a third bridge between Levis and Quebec totally idiotic.

    I think the use of plastics has to come down substantially..the government should ban plastic bags..force companies to dramatically reduce packaging..ban plastic bottles..and so on. We are literally drowning in plastic waste..the oceans (and fish) are full of this crap..its going to cause serious health issues at some point.

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    1. complicated writes:

      "Having said that I think its still quite possible..maybe probable that the theory is true or partly true..."

      But science isn't a field of knowledge in which you can be half pregnant; something is either true or it isn't true. Especially when, as a planet, we are spending over $350 billion per year on various aspects of climate change policy (research, investment, etc.). That's an amount larger than the GDP of over 90% of the world's countries.

      That's why I think it is important to go back to basics. I'm not a scientist but when I was confronted with the "for" and "against" sides in this debate, I wanted to know what the scientific method said about it all. And for that, the side claiming a new reality/law (i.e., the warmist side) has the onus to declare an hypothesis. And 99% of the time I cannot get them to say what exactly it is, in scientific terms, that they believe in.

      So "quite possible", "maybe probable", and "partly true" don't cut it in science. State what exactly it is you are claiming is the physical reality of the situation -- and state it in terms which can be measured scientifically -- so that it can be tested and measured against real world observations. And if the real world results match the predictions of your hypothesis, the hypothesis gets to live another day to be tested -- again and again -- until it reaches the level of theory. If it fails just once, it is thrown out.

      Here's a link to a one minute, two seconds video from Richard Feynman from the early '60s talking about the scientific method. It's called "The Key to Science". You can copy and paste it:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b240PGCMwV0

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  6. I think the hypothesis is pretty clear..this is from the IPCC who are the experts in this domain..

    In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report concluded, "It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."[9] The largest human influence has been the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Climate model projections summarized in the report indicated that during the 21st century, the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 0.3 to 1.7 °C (0.5 to 3.1 °F) to 2.6 to 4.8 °C (4.7 to 8.6 °F) depending on the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and on climate feedback effects.[10] These findings have been recognized by the national science academies of the major industrialized nations[11][a] and are not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing.[13][14]

    Man made emissions is leading to an increase in temperature..that is the hypothesis. Obviously the theory is true or not true or partly true but nobody will really know for sure likely for another 20-40 years. In the meantime I am somewhat skeptical. But I do know that pollution of air and water is a big problem right now and is something we need to tackle..and if that also helps reduce emissions tied to potential global warming then its a win win.

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  7. As an hypothesis,it's pretty piss-poor.

    "...during the 21st century..." Does this mean from the year 2000 until the year 2099? And with very little precision, we are given a range of temperature increase which can be anywhere from 0.3C to 4.8C.

    This is just silly on its face.

    Plus, there is nothing about what the consequences are even if the rise of temperature happens: will there be good consequences or bad ones? More tornadoes or less? More tsunamis, more rising sea levels, more hurricanes? Nothing on this and nothing on whether it will be X% more or less than what has occurred in the past. And nothing on how much accumulation of CO2 there will be in the atmosphere and at what annual rate (2 ppm each year? Rising from a starting point of 400 ppm?). This is not a hypothesis that someone can take out to the field and do experiments to measure against. This is silliness.

    Are you aware that there are two working groups for the IPCC? Working Group I are the scientists who gather the measurements and do the research; Working Group II are the politicians who write the press releases and the final report. The former say there is no problem; the latter say there is.

    This is why, in past IPCC reports, you will read a narrative that predicts dire catastrophes ahead for mankind; but when you read the actual measurements of temperatures that the politicians could not squelch from being put in the report you see that there is NOT problem.

    Take the following, for example, from p. TS-5 under "TS2.2 Changes in Temperature" from the "Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis":

    "Although the trend uncertainty is large for short records, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05°C per decade [–0.05to +0.15]) is smaller than the trend since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12°Cper decade [0.08to 0.14])6."

    complicated, these are REAL WORLD OBSERVATIONS AND MEASUREMENTS, not predictions from an hypothesis. A 0.05 degree celsius per decades increase in temperature over a 15 year period (1998-2012) during which mankind was SPEWING RECORD AMOUNTS OF CO2 AND OTHER GREENHOUSE GASES into the atmosphere. More importantly, it contradicted about 100 computer models (i.e. hypotheses) which predicted, on average, about a 0.3-0.4 degrees celsius temperature increase during this same time period. ALL OF THE WARMISTS' HYPOTHESES FAILED...AND THEY FAILED BIG TIME.

    Note that Chicken Little (i.e., the politicians of the IPCC) are brazenly trying once again to scare us (even though, as the above demonstrates, they failed miserably already) with as much as a 4.8 degree celsius temperature increase over 100 years (that's 0.48 degrees celsius increase per decade on average...which is, literally, 10 times higher increase than we saw in real world temperature measurements of 0.05 degrees celsius from 1998 to 2012).

    Really? You want to believe these sham artists again?

    And the bottom line is: even they are right and the temperature DOES rise as they predict, maybe this will be a GOOD thing! CO2 is a building block of life. More CO2 for the Earth is going to give us wonderful greening of the Earth benefits!

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    1. P.S. Complicated, I do want to congratulate you...sincerely.

      In online debates I have had over the years on climate change I always ask the person I am discussing/debating with to state their hypothesis of catastrophic man-made climate change. And, as I wrote previously, virtually 99% of those I ask cannot or are unwilling to state it.

      You did and you are to be appreciated for it. And you went to the exact place where one should find the hypothesis. Of course, it wasn't a complete hypothesis but that isn't any fault of yours. I've been asking Irwin Rapoport to state the hypothesis for years and he hasn't been able to do it; you did it within about 24 hours, I think. Thanks.

      Hypothesis, real world measurements, compare. This in its simplest form is the scientific method (and which Feynman mentions in his own words in the video I link to, above). This is all that matters in science and that's why I think everyone -- pro and con -- in the climate change debate should always start any discussion with the scientific method is, what is the hypothesis is that is being proposed, and what if any real world measurements have been made to compare to that hypothesis.

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  8. Tony..
    I do share a healthy skepticism..as I do know some people who actually work int he field. One of them is a big believer that sunspot activity could also be playing a role and yet nobody wants to even here his thesis and data and so on. When people dont even open there ears to another possibility then I start to get suspicious. So yes I am somewhat skeptical too..I always here about the IPCC as the eminent group in this field. But then again there has to be groupthink involved which means little acceptance of any scientist work which goes against their prevailing hypothesis.so again take it for what its worth.

    I think there needs to be a big distinction between climate and weather. Every time we get a cold snap then the skeptics tell us that global warming is a hoax..and vice versa whenever we have a heat wave the opposite happens. Whats important is the average temperature across the global for the year..not short term fluctuations over regional areas. Parts of the world can easily be quite cold for extended periods of time and yet the overall planet during the year is warmer than usual..this is something a lot of people need to understand..stop confusing weather with climate. The impacts on hurricanes, tornados, etc - who knows..I think people have to stop tying every storm to global warming also..very difficult to prove.

    In 25-40 years we likely will have a clearer idea..and personally I am not too worried. I think air and water pollution are much more pressing issues that are and will kill more people than global warmings.

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  9. Hmmmm....it seems everybody is ignoring the elephant(s) in the room. Around the time Mr. Berlach and I were born, there were about 3 billion people in the world. There was talk of a population explosion when I was a kid in elementary school, back in the '60s. I heard more than once the population doubles every 35-40 years, so here we are a half-century later and now there are 9 billion people, and probably 12 billion by the early to mid 2030s.

    Next, remember about 75% of the world is water, so we can't cultivate food in 3/4ths of our world. Of that ¼ that is left, an increasing amount of the land is needed to house our tripled population (soon to be quadrupled...and beyond), and therefore cannot be cultivated for food. Now what?

    We're burning fossil fuels like never before, increasingly using plastic packaging and machine parts that are not biodegradable, and carbon gases that seem to be deteriorating the protective ozone layer that is making the sun's deadlier rays more dangerous to us. It may also have a more devastating affect on our ability to grow crops.

    So let's add up the score: The population keeps growing, but how long it will be able to keep doubling every 35-40 years may somewhat slow down due to birth control that is still not practiced in most of the world. There is increasingly less land available to naturally cultivate our food, so while artificial means of increasing the food population exist, how many of genetically modified foods and new means of cultivation are going to harm and kill more of us?

    In the last 40 years, peanut allergies have skyrocketed because there is a cheap breed of peanut that is easy to grow but more of us are allergic to it! That's just ONE food item. I vaguely remember a story where Cuba's Fidel Castro had farmers develop some kind of super cow that then bred to create the next generation and the whole project went awry. In short, it's going to take a plenitude of trial-and-error to artificially manufacture (not really cultivate) food, and God knows how much error is going to harm and kill us.

    In summary, population is growing too fast, too many countries creating pollution and not cleaning up their messes and too much tampering with the food supply with unknown results. I'm sure I'm missing out on other variables that are deteriorating the state of the world, but these are just a few. I don't know the answers, but no doubt there are too many false prophets like Al Gore out there, and to give a particular year as the doomsday is too simplified.

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  10. I would love to watch Turdeau, Wolf Blitzer and AOC on Jeopardy. What a train wreck that would be watching those three retards make fools of themselves. Maybe Housewater could host as would be great entertainment.

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    1. You may get your wish.

      Alex Trebek is dying a fast death and he'll need a replacement soon enough.

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