Coronavirus Has Saved Lives In China–Emma Pinchbeck
By Paul Homewood
Emma Pinchbeck, formerly Deputy CEO of the renewable lobby group, Renewable UK, apparently believes the coronavirus pandemic has been good news for China:
https://twitter.com/ELPinchbeck/status/1248148351939416065
It seems she heard about this on the far left Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, so it must be right.
Leaving aside the actual numbers, the idea that COVID-19 has in any way been good news is contemptible. Trading off one set of actual lives lost against another theoretical set is utterly callous.
Pinchbeck admits she has no basis for the numbers, but assumes they must have something to do with air pollution. Leave aside the contentious details, such as the almost certainty that China has grossly underestimated its death toll from COVID-19, the fact that “deaths due to air pollution” is not an absolute concept but one of premature death, and the fact that much of China’s air pollution results from indoor coal fires.
There is a fundamental and fatal flaw in her logic.
As a direct consequence of China’s industrial revolution, living standards for the majority of its population have improved out of all recognition.
They are better fed, clothed and housed. Their health care and other public services have been transformed. The problems caused by famine, flood and drought are a thing of the past.
As a result, life expectancy has risen from 60 years in 1970 to 76 years today.
This is not to say that China does not still have real air pollution issues. But the way to solve these lies with technology and not returning to the dark ages.
They are already building clean coal power stations, which take out most of the real pollutants, and building them outside of cities as well.
And to deal with pollution from homes, industry and transport, they only need to take a leaf out of the Western playbook, implementing Clean Air Acts and vehicle emission standards.
Does Emma really want China to return to the bad old days?
FOOTNOTE
Emma Pinchbeck is soon starting her new job as CEO of Energy UK, which represents all sectors of the power industry:
Energy UK is the trade association for the GB energy industry with a membership of over 100 suppliers, generators, and stakeholders with a business interest in the production and supply of electricity and gas for domestic and business consumers. Our membership covers over 90% of both UK power generation and the energy supply market for UK homes. We represent the diverse nature of the UK’s energy industry – from established FTSE 100 companies right through to new, growing suppliers and generators, which now make up over half of our membership.
Our members turn renewable energy sources as well as nuclear, gas and coal into electricity for over 27 million homes and every business in Britain
https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/about-us/about-us.html
I wonder whether she will lobby as hard for gas firms as she did for the over subsidised wind sector?
By Paul Homewood
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
Most of us are probably familiar with the pattern of Arctic sea ice decline between 1979 and 2007, followed by a period of relative stability. Most of the decline took place after the mid 1990s.
The decline is nearly always explained away as the result of global warming, but a couple of old studies show this not to be the case.
In 2011, Robson & Sutton found that the sub polar gyre underwent remarkable and rapid warming in the mid 1990s, and that this was linked to changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation:
By Paul Homewood
A welcome return to the fray for Davis Rose, with this piece in the Spectator:
As we contemplate the havoc being wrought by the coronavirus, most of us see mainly sickness, death, and economic ruin.
Dr. Rupert Read, spokesman for the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion — plus sometimes Green party candidate and associate professor of philosophy at the University of East Anglia — has rather a different view.
In this pandemic, he writes, ‘there is a huge opportunity for XR… It is essential that we do not let this crisis go to waste.’
Read’s thoughts are set out in a paper entitled ‘Some strategic scenario-scoping of the coronavirus-XR nexus.’ The paper is not meant to be widely read. ‘NB, this is a confidential document for internal XR use, NOT for publication!’ he writes at the head.
Small wonder. After all, says Read, even if the gloomiest projections of national and global mortality turn out to be accurate, ‘the direct risk to most of us from [coronavirus] is low, and the direct risk to humanity is low in the sense that even a very bad case scenario of a hundred million deaths, though horrible, would hardly break us.’
Read says that the virus ‘may overwhelm some healthcare systems’, including Britain’s NHS — in which case, ‘many of those who then need medical treatment, ill and old people especially, will not be able to get it, and some/many of them will die.’
But there is a bright side, he insists, because the virus will also test the ‘vulnerable, just-in-time systems’ of trade.
This, in turn, ‘might set off cascading breakdown effects, given how interconnected we have allowed our global system to become, how fragile and un-resilient many of our systems are, and how close to the edge some of them are already. Corona might lead indirectly to partial or complete collapses, especially in more vulnerable countries.’
That is a prospect Read seems to relish.
Full article here.
Much of the stuff about XR we already know, but it is his finishing comments which strike home:
Extreme as Read and his cohorts are, there is every sign that other influential figures are beginning to argue on similar lines — that the post-crisis world needs to be both different and less enjoyable, with things such as cheap foreign holidays, easy mobility and rising standards of living consigned to the past.
‘When the corona crisis is over, we’ll remember there’s something infinitely worse and more destructive hanging over us: the threat to our planet,’ the veteran BBC reporter — and inveterate earner of air miles — John Simpson tweeted last week.
According to the Oxford historian Peter Frankopan, the days of a ‘me-first world’ may be over, and if they are, ‘one beneficiary will be the climate: after all, the world’s lungs are already breathing more easily thanks to the collapse of industrial production’.
How a populace picking itself up after months of lockdown to survey a bleak vista of impoverishment and economic devastation may view such messages when the time comes remains to be seen.
It may depend on whether, with hindsight, the measures now being taken are seen as justified — or, as some are already arguing, as a catastrophic overreaction, which slightly prolonged the lives of a relatively small number of old and infirm people at an almost unimaginable cost.
Either way, Read’s thoughts are a guide to the coming battlelines.
By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
More of the usual renewable energy propaganda from the Guardian:
Almost three-quarters of new electricity generation capacity built in 2019 uses renewable energy, representing an all-time record. New data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) shows solar, wind and other green technologies now provide more than one-third of the world’s power, marking another record.
Fossil fuel power plants are in decline in Europe and the US, with more decommissioned than built in 2019. But the number of coal and gas plants grew in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In the Middle East, which owns half the world’s oil reserves, just 26% of new electricity generation capacity built in 2019 was renewable.
The world has invested about $3tn in renewables over the past decade, according to Irena, but annual investments must double by 2030 to tackle the climate emergency.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the world will soon be 100% powered by renewable energy at this rate.
But, of course, the Guardian is misleading its readers by solely looking at CAPACITY and not GENERATION.
By Paul Homewood
Re-post from Climate Change Dispatch:
Some 40,000 children slave away in Chinese-operated Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) mines, digging out cobalt for cell phones, laptops, Teslas, and Green New Deal technologies, the London-based Guardian has reported.
They’re exposed constantly to toxic and radioactive mud, dust, water, and air. Blood and respiratory diseases, birth defects, cancer, paralysis and death by suffocation are common. Other investigators have confirmed the horrors. But human rights violations continue.
Unfortunately, other Guardian stories are a bizarre mix of fact, fake news, junk science, conjecture, and nonsense.
“Is our destruction of nature responsible for COVID-19?” a recent headline blared, adding: “As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics.” The story blamed the destruction and virus on road building, mining and logging.
Read the full post here.
Free Electricity!!
By Paul Homewood
Thousands of British homes will be paid to use electricity during the day for the first time, as wind and solar projects produce a surge in clean energy during the coronavirus lockdown.
On Sunday morning, windfarms contributed almost 40% of the UK’s electricity, while solar power made up almost a fifth of the power system. Fossil fuels made up less than 15% of electricity, of which only 1.1% came from coal plants.
Meanwhile, the country’s energy demand has fallen by around 10% due to the shutdown of pubs, restaurants, companies and factories across the country, leading to the lowest electricity market prices in 10 years.
Households on a new breed of home energy tariff will even be paid to use electricity during the day on Sunday, because sunny weather and a brisk breeze will help generate ample clean electricity to meet the UK’s lower energy needs.
The so-called “negative electricity prices” have previously only been available to homes overnight, when demand is typically at its lowest. But the impact of the coronavirus lockdown and the bright spring weather mean some homes will be able to earn money while using clean electricity during the day for the first time.
Households which use the Agile Octopus energy tariff, offered by Octopus Energy, were contacted on Saturday to let them know they would be paid for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity they use during the sunniest hours of Sunday afternoon.
From 11am-4pm, those customers will earn 0.22p-3.3p per kWh to make use of the UK’s abundant clean energy, the company said.
Free electricity? What’s not to like!
But, of course, wind and solar power are not really free at all, as they receive obscene subsidies, paid through everybody’s energy bills. Without these subsidies, there would be no “negative electricity prices”.
Who Is Dr Tedros?
By Paul Homewood
We have been getting used to being lectured by the WHO chief, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on how we should be tackling coronavirus.
There have however been concerns raised in the press about the WHO’s cover up of China’s responsibility in all of this. Rebel News, the Canadian news site, has a disturbing video of his background and how his involvement with China runs much deeper than generally thought.
Above all, the investigation raises serious concerns about how other UN roles are filled, often to the detriment of the West:
By Paul Homewood
It is being billed as the long-awaited breakthrough moment in European gastronomy for mealworm burgers, locust aperitifs and cricket granola.
Within weeks the EU’s European Food Safety Authority is expected by the insect industry to endorse whole or ground mealworms, lesser mealworms, locusts, crickets and grasshoppers as being safe for human consumption.
The ruling is likely to lead to the final authorisation of their sale across the EU as a “novel food” by as soon as the autumn, opening up opportunities for mass production of a range of insect dishes to be sold across Europe for the first time….
“We have many of our members building bigger factories because the key to success is to upscale your companies and produce on a mass scale. And this is already happening,” Derrien said. “We are expecting the next few years will be very interesting ones and obviously the novel food authorisations will definitely help.”
He added: “The sort of foods ranges from whole insects as an aperitif or as snacks to processed insects in bars or pasta or burgers made out of insects. We believe that insects for food is one solution for some of the biggest challenges we are facing on the planet. In the context of scarce resources, and insect production is not too demanding, you have the capacity to produce high-quality protein. That is a very promising solution.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/03/insects-likely-approved-human-consumption-by-eu
No doubt this will be touted as a way to reduce dependence on meat eating, but I wonder what Vegans will have to say?
Personally I prefer food that does not wriggle around on my plate!
El Nino & Arctic Warming In the 1930s
By Paul Homewood
Just following up on Joe Bastardi’s article yesterday about El Ninos and Arctic warming, it is worth looking at longer term trends.
Below is the chart of the MEI, with red indicating El Ninos and blue La Ninas.:
Extended Multivariate ENSO Index
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei.ext/
As we can see, the period 1925 to 1945 was dominated by powerful El Ninos. This of course was also the time of great warming in the Arctic, known as “The Warming in The North”, when temperatures across much of the Arctic were as high as they are now.
During the 1950s, a much colder climate took over in the Arctic, until it became warmer again in the 90s. This was also a period when La Ninas dominated.
Coincidence?
The climate in the Arctic is also very well correlated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO):
Both of the warming regimes were marked by the inflow of warmer Atlantic waters, which also would have had the effect described by Joe Bastardi, ie the introduction of moist air into the Arctic.
Whether the AMO supplemented the effect of super El Ninos, or whether in fact the two oceanic phenomena are interconnected remains to be seen.
By Paul Homewood
Climate matters have certainly been pushed into the background, now that people have real problems to worry about.
I spotted this article in Der Spiegel, which might generate some discussion.
Mass coronavirus testing seems to be the current obsession of the self appointed experts in the media, but it does not appear to be the panacea in Germany which we have been led to believe:
When Sascha Stoltenow held a training course back in March, the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, had already made an appearance in his life. The only problem was that Stoltenow didn’t know it yet.
Four days later, back in his hometown of Wiesbaden, the communications consultant learned that the Hamburg Academy had to be closed temporarily because someone there had tested positive for the virus. One phone call later, Stoltenow realized: "I had direct contact with the infected person."
The next day, the 50-year-old Stoltenow felt a "slight scratching" on his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He called the medical hotline 116 117 and was told go to Frankfurt to undergo a virus test. At first, the doctor there didn’t want to test him, Stoltenow recalls. "She thought the symptoms were too mild."
But he was able to convince the doctor to perform the test anyway. "Luckily," he says. The result was supposed to be available the next day, but Stoltenow didn’t hear back. Another day went by and he eventually called the local health department. "I was told they didn’t have a file on me." Stoltenow suspected the test hadn’t been processed and stayed home, just in case. Then he heard about two other people who had attended the conference in Hamburg whose tests had come back negative. "That’s when I stopped quarantining."
It wasn’t until eight days after being tested that Stoltenow received the news: His results were positive. The health department had apparently misfiled his results. The 50-year-old immediately went into quarantine with his entire family. But there was a problem: Before he discovered he was positive, he had attended a university event and had been in contact with around 150 people, all of whom could theoretically have been infected by him.
There are countless reports like this one. They involve constantly busy telephone hotlines, testing being either refused or postponed and people waiting days for their test results — if they hear back at all.
