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Friday Open Thread
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9.2 out of 10 based on 16 ratings
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
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here’s a clue, blue–
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/06/new-evidence-in-nisman-kirchner-case.html
21
thanks… it is great to be kept informed about your blog
21
Much amusement Leaf.
On a more serious note, Beijing rejects any suggestion that their concentration camps are inhumane
https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202006/18/WS5eead14ca310834817253e05.html
00
Nisman was in too much of a hurry to present the new evidence.
In January 2015 when he was murdered
Kirchner was the retiring president o Argentina.
A month later and Macri, who won in the November Presidential elections
Would have been in office.
And then Nisman would have had more protection.
And maybe not have been murdered.
13
And now Kristina de Kirchner is back in power in Argentina as Vice President again.
So the chances of this assassination being cleared up with a conviction are zero.
01
I have to publish photos which is hard to do at jono’s, but links are appropriate. Half of Republicans in recent poll support police chokeholds
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/06/half-of-republicans-in-recent-poll.html
01
Police are required to deal with lethal people. There is no such thing as a completely safe way to restrain a violent person. Conservatives are more likely to understand this than Lefties.
80
Because they are more frequently physically restrained by the police than Socialists are?
10
No….
Because Socialists have been demonstrating for a century, now, their dependence on schemes based on fantasy.
10
Facetiousness:
Making a ‘humorous’ remark in a situation where one ought to be serious.
My apologies.
10
Apology accepted, Fred…. and mine offered for not suspecting the irony. Been dealing with too many lefties, lately, and the rubbish that they will repeat with a straight face beggars belief.
10
Rob,
That comment has some usefulness in that it shows us what goes on in the upper levels of government.
We, the voting public, need to be aware of the potential for abuse of trust because it provokes us to give consideration to what’s happening locally.
So far Australian politics has been plagued by the two party system and too few voters seem capable of being provoked to vote the lesser known alternatives.
KK
00
We already knew the problems with solar and that they want to control roof top solar but I never knew the AER was taking a Windfarm operator to court for not being told in advance if it was too windy they had to close down .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-19/solar-boom-puts-sa-at-risk-of-another-statewide-blackout/12372558
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The SA government wants more renewables, and to decrease car use, yet off they go, killing off numerous bus routes, and forcibly acquiring housing to widen roads.
Really consistent, great job…
90
The SA has just started another $650 million renewables project, involving yet more solar and another battery. Seems they never learn…
130
No the stupidity runs deep here in SA
Wind and Solar pushers are the messiahs of this Greenist religion.
92
An open thread, a chance to tie the current CV19 situation and likely near future Global Vaccination to past experience.
Past experience with big pharma is something I have outlined previously in relation to antidepressant medications of the SSRI being given to young people.
This afternoon while driving home there was an interview with a Professor Jureidini who warned strongly about the dangers of these antidepressants being used by young people.
The scientific understanding should dismiss SSRIs as a useful remedy for adults, but when given to young people they can be seriously negative in outcome.
It was good to hear this confirmation.
The point: beware of those pushing a product when their main aim might be dollars as opposed to providing a cure.
KK
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This comment was intended to be standalone.
30
An angry open letter to Jacinda , published this morning in NZ.
“Open letter to the Prime Minister:
The pedestal was never high enough for you, was it?
You swaggered on stage and addressed the nation every day for two months convincing many that under your watch, we would be protected from the unmitigated calamity of Covert-19.
You claimed that without your immediate intervention up to eighty thousand could perish. You told us ad nauseam that your job was to save lives. Yes, your self- proclaimed heroism was established and every day lives were spared.
Except for those who lived in rest homes. What does PPE stand for? and why was PPE necessary for those working in rest homes?
Tough questions, for the leader who had our backs and her every finger on every pulse. The excuses, and quite frankly, the BS that covered up this fundamental failing should have set alarm bells ringing, and it did.
But you our heroine, had the stage, the media and the gullible convinced that you could do no wrong.
Almost all the Covid-19 deaths occurred from this one simple requirement. Almost everyone except you and your sidekicks knew that this demographic was the most vulnerable and seriously at risk.
You failed them.
There were multiple incidences of incompetence throughout this period. It was obvious those in charge were clambering to have events match your rhetoric. The dishonesty slowly unraveled but your smile, your reassurance and your “be kind” profile was an effective camouflage that kept the doubters at bay. But you can only fake it until you make it for so long, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
The last few days have exposed what an absolute shambles quarantine has become. How hard can it be to have a system of “top down” scrutiny implemented? Your lack of leadership is appalling. You love being the “Capitan”. Captains are the last to leave a sinking ship but it appears you were the first to abandon the ship. NZ was never at severe risk of multiple deaths.
Your blundering border control was responsible for the virus spreading through the country in the first place.
If you had moved as fast as all other South Pacific leaders, then the result would have been different, almost zero cases, and this would have allowed the economy to continue unabated with the exception of tourism. You got it all wrong. You played the drama queen, you acted the heroine, but now the curtain has come down. Now you have to wait for the reviews. Playtime is over. It is time for all of us to “wash our hands” of you.”
121
“Didn’t stop and think”. Nope. That says it all. The green retards at work. Does anybody think they can think?
Incompetents and loonies in charge of the asylum.
190
Sam I’m still amazed they didn’t know wind was intermittent and highly variable.
180
Trained that it is constant from houses of parliament and like places?
00
Sam it’s better to sheet the blame home to the silly buggers who did it :
LABOR was in office from 2002 till 2017 – 15 years under Rann & Weatheredall.
It was particularly under Weatheredall that Solar & wind were promoted
tho it started under Rann.
Of course the Greens cheered on Labor the whole time.
But there are in the Liberals idiots who are global warmer believers.
However did that happen ?
92
I think you mean: How ever did that happen?
And the answer is no mystery. Infiltration, subversion, green/left university lectures pushing green/left ideology onto their arts/law undergrads who subsequently find their way into the Liberal Party’s organisation in one form or another. Conservative weakness and failure to take action to remove these subversives.
The really sad thing about this is that these Liberal subversives probably don’t even understand that they’ve been influenced, corrupted.
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Subversives?
If Peter Costello is to be believed, John Howard started throwing money at the global warming scam late in their term of government….. part of his failed attempt to buy votes ahead of the 2007 election.
When politically expedient, Howard’s “conservativism” values looked more like a veneer than core values.
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Yes.
I became very disappointed with J H at the end.
80
His nickname “Honest John” was bestowed by his detractor, with a great deal of intended irony.
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One of the things that got me offside was his failure to oppose the French nuclear bomb testing on their Pacific island territory: just a little upwind of Australia.
Creepy.
30
Not creepy. Just politics.
I don’t like the French attitude, then or now, but we don’t own the Pacific and having hosted our own tests when it was convenient……
30
Came across this article:
Solar power’s greatest challenge was discovered 10 years ago – it looks like a duck!
It’s about the California experience, but it seems that we are heading in that direction. Here is a cherry-picked quote to whet your appetite:
An interesting read.
00
Unless you miss quoted them,…that quote suggests they do not understand what storage is !
GW is not a measure of storage at all .
60
But in the real world, buy Cat.
“storage” = diesel generators …..
If you quantify the number of semi-size units on standby for the fire season plus the number reported
by the major companies (Cat, Generac, etc) we have the equal of a couple of dispatch power plants in aggregate.
I don’t have good sources, and did a very casual web search, but it is my sense that the number of installed units vastly
exceed the number of permitted and reported (and taxed) units. And this doesn’t count the little 600 KW gas units
in everybody’s garage or RV.
Because you know with PG&E the & stands for intermittent.
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Lordy I hope thats 6kW in garages and RVs 🙂
20
100 GW of storage is not much?
That “world’s biggest” battery in SA is 100 MW, or 129 MWhr.
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SA’s latest 64.5 MWh upgrade to e Hornsdale Battery cost $71.0 million
At that level of cost, and assuming they meant 100GWh, .. then their “little aas” 100GWh would cost $100 Billion +
A bargain for what would effectively be less than 3 hours of back up for Ca !
70
Well that was an interesting exercise, and it’s still not finished yet, but at least the data has been collected.
I’ve been looking at how many times wind power fails, resulting in large losses of power, and directly attributable to loss of wind, and in some cases too much wind.
It is now becoming a problem really, one of the ‘dirty little secrets’ wind supporters don’t want to even mention, let alone directly address.
The problem stems directly from the proliferation of wind plants in that area where those High pressure wind systems prevail, the South East of South Australia, and into the West and Central Victoria.
Now that the Nameplate for wind power in that area has risen significantly across the last couple of years. it means that when the wind fails, more power generation is lost. That power HAS to be replaced from the traditionally more expensive sources, natural gas fired power, so in effect the more wind power, then the more expensive it is when wind power fails, so in effect more wind power has DIRECTLY led to an increase in the cost of electrical power.
Now, you may think it might be an isolated occasion when wind power fails, and it may not really be all that much of a loss of power. (and incidentally, that’s exactly what I thought before starting the exercise)
I went back just two years and to make it so that it didn’t become too huge, I just concentrated on drops in power of 500MW (PLUS) across five different time periods. I selected 500MW, as that is around the same average size of a SINGLE large coal fired Unit. In Selecting that large total, it dropped out an awful lot of losses of between 250MW and 500MW across those two years.
I split it all into five separate time periods, (1) less than One Hour, (2) One Hour, (3) between one hour and three hours, (4) between three and eight hours, and (5) More than 8 hours.
The really surprising results were as follows, and this totals out to 244 separate occasions across just those last two years.
1. 50 times ranging between 500MW in ten minutes, with the largest loss of power being 1280MW in 35 Minutes with all power totals between 500 and 980MW with that 1280MW being the highest.
2. 51 times (all at one hour) ranging between 500MW and 920MW.
3. 46 times ranging between one hour ten minutes and three hours ranging between 750MW and 1780MW.
4 37 times ranging between four hours and eight hours 30 Minutes ranging between 1300MW and 2490MW.
5. 60 times ranging between nine hours and one long sustained fall over 27 hours of 3500MW, and here the range was between 1450MW and 3570MW, with nine occasions over 3000MW.
You may ask why I did the task over periods longer than an hour, and keep in mind that those losses of 3000MW plus is the equivalent of losing six of those coal fired Units off line during that same period. (as you think about it, each increment of 500MW is one coal fired Unit)
Now that I have them all in tables, I just have to add some text to get it all down in one place.
This was an eye opening thing for me to see, as I am looking at that data every day for a couple of hours every day, and there are things that I don’t even see.
Tony.
321
Amazing stats Tony thank you !
50
And I guess ‘green’ blowhards will be the first to denigrate Tony as a ‘climate den!er’.
Cheers Tony for ‘learning me’ so much about these Don Quixote era deluded fantasies.
120
I imagine the sudden drops in roof-top solar due to cloud could be similar (see Robert’s post at #2 above)
The grid suddenly has to find another X00MW, or the system crashes.
72
Thanks Tony for documenting the wind generators rise and fall and rise and fall and sleep and ………….
You would think that they would start preparing for the predictable curtailment periods that will start once the next 6 GW batch of projects come on stream but there are few willing to invest.
Also, does anyone out in the blog community know how a wind generator can operate outside the umbrella of the AEMO but still supply to the grid? Is there something like a nameplate capacity minimum under which they can freelance?
20
Tony, these figures are amazing! As you point out, even 500MW is a huge drop in supply, and almost certainly (?) cannot be filled for more than a few minutes by any kind of a ‘battery’.
Please send this information to all the MPs and Senators that you can, warning them of the craziness of this situation, and the vast waste of taxpayer’s money that investing in unreliables (aided and abetted by the imfamous RET stealth subsidy/tax) has and will continue to impose on us taxpayers, especially now that we are facing a deep recession, the like of which most of us will not have seen in our lifetime. And maybe remind them to bone up on the history of federal election results during recessions!
100
Do the Health Authorities know what They are Doing?
1. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern does not think so. New Zealand has two new cases of Covid19 just days after the country was declared Covid free. Turns out that two overseas travellers came into the country from the UK, via Australia. One of them was showing mild symptoms of Covid but they were granted a special exemption from their quarantine to visit a sick friend . The Prime Minsters response was to call in the Army!
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced the military will now oversee the nation’s borders and quarantine after a blunder resulted in two new COVID-19 cases.
She said” “My view is that we need the rigour, we need the confidence, we need the discipline the military can provide,” Ms Ardern told reporters today.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/new-zealand-brings-in-military-after-two-new-cases-confirmed/ar-BB15An2O?ocid=spartan-ntp-feeds
2. New Case in South Australia has virus but it does not count!
The 35-year-old Australian man was tested by a nurse on arrival at Adelaide Airport on Tuesday morning (15Jun2020)
He had travelled from Pakistan to Melbourne on June 6 and was quarantined in a hotel, where he tested positive for COVID-19 on June 9.
He was given the all clear to emerge from quarantine after eight days because he had first developed his symptoms in Pakistan on May 26.
SA Health says he is no longer considered infectious
South Australia’s Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said the man presented no risk to the public.
“We do have people that test positive for COVID-19 for a very prolonged period of time,” Dr Spurrier said.
“It can be six or eight weeks, and so this is exactly the situation we now have,
“This gentleman actually had symptoms before coming to Australia.
“I’m very confident … that things are absolutely fine.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-17/coronavirus-case-arrives-adelaide-sa-health-confirms/12365536
3. Professor Neil Ferguson, (the Bonking Boffin), breached his own lockdown rules for a tryst with his married lover. Ferguson knew he had been infected with Covid19. The infection is thought to have spread to his lover and her husband.
He said: “I acted in the belief that I was immune, having tested positive for coronavirus, and completely isolated myself for almost two weeks after developing symptoms.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11563707/lockdown-rules-experts/
6May2020
In each case the Health authorities seem to misunderstand the purpose of the 14 day quarantine period, which is based on the incubation period, and the similar but different requirement to isolate known infected people.
The infection can take months to be cleared from a patient. There is no reason to think that the patient is not infectious while they are still sick or continue to test positive on the PCR test. Indeed Professor Ferguson seems to prove that point.
Correct management is important to contain the virus as social lockdown is eased. There are a surprising (to me) number of people coming into Australia. 63,000 people have been in hotel quarantine with about 9000 people currently. Most of the new cases are from this group. They need to be well managed if the Covid virus is to be contained.
https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=People+In+Hotel+Quarantine&qpvt=people+in+hotel+quarantine&FORM=NWRFSH
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Or as Red Radio sums it up: https://www.rnz.co.nz
“Border Botch-Up, Covid Shambles, Catalogue of Cock-Ups” [sic]. Be kind… of stupid – or intentional?
It quickly came to light that Deputy Chief of Defence Air Commodore Digby Webb had ALREADY been ‘in charge of security’ for the past 4 weeks. What security! you may rhetorically ask. Sounds like another case of ‘open borders’ (cough!) to many of us here.
Then yesterday a police officer was shot and killed, and another seriously wounded, in Auckland. The crisis actor – oops, I mean the guilty party – has been arrested; however, police will “continue to be armed” until further notice.
This ain’t no Banana Republic, it’s a Kumara Republic – or for the vernacularly challenged, Fush’n’Chups Republic. Pass the vinegar & salt, darling.
61
Peter C:
My understanding is that an infected person will often test positive for days and weeks later because the tests react to viral fragments – which is not infectious or transmissible.
Now, are there sometimes exceptions to that rule? As determined, I think, by studies in South Korea? I don’t know.
I think a critical review of the status of the literature and the frontier of uncertainties yet to be resolved is in order.
Science ain’t easy. And getting sound, repeated and confirmed results in cases like CV19 with enormous costs is very important. I’d like the uncertainty gaps closed! Don’t you?
00
That might be the case, but I think it is unlikely that the viral fragments would persist for long, unless they were still being replicated (ie patient infected).
Also consider that 48 cases from the Diamond Princess are still listed as active, almost three months after they were infected.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
30
Clive Palmers new coal mine proposal headed for the courts this time on “Humanitarian grounds”,
Seems a new law in Queensland allows various green groups to apply to the courts this objection by saying the coal mined will contribute to globull warming with the resultant cyclones , bushfires etc affecting their lives .
50
The PM (Scott Morrison) has promised faster progress on development projects. Lets hope he means it.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/121394149/fasttracked-projects-needed-for-postcovid19-economy-but-the-devil-will-be-in-the-detail-groups-say
61
China is blamed for huge cyber attack on Australian businesses, schools and hospitals amid increasing war of words between Canberra and Beijing over calls for international inquiry into COVID-19:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8438205/Huge-cyber-attack-aimed-Australian-government.html
50
You would also be aware that they are trying to get the world focussed on this supposedly new cluster in Beijing. It maybe fake.
00
The idea is to get out of our head any idea that Covid-19 came out of the Wuhan Institute. Nothing to do with bats.
‘Top epidemiologist says there are similarities to the situation in Wuhan at the start of the outbreak last year. Areas where seafood, beef and lamb were sold found to have more traces of the virus than other sections.’ SCMP
10
FYI on that
https://app.spectator.com.au/2020/05/nothing-to-xi-here/pugpig_index.html
20
Thanks for that Ian, David Samuel was devastating.
00
I like to watch ever increasing claims that try to attract attention/funding/clicks and views
It seems:
Indigenous folk have gone from being here for 30,000 years to 60,000 years
The death of the snow season gets ever more certain while the depth of the snow gets ever deeper
“Renewable” energy is always getting cheaper yet energy costs always go up, especially were “RE” is installed to a significant level
Were are nearing Peak Oil yet oil prices dip into negative territory
Indigenous deaths in custody are apparently an outrage, yet other die at a rate of 4 to 1 compared with the indigenees. What are they? chopped liver?
Victoria is a political basket case because of the latest Labor shenanigans. Its like Obeid, Aldi bags of money, Farell and Queensland in general never existed.
After the wannabee faux BLM protests we still maintain the charade of slowly reducing restrictions
The hypocrisy, lies and deception is so deep its like wading through treacle.
200
Mungo man was dated to 42,000 years and I know there are claims of 60,000 years for finds up north but the most interesting I’ve seen was the 100,000 year old site near Warrnambool although it’s still to be confirmed.
40
Robert,
Yes, Mungo Man is important in past history of earlier waves of arrivals.
My recollection, from some years back, was that there had been more than one distinctive racial group coming to Australia.
The current early Australians are almost certainly not the groups present 60 and 100 thousand years ago nor much past 40,000.
There was a TV clip a couple of years ago with some current original Australians laying claim to kinship with those who occupied a cave system up north. What was concerning was that the archeology suggested that there was no link between the current and earlier groups.
30
Huge.
An interesting list ; if we are now at the peak of the evolutionary cycle it makes the future look a bit bleak.
10
Sea level has been falling since the Holocene Climate Max (7000 BP).
https://notrickszone.com/2020/06/18/new-studies-suggests-sea-levels-are-lower-today-than-they-were-even-during-the-little-ice-age/
20
The folly of offshore wind with hurricanes (My latest article)
https://www.cfact.org/2020/06/18/virginias-latest-folly-offshore-wind-power/
This is true wherever there are hurricanes or typhoons, not just in Virginia.
10
I was in the Carolinas after Hugo, and Miami after Andrew. I had the opportunity to inspect buildings designed to withstand
a Cat 5. They proved capable of sustaining human life, in general, but none were damage free. One can only imagine a tall tower, with a
heavy weight on the top, flexing back and forth, back and forth, for hours. Couldn’t we just build a nat gas plant onshore,
for reliable power at 10% for the cost? Of course not.
30
Interestingly, coal generation capacity ride last year due to guess who?…
China’s Coal Rush Causes Global Capacity To Rise For The First Time Since 2015
Only the Western nations are still falling for this green, sustainable nonsense
90
Most, if not all, of those plants in Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan are funded by China. Buying influence.
40
It’s major news over here about the cyber attack on oz but no headline article here and seemingly no comment either on this thread.
Is it happening? Who is it affecting? Is it serious?
20
Yes it is happening and widespread. Its a serious attempt to threaten our resolve, they want Oz to dampen down our demands for an inquiry into Covid-19. Its a Churchillian moment for Morrison and he won’t let us down.
31
‘China has fired back over accusations they were the ‘sophisticated state-based actor’ who launched a massive cyber-attack on the Australian government and businesses.
‘Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said the attack was ’95 per cent or more’ likely to have been launched from China.’ Daily Mail
41
Oh dear.
You can see Oz in bottom right hand corner.
All that warming and 1940+ cooling caused by carbon (sic).
And how reliable is that data before 1910?
NASA Video: Global warming from 1880 to 2019
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/video-global-warming-from-1880-to-2019/
BoM: “Temperature data prior to 1910 should be used with extreme caution as many stations, prior to that date, were exposed in non-standard shelters, some of which give readings which are several degrees warmer or cooler than those measured according to post-1910 standards.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/about-airtemp-data.shtml
20
Get ready to lol.
Looked out the window lately?
How is that 2020 weather prediction working out for you …
January 2007, the BBC aired a special programme presented by Sir David Attenborough called “Climate Change – Britain Under Threat”.
“Will your home be habitable by your grandchildren?
Using the climate prediction results viewers will see snapshots of the future of Britain in 2020, 2050 and 2080 as Sir David guides us through 21st century Britain. ”
4.58 sec:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1oFhTINXE
20
Brazil registered 49,554 new cases of COVID-19 today, the previous highest total was 37,273 cases, 4 days ago. That is the largest single day increase by any country and is about 25% higher than the next highest daily total. Brazil passed 1 million total cases overnight. With this degree of spreading acceleration it is not going to take long to get to 2 million total cases there. The result will be a very sharp rise in daily death numbers, before mid-July.
USA also registered more than 30,000 new cases today, with 31,808. The lowest daily new cases increase so far post the peak of 39,072 on April 24th, was 18,681 cases on May 11th. This increase is the first time new cases has gone above 30,000 in almost 7 weeks, the last time it occurred was May 1st. The shrinking active cases load is also visibly failing now. During the past week the total number of actives increased, despite the recent rise in recoveries, which was beginning to shrink the actives total by a couple of percent. That has now reversed, and things are getting numerically worse in the US once more. Which was entirely predictable and completely avoidable.
The US population, US business and US State governments all chose not to avoid a known deadly pandemic from spreading in the USA. They all apparently decided the economy would do better if they just let it expand again. Which is tremendous bullish economic news, if you own a funeral home, or some heavy earth-moving equipment, or a hearse. Not so much for the wider ‘real-economy’, which will now take a much more protracted hit to the bottom lines, and many more businesses will close down permanently as people’s capital is expended, sans profits and personal income.
‘Re-opening’, for economic reasons, when there were over 25,000 community spreading cases per day was false ‘economics’ from the outset, it was never going to produce an economic recovery. They’ve now missed the one opportunity they had to end it, and reopen in a way that would actually work. Greed has won the political bun fight (as expected), but greed will not win the economy back during an accelerating national plague.
What is amazing is that many of the same people who pointed-out the extraordinary smoke plumes coming from Wuhan crematoria during March, during Wuhan’s economic close-down, were arguing to reopen in the USA even while their were 25K new cases or more a day right across the US. These are also people who said China was massively hiding the deaths and faking their data (and they were doing that).
But such observed or inferred facts and the resulting epic cognitive-dissonance, when faced with same themselves, was no barrier to dumb, greedy irresponsible people arguing to take very predictably self-defeating generalized ‘re-opening’ actions, which will in time kill millions of people — and will also not work.
But the economy needed saving. Stunning nearsightedness at best, alternatively, rank greed and insanity in action. We’ll fairly soon see how that plays out.
As I have said a few times in recent month, an economy is there to serve our needs, not the other way around. The other way around is called greed — the love of money, the traditional “root of all evil”.
US real GDP produced $15.6 trillion in goods and services in 2008 ( https://www.thebalance.com/2008-gdp-growth-updates-by-quarter-3305542 ). US GDP was $21.428 trillion in FY 2019. An approximately $6 trillion increase in GDP in 11 years (~40% growth) since the Lehman’s and subprime induced GFC panic and temporary collapse (of 6.4% of GDP).
When you have over a decade of compounding growth, at 2.5% or so, it’s entirely valid to expend part of that growth during a national epidemic to ensure you can recover and grow again. Except the USA has totally failed to do this. US GDP did indeed recently drop (est. to be ~5.9% of GDP thus far). But the policies to defeat COVID-19 were never put in place within the USA, it was just half measures and weak half-hearted weak ‘leadership’ (if you can even call it that).
And when it was obvious that what had been done so far was not working sufficiently (or even close to it) they did not get together (Federal and State in a single unified policy grouping, as occurred in Australia), and review what was going wrong, and renovate all policies and procedures, to ensure they absolutely could and would defeat COVID-19, to eliminate it from spreading in the US community. Thus to be able to open their economy again with little chance of a general resurgence (isolated events yes, national resurgence, no).
This is a stunning incapacity to appreciate the situation, and self-regulate and effectively within a genuine national emergency, one with comprehensive strategic negative implications.
That is what is occurring instead. The USA has become ungovernable, to the extent it can not even spare itself what it clearly must. The authority to act has seeped away and been replaced with fawning weakness and ineptitude. It’s the most pathetic situation I’ve seen within any western country within my life time.
A major resurgence of COVID-19 will take down the US system of government, not just the US economy.
What replaces it will of course be very much more hard-line and Martial in nature. Martial as in military law, as the civilian system of governance has totally failed, at a most critical time.
If I were to speculate and guess as to where that will go, as it unfolds, I’d say the US military takes over civilian control, imposes national Martial Law and finally closes (and encloses) the borders, and finally provides direct support to embattled police forces, who will then be part of a “military-transition government”. And these then enforce a brutal forced lockdown (i.e. not unlike what was necessary in Wuhan), on the whole population of the USA. While the Constitution and existing authorities and alphabet soup agencies are annulled by emergency decree (including the current and future presidency and election cycle) and a new form of government is devised (you can bet a detail plan exists for that), while media is nationalized and their owners removed or all broadcast licences and current arrangements cancelled. While a new Constitution is drafted and passed into law and power is gradually returned to civilian control over a period of several years (if they can demonstrate they’re capable of exercising effective government, to aid the US people, rather than their petty self’s interests).
Expect a lot of arrests and swift trials.
Three months ago I would never have thought there’s any real chance of that occurring within the USA, but now it seems some version of that will occur, the only question is how long it takes, and how comprehensive it is. My guess is that once it begins it will evolve into the full enchilada.
53
Wow!
Brave call!
It looks like this second wave is the big one that wakes everyone up.
Let’s hope our borders don’t get breached. (the National border, not the State borders)
Tony.
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It is, but I don’t see how they avoid it now. They’ve done martial law before of course, but this time it will have to be everywhere, police as well, and much more firm-handed to end rebelliousness and resistance. Not going to be pretty.
40
WX I have been watching the USA for the past 4 months with fear and uncertainty.
There have been no closures of internal state borders
So the virus is washing backward & forward across the continental USA
As people move about with no check to see if they are infected or or carrying the virus.
At both the national level and at the state level the response has been incompetent
And politicised to a degree I would never have believed unless I had seen it actually happen.
I think though that as the disease numbers & deaths rise,
There will be a response at the local level in the USA:
At the level of cities and counties within the states
Which is where there is a local funded and controlled
Police capacity to impose lockdowns and quarantines.
And exclude or detain others travelling from elsewhere in the USA.
This process would I think be supported by the USA military command.
I notice you avoided two names in your long comment : Trump & Biden.
And i agree there are both now irrelevant nonentities.
Trump has stuffed up on this pandemic & is no longer
Recognised by most Americans as their national leader.
Biden is hiding somewhere in a basement
And has never had any recognition as the USA’s national leader.
This is a major crisis for the USA tearing at the very fabric of the country.
And I suspect it will spill over into Canada.
The Guardian reports that US citizens, despite the borders being closed,
Are also being allowed into Canada if they state they are traveling to Alaska.
But in actual fact simply to travel and tour.
Canada will be caught up in this viral caused chaos.
13
from above..
And just to add to that situation is of course,..the 2nd Amendment.
…..mass ownership of weapons !!
20
Yes, though the point of those weapons was also to defend the constitution, which is failing to be effective, not to engage the military who’s aligned with doing the same thing. Ones a military, one’s a militia.
Bottom line is the military will not put up with ineffective spiral policy mess indefinitely and let the country go down the drain.
I’d say once US deaths rise (well) above the level of 200,000 as predicted by Dr Anthony Fauci, and as discussed widely in the US media, with a trajectory for an order of magnitude even higher deaths, at least, all bets are off. They’re 78,000 deaths short of the 200,000 now, and there’s no way it’s going to be stopping there.
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Local confidence in Dr Fauci ranges up to this thread title
“Let’s Start A Contest, How Many Times Has The Quack, fauchi,”
20
“The Military” is not a single entity. As I pointed out earlier, millions of individual Servicemen will be making their own decisions about whether orders are legitimate or not.
Unlike you, they assume that the Constitution is there to protect your Rights, not your personal failure to take sufficient precautions against a sickness. No… your right to life does not include 24/7 protection by government agencies. That principle has been established by the highest courts in the land.
Those focussed on the death toll to the exclusion of everything else are failing to recognise that the US history of Revolution and Civil War are regarded is Prima-face evidence that the nation can endure casualties without failing. That they would rather take casualties than give up what makes America, America.
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Chad…
You might note that a majority of both military and Police are RKBA supporters.
The 2A is one of the primary reasons why the looting and riots will not spread outside urban areas.
30
There’s a basic failure to understand the US in these predictions of nation-wide martial law.
Every Serviceman takes an oath to Protect and Defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC . An enormous number of them take the attitude that this is serious, binding, and every individual soldier has a personal responsibility to adhere to this. Americans not only do not have any tradition of military law, they have a strongly-held tradition of opposing it.
The default response of the majority of the military will be to support legal orders from the legitimate civilian government.
Bear also in mind that the current culture in the military has been governed for years be the tight legal constraints of modern combat. They know that they only operate with the consent of the civilian population and according to the laws set by civilian governments.
The National Guard are the States’ military, predominantly living in and loyal to their own States.
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There’s a basic failure to understand the US in these predictions of nation-wide martial law.
Every Serviceman takes an oath to Protect and Defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC . An enormous number of them take the attitude that this is serious, binding, and every individual soldier has a personal responsibility to adhere to this. Americans not only do not have any tradition of military law, they have a strongly-held tradition of opposing it.
The default response of the majority of the military will be to support legal orders from the legitimate civilian government.
Bear also in mind that the current culture in the military has been governed for years be the tight legal constraints of modern combat. They know that they only operate with the consent of the civilian population and according to the laws set by civilian governments.
The National Guard are the States’ military, predominantly living in and loyal to their own States.
00
Uh, probably not. We have some ungoverned cities, and a coupe of very badly messed up states.
They were failing before COVID. Things are worse now.
There were between ten and twenty million people living in urban cores that have exploded from time to time.
Many were slowly being restored to productive life. The current combination of racial strife and COVID may cause a relapse to
ungovernable ghetto status.
Our media, as seen internationally, exists in between three and five of these cities and is almost completely unrepresentative of the
America most Americans live in. It is difficult to explain how different life can be when you are only ten miles from the city center.
In a city, one can’t get around without using mass transit, and one rides an elevator to and from ones job and to and from one’s apartment.
I live 12 miles from the center of a medium size city, that offers people a lifestyle like this if they want it, but, unlike our dozen or so largest
cities, is fully open and accessable to cars. I don’t remember the last time I was in an elevator. I have lived here for over 30 years and never used mass transit —
about half of American have no possible access to mass transit nor do they want or need it. WIthin 10 miles in the other direction I still see deer by the side of the read once in a while.
Here’s a map: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/blogs/2012/04/how-do-we-measure-urban-areas/UA2010_UAs_and_UCs_Map2.jpg
And a hint, at ground level, 50% of the purple is still relatively open, and another 25% is very wealthy and nothing at all like what you see on TV unless you are watching reruns of “Dallas”.
We’ve endured carnage from smoking, and carnage from unsafe cars, and wars, and pollution, and survived fast food.
The wealthy people who live in and around cities have stupidly put in ineffective governments. They have rewarded rioters and political parasites.
They will either return to law and order as they have in the past, because they found cities useful, or decide that they no longer really make much
economic sense in a contemporary American economy and treat them all like ‘Detroits’….abandoned, bankrupt, depopulated, with a remaining disenfranchised population;
but now enough assets at a low enough price that some revitalization was occuring before the pandemic.
The cities do not have, I do not think, the ability to suck really serious financial resources out of the country in the form of taxes, subsidies, and the like.
Do not imagine that the suburbs where the comfortable live are not still well policed.
It will be reported as horrific that only 40% of our minorities own homes, and only 60% are in the middle class, and so on. It is no reported that in much of America
minority folks are in fact home owning college graduates (40% being about 7MM housholds) and are part of the fabric of everyday life; not running down a street throwing bricks through windows.
Target has 1868 stores in the US. You saw on international TV 2 or three in riot areas that had to be closed. The rest have been open as essential business throughout the pandemic
and their employees are working and getting paid. And some are getting sick. And getting well and going back to work. A company that has hundreds of thousands of employees can deal with this.
The News media profit from Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Rioting and loud public display of idiocy lead to the illusion of power, at the moment.
Stupid stuff like tearing down statues or taking down pictures or feel-good laws or sounds-good windmills don’t makes people’s lives better.
Most people aren’t directly impacted by the really bad stuff. But they see the quality of their lives eroded by it’s consequences in society, and either change horses or
withdraw. More than most people, Americans will pull up stakes and vote with their feet.
Meanwhile, I would submit that the people who seem ready for dystopia and may get it in a few cities are not representative.
50
Thanks Richard for an on the ground perspective.
01
I’ve been away for a couple of days, thanks for that reply Richard, you always present a thoughtful mix of perspective.
00
David Whitehouse gets a scoop, West Antarctica is warming naturally, he then questions why the MSM is not carrying this fantastic good news.
https://www.thegwpf.com/natural-climate-change-in-antarctica-is-no-news/
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Rules for Some.
I live in an Aged Care Facility, there have been very strictly enforced rules since February, regarding relative visits. Visiting only Monday to Friday and with set hours and by appointment. All business people who come have to have a flu vaccination certificate and have their temperature tested. Us residents are not allowed out, even visits for specialist medical appointments have only been allowed this month and those under strict supervision. All of these measures are well understood and accepted. Separate registers are kept for Relatives and business people.
Late last Sunday evening a visitor was admitted, No test, no record of who she was. I asked the Care manager about this on Monday and he has told me that the visitor was know to the person who let her in and the temperature testing and registration of the visit was ‘Not her Job’.
No wonder Aged Care Facilities become hot spots for COVIC-19
100
Total new cases today, globally = 181,005 cases in 1 day
Highest so far, by a large margin.
The previous highest daily total was 146,111 just 2 days ago. The last expansion phase’s peak was 102,180 new cases on April 24th. This is not a surprise to me, 6 weeks ago I was expecting this to happen in the middle of June as the developing world takes off, and as the US resumes its infection spreading. It occurred in an easily foreseeable progression. Now we wait to see how big the expansion curve multiplication factor amplitude becomes, it will not take much to become ¼ million new cases per day, by July 1st. If that occurs it adds 10 million new cases each month.
It took 7.5 months to get to 8.75 million – it means the spread has just changed up a gear.
Here’s the last 6 days to show what any new acceleration does.
Date … Total Cases … Case Curve multiplication … ∆ Cases
14-Jun-20 … 8,014,147 … 1.016 … 124,455
15-Jun-20 … 8,139,780 … 1.016 … 125,633
16-Jun-20 … 8,283,346 … 1.018 … 143,566
17-Jun-20 … 8,429,457 … 1.018 … 146,111
18-Jun-20 … 8,569,985 … 1.017 … 140,528
19-Jun-20 … 8,750,990 … 1.021 … 181,005 A tiny acceleration of just 0.004 increased new cases by 41,000 in 1 day.
So any May-like acceleration now will produce several 10s of millions of new cases inside 1 month.
In late May the curve of new cases acceleration peaked out at 1.125 on May 20th (and order of magnitude larger than now), and began to decline a week after that as home isolation policies starved the virus of new hosts. But when that occurred there were only 30,700 total new cases on that day. But if that level of acceleration occurred again, in July, there would be over a million new cases added each day. By the time people figure out there’s a major problem in mid-July, another 10 days of expansion will be baked-in. And even then it takes another 4 to 5 weeks to shallow out again after the peak.
That’s what occurred during March and April.
And even as the expansion curves were shallowing-out again, in late April, that was when we got the biggest totals — on April 24th. So at this point it only takes a tiny change in added acceleration to produce a huge effect on new case totals, and a large surge in deaths to follow 2 to 2.5 weeks later, which deaths just began to show up in the global stats.
If the acceleration is slow (and I think it will be more gradual this time) it’ll still kill millions by the time it flattens out at a lower level again.
52
Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
‘It is important to understand that China is a fascist dictatorship. The term “fascist” is now thrown around with such carelessness that it has lost most of its meaning outside the offices of a few historians or political science professors.
‘But fascism, in its original early twentieth century incarnation, meant a political system defined by three attributes—authoritarianism, ethnonationalism, and an economic model in which capitalism co-existed with large state-directed industries and partnerships between the government and corporations.’
Simon Leitch / Quillette
60
FWIW on that
“The beginning of the end of China”
https://zeihan.com/a-failure-of-leadership-part-iii-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-china/
21
Interesting; Do we hope or fear that he is right ?
01
Bill
My guess might be the hope of getting it sorted out,
the fear what happens while that is occurring
and the certainty is that somewhere in the future it will be tried again because “it wasn’t properly applied”.
But I only have a low grade crystal ball so I might well be wrong
30
‘A full political lockdown is the only possible survival mechanism.’
Not sure about that, there might be another way.
10
Yeah, he says China’s had it and bound for famine; a quick summary is available at his website zeihan dot com.
10
Gordo….
Back then it was well understood that Fascism, Socialism and National Socialism were all part of the same family.
Some held to the doctrine that the State should own everything. Others argued that it didn’t matter who owned what, as long as they did what the State told them (because they would be in front of a firing squad if they didn’t)
40
There might not be much point to a CoViD-19 vaccine.
https://www.ibtimes.com/coronavirus-antibodies-may-only-last-three-months-study-reveals-2997032
‘Within eight weeks, antibodies plummeted to undetectable levels in 40% of asymptomatic people compared with 12.9% of symptomatic people.’
20
INDIAN OCEAN EQUATORIAL JETSTREAM
A novel EQUATORIAL jetstream structure has formed between 34 to 45 K ft, over the Indian Ocean during the past 2 weeks or so. Here it is displayed, within an gif ECMWF animation projecting it forwards over the next 10 days at 12 hr intervals.
https://i.ibb.co/bLCgnJB/Indian-Ocean-Equatorial-Jet-June-20th-2020-45k-ft-ECMWF.gif
NOTE:
1. That it is getting stronger and more organized as the respective hemispheres approach their summer and winter extremes.
2. That the net wind flow is from the hotter hemisphere to the colder hemisphere.
3. That the southern hemisphere jets are considerably stronger at 45,000 ft (the global wind speed symmetry present even 2 months ago is now gone).
4. That is not really a jet, it is more an area of high winds, with not much of a jet like ‘core’ to it.
5. That this jet blows westward, while all other jets I know of go eastward.
6. That this is another ‘quasi-stable’ equatorial jet ‘structure’, that’s been present for weeks already in weaker form, and is likely to remain roughly in place for a couple of months to come.
—
As far as I know nothing like this has been observed before. It’s even more curious that it’s a westward flow this time. The flow starts in the north central pacific and flows to central Africa — a very strange dynamic. Most of the ultra dry sunken stratospheric air is now in the southern hemisphere, pooling mostly at about 18,000 ft level, but some of it remains over north and east Africa
Got to figure out how the standing pressure structures are doing this.
40
Has anything like this ever been observed before ?
11
Hi Bill, doubt it, no one had seen an equatorial jet (parallel to it for months) at all prior to a few months back as far as I can tell, let alone one that’s moving westward. Most likely a novel development. Notice it is still getting organised and stronger. Will probably peak in another 6 weeks as a much more defined and faster deeper jet. I’ll make several more animations as it develops and fades during this Winter and Spring.
00
WX could it be related to the QBO?
00
Certainly, haven’t had much time to think about this yet, but that’s a good question Gordo.
00
Maybe it is a total coincidence, but there were BLM protests last weekend and before, and now CCP virus cases are increasing in Victoria:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-20/victoria-coronavirus-numbers-increase-again-with-more-new-cases/12376316
Victoria is looking at tightening isolation measures again. Also, an Essendon Bomber has tested positive … wonder if he or someone in his household marched…
50
Move along. Nothing to see there.
“I’ll summarise Andrews’ statement.
It wasn’t the protests.
It was families.”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/06/victorias-cfmeulabor-premier-andrews-announcement-on-extended-restrictions-after-spike-in-chicom-vir.html
60
Which families ?
Name & shame would sort the problem out !
But no these families who have behaved recklessly and got infected
Have to have their privacy protected !
Ha ha Ha !
But the joke is on the people of Victoria !They are ones paying for these families recklessness.
21
No. He’s Irish and went home for the Lockdown.
Then came back in early June and did 14 days in quarantine.
But he has ‘now’ tested positive.
Is 14 days quarantine enough to ensure that people are not infected ?
11
Those restrictions are back and I am furious. Not banning those protests (and failing to fine the offenders where photographic evidence is available) I found deeply offensive to all those of us who have been very careful. We are the ones being imprisoned, in effect, for the sins of those who don’t care. After being told we must be particularly careful where indigenous people are concerned, we saw many of them at the protests; do they care about carrying the Wuflu back to their communities? What was the point of it all?
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To have the nerve to blame families for community transmission after we all saw the tens of thousands standing close together is beyond words to describe it.
41
In a word …. psy-op.
11
House arrest is a favoured way of punishing dissidents in China.
Just sayin’…
30
There’s a lot of people here who have no time for Scott Morrison but you have to applaud fees hike for arts and humanities degrees. The horror of having to consider your career when deciding on a tertiary course!!!!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-20/study-arts-and-humanities-government-fees-tertiary-education/12374124
And doing this while the ALP are embroiled in damage control over the branch stacking issue is just beautiful.
30
I wonder who I would be offending with my link to the story on the fees hike for arts and humanities degrees? Arts and humanities students,I guess
10
Possibly the Arts and humanities students if they have learnt to read and write.
20
For discussion, assuming the link works.
00
Doesn’t work ATM
00
Apologies… I have difficulty in making the link function work.
It is a paper accepted for publication in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly , by Carlo Caduff of Kings College London.
Titled What Went Wrong – Corona and the World After the Full Stop, it’s a discussion of the development of government response to the COVID epidemic.
Link to the PDF https://www.academia.edu/42829792/What_Went_Wrong_Corona_and_the_World_after_the_Full_Stop?email_work_card=abstract-read-more&fbclid=IwAR1PrRwCa595QcgSEob-h9l8QUlP7mf7W62BbZdhwtLfqion0K_72dTU1O8
01
That link has been configured so that everybody has to provide name and email address to get the pdf.
Why ?
I refuse.
Is it publicly available on a website Peter ?
10

PeterW
June 20, 2020 at 4:33 pm · Reply
Police are required to deal with lethal people. There is no such thing as a completely safe way to restrain a violent person. Conservatives are more likely to understand this than Lefties.
PeterW: your mind/psyche is split between political opposites, but the law of justice is not so. Police in the USA are also under the law, actually moreso in order to set the proper example. Chokeholds are not the proper example of an arrest.
The extreme desecration of values by some will result in their own self-destruction and the ultimate end of hypocrisy with lip-service to “law.” Real law a person must dedicate himself to; phony law that only is there as hit-men for thugs and cartels and for vast subtle multinational monopolies will go down. Is this too hard for people to fathom?? -rd
00
If SA needs a link to NSW to get the energy they need what happens when NSW no longer has energy to sell.
20
Lawrence:
SA doesn’t need a link to NSW to get the energy they need. Its purpose is to allow excess wind generation to be dumped somewhere and allow the wind farm owners to get the subsidy. Currently there is too much generation to fit into the state demand + export to Vic. so wind farms are being shut down (in rotation) so they don’t get money when there is a lot of wind. The overall Capacity Factor has dropped from just over 30% to 27%, so like any concern which suffers a 10% drop in revenue they are looking for ways to get it back. Oddly enough, part of their problem is due to increased household solar, which the State government is currently encouraging.
During the last breakdown of the interconnector to Victoria the State had no problem with the power supply, indeed it was still supplying some into parts of Victoria. The demand is less than the supply, which would normally lead to a reduction in prices, but in the absence of cheap reliable generation this hasn’t happened as the State now relies on costly diesel for grid stability.
60
We, NSW, still have to pay for the Link.
30
If SA needs a link to NSW to get the energy they need what happens when NSW no longer has energy to sell.
21
Theoretically it will come from Queensland.
https://www.energymagazine.com.au/aer-greenlights-queensland-nsw-interconnector/
10
“Energy giants want to thwart reforms that would help renewables and lower power bills”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/20/energy-giants-want-to-thwart-reforms-that-would-help-renewables-and-lower-power-bills/
Good luck with reforming those choke points
20