Is that the dark smell of desperation?
Green energy is so essential and profitable that when the chips are down, investors ran a mile.
IEA: COVID-19 crisis causing the biggest fall in global energy investment in history
31 May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has set in motion the largest drop in global energy investment in history, with spending expected to plunge in every major sector this year—from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency—the International Energy Agency said in a new report.
The unparalleled decline is staggering in both its scale and swiftness, with serious potential implications for energy security and clean energy transitions.
global investment is now expected to plummet by 20%, or almost $400 billion, compared with last year, according to the IEA’s World Energy Investment 2020 report.
Not only has the money gone, but renewables have been out-competed at the thing they are supposed to do best.
The Global Pandemic is the world’s greatest carbon reduction program since the Black Plague:
Those short-term benefits [of the Coronavirus] have been substantial. Consumption for jet fuel and gasoline, for example, declined by 50 and 30 percent, respectively, from early March to June 7, while electricity demand fell by 10 percent.
Fans of green investments must be feeling squeezed out of the public arena as well as out of investors wallets.
The industry dependent on death threats from climate models has been crushed by real deaths from Coronavirus. Realizing they are in danger of dropping right off the Radar of Death, they have reshuffled advertising memes. The new approach is to convert the usual extinction-extortion into Pandemic-speak, which means trying to compete with the pandemic in deaths per million, or failing that, deaths per month. Remember Coronavirus has killed 476,000 people (so far). But, by saving all the Avgas and petrol, the lockdown is saving, wait for it… “an estimated 200 lives per month”.
So fighting for relevancy, the Green Blob’s new tack is to plead for subsidies and help because if investors don’t keep pushing money into windmills and solar panels, 40 people a month will die:
Under a worst-case — but realistic — scenario, they predict an additional 2,500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — or the equivalent of nearly 3 trillion pounds of coal burned — could be emitted, causing 40 more deaths per month, through 2035.
They must be very worried, and so they should be. Humans did the ultimate Paris Lockdown, and CO2 hits record high anyway. The renewables industry is pointless every which way. It doesn’t make much money, or energy, or save much CO2. The CO2 it does save makes no difference to global CO2, and the global CO2 makes no measureable difference to the climate.
The IEA’s Sustainable Recovery Plan Is Not Sustainable
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/23/remaking-post-covid-19-capitalism-in-the-west-lessons-for-the-east-2/
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Minerals Council of Australia Fails to Appease Climate Activists
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/22/minerals-council-of-australia-fails-to-appease-climate-activists/
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Go the minerals council
Push hard a
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What happens after 2035? Or is that how far their crystal ball can see?
According to the WHO data, (if you trust that) globally around half a million people die of the flu every year.
Forty more deaths per month? They’re not trying hard enough.
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Looks like their crystal ball has a similar life span to a wind turbine?
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Who would have thought that two thousand years after the world’s capacity to think, reason, analyse and debate logically had been made evident, we would have obviously gone into reverse.
The two recent and connected social memes being used to Charm and control the world are examples of our collective failure to think.
The man made global warming and death by incineration due to atmospheric CO2 levels and the solution; Renewables, made in China and Germany, need urgent scrutiny.
Neither the CO2 “problem” nor the Renewables “solution” have any basis in fact.
There is undeniable science, engineering, economics and environmental considerations that refute the political push behind these issues.
How can we allow ourselves to be led by obvious distortions of the truth?
KK
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But, but … I was told renewable energy was cheaper …
Michael Mann, 2017:
“It’s a matter of scaling it up and making that transition as quickly as we can, in part by putting a price on carbon (sic), by leveling the playing field and the energy marketplace so that renewables can compete fairly against fossil fuels.”
https://therealnews.com/stories/mmann0906reportpt2
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The dopey git wouldn’t even comprehend the idiocy of his comments. 🙂
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Covid-19 Claims Another UN Climate Conference
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/23/covid-19-claims-another-un-climate-conference/
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A year without a CoP? … now, that won’t be missed!
There is an upside to the Sars-Cov2 pandemic after all.
The alcohol barons will be disappointed though.
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How dare they!
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The way I see it is the pandemic alarmists and the climate change alarmists are one and the same type of people. Their aim is to destroy the economy of the West. Why? Because they hate the West with a vengeance. Why? Because they hate what the West has and has not done for them. Which are what? The West has a tradition that people should work for a living and not expect free handouts from governments. So what happens when the current free handouts due to the pandemic are withdrawn. All hell will break loose and civil violence will get out of control. Meanwhile in Europe, crop yields are down as a result of a very cold season. More of the same over the coming years and we will have another crisis that will make the current pandemic look like a picnic; mass shortage of food. Don’t bother looking to Australia to make up for the shortage given we have the ideal environment. Politicians on both sides will make sure we won’t become the food bowl of the world.
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‘The way I see it is the pandemic alarmists and the climate change alarmists are one and the same type of people.’
Strongly disagree, apples and pears.
‘So what happens when the current free handouts due to the pandemic are withdrawn.’
In Oz support will continue for as long as it takes, but in the US its an entirely different matter.
‘Politicians on both sides will make sure we won’t become the food bowl of the world.’
We are a food bowl and with the return of La Nina the agri sector will flourish. Our democracy is sound and there is a genuine desire from both sides to get the country moving again, so we need to have a real energy debate on efficiency
‘Anthony Albanese has invited the PM to begin negotiations to develop a national energy framework in an attempt to cut through years of conflict over the issue.’ SMH
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Sorry, Gordo, but that is unwarranted optimism.
Firstly because politicians have a well-established pattern of throwing money around when the electorate threatens to give them the boot….. and the majority of voters already get from the public purse, more than they put in. Peolke quickly assume tgat they have a “right” to what started out as emergency measures. Politicians also have a demonstrated tendency to hang onto powers and regulations assumed to deal with emergencies, once the emergency has passed.
Secondly, because the technology to increase food production is expensive. You don’t turn that around in a season while maintaining a high-cost, high-taxation environment for the farmers who must do the investing. I am trying to increase my own productivity right now. I have been for decades and still have plenty of room to improve. One of the major barriers is the cost of exactly tge things I mentioned.
As for Australia being a “food bowl”. We are not a big producer on the world scale. We just have a small population relative to our productive capacity, which makes us a significant EXPORTER to those countries with big populations. There is a difference between production and having an excess available for export.
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If chairman Dan and Palacechook gutter their economies unnecessarily, then they will be punished at the ballot box.
We are not yet the food bowl of the earth, but there is an awful lot of useless desert which could be converted into Chinese market gardens.
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How? It’s “useless desert” for reasons other than an extreme shortage of market gardeners …
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I envisage large geodesic domes, linked to a central core for packing and distribution. Creating brown soil out of red desert shouldn’t be too hard and might prepare us for the Martian mission.
Energy would primarily be a mix of renewables and water piped from Lake Argyle should suffice.
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The only way we will ever become a food bowel for the word is we become another province of China. Our current “crop” of politicians are a failure because they are myopic.
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You mean outpost of empire, quarry, food bowl and Covid free zone for the idle rich.
China’s leadership is myopic and potentially dangerous, so its better we make them lose face now and shame them into reforming.
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Joanne, this is fairly big news.
We have info on a company named Zetas in Mexico from some years ago. Connects to UPC Renewables…
At least 15 dead in southern Mexico wind-farm feud killings
https://www.wfmz.com/at-least-15-dead-in-southern-mexico-wind-farm-feud-killings/article_cc943ec3-51bf-551b-91d5-7834bb211287.html
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We are going through records now. Will post or email you results when we go through over a decade of records.
john
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“NSW Government Offers Subsidised Infrastructure for Renewable Energy, Overwhelming Response”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/22/nsw-government-offers-subsidised-infrastructure-for-renewable-energy-overwhelming-response/
Where one state government’s pipe dream clashes with another?
“SA: Still at risk of blackout, one third of solar PV “switching off” to save state, needs $1.5b interconnector bandaid to NSW”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/06/sa-still-at-risk-of-blackout-one-third-of-solar-pv-switching-off-to-save-state-needs-1-5b-interconnector-bandaid-to-nsw/
When NSW has all that excess solar energy will they want the excess from SA?
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Gotta job. Maybe.
Gotta Family, maybe.
If responsible citizen….
Worried about job, family.
Maybe have room in tiny lizard brain for one more thing.
Covid displaces Green.
Probability: Law and Order displaces COVID.
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Investors don’t make decisions based on ideology. The reason for their exit in RE is due to the expectation of an end to subsidies in a bankrupt world. What the green idiots can’t understand is that all government money is provided by taxpayers (ie: people that actually work) and if the source of tax income dries up as the economy collapses, then the government has no money to take from real workers to provide as gifts to green rent seekers.
Perhaps the obvious solution to this green funding problem is to request all green protesters to forego their fortnightly government welfare payments and send the money to the RE rent-seekers, who will be grateful that they can maintain their expensive mansion and yacht maintenance bills.
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Private investment won’t pass up the opportunity …
India eyes private investment to open 41 new coal mines
“Prime Minister Modi says private coal mining will boost India’s energy security, despite expert warnings of stranded assets and indigenous rights violations”
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/06/19/india-eyes-private-investment-open-41-new-coal-mines/
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Wait. What?
I was told if we built more windmills, there would be less heat waves …
August 2019: Texas Heat Wave Exposes Energy Grid Challenges
“As the temperatures climbed, demand from air conditioners soared and winds slowed, the state’s grid operator found itself with a shrinking margin of reserve power.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2019-08-19/texas-heat-wave-tests-electric-grid-underscores-challenges-for-wind
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Premier Gladys is behaving badly.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/nsw-first-renewable-zone-attracts-stunning-27gw-of-solar-wind-storage-proposals-82163/
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How unusual that the RE rag has a totally different view to the world Energy Investment. Report. ?
Interesting to see how much of the “reported”. 27 GW (nameplate) if “interest” ever actually materialises. ?
I wonder if anyone has estimated the cost of the transmission lines needed to get even a fraction (5-10GW ) toan Dubbo, to an area it is needed. ?
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Its fair to say this is a fait accompli.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-23/renewable-energy-zone-near-dubbo-attracts-113-investors/12383308
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You may be interested in the battle between Eric Worrall and Nick Stokes in comments.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/22/nsw-government-offers-subsidised-infrastructure-for-renewable-energy-overwhelming-response/
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Ross McKitrick on any scary prediction using RCP8.5
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/06/23/the-sound-of-settled-science-78/
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And comments
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Plans to open up the Central West of NSW to more renewable energy have generated overwhelming investor interest …
Government renewable energy investment program swamped by support
“Plans to open up the Central West of NSW to more renewable energy have generated overwhelming investor interest – topping $38 billion, or nine times the government’s available capacity.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/government-renewable-energy-investment-program-swamped-by-support-20200622-p554uo.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1592857448
>> Considering that every wind turbine is paid $600,000 a year in taxpayer subsidies there is little surprise in ‘investor interest.’
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Faux Facts Group, now owned by 9.
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Invest all your available money in ‘Renewable’ Energy or the Baby gets it! , signed The Greens.
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Something like that. A little more plain and on a world scale:
6-11-20 Fed printed $2.9 trillion since early March. That’s about $22,000 per household. But this money wasn’t spread to them. It was helicopter money for Wall Street. And it went on to multiply. And most of it ended up with a relatively small number of households. And their wealth increased by the trillions of dollars….
And so the Fed bailed hedge funds out through the “backdoor” by buying vast amounts of Treasuries that pushed up their prices and pushed down their yields. And this action made sure that the people whose money was tied up in these hedge funds didn’t have to pay the price for the risk they took. They were made whole entirely, even as tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs….
“As volatility soared, real-estate investment trusts that invest in mortgage-backed securities were forced sellers as they struggled to meet margin calls,” Dudley said. “Again, the Fed purchases helped limit their losses.”
And then there is the bailout of “heavily indebted corporations,” as Dudley put it. “This is significant because many corporations took on lots of debt by choice,” he said. So the Fed set up these special purpose vehicles, or SPVs, to purchase corporate bonds and leveraged loans, which pushed up their prices, pushed down the yield, and allowed these over-indebted companies to borrow in the market that was suddenly chasing yield as yield was evaporating.
“These actions also protected investors in high-yield mutual-bond funds,” Dudley said. “Had the funds been forced to sell amid plunging prices to meet large redemptions, this could have set off a chain reaction in which falling prices begat more sales. Both the asset managers and the retail investors who bought shares in these junk-bond funds escaped bearing the cost of their actions,” he said.
In central-bank lingo this is called “moral hazard”: Bailing out the wealthy and asset holders, hedge funds, mortgage REITs, private equity firms, and huge risk takers, and it’s called “moral hazard” because it encourages this risky behavior because they know that they’re going to get a bailout when it hits the fan next time, and so they do the same thing again and take even greater risks, and it blows up again with even bigger consequences, and they get bailed out again with even more trillions.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/06/11/america-convulses-in-pain-fed-bails-out-the-wealthy/
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🙂
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Governments have been subsidising renewables for at least the last 15 years.
Economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will very likely dictate that the money that would go into renewables is more urgently needed elsewhere.
Current contracts with renewables probably can’t be broken but it’s no problem to back away from subsidising new renewables projects.
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Invoking ‘force majeure’ to cancel contracts insights:
https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/articles/impact-covid-19-contractual-obligations-force-majeure-and-frustration
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Seems sort of appropriate here
“Welcome to Idiocracy”
https://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/06/23/welcome-to-idiocracy/
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And to give hydrogen a mention
“Hasten slowly with Hydrogen!”
https://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/06/24/hasten-slowly-with-hydrogen/
See 3rd comment by “Bruce”
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With any luck this next Chief Scientist will rid of us of the support for the hydrogen albatross the mountebank Finkel has burdened us with during the two year extension he has enjoyed in the sinecure.
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Australia’s strategy should be
1 No more windmills or solar for the grid
2 Replace existing coal fired plants as they reach their end of life
3 develop gas fired plants
4 go nuclear in mid to long term
Simples
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And legislate against sales and marketing hyperbole and puffery promoting a tiny segment of unreliable, intermittent energy bursts to the grid.
For example quoting theoretical installed capacity (nameplate) as if that is realistic.
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At the heart of wind power is a pesky cube factor, double the wind speed and octuple the generated power; it’s unsurprising that being subject to such variability in load their lifetimes are abridged.
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If you tried to design a more fragile machine than a wind turbine you would have great difficulty.
They are an engineering nightmare, designed to fail.
Their prime function in the future will be to serve as a highly visible marker of human stupidity.
They are monuments to self indulgence, greed, domination, theft and the immense gullibility of society.
KK
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If Australia wants a future with manufacturing and heavy industry it needs first to repeal the RET legislation and then build power plants which deliver the cheapest baseload power which will be coal generators built on the coal mines.
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1. There is no climate crisis.
2. Renewables do not work and never will work.
3. Climate crisis is only a scam to destroy the Western world.
4. Every warmest, Greenie, socialist, communist, laborite, Democrat, are seeking power to enslave you.
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The climate crisis took a backseat when a real crisis turned up.
Renewables have potential in isolated situations, but not cities or towns.
The global cooling during the middle of last century sowed the seeds for what was to follow.
The green/left cannot be lumped in one basket. Do you consider yourself far right?
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Jo you are starting get under my skin.
I thought you were a hard headed sceptical journalist, you certainly are in relation to climate change but when it comes to Covid you seem to swallow every bit of alarmist claptrap the msm spits out.
Your contention that 476,000 people have died OF Covid is just rubbish.
Even Dr Birks of President Trumps medical team has said that anyone who dies and is positive for Covid or is even just suspected of having Covid is counted as dying OF Covid, so who knows what the REAL figure is.
Just yesterday the Australia chief medical officer was still spouting the alarmist figure that the death rate is 3 to 5% when the latest from the CDC puts the figure at .26 of 1% so please I suggest you dig a little deeper before publishing alarmist info unchallenged.
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Quite a few people seem to agree with the 480,000+ figure
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
How many other facts are you misinformed about ?
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So it’s written on a web page so it must be correct.How could I be so dumb?
So you are happy if someone is killed in car accident who has Covid is added to the Covid death figure?
Extreme example I know but forms of that is happening all the time.
As I said Dr Birks one of Trumps leading advisers said exactly that.
https://youtu.be/IW3H_B36-7s
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Leading advisors don’t seem to last long and Trump will be saying how rubbish they were.
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Daily COVID-19 Deaths in the U.S. Have Fallen Dramatically Since April
The downward trend continued after states began lifting their lockdowns.
JACOB SULLUM | 6.22.2020 2:15 PM
https://reason.com/2020/06/22/daily-covid-19-deaths-have-fallen-dramatically-since-april/?utm_medium=email
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Government will waste money when government has money to waste.
I am not familiar with the tax flows in most of the world, but governments, in general are seeing diminished revenues
and increased expenses. While even the most wasteful expenditures have constituencies when folks are unemployed and hungry public works,
even those said to save the planet, take the hindmost.
The US pattern may be a bit like this.
Bear in mind the difference between the “economy”, a sort of gross measure of goods and services and forward looking items like the stock market,
and the budgets of government units which represent cash flow.
Cities will be first to feel the pinch.
They depend, foremost, on property taxes and sales taxes. Even tho Amazon dominates and does charge tax, retail is way down. Much business is not taking place.
ALso, consumers, working from home, seem to be spending less, possibly because they need less, and possibly because fear has motivating savings.
The $7 cup of coffee on the way to work, the toll or train ticket, the business lunch, the impulse purchase from a storefront are all gone. But the fixed costs of running
the city haven’t changed much, maintenance costs have probably gone up, it’s very hard to lay off union workers, state and federal authorities are fighting their own battles,
you may be doing riot cleanup, and you pension fund looks like a black hole. So Cities can still pass all the virtue signaling green energy resolutions they want but there won’t
be funding. And piling expensive and irrational requirements on business that are already setting one-way uHaul records probably doesn’t look like a good idea. And with property values going down, property tax receipts will tumble. If you have to cover slow pay with anticipation warrants, you net less.
Wanna run for mayor?
States have similar problems. If you were non-green, you suffered though a real shock in the oil patch, and the relatively low oil and gas prices that are great for consumers are
crushing your budget. But most big energy producers also keep moderate economies going. The greener states were the shut-down states and they are now the broke states.
Many of the are learning a lesson true also in OZ: it is quick and easy to decommission and destroy older conventional energy sources; not so quick and easy to restore them.
California is building up portable generator and fuel stocks, and planning for another season of rolling blackouts. But across the board, the question will quickly devolve to this: Federal aid will be target to COVID identifiable expense, and the pension fund is underwater. I expect between 6 and 20 states to zero out their financial support for
green and alternative energy projects to find cash to backfill pension funds, and maintain union employment, especially in schools.
Bankruptcy has a way of sharpening the mind. And this discussion will probably take place without much input from skeptics (but we told you so).
If and when the buying is to begin again, part coming from China will be another new hurdle.
So net, rational behavior may result from totally insane mismanagement of government. Think they’ll learn?
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Good comments with which I would like to agree.
Experience shows that governments have followed bad decisions with worse, and rational solutions may not follow after the damage from irrational policies.
(Venezuela, Victoria, California, Cuba)
What governments do depends on who they depend on, it may be two or three big unions, or a section of the mass media, or who will bail them out, I can well imagine the current regime in our state of Victoria going to China for a ‘loan’. National governments do not run out of money in that way, they just print more.
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Out of massive respect for Jo’s audience, opinions should be backed by numbers
Highest state unemployment: Nevada (25.3%), Hawaii (22.6%), Michigan (21.2%), California (16.3%), Rhode Island (16.3%), Massachusetts (16.3%), Delaware (15.8%), Illinois (15.2%), New Jersey (15.2%), Washington (15.1%). All Democrat dominated politically.
Lowest unemployment rates Nebraska (5.2%), Utah (8.5 %), Wyoming (8.8%), Arizona (8.9%), and Idaho (8.9%). Republican governance all.
If folks ain’t workin’ the cash ain’t flowin’. So it hardly matters if the windmills are spinnin’.
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Utterly meaningless, as the pandemic also demonstrates that shutting economies down did not affect atmospheric CO%#8322; levels.
This pandemic has falsified alarmist claims on multiple levels.
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