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If solar power and batteries were a winner anywhere, we’d hope it would be in remote Australian communities. But a cyclone clouded over Central-Australia for a few days and the batteries ran out. People had no money, no phone and no landline either. To boot, the rain flooded the roads, so people were cut off in every sense.
Welcome to Renewable World:
Telstra says the stations that provide landline and mobile phone coverage to some remote communities in Central Australia are not robust enough to withstand several days of cloud cover.
The communities of Santa Teresa and Titjikala, south-east of Alice Springs, were without mobile and landline coverage for over thirty hours in a recent outage.
In the most recent outage, Santa Teresa was also cut off by road because of flooding.
Santa Teresa parish assistant Sister Liz Wiemers said being that isolated was alarming.
“We couldn’t use ATMs, couldn’t buy fuel, community members couldn’t buy power cards,” Sister Wiemers said, referring to the pre-paid electricity system used in remote communities.
Obviously they need diesel-gens as a back up. But because the roads were blocked Telstra couldn’t send any technicians […]
The irony: while Australia blocks fruit flies, China blocks deadly viruses
How long before China bans flights from the US, UK and Australia? Count the days…
Coronavirus: China orders travellers quarantined amid outbreak
[BBC] Travellers from countries with severe coronavirus outbreaks who arrive in some parts of China will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine, state media say.
Travellers from the virus hotspots of South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy arriving in the capital will have to be isolated, a Beijing official has said.
Shanghai and Guangdong announced similar restrictions earlier.
Authorities are worried the virus might be imported back into the country.
Although most virus deaths have been in China, Monday saw nine times more new infections outside China than in.
Shanghai said it would require new arrivals from countries with “relatively serious virus conditions” to be isolated, without naming the countries.
Chinese official statistics suggest they are getting the outbreak under control, which is hard to believe, but they are acting like they do. If most of their population is still at risk of further outbreaks, then they would care about risky incoming flights.
Meanwhile our […]
The Tasmanian Government has just announced they will be “200% renewable” by 2040 — a feat only possible because they have an umbilical cord to hostages in the mainland who have to pay for irrelevant surges in electricity that arrive when they don’t need it. The same hostages will send back fossil powered electricity every week to keep Tasmania running when the wind and sun stop and the water is worth more in the dam than out of it. Not to mention container-ships of GST cash to support the state with the second highest unemployment in the nation.
This is the same state that went 100% renewable for three months in 2015 and launched itself into an electricity crisis. They decommissioned the last fossil fuel power station, just in time to get islanded by a break in their umbilical cable and thence had to order flying squads of diesel generators to keep the lights on at a cost of at least $140m. They also had to restart the same plant they just closed. The state lost half a billion dollars in the crisis — nearly twice the cost of the newish gas plant which had only built in 2009.
[…]
Leading the pack, at about number 92, Australia bans flights from South Korea
South Korea added to Australia’s coronavirus travel ban list, restrictions for travellers from Italy
[ABC News] The Federal Government has expanded its coronavirus travel ban to include South Korea, and added additional precautions for travellers from Italy, amid fears about the spread of the disease.
The revised bans will be in place until Saturday, March 14 but the Government will review the situation within a week to determine if the travel restrictions need to be extended further.
Since the government was at least one week too late with the Iranian block, how will the medical experts stay ahead of the curve on other countries with no testing? Eg Indonesia? Or in this case, Europe and Dubai?
First case of Coronavirus in Western Australia that was brought in accidentally:
The woman in her 30s from Perth’s southern suburbs returned a positive result after holidaying in Iceland and the UK, and returning to WA via Dubai on Monday.
It’s still a soft loopholey quarantine:
9.5 out of 10 based on 51 ratings […]
In a word: bum.
WHO announced their estimates of 3.4% global mortality today. All the caveats apply — it includes rubbery-figures-from-China and comes from the Useless UN and a group headed by a star apologist-for-Xi. But here’s the thing, look at the numbers outside China (see the big table below), and its a similar ballpark. Sorry to rant on about this virus.
The World Health Organization had said last week that the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated.
Don’t look now: Big Numbers Coming. Assuming 60% of people catch it before some treatment appears, a death rate of 0.7% – 4% means bad news for some furry number from 100,000 to 600,000 Australians. Double that for the UK. And 1.4m – 8m in the United States. There is a wide range of mortality rates, which may reflect that there are two kinds of mortality rates here — one where people get great ICU care, and one where hospitals are overrun and they don’t. We’ll probably pin that to the low end if we keep cases limited, we eat well, don’t […]
In the new pandemic era with a global social media, people are not waiting for governments to tell them travel is risky.
According to IATA’s press release, airlines are experiencing serious declines in demand:
A carrier’s 26% reduction across their entire operation in comparison to last year. A hub carrier reporting bookings to Italy down 108% as bookings collapse to zero and refunds grow. Many carriers reporting 50% no-shows across several markets. Future bookings are softening and carriers are reacting with measures such as crew being given unpaid leave, freezing of pay increases, and plans for aircraft to be grounded.
It almost gives me hope that people are smart enough to outwit their governments and protect themselves despite the incompetence at the top. But it doesn’t get the governments off the hook — it just shows how easy it would have been to stop the flights. The problem is that while the people who are afraid of getting sick are staying home, the people who are surrounded by the sick would want to fly in if they could. Therefore countries that want to stop their hospitals being overrun still need to stop those flights.
With only two cases of Covid-19 […]
It’s too expensive to close borders, they say, but who can afford to import this virus?
Should we stop holidays and conferences, or most of the economy?
The monthly PMI figures show that in February about four fifths of China’s economy was shut down. Locking people in apartments and hospitals being not very productive. Strangely, all the economists watching the mainstream news and official Chinese figures did not expect this. They were shocked when the monthly PMI result was announced. The drop from 50 to 35 was more than twice as bad as the economists expected.
China PMI horror show to trigger Q1 downgrades
Umesh Desai, Asia Times
China’s Purchasing Managers’ Index in February plunged to 35.7 from 50 in January. This is the lowest reading since January 2005 when it was first released and even lower than November 2008’s figure of 38.8 during the Global Financial Crisis.
The market had expected a reading of around 46, according to a Reuters poll and this shocking data had analysts recalibrating their numbers.
The ANZ economists said this implied the utilization of only a fifth of the country’s full economic capacity, much lower than […]
Fun subject of the day: How Coronavirus kills
No seriously, this is matter-of-fact, youtube-at-its-best, concise, cartoony, and smart.
Think of doctors as Body-Engineers. The problem to solve today Engineer-readers — is how to keep blood supply oxygenated when lungs are highly inflamed, filling with fluid, and the delicate thin membranes of lung tissue can’t cope with the sheer forces of rapid collapse and expansion. As well, if oxygen levels drop, even unconscious patients will breathe involuntarily — out of synch with artificial ventilation machines. The sensation of suffocation creates the urge to breath faster and harder. . The great news is ICU staff are getting much better at keeping people alive when they get ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) which can happen with other diseases (like Influenza). Seems, the ICUs can keep 84% alive while they wait for the inflammation to subside and the damage to heal. Though the DIY version at home probably won’t be so effective.
Not enough beds
Obviously, this explains my obsessive interest in the percentage needing ICU care and also the Ro (rate of reproduction or spread). With a shortage of ICU beds, slowing the spread makes a life-and-death difference to state the bleeding obvious. […]
Amazing. Sinbad reports on the situation in Iran. He is a commenter here who speaks the language. I can’t confirm this except to say that #Coronavirusupdates Iran looks like everything he is describing. Officially there are only 388 cases and 34 deaths. But on twitter, just like China, censorship and denial and so much more. Mass graves. Corrupt officials. Mass spraying of the streets. But if there is no attempt to stop it spreading (no lockdown like China has done) this will truly run wild. Those poor people. Germany closed flights in January, related to other problems in Iran. In the last week Iraq, Oman, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, UAE, Kuwait all closed borders with Iran. Australia, with lower medical standards imported a case from Iran today instead. – Jo
UPDATE: Finally, today the Australian government banned arrivals from Iran without a two week holiday stopover somewhere. That’s a lot better but should be mandatory proper quarantine. The government now has the arduous job of tracking the 40 people (or more) she may have infected and the people those victims may have infected (their families). Those 40+ people now have the stressful wait to find out if they got “lucky”. […]
Overnight, people woke up to the real threat and markets crashed appropriately. Unless we take massive action immediately, the exponential curve is about to lift off. And if we don’t act now then massive action is coming anyway in a month, along with major disruption, pandemonium, and worse.
There are now 5,300 cases outside China. If it doubles every 5 days (as it just has) then 40 days from now 5 million people will be infected.
What does massive action look like? A bit like this:
Japan closes all its schools til early April 5 million people in Hakkaido in Northern Japan are told to stay home South Korea is preparing to test 200,000 people UK schools and offices are warned they could close for up to two months EasyJet and British Airways canceled many flights to Italy Iran has cancelled Friday Prayers in Tehran Italy has quarantined 11 towns Switzerland cancelled the Geneva Car Show UAE Canceled the rest of their bike race.
In Japan some are in uproar — they’re the ones who don’t understand how 226 infections becomes a national hospital crisis in weeks. Japan (like most nations) is theoretically only 19 […]
The non-binding unenforceable Paris agreement was always a theatre show on the international stage, where most countries promise to do nothing, and the rest make promises they don’t keep. But it’s an excuse for the domestic Deep State to do whatever they want.
The zero carbon goal by 2050 was also a Grand Theater Promise. But here the two symbolic acts of nothingness met like anti-matter and threaten to blow up an economy.
Climate campaigners win Heathrow expansion case
By Tom Espiner, BBC
Controversial plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport have been thrown into doubt after a court ruling.
The government’s decision to allow the expansion was unlawful because it did not take climate commitments into account, the Court of Appeal said. Heathrow said it would challenge the decision, but the government said it would not appeal.
The judges said that in future, a third runway could go ahead, as long as it fits with the UK’s climate policy.
Since when were Judges appointed to decide if an elected government stuck to its policies? Isn’t that what the voters are supposed to do?
Fears Heathrow eco-bombshell could pose a threat […]
Trainwreck in process
Watch this interview. Write to your MP. Send letters to the Editor. Stop the flights at least for a few weeks.
80% of Australians think closing the border was right so why is Scott Morrison undoing that?
Join these dots. Our universities took a huge bet on Chinese students that is falling apart. They’ve creamed the profits, but taken no insurance and stand to lose billions if they can’t get students to Australia — An extraordinary 65,000 of whom got caught in China by the quarantine. In China, travel agents are marketing 14 day holiday stopovers in Thailand to students, who are then flying on to Australia to get around the ban. But this is not quarantine. Thailand is open to China, and considered so risky that Israel has already banned flights from Thailand. What’s next? Australia imports the virus, tens of thousands may die, and all so the ivory tower smug academics can make their profits, while weak politicians sell out the nations citizens — especially the senior, longest serving ones?
How long before Israel bans Australian planes? We could be one the highest value clean nations in the world, waiting out our first winter […]
Something does not add up
So the virus is on its way. Even though Australia has no known community transmission we are choosing to slow down the spread by actively importing it even though we are surrounded by a moat, and are pretty much self-sustaining. We have thousands of high risk people and the disease that’s coming is largely unknown — today there are reports a Japanese case of a woman medical experts had thought had recovered who tests positive again. Is this a biphasic disease like anthrax? That’ll be fun.
Winter is twelve weeks away for Australians, and we know the coronavirus potentially threatens to overwhelm our medical systems and could be a GDP-type hit on national economies. It’s highly infectious, and between 5 – 17% of current cases outside China require hospitalization, and probably 1 -3% will need intensive care. Inviting the virus to start spreading now will mean it will peak during winter — the worst possible time in Australia.
Australia is one of the easiest countries to protect from this scourge, yet we are obediently following policies of northern hemisphere nations in a different situation. Hmm?
As I keep saying, it’s easier to import a deadly […]
UPDATE: The Hon. Craig Kelly MP was so appalled by this story he has taken this to the Australian Parliament already where The Labor Party was so afraid they interrupted his allocated 15 minute speech just to stop him finishing. They even called a formal Division which means the bell is rung and all the missing MPs have to return to the Chamber to vote. See that on Kelly’s Facebook page. Who cares about our climate and who covers up for incompetent bureaucrats?!
For generations it was a Guinness Book of Records type thing. Now it’s gone. In 1924 Marble Bar set a world record of the most consecutive days of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or above, during an incredible period of 160 days starting in 1923. It was legend — but thanks to the genius homogenized adjustments, we now find out all along it was wrong. It’s another ACORN triumph, rewriting history, extinguishing the hot days of days long gone. The experts at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have reanalyzed the temperatures from 4000 km away and nine decades in the future and apparently it wasn’t that hot.
Chris Gillham wonders how the bureau figured out the Marble […]
On twitter, there are a few photos suggesting that in Iran people are collapsing in the streets. The semiofficial news agencies are reporting the death toll in Qom alone is 50, but the official toll stands at 12, out of 61 reported cases. Iranian officials deny that Qom’s death toll is 50, but admitted 900 suspected cases were being tested. Some of the deaths are reported to be doctors and some of the infected are officials suggesting the virus has been spreading for weeks and is underreported. For example: the Chancellor of Qom’s Medical Sciences University, Dr. Mohammad-Reza Ghadir, had tested positive.
If official stats are correct the death rate is 20%. It almost certainly isn’t, but either this virus is deadlier than ever, or Iranian officials are hiding a broader spread. Either way, every nation with high risk people (say, people over 60 years old) might consider suspending the flights til we know more. We would all probably be dealing with what Iran is right now if we had not closed flights to China weeks ago.
The infection from Iran has spread to six countries so far –– Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon, Canada and Oman. But flights from […]
Australians are installing renewable energy, per capita, faster than any place on Earth, or at least we were until 2020 when the subsidies and schemes ran out.
Per capita, Australia (all shades of red) is installing renewables
The Quarterly update for the Greenhouse Gas inventory is out and we can see just how much difference all those renewables make, which is almost nothing. Emissions have flatlined.
Australians are paying record prices, risking blackouts, buying batteries and synchronous condensors, building new billion dollar interconnectors, losing companies overseas, and suffering voltage spikes. We’re playing chicken with our smelters, and party games with PeakSmart timers and extra domestic circuits so that electricity companies can manage our pool pumps and our air conditioners.
And this is all we get?
Per capita, Australia (all shades of red) is installing renewables
After adding so many wind farms and solar panels the electricity sector decreased emissions by only 1.2% on the year before.
Electricity sector emissions decreased 1.8 per cent in the June quarter of 2019 on a ‘seasonally adjusted and weather normalised’P 8 P basis (Figure 6). This reflected strong increases in hydro and wind generation (42.0 and 14.8 per cent) […]
Think this is pandemonium?
Changing by the hour:
Israel stopped allowing Koreans and Japanese visitors to enter while planes were in the air. Turkey and Pakistan closed borders with Iran. (Some Iraq did yesterday). Afghanistan followed. Italy now has 134 cases. Two days ago it thought it had only 3. 26 people have been hospitalized. Iran has 43 official cases — up from 3 on Saturday. South Korea has 602 cases, including 6 deaths. Up from 31 cases on Feb 18th. Nine Korean nationals who visited Israel tested postive so now 200 people are in quarantine in Israel. Jordan has barred entry to the country to any citizens of China, Iran, and South Korea
This is the danger of too many open borders and not enough testing. If things are this far advanced in Italy and Iran and South Korea what’s happening under the veil in Africa and Indonesia, and so many other places?
Choices for the West include closing risky borders now, or later perhaps closing schools, events, football matches, movies, parties, and maybe elective surgery.
Italy –a lesson in how fast things move
Current tally: 2 dead, 134 infections and 26 are severe (that’s 19%, and who knows […]
Coronavirus, Covid-19, cases outside China. Source JoDiGraphics
The short not-good news: It’s looking like early exponential growth outside China
The cases outside China have reached 1,500. South Korean cases leap to 156, 204, 340, mostly centred on one church and one hospital. In China, prisoners were discovered to be infected and a 29 year old doctor has died. The first death in Italy is confirmed, cases jump from 4 to 17, and the health minister there has cancelled or closed schools, events and shops in ten towns. The Iranian death toll has risen to 4, and Iraq has closed flights to Iran. Improbably Canada’s ninth case turns out to be a woman who flew from Iran, raising the worrying possibility that the virus is spreading undetected. Lastly, panic is spreading too. There were attacks in Ukraine to stop a bus of evacuees from China for their 14 day quarantine. It was triggered supposed by an email hoax.
Wise people might like to stock up the pantry just in case. As the people in some Italian towns just found out, there may not be a lot of warning.
The extraordinary rise in South Korea:
Four days ago South Korea had […]
More lies by omission from the Bureau of Misinformation
When a PM gets it totally wrong, where is the BOM…
“What this royal commission is looking at are the practical things that must be done to keep Australians safer and safe in longer, hotter, drier summers.” — Scott Morrison. — ABC
The BoM, like Prof Andy Pitman of UNSW, and all other climate scientists know that “climate change” will make the world a hotter wetter place. Who are the evaporation deniers among us? Yet, apart from one momentary candid admission from Professor Andy Pitman, which of our paid public servants will correct the PM when he says things that are flagrantly, 100% wrong? Will a Royal Commission really be forced to accept a complete myth?
Looks like extra CO2 “causes” Summer rainfall in Australia to increase
Apparently, we should burn fossil fuels to stop fires. You know it makes sense…
Australian rainfall trends, Bureau of Meteorology,
But wait, what about Southern Australia?
To cover every last caveat, it’s possible that “climate change” could change where rain falls, or when rain falls — so lets look at the BoM’s own rainfall records.
CO2 apparently makes summers wetter across […]
It’s a flip on a flop. After all the media headlines, a new paper suggests that some climate scientists are not just wrong, they got cause and effect mixed up, and that the wandering “blocking” jet streams are not caused by warmer arctic, but may be causing the temperature changes instead.
“”The well-publicised idea that Arctic warming is leading to a wavier jet stream just does not hold up to scrutiny,” says Screen.
“With the benefit of ten more years of data and model experiments, we find no evidence of long-term changes in waviness despite on-going Arctic warming.””
The truth is that most big models loosely predicted that global warming would make the jet streams less wiggly, but from the mid 1980s the jet-stream-trend was the other way. As the Arctic warmed the “waviness of jet streams increased”. So in 2012 a few modelers came up with a post hoc rationalization of why, really, truly, actually a warmer Arctic meant that the jets streams would wander more. The media enthusiastically repeated it, though it was contentious and disagreed with most models. But oh dear, by golly, by 2015 the trend started to reverse again. Now in […]
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