Weekend Unthreaded

7.6 out of 10 based on 13 ratings

Ominous space-weather: A mild Solar CME caused a bigger geomagnetic storm on Earth than anyone expected

This week a mild Coronal Mass Ejection off the sun blasted past Earth. It was only a mild CME with solar winds at 500km per second, which is a medium kind of speed. The experts were all predicting a G1 class Geomagnetic storm, and were a bit astonished when we got much bigger G3 storm instead. (NOAA’s G scale runs from G1 up to G5).

This occurred near the minimum weak point of the solar cycle, and we’re going to get much bigger blasts as Cycle 25 ramps up. But if mild CMEs can rattle the Earth’s magnetic field this much, things might get much more exciting when moderate or strong CME’s shake the cage. Satellites and networks could be in trouble. “Grid’s Away”…

Is Earths magnetic field weaker or more vulnerable than we thought? How could we miss that?

As Cap Allon of Electroverse said:

“Nobody saw the KP Index hitting 7.

…when I say nobody, I mean nobody predicted this: not NASA, NOAA, ESA or IPS in Australia.”

It was not dense, and the filament released was hardly cause for concern.

“There is absolutely nothing in the history of space weather that advises the expectation of a strong geomagnetic storm off a mild CME produced by the eruption of a small plasma filament,” says Ben Davidson of SpaceWeatherNews.com.

What happens when the next one hits on the heels of a coronal hole stream?

Or if the filament was bigger?

What happens when that X-class solar flare is launched in our direction?

Keep reading  →

9.2 out of 10 based on 64 ratings

Preventable Pandemic indeed: WHO helped infect the world, kill 3 million people, now wants $50b?

In 2020, the WHO did not protect even one country, but now says they just need more money and more power. The WHO should be disbanded, it failed at the one most important job it was set up to do  —  stop pandemics.

It’s only a year too late, but the WHO is finally telling people they could avoid deadly pandemics. A new report is out, with former New Zealand PM Helen Clark admitting only that the World Health Organisation was a week too late in calling it an emergency. After that tiny mini-culpa, then she blames slow nations for “wasting the month of February”. Though Clark seems to have forgotten the same stupid nations were all following WHO’s advice at the time.

This is what failure looks like —  Tedros, the WHO Director General on Jan 29, last year

When he could have saved the world, he was being a one man Xi Jinping fan club. Listen to this shameless rave:

…Tedros said it is admirable that the Chinese government has shown its solid political resolve and taken timely and effective measures in dealing with the epidemic. President Xi’s personal guidance and deployment show his great leadership capability, Tedros said.

He said that China has released information in an open and transparent manner, identified the pathogen in a record-short time and shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus in a timely manner with the WHO and other countries.

China’s measures are not only protecting its people, but also protecting the people in the whole world, he said.

Tedros Adhanom

Tedros Adhanom

So the WHO was the main enabler of bioweapons

The West wastes $5 billion dollars every year on an organization so corrupt it has been captured and turned into a Chinese advertising agency that directly works against the interests of the Western nations that fund it.

Here’s Helen Clark, forgetting:

“The WHO didn’t get enough information quickly enough. “

If only they had a twitter account, they could have seen the carnage live?

So many delays but we also looked in our report at the month of February when most countries took a wait and see approach rather than aggressively moving to either keep the disease out or contain the spread and that proved to be very, very harmful as well.”

As it is, Helen Clark has 1,000 words on the ABC and doesn’t say “border” once. And Leigh Sales helps her get away with it.

Admitting they failed (a tiny bit) is only a tool they use to demand more money

WHO ‘needs more powers’ says independent panel co-chair Helen Clark

For the world to prevent the next crisis, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response recommends a more independent World Health Organization, a new council that would maintain a political commitment to pandemic preparedness and response, and a financing facility that can disburse $50-$100 billion at short notice.

 Tedros is up for re-election and wants another five years to cover up for China. 

As I said on Feb 1, there were $13b reasons why Tedros went out of his way to praise President Xi of China…

Follow the chain, or rather the Belt and Road

The WHO Director General is Tedros Adhanom of Ethiopia. From 2012 – 2016 he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the one party government that rules Ethiopia. This is the same party that borrowed billions from China to build a railway line, then struggles to pay it back.  In Africa, Ethiopia is the second largest debtor nation to China — owing $13 billion.  As Foreign Minister Adhanom praised China for African loans, looks like he was the man to line them up. We also note that the one-party ruling party of Ethiopia is called the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front which was once a Marxist Lenninist far left group — labels it dropped after the Soviet Union collapsed. (Thanks Maurice for these tips).

A million people signed a petition to sack him but he’s still there.

Give us our money back!

 

TdeF in comments: It’s time to “Defund the UN”

If Democrats can demand the disbanding (defunding) of the police force and ICE for immigration, surely the world can demand the defunding of the massive so called United Nations. It has metastasized into an another evil group seeking world domination, as has the EU. We need UNEXIT. The only thing which should remain is the Security Council. The other 80,000 people can go home. Including Helen Clarke and the other Carbon Tax queens.

9.5 out of 10 based on 97 ratings

Thursday Open Thread

7.8 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

France threatens UK electricity supply again, Navies called in

UK Flag
The island of Jersey gets 95% of its electricity via cables from France. The latest post-Brexit fishing dispute got so hot so fast, that a French minister even suggested cutting off the electricity if they didn’t get their way. 60 French fishing vessels were protesting at slow licensing. But naval ships from both sides were even called in to patrol the area, the situation has been defused.

Surely the UK government must be working out that electricity supply is a major tool for foreign disputes.  Currently about 10% of the UK electricity comes in via undersea cables*, but that is set to rise to 25%, according to the Daily Mail. Surely alarms are ringing? This is not even the first time this outrageous threat was made. Macron himself threatened it last October too. See “Hands Up! Your money or your Fish!

There is a very uneasy power balance here: The right to fish in British waters is worth about 650 million euros to EU fishermen, but European energy markets were worth up to £2.3 billion for the UK.

Not only does it leave the UK in a weaker negotiation position, but a selfish foreign player could also ambiguously twist the knife with well timed, deniable, cable accidents costing millions of dollars and wreaking havoc. A blackout in 2017 left many travellers trapped in underground train systems for hours, with many resorting to mobile phone “torches” to find their way out. Chaos.

Smart political players lecture gullible patsies on setting “net zero” targets to change the weather, while making sure they use nuclear power or just repeatedly fail to meet their own targets.

In this case both leaders are playing a popular vote-winning card for their domestic audiences. There is a lot of puffery theater going on. But underneath that are very real vulnerabilities that will matter when things unravel due to pandemics, wars or economic crashes.

Who knows, what if a third party submarine decided to target those cables? Could they get away with that in the Channel? Greater military minds than I will know more about what’s possible with submarines in the Channel — remembering that it doesn’t need to be a big sub to damage a power cable, or perhaps, even a sub. How about fishing boats, anchors or divers?

h/t GWPF

UK faces electric shock: Jersey fishermen row shows our reliance on Europe for power could land us in big trouble, expert warns

by Harriet Line, UK Daily Mail

Tony Lodge, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, said the UK is setting itself up for ‘almighty trouble’ by the end of the decade. He warned that Britain is offshoring its energy security and emissions to Europe, leaving it vulnerable if the Continent’s surplus of power is reduced.

On Tuesday French maritime minister Annick Girardin said Paris would cut off electricity to Jersey – which gets 95 per cent of its power supply from France – if the dispute was not resolved. Mr Lodge yesterday said this had ‘inadvertently exposed’ the ‘very dangerous’ threat of being too reliant on a foreign supplier.

 

Shutting off electricity to a foreign country is nothing short of international gangsterism. The very idea of it shames a great democratic nation such as France.

It would be a hostile act that would put lives in danger. Without electricity, Jersey’s hospitals and many other vital services would be impaired.

*The UK Daily Mail said “8%” but last October the Times said 10% with a lot more detail. Half of the total incoming supply is from France.

 

 

9.6 out of 10 based on 56 ratings

In 2015 Chinese Military Scientists said Third World War would be fought with biological weapons

China, dragon flag.

We already knew the CCP were acting guilty, destroying all the samples and telling us it was like the flu when it wasn’t. They were blocking it from flying around inside China, but exporting it internationally.

Sharri Markson, at The Australian, has received documents from the US State Department showing that in 2015 Chinese Military scientists were chatting  and strategizing in fairly malevolent ways, about how useful bioweapons could be. As far as weapons-of-mass-destruction go, bioweapons are as cheap as chips, could overrun hospitals, strike fear into the hearts of soldiers and people, and wreak chaos on the economy. Tick, Tick and Tick. These weapons are self replicating, as long we feed them new bodies. Think of them as like miniature F-111s that can disassemble the enemy infrastructure and turn our ploughshares into their F-111s so to speak.

Coronavirus structure

Image: Scientific Animations

The question for the last year, was not so much whether it was a man-made creation, but whether it was released deliberately or not.   To that end, we don’t know, but if a hostile state was going to release it deliberately, you’d think they would aim for somewhere other than “next door” to the virology lab it was created in.

That military chiefs may have been discussing this is not unusual. Probably teams in every major nation have run wargame scenarios with coronaviruses as bioweapons —  the thing that makes this different is that it can be traced to people at or near the top, and no one appears to be pretending to be a good global citizen. It’s all in the phrasing…

Chinese military scientists discussed weaponising SARS coronaviruses

The Australian

Chinese military scientists held talks on bio-weapon benefits

The paper describes SARS ­coronaviruses as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons” and says they can be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before”.

Titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bio-weapons, the document outlines China’s progress in the research field of bio-warfare, saying a third world war would be fought using biological weapons.

It’s a bargain WMD:

… bio-weapons could be mass-produced at 0.05 per cent of the cost of traditional weapons when compared to the cost per square kilometre of damage.

The study also examines the optimum conditions under which to release a bioweapon. “Bioweapon attacks are best conducted during dawn, dusk, night or cloudy weather because intense sunlight can damage the pathogens,” it states. “Biological agents should be released during dry weather. Rain or snow can cause the aerosol particles to precipitate.

“A stable wind direction is ­desirable so that the aerosol can float into the target area.”

There were 18 authors, and one  Xu Dezhong, a top level scientist was reporting to the top honks of the CCP, especially during the first SARS outbreak. Curiously, he thought the first SARS was a bioweapon and one of his 50PhD’s wrote a thesis on that.

In a chilling echo of many states’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors note that the release of a bio-weapon could have secondary effects by placing enormous burdens on a country’s healthcare system. Using the example of an attack on a city of five million with 10 per cent of the population requiring hospitalisation, the document notes it could “cause the enemy’s medical system to collapse”.

Some of China’s senior public health and military figures are ­listed among the 18 authors of the document, including the former deputy director of China’s Bureau of Epidemic Prevention, Li Feng. Ten of the authors are scientists and weapons experts affiliated with the Air Force Medical ­University in Xi’an, ranked “very high-risk” for its level of defence research, including its work on medical and psychological sciences, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s ­Defence Universities Tracker.

Whatever we do, don’t let Tedros or the WHO run the “investigation”:

World Health Organisation ­director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has previously said there needs to be further investigation into the possibility of a lab accident in Wuhan, criticising his own team’s inquiry — that claimed a lab leak was unlikely — for not being thorough or ­extensive.

Tedros could have saved the world but worked for President Xi instead. As I reported on Feb 2 last year, this is the WHO Chief who told us to keep the borders open so the virus could infect the world. As I reported on Feb 4 this is the same man who was Foreign Minister of Ethiopia around the same time that nation became the largest African Belt and Road debtor.

Tedros is probably angling to run the second WHO investigation just to keep control of the process, stop other investigations and create another whitewash.

Right now, the rest of the world needs to form the G199 or something “Everyone but China”

The world needs to  band together to stop China getting away with anything, and to get it to behave like a good global citizen.

Sharri Markson has written a whole book — What Really Happened in Wuhan, soon to be released. It’s not clear why an Australian journalist got the info before US ones, but given the US had a role in setting up the lab at Wuhan, and US journalists have religious objections to discussing anything that might show Donald Trump in a good light (especially at the expense of the Guru-Fauci), it may have been easier to release in Australia.

There is some small consolation in knowing that if the CCP accidentally let this cat out of the bag, it will only help the West get ready for the next one.

h/t to GlenM

 

 

9.4 out of 10 based on 69 ratings

Tuesday Open Thread

6.9 out of 10 based on 9 ratings

If an adversary wanted to destroy manufacturing they could hardly have done a better job

UPDATED: See below

The Western World has mostly succeeded in reducing emissions by shifting their emissions to factories in developing nations. In industries like Steel, Cement and Plastic as much as 20 – 50% of all production has gone overseas.

All this was achieved in just 20 years or so…

A shift in manufacturing to the emerging economies. Graph.

In the game of emissions reductions the West will become irrelevant (and in so many other ways too):

…The even more important and larger question: even if the US succeeds, what about everyone else? Over the last 25 years, the developed world shifted much of its carbon-intensive manufacturing of steel, cement, ammonia and plastics to the developing world. As a result, developing world adoption of wind, solar, storage and nuclear power may end up being the primary determinant of future global emissions outcomes. That has certainly been the case over the last decade: Europe and Japan reduced primary energy use by 4%-6% but  developing world increases were 6x higher than their reductions

–Michael Cembalist, JP Morgan Annual Energy Paper

 

UPDATE: David Wojick makes the good point that some of shift is due to an increase in China for China’s own use, as opposed to a loss in the West. But the shift is still real (perhaps less so in the US compared to countries which “decarbonised” without the benefit of massive shale gas production). Consider steel production from the Yearbooks of WorldSteel from 1998 to 2019 . Despite populations growing over that 20 year period, Australia produces 40% less steel, the UK production fell 60%, Canada fell 17%, France fell 36%, USA produces 12% less steel, and Germany 14% less.

The nations that adopted some of the highest UN carbon fashion stakes also suffered the greatest losses. China’s steel production grew 1000%.

The Australian population has grown 30% since 1998. US population has grown 20% (and unknown others?). China’s has grown about 17%.

Patterns of energy use tell the story: here’s the shift in the last ten years.

Focus on the tan colored columns in the graph below. The US has not changed, but the EU and Japan have shrunk.

The blue columns are only a projection.

Changes in energy use, Continents.

After the Legacy Media, comes the Legacy Superpower.

REFERENCES

-Michael Cembalest, JPMorgan, 2021 Energy Review

h/t  Thanks to Rafe Champion at Catalaxy and Old Ozzie.

9.6 out of 10 based on 45 ratings

Ruled by Big Tech Predators — how did it come to this?

I knew they were bad, but this was blistering:

Big Tech’s Monopoly Creep

by Napolean Linarthatos, The AmericanConservative

… generations that come after us will have the opportunity to wonder how on earth we had been duped for so long and so pathetically by a few Big Tech monopolists, how it was possible to have such a grand accumulation of power and wealth preserved by a system so bluntly corrupt in its modus operandi.

In October 2020, the House Antitrust Subcommittee issued a damning report of steamrolling corruption.  It was so brazen, Amazon even sold counterfeit copies of products until the targets gave in — even big names, like Nike.  The supergiant went into business against smaller companies, dumping product on the market in impossibly good offers, until it beat them, and stole their customers, and then bought them anyway. (After that customers discovered the deals were not so sweet.) Employees of Amazon even admitted they used private customer data to find market opportunities for Amazon to exploit. The situation is so rapacious now that little companies are not even bought out anymore, they are just cloned and crushed.

And it’s not just Amazon. Smaller partners of Apple might find themselves suddenly competing with a new inhouse Apple product, only to also find that Apple updated the OS in ways that made the original product look faulty.

In the year 2017, Facebook and Google captured “an astounding 99% of revenue growth from digital advertising in the US.” Thus, though astonishing, it is no surprise that, “due to Google and Facebook’s dominance, ‘the average growth rate for every other company in the sector was close to 0’.”

It’s got to the point where startups against any flavour of the Big Tech oligarchs are so likely to fail that investors are balking, and this segment of the market is known as “the kill zone”, where few who enter survive.

Killing with Counterfeits (how is this not illegal?)

The Amazon abuse in question was about counterfeit PopSockets products sold on Amazon. The founder of PopSockets, David Barnett, “testified that ‘Amazon was aware that large quantities’ of counterfeit PopSockets products were selling on its platform, but that Amazon allowed the problem to continue until PopSockets agreed to spend nearly two million dollars on Amazon marketing services.” In a free market economy, Amazon would have readily apologized to PopSockets and got on with cracking down on the illegal products. But when 63 percent of the online searches for products start on Amazon, then PopSockets has to give in to what even Tony Soprano would call extortion. Basically, Bezos’s Amazon wanted a piece of the business if PopSockets wanted the problem to go away.

Would you like predatory-price-wars with that?

Lina Khan, recently appointed to the Federal Trade Commission, has documented the case of Quidsi, once “one of the world’s fastest growing e-commerce companies.” Quidsi was very successful selling many different products through its subsidiaries, like Diapers.com. Amazon wanted to buy Quidsi back in 2009 but the founders of the company declined. It was then that Amazon used its size, reach, and financial heft to start a price war against Quidsi.

Quidsi executives saw that Amazon’s pricing bots—software “that carefully monitors other companies’ prices and adjusts Amazon’s to match”—were tracking Diapers.com and would immediately slash Amazon’s prices in response to Quidsi’s changes. In September 2010, Amazon rolled out Amazon Mom, a new service that offered a year’s worth of free two-day Prime shipping (which usually cost $79 a year). Customers could also secure an additional 30% discount on diapers by signing up for monthly deliveries as part of a service known as “Subscribe and Save.”

It was not long before Quidsi was sold to Amazon for $545 million.

David Evans says: Obviously these are the companies we want in charge of public speech. They are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Ponder the timing: The Predatory behaviour of the Big Tech menace was laid out a month before the US election last year but at the time, as scandalous as it was, few realized the triumph of the report would be neutralized weeks later, as the Big Tech played out its election gambit, thwarting the political oppononents that threatened to break the monopoly.

How prescient the headline here from October 2, 2020:

Alexis Keenan
Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, told the subcommittee on Thursday that Congress, not the Supreme Court, should regulate Big Tech. “It is quintessentially a congressional job to respond to this threat,” Teachout said, calling for “significant” new legislation.
Read it all: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/big-techs-monopoly-creep/
9.8 out of 10 based on 101 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

8.3 out of 10 based on 15 ratings

Fifty years of failed renewables predictions

For five decades, experts have been predicting renewable energy would supply 20 – 50% of the US Electricity Grid. Instead it’s taken twice as long to get to one fifth of the original prediction. (And to get to that pitiful 10%, that includes Hydropower).

Renewable Energy is the wordsmiths Great Hopium. The seductive temptation of “free energy” rolls on, never mind about the vast infrastructure and land it takes to capture a low density energy source. The price for “free fuel” is expensive maintenance, costly transmission, extra stability charges, and eye-bleeding storage costs (or an entire national spare grid for “back up?”).

Failed renewables predictions

For fifty years people have been overestimating the renewables transition.

The graphs comes from the JPMorgan, Energy Review. Even back in 1970, the need for 24 hour supply and frequency stability were well known.

A search online did not find a copy anywhere of Bent Sorensen’s original 1970-ish prediction, but it did find about 500 articles and nine of his books, showing that if at first you don’t succeed, you can make a career out of it.

Joe Biden is also marching down Failure Boulevard:

Carbon reduction in the USA. Biden plans.

What are the odds?

Globally we used to get 95% of all our energy from fossil fuels. After half a century and a trillion dollars, now that’s plummeted all the way down to … 85%. Yeah. :

How is the global energy transition going? Taken together, the aggregate impact of nuclear, hydroelectric and
solar/wind generation reduced global reliance on fossil fuels from ~95% of primary energy in 1975 to ~85% in
2020. In other words, energy transitions take a long time and lots of money. The IEA expects fossil fuel reliance
to decline at a more rapid pace now, fueled in part by “Big Oil” companies becoming “Big Energy” companies
and by a faster global EV transition

Can any readers can find the original quotes listed in the graph above? I wonder which part of the “forward projections” failed the worst. They knew the wind and sun wouldn’t work all day, so were they depending on the birth of a Super-battery that never came?

REFERENCES

-Michael Cembalest, JPMorgan, 2021 Energy Review

h/t  Thanks to Rafe Champion at Catalaxy and Old Ozzie.

9.7 out of 10 based on 58 ratings

Be gone all you gas cookers and heaters in Victoria! We need colder weather. Seriously?

Evil weather-destroying equipment will be banished:

Photo KWON JUNHO

Photo Kwon Junho

Victorians building new homes will be denied the choice to pick their preferred heating  and cooking appliances in the hope that this will stop storms and droughts for their great grandchildren.

As household prices rise, the money that could have been used for holidays, health, or education will be used to enrich a few corporations and make a small percentage of the population feel important and calmer.

If only the low carbon revolution was clean, green and cheap, no one would have to ban anything.

Suffer the children:

Push to turn off gas to help reach state’s climate goal

Tom Cowie and Nick O’Malley, The Age

Gas appliances including heaters, hot water services and cooktops would be phased out under a proposed moratorium on new gas connections to Victorian households to help the state achieve its 2030 target to cut carbon emissions by up to 50 per cent.

Victorians are the nation’s biggest users of natural gas for heating, hot water and cooking due to the state’s historically cheap and plentiful supply piped in from Bass Strait since the 1970s.

But the state may need to cut back on gas if it is to meet its climate goal, announced on Sunday, to reduce greenhouse pollution by 28 to 33 per cent of 2005 levels by 2025, and 45 to 50 per cent by 2030.

“I love cooking on gas too, but there are certain luxuries that we are going to have to abandon if we are serious about climate change,” City of Yarra mayor Gabrielle de Vietri said.

h/t Eric Worrall, WUWT, via RicDre

Even though unreliable energy will “theoretically” fill that void (and raise those prices), what are the odds Victoria will just have to build new gas plants to make electricity? Instead of piping gas to homes and burning it there, gas will be burned at distant plants and converted to electricity, which will be transported miles.

First they came for Coal, and the Gas industry didn’t protest…

Keep reading  →

9.5 out of 10 based on 79 ratings

Thursday Open Thread

7.6 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

A cloud of Covid variants circles the globe

Mutations of SARS2 are roaming. Currently there are 19 million active (known) cases of Covid. Due to copying errors, mistakes are accumulating in the genes of the virus. It’s a relentless process of trial and selection. A trillion monkeys on keyboards blindly working its way around vaccines, and immune systems. To beat this, we need to understand it.

Below is a map of known variants created from the samples which have had full sequences done. This is the remarkable “Nextstrain — an opensource tool. I have labelled a few clusters by their “country names”, (though we’re not supposed to do that. Let’s all say “WuFlu”.)

The family tree of SARS-Cov-2 starts at the bottom left corner with two samples from Wuhan around Christmas 2019. This is called the 19A clade, which appears to have almost died out now, though there are still remnants left of this original virus in corners like Iran and PNG. Otherwise, the Wuhan 19A virus has been superseded by its children.

The branches and time marches to the right.

The code for one full virus is 29,000 bases long and as best as I can tell, all the dots on the branches have been sequenced in full. At the Nextstrain page you can mouseover and click on every point to find out which lab and town the sample came from, and which mutations it has.

Be aware the “tree” above is heavily shaped by the nations doing the most testing and sequencing. Australian labs pop up often, sampling the cases flying into airport quarantine. But India has done very little sequencing and Mexico even less. Some African nations have virtually none. So there will be thousands of invisible branches and strains that we can’t see above, because no one has tested them.

The only reasons the Indian and Brazillian variants are not branching as much as the UK variant is because those variants haven’t yet dominated countries which do a lot of sequencing. That not-so-fortunately is about to change as smart wealthy countries have, daftly, let these variants in.

The UK variant has spread far

These graphs below on the Nextstrain Covariants by country page show the predominance of each variant. The UK variant is marked as an orangish brown. It was first noticed in October last year, but within a few months was responsible for nearly every infection in the UK. Similarly, throughout the European lands the takeover is almost complete.

The US is a different cauldron. There, the pink zone is successfully competing with it in the USA graph is the Californian “484K” variant. But starting to spread are both the #P1 Brazillian variant and the Indian ones.

But the strains that will dominate in just a few months time may be invisible now.

It’s an arms race

The graphs below show that the newer faster-spreading variants usually wipe out the older slower ones. Partly this is because a new strain brings a new wave, and as infections rise (not shown in these graphs) the proportion of older strains is squeezed out. But in the end the faster-spreading arrivals breach the previous norms for quarantine, restrictions, and hospital care. After new cases rise rapidly and set off alarms, governments and citizens inevitably raise their own level of response. The new stricter restrictions, by default, then wipe out the old slower variants. Obviously, some combination of restrictions, masks,  isolation and lockdowns work — starving the old variants out of existence by depriving them of new bodies, but at great expense. The cheapest restrictions, of course, start at the border. (Just stop the flights!) A hard border means almost no need to lockdown. It also means no new mutants arise within that country.

Coronavirus strains spreading through nations. Graphed. Nextstrain.

The UK variant has taken over nearly everywhere in Europe. The grey background were the unknown variants.

 

It’s barely visible above — but seeping into the latest UK data (top left graph above) is a tiny barely visible, green wedge. This is the ominous strain from India. In India, the new double mutants are growing rapidly, but despite the catastrophe unfolding, they’re still only half of all the samples.

Most of the variants in India are “grey”. Not known.

India. Nextstrain. Covid variants. Graphed.

Indian new variants of covid (green).

The Indian variant has arrived in South Korea. See how fast it is growing.

South Korean covid strains

To appreciate how much data is held in this system, here’s the information for one “dot” in the orange section growing from the “UK Variant” branch. A 41 year old man was diagnosed in Raipur India, 3 to 7 days ago. His sample was sequenced with a full list of mutations. (To see this, mouseover a dot, then click inside the black small data box to see the larger more detailed one. Or not. It’s a nerdy thing. But you will be able to appreciate just how far and fast these versions are travelling.) You can, if the urge takes you, trace the branches and see how often the strains are leaping borders. Even if you are a data nerd, and not a Covid one, the Nextstrain system is impressive. The data can also be sliced by country, by region, by strain and by mutation. Scroll down — agog. Click particular strains in the legend to clear the clutter out.

Nextstrain sample information

Things we know

The virus exists. PCR is useful. The virus has been sequenced in full many times. Symptoms and transmissibility are linked to different variants. Never before has the world had live data like this. Yet we still need more. There is almost no data from so many countries that matter.

The variants are coming — as long as people are getting infected somewhere, this virus is adapting. New variants may well throw a spanner in the works of vaccine programs, and natural immunity. Herd immunity to a virus that no longer exists may not be useful, and in some cases can be a disadvantage. Eliminating the virus stops the mutations arising. Vaccination will slow the development of new mutations locally, but once they arise it will select for viruses that escape the vaccination.

PCR looks, smells and acts like a useful test. The PCR test is used to sequence viruses (and to do legal, forensic, medical and paleo-fossil studies). Like any tool, it can be overdone, abused, or faked. But the tree at the top of the page was made with a continuous branching structure and with data from hundreds of independent labs on five continents. That suggests, Occams razor style, that despite the masses of money and vested interests doing their best to skew results, that the bulk of these PCR tests and mapping would be hard to fake.

Restrictions are eliminating strains: That less infectious strains are universally wiped out shows that restrictions (as expensive, ugly, and unpopular as they are) do work. If the higher restrictions were used, without the presence of the newer strains, obviously that would eliminate all versions of Covid. (See Australia, NZ etc). As the virus gets more infective and transmissible, restrictions would need to be harder and faster.

Eventually a nicer strain of Covid will probably arise, one which doesn’t overwhelm hospitals. It may however become a nastier strain on the path to being kinder. Spanish flu did that and took three years.

We need antivirals: The arms race means there will be an ongoing competition between our immune systems, vaccines, anti-virals and new strains. “Herd immunity” is likely only a temporary illusion. Antivirals that act on our enzymes or entry portals are more likely to work against multiple strains because our biochemical machinery isn’t changing like the virus is, and it’s much harder for the virus to find a new port of entry into our cells, or a new path to hijack. If we used antivirals as well as vaccines, we’d prevent more mutations and eliminate clusters faster.

This is why it is still a rank scandal of the highest order that our public medical research dollars have not focused first on antivirals and our public health responses failed to do the most useful, cheapest restriction of all — just closing borders. Anthony Fauci should have been fired a year ago.

The UN WHO is responsible for every case outside China which could have been stopped. It was obvious to anyone with microbiological training on Twitter by February 2020 that the borders should have been sealed.

The WHO should be defunded immediately. It serves the CCP but fails the world.

The Indian strain looks bad, it’s hard to tell how bad, the data is awful (as in, poor testing, inadequate sequencing, high positivity. What’s the actual mortality rate? Who-the-heck knows. ). The governments dilemma is the competing duty of care to people at home versus abroad.  One case getting into the community could cost millions to resolve. But we owe it to citizens to find a way to get them home. I’d like to see us offer them tents near military air bases (or something!) and give them at least one path to return? It’s not five star, but it might still be better than a small apartment in Delhi. Those with better options will just wait. The desperate will be grateful to get home anyway they can.

See: Nextstrain  and    Nextstrain Covariants by country

..

8.6 out of 10 based on 74 ratings

China is the Fastest growing Nuclear Power in the world

The CCP say that China has to stay with coal, but The West ought pay attention more to the rapid growth of nuclear power. Last September I noted that China was poised to be the largest global nuclear power by 2030, overtaking the USA in the next nine years. In the last twenty years, China has increased its fleet of nuclear power reactors from three to 49, with 17 more plants under construction. That means it will soon surpass France which has 57 reactors. At the rate the USA is closing plants, China may hit the No 1 spot faster than expected.

China has also opened an experimental fusion reactor called the Artificial Sun, while the ITER international consortium keeps delaying the opening of the French fusion experimental reactor.

Rise of Nuclear Power in China. Graph.

Rise of Nuclear Power in China.

It is sobering to know that despite the rapid growth of nuclear, it is still only 5% of the total energy supply in China.*

Electricity generation in 2019 increased by 5% compared with the previous year, to 7.3 PWh, according to figures published by the China Electricity Council. That from fossil fuels was 5045 TWh (69%), from hydro 1302 TWh (18%), nuclear 349 TWh (5%), wind 406 TWh (6%) and solar 224 TWh (3%).

World Nuclear Association

In 2012, China became the worlds largest power generator (from all forms of generation). Since then it’s nearly doubled.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) notes that since 2012, China has been the country with the largest installed power capacity, and it has increased this by 85% since then to reach 2011 GWe in 2019, about a quarter of global capacity.

World Nuclear Association

The balance of power is shifting fast:

China has half the capacity of the USA in nuclear power, but it doubled capacity in the last five years while the USA closed 39 reactors:

China Will Lead The World In Nuclear Energy, Along With All Other Energy Sources, Sooner Than You Think

James Conca. Forbes, April 23, 2021

China now leads the world in total energy production and also produces almost twice the amount of electricity that the United States does, 4.4 trillion kWh versus 7.5 trillion kWh per year, respectively. As of this month, China has 49 nuclear reactors in operation with a capacity of 47.5 GW, third only to the United States and France. And 17 under construction with a capacity of 18.5 GW.

This is just about half of the nuclear capacity of the United States which has 94 nuclear reactors in operation with a capacity of 96.5 GW and 2 under construction with a capacity of 2.2 GW. But 39 reactors have been shutdown, many for no particularly good reason.

China lion statues, Taiwan.

The Chinese Lion advances.  | Image by AngMoKio

China is now largely self sufficient in building and operating nuclear plants.

China has most nuclear power plants in progress: industry report

by Gong Zhe, CGTN

China completed research and development on third-generation nuclear power technology called CAP1400 (Guohe One) in September 2020, according to an announcement by State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC). CAP1400 has broken overseas technology monopolies in many areas and owns independent intellectual property and export rights, said Lu Hongzao, assistant general manager of SPIC.

It will be a powerful provider of electricity. “For example, it can provide 1.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to the grid. So basically it can provide nearly 13 billion kilowatts per hour annually.”

With a design life of 60 years, the CAP1400 nuclear reactor improves safety performance against natural disasters including earthquakes and floods by 100 times, compared with the second-generation version.

In December 2020, China turned on the Artificial Sun in Sichuan province

The group plan to collaborate with the  International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project — which is the worlds largest research project in fusion reactors, sited in France. The total cost of ITER was around $22b, half paid for by the EU and the rest by a consortium of Japan, China, South Korea, the USA and Russia. It was started in 2007 but after many delays and cost overruns, the French fusion reactor is not expected to start operating until 2027, 11 years late. Ain’t that the way?

The HL-2M Tokamak reactor i

The HL-2M Tokamak reactor

China turns on nuclear-powered ‘artificial sun’

China successfully powered up its “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, state media reported Friday, marking a great advance in the country’s nuclear power research capabilities.

The HL-2M Tokamak reactor is China’s largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental research device, and scientists hope that the device can potentially unlock a powerful clean energy source. It uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, according to the People’s Daily—approximately ten times hotter than the core of the sun.

The future is surely fusion — one day, though there are many obstacles to overcome.

Australia could use that 300 year supply of coal now, while it’s still worth digging up.

China has a nuclear Belt and Road project too, Argentina, Iran, Pakistan:

Future projects are also being developed in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America

Why China is eager to promote Nuclear Energy

Japan Times, 6 Dec 2020

Keep reading  →

9.6 out of 10 based on 56 ratings

Tuesday Open Thread

Late today. (oops)

8.9 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

Zuckerberg uses “climate change” as a shield to cover for his obscene wealth

KAuia “Climate change” is just the handy branding for the uber rich to hide behind

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief who deletes people to save The Earth, is also apparently working on owning a Hawaiian island by suing the hapless natives who were in the way. His holiday house on Kauai Island is apparently worth $80 million, is 57,000 square feet, and has 8 bedrooms and nine baths.

Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan pick up 600 more acres in Hawaii

Conor Skelding, New York Post

The Big Tech billionaire and wife Priscilla Chan snatched up 600 additional acres on the island of Kauai — and an existing online petition demanding that Zuckerberg stop “colonizing” the Aloha State is now well over 1 million signatures as of Saturday.

The pair purchased the land for $53 million from the local nonprofit Waioli Corp., according to Pacific Business News.

The couple now owns more than 1,300 acres on Kauai, known as the “Garden Island” for its extensive tropical rainforests.

The online petition, with 1,014,219 signatures, says, “Mark Zuckerberg is the sixth richest man in the world … and he is suing Native Hawaiians in Kauai for their land so he can build a mansion. He’s building a mansion to do what? Live in Kauai for two months out of the year? This is inhuman.”

Any normal billionaire, doing things like that, might find a HLM protest on his doorstep — burning down the guardhouse and butlers quarters and shouting “privileged”. Instead, the nastier Zuckerberg is to skeptics of climate change, the more the progressive left need him, no matter what Woke crimes he is guilty of.

It doesn’t matter how many private jet trips he takes, if he’s useful to the other parasitic power climbers, who cares?

In 2015, he was generously joining “The Breakthrough Energy Coalition”, and was committed to using his wealth to “invest in clean energy companies”. So the worlds sixth richest man who holds a vested interest in renewable energy is also man in charge of what people are allowed to say in the public square. What could possibly go wrong?

Facebook is investing in giant solar farms in Texas. 

I’m sure he won’t mind if critics on Facebook want to bag out solar power and campaign to get rid of subsidies for it.

We’d never let a Government Minister have that much power.

h/t Marc Morano, Climate Depot.

9.9 out of 10 based on 67 ratings

Chinese official says solar and wind are too intermittent and unstable. They must use coal.

China seems to operate in its own bubble of rules 

China, emeishan lion statue.

Image by Chris Feser

Imagine the apoplexy if our ecology minister said we’d fund coal power in the third world? Why is it only China that gets to build coal at home and abroad? What kind of developing nation can’t afford to run on “solar and wind” but is rich enough to be helping build coal plants in other nations too?

China has ‘no other choice’ but to rely on coal power for now, official says

Evelyn Cheng. CNBC

“China’s energy structure is dominated by coal power. This is an objective reality,” said Su Wei, deputy secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission. CNBC translated his Mandarin-language comments, which he made late last week following Xi’s separate remarks at a U.S.-led global leaders climate summit.

“Because renewable energy (sources such as) wind and solar power are intermittent and unstable, we must rely on a stable power source,” Su said. “We have no other choice. For a period of time, we may need to use coal power as a point of flexible adjustment.”

He added that coal is readily available, while renewable energy needs to develop further in China.

In 2018 China cut solar subsidies because it was making electricity too expensive.

China also intends to keep financing coal power in other countries.

China’s ecology ministry indicated that China’s funding of coal power in the developing world will continue. “China has supported some developing countries in the construction of coal-fired plants overseas,” Li Gao, director general of the ministry’s department of climate change, told reporters in Mandarin that CNBC translated.

It suits China if no one else is competing with its Belt and Road Project

How many favours will China earn by being the only major power providing useful energy?

China Is the Odd Man Out on Overseas Coal Financing

Laura Edwards, National Interest.org, April 26th

Despite its growing role in sustainable development financePresident Xi Jinping reiterated at the [recent Biden] summit that ecological cooperation is a key aspect of China’s Belt and Road InitiativeChina made no promises to end coal financing abroad, even as Japan and South Korea, the second and third largest financiers of overseas coal power plants, take ambitious steps to stop funding overseas coal plants as part of their new climate change agendas. China, the world’s largest financier of overseas coal, is now the odd man out. Reducing global emissions cannot be achieved without moving away from coal. A pledge from China to end its financing for overseas coal plants would be a major boon to international climate efforts.

Who wants to be a superpower?

h/t GWPF

9.5 out of 10 based on 74 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

….

8.4 out of 10 based on 19 ratings

Court rules Germany needs *more carbon action*. Who cares what voters think? Young people have right to climate protection.

How to wreck a democracy: Let judges decide complex national policies based on who sues first. What could possibly go wrong?

German climate change law violates rights, court rules

BBC

Germany’s climate change laws are insufficient and violate fundamental freedoms by putting the burden of curbing CO2 emissions on the young, its highest court has ruled.

It says the law fails to give enough detail on cutting CO2 emissions after current targets end in 2030. “The provisions irreversibly offload major emission reduction burdens on to periods after 2030,” it found.

Like the EU legislation, Germany’s domestic climate change law provides for a 55% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030.

But the German Constitutional Court said on Thursday that current measures “violate the freedoms of the complainants, some of whom are still very young” because they delay too much of the action needed to reach the Paris targets until after 2030.

Since when did young people have right to be protected from climate change?

It’s time for other young people to sue the court, and the government.  Germany’s climate change laws are wildly expensive and pointless, and will have no measurable benefit.  Expensive electricity will create an unfair debt-burden on the young. It will slow or break the economy, destroy jobs and harm the environment. That’s a violation of their human rights.

Young people could sue governments for not doing due diligence on a UN committee report and for selling out their civilization.

Let it rip, commenters.

Photo German wind turbines, Emben. Emden, Germany by Gritte

Emden, Germany by Gritte

See also The Guardian: for more info.

9.8 out of 10 based on 78 ratings