9 July - Jo Nova

Watching the Three Gorges Dam

90by Jo Nova / 1d

Eyes are still on the Three Gorges Dam as a rare flooding event spreads across Asia. Bridges that have stood for 500 years have succumbed. Pity the poor people of Wuhan, the flood waters released from the Three Gorges Dam have arrived. That dam and all upstream dams have opened the flood gates, and cities as far downstream as Wuhan are flooding. According to the South China Morning Post, 19,380,0

JUL 07

Some offer shame and division, Trump offers heroes and unity

by Jo Nova / 2d

Some can inspire others to do great things. Others inspire people to wreck statues. The NY Times called his speech an effort to “sow division” to “exploit race”.The Washington Post said it’s dark and divisive. The National Review said the reaction was unhinged. A guy called Roger Kimball argues the Mt Rushmore Speech was the moment Donald Trump won reelection. So, if you haven’t already, read it

Victoria in lockdown again. Border Wars suddenly vanish as hypocrite NSW leaders close state finally

by Jo Nova / 2d

The whole of Melbourne is now in a six week lockdown again, but thankfully, most of regional Victoria isn’t. The freedom in regional Victoria is solely due to a “ring” around Melbourne. Not only is the second peak bigger than the first one, but it’s all community spread this time. 191 new cases of Covid19 were announced in Victoria today. Ominously, only 37 so far can be traced, which means this

JUL 06

Tuesday Open Thread

by Jo Nova / 3d

… Rating: 9.0/10 (6 votes cast) Rating: 9.0/ 10 (6 votes cast)

Stop making sense. Forget science and become emotional

34by Jo Nova / 3d

Stop making sense…. Rebecca Huntley proffers reassurance to the faithful fans of man-made weather. Why make sense when you can just weep your way through national energy policy? Stop making sense: why it’s time to get emotional about climate change Rebecca Huntley, The Guardian It’s a soothing piece of public self-therapy, offering forgiveness to those, like her, that struggle to make sense in th

JUL 05

Weekend Unthreaded

by Jo Nova / 4d

…. Rating: 9.7/10 (11 votes cast) Rating: 9.7/ 10 (11 votes cast)

JUL 04

Hydroxycholoroquine *may* save half the people who were going to die of Covid

20by Jo Nova / 5d

Good news on the HCQ front The Henry Ford HCQ study is by no means decisive, but with death rates seemingly halved (sorta, maybe, kinda) — it does show how crazy it is to ban hydroxychloroquine. It also shows it’s low risk, and with all the conflicting studies out there, that there are a lot of ways to stuff things up. With 10 million cases around the world it seems a bit incongruous that it’s ta

JUL 03

In China severe floods, mud, hail, raise concerns about the Three Gorges Dam

62by Jo Nova / 6d

Something to watch Spare a thought for people living in China. There have been 31 days of rain, leading to mass flooding, mudslides, a few minor earthquakes, and some ominous warnings like in #Chongqing city, where people have been told they need to be “above the third floor” and to prepare for floods that might reach 193m (which does not add up). There is chatter on social media ( and a few news

JUL 02

Koalas extinct? Hardly. “Nearly everything you have read or heard about koalas, is wrong”

100+by Jo Nova / 7d

Since Europeans arrived Koalas have been booming and busting The calls were out this week saying that koalas will be extinct in New South Wales in 30 years. But they didn’t mention that Koalas thrive and multiply so fast that in the right conditions scientists talk of ‘plagues’. On Kangaroo Island last year, there were so many koalas, the South Australian government has been trying to sterilize or

JUL 01

Thursday Open Thread

by Jo Nova / 7d

… Rating: 9.7/10 (11 votes cast) Rating: 9.7/ 10 (11 votes cast)

EVen the UN is warning about the environmental damage Electric Vehicles will cause

100+by Jo Nova / 8d

Child Labor in Congo mining. Photo Julian Herneis Welcome to the Clean Green Future. Demand for rechargeable car batteries is predicted to rise 700% in the next four years. But even at current levels, children are already dying in mines in the Congo, and farmers in Chile are being forced off their land. The UN is now slightly “concerned” about a car battery boom which it helped create. …a new rep

JUN 30

Cheap ways to starve a virus: Masks reduce spread by 70%, Distance by 80%

23by Jo Nova / 9d

One good thing about Coronavirus is that people are suddenly paying attention to all the cheap easy ways to slow viruses. Hopefully we will get a bit better at preventing other respiratory infections too. As I’ve mentioned before, masks stop as much as 75% of influenza, and now we know the number is similar with Coronavirus. If any drug was this effective, it would be hailed as a Gamechanging Bre

Tuesday Open Thread

by Jo Nova / 9d

.. Rating: 10.0/10 (9 votes cast) Rating: 10.0/ 10 (9 votes cast)

JUN 29

“Apologizing for the climate scare” — Another Environmentalist joins skeptics

100+by Jo Nova / 10d

Click to go to Amazon* UPDATE: The page this links to is now “inactive” at Forbes. Perhaps they’ve run out of electrons? Google Cache has a copy here. At some point there will be a rush — a phase change as real environmentalists realize they are being used as useful idiots for multinational giants and Big Bankers. Then there will be a scramble to outgreen the establishment Greens by denouncing so

JUN 27

Weekend Unthreaded

by Jo Nova / 12d

… Rating: 8.5/10 (30 votes cast) Rating: 8.5/ 10 (30 votes cast)

JUN 26

Climate skeptics are terrorists now (the “terror”is talking about coal)

23by Jo Nova / 13d

We can tell skeptics are winning by the scale of the panic Labor made a “big” concession this week and it has triggered the Anti-carbon Tribe. Anthony Albanese dared to concede that coal might have a future but only with impossible fantasy carbon capture limits. In his horror at this, Bernard Keane of Crikey.com puts forward his best scientific argument — essentially that 50% of Australians who do

JUN 25

Penguins pretty happy about melting sea ice

by Jo Nova / 14d

Adelie Penguins would probably benefit from a bit of global warming. When 175 were tagged and tracked it turned out that they ate more krill when there was less sea ice. This is not so surprising given that they swim better than they waddle, so long stretches of sea ice make it harder to get to the supermarket and back. And Krill (dinner) apparently like less sea ice too. Phytoplankton bloomed wh

JUN 24

Thursday Open Thread

by Jo Nova / 15d

… Rating: 9.6/10 (10 votes cast) Rating: 9.6/ 10 (10 votes cast)

Labor in Australia finally gets a message from the voters and “wants to end climate wars”

by Jo Nova / 15d

Labor dumps a bit of green extremism, but it’s mostly symbolic Anthony Albanese says “Yes” to Coal (only with Carbon Capture) but still “No” to Nukes. Keeps the same emissions target. After losing three elections in a row on and with help from SARS-2, the Labor Party have realized they can’t wedge the coalition by being holier-than-all-the-workers that used to vote for them. They can’t be seen as

JUN 23

One in three hospitalized with Covid may be “harmed for life” say UK docs

by Jo Nova / 16d

It is never a good idea to let a mystery virus with likely man-made “Gain of Function” changes run free in the population. Virus scars for life as doctors warn of long-term health damage London: One in three patients who recover from COVID-19 could be harmed for life, with long-term damage to their lungs, as well as chronic fatigue and psychological disturbances, research suggests. Experts said t

In the pandemic, investors fled from “Green Energy”. Desperate industry predicts 40 deaths a month in wake

65by Jo Nova / 16d

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 f

JUN 22

Freedom is closed borders, crowd limit now “30,000″

by Jo Nova / 17d

Western Australians will be allowed have 30,000 spectators at the biggest venue in the state this weekend. Phase four means half packed stadiums, nightclubs bars and gyms are all back in action. Venues will be allowed to pack in people to the two square meter rule. Phase five starts July 18th where all rules are dropped, bar two — the state border will stay shut and so will remote indigenous comm

JUN 21

Protest hypocrisy blows away social distancing. How much did that feed second waves?

by Jo Nova / 18d

As lockdown restrictions are released, and social distancing is blown away by riots and rallies, the virus is coming back in some parts. Victoria gets 25 new cases, cancels “reboot” and ramps up restrictions again Two weeks after restrictions were partially released and the BLM rallies took place in Melbourne, the surge comes. Actual spread at the BLM rallies is hard to pin down but the rank hypo

JUN 20

Weekend Unthreaded

by Jo Nova / 19d

… Rating: 9.4/10 (17 votes cast) Rating: 9.4/ 10 (17 votes cast)

Asymptomatic covid patients with no symptoms still get lung damage

39by Jo Nova / 19d

Results from China, Japan, and USA show that half or more of asymptomatic cases have lung damage Asymptomatic cases show a weaker immune response. In a small study in China, the asymptomatic cases had a lower, slower immune response, which means they shed virus for longer than the symptomatic cases, perhaps even as long as 14 days. Though the presence of viral RNA does not necessarily mean they ca

JUN 19

SA: Still at risk of blackout, one third of solar PV “switching off” to save state, needs $1.5b interconnector bandaid to NSW

100+by Jo Nova / 20d

A $1,500 million dollar emergency line is needed to rescue South Australia from renewable blackouts. Image: Marcus Wong Wongm Why do so few see the enormous subsidy cost of keeping the South Australian electricity experiment alive? Having got too much intermittent, unreliable electricity, the state is still in danger of another statewide blackout. One third of the solar panels on homes are being

JUN 18

Friday Open Thread

by Jo Nova / 21d

… Rating: 9.2/10 (16 votes cast) Rating: 9.2/ 10 (16 votes cast)

Despite pandemic China increases coal production, has 5,000 coal mines, and a glut of new plants

45by Jo Nova / 21d

Due to the pandemic fully eighty percent of China’s economy ground to a halt in February, but even despite that — coal use still grew in China by 0.9% in 2020. Another nine billion more tons of coal was discovered in 79 northern regions. And China has as much coal generation being built or planned as the USA has in total. The numbers are still the conversation stoppers they always were. Ponder th

JUN 17

Congrats! US, Sweden, Australia have more climate “deniers” than anywhere

100+by Jo Nova / 22d

There are more skeptics in the USA than anywhere, followed by Sweden, Australia, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Finland, and Germany. And in the same large report, we find that Australian “trust” in the media has fallen yet again from 44% last year to 38% this year. As well as those listed dismissively as “deniers” (see the graph below) another 10% say climate change is “not very serious”. So about

JUN 16

FDA bans Hydroxycholoquine use in USA, but Yale expert (and many doctors) say it should be used early and asap

by Jo Nova / 23d

The most popular drug with doctors all over the world will seemingly now not even be allowed in the US for Covid related treatment: HCQ No Longer Approved Even a Little for COVID-19 Molly Walker, MedPage The FDA rescinded its emergency use authorization (EUA) of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID-19 patients, citing concerns about efficacy and risks associated with its use, and saying the dru

Tuesday Open Thread

by Jo Nova / 23d

It’s still Tuesday in most of the world. Rating: 9.9/10 (12 votes cast) Rating: 9.9/ 10 (12 votes cast)

JUN 15

Estimates from crematoria and urns in China of 2.2 million cases, 36,000 dead

50by Jo Nova / 24d

Watching the photos and twitter feed from China it was obvious something terrible was happening and the official numbers did not add up. For example, there were reportedly 90,000 hospital beds in Wuhan in 2018, yet another 100,000 beds were suddenly urgently added in schools, hotels, and pop-up new hospitals, even though there were only 30,000 official cases. Some 169,000 ventilators were supplie

JUN 13

Low dose radiation may save people from Coronavirus

85by Jo Nova / 25d

Fascinating. Could one shot of radiation calm Covid infected lungs and stop the severe cytokine storm? In a trial in the US, five very sick Covid patients with a median age of 90 were given a “low dose” (which is not so low) of 1.5 Grey (150 Rad) of Photon beam radiotherapy (in a front and back beam configuration.) It took only 10 – 15 minutes, and four of the five showed “rapid improvement” in 2

Weekend Unthreaded

by Jo Nova / 26d

… Rating: 9.1/10 (10 votes cast) Rating: 9.1/ 10 (10 votes cast)

Found! Crystal Ball for wine regions “charting” climate to 2100

27by Jo Nova / 26d

Somewhere in Victoria. | Image by veronoumea It’s just another day in the death of investigative journalism Notice the way the words shift. The ABC told us tonight that a new “Atlas” will “chart” the temperature for wine growing regions in Australia, as if charting is what we do when we are taking a blind guess with a broken model at the future. Once upon a time, atlases mapped things that alread

JUN 12

Imagine that? Coronavirus flew in to UK at least 1,356 times — Open Borders is deadly

27by Jo Nova / 27d

New research of the WuFlu “gene” lineage in the UK show that the virus kept being introduced via planes, trains and cars. The entire time that UK residents were being restricted in lockdown, tens of thousands of people were allowed to bring virus in through the border. Sabotage or Incompetence? The single failure to quarantine arrivals in the UK means the lockdown has gone on longer than it neede

JUN 11

Desperate signs: Australian companies will be paid to use less electricity

54by Jo Nova / 28d

Another hidden renewables tax buried in complexity Here in Renewables World we now have to pay companies to make less of the products we want. It’s a sign of how fragile and dysfunctional the Australian grid is. “Big energy users like factories and farms will be able to earn money by saving energy during heatwaves and at other times when electricity prices are high,” the Australia Institute’s ener

JUN 10

Tucker: Black Lives Matter is now a political party

21by Jo Nova / 29d

Watch this: Tucker Carlson asks whether the insane, unpopular idea to “defund the police” means getting rid of the current police and bringing in a new BLM-compliant “force”? Is this just The March through yet another Institution? No one is allowed to say anything against this ideology. People are losing their jobs for the merest hint they they don’t wholeheartedly adopt an activist supporting ro

JUN 09

Virus Eliminated: NZ is free

by Jo Nova / 30d

Just pausing for a moment to say “cheers, New Zealand”. The last remaining barrier there are closed international borders. LiveScience Updates NEW ZEALAND EASES ALMOST ALL CORONAVIRUS RESTRICTIONS AMID NO ACTIVE COVID-19 CASES — New Zealand has no active cases of the