Chris White Tech Reporter
March 19, 2020 12:50 PM ET
Environmentalists and activists say they’ve found a way to better sell climate change to a skeptical American public: paint global warming as a pandemic on par with the likes of coronavirus.
Environmentalists are pointing to drastic dips in carbon emissions in China and Europe during the coronavirus scourge to craft a new climate message. They also suggest that there are some positive lessons to be learned from the virus, which has killed more than 8,000 people globally.
“If we can think about how to prepare for climate change like a pandemic, maybe there will be a positive outcome to all of this,” Christopher Jones, an environmental researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, told NBC News in a report published Wednesday.
He added: “We can help prevent crises in the future if we are prepared. I think there are some big-picture lessons here that could be very useful.” (RELATED: Environmental Activists Are Blocking The Clean-Up Of A Polluted Mining Site In Idaho)
NBC News’s report cited a March 13 Washington Post report that analyzed data from one of the European Space Agency’s satellites that seemed to suggest that nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, fell dramatically over Northern Italy, a portion of Europe that has been the most negatively impacted.
More than 1,800 people who were exposed to the virus have died in Italy over the last several weeks as the country has seen nearly 25,000 cases overall. Nearly 430 people died in the country in one day after contracting coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China in November 2019.
Other academics are offering similar critiques.
“As we move to restart these economies, we need to use this moment to think about what we value,” Jacqueline Klopp, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University in New York City, told NBC.
“Do we want to go back to the status quo,” she rhetorically asked before adding: “or do we want to tackle these big structural problems and restructure our economy and reduce emissions and pollution?”
One environmentalist journalist pointed out that China’s draconian crackdown is creating the most benefits.
“Every cloud has a silver lining,” John Gibbons, an environmental journalist and commentator, said during a Thursday episode of NewsTalk.
The air quality improved “dramatically” over China during the past few months thanks in part to Beijing’s move to idle industries, he added.
The reasons why the public is handling the pandemic differently than, say, climate change is because one is happening over decades while the other is an immediate concern, according to Craig Altemose, the executive director of Better Future Project, a group pushing climate change policy.
“The international response to COVID-19 stands in stark contrast to our slow, half-hearted response to the climate crisis,” Altemose wrote Wednesday in an editorial for the Boston Globe. The reasons are obvious, he added: “COVID-19 is a crisis playing out over the course of days rather than decades.”
Scum….. Using a horrible virus as a excuse for going green. People are going crazy over here in england, even milk is hard to get 😐 Asda and tesco had no milk in my local stores…
I wonder how many of these greens are using hand sanitizer, which is a fossil fuel based product?
They have no conscience and this proves it is a political agenda to them, not a scientific one.
Yes, meanwhile China cuts subsidies to solar and wind. Is this true?
If so, I wonder how they feel about this move?
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/china-takes-axe-alternative-energy-funding-slashing-subsidies-solar-and-wind
I think they, the green alarmist blob, should run down this path with posters of this method of communication with the public. I will even hand them the scissors, while they are running, to cut apart the posters streaming off the big industrial printers.
If they are destined to make fools of themselves why should we stand in their way.
The only useful lesson from all of this is that greens would make millions and millions of people unemployed and unemployable and make hundreds of millions of other people totally miserable. This whole period should be called “what life is like during the Green New Deal.”
Exactly, how the COVID-19 pandemic is being handled would paint a far better analogy if compared to the potential GND-20 pandemic and how society would be affected
I agree Sunny. Do they not understand that the life we are experiencing now would be a permanent way of living if we pushed the green agenda? It must seem somewhat a novelty to them at the the moment, or an obscene way to achieve their imagined utopia. They have no idea.
I live in the country, small town, nearest big town is 30 kilometers away. We haven’t been able to buy toilet paper for three weeks, here or in the big town. Our local school was broken into, as was a small clothing shop, they stole toilet paper. Could be that some of the locals themselves are getting desperate. Buses, from out of town are arriving to ‘shop’ at our one and only supermarket, the shelves look bleak. The same is happening in the larger town which has three supermarkets. Locals are going home shortchanged.
The thing that concerns me most though is these outsiders bringing the virus with them. We only have two doctors in our small town and many elderly people. Generally we have to wait two to three weeks for a doctor’s appointment. So far the virus hasn’t surfaced here, I don’t know why people are coming from the city to raid us.
This is the future under a ‘Green’ regime.
megs I have this feeling you live in my town;-)))
our chemist butcher dressshop n docs(and the local craft shop, not publicised) all robbed
same amt of docs
but naracoortes 50k and horshams 100
we now have signs saying
No cash OR toilet paper kept on premises
I took a pic as its surely a sign of our times
a bad one
after our first outsiders foray..
I called the cops reporting the facebook page(friend founf it n was going bonkers) stating their intent
I also called the local nationals MP
suggested that ID required for locals only to be allowed to shop unless caravan park guests limited shop
well dunno if it was via me but the police met buses on the highway apparently n turned em around
shops got locals with id sign up
but yes the risk of a pile of morons jammed in a bus breaking social distance regime and bringing it from melbourne is far too dangerous to allow
even more annoying is the total avoidance of listing AREAS of infection so people can be ultra aware in high risk zones
though as cluster hit city areas that might change, as theyll have to lock em down
Quite impressed OZ. You have an MP that will take your calls?!!.
Corruption is rife in our Municipality here in NSW, even without all the CC and Coronavirus goings on. A long and frustrating story, not for this site.
Hey OZ, what about the NSW state health minister allowing a cruise ship to dock in Sydney. One of the big ones too, 2700 people disembarked, no checks and no questions asked! Turns out out a number of them have the virus. Hopefully there will be an uproar and they might come to realise how vulnerable country people are when city folk arrive by the bus loads to raid our supermarkets.
The Green New Deal is like any other parasite when it has killed the host it too will die.
The international response to COVID-19 stands in contrast to the slow, half-hearted response to the ‘Climate Crisis’ because COVID-19 is a real crisis playing out over the course of days rather than being a manufactured fraud with no scientific basis which is not evident or scientifically detectable over decades.
COVID-19 also teaches people another useful lesson. That everything has a price. We have allowed our own societies and countries to become dependent on China for literally everything. For some cheaper iPhones. Tome to redraw the rules. Time to consider giving wares from countries that destroy their environment and enslave their population and price.
”paint global warming as a pandemic on par with the likes of coronavirus.”
Great, just what we don’t need. Making alarmism more alarmist.
Paint the GND as a pandemic on par with COVID-19
coronavirus pandemic
“Environmentalists are pointing to drastic dips in carbon emissions”
The anti human movement of humans?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/01/13/human-pollution-the-planet-is-doomed/
Further proof you can’t fix stupid.
And if global temperatures don’t immediately fall dramatically, they’ll just call for more dead.
It may backfire on them. If people realize that what they want to turn the world into is something similar to what we are currently experiencing – the lack of travel, the lack of employment, the lack of goods. Each of these and more are dependent upon fossil fuels.
Agreed. They are admitting they did indeed want to push us back to the stone age here, locked in our homes, no jobs, nothing. For decades, they have lied about their intent, and here they are, parading around, rubbing in our faces.
When this is over, do you want to return to the status quo? Or would you rather remain unemployed and locked in your house?
The Left are Zombies.
Every country is deeply in debt and there is the start of currency problems.
20% unemployment. People who have never been without work losing their homes.
The Left Zombie solution: Spend money that we do not have on stuff that does not work to fix a problem that does not exist.
How do you know we won’t end up unemployed and locked in our houses? California is on “indefinite” lockdown.
Name anyone who’s died of global warming.
Comparing AGW to the outbreak of a sometimes lethal virus is an idiot’s analogy.
Agreed!
If you want me to treat both situations in a similar manner, “Show me the bodies”.
The panic reaction to Covid 19 was not because of models but because there were real deaths of people with real names.
Now we can say the GND would be worse that the covid19, that is scary!
“Now we can say the GND would be worse that the covid19”
Good angle of attack.
So lie?Is that not the plan they started out with?
How is hysteria and blatant dishonesty working out for Gang Green?
Now me,I would like to “paint” Gang Greenies with Tar,add feathers and escort them to the outskirts of town.
Time to take out the trash,once the Wuhan Flu Terror subsides,we might consider cleaning out the useless and clueless that have brought us to this current standstill.
There are some kinds of “help” that nobody needs.
They are self identifying at the moment.
“Every cloud has a silver lining.” This is the science we all must listen to?
This CV epidemia has rather shown that’s high time to stop wasting taxpayers money to fund all those climate clowns and crooks.
There are far more interesting fields to fund, eg public health.
“The air quality improved “dramatically” over China during the past few months thanks in part to Beijing’s move to idle industries …”.
Of course the air quality over Chinese cities has nothing to do with global climate change.
There are better ways to improve air quality in cities other than k!lling the economy along with people.
It will be interesting to see the effect of industry and economic shutdowns on the Mauna Loa Observatory data, if any.
If there is an observable effect on the global atmospheric CO2 concentration then we have an analog for what life would be like under a ‘zero carbon’ target regime; if there is no observable effect then the obvious question to ask the z-c enthusiasts is: what is the point?
“Of course the air quality over Chinese cities has nothing to do with global climate change”
Except aerosol cooling, a more robust climate effect than the ghg effect of co2. Pls see
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/23/the-1970s-cooling-anomaly-of-agw/
Paragraphs 8 to 11 describe the aerosol feature of the industrial economy and of nuclear bomb testing and its cooling effect as described by the late great stephen schneider and a few others.
Maybe the nuclear test ban treaty was not such a good idea after all. Nor the acid rain program.
Pathetic.
Simply pathetic, these authors.
Later in life, when grandchildren ask them “What did you do in your life to help the World?” they will be able to reply proudly “I sat at a comfortable desk taking a salary of other peoples’ money, inventing new ways to express propaganda.”
How useful is that?
Very.
Climate change is not the threat.
But Climate change policy being pushed by the UN and these Green NGOs is very much like a global pandemic in that both will kill 4 Billion humans.
Are these people mentally ill?
Paul H Why do you need to ask ?
The lawyers say don’t ask a question unless you know the answer. 😉 Every time the Green Blob opens its collective mouth, the same pollution flows out.
When a cabal of climate scientists some 40 years ago categorised CO2, a trace gas that is the nutrient of photosynthesis on which all life depends, as a “pollutant”,they stepped through the Looking Glass with Alice.
We don’t have to join them.
OK, the dire threats of Global Warming by Gore, Mann, Hansen, Ehrlich et al were made decades ago.
Weather (despite the ignorant ravings of politicians and activists) has NOT become more extreme. Temperatures have not become “unbearable”.
So show me the disasters from SLR, polar bear deaths, etc.
What exactly has played out over the last several decades that we failed to notice because of the longer time interval?
Oh, dear. CoVid19 has spread into Sweden; sixteen deaths so far.
I would not wish this disease on the Swedish people in general, nor on Dear Greta in particular.
What I DO wish upon them, and her, is the hysteria – so that they can get a taste of life in their Green “Paradise.”
I know, I’m a bad, bad man.
So, virus causes huge drop in CO2 production.
How are they going to show a concurrent drop in temperature since they say human CO2 is a direct line thermostat of the climate?
They use manipulated datasets to give us our bi-yearly “hottest ever” xxx headline.
Do they simply use unadulterated datasets and therefor proclaim the temperature has dropped?
Is that what we need to watch for?
Worry not. Unless this turns out to be really the hottest year ever, they will find a way to call it the coolest in decades, warm spring nonwithstanding.
The real pandemic is the pandemic of stupid.
Planned Parent, Planned Parenthood… selective-child the elective surgical removal, reuse, and recycling of a human life. A wicked practice that has been curbed with Gaia’s Choice.
These compooter models are pretty handy for the doomster industry particularly when there’s $3mill up for grabs-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/smoke-from-australias-bushfires-killed-far-more-people-than-the-fires-did-study-says/ar-BB11tQBH
If Gaia don’t get ya with the smoke she has viruses up her sleeve unless you repent and go back to gathering nuts and berries at an appropriate social distance naturally.
Observa why is it that these people seek to blame AGW on everything? We have extended life expectancy to beyond the point that a healthy person can live, well into the nineties.
If the compromised old folk happen to die around the time of the smoke or the virus or whatever then why cant it be that they simply died of old age? It’s what happens, our bodies wear out. They seem to want to keep everyone alive at all costs for as long as possible, makes them proud.
I’m not in advanced years yet, but I would rather die of complications of smoke haze, or a virus, or whatever than be lined up in an old folks home unable to feed, toilet, bathe or dress myself just waiting to die. That takes years sometimes and it’s so sad to witness. I’m not religious, but people say that God will choose your time, I say that in some cases it’s doctors playing God.
The Guardian is nothing more than a useless rag, most read it for entertainment value these days. Hey, we could use it for toilet paper if things get any worse in the stores. And in regard to the extensive smoke over Australia, if the greens hadn’t interfered with the regular ‘cool’ burnoffs then the extensive fires would not happened. Not to that extent anyway. Australia has always had fires, fires are not a recent phenomenon. More idiots this past fire season, nothing to do with AGW or CC or whatever name it goes under these days.
The present situation is a first for all humans living today……… yet we have so many EXPERTS to explain it???
Probably the same experts that can unreservedly predict the future of our climate?????
And they use computer modeling – on a ridiculously simplified basis – rather than animal entrails. Wonderful. Culturally appropriate prophecy with the usual relationship to data gathering – none.
The greens are not worried that covid 19 might be cancelled because of a climate conference.
The greens are worried that a climate conference might be cancelled due to covid 19.
Only a prime time wazzock would fail to understand that one is a real crisis and one is a confected crisis
Excellent succinct summation EternalOptimist!
What a joke!
“Paint global warming’, which in this current phase has been whined about since the 1980s as a “pandemic”?
Do they have an “Obliviate” curse we don’t know about?
Not only does the emperor not have any clothes, they’re dancing on NYC’s Wall Street visible to everyone.
The country’s businesses, industries, companies and citizens are taking a hard economic fall.
During this economic shutdown, I seriously doubt ‘renewable energy’ sources covered for closed businesses.
When the country needs to return to a firm financial position, it will be hydroelectric, nuclear and fossil fuels the country depends upon.
It will be the same for China. What England, Germany and Canada fall back upon is their choice. Only if it isn’t the dependable energy makers, their return to solid business/industrial strength is in doubt.
Especially, as I doubt the alarmists can prove the Earth cooled during the past two months.
Nor, will they be able to demonstrate unusual warming as countries pull out all stops to regain economic strength.
Thousands of deaths have a silver lining? These vermin are truly showing their shameless colours now. I hope all the millions secluded in their apartments take time to reflect to see it that is pretty much the life the “Greens” would have everyone else live so they could feel self important.
Their solutions are a huge amplifier of the pandemic problem to begin with. Dense cities and mass transit are extremely fertile places to transmit infection as NYC is proving. Yes, let’s talk about how all of their solutions to the non-problem of global warming will really endanger human lives.
Isn’t that what they want to talk about, being committed to science and facts after all…
What dismays is that the argument for climate change mitigation and COVID-19 countermeasures is the same. It goes like this: Somebody says that something really bad might happen. The media get hold of it, and very soon the story becomes that the bad thing will probably happen. And then it becomes, we have to act now as if the bad thing is a certainty because if we argue about whether it is likely or not we will lose valuable time to avert the bad thing. That’s what “the science is settled” is founded on. It means, we don’t have time to argue. We must obey.
Here’s what I think is going to happen: In Canada, the death toll from COVID-19 is going to continue to be light, and mostly confined to the elderly. The media will just keep doing scare stories about the pandemic as if everyone were seeing people dropping dead in the streets. And then, suddenly and quickly, the whole thing will just kind of fade away, and the media people will never admit that they had made a mistake. Now of course that’s a guess, but I’ll be vindicated or humbled in about four weeks.
I don’t think you can sell that line of thought to the Italians of Lombardy.
Hint: have you seen the procession of army trucks taking away the corpses?
A question that I enjoy asking my climate-alarmist friends is the following;
OK, so hypothetically, let’s say we discovered something that would stop NET human CO2 generation virtually in its tracks, but without significant, drastic political changes in the world. Let’s say, hypothetically, that every power-plant and fossil-fuel sink/CO2 emitting device on Earth could be replaced with something carbon-neutral, and sustainable in, say 5 years’ time. Let’s say that this thing was cheap and plentiful, and the technology was available to anyone, in any country, at low cost, without significant political changes.
So, given this, would you still feel the same way about climate-change?
The true-colors usually come right out, one way or another.
Some folks actually get angry when you ask this hypothetical question.
I have just phoned my mother, to let her know the nice Green people have said the air is now much cleaner and easier to breath, thanks to the Corona virus effects.
She said “what about the ones who can’t breath because of Coronavirus, is it better for them too?”
Every silver lining….
I think we can be certain, the alarmists of climate will try to use this virus to their advantage and draw parallels between the two issues. Here in Ireland, the virus has killed climate scaremongering. The loonies must be raging and scared that their beloved ideology has lost traction. When faced with a real Global issue, even if there is a surprising amount of drama and hype attached, the imaginary climate emergency/crisis fails.
Right now, it’s almost as if anyone who dared mention another ”crisis”, they would be ridiculed. When this virus issue is over, people will have ”crisis fatigue” and will want to return to a ”normal” life as soon as possible. The media is the main problem then and will have a need to keep the scaremongering wheels turning. C.C. may have taken a serious hit, but is it gone? I doubt it. It will need to re invent itself, and that’s happening right now.
Proof positive that enviro activism is a manifestation of a misanthropic mindset.
They are part of a diverse distribution of secular sects that socially justifies normalization of wicked solutions for what they claim are hard problems.
I assume this means there will be a corresponding dip in temperatures caused by the emissions. When it does not happen it is weather not climate of course. One almost can believe the conspiracy theory that this was caused by environmentalists to set up the police state needed to enforce their ideology. On the other hand maybe the public will have learnt what a tipping point graph looks like to realise climate change is not even remotely close to being one.