Guest essay by Eric Worrall
More evidence some climate activists celebrated the lockdown loss of freedom as a step in the right direction.
Climate explained: will the COVID-19 lockdown slow the effects of climate change?
July 1, 2020 5.11am AEST
Simon Kingham
Professor, University of CanterburyThe COVID-19 lockdown has affected the environment in a number of ways.
The first is a reduction in air travel and associated emissions. Globally, air travel accounts for around 12% of the transport sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and this was predicted to rise. An ongoing reduction in air travel would lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
…
Keeping some lockdown changes
In many parts of the world, governments are implementing plans to lock in some of the reductions in traffic caused by the pandemic.
This includes allocating road space to walking and cycling and incentives for people to buy or maintain bikes (such as in Franceand the UK).
There are also initiatives to decarbonise the car fleet by replacing fossil fuelled vehicles with electric ones. In New Zealand, electric vehicles are exempt from road user charges and the government is investigating ways to increase the uptake of alternative fuels in the road freight industry.
These measures are important and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they are not designed to reduce the number of people travelling, or the mode they use. Congestion is an ongoing issue in Auckland and is now estimated to cost more than NZ$1 billion per year.
…
Encouraging some of the lockdown behavioural changes could have additional benefits and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-will-the-covid-19-lockdown-slow-the-effects-of-climate-change-141604
Professor Kingham claims people will still have the same freedom to travel.
But not everyone can get about by bicycle, and electric vehicles will remain too expensive for many people for the foreseeable future, especially if renewable energy is used to process the raw material for all those batteries.
Funny how all these ‘solutions’ seem to advance progressive agenda. Almost makes you think that’s the primary concern.
Hiding behind virtue signaling, as always.
Professor Kingham claims people will still have the same freedom to travel.
Government rationed, issued, and promptly paid for permits to travel will come later.
You have the right to travel. We just won’t allow the ability to travel.
OMG I wonder what her offense was?
The photo description cracked me up…”A female prisoner living inside her tiny prison cell. The cell provides the inmate with a toilet and a bed, as well as bars to protect her from the outside elements. The cell is designed for the comfort and benefit of the prisoner as well as the public.”
The young lady in the cell looks very penitent, she’s sorry for her carbon sins and is ready to pay the penalty.
Funny how the measured CO2 at Mauna Loa keeps on rising at exactly the same rate as before..
So, remind me again, is the CO2 atmospheric content at the top of Mauna Loa unchanged? or not? The CAGW hysterical crowd thinks they have something useful (emissions reduction) but it might well turn out to be a trap in that if CO2 atmospheric content doesn’t respond it might be something else other than evil SUV’s.
I’ve seen this film before, let’s see we’ll institute a tax for the war effort and remove it later(maybe not). Like diesel used to be cheaper, then when a bunch of manufacturers jumped on the wagon- guess what? Diesel cost goes way up (never mind that diesel is evil now).
Expect the holiday for electric transportation to be short lived as the insatiable needs of government coffers call.
And yet again still this only applies to western cultures they think they can guilt into it right?!
Watermelons have already stated that a permit to reproduce would be high on their list of needs.
To all of which I say NO!
COVID-19 lockdowns, or are they really social and employment lockouts?
Historically only those who show symptoms and those in direct social contact with them were isolated from the population to be treated or just kept away. Leprosy, plagues, and epidemics of all kinds saw this type of behavior and response, in these enlightened time though everyone needs to be isolated.
Isn’t modern politics mixed with some medical/social knowledge marvellous!
I guess the learned professor did not read the latest warning about electric vehicles from the U.N.
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2020/06/29/u-n-warns-of-devastating-environmental-side-effects-of-electric-car-boom-2/
NO levels, fine dust… no change seen although nearly no car traffic but diesel engines are still to blame. Funny, isn’t it?
The locked down woman in the picture should be given her laptop, for the sake of equality and to be socially educated via Facebook, Twitter and MSM.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/this-is-the-psychological-side-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-that-were-ignoring (genetic fallacy warning)
Yep…..COVID sure is making a difference.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_mlo.pdf
The interesting thing is the more “progressive” the city, county or state the stricter the lockdown.
Give her what she wants.
“In New Zealand, electric vehicles are exempt from road user charges…”
So who is paying for the wear and tear on the road? That’s right, the rest of the population. So when the fuel taxes are gone (a huge source of revenue) what and who is going to pay for the use of the road? If the mass of the cars rises due to massive batteries, the wear and tear will be even greater. Then there will be the damage caused by exploding and burning batteries from the inevitable collisions.
If they want a “sustainable solution” then exempting the expensive cars of the future sets a very bad precedent. That is an unsustainable things to do. Obviously. There are no free lunches in NZ or anywhere else.
Electric vehicles are expensive. Why would we give the rich a tax break on road use? The only survivable option is to over-tax the poor who can’t afford to buy expensive electric cars. When the road system comes to an inevitable maintenance crunch, when the number of electric vehicles is so large the roads cannot be maintained, then additional charges will have to be applied. To whom? The poorest of course, last to “benefit”. They will still have to pay when their wealthier cousins did not.
All this will do is increase the wealth gap. It is a structured prejudice that goes against the concept of equality before the law and equal in access to public infrastructure.
USA has only just started its battle with CV19. Lockdowns will be a feature across the country for some time. The number of cases is skyrocketing past 50k/day and this is not purely the result of increased testing:
http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries&highlight=United%20States&show=25&y=highlight&scale=linear&data=cases-daily&data-source=jhu&xaxis=left#countries
Hospitals in some cities are already at capacity and that is just from the beginning of the reinfection since lockdowns were lifted in May. All but 13 states have reproduction rate above 1:
https://rt.live
The genie is out and very difficult to get back in without enforced social distancing. The one hope is that there are a lot of young people now being hospitalised and their experience will spread through the social media.
Willis E has given up trying to make sense of it. He does not appreciate the time factors – 6 to 12 days from infection to serious symptoms; up to 3 of those days presymptomatic but still contagious. Typically 1 to 20 days from serious symptoms to a result (some people have been hospitalised for more than 3 months). About 1.2% of those contracting CV19 will die; possibly higher in the USA due to existing conditions and definitely higher once the hospitals are making triage decisions based on age, health status and health insurance cover.
What was the climate impact of the Covid-19 lockdown emission reduction?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/18/12479/
2 Jul: Foundation for Economic Education: Modelers Were ‘Astronomically Wrong’ in COVID-19 Predictions, Says Leading Epidemiologist—and the World Is Paying the Price
In a recent interview, Dr. John Ioannidis (C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention at Stanford University) had a harsh assessment of modelers who predicted as many as 40 million people would die and the US healthcare system would be overrun because of COVID-19.
by Jon Miltimore
In a wide-ranging interview with Greek Reporter (LINK) published over the weekend, Ioannidis said emerging data support his prediction that lockdowns would have wide-ranging social consequences and that the mathematical models on which the lockdowns were based were horribly flawed…
https://fee.org/articles/modelers-were-astronomically-wrong-in-covid-19-predictions-says-leading-epidemiologist-and-the-world-is-paying-the-price/
27 Jun: Greek Reporter: Up to 300 Million People May Be Infected by Covid-19, Stanford Guru John Ioannidis Says
By Patricia Claus
“Globally, the lockdown measures have increased the number of people at risk of starvation to 1.1 billion, and they are putting at risk millions of lives,” he says…
Dr. Ioannidis: I feel extremely sad that my (lockdown) predictions were verified. “Major consequences on the economy, society and mental health” have already occurred. I hope they are reversible, and this depends to a large extent on whether we can avoid prolonging the draconian lockdowns and manage to deal with COVID-19 in a smart, precision-risk targeted approach, rather than blindly shutting down everything. Similarly, we have already started to see the consequences of “financial crisis, unrest, and civil strife.” I hope it is not followed by “war and meltdown of the social fabric.”
Globally, the lockdown measures have increased the number of people at risk of starvation to 1.1 billion, and they are putting at risk millions of lives, with the potential resurgence of tuberculosis, childhood diseases like measles where vaccination programs are disrupted, and malaria. I hope that policymakers look at the big picture of all the potential problems and not only on the very important, but relatively thin slice of evidence that is COVID-19…
https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/06/27/up-to-300-million-people-may-be-infected-by-covid-19-stanford-guru-john-ioannidis-says/
Subject 1) [Political] Tucker Carlson said tonight that the riots were organized events with the end result of funneling millions of dollars into Democratic Party coffers.
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Subject 2) [Engineering] The greens are going to freak out after Governor DeSantis of Florida on his Wednesday press conference pointed his finger at sending people from the beaches and the parks, back into air conditioned spaces. He said they were safe at the beach in the sun and humidity, and likely a risk in enclosed spaces with recirculated air. (paraphrased a bit.)
Background: [and probably not due to my actions alone] About a week ago I wrote DeSantis, and later one of his environmental health experts pointing out that ASHRAE’s standards for makeup air for occupied spaces was ‘way too little to clear a space of virus aerosols. I pointed out that hot areas like Greece or equatorial Africa had low virus spikes because most of the people are nearly broke and cannot afford air conditioning. Italy, on the other hand, is moderately wealthy and one carrier can easily infect all the people in a restaurant or private home.
I suggested increasing makeup air, leaving a window open, and making sure that energy recovery heat exchangers not be direct contact types. I, for one, would pull over and enter the first restaurant that had a sign out front saying “We use 100% Makeup Air.”
Also consider UVC lamps in elevators, a suggestion I made two months ago with some positive feedback.
We cut emissions ~20% yet no change at all in global CO2 readings. Zilch. Nothing. Not even a blip. Nada.
Explain that.
oh for cripes sake!
I’m so done with these types of ‘arguments’ about how shameful I’m supposed to feel because I’m a human being.
They want people to stay locked up forever–great….totally ignoring the fact that goods and services they want still have to be transported. Totally ignoring that too many people have lost their livelihoods, homes, businesses, and any means of survival in the modern world. Too many people have gone nuts in captivity–but these nut jobs want us all to stay in it…so we can continue to starve plants. The absolute gall. Have some decency to your fellow human being, not to a gas that if you breathe too much of, you die.
WUWT was right – HCQ works!
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext
“But not everyone can get about by bicycle”
Electric bikes can be useful to them. For shopping, a trailer could be attached. Here’s a link to a $800 folding e-bike with a removable battery:
https://electrek.co/2020/06/26/fiido-d11-folding-electric-commuter-bike-ebike-launches/
See also: “How an E-Bike Got Me off the Couch and Back in Love with Exercise” at https://medium.com/better-humans/how-an-e-bike-got-me-off-the-couch-and-back-in-love-with-exercise-bc76535bdb51
And “As e-biking grows, U.S. cities consider easing rules on where the machines may be used” at https://app.getpocket.com/read/2142882141