The WMO could have declared a state of emergency earlier. Instead it delayed the announcement, praised China’s transparency, and recommended countries allow planes potentially carrying a deadly virus continue to fly freely. The WMO waited until the 2019-nCoV virus had spread to 18 nations before declaring an emergency. Wasn’t it an emergency with the first foreign case or the first case of symptomless transmission?
Follow the chain, or rather the Belt and Road
The WMO 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).
Leading dailies in Germany are reporting today that power companies across the country will be hiking electricity prices once again in the February to April period, affecting millions of households.
This comes at the heels of a January price hike .
“The wave of electricity price increases in Germany is not abating. According to figures from the comparison and brokerage portal Verivox, 86 utilities have announced average price increases of 8.1 percent for the months February to April,” writes Germany’s flagship Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) here. “For a family with an annual consumption of 4000 kilowatt hours, this would mean additional costs of around 100 euros per year.”
Already in January, “543 basic utilities had already increased their electricity prices”, according to the FAZ. “The average increase was 5.4 percent.”
The price hikes come just as Germany’s electricity rates have become among the world’s highest. Annually tens of thousands of German households see their power cut off because they are unable to pay their bills.
A large portion of the rate hike is due to the feed-in tariffs for green energies such as wind and sun.
A packed Airbus A319, operated by Iran’s flag carrier, failed to land safely at Kermanshah Airport in western Iran, ending up in the middle of a snow-covered field after “running out of runway.”
1 Feb 2020 – The governor of Kermanshah told IRNA that the A319, with 110 aboard, had landed “without any problems,” but one of its wheels “slipped” while taxiing on the runway. He said the incident was caused by heavy snowfall and a flaw with the landing gear.
No casualties were reported in the incident.
A similar incident occurred last Monday in the city of Mahshahrm, when a Caspian Airlines McDonnell Douglas MD-83 overshot the runway and ended up belly-down in the middle of a highway. Several of the 136 people on board suffered minor injuries, but no one died during the botched landing.
Boris Johnson is expected to launch the UK’s COP26 strategy on Tuesday, at an event with Sir David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Mark Carney, Nicholas Stern, Patricia Espinosa.
Concern has been raised over Westminster’s handling of the crucial UN climate change summit planned for Glasgow following the shock sacking of the woman in charge.
Former climate minister Claire Perry O’Neill has criticised the UK Government after being removed from her role as “president” of the November event.
Expressing her sadness over losing the job, O’Neill (pictured below) added that Westminster could not cope with the fact that an independent body was managing the conference preparations.
She went on to point out that No 10 has not held a single climate change meeting since the unit was formed. Sources close to her claim the UK’s preparations are in “disarray”, with cabinet ministers fighting for control over the COP 26 summit and unable to agree on a final budget.
Leader of Glasgow City Council Susan Aitken said the news of O’Neill’s sacking was “very concerning”.
The row follows Boris Johnson’s comments that he did not want First Minister Nicola Sturgeon “anywhere near” the event and insisted the Union flag should be prominently displayed.
“I want to see a Union flag – I don’t want to see Nicola Sturgeon anywhere near it, because the Scottish Nationalist Party [sic] didn’t secure that summit in Glasgow, it was the United Kingdom Government,” he said.
Up to 30,000 delegates are expected for the conference which will be the most important on the climate since the Paris Agreement was passed in 2015. Pledges countries made then will be reviewed.
Nations agreed in Paris to a legally binding commitment to keep global temperature rises to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels but also offered national pledges to cut or curb their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
O’Neill’s role will now be taken over by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the UK Government has confirmed.
A statement from the Cabinet Office said Johnson was “grateful” for the work O’Neill has done.
“Preparations will continue at pace for the summit, and a replacement will be confirmed shortly,” it said. “Going forward, this will be a ministerial role.”
The announcement has come as a shock to environmental and business groups who have been working with O’Neill but it is understood that she had become increasingly fed up by Johnson’s lack of engagement with the event. She has been pushing for an agenda and played a prominent role at the last UN summit in Madrid in December.
She has emphasised the importance of the forthcoming Glasgow event and has said the world has “one shot” to take meaningful action on climate change. If this fails, she said, people would question the whole process…
O’Neill announced her decision to resign as an MP last September, citing the pressures of the COP26 presidency, and stood down in December’s General Election. That left her outside Cabinet discussions.
William Hague, Zac Goldsmith and Michael Howard have all been touted as her possible replacement.
Johnson is expected to make his first public intervention on the issue on Tuesday, when he will launch the UK’s COP26 strategy, at an event with Sir David Attenborough, teenage climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, climate expert Lord Nicholas Stern and the UN’s climate chief, Patricia Espinosa.
Iowa Climate Science Education 
