The New York Times has been calling for the destruction of Mt. Rushmore all week, and they call the President’s speech “dark and divisive”
“We are the country of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Frederick Douglass. We are the land of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. We are the nation that gave rise to the Wright Brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, George Patton — General George Patton — the great Louie Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley, and Mohammad Ali. And only America could have produced them all. No other place.
We are the culture that put up the Hoover Dam, laid down the highways, and sculpted the skyline of Manhattan. We are the people who dreamed a spectacular dream it was called: Las Vegas, in the Nevada desert; who built up Miami from the Florida marsh; and who carved our heroes into the face of Mount Rushmore.
Americans harnessed electricity, split the atom, and gave the world the telephone and the Internet. We settled the Wild West, won two World Wars, landed American astronauts on the Moon and one day very soon, we will plant our flag on Mars.
We gave the world the poetry of Walt Whitman, the stories of Mark Twain, the songs of Irving Berlin, the voice of Ella Fitzgerald, the style of Frank Sinatra the comedy of Bob Hope, the power of the Saturn V rocket, the toughness of the Ford F-150 and the awesome might of the American aircraft carriers.”
- Donald Trump July 3, 2020
via Real Climate Science
July 5, 2020 at 08:55AM
Another one reposted from the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
There is now powerful observational evidence that outdoor air is extraordinary safe regarding COVID-19, and the recent protests have helped provide it. The protests/riots began in Seattle and other cities on May 26th. Thousands gathered without social distancing and a good 10% had no masks. They participated in chanting, singing, screaming and other activities that ensured plenty of droplets were injected in the air, and that unhealthful environment was “enhanced” by coughing from tear gas and other agents.
Did this huge exposure result in increased spread of COVID-19? The answer is clearly no.
Consider Washington’s King County, a hotbed of protests starting 26 May (see below). Both hospitalizations and deaths showed no upward spike after the protests (the blue line shows May 26th). We should have seen a signal by now, since the average time to symptoms is approximately five days.
It is important to note that the number of COVID-19 cases is going up modestly in King County, but that is being driven by a near doubling of tests (note that the bottom graph starts earlier). Much of the media neglects to note the importance of increased testing in finding more cases.
This lack of a coronavirus spike has been noted in every major city in the U.S., something discussed in the Seattle Times today and in many media outlets.
These are huge number of independent experiments in varying environments and climates. A very good sample. And the obvious conclusion is that COVID-19 has a very difficult time spreading in outdoor air. There is no other explanation.
Some of you might argue that many of the protestors were young and so would not get very ill. True enough. But young people can get sick from it and they could certainly give it to their parents, neighbors, and folks in food stores and restaurants. There were plenty of teenagers and folks in their early 20s still living at home who were at the protests.
You want more evidence? No problem. About a month ago, there was a huge media commotion about “irresponsible” outdoor parties at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks (see picture below from the famous “party cove”. Several media outlets promised a huge uptick in COVID-19 cases.
What actually happened? Nothing. No spike of COVID-19 cases in the neighboring counties. Outdoor air is safe.
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The lack of outdoor transmission is consistent with the scientific literature. There is in fact no documentation of effective outdoor transmission of coronavirus (see my earlier blog for documentation). Some examples of scientific papers discussing the issue, include:
Qian et al., 2020: Examined 1245 confirmed cases in 120 cities in China and identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases.
Nishiura et al., 2020: Transmission of COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment (95% confidence interval).
The reasons for a lack of outdoor transmission are clear:
We have folks going outside with great fear, even wearing masks when they are alone or distant from others.
The other day I was biking down the Burke Gilman trail and an older women saw me coming and fled off the trail, pushing her mask tight around her mouth as she turned to face away from me. There was profound fear in her eyes and it was completely unnecessary. Really bothered me.
And such fear is being stoked by local politicians and governments. The City of Seattle parks STILL has many of the parking lots closed and threatening signs everything.
Completely inconsistent with scientific evidence and even the Mayor’s Office’s own statement on the lack of transmission during the protests. Talk about being anti-science and irrational.
Take a look at the welcome provide by Seattle Parks and Recreation for Magnuson Park, one of the city’s jewels. Why does the Mayor allow this situation to continue? City parks should be completely opened.
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Additional Material
One commenter noted that percentage of positive test are increasing recently, indicating viral spread. This is true. But as shown by the plots of positive percentiles for Washington State (and daily tests), the rate of positives fell for WEEKS after the protests (which started at the time of the blue line). The minimum was in mid-June. The positive percentage is a very fast reacting measure of increase of COVID-19 transmission and there is NO hint of a surge with the advent of the protests. More recent rises, in WA and for most of the country, are associated with lessening of restrictions and lockdowns.
PS: Wearing masks is a very, very good thing if you are indoors. More than a good thing– necessary in all public indoor spaces.
via Watts Up With That?
July 5, 2020 at 08:03AM
By Paul Homewood
There has been a wide ranging debate about hydrogen in the last couple of days, so I thought it worthwhile to recap some of the basic facts. Most of these are from the Committee on Climate Change’s Net Zero report last year, otherwise I will provide links.
I have referred to many of these facts before, but they sometimes get lost in the fog of technical debate. If anybody disagrees with these facts, please explain where the CCC went wrong.
Production
There are essentially two methods of producing hydrogen:
1) Steam reforming
This process typically usually uses natural gas as the feedstock, but produces CO2 as a by-product. Therefore, for the process to be “low carbon”, carbon capture and storage would be necessary. Unfortunately even then not all of the CO2 is captured. Allowing for upstream emissions as well, the CCC estimate that the process will only reduce emissions by 60 to 85%, compared to burning natural gas instead.
The cost of producing hydrogen via steam reforming with CCS is estimated to be triple the current wholesale price of natural gas (ie before adding distribution costs).
2) Electrolysis
The CCC explain why electrolysis can only offer a limited contribution:
According to IEA figures, the cost of production via electrolysis is about three times as much as steam reforming, in other words nine times that of natural gas.
Hydrogen for heating
The CCC estimate that the cost of decarbonising heating in buildings will be £28bn a year. They have considered three scenarios:
1) Full electrification – (mainly heat pumps)
2) Fully hydrogen
3) Hybrid hydrogen – which mixes heat pump and hydrogen heating applications.
They say that there is little difference in costs between all three scenarios. However their favoured option is hybrid because:
1) Heat pumps cannot meet peak demand in winter
2) A full hydrogen pathway would lock in high emissions, while electrolysis would be too expensive and entail extremely challenging build rates for electricity generation capacity.
The annual cost of £28bn does not include the costs of seasonal storage, which they estimate could add another £6bn a year.
Rather deviously, the CCC also base their costs on the assumption that insulation and other efficiency measures reduce energy consumption for heating by 30%. However, the above costs do not factor in the extra costs of such measures. A failure to achieve such savings would, in their own words, imply higher costs for a decarbonised heating system.
Finally, the national switchover to hydrogen use in buildings would cost between £50bn and £100bn in upfront costs, excluding network costs.
Transport
There seems to be little prospect of a switch to hydrogen cars in the foreseeable future. Although running costs appear to be similar to petrol cars, the costs of purchase are prohibitive, something like double the price of a conventional car. According to BMW, a fuel-cell powertrain is currently still around 10 times more expensive than an equivalent electric one.
The lack of any proper refuelling infrastructure is obviously another insurmountable obstacle. This is obviously a chicken and egg situation – nobody will buy a hydrogen car if they cannot easily refuel, but nobody will build such refuelling stations if there is no demand.
On a more fundamental level, the huge investment being made in EV and battery technology is likely to dwarf investment in hydrogen cars. For instance, there is no logic in spending billions of public money in charging points, upgrading electricity networks etc, if we are going to be driving hydrogen cars instead.
Hydrogen cars at the moment appear to be the betamaxes of the car world.
Little wonder than that Mercedes has already pulled the plug on development of hydrogen cars. Car manufacturers simply cannot afford to spend billions developing both electric and hydrogen technology at the same time.
That of course leaves heavy transport, such as lorries, buses and coaches, where hydrogen could be of some use. However HGVs and buses only account for 5% of emissions, so certainly would not warrant any major expansion of hydrogen production capacity or radical changes in the energy infrastructure.
The CCC reckon that switching HGVs to hydrogen would add about £3bn a year to costs of transport, although this is cheaper than the electric option.
As we have known for a long time, the cost of decarbonising the UK economy will be crippling. There is no evidence that large scale use of hydrogen will change that fact.
References
Further information is available here:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/08/26/is-hydrogen-a-solution/
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/net-zero-technical-report/
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
July 5, 2020 at 07:42AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 