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via Real Climate Science
January 5, 2022 at 02:29AM
People are asking why early safe cheap treatments could have been suppressed, after all, people are dying. A better question is to ask how could any cheap safe alternative treatment ever be selected?
In the current system, legally, the FDA can’t give EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) for any vaccine if there is a safe useful alternative. The EUA approval is simply extinguished by any treatment that works. Therefore billions of dollars in profits depends on making sure there are no cheap safe alternatives:
This year, the Covid vaccine has brought in revenue of $24.3 billion. And Pfizer said it expects a total of $36 billion from the vaccine for all of 2021 — nearly $12 billion more in revenue the final quarter of the year. And it said based on contracts it now has signed it expects revenue $29 billion from the Covid vaccine in 2022. And that’s not necessarily all it will bring in.
So billions of dollars depend on there being “no safe alternative” so Pfizer and other companies would be doing their shareholders a disservice if they did not lobby, cajole, scare, smear and call in all their favours to make sure there would never be a cheap safe alternative. And if no one does the right study, how could there be?
It’s easy to screw up a study of safe drugs by starting them too late, using too little, too much, picking the wrong participants, and keeping the study small so it never reaches “significance”. And if a study gets published it can always be retracted. Editors like their careers too.
It’s not just Pfizer with fingers in the medical swamp of course. All Big-Pharma sellers are happier if the people are vitamin deficient:
Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna making $1,000 profit every second while world’s poorest countries remain largely unvaccinated
New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute.
Despite receiving public funding of over $8 billion, the three corporations have refused calls to urgently transfer vaccine technology and know-how with capable producers in low- and middle-income countries via the World Health Organisation (WHO)…
The left-leaning activists miss the point:
Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa said: “It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour, while just two percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus.”
What’s obscene is not that barely tested, unnecessary, risky drugs were not foisted on Africans, it’s that millions of people have died in the West that could have been saved if our government run agencies were serving The People instead of Big-Pharma. Billions of dollars has been burnt in long lockdowns that ten dollars worth of Ivermectin, Vitamin D3, A, C, B6 and antihistamines, nasal sprays, and mouthwashes could have avoided.
What’s obscene is that our spineless elected Representatives fail to represent The People (apart from the few brave souls like Rand Paul, Craig Kelly and Malcolm Roberts).
What’s obscene is that the mass media journalists jumped to “Vax The Nation” and not report the obvious conflicts of interests, the alternative treatments, or give a voice to the few brave doctors who have been sacked.
What’s obscene is that our Minister of Health, our Prime Minister, and Presidents everywhere unquestioningly obeyed the captured committees and incompetent Chief Health Officers who turned vaccines into a religion and signed secret contracts with multinational corporate giants that are well known to sacrifice lives for profits.
The greatest scandal of our lifetimes is here, and it’s the deep dark Medical Swamp, hidden in plain view and killing people we love. It bans wonder drugs, pours scorn on vitamins, denies doctors the training and choice to use the best treatments they know of, and generates massive profits for companies that used government funds yet avoid any legal liability and transparency.
People deficient in Vitamin D3 are 14 times more likely to get severe Covid. Why aren’t the Health Departments telling us all to get our D3 measured and why don’t they hand out free samples at every corner chemist? Vit D3 reduced hospital deaths in Turkey by 60%. Most of the sickest Covid patients in Spain were deficient in Vit A.
Melatonin reduces deaths by maybe 90%, good old antihistamines saved nursing home patients, Iota-carageenan nasal sprays reduced infections by 80%, Mouthwashes reduce covid deaths by 80%. Asthma drug Budesonide reduces Covid hospitalization rate by 90%. Even cough syrup with Bromhexine might help.
Indonesia cut Covid by 98% with Ivermectin while Australia grew cases 500% with Lock-n-Vax, Uttar Pradesh, India, wiped out Covid with ivermectin. In Peru, Ivermectin cut covid deaths by 75% in 6 weeks. The virus mysteriously disappeared in Japan. Can’t we copy them? Meanwhile countries that use hydroxychloroquine appear to have 80% lower Covid death rates. Maybe that matters?
If the Health Dept cared about health, if hospitalization rates were important at all, they’d be acting differently.
Right now, your life may depend on getting organized and getting angry.
Time to drain the Swamp.
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via JoNova
January 5, 2022 at 01:11AM
“Since rooftop solar customers pay less on their utility bills, they end up contributing less toward maintaining the grid, which they still use. That has meant the cost burden was shifted to those without rooftop solar, and often those who can’t afford it.” (Wall Street Journal, below)
“For rooftop solar companies, generous incentives were the training wheels that had to come off at some point.” (Wall Street Journal, below)
Solar as a grid source of electricity is uneconomic, from the rooftop to the large solar arrays. So various government interventions pushed by the solar lobby must come to the rescue.
Solar’s Investment Tax Credit (ITC) offers a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for 26 percent of the cost of installing solar. Enacted in 2006, it has been extended several times and continue through 2023.
But then comes net metering, a local/state program that requires utilities to buy solar from the same rooftop systems–at inflated prices.
Jinjoo Lee’s recent ‘Heard on the Street’ piece, Solar Starts Year with Long Shadows, in the Wall Street Journal (January 3, 2022) reveals how this subsidy is under fire, making the solar proposition a shaky political bet for the “energy transformation.”
“Rooftop solar companies aren’t exactly starting the new year with the sun shining on their faces,” the article begins.
Shares of residential solar companies Sunrun and Sunnova have fallen 19% and 14%, respectively, since the California Public Utilities Commission put subsidies for rooftop solar—known as net metering— on the chopping block in December. The commission plans to vote on Jan. 27 after taking public comments.
Florida is considering legislation that would cut such subsidies. The shock to their share prices isn’t surprising given that the two rooftop solar companies don’t yet generate a profit; their shares trade largely on growth prospects.
California and Florida–two of the sunniest states. And just imagine if the ITC were to expire too! Then it would be ‘game over’ for rooftops on the grid except for the wealthiest persons wanting to virtue signal.
California
The Golden State has the highest electric rates in the lower-48. It is mecca of high-cost energies, including solar. Jinjoo Lee continues:
California is a leader in rooftop solar adoption and as of 2020 accounted for roughly a third of all new residential solar installations in the U.S., according to Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The state’s customers account for roughly 40% of Sunrun’s installed base and a quarter of Sunnova’s, according to estimates by RBC Capital Markets.
Why?
Much of California’s rooftop solar growth has been fueled by the net-metering system, which allows solar customers to sell the excess electricity they don’t use back to the grid at a pretty generous value, the same retail rate they are charged for their home electricity. That has helped spur solar adoption as intended, but someone else has had to pick up the tab.
But other ratepayers foot the bill, which has put the issue into play:
Since rooftop solar customers pay less on their utility bills, they end up contributing less toward maintaining the grid, which they still use. That has meant the cost burden was shifted to those without rooftop solar, and often those who can’t afford it. Various groups peg that cost shift at between $1 billion and $3.4 billion a year.
The new rule would cut the rate solar customers get for selling their excess energy by a fair chunk. The rate will decline to 3 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour during most sunny hours of the day, down from 17 to 44 cents per kWh previously, according to estimates from Pol Lezcano, North America solar analyst at BloombergNEF.
The economics are ruined:
It also adds a carrot in the form of a credit for installations and a stick in the form of a “grid charge” for solar users. The bottom line is that it will take new solar customers about 11 years to make back their upfront investment in their solar panels through reduced electricity bills, a substantial jump from the seven years it currently takes, according to BloombergNEF estimates.
Intermittency, creating the state’s infamous ‘duck curve,’ is a big part of the problem:
Net-metering rules have always been contentious across the country, but an overhaul seemed inevitable in California. Its solar-heavy grid has an abundance of electricity during daylight hours but a steep drop once the sun sets. That creates strains. Hawaii, which saw furious growth in rooftop solar before getting rid of net metering in 2015, had to do so largely out of necessity—parts of its grid were overwhelmed by a surge of solar electricity generated during the day.
Battery Storage?
“There are some silver linings to this,” Lee adds. (Can’t be too critical to a pillar of the ‘energy transformation.’)
One is that California’s rooftop solar market is no longer at the peak of its growth, which has slowed in recent years … [at] roughly 15% of California households living in single-family detached structures….
That means growth, to some extent, has to come from selling battery storage to those existing solar customers. The new rules create a price incentive for households to add storage to solar systems, according to Mr. Lezcano.
BloombergNEF estimates that with the new rules, the payback period for solar-plus-storage will decline to six years by 2027, down from eight years now.
For rooftop solar companies, generous incentives were the training wheels that had to come off at some point. Expect some wobbles ahead, but not a crash.
Or a crash if batteries are not subsidized, and the ITC withers away.
The post Net Metering Rethink: Rooftop Solar in Trouble (a hidden subsidy in addition to ITC) appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
January 5, 2022 at 01:05AM
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Professor Emeritus David Shearman, some problems are beyond the comprehension of elected politicians, and should not be entrusted to their authority. The only way to halt the disintegration of Western democracy is for politicians to surrender power to independent peer appointed panels of scientists.
Climate change emergency cannot be solved by disintegrating democracies
BY DAVID SHEARMAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/03/22 07:30 PM EST 1,097
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILLPresident Biden’s climate agenda was launched with hopes, prayers and the expectation of leadership to all world democracies, like a glorious ship set on a maiden voyage: the SS Biden. There is now deep concern that in stormy seas it has been driven onto rocks, still intact but in need of a high tide to free it.
…
Clearly, President Biden placed great reliance on reducing domestic emissions by a range of measures in a Build Back Better initiative, which was grounded on the rocks of a democratic congressman who appears to accept climate change and yet opposes constraints on fossil fuel production. The president now has to resort to executive orders and to a range of other measures, which do not require legislation.
This brings us to the crux of the problem. Our western democracies can no longer deliver consensus and action on issues that threaten the continued existence of humanity, not least the most powerful democracy in the world.
…
In the U.S., there are 109 members of the House of Representatives and 30 senators who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. These members have received more than $61 million in lifetime contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries.
…
The U.S. is not alone in democratic disintegration. Climate denial and anti-vaccination sentiment exist in many countries but have not become as debilitating as they appear to have done in the United States.
Over the past four decades, the failures of liberal democracies to address environmental issues and particularly climate change have become increasingly apparent. In 2007, these failures were detailed and today we find they remain unaddressed. Indeed, one failure has become the salient problem, the need to separate governance from corporate capitalism.
The common denominator in current democratic failure is government unwillingness to accept that many of the problems we now confront are so complex and urgent as to be beyond the comprehension and abilities of elected officials. The issue of climate emergency is compounded by two additional interrelated issues: Elected officials place their political survival before collective needs and many defer to an overwhelmingly powerful fossil fuel industry for personal gain.
To become relevant today, elected governments have to be prepared to accept advice and guidance from independent commissions of scientists and other relevant experts selected by their peers — and not by political appointment. The details of this guidance need to be available to all parties and to the public. A starting model for the U.S. and many other countries might be a strengthened U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with appointees selected by peers and not politically appointed.
…
David Shearman (AM, Ph.D., FRACP, FRCPE) is a professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide, South Australia and co-founder of Doctors for the Environment Australia. He is co-author of “The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy” (2007) commissioned by the Pell Centre for International Relations and Public Policy.
If you want to see what an Expertocracy or Technocracy looks like, a place where a significant portion of daily decision making is genuinely dominated by appointed panels of alleged experts, take a look at Communist China.
The following academic wet dream of how wonderful life is in China for educated people was published a few years ago in an engineering industry magazine.
The Chinese Government Is Dominated by Scientists and Engineers Their political elite are largely technocrats.
By Patricia Eldridge 3 years ago
When Chinese Government comes to mind, what things do you generally think of?
Most of you would say The Great Wall, feng shui, their food, pandas, cheap products, communism, and martial arts, among others. All of these are valid observations, as China is indeed famous for such. But I’d like to add something to that list, a thing that is so rare that China has to be remembered for it: most of the political leaders in China are scientists and engineers.
To prove that fact, let us play a quick game. Name a scientist or an engineer from your country’s top government officials. Don’t cheat with Google, just think of someone that you already know.
Now I doubt that you have thought one especially if you’re in the U.S.
Nowhere in the world can you see the same admiration and respect from the public to their scientists and engineers other than in China. This is a little known fact. They admire such professionals so much to the point that they qualify these people to be worthy and capable in handling political affairs.
The Chinese people believe that scientists and engineers, who eventually become technocrats, have a highly disciplined mind fit for public office.
…
Read more: https://gineersnow.com/leadership/chinese-government-dominated-scientists-engineers
In my opinion this seductive offer of power is the real pulling power China has over Western academia. It is not just the shadowy grant money Chinese Communists provide to our elites, it is the promise of a future in which Western academics have greater say over government policy; the promise that if Western governments become more like China’s Communist Technocracy, academics will play a far greater role in civil government.
Those who are tempted by China’s seductive offer somehow overlook the fact that the offer of power is conditional on total obedience to the central authority. China did not hesitate to punish expert doctors who tried to warn the world about Covid. The local CCP leaders were upset when the doctors tried to speak out, because did not want anyone to know they had a problem.
To be fair, Professor Shearman does not mention China directly, and glancing through his writing, he is not a fan of China’s greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on coal. But in my opinion, a Chinese style Technocracy is effectively what Professor Shearman is describing, whether or not he is self aware enough to realise what he is saying.
Professor Shearman does not explain what he would want to happen, when ordinary people rebel against and refuse to follow “expert” directives, like the massive ongoing protests against vaccine mandates, or the yellow vest riots against carbon tax fuel hikes in France. I’m guessing Professor Shearman would want the views of his panels of peer appointed experts to prevail over the short sighted desires of the uneducated masses.
We’ve seen what happens in China when ordinary people object to government directives, or to ordinary people in China who demand a greater say over government policy.
Frankly I don’t want to live under such a system. We’ve all seen the bullying, pettiness and mindless cruelty of Western academic elites, like the mistreatment of Peter Ridd, and countless other cases.
Imagine if these people had a bigger say over your life? Imagine if the vicious internal politics of academia spilled out of universities and was inflicted on the whole of society? Imagine if these people were permanently put in charge of major levers of government like the EPA. Imagine if elected politicians were stripped of the power to remove them? Imagine if say the next US government was stripped of the power to remove people like Dr. Fauci from office?
Because that is what life is like in Communist China. That is effectively what Professor Shearman is calling for.
Thanks but no thanks, Professor Shearman.
via Watts Up With That?
January 5, 2022 at 12:39AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 