By Jo Nova

The silence is deafening

Matt Ridley wrote a whole book about the Covid lab leak, and now marvels that what was once an unthinkable conspiracy is now quietly accepted by two thirds of the population, but still exists under a cone of silence. The Wuhan Lab Leak was “worse than a thousand Bhopals” he points out, but the Royal Society said it wasn’t a suitable topic for discussion. It’s as if the deaths of millions, the economic chaos and the threat of bioweapons is a bore.

The World Health Organization never mentions it. The Academy of Medical Sciences said it was too controversial. Ridley was invited to debate the issue but no one would take the other side. He was invited to write a paper for a prestigious journal with a professor at Oxford. After they wrote a paper with hundreds of references, the editors rejected it out of hand, telling him that there was no evidence of people doing gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan, even though the Institute of Virology has published papers for six years detailing how they did exactly that.

Ridley was invited to debate at another forum, and after much searching, and payments of more than $10,000, finally one virologist was willing to argue it was not a lab leak. Mysteriously most virologists seem to hope the biggest issue of their specialty career will just go away, quietly.

By Matt Ridley, Spiked

…two-thirds of Americans believe the virus originated in a lab in China – yet most senior scientists seem to be sublimely unbothered by the fact that the public holds this view. They show little or no interest in getting out there and persuading people to change their minds. Instead, they just hope the whole topic fades into history.

China has a database of 22,000 virus samples on it, and they won’t share it, but Western virologists and politicians don’t seem to want to see it.

Have we sold our souls, our universities, our health, for cheap fridges and trade deals?

If the lab leak had occurred in any other country, we might be more interested. As Matt Ridley explains:

A former president of the Royal Society told me he hopes we never find out what happened, lest it annoy the Chinese. Would he have said the same about Bhopal, I wondered, or a plane crash?

Why is this topic taboo? Scientists in the West have become addicted to collaboration with China. They get students and money from China. Ten British universities rely on Chinese students for more than a quarter of their income. Scientific journals get rich on Chinese publication fees. Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet and recipient of a Friendship Award from the Chinese government, went on Chinese television early in the pandemic to say: ‘I think we have a great deal to thank China for, about the way that it handled the outbreak.’

As bad as that corruption of science is, the real problem is much bigger. Ridley doesn’t mention it, but Australians know all too well why no one wants to ask for an inquiry. The second biggest economy in the world plays nasty — it’s not just about Chinese students at university, or journal sales:

…when Scott Morrison, Australian Prime Minister, dared ask for an investigation in April 2020, within a week China threatened boycotts, and followed up with severe anti-dumping duties on Australian barley. After which the CCP discovered “inconsistencies in labelling” on Australian beef imports, and added bans or tariffs on Australian wine, wheat, wool, sugar, copper, lobsters, timber and grapes. Then they told their importers not to bring in Australian coal, cotton or LNG either. The only industry they didn’t attack was iron ore, probably because they couldn’t get it anywhere else. In toto, the punishment destroyed about $20 billion dollars in trade, and everyone, even CNN, knew this was political retribution and a message to the world.

With Professor Anton van der Merwe of Oxford University, I detailed how it is no coincidence that this virus turned up in exactly the right city at exactly the right time as they were planning exactly the right experiments that would put exactly the right insertion into exactly the right place in exactly the right gene of exactly the right kind of virus. And to do so at exactly the wrong biosafety level.

There have been lab accidents that caused outbreaks of influenza, anthrax and many other pathogens. In 1977, there was a global influenza pandemic caused by the trial of an experimental vaccine that had been inadequately attenuated.

In 2003-4, SARS-1 leaked from a lab at least four times, once in Singapore, once in Taiwan and at least twice in Beijing, and killed the mother of a researcher. In three of those cases, we still don’t know how the accident happened.

Bizarrely, no one can even explain why anyone would want to do these experiments. There are a million permutations of possible pandemic causing virions and we’re trying to make them one at a time, in advance, to get ahead of the game? As Ridley says” That went well, didn’t it?”.

In January, Chinese scientists published a preprint paper describing a new coronavirus that had a 100% death rate in humanized mice.

So the question of bioweapons, of reckless experiments that put us all at risk, is surely one of the most important issues of the era, unlike the exaggerated hyperbole of one more degree of global warming — yet there are no discussion panels on the nightly current affairs circus shows. The Ministers of Science, Health, Defence do nothing.

And the UN is as useless as it ever was.

Read it all at Spiked. Matt has waged his own war for four years to get this story out there.

Matt Ridley is a science writer and co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, with Alina Chan.

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that …”

Italy Seeks Reversal of EU’s 2035 Combustion Engine Ban

By Alberto BrambillaSeptember 07, 2024 at 11:45AM EDT

Bloomberg) — Italian officials said the European Union’s plan to ban sales of new internal combustion engines from 2035 should be reviewed.  

“The ban must be changed,” Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como, on Saturday. 

Pichetto Fratin called the decision by the EU “absurd,” and dictated by an “ideological vision” along with a state-controlled approach to policy-making within the bloc. The plan needs changing in order to reflect different market realities amid the European auto industry’s slowdown, he added. 

Industry Minister Adolfo Urso also backed a change, urging the incoming European Commission to anticipate the review of the plan to early 2025, from 2026. “In an uncertain landscape which is affecting German automotive industry, clarity is needed to not let the European industry collapse,” Urso said in Cernobbio.

“Europe needs a pragmatic vision, the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that,” he added.

…

Read more: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/09/07/italy-wants-reversal-of-eus-planned-2035-combustion-engine-ban/

I don’t know how many people would agree that Italy pretty much invented the prestige automobile industry, but they sure played and continue to play a big part in it. The thought they would give up such beauty, such an exquisite quest for perfection, was always a nightmare perpetrated by joyless left wing green ideologues.

Italian prestige automaker Ferrari was an early mover when it came to rejecting EV mandates. Last year they publicly announced their rejection of EV mandates, and in doing so likely saved themselves from sharing the financial pain of their more gullible competitors, most of whom blindly gambled the future financial viability of their businesses on the promises of politicians.

There are other considerations, aside from the fact a lot of people just don’t want an EV.

Europe claims around 11 million EVs, out of a total vehicle ownership around 250 million. Even if Europe somehow convinced every one of the owners of those 250 million vehicles to swap their ICE vehicle for an EV, that would be a lot of extra demand on a grid which is already struggling to maintain winter energy supplies.

Let’s hope the EU surrenders to necessity sooner rather than later.

I write, not of our oxymoronically-named Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, but of his very expensive plaything, Great British Energy (sic). Already there is a website produced by the Labour Party ahead of the general election in July this year. Take a look, to see just how truly banal it is. It claims that it will reduce energy bills while also promising to invest in very expensive sources of energy, such as floating offshore wind and hydrogen, and quotes some very credulous electors who obligingly parrot the claim that it will “end the struggle between heating and eating.” That last claim is attributed to Gary, a pensioner from Dudley. I wonder if he is one of those who is now wondering what he has done. Is he one of the millions of pensioners who will be losing their winter fuel allowance?

The new Labour government has already appointed Juergen Maier CBE chair of Great British Energy. You can find out some more about him at his own website. As for the job he has been tasked with, it does seem to be a pretty ineffectual one. The government’s press release of 25^th July 2024 tells us that the organisation won’t actually do very much. Rather it is to be given £8.3 Billion of taxpayers’ money to nudge and keep its fingers crossed:

Great British Energy will have five key functions

• Project development – leading projects through development stages to speed up their delivery, whilst capturing more value for the British public
• Project investment – investing in energy projects alongside the private sector, helping get them off the ground
• Local Power Plan – supporting local energy generation projects through working with local authorities, combined authorities and communities
• Supply chains – building supply chains across the UK, boosting energy independence and creating jobs
• Great British Nuclear – exploring how Great British Energy and Great British Nuclear will work together, including considering how Great British Nuclear functions will fit with Great British Energy

Leading, co-investing, supporting, boosting, exploring, considering. It’s like a thesaurus of management-speak gobbledook. It turns out that it’s not going to own anything, it’s not going to make anything, it’s just going to cost us all a lot of money while possibly helping to make our energy bills even higher.

Surely, I thought, that’s a bit cynical, even for me. There must be more to it than that. The Great British Energy Bill was being debated in the House of Commons the other day and I was pleased to see that it was rather more meaningful than the mutual back-slapping that accompanied what passed for a debate about the latest round of awards under the Contracts for Difference regime. At first it looked as though it was going to be more of the same, until Claire Coutinho stepped up for the Conservatives and proposed an amendment:

…this House, while recognising the need to cut household energy bills for families, accelerate private investment in energy infrastructure, and protect and create jobs in the energy industry across the UK, declines to give a Second Reading to the Great British Energy Bill because Great British Energy will not produce any energy, will not reduce household energy bills by £300, does not compensate for the amount of investment in energy projects that will be deterred by the Government’s plans to prematurely shut down the UK’s oil and gas sector, and involves an unjustified use of taxpayers’ money at a time when the Government is withdrawing the Winter Fuel Payment from 10 million pensioners as energy bills rise.

She went on:

I do not want to oppose the Bill just for opposition’s sake, but the Secretary of State has provided no detail on how the Bill will deliver any of his promises, let alone all of them. It is a four-page Bill in which he is asking for £8 billion of taxpayers’ money, while setting out no investment plan, no figures for the energy that will be produced, no numbers for energy bill savings or carbon emission reductions, and not even a timeline. I doubt it can deliver any of the things he has promised. He is asking for £8 billion of taxpayers’ money—a completely blank cheque—for an energy company that will not cut bills or turn a profit by 2030….

…The Secretary of State is setting up a new body when our energy sector is not short of state-run bodies. We have Ofgem, the National Energy System Operator, the Climate Change Committee, Great British Nuclear and, of course, the UK Infrastructure Bank, with £22 billion to provide debt, equity and guarantees for infrastructure finance to tackle climate change, set up by the former Prime Minister.

At this point, the taxpayer might well ask why they are coughing up twice for programmes that do the same thing. Here is why. When I read the Bill, tiny as it is, it rang a bell and, lo and behold, it is a carbon copy of the Infrastructure Bank legislation, so why do the same thing again? Well, there are a few important omissions and tweaks. First, while the Infrastructure Bank legislation sets out directions for governance by directors and non-executive directors, the Bill does no such thing. While the Infrastructure Bank legislation appoints an independent person to carry out a review of the effectiveness of the bank in delivering its objectives, the Bill does no such thing.

Lastly, while the Infrastructure Bank legislation gives special powers to direct investments to the Treasury—to independent civil servants—the Bill gives powers to the Secretary of State, who, as far as I am aware, has no investment background and no financial training and whose only period in the private sector, if I have this right, was as a researcher at Channel 4.

I think she made a number of excellent points there, though naturally – given the Government’s unassailable majority in the House of Commons – the amendment she proposed was not carried. What intrigued me, however, was her reference to the Great British Energy Bill being only four pages long. This is in marked contrast to the enormously complicated Energy Act which I critiqued (while it was still just a bill) here and here. I thought I really ought to take a look at the Bill itself.

Sure enough, after the boilerplate introductory blurb that we have learned to expect (statements that it is compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights and that it represents an environmental law that won’t reduce the level of environmental protection provided by any existing environmental law) we do learn that it is an extremely short piece of proposed legislation indeed. (Digression – lawyers might have some fun arguing that it if its object is to promote a massive expansion in huge industrial-scale renewable energy projects with their associated layers of infrastructure, then it does infringe various rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and is also environmentally damaging).

Clause one simply deals with the setting-up of the company and its name, while a very short clause 2 deals with its status. Clause 3 provides for its objects, which are to be “restricted to facilitating, encouraging and participating in— (a) the production, distribution, storage and supply of clean energy, (b) the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from energy produced from fossil fuels, (c) improvements in energy efficiency, and (d) measures for ensuring the security of the supply of energy.”

(Again, those of us of an argumentative disposition might take issue with the definition of “clean” energy as being simply “energy produced from sources other than fossil fuels”).

Clause 4 provides (as Claire Coutinho observed) for the Secretary of State to provide financial assistance to Great British Energy, whether by way of grant, loan, guarantee or indemnity; acquisition of shares or other interest in any other company; the acquisition of any undertaking or assets; pursuant to a contract; or by incurring expenditure for the benefit of Great British Energy, subject (or not, as the case may be) to any conditions he considers appropriate.

Clause 5 provides that the Secretary of State must prepare a statement of strategic priorities for Great British Energy, which he can revise or replace, and which must be laid before Parliament. This must involve consultation with Scottish and Welsh Ministers and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, where matters reserved to devolved legislation are touched upon.

Clause 6 provides that the Secretary of State may (after consulting Great British Energy and anyone else he considers appropriate) give instructions to Great British Energy and lay those instructions before Parliament. Great British Energy must comply with those instructions.

Clause 7 deals with the preparation of its report and accounts and provides that they must be laid before Parliament. Clause 8 confirms that the legislation is to extend to the whole of the United Kingdom.

And that’s it.

I wasn’t joking when I said at the outset that it’s going to be Ed Miliband’s very expensive plaything. It’s his creation and it’s his to do with as he pleases. Judging by the debate in the House of Commons, the website set up in advance by the Labour Party, and the Press Release issued by the Government in July, it doesn’t seem as though the Secretary of State yet has much idea about how it is to achieve its mutually contradictory objectives. While I am entirely lacking in confidence with regard to this farce there is one thing I have every confidence in – its ability to waste £8.3 Billion of taxpayers’ money over the next five years.