Back to important things like the Welsh supermarkets ....
Even assuming Mark Dunceford is correct to ban non-essentials, I note that the implementation of the policy is particularly dense.
Pictures on social media show the Welsh supermarkets blocking off aisles. For something like e.g., an Aldi or Lidl, the blocking of the middle aisles will reduce the flow of shoppers, packing them in to the available aisles.
For the same number of folks in the supermarket, this clearly **increases** the number density of shoppers , and hence **increases** the probability of COVID transmission.
If you are going to implement Dunceford's restrictions, then it is better to just remove the items but leave the aisles open (but this is probably too much work for the supermarkets for just 17 days).
Oddly designed image there's a couple of subconscious things that make it look like good news for Trump, bad news for Biden. Eg the down arrow pointing at Biden and the up arrow pointing at Trump's numbers, also Trump look up and Biden looking down. Up generally considered to be good and down bad.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Diverting away from the US election and Soy Sauce for a moment, the latest leaked SAGE forecasts are sobering*. Pox hospitalisation forecasted to peak above the spring high and then stay that high for a prolonged period. Happily we have got a highly responsive and competent government in charge so we don't need to worry about them doing anything heartless or stupid.
*I for one intend to be a good friend to Scotch Whisky and interesting ale producers this winter
The gaps between populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap and it being confirmed (once again) that they're populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap just get shorter and shorter.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
I agree, and I think those revolve around using market forces and new technology whilst maintaining choice.
Wisconsin score not credible, imo, and would probably be bad for Biden if true anyway because it piles up votes uselessly in a State he is sure to win.
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Getting more difficult daily on iPad loading comments, normally completely stops early evening disconnects from server especially when large amounts of data dropped all at once.
I can announce that the new IPad Air 2020 fixes this at a stroke... pages load in a split second just like they used to do... may be down to more RAM, faster processor or IOS 14.. or a bit of both... not a cheap solution, mind, at £579
Sounds like Apple have put in a special 'slow down politicalbetting.com on old machines' patch to encourage upgrading...
Back to important things like the Welsh supermarkets ....
Even assuming Mark Dunceford is correct to ban non-essentials, I note that the implementation of the policy is particularly dense.
Pictures on social media show the Welsh supermarkets blocking off aisles. For something like e.g., an Aldi or Lidl, the blocking of the middle aisles will reduce the flow of shoppers, packing them in to the available aisles.
For the same number of folks in the supermarket, this clearly **increases** the number density of shoppers , and hence **increases** the probability of COVID transmission.
If you are going to implement Dunceford's restrictions, then it is better to just remove the items but leave the aisles open (but this is probably too much work for the supermarkets for just 17 days).
Duhhhh ..... Dunceford.
Boris won't make those schoolboy errors when he locks down the UK for a second time!
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
Depends which ones you refer too.
Heneghan I respect, Gupta I do not on this issue.
Heneghan has done some good stuff, but he's not really an expert in this area. His area of research is broadly not that dissimilar to mine (applied health research/epidemiology) and I'm absolutely no expert in this area (I'll criticise people on here posting obviously flawed analyses, but I've not been predicting what will happen or saying what should be done).
The public, media and - often - the scientists themselves make the mistake that because they are highly accomplished in one area their pronouncements on other areas are correct/relevant/worth the bytes their broadcast with. I posted back in the spring that I had no idea how this was all going to pan out - I may be an epidemiologist but that doesn't make me an expert on infectious disease. I'm in a well respected health sciences department, but I can count on one hand the number of our people involved in COVID response, the others don't have expertise in the area (there are plenty doing tangentially related stuff such as impact of the pandemic on other conditions/treatments etc, but the few people directly involved are those who previously worked on Ebola and other similar outbreaks and have actual expertise in infection control and non-pharmaceutical interventions).
The people who have the expertise in this are mostly in SAGE, they've been selected for a reason. Don't listen to a vaccine expert pontificating on the best lockdown options and don't listen to an infectious disease epidemiologist pontificating on how to develop a vaccine, it's just mostly, ill informed speculation. I'm not saying that people should not be free to say what they like, just don't assume because someone's a prof at Oxford they're not talking about something about which they have quite limited knowledge.
Ah, I see others have posted similar while I was typing, e.g. @Stuartinromford has basically said it all already
I would go a little further and argue that scientists being interviewed on the record *shouldn't* express expert opinions outside of their expertise, precisely because neither the media nor the public are able to distinguish exactly what each scientist's expertise is. (Such distinctions sometimes themselves require expertise to appreciate.) I think this is one of the duties of a scientist: to know when not to express a strong view.
This aspect of the scientific response to COVID I have been very disappointed in. I wonder if the scientific establishment will reflect on it afterwards -- the Royal Society, say, would be well-placed to review after the dust settles -- but I fear that we will not. In fact my experience of the Royal Society is that they would probably conclude the opposite: that it was good to see so many scientists in the media...
--AS
I'd be a bit squeamish about anything too strong, but maybe encouraging disclaimers (this is not my area of expertise - probably comes under your "shouldn't express expert opinions...") for anyone wanting to offer other opinions. Media also have a role, I've seen scientists of TV refuse a question as not in area of expertise and then be pushed with something like "but you must have an opinion". It's brave ones who still refuse to answer and I suspect they don't get invited back.
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Getting more difficult daily on iPad loading comments, normally completely stops early evening disconnects from server especially when large amounts of data dropped all at once.
I can announce that the new IPad Air 2020 fixes this at a stroke... pages load in a split second just like they used to do... may be down to more RAM, faster processor or IOS 14.. or a bit of both... not a cheap solution, mind, at £579
Sounds like Apple have put in a special 'slow down politicalbetting.com on old machines' patch to encourage upgrading...
Working fine on my 2011 iMac - much newer iPhones, not so much.
Just heard Trump call Biden corrupt on the news. Seems an add tactic at this stage. I cant see it doing anything other than motivate Biden voters.
Shoring up the base - core voter strategy.
Takes much longer than that to plant a story like that and give it legs. Those who think it's likely will already be voting Trump. All those who think it's bullshit (coming from him and with his history) will have added motivation to get rid of him.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
There will always people who want to go further, sometimes thats needed other times its not. I do think the UK can do a lot more (the lack of real progress in tidal generation is a shame) but in general we stand up against most other countries very well.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
Depends which ones you refer too.
Heneghan I respect, Gupta I do not on this issue.
Heneghan has done some good stuff, but he's not really an expert in this area. His area of research is broadly not that dissimilar to mine (applied health research/epidemiology) and I'm absolutely no expert in this area (I'll criticise people on here posting obviously flawed analyses, but I've not been predicting what will happen or saying what should be done).
The public, media and - often - the scientists themselves make the mistake that because they are highly accomplished in one area their pronouncements on other areas are correct/relevant/worth the bytes their broadcast with. I posted back in the spring that I had no idea how this was all going to pan out - I may be an epidemiologist but that doesn't make me an expert on infectious disease. I'm in a well respected health sciences department, but I can count on one hand the number of our people involved in COVID response, the others don't have expertise in the area (there are plenty doing tangentially related stuff such as impact of the pandemic on other conditions/treatments etc, but the few people directly involved are those who previously worked on Ebola and other similar outbreaks and have actual expertise in infection control and non-pharmaceutical interventions).
The people who have the expertise in this are mostly in SAGE, they've been selected for a reason. Don't listen to a vaccine expert pontificating on the best lockdown options and don't listen to an infectious disease epidemiologist pontificating on how to develop a vaccine, it's just mostly, ill informed speculation. I'm not saying that people should not be free to say what they like, just don't assume because someone's a prof at Oxford they're not talking about something about which they have quite limited knowledge.
Ah, I see others have posted similar while I was typing, e.g. @Stuartinromford has basically said it all already
I would go a little further and argue that scientists being interviewed on the record *shouldn't* express expert opinions outside of their expertise, precisely because neither the media nor the public are able to distinguish exactly what each scientist's expertise is. (Such distinctions sometimes themselves require expertise to appreciate.) I think this is one of the duties of a scientist: to know when not to express a strong view.
This aspect of the scientific response to COVID I have been very disappointed in. I wonder if the scientific establishment will reflect on it afterwards -- the Royal Society, say, would be well-placed to review after the dust settles -- but I fear that we will not. In fact my experience of the Royal Society is that they would probably conclude the opposite: that it was good to see so many scientists in the media...
--AS
I'd be a bit squeamish about anything too strong, but maybe encouraging disclaimers (this is not my area of expertise - probably comes under your "shouldn't express expert opinions...") for anyone wanting to offer other opinions. Media also have a role, I've seen scientists of TV refuse a question as not in area of expertise and then be pushed with something like "but you must have an opinion". It's brave ones who still refuse to answer and I suspect they don't get invited back.
Yes, that's what I had in mind.
Right, back to work: lights-camera-action for lecture recordings...
Diverting away from the US election and Soy Sauce for a moment, the latest leaked SAGE forecasts are sobering*. Pox hospitalisation forecasted to peak above the spring high and then stay that high for a prolonged period. Happily we have got a highly responsive and competent government in charge so we don't need to worry about them doing anything heartless or stupid.
*I for one intend to be a good friend to Scotch Whisky and interesting ale producers this winter
The gaps between populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap and it being confirmed (once again) that they're populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap just get shorter and shorter.
The SAGE release is another forecast. Presumably from the same Ferguson/UCL font of wisdom that was relied on in the spring.
But 367 deaths yesterday is not a forecast, it is a recorded fact.
It's dreadful, of course, and at the same time we need to wait another 2 weeks to see the effects of the Tier 3 lockdowns last week.
There's a 2-3 week lag for hospitalisations/deaths. So 10-11th November is crunch time, I think.
The actual trend of what is happening with deaths is quite clear
(yes, last 3-5 days is incomplete).
Also, this excellent diagram from a BMJ publication is very useful
Thanks, so you're saying it's already peaked/peaking - for now?
Er no - he isn't saying that! Deaths are slowly increasing (ignore the last week or so)
Ok, is there a reason we should ignore the last week or so? The figures are provisional/unreliable?
Sigh.
Reporting delay. The is because case, deaths etc are not reported instantly. This is true everywhere in the world - each country has a different reporting delay in terms of cases, deaths etc.
In the UK, reporting delay means that 3-5 days are required to get the full set* of data for a day.
At this point, some people say that reporting day data is better. Because it does't get revised. Well, the problem is that the reporting delays vary, and you have a weekend effect. Which means that while it *looks* complete, it is as much of a guess as filling in the "gap" in "day of" data by hand.
I thought that after 6 months of this, people would know.....
*There are further revisions, but minor, after this time. This again matches what you see everywhere in the world.
Ok, there's no need to be rude.
Thank you.
Sorry - after explaining the same thing repeatedly, my sense of humour has developed a malfunction, I think.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
You mean people like Michael Levitt?
Other notable statements made by Levitt during the COVID-19 pandemic include his belief that Israel would suffer no more than 10 COVID-19 deaths and his belief on July 25, 2020 that COVID-19 in the United States would be over "in 4 weeks with total reported deaths below 170,000".
As of September 2020, there were more than 200,000 reported deaths in the United States and more than 1,500 reported fatalities in Israel.
Or Professor Gupta, with her claim that between 50% and 68% of Brits had had covid and were now immune prior to lockdown? Or that the IFR was lower than the death rate already seen in some cities and countries. Or that if we abandoned all restrictions from June, there would be no resurgence and it was all over already?
It's amazing how picky people are about specifics of a model that they don't like but utterly accepting of people saying things that proved to be totally in variance with reality.
I actually (accepting that it's not my area of expertise and I may be wrong, it maybe really was rubbish...) liked the Gupta paper, although the conclusions were over-stated. Started from a completely different set of assumptions and showed that these could be consistent with the data (at the point when analysed). Scientifically very interesting and good to look at alternative explanations of what was happening.
The problem was sticking with it when the emerging evidence clearly became inconsistent with what the paper was saying. There would have been no shame in saying that the number of cases was clearly no longer consistent with the theory, it would still have been an interesting piece of work.
Diverting away from the US election and Soy Sauce for a moment, the latest leaked SAGE forecasts are sobering*. Pox hospitalisation forecasted to peak above the spring high and then stay that high for a prolonged period. Happily we have got a highly responsive and competent government in charge so we don't need to worry about them doing anything heartless or stupid.
*I for one intend to be a good friend to Scotch Whisky and interesting ale producers this winter
The gaps between populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap and it being confirmed (once again) that they're populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap just get shorter and shorter.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Indeed that's raving nonsense. Thankfully most people ignore such nonsense.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Capitalism, science and technology are the solution, not taxes, veganism and communitarianism.
Just heard Trump call Biden corrupt on the news. Seems an add tactic at this stage. I cant see it doing anything other than motivate Biden voters.
Shoring up the base - core voter strategy.
Takes much longer than that to plant a story like that and give it legs. Those who think it's likely will already be voting Trump. All those who think it's bullshit (coming from him and with his history) will have added motivation to get rid of him.
It's all Bobulinski, Bobulinksi, Bobulinski in the Trump echo chamber right now.
Diverting away from the US election and Soy Sauce for a moment, the latest leaked SAGE forecasts are sobering*. Pox hospitalisation forecasted to peak above the spring high and then stay that high for a prolonged period. Happily we have got a highly responsive and competent government in charge so we don't need to worry about them doing anything heartless or stupid.
*I for one intend to be a good friend to Scotch Whisky and interesting ale producers this winter
The gaps between populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap and it being confirmed (once again) that they're populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap just get shorter and shorter.
The SAGE release is another forecast. Presumably from the same Ferguson/UCL font of wisdom that was relied on in the spring.
But 367 deaths yesterday is not a forecast, it is a recorded fact.
It's dreadful, of course, and at the same time we need to wait another 2 weeks to see the effects of the Tier 3 lockdowns last week.
There's a 2-3 week lag for hospitalisations/deaths. So 10-11th November is crunch time, I think.
The actual trend of what is happening with deaths is quite clear
(yes, last 3-5 days is incomplete).
Also, this excellent diagram from a BMJ publication is very useful
Thanks, so you're saying it's already peaked/peaking - for now?
Er no - he isn't saying that! Deaths are slowly increasing (ignore the last week or so)
Ok, is there a reason we should ignore the last week or so? The figures are provisional/unreliable?
Sigh.
Reporting delay. The is because case, deaths etc are not reported instantly. This is true everywhere in the world - each country has a different reporting delay in terms of cases, deaths etc.
In the UK, reporting delay means that 3-5 days are required to get the full set* of data for a day.
At this point, some people say that reporting day data is better. Because it does't get revised. Well, the problem is that the reporting delays vary, and you have a weekend effect. Which means that while it *looks* complete, it is as much of a guess as filling in the "gap" in "day of" data by hand.
I thought that after 6 months of this, people would know.....
*There are further revisions, but minor, after this time. This again matches what you see everywhere in the world.
I think the cases by specimen date charts would be more useful if they also contained a forecast of where each day is likely to end up, based on the actual numbers already available for each day as well as previous days' data and reporting patterns. Maybe visualised as a dotted line, which would diverge from the line of already-reported cases for the last few days.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
The RedGreen types are absolutely horrified by the prospect of a net zero carbon economy.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
Remarkable indeed. And you wrote all that without mentioning even once the great contribution that the Lib Dems made when they formed part of the Coalition Government.
"....they can't admit that or give us credit", you say. I give credit where it is deserved. You Tories don´t.
Diverting away from the US election and Soy Sauce for a moment, the latest leaked SAGE forecasts are sobering*. Pox hospitalisation forecasted to peak above the spring high and then stay that high for a prolonged period. Happily we have got a highly responsive and competent government in charge so we don't need to worry about them doing anything heartless or stupid.
*I for one intend to be a good friend to Scotch Whisky and interesting ale producers this winter
The gaps between populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap and it being confirmed (once again) that they're populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap just get shorter and shorter.
The SAGE release is another forecast. Presumably from the same Ferguson/UCL font of wisdom that was relied on in the spring.
But 367 deaths yesterday is not a forecast, it is a recorded fact.
It's dreadful, of course, and at the same time we need to wait another 2 weeks to see the effects of the Tier 3 lockdowns last week.
There's a 2-3 week lag for hospitalisations/deaths. So 10-11th November is crunch time, I think.
The actual trend of what is happening with deaths is quite clear
(yes, last 3-5 days is incomplete).
Also, this excellent diagram from a BMJ publication is very useful
Thanks, so you're saying it's already peaked/peaking - for now?
Er no - he isn't saying that! Deaths are slowly increasing (ignore the last week or so)
Ok, is there a reason we should ignore the last week or so? The figures are provisional/unreliable?
Sigh.
Reporting delay. The is because case, deaths etc are not reported instantly. This is true everywhere in the world - each country has a different reporting delay in terms of cases, deaths etc.
In the UK, reporting delay means that 3-5 days are required to get the full set* of data for a day.
At this point, some people say that reporting day data is better. Because it does't get revised. Well, the problem is that the reporting delays vary, and you have a weekend effect. Which means that while it *looks* complete, it is as much of a guess as filling in the "gap" in "day of" data by hand.
I thought that after 6 months of this, people would know.....
*There are further revisions, but minor, after this time. This again matches what you see everywhere in the world.
Ok, there's no need to be rude.
Thank you.
Sorry - after explaining the same thing repeatedly, my sense of humour has developed a malfunction, I think.
No problem, perhaps I missed your other explanations.
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Getting more difficult daily on iPad loading comments, normally completely stops early evening disconnects from server especially when large amounts of data dropped all at once.
I can announce that the new IPad Air 2020 fixes this at a stroke... pages load in a split second just like they used to do... may be down to more RAM, faster processor or IOS 14.. or a bit of both... not a cheap solution, mind, at £579
Sounds like Apple have put in a special 'slow down politicalbetting.com on old machines' patch to encourage upgrading...
Working fine on my 2011 iMac - much newer iPhones, not so much.
Ha! So Apple caught red-handed, they obviously didn't bother to put in the political betting patch for machines as ancient at 2011.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
Depends which ones you refer too.
Heneghan I respect, Gupta I do not on this issue.
Heneghan has done some good stuff, but he's not really an expert in this area. His area of research is broadly not that dissimilar to mine (applied health research/epidemiology) and I'm absolutely no expert in this area (I'll criticise people on here posting obviously flawed analyses, but I've not been predicting what will happen or saying what should be done).
The public, media and - often - the scientists themselves make the mistake that because they are highly accomplished in one area their pronouncements on other areas are correct/relevant/worth the bytes their broadcast with. I posted back in the spring that I had no idea how this was all going to pan out - I may be an epidemiologist but that doesn't make me an expert on infectious disease. I'm in a well respected health sciences department, but I can count on one hand the number of our people involved in COVID response, the others don't have expertise in the area (there are plenty doing tangentially related stuff such as impact of the pandemic on other conditions/treatments etc, but the few people directly involved are those who previously worked on Ebola and other similar outbreaks and have actual expertise in infection control and non-pharmaceutical interventions).
The people who have the expertise in this are mostly in SAGE, they've been selected for a reason. Don't listen to a vaccine expert pontificating on the best lockdown options and don't listen to an infectious disease epidemiologist pontificating on how to develop a vaccine, it's just mostly, ill informed speculation. I'm not saying that people should not be free to say what they like, just don't assume because someone's a prof at Oxford they're not talking about something about which they have quite limited knowledge.
Ah, I see others have posted similar while I was typing, e.g. @Stuartinromford has basically said it all already
I would go a little further and argue that scientists being interviewed on the record *shouldn't* express expert opinions outside of their expertise, precisely because neither the media nor the public are able to distinguish exactly what each scientist's expertise is. (Such distinctions sometimes themselves require expertise to appreciate.) I think this is one of the duties of a scientist: to know when not to express a strong view.
This aspect of the scientific response to COVID I have been very disappointed in. I wonder if the scientific establishment will reflect on it afterwards -- the Royal Society, say, would be well-placed to review after the dust settles -- but I fear that we will not. In fact my experience of the Royal Society is that they would probably conclude the opposite: that it was good to see so many scientists in the media...
--AS
I'd be a bit squeamish about anything too strong, but maybe encouraging disclaimers (this is not my area of expertise - probably comes under your "shouldn't express expert opinions...") for anyone wanting to offer other opinions. Media also have a role, I've seen scientists of TV refuse a question as not in area of expertise and then be pushed with something like "but you must have an opinion". It's brave ones who still refuse to answer and I suspect they don't get invited back.
The most important quality of a good scientist is a grifter or bullshit detector.
I think most good scientists should be able to smell the bullshit, or spot the grifters, even if not exactly in their area of expertise. (Unless the question is excessively technical ...)
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Indeed that's raving nonsense. Thankfully most people ignore such nonsense.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Capitalism, science and technology are the solution, not taxes, veganism and communitarianism.
Two black men were stopped and searched on suspicion of exchanging drugs simply because they had bumped fists, according to a highly critical review of the Metropolitan Police’s use of the power.
Officers have also stopped black men when the only basis was the smell of cannabis, contrary to policing practice, and handcuffs are routinely used when other tactics would calm situations. Other examples included a case in which a black man with someone else’s credit card was suspected of theft even after providing a credible explanation.
Isn't stopping them for the smell of cannabis legitimate given it's still an illegal drug?
I'm not sure the Met can win. They're not my favourite force but I see them attacked for extreme Wokeness/PC'ness as much as I do stop & search.
Another reason to get rid of the war on drugs nonsense.
Structured, legalisation of the whole drug supply chain. With taxes calculated to keep the prices less than the illegal stuff.
It works for alcohol.
Yeah, I used to be in favour of this but I really don't like the sickly-sweet decadent fug of cannabis wafting over private fences and gardens unchecked. It really stinks, and travels a long way.
If a house 4-5 doors away has a joint I can smell it. We successfully eliminated cigarette smoke from public spaces (another antisocial habit) so I'm quite cautious about how/where cannabis should be legalised.
I wouldn't care a jot for cakes, biscuits etc.
One thing that I'm curious about is that there doesn't seem to be a path to market for a new non-prescription drug that was developed solely for the purpose of producing a "high". Why?
I mentioned yesterday that, out of the top 10 TX counties by population, the top two counties with the highest early voting rates were both Trump strongholds in 2016. There could be several explanations for this but one is that Republicans may be very motivated to vote (and white non-college voters typically have lower voting rates). Conversely, heavily Hispanic counties were not seeing a surge in early voting.
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Ditto, if I switch my phone to desktop view then the vf.politicalbetting.com domain will load.
I can only use it if sitting at my desktop now, and nowhere else.
My wife is remarkably pleased about this.
Same here - not the wife bit, she doesn't give a shit, but the PB site. It's gone laptop only for me. Impact is that when I'm at a loose end I now reach not for my phone but for "THIS LAND: The Story of a Movement" by Owen Jones. I've reached the bit where Jeremy is attacked by the media for not singing the National Anthem.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
On that basis, quite a lot of the scientists linked to Great Barrington aren't good scientists.
Agree - in the AIDS crisis we benefited from having a PM trained in the scientific method and willing to listen. Now we have a classicist/journalist who can't see beyond tomorrows' headlines and the opportunity for a classical bon mot.
My two favourite quotes when I studied chemistry:
"At first I though Chemistry was a mass of unrelated facts. Later I came to realise it is a mass of unrelated theories"
"Many a beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact"
Scientists - even great ones - who are heavily invested in a particular theory struggle to abandon it, hoping "something will turn up".
It’s been said that science advances one funeral at a time...
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Getting more difficult daily on iPad loading comments, normally completely stops early evening disconnects from server especially when large amounts of data dropped all at once.
I can announce that the new IPad Air 2020 fixes this at a stroke... pages load in a split second just like they used to do... may be down to more RAM, faster processor or IOS 14.. or a bit of both... not a cheap solution, mind, at £579
Sounds like Apple have put in a special 'slow down politicalbetting.com on old machines' patch to encourage upgrading...
Working fine on my 2011 iMac - much newer iPhones, not so much.
There is too much Javascript in the comments. Which is a function of using Vanilla.
I don't think there is anything in the comments that really needs Javascript - could do all of it in HTML5, I would think....
Hi for the past few weeks logging onto this site has been difficult keep getting a winning prize lottery site. However this morning got a completely red page saying warning do not go further and advisingyou to go back to safety. Has anyone else had the same experience ?
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
Remarkable indeed. And you wrote all that without mentioning even once the great contribution that the Lib Dems made when they formed part of the Coalition Government.
"....they can't admit that or give us credit", you say. I give credit where it is deserved. You Tories don´t.
I never mentioned the Lib Dems as I never mentioned any political party at all in that post. 🙄
Why are you so needy and insecure? The entire post was about the country, not politics and I referenced that it was about the country in the very first line onwards. The Lib Dems were part of the government of the country for half of that decade so yes I do give credit to them too.
If the Lib Dems want to acknowledge that the UK is doing a good job and claim credit for part of that for being junior partner of the government for half of the past decade then all credit to them, but it wasn't a party political comment.
Two black men were stopped and searched on suspicion of exchanging drugs simply because they had bumped fists, according to a highly critical review of the Metropolitan Police’s use of the power.
Officers have also stopped black men when the only basis was the smell of cannabis, contrary to policing practice, and handcuffs are routinely used when other tactics would calm situations. Other examples included a case in which a black man with someone else’s credit card was suspected of theft even after providing a credible explanation.
Isn't stopping them for the smell of cannabis legitimate given it's still an illegal drug?
I'm not sure the Met can win. They're not my favourite force but I see them attacked for extreme Wokeness/PC'ness as much as I do stop & search.
Another reason to get rid of the war on drugs nonsense.
Structured, legalisation of the whole drug supply chain. With taxes calculated to keep the prices less than the illegal stuff.
It works for alcohol.
Yeah, I used to be in favour of this but I really don't like the sickly-sweet decadent fug of cannabis wafting over private fences and gardens unchecked. It really stinks, and travels a long way.
If a house 4-5 doors away has a joint I can smell it. We successfully eliminated cigarette smoke from public spaces (another antisocial habit) so I'm quite cautious about how/where cannabis should be legalised.
I wouldn't care a jot for cakes, biscuits etc.
One thing that I'm curious about is that there doesn't seem to be a path to market for a new non-prescription drug that was developed solely for the purpose of producing a "high". Why?
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Indeed that's raving nonsense. Thankfully most people ignore such nonsense.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Capitalism, science and technology are the solution, not taxes, veganism and communitarianism.
The current plans imply a huge leap of faith in untried (over long time frame) and not yet existent technological solutions in electricity generation, distribution infrastructure and energy storage. Unless a significant nuclear electricity generation programme is started soon then I think it will end in tears and abandonment of the targets.
Hi for the past few weeks logging onto this site has been difficult keep getting a winning prize lottery site. However this morning got a completely red page saying warning do not go further and advisingyou to go back to safety. Has anyone else had the same experience ?
Yep loads. Driving me potty. Posted about it here a week or so ago. Free from it most of the time but sometimes I will get it 10 times in a row when I log in. No obvious solution. Only on my phone and my wife's phone. Never on PC.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Indeed that's raving nonsense. Thankfully most people ignore such nonsense.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Capitalism, science and technology are the solution, not taxes, veganism and communitarianism.
Hi for the past few weeks logging onto this site has been difficult keep getting a winning prize lottery site. However this morning got a completely red page saying warning do not go further and advisingyou to go back to safety. Has anyone else had the same experience ?
Yep loads. Driving me potty. Posted about it here a week or so ago. Free from it most of the time but sometimes I will get it 10 times in a row when I log in. No obvious solution. Only on my phone and my wife's phone. Never on PC.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
The right have put forward solutions to climate change, solutions that work. The right is getting on with the job.
Clean technology, clean power, clean innovation and the market taking us forwards works better than taxes, clampdowns, hairshairts and stopping people from getting to work on a clean electric train.
The UK goverment have not been terrible over Climate Change, but they haven't been great either. The market responds to government rules. Remove the Feed In Tarriff and fewer solar panels will be installed, cancel the tidal project or the carbon capture and storage project and we'll continue using fossil fuels longer. I'm afraid that Cameron's getting rid of 'green crap' means that the Tories merit only a 'C+' on climate.
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Getting more difficult daily on iPad loading comments, normally completely stops early evening disconnects from server especially when large amounts of data dropped all at once.
I can announce that the new IPad Air 2020 fixes this at a stroke... pages load in a split second just like they used to do... may be down to more RAM, faster processor or IOS 14.. or a bit of both... not a cheap solution, mind, at £579
Sounds like Apple have put in a special 'slow down politicalbetting.com on old machines' patch to encourage upgrading...
Working fine on my 2011 iMac - much newer iPhones, not so much.
Ha! So Apple caught red-handed, they obviously didn't bother to put in the political betting patch for machines as ancient at 2011.
Given Apple’s target market has always been people who are easily parted from their money, going after PB.com readers with a slow-down patch seems eminently sensible...
LONDON (Reuters) - A COVID-19 vaccine could be rolled out in Britain for some people before Christmas but an early 2021 launch is more likely, the woman responsible for procuring possible jabs in Britain said on Wednesday.
“If the first two vaccines, or either of them, show that they are both safe and effective, I think there is a possibility that vaccine roll out will start this side of Christmas, but otherwise I think it’s more realistic to expect it to be early next year,” Kate Bingham said on BBC television.
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Ditto, if I switch my phone to desktop view then the vf.politicalbetting.com domain will load.
I can only use it if sitting at my desktop now, and nowhere else.
My wife is remarkably pleased about this.
Same here - not the wife bit, she doesn't give a shit, but the PB site. It's gone laptop only for me. Impact is that when I'm at a loose end I now reach not for my phone but for "THIS LAND: The Story of a Movement" by Owen Jones. I've reached the bit where Jeremy is attacked by the media for not singing the National Anthem.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
On that basis, quite a lot of the scientists linked to Great Barrington aren't good scientists.
Agree - in the AIDS crisis we benefited from having a PM trained in the scientific method and willing to listen. Now we have a classicist/journalist who can't see beyond tomorrows' headlines and the opportunity for a classical bon mot.
My two favourite quotes when I studied chemistry:
"At first I though Chemistry was a mass of unrelated facts. Later I came to realise it is a mass of unrelated theories"
"Many a beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact"
Scientists - even great ones - who are heavily invested in a particular theory struggle to abandon it, hoping "something will turn up".
It’s been said that science advances one funeral at a time...
In the case of things like fluorine - quite literally one funeral at a time.
And of course, that master piece of science writing, "Igntion!" details some others.....
"It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively."
Wisconsin score not credible, imo, and would probably be bad for Biden if true anyway because it piles up votes uselessly in a State he is sure to win.
It's a 2-5 shot according to the bookmakers, not sure that's right.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
Depends which ones you refer too.
Heneghan I respect, Gupta I do not on this issue.
Heneghan has done some good stuff, but he's not really an expert in this area. His area of research is broadly not that dissimilar to mine (applied health research/epidemiology) and I'm absolutely no expert in this area (I'll criticise people on here posting obviously flawed analyses, but I've not been predicting what will happen or saying what should be done).
The public, media and - often - the scientists themselves make the mistake that because they are highly accomplished in one area their pronouncements on other areas are correct/relevant/worth the bytes their broadcast with. I posted back in the spring that I had no idea how this was all going to pan out - I may be an epidemiologist but that doesn't make me an expert on infectious disease. I'm in a well respected health sciences department, but I can count on one hand the number of our people involved in COVID response, the others don't have expertise in the area (there are plenty doing tangentially related stuff such as impact of the pandemic on other conditions/treatments etc, but the few people directly involved are those who previously worked on Ebola and other similar outbreaks and have actual expertise in infection control and non-pharmaceutical interventions).
The people who have the expertise in this are mostly in SAGE, they've been selected for a reason. Don't listen to a vaccine expert pontificating on the best lockdown options and don't listen to an infectious disease epidemiologist pontificating on how to develop a vaccine, it's just mostly, ill informed speculation. I'm not saying that people should not be free to say what they like, just don't assume because someone's a prof at Oxford they're not talking about something about which they have quite limited knowledge.
Ah, I see others have posted similar while I was typing, e.g. @Stuartinromford has basically said it all already
Heneghan brought to light the run over by a bus Covid deaths. Admittedly less important now, but over the summer this was driving a narrative that somehow Scotland (and to a lesser extent NI and Wales) were somehow doing better than England. This was a useful intervention. I also think he is right on the use of PCR for population testing being a bad thing, especially with no agreed definition of a 'case'. PCR can find extremely low levels of virus, that may well be just remnants, and in no way active, but a case would still be called positive. he is not going to right about everything, but he is right to call for evidence to be used.
Yes, he's a good guy - the deaths reporting issue was important (although the right method/time limit is far from clear, the method used had to have some kind of time limit). I don't really know the ins and outs - e.g. cost and scalability - of PCR compared to the other methods, so won't comment on that. I'm not saying his opinion has no weight, just that pointing to him signing Great Barrington as evidence for Great Barrington being the way forward is flawed because while he understands some of the issues (GP, aware of the problems in primary care and probably also getting people to hospital for other things, an ability to compare risks) I'm not sure that he has expertise on the plausibility of shielding or the likely hospital case load of pursuing Great Barrington - that requies expertise in modelling infectious disease transmission. There are equally/more qualified people on the other side. Saying Great Barrington is right because Heneghan signed it is ridiculous. As ridiculous (or more so) than I would be if I argued that SAGE are always right because Chris Whitty is involved.
My approach is that I change my view when the facts change*. For example, I was very sceptical of masks back in May/June, and thought the big issue was fomites. When the science changed I changed my view. Same with herd immunity - I thought there might be something in that and now I can see issues with long Covid, reinfections and dwindling antibodies with very high death rates if left unchecked, I'm not.
Of course, if you do that, for an issue that's highly politicised, you can easily lose the respect of both sides: the sceptics will think you're a wet flip-flopper, and the lockdown hawks will gloat with "told you so".
(*I still challenge and test the policy responses regardless - accepting those facts - because I think it's good practice to have the trade-offs, assumptions and compromises challenged on something as awful as this.)
Agreed. A particular problem with politicisation is that it goes against the grain for most of us to admit that someone you really dislike may have a valid point, even if they're making it for political reasons. I discounted the early claims by the likes of Nick Griffin about exploitation of girls by Asian-led gangs in several towns, because it was obvious that he was making the claim to have a go at Asians.
On the other hand, if you totally depoliticise an issue it can become neglected. The care system is an example. Both parties have had a go at addressing the problem and been punished for it, so it's been shunted into the nebulous area of "Difficult, needs an agreed cross-party solution", which in practice has meant that absolutely nothing happens. The spur of parties competing to offer a solution can be healthy.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
The right have put forward solutions to climate change, solutions that work. The right is getting on with the job.
Clean technology, clean power, clean innovation and the market taking us forwards works better than taxes, clampdowns, hairshairts and stopping people from getting to work on a clean electric train.
The UK goverment have not been terrible over Climate Change, but they haven't been great either. The market responds to government rules. Remove the Feed In Tarriff and fewer solar panels will be installed, cancel the tidal project or the carbon capture and storage project and we'll continue using fossil fuels longer. I'm afraid that Cameron's getting rid of 'green crap' means that the Tories merit only a 'C+' on climate.
We don't need 'green crap' that doesn't work, we need green solutions that do work.
Solar panels were always the wrong priority for this country. The simple fact of the matter is that we are a cold, northern hemisphere, winter country that doesn't require air condition but does require heating. Solar panels are wonderful in Australia or California where demand peaks in the summer when air cons run full blast and the solar panels operate with peak efficiency.
Our electricity demand peaks in the winter and as we transition from gas boiler to more electric heating that is going to transform even further the gap between the seasons. Solar panels are least efficient in the winter.
We don't need green crap we need green solutions that work. The government rightly recognised a decade ago that wasn't bribing people to put on solar panels that would never provide a solution to electricity in this country - it was wind power. Wind works in the winter in a way that solar never will as well.
The proof is in the pudding. Solar panels and the feed in tariff made a negligible impact in our power generation - the past decade has seen a mammoth transformation far outstripping anything the feed in tariff ever achieved.
They've gone for solutions that actually work. A- (the only reason its A- was saying no to the tidal lagoon).
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
The right have put forward solutions to climate change, solutions that work. The right is getting on with the job.
Clean technology, clean power, clean innovation and the market taking us forwards works better than taxes, clampdowns, hairshairts and stopping people from getting to work on a clean electric train.
The UK goverment have not been terrible over Climate Change, but they haven't been great either. The market responds to government rules. Remove the Feed In Tarriff and fewer solar panels will be installed, cancel the tidal project or the carbon capture and storage project and we'll continue using fossil fuels longer. I'm afraid that Cameron's getting rid of 'green crap' means that the Tories merit only a 'C+' on climate.
We don't need 'green crap' that doesn't work, we need green solutions that do work.
Solar panels were always the wrong priority for this country. The simple fact of the matter is that we are a cold, northern hemisphere, winter country that doesn't require air condition but does require heating. Solar panels are wonderful in Australia or California where demand peaks in the summer when air cons run full blast and the solar panels operate with peak efficiency.
Our electricity demand peaks in the winter and as we transition from gas boiler to more electric heating that is going to transform even further the gap between the seasons. Solar panels are least efficient in the winter.
We don't need green crap we need green solutions that work. The government rightly recognised a decade ago that wasn't bribing people to put on solar panels that would never provide a solution to electricity in this country - it was wind power. Wind works in the winter in a way that solar never will as well.
The proof is in the pudding. Solar panels and the feed in tariff made a negligible impact in our power generation - the past decade has seen a mammoth transformation far outstripping anything the feed in tariff ever achieved.
They've gone for solutions that actually work. A- (the only reason its A- was saying no to the tidal lagoon).
100% agree with you on solar, as someone who used to work in the renewables industry. The advocates for solar are those on the legacy subsidies, which were huge.
Hi for the past few weeks logging onto this site has been difficult keep getting a winning prize lottery site. However this morning got a completely red page saying warning do not go further and advisingyou to go back to safety. Has anyone else had the same experience ?
Yep loads. Driving me potty. Posted about it here a week or so ago. Free from it most of the time but sometimes I will get it 10 times in a row when I log in. No obvious solution. Only on my phone and my wife's phone. Never on PC.
Also on when going into PB.
That should have read 'only when going into PB'
Anyone else? Why is it happening and only with PB?
Wisconsin score not credible, imo, and would probably be bad for Biden if true anyway because it piles up votes uselessly in a State he is sure to win.
It's a 2-5 shot according to the bookmakers, not sure that's right.
Oh I think Wisconsin is a home banker for Biden but I don't buy 17pts.
Shocking Covid figures in Wisconsin though so that would help to fuel an anti-Trump vote. Similar considerations apply to Texas which is having a bad second wave, but I'm still not buying the blues there.....yet.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
The right have put forward solutions to climate change, solutions that work. The right is getting on with the job.
Clean technology, clean power, clean innovation and the market taking us forwards works better than taxes, clampdowns, hairshairts and stopping people from getting to work on a clean electric train.
The UK goverment have not been terrible over Climate Change, but they haven't been great either. The market responds to government rules. Remove the Feed In Tarriff and fewer solar panels will be installed, cancel the tidal project or the carbon capture and storage project and we'll continue using fossil fuels longer. I'm afraid that Cameron's getting rid of 'green crap' means that the Tories merit only a 'C+' on climate.
We don't need 'green crap' that doesn't work, we need green solutions that do work.
Solar panels were always the wrong priority for this country. The simple fact of the matter is that we are a cold, northern hemisphere, winter country that doesn't require air condition but does require heating. Solar panels are wonderful in Australia or California where demand peaks in the summer when air cons run full blast and the solar panels operate with peak efficiency.
Our electricity demand peaks in the winter and as we transition from gas boiler to more electric heating that is going to transform even further the gap between the seasons. Solar panels are least efficient in the winter.
We don't need green crap we need green solutions that work. The government rightly recognised a decade ago that wasn't bribing people to put on solar panels that would never provide a solution to electricity in this country - it was wind power. Wind works in the winter in a way that solar never will as well.
The proof is in the pudding. Solar panels and the feed in tariff made a negligible impact in our power generation - the past decade has seen a mammoth transformation far outstripping anything the feed in tariff ever achieved.
They've gone for solutions that actually work. A- (the only reason its A- was saying no to the tidal lagoon).
The tidal ponds are an interesting idea - but they have 2 flaws.
- They only work at the mega-project scale - Planning. There is a large chunk of the environmental lobby that will die in a ditch to stop them.
The alternative tidal system uses individual turbines anchored in mid water, away from surface and bottom effects. You don't get the storage, but you get scalability and planning issues go away.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
You mean people like Michael Levitt?
Other notable statements made by Levitt during the COVID-19 pandemic include his belief that Israel would suffer no more than 10 COVID-19 deaths and his belief on July 25, 2020 that COVID-19 in the United States would be over "in 4 weeks with total reported deaths below 170,000".
As of September 2020, there were more than 200,000 reported deaths in the United States and more than 1,500 reported fatalities in Israel.
Or Professor Gupta, with her claim that between 50% and 68% of Brits had had covid and were now immune prior to lockdown? Or that the IFR was lower than the death rate already seen in some cities and countries. Or that if we abandoned all restrictions from June, there would be no resurgence and it was all over already?
It's amazing how picky people are about specifics of a model that they don't like but utterly accepting of people saying things that proved to be totally in variance with reality.
I actually (accepting that it's not my area of expertise and I may be wrong, it maybe really was rubbish...) liked the Gupta paper, although the conclusions were over-stated. Started from a completely different set of assumptions and showed that these could be consistent with the data (at the point when analysed). Scientifically very interesting and good to look at alternative explanations of what was happening.
The problem was sticking with it when the emerging evidence clearly became inconsistent with what the paper was saying. There would have been no shame in saying that the number of cases was clearly no longer consistent with the theory, it would still have been an interesting piece of work.
Agreed.
The problem was when she continually doubled down on it after reality was clearly in conflict with it. It was as late as June that she was insisting in the Oxford Mail that it was correct, the pandemic was over, and we could release all restrictions immediately and go back to normal.
EDIT: Apologies, it was the 23rd of May, so just over a week before June.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Indeed that's raving nonsense. Thankfully most people ignore such nonsense.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.....
But could not have done it without government subsidies at crucial junctures.
The same could be said about the technologies - solar and battery - that much of his business depends on. The reality is that capitalism left to its own devices would not have got us to where we are now as quickly, if at all.
Though I agree with your deprecation of the more extreme eco warriors.
Wisconsin score not credible, imo, and would probably be bad for Biden if true anyway because it piles up votes uselessly in a State he is sure to win.
It's a 2-5 shot according to the bookmakers, not sure that's right.
Oh I think Wisconsin is a home banker for Biden but I don't buy 17pts.
Shocking Covid figures in Wisconsin though so that would help to fuel an anti-Trump vote. Similar considerations apply to Texas which is having a bad second wave, but I'm still not buying the blues there.....yet.
I don't think anyone knows what happens to the in-person vote with a huge covid outbreak. If the GOP are tribally conditioned not to worry about it, don't their people show up while low-enthusiasm Dems (ie those who haven't already voted) stay home for fear of catching it?
Diverting away from the US election and Soy Sauce for a moment, the latest leaked SAGE forecasts are sobering*. Pox hospitalisation forecasted to peak above the spring high and then stay that high for a prolonged period. Happily we have got a highly responsive and competent government in charge so we don't need to worry about them doing anything heartless or stupid.
*I for one intend to be a good friend to Scotch Whisky and interesting ale producers this winter
The gaps between populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap and it being confirmed (once again) that they're populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap just get shorter and shorter.
The SAGE release is another forecast. Presumably from the same Ferguson/UCL font of wisdom that was relied on in the spring.
Oh, give it a rest. You're just so desperate to smear the forecasts because you don't like the outcomes that they predict.
Ferguson's UK model a) is not the only model used by SAGE, b) turned out pretty accurate in the spring, and c) has been peer-reviewed and published.
--AS
It "has been peer-reviewed and published." I am sure you know that means virtually nothing
As a peer-reviewer, I take issue with that
Mind you, while I'm obviously an excellent peer reviewer, the reviewers on my papers are often idiots and I do very often get invited to peer review papers on subjects about which I know next to nothing, so the system may not be entirely perfect...
Seriously, peer reviewers need to get paid, either directly or to have it as part of the job with (real, rather than notional) allocated time. Anyone remotely known in a field gets far too many requests to fit in, so they get bounced around until you get to someone who never gets asked, wants to do it and will have a crack at reviewing almost anything. Of course, you still sometimes get an excellent reviewer who is an expert in the field. I've learned valuable things from having my papers peer reviewed at times, including introductions to completely new methods that I could have used/did then use in a later paper.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
The RedGreen types are absolutely horrified by the prospect of a net zero carbon economy.
People say this, but I've been a member of the Green Party, I'm left-wing, I was arguing in favour of wind power on here back when Labour were in government and all the PB Tories were telling me they didn't work, and it's not a description I recognise.
There's perhaps a certain degree of cynicism about green-washing which obscures the reality that new capitalists replace old ones at a time of technological transition, so they find it hard to imagine it happening.
But I've never come across anyone on the Green Left who wouldn't be delighted if it happened. And there are plenty other ways that capitalism is dumping on the environment.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Indeed that's raving nonsense. Thankfully most people ignore such nonsense.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Capitalism, science and technology are the solution, not taxes, veganism and communitarianism.
The current plans imply a huge leap of faith in untried (over long time frame) and not yet existent technological solutions in electricity generation, distribution infrastructure and energy storage. Unless a significant nuclear electricity generation programme is started soon then I think it will end in tears and abandonment of the targets.
Just because technological solutions haven't been tried yet doesn't mean they can't work and shouldn't be the basis of how we develop.
Wind power is increasingly economic and reliable. Energy storage is coming along in leaps and bounds. It is almost improving in a rate that computers have following Moore's Law in past decades.
There is no need to switch off gas power immediately, we can continue to use it as a back up less and less frequently until it can be phased out completely (just as we have increasingly done with coal).
Its a far more sensible solution than "turn off everything that requires electricity, become a vegan, don't go on holiday".
Exponential is a very scary concept when facing a virus. If you start with 1 and have doubling every week can you guess how many weeks before the number is: a) Greater than the UK population b) Greater than the world population. ANSWERS at bottom of post.
Once a country loses control of the virus, the pandemic will knock over the hospitals / health service and crash the economy. Underestimate this at your peril. I am not one of those who think we should focus on protecting the economy. I think that the best way to help the economy is to go very hard against the virus. One thing that would help is to move life outdoors as much possible. In much of the country you can have a group of 6 indoors. I think this is a terrible mistake.
ANSWERS (Hope my maths is correct) 26 weeks = 67,108,864 33 weeks = 8,589,934,592
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Ditto, if I switch my phone to desktop view then the vf.politicalbetting.com domain will load.
I can only use it if sitting at my desktop now, and nowhere else.
My wife is remarkably pleased about this.
Same here - not the wife bit, she doesn't give a shit, but the PB site. It's gone laptop only for me. Impact is that when I'm at a loose end I now reach not for my phone but for "THIS LAND: The Story of a Movement" by Owen Jones. I've reached the bit where Jeremy is attacked by the media for not singing the National Anthem.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
On that basis, quite a lot of the scientists linked to Great Barrington aren't good scientists.
Agree - in the AIDS crisis we benefited from having a PM trained in the scientific method and willing to listen. Now we have a classicist/journalist who can't see beyond tomorrows' headlines and the opportunity for a classical bon mot.
My two favourite quotes when I studied chemistry:
"At first I though Chemistry was a mass of unrelated facts. Later I came to realise it is a mass of unrelated theories"
"Many a beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact"
Scientists - even great ones - who are heavily invested in a particular theory struggle to abandon it, hoping "something will turn up".
It’s been said that science advances one funeral at a time...
In the case of things like fluorine - quite literally one funeral at a time.
And of course, that master piece of science writing, "Igntion!" details some others.....
"It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively."
Wisconsin score not credible, imo, and would probably be bad for Biden if true anyway because it piles up votes uselessly in a State he is sure to win.
https://www.langerresearch.com/category/abc-news-polls/ "Langer Research Associates is the primary news poll provider for ABC News, responsible for ABC’s partnership in the ABC News/Washington Post poll and the network’s ongoing coverage of public opinion on politics, policy, social trends and international issues."
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
Good post. I think it's a bit difficult for the right wing to come up with environmental solutions unlike, say, education policy, because of something inherent in the subject matter. When it comes to education, there are rational arguments to be made for the free market to contribute to it, especially around choice and accountability. But the environment is very, very different. And that is because humans have an industrial capacity for ruining nature but not a similar one for restoring it. One person with a chainsaw can pull down trees faster than one person with a can grow a forest. It's an inherent property of any complex systems that as soon as one actor gains a disproportionate capacity to intervene, the complexity of the system crashes. The only way to preserve complexity is to have a balance of power. And that means constraint on the freedom of the powerful actor. It's an old idea, usually referred to as the tragedy of the commons. The traditional right wing solution is through property rights, but our industrial capacity means humans can have global effects, and nobody owns the skies and seas. And if they did, enforcement of those property rights would require some sort of supranational legal system, which would tick off some on the right quite a lot.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
I agree our record is good, and to an extent it has been depoliticised but not entirely. Just look at the BBC give this academic eco-loon airtime this week. Professor Jillian Anable isn't happy with electric cars because: "They also need roads and parking spaces that could otherwise be used for gardens and trees that soak up carbon dioxide" 🙄
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
Indeed that's raving nonsense. Thankfully most people ignore such nonsense.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.....
But could not have done it without government subsidies at crucial junctures.
The same could be said about the technologies - solar and battery - that much of his business depends on. The reality is that capitalism left to its own devices would not have got us to where we are now as quickly, if at all.
Though I agree with your deprecation of the more extreme eco warriors.
Indeed. That is where government is best at acting - giving the market a nudge in the right direction. Taxing elements you wish to discourage (eg fuel duty) and subsidising research, technological development and tax-breaks for clean vehicles etc.
That way the government transforms the externality of pollution into a cost which it is - and the market can deal with costs as it does best.
Diverting away from the US election and Soy Sauce for a moment, the latest leaked SAGE forecasts are sobering*. Pox hospitalisation forecasted to peak above the spring high and then stay that high for a prolonged period. Happily we have got a highly responsive and competent government in charge so we don't need to worry about them doing anything heartless or stupid.
*I for one intend to be a good friend to Scotch Whisky and interesting ale producers this winter
The gaps between populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap and it being confirmed (once again) that they're populist fuckwits spouting dangerous crap just get shorter and shorter.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
The RedGreen types are absolutely horrified by the prospect of a net zero carbon economy.
People say this, but I've been a member of the Green Party, I'm left-wing, I was arguing in favour of wind power on here back when Labour were in government and all the PB Tories were telling me they didn't work, and it's not a description I recognise.
There's perhaps a certain degree of cynicism about green-washing which obscures the reality that new capitalists replace old ones at a time of technological transition, so they find it hard to imagine it happening.
But I've never come across anyone on the Green Left who wouldn't be delighted if it happened. And there are plenty other ways that capitalism is dumping on the environment.
They are quite outspoken - I am rather surprised you haven't encountered them.
A friend got chased out of the Green party (was a parish councillor) by them. He was a Technological Green - a scientist, he had a list of solutions to each part of the Global Warming/CO2. His branch became very RedGreen - and they denounced him at every opportunity for not being anti-technology.
On the Christmas Dinner front, I would recommend this as a vegan alternative, if having vegetarian guests. It is quite easy to make, can be prepared in advance and reheated on the day, and really seasonal and tasty.
On the Christmas Dinner front, I would recommend this as a vegan alternative, if having vegetarian guests. It is quite easy to make, can be prepared in advance and reheated on the day, and really seasonal and tasty.
For me , although there are lots of permutations, who wins the election will come down to two states, FL and PA. If Biden wins FL he's going to win, end of. If he loses, though there may be some ups and downs , I think it will come down to PA. I still think the national polls are reflecting more that Biden is doing better in places like TX and GA but I don't expect him to win either or NC. AZ I think he will. I am pretty confident he will win MI and WI but I have real doubts about PA, yes he's about 5% up but the mood music there seems so volatile. So I think if it comes down to PA (which I think it will as i suspect Trump will win FL just), we may have to wait a while to know who's won and can expect some shenanigans over postal votes. So much against my personal wishes I really can see Trump falling over the line, despite losing the popular vote by more than 2016 and only just getting past 270 this time. Now I need a stiff drink
Exponential is a very scary concept when facing a virus. If you start with 1 and have doubling every week can you guess how many weeks before the number is: a) Greater than the UK population b) Greater than the world population. ANSWERS at bottom of post.
Once a country loses control of the virus, the pandemic will knock over the hospitals / health service and crash the economy. Underestimate this at your peril. I am not one of those who think we should focus on protecting the economy. I think that the best way to help the economy is to go very hard against the virus. One thing that would help is to move life outdoors as much possible. In much of the country you can have a group of 6 indoors. I think this is a terrible mistake.
ANSWERS (Hope my maths is correct) 26 weeks = 67,108,864 33 weeks = 8,589,934,592
Ten doublings is about a thousand (1024 to be exact) is an excellent approximation to use for that sort of question. So ten weeks to a thousand, twenty to a million, thirty to a billion and so on.
Exponential is a very scary concept when facing a virus. If you start with 1 and have doubling every week can you guess how many weeks before the number is: a) Greater than the UK population b) Greater than the world population. ANSWERS at bottom of post.
Once a country loses control of the virus, the pandemic will knock over the hospitals / health service and crash the economy. Underestimate this at your peril. I am not one of those who think we should focus on protecting the economy. I think that the best way to help the economy is to go very hard against the virus. One thing that would help is to move life outdoors as much possible. In much of the country you can have a group of 6 indoors. I think this is a terrible mistake.
ANSWERS (Hope my maths is correct) 26 weeks = 67,108,864 33 weeks = 8,589,934,592
The floor in that thinking is the naive assumption it will keep doubling every week. It won't, it doesn't and it hasn't.
@Philip_Thompson one piece of solar that people should consider in this country is solar thermal. Even in Scotland it can provide almost all of your hot water needs throughout most of the year, with the exception of the coldest winter months. All from 1 or 2 panels on your roof.
Exponential is a very scary concept when facing a virus. If you start with 1 and have doubling every week can you guess how many weeks before the number is: a) Greater than the UK population b) Greater than the world population. ANSWERS at bottom of post.
Once a country loses control of the virus, the pandemic will knock over the hospitals / health service and crash the economy. Underestimate this at your peril. I am not one of those who think we should focus on protecting the economy. I think that the best way to help the economy is to go very hard against the virus. One thing that would help is to move life outdoors as much possible. In much of the country you can have a group of 6 indoors. I think this is a terrible mistake.
ANSWERS (Hope my maths is correct) 26 weeks = 67,108,864 33 weeks = 8,589,934,592
Well that's a relief. Since this started in January everyone on the planet has had the virus several weeks ago now. Panic over, job done. What on earth is all the fuss about?
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
What you're saying has happened in this country though. Sane climate change mitigation has been depoliticised, which is part of what drives the far left so crazy is because this country actually has a fantastic record on climate change - but they can't admit that or give us credit.
The transformation in our power generation over the past decade from 2010 to 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, even the most optimistic of climate change activists wouldn't have realistically thought we'd have essentially eliminated coal and be routinely getting a majority of power from renewables in only one decade then.
From cars to electricity to heating and everything that matters people are acting in environmentally sound ways and the transformation is simply happening - while keeping capitalism not dumping it. Hence the ever louder screechings by loonies like XR attacking clean electric public transport because climate change means clean electric public transport should be attacked apparently. 🙄
Remarkable indeed. And you wrote all that without mentioning even once the great contribution that the Lib Dems made when they formed part of the Coalition Government.
"....they can't admit that or give us credit", you say. I give credit where it is deserved. You Tories don´t.
Not just the Lib Dems, but largely down to Ed Davey...
Vf has now finally stopped loading comments (period) on my phone on chrome.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Ditto, if I switch my phone to desktop view then the vf.politicalbetting.com domain will load.
I can only use it if sitting at my desktop now, and nowhere else.
My wife is remarkably pleased about this.
Same here - not the wife bit, she doesn't give a shit, but the PB site. It's gone laptop only for me. Impact is that when I'm at a loose end I now reach not for my phone but for "THIS LAND: The Story of a Movement" by Owen Jones. I've reached the bit where Jeremy is attacked by the media for not singing the National Anthem.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
On that basis, quite a lot of the scientists linked to Great Barrington aren't good scientists.
Agree - in the AIDS crisis we benefited from having a PM trained in the scientific method and willing to listen. Now we have a classicist/journalist who can't see beyond tomorrows' headlines and the opportunity for a classical bon mot.
My two favourite quotes when I studied chemistry:
"At first I though Chemistry was a mass of unrelated facts. Later I came to realise it is a mass of unrelated theories"
"Many a beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact"
Scientists - even great ones - who are heavily invested in a particular theory struggle to abandon it, hoping "something will turn up".
It’s been said that science advances one funeral at a time...
In the case of things like fluorine - quite literally one funeral at a time.
And of course, that master piece of science writing, "Igntion!" details some others.....
"It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively."
Ah yes, chlorine trifluoride...
When a chemical is rejected by the Nazis as too toxic and dangerous to use - it is a sign.
"In an industrial accident, a spill of 900 kg of chlorine trifluoride burned through 30 cm of concrete and 90 cm of gravel beneath" - this always makes me wonder....
What is the rate of pay for being in the same timezone as a literal ton of chlorine trifluoride?
Exponential is a very scary concept when facing a virus. If you start with 1 and have doubling every week can you guess how many weeks before the number is: a) Greater than the UK population b) Greater than the world population. ANSWERS at bottom of post.
Once a country loses control of the virus, the pandemic will knock over the hospitals / health service and crash the economy. Underestimate this at your peril. I am not one of those who think we should focus on protecting the economy. I think that the best way to help the economy is to go very hard against the virus. One thing that would help is to move life outdoors as much possible. In much of the country you can have a group of 6 indoors. I think this is a terrible mistake.
ANSWERS (Hope my maths is correct) 26 weeks = 67,108,864 33 weeks = 8,589,934,592
Ten doublings is about a thousand (1024 to be exact) is an excellent approximation to use for that sort of question. So ten weeks to a thousand, twenty to a million, thirty to a billion and so on.
Like amoeba reproduction - in just a few weeks they'll occupy all known space. Scary or what?
@Philip_Thompson one piece of solar that people should consider in this country is solar thermal. Even in Scotland it can provide almost all of your hot water needs throughout most of the year, with the exception of the coldest winter months. All from 1 or 2 panels on your roof.
Oh indeed solar isn't a complete write off. If I was getting a new build home I'd certainly consider looking into the feasibility of solar panels and some form of storage to see how economic it might be.
But the simples maths are that solar works best in summer and demand is massively higher in winter. Solar is OK as far as displacing coal or gas is concerned, but for a long-term net zero solution we need a solution we can rely upon over the winter and that is not going to be solar in this country.
@Philip_Thompson one piece of solar that people should consider in this country is solar thermal. Even in Scotland it can provide almost all of your hot water needs throughout most of the year, with the exception of the coldest winter months. All from 1 or 2 panels on your roof.
Oh indeed solar isn't a complete write off. If I was getting a new build home I'd certainly consider looking into the feasibility of solar panels and some form of storage to see how economic it might be.
But the simples maths are that solar works best in summer and demand is massively higher in winter. Solar is OK as far as displacing coal or gas is concerned, but for a long-term net zero solution we need a solution we can rely upon over the winter and that is not going to be solar in this country.
It certainly shouldn't be anywhere near the top of our "green" strategy.
It looks like everything is closing down again soon in Germany. Well, at least bars and clubs and restaurants and gyms etc. I think the schools will stay open. We've had a kind of "rule of 5" in Cologne for a couple of weeks, I guess it will get stricter. No toilet paper shortage yet.
Of course, it's up to the Bundesländer, but I think Merkel will give clear instructions today. It would probably be brave (in the Yes Minister sense) for a Bundesland to go against the consensus at this point. Personally, I think they have left it a bit late to take action, hospital admissions seem to be already increasing quite quickly. Germany in a way got lucky the first time around in the Spring and maybe people got a bit complacent. I'm not looking forward to the winter, especially for my wife who is Oberärztin in the Notaufnahme of a hospital, where most of the admissions come in. I don't think people will be clapping outside their doors at 8pm this time around.
I'm not sure what happened to all the promises back in the spring of all kinds of new easier quicker tests, but they don't seem to have materialised, or aren't being used. I would be in favour of having a pooled test, maybe once a week, for school classes, so that schools can carry on with a bit more confidence. I'm surprised that Germany hasn't been able to arrange this, or maybe there has been no real leadership.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
You mean people like Michael Levitt?
Other notable statements made by Levitt during the COVID-19 pandemic include his belief that Israel would suffer no more than 10 COVID-19 deaths and his belief on July 25, 2020 that COVID-19 in the United States would be over "in 4 weeks with total reported deaths below 170,000".
As of September 2020, there were more than 200,000 reported deaths in the United States and more than 1,500 reported fatalities in Israel.
Covid denialism is no different to the Climate Change variety.
If you accept the truth it means solutions you don't like - so refuse to accept it.
The deniers are the lockdowners. They deny lockdown's utterly destructive economic, social and indeed health effects.
Look at the economic numbers. Under your strategy, meltdown is coming. What lockdowners like Burnham are trying to organize now is a convoy system. If everybody goes down, then nobody can claim the strategy was wrong.
But Donald Trump ain't no convoy kinda guy. And I reckon America ain;t no convoy kinda country,.
Wonder if I can do this too? Let's have a bash -
There are no such thing as lockdowners. There are only those who deal in hard facts and those who shy away from them.
Look at the virus. Under "let it R.I.P." we get economic meltdown PLUS thousands of putrefying bodies in the street. Not one or two. Thousands. Of putrefying bodies. Because the hospitals have had to shut their doors. Rotting corpses that were once our loved ones littering the streets. Think about that for a second.
And this is PLUS economic carnage not instead of it. All for the lack of a vestige of discipline and community spirit. And for what? So that whiny snowflakes whose idea of "oppression" is having to wear a mask in Tesco - whose idea of "liberty" is the right to breathe lethal germs in my face - might finally shut the fuck up.
Has there ever been such a mass outbreak of sheer selfishness and stupidity? And could these hordes of dumb and nasty fucks have a more appropriate leader than Donald "me me me" Trump? No sirree. It's a perfect fit.
For anyone hell-bent on starting your own viral modelling, I can heartily recommend you look into the concept of a logistic function, rather than exponentials. It's a better place to start.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
Good post. I think it's a bit difficult for the right wing to come up with environmental solutions unlike, say, education policy, because of something inherent in the subject matter. When it comes to education, there are rational arguments to be made for the free market to contribute to it, especially around choice and accountability. But the environment is very, very different. And that is because humans have an industrial capacity for ruining nature but not a similar one for restoring it. One person with a chainsaw can pull down trees faster than one person with a can grow a forest. It's an inherent property of any complex systems that as soon as one actor gains a disproportionate capacity to intervene, the complexity of the system crashes. The only way to preserve complexity is to have a balance of power. And that means constraint on the freedom of the powerful actor. It's an old idea, usually referred to as the tragedy of the commons. The traditional right wing solution is through property rights, but our industrial capacity means humans can have global effects, and nobody owns the skies and seas. And if they did, enforcement of those property rights would require some sort of supranational legal system, which would tick off some on the right quite a lot.
From Adam Smith onwards, various "right-wing" economic theories/systems have argued that dealing with externalities is one of the major functions of government intervention in the economy. Such as "the polluter pays"....
From this strand of thinking came the idea that the best way to deal with CO2 emissions was to tax them. It is notable that all the countries in which CO2 emissions have been reduced substantially have used CO2 taxes - direct or indirect.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Presumably the Oxford professors and Nobel Prize winners who signed the Great Barrington are 'bad' scientists in your humble opinion.
You mean people like Michael Levitt?
Other notable statements made by Levitt during the COVID-19 pandemic include his belief that Israel would suffer no more than 10 COVID-19 deaths and his belief on July 25, 2020 that COVID-19 in the United States would be over "in 4 weeks with total reported deaths below 170,000".
As of September 2020, there were more than 200,000 reported deaths in the United States and more than 1,500 reported fatalities in Israel.
Or Professor Gupta, with her claim that between 50% and 68% of Brits had had covid and were now immune prior to lockdown? Or that the IFR was lower than the death rate already seen in some cities and countries. Or that if we abandoned all restrictions from June, there would be no resurgence and it was all over already?
It's amazing how picky people are about specifics of a model that they don't like but utterly accepting of people saying things that proved to be totally in variance with reality.
I actually (accepting that it's not my area of expertise and I may be wrong, it maybe really was rubbish...) liked the Gupta paper, although the conclusions were over-stated. Started from a completely different set of assumptions and showed that these could be consistent with the data (at the point when analysed). Scientifically very interesting and good to look at alternative explanations of what was happening.
The problem was sticking with it when the emerging evidence clearly became inconsistent with what the paper was saying. There would have been no shame in saying that the number of cases was clearly no longer consistent with the theory, it would still have been an interesting piece of work.
Agreed.
The problem was when she continually doubled down on it after reality was clearly in conflict with it. It was as late as June that she was insisting in the Oxford Mail that it was correct, the pandemic was over, and we could release all restrictions immediately and go back to normal.
EDIT: Apologies, it was the 23rd of May, so just over a week before June.
Gupta & the misplaced allegation by Roy Anderson, then led to disciplinary action against Anderson by Oxford University and then the disruption of the original Oxford theoretical epidemiology group ... with Ferguson & Anderson decamping to IC.
There is a personal grudge that is driving Gupta into the position she is adopting.
Exponential is a very scary concept when facing a virus. If you start with 1 and have doubling every week can you guess how many weeks before the number is: a) Greater than the UK population b) Greater than the world population. ANSWERS at bottom of post.
Once a country loses control of the virus, the pandemic will knock over the hospitals / health service and crash the economy. Underestimate this at your peril. I am not one of those who think we should focus on protecting the economy. I think that the best way to help the economy is to go very hard against the virus. One thing that would help is to move life outdoors as much possible. In much of the country you can have a group of 6 indoors. I think this is a terrible mistake.
ANSWERS (Hope my maths is correct) 26 weeks = 67,108,864 33 weeks = 8,589,934,592
Ten doublings is about a thousand (1024 to be exact) is an excellent approximation to use for that sort of question. So ten weeks to a thousand, twenty to a million, thirty to a billion and so on.
Like amoeba reproduction - in just a few weeks they'll occupy all known space. Scary or what?
Did they reimburse the government for the £500k of legal expenses that they blew on that disciplinary fiasco involving Salmond? I rather thought that they hadn't.
@Philip_Thompson one piece of solar that people should consider in this country is solar thermal. Even in Scotland it can provide almost all of your hot water needs throughout most of the year, with the exception of the coldest winter months. All from 1 or 2 panels on your roof.
Oh indeed solar isn't a complete write off. If I was getting a new build home I'd certainly consider looking into the feasibility of solar panels and some form of storage to see how economic it might be.
But the simples maths are that solar works best in summer and demand is massively higher in winter. Solar is OK as far as displacing coal or gas is concerned, but for a long-term net zero solution we need a solution we can rely upon over the winter and that is not going to be solar in this country.
It certainly shouldn't be anywhere near the top of our "green" strategy.
On current trends it wouldn't surprise me if within a decade we can get 100% of our electricity on a good day from wind.
My preferred long-term solution if it was up to me is to aim to get 300-400% of our electricity from wind - using the excess for industry that can be shut down (especially hydrolysis) and topping up storage, with then when wind power is unreliable shutting down the hydrolysis process and only needing to access storage once less than a third of our generation is functioning.
If hydrogen created via hydrolysis from our surplus can be used to power plants when wind is unreliable then even better. It is just a case of getting production high enough and then we would have essentially infinite clean reliable power.
Ref: Exponential. The reason I posted was because I think that many people (possibly including our government) do not understand exponential. Of course continued doubling of the virus cannot happen in real life for many periods. (Not sure how long doubling is currently taking.) Many people can grasp linear growth but struggle with exponential growth. They are not the same thing.
Wisconsin score not credible, imo, and would probably be bad for Biden if true anyway because it piles up votes uselessly in a State he is sure to win.
It's a 2-5 shot according to the bookmakers, not sure that's right.
Oh I think Wisconsin is a home banker for Biden but I don't buy 17pts.
Shocking Covid figures in Wisconsin though so that would help to fuel an anti-Trump vote. Similar considerations apply to Texas which is having a bad second wave, but I'm still not buying the blues there.....yet.
I don't think anyone knows what happens to the in-person vote with a huge covid outbreak. If the GOP are tribally conditioned not to worry about it, don't their people show up while low-enthusiasm Dems (ie those who haven't already voted) stay home for fear of catching it?
Maybe Trump faked getting coronavirus and a quick recovery, to make his potential voters less scared of catching it so they are more likely to vote? NB I don't believe this, but plenty of Germans I speak to don't believe he ever had it. Seemingly on the principle that anything that comes from Trump is probably a lie.
For me , although there are lots of permutations, who wins the election will come down to two states, FL and PA. If Biden wins FL he's going to win, end of. If he loses, though there may be some ups and downs , I think it will come down to PA. I still think the national polls are reflecting more that Biden is doing better in places like TX and GA but I don't expect him to win either or NC. AZ I think he will. I am pretty confident he will win MI and WI but I have real doubts about PA, yes he's about 5% up but the mood music there seems so volatile. So I think if it comes down to PA (which I think it will as i suspect Trump will win FL just), we may have to wait a while to know who's won and can expect some shenanigans over postal votes. So much against my personal wishes I really can see Trump falling over the line, despite losing the popular vote by more than 2016 and only just getting past 270 this time. Now I need a stiff drink
One thing that might influence the vote in PA is that there have been serious disturbances in Philly - 30+ cops injured
Did they reimburse the government for the £500k of legal expenses that they blew on that disciplinary fiasco involving Salmond? I rather thought that they hadn't.
Declared legal fees were £156k - (which is half the deficit), so it appears not.
Its so frustrating that those most sceptical of lockdowns persist in insisting upon bad science.
I'm sceptical too - libertarianism is always my go to - but I believe in good science. It should be possible to make libertarian arguments without bad science and if you can't there's a problem.
Science is easy to attack, the average person doesn't understand it and scientist generally are not very good at explaining it down to a level the general public can understand.
Its been a big bug bear for me for a long time with Climate Change, at some point it became a "left wing" issue and the "right wing" just surrendered the issue and proposing conservative based solutions. Of course differs from country to country, the UK is actually quite good with the Tories in general recognizing the problem an acting, the US however.....
Climate change becomes "left-wing" when the Left start attaching their favoured communitarian and socialist policies to it that attack free choice, individual freedom and independent private lifestyles.
For climate change mitigation to be truly effective it needs to be depoliticised. The logic of that is that people will move to environmentally friendly methods because doing so makes their lives more pleasant; not because they're volunteering for the hairiest of shirts.
It's not a surprise that left-wing people should think of left-wing solutions to a problem. The question is why the right don't put forward their own solutions.
On Education, for example, the right don't deny that Education is a good thing that should be improved by way of public policy as some sort of strop in response to left-wing people proposing left-wing policies to improve education. They put forward right-wing policies instead.
So it would be good if people on the right would come up with their own ideas instead of complaining that people on the left haven't done it for them.
Good post. I think it's a bit difficult for the right wing to come up with environmental solutions unlike, say, education policy, because of something inherent in the subject matter. When it comes to education, there are rational arguments to be made for the free market to contribute to it, especially around choice and accountability. But the environment is very, very different. And that is because humans have an industrial capacity for ruining nature but not a similar one for restoring it. One person with a chainsaw can pull down trees faster than one person with a can grow a forest. It's an inherent property of any complex systems that as soon as one actor gains a disproportionate capacity to intervene, the complexity of the system crashes. The only way to preserve complexity is to have a balance of power. And that means constraint on the freedom of the powerful actor. It's an old idea, usually referred to as the tragedy of the commons. The traditional right wing solution is through property rights, but our industrial capacity means humans can have global effects, and nobody owns the skies and seas. And if they did, enforcement of those property rights would require some sort of supranational legal system, which would tick off some on the right quite a lot.
From Adam Smith onwards, various "right-wing" economic theories/systems have argued that dealing with externalities is one of the major functions of government intervention in the economy. Such as "the polluter pays"....
From this strand of thinking came the idea that the best way to deal with CO2 emissions was to tax them. It is notable that all the countries in which CO2 emissions have been reduced substantially have used CO2 taxes - direct or indirect.
Precisely. The market works, you just need to get the market to take into account the externality and then the market does its job.
For me , although there are lots of permutations, who wins the election will come down to two states, FL and PA. If Biden wins FL he's going to win, end of. If he loses, though there may be some ups and downs , I think it will come down to PA. I still think the national polls are reflecting more that Biden is doing better in places like TX and GA but I don't expect him to win either or NC. AZ I think he will. I am pretty confident he will win MI and WI but I have real doubts about PA, yes he's about 5% up but the mood music there seems so volatile. So I think if it comes down to PA (which I think it will as i suspect Trump will win FL just), we may have to wait a while to know who's won and can expect some shenanigans over postal votes. So much against my personal wishes I really can see Trump falling over the line, despite losing the popular vote by more than 2016 and only just getting past 270 this time. Now I need a stiff drink
One thing that might influence the vote in PA is that there have been serious disturbances in Philly - 30+ cops injured
Comments
Even assuming Mark Dunceford is correct to ban non-essentials, I note that the implementation of the policy is particularly dense.
Pictures on social media show the Welsh supermarkets blocking off aisles. For something like e.g., an Aldi or Lidl, the blocking of the middle aisles will reduce the flow of shoppers, packing them in to the available aisles.
For the same number of folks in the supermarket, this clearly **increases** the number density of shoppers , and hence **increases** the probability of COVID transmission.
If you are going to implement Dunceford's restrictions, then it is better to just remove the items but leave the aisles open (but this is probably too much work for the supermarkets for just 17 days).
Duhhhh ..... Dunceford.
Of course, her real objection is that she sees them as an obstacle to communitarianism.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54662615
Wisconsin score not credible, imo, and would probably be bad for Biden if true anyway because it piles up votes uselessly in a State he is sure to win.
https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1321377917683658752?s=20
Right, back to work: lights-camera-action for lecture recordings...
--AS
The problem was sticking with it when the emerging evidence clearly became inconsistent with what the paper was saying. There would have been no shame in saying that the number of cases was clearly no longer consistent with the theory, it would still have been an interesting piece of work.
p.s. sorry that should have been for Malmesbury.
The government absolutely is on the right path listing to technical scientists and experts in developing new clean technologies, not the so-called "experts" and scientists wanting to roll us back 400 years in our economic development.
Elon Musk has done more for climate change than any activist ever will, while operating in a capitalist economy and developing a business worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Capitalism, science and technology are the solution, not taxes, veganism and communitarianism.
"....they can't admit that or give us credit", you say. I give credit where it is deserved. You Tories don´t.
I think most good scientists should be able to smell the bullshit, or spot the grifters, even if not exactly in their area of expertise. (Unless the question is excessively technical ...)
I don't think there is anything in the comments that really needs Javascript - could do all of it in HTML5, I would think....
However this morning got a completely red page saying warning do not go further and advisingyou to go back to safety.
Has anyone else had the same experience ?
Why are you so needy and insecure? The entire post was about the country, not politics and I referenced that it was about the country in the very first line onwards. The Lib Dems were part of the government of the country for half of that decade so yes I do give credit to them too.
If the Lib Dems want to acknowledge that the UK is doing a good job and claim credit for part of that for being junior partner of the government for half of the past decade then all credit to them, but it wasn't a party political comment.
https://twitter.com/bryworthington/status/1321402649862950912?s=20
The market responds to government rules. Remove the Feed In Tarriff and fewer solar panels will be installed, cancel the tidal project or the carbon capture and storage project and we'll continue using fossil fuels longer.
I'm afraid that Cameron's getting rid of 'green crap' means that the Tories merit only a 'C+' on climate.
“If the first two vaccines, or either of them, show that they are both safe and effective, I think there is a possibility that vaccine roll out will start this side of Christmas, but otherwise I think it’s more realistic to expect it to be early next year,” Kate Bingham said on BBC television.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-vaccine-la-idUKKBN27D1AV
And of course, that master piece of science writing, "Igntion!" details some others.....
"It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively."
On the other hand, if you totally depoliticise an issue it can become neglected. The care system is an example. Both parties have had a go at addressing the problem and been punished for it, so it's been shunted into the nebulous area of "Difficult, needs an agreed cross-party solution", which in practice has meant that absolutely nothing happens. The spur of parties competing to offer a solution can be healthy.
Solar panels were always the wrong priority for this country. The simple fact of the matter is that we are a cold, northern hemisphere, winter country that doesn't require air condition but does require heating. Solar panels are wonderful in Australia or California where demand peaks in the summer when air cons run full blast and the solar panels operate with peak efficiency.
Our electricity demand peaks in the winter and as we transition from gas boiler to more electric heating that is going to transform even further the gap between the seasons. Solar panels are least efficient in the winter.
We don't need green crap we need green solutions that work. The government rightly recognised a decade ago that wasn't bribing people to put on solar panels that would never provide a solution to electricity in this country - it was wind power. Wind works in the winter in a way that solar never will as well.
The proof is in the pudding. Solar panels and the feed in tariff made a negligible impact in our power generation - the past decade has seen a mammoth transformation far outstripping anything the feed in tariff ever achieved.
They've gone for solutions that actually work. A- (the only reason its A- was saying no to the tidal lagoon).
This is not a left/right issue by the way.
Anyone else? Why is it happening and only with PB?
Shocking Covid figures in Wisconsin though so that would help to fuel an anti-Trump vote. Similar considerations apply to Texas which is having a bad second wave, but I'm still not buying the blues there.....yet.
- They only work at the mega-project scale
- Planning. There is a large chunk of the environmental lobby that will die in a ditch to stop them.
The alternative tidal system uses individual turbines anchored in mid water, away from surface and bottom effects. You don't get the storage, but you get scalability and planning issues go away.
The problem was when she continually doubled down on it after reality was clearly in conflict with it.
It was as late as June that she was insisting in the Oxford Mail that it was correct, the pandemic was over, and we could release all restrictions immediately and go back to normal.
EDIT: Apologies, it was the 23rd of May, so just over a week before June.
The same could be said about the technologies - solar and battery - that much of his business depends on.
The reality is that capitalism left to its own devices would not have got us to where we are now as quickly, if at all.
Though I agree with your deprecation of the more extreme eco warriors.
Mind you, while I'm obviously an excellent peer reviewer, the reviewers on my papers are often idiots
Seriously, peer reviewers need to get paid, either directly or to have it as part of the job with (real, rather than notional) allocated time. Anyone remotely known in a field gets far too many requests to fit in, so they get bounced around until you get to someone who never gets asked, wants to do it and will have a crack at reviewing almost anything. Of course, you still sometimes get an excellent reviewer who is an expert in the field. I've learned valuable things from having my papers peer reviewed at times, including introductions to completely new methods that I could have used/did then use in a later paper.
There's perhaps a certain degree of cynicism about green-washing which obscures the reality that new capitalists replace old ones at a time of technological transition, so they find it hard to imagine it happening.
But I've never come across anyone on the Green Left who wouldn't be delighted if it happened. And there are plenty other ways that capitalism is dumping on the environment.
Wind power is increasingly economic and reliable. Energy storage is coming along in leaps and bounds. It is almost improving in a rate that computers have following Moore's Law in past decades.
There is no need to switch off gas power immediately, we can continue to use it as a back up less and less frequently until it can be phased out completely (just as we have increasingly done with coal).
Its a far more sensible solution than "turn off everything that requires electricity, become a vegan, don't go on holiday".
If you start with 1 and have doubling every week can you guess how many weeks before the number is:
a) Greater than the UK population
b) Greater than the world population.
ANSWERS at bottom of post.
Once a country loses control of the virus, the pandemic will knock over the hospitals / health service and crash the economy.
Underestimate this at your peril.
I am not one of those who think we should focus on protecting the economy. I think that the best way to help the economy is to go very hard against the virus.
One thing that would help is to move life outdoors as much possible. In much of the country you can have a group of 6 indoors. I think this is a terrible mistake.
ANSWERS (Hope my maths is correct)
26 weeks = 67,108,864
33 weeks = 8,589,934,592
"Langer Research Associates is the primary news poll provider for ABC News, responsible for ABC’s partnership in the ABC News/Washington Post poll and the network’s ongoing coverage of public opinion on politics, policy, social trends and international issues."
But yeah, 17% does seem a bit out there.
I think it's a bit difficult for the right wing to come up with environmental solutions unlike, say, education policy, because of something inherent in the subject matter. When it comes to education, there are rational arguments to be made for the free market to contribute to it, especially around choice and accountability.
But the environment is very, very different. And that is because humans have an industrial capacity for ruining nature but not a similar one for restoring it. One person with a chainsaw can pull down trees faster than one person with a can grow a forest. It's an inherent property of any complex systems that as soon as one actor gains a disproportionate capacity to intervene, the complexity of the system crashes. The only way to preserve complexity is to have a balance of power. And that means constraint on the freedom of the powerful actor.
It's an old idea, usually referred to as the tragedy of the commons. The traditional right wing solution is through property rights, but our industrial capacity means humans can have global effects, and nobody owns the skies and seas. And if they did, enforcement of those property rights would require some sort of supranational legal system, which would tick off some on the right quite a lot.
That way the government transforms the externality of pollution into a cost which it is - and the market can deal with costs as it does best.
A friend got chased out of the Green party (was a parish councillor) by them. He was a Technological Green - a scientist, he had a list of solutions to each part of the Global Warming/CO2. His branch became very RedGreen - and they denounced him at every opportunity for not being anti-technology.
I still think the national polls are reflecting more that Biden is doing better in places like TX and GA but I don't expect him to win either or NC. AZ I think he will. I am pretty confident he will win MI and WI but I have real doubts about PA, yes he's about 5% up but the mood music there seems so volatile.
So I think if it comes down to PA (which I think it will as i suspect Trump will win FL just), we may have to wait a while to know who's won and can expect some shenanigans over postal votes. So much against my personal wishes I really can see Trump falling over the line, despite losing the popular vote by more than 2016 and only just getting past 270 this time.
Now I need a stiff drink
So ten weeks to a thousand, twenty to a million, thirty to a billion and so on.
"In an industrial accident, a spill of 900 kg of chlorine trifluoride burned through 30 cm of concrete and 90 cm of gravel beneath" - this always makes me wonder....
What is the rate of pay for being in the same timezone as a literal ton of chlorine trifluoride?
Off topic having read this hard to believe why the jury did not find the policeman guilty of murder.
But the simples maths are that solar works best in summer and demand is massively higher in winter. Solar is OK as far as displacing coal or gas is concerned, but for a long-term net zero solution we need a solution we can rely upon over the winter and that is not going to be solar in this country.
SNP accounts (2019 vs 2018)
Costs:
Salaries: +15%
Headcount: +5%
Fundraising: +26%
Conference: +20%
Legal: +305%
http://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Api/Accounts/Documents/22612
Of course, it's up to the Bundesländer, but I think Merkel will give clear instructions today. It would probably be brave (in the Yes Minister sense) for a Bundesland to go against the consensus at this point. Personally, I think they have left it a bit late to take action, hospital admissions seem to be already increasing quite quickly. Germany in a way got lucky the first time around in the Spring and maybe people got a bit complacent. I'm not looking forward to the winter, especially for my wife who is Oberärztin in the Notaufnahme of a hospital, where most of the admissions come in. I don't think people will be clapping outside their doors at 8pm this time around.
I'm not sure what happened to all the promises back in the spring of all kinds of new easier quicker tests, but they don't seem to have materialised, or aren't being used. I would be in favour of having a pooled test, maybe once a week, for school classes, so that schools can carry on with a bit more confidence. I'm surprised that Germany hasn't been able to arrange this, or maybe there has been no real leadership.
Legal probably not so much though for other parties.
There are no such thing as lockdowners. There are only those who deal in hard facts and those who shy away from them.
Look at the virus. Under "let it R.I.P." we get economic meltdown PLUS thousands of putrefying bodies in the street. Not one or two. Thousands. Of putrefying bodies. Because the hospitals have had to shut their doors. Rotting corpses that were once our loved ones littering the streets. Think about that for a second.
And this is PLUS economic carnage not instead of it. All for the lack of a vestige of discipline and community spirit. And for what? So that whiny snowflakes whose idea of "oppression" is having to wear a mask in Tesco - whose idea of "liberty" is the right to breathe lethal germs in my face - might finally shut the fuck up.
Has there ever been such a mass outbreak of sheer selfishness and stupidity? And could these hordes of dumb and nasty fucks have a more appropriate leader than Donald "me me me" Trump? No sirree. It's a perfect fit.
But the Big Fumigation is coming. Not long now.
From this strand of thinking came the idea that the best way to deal with CO2 emissions was to tax them. It is notable that all the countries in which CO2 emissions have been reduced substantially have used CO2 taxes - direct or indirect.
There is a personal grudge that is driving Gupta into the position she is adopting.
My preferred long-term solution if it was up to me is to aim to get 300-400% of our electricity from wind - using the excess for industry that can be shut down (especially hydrolysis) and topping up storage, with then when wind power is unreliable shutting down the hydrolysis process and only needing to access storage once less than a third of our generation is functioning.
If hydrogen created via hydrolysis from our surplus can be used to power plants when wind is unreliable then even better. It is just a case of getting production high enough and then we would have essentially infinite clean reliable power.
The reason I posted was because I think that many people (possibly including our government) do not understand exponential.
Of course continued doubling of the virus cannot happen in real life for many periods. (Not sure how long doubling is currently taking.)
Many people can grasp linear growth but struggle with exponential growth. They are not the same thing.
NB I don't believe this, but plenty of Germans I speak to don't believe he ever had it. Seemingly on the principle that anything that comes from Trump is probably a lie.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-knife-wielding-man-philadelphia-police-presents-difficult/story?id=73847412&cid=clicksource_4380645_7_three_posts_card_hed
Salaries up 15% for a 5% increase in headcount? Nice work if you can get it!
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1321402623078051840?s=20
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1321413043092443138?s=20
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1321413695415746566?s=20
https://election.usc.edu