Climate- Science.press

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Termites were well managed by our ancestors, but in the wake of banning powerful insecticides like DDT, they are now apparently a climate problem.

Hungry and on the march as the climate heats up: Termites in Australia

By Frances Vinall
January 1, 2023 at 2:00 a.m. EST

TENNANT CREEK, Australia — In a forgotten restaurant behind a gas station in this country’s red center, only metal and plastic parts remain unscathed. Chris Cook grabs at a timber door frame, which crumples like paper in his hand.

“This has all just collapsed,” says Cook, a manager at Territory Pest Control in Australia’s Northern Territory. He eyes boards hanging in ragged pieces from the ceiling. Since he last visited the abandoned building three years ago, thousands of uninvited guests have been busy.

The destruction at Galaxy Auditorium restaurant at Wycliffe Well — a tiny highway stop calling itself the “UFO capital of Australia” — is the destruction that could lie ahead for many places on the continent unless Mastotermes darwiniensis can be stopped. 

These termites are the last survivors of an ancestral species that shared space with dinosaurs 150 million years ago. They’re voracious and relentless. And because of climate change, they, like their fellow kin, are expanding their range.

…Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/01/giant-termites-australia-climate-change/

The article also cites a 98 author study which suggests termites become more active in warm weather;

Termite sensitivity to temperature affects global wood decay rates

AMY E. ZANNE, HABACUC FLORES-MORENO, JEFF R. POWELL, WILLIAM K. CORNWELL, JAMES W. DALLING, AMY T. AUSTIN, AIMÉE T. CLASSEN, PAUL EGGLETON, KEI-ICHI OKADA, CATHERINE L. PARR, E. CAROL ADAIR, STEPHEN ADU-BREDU, MD AZHARUL ALAM, CAROLINA ALVAREZ-GARZÓN, DEBORAH APGAUA, ROXANA ARAGÓN, MARCELO ARDON, STEFAN K. ARNDT, LOUISE A. ASHTON, NICHOLAS A. BARBER, JACQUES BEAUCHÊNE, MATTY P. BERG, JASON BERINGER, MATTHIAS M. BOER, JOSÉ ANTONIO BONET, KATHERINE BUNNEY, TYNAN J. BURKHARDT, DULCINÉIA CARVALHO, DENNIS CASTILLO-FIGUEROA, LUCAS A. CERNUSAK, ALEXANDER W. CHEESMAN, TAINÁ M. CIRNE-SILVA, JAMIE R. CLEVERLY, JOHANNES H. C. CORNELISSEN, TIMOTHY J. CURRAN, ANDRÉ M. D’ANGIOLI, CAROLINE DALLSTREAM, NICO EISENHAUER, FIDELE EVOUNA ONDO, ALEX FAJARDO, ROMINA D. FERNANDEZ, ASTRID FERRER, MARCO A. L. FONTES, MARK L. GALATOWITSCH, GRIZELLE GONZÁLEZ, FELIX GOTTSCHALL, PETER R. GRACE, ELENA GRANDA, HANNAH M. GRIFFITHS, MARIANA GUERRA LARA, MOTOHIRO HASEGAWA, MARIET M. HEFTING, NINA HINKO-NAJERA, LINDSAY B. HUTLEY, JENNIFER JONES, ANJA KAHL, MIRKO KARAN, JOOST A. KEUSKAMP, TIM LARDNER, MICHAEL LIDDELL, CRAIG MACFARLANE, CATE MACINNIS-NG, RAVI F. MARIANO, M. SOLEDAD MÉNDEZ, WAYNE S. MEYER, AKIRA S. MORI, ALOYSIO S. MOURA, MATTHEW NORTHWOOD, ROMÀ OGAYA, RAFAEL S. OLIVEIRA, ALBERTO ORGIAZZI, JULIANA PARDO, GUILLE PEGUERO, JOSEP PENUELAS, LUIS I. PEREZ, JUAN M. POSADA, CECILIA M. PRADA, TOMÁŠ PŘÍVĚTIVÝ, SUZANNE M. PROBER, JONATHAN PRUNIER, GABRIEL W. QUANSAH, VÍCTOR RESCO DE DIOS, RONNY RICHTER, MARK P. ROBERTSON, LUCAS F. ROCHA, MEGAN A. RÚA, CAROLINA SARMIENTO, RICHARD P. SILBERSTEIN, MATEUS C. SILVA, FLÁVIA FREIRE SIQUEIRA, MATTHEW GLENN STILLWAGON, JACQUI STOL, MELANIE K. TAYLOR, FRANÇOIS P. TESTE, DAVID Y. P. TNG, DAVID TUCKER, MANFRED TÜRKE, MICHAEL D. ULYSHEN, OSCAR J. VALVERDE-BARRANTES, EDUARDO VAN DEN BERG, RICHARD S. P. VAN LOGTESTIJN, G. F. (CISKA) VEEN, JASON G. VOGEL, TIMOTHY J. WARDLAW, GEORG WIEHL, CHRISTIAN WIRTH, MICHAELA J. WOODS, AND PAUL-CAMILO ZALAMEA

Deadwood is a large global carbon store with its store size partially determined by biotic decay. Microbial wood decay rates are known to respond to changing temperature and precipitation. Termites are also important decomposers in the tropics but are less well studied. An understanding of their climate sensitivities is needed to estimate climate change effects on wood carbon pools. Using data from 133 sites spanning six continents, we found that termite wood discovery and consumption were highly sensitive to temperature (with decay increasing >6.8 times per 10°C increase in temperature)—even more so than microbes. Termite decay effects were greatest in tropical seasonal forests, tropical savannas, and subtropical deserts. With tropicalization (i.e., warming shifts to tropical climates), termite wood decay will likely increase as termites access more of Earth’s surface.Read more: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo3856

Strangely our ancestors managed to build long lived wooden structures which weren’t instantly destroyed by termites.

What did our ancestors do differently?

I think you can guess from the image at the top of the page.

Termites can and are controlled by regular building inspections and five year applications of short term poisons. But if you want long term protection, there is no substitute for injecting DDT into the structural beams, and spraying the entire building with DDT.

It is not just termites. Where I live, there’s a nasty variety of sand fly, biting insects which live in the soil, especially loose sandy soil near beaches. But sand flies only seem to be a problem in some areas – mostly new developments which were built after DDT spraying was stopped. Old established areas of town, where massive public spraying with DDT was a regular event until the 1972, don’t seem to have a similar level of difficulty with sand flies.

Today Australians put up with mosquitos, horse flies, ticks, termites and sand flies, insects which simply weren’t a problem for our ancestors, who weren’t afraid to use powerful chemicals to make the places where they live comfortable and free from insect pests.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ray Sanders

An unusually frank piece from the Guardian!!

 

Conservatories and house extensions could be helping to wipe out the reductions in gas use secured by insulating homes, according to a study that found insulation only provides a short-term fall in energy consumption.

In a surprise finding, the study into the long-term effect of loft and cavity wall insulation in England and Wales showed that the fall in gas consumption for each household was small, with all energy savings disappearing by the fourth year after it had been fitted.

Policy experts at the University of Cambridge said the findings suggested a “rebound effect” in energy use, where changing behaviour cancelled out the reductions in gas use. They also suggested that fitting insulation often happened alongside the building of house extensions, which use extra energy. For households with conservatories, any gains in energy efficiency disappeared after the first year.

The government and opposition parties have championed the retrofitting of homes with insulation as a way of dealing with the energy crisis. Ministers have announced insulation retrofits as a leading part of a programme to reduce the energy consumption of buildings and industry by 15% over the next eight years. Labour has said insulating homes should be a “national mission” that could save people £11bn in three years.

However, researchers said that while insulation was vital for fighting fuel poverty, it was not a “magic bullet” for reducing energy use and should come alongside advice to conserve energy and programmes to install heat pumps in homes.

Researchers said it was hard to identify the exact causes of the rebound effect. However, they stated that turning up the heating, opening windows in stuffy rooms or building extensions could all contribute. They made clear that in circumstances such as the current cost of living crisis, it was possible that energy savings from insulation could be more significant and longer lasting.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/01/rebound-effect-cancels-out-home-insulations-impact-on-gas-use-study

This has actually all been very obvious for a long while, and did not really need an expensive study to prove it.

Energy efficiency is not something new dreamt up by the climate lobby. It is a natural process whereby technology continuously improves the products we buy and the way we live. Cars, for example, are twice as efficient as they were even twenty or thirty years ago; they did not need government mandates to make it happen.

But as energy efficiency improves, along with the cost of things we buy, we have more money to spend in other ways. In terms of energy, most people, I suspect, would use better insulation to enjoy warmer homes, not reduce bills.

Equally they will tend to buy conservatories etc, which will increase energy consumption. And, yes, people will open windows to let fresh air in – we have our bedroom windows open at night even in mid-winter.(No doubt the Guardian would be horrified!)

If people want insulation, fine – let them pay for it. But it should be a “national mission”, paid for by taxpayers, as the Labour Party want. And it certainly will not save the planet!

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Climate scientists have acted to ensure the world receives their narrative as quickly as possible, whenever a severe weather event strikes.

‘I am an optimistic person’: the scientist who studies climate catastrophes

Friederike Otto, a member of the world’s only rapid reaction force of climate scientists, on looking into the apocalypse of extreme weather

Sandra Laville Environment correspondent
Fri 30 Dec 2022 01.30 AEDT

…

Otto, known as Fredi, and a small team of researchers are the world’s only rapid reaction force of climate scientists. They target extreme weather across the world almost as it happens, reach out to local people on the ground, and carry out deep, rigorous statistical analysis, which is transforming our understanding of how human-caused global heating is affecting the planet and our lives.

Until now, scientists have had to be equivocal about whether a single weather event is linked to global heating. Otto’s work makes the connection between the string of disasters the world is suffering and global heating, much clearer. Her work was recognised internationally in 2021 when she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.

…

The journey from the creation of the World Weather Attribution unit to its current iteration, began with a paper Otto and Oldenborgh wrote on a heatwave in Russia in 2010. It was a classical academic paper, peer reviewed and published long after the event.

…

This last study drew her up short by the starkness of its findings. “One of the biggest scientific surprises for me this year was the floods in Nigeria because there was such a huge climate change impact,” said Otto. “They were made 80 times more likely as a result of climate change. That makes me think: ‘Oh wow, there is really a lot that we don’t understand in Africa’.”

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/29/i-am-an-optimistic-person-the-scientist-who-studies-climate-catastrophes

Obviously it is critically important to climate science that attribution studies align with news cycles. Otto has been very successful in attracting attention, her World Weather Attribution team made Time Magazine’s top 100 most influential people in 2021.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

This really is a grossly dishonest, scurrillous and factually inaccurate piece:

 

Households across Britain are being punished with a ‘stealth tax’ on their energy bills amounting to billions of pounds to pay for the bailout of dozens of electricity and gas supply companies.

Campaigners have condemned the increases to the levy, which has soared over the past 12 months – and now costs bill-payers around £273 each.

The inflation-busting figure does not include the £6.5 billion cost to the taxpayer of bailing out controversial start-up company Bulb, which had 1.7 million customers when it suddenly collapsed.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11588825/The-rapidly-rising-stealth-tax-fuel-bills-used-bailout-failed-electricity-gas-firms.html

The money is not being spent “to bail out energy firms”; this would mean that the money has gone to those failed companies in order to keep them going.

The system of Supplier of Last Resort has been operating since 2008. It was set up to protect energy customers in the event of their supplier going bust, where there would have been a danger of being left without electricity and gas, losing credit balances on their accounts etc. Under the mechanism, OFGEM appoint a new supplier to take over.

The new supplier is quite rightly allowed to claim back any additional costs from a fund  paid for by an industry levy on Distribution Use of System Charges. All energy suppliers pay this levy, and currently the charge is built into the Energy Price Cap.

Originally the claims on the levy were tiny, but in the last year or two have rocketed. Energy suppliers have often lost money recently as energy market prices have outstripped the Energy Price Cap. Furthermore, whereas suppliers may have fixed the prices they pay in advance for their existing customer base, they would need to pay current prices for any new dollop of customers handed over by OFGEM.

In short, the money, even the Bulb “bailout” has gone to protect customers of these failed companies.

The Mail ignores the two underlying policy errors made, which have largely contributed to this crisis:

1) The Energy Price Cap –  many smaller companies have gone under in the last two years because the Cap was set far too low. Or, more to the point, the Cap was fixed for six month periods during which market prices rose rapidly.

It has been the media above all who pushed for the Cap in the first place.

2) Smaller energy companies were not only allowed to proliferate without any real checks on their financial stability, they were actually encouraged to. Politicians and media have regularly attacked the big energy companies for ripping customers off (partly to divert attention away from the green subsidies which have forced up electricity prices). They have encouraged customers instead to move to smaller companies, more often than not boasting fake green credentials.

There is an issue of how these costs are passed on to customers. Currently it is done through Standing Charges, so each customer pays the same; this obviously can be regressive. However, OFGEM took a hard look at this a few months ago. They argued that to add the cost on to the price of energy would penalise those vulnerable people who use more energy:

“Following a review of one part of electricity standing charges covering the cost of supplier failures, we looked long and hard at whether moving the costs from standing charges to usage was the right thing to do, but the numbers just didn’t stack up.

“Our analysis shows it would disproportionately negatively affect some of the most vulnerable consumers who use high amounts of energy and are least able to reduce their use, such as those with disabilities and the elderly, while resulting in minimal savings for those it would benefit – around just £1 a month.”

Ofgem on supplier failure costs: “The numbers didn’t stack up”

Whichever way is chosen, customers still end up paying. But for the Mail to claim that “pensioners pay the most” is an outright lie.

Meanwhile, if they want to report on real bailouts, maybe the Mail should mention the German government, which has already injected billions into Uniper, to stop them going broke. And many more bailouts will follow.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-to-bail-out-energy-suppliers-ahead-of-winter-without-russian-gas-11657032009

From JunkScience.com

By Steve Milloy

My latest in the Wall Street Journal (Web | PDF).

‘Net zero by 2050” is more than a slogan of climate activism. It has become a chief organizational principle for multinational corporations and the BlackRock-led cartel pushing environmental, social and corporate governance investing.

“Net zero” was mentioned in more than 6,000 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2022 and countless other times by publicly traded corporations and investor groups in statements and on their websites. The SEC says its proposed climate disclosure rule will help investors “evaluate the progress in meeting net-zero commitments and assessing any associated risks.”

“Net zero” and its corollary, the “energy transition,” are talked about so often and so loosely that many take them for granted as worthy goals that could be accomplished with greater buy-in from political and business leaders. But two new reports from the utility industry should put an end to such loose talk.

In September, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric utility industry, released a report titled “Net-Zero 2050: U.S. Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization Scenario Analysis.”

The EPRI report concludes that the utility industry can’t attain net zero. “This study shows that clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency . . . are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.”

In other words, no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of fossil-fuel technologies or energy-efficiency technologies will get us to net zero by 2050.

Even to achieve “deep decarbonization”—which isn’t net zero—by 2050, EPRI says, “a broad portfolio of options that includes low-carbon fuels and carbon removal technologies will be required.”

But “low-carbon fuels”—efficient biofuels—don’t exist. “Carbon removal technologies” aren’t possible to scale up, and if they were, it would cost about $1 quadrillion—a million billion dollars—at today’s prices to remove the 1.6 trillion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said needs to be sucked “out of the atmosphere even after we get to net zero.”

There’s more. The EPRI report states: “This study does not include a detailed assessment of factors such as supply chain constraints [and] operational reliability and resiliency” of a net-zero electricity grid.

How a net-zero grid could be built and function would be an issue worth studying if it were possible in the first place. But it simply isn’t.

So, barring some unforeseen miracle technology, “net zero by 2050” won’t happen.

The curious thing about the report is that it has largely remained an EPRI secret. There has been no media coverage of it. I found out about it only after I filed a shareholder proposal about net zero with the electric utility Alliant Energy. The company offered the report as a defense against my proposal that management explain how it planned to reach its goal of net zero by 2050.

The other recent report is “2022 Long-Term Reliability Assessment” from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a government-certified grid-reliability and standard-setting group. NERC concluded that fossil-fuel plants are being removed from the grid too fast to meet continuing electricity demand, and that is putting most of the country at risk of grid failure and blackouts during extreme weather. The U.S. just got another taste of this during the Christmas electric-grid emergency.

So there you have it: We are dangerously dismantling our electric grid while burdening it with more demand in hope of attaining the goal of “net zero by 2050,” which the utility industry has admitted is a fantasy.

Congress should hold hearings on “net zero by 2050” goals before real disaster happens. It should bring in witnesses from utilities, public-service commissions, grid operators, regulators and the ESG cartel and have them explain under oath how they plan to accomplish the impossible.

Mr. Milloy is a senior fellow with the Energy and Environment Legal Institute.

Appeared in the December 29, 2022, print edition as “A Quiet Refutation Of ‘Net Zero’”.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

There was a time when the BBC were more honest about coastal erosion in Happisburgh:

This report is from 2004:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/funstuff/360/happisburgh1.shtml

And this is from 2003:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/senseofplace/coastal_video.shtml

No mention of climate change in either report, just talk of nature and offshore dredging.

Meanwhile the BGS study, which I believe is from 2006, on Happisburgh is worth reading:

Happisburgh, on Norfolk’s North Sea coast, is a village with a population of 1400 people in about 600 houses. The village contains a notable stone church dating from the 14th century, an impressive manor house, listed buildings and a famous red and white striped lighthouse.

Although now a coastal village, Happisburgh was once some distance from the sea, parted from the coast by the parish of Whimpwell, long since eroded away. Historic records indicate that over 250 m of land were lost between 1600 and 1850.

More recently the village was affected by the tragic floods of 1953 that claimed the lives of 76 Norfolk residents.

Coastal defences built at Happisburgh have slowed down the rate of retreat. However, large sections are now in disrepair. Sea-level rise and climate change, including increased storminess, may also increase the rate of erosion….

It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years, when sea level rose to within a metre or two of its present position (Clayton, 1989). Therefore, the future predictions of sea-level rise and storm frequency due to climate change are likely to have a profound impact on coastal erosion and serious consequences for the effectiveness of coastal protection and sea defence schemes in East Anglia in the near future (Thomalla and Vincent, 2003).

Coastal erosion at Happisburgh, Norfolk

Note:

It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years

Sure, they say that climate change MAY increase the rate of erosion, but this is mere speculation, and in 2006 there was no evidence it was actually happening.

Secondly there is a case study on Internet Geography, with a useful video:

Happisburgh (pronounced “Haze-bro”) is a settlement located on the Norfolk coast, eastern England. It has a population of around 1400 people in 600 houses. Although now a coastal village, this was not always the case. When founded over 1000 years ago, there was another village separating Happisbourgh from the sea. Historical records indicate that over 250m of land was lost between 1600 and 1850.

Happisburgh, situated to the southern end of one of the most active stretches of the Norfolk coast, is one of the primary providers of sediment for beaches along the east Norfolk coast. The coastal part of the village is subject to frequent coastal erosion: houses that used to be over 20 feet (6 m) from the sea now sit at the edge of a cliff and are expected to fall into the sea.

Sea Defences at Happisburgh

The civil parish shrank by over 0.2 km² in the 20th century by the erosion of its beaches and low cliffs. Groynes were constructed along the shore to try to stop erosion during the 1950s.

Sea defences were built in 1959 to slow the erosion. Changes in government policy mean that coastal protection in Happisburgh is no longer fundable from central government. The road (Beach Road) that leads into the sea is being steadily eroded.

A wooden revetment once stretched from Happisburgh to the Cart Gap seawall, but in 1990 a storm destroyed about 300 metres of it to the east of Happisburgh. The rate of erosion increased rapidly following the destruction of the wooden revetment.

In 1996 the remaining revetment was further damaged by storms, and another length was lost. At the time six cliff-top properties were lost.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

They’re lying. They know they’re lying. But they carry on lying anyway:

 

In a small village on the north Norfolk coast, some residents are wondering how long they’ve got left in their homes before they are lost to the sea.

During the last 20 years, 34 homes have crumbled into the water in Happisburgh because of coastal erosion. Nicola Bayless thinks her home could be the next. She says she is devastated that she might have just spent her last Christmas there.

Along with East Riding in Yorkshire, Happisburgh and other parts of the north Norfolk coast have the highest number of properties at risk from coastal erosion in England.

“I’m angry and I’m heartbroken,” Nicola says. “My children have grown up here, my husband died here and my parents lived here before they died.

“I’m so sad that things have come to this,” the 47-year-old nurse says.

When Nicola, who also works as fitness instructor, moved to Beach Road 18 years ago, her three-bedroom semi was in the middle of the street.

But punishing weather conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the village’s soft sandy rock that her house is now the last one before the cliff edge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-63822899

No where in the article is there any mention at all of the fact that the coast at Happisburgh has been eroding away rapidly for centuries. Instead the impression is deliberately given that “punishing weather conditions linked to climate change” are the cause.

As many will know, I have written extensively about Happisburgh for many years, every time these lies are propagated. I won’t bore you with all of the detail again, but you can read them here. A selection of historical facts tell the story:

• In the Middle Ages, the village of Whimpwell stood between Happisburgh and the sea. By 1183 only one field remained, and now it is under the sea, not even visible at low tide.
• Happisburgh has lost land to the sea throughout the centuries. The rate of erosion has been erratic – at times large areas have disappeared overnight, and at others the cliff has remained virtually the same for some years
• A twelve-acre field at Happisburgh was drilled with wheat. A north-west gale raged all night, and by new morning the field had disappeared.
• White’s Directory for this year reported that the sea had encroached 250 yards in the last 70 years at Happisburgh.

Many attempts have been made down the years to protect the coast. An entry under Happisburgh in White’s Directory states ‘it is calculated the Church will be engulphed in the ocean before the middle of the ensuing century. In the same year, William Hewitt, MRCS, a relative of the Revd. John and a Stalham surgeon, suggested that breakwaters should be constructed parallel with the cliffs.

The first sea defences were built at Happisbugh and were later extended. Steel, greenheart and jarrah wood were used in their construction. The rate of erosion decreased, any loss of land being due mainly to surface water causing falls of cliff.

During the last forty years portions of the revetment have been destroyed, and repairs have been carried out on numerous occasions, but have not succeeded in preventing the formation of a large bay to the south of Happisburgh. To attract grant aid for capital works, stringent Government criteria must be satisfied, which relies heavily on the value of land and property at risk, thus prejudicing the relatively low property value in Norfolk as opposed to for example the South Coast of England. The Government’s declared present policy is to maintain ‘ a sustainable coastline’

The photo below shows houses close to the cliff edge in 1955. They look to be no more than a couple of decades old, and most certainly would not have been built anywhere near the cliffs, good indication of the rapid erosion prior to 1955.

https://www.francisfrith.com/happisburgh/happisburgh-the-beach-c1955_h304044

So what are these punishing weather conditions linked to climate change?

Sea levels have been rising since the 19thC, and if anything the rate of rise has slowed on the East Anglian coast. About 1mm a year of the rise is due to the land sinking.

As for storms, the Met Office admits that storm frequency and strength has been declining since the 1990s, in line with global warming theory:

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/joc.6213

BBC lies are bad enough. But what really is most disgusting is the way they use personal tragedy to promote their climate scares.

From budbromley

By budbromley

The De-Population Bomb on Uncommon Knowledge

In 1970, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich published a famous book, The Population Bomb, in which he described a disasterous future for humanity: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” That prediction turned out to be very wrong, and in this interview American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt tells how we are in fact heading toward the opposite problem: not enough people. For decades now, many countries have been unable to sustain a #population replacement birth rate, including in Western Europe, South Korea, Japan, and, most ominously, China. The societal and social impacts of this phenomenon are vast. We discuss those with Eberstadt as well as some strategies to avoid them.

Wednesday, September 14, 2022  interview with Peter M. Robinson, Nicholas Eberstadt

The Hoover Institution

audio https://www.hoover.org/research/de-population-bomb

video  https://youtu.be/uNdnlrkx-wg

Transcript: https://www.hoover.org/research/de-population-bomb

Bud’s comment:

Eberstadt’s commentary dovetails perfectly with Klaus Schwab, WEF, UN, the Pope, King Charles, Bill Gates, Al Gore, etc (i.e., the Great Rest cabal) on open borders immigration and de-population except the cabal is pressing aggressive depopulation, whereas Eberstadt, Musk and others think depopulation is dangerous existentially for societies.

Unfortunately, Peter’s questions did not probe the WEF de-population open conspiracy, the elephant in the room.

Eberstadt’s analysis ignores the intentional, planned, lack of assimilation of some cultures, obviously Islam, into many countries. Perhaps Eberstadt’s book covers this most important existential point; without explaining that crisis, his entire analysis is dubious, a scatter of facts with no answers.

For example, large numbers of Muslim immigrants in many countries are not working, instead becoming dependent (or, continuing to depend) on governments, which contradicts his implied thesis that mass migration is a solution to de-population.

Will you lose your civilization to the islamic invasion or to de-population of your civilized society? The former is a certain strategy.

he app would be similar in nature to one already employed by China, which critics have argued has been used by the totalitarian regime in that country to control the movement of their population. The app in question displays color codes to denote their vaccination status and determine if its user has tested positive for COVID-19 or not. File photo: Maxx-Studio (Modified), Shutter Stock, licensed.

From publishedreporter.com

By John Colascione 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In November, the Group of Twenty (G20) – an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union – met in in Bali, Indonesia, and one development out of the summit was the upcoming adoption of a controversial color-coded health monitoring smartphone app meant to protect people from COVID-19. 

The app would be similar in nature to one already employed by China, which critics have argued has been used by the totalitarian regime in that country to control the movement of their population. The app in question displays color codes to denote their vaccination status and determine if its user has tested positive for COVID-19 or not.

Recently, reports have surfaced that the Chinese Communist Party has been changing the app’s color codes seemingly at random – often without legitimate proof of any infection – in order to limit the freedoms of their population as per the country’s ruthlessly authoritarian “Zero COVID” strategy. 

One shocking video that has surfaced on Twitter showed that Chinese authorities had remotely switched the app’s health status for a large number of individuals traveling from the city of Guangzhou from green – indicating that the user is COVID-free – to yellow or red – indicating exposure or full-on infection – falsely forcing them to quarantine and preventing them from traveling home. 

China 🇨🇳

The Chinese authorities have remotely switched these people’s Covid digital QR passport to yellow or red to stop them from leaving Guangzhou. They are now stuck in Guangzhou and unable to travel home.

Welcome to tech totalitarianism.pic.twitter.com/fJ32VY4fg4

— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) December 2, 2022

In addition, there have been other reports of similar occurrences happening to other Chinese residents, illustrating that what happened in Guangzhou was far from an isolated incident. 

Since China adopted the use of the app, speculation as to its potential abuse has run rampant, and the topic of potentially adopting such tech by the rest of the world in order to serve as a COVID passport of sorts – where a “green” reading on the app would allow individuals to travel freely, whereas yellow or red would not – has some growing concerned. 

During November’s Business 20 (B20) summit – an event which is part of the G20 Summit – the Health Minister of Indonesia, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, advocated for a worldwide expansion of China’s program in order to monitor the vaccination and infection status of individuals wishing to travel. 

“Let’s have a digital health certificate acknowledged by [the World Health Organization]. If you have been vaccinated or tested properly, then you can move around,” he said. “So, for the next pandemic, instead of stopping the movement of the people 100 percent, which blocked the economy globally, you can still provide some movement of the people.” 

At the B20 Summit Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Indonesian Health Minister calls for a digital health certificate:

“Let’s have a digital health certificate acknowledged by WHO. If you have been vaccinated or tested properly, then you can move around…” pic.twitter.com/cFYhgu2xTT

— ❣️Anne❣️ (@USA_Anne711) November 15, 2022

Sadikin noted that the constituent countries of the G20 – which includes the United States – have already agreed to such a program, although it is not clear when or how it will be implemented. 

“Indonesia has achieved, G20 country has agreed, to have this digital certificate using WHO standard, and we will sub it into the next World Health Assembly in Geneva as the revision to international health regulation,” he said. “So, hopefully for the next pandemic, we can still see some movement of the people, some movement of the goods, and movement of the economy.” 

From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin on 30. December 2022

Symbol photo. Grafenrheinfeld power plant, Germany – 2013, Avda – Own work. CC BY-SA 3.0

Italy is planning an energy U-turn reports, the Berliner Morgenpost:

“So while Germany is saying goodbye to the use of nuclear energy, the technology is making a comeback in Italy, where people turned away from it almost 40 years ago. This is more than noteworthy, since Italy is so far the only major European country besides Germany that has abandoned the use of nuclear energy. Under the pressure of the energy crisis, however, the Italians have suddenly become painfully aware of their heavy dependence on electricity from abroad. The issue is moving citizens because they are clearly feeling the inflation of their electricity bills, despite government aid.”

Expect many countries to follow Italy’s course correction – except for Germany, which will obstinately cling to its wind and solar ideology to the very end even though a growing number of experts are calling for an extension of the operating times of its remaining nuclear plants.

The Berliner Morgenpost adds that Italy produces only 25 percent of the energy it needs itself. “Although renewable energies have been significantly expanded in recent years, the production of green electricity is far from sufficient.”

Surely nuclear power plants would provide a much needed energy boost for Italy. Whether the country can do away completely with fossil fuels, remains doubtful, however.

Hat-tip: klimanachrichten.de