Daily Archives: 18. September 2020
Earthquake Crete, Greece Magnitude, 5.9 Island Formation, Plates Collide
Joe Biden’s Jobs Plan
There Is No Climate Change Consensus
Remdesivir has only insignificant antiviral effect against SARS-COV-2 but dangerous adverse events
Bullet Points
- In the recommended doses (200 mg on day 1, 100 mg per day after that), Remdesivir (RDV) has only insignificant antiviral effect against SARS-COV-2.
- RDV treatment in accordance with the current recommendations is likely to significantly increase mortality in severe COVID-19 patients.
- Only 3 (three) useful clinical trials have been cited by the FDA in the two EUAs they issued for RDV and by the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Panel in its recommendations to use RDV for COVID-19.
- Only one of the referenced studies claimed clinical benefits of RDV for COVID-19 patients, but it is invalidated by conflicts of interest, misleading reporting of results, suspicious data, and multiple significant changes in the protocol in the middle of the study
- The lack of RDV’s antiviral effect for SARS-COV-2 is consistent with the results of its trials for respiratory coronavirus on animals.
- The lack of RDV’s antiviral effect for SARS-COV-2 is also consistent with hindsight interpretation of early in vitro trials. RDV and Chloroquine (CQ) have shown similar selective antiviral effects in vitro. However, in vivo, CQ accumulates in lung tissue, while RDV does not. Even with this accumulation, CQ/HCQ is only effective in a synergetic combination with additional medicines, such as Azithromycin (AZ) and/or Zinc.
Abstract
This paper analyzes all clinical trials referenced by the FDA and the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Panel, in their decisions to issue Emergency Use Authorizations and recommendations for the use of Remdesivir (RDV) for COVID-19 treatment.
Surprisingly, only three comparative clinical trials were cited in four documents issued by the FDA and the NIH, and only one of these studies asserted that RDV treatment was beneficial for COVID-19 patients.
Only one of the three studies – Wang Y. et al. – was conducted without gross conflicts of interest in favor of Gilead Sciences, Inc., the rights owner and manufacturer of RDV. This study found that RDV had no effect in the treatment of COVID-19.
The remaining two studies (Beigel et al., May 22, and Spinner et al., August 21) were marred by gross methodological defects, including changing the primary endpoints in the middle of the study, invalidating their results. Beigel et al. was supposed to be double blind, but it was not. Spinner et al. was not placebo controlled.
Beigel et al. is the only one of these studies that asserted that RDV had clinical benefits in COVID-19 patients. In addition to other defects, it incorrectly reported mortality. The article’s text selectively reported the mortality rates after 14 days from the start of treatment, which was lower in the RDV group. However, the results for RDV group deteriorated immediately after that. The mortality rates in severe patients, and only slightly decreased mortality in moderate patients, and severe patients had much higher mortality after RDV treatment than after placebo. The in-depth analysis of this trial’s conduct and reporting results indicates a strong bias in favor of the researched product. With a correction for that bias, RDV is likely to increase mortality in the general population of COVID-19 patients, and to sharply increase mortality in severe patients.
Each of the FDA and NIH decisions on RDV only cited one or two useful clinical trials, as follows:
FDA EUA for RDV, May 1: cited Beigel et al. unpublished data
NIH Panel on RDV, May 12: cited Beigel et al., Wang Y. et al.
NIH Panel on RDV, July 24: cited Beigel et al.
FDA EUA for RDV, August 28: cited Beigel et al., Spinner et al.
The two additional studies cited in the FDA and NIH documents were: Goldman et al. (compared a 5-day RDV treatment course against a 10-day RDV treatment course, with no control group) and Grein et al., (a summary of selected cases from Gilead’s early compassionate treatment with RDV, with no control group). Neither of these studies are randomized controlled trials (RTC), nor are they observational studies. They did not compare results of RDV treatment to anything else and could not provide any information in favor of the drug’s effectiveness or safety.
The in-vitro and animal studies also show that RDV is not an effective antiviral against SARS-COV-2.
The author declares no conflict of interest.
No funding was provided for this work.
All relevant ethical guidelines have been followed.
via Science Defies Politics
September 18, 2020 at 04:00PM
Solar panels generate mountains of waste
Isn’t sunshine a free fuel? “Harnessing sunshine (and wind) to serve humanity is not free – or clean, green, renewable or sustainable,”Duggan Flanakin points out.
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“Duggan Flanakin has written another important, perceptive article,” writes Paul Driessen. “This one examines the enormous amounts of plastic, metallic and dangerous chemical wastes that solar panels generate during their manufacturing process and when their electrical output declines (often rapidly) and they must be dismantled … and mostly hauled off to landfills, because most of their complex components cannot easily be recycled. As America and the world install literally billions of panels over the next decades, these problems will skyrocket.”
“In fact, the International Renewable Energy Agency has estimated that in 2016 there were already about 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste worldwide – and that total will explode to 78 million metric tons by 2050!”
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Solar panels generate mountains of waste
They also heat the planet, blanket wildlife habitats and cause other ecological damage
Duggan Flanakin
The problem of solar panel waste is now becoming evident. As environmental journalist Emily Folk admits in Renewable Energy Magazine, “when talking about renewable energy, the topic of waste does not often appear.” She attributes this to the supposed “pressures of climate change” and alleged “urgency to find alternative energy sources,” saying people may thus be hesitant to discuss “possible negative impacts of renewable energy.”
Ms. Folk admits that sustainability requires proper e-waste management. Yet she laments, “Solar presents a particular problem. There is growing evidence that broken panels release toxic pollutants … [and] increasing concern regarding what happens with these materials when they are no longer viable, especially since they are difficult to recycle.”
This is the likely reason that (except in Washington state), there are no U.S. mandates for solar recycling. A recent article in Grist reports that most used solar panels are shipped to developing countries that have little electricity and weak environmental protections, to be reused or landfilled.
The near-total absence of end-of-life procedures for solar panels is likely a byproduct of the belief (and repeated, unsupported assertion) that renewable energy is “clean” and “green.” Indeed, Mississippi Sierra Club state director Louie Miller recently claimed that unlike fossil fuels and nuclear energy, “Sunshine is a free fuel.” Well, sunshine is certainly free and clean. However, there is a monumental caveat.
Harnessing sunshine (and wind) to serve humanity is not free – or clean, green, renewable or sustainable.
The 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act mandates that new surface coal mines include plans and set aside funds for full reclamation of mine properties. The law also sets standards for restoring abandoned mine lands. There is nothing akin to this for solar facilities and wastes.
Similarly, the 1980 Superfund law (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act) created a tax and trust fund to pay for preventing and fixing actual or threatened releases of hazardous substances that could endanger public health or the environment. Again, still nothing for solar.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act prioritizes deep geologic repositories for safe storage and/or disposal of radioactive waste. Unfortunately, 25 years after being designated as the disposal site, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has never opened, because of conflicts among politicians, locals, anti-nuclear activists, government officials and the nuclear industry. The U.S. still stores its nuclear waste at 75 scattered sites, including some near New York City, New Orleans and Chicago. For solar no steps have been taken.
While coal, nuclear, and petrochemical companies must come up with detailed, costly plans for dealing with real or potential negative consequences of their operations, solar (and wind) companies have been rewarded with massive subsidies and absolutely no disposal standards or requirements.
No government grants require that solar companies set aside money to dispose of, store or recycle wastes generated during manufacturing or after massive solar “farms” have ceased functioning and been torn down. Solar (and wind) customers are likewise not charged for waste cleanup, disposal, or reuse and recycling. This and the massive subsidies distort and hide the true costs of solar power.
But reality is starting to catch up. Disposal (or recycling) costs will have to be paid, ultimately by consumers. The more solar panels we have (likely billions within a few years), the higher those costs will be. Consumers in states like California that have committed to heavy reliance on solar (and wind) energy (and already have the nation’s highest energy bills) will have to pay even more.
California is also facing a secondary problem from the proliferation of subsidized industrial solar installations. A 2015 study by Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science found that nearly a third of the state’s solar development is occurring on former cropland, where many farmers are shifting from growing crops to using their land to generate electricity – rather than letting it become wildlife habitat. As Big Solar also moves into natural areas, California is losing even more habitat and scenic land, while the integrity of state and national parks suffers from the nearby glare of countless solar panels and towering transmission lines to distant cities.
The Stanford study highlights another problem: localized higher temperatures. It found it will take an area the size of South Carolina filled with solar arrays to meet California’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. [It would take at least eight South Carolinas if the California mandate were extended nationwide.]
Other research has found that these large-scale solar power plants raise local temperatures, creating a significant solar heat island effect. Temperatures around one solar power plant were 5.4o-7.2 °F (3o-4°C) warmer than nearby wildlands. Imagine such manmade “global warming” across 20 million acres (South Carolina) or 160 million acres (Texas), to meet California or U.S. greenhouse gas reduction goals!
Australia is already coping with this unwelcome reality. Not until 2018 did Aussie environment ministers mandate fast-track development of new product stewardship schemes for photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, like those television and computer manufacturers and retailers have had to comply with since 2011.
Total Environment Centre director Jeff Angel admitted that setting standards for life-of-product management for solar panels was “long overdue,” and that the 30-year delay in imposing standards revealed a “fundamental weakness” in Australia’s waste policies. He further noted that while solar panels contain hazardous substances, Aussies are “sending hundreds of thousands of e-waste items to landfills” and creating significant pollution problems. And Australia has less than a tenth of the U.S. population!
Since 2002, the European Union’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive has required that original producers of e-wastes guarantee and pay for taking back and recycling their wastes, so that end-user consumers aren’t surprised by additional disposal costs.
However, PV solar panel waste was not included in this mandate until July 2012 – and “some uncertainty remains” about the cutoff date for such wastes, because the directive has yet to be implemented in national laws. Producer financing of PV waste treatment thus cannot be applied to older solar panels. So who will pay? And how much?
Ms. Folk and others look to waste-to-energy plants, and indeed the EU does send much of its solar panel waste to incinerators – which many environmentalists oppose. Landfilling is not a viable option in the U.S., because toxins could leach out. Unscrupulous companies ship solar panel waste to developing nations, but that is a stopgap solution that is environmentally irresponsible.
Tao Meng, lead author of a new study, says “the big blind spot in the U.S. for recycling is that the cost far exceeds the revenue” – by nearly 10-to-1, especially when including transportation costs. Chemicals must be used to remove silver and lead from silicon modules before they can be safely placed in landfills, Meng notes.
The problem of solar panel waste will continue to grow as more panels reach their end of life. Four years ago the International Renewable Energy Agency estimated there were already about 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste worldwide – and that total will explode to 78 million metric tons by 2050!
So when you read that solar energy is already cheaper than natural gas, don’t be fooled. They are omitting the pollution and disposal costs, as well as habitat losses, solar heat islands, and the need for backup power generation or batteries – to lowball the true costs of intermittent, season, latitude and weather-dependent solar. We need some honest math now, before it’s too late to turn back.
Duggan Flanakin is director of policy research for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
The post Solar panels generate mountains of waste appeared first on Ice Age Now.
via Ice Age Now
September 18, 2020 at 02:35PM
Wildfires offsetting California’s expensive cap-and-trade emissions cuts
California’s failure to manage its forests so as to limit wildfires offset much if not all of the state’s expensive efforts to reduce its greenhouse emissions. Three charts from the California government and some back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate this.
First, here is the burn acreage for 2000-2019. Note that in 2019, for example, wildfires consumed 280,000 acres of California’s forests.
Next, here are the CO2 emissions caused by those wildfires. Note that in 2019, for example, wildfires produced 6.5 million tons of CO2.
Now, so far in 2020, about 3.4 million acres of California forests have burned. If 280,000 acres of burned forests produced 6.5 million tons of CO2 in 2019, then using the same proportion, 3.4 million burned acres have produced about 79 million tons of CO2 in 2020 alone.
Now, here is the chart of California emission reductions between 2000-2017 (the latest available from the state). Note that California emissions as of 2017 were slightly below the state’s 2020 emissions goal of 430 million tons.
Let’s assume that the state is still around the same level of emissions as 2017. If you add back in the emissions from this years fires (79 million tons), California is not only about 79 million tons above its emissions goal, but California’s emissions are slightly higher than the state’s emissions peak of 493 million tons in 2004.
But there’s more.
California began it cap-and-trade system for emissions in 2012. The state has raised and spent about $5 billion from that program.
Assuming that emissions cuts for 2018 and 2019 amounted to a total of 10 million tons and the total emissions cuts under the cap trade program from 2012-2017 amount to about 25 tons, the 2020 forest fire emissions (79 million tons) more than double the emissions cut since cap-and-trade was implemented in 2012 (35 tons).
And we haven’t even added back in the emissions from other post-2012 wildfires (a total of about 182 million tons).
Here are some concluding points:Businesses and consumers have paid $5 billion since 2012 to cut emissions. Instead, emissions have never really been cut and are now higher than ever. Money for nothing.Although we don’t actually know the cause of the drought that has turned California’s forests into tinderboxes, it could very well be entirely natural. As such, we know the drought could last another 200 years. So unless California’s 33 million acres of forests are managed, they could burn until there is nothing left to burn. At the 2020 (so far) rate of 3.4 million acres, that’s about 10 years of forest fire emissions on the order of 79 million tons per year. In that case, California won’t meet its emissions goals for a long time.
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via Watts Up With That?
September 18, 2020 at 12:47PM
Atlantic Hurricane Season Update
By Paul Homewood
Atlantic Hurricane & Tropical Storm Tracks 2020
There has been a load of nonsense written about how busy this year’s Atlantic hurricane season has been, with Greek letters having to be used if we run out of normal ones.
In reality, the vast majority have been weak Tropical Storms, spinning around aimlessly in the middle of the ocean. Very few of these would even have been spotted in the pre-satellite era.
To date, there have just been eight Atlantic hurricanes, including two major ones, Laura and Teddy. While the season has not quite ended yet, it seems unlikely that the total number will be unusually high, while the number of major hurricanes looks like being relatively low.
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd-faq/#tcs-to-1930
While the Accumulated Cyclone Energy is running 28% above average in the Atlantic, globally it is well below, at 64%.
Global hurricane numbers are also lower this year, as are the number of major hurricanes. There is no evidence of increasing hurricane frequency or intensity, despite the BBC’s attempts to mislead otherwise.
http://climatlas.com/tropical/
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
September 18, 2020 at 12:33PM
RECORD COLD HITS NORTH-EAST/NORTH-CENTRAL U.S., AS THE ENTIRE EASTERN HALF OF NORTH AMERICA HOLDS COLDER THAN AVERAGE
From Canada all the way down to Mexico, a record-breaking blob of “blue” and “purple” has engulfed the eastern half of the North American continent, and will continue to linger for some time:
The combination of brutal polar air plus predominantly clear skies saw many states register record-low temperatures Thursday, September 17:
The Thursday morning mercury in Minnesota, for example, ranged from 10 to 15 degrees below the seasonal average — this unusual cold had the majority of northern Minnesota under either a freeze or frost warning.
Furthermore, Minnesota’s cold wasn’t just ‘unusual’ it was record-breaking, with a number of regions, including International Falls and Hibbing, breaking all-time lows:
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According to the National Weather Service in Duluth, a record low of 23F (-5C) was set at International Falls on the morning of Thurs, Sept 17 — busting the old record of 24F (-4.4C) set back in 1959. In addition, a second record low temperature of 24F (-4.4C) was set at Hibbing — comfortably usurping the previous record of 26F (-3.3C) set in 2011.
In fact, hundreds upon hundreds of low temperature records have fallen across the United States over the past 10-or-so days, thanks to a frigid blast of Arctic air that plunged anomalously-far south starting Sept 8:
This record-breaking polar chill will linger in the east into next week, with the cold currently forecast to intensify and dip south as we near October.
The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING, in line with historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow. Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.
Prepare for the COLD— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.
Social Media channels are restricting Electroverse’s reach: Twitter are purging followers while Facebook are labeling posts as “false” and have issued crippling “page restrictions”:
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Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift
NASA has been warning of a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) for the past Decade
The post Record Cold hits North-East/North-Central U.S., as the entire Eastern Half of North America holds Colder than Average appeared first on Electroverse.
Scientists: Antarctica Ice Sheet Thinned 400 Meters 5000 Years Ago, And Natural Oceanic Cycles Drive Climate
Today we present two papers on climate reconstruction using proxy data. One about East Antarctica and the other about belize. Hat-tip reader Mary Brown.
AMO behind sea surface temperatures
First we look at a paper authored by a team of German scientists: “Great Blue Hole (Lighthouse Reef, Belize): A continuous, annually-resolved record of Common Era sea surface temperature, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and cyclone-controlled run-off“.
The team looked at 2000 years of proxy data from Belize and found interesting natural cycles at play. According to the authors, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) occurred 1885 years back in time and that it controls the SW Caribbean sea surface temperature patterns on multi-decadal time scales.
The authors note that the Holocene (<11.7 kyr BP) has been characterized by several periods of distinct climate changes and that the climate remains difficult to predict “due to the lack of comprehensive, annually-resolved and continuous sea-surface temperature (SST) data”.
So what about them models?
Examining an 8.55 m long sediment core from the bottom of the Great Blue Hole (Lighthouse Reef, Belize), the scientists were able to extract “an annually-resolved, continuous and unique south-western Caribbean climate record for the last 1885 years”.
The result? The data imply a general SST rise within the south-western Caribbean and that the modulation of SST within the time series likely operated on two different time levels: (1) Solar (e.g., “Gleissberg Cycles”) and volcanic activity triggered climate changes, which in turn induced responses of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the El-Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The authors conclude further in the abstract:
We suspect long-term positive AMO and NAO modes as the primary key control mechanisms of the Dark Ages Cold and Medieval Warm Period SST patterns. ENSO mode modulation likely exerted primary control on regional SST variability during the Little Ice Age and the Modern Global Warming. (2) Our δ18O data further indicate a striking secondary control on multi-decadal time scales: δ18O variations occur with 32–64 years periodicity. This signal is clearly evidence of SST modulation controlled by AMO phase changes (50–70 years) over almost the entire Common Era. Our carbon isotope record (δ13C) exhibits two remarkable negative anomalies and a long-term up-core decreasing trend. The first excursion (drop of 0.5‰) occurred with the onset of the Medieval Warm Period, which is reconstructed to be a peak time in south-western Caribbean tropical cyclone (TC) activity. This overlap is stressing a potential context between TC activity, enhanced coastal run-off and increased soil-erosion reflected by 13C-depleted carbon isotopes. A second anomaly (>1900 CE) is more likely the result of the “Suess Effect” (anthropogenic impact of the Industrial Revolution on carbon isotopes composition) than another reflection of a TC peak activity interval.”
But since 1900, man has taken over control of the earth’s climate, the authors seem to be suggesting. That was probably written in witha wink to the funders.
Antarctica suddenly lost 400 meters of ice
In another new paper: Abrupt Holocene ice-sheet thinning along the southern Soya Coast, Lützow-Holm Bay, East Antarctica, revealed by glacial geomorphology and surface exposure dating, a team of Japanese scientists led by Moto Kawamata examined the deglacial history of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS).
Image: Figure 1 here.
The authors found that it had thinned from at least 400 m a.s.l. during the Early to Mid-Holocene (9–5 ka) and say the abrupt thinning was likely caused by the natural inflow of modified Circumpolar Deep Water via submarine valleys in Lützow-Holm Bay.
Abstract:
Geological reconstruction of the retreat history of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is essential for understanding the response of the ice sheet to global climatic change and the mechanisms of retreat, including a possible abrupt melting event. Such information is key for constraining climatic and ice-sheet models that are used to predict future Antarctic Ice Sheet AIS melting. However, data required to make a detailed reconstruction of the history of the EAIS involving changes in its thickness and lateral extent since the LGM remain sparse. Here, we present a new detailed ice-sheet history for the southern Soya Coast, Lützow-Holm Bay, East Antarctica, based on geomorphological observations and surface exposure ages. Our results demonstrate that the ice sheet completely covered the highest peak of Skarvsnes (400 m a.s.l.) prior to ∼9 ka and retreated eastward by at least 10 km during the Early to Mid-Holocene (ca. 9 to 5 ka). The timing of the abrupt ice-sheet thinning and retreat is consistent with the intrusion of modified Circumpolar Deep Water (mCDW) into deep submarine valleys in Lützow-Holm Bay, as inferred from fossil foraminifera records of marine sediment cores. Thus, we propose that the mechanism of the abrupt thinning and retreat of the EAIS along the southern Soya Coast was marine ice-sheet instability caused by mCDW intrusion into deep submarine valleys. Such abrupt ice-sheet thinning and retreat with similar magnitude and timing have also been reported from Enderby Land, East Antarctica. Our findings suggest that abrupt thinning and retreat as a consequence of marine ice-sheet instability and intrusion of mCDW during the Early to Mid-Holocene may have led to rapid ice-surface lowering of hundreds of meters in East Antarctica.”
Today, if an ice sheet loses 60 cm, it’s deemed a crisis by climate bedwetters. Just imagine if an ice sheet in Antarctica were to lose 400 meters thickness.
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September 18, 2020 at 11:25AM