This is an excellent movie-length discussion of how inefficient it is to continue to subsidize fossil fuels, which are disposable fuels. He discusses “opex” (operational expenditures) vs. “capex” (capital expenditures). Over the medium- to long-run, an energy infrastructure with lower “opex” will win out.

“We should stop growing corn to feed to cars.”

You are being misled about renewable energy technology. by Technology Connections (YouTube)

The author discusses how modern solar panels no longer use hazardous materials, being composed primarily of materials derived from quartz.
... [More]

The article NASA launches new mission to get the most out of the James Webb Space Telescope by Stephen Clark (Ars Technica) describes something really neat[1] but the thing that drew my attention was a more politically oriented comment at the end of the article.

““It’s been very, very challenging to try and squeeze this big amount of science into this small cost box, but that’s kind of what makes it fun, right?” Barclay told Ars. “We have to be pretty ruthless in making sure that we only fund the things we need to fund.... [More]”

The article ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ Is Inferior To Science by Thomas R. Wells (3QuarksDaily) has two main thrusts: the primacy of scientific thinking and the degeneracy of preferring something for nonscientific reasons. On second that, those are two sides of the same coin.

Science is knowledge that deserves to be believed

The following citations illustrate the point as Wells put it,

“[…] knowledge is knowledge. Where it comes from doesn’t matter to its epistemic status. What matters is whether it deserves to be... [More]”

The title is clickbait but the content is nonetheless interesting. It discusses how to move processing from “system 2” (logical reasoning) to “system 1” (intuition). It’s how you get to a point where you understand a language without thinking about it. Or how you can just read music, or code, or vast swaths of text on economics or philosophy. Or how your body has learned to move in any sport or activity.

There is no way around using familiarity and repetition to get to highly accurate and... [More]

This morning, my partner reported that Utica’s air quality was really. I checked the Real-time Air Quality Index (World Air Quality Index) and could verify that the station in Utica was signaling “very unhealthy” conditions.

You can see that Utica stands out alone as very unhealthy.

Utica Air Quality is 243 (very unhealthy)

Whereas our initial idea was “wow the fires in California have already drifted that far? Over 5000km? Is that even possible?”, you can see that no-one else between California and Utica is similarly affected. It’s not smoke. If you look... [More]

There is an unalterable dynamic in which the establishment rejects all heresy if it is a challenge to its power. It continues to repeat itself. In Midnight Mass, one of the characters told a story about Ignaz Semmelweis (Wikipedia).

“[…] was a Hungarian physician and scientist of German descent, who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures […] Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of infection could be drastically reduced by requiring healthcare workers in obstetrical clinics to disinfect... [More]”

Stop what you’re doing and learn about how clever corvids are. There is a lot of footage of them creating grub-digging sticks to quite exacting specifications. It’s quite incredible, but there you are.

True Facts: Crows That Hunt With Sticks by Ze Frank (YouTube)

“Anyway, science hippies put a camera on the crow’s tail feathers…”

The crows are capable of solving multi-step problems. There are several tubes arrayed around the crow. One of the tubes has food in it, but cannot be reached with the small stick that the crow is given. There is a... [More]

First, let’s take the less-hopeful, but more-sober article COP28 climate summit exposes the dead end of fighting climate change under capitalism by Brian Dyne (WSWS). It writes,

“The end of COP28 was also applauded by John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate. Kerry said of the draft resolution, “While nobody here will see their views completely reflected, the fact is that this document sends a very strong signal to the world.”

“That signal is that capitalist governments can and will do nothing... [More]”

The article We can’t afford to be climate doomers by Rebecca Solnit (Guardian) takes “doomers” to task for failing to maintain optimism in the face of overwhelming resistance.

“Stanford engineering professor and renewable energy expert Mark Z Jacobson tweeted the other day, “Given that scientists who study 100% renewable energy systems are unanimous that it can be done why do we hear daily on twitter and everywhere else by those who don’t study such systems that it can’t be done?””

This means nothing. First of... [More]

The article Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows by Patrick Greenfield (The Guardian) reveals what it says in the title. It’s an excellent article proving to us what many of us already suspected strongly or already “knew”: the carbon-offset system looks like a scam and it is a scam. The company Verra, responsible for providing about ¾ of carbon offsets globally, is being accused of having sold 20x more credits than it can actually verify. That is, it is being... [More]

As I was reading the article Polio declared a disaster emergency in New York after more poliovirus found by Beth Mole (Ars Technica), the following citation caught my eye,

“Rockland County—which is notorious for generally low vaccination rates after battling a tenacious measles outbreak in 2019—has a polio vaccination rate of just 60 percent among children under the age of 2, who are recommended to have three polio vaccine doses.”

People are not vaccinating their children because they see the injections as dangerous.... [More]

What’s the biggest source of CO₂ in the world? I was with a friend who argued that it was personal passenger vehicles. I was pretty sure that industry and agriculture produced the lion’s share of CO₂, but she was adamant. I thought it sounded like her source was conveniently placing the blame for a warming planet on individuals’ inability to conserve when I thought that our individual contributions, while not inconsequential, were not the place that we needed to start, necessarily.

When I had... [More]

I was listening to this video,

COVID decreased life expectancy by 2 years. What does that mean? by Sabine Hossfelder (YouTube)

Sabine said that the standard measure of life expectancy “is easy to misunderstand”. So, instead of expecting that people should make an effort to understand it, we dumb it down instead, making it easier to understand, but much less accurate. That is, people will get a less-accurate impression, but be just as confident in it. It will become the new reality, as usual.

Hossfelder talks about the Period life expectancy, which is a measure that assumes that every... [More]

The article So entwickeln sich die Corona-Zahlen in der Schweiz (SRF) is updated constantly. In the update from Monday, 24.01.2022, the matrix that shows the infection rate by age group was a particularly brilliant crimson.

Matrix of Infections by Age Group

If I’m reading this chart correctly, 4.5% of 10 to 19-year-olds were infected with COVID in the week from 10.01 to 17.01. That seems like quite a lot. Switzerland has a 7-day rolling average of about 32,300 cases per day. That makes about 226,000 per week. The latest population... [More] (Wikipedia)

In a recent article Links and Notes for December 17th, 2021, I noted that Doctor Mark Hanefeld seems to be underselling vaccine efficacy (predicted) and effectiveness (measured).

The podcast is linked below,

Coronavirus-Update Sonderfolge: Gerüchte und Fake-News zur Impfung einordnen | NDR Podcast by NDR Ratgeber (YouTube)

At 17:30, Herr Doktor Marc Hanefeld says,

“Nehmen wir mal einfach die Zulassungsstudien zu Biontech. Da haben wir eine 95% Effektivität. Und die Effektivität ist immer im Hinblick auf symptomatische Ansteckung. Das heisst, man wird angesteckt mit dem Virus und merkt was—hat... [More]”

I recently saw an argument that says that people like Greta Thunberg—let’s use her as a placeholder for any semi-affluent first-worlder—can argue all she wants for a massive reduction of fossil-fuel usage, but that she’s privileged to be able to do so, as there is zero chance that her life will be impacted negatively by it. The argument is that stopping fossil fuels now will leave the developing world even farther behind because they won’t be able to benefit from the economic growth they... [More]

A not insignificant part of the community doesn’t want the COVID vaccine. So, they’re coming up with their own versions. I heard from one friend that he’s taking dandelion extract. He’s convinced it will help fend off COVID, so that means he thinks he’s developed a partial vaccine, at least. The picture below comes from an anti-vaxx blogger I follow,[1]

Nyquil: just as good as the vaccine

The guy posted it without comment, other than to title it “A safe alternative to the “vaccine”“, so I have no idea whether he’s just kidding... [More]

In combatting the pandemic efficiently and successfully, Switzerland is in a pretty bad place right now. It’s not nearly as bad as Austria or Germany (or a bunch of Eastern Europe, for that matter), but it’s not too far behind.

There aren’t too many reasons to believe that things will go any better in Switzerland than it’s gone in those countries—with their overflowing hospitals and people dying due to emergency-triage policies.

That’s the thing about playing musical chairs for real: when... [More]

The Edit by Mr. FishCOP26 has come and gone and many people, if not most of them, didn’t even notice. It was the 26th meeting of world leaders to discuss which measures they can all agree to put into place in order to address climate change.

A few of the other summits are famous by their city names: Kyoto in 1992, where the U.S.—by far the biggest polluter at the time—refused to ratify it; Copenhagen in 2009, where the world’s worst per-capita polluter Canada torpedoed everything so that they wouldn’t have to... [More]

The DACH region ([D]eutschland, [A]ustria, S[CH]weiz) is looking down the barrel of its worst COVID wave yet. We are a good 20 months into the pandemic and nearly a year after the general availability of a highly effective vaccine. To be fair, most people under 65 were not able to get the vaccine until May or June (in Switzerland, at least). However, it’s been 5 months since then.

Stuck in the lifeboat

That’s more than enough time for a civilized and well-educated public to do the right thing... [More]

I keep finding people who suggest that the vaccine is “potentially sacrificing millions of citizens like so many experimental fruit flies.” That is one of the more reasonable formulations, as the author of the article Medicine Wants to Kill You by James Howard Kunstler (Clusterfuck Nation) has included the word “potentially” to hedge his bets against the fact that many of us have not (yet!) fallen over with an acute case of death brought on by what they deem an untested—or under-tested—vaccine.[1]

They also seem to believe—and almost... [More]

People in Switzerland are pretty much done with being vaccinated, according to the video report FOKUS: Impfbereitschaft in der Schweiz am Limit (SRF), Switzerland has managed to fully vaccinate 63% of the population (64% at the time of writing) but pretty much everyone who’s not gotten vaccinated yet is not planning to do so.

“Das Impf-Potential in der Schweiz scheint ausgeschöpft, wie die neuste Sotomo-Studie zeigt. Personen, die jetzt noch eine Impfung ablehnen, haben ihre Meinung gemacht.”

The... [More]

The article Fossil fuels doomed in New York as regulator blocks new gas power plants by Tim De Chant (Ars Technica) writes,

“New York’s climate law requires polluters to account for two sources of emissions: from the plants themselves and from the natural gas supply chain. Once the latter was included—figures which in the past were nearly always ignored when determining a power plant’s pollution—the emissions quickly exceeded the DEC’s thresholds, the decisions say.”

I think that this is a good way of looking at... [More]

The article Biden Wakes Up From The Strangest Dream That He Was Attending International Climate Conference (Babylon Bee) is a joke, but…is it really? It feels true, doesn’t it?

I am an optimistic man and, yet, we must be realistic. These people at COP26 are nearly literally all of the same people who’ve done nearly nothing since Kyoto. Remember Kyoto? Nah, no-one does. That was COP3 in 1997. Almost a quarter-century ago. Back then, it was absolutely necessary that something be done. Nothing was done.
... [More]

I was browsing the COVID situation on Corona Zahlen Weltweit yesterday and sorted by %-deaths for the first time. I was quite shocked to see that a sizable country like Mexico had a lethality of 7.6%. Peru is at 9.1%.

Mexico COVID infection and death rates

The only countries higher than that are the tiny, island nation of Vanuatu (with only 4 infections total), Yemen, Peru, and Sudan. Yemen and Sudan are well-known to be in dire straits six ways from Sunday, with multiple humanitarian crises happening all at once, including war... [More]

From a comment on the article, Vaccine Success, Media Misery: Is Good News Taboo in the Trump Age? by Matt Taibbi (TK News)

“I find it interesting that for all the takes on who will and who won’t take the vaccine- and why- a simple reason is commonly overlooked: For many people in good health and of a certain age group, the virus poses little to no real threat. Yes, there have been terrible cases reported in surprising victims, but as far as the data goes, they continue to be anomalies.”

This is exactly the kind of... [More]

Virologist Christian Drosten was very good on his weekly podcast, (88) Impfmission possible by Das Coronavirus-Update von NDR Info (Apple Podcasts). In this episode, he lays down the cold facts: COVID will become endemic in the west. Get vaccinated or get COVID. There is no choice (C).

An English translation follows the German citation.

At 48:00,

“Christian Drosten: Jeder wird immun werden. 100%. Nicht 70% oder 80% sondern 100% in der Bevölkerung werden unweigerlich—ich würde mal sagen, in einem Fenster das von jetzt noch so anderthalb Jahre... [More]”

Biden recently informed the nation that things would be back to normal by July 4th—as if the virus cares.

Biden peddles national self-delusion on pandemic anniversary by Patrick Martin (WSWS)

“The language of collective loss, suffering and sacrifice, however, ignored the brutal fact that one section of American society, the super-rich, has lost nothing at all from 12 months of the worst pandemic in a century.

“While 527,000 Americans died, the billionaires increased their wealth by $1.4 trillion. While the economy... [More]”

The article CDC study finds c. 78% of people hospitalized for COVID were overweight or obese by Mark Crispin Miller contains the following text and the link below it.

“A study from the CDC, reported by CNBC, and yet it slipped right down the memory hole, despite—or because of—the further light it sheds on the entire COVID narrative, which has millions of slim, healthy people tightly masked and terrified of human contact.”

The article he linked, CDC study finds about 78% of people hospitalized for Covid were... [More] by Berkeley Lovelace Jr. (CNBC)

Coronavirus-Update #82: Die Lage ist ernst by NDR Ratgeber (YouTube)

Drosten’s pissed. I’ve heard “irreführende” about 90 times now. He thinks there are two options: let it rip and collapse the health system or go back into lockdown (“der Holzhammer”) … Germany doesn’t seem capable of doing anything in between.

He said “private Kontakte” are definitely where infections are coming from now. It’s no longer true that “wir wissen einfach nicht wovon die Infectionen kommen…”

At 37:30, he said

“Bei keinem diesen Viren gibt es eine “Dauerwelle”. Der Begriff “der... [More]”