kgwilson

Great, lets all start smoking again & die from Lung cancer instead. The government will be back in the black from the massive increase in the cigarette tax it will get.

The hype is now so intense and it seems many governments have not taken the risk seriously enough, a pandemic has now been declared and new predictions are quite concerning. e.g. Germany now believes 70% of its 83 million people will become infected. The difference between Covid-19 & the Flu is that we just don't know. Things will get worse but by how much. Again we just don't know. Will the stimulus packages work or will this eventually be known as the great 2020 depression. I hope not.

I've been making my own beer since the 1980s. I started making a basic lager with little body or flavour but you got pretty pissed. I am somewhat more refined now and make a very nice IPA and Pale Ale derivatives but of course the cost of ingredients (I only use malt, no sugar) is exponentially higher than a crappy tasteless lager. Craft Breweries are finally making an inroad in to Australias Beer drinking culture. It happened 30 years ago in my native land and I enjoy going back to Nelson (NZ) just for the beer. There were around 40 breweries at one time for a population of 50,000, some very small, but the quality of almost all was outstanding. A pale ale I enjoyed out of WA some years ago was Little Creatures. They got big & were bought by Lion which is a shame but the beer is still pretty good, (expensive though).

The scientist expelled from Canada is a woman. The one who died in Wuhan is male. The woman, her husband and several students were expelled in July last year. It is thought (no proof) that the doctor (whistleblower) the Chinese tried to suppress who died was one of those students. The theft of genetically modified pathogens from Canada and the Chinese plan to produce biological weapons is pure speculation with again no proof.

The fact that Covid-19 got out there is almost certainly a failure of the system at the Chinese laboratory and not at all deliberate. Whether or not the intention was to develop some form of Biological weapon we will probably never know. Covid-19 seems no more or less dangerous than the Flu. It is just new, there is currently no vaccine and the world wide hype has turned it into the ultimate fear of the unknown.

The official line is it jumped from Bats to humans at a Fish market in Wuhan. How? A recent research paper published in the Lancet journal (copy attached) concludes the virus is most closely related to bats, however, most bat species in Wuhan were hibernating at the time, there were none available for sale at the sea food market, there is likely to be an intermediate host that has not been identified, no animal there has so far tested positive and probably only a single human was the source. A report by the Canadian Broadcasting Commission last October that a Chinese scientist, her husband and several students were expelled from Canada in July due to a so called "Policy Breach". They were working at the only level 4 lab of the Canadian Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and made at least 5 trips to Wuhan China at that time. Details below. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/national-microbiology-lab-scientist-investigation-china-1.5307424 It is thought that they smuggled samples back to Wuhan in China to continue development of genetically engineered viruses. This Lab is only a few blocks from the Wuhan Fish market. Covid-19 is about 30% different from the SARS virus and could not have mutated from it as there must be multiple mutations which takes a very long time to change by 30%. It seems that the Chinese Lab stuffed up and one of the scientists contracted Covid 19 & spread it at the Fish market. The reports suggest this is the Whistleblower doctor who eventually died from it. He apparently was one of the students expelled from Canada. The Chinese are silent & won't co-operate with Canada since the expulsion of the Huawei VP last year. It is entrely possible that the underlying reason is development of biological weapons. PIIS0140673620302518.pdf

The Flu kills around 400,000 people a year world wide. The great majority of these fall into the same age brackets and pre-existing conditions scenario as Covid-19. The difference is that the Flu is accepted as normal and there are vaccines for it. Even so in the Winter of 2018 80% of the Flu vaccines administered were ineffective because they had been produced for Flu strains that were no longer an issue as they had mutated into new more virulent strains.

I went from London to Glasgow by train in 1974. It did 100mph. I remember looking out the window at cars on the M1 at 70mph & we were tearing past them all. I have no idea what speed they travel at today. There are some very fast trains in Europe.

Or use water like the majority of the worlds population. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20191004-the-peculiar-bathroom-habits-of-westerners Cleans better & is more hygienic. Two thirds of the world squat mostly on keyhole type toilets. Some have thrones but with big flat foot places allowing squatting or seating. The Japanese have developed the system originally invented by the French the best with a warm wash followed by a blow dry.

I don't understand why Sydney decided to go back to light rail (trams). The disruption and time to lay down a few km of track has been ridiculous not to mention the massive blow out in costs and the failure of the contract with the Spanish mob cost them more millions. Putting in overhead cables and opting for trolley busses while simultaneously banning private cars from the CBD areas would have been a better option in my opinion.

Many are giving him 3 months before failure to get enough votes to enact his "leave with or without a deal". I don't compare him to Trump at all (hair colour aside). He is articulate and intelligent but a buffoon. Trump is a racist, narcissistic, bigoted complete F#@!wit.

Must be a relative of the Norwegian Blue. They are renowned for lying still like that apparently pining for the fjords.

What brain? There is no evidence he actually has one though it is probably like his tiny hands and that other tiny thing the women he has paid to shut up, laugh about.

The Economist Intelligence Unit report for 2018 found that the USA did not meet the conditions of being a democracy. According to their index there are only 20 full democracies in the world with Australia & NZ the only democracies in the entire Asia Pacific region. The list of the 20 democracies was dominated by European countries with Norway at No1. The USA was down at 25, 5th best FLAWED Democracy. Here is the full list Which is the world's most democratic country?

I drive a car and I ride a bike. I am appalled at some motorists attitude to cyclists. Most car drivers seem to forget that cyclists are people going about their business or recreation because they get slowed down. Sometimes I'd like to kick their doors in. So you are in a hurry. Why? Leave a bit earlier to get where you are going. They get in their steel container on wheels with all the creature comforts they could want but then the psyche changes from normal reasonable human behaviour to an aggressive stance that anyone who is not like me needs to be down trodden so get out of my way. Maybe the best way is to separate the 2 modes of transport/recreation. This does happen in a lot of places and it is good but even on the shared roadway a cyclist should always have priority so long as they keep within the laws that exist.

Even at 90 cents difference in the price if the rego comparison of say $80 to $700, $620.00 buys 258 litres of fuel & in a Corolla that will still get you about 4,500 km of driving. The tax on fuel in NZ is almost double what it is here at just over 70 cents per litre. Then there is 15% GST on top of that (tax on a tax just like here) & in Auckland an extra 10 cents congestion tax. Prices in NZ are generally more expensive than in Australia as GST is on absolutely everything except financial transactions like mortgages but the top income tax rate is 30%, there is no medicare levy and the Pension is not means tested. When everything is taken in to account there is not much difference except how things are run. The NZ government seems much more progressive and they have bi-partisan support on Climate Change and attitude towards electric vehicles. NZ has its own nutters like we have Hansen, Anning, Palmer and Katter. Something I found rather amusing this week was a survey of 1400 Australians found Jacinda Adern as the most trusted politician - In Australia. Millward Brown polled 1400 Australians and asked them to score 12 politicians on their relevance, integrity, shared values, affinity, commitment and follow through. Despite being a Kiwi Adern scored 77 out of 100, next was Penny Wong at 53 then Julie Bishop on 52 & Tania Plibosek at 50. So the top 4 are all women. Morrison was 8th at 43, Shorten 42, Abbott 36, Dutton 34 & unsurprisingly in last place Palmer on 30. Bishop had the highest ranking for PM, at 14 per cent. Shorten came in second at 12 per cent, Morrison (11 per cent), Pauline Hanson (8 per cent), and Wong and Plibersek both sat at 6 per cent.

The price of petrol is expensive in NZ but it costs just $80.00 a year to register a car and that includes CTP which is the ACC levy. (ACC is a government system to cover workers compensation & accidents etc. The right to sue has been removed by law.) Here the registration & CTP cost is $ 700.00 and up to several thousand depending on your age and the vehicle. You can buy a lot of fuel for the extra 65 cents a litre so for majority the overall cost is actually less to run a car in NZ than in Australia.

Phasing out nuclear, coal and gas is an ambitious undertaking for a heavily industrialised country such as Germany. The government has set a deadline to shutter all the country's nuclear plants by 2022 and stop burning coal for electricity by 2038. At the Reuter power plant in Berlin, which supplies 600,000 households in the capital with heat, the solution now includes calcium oxide, also known as quicklime. Vattenfall and Swedish start-up SaltX have been taking advantage of a simple chemical reaction that occurs when quicklime becomes wet: the salt-like grains soak up the water, becoming calcium hydroxide and releasing large amounts of heat in the process. By removing the water again - a process not dissimilar to baking - the substance turns back into calcium oxide. The process essentially mirrors how batteries work, except that instead of electricity, the system stores heat. SaltX says it has also patented a way of covering the quicklime with tiny particles - known as a nano-coating - to prevent it from lumping together after several heating and cooling cycles. "Germany currently has enough installed renewable energy capacity to produce twice as much as it needs, it's just not constant," says Hendrik Roeglin, who oversees the salt storage project for Vattenfall. Rival utility E.ON recently calculated that solar and wind power generated up to 52 gigawatt hours of electricity during peak daylight hours on Easter Monday. Germany's energy consumption at the time was just 49.5 gigawatt hours. And here we have far better conditions to produce renewable energy & the idiocy of conservative thinking is more coal. Unbelievable but true.

Yep it has taken 20,000 years to get to the level it was 10 years ago. It is not the fact that it is rising, it has been all that time, it is the accelerated rate of rise in just a few years that is cause for concern.

I see today that the UK has for the first time since 1882 gone a whole week without burning any coal to generate electricity. The country has already gone for more than 1,000 hours in total without needing coal in 2019 - and this year is likely to beat all previous records. They have the largest offshore wind farms in the world and actually export some of that generation. Nuclear and gas generation make up most of the balance. They are serious about climate change and actually have bi-partisan support for emissions reduction even though they can't resolve Brexit. Here we have the LNP wanting to build more coal fired power stations, the PUP saying they are going to & there is no climate change policy at all. Yet climate change is listed as more important to most voters than the economy. With a bit of luck those Dinosaurs will be by-passed in a couple of weeks. If the sea level isn't rising how come Kiribati is going under & numerous other pacific Islands are being regularly flooded. I'll bet some expert will come up with a documented story showing that he islands are sinking.

I don't think we have reached the tipping point or are that close to it yet but I believe it may happen in my lifetime. I don't think I am as optimistic as Octave but I am hopeful that the slow destruction of our ability to maintain our presence here can be arrested. Businesses and corporations are flat out moving towards environmental responsibility however it is the political will that is still not there even after the climate accords of Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris with the biggest polluter of all pulling away. The difference today is that man made climate change (though the man made bit is left out) is becoming front and centre of discussions and debate that only a couple of years ago was ignored by large portions of the worlds population. Last election only the Greens were talking about it, now it is the most important issue identified by the majority of voters that are not die hard LNP supporters. That's why I am still hopeful.

And global population at almost 8 billion. While the rate has slowed, wars and pandemics have had no effect so the demand for dwindling resources may outstrip supply. It does though have some hope in that with all the extra people there is a bigger pool of educated people to make the decisions. All well and good but none of them are politicians.

On the 24 hour evolutionary clock human beings have been around since 1 second to midnight & we have managed to almost completely stuff things up in that time. If things finally go pear shaped and we become extinct I reckon it will only take another second or less for the planet to recover without us. It is also interesting to note that when the bulletin of Atomic Scientists started the doomsday clock in 1947 it was all about nuclear annihilation and the clock was at 7 minutes to midnight. It got down to 2 minutes at various times like the Cuban missile crisis & up to 17 minutes in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union & end of the cold war. Now it is back to 2 minutes to midnight but the threat is now equally climate change with emerging technologies and global risk (hacking and political change, rise of the right and errosion of democracy). The signs are there and have been for all of that time but we still seem to have a head in the sand approach.

If 911 happened now & the US blamed somewhere like Vietnam, would they invade on the false pretence (WMD) like they did in Iraq and all the consequences leading to the IS caliphate? China is right next door & even though historically China & Vietnam have not been the best mates there is no way the US would even consider it. China is too strong and Trump has lost most of his mates.

These will all become redundant as the super charging stations come on line and the cars have an on board DC converter. In the meantime someone will produce adaptors just like you have when travelling overseas to run your electrical stuff with an Aus/NZ plug.