Just quietly, coronavirus is affected USA’s nuclear weapons preparedness
For now, Kristensen says, “probably the healthiest people in America are those who are coming back from the longest submarine patrols,” which currently last as long as 78 days.
They’ve been underwater since almost the beginning of the year.
THE U.S. MILITARY’S BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOVES TO PROTECT NUCLEAR READINESS AMID CORONAVIRUS https://www.newsweek.com/us-militarys-behind-scenes-moves-protect-nuclear-readiness-amid-coronavirus-1493829
Though Pentagon officials continue to insist that the coronavirus pandemic has had no impact on operational readiness of the armed forces, behind the scenes military exercises and deployments are being scaled down and canceled, and plans are being put in place to sustain essential operations. That includes the so-called triad of bombers, land-based missiles and submarines that make up the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Continue reading
Hinkley nuclear construction work continues, while rest of UK is in lockdown
on and called on the Government to tell them to stop. “This is putting lives at risk right across Somerset and the whole of the country,” said Stop Hinkley campaign spokeswoman Katy Attwater. “Why hasn’t the Prime Minister ordered them to stay at home – is he just pandering to the nuclear lobby? “While the rest of the country is in lockdown, EDF fails to acknowledge that if someone has developed a fever, they have been incubating and spreading the virus for days beforehand.The President of the United States misses his opportunity to lead the world against the Coronavirus
The president and his far-right allies see the pandemic as one more chance to again rip apart the notion that countries do better by cooperating.
While we have to self-isolate from the virus, we don’t have to isolate ourselves from the world. Trump could be uniting our strengths. We all could.
Trump Could Have Led the World Against the Coronavirus We have to isolate ourselves from the virus. He doesn’t have to isolate us from the world. https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/03/trump-could-have-led-world-against-coronavirus/164086/?oref=d-topstory
Trump can’t help himself. He is missing his chance to live out “America First.”
In January or February, he could have convened world leaders, determined a plan to stop the coronavirus, and shown what American power can really do with all of the pomp and circumstance of summit stages and Fox News backdrops. He could have made the world grateful for his leadership.
Even now, as the world stays home FaceTiming with family, Trump could convene a video conference of world leaders, sitting in Washington’s big chair in the middle of the virtual table, directing help, aid, relief, supplies, NATO militaries and the narrative. He could have even liberals and TV pundits praising him as the global leader he believes himself to be.
The coronavirus pandemic is more than a 9/11 moment. It’s a Reagan-second-term-chance-to-beat-the-Soviets moment. It’s a political opening to soften up, wake up, and bring the world together. It’s an opportunity to diminish Beijing and Moscow and marginalize violent extremists.
The United States should be leading the world through this pandemic. Americans should be leading the world. Trump should be leading the world.
He could have thought big, but instead he plays small. On Tuesday night, the president of the United States was up late retweeting posts from the partisan and anti-Semitic information warfare site Breitbart, amplifying their praise and thumping liberal snowflakes and the corporate media.
Yesterday, the number of Americans who have died from the coronavirus rose by 160. The number of Americans who tested positive for the virus rose by 10,000. The number of infected reached 26,000 in New York state. The number worldwide is nearly 500,000. Continue reading
Tokyo Olympics cannot be held this year
 PM Abe says Tokyo Olympics cannot be held under current circumstances https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/c6332013fc1d-urgent-abe-hints-at-possibility-of-postponing-tokyo-olympics.html?fbclid=IwAR3qxfvLzio4uiSplOcB_4r8ENGfdvBHscjj5RoO4chmk9NgleH-C65UCxk KYODO NEWS 23 Mar 20, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday this summer’s Tokyo Olympics cannot be held under current circumstances due to the new coronavirus pandemic, suggesting for the first time that the games may have to be postponed.“If I’m asked whether we can hold the Olympics at this point in time, I would have to say that the world is not in such a condition,” Abe told a parliamentary session, adding he hopes to hold talks with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach over the issue.
“It’s important that not only our country but also all the other participating countries can take part in the games fully prepared,” Abe said. The premier’s comments came a day after the IOC said it will study alternative plans for the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled to open on July 24, amid the global outbreak, and make an assessment within the next four weeks. The Japanese government will soon tell the IOC it will accept a postponement if the organization decides on it as a precaution against the coronavirus, a source familiar with the plan said. Tokyo Olympic organizing committee President Yoshiro Mori said he supports the IOC’s decision to review existing plans, adding representatives from Japan and the IOC will hold discussions to examine possible scenarios closely. “Japan is in a critical state, and the situations in the United States and Europe have been abnormal,” Mori said. “We are not so foolish as to say we will do it under our first (plan).” Abe, who has previously said he aims to hold the major sporting event in its “complete form,” told the parliamentary session, “If it is difficult to hold the games in such a way, we have to decide to postpone it, giving top priority to (the health of the) athletes.” “Although the IOC will make the final decision (on the matter), we are of the same view that cancellation is not an option,” Abe said while vowing to work closely with the IOC and the Tokyo metropolitan government. The IOC on Sunday officially admitted the possibility of pushing back the quadrennial event, saying it will examine various scenarios, adding that it will finalize discussions “within the next four weeks.” “These scenarios relate to modifying existing operational plans for the games to go ahead on 24 July 2020, and also for changes to the start date of the games,” the IOC said in a statement. Speaking at a press conference, organizing committee CEO Toshiro Muto said reviewing the possibilities, including postponement, is “not easy” and the organizers are open to “all options.” Mori said some of the challenges organizers will face in terms of postponement include handling the costs of delaying and the availability of venues. Meanwhile, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike told reporters, “(The IOC) clearly stated that cancellation will not happen, and I am glad to share that view.” “There are lots of issues, but I would like to discuss possible scenarios over the next four weeks with the IOC and the organizing committee,” she said. “The Tokyo Games now have another goal, to defeat the novel coronavirus.” Mori said local organizers will decide in the coming days whether to go ahead with the opening of the domestic leg of the torch relay in Fukushima Prefecture on Thursday, as developments surrounding the pandemic have been changing rapidly. Mori added that Bach told him that the Japanese organizers have the authority to make decisions about the domestic leg of the torch relay. Members of the organizing committee revealed Monday they may drastically reduce the scale of the torch relay, including canceling the participation of members of the public. Under modified plans, the Olympic flame may be carried by car in the initial stages of the relay. Muto and Olympics minister Seiko Hashimoto each said Monday the relay will proceed as planned for the moment. Mori also revealed that Abe is now reluctant to attend the kick-off ceremony since the Japanese government has been requesting people refrain from holding large events to prevent the spread of the virus. Olympic torchbearers in Japan expressed concerns over the IOC’s new direction. Both runners and spectators of the relay would be half-hearted. I wonder whether they will let us run again if (the sporting event) is postponed,” said 66-year-old Yumiko Nishimoto, who is scheduled to run in Fukushima on Thursday as one of the 10,000 torchbearers in Japan. The 121-day Japanese leg is scheduled to kick off at the J-Village soccer training center, which served as a frontline base of operations to battle the 2011 nuclear crisis caused by the March 11 quake-tsunami disaster that year. A decision on postponement “should be made before the torch relay starts,” Nishimoto said. “I have mixed feelings as I feel that we are being messed around.” The global coronavirus pandemic has cast a cloud over the hosting of the Tokyo Olympics from July 24 to Aug. 9 and the Paralympics from Aug. 25 to Sep. 6. In recent days, national Olympic committees in Brazil, Norway and the Netherlands have called for postponements. Japanese government officials have repeatedly said preparations are under way for the games to go ahead as scheduled, and the flame for the Olympics arrived on Friday in Japan. During a videoconference with other leaders from the Group of Seven industrialized nations earlier in the month, Abe secured support for holding “complete” games, meaning they should be held with spectators and without any downsizing. “I think U.S. President (Donald) Trump and other G-7 leaders will support my decision,” Abe said in the parliamentary session. |
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U.S. nuclear industry exploits coronavirus crisis, seeks tax-payer grants
Nuclear Industry Effort to Exploit Coronavirus Crisis for Backdoor Bailout Decried as ‘Disaster Capitalism at its Worst’ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/23/nuclear-industry-effort-exploit-coronavirus-crisis-backdoor-bailout-decried-disaster
“The nuclear industry begged for a bailout last fall and is now using coronavirus to try and brazenly grab more cash,” warned Friends of the Earth. by Andrea Germanos, staff writer, Jon Queally, staff writer
According to E&E News, which focuses on the energy industry, the request came in a letter sent to congressional leaders and White House officials on Friday by Nuclear Energy Institute president and CEO Maria Korsnick.
In addition to other forms of aid—including sick leave for employees and “prioritized access” to testing and masks—the letter requested taxpayer-funded grants in the form of broad tax credits and waivers for existing regulatory fees.
“Our member companies are anticipating—or are already experiencing—severe financial strain as product orders are delayed or canceled, as industrial electricity demand falls, and as workforce availability becomes increasingly constrained,” Krosnick wrote to in a letter sent to lawmakers, Treasury Sectary Steven Mnuchin, and Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council.
In reaction, Friends of the Earth senior policy analyst Lukas Ross called the request a bald effort to exploit the current outbreak and economic downturn to obtain the same kind of financial bailout it has repeatedly sought from the U.S. government in recent years.
“Demanding a $23 billion gift from taxpayers during an unprecedented public health crisis sets a new low bar,” said Lukas Ross, senior policy analyst with Friends of the Earth. “The nuclear industry begged for a bailout last fall and is now using coronavirus to try and brazenly grab more cash.”
The industry proposal, added Ross, “would hurt ratepayers and the climate at a time when immediate need for people must be the first priority. The nuclear lobby should be ashamed. This is disaster capitalism at its worst.”
Bill McKibben on the Virus and the Climate Movement
The Tyee talks to the prominent activist and author about fighting on two fronts. Geoff Dembicki 23 Mar 20 | TheTyee.ca
Geoff Dembicki reports for The Tyee. His work also appears in Vice, Foreign Policy and the New York Times. A few weeks ago, this was looking like a big year for Canada’s climate movement.
After years of grassroots opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline in B.C., an eruption of rail blockades across the country in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en natural gas fight and Teck Resources shelving a major new oil sands mine for economic reasons, all the conditions seemed there to push for economy-transforming policies on the scale of the Green New Deal.
Then the coronavirus hit.
At a time when climate leaders in Canada, the U.S. and Europe imagined millions of people on the streets pressuring financial institutions to ditch fossil fuels and forcing political leaders to enact bold legislation, people are now fearful and physically alone, stuck in their homes to prevent a public health catastrophe as outside ecosystems veer towards collapse.
To help Tyee readers make sense of this new reality, we reached out to author and activist Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate group 350 and a global authority on what must be done to fight the climate emergency. It was McKibben who wrote the book The End of Nature about climate change in 1989 that put the threat firmly on the public radar.
On the impact of coronavirus on the climate movement:
In a conversation that has been edited for length and clarity, he urges Canadians to pressure politicians to keep the climate emergency front and centre as we navigate this crisis, while using these terrifying and inexplicable times as a chance to reflect on the fairer and more sustainable world we must build after the crisis is over.
On the similarities between coronavirus and climate change:
There’s a sense in which something like coronavirus is like climate change except encapsulated in a few months instead of a few decades…The biggest difference is that there’s no enormous industry that gets rich off of coronavirus, so there’s not like a built-in opposition to doing what needs to be done and that’s always been one of the problems with climate change.
On how coronavirus is helping kill off the fossil fuel industry:
One thing that’s happening I think is that last year will mark the peak of fossil fuel demand. I don’t think fossil fuels will be able to recover to the point they were at before. I can’t imagine anyone deciding that what they’re going to invest their money now in is another tar sands mine. I find it hard to imagine that even the Canadian government is going to want to spend $12 billion to build its pipeline out to Burnaby. I think we’re going to be reminded that there are other more important things to spend money on.
It seems to me that probably some of the landscape of oil and gas is getting rewritten even as we watch. That is a direct testament to the power of protest and organization over this last decade and to the incredible work of people, especially Indigenous organizers, pushing this case for a very long time. And it’s gotten through. Earlier this winter, the decision of investors that they weren’t going to throw more money into the Teck Frontier mine was a kind of bell ringing and those echoes will reverberate for a long time.
On the message Canadians should send to businesspeople and politicians:
I do think that the best thing for people to be doing in North America at the moment is to be putting huge pressure on the banks and financial institutions that fund fossil fuels, like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, Liberty Mutual, RBC, all the Toronto banks, reminding them that it’s not ok to be trying to profit off the end of the world.
Some of these banks are going to need bailouts as the economy tanks and it should be pretty clear that we should not be bailing out them without making sure that they’re not going to contribute to the next even larger crisis facing the planet. https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/03/22/How-The-Virus-Has-Hit-Climate-Movement-McKibben/
Sellafield nuclear facility cuts back drastically on staff working onsite
In Cumbria 22nd March 2020, Sellafield is telling the vast majority of its workers to stay away from its main site and satellite offices and to work from home. Mark Neate,
director of environment, safety and security with Sellafield Ltd, has told
employees: “We will minimise attendance at all of our sites and wherever
possible everyone should continue (or start) working from home.
https://www.in-cumbria.com/news/18325910.sellafield-workforce-told-stay-home/
Canada pushing Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, but the outlook for uranium/nuclear industry is bleak
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Nuclear power, and Canada’s uranium industry, are struggling to find their place in a green energy future, CIM Magazine, 23 Mar , 2020 NuScale Power submitted its small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) design to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for a pre-licensing vendor design review. This came just over a month after the leaders of three Canadian provinces – Ontario premier Doug Ford, New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs and Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe – signed a memorandum of understanding to develop SMRs in their respective provinces.
…….Canada entering into a collaboration with the United States to secure supply lines for several critical minerals, uranium included reinforces that idea.
That would be good news for the uranium industry, as Canada is the world’s second-largest producer of the fuel source for these powerplants. But Cameco, the country’s largest uranium company, suspended production indefinitely at its flagship MacArthur River/Key Lake mine in July 2018, and the spot price of uranium is one-third of what it was back in 2011. That was before the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor in Japan, when an earthquake and tsunami triggered the release of radioactive materials.
In 2018, supply and demand became more balanced, but only as a result of “substantial production cuts, cuts to some secondary supplies, reductions in inventories and an increase in demand for uranium,” said Rachelle Girard, vice-president of investor relations for Cameco. “Despite these improvements, it is no secret that today’s uranium market remains discretionary.”
Many nuclear reactors in Japan remain shut down following the Fukushima meltdown and countries such as Germany and South Korea are proceeding with nuclear phase-out programs in favour of alternative sources of energy, such as natural gas. The IEA agency projects that without a major turnaround in plant construction and refurbishments, nuclear power generation will continue to decline, making the share of energy required from renewable sources even larger than it would otherwise be……..
“The main problem with nuclear… is that it’s too slow and too costly,” said Gordon Edwards, co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. “It takes too long to get new nuclear implanted. You’re looking at 10 to 20 years, even with one of these small modular reactors – and the cost is prohibitive. Other [options] are both much faster and much cheaper, the first and foremost of those being greater energy efficiency.”……..
shifting public sentiment might help lower resistance to nuclear projects, other trends are not as encouraging. The average age of the nuclear fleet in advanced economies is 35-years-old, according to the IEA, and 25 per cent of that existing nuclear capacity is expected to shut down by 2025.
Canada has invested in multiple programs aimed to promote the use of nuclear energy domestically and internationally. “… Canada is also a participant in “Mission Innovation,” a global initiative to accelerate public and private clean energy innovation, and unveiled its “SMR Roadmap,” a 10-month engagement process with the industry and end-users, in December 2018. …..
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Why using hydrogen to supply heating would be a terrible choice
energy. Even if the hydrogen was sourced from renewable energy (and not much of it will be) the result would be a grandiose waste of renewable energy. This is because using hydrogen from renewable energy to heat buildings is around four times less energy efficient compared to using heat pumps (using renewable electricity) to supply heating in buildings.
enough to 100 per cent. Second, such a programme will provide support for a continued fossil fuel industry. A third reason is that using ‘blue’ hydrogen, in as much as it succeeds in paving the way for supply of renewable hydrogen, will lock in a huge wastage of renewable energy
compared to using this renewable energy much more efficiently.
http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2020/03/why-using-hydrogen-to-supply-heating.html
No place for atomic power amidst climate chaos and pandemics
Nuclear lessons from the corona virus March 22, 2020 by beyondnuclearinternational
There is nothing like being shut in your own home, alone with your human and animal nearest-and-dearests, to focus the mind on the crises that now swirl outside.
And it is “crises” in the plural, because while all the focus is of course on the corona virus, there is one giant crisis steamrollering toward us that will wreak orders of magnitude more devastation, but somehow does not merit the same kind of emergency action. And that, of course, is climate change.
Denial seems to be one of the greatest of human achievements. It’s also why we have nuclear power. It will be too cheap to meter. An accident will never happen. We will solve the radioactive waste problem later.
With the climate crisis upon us, it should be patently obvious that building new nuclear power plants anywhere is not an intelligent plan. Sea level rise is a certainty, and fires, flooding, storm surges, and earthquakes are likely to increase both in frequency and force. Building power plants that contain an inventory of long-lived lethally radioactive fuel in such an environment is insane. And then to build them on shorelines, as is currently happening at Hinkley, and is threatened for similar settings at Sizewell and possibly Wylfa — all of them in the UK— is irresponsible in the extreme.
The covid-19 crisis almost certainly won’t be the last such Biblical-style plague to strike us. If we fail to learn our lesson this time around, we will be equally unprepared and again forced to quarantine ourselves and call workforces home. But while wind turbines will keep spinning and solar arrays will continue to collect sunlight without any help from us, workers cannot leave a nuclear power plant untended. Knowing this, why build an installation that cannot be safely abandoned?
The answer, of course, is money. But not the industry’s money. Ours. We are the ones who will pay to keep nuclear plants running, and to build new ones……….
The French government is on record as saying that without Hinkley and Sizewell, the French nuclear brand will be finished. It sees the UK projects as an essential redemptive step, given the EPR, its supposed flagship, has so far been a financial and technical shipwreck.
As the Financial Times pointed out in May 2018, “Avoiding delays in the UK will be crucial if EDF is to persuade international buyers — and its own shareholders, not least the French government — that the EPR’s teething problems are over.” ……..
Maybe all of us, becalmed and decelerated, will start to come to our senses. We may see climate changes for the better as we stop flying and driving and cruise-shipping and needlessly consuming, while factories are idled and our air quality improves. The wake-up call comes at a terrible price. But the bigger cost could be everything. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2020/03/22/nuclear-lessons-from-the-corona-virus/
Global warming influence on extreme weather events has been frequently underestimated
 Global warming influence on extreme weather events has been frequently underestimated, Science Daily, March 18, 2020
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Coronavirus posing a safety threat to Britain’s nuclear facilities
NFLA 20th March 2020, The unprecedented public health crisis that is associated with the global outbreak and spread of coronavirus is affecting all communities across the UK and Ireland. NFLA has specific concerns around its impact on the sensitive nuclear sector. In the past few days, the Sellafield site has announced that its Magnox reprocessing site operations will be suspended after workers on the facility tested positive for coronavirus.
A Daily Mail report has also suggested there could be as many as 20 positive cases of
coronavirus on the HM Nuclear Base Clyde, where Trident submarines hosting the UK’s nuclear weapons programme are stationed. The Daily Mail report suggests as well that a quarantining facility is to be built on the Faslane site. As independent nuclear policy consultant David Lowry has commented:
“This raises the question of how well protected are our critical national nuclear installations – including nuclear submarine bases, nuclear weapons manufacturing plants such as AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield near Reading in Berkshire and civil nuclear power plants and associate nuclear fuel chain facilities such as Sellafield in Cumbria and Capenhurst in
Cheshire – from being overwhelmed by a rapid spread of a virus without any known antidote vaccine?”
Meet the Climate Science Deniers Who Downplayed COVID-19 Risks
 Meet the Climate Science Deniers Who Downplayed COVID-19 Risks https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/03/16/climate-science-deniers-downplayed-covid-19-cato-acsh-aei?utm_source=DeSmog%20Weekly%20Newsletter By Sharon Kelly • Monday, March 16, 2020 On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the outbreak of novel coronavirus 2019, which causes the disease COVID-19, was officially a “public health emergency of international concern.” At the time, there were cases confirmed in 19 countries and deaths in China had reached 170.
The very next day, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) published an article titled, “Coronavirus in the U.S.: How Bad Will It Be?” “Is coronavirus worse than the flu?” it began. “No, not even close.” “It already has spread from person-to-person in the U.S., but it probably won’t go far,” ACSH added. “And the American healthcare system is excellent at dealing with this sort of problem.” ACSH is one of several organizations promoting climate science denial that are now spreading misinformation on the coronavirus, with potentially deadly consequences. American Council on Science and Health?The ACSH presents itself to the public as a proponent of “peer-reviewed mainstream science,” in the words of the organization’s mission. Their experts have frequently been quoted in mainstream newspapers and magazines, and they pen columns criticizing journalists who write critically about companies like Monsanto. The group has received funding from oil giants including ExxonMobil, as well as from the agribusiness, chemical and tobacco industries to name a few. When it comes to climate change, ACSH has published a steady stream of articles downplaying climate science and criticizing efforts to slow carbon emissions — even in the face of a mountain of peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis. ACSH slammed the medical journal The Lancet as “an ideologically driven outlet with a very clear political agenda where being sensationalist and culturally woke trumps evidence and reasonability” (after the Lancet published an article titled “The carbon footprint”). The purported “pro-science” advocacy group has labeled Greta Thunberg’s activism “doomsday prophesying.” It has (falsely) suggested that climate change is less of a concern because “more people die in winter than in summer” (they don’t). And that’s all just in the past nine months. The ACSH’s stance against climate action dates back to at least 1997. When it comes to coronavirus, now a global pandemic, ACSH’s authors rushed to judgment. They assured readers that there was little to worry about, and put some of the same faulty thinking that underlies their stance on climate change on display. ACSH isn’t alone. Other organizations that have also engaged in climate science denial made similar missteps on COVID-19, including prominent organizations that fanned the flames of conspiracy theories or confidently promoted complacency when circumstances required rapid action. To be clear: No one should be faulted for failing to foresee precisely how severe of a problem COVID-19 would prove to be. None of us has a crystal ball and few, if any, expected this situation to unfold in this particular way. But these organizations published positions that not only wound up being laden with false reassurances, but they did so based on claims that they made confidently at the time that now appear to have been false or misleading. Defending Conspiracy Theorists Continue reading |
6 Ways Trump’s Denial of Science Has Delayed the Response to COVID-19 (and Climate Change)
6 Ways Trump’s Denial of Science Has Delayed the Response to COVID-19 (and Climate Change) https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19032020/denial-climate-change-coronavirus-donald-trump Misinformation, blame, wishful thinking and making up facts are favorite techniques. Katelyn Weisbrod, 20 Mar 20
Wishing Away the Science.
Coronavirus Feb. 28, 2020 “[Coronavirus is] going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview on CNN that the virus was likely here to stay, possibly for months.
Climate Change September 2015“I’m not a believer in global warming, I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. It could be warming and it’s gonna start to cool at some point.”
The scientific consensus is clear that global warming is happening and is a threat to the planet; The New York Times illustrates the basics of global warming and climate change here.
Misusing Scientific Data
Coronavirus Feb. 10, 2020 “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat—as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though.”
Some coronaviruses are seasonal. But scientists still don’t know whether the virus that causes COVID-19 will be. Findings of a recent study suggest that the virus is spreading most readily in cooler temperature zones, The Washington Post reports; however, the study does not conclude from that evidence that the virus will be significantly reduced in the summer.
Climate Change Nov. 11, 2019 “You know, I actually heard the other day, some pretty good politician. I’ve seen him around for a long time. Nice white hair. Everything is like central casting. You could put the guy in a movie. He was talking. I don’t know if he believes this—but he was a Democrat—he said, ‘We have 11 years.’ It’s the first time I’ve heard it; I heard 12. But now, see, it’s been a year, so now they think we have 11 years to live. I don’t know, folks. I think these people have gone totally loco.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report in 2018 that said global carbon emissions would need to be cut by 45 percent by 2030 to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius. This does not mean we have 11 years to live, as Trump asserted, but rather 11 years to shift energy production away from fossil fuels to keep warming within the goals of the Paris accord.
Making Stuff Up
Coronavirus March 6, 2020 “Anybody that needs a test can have a test. They are all set. They have them out there. In addition to that they are making millions more as we speak but as of right now and yesterday anybody that needs a test that is the important thing…”
Contrary to Trump’s assertion, patients and health care workers were complaining that they could not get access to coronavirus tests. A few days later, testifying to a House committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, acknowledged tests were not yet widely available. “The idea of anybody getting it
easily the way people in other countries are doing it—we’re not set up for that,” he said.
Climate Change Sept. 4, 2019 In September, 2019, Trump showed the press an image of Dorian’s projected trajectory that had apparently been altered using a Sharpie to include Alabama in the path of the storm.
Earlier, Trump had tweeted that Alabama would probably be hit by Hurricane Dorian. The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, then contradicted the president with a tweet saying Alabama was not at risk. Trump used the altered image a few days later.
Blaming China
Coronavirus March 18, 2020 on Twitter “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the ‘borders’ from China—against the wishes of almost all. Many lives were saved. The Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false!”
Trump has been urged to stop calling COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus,” a term he has used repeatedly and that some have called racist and dangerous. And many public health experts have criticized the administration’s lack of preparation and failure to act quickly when the virus was first recognized.
Climate Change Nov. 6, 2012 on Twitter
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
There is a widespread scientific consensus about the reality of human-driven global warming.
Blaming the Democrats
Coronavirus Feb. 28, 2020 “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it … And this is their new hoax.”
By this time, the U.S. had confirmed 60 cases of coronavirus. The CDC had already warned the public to prepare for the virus to spread, assuring them that this was not a hoax.
Climate Change Sept. 11, 2019 “Over 100 Democrats have signed up to support the $100 trillion Green New Deal. That’s a beauty. No more cows. No more planes. I guess, no more people, right?”
A Washington Post fact check shows that the Green New Deal resolution supported by most Democrats did not include mention of halting air travel or doing away with cows.
Ignoring Expert Advice
Climate Change Nov. 26, 2018, Commenting to reporters on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report saying climate change would hurt the economy.
“I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, it’s fine. Yeah, I don’t believe it.”
The report, produced by climate experts and Trump’s own administration, said climate change would damage the economy.
Coronavirus March 13, 2020 during a press conference on the coronavirus. Trump is seen shaking hands with Walgreens president Richard Ashworth, despite CDC warnings that shaking hands can spread the virus and recommending elbow bumps instead.
Coronavirus is scary. Secret, silent, radioactive pollution is also scary
Regina McKenzie Fight To Stop A Nuclear Waste Dump In South Australia, 20 Mar 20,
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 