Much as it pains me, it is clear that I will have to post about MMT. Walk into any pet shop and the resident galah is talking about it. (Apologies to PJK). It will be unpleasant but someone will have to disabuse these cranks. Give me space to build the stomach for it.
Month: July 2020
Renewable energy – a futile decades long experiment with other peoples’ money
Reliable energy generation from renewable sources (solar, wind and hydro) has proven unattainable. Despite decades of trying, decades of subsidizing renewable energy projects using other peoples’ money, they can never work. Australia has one of the world’s largest supplies of cheap reliable proven energy: coal. Yet Government action is actively killing the coal industry to give a leg up to renewable projects. It may well end up killing the coal industry and smashing the standard of living of Australians. But we can say with certainty, that reliable energy cannot be generated by solar, wind or hydro facilities.
The serious situation of the Three Gorges Dam
In case things were not bad enough already in China, there is a serious situation rapidly turning into the risk of a catastrophe with the Three Gorges Dam. In brief, its structural integrity appears to be compromised. Combined with very high rainfall in the catchment area of the Yangtze River, the Dam is buckling and the authorities are releasing as much water as is possible to take the pressure off. But it might not be enough. Should the dam fail, it would cause a catastrophe in China.
The first impact would be humanitarian. Millions of people live and work downstream of the dam. Casualties would be large in number. The second impact would be local economic wipe out. The third would be international economic consequences. The fourth impact would be political reprisal. This is not looking good.
The rise and rise of COVID-19 recoveries
In a previous post I asked where are the deaths? This following chart goes some way to answering that in showing the rise in numbers of recoveries (worldwide data).
Move along, buddy, you’re holding up the line.
It’s time to get back to the business of life, if only our political masters would permit us. There is nothing to see anymore. The media fascination with counting each new COVID-19 case ought to be over.
What is notable from the next two charts is the shape of the curves. First, some larger countries and secondly smaller, (just to make the data easier to see).
Conclusion: the daily deaths have been falling everywhere, even bad boy Sweden, since the peak in late April. This is despite the rapidly growing number of reported cases globally for the last month.
Next, look at the excess deaths from the continuous mortality study, Euromomo, with 24 participating countries:
Conclusion: the spike in deaths, relative to normal, was 4 months ago. Also notable is that there is a spike in deaths every European winter. In 2017, the excess deaths reached 70,000 per week. In 2018 and 2019, they reached 60,000-65,000 per week. In 2020, there were two spikes: the ‘normal’ winter spike around 60,000 per week and then the COVID-19 spike reaching 90,000 per week.
Time to get back to living, working, schooling, business, socialising and recreation.
How is that renewable energy production going?
I think the short answer is thank goodness for fossil fuels. 84% of power generation in Australia this morning is due to coal and gas.
Colour legend: coal (black and brown), gas (red), wind (green), hydro (blue), solar (yellow)
Perspective
Where is the global panic about deaths from road accidents? Or HIV/AIDS? Or tuberculosis? Why is COVID-19 worthy of a 6 month on-going panic when TB doesn’t rate a mention?
Currently, the global total death toll from COVID-19 is 562,000 people. Round that out to 0.6 million.
In other news, annual deaths from road accident trauma total 1.2m people, tuberculosis also kills 1.2m people annually and HIV/AIDS is killing about 1m people each year. Each and every year.
Let’s tally up the score over the last three years in terms of aggregate deaths:
- Combined road trauma, TB and HIV/AIDS: 10.2m deaths
- COVID-19: 0.6m deaths
Why weren’t economies busted and free people locked down years ago?
A bewildered man under pressure
This is the picture of a man under pressure. He looks bewildered.
He has just announced the reintroduction of hard lockdown rules to apply to all of metropolitan Melbourne and one neighboring municipality. Back to square one. Covid19 lockdown strategy, here we go again in the State of Victoria.
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Australian Actuary 