For sure they can. Someone with an appeal to power will take advantage of these people and tell everyone how smart the decisions are (s)he is making and that everybody else should shut up.
The reason wood is considered neutral is, that most of the wood is used for construction and other stuff. If you burn it and happen to burn fossil fuel as well, nothing is neutral.
No, it's considered neutral because you plant more of it to replace the trees you cut down (not because you are trying to save the world, just because you have some land that's suitable for growing a sustainable commercial forest).
Over the life cycle of the tree from planting to burning, it's carbon neutral, though the shape of it for any given tree is 20 years of carbon sequestration followed by 20 minutes of carbon release.
1. Not nearly enough trees are being planted to offset the ones being cut down.
2. Neutral on a scale of 30 years doesn't much matter when we have to reduce the degree to which we're accelerating a highly non-linear climate change process right now.
But also perfect is the enemy of good. If wood pellets stop us burning coal in the short term while we transition to a carbon-neutral future, then that's surely a good thing.
That is the point where someone bring up photos from almost 100 years ago and make comparison photo of today and notice the obvious: there is a lot more trees in the old photos.
Not 100 years ago, maybe in urban areas that got converted to buildings, but overall, forest acreage in the U.S. has been flat for the past 100 years. If you go back to early 1800s, that would have been a time when acreage was about 25% higher: https://www.fia.fs.fed.us/library/brochures/docs/2012/Forest...
Obviously I don't mean perfectly flat, when we're talking an organic, dynamic system. The trend is flat. See page 7 of the document I linked from the USDA. Even the page you link shows: 766,000,000 acres (3,100,000 km2) in 2012 and 721,000,000 acres (2,920,000 km2) around 1920. Note: "The majority of deforestation took place prior to 1910"
What kind of vehicles do you use to move the lumber from the farm to market, how are the pellet factories powered, and what kind of vehicles are used to move the bulk pellets from US to UK ports?
Growing a tree removes carbon from the air. That's carbon-negative. Cutting it down and using it in construction is still net-negative for the wood itself. (Though probably not when you take other energy usage into account.) In the very long run, the building might be torn down and the wood might rot or burn bringing things back to zero again.
Growing a tree, cutting it down, and burning the wood is carbon-neutral. But it's very dirty when it comes to other pollutants. A catalytic converter can help.
You are right about it being carbon neutral but only from a small frame of reference.
How is the wood cut?
How is the wood transported?
How is the wood processed?
Every one of these steps add carbon to the cycle. Some steps are minimal, others are huge; it all depends on scope.
I've heat my home with a wood-burning stove for 20-odd years. I have my own acreage and friends/family/farmers all contribute. Cutting down a tree, bringing it home, chopping it size so it fits in the stove are VERY energy intensive operations.
> Growing a tree, cutting it down, and burning the wood is carbon-neutral
It isn’t though. A lot of energy is used planting then maintaining a forest for 30 years, cutting it down, processing it then shipping it.
When timber is used in the building industry it’s a bit better but it is still notoriously wasteful. A lot of material goes to site and is binned - offcuts, wastage, over order and material in the wrong place.
It is because tech people think of tech solutions. Just as this whole pandemic was handled in the countries by virologists - who think in terms of viruses.
Reading about the app I remembered the book of Hans Rosling ("Factfulness") where he describes a situation in Africa during an Ebola outbreak. He wrote: There where people with apps everywhere. The apps were the hammers looking for nails. However, it just consumed resources and shadowed the fact that numbers reported were just messy and the epidemic was over 14 days ago. In the end they had to do data cleaning and they managed _Ebola_ without an app.
I think this app will make people become accustomed to getting traced for $reason.
I'd also suggest extreme attention be paid to locations with improbably low case and death reports, or where severity mix and/or mortality are strongly out of line with expectations.
The video shows a plot of "new cases", which might be measuring the rollout of testing, not the actual increase in number of people with the virus. It is also not showing data per-capita. In other words, this is not terribly useful IMO
> The video shows a plot of "new cases", which might be measuring the rollout of testing
Maybe, but probably not given how consistent the trend is over time, response, and as the disease progresses.
> It is also not showing data per-capita.
Per-capita would be much LESS representative. The virus spreads locally, at a scale far smaller than country borders. The point is to show the progression of an outbreak. If you show per-capita, you would be showing the number of outbreaks per country and minimizing the growth of any individual outbreak. For instance China, with 4x the population of the US, would be moved much farther down the graph than the US. That would only make the data look fuzzier, and convey zero useful information.
In the end it would probably be a very minimal difference given the logarithmic scale.
> or where severity mix and/or mortality are strongly out of line with expectations.
Yes, that was the only conclusion I was able to make based on Germany's data being so different in the proportion of known cases against reported deaths. Some arguments from there like to explain their results as "superior" hospitals and the "lack of hygiene" as the cause of the results of Italy, Spain, France etc. and I just don't buy it.
It seems to me rather a result of a combination of more factors: my explanation at the moment is that they already had more old people in hospitals, and that they had for a lot of such people already "diagnosed" what brought them there, not changing it now when they die. As we see from the user
nathell reporting from Poland, they are not the only land with such an idea.
It earns them short term prestige for "superior" health system, but it obscures what's going on. If they manage to keep doing this with the newly admitted cases remains at the moment unknown.
The real story behind all the graphs, anyway, is not in the numbers which we can see from the statistics of "reported cases" or "deaths", but those that are only to read between the lines, and which are the actual causes for all the measures introduced by all the countries, and that is for the countries at the start:
- how far are they from the health system being overflown
and for the countries where it progressed:
- how many people are without necessary medical care due to the health system not being able to handle, and how many people die due to that.
Both of those are something that the countries would rather not directly report. So that's why, from some point on, the only conclusion we will be able to reliably have would be possible if we'd be able to have the actual death statistics (including the cases not claimed to be Covid-19 cases) and compare these statistics with the statistics in the "normal times." All surges are then surely indirectly (due to the disruption of all the country's systems) and directly caused by Covid-19, even if they aren't reported as such.
Back to the data we have now, I also find the ft.com graphics the best on the web at the moment.
The log-log graph from this title is only useful post-factum and I don't agree with its current advantages claimed in the video at the moment. It is obscuring the current severe issues in most of the countries:
Contrary to the claims of the video, at the moment, most of the countries indeed should look at the charts of log of whatever on the y axis against the linear time on the x axis. With the doubling time of around 3 days, that means that whichever capacities you manage to provide, like hospital beds, or more health workers, whenever you double them, that "advantage" disappears in just three more days.
Linear time on x axis is the only sensible choice. The charts should allow us having some idea what the future brings.
> Some arguments from there like to explain their results as "superior" hospitals and the "lack of hygiene" as the cause of the results of Italy, Spain, France etc. and I just don't buy it.
That sounds pretty wrong, and it's not what I've been hearing here in Germany. The "official" story is that testing ramped up earlier relative to when the outbreak started, and that through luck so far the virus hasn't infected many retirement homes and old people in general. [0]
If you break down cases / deaths in Germany by state and by district, you find that the districts that had big outbreaks the earliest also have the highest death rate now.
Heinsberg, the original hotspot, is now at something around 2.5% [1]. So I think it really is consistent with the story that testing started relatively earlier so fewer cases were missed, at least initially (there are reports now that non-symptomatic contact persons of confirmed cases are not getting tested anymore due to test shortages). This would imply that the death rate would converge to the world-wide average over time, which seems to be happening.
> That sounds pretty wrong, and it's not what I've been hearing here in Germany.
Depends on who passes you the news. My quotes are from what "Dr. Stefan Hockertz" an "immunologist" directly claimed, and there are some other German-speaking claimed experts that wrote or made similar statements, including "it's not worse than flu" even as there were so many dead in Italy and Spain -- then their argument for why it's not happening in Germany is the said "superiority" and the reason for happening in Italy their "lack of hygiene". Some of these were than repeated in some articles written in French, which I've happened to read. French were actually interested to find what is Germany doing "better." What can be seen is however, German "doctors" criticizing Italians for "reporting those who died with coronavirus as dying from coronavirus" totally ignoring the scale and speed at which that happened in Italy, Spain and France.
The said distinction was apparently often used in Germany (or not? maybe you can investigate more? I'd be very interested in what you find!) but I do believe it's misleading, I think the sudden order of magnitude surges can have only a single cause, or some equivalent. If they claim it's not this coronavirus, and the surge factually exists, then there must be some additional new illness that otherwise wasn't recognized.
I think there are some people everywhere who like to find confirmation for their nationalist prejudice in this crisis. It's wrong, but it's also just way too early to draw any conclusions. You shouldn't be proud of your achievment when you don't know what's yet to come.
For what it's worth, I just searched for "why is the mortality rate lower in germany" in french on Google [0] and I've briefly looked at most of the hits on the first page, many of them cite German experts noting exactly the points that I mentioned.
> I don't think he's expressing a view that many share.
"Many" is hard to estimate, but my impression is that there was, at least at some points of time, obvious political motivation to downplay the seriousness of the epidemics. Apparently, at the moment when even the Netherlands, also being even more "pro market" and having publicly stated "herd immunity" goal (by their prime minister), already closed the restaurants, there were still open places across the border in Germany, and at least some parts of Germany were still reluctant to admit the seriousness of the issue. By the way, I still can't find some useful timeline of the measures introduced in Germany in the
I am aware that many decisions are up to the regional institutions there, and that's why generalizing and equalizing any statement to whole Germany is by definition wrong. But we can recognize, at least, different "interests" influencing what is happening and how it is covered in the media.
In that sense, as the impact of the epidemics to Germany potentially increases, I expect the climate to be always more similar to the one in the countries which are already more seriously affected.
However blaming first southern people for being "inferior" to Germans and having "less hygiene" fails to the fertile ground there, one other relatively recent reaction was "the Spanish cucumbers are guilty" affair where the cucumbers from Spain were destroyed but eventually the cause turned out to completely originate in Germany:
"Spain consequently expressed anger about having its produce linked with the deadly E. coli outbreak, which cost Spanish exporters US$200 million per week"
Eventually it was established that the origin was "an organic farm[1] in Bienenbüttel, Lower Saxony, Germany."
> However blaming first southern people for being "inferior" to Germans and having "less hygiene" fails to the fertile ground there
I understand that you find that offensive, I do as well. But please don't generalize from statements made by fringe conspiracy theorists. That's almost as divisive as the original statement.
I don't, I specifically point exactly against the generalization:
> I am aware that many decisions are up to the regional institutions there, and that's why generalizing and equalizing any statement to whole Germany is by definition wrong.
and additionally give an example of one older affair where exactly the same prejudices that I mentioned resulted in measurable consequences.
> "Spain consequently expressed anger about having its produce linked with the deadly E. coli outbreak, which cost Spanish exporters US$200 million per week"
Is there anything that you dispute in what I've written?
If you want me to additionally support my claim that there was downplaying of the seriousness of the coronavirus epidemics, I have also:
"Of course, people will still die, but I lean out of the window and say: It could well be that in 2020 we won't have more deaths than in any other year."
"Virologe Hendrik Streeck : „Wir haben neue Symptome entdeckt“ 16.03.2020"
A virologist, less than 2 weeks ago. Two doctors openly downplaying is already a symptom to me. I can imagine that slipping to the educated politicians, but the doctors...
Regarding which deaths are reported Covid-19 in Germany, my initial observation, please see other comments in this whole topics, e.g:
"Unlike in Italy, there is currently no widespread postmortem testing for the novel coronavirus in Germany. The RKI says those who were not tested for Covid-19 in their lifetime but are suspected to have been infected with the virus “can” be tested after death, but in Germany’s decentralised health system this is not yet a routine practice."
As I also already mentioned, Germany is big with a lot of local policies which aren't unified across the federation, so let me stress it again, all that should be taken with grain of salt.
EDIT: it also appears to me that even the "debunking" of that first doctor guy didn't even try to address that he's misusing prejudices against "the southern people" etc. I haven't tied to analyze the "debunking" too carefully (not enough time) but my general impression is "oh, it's too early to tell if he is right."
What I'm saying is that this particular explanation for the apparent difference in fatality ratios of Coronavirus infections is a fringe one, and it's not right to point to that as an example of sentiment in Germany in general.
I'm not disputing any of the other things that you wrote. Distancing started in Germany on March 12, at that point it was just a legally non-binding recommendation, it became legally binding on March 16. The timing is similar to what happened in many other European countries with the exception of Italy.
Based on that, it's fair to say that the seriousness was downplayed initially, but that is pretty much universal. We knew this was going to be a global problem by mid February at the very latest.
Germany tested more and tested earlier. This allowed Germany to look into the future, nothing more.
If you look at the increase in deaths it’s pretty obvious that Germany is now catching up fast.
Testing alone obviously doesn’t do anything against the epidemic so it still remains to be seen whether everything that happened besides testing helped and whether the time won through being able to look into the future was used well.
I like this chart because it shows when various countries jumped off the trend, presumably heading towards recovery. But I agree, to be useful as a comparison it should be normalized by total population per country in addition to the testing/reporting part that you mentioned.
Additionally, it'll also show a second wave, if that starts happening anywhere.
BTW:
Carrots can be stored for very long. Here is a video how carrots are stored usually in winter time at industry scale. But you can do this at home as well:
I had the same reaction at first, but after a bit of thinking I reached this:
You can do without it, sure, but if you don't have a bidet then it's inconvenient and annoying.
Toilet paper is cheap, easy to store and it does not degrade (in a meaningful timeframe).
Basically, unless you are really space constrained, there are no downsides to having more than needed, so why not buy extra?
I say this as someone who had to go without a couple days because the stores had been cleared of any toilet paper.
Yeah, it took me a while to understand this behavior. However, it seems you can make a face mask to protect against CV-19 using toilet paper. Please do your research, I found too many links. In the situation you don't have a proper mask, a plastic mask, with holes, to keep toilet paper on your face may safe your life these days.
I don't understand it because between my girlfriend and me we seem to use about a roll per week. I thought it was because I usually take a dump at work, but even after lock down our usage doesn't seem to have changed significantly. And yes if it does run out then the shower is right next to the toilet and I have visited Nepal a few time where water is the way to clean.
(When I was young schools and public toilets always seemed to have horrendous tracing paper like stuff).
That’s what I’ve always said. If you smeared a bit of poop on your face or arm, you wouldn’t be content with just wiping it down with a thin piece of toilet paper. You’d probably shower!
It's different because I don't use my ass to open doors, type on computers, prepare/eat food, or scratch my eye. Your face and arms, however, get involved in those activities sooner or later. I don't care if my poop cannon has a bit of residue around the rim that paper can't quite remove, handling shit is literally what it does every day, and it's otherwise stowed away safely.
Granted, I bet a warm-water bidet feels fantastic and I would probably never go back if I had one.
BTW: You can use something like a small washing towel (I do not know what the proper english word is - in German it is Waschlappen). So you do not have to touch your shit:)
Well take a guess why the left hand in some regions of the world is considered dirty even there is water around to wash? Because toilet paper is seen as improper cleaning.
I've thought the same thing and after spending time in Asia I got really accustomed to using a water hose. This whole thing (among other things) has made me question the practicality of toilet paper even more, strongly considering installing a hose in the bathroom.
Remember, there’s probably a similarly high false negative rate. Also, take into account the number of people who won’t be going home, but will instead be flooding into ERs.
If you want to cause true mass hysteria and quickly overwhelm our already strained medical infrastructure, tell 10% of the population that that have SARS-CoV-2.
You need to stay home. There’s no way around it—certainly not for $20.
What you say is an argument from ignorance...but anyway: you should not imply intent if incompetence works as well. And the latter is strong in.the current US government;)
We are witnessing just that.