24th February 2020 – The Corona Virus and Much More
24th February 2020 – The Corona Virus and Much More
As you read through my disparate musings, I trust you will build each one into your bigger picture of where the world is headed. That’s what I tried to do with my book, which I am still trying to get published. In the meantime, I recommend you make do with the highly readable and thought provoking Good Economics for Hard Times by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, who together won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics. As with many books on global issues, it does perhaps focus too much on America, while there is no concluding prescription on how to proceed. Nonetheless, I highly commend it to your reading.
Regular readers of these musings will know I try to list them under the headings of the major trends I have identified. I am finding it increasingly difficult to do this because of overlaps. Take the Corona Virus epidemic, for instance. The obvious place to mention it is under People Change because a global pandemic could lead to more than 100 million deaths at current mortality rates.
However, it could just as well be listed under Environment. I often refer to studies showing exposure to PM2.5 pollution causes respiratory ailments in those exposed, making them more susceptible to the Corona Virus. At the same time, the environment has gained as Chinese CO2 emissions have fallen by more than 20%, while cancelled flights and voyages have reduced transport emissions everywhere.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasing being blamed for rising unemployment, yet it is increasingly being used to speed the development of new drugs – maybe an anti-corona medication could be next. Inequality will be exacerbated as the rich access superior medical care denied to the poor. A mention of the word Globalisation makes one immediately think about international trade – which has indeed been affected by the outbreak as exports to China build up on docks and imports from China, including face masks, dry up – but infections, information and disinformation (what can I believe of the corona statistics published in my daily business paper by the Chinese Embassy, for instance) all flow just as smoothly across oceans and borders.
The Eurasia risk consulting group considers the top risks currently faced by the world are the American political system and China’s relations with the USA.
People Change:
After a ten year long study, scientists have published a catalogue of cancer mutations which will allow indications of cancer to be detected much earlier.
AI has been used to design a new antibiotic effective against 35 previously drug resistant bacteria in a much shorter time than if traditional methods had been used.
Five African countries became the first to license a highly effective Ebola vaccine, as the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo rumbles on. In Congo, Burundi, Ghana, Zambia, and Guinea,
Climate Change and the Environment:
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, January 2019 was the hottest January on record with average global land and ocean surface temperatures 1.14C above the 20th-century average. 2019 was the second hottest year for the planet’s surface since reliable measurements started. The past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years of record-keeping.
In early February 2020, Antarctica recorded a temperature of 18.3C, the highest ever recorded. Less than two weeks later temperatures in excess of 20C were recorded.
According to the IEA, global emissions of carbon dioxide in 2019 were unchanged at 33 gigatonnes even though the world economy expanded by 2.9%. This was mainly due to declining emissions from electricity generation in advanced economies as they moved to renewables; switching from coal to cleaner natural gas; and higher nuclear power generation. There was also milder weather in several countries, and slower economic growth in some emerging markets.
Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. An international team of research scientists have found there has been a substantial underreporting of methane emissions, with annual methane emissions up to 40 per cent higher than first thought. On a more positive note, Canada finalised regulations in 2018 to reduce methane emissions from upstream oil and natural gas facilities, and this year put into effect provisions to track and repair methane leaks and to limit emissions from compressors and fracked gas well completions.
A report from Greenpeace Southeast Asia and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, found that burning gas, coal and oil costs the global economy about US$ 8 billion a day and cause four million premature deaths each year (some three times the number of deaths as road traffic accidents). Children, especially those living in low-income countries, are particularly affected with an estimated 40,000 dying each year before they reach their fifth birthday because of exposure to particulate pollution from fossil fuels. An estimated 4.5 million people died in 2018 due to exposure to air pollution from fossil fuels. Fossil fuel PM2.5 pollution was responsible for 1.8 billion days of work absence, 4 million new cases of child asthma and 2 million preterm births, among other health impacts.
According to researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, sea level rise accelerated in 2019 at nearly all measurement stations along the US coastline in 2019. Generally speaking, the sea level is rising faster on the US east and Gulf coasts compared with the US west coast, partially because land on the eastern seaboard is gradually sinking.
Most beaches around Wellington in New Zealand have been closed to swimming for most of the summer due to polluted water.
Canadian researchers have found that bumblebees are in drastic decline across Europe and North America owing to hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures.
On a more positive note, Deutsche Bahn has reduced the price of long distance rail travel to encourage travellers to shift from cars and planes.
Food and Water:
Locusts have devastated crops in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, with the latter two countries losing 67% and 83% of their crops. The insects are now moving into South Sudan, Kenya and Uganda.
World almond milk production has increased 250% in five years. This is having a deleterious effect on bees used in large numbers to pollinate the nut trees.
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
According to research by Sandbag and Agora Energiewende, renewables generated more electricity than coal in the EU for the first time ever in 2019. Coal-fired generation dropped 24% leading to a 12% reduction in the power sector’s CO2 emissions. According to SolarPower Europe, some 16.7 GW of solar was installed in the EU in 2019, more than double the 8.2 GW installed in 2018. Wind capacity is expected to have expanded by about 14 GW.
Qatar’s 800 MW solar tender elicited a world record low solar power price of US$ 0.01567/kWh. A 100 MW German PV tender, five times oversubscribed, delivered a German record low solar power price of €0.0355/kWh, €0.05 lower than the previous procurement round.
India concluded the world’s largest renewables-plus-storage tender at US$0.0566595/kWh, indicating a significant move away from coal which should be a warning light to coal exporting countries including Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.
In many countries there is a concern that jobs will be lost as power systems switch from coal to renewables. The solar industry, which represents 2.6% of overall U.S. electricity generation, already employs twice as many workers there as the U.S. coal industry.
The American oil and gas fracking sector continues to face woes, with 42 exploration and production companies, whose joint debt had doubled from 2018 to a 2019 level of US$ 26 billion, filing for bankruptcy as natural gas prices plummeted and 2019 oil prices were more than 10% down on 2018. ExxonMobil and Chevron, both with American fracking operations, reported poor fourth quarter 2019 results. Oilfield service companies have also been badly hit. Energy’s weighting in the S&P 500 has dropped from 11.4% in 2010 to just 4% today.
Vancouver-based Teck Resources has withdrawn its application to build a massive oilsands project in northern Alberta.
America’s coal mining industry also faces headwinds (turning turbines!) with Morgan Stanley claiming that nearly 50GW of US coal-fired power capacity will be unable to compete against renewables by 2024
In 2019 nine nuclear power reactors in eight countries worldwide were permanently closed while the only new plants to come online were in Russia (three), China (two) and South Korea (one). The shutdowns were spread across eight countries. Only three nuclear construction projects started in 2019. The average age of the global reactor fleet passed 30 years in 2019. The International Atomic Energy Agency anticipates the closure of more than a third of current capacity by 2030.
The Bank of International Settlements, the governing body of the world's central banks, warned in a paper entitled Green Swan, that bad loans for coal based power stations and mines could spark the next financial crisis.
Japan is planning to build as many as 22 coal fired power stations which, together, would emit almost as much carbon dioxide annually as all the passenger cars sold each year in the USA.
Production of cobalt, used in batteries, has increased sevenfold since 2010. Much of the metal is mined informally by artisanal miners in the DRC who make extensive use of child labour.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
The American government has accused four Chinese military officers of stealing the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of millions of Americans in a 2017 Equifax hack. Now, as international crimes go, this would seem to be quite mild compared, say, to using drones to assassinate people in another country who disagree with you or copying all the E-mails sent in Bermuda (and where else?) as the CIA is wont to do. In fact, for decades the secretly CIA owned Swiss company Crypto sold “secure” communications software to the governments of more than 100 countries, then closely watched the flow of messages. Maybe the real reason the American government doesn’t like the idea of 5G networks using equipment from China’s Huawei is not that that the Chinese will collect data but that they will no longer be able to?
And the amount of personal data the Chinese stole is miniscule compared to the bits and bytes hoovered up by the likes of American banks, Google, Facebook, Amazon and more. The BBC published a fascinating article on all the data Amazon collects about all of us.
The latest data culprit to come to light is AVG, which more than 400,000 of us around the globe count on to protect us from viruses and other Internet nasties. It turns out that all the time they were spying on our every cyber activity and selling the data – including to Google, as if that giant doesn’t already have enough. Ironically, the last message I received from AVG before I removed their software, warned me that I was being watched!!
There is some good news good news in all of this. Competition authorities on three continents are examining Google’s proposed takeover of Fitbit - as well as all its subscribers’ personal data, of course. No doubt the authorities remember Google’s broken pledge not to integrate British health data with its own. US lawmakers have called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate companies that collect and sell consumers' personal financial data while the European Union’s Data Protection Commission has started inquiries into the data privacy practices of Google and Tinder.
A Dutch court has ordered the immediate halt of an automated surveillance system for detecting welfare fraud because it violates human rights
On a more amusing note, German artist Simon Weckert created his own virtual traffic jams on Internet traffic monitoring services by loading 99 switched on smartphones into a small cart and lugging them down a street in his village….
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
Technology improves by small increments, particularly in the energy sector, and, although I receive several updates on what applied research teams are doing each week, none on its own warrants mention in my Musings. For instance, a team of researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology have developed a new carbon-silicon material that they say could more than double the driving range of electric vehicles — and enable fast charging to more than 80 percent capacity in just five minutes.
There have been more than half a million pre-orders for the Tesla Cybertruck.
Increasing Inequality:
Australian Bureau of Statistics data show that property-owning households — where at least one of the occupants was 65 and over — had a median net worth of $960,000 while the median net worth of similar households that rent was just $40,800.
Southern Africa:
The South African government, reluctant to the last, is finally considering opening the window for new large scale renewable energy projects. In the meantime, the regulator is considering smaller applications from a number of entities including Ceres Fruit Growers and Belgotex Floor Coverings.
Coal exports through South Africa’s Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) dropped 2% to 72.15-million tons in 2019, well below the targeted 77-million tons. RBCT now relies on India for 58% of its coal exports, though increased shipments during 2019 were still not enough to prevent an overall decline. India’s coal imports were running high during 2019 but a sudden downturn towards the end of the year underlines the risk to SA coal exporters. In 2019, just 3% of all exports out of RBCT went to Europe, compared to 10% in 2018.
Ncondezi Energy, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market, is planning a 300MW coal-fired power plant in the northern province of Tete, which could be scaled up to 1,800MW in the future. Coal would be supplied from an adjacent mine. With banks increasing eschewing funding coal projects, finance, equipment and the workforce are to be supplied by China and GE.
In Kenya, the high court put a halt to the Lamu coal fired power station problem, while in most African countries low cost renewables are providing power, including Uganda where China is funding a 500 MW solar project.
As you read through my disparate musings, I trust you will build each one into your bigger picture of where the world is headed. That’s what I tried to do with my book, which I am still trying to get published. In the meantime, I recommend you make do with the highly readable and thought provoking Good Economics for Hard Times by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, who together won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics. As with many books on global issues, it does perhaps focus too much on America, while there is no concluding prescription on how to proceed. Nonetheless, I highly commend it to your reading.
Regular readers of these musings will know I try to list them under the headings of the major trends I have identified. I am finding it increasingly difficult to do this because of overlaps. Take the Corona Virus epidemic, for instance. The obvious place to mention it is under People Change because a global pandemic could lead to more than 100 million deaths at current mortality rates.
However, it could just as well be listed under Environment. I often refer to studies showing exposure to PM2.5 pollution causes respiratory ailments in those exposed, making them more susceptible to the Corona Virus. At the same time, the environment has gained as Chinese CO2 emissions have fallen by more than 20%, while cancelled flights and voyages have reduced transport emissions everywhere.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasing being blamed for rising unemployment, yet it is increasingly being used to speed the development of new drugs – maybe an anti-corona medication could be next. Inequality will be exacerbated as the rich access superior medical care denied to the poor. A mention of the word Globalisation makes one immediately think about international trade – which has indeed been affected by the outbreak as exports to China build up on docks and imports from China, including face masks, dry up – but infections, information and disinformation (what can I believe of the corona statistics published in my daily business paper by the Chinese Embassy, for instance) all flow just as smoothly across oceans and borders.
The Eurasia risk consulting group considers the top risks currently faced by the world are the American political system and China’s relations with the USA.
People Change:
After a ten year long study, scientists have published a catalogue of cancer mutations which will allow indications of cancer to be detected much earlier.
AI has been used to design a new antibiotic effective against 35 previously drug resistant bacteria in a much shorter time than if traditional methods had been used.
Five African countries became the first to license a highly effective Ebola vaccine, as the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo rumbles on. In Congo, Burundi, Ghana, Zambia, and Guinea,
Climate Change and the Environment:
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, January 2019 was the hottest January on record with average global land and ocean surface temperatures 1.14C above the 20th-century average. 2019 was the second hottest year for the planet’s surface since reliable measurements started. The past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years of record-keeping.
In early February 2020, Antarctica recorded a temperature of 18.3C, the highest ever recorded. Less than two weeks later temperatures in excess of 20C were recorded.
According to the IEA, global emissions of carbon dioxide in 2019 were unchanged at 33 gigatonnes even though the world economy expanded by 2.9%. This was mainly due to declining emissions from electricity generation in advanced economies as they moved to renewables; switching from coal to cleaner natural gas; and higher nuclear power generation. There was also milder weather in several countries, and slower economic growth in some emerging markets.
Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. An international team of research scientists have found there has been a substantial underreporting of methane emissions, with annual methane emissions up to 40 per cent higher than first thought. On a more positive note, Canada finalised regulations in 2018 to reduce methane emissions from upstream oil and natural gas facilities, and this year put into effect provisions to track and repair methane leaks and to limit emissions from compressors and fracked gas well completions.
A report from Greenpeace Southeast Asia and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, found that burning gas, coal and oil costs the global economy about US$ 8 billion a day and cause four million premature deaths each year (some three times the number of deaths as road traffic accidents). Children, especially those living in low-income countries, are particularly affected with an estimated 40,000 dying each year before they reach their fifth birthday because of exposure to particulate pollution from fossil fuels. An estimated 4.5 million people died in 2018 due to exposure to air pollution from fossil fuels. Fossil fuel PM2.5 pollution was responsible for 1.8 billion days of work absence, 4 million new cases of child asthma and 2 million preterm births, among other health impacts.
According to researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, sea level rise accelerated in 2019 at nearly all measurement stations along the US coastline in 2019. Generally speaking, the sea level is rising faster on the US east and Gulf coasts compared with the US west coast, partially because land on the eastern seaboard is gradually sinking.
Most beaches around Wellington in New Zealand have been closed to swimming for most of the summer due to polluted water.
Canadian researchers have found that bumblebees are in drastic decline across Europe and North America owing to hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures.
On a more positive note, Deutsche Bahn has reduced the price of long distance rail travel to encourage travellers to shift from cars and planes.
Food and Water:
Locusts have devastated crops in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, with the latter two countries losing 67% and 83% of their crops. The insects are now moving into South Sudan, Kenya and Uganda.
World almond milk production has increased 250% in five years. This is having a deleterious effect on bees used in large numbers to pollinate the nut trees.
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
According to research by Sandbag and Agora Energiewende, renewables generated more electricity than coal in the EU for the first time ever in 2019. Coal-fired generation dropped 24% leading to a 12% reduction in the power sector’s CO2 emissions. According to SolarPower Europe, some 16.7 GW of solar was installed in the EU in 2019, more than double the 8.2 GW installed in 2018. Wind capacity is expected to have expanded by about 14 GW.
Qatar’s 800 MW solar tender elicited a world record low solar power price of US$ 0.01567/kWh. A 100 MW German PV tender, five times oversubscribed, delivered a German record low solar power price of €0.0355/kWh, €0.05 lower than the previous procurement round.
India concluded the world’s largest renewables-plus-storage tender at US$0.0566595/kWh, indicating a significant move away from coal which should be a warning light to coal exporting countries including Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.
In many countries there is a concern that jobs will be lost as power systems switch from coal to renewables. The solar industry, which represents 2.6% of overall U.S. electricity generation, already employs twice as many workers there as the U.S. coal industry.
The American oil and gas fracking sector continues to face woes, with 42 exploration and production companies, whose joint debt had doubled from 2018 to a 2019 level of US$ 26 billion, filing for bankruptcy as natural gas prices plummeted and 2019 oil prices were more than 10% down on 2018. ExxonMobil and Chevron, both with American fracking operations, reported poor fourth quarter 2019 results. Oilfield service companies have also been badly hit. Energy’s weighting in the S&P 500 has dropped from 11.4% in 2010 to just 4% today.
Vancouver-based Teck Resources has withdrawn its application to build a massive oilsands project in northern Alberta.
America’s coal mining industry also faces headwinds (turning turbines!) with Morgan Stanley claiming that nearly 50GW of US coal-fired power capacity will be unable to compete against renewables by 2024
In 2019 nine nuclear power reactors in eight countries worldwide were permanently closed while the only new plants to come online were in Russia (three), China (two) and South Korea (one). The shutdowns were spread across eight countries. Only three nuclear construction projects started in 2019. The average age of the global reactor fleet passed 30 years in 2019. The International Atomic Energy Agency anticipates the closure of more than a third of current capacity by 2030.
The Bank of International Settlements, the governing body of the world's central banks, warned in a paper entitled Green Swan, that bad loans for coal based power stations and mines could spark the next financial crisis.
Japan is planning to build as many as 22 coal fired power stations which, together, would emit almost as much carbon dioxide annually as all the passenger cars sold each year in the USA.
Production of cobalt, used in batteries, has increased sevenfold since 2010. Much of the metal is mined informally by artisanal miners in the DRC who make extensive use of child labour.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
The American government has accused four Chinese military officers of stealing the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of millions of Americans in a 2017 Equifax hack. Now, as international crimes go, this would seem to be quite mild compared, say, to using drones to assassinate people in another country who disagree with you or copying all the E-mails sent in Bermuda (and where else?) as the CIA is wont to do. In fact, for decades the secretly CIA owned Swiss company Crypto sold “secure” communications software to the governments of more than 100 countries, then closely watched the flow of messages. Maybe the real reason the American government doesn’t like the idea of 5G networks using equipment from China’s Huawei is not that that the Chinese will collect data but that they will no longer be able to?
And the amount of personal data the Chinese stole is miniscule compared to the bits and bytes hoovered up by the likes of American banks, Google, Facebook, Amazon and more. The BBC published a fascinating article on all the data Amazon collects about all of us.
The latest data culprit to come to light is AVG, which more than 400,000 of us around the globe count on to protect us from viruses and other Internet nasties. It turns out that all the time they were spying on our every cyber activity and selling the data – including to Google, as if that giant doesn’t already have enough. Ironically, the last message I received from AVG before I removed their software, warned me that I was being watched!!
There is some good news good news in all of this. Competition authorities on three continents are examining Google’s proposed takeover of Fitbit - as well as all its subscribers’ personal data, of course. No doubt the authorities remember Google’s broken pledge not to integrate British health data with its own. US lawmakers have called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate companies that collect and sell consumers' personal financial data while the European Union’s Data Protection Commission has started inquiries into the data privacy practices of Google and Tinder.
A Dutch court has ordered the immediate halt of an automated surveillance system for detecting welfare fraud because it violates human rights
On a more amusing note, German artist Simon Weckert created his own virtual traffic jams on Internet traffic monitoring services by loading 99 switched on smartphones into a small cart and lugging them down a street in his village….
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
Technology improves by small increments, particularly in the energy sector, and, although I receive several updates on what applied research teams are doing each week, none on its own warrants mention in my Musings. For instance, a team of researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology have developed a new carbon-silicon material that they say could more than double the driving range of electric vehicles — and enable fast charging to more than 80 percent capacity in just five minutes.
There have been more than half a million pre-orders for the Tesla Cybertruck.
Increasing Inequality:
Australian Bureau of Statistics data show that property-owning households — where at least one of the occupants was 65 and over — had a median net worth of $960,000 while the median net worth of similar households that rent was just $40,800.
Southern Africa:
The South African government, reluctant to the last, is finally considering opening the window for new large scale renewable energy projects. In the meantime, the regulator is considering smaller applications from a number of entities including Ceres Fruit Growers and Belgotex Floor Coverings.
Coal exports through South Africa’s Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) dropped 2% to 72.15-million tons in 2019, well below the targeted 77-million tons. RBCT now relies on India for 58% of its coal exports, though increased shipments during 2019 were still not enough to prevent an overall decline. India’s coal imports were running high during 2019 but a sudden downturn towards the end of the year underlines the risk to SA coal exporters. In 2019, just 3% of all exports out of RBCT went to Europe, compared to 10% in 2018.
Ncondezi Energy, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market, is planning a 300MW coal-fired power plant in the northern province of Tete, which could be scaled up to 1,800MW in the future. Coal would be supplied from an adjacent mine. With banks increasing eschewing funding coal projects, finance, equipment and the workforce are to be supplied by China and GE.
In Kenya, the high court put a halt to the Lamu coal fired power station problem, while in most African countries low cost renewables are providing power, including Uganda where China is funding a 500 MW solar project.
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