On Sunday’s Velshi show, one day after MSNBC host Ali Velshi recommended using the coronavirus pandemic to push for more welfare programs in the U.S. to fix capitalism, he devoted a segment to talking up the possibility of also using the deadly pandemic to pressure the airline and fossil-fuel industries to adhere to more regulations to affect climate change.
At 9:51 a.m. Eastern, Velshi took the time to note “silver linings” in the epidemic:
ALI VELSHI: It’s been a hard couple of hours of TV to watch on a weekend morning. With this ongoing national crisis, it can be hard to find silver linings when there’s nothing but a dark cloud above you, but we think we found one or two. Take a look at these images — the waterways in Venice, Italy, have gone from dark cloudy to clear after the countrywide quarantine. How? Because less canal traffic means an absence of sediment.
He then added:
VELSHI: The European Space Agency says countries practicing lockdowns like Italy, seen here, are seeing a significant drop in air pollution, specifically dioxide emissions — kind of why the price of oil is down as much as it is. Researchers have also found pollution from nitrogen dioxide in China has fallen by 40 percent.
After bringing aboard former Obama administration EPA administrator Gina McCarthy as a guest, Velshi fretted:
VELSHI: I guess I am a little worried that the discussions — the very active and regular discussions that you and I and others would have about climate on a very regular basis have been pushed aside a little bit by coronavirus, and maybe some of the strides that we are making on a matter that is going to effect our health for decades to come is getting sidelined a little bit.
In her response, McCarthy claimed that climate change is as serious a “crisis” as is the deadly coronavirus epidemic.
A bit later, Velshi pushed for regulation on what he viewed as those who contribute to climate change as he followed up:
VELSHI: “…but this may be the opportunity for us to stop the subsidies that we provide to that industry or at least impose conditions to say, “It’s always too hard and too expensive to go green — we’re now going to do things that are going to be really hard and really expensive — let’s do it.”
McCarthy talked up pushing the airlines to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Read rest at NewsBusters
First off, there is no death toll from climate change, particularly as the globe is not warming, but doing nothing or actively cooling. Attribution of the effects of a little warming are cobbled up out of thin air and even thinner “science.”
That said, someone explain to me why the flu season is not declared a “pandemic” every year. It goes around the world and kills 800+ thousand people a year. What kind of idiots are we to react so radically when someone claims to have a specific test for one of a salad of flu viruses. If this test was not here, the illness and deaths from this one virus would be not even a blip in the flu season statistics. Worrying about a burning match while the building burns seems horribly hypocritical.
Furthermore, the Covid “tests” have never been verified to be even specific for this virus. No real testing of the various tests has been done. There has been no lab that has definitively isolated, let alone sequenced, this virus. Very likely, they are going on the basis of genetic markers, which are not all that specific. With multiple tests out there, there is a good likelihood that we are chasing multiple targets.
From what I’ve read (I don’t have the link handy), the tests are not very reliable, based on amplification of a small sample, then looking for fragments of DNA that matches what is thought to identify the COVID-19 virus. But errors are also amplified, and some of the viral DNA is normally in us. Anyway, this disease is not deadly in the usual sense of likely to kill. The authorities seem to have adopted the panic they’re triggering in a major part of the population and largely disregarding the serious social harm to many of the most vulnerable.
I watched the Velshi-McCarthy exchange. It was 99% political, 1% technical.
The good news is there might be more n95 mask to go around, since they are made from plastic. Which is made from oil.
If your against drilling, fracking all you have to do is refuse to buy and wear PPe which are mostly derived from oil. Do not support the oil industry or you might all die in 30 years time.
Which gives people who want to take it out of the ground to better improve our lives, and enjoy the fruits of having access to such resources.
I’m actually glad Velshi and McCarthy had that exchange on MSNBC because it identified them as shallow scientific hucksters, incapable of logical thought and buffoon-fools. Kinda think the interview served a noble end.