"Coronavirus: the Guardian's promise to our readers"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/coronavirus-the-guardians-promise-to-our-readers

There's much to applaud, but read on far enough, and you reach this:

"We will not forget that other issues still matter, most especially the climate crisis; our dedicated teams will continue to bring you their unrivalled reporting on the environment."

Oh dear. Meaningless words, and they fortunately they don't seem to be abiding by that "promise", as their climate hysteria has almost dried up.

There is this, though:

"Extinction Rebellion protesters stay away from court over Covid-19 fears
One defendant did not attend hearing into last year’s protests as she was self-isolating"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/extinction-rebellion-protesters-stay-away-from-court-over-covid-19-fears

"Dozens of Extinction Rebellion protesters failed to attend their court hearings after the campaign group told them to stay away due to the coronavirus crisis.

Forty-nine people were due to appear at City of London magistrates court on Friday charged in connection with a series of environmental demonstrations held in the capital last October.

However, only one defendant attended their hearing after Extinction Rebellion told the defendants not to travel due to concerns about the spread of Covid-19.

Some court staff wore face masks and medical gloves during the morning, but these were later removed when it became apparent almost all the defendants would not be attending.

In the majority of cases, pleas were entered either by post or through lawyers.

A spokesman for Extinction Rebellion said: “We’ve been really concerned about large numbers of people coming into London, maybe getting infected and taking their virus back to their communities, so we advised them to stay away and arranged for lawyers to represent them.”

Elizabeth Garrett, who is charged with the wilful obstruction of a highway, told the court in writing she could not attend due to being in self-isolation, but pleaded guilty to the offence...."

It's nice to see that they CAN recognise a real crisis, after all.

Oh, yes, and there's some good news apparently:

"Wine cooler: global heating helps Sweden's vineyards to success"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/wine-cooler-global-heating-helps-swedens-vineyards-to-success

"As climate change makes winemaking a torrid business in southern Europe, viniculture is taking off in Scandinavia"

And:

"“We have an extra month of summer now. And winters are not like what they used to be. That’s why we can make wine, and why 50 years ago, we couldn’t.”

September, Hansson said, used to be the month when temperatures would plummet, but not any more: “Now we’re seeing daytime temperatures of 24 or 25C, even at the end of the month, with perfect, cool nights. Impossible when I was a kid, and not very different from Burgundy.”

Even a decade ago, few would have bet on Scandinavia becoming a serious producer of quality wine. But while temperatures of up to 48C grilled grapes on the vine in some traditional wine-making areas of southern Europe last summer – costing some French growers up to 80% of their crop – global heating is incubating a whole new industry in the Nordic region.

Denmark now has about 90 commercial vineyards, compared with two in 2005, while Sweden has 50. A handful of bold pioneers are growing grapes in Finland, and the world’s most northerly functioning vineyard overlooks Norway’s largest fjord."

Great news for Scandinavians to offset the demise of eiswein....

"Coronavirus crisis cash threatens EU green plans
‘You don’t want to come out of this crisis only to stumble into the next crisis,’ says a West European diplomat."

https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-crisis-cash-threatens-eu-green-plans/

The usual suspects are wailing at the prospect of their "green deal" not going ahead. Meanwhile:

"Wavering Green Deal support
Coronavirus-induced economic shocks are already weakening support for the Green Deal and tough climate policies like the Emissions Trading System in coal-reliant countries, which had long feared that radically slashing emissions will be costly and hurt economic competitiveness and jobs.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš told reporters on Monday that the bloc needed to focus on its fight to contain the coronavirus and “forget about” the Green Deal for now.

Jan Zahradil, European Conservatives and Reformists MEP and a vice chair of the Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, said it was “crystal clear” that the EU needed to reconsider its Green Deal strategy: “Seriously. No post-virus economy in Europe will be able to handle it. It’s too expensive.”

Another Czech MEP, Tomáš Zdechovský, with the European People's Party and vice chair of the employment committee, said he had called on Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to delay or weaken carbon dioxide emission standards for cars to help the reeling industry.

"We see it's going to be a really huge problem for all the automotive companies now … they will need investments," he said, warning that automotive production could suffer; carmakers this week shut production across the Continent.

Poland's Deputy Minister of State Assets Janusz Kowalski tweeted Thursday: "The priority is lowering power prices for millions of Poles and for the Polish economy. How to do it? Disconnect the ETS — a useless gigantic cost for the economy."

It's part of a broader call to rethink the ETS, which has made investments in coal-fired power prohibitively expensive; Poland generates almost 80 percent of its electricity from coal.

“We will need to make sure that the policies we design in the coming months will help our economies to recover,” Kurtyka said, adding that changes to the ETS “may be necessary in the nearest future.”

The Central European pushback is riling Western European diplomats in Brussel.

"Climate change is real, like it or not, plus you don't want to come out of this crisis only to stumble into the next crisis. So let's keep an eye on what's beyond our immediate horizon as well and at the very least not throw away what's been achieved so far," said a diplomat who asked not to be named.

Brussels-based officials, for now, are undeterred — arguing that it's possible to tackle both challenges simultaneously.

"It is clear that we must deal with the economic impact of the coronavirus ... why not already prepare the forward-looking investments of the Green Deal as a way to help the economy to recover from the current shock?" said Kadri Simson, the energy commissioner.

"The European Green Deal is not over and we will deliver and offer ever greener solutions once the pandemic is done," Thierry Breton, the French commissioner in charge of the bloc's industrial policy, said during a videoconference Thursday."

Stoic, if the BBC is reducing numbers of staff (and presumably there is great scope to reduce the extraordinary number of BBC employees associated with their sports output, including some who are highly over-paid), then they should just maintain free TV licences for over 75s until the end of 2020, at least. Their costs should be plummeting.

NB This is not special pleading - I'm many, many years away from being agitated by the loss of a free TV licence.

From the BBC - corona excuses. It’s a puzzle why the BBC received so many complaints at the end of last year!

“We’re contacting you to apologise that we were unable to reply to the complaint you made last year to the BBC. We regret that we could not provide you with our usual level of service.

This happened because of unprecedented numbers of complaints submitted to the BBC at the time, and unfortunately we could not manage to reply to everyone. We would like to reassure you however that we circulated your complaint to the production team and BBC management the following morning, so they were aware of yours and the other overnight feedback the next day.

We regularly publish public responses to significant issues, which you can read at:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/recent-complaints

and complaints reports at:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaint-service-reports.

We are now trying our best to maintain the current service despite staff numbers being unavoidably reduced by the coronavirus pandemic. We appreciate your understanding, and if you still would like a reply after this time you can contact us again (quoting your case number). We do however need to indicate that the reduced staffing we’re experiencing at present means we may still not be able to reply for some time until the crisis eases.

Kind regards,

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints”

https://conservativewoman.co.uk/will-we-wake-up-from-this-nightmare-even-worse-off/

As per usual the Conservative Woman gives conservatives a bad name. They're worried by a loss of civil liberties when we're still on the foothills of a catastrophe. Meanwhile the government releases documents that say 80% would catch this without mitigation (haven't worked out where they are yet)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-uk-latest-italy-deaths-cases-schools-lockdown/

Who on earth is stockpiling milk?

Mar 20, 2020 at 1:14 PM DaveS

Cows keep producing milk, and chickens keep laying eggs.

Farm dairies only have limited capacity to store milk. If milk is unpasteurised and then dumped, it is not good for watercourses due to the high BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand) Hopefully Milk Tanker drivers are still collecting milk from our dwindling UK Dairy Farms. It could be that milk destined for UK fridges is being stockpiled outside the UK.