Saturday Morning Links -- May 2, 2020

First things first: a happy belated birthday wish to Willie Nelson -- 87 years old this past week, April 29, 2020. Here are his 143 albums ranked by Texas Monthly. It's hard to believe that one of my favorite albums, "Highwayman" was only #70. I think my second all-time favorite was "Wanted! The Outlaws." It came in at #49. Wow. What a discography. Then there's "Waylon & Willie," number 11."Stardust," #3, and, it's hard to believe that the incredible "Red-Headed Stranger" came in at #2.

Kentucky Derby: postponed until September 5, 2020. 

From the other blogs, linked at the sidebar at the right:

Meltdown: I blogged about this a couple of days ago; Bloomberg now writes about it and even uses the same graph I used! Saudi outlook cut to negative at Moody's as reserves tumble. Fiscal deficit will widen to more than 12% of GDP in 2020.

Meltdown: VLCC floating storage bookings hit at least 71 -- ArgusMedia. Average cost: $77,000/day but Shell may hold the record -- a six-month charter with a three-month extension option at $120,000/day for the Eliza. This tells me that Shell expects this glut to last well into 2021.

Wuhan flu: the strategies don't seem to matter. The "curve" looks the same in every country, with or without "shelter-in-place" mandates. Amazing graph at realclimatescience.

Wuhan flu: pseudo-science behind the assault on hydroxychloroquine. Now we see why. Nine of the 50 panel members have ties to the company manufacturing Remdesivir which now has approval by the FDA as a front-line drug for Wuhan flu. I always thought the sudden reversal on hydroxychloroquine was strange and suspect. The reversal happened way too quickly. Almost like something out of Hillary's war room. Of all the articles linked on this post, this might be the most interesting, most important. Later: Remdesivir is probably worthless.

Endangered no more? One endangered bumblebee species may be off the list simply by reviving a single UK garden. Over at not a lot of people know that.

Endangered? The UK grid. Same story we've talked about before. Some interesting data points at this update.

UK renewable energy: after all this time, renewable energy in the UK still accounted for only four percent of energy consumption in 2019. My pet peeve: they include hydroelectric with renewable energy. Hydroelectric is not the "renewable" energy that concerns most folks. Take out hydroelectricit and the percentage of renewable energy drops even further. Having said that, the UK has very little hydroelectricity; what little they have is mostly in Scotland.

Meanwhile, over in China: to kick start their economy following the Wuhan flu debacle, China has approved nearly 10 gigawatts of new coal-fired power generation capacity in this year's first quarter, roughly equal to the amount approved for all of last year. How much is 10 GW? To put that in perspective, the entire UK coal-fired capacity at the end of 2018 was 12 GW.

April 2020 was almost as warm at 1865: central England temperature.

NOAA: second largest 2-month temperature drop in history in northern hemisphere record, from February-to-April, 2020. This was a 0.53°C drop. In that universe of global warming, 0.53 degrees is incredibly. Algoreans are only worried anticipating a 2-degree rise in global temperature over the next 100 years. By the way, the largest 2-month drop was also in the modern industrial age: a drop of 0.69 degrees Celsius was recorded from December, 1987, to February, 1988.

Johnny Appleseed: And we close with this .... social distancing south of Fargo, ND, winter:

Mr Vern Whitten sent that to me. What a great photo. He calls it "social distancing." Vern says he took the photo a couple of years back but it must have stuck in his mind all these years. For those interested in a huge catalogue of North Dakota prints visit www.vernwhitenphotography.com.

Weather: do I hear thunder? There was no rain / thunderstorms in the forecast for today as of last week. What gives. Okay. That's better. It appears to be simply a pop-up storm. Will be out of the area by 10:00 a.m. and then no more rain all day. A high of 89° is forecast but it will be partly cloudy all day.

Beef: there were reports that America's beef and pork supply might be interrupted due to Wuhan flu. If so, we're not seeing it it in Texas yet. The local Albertson's had a special yesterday: huge sale on ribeye steak -- limiting the incredible deals to one per customer. A steak originally priced at $19.94 was priced down to $7.94.