You need to be very careful using per-capita numbers when measuring relatively rare events like homicides in small cities, because small random fluctuations can cause big per-capita figures. I'm pretty sure I've seen numbers tossed around before where the huge homicide rate is the result of as little as one single homicide.

The kind of "no deindustralisation at all" where there's been a massive decline in industrial output from Germany's energy-intensive industries over the past couple of years? (From what I've seen, a lot of it seems to be moving to the USA which is more or less self sufficient in fossil fuels unlike Europe, though some German companies also seem to be interested in setting up production in China as well.)

Wow, that's a stupid and misleading headline. Cooling buildings uses more energy in hotter climates? No shit Sherlock, but the other detail they're completely ignoring is that in general heating buildings is more energy intensive than cooling them (mostly because the temperature differences tend to be larger), and of course most of the plans to stop climate change involve that heating being done with electricity, generally using heat pumps which are effectively exactly the same as air conditioning systems but in reverse.

It's quite simple, I think: they can get away with this because all around the world, the media have lied to the public about the consequences of these measures. They tell people that the only beneficiaries of fossil fuel investments and production are the evil fossil fuel corporations making a profit off selling climate-destroying products, that any attempt to draw attention to the ways in which consumers make use of those fuels and suggest that they're the ones that have to cut back is pushing fossil fuel propaganda, and that cutting off the supply is essential to saving the planet. Then when the crisis hits they doubled down on the narrative. For example, there's a line the Guardian loves when anyone suggests producing more natural gas as a solution to the energy crisis: they're trying to solve a problem caused by gas with more gas. (The problem is, of course, insufficient supply of natural gas.) And of course, as for the fact that this is causing energy and everything made with it to be unaffordable due to insufficient supply, well that's because politicians are too attached to the lie of free markets.

It seems like a relatively easy problem to solve because the media coverage has not exactly been honest about.... well, anything really. The big problem the UK and EU face is that energy prices are through the roof because there's not enough energy available - we're talking natural gas prices something ludicrous like ten times those in the USA, with electricity prices similarly high since they're effectively set by the price of natural gas - and this is utterly wrecking the economy. The EU does not have any solution to this. Another big problem is that the Fed in the US has increased interest rates rapidly to try and fight inflation, dropping the value of the Euro and pound and making energy imports even more unaffordable. The Eurozone is actually in an even worse position to fight this than the UK because that requires raising interest rates, which they can't do without vulnerable member states having their government bonds implode and take the economy with them.

You're also ignoring the reason the UK never joined the Euro in the first place: our economy was just too badly aligned with Germany's, and sharing a currency under that scenario leads to the kind of problems that Italy and Greece have experienced. The level of austerity forced on Greece in particular by the EU as a result of this and the damage it did makes the Tory "austerity" people complain about elsewhere in the comments look like a generous left-wing paradise by comparison.

Eurozone inflation is 9.9% compared to 10.1% in the UK. Technically that's lower, but in reality there's a few tenths of a percent margin of error on all those measurements anyway. The pound's also been pretty stable against the Euro. Not sure about energy prices, but they don't seem to be much better in general. The trick is that ever since Brexit the British press only runs comparisons that make it look like the EU's doing better - so they almost always compare against inflation and energy prices in France (which are rather lower than the rest of the EU) and point at the exchange rate with the dollar unless the pound has fallen overall against the Euro that week or month.

The UK's domestic production of oil and gas isn't enough to meet domestic consumption and hasn't been for some time. There are enough gas import terminals here to meet demand so long as sufficient LNG is available to buy on the global market (the EU doesn't have sufficient LNG import capacity, which is why it's being imported here, regasified, and exported to the EU via pipelines). The worst-case scenario they're worried about is one where there isn't enough gas available to buy globally, which will be a sufficiently awful global catastrophe that whatever happens in the UK probably won't make it into the news anywhere else.

From the article you linked to: "Wind generation dipped as low as 0.65 gigawatts". The way that article justifies its claim that it wasn't the fault of renewables is that wind and solar power was expected to drop to worthlessly low levels during the winter and the Texas grid wasn't relying on it to supply power because of this, whereas it was relying on fossil fuel power plants, therefore the failure was the fault of the fossil fuel power plants. Which is all very well and good as a rhetorical tactic, but not very promising for the idea that Texas could avoid blackouts by switching to renewable power.

I wouldn't be surprised if the kind of non-medical cotton face coverings pushed by mask policies in most countries have the exact same problem. The article is all about how barriers stop the larger particles produced by coughing or sneezing but not the finer aerosols that supposedly are responsible for most of the spread; this is exactly what you'd expect non-medical masks with relatively coarse pores and no filters to let through. Masks have just become a partisan battleground in the US which means there's no way the New York Times would run an article like this about them.

(I suspect this may also be why studies make it seem like they'd be more effective at protecting others than the wearer; there's no physical reason why this would be true, since they're not directional aside from a tendency to lift up and let out more of the exhaled breath and that'd have the opposite effect. But most of the studies are based on the amount of potentially virus-carrying particles blocked, and if most of the particles blocked wouldn't actually reach other people it'd produce exactly this result of them seeming to block more outgoing particles than incoming,.)

In the long run, residential solar saves people money due to more subtle subsidies resulting from how residential electricity is billed for. It's going to be very cheap for the grid to supply electricity at the times when residential solar produces well and much more expensive when it doesn't, thanks to grid-scale solar being so much cheaper than other forms of generation and storage, but residential customers are charged for both just the same. This means that wealthier people who can afford to install rooftop solar and not draw from the grid during those times when wholesale electricity prices are low are effectively being subsidised by less wealthy people who don't have this option.

The trouble with that reasoning is that, at least in the short term, most of the benefits of these vaccinations come from the first dose. The second dose seems to provide a slight boost to effectiveness and probably improves long-term immunity, but based on what we currently know getting the first vaccine dose to as many people as possible is the number one priority. So the only reason to only count people who've been given both doses is for political reasons, to justify bad strategic decisions by certain countries.

Also, the clause requiring them to make their "best efforts" to supply the EU with a specific number of vaccine doses specifically only applied to the EU production facilities and not the UK ones, for some reason.

The Eastern and Western US grids have had other equally spectacular wide-scale failures whilst the Texas grid remained up - they just happened at different times (and from somewhat different causes, including ones tied directly to the extra complexity of running a large, heavily interconnected grid). Someone could just as easily point to those failures in isolation as proof the Texas grid is better. Also, as far as I can tell there was no grid collapse due to cold in 1989 and 2011, just rolling blackouts comparable to the ones California had last summer.

From what I can tell, there was no grid collapse in 2011. Texas came closer than they probably should've, and had to enact rolling blackouts, but they didn't encounter the kind of complete failure that they're experiencing now and that the other two American grids have suffered from.

I suspect a lot of European countries do. Even the Czech Republic, which everyone was pointing to during the spring as the European success story which showed all the other countries in Europe should've done better, has a death rate very similar to that of the UK.