The 60mph speed restrictions on the M1 and M6 will be removed after National Highways admitted air pollution had risen in places and it didn’t know whether the restrictions had helped. The Telegraph has the story.
Since 2021, drivers have been forced to slow down on stretches of motorway such as the M1 between junctions 28 to 35a in a bid to ascertain if driving more slowly helps reduce emissions.
The restrictions were supposed to last between 12 and 15 months, with National Highways promising that data showing if the schemes were working would be available last spring.
On Friday, the body said the sections would return to the national speed limit of 70mph after pollution had fallen in the areas, but could not say whether this was because of the trials or because there were more electric and hybrid cars on the road.
Angela Halliwell, the head of the National Highways’ carbon and air quality group, said: “There is an overall trend that air quality is improving across our network. Removing 60mph speed limits from sections of the M1 and M6 where air quality has improved is a positive step.
“Ultimately, air quality will be solved ‘at the tailpipe’ by vehicle manufacturers and changes in vehicle use.”
A new report released by National Highways this week shows that nitrogen dioxide levels fell in the Rotherham speed restriction zone from 39 micrograms per [cubic] metre (µg/m3) to 35 µg/m3.
Likewise, pollution has dropped in Manchester from 38 µg/m3 to 31 µg/m3.
National Highways said it was “highly unlikely” that the pollution would exceed the legal limit if restrictions were removed, but could not say how it had come to that conclusion. It said it would continue to monitor both locations.
However, the report also shows that some areas with speed restrictions have seen pollution levels increase, including the trial site at the M602 at Eccles, and the M4 at Hillingdon. Nitrogen dioxide levels have remained the same at the M5 at Oldbury.
Motoring groups have previously warned that speed restrictions could increase congestion and may worsen pollution.
National Highways said that air quality was influenced by multiple factors and that building work near the speed restriction areas may have played a factor.
When asked what they thought was causing pollution to rise or fall in the various areas, the body said: “We generally don’t know.” …
Experts called for the remaining limits to also be scrapped if there was no evidence they were working.
Worth reading in full.
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Of course they don’t exclude the possibility of a much earlier event.
At the risk of driving Steve Kirsch nuts: To me, it’s either man-made and escaped from the lab or was set free deliberately (more likely), or, it doesn’t exist.
I think the short answer is NO. A long way back, there were stories about the identity of the allegedly novel infection in different parts of the world – e.g. Brazil, Italy and others. As to whether there was actually a single source at all, or more than one that happened to be identified in a similar timeframe, we just don’t know for sure. Maybe the (SARS) Cov-2 viruses was around for rather longer before it was identified – after all, who looks for something novel at sufficient level of detail?
Remember that most of us do not report onto the records that we have suffered from most minor respiratory infections, such as the Common Cold, many of which are thought to be caused by other coronaviruses.
I dare not read BBC articles at the risk of puking
Short of confessions from multiple participants (as there must have been) in any leak cover-up, I doubt we will ever know. The evidence, if there is any, has probably been destroyed. It’s possible that those pulling the strings don’t know either – they just suspected it was a leak. At least some of those working at the lab must know what viruses they had in the fridge – was c19 one of them? Has that question been definitively asked and answered?
So why hasn’t the animal host been found after 3 years? one of many unanswered questions on COVID.
Lab leak is at least as likely as natural origin and any scientist who thinks otherwise has a COI, like this Covid God Fauci.
What’s been proven decisively is that there was a cover up to suppress lab leak theory and only that should make one very suspicious.
Everything points to a lab leak. Occam’s Razor: there’s enough evidence from the structure of the virus, which includes proteins that could could not have got in there naturally, that it came from a lab.
Maybe someone at the lab sold some infected bats to the Wuhan market – it happens in China, apparently – who knows? Maybe the virus emerged in several places at the same time because the Chinese unleashed it from facilities in S America and Africa as well as the Wuhan lab. It doesn’t change the facts that the virus bears all the hallmarks of being created in a lab and the Wuhan lab was doing the exact research that created this virus.
The amount of panicked covering up by the likes of Daczak and Fauci is deeply suspicious. Ultimately, the scientific establishment knows that if it doesn’t cover things up or at least obfuscate, the vast amounts of money it’s acquired (without questions being asked for decades) will dry up and all public trust in scientists will be annihilated.
These are people who have gleefully destroyed the West. This is no exaggeration: our liberty and future expectation of liberty has been obliterated. The possibility of new lockdowns, of our formerly free nations turning into police states overnight for any reason a government dreams up or – should the mooted pandemic treaty happen – if the WHO decrees it, is a Sword of Damocles hanging over out lives.
Virology labs – which are really bioweapons facilities using gain-of-function research under the auspices of researching cures for viruses that aren’t even in circulation – need shutting down and burning to the ground. The WHO needs criminal investigation and all Chinese and communist influence removed. The UN needs ground-up reform.
The BBC needs to be privatised. Its authority is in tatters and its report is Chinese propaganda.
I still fail to understand why this matters. Sars-CoV2 is there. Absent a confession, it’s origin can’t be determined with certainty.
That said, so-called gain of function research is no research at all as it doesn’t contribute anything to our knowledge about the real world. It’s just otherwise unoccupied people playing with really expensive lego bricks. At best, the outcome is completely uninteresting. At worst, these genome fiddlers might end up creating something really dangerous, say, a variant of Yersinia Pestis which spreads via aerosols and is immune to all known antibiotics.
Considering that so-called research biologists have – in the past – tried to grow bacteria which are resistant enough to alcohol that they surive common antiseptic procedures, there can be no doubt that people calling themselves scientists exist who are be mad enough to try that. And they’d doubtlessly also get funding for this from same the people who already fund semi-random genome fiddling for killing the time.
All of these so-called research labs need to be razed to the ground. And everybody ever involved with channeling money to them needs to be removed from any position of influence on the grounds that he’s an irresponsible twit of the kind who’d detonate a nuclear warhead in a shopping mall just to find out what happens.
And on a related topic, did you see the latest reports that rather than originating in the Soviet Union’s chemical research lab, Novichok actually occurred spontaneously in an orchard just next door, and was found to be growing on the trees?
BBC journalism is basically advocay for establishment panicky preoccupations, leavened by woke duplicity. Today on BBC 24 supercillious “science” special correspondent Roger Harrabin used a positive story on print technology to launch a specious jeremiad about “us all using too much stuff”. He sounded mire like Neil from the Young Ones with his “we’re all doomed man” schtick than a balanced reporter.
Apparently the BBC overlooked to place both the Wuhan Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Wuhan institute of Virology on their helpful map.
They obviously didn’t realise that both labs might actually be located IN Wuhan, although their names do give a sort of clue .
In the interests of objectivity, Igor Chudov has done it for them :-
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/lie-exposed-bbc-says-covid-19-came?utm_source=email