What if the world has a pandemic but your government responds incompetently?

December 30, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

The United States has repeatedly fallen apart in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in large part because of leadership issues. The pandemic was downplayed, then masks were politicized and mocked, then PPE was the issue, along with lack of testing, and so on. And now the United States is falling apart in its effort to vaccinate its citizens quickly:

Operation Warp Speed at a crawl: Adequately vaccinating Americans will take 10 years at current pace

The Trump administration’s Covid-19 vaccine distribution program needs a major shot in the arm because at the current rate, it would take almost 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to get the pandemic under control, a jarring new NBC News analysis showed Tuesday.
The goal of Operation Warp Speed, a private-public partnership led by Vice President Mike Pence to produce and deliver safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines to the public, is to ensure that 80 percent of the country’s 330.7 million people get the shots by late June. To meet that goal, a little more than 3 million people would have to get the shots each day, the math shows. But so far, only about 2 million people — most of them front-line health care workers and some nursing home residents — have gotten their first shots of the 11.5 million doses that were delivered in the last two weeks, a review by NBC News of data from federal and state agencies showed.

It is heartbreaking to understand how many people in the United States have died, and to know that the vaccine could solve the problem, and to know that the vaccine could be distributed at a much quicker rate, and to then watch as the government’s leadership is once again dropping (or intentionally destroying) the ball. A tragedy.

It is also heartbreaking to know that many other governments have responded in exemplary ways, and there has been much less death and suffering and economic destruction in these countries.

This Coronavirus pandemic is a true doomsday scenario. Then on top of that, the response of the United States’ leadership has made the effects far worse than they should have been.

More info:

‘We’re repeating all the mistakes we made with PPE and testing’: Health expert Dr Jha slams fact only two million Americans have received their first vaccine shot when 20 million were supposed to be vaccinated by end of year

“The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

Global Warming, Mass Extinction, Rainforest Collapse

What does climate change look like from orbit?

December 29, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

It can sometimes be difficult for an individual person on the ground to personally witness the effects of climate change right now. If you were in California or Australia during the wildfires, you might have been directly affected, but more people still are now seeing direct effects. However, satellite imagery allows a view of the whole planet, and what we can see from satellites paints a terrible picture:

Watching Earth Burn – For 10 days in September, satellites in orbit sent tragic evidence of climate change’s destructive power.

Last winter, for example, Australia experienced one of the worst brushfire seasons in its history. On the first Sunday of 2020 I decided to take a look. Himawari-8 revealed a vista as spectacular as it was unnerving. A giant furnace door had seemingly been pried open. A plume of smoke extended outward from the continent’s southeastern quarter, a region twice the size of Texas where flame vortexes had been spiraling 200 feet into the air. Carrying the color of the land it came from, that noxious exhalation bore the residue of a billion or more incinerated animals and innumerable plants, baked into tinder from decades of ever-hotter summers.

The author points out in the article how you can look through the eyes of these satellites yourself:

My earth-watching, made possible by NOAA and Colorado State University websites, originates in three geostationary weather satellites parked in exceedingly high orbits above the Equator.
The effects of climate change will only become worse and worse unless humanity takes direct and massive steps to correct things.

Power Grid, Terrorism

The Nashville Christmas Day RV Bombing – Police had plenty of warning and did nothing

December 28, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Early on December 25, 2020 in downtown Nashville, TN, a huge bomb inside an RV exploded. This is what the blast looked like:

Nashville explosion: CCTV captures moment of blast – BBC News

Thousands of articles have already been written about the day of the blast because it was so incredible and so unexpected.

But then we find out that the terrorist’s girlfriend and lawyer had reported his bombmaking activities to police, and nothing was done to stop him:

Anthony Warner’s girlfriend warned police he was building bombs in his RV last year

Police were warned Anthony Warner was making bombs in his RV more than a year before his Christmas morning attack in downtown Nashville. The tip came from Warner’s distraught girlfriend in August of 2019…. The police report states that an attorney who was also there and represented both the woman and Warner – told police that Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making.”

And then we find out the intent of the bomb:

Nashville bombing froze wireless communications, exposed ‘Achilles’ heel’ in regional network

The vulnerability of the telecommunications system in Nashville and beyond became clear Christmas Day when AT&T’s central office in downtown became the site of a bombing. Mayor John Cooper called the blast on Second Avenue an attack on infrastructure. The effects of that attack are sure to ripple through the region for weeks, as the telecom giant scrambles to restore services while maintaining the integrity of an active investigation site teeming with federal agents. State and local officials and experts say the fact that a multistate region could be brought to its knees by a single bombing is a “wake-up call,” exposing vulnerabilities many didn’t know existed and predicting it would lead to intense conversations about the future.

Mass Extinction, Warnings

China has a fleet of Super Trawlers capable of stripping the ocean bare

December 26, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Humans are rapidly depleting the ocean of fish. There are simply too many people catching too many fish for the fish to replenish themselves, and soon we will see more and more species collapsing. There is a whole chapter in The Doomsday Book about these kinds of mass extinction events. Watch this video:

Peru defends its waters as Chinese boats are accused of illegal fishing

Example:

Why is the government letting destructive ‘supertrawlers’ fish in Marine Protected Areas?

The intensity and scale of supertrawler fishing is a real threat to the habitats within MPAs. These industrial vessels stay at sea for weeks on end, catching, processing and freezing hundreds of tonnes of fish every single day. Ocean life is deeply interconnected, so when vast numbers of fish suddenly vanish from one part of the ecosystem, it’ll inevitably have serious impacts on everything else.
Supertrawler-size ships also carry a massive extra risk if anything goes wrong. There’s simply no margin for error when you’re working with mile-long nets that can cause serious damage if they’re not used correctly. Even without the direct impacts from fishing, supertrawlers put these vulnerable habitats at risk every time they enter an MPA.
Currently, it’s completely legal for them to do all of this, which makes a mockery of the idea of a Marine Protected Area.

Exposed : Supertrawlers fish in UK Marine Protected Areas in 2019

Global Warming, Mass Extinction, Rainforest Collapse

It cannot get any worse – active destruction of the Amazon rainforest

December 24, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

This article is terrifying:

Amazon fires: Bolsonaro actively trying to devastate rainforest, leaked documents show

The Brazilian government intend to build bridges, motorway and hydroelectric plant in the jungle to “fight off international pressure” to protect the world’s largest rainforest. The plans, leaked to political website openDemocracy, emerged as devastating fires rage through the Amazon.

As described in the Doomsday book, the Amazon rainforest is too important to let a country like Brazil destroy it. The entire forest should be taken over through international stewardship, humans should be removed from the forest, and every effort should be taken to keep it alive. If the rainforest is allowed to die, there will be a huge pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the loss of the rain cycle, and the destruction of a million or more species. It will be catastrophic. See:

Mass Extinction

Songbirds are dying of starvation

December 23, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Imagine that you are a songbird. Winter is coming and you need to fly south for the winter. But all of the insects and berries you would normally eat during the migration are missing. So you die of starvation. That is the picture being painted by this year’s mass die-off:

Mass die-off of birds in south-western US ’caused by starvation’ – Necropsy reveals 80% of the thousands of songbirds that died suddenly showed typical signs of emaciation

The mass die-off of thousands of songbirds in south-western US was caused by long-term starvation, made worse by unseasonably cold weather probably linked to the climate crisis, scientists have said. Flycatchers, swallows and warblers were among the migratory birds “falling out of the sky” in September, with carcasses found in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. A USGS National Wildlife Health Center necropsy has found 80% of specimens showed typical signs of starvation.

Also:

Allison Salas, a graduate student at NMSU, said the volume of carcasses she had collected had given her chills. She said: “The fact that we’re finding hundreds of these birds dying, just kind of falling out of the sky is extremely alarming.”

It is the harbinger of the mass extinction events to come, as a ripple effect of one after another. Kill off too many insects and the birds have nothing to eat.

Government, Terrorism

The Russian computer Breach is a doomsday sceanrio for the nation’s security

December 22, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

This article tells the tale of the massive Russian computer attack:

Why the Russian hack is so significant, and why it’s close to a worst-case scenario

From the article:

Around the world, at least hundreds, but more likely thousands or tens of thousands of organizations — including companies, schools, think tanks and, notably, every major government agency — have been working frantically to see whether they’ve been affected by the suspected Russian hacking campaign and, if so, how much access the hackers had.

And:

The hackers’ lead time and extraordinary access mean victim organizations will have to choose between two unpleasant options: spending significant resources hunting through their computers in the hope that they can eradicate the hackers’ footholds or rebuilding their networks from scratch, said Suzanne Spaulding, the former head of what is now CISA and currently the director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

Plus we don’t yet know the full scale of what data was stolen, or how important/valuable it is.

Global Warming, Rainforest Collapse, Warnings

The Dustbowl era in the United States was a doomsday scranario for agriculture and the food supply, and we are about to repeat it

December 21, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

A terrifying article about the next United States dustbowl:

National Soil Erosion Rates on Track to Repeat Dust Bowl-era Losses Eight Times Over – Scientists Say Farmland Degradation to Worsen with Climate Change

From the article:

The UCS study analyzed various scenarios for erosion rates and total soil loss using soil survey data from the National Resources Inventory, a research program conducted by the USDA and Iowa State University. Because of climate change, the possibility for even more accelerated erosion rates exists. The study found if more flooding and droughts lead erosion rates to worsen again, reverting back to the higher rates recorded almost forty years ago, farmers nationally are at risk of losing more than two inches of soil by 2035 and five inches by 2100.

In other words, we depend on the soil to grow the food we eat, but we are not good stewards of the soil. Therefore the topsoil is washing and blowing away, and with it our ability to grow grains like wheat, corn and soybeans. It could lead to a food catastrophe.

Global Warming, Hurricanes & Cyclones, Rainforest Collapse, Sea Level Rise, Warnings

Climate Change will force human migration in 3 ways: Flooding, drought and heat

December 20, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

There are three big things that will force human beings out of one area and into another:

Flooding – Climate change can cause flooding either by raising sea levels or increasing rains (e.g. hurricanes)
Drought – Climate change causes areas that once received rain to dry up. Rainforest collapse is the most dramatic example, but simple rainfall pattern change is another.
Heat – As the planet warms, equatorial regions will eventually become so hot that humans can no longer tolerate or work in the heat.

All three of these effects will cause climate migration, by millions and millions of people. The people who are migrating will have no choice, because the alternative is death.

Take a country like Bangladesh. Much of Bangladesh is highly susceptible to sea level rise, and much of Bangladesh is hot and humid, so rising temperatures will eventually make it virtually uninhabitable. 160 million people live in Bangladesh, and most are in poverty already. Given this, the headline is probably understating things:

Climate change could create 63 million migrants in South Asia by 2050

The growing impacts of climate change have already pushed more than 18 million people to migrate within South Asian countries, but that could more than triple in three decades if global warming continues on its current path, researchers warned on Friday. Nearly 63 million people could be forced from their homes by 2050 in the region as rising seas and rivers swallow villages, and drought-hit land no longer supports crops, said ActionAid International and Climate Action Network South Asia in a report. The projection does not include those who will be forced to flee sudden disasters such as floods and cyclones and so is likely an under-estimate, noted Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at ActionAid. He said the situation could become “catastrophic”.

The obvious solution is to try to limit the damage that climate change causes by:

Stopping the combustion of all fossil fuels
Pulling carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere

Unfortunately, there are many economic forces and powers that want to move in the opposite direction:

‘Grossly Insufficient’: ExxonMobil Lambasted Over Emissions Reduction Plan That Pledges No Reduction in Absolute Emissions

ExxonMobil’s Monday announcement of new targets for addressing greenhouse gas emissions was met with derision by climate advocates who called the plan “too little, too late.”

There is something Exxon could do to help migitgate the problems it has created. Exxon could develop and sell a carbon neutral gasoline substitute. In this way, all of the existing pipelines and gas stations and vehicles could still operate, while not adding any more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Using solar, wind or nuclear power, there is definitely a pathway toward achieving this. For example, the U.S. Navy has demonstrated how to make jet fuel out of seawater.

What If We Powered the Planet With Seawater?

How Big Can Wind Turbines Get?

There are several other approaches that can make synthetic gasoline as well. Exxon (and other oil companies need to scale them up and sell synthetic gasoline instead of fossil fuel gasoline.

Then humanity needs to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at a massive scale:

Carbon Engineering | Direct Air Capture Technology

Pandemics

The COVID-19 virus is rapidly mutating and diversifying

December 18, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

In England there is a new fast-spreading strain of COVID-19:

Boris Johnson calls crisis meeting over new Covid strain

Professor Sir Mark Walport – a member of the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) – said there was a real possibility that the strain could have a “transmission advantage”. “What happens with viruses is they do naturally mutate all the time and the ones that are likely to do well are the ones that increase transmission,” he told BBC2’s Newsnight. “We know that this is a new variant, it has been seen in other countries but it seems to be quite widespread which suggests that it has got a transmission advantage. Scientists are working extremely hard to work out what is going on. But it does definitely seem possible that this transmits more easily. It will make the social-distancing even more critical.”

South Africa is also affected:

South Africa’s second coronavirus wave is fueled by a new strain, teen ‘rage festivals’

in a beach town last week, more than 3,000 17- and 18-year-olds went ahead with a huge, week-long graduation party, and more than 1,000 of them have since tested positive for the coronavirus. Hundreds more refused to get tested or gave wrong numbers to contact tracers. Then, on Friday evening, South Africa’s health minister announced that researchers had discovered a new strain — similar to one found in Britain this week — that he said seemed to affect young people more than strains that had previously been circulating.

Doomsday Now

Monthly Archives: December 2020