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

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:

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.

Songbirds are dying of starvation

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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:

  1. Stopping the combustion of all fossil fuels
  2. 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

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.

The COVID-19 virus is rapidly mutating and diversifying

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.

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.

Nuclear weapons agency (and many others) attacked by massive computer breach

Terrorism often comes in the form of bombs and poisons, but it can also come in the form of cyber attacks. There has been a massive attack in the United States stretching up to some of the most secure sites in the country:

Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.

The breach is so bad and so far reaching, it is thought that entire computer networks will need to be “burned to the ground” in order to lock them down again:

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’

“We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow… The only way to be sure a network is clean is “to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it,” Schneier said.

An unbelievable situation for a country as advanced and powerful as the United States.

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.

An unfathomable story of human destruction at a massive scale

Here is a documentary that describes massive infrastructure projects in Florida – dams and canals – that have destroyed entire ecosystems:

Sweetwater- A Film by Spencer Miller

The video describes a path to repair, but what is the chance that we take it?

The problems include:

  • A massive sugar industry
  • Housing development
  • Politics

Whole areas destroyed by misguided human infrastructure and economic development. The destruction documented in the video is heartbreaking. By the 29 minute point you just want to cry.

More details: Help save Florida Bay and Florida’s water

Domestic Terrorism Threats surging in wake of United States Elections

The Proud Boys are using YouTube to organize violence at Joe Biden’s inauguration

In the last few years, the Proud Boys have been involved in one violent clash after another. The extremist far-right group with ties to white nationalism doesn’t just relish violence, it encourages it. And lately, Proud Boys leadership has been using a show on InfoWars alum Joe Biggs’ YouTube channel for recruiting, fundraising, promoting events, and urging violence up to and including revolution.

Watch what happened when CNN reporter went to Proud Boys rally
What Goes on at A Proud Boys Rally | NowThis

Is the loss of arctic ice the true harbinger of the climate apocolypse?

Is the loss of arctic ice the true harbinger of the climate apocolypse? Probably:

Blue Ocean Event : Game Over?

From the description:

A Blue Ocean Event, or Ice-Free Arctic, is the source of almost fever pitch speculation in the climate science world. The consequences of the disappearance of sea ice from the arctic ocean, however briefly, at the end of a summer melt season some time in the not too distant future, are potentially very ominous for the way we organise our human socio-economic structures today. This week, we consider what those consequences may look like.

It truly is a frightening prospect. Without artic ice to cool things off, temperatures in the northern hemisphere can go haywire and permafrost will melt, releasing gigatons of methane and CO2 into the atmosphere in a positive feedback loop. It is both terrifying and deeply depressing, because it appears that humanity (though politics, lack of leadership, lobbying, inertia, ignorance, indifference, corporate power in the fossil fuel industries, etc.) will be unable to take any coordinated action to turn things around.

See also: Global warming has profoundly transformed Arctic in just 15 years, report warns

The Arctic as we once knew it, an inhospitable, barely accessible and icebound place, is gone. Climate change has transformed it into a region that can heat up to 100 degrees, is beset by ferocious wildfires, and is covered in permafrost that is no longer permanent. The sea ice cover that has long defined the Far North is fast disappearing. This is the picture from a new international scientific assessment released Tuesday. The 2020 Arctic Report Card, a report led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) involving 133 scientists from 15 countries, points to trends that, with each passing year, have grown more extreme and have far-reaching implications for people living far outside the region, including in the Lower 48 states.

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.