Before getting into the Pandemic and the science topic of today, here is what President Joe Biden will attempt to do tonight in a national address from the U.S. Congress:
- Initially, the purpose was to prepare the supportive groundwork for his $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure spending package.
- More recently, this has become a $3 trillion "Build Back Better" program.
- A good part of the effort is to gain bi-partisan support by including two items that might draw some Republican interest:
- Free community college and universal pre-K schooling.
- The second is that obvious infrastructure focus, for everyone agrees that the nation's roads, bridges, airports and just about everything else, are now deficient.
From Worldometer (new COVID-19 deaths yesterday):
DAY USA WORLD Brazil India South Africa
June 9 1093 4732 1185 246 82
July 22 1205 7128 1293 1120 572
Aug 12 1504 6556 1242 835 130
Sept 9 1208 6222 1136 1168 82
Oct 21 1225 6849 571 703 85
Nov 25 2304 12025 620 518 118
Dec 30 3880 14748 1224 299 465
Jan 14 4142 15512 1151 189 712
Feb 3 4005 14265 1209 107 398
25 2414 10578 1582 119 144
Mar 2 1989 9490 1726 110 194
31 1115 12301 3950 458 58
April 6 906 11787 4211 631 37
20 883 13905 3481 2020 120
21 876 14088 3157 2102 53
28 885 14837 3120 3285 51
Summary:
- This pandemic just is not going away.
- India is now suffering the most deaths/day.
- They had 362,902 new cases yesterday.
- Brazil was #2 with 76,085 new cases, and the USA #3 with 52,046.
- Turkey was up to 43,301 new cases as #4.
- Thailand is now experiencing a new wave with 2,179 new cases and 15 new deaths yesterday.
- Significant because it is #104 in total cases and with only a total deaths of 163.
- Thus, just in one day, it experienced 9.2% of all deaths.
- The USA had 885 new deaths, so compared to our 52,046 total deaths, that calculates to 1.7%
Recently, the New York Times reported:
This sudden rise in cases is alarming, especially as India has four the times the population of the U.S.
Also, too the
NYT reported:
...a major U.N. report to be released next month will declare that slashing emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, is far more vital than previously thought to ward off the worst effects of climate change.
Natural gas is mostly methane. In parallel, on 21April2021, Nature reported that the U.S. is particularly responsible for paying a lot more to reduce methane escape than a poor African nation:
To most, this would hardly be newsworthy. To me, someone who is actually writing a novel on something called
The Venus Syndrome, I searched with some interest.
The Pandemic has thus far changed our economy and society in ways we did not contemplate a year ago. Global Warming will linger for many decades, and further adjust all facets of human life. Methane, through The Venus Syndrome, could well end the existence of Humanity, and this could happen virtually instantly in a worst case scenario. Read on.
The
Environmental Defense Fund blares that methane is 84 times more potent in warming our planet over the first 20 years it reaches the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. This is why you see numbers ranging from 125x to 15x, for the effect depends on the time frame involved. This is why the
United Nations says methane has a warming potential 28-34 times that of CO2 because that is over a 100-year warming cycle.
They go on to further say that 60% of global methane comes from human activities, with the following primary sources:
Further cited is that the 40% natural contribution could well be too low. This the basis for what
one of my books called
The Venus Syndrome, described in three
Huffington Post articles:
Six years ago I outlined what could be the basis of a novel I was then contemplating on this subject.
Clearly, our oceans, are slowly warming. What if a certain tipping point is reached where the
methane clathrates at the bottom of the sea, but concentrated around the ring of fire, are triggered by an eruption to suddenly release methane to the surface?
How much energy is stored in these deep-sea methane clathrates, also known as fire ice (
ice that burns)?
And the deposits of these compounds are enormous. "Estimates suggest that there is about the same amount of carbon in methane hydrates as there is in every other organic carbon store on the planet," says Chris Rochelle of the British Geological Survey.
In 2008
James Hanson made a presentation showing how Planet Earth could become Planet Venus through the evolution of carbon dioxide. He did though hint that there was some danger from methane hydrates.
Barry Brook of the University of Tasmania also said essentially the same thing.
Buzzfeed picked this up and even showed an image of a possible sci-fi movie.
As far as I know, no such film is being planned. However, Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio will play star-crossed astronomers who discover that an asteroid is heading for Earth, but no one takes their warning seriously. Called
Don't Look Up, this will be a Netflix black comedy. Also in the cast will be Cate Blanchet, Meryl Streep as the U.S. President, Jonah Hill as the prexy's son and Chief of Staff, and Ariana Grande.
The reason why I have not moved ahead with my book, The Venus Syndrome, is that I have still not figured out how to save the world if the feared cascading methane effect of enormous quantities into the atmosphere can be reversed. Perhaps the solution would be to prevent this from happening. But stopping the escape of methane from the ocean and tundra is not as easy as reducing carbon dioxide emittance.
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