THE VENUS SYNDROME

                     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

Mar     2        1989      9490        1726       110      194

April   6          906     11787         4211       631       37

May    4         853     13667         3025     3786      59 

June   1         287    10637         2346      3205       95

 July   7          251      8440        1595        817       411

Aug    4          656    10120        1118         532      423 

Sept   1        1480    10470          703        505      235

          8        1700      9836          250        339     253

        14        1934      9001          709        281      300

        22       2228     9326           839        279      124

        27         689     5376            218         181      164

Summary:  Hmmm....something looks too good, so must be somehow questionable.  Well, I usually don't show Monday figures, so let's see how these numbers look tomorrow.

Ray Kamada, who blogs from the state of Washington, sent me his analysis of the current debate regarding the morality of the USA moving ahead with booster shots when developing countries are at vaccinations rates below 10%.  Two telling points are that this is not a simple matter, for the U.S. is faced with one of the two mRNA-based vaccine--by Pfizer--not being a safe life preserver, but a leaking one, plus these both cannot really be used by many undeveloped countries.  Read his thoughts:

Yet, such purely ethical discussions overlook a major technical detail. And that is - the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines require unbroken chains of ultra-cold transport and storage that simply aren't available in ~40% of the globe. And this void exists mostly in the same nations that have low vaccination rates. So, together with their high production costs, the two mRNA-based Covid vaccines, produced entirely in the US, are by nature ill-suited for such nations

Let's begin with one stark fact. Pfizer vaccine-based immunity to Delta-driven infection and hospitalization seems to have faded roughly twice as fast as that based on the Moderna vaccine.  Thus, if each nation aims to minimize its own Covid transmission rate, then, besides prophylactic measures, boosting its immunity via the Moderna vaccine at 8 months seems about optimal. But, contrary to the current CDC stance, it really looks like only about 4 months for Pfizer. Note that these tipping points are well-supported by the Israeli and Mayo Clinic data, plus more recent, multi-state reports collated by the CDC. (Read here, here and here.)

Intertwined with the above issues, we also mention that, as of late August 2021, at least 15 million US doses had spoiled and gone to waste, due mostly to lack of interest or even an outright disdain, promoted largely by red state governors who, unsurprisingly, have all been vaccinated. (Wasted doses reports here, here, here, here, here and here.) 

While I personally have been concerned about the inability of Moderna to gain even emergency use for their booster, the developing reality that their vaccine is effective for twice as long as Pfizer's is reassuring.  

Before I get into my science topic of this week, I mention that last Wednesday I posted Update on Fusion.  I just noticed in Quora a similar discussion:

This becomes a chicken and the egg situation - a vicious cycle. We can’t get fusion without funding, support, leadership and help. But - not getting support, means we can’t get fusion funding, which makes fusion harder to achieve, which in-turn kills support, which means we can’t get fusion funding, which…  Right now, there are lots of examples of fusion research teams in need of a very small amount of funding for fusion; but they can’t seem to get the attention of investors, private or public. These include:

Well, that was last week.  My science topic this week begins on Tuesday with a detailed coverage of what could lead to a permanent extinction event, continuing in part 2 tomorrow focusing on Planet Venus, which could well be the future of Planet Earth if something I call The Venus Syndrome occurs.  These thoughts congealed 14 years ago when the closing chapter of my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth featured this cataclysmic ending for our globe.  You can read my book, or go to the Huffington Post for some summaries:

• The Venus Syndrome (Part One)
• The Venus Syndrome (Part Two)
• The Venus Syndrome Revisited

Part of the stimulus for this particular blog is a perspective provided by Rinaldo Brutoco of the World Business Academy on The Methane Accelerator:

• We know about the falling levels of Lake Powell land Lake Mead, but don't know that the situation in  the Middle East and Africa is worse.
• He indicates that the climate change models of the UN IPCC are dominated by carbon dioxide.  The influence of methane is only now catching their attention.
• This vicious feedback loop he calls the Methane Accelerator:

Get ready to be jolted: that new attention to methane means the public will be hearing that climate change is a) much more severe than previously thought, and b) that it is accelerating at a geometric (as opposed to an arithmetic) rate.   

It turns out that massive amounts of methane are being released from ocean marine hydrates, and these are rapidly accelerating, and from the thawing permafrost due to atmospheric and ocean warming. The released methane is the “X Factor” in climate change, independently functioning as a powerful accelerant of greater atmospheric heating, faster ice melt, more severe weather disturbances, ocean acidification, and rising seas. 

• 

  In its most disturbing finding, the Academy concludes that, when the cumulative effects from the Methane Accelerator are fully considered, mankind is likely to have already passed the “tipping point” where merely reducing CO2 emissions, even to zero, will not be sufficient to curtail the catastrophic effects of climate change. 

• 

  Accelerating methane releases are accelerating the effects of climate change so we can better predict how bad it will become, and how fast. That’s helpful. And, be aware that a spontaneous “trigger” of a massive methane release could occur once again at any time resulting in another global mass extinction event. We simply must “wake up’ to this threat immediately so we can begin to address a responsible geoengineering solution that would prevent such a catastrophe.

That's exactly what I said 14 years ago, when after release of my book I gave a talk at the University of Hawaii, and had a lot of "experts" in the audience shaking their head at my naivete.  The dean of a school made some statement about how can this could possibly be so when there was so little methane in the atmosphere.  In those days, no noteworthy researcher in this field published on the potential danger of methane.

On the surface, they make sense, for our atmosphere is  0.0404% carbon dioxide to 0.00018% methane.  224 times more carbon dioxide than methane.

But, ah, depending the circumstance, molecule versus molecule, methane can be from 15 to 125 times more potent in inducing the Greenhouse Effect than carbon dioxide.  More important, in the tundra and coastline are vast amounts of methane compounds that if jostled from a current metastability and suddenly released into the atmosphere can cause something I termed The Venus Syndrome.   The particular danger is when methane suddenly explodes to the surface, where the puissance factor is even higher than 125.  The Venus Syndrome occurs when we reach this tipping point.

This phenomenon has been named by some as one reason why life on our globe has gone through five extinction periods.  The worst one was 250 million years ago when 96% of marine species and 70% on land disappeared.  The usual suspects are asteroids, super volcano eruptions and carbon dioxide.  However, included with these more conventional surmisals are methane hydrates as maybe a possible super villain.  Something called the clathrate gun hypothesis is worthy of your knowledge.

Methane hydrate is also called methane clathrate, and popularly known as fire ice because you can burn it.  Frighteningly, there is twice as much energy in marine methane hydrates as all the known fossil fuel deposits on land.  Finally, the nailing factor is that much of this ocean fire ice is located right on top of and otherwise near the Ring of Fire in the Pacific

What are the odds of the Ring of Fire, the entire ring, suddenly erupting to release these methane hydrate deposits?  Miniscule, of course, but not impossible.  As a worse case scenario, can The Venus Syndrome result in Planet Earth becoming the exact twin of Planet Venus?

I've had difficulty continuing my book on The Venus Syndrome because for the longest time I just could not come up with any kind of non-preposterous solution to overcome this extinction phenomenon. Then, as I was filming my TEDx talk, it occurred to me that among the cornucopia of benefits provided by the Blue Revolution, just maybe another one could be a solution to this quandary.  What this might be will not be shared until I complete that book. 

Tomorrow I will focus on Planet Venus, suggesting clues on why the surface of Venus is at 872 F and 1350 pounds/square inch, approximately the pressure found at 3000 feet ocean depths.  Any reality to the fascinating potential that there is a Goldilocks portion of the atmosphere there where, perhaps, life might exist?

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Typhoon Mindulle overnight strengthened to 115 MPH, and the Japan Times today showed this graphic:

Mindulle is the 16th named ocean storm in the West Pacific, and the above track sequence surely looks threatening.  However I checked various other models, and most of them shows this typhoon making almost a right turn and passing sufficiently far away along the east coast of Japan.  But as I always say, you're never sure until you are.

I might mention that Hurricane Sam is still plodding along in the Atlantic, having reached 150 MPH on Sunday, and today still a Category 4.  About all the trouble he will cause will be to ships and waves along the East Coast.

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