Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(
only in the U.S.
Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
11–20 of 146 posts
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#12wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse.
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...
One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(
Fefe (a prominent German Internet commentator) posted a user's email yesterday which shows 3 perspectives I really haven't given much thought to.
The Google translation is pretty good, one big mistake though, it mistranslated "Asi-Kindern" as "Asian children" instead of "asocial kids": https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%... . And Case 1 is someone who builds booths for conventions.
A lot of people are going through the "denial" phase of grief and loss, although I wonder if this is valid for the people who showed up with guns at state capitols...
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#14Would be a fitting end to 2020; super COVID released from ancient arctic ice.
Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...
It's gonna come sooner rather than later. Humans encroach on the natural habitats of animals all over the world, which increases the number zoonoses dramatically. Most such spillovers don't cause any further human to human spread. Think of MERS. But there are spillovers that do spread between humans, like in the case of SARS-Cov-2. While the COVID pandemic is a major catastrophy, we were still quite lucky. MERS has a much higher case fatality ratio. Something that spreads as easily as SARS-Cov-2 while being as deadly as MERS is entirely possible.
We should start preparing once most of the population is vaccinated and human societies have returned to normal. Develop and test antivirals targetting the conserved proteins in major virus families. Build a pipeline that can respond to new viruses quickly with a vaccine. Create capacities to quickly ramp up mass production of PPE. Map the viruses that appear in animals around us to know what we are up to.
I hope that political leaders will listen to the people doing such proposals.
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#15wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.
Is there an estimated timeframe on approximately when this will happen?
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#16wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.
What kind of quantity of newly released methane are we talking about, compared to the methane produced by trees and other plants?[1]
1. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=515109...
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...
One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(
We can no longer use the phrase “avoid like the plague” because, well, COVID-19 deniers.
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#18wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.
What kind of quantity of newly released methane are we talking about, compared to the methane produced by trees and other plants?[1] 1. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=515109...
Yeah, it's a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#19wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.
Is there an estimated timeframe on approximately when this will happen?
Isn’t it already happening? Is that what is creating the huge methane explosions and craters in Siberia?
Re: Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...
One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(
The fact that people can be literally dying from COVID in a hospital yet still deny its existence has almost totally destroyed any faith I have in humanity.