The Green Room

[Mulezen]

And back then it was called the Spanish flu though it was imported from the US on troop ships. Just saying

 

[Art Deco]

I seem to remember there was denial and goverment cover ups involved at the beginning of the outbreak then as well...
Wow... is this thread getting dark . Anyway, we have a vaccine that generation didn't have, better sanitation, and modern medicine ... sometimes.

 

[Gordon71]

Is that (1918 flu deaths) what we should be aiming for? We've had effective vaccines for this virus for over 6 months now... Really no excuse for the death level to be increasing the way it is (in the developed world). They didn't have any way to stop the flu in 1918. It's a crime that unvaccinated people are the cause of so much unnecessary death.

It is really bizarre why that is happening. Lucky it wasn't like that when they made vaccines for things like polio and small pox or those would still be with us. One thing that puzzles me though. If they can make a vaccine as effective as they have for covid , why can't they do better with the flu or even come up with one for the common cold? Or have they?

 

[Art Deco]

Art…I have to somewhat disagree with you about energy storage Since storage is presently the kink in renewable energy. I do get what you’re saying about energy stored as end products. For example…solar hot water heating is one important aspect of the equation. Actually rather than mandates like in CA for roof solar, Hot water should be the target. Solar power is more efficiently administered in larger ground arrays. But with renewables the cheapest form of new energy storage becomes key in a 24 hour country. The iron oxide battery for these large arrays solves many problems

Another way to help cool things down a bit if there are going to mandates... how about painting the roofs high gloss white?

 

[Mulezen]

My 900sf house has a near flat rubber roof painted that aluminum white.
i keep a can of black paint handy in case I ever have to paint an SOS

 

[Art Deco]

Another silly incentive that backfired.... I replaced my roof with metal when we installed solar panels, and there was a rebate on some " reflective " colors. but white or pale green were both out of stock in the reflective finish .
I ended up getting a medium brown just for the rebate.

 

[john peck]

I understand your sentiment, I think. I disagree about the order of disasters; you missed a couple, specifically famine and resource wars will happen.

There is the legend of the four color of horsemen

Violence, Starvation, and Pestilence, who ride together with a fourth ... the White horse and pale rider of natural mortality.

Earch of them can kill up to about a quarter of a population at a time. IDK the order but the bodies from the so called called ' "Chinese Hoax" is catching up to the Holocaust murders at least.

/end rant

I was trying to keep it brief, there´s a thousand ways to die. Callous as it maybe. the crux of it is that there
really are too many people. Nature works by reducing that which is too much & augmenting what is too
little. We are are the spanner in the works. Still, I think we are approaching a bottleneck like the one that
all but wiped out the human race 70,000 yrs ago. I´m not too worried, I´ll probably be dead before it happens.
Unless we kill ourselves off, nature will find some catastrophe to do it. Is that fatalistic or just inevitable?

 

[Art Deco]

We will all die off, naturally or not. What doesn’t need to happen is lots of new births to women of child bearing age. Much more desirable to raise one or two children well than trying to raise six or eight in hard times.

 

[john peck]

John, unfortunately, I don't think anything short of utter catastrophe is going to motivate the vast majority of us to do anything that's inconvenient or difficult, on a sustained basis. Very sad, but, I'm afraid very true.

I reluctantly agree. I fear in the not too distant future it will become every man for himself. Hopefully,
I will be gone of natural causes 1st. To quote ?: ´Humanity is only skin deep.´

MSNBC just reported 76,000 new cases in one day in Florida? How do they know this?
Did 76,000 people just show of a sudden to be tested? This kind of reporting makes me skeptical no
matter which network you watch. Was it a flash mob? They haven´t been showing the total US death toll
much lately. Apparently vaxxed people are getting delta. Should we be getting a shot on a weekly basis?
Every couple of weeks now we get a new variant. How long must we wait for one with a 60% mortality rate
like the plague? That would go a long way toward solving global warming since the primary cause is just
too damn many people. I´m not volunteering to die, but can the media please find something else to with
which to be beat us to death.

Update: MSNBC said 76,000, Today Yahoo sez it was 26,000. Who should we believe?
I suppose we should split the difference ?

 

[PatriciaK]

I'm still going with Hans Rosling's projection that the population is going to level off at around 12 billion. And believe that educating women and alleviating poverty are the keys to slowing that growth sooner. When women are educated, and when children reliably survive to adulthood and are not required to support the family, women have fewer children. Birth rates are already falling in many areas of the world. Also part of what we need, is migration to areas that can support larger populations, and away from areas that can't. It's going to happen, peacefully or not, as climate change continues...

Of course we need to change our habits of consumption and energy use, too - it's a big, complicated puzzle.

 

[john peck]

We will all die off, naturally or not. What doesn’t need to happen is lots of new births to women of child bearing age. Much more desirable to raise one or two children well than trying to raise six or eight in hard times.

Gotta be less stressful anyway. I try to remain optimistic in spite of the way events are unfolding. My
concern is what our children will face tomorrow if we do not act today.

 

[Art Deco]

I'm still going with Hans Rosling's projection that the population is going to level off at around 12 billion. And believe that educating women and alleviating poverty are the keys to slowing that growth sooner. When women are educated, and when children reliably survive to adulthood and are not required to support the family, women have fewer children. Birth rates are already falling in many areas of the world. Also part of what we need, is migration to areas that can support larger populations, and away from areas that can't. It's going to happen, peacefully or not, as climate change continues...

Of course we need to change our habits of consumption and energy use, too - it's a big, complicated puzzle.

AFAIK, consumption, not population is the issue. Global population doubled since I was born, but global GNP per person increased four fold. Waste per person is much higher yet.
Not just too many people, too many rich people

 

[john peck]

AFAIK, consumption, not population is the issue. Global population doubled since I was born, but global GNP per person increased four fold. Waste per person is much higher yet.
Not just too many people, too many rich people

Food product has just marginally kept up with population for the last 20 years. With the drought & floods,
it is perilously close to wide spread famine. Add to that soil depletion & rising fertilizer costs, & we are
teetering on the edge. Get a copy of ´The State of the World Atlas¨ , dan smith(new addition for the 21st century)
The stats therein are a real wake-up call. (also ´The state of war & peace atlas, ´)**
**Oslo, international peace research institute

 

[Art Deco]

Food product has just marginally kept up with population for the last 20 years. With the drought & floods,
it is perilously close to wide spread famine. Add to that soil depletion & rising fertilizer costs, & we are
teetering on the edge. Get a copy of ´The State of the World Atlas¨ (new addition for the 21st century)
The stats therein are a real wake-up call.

True. But we still waste a third of the food we produce in the "developed" countries. Much more if you consider what happens to the nutrition value of the real foods that are turned into fast food.

 

[Art Deco]

It is really bizarre why that is happening. Lucky it wasn't like that when they made vaccines for things like polio and small pox or those would still be with us. One thing that puzzles me though. If they can make a vaccine as effective as they have for covid , why can't they do better with the flu or even come up with one for the common cold? Or have they?

I suspect that the vaccines and virus will be an ongoing issue. Like the flu and colds , it will mutate .

 

[DaveMatthews]

I suspect that the vaccines and virus will be an ongoing issue. Like the flu and colds , it will mutate .

Agreed. Hate it, but it's been feeling like that for months now.

 

[tomjasz]

It's not over. CDC lists my county as a "substantial risk". Mask up in public places, stores and such...

 

[Art Deco]

Yes. Vaccines or not. We don't spray the mail or avoid entering buildings or such anymore, but always carry a mask and wear it upon entering. Socialize outdoors in open spaces. .

 

[Art Deco]

Some more about climate change, infectious disease, and the linkups to deforestation and land use.

TLDR version: This isn't news, scientists told the politicians that disease outbreaks were to be expected under BAU.

How Climate Change Is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease

A catastrophic loss in biodiversity, reckless destruction of wildland and warming temperatures have allowed disease to explode. Ignoring the connection between climate change and pandemics would be “dangerous delusion,” one scientist said.

www.propublica.org

 

[john peck]

I suspect that the vaccines and virus will be an ongoing issue. Like the flu and colds , it will mutate .

Great news, now you get Delta + with many upgrades. When will we learn? A virus can evolve a hundred
times faster than larger, more complex organisms. Thus far efforts seem to accelerated the process. We
cannot develop antibodies, vaccine or natural, quickly enough to keep up. There needs to be a cure that
knocks it dead in it´s tracks. There´s gotta be something growing out there that will kill it like what penicillin
did for the 20th century.