News roundup for Fri, Dec 10, 2021

19 Comments on News roundup for Fri, Dec 10, 2021
What is Project Earth’s Black Box

There could be nocturnal tornadoes Friday spanning from Texas to Ohio that could endanger 5 million people. 25 million people in this region are under storm threat:

Biden wants the federal government to be carbon neutral in less than 30 years. Greenhouse gas emissions will have to be cut by more than half in less than a decade for this goal to be met by federal agencies. Recommended interventions include retrofitting, transitioning to energy efficient hardware, installing solar panels, and using parking and other structures for the installation of green technologies.

China Evergrande is unable to pay its debt and will be restructured. The company is experiencing what is being called a “restricted default,” which is probably a euphemism for actual default. Some of the interest the company failed to pay out was on 1.2 billion dollars in US bonds. Here’s a forum post on the topic with references where the discussion can continue.

Biden does not want to send troops to help defend Ukraine from Russia, but threatens more sanctions if Russia advances further into the country.

There have been scores of earthquakes off the Oregon coast—over 80 of them. There have been half a dozen or so over 5.0 on the Richter scale. Are these foreshocks? If they exceed activity known for the region they could be, but that region is known for these kinds of swarms so it’s hard to say for sure. Also, just for fun because I just stumbled across this: there’s no such thing as earthquake weather.

Project Earth’s Black Box will record and store climate data in a large monolith for decades in a remote area of Tasmania for the purposes of documenting climate-induced collapse. There’s some question as to the feasibility of long-term data storage for this purpose, but I suppose the project has time to get that figured out.

The world has 268.7 million COVID cases. The world has gained 4.3 million cases in the last week. There have been over 5.3 million deaths in total. The US has had a cumulative 50.5 million cases—over 800,000 cases were added in the last week. Over 815,000 Americans have died—over 8,400 in the last week. The US added 129,000 new cases Wednesday, and over 107,000 by late afternoon Thursday. The US is still leading global daily case gain followed by India, Brazil, the UK, and Russia.

The Omicron variant is worrying because it’s an escape variant. Immunity from previous infection with virtually any other variant will not do much for folks. Even being double-vaccinated won’t do much for folks. Previous infection plus one vaccine seems to be more protective, and those who have had three doses will definitely do better than those with two or fewer. Preliminary statistics on deaths from areas where Omicron is growing are not showing a huge spike in deaths (yet), so it MAY be slightly less dangerous in that respect:

Osterholm, the director at CIDRAP, predicts Omicron will be the dominant strain in less than one month.

The FDA has given authorization for 16- and 17-year-olds to get 3rd doses of Pfizer. With Omicron spreading quickly this is quite timely:

The pandemic virus has been shown capable of attacking fat tissue and eliciting inflammatory responses from that attack. It’s possible it’s one of the places the virus hides in the body. It might also be why overweight and obese people face higher risks from getting COVID.

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 19 Comments
    • brownfox-ffContributor December 9, 2021

      What you can do about it:

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    • brownfox-ffContributor December 9, 2021

      Thanks Stephanie, as always, for the great collection of updates.
      Great idea linking to forum posts on some topics for further discussion.

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    • brekke December 9, 2021

      Thank you for the updates Stephanie! I always look forward to reading them.

      Every few years, the Blanco Fracture Zone earthquakes get the general public all excited, but usually it’s just because the media keeps trying to link them to a Cascadia event. They are interesting from a geological standpoint, but not something to worry about as far as “the big one” goes. They are also far enough out in the ocean, very shallow, and mild enough in scale to not be a danger to the West Coast. Here’s an article that discusses why this is the case. But, if they convince some people to start preparing for a potential earthquake that could cause damage, then I guess it’s good that they’ve grabbed some attention. 

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor brekke December 10, 2021

        Yes, the number of 5.0+ quakes there is only slightly above baseline. I know that that’s my personal threshold (in my area of California) to recheck my earthquake preps. If there are three or more 5.0+ quakes in short succession in the county I live in, I top up my earthquake supplies. 

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    • Bill Masen December 10, 2021

      Ref Ukraine, the Brits have sent troops and equipment and specialist weapons to the Ukraine to help out, and we have sent more military stuff to Poland to help them counter the problems from Belorus

      https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/a-look-at-the-uks-strategic-partnership-with-ukraine/

      https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-military-providing-support-to-poland-amid-border-pressures/

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    • Bill Masen December 11, 2021

      Look like a terrible loss of life in the storms last night in the US, My heart goes out to the victims, I understand am Amazon fullfillment center collapsed as did a retirement home I think in another state.

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      • Bill Masen Bill Masen December 11, 2021
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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Bill Masen December 12, 2021

        Yes. It’s awful.

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      • M. E.Contributor Bill Masen December 12, 2021

        I would like to share a tornado story of my own, as I think it could be instructive if someone finds themselves in a tornado warning. Many years ago I was at a business dinner in a very fancy restaurant in a midwest city. I heard the emergency alert on the radio at the bar, and asked the waiter what it said. He said it was a tornado warning and started to go back to work. Everyone in the restaurant kept eating and laughing and chatting as though nothing was happening.

        I asked the waiter how to get to the basement and he just pointed to the stairs. I calmly picked up my purse, my dinner, and my drink and started walking to the basement. Everyone stopped and STARED – and then they followed me! Within 3 or 4 minutes everyone was in the basement and having a marvelous time (since they followed my lead and also brought their meals with them).  The staff all came downstairs too and we turned it into a party.  We were down there for a good 45 minutes before the all clear was sounded.

        What is important about this story is that someone had to act first. I’m pretty certain that if I had returned to my dinner, peer pressure would have meant that others would have stayed at the table too (some of the attendees were vendors, and one was my employee).  The mere fact that one person headed for the basement – and calmly – made it okay for everyone to do so.  And making it okay to bring our meals with us (which I didn’t think through, really – I just did it) – meant the staff didn’t feel they had to take the risk to go upstairs to feed us etc., so everyone was safe.

        I was fortunate in that situation that there was a basement available.  So sad that many people in this weekend’s storm apparently had nowhere safe to go.  

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor M. E. December 13, 2021

        Very good point! Yes, I was at an airport in Texas in spring of 2016 when the sky turned dark and green. When I flew into it we had to circle around a HUGE, dense, and very visible storm cell just to land (it was like an aerial light show–furiously lit up with lightning!). All flights were stopped because of tornado warning. The airport was all windows. I moved towards the center of the airport and started looking for where I could shelter more safely if needed. 99% of folks were operating like nothing was happening (I’m sure when people go through it over and over again it’s not as motivating). Luckily nothing happened in that location and I was able to fly out a few hours later. A number of tornadoes did hit other parts of Texas nearby. In the airport I don’t think people would have acted unless/until announcements directed them to, unfortunately. But you can always be that person, too! If a crowd needs to act, calmly instruct folks and lead the way.

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      • Mr. Mark Stephanie Arnold December 13, 2021

        Both experiences were valuable learning lessons! Several years ago my wife and I were in a Home Depot when the tornado siren sounded. The announcement over the PA was to vacate the store! We went to the glass enclosed entrance where a small crowd had gathered, trying to decide whether on not leaving the store was safe. I could already see rotation in the dark skies above so we headed for the restrooms. While concrete walled and undoubtedly the safest locations in the store, they were packed…no room to get any more people in whatsoever. I decided the safest place to be then was in the bathroom section. My wife and I both crawled into separate steel display tubs, using boxed tub-surround kits to cover ourselves. The store was hit, but fortunately only one corner near the garden section and front entrance were damaged. There were trees and shrubs of all kinds scattered everywhere but no one was hurt except for a couple of people who suffered some small cuts because they elected to stay at the entrance and “watch the tornado!” To this day I do not enter a building without first looking for a designated tornado shelter or safest place to be during a tornado. During a later experience in a WalMart we were told we cold not leave the store, but to lie down in an aisle somewhere! Despite those instructions we headed for what we found were empty bathrooms! Several people were injured by flying debris when the store was hit. My wife and I were injury free. 

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Mr. Mark December 13, 2021

        Holy Moly!

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      • brownfox-ffContributor Mr. Mark December 13, 2021

        Excellent story and good idea. Thank you for sharing.

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      • M. E.Contributor Mr. Mark December 14, 2021

        All of these threads have helped me identify a major gap in my preps: my bug out bag, etc are all in the upstairs of my house, where they are easy to grab if I have, say, a few minutes of warning. At least five times in the past few years I’ve had to go to the basement for a tornado warning and not once has it occurred to me to grab my BOB.  Based on what I’ve seen of the news coverage, that BOB will be gone if my house is hit, and then I’ll have no food, water, etc.

        So my project for this weekend will be to put some basic supplies under the stairs in my basement, which is probably the strongest place to be if the house is hit.  At least three days of food, water, medicine, a Jackery, etc.  The space under my stairs is even big enough for a cot – I could make it a little campout space!

        One thing I don’t know how to handle is shutting off the utilities.  I have a natural gas line into my house, and in the event of a tornado warning, there’s really no time to shut off the gas.  Shutting it off is also enough of a pain that I wouldn’t want to do it in the event of “just” a tornado watch, because turning it back on causes all kinds of issues with a variety of appliances in my home. Does anyone have insight into how gas lines are handled in the event of a tornado touchdown – will the utility find a way to cut off the neighborhood as a whole so that gas isn’t just spewing into the air when everything is wrecked? I sure as heck won’t be able to locate the cutoff post-tornado if my house is hit as hard as those houses I see in the news coverage were.  

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      • Carlotta SusannaStaff M. E. December 15, 2021

        I don’t have direct experience with tornados so I had to look at our tornado guide 🙂 The main points Josh made re gas are:

        • Turn off gas lines (if possible)
        • Make a decision on whether to bug in or bug out. If you can, contact EMS or local utilities in the case of downed power lines or broken gas lines.
        • If you smell gas, leave immediately [that’s mostly for the aftermath – you won’t be able to leave anyway if you’re sheltering at home and get hit by the tornado] after shutting off whatever gas lines you can and main power. Contact EMS as soon as possible.
        • If a gas leak is possible, avoid turning on lights, lighting matches, or smoking until you’ve secured the area.

        Thinking out loud:

        I would assume that you could ask your local utility company to know how they handle these kinds of situations if you want to make sure.

        You said that “in the event of a tornado warning, there’s really no time to shut off the gas” – do you think that learning and practicing how to do it might actually help you out to be more confident? I thought that maybe if you have all of your supplies in your safe space and the only thing you have to do is to shut off the gas and hide, it might be actually feasible on some occasions? 

        Re shutting off the gas line being a pain if it’s just a preventative measure,  I would only assume that it’s a question of balancing risk vs reward and I can’t really speak for you :))

        Anyway, good luck, and kudos for taking extra steps in preparing!

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      • brownfox-ffContributor M. E. December 13, 2021

        Excellent! Kudos on staying calm and acting as a leader. Thanks for sharing.

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    • Karl Winterling December 11, 2021

      One positive: Traditional health messaging and public service announcements are pretty much worthless at convincing vaccine hesitant people, but more media savvy approaches are much more effective (like not assuming that high production value makes a speaker seem more credible, limiting scary or “triggering” content, and encouraging people to sit back and reflect on an article before sharing it). I agree that it would probably be far worse to trust a centralized organization like Facebook or the US federal government to determine what qualifies as legitimate debate.

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Karl Winterling December 12, 2021

        Thank you for that, it’s interesting. Yes, we need to improve our public health messaging. The messaging since the start of this pandemic (in the US, anyway) has been absolutely chaotic and, if anything, only reinforced peoples’ fears/hesitancy because of its capriciousness. 

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