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Things are Starting to Heat Up Part VI 10

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dik

dik

Structural
Apr 13, 2001
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So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik
 
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It is a hazard in the sense that everything has some level of hazard associated with it.

Didn't they swab some dudes belly button last year and discover like 50 new bacteria/viruses never seen before? (Edit: I went and looked it up and it was like 10 years ago and there were over 1,400 new species never before seen. The point I was trying to convey was that there are more bacteria in more places than we can likely ever prepare for.)

Trying to anticipate/prepare for some ancient viralpocolypse seems like a waste of bandwidth to me when we've got real, modern, and treatable viruses that are doing harm today. But then again, they just don't capture headlines the same way.

- Andrew
 
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Viruses trapped in ice don't change over time. Our ancestors survived these viruses without medical intervention so it is unlikely for them to be seriously harmful to the modern world.

It is possible that there are viruses in the ice for which we have no immunity because they developed in inhospitable places where humans didn't live. With that said, these viruses probably couldn't infect a human for the same reason. Maybe avian viruses would be the biggest threat.

It doesn't seem that the ones taking samples and bringing these viruses to the surface for study seem very concerned about it. It's most likely that some think tank came up with the idea of a deadly pathogen emerging from the ice and ran it as a headline for clicks.
 
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I haven't been able to dig up info on whether they can mutate, but apparently there can be some new 'old ones'. As long as they haven't been killed, I suspect they can mutate, too.


-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik
 
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Mutation requires a host. The mutation happens during replication and viruses can't self-replicate. Therefore, a virus frozen in ice can't mutate.
 
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Thanks... didn't know that they needed a host.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik
 
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That's a good source of vetting information, I've heard...

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik
 
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It's a relevant comment. Your article says researchers have revived a virus from the ice. That's not very different from reviving the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. It doesn't sound like they let the ice melt and the virus started spreading itself. It does sound like they recreated the virus using the same technology that added a spike protein to a coronavirus.
 
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Much as I enjoyed the memes about Monkeypox, I'd love to see what the internet would do with Dinopox
 
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How is this relevant to climate change? Maybe post it to the engineering disasters forum?
 
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It and what is going to follow is likely related to the effects of climate change... It may get more severe over time... we'll just have to wait and find out... [pipe]

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik
 
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I'm not sure how many of you saw this, but the Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe was spruiking this graph in his speech last week:

sp-gov-2022-11-22-graph07_xvlxwd.svg



Th graph was picked up, published and retweeted by all the usual suspects - ABC, Guardian, etc...

Isn't it astonishing, a graph which claims a ~3000% increase in flooding has already occured since 1940, and not a single media outlet questioned it.
 
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I don't know if the data is correct... but, Australia's position, in the middle of a nice warm body of water that may heat up, makes it particularly vulnerable to climate change. Even in nice 'cool' Canada, we may not be safe. We'll see what the future brings. [pipe]

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik
 
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The trick is that the data is correct so it can't be refuted. The problem is that they likely changed the definitions along the way. What is the definition of flood, storm, fire, drought, and extreme temp? How can these all go up when some are mutually exclusive?
 
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dik said:
I don't know if the data is correct
Click to expand...

It's not. There are not ~20x as many natural disasters happening today as there were in the mid 20th century. Floods do not occur ~30x as often as they did back then. These are artificial numbers.

Tug said:
The problem is that they likely changed the definitions along the way.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's partially that (but not only that). One of the definitions of disaster is to declare a state of emergency ( That now constitutes a natural disaster according to the database in question. You may have noticed this increasing willingness for governments to declare states of emergency. It has filtered right down to local government level in Australia. I'm sure it's the same around the world.
 
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It would be interesting to know the original source for that data. I don't imagine there were many weather satellites spotting storms in the deserts in 1959.

I'll have a look but I suspect it is a ridiculous graph.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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What is the Emergency Events Database and who are RBA? [ponder]

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik
 
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