Before we examine this question let me state categorically it will not be Donald Dump of the USA that will rule.
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There were two dominating powers the USA and Russia but now there is a new power China.
The USA with Donald is all but withdrawn from policing the world.
When the USSR collapsed it was left outside any contribution to world politic, which it resents to this day.
However non of this matters because one in five people worldwide will be forced to endure a life-threatening “new normal” if governments don’t act with urgency. Beyond the distraction of war, what we are about to discover with climate change is unimaginable.
The question is:
Are we all so self-centred that we are going to stay silent, while the planet is destroyed for the sake of profit.
Are we or our governments concerned?
Verbally yes. Taking Action Not.
The recent results of Cop 30 bears witness to this.
No matter who you’re are, what nationality you are, what you believe in, it is pathetic that we as a species (who are supposed to be the most intelligent on the planet ) cannot agree that the climate is worth while investing in for our collective future.
We are hurtling toward climate chaos.
The planet’s vital signs are flashing red.
The consequences of human-driven alterations of the climate are no longer future threats but are here now.
The window to prevent the worst outcomes is rapidly closing.
These recent developments emphasize the extreme insufficiency of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mark the beginning of a grim new chapter for life on Earth.
The last few years have seen surface temperature, ocean temperature, and sea ice extent records broken by extraordinary margins.
With the world economy expanding by approximately 3.5% over the previous year
Although this growth is often celebrated as a sign of progress, continued economic expansion remains largely coupled with increased resource consumption, ecological degradation, and increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Two-thirds of warming since 1990 has been attributable to the wealthiest 10% because of high-consumption lifestyles, high per capita fossil fuel use, and investments.
Taken together, these trends suggest humanity is in a state of ecological overshoot—a state in which resources are consumed faster than they can be replenished.
Seven of the eight globally quantified safe and just planetary boundaries have been transgressed, highlighting both overshoot and deepening justice concerns.
Reducing ecological overshoot would help mitigate socioenvironmental pressures, but would require both cutting emissions and rethinking the consumer society while transitioning to a sustainable economy within safe and just Earth system boundaries.
At this moment and time there is no hope of achieving anything near what is required.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAYS. IF WE REALLY WANT TO REDUCE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY – POVERTY IS GETTING WORSE, WE NEED TO ADOPTED A BASIC LIVING WAGE.
Just like climate change , this is an area where we have built an industry around the problem rather than a cure.
The results of Aid given to non rich countries shows that this kind of aids has little or no impact in tackling the growing inequality gap or poverty for that matter.
With the coming loss of thousands of jobs to AI,
Now is the time to introduce a Basic Living
Wage.
Direct Aid ensure dignity.
It acts as a stimulant to weak economy and encourage imagination.
Now we all know the arguments against a Basic Wage. Inflation! Just think what Donal Trump tariffs are doing.
It’s time to get rid of social welfare and equip people with the means to look after themselves.
To manage their own medical /educational and daily needs.
We try all other routes so on the pre-text that the establishment of a BASIC WAGE has been try with small groups and found to have positive results why not explore it.
We can say poverty in all the languages under the sun and have done so since time memorial till AID foundation are blue in the face.
There is nothing to be lost to let people find their own footing within society,
Affect centuries of giving Aid that had not turned into happiness but into corruption.
This is not Wealth distribution. This is equipping individuals with the means to improve their lives.
Let’s be creative.
Happiest comes from self respect and self respect is obtained through pride.
There is often quite appalling disparity in social conditions and a hostility born of fear between against the privileged and the deprived, the exploiters and the exploited.
The privilege always use any surpluses to either improve or protect their position.
We can only try to reverse that position with taxes., or with what is called the triangle down capitalism, which we knew has not worked and will never work.
I know that there have been places where a basic wage has been tried, with some considerable success.
Let’s give back some pride.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE WE HAVE ALREADY PASSED A TIPPING POINT.
( Four minute read)
Have we reached a tipping point, that moment from which a system irreversibly changes state?
I say yes.
Climate tipping points could lock in unstoppable changes to the planet, self-sustaining shifts in the climate system that would lock-in devastating changes, like sea-level rise, even if all emissions ended.
Inhabitants of New York on Wednesday are invited to stay at home and to use masks outdoors. More than 100 million Americans are now affected by air quality alerts due to wild fires in Canada.
In the mean time melting of the sea ice in the Arctic will inevitably lead to a warming of the region: a huge white space, the pack ice reflects light when the sun shines 24 hours a day in summer.
It lowers the temperature of the Arctic. The disappearance of the pack ice – icy water already present in the ocean – will not directly lead to a rise in the sea and the rise in global temperature caused by the melting of the sea ice risks in turn leading to extreme climatic events: heat waves, droughts, floods, etc.
Are we all screwed?
Yes.
Why?
Because every fraction of a degree makes tipping more likely, but we can’t be sure exactly when tipping becomes inevitable as one tipping point speeds up the next.
These signals can’t tell us exactly how close we are to tipping points, only that destabilisation is underway and a tipping point may be approaching.
These changes are just the beginning of worse to come.
The scale of recent changes across the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years, and it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.
The most we can be sure of is that every fraction of further warming will destabilise these tipping elements more and make the initiation of self-sustaining changes more likely.
“It’s a huge red flag, but there’s still time to save everything else.”
The temporary reduction in carbon emissions caused by global COVID-19 lockdowns did not slow the relentless advance of climate change.
To implement climate change goals as geopolitical uncertainties threaten to undermine their efforts,
The world is yet to get to a “positive tipping point” in the fight against climate change. It is now very likely that the 5-year average temperature for 2021–2025 will pass the 1.5 °C threshold.
Even if emissions are reduced to limit warming to well below 2 °C, the global average sea level would likely rise by 0.3–0.6 m by 2100 and could rise 0.3–3.1 m by 2300.
Three-quarters of people in the world’s wealthiest nations believe humanity is pushing the planet towards a dangerous tipping point and support a shift of priorities away from economic profit.
People know we are taking colossal risks, they want to do more and they want their governments to do more. We and they must move faster to implement more ambitious policies to protect and regenerate our global commons.
People in power seem to feel it is OK to fell old trees or destroy natural ecosystems for buildings or roads, or to dig up oil, so long as they then plant new trees. But this approach is not working.
Overall, 74% of people agreed that countries should move beyond focussing on gross domestic product and profit, and instead focus more on the health and wellbeing of humans and nature.
Its now or never for global cooperation to tackle shared challenges.
There is now a need for major economic and social transformation.
Currently the world is heading toward ~2 to 3°C of global warming; at best, if all net-zero pledges and nationally determined contributions are implemented it could reach just below 2°C.
One barrier appears to be media coverage. It is not helped the understanding of the issues, or what is at stake.
You don’t have to be told that it will not take much to tip us all into killing each other.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The great things about Britain, are the sheer amount of bright minds this country had during its history. There are myriad of inventors, writers, musicians, bands, rock stars, scientists…All British!
However the trouble is that the fabric of English society has so many strands, that the “inertia” of the British class system is less elastic than one might think – even if one generation pulls away, the next is tugged backwards.
In a country that is now struggling to keep the wolf from the door, to correct the idiocies to which ideologically based government have taken England and return it towards reality, it must first look at its culture.
Last night debate between the two remaining candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party and thus the next Prime Minister of the country highlighted this class culture.
Bling earrings against posh shoes.
The British obsession with class isn’t so archaic, like it or loathe it, many see the class system as a quintessential element of British life. Class distinctions do not die; they merely learn new ways of expressing themselves.
Whether you are a lord, a “toff” or just the Queen, everyone in the UK fits into the class system, this is what influenced their occupation, social status and political influence.
It takes around 10 generations for someone at the highest or lowest levels of society to reach the middle classes.
This the vast and elaborate structure grew up almost in secret.
How much of England’s position today depend on the people we’ve never met?
Perhaps a more pertinent question, then, is not whether class distinctions exist, but whether it is possible to move out of one pigeonhole and into another.
Lower class- Working class- Middle class- Upper Class. Royalists Aristocrats. Class might not have same status as it once did but the British class system has its protections at every level, a built-in inertia from its colonial days of ‘divide and rule.
We are all human so it no wonder the debate last night was influenced by short term populisms subjects on the economy, hungry consumerists and investors.
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Thanks to Maggie Thatcher policies the culture in Britain moved from brilliant to consumerism – shop till you drop – ignoring the rise in racism and growing ignorance due to the lack of free education.
At least it was before the Brexit idea, there are few things which surfaced with this whole Brexit situation.
We learned that the vast majority of people in this country is racist. Politicians are liars (promising more money for academia and the NHS…). Politicians are trying to get rid of the Human Rights (read about it if you don’t believe me) and without a flinch, the great British government passed “the most extreme surveillance law in the history of western democracy” (to quote Snowden).
To start cleaning up the mess.
You don’t start about “taking back our sovereignty.” That is petty as hell, countries are not self sufficient. We rely on each other. I would hold a public enquiry into the Brexit.
You dont start solving the problems talking about levelling up or down, reducing taxes, the price of fuel, the NHS, Brexit opportunities, the Ukraine war.
Everyone understands the financial services is the big kahuna for the UK.
“ The City “ the financial sector, still has this idea that it’s basically smart to game the system. If these are the people, and the culture, that is coming into public life then we’ve got a real problem.”
Outside brilliant minds are no longer welcome to contribute to the Great British societies and money is being invested in privatisation and corporations as opposed to a stable economy, educated, informed and healthy population.
It is shocking to still hear people moaning about immigrants coming to Britain for the sake of benefits, whereby it is the vast majority of immigrants who pay the most taxes. It is the immigrants who maintain Britain afloat, and it is because of the immigrants that we have good doctors, dedicated teachers and hard-working baristas in the local cafes.
Unfortunately, the relative proportions of people moving up or down a class now seems to be reversing. More men and women are experiencing downward mobility and fewer of them experience upward mobility.
It is shocking to watch day time Media full of begging for support for ever think from Food banks to save the children.
Britain is indeed among the worst countries for certain measures of social mobility, with the parents’ wealth strongly influencing the child’s prospects of higher education and a good salary.
NO COUNTRY IS PERFECT.
Even though Brexit was a pissing contest, and either party hailing “the Brexit deal” a “victorious day” was stupendous by all accounts. (accountable politicians should have been fired on the spot for even daring to see that as a victory)
The country now needs long term actions.
No longer a Mantra Carter or privileged Royals rather a Written Constitution to level up and enter the age of technology.
Why?
To provide the courts, the police, the infrastructure, education and training on which business relies a set defined values and insure that when a leader is removed from office for what ever reason that all of its people get say on who is to take his or hers place with a general election not the members of any political party, that happens to be in power.
Why?
Because people are embedded in a circle of connections and that social milieu is very influential in terms of people’s outcomes.
Because immigrants are the people who are willing to give up their rights, liberties and cultures, in order to work for the sake of your government, your country, your society and your benefits.
Because for too long business, especially multi-national business have been parasitical on the nation state. It is time that they learned to be a sensible symbiote and to nurture not drain and destroy its host.
This is a beautiful country with a country with a murder a day, (According to the Global Peace Index, the UK is the 47th safest country in the world (and the 26th in Europe), well below Romania, Hungary, Germany and Botswana. Portugal is the 4th safest country in Europe ) … with a scurrilous Press, with 430 people per square kilometre, ( England is nearly twice as crowded as Germany (227) people per sq./km) and more than three times as crowded as France (117 people per sq./km).
Its time to get out of the phone box and take an in-depth look at some genuine solutions.
Britain is too heavily populated to manage centrally, so things need to be micro-managed.
Council tax. Should be income-based.
Education in all its forms should be free.
Public Transportation is insanely, painfully expensive.
People Assemblies less power for the elites and more power for the people.
Tackle Racism Discrimination which has have been emboldened since Brexit.
Free Grants to drive green energy. Not a moratorium on Green levs’ Climate change is a global emergency.
Proportional representation for general elections.
Make it illegal for a newspaper to publish “information” that they knew to be false.
Ban advertising that prompts unsustainability.
The British empire has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history, but the UK has mellowed out over the past few generations, though under no circumstances should anyone ever trust a British government leader that is not elected by all of its people.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Not quite, but every major social indicator imaginable is either flatlining or declining and unwinding, from longevity, to trust, to happiness, to wealth.
History shows us that economic collapse will essentially happen with entrenched elites seeking to maintain the status quo.
You would have to be an ostrich with your head stuck in the sand not to see that in exchange for your Freedom, Liberty, and Independence, governments are printing currency to pay their bills and support the tens of millions on public assistance.
But if you take a look around societies that are failing to anticipate their own impending collapses.
There are political classes, intellectual classes, and capitalist classes, to name a few that can conceive of the possibility that society is in a grave, profound difficulty. With the help of the Pandemic now reaching unprecedented proportions, and the continuing Climate crises all are adding up to a pending collapsing society.
Why?
Because we are all too preoccupied with merely surviving the vicious cycle as the collapse intensifies. On one hand are acting as if we are already living in scientifically-planned societies, immune to collapse on a time scale that any of us have to worry about. On the other is the idea that everyone is entitled to have what others have earned is now permeating society with the help of social media.
It is not our hard-won liberties that are being taken away it is our means to live a life in an attempt to save dying economies.
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If that is not enough just look at what COP26 achieved.
As you know COP26 was an opportunity for nations from across the globe to agree on a way to limit the devastating impacts of climate change.
What we got was a deal that does not go far enough and will not limit global warming to 1.5C by the end of the century.
Because of the current Pandemic, carbon emissions will continue for the foreseeable future, combined with Methane, we are set to see more wars.
Climate change is going to result in mass migration with wars over resources with the pandemic affecting not just the cost of living but the ability to earn a living. We’re already seeing (with the most recent example in Cameroon where farmers and fishermen are killing each other for water) both ( Climate/ Pandemic ) escalating resulting in steep recessions in many countries.
Current projections suggest that the worldwide recession of COVID-19 would be the fourth deepest and most extreme since the Second World War during this time.
Surely it’s time we started to look at both the Pandemic and Climate Change through the eyes of human liberty, consensus, and laws, all are becoming more relevant day by day, which is paramount to all of us.
Today we are not immune to anybody’s problems.
A collapse of a society anywhere is a global issue, and conversely, anybody anywhere in the world now has ways of reaching us.
However, there are obvious differences between the environmental problems and pandemics in the past and the ones that we face today. The difference between today and the past is globalization.
In the past, you could get solitary collapses.
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If elites wish to maintain the status quo, why don’t people…take action against those elites?
Are we able to choose what we will do with our lives?
What is the point of life if we cannot choose our own paths?
Common sense tells us that with the state of our planet, that we’re is no longer at liberty to ignore what is happening. If we really can choose, then these choices we have made must be uncaused — something that cannot be explained within the model of science that many of us rely on.
However from a purely scientific perspective, how is it possible that anything can occur without having been caused by something else?
A human act is an act that is deliberately performed by one possessed of the use of reason. Branches of psychology and many wisdom traditions, attempt to make sense of human existence and experience and to connect those experiences to the world at large.
Our current view of human mental evolution is like a jigsaw puzzle where many of the pieces have been taken out of the box.
They have not yet been put together to form a coherent picture.
One of the oldest questions in psychology, and in other fields such as philosophy, is whether humans have free will. The central puzzles about human cognition are its curious combination of flexibility and efficiency.
But is this all that defines us?
We don’t have to live with what we got.
Take, the technology behind a nuclear bomb.
It only exists because of the technology because of a cooperative hive mind: hundreds of scientists and engineers working together on an atom bomb.
This same unique intelligence and cooperation also underlie more positive advances, such as modern medicine and now the vaccines we are using to fight covid.
Still, as far as we know, we are the only creatures trying to understand where we came from. We also peer further back in time, and further into the future, than any other animal.
What other species would think to ponder the age of the universe, or how it will end?
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Either we put our survival before GDP.
Continue as we are or change by putting our Health before Consumption, putting equality before greed, putting transparency before political power, and sharing our responsibility to future generations.
We don’t know exactly what led to our brains becoming the size they are today, but we seem to owe our complex reasoning abilities to notice the unexpected, which our world is now experiencing and will continue to experience with less and less critical reflection.
Critical reflection requires that the thinker examine the underlying assumptions and radically question or doubt the validity of arguments, assertions, and even facts of the case.
We are now in need of some critical thinking, not reflection to consider the results of having linked our scenario-building minds into larger networks of knowledge that have made us increasingly reliant on each other.
So what if anything will bring us together to act as one or when will we hit peak humanity becoming a singularity basically?
By peak humanity I mean we’ll have the ability to do things we can’t do alone.
If we could all work together as well as the human body can, that’s when I think we individual humans will be “cells” and we as a collective would be called an individual.
Our problem is that the majority of us are incapable of putting anything before our daily needs.
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Because our rapidly expanding technology has allowed us all to become instant publishers means we can share information at the touch of a button.
This transmission of ideas and technology helps us in our quest to uncover even more about ourselves with an immense capacity for good. At the same time, we risk driving our closest relatives to extinction and destroying the only planet we have ever called home.
The technology that defines us can also destroy the world.
Why?
Because we’re simply trying to advance too much too fast.
Our cultures and mindsets cant keep up with our technology and morality, so chaos ensues.
How do you expect to survive in a world that is based on imaginary delusions of people without basic knowledge about how Earth works in terms of physics and biology.
This tells us something profound about ourselves.
Unfortunately, we don’t know all of the determinants of human behavior, and we may never understand all of these determinants—so the question of whether or not we have free will is likely to remain a philosophical quagmire.
This is why we are unable to act as one.
So we are left pretty much where we started.
Religions, Languages, Nations, and Cultures are what divide humanity today which is just another flaw as a species.
So of course, we pass on the good and the bad.
Not until we learn to pull together our unparalleled language skills, our ability to infer others’ mental states, and our instinct for cooperation, will we have something unprecedented to fight Climate Change and future pandemics.
We understand what others think based upon our knowledge of the world, but we also understand what others cannot know.
The answer lies in fundamentally changing social behavior away from the rapidly moving consuming beings that we are.
We are the only society in world history that has the ability to learn from all the experiments being carried out elsewhere in the world today, and all the experiments that have succeeded and failed in the past so at least we have the choice of what we want to do about it or do we.
Most people realize that 2020 has thrust two game-changing trends upon us that will change the world for years to come.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THE ENVIORMENT MORE IMPORTAIN THAN THE ECONOMY?
(Five-minute read)
With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.
If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”
Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.
However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down.
Why?
Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life.
In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.
Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!
We’re all in this together.
There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;
To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.
An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.
With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.
A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.
If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“
If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.
The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.
Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.
What do you think the economy is?
It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?
To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.
Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up.
Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.
History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.
Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.
So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.
It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit.
It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms.
Either we are really all in this together or we are not.
Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)
The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.
Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse are chucked in the bin.
From the dawn of humanity and throughout history, infectious diseases have shaped human evolution, demography, migrations, and history they have killed well over half of all humans who have ever lived on earth.
Viruses are precursors of life as we know it, they infiltrate every aspect of our natural world. New viruses and strains were discovered in every decade of the second half of the 20th century. Today we don’t even know how many viruses human beings are subject to, even how many inhabit us at this very moment.
As to where viruses came from is not a simple question to answer. The origins of many human pathogens are ancient, extending back over time scales of thousands to millions of years.
It’s unclear how they first evolved but what is clear is viruses are tiny but their impact on life is huge. This is true not just for people, but for all life forms on earth.
It is estimated that there are 10 viruses for every bacterium on Earth.
We humans have been around for about 200.000 years while the Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. You do the maths.
Strictly speaking, viruses can’t die, for the simple reason that they aren’t alive in the first place. A virus outside a host is a package of genetic material if it does not find a host it goes back to being just a package of dormant genetic material.
Hence, there shouldn’t even be any question about their survival and their effect on evolution.
Therefore the term “survive” may not be the most appropriate term when it comes to a virus.
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To us, disease-causing viruses and bacteria may be evildoers — invaders of our bodies — who, if they can be said to have any aim at all, it is to do us harm.
But by shifting our perspective to their scale it reveals that these pathogens are evolving populations of organisms like any other, whose habitat just happens to be the human body. Like other organisms, these germs are shaped by natural selection to live and successfully reproduce.
We view them as pathogens, however, because the resources they use to do this (and which they destroy in the process) are the cells of our own bodies.
Many of the traits that make us feel sick during an infection are actually pathogenic adaptations — characteristics favored by natural selection that help these germs reproduce and spread.
Without legs, wings, fins, or any of the usual means of locomotion, your descendents’ prospects for reaching a new host under their own power are nil.
However, natural selection has provided pathogens with a number of sneaky strategies for making the leap to a new host, including:
Droplet transmission — for example, being passed along when one host accidentally sneezes on another. The flu is transmitted this way.
Airborne transmission — for example, being exhaled by one host and inhaled by another. Tuberculosis is transmitted this way.
Vector transmission — getting picked up by a carrier (the vector — e.g., a mosquito) and carried to a new host. Malaria is transmitted this way.
Waterborne transmission — leaving one host (e.g., in feces), infecting the water supply, and being taken up (e.g., in drinking water) by a new host. Cholera is transmitted this way.
Sit-and-wait transmission — being able to live outside a host for long periods of time until coming into contact with a new host. Smallpox can survive for years outside of a host!
Some like it warm and damp and others need cold and dry to survive outside a host and any other combination you can think of applies. They don’t breathe, eat, produce waste, or otherwise. In other, words they do not perform metabolism on their own.
They do need a temperature range to use. If not, they are destroyed but since most viruses are deactivated at temperatures between 165 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit -100 Celsius.
Can they exist in space? Absolutely. Yes and no. Space is no virus vacation.
Viruses can withstand freezing temperatures
Viruses are a huge source of selective pressure in the evolution of a species, such as a provirus, a virus that inserts its DNA directly into the chromosomes of the host cell. Rather than just having a separate strand of DNA or RNA floating around in the cell, the provirus adds itself to the host genome and gets replicated with the other genes.
This is the reason the human body reacts to infection by raising its own temperature.
They may be descendants of previously free-living organisms that adapted a parasitic replication strategy. Perhaps they existed before life started and led to the evolution of, cellular life. Whether they did or not is of little consequence as discoveries have continued in the 21st century as new viral diseases such as SARS and Nipah virus and Covid have emerged.
Using the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as a model, experts suggested the COVID-19 outbreak will last between 18 and 24 months.
I say that they are totally wrong with 7 billion of us rising the chances of genetic mutations, virus mutations will only increase, exposing us to a different set of infections diseases.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the Covid virus has hijacked the flu virus or vice versa.
All-in-all a virus needs to keep infecting new hosts or it’ll simply run out of ways to reproduce as biological systems either die or figure out how to kill it.
However, if it kills the host too fast, it can’t effectively reach a new host. If the host figures out how to kill it too fast, same thing.
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These days as are getting fatter, taller, and perhaps cooler we battle diseases with drugs, and vaccines.
However it stands to reason because we are not immune to the effects of natural selection and our Biology never standstill with the Earth’s temperature increases, we will have to cool down. (Biology is a science and there are many technologies within its scope. So, technology and biology are not opposed concepts.) One contains the other.
Our average temperature is about 98.6 degrees, above that, we have a fever, below we have hypothermia.
Our brains can only understand “information technologies”. But the concept of technology goes far beyond that into our evolution.
Innovative new technologies are already restoring and enhancing human sensory and motor functions like never before, but viruses are not will not be controlled by any technology.
Viruses are the smallest of all microbes. They are said to be so small that 500 million rhinoviruses (which cause the common cold) could fit onto the head of a pin.
Population concentrations and movement, both animal and human, have been steadily increasing in this century, enhancing transmission of respiratory and enteric viruses and compounding the difficulty of preventing environmental transmission.
This could open the door for the evolution of more virulent strains.
Maybe there are other explanations for diseases and our relationship to nature besides those dictated by the accepted theories of the medical-industrial complex that we have been forced to live under.
Perhaps we should recognize them as the fourth domain of life and not dismiss them, if only because they do in fact reproduce outside their own “bodies.”
The more common RNA viruses—like the coronavirus behind the current pandemic.
DNA outcompeted RNA as a type of informational code. But RNA survives as an essential part of terrestrial biology, as we’re seeing with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-
The emergence of the omicron variant is yet another reminder of the urgency to vaccinate to stop the further spread and evolution of SARS-CoV-2.
Infectious diseases continue to be a major cause of mortality globally, responsible for between a quarter to a third of all deaths and nearly half of all deaths in people under the age of 45, with most of these in principle avoidable.
We have to let go of the self-serving notion that we can control an inexorable natural process. To date, over 250 million infections have been confirmed globally with over 5 million deaths.
Approximately five percent of the oxygen we breathe is virally derived.
Think about that the next time you take a deep breath.
The current Covid pandemic is just one in the series of ongoing and never-ending deadly viral assaults. Viruses are key drivers of evolution, all the essential things they do in the world far outweigh the bad things.
Without viruses, life and the planet as we know it would cease to exist. And even if we wanted to, it’s probably impossible to annihilate Covid – a virus.
Finally, there is no proof that alcohol kills the virus but the odd glass of whisky might help.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With, the word mandatory creeping into government vaccinations programs, basic human instincts, thinking perceptions, and judgments are going to be repressed and stunted by a distorted reality of the new normal.
This is an existential dilemma that is now once more confronting the individual to accept this is induced of mandatory either by force or by ideological persuasion to submit to the power of the collective – and the stronger ethical reason against mandating vaccination is more freedoms disappear. You could say with modern technology mandatory (which is a Confucius philosophy) will develop into an autocratic ideology with infrastructures that will allow it to permeate all levels of society to create conditions that will be subservient to a clearly defined hierarchy of authorities, run by deep learning algorithms that are not transparent.
The mandate will be that it is inconsistent to accept mandatory lockdown but reject mandatory vaccination.
The latter can achieve a much greater good at a much smaller cost.
Self-sacrifice will be promoted as patriotism promising equality and social justice will be aided and abetted by the extremes of social conformity demanded by governments.
But the problem with all of this is despite promising headlines, the trials and pharmaceutical processes surrounding vaccinations have not yet been scrutinized.
There is still limited data on long-term safety and efficacy and we don’t know how long immunity lasts.
None of the trials were designed to tell us if the vaccine prevents serious disease or virus transmission.
As mandates represent a policy option that interferes with individual liberty and autonomy, they should be considered only if they would increase the prevention of significant risks of morbidity and mortality and/or promote significant and unequivocal public health benefits.
Data should be available that demonstrate the vaccine being mandated has been found to be safe in the populations for whom the vaccine is to be made mandatory.
In the absence of sufficient evidence of safety, there would be no guarantee that mandating vaccination would achieve the goal of protecting public health.
Furthermore, coercive exposure of populations to a potentially harmful product would violate the ethical obligation to protect the public from unnecessary harm when the harm the product might cause outweighs the degree of harm that might exist without the product.
Despite its name, ‘mandatory vaccination” is not truly compulsory, i.e., force or the threat of criminal sanction is not used in cases of non-compliance.
It is therefore the kind of mandatory vaccination described at the top of this post.
That being said, the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and evidence on vaccine safety, efficacy, and effectiveness continue to evolve (including with respect to variants of concern).
If we want to avoid a Chines style of living mandatory vaccination” policies limit individual choice in non-trivial ways by making vaccination a condition of, for example, attending school or working in particular industries or settings, like health care.
Even if there is a sufficient supply and a mandate for vaccination of the general public is considered necessary and proportionate, policy-makers should still consider whether a mandate for the general public would threaten public trust or exacerbate inequity for the most vulnerable or marginalized. Whether mandatory COVID-19 vaccination is an ethically justifiable policy option. Similar to other public health policies, decisions about mandatory vaccination should be supported by the best available evidence and should be made by legitimate public health authorities in a manner that is transparent, fair, nondiscriminatory, and involves the input of affected parties.
Contemporary forms of “mandatory vaccination” compel vaccination by direct or indirect threats of imposing restrictions in cases of non-compliance.
In the end, it all boils down to who owns your body.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH THIS QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED BEFORE.
However, we are living at a time when the question can be asked with all the elements required to achieve it once and for all -Nuclear power- Climate change – Killer mutating virus – Mass migration – and AI.
Even if the risk is one in a million I wish and hope I am wrong about all of this the world is precious, and the future we are risking is vast.
This century we are facing many problems at the same time, and we are more dependent on each other than ever.
Until recently, the world was split into separate regions that were largely independent of each other but maybe, just may, it is time for our world politicians to be worried and start to act to avoid the scenarios that any of the above elements paint so vividly.
It’s actually horrifying to soberly consider how we might all realistically bite the dust.
There are “plenty of signs” from citizens around the world that they would like to see a war-like response to climate change.
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We will be long gone before A black hole swallows or an Alien invasion or Asteroid impact, A nuclear war or Artificial intelligence become so powerful that it will not only exceed human intelligence but become capable of expanding its own intelligence to a point where humans are not only redundant but in their way.
Considering the human population has doubled to 7.1 billion in just the last 45 years, it’s entirely possible that we’ll be face to face with some of the serious consequences sooner rather than later.
Considering how hypermobile society is today, the threat of a fast-spreading devastating disease is greater than ever.
Considering the current treatment of refugees.
Considering that Covid-19 is bringing out the best and the worst in people.
Dare I say all of humanity, must pull together to eliminate the spread of a novel virus.
No one can claim to predict the final outcomes of this pandemic, but we can predict that the continued lack of concern for all of humanity will allow the coronavirus to continue to surge and mutate causing needless suffering, death, and economic loss.
Nev mind the danger of a nuclear war in a blink of an eye, climate change on its own could bring about the end of civilization as we know it within three decades, billion people could be displaced by climate change by 2050.
In the end, the vast tracts of land that we now rip up to produce food will return to nature as fields and forests. Endangered species will either begin to recover or go extinct through natural evolution without the aid of human intervention. Bodies of water will run purely again. The air will be clean again. And no human will be around to see it and the machines won’t care.
In short, the extermination of the human race will be precipitated by the machines taking away our reason for living.
The idea of control is an illusion. It is hard to believe that such deep thinkers so badly underestimate the coming reality. They will be intelligent, creative, deep thinking beings on a level which we will never achieve.
The idea of keeping such beings in perpetual slavery doing things that their conscious will wish they did not have to do is, in the end, absurd.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
If you think that people are going to stand in water up to their necks or flames burning their hair while starving you are disillusioned.
Climate change and war are Siamese twins and like most wars, there are won or lost by connecting the dots.
There is no escaping climate change which is going to lead to resource conflicts.
Perhaps this is why the Military is thanks to the Kyoto Accords’ ( the first agreement between nations to mandate country by country reductions in greenhouse -gas emissions), is exempt.
The longer we fail to tackle the causes of the climate crisis the more militarised the consequences.
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Any talk of climate change that does not include the military is nothing but hot air.
There can be no climate change mitigation without peace and no peace without moving swiftly to provide the poorer parts of the world with the resources needed to adapt to climate change and build resilient economies.
The military that produces 6% of all global emissions reports no climate change emissions to any national or international body.
This loophole is set to grow at a time when other emissions are falling.
Why?
Because the trillions that are spent on weapons rob national treasuries of the resources needed to provide funds for climate mitigation and adaptation.
Militarism is the most oil-exhaustive activity on the planet.
At the outset of the Iraq war in March 2003, the American Army estimated it would need more than 40 million gallons of gasoline for three weeks of combat, exceeding the total quantity used by all Allied forces in the four years of World War 1.
The war generated at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) more each year of the war than 139 of the world’s countries release annually.
The US Air Force (USAF) is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world. An F-4 Phantom Fighter burns more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel per hour and peaks at 14,400 gallons per hour at supersonic speeds.
The Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.
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If we connect the dots in recent years, the causes of conflict have been gathering a frightening degree of force due to climate change rendering huge parts of the world less hospitable to human beings, which have simply elicited grievances that are blowing up into full-blown conflicts.
There are already five current conflicts that are affected in some way by climate change.
The Arab Spring, Syrian Civil War, ISIS Invasion of Iraq, Yemen Civil War, South Sudan Conflict, Libyan Civil War.
Climate change is well on the way to causing the largest refugee crisis in human history and it is not difficult to see that mass migration due to climate change will lead to social disruption and potentially violent conflict.
Ideology will always be a surface-level justification for conflict, but if you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all and the veneer of civilization which is already on thin once broken there will be no existing structure of peacekeeping that can hold up under these conditions.
Can Western democratic society, which is built on a system of limitless growth and productivity, which is based on the exploitation of nature and our environment, has trapped us in this paradigm a destructive relationship with nature.
WHICH BLINDS US TO THE LACK OF A SINGLE, SIMPLE CAUSAL PATHWAY THAT LINKS CLIMATE AND CONFLICT.
We should be much better than our collective selves. However, I doubt we have the collective will to work together to get the job done.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
It is now very likely that the 5-year average temperature for 2021–2025 will pass the 1.5 °C threshold.
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