Is An #Infectious Global #Pandemic Underway?

The rise of Candida auris embodies a serious and growing public health threat: drug-resistant germs.

A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy 

Last May, an elderly man was admitted to the Brooklyn branch of Mount Sinai Hospital for abdominal surgery. A blood test revealed that he was infected with a newly discovered germ as deadly as it was mysterious. Doctors swiftly isolated him in the intensive care unit.

The germ, a fungus called Candida auris, preys on people with weakened immune systems, and it is quietly spreading across the globe. Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa.

Recently C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed “urgent threats.”

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.

Read More

LEARN MORE

CDC WARNING ABOUT "SUPERBUG"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html

#California Vanishig #Glacier Futures Planet Earth

 "For the past 148 years, Yosemite’s Lyell Glacier has taught us about the Earth — how it was created, where it was going, and now, how it might end"

 

 By Daniel Duane

 What Remains

On a cool September morning in 2014, among lodgepole pines under blue mountain sky, Greg Stock shouldered a backpack full of camping gear and scientific equipment. Boyishly slender and athletic at 45, Stock is a climber, caver, and serious reader of books about mountaineering and the natural world. He holds the enviable job title of Yosemite National Park Geologist and mostly loves the work, especially the part he was bound for that day — the study of Yosemite’s last two glaciers.

Stock and several companions started their walk in Tuolumne Meadows, the high-country jewel of Yosemite and everything that I would ever wish to find in the pastures of heaven — many square miles of grass and wildflowers surrounded by white granite domes that reflect sunshine like polished glass. Stock followed the John Muir Trail south out of those meadows into an immense U-shaped gorge called Lyell Canyon, 8 miles long and 3,000 feet deep, carved out of granite by long-vanished glaciers during dozens of ice ages. Evergreens dot the sloped walls of Lyell Canyon — straight lodgepoles down low, bent whitebarks up high.

 

In that drought year of 2014, dry meadow grasses carpeted the canyon floor in pale gold. Down the middle, the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River trickled through wide, meandering oxbows. The great irrigator of Tuolumne Meadows and drinking-water source for San Francisco, that river thunders deep in spring but flows in autumn thanks to meltwater from Stock’s destination, the Lyell Glacier.

Read More 

LEARN MORE

 

50 Major #Companies Facing #Bankruptcy Possibility 2019

 "Finally it’s had to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy October 2018, closing 142 stores in the process"

50 Failing Companies At Risk Of Going Out Of Business In 2019

1. J. Crew

The clothing company favored by former first lady Michelle Obama has been closing some of its stores due to plunging sales over the years. It also closed its bridal store and parted with its creative director, Jenna Lyons, and CEO, Millard “Mickey” Drexler. Drexler confessed he thought the company’s troubles stemmed from raising prices.

2. Sears Holdings

Sears Holdings has undergone trouble for a decade, with their sales continuing to decline. It sounds like they’ve tried nearly everything — cost cuts, asset sales, store closures, and layoffs — but RetailDive says this hasn’t helped the giant department store out too much. Finally it’s had to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy October 2018, closing 142 stores in the process.

3. 99 Cents Only

The retailer offering discount goods has found itself between a rock and a hard place, facing competition from companies like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Walmart. In December 2017, the company reported a net loss of $27.1 million on top of $33.6 million in losses the second quarter and $8.8 million in Q1.

Read More

LEARN MORE

BIG RETAIL COLLAPSING?

Greta #Thunberg #UK Speech Greater Than #FDR's and #Churchill's Historic #Inspirations

HISTORY IN THE MAKING

 "We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back"

 

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.

I know many of you don’t want to listen to us – you say we are just children. But we’re only repeating the message of the united climate science.

Many of you appear concerned that we are wasting valuable lesson time, but I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask?

 

In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us.

I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big; I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to. People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now we may have nothing.

Now we probably don’t even have a future any more...

READ MORE

LEARN MORE

WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME

END OF STORY???

Trends: #ECVs Report Little Progress Over 10 Years

 "Overall it appears that while a good number of the entities that sought to begin the transition of commercial vehicles from purely liquid or gas fueled options, to hybrid electric or pure electric have failed, there are some that have survived and are still supplying solutions today"

 

Electric Commercial Vehicles, a ten year update – Part 1

Just over ten years ago on April 9, 2009 the original article “Electric Commercial Vehicles” was posted at The Oil Drum web site. The article was prompted by an exchange in the discussions following a “Drumbeat” post about nine months earlier in which I had rattled off a series of links to articles from the web site autobloggreen.com that were specifically about electric or hybrid commercial vehicles of one kind or another. I should note that autobloggreen.com is the one of the first places I saw the term “Peak Oil” and when I saw the term more than once I decided to do look it up, which eventually led me to theoildrum.com. As they say, the rest is history.

In this post, I have looked back at what has happened to the companies and products featured in that article and will elaborate on what I found. I will attempt to discuss as many of the companies and products mention in the article as possible. If you visit the original 2009 article, all the pictures are now missing since links to external images were used rather than images hosted at theoildrum.com. I am somewhat surprised that I was able to find many of the pictures that I used in the 2009 article and will be using them in this article as much as possible. The first picture below was the lead picture for the 2009 article.

 

Battery Electric Vehicles

Battery Electric Vehicles are a class of electrified vehicles that use only electric motors for motive power and rely on batteries for the electricity to power their motors. BEVs carry no fuels on board except in the case of those which may use fuels for heating but, there are no internal combustion engines of any kind built into the vehicle.

Read More 

LEARN MORE 

TOP TRENDS ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Is BIG #OIL Targeting #Tesla?

"the company now burns around $700 million in cash per quarter"

By Philip Verleger 

Big Oil Scrambles To Cut Tesla’s Lifeline

The oil industry hates electric cars for good reasons. Intelligent executives in the industry (of which there seem few) see electric vehicles (EVs) as a death threat to their business. Thus, they have fought aggressively to end tax credits that encourage consumers to buy EVs. To a large extent, their lobbyists have succeeded.

However, EV manufacturers have now been given a regulatory lifeline. Last week, Financial Times reported that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has agreed to pay Tesla hundreds of millions. The payment will allow FCA to pool its fleet sales with Tesla’s to “avoid large fines for breaking tough new EU emissions rules.”

The FT article explains that new EU regulations on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions require that new vehicles emit no more than 95g/CO₂ per kilometer. In 2018, these emissions averaged 120.5g/CO₂ per kilometer and FCA vehicles averaged 123g/CO₂.

FCA could address its emissions problem by selling hybrid and electric vehicles. However, it has yet to produce any. Consequently, according to FT, the firm would face more than two billion euros (2.3 billion dollars) in fines when the EU CO₂ emissions rule takes effect.

Read More

LEARN MORE

TESLA IN TROUBLE?

Private Security Firms Preparing For #Climate #Anarchists

As they see it, global warming stands to make corporate security as high-stakes in the

21st century as it was in the 19th.

By NOAH GALLAGHER SHANNON

Climate Chaos Is Coming —

and the Pinkertons Are Ready

The Pinkertons wanted me to picture myself in a scene of absolute devastation. “A hurricane just wipes out everything, and you need to feed your children,” Andres Paz Larach said. The power grid is down, shipments of food are cut off, the water is no longer potable — how do you get what you need to survive? What risks do you take? It was a hot early morning in March, and we were driving through a pine forest high in the mountains surrounding Santa Ana Jilotzingo, 25 miles northwest of Mexico City. Our Suburban, equipped with bulletproof windows and reinforced doors, labored slowly over the dirt road, which appeared to have been washed out by a recent thunderstorm.

For much of the previous hour, Paz Larach and two other executives from Pinkerton, Carlos Manuel López Portillo Maltos and Paul Rakov, had been explaining the company’s philosophy of risk management. Now over 150 years old, having long outlived its reputation as Andrew Carnegie’s personal militia, the agency has evolved into a modern security firm. Over the last decade or so, Pinkerton began noticing a growing set of anxieties among its corporate clients about distinctly contemporary plagues — active shooters, political unrest, climate disasters — and in response began offering data-driven risk analysis, in addition to what they’re more traditionally known for. Dressed in an untucked powder blue oxford and round, rimless sunglasses, Paz Larach, the firm’s senior vice president in charge of the Americas, paused before affecting a look of brutal candor. “You’re going to turn to desperate measures,” he said. Everybody will. The other Pinkertons nodded.

Read More

LEARN MORE

CAN ANARCHISM SAVE EARTH?

#IMF GLOBAL #OUTLOOK LOWEST IN 10 YEARS

Growth seen softer across major rich-world economies: IMF

By Andrew Mayeda

IMF Cuts Global Growth Outlook to Lowest Pace Since Crisis

The International Monetary Fund cut its outlook for global growth to the lowest since the financial crisis amid a bleaker outlook in most major advanced economies and signs that higher tariffs are weighing on trade.

The world economy will grow 3.3 percent this year, down from the 3.5 percent the IMF had forecast for 2019 in January, the fund said Tuesday in its latest World Economic Outlook. The 2019 growth rate would be the weakest since 2009, when the world economy shrank. It’s the third time the IMF has downgraded its outlook in six months.

“This is a delicate moment” for the global economy, Gita Gopinath, who recently became the IMF’s chief economist, said at a press briefing in Washington. A projected pickup in growth next year is precarious, she said.

Read More

LEARN MORE

ANOTHER IMF GROWTH CUT = WHO KNOWS?

Transition From Fossil #Fuels Ushers Dark-Age #Outlook

 "We can’t know exactly what is ahead, but it is clear that moving away from fossil fuels will be far more destructive of our current economy than nearly everyone expects"

 

 The true feasibility of moving away from fossil fuels

One of the great misconceptions of our time is the belief that we can move away from fossil fuels if we make suitable choices on fuels. In one view, we can make the transition to a low-energy economy powered by wind, water, and solar. In other versions, we might include some other energy sources, such as biofuels or nuclear, but the story is not very different.

 

The problem is the same regardless of what lower bound a person chooses: our economy is way too dependent on consuming an amount of energy that grows with each added human participant in the economy. This added energy is necessary because each person needs food, transportation, housing, and clothing, all of which are dependent upon energy consumption. The economy operates under the laws of physics, and history shows disturbing outcomes if energy consumption per capita declines.

 

There are a number of issues:

• The impact of alternative energy sources is smaller than commonly believed.
• When countries have reduced their energy consumption per capita by significant amounts, the results have been very unsatisfactory.
• Energy consumption plays a bigger role in our lives than most of us imagine.
• It seems likely that fossil fuels will leave us before we can leave them.
• The timing of when fossil fuels will leave us seems to depend on when central banks lose their ability to stimulate the economy through lower interest rates.
• If fossil fuels leave us, the result could be the collapse of financial systems and governments.
•  
• Read More
•  
•  

LEARN MORE 

NOT AN EASY TRANSITION

#Oil Shock Looms As #Saudi Ghawar Field Fading Fast

"about a fifth of the total -- had been drilled so systematically over nearly a century that more than 40 percent of their oil has been already extracted, a considerable figure for an industry that usually struggles to recover more than half the barrels in place underground."

 

The biggest Saudi oil field is fading faster than anyone guessed

 

It was a state secret and the source of a kingdom’s riches. It was so important that U.S. military planners once debated how to seize it by force. For oil traders, it was a source of endless speculation.

Now the market finally knows: Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest conventional oil field, can produce a lot less than almost anyone believed.

`

When Saudi Aramco on Monday published its first ever profit figures since its nationalization nearly 40 years ago, it also lifted the veil of secrecy around its mega oil fields. The company’s bond prospectus revealed that Ghawar is able to pump a maximum of 3.8 million barrels a day -- well below the more than 5 million that had become conventional wisdom in the market.

"As Saudi’s largest field, a surprisingly low production capacity figure from Ghawar is the stand-out of the report," said Virendra Chauhan, head of upstream at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. in Singapore.

Read More

LEARN MORE

WHAT IS SAUDI ARAMCO?

#UN (IPCC) Fears Serious #Asteroid Strike 2046

"several prominent scientists including a Nobel laureate biologist have noted that no technology was yet available to deflect the asteroid "

Asteroid to Hit Earth in 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN Panel Formed

Scientists have today revealed that thanks to new radar imaging system, a 20 km-wide asteroid is on a probable collision course with earth and they calculate it has an 85% probability of striking the planet between 23-25 August, 2046. Observers from centers in Chile to Finland have confirmed the observations and are urging governments worldwide to begin efforts to avoid a global catastrophe. The plan is to mobilize industry and research together into an effort to deflect the asteroid before a collision. Briefed earlier in special meetings, the UN has formed an Intergovernmental Panel on Cosmic Catastrophe (IPCC), to consider options and advise governments. The asteroid is of a similar size to that associated with the dinosaur extinction.

The plan however has immediately run into opposition from dozens of retired scientists and bloggers.

“This is just alarmist talk based in computer models. So far there is no solution to the 3-body problem in gravity and this is clearly a much more complicated N-body problem. The system is chaotic and tiny errors in measurement will blow the computer models away” said Prof Al Kaos. He dismissed the accuracy with which solar orbits are determined and navigation of planetary rockets. “The dirty secret is that they are making course corrections all the time. Tell me how Hyperion will look next year before telling me where an asteroid will be in 2046”. Scientists acknowledged some uncertainty but have stuck to their probability estimate.

Read More

LEARN MORE

Many Are Coming Our Way