Now What?

cnet:

A previously unseen asteroid the size of a truck flew about 4,350 miles (7,000 kilometers) over the Pacific Ocean on Monday, making it one of the closest passes by our planet on record.

Astronomers had no notice of asteroid 2020 JJ's existence, as it was discovered using the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona right around the time it reached its closest point to us.

NASA keeps an online database of close approaches by asteroids and other "near-Earth objects" going back to 1900, and 2020 JJ comes in as the sixth closest approach ever recorded. It should be noted that the top 10 close approaches have all come since 2004. This isn't because asteroids started attacking us in the 21st century. Rather, it says something about how astronomers and their technology are becoming better at spotting ever-smaller and closer asteroids.

I think I'm glad not to have known about it until after the fact.

Pandemic, then Murder Hornets, and then an asteroid - like we needed something to pass the time while we wait for the tornadoes, the hurricanes and the wildfires?

Seeing Our Immediate Future

This is NOT in place yet.

Detroit News:

Henry Ford Health System has prepared a policy for how its hospitals will determine which patients get to use ventilators should need surpass availability.

A letter circulated online Thursday said patients “will be assessed for eligibility” for ventilator support based on the extent of their symptoms, underlying health conditions and advanced directives.

That letter was in preparation for a "worst case scenario," but has not been enacted as policy, the Detroit-based five-hospital system said in a statement.

The hospital system has not reached capacity at any of its locations, nor has it reached the limit on ventilators at any of its hospitals, said Brenda Craig, vice president of the health system’s integrated communications.

“The letter is part of a larger internal document that unfortunately was shared publicly,” Craig said. “It would only be something used in a worst case scenario, and we are not in one right now at any of our hospitals.”

With a pandemic, we must be prepared for worst case. With collective wisdom from our industry, we crafted a policy to provide guidance for making difficult patient care decisions. We hope never to have to apply them. We will always utilize every resource to care for our patients.

— Henry Ford News (@HenryFordNews) March 27, 2020

But remember - hospitals are traditionally very good at things like Risk Assessment and Risk Management and Contingency Planning.

And they don't waste resources on planning for things without having assigned it some fair probability of eventuation.

We're not ready for this shit, and it's probably going to get pretty fucking bad pretty fucking soon.

Not To Worry

 The guy who can't quite master the intricate workings of an umbrella; has no idea how the Civil War got started, and then wondered why Andrew Jackson didn't do more to stop it; believed Colorado is a border state; thinks healthcare insurance costs about 12 bucks a year; thought Canadians burned the White House; asked why we can't just nuke the hurricanes; and claimed windmills cause cancer - 

- that's the guy who went on national TV yesterday to tell us COVID-19 is no big deal, and if it is a big deal, we're ready for it.

And anyway, the warm weather will fix it.

We are so fucked.

12,000,000,000 Tons

Greenland is melting. Today is expected to be the single biggest melt in recorded history, as 12 billion tons of water dump into the ocean - causing irreparable rise in sea levels.

The next President has to lead on climate as no president has before.pic.twitter.com/pS1SuYXcNX

— Nick Knudsen 🇺🇸 (@DemWrite) August 1, 2019

I’m no climate scientist but this sounds really Fucking bad https://t.co/zENlxgikJk

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) August 1, 2019

A classic case of Fouling The Nest.

For those of you scoring at home, the Greenland icepack ended July with a Net Loss of 197 BILLION tons - just for the month of July.

Wednesday, July 31st 2019:

WaPo:

When one thinks of Greenland, images of an icebound, harsh and forbidding landscape probably come to mind, not a landscape of ice pocked with melt ponds and streams transformed into raging rivers. And almost certainly not one that features wildfires.

Yet the latter description is exactly what Greenland looks like today, according to imagery shared on social media, scientists on the ground and data from satellites.

An extraordinary melt event that began earlier this week continues on Thursday on the Greenland ice sheet, and there are signs that about 60 percent of the expansive ice cover has seen detectable surface melting, including at higher elevations that only rarely see temperatures climb above freezing.

July 31 was the biggest melt day since at least 2012, with about 60 percent of the ice sheet seeing at least 1 millimeter of melt at the surface, and more than 10 billion tons of ice lost to the ocean from surface melt, according to data from the Polar Portal, a website run by Danish polar research institutions, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Thursday could be another significant melt day, before temperatures drop to more seasonable levels.

- and -

At Summit Station, which at 10,551 feet is located at the highest point in Greenland and rarely sees temperatures above freezing, the thermometer exceeded this mark for about 11 hours Tuesday, according to Christopher Shuman, a glaciologist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The ongoing melt event is being compared to a record extreme heat and melt episode that occurred in Greenland in 2012. While the extent of surface melt during that event may have exceeded this one so far, Shuman found that Summit Station experienced warmth that was greater “in both magnitude and duration” during the current event. The temperature only remained above freezing about half as long in 2012, and the peak temperature reached 34.02 degrees this year, whereas it only hit 33.73 in 2012. During the 2012 extreme event, however, 97 percent of the ice surface experienced melting.

Don't have kids.

Tell your kids not to have kids.

Cuz yeah - we're in for some real bend-over-and-grease-up squeal-like-a-pig yeehaw-and-away-we-go kinda fun.

An Outrageously Blatant Act Of Journalism

And the name of the rat bastard pinko librul media type who insisted on at least trying to hold this valiantly entrepreneurial job creator accountable for something completely out of his control?  Kallie Cart, WCHS Channel 8 Eyewitness News

I have no idea if Ms Cart has done anything else of note in her career, but when a Press Poodle does anything even close to a decent job of imitating a real reporter, I think it's important to pile on some laurels.

Now, maybe if she took a hard look at the failures of the Regulatory Regime, we'd have something even more worthy of my much-sought-after kudos.  Go get 'em, Kallie.  Keep doin' good.

hat tip = Addicting Info

There's A Difference

Violent spring weather rolled thru parts of the American South a couple of weeks ago killing at least 16.  It happened again yesterday, when a bunch of tornadoes stomped the crap out of some places across at least five states.  The number of dead this time is reported at 270, and the people who are supposed to know about such things expect it to go up from there.  There's also of course billions of dollars in property damage and lost productivity at a time we can least afford to have more people on the sidelines.

All of that seems pretty normal somehow - aside from the feeling that we shouldn't be getting all this kinda weather so early in the year.  (I'll forego the usual snark about Climate Change denial)

What doesn't feel quite normal right now is that I'm not hearing much about, "Those dumbass rednecks are prob'ly all sittin' around waitin' for a gubmint handout."
--or--
"Maybe they should call their buddies over at The Council of Concerned Citizens, or the local Chamber of Commerce if they need help."
--or--
"They shouldn't be livin' where there's bound to be tornadoes anyway".

Something else we're not hearing is a bunch of horseshit about Milton Friedman, or a Market-Based Recovery approach, 'cuz hey - it worked so well for Nawlins, it seems like we should be cloning it for just this occasion.

While we're at it, maybe somebody could ask Glenn Beck about those FEMA Relocation Camps that had him spooked not too long ago.

So no, we're not hearing any of that crap this time.  What we've heard is a president who interrupted his own announcement of a major re-ordering of his National Security team to tell people to hang on, help is on the way.

"We can't control when or where a terrible storm may strike, but we can control how we respond to it and I want every American who has been effected by this disaster to know that the federal government will do everything we can to help you recover and we will stand with you as you rebuild," Mr Obama stated at the White House.

Next time some bozo starts harpin' about how "all them politicians're alike anyways"; first you'll have to resist the overwhelming urge to throw dense heavy objects at his head, but then just try to remember what we talked about today.

Yeah - there's a difference.