The drought monitor is taking into account the lack of retained moisture in the soil. It takes years of good conditions to replenish the soil moisture. I think the estimate is 6 straight years of 150% precipitation to return to full normal.

The evidence of the SARS-CoV-1 spillover is still around. You can still find the precursor virus in specific bat populations. There is also an evidence trail for the spillover of MERS. The same type of evidence trail does not exist for SARS-CoV-2. We do not know the original host animal. We still have not found the precursor virus(s).

I know that the absence of evidence does not prove anything, but in this case the absence of evidence is conspicuous. Either it wasn't a spillover event, or our entire understanding of spillover events is incorrect. Occam's razor applies here. We have hunted extensively for the origins SARS-CoV-2, in every way allowed by the Chinese government, and still have not found conclusive evidence of a spillover. I find the lab leak hypothesis to be far more plausible than a complete misunderstanding of how spillover events work in the 21st century.

That's the problem, isn't it? There are no citations for what happened inside of China during the early pandemic. From what we know about epidemiology and spillover events, there simply isn't much evidence to point to said spillover. In the absence of evidence, people will look toward other possibilities and assess the likelihood of those possibilities. In this case, given the lack of evidence, this does not look like a spillover, and the next likely option is a lab leak.

Here's the rub. If it were a true spillover event, the evidence would be EVERYWHERE. There would be so much worldwide evidence of a spillover that we wouldn't have even considered a lab leak scenario. In the absence of spillover evidence there are essentially two options 1) Wuhan was the epicenter of an extremely unlikely random combination of viruses leading to a pandemic capable SARS-CoV-2, or it somehow leaked from that lab. If I were a betting man, my money is on an accidental leak.

Origin aside, the CCP stopped all domestic flights from Wuhan weeks before they stopped all international flights. They knew about it and intentionally spread it to the rest of the world through that deliberate choice.

Add billions of additional listens through tictoc. I have never heard the entire song, but I've heard that catchy damn chorus at least 1000 times.

New tech is never cheap. Fusion is only "cheap" in the sense that you almost get "something for nothing" at an intrinsic level. There are exactly zero cheap power plants and the renewables that also provide a "something for nothing" type of power are limited by expensive and finite materials. Hydrogen infrastructure and production is also quite difficult and expensive, but it has enough intrinsic benefits to make it a worthwhile struggle. Fusion will be similar.

Let's look back at the major tech in our lives and see which ones started out with insane physics, monstrously expensive machines, and incredible intrinsic value worth pursuing...

• Internal combustion engines
• Chemical reactors and refineries
• Telecommunications
• Powered aviation
• Computers
• Fission (finally reaching the demand for scaled down size)
• Fusion (finally reaching demand for a viable product)

Yes, fusion will certainly change everything, but it's not going to solve our climate crisis. We need fusion power to address the problems created by climate change. Water desalination and pumping, geoengineering projects, carbon capture/sequestration projects...

I'm not convinced that we'll ever decarbonize as a species. But we will need fusion for cheap power for our bandaids and remediation attempts.