MASSIVE ICE-SHELF COULD COLLAPSE ANY TIME
This New Zealand Herald article spells it out. The whole Ross Ice Shelf could collapse at any time, with a significant effect on global sea-levels, and the huge West Antarctic iceshelf could follow it. The latter would raise the oceans at least 5 metres--perhaps as much as 17 metres.
Meanwhile, as the BBC reports, carbon emissions have been increasing two and half times faster since 2000 than in they were towards the end of the twentieth century.
We never learn. We refuse to connect the dots.
Wednesday, 29 November 2006
Saturday, 18 November 2006
THE MYTH THAT BIO-FUEL IS SAFE
There is an old Roman saying, 'When men cannot change things they change words.' In our age there are countless examples of that arrant dishonesty. 'Bio-fuels' is one. It sounds good, because 'bio' means life, so it looks as if we can have our cake and eat it too: we can carry on with that abysmally crude nineteenth-century technology--the internal-combustion engine (ICE)--we can carry on getting from A to B on serial explosions, but without messing up the global environment.
Really? The test of whether something really does have human life at heart is to see if you can breathe, drink or eat the exhaust. If you survive, and healthily, you know it was good for you. If you end up sick or dead it was probably a bad idea.
What comes out the exhaust-pipe of a bio-fuelled vehicle is certainly not going to make you delirious with joie de vivre. Depending on the fuel, you may have no vivre at all. And the planet is unlikely to benefit one iota. For example, the incomplete combustion you get in ICEs gives you soot, which fouls the sky; and the particles are so fine they can pass straight through the walls of your lungs and lodge in your tissues, such as heart tissues. The label on the tank may say 'bio' but the soot is just as ruinous, not matter what the label says.
Then there is the notion that 'bio-fuel' is 'carbon-neutral.' True? No. The theory says that the next crop of the bio-fuel feedstock will remove from the atmosphere all the carbon-dioxide and carbon-monoxide produced by burning the fuel from the last crop. That assumes that it goes into the atmosphere and stays there. But it is not intelligent, it does not understand English, so it may not. It may go into the oceans. If so it will stay there for a thousand years, making them more acidic; then it will come out into the atmosphere and stooge about for an average of a century.
There is also a lag between when the fuel it burnt and when the next crop reaches maturity, and it is only at that point that could take out all the carbon produced from the previous year's mature crop. There may be some evening-out over the globe, but in that long lag there is a vast amount of carbon busy having its greenhouse effect. So the 'neutral' bit, even if it is there, is not there constantly; it goes up and down, like any feedback effect. There is no instant subtraction to blance the addition.
The blunt, inconvenient truth is that we have to stop pumping carbon into our sky, in any form. We already have far too much for optimal human life.
A major problem with adding more is that the effect is cumulative,; volcanic eruptions add yet more; and major ones add huge quantities. That means adding a huge amount on top of whatever we have put there. So the more we put there, the greater the peaks that we make through our additions, the more likely it is that anything added by Nature will take us over a climatic tipping-point, known or unknown.
Then there is the very tiny, very unimportant fact that human beings have to eat. Every square metre of land that is producing 'bio-fuels' is a square metre not producing food. But don't worry about starvation. So long as your bang-bang car can run you'll be fine. Dead behind the wheel, but still mobile, so you'll be fine. Yessir, fine. O goody! There is not way we have enough land to supply more than a fractio of the fuel we need.
On top of that, producing 'bio' fuels takes a huge amount of water. A lot is needed to grow the plant feedstock and a lot is needed to process it into whatever fuel you want.
If the process of producing the fuel involves fermentation that produces a lot of carbon-dioxide, the very gas we should not be producing. You also have to transport the feedstock and the fuel to where it is to be burnt, which consumes fuel, adding to the carbon-neutral falsehood.
Then if the fuel produced is ethanol or butynol or something else that can only be used as a blend with fossil-fuels, you will only have saved 10-20% fossil-fuel.
And having gone through all the process of getting the stuff to the pumps, you then put it through your bang-bang engine which the laws of physics in the form of the Carnot Cycle says cannot possibly be more than 33% efficient. Add to that all the losses in the mechanical linkages getting the power out to the wheels and you get only 16% where the rubber meets the road--you lost 84% of what you put in the tank. A huge effort and energy-investment for very little return.
'Bio-fuel', in short has nothing to do with life. It should be called 'morifuel' (mori means death).
There is an old Roman saying, 'When men cannot change things they change words.' In our age there are countless examples of that arrant dishonesty. 'Bio-fuels' is one. It sounds good, because 'bio' means life, so it looks as if we can have our cake and eat it too: we can carry on with that abysmally crude nineteenth-century technology--the internal-combustion engine (ICE)--we can carry on getting from A to B on serial explosions, but without messing up the global environment.
Really? The test of whether something really does have human life at heart is to see if you can breathe, drink or eat the exhaust. If you survive, and healthily, you know it was good for you. If you end up sick or dead it was probably a bad idea.
What comes out the exhaust-pipe of a bio-fuelled vehicle is certainly not going to make you delirious with joie de vivre. Depending on the fuel, you may have no vivre at all. And the planet is unlikely to benefit one iota. For example, the incomplete combustion you get in ICEs gives you soot, which fouls the sky; and the particles are so fine they can pass straight through the walls of your lungs and lodge in your tissues, such as heart tissues. The label on the tank may say 'bio' but the soot is just as ruinous, not matter what the label says.
Then there is the notion that 'bio-fuel' is 'carbon-neutral.' True? No. The theory says that the next crop of the bio-fuel feedstock will remove from the atmosphere all the carbon-dioxide and carbon-monoxide produced by burning the fuel from the last crop. That assumes that it goes into the atmosphere and stays there. But it is not intelligent, it does not understand English, so it may not. It may go into the oceans. If so it will stay there for a thousand years, making them more acidic; then it will come out into the atmosphere and stooge about for an average of a century.
There is also a lag between when the fuel it burnt and when the next crop reaches maturity, and it is only at that point that could take out all the carbon produced from the previous year's mature crop. There may be some evening-out over the globe, but in that long lag there is a vast amount of carbon busy having its greenhouse effect. So the 'neutral' bit, even if it is there, is not there constantly; it goes up and down, like any feedback effect. There is no instant subtraction to blance the addition.
The blunt, inconvenient truth is that we have to stop pumping carbon into our sky, in any form. We already have far too much for optimal human life.
A major problem with adding more is that the effect is cumulative,; volcanic eruptions add yet more; and major ones add huge quantities. That means adding a huge amount on top of whatever we have put there. So the more we put there, the greater the peaks that we make through our additions, the more likely it is that anything added by Nature will take us over a climatic tipping-point, known or unknown.
Then there is the very tiny, very unimportant fact that human beings have to eat. Every square metre of land that is producing 'bio-fuels' is a square metre not producing food. But don't worry about starvation. So long as your bang-bang car can run you'll be fine. Dead behind the wheel, but still mobile, so you'll be fine. Yessir, fine. O goody! There is not way we have enough land to supply more than a fractio of the fuel we need.
On top of that, producing 'bio' fuels takes a huge amount of water. A lot is needed to grow the plant feedstock and a lot is needed to process it into whatever fuel you want.
If the process of producing the fuel involves fermentation that produces a lot of carbon-dioxide, the very gas we should not be producing. You also have to transport the feedstock and the fuel to where it is to be burnt, which consumes fuel, adding to the carbon-neutral falsehood.
Then if the fuel produced is ethanol or butynol or something else that can only be used as a blend with fossil-fuels, you will only have saved 10-20% fossil-fuel.
And having gone through all the process of getting the stuff to the pumps, you then put it through your bang-bang engine which the laws of physics in the form of the Carnot Cycle says cannot possibly be more than 33% efficient. Add to that all the losses in the mechanical linkages getting the power out to the wheels and you get only 16% where the rubber meets the road--you lost 84% of what you put in the tank. A huge effort and energy-investment for very little return.
'Bio-fuel', in short has nothing to do with life. It should be called 'morifuel' (mori means death).
HUMAN ENEMIES NUMBERS ONE AND TWO
China, which is fast overhauling the Number One Enemy of Humanity (the world's worst polluter, the United States of America, in case you haven't heard), is adding a new coal-fired power-station every week, according to the BBC World Service. Goody! Just what we needed: a second USA on filthy steroids.
China, which is fast overhauling the Number One Enemy of Humanity (the world's worst polluter, the United States of America, in case you haven't heard), is adding a new coal-fired power-station every week, according to the BBC World Service. Goody! Just what we needed: a second USA on filthy steroids.
Friday, 10 November 2006
ANY MURDEROUS FOOL CAN MAKE MONEY
Only the wise can make a habitable planet.
This article by James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University's Earth Institute, lays out the stark horror of what all the murderous black-stuff addicts have unleashed upon this planet.
And unless draconian action is taken against them, such that they are stopped in ten years at most (hah!), we shall thus, amongst other things, have set the world's oceans rising unstoppably to where they were three million years ago, the last time the global temperature was the least we are now heading for. They will be 24 metres higher (80 feet). And they could get there at up to a metre every twenty years, which has happened in the ancient past: half a metre a decade for centuries.
A metre rise every twenty years till the water is 24 metres higher might even make a few thieving murderers sit up. Might...
Of course, all that will start with a trickle. Perhaps the fact that the sea has risen 45mm since 1995, more than double the rate in previous decades, is the trickle starting to gather pace...
Only the wise can make a habitable planet.
This article by James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University's Earth Institute, lays out the stark horror of what all the murderous black-stuff addicts have unleashed upon this planet.
And unless draconian action is taken against them, such that they are stopped in ten years at most (hah!), we shall thus, amongst other things, have set the world's oceans rising unstoppably to where they were three million years ago, the last time the global temperature was the least we are now heading for. They will be 24 metres higher (80 feet). And they could get there at up to a metre every twenty years, which has happened in the ancient past: half a metre a decade for centuries.
A metre rise every twenty years till the water is 24 metres higher might even make a few thieving murderers sit up. Might...
Of course, all that will start with a trickle. Perhaps the fact that the sea has risen 45mm since 1995, more than double the rate in previous decades, is the trickle starting to gather pace...
Monday, 6 November 2006
OCEANS AND GREENHOUSE GASES STARE DOWN THE BARREL
Collapse Of Ocean Fisheries Looming:
If we keep abusing the oceans the way we have been there will be no wild fish, no fish in the open oceans, worthy of mention by the middle of the century. That is the conclusion of a major, four-year, international study.
Different Trading World:
Global-overheating plus the inevitable end of the oil-supply will mean a huge change in oceanic trade, unless the thousands of ships plying the trade-routes get a different source of power. Without that, any country that cannot import and export over land will have to produce all its needs itself, or go without.
But Two Things Are Universal: Hydrogen and Stupidity
In spite all that, the greenhouse emissions from rich countries are rising and rising and rising and rising.... BBC News
Collapse Of Ocean Fisheries Looming:
If we keep abusing the oceans the way we have been there will be no wild fish, no fish in the open oceans, worthy of mention by the middle of the century. That is the conclusion of a major, four-year, international study.
Different Trading World:
Global-overheating plus the inevitable end of the oil-supply will mean a huge change in oceanic trade, unless the thousands of ships plying the trade-routes get a different source of power. Without that, any country that cannot import and export over land will have to produce all its needs itself, or go without.
But Two Things Are Universal: Hydrogen and Stupidity
In spite all that, the greenhouse emissions from rich countries are rising and rising and rising and rising.... BBC News
Friday, 3 November 2006
DNA IS FAR MORE THAN WAS THOUGHT
Genetic researchers have long dismissed as 'junk' stretches of DNA that were not genes, a view I always refused to accept. But during the past year it has been found that the 'junk' has been faithfully reproduced generation after generation after generation, thus showing that it has an important function. Nature would not bother to take great pains to replicate junk. Also during the past year other researchers built a simple computer from DNA.
It is therefore obvious that DNA is not what the traditional view would have us believe. To see it only as genes is, literally, like seeing a computer as nothing but program and dismissing the rest as junk. Genes are only part of the story. DNA is far, far more. It is integrated processor, data-storage, program and power-source. It can therefore be seen as intelligent; it has design-intelligence; it is design-intelligence: stored design with the intelligence and power to manufacture it.
That applies not only to DNA: cell-proteins in general are processors. Which explains why the folding that is so critical alters the way that protein processor functions. Folding affects the shape and therefore the function of the processor; it also affects its internal power-level because it alters the electrical potential of the molecule. When the processor and its level of self-power are different the function of the molecule are different.
It has been found that bacteria communicate with chemicals and by that means intelligently co-ordinate their actions. Therefore DNA and other complex proteins also communicate using lesser chemicals, thus forming processing molecular networks, just as computers communicate with packets of data over networks; there is also electrical communication. Thus there is an intelligent processing network at the level of complex bio-molecules, literally making the cell; on top of that is the network of cells, together making up simple organisms, or organs in higher organisms; on top of that is the network of organs together making up the organism.
A computing analogy is that the complex molecules are the components in a computer, with DNA being the CPU; on top of that computers are formed into local networks; on top of that they are formed into the global Internet.
DNA is not only a programmed computer, complete with memory, data-storage and a power-source, it is self-programming, self-improving, exploring, like T-cells, for a better 'fit' to the external needs of the organism.
The few-percent different in genetic instructions between chimps and humans (although significant in such a huge total) is therefore only a fraction of the story. The processors are different, so the resulting organisms are different. A different design-intelligence, a different level of processing power, implements a different design. The DNA processor of a human being is far more intelligent and complex than the DNA processor of an insects or bacteria, so we are far more intelligent and complex. Even when the same code or data is processed the result is different. To adapt Marshall McLuhan, the processing is the organism.
That is true not only of the making on an organism it is also true of its behaviour and activities. For instance, a bird is not taught how to build a nest or rear young, etc.. It just knows, because its molecular processing informs its actions. There is behavioural intelligence, stored behavioural design at molecular level.
The same applies to memory--indeed to thinking in general. It is essentially molecular. Above that is the neural level, the functioning of neurons; above that is the functioning of the brain, all the neurons acting in concert, firstly in the sub-networks that are the discrete areas of the brain, then in the complete network.
A thought or a memory may thus be a unique network of neurons identified by marker proteins stored only in that neural set. Then to recall the memory would just be a matter of re-establishing the same network by establishing the start of it, or sufficient of it to begin the trace, then that starter neuron would interrogate all the ones linked to it to establish which have that protein, and so on, till that entire 'thought-net' has been searched out, retrieved and be firing. Any neuron could be in thousands of thought-nets, each very different, because each cell can have thousands of different proteins; it would just be linked to a different neural set characterised by the marker protein unique to that set. Modification of a thought or memory would be then the addition or deletion of neurons from a thought-net by making or eliminating the relevant marker neuron specific to that net.
The only argument left between the ungodly and the godly is whether that fundamental DNA and molecular intelligence arose spontaneously from nothing or was put there. If put there, was it processed into being by the quantum computer called Earth (Gaia, if you prefer), a subset of the quantum computer called the Universe? Or was it all put there by God?
But both sides of that puerile ID argument (i.e., 'intelligent design' versus evolution) have to accept that absolute proof, and also therefore absolute disproof, of the ultimate source are beyond the reach of human science. Neither side can absolutely prove the existence of anything, not even their own existence.
Relative proof, however, which is knowledge of communication, or knowledge of sensory awareness both internally with oneself and externally with others, is another matter. We all do that every day. And as Winston Churchill neatly put it: Men often stumble over the truth. Most of them manage to pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.
Genetic researchers have long dismissed as 'junk' stretches of DNA that were not genes, a view I always refused to accept. But during the past year it has been found that the 'junk' has been faithfully reproduced generation after generation after generation, thus showing that it has an important function. Nature would not bother to take great pains to replicate junk. Also during the past year other researchers built a simple computer from DNA.
It is therefore obvious that DNA is not what the traditional view would have us believe. To see it only as genes is, literally, like seeing a computer as nothing but program and dismissing the rest as junk. Genes are only part of the story. DNA is far, far more. It is integrated processor, data-storage, program and power-source. It can therefore be seen as intelligent; it has design-intelligence; it is design-intelligence: stored design with the intelligence and power to manufacture it.
That applies not only to DNA: cell-proteins in general are processors. Which explains why the folding that is so critical alters the way that protein processor functions. Folding affects the shape and therefore the function of the processor; it also affects its internal power-level because it alters the electrical potential of the molecule. When the processor and its level of self-power are different the function of the molecule are different.
It has been found that bacteria communicate with chemicals and by that means intelligently co-ordinate their actions. Therefore DNA and other complex proteins also communicate using lesser chemicals, thus forming processing molecular networks, just as computers communicate with packets of data over networks; there is also electrical communication. Thus there is an intelligent processing network at the level of complex bio-molecules, literally making the cell; on top of that is the network of cells, together making up simple organisms, or organs in higher organisms; on top of that is the network of organs together making up the organism.
A computing analogy is that the complex molecules are the components in a computer, with DNA being the CPU; on top of that computers are formed into local networks; on top of that they are formed into the global Internet.
DNA is not only a programmed computer, complete with memory, data-storage and a power-source, it is self-programming, self-improving, exploring, like T-cells, for a better 'fit' to the external needs of the organism.
The few-percent different in genetic instructions between chimps and humans (although significant in such a huge total) is therefore only a fraction of the story. The processors are different, so the resulting organisms are different. A different design-intelligence, a different level of processing power, implements a different design. The DNA processor of a human being is far more intelligent and complex than the DNA processor of an insects or bacteria, so we are far more intelligent and complex. Even when the same code or data is processed the result is different. To adapt Marshall McLuhan, the processing is the organism.
That is true not only of the making on an organism it is also true of its behaviour and activities. For instance, a bird is not taught how to build a nest or rear young, etc.. It just knows, because its molecular processing informs its actions. There is behavioural intelligence, stored behavioural design at molecular level.
The same applies to memory--indeed to thinking in general. It is essentially molecular. Above that is the neural level, the functioning of neurons; above that is the functioning of the brain, all the neurons acting in concert, firstly in the sub-networks that are the discrete areas of the brain, then in the complete network.
A thought or a memory may thus be a unique network of neurons identified by marker proteins stored only in that neural set. Then to recall the memory would just be a matter of re-establishing the same network by establishing the start of it, or sufficient of it to begin the trace, then that starter neuron would interrogate all the ones linked to it to establish which have that protein, and so on, till that entire 'thought-net' has been searched out, retrieved and be firing. Any neuron could be in thousands of thought-nets, each very different, because each cell can have thousands of different proteins; it would just be linked to a different neural set characterised by the marker protein unique to that set. Modification of a thought or memory would be then the addition or deletion of neurons from a thought-net by making or eliminating the relevant marker neuron specific to that net.
The only argument left between the ungodly and the godly is whether that fundamental DNA and molecular intelligence arose spontaneously from nothing or was put there. If put there, was it processed into being by the quantum computer called Earth (Gaia, if you prefer), a subset of the quantum computer called the Universe? Or was it all put there by God?
But both sides of that puerile ID argument (i.e., 'intelligent design' versus evolution) have to accept that absolute proof, and also therefore absolute disproof, of the ultimate source are beyond the reach of human science. Neither side can absolutely prove the existence of anything, not even their own existence.
Relative proof, however, which is knowledge of communication, or knowledge of sensory awareness both internally with oneself and externally with others, is another matter. We all do that every day. And as Winston Churchill neatly put it: Men often stumble over the truth. Most of them manage to pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.
Thursday, 2 November 2006
BUSINESS IS NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPIDS
These five paragraphs by the BBC's Science Corrrespondent, Richard Black, should be required reading for every politician, especially those with their heads in the Arabian sands on the subject of global-overheating, more especially those who refuse to act because it would be 'bad for business,' such as George W et alia:
'And while [Blair] warns of "catastrophic" consequences of climate change in one breath, in the next he can say, as he did at the Davos economic forum last year and again last week, that no climate action will be taken which damages business.
'There are two big problems here. One is that Mr Blair is mistaking "business" for "the economy"; the other is that he is neglecting the trans-generational nature of climate impacts and solutions.
'Business is not the only driver of a healthy economy. It is affected by war, disease, storms, global events: even (if you live in north Africa) by plagues of locusts.
'Stern's fundamental message is that business as usual is doing a certain amount of harm to the economy - not too much now, but much more later unless things change.
'If a mild pinprick for business now will save it from wholesale cauterisation later, we surely need a level of politics rather more subtle than a simple ban on moves which are "bad for business".'
The economy is the planet, life, society. Business is only money.
The full text of Black's item can be found by clicking here.
These five paragraphs by the BBC's Science Corrrespondent, Richard Black, should be required reading for every politician, especially those with their heads in the Arabian sands on the subject of global-overheating, more especially those who refuse to act because it would be 'bad for business,' such as George W et alia:
'And while [Blair] warns of "catastrophic" consequences of climate change in one breath, in the next he can say, as he did at the Davos economic forum last year and again last week, that no climate action will be taken which damages business.
'There are two big problems here. One is that Mr Blair is mistaking "business" for "the economy"; the other is that he is neglecting the trans-generational nature of climate impacts and solutions.
'Business is not the only driver of a healthy economy. It is affected by war, disease, storms, global events: even (if you live in north Africa) by plagues of locusts.
'Stern's fundamental message is that business as usual is doing a certain amount of harm to the economy - not too much now, but much more later unless things change.
'If a mild pinprick for business now will save it from wholesale cauterisation later, we surely need a level of politics rather more subtle than a simple ban on moves which are "bad for business".'
The economy is the planet, life, society. Business is only money.
The full text of Black's item can be found by clicking here.
Tuesday, 31 October 2006
OUR WRECKED WORLD HAS LEARNT NOTHING
Hard on the heels of Sir Nicholas Stern's epochal report on the dire consequences of global-overheating comes a UN report that shows greenhouse-gas emissions are rising, particular from the worst offenders, the rich, industrialised nations. Emission levels are up 3.3% since 1990. The USA is far and away the worst. It pumps out 25% of the world's emissions.
We never, ever learn. But we will not be able to say we were not told. We have been: plainly, unequivocally. Sternly.
How long will it take to get through the brain-damaged skulls of those responsible for the mess, the Black Stuff pushers and the inept politicians, that we now live on a different planet. The Earth that the human race has lived on for the past 10,000 years has gone, because we have destroyed it. The normality on which we have predicated our decisions for 10,000 years has gone because we have destroyed it.
We must therefore predicate our decisions on the new, damaged reality. If not, we will make it unimaginably worse. As the teenagers say, 'Get real.'
The only question to ask of any proposed action is ' Will it profit the planet or push it further into climatic debit?' Nothing else. Because the real bottom line is life. Not money. It has always been so, but now our noses have been forcibly rubbed in that fundamental truth.
Get real.
Hard on the heels of Sir Nicholas Stern's epochal report on the dire consequences of global-overheating comes a UN report that shows greenhouse-gas emissions are rising, particular from the worst offenders, the rich, industrialised nations. Emission levels are up 3.3% since 1990. The USA is far and away the worst. It pumps out 25% of the world's emissions.
We never, ever learn. But we will not be able to say we were not told. We have been: plainly, unequivocally. Sternly.
How long will it take to get through the brain-damaged skulls of those responsible for the mess, the Black Stuff pushers and the inept politicians, that we now live on a different planet. The Earth that the human race has lived on for the past 10,000 years has gone, because we have destroyed it. The normality on which we have predicated our decisions for 10,000 years has gone because we have destroyed it.
We must therefore predicate our decisions on the new, damaged reality. If not, we will make it unimaginably worse. As the teenagers say, 'Get real.'
The only question to ask of any proposed action is ' Will it profit the planet or push it further into climatic debit?' Nothing else. Because the real bottom line is life. Not money. It has always been so, but now our noses have been forcibly rubbed in that fundamental truth.
Get real.
Monday, 30 October 2006
SIR NICHOLAS SAYS THE WORLD HEADING FOR RUIN
Sir Nicholas Stern, a former head of the World Bank, in a 700-page report commissioned by the UK government, says global-overheating (he actually uses that damnable euphemism global-warming) will cost the world up to seven trillion dollars in the next decade unless governments take drastic action now.
That would be, and because we are hardly likely to take that action it means that will be more than World War I, World War II and the Great Depression of the 1930s rolled into one. A 20% contraction in the global economy. Without action floods from rising sea-levels could displace up to 100 million people; melting glaciers could cause water-shortagee for a sixth of the global population--over a billion people; up to 40% of wildlife could become extinct; drought may create ten or hundreds of millions of climate refugees.
At last. Someone has told us the terrible truth. Now, please, all you brain-damaged politicians and all you car, oil and coal companies take note. Stop wrecking the planet. Stop your crimes against humanity. Get on the side of life. Stop your murderous policies.
Sir Nicholas also calls for Kyoto to be dumped ASAP and replaced with something better. About time. That thing is useless. The Munich Agreement of the 21st century.
Click here for a BBC summary of the report, and here for its business analysis.
Sir Nicholas Stern, a former head of the World Bank, in a 700-page report commissioned by the UK government, says global-overheating (he actually uses that damnable euphemism global-warming) will cost the world up to seven trillion dollars in the next decade unless governments take drastic action now.
That would be, and because we are hardly likely to take that action it means that will be more than World War I, World War II and the Great Depression of the 1930s rolled into one. A 20% contraction in the global economy. Without action floods from rising sea-levels could displace up to 100 million people; melting glaciers could cause water-shortagee for a sixth of the global population--over a billion people; up to 40% of wildlife could become extinct; drought may create ten or hundreds of millions of climate refugees.
At last. Someone has told us the terrible truth. Now, please, all you brain-damaged politicians and all you car, oil and coal companies take note. Stop wrecking the planet. Stop your crimes against humanity. Get on the side of life. Stop your murderous policies.
Sir Nicholas also calls for Kyoto to be dumped ASAP and replaced with something better. About time. That thing is useless. The Munich Agreement of the 21st century.
Click here for a BBC summary of the report, and here for its business analysis.
OUR SYSTEM MAKES CORRUPT POLITICIANS
We have a political system that could hardly be better designed to generate corruption. Blithely, every few years, we trot off to vote a small number of people into power. We even use that phrase--'vote into power'--although we well know Lord Acton's dictum that all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So, very deliberately, we put people into positions that are likely to corrupt them. And we plume ourselves on how good our system is. We even go to war to defend it and spread it about.
But, making matters worse, such positions attract the wrong kind of people, people who are dysfunctional, people with low self-esteem and weak personalities who compensate with power and position, people who have little love for other human beings, people who instead of attending to their inner deficiences and fixing them by changing themselves try instead to change everyone round them. And we give them a whole country to play with...
So they start with internal corruption, and we put them in positions that tend to make them externally corrupted. Once, when the Divine moral compass was generally steered by, there was constant correction militating against malign internal and external forces, but all that was biffed overboard, so now we are dependent on politicians having good wiring between their ears. Few do. No wonder we end up with corrupted countries.
The only way out of that, short of a miracle, is to change the system. Ditch the system that breeds corruption, the elected dictatorship, and use the Internet to change to a national plebescite. Let the people be self-governing.
A prime example of this corruption phenomenon is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. If ever a PM was a chronically messed-up human being it is her. Small wonder that New Zealand is going down the social tubes. And small wonder that her party was caught with its fingers in the public till, having made off with $750,000 with which it bought the last election by funding a last-ditch advertising push that got the few percent it needed. Published interviews show that she was psychologically abused as a child and is now a mess inside. But her way of dealing with the resultant abnormality, instead of fixing it, was to claw her way to topmost power and shift the whole country towards her abnormality so that she could call herself normal. Weird 'logic', but that is how the dysfunctional function. The abused abuse: she is abusing a country. Yet 33% of the populace, although down from teh former 62%, still think she is the bee's knees and the best bod for the PM's job. Another case of the Stockholm syndrome, where the hijacked end up siding with the hijackers. Or, to use an older analogy, another case of PC-fearful, sycophantic supporters cheering on the naked emperor as he struts his stuff down the High Street.
We have a political system that could hardly be better designed to generate corruption. Blithely, every few years, we trot off to vote a small number of people into power. We even use that phrase--'vote into power'--although we well know Lord Acton's dictum that all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So, very deliberately, we put people into positions that are likely to corrupt them. And we plume ourselves on how good our system is. We even go to war to defend it and spread it about.
But, making matters worse, such positions attract the wrong kind of people, people who are dysfunctional, people with low self-esteem and weak personalities who compensate with power and position, people who have little love for other human beings, people who instead of attending to their inner deficiences and fixing them by changing themselves try instead to change everyone round them. And we give them a whole country to play with...
So they start with internal corruption, and we put them in positions that tend to make them externally corrupted. Once, when the Divine moral compass was generally steered by, there was constant correction militating against malign internal and external forces, but all that was biffed overboard, so now we are dependent on politicians having good wiring between their ears. Few do. No wonder we end up with corrupted countries.
The only way out of that, short of a miracle, is to change the system. Ditch the system that breeds corruption, the elected dictatorship, and use the Internet to change to a national plebescite. Let the people be self-governing.
A prime example of this corruption phenomenon is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. If ever a PM was a chronically messed-up human being it is her. Small wonder that New Zealand is going down the social tubes. And small wonder that her party was caught with its fingers in the public till, having made off with $750,000 with which it bought the last election by funding a last-ditch advertising push that got the few percent it needed. Published interviews show that she was psychologically abused as a child and is now a mess inside. But her way of dealing with the resultant abnormality, instead of fixing it, was to claw her way to topmost power and shift the whole country towards her abnormality so that she could call herself normal. Weird 'logic', but that is how the dysfunctional function. The abused abuse: she is abusing a country. Yet 33% of the populace, although down from teh former 62%, still think she is the bee's knees and the best bod for the PM's job. Another case of the Stockholm syndrome, where the hijacked end up siding with the hijackers. Or, to use an older analogy, another case of PC-fearful, sycophantic supporters cheering on the naked emperor as he struts his stuff down the High Street.
Thursday, 26 October 2006
GET OUT OF IRAQ? NO, GET OFF THE PLANET!
The USA is once again castigated for its greedy, selfish, profligate way of living, this time in a WWF report, which not surprisingly shows it to be the worst on earth--BBC News article.
So why bother telling it to get out of Iraq? We would all be better off if it got off the planet.
More nasty details are here, also at BBC News.
If nothing changes, the WWF says global ecosystems could collapse by 2050.
The USA is once again castigated for its greedy, selfish, profligate way of living, this time in a WWF report, which not surprisingly shows it to be the worst on earth--BBC News article.
So why bother telling it to get out of Iraq? We would all be better off if it got off the planet.
More nasty details are here, also at BBC News.
If nothing changes, the WWF says global ecosystems could collapse by 2050.
Tuesday, 24 October 2006
OZONE HOLE OVER ANTARCTIC SETS BIG RECORD
As this BBC News report blaringly headlines it: Ozone hole is 'biggest on record'--'bigger than North America.' NASA's Aura satellite says so, backed up by ground-based readings using high-altitude balloons.
Ain the layer between 13 and 21 kilometres above the earth, there was virtually no ozone; almost all had been destroyed. And at the 20km mark there were extremely high levels of ozone-destroying chlorine chemicals. Scientists say that levels of the nasty chemicals peaked in 2001. This latest peak, between September the 21st and 30th, must not have read their report. They also expect the ozone-layer to make a slow recovery and be back to normal in about 2065...
Keep the sunblock handy. In New Zealand the UV level is at 9, out a of a possible 10.
As this BBC News report blaringly headlines it: Ozone hole is 'biggest on record'--'bigger than North America.' NASA's Aura satellite says so, backed up by ground-based readings using high-altitude balloons.
Ain the layer between 13 and 21 kilometres above the earth, there was virtually no ozone; almost all had been destroyed. And at the 20km mark there were extremely high levels of ozone-destroying chlorine chemicals. Scientists say that levels of the nasty chemicals peaked in 2001. This latest peak, between September the 21st and 30th, must not have read their report. They also expect the ozone-layer to make a slow recovery and be back to normal in about 2065...
Keep the sunblock handy. In New Zealand the UV level is at 9, out a of a possible 10.
Monday, 23 October 2006
NASA SAYS GREENLAND LOSES 101 GIGATONS PER YEAR
NASA's latest measurements show that Greenland is now melting at a fast clip, much quicker than had been predicted and that the pace has accelerated in recent years, even though global-overheating has yet to get a full head of steam. The detail of the bad news, in
this Reuter-based article shows that between 2003 and 2005 it gained 54 gigatons per year in the high interior but lost 155 gigatons round the coast. That is a far cry from the 1990s, when gains and losses were about equal.
Click here for the original NASA site.
The guys who think the place will take thousands of years to melt down will have to have another decko at their myopic optimism.
NASA's latest measurements show that Greenland is now melting at a fast clip, much quicker than had been predicted and that the pace has accelerated in recent years, even though global-overheating has yet to get a full head of steam. The detail of the bad news, in
this Reuter-based article shows that between 2003 and 2005 it gained 54 gigatons per year in the high interior but lost 155 gigatons round the coast. That is a far cry from the 1990s, when gains and losses were about equal.
Click here for the original NASA site.
The guys who think the place will take thousands of years to melt down will have to have another decko at their myopic optimism.
Thursday, 19 October 2006
AS THE FISH GO SO GOES THE CLIMATE
This article in Science Daily gives yet another reason why wiping out marine animals, small and large, is not a very good idea. They provide about a third of the power that stirs the oceans, and are thus a giant, very necessary part of the climate-making mix.
We are busy knocking back these vital stirrers with over-fishing and manmade climate-change. Clever, huh?
Sounds like a title for a book: So long, fish. Thanks for all the good weather...
A giant footnote to that is the news, in the NZ Herald that scientists have found that the smoking gun of climate-change was responsible for the breaking off of the huge Larsen B iceshelf from Antartica in 2002.
We cannot tell a lie, we chopped it off with our little greenhouse-gas axe...
This article in Science Daily gives yet another reason why wiping out marine animals, small and large, is not a very good idea. They provide about a third of the power that stirs the oceans, and are thus a giant, very necessary part of the climate-making mix.
We are busy knocking back these vital stirrers with over-fishing and manmade climate-change. Clever, huh?
Sounds like a title for a book: So long, fish. Thanks for all the good weather...
A giant footnote to that is the news, in the NZ Herald that scientists have found that the smoking gun of climate-change was responsible for the breaking off of the huge Larsen B iceshelf from Antartica in 2002.
We cannot tell a lie, we chopped it off with our little greenhouse-gas axe...
Friday, 13 October 2006
THE EARTH IS NOW OUTSIDE THE BOX
So we have to think outside it, otherwise our thinking will be on the wrong planet. The normality on which we have predicated our decisions, both public and private, for 10,000 years has gone, so we have to be thinking where we are, not where we used to be.
We have to do whatever it takes, we have to try many things that we would not in the old normality have considered, so as to try to fix at least some of the mess we have made through our insane, murderous addiction to the Black Stuff. Global overheating has clearly passed the point of no return (and even if it hadn't that damned addiction would not be given up soon enough to stop it before it did).
During World War II the British were willing to try any idea, to use all sorts of opeople, such as movie directors and sci-fi writers and horoscope pushers, and to do whatever it took to beat the Nazi foe. For example, they set up a full-blown mock army in southern English fields made of wood and canvas and rubber, and even had a general assigned to it, to help fool the Germans into thinking that the D-Day landings were going to be somewhere other than Normandy. They also sent a uniformed corpse to war in a rubber dinghy, with some private letters in his pocket that appeared to hint at a false landing place. Whatever helped, they did. Everything was on a war footing to win the war.
We have to do the same. Guys with money, and government treasuries, have to be ready and willing to tip it into all sorts of schemes. Except looney ones. This is no time for little green men stuff. But if an idea has a chance of helping to make a hole in the problem, and it needs, say, a hundred thousand dollards, or a million, then that should be provided so that it can be tried. This is no time for standing on that traditional work of fiction, the business plan, and saying that if there isn't one there's no deal. Everything has to be predicated on the new reality, the planet as it is, not as it was; and everything that might help it should be done ASAP (which also means doing nothing that would hinder it--such as anything that would generate more carbon-dioxide).
So get outside the box. If you aren't you aren't on planet earth.
So we have to think outside it, otherwise our thinking will be on the wrong planet. The normality on which we have predicated our decisions, both public and private, for 10,000 years has gone, so we have to be thinking where we are, not where we used to be.
We have to do whatever it takes, we have to try many things that we would not in the old normality have considered, so as to try to fix at least some of the mess we have made through our insane, murderous addiction to the Black Stuff. Global overheating has clearly passed the point of no return (and even if it hadn't that damned addiction would not be given up soon enough to stop it before it did).
During World War II the British were willing to try any idea, to use all sorts of opeople, such as movie directors and sci-fi writers and horoscope pushers, and to do whatever it took to beat the Nazi foe. For example, they set up a full-blown mock army in southern English fields made of wood and canvas and rubber, and even had a general assigned to it, to help fool the Germans into thinking that the D-Day landings were going to be somewhere other than Normandy. They also sent a uniformed corpse to war in a rubber dinghy, with some private letters in his pocket that appeared to hint at a false landing place. Whatever helped, they did. Everything was on a war footing to win the war.
We have to do the same. Guys with money, and government treasuries, have to be ready and willing to tip it into all sorts of schemes. Except looney ones. This is no time for little green men stuff. But if an idea has a chance of helping to make a hole in the problem, and it needs, say, a hundred thousand dollards, or a million, then that should be provided so that it can be tried. This is no time for standing on that traditional work of fiction, the business plan, and saying that if there isn't one there's no deal. Everything has to be predicated on the new reality, the planet as it is, not as it was; and everything that might help it should be done ASAP (which also means doing nothing that would hinder it--such as anything that would generate more carbon-dioxide).
So get outside the box. If you aren't you aren't on planet earth.
Monday, 9 October 2006
NEW ZEALAND GETS ITS GLOBAL WARNING
A New Zealand scientist has plainly told his country how things are and how they will be in a story in the
New Zealand Herald. It is good to see someone saying out loud that the changes we have made in the planet's atmosphere have built a momentum that cannot be switched off. But in New Zealand 89% of those who can have driver's licences (15 and over) also own cars, so they are obviously not listening to the winds of planetary change. They are sowing disaster, and will reap the global-overheating whirlwind.
A New Zealand scientist has plainly told his country how things are and how they will be in a story in the
New Zealand Herald. It is good to see someone saying out loud that the changes we have made in the planet's atmosphere have built a momentum that cannot be switched off. But in New Zealand 89% of those who can have driver's licences (15 and over) also own cars, so they are obviously not listening to the winds of planetary change. They are sowing disaster, and will reap the global-overheating whirlwind.
BACTERIA ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE
They also show us the way to a true democracy.
The September/October 2006 issue of Update, the magazine for members of the New York Academy of Sciences, has a piece headed Microbial Chatter, How Bacteria Talk to Each Other, which outlines the researches of Bonnie Hassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
'She has found that bacteria like to live in complex multi-species communities and their ability to communicate and co-operate is essential to their survival,' says the magazine. Amongst other abilities, they are 'multilingual' (via signalling molecules called auto-inducers), and they have a communications system called 'quorum sensing' in which the majority rules. A single bacteria expressing what might be called an auto-inducer opinion cannot persuade group action; that happens only when a large number express it in unison. There are three main types of auto-inducers. One of them enables cross-species communications: 'An example of this ability for mixed-species consortia to talk among themselves is evident on our teeth: 600 species are there every morning in precisely the same organisation as the night before. The only way they can build their complicated biofilms is to know precisely what other cells are out there and to use the information to function effectively as a working conglomerate.'
Meanwhile, in the brains a few centimetres above those teeth there is touching faith in the notion that our system of government is a democracy, that it truly is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people', when it is nothing but an elected dictatorship--it is government of the people, by a few people, for some people. The bacteria have true a democracy. Every bug has an auto-inducer voice, every voice counts, and the action of the group is decided by the majority in unison. A molecular opinion expressed by only a few bugs is ignored.
Poor people. How sad! They have less organisational sense than the bugs on their teeth.
They also show us the way to a true democracy.
The September/October 2006 issue of Update, the magazine for members of the New York Academy of Sciences, has a piece headed Microbial Chatter, How Bacteria Talk to Each Other, which outlines the researches of Bonnie Hassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
'She has found that bacteria like to live in complex multi-species communities and their ability to communicate and co-operate is essential to their survival,' says the magazine. Amongst other abilities, they are 'multilingual' (via signalling molecules called auto-inducers), and they have a communications system called 'quorum sensing' in which the majority rules. A single bacteria expressing what might be called an auto-inducer opinion cannot persuade group action; that happens only when a large number express it in unison. There are three main types of auto-inducers. One of them enables cross-species communications: 'An example of this ability for mixed-species consortia to talk among themselves is evident on our teeth: 600 species are there every morning in precisely the same organisation as the night before. The only way they can build their complicated biofilms is to know precisely what other cells are out there and to use the information to function effectively as a working conglomerate.'
Meanwhile, in the brains a few centimetres above those teeth there is touching faith in the notion that our system of government is a democracy, that it truly is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people', when it is nothing but an elected dictatorship--it is government of the people, by a few people, for some people. The bacteria have true a democracy. Every bug has an auto-inducer voice, every voice counts, and the action of the group is decided by the majority in unison. A molecular opinion expressed by only a few bugs is ignored.
Poor people. How sad! They have less organisational sense than the bugs on their teeth.
Wednesday, 4 October 2006
THIRTY PERCENT OF THE PLANET UNINHABITABLE
As this blog has said many times the worst is yet to be officially told--namely that billions will die and large tracts of the planet will become uninhabitable because of the murderous insanity of burning the Black Stuff (coal & oil), which is overheating the planet. Now, at last, the dire truth is beginning to emerge: see this article in the
NZ Herald from the Independent
As this blog has said many times the worst is yet to be officially told--namely that billions will die and large tracts of the planet will become uninhabitable because of the murderous insanity of burning the Black Stuff (coal & oil), which is overheating the planet. Now, at last, the dire truth is beginning to emerge: see this article in the
NZ Herald from the Independent
Monday, 2 October 2006
PETTY, MUCK-MINDED JOURNALISTS, GET REAL
What was the lead story on Radio New Zealand news the other day, the day the ozone-layer over the country was the thinnest ever measured? Was it that terrible fact--something that affects everyone vitally? No, it was the latest instalment of a media beat-up about some bunch who tried to hire a private investigator to get the dirt on our repellent Prime Mince and her inept cabinet cronies--the gang who haven't done a single useful thing about global-overheating, and who have overseen a steady downgrading of the country's social fabric.
So nice to know that the media has the country's real interests at heart. They dissect an irrelevant microbe oicked from the armpit of politics and ignore the destruction of the planet. There should be an award in that, shouldn't there? Yay!
Putting political shennigans ahead of the planet was one of the bad habits that got us into this environmental mess in the first place. So why not keep up the good work, eh chaps? Let the brain-damaged media rule! Yay 2!!
Actually, that day was the saddest in New Zealand's history, because it marked the end of the beginning, the door slamming on life as this country has always known it, the first overt sign it has had that the planet will never be the same, that the climatic normality of the past 10,000 years has gone for ever. The ozone layer above New Zealand had been anorexic anyway, but that day, and for the next day or two, a gusty stratospheric wind tore the bottom off it. Which shows how little is needed, now that we have pushed the planet to the brink, for things to tip over and seriously threaten human health, even life.
And not just human health and life. We can stay indoors or use sun-block and protective gear to protect ourselves but what about the wild animals and the livestock? They, like us, can get cataracts, and suffer DNA damage. Plants, too, can be irrevocably damaged.
The gusts of change are upon us. But we, as always, are doing nothing.
Click to get to this BBC News page, where a British politician proves that he, at least, is saying some of the right things--'people should be scared...'
What was the lead story on Radio New Zealand news the other day, the day the ozone-layer over the country was the thinnest ever measured? Was it that terrible fact--something that affects everyone vitally? No, it was the latest instalment of a media beat-up about some bunch who tried to hire a private investigator to get the dirt on our repellent Prime Mince and her inept cabinet cronies--the gang who haven't done a single useful thing about global-overheating, and who have overseen a steady downgrading of the country's social fabric.
So nice to know that the media has the country's real interests at heart. They dissect an irrelevant microbe oicked from the armpit of politics and ignore the destruction of the planet. There should be an award in that, shouldn't there? Yay!
Putting political shennigans ahead of the planet was one of the bad habits that got us into this environmental mess in the first place. So why not keep up the good work, eh chaps? Let the brain-damaged media rule! Yay 2!!
Actually, that day was the saddest in New Zealand's history, because it marked the end of the beginning, the door slamming on life as this country has always known it, the first overt sign it has had that the planet will never be the same, that the climatic normality of the past 10,000 years has gone for ever. The ozone layer above New Zealand had been anorexic anyway, but that day, and for the next day or two, a gusty stratospheric wind tore the bottom off it. Which shows how little is needed, now that we have pushed the planet to the brink, for things to tip over and seriously threaten human health, even life.
And not just human health and life. We can stay indoors or use sun-block and protective gear to protect ourselves but what about the wild animals and the livestock? They, like us, can get cataracts, and suffer DNA damage. Plants, too, can be irrevocably damaged.
The gusts of change are upon us. But we, as always, are doing nothing.
Click to get to this BBC News page, where a British politician proves that he, at least, is saying some of the right things--'people should be scared...'
Friday, 15 September 2006
ARCTIC ICE SHRINKS 14% IN ONE YEAR
BBC News says NASA has found an enormous loss in Arctic ice--14% in the 2004-2005 year, a huge increase on the former average of 0.7% per year. Because black water absorbs the heat from sunlight and white ice reflects it, the change from ice to water bodes ill for global-overheating. The area lost is the size Turkey or Pakistan.
Add to that this litany of ecological disasters culled from all over the planet, and you must again seethe with fury at the fact that no one of any consequence is doing a blind thing about it.
BBC News says NASA has found an enormous loss in Arctic ice--14% in the 2004-2005 year, a huge increase on the former average of 0.7% per year. Because black water absorbs the heat from sunlight and white ice reflects it, the change from ice to water bodes ill for global-overheating. The area lost is the size Turkey or Pakistan.
Add to that this litany of ecological disasters culled from all over the planet, and you must again seethe with fury at the fact that no one of any consequence is doing a blind thing about it.
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