A Heartbeat of Unobtainium

Some will remember that "unobtainium" is a word used by scientists as a humorous reference to things not yet obtainable.

While some scientists worry about a mission to Mars, regular readers of The Ecocosmology Blog know that this blog worries first about the mission to Earth.

We worry because that mission to the Earth is failing.

We have cited to research recently that debunks climate change and global warming deniers.

We are concerned by such denial because it is a dementia which prevents a remedy in dangerous situations.

Carte Blanche disregard for the work of scientists who have impeccable credentials, and the obvious tons of evidence they cite to, is reckless because it often diminishes the reputation of the entire realm of science in the minds of the public.

For example scientists inform us that the Gulf is still contaminated to the degree that seafood is generally not safe to consume, yet politically motivated government officials, who appear willing to risk the health of the public, quarrel with these scientists who are warning of an existing danger.

We are adding yet another post which offers yet another study that strikes at the heart of the arguments the deniers have historically used to bolster their denial:

The troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere closest to the Earth, is warming and this warming is broadly consistent with both theoretical expectations and climate models, according to a new scientific study that reviews the history of understanding of temperature changes and their causes in this key atmospheric layer.

...

In the 1990s, observations did not show the troposphere, particularly in the tropics, to be warming, even though surface temperatures were rapidly warming. This lack of tropospheric warming was used by some to question both the reality of the surface warming trend and the reliability of climate models as tools. This new paper extensively reviews the relevant scientific analyses -- 195 cited papers, model results and atmospheric data sets -- and finds that there is no longer evidence for a fundamental discrepancy and that the troposphere is warming.

(Science Daily, emphasis added). The mission to the Earth is failing because the toxins of power corrupt the minds of politicians who then care more and more about their own election chances, but less and less about the public safety and health.

This blog has posts regularly which point out that if the mission to Earth fails, the missions to other worlds are going to fail too.

Carbon Dioxide & The Kooks

No, "Carbon Dioxide & The Kooks" isn't a country music band.

It is a story of the climate change deniers who do not get the science about the carbon dioxide in the Earth's carbon cycle.

More recently it is a story by climate change scientists who confirm the important role carbon dioxide plays in the global warming of the Earth in our time:

Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide.

(CO2 Controls Earth's Temperature, bold added). The deniers have wacky tales:

For a start, carbon dioxide is not the dreaded killer greenhouse gas that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol five years later cracked it up to be. It is, in fact, the most important airborne fertiliser in the world, and without it there would be no green plants at all.

That is because, as any schoolchild will tell you, plants take in carbon dioxide and water and, with the help of a little sunshine, convert them into complex carbon compounds - that we either eat, build with or just admire - and oxygen, which just happens to keep the rest of the planet alive.

(Junk Science, a website of S.J. Milloy, a Fox News columnist). It is just as invalid to say drowning can't happen because water is natural to the environment.

They do not seem to get the notion of excess, nor the notion of balance, thus, they can't fathom the reality of the dangers inherent in polluting ecological realms to get them out of balance.

Like a fine-tuned turbine that will destroy itself and anything near it if it looses balance, the ecosystem is a conglomeration of balanced cycles that depend on the other cycles it interacts with also staying balanced.

If an ecological cycle, such as the CO2/carbon cycle, goes out of balance it can take the others with it ("Ecosystems will fail if they do not remain in balance.").

Climate scientists intend to counter the junk science blather:

Hundreds of US scientists are joining a mass effort to speak out on climate change, experts said Monday after skeptics gained political ground with last week's Republican gains in Congress.

The moves signals a bold approach by scientists, typically reluctant to get involved in policy debates, as US President Barack Obama's efforts to set stricter penalties for polluters face near-certain defeat in the legislature.

(Terra Daily). The growing public danger from climate change deniers will be debunked until kookiness is more easily identifiable by non-scientists.

Pricing The Priceless At The Plantation

Historians have argued about whether or not slavery in the United States was economically efficient.

It is as if The Plantation Era is to be judged by the cost of a slave, since labor is a fundamental part of the cost of goods and services.

The bottom line is that we rejected slavery whether or not economists from Cygnus considered it to be efficient or inefficient, because we consider human life to be priceless.

A new plantation mentality has developed in the "economics" of environmental law, which basically "bargains" over the cost to be paid for human life.

When the Supreme Court said it was legal to use "cost benefit analysis" to decide environmental damage assessment, that court basically put a price on the heads of all members of civilization.

The Supreme Court is saying that it is legal to protect the environment so long as it does not cost big business too much money.

When a price is placed on the priceless environment it puts a price on the priceless human life that the environment makes possible.

Dredd Blog has pointed out the reality that the main function of human government should be to enforce the laws of nature, not to ignore them by passing human legislation at odds with the laws of nature.

This blog has also posted, in accord with that view, posts pointing out that it is delusional to think human law trumps natural law.

In the United States the return to a plantation mentality is a function of the federal judiciary, which has gone back to its 1930's configuration, a time when it was a right wing "institution".

Shadow of Time Governs The Earth - 2

In the first post in this series, we touched upon the convergence of needs that are approaching as well as those that are here already, which together are endangering civilization as we know it.

The "time" focused on in that post was the year 2030 when "the perfect storm" would converge such that the whole danger would be greater than the sum of its parts.

In this current post let's update ourselves using The Living Planet Report from the WWF.

Here are some interesting findings contained in the report:

1.5 years are needed to generate the renewable resources used in 2007 (use was more than the Earth produced, i.e. decline)

71 countries are experiencing blue water resource stress

2 earths will be needed by the year 2030

5 major threats to civilization (habitat loss, exploitation, pollution, climate change, invasive species)

(Living Planet Report, PDF, 24 megs). For the rest of this post lets focus on the statement "2 earths will be needed by the year 2030" (to accommodate the needs of civilization).

This statement is in agreement with The Tenets of Ecocosmology, although for different reasons.

Tenet One is based on the demise of the Sun which requires us to find a new home world, but the Living Planet Report is based on the demise of the Earth caused by violations of Tenet 3(a).

The shadow of time is approaching fast upon current world civilization, and there is no time at all to waste, seeing as how it may already be too late.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Are We Really Sure How Stars Decline?

The tenets of ecocosmology are based on the scientific understanding concerning how stars decline then die out.

In recent years there have been discoveries which challenge the existing models of stellar decline, also challenging the tenets of ecocosmology to some degree because the science and the tenets are inextricably linked together.

It behooves us, then, to revisit the tenets periodically as we revisit the current stellar models, hypotheses, and theories.

Two quick examples will illustrate the point, the first concerns red dwarf stars:

One mystery which has not been solved as of 2007 is the absence of red dwarf stars with no metals. (In astronomy, a metal is any element heavier than hydrogen or helium). The Big Bang model predicts the first generation of stars should have only hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium. If such stars included red dwarfs, they should still be observable today, but none have yet been identified. The preferred explanation is that without heavy elements only large and not yet observed population III stars can form, and these rapidly burn out leaving heavy elements which then allow for the formation of red dwarfs. Alternative explanations, such as that zero-metal red dwarfs are dim and could be few in number, are considered much less likely as they seem to conflict with stellar evolution models.

(Red Dwarf Stars, emphasis added). Another issue challenges our understanding as well:

"A massive star a million times brighter than our sun exploded way too early in its life, suggesting scientists don't understand stellar evolution as well as they thought."

(Star Explodes, So Might Theory, emphasis added). There is some mystery about the red giant Betelgeuse also.

The First Tenet of Ecocosmology states:

1) The stars like our Sun, at the center of all solar systems, will support life forms for an amount of time, but will then destroy life on the planets near them at an unknown time during each solar system's developmental life cycle.

a) For stars that are late K thru M, such as red dwarfs, this applies to the deadly outbursts, that come short of physical destruction, of the planets orbiting close to that type star.

(Revised 2/12/12, See Tenet One Basics). That is true for all planets orbiting stars which fit that mold, but what about a red dwarf?

The current teaching is that they do not destroy the planets near them, they die out orders of magnitude more slowly than our Sun will, and they just fizzle out so to speak.

So, in one sense the tenet holds true for all star types, it is just that some stars require a relatively quicker response from any species on the inhabited planets around them.

That response is the same for all species on all planets, which is finding another habitable planet to live on when the star which the planet orbits expands to destroy them, or fizzles out to leave the planet no longer habitable.

The difference among those like us who inhabit planets orbiting destructive-decline stars, and those who might inhabit planets orbiting red dwarfs, is that they have a much, much, much longer time frame within which to find another home world than we do.

The silver lining in this cloud is that red dwarfs would be very, very long lasting locations for "bases" from which to search for new home worlds, perhaps taking the pressure off planets like Earth whose inhabitants have a million times less time to find a new home world.

A Lovely Planet In The Neighborhood? - 2

Astronomers are being quoted as having found a planet that is "near" us.

But what is called "near-by" is quite relative, because we can ask "near-by compared to what?"

Well, compared to far, far, far, far away for example?

Never-the-less, astronomers are happy to have discovered the most earth-like planet orbiting a star as only one of several planets in that distant (or close?) solar system.

The red dwarf star Gliese 581 has not only six known planets, but it also has at least one planet that orbits at a distance that places it in what is called the habitable zone.

That zone is also called the Goldilocks zone, because planets within that zone are at a distance from the star so as to allow liquid water to exist in some places on those planets, which in itself makes it an interesting solar system:

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf located 20.5 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Libra. Like other red dwarfs, it's smaller and much dimmer than our sun. Scientists believe Gliese 581 is old — at least a few billion years — and relatively stable. Both are qualities conducive to the evolution of life, scientists have said.

(Space; also White Paper PDF). So how excited should we get about this discovery, in terms of potential human space travel to check it out?

As was pointed out in an earlier post on Ecocosmology blog:

For example, our B.C.E. technology (burning chemicals to produce energy (thrust) in rockets) which we fondly call rocket science, is not going to get us to the part of "the block" where the "near" star with planet GJ-1214b is.

Light travels at about 670,618,800 miles an hour (186,283 miles per second x 60 x 60) or 5,878,644,400,800 per year (670,618,800 x 24 x 365.25). A planet orbiting a star 40 "light years" away, then, is 235,145,776,032,000 (5,878,644,400,800 x 40) miles away.

Our spacecraft Voyager I and II travel at about 38,000 miles per hour, or 333,108,000 miles a year (38,000 x 24 x 365.25).

So it would take them 705,914.53 years (235,145,776,032,000 / 333,108,000), one way, to get to that planet salaried scientists say is "on our block".

Many scientists' salaries come from military sources in the Pentagon budget. The military scientists are only concerned with being able to destroy things on the earth, so "rocket science" is the apex of their intellect. If it kills better than the last one they love it.

(A Lovely Planet In The Neighborhood?). What that means is since the star Gliese 581 is half the distance to GJ-1214b, it would "only" take us 352,957.27 years (705,914.53 / 2) to get there, ONE WAY.

We see, then, that the science produced by our political systems on Earth is so heavily controlled by military considerations that we have unwisely focused on chemical propulsion for space travel.

Thus, we are still way, way out of range and cannot realistically consider travelling to Gliese 581, or any other star system for that matter, even though our continued existence depends upon the ability to do so.

Humanity has expressed hope, through the SETI program, to find another planet out there where a civilization exists that has the ability to do competent space travel, and could help us continue to survive when it gets close to the time when our solar system catastrophically dies out.

For now, then, all that any warmonger controlled planets like Earth can ask of "near-by" planets is the Mr. Robinson question, "would you be my neighbour?"

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

The Wind Is Not Just For The Birds

The memes that say the human species on the earth is the epitome of evolution, or on the other hand the epitome of creation, resides in meme-complexes of a strange form of "species exceptionalism".

It is a mix of religious fanatics, secular ideologues, scholars, and religionists who think that environmentalism is much ado about nothing because humans are exceptional while the environment is nothing by comparison.

The history of the ancestors of these ideologues is not well settled or certain.

At least it isn't if you compare Wikipedia with Wikipedia Critic.

Thus, perhaps the reason for the conflict between these dogmas is the usual dual set of "facts" based upon the same evidence or data:

There are widely varying interpretations of this text, but it is safe to say that all presume human beings have inherited the earth to be used as they see fit. For many, God's gift to Adam and Eve of "dominion" over the earth and all its creatures has been taken as the right to unlimited exploitation.

(Bill Moyers). The fundamentalists of the ecocide-is-no-biggie persuasion think that the earth is a 7,000 year old plaything for them to do anything the want to with; that green energy can never work, and we are thus enslaved to pollute the earth until the rapture saves us from the ecocide of our indiscretion.

Meanwhile, their counterparts took only two years to construct the largest offshore wind farm to date:

Construction work at the £780m wind farm began two years ago and was completed in June.

The 380ft (115m) tall turbines are spread over an area of more than 35 sq km and are visible from the shore on a clear day.

There are currently about 250 wind farms operating in the UK, with a further 12 offshore, with 2,909 turbines in operation in total.

Vattenfall also owns the 30-turbine Kentish Flats wind farm, off Herne Bay, which was one of the UK's first such projects when it opened five years ago.

A company spokesman said more than 3,600 people have worked on the Thanet wind farm, with 30% of workers from the UK.

(BBC News). Wow, clean, renewable energy and job creation all in one.

Who knew?

Chemosynthetic Community Extinction

In 1984 life forms were discovered in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) that resemble those found near vents in the mid-Atlantic Ridge.

They are endangered by the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher remnants, released along with millions of barrels of crude oil, methane, and other hydrocarbons.

The toxic chemical dispersant BP used to keep the oil from the surface added yet another extinction disaster threat to the area.

For the most part British Petroleum, BP, has controlled information about daily events during the time the catastrophe absorbed the news.

Knowledge of dispersant flow, underwater methane flow, and crude oil flow, including plumes, was discovered by independent, private researchers from colleges and universities using research vessels.

One of those marine biologist teams collected data from various places, since government vessels were not tasked with that effort.

Their basic sentiments are:

The Deepwater Horizon wellhead that tapped the Macondo reservoir was capped on 15 July 2010. After the venting of oil and gas into the Gulf waters was stopped, everyone felt a sense of relief. Multiple news outlets have reported that the surface oil has disappeared, for the most part. I read many reports that stated conclusively the oil had been either transferred to the atmosphere (via evaporation) or that it had been consumed by oil-eating microorganisms. Everyone’s reaction was, not surprisingly, ‘what a relief !!’.

Should we be relieved? Is this disaster over?

On the whole, I believe the answer to both questions is no.

(Where Has The Oil Gone). The long term body count now begins, the next phase we are entering will have intense scientific scrutiny mixed with years of litigation in the federal courts.

BP will try to defend itself to the maximum, but who will care for the gulf now?

Ents & The Entities Become Nomadic

If a keyword on this post is biomimicry, why is "Ent" in the title?

Before the answer begins, let's contemplate some statements by scientists from a few years ago.

At that time the study was probably poo pooed by the climate change deniers.

But we can't debate the undebatable, so let's move on and reflect on the words of those scientists:

"Geographers have projected temperature increases due to greenhouse gas emissions to reach a not-so-chilling conclusion: climate zones will shift and some climates will disappear completely by 2100. Tropical highlands and polar regions may be the first to disappear, and large swaths of the tropics and subtropics will reach even hotter temperatures. The study anticipates large climate changes worldwide."

(Completely New Climates). Ok, so how does that tie in to the Ents and Nomads?

For those who do not know what an "Ent" is, let's start off with this:

Ents are an old race ... Shepherds of the Trees to protect the forests from ... perils ... the Ents were sentient beings ...

(Wikipedia - Ent). They are tree-like mythical creatures that could move their locus from place to place, making them totally unlike the real trees.

Right?

Wrong.

New scientific studies, following up on the climate change studies linked to and quoted above, show that in fact the trees are moving out of Dodge:

Vegetation around the world is on the move, and climate change is the culprit, according to a new analysis of global vegetation shifts led by a University of California, Berkeley, ecologist in collaboration with researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

In a paper published June 7 in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, researchers present evidence that over the past century, vegetation has been gradually moving toward the poles and up mountain slopes, where temperatures are cooler, as well as toward the equator, where rainfall is greater.

(Major Vegetation Shifts, emphasis added). The Earth's vegetation has enough sense to move when it is in danger.

Biomimicry is what the human species does when it sees some beneficial behavior in the biosphere that helps us.

Could this be a harbinger of things in store for us?

Let The Phony "Debate" End

On the heals of the NOAA report that the past few months presented global warming data, like those months had not done before, comes climate data which climate scientists say removes the phony "debate" from the halls of sanity.

The climate change and global warming deniers will have to wax more and more eratic, irrational, and plain dishonest if they choose to continue their religious boycott of strong scientific evidence.

The NOAA report indicated that March and April were the warmest ever, and that the quarter was likewise very significant in terms of global warming:

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for both April and for the period from January-April, according to NOAA. Additionally, last month’s average ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for any April, and the global land surface temperature was the third warmest on record.

The monthly analysis from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, which is based on records going back to 1880, is part of the suite of climate services that NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions.

(The Most Poisonous Months On Record?). Following that a panel of scientists has published reports that give the deniers a way out if they choose to join the only movement that can get through to the halls of power:

A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems, concludes this panel report from the America's Climate Choices suite of studies. As decision makers respond to these risks, the nation's scientific enterprise can contribute both by continuing to improve understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change, and by improving and expanding the options available to limit the magnitude of climate change and adapt to its impacts. To make this possible, the nation needs a comprehensive, integrated, and flexible climate change research enterprise that is closely linked with action-oriented programs at all levels.

(Advancing the Science of Climate Change). It is time for Senator Inhofe and other ethically challenged government officials to wake up and avoid the horror.

West Texas Winds Blow Greener

The wind power project in Texas is 15 years ahead of its goal.

Ahead of its goal in megawatts of power it already generates, and even more good power is yet to come beyond that goal.

The idea immediately comes to mind that solar could be partnered with the wind, because we all know that West Texas gets its share of strong sunshine.

Anyway, the winning wind story goes something like this:

Texas has reached its goal of having 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity this year, 15 years earlier than scheduled, thanks to an ample supply of West Texas wind.

According to a report (.doc) filed with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) Friday, the Lonestar State has 10,367 megawatts of renewable energy capacity, and generated 21,594,278 megawatt-hours of clean electricity in 2009.

(Texas Meets Renewable Energy Goals Early). Now if the federal government will get their act together and generate green jobs for rebuilding and retooling the power grid, the winds of Texas will send clean power to the east coast.

We are very impatiently waiting congress.

Good job West Texas wind pioneer patriots!

Are You In Good Hands With Oilstate?

The goo hands people have spread what they consider to be their holy oil upon the lives of millions once again.

It looks like blood mixed with oil, and in reality the blood, sweat, and tears of millions is in the hands of the goo people we know as MOMCOM.

MOMCOM wishes all of you a Happy Earth Day and a Happy Mothers Day.

We can only hope that there can be memetic evolution away from the tenets of death into cosmic concepts instead, in tune with the cosmos we live in.

Happy Mother's Day Mother Earth

The photo shows the gift the oil barons gave to Mother Earth on Earth Day a few weeks ago.

The government is controlled by the mother-polluters of MOMCOM.

The Administration of Barack Obama is in no way free from that control.

Mother's Day is the day when mothers are likely to have an experience unique to them:

“There’s a time when you have to explain to your children why they’re born, and it’s a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then.”

(Hazel Scott, Quotable Women, Running Press, 1989). On this Mother's Day, can MOMCOM do the duty of mothers around the globe, and explain to the children why those children were born into a civilization that seems to be doomed to destroy, maim, and kill its mother?

If not, then this Mother's Day and the recent Earth Day took place during The Criminally Insane Epoch.

The mother-polluters of MOMCOM have run amok, and now seem to be growing more and more fond of giving the gift that keeps on killing.

They seem bent on destroying their mother, the Earth, which will in turn destroy themselves too by what we call ecocide.

Anyway, there is an answer to the question children of the Earth ask:

You were born to take care of Mother Earth along with your brothers and sisters, not to destroy her.

Then when you mature into a cosmic civilization composed of cosmic adults, you are to care for other places in the cosmos.

Your legacy is not intended to be a short lived binge of planetary destruction leading to extinction.

(Tenets of Ecocosmology). We have the clean, renewable energy available but we do not seem to love our Mother or ourselves enough to do it, to do solar:

A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.

(Scientific American). Add the potential of wind energy, and we are on our way to a clean life of clean energy:

After all, a massive three-megawatt wind turbine "pays back" the carbon dioxide emitted in its making—mining iron, smelting steel, trucking blades, among other things—in roughly seven months of operation by displacing emissions from fossil fuel–fired power plants, according to Michael Zarin, director of government relations at the Denmark-based wind turbine–maker Vestas Wind Systems. Wind power is now responsible for 100 percent of Samso's electricity needs, 20 percent of all of Denmark's, and has become the largest single type of new electricity generation installed in the U.S. "There's nothing alternative about wind anymore," Zarin notes.

(Scientific American). All it takes is the will to live being expressed in a national effort to go clean by shaking the dirty addiction to death oil.

Ice & Bees Gone, Rain, & Ocean Rivers

Several dangerous events along with some new discoveries are the subject of this post.

The tropical rain forest amount of rain that fell on Tennessee, along with tornadoes, flooding modern cities and destroying towns there and in neighbouring states, was a record and therefore a sign of climate change.

The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland have all harmed commerce too.

Some new discoveries add an even more grim reality to the picture emerging in all of this.

We posted some disturbing information about the value of bees a while back, I mean their value in keeping the human species alive:

It has been stated by several biologists that, if it were not for the honey bee pollinating plants, humans would only last 3 or 4 years as our food supply would disappear [explained below].

(Will We Destroy Food - The Bees, emphasis added). That is a shocking statement in itself.

Well, an equally shocking development happened this winter concerning the bee population:

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter.

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

(Guardian, UK, emphasis added). Meanwhile the ice continues to melt, which puts more moisture in the air, which means more rain, and then when that rain reaches the oceans, a rise in ocean levels.

Scientists have discovered that when the water reaches the ocean, it may find its way to what could be called "ocean rivers" or currents deep in the ocean.

These currents can carry toxins quickly around the globe, and could increase "dead zones" around the globe.

There is also the spectre of catastrophe when potable water is also considered.

We truly have entered the Criminally Insane Epoch and civilization may not weather this storm.

There is an important distinction between human civilization and the human species.

The post What Do You Mean - World Civilization? and Confusing Civilization With Species point out the difference between human "civilization" and the human "species".

The honey bee is essential to the food economy of civilization and the failure can cause civilization to collapse even though the species will continue on.

Remember the distinction.

The damaged minds who officially doublespeak call the demise of the honey bee "marginally encouraging" because only a third of them died again four years running now.

Tea Party Needs To Change To Green Tea

A massive Earth Day demonstration dwarfed the media darling Tea Party demonstrations, however, the media did not cover it.

According to posts of record, the media is owned by anti-environmental movement and pro-oil and war forces.

Media forces that are quite ignorant of the dire straits that "civilization" has gotten itself into:

Yes, the biggest single climate rally in U.S. history is dismissed by comparison with the hypothetical cumulative turnout of dozens of future rallies on immigration. Who says the media isn’t fair? Apparently preserving the health and well-being of countless future generations isn’t “hot-button” enough for the media to be interested [kind of an ironic phrase, considering the rally was for action of global warming].

(Climate Progress). Like Nero, they foolishly fiddle while their civilization is burning up energy as the emergence of many catastrophic effects begin to converge.

Happy Earth Day

My daughter was born on Earth Day.

Earth day was born in 1970 at a teach-in.

Since then the Earth's environment has, unfortunately, been more and more abused by humanity even though we must have a healthy Earth to have a healthy humanity.

But in some ways we have come a long ways.

Even the NY Times in those days warned of the growing "hysteria" of the idea of global warming.

Almost everyone is "hysterical" about it now.

It can even be discussed in the context of economy and the survival of the human species on the earth.

A Close Up Look At The Test of Time

The photo looks like a pile of pomegranate seeds, with some salt grains between them.

It is actually a close up of our Sun, the nearest star to us.

The white line at the bottom left of the photo represents a distance of 5,000 km (3,107 miles).

Imagine that image being turned into a wave much larger than the earth during solar disturbances, as was reported in a post about waves on the Sun.

I suppose it could be called a mystery as to why the Sun will one day destroy Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars when it goes through its expansion phase.

That is what scientists teach us, causing some of us to wonder why did the cosmos evolve like this?

Why do scientists have to be "doomers", telling us our beautiful home world will be destroyed by the very Star that is giving us life sustaining energy and light?

These questions need not cause us to go into denial, but instead we could get busy with adapting to the requirements which the tenets of ecocosmology set forth.

Global Warming & Potable Water

We have been talking about global warming spotted by NASA, a tiny Atlantis sinking below the rising waters of the sea, and global warming induced volcanic & earthquake activity.

There is another challenging portion of this subject matter that needs to be mentioned:

Forecasts suggest that when the world's population soars beyond 8bn in 20 years time, the global demand for food and energy will jump by 50%, with the need for fresh water rising by 30%.

But developing countries are already using significant proportions of their water to grow food and produce goods for consumption in the West, the report says.

"The burgeoning demand from developed countries is putting severe pressure on areas that are already short of water," said Professor Peter Guthrie, head of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Cambridge University, who chaired the steering group.

(BBC News). All this talk about global warming raising the depth of the ocean yet there being less and less drinking water, makes one think of the "water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" saying of old.

The bottom line we have been told about year after year, decade after decade, which we have ignored up until now, is that the global ecosystem is one united and interwoven living realm, so when we do anything to it that is harmful, it propagates through the entire system.

The point to remember now, since we are so far into the sequence of damaging events, is that at some point in time there is a convergence into a perfect storm:

Song writers mentioned that "time keeps on slipping slipping slipping into the future" in a popular song some time back, while the exclamation "just in time" indicates that only a portion of the vast amount of the totality of time is available for some efforts.

Time is another one of those invisible realms, like gravity, that governs the earth from "the shadows", that is, the realm we cannot see even though we can see the effects of the unseen power at work.
...

[John Beddington, the UK government's chief scientific adviser] foresees each problem combining to create a "perfect storm" in which the whole is bigger, and more serious, than the sum of its parts.

(Shadow of Time Governs Earth). Like Toyota and its accelerator pedal problem, we have ignored the problem but that does not make it go away, it only gets worse.

The clock is still ticking on this time bomb, but our subconscious fear of death, which can lead to denial, is also still kicking.

UPDATE: A recent study, conducted both in the field and in the lab, indicates that 4/5ths of drinking water is located in Antarctica, and may melt into the ocean in this century.

That would do two things, destroy "civilization", and make drinking water worth its weight in gold.

Global Warming & Volcanic Eruptions

In August of 2007, over 2.5 years ago, a geologist had studied the historical record for global warming events which were not anthropogenic (not caused by human activity).

His conclusions were that global warming has caused volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in the ancient past.

He went on to say that the anthropogenic global warming occurring now will do so too.

Over two and a half years ago he mentioned by name the very volcano that just erupted in Iceland shutting down air traffic over Europe.

He also indicated that earthquakes could result from anthropogenic global warming:

"In places like Iceland, for example, where you have the Eyjafjallajökull ice sheet, which wouldn't survive [global warming], and you've got lots of volcanoes under that, the unloading effect can trigger eruptions," McGuire said.

With the changing dynamics in the crust, faults could also be destabilized, which could bring a whole host of other problems.

"It's not just the volcanoes. Obviously if you load and unload active faults, then you're liable to trigger earthquakes," McGuire told LiveScience, noting that there is ample evidence for this association in past climate change events.

(Live Science, 2007, emphasis added). A paper recently published in the journal Arctic indicates that in fact the ice sheets have been melting and vanishing:

Close to 50 years of data show the Devon Island ice cap, one of the largest ice masses in the Canadian High Arctic, is thinning and shrinking.

A paper published in the March edition of Arctic, the journal of the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America, reports that between 1961 and 1985, the ice cap grew in some years and shrank in others, resulting in an overall loss of mass. But that changed 1985 when scientists began to see a steady decline in ice volume and area each year.

"We've been seeing more mass loss since 1985," says Sarah Boon, lead author on the paper and a Geography Professor at the University of Lethbridge. The reason for the change? Warmer summers.

(Science Daily). We all know that there is volcanic activity exactly where he said some would be, and there have been many earthquakes over the past several months.

It behooves scientists to rethink these possibilities, because it can cause severe economic impact, and perhaps tempt one nation to attack another because they know the other side's military aircraft are grounded.

Ice Sheet melt is not the end of the story:

McGuire conducted a study that was published in the journal Nature in 1997 that looked at the connection between the change in the rate of sea level rise and volcanic activity in the Mediterranean for the past 80,000 years and found that when sea level rose quickly, more volcanic eruptions occurred, increasing by a whopping 300 percent.

(ibid, Live Science, link above). In other words as the melting ice around the world is released into the atmosphere or river system, eventually causing more climate change, it will eventually find its way to the oceans where weight on the crust will be redistributed causing different stresses than usual on the tectonic plates.

Which means more "surprises".

Some major networks are carrying the story that global warming causes or can cause volcanic activity in some circumstances: Warming Could Wake Up Volcanos (MSNBC), Global Warming May Trigger More Volcanoes (Telegraph, UK).

If you know of any more, feel free to post a comment.

The Rebel Orbits of the Rebel Planets

When are the stars and planets going to conform to the law passed by human governments?

Or conform to the doctrine of human science?

Funny questions, but governments seem to think that their laws are more important than the actual laws of the cosmos it sometimes seems.

The universe does not change when we pass environmental laws or when we make doctrinal declarations about this or that cosmic reality.

That applies to our sense of cosmology, our hypothetical sense of the cosmos, and our theoretical sense of the cosmos, taught in the state universities.

Yes, the state has an approved dogma for you and I to learn, which they call "education", but some scholars have a different name for it:

And, of course, there are power systems in place to facilitate this. Throughout history it's been mostly the property holders or the educated classes who've tended to support power systems. And that's a large part of what I think education is — it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.

(Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). Another scholar, a noted physicist, uses similar language to point out his belief that much of "advanced" scientific theory is nothing more than fantasy:

Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. The greatest weirdness here is that it [quantum mechanics] doesn’t make sense. If you follow the rules, you come up with something that just isn’t right.

...

The [new Penrose] book is called Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe. Each of those words stands for a major theoretical physics idea. The fashion is string theory; the fantasy has to do with various cosmological schemes, mainly inflationary cosmology [which suggests that the universe inflated exponentially within a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang]. Big fish, those things are. It’s almost sacrilegious to attack them. And the other one, even more sacrilegious, is quantum mechanics at all levels—so that’s the faith. People somehow got the view that you really can’t question it.

(The Memes of Penrose, see Discover). In general these scholars point out that you are judged by how well you learn their scientific dogma, not on how well you learn how to think or apply rigorous scientific processes.

Thus, after all your hard work to memorize doctrine and dogma, every once in awhile you get blind sided with some new information, new data, or new experimental results that give you reason to throw out the window some of the textbooks you memorized from:

Planets are thought to form in the disc of gas and dust encircling a young star. This proto-planetary disc rotates in the same direction as the star itself, and up to now it was expected that planets that form from the disc would all orbit in more or less the same plane, and that they would move along their orbits in the same direction as the star's rotation.

...

They even found that six exoplanets in this extended study (of which two are new discoveries) have retrograde motion: they orbit their star in the "wrong" direction.

"The new results really challenge the conventional wisdom that planets should always orbit in the same direction as their stars spin," says Andrew Cameron of the University of St Andrews, who presented the new results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM2010) in Glasgow this week.

(Turning Planetary Theory Upside Down). That is the way it has been for decade upon decade, however, that is not what scientists tend to feel, because they actually have made a faith out of portions of what they call science.

Delusional Government Must Be On LSD

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seems to be of the opinion, as is the U.S. federal government in general, that they make the rules.

They are constantly hallucinating that the environment of this planet earth must go by their EPA rules and regulations, and must patiently await until the all-wise EPA decides what is fit here and what is not.

Black is white and white is black in their delusional world inspired by the toxic effects that power has on them.

One day a president says it is great to drill baby drill, and the next day the government says this Regulation X will do just fine for the environment.

The photos in this post are of the planet Mars taken from a satellite in orbit.

Mars looks more and more like a planet that once had a watery environment, but was somehow destroyed.

The reality facing the federal government is that the earth's environment is being made into the image of Mars.

That is, the earth's ecosystem can also be destroyed and the earth can become like Mars.

More to the point, contrary to their delusion, the governments are not the ultimate deciders of what environmental law is.

The only legal decision they are allowed to make, in terms of human extinction contrasted with human enlightened evolution, is to obey the regulations of the cosmos or not to.

They can not make regulations that govern the cosmos as they seem to think they can.

Thus, the new epoch that currently plagues us must give way to an epoch of mature cosmic adults who are aware of where they are and who they are.

The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises

Life after psychopaths

The fact that human extinction can only come about via choices made by segments of humanity, who do not care enough about their fellow sojourners on this planet to allow them to live on, is perplexing.

Obviously the notion that there are those who have caused the deaths of millions of people is not a fantasy; no, in fact it is well documented in history.

The notion that it is the result of criminally insane cognition has also been considered.

At any rate, there needs to be a term we can use to describe the times we live in.

Some serious scientists are petitioning their peers for an official term for our era of environmental devastation, requesting that it be called The Anthropocene Epoch:

The scientists propose that, in just two centuries, humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented changes to our world that we actually might be ushering in a new geological time interval, and alter the planet for millions of years.

Zalasiewicz, Williams, Steffen and Crutzen contend that recent human activity, including stunning population growth, sprawling megacities and increased use of fossil fuels, have changed the planet to such an extent that we are entering what they call the Anthropocene (New Man) Epoch.

First proposed by Crutzen more than a decade ago, the term Anthropocene has provoked controversy. However, as more potential consequences of human activity -- such as global climate change and sharp increases in plant and animal extinctions -- have emerged, Crutzen's term has gained support. Currently, the worldwide geological community is formally considering whether the Anthropocene should join the Jurassic, Cambrian and other more familiar units on the Geological Time Scale.

(Science Daily). The tenets of ecocosmology would have us take care of our environment, this planet's ecosystem, so that we have a chance to avoid extinction as a species.

These new revelations cast some doubt on that vision, and do support the notion that governments will probably resort to triage as a global policy.

The next post in this series is here.

Goodbye Itsy Bitsy Atlantis

India & Bangladesh will fight no longer over an island in the Bay of Bengal.

The rising ocean level, as a result of global warming, has sunk it beneath the waves, like the legendary Atlantis of ancient times.

Even though war has been avoided this time, the effects of the rising oceans in the future, because it will cause mass migrations, may lead to conflicts or even wars.

The scientists in India report:

The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis.

Recent satellites images show the whole island under water, says the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta.

Its scientists say other nearby islands could also vanish as sea levels rise.

(BBC). There are populated islands that face the same fate, some of which have governments who know how to make the point.

We really do not know if we can stop the rise of ocean levels, but we know that if we do not it will destroy what we call world civilization.

Billions of people will live on into the post-civilization world, with oral tales of lands that sank below the sea.

UPDATE: The first inhabited island has now gone under as a result of global warming induced ocean rise:

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

(Climaction, see also this and this). We can't call it apocalyptic predictions anymore, it should now be referred to as history and history still in the making.

Being Natural Is Not Always Good - 2

A post on this blog a while back offended some people.

There are those who evidently think that the natural world is full of good and only good, so that nothing "bad" ever happens that is natural.

The frequency of earthquakes recently, which kill hundreds of thousands of people, is a natural phenomenon that terrorises the human and other species.

These events show that there are terrifying events against innocents that seem to be built into the cosmos.

In that sense there is natural terrorism which is not "good".

Asteroids, another natural phenomenon in the sense they are not man made, have even made some species extinct:

A panel of 41 international experts ... reviewed 20 years' worth of research to determine the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which happened around 65 million years ago. The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet, including the dinosaurs, bird-like pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.

The new review of the evidence shows that the extinction was caused by a massive asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub (pronounced chick-shoo-loob) in Mexico.

(Science Daily, see also). Not so nice for a natural event is it? Great quantities of the oil reserves buried under the earth are also, in my opinion, the results of catastrophes that have happened during the history of this planet:

The original organic source material of both oil shale and petroleum was at least associated with, and probably derived from, at least in part, green algae, since Treibs (28) has found chlorophyll porphyrine in all oil shales examined by him and in all petroleums containing asphalt or, in other words, in all petroleums not purified by selective adsorption during migration. This discovery of chlorophyll porphyrins is undoubtedly the most important single discovery bearing upon the question of petroleum origin. It definitely connects up both oil shales and petroleum with green algae and proves that both have never been at any time in their history subjected to high temperatures and, in agreement with other evidence, shows that the original organic source material was deposited sufficiently rapidly to seal in the organic debris under anaerobic conditions.

(Ohio Journal Of Science; Vol. 48, Num. 4; emphasis added). If catastrophes destroyed the dinosaurs, why would it not also destroy other animal and plant species, burying large masses of them instantly?

At one time scientists were dead set against any catastrophe theories, because for one thing, the concepts of biological evolution were taught as if there was a perfecting process in place where everything was heading naturally to a better place.

Disruptive catastrophe was not seen as part of a perfecting process, but rather as anathema to it.

All we need to do is look at the nature of our Sun, and if we give it the full import we should, we see that catastrophe is natural to the cosmos as it is currently functioning.

Part of our avoidance of extinction, then, is to avoid the catastrophes built into the cosmos, not to ignore them.

eMail From Repower America

I received this email from Repower America:

Next week could make or break America's climate and energy future.

Last summer, the House passed a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill that could create millions of clean energy jobs and begin to address the climate crisis. Now, a new Senate version, with significant support from key Senators, could be less than a week away* -- but lobbyists from Big Oil and Coal are already lining up to do whatever they can to gut critical provisions.

We can't let lobbyists and special interests win. America needs clean energy and the jobs it will bring to our economy.

That's why we're launching our biggest calling campaign ever. We're joining forces with a coalition of climate groups to create a perfect storm of grassroots pressure from Tuesday through Thursday of next week. Can you get us off to a big start by pledging to call your Senators next Tuesday?

Clicking here will record your pledge to call next Tuesday.


[CLICK HERE TO PLEDGE.]

Your calls were crucial to shutting down Senator Lisa Murkowski's attack on the Clean Air Act last month.

Now, with the Senate negotiating the contents of this critical new bill, its fate is in our hands too. We need to keep our Senators' phones ringing off the hook -- the more they understand that passing this bill is our top priority, the more they will make it theirs.

To get it done, we're setting the ambitious goal of 20,000 calls from the Climate Protection Action Fund alone next week. And to reach that number, we want to start off with 1,000 pledges to call next Tuesday that we can count on from committed supporters like you. Can you help us reach our goal?

Clicking here will record your pledge to call your Senator next Tuesday.

Successful legislation isn't just important here in the U.S. As we saw at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, countless nations are relying on our action to catalyze global efforts to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution.

But for this bill to make a real impact, it's got to include two things:

1) Strong investment in clean energy to create American manufacturing and construction jobs, and

2) A cap on carbon pollution that limits the amount of carbon companies can emit, giving them incentives to reduce emissions while holding violators accountable.

Your calls have made a difference before. And next week, your barrage of phone calls will tell our Senators to stop wasting time, stop caving to big oil and coal, and finally pass a strong clean energy and climate bill -- because we can't afford the consequences of their inaction.

Please click here now to pledge to make a call to your Senators to support strong clean energy and climate legislation.

Thanks,

Dave Boundy
Campaign Manager
Repower America


* Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson, "Reid demands climate bill ASAP," Washington Post - Post Carbon blog, February 24, 2010.