Some Way Out Of Here - 2

In the first post of this series we touched upon ways of freeing ourselves from the addiction to fossil fuels.

Other posts have touched upon that theme (e.g. A Green Way Out of Here, BioChar: A Green Way Out of Here, A Methanol Economy Way out of Here, and Nanoengines For Spacecraft? to name a few).

Scientists tend to focus on the technical problems so they can sometimes be very optimistic, because there are scientific remedies which can be done.

At the same time, others focus on the problems that the Toxins of Power bring to this table, and they are not as optimistic.

They tend to be of the opinion that there are indications that we are confronting a plague rather than an engineering problem.

On the other hand, there is an element of criminality because when millions need not be poisoned but are poisoned, there is a criminal insanity in the mix.

IPCC News Conference

The IPCC has released a report on extreme events as a result of climate change:

On 18th November 2011, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched its ‘Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation’ (SREX). The findings were approved by 194 governments following a four-day meeting in Kampala, Uganda in which the Report’s Summary for Policy Makers was agreed line by line. Written over two and a half years by over 200 hundred authors, reviewed by many hundreds more and involving academics, practitioners and policy makers from Fiji to Senegal and from Russia to Chile, the report presents a dramatic and precise set of findings ... Key messages of SREX are as follows ...

(Ten Key Messages). An in-depth discussion of the ten key points is available in PDF format here.

On The New Meaning of "Human" - 2

In the first post of this series we touched upon the difference between the ancient concept of homo sapiens contrasted with the startling new, emerging, modern concept of a human being.

The ancient concept is that we humans are human because we are composed of human cells.

The emerging modern concept is radically different, even something not yet in the textbooks.

That new, emerging, modern concept resembles nothing your mother and father told you about yourself when they taught you to say "foot", "arm", "leg", "head", "eyes", or "me".

Before we tie these new concepts about what it means to be human together, later in this post, let's get a feel for the magnitude of the issue we are dealing with:

... the fields of medical and environmental microbiology have begun to merge. The resulting hybrid discipline embraces the complexity of a larger system; it’s integrative rather than reductive, and it supports the gathering view that our bodies, and the bodies of other animals, are ecosystems, and that health and disease may depend on complex changes in the ecology of host and microbes ...

(The Body Politic, Seed Magazine, emphasis added). A singularity is at the core of the way we see ourselves, not a community, but that concept is now outdated:

“We’ve all been trained to think of ourselves as human,” he says. Bacteria have been considered only as the source of infections, or as something benign living in the body. But now, he says, it appears that “we are so interconnected with our microbes that anything studied before could have a microbial component that we hadn’t thought about.” It will take a major cultural shift, says Karasov, for nonmicrobiologists who study the human body to begin to take microorganisms seriously as a part of the system.

(ibid, emphasis added). This is a challenge to some of our western notions, so it will need to be handled gingerly, so as not to confuse some of us:

Equally challenging, though in a different respect, will be changing long-held ideas about ourselves as independent individuals. How do we make sense of this suddenly crowded self? David Relman suggests that how well you come to terms with symbiosis “depends on how comfortable you are with not being alone.” A body that is a habitat and a continuously evolving system is not something most of us consider; the sense of a singular, continuous self is a prerequisite for sanity, at least in Western psychology.

(ibid, emphasis added). A new sense or definition of sanity comes with this new foundation, this new psychology of self as a community, a concept of self as an ecosystem within the Earth's global ecosystem, which in turn is part of a larger cosmic community which we call the universe.

The modern concept will also have an impact on our vision of government.

Some nations have already made inroads into that vision via advanced legislation, based upon modern environmental understanding.

International gatherings fostered by The United Nations, and other organizations, work to coordinate environmental protection, recognizing the reality that ecocide is not a sane way for mature, properly functioning nations to behave.

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A Cold Fusion Plant Is Being Tested

From time to time we take a look at new, hopeful forms of energy solutions that may become viable.

For a concrete in-the-now example see A Methanol Economy Way Out Of Here, or for a futuristic example see Nanoengines For Spacecraft?

Across the pond in Europe, specifically Italy, a test is taking place on a new energy system based on what some are calling "cold fusion" while others call it an "E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) device".

The test is described as:

For the next few days, PES will be scanning the net to bring you the latest and most up-to-date information about the important October 28 test of the 1 megawatt E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) device, taking place in Italy. PESN's founder, Sterling D. Allan, will be in attendance at the private event. Keep checking this page for the latest news and updates!

(Pure Energy Systems). Others describe it as a scam, or just another event in the relentless pursuit of magic energy:

I’m going to go out on a limb here with a prediction. The energy world will look exactly the same the day after October 28th, 2011, as it did yesterday. Why? On October 28th we’re expecting a public demonstration of a “revolutionary” new energy device in Bologna, Italy. The magic technology? Another too-cheap-to-meter construct called the “e-cat” machine invented and promoted by Italian Andrea Rossi. Cold fusion … again, but with an updated label; Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction. Will it change the world? No. Will it work? Doubt it.

(Forbes). The Forbes author then goes on to say purchase oil stock and keep focused, steady as she goes, on the status quo.

Thus, it is unlikely that the oil wars are going to be replaced with an era of peace any time soon.

Evidently the test did well enough to satisfy the customer:

"Q&A just finished; reading of results; 470 kW maintained continuously during self-sustain; customer satisfied; sale made; more later."

(Twitter). Will check up on this to try to verify it in the days ahead.

On The Definition of Sanity

This post deals with the definition of the sanity of nations and civilizations.

There are similarities to the definition of the sanity of individuals, however, to implicate the notion of the sanity of national government as well as the sanity of civilization, we must rise above the limitations of current definitions which tend to be designed to apply exclusively to individual persons.

It would seem to be axiomatic, as well as compelling, to say that a sane nation or a sane civilization is one without dementia at that level, that is, sanity is simply the substantial absence of dementia at a particular, applicable level.

But, in our doublespeak world, words of this nature have been torn asunder to the point that they typically have only a localized meaning within a local context.

In other words, a comprehensive definition takes a comprehensive scope, and in the real universe, it requires a cosmic scope.

The tenets of Ecocosmology offer a good foundation for a comprehensive, cosmic (meaning widest in scope) definition of sanity:

The four tenets are:

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.

2) That final catastrophic event (destruction of life on inner planets), and all events leading up to it, comprise "The Test". This test is composed of all the preliminary and final evolutionary requirements for the life forms on all planets near central stars. The Test works as a wall, moat, or barrier, to divide those species who may continue to live in the physical universe from those who may not.

3) To pass The Test, intelligent life forms which inhabit any planet will be required to:

a) first learn to live and work together within, and in accord with, their planet's ecosystem, and to substantially coexist with all the other species on that planet, overcoming any toxins of power that are contrary to that social harmony;

b) develop technology that produces space vehicles able to substantially meet or exceed the speed of light;

c) find another solar system with a habitable planet which contains a central star still having enough time left in its stellar life cycle for them to colonize a habitable planet in that solar system; since it is unknown whether the toxins of power are to be found on all planets as they are on Earth, the possibility of that should be taken into consideration when selecting any new planet or moon as a home world; since red dwarfs are the most stable & most abundant stars, they should be favored over Sun-like stars;

d) colonize that habitable planet, and then improve their ecocosmological skills;

e) then repeat the entire process ad infinitum;

f) or, experience a morph into another species free from that type of solar/planetary cosmic dependence.

4) The seeds of intelligence (genetic and memetic clues) required to successfully perform The Test are distributed into all species, races, religions, sciences, creeds, and genders; thus all individuals should be respected as carriers of some quanta of the seed of intelligence required to pass The Test, lest a fundamental quantum of necessary intelligence be lost.

(The Tenets of Ecocosmology). Avoiding the death of humanity is sanity, perpetuating the human species and its earthly realm is sanity, which is to say that anything to the contrary equates to the definition of insanity.

There you have it.

So we can take a look at our nation, our civilization, and do a sanity test by asking how we are doing on each point: a) are national educational systems teaching that all life on this planet is doomed if we stay here and fail to migrate out into the cosmos (or morph), b) are we dedicating the mental and physical resources of civilization toward that end, c) are we demanding and practicing world peace and cooperation toward that end, and d) as we do so are we feverishly taking care of all species on this planet?

This is the line between sanity and insanity, so you decide how your nation and our civilization is doing on the cosmic IQ and the cosmic sanity test:

On The New Meaning of "Human"

I have a "gut feeling about this" is a common utterance amongst some people.

Once upon a time we would chuckle or giggle at the question: "Is a 'gut feeling' a signal from your microbes?"

But more and more a "yes" answer to that question is looking neither fully impossible nor fully improbable, according to experts in this field of human-microbe symbiosis:

Scientists originally expected that the communication between animals and their symbiotic bacteria would form its own molecular language. But McFall-Ngai, an expert on animal-microbe symbiosis, says that she and other scientists have instead found beneficial relationships involving some of the same chemical messages that had been discovered previously in pathogens. Many bacterial products that had been termed “virulence factors” or “toxins” turn out to not be inherently offensive signals; they are just part of the conversation between microbe and host. The difference between our interaction with harmful and helpful bacteria, she says, is not so much like separate languages as it is a change in tone: “It’s the difference between an argument and a civil conversation.” We are in constant communication with our microbes, and the messages are broadcast throughout the human body.

(The Body Politic, Seed Magazine, emphasis added). The Dredd Blog System has been looking into the human-microbe symbiosis for a while, for example, see The Undiscovered Side of Science and Life, Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power, Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power - 2, and Weekend Rebel Science Excursion.

It is even beginning to look more and more like we are simply not "human" in the sense we have always thought we were:

After all, our cells carry an ancient stamp of symbiosis in the form of mitochondria. These energy-producing organelles are the vestiges of
symbiotic bacteria that migrated into cells long ago. Even those parts of us we consider human are part bacterial. “In some ways, we’re an amalgam and a continuously evolving collective,” Relman says.

... life as we know it is built upon microbes, whether we look in the deepest oceans or our own intestines. We once had the luxury of ignoring the diminutive members of our bodies and other ecosystems. Now the blinders are off.

(ibid, emphasis added). Yes, "Our bodies harbor 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering our human cells 10 to one", so we need to rethink "environment", "mother nature", and "ecosystem" in terms of humans being separate from them, because we are decidedly not separate from them.

We defined human sanity more in accord with the revelations of that recent science in On The Definition of Sanity, and also pointed out that we reached The Peak of Sanity when we abandoned the reality of our nature to become our own worst enemy by going in the direction of Ecocide.

The next post in this series is here.

The Exceptional American Denial

Some things can't really be improved upon.

One of those "things" is the presentation of a professor from UCSD, detailing the history of global warming science.

Not stopping there, the professor then details the greatest propaganda hoax ever fostered on the American people (see Agnotology: The Surge), which is one source for the diagnosis of those who are suffering psychologically from the impairment "climate science denial".

Senator Inohfe, there is no way you could have been there, even if your body had been there.

For the other readers, use the video below to enjoy a free class lecture at a very well respected American university, or, read the history here.

Key times in the video (Note: GW = global warming; GG = greenhouse gas, CC = climate change):

00:40 - Schwarzenegger: no debate, GW is happening.
06:20 - Proper amount of GG is good, keeps us warm.
07:00 - Too much GG is a bad thing.
07:09 - Tyndall in mid 1800's began research into GG.
07:45 - Arrhenius did first degree calculations re: CO₂ content.
08:25 - Callendar discovered GG increases in 1930's.
09:02 - Hulburt accord in 1930's.
09:43 - Depression / war stopped GG research.
10:00 - Gilbert N. Plass developed CO₂ atmospheric calculations.
10:49 - Suess & Revelle do paper in 1957 warning of GW dangers.
12:30 - Dr. Revelle warned of polar ice cap melt in TIME interview.
13:25 - CO₂ levels discovered to be high.
16:30 - Lyndon Johnson in 1965 says fossil fuels causing GW.
17:00 - GW, CC not political originally.
18:20 - White of NOAA, 1978, warns of GW dangers.
20:52 - Polar Areas to be impacted 4 times more than other areas. 
24:20 - IPCC formed in 1979 with consensus on GW.
26:00 - Bush I signed GW treaty.
26:45 - Denial of GW begins.
27:40 - Luntz injects GW denial propaganda into political debate.
28:25 - Oil baron Cheney propagates GW denial.
29:00 - Oil companies do massive scale denial propaganda.
29:30 - Marshall Institute
30:30 - Marshall Institute formed to support Reagan SDI (star wars)
32:50 - Marshall Institute "cigarettes not related to cancer".
36:50 - Marshall Institute does GW denial campaign.
42:54 - Marshall member Seitz worked for big tobacco.
47:20 - Singer of Marshall Institute politically attacks GW.
53:35 - Cigarette smoking is ok rhetoric applied to GW science.



A new study done by skeptics confirms global warming, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The propaganda organization, The Heartland Institute, has taken up the job of global warming induced climate change denialism.

The Little People - 2

In the first post of this series, The Little People, we broached the subject of microbes within the context of the Fourth Tenet.

We urged acceptance of the notion contained in that tenet, which asserts that even the tiniest of living organisms on this planet should be highly esteemed and protected along with every other "big" living organism on the planet.

Now, the Dredd Blog and the Toxins of Power Blog have shown how utterly critical "the little people", the microbes, really are.

In the posts The Tiniest Scientists Are Very Old - 2, Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power, and A Structure RE: The Corruption of Memes - 4, recent incredible scientific discoveries concerning symbiotic relationships between humans and microbes are pointed out.

Those two posts show that microbes are players in human genetics, as well as human cognition.

Before that science became known, in one of his many papers Richard Dawkins elaborates:

Since all organisms alive inherit their genes from their ancestors, rather than from their ancestors' unsuccessful contemporaries, all organisms alive tend to possess successful genes. This is why organisms tend to inherit genes that build a well-designed machine, a machine that behaves as if it is striving to become an ancestor.

(Universal parasitism and the co-evolution of extended phenotypes, Dawkins, Whole Earth Review, Volume 10, Issue 62, p.90, 1989). Dawkins did not have the benefit of later genetic research that caused "shifts in perspective ... occurring throughout cellular biology ... seem as dizzying as what happened in cosmology ... issues once thought settled are up in the air".

Dawkins is also criticized by creationists for attributing almost an intelligence to genes:

Since evolution can't consider an intelligent designer, they have elevated the genes themselves with intelligence beyond the species. Genetics becomes a collective mind that spans species in the sci-fi world of evolution.

(Intelligent Genes). In the post Will Humans Evolve Into Machines? the evolution from machine to organism is perused and reviewed, noting that combining machine-into-organism evolution with consideration of Dollo's Law (reverse-evolution back into machines is a no-no according to Dollo's Law), we must have some skepticism when considering Dawkins' quote above:

"... organisms tend to inherit genes that build a well-designed machine, a machine that behaves as if it is striving to become an ancestor"

This skepticism is required because going back into any machine state is a no-no per Dollo's Law, so we must assume that Dawkins conflated the meaning of "machine" with the meaning of "organism".

Furthermore, Dawkins fails to mention the role human symbiosis with microbes has on his hypothesis, because that discovery had not yet been revealed and considered when he did that paper.

So, it is not out of line to recall and consider that:

Microbes existed on the Earth billions of years before humans did.

Why do microbes need humans, seeing as how humans have been on the planet such a very tiny amount of time?

Do the microbes need humans via symbiosis in order to become fit enough to survive in this cosmos?

How does all that fit into The Tenets of Ecocosmology?

We will address those issues now that we have set forth the preliminary considerations.

The first fundamental consideration is the scientific fact that the Sun will destroy all life on this planet Earth, including microbes, at some unspecified time in the future.

Next, in order to survive, microbes and humans must care for this planet while developing a way to leave this planet in order to find another planet or moon with microbe and human life sustaining capability.

We violate the criticism above in the "Intelligent Genes" quote (which alleges that evolutionists attribute intelligence to microbes) if we say "microbes are aware of the condition of the Sun, so they became symbiotic with humans because humans are the only species capable of developing space travel to another habitable planet, therefore microbes are preserving their species via symbiosis with humans".

There are many questions that arise unless we relegate the whole evolutionary scheme to absolute chance mutation, because "genes that build a well-designed machine" attributes way too much to microbes without explaining at all how that could be, not to mention that it violates Dollo's law if it was meant literally.

Perhaps we can say that there is now a requirement to determine when the first meme concerning space travel came to the human mind, how it came there, and where it came from?

Exploded Planet Hypothesis

Mysterious Sphere in Cygnus

Is the act of contemplating life on other planets in the universe a "scientific" thing to do?

At least in the sense of wondering how they might approach the issue of clean sources of energy compared with the other side of that coin, the many pollution generating sources of energy?

Or is such contemplation an activity properly left to mystics, UFO folk, and others of that "unscientific" ilk?

In prior posts we have mentioned the contemplations of scientist Freeman Dyson, who wondered how civilizations on other planets, if they exist, would deal with the energy crisis our existing civilization faces.

If scientists like Freeman Dyson professionally contemplate, and even go so far as to predict forms of alien energy systems, such as the "bubble" shown in the photo above, then the contemplation of extraterrestrial potential is by definition scientific:

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life ... In Dyson's original paper, he speculated that sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial civilizations would likely follow a similar power consumption pattern as humans, and would eventually build their own sphere of collectors. Constructing such a system would make such a civilization a Type II Kardashev civilization.

(Wikipedia: Dyson Sphere). There are other strange shapes out there in the cosmos that give scientists pause.

A Dyson Grid?

For example, the photo to the right shows yet another star enclosed within a strange shape.

Scientists go through the exercise of figuring out how natural forces could craft these shapes, while other scientists try to figure out how an alien civilization could do so.

The title of this post alludes to the fact that there is a hypothesis floating around about a planet in our solar system which exploded long ago.

It was said to have been located in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, where now only the debris we call the asteroid belt remains.

Remnant of a failed Dyson Grid?

Let's add to that hypothesis the notion that the planet exploded while a prior civilization which inhabited that planet was engaged in the engineering necessary in order to develop a Dyson energy grid system.

Let's further hypothesize that parts of their grid energy system still remain, and that one part of that Dyson energy grid system is the hexagon on Saturn's north pole.

The elaborate systems talked about by Dyson would quite feasibly be set up on several planets in a solar system energy grid designed to harness clean energy.

Hypothetically, perhaps the people who inhabited the planet that exploded were engaged in efforts to do a Dyson Grid, but came upon an unknown, perhaps they rushed it a bit knowing that the Sun has a limited lifespan, and in the foray perhaps a disaster was triggered that in turn destroyed the planet.

If so, they were probably the first of the human species, since destroying seems to be so human.

The next post in this series is here.

Biochar: A Green Way Out Of Here

This blog has asserted over and over that there are many ways out of the climate changing cycle we are currently in.

That is what makes not feverishly working toward climate safety criminal.

We have discussed some of the ways out of our predicament, including methanol, dandelion, and solar, to name a few.

There are many others.

In this post today we mention another one for your perusal.

Yes, it is TIME for a biochar solution.

More information is available at BIOCHAR Solution.

Are We Really Sure How Stars Decline? - 2

In the first post of this series this blog asked Are We Really Sure How Stars Decline?

In that post it was pointed out how important it is, in terms of The Tenets of Ecocosmology, to know solar science, and know it well.

The obvious reason for that is because our future as a planetary society in the long run is utterly dependent on the way the Sun behaves.

The dogma of science is quite assertive and impatience with questions about its authority, even though scientists are constantly being surprised by new discoveries, such as huge waves on the Sun.

The recent decade saw scientific expressions of certainty as to how the Sun would enter an active period soon, after having been relatively quite for a period of time.

Now, all of a sudden, a flip flop is taking place and scientists are now saying it looks like the Sun will be going quiet for a prolonged period instead.

The question that arises, in the context of the climate of this planet, is how will that impact global warming:

How much light the sun emits affects the Earth's weather and climate. And sunspots — dark dots on the face of the great fusion reactor in the sky — do alter the orb's output. So when solar scientists said last week that sunspot cycles might be going into hibernation, the impact on our planet's climate became a hot topic.

Previous prolonged weakenings in the solar cycle may have launched mini-Ice Ages. An example is the so-called Maunder Minimum in the 1600s and 1700s when the Thames River routinely froze, something that never happens today.

So if we're to face a temporarily cooler sun, maybe all those greenhouse gases we've been putting into the atmosphere will keep us toasty?

A cooler sun might mean a drop in global average temperatures of at most 0.3 degrees Celsius. But the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere today will add 0.6 degrees Celsius to global average temperatures by the end of the century. And more, since greenhouse gas emissions show no signs of diminishing. So the slightly cooler sun won't counteract a much hotter earth.

(Scientific American, David Biello). The political animals who also espouse dogma, and who have in general been in denial about global climate change, are likely to seize upon this new scientific "position" to defend the status quo.

As time goes on, this blog will research the issue and present the results to Ecocosmology Blog readers for their perusal.

But one thing is for sure concerning the Earth environment being impacted by the Sun in this decade, it is absolutely minuscule compared to the damage that human civilization is doing.

The Fukushima Coverup

Things are continually getting worse at the ill fated Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

It is quite likely that the Fukushima disaster will surpass the Chernobyl disaster before long, if it hasn't already.

The government cannot be trusted to drop the propaganda and just tell the truth, nor to halt construction of new plants like Fukushima.

These nuclear power plants are not shielded from storm outbreaks or global climate change.

The video below indicates that Reactor 4 at Fukushima may tumble over since the ground underneath it seems to have been undermined with water, plus the Reactor 3 explosion damaged Reactor 4's structural integrity.

Washington's Blog has an interesting post about the coverup of the fact that one reactor melted down within a few hours of the earthquake and Tsunami.

Germany has decided (see also USA Today) to stop all existing nuclear plants by 2022.

Japan admits that three reactors had a complete meltdown within hours of the earthquake and tsunami.

It is now known that "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident", something that is "far worse than a core meltdown" has taken place:

The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.

(Telegraph). Hot particles from Fukushima have been detected in Seattle, and one expert estimates that people in the Seattle area ingest up to 10 "hot particles" a day.

The trust in nuclear power seems also to have melted down and it is not likely it will be trusted again going forward.

A good idea, filtering radiation out of standing water in the reactor buildings, got underway but had to be shut down in a few hours because the radiation was too intense for some of the filtering to continue.

The filters were expected to last for weeks, not hours.

Dredd Blog and other blogs envisioned a cover-up from the beginning. In other words, news in advance. Now the cover-up has unraveled completely.

Seattle is getting more from Fukushima than meets the eye or what the government will admit.

It is even getting worse as shown in this post.

Four commissioners of the NRC are sabotaging efforts to improve safety, according to a member of congress.



Concerns about U.S.A. Fukushima type plants are covered here.

Someone Figured It Out

Bolivia is considering a human law that acknowledges what is already law of a different sort, the laws of nature.

It would not matter any if nations passed what they might call "The Law of Gravity", since that is already the law whether we like it or not.

However, it would be a sane gesture to acknowledge a superior, immutable law.

That is, acknowledge natural law which always issues its own equal-justice-for-all punishment each time it is violated.

In that vein, Bolivia is considering passing national laws which declare that the environment has the same rights as human beings:

Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

(There Otta Be a Law). Like gravity, the law of the environment already exists, in that, the law of this planet is that if we destroy nature we destroy ourselves, seeing as how we too are nature.

But hats off the Bolivians who are bringing focus to the laws that really, really matter.

A Green Way Out Of Here

One of the myths that the destroyers of the Earth want us to believe is that there is no way around dirty oil, gas, and coal.

Even some of those who fancy themselves to be astute, enlightened, and aware of our plight as a civilization, have been propagandized into the fallacy that there is no way out.

This blog and others have intimated that there are many ways out of it, but that the criminally insane powers that be are making the deliberate choice to continue down the path of destruction.

A recent report says that there is a sunny way out of addiction to oil, coal, and gas:

Arguably no challenge is more serious for the world’s future than bringing about a rapid decarbonation of the energy infrastructure with the possibility of preventing the onset of catastrophic climate change. With a mathematical model we demonstrate that this transition is technically plausible using modest inputs of existing fossil fuel reserves in the creation of a global solar power infrastructure even with existing solar technologies such as wind turbines. In addition, this global power capacity can likewise provide energy consumption per person levels for all of humanity consistent with high human development requirements.

(Sunny Transition, PDF Version). There are criminally insane elements who do not want that reality to be known or to be believed.

Why MOMCOM wants that to be kept secret, or wants to brand it as pie-in-the-sky, can only be known by those who understand the criminally insane mind.

Nevertheless, we street people do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, or to know that environmental destruction is a suicidal endeavor for civilization as we know it.

The Dying - Lying Continuum

The government keeps on lying while the Gulf of Mexico keeps on dieing.

This is rank criminality taken directly from the operation manual developed during the Exxon Valdez catastrophe which still continues to poison the planet.

Dredd Blog had a series early on in this grotesque charade, detailing its history while predicting a long lasting episode of propaganda.

Huffington Post has a piece which quotes the scientists as well as the government propaganda mouthpieces:

Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

(Gulf Oil Update). Not surprisingly, the scientists and the government wearing the rose colored glasses of propaganda have different stories.

The government says all is well because they were the ones who said all the dangers of offshore drilling were in the past, a short six weeks before the Deepwater Horizon disaster began.

A disaster that continues to destroy life as we know it:

The deep-sea hydrocarbon discharge resulting from the BP oil well blowout in the northern Gulf of Mexico released large quantities of oil and gaseous hydrocarbons such as methane into the deep ocean. So far, estimates of hydrocarbon discharge have focused on the oil released, and have overlooked the quantity, fate and environmental impact of the gas. Gaseous hydrocarbons turn over slowly in the deep ocean, and microbial consumption of these gases could have a long-lasting impact on oceanic oxygen levels. Here, we combine published estimates of the volume of oil released, together with provisional estimates of the oil to gas ratio of the discharged fluid, to determine the volume of gaseous hydrocarbons discharged during the spill. We estimate that the spill injected up to 500,000 t of gaseous hydrocarbons into the deep ocean and that these gaseous emissions comprised 40% of the total hydrocarbon discharge. Analysis of water around the wellhead revealed discrete layers of dissolved hydrocarbon gases between 1,000 and 1,300 m depth; concentrations exceeded background levels by up to 75,000 times. We suggest that microbial consumption of these gases could lead to the extensive and persistent depletion of oxygen in hydrocarbon-enriched waters.

(Natural GeoScience, emphasis added). Seventy Five Thousand times more toxic than normal is clear, convincing, and beyond a reasonable doubt proof of the criminality of the republican minds who want to shut down the EPA.

The oceans are a prime source of food that is getting more and more critical:

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

To feed all those mouths, "we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if current trends continue, Clay said.

(Raw Story). The fringe elements (the death bringers) are the establishment propagandists.

A House Committee dedicated to false information called a scientist who had made dubious claims in previous years to their delight. During the hearing that scientist recanted to point out not only that he had been mistaken, but that climate science data are accurate.

Ancient Ecocosmology?

The taste of mystery does not belong only to the fanciful among us.

Mystery is real and powerful.

Take for example the most mysterious book so far known, a book older than the Gutenberg Bible, a book not yet translated, the book with an unknown name, but now called The Voynich Manuscript:

The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten book thought to have been written in the early 15th century [circa 1404] and comprising about 240 vellum pages, most with illustrations. The author, script, and language remain unknown: for these reasons it has been described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript".

(Wikipedia, cf. The Voynich Manuscript website). Tenet Four advances a theory that within the ecosystem are answers to questions we need to have as a civilization.

Some of the most profound mysteries of science and power are very, very old, as we pointed out in an earlier Ecocosmology post:

While watching the other species in the world around us, scientists noticed that some of the tiniest of them are good at quantum mechanics:

A team of University of Toronto chemists have made a major contribution to the emerging field of quantum biology, observing quantum mechanics at work in photosynthesis in marine algae.

"There's been a lot of excitement and speculation that nature may be using quantum mechanical practices," says chemistry professor Greg Scholes, lead author of a new study published in Nature. "Our latest experiments show that normally functioning biological systems have the capacity to use quantum mechanics in order to optimize a process as essential to their survival as photosynthesis."

(Quantum Mechanics at Work in Photosynthesis). Algae have been familiar with these quantum mechanical processes for nearly two billion years.

(The Tiniest Scientists Are Very Old). Contempt for the natural world is an exceptionalist religious doctrine of modern origin.

Is what we call the The Voynich Manuscript some missing wisdom this civilization could use to stem the tide of the epoch of criminal insanity that threatens to bring us down?

In any case, it is no mystery that the new phrase "global weather wierding" should give us pause.

UPDATE: Software engineers are using AI to figure it out (Famously Indecipherable Coded Manuscript Cracked by AI?).