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Author Topic: Future Earth  (Read 36670 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #75 on: March 06, 2015, 02:42:35 pm »
College Town Cuts Ties With TransCanada Over Keystone XL, Plans to Go 100 Percent Renewable  [/font][/b][/size][/i]
Anastasia Pantsios | March 5, 2015 2:28 pm

The battle over building the Keystone XL pipeline is having an impact far from its proposed route. One of those places is the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a city of 100,000 known for its educated and engaged citizens.


Cambridge city councillor Dennis Carlone poses with members of Mothers Out Front  following their testimony in support of terminating the city’s contract with TransCanada. Photo credit: Dennis Carlone blog

The city currently purchases the electricity that powers its municipal buildings from TransCanada, Keystone XL’s parent company. But now its city council has passed a unanimous resolution advising city manager Richard Rossi not to do business with the company once its current contract expires at the end of 2015 and to look at acquiring the city’s electricity from clean, renewable sources. The measure was sponsored by councillor Dennis Carlone.

In the distinctive language of such resolutions, Policy Order 18 made clear what motivated the demand for change, stating:

“Whereas: the City of Cambridge obtains electricity for municipal operations through a contact with TransCanada Corporation; and Whereas: TransCanada is the driving force behind Keystone XL, a proposal to create a 1,179-mile pipeline to deliver tar sands oil to the U.S.; and Whereas: Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has stated that the Keystone XL pipeline would mean ‘game over’ for the environment, because exploitation of tar sands oil would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts; and Whereas: it has come to the attention of the city council that our contract with TransCanada is set to expire at the end of the year; now therefore be it Ordered: that the city manager be and hereby is requested not to enter into any future contracts to obtain electricity from TransCanada; and be it further Ordered: that the city manager be and hereby is requested to investigate the possibility of entering into an agreement to obtain up to 100 percent renewable power for all municipal electricity needs.”

In an email to constituents, Carlone said, “Let’s end our dealings with TransCanada. The same logic that applies to the fossil fuel divestment campaign applies here—if TransCanada is going to continue with its business of extracting oil from tar sands, then we shouldn’t be buying our electricity from them.”

Carlone was referring to the Divest Harvard campaign, in which hundreds of students and prominent alumni such as Natalie Portman, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West and Bill McKibben are pressuring the school’s administration to remove its endowment money from fossil fuel investments.

The policy order came out of a series of discussions Carlone had with Mothers Out Front, a two-year-old Cambridge-based grassroots advocacy group describing themselves as “mothers, grandmothers, and other caregivers who can no longer be silent and still about the very real danger that climate change poses to our children’s and grandchildren’s future.” The group provided testimony at city council on behalf of the resolution.

“Our organization has a strategy for creating a clean energy future but we need your help,” said Beth Adams, the mother of two young boys, in her testimony. “We are working on the ground to get individuals to weatherize their homes, conserve their energy and to switch to clean electricity. My family has made the switch, along with 100 other people in Cambridge including councillor Carlone. I am here tonight to ask for more bold climate action and leadership from the city of Cambridge to help us ensure a livable climate for our children and for future generations.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zJZYOFfUsw&feature=player_embedded

“I am extremely proud that we have this possibility for the city to take this bold step to say no to continuing our contact with TransCanada which is actual the corporation that has brought us tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline which I’ve been protesting for several years now,” added Mothers Out Front member Rachel Wyon. “We have an opportunity now to close down that end of that contract and open a new contract in a new era with clean, renewable energy. We need for Cambridge to be a leader, not only for Cambridge, but for the state and for the nation.”

TransCanada spokesperson Sharan Kaur minimized the company’s climate impact, telling the Boston Globe, “Regardless of the type of product we are transporting or the kind of energy we are producing, we will continue to do so safely and in an environmentally sustainable way.”  


Cambridge residents clearly don’t agree. 

“As a lifelong Cambridge resident and clean energy entrepreneur, I’m thrilled to see the city potentially making a real change in our energy supply,” said Eric Grunebaum. “I hope we can move towards the front of the pack of U.S. cities which recognize the grave risks that climate disruption and destabilization poses. It would be a great thing for Cambridge to use its buying power to spur new renewable power generation, while at the same time removing our financial support from TransCanada which has demonstrated itself to be a bad actor in the growing movement to reduce our dependence on planet-cooking fossil fuels.”


http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/05/cambridge-cuts-ties-transcanada/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #76 on: March 15, 2015, 07:11:58 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2HvhaAC2qM&feature=player_embedded

Three Year Old Girl Prepares for 21st Century Challenges
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #77 on: March 15, 2015, 10:07:03 pm »

Quote

David Michaels’s “Manufactured Uncertainty: Contested Science and the Protection of the Public’s Health and Environment” is the third chapter in Part I. 

In this thought-provoking chapter, replete with interesting examples and insights, Michaels explores the role certainty plays in contemporary medicine and public health debates.  Based on the assumption that “debating the science is much easier and more effective than debating the policy” (92), big business, Michaels argues, has become adept at manufacturing ignorance about science in order to attain their policy goals.

Michaels brings together the examples of tobacco, global warming, and toxic chemicals such as beryllium (used in the production of nuclear weapons systems), to support his claim that a “new regulatory paradigm is required” (102). 

Michaels sets out the first steps for such a paradigm, including requirements that federal regulatory agencies develop requirements for research integrity, which means they should be given the authority to inquire into who pays for studies “and whether these studies would have seen the light of day if the sponsor didn’t approve the results” (102-103).   

Michaels concludes that “those charged with protecting the public health [must] realize that the desire for absolute scientific certainty is both counterproductive and futile”  (104).  That is, we need a new regulatory paradigm that focuses more on values in policy than just science, which is fallible and easily manipulated .
 


http://social-epistemology.com/2012/01/20/agnotology-the-making-and-unmaking-of-ignorance-and-race-and-epistemologies-of-ignorance-reviewed-by-susan-dieleman/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #78 on: March 19, 2015, 02:43:34 pm »
Quote
As mentioned elsewhere in this labyrinth, I will not be voting for anyone named "Clinton" or "Bush" at the next coronation.

We need a miracle Surly, most likely a young idealistic adult, sly enough to use the sytem to get in, and then turn on the pigs he conned to rally the people. 

Talk about a long shot or pipe dreaming.  ::)

GO,
This  old Spanish Proverb is small consolation but it might be of some help:
Quote
"No hay mal que dure cien años ni cuerpo que lo resista".

Translation: There is no evil that lasts 100 years or human life that can bear it for that long.

IOW, there is a clock timer on everything we perceive and experience. All the evil that is present will end while we are alive or be the cause of our death. After that, earthly evil cannot affect us.   

A bit fatalistic, but it is still accurate.  8)
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #79 on: March 20, 2015, 03:05:55 pm »


  The Irony of Climate

Archaeologists suspect that a shift in the planet's climate thousands of years ago gave birth to agriculture. Now climate change could spell the end of farming as we know it.

High in the Peruvian Andes, a new disease has invaded the potato fields in the town of Chac­llabamba. Warmer and wetter weather associated with global climate change has allowed late blight-the same fungus that caused the Irish potato famine-to creep 4,000 meters up the mountainside for the first time since humans started growing potatoes here thousands of years ago. In 2003, Chacllabamba farmers saw their crop of native potatoes almost totally destroyed. Breeders are rushing to develop tubers resistant to the "new" disease that retain the taste, texture, and quality preferred by Andean populations.

Meanwhile, old-timers in Holmes County, Kansas, have been struggling to tell which way the wind is blowing, so to speak.
On the one hand, the summers and winters are both warmer, which means less snow and less snowmelt in the spring and less water stored in the fields. On the other hand, there's more rain, but it's falling in the early spring, rather than during the summer growing season. So the crops might be parched when they need water most. According to state climatologists, it's too early to say exactly how these changes will play out-if farmers will be able to push their corn and wheat fields onto formerly barren land or if the higher temperatures will help once again to turn the grain fields of Kansas into a dust bowl. Whatever happens, it's going to surprise the current generation of farmers.

Asian farmers, too, are facing their own climate-related problems. In the unirrigated rice paddies and wheat fields of Asia, the annual monsoon can make or break millions of lives. Yet the reliability of the monsoon is increasingly in doubt. For instance, El Niño events (the cyclical warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean) often correspond with weaker monsoons, and El Niños will likely increase with global warming. During the El Niño-induced drought in 1997, Indonesian rice farmers pumped water from swamps close to their fields, but food losses were still high: 55 percent for dryland maize and 41 percent for wetland maize, 34 percent for wetland rice, and 19 percent for cassava. The 1997 drought was followed by a particularly wet winter that delayed planting for two months in many areas and triggered heavy locust and rat infestations. According to Bambang Irawan of the Indonesian Center for Agricultural Socio-Economic Research and Development, in Bogor, this succession of poor harvests forced many families to eat less rice and turn to the less nutritious alternative of dried cassava. Some farmers sold off their jewelry and livestock, worked off the farm, or borrowed money to purchase rice, Irawan says. The prospects are for more of the same: "If we get a substantial global warming, there is no doubt in my mind that there will be serious changes to the
 monsoon," says David Rhind, a senior climate researcher with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Archaeologists believe that the shift to a warmer, wetter, and more stable climate at the end of the last ice age was key for humanity's successful foray into food production.
Yet, from the American breadbasket to the North China Plain to the fields of southern Africa, farmers and climate scientists are finding that generations-old patterns of rainfall and temperature are shifting. Farming may be the human endeavor most dependent on a stable climate-and the industry that will struggle most to cope with more erratic weather, severe storms, and shifts in growing season lengths. While some optimists are predicting longer growing seasons and more abundant harvests as the climate warms, farmers are mostly reaping surprises.

Toward the Unknown (Climate) Region 

For two decades, Hartwell Allen, a researcher with the University of Florida in Gainesville and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has been growing rice, soybeans, and peanuts in plastic, greenhouse-like growth chambers that allow him to play God. He can control-"rather precisely"-the temperature, humidity, and levels of atmospheric carbon. "We grow the plants under a daily maximum/minimum cyclic temperature that would mimic the real world cycle," Allen says. His lab has tried regimes of 28 degrees C day/18 degrees C night, 32/22, 36/26, 40/30, and 44/34. "We ran one experiment to 48/38, and got very few surviving plants," he says. Allen found that while a doubling of carbon dioxide and a slightly increased temperature stimulate seeds to germinate and the plants to grow larger and lusher, the higher temperatures are deadly when the plant starts producing pollen. Every stage of the process-pollen transfer, the growth of the tube that links the pollen to the seed, the viability of the pollen itself-is highly sensitive. "It's all or nothing, if pollination isn't successful," Allen notes. At temperatures above 36 degrees C during pollination, peanut yields dropped about six percent per degree of temperature increase. Allen is particularly concerned about the implications for places like India and West Africa, where peanuts are a dietary staple and temperatures during the growing season are already well above 32 degrees C: "In these regions the crops are mostly rain-fed. If global warming also leads to drought in these areas, yields could be even lower."

As plant scientists refine their understanding of climate change and the subtle ways in which plants respond, they are beginning to think that the most serious threats to agriculture will not be the most dramatic: *** the lethal heat wave or severe drought or endless deluge. Instead, for plants that humans have bred to thrive in specific climatic conditions, it is those subtle shifts in temperatures and rainfall during key periods in the crops' lifecycles that will be most disruptive. Even today, crop losses associated with background climate variability are significantly higher than those caused by disasters such as hurricanes or flooding.

***
Agelbert NOTE: While the above may be true fro CROPS, it is the lethal heat waves, severe droughts, endless deluge and/or large daily temperature extremes that WILL KILL most wildlife that land REQUIRES to be healthy.


John Sheehy at the International Rice Research Institute in Manila has found that damage to the world's major grain crops begins when temperatures climb above 30 degrees C during flowering. At about 40 degrees C, yields are reduced to zero. "In rice, wheat, and maize, grain yields are likely to decline by 10 percent for every 1 degree C increase over 30 degrees. We are already at or close to this threshold," Sheehy says, noting regular heat damage in Cambodia, India, and his own center in the Philippines, where the average temperature is now 2.5 degrees C higher than 50 years ago. In particular, higher night-time temperatures forced the plants to work harder at respiration and thus sapped their energy, leaving less for producing grain. Sheehy estimates that grain yields in the tropics might fall as much as 30 percent over the next 50 years, during a period when the region's already malnourished population is projected to increase by 44 percent. (Sheehy and his colleagues think a potential solution is breeding rice and other crops to flower early in the morning or at night so that the sensitive temperature process misses the hottest part of the day. But, he says, "we haven't been successful in getting any real funds for the work.") The world's major plants can cope with temperature shifts to some extent, but since the dawn of agriculture farmers have selected plants that thrive in stable conditions.

Climatologists consulting their computer climate models see anything but stability, however. As greenhouse gases trap more of the sun's heat in the Earth's atmosphere , there is also more energy in the climate system, which means more extreme swings-dry to wet, hot to cold. (This is the reason that there can still be severe winters on a warming planet, or that March 2004 was the third-warmest month on record after one of the coldest winters ever.) Among those projected impacts that climatologists have already observed in most regions: higher maximum temperatures and more hot days, higher minimum temperatures and fewer cold days, more variable and extreme rainfall events, and increased summer drying and associated risk of drought in continental interiors. All of these conditions will likely accelerate into the next century.

Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scholar with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, argues that although the climate models will always be improving, there are certain changes we can already predict with a level of confidence. First, most studies indicate "intensification of the hydrological cycle," which essentially means more droughts and floods, and more variable and extreme rainfall. Second, Rosenzweig says, "basically every study has shown that there will be increased incidence of crop pests." Longer growing seasons mean more generations of pests during the summer, while shorter and warmer winters mean that fewer adults, larvae, and eggs will die off.

Third, most climatologists agree that climate change will hit farmers in the developing world hardest. This is partly a result of geography. Farmers in the tropics already find themselves near the temperature limits for most major crops, so any warming is likely to push their crops over the top. "All increases in temperature, however small, will lead to decreases in production," says Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank and former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Studies have consistently shown that agricultural regions in the developing world are more vulnerable, even before we consider the ability to cope," because of poverty, more limited irrigation technology, and lack of weather tracking systems. "Look at the coping strategies, and then it's a real double whammy," Rosenzweig says. In sub-Saharan Africa-ground zero of global hunger, where the number of starving people has doubled in the last 20 years-the current situation will undoubtedly be exacerbated by the climate crisis. (And by the 2080s, Watson says, projections indicate that even temperate latitudes will begin to approach the upper limit of the productive temperature range.)

Coping With Change 

"Scientists may indeed need decades to be sure that climate change is taking place," says Patrick Luganda, chairman of the Network of Climate Journalists in the Greater Horn of Africa. "But, on the ground, farmers have no choice but to deal with the daily reality as best they can." Luganda says that several years ago local farming communities in Uganda could determine the onset of rains and their cessation with a fair amount of accuracy. "These days there is no guarantee that the long rains will start, or stop, at the usual time," Luganda says. The Ateso people in north-central Uganda report the disappearance of asisinit, a swamp grass favored for thatch houses because of its beauty and durability. The grass is increasingly rare because farmers have started to plant rice and millet in swampy areas in response to more frequent droughts. (Rice farmers in Indonesia coping with droughts have done the same.) Farmers have also begun to sow a wider diversity of crops and to stagger their plantings to hedge against abrupt climate shifts. Luganda adds that repeated crop failures have pushed many farmers into the urban centers: the final coping mechanism.

The many variables associated with climate change make coping difficult, but hardly futile.
In some cases, farmers may need to install sprinklers to help them survive more droughts. In other cases, plant breeders will need to look for crop varieties that can withstand a greater range of temperatures. The good news is that many of the same changes that will help farmers cope with climate change will also make communities more self-sufficient and reduce dependence on the long-distance food chain.

Planting a wider range of crops, for instance, is perhaps farmers' best hedge against more erratic weather. In parts of Africa, planting trees alongside crops-a system called agroforestry that might include shade coffee and cacao, or leguminous trees with corn-might be part of the answer. "There is good reason to believe that these systems will be more resilient than a maize monoculture," says Lou Verchot, the lead scientist on climate change at the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry in Nairobi. The trees send their roots considerably deeper than the crops, allowing them to survive a drought that might damage the grain crop. The tree roots will also pump water into the upper soil layers where crops can tap it. Trees improve the soil as well: their roots create spaces for water flow and their leaves decompose into compost. In other words, a farmer who has trees won't lose everything. Farmers in central Kenya are using a mix of coffee, macadamia nuts, and cereals that results in as many as three marketable crops in a good year. "Of course, in any one year, the monoculture will yield more money," Verchot admits, "but farmers need to work on many years." These diverse crop mixes are all the more relevant since rising temperatures will eliminate much of the traditional coffee- and tea-growing areas in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. In Uganda, where coffee and tea account for nearly 100 percent of agricultural exports, an average temperature rise of 2 degrees C would dramatically reduce the harvest, as all but the highest altitude areas become too hot to grow coffee.

In essence, farms will best resist a wide range of shocks by making themselves more diverse and less dependent on outside inputs. A farmer growing a single variety of wheat is more likely to lose the whole crop when the temperature shifts dramatically than a farmer growing several wheat varieties, or better yet, several varieties of plants besides wheat. The additional crops help form a sort of ecological bulwark against blows from climate change. "It will be important to devise more resilient agricultural production systems that can absorb and survive more variability," argues Fred Kirschenmann, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. At his own family farm in North Dakota, Kirschenmann has struggled with two years of abnormal weather that nearly eliminated one crop and devastated another. Diversified farms will cope better with drought, increased pests, and a range of other climate-related jolts. And they will tend to be less reliant on fertilizers and pesticides, and the fossil fuel inputs they require. Climate change might also be the best argument for preserving local crop varieties around the world, so that plant breeders can draw from as wide a palette as possible when trying to develop plants that can cope with more frequent drought or new pests.

Farms with trees planted strategically between crops will not only better withstand torrential downpours and parching droughts, they will also "lock up" more carbon. Lou Verchot says that the improved fallows used in Africa can lock up 10-20 times the carbon of nearby cereal monocultures, and 30 percent of the carbon in an intact forest. And building up a soil's stock of organic matter-the dark, spongy stuff in soils that stores carbon and gives them their rich smell-not only increases the amount of water the soil can hold (good for weathering droughts), but also helps bind more nutrients (good for crop growth).

Best of all, for farmers at least, systems that store more carbon are often considerably more profitable, and they might become even more so if farmers get paid to store carbon under the Kyoto Protocol. There is a plan, for instance, to pay farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, to shift from farming that involves regular forest clearing to agroforestry. The International Automobile Federation is funding the project as part of its commitment to reducing carbon emissions from sponsored sports car races. Not only that, "increased costs for fossil fuels will accelerate demand for renewable energies," says Mark Muller of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who believes that farmers will find new markets for biomass fuels like switchgrass that can be grown on the farm, as well as additional royalties from installing wind turbines on their farms.

However, "carbon farming is a temporary solution," according to Marty Bender of the Land Institute's Sunshine Farm in Salina, Kansas. He points to a recent paper in Science showing that even if America's soils were returned to their pre-plow carbon content-a theoretical maximum for how much carbon they could lock up-this would be equal to only two decades of American carbon emissions. "That is how little time we will be buying," Bender says, "despite the fact that it may take a hundred years of aggressive, national carbon farming and forestry to restore this lost carbon." (Cynthia Rosenzweig also notes that the potential to lock up carbon is limited, and that a warmer planet will reduce the amount of carbon that soils can hold: as land heats up, invigorated soil microbes respire more carbon dioxide.)

"We really should be focusing on energy efficiency and energy conservation to reduce the carbon emissions by our national economy," Bender concludes. That's why Sunshine Farm, which Bender directs, has been farming without fossil fuels, fertilizers, or pesticides in order to reduce its contribution to climate change and to find an inherently local solution to a global problem. As the name implies, Sunshine Farm runs essentially on sunlight. Homegrown sunflower seeds and soybeans become biodiesel that fuels tractors and trucks. The farm raises nearly three-fourths of the feed-oats, grain sorghum, and alfalfa-for its draft horses, beef cattle, and poultry. Manure and legumes in the crop rotation substitute for energy-gobbling nitrogen fertilizers. A 4.5-kilowatt photovoltaic array powers the workshop tools, electric fencing, water pumps, and chick brooding pens. The farm has eliminated an amount of energy equivalent to that used to make and transport 90 percent of its supplies. (Including the energy required to make the farm's machinery lowers the figure to 50 percent, still a huge gain over the standard American farm.)

But these energy savings are only part of this distinctly local solution to an undeniably global problem, Bender says. "If local food systems could eliminate the need for half of the energy used for food processing and distribution, then that would save 30 percent of the fossil energy used in the U.S. food system," Bender reasons. "Considering that local foods will require some energy use, let's round the net savings down to 25 percent. In comparison, on-farm direct and indirect energy consumption constitutes 20 percent of energy use in the U.S. food system. Hence, local food systems could potentially save more energy than is used on American farms."

In other words, as climate tremors disrupt the vast intercontinental web of food production and rearrange the world's major breadbaskets, depending on food from distant suppliers will be more expensive and more precarious. It will be cheaper and easier to cope with local weather shifts, and with more limited supplies of fossil fuels, than to ship in a commodity from afar.

Agriculture is in third place, far behind energy use and chlorofluorocarbon production, as a contributor to climate warming. For farms to play a significant role, changes in cropping practices must happen on a large scale, across large swaths of India and Brazil and China and the American Midwest. As Bender suggests, farmers will be able to shore up their defenses against climate change, and can make obvious reductions in their own energy use which could save them money.

But the lasting solution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change will depend mostly on the choices that everyone else makes. According to the London-based NGO Safe Alliance, a basic meal-some meat, grain, fruits, and vegetables-using imported ingredients can easily generate four times the greenhouse gas emissions as the same meal with ingredients from local sources. In terms of our personal contribution to climate change, eating local can be as important as driving a fuel-efficient car, or giving up the car for a bike. As politicians struggle to muster the will power to confront the climate crisis, ensuring that farmers have a less erratic climate in which to raise the world's food shouldn't be too hard a sell.

Brian Halweil is a senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute, and the author of Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/572
 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #80 on: April 12, 2015, 04:23:46 pm »
Action starts after the 15 minute mark.  :o  :o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZriuDmppWfw&feature=player_embedded
A Stormy Odessy - May 31, 2013 The Day The Rules Changed
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #81 on: April 12, 2015, 06:25:03 pm »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #84 on: April 17, 2015, 06:40:54 pm »

Ka and Ashivin,
The bottom line is that humans, although we are tasked as self aware beings with being stewards of those life forms who are not, are a function of the biosphere, just as all the other life forms are.

We have NOT "risen above" the other life forms with our polluting example. The reverse is true. Our science CANNOT replace life forms that go extinct. We can't even make a paramecium! We are STUCK when a large enough percentage of the biosphere we MUST have to survive dies off. And THAT is ALREADY BAKED IN, according to Hansen and thousands of other serious scientists.

We have NOT earned the right to do anything on this biosphere except to obey the rules of  planetary biochemistry that our scientists have discovered. We don't do that and we die, period.

Agreed.

Quote
So we can sit here and hem and haw about whether this or that system is "doable", "practical" or "too utopian" while we are oh, so cautious in not wanting to tinker with all those "Great traditions" and "individuality" and "freedom" that gave us our present Dystopia. Good luck with that.

As far as I can tell, I am in full agreement with you as to the correct attitude and actions for the individual and society to take with respect to the environment. That's the whole point of it being GREEN Libertarian Socialism. As to the libertarian socialism, as I see it, that is the only way that what you want to see happen w.r.t. the environment can be institutionalized. What do you propose instead?


Well, I propose that we go from a defunct "carrying Capacity" meme to a "Caring Capacity" meme.
This world view modification is life promoting, instead of death rewarding.

First, we would need to adopt Hansen's "Golden Opportunity" (tax and dividend) on fossil fuels  along with the elimination of any and all subsidies and tax deductions for exploration for fossil fuels.

Second, codifying into international law fines and/or imprisonment for biosphere harming activities (e.g. fossil fuel exploration and non-bioremidiated mining) must occur across the board in order to ensure compliance to the Caring Capacity meme.

Third, we adopt the product of a Caring Capacity concept called a modified Borsadi Constant.  The modification consists of Biosphere math applied to the basket of commodities Borsadi proposed. The modified Borsadi Constant must be the ONLY LEGAL TENDER in order to ensure compliance to the Caring Capacity meme.
Of course, the international community could expand that basket to include other, less known, but important commodities vital to biosphere restoration. This requires a planetary ecology inventory of the biosphere by objective scientists. 

An inventory of the biosphere must be RADICALLY different than those now made by the CIA and all the other profit over planet exploiters that operate on the carrying capacity meme (i.e. ANYTHING we get from the ground that harms the biosphere MORE than nurtures it MUST be considered too expensive to extract, period).

For those that will wail and moan about how we need fossil fuel this and fossil fuel that (pesticides, fertilizers, plastics, etc.) in order to avoid having to cull the human population, I present to you the example of China BEFORE the industrial revolution.

For over 1,000 YEARS they had such a perfectly balanced use of human feces for fertilizing crops, that they obtained a population density FAR above anything any other country in the world has reached as of this date. And they did that WITHOUT warring on other countries (yeah they had internal conflict but nobody's perfect!  ;D)  and WITHOUT CAPITALISM several centuries before the industrial revolution. 

With the knowledge we now possess, ALL the products we need to thrive can be obtained IN HARMONY with the biosphere. Any population pressure we experience can be solved by GROWING the biosphere onto arid, desolate portions of the globe. There are a LOT of those.

When the limit to THAT is reached within a century or so, we can terraform mars to give us another 1000 years of growing elbow room. It's a BIG universe out there! The reason more people don't see this is that they are brainwashed to think SCARCITY, SCARCITY and SCARCITY equals VALUE. That's the exploitive, profit over planet mindful ck we have been visited with for the benefit of the Gordon Gecko IDIOTS.


Here's the CARING CAPACITY CURRENCY part of the proposal:


Dystopia:

The "currency" of Dystopia:

3 09 Ralph Borsodi Constant Currency

22 § Community Currency Magazine March 2009 Issue
Quote

The BorsodI Constant aka “the Exeter experiment ”InFLatIon Free Currency (approximately 1971-1974)


United States Constitution forbids the counterfeiting of this nation’s currency, however, it in no way limits the circulation of a completely alternative medium of exchange...

3 09 Ralph Borsodi Constant Currency

What MUST we do to have a type of FUNCTIONAL society based on human CARING CAPACITY instead of the exploited biosphere's "carrying capacity"?  ???

We must adopt a currency that reflects REAL VALUE in the biosphere. The use of this currency must nurture LIFE, not reward coercion, greed, war and death.

Ralph Borsodi came up with a local currency called the "CONSTANT".

I like it. With some fine tuning   ;D, it would fit the bill for a Green Libertarian Socialist  currency that would meet the Caring Capacity requirement to nurture LIFE, not reward coercion, greed, war and death.

SNIPPET:
Quote

The first Constants were sold on June 21st 1972. Over a period of about three years, Borsodi presented his ideas to many people who deposited approximately $100,000 in his bank experiment called Arbitrage International and the funds were used to buy the basket of 30 basic commodities on the world market. (Arbitrage International maintained a Luxembourg and a London office, in addition to its temporary headquarters in Exeter, New Hampshire.)

“The value of a Constant was based on that of specific amounts of thirty basic commodities,
including gold, silver, iron, aluminum, lead, copper, nickel, tin, zinc, coal, oil, wheat, barley, rice, rye, oats, soya, maize, wool, cotton, cocoa, coffee, copra, hides, jute, rubber, cement, sulphur and sugar, and holders could sell them at any time for the total of whatever the constituents were then worth:



Borsodi’s organisation, Independent Arbitrage International, recalculated the Constant’s underlying value monthly and let the banks know. “ People who bought Constants from Borsodi’s organisation at, say, $2.18 a 10-Constant note were surprised later when the bank
paid them $2.19 for it” a local newspaperman, Mel Most, wrote after the experiment had been running for seven months.” 

“To everybody’s surprise, even including Borsodi, many people bought Constant notes and made deposits in the bank checking account. At the same time Constants began to circulate around the town of Exeter, where restaurants and other businesses accepted them in payment.”

The participants in the experiment saw the value of their constant rise 17% in three years. 36 months into the test, “...a constant bought in 1970 can still be traded for exactly one constant’s worth of goods . . . while a dollar will now buy only 85% of what it would purchase three years ago.”

3 09 Ralph Borsodi Constant Currency

HERE is the typical BALONEY double talk response from the gooberment:
Quote
What did the U.S. Treasury Department have to say about the private currency? 

A Treasury agent was quoted at the time saying, “We don’t care if he issues pine cones, as long as it is exchangeable for dollars so that transactions can be recorded for tax purposes. ” 


"Tax purposes" DOES NOT HAVE BEANS to do with it and COERCION to make people accept a  worthless fiat currency issued by the "Federal" Reserve has EVERYTHING to do with it. But they don't say that, do they?  ;)  THE INSTANT people with REAL currency try to PROPERLY value fiat dollars (see USED toilet paper or less), the profit over planet counterfeiters get their balls in an uproar. 







 

 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #85 on: April 19, 2015, 05:39:15 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bRrg96UtMc&feature=player_embedded
We ARE in a mass extinction event. The question is, will we, thanks to Homo SAP POWERS THAT BE (NOT MOST OF THE POPULATON!) GREED & STUPIDITY, be one of the species to go extinct?  >:(
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #87 on: April 24, 2015, 07:54:05 pm »



A Community Resilience Take on The Great Transition


by Richard Heinberg, originally published by The Great Transition Initiative   | TODAY 
 
A review of Bounding the Planetary Future: Why We Need a Great Transition by Johan Rockström.


“Planetary boundaries” research constitutes an important advance in our ability to identify and quantify the components of global overshoot. Permit me to suggest that all presentations on planetary boundaries should include a discussion of Liebig’s Law—an ecological truism that can be boiled down to “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” We don’t have to wait for all nine boundaries to be transgressed before global calamity threatens; all it takes to shred the ecosystem web is for one boundary to be breached far enough, long enough. Seen in that light, the fact that four out of nine identified boundaries are already far behind us should be cause for profound concern.

 Nevertheless, Johan Rockström’s exposition follows the familiar and necessary formula: industrial civilization is propelling us toward planetary collapse, but there is still time to change civilization’s operating system so as to ensure survival and well-being for everyone, even as population continues to grow. I have used that formula in essays and lectures any number of times, and, each time I do, I catch myself feeling just a bit disingenuous. Yes, as public intellectuals, it is our job to prescribe the medicine we think will improve the patient’s (i.e., civilization’s) condition. But is our prescription really capable of curing the disease?

Let’s face it: our patient’s condition is worsening. Further, we have seen cases like this before (i.e., there have been previous civilizations that overshot their environment’s carrying capacity), and in all instances, the outcome was dire. Nevertheless, following the discursive formula, a hypothetical treatment is proposed, consisting of energy substitution, massive resource efficiency improvements, wealth redistribution, and global governance; though it has never been tried, it seems to be our only hope.

 A new school of environmentalist thought—sometimes labeled “doomerism”—holds that it is too late for such nostrums. The patient has no interest whatever in taking our medicine (sustainability proposals have been tabled at least since 1972’s Limits to Growth, but global elites have shown themselves completely uninterested in any course of action that does not promise continuing GDP expansion), and the disease is too far advanced (we have set in motion self-reinforcing geophysical processes that cannot be reversed). The most extreme doomers insist that near-term human extinction is now assured. Forget trying to save civilization, they say; think planetary hospice instead.

 Doomerism has the virtue of willingness to look our predicament squarely in the face without flinching. But it has been criticized for underestimating the likely role of balancing feedbacks within both the environment and human society; further, it disempowers both its purveyors and its audience, who have a tendency to adopt an attitude of cynical, resigned apathy. Is there a third approach?

 It seems to me we could start with a recognition that crisis is now assured. That does not mean near-term extinction is inevitable, but it does mean that this century will almost certainly see ecological, economic, and social upheaval on an unprecedented scale. The doomers are right in saying that it is late in the game, but wrong in simply giving up.

 An alternative strategy would be to anticipate crises and use them to advantage. Such a crisis-led strategy would first seek to provide ways for people and institutions to adapt to coming changes in ways that create more community resilience and that meet basic human needs more sustainably over the long run. That would almost certainly imply different adaptive tactics for societies in varying stages of industrialization (or de-industrialization, as the case may be). A secondary strategy would be to widely and consistently publicize an ecological explanation for inevitable crises (overpopulation, depleting resources, pollution) that could at least partly reduce the social tendency to find scapegoats for declining economic conditions. This could avert a great deal of unnecessary conflict.

 Crisis can be a teacher. All indigenous human societies eventually learned self-restraint, if they stayed in one place long enough. They discovered through trial and error that exceeding their land’s carrying capacity led to awful consequences. That’s why these peoples appear to us moderns as intuitive ecologists: having been hammered repeatedly by resource depletion, habitat destruction, overpopulation, and resulting famines, they eventually realized that the only way to avoid getting hammered yet again was to respect nature’s limits by restraining reproduction and protecting other forms of life. We have forgotten that lesson, because our civilization was built by people who successfully conquered, colonized, then moved elsewhere to do the same thing yet again  —and because we are enjoying a one-time gift of fossil fuels that empower us to do things no previous society ever dreamed of. We have come to believe in our own omnipotence, exceptionalism, and invincibility.   

But we have now run out of new places to conquer, the best of the fossil fuels are used up, and the environmental consequences of burning them are starting to catch up with us. We can learn from crisis; cultural anthropology shows that. But, in this instance, we need to learn fast, and perhaps some organized effort to aid that process would be well spent. Planetary boundaries discourse could help explain to frightened masses why the world seems to be falling apart around them, while community resilience-building could help them adapt to changed conditions.

 For the time being, most environmental activists will (and probably should) continue publishing new reports saying, “If we don’t change policies, terrible things will happen,” and, “If we do change policies everyone can live in peace and sufficiency.” I am merely suggesting that some of us might also be thinking strategically about what to do if world leaders do not adopt policies to drastically cut carbon emissions and redistribute wealth. Crisis-led community resilience seems to be the logical fallback plan.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-04-24/a-community-resilience-take-on-the-great-transition

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #88 on: April 25, 2015, 12:30:13 am »
This is a True Story. It just hasn't happened yet (BUT IT WILL).  :o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d14ntlWFsAA&feature=player_embedded
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #89 on: May 09, 2015, 02:04:52 pm »
15 Insects You Can Eat  :P
Kara, selected from TreeHugger
May 8, 2015
6:13 am
74 comments

Not being much of an eater of things with legs in the first place, partaking of those from the creepy-crawly family of edibles doesn’t hold much appeal to me personally. But I might be in the minority there, especially when considering entomophagy from an international perspective. We may be squeamish here in the United States when it comes to binging on bugs, but people all over the world smartly consume insects. In fact, some two billion people across the globe eat a wide variety of insects regularly.

They are a fantastic source of protein and don’t require intensive resources to produce; and they have little environmental impact, unlike the livestock that we are so reliant on here.

Given the food crunch the globe is in, all I can say is this: Bring on the cricket skewers and roasted water bugs, the smoked tarantulas and candied ants. If you’re an eater of creatures already, get on this!

While there are more than 1,900 edible insect species from which to choose, not all are edible. Brightly colored insects usually indicate a warning: Back off, buddy, I’m toxic. Pungent bugs, hairy bugs, bugs that bite or sting, and disease-carriers like flies, ticks and mosquitoes are also on the very generalized do-not-eat list, although there are exceptions. But not to worry, that leaves so many many other insects to revel in. 

To get started, here are the main 15 orders of insects suitable ;D for eating:


1. Anoplura: Lice
 2. Orthoptera: Grasshoppers, crickets and roaches
 3. Hemiptera: True bugs
 4. Homoptera: Cicadas and treehoppers
 5. Hymenoptera: Bees, ants and wasps
 6. Diptera: Flies and mosquitoes
 7. Coleoptera: Beetles
 8. Lepidoptera: Butterflies and moths
 9. Megaloptera: Alderflies and dobsonflies
 10. Odonata: Dragonflies and damselflies 
 11. Ephemetoptera: Mayflies
 12. Trichoptera: Caddisflies
 13. Plecoptera: Stoneflies
 14. Neuroptera: Lacewings and antlions
 15. Isoptera: Termites

And a few things to consider. Cooking will improve flavor  ;D, texture and kill parasites. Wings and legs do not contain much protein, remove them if they make you want to gag. Heads, too. Take care in eating already-dead insects, as they may have been killed by pesticide. And importantly, if you want to forage for wild insects, seek out a good guidebook so that you are sure to get the best from your efforts. Be brave, and bon appetite.

by Melissa Breyer, from Treehugger

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/15-insects-you-can-eat.html#ixzz3ZfHRk5DB

Agelbert COMMENT:
Well, any port in the storm, of course. I don't deliberately eat insects, especially Dragonflies. I like Dragonflies! Don't eat Odonata!

That said, according to the FDA, that regulates insect parts in processed foods like flour, candy bars, soups, juice, etc., we ALL EAT a certain amount of "insect parts" in our food, whether it is processed or not.  :P

Some strict vegetarians from India moved to England several decades ago. They ate the same diet in England but began to suffer vitamin B-12 deficiency because the veggies they ate in India had a healthy amount of insects and insect eggs in them, whereas those veggies were washed too well in England.

 If you want to eat MORE insects than you already eat in blissful ignorance of that fact, and save the planet too, EAT TERMITES.  I will have you know that the planetary termite biomass produces more methane than cows!  :o

Termites are soft and gather in large groups for easy harvesting. We will NEVER run our of termites! Besides, we can feed them to the fossil fuelers when we put them in prison!   

AS for meat products, there is absolutely no difference between the muscle tissue of a slug, snail or earthworm as compared to that of a cow and may, in fact, be a healthier source of meat protein. Birds and fish all agree!

I'm sure McDonalds and Burger King are working on that right now... 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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