Saturday, August 8, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Disease: Ecocancer of the Lungs
The USGS has reported the results of a fifty year study of glaciers which was designed to detect wide spread trends that now effect the clean drinking water cycle in the environment. Among other things they concluded: The USGS has been monitoring the mass balance of three glaciers in the Pacific Northwest and in Alaska for nearly 50 years. This mass balance record is now sufficient to interpret glacier responses to short- and long-term climate changes in the Pacific Northwest, the Alaska Coast, and the Alaska interior. What have we learned so far?(USGS Report). The drinking water cycle is being disturbed which will disturb civilization in ways that can be called catastrophic.* All three glaciers have lost mass since USGS monitoring began more than four decades ago.The accelerating loss of mass, the weakening correlation with the PDO, and increasing mass turnover likely are the result of changes to warmer and (or) drier climate conditions that are affecting all three regions. The climate changes could be overwhelming the previously observed responses of the maritime glaciers to periodic shifts in ocean conditions, such as are represented by the PDO.
* Mass loss has accelerated during the last 15 years, coincident with the highest melt years on record.
* Mass balance of the coastal South Cascade and Wolverine Glaciers correlate well with the PDO during the first few decades of the period of record, showing the effects of ocean-condition periodicity on glacier health.
* This correlation has weakened during the last two decades, as global average temperature has increased.
* Mass turnover has increased throughout monitoring and the trend of increase has become stronger during the last two decades.
The disruption of these water cycles can damage forests further too, especially since the United States government is not getting it yet.
If we do not care to protect and keep our own lungs healthy, it is not likely we will care a great deal about the lungs of the earth, which we have known for a long time are the forests:
When we consider the earth as a living organism, we recognize that the rain forests are the lungs of that energy system.(NYTimes, 1985). These are areas of knowledge that indicate we are the fools who have rushed in where angels would fear to tread.
Over 40 percent of the world's oxygen is produced from the rain forests. So the imlications of their destruction are far greater than we have previously considered.
Their destruction is part of the tragic pattern our species is now engaged in: because of ignorance about our own environment and its interconnected web of relationships, coupled with our high level of technology (and insatiable greed), we human beings are in the process of destroying our own life-support system.
This is not good because we must pass the earth environmental compatibility test before we can pass The Test of Ecocosmology.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Family On Catastrophe Street
The book reveals why the United States will not be the nation leading the human species into the next phase of its long term survival; because the book is about "C" Street, short for Catastrophe Street.
A place where Hitler and every other despot is approved, but where those who care about global climate change and who care for the survival of the ecosystem are derogatorily called "tree huggers" and worse.
These preachers of hate in the name of the Bible say that Jesus preached domination of everything through any means possible or available, which is contrary to the teaching of many other theologians.
United States Senators and House of Representatives members have lived there on Catastrophe Street for years, and they really do believe hatred and utter dominance is the good and godly path for the future.
That is why two wars have been wasting America for so many years against the votes and wishes of the citizens of the United States, and why the United States has been plundered into economic oblivion during that time.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Climate Change Deniers Take a Hit
What do the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," global climate change, and acid rain have in common? They're all a result of human impacts to Earth's biology, chemistry and geology, and the natural cycles that involve all three.(Science Daily). For those who are in the twilight zone of almost belief and who must go by sight, consider the garbage continent which is bigger and more dangerous than some countries. Or consider yesterdays "100 year event" in anti-climate change Louisville, KY, which flooded the city in about an hour. Remember however that purely local climate phenomenon are not good and lasting indicators of long term climate events.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The DNA of What is Killing
The graph lines in the census bureau figures tell one clear story.The top line that continues up and up and up follows home and business foreclosures, job losses, health care coverage losses, the national debt, and the national deficit.
Not in exact percentages, but in trends and in the direction the national economy has been heading.
The bottom line tracks the wealth, world respect, and prosperity of the United States.
But that is not what the graph is made to show. The same graph is shown again in the depiction below, but without the labels removed to protect the guilty.
The graph tracks military spending, and it says what Dredd Blog posts have been saying here, and here, for example.
Read it and weep because it says "spend your time on peace and your life will be more peaceful and you will prosper", but "spend your time on war and you and your children will suffer many years".
War is defined as the military in action, peace is defined as the military put back in its cage.
The ill advised neoCon use of the military to climb every mountain, swim every stream, and solve every problem is the most ignorant of policies since the Vietnam era fiasco and disaster.
Even though stupid was voted out, the addictions were reactivated, and it will take a generation extra to deal with the debauchery of the plunder barons.
Same Murder Different Pay Grade
The company that gave you and I a bad name in the world, got paid better than the soldiers Bush II used to invade Iraq, to run Abu Ghraib, to run GITMO, and to run America's name down.The company that was sent to New Orleans to shoot blacks, but to rescue no one, has changed their name since there has been growing scrutiny of their endeavours.
Since the Obama Administration is in an ivory tower of bliss far from this planet, they have coined the phrase "policies of the previous administration" to cover murder, lies, and general crimes against the United States.
One wonders whether that company may be making some campaign contributions, because no "good policy" goes unrewarded, or could it simply be that the Obama Administration is scared spitless?
Anyway, it was left up to a group of brave lawyers, who know that this company kills people who testify against them, to bring lawsuits against the company.
They have some brave people who worked for the company, and who know first hand, testifying:
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."(The Nation). The soldiers who get pennies for their Iraq work look up to these highly paid murder for hire types as role models, what with the glory movies paid for by Pentagon money, being so booyah popular and all.
Gang bangers do too, which means that there will be many more years of death and destruction within the United States as these types slowly pop the bubble of sanity and explode into news.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Keeping Up With The Jones Addiction
The same fellow who said "America is addicted to oil" got locked in himself, seeing as how he is an oil baron and all.Big mama oil addiction is the mother of many little junior and little miss addictions:
"Oil is also crucial to the drugs and chemicals industries and is a strategic asset for the military."(Independent, emphasis added). All the goodie two shoes who have been so self righteous about putting crack users in jail with hundred year sentences (many, many thousands of crack users have been dealt with that way) are now going to ponder their addictions exactly in the same manner that the "crackos" did.
Here is a clue: the first phase is denial.
What? Addiction to oil, addiction to drugs made from oil, addiction to chemicals that make anything from plastics to carcinogens aplenty, and addiction to wars to inflate the addiction to ego.
Yep, you got it all and it is easy to see a surge of denial coming on that will dwarf the Nile perennial floods.
I left out some inflammatory language in the article linked to above, which is not common for this blog, so lets flame on:
The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.(Independent link above, emphasis added). So says the "world's top energy economist".
Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.
The Matrix of Plunder
We have been discussing over the past months how the robber barons vanished, not by geographical movement, but by morphing into the plunder barons, aided by the removal of laws that had made certain types of robbery a crime.There is a smooth technique being used whereby the treasury money of the people is plundered, and those doing the plundering may even get distinguished service medals:
Wall Street banks are reaping outsized profits by trading with the Federal Reserve, raising questions about whether the central bank is driving hard enough bargains in its dealings with private sector counterparties, officials and industry executives say.(Financial Times [Wayback Machine version]). Isn't that convenient?
The Fed has emerged as one of Wall Street’s biggest customers during the financial crisis, buying massive amounts of securities to help stabilise the markets. In some cases, such as the market for mortgage-backed securities, the Fed buys more bonds than any other party.
The main functionary of plunder of the American people should not be forgotten in all this, lest we consider the problem to be a simple one to solve, and misunderstimate the nature of the disease we face and who is doing it to us.
One insider who is wise to it was on Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning. Dylan Ratigan, who has a program called Morning Meeting on MSNBC, is wise to some of the schemes that are plundering the United States and he points it out.
Sarah Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
The similarity Sarah and Mahmoud have is getting all mavericky, we pointed out.
There are some others who are warming to these comparisons:
Is Sarah Palin America's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The two differ in many key respects, of course, but it is remarkable how similar they are. There are uncanny parallels in their biographies, their domestic politics and the way they present themselves -- even in their rocky relationships with party elders.(Juan Cole, Salon). It is not flattering when one thinks about it and realizes that Ahmadinejad is putting his political rivals on trial for trying to show that the elections were rigged.
Both are former governors of a northwest frontier state with great natural beauty (in Ahmadinejad's case, Ardabil). Both are known for saying things that produce a classic Scooby-Doo double take in their audiences. Both appeal to a sort of wounded nationalism, speaking of the sacrifice of dedicated troops for an often feckless public, and identifying themselves with the common soldier. They are vigilant against foreign designs on their countries and insist on energy and other independence.
Some of these similarities are lost on people here in the U.S. who think Ahmadinejad is progressive but Palin is not.
Neither one of them even comes close.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Killing Growth & Cancer Ideology
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| Growniverse |
Consider one form of growth for growth's sake, overpopulation, and the utter disease that is.
One American author noticed and said:
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.(Edward Abbey). A psychologist James Hillman and a novelist and cultural critic Michael Ventura got together and wrote a book about the subject which we discussed here in a previous post, which criticizes growth for growth's sake.
We are also rebels, to some degree, to the notion that the universe either has or is a big, big and getting bigger cancer, and therefore have called for a cure.
Thus, in the abstract, since killing growth is a reality, and so is healthy growth, any discussion of growth that comes down on the side of growth for growth's sake is very suspect, and is probably a disease.
And even as we speak, there has been a lot of suspicion about the economic rhetoric being used in the disease that has brought down millions of people: economic growth for growth's sake.
Economists, when the disease began to be obvious, coined the phrase "too big to fail", but even that statement seems to be exactly what any cancer would say once it reached certain dimensions.
The middle class was not to big to fail, they were allowed to fail with loss of homes, jobs, pensions, health care, and the American dream turned into a nightmare; but for the elite on Wall Street the cure turned out to be big bonuses.
I mean really, you growthers (plunderers), should note that even the Viagra people warn you to call your doctor under certain conditions, because they know for a "medical certainty" you can only "screw over" so many people before somebody is going to try to get even.
911 Conspiracy Theorists Take A Hit - 4
The anthrax bug attached to the 9/11 attacks just will not go away, and of course it should not go away until some decent detective work is done.A prior post here discussed an event that undermined the whole FBI "story" and which caused the shut down of the "secure" government lab where the weapons grade anthrax used during the 9/11 daze was said to have originated and to have been stored.
Now a congressional website has a piece concerning New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt's take on this entire sordid mess. Holt is a well known scientist himself:
Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today met with a committee of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and asked them to conduct a thorough, wide-ranging investigation of the FBI’s scientific methods in response to the 2001 anthrax attacks. The attacks evidently originated from a postal box in Holt’s Central New Jersey congressional district, killing five, and disrupting the lives and livelihoods of many of his constituents. The attacks greatly contributed to the national fear of terrorism and affected the response of our nation to these attacks. Holt has consistently raised questions about the federal investigation into the attacks. Earlier this year, Holt introduced the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act of 2009, legislation that would establish a Congressional commission to investigate the attacks and the federal government’s response to and investigation of the attacks. The bipartisan commission would make recommendations to the President and Congress on how the country can best prevent and respond to any future bioterrorism attack.(House Website @Wayback Machine, emphasis added). The same sentiments are felt by people in New York who are trying to get an initiative on the next election ballot that would start a new investigation into other aspect of the 9/11 Commission investigation.
“Simply stated, our government – and specifically, the FBI – suffers from a credibility gap on this issue,” Holt said. “Answering all the doubts and questions about the handling of this case is beyond the purview of this panel, which is why I’ve introduced legislation that would create a national commission to ‘investigate the investigation.’ In the meantime, this panel has an opportunity to answer some of the key questions that I and so many other Americans have about the science behind the FBI’s investigation.”
Even the lead commissioners on that commission say they made incorrect conclusions because they were lied to and because testimony from individuals who were being tortured was used to reach their conclusion.
In the anthrax case no one has been indicted or prosecuted, the government has been sued and lost the case over its botched investigation; and the next person they accused before they had to shut down their very loose government WMD lab where the anthrax was said to have come from, "committed suicide" (same story for other witnesses too) or didn't, depending on which people involved in the investigation you believe.
Professional Architects, members of The American Institute of Architects (AIA), were in Washington D.C. questioning other aspects of the investigation and talking to congress recently.