Friday, March 27, 2015

Once Upon A Time In The West

The Earth is my bitch
The major movement taking place in our current civilization is also the greatest danger to security, that is, if the President and Pentagon are to be believed.

Under the ongoing storm of corruption, people often feel that they do not have time to figure out what to believe.

Because, every level of life in Petroleum Civilization suffers from corruption.

In the sense that the U.S. congress cannot agree as to whether or not we should accelerate the world forward into oblivion, starve "the government of the people, by the people, and for the people," deny the fast approaching horsemen of the apocalypse, deny oblivion by ecocide, facilitate the suicide of yet another society, or even the big one: help with the extinction of the human species.

It all turns, according the leader of the pact, on whether God is destroying all the animals, trees, rivers, reservoirs, environment and climate, or whether an ostensibly less-wise humanity is (Inhofe's One Man Troofiness Crusade).

Anyway, on today's date in 2009, I posted a piece about The Corrupting of America, in a context where innocent children were being falsely convicted and sent to private prisons to be screwed, literally and figuratively:

The Corrupting of America

Is it any wonder that a nation, which for close to 100 years has increasingly relied on deceit to push policy, would eventually collapse into corruption?

Wherever you look, whenever you hear, and when you read in current news there is corruption. Our local officials, military generals, financial officials like Madoff, election officials, and on and on, are exhibiting the type of ho-hum everyday corruption a banana republic would have.

Our behaviour defines what we are, and that behaviour says we are becoming a corrupt banana republic:
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said today that it will overturn the convictions of up to 1,200 juveniles in the wake of a corruption scandal that is sending two county judges to jail for more than seven years.

Last month, veteran Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan pleaded guilty to taking $2.6 million in kickbacks to send juveniles to privately run detention centers.
(USA Today, emphasis added [it was censured, so here is the Wayback Machine Copy]). Judges sending kids to jail so corrupt private prisons can profit. That is as low as a banana republic gets.

The FBI director testified this week that the FBI has thousands of corruption investigations going on.

He said that the FBI is saturated with corruption investigations, and has already prosecuted thousands of officials for corruption.

He said that the FBI is running out of resources with which to investigate and prosecute such corruption.

This daily corruption plague has now reached into The US Department of Treasury and again into your tax dollars, to wit:
A top bank regulator has been placed on leave pending a Treasury Department investigation into regulators' approval of backdated cash infusions for troubled thrifts.

The Office of Thrift Supervision said Thursday that its acting director, Scott Polakoff, was placed on leave "pending a review by the Department of the Treasury of the OTS' August 2008 actions related to post-period capital contributions."
(Huffington Post). A year ago in May 2008, under Bush II regime Treasury Secretary Paulson (who was able to receive over a hundred million dollars tax free for coming to Treasury) it became obvious to The Office of Thrift Supervision that IndyBank was going down.

For some reason Scott Polakoff backdated capital infusions that added up to a thousand times more than the AIG bonuses.

That "small" (by comparison to this $18 billion) AIG amount was enough to drive the nation into anger. Will there be a thousand times more anger now?

Anyway, back to the story. This backdating of cash infusions by Polakoff would allow the IndyBank people to spend the $18 billion in the way they wanted to before the FDIC attained the authority to take over and freeze assets and accounts.

They could selectively take care of "special people" but not others. They could pick and choose as if they had done it "a while back".

It does not look good to say the least. Actually no corruption or deceit by the government looks good does it?


Once Upon A Time In The West
by Dire Straits, (lyrics), excerpt:

"Yes it's no use saying that you don't know nothing
It's still gonna get you if you don't do something
Sitting on a fence that's a dangerous course
Oh, you could even catch a bullet from the peace-keeping force
Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest
Oh yeah, once upon a time in the west"




The next post in this series is here.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Inside Job and/or Conspiracy?

Reconstructing a narrative from its pieces
Some tragic events are a metaphor, an epitome, a simile, an analogy, or similar iconic representation of a larger reality.

Germanwings Airbus A320, Flight 4U 9525, was the scene of a mass-murder according to a French prosecutor.

In a news conference, it was revealed that the German co-pilot intentionally crashed the aircraft (Germanwings flight 4U9525 deliberately flown into mountain, says prosecutor).

Thus, we know that it was an inside job, a suicide, and a mass-murder.

We know that attempts were made to stop it, however, the cockpit door was too strong to get through, the external access mechanism was said to have been turned off, and/or a manual lock had been set, by the co-pilot.

So, the mass-murder could not be thwarted by the senior pilot.

But, was a conspiracy involved, a conspiracy that was engendered by converting the co-pilot's mind into a toxic cognitive machine?

Or, to put it into the vernacular, was someone whispering into the co-pilot's ear during his daily life, or had his mind been hijacked by pathogens a la Oil-Qaeda: The Deadliest Parasite Of Civilization?

I want to use this tragic event as representing (metaphor, epitome, simile, analogy, etc.) another tragic event that Dredd Blog has posted about time and again (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact, 2, 3, 4, 5).

This airliner mass-murder-suicide event is like the mass-murder-suicide that is taking place within current world civilization.

The first similarity is that these realities are nearly impossible for the majority to comprehend and therefore find credible, even though notable historians have discovered the evidence:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
(A Study of History,  by Arnold J. Toynbee). Psychologists have been puzzled by this phenomenon as applied to Oil-Qaeda:
06:28 - "the genetic argument allows us the luxury of ignoring past and present historical and social factors. In the words of Louis Menand who wrote in the New Yorker very astutely:
“It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on Earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere.”
... which is a good way to put it. So the genetic argument is simply a cop-out that allows us to ignore the social and economic and political factors that in fact underlie many troublesome behaviors" (Dr. Maté).

07:25 - "addictions are usually considered to be a drug related issue, but looking at it more broadly, I find that addiction is any behavior that is associated with craving for temporary relief and with long term negative consequences along with an impairment of control over it so that the person wishes to give it up or promises to, but can't follow through" (Dr. Maté).

08:10 - "The addiction to oil ... at least to the wealth and to the products made accessible to us by oil ... look at the negative consequences on the environment we are destroying the very Earth that we inhabit for the sake of that addiction. Now these addictions are far more devastating in the social consequences than the cocaine or heroin habits of my ... patients. Yet they are rewarded and considered to be respectable. The tobacco company executive that shows a higher profit will get a much bigger reward ... doesn't face any negative consequences legally or otherwise ... in fact is a respected member of the board of several other corporations ... but tobacco smoke related diseases kill 5.5 million people around the world every year. In the United States they kill 400,000 people a year" (Dr. Maté).

09:05 - "And these people are addicted to what? To profit, to such a degree are they addicted that they are actually in denial about the impact of their activities, which is typical for addicts, is denial. And that is the respectable one. It is respectable to be addicted to profit no matter what the cost. So what is acceptable and what is respectable is a highly arbitrary phenomenon in our society. And it seems like the greater the harm the more respectable the addiction" (Dr. Maté).

09:35 - "There is a general myth that drugs in themselves are addictive, in fact the "War on Drugs" is predicated on the idea that if you interdict the sources of drugs you can deal with addiction that way. Now, if you understand addiction in the broader sense we see that nothing in itself is addictive. No substance, no drug is by itself addictive. And no behavior is by itself addictive"  (Dr. Maté).
(The "It's In Your Genes" Myth, quoting psychotherapists in a video). Without specific training or education it is not easy for anyone, even psychologists, to understand toxic thought in a toxic mind (i.e. psychopaths).

It is even more difficult when a trusted insider, a "co-" is involved ... something like the Judas syndrome.

It is also sometimes impossible for the perpetrators to understand their condition, or do anything about it, even if they should somehow suspect it:
... [Whitman] killed a receptionist with the butt of his rifle. Two families of tourists came up the stairwell; he shot at them at point-blank range. Then he began to fire indiscriminately from the deck at people below. The first woman he shot was pregnant. As her boyfriend knelt to help her, Whitman shot him as well. He shot pedestrians in the street and an ambulance driver who came to rescue them.

The evening before, Whitman had sat at his typewriter and composed a suicide note:
I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.
By the time the police shot him dead, Whitman had killed 13 people and wounded 32 more. The story of his rampage dominated national headlines the next day. And when police went to investigate his home for clues, the story became even stranger: in the early hours of the morning on the day
A religious problem too ...
of the shooting, he had murdered his mother and stabbed his wife to death in her sleep.
It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight … I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationa[l]ly pinpoint any specific reason for doing this …
Along with the shock of the murders lay another, more hidden, surprise: the juxtaposition of his aberrant actions with his unremarkable personal life. Whitman was an Eagle Scout and a former marine, studied architectural engineering at the University of Texas, and briefly worked as a bank teller and volunteered as a scoutmaster for Austin’s Boy Scout Troop 5. As a child, he’d scored 138 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test, placing in the 99th percentile. So after his shooting spree from the University of Texas Tower, everyone wanted answers.

For that matter, so did Whitman. He requested in his suicide note that an autopsy be performed to determine if something had changed in his brain — because he suspected it had.
I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt [overcome by] overwhelming violent impulses. After one session I never saw the Doctor again, and since then I have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail.
Whitman’s body was taken to the morgue, his skull was put under the bone saw, and the medical examiner lifted the brain from its vault. He discovered that Whitman’s brain harbored a tumor the diameter of a nickel. This tumor, called a glioblastoma, had blossomed from beneath a structure called the thalamus, impinged on the hypothalamus, and compressed a third region called the amygdala.
(Atlantic Monthly, emphasis added). The main problem people have is that we tend to reason about these issues using logic, sanity, reasonableness, and other good dynamics, as a backdrop.

When analysing madness?!
Toxic Bridge: Like Oil-Qaeda he deliberately hid things

Thus, sound judgment is usually removed from the analytical equation.

So, from the very beginning incapacitation sets in, and mystery is all that can follow.

Like the little girl who is told that her mommy has a boyfriend besides her daddy, or that her daddy has a girlfriend besides her mommy, it does not compute.

And is, therefore, rejected forthwith by a culturally automated subconscious circuit (Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?).

After all, notice what our own government says about Oil-Qaeda's number one product:
"Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy."
(The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil). In other words, the justification is: "mommy and daddy say we will die if we don't have our oil."

Thus, as the sea level rises, the sixth mass extinction proceeds unabated, the environment is increasingly poisoned, and the oil companies that make up Oil-Qaeda prosper into fabulous wealth (as more and more "others" become impoverished), the people exclaim "our pilots would never betray us" (The Elections of Pontius Pilots, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Are Some or All Comets Pieces of an Exploded Planet?

The Pebble comet
Is nomenclature important in astronomy and cosmology?

Not to some scientists and science writers.

Sometimes it seems like it never has been important (Modern Evolutionary Synthesis).

The word "pebble" was recently used to describe what a comet was made of.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog follows science stories as a continuing study of the Exploded Planet Hypothesis (EPH) or Exploded Planet Theory (see Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 40, Exploded Planet Hypothesis, Weekend Rebel Science Excursion, Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 11).

So, the use of the word "pebble" to describe what a comet was made of caught my eye:
During its brief mission, Philae collected some key data, including images that show the entire comet may be made of pebbles, scientists said at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston this week.

If confirmed, scientists will have to rethink how pebbles as big as some seen on 67P could form so far from the sun.
(Comet Made of Pebbles, emphasis added). My recollection of the meaning of "pebble" created images of the banks of beautiful streams and even some beaches.

So, I took another look at the definition of the word:
Definition of pebble in English:

noun

A small stone made smooth and round by the action of water or sand.

Example sentences:

We had sediments, river mud, pebbles rounded by water action, even the remains of aquatic plants on the site.

It's a lovely place and we walked across stepping stones and skimmed pebbles in the river.

They consist of particulate rocks that vary in size from sand to pebbles and cobbles.
(Oxford Dictionary, emphasis added, cf. pebble). This is the type of situation found repeatedly by our spacecraft.

Regular readers know that the Dredd Blog hypothesis, which is an extension of the EPH, is that one or more planets were destroyed and or damaged when the attempt to establish a Dyson Grid or Sphere failed:
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 ...
(Exploded Planet Hypothesis). We are constantly discovering new evidence of "bombardment" from asteroids and meteorites that have damaged all planets that we observe in our solar system.

And, that our solar system seems to be missing some planets (World's largest asteroid impacts (~300-600 mya) found in central Australia, Is Jupiter a Planet Destroyer?).

Further, some of the planets (including Earth) may now be missing life forms which they once had (Nitrogen / Nitrates on Mars) before one or more planets were destroyed by explosions that sent damaging debris throughout the entire solar system (e.g. craters, asteroids, moons in retrograde orbits, reverse rotation of Venus, strata on asteroids, etc.).

Thus, we can remain scientific as we speculate about whether the comet with pebbles and sand all over it is a chunk of the remains of a river bed, or part of a pebble strewn beach.

Once part of an ancient planet that was somehow destroyed in an accident of monumental proportions.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The Question Is: How Much Acceleration Is Involved In SLR?

Downtown Tomorrow
I. Introduction

The question is not "is sea level rise accelerating?"

The consensus is that sea level rise (SLR) is accelerating.

The answer, then, is based on a three-fold spectrum: "how much was there in the past?", "how much is there now?", and "how much will there be in the future?"

Any historical or current data is ok to use to build upon, because we really need to use a known base from which to calculate prospective acceleration.

II. Data Sources & Reasons

To set the stage for the reasoning, which is basic to the foundation of the software architecture currently being constructed and enhanced, I am using the following posts and papers from various sites, to establish the gist of the initial factors involved: Wikipedia, Current Sea Level Rise, Is sea level rise accelerating?, Sea Level Rise Accelerating Faster Than Thought, Discovery, Nature, Study Reveals Scary New Facts About Sea Level Rise, Gulf Stream Impact, Exceptional twentieth-century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation.

The purpose for using the three-fold spectrum, mentioned above, is to develop a potential for a narrower, and more tightly focused solution.

When contemplating the writing of software algorithms, which can reasonably project expectations of future SLR, it helps to not only properly design the initial system, but further, that design should also facilitate ongoing improvements and enhancements as they become necessary.

IMO, that involves a data driven system, with data entry windows, which are used to more easily update the associated database.

A database from which the current values are loaded into the computer by the software, where the software then uses that dynamic data to make increasingly accurate SLR projections.

Any software models of future SLR are speculation engines, but speculation is what all weather forecasting models do quite well now, all things considered.

III. Basic Approach

The basic approach I took was to first establish four melt zones for the three melt locations, which locations are "non-polar", "Greenland", and "Antarctica."
Fig. 1 (click to enlarge)

The latter two are the major future sources of water from melting ice.

Those four melt zones were described in earlier posts as "Coastal", "Inland 1", "Inland 2", and "No Melt" (Will This Float Your Boat - 7).

In the evolving model, each melt zone has its own beginning phase, rate of delay, rate of melt, rate of acceleration of melt, volume of ice, and total possible contribution to SLR.

Those factors are shown in Fig. 1, where Xn is the beginning (CO2 emission) and delay phase of the sequence, triggered by an initial CO2 emission temperature increase.

Then Yn represents the end of the delay phase, if any, as well as the beginning of the melt phase.

Finally, Zn represents the end of the melt phase.

So, X1,Y1, and Z1 represent the Coastal Zone, X2,Y2,and Z2 represent the Inland 1 Zone, X3,Y3, and Z3 represent the Inland 2 Zone, and X4,Y4, and Z4 represent the No Melt Zone.
Fig. 2 (click to enlarge)

As you can see, at any time the four zones could be in separate phases, or could be in the same phase.

They can also be in the same phase at a particular time, then change to separate phases as the relevant environmental factors change.

Each zone's phase sequencing depends on warming, delay, ice volume, and acceleration, each as they impact upon that particular zone.

The same goes for the three ice source locations (Non-polar, Greenland, Antarctica), however, not to the same degree (locations overall are generally more stable than zones).

For example, the Non-polar zone (non polar glaciers, snow capped peaks, high altitude frozen lakes, etc.) went into AGW induced melt phases that affect SLR first, Greenland second, and Antarctica last.

Where the math efficiency comes in is directly applying the volume of melt (500 cu. km) to the total volume of SLR for a zone.
Fig. 3 (click to enlarge)

Fig. 2 has the SLR for each location and sub-location.

That is, the volume in terms of km3 can be directly related to SLR by percentage.

Dividing the annual 500 km3 of current melt by the total volume for those locations (e.g. Greenland, 75%) renders the SLR value immediately (as shown in Fig. 3), but the reality is only grasped when it is projected out at that rate of acceleration.

Fig. 4 (click to enlarge)
I graphed it (Fig. 4) at the raw 14.87% acceleration rate to show how the initial figures can throw us off.

That is because they seem insignificant when viewed without the concept of acceleration applied to them.

The initial low numbers are deceptive, because, at that raw acceleration rate, a three foot SLR (catastrophic!) takes place in only about ten years, and a 21.49 SLR takes place in only about 30 years.

And, as is indicated on the graph, that only includes Greenland, not Antarctica which has about ten times more ice than Greenland.

Thus, as this post declares, the rate of acceleration must be known, and applied circumspectly, if mature risk management and risk aversion is to be realized.

The 14.87% rate is based on a melt of 250 km3  in 2009 becoming 500 km3 at the end of 2013 (only five years) as measured directly by the Cryosat-2 satellite.

That is why the zone concept, with altering rates of acceleration of melt, can implement a more realistic view of the impact that acceleration has on the amount of future melt.

A. The Rates of Melt & Acceleration

There are four basic rates of melt: "fast", "medium", "low", and "lowest."

In each zone in general, rates at first will tend to be: Coastal=fast, Inland 1=medium, Inland 2=low, and No melt=lowest.
Fig. 5 (click to enlarge)

Also, those rates can change as a zone phases through to reach the downhill slope of melt (Yn - Zn), especially as it nears the end of its ice melt.

Coastal zones are initially rated as "fast" because they are subject to warmer water and winds, since they are close to the ocean, nearer to sea level, and away from cooler, high altitudes.

In the locations with by far the most ice (Greenland, Antarctica), those factors change more slowly, on a longer time-scale, as we move inland and upward.

That is because, generally, as the height above sea level increases the ice is thicker, as we move up to higher elevations with colder temperatures.

Of course there are exceptions, such as when Greenland surface melt takes place even in the higher elevations ("Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12" NASA 2012).

Compare Fig. 4 with Fig. 5 to see how the model uses zones to normalize the raw acceleration rate, converting it to a zone specific acceleration, making acceleration fit the real world scenario more accurately.

IV. Selecting The Zones by Topography Factors

The four zones were selected based on the notion that the melt, for the most part, is moving from the coast into the interiors of Greenland and Antarctica.

Should that reality change at any time in any location (volcano, earthquake changed heights, etc.), the database can be updated.

Then, the software program can process the newest data to generate more current projections.

V. Selecting Acceleration Rates

The initial values should be produced by a combination of historical values with current values, AND likewise should be produced with an understanding that neither the past world, nor today's world, axiomatically control the future world.

All three (past, present, and future) are distinct, each with its own peculiarities and dynamics.

Future acceleration, then, is a product of how the future is going to be different from the past, and from the present, not how it is going to be the same.

And finally, keep in mind that acceleration, by definition, is an increase over the present rate.

That said, there are times when acceleration can be very near zero, and there are even times when there can be deceleration, so do not confuse the two (Good Nomenclature: A Matter of Life and Death).

Frequent updates of data, bringing the database very current and up to date, will insure that any scenario, and subsequent software-model projection based on it, is done on a robust location by location, and zone by zone analysis.

VI. Selecting the Initial Phase Values

I intend to select the initial phase based upon global temperature data compared to and fused with global SLR data (in terms of seeding the initial data).

In other words, the global-temperature-increases data and graphs will also be used to determine when the initial SLR increases took place year by year.

The initial global warming beginnings (Xn), the subsequent beginning rates of SLR, and finally the rates of acceleration of SLR, will be based on a common sense analysis of both historical and present values.

VII. Conclusion

Having done the above, if the projections cause someone to mess their pants, so be it.

Now, let me go finish the coding so we can try it out and discuss it some more (The Evolution of Models, 2, 3, 4).

The next post in this series is here.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Choose Your Trances Carefully - 4

How big is a cube 500 kilometres on each side?

It is about the same as a cube 311 miles on each side.

It would reach past the International Space Station orbit (258 miles) by 53 miles.

So what is that big?

The cube of ice melting each year from Greenland & Antarctica ice sheets is going to be that big, but is already causing the sea level around us to rise.

It is the number one danger to national security, according to the President and the Pentagon (What Do You Mean - World Civilization? - 2).

Sea Rising3
So, why don't we hear as much about the annual ice cube melt into the oceans?

Is McTell News irrelevant to the real world, and only interested in the world that the Plutocracy, the Corporatist 1%, yes, that Oil-Qaeda wants us to know about?

That is the way The Father of Spin put it (The Ways of Bernays).

The "free press" morphed into presstitutes long ago, and they now walk the streets peddling the wares of the Epigovernment, instead of the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

"Houston, we have a problem."
"How quaint" and "let them eat cake" won't last long.

The deniers are only experiencing the "freedom" a puppy thinks it has as it runs full speed away from its handler.

So happy to be "free" --until the end of the leash looms large.

An abrupt change is inevitable when the ice is melting at such an unprecedented rate, and especially so when that melt is accelerating (Will This Float Your Boat - 7).

Take that ice cube to your next Senate snowball B.S. session Senator Inhofe (Inhofe's One Man Troofiness Crusade).

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

We are the Asteroid ...