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#Post#: 923--------------------------------------------------
Future Earth
By: AGelbert Date: April 14, 2014, 5:15 pm
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#Post#: 944--------------------------------------------------
Re: Future Earth
By: AGelbert Date: April 23, 2014, 10:45 pm
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#Post#: 1144--------------------------------------------------
Re: Future Earth
By: AGelbert Date: May 18, 2014, 9:06 pm
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Jump to 4:50 where Jeff starts. [img width=110
height=100]
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Western University
Published on Oct 21, 2012 Agelbert NOTE: But prophetic from
then until now and on into the future.
Consider today's sociopolitical landscape and it's likely you'll
note the environment and the economy don't exactly go hand in
hand.
In reality, the two are inextricable and, increasingly, need to
be treated as such, according to Jeff Rubin, the award-winning
economist who, along with David Suzuki, wraps up a cross-Canada
tour addressing the juncture of the two issues on October 18,
2012 in Alumni Hall.
Rubin, former chief economist and chief strategist for CIBC
World Markets, is the author of The End of Growth, a national
bestseller. He was among the first economists to predict rising
oil prices more than a decade ago and is one of the most
sought-after energy experts.
Suzuki, an environmental activist, academic and broadcaster, is
perhaps best known for The Nature of Things on CBC television.
He has written more than 40 books and is known as a leader in
sustainable ecology.
The End of Growth Eco Tour came out of a meeting earlier this
year in which the two realized their goals of addressing climate
change and sustainability were the same, despite an approach
from different disciplines.
The event was sponsored by The Bookstore at Western and the USC.
#Post#: 1159--------------------------------------------------
Re: Future Earth
By: AGelbert Date: May 19, 2014, 6:10 pm
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#Post#: 1166--------------------------------------------------
Earth has a Future; BUT do HOMO SAPS have a Future on Earth?
By: AGelbert Date: May 19, 2014, 9:21 pm
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Time to outgrow the Corporate LIARS that run the Fascist SHOW to
keep people INFANTALIZED in the USA and IGNORING REALITY or
there will be NO FUTURE! Being WILLFULLY IGNORANT is BAD FOR
YOUR HEALTH!
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>:(
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#Post#: 1171--------------------------------------------------
Re: Future Earth
By: AGelbert Date: May 20, 2014, 7:19 pm
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Mission Blue: Sylvia Earle’s Plan to Save the Ocean
EcoWatch | May 20, 2014
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#Post#: 1182--------------------------------------------------
Re: Future Earth
By: AGelbert Date: May 22, 2014, 6:10 pm
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Published on Thursday, May 22, 2014 by TomDispatch
The 95% Doctrine: Climate Change as a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Is climate change a crime against humanity? Let's go with...
Yes.
by Tom Engelhardt
The fossil fuel industry is waging a war on the planet's
ecosystem and her people. It's not only unnecessary and obscene,
but should be considered a crime.
Who could forget? At the time, in the fall of 2002, there was
such a drumbeat of “information” from top figures in the Bush
administration about the secret Iraqi program to develop weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) and so endanger the United States. And
who -- other than a few suckers -- could have doubted that
Saddam Hussein was eventually going to get a nuclear weapon? The
only question, as our vice president suggested on “Meet the
Press,” was: Would it take one year or five? And he wasn’t alone
in his fears, since there was plenty of proof of what was going
on.
For starters, there were those “specially designed aluminum
tubes”
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/>[img width=40
height=40]
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/>that the Iraqi autocrat had ordered as components for
centrifuges to enrich uranium in his thriving nuclear weapons
program. Reporters Judith Miller and Michael Gordon hit the
front page of the New York Times with that story on September 8,
2002.
Then there were those “mushroom clouds”
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[img
width=40
height=40]
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/>that Condoleezza Rice, our national security advisor, was so
publicly worried about -- the ones destined to rise over
American cities if we didn’t do something to stop Saddam. As she
fretted in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer on that same
September 8th, “[W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom
cloud.” No, indeed, and nor, it turned out, did Congress!
And just in case you weren’t anxious enough about the looming
Iraqi threat, there were those unmanned aerial vehicles --
Saddam’s drones!
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[img
width=40
height=40]
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/>that could be armed with chemical or biological WMD from his
arsenal and flown over America’s East Coast cities with
unimaginable results. ::) President George W. Bush
HTML http://www.u.arizona.edu/~patricia/cute-collection/smileys/lying-smiley.gif<br
/>went on TV to talk about them and congressional votes were
changed in favor of war thanks to hair-raising secret
administration briefings about them on Capitol Hill.
In the end, it turned out that Saddam had no weapons program, no
nuclear bomb in the offing, no centrifuges for those aluminum
pipes, no biological or chemical weapons caches, and no drone
aircraft to deliver his nonexistent weapons of mass destruction
(nor any ships capable of putting those nonexistent robotic
planes in the vicinity of the U.S. coast). But what if he had?
Who wanted to take that chance? Not Vice President Dick Cheney,
certainly. Inside the Bush administration he propounded
something that journalist Ron Suskind later dubbed the “one
percent doctrine.” Its essence was this:
if there was even a 1% chance of an attack on the United States,
especially involving weapons of mass destruction, it must be
dealt with as if it were a 95%-100% certainty.
Here’s the curious thing: if you look back on America's
apocalyptic fears of destruction during the first 14 years of
this century, they largely involved three city-busting weapons
that were fantasies of Washington’s fertile imperial
imagination. There was that “bomb” of Saddam’s, which provided
part of the pretext for a much-desired invasion of Iraq. There
was the “bomb” of the mullahs, the Iranian fundamentalist regime
that we’ve just loved to hate ever since they repaid us, in
1979, for the CIA’s overthrow of an elected government in 1953
and the installation of the Shah by taking the staff of the U.S.
embassy in Tehran hostage. If you believed the news from
Washington and Tel Aviv, the Iranians, too, were perilously
close to producing a nuclear weapon or at least repeatedly on
the verge of the verge of doing so. The production of that
“Iranian bomb” has, for years, been a focus of American policy
in the Middle East, the “brink” beyond which war has endlessly
loomed. And yet there was and is no Iranian bomb, nor evidence
that the Iranians were or are on the verge of producing one.
Finally, of course, there was al-Qaeda’s bomb, the “dirty bomb”
that organization might somehow assemble, transport to the U.S.,
and set off in an American city, or the “loose nuke,” maybe from
the Pakistani arsenal, with which it might do the same. This is
the third fantasy bomb that has riveted American attention in
these last years, even though there is less evidence for or
likelihood of its imminent existence than of the Iraqi and
Iranian ones.
To sum up, the strange thing about
end-of-the-world-as-we’ve-known-it scenarios from Washington,
post-9/11, is this: with a single exception, they involved only
non-existent weapons of mass destruction. A fourth weapon -- one
that existed but played a more modest role in Washington’s
fantasies -- was North Korea’s perfectly real bomb, which in
these years the North Koreans were incapable of delivering to
American shores.
The "Good News" About Climate Change
In a world in which nuclear weapons remain a crucial coin of the
realm when it comes to global power, none of these examples
could quite be classified as 0% dangers. Saddam had once had a
nuclear program, just not in 2002-2003, and also chemical
weapons, which he used against Iranian troops in his 1980s war
with their country (with the help of targeting information from
the U.S. military) and against his own Kurdish population. The
Iranians might (or might not) have been preparing their nuclear
program for a possible weapons breakout capability, and al-Qaeda
certainly would not have rejected a loose nuke, if one were
available (though that organization’s ability to use it would
still have been questionable).
In the meantime, the giant arsenals of WMD in existence, the
American, Russian, Chinese, Israeli, Pakistani, and Indian ones
that might actually have left a crippled or devastated planet
behind, remained largely off the American radar screen. In the
case of the Indian arsenal, the Bush administration actually
lent an indirect hand to its expansion. >:( So it was
twenty-first-century typical when President Obama,
HTML http://www.u.arizona.edu/~patricia/cute-collection/smileys/lying-smiley.gif<br
/>trying to put Russia's recent actions in the Ukraine in
perspective, said, “Russia is a regional power that is
threatening some of its immediate neighbors. I continue to be
much more concerned when it comes to our security with the
prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in
Manhattan.”
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/>[img width=40
height=40]
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/>
Once again, an American president was focused on a bomb that
would raise a mushroom cloud over Manhattan. And which bomb,
exactly, was that, Mr. President?
Of course, there was a weapon of mass destruction that could
indeed do staggering damage to or someday simply drown New York
City, Washington D.C., Miami, and other East coast cities.
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It had
its own efficient delivery systems -- no nonexistent drones or
Islamic fanatics needed. And unlike the Iraqi, Iranian, or
al-Qaeda bombs, it was guaranteed to be delivered to our shores
unless preventative action was taken soon. No one needed to hunt
for its secret facilities. It was a weapons system whose
production plants sat in full view right here in the United
States, as well as in Europe, China, and India, as well as in
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and other energy states.
So here’s a question I’d like any of you living in or visiting
Wyoming to ask the former vice president, should you run into
him in a state that’s notoriously thin on population: How would
he feel about acting preventively, if instead of a 1% chance
that some country with weapons of mass destruction might use
them against us, there was at least a 95% -- and likely as not a
100% -- chance of them being set off on our soil? Let’s be
conservative, since the question is being posed to a well-known
neoconservative. Ask him whether he would be in favor of
pursuing the 95% doctrine the way he was the 1% version.
After all, thanks to a grim report in 2013 from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we know that there is
now a 95%-100% likelihood that “human influence has been the
dominant cause of the observed warming [of the planet] since the
mid-20th century.” We know as well that the warming of the
planet -- thanks to the fossil fuel system we live by and the
greenhouse gases it deposits in the atmosphere -- is already
doing real damage to our world and specifically to the United
States, as a recent scientific report released by the White
House made clear. We also know, with grimly reasonable
certainty, what kinds of damage those 95%-100% odds are likely
to translate into in the decades, and even centuries, to come if
nothing changes radically: a temperature rise by century’s end
that could exceed 10 degrees Fahrenheit, cascading species
extinctions, staggeringly severe droughts across larger parts of
the planet (as in the present long-term drought in the American
West and Southwest), far more severe rainfall across other
areas, more intense storms causing far greater damage,
devastating heat waves on a scale no one in human history has
ever experienced, masses of refugees, rising global food prices,
and among other catastrophes on the human agenda, rising sea
levels that will drown coastal areas of the planet.
From two scientific studies just released, for example, comes
the news that the West Antarctic ice sheet, one of the great ice
accumulations on the planet, has now begun a process of melting
and collapse that could, centuries from now, raise world sea
levels by a nightmarish 10 to 13 feet. That mass of ice is,
according to the lead authors of one of the studies, already in
“irreversible retreat,” which means -- no matter what acts are
taken from now on -- a future death sentence for some of the
world's great cities. (And that’s without even the melting of
the Greenland ice shield, not to speak of the rest of the ice in
Antarctica.)
All of this, of course, will happen mainly because we humans
continue to burn fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate and so
annually deposit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at record
levels. In other words, we’re talking about weapons of mass
destruction of a new kind. While some of their effects are
already in play, the planetary destruction that nuclear weapons
could cause almost instantaneously, or at least (given “nuclear
winter” scenarios) within months, will, with climate change,
take decades, if not centuries, to deliver its full, devastating
planetary impact.
When we speak of WMD, we usually think of weapons -- nuclear,
biological, or chemical -- that are delivered in a measurable
moment in time. Consider climate change, then, a WMD on a
particularly long fuse, already lit and there for any of us to
see. Unlike the feared Iranian bomb or the Pakistani arsenal,
you don’t need the CIA or the NSA to ferret such "weaponry" out.
From oil wells to fracking structures, deep sea drilling rigs to
platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, the machinery that produces
this kind of WMD and ensures that it is continuously delivered
to its planetary targets is in plain sight. Powerful as it may
be, destructive as it will be, those who control it have faith
that, being so long developing, it can remain in the open
without panicking populations or calling any kind of destruction
down on them.
Continued in next post:
#Post#: 1183--------------------------------------------------
Re: Future Earth
By: AGelbert Date: May 22, 2014, 6:11 pm
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The companies and energy states that produce such WMD remain
remarkably open about what they’re
doing.
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Generally
speaking, they don’t hesitate to make public, or even boast
about, their plans for the wholesale destruction of the planet,
though of course they are never described that way. Nonetheless,
if an Iraqi autocrat or Iranian mullahs spoke in similar fashion
about producing nuclear weapons and how they were to be used,
they would be toast.
Take ExxonMobil,
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one
of the most profitable corporations in history. In early April,
it released two reports that focused on how the company, as Bill
McKibben has written, “planned to deal with the fact that [it]
and other oil giants have many times more carbon in their
collective reserves than scientists say we can safely burn." He
went on:
The company said that government restrictions that would force
it to keep its [fossil fuel] reserves in the ground were 'highly
unlikely,' and that they would not only dig them all up and burn
them, but would continue to search for more gas and oil -- a
search that currently consumes about $100 million of its
investors’ money every single day. 'Based on this analysis, we
are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or
will become
"stranded."'
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In other words, Exxon plans to exploit whatever fossil fuel
reserves it possesses to their fullest extent.
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Government leaders involved in supporting the production of such
weapons of mass destruction and their use are often similarly
open about it, even while also discussing steps to mitigate
their destructive effects. Take the White House, for instance.
Here was a statement President Obama proudly made in Oklahoma in
March 2012 on his energy policy:
Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil
today than at any time in the last eight years. That's important
to know. Over the last three years, I’ve directed my
administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil
exploration across 23 different states.
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We’re opening up
more than 75% of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve
quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve
added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and
then some.
Similarly, on May 5th, just before the White House was to reveal
that grim report on climate change in America, and with a
Congress incapable of passing even the most rudimentary climate
legislation aimed at making the country modestly more energy
efficient, senior Obama adviser John Podesta appeared in the
White House briefing room to brag about the administration’s
“green” energy policy. “The United States,” he said, “is now the
largest producer of natural gas
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in the world and
the largest producer of gas and oil in the world. It's projected
that the United States will continue to be the largest producer
of natural gas through 2030. For six straight months now, we've
produced more oil here at home than we've imported from
overseas. So that's all a good-news story.”
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Good news indeed, and from Vladmir Putin’s Russia, which just
expanded its vast oil and gas holdings by a Maine-sized chunk of
the Black Sea off Crimea, to Chinese “carbon bombs,” to Saudi
Arabian production guarantees, similar “good-news stories” are
similarly promoted. In essence, the creation of ever more
greenhouse gases -- of, that is, the engine of our future
destruction -- remains a “good news” story for ruling elites on
planet Earth.
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Weapons of Planetary Destruction
We know exactly what Dick Cheney -- ready to go to war on a 1%
possibility that some country might mean us harm -- would
answer, if asked about acting on the 95% doctrine. Who can doubt
that his response would be similar to those of the giant energy
companies, which have funded so much climate-change denialism
and false science over the years? He would claim that the
science simply isn’t “certain” enough (though “uncertainty” can,
in fact, cut two ways), that before we commit vast sums to
taking on the phenomenon, we need to know far more, and that, in
any case, climate-change science is driven by a political
agenda.
For Cheney & Co., it seemed obvious that acting on a 1%
possibility was a sensible way to go in America’s “defense” and
it’s no less gospel for them that acting on at least a 95%
possibility isn’t. For the Republican Party as a whole,
climate-change denial is by now nothing less than a litmus test
of loyalty, and so even a 101% doctrine wouldn’t do when it
comes to fossil fuels and this planet.
No point, of course, in blaming this on fossil fuels or even the
carbon dioxide they give off when burned. These are no more
weapons of mass destruction than are uranium-235 and
plutonium-239.
In this case, the weaponry is the production system that’s been
set up to find, extract, sell at staggering profits, and burn
those fossil fuels, and so create a greenhouse-gas planet. With
climate change, there is no “Little Boy” or “Fat Man”
equivalent, no simple weapon to focus on. In this sense,
fracking is the weapons system, as is deep-sea drilling, as are
those pipelines, and the gas stations, and the coal-fueled power
plants, and the millions of cars filling global roads, and the
accountants of the most profitable corporations in history.
All of it -- everything that brings endless fossil fuels to
market, makes those fuels eminently burnable, and helps suppress
the development of non-fossil fuel alternatives -- is the WMD.
The CEOs of the planet's giant energy corporations are the
dangerous mullahs, the true fundamentalists, of planet Earth,
since they are promoting a faith in fossil fuels which is
guaranteed to lead us to some version of End Times.
Perhaps we need a new category of weapons with a new acronym to
focus us on the nature of our present 95%-100% circumstances.
Call them weapons of planetary destruction (WPD) or weapons of
planetary harm (WPH). Only two weapons systems would clearly fit
such categories. One would be nuclear weapons which, even in a
localized war between Pakistan and India, could create some
version of “nuclear winter” in which the planet was cut off from
the sun by so much smoke and soot that it would grow colder
fast, experience a massive loss of crops, of growing seasons,
and of life. In the case of a major exchange of such weapons, we
would be talking about “the sixth extinction” of planetary
history.
Though on a different and harder to grasp time-scale, the
burning of fossil fuels could end in a similar fashion -- with a
series of “irreversible” disasters that could essentially burn
us and much other life off the Earth. This system of destruction
on a planetary scale, facilitated by most of the ruling and
corporate elites on the planet, is becoming (to bring into play
another category not usually used in connection with climate
change) the ultimate “crime against humanity” and, in fact,
against most living things. It is becoming a “terracide.” [img
width=100
height=080]
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/>
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© 2014 TomDispatch.com
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#Post#: 1205--------------------------------------------------
Future Earth: Are We Going Underground?
By: AGelbert Date: May 25, 2014, 12:01 am
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[img]
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Are We Going Underground? ???
SustainableBusiness.com News
What will happen to humans when climate change really gets
going? Some scientists think we'll shrink to hobbit-size :o to
give us a chance to survive in a world with much less
nourishment.
Regardless, it will surely be tough and we may end up
underground. Here are some ideas people are putting into
practice that might be more useful than they seem today.
Growing Underground - London (picture at link) ;D
What was once a WWII bomb shelter is being turned into a
subterranean urban farm underneath the streets of London.
100 feet below the street is a 2.5-acre test hydroponic farm
being developed by the non-profit Zero Carbon Food. Farming in a
tunnel has its advantages - temperatures stay at a steady 60
degrees all year long. No pesticides needed, very little water,
powered by LEDs - brings fresh micro-greens like watercress and
red amaranth to people that live above. And the space - two long
tunnels - is cheap.
To build out Growing Underground they are crowdfunding and
investors are enthusiastic - having contributed about $500,000
in its equity campaign - there are four days left. They start
growing this fall.
Urban Farm London Underground (picture at link) ;D
Highline - London
Another idea for London's empty tunnels is "Lowline," which
would turn some into an underground park and mushroom farm.
Dark spaces are perfect for growing mushrooms. A series of glass
sculptural mushrooms at street level would let in light and also
point the way down for visitors. ‘Funghi' restaurants and cafés
would be at each entrance.
Lowline - New York City
In NYC, a group is working on the world's first underground
park. After raising funds through crowdfunding, they are in the
process of converting an abandoned, underground trolley station
into a one-acre park.
Below the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the site has been
vacant since 1948, but it still has cobblestones and vaulted
ceilings.
Metro Stations - Paris
A mayoral candidate piqued people's interests when she suggested
turning a dozen empty subway stations into a theater, an art
gallery, a swimming pool, a nightclub, and a restaurant.
Read more:
Website:
www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/02/12/a_paris_mayoral_candidate
_s_plan_to_turn_ghost_m_tro_stations_into_nightclubs.html
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#Post#: 1230--------------------------------------------------
Future Earth: A Wilder Europe
By: AGelbert Date: May 26, 2014, 7:20 pm
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A Wilder Europe ;D
An organization hopes to restore natural ecological processes by
reintroducing large herbivores to the continent.
HTML http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/39863/title/A-Wilder-Europe/
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