The tar sands oil mining and giant hydro dams in Canada are making what is obviously a very dangerous situation for the whole world very, very much worse. The process is being aided and abetted by the US federal government which is keen to import oil from the tar sands, although some State governments want to ban it. | Surface temperatures over much of the Arctic landscape and the Siberian landscape, particularly in summer, have jumped six to 10 degrees C above normal in recent years. That has lead to a massive increase in the flows of the many rivers that terminate in the Arctic Ocean. |
| Shakhova and colleagues believe this substantial increase of warmer water into the shallow East Siberian Shelf has accelerated the melting of the subsea permafrost, in effect fracturing the frozen cap and allowing methane to escape into the atmosphere. “ |
| Shakhova´s study is just one of at least a dozen others that clearly show the Arctic region is not only melting but also emitting more carbon and methane. |
| Another Canadian study released last year showed that the region was getting darker and absorbing more heat in the summer because of a significant shift in plant growth from grasses and lichen to larger shrubs |
| the top two to three metres of permafrost across the entire Arctic region could thaw by the end of this centuryRead more at www.galdu.org |
Why are the same symbols turning up in so many different places? | What emerged was startling - 26 signs, all drawn in the same style, appeared again and again |
| It was a way of communicating information in a concise way, |
The line turned out to be the most popular, being present at 70 per cent of the sites and appearing across all time periods, from 30,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The next most prolific signs were the open angle symbol and the dots, both appearing at 42 per cent of the sites throughout this period. |
| Yet while long winters spent in caves might have induced people to spend time painting wonder walls, there are reasons to think the symbols originated much earlier on. One of the most intriguing facts to emerge from von Petzinger’s work is that more than three-quarters of the symbols were present in the very earliest sites, from over 30,000 years ago. |
| a tentative look at the existing records suggests |
| symbols crop up in other places |
Our first mini-report is the result of an analysis of 722 selected key clips on all Energy Sectors collected over the past three years from reputable published sources. Even though the numbers are relatively small, the findings are significant … and free for Amplifiers to Amplify. Also thanks to Eric and Amplify for enabling the initial compilation process. | The main issues of concern were 1) depletion of supply because of drought and 2) high CO2 and methane emissions from dams. Such a low percentage of clips about such significant issues indicates a lack public awareness of their importance. |
As drought conditions increase, the water levels behind dams are reported decreasing at accelerating rates, increasingly threatening generation capacity. |
In addition to flooding whole carbon sequestering ecosystems, research is cited which indicates that hydro dams “spew” methane and carbon dioxide from the rotting of drowned trees, vegetation and soil. |
A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical? |
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. |
| B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming |
| C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling? |
| this trend is not statistically significant. |
| Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998 |
| Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period. |
| we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing |
| I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. |
| unintentional error of solving the wrong problems precisely. In sharp contrast, the Type 4 Error is the intentional error of solving the wrong problems. |
| The fundamental deceit, Type 4 Error, of the healthcare crisis |
| can be boiled down to the following question: How can the AMA, the big HMOs, the insurance companies, and other powerful interests solve the problem of getting the public to accept the notion that maximizing profits at the public’s expense is the problem worth solving? |
| calls for a “meta-system of inquiry” to surface the relationship between epistemology and ethics. |
| Churchman argues ethics are embedded within epistemology, |
| knowledge is not cumulative, self-correcting and value-free; “facts” discovered by science are organized/created |
| within the ethical parameters |
| A systems approach means seeing the world through the eyes of another |
“Greek government would have to agree to a “long list” of demands to reform the Greek state”. From a Greek perspective that looks like loss of sovereignty to German diktat - an extremely volatile mixture given horrifying memories of the German war time occupation.
Germany and other eurozone partners are prepared to lend Greece money or to buy its sovereign bonds should the debt-laden Athens government run into trouble funding itself on the financial markets, according to officials in Berlin. |
A senior government official told the Financial Times on Wednesday: “Both are conceivable options, which will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis”, although he said it was “open” whether EU leaders would formally agree the plan at a summit on Thursday. |
Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, suggested on Wednesday that Britain would only get involved in a bail-out of Greece as part of an operation led by the IMF.
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But why does every story we tell ourselves end up being reduced to just another case of “either-or”? |
In America (at least), every headline can be boiled down to a choice between warring ideologies or identities, but there never seem to be more than two combatants. It’s always Leno OR Conan, liberal OR conservative, bailouts OR collapse, etc. |
Modern media frames every news item as a sporting event, in which there must be a winner and a loser, underdogs and dynasties, slumps and grooves. Every conflict is war. And since all of our stories are told at such a primitive level, we’re never challenged to see more than just “us” and “the other.” |
| This cognitive shorthand makes it easy for you to choose sides. |
| how are we supposed to evolve as a society when our news, our entertainment and our public culture is predicated on winners and losers, “right” OR “wrong,” “yes” OR “no”? |
1951 work, The Bias of Communication. Although Innis was writing well before Web 2.0, note how many of his predictions accurately reflect the major trends of today:
- Redistributing knowledge and, in doing so, shifting power
- Making it easier for “amateurs” to compete with “professionals,” because access to knowledge substitutes for mastery of complexity
- Allowing individuals and minorities to voice ideas
- Reducing the advantages of speed that formerly accrued because some had knowledge before others
- Reducing the advantages of size that are based on the ability to afford high costs.
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| the frontier of human productive capacity today is the power of extended collaboration — the ability to work together beyond the scope of small groupsRead more at blogs.hbr.org |
As Wittgenstein observed, we are flies trapped in the bottle of our language. Various forms of meditation claim to release consciousness from the language bottle. | Bohr argued that Heisenberg had made the unwarranted assumption that an electron is like a billiard ball in that it has a “position” and possesses a “speed”. These are classical notions, said Bohr, and do not make sense at the quantum level. The electron does not necessarily have an intrinsic position or speed, or even a particular path. Rather, when we try to make measurements, quantum nature replies in a way we interpret using these familiar concepts |
| While Heisenberg argued that “the meaning of quantum theory is in the equations”, Bohr pointed out that physicists still have to stand around the blackboard and discuss them in German, French or English. Whatever the language, it contains deep assumptions about space, time and causality - assumptions that do not apply to the quantum world. Hence, wrote Bohr, “we are suspended in language such that we don’t know what is up and what is down”. Trying to talk about quantum reality generates only confusion and paradox.Read more at www.newscientist.com |
Crime pays, especially in countries where people lack respect for their politicians. Unofficial, or “shadow”, economies can help shield European countries during a recession – but illicit activity has to be on a sizeable scale, according to report by Germany’s Deutsche Bank. |
Countries with a high prevalence of moonlighting builders, unrecorded cash transactions, missing invoices, tax evasion or illegal activities such as drug dealing, have seen smaller contractions during Europe’s worst downturn since the 1930s than more honest neighbours, researchers at the Frankfurt-based bank have concluded. |
The relationship works, however, only if the “shadow economy” is large – such as in Greece, where George Papandreou, prime minister, acknowledged this month that the public services are riddled with corruption. |
At the other extreme, Deutsche Bank found that countries with a “particularly honest” population – such as Austria, France or the Netherlands had also fared relatively well during the crisis. Read more at www.ft.com |
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Running away - CLIMATE CHANGE: Arctic Shelf Leaking Potent Greenhouse Gas
